Okay, we came from monkeys. Cool. But why do we still have monkeys and no middle man?

You haven't met my in-laws.

Only the dinosaurs know.

Texans are the middle men.

In all seriousness, weren't the middle men absorbed by Homo Sapiens? Neanderthal and Denosovian DNA are still carried by certain peoples.

Let's see. Dogs come from wolves, right? So why are there still wolves? Answer that (it's not very hard), and you'll have your answer.

Oh, and no "middle men" because they all competed for the same resources, and the best men won. Monkeys don't compete for our resources, so they continued.

Nope. They would have survived as high iq humonkeys.

They didn't survive, so that's false. That they existed, however, is not disputed. We have many stages in man's evolution in the fossil record.

Evolution isn't linear

We have Maxine waters. 😖

That was awesome! I mean way too insensitive!

GFY

The simplest answer is: we didn't "come from monkeys." However, somewhere in the distant past, all of the existing primates did presumably have a common ancestor. We don't know exactly what or when that was--and we may never know as there were apparently very few of them, whatever they were, and archeological evidence is very sparse and hard to come by. DNA evidence does suggest that, with respect to modern species, humans are most closely related to a species represented today by Ronald Reagan's co-star Bosco. (Apparently the common name is not deemed acceptable to use on this web site.) That doesn't mean that we are descended from them, only that the two species apparently had a common ancestor in the distant past--most certainly millions of years ago.

No one has ever said that evolution worked that way except those trying to disprove it. According to the theory men and apes developed from the same, now extinct, species.

Go back far enough, and you will find an ancestor of ours that would be zoologically classified as an old world monkey species (downward facing nostrils and non-prehensile tail) were it extant today, so it's perfectly appropriate to assert that we evolved from monkeys, although not from any species of monkey extant.

This is a good one, too.

Evolution denies God. The theory is for people looking for a way.

Evolution says nothing about God whatsoever. No more than the theory of gravitation says anything about God.

Not in the least.

Again, evolution is not linear. Mudhen gave a good explanation.

Wolves and dogs can interbreed and produce offspring.

Humans cant with apes or any other creature in the past.

It is written, humans alone are wonderfully made.

Any previous being with the strength of apes and IQ of humans would have quickly filled enough space on earth they would still be here.

:: This space reserved for Ringman ::

Another good one. You folks should watch the whole series.

Yes it does. The Scripture says that everything reproduces "after its kind" and by all accounts of observation made by anyone who has ever lived this is obviously true. You raised the example of dogs coming from wolves. This is an example of selective breeding done by man under controlled circumstances over a relatively short period of time. This is how we get a Pomeranian which could never survive in the wild but it is still a canine creature which has the same basic traits of a wolf except for size, temperment, etc. The point being is that you can selectively breed dogs from now till hell freezes over and you ain't gonna get a cat. Things reproduce after their kind period.

The theory of evolution purports that over "millions of years" fish can evolve into amphibians which can evolve into aquatic mammals which evolve into land mammals. No one has ever observed this happen. Ever. They will tell you all of this stuff took place a long time ago and took millions of years but they can't prove it. No one has observed it just like no one observed God create Adam out of the dust. You take both by faith and go one way or the other.

They didn't have our IQ. IQ proved superior to physical power when it comes to which species will end up controlling the same niche.

Dogs haven't been long enough isolated from wolves to lose the ability to produce fertile offspring. Horses and donkeys have, though.

PS opposing Creationism isn't the same as opposing divine creation. The latter doesn't contradict science. The former does.

The middle men moved to Chicago and Detroit.

Been here all along!!

In an alternate universe, monkeys descended from us. It’s happening in Chicago also.

Reproduction according to kind doesn't contradict evolution, since evolution doesn't propose that a member of species X gives birth to a member of species Y. Rather, it is only from a distance of many thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of generations can you observe that specimen A is sufficiently distinct from specimen Z (born many thousands of generations earlier) to justify classifying it as a member of a distinct subspecies, or a distinct (though closely related) species.

Someone would think I broke up with you just before the prom.

Why do you hate Fire members so much as to place that image before us?

Only because you asked me to use protection...

They tasted like chicken.

American's came from England, so why do we still have the English?

For the rational free thinkers, this science was settled in the 1880's. Evangelical Christians won't accept ANYTHING anyone says on the issue in support of evolution...so what's the point of any so-called "discussion"?

Theologians (who are NOT experts on paleontology, anatomy, kinesiology, primatology, embryology, neurobiology, etc) snub anything and everything that doesn't conform to their pre-conceived ideals. These people are not interested in the truth at all. They are only interested in things that support their pre-determined ideology.

Discussing evolution with an evangelical is wasted time you will never get back!

I WAS an evangelical who spent a lot of time studying Christian Apologetics. My copies of Evidence That Demands a Verdict are autographed by Josh McDowell. And although I no longer agree with his conclusions, I still have a great deal of respect for the man himself.

There is no arguing spiritual ideals with intellects. You can always tell an intellectual, but you just can't tell him much...

Evolution is the way God did it.

According to Genesis, God assigned the job to nature. It says that God commanded that the waters and the earth bring forth all the living creatures, and they did. That's what science says happened, too.

In the last 20 years DNA sequencing has sorted all this out. We are actually more closely related to [bleep] than [bleep] are to gorillas. Monkeys are more distant than any of the above. We used to think that the extinct Neanderthals were a wholly separate species but now it turns out that most Europeans have Neanderthal ancestors. The human/[bleep] split was about 7 million years ago.

Public radio just had a piece on this and said that humans share 96% of our DNA with c himpanzees, but that the European decedents share 97% with the Neanderthals.

"Public Radio", liberal by any chance?

Maybe I'm misreading but I think they meant 97% of Europeans have Neanderthal DNA. As I understand it, all European decendents have 1% to 4% Neanderthal DNA.

That 1-4% shines awfully bright at times.

So, at some time in history an ape had a genetic advancement in its species progression and became a human.
Its dna defect resulted in a new form of animal. It was of one sex or another and couldnt reproduce. At the same time and in the same county another exact same type genetic mutation occured and another same type animal was created which could only reproduce with its counterpart across the river.

They got to gether and viola- Adam and Eve. The rest is history.

Populations become isolated from other populations of the same species, and you get genetic drift for the entire population, not just one or two individuals, and this happens over hundreds of thousands of years. The unique environmental pressures determine the direction of the drift. Eventually, the two groups of the same species become sufficiently different as to (first) form a distinct subspecies (still capable, theoretically, of interbreeding). Then, given enough time apart, they become two distinct species, sufficiently dissimilar that a mating between them could not even theoretically produce fertile offspring. At that point, they are said to be (like donkeys and horses) two distinct (though closely related) species. Given more time apart, and no live young (fertile or not) can be preduced between the two populations that were once the same species (they become genetically isolated from one another). Should something bring them together again, one species may out-compete the other, causing the other to eventually disappear from the planet. Most species that have ever existed no longer exist.

PS That evolution occurs isn't a theory. That's a mere scientific observation (like the observation that massive objects attract one another), accepted universally by science. The theory relates to the mechanisms by which it occurs (like the theories of gravitation that explain why massive objects attract one another).

I hear you. Not near as easy to believe as the cosmic zombie

The Big Bang theory, when has an explosion , caused things to be in order? Explain that. With out God

" Middle men"...if you want to call them that, exist in South Chicago...for one example, and they are trying to kill each other off as fast as possible...

I wish them complete success.

Darwin

Yes. I applaud their efforts...

Haha classic. Complete with y’alls “middle-men.”

Evolution is poorly understood;)

That is not quite right on either account at least as I see it. The next verse in the narrative after the one you are sorta quoting clearly states that God created the critters and told them to multiply AFTER THEIR KIND. The words "after their kind" is repeated several times. You have already stated that you believe that leaves the door open for the evolution theory because "after millions of years" of a species breeding after its kind it can develop into another species. That is fine if you choose to believe that but it can't be proven. It also cannot be disproven.

Evolution is theory not science. Science is about what can be observed, tested and repeated. We can argue for months about the boiling point of water. I can say its 80 degrees. You can say its 212. Neither of us will know until we get a container of water, a thermometer, and a heat source. Then it will be proven to be 212 and not 80 no matter how many times the experiment is repeated. Case closed. That is science.

Conversely, no one has observed nor documented evolution. A metric crap ton of theory and conjecture and a few out right lies have been put out to sell and support it. The simple fact is that no one has ever seen life reproduce except after its kind. Closest thing I can think of that comes close to violating this principle is interspecies hybrids. Man can under controlled circumstances create these. We can breed horses and donkeys and get a mule which is a really neat animal but almost all of them are sterile. I think also a similar situation exists with lions and tigers. Actual science can explain why this happens.....IIRC these similar animals have different numbers of chromosomes and that is why their offspring is not able to reproduce. Hmmmmmm?

Anyway lets get down to the nitty gritty. What is my beef? Well first of all it does not threaten my faith in the least. If it is ever proven to my satisfaction and taken from theory to fact, the obvious fall back position is "that's the way God did it"......which is what most "rational free thinkers" who have a problem with the hurricane in a junkyard creating a shiny new 2018 F-150 aspect of it, or perhaps are afraid of going to hell resort to. Belief in an infinite supreme being gives one a lot of mental latitude. Big bang? No problem, the big banger did it. Life developing over "millions of years".....no problem, the big guy was just taking his time.

So what IS the problem. The problem is that I can't help but notice that the theory of evolution started about the same time very likely by the same group of 19th century intellectuals that thought Marxism was a great idea. They sold it with lies about a pig tooth and a monkey skull put together with glue. I was taught about Nebraska man and Piltdown man as a child in the public screwel system. I was a grown man before I learned that they were hoaxes which really pissed me off. These great "discoveries" were printed on the front pages of all the papers of their times and put in all the school books. When the truth was discovered, it may have been noised about in academia but the papers put it in a one paragraph retraction on section d3 by the classifieds, and NatGeo sure as heck didn't do a special about it like they did when it first came out. Exactly like "fake news" today. It does not matter. Regular rank and file people do not keep up with this crap. A generation of kids believe in evolution based on the lies they were taught, have abandoned faith, and are open to Marxism which was the goal in the first place.

