Posted on 12/20/2010 7:19:04 AM PST by SeekAndFind
If you're in a room of 100 people, odds are likely about 40 think God created humans about 10,000 years ago, part of a philosophy called creationism, according to a Gallup poll reported Friday (Dec. 17). That number is slightly lower than in years past and down from a high of 47 percent in both 1993 and 1999.
And 38 percent of Americans, the poll estimates, believe God guided the process that brought humans from "cavemen" to today's incarnation over millions of years, while 16 percent think humans evolved over millions of years, without any divine intervention.
This secular view, while a relatively small number, is up from 9 percent in 1982, according to Gallup.
Like most American attitudes, Gallup wrote, views on human origins have political consequences. For instance, debates and clashes over which explanations for human origins should be included in school textbooks have persisted for decades. And with 40 percent of Americans continuing to hold to an anti-evolutionary belief about the origin of humans, it is highly likely that these types of debates will continue, according to Gallup.
The findings also stand in stark contrast to another announcement Friday, this one by John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The memo was issued to federal science agencies to guide them in making rules to ensure scientific integrity.
The Gallup results are based on telephone interviews conducted Dec. 10-12 with a random sample of 1,019 adults, ages 18 and older, living in the continental United States. The findings were weighted by gender, age, race, education, religion and phone lines to make the sample nationally representative.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
> “I am a Christian and a scientist”
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What a laugh!
You are neither! - you are a technician that follows orders, and a lost unbeliever that would like to fancy himself as a ‘Christian.’
Your inability to grasp that the Earth being at the center of all creation does not have anything whatsoever to do with our path around the sun in local geometry. The big picture leaves you dazed and babbling. (and then you brag about it)
ROFLMAO!!! Now you have convinced me that comprehension is not your strong suit. I was talking about the words YOU used.
Let me try to make this simple enough for you. You said to a fellow Christian, and I quote, “Damn you’re stupid!” In response to that moronic comment I was suggesting that you heart is not one of a loving Christian.
You didn’t just laugh your ass off; there’s something missing above your neck!
He attacked me, and all I did is respond to his depth of ignorance, which he willingly displayed of his own volition.
If you think that he is a real ‘Christian,’ start a church with him; you are similar, by your own revelation.
CB:”Now those words indicate the true heart of the person that uttered them don’t they.”
Nope, God says only he knows our true heart. Words often betray.
CB maybe you should apply to be our new ‘freepolice’ to tell us all how when and where we’ve errd in posting.
I confess there was a time when I too played the part of a hypocrit judging and/or criticizing others. Eventually came to realize I’d better stop b/c I felt God was teaching me ‘the worst things we see in others we often become in ourselves’...
So it would be your view that to say to another Christian during a conversation that you have a disagreement on the words “Damn you’re stupid!”?
“Dinosaur means giant lizard. Gigantism is a known condition that appears to be possible (not always probable) with all created kinds.”
—You seem to be implying that dinosaurs were merely large reptiles. There are anatomical differences between reptiles and dinosaurs (such as the shape of the limbs) and, actually, size isn’t one of them. Many (adult) dinosaurs were much smaller than large reptiles, such as crocodiles (particularly the ancient crocodiles which most likely feasted on smaller dinosaurs).
Even modern crocodiles can be up to about 2600 lbs - while some dinos were no more than 26 lbs. And ancient crocodiles were many times larger than their modern counterparts.
“Eons are not necessary for micro-evolution and macro-evolution is a mathematical impossibility - even many orders beyond trillions of years.”
-I’m not sure how you are differentiating micro and macro evolution, but given measured mutation rates I would say that, generally speaking, over millions of years that it is mathematically impossible for speciation to not occur (a change of only a few percentage of dna).
“So if/when they do find a giant deep-sea living coalacanth I will be no more surprised than if they don’t...”
—Was that a misspeak? All extant Coelacanths ARE of the giant deep-sea variety. The fossil Coelacanths are all much smaller and lived in shallow water, among other differences. Perhaps you meant to say “if/when they do find a shallow water living coelacanth” or “if/when they do find a giant deep-sea coelacanth fossil” - and, yes, both may possibly be found.
> “Your position is indeed, so stupid; that you will not even own up to it!”
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That’s called Projection.
I own up to all my positions, but since you lack the cognition to understand them, you attack with deep ignorance, assuming that the vast gulf your ignorance spans is shared.
You’d be great comic relief, if it weren’t for the fact that you really are that mindless.
> “I’m not sure how you are differentiating micro and macro evolution, but given measured mutation rates...”
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Ignoring the fact that every ‘mutation’ destroys information, and almost always results in the death of the mutant. ‘Speciation’ would require an increase in information, which has never been observed.
“Micro evolution” is simply change within a species that was placed there in potential in their DNA from the time of creation, to be awakened when needed, and to retreat when not needed. “Macro evolution” has never happened; there are no chains of gradual change from one species to another demonstrated in the fossil evidence. That was what inspired Stephen Gould to conjur up “Punctuated Equilibrium” to side-step the lack of evidence for what he so religiously wished were there.
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I wonder what AMD makes of the fact that the builders of Angkor Wat, about 800 years ago, carved images of stegosaurii onto the stone columns of that temple complex?
If nothing else, one has to wonder where they got the idea for that rather unique looking creature.
Um....you do realise that, by this definition, evolution doesn't qualify as science?
