Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
That's actually a pretty good summary of Theistic Evolution, which is what I believed back when I was a Christian (I sorta believe in a mushy dualistic evolution right now) . We need more people who believe in TE around here, but it seems like they keep getting scared off.God can use evolution to create. There is nothing stopping Him or telling Him, you can't do it THAT way. Humans assume that they can do this. You can't possibly know how it happened
No human can
You didnt exist
And another thing
Come on, Richard. You've been on here for long enough, surely you've seen Douglas Theobald's 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution article? That article actually lists potential falsifications for each bit of evidence he presents. How can you maintain that common descent is unfalsifiable after that?The point that I have been trying to show is that the ToE is in fact unfalsifiable. I'll start a thread on chimeras soon enough.
*drools*I was thinking, no evidence on this other than it makes sense to me, that maybe, God did create everything. However, the Bible says seven days, where maybe a signifies an age, instead of a literal day. So like, maybe the first age was the creation of space, time, and the planets.
Not one day, maybe, but maybe God's plan that the HOW was to take x time and somehow create space, and then bring the elements that make up the planets together to be planets. Not an instant creation in our idea of time, because God is not bound by human time. One instant for Him can be a billion years for us. Possible right?
Ok, so after all that happens, God brings together the gases that make up the sun, in the order that they have to be brought together to burn, and also the components that make up the moon. Not neccesarily a 24 hour our time day, maybe an age. The second day.
If you actually see the pattern of God's creation in genesis, you recognize that it had to happen in that order, plants cant survive without light so light had to come first, kind of thing. It makes sense to do things in His order of doing them. However, when he gets to life, right, which comes first?
Creatures of the sea. He said creatures, not specifically fish and whales. So who is to say that He didnt create in the water first, and then lead micro organisms there to evolve and grow, over time, using some of them to populate earth? Somehow bringing it all together. Sea creatures first that through His plan and His will evolved slowly to become what we have today. Christians, you believe that God created everything. So do I. But how does God create a baby? We have seen scientifically that He doesnt just make the whole baby. One egg, splits into 2, multiplies, this is MINI evolution. A baby is a tiny, very fast process of cellular evolution to create a whole human. God is God. He can do anything He wants, use any process to do it, and use as much time as He wants, and to Him the whole process of JUST human evolution can be considered one day to Him, so who is to say that God didnt create us out of dust, bringing dust together, bacterium live in dust, and we just evolved slowly as the HOW GOD CREATED IT.
God can use evolution to create. There is nothing stopping Him or telling Him, you can't do it THAT way. Humans assume that they can do this. You can't possibly know how it happened
No human can
You didnt exist
And another thing
God DOES exist, but only comes to those willing. He doesn't want to invade someones life where He isnt wanted and only will be hated any more than a human does. A kicked dog isn't going to want to come home. God is not doing things forcefully. If you hate and reject Him, and kick Him out of your life, and don't let Him in and push Him away, He quietly leaves you alone. I wouldn't want to force myself on anyone either. Thats just common sense. He will not force Himself to be a part of your life, He will not PROVE His existance, because the fact that He is God and YOU are the human remains, and He doesn't have to, He will not show Himself you you to prove it just to satisfy your arrogant pride of baby foot stomping *I want it MY WAY NOW* 2 year old temper tantrum, and He will NOT stop loving you. Athiest or not , He loves you, and He isnt gonna force Himself on you. God is NOT a spiritual rapist. You don't want Him, FINE, but HE still wants you. However, have it your way. Don't want Him in your life, He still works in it, like it or not, but He's not gonna make it a personal thing, or even talk to you about it. If He chooses to, great, but He is NOT a forceful God. So, you don't want Him, fine, Free Will, but He wants and loves you, like it or not, and you hiding under a blanket and saying *I cant see you you cant see me, I cant hear you you cant hear me* like a 2 year old after the horror movie does NOT MAKE HIM GO AWAY.
If you have a dog, and its in that room, you hiding your face *I dont see you you dont see me* does NOT make the dog stop existing. You cannot make God not exist, you can willfully ignore it, or even not see it, but He is STILL THERE, and He STILL sees, loves, and wants to help YOU, God could be doing tons of other stuff besides standing around watching you hide for 40 years. But, He is omnipresent, and infinate, so He has time, and patience. He loves you. If you hate Love, get over it, because He still loves you anyways, doesn't mean you absolutely HAVE to accept it.
