Why do some Christian's dismiss evolution?

[Numenor]

Achem, I'll be emotional if I want to....

Should I assume from this reply that you are not interested in being civil? Please consider whether this is a good witness since non-Christians come here to view these threads. Is this how you want them to see you behaving?

Wow, you totally missed that concept. Seems some of the TE's have a hard time with context and parables. try re-reading it. Man kind is like grass. I dont know if you know much about grass but when one blade dies, another takes its place. The concept is not that eventually grass wont exist, but that one blade will die. Man's life is like this, one blade dies and time continues on and the cycle repeats and our lives are little compared to the field of other people.

In the part of Ps 103 I quoted from David is comparing the eternal nature of God's love with temporal nature of man's existence. It's so short in comparison that it's like grass (v16). (I don't see any reference to the cyclic nature of life in the text nor where he is comparing his life to the life of others, or 'the field of other people' as you put it, please point me to the verses where you are getting this from.) Your complaint was that evolution renders man insignificant because of the timescales involved yet David is saying that we are insignificant in comparison to God.

My point, my friend, is not just that it is billions of years wasted, but if it wasnt, the time line shows that we are just that insignificant and that we are but a speck of God's creation and really alot less important than the earth itself.

Why is it wasted? I really don't understand how it can be described as time wasted when God is eternal and is not constrained by time (and in saying that God created. This viewpoint seems to be simply your opinion, unless you can demonstrate how the everlasting to everlasting eternal God can be said to 'waste' time, otherwise it's your conjecture and nothing more.

He spent alot more time on the earth's creation than our own, thus would say that the earth is more important.

Christ spent a lot more time as a carpenter than he did on the cross, does this mean that him making joists was more important than his atoning sacrifice?

I don't even see how this could work in your favor. Of course he did not NEED to make us, he WANTED to make us and wanted to love us and for us to love him back.

You said (post #394): "God created us to love him, so what was there to love him before? The angels, I suppose but their love is little compared to ours....Which means that there was nothing to love him back until mankind came along only several thousand years ago in a Billion year old universe."

We are in agreement that God didn't need to create us, so what's the big deal about man not being around for very long on the cosmological scale of things? You seem to be suggesting that God was devoid of love prior to our creation (see bolded part of quote), and that this is the reason he created us. As I have pointed out, God was not lacking in love before we were created, or do you dispute this? If not then your objection of evolution because there was nothing to love God is incorrect. The method and timescale of creation is of no relevance.

The problem is that the Fall gives us that point, that we could chose to love him or not. What you are saying is that we have always sinned which means God created us to sin.

This seems to be in reference to my comments of predestination and election. This is not the forum for this topic so I'm not going to get into an indepth discussion on it. However, what I am saying is that when our sovereign, omniscient God he created mankind he knew we would fall and he knew we would need redemption. Saying he knew we would sin is a far cry from saying he created us to sin.

With an Eden, He shows that we had a choice, and he did not make us sin, but without the fall, there was no choice, we are just born sinners, which means that is how God made us. He created us with sin and then tells us not to?

Rather it is because of the fall and that we are born sinners. You really do not have a choice about being sinful, or perhaps you don't believe in original sin? Are you sinful because you sin, or do you sin because you are sinful?

 

[QuantumFlux]

Should I assume from this reply that you are not interested in being civil? Please consider whether this is a good witness since non-Christians come here to view these threads. Is this how you want them to see you behaving?

No, it was a "I'm not a robot and ill be emotional if I want to be" response. I havent called anyone names or anything. I have demeaned ideas, guilty as charged. I just dont want to pretend like some ideas are good when they arent in order to possibly persuade you to my side. I have no interest in having you believe what I believe, I do this so I am more informed of what you believe. This is not a formal debate, you don't like the thread, don't post. I never said I was here to be respected or to make friends. Personally, I think that is a crime amongst many christians. We soften the truth in order to talk people into becoming christians. The problem with that is, people can just as easily talk them out of being a christian.

I believe what I believe and I wont sugar coat my beliefs for anyone.

