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Yea. It bothers me that most Christians now associate evolutionary biology with Richard Dawkins. Evolutionary biology is not synonymous with militant atheism.

Archeology/Paleontology is the 'time machine' and fossil record clearly indicates modern humans are descended from animal ancestors that looked like monkeys. DNA evidence also very clearly proves this is the case.

So seriously, what other 'explanation' can you think of when you are given DNA evidence and Fossil record evidence almost the whole way from animal to human? The bogeyman in the sky clapped his hands and made it happen? Aliens put the monkeys there and zapped them with evolve-o-tron beams?



When a single cell organism becomes resistant to a hostile element in its environment and passes it on to its descendants that's evolution in progress. It has been recorded and induced in laboratory conditions. Adaptation is the heart of the evolutionary process. Just because we don't have the tens of thousands up to million+ years of time to observe that single cell turn into dinosaur doesn't mean it evolution doesn't happen.

Here's a thought for you: We have identified the evolution of several creatures on earth from one form up to another completely different form through fossil and DNA record every step of the way.

Our species currently lacks the one 'in between' specimen that marks the transition between animal to proto-human , the 'missing link' . That is where all the anti-science nutjobs base their claims that evolution doesnt explain things.. just because the human tree has yet to find the missing link .. but forget conveniently that we have dozens to hundreds of species with full trees accounting for their evolution. Somehow, evolution isn't valid for them because we have not yet stumbled upon the remains of the one species that took the first step from animal to human.

Even if that fossil is found, the Creationists will ask for yet another "missing link". They are not the least bit interested in the biological and physical truth of things.

ruveyn

Right. Nor do creationism and evolution really conflict with each other. It's the proverbial "dog in the fight" that really confuses the issue.

This is what I think:
1. God is a spiritual, supernatural being
2. Science centers on observations of the natural world
3. Therefore, science is not concerned with naturilistic "proofs" or "disproofs" of God.

Thus, by extension:
4. Event X is oberved to happen.
5. X is not known to be physically possible, AND
6. X cannot be replicated due to 5.
7. Therefore, X is beyond the scope of 2.

So, if science can inform us of what is physically possible or naturally possible, by ruling out all possibilities science can detect that something is supernatural in origin.

Therefore:
8. Religious text documents supernatural events.
9. X is beyond the realm of the naturally or physically possible
10. X is best explained as the result of the supernatural.

Scientific creationism and The Theory of Evolution directly conflict with each other.

Getting back to RNA, as I pointed out earlier after Orwell proposed life began through RNA life, that RNA is extremely unstable compared to DNA.

To debunk what Orwell was saying even further, RNA can be destroyed by being in water and wouldn't be able to survive as long as DNA would in the environment that life supposedly began in. Sure single celled organisms now are able to survive in extreme temperatures or hostile environments, but those single celled organisms happen to have protective membranes (sp?), which is partially why their genetic coding isn't destroyed.

While amino acids can be produced in a laboratory environment under controlled conditions, those conditions wouldn't be identical to early Earth by any stretch. There was too many contaminants flying about that would be more reactive to the chemicals found in both DNA and RNA than the chemicals in DNA and RNA are. Hence those contaminants would have completely torn apart the amino acids due to their greater reactivity.

The theory of evolution is all well and good after the beginning of life. However, it completely falls apart when you look at the origin of life.


Also one needs to consider the people of the time when the Old Testament was put into writing. Do you really think they would have understood the concept of billions of years? Also the idea of God using evolution to shape all the species on this planet. It would have gone completely over their heads, anyways where in the Bible does it say Earth is 10,000 years old?

I propose that Genesis was written the way it was so it would be in a way that people of the time period could understand. God would want the people of the period to be able to understand and be able to conceptually grasp the idea of their origin and that he was the Creator. He didn't inspire how he did it to be written down (other than he did it) because it would only completely confuse the people of the period. Earth was created in 6 days, question is how do you define day? We're talking about a being that in all rationality time is meaningless, and for all we know his idea of a day mentioned in Genesis is the time it takes the Milky Way Galaxy to rotate about its axis (I'm not sure how long that is off the top of my head, but this is just an example).

You're an idiot. I have already explained that the origin of life is outside of evolutionary biology. You may as well complain that a hammer is useless for turning screws, or that calculus doesn't adequately explan the chinese remainder theorem.

