the illusion of Evolution

[lifepsyop]

Evolution produces nothing de novo; it always modifies something already there. Hence, the prediction of biologists that the articular bone became reduced and displaced to the (nearby) middle ear is confirmed by the discovery of many transitional forms in the fossil record, by homeobox genes, and by embryology, which shows the reptilian form in early mammalian development, and other evidence.

You are just repeating basic orthodox beliefs, as usual. None of this is very compelling unless you’ve first assumed evolution to be true. The more ingrained that assumption, the less one becomes aware of, or able to question the assumption, and the more one begins hallucinating all observation as evidence for it.

For example, the many variations in the basic tetrapodal limb anatomy in different types of animals. It’s the same pattern argument as the reptile-mammal example you keep touting. Because the same basic tetrapod limb anatomy is organized in diverse ways, you assume evolution. Similar bones utilized in different ways in the skulls of different animals… must be evolution.

And importantly, in the case of more radical body-plan differences that cannot be easily fit into a story of reptiles and mammals, the solution is always to imagine a deeper and deeper imaginary point of common ancestry. Deep imaginary time of millions and billions of years solves everything.

For example, if we had ‘six-legged mammals’ hopping around today, then for starters, they wouldn’t be called ‘mammals’ at all, but descendants of a lineage separate from vertebrates. This sounds ridiculous, but is actually how evolutionists arrange the most basal imaginary nodes of the tree of life. The more fundamentally unique the body-plan, the more that the solution must be pushed into imaginary deep-time where such distinct body plans are imagined to have branched off from an imaginary common ancestor. The process of generating the evolution story is almost entirely ad-hoc.

If the animal kingdom were radically different than real-life today, evolutionists would have a radically different story for it, and a different phyolgeny. Perhaps today, instead of a committed orthodox Darwinian, you would be a Saltationist or a promoter of another story of evolution: Alternatives to Darwinian evolution - Wikipedia

And today you would be sharing different “evidence” for that story of evolution, assuming it to be true as you assume now. Either way, you would be incapable of questioning those assumptions, as you are now. This is because Evolution is not a science to be examined, but a fundamental metaphysical philosophy dictating what the nature of reality is.

When you are trying to arrange all of earth history into a naturalistic, progressive chain of being, there really is no limit but one’s imagination.

 

[The Barbarian]

You are just repeating basic orthodox beliefs, as usual.

Well, I am an orthodox Christian. So I do follow Christian orthodoxy. However, as you learned, "belief" is not part of science. We need evidence, not belief.

None of this is very compelling unless you’ve first assumed evolution to be true.

Since Darwin, Huxley, and the others assumed species were immutable at the start, your assumption is demonstrably false. Sorry.

For example, the many variations in the basic tetrapodal limb anatomy in different types of animals. It’s the same pattern argument as the reptile-mammal example you keep touting.

Yep. Homology. Hence we know common descent of humans and horses at some point, because horse forelegs and human arms are homologous structurally, genetically and developmentally. Likewise, certain reptile jawbones are homologous with mammalian middle ear bones, structurally, genetically, and developmentally. And in both cases, there are transitional fossils showing the common structure of a distant ancestor.

Homology shows common descent, even if the structures look and function differently in different animals.

And importantly, in the case of more radical body-plan differences that cannot be easily fit into a story of reptiles and mammals, the solution is always to imagine a deeper and deeper imaginary point of common ancestry.

It comes down to evidence. As you have learned, there is overwhelming evidence for common descent from many different sources, which even honest creationists have admitted. Many YE creationists organizations are now admitting the fact of common descent to various levels of taxa. But what's even more compelling, is we never see homologies where the theory says there shouldn't be any. No insects with bones, no feathered mammals. Like your example below where you make an important admission:

For example, if we had ‘six-legged mammals’ hopping around today, then for starters, they wouldn’t be called ‘mammals’ at all, but descendants of a lineage separate from vertebrates.

