Why the theistic evolution position is both unbiblical and impossible

[SkyWriting]

You're not saying anything which hasn't been said hundreds of times already. And I'm not either

[*]You provide Biblical scripture but not actual evidence. If we disproved evolution everything else we know - such germ theory, geographic evidence and genetic evidence - would fall apart too.

He's only referring to the Origins-Fiction. He's not referring to the facts about biological change that can be proven.

[*]The Bible frequently uses allegories, poems and metaphores. Jesus was not literally a lamb or a vine.

Quit infrequently actually. And only when indicated. Not anytime you choose to disagree with the text.

[*]Theistic evolution, as the name suggests, says that God created all living things via evolution. Even in the USA, theistic evolutionists outnumber atheistic evolutionists. Clearly evolution is not inherently atheistic.

I'm sure you meant to say "only in the USA." Believers outnumber everybody here.
Truth is not a democratic process, so numbers don't count for anything anyway.
The part of Evolution theory that is based on science, specifically excludes supernatural causes.
All non scientific aspects of Evolutionary theory do allow for the supernatural.

[*]Many theistic evolutions do believe Adam was a literal person - the first Homo Sapiens to receive a soul. Other believe the "houses" mentioned in the Bible refer to tribes or clans, rather than individuals. This would not change the geneologies listed in the Bible.

Would this mean Adam's offspring had to mate with the soulless animals? Talk about being unequally yoked.

Let's imagine Adams Gorilla/parents. I see then scratching their heads (and butts) wondering what they did wrong.
"Our little monkey-boy-Adam has left us for the ministry. What did we do wrong?"
"He had a chance to live in that nice garden full of fruit and easy pik'ins. Now he's run off with that same Harpy who ruined it all"
"Men!"

Lets go back to the tree house and forget about our idiot man-son.

 

[SkyWriting]

I'd rather communicate with more open minded & honest people like Florida-2.

Actions speak louder than words.

 

[sfs]

You don't know what you're talking about. Don't even try to tell a retired science/history teacher that I did not quote the 1st Law of Thermodynamics correctly because you are not telling the truth.

Pay careful attention: you did not quote the 1st Law of Thermodynamics correctly.

Proof:
Quote: Directly from Wikipedia; (copied and pasted in fact!)...
First law of thermodynamics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The first law of thermodynamics is an expression of the principle of conservation of energy.
The law states that energy can be transformed, i.e. changed from one form to another, but cannot be created or destroyed.

Thank you for demonstrating my point. What you wrote was "'Matter can neither be created nor destroyed' (wikipedia)," while what Wikipedia actually says is that the 1st Law is an expression of the conservation of energy -- not the conservation of matter. Wikipedia's statement is correct, yours was not. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but matter can be both created and destroyed, and is routinely created by particle physicists.

You are just full of lies.

You're awfully quick to call people liars. You are neither a physicist nor a biologist; prudence and humility would both suggest that you tread carefully before plunging into matters you have little grasp of.

Quote: (From the Oxford University Dictionary of Physics) "A measure of the unavailability of a systems energy. ..all real processes are to a certain extent irreversible changes and in any closed system an irreversible change is always accompanied by an increase in entropy. In a wider sense entropy can be interpreted as a measure of disorder; the higher the entropy the greater the disorder."

Let's recap. I said, "Note: 'disorder increases' is not a statement of the 2nd Law; it's a vague attempt to explain the law to people who don't understand it." Your quotation offers "disorder increases" as a ... vague attempt to explain the law to people who don't understand it. Weren't you supposed to be showing that I was lying?

For a more complete discussion of this issue, consult this paper, from the Journal of Chemical Education (addressed, unlike your quotation, to people who do understand the subject). Representative quotation: "I will urge the abandonment of order-disorder in introducing entropy to beginning students. Although it seems plausible, it is vague and potentially misleading, a non-fundamental description that does not point toward calculation or elaboration in elementary chemistry, and an anachronism since the introduction of portions of quantum mechanics in first-year textbooks." Tell me again how I'm lying, but this time try to back up your accusations with some substance.

You lied again.

Well, you're consistent, anyway. Is no one ever honestly mistaken in your world? Or is everyone who disagrees with you a liar?

