Glenn Beck: What if God made us from monkeys?

"To Big-Bangers, I would ask - what created the stuff that banged?"

God, of course.
Did someone suggest SomeOne or SomeThing else?

Or maybe just better diet, hygiene, & living conditions.

Don't environmental conditions factor into evolution? There has to be some catalyst for the change.

and what created God?

gleeaikin: " If evolution doesn't happen, how come we need a new flu vaccine every year?"

glee, a great post, but you need to learn the use of punctuation.
Might I suggest:

Use the < p> to make a new paragraph.
Use the < br> to start a new line.

Makes your ideas easier to read. ;-)

bert: "and what created God?"

That is a theological question, not a matter of scientific knowledge.

From our earliest days, theologians have said that God is eternal, omnipotent and omnipresent.

I've never seen anything scientific to discredit that.

>>Here’s the two big ones for me:
>> 1) The transition from nonlife to life; the complexities of even the “simple” forms of life [such as viruses] is staggering.
>> Scientists have been unable to even *engineer* new fully-functional life.”
>
>What an astonishing argument!
>Do you expect scientists to replicate in a test tube what it took God billions of years to evolve?

You’re assuming that God used billions of years* to DO anything; further, the theory of evolution is itself a Godless theory (that is you can take God out and it still ‘works’).

*Granted, I’m not sure that we can call the first several days in Genesis “literal days” as ‘day’ is defined to be the time it takes the Earth to rotate one revolution in relation to the sun... which was uncreated in the first several days.

>Do you think scientists should be so omnipotent?

They proclaim themselves to be the ultimate purveyors of knowledge (just look at how they, as a society, treat the dissidents of their “established scientific fact” [i.e. “Global Warming Deniers”]), so I think the adaptation of the saying “Let them enforce it” applies: “Let them show it.”

>Or do you imagine God is so nearly human?

What? Where are you getting that from?

>>”The development of sexual reproduction...”
>
>There are many, many biological examples today of asexual or semi-sexual reproduction amongst plants, animals and other little critters that seem never to have gotten the “have sex” memo.
>Those who did “get it,” of course, have done much better, for obvious evolutionary reasons.

And this even flies in the face of the assertion that the “less useful” developments of an organism will be “pruned away” by the evolutionary theory. The appendix was said, for a long time, to be such a “vestigial organ” by evolutionists whereas Creationists had the stance that if God put it there it must have a purpose even if it was not readily obvious. Well, recent research has shown that the appendix DOES serve a function: whenever the bacterial culture in your intestines is flushed out (say by a bad case of diarrhea) the appendix can repopulate the bacterial ecology of your intestines as it houses/incubates those bacteria.

Like I said, evolutionary theory does NOT, IMO, adequately explain the state of life that we see today; in fact, your earlier appeal to God [”Do you expect scientists to replicate in a test tube what it took God billions of years to evolve?”] is acknowledgment thereof.

>“God says he made man from slime.” Where did the “slime” come from, I thought it was earth or mud. Also which of the two versions of creation told in the Bible is correct. The one where he formed man and woman from earth (implying they are equal), or the one where he took woman out of man’s rib (implying the man is superior)?

There is nothing discordant about the “two stories of creation,” they both fall into line with the ancient methods [and modern!] of story-telling wherein there is a recap to show when this story is taking place (definitely needed if the story telling is interrupted by a significant length of time OR if the story is being told out-of-sequence). (Like the phrase “in the day of King Salomon” doesn’t refer to a single 24-hour day but the period wherein Solomon lived.) The main difference in the stories isn’t what happened, but the focus; i.e. it’s like the “[meanwhile...]” panels in comic books.

BroJoeK from #78: "Another was called the "Solid State Theory"."

Oh, dear me... Steady State Theory.

Where is my coffee? :-(

>If evolution doesn’t happen, how come bacteria are now resistant to almost all types of penicillin, to the point we are in very real danger of “super bug” forms of e coli and strep?

Ah, and here’s something interesting: medics are finding out that these “superbugs” tend to be susceptible to ‘inferior’ antibiotics which the “normal” variety of the bacteria.

>Nor the lactose tolerance mutation that allowed middle easterners to move into central Europe with their cows and highly nutritious milk and suplant the non lactose tolerant population that was there before 6 to 9,000 years ago.

So, the equivalent is that if Americans with their superior farming techniques moved to some war-torn African state and displaced/supplanted the local population because we weren’t starving to death [and we had the will/means to protect ourselves] that would be proof of evolution?

I love Beck’s sincerity and passion. I agree with his politics. As a clinician, however, I see signs of mental illness. I just want him to take care of himself.