When Dawkins was asked about evidence he would accept against evolution he gave a good answer. It went like this, but it could be taken in a more general sense. If two islands far apart were found with similar species yet the main land (or lands) they were off of had vastly different species that had very little relation to the island, this would be evidence against evolution. Now there are a lot of if this didn't happen as one of the people above me pointed out an article had, but it would be incredibly hard to falisify because of the mountains of evidence on it's side. If you think evolution is hard to falisify, try plate techtonics. I don't even know how you would go about falisifying plate techtonics but I'm certain it's possible. Or trying falisying a heliocentric solar system (I know you already tried RichardT), and even worse try to falsify a round Earth. Evolution is much easier than any of these to falsify, yet they are all scientific theories.The point that I have been trying to show is that the ToE is in fact unfalsifiable. I'll start a thread on chimeras soon enough.
Unfortunately, the order of events are wrong in both of the Genesis creation stories. The earth exists before the sun (along with day and night), sea life comes after flowering plants, humans are created before all other animals, etc. These all contradict how things really happened.If you actually see the pattern of God's creation in genesis, you recognize that it had to happen in that order, plants cant survive without light so light had to come first, kind of thing. It makes sense to do things in His order of doing them. However, when he gets to life, right, which comes first?
Everytime I hear this line it reminds me of the car salesman who says, what's it gonna take to get you to buy this car? I'm sorry to be so, but I am just a little bit skeptical.
But because it's you LM, I'm going to give it a try. I'd like to start by asking, "what makes you believe in evolution?" I would ask that you, please, don't say something like the "mounds or books of evidence". While I'm not slamming those who have, I just need more.
I, also, would ask that you don't show me a series of pictures that depict what something could look as it evolves with a little story to go along with it.
Also, remember you asked me to tell you what I would accept, so here it is.
Yes, they do but you guys won't even look at it. You won't accept it. You know it's out there but if it doesn't agree with you reject it.
Come on, Richard. You've been on here for long enough, surely you've seen Douglas Theobald's 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution article? That article actually lists potential falsifications for each bit of evidence he presents. How can you maintain that common descent is unfalsifiable after that?
that's what im throwing in withI was thinking, no evidence on this other than it makes sense to me, that maybe, God did create everything. However, the Bible says seven days, where maybe a signifies an age, instead of a literal day. So like, maybe the first age was the creation of space, time, and the planets.
Not one day, maybe, but maybe God's plan that the HOW was to take x time and somehow create space, and then bring the elements that make up the planets together to be planets. Not an instant creation in our idea of time, because God is not bound by human time. One instant for Him can be a billion years for us. Possible right?
Ok, so after all that happens, God brings together the gases that make up the sun, in the order that they have to be brought together to burn, and also the components that make up the moon. Not neccesarily a 24 hour our time day, maybe an age. The second day.
If you actually see the pattern of God's creation in genesis, you recognize that it had to happen in that order, plants cant survive without light so light had to come first, kind of thing. It makes sense to do things in His order of doing them. However, when he gets to life, right, which comes first?
Creatures of the sea. He said creatures, not specifically fish and whales. So who is to say that He didnt create in the water first, and then lead micro organisms there to evolve and grow, over time, using some of them to populate earth? Somehow bringing it all together. Sea creatures first that through His plan and His will evolved slowly to become what we have today. Christians, you believe that God created everything. So do I. But how does God create a baby? We have seen scientifically that He doesnt just make the whole baby. One egg, splits into 2, multiplies, this is MINI evolution. A baby is a tiny, very fast process of cellular evolution to create a whole human. God is God. He can do anything He wants, use any process to do it, and use as much time as He wants, and to Him the whole process of JUST human evolution can be considered one day to Him, so who is to say that God didnt create us out of dust, bringing dust together, bacterium live in dust, and we just evolved slowly as the HOW GOD CREATED IT.
