To all athiests out there: bring it on

Originally posted by Outspoken
Because of context, its fiction. Pete, we went through this already keep up

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And the only reason I know it's fiction is because of experience independent of the text itself. Yet, for some reason, I'm not allowed to do the same with the Bible, but instead supposed to treat it as 100% literal. And you can't seem to explain why.

I'd wager, from where I'm sitting, that you either don't know how to explain it, or you just don't know. Either way, that doesn't do a non-believer like me any good, does it?

Originally posted by Smilin IMO, seekin scientific answers from any theology is a huge mistake. 

  Smilin, I'm truly puzzled here. You put forth a hypothesis: "Evolution, in fact, is the only explanation for many Biblical stories, such as: 

1. All present animals on our planet originating from the animals carried on the ark.  (Do the math of the dimensions for the ark and you'll see there is NO WAY that all current species could have fit into such a boat."

What I posted was supporting evidence from none other than those who nominally hold the opposite viewpoint: evolution doesn't happen.  Even they find evolution the only way to explain the diversity of animals after the Ark. So yes, it appears that evolution is the only explanation possible.

And now you complain about that support?

On the other hand, I look to my faith and scriptural doctrine for matters concerning spirituality, morals, code of conduct, and to seek a closure relationship with God. 

Good for you. You've apparently got a healthy separation of your beliefs from science.

 I'm not a creationist....because I didn't major in Creationism, I don't think it's currently accepted as a science, if it's taught at any college, and if you can indeed major in it.  (however I do personally believe in a Creator)

I never said you were a creationist. I simply said that you got support for your hypothesis from creationists.

I'm not an evolutionist.... I didn't major in Evolution.  Evolution is a science, but I'm not sure if you can major in it. 

Yes, you can major in it.  Several colleges have majors in evolution.

yes, It is my assertion that only Evolutionary Science offers any credibility to the biblical account of Noah's ark.

That's too bad. Because your assertion is contradicted by the data.  It was the data of geographical distribution of species that provided one of the conclusive falsifications to Noah's Ark.  See Davis A Young's The Biblical Flood for an extensive review of the literature on the subject.

Originally posted by Smilin
If I did indeed take the Bible 100% literally, how would it convince me Evolution is false?

This argument always stumps me...

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Then you should go to the ICR and AiG websites and read their FAQs.    Or go back to Whitcomb and Morris' The Genesis Flood and read their arguments.

The key is in Genesis 1 and Exodus 20:11  If the earth was created in 6 -24 hour days, then there was no time for the transformation of species by evolution. Also, in Genesis 1 it states that organisms were made "after its kind" and instantaneously.  That too does not allow transformation of one species to another. Finally, the creation story in Genesis 2 has (and Genesis 1) specifically has humans manufactured in their present form.  No possibility of connection to non-human evolutionary ancestors.

BTW, both ICR nor AiG claim to be science sites.  However, you will find on them refutations of theistic evolution, and those refutations are based upon a literal intepretation of the Bible.

Now, obviously I don't agree with a literal interpretation of the Bible nor that creationism is correct.  However, one aspect of a discussion is that you must present each position accurately according to what they state that position is.  After you accurately state the position, then you can show how the position is in error.

Originally posted by Outspoken
"For instance, Genesis 1 and 2 are two very different creation stories that contradict each other on major points. "

You've got to be joking.

"Not exactly a way to write literal history -- basing literal history on numerology."

They are expansions of one another. I think you're just not reading them???

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Genesis 1 is based on numerology. In Genesis 1 the order of creation is plants, sun, stars, moon, water and air animals, land animals, and then people, plural, men and women together.

In Genesis 2 the order is: sun, moon, stars, plants, man alone, animals and birds (no mention of water creatures), and then woman alone.  In Genesis 1 God creates everything by speaking "let us make ..." while in Genesis 2 Adam is formed from dust and Eve from Adam's rib.  In Genesis 1 creation of the heavens and earth take 6 days.  In Genesis 2:4 it is one day.

Yes, many Biblical literalists try to make  Genesis 2 a supplementary text to Genesis 1, but such a view is refuted upon examination.

Originally posted by Outspoken
"And this is the fundamental reason evolutionary theory hasn't been toppled."

No, I think its actually because anyone who does poke a hole into it is ostrosized (sp) from the science relam, its peer pressure at its finest. I've actually seen it in action.