Right. Because (as Darwin pointed out) evolution of a complex structure requires that it be at least not harmful to the organism in any stage of its evolution. It would be great to have two additional arms, but natural selection won't allow that to evolve, as Darwin pointed out. You've made an important point for me.

If the animal kingdom were radically different than real-life today, evolutionists would have a radically different story for it, and a different phyolgeny.

Yeah, if things had evolved differently, they would look different today. And biology would recognize that. Science works with evidence, not belief.

Perhaps today, instead of a committed orthodox Darwinian, you would be a Saltationist or a promoter of another story of evolution:

If, for example, acquired traits were inherited, scientists would explain it by a sort of Lamarckism. And if pigs could fly, farmers would have to put a cover over their pens. Doesn't seem like a very deep issue to me.

And today you would be sharing different “evidence” for that story of evolution, assuming it to be true as you assume now.

Because your beliefs are purely based on man-made doctrines, evidence seems unimportant to you. But surely you realize that if (for example) acquired traits were heritable, the evidence would be different than it is. Scientists frequently challenge theories because that is the nature of science. But creationists are incapable of questioning their assumptions, as you are now.

This is because Evolution is science and therefore frequently examined, but YE creationism is a fundamental metaphysical philosophy dictating what the nature of reality is. We can, as scientists, debate the role of neutral mutations in evolution, or the degree to which epigenetics affects descent, and so on, but as a YE creationist, you are locked into an ideological straitjacket from which you cannot escape.

For us, the theory must conform to the facts. For you, the facts have to be trimmed to fit your man-made doctrines.

 

[The Barbarian]

When you are trying to arrange all of earth history into a naturalistic, progressive chain of being, there really is no limit but one’s imagination.

But as Darwin pointed out, evolution is often not progressive. And since Earth is a natural object, involved with naturalistic processes, it's history by the very nature of its creation is naturalistic.

YE creationists, having rejected the nature of God's creation, have no limits on their imaginative stories.

 

[stevevw]

Why would you want to love a satanic teaching? The devil laughs as Christians again and again prove to have no faith in scripture.

Revelation 18:4
Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “’Come out of her, my people,’ so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues;

Didn't the Church use to say that the ideas of Nicolaus Copernicus and the like were evil satanic teachings as well.

 

[coffee4u]

Didn't the Church use to say that the ideas of Nicolaus Copernicus and the like were evil satanic teachings as well.

I had to look up this Nicolaus Copernicus. I don't follow anything to do with the Catholic church. The only book I hold as Gods word is the Bible. Words of men are helpful at best heretical at worst and none are to be taken as gospel.

 

[Ted Kaz]

It may be surprising to learn that the apostle Paul was contending with evolutionists two thousand years ago. The Epicureans show up in the city of Athens, in the book of Acts chapter 17. Epicureanism is one of many ancient models of the naturalistic or evolutionary metaphysics and cosmology. They believed that all objects in the universe were essentially cobbled together by the innate properties and propensities of matter. The same fundamental materialistic creation story held by modern evolutionists today. There is nothing new under the sun.


Much has been said about the blinders or tunnel vision of evolutionists. No matter what phenomena they observe, they cannot help but see a mystical chain of materialistic origin. The origin of your own human hand must trace back to the gaseous clouds of elements dissolving and coalescing in the infant universe many eons ago. They cannot see reality any other way.


When observations are made, evolutionists cannot help but force them into this model of reality.


A popular atheist argument is that one’s religion depends upon the culture in which they were raised. If you grew up in a Christian society then you’re a Christian, if it is a Muslim society, then you become a Muslim, etc.


(For now let’s set aside the awkward fact that this argument is self-defeating for the atheist, as the vast majority of them were indoctrinated into a materialistic / evolutionary worldview through public schools.)


If the conditions of your upbringing were different, so would be your beliefs.


In a similar way, if the conditions found on earth were different, we’d have a different model of evolution.


If mammalian fossils were strewn about Devonian rock layers, we’d have a modern theory of evolution that mammalian body plans emerged in early earth history.

If fossil human bones were routinely found alongside dinosaur remains, then we’d have a theory that says humans and dinosaurs evolved and coexisted alongside each other.