Quote: The Law of Biogenesis - (from Biology Online)
Law of biogenesis

Definition
noun
(1) The principle stating that life arises from pre-existing life, not from nonliving material.

Continuing to quote from the same source: "The theory has been discredited in time when modern science and genetics have raised doubt its validity." Did you just skip that part?

Also; Quote: "In the field of biology, one of the most commonly accepted and widely used laws of science is the law of biogenesis. This law was set forth many years ago to dictate what both theory and experimental evidence showed to be true among living organisms—that life comes only from preceding life, and perpetuates itself by reproducing only its own kind or type." Apologetics Press.

If you get your knowledge of science from creationists, it's no wonder you have problems. Let's see how accurate this claim is; how widely is the "law of biogenesis" used in biology? For comparison, if you search Google Scholar for the phrase "natural selection", you will get 1,140,000 hits. If you search for "law of biogenesis", you will get 298 hits. A bit of a mismatch there, don't you think?

But let's dig a little deeper; let's see how often even these papers actually use the law of biogenesis in doing biology. That way, rather than taking anyone's word for it, we can see for ourselves what's really going on. Of the first ten cited uses of the term, three are from the nineteenth century, and one is from a psychoanalyst writing in 1943; those we can discard as telling us nothing about contemporary biology. Two do refer to a "law of biogenesis", but are talking about a different law, Haeckel's theory that embryonic development recapitulates evolution. Three are not from the scientific literature at all, but are from creationists making the same kind of claim you did here. That leaves one article, in the Journal of Biological Education, which does not report research but is at least about the right concept and about real biology. Here's what the author writes about the law: "It is possible to make biological statements that satisfy most of the requirements of a scientific law, for example that all life comes from pre-existing life, but even this 'law' of biogenesis cannot apply universally
in time." So the only one of the first ten sources that mentions the law denies that it's always true. Not very impressive.

Now of course, in practice biologists do indeed believe that any organism they're looking at has come from another organism more or less similar to it. But that is very different from a law that states that life could never arise from non-life under any circumstances. That law has, as I said, no experimental or theoretical support, and is not part of biology.

Now, you may offer an apology to the readers here for a direct, bald-faced lies any time now.

Well, it's clear that someone should be offering an apology here, but it isn't me.

 

[SkyWriting]

Perhaps then the light might come on for you and you will see the necessity to toss out Darwinian evolution. I did, years ago.

There is nothing really wrong with Darwins observations that organisms have the ability to adapt to their environment. He and others have supposed that current natural processes are responsible for the formation of life. That part is likely wrong given that Jesus would have mentioned that the meek will all die of starvation as God intended, if that was God's plan.

But Jesus said Natural Selection was not God's plan for life
and that the meek shall inherent the earth.
Take that, Darwin.

 

[SkyWriting]

There is no scientific law that says life cannot arise from nonlife.

True. It's just a 100% observation. One can't prove a negative.

 

[Kirkwhisper]

True. It's just a 100% observation. One can't prove a negative.

Biogenesis is a scientific law and it has never been overthrown since the experiments of Pastuer.

But let anyone try prove this wrong by giving just one example of life that has been observed generating from non-living matter.

 

[Kirkwhisper]

There is nothing really wrong with Darwins observations that organisms have the ability to adapt to their environment. He and others have supposed that current natural processes are responsible for the formation of life. That part is likely wrong given that Jesus would have mentioned that the meek will all die of starvation as God intended, if that was God's plan.

But Jesus said Natural Selection was not God's plan for life
and that the meek shall inherent the earth.
Take that, Darwin.

Darwinian evolution of living organisms does not exist and never did. "After his kind' is the rule of nature and always has been. God's Word is true and Darwin was wrong.

 

[Kirkwhisper]

sfs;Pay careful attention: you did not ...

Further proof that what I said was true as it concerns matter and energy, for sfs charged me with not making a distinction between them as it relates to thermodynamics;

Quote: "In physics, mass–energy equivalence is the concept that the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content. In this concept, mass is a property of all energy, and energy is a property of all mass, and the two properties are connected by a constant."

