Why do some Christian's dismiss evolution?

[QuantumFlux]

1-the precursors were soft bodied and not expected to leave fossils

certainly not a valid excuse considering that many fully developed crustatia where found and have no links to any lesser developed crustatia

[QUOTE] 2-the great invention of the cambrian was the regulatory genes that established body plans (right to left, frontal to dorsal, head to tail, or radial or ?) these are like the HOX genes then experimented with to investigate the phenomorphic space represented by the genes.[/QUOTE]

what you are saying sounds alot like the "hopeful monster" theory. Your saying that within one generation they went from simple life soft skinned life forms to fully developed crabs and crustatia.... If you wish to believe that, go right ahead, but dont expect me to buy that because this hopeful monster with the HOX genes would have had to have been born two times, on male, one female and the odds of that happening are staggering.

I say hopeful monster because you brush off the apparent lack of fossil and other records that would show links as if it would be expected. I dont think you have grasped the concept that a crab would ceratain have some ancestors that were not soft skinned and some of the others found have no links to the ones found priar to the period, which only leaves that the incomplex suddenly gave birth to a complex....twice.... which isnt in possible, but highly improbable, so if you wish to believe that.... go right ahead.

Try not to see my views as creationist, but rather Design over happenstance. I dont like labels to what I believe because I dont know anyone else that believes everything that I believe. You can stop saying things like "So your saying to give up on science" because i havent once said that. The only thing that i said was that science is little more than stereotypes and prejudices and it is. It presumes that if you jump up that gravity will bring you back down to the earth, and we have no reason to believe otherwise, but it is still a presumption, we have no guarentee that gravity will exist tomorrow.

before anyone says it.... no im not saying give up on the law of gravity... but many other scientific "laws" have been broken, there is no reason to believe the law of gravity is any different.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

Why is a great deal of biodiversity becoming evident over a period of 70 million years

Your saying that within one generation

where do you get this 1 generation from 70 million years?

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

If you wish to believe that, go right ahead, but dont expect me to buy that because this hopeful monster with the HOX genes would have had to have been born two times, on male, one female
I say hopeful monster because you brush off the apparent lack of fossil and other records that would show links as if it would be expected. I dont think you have grasped the concept that a crab would ceratain have some ancestors that were not soft skinned and some of the others found have no links to the ones found priar to the period,

You are assuming a complete fossil record.

 

[QuantumFlux]

because, though we have many complex life form fossils form the period, we have nothing to link them to less forms of life. What you are saying is that fully developed crabs were birthed from simple soft skinned life forms, that would be within one generation. A simple life form such as a worm cannot gradually become a crab without something hard skinned in between. what you are saying is just that because fossils dont give us a link however they should give us something less complex with a hard shell. However they have not and even highly respected evolutionists are baffled as to why they have not found them.

 

[QuantumFlux]

maybe im going about this the wrong way, maybe i should make my responses short and simple as not to be misunderstood

No link between complex crustacia and simpler soft skinned life forms have been found even though it is highly improbable that they would not have been.

 

[shernren]

No link between complex crustacia and simpler soft skinned life forms have been found even though it is highly improbable that they would not have been.

You know, in my country there was a recent hoo-hah when a high-profile murderer was acquitted from court. The victim was found in the accused's bungalow, which is under the guard of several armed bodyguards, and so the only possible murderer was the owner of the bungalow who was acquitted in court. He is guilty and everybody else knows it. So why was he acquitted? Because the prosecution had made a very shoddy case against him, losing key witnesses and fumbling with evidence.

Sometimes our scientific investigation of the universe is something like that. We suspect and intuitively know that a certain theory best explains a particular phenomenon. Yet because we don't have good enough experimental technique, or simply because of the limitations of nature, we can't prove it outright. For example continental drift theory couldn't be validated until scientists had good enough working knowledge of the earth's interior.

