Creationist "arguments" - different karyotypes

[coffee4u]

Or that the Genesis stories were not intended by their author (God, ultimately, since Christians believe them to be divinely inspired) to be 100% accurate literal history.

The reason why we accept it as literal is it was written in a form that should be taken literally, other Bible doctrine hangs on it and Jesus and Paul refer back to it in a way that suggests not only did they take it literally but the people hearing them speak also took it literally. They didn't have to establish who Adam, Noah and Mosses were, they assumed their listeners were very familiar with the three men's deeds and teachings. I said this on another thread, but if you mention someone like Carl Sagan you assume your listener has at least heard of him and takes him to be a literal man not a character in a story.

There is much repeated in Genesis chapter 1 for emphasis to show the importance of what is being said.
'And God said' occurs 10 times
'and God saw that it was good/very good’ 7 times
'after his/their kind' 10 times
'And the evening and the morning were the … day' 6 times.

The word day here was yom. Now yom can have different meanings, but when used with numbers like it is here, as well as morning and evening it means a literal 24 hour day. If compared to the rest of scripture the combination of 'yom with morning and/or evening' occurs 19 times outside of Genesis 1. In all 19 cases, a 24hour day is intended. Meaning the author, who was probably Mosses, intended it to be taken literally.

Hebrew poetry takes on a different form. Contrastive parallelism and completive parallelism.
Parallelism in Hebrew Writing

A parable was always introduced straight away as a parable or Jesus would start off by saying ‘The kingdom of heaven is like …" then the parable would follow. Nothing indicates this was a parable.

If each day were some long-time spans they would have had many children and anyway we are told how old Adam was when he died.
Genesis 5
'Altogether, Adam lived a total of 930 years, and then he died.'

So no, I take it to be meant literally.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Well, birds already being descendants of avian therapod dinosars, is exactly the issue we are trying to prove. Can you prove that birds do have in their ancestral lineage avian therapod dinosaurs, beyond any shadow of a doubt? Or, can you only assume that birds have avian ancestral lineage based only on some commonality of organism construction?

In general in the sciences, proof is considered to be applicable only in formal axiomatic systems like logic and mathematics, where things can be true by definition.

When making inferences from observations in the real world, we can only have levels of confidence, there is always room for error in any particular observation or inference. By repeating observations, especially in different ways, we can reduce the probability of error until the observation is considered valid beyond reasonable doubt.

Similarly for inferences from observation; if you make an inference from a single line of evidence, such as 'birds may be descended from therapod dinosaurs because they both have/had feathers', that will have a fairly low level of confidence - it's speculative. However, if you can make testable predictions from that inference, and the predictions are verified, your confidence in that inference is vastly increased.

For example, early feathered theropods only had fluffy (insulating?) feathers, so we would expect to see a progressive development of more modern pennaceous feathers over time in the fossil snapshots, and a corresponding development of wing-like feathered forelimbs and other flight-related features... and this is what we have found - our inference is supported by new evidence and becomes considerably less speculative. Unexpectedly, we also see pennaceous feathers developing in some non-avian dinosaur lineages, suggesting that flight was an adaptation of pennaceous feathers, which originally had some other function, possibly signalling and/or waterproofing. Those lineages did not survive.

Other similarities characteristic of both birds and avian theropods - the hollow, voided bone structure, the breastbone & 'wishbone', the clawed feet, the scaly legs, and many other anatomical similarities lend further support.

No transitional fossil between bird beaks and dinosaur snouts has yet been found, but it's predicted that beaks evolved as wings became less capable of grasping. An alternative method, molecular biology, was used to see if modern birds showed evidence of that genetic history. It was shown that there are two genetic pathways in the development of bird embryos that are slightly different from other animals, and if those pathways are interrupted, the embryos develop snout-like facial bones instead of beak-like ones. Chicken embryos have also been found with a mutation that produces toothed beaks, an atavism that puts another tick in the 'plausible' box.

