Creationism (doctrine and teaching)

What is your position on the subject of Origins

  • Young Earth Creationist

  • Old Earth Creationist

  • Theistic Creationist (if that distinction matters to you)

  • Theistic Evolutionist (strictly secondary causes)


Results are only viewable after voting.

Fascinated With God

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Which is what Papias and the other evolutionists do with two definitions of evolution. The scientific meaning of 'evolution' is the, 'change of alleles (traits) in populations over time'. What Papias is doing here is calling a Creationist a, 'common descent denier' which is a fraudulent misrepresentation of what it is. Evolution is it is being used here is the 'a priori (without prior) of universal common descent by exclusively naturalistic means'. I have told him that repeatedly but he purposely equivocates, 'common descent' with 'universal common descent'.
That makes absolutely no sense. How is 'common descent' any different from 'universal common descent'? Anyway, I don't believe in common descent so splitting hairs over something I don't believe in won't convince me of anything.

As to 'exclusively naturalistic means', you are simply making false accusations about what we believe. That is very unbecoming and uncivilized. I believe in divine selection as well as natural selection, social selection (also called social Darwinism), and sexual selection. That is why I asked you about the Chosen Race. That is clearly a case of divine selection in action. One population expanded while others were wiped out or dramatically reduced, all by the hand of God.

It's called Darwinism and it's a formal and categorical rejection of 'special creation':
in the Introduction to his "Hist. Nat. des Animaux sans Vertébres.' In these works he upholds the doctrine that species, including man, are descended from other species. He first did the eminent service of arousing attention to the probability of all change in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition. (On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin)
I am not denying there are lots of atheists in biology, but Darwin was not an atheist and there is nothing inherently atheistic about evolution, as you falsely imply. Atheists can put an atheistic spin on evolution, just as Christians can put a theistic spin on evolution, which in my view is far more accurate than the atheistic take.

The equivocation fallacy here is the one Papias and all evolutionists, theistic or otherwise, use to conflate and confuse the observer. It is the, 'misleading use of a term with more than one meaning', that is the fallacy or flaw in the argument, rightfully branded 'equivocation'.
The supposed equivocation you tried to fabricate made no sense what-so-ever. Whether or not the word universal is in the term makes absolutely no difference that I can see.

<edit>
Papias purposely misleads with one vital omission, what is denied is 'universal common descent' and a secondary element to Darwinism which is, 'by exclusively naturalistic means'.
Repeating a false accusation over and over doesn't make it any less false. You are simply trying to fabricate your own definition that evolution must be associated with atheism. It is completely without substance.

That is why I phrased the poll question the way I did.
To be deliberately obscure, yes we know.

Papias knows this, he is deliberately misleading you.
Papias is neither leading nor misleading me. We have our own opinions which happen to coincide to some extent.

Evolution defined as what?
That is what this argument really is, you are just trying to quibble over what the definition of 'is' is.

My definitions are on the table...again.
Your strawman definitions which are nothing more than false accusations. You seem to know what we think better than we do. It is one thing to say that you disagree with a statement someone makes, it is quite something else to say that we don't even know what we actually believe and you are going to tell us what it is that we actually believe. <edit>





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Fascinated With God

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If you detest them then stop defending their philosophy.
Evolution is not a philosophy and it is not owned by atheists.

I know Catholic theology well enough to tell you that all Catholics are creationists.
I showed you the quote from the Pope in 1996 stating the evolution is not simply a hypothesis. And yet you ignore this fact and continue making this false statement. You clearly don't want the facts to get in the way of your argument.

I made it crystal clear that all I intend to do is to reject the naturalistic assumptions that are essentially atheistic at it's core.
Now that at least I can agree with IF you expand the phrase to 'purely naturalistic means'. Having naturalistic means as PART of the picture but not the full picture is not atheistic at all.

Stop equivocating Darwinism with evolutionary biology and we can start a more substantive dialogue.
Huh?! What is the difference? You agree with one and not the other? :confused:






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mark kennedy

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Evolution is not a philosophy and it is not owned by atheists.

Darwinism is.

I showed you the quote from the Pope in 1996 stating the evolution is not simply a hypothesis. And yet you ignore this fact and continue making this false statement. You clearly don't want the facts to get in the way of your argument.

I showed you in a quotes from the same Pope the dangers of Modernism. Like all Theistic Evolutionists you ignored them.

