Christian Evolutionists....

Originally posted by chickenman
the missing link is no challenge, you only have to look at chimp and human DNA to realise that the best explanation is common descent.

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Best explaination? I don't need no best explaination, all I need is the truth, and evolution does not provide enough answers for me consider it truth.

I firmly believe it to be truth, nothing else explains the human/chimp DNA homology

But Shaggy does not the Bible tell us to test and see if it is true and did not God say to look at nature to see His glory?

We test the Bible and find that though it is not scientificaly or even historicaly correct it does have spiritual meaning.

We look at nature and find that things don't seem to have happened as stated in the Bible but this in no way diminishes the glory of God, but IMO makes Gods glory even brighter that He could make more than we could have ever imagined in ways that we never imagined.

It is not Biblical to stick ones head in the sand and humm real loud until Jesus comes again.

Nothing else that man can offer can explain it, besides it's no secret how close a lot of species DNA is. That doesn't prove anything.

Lewis, when evolution has been proven 100%, you'll have my attention.

Originally posted by LewisWildermuth
But Shaggy does not the Bible tell us to test and see if it is true and did not God say to look at nature to see His glory?

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Yes it does, but it doesn't say to try to disprove Gods account of his creation of man, he was explicit when he said he CREATED man in a day.

And my first grade teacher was quite explicit when she was teaching me the basics about reading. But most of what she taught me was an oversipmlification as not to overload me with knowlege that would not be needed for years to come. Was what she did wrong? No, it gave me the help to understand the basics so I would not be overwhelmed by the more complex things I would learn later.

God was doing the same thing IMO, yes he could of tried to explain evolution, geology, quantum physics, realativity and so on to a group of sheep herders that lived in a desert and rarely traveled more than 100 miles from where they were born, but that would have probably lead to more confusion than they were able to handle at the time.

Originally posted by npetreley


Boy do you have issues.

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I'm not the one taking a particular interpretation of a Bronze Age text over the evidence flanking from all directions and different fields like hungry vultures.

sbbqb7n16:

Thermodynamics...

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That's one of the dumbest young-earth cretinist arguments ever made and is Kent Hovind-quality. Look at ice crystals, snowflakes, amino acid formation or the whirlpool patterns in running water to see complexity arising from chaos when energy is added.

And your problem now turns out to be that the God of all creation, says He created you, but nooo you're too smart for that. You would have to appear to "show why HE is wrong, yet highly consistent before any other interpretation would be possible."

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There is nothing whatsoever consistent about your God. From logically contradicting his own attributes, to acting differently to what other parts of the Bible say about him, to leaving evidence for evolution all around the earth to trick scientists and all the Christians who have a bit of sense... He's either made up by shroom-consuming humans or the equivalent of a schizophrenic psycho. Nah, I take that back--schizophrenic psychos at least are mostly consistent...

And these pieces of evidence are from who? Scientists whose sole dependance at being a scientist derives answers? How did they date the earth again? And you know them to be correct every time? because they are all infallible, right?

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Because numerous other methods can be used to cross-check any single other method of gathering data to more or less prove it's airtight if they all point to the same conclusion?

Let's say you have 50 clocks in a store. They're quartz watches, mechanical watches, hourglasses, sundials, radioactive watches, quantum watches (ok, I made that one up...) They all show the time as ranging from 8:26 AM to 8:31 AM. Now you get a new watch and wonder if it's right. Is it reasonable to conclude that if it shows the time as 8:28 AM, it's probably at least somewhat accurate, since all the others agree as well?

And when you add new watches, they agree with the old timepieces 95%-99% of the time. When one rarely disagrees, it is tested and virtually always found to be suffering from mechanical failure or another condition--other watches give consistent results.

The assumption they're measuring time at a constant speed is therefore perfectly valid and is more or less 'proven'--any single phenomena that could screw up the results of even a group would only affect that group, leaving the results between groups scattered and non-uniform.

