As a Christian, how many of you believe in evolution?

inquiring mind · Jan 14, 2019

USincognito said:
Now see here's the problem. An extant taxon evolving into another extant taxon would not be evidence of evolution, but would falsify it. Existing things, like rhinos, don't evolve other existing things, like rabbits. Evolution is a one way street and every branch is a different and separate route. So, "macro" would be changes above the species level where an ancestral population splits into one or more species over time.

USincognito said:
This is false. I'm going to bet that you're conflating direct observation with evidence, but that still isn't true. We have observed speciation occur numerous times. Some examples would be Italian Wall Lizards, Apple Maggot Flies and Faroe Island House Mice. And direct, real time observation is not the only way to gather evidence. There are numerous lines of evidence for common descent found in biogeography, anatomical and molecular vestiges, atavisms, anatomical homology, genetic similarity, etc.
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent

Beware! More speculation with heapings of scientific verbiage, all passed off as fact (like saying the examples change from one kind to another 'by their definition'). Evolutionists love words and changing definitions because the evidence they long for is hard to come by mind you... and there is nothing in the fossil record to back it up.

DecstarG said:
Psalm 104:5 - "He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." [The Earth moves in many ways, around the Sun, through the Milky Way, etc.]

Ecclesiastes 1:5 - "The Sun rises and the Sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises." (From the NIV Bible) [The Sun doesn't revolve around the Earth as this suggests.]

Job 9:6 - "He shakes the earth from its place and makes its pillars tremble." (From the NIV Bible) [It says that the Earth rests on pillars which it clearly doesn't.]

Isaiah 11:12 - And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. (KJV Bible) [A sphere cannot have corners.]

Now do you still want to tell me that the bible says the Earth is not flat?

Don't get me started on Isaiah 40:22. That has nothing to do with a sphere. A sphere is not a circle.

Expressions only... I don't see 'flat' anywhere.

USincognito · Jan 14, 2019

inquiring mind said:
And I've seen this over and over again... charges of ignorance or lack of understanding when scientific speculation isn't accepted.

Then followed by more conjecture and inferring instead of accepting God's word Genesis 1:26-27. Science is a wonderful thing until it's used to usurp God's glory.

Thanks for demonstrating my point for me. You're talking in circles, whining and using magic words rather than simply diving right in and presenting/discussing the evidence. Why don't you just go ahead and discuss the evidence?

USincognito · Jan 14, 2019

inquiring mind said:
Beware! More speculation with heapings of scientific verbiage, all passed off as fact (like saying the examples change from one kind to another 'by their definition'). Evolutionists love words and changing definitions because the evidence they long for is hard to come by mind you...

Thank you for again demonstrating my point for me why spouting vacuous verbiage instead of simply and actually addressing the points I made. Don't metadebate by talking about the discussion or the person.

inquiring mind said:
and there is nothing in the fossil record to back it up.

This is another great example demonstrating my point. Notice how he doesn't actually address the fossil record, he just claims that there's no evidence in it. Let's test this out a bit further. I will post a bunch of photos of fossils and he'll either hand wave them or claim they don't show a "change in kind" (whatever that means) or claim that fossils don't tell us anything other than that something has died - though he clearly thinks fossils would tell us about evolution when he said "there is nothing in the fossil record to back it up". Let's see how my prediction goes...

_____a_____ · Jan 14, 2019

inquiring mind said:
Expressions only... I don't see 'flat' anywhere.

No but it is heavily implied. Also, are you going to respond to my previous post? I'll quote it here for convenience, but it seems to have stumped you.

DecstarG said:
I would like to point out a few issues with your argument, you appear to be arguing on the premise that God exists, and therefore anything else is false. Allow me to point out some contradictions in the bible (the link leads to a list). In addition to that 1 Corinthians 2:15 states that spiritual men cannot be judged, implying that all priests, no matter what bad things they do, should not be punished. Do you want priests to kill people and get away with it? The bible can not be true, in addition to the fact the bible states clearly the earth is flat, which it clearly is not, it is impossible and therefore god cannot exist.

However I will allow you the benefit of the doubt and we'll assume that the bible has been distorted from it's original meaning. How is it possible to disprove a god then. (I used "a god" because without the bible then you have no way of knowing what the Christian god is like). Without the bible you use a simple argument of philosophy, Occams Razor. 2000 years ago, we had very little understanding of the universe around us, philosophers believed the Earth was flat and everything wanted to go to ground because it was their natural state. 2019 years ago, the simplest explanation was that a sentient being made things happen. However today, we understand much more and a better explanation is that the universe is expanding constantly and we are not the center of it. Today it is unreasonable to use 2019 year old manuscripts to attempt to understand the world. Occams Razor.

