Why you should think that the Natural-Evolution of species is true

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rossum said:
The scientific definition of “macroevolution” is “evolution at or above the level of a species.” Hence, evidence for speciation is evidence for macroevolution. One species splitting into two is macroevolution as science defines it.
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More evolutionist word games - bacteria speciate like crazy but remain bacteria … and in a billion years time these continuously-speciating bacteria will still be bacteria! God said He created organisms “according to their kind” - which is a mighty strange thing to say if kinds evolve into different kinds. (I might have stated in a previous post that I don’t have a theological objection to the evolution of non-human creatures, but then I remembered this Genesis verse!)
You are right about AiG, they require large amounts of super-fact macroevolution to get from the few pairs on the Ark to all the species alive today in the time their dating allows. Just one example of the hoops some forms of creationism have to jump through in order to justify their ludicrously bad hypotheses, based on equally bad interpretations of the Bible.
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I agree with you on this one - it seems to me that belief in a global flood is the result of a misreading of Scripture … which then presents a whole host of scenarios that are difficult to defend scientifically. Although having said that, a regional flood also requires some miracle-working going on - such as confining the flood to a finite area of the earth.
 
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Edgar said:
More evolutionist word games - bacteria speciate like crazy but remain bacteria
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Not word games, merely biology. Mammals speciate like crazy but remain mammals. Are you telling us you have no problem with humans descending from a chimp-like ancestor because both that ancestor and ourselves were mammals?

You need to understand just how wide a classification “bacteria” is. There are more species of bacteria than there are of insects, and there are a lot of different species of insect around.

rossum
 
Well, many of the numbers I described do, in fact, show up in the narrative you’re describing. But let’s switch to a different way of looking at it.

Assuming evolution isn’t true, and the flood was a literal world-wide catastrophe, Noah would have had to round up every animal on the face of the planet (including the kangaroos of Australia, Buffalo from North America, elephants of Africa, etc.) from vastly varying geographical regions, and hold them for 40 days in what amounts to a relatively small space with limited resources (a cubit is the length from your wrist to your elbow). On top of the logistical nightmare that that would be in today’s day and age (not even taking into account the infeasibility of the time), there isn’t enough water on the world to flood over every bit of land so suddenly and retreat so suddenly. Perhaps this would be possible with a great regional flood, as I would suggest is the case? But not a global one, as the text would literally suggest. Again, consider – there are two accounts of the narrative, which actually happened? One pair of ever animal, or 7 pairs, clean and unclean? The two accounts appear to contradict each other, and if they are read literally, which one is to be taken as truth?
 
buss0042 said:
But not a global one, as the text would literally suggest.
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Another thing to keep in mind is that “the world” != “the world.” In ancient times, “the world” was more used to mean “the known world” which varies from place to place. (Consider the story of Joseph when it mentions people from all over the world came to buy grain from Egypt. That doesn’t mean there were some Mayans canoeing across the Atlantic on a bunch to buy grain. It means the region around Egypt bought grain.)
 
mVitus said:
Another thing to keep in mind is that “the world” != “the world.” In ancient times, “the world” was more used to mean “the known world” which varies from place to place. (Consider the story of Joseph when it mentions people from all over the world came to buy grain from Egypt. That doesn’t mean there were some Mayans canoeing across the Atlantic on a bunch to buy grain. It means the region around Egypt bought grain.)
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The Hebrew is eretz, which can be translated a number of ways. It certainly did not always mean the whole planet, otherwise Abraham would have been an extra-terrestrial! See Genesis 2:1
The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your eretz, your people and your father’s household to the eretz I will show you.
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Of course, that would explain why there is no evidence for the flood on earth; it happened on a different planet! 😄

rossum
 
Edgar said:
I am aware of the frequent use of symbolic numbers like 7, 12 and 40 in the Bible. But the Flood account contains several, seemingly meaningless numbers, such as the following:
“In the SIX HUNDREDTH year of the life of Noe …
in the SECOND MONTH …
in the SEVENTEETH DAY OF THE MONTH …
for A HUNDRED AND FIFTY DAYS … the SEVEN AND TWENTIETH DAY OF THE MONTH …
until the TENTH MONTH …
the FIRST DAY OF THE MONTH …
in the SIX HUNDRETH AND FIRST YEAR …
In the SECOND MONTH, the SEVEN AND TWENTIETH DAY OF THE MONTH”

You have not explained the symbolic significance of these numbers, which doesn’t surprise me, as I believe they are not symbolic at all, but are part of a description of literal history.
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You can believe that if you want to, but the Church does not insist that we take the dimensions of the ark as literal truth.
 
Edgar said:
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William_Scott:
I like these AIG guys–my primary annoyance is their insistence on using Ussher’s 6000 year old Chronology based on the Masoretic text. We all know IMHO that the better numbers are found in the older Hebrew text reflected in the LXX, which provide for a world that is about 7600 years old if there are no gaps in the Biblical genealogy. However, if there are gaps in the genealogies the Masoretic and the older Hebrew texts allow for a somewhat older earth (though a 10,000 year old earth would already be pushing the limits of additional years that could be squeezed into hypothetical genealogical gaps).
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The Martyrology of the Catholic Church states Christ was born 5199 years after the creation of Adam and 2957 years after the Flood. So this implies mankind is about 7217 years old. I think it’s fair to assume that the Catholic scholars who calculated these dates were well versed in the Bible’s genealogies and any ambiguities contained therein. The Church’s modernists, deceived by the atheist/demonic fable of evolution, laugh at such dates of course…
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We do not laugh, because we understand the limitations of the people who wrote these accounts. But we do believe the science that shows that mankind is much older. The Church does not disagree.
 
