creation or evolution, which do you believe

[indyz 1]

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Check out this site.. This man was an athiest SCIENTIST turned christian by his own scientific research.

http://www.creationworldview.org/_docs/articles.htm

Old, debunked arguments. And I would hardly call that man a scientist. Many of his claims are merely elaborate conjecture with no evidence.

A few links to peruse:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/ (Please excuse the "Darwin" fish. I don't much care for it either)
http://vuletic.com/hume/cefec/
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html (My favorite)

I would also recommend just about anything written by Stephen Jay Gould.

[wmw999 2,144]

There's plenty missing in the fossil record. That doesn't invalidate it, any more than a single contradiction in the Bible would invalidate it for people who believe in it.

If there were nothing missing in the fossil record, it'd be a lot harder for people to disbelieve it. After all, even the Catholic church eventually agreed that the earth wasn't the center of the universse.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[billvon 2,425]

>DNA changes yes. But if each piece of the puzzle is not perfectly
> matched with the next, the order is not correct and life does not
> exist the way we know it.

Simply not true. You can mess with people's DNA a bit and still have them be viable; there's a lot of redundancy built into the system, and a lot of DNA that we don't think is used by the organism. Change one base pair, and 75% of the time you get nothing. 25% of the time you get a nonviable organism. But .0001% of the time, you get something that has a new characteristic - bigger eyes, or longer arms, or a smaller brain. Of those, .001% are useful changes (like, say, a bigger brain) and they are kept.

>There was work or effort put forth in combining the acids and
>proteins in the correct combo to begin with.

Definitely. It took billions of years of random chances, with trillions of amino acids, to get the first self-replicating protein. The cool thing about life is that it only has to happen once.

[pds 0]

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Again, you can believe in a trickster god - I don't.

amen.

namaste, motherfucker.

[quade 3]

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This isn't true for anything else. If a medical text that millions of doctors used to cure people contains an error due to incomplete/erroneous information, is the rest of the information voided? Are all those people un-cured?

The difference being that a medical text is clearly the work of man.

If you believe in fundamentalist dogma, then the Bible is the word of God. Since God is perfect and all knowing, He obviously doesn't make mistakes.

If the very basic stories in the very first parts of the Bible are incorrect, then how can we believe much that follows. I'll even give you quite a bit of leeway in interpreting a couple of simple concepts or minor translational errors; apple for pear for instance, but if earth and man (as we would have known men to be 6,000 years ago) weren't created in seven settings and risings of the sun, then again, I think it's very difficult to logically assume that all of what follows is true either.

I see the Bible as being several parts; speculation on the origins of the universe (creation myths), some very nice historical story-telling and then a LOT of speculation about the end of the universe.

I really like the middle parts, but the beginning and ending are -- to me -- quite unbelievable.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[rhino 0]

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I really like the middle parts, but the beginning and ending are -- to me -- quite unbelievable.

Interesting.. I use to think it was all unbelievable. Until I found faith. I believe the bible is the word of God. I am not a minister or anything.. But the more I listen to most of you the more thankful I am that I do have faith. Thank God I have faith..


Rhino

[billvon 2,425]

>The difference being that a medical text is clearly the work of man.

Based on faith in science; both science and authors make mistakes. I don't think anyone claims that the bible was written by god - even the most fundamental religions claim only that it was written by men divinely inspired by god.

>If the very basic stories in the very first parts of the Bible are
>incorrect, then how can we believe much that follows.

You don't have to. I could list a dozen things that are pretty obviously false or contradictory (genesis 19:26, matthew 27:5 vs acts 1:18, exodus 21:12 vs romans 12:17, leviticus 11:6, psalms 93:1 - the benefits of a catholic education.) There are even some scary translation errors, like the one that turned "young woman" into "virgin."

I don't believe in the bible literally; indeed, you'd have to deny an awful lot of science and history to do so. I believe in its message, which I think is the more improtant part.

[goose491 0]

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>DNA changes yes. But if each piece of the puzzle is not perfectly
> matched with the next, the order is not correct and life does not
> exist the way we know it.

Simply not true. You can mess with people's DNA a bit and still have them be viable; there's a lot of redundancy built into the system, and a lot of DNA that we don't think is used by the organism. Change one base pair, and 75% of the time you get nothing. 25% of the time you get a nonviable organism. But .0001% of the time, you get something that has a new characteristic - bigger eyes, or longer arms, or a smaller brain. Of those, .001% are useful changes (like, say, a bigger brain) and they are kept.

