Why I don't believe in evolution...

The Barbarian

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If you mean all the ideas people have had about how life forms change, I suppose there would be some unusual ones among them.

Yes. By the time Darwin became a scientist, many scientists had come to the conclusion that some kind of evolution must have occurred. Darwin's great discovery was in learning how it worked.
 
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Job 33:6

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Since evolution is observed to be happening everywhere there are living things, you might as well ask the Bible [to] refute thunderstorms.

This couldn't have been worded any better.
 
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Sam Saved by Grace

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Ahh ok I see the problem now. My position is contrary to your’s so your going to refuse to acknowledge it. That’s fine.
Exactly. And it's almost as if some folks believe we need their approval to believe as we do. They are ever ready to teach, but will never accept correction themselves. They are lifted up in the vanity of their own minds.

Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures...

That sounds like naturalism to me.

For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.

If you look at what all a person has posted on this site, it becomes abundantly clear where that person's heart is. And some people are not interested in defending the Word of God. Some people are not seeking to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. They are here to spout their twisted agenda.

I haven't made a study of it, but I have noticed a strong correlation between "Christians" who espouse evolution and those who support keeping churches shut down because of Covid. And those who consider abortion clinics essential while considering church non-essential are devils. In these last days there are a lot of people trying to come in among us, into our churches, bringing divisive racism and doctrines of demons. Claiming to be woke, they are actually completely dead, as espouse gay marriage, abortion, reverse racism, evolution, and every other worldly, wicked doctrine under the sun. We must never fellowship with such people. We must always stay strong in the faith, as these days are growing darker.

The Bible tells us "that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these..." The Bible goes on to say that such men are "always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth...." Men of "depraved minds, rejected in regard to the faith. But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all."

Stay strong in the faith. We must hold fast to those things which are holy, right, and true. In this wicked, apostate society, we are surrounded by those who call evil good, and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.

In the end, the Lord Jesus Christ, the thrice Holy Son of the Living God, will be glorified above all things in the presence of all. His righteousness and holiness will shine forth. Those who love evil will gnash their teeth at Him, but will be cast into hellfire. On that day, those believers who love and practice righteousness, who delight in the law of God in the inward man, will be vindicated.
 
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J_B_

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Yes. By the time Darwin became a scientist, many scientists had come to the conclusion that some kind of evolution must have occurred. Darwin's great discovery was in learning how it worked.

I've always been amazed by what engineers accomplished in the generations before I came on the scene - the things they did without the use of modern computing power. Still, they also did some cringy things, and modern computing is the tool that has helped me convince people to change.

If I had another lifetime to spend, I think I'd enjoy branching out beyond engineering - maybe get a degree in biology for example to see if my modeling skills would apply there - if the potential I see for improvement would bear fruit. But then I remember the catch of naturalism and think ... nah.
 
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Job 33:6

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Exactly. And it's almost as if some folks believe we need their approval to believe as we do.

The guy is proposing that advanced technology should have been developed hundreds of thousands of years ago, but he's not actually giving an evidence based argument for why that ought to be.

Then when I said I don't agree (because the evidence suggests that cavemen weren't carving equations of general relativity and quantum physics into cave walls), he says that im refusing to acknowledge his beliefs simply because I disagree with young earth creationism.

But the evidence doesn't go both ways. Either cave men knew quantum mechanics or they didn't. And if they didn't, this implies that historically people didn't advance as fast as he thinks they should have.

But he never really says why he thinks reality should be any different. Why should a cave man who doesn't have modern medicine, who risks his life hunting megafauna, who doesn't have mail and email and computers etc. Why should we expect this kind of individual to invent satellites 200,000 years ago?

Why have that expectation for cavemen to invent advanced technology, but also, what evidence is there for that expedited invention in a mere brief 6,000 years?

His position is very strange. It isn't made with use of evidence, but rather its just a broad subjective idea.

As a geologist, I could very easily point to the 5 million varves of the green river formation and could ask how 13,000 varves could form per day (for 365 straight days), while simultaneously preserving animal trackways, nests and feeding traces (implying that life casually roamed amongst this depositional environment). Or I could point to the fossil Grove site of upright petrified trees with animal trackways around their base, rooted in paleosols midway through carboniferous strata, which only could have grown in situ yet rests midway vertically up the geologic column, and I could easily conclude that logically there is no way for such features to form in a mere 6,000 years.