If the conditions were different, we’d have a different Evolution theory. If the pioneering paleontologists of earlier centuries had discovered a vastly different pattern of animal fossils throughout the “geologic column” than what we find today… those conditions would simply be translated into a story of Evolution that reflects them. We’d be walking through modern museums with giant murals of mammals frolicking throughout an earlier period of earth. It would just be the way it is.


This is the illusion of Evolution.


Now evolutionists will claim there are all sorts of rigorous independent lines of evidence that confirm their materialistic creation story. If you look close enough, you will find that such confirmations do not exist. “Molecular clocks” were once held up as powerful evidence that confirmed the appearances and divergences of different animal types throughout evolutionary history. Evolutionists themselves now quietly admit that no such discernible molecular clocks exist.

Even when animal types appear vastly out of order with the ancestor-descendant relationships they’re supposed to have with each other, evolutionists will simply imagine that a “ghost lineage” must have existed for which there is no actual fossil evidence for. That is one of the dirty little secrets of Evolution… that fossils don’t even have to be in the same order as the presented story of how things evolved.


The independent lines of evidence for Evolution do not exist. There is only the story.


Just as an atheist will argue that your chosen religion will conform to your community, so the ancient tradition of evolutionary belief conformed to the community of discovered fossils. If the fossils were different, the story would be different.


The same logic extends to all things in our universe, not just earth history. If other planets looked different, we’d have a different story of how they evolved.


This is the tragic spell that the modern world has fallen under, ironically dubbed The Enlightenment which was actually a return to pagan religion and cosmology. Ancient Epicureanism in modern packaging.


The truth is that the history of this world is nothing like what the evolutionists believe now, or what they believed two thousand years ago on the streets of Athens. The apostle Paul revealed us the truth. Christ crucified. The God of this world who walked among us, and died for us on the cross, and walked out of the empty tomb resurrected. God has been working in our world since its beginning. Marvelous works. Jesus talked all about it.


For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” - John 5:46-47

There is no such thing as the illusion of Evolution. Evolution is real and it can be touched and observed with your own hands and eyes (to an extent) or through the fossil record. I am sorry but if you refute evolution, then you are delusional.

Here's the thing though, I totally believe in evolution and yet I do not find that to be in anyway in conflict with my religion. God can choose to create in whichever way he wants, evolution included. What's the big deal with that?

 

[stevevw]

I had to look up this Nicolaus Copernicus. I don't follow anything to do with the Catholic church. The only book I hold as Gods word is the Bible. Words of men are helpful at best heretical at worst and none are to be taken as gospel.

Copernicus along with Galileo Galilei's discovery that the earth revolved around the sun (heliocentric) rather than the belief the Catholic church held where the sun revolved around the earth (geocentric model).

As the Bible said the earth was at the centre of the universe the Catholic church thought that Copernicus and Galileo's were heritics. More so Galileo who was persecuted. The discover was regarded as one of the greatest and known as the Copernican Revolution and brought in a paradigm shift in how we viewed the cosmology.

 

[The Barbarian]

As people of the world, we love Evolution. Even professing believers love Evolution, because it pushes God's judgment into the background, into the realm of symbolism or fantasy.

That's like saying physicists "love gravity." It's a fact, like evolution. But I don't think anyone "loves" it.
And given that it's part of God's creation, I don't question His judgement.

 

[The Barbarian]

God can choose to create in whichever way he wants, evolution included.

Some people want to put some conditions on His creation; they don't want evolution to be part of it.

 

[lifepsyop]

That's like saying physicists "love gravity." It's a fact, like evolution. But I don't think anyone "loves" it.
And given that it's part of God's creation, I don't question His judgement.

The comparison is not serious. There are no eschatological implications associated with the concept of gravity, whereas the belief in an Evolutionary history of earth renders God's past judgments upon the earth as merely allegorical or myth. (I don't think you'll find many evolutionists who believe that humanity was repopulated by only eight people just a few thousand years ago.)