OneWingedShark: "You’re assuming that God used billions of years* to DO anything; further, the theory of evolution is itself a Godless theory (that is you can take God out and it still ‘works’)."

I don't assume anything.
I am simply reporting what the scientific data tells us --

the Universe is circa 13 billion years old.
the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old.
the earliest evidence of primitive life on Earth are found in rocks dated around 3.9 billion years (all numbers here from memory, subject to minor corrections)

Your problem is: in rejecting the theory of evolution, you must also reject virtually all of science -- from physics and chemistry to astronomy, astrophysics, geology, biology, paleontology and even mathematics.

Virtually no scientific discipline is untouched by the theory of evolution.
So, you can't just deny evolution without also denying the rest of science.

OneWingedShark: "*Granted, I’m not sure that we can call the first several days in Genesis “literal days” as ‘day’ is defined to be the time it takes the Earth to rotate one revolution in relation to the sun... which was uncreated in the first several days."

Would it not logically follow, that if God is eternal, omnipotent and omnipresent, then distinctions between a nanosecond, a "day" and hundreds of billions of years are utterly irrelevant to Him?
Why should God care if evolution takes a "day" or a billion years?

OneWingedShark speaking of scientists: "They proclaim themselves to be the ultimate purveyors of knowledge (just look at how they, as a society, treat the dissidents of their “established scientific fact” [i.e. “Global Warming Deniers”])... "

Not of all knowledge, only of scientific knowledge.

In that, they are correct -- so if you wish to influence a scientific debate, you must yourself first become a recognized scientist, learn to speak the "language of science," and debate scientific topics on scientific terms.

And this is precisely what many opponents of "man made global warming" have done.
And that's the reason we non-scientists have a leg to stand on in this debate -- because we can quote real scientific data and ideas from real scientists who have not been corrupted by government handouts supporting "Global Warming research."

Similar scientists do not exist supporting I.D./Creationism.
Indeed, nearly all of those scientists who "question" evolution theory, do so merely for the sake of supporting more research.

Of course any scientist will support calls for more research. It doesn't mean they have jumped on the I.D./Creationists bandwagon.

Responding to BroJoeK: "Or do you imagine God is so nearly human?":
OneWingedShark: "What? Where are you getting that from?"

You obviously missed my point, pal.
Here you are, brazenly demanding that mere human scientists replicate in a test tube, in a just few years, evolutionary processes which the scientific data says took literally billions of years to evolve.

I'm saying: what makes you think mere scientists could be so Godlike -- or that God would make one of His greatest creations (life) so easy for pathetic humans to figure out?

I hugely doubt if any humans will ever figure out all of God's secrets.

OneWingedShark: "And this even flies in the face of the assertion that the “less useful” developments of an organism will be “pruned away” by the evolutionary theory."

There are innumerable examples of evolutionary "pruning," throughout the biological world.
If as you say, the full purpose of some organ like the appendix was not entirely understood, that does not invalidate the fact of evolutionary "pruning."

Specific to this subject: Asexual or "semi-sexual" reproduction still exists for the obvious evolutionary reason that under certain circumstances it confers survival advantages.

OneWingedShark: "Like I said, evolutionary theory does NOT, IMO, adequately explain the state of life that we see today; in fact, your earlier appeal to God [”Do you expect scientists to replicate in a test tube what it took God billions of years to evolve?”] is acknowledgment thereof..."

You're stretching way too far there.
All I intended was to doubt if God's amazing actions in creating and managing the evolution of life are going to be replicated by pitiful human beings in a test tube any time soon.

Why would you expect otherwise?

I did not say there were 2 versions of creation, I said there were 2 versions of the creation of man and woman.

Ok, fair enough...

Read Genesis, don’t have a Bible here so cannot give chapter and verse, but it is in there.

Well, I can't address your question without specifics. If you're so inclined, and you want to take the time to post the relevant passages and explain your reasoning, I'll be more than glad to discuss it with you.

"As a clinician, however, I see signs of mental illness."

Hmmmmmm... I don't doubt Beck's sincerity or authenticity.

But I also know that success on TV & radio requires sustaining a level of dramatic intensity that most people could not stand for long.

And we can be certain that whatever help he needs -- physical, spiritual, emotional, etc. -- the best anywhere will be available to him.

No one knows Beck's eventual fate, but not all of us are fated for long and happy lives. Some will be shooting stars.

As they said of JFK: only the good die young.

This is again the evolutionary thinking of progressivism

This is far too simplistic.

The fact is that the left (large proportions and important elements thereof, in any case, granting the tendency of all extremists to schism) even though they readily accepted evolution, fought Darwinian versions thereof for nearly one hundred years.

