Evolution?

Archivist · Jul 24, 2018

ChrisJ83 said:
Dinosaurs are simply extinct kinds of lizards which lived for centuries and grew very large. Lizards never stop growing.

Actually chickens are more closely descended from dinosaurs.

ViaCrucis · Jul 24, 2018

Marvin Knox said:
If your faith is so fragile that a half baked theory presented to you by the ruler of this world causes you to worship another God than the one presented in the scriptures - go ahead on.

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of one Being with the Father, through Him all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and His kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father [and the Son], who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.
I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
I look forward to the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the age to come. Amen.

-CryptoLutheran

ViaCrucis · Jul 24, 2018

RageOfAngels said:
"The biblical global flood supposedly covered the planet. Mount Everest is 8,848 meters tall..."

If there are seashells and sedmentary rocks on the top of Mt Everest I think that's pretty conclusive that part of it was underwater at some point. What the height of Mt Everest was at the time is a completely different question...

Yeah, before it was a mountain, it was a seabed. Millions of years ago.

-CryptoLutheran

MournfulWatcher · Jul 24, 2018

NBB said:
But they affirm we are a brain only, try talk to an evolutionist about souls. So i don't know why we are discussing.

You're talking about materialism, not evolutionism. One can believe in evolution and not believe in materialism. Atheistic scientists tend to be materialists and evolutionist, but the two ideas are not equivalent.

NBB · Jul 24, 2018

MournfulWatcher said:
You're talking about materialism, not evolutionism. One can believe in evolution and not believe in materialism. Atheistic scientists tend to be materialists and evolutionist, but the two ideas are not equivalent.

But if evolution made man and not God, where it got the soul then? it does not make sense.

NBB · Jul 24, 2018

The two ideas, evolution and God conflict each other, one says there is no need for God, the other that God created everything. Unless you make you own version about evolution and creation different from the 'official'.

JackRT · Jul 24, 2018

Falsifiability

One of the fundamental tenets of scientific inquiry is falsifiability, which is commonly attributed to philosopher of science Karl Popper. This tenet arises from the fact that the scientific method operates by testing ideas against reality. In order to determine whether or not an idea is valid, we must know in what circumstances that idea would be invalid. According to this line of thinking, an idea must be valid in only specific circumstances to be of scientific value, and an idea that is valid in every circumstance is in fact of no scientific value. In other words, an idea must be falsifiable to be scientific, since it is impossible to test for an unfalsifiable idea's validity. If this does not seem obvious to you, perhaps Carl Sagan can make it clearer.

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage."

Suppose I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me", you say, and I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle - but no dragon

"Where's the dragon", you ask.

"Oh, she's right here", I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon".

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints. "Good idea", I say, "but this dragon floats in the air". Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire. "Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless", I say. You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible. "Good idea, except she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick!"

And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now what is the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? You're inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so." (Demon-Haunted World)

God & Falsifiability

God is unfalsifiable. No matter what we observe in the divsersity, complexity, or history of life, an omnipotent, omniscient being could certainly have made it come about. Since there is not a single piece of evidence that could ever falsify the idea of an intelligent and creative force, it is not within the realm of science.

Evolution & God

Being a scientific theory and given the fact that God is unfalsifiable, the theory of evolution cannot state anything on the matter. What the theory of evolution does is describe the complexity, diversity, and history of life in scientific and naturalistic terms. These naturalistic mechanisms appear to work fine without an intelligent agent, but that does not mean an intelligent agent isn't involved. To say otherwise would be an argument from ignorance. The theory of relativity explains gravity in naturalistic terms that seem to work without the intervention of an intelligent force, but clearly it poses no threat to the idea of said intelligent force. The same goes for evolution.

NBB · Jul 24, 2018

archer75 said:
No. "They" - people who accept the theory of evolution - do not "preach" this.

If you accept the official version of evolution then you believe that God did not intervene in making life. This should be clear as crystal. People are trying to reconcile evolution with faith and i don't know if that is possible.
If God intervene making life with evolution then it was not the official version of evolution but a God influenced version meaning that still God made life. That is design.

And i meant, that evolutionists usually are very expresive about denying God as creator.

JackRT · Jul 24, 2018

Dr. Francis Collins is one of the towering scientific minds of the last century ---- and a Christian. Here is a short essay of his:

By Dr. Francis Collins
Editor's note: Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. His most recent book is "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief."

ROCKVILLE, Maryland (CNN) -- I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views. As the director of the Human Genome Project, I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, our own DNA instruction book. As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God's language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan.

I did not always embrace these perspectives. As a graduate student in physical chemistry in the 1970s, I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked "What do you believe, doctor?", I began searching for answers. I had to admit that the science I loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as "What is the meaning of life?" "Why am I here?" "Why does mathematics work, anyway?" "If the universe had a beginning, who created it?" "Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?" "Why do humans have a moral sense?" "What happens after we die?"

I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. My earlier atheist's assertion that "I know there is no God" emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative." But reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page. Ultimately, a leap of faith is required.

For me, that leap came in my 27th year, after a search to learn more about God's character led me to the person of Jesus Christ. Here was a person with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life, who made astounding statements about loving your neighbor, and whose claims about being God's son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing. After resisting for nearly two years, I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty, and I became a follower of Jesus.

So, some have asked, doesn't your brain explode? Can you both pursue an understanding of how life works using the tools of genetics and molecular biology, and worship a creator God? Aren't evolution and faith in God incompatible? Can a scientist believe in miracles like the resurrection? Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers. Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.

