Creation vs. Evolution

[Rosenritter]

I appreciate the tutorial, but now it is time to move beyond Creationist Elementary School. The vast majority of mutations are in non-coding areas of the DNA, and have almost no effect on the fitness of the individual. So your 100 mutations turns into probably less than 10 that really count (except for determining things like paternity). If any of those 10 are seriously deleterious, selection will keep you from spreading that through the population.

Sexual recombination, in which you get only half of your DNA from each parent, means that often there is only a 50% chance you will inherit a specific mutation unless both of your parents already have it.

It's always so funny to hear an evolutionist get asked about how sex makes any sense within an evolutionary model. The silence and/or evasion is classic.

 

[gcthomas]

It's always so funny to hear an evolutionist get asked about how sex makes any sense within an evolutionary model. The silence and/or evasion is classic.

Yet another declaration relying on the argument from ignorance. You seem unaware of the possible benefits of sexual reproduction, such as the ability of heterozygotes to mask deleterious mutations, the power of sexual selection to remove mutations from the gene pool, the sharing across a gene pool of the benefits of the beneficial mutations, allelic recombination generating genetic variation leading to more rapid evolution and increased resistance to parasites ...

If any or all of these advantages outweigh the biological cost of having two sexes, then it will be favoured by evolution.

Do you care to engage with this topic that you raised?

 

[MichaelCadry]

Yes, I do understand, the Genesis creation story was just one of many creation stories in existence that the Hebrews drew from. But because they have convinced you that God wrote it, and that's a critical part of your theology, you can't be honest about the mountains of evidence to the contrary.

There are a number of reliable dating techniques, the authors of scripture didn't have to prove anyrhing.

Adam and Eve were educated adults who spoke the language of the fallen "prince of this world", this old, evolved earth, because they came here from another world. There were already people here, the crafty beast had been here loooooooong before Adam.

This Christian scientist explains the many dating techniques if you want to educate yourself.

http://asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html

Dear Caino,

Cain killed Abel, right?? Just curious. I have checked out your link and I still do not trust any of their lofty methods of dating anything! I don't believe in it. To me, it is another Carbon-14 ready to happen. And then again the scientists will say they are sorry they were wrong and come up with some other method we are to believe in instead. I don't need to hear about the half-lives of any rocks or specimens, especially when man will not even live to the date of those half-lives to see if they were right or not?? And their half-lives are thousands or a million of years or more, right?

If our books of the Bible are faulty, then I am sure Jesus would have said something after reading them. He did not say, "Well, this is not true, etc." He upheld the Scriptures and reverenced them. He came to fulfill the Scriptures and He said so. This is getting tiring. Discover it when you face the Lord God during judgment time. That is the best advice that I can presently give you. And Adam and Eve did not come from 'another world.' C'mon! And they spoke the language God gave them to speak in an instant, just like He did with people at the Tower of Babel. Many languages in one instant. Don't you realize He's God??!

Michael

 

[lucaspa]

MichaelCadry "Now when God created Adam, he did not create him as an infant, but instead as a man. Also God did not create a young Universe and planet Earth, or Our Sun and Moon. Instead He created them older. .. These things found in amber, etc., must only truly be 7 or 8,000 years. They just look aged for our sakes. "

I have skipped all the intervening posts, so someone may have brought this up before. Michael is repeating the Oomphalos argument that the world only looks old but is really young. The argument has massive theological problems. The underlying problem is that God did not have to make them older for our sakes. He could just as easily have made the universe look as young as it is. What this argument does is make God a huge liar.