Basically, the left long preferred versions of evolution that included "the inheritance of acquired characteristics" (which Darwin himself did include as a subsidiary mechanism, but was later abandoned by mainstream scientists) over the more distinctively Darwinian elements of mutation followed by selection.

In short, Leftists had already been Lamarckian evolutionists before Darwin came along, and they continued to prefer Lamarckian to Darwinian versions of evolution long after.

Much of the left was dogmatically stubborn about this for decades after the evidence against the inheritance of acquired characteristics became decisive. Under Stalin, hundreds of evolutionists (specifically geneticists pursuing the theories of Mendel and Thomas Morgan, and in several cases pioneering the "synthetic" theory of evolution that would reconcile classical Darwinian selection theory with modern genetics) were sent to gulags and many killed.

Whoa buddy!
You go too far assuming I’m not a “scientist,” I’m a programmer (Computer Scientist) and as such I must be familiar with logic. So that is the point where I will start my rebuttal; Mathematics is the ONLY Science wherein one can prove/disprove something — That is to say that in order to prove something you must use logic which is a subset of Mathematics.

>I don’t assume anything.
>I am simply reporting what the scientific data tells us —
>
> * the Universe is circa 13 billion years old.
> * the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old.
> * the earliest evidence of primitive life on Earth are found in rocks dated around 3.9 billion years (all numbers here from memory, subject to minor corrections)

There are assumptions in the data that you are citing; or rather in the interpretations of the data.
Let’s start with radioactive decay; it has a nice, steady rate of decay where every period of some length of time that elapses half of the material decays into another material these are termed the parent and daughter materials, respectively.

Let’s say that I give you a package containing only the elements of the parent & daughter materials and, after one halflife [let’s call it a week, for convenience] your curiosity as to when I filled the package becomes overwhelming so you open it up, test and find that the contents are exactly a ratio of 3:1 (that is 1/4 parent material and 3/4 daughter). Using that data you could assume that I had the package a week before giving it to you; this would be correct IF I were to have filled the package with only the parent material... however, I could ALSO have filled it with half parent material and half daughter material on the same day that I gave it to you.

You cannot, therefore, use that method of dating without imposing assumptions; assumptions which must be acknowledged.

>Your problem is: in rejecting the theory of evolution, you must also reject virtually all of science — from physics and chemistry to astronomy, astrophysics, geology, biology, paleontology and even mathematics.

I’ve refuted the mathematics claim there...
The paleontology claim was impacted by the discovery of soft-tissue in dino-fossils ( http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur.html ).
The geology and paleontology claims are too intertwined: they determine the age of the fossils by what layer they were found in & they determine the age of the geologic-layers by what fossils they contain. (This circularity even present in modern textbooks.)
Astrophysics presents its own challenges to the evolutionary theory; namely that their star-generation theory says in order to produce 1 star you have to use up 20 stars worth of nebulae... and of all the novae/supernovae [star-deaths] that we’ve seen we’ve yet to see a star-birth (the most we’ve seen are stars that “could be” being born).
And as for Biology, I think that it’s quite telling that our “best and brightest” are unable to engineer new life... or even “improve on*” existing life.

*A friend of mine who is in agriculture was telling me how they took a gene from Salmon [IIRC] that was resistant to some sort of disease, grafted it into their Alfalfa and when they loaded it into their analyzer they saw ‘ghosting’ which indicates the presence of a “double gene” — IOW, the pant they were working with already [naturally] contained that gene.

But were’re getting to the meat of why Evolution doesn’t work; the method that the theory uses as its engine [natural selection] is a purely subtractive procedure. In programming there is a language, Ada, which allows you to define your own types; you can narrow things down with subtypes so we can map numbers like so:
— Define Integer as a signed-type mapping onto the two’s-complement bit-pattern.
Type Integer is range -2**(System.Storage_Elements.Storage_Element’Size-1)..2**(System.Storage_Elements.Storage_Element’Size-1);

— Define Natural as all non-negative integers.
SubType Natural is Integer Range 0..Integer’Last;

— Define Positive as all positive integers, note that Natural is a superset of Positive.
SubType Positive is Natural Range Natural’Succ(Natural’First))..Natural’Last;

As you can see, during subtyping the possible range is cut down, it is NEVER expanded.
Evolution would say that subtyping could, in some way (if used often enough and given enough time) result in a range greater than its parent type; something like:

— Illegal in ALL Ada compilers; will not compile.
SubType Positive_And_One is Positive Range Positive’First-1..Positive’Last;

Now one COULD create a “supertype” that could take all the values of Natural plus that of -1 as follows:
Type Naturals_And_Negative_One is Range Integer’Pred(Natural’First)..Integer’Last;
Or you could subtype off of Integer
SubType Negative_One_To_Last is Integer Range Integer’Pred(Natural’First)..Integer’Last;

but those aren’t using subtyping Positive to gain a larger range than Positive.