But why couldn't this be God's plan for creation? True, this is incompatible with an ultra-literal interpretation of Genesis, but long before Darwin, there were many thoughtful interpreters like St. Augustine, who found it impossible to be exactly sure what the meaning of that amazing creation story was supposed to be. So attaching oneself to such literal interpretations in the face of compelling scientific evidence pointing to the ancient age of Earth and the relatedness of living things by evolution seems neither wise nor necessary for the believer.

I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.

NBB · Jul 24, 2018

JackRT said:
Dr. Francis Collins is one of the towering scientific minds of the last century ---- and a Christian. Here is a short essay of his:

By Dr. Francis Collins
Editor's note: Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. His most recent book is "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief."

ROCKVILLE, Maryland (CNN) -- I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views. As the director of the Human Genome Project, I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, our own DNA instruction book. As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God's language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan.

I did not always embrace these perspectives. As a graduate student in physical chemistry in the 1970s, I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked "What do you believe, doctor?", I began searching for answers. I had to admit that the science I loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as "What is the meaning of life?" "Why am I here?" "Why does mathematics work, anyway?" "If the universe had a beginning, who created it?" "Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?" "Why do humans have a moral sense?" "What happens after we die?"

I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. My earlier atheist's assertion that "I know there is no God" emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative." But reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page. Ultimately, a leap of faith is required.

For me, that leap came in my 27th year, after a search to learn more about God's character led me to the person of Jesus Christ. Here was a person with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life, who made astounding statements about loving your neighbor, and whose claims about being God's son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing. After resisting for nearly two years, I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty, and I became a follower of Jesus.

So, some have asked, doesn't your brain explode? Can you both pursue an understanding of how life works using the tools of genetics and molecular biology, and worship a creator God? Aren't evolution and faith in God incompatible? Can a scientist believe in miracles like the resurrection? Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers. Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.

But why couldn't this be God's plan for creation? True, this is incompatible with an ultra-literal interpretation of Genesis, but long before Darwin, there were many thoughtful interpreters like St. Augustine, who found it impossible to be exactly sure what the meaning of that amazing creation story was supposed to be. So attaching oneself to such literal interpretations in the face of compelling scientific evidence pointing to the ancient age of Earth and the relatedness of living things by evolution seems neither wise nor necessary for the believer.

I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.

But if God created life with evolution is not like scientists say but another version needing God. The offical version of evolution doesn't make sense, a process with no guidance no designer no intelligence can't create consciousness and intelligence and complex organisms.

archer75 · Jul 24, 2018

NBB said:
If you accept the official version of evolution then you believe that God did not intervene in making life. This should be clear as crystal. People are trying to reconcile evolution with faith and i don't know if that is possible.
If God intervene making life with evolution then it was not the official version of evolution but a God influenced version meaning that still God made life. That is design.

And i meant, that evolutionists usually are very expresive about denying God as creator.

This is unrelated to what I posted. I simply denied that people who "preach" evolution say that life came from "nothing." End of story. Denying a personal God is NOT the same as stating that life "came from nothing."

It's the same as when people (atheists, often) attack Christians for "believing in" "an old man in the sky who throws lightning bolts." I think it's good form to respond to what people actually say.

JackRT · Jul 24, 2018

NBB said:
But if God created life with evolution is not like scientists say but another version needing God. The offical version of evolution doesn't make sense, a process with no guidance no designer no intelligence can't create consciousness and intelligence and complex organisms.

I have been a scientist for a very long time and I am not aware of an official version of the theory of evolution. I think that you have encountered a strawman version created someone like Ken Hamm. Strawmen are easy to knock down but they seldom have any relationship to the truth.

NBB · Jul 24, 2018

JackRT said:
I have been a scientist for a very long time and I am not aware of an official version of the theory of evolution. I think that you have encountered a strawman version created someone like Ken Hamm. Strawmen are easy to knock down but they seldom have any relationship to the truth.

Why every evolutionists ever say there is no need for God to create life then?
Except the ones that try to reconcile it with faith.

archer75 · Jul 24, 2018

NBB said:
Why every evolutionists ever say there is no need from God then?

Where did you get the idea that "every evolutionist" (do you mean professional people in the sciences?) says this. Plenty of people, layfolk and professional, accept the idea of biological evolution while also affirming belief in God.

NBB · Jul 24, 2018

archer75 said:
Where did you get the idea that "every evolutionist" (do you mean professional people in the sciences?) says this. Plenty of people, layfolk and professional, accept the idea of biological evolution while also affirming belief in God.

But evolution can easily be interpreted as such, no needing for God. Christian scientist believe that God intervene in this process?, then it is not evolution as taught in schools.

JackRT · Jul 24, 2018

NBB said:
Why every evolutionists ever say there is no need for God to create life then?
Except the ones that try to reconcile it with faith.

Did you take the time to read the essay by Dr. Francis Collins in post #69?

NBB · Jul 24, 2018

JackRT said:
Did you take the time to read the essay by Dr. Francis Collins in post #69?

Yes i did, and he didn't provide a 'God evolution alternative' the official version as taught in schools and universities and wide accepted does not need God.

NBB · Jul 24, 2018

I guess scientists are afraid of being ridiculed if they mix their science and God like saying God intervene in evolution. (not that i personally believe that this is the way God made things) God all powerful , doesn't need no evolution to make things.

Chinchilla · Jul 24, 2018

majj27 said:
Not. Even. Remotely. Close.

That's like saying that Christianity is the idea that if you nail a random jewish person to a giant plus sign, it will grant you immortality and your head will catch fire.

Not random .
But the rest is true tho ...

NBB · Jul 24, 2018

People give credit to evolution instead of the creator God, and is an good excuse to not believe in Him, i don't know how many people are dragged to hell or at least astray because of this teaching.

Evolution?

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