The same playbook is continued. Every so often a :"scientist" or "archaeologist" will show up in the news with a bone he found somewhere. He will tell you what he believes about it and very likely draw some pictures of some kind of human like critter that no one has ever or will ever see and explain how it fits into the big picture. Thus the concept is propagated without any actual proof. More theory which serves the purpose of keeping the idea in people's mind.....that is presented as fact. Rank and file people will read the article, say ain't that neat and forget about it, but they will believe, in a superficial way, in evolution. In other words, the customer base is maintained by continued sales.

If these clowns left it in the realm of theory it would be one thing and I would say nary a thing. But they present it as fact and get real pissy about it if you ask questions. Those of you who think "evolution is how God did it"......go ahead and share that with one of them. They will mock and ridicule you, even though their theory is no more provable or scientific than the creation narrative or the ancient alien theory......Gus, that is your cue buddy!
You MUST believe their narrative, or else you get the ridicule business which is straight out of the Alinsky playbook. The possibility of a supreme being is not allowed because that throws a big ole monkey wrench in the agenda which is acceptance of an all powerful state.

What I find fascinating is that 99 percent of the folks on this board hate a damn commie. Flat out to the point of taking up arms. You want to keep your guns most of all, but also your money, freedom and constitutional republic. Yet some of the most stalwart of you will kneel and take the sacrament of their religion which is evolution as fact. What is the goal of the commies? Destruction of the old order, the culture of Western Civilization by any means. Religion, specifically the Christian religion, WAS a big part of that. Evolution has been the big weapon they have used to destroy that part of it.

Long post I know but I just want to make the point that all skepticism of evolution is not based on solely "being an evangelical" that no one can talk to but in my case moreso the people who are selling it and how they are selling it.

homo sapiens are born killers. check it out. the closest competitors were annihilated. present day monkeys & humans probably did come from the same ancient ancestors.

but monkeys don't much compete with humans and live to tell about it.

Accepting science doesn't mean rejecting God, so your premise is invalid.

It is both true that 1) God assigned the task of creating all living creatures to nature and 2) that God created all living creatures, since he created nature to which he assigned the task.

So astronomy isn't within the realm of science either? Sure it is, because astronomers can generate theories about what they observe, generate predictions based on said theories, supported by what we know about chemistry and physics, and those theories and predictions can then be tested and potentially supported or disproved. Same with the theory of evolution. Theories and predictions about evolution are tested by further discovery in fields like paleontology and genetics.

For example, Darwin predicted, based on his theory, that a fossilized species would be discovered in a strata beneath which no modern bird fossils have ever been found, indicating an archaic bird species with differentiated finger bones. Within Darwin's life time, such a fossil was in fact discovered in strata just beneath the point where there were no modern bird fossils ever found. This is a prediction based on a theory supported by observation that was fulfilled by further discovery. That's science, and it happens all the time vis a vis evolution.

It's also science because it's subject to disproof by a discovery which contradicts it, such as the discovery of a horse fossil in Cretaceous strata. Such a discovery would entirely disprove the theory. So far, no evolution-theory-contradicting discovery has been found in undisturbed strata. Were evolution false, that would be a common discovery. Its not having been discovered further supports the theory, since consistent with the theory.

Being disprovable by further discovery places evolution theory firmly within the sphere of science.

Out of ignorance comes enlightenment it you but open your eyes.

Across the northland are many examples on lakes where rocks are sorted into extremely ordered beaches by nothing more than time, energy and gravity. These beaches may be a few hundred yards in length or much longer. the rocks can be sorted by size along that length in a very well ordered diminishing or increasing sizes depending on your perspective. Presumably since the lakes and rock shoreline did not exist prior to the last glaciation, that occurred in less than 10,000 years or so, and likely a very great deal less time. As little as 100 years demonstrably in many cases. That's a mere blink in the billions and billions of years that have been at work upon the universe.

These are examples of exactly what you question that are common around you!

I thought black people were the middlemen

LOL. I think I know this guy. Isn't that Tershawn?

I recall many years ago watching a news program telling about the rock from mars that impacted someplace, I believe, in Australia.

It had no postmark and we had never been to Mars.

The same folks also talk about this missing link you allude to.

Listen here you goose, this is a thread about evolution and there is no reason for you to introduce Klingons into the mix.

A number of rocks from Mars, kicked off by large objects impacting Mars, have been found on earth. Also rocks from the moon. How do we know they are from Mars? Because we have sent spacecraft to Mars which determined the ratios of isotopes in rocks there.

Uneducated people often claim we have not observed evolution. In fact we have. We have observed small variations. Large variations require millions of years, so the way to observe evolution is to note the differences and progression of fossils in rocks of different ages. We can age many rocks by radio isotope measurements.

observe evolution :

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2935100/

Did you ever take even a nanosecond and consider that the most probable event in our evolution is that we evolved from a single species of primate, not monkeys as a whole? Did you ever stop to consider that the driving force behind that evolution was likely to have been a very poor adaptation of a species to it's environment, or a change in that environment placing great pressure upon that speciesthus driving the evolutionary change and the extinction of to original species simultaneously? That just might be one very good way to explain different primate species surviving and continuing to evolve and the evolution of a proto human species in parallel.

The trend in taxonomy is to retain the category, but add new categories to account for more recent speciation. For example, a dog is now scientifically termed canis lupus familiaris, giving credit for its derivation from wolves, both subcategories of canis, whereas in the past the dog was termed simply canis familiaris to distinguish it from canis lupus. So today, the scientific name implies that the dog is also a wolf, and is also a canine. You can go further and include in its name (before canine) carnivore. So our dogs are dogs, but also wolves, and also canines, and also carnivore, all at the same time.

Similarly, humans are apes, monkeys, and primates, in that order, since apes derived from monkeys (a species that any zoologist would classify as a monkey - Old World type - were it currently extant), and monkeys are a category of primate. This makes a human being a human, an ape, a monkey, and a primate, all at the same time. So you can both say that we evolved from monkeys and that we remain a type of monkey, just as we remain a type of ape, and a type of primate.

I do not doubt that evolution has occurred and is occurring.

I do doubt that any form of life is evolving into a higher plane of existence. Becoming more intelligent, bigger, stronger, or what-have-you.

The fossil record clearly shows that all of the animal families are becoming smaller, weaker, lesser versions of what they were in ages past.
I think this is evident in human history as well.

Believe what you will.
I believe in a Creator God.

well there it is. the Naked Ape remains the apex killer species upon the urth.

our consciousness, body design, and technology allows us, homo sapiens, to reign supreme.

we are wired to kill, and also to reproduce. that combination of factors, along with technology accounts for much of our progress.

This really is an excellent post.

C.S. Lewis remarked that Darwin’s Theory might better be titled, “ The Decline of the Species “ since it went from larger to smaller and from more to fewer.

As do I.

Many who accept the discoveries of modern science are also believers, and see no contradiction between evolution and a creator God.

Most believers in "Creationism" worldwide, however, are Muslims. Christians tend not to be "Creationists," even if they believe in creation.

PS A "Creationist" is someone who believes that each kind of living creature (species) was created from scratch by a sort of conjuring action on the part of God, and that living creatures are not related to one another across species. Genesis does not demand this interpretation in the least, although a pre-scientific primitive who reads it might well take that meaning from it.

I have seen "people" that could possibly be the missing link to which you have reference. I don't think you can deny evolution. We see it happening before our eyes in the form of survival of the fittest. We have to constantly develop new pesticides as the pests we are trying to control become resistant. I also don't deny God as the Creator of all life.

We took their women.

This is ignorant BS.

yes we did. right after we kilt the males. and evidently this behavior went on for some time.

humans are a very competitive species. it accounts for much of our success over the aeons.

"Becoming more intelligent, bigger, stronger, or what-have-you."

The USA Grizzly bear and the much larger stronger Alaskan Brown bear have the exact same genetics. If you were to take one of our Grizzly bears to Alaska the Brown bears would kill it and eat it.

This is a result of pure brain washing for at least a dozen years of government schooling.

"Like!"

Good to see the top is still wound up tight!

Well, yeah. But it does beat the hell out of only three.

Too many assumptions when "dating" rocks. You have to assume there was no daughter product at the beginning. You have to assume there was no parent or daughter product leached out. You have to assume there has been no parent or daughter product contamination in the subject material for the millions of years prior to testing it.

I recently read about a rock picked up at the bottom of Grand Canyon. It was broken into different parts. Different dating methods by different laboratories came up with dates that varied over a billion years for the samples from the same rock.

Bravo

The answer to this is very simple, all living thing do evolve, Animals mostly but evolution doesn’t explain creation. Man was created by God and that’s just the truth.
If man truly exist, evolving from apes, then they are gonna be middle men today.

If we are products of evolution-- why don't we have that extra hand we always seem to need?

There was a time when I regularly debated the facts supporting evolution and the theory of evolution with creationists. I eventually stopped when I realized that no matter how much evidence they hear, they will not change their minds, and that's ok with me. Believe whatever you want.

When someone asks me if I believe in evolution, I tell them "No, I don't believe in evolution at all, I'm convinced of evolution and the theory of evolution due to the vast amount of evidence that supports it. Science has nothing to do with "believing" this or that."

My belief in God is not based on science, and likely never will be. God is something you choose to believe in, or not. If you think you have scientific evidence for God, and that is something you base your faith upon, I have bad news for you.

I see here, years later, that the same straw man arguments and red herrings are put forth. Creationists tend not to argue against the actual evidence of evolution and the theory of evolution, but rather things they make up that neither actually state.

And not to change the subject, yet in a similar vein, I don't "believe" in anthropogenic global warming for the exact same reasons, and the evidence I've studied for that idea is not convincing. In fact, every single person I've talked to that believes in anthropogenic global warming, does so without any clear understanding of the evidence. They "believe", but they're not convinced by evidence. I've yet to talk with someone that can put forth the idea with evidence that also explains the facts that we know.

You seem to forget creationists and evolutionists have the same data. It's a mater of interpretation. Therefore I can say, "No matter how much evidence you get, you won't change your mind."

You mean like the extra fingers common among some of the Basque people?

The next version. Always features to add marketing will tell you, ask any designer. Personally I think a prehensile tail would come in handy.

You need to read more on geochronology.

Ringman, I'd like to ask if you have ever considered how many people you have turned away from Christianity from the ridiculous crap you post on here about Creationism? How dare you presume that you have all the answers about how God created? Do you not realize that the stuff you parrot from pseudo-scientists, with no real training, give the impression to many that all Christians are morons?

