Posted on 02/07/2005 3:50:28 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Ever hear of Heinlein's Interregnum of the Prophets?
We're on our way.
"Evolution is a fact: it is the way God has created our bodies. Not so our souls."
Or perhaps "Evolution is a fact: it is the way our bodies were created. Not so our souls which is what God created?
By the odds, it should have taken many billions of years - if ever - to cook it just right, yet there it was.
Replication seems out of reach.
Strange indeed?
Interesting that it seems only Christians that have an argument with the THEORY of evolution?
Wonder what other religions think, the Jews for example?
"The theory that all life shares a common ancestor rest on the premise that "nature is all there is"--Naturalism."
God ain't natural huh?
God created our world slowly and wonderfully - for instance, he took about 9 billion years to make one or more supernovae to build all the transuranics and other elements heavier than iron on earth.
He created our world slowly and wonderfully, and then did the same with our bodies. And at the very last he breathed his image into the clay. This would appear to have been sometime between 100, 000 and one million years ago. The genetic migration appears to indicate a "genetic bottleneck in mitochondial DNA" (a quaint scientific term for a single mother) between those dates. Score one for the Garden of Eden.
Embrace science. Real science (not junk science like Global Warming or the HIV hypothesis) is a friend to truth. If you know that God exists, then no actual, real scientific discovery can contradict his Reality. How could it?
But Creationism needs to be dropped - it's unfortunate that so many regard any contradiction of Creationism to be an attack on God. But those who believe it must drop it. It is not true, it contradicts Truth. And in defending it, many are forced into indefensible positions.
Accepting the empirically proven Evolutionary theory is - properly understood - a Christian act. It really appears to be so, and it tells us something of what God has done. Just be aware that there are many unwarranted penumbra from Evolution theory: for instance "Evolution proves that God doesn't exist". Such unproven statements are poor science.
How do you know?
>Evolution is totally about leaving God out.
Not totally. He can create the rules, can set the evolution in motion, there are many possibilities
>If there was no God, there would still be evolution.
No evolution, if the God is the ultimate cause
>Evolution is what Communists use to defend their theory.
So what? They used algebra also. Are we supposed to reject algebra now because of this?
>Evolution does away with Adam and Eve. That means they do away with the fall of man in the Garden. That means they do away with the need of a Saviour.
Hm-m, Adam and Eve can remain as metaphors. You would not reject a moral of a good tale just because it was made up, would you?
>Evolution itself does away with the need of Jesus Christ.
Then the need was not strong enough!
>Evolution is totally about doing away with man's need for salvation.
I reckon there should be other reasons.
>Evolution is totally against God
Ignorance is against Man
I had to think about that!
No, if we take it that God exists, he created both body and soul. Plus mountains, streams, sun, moon, stars. Otherwise we're back in Manichaeism (sp?), where the devil created the physical universe and God created the spiritual. Not good.
You maybe had an implicit question - why would God make the body slowly, and the soul fast? Well, I guess the answer here is - Free Will and an Immortal soul are things that are discontinuities. You either have them, or not. And (from an artistic point of view) they are the finishing touches to human creation, so would be added last.
Good point. The DNA helix that leads to all the subsequent intricacy of life doesn't appear to have itself evolved. There are no evolutionary stages, though once DNA exists, it replicates its own building blocks. A very good point you have there Onedoug.
"You're right. Savings souls is more important."
If they want to save soles, they should become shoe repairmen.
Before you start arguing about science in general, and specifically evolution, you need to know what these concepts are all about. If you did, you would know that evolution neither says there is a God (or Gods), not denies the existence of God (or Gods). Science is incapable of answering those questions.
Souls/soles
You said-->The theory that all life shares a common ancestor rest on the premise that "nature is all there is"--Naturalism. Can science based on Naturlism say Intelligent Design is false? No! It can only state it is not science. This is a clever way to win an argument."
You are making a mistake. There is no required premise in science that "Nature is all that is". Where did you get that idea from? Who said that, your Pastor?
What there is Texas, is real evidence that you can actually see and test that drives the picture of nature as presented by science. A theory in the scientific sense is assembling the facts that you actually have in your hand, and putting them together to try and see the picture that is revealed on the surface of the jigsaw puzzle. You can make a very good guess about what that picture is without having every single piece. There may be something missing from the set, but you can tell if it is a painting of the statue of liberty or of a Playboy nude without having everything in place. Certainly you may change you mind if something comes along that alters the view.
The problem with so called "Intellegent Design" is that it is not very intellegent to accept the idea that creatures are so complex that they demand a creature of vastly more complexity to design them. So who designed that creature?
We, as human beings have accomplished a great deal in the real world because some of us are not satisfied with the only solution to the questions to the reality that surrounds us, is that "GOD DID IT-- Shut up."
This is not about clever ways to debate, it is about a way to develop medicine, DNA from bacteria that can make human insulin, cell phones and computers to name a few things.
If you took everthing the theologists have accomplished over the years and pressed a button and deleted it, you would go to work tommorow just fine, and would not notice the absence any of that stuff. That would not be the case if we lost the scientific works we have strained so hard to pry out from nature.
Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam, used to teach that the white race was created in a test tube by black scientists. Does that qualify for teaching as an Intelligent Design theory?
A scientific theory is an explanation that links together multiple facts into a systemic body of knowledge. A scientific theory is higher in a hierarchy than facts and hypotheses. A hypothesize is closer to the layman's definition of theory. Creationism has none of these elements and, hence, cannot be considered science. One important point that makes Creationism fail the basic tenets of science is that it does not have any information or insight into the origins of the Creator. In order to be valid, creationism must have some idea how a creator that creates us came into existence. Our origins ultimately reside in the origins of such a creator.
Secondly, there is no room for supernatural intervention in the physical worlds. If there was, experimental sciences would be irreproducible and the explanation "God did it" would be sufficient.
The Fundamentalist Christian approach to science will result in it's elimination from schools and the U.S. will cease being a force in technological and scientific endeavors. Students here will be forced to be scientifically dumb and ignorant, but, hey, they will be saved!
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