This problem was recognized back when the argument was first proposed: 1857. In that year Philip Gosse, a minister in the Fundamentalist group called the Plymouth Brethren, wrote Oomphalos. In it Gosse made the first written argument that creation only LOOKS old. In it, Gosse even argued that Adam and Eve had navels because that is what one would expect in God-created creatures. (MichaelCrady did not explicitly say that Adam had a navel, but that would be part of Adam being an adult, wouldn't it.) Gosse expected Oomphalos to be attacked by scientists. What he should have expected, but didn't, was the denunciation by the religious community. Asked to write a review of Oomphalos, his friend Rev Charles Kingsley, a minister and author of Westward Ho! refused and wrote the following letter to Gosse.
"You have given the 'vestiges of creation theory' [a pamphlet published in 1844 and espousing a primitive theory of evolution] the best shove forward which it has ever had. I have a special dislike for that book; but, honestly, I felt my heart melting towards it as I read Oomphalos. Shall I tell you the truth? It is best. Your book is the first that ever made me doubt the doctrine of absolute creation, and I fear it will make hundreds do so. Your book tends to prove this - that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes God-the-Sometime-Deceiver. I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in ...your newly created Adam's navel, you make God tell a lie. It is not my reason, but my conscience which revolts here ... I cannot ...believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind. To this painful dilemma you have brought me, and will, I fear, bring hundreds. It will not make me throw away my Bible. I trust and hope. I know in whom I have believed, and can trust Him to bring my faith safe through this puzzle, as He has through others; but for the young I do fear. I would not for a thousand pounds put your book into my children's hands." Garret Hardin, ""Scientific Creationism'" - Marketing Deception as Truth" in Science and Creationism edited by Ashley Montagu, 1982.


Science can accept a deity that lies; Christianity cannot. God must be completely truthful, because we rely on God's truthfulness for things we cannot verify for ourselves: forgiveness of sins, eternal life, Jesus as God's son, etc. If God lies even a little -- much less the massive lie MichaelCrady is proposing -- then we have no assurance God is not lying about these absolutely essential things.

Could the universe look 8,000 or so years old? Absolutely! Not a problem at all. Here's a bit how it would look:
1. No or very little sedimentary rock, because there has not been enough time for erosion to make sediments. Just enough soil for crops. No oil or coal deposits.


2. No stars visible beyond 8,000 light years and stars becoming visible thru history as their light first reached the earth.


3. Isotopes with half-lives less than 50 million years in the earth's crust.


4. No or very few fossils. And those fossils are those of contemporary organisms. Skeletons of ALL organisms mixed together in the sediments. No transitional individuals linking our species to earlier species of hominid (and those exist).

IF we had seen this, then the earth would look as young as is claimed: 8,000 years.

One last thing. The title of the thread sets up a false opposition: creation vs evolution. Evolution is not atheism. Nor is against creation. Instead, evolution is how God created the diversity of life on the planet. That is how Darwin saw it. That is how most Christians have seen it since: "Christians should look on evolution simply as the method by which God works." Rev. James McCosh, theologian and President of Princeton, The Religious Aspect of Evolution, 2d ed. 1890, pg 68.


Creationism is a proposed how that God created: 6 days, 8,000 years ago, each species either spoken into existence in its present form or formed from dirt (depends on which creation story), etc.

God's Creation tells us creationism is wrong. God did not create that way. Instead, God created the universe by the Big Bang, galaxies, stars, and planets by gravity, life by chemistry, and the diversity of life by evolution.

Look up "secondary cause".

 

[lucaspa]

Exactly! Breeders can't tweak add novel change to a turnip to become a human, as Dawkins suggests when he calls them our distant cousins.
The savior of evolutionists, novel change, is overwhelmingly deleterious and slowly accumulates in genomes. Novel change leads to genetic problems. Selection is impotent at recognizing and removing the vast majority of these harmful 'saviors'.

Nice Strawman Fallacy. Of course breeders can't change a turnip into a human. The 2 are already in different Kingdoms, separated by millions of speciation events. But, turnips and humans do share a common ancestor, and yes, that does make them distant cousins, very distant.

Remember, evolution works on populations and results in gradual change over generations, not massive change in a single generation.

The vast majority of mutations are either neutral or beneficial. Only 2.8 mutations out of 1,000 are harmful. PD Keightley and A Caballero, Genomic mutation rates for lifetime reproductive output and lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 94: 3823-3827, 1997. So the premise you have that most "novel change" is overwhelmingly deleterious, is wrong. God tells you it is wrong in His Creation. You should listen to God.

Actually, selection preserves the beneficial variations. I don't suppose you have actually read Darwin, have you? Too bad. Here is Darwin's summary of natural selection. Please note it is a two-step process: variation and selection. You can't separate the 2. Note what I bolded.

"If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each beings welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occured useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection." [Origin, p 103 6th ed.]

