Why I post, or Yes, you can be a Christian and accept evolution!

[Vance]

By the way, thanks for helping keep this thread near the top. I think the OP is very important for new visitors to read, and it is very helpful to have the discussion continue so that first page will get more readers.

So your belief about evolution has taken you to the point of not knowing which people within a Hebrew geneology are real and which are fictious. Have you ever read about how fanatical the Hebrews were and are about their geneologies..

It has not "taken me to the point", it is simply the most likely reading of the text. And yes, I know exactly how they feel about their genealogies. Funny that they are the ones just as likely to read it the way I do.

If Abraham was real, then who was his father, and grandfather. Are we told? Yes we are. If Shem was real then who was his father? Are we told? Yes, Noah.

You seemed to have missed the point. The point is that it doesn't matter when the historical merges with the non-historical. Or, they could all be historical, and their stories are just figurative or partly so. The point is that it simply does not matter since the truth of the message is the same regardless. God can present it any way He wants. Don't you agree with that?

Please openly provide proof, lexical or otherwise that the infomation provided about Noah is allegorical. Can you do this? What proofs lead you to this position?

Prove that it is literal. And proving that it is literal requires proving that a literal flood took place within the last 4,000 years. I can definitely provide stronger evidence that it did not occur than you can provide that it did. What led me to the belief, though, was a number of things. First, and foremost, was the realizations that the Israelites themselves would not have necessarily viewed it as strictly historical in the way we do. They did not view their past that way. So, there was no absolute requirement for it to be literal from that standpoint. Second, the fact that the flood stories of Sumer predate the writing of the story in the Bible, so it is much more likely that the Biblical narrative came from that source, through Abraham who lived in that area, and would have grown up on that story. Third, the simple fact that a global flood did not take place.

So, that leaves us with a number of possibilities. First, the Biblical version could be the original and the Sumerian just a variation of it, or the other way around (although it would seem odd that it would first be Noah, then the Sumerian version, then back to Noah, but it could be, I suppose. Regardless, it is almost assuredly based on a local flood event, expanded to convey the truths that God wants for us.

Do you realise that Noah was alive for 58 years of Abraham's life. Do you think that Abraham might have been able to verirfy the stories of Noah by asking him directly?

Begging a bunch of questions there.

This passage is JESUS SPEAKING. Do you think HE was talking about a figurative Noah? Do you think HE was speaking about a past event that never happened? Was Jesus lying? Especially after saying "Truly, I say to you".
Was Jesus wrong?

No, Jesus was not wrong, and yes, I think He it is very possible He was speaking of a figurative Noah. If Noah was historical, though, that still does not require a local flood.

Do you think he might have been speaking about a real flood event, that was known to the people as a real event, and would have been understood by them as real? At what point in history did the flood become 'figurative'.?

I think He was speaking about the story of the flood known to all of them and which conveyed important truths about God's relationship to Man. This does not require that it be historical or not, and you seem to keep forgetting that the audience He was speaking to did not view their past in that way, as either literal history or "false" stories. While the flood story may have derived out of a local flood, it was told as a global flood, but it's historicity was not what was important. It was the message that was true regardless.

By the way, please explain by what piece of scholarship I am supposed to know 'only from the text' that a piece of Scripture is figurative. Please provide examples.

I have explained all this to you in the past, but you keep ignoring what I say and asking the same questions. Why should I bother to go over it all again and again?

Also which of the characters in Hebrews 11 are real and which are figurative. How do you tell the difference? Was the writer of Hebrews inspired by the Holy Spirit or not?

Yes, the writers of all the Scriptures were inspired by God. As for the characters, again, it does not matter which were historical. Not one little bit, since the message of their story is true regardless of their historicity. They could possibly all be historical, but it does not matter. This is not a case like Jesus, where His actual human life and death were not only essential to our salvation, but where the style of the narratives is not in the epic, mythic or poetic (as in early Genesis), but direct eyewitness accounts overlaid with some allegory in John. If you can't see the difference in style between Genesis 1 and Mark, then I am afraid this conversation is useless.