You're absolutely correct. The order can be changed. Perhaps I should have said "structure" in it's place. You are talking about making small changes to a structure that has already been built. We know what DNA looks like (spiraly

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There was work or effort put forth in combining the acids and
>proteins in the correct combo to begin with.

And that "work" is the result of power over time. That power is the mystery, the god, the "Higher power"... Whatever you may call it. "It" exists.

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Definitely. It took billions of years of random chances, with trillions of amino acids, to get the first self-replicating protein. The cool thing about life is that it only has to happen once.

You can say random but random doesn't put the square block in the square hole time and time again. "Many Random Chances" Just doesn't create DNA. Likewise, Trees have been growing and reproducing for millions of years but I defy you to find a field where the trees have aligned themselves in perfect rows just out of random placements.

My Karma ran over my Dogma!!!

[cloudseeker 0]

I have read almost every post in this thread, and I have to say that I am astonished, but not so much surprised.

The only for sure thing that I can gather from this is that 90% of you aren't sure of what you believe, but are looking for an answer somewhere. I tell you the truth, God is the only answer. When you find God you will find the most important answer there is, WHY are we here? We are here in order to carry out God's perfect plan. HOW we got here is answered in the book of Genesis, the very first book of the Bible. Of course, the exact scientific data isn't there, but it was written in such a way that thousands of generations could read and get a vague understanding. Who cares HOW God put us on the earth, just know that He DID!

I am a very devout Christian, and I think that the little specifics of the Bible, i.e. sprinkle, pour, or dunk, shouldn't be argued over. They are doing nothing but driving a wedge in between us, hince we get denominations. We should concentrate on the big picture, that Jesus came to earth as God in human form to save the world, and became a bridge between man and God the Father. If the trinity confuses you, think of it scientifically...water, ice, steam...all the same element right? Yes, just in different forms. It's the same thing with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit...same thing, just different forms. As a Christian it is my responsibility to spread the word of God as much as possible, and somehow make a difference in the world. I promise you, nothing has ever given me as much hope, joy, and peace than having a relationship with the living God. I would say to any of you, read the Bible, preferably the gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and all of your questions for life will be answered. But be careful not to read INTO the Bible, read OUT of it. The story of the apostle Paul is quite amazing as well. He wrote the epistles, which are letters to many churches of his time. They begin with Romans and end with Ephesians I think, I don't have my Bible with me right now. If any of you have any questions, don't hesitate to email me or something.

Kim

When once you have tasted flight you will always walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you have been and there you will long to return.-Leonardo DiVinci

[narcimund 0]

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The only for sure thing that I can gather from this is that 90% of you aren't sure of what you believe, but are looking for an answer somewhere.

How odd. I read quite the opposite in these posts. Most everyone has expressed clear, deeply held opinions without equivocation.

Can you help me understand your position by listing who has said they aren't sure compared with who has said the opposite?

First Class Citizen Twice Over

[wmw999 2,144]

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90% of you aren't sure of what you believe, but are looking for an answer somewhere.

I don't think a lot of us are looking for a single answer. Because an answer can limit how you look at things; there's no point in exploring or discussing any more once the discussion has been bounded.

After all, someone who believes there's a significant difference between sprinking, dunkng, or dipping thinks there's an answer. In some ways, it's like we're looking at different puzzle pieces, and some of us think we've found the edge, when really it's just a couple of pieces of similar color that have straight sides.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[billvon 2,425]

>And that "work" is the result of power over time. That power is the
> mystery, the god, the "Higher power"... Whatever you may call
> it. "It" exists.

I agree. "It" is chaos theory; it is fractal math. It is Heisenburg's uncertainty principle. Under all that, you will find the forces that created this universe - 'god' if you will. Just because we are closer to understanding them now doesn't make them any less majestic or sacred. We just need to assume less magic to explain them nowadays.

>You can say random but random doesn't put the square block in the
>square hole time and time again.

Correct. Fortunately for us, random chance only had to do that once.

>"Many Random Chances" Just doesn't create DNA.

No, but they do create amino acids. From amino acids, random chance can create proteins. From proteins, random chance can create something that can replicate itself in a perfect environment. From a self-replicating organism, evolution begins.