That's just some of the evidence. Taken individually, each piece of evidence is plausible but not convincing, and there was considerable scepticism in the early days of this hypothesis, but taken together and supported by the successful predictions made from them, the conclusion is now beyond reasonable doubt. The large number of fossils of avian theropod evolution, found in China and Germany in recent years, have provided ample confirmation of the evolution of bird-like traits.

You see, for me, that's the whole of the argument. Proving what we know, or merely assuming assumptions based on what we know.

I would suggest that what we now know about avian evolution is sufficient to count as colloquial 'proof'. YMMV.

 

[Speedwell]

The reason why we accept it as literal is it was written in a form that should be taken literally, other Bible doctrine hangs on it and Jesus and Paul refer back to it in a way that suggests not only did they take it literally but the people hearing them speak also took it literally. They didn't have to establish who Adam, Noah and Mosses were, they assumed their listeners were very familiar with the three men's deeds and teachings. I said this on another thread, but if you mention someone like Carl Sagan you assume your listener has at least heard of him and takes him to be a literal man not a character in a story.

There is much repeated in Genesis chapter 1 for emphasis to show the importance of what is being said.
'And God said' occurs 10 times
'and God saw that it was good/very good’ 7 times
'after his/their kind' 10 times
'And the evening and the morning were the … day' 6 times.

The word day here was yom. Now yom can have different meanings, but when used with numbers like it is here, as well as morning and evening it means a literal 24 hour day. If compared to the rest of scripture the combination of 'yom with morning and/or evening' occurs 19 times outside of Genesis 1. In all 19 cases, a 24hour day is intended. Meaning the author, who was probably Mosses, intended it to be taken literally.

Hebrew poetry takes on a different form. Contrastive parallelism and completive parallelism.
Parallelism in Hebrew Writing

A parable was always introduced straight away as a parable or Jesus would start off by saying ‘The kingdom of heaven is like …" then the parable would follow. Nothing indicates this was a parable.

If each day were some long-time spans they would have had many children and anyway we are told how old Adam was when he died.
Genesis 5
'Altogether, Adam lived a total of 930 years, and then he died.'

So no, I take it to be meant literally.

That's fine. But you offered several other alternatives for reconciling Genesis and evolution so thought I would mention this one as the oldest and most widely held, actually predating evolution as figurative interpretations of Genesis are almost as old as the book itself.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

... The creationist model expects to see organization and 'perfection' to degenerate into disorganization and mistakes. So we expect more birth defects and illnesses over time, we do not expect to see new life forms or for existing life forms to gain new useful body parts even if the world carries on for thousands more years.

But we don't see more birth defects and illnesses over time, and we do see new life forms (species), and we see new adaptive traits in them (we haven't been around long enough to see new body parts evolve).

Your expectations are contradicted by the living world.

As for snakes, I read somewhere that secular science says they did have legs at some point. Since the curse includes them crawling on the belly they can't have been doing that before the curse, so losing their legs makes sense.

OK, so you'll accept the scientific evidence if it fits your preconceptions but not otherwise. It's fallacious reasoning, but I expect you knew that.

 

[Sam Davis]

Are you serious? This is completely irrelevant and you know it!

I’m merely showing that these Godless people are wrong in more ways than one.

The probability is high that those University indoctrinated liberals who believe in evolution also support the abomination of abortion.

 

[Sam Davis]

What makes you think they are all atheists?

The majority of people who believe in evolution are not Bible believing Christians.

 

[Speedwell]

I’m merely showing that these Godless people are wrong in more ways than one.

The probability is high that those University indoctrinated liberals who believe in evolution also support the abomination of abortion.

But your slimy implication was that all who accept evolution are university indoctrinated liberals who support abortion.

 

[Speedwell]

The majority of people who believe in evolution are not Bible believing Christians.

So not being a "Bible believing Christian" is the same as being an atheist?