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Within the scientific community?

When Darwin first published Origin, there was quite a bit of opposition within the scientific community.  In fact, the theological community accepted evolution before the scientific community fully did.

"When my Father [Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury] announced and defended his acceptance of evolution in his Brough Lectures in 1884 it provoked no serious amount of criticism ... The particular battle over evolution was already won by 1884."  F.A. Iremonger, William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, His Life and Letters, Oxford Univ. Press, 1948, pg. 491. 

In fact, evolution got Christianity off a couple of very bad theological hooks.  It wasn't until the Modern Synthesis that everything fell into place for evolution in the scientific community.

No one can force a scientist to accept a theory.  The only thing that can "force" acceptance is the data. And the data  overwhelmingly falsifies creationism and supports evolution.  Yet people still test parts of evolutionary theory and successfully challenge some of the mechanisms of evolution.  However, no one has come up with the data to challenge common ancestry or natural selection.  If you've got such data, please post it and we can discuss it.

Originally posted by Outspoken "I'll trust real-world evidence over a presumed creation event in some religious text any day of the week."

then don't reply to me, I'm speaking from a christian perspective. I don't ask you do talk about the validity of the Koran, so don't expect me to speak from something other the my choosen perspective..that's silly.

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But Christianity doesn't have a perception just from the Bible. Christianity has always had the "two books" perception. That is, God made two books for humans: one was the Bible and the other was Creation.  "Duplex cognito" it is called in Latin.  All major Christian theologians from at least Augustine of Hippo on down have held to this view, including Luther and Calvin.

The two books of God, according to Christians, can't contradict.  Therefore, if the evidence from Creation appears to contradict the Bible, then it is the interpretation of the Bible that is at fault.  What Biblical literalists do is place their interpretation above God.

Originally posted by Outspoken
"After all, it's not like the "creationist" scientists of the day just decided to flip a coin to see if they'd believe the new theory."

nope, gave the nonchristians something to latch onto, to fight back with. Now its just rooted in so deep people don't want to let it go...classic pyradyme problem.

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That's the creationist myth. The historical reality is very different.  The fact is that creationism was the accepted scientific theory of the day.  It is also true that most scientists in England were not only Christians but ministers, because at the time there were very few paying jobs as a scientist. I can find very few atheist scientists at the time. Lyell was a deist.  Shoot, even Darwin was a believing Christian at the time he wrote Origin, and he never became an atheist.

So, if paradigms have such power, evolution should never have replaced creationism in the first place.  So, the explanation that evolution was accepted for the sake of nonChristians simply doesn't stand up under investigation.

Now, if scientists were open-minded enough to accept evolution rather than creationism in the first place, then they are open-minded enough now to accept creationism.  Sorry, Outspoken, but you can't have it both ways.  If scientists were closed minded they never would have given up creationism to begin with. If they are open-minded then they would go back to creationism IF the data said so.  But the data does not say so. The data at the time (which is still around) falsified creationism.

God simply did not create by a literal interpretation of Genesis.

Originally posted by Live4Jesus There appears to be numerous and mounting SCIENTIFIC evidence against Darwin's theories of evolution.

Oh, good! I get to talk about science!

For instance scientists would like very much to know where do a certain bacteria, known as 'flagellum' (hope I spelled that right) fit in? Fact is, they don't. Amazing little things, flagellum, with little outboard motors attached...

  The bacteria are not called flagellum, but the "outboard motors" are called flagellum. And it's not just bacteria.  Human sperm have a flagellum.  This comes from Behe's Darwin's Black Box and Behe claims that flagellum are "irreducibly complex" and can't possibly have come about through natural selection.  Remember that claim:  can not possibly.  If it is possible for natural selection to design a flagellum, then Behe's claim is false.  As it happens: 1) flagellum aren't actually irreducibly complex and 2) it is possible for Darwinian selection to make them.  See Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth Miller for the details.

In China, scientists digging in fossil beds have uncovered an astounding array of cambrian fossilized matter. After years of research, they are saying Darwin had it backwards, that there were more lifeforms than there are now, as they put it, Darwin's tree of life should be turned upside down.

