Melding Evolution and Creationism

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
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Not all religions are equal! some are monotheist, some are polytheist, and any other type of theist you want.

Some base everything off of a philosophy, and some base it off of folklore, and some off of tangible events that happened. If you are try searching and not simple dismissing than look at all equally, and then start looking for truth, and not philosophical truth, but truth with in our defined reality. If God exists He will communicate to us in that reality.

Taking your model that all say something about God so why choose one? We could do the same with JFK there are many theories and all conclude he was killed. All theories say something about how he was killed so all are right or none are right. Why bother to know which one? We want to know because there is one way that it really happened.

The idea behind a pursuit of God is that there is true truth and it is found in Him. All pursuit of God is nothing more than a pursuit of truth. Whatever form it maybe.

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[quote]tzoley wrote:
I love the argument from people of faith that say “Why trust these scientists?” and then tell me that God spoke to the people who wrote the Bible.

Please put me in my place if I am wrong.[/quote]

You are wrong!

Science is something that takes a long time to prove. Evolution science does not follow the newtonian science model. It looks at the evidence crams it into place, and say this is what happened. Evolution could be true, It is too early to tell.

In 1994 they stated that we have 3% of all the fossils to reconstruct the evolutionary process. If you read my early post with a quote from NG the new figure is .1% of all the records we need to prove evolution.

I have a hard time just jumping on the evo band wagon when they are basically saying we are losing ground.

As far as the Bible most likely being the word of God have you ever done anything to disprove the Bible? or are you just making a blanket statement based off of your logic?

Even if you don’t beleive the Bible it is the most unique book this world has ever known, and deserves atleast a peak.

?There is a gulf between the Bible and the so called books sacred books of the East which severs one from the other utterly, hopelessly, and forever?
~ Prof. M Monterio-Williams

I don’t believe He is a Christian either.

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Here are some interesting facts about the Bible. It truly is a book different from all others.

?There is a gulf between the Bible and the so called books sacred books of the East which severs one from the other utterly, hopelessly, and forever?
~ Prof. M Monterio-Williams

The Bible is different from all others in the following ways
Written over 1500 years
Written over 40 generations
40 Different Authors

It was written in different places
Moses in the wilderness
Jeremiah in the dungeon
Daniel on a hillside/palace
Paul in prison
Luke while traveling
John on the isle of Patmos
Others while in the rigors of military campaign

It was written in Different times
1. David in time of war
2. Solomon in time of peace
It was written in Different moods
some joyful, some in despair
It was written over Three Continents
Asia, Africa, and Europe

It was written in Three Languages
1.Hebrew
2.Aramaic
3.Greek
It?s Subject matter Controversial, but the Author?s spoke with continuity. One unfolding story God?s Redemption of Man

?The Bible is not simply an anthology; there is a unity which binds the whole together. An anthology is compiled by an anthologist, but no anthologist compiled the Bible?
~ F.F. Bruce

It is unique in its survival
Compared with other ancient Manuscripts
The Bible compared with other ancient manuscripts has more manuscript evidence than any 10 classical pieces combined

? It seems strange that the text of Shakespeare, which has been in existence less than two hundred and eight years, should be far more uncertain and corrupt than any of the New Testament, now over eighteen centuries old, during nearly fifteen of which it existed only in manuscript?
~ John Lea

Unique in it persecution
The Bible has been banned, burned,destroyed, and outlawed.

Voltaire Said ?in 100 years Christianity would be swept off the Earth? .
?only fifty years after his death the Geneva Bible Society used his press and house to produce stacks of Bibles.?
~ Geisler and Nix

? No other book has been so chopped, knifed, sifted, Scrutinized, and vilified. What Book on philosophy or religion or psychology has been subject to such a mass attack as the Bible? With such venom and skepticism? With thoroughness and erudition? Upon every chapter, line, and tenet?
The Bible is still loved by millions, read by millions, and studied by millions?
~ Bernard Ramm

? I?ve been accused of teaching the verbal plenary inspiration of the Scripture. I want it to be understood that I have never taught this. All I have ever said is that in all of my archeological investigation I have never found one artifact of antiquity that contradicts any statement of the Word of God.?
~ Nelson Glueck

Unique in its teaching
?It is the only volume ever produced by man, or a group of men, in which is to be found a large body of prophecies of the earth, to certain cities, and to the coming of One who was to be the messiah.The ancient world had many different devices for determining the future, known as divination, but not in the entire gamut of Greek and Latin Literature, even though they use the words prophet and prophecy, can we find ant real specific prophecy of a great historic event to come in the distant future nor any prophecy of a savior to arise in the human race Mohammedanism cannot point to any prophecies of the coming of Mohammed uttered in hundreds of years before his birth?
~ Wilbur smith

Unique in its personalities

The Bible Deals with it Characters openly and honestly. Dealing with their sin and flaws. No other biography does that.
The sins of the people denounced ? Deuteronomy 9:24
Sins of the patriarchs ? Gen. 12:11-13; 49:5 ? 7
Disorder of the churches ? I Cor. 1:11; 15:12; II Cor 2:4
Many will say ? why did they have to put in that chapter about David and Bathsheba?? The Bible tells it like it is.

