Spaceships in the Bible

[Cotjones]

@ Ronald, I could throw you quite a few quotes that suggest it will be much worse than you seem to think. Don't have time right now though. - Later

@ Cotjones : How long would it take a sponge to turn into a cat ? And how long would it take a cat to turn into a dog ? And how long would it take a dog to turn into a monkey ?

Well lets look at the differences. The cat > dog or dog > cat question is actually a subject of study, but lets look at what we actually think happened. Squirl-like mammals to monkeys. Here they are.

These appear in fossil records about 65 million years ago.

The major difference in these 2 would've been the opposeable thumbs. This mutation would allow the thing to grasp trees and climb to evade predators. After this mutation the rest come easily. Longer and stronger limbs make it easier to climb and the placement of the joints easier to swing and jump. From this point higher brain function makes the primate a more versatile tool. What else are the big differences?

btw these appear in the fossil record about 35 million ago:

The fact is that we're really only dealing with a few major functional differences and the rest are mainly incidental. But if your telling me that the above creature doesn't have time to mutate into this in 35 million years:

Yet we can get Danes and chihuahuas in mere thousands, I'm again forced to question either your bias in belief or your test scores.

 

[Cotjones]

@ Cotjones : How long would it take a sponge to turn into a cat ? And how long would it take a cat to turn into a dog ? And how long would it take a dog to turn into a monkey ?[/QUOTE]

Furthermore, lets look at some actual timeline.

Sponges appeared about 760,000,000 years ago.

The next major development to arise is the formation of true tissues. Once this happens, parts of an organism can be focused on digestion, part of catching food particles etc. The simplest versions of these still alive are the simplest cnidarians likely still around because of the development of the nematocyst which is one of nature's most nasty weapons.

These appear about 580 Ma.
This is a long time, but we are dealing with a much bigger shift, bigger animals need bigger food supplies. and the mutations that brought on cnidarians were much more complicated than those from mammal ancestors to monkeys. Included where the first nerves and sensory organs, first contractile parts (primitive muscle tissues) and the formation of an incomplete gut.

after this we have radially symmetric things with a gut so that they can store a food source and digest it over time. The next big advantage would be if you could go ahead and start hunting for more food before you are finished digesting your last meal. Ergo Complete gut, ergo Flatworms. They also migrate to bilateral symmetry and more developed sensory organs cephilated to one end to give and obvious advantage to seeking out prey.

These appear 550 ma. and already have the beginnings for the major components of many complicated species many millions of years to come.

The timelines actually fit perfectly the timeline expected from amoeba to human (so-to-speak.)

Part of your confusion seems to be from the fact that you place these animals into distinct categories that don't exist. You think a human is so different from a monkey, an amoeba SOO different from a sponge, A reptile SOOO different from a fish. lol for some fun, a dog SOOO different from a dolphin.

In reality, many of these things have more in common than not. In fact your friendly apologetics dudes love to talk about how similar the Human DNA is to Nematode. As a Biology fanatic i'm thinking "Duh!"

 

[JHM]

Gee, and here I thought you were going to say that 3 different sponges evolved in 3 different directions silmultaneously, one becoming a cat, one becoming a dog, and one becoming a monkey.

I actually haven't studied "Evil - ution" because I regard it as : "The crackpot theory that has led more people to disbelieve in GOD than all other factors combined". BUT there is some scientific evidence that I encountered from Carl Sagan that goes some ways to support creation. No time to post it now, cause I have to go to bed, if I am going to work tomorrow, but I will later.

 

[Ronald]

The evidence it there, you just have to open your eyes.

What evidence, that there are variations within a kind > micro-evolution?

Macro-evolution is a specie mutating into an entirely different specie. There are no examples of transitional forms in the fossil record. This is what confounded Darwin himself. He was patiently waiting for them to appear to prove his theory -- they did not. Of course, he was ignorant of the irreducible complexity of the cell.
So, as you display, micro-evolution is evident. But the basis for these variations is not due to chance mutations (defects) which are almost always harmful to the specie, they are part of the organisms genetic code, called adaptive mechanisms. God made these adaptive mechanisms to allow the specie to survive environmental changes to protect. These aren't accidents of chance, they are designed by God.