Now that at least I can agree with completely. Thank you oh Lord for this moment of coherence where this fierce and ugly battle has paused for a moment and we can actually agree on something. Amen.

I certainly hope so.

Huh?! What is the difference? You agree with one and not the other? :confused:

Let's cut to the chase, define evolution and we can move on to a more substantive discourse.
 
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gluadys

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WOAH! Who said creationists are: "evolution deniers"

Seriously? Like equivocation much? Creationists BELIEVE in natural selection and Darwinian evolution is not a "fact" that people deny.

I'm rolling my eyes here.

Bad definition, man.

Whose bad definition?

I am puzzled by the idea of accepting natural selection while rejecting Darwinian evolution. After all, Darwin's proposal was "evolution by means of natural selection". You can't get much more Darwinian than natural selection.

So what definitions of both are you using that makes one acceptable and the other not?
 
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mark kennedy

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Whose bad definition?

I am puzzled by the idea of accepting natural selection while rejecting Darwinian evolution. After all, Darwin's proposal was "evolution by means of natural selection". You can't get much more Darwinian than natural selection.

So what definitions of both are you using that makes one acceptable and the other not?

Darwin's concept was the death of the less fit and it was just one long argument against special creation. Your right, you can't get any more Darwinian then that but your wrong about one thing. Darwin's shallow attempt at metaphysics had nothing to do with evolution. He tells you in the title what his book on natural selection was about:

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

Amazing that Darwinism has almost universal acceptance among liberals when it's central focus was race.
 
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frogman2x

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WOAH! Who said creationists are: "evolution deniers"

Seriously? Like equivocation much? Creationists BELIEVE in natural selection and Darwinian evolution is not a "fact" that people deny.

Soem do and some do not belive in naural selection and do deny that Darwin was right.

IMO, most Christians reject evolution as a whole.

kermit
 
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gluadys

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Darwin's concept was the death of the less fit and it was just one long argument against special creation. Your right, you can't get any more Darwinian then that but your wrong about one thing. Darwin's shallow attempt at metaphysics had nothing to do with evolution.

No, I am not. I agree, Darwin was not strong in metaphysics. That is why he is remembered as a scientist, not as a philosopher. I would probably disagree with a lot of his non-science-based attitudes.






He tells you in the title what his book on natural selection was about:

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

Amazing that Darwinism has almost universal acceptance among liberals when it's central focus was race.

Well, anyone who knows how the term 'race' was used in Darwin's generation knows it did not have the connotations it has today. Then it was merely a synonym for 'breed' or 'variation' in any species. So, the races he was speaking of were things like pouter pigeons, spy apples, cabbage butterflies, white-tailed deer, polar bears, howler monkeys and so on.

Anyway, it seems you agree with me that it is nonsensical to differentiate between natural selection and Darwinian evolution. They are almost synonymous.
 
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mark kennedy

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No, I am not. I agree, Darwin was not strong in metaphysics. That is why he is remembered as a scientist, not as a philosopher. I would probably disagree with a lot of his non-science-based attitudes.

Darwin wasn't all the good at science either, he was a naturalist. He was trained in the sciences but he proved to be a better author then anything else.

Well, anyone who knows how the term 'race' was used in Darwin's generation knows it did not have the connotations it has today. Then it was merely a synonym for 'breed' or 'variation' in any species. So, the races he was speaking of were things like pouter pigeons, spy apples, cabbage butterflies, white-tailed deer, polar bears, howler monkeys and so on.

It was also applied to human races and subspecies. The inferior as he saw them were the Aborigines and the Irish. In the Descent of Man it's clearly a premise.

Anyway, it seems you agree with me that it is nonsensical to differentiate between natural selection and Darwinian evolution. They are almost synonymous.

Natural selection is obviously his central thesis, it's evolution by means of natural selection. Darwinian evolution itself has went through some modifications over the years and it's little more then a worldview applied to natural history and it's positively transcendental.

Maybe Darwin wasn't so good at metaphysics by Darwinians have used it as the basis for a unified theory of biology, natural history and it's been applied to legal and political theory on a broad scale. Darwin was just a naturalist but Darwinism is the a priori assumption of universal common descent going all the way back to the Big Bang. It's still just one long argument against special creation where naturalistic assumptions transcend all living systems throughout natural history.

Thanks for the exchange.