Unique in its influence in surrounding literature
?If every Bible in any considerable city were destroyed, the Book could be restored in all its essential parts from the quotations on the shelves of the city library?
~ Cleland B. McAfee

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[quote]tzoley wrote:
I love the argument from people of faith that say “Why trust these scientists?” and then tell me that God spoke to the people who wrote the Bible.

Please put me in my place if I am wrong.[/quote]

Whsat are you talking about?

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[quote]haney wrote:

It is funny you say we can only prove things in math. It has been proven that it is Mathmatcially impossible for one organism to have formed by random chance.
I think the math works out to something like 10 to the 50th power.
The French mathematician, Emile Borel is the one who performed that statistic.
[/quote]

Well, there is a difference between “mathematically impossible” and “mathematically improbable”. Borel’s argument was that anything with a probability of less than one divided by 10 to the power of 50 cannot have occured by chance. Let’s try this: Take a six sided die. Toss it 100 times and record the number after each toss. Now the 100 digit number you have is very rare. The probability of that number happening is one divided by then to the sevety-seventh power. This is much less than Borel’s threshold number. According to creationists, this number cannot have happened, due it’s extremely low probability. Yet, it did occur, so to say it cannot have happened is absurd. If you got 100 one’s, you may think it’s special. Probability dictates that it’s no less likely than any of the other combinations. Just because we attatch some significance to an event, does not alter it’s probabilistic nature. Also, creationists use calculations assuming we went from nothing to life in one step. Most scientific theories of the emergence of life view the creation of the first self replicating molecules as comprising many steps, the probability of each being immensely larger than the instant emergence of an RNA molecule in one fell swoop.

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Exactly. The probability arguement also asssumes a serial execution until an event happens. It does not allow for millions and billions of simultaneous reactions occuring over 100’s of millions of years.

It also assumes that the first life looked like something we would call life, ie…the first life was of very high order complexity.

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[quote]ToShinDo wrote:
haney wrote:

It is funny you say we can only prove things in math. It has been proven that it is Mathmatcially impossible for one organism to have formed by random chance.

I think the math works out to something like 10 to the 50th power.

The French mathematician, Emile Borel is the one who performed that statistic.

Well, there is a difference between “mathematically impossible” and “mathematically improbable”. Borel’s argument was that anything with a probability of less than one divided by 10 to the power of 50 cannot have occured by chance. Let’s try this: Take a six sided die. Toss it 100 times and record the number after each toss. Now the 100 digit number you have is very rare. The probability of that number happening is one divided by then to the seventy-seventh power.

This is much less than Borel’s threshold number. According to creationists, this number cannot have happened, due it’s extremely low probability. Yet, it did occur, so to say it cannot have happened is absurd. If you got 100 one’s, you may think it’s special. Probability dictates that it’s no less likely than any of the other combinations. Just because we attatch some significance to an event, does not alter it’s probabilistic nature. Also, creationists use calculations assuming we went from nothing to life in one step. Most scientific theories of the emergence of life view the creation of the first self replicating molecules as comprising many steps, the probability of each being immensely larger than the instant emergence of an RNA molecule in one fell swoop.
[/quote]

Their math is based off of if these certain unproved things are true, then (add math) that means that these things are true.

Darwin Him self said that if you can prove evolution did not happen by a successive progression of small changes the theory is destroyed.

There is no way the theory in its present state could explain even the simpliest blood clotting mechanism to have occurred by random chance, and with in the time frame of 4.55 billion years is very unlikly.

Could it happen? Yes

But what are the chances that all of these life forms managed to keep on surviving and adapting?

Creation does not come from none creation.

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I want you to grasp hold of the concept that the big bang theory math is based off of no center of the Universe. I struggle to see where the exact math and observation came into play for this one.

You say believing in God is a stretch. Believing that something does not have a center point in our Universe is really a tough thing to accept.

Presupposition is a funny thing.

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With regard to probability, the sample size is 1, so use of classical analogies (100 rolls of six-sided die) is fallacious.
Not that probability arguments are all moot.
The time available for formation of life, to say nothing of complex life, is extremely short: Hundreds of millions of speculative “reactions” over hundreds of millions of years is rather insufficient to address the probability of forming even the conditions necessary to have such reactions. This place where we live, earth (sample size = 1), has a myriad of qualities which make it unique and their origin is worthy of much consideration.