To conclude this fairly long post, I would ask you a simple question, what can you believe in if you can't believe your observations?

Thanks for hearing me out.

_____a_____ · Jan 14, 2019

USincognito said:
Thank you for again demonstrating my point for me why spouting vacuous verbiage instead of simply and actually addressing the points I made. Don't metadebate by talking about the discussion or the person.

This is another great example demonstrating my point. Notice how he doesn't actually address the fossil record, he just claims that there's no evidence in it. Let's test this out a bit further. I will post a bunch of photos of fossils and he'll either hand wave them or claim they don't show a "change in kind" (whatever that means) or claim that fossils don't tell us anything other than that something has died - though he clearly thinks fossils would tell us about evolution when he said "there is nothing in the fossil record to back it up". Let's see how my prediction goes...
View attachment 249018
View attachment 249019
View attachment 249020

You'll be correct about our creationist friend. If they respond in the next 42 years (I got the dolphin joke in your signature).

USincognito · Jan 14, 2019

SinoBen said:
I wonder if you are conflating theories of evolution with natural selection.

Those are not separate theories, and in fact natural selection isn't a theory. You also appear confused as to the meaning of theory in science. It does't mean a hunch or a guess. It means an overarching explanation for a large body of related phenomena and observations. In the case of evolution it explains the diversity of life we see now and in the fossil record.

SinoBen said:
But using a different albeit standard definition if it can be called that:
Macro evolution - nah.... highly sceptical about that
Micro evolution - sure.... the changes are "horizontal" not "vertical" so still just variation of the same species.

"Horizontal" and "vertical" are meaningless terms in the context of evolution (apart form horizontal gene transfer). And we have not only observed speciation, but we have numerous lines of evidence supporting common descent including the fossil record and genetics.

USincognito · Jan 14, 2019

Hank77 said:
No they are not separate theories but they are different even though the same mechanisms apply.

Microevolution is simply a change in gene frequency within a population. Evolution at this scale can be observed over short periods of time — for example, between one generation and the next, the frequency of a gene for pesticide resistance in a population of crop pests increases.
Macroevolution encompasses the grandest trends and transformations in evolution, such as the origin of mammals and the radiation of flowering plants.
What is macroevolution?

1. They are only quantitatively different, not qualitatively different. The mechanism for both is exactly the same - mutations being selected by the environment.
2. The second part in bold is merely the first part in bold over longer periods of time. Or to insert the examples from the quoted material, the evolution of mammals and the radiation of flowering plants is merely changes in gene frequency in populations over longer periods of time.

_____a_____ · Jan 14, 2019

This thread is getting pretty clogged with misunderstandings so far, and it is quite annoying, so I will clear up some main misconceptions.

Natural selection: It is the process of more success in mating leading to beneficial genes being passed on more often. This is the theory of evolution.
Micro/Macro evolution: same thing - different time scale.
Fossil records: support evolution. As the kind @USincognito has shown:(you can see the difference particularly in the side shots) [found some relevant dating as well: The Timeline of Human Evolution].
THEORY: A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

The last one is important. I will edit this as appropriate.

DogmaHunter · Jan 14, 2019

JCFantasy23 said:
I'm still not convinced humans came from apes

Humans are apes, just like humans are mammals.

but animals and other matter clearly have evolved over time, usually to adapt to change so they can survive.

And the same goes for humans, which are animals too. In the same way that humans are mammals and primates.

DogmaHunter · Jan 14, 2019

Jonaitis said:
I do believe in adaptation, the change that can occur in a species of an animal due to their long residence in a certain environment or climate. This answers the question how all the animals could fit in the Ark, it was before adaptation took place when there may have been just one kind of species of each animal. The same goes for the way different people look different in different regions on earth.

Assuming you believe that the impossible flood happened a few thousand years ago, then this idea actually requires you to believe in a super-duper-hyper version of evolution, which goes thousands of times faster then what we empirically know and observe.

To the point were you actually require some 20 speciation events PER DAY, to get to all the diversity we observe today.

It's obvious nonsense. And bizar....

I don't believe in Human Evolution, that all of life on earth came from an single cell that developed over millions of years, and that we share a common ancestor with all animals, especially with the modern ape.