The evidence really only goes one way. So when we look at the timeline of human invention, evidence implies that it really did take us millions of years to invent satellites and nuclear weapons. But what does the opposition offer? They don't have any refutation. They just have broad and subjective ideas. "I think this should be the case" but never really a clear argument as to why they think so.
 
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The Barbarian

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I've always been amazed by what engineers accomplished in the generations before I came on the scene - the things they did without the use of modern computing power. Still, they also did some cringy things, and modern computing is the tool that has helped me convince people to change.

If I had another lifetime to spend, I think I'd enjoy branching out beyond engineering - maybe get a degree in biology for example to see if my modeling skills would apply there - if the potential I see for improvement would bear fruit. But then I remember the catch of naturalism and think ... nah.

Actually, there is a branch of engineering that does what you're thinking about. Genetic algorithms copy evolutionary processes to solve engineering problems that are too complex for design to solve.

SAE International:
2003-05-19

Genetic Algorithms Optimization of Diesel Engine Emissions and Fuel Efficiency with Air Swirl, EGR,Injection Timing and Multiple Injections 2003-01-1853

The present study extends the recently developed HIDECS-GA computer code to optimize diesel engine emissions and fuel economy with the existing techniques, such as exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and multiple injections.
A computational model of diesel engines named HIDECS is incorporated with the genetic algorithm (GA) to solve multi-objective optimization problems related to engine design. The phenomenological model, HIDECS code is used for analyzing the emissions and performance of a diesel engine. An extended Genetic Algorithm called the ‘Neighborhood Cultivation Genetic Algorithm’ (NCGA) is used as an optimizer due to its ability to derive the solutions with high accuracy effectively.
In this paper, the HIDECS-NCGA methodology is used to optimize engine emissions and economy, simultaneously. The multiple injection patterns are included, along with the start of injection timing, and EGR rate. It is found that the combination of HIDECS and NCGA is efficient and low in computational costs. The Pareto optimum solutions obtained from HIDECS-NCGA are very useful to the engine designers. They show that it is possible to reduce emissions without increasing the fuel consumption by the optimization of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and multiple injections.

Turns out, God had it right once again; evolutionary processes work better than design for really complicated things. Engineers noticed and their evolutionary simulations paid off.


There's a biological field like that, too. Population genetics is a highly mathematical discipline, that uses numerous models to learn more about the way evolution works.

One of the simple ones, the Hardy-Weinbert model, is a simple, but useful way to detect selective pressure in a population:

POPULATION GENETICS AND THE HARDY-WEINBERG LAW
Principles of Biology/hardwein.html


And you might be interested to know that Claude Shannon first applied his information theory to biological systems. It's still used to measure the genetic information of a population.

IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine : the Quarterly Magazine of the Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society, 01 Jan 2006, 25(1):30-33
Claude Shannon: biologist. The founder of information theory used biology to formulate the channel capacity.
Recent work using information theory to understand molecular biology has unearthed a curious fact: Shannon’s channel capacity theorem only applies
to living organisms and their products, such as communications channels and molecular machines that make choices from several possibilities. Information theory is therefore a theory about biology, and Shannon was a biologist.
 
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Sam Saved by Grace

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The guy is proposing that advanced technology should have been developed hundreds of thousands of years ago, but he's not actually giving an evidence based argument for why that ought to be.

Then when I said I don't agree (because the evidence suggests that cavemen weren't carving equations of general relativity and quantum physics into cave walls), he says that im refusing to acknowledge his beliefs simply because I disagree with young earth creationism.

But the evidence doesn't go both ways. Either cave men knew quantum mechanics or they didn't. And if they didn't, this implies that historically people didn't advance as fast as he thinks they should have.

But he never really says why he thinks reality should be any different. Why should a cave man who doesn't have modern medicine, who risks his life hunting megafauna, who doesn't have mail and email and computers etc. Why should we expect this kind of individual to invent satellites 200,000 years ago?