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[quote]haney wrote:
I want you to grasp hold of the concept that the big bang theory math is based off of no center of the Universe. I struggle to see where the exact math and observation came into play for this one.

You say believing in God is a stretch. Believing that something does not have a center point in our Universe is really a tough thing to accept.

Presupposition is a funny thing.[/quote]

What is this about a center point? BB Theory (not bodybuilding…) comes as a direct consequence of the equations of relativity.

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[quote]seanc wrote:

Exactly. The probability arguement also asssumes a serial execution until an event happens. It does not allow for millions and billions of simultaneous reactions occuring over 100’s of millions of years.

It also assumes that the first life looked like something we would call life, ie…the first life was of very high order complexity.[/quote]

Well, one thing is for sure…for the instantaneous life theory to be likely, life, however simple, would have to have a WILL to survive and a drive to perfect itself for the theory to even be plausible. What would give instant life its drive to continue living and “evolving”? It is a HUGE assumption that life appeared, wanted to survive, and wanted to get better. In fact, that increases its chance of mprobability and brings into question why life itself confined itself to only this planet. If life was that simple, it could adapt to nearly any environment through sheer will. Why not Saturn?

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[quote]T-Doff wrote:
haney wrote:
I want you to grasp hold of the concept that the big bang theory math is based off of no center of the Universe. I struggle to see where the exact math and observation came into play for this one.

You say believing in God is a stretch. Believing that something does not have a center point in our Universe is really a tough thing to accept.

Presupposition is a funny thing.

What is this about a center point? BB Theory (not bodybuilding…) comes as a direct consequence of the equations of relativity.[/quote]

look at the big bang theory it is based off of there being no center to the universe. If you add a center to the math that proved the big bang theory it does not work.

I didn’t come up with the theory I have only observed what it took to make the idea work. When they were working out the theory it never worked until they removed the idea of the Universe having a center point.

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[quote]haney wrote:
lizard king wrote:
neilbudge wrote:
Lizard, Care to share what the two stories are? I only know about one. Please specify the verses. Thanks.

By the way, this discussion is not around what is ‘true’, since none of the theories can be absolutely proven.

Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 is one version, Genesis 2:4-25 is another. They differ in order of events and happenings. Such as, in one Man and Woman are created together and in the other Adam is created first. In one, it takes God six days and the other it takes him only a day. In one, God first creates Light, then Day and Night, in the other, God makes the earth and the heavens first… and so on, and so on… So which is right? Or do we just pick and chose which lines best serve our arguments? Don’t get me wrong, I believe in God, I just don’t believe ANY facts can be gleaned from dogma.

Lizard if you would of read the link I posted you would of clearly seen that it is a translation problem from the Hebrew to English that causes this so called two versions. One is the details of how the Bible says it happened. The other is more like a family tree. Look at the Hebrew, and it will become very clear that there is only one version, and the other is only complementary
[/quote]

That is my point exactly. The bible has been translated from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to German to English. Usually when something is translated, something is lost, connotation/denotation. It has been cut and pasted by so many editors, where is the “true” bible? The King James version had over 50 different translators that helped create it, and it comes off as somewhat Shakespearean because that was the “high” form of the day. Consider the multitude of versions we have to choose from today. That is why I have a problem with arguments backed by a literary work. Evolution in its simplest form states that genetic material is transferred from parent to offspring, that is why my daughter looks just like me (only much cuter.) Now Darwinian evolution on the other hand is a different beast altogether. Couldn’t God simply have created the universe and what we call evolution, is simply the process he used? Hats off to everyone involved in this discussion, keep them coming, I do enjoy these sorts of discussions. Oh, did you know Jesus is actually a mistranslation of Joshua from Hebrew to Greek? :wink:

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Thanks. I think that’s a bit of a simplification in that the equations of general relativity involve concepts that are more involved than a lack of a center. In GR, the existence of matter actually causes space to “bend.” I don’t think this is the place to discuss whether or not GR is a “theory” or a “law” but it is well supported by the evidence and does point to the existence of a “beginning.”
It seems that a lot of people (I’d say fundamentalists but I don’t want to imply anything bad) are disturbed by the implications of BB theory but it seems to me that this implies, at a minimum, the existence of something (or someone?) behind the event.

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Lizard,
Actually, if you take the time to look at the translations involved (no offense intended - not everyone has the time) the English bible we have is basically translated from ancient greek to English or from Ancient Hebrew/aramaic to English depending on what the original language was. It is a straw-man argument to say it’s been translated and cut and pasted over and over and over. The manuscript evidence(i.e. handwritten - before printing presses) for the bible far outweighs the manuscript evidence for other ancient works like Homer, the Peloponesian(sp?) wars, and the writings of aristotle, plato, etc. which are virtually never questioned.

