Why is Christianity opposed to the theory of Evolution?

Particles-to-people evolution is an unsubstantiated hypothesis or conjecture. That's all I'm really saying.

JonFromMinnesota said:

What about the genetic mutation that people in Tibet have that allows them thrive in high altitudes and not succumb to altitude sickness? Is that destructive?

What about a genetic mutation of sickle cell anemia? It sounds destructive right? Well it also is resistant to malaria.

What about a genetic mutation seen in 20% of Causation populations that have a genetic mutation in gene ccr5 called delta 32 that makes them more resistant to HIV? 1% of Caucasians have two copies of this mutation, essentially making them immune to the HIV virus. Is this destructive?

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Directly contradicting mutation’s central role in life’s diversity, we have seen growing experimental evidence that mutations destroy life. In medical circles, mutations are universally regarded as deleterious. They are a fundamental cause of ageing, cancer and infectious diseases.

Even among evolutionary apologists who search for examples of mutations that are beneficial, the best they can do is to cite damaging mutations that have beneficial side effects (e.g. sickle-cell trait, a 32-base-pair deletion in a human chromosome that confers HIV resistance to homozygotes and delays AIDS onset in heterozygotes, CCR5–delta32 mutation, animal melanism, and stickleback pelvic spine suppression). Such results are not at all surprising in the light of the discovery that DNA undergoes up to a million damage and repair events per cell per day.

All multi-cellular life on earth is undergoing inexorable genome decay because the deleterious mutation rates are so high … and natural selection is ineffective in removing the damage.

Like rust eating away the steel in a bridge, mutations are eating away our genomes and there is nothing we can do to stop them.

Evolution’s engine, when properly understood, becomes evolution’s end.

mickiio said:

Macroevolution only goes against the Laws of Physics, Laws of probabilities and II Law of Thermodynamics. That's all!

Microevolution has tons of breakthroughs in medicine. It is a true science. Provable, testable and verifiable. You will have no argument from any Creationist there. Name one that macroevolution has done.

Microevolution is provable, verifiable and testable. That is a given. Macroevolution is faith based. Calling it a theory is really a stretch. The only reason it has the respect it does is because Macroevolution piggy backs onto provable, verifiable microevolution. They conveniently "extrapolate" micro to macro and say..."It's all the same thing" Well I call them on it.

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Mickiio, your post was a joy; I laughed out loud as I read it! I had not heard the terms macro- & micro-evolution before - but those concepts were clear to me decades ago. "It is obvious that evolution takes place, but it is not the origin of species." Macro and micro are tidy, and I think appropriate categorizations to simplify thinking about this topic.

My college physics professor was one of the best teachers I ever had. He was an avowed evolutionist. Somewhere right in that timeframe, I came across the 2nd Law (not theory) of Thermodynamics. So, I went into his office one day and asked him how it could possibly be that a spark of lightning or something in a great chemical soup that hypothetically created life in some simple little strand of protoplasm could, left to itself, differentiate into the vast organization that we now observe. Left to itself (in the sunshine - OK) it got more organized? That's Macroevolution, right? How could that possibly happen?

My professor said that they had to assume that somewhere in the universe things were becoming less organized faster than we were getting organized so that the Law of Entropy held true.

Maybe someone here, 35 years later, has a better answer. Not a more complicated ration of gobbledegook, but a simple, truthful answer. One surely has to have more blind faith than I can muster to believe the one my prof gave me. He was, still, one of the very best teachers I have ever had. In fact it was in watching him that I learned that when one really understands a subject, it is simple.

Gene2memE said:

It is quite possible that the level of atmospheric oxygen has varied (roughly between 15 and 30% O2) over the past 550 million years. This variation is suggested by modeling of the carbon and sulfur cycles, by the excessive sediment burial of organic matter that accompanied the advent of large vascular land plants, and by recent physiological studies that relate to biological evolution.

From the same article, we have this diagram:

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You lost me at "it is quite possible." Again, the whole dilemma falls to this: This GOE event becomes purely hypothetical.

