Creation or Evolution. What do you believe?

[StevenAC]

I am a physician and have never had any problem reconciling evolution with my Catholic Faith. I believe that God Created and He used evolution as his template by which our current world developed. “Galileo declared explicitly taht the two truths, of faith and of science, can never contradict each other, ‘Sacred Scripture and the natural world proceeding equally from the divine Word, the first as dictated by the Holy Spirit, the second as a very faithful executor of the commands of God’ as he wrote in his letter to Father Benedetto Castelli on December 21, 1613.
The Second Vatican Council says the same thing, even adopting similar language in its teaching: ‘Methodical research, in all realms of knowledge, if it respects… moral norms, will never be genuinely opposed to faith: the relity of the world and of faith have their origin in the same God’ (Gaudium et Spes,36) Galileo sensed in his scientific research the presence of the Creato who, stirring in the depths of his spirit, stimulated him, anticipating and assisting his intuitions” John Paul II, Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (November 10, 1979) I found this quote on page 47 of my copy of Fides et Ratio, in the footnotes…
I must add that I believe we have a long way to go before we understand God’s Creation, and yet, in my medical training and now, in my surgical practice,I often stand in awe of His Work. The more we understand, the more we discover we need to learn!

 

[James_Bond]

Here comes the “attack of the ‘infidels’”:

iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=88672

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

TCB:

I think that any discussion on evolution would be aided by focusing on 3 key question.

That is a good idea. These discussions do tend to spiral out of control

However…

Did the universe have a beginning?

Apparently it did. It is expanding, suggesting that it was once smaller – potentially very much smaller. And the cosmic background radiation as picked up by eg the COBE satellite is consistent with a small, hot beginning.

But while this may be creation, it has nothing to do with evolution. Take it up with cosmologists! As far as I care, God could have started and overseen the big bang.

Did life evolve from none [sic] life?

Maybe, and we have reasons to think it did. But again, this is not evolution.

The fact that both of these are ‘creation’, but not evolution, shows that it is not merely evolution which creationists seek to undermine – they are actually attacking all of science.

I should also point out that attacking science does not offer evidence for creation. If our scientific explanations were to be refuted (they’re not, but creationists think they are!), that would simply leave us with a ‘don’t know’ instead. Creation – even if vindicated – only offers a god-of-the-gaps explanation… which is not one most theists are happy with.

Did rational animals (man) evolve from none [sic] rational animals?

Please define rational! Is a chimpanzee that knows how to shape a stick to extract termites from a log not acting rationally and with foresight? Chimps can also deceive others: a subordinate chimp who knows where a piece of fruit is hidden can misdirect the dominant male until he can have it himself, unobserved. Is this not rational thought?

We may be more rational than other animals (though creationists give the lie to this ), but we’re not the only rational creatures.

So if we reduce the question for now to ‘did man evolve from an ape-like ancestor’, then the answer is clearly ‘yes’. And I will be happy to explain exactly why that is to anyone who disagrees .

Cheers, Oolon

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

James Bond:

Here comes the “attack of the ‘infidels’”:

iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=88672

Heh. Yeah, sorry to butt in. Personally, being a pernickety whatsit, I just like to correct misinformation and refute factual falsehoods, wherever it turns up. You are welcome to your theology, but when theology steps on science’s turf, it’d better get it right!

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

And before I get back to the meat of these discussions, I’d like to offer the following quote from St Augustine, for the creationists to ponder…

Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances, …] and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.
(St Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim)

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

raggamuffin:

I have not read all of the posts on this particular question, but my devout belief is in a literal 6-day creation, young earth between 6,000 - 10,000 years old.

I have no problem with anyone believing whatever they like. But are you claiming that as fact?

We cannot have death and decay before the original sin of Adam.

If you say so. But it is a theological argument which has nothing to do with the evidence.
And just out of interest, do you mean human death, or death in general?
Oolon

 

[Heathen_Dawn]

James Bond:

Here comes the “attack of the ‘infidels’”:

iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=88672

I plead guilty. I brought them all here. I figured such a matter would best be given to the professionals to deal with. I know the basics but I’m not a professional.

PS I’m a theistic evolutionist, like PhilVaz.