 

[6days]

Could the universe look 8,000 or so years old? Absolutely! Not a problem at all. Here's a bit how it would look:
1. No or very little sedimentary rock, because there has not been enough time for erosion to make sediments. Just enough soil for crops. No oil or coal deposits.

The sedimentary layers..... vast coal beds and oil deposits are best understood from the absolute truth of God's Word and the creation/flood model.

2. No stars visible beyond 8,000 light years and stars becoming visible thru history as their light first reached the earth.

The vast number of stars, and vast distances confirm the truth of scripture and the majesty of our Creatir.

3. Isotopes with half-lives less than 50 million years in the earth's crust.

We can measure the half life, but how do you measure the initial quantities and conditions at time of Creation.*

4. No or very few fossils. And those fossils are those of contemporary organisms. Skeletons of ALL organisms mixed together in the sediments. No transitional individuals linking our species to earlier species of hominid (and those exist).

From scripture we know God created Nan from the dust, and woman from mans rib. Man was created as highly intelligent beings. The idea of different species of man is racist and gospel destroying as it destroys the purpose of Christs physical death

IF we had seen this, then the earth would look as young as is claimed: 8,000 years.

The earth DOES look young!

One last thing. The title of the thread sets up a false opposition: creation vs evolution. Evolution is not atheism. Nor is against creation. Instead, evolution is how God created the diversity of life on the planet. That is how Darwin saw it. That is how most Christians have seen it since: "Christians should look on evolution simply as the method by which God works." Rev. James McCosh, theologian and President of Princeton, The Religious Aspect of Evolution, 2d ed. 1890, pg 68.

If McCosh believes in common ancestry, he does not understand the gospel. Death and corruption of creation entered our world with "first Adams" sin.

 

[redfern]

It's always so funny to hear an evolutionist get asked about how sex makes any sense within an evolutionary model. The silence and/or evasion is classic.

Did I say something about DNA from each of your parents that you think was wrong, or is seizing on any chance for ridicule a Creationist talent you specialize in?

 

[MichaelCadry]

MichaelCadry "Now when God created Adam, he did not create him as an infant, but instead as a man. Also God did not create a young Universe and planet Earth, or Our Sun and Moon. Instead He created them older. .. These things found in amber, etc., must only truly be 7 or 8,000 years. They just look aged for our sakes. "

You're nuts, lucaspa! God did create Adam and Eve as young adults, not babies or children. What about it? I meant the things in amber must be only ~6,000 to 7,000 years old. And I believe God created an 'aged Earth.' This Earth that He created had trees grown on it and plants, after He created them. And animals and creeping things also. Before He created man to live on it. Adam and Eve weren't placed in a garden with saplings instead of trees. They had full-grown trees with fruit on them. It is hard to understand, yes. But I'm not making a liar out of God, like you purport. Don't give me any of this "Oomphalos" beliefs. When our God created everything in 6 days, He did not plant saplings, but instead trees with fruit. The same with Him creating aquatic life in ONE DAY! Not baby fish, but instead aged fish. He spoke everything into existence!! I don't even believe in a 'big bang theory.' Your head is all screwed up yourself.

I have skipped all the intervening posts, so someone may have brought this up before. Michael is repeating the Oomphalos argument that the world only looks old but is really young. The argument has massive theological problems. The underlying problem is that God did not have to make them older for our sakes. He could just as easily have made the universe look as young as it is. What this argument does is make God a huge liar.

This problem was recognized back when the argument was first proposed: 1857. In that year

Philip Gosse, a minister in the Fundamentalist group called the Plymouth Brethren, wrote Oomphalos. In it Gosse made the first written argument that creation only LOOKS old. In it, Gosse even argued that Adam and Eve had navels because that is what one would expect in God-created creatures. (MichaelCrady did not explicitly say that Adam had a navel, but that would be part of Adam being an adult, wouldn't it.) Gosse expected Oomphalos to be attacked by scientists. What he should have expected, but didn't, was the denunciation by the religious community. Asked to write a review of Oomphalos, his friend Rev Charles Kingsley, a minister and author of Westward Ho! refused and wrote the following letter to Gosse.
"You have given the 'vestiges of creation theory' [a pamphlet published in 1844 and espousing a primitive theory of evolution] the best shove forward which it has ever had. I have a special dislike for that book; but, honestly, I felt my heart melting towards it as I read Oomphalos. Shall I tell you the truth? It is best. Your book is the first that ever made me doubt the doctrine of absolute creation, and I fear it will make hundreds do so. Your book tends to prove this - that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes God-the-Sometime-Deceiver. I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in ...your newly created Adam's navel, you make God tell a lie. It is not my reason, but my conscience which revolts here ... I cannot ...believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind. To this painful dilemma you have brought me, and will, I fear, bring hundreds. It will not make me throw away my Bible. I trust and hope. I know in whom I have believed, and can trust Him to bring my faith safe through this puzzle, as He has through others; but for the young I do fear. I would not for a thousand pounds put your book into my children's hands." Garret Hardin, ""Scientific Creationism'" - Marketing Deception as Truth" in Science and Creationism edited by Ashley Montagu, 1982.


