Creation vs. Evolution

[niky]

Jesus is the Son of God. He is God because he is part of the trinity.
Around 70% of the world is religious. Here is a video to why I think there will never be a complete natural explanation or formula to everything: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr5lY0TcdAw&feature=youtube_gdata_player
I don't think that it's hilarious at all.

There's more proof for Evolution than for Jesus. Even archeological evidence for Jesus, the man, is hard enough to find. Evidence for Jesus, the Son of God is non-existent outside of the writings of his followers. The Qu'ran merely acknowledges him as another prophet.

But that belongs in the Religion thread.

And the existence or non-existence of a Jewish prophet some 2000 odd years ago has nothing to do with Evolution or Creation...

 

[Sanji Himura]

There's more proof for Evolution than for Jesus. Even archeological evidence for Jesus, the man, is hard enough to find. Evidence for Jesus, the Son of God is non-existent outside of the writings of his followers. The Qu'ran merely acknowledges him as another prophet.

But that belongs in the Religion thread.

And the existence or non-existence of a Jewish prophet some 2000 odd years ago has nothing to do with Evolution or Creation...

Explain to me this then, I bury a pork rib bone twenty years ago, and tomorrow I decided to dig it up and have it carbon dated. It came back with a carbon age of 2,000,000 years old. However, since no one knows that I buried it twenty years ago, I present the find as genuine.

The point that I am trying to make is that Evolutionists manufacture evidence to fit their theories.

 

[TankAss95]

Explain to me this then, I bury a pork rib bone twenty years ago, and tomorrow I decided to dig it up and have it carbon dated. It came back with a carbon age of 2,000,000 years old. However, since no one knows that I buried it twenty years ago, I present the find as genuine.

The point that I am trying to make is that Evolutionists manufacture evidence to fit their theories.

Dinosaur fossils are actually just a bunch of pork ribs!
There have actually been some fossil scams in the past. I remember seeing stuff on the news a while back.
For a laugh: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man

 

[Joel]

The point that I am trying to make is that Evolutionists manufacture evidence to fit their theories.

 

[CMvan46]

The point that I am trying to make is that Evolutionists manufacture evidence to fit their theories.

?

All decent studies done now are peer reviewed and scrutinized beyond belief. 2nd rate stuff the news reports on isn't the stuff today's theories are based around. This is an issue with crap like "chocolate is good for you" which was a study paid for by Hersey or some crap like that. Evolutionists work in massive teams and with collective knowledge to come up with their theories it isn't as simple as putting a bone in the ground and saying it's 2 000 000 years old. As this stuff is peer reviewed any person reviewing it would clearly pick out the obvious flaw and that scientist's career is over.

The guy who claimed vitamin C is what keeps you from getting sick? Yeah none of his stuff is credible now because that vitamin C theory was crap. There was and still isn't any evidence to prove that... These guys don't risk their careers like that.

 

[niky]

Explain to me this then, I bury a pork rib bone twenty years ago, and tomorrow I decided to dig it up and have it carbon dated. It came back with a carbon age of 2,000,000 years old. However, since no one knows that I buried it twenty years ago, I present the find as genuine.

The point that I am trying to make is that Evolutionists manufacture evidence to fit their theories.

There are no "Evolutionists", just Paleontologists and Archaeologists.

And "manufactured" evidence? It's been tried... And debunked.

Look up "Piltdown Man".

 

[Encyclopedia]

The point that I am trying to make is that Evolutionists manufacture evidence to fit their theories.

*sigh* Tinfoil hats on!

That would be career suicide.

 

[Scaff]

Explain to me this then, I bury a pork rib bone twenty years ago, and tomorrow I decided to dig it up and have it carbon dated. It came back with a carbon age of 2,000,000 years old. However, since no one knows that I buried it twenty years ago, I present the find as genuine.

Care to explain exactly how it would come back as 2 million years old when carbon dated?

The point that I am trying to make is that Evolutionists manufacture evidence to fit their theories.

Citation needed, and no Piltdown man doesn't count given that the second technology allowed it to be shown as a fake it was, and the people who stated it was a fake. They were scientists.

To be blunt the manner in which Piltdown is often displayed (as scientist just wandering around ramming it in peoples faces and shouting "look proof") is a total fallacy.

Scientists questioned it from day one and did not accept it universally as proof at all and were the ones who identified it as a fake and also to publish it as such.



Scaff

 

[BrutherSuperior]

There's more proof for Evolution than for Jesus.