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

Christian5:

But my question remains that why has God created animals to die along with sickness and so on?

That’s a good question… for you theists to work out. I’d like to know what God was thinking when he created Rickettsia, Loa loa, Plasmodium, Wuchereria bancrofti and hundreds of others. Personally, any god that’d deliberately create these things (as creationists imply) is one I’d steer well clear of!
(And before anyone comes out with the usual ‘it all started at the Fall’ guff, I’d like to point out that these things have absolutely incredible adaptations to living the lifestyle – the thoroughly nasty lifestyle – that they do. Adaptations of the intricacy and extensiveness that, when seen in something ‘good’ – eyes, wings, etc – are quickly attributed to God.)
But that’s something of a digression, requiring a thread of its own, probably. Now, about those hominids…

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

Hi Phil, just a few nit-picks of sorts …

PhilVaz:

Yes, there is good evidence (okay I won’t say overwhelming) that mankind evolved from the great apes several million years ago.

Just to be clear, we did not evolve from modern great apes – Pan troglodytes, P paniscus and Gorilla gorilla. We share a common ancestor with them. And secondly, we are great apes: there is no way to classify them to the exclusion of us. Not only are there debates as to whether chimpanzees should be classified as Homo (or conversely, that we be reclassified as Pan; but also the ‘father’ of modern classification, Linnaeus, classified chimpanzees as Homo troglodytes. And he was a creationist. See eg: here.

The scientific evidence for that has already been provided, …] the molecular evidence – the 99% DNA similarity between homo sapiens and chimps, our closest relative today.

Yes, but it’s worse (for creationists) than just similarity. Here’s two points of interest.

1. Humans cannot synthesise our own vitamin C, as most other mammals can. We have to get it from our diets. Yet we do have the biochemical machinery to do so, it’s just that it is broken: the gene responsible for one crucial step is rendered non-functional by a mutation, and now exists in our genome as a pseudogene. And the odd thing is, apes too are unable to make vitamin C. And their gene is broken in exactly the same way as is ours.

Remember: patterns of DNA are passed down generations…

If we were created separately, how did the same gene get broken in exactly the same way in our (alleged) closest relatives?

1. Humans have one fewer chromosomes than chimpanzees. Yet the human chromosome 2 bears a remarkable similarity to the chimp 2p and 2q chromosomes. Other great apes also have one more chromosome than us. So the hypothesis is that the two chromosomes are the ancestral condition, and that the chromosome fused in our lineage.

Are there ways to check? Yep. Chromosomes have characteristic endy pieces called telomeres, and central portions called centromeres. A single chromosome should therefore have telomeres at each end, and a centromere in the middle.

Prediction: the human chromosome 2 should have extra telomeres and centromeres.

And this is confirmed by observation: it does indeed have telomere sections in its middle, and extra centromeres.

Therefore the ancestral, chimp-style two chromosomes fused some time after our divergence.

I’d be interested to hear why creationists think God put the telomeres in the middle of the chromosome.

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

MichaelTDoyle:

I think having an open mind on this issue is good.

Agreed. But as someone once said, not so open that your brain falls out

Just seems the evolutionists are so full of scorn that I have to wonder if they are about to end up with egg on their face.

But you see, the scorn is almost inevitable. Not only are creationists pushing long-refuted ideas – the very idea that evolution replaced because it was inadequate – but also they argue things that are totally, utterly ludicrous. And the more you learn about the evidence, the more obvious is the ludicrousness.

I have little time for the arrogant ‘evolutionists’ who simply use it to reject religion, while knowing nothing much about it.

But that pales in comparison to the arrogance of creationists. They think they can see through a fog of evolutionary ideology to its unfactual basis. They alone can see that it’s nonsense. This means that scientists (many of whom are theists) are unaware of, or too stupid to see, the lack of evidence… or are covering it up.

Creationists, who are demonstrably ignorant of the science, think they know better than the people who spend their lives actually working with the data. I’d call that arrogant…

So many times new technology and new scientists turn everything upside down. If people demand that evolution is the only model, I think that closes minds to other possibilities.

