Guest Davka Posted July 17, 2009 Share Posted July 17, 2009 OK, lots of Christians seem to agree with the idea that species adapt, and will even concede some degree of evolution. But they contend that God was the one who created evolution, and that God continues to guide evolution. If that's you, let's hear your evidence for this idea. If that's not you, stick around and make fun of people who think differently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted July 17, 2009 Share Posted July 17, 2009 I will help get it started: Irreducible Complexity in the genetic code. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neon Genesis Posted July 17, 2009 Share Posted July 17, 2009 But presuming that the universe is so complex that it had to have been created by God including evolution, if Christians admit that some things can evolve into complexity from simplicity without being created, doesn't that disprove the argument that anything complex must be created/guided by God? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Davka Posted July 17, 2009 Share Posted July 17, 2009 The idea that complexity proves a creator is actually a two-edged sword. By this logic, either God was created, or God is extremely simple, and not complex at all. Of course, looking at some people, I'm inclined to agree that God may well be a moron. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted July 18, 2009 Share Posted July 18, 2009 It took evolution to make a man out of a monkey, but it takes religion to make a monkey out of a man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neon Genesis Posted July 18, 2009 Share Posted July 18, 2009 It took evolution to make a man out of a monkey, but it takes religion to make a monkey out of a man. Hey, don't insult the monkeys (just kidding). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Legion Posted July 18, 2009 Share Posted July 18, 2009 It took evolution to make a man out of a monkey, but it takes religion to make a monkey out of a man. We'll make great pets... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sexton Blake Posted July 28, 2009 Share Posted July 28, 2009 Nature is the very small and simple on a very large scale. To make a universe you just need lots of hydrogen and maybe a billion years. DNA and RNA are made from just 4 different molecules. From god's point of view, why evolution? He makes what he wants and that's it. Ants have been the same for 200,000,000 years as they are now. Life has been around for maybe 3.6 billion years but modern man for maybe 130,000 years. Why the billions of years delay for the "ultimate creation"? Many men might not be able to see god but any donkey can, as Balaam's donkey proved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Posted September 2, 2009 Share Posted September 2, 2009 Life has been around for maybe 3.6 billion years but modern man for maybe 130,000 years. Why the billions of years delay for the "ultimate creation"? Thats what i always ask. If some christians believe in evolution and that man has been around in his modern form for over 130,000 years, then they have a huge problem trying to come up with excuses as to why the good lord decided to start saving people only in the last 2,000 years, or after Christ's death. What about the other 128,000 years? Where the people who lived prior to 2,000 years ago not worth it in god's eyes? Why would god have us, his holiest "creation", to slowly evolve over eons and eons from one life form to another, hell all the way back to single-celled life? This is what gets me about christians like LNC who believe in evolution. All it is is one big compromise. They run out of excuses as to why they shouldn't believe in evolution/they can't defend their arguments against it any longer and they see that it is the truth. So instead of abandoning their beliefs they just select bits and pieces into their belief system, even if it makes it more ridiculous and insane than their beliefs already were to begin with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest FormerThings Posted October 5, 2009 Share Posted October 5, 2009 Proven lies of Charles Darwin http://hellandjustice.com/human_eye.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotBlinded Posted October 8, 2009 Share Posted October 8, 2009 Proven lies of Charles Darwin http://hellandjustice.com/human_eye.htm OMG, thta wesbtie drooped by IQ by 100 piotns! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abiyoyo Posted October 8, 2009 Share Posted October 8, 2009 The idea that complexity proves a creator is actually a two-edged sword. By this logic, either God was created, or God is extremely simple, and not complex at all. Of course, looking at some people, I'm inclined to agree that God may well be a moron. I think sometimes we see the simple things within each species, but forget that beyond these simplistic structures are more complicated structures and processes. What about the Ant? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antlerman Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 Proven lies of Charles Darwin http://hellandjustice.com/human_eye.htm OMG, thta wesbtie drooped by IQ by 100 piotns! Holy crap. Dumb does exist! Ahhhhh..... So this is what it feels like to have an IQ barely measurable by any but the most sensitive of instruments? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shyone Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 I think sometimes we see the simple things within each species, but forget that beyond these simplistic structures are more complicated structures and processes. What about the Ant? Within an evolutionary framework, the ant describes well why religion is so successful. Animals that cooperate create more power than individuals alone. The priest has more power than a strong man in a primitive society because he has the strength of those who fear the power of the God with whom the priest communicates. I'm sure there were ant colonies that failed because each ant had its own agenda and refused to cow-tow to the "Queen", but these colonies failed. Mankind does have an evolutionary tendency to be religious, or nationalistic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotBlinded Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 Proven lies of Charles Darwin http://hellandjustice.com/human_eye.htm OMG, thta wesbtie drooped by IQ by 100 piotns! Holy crap. Dumb does exist! Ahhhhh..... So this is what it feels like to have an IQ barely measurable by any but the most sensitive of instruments? Yes, and im slowyl but surely geetting a few points back. Be wary! Dont lok at that wesbite. It hurts and causes brian damage!11!