 

[lifepsyop]

That's like saying physicists "love gravity." It's a fact, like evolution. But I don't think anyone "loves" it.
And given that it's part of God's creation, I don't question His judgement.

The comparison is not serious. There are no eschatological implications associated with the concept of gravity, whereas the belief in an Evolutionary history of earth renders God's past judgments upon the earth as merely allegorical or myth. (I don't think you'll find many evolutionists who believe that humanity was repopulated by only eight people just a few thousand years ago.)

 

[The Barbarian]

That's like saying physicists "love gravity." It's a fact, like evolution. But I don't think anyone "loves" it.
And given that it's part of God's creation, I don't question His judgement.

The comparison is not serious.

Absolutely is. We directly observe both gravity and evolution occurring. There are theories that explain each of them. Actually, evolutionary theory is stonger than gravitational theory; we know why evolution works, but we still aren't quite sure why gravity works.

There are no eschatological implications associated with the concept of gravity

Reality is not obligated to accommodate your religious beliefs. Sorry about that.

whereas the belief in an Evolutionary history of earth renders God's past judgments upon the earth as merely allegorical or myth.

Only if you assume the modern revision of YE creationism to His word. Again, reality is not obligated by your new doctrines.

(I don't think you'll find many evolutionists who believe that humanity was repopulated by only eight people just a few thousand years ago.)

Most Christian theologians don't either. Again, I realize that your religious beliefs put you at odds with the evidence and historical Christian doctrines. I'm not unsympathetic, but it is what it is.

Sorry.

 

[sfs]

(I don't think you'll find many evolutionists who believe that humanity was repopulated by only eight people just a few thousand years ago.)

You won't find many Christian archeologists, paleontologists, geologists, anthropologists, geneticists, botanists, or zoologists who believe that the Earth was repopulated by 8 people and an arkful of animals just a few thousand years ago.

 

[lifepsyop]

You won't find many Christian archeologists, paleontologists, geologists, anthropologists, geneticists, botanists, or zoologists who believe that the Earth was repopulated by 8 people and an arkful of animals just a few thousand years ago.

And most of them will also deny the Biblical accounts of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Exodus. Even though those accounts are irrelevant to Evolution theory. These are professing Christians who really do not like the idea of God executing judgment upon the earth, and they find some kind of solace in a uniformitarian model of earth and human history.

Even with the overwhelming evidence of the destruction at Sodom that has been recently published, it's not going to make these Christians reevaluate their overarching philosophy of interpreting history (and actually entertain the possibility that the Old Testament could be true). Instead, they will just argue that the Biblical authors happened to witness a natural disaster and mythologized it as divine wrath from God.

Because it's not really about following the evidence, but instead maintaining a certain philosophy of uniformity of earth history. If God is not actually judging the earth, then us humans are in a lot more authority here to live the way we want to. That's why uniformitarianism is so attractive to professing Christians and Atheists alike.

 

[sfs]

And most of them will also deny the Biblical accounts of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Exodus.

Sodom and Gomorrah and the Exodus do not fall within the professional scope of Christian geneticists, zoologists, geologists, paleontologists, anthropologists, and botanists. They also have nothing to do with my post, this thread, or this forum. If you wish to discuss those subjects, I suggest you start another thread in some more appropriate forum.

 

[The Barbarian]

And most of them will also deny the Biblical accounts of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Exodus.

Never took a poll. But I doubt it.

If God is not actually judging the earth, then us humans are in a lot more authority here to live the way we want to. That's why uniformitarianism is so attractive to professing Christians and Atheists alike.

I suspect that you don't know what "uniformitarianism" means. What do you think it means? I don't have to worry about God judging the Earth. He made it, after all, and judged it to be very good. My concern is how God will judge me and my loved ones.

That should be your concern, too.

 

[lifepsyop]

But surely you realize that if (for example) acquired traits were heritable, the evidence would be different than it is. Scientists frequently challenge theories because that is the nature of science.