I don't forget that in the least. But, as is evident on this thread, creationists don't use evidence as it stands, but rather come up with straw man arguments and tear those down, stating, "see, evolution is not true", even though anyone that understands the theory of evolution would not have suggested the argument in the first place.

It's like me arguing that my bicycle doesn't do a particular thing (which may or may not be true) in order to try to prove that your car can't do the same thing. I know that sounds ridiculous, but is closely analogous to the arguments creationists present.

Oh, and to be more analogous, I would spend a great deal of time arguing that my bicycle actually -is- your car...

It’s one thing to look at the evidence. It’s another thing to understand it.

And if you have already decided to not believe it before you even look at it then, well... I guess you’re just smarter. That’s what intelligent people do. They first decide what’s what, then focus on rejecting any bull crap someone else might present to the contrary. Like scientists or whatever. Idiots.

Haha yeah. That cartoon tranny makes some excellent and hilarious points about evolution. And how most of its opponents have both a complete lack of understanding of it and an unreasonable vendetta against it. Classic.

I really wasn't trying to get into the religion thing. I'm good with God making me from a tadpole. Just pondering why Uncle Apeman didn't make it.

lol,....Pretty sure he did....





Ace

Yeah...I'm thinking they're not going too crazy with those DNA tests.

Ancient civilisations used their primitive creative imaginations to produce Gods that to them existed beyond the bounds of earth
in the vast unknown heavens of space.

Science has since extended the old boundary between the known and unknown.

People also once followed Jesus when he turned water into wine, until they hit a town or village with a 24 hr inn.




Some folk find it too challenging to develop or expand their minds beyond enchanted tale interpretations.

Mr. Garrison is only funny because he's well known to be a complete loon. Hardly someone I'd want on my side of any discussion.

Because whenever the superior edition came into contact with his ancestral edition, he viewed him as a competitor for limited resources and wiped him out, due to superior organizational capacity and weapon technology.

Yes, exactly the point I (and the creators or South Park) was making

Weapon tech.... re; primitive mans motivation to develop a stone axe...

do you think it may have been primarily based on the idea of taking his competitor out?

I know.

This is pure gold...

If you don’t believe in evolution, you can’t own a dog.

Plus, it’s funny as hell

It seems the people I learned from are certainly educated enough to give me the good info. I met three Ph.D geologists who were trained in NON-Christian colleges. That should at least equal your education. All three accept the universe is less than 7,000 years old.



Whlether I have “turned away” folks from Christianity by posting Truth is not my problem. God tells us in His Word He will send a deluding influence on those who wish to believe a lie. About presuming about God. You are sadly mistaken. If someone asked me, “Do you know the Lord?” I always tell them, “NO!” The idea that folks think Christians are morons is a problem for them. They are not on their way to Hell #2 or Hell #3. They are on their way to Hell and need to repent; whether they think I’m a moron or not.




But, as is evident on this thread, evolutionists don’t use evidence as it stands, but rather come up with strawman arguments and tear those down, stating, “see, creation is not true”, even though anyone that understands the theory of creation would not have suggested the argument in the first place.

It's like me arguing that my bicycle doesn't do a particular thing (which may or may not be true) in order to try to prove that your car can't do the same thing. I know that sounds ridiculous, but is closely analogous to the arguments evolutionists present.

Oh, and to be more analogous, I would spend a great deal of time arguing that my bicycle actually -is- your car... only because you are willfully ignorant.

You guys do realize that Darwin's educational training was Theology. So you trust a preacher that tells you you are an improved monkey. But you don't trust one that says you were created in the image of God and the earth is yours to have dominion over.
Apes and Men don't have the same number of Chromosomes. If we were an improved monkey we would.

Ringman, I apologize for the implication that you are moron for believing what you do. Name calling should not have been a part of this discussion. The fact is, YOU do not know the details of the mechanisms of God's creation any more than I do. I would respectfully suggest that it is vanity that makes you cling to the details of your beliefs, and your time would be better spent on highlighting Christ's teachings rather than arguing about the details of how creation came about.

how is it man is the only animal that eats an wipes its ass with the same paw .think about it

Miles,
No I do not means toes.
I mean that folks are frequently saying to someone--- hey lend me a hand, or I need a hand here--

Are you seven years old?

I dont, and i do. GSP.

The objection to Darwin having training as a minister is ridiculous. Being a Christian doesn’t preclude the persuit of science. He was also a naturalist.

As for our 23 chromosomes vs apes’ 24, the explanation is well understood, ie., two of our chromosomes have simply fused together at some point after our divergence from their line of descent.

However, Ringman does know the actual text of the Bible better than most, and his beliefs are very consistent with a literal reading of the text.

It isn't ridiculous it is a fact. His education was the study of religion. You have to have as much faith to believe complex life forms evolved from pond scum as you do in creation. But if someone demands that their folks came from monkeys who I am I to argue.

Life from pond scum isn’t a part of evolution theory. That’s a separate field of inquiry. Evolution doesn’t require faith because it’s evident to anyone who actually studies the evidence.

Denying evolution is not being pious, its just being ignorant.

You can still keep your faith, even if you pull your head out of your ass far enough to see that species have changed and evolved due to environmental pressures.

I once read a theory that made a lot of sense in explaining how racial differences could of occurred in our evolution from our common ancestor with the chemps. If I remember correctly it speculated that some of the human side of the split escaped Africa early on and made it to the Mid-East and thence to Europe and beyond while the humans that stayed in Africa continued to breed across the line with the side they split from for some time. The escapees would have encountered Neanderthal and maybe other humans and absorbed them causing at least some of the differences between Europeans, Asian Mongol races, and the race found in Africa. I'm sure living conditions and climate played a part but this theory certainly sounds reasonable to me.

On another note concerning Wolves vs domestic dogs. They are all dogs, a wolf is a dog.

When one side finally prevails in this debate it will drive BOTH sides to drink when they discover that it really makes no difference in the Grand Scheme.

O, but I do know the details of His creation. His Word tells us He spoke and it happened. Using regular common sense, if we speak and something happens, it happens when we speak. It doesn't take years or decades or centuries. We have been brainwashed by cartoons from age two or three years old to post graduate school that evolution is a fact. It takes some real life open minded research to overcome it.

Often I challenge our .com friends: Name ONE Ph.D. physical scientist who was a creationist and became an evolutionist after earning his doctorate. Just one. And I will name a dozen Ph.D. evolutionists physical scientists who after earning their doctorate became creationists. I limit it to physical scientists and don't include philosophers and theologians because those guys get whacked out by too much thinking and not enough observing.

You need to keep up with the most current information. This info is dated and has been refuted.

To believe in the theory evolution takes a large, if not larger leap of faith than Creation.

Your are badly mistaken about requiring faith. When John Sanford, who has seventy patens on gene splicing and taught graduate students for twenty-five years asked a colleague wht evidence we have for evolution he said, "We have none. We go on faith just the creationists." No one was there for the millions of years to see these supposed changes.




You are conflating change from on animal like horses and zebras and mules with the microbe to man theory. One is observable science the other is historical speculation from interpretation of facts.

I don't think many folks here understand what Evolution is.

Some folks here the word evolution and immediately think someone is trying to take Jesus away.

One side will prevail. At that time every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus Christ is Lord, to the Glory of the Father.

The truth is simple: Christ is a fact, evolution is a theory...

You paint with a pretty wide brush. I am an Evangelical Christian but have no doubt evolution exists. You seem to me limiting my ability to think and have opinions just because of my faith. I find that insulting.

Many people like to put groups of people into small boxes that they cannot escape because of their beliefs. Than can be a mistake.

He may very well say;;” Rich, do you have any idea how much precious time you wasted arguing from an ignorant place?”

Scott,

very well said.

I'm not an "Evangelical Christian" and I, too, don't like to be put in a box.

There's too much of the small box thing going around regarding many groups, religious, political, economic, racial, and so on.

Geno

I refer you to my signature line...

I am kind of surprised at you, GG. The only thing "settled" about this science is that evolution exists. How and why it does is far from settled. In fact, it is clearly a work in progress. The evidence for that is the numerous times that what was once accepted has been disproven. That is not to say that evolution is disproven - but our understanding of how it works has been....several times.

The vast majority of posters on both sides of this thread are lagging behind recent discoveries. Most here (if not all) would benefit by spending more time reading and less time arguing. What I see here is argument from both sides that is not supported by the most up-to-date science (not that I'm on the cutting edge either), and much of it coming from ideas that have been shown to be wrong for a long time.

I don't see anything in the most current science that I am aware of that challenges my faith in God. Likewise, I don't see anything in the Bible that disallows scientific discovery and/or the study of evolution. My educated guess is that both extreme arguments are close-minded and wrong.

I am not that important to Him.

Your opinion does not establish facts. They're just opinion.

Back at ya.

I wasn't trying to establish any facts here, other than that you and others are lacking in current knowledge - and you and others from both sides are attempting to persuade (poorly) others to accept ideas based on weak assumptions.

You want facts? Then you will have to leave your assumptions at the door and keep your pursuit of truth ongoing. It's difficult....I know.

Evolution is the change of allele frequency in a population over time. Pure fact. Fuggin amazing any of this stuff occurs.

Evolution is so overwhelmingly evident to any scientifically literate person that it's hard to comprehend how anything but bad faith can explain its rejection by any but the most universally ignorant.

Then name one Ph.D creationist who switched. Just one.

More so when one is brain washed.

Ringman - ya think it's possible that you could be more careful about how you quote me?

And If you're accusing me of being brainwashed, I find that kind of funny. The way I see it, you literalists are brainwashed, and so are the atheists.

If you so want to take Genesis literally, how about this passage?

Gen. 4:10
"But the LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground!

You suppose that was audible? What exactly do you think that phrase means?

Or - how about this...

Psalm 19:1-2
"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. "

I have yet to hear a recording of "sky speech" - but atheists should pay closer attention to what the heavens have been telling us. BTW - what do you think we should do about this passage, in light of what the heavens have been teaching us about the age of the universe and its beginning?

In 1956 a couple guys received the Nobel prize for discovering the earth "groans". Let me see. Where did I read about that? O yea. It's in Romans. But to answer your foolish question..... You anthropomorphize God. You think the Creator of the universe is limited to the senses you experience?

Well said, FreeMe.

It's all very simple......White people were created, Blacks evolved from monkeys.


Go chew on that one a while, deflave.

Ringman vs Dawkins:

Wow, Richard Dawkins? Rilly? That sorry sumbitch would put us in camps if he had the power....well some of us anyway.