 

[miamited]

When I speak of applications, I'm not talking about something like the patent of a chart. I'm talking about the patent of a methodology based on the theory of evolution which is directly used to achieve an end result (e.g. solve a problem in biology and the like).

If you want an example, here is a real-world biotech company which literally derives is name and underlying technology from the Theory of Evolution: Evolutionary Genomics, Inc.

If you want to see the patents they have filed (and been granted) you can view them here: Google Patents

Hi expo,

Oh, ok. These are patents that they have applied for that cover a specific method that they have devised to test/examine/formulate various testing methods. I was thinking that you were inferring that these were going to be patents that were actually based on some finding of evolution itself.

Yes, Evolutionary Genomics, Inc. is a company whose reason d'tre is to continue study of the theory of evolution in hopes of some day being able to find the link or determine some positive proof that would move evolution from theory to fact.

I have no problem with such work, although I don't believe there will ever be found any such evolutionary trail. However, I'm also one who believes that God created the earth as the sole sustainer of biological life, i.e, humans, animals, etc. and am also confident that no matter how hard we may look, we aren't ever going to find little green men on mars or space aliens that visited the earth to build the pyramids. That out there a gazillion light years distant from us is some civilization of creatures as we see in the many 'space adventure' movies. That certainly doesn't mean that men aren't going to keep trying.

God bless,
In Christ, ted

 

[xianghua]

(never mind the compelling evidence that our Chromosome 2 is a fusion of 2 ape chromosomes)

actually its a fusion of 2 ancectral human chromosomes. so this is evidence for common descent of human with...human.

 

[Speedwell]

Are there classes in the church basement where you are instructed to think this way?

Alas, yes.

 

[expos4ever]

For a minute it looked like you were trying to turn your defense of your interpretation of Genesis into a cosmic struggle between theism and atheism, which would be a disgusting and unethical thing to do. My apologies.

Bazinga. You have a gift.

 

[miamited]

Hi speedwell,

Thanks for your reply:

But the Scriptures are not scientific evidence.

The Scriptures are not scientific at all. They're aren't intended to be. The Scriptures, however, are true. Science is a methodology of man to attempt to gain answers as to how things are made and react to various stimuli. For example, it would be a scientific endeavor to try and determine what kind of food plants use and how they process such food to produce the energy needed for growth., However, that plants grow is merely a truth. We see it proven absolutely every day upon the earth.

As far back as Cain and Abel, we know that man planted seeds and grew crops. Now, they didn't have a clue as to 'what' made them grow or 'how' that process was carried out. They just knew that if they planted seeds from a plant, that shortly they would have a copy of the parent plant and that was good enough for them to grow food to sustain their lives.

Similarly, science concerning how we got to be here in the year 2019, may give us explanations, but it depends on whether the evidence is correctly interpreted, and such evidence never allows for possible differences that may have been effectual at some earlier point in time.

For example, there is an account in the Scriptures of a shadow cast by the sun going backwards the distance of 10 steps. Now, we can just immediately dismiss the account as not being true because we know that a shadow cast by the sun can never go backwards without some really, really massive change in the planetary operation of our solar system. Or, we can allow that the power of the God who spoke all of this realm to be, can, however He uses His power, cause a shadow cast by the sun to go backwards and still keep everything in tack in the solar system.

That's going to be a matter of faith and worldview. For those who depend on scientific methodology to answer all the question of 'how' past events happened, they're never going to find that answer because you can't test the power of God. We can't say to God, "God, I want you to come down here and show us how you did that!" So, it's a matter of faith, that one believes the word of God when it tells us that what seems impossible to man is possible for God. It's a matter of faith that what we call today the Scriptures, are really authored by God and only written down by men. Which is what Paul tells us when he says that all Scripture is God breathed. That holy men of God wrote as the Spirit of God led them to write.

