Is evolution a fact or theory?

Job 33:6 · Jan 29, 2018

2tim_215 said:
Let me try an answer if I understand what you're asking.
1) First let us assume that the earth were billions of years old
2) I think that's safe to say that "Modern Day Man" is no older that 10000 years in existing (Adam).
Based on 1), it would be reasonable to say that during all those "billions" of years, that there was some form (or forms) of life existing on this earth at one time or another before modern day man (Adam) appeared on this earth in addition to the other creatures which supposedly appeared in the "beginning". In the meanwhile, all other creation prior to this would have died out and thus became extinct but would have still been encrusted in/under the earth and under the seas if their if in particular their extinctions would have occurred as a result of a massive flood which is why they would likely show up in the fossil record.

The most realistic and logical answer to this you probably won't care for, but it's logical (or intelligent) design which requires a designer (God). You may or not be aware of this, but in the design world, a technique often used is "leveraging your design" which instead of "reinventing the wheel" is to take an existing design to start with and either "modify" or add incremental changes to it, which is much more cost effective (in human terms) and is certainly a much more efficient approach. This is more efficient since you likely will have the major building blocks necessary to create life and there's no need to reproduce it all over again, especially since you know it works.

So in looking at creation in general prior to Adam, the "basics" for life (actually the most complex part of it) was already determined and implemented (which must be in all created beings, including those beings who were created in the distant past) and thus it should be relatively simpler for the creator (designer) to add whatever attributes the designer wanted incorporated into His new design which is why you see the closeness in terms of dna between the various creations. Probably one of the reasons that it only took Him 6 days, lol.

It's no wonder there's only a difference of 1 chromosome between the human genome and that of a chimpanzee. It makes sense if you consider there's not much difference in terms of their physical attributes. First of, they both have life, which probably makes up at least 50% of it. Then they both have arms, legs, feet, eyes, ears, mouth, genitals etc. As far as what's left, it shouldn't be much different. It would be quite interesting to be able to get an accurate dna reading from some of these fossils to compare with the DNA in modern man.

"Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes while chimpanzees have 24. Evolutionary scientists believe that one of the human chromosomes has been formed through the fusion of two small chromosomes in the chimp instead of an intrinsic difference resulting from a separate creation."

At the end of each chromosome is a string of repeating DNA sequences called a telomere. Chimpanzees and other apes have about 23 kilobases (a kilobase is 1,000 base pairs of DNA) of repeats. Humans are unique among primates with much shorter telomeres only 10 kilobases long.7

While 18 pairs of chromosomes are ‘virtually identical’, chromosomes 4, 9 and 12 show evidence of being ‘remodeled.’5 In other words, the genes and markers on these chromosomes are not in the same order in the human and chimpanzee. Instead of ‘being remodeled’ as the evolutionists suggest, these could, logically, also be intrinsic differences because of a separate creation.

The Y chromosome in particular is of a different size and has many markers that do not line up between the human and chimpanzee.1

Scientists have prepared a human-chimpanzee comparative clone map of chromosome 21 in particular. They observed ‘large, non-random regions of difference between the two genomes.’ They found a number of regions that ‘might correspond to insertions that are specific to the human lineage.’3

For contents of full article see:
Greater than 98% Chimp human DNA similarity Not any more - creation.com

Sorry if I got off-track a bit by mentioning fossils and dna.

Part of my post, brings up the discussion about how microbiologists use modern day rates of mutation, examine differences between animals A and B, and based on the rate of mutation and modern day differences, predict the temporal location of A and B's common ancestor.

This only makes sense if the fossil succession is a product of common descent with relation to genetic alterations.

Because, not every modern day animal mutates at the same rate. For example, a mouse might undergo a larger amount of genetic drift over time, than an elephant (different rate of producing offspring and generations over time with associated mutations). So, a common ancestor between two mice or two elephants, could be guessed to exist at different times in the past. An ancestor between two mice of X genetic difference, could be guessed to be more recent existing, than two elephants of X genetic difference, because the mice could produce X genetic difference in a shorter amount of time (because they mutate faster).

