Posted on 02/08/2005 3:50:43 AM PST by PatrickHenry
The Origin of Species tells us that life evolves. It has nothing to do with creation of life.
So, you are bringing in the same stupid strawman that creationists have been lying about for years. Give us a break and learn some biology.
Correct. They are not. They are laws. That is, descriptions or models of how some (idealized and representative) physical system behaves.
Yet they all started as postulates and were proven mathematically.
Pardon? How were they "proven mathematically"? Sure, they're formulated mathematically. They, or elements of them, are expressed in the language of some mathematical system. But this is nothing at all like saying they are "proven mathematically".
If something is "proven mathematically" that means you could, in principle, sit down with a piece of paper, or at a computer, and determine it's validity purely by calculation and formal analysis without respect to what happens or doesn't happen in the natural world. That's crazy because what happens, or doesn't, in the natural world is precisely what these laws are all about!
You are -- in effect -- saying that you can evaluate (even "prove"!) a law of nature without the necessary step of examining nature!!! (Relating a formalism like a scientific law to real instances in nature will necessarily involve some, indeed many, non-mathematical assumptions and inferences. Not to mention that it is never close to possible to test all possible real instances in which the law should apply, which would be the minimum necessary to literally prove it.)
Yeah, if you don't believe bronze aged silliness, you will go to H E double hockey sticks. This is exactly the silliness that conflating the Good News of Christ's resurrection with Genesis causes.
That statement is proved false quite easily.
RECENT CREATION
In his gospel, Luke, the beloved physician, recorded 75 generations from Jesus to Adam.26 Using the numbers found in the Old Testament, Theophilus and others 27 added up the number of years from the creation of the world. Theophilus concluded,
There are not two myriads of myriads (28) of years, even though Plato said such a period had elapsed between the deluge and his own time, . . . The world is not uncreated not is there spontaneous production of everything, as Pythagoras and the others have babbled; instead the world is created and is providentially governed by the God who made everything. And the whole period of time and the years can be demonstrated to those who wish to learn the truth. . . . The total number of years from the creation of the world is 5,695.29
Regarding the total number of years, Theophilus acknowledged,
If some period has escaped our notice, says 50 or 100 or even 200 years, at any rate it is not myriads, or thousands of years as it was for Plato . . . and the rest of those who wrote falsehoods. It may be that we do not know the exact total of all the years simply because the additional months and days are not recorded in the sacred books."30
Origen (b. 185), the great theologian of the Greek churches, defended "the Mosaic account of the creation, which teaches that the world is not yet ten thousand years old, but very much under that."31
And Augustine (b. 354), the great bishop of the Latin churches, wrote, "the Scripture . . . has paramount authority, . . . to which we yield assent in all matters."32 "That God made the world, we can believe from no one more safely than from God Himself."33
On the age of man and the earth, Augustine wrote, Some hold the same opinion regarding men that they hold regarding the world itself, that they have always been . . . . And when they are asked, how, . . . they reply that most, if not all lands, were so desolated at intervals by fire and flood, that men were greatly reduced in numbers, and . . . thus there was at intervals a new beginning made. . . . But they say what they think, not what they know. They are deceived . . . by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6,000 years have yet passed.34
Care to recent?? You stated that it is only a RECENT thing to believe in a young eqarth...
See? All you have to do is Believe what the Bibel says, and it all falls into place.
The following is a partial list of people who were both scientists and creationists. Note that the "founder" of the scientific method was a creation science adherent. Both of you tell me with a straight face that these scientists are "quacks" and non-scientists.
Early
The Age of Newton
Just Before Darwin
Just After Darwin
The Modern Period
"I said simpler creature because it seems to me that if you're 'evolving' you're taking a step up from something less."
Is a tapeworm simpler than a free-living flat worm?
It doesn't matter what "seems" to you. It matters what the science is. Evolution goes in the direction of survival of populations not complexity.
Shubi just wrote that God is stupid. That sounds to me like hatred toward God.
If you don't know either, just say so.
Good analysis, but hardly a theory. ;-)
You have the audacity to imply that I am lying like Kerry did?
Your fervor in defending evolution is beyond "religious".The arrogance of your postings insulting all who ask questions is disgusting and is far from convincing anyone of the validity of your opinion.
Nothing more to say.
When sects of Christianity spout nonsense they drive people that know better away from Christ. This is the problem with the heresy that is creationism. It rejects science and embraces misinterpretation of the Bible.
This misinterpretation is used to try to convince people that if you don't believe that all the species in the world floated around on a wooden boat for a year you can't believe in Christ. This is nothing more than heresy almost to the point of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. It is attributing things to God that He did not do and by doing so implying that nonsense is Holy Spirit inspired.
Someone can be an engineer and still completely ignorant of biology.
The light is beginning to dawn! Creationism is a cult.
I find the whole "there are no transitional species" argument highly amusing.
going by this rationale, there should be NO record, of any sort, of creatures capable of certain functions BUT NOT PERFECTLY SUITED TO EXECUTE THESE FUNCTIONS WELL.
You and I both know that this is far from the case.
I am grown weary of the Creationist crowd's disingenuousness. They never fail to ignore the arguments their philosophical ancestors have put forth - the ones that have been utterly trounced (eg: there can never have been any extinctions, etc...)
According to their philosophy, all forms of life must have been concurrent. This is not so.
According to them, there can never have been any succession of species (one form appearing at time=a, disappearing at time=g, another form appearing at time=m, disappearing at time=s, etc...). This is not so.
In earlier times, the very notion that species are related was anathema to them. NOW, having had too much proof paraded before their superglued-shut eyes for even them to completely deny it, they now claim to have never claimed species are not related, but that "adaptation does not lead to speciation". Geesh - a casual review of interbreeding patterns of the arctic-ring seagull species blows THAT out of the water, but damn me if I can figure out a way of making them see this.
And they wonder why we seem to be getting fed up with them.
Just a step up in survival, not necessarily complexity or goodness. You have the definition of evolution wrong. This is a severe problem among creationists who argue against evolution. They distort and misuse scientific definitions.
"I've noticed that many people's belief in evolution stems from their hatred toward God...."
Did you notice on my personal page that I have a Dr. in Ministry and direct a homeless ministry in the inner city?
So don't accuse me of hating the guy I work for. ;-)
Are you saying that all those scientists opposed evolution? Most of them died before Darwin lived.
No he didn't. You must be one of those "soldiers of God" that doesn't have to obey the Ten Commandments, specifically that one about bearing false witness (also more commonly known by a simpler term).
So?
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