Good TED Video on Evolution

If God created kinds which adapted and changed and He chose to specifically act upon these kinds in supernatural ways along the way, how far do you think your “nitty gritty details” will get you in order to decipher this? Faith in a God who is supernatural and evolution are an impossible mix to find a reasonable path of explanation. All that i know is that God is real. His Word is good. And He was the only one who was there when He created.

If your aunt had a pair she’d be your uncle too. Since there is zero scientific evidence for created “kinds” and plenty of positive evidence no evolutionary “kinds” barrier exists what is your argument? God made “kinds” then tinkered to make it look exactly like evolution from a universal common ancestor happened?

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Show me how. They did not even have the luxery of genetics 100 yrs ago. If historical science is of a form that disallows any detection of ID, it will miss ID every time even when it is so close it is smacking it into its face.

And now show me how they 100% proved universal common decent 100 yrs ago.

Your statement here is telling

If i could get past the mind blowing brain stem breaking anti intellectual thinking on how one surmises naturalistic evolution via natural selection of RANDOM mutations responsible for eyes and eye sockets, male and female sex organs, nervous systems and all of the rest as you seem to accept, then just maybe i could trust this accessment.

I didn’t say science proved universal common descent. I said science disproved the idea of specially created “kinds”. This was done with just the fossil record as numerous transitional species between supposed “kinds” were found. The confirming genetic data was just piling on the already discredited YEC “kinds” nonsense.

You inability to properly relate what others actually wrote is more telling.

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Haven’t you been corrected on this Creationist canard enough, claiming evolution is only a RANDOM processes? Why do Creationists always “forget” about the statistically biased nonrandom feedback from natural selection?

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That makes not one single bit of sense. Transitional forms are the evolutionists biggest problem. And how can you assume the speed of adaptation? A new finch was just discovered on galapagos isle that is suggested formed in the last 30 yrs.

Sorry but science has known about transitional species for well over 100 years.

Partial list of transitional species

Your almost total ignorance of all aspects of evolutionary biology is amazing.

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I believe in a Creator that has incredibly designed the unfolding of nature that ultimately led to His primary objective (humans able to commune with Him) over the course of billions of years. I believe all things were made by Him and there is nothing in existence He did not make. Such creative capacity and ultimate power humbles me and leaves me in wonder and awe. I cannot even comprehend how such a God still desires a relationship with me - yet I trust and rejoice that He does. Your assumption that your interpretation of Genesis gives you some sort of superior level of worship and adoration is in sad error. What do you think?

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That’s not what COMMON descent (not decent) means, Greg. The adjective COMMON means that your “kinds” are related to each other, not separate. There’s no discontinuity corresponding to the divisions creationists claim between any of their alleged kinds.

Therefore, you have a major disagreement with Behe. How can you not know something so fundamental?

And why does Greg somehow manage to realize how false it is when he doesn’t take me up on my offer of a high-stakes poker game in which I select cards to discard and randomly draw while he doesn’t?

Selection makes the process as a whole nonrandom, and Greg understands this for poker but can’t admit it for biology.

Greg-- I respect you for trying to reconcile the ideas you hold as a YEC, but here’s where the crux lies in what I have come to understand as a modern biblical misapprehension over fifty years of study.
The YEC position swirls around two biblical watershed issues that are the result of translating ancient Hebrew into modern English, as if doing so would automatically grant you access to the original cultural ideas, message and meaning that the original audience would have understood.
One issue you’re undoubtedly familiar with, to some degree, is the biblical sense conveyed by the Hebrew word “yom,” usually translated as “day” in the English versions, along with ones translated “evening” and “morning,” as if the natural “plain sense English” reading could adequately express the rich semantic meaning and variability involved in the original Hebrew terms --which are more accurately understood as “eras” delineated by the kinds of cycles of alternating light and darkness defining a regular human workday, “dawn” and “twilight” which is applied analogously to God in Genesis 1 --and which we, even in English, apply to whole eras --the “dawn” or “twilight” of civilization, e.g.
The entire “24 hour days” claim is based upon the importing of modern cultural assumptions about the specificity of “literal meanings” being imported backwards into the ancient text.
The ancient Hebrews already knew better than this, and did not confuse analogy with literality, when they told or read these accounts, in a world they knew as already ancient in their own time.
The other bit of anachronistic assuming by many Christians is over the whole notion of what “God created…” means.
The Hebrew verb 'bara (“create”) cannot be understood as meaning that the something mentioned happened “immediately,” as a simple magic “poof” in time. It conveys absolutely no information about duration or means employed, nor, by itself, whether what happened was “ex nihilo” --only that the result was “de novo.”
Notice that the normal English sense works in the same way, somewhat ambiguously, when we say “Michelangelo created the Pieta.” We have absolutely no data in that statement on how he went about it, what process was involved, nor how long it took.
For Christians who know and rely on these kinds of things, ascribing “billions of years of evolution” to, at least partially, explain the means of life’s emergence has absolutely zero deleterious effect on them equally affirming that “God created.”
It’s when the scientific hackles are raised, in objection, that “no God is allowed” in evolutionary conceptions, that the crux of the difference arises between Christians or theists in science, and non-theists. What you won’t see is Christians in science demonizing non-theist colleagues for their decisive exclusion of God from the process, as if the definition requires an entire seperation and compartmentalization of such thinking. As a working hypothesis, Christians in science don’t expect to see instances of “micro-miracles” under their microscope, e.g., whike still appreciating the whole thing as “wondrous” and even “miraculous,” and the result of God’s direct handiwork.
Hope that helps.