Again, from the very first page of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(order_and_disorder)

My counterparts on this subject are poorly trained (at best) & they simply do not know what they are talking about.

 

[Kirkwhisper]

Actions speak louder than words.

And my actions (communicating with Florida-2) speak loudly. There have been others.

 

[florida2]

I'm just thinking, is this really so important? We can never definitively know how the world and life was created.

All I know is that theistic evolution makes sense to me. I adore science - studying it only enhances my appreciation of the universe's beauty and God's majesty in creating it. I believe that life arose billions of years ago under God's direction - I struggle to see how life can arise from lifeless material.

This doesn't make me a 'true' Christian, nor a 'bad' one. I cannot begin to accept six day creationism since it goes completely against all my scientific instincts and a huge amount of proof.

That's all.

 

[shernren]

That's right. You made several bald-faced lies and you deserved it.

Never mind the fact that I taught both biology and physics. You just don't even care how you shot-gun those who differ with your Orwellian attitude.

Second Law of Thermodynamics
[SIZE=+1]Natural processes that occur in an isolated system are spontaneous when they lead to an increase in the disorder, or entropy, of the system.[/SIZE]

• Liquids are more disordered than solids.
  • WHY? - Solids have a more regular structure than liquids.
• Gases are more disordered than their respective liquids.
  • WHY? - Gases particles are in a state of constant random motion.
• Any process in which the number of particles in the system increases consequently results in an increase in disorder.(and that, my dear counterpart, is in an OPEN system!).

entropy

So Oxford and a host (at least a dozen) commonly used sources are all wrong and you are right? Nope. I will say it again; you don't know what you're talking about.

Once again, I really pity the students you once taught. The website you are quoting has a precise, mathematical definition of entropy right at the top of the page:

S = k ln W​

where k is the ideal gas constant divided by Avogadro's number (i.e. Boltzmann's constant) and ln W is the natural log of W, the number of equivalent ways of describing a system (i.e. the number of microstates per the relevant macrostate).

So tell me something: if evolution predicts a decrease in entropy, what are the microstates being counted, what macrostate are they equivalent to, and how do the number of microstates decrease as evolution proceeds? Otherwise, you have no scientific basis to spout your rhetoric.

 

[Kirkwhisper]

Anyone else?

 

[Kirkwhisper]

I'm just thinking, is this really so important? We can never definitively know how the world and life was created.

How about what God told us about it? Does His Word count?

So we are to ignore what God said in His inspired word in the issue? I can't do that, my nicely worded friend.

All I know is that theistic evolution makes sense to me.

I am an ex-theistic evolutionist. It makes no sense to me after reading the scriptures in light of scientific law.

I wish you well.

 

[sfs]

You still aren't telling the truth. I quoted from Wikipedia FIRST SENTENCE on the subject.

You quoted this sentence: "Matter can neither be created nor destroyed' (wikipedia)". That is not the first sentence of the Wikipedia article on the 1st Law, or of any other Wikipedia article that I can find. Please tell me what you were actually quoting.

Quote: The law of conservation of mass, also known as the principle of mass/matter conservation, states that the mass of an isolated system (closed to all matter and energy) will remain constant over time. This principle is equivalent to the conservation of energy, in the sense when energy or mass is enclosed in a system and none is allowed in or out, its quantity cannot otherwise change (hence, its quantity is "conserved"). The mass of an isolated system cannot be changed as a result of processes acting inside the system. The law implies that mass cannot be created or destroyed, although it may be rearranged in space and changed into different types of particles; and that for any chemical process in a closed system, the mass of the reactants must equal the mass of the products. (Wikipedia)

Quote: "law of conservation of matter - a fundamental principle of classical physics that matter cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system, (The Free Dictionary)

Quote: "The principle of matter conservation may be considered as an approximate physical law that is true only in the classical sense, without consideration of special relativity and quantum mechanics. Another difficulty with the idea of conservation of "matter" is that "matter" is not a well-defined word scientifically, and when particles that are considered to be "matter" (such as electrons and positrons) are annihilated to make photons (which are often not considered matter) then conservation of matter does not take place, even in isolated systems.

So yes, mass is conserved (when both mass and the system are properly defined). Matter is not conserved.