‘The [scientific] consensus for more than 30 years has been that atmospheric oxygen first reached appreciable levels around 2 billion to 2.4 billion years ago, an occasion referred to as the great oxidation event (GOE).’ Naturally, the issue of the timing and origin of the oxygenation of the atmosphere is significant because it is central to the origin of life and evolution. However, as the article points out, there are two major problems with the timing of this ‘GOE’. First, if oxygen producing bacteria supposedly evolved some 2.7 Ga ago, why then did it take at least 300 Ma, and possibly up to 700 Ma, before oxygen comprised a significant part of the atmosphere? The significance of this time interval is that it is potentially longer than the entire time frame of the fossil record (the Phanerozoic), and is exceedingly slow even by evolutionary standards. The second problem is that carbonate rocks formed before and after the supposed ‘GOE’ show the same carbon isotopic signatures. The burial of organic carbon from photosynthesizing organisms should cause the ratio of 13C to 12C in carbonates to rise. This leads to a huge contradiction as explained in the article: ‘… the source of the atmospheric oxygen — organic - carbon burial—seems to have remained constant with time, even though atmospheric oxygen levels have changed enormously.’ This problem is arguably overcome if one accepts the contention that ‘a mere 3% increase in organiccarbon burial would have been enough to trigger the GOE.’1 However, such a small increase is far too small to be detected in the geological record, as the author admits, which makes the idea geologically untestable and thus wholly hypothetical. The article outlines various creative ways that researchers have tried to address these problems over the years, but ends with a rather forlorn conclusion: ‘The ancient atmosphere may have had a more complex evolution than we imagined.’1 In essence the author admits that within an evolutionary framework the data is contradictory, and no resolution of the contradictions is in sight, hence the need for ‘creative thinking’. However, it is the naturalistic evolutionary framework that is the problem. Within this framework a reducing atmosphere is needed initially if the first cell is to have any possibility of arising by chance.3 But it must then change into an oxidizing atmosphere to permit the evolution of aerobic bacteria and multi-cellular life. These problems disappear when the problem is approached from a biblical framework. There never was a great oxidation event because oxygen, at concentrations necessary for life to flourish, was present in the atmosphere during Creation week at the beginning. The geological evidence, including sulfur minerals and carbonate rocks, is explained by deposition during the early part of the global Flood.

Open Heart said:

Not at all. It's backed by evidence in any number of sciences, from genetics to geology.

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Open Heart, how does your signature, “This people [Israel] has been called and led by God, Creator of heaven and earth. Their existence then is not a mere natural or cultural happening,... It is a supernatural one. This people continues in spite of everything to be the people of the covenant”... (Pope St. John Paul II; emphasis mine) coexist with your apparent belief that the earth and universe are mere natural happenings, rather than supernatural ones?

Would you ever, ever come to the macroevolutionary conclusion about a watch you found out in the forest?

TheMadnessInMe said:

I hate when evolutionists always use this as further proof or authenticity of evolution. Just because we're similar makes NO CASE that we were once from this animal or an ape or a monkey.

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Are you saying that even though your DNA is similar to your great, great, great, great grandfather, it doesn't necessarily mean you are related? And we don't "Come from" monkeys. We share a common ancestor. Our closest cousins are chimpanzees and bonobos.

So why are we all part dolphin, part monkey, part ape, part fish, part rat, etc? Yet there are no fossil records that complete these links together.

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It's called nested hierarchy. Groups of related organisms share similar traits and these shared traits increase with relatedness. http://www.evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/lines/IVDhierarchies.shtml

There won't be fossils transitioning from dolphin to human as that is not what evolution says we should see.

If they're all found, then at what museum/university can we take a field trip to, to discover for ourselves the infallibility that we were all part of the same organism at some point?

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Tiktaalik is located at the Field Museum in Chicago. The cool thing about this fossil is it was found based on predictions using the theory of evolution. The team took what they already knew about evolution and predicted what they should find if evolution were true. They predicted how old it would be, where they would find it and what features this species would have. They found it:

http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/meetTik.html

The famous Lucy fossil is in the National Museum of Ethiopia. She has both ape and human like features, exactly what we should find if evolution were true.

Here is the peer reviewed paper on the most recent discovery Homo naledi
http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e09560

Finally, the analogy of the court case is equally astounding considering the fact that you don't have as much evidence as you think.

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The reason that the intelligent design loses these court cases repeatedly is that it is not science, it has not subjected itself to the peer review process all other science is required to go through. Evolution wins because it is supported by an overwhelming amount of evidence.

