Theory of Evolution

[tucksma]

I don't know if this was brought up or not....but Charles Darwin even stated at the end of his life that he was wrong.

Edit: that is debated though, so take it for however you want.

 

[IntoTheVoid]

He didn't though. A lady said to the press that Darwin said all these things although both Darwin's Son and Daughter have said Darwin never said those things and the lady was never even there.

 

[tucksma]

I said it is debated. Also the theory is off in the fact that there are both monkeys and humans today. According to the theory, the "missing link" should also be alive right now, that or the monkeys should not be. Also notice how monkeys have had no astronomical changes. Each species has remained the same for as long as we have been recording it. There is no proof that the species that we think evolved into us were related. They could simply be their own species, and became extinct. Just because two things are similar doesn't mean they are related. A square and a triangle are similar. They both have corners, straight lines, and are closed shapes. Will the triangle ever evolve into a square? No.

 

[tucksma]

Also why would we lose hair in evolution? Like monkeys have hair all over and it keeps them warm, we do not. I would say having hair all over would be a good thing not a bad one in that it keeps us warm. If you use the argument "well not for the warmer areas" then I would have to ask if an entire species changes because of some areas the species lives in.

Granted that's just a thought of mine, not proof of any sorts.

 

[IntoTheVoid]

I wonder some of those things too lol. Like why is there baldness, why do my knees get worse as I get older. Why is my left ear hardly working etc.

Yeah we are far from physical perfection I'll grant you that

 

[SarahM777]

And your evidence is? You can site Genesis if you want but the Bible has no reference to the Big Bang. I suspect your thinking goes something like this: 'I can't understand how the Big Bang could occur without God's intervention, therefore God is the cause of the Big Bang.' Unfortunately Sarah that's not evidence, it is only guess work.


Sound cannot propagate in space as it needs a medium to travel through.

Except for a very faint sprinkling of light from the stars all of our daylight comes from the sun. God's first act is to create light so that there can be night and day and days can then be counted, yet the sun is not created by God till the fourth day. Notice Genesis says God separated light from darkness? "And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day." Notice there is no concept that the rotation of the light side of the earth into shadow is what causes night. Notice there is no earth, yet there was an evening followed by a morning. The light came up and the light went down, but there was no rotating earth and there was no sun. And then God throws the sun into the mix on the fourth day so time can be better measured.

It might help you to understand better if I tell you what I've heard. The order of events in the Genesis creation story apparently follows the same pattern of events as in the Babylonian creation myth. I haven't looked into this to confirm it. I do know, as you also are aware, that the Jews spent two or three generations in Babylonian captivity. I'll let you make the inferences.

Are you sure you are not confusing the entire spectrum of light with visible light? You do also have infrared and ultraviolet light which neither can be seen by the naked eye yet BOTH are light. Some animals can SEE ultraviolet and infrared light. Plus you also have phosphorescence light. The Bible does NOT state what KIND of light.

 

[speedybike]

For the record, I don’t have any strong ideas for or against a young earth or old earth or for theistic evolution. However, I think a young earth view and special creation of the creatures has a prima facie validity from Scripture and tradition.

Having said that, take a look at this Ida (Darwinius Masillae) for yourself and tell me whether that really looks like a “missing link” (supposing that is saying anything meaningful). For one thing, it’s not even a link between apes and humans. At best, it’s a link between lemurs and anthropoid like apes.

Simply because Ida lacks a tooth comb and a grooming claw, this is supposed to make it “the Holy Grail” of our transition from lemurs to apes?

I have to say, the evidence is underwhelming. The fact is, connecting the dots with fossils is 95% pure imagination and creativity. The other 5% is having a PhD in a relevant field so that the general public will swallow your story.

Check out this article by Scientific American for a more level headed analysis:

Weak Link: Fossil Darwinius Has Its 15 Minutes: Scientific American

Maggie said,



The other commenter, Chris, is sort of right about this one. In science, everything is a theory. Nothing can be “proven” in technical terms (which simply means with deductive certainty) because science uses the method of induction, not deduction.

The fact that a thing is a theory doesn’t mean we don’t have excellent reasons for believing it. Gravity is in fact still a theory. But it’s a theory I’d stake my life on under the right conditions.

Chris said,



They are both theories, but not in the same sense. We have direct observational evidence for the theory of gravity. We don’t have anything like this for the theory of evolution.



