Genesis Account v. Macroevolution Myth (1 Viewer)

speakers_86

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Life isn't all that special.

Also, why such fuss over finding the missing link? Consider the evolution of man. We have fossils of our different stages of evolution. Is it really so far fetched that we changed over millions of years? Or is it more likely that there is a man in the sky? At least with evolution we have tangible evidence that allows us to accept, change, or deny a theory (yes, there are issues with evolution). Religion does not offer this.

Also, consider the basic premise of evolution: survival of the fittest. Can't you see how that almost guarantees species will change over time?
 

ConnorGiles

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Hum... Why would one supply evidence to support faith? Isn't that some sort of contradiction?

I actually quoted a part of the book "A Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy" and it proclaims exactly what you have said. If you read some of my earlier posts on this or the atheist thread.

I'll quote it again for you.

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.

I particularly enjoy the conclusion to this part, being as random as it is :D

Apply this argument to most religious peoples view on the human eye and how complex it is.
 

KenHigg

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Not sure what a Babel fish is, sorry if I don't want to google it :) Odd how some atheist (and some religious people) seem to need to feed an ego by trying to force their view on others. I say live and let live, if you don't want to believe, then don't :)
 

ConnorGiles

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Not sure what a Babel fish is, sorry if I don't want to google it :) Odd how some atheist (and some religious people) seem to need to feed an ego by trying to force their view on others. I say live and let live, if you don't want to believe, then don't :)

No need to research, when if you read my post, I said replace the babel fish with the human eye. Really not all that hard Ken?

I don't try and force my opinion on someone, They can believe what they like. I have a problem when they try and force theirs on me.

It's also funny how you seem to have been offline on this forum for quite a while and since you've came back - each and every comment you have made seems to contradict something someone has said.

Got up on the wrong side Ken? :D
 

KenHigg

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I'm probably just upset because I had to cut down on my coffee in the morning :)
 

KenHigg

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At the end of the day both sides seem to have to say 'I don't know' about something. And I suppose that will just have to be ok for now...
 

Rabbie

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Having just come across this thread I was surprised to see the assumption that Christians do not believe in evolution. In fact the vast majority of European Christians believe in evolution. Their position is that while God created the first life and then he used evolution to create all the species.

Evolution and religion are not mutually exclusive
 

Frothingslosh

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Having just come across this thread I was surprised to see the assumption that Christians do not believe in evolution. In fact the vast majority of European Christians believe in evolution. Their position is that while God created the first life and then he used evolution to create all the species.

Evolution and religion are not mutually exclusive

The thread was started by an American evagalist Protestant who flat-out denies evolution and considers it to be a myth and science to be a competing religion.

Unfortunately, that seems to be pretty standard for American Protestants these days.

Meanwhile, the rest of us (meaning mostly Galaxiom, as the rest of us gave up) are trying to get him to understand that he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
 

Libre

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Having just come across this thread I was surprised to see the assumption that Christians do not believe in evolution. In fact the vast majority of European Christians believe in evolution. Their position is that while God created the first life and then he used evolution to create all the species.

Evolution and religion are not mutually exclusive

Seems to me that, while there are religious folks who don't deny evolution, it is in conflict with the basic tenets of the bible, just as the heliocentric model of the solar system, the chronology of the universe, human biology, the impossibility of miracles like resurrection and immaculate conception, etc etc on and on.
They have had to accept these things because they've been proven - as much as anything can be proven - and to deny them is sheer stubbornness. Even the RC Church has had to modify its doctrines due to these scientific discoveries.
Still, there are those - like the OP, who can't be reasoned with and no amount of evidence, facts, discoveries, or logic will convince them that the bible as originally written is not to be taken as anything but 100% factual.
 

KenHigg

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...
Still, there are those - like the OP, who can't be reasoned with and no amount of evidence, facts, discoveries, or logic will convince them that the bible as originally written is not to be taken as anything but 100% factual.

Perhaps if you continue to post your fresh, new and enlightening hypotheses you will eventually convince them...:rolleyes:
 

Libre

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Looking over your recent posts leads me to retort, perhaps if you do the same, eventually you might come up with something - anything - to contribute to this discussion, but I doubt it.
 

The_Doc_Man

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I butted heads with Bladerunner on the "Are you an atheist" thread and have been reluctant to step into this buzz-saw, particularly since A2E seems one of the more virulent pulpit-pounding fundamentalists.

The issue of "incomplete fossil records" is of course an example of "hedging the bet." The problem is that if an animal dies in an area that chemically decomposes bones as well as flesh (usually, that means alkaline soil), there are no fossils. If there is tectonic activity, the fossils might have been there but they are now buried by physically tumultuous disruption of the ground on which they had been deposited. In other words, if you wanted complete fossil records you are asking the wrong question to begin with, because you don't dare ask questions that give better answers - like the number of gene changes between two linear species or the number of changes in parallel from a common point. THAT is a lot more telling - but it requires someone to actually think a bit, and so far, A2E hasn't shown any evidence of wanting to do so.