So was Enoch figurative? Noah? Lot?
Was the flood figurative? What about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah? What textual rules prove this?

See above. Really, though, can you not see a change in literary style between Genesis 1 and 2, the Patriarchal stories and, say, I Samuel? Do they honestly all sound like they are the same literary style? How much near eastern mythology have you read?

Was Peter not inspired by the Holy Spirit when writing this passage? Did he get it wrong? Do you think he might have been talking about a real event?

Yes, Peter was inspired by the Holy Spirit, but what passage are you referrign to?

You see there is much more than just Genesis that leads a Christian believer to accept the reality of a global flood. The reason evolutionist so desperately want to call it false is that it explains a lot of things very logically that they would want us to believe that only evolution can explain. It also invalidates a lot of theories about geological formation.

What does evolution have to do with a global flood? I think you are getting things mixed up. It is geologists and other scientists (both Christian and non-Christian) who have provided the tons of evidence that a global flood can not have occured. If you really believe that the evidence from God's Creation supports a global flood, we might as well not even be talking.

Have you ever wondered why there is an ancient flood story in diverse cultures around the world. These cultures have only been discovered in the last few hundred years but their stories of ancient times have incredible similarity to a flood and to Babel. A common ancestry makes a lot of sense when you consider this evidence. All the way back to Noah.

A common story in many cases, yes. Stories spread well, especially good ones. Maybe even common ancestry to a certain extent assisting in the spreading of the tale of a great local flood which happened LONG before the standard dates for a Biblical flood.

 

[Vance]

Bump specifically for Jase to read.

 

[Mustaphile]

I'm not even a creationist and I am getting oodles of interesting information from this thread. I'm looking forward to further installments.

 

[artybloke]

Again, there are philosophical approaches which deny this. The best-known is that of Immanuel Kant, who makes a strong distinction between the phenomena which are perceived by our senses and the noumena or things as they really are in themselves. Can we know at all that what we sense has any connection to what is?

This is probably a tangent but:

From my understanding of Kant, he's not saying the world cannot be known; he's just saying that the world cannot be known completely through objective reasoning.

It's more a case of the real consisting of both phenomena and noumena, rather than either/or.

I don't see how you can have a belief in God or the spiritual without some idea that there are aspects of reality that reason can't go, where we walk in faith or not at all.

 

[ignorant and stupid]

I can definitely provide stronger evidence that it did not occur than you can provide that it did. What led me to the belief, though, was a number of things. First, and foremost, was the realizations that the Israelites themselves would not have necessarily viewed it as strictly historical in the way we do. They did not view their past that way

Where did you find out that the Israelites didn't view the Bible as historical? I'd like to have a look at that.

Thanks.

 

[Vance]

This has been discussed in a number of threads, but basically, the ancients did not view the stories about their past as literal history, but still as very true and important. In fact, they would never have said they were false or untrue in any sense, but their mindset was VERY different than ours (with our modern, empirical minds, which places such a massive value on "historicity" and true history as the best method of conveying information about the past) and simply did not even consider that we could know what was exactly said and done in the distant, misty past. Again, you can read more about that elsewhere on this forum, but I am not just making this stuff up. ;0) I have a degree in ancient history, and a review of ancient literature and culture supports this view.

One simple example, though. Many of the neareastern cultures had more than one story or myth about their past, and very often these contradicted each other in either chronology or detail. Now, they still believed BOTH these stories were true and told them side by side without a blink of an eye, which is something that we have a hard time getting our heads around today. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Scripture also has two different Creation accounts, which contradict each other in chronology and details, but which are BOTH believed and are BOTH considered to be true. If they are both true, but can not be both historically accurate, then the best alternative is that they should NOT be meant to be read as literal history.

[and yes, I am very well aware of all of the "workarounds" fundamentalists have come up with to conform the two accounts to each other while still retaining strict historicity, but I find that they are only convincing to someone who needs them to work in order to support a required literalness].

 

[rmwilliamsll]

Where did you find out that the Israelites didn't view the Bible as historical? I'd like to have a look at that.