In fact, it’s not so simple. There isn’t a straight line of evidence from the fossil record or from DNA. There is a lot of imaginative story telling in between the evidence. It’s more like dotted lines filled in with “just so” stories.

As Alex Rosenberg observes, “It may seem a simple matter to state the logical relationship between the evidence that Scientists amass and the hypotheses the evidence tests. But philosophers of science have discovered that testing hypotheses is by no means an easily understood matter… At most, empirical evidence supports a hypothesis to some degree. But as we shall see, it may also support many other hypotheses to an equal degree… When the hypothesis under test is not a single statement like ‘All swans are white’ but a system of highly theoretical claims like the kinetic theory of gases, it is open to the theorist to make one or more of a large number of changes in the theory in light of a falsifying test, any one of which will reconcile the theory with the data… In short, theory is underdetermined by observation” (Philosophy of Science 2nd ed. 117, 139).

And so Godfrey-Smith, “Empiricists argue that there will always be a range of alternative theories compatible with all our actual evidence, and maybe a range of alternative theories compatible with all our possible evidence” (Theory and Reality 181).

Of course, there are many things which scientists use to help them select one theory over another. But let’s not be naïve and think this is a purely objective affair. The fact is, presuppositions, religious and anti-religious biases, politics, and social pressures play a much bigger role in scientific theorizing than anyone wants to admit nowadays.

As Richard Lewontin incrimatingly admitted, “Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.

RICHARD LEWONTIN: Billions and Billions of Demons

And if anyone thinks this doesn’t come into play in the realm of evolution, which as Dawkins (I believe) said, makes it intellectually respectable to be an atheist, they are only fooling themselves.

So how does all this scientific dogma arise about how you’d have to be an idiot to deny evolution etc. etc.? Well that’s easy. Scientists are the new priests and, nowadays, everyone (including the Christian) is part of their congregation.


“In the present euphoria about the wonders of science you find many scientists, individually and in groups, arrogating to themselves rights that do not strictly flow from their scientific competence. They pass high judgements on … God and man, on good and evil, on culture and justice, and on the deepest issues of human destiny. And their prestige as scientists, which is in no doubt whatever, illicitly carries over in the mind of the public to these extrascientific pronouncements” (Charles Malik, “The Limitations of Natural Science,” 385).

+1 Absolutely nailed it. Thank you. Looking forward to reading more of your posts.

 

[SarahM777]

Sound cannot propagate in space as it needs a medium to travel through.

Except for a very faint sprinkling of light from the stars all of our daylight comes from the sun. God's first act is to create light so that there can be night and day and days can then be counted, yet the sun is not created by God till the fourth day. Notice Genesis says God separated light from darkness? "And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day." Notice there is no concept that the rotation of the light side of the earth into shadow is what causes night. Notice there is no earth, yet there was an evening followed by a morning. The light came up and the light went down, but there was no rotating earth and there was no sun. And then God throws the sun into the mix on the fourth day so time can be better measured.

See what gets left out is that the sun is a form of plasma,plasma can produce light but it does NOT have to be in the form of a sun. Plasma is the fourth state of matter. These are all forms of plasma

This shows that plasma does NOT have to be in the form of a sun to produce light.

 

[2Thewaters]

The theory of evolution is kind of like the theory that the moon is made of green cheese.
Unlearned people who do not understand science are given authority, that is where the problem lies.

 

[IntoTheVoid]

You have to admit though that gods in general have certainly fallen from Grace. At one time it was believed a god pulled the sun across the sky in the day, or that a god threw lightening down from the sky and thundered when he was angry. They Made suns stand still, manually managed the direction and course of every single planet in the universe and were hands on with our weather patterns and the pulling of the tide.

What do they do now? They don't pull suns across the skies in chariots anymore, they don't dictate where it rains nor do they manually guide planets around space.

The only thing god has left to do now is tinker with a bit of DNA to bridge the gap from micro to macro evolution.

We can explain everything now, except maybe one or two things. How long until a god isn't responsible for those anymore either?

One day your pulling suns, next minute you don't need to do that anymore... You just tell people not to be gay. How the mighty have fallen.

 

[ChristIsLord229]

Why is this thread even active? Genesis 1:1 destroys the evolution myth, if you have faith of course...