In the same way, evolution is missing a few gaps of knowledge. But what scientific creationists are doing is celebrating around those gaps of knowledge and predicting the "collapse of evolutionary theory". Heaven help them when we begin to amass the knowledge and technology needed to close those gaps.

About the Cambrian explosion: have you heard of the Edicaran life-forms? Those were simple tubular traces left by very, very soft-bodied organisms in rocks which predate the Cambrian "explosion". (In inverted commas because actually, some paleontologists don't even consider explosion a good term. But that's another thread.) Most of the evidence for the Cambrian explosion comes from the Burgess Shale where a sudden rockfall (or something like that; can't remember the specifics) swallowed up an entire ancient habitat, leaving for us a very detailed and interesting snapshot of the life-forms that were around then. It's not our fault that there were no similar incidents preserving the pre-Cambrian biosystem.

(In the first place I'm not even sure if "crustacea" is the proper term for those organisms. But anyway.)

How would soft-bodied creatures have been preserved as fossils? It took an extreme stroke of luck to find and identify the Edicaran life-forms. It isn't surprising then that the first life-forms we find clear fossils for are the Cambrian ones - hence a Cambrian explosion.

Let me give you an analogy. Imagine that Earth is devastated by nuclear war, and aliens come to study the history of the planet. They would find the radioactive fallout of nuclear bombs in the soil, but only all the way up to 1945 (the bombs exploded over Japan). Does that mean nuclear technology only miraculously appeared in 1945? That it was suddenly researched, developed, and then deployed all in that same year? No, because the beginnings of nuclear technology did not leave any nuclear trace. In the early 1900s when Albert Einstein came up with his relativity theories, or when the Curies were experimenting with radioactivity - those would not have left widespread radioactive traces, yet it was there that nuclear technology began.

In the same way, we shouldn't be surprised if the first fossils we find are simply the first life forms that could possibly be fossilised.

 

[Dust and Ashes]

Since there's no way I'm going to read 29 pages of posts, I'll just insert my opinion with the disclaimer that I haven't read the thread. I think so many Christians dismiss evolution because it is so very often equated with an atheistic world view.

I have my homepage set to Yahoo and have science headlines close to the top and the last week or so have seen numerous articles about Intelligent Design: The Death of Science, etc, etc and in reading the articles they are very careful to equate evolution with a Godless model of the universe.

A large number (if not most) Christians who aren't "into" science read what the mainstream media writes about the issue and it's no wonder they reject it. Heck, if I didn't know better, I'd reject it because it's usually equated with atheism. You are pretty much given a choice between Theism and Evolution and the two are usually presented as mutually exclusive by the media.

So what does ID offer? What can it explain that evolution can't?

To answer this, it is necessary to examine the two main arguments—irreducible complexity and specified complexity—that ID proponents use to support their claim that a Supreme Being is responsible for many or all aspects of life.

...

Evolution was and still is the only scientific theory for life that can explain how we get complexity from simplicity and diversity from uniformity.

ID offers nothing comparable. It begins with complexity—a Supreme Being—and also ends there.

I thought Theistic Evolutionists would also claim that a Supreme Being is responsible for many or all aspects of life.

Please note, I am NOT attacking science, just the tone of these articles and why I think many Christians reject evolution.

 

[mortsmune]

But without the Bible, it is quite possible to learn this:
* God loves us
* God wishes us to love God
* God wishes us to love others

Jesus, in the Bible, seems to give this as the core set of beliefs which are sufficient; "this do, and thou shalt live".

The Bible is helpful for instruction, but you can learn everything you need by prayer alone. God does not forsake His creations.

I have just come to this thread for the first time. The discussion is interesting, even though it seems to have gotten away from the original post.