Really? You respond to his arguments with argumentum ad hominem?

Just by similarities of shape and structure, people are still looking for the missing link where man evolved from an ape-like creature. Why not back it up to the very beginning where life was supposed to start from a single cell and got more complex as it evolved into a more sophisticated double cell and so on until we have all the life forms that inhabit the earth today.

So as these cells became increasingly complex, some turned into a blade of grass, others became trees, lizards, horses, insects and every organic life form that we observe today. Where does my DNA connect me to a tree or butterfly?

All science is a knowledge based on discovery and not invention. Science only finds out things that have always existed and then builds upon previous discoveries to help new discoveries. As this science evolves intellectuals add their understanding to previous discoveries and make conclusions accordingly.

When you can show me that my DNA is the same as a 2X4, I will pay more attention. But I guarantee you that at the time of your death, you will find out if your ancestors were an amoeba or Adam and Eve...

Also, if you don't believe that Egypt is actually an iron furnace (literally, an enclosed structure in which iron can be heated to very high temperatures for smelting), then God has some special suffering to send your way when you've passed into the great beyond, and that regardless of whether or not you trust in Jesus (sarcasm).

"But the LORD hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt, to be unto him a people of inheritance, as ye are this day."

- Deuteronomy 4:20

So, let's have it. Is Egypt literally an iron furnace, or isn't it? Your eternal disposition is on the line based on your answer to that question. Don't call the Bible a liar, now.

I am not even calling you a liar, you are just confused and rely on intellect for your perception of your existence, I rely on God...

You make some good points. While you have Hawkeyes attention, how about seeing if you can persuade him to remove his boyfriends picture from his signature line.

Is God telling you that Egypt is literally an iron furnace, or do you suppose that's a metaphor?

Like, perhaps, the Lord having formed Adam from the dust of the ground? - Genesis 2:7

That, not taken literally, would seem to suggest that Adam (i.e., man) was made from what had once been inorganic matter (i.e., the dust of the ground), which is actually an amazing insight, lending credence to the claims that the Bible was in fact divinely inspired, since men of the ancient world would have no other way of knowing that.

The flip side of Evolution was Ey Jude.

If you aren’t an attorney, you sure reason as one. You are trying the same distortion of logic that the Sanhedrin used in the days of Christ. I am not here to get tangled up with your skewed version of scripture and devotion to evolution, I am only pointing out some holes of your belief system and continue to cling to my beliefs. What do you think will happen to you when you die?

Evolution deesn't require "devotion" to be accepted as a reality, as it's quite evident to anyone who's not pre-scientific in his thinking.

PS Is it your belief, based on your reading of the Bible, that women become pregnant by merely knowing a man?

"And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain ..." - Genesis 4:1

Remember, you have to take it plainly and literally. You're not allowed to apply your knowledge about how conception happens, filling in any gaps in the text with information about eggs, sperm, zygotes, etc., otherwise you're doubting the plain and literal word of God, and damnation will surely follow.

That isn’t his boyfriend, I believe that is a video of him when the judge told him he was defending the wrong parking violation...

Shrap, you a young earth guy too?

It would appear so.

Who I am is not as important as the people getting screwed by having TRH as their defense attorney...

TRH, The Giraffe video explains nothing. A bunch of know-it-alls in the "science community" have GUESSED that it must be an evolutionary relapse for the looping nerve because they have no explanation for it, you know why? Because they never created the damned giraffe and pick option A out of thin air and pontificate their findings as fact, not unlike the armies of arm chair quarterbacks from any venue you could think of. A lot of similarities to poosy hatted liberals, wait! I'll betcha they are liberals - after all, they know everything there is to know about everything and just like liberals, they blow a fucqing gasket if you dare challenge their theory based facts.

Truth is there is one type of evolution that can be exclusively called a FACT and that is creation based evolution. You know, genetically engineered evolution like plant foods and designer dogs. That is verifiable. That is something that is undeniable because humans were making the modifications under whatever recordable media you wish to investigate.

Never met an atheist who wasn't a know it all with damn near any subject you could bring up. If you want to make a measuring stick your god, be my guest! But any theory you subscribe to is actually as faith based as any religious zealot's explanations.

NO one walking the earth has any FACTS about our origins, just faith, theory and BS!

Lol. I don’t look at his drivel.

Just curious if you adhere to the young earth belief.

I personally have no issue witnessing and believing in both a creator and evolution.

FFS, seriously?! I take that apology back, you truly are a moron.

I have struggled many years over the evolution versus creativity thing, even though I believe in God, and I believe the account in Genesis. I've thought times that there is sufficient evidence, and I use that term for lack of a better word, to consider that there may be more to the Biblical account of things than meets the eye. But...here is what I know and what I believe.......this world and everything in it is just too perfect to have just happened. The seasons, the sun, the moon, the stars, the plants, the animals.......everything, I just don't think it just happened to have evolved that way, I believe there is a superior being who made it all happen.

I have been out hunting many times, and watched the sun come up, and thought that there has to be a God, because this world is just too perfect, everything fitting together like pieces of puzzle. So, even though the theory of evolution is a very compelling one, I think the evidence that God has presented to us, is just too much to resist.

If that's the case, why would you classify the defense of evolution as drivel?

PS We agree on the point you make above, apart from the suggestion that scientific defenses of evolution theory constitute drivel.

Study geology and you will discover that the placid state of things on our planet while we live here in our current time wasn't always the case. Such placid conditions come and go on the geologic time scale. Life has prospered for millions of years, then suddenly been almost completely wiped out. Research "The Great Dying," i.e., The Permian–Triassic Extinction, or "Snowball Earth," or the Cretaceous Extinction. There have been many such occurrences. We are living in a very nice respite from all that.

The human mind can’t comprehend eternity, it is all as one day with God, time is only measured by man...

I was wondering if someone was going to bring that up.

It seems you are trying to use the King James Bible translated in 1611 instead of The New American Standard which is modern to make a foolish point. The new Bible use "had relations". Repent.

this in my opinion and understanding is the basis of very hardcore philosophy.

we don't know where we are from, we don't even know where we are, and for certain we don't know where we are going next.

all else is conjecture. we're putting together the conclusions from our perceptions and observations the best we can. are we on the right track? who could possibly know for sure?

How very progressive of you to allow Bibles in your home other than the good old King James Version.

You are aware, I assume, that your favorite Bible translation, The New American Standard Bible, says that Jesus is fallen from heaven, right? That's Satanic. Perhaps you should stick with the good old King James, like I do.

"“How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations!" - NASB

"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!" - KJV

Jesus is the Morning Star (Revelations 2:28), and your favorite Bible translation says he's thrown from heaven, i.e., that Jesus is Lucifer.

This is just one of many of the subtle Satanic deceptions found in that translation.

A very common observance by people who have entered another realm, either by NDE experience or the introduction of certain chemicals into their bodies, is the absence of time there.

It's interesting to me that the Bible mentions time as being relative a couple of Millennia before Einstein started thinking along the same line.

I’ve pointed out before that explaining our origin, and evolution, requires the one doing the explaining to grab huge chunks of TIME and insert them at points favorable to their conclusions.

Meanwhile, other portions of the Scientific Community tell us that tome is not a constant and may not even exist as we use it.

I’ve caught samples while drilling oil wells and I’ve seen countless little sea shells being circulated to the surface from thousands of feet below the surface of the earth, so there can be no question in my mind about there being a vast ocean once where there are now hills, valleys, and desert.

And that is ALL I can surmise from the evidence.

I think time exists *here*,..and that it's impossible to imagine an existence without time. But as mentioned, people who have gone into another realm then come back almost universally describe it as a place where there's no time.

Here's a video I've posted before of Steve Gardipee describing his NDE after he was shot down while flying a Loach in Vietnam. The entire video is worth hearing. He goes into a lot of depth. But at the 15:57 mark he just casually mentions that "There's no time up there, so it was an instant, it was a million years'.

You hear that theme over and over from many people who have such an experience.

I maintained what you are saying for years. The KJV is wrong.

That was great, Bristoe. Thanks for posting it.

Do you really want to leave a record of being a willful liar?

You are making no sense. About what am I a liar?

If I am anthropomorphizing God, why is he telling Cane to listen?

And you didn't answer my question about Psalm 19:1-2. What do we do with that? The heavens have been revealing a tale of a definite beginning....billions of years ago (by our measure). To deny this suggests that Satan has unlimited power to overrule God's vast message. He is the great deceiver - but that's giving him too much credit, I think. To go that far, we'd have to allow that he has the power to corrupt the word and the laws of God.

At this point in my studies, I have to question which God is greater - the God who is the ultimate conjurer, or the God who is all-knowing, to and beyond the point that he can design a system that works in ways we are just beginning to understand through science - in some ways that by most expectations should be impossible. I suspect that these two versions of God are one and the same - but it is we who are seeing him differently. A God who can design the working biological cell is infinitely wise and powerful, in my current perception. But to one who remains ignorant or refuses to give credit to science, He would still look like the ultimate magician. I'm perfectly willing to accept that I may be wrong, but I find it really hard to believe that God would encourage us to learn about his creation, make it uncannily accommodating to discovery, and then expect us to disbelieve what we see.

Mr Gardipee seems very humble considering his military decorations and how he acquired them. He was shot down and experienced his NDE after volunteering for a second tour in Vietnam.

(Scroll across with the arrows at the bottom)

https://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/84632

My point in discussing this stuff is because people want to have differences of opinion on the age of the Earth and how long it took God to create the Universe when it's mentioned a few times in the Bible that time doesn't exist in God's realm as it does on Earth.

Therefore, it's meaningless to have discussions concerning those matters while using our understanding of time.

what's time to a hawg anyways?

My dear sister is one of those special lot that firmly believes the Earth is somewhere around six thousand years old...I just think she is a [bleep]-wit.

I'd guess that even a "hawg" would have an easier time conceptualizing time that the absence of it.

Tell her this.

2 Peter 3:8

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

Totally. Seven days is negotiable because the science of geology is easily understood and one would look like a dipschit if they said well the earth is a few thousand years old. So seven days is meaningless to talk about because God and Genesis. Time is different in heaven earth, duh, erryone knows that..

But species changing into other things, and man appearing to be part of that, well that's a hard line in the sand. Ain't nothing different there. Doesn't happen in heaven, doesn't happen on earth, because God and Genesis.

