Observed Speciation

[kenneth558]

First, if if "bigness" or "quickness" is a virtue, why not one day?

If honesty is a virtue, why create the universe to trick us into believing evolution?

What relevance does trickery and deceit have to holiness?

michabo, does God say one day is better than 6? Or that quickness is a virtue?

But your 2nd question is quite valid. God tells us that He sends "...them strong delusion that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." IOW, it is God's reaction to our choices - we chose the wrong path first. The delusion just makes your choice more palatable to you. Kind of like the opiate of the unrighteous. Choose to believe the truth and love righteousness, and you won't believe the delusion. It's not so hard.

 

[Aduro Amnis]

The Bible says it either One or Six days to make up the universe.

 

[lucaspa]

Well, well, lucaspa, why all the debate, then? I believe in speciation. No problem. But I don't believe in the theory part of evolution. No, speciation is not the only event needed to disprove a literal Biblical Special Creation. It does nothing for evolutionists.

The theory of Special Creation was that God had created each species individually. Showing speciation and the formation of of new species from old falsifies special creation.

BTW, what do you think is the "theory part of evolution"? Do you disagree with the "theory part" of Cell Theory? Or the "theory part" of Round Earth Theory?

lucaspa, I serve a God big enough to create a universe in 6 days. I serve a God honest enough to tell the truth: morning and evening were each of those days.

Well then, a literal reading of the Bible says that God created in 6 days in Genesis 1 but created in one day in Genesis 2:4. So where is the honesty of your god there?

Yes, God could have created in 6 days. But the evidence He left us in His Creation says He did not create that way. I guess you don't think God was honest enough to have Creation look how He actually created, do you?

I serve a God gracious enough to credit righteousness to my account for simply believing what He says.

That's the problem. You don't believe what He says. You believe what you say He says in the Bible. And then you don't believe what He says in His Creation.

And I serve a God holy enough to dangle the bait of evolutionist delusion for those who chose not to believe Him.

Really? You serve a god that would deliberately deceive us in His Creation? How sad then that you have abandoned God for your made up god.

You take that bait when you uncritically accept profoundly atheistic interpretations of the data by your peers.

I don't accept the atheistic interpretations. When Dawkins says that the universe looks exactly like it should if God did not exist, I don't accept that. When Simpson unintentionally says "Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned." I don't accept it. However, I do accept that God really did Create and that everything in Creation was put there by Him. Therefore, when transitional series are so hard to find and one of the best ones is in our own hominid lineage, I believe God when He is shouting "I did it by evolution!"

Don't you realize that God did intervene in the origins of this physical realm?

I never denied it. I simply say God tells us plainly that He didn't intervene in the way you say He did.

And that atheistic scientists vow to themselves never to recognize that intervention, regardless of any evidence for it?

So what if they do? That's their problem.

That prejudicial vow is a very unscientific approach to the search for truth. Because the whole of truth includes facts whose characteristics are beyond the limitations of glass flask and test tube.

Right, but we aren't talking about the whole truth. We are only talking about the part of the truth of how God created. The prejudices of the atheists don't count there. They can make whatever personal conclusions from the data they want. Their conclusions are not science. They are personal.

Kenneth, realize that at least half the evolutionary biologists in history, starting with Darwin, were theists/Christians. As Gould states in giving part of the list:
" Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs -- and equally compatible with atheism,"

Science is agnostic. Do you have any idea what that means? Agnostic is a very neutral position. It means you do not know whether God exists or not. You withold judgement until more data is in.

Kenneth, if you are looking for proof of God via science, you aren't going to get it. All you will do is harm Christianity in the attempt.

 

[lucaspa]

michabo, does God say one day is better than 6? Or that quickness is a virtue?

No, you did. You said 6 days was better than 13.4 billion years. Michabo was simply taking your logic to the next step and showing the error of your logic.

But your 2nd question is quite valid. God tells us that He sends "...them strong delusion that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."

This is Paul talking, and he is not talking about God. He is talking about ministers who preach a different message from Paul. This is another indication that you are worshipping the Bible and not God.