For example, when Daniel wrote of the coming Messiah and counted out the weeks for us to that event, he had no idea what he was writing and the words that he wrote didn't come out of his mind. Daniel had no idea when the Messiah was going to come. He knew that the Scriptures promised that a chosen one of God would come, but he didn't have any idea when. It was the Spirit of God that gave Daniel the knowledge that in 69 weeks of years the Messiah would be here.

It was God that told Moses to say to Pharaoh that in just a short while fire and ice were going to come down from the heavens. Moses didn't have any idea that in a short while it was going to start raining fire and ice. Moses didn't have any idea that the land was going to be covered with frogs when he told pharaoh that Egypt would shortly be so covered. He merely told Pharaoh what God had said and lo and behold, the land was soon covered with frogs everywhere. This is how we got the Scriptures!

Now, many don't agree with that and I fully understand that. However, that doesn't make what the Scriptures claim of themselves to be untrue. It is my belief that God has actually attempted to prove himself to man by use of prophecy. He even lays that out as a test to His people Israel. Saying to them that if anyone comes to them claiming to be a prophet of His, but what they prophecy doesn't come true, then they are not His prophet. God declares that He knows the end from the beginning.

Anyway, I don't want to get too deep into proselytizing.

God bless,
In Christ, ted

 

[xianghua]

Nearly all (around 97%) of the scientific community accepts evolution as the dominant scientific theory of biological diversity.

are you aware that the majority of biologists believe in higher power? also note that the fact that most scientists believe in something doesnt make it correct. we have many good evidence for design in nature (take a look at my signature link for instance).

 

[Speedwell]

Hi speedwell,

Thanks for your reply:


The Scriptures are not scientific at all. They're aren't intended to be. The Scriptures, however, are true. Science is a methodology of man to attempt to gain answers as to how things are made and react to various stimuli. For example, it would be a scientific endeavor to try and determine what kind of food plants use and how they process such food to produce the energy needed for growth., However, that plants grow is merely a truth. We see it proven absolutely every day upon the earth.

As far back as Cain and Abel, we know that man planted seeds and grew crops. Now, they didn't have a clue as to 'what' made them grow or 'how' that process was carried out. They just knew that if they planted seeds from a plant, that shortly they would have a copy of the parent plant and that was good enough for them to grow food to sustain their lives.

Similarly, science concerning how we got to be here in the year 2019, may give us explanations, but it depends on whether the evidence is correctly interpreted, and such evidence never allows for possible differences that may have been effectual at some earlier point in time.

For example, there is an account in the Scriptures of a shadow cast by the sun going backwards the distance of 10 steps. Now, we can just immediately dismiss the account as not being true because we know that a shadow cast by the sun can never go backwards without some really, really massive change in the planetary operation of our solar system. Or, we can allow that the power of the God who spoke all of this realm to be, can, however He uses His power, cause a shadow cast by the sun to go backwards and still keep everything in tack in the solar system.

That's going to be a matter of faith and worldview. For those who depend on scientific methodology to answer all the question of 'how' past events happened, they're never going to find that answer because you can't test the power of God. We can't say to God, "God, I want you to come down here and show us how you did that!" So, it's a matter of faith, that one believes the word of God when it tells us that what seems impossible to man is possible for God. It's a matter of faith that what we call today the Scriptures, are really authored by God and only written down by men. Which is what Paul tells us when he says that all Scripture is God breathed. That holy men of God wrote as the Spirit of God led them to write.

For example, when Daniel wrote of the coming Messiah and counted out the weeks for us to that event, he had no idea what he was writing and the words that he wrote didn't come out of his mind. Daniel had no idea when the Messiah was going to come. He knew that the Scriptures promised that a chosen one of God would come, but he didn't have any idea when. It was the Spirit of God that gave Daniel the knowledge that in 69 weeks of years the Messiah would be here.

It was God that told Moses to say to Pharaoh that in just a short while fire and ice were going to come down from the heavens. Moses didn't have any idea that in a short while it was going to start raining fire and ice. Moses didn't have any idea that the land was going to be covered with frogs when he told pharaoh that Egypt would shortly be so covered. He merely told Pharaoh what God had said and lo and behold, the land was soon covered with frogs everywhere. This is how we got the Scriptures!