> You obviously missed my point, pal.
>Here you are, brazenly demanding that mere human scientists replicate in a test tube, in a just few years, evolutionary processes which the scientific data says took literally billions of years to evolve.
>I’m saying: what makes you think mere scientists could be so Godlike — or that God would make one of His greatest creations (life) so easy for pathetic humans to figure out?

And if you look at the above example you’ll see why I feel absolutely justified in saying “prove it.”

>> OneWingedShark: “*Granted, I’m not sure that we can call the first several days in Genesis “literal days” as ‘day’ is defined to be the time it takes the Earth to rotate one revolution in relation to the sun... which was uncreated in the first several days.”
>
>Would it not logically follow, that if God is eternal, omnipotent and omnipresent, then distinctions between a nanosecond, a “day” and hundreds of billions of years are utterly irrelevant to Him?

Doesn’t this argument undercut your own “billions of years” statement? At the least it doesn’t support it.

>Why should God care if evolution takes a “day” or a billion years?

*shrug* - I never said that God cared about time. But let me give you something to chew on:
Time is defined, at least in mathematics/physics, as the changes between the position of two or more objects.
So then a Null universe would have no time because there would be no objects therein.
A universe containing one object, likewise, would not experience time. {Even the radioactive decay can be described as the movement of multiple objects.}
Space, as you know, has been linked to time via Einstein’s Relativity theory; using this we can say that if there is no time then there is no space.
So then, how can someone in a time-bound universe fully understand the transition of a non-time/non-space to a time/space? Or, for that matter, the transition of a time-bound universe to one not bound by time? {In Revelation there is an Angel who proclaims “there shall be time no more.”}

The geology and paleontology claims are too intertwined: they determine the age of the fossils by what layer they were found in & they determine the age of the geologic-layers by what fossils they contain. (This circularity even present in modern textbooks.)

Although this claim is dogma among antievolutionists (at least young earth, flood geology types) it is completely false.

"Index fossils" (used to identify geological systems) are always and only determined -- and empirically so -- first in systems where the lithostratigraphy (the simple superposition of rock layers, independent of fossils contained) is uncomplicated and unambiguous. IOW, lithostatigraphy (determination of rock sequence) always precedes biostratigraphy (determination of fossil sequences) and biozonations (the lithographic ranges given fossils occupy) are only established based on clear and unproblematic lithostratigraphies.

Those index fossils can then be used to elucidate geological relationships in areas where the stratigraphy is more complex. But there is no circularity as it is never a case of fossils dating rocks. It is always a case of rocks dating other rocks, sometimes by means of the fossils contained. (IOW the complex or unclear stratigraphic systems are correlated to the unambiguous sequences where the systems of index fossils were originally determined.)

An equally clear, and possibly more compelling, falsification of the circularity argument derives from how, when and by whom the phenomena of "index fossils" was first discovered and utilized. It wasn't by ivory tower theorists, or even field workers conducting pure research, or by "evolutionists" at all. Index fossils were discovered -- and utilized -- by an engineer, William Smith, surveying England on behalf of a for profit canal building company.

Smith was a creationist who learned, by empirical and subsequently tested observation, that certain sequences of rock layers, and contained fossils, recurred in different locations. He eventually used this observation, in part, to construct the first geological map of England, which he produced and sold for profit.

To this day, "index fossils" (and the general techniques of biostratigraphy, and therefore the underlying assumption of geological faunal succession) are most commonly used not by evolutionary scientists, but by commercial geologists, in the highly competitive task of predicting the locations of oil, gas and mineral deposits, and used in making decisions upon which untold billions in capital are risked in drilling and mining operations.

So, if we accept your claim that faunal succession is merely an evolutionary imposition upon the geological record, how are we to explain that facts that: 1) it was discovered and first found to be a compelling fact of nature by creationists, and; 2) used heavily and continuously for literally hundreds of years by highly competitive for profit enterprises?

“I’ll say it again: God does not use broken tools.”

Why not? God could use anything he wants and, anyway, if the tool does the job, it isn’t broken.

Note to Glen: If you’re going to argue against something, it’s always a good idea to understand it first. It helps stop you looking like an ass later on.

I’ll put it another way: God operates within the laws of mathematics and physics, while evolution requires trans-finite sequences of probabilistic miracles and zero-probability events. There is a further problem in that evolution(ism) entails a belief that one’s fellow man is basically a meat byproduct of random events rather than a fellow child of God and that belief leads to things like Nazism, Communism, and world wars. God doesn’t have any use for ideological doctrines or broken theories like that.