Not at all. Science is completely open to new models. But the new model must explain what we already know, and to superceded the old one, must explain it better… and also make new testable predictions. So new models are welcome… but creation is an old model, and has already been refuted. Sure, there are ‘paradigm shifts’. But never reversions to outmoded paradigms.

(cont…)

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

Punctuated evolution was a pretty radical departure.

Actually, no it wasn’t. It was ‘bigged up’ (as I believe the current parlance would have it ) by Eldridge and Gould. And all it said was that the pattern of evolution might be expected to appear to have jumps, when a diverged species in an isolated population reinvades the old territory and out-competes its parent species. It was an argument, in fact, against ‘constant speedism’. And the problem was that nobody believed constant speedism anyway.

Furthermore, there are plenty of examples of smooth, gradual transitions in the fossil record, such as Sheldon’s work on Ordovician trilobites here. And curiously, the Phacops trilobites that Gould originally used as an example of PE have revealed on closer inspection to display nice phyletic gradualism.

Punk Eek (or ‘evolution by jerks’ ) was a storm in a teacup.

Have they stated why something is punctuated?

Eek!

Yes, it’s to do with allopatric speciation and re-invasion. Not generation-to-generation jumps (saltation). Natura non fecit saltum (to prove I can do Latin nearly aswell as Vindex ).

Theories are made to fit the existing data, but the data is incomplete.

No news there. But while it’s theoretically possible that Precambrian mammal bones will be found, it is vastly unlikely. If evolution were untrue, we’d need to find something that explains why all the evidence makes it look like it’s true!

I dunno. I just don’t like the scorn people are heaping on each other in this thread.

As I say, I try to avoid scorn. But put it this way. Suppose someone came along and claimed, in all seriousness, that Jesus was actually a Roman called Brian, and based his evidence on a certain film. You’d have to be a very strong, forgiving and other-cheek-turning Christian not be scornful, would you not? It is a similar situation with evolution. When palpable nonsense is talked about it by people who are obviously very uninformed, why should we not be scornful? I refer you to the St Augustine quote above.

I honestly don’t think we have all the answers on this issue.

Sure. Not having all the answers is what keeps scientists employed! But every answer – every piece of evidence – we do so far have is unequivocally in favour of evolution.

And I’ll happily show the evidence to anyone who think otherwise…

Nothing in science is absolutely certain, because we cannot know everything (not having examined every corner of the universe). But a scientific fact is as certain as anything can be. Evolution is, therefore, a scientific fact. I refer anyone interested in this to Evolution is a Fact and a Theory and especially to the Gould quote therein.

Cheers, Oolon

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

Melchior:

How does you chart of skulls prove anything?

It shows that there are morphological intermediates. Those skulls are in chronological order, with the exception of the first, which is modern and there for comparison.

So I repeat: which are the ‘ape’ ones and which are the ‘human’ ones, and why? (It’s a trick question. They are all apes .)

Is evolution the only explanation?

Do you know of a plausible, testable other one, that fits with other facts from unrelated areas, such as the chromosome fusion I offered above?

I know we are still discovering many extinct and humans.

Yup. Check the Talk Origins Hominid FAQs link for details.

I would love to see a skull of a grown Australian Aborigine next to one of an Irish child. I bet they would look quite different.

I’m sure they would. If you were to compare Aborigine and Irish adults, or children, though, you will find far less discrepancy. All modern humans have a mental process, reduced prognathism, vast cranial expansion, reduced canines and supraoccipital torus, more ventrally positioned foramen magnum and a host of other features that distinguish them from earlier species.

(I could have translated those… but don’t feel like it. If you want to walk the walk, you have to talk the talk! )

Or how about the elephant man?

Are you seriously claiming that every fossil we find is diseased? More diseased, furthermore, the earlier the fossil is? And always diseased in the same way? All of them?

I bet if someone found his skull they would say “look a different species!”

You might. Palaeopathologists are rather more experienced.

Sorry but there are nummerous explanations that are plausible outside of evolution.

Let’s hear some then!

All have been disproven!

Not all. Nebraska and Piltdown are the only ones, in fact. Neanderthals were once considered ancestral, but now aren’t… and nobody much cares. H neandertalensis is perfectly genuine, just not of our direct lineage. And I’ve no idea what you think the problem is with Cro-Magnons.