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antlerman Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 Be wary! Dont lok at that wesbite. It hurts and causes brian damage!11!! Yes, I noticed. It was almost like a great sucking action against my brain, like some sort of vampire zombie eating it alive! I felt at least 15 points getting sucked down before, through sheer force of survival instinct I pulled back to see the succubus and rebuke it in the name of all that is named Sanity! Praise Batman, I escaped with reason still in tact! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest I Love Dog Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 Life has been around for maybe 3.6 billion years but modern man for maybe 130,000 years. Why the billions of years delay for the "ultimate creation"? Thats what i always ask. If some christians believe in evolution and that man has been around in his modern form for over 130,000 years, then they have a huge problem trying to come up with excuses as to why the good lord decided to start saving people only in the last 2,000 years, or after Christ's death. What about the other 128,000 years? Where the people who lived prior to 2,000 years ago not worth it in god's eyes? Why would god have us, his holiest "creation", to slowly evolve over eons and eons from one life form to another, hell all the way back to single-celled life? This is what gets me about christians like LNC who believe in evolution. All it is is one big compromise. They run out of excuses as to why they shouldn't believe in evolution/they can't defend their arguments against it any longer and they see that it is the truth. So instead of abandoning their beliefs they just select bits and pieces into their belief system, even if it makes it more ridiculous and insane than their beliefs already were to begin with. Further to this argument for evolution, which version of "man" did god create in his own image? Was it the 130,000 year-old version? If so, then how did the 130,000 year-old version turn into a Middle-Eastern man of 2000 years ago? Could it have been evolution? If god looks and acts like the 130,000 year-old version of man then I'm surprised that he has any power at all, because 130,000 year old man could barely speak/grunt and took a thousand years to be able to walk upright and start to use tools. Not a good advertisement for a supreme all-powerful being! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Wayne Buchanan Posted November 8, 2009 Share Posted November 8, 2009 Life has been around for maybe 3.6 billion years but modern man for maybe 130,000 years. Why the billions of years delay for the "ultimate creation"? Thats what i always ask. If some christians believe in evolution and that man has been around in his modern form for over 130,000 years, then they have a huge problem trying to come up with excuses as to why the good lord decided to start saving people only in the last 2,000 years, or after Christ's death. What about the other 128,000 years? Where the people who lived prior to 2,000 years ago not worth it in god's eyes? Salvation was being worked out from the first sin. The sacrificial system of the Old Testament was set up looking toward the coming messiah. "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness" (Romans 4:3). The blood of the sacrifices offered by those who believed in God prior to Jesus' death were a picture of the sacrifice of the messiah which brought eternal life. "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life" (Leviticus 17:11). The salvation brought by Jesus was not confined to only those who lived on earth after he died. It works backward to those before who believed before looking toward the messiah promised by God. Why would god have us, his holiest "creation", to slowly evolve over eons and eons from one life form to another, hell all the way back to single-celled life? This is what gets me about christians like LNC who believe in evolution. All it is is one big compromise. They run out of excuses as to why they shouldn't believe in evolution/they can't defend their arguments against it any longer and they see that it is the truth. So instead of abandoning their beliefs they just select bits and pieces into their belief system, even if it makes it more ridiculous and insane than their beliefs already were to begin with. At some point, God made man in His image. There are different theories about what this means. I personally think it was when God gave man a soul. However, that does not mean i am right about it. Whatever it means, with Adam and Eve it began. However, it seems there were other people around, "When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose" (Genesis 6:1-2). Those Christians who believe that God's process of creation was long and took billions of years tend to believe that these were the other people around who God did not chose to make in His own image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antlerman Posted November 9, 2009 Share Posted November 9, 2009 At some point, God made man in His image. There are different theories about what this means. I personally think it was when God gave man a soul. However, that does not mean i am right about it. Whatever it means, with Adam and Eve it began. However, it seems there were other people around, "When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose" (Genesis 6:1-2). Those Christians who believe that God's process of creation was long and took billions of years tend to believe that these were the other people around who God did not chose to make in His own image. That's really a fascinating theology. Some humans were created in God's image and some were not. Now this opens to door to a lot of serious questions, like are there humans today which are not created in God's image? And if there are human's that aren't today, just like there wasn't back then, then is it OK to kill them like you would any other animal? Animals supposedly don't have a soul, not being created in the image of God. So it would reason these non-image humans are no different than a goat, a cow, a lion, a gorilla, or a dog. I certainly am aware of groups of humans that have thought this way towards their fellow humans. It accounts for things like justifying genocide - choosing to not see their victims as fully human, not a special creature of God like themselves - the chosen ones, the elect, the saved. Personally if I were to try to play connect the dots of the story of Adam and Eve as having some accurate (as opposed to metaphorical) counterpart in the evolution of our species, it would seem most closely related to the emergence of civilization in early Agricultural societies around 10,000 years ago. It's at that point humans began in earnest to develop