Now, many don't agree with that and I fully understand that. However, that doesn't make what the Scriptures claim of themselves to be untrue. It is my belief that God has actually attempted to prove himself to man by use of prophecy. He even lays that out as a test to His people Israel. Saying to them that if anyone comes to them claiming to be a prophet of His, but what they prophecy doesn't come true, then they are not His prophet. God declares that He knows the end from the beginning.

Anyway, I don't want to get too deep into proselytizing.

God bless,
In Christ, ted

I don't think that's proselytizing. It does lay out an entirely different view of the Bible than I hold to myself, but the underlying point is, I think, that creationism is not science. It rests on an entirely different epistemological foundation than science. Even if science were wrong about the age of the Earth, evolution, etc. and the creationists were right, creationism still wouldn't be science.

 

[Speedwell]

are you aware that the majority of biologists believe in higher power?

So what? Like most good Christians and other theists, they reject ID as bad science and even worse theology.

 

[miamited]

We can certainly get into things. But before we do, may I ask what your general knowledge and comfort level is with respect to biology, genetics, evolution and so on?

I ask because evolution is a broad and heady topic. It's easy to throw someone in the deep end when it comes to material, but if it comes off like a bunch of Greek, it doesn't do anyone any good.

This is where my suggestions for material will be based on your relative comfort with biology, evolution and science in general.

Hi pitabread,

Well, I've looked into a lot of the evidence that has been offered from time to time in various general magazine articles. I've never actually stood in the lab to oversee or be some part of any of the experimentation or watched the various evidence gathering. I have just a smattering surface level of DNA science. So, as I said, I expect it to be a difficult journey and you'd likely have to consider me the equivalent of maybe a third grader in the understanding of such scientific endeavors.

None of the evidence that I have looked at so far seems to be more than, as I've also said, just a comparison of commonality evidence. That two creatures seem to have very common traits as regards their DNA or physical structure comparison. Personally, all of that is easily answered by just looking at all the people that have come from God's first creation of Adam and Eve. We have millions of different shapes sized and colors within the group of creatures called 'man'. But they are all man and they don't seem to be progressing to any 'next level' of life. If evolution is true, why would it stop? If evolution is true, why don't we have a chain of some clearly defined creature that we see changing gradually into some other creature. I mean, are we really to believe that the frog became a fish overnight? Shouldn't we find evidence of a frog as a whole creature, and then in some other layer of remains find at least one frog with a shortened hip and another one with a slightly shorter hip, and so on? Then another evidence of a frog where the legs slowly begin to flatten out to become fins. Not overnight, of course, but over a few thousand years as the theory of evolution suggests.

So far, as far as I'm aware, we have no intermediary evidence. We have evidence of a creature that doesn't exist any longer that is a lot like one that we have today and the claim seems to be made that because of these traits of commonality. The second must have come from the first, but there is no intermediate evidence to show that actually happening and the first looks quite different from the second. Are we really to believe, without such intermediary evidence, that this occurred just practically overnight? If it did, then why don't we see it still happening practically overnight?

God bless,
In Christ, ted

 

[The IbanezerScrooge]

are you aware that the majority of biologists believe in higher power? also note that the fact that most scientists believe in something doesnt make it correct. we have many good evidence for design in nature (take a look at my signature link for instance).

Yes, even atheists acknowledge that the majority of evolutionary biologists believe such things and still accept Evolution as the foundation of all of biology. That's a point in evolution's favor in this debate.

It's a conspicuously overlapping Venn diagram of Bible-believing Christians and those who accept Evolution Theory. So, it seems like you and Sam need to have a discussion amongst yourselves.

 

[miamited]

Hi FB,

Thanks for your reply.

When making inferences from observations in the real world, we can only have levels of confidence, there is always room for error in any particular observation or inference.

