Is Darwin's Theory of Evolution True? Part Three

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Well, in this example, intermediary fossils and genetic markers would be the “hotel,” i.e. the known points along the way. Carbon dating would say when. Current traits and DNA would show where an animal is now.

Scientists have a huge body of excellent work explaining exactly why and how many different species have arrived where they’re at. Denying their work out-of-hand without being very familiar with it is like saying, “Nuh uh. . . there’s no way the police can know anything about why John is here, because I already know God did it.”

First of all-- even if God is ultimately responsible for John being there, that doesn’t mean people can’t investigate the mechanism or methods by which he arrived here. And if, through their efforts, they learn something about his journey, saying, “No. . . the Bible doesn’t say that, so it never happened!” is kind of pointless: John did more in every moment that can be cataloged in a few hundred pages of text. That doesn’t mean the text is wrong-- but obviously, there are still a lot more details to learn than it can possibly contain.

My position is this. Given that God is real, and assuming that God is not deliberately putting fossils in the ground to test us and send us to Hell, then studying biology, including evolutionary biology, is just one of the ways that we can take an interest in the wonders He has created for our use and enjoyment. What could possibly be wrong with attempting to learn more?

The only reason to avoid learning is that you think Truth is at odds with the Bible, and that is the weakest position one could possibly take in my opinion.
 
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benjamin1973 said:
Carbon dating would say when.
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Carbon dating only goes back about 50,000 years with good samples and good equipment. Other radiometric methods, like K-Ar or Rb-Sr, are used to go back a lot longer. Some methods can measure four billion years or more.

rossum
 
Well, given that John is presumably human, and is not in fact “400 billion years old,” then I can appeal to my analogy and the reference to genetic markers to save me from losing face over my lack of inaccuracy in mentioning dating. 😃

Seriously, though, I think I can sum up this thread: there are millions of individual articles and pages dedicated to explaining almost every aspect of evolution, in humans and otherwise, but there’s very little interest among ID proponents in knowing WHAT people have observed, thought, and even said about their observations.

I suppose we all do the same thing-- get into a debate, then go to imright.com to find supporting facts and articles.

My philosophical position is that a real God must be perfectly in accordance with all observable information. There could be no conflict between truth and such a being. When religious positions attempt to go against science, it feels to me like an implicit confession: I believe in God, but not enough to examine actually facts of the Universe.

The irony, to me, and part of the reason I’m agnostic, is that QM is so squirrelly and paradoxical that I’m starting to think modern science could be a great tool for religious positions, generally if not specifically supporting anything in the Bible.
 
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There is no science test in religion. To imply there is rules out a wide number of people around the world. The Christian message is about spreading the Gospel. Science has its place but is limited. When it exceeds those limits, that is the point of friction. God is real and believing in Him requires that ‘leap of faith’ some philosophers have mentioned. But the Bible tells us also:

Romans 1:20

New International Version
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

New Living Translation
“For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.”

English Standard Version
“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

This was written long before science, as we understand it, existed.
 
benjamin1973 said:
There are animals with all stages of photo-chemical processing, from simple photo-sensitivity in the skin, through very simple cup eyes, through the multi-faceted eyes of spiders, through to our own. It’s not as big a mystery, and not as impossible, as you think it is.
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This is typical of the simplistic nonsense evolutionists delude themselves with: Dumb the mind-bloggling complexity of God’s creation down until it looks simple enough for dumb humans and their dumb science to digest. You live in a dreamworld.
 
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It’s possible because it’s possible? I should be able to buy a packet, get a pot of water, heat it up a bit, pour in the contents, and get instant life.
 
edwest211 said:
It’s possible because it’s possible? I should be able to buy a packet, get a pot of water, heat it up a bit, pour in the contents, and get instant life.
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Life is so simple that mindless chance produced it and mindless evolution shapes it. How hard can it be?
 
When science tries to explain scientific impossibilities, it gets farcical and embarrassing. God looks at puny humans and their puny science … and laughs.
 
benjamin1973 said:
My philosophical position is that a real God must be perfectly in accordance with all observable information. There could be no conflict between truth and such a being. When religious positions attempt to go against science, it feels to me like an implicit confession: I believe in God, but not enough to examine actually facts of the Universe.
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That’s fair enough, but it is not an established fact that all life on earth evolved from microbes … and it never will be.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
Yes, they are clear. They just don’t deny Darwinism
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How about’ “But from the beginning of creation, God created them male and female” (Mark 10:6)? Jesus says humans existed at the “beginning of creation”, which is totally incompatible with evolution.
 
rossum said:
You do not need a complete eye to be functional. Our own eyes are not fully functional. An eagle has far better distance vision than we do, while bees can sense the polarization of light, which we cannot.
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Yeah, eyes are simple - a child can build a rudimentary version using Lego blocks.
 
Glark said:
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LeafByNiggle:
Yes, they are clear. They just don’t deny Darwinism
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How about’ “But from the beginning of creation, God created them male and female” (Mark 10:6)? Jesus says humans existed at the “beginning of creation”, which is totally incompatible with evolution.
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How do you know “from the beginning” means “from the beginning of all creation” or “from the beginning of man’s creation?” Darwinism is compatible with the second interpretation.
 
So you have to ask yourself something.
Did God direct his movements through history or did random chance.
 
In my opinion, we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from our perspective. I don’t think God just steps in once every thousand or hundred years to make a major change. If God is real (remember I’m agnostic), then I think everything, literally everything, is in / of / from God.

If I flip a coin and it changes my life (I end up receiving the football and winning the game, leading to a coaching position, leading to charity work, etc. etc.), is it because God just stepped in at that moment and determined that coin flip? Or is it that the entire chain of determinist physics stretches right back to the moment of Creation?

I’d say the latter. I don’t think God is in and out, attentive and inattentive, participating and ignoring. I’d expect 100% attention, 100% participation.
 
I don’t see how that would / could be considered an established fact, and there are several other possibilities. One is that life arrived on Earth from space. Another possibility is that everything is alive, and it is only life as we know it that we identify as such due to our limitations. You could speculate another dozen possibilities, some in accordance with the current state of science and some not.

But I don’t think most scientists would make the claims that some here are arguing against. I don’t even think most scientists are anti-theist, though some frustration with things like ID being taught in science class in some states might cause them some consternation.
 
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No. But an engineer can build a pretty good one with plastic, metal and glass. It’s called a camera.
 
Glark said:
Life is so simple that mindless chance produced it and mindless evolution shapes it.
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So, in Glark-world, which runs on chance, there is just as much H2O as there is HO2, because in Glark-world, chemistry is “mindless chance”. However, in the real world H2O is far more common because chemistry has its rules and is not “mindless chance”.

You would do better to observe the real world, that your God made, Glark. Do you not trust the work of your God?

rossum
 
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