 

[Cotjones]

What evidence, that there are variations within a kind > micro-evolution?

Macro-evolution is a specie mutating into an entirely different specie. There are no examples of transitional forms in the fossil record. This is what confounded Darwin himself. He was patiently waiting for them to appear to prove his theory -- they did not. Of course, he was ignorant of the irreducible complexity of the cell.
So, as you display, micro-evolution is evident. But the basis for these variations is not due to chance mutations (defects) which are almost always harmful to the specie, they are part of the organisms genetic code, called adaptive mechanisms. God made these adaptive mechanisms to allow the specie to survive environmental changes to protect. These aren't accidents of chance, they are designed by God.

That is a delightfully illogical conclusion now you are conjecturing things not supported in the Bible to support conjectures made from the Bible.

I suppose you would say that cancer is an adaption. I supposed you'd say that God programmed the Drosophila flies with the mutation to grow an extra pair of legs on it's face. These are not pre-programmed hidden codes in DNA. These occur when a point mutation occurs at the encoding portion of the Gene for the specific amino acid. Sometimes nucleotides are added, sometimes they are deleted, sometimes they change varieties.

It's so incredibly simple I don't know how anyone can not understand it.

All life is encoded in DNA. DNA is simple in that there are only 4 different pieces that literally ALL living things are ultimately made of. Now granted, the average DNA strand is so long that it is taking scientists a long time to crack, but its actually incredibly simple. The DNA that makes up the amoeba is made of the exact same thing that a Human is made of.

If I took a cat's Zygote and manually switched around the DNA and took stuff out until I got DNA identical to a worm, the thing would develop into a worm!

So knowing that what makes you is just a really long code and that everyone's code is made of the same 4 characters. And furthermore the characters in these codes periodically change just randomly.

Knowing this... what in the world makes you think that under the right circumstances something wouldn't mutate to become a new species?

We see new traits that are not present in the genome every day in almost every type of species we study. Some Glioblastomas are caused by the random deletion of the NFKBIA portion of the glial cells. That's not something that existed in the gene, it randomly changed. Frankly, if it can change that much how can you not believe it could happen the other direction?

Let me answer that for you.The following is my explanation for the reason people reject evolution.

#1 You haven't studied enough Biology to know what a virus really is, much less witness the unmistakable pattern of evolution.

#2 You subconsciously don't care what the truth is. You want what your personal image of God gives you, and Evolution doesn't fit your pre-conceived notion. This is what happened between the Church and Galileo. (Surprisingly "@@", something everyone in this forum has still failed to address.)




Let me try this one more time a different way. Lets look at some sample codes.

Say these are possible cat genomes.

ACCTTCC
ACCTTCA

Every once in a while a cat gets a specific type of cancer, when we look at its DNA it looks like this.

CCCTTCAAA

Obviously, the cat was of the second type, and randomly had 2 A's added to the end of it's Genome and the first A changed to a C.

Now let's say the Genome for a Dog looks like this:

AAACATTCA

Now we see that to get here we needed to add 2 A's to the front and change a C to an A.

As you can see, given the fact that random mutations do happen, anything has the ultimate potential to mutate into anything else, given enough time.

So my question for you is how would it not happen?



Let's talk about viruses. Why did god create them? They are not alive, and do nothing but kill cells and copy themselves. So God made these?

 

[JHM]

Actually there ae a lot of differences betwee cats and dogs.
1) Cats have much faster reflexes than dogs. (Ever watch a cat fight its movements are a blur.)
2) Cats are far more agile than dogs. They pretty well always land on their feet when they fall.
3) Cats can jump vertically several times their length, I've seen them jump upwards as much as 6 feet.
4) Cats have retractable claws.
5) Cats can climb trees.

Take a heck of a long time for a dog to acquire all those features by "Random Mutation".

