Greg, I’m unsure how you make a statement like this after having to stop a video because someone was overconfident in their own position. You claim the speaker couldn’t possibly know for certainty what happened 4 billion years ago. How do you know with certainty what happened 6,000 years ago?
Please don’t misunderstand me, I have a great deal of confidence that a very real God is responsible for creation and I believe that this same God desires a personal relationship with me (astonishing, when I think about it!) as well as every other human that has ever lived. But, this requires faith on my part - the type of faith extolled throughout the Bible. You do not “know” that humanity was created in a single 24-hour period, you believe it sincerely. There is a very real difference.
Hello Sir: The video had a guy speaking who i would assume put high trust in science as determiner of truth about our existence. So if science is of such high esteem, then why would there be such confidence in universal common decent over billions of yrs if science is really not capable of declaring this w any true scientific validation? So i will have to conclude that the language in the video does not place value on science as much as it displays faith in naturalism at the expense of and possibly disdain of intelligence and creationism.
I, on the other hand, have great appreciation for science as a gift from God for helping solve medical issues. And if i really think about who this God is as the very Creator of the entire universe, then completely different than the stance by the man in the video, the basis of faith i choose to stand upon is trust in the existence of this God. And if such a God who is capable of creating billions of galaxies, then i have to conclude that the mind of man is going to potentially be inept at truly accessing how and when He created apart from what He tells us about it. And since i was saved from my biggest problem of my sin in coming to know God through His Son as i learned about Him in His Word, when i see language that describes how He created mankind in a single day, i believe this, i trust this, and i have not a single doubt in my mind that it is true. That is what we call Biblical faith.
In Heb 11:7 it says, “By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household.” God said something to Noah. Noah in reverent fear believed God. And Noah obeyed God.
Of course in Heb 11:1 the definition of faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Then we see that God told Moses to record His words referenced in Gen 1: 26 “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them…31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day."
God said He created man in a day. I in reverent fear believe He did this. And so I obey Him by not being ashamed of this truth and confess it to the world. So i like to encourage all Christ followers to take these passages from His Word and truly discern if it is better to follow the man in the video who places confidence in the rhythms of nature, or to follow the line of reasoning espoused by these Scriptures that offers the only basis that upholds true assurance. God is alive and aware of our choices and beckons us to choose wisely.
There is a huge amount of scientific evidence for common descent over deep time. Libraries and natural history museums are full of the evidence. You can learn about it at most every college and university on the planet. You can visit science labs and see geneticists work on it. You can go on field trips with paleontologists and see it first hand. Of course you can read gigabytes of information and scientific research results online without leaving your home.
There’s no excuse for your willful ignorance Greg. There are plenty of science professionals here including myself who will walk you through the evidence if you show an honest desire to learn. So far that has been 100% lacking in your antagonistic approach.
You seem pretty sure that this evidence fits the worldview that a simple celled organism evolved via nature to result in all life as we know it. So in your opinion, can that same evidence fit to uphold a creationist worldview that God seeded the planet with kinds which He miraculously created instantaneously with a broad range of genetic capability which then speciated the planet via micro forms of evolution?
I have read so much literature from the top notched scientists, and have concluded that the evidence trail can easily fit this creationist perspective and do no damage to the Biblical account of creation. But many of those scientists do not permit God because they bought the darwinian thinking that historical science is only objective if it eliminates the miraculous from the pool of options for instead replacing the idea of a Creator with a more anti intellectual idea that nature is capable of the marvelous feats of complex life, order and beauty we see on this planet. What say you?
No. That doesn’t explain why life shows a nested hierarchy, it doesn’t explain why the fossil record fits that hierarchy too, and the whole bit about “broad range of genetic capability”, etc., is so ill-defined as to be useless as a scientific hypothesis.
MIght I suggest that you are approaching this subject with such a strong initial bias that your conclusion was foregone? Your conclusion is wrong. But nothing can be done for you.
The cambrian explosion?? Coal seams under and over layers of rock w marine fossils? Coal seems to be constructed of tree bark, not a swamp. Bird fossils found w the dinos? Soft tissue found in dino fossils? Other fossilized forms found in layers where they do not belong relative to our current conclusions?? What about living fossils? So many questions. The only reason the scientist see life w a nested hierarchy is bc he is looking for it. If naturalism is the rule, a nested hierarchy is a must. [
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MIght I suggest that you are approaching this subject with such a strong initial bias that your conclusion was foregone?
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So it seems that you ALSO have such a strong initial bias that your conclusions are also foregone. Am i wrong? Such bias is powerful for forming models that are acceptable to the naturalistic viewpoint.