Which parts are negotiable and which aren't? The science each individual understands and/or ignores?

Maybe God didn't feel the need to even discuss it because it only took a fraction of a second.

Some here may not have heard the joke, Gus.

OK, your statement was a bit ambiguous. Perhaps you didn't mean to suggest that I ever said the KJV was wrong.

Another excellent post.

Precisely.

Bingo.

Yep. Nailed it.

First I should remind you not to add to God's Word. God does not tell Cain to "listen". God is telling Cain what He hears. Not what Cain hears.

There are numerous people who have come accepted the reality of God by considering the heavenly bodies. I remember one African chief who, while worshiping the sun god, decided..."I am boss here. The witch doctor is second in command. Someday my son will be chief. We are no longer going to worship the sun god or any other god. We are going to worship the Boss God." I was in my early teens when I met the missionary who told me about this. He was an older guy. After he told them about Jesus his tribe, en masse accepted Jesus as the Boss God.

Based on this first like I think you need to appeal to God for wisdom. You can't seem to understand a lot of God's Word. God is Infinite. That includes not only neutral to nice, but all that we can conceive. The billions who died in The Flood would certainly say God is harsh. God tells us in His Word when a calamity occurs in a city He did it. Satan, despite his fantastic power, is a created being and has to beg his position before the most high.

You reject God's Word and then have the audacity to accuse a Bible of being Satanic deception? There are lots of errors in the King James Version, but they didn't come from Satan. God sends a deluding influence on those who wish to believe a lie. You are deceived.

God gave us time for our use. He says He gave us the sun, moon, and stars for days and years and signs and seasons. We are locked into time; at least for the present.

Recognition that the Bible frequently teaches truth through metaphor isn't rejection of God's word.

Do you believe that God reached to the ground, picked up some dust in his hands, and molded it into a man? I don't think God wishes for us to turn off our higher mental faculties when we read his word. He gave them to us for a reason.

Do you believe a man that was beaten half to death by Roman soldiers, crucified, and stabbed in the heart with a spear just to make sure.......came back from the dead after three days and walked through a wall to say hi to his friends and let them know he was okay....among other things?

Nothing about that narrative was metaphorical.

That very same man spoke of things in the book of Genesis such as the creation and Sodom and Gomorrah, as history, not as metaphor.

...And he wasn't stabbed in his heart. Read.

True. I didn't say otherwise. Where does Jesus say that God literally reached to the ground, grabbed some dirt, and molded a man with his hands, though?

On that point, Genesis doesn't in any respect demand a literal interpretation. Since we know that's not how species came into existence, therefore, there would be no rational justification for giving it a literal interpretation, and much rational justification for giving it a metaphorical one.

He did not say one way or the other unless I missed it somewhere.

I didn't add anything. Oh - you're going to tell me that the only translation that is accurate is the KJV. Nice dodge from having to deal with the concept of literalism. Let's move on....

Your witch doctor studied the heavens enough to convince him of the truth. Good. We continue to study the heavens, and by my reckoning, they still point to a creator - only more forcefully. When the Big Bang theory was announced, atheists were loathe to accept it because it points to a beginning. But it was science that brought it to light. That's history now, and we have progressed beyond even that in knowledge that points to a creator. If that threatens your world view and you have no inclination to introspection and appeals for wisdom yourself (BTW - your assumption that I have not done so is a bad attempt at mind reading), you might consider at least choosing your words more carefully when discussing this with other Christians and atheists as well.

Thank you.

Suppose that God had Moses write the account of creation in perfect detail. No - not even that....Suppose he instructed him to give just an overview of the process of how He created the system that has creative power built in (as it must to survive beyond "...God finished his work of creation..."). Just how much of that detail would anyone at the time understand? What would people of Moses's time think of the complex design of the cell? What would they think of quantum mechanics? How distracting would that be? Just something to think about as you remember that the point of Genesis is not the "how"?

So, just how old is creation?

We know it is significantly over 13 billion years. We can see fully formed galaxies of stars which are more than 13 billion light years away.

This obviously necessitates that the image we are seeing departed that galaxy 13 billion years ago. Then we must add the time it took for the matter of that region of space to coalesce into stars and start shining. I would have to assume many more billions of years.

Heck, for all we know, every star in that galaxy might have burned out and turned into black holes by this time.

Careful now. The Deceiver is fooling you with science.

13 billion years by the way time is measured in this realm. But as I mentioned before, if time doesn't exist in God's realm, then there's no reason to try to estimate it's age with man's measurements.

You reject sober history, that Jesus and the apostles accepted, and accept man's fallible opinions and espouse them as fact. As far as answering you question, I answer with a question. What does God's Word say?

Doesn't every reasonable person?

"So we know that's not how species came into existence..." What an arrogant, willfully ignorant statement!

"Just how much of that detail would anyone at the time understand?" You are missing a lot here. You assume God didn't create Adam to be ten times or fifty times smarter than modern man? If we went back before the Flood in a time machine we would be put in a mental institute for the mentally handicap. God programmed Adam with more information than we can conceive. Adam knew math beyond what our brightest mathematicians understand. You have been brainwashed by the many years of not accepting God at His Word.

You added the word "listen". It's not there. The KJV has too many errors for me to use regularly. I don't understand your idea that I try to "dodge from having to deal with the concept of literalism." I accept God's Word as written. Some is historical. Some is poetry. Some has metaphors. The context helps those who are serious understand Him.

I see you didn't read the story correctly. It was the chief. Perhaps you do the same thing with God's Word. I am a presupposionalist. That means my world view starts with the idea God's Word is correct and anything that deviates is incorrect to one degree or another.

You are accepting the Big Bang as accepted science. Take a look at google and discover how many evolutionist do not accept it.

In part, it says that Egypt is an iron furnace. Do you accept that, literally? Or, was it perhaps a metaphor?

I will have to note that it here that I first done seen the term, "PhD Creationist." LOL

You have not read enough about this subject. Both creation and evolution have a time travel problem. With the Big Bang you are limited to what we think we know now. With God, Who created time dilation that has been proven by scientists, there is no problem with a six day old universe getting light from the farthest star or galaxy. There is a book available which you may or may not find interesting. (The author is educated at least as much as anyone on this forum.) It is named "Starlight & Time" by Dr. Russell Humphreys Ph.D. He's made some fantastic predictions of what will be on other planets which have been correct.

I'll let you try to figure it out.

I know the answer. It's important for you to state where you stand on it. I know why you won't, though. So does everyone else.

No.

If you are going to be a Christian, you have to.....its pretty fundamental. Where I was going with all that was that if you are going to believe the crucifixion-resurrection narrative, why is it such a stretch to believe that God made man out of the dust of the earth?

Since you know so much, please tell me why I didn't respond to your attempted agitation so I will know.

No, I believe the crucifixion and resurrection to be the greatest hoax ever perpetrated by organized government upon its constituents.

I believe there was a renegade portion of the priesthood which understood that the time of beating the congregation over the head with threats of hell was at an end. It was time to offer the carrot and put the stick away.

Not to mention that the entire philosophy of the crucifixion/resurrection makes no sense to me.

Christ is God, omniscient and eternal. Yet a man killed him?

Take a look at God's Word. It tells us He gave up His life, no one took it from Him. He maintained if you sin you deserve death. The problem is your death is not adequate to satisfy The Angry God. He gave Himself. It is beyond my understanding. That does not prevent me from accepting His substitutionary death to purchase His creation. Remember the entire creation groans like a woman in childbirth waiting for its redemption from its bondage of corruption.

Everybody knows what the deal is, we make our own accountings when our numbers are up. I love God but I'm not going to tell somebody else they have to believe anything. I generally avoid both those guys who yap on about me needing to do as they say or I'm going to burn and those who refuse to even consider an opinion other than total negation. My own guesses work well enough for me and I figure If a man is happy with what he brings to the pearly gates then that's his business. I'm happy with my efforts at doing the right things and with my guess that evolution is one of God's tools.

Nothing new to me, friend. But we're not talking about Adam here.We're looking at several generations beyond the fall. None of the Bible we have was written before the flood. So it wasn't intended for those intelligent people of whom you speak. That's not my whole point, anyway. If we're going to have a Genesis that amounts to "how did God do it?", it's going to be a lot of reading that is not focused on the Message. Ask yourself - why did God have Moses write Genesis? Now - what should he include? Oh, BTW - what medium was available for writing and storing, and why does that matter?

Ever taken a course in journalistic writing?

No, I did not add the word "listen". Several translations have done that for me. At your prompting, which I suppose is sure to come, I will have to do a study in the Hebrew text to see whether that is incorrect. Please forgive my tendency to not read you as well as I do God's word - my point about your story was not lost, and you know it.

As for your claim of being a "presupposionalist"......I suppose I am that also, although I have never used the term. But you go beyond that as a Genesis literalist. I believe the Word is correct, but I also acknowledge the possibility that it isn't necessarily all literal and complete detail. My understanding of how that works does not challenge any of the Message.

Yes - I accept the Big Bang....until that is somehow disproven. What you don't seem to realize is that the reason so many evolutionists (atheists, actually) don't accept it is that it blows their "eternal cosmos" idea - which was necessary for their "chance" argument - out of existence (now some of them make an appeal to "multiverse"). When it first came to light, they attempted to mitigate it with the idea that the universe is continually expanding and collapsing in never ending cycles. Even that has been shown by scientific discovery to be incorrect. Those silly scientist who won't just take the Biblical text as literal history now know that the universe has a beginning and is expanding at an accelerated rate. There is no sign of the supposed "endless cycle". I find that exciting - and useful when talking to atheists.

Now, the atheist position is that presupposing Biblical truth is hostile to scientific discovery. I disagree, and propose the opposite - that presupposing no God blinds the atheistic scientist and impedes discovery. My belief that many of the details of God's creation are discoverable (over time) is based on study of the Bible and on my faith, not only in his saving grace, but also in his desire for us to know him, even in life. Frankly, I find the wonders of molecular biology and astrophysics to be awesome almost beyond belief, and showing evidence of a masterful Creator. Surely God could have left no such evidence if he did not desire us to discover it. And surely if he desires us to discover it, He would not allow Satan to rearrange the entire cosmos, the tiniest complex components of life, and matter itself, and everything in between so as to make it incomprehensable.