It is a fact if history and science. What’s worse is that they were all discredited years ago.

Well well well, you live and learn…

Perhaps that’s why they rate barely a mention in any modern textbook? Say, I wonder what they fill the books with instead, then…

If you do not know that or deny it you are simply ignoring common knowledge and I will definately not continue this discussion if you cannot acknowledge this as it removes all credibility.

Mel, sweetie… if you do not know that there are countless other fossils, or deny it, you are simply ignoring common knowledge. I don’t see why I should continue this discussion if you cannot acknowledge this, as it removes all your credibility.

Don’t forget Peking Man. Perhaps you should look these up before we continue.

You are referring, presumably, to all the pre-war finds at Zhoukoudian, which were lost at sea during shipping to the US. Yes, a great pity. A pity that we only have casts of them. Still, we have the casts. Are you claiming that they’re fake?

Even if you are, so-called Sinanthropus pekinensis is now called Homo erectus. And we have plenty more fossils of it. Are you casting aspersions on Trinil 1 and 2, the Mojokerto skull, Sangiran, Ngandong and Sambungmacan fossils, and African erectus / ergaster too?

TTFN, Oolon

 

[MichaelTDoyle]

Okay here’s a question. I honestly am interested. How do the more complex structures for specific purposes develop? The spinarets of a spider for example, the structure isn’t one that appears to be a process of one improvement after another but a complex mechanism. I have a tough time visualizing how such a complex structure could evolve with mid-way or mutational adaptions. (Go easy on the Latin, k?)

thanks

-mike

ps. For those who wonder about nasty bugs and their moral implications, how about taking into account that evil and good are concepts (and realities) hinging on freewill and consciousness. They may not be applicable to entities that have no capability of recognizing good or evil or even that suffering is bad, e.g. protozoa.

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

Mike, I’m afraid I know very little about spiders. I’ll ask over at Infidels though if you’d like. But I strongly urge you to pop to the library for a copy of Richard Dawkins’s Climbing Mount Improbable. (Ignore his overt atheism: as we’ve already established, it’s perfectly possible to accept evolution and be a Christian, so just ignore him on that… read it for the science, which is most of it.) Dawkins goes into plenty of detail on the evolution of eyes, spider webs, and fig / fig-wasp symbiosis (amongst others).

I’ll check my books and see what I can find. But I’ll suggest – predict – that it’s probably something that’s already been thought about and resolved…

Cheers, Oolon

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

Chris W:

In the meantime, Creation is the only answer to the origin of the universe that does not contradict current scientific law.

You mean apart from the first law of thermodynamics?

If they overturn the Law of Biogenesis, evolution could become a possibility.

Just what is this “law”? That life comes from life? So what you’ve got there is an argument about abiogenesis. But evolution is what you get once you’ve got life, and so how life came about is irrelevant. Evolution is more than a possibility, it has been observed. And the marks of it are in the rocks and our bodies.

Until then, the evolutionist still has to make the following statement: “I believe, by faith, that contrary to current scientific law, evolution somehow occurred.”

Funny. I’ve never made any such statement. Here’s what I would state: I accept, by looking at the evidence, that evolution has occurs and continues to occur via natural selection and genetic drift, and violates no scientific laws.

That religion (atheistic evolution) requires too much faith for me.

Have you missed the rest of this thread? One can easily be a theist and accept evolution. And no faith is required to accept evolution, if you’d only look at the evidence. Want to give that a go?

 

[Chris_W]

Meatros:

I’ll say this, you just showed your hand that you aren’t scientifically literate. .

Indeed I show my hand. I lay my cards on the table face up. I am not trying to trick someone into thinking I am a scientist. Fortunately, one does not have to be a scientist to see the limitations of evolution.

Meatros:

Nothing in science is ‘proven’. “Proofs” are for math and alcohol. Science rests on reasonable certainty. In any event, Laws and Theories are completely different entities in science. Laws describe general phenomenon while Theories tell us why the phenomenon occurs (basically). Theories are the end points of science, not the beginnings. What you are actually thinking of is called a ‘hypothesis’, not a theory. .

Thanks for the explanation. I regret that my choice of words seems to have distracted you from responding to the point of my post.