But if someone predicts where the common ancestor is (in time), based on mutation rates in those modern day living animals, then it is more than just a question about order of DNA and order of fossils, it is a question about genetic differences, and rates of mutation.

So its not comparable to...human beings just upgrading software, or just buying the new iphone and adding some new pieces. It is indicative of change that is a product of modern day, observed mutation.

The reason it is not comparable, is that anyone can take a phone and go buy a new one at any time. Anyone can download a software update at any time. But fossils dont exist at "any time", they exist at specific times which reflect mutation rates of their associated descendants.

Thank you for your thoughtful response, otherwise.

Job 33:6 · Jan 29, 2018

@2tim_215
Also, I just have to add this bit.

If hypothetically, God were to keep adding pieces and upgrading life over and over and over again. To the extent that, theropods could ultimately be upgraded into birds, or fish could be upgraded into tetrapods...

There is really no reason to...not consider mutations, as a means for God to do that. Like you said, the pieces are already there, if its just a matter of working on pre existing life, this is precisely what evolution does. So, philosophically, I couldnt see myself not considering it as the most plausible explanation.

But also, like I said before to the last guy, life doesnt evolve in one direction. It evolves back and forth, up and down, left and right. Things evolve "backwards" at times. Because there is no real backwards. This also, isnt comparable to life simply being upgraded overtime like new software.

Science provides a good explanation for these things. When people in these forums read this, they almost just make stuff up to explain it. Like, God never said anything in scripture about upgrading life forms billions of times, so that a fish might become a tetrapod. People talk about the Global flood with respect to extinction, but there have been 5 recorded mass extinctions. Even if I were to be exceptionally nice and to ignore geology, to assume that a flood caused 1 of the 5, what does anyone have to say about the other 4?

People talk about the flood splitting the continents of Pangea. Well, what split the continents of Rodinia?

Science (the study of Gods creation) has an understandable and logical explanation for these things. While people who try to rely strictly on scripture, just seem to make stuff up to explain away these things.

Its like...Carl Sagans dragon in the garage.

One more thing,

By the logic used by many deniers of...science, if hypothetically evolution were true, many of them would never be able to know it, because there is nothing they would accept as evidence for it. For example, the absence of transitional fossils is used as an argument against evolution. When transitionals are discovered and explained, all of a sudden, there arent enough of them. When more are discovered, all of a sudden, no number could ever be enough.

When features in the earth could only logically form in hardened rock, flood proponents just make up stuff about rock layers hardening super fast.

I could really go on and on, but a lot of deniers really just kind of make stuff up, baseless claims to resist an old earth and or evolution. Their imaginations run wild without supporting evidence.

And anyone can...use their imaginations to argue in favor of an invisible dragon in their garage. But they end up looking stupid.

lismore · Jan 29, 2018

mathinspiration said:
Is there are proof of either?

Evolution is a lie from the pit of hell. You would do well to avoid it. Instead study God's word. God be with you

dcalling · Jan 29, 2018

Could God created life and just let life mutate to different forms? Sure God can. But the fossil evidence does not support it. All different types of fossil has big gaps. Every day many more fossils are discovered, and they all tend to be existing types.

People have been observing e.coli for 66k generations, and all they can see is existing permutation of possible mutations, and it never mutated to anything more complex, i.e. multi-celled organisms.

KomatiiteBIF said:
@2tim_215
Also, I just have to add this bit.

If hypothetically, God were to keep adding pieces and upgrading life over and over and over again. To the extent that, theropods could ultimately be upgraded into birds, or fish could be upgraded into tetrapods...

There is really no reason to...not consider mutations, as a means for God to do that. Like you said, the pieces are already there, if its just a matter of working on pre existing life, this is precisely what evolution does. So, philosophically, I couldnt see myself not considering it as the most plausible explanation.