It is possible to learn those three things without the Bible; however, those three things do not express the core of what the Bible or the teaching of Jesus was all about. You make no mention of sin and redemption. Sin and redemption is the theme of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. It is a single scarlet thread woven through its entirety. We see it starting with the first animals sacrificed by God Himself to clothe the nakedness of Adam and Eve after their sin. We see it in the blood of the lamb over the doors of the children of Israel that caused the death angetl to "pass over" their homes. It was seen in the scarlet thread hung out the window of Rahab the harlot and made her home the only one spared in the fall of Jericho. And finally, the Redemptive sacrifice for the remission of sin was the purpose for which Jesus came.

God does love us, yes. He does wish us to love Him and others, yes. But the entire Bible is about the fact that we do not love God and that we do not love others. We have all gone astray. Every one of us has turned to his own way. God is also Just and Holy. His Justice and Holiness are as much a part of who He is as His love. Justice demands punishment for sin. One sin makes us guilty. The wages of sin is death. Your quote "Do this, and thou shalt live." is precisely the problem. We do not do that. There is none righteous, no, not even one.

It was the Crucifixion of Jesus that provided the way of escape for us. He, as the Son of God, the Eternal Word, came expressly for the purpose of paying the wages of death for the sin of all humanity. It is precisely because of the love of God that He did this. However, we must believe on Him in order to receive this redemption.

These are things that you cannot learn without the Bible. Prayer alone, without knowledge of the truth, is not enough. There are many spirits out there that are false spirits, enemies of the One True God. They are very willing to speak to us and mislead us, even while masquerading as "God." God revealed His truth to us in written form so that we would have a standard by which we could judge teachings we receive from other sources that we might know what is true. There are many voices from the enemies of God who desire to keep us from discovering the truth of redemption through the Blood of Jesus Christ. The Bible itself says that we are to "try the spirits to see if they are of God."

 

[QuantumFlux]

In response to Shenren:

In your scenario, the evidence was fumbled but still there. However, In the scenario of the cambrian era, there is no evidence where there should be. This is not a case of simply an incomplete fossil record. This is a case where top evolutionists are confounded that they have not found any dispite the thorough and exoustive searching.

Its not like we simply havent found them, its a matter of where many many should have been found, zero have been found.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

In response to Shenren:
However, In the scenario of the cambrian era, there is no evidence where there should be. This is not a case of simply an incomplete fossil record. This is a case where top evolutionists are confounded that they have not found any dispite the thorough and exoustive searching.

Evidence for this claim has been promised, has any been delivered?

The Cambrian period was 500+ million years ago.

We have very few sources for fossils of that time period, until 1985 the Burgess Shale was by far the primary source of information and it is in large part a snap shot only covering a relatively short period toward the end of the Cambrian era.

More recently Chinese provinces, Guizhou in 1999 and Chengjiang in 1985, have expanded our knowledge (Actually I believe Guizhou is on the boundry of Cambrian and pre-Cambrian).

To expect a complete fossil record from 500+ million years ago is a bit much I think.

www.gps.caltech.edu/users/jkirschvink/pdfs/KirschvinkRaubComptesRendus.pdf

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/cambrian/burgess.html
[ident][]
Through additional work on the site, it was determined that the Burgess Shale included multiple fossil bearing layers of about 2 meters thick stacked 150 meters high and over 60,000 unique fossils have been found.
[]
Since its discovery in 1909, the Burgess Shale has become the authoritative picture of life in the Cambrian Period.
[]
The Burgess Shale represents a snapshot of the evolution of a marine biota that would come to dominate the world's oceans for the next 300 million years.[/indent]
http://www.burgess-shale.bc.ca/history/history.htm

After nearly 2 billion years of only simple, unicellular lifeforms on earth, a full spectrum of complex animal forms appeared in the oceans in just 10-20 million years, a geologic blink-of-an-eye! The reason why is still of great debate and interest among scientists.
[]
Since then, the ancient mudstones (shales) containing the fossils have been subject to the erosional powers of glaciers, wind, water, landslides and avalanches. The fossils' preservation for 505 million years is a miracle, indeed!
​

