Hineini!
Science degrees, big boards scores, and all.
ML/NJ
Whether the Heaven and the Earth, and human life, was created over 13.2 billion years following the Big Bang, or over six days as a literal reading of Genesis is interpreted as saying, actually does not matter.
Actually, it matters a whole lot, it effects how one views nearly everything else....
but believing we're all talking monkeys descended from swamp thing isnt? *shrug* Pick your insanity but make mine God.
From the article:
We also ought to find a colossal number of transitional organisms in the fossil record -- for example, a squirrel on its way to becoming a bat, or a bear becoming a whale. (Those are actual Darwinian claims.)But that's not what the fossil record shows. We don't have fossils for any intermediate creatures in the process of evolving into something better. This is why the late Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard referred to the absence of transitional fossils as the "trade secret" of paleontology. (Lots of real scientific theories have "secrets.")
If you get your news from the American news media, it will come as a surprise to learn that when Darwin first published "On the Origin of Species" in 1859, his most virulent opponents were not fundamentalist Christians, but paleontologists.
Unlike high school biology teachers lying to your children about evolution, Darwin was at least aware of what the fossil record ought to show if his theory were correct. He said there should be "interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps."
But far from showing gradual change with a species slowly developing novel characteristics and eventually becoming another species, as Darwin hypothesized, the fossil record showed vast numbers of new species suddenly appearing out of nowhere, remaining largely unchanged for millions of years, and then disappearing.
Darwin's response was to say: Start looking! He blamed a fossil record that contradicted his theory on the "extreme imperfection of the geological record."
One hundred and fifty years later, that record is a lot more complete. We now have fossils for about a quarter of a million species.
The problem I have with rigid natural selectionists (something that is totally disproven btw) is their total disconnect from reality. They as it tends to be with the left on nearly every issue want to act as though if you don’t believe in their exact narrow interpretation of evolution that you must be ignorant stupid or just plain dumb. I’m surprised they haven’t found a way to work in the “hate” angle somewhere because you know hate is all that motivates religious people because you know how very civil people were before organized religions like Christianity.
What I don’t understand is why they are so very religious and hateful about an issue that really has no effect on whether the sun rises or sets. People believe all kinds of totally fictional subjective and unproven things. Their problem is they want to use evolution as a spear to slay God and that is not and should never be the aim of science.
The great scientists that founded nearly every branch of hard science were creationists and to more or lesser degree religious. Newton certainly was, Galileo, Copernicus a priest was, Kepler was a very religious man, who even though he was persecuted by the church found a way to credit God for each and every discovery he would make.
There is an unreality to rabid evolutionists just as there is with all those who have tunnel vision. It is bad enough in people who are uneducated but it is a true travesty in those who are educated. The first acknowledgement of science should be of the limits of our knowledge not the narrow constrainment of it. Those who worry about children and whether they are taught about creation don’t seem concerned at all that the very obvious differences between man and apes are taught the simplest being the count of our chromosomes. Apes have 48 and humans have 46. Strange given that most undomesticate species have more not less but lets not worry about that nor the fact that gene expression patterns of human beings is vastly different than any so called ape cousins.
Rigid Evolutionists expect us to ignore our eyes. They expect us to ignore that given their measurements mice, men, apes are nearly the same give or take a small percentage. This of course is not true but they still refuse to fully acknowledge the role of epigenetics for some of the same reasons that the church tried to suppress knowledge it did not like. The whole of academia is built to reinforce accepted notions and has a decidely liberal bent so when they say most scientists believe such and such or an even better one most pre-eminement scientists agree one has to ask how could they not?
There is one simple fact that should be accepted by any person who has any degree of intellectual honesty and that is that there are more questions than answers and that the role of science is not to disprove religion or carry a liberal or conservative political torch but instead to tell us a bit more about the world around us. The grande ironey is that evolutionists like Dawkins have far more in common with those who persecuted Kepler and Galileo than not and both of those great men died loving God having appreciated living a life discovering the great myteries he laid before them.