What is being claimed is that there were more phyla  then than now. That the number of phyla has been trimmed, not the number of species.  This is an artifact of the classification scheme.  Remember, higher taxa -- from genera to phyla -- are simply groupings of species.  If the species does not have any relatives, then it is placed in its own phyla.  Most of the phyla of the Cambrian have less than 10 species.  So, add up all the species  then and now and we still have more species.  But because the species today came from common ancestors -- phyla -- there are fewer phyla as the original species of the Cambrian became extinct without descendents.

There is very little fossilized matter available prior to the cambrain age, that's why it's called the Cambrian explosion. Many scientists say it's like life suddenly appeared, yes, in one day.

Not in one day. The Cambrian covers 15 million years.  Not exactly "one day".  More and more pre-Cambrian fossils are being found.  And now it looks like the Cambrian was a huge adaptive radiation after a massive die-off.  Similar to the radiation of mammals after the extinction of the dinosaurs.  So yes, ancestors are going to be few because they were few -- the survivors of the die-off.

I think the guy's name was Heggel that made those drawings we still see in textbooks today, the comparitive embryo drawings, also a fabrication.

It's Haeckel.  And his drawings were known to be false when he first published them. Haeckel had a theory different from Darwin's. Haeckel claimed that embryos went through the adult form of their evolutionary ancestors.  Darwin's claim was very different: ancestors and descendents had similar but not identical embryological development.  Haeckel's theory has long been falsified and it is indeed a scandal in science education that the drawings were used so long.  But they do not challenge evolution and the accurate drawings very much support Darwin's claim. See:
http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/evo5.html and
http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/evo1.html

One should wonder at the current hush hush censorship of new scienctific studies,

I should wonder, considering that no scientist would allow his work to be censored like that without raising a big stink.  Considering the competition of journals for papers, just how would this censorship work? And what is to stop these scientists from presenting abstracts at meetings, where there is no prior review?  Sorry, the conspiracy theory simply doesn't track.

Darwin's theories are hampering all of science at this point. They will have to go if progress is to be made.

Hampering science?  Go to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed and enter "evolution" as your search term.  Set the "Entrez date" for 1 month and see the number of articles. Then for 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, etc. and see the increase in the number of articles discussing evolution. 

Originally posted by Live4Jesus
Even scientists working with viruses and stuff have a problem because of Darwin. Stuff just doesn't evolve on it's own. You get weaker strains, resistant strains, and every variation in between, but whenever things get back to normal the species reverts to original condition. How does evolution explain it?

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Simple.  Change in environment. 

1. Weaker strains.  When a virus is very virulent and kills its host, it makes a crisis for itself.  After all, it can't live without a host so if the host dies, the virus dies too.  Therefore any variation that is less harmful to the host will be selected for because the host lives longer and this allows the virus to infect another host: making more of the weaker strain.  This process continues until the virus causes very little harm to the host, such as Epstein-Barr virus. I don't know of any "going back" for this process because the more virulent variation doesn't exist anymore.

2. Resistant strains.  This is a change in environment and applies more to bacteria in the face of antibiotics but also viruses in the face of new anti-viral drugs.  The drug kills 99.9% of the population. The only virus that lives are those with mutations/variations that make it resistant to the drug. Under creationism these variations should not exist at all, so resistant strains falsify creationism. Eventually, in the face of continued drug, the resistant strain will become 99.9% of the population.  BUT, being resistant to drugs entails its own cost in terms of new or altered proteins to resist the drug. Thus, when the drug is withdrawn, the environment goes back to the way it was and the original strain now has the advantage. 

Evolution as viewed this way has become a successful treatment of AIDS.  It would not be possible if evolution were wrong.

And actually, "stuff" does evolve on its own.  Do you know anything about natural selection? Why don't you tell us what you think natural selection is so we can try to figure out why you would make this statement.

Originally posted by Live4Jesus
Yes there are layers below with a few fossils, but it is called the Cambrian explosion for a reason that evolution cannot explain a whit. Not hard to reconcile with creation at all, considering a flood...

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Evolution has several explanations for the Cambrian "explosion". The major one is that this is the appearance of hard body parts that actually fossilize.  Therefore you would expect there to be a lot of fossils to find at that point and relatively few fossils to find prior to that point: they simply didn't fossilize. DUH!