Your complaint was that evolution renders man insignificant because of the timescales involved yet David is saying that we are insignificant in comparison to God.

Notice that my point was that compared to the rest of creation we are insignificant according to the evolutionary timeline, however throughout the bible God clearly shows we are not insignificant in comparison to the rest of creation, NOT in comparison to God.

This issue here is that you look at genes and say they tell you that common ancestory is true and that in essence God says that evolution is true. However, when you look at the timeline of evolution you neglect hear what the timeline is telling you.

Why is it wasted? I really don't understand how it can be described as time wasted when God is eternal and is not constrained by time (and in saying that God created. This viewpoint seems to be simply your opinion, unless you can demonstrate how the everlasting to everlasting eternal God can be said to 'waste' time, otherwise it's your conjecture and nothing more.

Your point here is almost counter productive. A God not contrained by time has to have created the universe over billions of years and he could in no way speed up the process because that would be deceptive?

It is a waste of time because in that time there is no love for God until mankind appears. God is love and the most important thing in the universe is love but love for God did not exist until the very very end of a multiple billion year old universe. It doesn't make sense why a God who wants love would have such a small time with anything in existance that could love him.

Saying he knew we would sin is a far cry from saying he created us to sin.

Nor did I say it was. But when you create creatures that will sin as a little child with no comprehension of right and wrong. There really is no choice there, which means we were created programmed to sin. Paul talks all about this in Romans, that there is no way for us not to sin in our lives. There had to be an educated choice at some point to say that God did not create us with sin already programmed into us. Thus is Adam, he was mature and aware that God did not want him to eat the fruit, but he did anyway as a mature human. That says that God did not program sin into us, but we chose to have it. With out the fall, there is no evidence that says God did not program sin into us.

 

[gluadys]

That is just it, you do assume based on what you consider evidence.

If a conclusion is based on evidence, it is not based on assumption. I also do not make personal opinion a basis for what I "consider" evidence. Evidence, by definition, must be objective and available to all interested observers. It must be an aspect of nature which requires explanation and which the theory explains. Science does not allow for picking and choosing which observations will be "considered" evidence. All observations must be considered. This is quite the opposite stance of creationist propaganda machines which decide that only some observations are evidence and the rest must be ignored.

In our court system we have found that even though we can have boat load of evidence, that evidence can point to the wrong conclusion.

But the boatload of evidence will only be disgarded when new contradictory evidence calls it into question. It will not be dropped on the basis of assumptions or religious bias.

What is my evidence that genes popped into existance? Moses,

Assuming Moses ever existed

a prophet of God,

assuming he was a prophet of God

wrote Genesis

assuming he wrote Genesis

All you have is assumptions, not evidence.

and God allowed it to continue. I don't believe God would allow a prophet to be blatently false about something like this.

neither do I. But I do not consider the fact that a document is not a scientific or historical document to be a reason to slander it as "blatantly false" especially when it is part of inspired scripture.

Jesus obviously believed that mankind was made with the beginning of his creation.

At least we are agreed on that.

I'll take his word over any other evidence (not that evolution is solid ground or that I dont have scientific problems with it).

You don't have scientific problems with evolution. You may have problems understanding evolution. You may have false preconceptions about evolution. And because you choose an interpretation of scripture that is incompatible with science, you have theological problems with evolution. But you don't have scientific problems with evolution.

I guess, in the end I believe God was truthful and did not mislead the jews for millenium on end about creation. Our God is not one of half truths, if you can show me an instance where God did not give the full truth, I'd like to hear it.

I also believe that God is truthful, and therefore that all that is true is of God. I can't show you an instance of God being less than truthful, because I don't believe such an instance exists.

It most certainly isnt saying that, but evolution certainly is saying that mankind wasn't created in the beginning.

Another assumption on your part. Jesus defined the creation of humankind as occurring in the beginning of creation. So, whenever humankind was created, that was in the beginning of creation.

I'm sorry, I guess i missed that class where evolution has stopped.