I know of no Christian Cosmology which makes this absurd statement. First Principles state the following: "Everything which comes to be has a cause." The capricious statement that the universe (notwithstanding the capitalization of the word Universe, which should not go unnoticed) created itself ex nihlo has never been advocated from Christian cosmology. It has, however been misstated time and again by seemingly illinformed atheists with an agenda. They create this pretext, taken out of context for their text. It is the underpinning cosmology of atheists and Hindu.
The simple syllogism is as follows:
Everything which comes to be has a cause
The universe exists
Therefore the universe had a cause.
The 20th century cause of Cosmology has largely been one attempt after the other to do away with a beginning of the Universe. Einstein hated the idea of a beginning. The great astronomer and Christian Arthur Eddington said he found to idea of a beginning to be so absurd that he would be shocked if anyone else believed it, except himself. Fred Hoyle, father of the idea of a steady state, finally capitulated and accepted the idea of a beginning. As did, Penzias, Wilson, Hubble, Smute, Goddard, and hundreds of other men who examined, without presuppositions against facts, concluded the same thing.
Richard Dawkins was so convicted to his worldview that upon William Lane Craig going to Cambridge, England this summer to debate Dawkins, Dawkins, in a display of cowardice, so self-evident, no casual observer could deny the feckless Dawkins, like the mental pigmey that he is, ran for the tall weeds to avoid Dr.Craig. They keep pumping out these articles, keep calling others names who disagree with them, and keep avoiding intellectual confrontation with the likes of Dr.Craig, that their motives are revealed in their process....call a name...then run like hell to avoid a logical, reasonable, rational examination of the facts before them....not what they believe (not their faith), just the facts. They claim to be the champion of knowledge, yet their own worldview will not allow for reason and logic via evolutionary model. If it did, they would put it out there. But alas, theirs is an empy vessel devoid of any factual prescription to put the argument to rest. Come forth Mr. Dawkins and let us reason together.
Bump!
Vide's point is the important one on the issue of allegedly "missing links" -- of the many millions of species which could have left fossils, we've discovered only 250,000 according to Ann Coulter = maybe 2.5%.
So, you'd expect "missing links" to be the rule, not exceptions.
But the key idea that everyone seems to miss is that every species is a "transitional form" between whatever went before and what may come after.
Indeed, the very word "species" is so vague, that we can't really say for certain if two similar looking fossils are more-or-less the same species or not.
As proved by many examples (i.e., horses and donkeys, or brown & polar bears), the process of speciation can be gradual and incomplete over millions of years.
Breeding populations get separated by geological forces, then come back together, possibly forming hybrids, etc., etc.
In the case of human beings, we find the remains of about two dozen "species" of pre-humans dating back about 7 million years to a presumed common ancestor with chimpanzees.
How many of these two dozen or so ancient species were actual ancestors, and how many merely distant uncles & aunts?
Well the fossil record suggested that Neanderthals were not directly related, but the DNAs say maybe there was a little hanky-panky going on in back of old cave.
So much is unknown, even unknowable.
But none of that effects the facts (=confirmed observations) of evolution: A) descent with modifications and B) natural selection.
Nor does it challenge the confirmed theory of evolution: descent from common ancestors.
Nor does it effect current work on unconfirmed hypotheses such as abiogenesis.
As for the rantings of atheists, why should those effect what we understand?
Of course, it's that word "kind" which drives our Creationist FRiends nuts, but it seems to me the answer should be quite simple: Yes or no, is God Infinite?
Could not an Infinite God have an infinite number of "kinds"?
Indeed, in the eyes of an Infinite God, could not each & every individual be its own "kind"?
If God is the giver of life itself, then how can some theory of "descent with modifications" in any way restrict God's creative power?
Finally, if God intended to keep his creative processes secret from us, do you not suppose He would have hidden them more effectively?
Surely you wouldn't suggest that God provides us with evidence confirming Evolution just to trick us?
Anyway, seems to me that last sentence from Genesis quoted above, and others like it, is the very important point:
“Evolution” is an impossibly broad term.
Even Six-Day Creationists believe in “Evolution.”
For example, every Six-Dayer I’ve ever met believes that the distinctive races of man evolved and differentiated from a single individual, over a relatively short period of time.
So when a person says “Do you believe in ‘Evolution’,” the next thing that is required is a DEFINITION.