Why have that expectation for cavemen to invent advanced technology, but also, what evidence is there for that expedited invention in a mere brief 6,000 years?

His position is very strange. It isn't made with use of evidence, but rather its just a broad subjective idea.

As a geologist, I could very easily point to the 5 million varves of the green river formation and could ask how 13,000 varves could form per day (for 365 straight days), while simultaneously preserving animal trackways, nests and feeding traces (implying that life casually roamed amongst this depositional environment). Or I could point to the fossil Grove site of upright petrified trees with animal trackways around their base, rooted in paleosols midway through carboniferous strata, which only could have grown in situ yet rests midway vertically up the geologic column, and I could easily conclude that logically there is no way for such features to form in a mere 6,000 years.

The evidence really only goes one way. So when we look at the timeline of human invention, evidence implies that it really did take us millions of years to invent satellites and nuclear weapons. But what does the opposition offer? They don't have any refutation. They just have broad and subjective ideas. "I think this should be the case" but never really a clear argument as to why they think so.
I have actually thought about that myself, though. According to darwinism, it took millions and millions of years for man to evolve to his current form. So for the past 200,000-250,000 years or so, we have been very close to our current form. Yet, that is a whole lot of nothing for such a relatively advanced specimen. And this has nothing to do with learning to split the atom. We are talking relatively simple things.

Here, let's use the 24 hour analogy again - for the sake of the illustration, let's say man has been at his current state for 200,000 years:

At midnight, the clock starts, as homo sapiens arrive on the scene. Progress is extremely slow, and at 10:30pm, we barely qualify as hunter-gatherer. And then all of a sudden, starting at about 10:45pm, we have recorded history, the wheel, and civilization, and this progresses on up through the information age to the current time of midnight, where we have split the atom, invented the world wide web, and walked on the moon.

Yea, call me incredulous.
 
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The Barbarian

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I have actually thought about that myself, though. According to darwinism, it took millions and millions of years for man to evolve to his current form.

According to YE creationists familiar with the evidence, that's what the evidence indicates. Would you like to see that?

So for the past 200,000-250,000 years or so, we have been very close to our current form.

Yep. Our post-cranial skeleton hasn't changed much. Skulls have, however. Neanderthals, apparently smart enough to thrive in areas in which anatomically modern humans had difficulty surviving, were culturally very conservative, as opposed to anatomically modern humans, who were constantly changing their weapons and tools. We don't know why.

Still, details in shoulder anatomy (for example) may explain why Neanderthals did not use projectile weapons while anatomically modern humans of the same time did use them.

American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Neandertal scapular glenoid morphology
Steven E. Churchill, Erik Trinkaus,

Abstract

Analysis of Neandertal and recent human scapular glenoid fossae reveals that the former had long, narrow, and flat glenoid articular surfaces relative to those of modern humans. Comparison of glenoid length, breadth, and curvature to humeral articular dimensions demonstrates that Neandertal glenoid length and curvature scale to proximal and distal humeral articular dimensions in the same manner as those of modern humans. The remaining contrast is in the relatively greater glenoid fossa width seen in modern humans. This difference in morphology implies differences in the habitual degree of dorsoventral glenohumeral movement between Neandertals and modern humans. This in turn may be related to contrasts in tool use, especially with respect to throwing and projectile use.

This is just one example showing that rather minor differences in anatomy and development can account for significant differences in behavior.


 
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Job 33:6

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I have actually thought about that myself, though. According to darwinism, it took millions and millions of years for man to evolve to his current form. So for the past 200,000-250,000 years or so, we have been very close to our current form. Yet, that is a whole lot of nothing for such a relatively advanced specimen. And this has nothing to do with learning to split the atom. We are talking relatively simple things.

Here, let's use the 24 hour analogy again - for the sake of the illustration, let's say man has been at his current state for 200,000 years:

At midnight, the clock starts, as homo sapiens arrive on the scene. Progress is extremely slow, and at 10:30pm, we barely qualify as hunter-gatherer. And then all of a sudden, starting at about 10:45pm, we have recorded history, the wheel, and civilization, and this progresses on up through the information age to the current time of midnight, where we have split the atom, invented the world wide web, and walked on the moon.

Yea, call me incredulous.