Not really.

When you look at the big picture, evolution makes a lot of sense. It's when you get to the nitty-gritty stuff that it all starts to fall apart.

Unlike the Gospels, the fossil record is not complete. For instance, there is no scientific explanation for the Cambrian Explosion that also jives with evolution. It's somewhat of a paradox. Likewise, there is no 'proof' of how something as complex as the human eye 'evolved' from various amino acids and whatnot.

The part that I think is the most interesting is not how or if we came from monkeys, it's why only humans have consciousness & the ability to build upon the knowledge and experience of past generations. Evolutionally speaking, shouldn't at least one other creature on Earth have that ability/gift?

Where we came from and why we're smart enough to even ask that is a very-very old question. Evolution tries to answer the former and religion the latter. The only similarity is both require a certain degree of 'faith'.

 

[Encyclopedia]

The part that I think is the most interesting is not how or if we came from monkeys

Wrong. Evolution does not state that.

it's why only humans have consciousness.

What an absurd statement. There are other self aware creatures on this planet than humans.

 

[Touring Mars]

The part that I think is the most interesting is not how or if we came from monkeys

We didn't come from monkeys. Monkeys and humans shared a common ancestor, somewhere on the order of 50,000,000 years ago, long before humans or monkeys ever existed.

it's why only humans have consciousness & the ability to build upon the knowledge and experience of past generations. Evolutionally speaking, shouldn't at least one other creature on Earth have that ability/gift?

Humans are obviously not the only species to possess consciousness. I presume you meant intelligence, but even that would be incorrect. Other intelligent animals, such as whales and other primates, demonstrate intellectual abilities that were once considered to be 'uniquely' human, such as self-recognition, learning, reasoning, communication, playing, deception/simulation, the use of tools and the ability to form complex social structures where individual identities are recognised.

Where we came from and why we're smart enough to even ask that is a very-very old question. Evolution tries to answer the former and religion the latter.

Evolution does answer the first one, in far more detail and far more accurately than any other method. That we are related to other species by descent is as much of a demonstrable fact as it can also be demonstrated that you are related to your own kids/siblings/cousins/parents. As to 'why' we are so smart, I don't think religion answers that at all.

The only similarity is both require a certain degree of 'faith'.

Nope. Evolution requires evidence and does not depend on faith at all. There is a massive difference between acknowledging that there is some uncertainty and taking something 'on faith'. Science will always have uncertainty, but it must, otherwise we would never be able to identify and correct mistakes. Conversely, believing that you know the whole story and that it cannot possibly be wrong, requires faith - a hallmark of Creationism, and the antithesis of science.

 

[JJ72]

My dog has consciousness, I don't think it's the only one on earth lol.

 

[TankAss95]

I thought this quote was fascinating. It describes the complexity of a single-cell organism. It is from 'Evolution: A Theory in Crisis' by Michael Denton:

"Perhaps in no other area of modern biology is the challenge posed by the extreme complexity and ingenuity of biological adaptions more apparent than in the fascinating new molecular world of the cell. Viewed down a light microscope at a magnification of some several hundred times, such as would have been possible in Darwin's time, a living cell is a relatively disappointing spectacle appearing only as an ever-changing and apparently disordered pattern of blobs and particles which, under the influence of unseen turbulent forces, are continually tossed haphazardly in all directions. To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometres in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the portholes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. We would see endless highly organised corridors and conduits branching in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly plants and processing units. The nucleus itself would be a vast spherical chamber more than a kilometre in diameter, resembling a geodesic dome inside of which we would see, all neatly stacked together in ordered arrays, the miles of coiled chains of the DNA molecules. A huge range of products and raw materials would shuffle along all the manifold conduits in a highly ordered fashion to and from all the various assembly in the outer regions of the cell."

Amazing stuff. It just reminds us the complexity of all known life forms.

 

[Sureboss]

And yet 99.9999999999999% of all the complexity is empty. I'm glad God wasn't a software developer, with those levels of compression he'd have to use a Blu-Ray disc to store a game of virtual hangman!

 

[dylansan]

That percentage doesn't seem very accurate. While I agree that most DNA doesn't actually do anything, if that percentage of our DNA were useless, that would leave 0.00031647 of a base pair for functionality, and I think we can agree that's absurd.

However, according to the Human Genome Project:

The human genome contains 3164.7 million chemical nucleotide bases (A, C, T, and G).
Almost all (99.9%) nucleotide bases are exactly the same in all people.
The functions are unknown for over 50% of discovered genes.