Genesis​

Creation​

At time's beginning, from his own Spirit; the Master crafted the scenes;
Then working with clay [sup]1[/sup], from the dust of the earth [sup]2[/sup]; the Potter fashioned the genes;
And in sequence ordained, to fulfill the design; the Sower planted the seeds;
Thus species by species, sprouted in turn; each meeting the next one's needs [sup]3[/sup].
Nourished by dew; they blossomed and grew; in harmonious balance to plan;
With last seed sown; in image their [sup]4[/sup] own; they signed [sup]5[/sup] their work with "Man".
Six days God spent; as his time went [sup]6[/sup]; ere resting a day from these cares;
But while he slept; an enemy crept; through his garden by night sowing tares [sup]7[/sup].​

1) See Isaiah 29 16 & Note k : Jerusalem Bible
Isaiah 29 16 :What perversity this is! Is the potter no better than the clay? Can something that was made say of its maker, "He did not make me"? Or a pot say of the potter,"He is a fool"? [sup]k[/sup]

Note k : The ancient story of creation, Ge 2 7, had already pictured Yahweh as a potter, shaping man from the earth. ...


See Isaiah 45 9 & Notes f & g : Jerusalem Bible
Isaiah 45 9 :Can it argue [sup]f[/sup] with the man who fashioned it, one vessel among earthen vessels? Does the clay say to its fashioner, [sup]g[/sup] "What are you making?", does the thing he shaped say, "You have no skill"?

Note f : "Can it argue" corr.: "Woe to him who argues" Hebr.
Note g : As Yahweh "fashioned" or "modelled" the body of Adam. Gn 2 7.


See Isaiah 64 7& 8 : Jerusalem Bible
Isaiah 64 7 & 8: And yet , Yahweh, you are our Father; we the clay, you the potter, we are all the work of your hand.

2) See Genesis 2 7 : Jerusalem Bible
Genesis 2 7 :Yahweh God fashioned man of dust from the soil. Then he breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus man became a living being.

See "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan re the "Viking Lander" missions to mars. Pp. 102 - 104.
Pp 102. "Each Viking lander was equipped with a sampler to acquire material from the surface and then slowly withdraw it into the innards of the spacecraft, transporting the particles on little hoppers like an electric train to five different experiments : one on the inorganic chemistry of the soil, another to look for organic molecules in the sand and dust, and three to look for microbial life."

Pp 103. "By criteria established before launch, two of the three Viking microbiology experiments seem to have yielded positive results. First, when Martian soil was mixed with a sterile organic soup from Earth, something in the soil chemically broke down the soup – almost as if there were respiring microbes metabolizing a food package from Earth. Second, when gases from Earth were introduced into the Martian soil sample,the gases became chemically combined with the soil – almost as if there were photosynthesizing microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian microbiology were achieved in seven separate samplings in two locales on Mars separated by 5,000kilometres."

Pp 103 contd."But the situation is complex, and the criteria of experimental success may have been inadequate. ... Perhaps there is some special inorganic, nonliving catalyst in the soil that is able to fix atmospheric gases and convert them into organic molecules."




Pp 103 - 4 "Recent experiments suggest that this may indeed be the case. In the great Martian dust storm of 1971, spectral features of the dust were obtained by the Mariner 9 infrared spectrometer. In analysing these spectra, O.B. Toon, J.B. Pollack and I found that certain features seem best accounted for by montmorillonite and other kinds of clay. Subsequent observations by the Viking lander support the identification of windblown clays on Mars. ... The clays have a complex active surface, given to absorbing and releasing gases and to catalysing chemical reactions."

Pp 104 In Addition, we know that montmorillonite clays are a potent catalyst for combining amino acids into longer chain molecules resembling proteins. The clays of the primitive Earth may have been the forge of life."

Note: Scientists have succeeded in cloning animals, by working with egg cells, but they have never succeeded in creating life from scratch. Given Mr Sagan’s observations about Montmorillonite Clay; and the Biblical story of the creation of Adam, I suspect that it would involve the use of said clay. (Which goes a long ways towards substantiating the story of Creation ; bearing in mind that the Bible doesn’t say how God created Adam, it merely says that he used "The dust of the Earth" in the process.)


Further Note : Given the vanity of man, were the story of the creation of Adam pure fable, I would expect that "Gold", or "Ivory" or some other precious ingredients would be involved in the recipe for creation. "The Dust of The Earth", when taken in the context of the foregoing scientific material suggests to me that the story of creation is based in fact. See also the accompanying article on "Intelligent Design" by Stephen C. Meyer, PHD, Director of the Discovery Institute’s Centre for Science and Culture.