Someday, a billion years later, the first organism that can store just a little of its genetic material for the next generation is created. It's not really DNA yet, just a short piece of RNA that can make one protein under the right conditions. This is a huge advantage to that proto-organism, and it is propagated. Genetics has begun. The structure we know as DNA, with its associated mechanisms for transcription, mitosis and meiosis, and repair, took billions of years to work out.

>Likewise, Trees have been growing and reproducing for millions of
> years but I defy you to find a field where the trees have aligned
> themselves in perfect rows just out of random placements.

Why would trees do that, instead of growing where they survive best? There is no evolutionary advantage to growing in a grid; in fact, there are some problems with that that would cause such a tree to go extinct.

I don't need to look any further than a snowflake to see perfectly natural forces create something incredibly intricate, ordered and unique. Did god shape each one to trick us? Or is that just simple physics and chemistry at work?

[billvon 2,425]

>The only for sure thing that I can gather from this is that 90% of you
> aren't sure of what you believe, but are looking for an answer
> somewhere. I tell you the truth, God is the only answer.

Some of us see god in a different way than others. That doesn't mean we're not sure of what we believe, just that we believe something a little different than you do.

[indyz 1]

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>You can say random but random doesn't put the square block in the
>square hole time and time again.

Correct. Fortunately for us, random chance only had to do that once.

>"Many Random Chances" Just doesn't create DNA.

No, but they do create amino acids. From amino acids, random chance can create proteins. From proteins, random chance can create something that can replicate itself in a perfect environment. From a self-replicating organism, evolution begins.

Just to add: Whether abiogenesis happened or not does not invalidate evolution. Whether creation happened or not does not invalidate evolution. Creation and evolution evolution can coexist (see old-earth creationism). I don't buy into that, but plenty of people do.

I would also argue that given the right stew of chemicals and lightning, self replicating molecules are not only possible, but likely. Given the scope of the universe, it was bound to happen somewhere.

[quade 3]

If you're looking for some sort of order in the chaos, you can find it fairly easily if you know where to look -- maybe not in a rectangular grid but certaily in shapes defined by Phi and phi. Tree branches usually grow according to a fairly well defined mathematical structure. No divine watchmaker at work either, just the most efficient way to go about it.

You'll also want to look at a number of other natural stuctures as well -- heck even the human body.

http://www.unitone.org/naturesword/index.htm

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[happythoughts 0]

Because I don't want to discuss one particular flavor of "God", and offend one or the other group, I'll just call God, "The Big Invisible Guy". There. Isn't that better?

[rhino 0]

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I don't think a lot of us are looking for a single answer. Because an answer can limit how you look at things;

Actually exactly the opposite is true. When you have faith you are limitless.. When you don't have faith you are very limited...

I think what she meant by the 90% comment was meant to show that if you don't stand for something whether that is believing in God than you stand for nothing.

Where do you stand? I am what I would call a believer. I believe in God and I am saved. I am a person of faith. Hard to explain really but life get's much easier to handle when you know God is with you.


Rhino

[cloudseeker 0]

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I don't think a lot of us are looking for a single answer. Because an answer can limit how you look at things;

Actually exactly the opposite is true. When you have faith you are limitless.. When you don't have faith you are very limited...

I think what she meant by the 90% comment was meant to show that if you don't stand for something whether that is believing in God than you stand for nothing.

Where do you stand? I am what I would call a believer. I believe in God and I am saved. I am a person of faith. Hard to explain really but life get's much easier to handle when you know God is with you.


Rhino

That's it exactly!!!

When once you have tasted flight you will always walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you have been and there you will long to return.-Leonardo DiVinci

[wmw999 2,144]

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Where do you stand?

Well, actually, right now I'm sitting. I'm uncomfortable getting into belief discussions on a personal level because I live in southern baptist-land; Houston.

I believe in faith as something that includes, rather than excludes. And it fills in the holes of what we don't understand, or what we choose not to try to understand, about the world.

And faith shouldn't limit you from trying to understand what you don't right now, or from accepting what you don't understand.

As far as to God, Allah, Jesus, the virgin Mary, Joseph, Buddha, Thor, Iemanja, and everything else is concerned? Those are manifestations. If God isn't a trickster, then why build up thought tricks to try to send his beloved creations to hell, simply because they lived kind lives outside of a particular framework?