God can use evolution to create. There is nothing stopping Him or telling Him, you can't do it THAT way. Humans assume that they can do this. You can't possibly know how it happened
No human can
You didnt exist
And another thing
God DOES exist, but only comes to those willing. He doesn't want to invade someones life where He isnt wanted and only will be hated any more than a human does. A kicked dog isn't going to want to come home. God is not doing things forcefully. If you hate and reject Him, and kick Him out of your life, and don't let Him in and push Him away, He quietly leaves you alone. I wouldn't want to force myself on anyone either. Thats just common sense. He will not force Himself to be a part of your life, He will not PROVE His existance, because the fact that He is God and YOU are the human remains, and He doesn't have to, He will not show Himself you you to prove it just to satisfy your arrogant pride of baby foot stomping *I want it MY WAY NOW* 2 year old temper tantrum, and He will NOT stop loving you. Athiest or not , He loves you, and He isnt gonna force Himself on you. God is NOT a spiritual rapist. You don't want Him, FINE, but HE still wants you. However, have it your way. Don't want Him in your life, He still works in it, like it or not, but He's not gonna make it a personal thing, or even talk to you about it. If He chooses to, great, but He is NOT a forceful God. So, you don't want Him, fine, Free Will, but He wants and loves you, like it or not, and you hiding under a blanket and saying *I cant see you you cant see me, I cant hear you you cant hear me* like a 2 year old after the horror movie does NOT MAKE HIM GO AWAY.
If you have a dog, and its in that room, you hiding your face *I dont see you you dont see me* does NOT make the dog stop existing. You cannot make God not exist, you can willfully ignore it, or even not see it, but He is STILL THERE, and He STILL sees, loves, and wants to help YOU, God could be doing tons of other stuff besides standing around watching you hide for 40 years. But, He is omnipresent, and infinate, so He has time, and patience. He loves you. If you hate Love, get over it, because He still loves you anyways, doesn't mean you absolutely HAVE to accept it.
Inan3 said:What would make you less skeptical?
More posts like this one. I so appreciate (most) of your posts. They are informative and mostly respectful. I realize at times you might think I am being hard to get along with and that may make you respond negatively but on the whole I appreciate your posts and I believe in time we can work out the negative stuff. So thank you. I still have questions but I assure you I am really not trying to be difficult.
You keep telling us that we won't accept creationism because we are stubborn when in fact you appear to be the stubborn one.
I may be stubborn but I prefer to say not easily swayed. It is not because I just want to be resistant but rather I'd like my questions answered. Not just the ones I ask but also the questions which come with each new piece of info.
Then there's always the "flippin" negativism that is on this and every Crevo forum out there that needs to be addressed and filtered through. It seems to take up most of the time here and it can be very frustrating as you all know. I'm working very hard to keep it out of my posting but sometimes I get caught up in it for which I am sorry.
The very fundamental way in which life is organized screams evolution. This organization was first discovered by Linnaeas, the "Father" of taxonomy. He found that large organisms (ie multi-cellular life) fell into nested hierarchies. He discovered this well before Darwin came along. In fact, Linnaeas was a creationist. When Darwin discovered natural evolution, and people after him discovered the mechanism of inheritance, it became quite clear that the only pattern of homology that evolution could produce is a nested hierarchy. What Linnaeas discovered was the fingerprint of evolution
So what is a nested hierarchy, you ask? Simply, it is groups that fit within other groups, and only those groups. For example, all apes are primates but not all primates are apes. All primates are mammals but not all mammals are primates. All mammals are vertebrates but not all vertebrates are mammals. Each group is nested within the next, but no group spills into another group in a separate hierarchy. For example, you never see a bird that has features found in mammals that are not also found in every other bird. It's a bit confusing when you first think about it, but it makes sense once you get the swing of it.
Using the nested hierarchy you can make very strong predictions about what you should and should not see. For example, you should never see a bat with feathers, a bird with teats, an animal with feathers and three middle ear bones, a fish with fur, a jellyfish with a notochord, and a host of other well defined predictions. That these predictions are accurate to the nth degree tells me that evolution is accurate.
Thank you!
All other evidence that demonstrates evolution and common descent stems from the concept of a nested hierarchy. In my debate with mark kennedy I used the evolution of languages to illustrate how evolution produces a nested hierarchy. You can read the debate here.
I'll check it out.
Maybe you could explain this to me. Creationists often claim that there are no transitional fossils. When we show them pictures of what we claim are transitional creationists dismiss them in the same manner as you state above. Why do they do that?
Well I'm sure that there are as many different reasons as there are different creationists but I suppose the underlying reason would be (for me anyways) that they don't give enough convincing information. A blanket statement that "this is this and that is that" doesn't cover it for me.
Where? You asked me to tell you what convinced me. Where did you tell me what evidence would convince you?
You're right. I guess I gave you more of what I don't want than what I do want. I'm really open to any evidence with good information provided. More than just a summary saying "this is this and that is that". My question then, is usually "how did you arrive at that conclusion?" And without more information, I'm just not convinced.