The data could be virtually anything and you would still be trying to force it into a model of an evolutionary, uniformitarian universe. That is the whole point of 'methodological naturalism' as an applied philosophy to science. You will keep arriving at the same essential conclusion because you cannot interpret reality any other way. "the evidence would be different".... and the conclusion would still be Evolution. Always Evolution. Only Evolution. The illusion is in force when you keep believing the data is leading you to that conclusion, when the conclusion was decided on beforehand.

The example I recall often is how the enlightenment philosophers of the 18th century were already enthralled by the idea of an evolutionary story of the universe and earth history before the advent of a 'scientific theory' for it. The constant pretending that it is all disinterested objective scientific research leading to more and more supposed confirmation of this naturalistic model of history is really nonsense.

 

[The Barbarian]

The data could be virtually anything and you would still be trying to force it into a model of an evolutionary, uniformitarian universe.

You have it backwards. Science is what it is, because God created the universe as it is. Scientists aren't gods, and you're trying to make them so. We just observe what we have and learn from it.

That is the whole point of 'methodological naturalism' as an applied philosophy to science.

You're completely misunderstanding what it is. It's just a method, no different in principal than plumbing. We look at things, try to figure out why they are as they are, and then go out and test our ideas to see if they are correct. That's it. No assumptions, no philosophy of gods or no gods. In fact, methodolgical naturalism specifically excludes any way to comment on the supernatural or even if it exists. Science and plumbing can't find God. But scientists and plumbers can. If this puzzles you, it's a good first step to enlightenment.

You will keep arriving at the same essential conclusion because you cannot interpret reality any other way. "the evidence would be different".... and the conclusion would still be Evolution.

Nope. For example (from Darwin) if we could find a feature of some organism that was for the exclusive benefit of a different sort of organism, there goes natural selection. You've obviously not given this very much thought. Your illusion is in force when you keep believing your assumptions are leading you to a comprehension of science, when you had decided the conclusion beforehand.

The constant pretending that it is all disinterested objective scientific research leading to more and more supposed confirmation of this naturalistic model of history is really nonsense.

Well, that's a testable belief...

In fact, more Americans accept evolution than even a few decades ago. The sad thing is, many people being taught the story that creationism is an essential part of Christian belief, are abandoning Christianity when they realize that creationism cannot be true. YE creationism will have much to account for at Judgement.

 

[Trusting in Him]

There is no such thing as the illusion of Evolution. Evolution is real and it can be touched and observed with your own hands and eyes (to an extent) or through the fossil record. I am sorry but if you refute evolution, then you are delusional.

Here's the thing though, I totally believe in evolution and yet I do not find that to be in anyway in conflict with my religion. God can choose to create in whichever way he wants, evolution included. What's the big deal with that?

I'm not refuting anything! I choose to receive what is written in the bible and not to add anything else to that. Ancient jewish teaching is that when you add anything, you are also taking somthing away and when you take something away, that it the same as adding something else. I not only don't want to go beyond what God's word has said, but I think about what I have read and retained in my memory and even adding something else, or taking something away from that in my own memory is altering the word of God and I don't want to do that! I guess that there will be many who don't agree with my, but I want to keep my walk with the Lord on the basis of child like faith!

 

[coffee4u]

There is no such thing as the illusion of Evolution. Evolution is real and it can be touched and observed with your own hands and eyes (to an extent) or through the fossil record. I am sorry but if you refute evolution, then you are delusional.

Here's the thing though, I totally believe in evolution and yet I do not find that to be in anyway in conflict with my religion. God can choose to create in whichever way he wants, evolution included. What's the big deal with that?

The big deal is no death before sin.

Or do you believe that for millions of years while evolution took place that there was no death?

The very reason that death is the last enemy to be placed under Christ's feet after the second coming, and will be done away with in the lake of fire is because death is an enemy that came in. It was a stranger, an interloper and enemy. God did not finish creating and look out at millions of years of bones and blood and rotting flesh and call it "very good", God didn't use death to achieve his goals. When God finished his creative work there was no death.

Death only came into being due to man's sin.