But also, like I said before to the last guy, life doesnt evolve in one direction. It evolves back and forth, up and down, left and right. Things evolve "backwards" at times. Because there is no real backwards. This also, isnt comparable to life simply being upgraded overtime like new software.

Science provides a good explanation for these things. When people in these forums read this, they almost just make stuff up to explain it. Like, God never said anything in scripture about upgrading life forms billions of times, so that a fish might become a tetrapod. People talk about the Global flood with respect to extinction, but there have been 5 recorded mass extinctions. Even if I were to be exceptionally nice and to ignore geology, to assume that a flood caused 1 of the 5, what does anyone have to say about the other 4?

People talk about the flood splitting the continents of Pangea. Well, what split the continents of Rodinia?

Science (the study of Gods creation) has an understandable and logical explanation for these things. While people who try to rely strictly on scripture, just seem to make stuff up to explain away these things.

Its like...Carl Sagans dragon in the garage.

One more thing,

By the logic used by many deniers of...science, if hypothetically evolution were true, many of them would never be able to know it, because there is nothing they would accept as evidence for it. For example, the absence of transitional fossils is used as an argument against evolution. When transitionals are discovered and explained, all of a sudden, there arent enough of them. When more are discovered, all of a sudden, no number could ever be enough.

When features in the earth could only logically form in hardened rock, flood proponents just make up stuff about rock layers hardening super fast.

I could really go on and on, but a lot of deniers really just kind of make stuff up, baseless claims to resist an old earth and or evolution. Their imaginations run wild without supporting evidence.

And anyone can...use their imaginations to argue in favor of an invisible dragon in their garage. But they end up looking stupid.

lismore · Jan 29, 2018

NobleMouse said:
But maybe Genesis is just allegory... until you read the 10 commandments --> see Exodus 20:8-11 (especially verse 11). You can continue to believe what you want about evolution, but it is not in any way supported biblically. Keep up those mental gymnastics on (mis)interpreting scripture boys...

Amen NobleMouse. And we must not forgot who is speaking in Exodus 20. Verse one says 'And God spoke all these words'. God himself says that he created everything in six literal days and rested on the seventh. Case closed! God be with you !

2tim_215 · Jan 29, 2018

dcalling said:
Could God created life and just let life mutate to different forms? Sure God can. But the fossil evidence does not support it. All different types of fossil has big gaps. Every day many more fossils are discovered, and they all tend to be existing types.

People have been observing e.coli for 66k generations, and all they can see is existing permutation of possible mutations, and it never mutated to anything more complex, i.e. multi-celled organisms.

One problem that science has, it has come up with many theories with regards to creation, and builds on them, some eventually becoming pretty accurate but many others still uncertain while others generate still unanswered questions. What if mutations are the way that God has implemented human life (the one thing that science has not been able to), likely will never be able to do but will keep on trying to do (cannot even create Frankenstein except in their minds).

As part of this great mystery (which no matter how old this earth really is) will that mystery be solved. What somehow injected (these so-called mutations), Now this shouldn't be so hard to envision if there is an all powerful God and you accept that He created the Universe somehow and created man in the process with all the other living forms on the earth.

If one can accept this hypothesis to start out with (I don't know why they couldn't if the can accept that man evolved into what he is today over billions and billions of years. If you can accept this premise (that God put in some of the changes/mutations which give the appearance of evolution, then the real question should be why and the answer can very well be that it was due to man's fall.

Man was originally designed to be an immortal being, but once he fell in the garden he lost that immortality, So if that were true, the next question should be, how could God do this, that is someone who was given immortality make mortal? It sounds like it should be rather difficult, unless He were to kill him on the spot, but that wasn't what He did. The Bible gives us a perfect and logical solution to this.

