Fossils Challenge Old Evolution Theory

[SuperSaint4GodDBZStyle]

Check this out...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070808/ap_on_sc/human_evolution

I just wanted to bring this up for sake of arguement. I'm not going against my position as a YEC though. Just discuss this please.

 

[gluadys]

Check this out...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070808/ap_on_sc/human_evolution

I just wanted to bring this up for sake of arguement. I'm not going against my position as a YEC though. Just discuss this please.

A new discovery tells us the family tree may be a bit more bushier than the way we envisioned it before that discovery was made. We may need to draw in a few new branches and side branches.

So what?

It is like finding that a certain person on the family tree that was assumed to be a great-grandfather was actually great-grandpa's brother, and we still need to find great-grandpa.

The relationship of H. habilis and H. erectus may be somewhat different than we thought, but it is still a relationship, and back of it all we still share a common ancestor with them and with the chimpanzees.

I don't understand why creationists point to these reports as if they posed a challenge to the theory of evolution or to the basic structure of common descent. All that is happening here is that we are figuring out the correct placement of a few twigs.

 

[SuperSaint4GodDBZStyle]

Could these other forms such as H. erectus and so forth just be 100% ape and not necessarily a particular type of man? Could it be an extinct species of 100% apes? Since God made man in his image, I don't think God would want us to look like apes. During Creation, God spoke everything into existence. A lot of pastors world wide preach on that. Also God molded us out of clay with his own hands and then breathed the breath of life.

 

[gluadys]

Could these other forms such as H. erectus and so forth just be 100% ape and not necessarily a particular type of man? Could it be an extinct species of 100% apes?

Of course they are 100% ape. But so are we. Just as we are 100% mammal. We don't stop being mammal just because we are human. We don't stop being ape just because we are human.

And of course, they are also extinct apes, while we are not.

Since God made man in his image, I don't think God would want us to look like apes.

Yet he did make us look like apes. What are the features that make an ape an ape? Can you name one feature of an ape that humans do not also display?

I don't mean a feature specific to only one or two ape species, like knuckle-walking. Those are specific features that distinguish one ape from another, just like having a large brain and walking up-right are features specific to us.

But any feature that defines an ape in general is one we find also in ourselves.

So we do look like apes, and I expect, therefore, that God did want us to look like apes since he made us that way.

During Creation, God spoke everything into existence. A lot of pastors world wide preach on that. Also God molded us out of clay with his own hands and then breathed the breath of life.

The bible often speaks of God moulding us as a potter moulds clay. It is a beautiful image of God taking a personal interest in our formation.

But tell me what it means to say God moulded us "with his own hands". Is God not a spirit? Does a spirit have hands? Does God have physical hands like us to mould clay with?

Similarly, does God have a physical respiratory system to breathe with? Does God need to breathe? What does the "breath of God" really mean?

 

[SuperSaint4GodDBZStyle]

I've read about does God have a body when the Bible mentions his hands, face, breath, eyes and so forth somewhere on a christian website. Unfortunately, I can't recall all of that. I suggest going to speak to a pastor near you who is knowledgable about that. I'm sorry.

 

[PaladinValer]

To be in God's Image and Likeness doesn't mean we look physically like God. God had, until the Incarnation, no physical form. Therefore, the Image and Likeness could not be physical but something else.

Therefore, we can physically look like apes while being in the Image and Likeness of God.

Edit: What you are referring to is called "anthropomorphism," which is the bestowing of human characteristic upon something or someone that/who is not human. The authors of the Holy Bible often used this literary form for us to better understand how He works since we can never completely understand God.

 

[SuperSaint4GodDBZStyle]

Agreed.

 

[gluadys]

I've read about does God have a body when the Bible mentions his hands, face, breath, eyes and so forth somewhere on a christian website. Unfortunately, I can't recall all of that. I suggest going to speak to a pastor near you who is knowledgable about that. I'm sorry.

As far as I know, the only so-called Christians who believe God has a physical body are the Mormons and of course, most Christians do not consider them bona fide Christians.

I think the point here is that we cannot describe spiritual action directly, as all our vocabulary is based in physical experience.

So when we want to describe how God acts, we use physical analogies, like breathing and moulding clay.

