Posted on 02/02/2004 3:47:15 PM PST by DannyTN
Well, I certainly agree that Genesis doesn't tell us how God create man and there are some possible gaps. Could he have used an evolutionary process. It's possible. But I doubt it.
There are several issues with this.
It is possible that in the creative process, God made some lifeforms that He subsequently decided to improve. Thus, what may look like evolution or random mutation to us, may be a continuation of God's direct design and intervention and not chance at all.
Most importantly though, I still don't believe the evolutionist's have not made their case. They say things are impossible based on their own current limited understanding. They make wild speculations about what happened in the past and present them as fact, even though it's been less than 200 years that man has even known dinosaur's existed. They are clearly biased in many of their writings. They have perpetrated frauds in support of evolution, which certainly did not get the kind of scrutiny from peer review that creationist writings get. They have and continue to ignore major pitfalls in assumptions about dating methods.
It's only been 200 years since man even knew Dinosaur's existed. On the other hand I've got a record that is at least 3000 years old that purports to be from our Creator, holds up the highest standard known of right and wrong, and that has other evidence such as fulfilled prophesy to back it up. I've watched through the years as scientists said the dates and people and places in the Bible couldn't possibly be correct, only to learn later that yes, those dates do match, those people did exist and those places were real places.
And while the record has been misinterpreted by some such as assuming "cannot me moved" means "not in motion or not in orbit". I expect that in the final analysis the Bible will be proved correct.
I disagree. The main importance of those passages were to state that God was responsible for the sunrise and sunset. It was God who made night and day. It was God who made the earth and put it in it's place. It was not intended to describe how he did it.
I actually agree with PatrickHenry here, that the same thing can be said of creation. It says God created us, it doesn't say how. Thus evolution is not specifically precluded, but It's doubtful for the reasons in my most recent post.
This doesn't preclude us from examining His creation to see what we can learn. However when we adopt positions that contradict what He has told us, based on limited analysis and understanding we are very subject to being wrong and subsequently proved worng by further analysis and further evidence.
This is what evolutionists object to, further anlaysis and further evidence. Anything that doesn't support their storyline is automatically rejected instead of evaluated on the merits of the science. That bias doesn't belong in science.
Agreed, but there is dispute about what that history tells us. Evolutionists reject any findings that conclude a different history than they have imagined. When they reject the science based on the conclusion, instead of on the science itself, then they show themselves to be biased.
That's what this thread was about.
Wildly incorrect. Science, by definition, deals with the evidence. That's why, from time to time, we have these dust-ups where the findings of science seem to contradict a literal reading of scripture. Science always goes with the evidence.
If some kook hides evidence that contradicts his pet theory, he's a fraud, and loses all respect in scientific circles. If you know of any genuine tales of evidence that contradicts evolution theory, please let us know.
On the other hand, I've spent years here watching an endless parade of creationists deny all the evidence of evolution. Just watch. Every new thread they show up with their claims that "there's no evidence" for evolution. It gets tiresome.
I am as uncertain of "my" science as the next, but I am certain of my faith. To put it another way: as to the mechanism of creation, I "haven't nailed it down solid yet", but I am certain it was created.
Not only that, but I can debate this issue with you without insulting your beliefs on the matter. Perhaps you cannot do the same because you know to the depths of your being that you have so much more to lose if you are wrong than I do if I am wrong. If I am wrong I will never know it, but if you are wrong you will be (painfully) reminded of your error for all eternity.
Seems to me it's a side-effect of abstract reasoning ability. It's rather like the ability to read and write - this had no survival value until 5000 years ago in a very few cultures, yet everyone has the ability to become literate.
Me: "Concrete examples, please."
You: New Guinea man.
New Guinea man is something I never heard of before. So I did a Google search. Most of the hits were Papuans, anthropologists, and so forth. Nothing having to do with human origins. Except one: Review of Jack Chick's "Big Daddy" at talk.origins. Surely you have more info than a Jack Chick tract!
(BTW, my opinion of Chick is that he has driven many more people *from* Christ than the secularists, commies, usual suspects could ever dream of.)
But seriously. "New Guinea Man"? A modern H. sapient skull something like 5000 years old. Please provide a link to some "embellished story" about it, and I don't mean Jack Chick.
You: The drawings of human embryos that look like different creatures but have been known to be false for a long time, but still get put in school science textbooks.
I ask for concrete, and get jello. Anyhow.
Presumably, you're referring to Haeckel's infamous drawings of embryos. an article about them According to this review of "Icons of evolution" "Haeckel's drawings are seldom if ever still printed in biology textbooks and when they are, they are there for historical reasons or as an wxample of the human falllibility aspect of science."
You do, of course, have some *specific*, *modern* counterexamples, don't you?
Now let's get away from Ernst Haeckel and look at some actual science. Embryology - the study of how complex things develop from single cells. Part of embryology is called von Baer's laws:
"Karl Ernst von Baer was the foremost German embryologist of the first half of the 19th Century. After carefully comparing the chick embryo to other vertebrates, he came up with four generalizations about vertebrate development. The photograph above comes from Scott Gilbert's Developmental Biology, 6th Edition (p. 10) von Baer's generalizations are:
The general aspects of a large group of animals appear earlier in embryonic development than do the more specialized ones.
Less general characters develop from more general ones.
The embryos of a particular species diverge more and more from those of other animals as development proceeds.
The young embryo of a "higher" animal is not like the adult of a "lower" one, but instead resembles its early embryo."
These are called "laws" because they are simple observations, no theory trying to explain them. (this is the usual scientific terminology: Boyle's' law is an experimental result - it was later explained by the kinetic theory of gases. Ditto Kepler's laws, Bodes' law, etc)
Haeckel was trying to show that embryos resemble their adult ancestors, von Baer that they resemble their ancestors' embryos.
A specific example of this is the human (as an example of a mammalian) ear:
"In addition, in mammals only, the quadrate bone and articular bone shift off the jaw to become part of the ear. This shift is not a profound one in terms of distance, as the ear is so close to the jaw joint. The quadrate becomes the incus and the articular becomes the malleus. "
In other words, reptile and mammal embryos have what appear to be the same bones in the same positions. Then, in mammals, they move to become our ear bones.
The really interesting thing is that much later fossils were found with the jaw/ear bones in intermediate configurations in adults - these are the so-called mammal-like reptiles.
So Haeckel may have been exaggerating, but there is definitely a sense in which "ontolgeny recapitulates phylogeny".
There are other examples as well: the recurrent pharyngeal nerve goes from the neck, down into the chest, loops around the aorta, and comes back up to the throat. This adds something like 15 feet to it in giraffes! Its embryological development makes the reason for this obvious - in fish it doesn't take such a lengthy path, neither does it in early embryos; but the proportions change as we mature, and the nerve is stuck and can't change its path (I couldn't find an on-line illustration of this)
Surely you have no problem replacing Haeckel's misleading drawings with modern photos to illustrate these fascinating topics of biology.
Our embryos resemble tadpoles which resemble fish, embryonic horseshoe crabs are called 'trilobites' because they resemble extinct trilobites, immature insects resemble worms... definitely some food for thought here
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