 Gen 1:1-31
1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4And God saw the light, that [it was] good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. 6And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so. 8And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. 9And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry [land] appear: and it was so. 10And God called the dry [land] Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that [it was] good. 11And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed [is] in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12And the earth brought forth grass, [and] herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed [was] in itself, after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good. 13And the evening and the morning were the third day. 14And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: [he made] the stars also. 17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that [it was] good. 19And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. 20And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good. 22And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. 24And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good. 26And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. 29And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which [is] the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein [there is] life, [I have given] every green herb for meat: and it was so. 31And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, [it was] very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.Gen 2:1-25
1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. 4These [are] the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, 5And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and [there was] not a man to till the ground. 6But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 7And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. 8And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 10And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. 11The name of the first [is] Pison: that [is] it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where [there is] gold; 12And the gold of that land [is] good: there [is] bdellium and the onyx stone. 13And the name of the second river [is] Gihon: the same [is] it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. 14And the name of the third river [is] Hiddekel: that [is] it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river [is] Euphrates. 15And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 16And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. 18And the LORD God said, [It is] not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. 19And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought [them] unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that [was] the name thereof. 20And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. 21And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. 23And Adam said, This [is] now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. 24Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. 25And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. |
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All-or-nothing perfectionists: Those who point to one imprecisely classified fossil, and declare that it's all a confused mess. -
Ape Ancestry Revulsionists: "There ain't no ape in my family tree." or "I ain't no kin to no monkey nohow!" -
Battlestar Galactica Buffs: Those who insist that aliens in UFOs are a better explanation than evolution. -
Certainty Fetishists: Those who can't stand the way science grows in understanding, and revises its theories to accommodate new data, declaring: "The experts used to say that man is X years old, now they say he's X+Y years old; so they keep changing their minds and don't know anything!" -
Conspiracy Believers: Those who have heard about Piltdown Man, and who declare that all the evidence is fake (while refusing to admit that there are far more fraudulent clergymen than data-faking scientists). -
DNA Decoders: Those who believe the Deity has written a secret message in our DNA (which, although not yet decoded, provides proof that evolution is false). -
Gap artists: Those who actually see the evidence, but who point to the inevitable gaps, and claim that until all gaps are closed (an obvious impossibility), they will refuse to accept any of the evidence that lies between the gaps. -
Genesis Uber Alles: Self-explanatory category, and perhaps the most amazing of all. Flat-earthers in spirit, if not in fact. -
Jehovah's Disrupters: Those who imagine that God wants them to spam, insult, act-up, flame, and otherwise disrupt these threads. -
Just-Don't-Get-It-Gang: Those who were intellectually abused as children, and who now demand: "Show me a dog that changes into a goldfish, and maybe then I'll accept evolution." -
My-Cult-Is-Better-Than-Your-Cult Fanatics: Those who insist that that what they call Darwinism is some kind of Satanic cult (revealing that they have no concept of the nature of science). -
Platonists: Those who can't accept evolution because they insist that there is a mystical dimension to the universe, and fear that evolution is some evil plot to deny this elusive domain of existence. -
Road-To-Hell Rejectionists: Those who see the evidence, but reject it because of an irrational belief that it leads to fascism, socialism, teen pregnancy, the heartbreak of psoriasis, etc. -
Stealth-ies: Those who deny evolution as ardently as any creationist, and who endlessly demand that evolution be defended, yet who swear "I'm not a creationist," no matter how obvious it is that they are, and who refuse to explain their own beliefs (because they're creationists-in-the-closet). -
Subjunctive Junkies: Those who leap upon standard phrases in scientific papers such as " ... the data would seem to indicate .." and exclaim: "See there! He admits he's just guessing!" -
Total-Blankout Boys: Those who simply go blank when the evidence is presented, and deny that any of it exists. -
Undistributed Middle Fallacists: Those who believe that (a) most atheists are Darwinists, therefore (b) disproving Darwin=proof of Christianity. What these folks don't realize is that (1) evolution is compatible with everything but the most hyper-literal fundamentalist reading of the Bible, and (2) even if evolution were disproved and Intelligent Design could be proven, that would not prove the truth of Christianity, as the intelligent designer could be the impersonal God of the Deists -- or Zeus or Vishnu or Ahura Mazda or Moloch.
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At some finite time in the past, life began somehow. (How it began is beyond the scope of the theory, but the observational evidence strongly suggests that only one such beginning on Earth has left descendants to the present day.) As life reproduces and multiplies, mutations occur with small but finite probabilities, causing new genes to be added, and creating new alleles of existing genes. The different alleles confer different traits upon their owners, rendering them more or less successful in coping with their environments. The organisms that are more successful in coping with their environments consequently have a slightly greater probability of passing their genes to the next generation of organisms than do the less successful organisms. This causes allele frequencies to change over time.