Science can accept a deity that lies; Christianity cannot. God must be completely truthful, because we rely on God's truthfulness for things we cannot verify for ourselves: forgiveness of sins, eternal life, Jesus as God's son, etc. If God lies even a little -- much less the massive lie MichaelCrady is proposing -- then we have no assurance God is not lying about these absolutely essential things.

Could the universe look 8,000 or so years old? Absolutely! Not a problem at all. Here's a bit how it would look:
1. No or very little sedimentary rock, because there has not been enough time for erosion to make sediments. Just enough soil for crops. No oil or coal deposits.


2. No stars visible beyond 8,000 light years and stars becoming visible thru history as their light first reached the earth.


3. Isotopes with half-lives less than 50 million years in the earth's crust.


4. No or very few fossils. And those fossils are those of contemporary organisms. Skeletons of ALL organisms mixed together in the sediments. No transitional individuals linking our species to earlier species of hominid (and those exist).

IF we had seen this, then the earth would look as young as is claimed: 8,000 years.

One last thing. The title of the thread sets up a false opposition: creation vs evolution. Evolution is not atheism. Nor is against creation. Instead, evolution is how God created the diversity of life on the planet. That is how Darwin saw it. That is how most Christians have seen it since: "Christians should look on evolution simply as the method by which God works." Rev. James McCosh, theologian and President of Princeton, The Religious Aspect of Evolution, 2d ed. 1890, pg 68.


Creationism is a proposed how that God created: 6 days, 8,000 years ago, each species either spoken into existence in its present form or formed from dirt (depends on which creation story), etc.

God's Creation tells us creationism is wrong. God did not create that way. Instead, God created the universe by the Big Bang, galaxies, stars, and planets by gravity, life by chemistry, and the diversity of life by evolution.

Look up "secondary cause".

Dear lucaspa,

You can't have it both ways! God 'SPOKE' everything into EXISTENCE! Don't you think that, if our Lord can keep Daniel and his friends from burning in a super-hot furnace, He can do ANYTHING!!

If God says He Created Everything in six days, then He did. It says He created the Dry Land of Earth before He created the Heaven. He created the Host of Heaven after He created the Earth. The host of heaven includes our stars, and galaxies, and planets, to be for signs and for seasons, etc. And He CREATED our Sun and Moon after He Created our Earth. Do you want to argue with Him. Didn't Jesus made wine out of water?!! Didn't Moses PART the Red Sea?? God doesn't care whether you think He needs half-lives of whatever, He will give you readings of whatever He wishes. Here in Phoenix, it is thundering right now and the sky is clear, not cloudy. He speaks from Heaven. Do you want to mess with Him??

lucaspa, you can't have everything TWO ways. God said He created Light and Darkness: Day and Night, on the first day. During the SAME WEEK as He created the creatures and man/woman. If you are expecting Him to do it all long and drawn out, you're mistaken. You can't expect any Rhyme or Reason when God is creating miracles. Didn't Jesus tell us that God could make men out of rocks?? It's in the Gospel. I remember reading it and I know it's true. Heck, Jesus WALKED ON WATER!!! How can you expect any less from His Father?? Miracles were involved making this Earth and everything ELSE, including the Universe. Your "light years" and all are simply rubbish to God. It did not take a billion years for a star's light to reach our eyes. You're nuts!! Things don't appear what they seem. That is because there is a Fourth dimension. Oh, the things that I could tell you about this 4th Dimension. But I can't tell you because it's still secret until "the mystery of God shall be finished, as He hath declared to His servants, the prophets." (See Rev. 10:7KJV}. So much that IS is invisible to human eyes. Our eyes can only see Third dimensional things right now. You don't know the half of it, and I could tell you secrets that I know if I felt it was right, but you are having trouble with all of this, so how can you understand more?

