Posted on 04/20/2003 10:36:35 AM PDT by JHL
On Easter of all days, Gary Trudeau uses his Doonesbury cartoon to insult Christians in general, and George Bush's faith in particular. How quick the liberals are to condemn someone else's faith and belief system, but just let a Christian say anything negative about another's belief system and how quick they are to invoke an injunction against "judgementalism."
You can read the cartoon for yourself at the following link CLICK HERE for cartoon
In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII had already stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation, on condition that one did not lose sight of several indisputable points.
Today, almost half a century after the publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis.
It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.
Of course, you will try, won't you?
"The Pope, of course, does not express a definitive judgment on the scientific debate. He does, however, reassert the Church's competence to assess the theological and philosophical repercussions of evolutionary theories. The Church thus excludes, as Pius XII stated, "purely materialist or reductive analyses," which leave no room for spiritual interpretations. John Paul II reaffirmed this essential emphasis: "Even if the human body originates from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is spontaneously created by God."
In his message, John Paul II never even pronounced Charles Darwin's name. Thus it seems clear that the mass media gave their own "spin" to the Pope's words, in some cases gravely distorting his actual meaning.
Keep spinning.
One gets the impression you are attempting to find loopholes to maintain your untenable worldview. T'ain't gonna happen.
A cross section of this so-called geologic column shows fossils within each layer. As one studies each layer from the bottom to the top, he notices and ever-increasing complexity oin the fossil record. The most primitive and simplistic animals are found on the bottom and the more complex and diverse are found toward the top.
What we see in the "geologic column" can be explained on the basis of a worldwide flood. The most simple and least mobile animals were buried first as the seas became increasingly sediment-laden. The more mobile animals then survived until they were buried by heavier sediment, rock slides , and volcanic eruptions.
Regarding your point, it is interesting to note that very few fossils of man and higher animals are found. Therefore, it is the creationist contention that rather than being inundated by sediment, man survived until he simply drowned and his body decomposed. Occasionally, archyaeologists find large deposits of animal bones indicating these creatures had herded together and were suddenly buried...some with their last meal still lying in thieir stomaches. This suggests a rapid cataclysmic burial...certainly explainable if one believes the Biblical account of the flood where "the fountains of the deep" were opened.
The bottom line is the WHOLE geological column that we see today was esentially the result of the above cataclysmic event.
Remember: this is your opportunity for my soul to be saved.
my job is not to save your soul...just to point out the testomony of the Bible, and give you another way to look at what we see today. I sense a bitterness towards Christians, so I won't quote the Biblical passage again, but simply point out that Jesus Himself gives testomony to the the flood in Noah's time.
ROFL!! Yeah sure, and oak trees outran velociraptors in the race to reach higher territory.
Most simple isn't necessarily least mobile. Most simple doesn't even most primitive.
Of course, the same geological crosssection shows more primitive plants at the bottom and newer plants at the top. Do you claim that the most simple plants are less mobile than the others.
In geological columns taken from Africa and South America, the oldest plants are identical. Newer plants are found which are clearly related to the older ones, but there is a bifurcation across the Atlantic. The same mothers in South America and Africa, but the daughters differ. Not only does one see evolutionary action, but continental drift too.
No. What I am saying is the plants that are fossilized lived at the same time (before the flood). The order in the geological columns varies by location, since the turmoil that occured during the flood caused variations in the geological columns that we see today. In some cases, more complex fossils are BELOW the less complex. This can be visualized assuming the turmoil and lifting of sediments during a worldwide flood and tremendous pressures and upheavels that would logically occur during such an event.
Explain the separation of plant fossils in the geological column. We some plants "more mobile" than others?
Oh, by the way, your "theory" does not explain fossilized rain drop spatters and animal footprints deep within the geological column.
So there's no muddling, I'll clarify: Yes, man and dinosaurs lived at the same time. The word "dinosaur" was not coined until, I believe, 1841. Before that, they were most commonly referred to as dragons. The Bible has many references to dragons, and not in some mythical reference, but in reference to actual living creatures that were on the earth.
Moving beyond the Bible, if you wish to totally discount it, there are a number of places where petroglyphs and other contemporary pictures showed man and animals together, those animals obviously being dinosaurs. This includes, among many others, American Indians. When dealing with isolated peoples like this--and remember, the Indians are only one example of many--who had no access whatsoever to any textbooks or other materials that might show such animals, where do you think they got the notion of drawing pictures of animals that are unquestionably dinosaurs to anyone at first glance?
You state "not one transitional fossil has ever been found." Please click on one of patrickhenry's links and then repeat your statement in good faith.
Okay, I did. And it changes nothing. Evolution proponents lump everything together, most notably, microevolution and macroevolution. They scoff and chuckle at creationists as not believing in any evolution, when they know full well that most creationists of course believe in microevolution: variations within species. Of course things change and adapt over time! But they do not change from one species to another, which is macroevolution.
They pontificate long on proving that microevolution is real, such as Darwin's finches, when that's not even in question. But beaks adapting to different environmental conditions in no way proves that a bird has ever or will ever make the jump from being a bird to being a dog. After their long-winded (and unneeded) defense of microevolution, the Scientific American articles says about macroevolution:
Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related.
IOW, macroevolution is all a bunch of conjecture, but by lumping it in with something proven, like microevolution, they would have us believe that it is something else. As for all the skulls they lay in a nice progression, what they have are a bunch of ape skulls and one human skull.
You state Carbon dating has been faulty within "thousands of years." as an FYI, "thousands of years" in evolutionary science is but a miniscule amount.