Not as much evidence as we think? Lawrence Krauss explained at a talk about intelligent design of an experiment he ran where he went to one science publication and key word searched "Evolution" against all of their peer reviewed papers. How many came back with that keyword? 136,000. This is just one publication.

TheMadnessInMe said:

but the more science and biology advances to really explore the world of DNA and single-cell organisms and particles, you must concede there are more questions than answers.

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I can easily concede that new discoveries lead to more questions. Should science stop trying to answer questions we don't know the answers to? I think using God of the gaps is an inefficient way to advance our knowledge. Imagine if we concluded "God did it" to every question we didn't know? We'd still be in the bronze age. Should we have just accepted that diseases are plagues from God instead of trying to answer the question....eventually discovering germ theory of disease?

The fact that science self corrects is a strength, not a weakness. It is also a strength that it doesn't stop trying to answer new questions as they arise. It's how we learn new things. I think that is wonderful.

If you deny the existence of God then your burden of proof is far more difficult than ours because we've given you ample amounts of evidence for intelligent design

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I don't deny the existence of God. I take the position of not believing that a God exists. The burden of proof belongs to the one making a positive claim. I do not have a burden of proof in this position as it is impossible to prove a negative. I could make the claim that there is a teapot orbiting around the moon and it is too small to be seen by telescopes. There is no way you can prove that this doesn't exist. This is why the burden of proof would belong to me.

So again, I take the position of not believing a God exists. I do not deny the possibility of the existence of God. I am willing to change my mind if verifiable and testable evidence demonstrated a God exists. The problem you have is that even if you were to demonstrate that an intelligent designer exists, you've only gotten as far as deism. You still have work ahead of you to demonstrate this "Designer" is the Christian God.

If intelligent design wants to be taken seriously, then it must be testable and verifiable. It also must go through the peer review process as all science is required. I encourage anyone to write a paper in attempts to change my mind.

Faith is simply believing in what you cannot see.

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Which is why I do not think faith is a virtue. I care about what is observable. I care about what is true. I care about what logical conclusion the testable evidence leads me to. I care about having a willingness to change my mind if i'm shown to be wrong.

Truthfully, there's a reason why Jesus didn't always perform miracles. Jesus, the Son of God, walked this earth, performed miracles and spoke the truth, yet there were still some skeptics and unbelievers that couldn't bring themselves to have faith in Jesus. You need proof, yet we had proof and still denied. We have proof to this day!

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This is a thread about the theory of evolution, not theology. I'm afraid if we go down this road it will lead to apologetics, which are not allowed on this site and will get the thread shut down.

jackcv said:

Open Heart, how does your signature, “This people [Israel] has been called and led by God, Creator of heaven and earth. Their existence then is not a mere natural or cultural happening,... It is a supernatural one. This people continues in spite of everything to be the people of the covenant”... (Pope St. John Paul II; emphasis mine) coexist with your apparent belief that the earth and universe are mere natural happenings, rather than supernatural ones?

Would you ever, ever come to the macroevolutionary conclusion about a watch you found out in the forest?

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I am a theistic evolutionist -- I believe that God directs evolution. For me natural and supernatural are the same thing.

Would you ever, ever come to the macroevolutionary conclusion about a watch you found out in the forest?

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Ah the blind watchmaker argument. A watch is not a living thing. Nonliving things don't evolve, living things do. I can do research to find out where the watch came from and who made it.

JonFromMinnesota said:

This is a thread about the theory of evolution, not theology. I'm afraid if we go down this road it will lead to apologetics, which are not allowed on this site and will get the thread shut down.

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What do you think we've been doing? Apologetics should have shut down this thread long ago. It seems we're at an impasse. All of the "facts" in the world are only revolving around science. Empirical observation, however, is not the all-determining factor as to what is real and what is not real. Philosophers have pointed out that plenty of things in the world are real- things that are rational to accept - but cannot be scientifically proven. For example, love, beauty, and loyalty are intangible but real traits. Consequently, atheists ought to consider the possibility that they have a limited worldview - worldview that excludes God - precisely because they utilize a limited, insufficient methodology that requires empirical evidence for belief. Wrong methodology will always yield wrong conclusions.

The fatal flaw in the statement, "I only believe in what can be observed empirically," is that it cannot itself be derived from empirical observation.

To TheMadnessInMe.