Kenneth, if you believe God really created, you must believe that everything in Creation was put there by God. No other entity to do that, right? So, would God deliberately lie to us in Creation? If He does, then how can we believe Him about anything else? You preserve creationism, but the cost is the destruction of Christianity. As I said, you can go out to the tall grass if you want, but I'm not going to follow you.

 

[lucaspa]

BTW, has anyone noticed that no creationist has challenged observed speciation? Instead, we get told that God lies, that we accept delusion, that evolution is atheism, but nowhere do we get told that speciation does not happen.

Instead of believing the evidence, Kenneth's last argument is that we are to ignore what our eyes see and just listen to his intepretation of the Bible. Anyone else see a problem with that?

 

[bevets]

The opposite truth has been affirmed by innumerable cases of measurable evolution at this minimal scale-but, to be visible at all over so short a span, evolution must be far too rapid (and transient) to serve as the basis for major transformations in geological time. Hence, the “paradox of the visibly irrelevant”-or, if you can see it at all, it’s too fast to matter in the long run. ~ Stephen Jay Gould


You should not confuse scientific observation with the evolutionary mythology.

 

[michabo]

michabo, does God say one day is better than 6? Or that quickness is a virtue?

I've no idea. You said "I serve a God big enough to create a universe in six days" (or words to that effect). It seems to me that you are emphasizing the six-day creation, as opposed to a multi-billion year progression. So if six days is better than 14 billion, then one day must be better than six. And one minute better than one day. And 10e-40 seconds is better than one day. But oddly now we're back to the big bang theory...

God tells us that He sends "...them strong delusion that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."

Ignoring for a moment the disturbing consequences of that, what are we left with? A statement in the bible which says that God will try to delude us, and two pieces of god's handiwork: the universe and the bible. On the one hand we have the universe which God created directly, leaving information about the process which is unambiguous, and speaks to creatures anywhere in the universe regardless of species, society, culture, belief or language, provided they have the technology to see. And on the other hand we have a book written by men but inspired by god.

It seems to me that as the universe was authored by god directly, we should trust it over the bible. Given that, according to you (and not others here), the universe and the bible are inconsistent and God may be sending us a delusion, why should we trust the writing of men over the handiwork of God?

 

[Western Deity]

Bump, now where's ikester at?

 

[kenneth558]

I don't accept the atheistic interpretations. When Dawkins says that the universe looks exactly like it should if God did not exist, I don't accept that.

Excellent, lucaspa! Now let me ask you this: should you happen upon one of those differences [in appearance], how would you go about convincing your peers of the hand of God in the matter? Or if you'd rather, keep it simple: how would you recognize (or have you seen) one of those differences?

(I may get the chance to meet you come this fall. I'm hoping to be selected from the standby list of a NY college.)

 

[kenneth558]

... Ignoring for a moment the disturbing consequences of that, what are we left with? A statement in the bible which says that God will try to delude us, and two pieces of god's handiwork: the universe and the bible. On the one hand we have the universe which God created directly, leaving information about the process which is unambiguous, and speaks to creatures anywhere in the universe regardless of species, society, culture, belief or language, provided they have the technology to see. And on the other hand we have a book written by men but inspired by god.

It seems to me that as the universe was authored by god directly, we should trust it over the bible. Given that, according to you (and not others here), the universe and the bible are inconsistent and God may be sending us a delusion, why should we trust the writing of men over the handiwork of God?

It's late, I'm calling it a day. But I don't want to leave you hanging if your are serious in your qwest for truth. Go get your Bible and read. Yes, it will take a few weeks or months to get through. But it will answer many of your questions. Otherwise you may have to wait quite a while for me to get back here. Finals are coming up fast.

 

[lucaspa]

The opposite truth has been affirmed by innumerable cases of measurable evolution at this minimal scale-but, to be visible at all over so short a span, evolution must be far too rapid (and transient) to serve as the basis for major transformations in geological time. Hence, the “paradox of the visibly irrelevant”-or, if you can see it at all, it’s too fast to matter in the long run. ~ Stephen Jay Gould


You should not confuse scientific observation with the evolutionary mythology.