Grace and peace,
Mark
 
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Calminian

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...Since the word Creationist does not appear before 1859 I don't know how you can claim John Wesley (1703–1791) and Matthew Henry (1662–1714) were Creationists, let alone Calvin and Augustine.....

The word calvinist didn't exist during the life of augustine nor during calvins life. Does than mean he wasn't a calvinist?

The logic to this argument doesn't work. Creationist is just a title. Creationists today agree on some basic things, and there is also much diversity among them. But they believed in the basic ideas of creationism, thus are rightly categorized as creationists. They all accepted that death came into the world through the sin of Adam. That alone sets them apart from radical theistic evolutionists.
 
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gluadys

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Darwin wasn't all the good at science either, he was a naturalist. He was trained in the sciences but he proved to be a better author then anything else.

In Darwin's time the word "scientist" was not yet in use. All those we would call scientists were then called naturalists or natural philosophers. What we would call Departments of Science at a University were then called Departments of Natural Philosophy. A few still are.



It was also applied to human races and subspecies. The inferior as he saw them were the Aborigines and the Irish. In the Descent of Man it's clearly a premise.

In Darwin's time, it was still a debatable issue whether humanity was one or several species. That is an issue he addresses in Descent of Man and comes down in favour of one species. (By contrast Louis Agassiz favored polygenism--that the different "races" of humanity were independent special creations.)

Darwin favored the abolition of slavery, but like Abraham Lincoln, he did not think of the "races" as being equal. Any "race" other than European (actually British) was seen as "less civilized". A streak of prejudice that was par for the course among even the most liberal thinkers of the time in Europe, but certainly no longer defensible today. In fact, today, we can no longer even think in scientific terms of human "races". Race has become an entirely cultural reference. According to our DNA, humans are no more divided into different races than they are into different species.

Darwin's views on women were also filled with Victorian-era prejudices. I expect this is why Descent of Man seems very outdated in contrast to Origin of Species.



Natural selection is obviously his central thesis, it's evolution by means of natural selection. Darwinian evolution itself has went through some modifications over the years and it's little more then a worldview applied to natural history and it's positively transcendental.


Actually, we have learned more about how evolution works, that there is more than one type of selection, for example, and that there is selection on many different levels, not just that of character trait or organism. Darwin could not have known about gene selection or kin selection, for example.

How this makes selection or evolution "transcendental" eludes me. I would just say anything purporting to be transcendental is an extension of evolutionary ideas into other fields, and not part of the science of biological evolution.

Maybe Darwin wasn't so good at metaphysics by Darwinians have used it as the basis for a unified theory of biology, natural history and it's been applied to legal and political theory on a broad scale.

Yeah, that's what I mean. An application or misapplication of evolutionary ideas to legal or political theory has nothing to do with science, biology or evolution in science. If the concept of evolution is badly applied in politics, that tells us nothing about the correctness of its application to biological data.





Darwin was just a naturalist but Darwinism is the a priori assumption of universal common descent going all the way back to the Big Bang.



As you have been told many times before, that is not an assumption. It is a conclusion. A posteriori, not a priori.


It's still just one long argument against special creation

Actually, that may not be quite true. I don't think even you believe in the special creation of every single one of the 3,000 or so species of frogs or 2,000 or so species of bats. Darwin argued against the special creation of every species, not against special creation per se.

Though he did speculate on the possibility of a common origin of all animals, and was fairly confident that at least each class of animals had a common origin. Likewise for plants.

Now we are looking at the common origin of the three domains of life.
 
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The word calvinist didn't exist during the life of augustine nor during calvins life. Does than mean he wasn't a calvinist?
From what I have read of Calvin, I am not sure he was :) But that is a completely different subject. The terms Calvinian and Calvinist date back to very shortly after Calvin died. In contrast, while the doctrine of creation has been foundational to church teaching from the beginning, a doctrine shared by both those who interpreted Genesis literally, like Basil, and others who interpreted it figuratively, like Augustine and Aquinas. The terms Creationism and Creationist have only been around for the last century and a half. The question you need to ask yourself is why we needed a specific term in the last 150 years and what that term described

The logic to this argument doesn't work. Creationist is just a title. Creationists today agree on some basic things, and there is also much diversity among them. But they believed in the basic ideas of creationism, thus are rightly categorized as creationists. They all accepted that death came into the world through the sin of Adam. That alone sets them apart from radical theistic evolutionists.
You are actually using the term Creationist and Creationism properly. Mark tries to conflate a belief in Creation which the church has held and defended for 2000 years, with Creationist and Creationism which refers to the rejection evolution. However the idea there was no death before the fall is more a Young Earth teaching rather than one shared by all Creationists. If you look at Old Earth Creationist websites like Reasons To Believe, Evidence for God from Science or Old Earth Ministries they have no problem with the hundreds of millions of years of fossil record before mankind was on the earth.

