One thing I don't understand about the creationist position

[pitabread]

Fine then we are both happy with it and you have yet to explain an evolutionary solution that can take dust and turn it into a fully functioning adult human in one evening-morning 24 hour day.

I don't have to explain it. I'm simply asking whether God could have done it.

Despite your apparent need to place limitations on your god for reasons I still can't entirely fathom, I'll take this is a concession that at least think that God could have done that if they had wanted to.

so then what problem are you solving by slapping the term "evolution" on what God does in a single evening-morning day that is the same as the 24 hour day at Sinai?

As I said earlier in the thread, life on Earth has the appearance of evolutionary relationships and ancestral histories. It does not have the appearance of independent manufacture.

 

[Speedwell]

That is a rather odd definition of "death". Why is there a need for a creature to contemplate its own mortality?

But there is one, only us* need or not. The story is an etiology, designed to answer fundamental questions like "who are we?" "where did we come from?" and "why is everything always so screwed up when we know it could be better?" And, "why do we die?"

*I don't know if that is strictly true with respect to the other creatures, but the story sets up that dichotomy.

 

[pitabread]

24 hour days rule it out..

So you're back to limiting your god by saying they couldn't have used an accelerated evolutionary process...

 

[prodromos]

I'm simply asking why God couldn't have used an evolutionary process to produce living species.

That presupposes death, which didn't exist prior to the fall, when all the different kinds of creatures had already been created.

If the answer is "we can't know", then that's not overly helpful but it also clearly doesn't rule it out. Despite the fact that some creationists here seem really set on limiting what God can or can't do.

We can know there was no death because that is what was revealed to us by the only person who was there at the time, so that rules out your evolutionary process.

 

[pitabread]

That presupposes death, which didn't exist prior to the fall, when all the different kinds of creatures had already been created.

But you just said we can't know what the world before the fall was like, so we can't assume there was no literal death.

You can't have it both ways.

We can know there was no death because that is what was revealed to us by the only person who was there at the time, so that rules out your evolutionary process.

Technically speaking, there is nothing in the Bible that explicitly says there was no physical death before the Fall.

Like I said, if you assume no physical death, then you have other problems to deal with such as why God's command that living things be fruitful and multiply didn't simply overtake the Earth. And you can't rely on invoking things like environmental carrying capacity because as you said, that's a post-Fall observation.

 

[BobRyan]

BobRyan said: ↑
God speaks the humans in both Gen 1 and 2 and the humans do things and say things .. they "instantly have speech" the moment they come to life they can walk, speak, hold conversation, name animals etc.

Is this hampering your hyper-saltation-evolution proposal?

No since again, it doesn't say anything about God doing things in an accelerated fashion.

Fine then we are both happy with it and you have yet to explain an evolutionary solution that can take dust and turn it into a fully functioning adult human in one evening-morning 24 hour day.

Your stuck slapping the "evolution" label on God's direct manufacture of a human in one evening-morning 24 hour period. - your hyper-saltation as evolution suggestion is not viable given that no evolution text book knows about it or even has a model for it.

so then what problem are you solving by slapping the term "evolution" on what God does in a single evening-morning day that is the same as the 24 hour day at Sinai?

I don't have to explain it. I'm simply asking whether God could have done it.

Simplifying it for you then --

The Bible says "God did - A" in a single evening and morning - 24 hour day just as at Sinai
you say "Why couldn't God have done B in that same period of time getting that same result?"

I respond with "define B". -- what is the B that you are proposing and what problem does it solve?

you respond with (in essence) "B is undefined I just don't want to call it A"..

That is not a compelling argument.

This is what the Bible says:
Genesis 2:7: And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

So then are you happy claiming that -- as your new definition for evolution/evolutionism?

How is that in any way "evolution"??

No evolution text claims such a thing for evolution. I think we both know that.

 

[pitabread]

The Bible says "God did - A" in a single evening and morning - 24 hour day just as at Sinai
you say "Why couldn't God have done B in that same period of time getting that same result?"

I respond with "define B". -- what is the B that you are proposing and what problem does it solve?

you respond with (in essence) "B is undefined I just don't want to call it A"..

That is not a compelling argument.

That's not my argument at all. You're just creating strawman at this point.

I already stated (several times now) that species have the appearance of biological evolution and shared ancestry. So an evolutionary process, even a supernaturally-accelerated one, would at least explain that.

Independently created species do not. Unless you can explain the direct manufacture process and why it would yield a result that looks like shared ancestry among species?

But I suspect any answer you could give will be little more than "that's just how god made stuff".

 

[prodromos]

You can't have it both ways.

Whereas you apparently can. Got it.

 

[pitabread]

Whereas you apparently can. Got it.