The "why are there still apes" question is SUCH a joke that I have to stop laughing before I address it. We didn't descend from apes. We descended from hominids. However, that is immaterial. When the biologically separated species move to also geographically separate, they no longer complete for the same food. Man descended from the trees to become a ground dweller. Apes remained tree dwellers. Man had the new food source, their ape cousins had the old sources. No competition, so they could continue to survive separately. That would have been true even if we HAD descended directly from apes - which we did not.

Abiogenesis is easily - but not quickly - possible. If you think that CELLS formed in a single event, that is wrong. Free-floating chemicals such as RNA and its components formed in the primordial soup that was the oceans of several hundreds of millions of years ago. These chemicals randomly combined (and usually fell apart... but not always) based on simple laws of physics and chemistry - electrophilic and nucleophilic attraction.

Each milliliter of ocean was home to many hundreds of thousands - or even millions - of molecules other than simple water. Each milliliter had literally thousands of molecular interactions per second. Now, how many milliliters of ocean were there at that time? (Answer: In the trillions, I'm sure, but it is hard to compute.) How many seconds were in the interval between the time those reactions started and the time that abiogenesis occurred? (Answer: Again, hard to compute but each DAY is 86,400 seconds, multiply that by 365 * several hundred million years - and the number will be in the billions or even trillions.) NOW multiply the number of seconds x the number of reactions per second per milliliter x the number of milliliters in which the reactions occurred. It's a big number. Quadrillion? Quintillion? Big enough to qualify for the laws of large numbers, I'm sure.

The final question is simple: Was that time and volume and number of reactions per second per unit volume enough opportunity for random chemical reactions to produce one example of life? If your answer is NO, then your problem is skepticism, and DON'T show your skepticism without granting me the equal right to assert my skepticism over the content of the holy books.
 

ConnorGiles

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I butted heads with Bladerunner on the "Are you an atheist" thread and have been reluctant to step into this buzz-saw, particularly since A2E seems one of the more virulent pulpit-pounding fundamentalists.

The issue of "incomplete fossil records" is of course an example of "hedging the bet." The problem is that if an animal dies in an area that chemically decomposes bones as well as flesh (usually, that means alkaline soil), there are no fossils. If there is tectonic activity, the fossils might have been there but they are now buried by physically tumultuous disruption of the ground on which they had been deposited. In other words, if you wanted complete fossil records you are asking the wrong question to begin with, because you don't dare ask questions that give better answers - like the number of gene changes between two linear species or the number of changes in parallel from a common point. THAT is a lot more telling - but it requires someone to actually think a bit, and so far, A2E hasn't shown any evidence of wanting to do so.

The "why are there still apes" question is SUCH a joke that I have to stop laughing before I address it. We didn't descend from apes. We descended from hominids. However, that is immaterial. When the biologically separated species move to also geographically separate, they no longer complete for the same food. Man descended from the trees to become a ground dweller. Apes remained tree dwellers. Man had the new food source, their ape cousins had the old sources. No competition, so they could continue to survive separately. That would have been true even if we HAD descended directly from apes - which we did not.

Abiogenesis is easily - but not quickly - possible. If you think that CELLS formed in a single event, that is wrong. Free-floating chemicals such as RNA and its components formed in the primordial soup that was the oceans of several hundreds of millions of years ago. These chemicals randomly combined (and usually fell apart... but not always) based on simple laws of physics and chemistry - electrophilic and nucleophilic attraction.

Each milliliter of ocean was home to many hundreds of thousands - or even millions - of molecules other than simple water. Each milliliter had literally thousands of molecular interactions per second. Now, how many milliliters of ocean were there at that time? (Answer: In the trillions, I'm sure, but it is hard to compute.) How many seconds were in the interval between the time those reactions started and the time that abiogenesis occurred? (Answer: Again, hard to compute but each DAY is 86,400 seconds, multiply that by 365 * several hundred million years - and the number will be in the billions or even trillions.) NOW multiply the number of seconds x the number of reactions per second per milliliter x the number of milliliters in which the reactions occurred. It's a big number. Quadrillion? Quintillion? Big enough to qualify for the laws of large numbers, I'm sure.

The final question is simple: Was that time and volume and number of reactions per second per unit volume enough opportunity for random chemical reactions to produce one example of life? If your answer is NO, then your problem is skepticism, and DON'T show your skepticism without granting me the equal right to assert my skepticism over the content of the holy books.

Well said :)
 

BlueIshDan

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My simple argument to this simple one sided argumentative post is this? Who created your creator, where do they come from and why is it that you believe in this single creator? Where does your mind go what I ask you this question. Does it come to a terrifying stop and immediately find defensive responses or does it actually think of how your creator may have come to be.

To express my view on this argument. I accept all information and not only believe in the possibility of our creation and/or observation by a or many higher being(s) of intelligence, but also that we've come from a longing process of evolution.
 

The_Doc_Man

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Ken Higg:

My statement:
We didn't descend from apes.

Ken's statement:
What about Col?

Since the nexus of this debate is about descending FROM apes or descending TO the inferno, we cannot directly reference either one without prejudicing the answer to this question. That leaves me with the only descent about which I'm sure, and for me that occurred around puberty.

:D
 

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