When Darwin came along most Christians were Day Age or Gap, with YEC a fringe interpretation held by groups like the Seventh Day Adventists. Most of the Christians who rejected evolution, the people first called 'Creationists', already accepted an old earth where animals lived and died over the longs ages before man was created.
 
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gluadys

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Just a simple question, please respond with a simple answer I can understand: were Adam and Eve white folk, indian folk, black folk, asian folk, etc.?

None of the above. They were just folk. Those divisions did not exist yet.

And a related question: can white folk give birth to an asian baby, black folk to an east indian baby, etc.?

I am assuming you mean if both partners are of the same sub-groups e.g. can two Masai produce a Japanese child. No, of course not. But genetically, this does not make the Masai of a different race than the Japanese. On a genetic tree, Africans like the Masai are more closely related to Europeans and Asians than to other Africans. So if "African" was a race, they would not be part of it, even though they are black Africans. Nor is "black" a race, for there are black folk from many different parts of the world (south India, Australia, Melanesia).

To take another example, some Asians are more closely related to Amerindians than to other Asians. Does that make them American Indians or American Indians Asian?

150 years ago, scientists were not even certain if Africans and Europeans were the same species, and even those, like Darwin, who believed they were, accepted without question that they were different races.

What we know from science today is that not only are all humans of the same species, they are all of the same race as well. The characteristics we call "racial" we do so for purely cultural reasons.
 
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Servant of Jesus

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My reason for asking, of course, was to point out that Adam and Eve had to be one race: white, asian, indian, black; whatever- and it was through evolution that we now have the multitude of genetically-unique races of people that are presently found on the earth.

So evolution is a fact: the multitude of human races, the multitude of different breeds of animals that are present, the multitude of different and changing pathogens all proof that.

So for a Christian to think that "evolution" is a dirty word is nonsense; it is a fact of life. I'm always surprised at the number of Christians who don't even really know how to define evolution (the change in the inherited (i.e. genetic) characteristics of biological populations over successive generations). They think that "evolution" is the heresy that man came from apes.

What is controversial is how far evolution goes towards explaining the presence of the multitude of life forms that are present on the Earth today. Every scientist acknowledges that life on earth must have had a beginning; it had to start somewhere. Some (most?) evolutionary biologists tell us that life began as an accident: the formation of a single, simple, living cell that came to be when inorganic material was somehow given the breathe of life. Of course, they never explain where the inorganic material came from, and are quick to point out that the science of evolution only starts once that first life form was made; what happened before is conjecture, and not science.

My question to that is always to ask: "what are the odds that inorganic material could somehow have been accidentally given the breathe of life AND, at exactly the same instant of time, the ability to reproduce itself and carry on?"

So that improbability alone is more than enough evidence to convince me that the Universe and all life in it had to made by a Creator God. And if He created Adam and Eve, then why wouldn't He also have created other living entities, as Genesis describes?

But Genesis is not exactly clear about the exact mechanism of that creation: did He create every single unique living entity that we see today, and that some, like the dinosaurs, became extinct, and that others, like the AIDS virus were always there, but were not noticed until they exploded in numbers at some later point in time; OR did God only initially create a limited number of life forms and allowed the mechanism of evolution to create the rest?

Eventually, we will know the answer- but I don't think that either explanation detracts from the fundamental reality of our Creator God. And neither does it detract from the fundamental message of salvation that comes from Jesus Christ.

Let us never forget those two basic facts when we debate these issues with our fellow Christians.
 
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My reason for asking, of course, was to point out that Adam and Eve had to be one race: white, asian, indian, black; whatever- and it was through evolution that we now have the multitude of genetically-unique races of people that are presently found on the earth.

So evolution is a fact: the multitude of human races, the multitude of different breeds of animals that are present, the multitude of different and changing pathogens all proof that.

So for a Christian to think that "evolution" is a dirty word is nonsense; it is a fact of life. I'm always surprised at the number of Christians who don't even really know how to define evolution (the change in the inherited (i.e. genetic) characteristics of biological populations over successive generations). They think that "evolution" is the heresy that man came from apes.

