Does evolution contradict creationism?

Talk Origins ^ | 1998 | Warren Kurt VonRoeschlaub

[shubi]

There are two parts to creationism. Evolution, specifically common descent, tells us how life came to where it is, but it does not say why. If the question is whether evolution disproves the basic underlying theme of Genesis, that God created the world and the life in it, the answer is no. Evolution cannot say exactly why common descent chose the paths that it did.

If the question is whether evolution contradicts a literal interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis as an exact historical account, then it does. This is the main, and for the most part only, point of conflict between those who believe in evolution and creationists.

[gdc61]

after reading all your posts I still can't tell what type of monkey you are, maybe an ape? they throw poo too right? and from the large amount of poo thrown perhaps a great ape.

[Alamo-Girl]

Welcome to Free Republic, both of you!

I don’t wish to engage in your debate directly since I am not a Young Earth Creationist per se nor am I an evolutionist per se - so I cannot take either side. But I would like to provide a bit of information for the discussion in response to your remark at post 203 where you said:

PP: Yet many sciences have shown time and time again that a worldwide flood has never happened. Records from many other cultures that predate the supposed deluge show no evidence of such happening. The fact that the Noah story was written around 600BCE and the flood was supposed to have occurred 1500 years before that is a good indication that it isn't the literal truth.

By my calculations, the date of the Noah flood is somewhere around 2348 B.C. to 2105 B.C. And with reference to the post to which you responded, the Hebrew word for “breath of life” in Genesis 7:22 is neshama which is the same word used for the life breathed into Adam (as compared to ordinary animal life) whereby he became a “living soul” – Genesis 2:7. Non-Adamic life have souls but the word used in Genesis 1 is not the same, i.e. nephesh.

Here's the tidbit for the discussion: the evidence is that about the proper time for the Noah flood, a large number of the major civilizations around the world collapsed suddenly:

British Archeology, Journal of the Council for British Archeology December 1997

At some time around 2300 BC, give or take a century or two, a large number of the major civilisations of the world collapsed, simultaneously it seems. The Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Early Bronze Age civilisation in Israel, Anatolia and Greece, as well as the Indus Valley civilisation in India, the Hilmand civilisation in Afghanistan and the Hongshan Culture in China - the first urban civilisations in the world - all fell into ruin at more or less the same time. Why? …

Some decades ago, the hunt for clues passed largely into the hands of natural scientists. Concentrating on the earlier set of Bronze Age collapses, researchers began to find a range of evidence that suggested that natural causes rather than human actions, may have been initially responsible. There began to be talk of climate change, volcanic activity, and earthquakes - and some of this material has now found its way into standard historical accounts of the period.

Agreement, however, there has never been. Some researchers favoured one type of natural cause, others favoured another, and the problem remained that no single explanation appeared to account for all the evidence….

The hunt for natural causes for these human disasters began when the Frenchman Claude Schaeffer, one of the leading archaeologists of his time, published his book ‘Stratigraphie Comparee et Chronologie L’Asie Occidentale’ in 1948. Schaeffer analysed and compared the destruction layers of more than 40 archaeological sites in the Near and Middle East, from Troy to Tepe Hissar on the Caspian Sea and from the Levant to Mesopotamia. He was the first scholar to detect that all had been totally destroyed several times in the Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age, apparently simultaneously.

Since the damage was far too excessive and did not show signs of military or human involvement, he argued that repeated earthquakes might have been responsible for these events. At the time he published, Schaeffer was not taken seriously by the world of archaeology. Since then, however, natural scientists have found widespread and unambiguous evidence for abrupt climate change, sudden sea level changes, catastrophic inundations, widespread seismic activity and evidence for massive volcanic activity at several periods since the last Ice Age, but particularly at around 2200BC, give or take 200 years.

Areas such as the Sahara, or around the Dead Sea, were once farmed but became deserts. Tree rings show disastrous growth conditions at c 2350BC, while sediment cores from lakes and rivers in Europe and Africa show a catastrophic drop in water levels at this time. In Mesopotamia, vast areas of land appear to have been devastated, inundated, or totally burned...

Yet what was the cause of these earthquakes, eruptions, tidal waves, fire-blasts and climate changes? By the late 1970s, British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier of Oxford University had begun to investigate cometary impact as the ultimate cause. Then in 1980, the Nobel prizewinning physicist Luis Alvarez and his colleagues published their famous paper in ‘Science’ that argued that a cosmic impact had led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.. He showed that large amounts of the element iridium present in geological layers dating from about 65 million BC had a cosmic origin.

