Posted on 11/30/2004 3:53:55 PM PST by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at talkorigins.org ...
"B: Well then, you're behind the times. I pity the company you work for. Because things like electrical circuits are now being designed by "Genetic Algorithms" which are mathematical algorithms which mimic Darwinian evolution.
I pity the other evolutionists on this board that are getting YOUR help...these programs that "mimic" Darwinian evolution were designed by who? Evolution?
B: Actually Yes. Mathematicians were inspired by them. After all if nature could use these simple algorithms for its advantage, so should engineers and scientists. So a whole new class of mathematics, stochastic hill climbing methods, owes its existence to Darwin. Doesn't that just bake your noodle?
"In fact Genetic Algorithms such as the Monte Carlo Method have been a staple of mathematicians and engineers for decades. I suggest you consider retirement, and let a younger generation of engineers who know what they are doing have a crack at it. "
UNBELIEVABLE! You are using human designed computer programs that mimic "so called evolutionary processes (whatever they are)" to prove that blind random chance can produce the same, or similar complexity that requires directed intelligence to produce.
B: Actually more complex. GA's have been used to generate circuits which are more complex and perform better than ones designed by human engineers. Furthermore, it refutes your contention that Darwinian process can't *design anything*.
How do you even feed yourself without help?
B: ROFL. I suggest you retire now. That would help the company you work for quite a bit.
Your are the EXACT evidence that belief in evolutionary theory is a mind killer. You can't even recognize your hypothesis is self-contradictory, and proves MY point!
B: Let me get this.. A process which is based random variation, cross fertilization and natural selection out performs human designers and that contradicts my point? I'm sorry, but typing in all caps doesn't make your point. You only look shrill and unable to cope.
B: THat biological materials have complex properties and interactions is a fact of nature. Again, here we have a creationists that is at war with reality.
And here we have an evolutionist that spouts tautologies as revelation. We all know, maybe even your 5 year old brother knows that nature is complex, the question is how does insensate (mindless) matter eventually produce consciousness.
B: Thats a good question. 3000 years ago, Why does the sun rise and set, Why does the moon go through phases, Why does it rain, were also considered imponderable questions which seemingly had no solution. Of course, every school kid knows the answers to these questions. It never amazes me how creationists, because they can ask questions, somehow think the mere existence of unanswered questions is a problem for science. Incredible. Folks this is the hallmark of the argument from "Personal Astonishment" and is a logical fallacy. All we get from Jehu are incorrect statements and testimonies to his personal astonishment. No data, no facts, no nothing.
I am speaking for myself, cause I am not sure YOU are actually conscious of anything but what your professors have already thought, or allow you to think.
B: BAwahahaha. There's nothing I like to hear more from god botherers than that I'm "brainwashed". This would be funny if it weren't so sad. Jehu is simply trying to blame his ignorance on other people. No, Jehu, your problem is that you have abandoned independent thought a long time ago.
I could only wish I could threaten Hell to evolutionists, seeing they are responsible for most of the philosophical foundations for most of the hell of man against man on this earth in the 20th century.
B: BAWAHAHA. Your powerless Jehu, and butt ignorant.
It used to be religions were the base of many human wars, but the killing fields of the 20th century were first seeded with the God-hating philosophy turned loose by Darwin.
Which is a religion and holding true to form in that it first kills the spirit (see Christ and His arguments to the "learned leaders" of His day)
Heck it's all just the "survival of the fittest," don't you know? You and your pals are not innocent of blood, even though your hands never pulled the trigger.
B: ROFL. Now for a few remarks from "Der Fuher". I'm sure Jehu will appreciate this, as will most of the God botherers.
"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith ... we need believing people."
[Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during
negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant of 1933]
"The folkish-minded man, in particular, has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfil God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will."
[Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" Vol. 2 Chapter 10]
"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work."
[Adolf Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936]
"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the
Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the
work of the Lord." -- _Mien Kampt_, Adolf Hitler
"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It
points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few
followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight
against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a
fighter." -- _My New Order_, Adolf Hitler
"When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and
look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a
very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two
thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are
plundered and exploited." -- _My New Order_, Adolf Hitler
Of course, Hitler never mentioned Darwin, natural selection or survival of the fittest. But he did speak about his sworn duty to God to many times.
Once again Jehu, swings and misses, and it comes back on him. Jehu, I pity you. I really do.
You still haven't got any actual arguments then Jehu. LOL.
Archaeopteryx
Exposing ignorance is fun, isn't it. You are better at it than I am though. :(
So someone designed in the same mistake in the same defective protein in all three species, which just by accident happen to be the three which evolutionists claim are closest related.
Why design in a mistake in the first place? And why design in the same mistake on three independent occasions? And you're claiming this theory is scientific?
Go read what DARWIN said about the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record, on more than one occasion. Or do you disagree with Darwin's assesment of the problem of the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record?
B: Darwin was correct. In has time, there were no bona-fide transtaionals identified as such. On the other hand since Darwin's day, Paleontologist have Identified more than 300,000 fossil species, where as in Darwin's time only a few thousand were identified. I can understand where Jehu is comming from. After all, he's chained his mind to a holy book written thousands of years ago, and figures I am beholden to what Darwin wrote 150 years ago. Sorry. It doesn't work that way. Before Darwin died, a number of transitionals were found including the famous Archeaopteryx. It was also regonized that Basilosaurus which was originally identified as a big lizard by Owen, was actually a whale. A whale with very small legs. Had Darwin lived long enough to write another edition of OOS, no doubt he would've mentioned them. LOL. Jehu, your argument has to be one of the silliest arguments I've heard.