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Are you saying mutations are not random? Are you a proponent of ID my friend? :slight_smile: Look at my statement again. [quote=“Timothy_Horton, post:79, topic:637”]
think your ignorance has blinded you so badly you can’t even see the insides of your own eyelids. There are plenty of devout Christian scientists who work in and completely accept scientific evolutionary biology. Yet you keep claiming all of them are wrong and scientifically illiterate you is right.
[/quote]

And Lady Gaga called Mike Pence and his wife immoral and “unchristian” because the moral stance they take that is solely based on plain as day Scriptural text that happens to…drumroll… define Christianity!
You are a scientist. You are not hollywood. You should be exacting and precise in your thinking. And if you apply this precise thinking towards how you define how a Christian can be “devout” without understanding Christianity, then you do no better than Gaga. Christianity has its laser focus on God. God is transcendent. Check. God reveals Himself as Creator in the appearance of highly sophisticated bio machines and all of Creation. Check. God in His full essence is also beyond us and beyond full human comprehension. Check. God was there when He created man. Check. God recorded historical detail about how He created. Check. You or I were not there when He created. Check. The Bible does not give true license for an earth being billions of years old. Check. The Bible gives no evidence that the natural selection of the luck of the random is the means of life forms. Double no triple check. According to the Bible, without faith, it is impossible to please God. Check.

Take all of these ingredients and now tell me how a “devout” Christian leans toward his interpretation and not God’s, leans with more of a naturalistic bend away from a supernatural God’s, is more enamored with delight in his rationale and less than the mysterious glory of God’s, and lastly does not appreciate the perfect relationship of the the beginning of Christian faith itself to creation that begins in a moment in time when a person is recreated by grace through faith!

I am very familiar with what you say. Are familiar with Dr. Sailhamer’s “Genesis Unbound?” He is with you. One of my favorite Pastor/teachers is John Piper who would lean w Sailhamer although he has made recent comments that have led me to believe he is reconsidering. What i cannot reconcile with this old earth view is how death, disease, torture, pain, natural disaster can be attributed to God because they would have had to have occurred before the fall of man. Tell me how you deal with this issue. Christianity is about God hating sin which is the cause of suffering and death. And Christianity is about God forgiving us by taking the condemnation we deserve. Show me an old earth view that does not water this down. If God in His nature is the constructor of torture and disease, then why would He be wrathful against his subjects who, for example torture and cause pain and death via murder in their sinfulness?

With that said, i am still 100% more closely akin to an old earth creationist that i am a theistic evolutionist. Nature makes such a lousy creator and lousy god and for why a Christian would lean towards it and away from Creator God is mind blowing to me.

So tying death of any kind, protozoan, animal, homind, etc. to some judgement imposed upon creation by God because of Adam’s is basically setting up the conditions for, say, cockroaches to dominate the world and ensure that no animal life ever even gets started.
Life and death is simply a good feature of the entire natural world.
That’s a bit like telling God, “well, if I have to go through physical death, I’d prefer to have never existed in the first place.”
Job was corrected for having that attitude. Life beyond death rights that seeming “wrong,” and even Job knew that.

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I’d hope, @Greg we can all rise above the impulse to trade insult for insult, at least most of the time? : )

This is the most beatiful passage of combination of God’s supernatural genious and natural fact! The passage clearly shows God as a worker of miracles in Him Creating instantly. And the passage clearly agrees with science that the substance used by God to do His miraculous work are fully found in the earth He created! That is so awesome to me! I told my 12 yr old son how crazy the thought that there could be atoms and molecules inside our bodies right now that could have been in a dino.

This passage has absolutely not one single shred of evidence that supports a naturalistic evolutionary worldview. Not even an atoms worth. I have no idea why you, a universalist, would even care so why make the point?

@Greg,

You should have a telephone conference with @Ashwin_s … he is quite convinced that they are the very same thing!

God clearly states “let the Earth bring forth…” and “let the Waters bring forth”… and then the observation is repeated, but stating that God did these things.

There isn’t a more clear statement anywhere in Genesis that points to the fact both perspectives are being engaged and executed simultaneously.

When you are driving your car down the road, and you turn left or right … what turns the car?

  1. Are you turning the car because you are deciding to turn left or right? Yes!

  2. Is your steering wheel turning the car by turning a steering shaft that engages a steering rack, which changes the angle of the front tires? Yes!!

  3. Are your two front tires turning the car (if the front wheels didn’t turn, you would need to control the rotation speed of each tire independently)? Yes!!!

  4. Is the outermost layer of rubber particles in your front tires turning the car by using friction to shift the force vector for your car? Yes!!!

LOL! Here we go again. Unless you believe in the SAME INTERPRETATION I DO of a LITERAL GENESIS CREATION then you are not a TRUE CHRISTIAN! :roll_eyes:

I wish I had a dollar for every scientifically illiterate YEC I’ve heard make that speech. I would have retired long ago.

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Considering that 3 of my top 10 pastor teachers of Scripture lean old earth creation, i suppose you are quite wrong. But they believe in a literal Adam.and Eve, a true Noahs flood, God actuallly creating kinds and no macro evolution and are very interested in careful theological interpretion of the rest of Scripture