Thanks.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0130448249/104-8329841-5449536?v=glance

History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction


really accessible introduction to topic.........

 

[Liberty Wing]

gluadys,

A thorough and open-minded exploration of the evidence for evolution would probably dissolve your doubt about its ability to meet the higher standard. Biologists consistently refer to the evidence in favour of evolution as "overwhelming". I would say that goes well past "beyond a reasonable doubt".

Many have a misunderstanding of parts of evolution and what parts have been proven and what parts have not. Micro-evolution has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt to a certain extent. The only changes on the molecular level are information losing, (where information is defined as specified complexity, which includes DNA) never information gaining, which is what is needed for macro-evolution to be true. Creationists know that there is these changes, but they acknowledge that not one change by mutation is ever observed to create the new information required to change a reptile into a bird or a reptile into a mammal. As such, these changes are called "varriation within a kind" by creationists. Natural selection like wise often destroys certain information that act as an disadvantage for a creature's survival in a particular environment, such as long fur dogs in a hot environment.

Basically, varriation within a kind is another word for micro-evolution. The only difference is that varriation within a kind cannot allow for any or too many up hill mutations, i.e. mutations that add brand new information to the genome. Micro-evolution is not distressed by any such mutation - the fact that we have not observed one (read Dr Lee Spetner's book "Not by Chance!" for more information, as Dr Spetner is an Israeli biophysicist who has studied mutations very carefully) new information gaining mutation is a fatal wound to macro-evolution.

The lack of this new information ensures that creatures stay true to their original created kinds (just as the Bible says) - hence the name given by creationists for these changes that we observe: varriation within a kind. Many bring up gene duplication, but this is neglectable because it doesn't add any new information to the genome - just doubles what is already there! This doubling of the same information does not lead to any new function or an enhancement of prexisting functions. It is just meaningless and is in no way new information.

- Liberty Wing (WL).

Btw, both creationists and evolutionists are in complete agreence over what we observe today. The above is my understanding of the issue and partly why I don't believe in the GTE. This is why I believe that evolution is not "proved beyond reasonable doubt" and IMHO fails on the "balance of probabilities" to use legal terms. I do realise that this is a response to the first page of posts, so sorry about that.

 

[raphael_aa]

I have seen creationists refer to these Biblical 'kinds' often but I have yet to see a biological definition. It all seems very fluid. Just on my observation the definition of kind seems to be 'whatever level of taxonomy that does not permit experimental observation of change.'

Evolution does not predict or postulate animals changing in one great leap from reptile to mammal. To say that animals don't do this has nothing to do with falsifying evolution. We do observe small changes in populations. Mutations which make a segment of a population more likely to survive an environmental pressure tend to be passed on. (Mutations aren't positive or negative in themselves of course, but only to the extent that they help or hinder reproductive success under environmental pressure.)

Now mix in time and the adding of layer upon layer of these changes in populations and you end up with a sequence of changes where amphibians indeed turn into reptiles. We can see the intervening forms and trace their pathways through gentetics. Add to that overwhelming evidence from other scientific disciplines that point to an ancient cosmos and an old earth and it seems to me the evidence is there. Not just from one scientific 'witness', but from several, independent of each other . Geology, Biology, Astronomy, Cosmology all tell surprisingly similar stories.

If evolution was on trial in a court, it would be found 'beyond a reasonable doubt.'

 

[rmwilliamsll]

snip....
The only changes on the molecular level are information losing, (where information is defined as specified complexity, which includes DNA) never information gaining, which is what is needed for macro-evolution to be true.
snip......


Many bring up gene duplication, but this is neglectable because it doesn't add any new information to the genome - just doubles what is already there! This doubling of the same information does not lead to any new function or an enhancement of prexisting functions. It is just meaningless and is in no way new information.

we have been over this carefully so many times on these forums that i am believing that the AiG mantra of 'no new information' has mesmerized the YECists.