The sequence of Creation given in Genesis 1 11-27, as pertains to life, is as follows :

1. Plant life.
2. Marine life
3. Birds
4. Land Animals
5. Man


Note : Generally speaking, insofar as it goes, the foregoing list is scientifically correct. It was only recently, however, that scientists came to realise that birds are descended from the dinosaurs; and did indeed precede land animals and man upon the Earth. The sixty four thousand dollar question is : "Who knew that when the Bible was written ?" Ten years ago scientists didn’t know that. Who if not God knew it 2-3 thousand years ago ?

 

[Cotjones]

Actually there ae a lot of differences betwee cats and dogs.
1) Cats have much faster reflexes than dogs. (Ever watch a cat fight its movements are a blur.)
2) Cats are far more agile than dogs. They pretty well always land on their feet when they fall.
3) Cats can jump vertically several times their length, I've seen them jump upwards as much as 6 feet.
4) Cats have retractable claws.
5) Cats can climb trees.

Take a heck of a long time for a dog to acquire all those features by "Random Mutation".

UGGGG WRONG WRONG WRONG! Cats didn't evolve into dogs or vica-versa. They both evolved from a common ancestor. An I never said they weren't that different. But an NBA'er Jumps much higher, has faster reflexes, and is much more agile than I am. The retractable claws are the only MAJOR functional difference out of that list. And they create the cats ability to climb trees.

Again you quote bible verses that seem haltingly obvious as symbolic language.

I don't know if you knew this but carl sagan died about 15 years ago, and they did find that no life was present in that sample.

However, now you seem to be agreeing with me that the language is symbolic. The clay may have indeed been the catalyst of combing sequences of amino acids into more complex chains. These made microbes which eventually evolved into everything alive today. Poetically, we could say "God created us from the clay." That doesn't mean he literally stuck a hunk of dirt on a pedestal, carved us out, and finished us in a kiln.

It boils down to this.

A. The language of creation is obviously symbolic, and NOT literal.
B. The theory of Evolution describes a literal account and has absolutely no conclusive evidence against it. And an Overwhelming amount of evidence for it.
C. ANY rejection of evolution theory due to a literal interpretation of creation constitutes a failure in the critical thinking process. (this failure may be induced persuasively, self-serving etc.) Point is, any conclusion that lands on creation in genesis being literal and proof against evolution has irreconcilable logical errors.

 

[JHM]

Basically wrong about the "Theory of Evolution" Fact is we, and every other form of life were Created by GOD. The manner in which that was done, may well have entailed scientific methodology, but to suggest that it happened by fluke is nonsense. If it happened by fluke, why is there no life whatsoever on Mars? There has been plenty of time for your "Random Events" to take place; but they haven't have they ? Wake Up !!

And by the way NBAers dont't jump so high that their feet are six feet off the ground. Further I once read a book which described the pursuit of a "Mountain Lion" which in order to escape, performed an upwards jump that was subsequently measured and found to be 83 feet verticle.

 

[Cotjones]

Basically wrong about the "Theory of Evolution" Fact is we, and every other form of life were Created by GOD. The manner in which that was done, may well have entailed scientific methodology, but to suggest that it happened by fluke is nonsense. If it happened by fluke, why is there no life whatsoever on Mars? There has been plenty of time for your "Random Events" to take place; but they haven't have they ? Wake Up !!

And by the way NBAers dont't jump so high that their feet ate six feet off the ground. Further I once read a book which described the pursuit of a "Mountain Lion" which in order to escape, performed an upwards jump that was subsequently measured and found to be 83 feet verticle.

Again you don't understand the very argument you are fighting against.
Does the fact that life emerged by chance mean that it should happen (BY CHANCE) in our neighbor planet? Absolutely not.

A more important question, one that I think is at the heart of the argument in its importance is this... Is saying something happens by chance any different than saying that God was responsible?

This issue is the problem with most Christians today. We expect God to act Miraculously in our lives every day. The Fact is, he doesn't. The fact is: this yearning for the miraculous signifies selfish motives in Christianity. God acts providentially. We as human's,call the way God acts "chance." Think hard about this. You are told God always answers prayer, but he sometimes answers No. Is this any different than saying: "flipping a coin always gives a result, but sometimes its tails"?