Precisely. Another interesting detail - the genealogy that descends from Noah is 70 names long (exactly 70, or symbolic of something? Let’s find out). The names of his descendants aren’t translated, as is much of the Bible. Instead, with these names, they are transliterated, meaning that how the word sounds in its native language is just mimicked in a new alphabet. If the words/names are actually translated, they are geographical regions, which is super interesting. Just like numbers used to mean a lot more than they do today, names were the same way; they had meanings that are lost on us today, but certainly weren’t at the time. So some of the descendants of Noah are named “Egypt” and “Cannan” and “Greece,” and there are 70 such names after Noah. So one might then deduce that, by the nature of the number “7,” and the translations of the names, that what is being conveyed is that the descendants of Noah are actually everybody, throughout the entire world, from Europe to Africa to Asia. Reading it to mean that there were exactly 70 generations would be a little dubious.
 
I’m on lunch, so I thought I should write something profound for the sake of clarifying my prior confession of fundamentalism (which I realize may have come as a shock to my Atheist, Buddhist, warlock and Unarian friends). I will offer this clarification:

I believe the Bible is true and actually means what it says (and as to that burning question you all have–no, I’m not a Teetotaler).
 
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Or, as my sainted friend Aquinas says: “Hence, it is plain that nothing false can ever underlie the literal sense of Holy Writ” (SUMMA THEOLOGICA-PART I, QUESTION I, ARTICLE 10).

Well, I’m out again–but I may check in over the weekend.
 
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LeafByNiggle said:
We do not laugh, because we understand the limitations of the people who wrote these accounts. But we do believe the science that shows that mankind is much older. The Church does not disagree.
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They were not inspired? The Holy Spirit was not involved?
 
buffalo said:
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LeafByNiggle:
We do not laugh, because we understand the limitations of the people who wrote these accounts. But we do believe the science that shows that mankind is much older. The Church does not disagree.
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They were not inspired? The Holy Spirit was not involved?
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The Holy Spirit did inspire them, but that does not guarantee that the grammar was correct or that every irrelevant detail is correct. Only Protestants profess sola scriptura.
 
buffalo said:
They were not inspired? The Holy Spirit was not involved?
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God made the world. Why do you deny the evidence shown to you by God in the world He made? And the Holy Spirit was involved in God’s work.

rossum
 
p.p.p.p.p.s. For those who might question what our friend Aquinas (or the rest of our “fundamentalist” forefathers) meant when he made radical statements about God’s Word not being a pack of lies–I give you just one example from Aquinas on the necessity of affirming the woodenly literal truth of God’s Word even when it is providing seemingly insignificant historical data:
“A thing is of faith, indirectly, if the denial of it involves a consequence something against faith; as for instance if anyone said that Samuel was not the son of Elcana, for it follows that divine Scripture would be false” (Summa Theologica, p.1, q. 32, art. 4).

Of course, he was an unenlightened YEC guy…so what can you expect. I’m really out of here this time…
 
@edwest @William_Scott @Edgar I don’t presume to convince you of anything. As you are all quick to point out, the Church allows both of these views that we discuss. I understand that it is difficult to let go of what you have been taught and believed for so long. For those reasons, I don’t try to convince, but just inform if its welcome. If you’d rather ignore what I say or ridicule it, by all means, go ahead. Just know that it will do very little to deter me, just as I’m sure what I say will do very little to deter you from what you believe.

Quite frankly, I don’t care one way or another what you believe about Genesis. I believe in what I have laid out for you, and honestly, it makes a lot of sense, is emphasized by many people much smarter than myself, and doesn’t in the slightest bit mean I am not faithful or don’t believe in God or believe the Bible is a lie. I’ve spelled out for you a lot of what I have because I am genuinely intrigued by the topic and believe knowledge should be propagated to those who are willing to be open to receiving it. What you do with that information is up to you, but I don’t feel the need to try to defend my view to you, as I believe it speaks for itself.

At the end of the day, God is good, no? So why bother with such a small thing when the Church herself doesn’t condemn either of us? The truth will out. Until then, I think its just a really fun area for academia.
 
Let’s try another:

A scientist from today is standing next to Jesus while the multiplying of the loaves and fishes is going on. The scientist decides it’s impossible.

And

A scientist from today walks up to Jesus:

Scientist: “I’m going to create life from this dirt.” And he scoops up some dirt.

Jesus: Get your own dirt.

God created the Universe out of nothing.
 
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LeafByNiggle said:
The Holy Spirit did inspire them, but that does not guarantee that the grammar was correct or that every irrelevant detail is correct. Only Protestants profess sola scriptura.
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The Holy Spirit allowed a misinterpretation for so long?
 
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