GENE DUPLICATION does 'add information'
although i think that the phrase 'add information' is a red herring, i will use your terminology.


look at the blood clotting proteins or at the relationship of myoglobulin to the chains of hemoglobulin. then look at the variants of hemoglobulin. yes. they are all the result of gene duplication and mutation-NS upon the copies, lots of them.
(see tutorial at: http://www.umass.edu/microbio/chime/hemoglob/)

apparently another major evolutionary way of making new dna sequences available for mutation-NS to operate on is the retroviral insertations, including pieces of DNA picked up from previous hosts.
("The human endogenous retrovirus HERV-W multicopy family includes a unique proviral locus, termed ERVWE1, which contains gag and pol pseudogenes and has retained a full-length envelope open reading frame (ORF). This Env protein (syncytin) is a highly fusogenic membrane glycoprotein and has been proposed to be involved in hominoid placental physiology." it is a pay for site at: http://mbe.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/21/10/1895)
(just a few minutes spent with google scholar yields lots of interesting hits on this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10446280&dopt=Abstract)


look at the nylon bug. certainly it is not a gene duplication, but a frame shift mutation on a non-coding repetitive sequence. the reason for looking at it is the radical change from 1 bp mutation. this can happen on the duplicated gene and not effect the product of the original gene which is still being made by that original dna. here again is NEW INFORMATION, in fact a new enzyme that the living world had never seen before, that metabolizes a product that the living world never made--nylon.
(see: http://www.nmsr.org/nylon.htm)

look at the science, read the online papers, get educated for yourself. With the net you don't need to spend the years that i have in university classrooms to learn all this. But please don't accept AiG and their ilk like the Gospel, they are wrong, mutation can and does create new information, new genes, new proteins, etc etc.

 

[Vance]

The "no new information" is simply their latest "fall back" position as it becomes more and more clear how the world actually works, and how it developed. When Creationism cranked up again in the 60's, it was "no evolution takes place, period!" Then, when they saw that this was simply false, they switched to "no speciation, no new species can develop!" Then, when speciation was actually observed, the shifted their ground to "Well, there is no macro-evolution, which is something beyond speciation, but no, we won't define exactly what it is, but it has something to do with 'kinds'". But when the evidence continued to pour in and there was no logical reason to doubt that small changes can add up to big changes, they latched on to this "no new information" concept. But this was a non-starter from the very beginning since it was a misread of two "information" discussions by scientists and combining them in a way that doesn't work.

But, the YEC groups have shown one trend, they will not abandon their current theory just because the evidence is against it, they must wait until they have something else to fall back on. My guess is that they will eventually have to drop all the way back to Intelligent Design and follow the lead of Behe, Denton, etc, who they love to point to already as real scientists in opposition to Darwinian evolution. These guys, however, fully accept that the earth is billions of years old and that the species, including Man, developed over those billions of years from earlier species. They just reject the concept that it could happen by random processes, and that it HAD to have a designer which actively managed the process, and didn't just let it happen on its own.

And, actually, there is no way to disprove God's full time involvement in the process, since it would be invisible. And I really have no problem with this idea, I just don't think, as the ID people do, that the evidence of the process itself PROVES the designer. I think God did it in a way that we would NOT be able to prove His involvement and must accept it on faith. I also think it possible that He DID just let it happen, but according to built in laws and methods which would achieve His ultimate purposes.

 

[Vance]

Here is a link to Gluadys' wonderful description of the is process of the "evolution of Creationism"

http://www.christianforums.com/t736563-the-evolution-of-creationism.html

 

[California Tim]

Now mix in time ....

Ahh Yes! The god of evolutionism is "TIME". Everything can be explained naturally, given enough "TIME". Everything else can be disproven by "TIME". Everything is interpreted based on preconceived ideals of "TIME". God Himself is purported to have used "TIME" as the divine tool to manipulate His creation. All YEC'ists are ignorant of "TIME". All "real" scientists understand "TIME". As for me, it's "TIME" to focus on the next statement.

If evolution was on trial in a court, it would be found 'beyond a reasonable doubt.'

Just as it was confidently declared by the Jewish community (to this day mostly) that Christ was in no possible way the Messiah. Open and shut case.