We can't see the shape of whatever might be God. So we make one up. That's what people do.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[BikerBabe 0]

Well, what does it really mean to be a Christian, then?

Does it mean believing in God and accepting Jesus into your life and living under His grace?

Or does it mean believeing all of that plus all of the other trappings of "faith" that human beings have deemed as necessary?

Am I not a Christian if don't believe that the earth is 6000 years old? Am I not a Christian if I believe that the Bible is a moral guidebook, but NOT a history or science textbook? Am I not a Christian if I don't take every single word of the bible as literal and not allegorical?

How about we look at it Biblically, then?

What would Jesus say? Remember...the Bible as we know it did not exist in Jesus's time...only the Law, Prophets, and Writings.

Jesus replied, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and Prophets rest on these two commandments." -- Matthew 22:37-40

I really can't find anywhere that Jesus commands us to learn history from the Bible, or science, either.

Science is discovery of the thruths of the world around us...isn't that what the teachings of Jesus are? Discovering the truths of God?

It's funny, but the debate over evolution/creation or literal/allegorical interpretation is just an extension of the debates of the early church...such as whether or not Gentile Christians needed to be circumcised, or what foods Gentile Christians could eat. See the discussions of clean vs. unclean in Matthew 15 or in Acts, with Peter's vision.

In the end, I believe what is REALLY going to matter is if you loved the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind, and if you loved your neighbor as yourself. If science was created by God...how can it be "unclean?"

My ultimate authority is Jesus...the Bible is just a way to know Him.

Never meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!

[billvon 2,425]

>Well, what does it really mean to be a Christian, then?

To me, it is believing in christian values, as described in the new testament. There are so many variations that it's hard to come up with a stricter definition.

>In the end, I believe what is REALLY going to matter is if you loved
> the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind, and if you loved your
> neighbor as yourself.

I think the latter is by far the most important issue. We are not here to spend our lives in silent, passive adoration of a deity - we are here to make the world a better place. It is our actions, not our secret beliefs, that define us.

>If science was created by God...how can it be "unclean?"

Because some people fear change and ambiguity. Heisenburg's nondeterministic view of the world is a pretty scary one; Giordano Bruno's heretical view that the earth might not be the center of the universe was too hard for the people of the 1500's to accept. The bible presents a perhaps inaccurate but 'approved' version of the world, and it takes decades (and sometimes even people's lives) to force people to see that it is not the literal truth.

[skygod7777 0]

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CREvolution

ok, i'll agree with you, since i can't deside

later

[6Speed 0]

Hi, I'm new to the board. :)

I recently read a book called "The Source". I recommend it to anyone regardless of where they stand on the creation vs. evolution debate.

First off, Genesis completely agrees with current scientific data and theory on the formation of the earth. Keep in mind that the original text is written in Hebrew, which has many more descriptive words than English. So for instance a word like Love would have many diff words in Hebrew. We love our dog, pizza, wife, kids, skydiving, etc. But there are many diff kinds of love, all being very different. Ok, anyway, on to what I was going to say.


Here are some things from the book...

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In Genesis the water of the newly formed earth is said to be "gathered together" in one place, and dry land appears in another. All geological evidence we have indicates that this actually happened. There was one huge ocean, and one supercontinent named Rodonia (Pangea came later).

Genesis also states that when the earth was created it was formless and empty, dark and covered in water. Science also tells us that when the earth was in it's formation it was covered totally in water, and enshrouded in clouds (genesis also states that it was covered in 2 diff waters one being ocean, and one being clouds). There was also a lot of intersteller dust between the earth and the sun. All sunlight was blocked from the surface of the earth from these two factors. So science and the Bible agree on the formation of the earth.

Now lets look at how plants formed according to science, and compare that with what the Bible says.

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In Genesis we are told the first living thing was grass. The Hebrew word is actually deshe, which literally means tender grass. This is not the grass that you mow with a lawnmower. The Hebrew word for that is chatsir. Tender grass is algae, mosses, and liverworts. Science tells us that these were the first plants on earth as well.

The 2nd plant material produced in the sequence is the herb from the word eseb. These ferns and conifers are to be distinguised from the "tree yielding see after its kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself." This latter use of the Hebrew word ets refers to an angiosperm-a tree with fruit and seed-not a fern or grass. It seems that there are three kinds iof plants given in the biblical sequence- tender grass, the herb, and the flowering tree with fruit in itself.