Why are you simply quoting, wholesale, articles from creation.com, which have little to no relevance to either my post or the articles I referenced?

Creation.com can claim the issues of the geological history of earth and oxygen "disappear when the problem is approached from a biblical framework". They can claim anything they want really.

Unfortunately, that's not how it works in the real world, where we have direct evidence that is observed and needs to be explained.

So researchers continue to work on the problems presented by the data and they build their models to explain the evidence. Since that creation.com article was published, there's been another decade of investigation, solving some problems and uncovering others.

Would you care to address the questions I posed to you?

TheMadnessInMe said:

It seems we're at an impasse.

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Well we can certainly can get back on topic. Would you like to address the rest of my post above or not? If you do not wish to continue, I accept that.

Gene2memE said:

Explain to me the difference between following:
The common use of the word 'theory'
The scientific use of the word 'theory'

The answer the question: Why is evolution both a theory and a fact?

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Particles-to-people evolution is an unsubstantiated hypothesis or conjecture. That's all I'm really saying.

TheMadnessInMe said:

Particles-to-people evolution is an unsubstantiated hypothesis or conjecture. That's all I'm really saying.

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Granted we have no scientific knowledge of how life began on earth, we have plenty of evidence that after life arrived evolution produced the variety of life we see today. Perhaps the first life was miraculous.

JonFromMinnesota said:

Are you saying that even though your DNA is similar to your great, great, great, great grandfather, it doesn't necessarily mean you are related? And we don't "Come from" monkeys. We share a common ancestor. Our closest cousins are chimpanzees and bonobos.



It's called nested hierarchy. Groups of related organisms share similar traits and these shared traits increase with relatedness. http://www.evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/lines/IVDhierarchies.shtml

There won't be fossils transitioning from dolphin to human as that is not what evolution says we should see.




Tiktaalik is located at the Field Museum in Chicago. The cool thing about this fossil is it was found based on predictions using the theory of evolution. The team took what they already knew about evolution and predicted what they should find if evolution were true. They predicted how old it would be, where they would find it and what features this species would have. They found it:

http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/meetTik.html

The famous Lucy fossil is in the National Museum of Ethiopia. She has both ape and human like features, exactly what we should find if evolution were true.

Here is the peer reviewed paper on the most recent discovery Homo naledi
http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e09560



The reason that the intelligent design loses these court cases repeatedly is that it is not science, it has not subjected itself to the peer review process all other science is required to go through. Evolution wins because it is supported by an overwhelming amount of evidence.

Not as much evidence as we think? Lawrence Krauss explained at a talk about intelligent design of an experiment he ran where he went to one science publication and key word searched "Evolution" against all of their peer reviewed papers. How many came back with that keyword? 136,000. This is just one publication.



I can easily concede that new discoveries lead to more questions. Should science stop trying to answer questions we don't know the answers to? I think using God of the gaps is an inefficient way to advance our knowledge. Imagine if we concluded "God did it" to every question we didn't know? We'd still be in the bronze age. Should we have just accepted that diseases are plagues from God instead of trying to answer the question....eventually discovering germ theory of disease?

The fact that science self corrects is a strength, not a weakness. It is also a strength that it doesn't stop trying to answer new questions as they arise. It's how we learn new things. I think that is wonderful.



I don't deny the existence of God. I take the position of not believing that a God exists. The burden of proof belongs to the one making a positive claim. I do not have a burden of proof in this position as it is impossible to prove a negative. I could make the claim that there is a teapot orbiting around the moon and it is too small to be seen by telescopes. There is no way you can prove that this doesn't exist. This is why the burden of proof would belong to me.

So again, I take the position of not believing a God exists. I do not deny the possibility of the existence of God. I am willing to change my mind if verifiable and testable evidence demonstrated a God exists. The problem you have is that even if you were to demonstrate that an intelligent designer exists, you've only gotten as far as deism. You still have work ahead of you to demonstrate this "Designer" is the Christian God.

If intelligent design wants to be taken seriously, then it must be testable and verifiable. It also must go through the peer review process as all science is required. I encourage anyone to write a paper in attempts to change my mind.



Which is why I do not think faith is a virtue. I care about what is observable. I care about what is true. I care about what logical conclusion the testable evidence leads me to. I care about having a willingness to change my mind if i'm shown to be wrong.