What is controversial is how far evolution goes towards explaining the presence of the multitude of life forms that are present on the Earth today. Every scientist acknowledges that life on earth must have had a beginning; it had to start somewhere. Some (most?) evolutionary biologists tell us that life began as an accident: the formation of a single, simple, living cell that came to be when inorganic material was somehow given the breathe of life. Of course, they never explain where the inorganic material came from, and are quick to point out that the science of evolution only starts once that first life form was made; what happened before is conjecture, and not science.

My question to that is always to ask: "what are the odds that inorganic material could somehow have been accidentally given the breathe of life AND, at exactly the same instant of time, the ability to reproduce itself and carry on?"

So that improbability alone is more than enough evidence to convince me that the Universe and all life in it had to made by a Creator God. And if He created Adam and Eve, then why wouldn't He also have created other living entities, as Genesis describes?

But Genesis is not exactly clear about the exact mechanism of that creation: did He create every single unique living entity that we see today, and that some, like the dinosaurs, became extinct, and that others, like the AIDS virus were always there, but were not noticed until they exploded in numbers at some later point in time; OR did God only initially create a limited number of life forms and allowed the mechanism of evolution to create the rest?

Eventually, we will know the answer- but I don't think that either explanation detracts from the fundamental reality of our Creator God. And neither does it detract from the fundamental message of salvation that comes from Jesus Christ.

Let us never forget those two basic facts when we debate these issues with our fellow Christians.
(((CLAP))) (((CLAP))) (((CLAP))) (((CLAP))) (((CLAP))) (((CLAP))) (((CLAP)))

Your reasoning is incredibly incisive. I don't know why I hadn't thought of the divergence of races from Adam and Eve to be absolute proof of evolution from even the most literal interpretation of Genesis 1. HIV is another excellent example of evolution that everyone can relate to.

It is surprisingly difficult to think incisively when the opposition is so angry at you for expressing your opinion. I have found posting here very stressful.
 
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gluadys

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My reason for asking, of course, was to point out that Adam and Eve had to be one race: white, asian, indian, black; whatever- and it was through evolution that we now have the multitude of genetically-unique races of people that are presently found on the earth.


Well, it would have to be "whatever" as it would not be any existing race.


So for a Christian to think that "evolution" is a dirty word is nonsense; it is a fact of life. I'm always surprised at the number of Christians who don't even really know how to define evolution (the change in the inherited (i.e. genetic) characteristics of biological populations over successive generations).

Absolutely.


They think that "evolution" is the heresy that man came from apes.

They need to stop labeling the truth "heresy".

What is controversial is how far evolution goes towards explaining the presence of the multitude of life forms that are present on the Earth today. Every scientist acknowledges that life on earth must have had a beginning; it had to start somewhere. Some (most?) evolutionary biologists tell us that life began as an accident: the formation of a single, simple, living cell that came to be when inorganic material was somehow given the breathe of life. Of course, they never explain where the inorganic material came from, and are quick to point out that the science of evolution only starts once that first life form was made; what happened before is conjecture, and not science.

Yes, though it is a good deal less conjectural than it was ten years ago.

Some (most?) evolutionary biologists tell us that life began as an accident...

Ah, but how many "accidents" are really God's plans?


My question to that is always to ask: "what are the odds that inorganic material could somehow have been accidentally given the breathe of life AND, at exactly the same instant of time, the ability to reproduce itself and carry on?"

The problem is in the terms of your question. Doesn't need to be "at the same time". Replication is likely to have been occurring well before cellular life was organized. And before that, inorganic matter produced organic matter. Organic matter (not living, but necessary to life) has been found in meteorites and comets and produced experimentally from inorganic matter. So the search is on for how organic matter became self-replicating and how self-replicating matter became cellular. It should not be seen as an instantaneous process of everything happening at the same time.

But Genesis is not exactly clear about the exact mechanism of that creation: did He create every single unique living entity that we see today, and that some, like the dinosaurs, became extinct, and that others, like the AIDS virus were always there, but were not noticed until they exploded in numbers at some later point in time; OR did God only initially create a limited number of life forms and allowed the mechanism of evolution to create the rest?

Eventually, we will know the answer- but I don't think that either explanation detracts from the fundamental reality of our Creator God. And neither does it detract from the fundamental message of salvation that comes from Jesus Christ.