 

[Vance]

But, Tim, that is the whole point, there was no preconception of time when the geologists first discovered that the earth was dramatically older than 10,000 years old, and that happened almost 200 years ago (long before Darwin). Actually, though, there was a preconception that the earth was young. This meant the geologists went looking for a young earth and discovered something very different. The Age of the Earth is not something which Evolution caused, or which created evolutionary thought. It is just there, as a fact about our planet. And everything we have discovered in the last 200 years has only confirmed the age of the earth, and even given more confident dating. Plate tectonics, volcanoes, radiometrics, the geologic columns, varves, and dozens (literally dozens and dozens) of other INDEPENDANT evidences all agree on the age of the earth. This type of interdisciplinary evidence could not all say the same thing as a huge coincidence.

So, the TIME issue is not a product of evolution. It is simply there.

 

[California Tim]

For your analysis, I offer some quotes from a very prominent "old-earth" geologist that demonstrates the potential conflicts within the geologic column itself, and how some conclusions are very consistent with the global flood. Ultimately he rejects the Biblical flood, but at least recognized some of the evidence. A link is provided for those who wish to read the entire paper, which is fascinating to both TE'ist and YEC'ist alike:

Modern History Sourcebook:
Archibald Geikie:
Geographical Evolution, 1879

The following paper on "Geographical Evolution," published among his "Geological Sketches at Home and Abroad" (1882), might be entitled with less ambiguity "Geological Evolution," since it is in this sense rather than in the broader modern signification that the word "geographical" is employed throughout the essay.
A Lecture delivered at the Evening Meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, 24th March, 1879.

Excerpts:

Thus we easily and rapidly reach a first and fundamental conclusion - that the substance of the main part of the solid land has been originally laid down and assorted under water.

The mere extent of the area covered by these water-formed rocks would of itself suggest that they must have been deposited in the sea. We cannot imagine rivers or lakes of magnitude sufficient to have spread over the sites of the present continents. The waters of the ocean, however, may easily be conceived to have rolled at different times over all that is now dry land.

we thus confidently announce a second conclusion - that a great portion of the solid land consists of materials which have been laid down on the floor of the sea.

While, then, it is true that most of the materials of the solid land have been laid down at successive periods under the sea, and that the relative dates of their deposition can be determined, it is no less certain that the formation of these materials has not proceeded uninterruptedly, and that they have not finally been raised into land by a single movement. The mere fact that they are of marine origin shows, of course, that the land owes its origin to some kind of terrestrial disturbance.

One of the most obvious and not the least striking features in the architecture of the land is the frequency with which the rocks though originally horizontal, or approximately so, have been titled up at various angles, or even placed on end.......
They cannot be accounted for by any mere local movements, though such movements no doubt took place abundantly. The existence of a mountain chain is not to be explained by a special upheaval or series of upheavals caused by an expansive force acting from below. Manifestly the elevation is only one phase of a vast terrestrial movement which has extended over whole continents, and has affected plains as well as high grounds.

The only cause which, so far as our present knowledge goes, could have produced such widespread changes is a general contraction of the earth's mass. There can be no doubt that at one time our planet existed in a gaseous, then in a liquid condition.

Without entering into this difficult problem in physical geology, it may suffice it we carry with us the idea that our globe must once have had a greater diameter than it now possesses, and that the crumpling of its outer layers, whether due to mere contraction or, as has been suggested, to the escape also of subterranean vapours, affords evidence of this diminution. A little reflection suffices to show us that, even without any knowledge of the actual history of the contraction, we might anticipate that the effects would neither be continuous nor everywhere uniform. The solid crust would not, we may be sure, subside as fast as the mass inside. It would, for a time at least, cohere and support itself, until at last, gravitation proving too much for its strength, it would sink down. And the areas and amount of descent would be greatly regulated by the varying thickness and structure of the crust.

http://geology.about.com/gi/dynamic...ham.edu/halsall/mod/1879geikie-evolution.html​

There are many more quotes in the article, and as you see, I included remarks that ulitmately reject the Biblical flood, while at the same time presenting evidence that might easily fit within the framework of the global flood by a different perspective. I do this to demonstrate the bias, whether intentional or not, that each of us carry to one degree or another, regardless of our academic prowess.