Now, if you throw in a flood as the explanation, that doesn't help.  Why are these the only lifeforms found at this level? C'mon, many modern molluscs are the same size and shape as the Cambrian ones. Why aren't they found mixed with them? Or how about fish and whales? For that matter, why aren't the extinct Cambrian phyla found mixed with fossils of modern undersea life? After all, they are all supposed to have lived together, right?

The presence of only primitive Cambrian fossils in Cambrian layers doesn't pose problems for evolution, but they absolutely falsify creationism.

Originally posted by Live4Jesus
Well as usual no one wants the poor 4 winged fruitfly, no not even it's mother and it will die alone in the isolation of the laboratory. 

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1.  G Kilias, SN Alahiotis, and M Pelecanos.  A multifactorial genetic investigation of speciation theory using drosophila melanogaster  Evolution 34:730-737, 1980. 

In this study they got new species of fruit flies in the lab after 5 years on different diets and temperatures.  Since one of the diets was meat and the other bread this means that the flies weren't even "fruit" flies anymore.  Genetic analysis revealed that the new species differed by over 3% from the original population. Remember, chimps and humans differ by only less than 2%.

Observed evolution in the lab that is more genetic difference than between chimps and humans. 

Originally posted by Live4Jesus
here try this, I don't think I can psots a link because I haven't been here long enough... just add the http part to the front of this:
biocrs.biomed.brown.edu/Books/Chapters/Ch%2019/Fossil-Embryos/Time-Cambrian.html

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I went to the website. Here is a quote: "But until about 600 million years ago, there were no organisms more complex than bacteria, multicelled algae and single-celled plankton."

Now, the article was written in 1995. Since you want us to go to the scientific literature, here is some of it since then:

5.  RA Kerr, Pushing back the origin of animals, Science 279: 803-804, 6 Feb. 1998.  The peer reviewed article is C-W Li, J-Y Chen, T-E Hua, Precambrian sponges with cellular structures.  Science 279: 879-882.  Got embryonic animal fossils that lived 40-50 million years before the Cambrian.  Correlates with the molecular data and removes the Cambrian "explosion".
6.  RA Kerr, Tracks of billion year old animals?  Science 282: 19-20, Oct. 2, 1998.  Primary article is  A Selachner, PK Bose, F Pfluger, Triploblastic animals more than 1 billion years ago: trace fossil evidence from India.  Science 282: 80-83, Oct. 2, 1998.   Shows tracks of worms 200-500 million years before Cambrian.
7.  S Jensen, JG Gehling, MI Droser, Ediacara-type fossils in Cambrian sediments.  Nature 393: 567-569, June 11, 1998.  Some ediacarans survived into the Cambrian period.

Notice that the ediacaran fossils were much more complex than "algae".  It's a nice article, but even when published it was wrong. It's even more wrong now.

Here's some more scientific articles. Each show "complex" life prior to the Cambrian explosion. 

1:  Chen JY, Huang DY.
A possible Lower Cambrian chaetognath (arrow worm).
Science. 2002 Oct 4;298(5591):187.

2:  Droser ML, Jensen S, Gehling JG.
Trace fossils and substrates of the terminal Proterozoic-Cambrian transition:
implications for the record of early bilaterians and sediment mixing.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002 Oct 1;99(20):12572-6.

3:  Chen JY, Oliveri P, Gao F, Dornbos SQ, Li CW, Bottjer DJ, Davidson EH.
Precambrian animal life: probable developmental and adult cnidarian forms from
Southwest China.
Dev Biol. 2002 Aug 1;248(1):182-96.

4:  Hausdorf B.
Early evolution of the bilateria.
Syst Biol. 2000 Mar;49(1):130-42.

Originally posted by Outspoken
okay, well I gave you an example of my entering into the "scientific" world.

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What we got was your assertion that the professor "forced" you to accept evolution. You also assserted that he suppressed your dissension in class. You never said whether you passed the class or not.

A classroom is not the "scientific world". It is the education world.  A curriculum has a finite amount of time to impart a given amount of information to the class.  A teacher cannot permit one student to hold up the whole class and jeopardize their progress because that student simply will not accept the data or is so filled with prior misinformation that he will not listen to what is being presented.

The scientist is not so constrained.  As Jerry noted, SJ Gould took on Kurt Wise knowing Wise's creationist sentiments and spent the enormous amount of time necessary to mentor a graduate student.  Wise did get his Ph.D. and now writes for religious publications saying evolution is false.  But he never, to my knowledge, presents his data ata scientific meeting. And he can, without prior review. 