Off course, empirical reality isn't impacted by what you believe or don't believe.

DogmaHunter · Jan 14, 2019

Mark Quayle said:
Many christians are revolted by my stand on this. But if God is indeed the one and only Self-existent, Omnipotent, Creator of everything else, he can do whatever he wants and make it look however he wants and take as long as he wants and make it happen within 6000 years, and not be lying. It maybe took 14 billion --what do I know?

Our own resident Geniuses --Einstein, Hawking and so on-- say time is relative, as also, therefore, is space. If it was expanding rapidly, say, from our point of view now, beginning 14 billion years ago, why would it look any different if from this place we have been the last 6000 years or so, it only took a day?

We do our computations, and then someone says, but......

As my dad was known to say, "How old was Adam when God made him"?

If God is God, he can do anything he wants, and doesn't owe us an explanation. That doesn't mean he doesn't delight in watching us figure things out, and maybe even give a nudge now and then in the right direction, or a hand on the head to make us realize maybe he did do it after all.

That's all nice.

But if god can do anything anyway, you might just as well accept the evidence of reality. Since by very definition, whatever that evidence suggests, is something your god can do, right?

DogmaHunter · Jan 14, 2019

SinoBen said:
I wonder if you are conflating theories of evolution with natural selection.

But using a different albeit standard definition if it can be called that:
Macro evolution - nah.... highly sceptical about that
Micro evolution - sure.... the changes are "horizontal" not "vertical" so still just variation of the same species.

That's like saying that you believe that I can walk 100 meters, but not 10 km.

DogmaHunter · Jan 14, 2019

xianghua said:
can you give an example? as far as i aware we only see variations but not something like a new family (say a cat evolving into a dog).

If a cat would evolve into a dog, evolution theory would be falsified.

As has been said to you so many times: please learn the science you wish to argue against. It will prevent you from posting such ignorant statements.

DogmaHunter · Jan 14, 2019

xianghua said:
i dont think that macro evolution and micro evolution are the same thing just on different timescales.

You're wrong, as has been explained to you ad nauseum.

for instance: a cat varitaion is still a cat varition. so we dont see a cat becoming something else like say a dog or a cow.

Evolution would be falsified, if that were to happen. As has been explained to you ad nauseum.

so even if we add millions of years we will end up with a cat variation

With sub-species of felines, yes.

think about this analogy: say that we had a self replicating car (like a living thing). can such a car evolve into something like an airplane?

Cars don't replicate.

DogmaHunter · Jan 14, 2019

inquiring mind said:
Micro Evolution - Yes, in the form of genetic parameters designed by God for adaptation and survival.

Macro Evolution - No, the biggest orchestrated hoax ever pulled on mankind. Universal descent from a common ancestor is only speculation passed off as scientific fact, and there is no evididence of one kind changing into another kind in the fossil record.

Examples of such evidence have been provided to you countless times.

Sticking your head in the sand, won't change that.

DogmaHunter · Jan 14, 2019

inquiring mind said:
They are deceived by the establishment that promotes macro evolution above God's word.

Who is this establishment, if not biologists themselves?

Valid science is determined by valid scientists... with evidence, not speculation.

Valid scientists...
That would be biologists when it concerns the field of biology, right?

DogmaHunter · Jan 14, 2019

inquiring mind said:
Well, according to you it's not proof; according to some other responses it's not faith... so, who's confused here?

Do you understand the difference between "evidence" and "proof"?

It sounds like you don't.

DogmaHunter · Jan 14, 2019

inquiring mind said:
Except of course that we were created by God. When they consider that... we can talk reasonable.

Merely assuming unfalsifiable extra-ordinary claims that don't fit the evidence and using that as a dogmatic unquestionable starting point, is the very opposite of "reasonable".

DogmaHunter · Jan 14, 2019

inquiring mind said:
This is only an attempt to make the Bible look silly. I see nothing in scripture that should be interpreted as meaning the earth is flat.

Flat earthers disagree.

Just like you disagree with biologists and more educated christians about evolution.

SinoBen · Jan 14, 2019

DogmaHunter said:
That's like saying that you believe that I can walk 100 meters, but not 10 km.

No, it's like saying you can take one step but not walk to the other side of the galaxy.

As a Christian, how many of you believe in evolution?

If you are a Christian, (this is a question for Christians only), do you think evolution occurs?

Yes, evolution occurs.

No, evolution does not occur.

I'm not sure.

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