However, we get high-level agreement between fundamentally different methods, such as plate tectonic movement, sedimentary deposition, radiometric dating, ice-cores, astronomical cycles recorded in the crust and others. All of these corroborate the standard geological model; furthermore, many geologic features cannot be explained by anything except processes acting over very long periods, not 6000 years.

Only radiometric dating can be used for the oldest dating, such as the ultimate age of the earth, but a great many methods with different decay rates agree on that as well, and changing physical constants such as the speed of light to uniformly screw up decay rates would also alter processes ranging from electromagnetism to nuclear fusion and leave pretty unambigous evidence, such as the sun exploding. Therefore, you're left with no valid objections whatsoever to scientific dating methods, unless you'd like to claim your God screwed ALL OF THEM up on purpose to fool us. In that case, the Matrix is feeding you fake sensory input that you're reading this.

Except that... where did God come from again? And actually God doesn't give any explanatory value whatsoever... in the Bible which you don't believe... no predictions can be gleamed from that hypothesis, no testable mechanisms. In short, it's a completely useless explanation

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Couldn't agree more. We can either find independent evidence of the thing that designed us, or, since we have none, assume that any phenomena that could be responsible for the existence of an infinitely complex being is more than enough to be responsible for our own existence, and scientifically look for better answers than 'God did it, don't ask how'.

Chemicals actually do not just up and arrange themselves in complex patterns though... "An object in motion tends to remain in motion and an object at rest tends to stay at rest....unless acted upon by an outside force."

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Gee, an outside force such as heat, mechanical energy or something else, all of which would likely be present on the primordial earth, just like they have for the past billions of years?

You made up the example why don't you tell us.... because we don't even know that the Egyptians existed except by the buildings they built, and their effect on other civilizations...

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But we do have very consistent historical accounts from a wide variety of unbiased sources, as well as archaeology, on the Egyptian civilization, more or less proving it exists. Do you dispute that they could build something orders of magnitude simpler than the Empire State Building because simpler designs would suffice at the time?

I see you don't. So how then is it logical or honest to take a modern cell such as E.Coli, which has undergone a billion years of gradual evolution from the protobiont, and calculate the odds on it forming spontaneously to 'disprove' abiogenesis? Does it reek of misleading the uninformed public for debate points (like everything on the YEC side) or what?

Actually... God said He created man from dust. If man came from evolution that makes God a liar. And God does not lie... therefore either God is right and evolution is false, or evolution is right and God is made up...

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There are plenty of things in the Bible that make your God out to be a liar anyway. And, of course, there's the ultimate proof of that--if he created everything 6000 years ago but left massive amounts of evidence for an old earth/universe, evolution, no global flood, etc. then he's a liar by any reasonable definition of the term.

And in line with your last statement "you already have that lifeform" ... why do we still have other lifeforms then? if these bacteria evolved... why are there still bacteria? If monkeys evolved into whatever, why are there still monkeys?

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And if dogs evolved from wolves, why are there still wolves? Could it be that bacteria and monkeys are well-adapted to their respective ecological niches, just like humans are to theirs now? (Besides, the common ancestor of human and ape no longer exists as a distinct species, so the argument doesn't apply anyway).

Ah, the stupidity of YEC arguments never ceases to amaze me. The worst part is that I can't hold it against anyone but the charlatans feeding crap to people who can't refute it easily. Can't blame a person who falls for an impressive-sounding but bankrupt argument on biology from a guy with a Ph.D. on an irrelevant subject from a diploma mill...

Ah but alas you are the ignorant one... I know God created man, and you just don't know that yet... but one day you'll learn then you won't be ignorant no more!

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If I ever do learn that, it will be on the basis of empirical evidence or at least a testable, repeatedly corroborated hypothesis that doesn't contradict itself before getting off the ground. Worshipping that God would be a different matter entirely from knowing he exists, though. You can find out Saddam Hussein exists after thinking he doesn't, but you won't be quick to worship him even if the threat of bodily harm presents itself. Principles, morality, yadda yadda.

Originally posted by seebs:


You would be well-advised to read Augustine's comments about Scripture and science, in a treatise titled _The Literal Meaning of Genesis_, written 1600 years ago:

"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion."