Carbon dating is but one example, but the problem with evolutionary dating as a whole is that it is based on the supposition that everything is millions of years old. Take the Miller-Ulrey experiment, which allegedly showed how the first components of life could have been generated by lightning strikes on the primordial soup. Miller managed to come up with a few amino acids that could be considered orgnanic material. The problem? Miller assumed that Earth's atmosphere way back then had no oxygen, and performed his experiment in the absence of oxygen. When a debate ensued, with many prominent scientists making the argument that early Earth's atmosphere did indeed have oxygen, Miller proponents finally put forth this nutshell of an argument: "We know there was no oxygen back then because if there had been, life could not have begun the way we think it did."
This same reasoning is present throughout the dating methods used to support evolution. It begins with a supposition that everything is millions or billions of years old, and they bend the facts around until it meshes, instead of beginning with the truth that they don't know how old something is and working from there.
Please define what you think "theory" means.
A theory is someone's set of ideas about how something works. Basically, an opinion, until it is proven. Evolution is treated not as opinion, but fact, despite the fact that real, genuine science is based on observable fact, and since it's obvious that none of the alleged "facts" of macroevolution have ever been observed, it's ludicrous to present them as anything other than opinion.
Please explain how a long series of so-called "micro evolution" events can't add up to a so called "macro evolutionary" change?
Proving a negative is impossible, so we must rely on the available evidence, and again, there is no evidence that shows one single species change. There is a lot of conjecture and wishful thinking, but there is no evidence.
Please show me where satan has anything to do with scientific theory.
Since I can't produce him at will and wouldn't want to even if I could, I suppose I cannot possibly prove that point to you, either. Instead, I choose to rely on the narration offered by the only entity who was around for all of it, God. Satan's very first interaction with human was a successful attempt to put doubt in Eve's mind about what God had said. And doubt remains one of his most powerful tools to date.
Evolution has been a super jackpot of doubt that he has been able to use to discount the word of God. It opened the door for people to day, "Well, if Genesis isn't true, maybe some of the other isn't true either. Maybe Jesus wasn't real. Maybe he was an allegorical reference." That's the natural chain of events that has our nation in a state of moral unraveling right now.
And even though Christians can indeed be saved IMO and believe in evolution, it's particularly sad to see Christians, who acknowledge that God came to Earth and died for them, be a willing part of undermining Biblical authority. For someone who does that to have the raw gall to suggest that creationists cause people to be atheists is sadder yet. Creationists are the ones fighting for the authority of God's word, while "evolutionary Christians" have long since caved on the issue and decided that man's conjecture and wisdom trumps that of the Almighty.
This is my last post in this thread. I have no doubt that you both, eagleman and whattajoke, will find it lacking, but I really don't care. I could spend days and days dredging up pages of evidence to "scientifically" refute your points, and it would come no closer to changing your mind than what I've said here. That is what I have been intending to do, but since it's been many days and I haven't yet had time to do so, and here I am spending an hour or so of my only day off to type this, I think I'll let this be it. If you choose to interpret that as some kind of admission on my part that I can't refute what you've said, who cares. That's not the case. It's simply a matter of how much of my time I'm willing to spend arguing for the sake of arguing, and I've wasted enough.
Even Darwin is a firm believer in Creation about now. You will be too.
MM
sure it does...we creationists never deny that significant, non-uniform, violent, up-heavals occured before and after the flood. In fact, it would be expected considering the pressure of over 1 mile of water covering the surface of the earth for a year. (even a tiny local flood today, does awsome damage).
The difference between you evolutionists and we Creationists is that we see the evidence differently going in. You assume a world, teaming of complex life, creating itself. I see a world Created as described in Genesis, and testified to by God himself.
Before I became a Christian in my late twenties, there were lots of things I observed that could not be explained at all by the religion of evolution. Once I accepted what the Bible plainly states, many unexplained things suddenly became clear to me.
Thanks for your post MM, and do not think its a waste of time. We never know what words God will use to change a heart. We are simply commanded to speak the truth, which you are doing. That scoffers continue to scoff should not suprise any of us...we are in very good company.
Cheers!
I understand the point you are making, but remember that I believe that most (if not all) fossils we see in large formations of fossils were alive at the SAME time (at the time right before the flood described in Genesis). Those "ancient" birds are no more ancient then other birds living at the time of the flood. In fact many fossils we see today are of species that we still have with us today. For example, sponges, snails and jellyfish lived in the what geologists call the Cambirian, clams and starfish in the Ordovician, scopians and corals in the Silurian, sharks and lungfish in the Devonian, etc, etc, etc. The above are only random listings and could be considerably expanded.
Except for the many now-extinct animals, such as the dinosaurs, it looks as though the fossil world was not greatly differnt from the present world. As far as the extinct animals are concerned, it should be pointed out that extinction is not evolution.
I got snippy because you included me in a group of people headed for a literal hell.
Well...I do not make any judgement of whether any particular person is heading for Hell. My guide book says that God is the ultimate judge for each of us. If someone choses to reject the testomony of scripture, then there is really nothing I could add that would make an difference.
I want scientific evidence for a literal interpretation of Genesis.
Well there is alot of evidence for the Biblical flood if one chooses to see it, and look at the world from the Biblical World View. A few examples include:
(1) The evidence of the Geologic column (rightly interpreted) itself, which could only be formed from a cataclysm, such as the flood of Noah. The hydrolic aspects of the flood were , of course, necessarily accompanied by tremendous volcanic and tectonic upheavals.
(2) The present decay graph of Earth's Magnet
(3)Population statistics (we would have run out of room long ago, if man was a million years old)
(4)Vast supply of Coal...another testomony of the flood cataclysm.
I'm sure that many will attack these examples...that doesn't concern me. If my critic rejects the Bible, then I certainly will be rejected. That rejection is not threatening to me at all.
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