This is a thread about the theory of evolution, not theology. I'm afraid if we go down this road it will lead to apologetics, which are not allowed on this site and will get the thread shut down.

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If evolution was not required to conceive of life as a nested pattern, then life’s nested pattern is accommodated by evolution, not predicted or verified by it. When Hennig tries to establish the theoretical priority of evolution on nested hierarchy, he fails to see his anachronistic and ill-founded assumption of naturalism. Darwin assumed the nested pattern of life that had already been demonstrated independently of evolution. He then constructed an explicitly naturalistic explanation for its origin.

However, evolution does not demand a nested pattern because it can accommodate other patterns just as easily, if not more so. For instance, transposition (also known as lateral gene transfer) would provide a much faster mechanism than common descent for disseminating new genes/structures throughout the biosphere. Evolutionists would still assume descent with modification occurred because it provides the mechanism for biological novelty. But widespread transposition would add so much noise to any nested pattern assumed to be congruous with descent with modification that the nested pattern would be lost. Evolutionists don’t accept transposition as a widespread phenomenon, especially in multicellular life, simply because patterns that suggest transposition are not observed.

Cladistics demands a nested pattern, and the fossil evidence fits into such a pattern relatively well, especially for higher taxonomic categories. However, neither evolution in general nor descent with modification in particular demand a nested pattern. Moreover, the nested pattern can be explained at least as well in a common design paradigm. Therefore evolution cannot claim to be the logical justification for cladistics, and it’s not the only available explanation for such a nested pattern. Neither can evolutionists legitimately consider cladistics an accurate reflection of actual phylogeny because evolution demands anagenesis, not just cladogenesis.


As far as Lucy goes:

"Today’s consensus can be tomorrow’s footnote. For decades, Neandertal was depicted as an ape-like, brutish animal. Now, a new consensus is rapidly emerging. Neandertals are fast becoming recognized as fully intelligent, fully functional human beings. For decades, Lucy was declared an indisputable link between humans and apes. Now, she’s joining the ranks of other discarded human ancestors. Those who repeatedly appeal to the scientific consensus of the day often put themselves in a precarious position when the consensus is eventually overturned.

As Christians, we are not to appeal to scientific consensus as the chief arbiter of historical and scientific investigation. Instead, we are to remain faithful to the divinely inspired, inerrant Word of God, which provides us with the true history of the world. The Bible alone provides us with the proper historical framework in which to conduct our scientific study of the natural world. Had scientists studied Lucy through a biblical lens, she never would have had to suffer such an ignominious demotion."

TheMadnessInMe said:

As Christians, we are not to appeal to scientific consensus as the chief arbiter of historical and scientific investigation. Instead, we are to remain faithful to the divinely inspired, inerrant Word of God, which provides us with the true history of the world. The Bible alone provides us with the proper historical framework in which to conduct our scientific study of the natural world. Had scientists studied Lucy through a biblical lens, she never would have had to suffer such an ignominious demotion."

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May I ask why you are copy/pasting from a creationist site without citing it?
Could you attempt to address my post in your own words?

Also creationist sites are openly bias.
From their site:

1. Facts are always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information. By definition, therefore, no interpretation of facts in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.

Is it fair for me to say I will not accept information from a site that openly admits their bias and will not accept any evidence that contradicts their beliefs? Why will they not subject their claims to peer review in relevant fields of study?

Do you share their same bias? That you cannot accept any evidence that contradict your beliefs?

JonFromMinnesota said:

Are you saying that even though your DNA is similar to your great, great, great, great grandfather, it doesn't necessarily mean you are related? And we don't "Come from" monkeys. We share a common ancestor.

I can easily concede that new discoveries lead to more questions. Should science stop trying to answer questions we don't know the answers to? I think using God of the gaps is an inefficient way to advance our knowledge. Imagine if we concluded "God did it" to every question we didn't know? We'd still be in the bronze age.

I don't deny the existence of God. I take the position of not believing that a God exists. The burden of proof belongs to the one making a positive claim. I do not have a burden of proof in this position as it is impossible to prove a negative.

So again, I take the position of not believing a God exists. I do not deny the possibility of the existence of God. I am willing to change my mind if verifiable and testable evidence demonstrated a God exists. The problem you have is that even if you were to demonstrate that an intelligent designer exists, you've only gotten as far as deism. You still have work ahead of you to demonstrate this "Designer" is the Christian God.