How bout the sequence of animal life? Does the Bible agree with science here?

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The Bible's sequence of animal creation starting in verse 20 also corresponds remarkably with the evidence seen in the fossil record. Animal life is scientifically known to have begun in water. In the Genesis account, the Hebrew word used suggests that a wide range of swarming creatures began in the sea. The Fossil record confirms this fact. Forty more animal phyla than exist today are contained in the earliast rocks-even animals with backbones.

We see additional examples of the sequential accuracy of the Bible by order in which it introduces new life forms to us. According to verse 20, the first warm blooded creatures were birds. In the fossil record, we see bird fossils, such as archaeopteryx, protoavis, and several similar finds in China, that authenticate the biblical statement.

Ok, so lets say that just by chance the universe came to be, and just by chance the earth came to be. Mathmatically the odds of our earth forming by chance alone is 1 in 150,000,000,000,000,000. "This number only includes 11 factors necessary to support life. It does not include all the other precise chemical balances needed in the composition of the atom and the elements making up matter. It also does not include the factors needed for life itself, as demonstrated in its complex chemical codes for DNA and RNA."


These are only a very small example of many things that the Bible contains, that agrees with science. Keep in mind that the Bible does not contain every tiny detail about life, and every organism that ever roamed the planet. It was, as I said before, written in a time of simple people, who could not understand concepts such as atoms, protons, DNA, etc.

[wmw999 2,144]

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First off, Genesis completely agrees with current scientific data and theory on the formation of the earth

I think that falls in line with "you can torture statistics until they say anything."

Same thing goes for the Bible. You have to look for what you want in it; it's easy to find just about anything if you look hard enough.

The problem comes with all the stuff you ignore in order to see what you agree with.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[goose491 0]

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>And that "work" is the result of power over time. That power is the
> mystery, the god, the "Higher power"... Whatever you may call
> it. "It" exists.

I agree. "It" is chaos theory; it is fractal math. It is Heisenburg's uncertainty principle. Under all that, you will find the forces that created this universe - 'god' if you will. Just because we are closer to understanding them now doesn't make them any less majestic or sacred. We just need to assume less magic to explain them nowadays.

If you agree that their is "Work" present before the "creation" then ther must be a "power" present before said creation.

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>You can say random but random doesn't put the square block in the
>square hole time and time again.

Correct. Fortunately for us, random chance only had to do that once.

Fine, a little nit-picky on the "time and time again" vs "once" aspect but there is no denyal here that work was done. Wheter many random combinations took place before the "right one" came about is really irrelevant to the fact that it had to of happend and it could not have happend without the "power" I refer to.

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>"Many Random Chances" Just doesn't create DNA.

No, but they do create amino acids. From amino acids, random chance can create proteins. From proteins, random chance can create something that can replicate itself in a perfect environment. From a self-replicating organism, evolution begins.

Ah! Now we can talk about "mutual-exclution" and "The Prime Mover". If your "Random Chances" somehow creates amino acids, then what puts them together so intricately (sorry about spelling) to form said protein? Another random chance? If the building blocks exist because of "random chance" (I guess you mean in a parallel universe, there is no such thing) than someone (let's just say someone okay) has to put those block together (Prime mover?) Either way, there is no way to explain what is without including a power that makes it so or another "random chance" where things are not.

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I don't need to look any further than a snowflake to see perfectly natural forces create something incredibly intricate, ordered and unique. Did god shape each one to trick us? Or is that just simple physics and chemistry at work?

Why does God creating a snowflake have to be a trick? I don't get it. I agree that the snowflake is intricate. Each one is different, supporting both your "random chances" method of reason AND the chaos theory. I tend to beleive we subscribe to a very similar train of thought.

Someone (I think Quade) mentions the tree branches growing in mathematical fashion. Agreed but all things are mathematical... Chaos is not the opposite of Math, it is a component of math. Math is not man-made but man-discovered and we have yet to discover more of it. As you have already mentioned Billvon, we see less magic now then we did when we did not KNOW the laws of physics. However, all the laws that we HAVE discovered point to a power beyond what already is, and what already was and what ever will be.

My Karma ran over my Dogma!!!