More information available at:
http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/palaeofiles/lagerstatten/chngjang/

 

[QuantumFlux]

http://www.burgess-shale.bc.ca/history/history.htm

After nearly 2 billion years of only simple, unicellular lifeforms on earth, a full spectrum of complex animal forms appeared in the oceans in just 10-20 million years, a geologic blink-of-an-eye! The reason why is still of great debate and interest among scientists.
[]
Since then, the ancient mudstones (shales) containing the fossils have been subject to the erosional powers of glaciers, wind, water, landslides and avalanches. The fossils' preservation for 505 million years is a miracle, indeed!​

Yeah, that sounds alot like, no one knows why we cant find what we really thought we would, so here is a list of our excuses to not look at this as evidence against.

BTW, my car is fixed, expect a more researched response tomorrow.

 

[stumpjumper]

Yeah, that sounds alot like, no one knows why we cant find what we really thought we would, so here is a list of our excuses to not look at this as evidence against.

QuantumFlux this is the problem with your line of reasoning. We certainly cannot find all the information about our past. However, simply bringing your best objections to evolution as a theory of biodiversifaction is not going to do anything at all to the facts that support the theory. The Cambrian explosion is not even at all anomolous. It encompasses 70 million years!!! Not exactly a blink of an eye.

What we do find in the fossil record, from geology, from cosmology, and from radiometric dating all lines up with the macroevolution none of it lines up with YEC. So, instead of saying we can't find what we thought we would in regards to evolution (which is quite untrue) you should be saying "we can't find anything that wholly lines up with YEC."

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

The Cambrian explosion is not even at all anomolous. It encompasses 70 million years!!! Not exactly a blink of an eye.

Where is this 70 million number coming from?

The numbers I seem to recall, which may predate the 1999/2000 Chinese discoveries, is that the majority of the "explosion" took place within about 20 million years.

But that is based on murky recollection so...

instead of saying we can't find what we thought we would in regards to evolution (which is quite untrue) you should be saying "we can't find anything that wholly lines up with YEC."

We can't find anything that more than vaguely lines up with YEC, and that only if you sort of turn your head like so, and squint like so...

I really have to go, so I will leave with my standard comments:

If you think YEC is important to believe in, then believe, don't make claims about physical evidence.

 

[QuantumFlux]

I don't know If anyone has noticed, I havent put anything on any of my posts that supports YEC. All I am doing is refuting evolution as a scientific theory, which i believe is the original topic of this thread.

There really is no evidence to support Macroevolution other than the jigsaw puzzle that scientists look at and say "well this animal kind of looks like this animal and it has these similar organs but this one looks a bit more advanced so it obviously came later"

There was an evolutionist a few years back that made a quote and it became his bane because of what he said and it truly is how scientists create the evolution models. The man said something along the lines of the following:

It's very obvious that evolution exists and that certain animals evolved into these other animals. It's as easy to see as anyone can see the difference between an '87 corvette and a '89 corvette.

This became his bane because of the obvious logic in that statement. Yes, you can obviously see the similarities in a '87 corvette and a '89 corvette, however, did the '87 corvette evolve? No, the '89 corvette was a completly new creation that was not birthed from the old one. It was created by a team of engineers, it may have been inspired by, but certainly did not evolve. Certianly it may have been inspired by, but inspiration does not prove evolution.

I have to work this morning, so my thorough post will be tonight some time.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

I don't know If anyone has noticed, I havent put anything on any of my posts that supports YEC. All I am doing is refuting evolution as a scientific theory, which i believe is the original topic of this thread.

There really is no evidence to support Macroevolution other than the jigsaw puzzle that scientists look at and say "well this animal kind of looks like this animal and it has these similar organs but this one looks a bit more advanced so it obviously came later"

<sigh>
Do you know what an ERV is? Pseudogenes?
Does L-gulono-gamma-lactone oxidase (also known as GLO and L-GLO) ring a bell?
Do you know what the twin nested hierarchies are?