Because God was the ultimate causation. All chance events are the result of God's act (speaking literally, the big bang). You should first try to wrap your head around that. And then you'll realize that every time you say a prayer you are asking God to change his plans if they aren't compatible with yours. When it comes down to it, God and "chance" are the exact same thing. God doesn't interfere with causation, because it came from him. The only reason he ever did in Biblical history was strictly to prove he was himself so that man could believe.

It's written all over the Bible that when you see natural law at work you see God's Word. Think about this, why does probability work? It's because God created a Universe where it would. The fundamental forces of the Universe are God acting. Not when you happen to get a check in the mail you weren't expecting one month when you were late on a Bill. (well technically that's Him too, but lets just say you'd have got that check whether you needed it or not.)

Look at these verses:
Job 36:27 "He draws up drops of water which distill as rain to the streams; the clouds pour down their moisture and abundant showers fall on mankind."

Jeremiah 10:13 "When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar; he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. he sends lightning with the rain and brings the wind from his storehouses."

The Bible gives us a symbolic interpretation of these events and science uncovers the true causality.

Same with life. The Bible gives us the symbolic interpretation of the phenomenon, and science shows us the true causality, (or mechanism causing the event.)

Does that mean that God wasn't responsible? No. Does that make us stupid if we reject the true causality because we still want to believe the symbolic is literal? Yes, frankly.

 

[JHM]

Hopeless case, you are.

 

[Cotjones]

Hopeless case, you are.

I could say that same about you.

The difference is that I have unequivocal empirical evidence behind my views.

You have your own interpretation of a book thousands of years old and conjecture that contradicts empirical evidence and a paper that says you are good at reading.

The funny thing is that I basically asked you to exploit every possible gap in evolutionary theory I could think of and you were not able to.

I am confused though, why do you not also reject chemistry, boiling point constants, vapor pressure, etc.? The BIBLE clearly says that GOD is responsible for rain.

Look at these verses:

Jeremiah 10:13 "When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar; he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. he sends lightning with the rain and brings the wind from his storehouses."

Job 36:
26 How great is God—beyond our understanding!
The number of his years is past finding out.
27 “He draws up the drops of water,
which distill as rain to the streams[c];
28 the clouds pour down their moisture
and abundant showers fall on mankind.
29 Who can understand how he spreads out the clouds,
how he thunders from his pavilion?
30 See how he scatters his lightning about him,
bathing the depths of the sea.
31 This is the way he governs[d] the nations
and provides food in abundance.
32 He fills his hands with lightning
and commands it to strike its mark.
33 His thunder announces the coming storm;
even the cattle make known its approach.[e]

The fundamentalist position you take is analogous to rejecting the chemistry that makes meteorology possible because it contradicts these verses.

My question to you is do you think weather would've been described this way if the Bible were written today? I encourage you to think back to the stories of Benjamin Franklin and note that even until the 16th century, a great deal of people believed that lighting was divine in origin.

The Bible simply CAN NOT serve as a scientific explanation of phenomenon relative to the thousands of years of knowledge obtained since then. When you treat it like it should, you fall for false doctrines. The point of Job wasn't to explain cause of rain. It was to draw attention to the fact that the way this universe works is the result of God.

So again, the reason that a coin flip gets half heads and half tails is God. The reason you got tails both (is) and (is not) God's intervention.
It (IS) in that the only reason probability works is because of the laws of the universe (Origin: God)
It (IS NOT) in that God isn't manually affecting the outcome of the coin for our benefit.

Quite simply, He made the rules for the universe and the universe simply acts within those rules. Evolution is simply an explanation of the Universe acting within those rules.

You are trying to be in God's shoes. You are trying to make sense of the world from His perspective, saying that all living things were "designed." In reality that perspective has no functional purpose because you can't know what God's plan was until after the fact. Men are meant to live from Man's perspective. The events in our lives can only be made sense in terms of cause and effect. While we understand that the underlying cause of everything is God, we don't reject the logic from the perspective of Man. To do that would be to say that when you add Gasoline and fire, the fact that you get a boom is the result of God.(In one sense true, but useless from Man's perspective at describing the truth relevant to man's perspective.) God's greatest "gift" was for us to have our own perspective. And as long as you continue to reject that, you'll always be lost and confused.