Let us never forget those two basic facts when we debate these issues with our fellow Christians.

Amen to that.
 
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It is surprisingly difficult to think incisively when the opposition is so angry at you for expressing your opinion. I have found posting here very stressful.

It is terribly disappointing at times to experience how utterly "human" people are at times, even here on CF. Maybe that aggression comes as a result of evolution- those with the sharpest tongue or the best put-downs survive here and thrive, and the rest slink away to less controversial WEB sites. ;)

We all need to think of Jesus Christ and the one word that sums up His ministry: LOVE- and govern our actions accordingly.

Before posting, I always ask myself two important questions:

1. would I make the comment I'm posting if I was face to face with the intended recipient AND

2. that person was my best friend?

If not, I modify the post or, if it's too late and I've hit the "send" button, and I have a change of heart, or someone reacts in an unexpected way, I use that other readily accessible "EDIT" button to make a change. My little iEDIT byline is a reminder for me to be careful, and a promise to consider modifying a post if someone takes offence.
 
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frogman2x

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My reason for asking, of course, was to point out that Adam and Eve had to be one race: white, asian, indian, black; whatever- and it was through evolution that we now have the multitude of genetically-unique races of people that are presently found on the earth.

]It was not through evolution that we have several races. All that you mentioned are the same species---homo-sapian. The various races are the result of the gene pool God gave Adam and Eve.

So evolution is a fact: the multitude of human races, the multitude of different breeds of animals that are present, the multitude of different and changing pathogens all proof that.

Races do not prove evolution and different breeds of the sake KIND does not either unless you can explain, biologically of course, how a dog-like animal can evolve into a whale. That is the most amusing tail, the evos have invented so far.

So for a Christian to think that "evolution" is a dirty word is nonsense;

We don't think it is a dirty word. We know it is unprovable and should not be included with science.

it is a fact of life.

Wonderful. Give me one, just one of something evolution preaches thatg has been proven. Biologically of course.

I'm always surprised at the number of Christians who don't even really know how to define evolution (the change in the inherited (i.e. genetic) characteristics of biological populations over successive generations).

That is an amusing, but convient and necessary definition and completly wrong. Over successive generation, the offspring can only inherit characteristic for which at least one of the parents had.

They think that "evolution" is the heresy that man came from apes.

You evos are good a making dogmatgic statemens that you can't support.

What is controversial is how far evolution goes towards explaining the presence of the multitude of life forms that are present on the Earth today.

Evolution does not explain it. They just say it happened.


Every scientist acknowledges that life on earth must have had a beginning. it had to start somewhere.

DUUH

Some (most?) evolutionary biologists tell us that life began as an accident: the formation of a single, simple, living cell that came to be when inorganic material was somehow given the breathe of life. Of course, they never explain where the inorganic material came from, and are quick to point out that the science of evolution only starts once that first life form was made; what happened before is conjecture, and not science.

How do they explain how this accident happened. How can inorganic matter become living? IT CAN'T. Their guess that the first life form was single, simmple cell is wild conjecture and not science. Do you really not know that cells are very complex.


My question to that is always to ask: "what are the odds that inorganic material could somehow have been accidentally given the breathe of life AND, at exactly the same instant of time, the ability to reproduce itself and carry on?"

The correct answer is it can't. I would be interested in how you answer your own question.


So that improbability alone is more than enough evidence to convince me that the Universe and all life in it had to made by a Creator God. And if He created Adam and Eve, then why wouldn't He also have created other living entities, as Genesis describes?

That's right. So why are you accepteing evolution as the answer


But Genesis is not exactly clear about the exact mechanism of that creation:

Sure it is: Gos said and it happened. That is what we see in Genesis.

did He create every single unique living entity that we see today, and that some, like the dinosaurs, became extinct, and that others, like the AIDS virus were always there, but were not noticed until they exploded in numbers at some later point in time; OR did God only initially create a limited number of life forms and allowed the mechanism of evolution to create the rest?

God created them all. The AIDS virus may have b een a mutation. I don't think anyone knows for sure.

Eventually, we will know the answer- but I don't think that either explanation detracts from the fundamental reality of our Creator God. And neither does it detract from the fundamental message of salvation that comes from Jesus Christ.

I am glad we have one common thread of agreement. We probably have more.

Let us never forget those two basic facts when we debate these issues with our fellow Christians.

Most of thethings evolutionists and Christians disagree on are tiny mole hills.

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