Meatros:

BTW-what is this ‘law’ of biogenesis?

What I am referring to is Pasteur’s Law, which denys the possibility of spontaneous generation.

Meatros:

Cite? Also, what scientific law does evolution violate? If you mention the second law of thermodynamics I think I’ll rupture my spleen laughing…

Pasteur’s Law still stands if I am not mistaken. Atheistic evolution, no matter how far back people try to date the beginning, relies ultimately on spontaneous generation doesn’t it? Non-living matter somehow became living matter. PhilVaz has since posted that he recognizes the hand of God in this matter, so my assumption about him was wrong. I understood that he was approaching the matter from an atheistic evolutionary approach.

So I still maintain the following conclusion, although revised to include the word “athiestic”: The *atheistic * evolutionist must make the following statement: “I believe, by faith, contrary to current scientific law, that evolution somehow occurred.”

Meatros:

Ah, so in addition to not knowing much about science (I think your poor definitions of ‘theories’ and ‘laws’ attest to that) you also have a bad definition of what a religion is.

Atheism is indeed a kind fo religion, with its own set of doctrines which are accepted by its believers as unqeustionably true. The Bible explains the origin of life and Christians hold to that truth with confidence. The Bible says, *“In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was God…All things came into being through him, and without him nothing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” * This is basically the definition of creationism.

The opposing view (what can be called Naturalism), although never really spelled out, goes something like this: *“In the beginning were the particles and the impersonal laws of physics. And the particles somehow became complex living stuff. And the stuff imagined God, but then discovered evolution.” * This belief system asserts that only the laws and the particles existed, and these two things plus chance had to do all the creating. God did not create man, it was the other way around. Primitive people, not having science to tell them what happened, relied on their uninformed imagination to create God.

The attitude has since become that belief in a personal, supernatural creator is increasingly confined to the uneducated (as is demonstrated by the tone of your post), and is expected to fade away, as education becomes more universal. Creationism may continue to exist, but only in the caves where science has not yet shed the light of knowledge. As science progresses, theologians simply invent some new principle to cover the evidence. Sound about right?

The interesting thing about this is that creationists and naturalists do agree on one principle. Both believe that their position is unquestionably true. Naturalism is not typically recognized as a dominant religious worldview, but it is just that. To the naturalist however, it is not religion, it is simply the way things are. It is just “what everybody knows” (“everybody” being those enlightened enough to hold the same belief). This position is portrayed as so obviously correct that there does not need to be any attempt to justify it.

If a person truely derived their beliefs from scientific evidence, then that person should not call himself an atheist because science cannot answer the question of the existance of God. He really should call himself an agnostic. I wonder though, if many agnostics question the beliefs of the atheist with the same vigor as the theist.

 

[bengal_fan]

i just want to say a few things quickly and then be done.

1st: will it really shake your faith that much if God did it through evolution? so why argue with people who are obviously more knowlegeable on the subject (not that they are necessarily correct). you have no hopes of winning this argument (either side) and it has begun to get a little nasty with all the name calling and insinuations that they other side is so stupid that “their brains fall out” (quote).

2nd: it is not possible to prove either way and we should keep our minds open to possibilities, and to say that creations scientists (and i do use the word scientist because there are many with doctorates from prestigious universities who have become creationists because they see evidence that supports that claim, not because they are stupid) have nothing to offer and that they don’t know what they are talking about is absurd. the same would go for creationists who think that evolutionists have been “duped” and have nothing to offer is not wise either.

3rd: we shouldn’t so much focus on where we came from but where we are going (and i don’t necessarily mean heaven or hell in the fire and brimstone preacher sort of way). both sides of the issue has more evidence of God than not. so let’s think about what the significance of that is (i know that this is not the subject of the thread and i love a good argument, but this one has gotten stale and mean-spirited).

that’s all i’ve got, you may all now rail against me as you wish because that’s what i’ve come to expect from this thread.

 

[MichaelTDoyle]

Chris W:

Indeed I show my hand. I lay my cards on the table face up. I am not trying to trick someone into thinking I am a scientist. Fortunately, one does not have to be a scientist to see the limitations of evolution.