Evolution hasn't stopped. But evolution is not on a timetable either. Sometimes creationists mock evolution by pointing to species that have not (apparently) evolved in 300 to 400 million years e.g. sharks, turtles. So there is no impetus for humans to change a lot in just one million years.

Also, humans have already adapted to almost all ecological niches without major morphological change, and currently rely on changing their environment rather than adapting to it. So there is little need for significant change.

With little selection pressure, there is no impetus for selecting new characteristics over old ones. Selection is limited primarily to deleting unwanted mutations. We do see human evolution happening in specific environments e.g. those who live in high altitudes have made specific adaptations to deal with the lower oxygen content of the atmosphere; people of the far north exhibit adaptations the cold, etc.

Finally, even if a future generation descended from us is a genuine new species, it will still be a species of human. Just like new species of fruit flies are still fruit flies. That is a very important principle of evolution. All descendants of a population will still be of the same kind as the original population. You will never get a non-human population from human ancestors.

 

[gluadys]

You talk of symbolism and poetic where all the hebrews of the time took it literal.

Another assumption on your part. Given the context of their time, in which myth was a prevalent form of communication, that is how they understood it. Of course, unlike moderns, they also understood that myth is not necessarily false.

There is a person named Vance who used to post here frequently. You will still find him listed in the members section, so you can find his posts in this forum. He does theological education with students and has studied ancient literature far more than anyone else I know. He affirms that it is virtually impossible that the ancient Hebrews understood Genesis to be a simple literal chronology.

The New Testament bears that out. The apostles and evangelists treat the Old Testament as allegory, type and myth more often than as history. As does Jesus. The leaders of the church, as well, continued this tradition for a millennium. In the 5th century, St. Augustine of Hippo wrote a treatise on Genesis in which he pointed out the danger of considering it a literal account of creation. For most of medieval times, the literal meaning, even when it was true, was considered trivial, and students of scripture were expected to discover the more important allegorical meanings. There is a good summary of this approach by Dante Alighieri in the Preface of The Divine Comedy.

The dividing of myth from history is a recent event in European-American thought. It would be incorrect to assume a literal approach to scripture in any pre-Enlightenment thinker.

A theistic approach to evolution, because it must reject an overly-literalist approach to scripture, is re-discovering ancient ways of thinking about scripture that used to be the norm, while creationists are locking themselves in a modernist box which says science is the be-all and end-all, even while science shows their literalist approach to Genesis to be wrong.

Which means that some how the wisedom of man has grown enough to truly understand what the first chapters of Genesis means, because God was very vague until now.

God only seems vague to you because you are not asking the questions Genesis was written to answer.

I'll always believe God over your science and your assumptions.

It is not my science and it is not my assumptions. It is what God wrote in creation that science is discovering.

 

[Numenor]

I believe what I believe and I wont sugar coat my beliefs for anyone.

I was asking for some civility, not sugar coating. Manners cost nothing as the old saying goes. Are you unaware of the attempts made by your YEC brethren to try and foster a more cordial realtionship between the YECs, OECs and TEs here? Because you are doing a lot to thwart their efforts.

Notice that my point was that compared to the rest of creation we are insignificant according to the evolutionary timeline, however throughout the bible God clearly shows we are not insignificant in comparison to the rest of creation, NOT in comparison to God.

Even if that was your point, so what? If the universe is 6000 years old at 30 years of age I am only a speck on the timeline of the universe! The universe of billions of light years wide and I am only 5'10", cosmologically speaking I am less than a speck, yet Christ still died for my sins. I do not derive any meaning for my life from evolution or from the nature of the universe, but from my relationship with God. Your argument from timescales is absolutely irrelevant.

This issue here is that you look at genes and say they tell you that common ancestory is true and that in essence God says that evolution is true. However, when you look at the timeline of evolution you neglect hear what the timeline is telling you.

The timeline of evolution is irrelevant. Man is here by the creative command of God and evolution was his tool. Just as natural biological processes were his tool for creating you from a fertilised egg to the adult you are now. Or do you think that God does not work through natural processes?