This says nothing about what percentage of the base pairs actually do anything, but there is a lot of "junk DNA." I think it's around 98%, but I'm not sure how widely accepted that number is.

 

[Zoom!Zoom!]

The part that I think is the most interesting is not how or if we came from monkeys, it's why only humans have consciousness & the ability to build upon the knowledge and experience of past generations. Evolutionally speaking, shouldn't at least one other creature on Earth have that ability/gift?

According to the ToE we didn't come from monkeys but an unknown mythological creature no one has ever seen before.(sound familiar?) Most thinks this creature was more ape-like while the molecular clock seem to suggest it was more human-like. (Where are all the missing ape fossils?) Even Mary Leakey who still believe evolution admitted "All these trees of life with their branches of our ancestors, that's a lot of nonsense."
Some animals does seem to have consciousness. Animals are more specialized than man. Man is like the jack of all trade but the king of none. He's not very strong, not very fast, plain hands, and his mind is mostly a clean slate with little knowledge built-in but like you wrote has the ability to learn and build upon knowledge and experiences. We have in the past send monkeys in space yet so far we've seen no sign of apes trying to build their own rocket or enter into the space race.

Where we came from and why we're smart enough to even ask that is a very-very old question. Evolution tries to answer the former and religion the latter. The only similarity is both require a certain degree of 'faith'.

I agree but often evolutionist tries to deny their faith. I have read a few who don't though.

 

[Sureboss]

That percentage doesn't seem very accurate. While I agree that most DNA doesn't actually do anything, if that percentage of our DNA were useless, that would leave 0.00031647 of a base pair for functionality, and I think we can agree that's absurd.

However, according to the Human Genome Project:

This says nothing about what percentage of the base pairs actually do anything, but there is a lot of "junk DNA." I think it's around 98%, but I'm not sure how widely accepted that number is.

You've misunderstood the figure, it was to do with all the empty space in everything, rather than the usefulness of certain things (like politicians, for instance).

 

[dylansan]

Oh, I see. I was worried I had misunderstood you. That's definitely true and a good point. 👍

 

[Zoom!Zoom!]

And yet 99.9999999999999% of all the complexity is empty. I'm glad God wasn't a software developer, with those levels of compression he'd have to use a Blu-Ray disc to store a game of virtual hangman!

Even with our technology and level of compression we can't come close of build a supercomputer as powerful as our brain let along put it in the size of a human skill. Also our machine are not anywhere as efficient nor as small as the machines inside a living cell.
There is also the problem of Blu-ray disc (and other man-made items) filling up the land-fields while stuff in nature is recycled back into the environment.

 

[dylansan]

Even with our technology and level of compression we can't come close of build a supercomputer as powerful as our brain let along put it in the size of a human skill. Also our machine are not anywhere as efficient nor as small as the machines inside a living cell.
There is also the problem of Blu-ray disc (and other man-made items) filling up the land-fields while stuff in nature is recycled back into the environment.

So what? The fact that humans can't create nature does not mean nature was designed.

 

[Sach]

Some random thoughts...

How can 'an explosion' create 'laws' in the universe: the constant of gravity, the speed of light, the speed of sound, certain rays being able to pass through some objects but not others, the fact that most objects in space are rotating, various other mathematical principles, etc., etc.?


Math seems so obviously logical, because generally that's how it operates. But if you have nothing in existence, how does 'an explosion' give you mathematical principles and logic?


If something (say, God) can't be infinite because it's just too silly to consider, how can one explain the existence of Pi?


How does an explosion create so many of the things found on this planet that share the golden proportion? The Fibonacci sequence?


I don't deny the existence of the fact that you can basically reproduce evolution in a lab, on a smaller scale. But randomness just doesn't suffice when it comes to the rest of the properties of reality, imo.


k, thx, bye

 

[dylansan]

Hmm, the question about Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio are very interesting, and I had never considered that. Here's something I just found about the subject.

This is something I'd like to research further, thank you for bringing it up. 👍

 

[Sach]

Before someone jumps in to tell me the mathematical definition of infinite, and how Pi isn't... I'm speaking to the fact that the decimal expansion of the number is infinite.


I also don't care to argue with anyone about this subject. See the part of my post: "IMO".

 

[Zoom!Zoom!]

So what? The fact that humans can't create nature does not mean nature was designed.

It's sure is a big clue it was by design. Pretty much everything man has thought of and invented has in some shape or form found in nature.