"Did evolution just stop?" Beck asked rhetorically. "I haven't seen the half-monkey/half-person yet. ... There's no other species that's developing into half-people."

For all the noise we hear about evolution, the way that "natural selection" is actually supposed to work remains a mystery to most people. A clear understanding of this idea of "genetic death" goes a certain way towards explaining some of the nazi-era thinking about racial policies. The idea is found mainly in treatises on population genetics, particularly in the works of J.B.S. Haldane and the question of the "Haldane Dilemma". This is the supposed mathematical basis of the theory of evolution.

There are two things conspicuously missing in the evolutionites picture.

One is the missing intermediate fossils; two is the missing intermediate "people" (the thing bothering Glenn Beck).

In other words, aside from the fact that Darwinism demands that the vast bulk of ALL fossils be intermediate types and none have ever been found, there is the question of why, if apes or "ape-like creatures(TM)" evolved into humans, we do not see creatures of every stage of such a process walking around today.

The basic answer, according to evolutionite dogma, is that natural selection kills off the old stock at every stage of such a process as one "beneficial mutation" after another after another is substituted into the herd.

You can picture this as a pipeline or tunnel of sorts, with apes walking in at one end and humans walking out the other, and picture the pipeline made in ten-foot segments, with some sort of a meat-grinder at the junction of each pair of segments. The old stock does not get past the meat grinder at any one stage of the process.

The thing has to work this way because the vast bulk of all mutations are harmful or fatal, and that means you'd be being exceedingly generous to admit that one mutation in every 10,000 or so might be "beneficial". In fact the normal English term for 'mutation' is "birth defect" and you might have noticed that the women going door to door for the Mothers' March of Dimes are ALWAYS collecting for research to PREVENT mutations and not to CAUSE them...

Nonetheless the claim which evolutionites make is that evolution is driven by a combination of chance mutations and "natural selection". Now, this also means that you cannot have multiple mutations spreading through the herd at one time in the process; the bulk of the mutations spreading around would be harmful/fatal and wipe out the herd.

That means that the only way this process can work at all is for one new trait (beneficial mutation) to get passed entirely through the herd, and then the next, and the next, and the next; thus the idea of a pipeline in ten foot segments, which does not allow the old stock past the gate at any one segment.

According to the theory, "genetic death" is the agency of all this. A "genetic death" occurs when somebody dies without heirs, i.e. takes himself out of the gene pool. The theory of evolution requires that there be a "cost" of substituting a genetic change into the herd and that this cost be in terms of genetic death. J.B.S. Haldane came up with a figure of 30 genetic deaths per substitution which was as favorable to evolution as he could get, and that means that for either you or me to get the good "beneficial mutation" AND THE WHOLE PIPELINE SCHEME WORK, 30 people have to die without heirs.

This dying out without heirs is supposedly CAUSED by the supposed advantage and selection pressure of the "beneficial mutation" involved at each step; this is the thing which weeds out all those not having the beneficial mutation at each step. In other words, the introduction of each new "beneficial mutation" causes all of those not having it to die out from jealousy and/or the inability to compete with those having it.

If that sounds stupid, it's probably because it IS stupid; nonetheless that's the way the theory supposedly works.

Haldane also figured that historically, when you include every sort of gentic death which the human birth rate has to compensate for, our species has had an excess birth rate capacity of something like ten percent, meaning that it would take 300 generations on average for each 30 turnovers of the population involved in substituting a single genetic change through the whole ape===>human evolving population.

Nobody had ever tried to quantify the whole thing before. The basic result indicates that it would take quadrillions of years to evolve from ape to man. That is the so-called "Haldane Dilemma".

This basic pipeline/genetic-death scheme is also the thing which Hitler and the other nazis were seeing in evolutionism. They were simply taking Charles Darwin at his word and, granted they were a a collection of major-league villains and were guilty of all manner of criminality, they were NOT guilty of any sort of a breakdown in basic logic. They were assuming that if the rise of a new and supposedly better racial stock GUARANTEED the extinction of the old stock, then they were not doing the members of the old stock any favors by prolonging the agony. Similarly, when asked about the firebombing raids over Japan, Curtis LeMay replied that you're not doing a dog with a cancerous tail any favors by cutting the tail off in slices.

Hitler and other nazi bosses were assuming that Jews, gypsies, and others were not going to make the cut one way or another for this pass through the evolution meatgrinder, and that they were not doing them any favors leaving them around to a slow and unpleasant group demise.