TheMadnessInMe said: ↑
Faith is simply believing in what you cannot see.​

Which is why I do not think faith is a virtue. I care about what is observable. I care about what is true. I care about what logical conclusion the testable evidence leads me to. I care about having a willingness to change my mind if i'm shown to be wrong.

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I agree with much of what you say here, JonFromMinnesota. Changing when we are shown to be wrong is the essence of mature repentance - assuming that we make restitution for our deliberate errors. I make a lot of errors, but steadily fewer in deliberate defiance of what I believe is right.

I agree with you that faith defined as simply believing what one cannot see is not a virtue. God Almighty says repeatedly, implicitly and explicitly, "prove me now herewith." Test me. Verify me. Come to me if you lack knowledge; I will give liberally and not upbraid. Elohim accepts the burden of proof.
Now, I am a 20th century boy, a baby boomer. Grew up singing "High Hopes" and watching John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart stand alone. Asking for help is anything but natural to me. I don't want to be helped. I want to do it myself. But finally, reluctantly, I am coming to see that to be a real man is to do whatever it honorably takes to serve family, friends and community most effectively. I am coming to see that my wisdom is a pitiful attempt, my foresight far less reliable than I thought. I am being humbled, finally, enough to really ask on a regular basis, and even importune for logical, verifiable, specific confirmations and directions to help me solve some few of the difficult problems that face us.

I am gradually becoming comfortable with this new humility, because in testing Him I have found that He is true, verifiable by my own personal experience - and the experiences of many intelligent, truthful, well credentialed and productive men and women whom I know personally. I am learning to follow up my due diligence with prayer for confirmation, and even to listen/feel for gentle guidance during the problem solving process itself.

The answers are in the questions. Revelation almost always comes in answer to a question, and usually an urgent question. Not always, but most of the time.

All the best.

jackcv said:

I agree with much of what you say here, JonFromMinnesota. Changing when we are shown to be wrong is the essence of mature repentance - assuming that we make restitution for our deliberate errors. I make a lot of errors, but steadily fewer in deliberate defiance of what I believe is right.

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Thanks for the reply. It's taking the thread a little off topic though in the rest of your post. If you'd like to have a discussion outside the topic of this thread, feel free to PM me.

A lot's already been said, I just want to put my take in here...

It's worth noting that the word that gets translated as "Day" during the Genesis creation story is also translatable as the word "Age." It's also worth noting that the order of created things corresponds to what the creation of the world would be scientifically speaking (for a while this was thought to not be true, but now that we've found vegetative fossils that predate the animalistic fossils in the ocean, everything's in a cheerfully corresponding order.) I'm generally in the minority, but I don't actually see a contradiction here.

Even if there *was* a contradiction, the way that the opening section of Genesis is written is almost more reminiscent of a song or a poem that might be written on the dedication to a temple than later stories. It's almost a proclamation; in some ways, the Genesis story is the original "atheistic claptrap", daring to say that the many things in the world that are worshipped by other cultures are not gods themselves, but are merely creations of the one true God. I don't think it's meant to be taken literally (though ever since I learned that the word could be translated as "Age" I've been reconsidering this a bit.)

So... yeah. Some Christians and many scientists can't accept both. I'm a Christian and a Scienti...fic Enthusiast (I probably shouldn't call myself a scientist if I don't actually do research or conduct experiments more regularly than my maybe once every two years) and I see no reason why I can't take it both ways. I mean, if we were a race of gingerbread men who long believed in the existence of a Baker, would we suddenly stop believing in the Baker because we then find scientific evidence of the revolutionary and groundbreaking Theory of Baking? We might. (I'm guessing that our race of gingerbread men, being smart enough to scientifically deduct the Baking process probably wouldn't call it "Baking", though. They'd likely come up with some other name. Theory of Prolonged Convection Exposure, perhaps? Something better than that, probably.)

Anyway... doubt it'll really add much of significance to the conversation here, but that's just my take on the issue. Carry on.

TheMadnessInMe said:

If evolution was not required to conceive of life as a nested pattern, then life’s nested pattern is accommodated by evolution, not predicted or verified by it. When Hennig tries to establish the theoretical priority of evolution on nested hierarchy, he fails to see his anachronistic and ill-founded assumption of naturalism. Darwin assumed the nested pattern of life that had already been demonstrated independently of evolution. He then constructed an explicitly naturalistic explanation for its origin.

