Is Darwin's Theory of Evolution True? Part 4.1

[Aloysium]

the ‘singularity’ of the Big Bang from which evolved matter and the first elements and elemental particles, the formation of stars from which evolved the other elements, and entire galaxies.

That’s just the story as it is commonly told. The facts reveal something greater. Nothing evolved, it was all created from the basic substance of the universe, whatever one may think of it, close to the amorphous plasma that existed near the beginning from which God created the subatomic, then the atomic and molecular, and finally life of which we in Jesus Christ are the climax. The epochs of time are a testimony of how He brought it all forth, one step at a time. That said, we are always learning and the depths of existence will never be fathomed.

 

[Richca]

Yes! At last you understand… So why can’t anybody tell us what it is “they actually think”? … or how many different kinds there were…

The ‘kinds’ I consider a species such as dogs, horses, cows, elephants, crocodiles, etc. Some creationists may consider ‘kinds’ higher up on the tree such as family. I believe the ‘kinds’ in Genesis are species such as I mentioned and which could include sub-species which God directly created from the earth or waters. For example, there are a variety of cows, hereford, black angus, texas long-horn, etc. Whether some variety (sub-species like) of cows came from human breeding, I don’t know, I haven’t researched it. Whether some came from a providentially directed natural mixing of genes as we have a variety of human races from one first couple, I don’t know that either, it may be possible in some situations but possibility does not mean God did not directly create them either. If we don’t know with certainty or beyond a reasonable doubt, than I assume God created them both species and sub-species. Essentially, I’m not going to place a limit on what God created.

Concerning horses, we have palomino, paint, chestnut, bay, quarter-horse, arabian, thoroughbred, etc. Did some of these variety come about by human breeding? I don’t know, one could research it. And if some didn’t, could the variety have come about by a mixing of genes or something of the nature through natural generation though certainly directed by God’s providence? That appears to be possible I believe from studies conducted and I posted one such study here on finches in I believe New Zealand. But, again, possibility does not mean that God didn’t directly create at least some of the variety. And since a lot of these species are scattered all over the world, God could have created one variety of horse or what have you in one location, and another variety of horse in another location on the other side of the world. Interestingly, unlike human propagation from a first couple, St Augustine says that the first species of animals God created were probably populations of them.

We have black leopards in the Amazon jungle, spotted leopards on the savanahh in Africa, and snow leopards in the Himalayas which these last I think may be stripped. God may have created each of these variety of leopards independently from one another and placed them in their locations unless the black leopard in the Amazon is a very good swimmer and swam across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa.

 

[Richca]

(continued)

There could have been some form of what is called micro-evolution concerning the varieties among species, but not necessarily every variety in a species came about this way. God could have and probably did create a lot of the variety himself even among the species. The varieties in the big cat family were most likely created immediately by God. I certainly do not believe in the macroevolution idea. Really, the question concerning variety among a species such as cows and whether that came about by a providentially directed microevolutionary process or whether they were individually created by God, does not concern me much. I assume the ‘sub-species’ or varieties in a species were individually created and if scientists want to explore how genetics or gene expression may affect variety in a species, by all means go for it. At the same time, what we might learn about microevolution presently, does not mean that is what happened in the past especially deeper in the past we go. As I mentioned, God could have and most likely did create one variety of cow in one location, and another variety in another location. I have no problem believing God directly created all the millions of species of animals and plants on earth and I assume it unless certain evidence or reason tells me otherwise. I don’t really feel I have a need or even an interest to appeal to evolution of any sort. God is the Creator you know. He created all the billions of stars and all atoms with their sub-atomic particles in the entire universe.

I’m getting to the fruit trees. However, I’m quite sure I have already commented on this. I’ll look at it and if I’m satisfied with the answer I gave then I’ll leave it at that.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

Thank you. That’s exactly what I was trying to find out.

You see, although the question of an exact number of kinds, or the exact length of a day seems niggly, an attempt to examine the question is crucial to a real understanding of what you believe. That is why I don’t mind Techno wanting to know the name and phone number of the first feathered dinosaur. A truly coherent explanation of any collection of phenomena must be able to include all the minute details, even if you don/t at the time have the observations to describe them.

In denying evolution, the real sticking point for most creationists is the simple idea that all living things stem from a common ancestor. Apart from being intuitively silly (a rabbit and a tree - descended from a common ancestor?), it denies the biblical account of God directly creating numbers of ‘kinds’ either from nothing or from the earth. The first objection is intellectually conquerable - most creationists at least understand how evolutionists see ancestry and descent - but the second relies on faith, and could only be conquerable if a reasonable objection can demonstrate that it is untenable.

From long before evolution became standard scientific thinking, the idea that a few ‘kinds’ had somehow become lots of different kinds was acceptable to creationists, and it mostly still is. You, and most others, can look at the 14 extant species of crocodile and are happy that they all derived from a single original kind. In doing so, you agree that the descent of ‘varieties’ includes the emergence of different species. Some cannot interbreed at all, some interbreed slightly, and few appear to interbreed quite freely.