Isn't it written that God created great whales, and aquatic life in ONE Day?? It doesn't say He created embryos or seedlings. He instead created the whales and aquatic life as young adults, but not as eggs that had yet to be hatched. Don't you all understand? He created the chicken and the egg, but He created the chicken first, and the chicken laid the egg later. Same with the aquatic life. He created frogs and toads first, not tadpoles. He created manta rays, not firstborn, but instead young adults. He SPEAKS His Creations Into Existence, NOT watching them grow from a seed, but instead already grown. So don't think it weird when I say that He created an 'aged' Earth. The Earth, of course, is young, but we are not living on lava and magma, but instead the Earth and ground above it. Which of you will contend with God on these matters?? Things had to start somewhere!! God didn't just throw a lot of 'Eggs' here and there. No, He created adults. Including man and including Earth. I have got to close. I don't know how to tell you any better. You can't go by 'half-lives' or sediments, etc. You'll not get what you would expect. Things have to start somewhere and it's not as seeds, or sperm and eggs. It's as trees and men/women instead.

God Bless US ALL As We Learn,

Michael

 

[6days]

Of course breeders can't change a turnip into a human. The 2 are already in different Kingdoms, separated by millions of speciation events. But, turnips and humans do share a common ancestor, and yes, that does make them distant cousins, very distant.

I understand... You believe that without direction a gene can create itself, and evolve into a geneticist. Yet, you believe its silly to think you can engineer a turnip into a tinsmith. (Both ideas are pseudoscience)

Remember, evolution works on populations and results in gradual change over generations, not massive change in a single generation.

If you mean adaptation...then the Biblical model is rapid change, based on pre-existing genetic information and mechanisms. It can happen in just a few generations.

The vast majority of mutations are either neutral or beneficial.

That is nonsense and I doubt even the most hardcore*atheist evolutionist in the world with a PhD in genetics would agree with you.* At best they might say most mutations are near neutral. To claim they are neutral would be like evolutionists of yesterday who told us our body was full of junk DNA and useless biological remnants.

Only 2.8 mutations out of 1,000 are harmful. PD Keightley and A Caballero, Genomic mutation rates for lifetime reproductive output and lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 94: 3823-3827, 1997. So the premise you have that most "novel change" is overwhelmingly deleterious, is wrong.

Two years later Keightley and Walker said "deleterious mutation rate appears so high in humans and our close relatives that it is doubtful such species could survive". That is the data...they then go on speculating how that data can fit within their worldview.

God tells you it is wrong in His Creation. You should listen to God.

Which verse are you referring to? Ex. 20:11 tells us* "For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."

Actually, selection preserves the beneficial variations.

Actually, selection is a fairly impotent 'force' that can remove the most deadly mutations, but with a hundred or more new mutations added to each generation, genetic load increases.

Here is Darwin's summary of natural selection.

Selection was an idea Darwin borrowed from a creationist scientist.

Darwins explanations have failed. He didn't understand what produces the variation. Too bad he didn't know what we know now. Too bad he hadn't worked alongside Mendel.

 

[Rosenritter]

Yet another declaration relying on the argument from ignorance. You seem unaware of the possible benefits of sexual reproduction, such as the ability of heterozygotes to mask deleterious mutations, the power of sexual selection to remove mutations from the gene pool, the sharing across a gene pool of the benefits of the beneficial mutations, allelic recombination generating genetic variation leading to more rapid evolution and increased resistance to parasites ...

If any or all of these advantages outweigh the biological cost of having two sexes, then it will be favoured by evolution.

Do you care to engage with this topic that you raised?

Wow. You don't even understand the question. Not even in the ballpark. Do you want to figure out the problem before you act arrogant?