Einstein said that matter/energy are transferable terms. So stop nit picking. You need to apologize to the readers here and I am not joking.

I'm not nitpicking. You badly misstated a fundamental law of physics, and you're continuing to avoid admitting that fact.

You've been listening to the wrong people, fella. Only God can create and only God can make what he created to not exist. (Isaiah 44:24).

Nice equivocation. Do you really think this evades the point that physicists can take a system with no matter in it and turn it into a system that has matter? Matter is not conserved, period.

Never mind the fact that I taught both biology and physics. You just don't even care how you shot-gun those who differ with your Orwellian attitude.

I didn't say you hadn't taught those subjects; I said (or implied) that you don't understand them. And you don't. You make egregious errors in physics, and show no understanding of actual biology.

Quote: "In thermodynamics, entropy is commonly associated with the amount of order, disorder, and/or chaos in a thermodynamic system" Wikipedia...first line.

And it's a poorly justified association, one that often misleads non-experts about the real behavior of entropy. Since you like quotations so much, here: "Entropy is not disorder. Entropy is not a measure of disorder or chaos." (From the paper I linked to previously. You should try looking at it.)

Second Law of Thermodynamics
Natural processes that occur in an isolated system are spontaneous when they lead to an increase in the disorder, or entropy, of the system.

Leave out the use of the word "disorder" and it's a fine definition of the second law. Now show how evolution violates it.

• Liquids are more disordered than solids.
  • WHY? - Solids have a more regular structure than liquids.

• 
  From which we can conclude that the Second Law forbids a liquid from spontaneously turning into a solid, since that would mean a spontaneous decrease in entropy. And yet, if you take an isolated container of supercooled water, it will spontaneously freeze. Either the Second Law is wrong, or the hand-wavy definition of it involving disorder is not accurate. You really can't do science with this kind of imprecise, layman-level treatment.
  

  So Oxford and a host (at least a dozen) commonly used sources are all wrong and you are right? Nope. I will say it again; you don't know what you're talking about.

  On this point, yes, they're wrong. Note that none of these sources are scientists doing science; they're all attempts to explain the science.
  
  
  

  Discredited? You mean by those who are just as befuddled by Darwinian philosophy? Forget it.

  No, by biologists -- the ones who are supposedly relying on this law. You will of course dismiss them all because they also accept evolution, but that doesn't help you: your claim was that biologists accept it as true.
  
  

  So 298 hits counts for nothing?

  Pretty much, especially since a random sample of them showed not a single one actually supported your claim. How about you find even one quotation from the scientific literature of the last forty years that shows this law being applied.
  

  But if you wish to prove me wrong, give JUST ONE example of life that has been observed generating from non-living matter. Just one. If you can't do that then just chalk it up to failure and you have lost this debate. Is that clear?

  You seem to be confused. The matter under debate is your claim that life cannot come from non-life, and that biologists know and use a law to that effect. Your challenge is to support both of those claims. I have made no claims at all about how life started -- I don't know how it started, in fact. So get started.
  
  

  Blah, blah, blah. You haven't said one thing that is worth a plugged nickel and the lies still stand. Now unless an apology comes forth I will look to other posters.

  
  It would not surprise me at all if you started ignoring me; you clearly do not handle correction well. For clarity, however, I will restate the claims that you have failed to support:
  1) Stellar evolution violates the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.
  2) Evolution violates the 2nd Law.
  3) There is a currently accepted law in biology that life cannot come from nonlife.
  4) Living fossils should not exist if evolution is true.
  
  Good luck supporting them.

 

[SkyWriting]

4) Living fossils should not exist if evolution is true.

I've thought of 3 conditions that allow for living fossils.

Environmental conditions have not changed in the known lifespan of the species.
Or that there is no natural drift of DNA.
Or that there is some drift but it is held in check by error correcting mechanisms.

 

[Kirkwhisper]

You quoted this sentence: "Matter can neither be created nor destroyed' (wikipedia)". That is not the first sentence of the Wikipedia article on the 1st Law, or of any other Wikipedia article that I can find. Please tell me what you were actually quoting.