Brainwashing? That is one way we get to the point of refusing to consider ideas that challenge our own. Another is fear. Fear that our limited understanding will be destroyed by truth revealed bit by bit. Either way, hostility toward discovery based on following where the evidence leads does nothing to save the unbeliever. Arguing how God went about creating and whether his day fits in our box, to the point of denigrating and just being argumentative, is no way to win souls....in my humble opinion.

We have the answer in God's Word how He did it. He spoke and it happened.

I did take a journalistic writing class in college. The teacher asked us to write about a book that changed our life; like Huckleberry Finn. I wrote about the Bible. She rejected my paper and appealed to the "separation of church and state." Neither she nor I are in congress so I figured she was too stupid to teach much and dropped the class.

I don't know what I don't know and you can't know what I do know without me stating it.

Another great post, FreeMe.

That speciation occurs/occurred roughly along the lines that evolution theory proposes is at least as certain as the fact that the earth orbits the sun. The only questions that remain (and they are only few and peripheral) relate do the exact processes involved.

Well then.......it appears that I have overestimated your comprehension. It also appears your intention is to argue for the sake of arguing. Otherwise, I would think that you might be more curious about what that point was.

Please tell me the point.

By the way, I think you are the poster who informed me that Moses was the recipient of God's Word; rather than people before the Flood. Thanks. That does change my opinion of those who might read it at the time. At the same time I do believe Moses understood all that God was giving him.

You make this assertion as though you were there to observe it. You faith in evolution is no more valid than the 7,000 year believer. Neither was he there to observe it.

Making note of evident facts requires no faith at all. Every field of science points to it. You'd have to be a fool to believe the earth is six thousand years old, or ten thousand years old, or anything anywhere close.

You don't seem to understand your information is so limited you can't understand how limited it is. Your information is like a grain of sand on the beach of the beach of information. If your information is so obvious name one Ph.D creationist who switched and became an evolutionist. Just one!

The only way they can be Creationists is if they've got a screw loose, so what would happen to change that?

Perhaps then you can explain why Ph.D evolutionist switch to become creationist since evolution is so obvious. Can you give it a try without ad hominin?

I have no respect for any scientist who believes in a flat earth either. They are in the same category.

It would not be possible for someone who is a creationist to pass a PhD examination for the same reason that someone who insisted the earth was flat and had four corners could not receive a PhD in geography or geology.

I laugh at you evolutionists every time I see a polar bear — and their black noses. Lmao.

My golly, I find myself agreeing with Ringman! The constitution says "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion." It means the founders didn't want to have the government REQUIRE belief in any particular religion. That's not the same as forbidding a kid to write a report on the Bible.

Aside from that, I found on another forum many years ago that it's pointless to argue with Ringman. He ignores all facts if they contradict his "Faith," Faith being defined as anything written in whatever version of the Bible he favors. No matter if Science has proven that much of Genesis is a Bronze Age fairy tale, that the Bible contradicts itself many times, and that even Genesis contains two separate creation myths that contradict each other.

You can't defeat Faith with Science or vice versa.

So argue with Ringman about what kind of scope to put on a .300 Magnum or something instead.

What does he recommend for scoping a 300 mag? That I should pray about it?

I think his latest creation is a 300 Ultra mag necked down to 6.5mm.

I don't think he's ever broken an inch with it for 3 rounds, let alone a real group.

He's also shooting some funky 109gr borerider bullet in it.

But considering how there's a fair amount of science involved with shooting........this shouldn't surprise anyone......

Monkeys are smarter than man; just look at the Walmart crowd

Lol. Hot damn. That’s like a cross between a RUM and a Creedmore. I’d probably call it a 6.5 CUM;)

TRH brought da' heat to this thread.

Is that good or bad?

It's good when you are correct, like today.
It's bad when you are on a conspiracy theory tangent.....

You've been better lately. I have to wonder if you've been eating more meat and fewer processed carbs:

Ha mostly good. I admit I haven’t read the whole thread, especially skipping all the back and forth with Ringman.



This is worded quite well though. Well played sir.

Well thanks.

Good.

Heartily written bish slaps are always good.

Cracking me up.

Well....there you go. I could have guessed.

I'll try to be more understandable....

You said

Then I said

My point?

The Bible states that "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands." Also, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse."

I don't take these passages as just emotional homage. I take this more literally. Those same intelligent ancients that you referenced very likely had the means to figure out at least some of what we have learned recently - that the cosmos show evidence of a beginning of time and space. They might just as well have deduced intelligent design by studying nature. Just like your African chief (but probably with more advanced knowledge). There is no reason for us to stop doing the same, even though some people take limited knowledge and (often by choice) make erroneous inferences. As it stands today, the deeper our scientific understanding becomes, the more it points to a Creator - "so that men are without excuse". I have no doubt that the trend will continue.

Your ignorance is showing. Candidates earn their Ph.D.'s every year. They just keep their true views to themselves. Why? Watch the movie "Expelled!" Don't read about it. Watch it.

This is suppose to be an intelligent answer? You are an anonomous poster who they don't even know. Your posts are like the wind in the trees: Noise without communication.

Again, name the Ph.D creationist scientist who became an evolutionist and I will name ten evolutionists scientist who became creationist by observing the evidence open mindedly.

The mere fact of being or becoming a "Creationist" indicates a rejection of science. People reject reality for all sorts of reasons. It's not evidence that a fairy tale (the one they adopt in its place) is true. The fairy tale here is the imposition onto the creation account a story line proposed by pre-scientific people, i.e., a hyper literal one.

PS I assume, based on your insistence on absolute literalism, that you agree with the Roman Catholics on the literal transformation of bread and wine into Christ's body and blood during communion service, right? In other words, the bread and wine are not mere figures of his body and blood for our remembrance of his sacrifice on the cross, but literally become his body and blood, only your senses being fooled into still seeing and tasting bread and wine. That's what you believe, right, because you're a literalist in your interpretation of Sacred Scripture. Right?

"Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you."

- John 6:53

"While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take and eat; this is my body. Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."

- Matthew 26:26-28

You are a special person. You think because a scientist finally sees the light that all of a sudden he rejects the very science that changed his mind. Please post some of the evidence that "real" scientist "know" that other scientists don't know. Do they observe a different sun? Do they look at different fossils? Do they test different strata? Do they measure the amount of different chemicals in the rivers and oceans? What are these evidences to which you appeal? Try to teach us about retrograde planets for a start.

I accept Scripture. What you or I think about something does not change it from what it is.

I notice you are avoiding answering questions along these lines.

I accept Scripture, too. My question relates to whether you accept every part of Scripture literally or not. Are you Roman Catholic on the bread and wine literally becoming the body and blood of Christ during communion service, or do you believe this was meant by Christ to be taken metaphorically as opposed to literally?

I'm curious. What do "retrograde planets" have to do with anything?

The biggest problem with this whole discussion is the mistaken assumption that there are only two camps - creationist and evolutionist - and that they are diametrically opposed. There are creationist scientists who accept the evidence of an ancient universe and genetic shifts. There are also scientists who do not invoke God but admit evidence of design.

As I mentioned earlier, those arguing from the extreme opposite ends of the question are, IMO, both overlooking much recent scientific discovery. As it stands, a lot of straw men are being propped up by both extreme camps. Playing the label game isn't very educational, but if you must, it would be more accurate to simply divide the groups into "atheist", and "believer".

I don't know what Ringman is alluding to, but it was scientists who figured out that what appears to the incurious eye as planets moving back and forth....is not. That lead to the "delusion" which landed some of them in trouble with the religious dogma of the day.

Idunno...Ringman - you surely aren't still thinking "retrograde" planets are changing direction....are you?

An important distinction to be made is between "Creationists" and Christians who believe in divine creation, but don't accept the fundamentalist/literalist interpretation of the creation account in Genesis, but rather allow that it's a metaphorical description of creation, leaving out details which were later filled in by scientific discovery, i.e., Genesis wasn't meant as a science text book.

A "Creationist" is someone who believes that the earth and physical universe are ten thousand years old, or less, that each species that ever lived, including man, was conjured into existence at roughly the same time, is roughly the same today as then, and that no animals of distinct species are connected genetically to any animal of another species, all being unique, unrelated, members of their own distinctly created species, e.g., a horse and a donkey (the Creationist will tell you) never had a common ancestor that lived some time in the past, nor did a snake and an iguana, a cow and a lion, a T-Rex and a mallard, etc., etc..

And trilobites and dinosaur bones were planted in layers of rock by Satan to make us doubt the Word.

LOL. Exactly. That's what Ringman would have us believe.

The biggest problem is that it conflates Since and Theology, two distinct disciplines which do not intersect.

There’s no such thing as a second camp, creation is too complicated to be explained by evolution, the the fire flies, all the fishes and girls and butterflies and the amazing complex nature of human cells. Creation and a higher person is the only thing that explains it in a spiritual and scientific way. Nothing in this world happens by chance.

Very interesting conversation on the topic. I've long believed there was a problem with the statistics.

Amen. Worthwhile to read again.

ttt for an informative review.

You did it now, three smart joos gumming up the works...

“Evolution is theory not science.”
This is my favorite part!

I’ve read Darwin’s doubt and it is compelling. The mathematics of Darwinian evolution just don’t work.

And the author makes a point that it goes beyond evolution or the origin of species. That every scientific discipline is finding evidence of design.

Regardless of the merits of the intelligent design theory, there can be no doubt that Darwinian thought has become a religion in itself. Every challenge is met with an emotional response uncharacteristic of science. Further, every scientific challenge is met a host of responses that do not deconstruct the science behind the challenge and show why it is wrong in a particular instance, but instead propose some alternate mechanism by which Darwinian evolution is still correct or explain how the challenger misunderstood some mechanism of the theory. Both assertions relying on some as yet unproved but only theorized mechanism of change in organisms.

And really, it’s been the same from the start. Darwin admitted at the first that the evidence for his theory was lacking but that it would be found in the fossil record. And I’m sure that if he had had even the slightest inkling of the complexity of the biology needed, he would have claimed that future discoveries would there would show him right as well. But we are going on nearly 200 years and the fossil records have largely failed to show what he said they would and the more we learn about the biology, the more unlikely Darwinian evolution seems. Yet, the argument is much the same as it was in the beginning, we simply don’t know enough. The evidence is there waiting to be discovered. Once we know enough, we’ll see all along that materialist bottom up evolution was right all along.

When you start with a theory and you insist upon its viability despite a lack of evidence, and even in the face of contrary evidence, and you rely on assertions that evidence is there but not found yet, you no longer have a scientific theory. You have dogma, a worldview, and a religion.