Well we did talk about some simple advances. For example, mankind was using Spears and sharpened weapons over a hundred thousand years ago. Pottery and agriculture some 20,000 years ago as well. But he didn't accept these technological advances.

Early man over 200,000 years ago had things like hammers and blades. Hand axes and grinding tools.

There were simple things around long ago, simple inventions. Simple tools.

But this just wasn't enough. Maybe the individual wanted to see cars? Planes? A steel foundry?

Why is it so strange that people might have a scientific revolution? One minute we could barely get into space (the 70s), the next minute we are launching tens of thousands of satellites in a single year (Tesla's spaceX). Is this not equally strange?

One day we might think that the elements are earth, wind, fire and water (the Romans beliefs in 50AD?), The next we are using chromatography to identify the elements of stars 10 billion light-years away (1980s?).

In medicine, one minute we attribute disease to witchcraft (1700s?), and the next minute we are using crispr to replace nucleotides in the human genome to fight disease (today).

Are these advances that just recently happened not equally odd to you? That we might go from witchcraft to microscopic genomic surgery In the last second of the clock?

But alas, at the end of the day, no matter how odd it might seem to any of us, this is just how it's played out. The evidence is what it is. Why Abraham and Job or Samson or Tertius didn't write about subatomic particles, is anyone's guess. Some things people of the past simply didn't know.

Agriculture played a huge role in buying us time to ponder things and some might ask well, why didnt we think of these things 2 billion years ago? Well, of course reptiles don't have minds like we do. Nor do birds nor fish, so in our most humble of origins, there's no reason to think that we should have just instantly known anything. We had to learn at some point.

Anyway, it's just incredulity. Alternatively, we are well aware that evidence for an old earth is absurdly insurmountable. The evidence for the timeline of human advances just is what it is. Why people didn't think of these things sooner? Well, people don't know what they don't know. We can't even ask about things that we don't know about because we don't know what to even ask. Especially back in the stone age.

Moving on.
 
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Sam Saved by Grace

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Well we did talk about some simple advances. For example, mankind was using Spears and sharpened weapons over a hundred thousand years ago. Pottery and agriculture some 20,000 years ago as well. But he didn't accept these technological advances.

Early man over 200,000 years ago had things like hammers and blades. Hand axes and grinding tools.

There were simple things around long ago, simple inventions. Simple tools.

But this just wasn't enough. Maybe the individual wanted to see cars? Planes? A steel foundry?

Why is it so strange that people might have a scientific revolution? One minute we could barely get into space (the 70s), the next minute we are launching tens of thousands of satellites in a single year (Tesla's spaceX). Is this not equally strange?

One day we might think that the elements are earth, wind, fire and water (the Romans beliefs in 50AD?), The next we are using chromatography to identify the elements of stars 10 billion light-years away (1980s?).

In medicine, one minute we attribute disease to witchcraft (1700s?), and the next minute we are using crispr to replace nucleotides in the human genome to fight disease (today).

Are these advances that just recently happened not equally odd to you? That we might go from witchcraft to microscopic genomic surgery In the last second of the clock?

But alas, at the end of the day, no matter how odd it might seem to any of us, this is just how it's played out. The evidence is what it is. Why Abraham and Job or Samson or Tertius didn't write about subatomic particles, is anyone's guess. Some things people of the past simply didn't know.

Agriculture played a huge role in buying us time to ponder things and some might ask well, why didnt we think of these things 2 billion years ago? Well, of course reptiles don't have minds like we do. Nor do birds nor fish, so in our most humble of origins, there's no reason to think that we should have just instantly known anything. We had to learn at some point.

Anyway, it's just incredulity. Alternatively, we are well aware that evidence for an old earth is absurdly insurmountable. The evidence for the timeline of human advances just is what it is. Why people didn't think of these things sooner? Well, people don't know what they don't know. We can't even ask about things that we don't know about because we don't know what to even ask. Especially back in the stone age.