Alvarez’s paper had immense influence and stimulated further research by such British astronomers as Clube and Napier, Prof Mark Bailey of the Armagh Observatory, Duncan Steel of Spaceguard Australia, and Britain’s best known astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle. All now support the theory of cometary impact and loosely form what is now known as the British School of Coherent Catastrophism.

These scholars envisage trains of cometary debris which repeatedly encounter the Earth. We know that tiny particles of cosmic material penetrate the atmosphere every day, but their impact is insignificant.

Occasionally, however, cosmic debris measuring between one and several hundred metres in diametre strike the Earth and these can have catastrophic effects on our ecological system, through multimegaton explosions of fireballs which destroy natural and cultural features on the surface of the Earth by means of tidal-wave floods (if the debris lands in the sea), fire blasts and seismic damage…

The extent to which past cometary impacts were responsible for civilisation collapse, cultural change, even the development of religion, must remain a hypothesis. But in view of the astronomical, geological and archaeological evidence, this ‘giant comet’ hypothesis should no longer be dismissed by archaeologists out of hand.

Just some things for y'all to think about ...

[Polybius]

Remember entropy, the force behind the big bang and the awesome power of the universe, predicts systems should “evolve” from a state of order to disorder. Evolution, observed on the planet Earth, predicts systems are evolving from a state of disorder to order.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system will decrease or remain constant.

The key word is "closed".

If anything can pass into, or out of, a system, we say it is an open system. If only matter can pass into, or out of, a system, but not energy, then we call it a closed system. If neither matter nor energy can pass into, or out of, a system, then we call it an isolated system.

Biological systems are not isolated or closed systems as they depend on the energy from an outside source: .......... Sunlight.

"Order" in biological systems is only made possible by the consumption of energy that is produced at the cost of increasing entropy in the Sun.

For example, truckloads of lumber, cement and hardwear are delivered to a vacant lot you own. Through your muscle power, which comes from your food energy, which comes from photosynthesis, which is made possible by sunlight which is made possible by increasing the entropy of the Sun, you can take that material and build a house.

You arrived at order (a house) from disorder (a pile of building material) by supplying energy.

The Sun is the source of energy input to the Earth's living systems and allows them to evolve, hunt, breed, construct, Freep, etc.

[NeuronExMachina]

If evolution was true there would be no monkeys cuz they woulda all turned into people by now.

Why would they turn into people? First, evolution doesn't in any way involve one species transforming into another already-existing species. Second, monkeys are much better adapted to a jungle environment than humans are.

[shubi]

Definitely the missing link. lol

[shubi]

"If you are stupid enough to feel that you can pass off this anti-Semitic garbage as fact, then more power to you and your fellow travellers. I don't care to waste any more time with bigoted racists and Christophobes"

Since when is it anti-Semite to advocate correct translation of the Torah?

Since when is it being a "Christophobe" to fight the cult of idolatry that is creationism?

If you are not going to waste any more time spouting your nonsense-we who still have brains thank you.

[Jehu]

You should look at the beginning of Darwinism, and its results. It is hostile to Christian faith. Primarily Darwinism does away with God as the creator, and substitutes entirely material processes. On the face of it that is a mathematical impossibility.

I think the evidence for the Big Bang is very good science. If it is true, all physical science cannot get past about 1 times 10 to the minus 43 seconds. Before then is a singularity in which all energy and time (all the dimensions of the universe existed). Cosmologists simply relate it as a singularity...another way of saying, "we don't have a clue where the universe came from."

As far as original sin...here is the problem: You have to understand the central Tenney of the need for, and Divine plan of redemption. Whether God can do anything is not my argument, of course He can, including work through any process we can imagine, and an infinite number we cannot imagine. What I argue is what He apparently has done, or limited Himself to do.

By Divine decree God has declared sin that came into the human race through one man (Adam) can be removed by another man (Christ). That is the REAL problem (beyond the scientific arguments) why Christians must examine revisionary claims, and what those claims ultimately mean to Christian faith.

Now either our faith is wrong and a fantasy, a construct of human thought and error. Or it is true, and a Spiritual and Physical reality. If true...then sin DID come into the earth through one man, and then can be (has been) removed by another man. It cannot have arisen from many sources (different tribes of apes).

Biblically we have a single set of parents (Adam and Eve) All the genetic code of the human race...all diversity, every human that ever lived was in the genes of Adam and Eve. They were the best that ever was, without fault or flaw.