social practices and cultural identities, and the role of a god eventually took the place of seeing the world through more animistic ways (events were tied to the cycles of the world with magical connecting strings). As the mythic worldview emerged to describe things, man looking back at his rise in consciousness and self-awareness as a people (societies and culture) from the time of them being simply a natural part of the eco-system, the idea of them being created in the image of this deity would seem a way to differentiate themselves from it. In other words, its the use of a mythic representation to talk about the sense of their own differentiation from the eco-system as an animal. Now of course the downside of the mythic worldview is that it becomes a very sociocentric and ethnocentric way of differentiated oneself from the rest of the world. And when that approach is taken literally, as in "God's Word is Authoritative in all matters, science, history, and faith, then it's a very easy step to see others as outside, and therefore, not human - not true human, in other words, outside God - unsaved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhampir Posted November 9, 2009 Share Posted November 9, 2009 Funny you should say all that. I've read that since the god talked about in Genesis was only one of a number of gods, that Eden was sort of a testing ground, that that particular god, Yahweh chose to create humans in his personal nature, and that there were of course, many other people around at the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dB-Paradox Posted March 20, 2010 Share Posted March 20, 2010 A little off topic, and sorry if it's in the wrong place.... I saw a YouTube video...Dawkins vs Comfort. Comfort, as we all know, used the banana to prove design. According to the video, he later admitted he was unaware that the banana he was using was a genetically altered plant (by man). The video then goes on to show that Dawkins recognizes that evolution may have been started by aliens. The video was something like "banana man vs alien man". Is it true that Dawkins accepts the belief that aliens may have very well planted the evolutionary seed on earth? Or is this a fake? You never know these days, with video edits and such. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HarrisonFnord Posted May 18, 2010 Share Posted May 18, 2010 The people who believe in guided evolution generally believe as more of a philosophical construct than trying to represent it as hard science. (Have you seen any museums of "guided evolution" on the roadside in Kansas lately?) This is generally because they usually believe in ideas that used to be labeled as "Gnostic" and is now "Progressive Christianity". It's the idea that God is manifested in the nature itself, and that all things are created in his image, including natural processes. The argument doesn't hold up to scientific scrutiny because it's isn't a scientific idea. Not that I agree with it, but it seems like less like a science vs. religion question, and more of a fundamentalist vs. gnostic theological argument. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Valk0010 Posted May 22, 2010 Share Posted May 22, 2010 I have wondered how, in a convoluted way that, people can square adam not existing and the sacrifice of jesus. if adam didn't exist what did jesus do again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shyone Posted May 22, 2010 Share Posted May 22, 2010 I have wondered how, in a convoluted way that, people can square adam not existing and the sacrifice of jesus. if adam didn't exist what did jesus do again I may be stretching it, but I'd say that we can accept that man is sinful even thought it our own sins and our own nature rather some doctrine related to hereditary sin. Hereditary sin never made sense to me; never seemed fair. But I know I have screwed up. Everyone has. So, religious blah, blah, doctrine, forgiveness, blah,blah. And that's what Jesus did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Neil Posted June 20, 2010 Share Posted June 20, 2010 OK, lots of Christians seem to agree with the idea that species adapt, and will even concede some degree of evolution. No they don't. Evolution doesn't come in degrees. Either you accept that allele frequencies change over time, or you don't. Some believers try to get away with saying that evolution only happens within species, but this is entirely arbitrary, as there is no factual basis from which to draw this conclusion, especially considering that all that is required of speciation is for two or more isolated populations to lose the ability to reproduce with one another. Considering that creationists are always harping on the point that you can only lose information in the genome, it mystifies me as to why they think it's impossible for two or more populations to lose the ability to interbreed. Other believers will say that evolution happens, but it's a guided process. In another thread, I did a pretty good job of explaining why this doesn't work either, because once you say that evolution can't happen without being guided, you've rejected the theory of evolution, because that's the whole point! Evolution describes a way in which complex structures CAN arise without conscious guidance. Terms such as "guided evolution" are as incoherent as a four-sided triangle. ...Or a squared circle. (Oh, wait. That second on is a wrestling ring.) You could not possibly get evolution more wrong. Instead, what you have is a very tedious version of Intelligent Design. If that's you, let's hear your evidence for this idea. If that's not you, stick around and make fun of people who think differently. Did someone tell you I was coming? Proven lies of Charles Darwin http://hellandjustice.com/human_eye.htm It never ceases to amaze me at how willing creationists are to make fools of themselves. Feel fortunate that the link no longer works, because it's normally my habit to tear shit like that apart. Given the file name of the HTML page, I have a pretty good idea what nonsense awaited me. Seriously, do you honestly think that we haven't been bombarded with that at least a few hundred times? Oh wow. We don't know how the eye formed! (Actually, we do!) That TOTALLY overturns all of the other evidence for evolution. I guess we'll have to throw out all the research that goes into making antibiotics and curing cancer. But seriously, why is it ALWAYS Darwin you numbnuts like to pick on? Darwin died OVER 100 YEARS AGO. He hasn't contributed anything to science in over a century. Try going after someone whose work up-to-date, for a change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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