However, evolution does not demand a nested pattern because it can accommodate other patterns just as easily, if not more so. For instance, transposition (also known as lateral gene transfer) would provide a much faster mechanism than common descent for disseminating new genes/structures throughout the biosphere. Evolutionists would still assume descent with modification occurred because it provides the mechanism for biological novelty. But widespread transposition would add so much noise to any nested pattern assumed to be congruous with descent with modification that the nested pattern would be lost. Evolutionists don’t accept transposition as a widespread phenomenon, especially in multicellular life, simply because patterns that suggest transposition are not observed.

Cladistics demands a nested pattern, and the fossil evidence fits into such a pattern relatively well, especially for higher taxonomic categories. However, neither evolution in general nor descent with modification in particular demand a nested pattern. Moreover, the nested pattern can be explained at least as well in a common design paradigm. Therefore evolution cannot claim to be the logical justification for cladistics, and it’s not the only available explanation for such a nested pattern. Neither can evolutionists legitimately consider cladistics an accurate reflection of actual phylogeny because evolution demands anagenesis, not just cladogenesis.


As far as Lucy goes:

"Today’s consensus can be tomorrow’s footnote. For decades, Neandertal was depicted as an ape-like, brutish animal. Now, a new consensus is rapidly emerging. Neandertals are fast becoming recognized as fully intelligent, fully functional human beings. For decades, Lucy was declared an indisputable link between humans and apes. Now, she’s joining the ranks of other discarded human ancestors. Those who repeatedly appeal to the scientific consensus of the day often put themselves in a precarious position when the consensus is eventually overturned.

As Christians, we are not to appeal to scientific consensus as the chief arbiter of historical and scientific investigation. Instead, we are to remain faithful to the divinely inspired, inerrant Word of God, which provides us with the true history of the world. The Bible alone provides us with the proper historical framework in which to conduct our scientific study of the natural world. Had scientists studied Lucy through a biblical lens, she never would have had to suffer such an ignominious demotion."

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You have certainly put more time and attention to this subject than I have ever considered, and you present your findings well. Thank you.

In the end, I find that science is only as credible as the scientists who conduct and report it. Ditto religion. It all comes down to who you trust, and in my experience, my Danish grandmother's motto has merit: Love all, trust a few, and always paddle your own canoe.

JonFromMinnesota said:

We also find transitional species leading up to whales and dolphins. They evolved from four legged land mammals.
This video explains it for you:

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Nice....except that again...this theory is incredibly flawed....


http://creation.com/rodhocetus

GraceSeeker said:

I think that the majority will disagree with you, Rygaku, that religion and science are incompatible. I suspect you don't understand either science nor religion very well if this is what you think.


Check out this link: Do Science and Religion Conflict? Not According to Highly Religious People.

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Thank you for sharing the link to the insightful article. It echoes what other polls have found about how many devoutly religious people see congruity between science and their faith. In my own personal experience it's been true that more nonreligious have falsely presumed there to be a conflict between the two, whereas those who are religious see compatibility. I think the article is correct about one of the primary reasons for this:

The media tends to focus on those rare flashpoints of controversy, such as fights over evolution and the content of science textbooks, and to highlight the most outspoken conservative fundamentalists. For the nonreligious, these strong voices become the faces of religion, and these flashpoints become evidence that religion and science are in conflict.

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This thread topic reminds me of Pope Francis' address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences this time last year, in which he stated:

“When we read in Genesis the account of Creation, we risk imagining that God was a magician, with such a magic wand as to be able to do everything. However, it was not like that…And thus creation went forward for centuries and centuries, millennia and millennia until it became what we know today, in fact because God is not a demiurge or a magician, but the Creator who gives being to all entities.”

“The Big-Bang, that is placed today at the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine intervention but exacts it. The evolution in nature is not opposed to the notion of Creation, because evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve.”

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His statements were not revolutionary but rather were in accordance to what the Catholic Church has been stating for years about the lack of contradiction between science and faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

…methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God.”

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This is harmonious to what Protestant denominations such as the Episcopalian and Methodist churches have stated.
And of course there's the Clergy Letter Project from clergy who support the teaching of evolution.