 

[niky]

Unlike the Gospels, the fossil record is not complete.

The Gospels, which completely miss out on most of Jesus's life, which disagree on minor points (and the Gospels which disagree on major points are simply omitted) and which were written second- or third-hand by disciples of the disciples? Forgive me if I think physical evidence is more reliable than hearsay (not meaning to make any connection to heresy... Just indicating the fudge factor involved).

-

Your other points have all been covered.

It's sure is a big clue it was by design. Pretty much everything man has thought of and invented has in some shape or form found in nature.

Why? If it's complex, then it must be manufactured? As we've pointed out numerous times in this thread, while organic systems are very complex, they aren't perfect. There is in-built into the human body many redundant organs, useless features, inefficiencies (Vitamin C deficiency, lactose intolerance, craving for fats, all discussed at length elsewhere here...) and "junk" DNA sequences. As a "designed" organism, the human body falls woefully short of aesthetic perfection.

Have no doubt, it's a wonderful thing, but it is more of a work in progress than a finished artwork.

Complexity is hardly a route to take when arguing for manufacture. If it's simple enough to be made by man, then it can be natural? That doesn't even make sense.

-

That explosion didn't create our physical laws. In fact, it was less an explosion than a sudden expansion. Our current laws came into being after the Big Bang as the previous Superforce broke down into the current known forces of nature... EM, gravity, etcetera...

 

[Sach]

The Gospels, which completely miss out on most of Jesus's life, which disagree on minor points (and the Gospels which disagree on major points are simply omitted) and which were written second- or third-hand by disciples of the disciples? Forgive me if I think physical evidence is more reliable than hearsay (not meaning to make any connection to heresy... Just indicating the fudge factor involved).

Since when?

Why? If it's complex, then it must be manufactured? As we've pointed out numerous times in this thread, while organic systems are very complex, they aren't perfect. There is in-built into the human body many redundant organs, useless features, inefficiencies (Vitamin C deficiency, lactose intolerance, craving for fats, all discussed at length elsewhere here...) and "junk" DNA sequences. As a "designed" organism, the human body falls woefully short of aesthetic perfection.

Have no doubt, it's a wonderful thing, but it is more of a work in progress than a finished artwork.

The bible explains this through the corruption that came from the introduction of sin into the world.

 

[TankAss95]

I would like to challenge the evolutionist:
Can you explain blood clotting? The incredibly amazing and complex task that we take for granted to survive? How did it evolve into existance?

 

[dylansan]

I'm trying to find a good depiction of Doolittle's model, but if you can find it yourself, even better.

 

[niky]

Since when?

Loathe as I am to use Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel#The_first_accounts

The gospels were penned, as best can be determined, by disciples of the disciples from oral accounts by the Apostles and other sources. They agree to some extent but not completely, and there are Gospels that were so divergent they were left out of the Bible. (The gnostic books, the Gospel of Judas, for one...)

The most we can say is that Jesus probably did exist, though his following and notoriety outside of the Church were not such as to make him notable to the Roman authorities or in Roman history while he was alive.

The bible explains this through the corruption that came from the introduction of sin into the world.

And it also gives us an approximate date of that, at around 6000 years ago (with the complete lineage of Adam and Eve through to later personages in the old Testament.)

Unfortunately, they never explain where Cain found a wife, or how the other races of the world came about in such short time.... or from where...

 

[Sach]

The gospels were penned, as best can be determined, by disciples of the disciples from oral accounts by the Apostles and other sources. They agree to some extent but not completely, and there are Gospels that were so divergent they were left out of the Bible. (The gnostic books, the Gospel of Judas, for one...)

Assembled by them, not 'penned'. And the gnostic books were left out of the assembly of the bible because they went against Jesus's teachings, no other reason.

The most we can say is that Jesus probably did exist, though his following and notoriety outside of the Church were not such as to make him notable to the Roman authorities or in Roman history while he was alive.

It's true that he was more isolated when he was alive. For one thing, he never frequently traveled to the extent of great distances. And his life was not the start of Christianity, his death was.


You are also (posthumously) leaving out the 12 disciples altogether with this assumption, along with the circumstances surrounding their respective deaths, who were certainly of concern to the Romans immediately following Jesus's death.

And it also gives us an approximate date of that, at around 6000 years ago (with the complete lineage of Adam and Eve through to later personages in the old Testament.)

The bible also says that a thousand years are like a day to God.

I disagree with theologists who say that Genesis was meant to be a literal interpretation.