The word “secular” is being used by this site to describe who you are so i completely understand why you might interpret the rock and genetics through a naturalistic point of view. But I believe from at least 2 dozen different angles that the God as described in Scripture is true. If i were a trusting, naive type who tends to buying the new car upon viewing a commercial, or tends to accept the new idea of the year on a whim, you can doubt my testimony…but im not that type! Just the opposite.
I believe in a God who transcends the natural, exists outside of time, is all powerful, all knowing and is both just and loving at the same time. The gospel in Jesus who saves us from our greatest problem is perfectly fitting of this God:
We were re-created in Christ and God is Creator.
We are saved from ourselves by God bc He loves us. The Bible says God is love, and that love is better than faith because faith will one day be sight where love from God is eternal.
We are saved by grace because sin is too sinful before a perfect God to be remedied by the works of man.
4.we are saved by grace so that no man has grounds for boasting. God loves us and cares for us, but at the end of the day His ultimate is in Himself because He is I AM. The most loving thing He has for us is to bring us in what CS Lewis calls the dance where we participate in illuminating Him as He does within His triune Being.
Just as creationism may seem foreign to your perspective, please, i kindly ask you to contemplate that this gospel of Christ is so beyond religion as usual and the mainstream naturalistic thinking. And that i part of the reason God used in my life to cause me to believe it to be true!
All these questions are artifacts of your personal ignorance and, I presume, reliance on some creationist web site. You might pick each one and start a thread about it, and I and others would be glad to explain.
Yes. Grossly so.
Did you just dismiss all the Christians here who aren’t YECs? Are you the only True Christian™ here?
The discourse on this site is helplessly difficult bc people are different and in the case of the conversations here, sometimes vastly so. I have just chosen to put out blanket statements knowing that some will not receive as well as others…I have the label “yec” by my name. I dont care for this bc the stigma caused by this ends conversations and considerations about the validity of the Christian worldview w men like u quickly. The title “yec” causes men like you to ignore me. But if one understands that i believe as per Scripture that the vastness of difference betw a bacterium and man pales compared to that betw God and man, it would be my hope that those willing to contemplate life would take pause to think on the possibilities about life and the potential that mans science may be completly inept to discover w any exact measure our beginings. One tinker from God is all it would take to completely ruin any attempt in naturalism to find historical truth about the existence of complex life . Anyway, I asked swamidass to change “yec” it and he would not oblige maybe to help in his prerogatives and book writting etc.
If i were to label me, id choose “man-skeptic/ God of Scripture-reverent”
As far as other Christians, i take 100% absence from any judgment about who they really are in reference to a relationship or not with God in Christ. Thats God’s business not mine. What i do wonder about is how a person calling himself a Christian who understands the monumental miraculous nature of becoming a new creation upon conversion where dead becomes life has such a difficult time putting off naturalistic indoctrination from the mainly godless forms of evolutionism to trade w putting on creationism. And there is even really good scientific inquiry from the Discovery Inst that points out in a very rational way how design is truely detectable. Heaven forbid that it is those who call themselves “Christian” at Biologos and elsewhere who have become the Discovery Institutes greatest critics! Mind boggling. That makes not one single bit of sense to me…i could begin to tell of the worldly prerogatives that may be in play for this strange thinking but i will abstain.
Well no, it’s the profound ignorance of evolutionary biology you continually demonstrate and your unwillingness to learn why you are wrong is what makes people ignore your inputs.
I wish i knew who you were and what worldview you espouse in relation to the existence of God. I think you said that you have been a science prof or teacher for 40 yrs did you say? Are you a Christian? Atheist? Agnostic? I cannot reply to the above adequately again without a point of reference. Evolution is so simple an idiot could understand. But i may be too ignorant to even declare this too. Maybe the years of reading evolutionary materials starting in HS through college and over the 25 yrs since still find me confused. I think it is now selection of a body of genetic mutations stored until they become useful for the construction of more and more complexity in bio machines…yada. Maybe you could share with us the perfect definition of neo darwinian evolution so, especially i, no longer get confused. Yeah- what is the perfect definition that you could point us to to keep us from being swallowed up into our own ignorant ways?
The main message I get out of this rant is your fear and hatred of the other. But believe me, the label YEC isn’t doing your reputation any harm; it’s what you post under that label. A different label would change nothing.
You are no skeptic. Skeptics pay attention to the evidence. You rant against the evidence, which is quite different.
What is the evidence that universal naturalistic common decent occurred over the past 4 billion years. I am serious. Where is the evidence i have been eager to learn for 30 yrs? There has been not a shred of evidence on this site or biologos. Alot of hunches and man made models, but no true evidence worthy of universal commin decent making it past the hypothesis phase. I even believe that there are even too many problems w an earth being billions of yrs old to justify the science that suggests this to boot.