God cursed not only man, but the entire earth in such a way what was created perfect would no longer be the case and things would start to deteriorate over time. And we see since the beginning of time, the earth has been decaying (science proves this with the first Law of Thermodynamics), as the sun wearing it self out, nature (which I'm sure was once peaceful when it was originally created) has created a decaying environment that has become worse and worse) and nature has had to adapt in order to survive all the changes.

And although the lifespans has recently increased (more and more people are starting to live to be over a hundred which science has managed to do in recent years) it's nothing like the 800-900 years that men lived in the early stages of the Bible. And God did not make these changes instantaneously, He made modifications which allowed these changes to take place over long periods of time (don't ask me how He did this, but He did), so I guess if you want to call it evolution, go ahead, but however you wish to term it, it was God's doing and not random event which some people try and claim which is about as theoretical as one can get.

It's time to stop trying to make the Bible (God) fit to science, but rather instead try and make science (if it's true science) fit into the Bible. Much simpler that way and wouldn't take thousands of years to figure it out and yet after all those years still have some things wrong or no real answers for.

stevevw · Jan 30, 2018

Resha Caner said:
There is a general misunderstanding of words like fact and theory. A layman doesn't mean the same thing as a scientist.

Lay usages of the term typically mean:
* fact = absolute truth
* theory = an idea yet to be proven, i.e. what a scientist would call a hypothesis

Scientific usages are:
* fact = data accepted without warrant
* theory = a proposition exercised per the scientific method that has not been falsified

Per the scientific usage, the vast majority of biologists consider evolution both fact and theory. That doesn't mean evolution is without issues, but that is typical of all the sciences. The theories of mechanics I use as an engineer to develop machinery are riddled with issues, yet they produce working machines.

I happen to believe there are workable alternatives to some of the theories in mechanics, but parsimony makes it debatable whether they are worth pursuing. Likewise, I happen to believe there are workable alternatives to evolution that address certain theological roadblocks, but for the working biologist, again, there is little motivation to pursue such things.

It can also depend what you mean by evolution. Evolution may be an accepted theory but it can also be assumed to do more than it can. There are other alternatives that are worth persuing and many scientists agree. These alternatives are more responsible for how living things can change and adapt to their enviroments. This is opposed to the blind process of adaptations by natural selection which requires extraordinary explanations that have not or cannot be supplied with any great credibility.

Job 33:6 · Jan 30, 2018

dcalling said:
Could God created life and just let life mutate to different forms? Sure God can. But the fossil evidence does not support it. All different types of fossil has big gaps. Every day many more fossils are discovered, and they all tend to be existing types.

People have been observing e.coli for 66k generations, and all they can see is existing permutation of possible mutations, and it never mutated to anything more complex, i.e. multi-celled organisms.

You say it has big gaps, but when more transitionals are given, you just deny them all.

These are different "types" of animals, a barytherium is not a modern day elephant, not by a long shot. Neither is a paleomastodon or plateybelodon. But paleomastodon really isnt too far off from a barytherium or a moeritherium. Paleomastodon also isnt too far off from deinotherium or plateybelodon. While deinotherium and plateybelodon arent too far off from mammut or stegodon.

This is solid fossil evidence here, and no person in the right mind could claim that what is presented, stands against evolution, because it doesnt. Its actually precisely what we would expect to find if evolution were true.

dcalling · Jan 30, 2018

I am saying you don't have a scientific way to test and verify what's mutated and what's designed.

If you don't have a repeatable, verifiable test, then what you have is an assumption.

KomatiiteBIF said:
You say it has big gaps, but when more transitionals are given, you just deny them all.

Job 33:6 · Jan 30, 2018

This is really about as good as it gets when it comes to the fossil record. It could not be more supportive.

Job 33:6 · Jan 30, 2018

dcalling said:
I am saying you don't have a scientific way to test and verify what's mutated and what's designed.

If you don't have a repeatable, verifiable test, then what you have is an assumption.