Moving on.
There is quite a big difference between a couple of hundred years and 180,000+ years. That it took modern man over 150,000 years to learn that mud can be formed and left to dry into pots and pans while this very same man was able to go from strapping simple explosives on dogs to computerized drones in less than 75 years, and the printing press to the internet in less than 600 years, is an inconsistency that strikes me as particularly glaring. Think about it, it took modern man almost 200,000 years to learn that four rounded stones, two axles and a chassis strapped to several horses can create faster travel. Yet this same man was able to progress from the development of turbines to advanced rocketry in less than 150 years, and was able to go from "horseless carriages" to walking on the moon in less than 80 years.

Again I note that 190,000 years is an awful long time to remain in the dark for a specimen of such vast potential.
 
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Sam Saved by Grace

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Ok, let's assume that evolution is true and that we share a common ancestry with apes, and that we've been in our current form for over 200,000 years.

When did sin enter into the world? Was there sin (murder, stealing, lying, adultery, etc) during those 200,000 years? What about death?

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. Romans 5:12-14

Who was this one man? At what point does he come into the picture? Jesus referred to Adam and Eve as real people. Not to mention, Jesus is why restoration and freedom from sin is available to everyone, just as Adam is the reason that sin and death came into the world and afflicted everyone. Please explain at what point sin and death entered into the world.

Please explain Noah and the flood, as this event was referenced by the Lord Jesus Christ who compared it with the end of the world. The Bible tells us that the three sons of Noah went on to birth the three races of people - Ham, the Africans (Blacks)...Shem, the Asiatics (Arabs, Jews, and Orientals)...and Japheth, the seafaring peoples (Europeans and Turks). Is the Bible wrong? After all, according to science, the Jews came from the Canaanites, who were Hamites. And supposedly all humans descended from a dark skinned East African people, with whom modern Africans share the highest number of genetic markers. This explicitly contradicts the Bible. Completely. What do you believe?

A good example of how methodological naturalism can produce lies can be observed by the dating of the New Testament. Here is an example of the way these scholars think: We know that because the destruction of the temple and the siege of Jerusalem was prophesied by Jesus in great detail, the Gospel of Mark must have been written after 70 AD (we are far too intelligent to believe in something like prophecy). And because the Gospel of Mark came first, we know that the other Gospels must have been written well after 70 AD. We know that the Gospel of Mark came before Matthew, because Matthew contains the same prophecy fabricated by the author of Mark, but is much longer and more likely to have incorporated other sources. And because they were written so late, they could not have been written by the actual disciples of Jesus. Likewise, we know that there must have been a Q source and an L source, because we know that there is no such thing as a Holy Spirit which brings all things back to the disciples' remembrance as Jesus supposedly promised. So naturally, the similarities and common factors must be explained by another source. This makes it possible that the Gospels may not have been completed until the 2nd century. Furthermore, the epistle of 2 Thessalonians makes reference to fabricated prophecies of Mark and Matthew, therefore we know that those epistles must have been written much later by an imposter using Paul's name, as Paul died before the destruction of the temple.

They do the same with the old testament. Isaiah, Daniel, and many books in the Bible have been maligned and disputed by scholars who attempt to discredit the Word of God by employing methodological naturalism. And they just keep building and building, theories based on theories based on assumptions. And then when I am outreaching, someone tells me that they don't believe in Jesus because the gospels were written so late. This is the kind of circular reasoning that methodological naturalism produces. Not just in biblical studies, but in all the sciences. It is a house of cards - cards built upon cards - and it all seems reasonable and solid as long as you are viewing it through the correct angle. But it is a very strong delusion.
 
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Actually, there is a branch of engineering that does what you're thinking about. Genetic algorithms copy evolutionary processes to solve engineering problems that are too complex for design to solve.

I'm aware of it, and have used it. It depends on the problem you're solving whether it works, and most optimization schemes (including genetic algorithms) require some human guidance to achieve anything meaningful ... an analogy that could be used to argue the need for God's creative intervention were it not for the fact that "genetic algorithm" is more a label and only involves concepts similar to those in biology rather than actually mimicking biological processes.

I meant something more along the lines of getting involved with computational biology. A few years ago I invested a significant chunk of time into that topic - enough to realize the field had gone farther than I once thought ... and enough to find things I didn't like about it.
 