Well now, you’re packing a lot into that. Common descent isn’t the same as universal common descent or naturalistic common descent. The best evidence is for common descent that’s short of universal descent but still things you’re unwillling to accept, like the common descent of humans and chimps. There’s still excellent evidence for universal common descent, though. However, it’s hard to get good evidence for all that being “naturalistic”, because a the odd bit divine intervention here and there, perhaps to cause a mutation or to encourage reproductive success of an individual, would be undetectable. The most one could do, and even this seldom for events in the distant past, is to show that such intervention wouldn’t have been necessary.
So why universal descent? Several reasons. First, even all life fits into a nested hierarchy, though it’s complicated by a lot of horizontal transfer long ago and still going on in bacteria. Second, all life shares certain common structures, like ribosomes and a single genetic code (with minor variations). Third, the fossil record is compatible with the nested hierarchy. None of this is compatible with the Genesis story, or at least with your interpretation of the story.
The age of the earth is another matter. The science on that is if anything even stronger than that for universal common descent. Whatever problems you suppose there are will, I predict, be shown to be due to your ignorance and weakness for creationist web sites.
My shed, garage and house all share common structure. They are a shed, garage and house all built by me at different times. And as far as genetics is concerned, we are at the very beginning of understanding. The ideas we have today may be dubunked a decade or two fr now.
I have come across evidence to the contrary. Do you read only the science that assumes naturalism? If you do, then you miss opportunities to see that there is scientific evidence that supports other theories than your tree. I see examples of scientists bringing these to your attn from disc inst but you are too busy formulating final thoughts on a single focused book or other resourses to be distracted w alternative views that mess your progress.
Yes…it is a monumental task for small little me to be taking on the entire world of naturalist mainstream…ibelieve we are beginning to see evidence of the One who knows the history bc He created it breaking into the scene. We will see. One weak servant and He is a supermajority. By His grace i go forth.
I did not. But the power of presumption that makes the lenses through which data is examined can formulate an argument demolish any other. You guys demolish any argument that intelligence is involved in the development of complex life, instead siding with the ludicrously most highly improbable event that time and energy can create eyes, brains and sexual reproduction. I frankly find this of the most naive position on the planet right now and this is why even agnostic scientists are pulling away fr naturalism and towards ID-not in droves, but still tellling. I think you are quite naive as to the powers of decades of indoctrination of the naturalistic evolutionary worldview that will empower interpretation powers. When you say you demolished an argument, that means absolutely nothing to me until i see a willingness in you to consider options other than the utterly impossible ones out fr naturalism.
I had some reps fr a cult come to my door with false information they said was of Scripture… information which i demolished with solid, simple Biblical parameter straight out of the book… and if was as if blinders on their eyes. They told me that i was deceived and how i needed to come to study w them. When they left i thought, "how can someone literally stand upon what they say is a rational position from a text when they are as if taking the opposite of what the text says. So that is humanity- we are emotional creatures who tend to hover around what we value at the expense of everything. Some say that that is me about God. I ask them if it appears that i use the idea of God as a crutch to get around in this life. They tell me,“yeah, God is your crutch.” I reply with,"Yes, He is my crutch, my bandage, my cast, my wheelchair, and my breath. I was broken in sin and He made me alive to Him. I was lost and now i am found. I still reside in an earthly tent affected by my lessening tendancy towards disobedience as well as a rotten world. One day, i will be saved permanently from this! What about you John?
You keep providing a false description of evolution. You omitted selection. Why do you have this apparent need to misrepresent evolution?
And another omission of selection.
And another omission of selection.
And there you FINALLY mention selection, but you call it random, which it isn’t.
Totally false. With the sequences, it’s just math.
If you think that selection is random, you are very confused. Since you couldn’t stand watching the video, it’s hard to believe that you’ve read any “evolutionary materials” at all–or at least any that accurately describe evolution.
If evolution is so threatening to you, don’t you have a responsibility to understand it so that you can argue against it, instead of arguing against the false versions you repeatedly present?
Of course i dont think selection is random. But the formulation of mutations sure is. (Not to mention that mutations can occur when a living thing w complexity already exists) Think about this: mutations which are typically neutral genetic errors are supposedly harbored then selected by the organism and kept if it has any benefit to the population creating a human eyeball or brain. I want to scream that this makes no sense! It is not becoming of science. It is not becoming of rational. It is not becoming of anything intelligent. This evolution thinking is what science settles for because they abide by daddy darwin’s naturalistic instruction book!