You invoked carrying capacity as an explanation for population controls. When I told you what that entailed, you then told me we couldn't use that.

For the record:

Most creatures do not breed beyond the capability of the environment to feed them.

Because they die. It's called "carrying capacity".

You are describing how things are after the fall. You cannot pretend to know anything about how things were prior to the fall.

 

[BobRyan]

BobRyan said: ↑
God speaks the humans in both Gen 1 and 2 and the humans do things and say things .. they "instantly have speech" the moment they come to life they can walk, speak, hold conversation, name animals etc.

Is this hampering your hyper-saltation-evolution proposal?

No since again, it doesn't say anything about God doing things in an accelerated fashion.

Fine then we are both happy with it and you have yet to explain an evolutionary solution that can take dust and turn it into a fully functioning adult human in one evening-morning 24 hour day.

Your stuck slapping the "evolution" label on God's direct manufacture of a human in one evening-morning 24 hour period. - your hyper-saltation as evolution suggestion is not viable given that no evolution text book knows about it or even has a model for it.

so then what problem are you solving by slapping the term "evolution" on what God does in a single evening-morning day that is the same as the 24 hour day at Sinai?

I don't have to explain it. I'm simply asking whether God could have done it.

Simplifying it for you then --

The Bible says "God did - A" in a single evening and morning - 24 hour day just as at Sinai
you say "Why couldn't God have done B in that same period of time getting that same result?"

I respond with "define B". -- what is the B that you are proposing and what problem does it solve?

you respond with (in essence) "B is undefined I just don't want to call it A"..

That is not a compelling argument.

This is what the Bible says:
Genesis 2:7: And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

So then are you happy claiming that -- as your new definition for evolution/evolutionism?

How is that in any way "evolution"??

No evolution text claims such a thing for evolution. I think we both know that.

That's not my argument at all.

You start off with a question. see the OP

I already stated that species have the appearance of biological evolution and shared ancestry.

That is not a "history" that you can jam into one evening and morning where you "start with dust".

OR are you proposing that instead of creating Adam from dust on day 6 you would "edit the text" to say "no animals existed - God took dust and formed it into simple starter animals then formed other animals from earlier animals then finally formed man from earlier animals all in one evening-morning 24 our day"?

And then adding "So an evolutionary process, even a supernaturally-accelerated one, would at least explain that."

??

First of all that is not an explanation of anything since there is nothing for animals to experience and adapt to with bazillions of mutations looking for a survivor... all in 24 hour day and such a random process would be nonsensical by every measure as compared to direct manufacture -- multiple individuals/species -- single designer.

(And a lot of evolutionists will admit that evolution is a very very inefficient process as compared to direct manufacture)

Independently created species do not. Unless you can explain the direct manufacture process

Independently created cars have the same basic design construct. i.e. Single designer. Surely this is not "news".

It is also not the question in the OP

 

[prodromos]

You invoked carrying capacity as an explanation for population controls. When I told you what that entailed, you then told me we couldn't use that.

For the record:

I did not invoke "carrying capacity", I was making a suggestion as to why populations would not explode. In a pre-fall environment this would not be what you termed "carrying capacity". In a pre-fall environment everything would be in perfect harmony because God created it "good".

 

[pitabread]

<snip>

Your posts are getting really confusing, since you keep repeating things you posted previously and for which I already responded to. I'm not going to keep repeating responses to things I've already responded to.

That is not a "history" that you can jam into one evening and morning where you "start with dust".

I'm not saying I necessarily agree with it. I'm just saying it would be more consistent with what is observed in the biological world.

Are you proposing that instead of creating Adam from dust on day 6 you would "edit the text" to say "no animals existed - God took dust and formed it into simple starter animals then formed other animals from earlier animals then finally formed man from earlier animals all in one evening-morning 24 our day"?

If you want to compare Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, the events are out of order. I figured we'd gloss over that, but if you want to get overly-literalist, there are some contradictions you have to deal with yourself.

Personally, I don't really have a dog in that fight. Like I said, I'm just trying to understand why creationists place limitations on their god when it comes to whether god could have used evolution to have created species.

You seem to really hate the idea, but it doesn't seem to to do with God at all.

 

[pitabread]

I did not invoke "carrying capacity", I was making a suggestion as to why populations would not explode.

You implied it by saying: "Most creatures do not breed beyond the capability of the environment to feed them."

This is what we observe in nature and it's referred to as environmental carrying capacity.

In a pre-fall environment this would not be what you termed "carrying capacity". In a pre-fall environment everything would be in perfect harmony because God created it "good".

But we can't pretend to know anything about how things were prior to the Fall... right?

You are describing how things are after the fall. You cannot pretend to know anything about how things were prior to the fall.