1. Remember the title of Darwin's book? Origin of the Species! Darwin stated that new species arose from transformation of existing species. That was what evolution is. So, if we observe new species coming from the transformation of existing species, then that is evolution. And since it is observed, it's not mythology. QED.

2. You didn't give a source for the Gould quote. Until you do, we have no choice but to classify it with all the other misquotes you have given us and know that it is irrelevent. Notice that Gould says "paradox". You do know that "paradox" is an apparent contradiction and not a real one, don't you?

 

[lucaspa]

Excellent, lucaspa! Now let me ask you this: should you happen upon one of those differences [in appearance], how would you go about convincing your peers of the hand of God in the matter? Or if you'd rather, keep it simple: how would you recognize (or have you seen) one of those differences?

You missed the point, Kenneth. I wouldn't try to convince my peer of the hand of God in the matter. I can't, because science is agnostic. I would point out to my peer that he was making a personal statement as though it were a conclusion from science and thus misrepresenting science. That's been done before and, because of it, Dawkins is much more careful now about his statements. See the essay at the end of this post.

(I may get the chance to meet you come this fall. I'm hoping to be selected from the standby list of a NY college.)

I wish you hadn't told me that. You have now placed me in a difficult ethical dilemma.

""First, science is a limited way of knowing, in which practitioners attempt to explain the natural world using natural explanations. By definition, science cannot consider supernatural explanations: if there is an omnipotent deity, there is no way that a scientist can exclude or include it in a research design. This is especially clear in experimental research: an omnipotent deity cannot be "controlled" (as one wag commented, "you can't put God in a test tube, or keep him out of one.") [From personal experience, I agree totally with the wag.] So by definition, if an individual is attempting to explain some aspect of the natural world using science, he or she must act as if there were no supernatural forces operating on it. I think this methodological materialism is well understood by evolutionists. But by excluding the supernatural from our scientific turf, we also are eliminating the possibility of proclaiming, via the epistemology of science, that there is no supernatural. One may come to a philosophical conclusion that there is no God, and even base this philosophical conclusion on one's understanding of science, but it is ultimately a philosophical conclusion, not a scientific one. If science is limited to explaining the natural world using natural causes, and thus cannot admit supernatural explanations , so also is science self-limited in another way: it is unable to reject the possibility of the supernatural. Scientists, like other teachers, must be aware of the difference between methodological and philosophical materialism and not treat them as conjoined twins. They are logically and practically decoupled.
...scientists can be more careful about how they use terms. For example, evolutionists sometimes confuse the evidence we have for considerable contingency during the course of evolution with evidence for a lack of ultimate purpose in the universe. Fuytuma writes, 'Perhaps most importantly, if the world and its creatures developed purely by material, physical forces, it could not have been designed and has no purpose or goal...Some shrink from the conclusion that the human species was not designed, has no purpose, and it the product of more material mechanism -- but this seems to be the message of evolution.' (20) GC Simpson is regularly quoted with dismay by creationists as saying 'Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind. He was not planned.' (21) A theist might respond that we do not know what God's purpose is or what he planned. It is possible that if there is an omnipotent, omniscient deity, it was part of its plan to bring humans and every other species about precisely in what seems to us the rather zig-zag, contingency-prone fashion that the fossil record suggests. Of course, this would be a theological statement, but that, indeed, is the point. Saying that 'there is no purpose to life' is not a scientific statement. We are able to explain the world and its creatures using materialist, physical processes, but to claim that this then requires us to conclude that there is no purpose in nature steps beyond science into philosophy. One's students may or may not come to this conclusion on their own; in my opinion, for a nonreligious professor to interject his own philosophy into the classroom in this manner is as offensive as it would be for a fundamentalist professor to pass off his philosophy as science." Eugenie Scott in the essay Creationism in The Flight from Science and Reason, New York Academy of Sciences, volume 775, 1995, pg 519.

 

[lucaspa]

Ignoring for a moment the disturbing consequences of that, what are we left with? A statement in the bible which says that God will try to delude us, and two pieces of god's handiwork: the universe and the bible. On the one hand we have the universe which God created directly, leaving information about the process which is unambiguous, and speaks to creatures anywhere in the universe regardless of species, society, culture, belief or language, provided they have the technology to see. And on the other hand we have a book written by men but inspired by god.