Augustine was wise indeed.

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Thank you for that most interesting and enlightening quotation, seebs. If you have the reference of where I can find it (including which translation into English), I would sincerely appreciate your sharing it. Again, thank you.

You might also be interested in Nahmanides' Commentary on the Torah, which was translated into English by Chavel in 1971. Writing about 750 years ago (well before the advent of modern scientific discoveries) and using only a very close and careful reading of the Hebrew scriptures and ancient commentaries, Nahmanides' conclusions regarding the Genesis account of creation (including both the universe and of Adam) are very similar to what mainstream science is currently saying.

Originally posted by Shaggy

Those are the words of an unbeliever, Im sorry you believe we evolved from a group of cells, your imperfect evolution theory has much missing data, and always will, you really believe the missing link will be found? Do you think the missing transitional fossils will surface?

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Aw, just give them more time. I posted a challenge to present transitionals, and nobody was able to meet the challenge, but there's a perfectly good explanation for that. I restricted my challenge to 99.9875% of the fossil record, which wasn't enough for them to find any evidence.

Originally posted by Shaggy

Those that do not walk with God will have doubts and put their faith in mans imperfect scientific theories, The more you reject God and his truths the more he will harden yur heart and the more certain of these evolution theories you will become.

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Extremely well put. One wanders into very dangerous territory when one trembles at man's word over G~d's word. I've already quoted Romans as an example of what happens in the long run...

Extremely well put. One wanders into very dangerous territory when one trembles at man's word over G~d's word. I've already quoted Romans as an example of what happens in the long run...

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That's right. And we know creation is true because Nick Petreley thinks that is the best way to interpret the Bible. And if Nick Petreley says it, I better tremble before it - 'cause that makes it God's word.

Give me your commandments, oh Nick.

I do not see how you can ask people not to say that it is a myth.

I was a Christian and an evolutionist.

I did not believe that Adam was made from dust or that Eve was made from Adam's rib.

It was simply a story, like many other stories in the Bible. You know - parables. The point of the story was that God was the creator. Where's the problem?

I am no longer a Christian.

And I am no longer a Christian because I took the words in the Bible to be literal truth.

Now, with regard to what I believed back when I was a Christian (I became an atheist in June of last year) I do not and did not think there is as clear a dividing line between fiction and fact in the Bible as you do.

Jewish storytelling was often mythic in nature - that is, there were allegorical elements thrown into the story to make it more interesting and to illuminate spiritual rather than physical truths.

God created the universe and everything in it is what I think the genesis creation stroy is saying. The other parts are allegory.

I did not believe there was an actual apple or an actual snake. I believed that they were symbolic of man choosing to disobey God and instead listen to the low things in his nature.

With regard to the rib thing, do I throw out all that science has to teach us or do I simply posit that perhaps the writers of the Bible were being a little poetic here - a tradition common to Jewish writers?

The answer to me was obvious and never caused me a problem.

Originally posted by sbbqb7n16
Has anyone answered my question yet!? Without claming it to be a myth...please?

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Can you answer questions about God, without asserting that He exists?

You're asking people who have a belief to justify it by assuming that it's false. This is ridiculous! If I believe that Genesis is a myth - a way for God to tell us important things (like that He loves us, and that He made everything) through a story - then obviously, my explanation of what I think it means will be entirely rooted in that interpretation.

Asking me how I "explain" the literal facts of a thing I do not believe to be literal is just pointless. It doesn't make any sense.

If you want to learn about what Christians who accept evolution believe, you'll have to start by accepting that what they believe is not necessarily going to agree with what you believe, and that they may not take every last word in the Bible as being literally and historically correct, with no questions of interpretation or context.

I am not aware of any archeological evidence for anything in Genesis. We certainly have no evidence for a global flood, or the ark, or anything like it. (Or at least, none that's remotely convincing, IMHO.)

seebs, there does seem to be some evidence for a large "local" flood of the black sea - its not a global flood, but it is a big flood

search "black sea flood" on google, I think theres a national geographic site on it