 

[BobRyan]

I already stated that species have the appearance of biological evolution and shared ancestry.

That is not a "history" that you can jam into one evening and morning where you "start with dust".

OR are you proposing that instead of creating Adam from dust on day 6 you would "edit the text" to say "no animals existed - God took dust and formed it into simple starter animals then formed other animals from earlier animals then finally formed man from earlier animals all in one evening-morning 24 our day"?

And then adding "So an evolutionary process, even a supernaturally-accelerated one, would at least explain that."

??

First of all that is not an explanation of anything since there is nothing for animals to experience and adapt to with bazillions of mutations looking for a survivor... all in 24 hour day and such a random process would be nonsensical by every measure as compared to direct manufacture -- multiple individuals/species -- single designer.

(And a lot of evolutionists will admit that evolution is a very very inefficient process as compared to direct manufacture)

I'm not saying I necessarily agree with it. .

Can't say as I blame you at that point

I'm just saying it would be more consistent with what is observed in the biological world.

That is a different topic than the OP.

The problem you are trying to solve then is how to get God's direct manufacture "text" description that results in animals that share the same design solutions to similar environment problems -- to be caused by evolution instead of the direct-manufacture cause where in the Bible the designer happened to like that sort of solution?

 

[prodromos]

But we can't pretend to know anything about how things were prior to the Fall... right?

Except that which has been revealed to us by the only person who was there at the time. He says He created everything "good". Animals competing over limited resources does not fit that description.

 

[pitabread]

On a side note, a fascinating application of evolution is evolutionary algorithms. It effectively uses the process of evolution in design and engineering. Humans have harnessed this process to design things themselves.

What is especially interesting is that it yields results that appear to go above and beyond normal human designs. For example, NASA used such a process to 'evolve' a radio antenna design which yielded superior results to traditional human design methods.

This suggests that the process of evolution observed in nature is a more powerful creative process than what humans can come up with on their own. Perhaps the process of evolution was created by a powerful God, capable to designing processes far beyond that of ordinary human mortals.

 

[Speedwell]

I did not invoke "carrying capacity", I was making a suggestion as to why populations would not explode. In a pre-fall environment this would not be what you termed "carrying capacity". In a pre-fall environment everything would be in perfect harmony because God created it "good".

According to your idea of "good." of course, which must be the same as God's.

 

[pitabread]

(And a lot of evolutionists will admit that evolution is a very very inefficient process as compared to direct manufacture)

What humans have found is that evolution yields superior results to direct design. I posted a snippet above about that.

"Direct manufacture" is not the be-all-and-end-all of design and manufacture processes. In fact, the reason humans don't use evolutionary algorithms as a standard design process is due to the unique outputs and non-standardization that results.

Yet for a creative God that wanted to populate the Earth with all sorts of living things, it seems like a much more pliable idea. After all, we're talking about an all-powerful God with no human limitations, right?

 

[BobRyan]

What humans have found is that evolution yields superior results to direct design. I posted a snippet above about that.

"Direct manufacture" is not the be-all-and-end-all of design and manufacture processes. In fact, the reason humans don't use evolutionary algorithms as a standard design process is due to the unique outputs and non-standardization that results.

Evolution proposes 100's of millions of years to get from dirt/dust to fully functioning adult human and piles upon piles of dead animals all along the way ... random failed attempts being the most common event rather than success.

Obviously. (even evolutionists are on record commenting on what a waist what an inefficient system that is)

Are you proposing that instead of creating Adam from dust on day 6 you would "edit the text" to say "no animals existed - God took dust and formed it into simple starter animals then formed other animals from earlier animals then finally formed man from earlier animals all in one evening-morning 24 our day"?

That "complete rewrite idea" -- not in the OP

If you want to compare Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, the events are out of order. I figured we'd gloss over that, but if you want to get overly-literalist, there are some contradictions you have to deal with yourself

1. Here again - not the OP
2. Genesis 2 does not have any days at all. It is an expansion on details already given. So then for example in Genesis 1 there is air - and atmosphere... no Atmosphere in Genesis 2.

It works with Genesis 2 expanding on details already given in Genesis 1 - providing details that don't exist in Genesis 1.

In Genesis 2 - man and woman have names "Adam" and "Eve" but the reader was not given their names in Genesis 1 alone.

In Genesis 6 and 7 you have "clean" vs "unclean" animals mentioned - but the reader does not see the definition for that term until he/she reads Lev 11.

 

[pitabread]

So I'm off to bed. Fun discussion. My current take-away is that the god of creationists has human limitations imposed by creationists for reasons of literalism.

However, it seems a true supernatural, all powerful being would not likely be limited by human imagination.