It doesn't mean God has a body and actual literal hands that picked up clay and shaped it into a human form, but that the nearest analogy to what actually happened is that God acted like a potter attentively shaping and moulding his pots.

How that would look to us if we had been there ourselves is anyone's guess. Would we have seen clay in the ground spontaneously taking on the shape of a man as if moulded by invisible hands? Or dust rising up in a little whirlwind and coalescing into a solid human shape as if from a transporter beam on Star Trek? Or a species of ape gradually acquiring variations like an erect posture and a larger brain, and adding a chin to its face?

The image of the Potter is consistent with all of these.

 

[KerrMetric]

The link in the OP has nothing to do with evolutionary theory.

 

[archaeologist]

the theory of evolution keeps changing as time goes on so i have a question:

what happens to all the people, when they die, who believed in the earlier forms of the theory and did not get the 'truth' which was discovered centuries and decades later?

so they die believing a lie is the truth? is that just, honest, fair?

 

[Willtor]

the theory of evolution keeps changing as time goes on so i have a question:

what happens to all the people, when they die, who believed in the earlier forms of the theory and did not get the 'truth' which was discovered centuries and decades later?

so they die believing a lie is the truth? is that just, honest, fair?

Even if your suppositions were accurate, it is like asking what happened to the people who died holding onto a cosmic view that precluded solar wind. Did they just die believing a lie was the truth? But since when are solar wind or evolution or whatever other knowledge of natural processes relevant to justice, honesty, or fairness?

 

[Rudolph Hucker]

...
what happens to all the people, when they die, who believed in the earlier forms of the theory and did not get the 'truth' which was discovered centuries and decades later?

so they die believing a lie is the truth? is that just, honest, fair?

I dunno: it nakes no difference to them really.

But for you a question: what about all those people who died before AD1. Did they die believing a lie is the truth? is that just, honest, fair?

 

[gluadys]

the theory of evolution keeps changing as time goes on so i have a question:

what happens to all the people, when they die, who believed in the earlier forms of the theory and did not get the 'truth' which was discovered centuries and decades later?

so they die believing a lie is the truth? is that just, honest, fair?

Same thing that happens to all the people who die today not knowing the discoveries that will not be made for another 50 or 100 years or more yet.

After all, there is still a lot of truth about the universe we don't know yet. Is that just, honest, fair? Are you going to complain to God because He didn't tell you today about something scientists won't discover until 2425?

I don't have any qualms about my scientific ignorance affecting my salvation. Nor do I think their scientific ignorance played any part in barring or permitting my ancestors' entry into heaven.

 

[Nooj]

Fossils challenge current theories on human evolution, but that's nothing new, even to be expected. It's unlikely that scientists have got everything down pat, although they do have high confidence in the broad, general statements, such as the fact that humans have evolved, or have come out of Africa.
I find the John Hawks weblog to be the best if you want to know an expert's opinions about palaeoanthropology news:

The press coverage of the paper so far (e.g., this AP article) has been a little confusing, because it misses this point: this paper is not about modern human origins, it's about much earlier evolutionary relationships. National Geographic News resorts to the always-safe:

The finding suggests that the hominid family tree could be much more complex than previously thought.​

Ah, so that's what it means! More complex than previously thought! Why isn't there ever a story that makes things simpler than previously thought? I mean, isn't it a sign of a failed science if you have to add complexity to your hypothesis every time you make a new observation? It's like Ptolemaic paleoanthropology!

 

[archaeologist]

Same thing that happens to all the people who die today not knowing the discoveries that will not be made for another 50 or 100 years or more yet.

you missed the point--the truth doesn't change that is why evolution never existed and creation as told in genesis is true. it has been true from the beginning and will forever be true because it never changes.

 

[Rudolph Hucker]

you missed the point--the truth doesn't change that is why evolution never existed and creation as told in genesis is true. it has been true from the beginning and will forever be true because it never changes.

They didn't really miss the point Archie, they responded to your assertion that God was being unfair on people who died before evolution, inter alia, was discoovered.

We know that you do not believe in evolution becuase you have told us on several occasions.

That you do not believe it exists does not negate the views of those who do. Remember too that in days of yore most Christians believed that the sun orbited the earth but eventually "saw the light".