You do not say - you may not have thought about it, which is fair enough - whether you include alligators in the crocodile ‘kind’. Some creationists do, some don’t. Baraminology.net does, for example. There are two species of alligator, on opposites sides of the Pacific. Then there’s caimans (six species), which are more closely related to the alligator than the crocodile.

Well I won’t go on. Unless you define ‘kind’ as ‘species’, which you appear not to, then you accept that the descent of ‘varieties’ includes the emergence of different species.

That’s enough for now.

But I warn you, before long we will find ourselves inexorably tied up in the knots in which poor buffalo finds himself, firmly believing that dinosaurs were alive twice as long ago as the creation of the earth, and desperately hoping that ‘refinement’ will enable some kind of reconciliation, or poor Edwest, who incorporates all this * into 48 hours.

• “As the earth was cooling, the surface was unstable. It was floating on magma and volcanoes were common. The outgassing from these and cracks in the earth would mean the atmosphere would not be breathable for a long time.”

 

[Hugh_Farey]

Actually, re-reading your post, it seems that you do indeed think that all the different ‘species’ were independently created, and even that many of the sub-species were too. This would be an absolute minimum of three million created ‘kinds’ of animal, let alone plants, fungi etc… Is that correct?

 

[Aloysium]

In denying evolution, the real sticking point for most creationists is the simple idea that all living things stem from a common ancestor. Apart from being intuitively silly (a rabbit and a tree - descended from a common ancestor?), it denies the biblical account of God directly creating numbers of ‘kinds’ either from nothing or from the earth.

The sticking point for me is that it does not acknowledge life. If we get into evolution’s implications, there are no kinds or species, but rather matter conforming itself to its environment. While most definitely true that the universe is an unfolding of matter on an infinite scale, the configurations it takes, as well as its actual being have been created. While one may consider all this the work of a Divine Mind, it isn’t a dream; an order has been established. And that order includes different kinds of animals. Just as focussing on matter alone will give the impression of one continuous universe without even the possibility of individual beings who exist in themselves, in our case individual, unique and irreplaceable, so too does it appear that there is a common decent. It’s an illusion that does not represent reality. An ancestor essentially is a member of one’s own kind, of which there would have been a first individual expression. To say we are descended from a single-cell creature, some sort of bacterium in the past is the equivalent, to my mind, of saying i am descended from the animals, vegetables and fruit that I have eaten, digested, and transformed into my body. I would agree with staunch evolutionists that our current idea of species is merely a projection. But there is a reality to which the term species, or perhaps genus, would apply, and it has to do with the kind of organism it is; let’s say an elephant. Each elephant is an example of that “elephantness”, physically, psychologically and spiritually, in the sense that it is its soul that defines it. Those are the kinds that God created out of nothing utilizing the earth He had previously created, and from which everything has been brought forth, shaped through His will. Thus we have atoms, we have amoebas, lions and we ourselves, each exhibiting the God-given attributes that determine what they are.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

I fully agree with the philosophical views expressed here, but not with the material ones. I think all living things are indeed individuals, but at the same time, that their materiality is drawn from the ever-interacting substance of the universe. I do think you are descended from single-celled creatures in an entirely literal sense, and that you are literally made of the animals and plants that you have digested. There is, now, an essence of elephantness, but a hundred million years ago there wasn’t. In a philosophical sense, elephantness has been created. From a biblical perspective, perhaps, created by God and identified by Humans. From a material point of view, every elephant had a mother.

 

[Aloysium]

From a material point of view there are no elephants, no mothers, but simply a unified field of physical events understandable by ultimately physics and from that basis, chemistry. While the individuality of particles as in the case of a photon, which is a wave when the event contributes to a beam of electromagnetic energy, alludes to a basic property of the structure of being, the problem with modern science is that it stops at that level, going no further in seeking an explanation.

Existence as we can contemplate within our own being is more highly structured than these elementary forms. That higher structure is not inherent within what we call matter and does not emerge from it; it includes the properties of matter, taking them into its own form of being.

Creation as the willing into existence of new forms has stopped. No more energy is being added to the universe. No new life forms are coming into existence. Clearly what happens now is that animals, plants and bacteria arise from what exists, replicating more or less what constitutes their parents. When this all started, when each kind of organism was brought into existence, this was not the case. In other words, the first placental creature arose where there had been none previously. Whether it temporally speaking hatched from an egg or was simply brought into existence at a point in time, as it all is conception to death, from an eternal perspective, we cannot know. Either way, that first pair would have been perfect as the forebears of a vast diversity of creatures that directly descended from them. This too cannot be validated, nor invalidated at this time, although I believe carrying out the appropriate statistical analysis would support the claim.

 

[buffalo]

It’s mostly luck, not pluck, that determines lifetime reproductive success

Why are those things true? Can one seedling, or one female bird, be so superior to the rest that it will inevitably become the “lucky” one to grow to the sky, or help perpetuate the species? The short answer: No.

“How much of the variability in outcomes is because of differences in quality between individuals, and how much is sheer luck? It turns out that a lot of it is sheer luck,” Ellner said, noting that ecologists are likely to take issue with their contentions.