 

[Rosenritter]

MichaelCadry "Now when God created Adam, he did not create him as an infant, but instead as a man. Also God did not create a young Universe and planet Earth, or Our Sun and Moon. Instead He created them older. .. These things found in amber, etc., must only truly be 7 or 8,000 years. They just look aged for our sakes. "

I have skipped all the intervening posts, so someone may have brought this up before. Michael is repeating the Oomphalos argument that the world only looks old but is really young. The argument has massive theological problems. The underlying problem is that God did not have to make them older for our sakes. He could just as easily have made the universe look as young as it is. What this argument does is make God a huge liar.

I agree with you on two counts. First, is that God did not have to make the world look older for our sakes. Second, the argument that God make the world look older is a bad argument to begin with, But the reason why it's a bad argument is because the world doesn't look old to begin with.

Science can accept a deity that lies; Christianity cannot. God must be completely truthful, because we rely on God's truthfulness for things we cannot verify for ourselves: forgiveness of sins, eternal life, Jesus as God's son, etc. If God lies even a little -- much less the massive lie MichaelCrady is proposing -- then we have no assurance God is not lying about these absolutely essential things.

That's very well said and written. Along those lines, if God is honest and truthful and forthcoming, that we would also expect that he would be correct about simple fact statements, such as "For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is..." (Exodus 20:11) and "But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female" (Mark 10:6.) If Jesus lies to us about this, how can he be trusted?

Could the universe look 8,000 or so years old? Absolutely! Not a problem at all. Here's a bit how it would look:
1. No or very little sedimentary rock, because there has not been enough time for erosion to make sediments. Just enough soil for crops. No oil or coal deposits.

You're operating on a bad assumption that God is able to create man from dirt in a moment, but that he isn't able to create dirt in the same amount of time. Tell me, when you buy a house plant and a pot, don't you also buy dirt as well? What are you going to put the plant in? When God created the plants, he already had created the earth with enough dirt to plant them in. He's not incompetent.

2. No stars visible beyond 8,000 light years and stars becoming visible thru history as their light first reached the earth.

You're again operating on a flawed assumption. If God can create a star or a million stars with a single word (universe) and if he created them for the express purpose of decorating the night sky for his creation, don't you think that he's also capable of creating the light at the same time? What type of all-powerful deity can create a sun but has to wait for it to emit light? Create both at the same time, since the stated purpose is so that they can be seen.

Genesis 1:14-16 KJV
(14) And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
(15) And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
(16) And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.


Do you think God is able to create photons, just incapable of of creating photons with an existing velocity vector? Or that if he creates a star, he is incapable of moving it to the location he chooses, or alternatively stretching the light out from it in a flash after it is positioned just right?

3. Isotopes with half-lives less than 50 million years in the earth's crust.

Why? If I build a Rolls Royce that is supposed to have a life span of 100 years, it doesn't mean that my company can't be two years old. The half life of my created product does nothing to reflect on the age of my company.

4. No or very few fossils. And those fossils are those of contemporary organisms. Skeletons of ALL organisms mixed together in the sediments. No transitional individuals linking our species to earlier species of hominid (and those exist).

Why would there be very few fossils? Fossils are created by the correct conditions, not my mere randomness over millions of years. Sudden burial and water replacing the substance with minerals creates the fossil. Just like what you would have with flooding. A world wide flash flood would provide tons of fossils, generally grouped by those that get buried first, and with those that swim or float or fly best at top. Like what we see today.

When you see a fossil, what makes you think it is "transitional?" You simply know that the thing is dead. Not that it was changing from one to another.

One last thing. The title of the thread sets up a false opposition: creation vs evolution. Evolution is not atheism. Nor is against creation. Instead, evolution is how God created the diversity of life on the planet. That is how Darwin saw it. That is how most Christians have seen it since: "Christians should look on evolution simply as the method by which God works." Rev. James McCosh, theologian and President of Princeton, The Religious Aspect of Evolution, 2d ed. 1890, pg 68.

Creationism is a proposed how that God created: 6 days, 8,000 years ago, each species either spoken into existence in its present form or formed from dirt (depends on which creation story), etc.

God's Creation tells us creationism is wrong. God did not create that way. Instead, God created the universe by the Big Bang, galaxies, stars, and planets by gravity, life by chemistry, and the diversity of life by evolution.

Look up "secondary cause".