I challenge you to audit a college Biodiversity class. (usually numbered BIO-202.) If you have a problem with the professor saying the word "evolution" just block it out. What I want you to do is study the phylogeny of all animals at a college course intensity. Then come back here and tell me your observations don't lead to the conclusion that organisms share common ancestry.

 

[iLogos]

Reminds me of the 70's and 80's Chariots of Gods and Hal Lindsey, and various was God an astronaut stories.

Granted, if we were visited in ancient times they might have seen it as gods as described.

But space travel has more serious problems then any one's doubts here.

 

[JHM]

What I want you to do is study the phylogeny of all animals at a college course intensity. Then come back here and tell me your observations don't lead to the conclusion that organisms share common ancestry.

They DO share common ancestry, they were ALL created by GOD. And as you should be quite well aware, those who are "Designing" things pretty well always use the same basic items over and over to create new things.

Do you think that an electronic engineer designing a NEW television set isn't going to use "Transistors" ?

 

[Cotjones]

They DO share common ancestry, they were ALL created by GOD. And as you should be quite well aware, those who are "Designing" things pretty well always use the same basic items over and over to create new things.

Do you think that an electronic engineer designing a NEW television set isn't going to use "Transistors" ?

That's a nice mediocre counter-argument and all, but my request isn't so that you see the similarities in all the species, its so that you see the differences and when those differences occur in the timeline of fossil evidence.

Are you telling me that it is coincidence that the following is the general timeline of dated fossils? :

Oldest Primate fossils: 65mya (million years ago.)
Oldest placental Mammals: 125mya
Oldest Mammals (marsupials): 160mya
Oldest Synapsids (mammal like reptiles): ~299mya
Oldest Reptiles: 315mya
Oldest Amphibians: 370mya
Oldest Fish fossils: 400-500 mya

Funny that these estimated dates fit almost perfectly the timeline expected if these creatures evolved their traits.

Fact is, I can tell you that 1 +1 = 2, because 1 is half of 2. And you can argue back that actually 1+1= 1 and god makes it equal 2. I can't counter that argument, does that make you right? All wisdom lies on a delicate balance of knowledge and faith. Unfortunately the church of today has trapped many into believing that all they need is faith.

Please read "Finding Darwin's God" by Ken Miller.

 

[JHM]

Oh yeah for sure, (Nonsense), "long periods of stasis with very little change" then "mass dieoffs", then "rapid bursts of devil-ution to fill the available niches" Right, - and now you are trying to tell me there is a rational timeline associated with all this. - (Utter nonsense ! !) The real timeline that ought be associated with "Evolution" is that found on Mars.

It all comes down to the various stages of creation. Like I said before :

Note : If you were a "Planetary Engineer" faced with turning a lifeless rockball like the moon into an inhabitable planet, how would you go about it ?

I suspect that first you would introduce some kind(s) of bacteria with a view to generating an atmosphere. Having done that, it would be pointless to wait, (and watch paint dry), instead you would leave and go elsewhere to do other things, so as to leave the bacteria time to fulfil their purpose. Because you are travelling very fast in your spaceship the time experienced by the bacteria is not the same as the time experienced by you. (See note c) When you return the following day, (your time), millions of years have passed for the bacteria, and as a result you not only have your atmosphere ; you also have a whole lot of bacteria that have served their purpose. So you kill them off, thereby creating a supply of humus, then introduce plant life prior to leaving again.


Be it Noted that by proceeding in this manner you are duplicating the revised version of what scientists describe as "Evolution".

Six Days​

All throughout creation, The Lord came and went; descending to earth, each morning at dawn;
Pruning those branches, whose purpose was spent; and sowing new seeds, before moving on;
For many mansions had vineyards, in his Kingdom above; and these he tended with care;
But his garden on earth, he lavished with love; for his bride and children lived there.
There must have been need; of very great speed; o'er the distance he had to fly;
For he travelled so fast; millennia went past; in less than the blink of an eye;
So some had their day; while he was away; overseeing afar through the night;
Returning ere long; and finding the strong; construing their might as right.​

 

[FreeinChrist]

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