A bunch of obvious crackpots wishing desperately to be taken seriously.

I’m pretty agnostic as to the mechanics of God’s creative forces but these quotes say an awful lot.

If we are going to use art as evidence of God, what does the work of Van Gogh, Picasso, or Dali suggest about reality.

I remember when it came out; the flip side was Ey, Jude.

Ya forgot your joke emoji.

That's complete bullshit. It says nothing about conservatives going out and doing the hunting while liberals stayed at the campfires sewing animal skins together, or brewing beer, or any of the most important historical stuff.

Evolution is a fact. Theory relates to the means and mechanisms by which it happens.

Dang, someone has a clue. What are you doing here?

Exactly, when evolution is defined as the change in gene frequencies over time. We use an off shoot of these theories to put people in prison all the time - called DNA evidence. Pretty good science.

nOn Sequitur July 18 , 2019.

https://images.app.goo.gl/ENsXGku45fWMq4mh9

Thank you for proving my point.

You state that it is a fact even though you can’t find evidence that it happened. You can’t find evidence that it is happening. And you can’t satisfactorily explain how it could have happened. Yet, it is fact. Lol

It's the most scientifically confirmed theory there is. Literally all of the life sciences, and the accomplishments therefrom, would be meaningless (and impossible) were it not correct. Nothing we know about biology makes any sense whatever without it. Before evolution, biology was an oddball hobby of cataloging all the different lifeforms as unrelated organisms.

Is it really your contention that the zebra, the horse, and the donkey are not related to one another, Joe? If you recoil at the notion of their being unrelated species, then you have accepted speciation by natural selection. You just grow increasingly uncomfortable as divergence increases beyond species that look superficially alike due to greater lengths of time in isolation that would be required.

There is micro evolution. There are no examples of macro evolution and it is a mathematical impossibility. Animals do not change form.

I guess we have to discuss what you mean by form? Most animals that you'd think are quite distinct, share a great deal in terms of form, e.g., two eyes, nostrils in about the same place, ears in about the same place, spine in about the same place, organs, blood vessels, etc.. yet this all could be said about a fish and a wolf. At first glance, one is inclined to say they are very distinct in form, but that's just a bias you have. Looked at scientifically, their forms are extremely similar. And that's explained by their having had a common ancestor. That position of the eyes, the skull, the spine, the limbs, the organs, etc., is a family resemblance, like the way you resemble your brother or sister, just further removed.

Anatomy cannot be studied or understood without evolution? Organic chemistry? Pathology? Even genetics? (all disciplines I've studied) The assertion that all the life sciences are "impossible" without evolution is a straight up crock of crap. The only life "science" that depends on evolution is evolution. If evolution was so essential to understanding life sciences, it would be a prerequisite for all major courses instead of a senior elective. You are simply repeating this stuff. Try to refute the math presented by the video. You'd look smarter.

No, just no. Find the mechanism where a foot becomes a fin, one stomach becomes four, lungs become gills, skin becomes scales, limbs become wings, and so and so forth. There literally has not been enough time on earth and not enough organisms on earth to have made the necessary genetic changes by random means.

That’s what those guys in the video were talking about. Today we understand more about genetics. They calculated the number of combinations possible and the odds of getting one useful mutation in one protein. It was ten to the 77th power. In the history of the world, counting every single bacteria that has ever lived, there have only been something like ten to the 40th power organism. In the universe, there is an estimated ten to the 78th power atoms.

only man is arrogant enough to think he has all the answers.

It's quite easy. Just take their discussion of the Cambrian Explosion. The speaker holds a fundamental misconception about it that makes any mathematically derived conclusions he draws from it utterly worthless. He makes the mistake of believing that the "explosion" was an actual sudden appearance of new kinds of species that hadn't existed before, or didn't exist before in anything like that form. This is wrong. All those types of species existed before, just lacking hard parts that would survive the fossilization process. Hard parts were a new adaptation to the first appearance of jaws. Once jaws came into existence on predators, it created a strong environmental pressure favoring the development of various hard parts of the body as a defense, and thus all those species seemed to suddenly appear in the fossil record. It was just an adaptation that made them visible to us there. The explosion refers to their sudden appearance in that record, not their sudden coming into existence without predecessor species very similar to themselves (just lacking hard, fossilizable, parts).

First, you didn’t address the math at all in the post. Secondly, you just repeated the old “Well, the evidence would be there but we can’t find it because it wasn’t preserved” excuse.

This is comical---TRH correcting Meyer on the Cambridge explosion. If only all those Phd evolutionist who Meyers has destroyed in public debates only knew what the great TRH knows about the Cambrian! LOL.

Change in allele frequencies in a population over time. Then they say, there's no evidence? LOL

The process of evolution isn't random, like dropping a bunch of material and a fully assembled typewriter appears on the twelve millionth repetition. It's not like that. There's a natural logic behind it. Biology comes ready for evolution, i.e., random variability is the norm, but the environment in which it occurs either suppresses change or encourages it in various directions based on survival advantage. That's not random, even if genetic variability is random. That's only a small part of evolution. The process of evolution isn't random, even if it requires some random genetic variability to act upon. The fact that evolution demonstrably happened proves that their conclusion is based on faulty reasoning.

You’re hopeless. Of course, there are no other explanations. It must be Darwinian evolution. Lol

Enjoy your religion.

TRH, do you even realize you are no longer arguing for darwinian evolution but intelligent design and even intelligent CONTROL?

“The secrets of evolution, are time and death.

There's an unbroken thread that stretches from those first cells to us.”

― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Who says that I can't find evidence? The evidence is readily available in practically any textbook on biology, online resources, etc. Fossil record, genetics, Anatomy and Embryology, Molecular Biology, etc.

The evidence is undeniable.

You are just under the mistaken belief that evolutionists propose that evolution is a random process. They do not propose that.

Here's Richard Dawkins propounding this to someone else who made the same mistake.

Of course.

An interaction of genetics and environment is not random. Environmental conditions drive and shape biological adaption in relation to the niche, predator, prey, plants, etc, that any given organism occupies.

You should have seen the evidence that the earth was the center of the universe before Gallileo.

Yep.

Those forces, according to Darwin, only select OUT. They do not shape genes. When the genetic potential is tapped out, extinction occurs.

That was a belief that the Church defended, special creation....punishing those who dared question their teachings.

I didn't say 'shape genes'

But, but, it was in all the books. ;-{>8

The church of Darwin is still punishing the disbelievers.

How so?

No, no, no, the debate is about the genetic variability presented to the environment. It IS believed to be random. That is where the discussion about mathematic impossibility takes place NOT in the selection process. Come on. Of course the theory is that the environment makes the selections. But if there isn't sufficient genetic variability over enough time, IT CAN'T.

Go back and listen to the video again. It's in there.

Why do people get so worked up about this stuff? You get to believe whatever you want. This is 'Merica! Land of the Free, soon to be Land of the Free Stuff.

;-{>8

Believing that something is true doesn't make it true. The World doesn't conform to our beliefs.

I don't have time to watch videos, sorry.

Soon to be land of the dead.

Not sure what you mean.

I find evolution more plausible than that old wives tale about Adam and Eve.

So, when is another species coming along.

But there evidently is enough, since the evidence for it having occurred is overwhelming. Nothing is more supported by the evidence than that speciation occurred and that all species are, to one extent or another, related to one another.

I'm not particularly worked up.

You really need to get out more. Ignorance is something you should not brag about in public.

Evolution is theory simply because all other possible theories cannot be eliminated. No matter how improbable.

Personally I find no conflict between evolution and creationism. However I'm neither a fundamentalist nor a literalist if those terms are not synonymous.

Sorry ol' bean, but this is just more arguing backward.

Bwahahaahahahaha!!! Nothing like finding the village nitwit has come to joust.

Actually, it's the reverse of what you say. You folks are trying to suggest that purely speculative evidence that something cannot happen is proof that something that quite evidently did happen (supported massively by the available evidence), didn't.

Your argument is like this. I see a rock. It was caused by the big bang. The evidence for the big bang is that the rock is here. See?

The Big Bang Theory is a fairly well supported scientific theory, while speciation by natural selection is massively supported by every observation made in biology, and in related fields, such as geology. The two are not even close.

It’s more like, I see a car, a train, a motorcycle, and a wagon. These are all vehicles of roughly the same form with wheels. Since I know that that there is no one who could have made these items, they must have appeared by natural means. Since they appeared by natural means, and they are so similar, they must have evolved from a common ancestor. And the proof that they did and that such a process occurred, is that they are here.

This was a logic lesson, not a theory comparison. Try again. To deal with the argument presented in the video you will need to show the error in their math or detailed explanations why it does not apply to genetic variability. Go for it, but stay on track.

A "fact" like any other lying lieberal "fact". A fact that is a lie.

His math-based argument is grounded on a false premise, i.e., the apparently sudden appearance of a gigantic zoology of completely new species in a geologically short period of time. This isn't, in fact, what evolutionists propose about the Cambrian Explosion. They propose that this enormous number of species suddenly (in terms of geologic time scales) appeared in the fossil record, not that they popped into existence in a geologically short period of time. What actually occurred was that all those species categories suddenly (from a geological time scale perspective) took on characteristics that made fossilization possible, i.e., hard (mineralized) body parts as an adaptive response to the first appearance of predators possessed of jaws.

If the premise is defective, which theirs clearly is, all conclusions based on it are presumed faulty, no matter how rigorous the math.