That is, of course, my point. So far, all of this theory or fact of evolution seems to rest on some level of confidence.

However, if you can make testable predictions from that inference, and the predictions are verified, your confidence in that inference is vastly increased.

So, what testable predictions have been made regarding the theropod to bird evolution? I understand what you're saying and given certain evidence I might even agree that your premise is true in some cases, but that doesn't make it true in all. I hear people make what seem to be very wise statements such as what you're making, but then when it gets to, "Well, ok here are the tested predictions concerning this evolutionary leap..." there never seems to be a satisfying answer. As I've written in another post, why don't we find some intermediate evidence. A fully formed theropod, then a nearly fully formed theropod with some slight difference. Then the new theropod with another slight difference and another and another until we see, just like the scientific reproductions try to show us in animated character how the fully formed theropod morphed into the bird.

For me, with all of the bazillion fossil and skeletal remains that we have, surely there must have been found at least a dozen of these intermediary forms.

God bless,
In Christ, ted

 

[miamited]

Hi speedwell,

Thanks for your reply.

I think, that creationism is not science.

Yes, but something not 'being science' doesn't make the claim true or false. God's word says that He created the heavens and the earth in six days. He first gives an account of all that He created in each specific day and then twice again repeats in His word that He made all things both in heaven and on the earth in six days. He enumerates each day and declares that each of the days consisted of an evening and a morning.

For me, He seems to have tried to make it fairly clear that He did all this in six literal days. Further, He made, according to His word, plants before the sun. Now, plants would have a hard time living for some several thousand or million years as some who adopt the day/age understanding, before the sun came out. But, for plants to merely live some loose 24 hours before the sun appeared to continue their growth is no big deal. Further, as I read the complete Scriptures, I find that this entire act of creating is so that God can get from creating man, to living with man in an eternal existence. There is nothing said about animals or other living things as far as God having some desire to be with them. So, it seems pretty clear to me that God made this realm of creation for nothing more than a place for man to live. If, that's the case, then why would He take billions of years to make something that He surely could have just popped into existence in a moment? Further, God does tell us, in the Revelation that He's going to roll all the heavenly bodies up like a scroll in the end and then recreate it all again. If God can do that, then why the billions of years needed to make it the first time?

God created the heavens and the earth in six rotations of the earth upon its axis (definition of a day). He then populated the earth with Adam and Eve and commanded that they go forth and multiply. After a couple of thousand years of existence in which man sinned and then began to sin in such a great degree that there was going to be no one who would make it out the other end, God established Israel.
A nation of people to do His bidding. All of this seems to be clearly described and defined in the old covenant Scriptures.

That nation of Israel were His people who He used to write down the Scriptures and within those Scriptures He made a promise that He was going to send someone to fix the problem of sin. He was going, of His own power, to create in men who had blackened sinful hearts, a new heart. He was going to send a redeemer who would suffer the punishment for man's sin and lead some in his train. He even had a band of angels to appear in the night sky on a cool evening around Bethlehem as the child was being born, to proclaim this fact of what the Scriptures had all been leading up to.

Jesus came and died for sin, all foretold in the Scriptures, and then God is, at some point in the future going to bring this existence that we live today to an end and judge all men and then recreate it all again. That's the full account of the Scriptures in a nutshell. For me, I have to ask, why would we even think to imagine that God took billions of years to create what He claims to have created in six days? What He claims to have created in six days at least three times in the Scriptures?

Yes, I understand that you don't understand the Scriptures this way, but I believe that a complete understanding of the whole of the Scriptures, from Genesis to the last word in the Revelation, does support this idea that this entire realm in which we live is for no other purpose than for God to get to the last verses of the Revelation where He will be our God and we will be His people. God doesn't need billions of years to allow the earth and the universe to 'become' what it is today. He merely speaks and it is immediately created as perfect. Which is what God's word says that He did.

God bless,
In Christ, ted