Your point here is almost counter productive. A God not contrained by time has to have created the universe over billions of years and he could in no way speed up the process because that would be deceptive?

God chose to prepare the universe for us over billions of years, this is what the physical evidence shows us, and this because it pleased him to do so. God saw it and said it was good after all! If he instead only took a couple of thousand years then the physical evidence would show this, it does not.

It is a waste of time because in that time there is no love for God until mankind appears. God is love and the most important thing in the universe is love but love for God did not exist until the very very end of a multiple billion year old universe. It doesn't make sense why a God who wants love would have such a small time with anything in existance that could love him.

Do you believe that God was deficient prior to creation and did in fact need to create us otherwise he could not experience love? Previously you had said that you did not think God needed to create us but the bolded parts of your quote seems to suggest that you believe that God did not know love and could not love until he created us. What about the Trinity? You didn't address this before, if you did I must have missed it so can you point it out please. This is tantamount to saying that God the Father does not love God the Son and God the Son does not love the God the Father, because prior to him creating us he had no-one to love. Do you really believe this? Do you really believe that God the Son did not love God the father prior to our creation? There was no deficiency in God prior to creation, he did not need to create us to experience love. There was plenty of love for God within God in his triune nature before mankind appeared! You are dead wrong about this, your understanding about the nature of the Trinity is way off. Please address this point. Please show me how the triune God experienced no love within the three persons of the Godhead prior to mankind's creation.

Nor did I say it was. But when you create creatures that will sin as a little child with no comprehension of right and wrong. There really is no choice there, which means we were created programmed to sin.

It's called Original Sin. You have no choice about your sinful nature. Are you saying you were programmed to sin?

Paul talks all about this in Romans, that there is no way for us not to sin in our lives. There had to be an educated choice at some point to say that God did not create us with sin already programmed into us.

Again, Original Sin.

Thus is Adam, he was mature and aware that God did not want him to eat the fruit, but he did anyway as a mature human. That says that God did not program sin into us, but we chose to have it. With out the fall, there is no evidence that says God did not program sin into us.

Did I say the fall didn't happen?

 

[shernren]

What? I mean really, do you know what a parable is? At what point did I say the world wasnt real? I didn't say God created a virtual world. Parables align where they align and thats it, I showed you where the parable aligned, don't add parallels that were not given. You are suggesting that my parable says the earth isnt real, however, that is an alignment I did not make.

If it is a parable then it must say something about what you believe. So, what is it saying? Let's say I'm too stupid for parables like you're implying. Let's say you're Jesus and I'm Peter and you were saying the Parable of the Sower. So go on and explain just what you mean by your parable so that I have something to respond to. Sorry for misrepresenting your views.

Nor did I say it was. But when you create creatures that will sin as a little child with no comprehension of right and wrong. There really is no choice there, which means we were created programmed to sin. Paul talks all about this in Romans, that there is no way for us not to sin in our lives. There had to be an educated choice at some point to say that God did not create us with sin already programmed into us. Thus is Adam, he was mature and aware that God did not want him to eat the fruit, but he did anyway as a mature human. That says that God did not program sin into us, but we chose to have it. With out the fall, there is no evidence that says God did not program sin into us.

Well, creationism is just as bad. Look at the alternatives.

A. God knows everything that is going to happen. He knew that man was going to eat the forbidden fruit. So He left the fruit there instead of taking it away.
B. God doesn't know everything that is going to happen.

So either God knew man was going to screw up and let man screw up anyway, or God is not omniscient. Theodicy is a very real problem both in creationism and in TEism.

 

[QuantumFlux]

There is a person named Vance who used to post here frequently. You will still find him listed in the members section, so you can find his posts in this forum. He does theological education with students and has studied ancient literature far more than anyone else I know. He affirms that it is virtually impossible that the ancient Hebrews understood Genesis to be a simple literal chronology.

I can name you 4 professors that would highly disagree with that statement. In fact, they have said exactly the opposite, that it would be impossible for them to take it any other way than literal.

What Vance may have done is compared the hebrews with all the other cultures of the time, which is a bad way to see the hebrews because they were a very different culture than the others of the time.

