I want to believe but I just can't seem to find a mammal with evidence of the animal it evolved from.
Are you qualified to see that if it was there?? Which it is, by the way. Every animal bears overwhelming evidence of evolution.
Take humans alone, and take a look at our spine, where it attaches to our pelvis and skull, and you can see that this is all constructed for quadrupedalism, and only partially adapted to bipedalism. This is why we so often damage our backs with heavy lifting. That S-shape is the adaptation. It's good enough for the most part so that we can walk upright, but it's a post hoc adaptation of a quadrupedal skeleton.
Then there's the nerve (vagus) attachment from our brain's speech center to our larynx. It takes a long detour, rather than being directly connected in a straight line. This is because when that nerve first appeared, our ancestors were fish, had no necks, and their hearts were right up close to their heads (back then, it was a straight line connection). As a result, as our ancestors developed necks, and our hearts moved further away from our heads, the nerve link between the brain and the voice box was on the wrong side of the right subclavian artery. This nerve serves no other function but to connect the speech center of our brains to our larynx, so the detour pathway it takes cannot be explained in any other way.
Then take dew claws not infrequently appearing on dogs' hind legs (one of my dogs was born with one such dew claw on his right hind leg, but not on his left). Wolves don't have them. It's a throwback to the distant ancestors of canids who had five toes on all four feet like wolverines.
Then there's the nerve (vagus) attachment from our brain's speech center to our larynx. It takes a long detour, rather than being directly connected in a straight line. This is because when that nerve first appeared, our ancestors were fish, had no necks, and their hearts were right up close to their heads (back then, it was a straight line connection). As a result, as our ancestors developed necks, and our hearts moved further away from our heads, the nerve link between the brain and the voice box was on the wrong side of the right subclavian artery. This nerve serves no other function but to connect the speech center of our brains to our larynx, so the detour pathway it takes cannot be explained in any other way.
Then there's the nerve (vagus) attachment from our brain's speech center to our larynx. It takes a long detour, rather than being directly connected in a straight line. This is because when that nerve first appeared, our ancestors were fish, had no necks, and their hearts were right up close to their heads (back then, it was a straight line connection). As a result, as our ancestors developed necks, and our hearts moved further away from our heads, the nerve link between the brain and the voice box was on the wrong side of the right subclavian artery. This nerve serves no other function but to connect the speech center of our brains to our larynx, so the detour pathway it takes cannot be explained in any other way.
Today I learned ancient fish could speak.
Oh, damn! You just stumped the entirety of evolutionary biology ... NOT!
It was, at that time, a nerve connection from the fish brain to the structure that eventually became our voice box. But I think you knew that.
So, is God supposed to be some sort of a non material entity? If so, what is this non material, this mysterious spirit stuff that can create a material universe through an act of magic?
And why is this more believable for some than naturalistic processes that we can readily examine and test?
So, is God supposed to be some sort of a non material entity? If so, what is this non material, this mysterious spirit stuff that can create a material universe through an act of magic?
And why is this more believable for some than naturalistic processes that we can readily examine and test?
Science isn't the enemy of spirituality. It doesn't touch on that question one way or another, because spirituality is non-disprovable. Science will not, and cannot, look at any non-disprovable questions.
So, is God supposed to be some sort of a non material entity? If so, what is this non material, this mysterious spirit stuff that can create a material universe through an act of magic?
And why is this more believable for some than naturalistic processes that we can readily examine and test?
Science isn't the enemy of spirituality. It doesn't touch on that question one way or another, because spirituality is non-disprovable. Science will not, and cannot, look at any non-disprovable questions.
Sorry, that wasn't the question. I did not say that spirituality is the enemy of science.
Posting on the phone typo....left out the 'not' the enemy....
I've read the old Testament, and to me it seems obvious that many of the stories are not meant to be taken literally. Alot of it would be ridiculous if you took the events depicted as being literally true.