Thanks for the explanation. I regret that my choice of words seems to have distracted you from responding to the point of my post.

What I am referring to is Pasteur’s Law, which denys the possibility of spontaneous generation.

Pasteur’s Law still stands if I am not mistaken. Atheistic evolution, no matter how far back people try to date the beginning, relies ultimately on spontaneous generation doesn’t it? Non-living matter somehow became living matter. PhilVaz has since posted that he recognizes the hand of God in this matter, so my assumption about him was wrong. I understood that he was approaching the matter from an atheistic evolutionary approach.

So I still maintain the following conclusion, although revised to include the word “athiestic”: The *atheistic * evolutionist must make the following statement: “I believe, by faith, contrary to current scientific law, that evolution somehow occurred.”

Atheism is indeed a kind fo religion, with its own set of doctrines which are accepted by its believers as unqeustionably true. The Bible explains the origin of life and Christians hold to that truth with confidence. The Bible says, *“In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was God…All things came into being through him, and without him nothing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” * This is basically the definition of creationism.

The opposing view (what can be called Naturalism), although never really spelled out, goes something like this: *“In the beginning were the particles and the impersonal laws of physics. And the particles somehow became complex living stuff. And the stuff imagined God, but then discovered evolution.” * This belief system asserts that only the laws and the particles existed, and these two things plus chance had to do all the creating. God did not create man, it was the other way around. Primitive people, not having science to tell them what happened, relied on their uninformed imagination to create God.

The attitude has since become that belief in a personal, supernatural creator is increasingly confined to the uneducated (as is demonstrated by the tone of your post), and is expected to fade away, as education becomes more universal. Creationism may continue to exist, but only in the caves where science has not yet shed the light of knowledge. As science progresses, theologians simply invent some new principle to cover the evidence. Sound about right?

The interesting thing about this is that creationists and naturalists do agree on one principle. Both believe that their position is unquestionably true. Naturalism is not typically recognized as a dominant religious worldview, but it is just that. To the naturalist however, it is not religion, it is simply the way things are. It is just “what everybody knows” (“everybody” being those enlightened enough to hold the same belief). This position is portrayed as so obviously correct that there does not need to be any attempt to justify it.

If a person truely derived their beliefs from scientific evidence, then that person should not call himself an atheist because science cannot answer the question of the existance of God. He really should call himself an agnostic. I wonder though, if many agnostics question the beliefs of the atheist with the same vigor as the theist.

This post really articulated my feelings almost better than I could. I think it dichotomizes the issues a bit (speaking to the extremists). I think there is an inherent danger in evolution for a proponent of this idea to lose their inspired Faith in Christ by a slide from physical effects (environment) causing other physical effects (natural selection) to attempting to supply an understanding of causation itself.

Those who get wrapped up in this worldview forget that there is a more important worldview: man should not live by bread alone (physical reality) but by spirit (faith, hope, and charity) I think if you forget that you get into a dog eat dog mentality and that is turning from Christ.

a word of caution

peace

 

[Oolon_Colluphid]

bengal_fan:

you have no hopes of winning this argument (either side) and it has begun to get a little nasty with all the name calling and insinuations that they other side is so stupid that “their brains fall out” (quote).

I apologise if that sounded nasty. It is merely a well-known saying: keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out. In other words, be open to new information, but sceptical about it.

I am under no illusions about changing people’s minds, if they are not open to new information. But I do not wish to shake anyone’s faith, only to shake their bad science.

But 'tis true, these discussions are well known for their potentially incendiary nature. I shall try to maintain more decorum, being something of a guest here. Please excuse my tackles, I do tend to go in rather hard!

Oolon

 

[Chris_W]

The purpose of my posting on these threads is as much to challenge my understandings, as it is to refute what I perceive as errors.

We are all just guests on these threads, but if it isn’t hostile, the dialogue is beneficial, in my opinion, even to those who just read the posts.

For clarification, I will not argue against all kinds of evolutionary processes. What I will defend is the understanding that evolution cannot answer how life came from non-living matter. That single point is the most significant to me, as it has no explanation other than God. The rest, though perhaps scientifically interesting, is insignificant to me and I will therefore let the experts haggle over that.