I also offer this post to once and for all quell the naysayers who claim dogmatically that there is no evidence to support a worldwide flood. Even though they conclude differently, many old-earth geologists such as the one here cannot substantiate such a wild claim as that there is no evidence of such.

 

[Vance]

Well, Glenn can better explain this issue, being a professional in this very field, but there is one thing that must be said. There is no dispute that at one point, in the early formation of the planet, before the formation of the land as we know it, all the planet was covered with liquid. This actually fits generally with Genesis 1. This is not where the dispute lies. The issue is whether there was could possibly have been a global flood within the last 10,000 years. And the answer to that is simply "no". All the evidence you have presented is talking about a very different event, not just in time (3 billion years ago v. sometime within the last 10,000 years), but in the known sequence of our earth's development. So, no, this is not any evidence of a recent flood at all.

 

[California Tim]

Well, Glenn can better explain this issue, being a professional in this very field, but there is one thing that must be said. There is no dispute that at one point, in the early formation of the planet, before the formation of the land as we know it, all the planet was covered with liquid. This actually fits generally with Genesis 1. This is not where the dispute lies. The issue is whether there was could possibly have been a global flood within the last 10,000 years. And the answer to that is simply "no". All the evidence you have presented is talking about a very different event, not just in time (3 billion years ago v. sometime within the last 10,000 years), but in the known sequence of our earth's development. So, no, this is not any evidence of a recent flood at all.

Right. And all based on what scale of time? You admit there is evidence now, but simply dispute the time-frame. Isn't that what I've been declaring from the beginning here? As I've mentioned before, the tables used to calculate the time required for various geologic phenomenon must rely heavily on many subjective conclusions. And if any of those conclusions are wrong, the whole table is corrupted and the time factors questionable. What you claim is an impossibility within the last 10K years is based on one or more of those subjective tables. That, is the gist of my point here.

 

[Vance]

No, you miss my point. There is evidence that earth was, in the far distant past, long before there was any land as we know it, covered by water. There is no evidence of a global FLOOD, which is a very different thing. This is an event which would occur after much of the development on the earth would have occurred and the land masses in place. There is NO evidence of that type of event. You are wanting to relate apples and oranges here. As I said, it is not just a matter of the time involved, but the nature of the event itself in the sequence of our earth's development, which can be seen.

And, no, the dating methods are not speculative or subjective, as has been shown you over and over and to which you have not provided any response. This whole subjectivity of the dating is very simply a wild exaggeration you have been fed at best, and a lie you have bought into at worst.

Again, I would urge you to spend a little time and review the falsifications for the flood sections I have linked you to. That way, you will at least know the evidences I am talking about. They are NOT just time and dating issues, there are numerous independent grounds that wholly disprove such an event.

 

[California Tim]

And, no, the dating methods are not speculative or subjective, as has been shown you over and over and to which you have not provided any response. This whole subjectivity of the dating is very simply a wild exaggeration you have been fed at best, and a lie you have bought into at worst.

OK. As I head on over to read and evaluate the information at the links provided, can we at least get a definitive answer from your perspective: When I read this information, is any time frame referred to based on prevailing assumptions of accurate and indisputable tables of geologic time?

 

[Vance]

Some of the arguments are based on dating, yes, but no dating is claimed to be indisputable, just likely true within a certain +/- degree of certainty. But you also need to read up on the dating techniques themselves, so you can see where the confidence lies, and where it doesn't.

Again, here is a primer from an anti-evolutionist (and, thus, no evolutionist bias):

For a full treatment here:

http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/roger_wiens_radiometric_dating.pdf

For a summary here:

http://www.reasons.org/resources/fff/2001issue07/index.shtml#dynamics_of_dating

and more generally on the age of the earth, a list of articles here:

http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/index.shtml#young_earth_vs_old_earth