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Job 33:6

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There is quite a big difference between a couple of hundred years and 180,000+ years. That it took modern man over 150,000 years to learn that mud can be formed and left to dry into pots and pans while this very same man was able to go from strapping simple explosives on dogs to computerized drones in less than 75 years, and the printing press to the internet in less than 600 years, is an inconsistency that strikes me as particularly glaring. Think about it, it took modern man almost 200,000 years to learn that four rounded stones, two axles and a chassis strapped to several horses can create faster travel. Yet this same man was able to progress from the development of turbines to advanced rocketry in less than 150 years, and was able to go from "horseless carriages" to walking on the moon in less than 80 years.

Again I note that 190,000 years is an awful long time to remain in the dark for a specimen of such vast potential.

Four rounded stones strapped to what horses? The ones that weren't domesticated? The ones that they could just walk to the local store and purchase? Imagine trying to strap a saddle to a wild undomesticated rhinoceros and trying to ride it. Or a wild bull. If you think bull riding is dangerous today, imagine 200,000 years ago when bulls were significantly larger and more dangerous. wild aurochs.

And remember, people back then didn't have tranquilizer weapons either. If they wanted to ride a horse, they had to risk their life in the process. No modern medicine to help them if the got kicked. No surgery or casts if they broke a bone. If you get injured trying to ride that wild horse, you're as good as dead. And then we might ask, where would they even want to ride to? On what roads? To what villages?

Even domestication itself would take thousands of years of intentional selective breeding. Or taming and teaching etc. It's the manipulation of genetic traits that unfolds in the species of animal.

And not only that but, it's not like people even knew that animals could be domesticated. It's not like they sat around talking about how if they just kept breeding the right animals or kept being friendly to certain animals that eventually they'd let us ride them. They didn't have language to even sit around talking about such ideas, let alone would they even think to carry such ideas out.

Just like when reading scripture, we need to put our thoughts into context. It's too easy for us to take these things for granted because they seem simple for us. But for people 200,000 years ago, doing something as simple as riding a horse wasn't so simple.

Like I said, there are people who still live in the Amazon jungle in loin cloths. Learning and growing in knowledge just isn't as simple as you're making it out to be.
 
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Four rounded stones strapped to what horses? The ones that weren't domesticated? The ones that they could just walk to the local store and purchase? Imagine trying to strap a saddle to a wild undomesticated rhinoceros and trying to ride it. Or a wild bull. If you think bull riding is dangerous today, imagine 200,000 years ago when bulls were significantly larger and more dangerous. wild aurochs.

And remember, people back then didn't have tranquilizer weapons either. If they wanted to ride a horse, they had to risk their life in the process. No modern medicine to help them if the got kicked. No surgery or casts if they broke a bone. If you get injured trying to ride that wild horse, you're as good as dead. And then we might ask, where would they even want to ride to? On what roads? To what villages?

Even domestication itself would take thousands of years of intentional selective breeding. Or taming and teaching etc. It's the manipulation of genetic traits that unfolds in the species of animal.

And not only that but, it's not like people even knew that animals could be domesticated. It's not like they sat around talking about how if they just kept breeding the right animals or kept being friendly to certain animals that eventually they'd let us ride them. They didn't have language to even sit around talking about such ideas, let alone would they even think to carry such ideas out.

Just like when reading scripture, we need to put our thoughts into context. It's too easy for us to take these things for granted because they seem simple for us. But for people 200,000 years ago, doing something as simple as riding a horse wasn't so simple.

Like I said, there are people who still live in the Amazon jungle in loin cloths. Learning and growing in knowledge just isn't as simple as you're making it out to be.

And here's another interesting thought as well. As far as I'm aware, horses were not even native to Africa where homosapiens were 200,000 years ago. Did mankind even have wild horses to tame to begin with?
 
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The Barbarian

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I'm aware of it, and have used it. It depends on the problem you're solving whether it works, and most optimization schemes (including genetic algorithms) require some human guidance to achieve anything meaningful ...

Not "guidance" but initial conditions and rules. Pretty much the way God set the initial conditions and the rules from which everything else would unfold from His creation as He commanded. It doesn't go to the molecular biology level, but it fits nicely into the principles of Mendel's genetics.

an analogy that could be used to argue the need for God's creative intervention were it not for the fact that "genetic algorithm" is more a label and only involves concepts similar to those in biology rather than actually mimicking biological processes.

