Evolution or Creation

[Q]

Um, because a definitive "missing link" has yet to be found?

Fixed.

Thank you.

Fine, the Christian version of creation. Happy?

I told you that you were generalizing. You should also put the words "dogmatic" and "literalist" in front of the word "Christian" in order to accurately match your very narrow definition of creationism.

[mimartin]

Bull****. See mimartin's post.

 

_EW_

 

Already did and rejected it.

Which part are you rejecting? The part where I wrote I believe in Evolution or the part where I wrote I am a Christian? So which one are you accusing me of lying about?

 

Other than my stating facts about my actual belief system, I only added 4 video that a friend had shown me awhile back.

 

Just so you know. There was nothing there for you to reject. I stated my belief system and that system is only for me to reject or accept. I was not trying to convert anyone to my way of thinking as I am a strong advocate of people making up their own mind. I also know my conclusion is illogical, but that is the very definition of the word faith.

[Web Rider]

Since evolution's main focus is how live evolved once it existed, and the theory does not intently deal with how life came into existence, I would like to just make sure that we're not confusing evolution into a sciency creation myth.

 

To that end I think life could have been kick-started by a higher power or by random chance. I do think that from that point on, it evolved into what it is now.

[DarthSion399]

When it comes to evolution Christians usally except micro evolution, because there is proof that over time a species will have minor changes but will stay the same species, but with Macro evolution a species to species jump hasn't been proven.

 

In the Christian Church there is two excepted beliefs on the age of the Earth, The Old Earth theory is that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old and that God let his creation sit for a while before moving on to the next things he created, then The Old Earth Theory beleves in the literal 6 day creation and I like to think that God created the Earth to look older then it is.

[Jedi_Man]

I am a christian all the way, but you probably get that from previous threads with discussions about morals and the like.

But, I'm wondering what evidence there is for Evolution. The new missing link, the Lemur thing, was found nowhere near the rock layer required for it to be our missing link. The missing links tooth, somewhere in the south west, was a pigs tooth. I'm not trying to be rude, and I'm sorry about the vagueness of the info. I haven't seen the articles in a while, and couldn't possibly find them in my messy house. BUt the point I'm making is that a lot of the so called evidence seems to be fairy tales to try and satisfy the Evolutionists need for having no superior form of life hovering over them and commanding them.

[Web Rider]

I am a christian all the way, but you probably get that from previous threads with discussions about morals and the like.

But, I'm wondering what evidence there is for Evolution. The new missing link, the Lemur thing, was found nowhere near the rock layer required for it to be our missing link. The missing links tooth, somewhere in the south west, was a pigs tooth. I'm not trying to be rude, and I'm sorry about the vagueness of the info. I haven't seen the articles in a while, and couldn't possibly find them in my messy house. BUt the point I'm making is that a lot of the so called evidence seems to be fairy tales to try and satisfy the Evolutionists need for having no superior form of life hovering over them and commanding them.

 

I realize this may sound condescending, but have you tried, ya know, looking it up? Researching the evidence? Heck if you can't do that the Wiki's pretty good presuming nobody's hacked it today.

 

So, not to be rude, but go look it up plz.

[Bimmerman]

You don't need to be American to discuss something that doesn't make sense.

 

No, you don't, you are correct. However, as the rest of the world does not have this ardent debate between evolution and christian creation, and only American fundamentalist Christians do, I think the wording of my question stands. The rest of the world accepts evolution, and has for decades. The US does not, and still argues about putting religious-themed information (ie intelligent design, or creationism with a new title) in science textbooks...that doesn't fly anywhere else in the first world. Teach creationism in a history of religion, theology, or bible class, but not in a proper science class, as...well...creationism/ID are beliefs, not science.

 

Hence my question.

 

Shwa? (translation: huh?)

 

Yet to be proven? Why isn't it proven?

 

And 'simply a theory'? Sounds like the all to common argument of 'It's only a theory', if I'm not mistaking your post's intentions. Gravity is a theory too, you know...

 

I know. Please, if you have evidence of genuine macro evolution, please show it. However, all we have now are theories of from whence we came, not exact hard evidence showing it. We have bits and pieces of the evidence, which is more than enough for most rational people, but without an entirely complete fossil record, or remains, or w/e, there will always be doubters.