All you have is assumptions, not evidence.

I have exactly what you have, accept mine comes from as you put it, inspired scripture, while yours comes from man's wisdom.

You don't have scientific problems with evolution. You may have problems understanding evolution. You may have false preconceptions about evolution. And because you choose an interpretation of scripture that is incompatible with science, you have theological problems with evolution. But you don't have scientific problems with evolution.

I do and I've stated my problems, perhaps it is you that doesnt understand my problems. I don't know if you have been reading from the beginning but I stated my cases against a scientific evolution in the beginning, now it has just moved into a philosophical and theological discussion.

It is not my science and it is not my assumptions. It is what God wrote in creation that science is discovering.

It is your science. You can debate it all you want but there are some very educated people out there (not all of them christian) that do not believe in evolution for scientific reasons. Until you can get all scientists to agree, it will continue to be your science. For example, all scientists agree that atoms exist, no question, but there are a great many scientists that do not believe in evolution. You have no agreement amongst the studied, so until then, it will be your science.

I was asking for some civility, not sugar coating. Manners cost nothing as the old saying goes. Are you unaware of the attempts made by your YEC brethren to try and foster a more cordial realtionship between the YECs, OECs and TEs here? Because you are doing a lot to thwart their efforts.

Manners is a cultural idea, one that I have little knowledge of. As far as I know I have respected everyone on the board and when I haven't I have apologized. Perhaps you should be more specific on what I have wronged someone on.

God chose to prepare the universe for us over billions of years, this is what the physical evidence shows us, and this because it pleased him to do so. God saw it and said it was good after all! If he instead only took a couple of thousand years then the physical evidence would show this, it does not.

what is your evidence that he chose to prepare the univers for us over billions of years? You said yourself that he is not confined by time, so what is there to say that he did not speed along the process?

As for your question of the trinity, that is the equivalent of God loving himself, which I am sure that he does, but love for ones self is very different from someone else loving you.

If it is a parable then it must say something about what you believe. So, what is it saying? Let's say I'm too stupid for parables like you're implying. Let's say you're Jesus and I'm Peter and you were saying the Parable of the Sower. So go on and explain just what you mean by your parable so that I have something to respond to. Sorry for misrepresenting your views.

I'll try, I thought it was pretty clear but I'll try to explain it without the parable. God is outside (and inside) of our existance, he programmed nature to work as it does with gravity and the birthing process and the like. When creating reality, there is no reason for him not to create a reality that looks mature in order for it to already be livable for the living things inside of the reality that he is to create. In a nut shell, God created the earth in an instant to look old so that it will already be livable. Since the creation, God has let the physics that he made, take its course, making interventions (or miracles) when he so chooses.

That is where it aligns, don't look at it any farther past that. When programmers create tiny universe for video games, they create an environment that looks mature in order for it to be useful to their needs, they do not merely create the physics and wait for it to become mature, they go ahead and make it mature and then let their physics they programmed take over (obviously on a much more basic scale, but the imagery can be used to create understanding). If we are made in the image of God, it would only seem natural that we would create similarly to the way God creates.

A. God knows everything that is going to happen. He knew that man was going to eat the forbidden fruit. So He left the fruit there instead of taking it away.

If he took it away there would be no choice, if there is no choice there is no love.

B. God doesn't know everything that is going to happen

He does, and in Genesis, he clearly showed that he knew that we would fall, but at least it was an educated choice to fall instead of infants who know little of right and wrong. The choice showed that God did not create us to fall, but gave us a chance to love him, without that educated choice there is no evidence that God ever really gave us a choice and that he merely programmed us to be sinful so that he could redeem us.

 

[Numenor]

Manners is a cultural idea, one that I have little knowledge of

It shows.

what is your evidence that he chose to prepare the univers for us over billions of years?

Are you trying to tell me you are unfamiliar with the evidence for our ancient universe?

* Ice-cores, they cross reference with other dating methods as well as things like the geologic record.
* Nucleochronology
* Supernovae
* Volcano ashes.
* Meteors. how do all those big ones fit into a 6k year old earth? one every 35 years? I don't think so.