Then why are you arguing creationists are idiots if evolution doesn't explain the origin of life?

As I said repeatedly, "creationist" typically means "young-Earth creationism" which does conflict with evolution. And most people who identify as creationists do deny common descent.

People that think evolution is true but God introduced the first spark of life are called "theistic evolutionists" not "creationists" , their belief is called "Theistic evolution" not "Creationism". More so, the thing that is currently called "creationism" includes rejecting evolution (and many other scientific facts) and is therefore incompatible with it.

Truth is, we still don't know how water was formed on Earth. One of the leading theories is that single celled organisms had sprung earlier in a much more hostile environment and helped create the conditions for water to form on the planet.

Also of note is that RNA does indeed survive in water today. If it does so today why not back then?



Apples to oranges. You do realize Evolution is about living things changing right? You can't say evolution falls apart when you try to use it to explain how life itself begun... that part isn't even part of what evolution is about.



Age of the earth in the bible comes from a man around or before the middle ages who traced back the age of the 'characters' in the bible itself all the way back to the adam and eve story and then followed 'the word' about how the world was created in X amount of days and that X time after that he made adam.. or so goes the story.



Seems he didn't do that swell of a job explaining it as they still wondered how things came to be and how they worked.. and went and developed this 'science' thing. How rude!

"Scientific creationism" is an oxymoron. I prefer the term "special creation" because it keeps in perspective that all things are made by God. Science does not touch what lies beyond the natural world other than stating what we might know as physically possible/impossible. YCs can't travel all the way back to the beginning to directly observe creation any more than evolutionists can travel back to the beginning and actually observe large-scale "monkey-to-human" evolution.

The thing I find appealing about "special creation" is it demonstrates the capability of an all-powerful God to bring what appears to us such a massive creation into being. I don't "know" with any certainty whether the universe came into being and into completion after 7 LITERAL, CONSECUTIVE, BACK-TO-BACK 24-hour periods of time. But I don't doubt that IF that's how God chose to do it, He is perfectly capable of doing so. But I'm not going to pretend that there is any kind of scientific method to show that. It is not the purpose of science to reveal God, and I personally don't think it would be a good thing for God to leave conclusive proof of His existence beyond creation itself.

As far as how we got from "there" to "here" goes, evolution IS a theory, and it isn't incorrect to call it a theory.



I also wanted to comment on what marshall mentioned about militant atheism: As far as how creationists view it, and as far as I personally look at it, I've made the same mistake about falsely equivocating evolution and militant atheism. But it's a lot like non-Christians look at Christianity and equivocate the whole thing with Fred Phelps. The New Testament doesn't really promote that kind of theology, but that's what sticks in the minds of others. I suppose people on both sides of the argument need to understand that those representing certain extreme positions and behaving badly don't speak for their respective communities as a whole, nor are the words of certain of those really representative of the underlying fundamental ideology.

Of course it is correct to refer to it as a theory, as long as you keep in mind that the technical definition of the word "theory" is a great deal different from the colloquial use of the term. Remember that gravity is "just a theory" as well.

Evolution is a scientific theory, not a homer simpson "theory". Relativity is just a couple of scientific theories, yet we've established time dilation, knocked down two japanese cities, and it can be used to make more accurate predictions than Newtonian "laws". Theory is as good as it gets. There won't be a graduation ceremony. Theories explain how your monitor works.

If you choose not to examine the evidence for evolution, that's no one's fault but your own. Most fundamentalists know they havent spent much time with it. They don't want to know.

lol I dunno. I suppose stranger things have happened!


100% agree, actually. That is how I understand evolution to happen, and like I said, I know those things have been observed. I have no problem with that.

It also doesn't mean evolution DID happen (single cell turn into dinosaur), though. That's the part I have a hard time accepting. What we do see with adaptation is perfectly ok with me. It would be silly to deny something that can happen right in front of you. But if part of scientific discovery is only accepting what we can test, and evolution is impossible to test due to the vast amount of time required, then that is science fiction.

What you call Scientific Creationism (a stealth name for Intelligent Design) is bollacks. It is balderdash. It has no empirical support. It is an intellectually dishonest attempt to disguise Creationist Nonsense as a scientific discipline. It is not such thing.

Since the Creationists could not suppress science in the centuries passed the will attempt to carry their nonsense on the back of science.

ruveyn