We accept evolution because the data is so overwhelming that it is perverse not to give (provisional) assent.  If you want to be perverse, then that is your choice. 

If you are really interested in the data, start at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=PubMed and do a search on "evolution". Start reading the more than 16,000 abstracts. 

Originally posted by lucaspa
If you are really interested in the data, start at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=PubMed and do a search on "evolution". Start reading the more than 16,000 abstracts. 

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I did a search for evolution there and got about 120,000 results. Just FYI

ediacarin fossils are less than 600 million years?

"complaint was that the teacher did not want to debate creationism during a class where his job was to instruct in the current state of the science."

Incorrect, he did not want to debate possible holes in evolution in public nor in private. I would ask a question and he would say no, evoution is not wrong, then move on, not even addressing what I asked, nor explaining why or if it was wrong at all.

"Can you confirm that this is what happened to you? "

You're missing the point Jerry. I was made to accept it, not question it nor address it. Teachers ARE THERE to clarify a topic and address questions, not to pass over them. that's what the learning process is.

"because there is no indication in the Bible that God doesn't have a "Hand" "

Untrue. there are many verses telling us God is a spirit, and spirits don't have hands I think I have conclusivly proven that context dictates it is not literal, as context dictates genesis is.


"And the only reason I know it's fiction is because of experience independent of the text itself."

Untrue. the book itself, LOR tells us its fiction by context.

"Yes, many Biblical literalists try to make Genesis 2 a supplementary text to Genesis 1, but such a view is refuted upon examination."

You've made the most common mistake when it comes to bibilcal interpreation. You assumed the numbers were in there when it was first written. That's your first problem. The text shows us there is one creation story with expanises written in after it. Sorry, the passage is quite literal, as context shows.

"No one can force a scientist to accept a theory. "

not true in the least. People HAD to accept blacks weren't human, thought the data said otherwise.

"So, if paradigms have such power, evolution should never have replaced creationism in the first place."

Not true at all, the reason the shift happened is because of the rise of the nonchristian scienitist as well as the shift away from religion as a way of life, ie bitterness towards it probalby also played a part.

"God simply did not create by a literal interpretation of Genesis"

LOL, God created genesis to be read literal, and that's the brunt of it. Context shows us that quite clearly. Don't fall into Origen's trap and fail as an interpreter.

I just did.

Listen, if I were to, in my calculus class, ask for a proof of every single mathematical concept my teacher (good old Mr. VanderBeek) supplied to the class then the class would bog down and we wouldn’t get to nearly as many topics as we should. Likewise, if in my biology class I were to challenge every thing we learn (for example telling my teacher to debate with me in regards to my assertion that pixies supply plants with the energy used to fuel the Calvin Cycle instead of the ‘scientific’ theory that they use high energy electrons excited from energy captured in the extremely complicated series of photosystems) then we wouldn’t get to nearly as many topics as we should. Likewise, if I were to tell my English teacher to prove that the English language evolved from some hypothetical ‘Indo-European’ language that no one has seen or observed and thus cannot be considered a valid theory, then she would have to spend a lot of time disputing whatever arguments I provided and we wouldn’t get to learn nearly as much as we should. I hope you can relate with my comparisons, teachers don’t have the time to waste class time discussing every student’s disagreements. I don't learn enough in class as it is

"ask for a proof of every single mathematical concept my teacher "

Actually in cal you derive it as you go along. I guess your cal teacher isn't very good. You actually prove my point for me. This is why you learn min and max before limits, if memory serves...?

"for example telling my teacher to debate with me in regards to my assertion that pixies supply plants with the energy used to fuel the Calvin Cycle instead of the ‘scientific’ theory that they use high energy electrons excited from energy captured in the extremely complicated series of photosystems)"

*sigh* wrongful analogy. I asked science based questions, not, well my bible doesn't say that. I kept the two relams seperate.

"English language evolved from some hypothetical ‘Indo-European’ language that no one has seen or observed and thus cannot be considered a valid theory,"

That's not having to do with the class. you want HISTORY of english. NOw if you ask why this pronoun is used here and not somewhere else your teacher better answer you if that is the topic she is teaching. Again, wrongful analogy.

I am sorry a made a factual statement or are you tied up in your own macho challenge.