I suggest you take a look at the C&E Archive Thread too, I'm sure you'll have no problem refuting all the evidence contained therein.

You said yourself that he is not confined by time, so what is there to say that he did not speed along the process?

I've already told you, evidence. It shows us how long God took.

As for your question of the trinity, that is the equivalent of God loving himself, which I am sure that he does, but love for ones self is very different from someone else loving you.

Get this into your head: there are three distinct persons in the Trinity, and they lack in nothing. The fullness of God's love was expressed in perfection within the relationships between the three persons of the godhead. God already knew what it was like to experience the love of another because of the relationships between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You are still saying that God was deficient in his being prior to creating man. This is dead wrong and is the kind of heresy Augustine railed againt.

 

[QuantumFlux]

I've already told you, evidence. It shows us how long God took.

Perhaps I worded my question wrong. If God is not confined by time, who is to say he did not hit the fast forward button. All of those things happened but at an extremely excellerated rate (this is obviously not what I believe happened, but in your view who is to say he didnt?).

Get this into your head: there are three distinct persons in the Trinity, and they lack in nothing. The fullness of God's love was expressed in perfection within the relationships between the three persons of the godhead. God already knew what it was like to experience the love of another because of the relationships between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You are still saying that God was deficient in his being prior to creating man. This is dead wrong and is the kind of heresy Augustine railed againt.

I'm sorry, the last I checked, the three were one, and I am not saying that the three were deficient, I am saying that God wanted love of man, so why wait? Maybe your concept of the trinity is different than mine, your's seems more polytheistic.

 

[KerrMetric]

Perhaps I worded my question wrong. If God is not confined by time, who is to say he did not hit the fast forward button. All of those things happened but at an extremely excellerated rate (this is obviously not what I believe happened, but in your view who is to say he didnt?).

Because if you accelerate physical processes then you have a problem with dissipating the energy. Like the silly arguments about accelerating radioactive decay rates - the energy released melts everything.

Now you can claim the Lord suspended the negative effects of this but then you have left science behind. I have no problem with that but I do have a problem when people argue that and pretend it is still somehow scientific.

 

[gluadys]

I can name you 4 professors that would highly disagree with that statement. In fact, they have said exactly the opposite, that it would be impossible for them to take it any other way than literal.

And I can name you 4 and more that do agree. So we still need to go to the evidence to determine whose opinion agrees with it.

What Vance may have done is compared the hebrews with all the other cultures of the time, which is a bad way to see the hebrews because they were a very different culture than the others of the time.

How? Why did the prophets spend so much time condemning the Israelites for following the ways of their neighbours if the culture was so different? The one thing Israel had that was different was their covenant with Yahweh, but they also continually broke that covenant. In most matters, their culture was very much like that of their neighbours, including the gods they worshipped and the way they understood their own literature.

I have exactly what you have, accept mine comes from as you put it, inspired scripture, while yours comes from man's wisdom.

You are making a false comparison here. You and I both have inspired scripture. You and I both have created nature. These are both revelations of the Word of God.

We both have a human interpretation of created nature, which, in respect to the creation God gave us, is partial, incomplete and imperfect and may contain erroneous conclusions. But we do the best we can to understand it correctly.

We also both have human interpretations of inspired scripture, which, in respect to God's revelation, are also partial, incomplete and imperfect and may contain erroneous conclusions. But we do the best we can to understand it correctly.

We both have an infallible revelation in scripture and in creation. And neither of us has an infallible interpretation of that revelation. Your understanding of scripture is just as much human wisdom as any scientist's understanding of creation.

It is not a choice of God's Word vs. human wisdom. Every revelation from God is apprehended with limited human faculties which means we have no revelation from God which is free of the limitations of human wisdom.

I do and I've stated my problems, perhaps it is you that doesnt understand my problems. I don't know if you have been reading from the beginning but I stated my cases against a scientific evolution in the beginning, now it has just moved into a philosophical and theological discussion.