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news.cornell.edu

 

[Hugh_Farey]

Oh, Lordy me. You’re not still trying to show that evolutionists don’t believe in evolution, are you? How dishonest. Again and again and again.

(For those who want to know what Stephen Ellner was referring to, the last line of the abstract of the paper cited in the article (“Pluck or Luck: Does Trait Variation or Chance Drive Variation in Lifetime Reproductive Success?”) sums it up nicely:

“While trait variation may influence the fate of populations, luck often governs the lives of individuals.” The greater reproductive success of better adapted organisms cannot be reduced to the study of any single individual.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

Some of this has a whimsical truth that I find attractive, and some of it is profound and I very much agree with it. I smile as I picture you approaching a zoo-keeper who is holding a bucket of sugar-cane before a swinging trunk to announce, “There are no elephants”.

Where I disagree is in the second paragraph, where you say that creation has stopped. If there is a sense in which ‘creation’ means something to me, I consider it continuous and on-going. I do not think the declaration that on the seventh day “God rested” is chronologically true, any more than any of the other days is chronologically true. God does not rest.

 

[buffalo]

Oh, Lordy me. You’re not still trying to show that evolutionists don’t believe in evolution, are you? How dishonest. Again and again and again.

Yup, makes evo much harder to sustain.

 

[edwest211]

Thank you.

10 characters.

 

[Glark]

Did you just accept what you were told about how to interpret the six days without considering how they fitted observations of the natural world?

The problem here is that you are relying on an atheist cult to inform you of both “the observations of the world” and how to interpret those “observations”. This atheist cult assumes the starting point of reality is mankind evolved naturally from microbes. It disturbs me that so many In the Church have swallowed this cult’s evolutionary pseudo-science hook, line and sinker. In so doing, such Catholics have revealed not only how naive and gullible they are, but also their lack of spiritual discernment.

 

[Glark]

Theistic evolutionists don’t seem to understand what the Bible is - they think it was written by fallible human beings. What they need to do is go back to Sunday school and learn that Almighty God is the inerrant author of all Scripture.

 

[Glark]

Creationists think scientists use their own methodology, by which blind faith, selective observations, worldwide collusion to mislead, lapping up whatever they are told without questioning

Pot calling the kettle black. How do “know” what’s in the fossil record? You don’t - you believe what you’re told without questioning.

 

[Glark]

I suspect that more often than not, theistic evolution is a stepping stone to unbelief. Once faith in the Scriptures is undermined, total apostasy becomes a real possibility.

 

[Glark]

There is no world-wide conspiracy. Scientists are not all stupid and they do not just automatically believe what they are told. Is there any social pressure to stick to Darwinism as the best explanation of the facts?

The sphere of science which concerns itself with the origins of life is ruled by an atheist cult that preaches an atheist dogma - evolution. It’s not wise to trust anything they say - one cannot even trust what they report as “observations” and “data” (the fossil record, for example), much less their interpretations of such. The truth is not in them.

Besides that, you seem to think it’s important to believe that life on earth evolved from microbes. But the truth is, such a belief is as irrelevance and worthless as a fairy tale.

And here is a thought that might help you clear the fog: Darwinism is to science what Scientology is to religion.

When any of you who are just too smart to fall for Darwinism have a better explanation, by all means make your proposals.

One doesn’t have to be very smart to reject Darwinism - junk science is not that hard to spot.

 

[Glark]

Crop-circles existed, and ‘aliens’ was an explanation for them. From an isolated observation, a hypothesis was derived, and by some people assumed to be ‘fact’. This is creationist thinking at its purist.

I don’t claim my creationists views are a “fact”; on the contrary, my views are a belief based on faith. Please provide the name of a creationist who claims the Genesis “six days of creation” is a fact.

which are indeed empirical evidence

It seems to me that you don’t understand what “empirical evidence” means and have misappropriated the term. Fossils are empirical evidence of certain creatures existing in the past; however, they are not empirical evidence that all on earth evolved from microbes. Can you see the difference? Empirical evidence is evidence that can be verified by observation or experiment.

Studies of unusually scaleless reptiles

The mind of an evolutionist is a magical thing - it can begin with “unusually scaleless reptiles” and end up with “reptiles grew feathers”. Impressive.

and reptile and bird embryology

Right - just as human embryos have “fish gills” - LOL!!

Yup. Models. That’s what science is. But they are not “rigged to say anything”.

You are so gullible.

I didn’t say the live studies ‘demonstrated’ anything (as you well know, you naughty man).

Sounds like you’re playing words games. Regardless, I will reword my question:

Glark: “There is not a shred of empirical evidence that “tubular scales” or feathers can evolve from reptilian skin.”
Hugh_F: “On the contrary, there is empirical evidence, both from fossil and live studies.”

My question is, what is this “empirical evidence (from) live studies” that supports the claim that “tubular scales or feathers can evolve from reptilian skin”?

 

[Glark]

My point is, if evolution can produce a 100-ton dinosuar, evolution can produce a 500-pound dog.