It rather precisely fits Darwin's four points that explain how evolutionary processes work in nature.

Simulations of evolutionary processes are not exactly new, nor are they difficult to match up to what happens in nature.
 
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The Barbarian

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When did sin enter into the world? Was there sin (murder, stealing, lying, adultery, etc) during those 200,000 years? What about death?

So when did two hominids get immortal souls and a knowledge of good and evil? God didn't tell us, did He? If it was H. erectus instead of H. sapiens, would that matter to you?

Keep in mind that the "death" God mentioned to Adam was a spiritual one, not a physical death. It was spiritual death that we brought into the world, not a physical death, as God mentions in Genesis. He told Adam he would die the day he ate from that tree, but Adam eats and lives on physically for many years thereafter. If God is truthful, then it cannot be a physical death.
 
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J_B_

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Not "guidance" but initial conditions and rules.

No, I meant guidance. I could tell stories.

Simulations of evolutionary processes are not exactly new, nor are they difficult to match up to what happens in nature.

Creative correlation always finds a way. If you think I'm attacking evolution, I'm not. Though I think I indicated my position, correlation issues are nothing unique to biology and don't indicate any kind of crisis in the field. It's just part and parcel of doing science.

It rather precisely fits Darwin's four points that explain how evolutionary processes work in nature.

What 4 points would those be? I'm not familiar with a 4 point list.
 
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The Barbarian

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No, I meant guidance. I could tell stories.

Many years ago, the AF decided to use a rational computer algorithm to determine the location of the AF academy. The first run didn't look very good, so they added some constraints. Then more. Then more.

Finally, they added the constraint that it had to be within 45 miles of Colorado Springs, and a rational solution was obtained.

None of the genetic algorithms I've seen, work that way.
 
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The Barbarian

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What 4 points would those be? I'm not familiar with a 4 point list.

1. More are born than can live (lots of feasible but suboptimal solutions)

2. Every individual is somewhat different than its parents (random changes in newly-generated feasible solutions)

3. Some of these differences affect the likelihood of surviving long enough to reproduce (some will be better than existing feasible solutions and will be the parents of the randomly-changed solutions of the next round)

4. These differences accumulate over time and tend to increase fitness. (surviving better solutions tend to converge on an optimum solution)

There is, BTW, no guarantee that it will converge on an optimum solution. It merely tends to do so. In some cases, increasing fitness can actually lead to population extinction (for instance, where males that are most successful in breeding with females, tend to have few or defective offspring).

Usually, it works though.
 
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Sam Saved by Grace

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So when did two hominids get immortal souls and a knowledge of good and evil? God didn't tell us, did He? If it was H. erectus instead of H. sapiens, would that matter to you?

Keep in mind that the "death" God mentioned to Adam was a spiritual one, not a physical death. It was spiritual death that we brought into the world, not a physical death, as God mentions in Genesis. He told Adam he would die the day he ate from that tree, but Adam eats and lives on physically for many years thereafter. If God is truthful, then it cannot be a physical death.
That's a good point. In that instance it was in fact a spiritual death to which God was referring. However, the fact remains that physical death is also a result of sin. It is written, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned, and, "the wages of sin is death..." To deny that physical death is a result of sin is to deny the atonement of Jesus Christ. That's what makes the death of Jesus Christ so incredible. The Bible says, "the soul that sinneth shall die", yet...He didn't sin. Jesus Christ lived a life of perfect, sinless obedience to God. Yet, He died. He actually died. This is what paid the penalty of our sins. He died in our place, paying for our sins. And because He is risen, we who are in Christ will rise from the dead (we have already been raised spiritually). Sin is to do with all encompassing death. Both physical and spiritual death are the result of sin in our mortal bodies. The Word of God is clear.

So I really don't see how death could spread to all because of one man - or how sin could spread to all because of one man - if evolution is true. Did some half-ape man disobey God, and then God say, "OK, so even though it was you who messed up, all the others alive today are also sinners because of you."? I think not. And just so you know, mitochondrial Eve and Y Adam lived in completely different time periods, so that answer won't work.
 
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