Quote: "The principle of matter conservation may be considered as an approximate physical law that is true only in the classical sense, without consideration of special relativity and quantum mechanics. Another difficulty with the idea of conservation of "matter" is that "matter" is not a well-defined word scientifically, and when particles that are considered to be "matter" (such as electrons and positrons) are annihilated to make photons (which are often not considered matter) then conservation of matter does not take place, even in isolated systems.

So yes, mass is conserved (when both mass and the system are properly defined). Matter is not conserved.


I'm not nitpicking. You badly misstated a fundamental law of physics, and you're continuing to avoid admitting that fact.


Nice equivocation. Do you really think this evades the point that physicists can take a system with no matter in it and turn it into a system that has matter? Matter is not conserved, period.


I didn't say you hadn't taught those subjects; I said (or implied) that you don't understand them. And you don't. You make egregious errors in physics, and show no understanding of actual biology.


And it's a poorly justified association, one that often misleads non-experts about the real behavior of entropy. Since you like quotations so much, here: "Entropy is not disorder. Entropy is not a measure of disorder or chaos." (From the paper I linked to previously. You should try looking at it.)


Leave out the use of the word "disorder" and it's a fine definition of the second law. Now show how evolution violates it.

From which we can conclude that the Second Law forbids a liquid from spontaneously turning into a solid, since that would mean a spontaneous decrease in entropy. And yet, if you take an isolated container of supercooled water, it will spontaneously freeze. Either the Second Law is wrong, or the hand-wavy definition of it involving disorder is not accurate. You really can't do science with this kind of imprecise, layman-level treatment.

On this point, yes, they're wrong. Note that none of these sources are scientists doing science; they're all attempts to explain the science.



No, by biologists -- the ones who are supposedly relying on this law. You will of course dismiss them all because they also accept evolution, but that doesn't help you: your claim was that biologists accept it as true.


Pretty much, especially since a random sample of them showed not a single one actually supported your claim. How about you find even one quotation from the scientific literature of the last forty years that shows this law being applied.

You seem to be confused. The matter under debate is your claim that life cannot come from non-life, and that biologists know and use a law to that effect. Your challenge is to support both of those claims. I have made no claims at all about how life started -- I don't know how it started, in fact. So get started.



It would not surprise me at all if you started ignoring me; you clearly do not handle correction well. For clarity, however, I will restate the claims that you have failed to support:
1) Stellar evolution violates the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.
2) Evolution violates the 2nd Law.
3) There is a currently accepted law in biology that life cannot come from nonlife.
4) Living fossils should not exist if evolution is true.

Good luck supporting them.

Hmm, no apologies, just equivocation.

Conclusion: Bye.

 

[florida2]

Hmm, no apologies, just equivocation.

Conclusion: Bye.

Are you just going to ignore his arguments and not debate?

 

[Assyrian]

Biogenesis is a scientific law and it has never been overthrown since the experiments of Pastuer.

How about the fact Pasteur didn't agree with you? His experiments certainly showed that when milk, wine and beer spoiled it wasn't life beginning spontaneously, they didn't show that life had never originated from inanimate matter. Pasteur firmly believed this had happened. It was through his work with chiral molecules like tartric acid that Pasteur thought that asymmetric forces in the universe and asymmetric molecules like tartric acid were responsible for the origin of life.

The universe is an asymmetric whole. I am inclined to think that life, as manifested to us, is a function of the asymmetry of the universe and of the consequences it produces.
Louis Pasteur (1874) OP1, 360-363. Observations sur les forces dissymétriques​

 

[Kirkwhisper]

Are you just going to ignore his arguments and not debate?

I corrected him twice in detail and he is equivocating on the matter.

I will answer the same questions for you if you wish.

At your discretion.

 

[Papias]

Originally Posted by Kirkwhisper

Hmm, no apologies, just equivocation.

Conclusion: Bye.

Are you just going to ignore his arguments and not debate?
​

Florida2, you might not have seen it too much yet, but Kirkwhisper says "bye" like this often. He's done so to various people (including me) on various threads. It doesn't seem to mean anything, as he continues posting, and later on, replying to the person he said "bye" to.

Papias

P. S. If anything, it seems to mean "I can't answer your points, so I won't try." But I'm just guessing.