 

Theory doesn't mean fact. Gravity exists, we all know this, but we don't know why it exists, or how it functions...we just have equations that give accurate explanations and predictions of behavior, and a theory (as in idea, hypothesis, something testable) for why and how it works.

 

Same for evolution. We have evidence it has happened, both fossil, genetic, biological, etc etc, but we are missing the mechanism for how it happened, and the in-between stages.

 

No theory is beyond scrutiny, and the theory of evolution (which is markedly different from what Darwin originally proposed), is no different. However, when you try to hold creationism (note my distinction between that and religion) and " 'Intelligent' Design" to the same level of scientific scrutiny, people call foul, complain, ignore you, or simply attack you for holding both to the same standard. This works fine in a theology class, religion study, or bible study class....but if both methods are to be taught alongside each other (which they absolutely should not be, unless we want to be even more of an international laughingstock), both must be held to the same level of scrutiny. That has not happened.

 

Please remember: I'm not being hostile to religion in general, nor to creationism. I only wonder why a) American Fundamentalists care so much (as nobody else does), and b) why a belief system has any place in a science classroom.

[Drunkside]

Evolution... Put to start by a "higher force" of some kind. Dunno really, but if there is one thing i know about this its that if there is a god or several of them, they definetely are not the christian/jewish/muslim/hindi/whatever religions there are gods, but something completely else.

 

Religions are mainly born out of a few reasons:

1) Need to understand the world around.

2) A group of people being oppressed by some others.

3) A charismatic leader who is somehow sick, mostly mental diseases (everybody has to understand the fact that for instance Jesus was schizophrenic).

4) IGNORANCE (moses saw bushes on fire cause at that time people took some kind of a hallusinogene after dinner. Some scientist actually tried the stuff and boom, flaming bushes were there)

 

Dont believe me if you dont want. I have read that hallusinogene thing somewhere but cant remember where, and the jesus being a schizo is just my opinion after seeing many schizophrenics who believe they are gods.

[Doomie]

I have done considerable research into microevolution back in school, and yes, it does exist and is proven to exist. Macroevolution (us from apes) has yet to be scientifically proven, and is simply a theory and hypothesis at this point, albeit with strong evidence for it.

 

I'll let you in on a little secret here; they're the same thing! biologists make no distinction between micro- and macro-evolution, it's an arbitrary distinction made by creation 'scientists'. Little changes over time build up to a big change in a long time. So the proving of 'micro-evolution' also proves 'macro-evolution'.

 

Yes, it is simply a theory, but that's just the way modern science works. No matter how much proof there is in favour, scientists will always account for the possiblity that one day a better theory comes along, so they will keep referring to it as a theory. But that doesn't imply a lack of proof or that it cannot be used to explain things.

 

I prefer the theory of evolution to the theory of creation as a means of explaining how we got here. As for how it all started, I guess things could have been created, but I prefer to say I just don't know, and I don't think anyone does (yet).

[Trench]

When it comes to evolution Christians usally except micro evolution, because there is proof that over time a species will have minor changes but will stay the same species, but with Macro evolution a species to species jump hasn't been proven.

 

In the Christian Church there is two excepted beliefs on the age of the Earth, The Old Earth theory is that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old and that God let his creation sit for a while before moving on to the next things he created, then The Old Earth Theory beleves in the literal 6 day creation and I like to think that God created the Earth to look older then it is.

 

Do I know you?

That is exactly what I was thinking. When God created Adam he didn't create a sperm or an egg to be grown into a man, he created a fully grown man probably somewhere in his thirties.

When he created the earth, he did the same thing to the ball of rock we are sitting on now.

The same goes for the beasts of the earth, the fish and whales of the sea, and the foul of the air. He created adults so that they could reproduce quickly and fill the earth.

[Lord of Hunger]

Intelligent Design because while Microevolution has been proven and I will never dispute it until given sufficient evidence, Macroevolution is incomplete, and logic dictates that for every affect there must be a cause.