I don't see that evolution being true means there is no God. Why would it? It just means that the creation myths aren't literally true stories, but why does it matter? Do they need to be true stories for God to exist?
I have no opinion on the matter,really, because I'm simply not educated enough on the issue to really understand it. I can listen to one side of the argument and be like"yeah that sounds right and very convincing"....but then I'll watch a video from the other side and think then same thing. I guess i don't care enough about how it happened to put in the effort to do the huge amount of research it would take to really understand it.
Materialistic evolution — the process of chance perturbations (and then mutations, almost off of which are fatal) over billions of years leading to all life from a common ancestor — is a philosophy, not hard science. A world view whose attitude of human arrogance emanating from the enlightenment and then the father of geology, Charles Lyle, in the1700’s and early 1800’s, wanting to describe a geology countering “the Moses account” needing billions of years of slow processes called Uniformitarianism.
He set the stage for the acceptance of billions of years which in 1859 Charles Darwin (also a non-believer) built on with his ”Origens.” This gave a ”possible” worldview many found easier to believe than a sovereign God they were accountable to. Darwin’s Science was at an elementary level and the rest conjecture.
Where did any original material come from in the first place? There are no transitional fossils in the record nor living ones? There is more than a whole set of encyclopedia Britannica’s information in one simple cell. Where does information directing the cell come from? Where does New information come from in the presumed increasing complexity of creatures? (The electron microscope was not even around until the early 20th century. Darwin had no idea of the complexity of the cell.). Crick of DNA fame and an atheist, has realized the total lack of credibility in evolution and has decided on transpermia — that “we” were “seeded” from someplace in outer space!!! There are arguably fifty or so physical constants that off one place behind the decimal point would make this globe uninhabitable — you might say it was custom-fitted for human habitation. You can direct genetic traffic within a species to make different varieties but each time there is a loss of genetic information. There is never a gain in genetic information — you cannot go from the Pomeranian back to the wolf. C14- and radioisotope dating that everyone hangs their hat on are rife with interpretation problems and bias.
I don’t have the time to go on but a question: why do you think the ID (Intelligent Design) movement got started in the ‘90’s? Because there is too much genetic information and complexity, and the scientific knowledge (true hard science) that has been gained shows pure materialistic evolution to a dream’s fantasy. It’s so deeply imbedded in academia and the sciences and culture as dogma that it will die a slow death but it is dying in your life time.
The blithely made statements made out of complete ignorance here are always amazing. I.e., there wasn’t room on the ark for all the animals? Perhaps, say, 80% of the animals were insects and small creatures and the behemoth kind were very young or juveniles. Also these “kinds” were not species but a higher category of immense genetic information from which species and varieties could be later generated.
Fearing God is the beginning of wisdom.
You are just wrong on EVERY level.
You didn't use logic or reason to get into this opinion, I cannot use logic or reason to get you out of it.
You cannot over estimate the unimportance of nearly everything. John Maxwell
I don't see that evolution being true means there is no God. Why would it? It just means that the creation myths aren't literally true stories, but why does it matter? Do they need to be true stories for God to exist?
Claro, That all depends on how a theist defines their particular god. For those with a literalist definition of their god, then yes, the stories must be true. If not it demonstrates their god is counter indicated by facts, and foundation of their faith falls.
For those who look at the Bible as a series of parables, it matters not if the stories are literally true, so long as it relates some truth about human nature.
As an example, lets take the story of Jonah. It's not really about someone getting swallowed by a whale.
It's a story about the futility of running from one's responsibilities.
For the literalist, it matters that a whale cannot swallow a person. For the moralist, what matters is Jonah tried to run across the sea, but he couldn't escape his responsibility. The whale was just a plot device to take him back.
Last edited by antelope_sniper; 07/26/19.
You didn't use logic or reason to get into this opinion, I cannot use logic or reason to get you out of it.
You cannot over estimate the unimportance of nearly everything. John Maxwell