OK. Here is what you originally set out with my comments.

1. NO, none, zero, nadda macro evolutionary fossils have ever been found for any species or cross species despite millions of dollars of archeological digs.

What does it mean to you that species evolve, not individuals? Do you understand that every fossil is a remnant of an individual organism? Since individuals do not evolve, how can you expect to find "macro evolutionary fossils" whatever they supoosed to be?

What is a "cross species"? Why do you expect to find a fossil of a "cross species"?

It would appear that this "objection" is firmly grounded in misinformation about fossils and about evolution, and so is not a valid scientific objection to evolution.

2. Evolution has never been seen. Some may say it would be impossible to see since it takes thousands and/or millions of years for something to evolve, however in the past 6000 years of history, nothing is written about anything cross species.

Evolution has been seen. There is a very comprehensive description of observed evolution in an easily accessible book called The Beak of the Finch. It is not true at all that evolution takes a long time. It may take a long time from point A to point Z, but observed evolution from point A to point B does not.

Again, what do you mean by "cross species" and what relevance do they have to evolution?

I suspect that this objection is grounded in a misunderstanding of what evolution is, and is therefore not a valid scientific objection to evolution.

3. The cambrian period is not a period that evolutionists like to talk about. It has what many referr to as the "Cambrian Explosion". It is dubbed that because pre-cambrian period you find little more than worms and sluggs, very undeveloped life forms, then in a compact period of time, BAM you see fully formed crabs and insects and other fully developed life forms. One could say that we merely havent found the fossils yet, however, if you do your research you find even the top evolutionists saying that its highly improbable that they wouldnt have found some in all the digs they have done.

All life forms are fully developed. The oldest fossil bacteria--some 7 times older than Cambrian fossils--are fully developed bacteria. Worms and slugs are not undeveloped. They are fully developed, complex animals.

The "compact time" you are referring to is compact only on the scale of geological time. In terms of a human lifetime, it is not compact at all since it is on the order of 70 million years. And you do not find crabs or insects or any modern species in Cambrian deposits. You find trilobites and crinoids and ancient corals (of a different type than modern corals) and other Cambrian species. You do not find vertebrate animals of any type--not even fish. You do not find terrestrial animals of any type. Nor plants with true roots and leaves in either earth or sea--only algae.

This objection is based on insufficient information about Cambrian, pre-Cambrian and post-Cambrian fossils and is not a valid scientific objection to evolution.

4. The origin of the species sounds something like this: "in an unknown substance, in an unknown atmosphere, under unknown conditions, an unknown living substance was created" Im sorry, how is that scientific again?

This is not about the origin of species, but about the origin of the first living things. So it is an objection to abiogenesis, not to evolution. Evolution does not include theories about the origin of the first living species. It is about changes in already existing species.

I stand by what I said. You have no scientific objections to evolution. What you have is a great deal of misinformation about evolution which leads you to look for the wrong kind of evidence. In some cases, the evidence you are looking for would actually disprove evolution.

It is your science. You can debate it all you want but there are some very educated people out there (not all of them christian) that do not believe in evolution for scientific reasons.

I have not yet found one person, including very educated people, including those with PhDs in science, who do not accept evolution for scientific reasons. Every one that has been named objects to evolution for religious or philosophical reasons, not for scientific reasons. They do not offer scientific reasons for not accepting evolution.

Until you can get all scientists to agree, it will continue to be your science. For example, all scientists agree that atoms exist, no question, but there are a great many scientists that do not believe in evolution. You have no agreement amongst the studied, so until then, it will be your science.

Since the only dissenters are a small group who are biased on non-scientific grounds, there is an overwhelming consensus on scientific grounds, accepted by scientists of all cultures, nations, and faiths (or non-faiths) world-wide. Where there is no bias, the agreement is solid.

 

[QuantumFlux]

Because if you accelerate physical processes then you have a problem with dissipating the energy. Like the silly arguments about accelerating radioactive decay rates - the energy released melts everything.

Oh wow, you are so right, I'm sorry, I forgot that God couldn't possibly compensate for that.