 

I am half Catholic, half Buddhist, and I do not believe that God simply zapped the world into being in six days and somehow needed to take a break on the seventh. However, I do believe that evolution has direction and DNA is an intelligent language, so these two things can only point to a Mind that to a certain extent regulates the path of evolution.

 

For example, there is a Stargate episode where the main characters encounter a planet where the populace of the planet has disappeared. They quickly discover that this is the result of a race of flying insects whose venom converts the DNA of others into their own, thus gradually converting people into at least ten of those insects. Microevolution is supposed to result in the species with the greatest survival rates living on. Technically these flying insects have a better survival rate than humanity, yet it is humanity, a bunch of fragile apes, that have lived on. If you have watched any shows about the origins of humanity, you notice that our statistical chances of survival were very low yet somehow we end up coming on top. I think that we have a trait not necessarily related to survival that the Mind responsible for the creation of our universe favors and thus It chose to preserve us.

 

I also believe that this Mind or God does not necessarily have to be a being abstract from its creation, but is more likely to be fully integrated with it.

[Darth_Yuthura]

Which part are you rejecting? The part where I wrote I believe in Evolution or the part where I wrote I am a Christian? So which one are you accusing me of lying about?

 

You misunderstand. I rejected the subject behind the content of the videos; it had nothing to do with your beliefs.

 

I guess that I got ahead of myself and didn't address what I had issues with.

 

I have a textbook that a friend gave me (In the Beginning: Compelling evidence of Creation and the Great Flood) and the author explains the elements of the bible using scientific evidence to justify the creation theory. He doesn't exactly say everything about the bible is true, but he keeps elements of the bible from being dismissed by explaining how they happened. The author discussed the uranium sample being billions of years old, how the great flood could have flooded the world with the water that exists today, and a number of other details that makes the creationist theory 'not impossible.'

 

I went through the logic and Walter Brown (author) offered very limited evidence and failed to address what would have made his theories impossible. He says that all the water from the great flood simply infiltrated into deep cavities within the Earth, which explains where all the water would have had to come from to cover the planet. He only took a limited selection of evidence and called something a theory without addressing EVERYTHING in regards to the subject. If you don't account for evidence that contradicts your theory, then you can't say you have a working theory if another does take that evidence into account.

[mimartin]

Why would anyone post evidence or information either way in this thread as what has already been posted has just been ignored? Then the same tired excuses are used to question evolutions that have already been answered by ignored information.

 

You misunderstand. I rejected the subject behind the content of the videos; it had nothing to do with your beliefs.

Wrong. The video has everything to do with my understanding that evolution is a fact. My experiences and knowledge are used to make up my belief system, so the videos have everything to do with my beliefs.

[Trench]

Is it just me, or has this thread just turned into a big futile argument? The Creationists aren't listening to the evolutionists, the evolutionists aren't listening to the Creationists.

The evolutionists aren't even listening to the evolutionists.

[Darth_Yuthura]

I don't want to sound arrogant, although that's what I always do, but religion usually acts in the opposite way that science does. Where science is used to find a conclusion after collecting and evaluation of correlations, religion is more like taking what exists and piecing it together in order to achieve the specified outcome.

 

Look at the Iraq war and how much real evidence the Bush administration had that could have confirmed that Iraq couldn't have developed WMD. Yet they took what little evidence was there and they used it to reach their desired outcome... which was to invade Iraq.

[Arcesious]

I know. Please, if you have evidence of genuine macro evolution, please show it. However, all we have now are theories of from whence we came, not exact hard evidence showing it. We have bits and pieces of the evidence, which is more than enough for most rational people, but without an entirely complete fossil record, or remains, or w/e, there will always be doubters.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macro_evolution

 

The actual definition of macroevolution accepted by scientists is "any change at the species level or above" (phyla, group, etc.) and microevolution is "any change below the level of species."

 

Insects and bacteria - macroevolution happens very, very often among these. There are numerous brand new species of insects and bacteria every year.

 

And what do you mean 'genuine'? If an observed change, whether big or small, meets the definition of macro-evolution, there isn't any variable for how 'genuine' it is, because a small change is just as 'genuine' as a big change.

 

We've only explored about 5% of the earth's oceans, so it is certain that there's a lot more to earth's history waiting to be discovered deep in the oceans, as well as the least explored areas of land.