Did it ever occur to you that hundreds of thousands of people working their for a substantial portion of their lives on a subject might come up with more than what is presented on anti-evolution sites?

That there might be a reason that 95% of those working in the sciences think that evolution, with or without God's help, is responsible for the shape of life today?

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen/
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

 

[QuantumFlux]

Did it ever occur to you that they make assumptions on things they havent seen? and that one wrong assumption in the multitude made on things they havent seen can lead to many more wrong assuptions?

Pseudogenes are not even close to proving evolution. Pseudogenes could just as easily be genes that once did something but have degraded to no longer do anything. There is no evidence to support either more than the other.

Nested hierarchies doesnt prove evolution either. Just because some of its predictions are accurate, doesnt show that its an absolute. Much like looking at cars, engineers can predict what the next model might look like be looking at the other cars in its category and the previous model. It can be a great tool for predicting microevolution, but not macroevolution.

Evolution is not proved, its a faith.

I'm sorry, but the majority of people believing something has never been evidence for me to take it as fact.

The problem with macroevolutionary is that all the thoeries are based on an assumption that events happen that have the best odds of happening. They look at the facts they have in front of them and the try to assume what happened in the past. However, we have no eye witnesses. We have learned through our court system that many times the facts we have in front of us can lead to the most common conclusion yet be completely wrong when eye witness evidence shows what really happened. All the facts align with the eye witness report, however without the eye witness the assumption made from it was completely wrong.

Same way with evolution, the evidence we have in front of us has lead to many assumptions of what happened in the past. Now imagine if just one of those idea were wrong, saaaay, the period of time it took for the layers of the earth to form. That would lead to an enourmous amount of damage in the other assumptions. No one saw the layers form, so we can look at the facts we have in front of us and make an estimation from the evidence but we could be making the wrong assumptions.

And that was just one wrong assumption. Out of the many things assumed from evolution that hasnt been seen, many more variables are added and the odds of one inaccuracy increases exponetially.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

Pseudogenes are not even close to proving evolution. Pseudogenes could just as easily be genes that once did something but have degraded to no longer do anything. There is no evidence to support either more than the other.

Errr, some pseudogenes clearly are genes that used to do something, which is rather a major point.

Nested hierarchies doesnt prove evolution either. Just because some of its predictions are accurate,

The vast majority of the predictions vis a vis changes such as seen in cytochrome C demonstrate that you have twin nested hierarchies.

Evolution is not proved, its a faith.

False dichotomy.

The problem with macroevolutionary is that all the thoeries are based on an assumption that events happen that have the best odds of happening. They look at the facts they have in front of them and the try to assume what happened in the past. However, we have no eye witnesses. We have learned through our court system that many times the facts we have in front of us can lead to the most common conclusion yet be completely wrong when eye witness evidence shows what really happened.

Far more often the eyewitness testimony is demonstrated to be faulty.

Same way with evolution, the evidence we have in front of us has lead to many assumptions of what happened in the past. Now imagine if just one of those idea were wrong, saaaay, the period of time it took for the layers of the earth to form. That would lead to an enourmous amount of damage in the other assumptions.

Demonstrate.

 

[QuantumFlux]

Errr, some pseudogenes clearly are genes that used to do something, which is rather a major point.

So are we de-evolving? What i am saying is, there is no more evidence that we evolved beyond their use than there is that they were a superior gene that degenerated until it didnt work anymore. If you say evolution is your proof, thats seriously circular thinking. Pseudo genes prove evolution, what what proves Pseudo genes? well, evolution.... I dont buy that.

Far more often the eyewitness testimony is demonstrated to be faulty.

I seriously think you missed the point of what I was saying. yes, sometimes eyewitness has proven to be faulty, but that is completely irrelevant to what I said. In some cases, eye witness testimony shined a totally new light on the evidence they had and gave them a completely different scenerio than what they had without it.