It seems to me that as the universe was authored by god directly, we should trust it over the bible. Given that, according to you (and not others here), the universe and the bible are inconsistent and God may be sending us a delusion, why should we trust the writing of men over the handiwork of God?

Good point. You might make the point even stronger by saying the delusion is sending people who make their literal interpretation of the Bible over God. So the delusion is propagated by men over what God tells us directly thru His Creation.

 

[lucaspa]

It's late, I'm calling it a day. But I don't want to leave you hanging if your are serious in your qwest for truth. Go get your Bible and read. Yes, it will take a few weeks or months to get through. But it will answer many of your questions. Otherwise you may have to wait quite a while for me to get back here. Finals are coming up fast.

You didn't answer the question. When we have a contradiction between God's Creation and an interpretation of the Bible, why should we trust the interpretation?

 

[kenneth558]

I wish you hadn't told me that. You have now placed me in a difficult ethical dilemma.

It shouldn't be that difficult, unless you believe that sincerely held religious beliefs are legal and ethical grounds to discriminate against me being given the opportuinity to learn. I quote from my Evolution text.

The giraffe example deomnstrates that we cannot uncritically accept a hypothesis about the adaptive significance of a trait simply becaue it is plausible. We must subject all hypothesis to rigorous tests.

It should not be a problem to any scientist that his, or any other scientist's, or the scientific community work is met with skepticism. You haven't proven the theory part of Evolution, otherwise it wouldn't still be called a theory. If you have an ethical dilemma accepting folks who realize that, what you really have is an personal ethics problem. Educated, intelligent men defending the scientific status quo...the Galileo scandal all over again?

You missed the point, Kenneth. I wouldn't try to convince my peer of the hand of God in the matter. I can't, because science is agnostic. I would point out to my peer that he was making a personal statement as though it were a conclusion from science and thus misrepresenting science.

You can't? But when God intervenes, natural physical laws are broken resulting in a supernatural event. Science no longer explains that event. Only truth can explain the event. You can't speak the truth just because you're a scientist?

You didn't answer the question. When we have a contradiction between God's Creation and an interpretation of the Bible, why should we trust the interpretation?

Please forgive me, I'm trying to stick a few minutes in here and there between studies and have to skim long posts. A contradiction between God's Creation and the Bible. Like when Abram was told he would have a son with Sarai when they were past child-bearing age? Like when the 12 spies brought back a true (but evil) report? Like when Jesus told the disciples to feed the multitudes when in their eyes they had no food? Like the giraffe (among other animals) whose descent has no valid evolutionistic explanation? (BTW, I'm not letting other creationists do my research for me in this matter, as you probably would otherwise assume.) Answer: God's Word will be shown to be true. When Jesus said Lazarus was sleeping, did He rebuke the disciples for misunderstanding a deliberately cryptic statement? No. But He also told them plainly the correct understanding immediately so no harm was done.

I'm sure I missed some of your questions, but I have to return to my studies....

 

[kenneth558]

For any of you who would wonder that Bible-believers are strangely under-represented in paleontology or any other scientific field, please read lucaspa's post #32. The implications of his having a "difficult ethical dilemma" with me entering a college in New York should be most seriously disturbing to you!

 

[armed2010]

I thought it was because you guys worked with disproven pseudo science in that field *shrug*

 

[Jet Black]

You haven't proven the theory part of Evolution, otherwise it wouldn't still be called a theory.

oh the pain, the terrible terrible pain. do you know the scientific meaning of the word theory? evolution is both a theory and a fact.

 

[Jet Black]

I wish you hadn't told me that. You have now placed me in a difficult ethical dilemma.

are you on the admissions panel or something? you haven't got any spare PhD places going have you

 

[Physics_guy]

You haven't proven the theory part of Evolution, otherwise it wouldn't still be called a theory.

If you do not understand why the above statement is completely an utterly wrong, you have no place in the science department of any university. Please what the word "theory" means in a scientific context before you embarass yourself in college.