Reading and comparing the evidence is hard work but not as hard as ABBH which I’m off to…

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[quote]lizard king wrote:

That is my point exactly. The bible has been translated from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to German to English. Usually when something is translated, something is lost, connotation/denotation. It has been cut and pasted by so many editors, where is the “true” bible? The King James version had over 50 different translators that helped create it, and it comes off as somewhat Shakespearean because that was the “high” form of the day. Consider the multitude of versions we have to choose from today. That is why I have a problem with arguments backed by a literary work. Evolution in its simplest form states that genetic material is transferred from parent to offspring, that is why my daughter looks just like me (only much cuter.) Now Darwinian evolution on the other hand is a different beast altogether. Couldn’t God simply have created the universe and what we call evolution, is simply the process he used? Hats off to everyone involved in this discussion, keep them coming, I do enjoy these sorts of discussions. Oh, did you know Jesus is actually a mistranslation of Joshua from Hebrew to Greek? :wink:
[/quote]

The message is still the same. There is no confusion. While the full text sometimes takes a little bit of study time to find out what someone really meant does not mean that the there are problems with the text. The idea of a message being lost in translation has no place in the Bible. The message translated still the same.

I am aware that translated back it is Joshua. However The NT was written in Greek. Consider the following Scott is not a Spanish name how would we translate it and then hope it would translate back? I would guess that they needed a Greek equivalent.

I have never read the English versions of G1 and G2 having a conflict. I have only seen G2 as further explanation of what happened.

with the find of the dead sea scrolls you would know that the Bible has practically never changed. The NT docs we have in a huge abundance with almost no errors.

So while it might have been translated for the lazy people who don’t want to learn two languages that does not mean it is has serious flaws. It just means sometimes you have to work harder to find certain answers. Answers that most people will never have questions for.

Also if you do believe the Bible then you would know it is God who gives understanding of His word.

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[quote]T-Doff wrote:
Thanks. I think that’s a bit of a simplification in that the equations of general relativity involve concepts that are more involved than a lack of a center. In GR, the existence of matter actually causes space to “bend.” I don’t think this is the place to discuss whether or not GR is a “theory” or a “law” but it is well supported by the evidence and does point to the existence of a “beginning.”
It seems that a lot of people (I’d say fundamentalists but I don’t want to imply anything bad) are disturbed by the implications of BB theory but it seems to me that this implies, at a minimum, the existence of something (or someone?) behind the event.[/quote]

You are right this is not the place for this type of discussion. I also agree that is a little simplified. I am only stating it so everyone has a concept of what it truly takes to believe the BB.

I believe in a BB of sorts. Have you read Dr. Humphry’s theory on white holes and a beginning. I know of two other scientist who are secualar scientist who have concurred with Humphy’s theory on a whote hole BB, with the Earth close to the center of the Universe.

I know that many will say He has been refuted, but He has no more been refuted than our current BB theory.

Evidence is a funny thing. It can work no matter what as long as you look at it right. SO is the case with many of our current theories. They work if you look at them correctly.

So Evo. could be 100% correct, God assisted Evo could be Correct, and a literal Genesis could also be correct depending on the Pressup glasses you view the evidence with. It is tough to be totally open.

One day we will know, until then all we have are educated guesses of what we hope to be true.

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[quote]T-Doff wrote:
With regard to probability, the sample size is 1, so use of classical analogies (100 rolls of six-sided die) is fallacious.
Not that probability arguments are all moot.
The time available for formation of life, to say nothing of complex life, is extremely short: Hundreds of millions of speculative “reactions” over hundreds of millions of years is rather insufficient to address the probability of forming even the conditions necessary to have such reactions. This place where we live, earth (sample size = 1), has a myriad of qualities which make it unique and their origin is worthy of much consideration.[/quote]

My point of that post was not “prove” evolution, but to disprove Borel, which I did.

Earth may be unique, but only as far as we know. As we speak, astronomers are discovering new planets. The problem lies in that earth-like planets are pretty small, and therefore hard to find.

Prof X: There may be life on one of Saturn’s moons. Titan has a thick organic atmosphere, and astrobiologists theorize that conditions there may be suitable for life. A probe is dropping of Cassini and will plunge through the atmosphere, taking samples. Also Europa may have a liquid water ocean under it’s frozen crust, could be interesting to see what’s in there!

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[quote]haney wrote:
One day we will know, until then all we have are educated guesses of what we hope to be true.[/quote]

Can’t argue with that, haney.

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“The idea that molecules could spontaneously organize themselves into living proteins is as likely as a tornado passing through a junk yard beside a Boeing aircraft plant accidentally creating a working 747 airplane. If you brought together all the carbon molecules in the universe, the chances of them spontaneously reacting to form a single perfectly sequenced protein are about 1 in 10 to the 60th power, Bradley said.”

Fred Hoyle