Evolution is not predictable. Beyond generalities around what *might* appear in such-and-such local environment, evolutionists will not even try to predict what sort of lifeform would appear, either phenotypically or genotypically.
Evolution is not useful, if for no other reason than it is not predictable. Who wants to flitter around waiting for something serendipitous to appear after 10 million years?
The other thing you forgot w.r.t. science is reproducibility. Evolution fails in this regard, as well. We can no more reproduce evolution than we can float on clouds by using magical unicorn dust.
"Evolution" is a philosophical construct. It is a paradigm through which evolutionists try to interpret data according to a preconceived worldview. It most certainly does not qualify as "science." "Science" is itself actually a very limited process by which empirical data is collected. "Science" certainly is not equal to the grandious tasks that materialists try to force upon it.
And then there is Mokelembembe, that the Congolese draw pictures of, that looks like a fierce Brontosaurus
“Ignoring the fact that every ‘mutation’ destroys information”
—How about a mutation where a piece of dna is duplicated in the genome. How does that destroy information?
” and almost always results in the death of the mutant.”
—based on measured mutation rates, we each have about 100-200 mutations. We seem to be alive.
“That was what inspired Stephen Gould to conjur up “Punctuated Equilibrium” to side-step the lack of evidence for what he so religiously wished were there.”
—No, what inspired Gould and Eldredge to develop Punctuated Equilibrium was Mayr’s theory of allopatric speciation based on population genetics.
In a nutshell, Mayr’s theory says that based on population genetics, that evolution will be essentially stagnant in large populations (the local or main column of a species) and instead most evolution will occur in the peripheral smaller populations of a species.
Gould and Eldredge recognized that this matched up well with what was being found in paleontology. Change occurred (gradually) in the peripheral populations while the main populations remained largely static. Gould never said that intermediate fossils aren’t found - only that they are generally found within peripheral populations.
This is opposed to phyletic gradualism which asserts that, generally, change takes place within most of the species.
In fact, I recall many articles by Gould where he writes about the many intermediate fossils found linking reptiles and mammals, and whale evolution, etc.
Here’s a quote from an article on whale evolution:
“The embarrassment of past absence has been replaced by a bounty of new evidence - and by the sweetest series of transitional fossils an evolutionist could ever hope to find. Truly, we have met the enemy and he is now ours. Moreover, to add blessed insult to the creationists’ injury, these discoveries have arrived in a gradual and sequential fashion - a little bit at a time, step by step...”
And another article on the evolution of mammals from reptiles:
“We can trace, through a lovely sequence of intermediates, the reduction of these small reptilian bones, and their eventual disappearance or exclusion from the jaw, including the remarkable passage of the reptilian articulation bones into the mammalian middle ear...”.
Here’s Eldredge describing punk eek:
“The model . . . is based on the allopatric model of speciation. The essence of this model is simply that most morphological change is effected (via normal selection processes) through geographic variation within a species, and that most morphological differences between sister species arose either prior to, during, or right after (e.g., character displacement during initial sympatry) the onset of full genetic isolation. The model does not assert that “large” morphological changes occur in jumps — most morphological parameters are perceived as continuous variables and evolutionary modification of such variables will necessarily be gradual - but rather that evolutionary change takes place more rapidly at certain times during the history of a species than at others.” – Eldredge
> “Gould and Eldredge recognized that this matched up well with what was being found in paleontology.”
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What a joke!
Nothing but discrete species with no trace of relationship to other distinct species is found anywhere.
No links. No ‘bridges.’
A vivid imagination is required to be an evolutionist.
Brontosaurs were herbivores and they’re long gone. The Cambodian stuff indicates at least an off chance that stegosaurs might have persisted into AD times but the stegosaur was a much smaller creature and didn’t have the overwhelming problem which sauropods would have with today’s gravity.
Common descent of species is predictive in that if I find a ERV sequence common to both humans and orangs, it is going to also be in gorillas and chimps. And one shared among all those guys is going to look more degraded from the original ERV sequence than one shared only among humans and chimps.
They found tetrapod intermediate fossils right where they PREDICTED they would be based upon paleontology, evolution and geology. Tiktaalik.
Evolution is a predictive science. It is taught as science because it is a theory that makes the facts fit together parsimoniously and logically and allows you to make accurate predictions.
Supposing supernatural causation of physical phenomena via creationism, is absolutely useless as far as making accurate predictions or discovery about the physical universe.
Thanks for your thoughtful, detailed reply. And Merry Christmas.
I didn’t say it was a Bronto, the pictures they sketch look like a fierce carnivorous version of a Bronto. Whatever it is, it must be alive for so many people to claim to have seen it.
The same can be said for the critters that live in Scotland’s lakes.
The article identified another 38% who believe - as I do myself - in Intelligent Design, or non-random Evolution. As I understand it Creationism centers about the concept of a young-earth: whereas ID is about evolution in a 4.5 billion year old Earth not being random, but the work of God.
I hazard a guess that you belong to one of these two schools of thought. Taken together that’s ~80% of the population who have a God-centered view of creation. That’s got to stick in the Marxists’ collective craw.
It’s mind-numbing to me that people who are unable to distinguish a tax “cut” from the extension of tax “rates” (the lamestream media) would somehow KNOW how old the earth is (as if anyone could know this).
At any rate, thanks for your provocative response. And Merry Christmas.
P.S.
Today’s gravity is the same as all previous ‘gravities.’
What reduced the numbers of the dinos was the ice age.
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