I will leave it as an exercise for you to ponder why the total lack of modern forms in the fossil record (below the very uppermost strata) is a problem for flood geology and a vindication for the ToE. Not that flood geology needs any more problems as it predicts nothing, is inconsistent with observed reality in too many ways to enumerate quickly, and would require numerous miracles to even come close to working.
First of all, Genesis is older than ToE. The burden of proof rests with ToE.
B: Genesis is not a scientific theory.
Secondly, what does ToE predict?
B: For starters, It predicted humans evolved from the higher primates. THis prediction, initally made by Darwin, has been borne out in a plethora of transitional forms.
Here is a link http://www.hebrewworld.com/books/ByChance.html to a source called "Not By Chance," which illustrates some of the issues that have been raised about Darwin's theory. I'm thinking about putting together a documentary about Creation and the Theory of Evolution. It seems to be a hot topic lately.
You're claiming that people lived for periods longer than 200 years? Can you cite one modern record of a human lifespan longer than 130? (Let me help you here: no, you can't). So we either have to conclude that either people's biochemistry has drastically changed in 3000 years (and, oddly enough, it had shrunk to less than 100 by the time of the Romans and has remained fixed or increased since), and that lifespans back then were totally discordant with what we know of mammalian lifespans, or that the oral tradition of an unsophisticated middle-eastern tribe embroidered history a bit.
Which is it likely to be? Hmm, that's a tough one.
The variation of the human genome requires at least 100,000 years to obtain.
This is your premise, not my contradiction.
B: LOL. We'll see.
It is based on average lifespans similar to or shorter than ours, rather than the ones described in the Mosaic account. Noah lived another 350 years after the flood. Abraham (born 400 years later) lived 175 years. The numbers become more "familiar after that.
B: Which makes for even a stronger contradiction. TO develop the amount of variation observed, requires more generations, not less. And if you posit long life times, that makes the bottleneck problem worse, not better. Its always amusing when creationists, trying to fend off a simple argument, actually make matters worse for themselves, not better.
This additional opportunity for more separate bloodlines more than explains your misconception.
B: What opportunity? LOL. Its even more amusing when creationists don't realize how wrong they are. Perhaps this guy will get a clue.
I love it when evolutionists accuse others of believing in fairy tales.
B: THis guy beleives Noah lived 940 years and accuses evolutionists of believing in fairy tales. You're a piece of work, dude.
None of the stuff that you mention explains the phenomena that are seen in real strata in the real world, like interposed fully-formed fossil coral beds, like fossilised burrows, like thick layers of powdery material where the powder is so fine that the grains take years to fall onto the sediment, Like interposed igneous strata, coal formations, like radiometric dates that get steadily and consistently older the deeper down the column we go etc etc etc.
And none of this contradicts the Mosaic account. your point, please? As for Antarctica, is there any proof those fossils couldn't have arrived there during the flood?
B: There's no evidence for a Noachian deluge. Period.
I guess you are just responding to people on this thread in general and nothing that I have said since I didn't say they were "mutually exclusive." I just don't believe in the theory of macro-evolution. If you want to call me and all the scientists who also don't accept it ignorant, that's your deal.
B: OK. You and they are hopelessly ignorant.
You can barely design something to put on your refrigerator with a magnet, and you are the expert on the design of the universe? You neither caused your birth or know your death. You cannot create or destroy one iota of energy.
B:Energy can't be destroyed, per se, but converted into mass and vice versa. THis is observed routinely. Yet again, realizing that he has no facts and no ideas, jehu resorts to his favorite chestnut, the argument from "Personal Astonishment". The basic problem with the argument from persoanl astonishment is that, when you're ignorant, just about everything astonishes you.
You are an absolute parasite in this universe. You have no idea what a thought is, how the human brain works, how memory is held in the brain etc... You come into awareness in a body that heals itself, respirates, and digests, all without your conscious control!
B: Jehu, back on your meds dear boy.
You and Thatcherite seem to enjoy calling people who don't agree with you "ignorant." Apparently you feel very very strongly that your ancestors were chimps. I certainly have no objection to your believing that.
Noah living longer means more generations, at least on the female side, which is what the theory examines (Mitochondrial DNA).
Exposing ignorance is fun, isn't it.
B: Better than a bowl game.
You are better at it than I am though. :(
B: Naaahhhh.
Actually I believe that chimps and I (and you) share a geologically recent common ancestor, not that we are descended from chimps. Do you know the first thing about evolutionary theory?
You and Thatcherite seem to enjoy calling people who don't agree with you "ignorant." Apparently you feel very very strongly that your ancestors were chimps. I certainly have no objection to your believing that.
B: I've called people ignorant when they attempt to pass off as facts, things which are known not to be true. If you wish to believe God *spoke* human beings into existence, that is your deal. When you try to claim that this belief is scientifically supported, then I will debunk those claims. Its pretty simple. And by the way if you really are Jewish, and I doubt it, because no self-respecting Jew would put down the AJC, regardless of politics. Second the Jews have long understood the Torah is not always to be intepreted literally. For example, do you actually think, "eye for eye, tooth for tooth".. etc. was how the Jews of yore practiced Justice?
Do yourself and other Jews a favor, don't talk about your religion and history until you can demonstrate you know something about it. THe last group of Jews to interpret the Torah literally were the Karaites. And we all know what happened to them. They went nowhere.
Uh, no Noah living longer doesn't increase the number of female generations. The amount of time for female generations remains the same.
What do you think the significance of mitochondrial DNA is? (I'll lay odds that the answer has something to do with Noah's wife. LOL)
Noah living longer means more generations, at least on the female side, which is what the theory examines (Mitochondrial DNA).
B: How does Noah living Longer mean more generations on the female side?
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