All of us in some deep way were in Adam...in the garden. We all would have failed, would have sinned, just like he did. God is justified in saying ALL have sinned in Adam. In a sense YOU are Adam...a mere shred of what he was, but in your DNA you were there, in spirit you were there.

We would have all made the decision to reject God for temporal pursuits. We all therefor must make the reverse decision to reject temporal pursuits for the eternal. The acceptance of Christ IS the adoption by a new parent. A process to be sure, but also something almost down to the level of DNA. (Think of communion...eating His flesh, Drinking his blood...a transfusion, so to speak).

You choose your new parent, something you can do in the eternal universe, not in the physical. Anyway for these reasons I believe evolution is NOT true. Slowly it will be shown by science itself, (as more and more) it is shown to not be credible. Think of the primitive times and conditions in which evolution was proposed. Hardly nothing was known of microscopic life, we did not know of the incredible complexity of even a single living cell. We knew nothing of DNA, of symbiotic life, of parasites, of the imaginable symphony needed for a living organism. Of the peculiar fitness of the earth for life, of the sheer wonder of the ecosystem. Evolution is a primitive scientific "philosophy," hanging on by a mere thread. Even now many of the scientists in other disciplines, (Even Nobel Prize winners) particularly the hard sciences of math and physics, say nothing about evolution, some even scoff, not too loudly yet, lest they face the scorn and retaliation of all the life science types...but it is over!

[shubi]

MONKEY MARKING

[shubi]

Slowly it will be shown by science itself, (as more and more) it is shown to not be credible

This is a LIE. Show us scientific evidence that the TOE is not credible. First, explain what an allele is, so all the other cretins can follow your logic (or lack thereof).

[shubi]

"You should look at the beginning of Darwinism, and its results. It is hostile to Christian faith. Primarily Darwinism does away with God as the creator, and substitutes entirely material processes."

Another lie! The only thing the TOE is hostile to is your silly interpretation of the Bible. The TOE is quite comfortable with my Christian beliefs.

[Jehu]

You sound like someone has attacked YOUR religion. TOE is a dying (and deservedly so) theory. I don't care about the endless speculation of processes constantly thrown out by evolution's advocates. Allele's are just the latest pseudo buzz words by evolutionists.

They are still not the magic bullet you are looking for to create ever more complex life from simpler forms. As far as we know they are just recombinations, (or new combinations) of EXISTING genes..., the point you will willingly always miss, is that evolution always has to work with something that is ALREADY here. From whence it all came?

By the way I enjoy the company of my fellow Cretins, far more than hanging out with pseudo-Christians.

[Jehu]

Your faith is weak and misguided, just as much as your science. Darwinism IS hostile to the basic Christian tenet of original sin (from one parent). If you do not know this, you know less about a "faith," you propose to be a part of, as you do about a science, you propose to know a lot about.

[shubi]

Yeah, whatever. Go back to your cult and be comforted.

[shubi]

LOL, very hostile for a true Christian, aren't ya?

[shubi]

Has anyone seen a creationut explain what an allele is?

[balrog666]

LOL, very hostile for a true Christian, aren't ya?

Only the True Christiansâ are allowed to Lie for the Lord!

[Jehu]

I always laugh at psuedo-Christians, who launch their weasel little attacks against Christians, then cry foul...usually quoting some scripture, that their little unbelieving minds barely comprehend, about how UNFAIR all those mean ole Christians are, just how judgmental they really, really, are when they respond to the direct attacks on Christian faith.

Come on shibu, teach me Christianity! Hope it is better than your science.

P.S. I gave a brief discription of alelles, and debunked yet another in the endless series of REASONS evolutionists hysterically present, to hide from the creative power of God.

[conservative_crusader]

I like the way you think. For the most part I agree with you, however you and I part company at one point. You believe that God said it, and literally it was. Now this is definitely a possibility, and is the one that i believe is more likely. You believe this beyond the shadow of a doubt. I find this admirable. However the Bible does not say "Poof" and Adam was created from dust. My belief is that it is also possible that God used evolution as a tool (whether he needed to or not). The point is, is that the Bible may say that literally man was created from dust. However it doesn't rule out the possibility of eventual evolution from dust into a human being.

That being said, whichever of these is true, I believe Jesus of Nazareth is the son of God, that he was without sin, that because he was without sin, he did not deserve death, and because he died without sin, my sins can be forgiven. This is all that someone has to believe to be a Christian. The ifs, whys, hows, and whats are secondary to this.

[conservative_crusader]

You know... hostility is not a sin. As a matter of fact in the Old Testament God commanded that Israel should go to war with other nations several times.