Now you can claim the Lord suspended the negative effects of this but then you have left science behind. I have no problem with that but I do have a problem when people argue that and pretend it is still somehow scientific.

At what point did you think I was trying to make creation scientific?

 

[QuantumFlux]

It is not a choice of God's Word vs. human wisdom. Every revelation from God is apprehended with limited human faculties which means we have no revelation from God which is free of the limitations of human wisdom.

It most certainly is since God's word has a very descriptive 6 day creation, Jesus seemse to believe that humans have been around since the beginning. At that point, its evolution vs. God's word. Keep bringing up that culture that understood it to be a myth and I'll keep ignoring it, because they obviously took it as it was read and you have no evidence to prove otherwise besides a very few christian theologians that dont appear until after the 5th century.

Again, what do you mean by "cross species" and what relevance do they have to evolution?

Apparently we have very diffent ideas of macroevolution. All that you spoke of that was observed falls into microevolution or more accurately called adaptation. Cross species as you called it is pretty much what macroevolution is. If one species did not come from another species then evolution is not even worth paying attention to. The origin of the species most certainly does fall into the evolutionary theory since the theory is that all life has evolved from a common ancestor.

What we have not observed is one species (such as reptiles) evolving into another species (such as a bird or mammal). Birds have always been birds, mammals have always been mammals.

Are we really going to get back on this? I mean if you want to i guess, but man our points were beat to death.

Since the only dissenters are a small group who are biased on non-scientific grounds, there is an overwhelming consensus on scientific grounds, accepted by scientists of all cultures, nations, and faiths (or non-faiths) world-wide. Where there is no bias, the agreement is solid.

I don't think so, if that were so, I guess the earth was flat until a couple hundred years ago. And it is probably not as small of a group as you think it is. There is no such thing as a non-biased ground in evolutionary science. Evolutionists assume evolution is true and will fight to the death for it. Keep telling yourself its non-bias, but I'm not buying it.

 

[KerrMetric]

At what point did you think I was trying to make creation scientific?

I didn't say you were. I was saying that the entire goofy army of groups like ICR and AIG are trying to do this.

 

[QuantumFlux]

so if you aren't trying to be scientific then there is no argument against my case. God could have sped the process up and you lack any evidence that He didn't.

My idea of creation is more miraculous. My definition of a miracle is anything that happens outside of natural processes and physics. God has no reason to bind his actions (such as creation) with our boundaries of physics.

 

[KerrMetric]

God could have sped the process up and you lack any evidence that He didn't.

This statement has no meaning. If he did speed the process up then by definition he can't have left evidence because it isn't there. However, isn't it more likely such a speeding up did not occur.

 

[QuantumFlux]

This statement has no meaning. If he did speed the process up then by definition he can't have left evidence because it isn't there. However, isn't it more likely such a speeding up did not occur.

considering he said a 6 day creation, I'd say it's more likely that he did speed it up (this is all just making a point, I don't believe he sped it up). The point here is you say that science points to an old earth.... well duh, it should considering he made a mature earth.

I'm sure if master chief could talk in Halo he would say the environment that he was in looked older than a year, however, he would be wrong considering that it was programmed in about a month, but it was programmed to look old.

It is impossible to prove this theory wrong, but this is what it does do. It aligns the bible and the evidence we see around us that makes the earth look old. It doesn't align with evolution though, so don't think I'm taking it that far.

 

[theFijian]

At what point did you think I was trying to make creation scientific?

The point where you were asking for evidence.

 

[Scholar in training]

I didn't say you were. I was saying that the entire goofy army of groups like ICR and AIG are trying to do this.

Answers in Genesis is not all bad. While I disagree with their stance on YECism, they have published a few good articles from time to time.

 

[KerrMetric]

Answers in Genesis is not all bad. While I disagree with their stance on YECism, they have published a few good articles from time to time.

I guess I have read every article they have ever posted on their website since it opened a few years ago, and I have yet to see a single one that was 'good' except maybe their critique of Kent Hovind.