Misleading, if not outright false. Micro-mutations occurring by natural selection are massively supported by evidence and no one but the most doctrinaire young earth creationist thinks otherwise, but that's not where the fight is. The debate is whether the same process that can cause a small change in finch beak size (for example or variation among dog size, shape or color) has the power to create life from inorganic matter or to change a dog into a horse. On that question the evidence shows overwhelmingly that natural selection is not up to the task. In the first place, natural selection is non-starter until you have at least a simple life form. But origin of life researchers don't have a clue how that life form could possibly have emerged from inorganic matter. All they've got is hand-waving speculation. Literally, they've made virtually no progress on this issue since Darwin's time. Furthermore, the odds that natural selection (assuming away the origin of life problem) can generate the massive amounts of information needed to generate even one simple protein are overwhelmingly tiny. So tiny in fact that it is essentially impossible. Here's a summary of how physicist Gerard Schroder illustrates the odds:

"In an experiment conducted by the British National Council of Arts a computer was placed in a cage with six monkeys. After one month of hammering away at it (as well as using it as a bathroom!) the monkey’s produced 50 typed pages---but not a single word. Schroeder noted that this was the case even though the shortest word in the English language is one letter (A or I). A is a word only if there is a space on either side of it. If we take it that the keyboard has 30 characters (the 26 letters and other symbols), then the likelihood of getting a one letter word is 30 x 30 x 30, which is 27,000. The likelihood of getting a one letter word is one chance out of 27,000. Schroeder then applied the probabilities to the sonnet analogy. What’s the chance of getting a Shakespearean sonnet?” he asked? He continued: All the sonnets are the same length. They’re by definition fourteen lines long. I picked the one I knew the opening for, “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” I counted the number of letters; there are 488 letters in that sonnet. What’s the likelihood of hammering away and getting 488 letters in the exact sequence as in “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day”? What you end up with is 26 multiplied by itself 488 times----or 26 to the 488th power. Or, in other words, in base 10, 10 to the 690th. [Now] the number of particles in the universe---not grains of sand, I’m talking about protons, electrons and neutrons---is 10 to the 80th. Ten to the 80th is 1 with 80 zeros after it. There are not enough particles in the universe to write down the trials; you’d be off by a factor of 10 to the 600th. If you took the entire universe and converted it to computer chips---forget monkeys---each one weighing a millionth of a gram and had each computer chip able to spin out 488 trials at, say, a million times a second; if you turn the entire universe into these microcomputer chips and these chips were spinning a million times a second [producing] random letters, the number of trials you would get since the beginning of time would be 10 to the 90th trials. It would be off again by a factor of 10 to the 600th. You will never get a sonnet by chance. The universe would have to be 10 to the 600th times larger. Yet the world just things monkeys can do it every time.”

And the information required in DNA to sequence a single simple protein is vastly more than the information contained in a simple Shakespearean sonnet.

To use the car analogy a bit more. Someone who did not believe that cars were made by an intelligent being would see the fact that all cars are now fuel injected instead of having carburetors as evidence of evolution in their fuel systems. And truly fuel injection is better. But how did it get that way naturally? The evolutionist would say it evolved. The next question would be. How? And if it did so, where are the transitional forms? And more importantly, how would the transitional forms work?

Would the car have a cylinder with a fuel injector and one that received it the old way? Would it have a cylinder that was partially fuel injected and carbureted? Would the positions of the valves and the spark plugs be changed as well as would be necessary? And so on and so forth. Very quickly one would be bogged down in a morass as that one understands that with a car and its fuel system there are several different systems that are required to work in conjunction with others in certain ways and that if you haphazardly mix these systems as one might in a natural process, then the car doesn’t run. And if it doesn’t run, then it is dead and it does not live to pass it’s genes to the next generation so that future cars can evolve. And if one considered all the intricate parts that had to work in conjunction just so to make that fuel injected car work, one would realize that even in nearly an infinite amount of time, a modern pickup could never evolve by natural means.

There exists no such fight, except in the fevered imaginations of science deniers. Science is unified in accepting what's quite evidently a fact, i.e., that all species are related, and descend from common ancestors. The degree of genetic and morphological dissimilarity is evidence merely of how early in time their common ancestor lived.

You don’t even understand the argument. Tarquin states it pretty well.

First your statement utterly begs the question of "how" and is completely non-responsive to my post on probabilities. Similarity in morphology or genetics does not necessarily imply common ancestry and, as we know, the fossil record is massively discordant with Neo-Darwinism. Secondly, science is not "united" on the question (the list of highly regarded intellectuals and scientists who think Neo-Darwinism cannot possibly explain the origin or development of life on this planet is long and impressive) , but even if it were, that fact would be irrelevant because scientific truth his not decided by committee, but by evidence. As Einstein famously remarked when Hitler trotted out his finest physicists to denounced Einstein's theories as false, "it only takes one to prove me wrong." The very fact that you have to employ the logical fallacy of "appeal to consensus" shows that you can't respond on the merits. You remind me of apologists for global warming who insist on the same logical fallacy (scientific consensus). In anv event, so called "science" (consensus opinion) has been spectacularly wrong in the past, as it is wrong right now on global warming, wouldn't you agree?

Ask, how can there be a creation, without a Creator?

I don't need to reinvent the wheel here at the Fire every time someone comes along and asserts that evolution didn't happen. Believe what you like.

This is no creation. Its a accident.

What kind of accident?

Some "Accident"

;-{>8

We're just letting you know your tire is flat. ;-{>8

Like the earth, I suppose. I assume you are one of those, too.

God said. "Let there be evolution."

Thank me later.

Could be. Why not?

Ouch.

You are such a meanie. A true believer, but, never the less a real meanie. BWahahahaha. ;-{>8

Who created the "creator"?

Why would the (not "a") creator need creating?

Since man is so constrained by time, space, material and energy, it's long been my belief that he is also constrained in understanding (in spite of our arrogance). There is an entity, not at all constrained as we are. And surprise, surprise, we do not understand Him in any way He does not want us to.

Powerful argument; I’m convinced.

So Philosophy and Theology are a waste of time? Unique of all other creatures (on Earth anyway) he gave only people the ability to exercise these disciplines. He gave us that without purpose other than to confuse ourselves? We may not be able to achieve a perfect understanding but far more than no understanding. (Why wouldn't he want us to know him?)

I could not really care less. Your ignorance on this subject could be nothing short of culpable, since you're clearly not a stupid man. Continue to choose ignorance, if that's what you prefer.

Agnostic but whatever suits you.

The issue here seems to me to be that you’re arguing a different point than that being raised, and doing so in a manner that proves joebob & others assertions concerning the dogma that surrounds the issue at hand.

You’re clearly not a stupid man either, which is why I bother pointing it out.

The man in the video lost me when he demonstrated that he misunderstood the Cambrian Explosion as it is propounded by the relevant fields of science, and furthermore suggested that his understanding (misunderstanding) of it was a central basis for his conclusions (i.e., it was this misunderstanding to which he applied his math). Once that was established, I had no need to listen further. What would be the point? Garbage in, garbage out.

Philosophy and Theology are not a waste of time, at all, but are limited. When was the last time you heard a truly new argument for the existence of God? I am further not saying that God is the author of confusion, but that His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts and are for His purposes, He reveals what He permits us to know. And as to why He does that, I do not know. We can't even imagine a realm outside of time, let alone creating time, space, material, energy etc, etc. ad infinitum.

Well, if you listened further, you would have learned that the math speaks to all of time. just sayin.

oldtrapper,
In that we cannot have full knowledge of the creator because he would necessary be a transcendent being, outside our experience, I would agree. But I think it is entirely reasonable that we can gain knowledge of the creator within the limits of our physical existence.

I like the modern refinement of the Thomistic proofs. More modern "proofs" from the expansion of the universe (and reversing that - big bang) are interesting. (Proof in quotes as there are underlying assumptions that I don't understand well enough) And while I don't consider "fine tuning" of physical constants to be a proof, they are a mighty big hint.

No, just no. He said that the Cambrian explosion is what caused him to begin to question it. For the point of the math involved, it matters not whether he is correct in his assertions or you are correct in yours that the Cambrian explosion was a much longer and more gradual event.

Address the fricking math.

Not necessary, since it's quite obviously in error or misapplied. That evolution occurred isn't in question by anyone who has the faintest understanding of the biological or geological sciences. In order to deny it, one has either to be extremely ignorant or, alternatively, he finds the conclusion too terrifying to actually consider with anything approaching an open mind, likely due to the belief that it threatens his religious convictions.

Maybe one of the videos make sense. It is a possibility.

Perhaps where we diverge is that I believe we are not only constrained by our physical existence, but also our reasoning. Kind of like understanding classical physics but never quantum physics.
For me, constrained does not mean unable, but limited. The God of the Old Testament has, IMO as much as told us so.

Quite obviously? So, you’re going to continue with the position that you are smarter than the three guys in the video and that as a result, you’re above any need to even question any of your previous assumptions? And of course, if anyone else does, it is because they are stupid?

Gee, I wish my mind could be as open as yours. Lol

Wrong, on all counts. ;-{>8

You need to review your elementary math.

I doubt it. just sayin. Have you any idea what it means to have a number on the order of the 70th power? It makes Avagadro's constant look like a numerical fly speck.

Never really thought about it, since we are constrained by a physical existence the point seems moot. We do kinda qualify for the short bus as we've been working on it since at least 500 BC and you see how far we've gotten. And I don't think we can prove God to an ontological certainty anyway as it would mess up free will and so the I-thou relationship which is at the core of Western thought. To that extent I think God has made himself unknowable.

It's the quality and abundance of evidence, information that anyone can examine, that makes something a fact.

The problem is not that there is insufficient evidence/information to establish evolution as being a fact, there is.....but that there are folks who are unwilling to consider the evidence because they, themselves prefer magical answers, special creation through an act of magic over research and careful examination of the evidence.....in other words, a bias in favour of their preferred religion.

What evidence? Explain the mechanism by which life first appeared. Explain the mechanism by which viable mutations are caused. Not how they are selected, but by what mechanism they are caused.

Until you are able to explain how something happened, all of the “evidence” can be taken any way you want it.

It isn’t the proponents of intelligent design who are afraid to consider alternative explanations. It is the Darwinian evolutionists. You rule out the possible influence of an intelligent mind on evolution simply because you refuse to countenance the possibility that such an intelligence could even exist.

This reminds me of those can't understand how you could disagree with obama. Sooooo, if you do you must be a racist. They would do well to speak to the issues, too.

What a [bleep] stupid question.You must have never read anything on the topic.Go ask "The Donald".He will give you an educated answer :)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Seems reasonable to believe a creator needs to be created and that he did not just "poof" exist. Perhaps this is where faith comes in. But this is not fairy land and I can not think of any animals that just "poof" were here. Can you?

No one can think of animals that went poof and got created. Those evolved into something else.

First off, you are conflating evidence for evolution with evidence for biogenesis/angiogenesis, which are different issues. The issue of how life began, a work in progress, does not mean that evolution itself has not been established.

The evidence that supports evolution is readily available.

Tell me the mechanism by which all explanations other than Darwinian Evolution are precluded by the evidence. Until you can do that, you’re JMSU. If you can’t explain the process in detail, then you can’t preclude other explanations.