Evolution makes an assumption that the layers of the earth were created over millions and billions of years. However, no one saw this happen. In fact, there is evidence to say they might have been created quickly, however, this evidence is thrown out because evolution is true.... Basically anything that says the layers were not created over billions of years is thrown out because we know that evolution is true.

C14 carbon dating is a good example. Measuring the carbon was once thought to be extremely accurate, this has the historical professors in an uproar because basically all of their egyptian artifacts that they knew how old they were, c-14 was telling them other wise. Finally they discovered that solar bombardment affect carbon levels, so then a bell curve was added to the calculation. The first assumption was that c-14 in itself was solid evidence, then it was c-14 with the bell curve is solid. Bad assumptions since we have no idea what else affects carbon levels.

 

[shernren]

C14 carbon dating is a good example. Measuring the carbon was once thought to be extremely accurate, this has the historical professors in an uproar because basically all of their egyptian artifacts that they knew how old they were, c-14 was telling them other wise. Finally they discovered that solar bombardment affect carbon levels, so then a bell curve was added to the calculation. The first assumption was that c-14 in itself was solid evidence, then it was c-14 with the bell curve is solid. Bad assumptions since we have no idea what else affects carbon levels.

And now they match as long as we know that the material in question is organic, within 50,000 years of age range, and not contaminated by fossil fuel exhaust. Your point being? Yes, scientists are fallible and might not know anything. But for scientists to miss a spanner as big as creationism in the works of historical science is comparing their intelligence to that of a starfish or lower.

Evolution makes an assumption that the layers of the earth were created over millions and billions of years. However, no one saw this happen. In fact, there is evidence to say they might have been created quickly, however, this evidence is thrown out because evolution is true.... Basically anything that says the layers were not created over billions of years is thrown out because we know that evolution is true.

Concrete examples please. You will find that most of that "evidence" is not thrown out because evolution is true but because practical experiments show alternative explanations. On the other hand, AiG explicitly reserves the right to throw out any evidence that the Earth was not created 6000 years ago. Isn't it hypocritical to scold evolutionists for doing something your own side is doing?

I seriously think you missed the point of what I was saying. yes, sometimes eyewitness has proven to be faulty, but that is completely irrelevant to what I said. In some cases, eye witness testimony shined a totally new light on the evidence they had and gave them a completely different scenerio than what they had without it.

Have you seen, with your own eyes:

-if the Hubble Telescope is still up there?
-if antibiotics really kill germs?
-if germs really kill diseases?
-the federal reserves of gold on which our money is based?
-the fusion processes of the Sun?
-the interior of the earth?
-the structure of the atom?
-while we're at it, atoms themselves?

There are many things we take sans eyewitness testimony and I don't see any reason that evolution shouldn't be one of them.

 

[QuantumFlux]

And now they match as long as we know that the material in question is organic, within 50,000 years of age range, and not contaminated by fossil fuel exhaust. Your point being? Yes, scientists are fallible and might not know anything. But for scientists to miss a spanner as big as creationism in the works of historical science is comparing their intelligence to that of a starfish or lower.

You dont see my point? we keep finding new things that affect it, how do we know that we there wasnt something that happened thousands of years ago that made a drastic impact on the c-14? We don't know, we just assume that nothing else has happend that hasnt drastically impacted it.

Have you seen, with your own eyes:

-if the Hubble Telescope is still up there?
-if antibiotics really kill germs?
-if germs really kill diseases?
-the federal reserves of gold on which our money is based?
-the fusion processes of the Sun?
-the interior of the earth?
-the structure of the atom?
-while we're at it, atoms themselves?

What I find really funny about all of those examples you listed is that at least one person has seen those things happen and thats how we know about them (asside from the interior of the earth and the contents of that is still under heavy debate). But with evolution, no one has ever witnessed it (macroevolution anyway).