God's creation supports what he already said, that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth in six days. The evolution theory, put forth and desperately clung to by the atheist community, says that if there is a God, he is mysteriously absent, that Death created humanity instead, that the bible is plainly wrong, and God cannot be trusted (and he for all intensive purposes does not exist.)

 

[Rosenritter]

We can measure the half life, but how do you measure the initial quantities and conditions at time of Creation.*
From scripture we know God created Nan from the dust, and woman from mans rib. Man was created as highly intelligent beings. The idea of different species of man is racist and gospel destroying as it destroys the purpose of Christs physical death

The first man was named Adam, not Nan. You're thinking of his great-grandchild, Nan the Prankster.

 

[Rosenritter]

Did I say something about DNA from each of your parents that you think was wrong, or is seizing on any chance for ridicule a Creationist talent you specialize in?

I was just seizing on an opportunity to ridicule Evolution, but it helps to prove my point that neither you nor gcthomas recognize the problem. It's an example of how the evolutionist mindset turns off and forbids critical thinking that threatens the sacred position.

I'll illustrate a bit and see if you understand. Have you seen a movie, "Reign of Fire?" The idea is that mankind is reduced in numbers as dragons took over the planet. Dragons, dragons, everywhere, and not a drop to drink. But the dragons had a weakness. They only had one male. That is, one male in existence on the entire planet. The humans killed the male and then poof! Dragon problem solved.

So how does "male and female" evolve? If you have a working organism that can reproduce itself, it is a massive evolutionary defect if one of its offspring has a mutation that does not allow itself to reproduce. Did you ever think about that?

 

[gcthomas]

Wow. You don't even understand the question. Not even in the ballpark. Do you want to figure out the problem before you act arrogant?

I can't act as arrogant as you, so why don't you spell out the problem for me? You forgot to state your position in your earlier post.

 

[6days]

The first man was named Adam, not Nan. You're thinking of his great-grandchild, Nan the Prankster.

Haha..... Yes, Of course!! I got confused because of the Book of Hezekiah.

 

[Caino]

MichaelCadry "Now when God created Adam, he did not create him as an infant, but instead as a man. Also God did not create a young Universe and planet Earth, or Our Sun and Moon. Instead He created them older. .. These things found in amber, etc., must only truly be 7 or 8,000 years. They just look aged for our sakes. "

I have skipped all the intervening posts, so someone may have brought this up before. Michael is repeating the Oomphalos argument that the world only looks old but is really young. The argument has massive theological problems. The underlying problem is that God did not have to make them older for our sakes. He could just as easily have made the universe look as young as it is. What this argument does is make God a huge liar.

This problem was recognized back when the argument was first proposed: 1857. In that year Philip Gosse, a minister in the Fundamentalist group called the Plymouth Brethren, wrote Oomphalos. In it Gosse made the first written argument that creation only LOOKS old. In it, Gosse even argued that Adam and Eve had navels because that is what one would expect in God-created creatures. (MichaelCrady did not explicitly say that Adam had a navel, but that would be part of Adam being an adult, wouldn't it.) Gosse expected Oomphalos to be attacked by scientists. What he should have expected, but didn't, was the denunciation by the religious community. Asked to write a review of Oomphalos, his friend Rev Charles Kingsley, a minister and author of Westward Ho! refused and wrote the following letter to Gosse.
"You have given the 'vestiges of creation theory' [a pamphlet published in 1844 and espousing a primitive theory of evolution] the best shove forward which it has ever had. I have a special dislike for that book; but, honestly, I felt my heart melting towards it as I read Oomphalos. Shall I tell you the truth? It is best. Your book is the first that ever made me doubt the doctrine of absolute creation, and I fear it will make hundreds do so. Your book tends to prove this - that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes God-the-Sometime-Deceiver. I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in ...your newly created Adam's navel, you make God tell a lie. It is not my reason, but my conscience which revolts here ... I cannot ...believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind. To this painful dilemma you have brought me, and will, I fear, bring hundreds. It will not make me throw away my Bible. I trust and hope. I know in whom I have believed, and can trust Him to bring my faith safe through this puzzle, as He has through others; but for the young I do fear. I would not for a thousand pounds put your book into my children's hands." Garret Hardin, ""Scientific Creationism'" - Marketing Deception as Truth" in Science and Creationism edited by Ashley Montagu, 1982.