 

Theory doesn't mean fact. Gravity exists, we all know this, but we don't know why it exists, or how it functions...we just have equations that give accurate explanations and predictions of behavior, and a theory (as in idea, hypothesis, something testable) for why and how it works.

 

Theories are made based on evidence. Theory and hypothesis are two totally different things, because a hypothesis is a guess with lots of potential holes.

I'll admit, there's bound to be holes in the biological historical record that is based on the evolution. If conflicting or new data shows up, the theory will be revised or added onto.

 

but we are missing the mechanism for how it happened, and the in-between stages.

 

A change in genus, family, and higher - I'm not sure if that has been directly observed, considering that the theory of evolution has only been around for so long. But you don't need to directly observe changes of such a level to collect data and evidence of them, thanks to transitional fossils and DNA analysis.

 

Heck, if there was no macro-evolution, where would we keep getting all these new species from?

 

Also, it should be noted that the difference between macro and micro evolution is very small. They both work the same way. They're essentially the same thing. Biologists just seperate them in order to be able to make the small distinction between a change in a species and a change to a new species.

 

No theory is beyond scrutiny, and the theory of evolution (which is markedly different from what Darwin originally proposed), is no different..

 

I totally agree.

[Trench]

People here do remember that Darwin rejected evolution and returned to Christianity and Creationism near the end of his life don't you? Even he knew that the theory was di'kutla.

[Arcesious]

People here do remember that Darwin rejected evolution and returned to Christianity and Creationism near the end of his life don't you? Even he knew that the theory was di'kutla.

 

You're being sarcastic, right? Do you know how many people have made fake rumors about people rejecting their ideologies on their deathbeds in order to try to discredit the person dying? Answer: A lot. I'm sorry to inform you, but the deathbed recanting story is fake.

 

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CG/CG001.html

[Pho3nix]

When God created Adam he didn't create a sperm or an egg to be grown into a man, he created a fully grown man probably somewhere in his thirties.

When he created the earth, he did the same thing to the ball of rock we are sitting on now.

The same goes for the beasts of the earth, the fish and whales of the sea, and the foul of the air. He created adults so that they could reproduce quickly and fill the earth.

I think you should return to this thread/topic after a couple of years when you're a little older and, hopefully, have stopped regurgitating your parents views.

[Trench]

I think you should return to this thread/topic after a couple of years when you're a little older and, hopefully, have stopped regurgitating your parents views.

 

I have done my own research on the subject. I don't "regurgitate" anyone's views.

[DarthSion399]

He's not much younger then me and I can say after research I'm a Christian by choice not because I've been raised to be one.

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

if those sites you linked earlier as examples of your research give an accurate picture of the types of sources you're basing your opinion on, your research skills are sorely lacking.

[DarthSion399]

I've also read some books against it, I've just learned about it in science class and read pro evolution sources and it didn't seem to measure up to the scientific method, I've read from several other sites that confirm what those sites say and give other peices of evidence, I've heard of scientists who said the evidence was lacking and read a quote by Darwin saying that the evidence was lacking.

[Totenkopf]

As some have noted correctly, science is basically just a tool, of God or nature is still anyone's guess. That monkeys and men are close in genetic makeup doesn't prove we came from them but that rather we're made from much of the same stuff. Still, if in the end scientists genuinely discover the "missing link", so what? It won't prove where we come from, just how we've changed over the course of time. If you accept that the God of Creationaism is omnipotent, then none of the usual objections matter b/c God did it. If you don't, well....Sam summed it up pretty well.

 

Putting the God of Christianity aside, how do members of other religions here view their own "creation myths"?

[Darth_Yuthura]

I've been burned because I treated the bible as the christian[i/] religion, but I will continue using it for this purpose. I've gone to a few bible study sessions with some friends and was able to contribute some very insightful details by relating what we've read to psychology. The bible and the seven deadly sins are not just a bunch of crap, as I've seen some very interesting ideals it introduced hundreds of years before modern psychology became an official field.

 

You can relate the bible to certain concepts in science, but the historical validity, such as creation, isn't important to the purpose of the Bible.