Here is what you said

" But the fossil evidence does not support it. All different types of fossil has big gaps. Every day many more fossils are discovered, and they all tend to be existing types."

Now, you are flipping the script. Just admit it, no there arent big gaps.

dcalling · Jan 30, 2018

Those are the mutation boundaries.

Edit: I can't claim if those are boundaries or designs, since they are all assumptions. Unless they can be tested you can never be sure.

KomatiiteBIF said:
This is really about as good as it gets when it comes to the fossil record. It could not be more supportive.

dcalling · Jan 30, 2018

KomatiiteBIF said:
Here is what you said

" But the fossil evidence does not support it. All different types of fossil has big gaps. Every day many more fossils are discovered, and they all tend to be existing types."

Now, you are flipping the script. Just admit it, no there arent big gaps.

Yes there are, can you deny that all fossils discovered tend to belong to the same kind? And unless it is the same kind, nothing really fill in between.

But the big issue here is, as I aways said, this data is free for anyone to interpert, it is totally subjective. If you really want facts (instead of interpertation of facts), you need to have repeatable, verifiable tests.

Job 33:6 · Jan 30, 2018

dcalling said:
Those are the mutation boundaries. This is how we breead horses today.

Nobody breeds horses to this extent

Where their feet split into a different number of toes.

Job 33:6 · Jan 30, 2018

The fossil succession, with respect to transitional forms, really could not be more "full".

dcalling · Jan 30, 2018

That is what you think, and that is totally subjective.

The horse evolution as you pictured may or may not happened. Which type is designed and which are mutated within the design parameters I am not sure, just waiting for science to show with actual repeatable verifiable tests.

What I do know is God created humans differently, so according to the Bible humans is not evolved from some primates. You need to have a verifiable, repeatable test to show me otherwise.

KomatiiteBIF said:
Nobody breeds horses to this extent

Where their feet split into a different number of toes.

dcalling · Jan 30, 2018

KomatiiteBIF said:
The fossil succession, with respect to transitional forms, really could not be more "full".

LOL, sometimes we do discover more fossils to fill the 'gap'. Somehow you can't see those evidences as subjective is amazing.

dcalling · Jan 30, 2018

That is what you think, and that is totally subjective.

The horse evolution as you pictured may or may not happened. Which type is designed and which are mutated within the design parameters I am not sure, just waiting for science to show with actual repeatable verifiable tests.

What I do know is God created humans differently, so according to the Bible humans is not evolved from some primates. You need to have a verifiable, repeatable test to show me otherwise.

And today, if you ever dig up some fossil of humans with 6 fingers, you might claim that is where humans evolved 6 fingers.

KomatiiteBIF said:
Nobody breeds horses to this extent

Where their feet split into a different number of toes.

Resha Caner · Jan 30, 2018

stevevw said:
It can also depend what you mean by evolution. Evolution may be an accepted theory but it can also be assumed to do more than it can.

Sure.

stevevw said:
There are other alternatives that are worth persuing and many scientists agree.

That would be nice, but it sounds like wishful thinking. What alternatives do you speak of?

Job 33:6 · Jan 30, 2018

dcalling said:
That is what you think, and that is totally subjective.

The horse evolution as you pictured may or may not happened. Which type is designed and which are mutated within the design parameters I am not sure, just waiting for science to show with actual repeatable verifiable tests.

What I do know is God created humans differently, so according to the Bible humans is not evolved from some primates. You need to have a verifiable, repeatable test to show me otherwise.

Your statement was specifically about gaps in the fossil succession.

If my statement is subjective, then yours was as well in claiming that transitionals are lacking. Because you cannot say theyre lacking if there is potential that what I am showing you, are in fact transitionals.

And no, this isnt comparable to digging up a human with 6 fingers, because they are collections of fossils that are found. Its not like its just one specimen, its collection of these things. No collection of 6 fingered humans has been found.

Is evolution a fact or theory?

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