AiG said:All carbon-14 should have disappeared by 50,000 years, at the most. There should be no carbon-14 left. However, the analysis confirmed a small but significant amount of carbon-14 in the wood—clear evidence that the sandstone is less than 50,000 years old.
AiG said:The small level of carbon-14 does not reflect an age, but rather the low concentration of carbon-14 in the atmosphere before the Flood (carbon-14 has been building up since the Flood).
AiG said:We see that the sand in the Three Sisters is deposited in layers.
Joe Meert a geophysicist who occasionally posts here has addressed Snelling's sample of "wood" HERE. I don't have time to go over the rest of the stuff on the page right now. Maybe Snelling did better than he did on the Absurd Page on the Coconino Sandstones that he has on AiG along with Steve Austin,
So they are suggesting atmospheric contamination? Wouldn't that basically just GUT the whole point they were trying to make about it being young? Contamination will give a false young age!
Inan3 said:You're right. I guess I gave you more of what I don't want than what I do want. I'm really open to any evidence with good information provided. More than just a summary saying "this is this and that is that". My question then, is usually "how did you arrive at that conclusion?" And without more information, I'm just not convinced.
the problem is science takes more knowledge and exploration than you are willing to give.
there are no easy answers in science and like LM said most creationists don't have the background to understand it.
my question is to to you; if he told you how they came to the conclusion would you accept it? would you be willing to test your faith to learn how and why they came to this conclusion?
would it matter to you to know? or would it just go over your head and would you just say its not evidence since its not in layman's terms that make it lose all meaning?
the reasons i trust science is purely because i can go look at the stuff that people provide as evidence and look at it, also while looking at what people who have studied it say.
oh and if i really wanted to i could do the same things they did, namely follow the path the scientist did, quite wonderful that
Well, first off, cross bedding occurs in many many different formations throughout the world at dramatically different times from this and does not necessarily mean catastrophic conditions.
But let's drill down to this point in the article you posted:
Now indeed, when something is as old as the other evidence would suggest these rocks are, then indeed there should be virtually no 14C.
But, technically speaking 50,000 years represents about 10 half-lives.
The way a half-life works is that each half-life removes HALF of the original radioactive element.
If you start off with 10000 atoms of 14-C, after 1 half-life you will have 5000, after 2 half lives, 2500, so on and so forth.
The equation would be:
Amount 14C Left = Original Amount * (1/2^n)
which means you'll wind up with 0.1% of the original 14C amount.
So if you start off with 10,000 14C atoms, after 10 half-lives (approximately 50,000 years) you will still have 9.8 atoms.
So the statement that after 50,000 years there should be nothing left is wrong. But further, to the point, there is contamination issues that can be induced.
Unfortunately the authors of your piece are "short on details" so we don't really know how much 14C was found, indeed there should be vanishingly small amounts of it.
But then, the specter of contamination always looms in this aspect. Perhaps a good analysis of the STABLE carbon isotopes would be in order to determine possible issues?
Then they go and shoot themselves in the foot:
So they are suggesting atmospheric contamination? Wouldn't that basically just GUT the whole point they were trying to make about it being young? Contamination will give a false young age!
I don't see any mention in the geologic literature of the Narrabeen or Hawkesbury sandstones being part of what is called a turbidite or Bouma sequence, which would indicate a catastrophic depositional environment, well at least a very high energy one. But I'm not an expert on Gondwanaland geology or Australian geology in general. Hopefully someone on here is.
Turbidite: geological formations have their origins in turbidity current deposits, deposits from a form of underwater avalanche that are responsible for distributing vast amounts of clastic sediment into the deep ocean. (SOURCE)
Now I'll readily admit I'm not expert on these formations, but just because you have a sandstone with cross-bedding doesn't mean it was necessarily from some world-wide flood. Otherwise you'd have to explain how you can have multiple layers of cross-bedded sandstones separated by either calm water (shales) or even sub-aerial exposure as we find in other places on the planet.
Cross-bedding is known to occur today in sandstones forming all over the planet. We can watch them form and we can even see soft-sediment cross-bedding and even, gasp, dune-cross bedding where no water is involved whatsoever.
So cross-bedding does not equal "Global Flood". It appears to be quite common.
Still I'd be interested if someone on here is an expert in Australain geology and can address this more fully.
the problem is science takes more knowledge and exploration than you are willing to give.
I guess you have your mind all made up about me so no sense in answering your questions. You guys make it real easy to decide which post to answer and which post not to answer. Thanks. I prefer not wasting my time.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?