Science can accept a deity that lies; Christianity cannot. God must be completely truthful, because we rely on God's truthfulness for things we cannot verify for ourselves: forgiveness of sins, eternal life, Jesus as God's son, etc. If God lies even a little -- much less the massive lie MichaelCrady is proposing -- then we have no assurance God is not lying about these absolutely essential things.

Could the universe look 8,000 or so years old? Absolutely! Not a problem at all. Here's a bit how it would look:
1. No or very little sedimentary rock, because there has not been enough time for erosion to make sediments. Just enough soil for crops. No oil or coal deposits.


2. No stars visible beyond 8,000 light years and stars becoming visible thru history as their light first reached the earth.


3. Isotopes with half-lives less than 50 million years in the earth's crust.


4. No or very few fossils. And those fossils are those of contemporary organisms. Skeletons of ALL organisms mixed together in the sediments. No transitional individuals linking our species to earlier species of hominid (and those exist).

IF we had seen this, then the earth would look as young as is claimed: 8,000 years.

One last thing. The title of the thread sets up a false opposition: creation vs evolution. Evolution is not atheism. Nor is against creation. Instead, evolution is how God created the diversity of life on the planet. That is how Darwin saw it. That is how most Christians have seen it since: "Christians should look on evolution simply as the method by which God works." Rev. James McCosh, theologian and President of Princeton, The Religious Aspect of Evolution, 2d ed. 1890, pg 68.


Creationism is a proposed how that God created: 6 days, 8,000 years ago, each species either spoken into existence in its present form or formed from dirt (depends on which creation story), etc.

God's Creation tells us creationism is wrong. God did not create that way. Instead, God created the universe by the Big Bang, galaxies, stars, and planets by gravity, life by chemistry, and the diversity of life by evolution.

Look up "secondary cause".

Great post, well reasoned. But these aren't reasonable people.

 

[redfern]

I was just seizing on an opportunity to ridicule Evolution,

I realize some people desperately want to pretend they are of a different lineage than what their ancestry really is. Some people just have to imagine they are descendants of some royal line.

For me, when I look at something as different from me as a tree, I still know that at the cellular level, that apparent vast difference between the tree and me is mostly just a rearrangement of instructions in the DNA.

If you have a working organism that can reproduce itself, it is a massive evolutionary defect if one of its offspring has a mutation that does not allow itself to reproduce.

Let me restate what I think you are pointing out. If we postulate that the early evolutionary forms (mostly single-celled) reproduced by simply splitting, and then one came along that was, say, “male”, it could not reproduce unless at that same time and locale a “female” miraculously showed up at the same time?

Did you ever think about that?

Details of evolutionary theory is not a specialty of mine, but I know this problem has been pointed out almost since Darwin sold his first book. Your point rests on what you say is the need for a “massive evolutionary defect”. I’ll bet the separation into two sexes was not a huge instantaneous jump, but rather like Darwin said evolution operates, the result of a series of small incremental steps, where initially exchanging DNA with a partner was slightly advantageous, but not essential.

Without even looking, I am confident there are numerous studies looking at how the transition from asexual reproduction to full male-female reproduction could occur.

 

[gcthomas]

So how does "male and female" evolve? If you have a working organism that can reproduce itself, it is a massive evolutionary defect if one of its offspring has a mutation that does not allow itself to reproduce. Did you ever think about that?

Another argument from ignorance, but this time with the assumption that everyone else is as ignorant. Why do you think that your high-school debating points haven't been thought about for over a century?

In the case of your 'massive evolutionary defect', the obvious solution is that the origin of sexual reproduction happened very early on, when organisms were substantially smaller and less complex. Have you noticed that some sexually reproducing organisms don't have two sexes at all, but are hermaphrodites?

Perhaps you should try typing your imaginary killer objections into Wikipedia before posting? It would stop you looking like you haven't even tried.

 

[6days]

Some people just have to imagine they are descendants of some royal line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzqTFNfeDnE

 

[6days]

In the case of your 'massive evolutionary defect', the obvious solution is that the origin of sexual reproduction happened very early on, when organisms were substantially smaller and less complex.

Oh...ok... so it was that simple??
GC..... You better let Richard Dawkins know that you have it cased.
Actually it was simple when an omnipotent omniscient God was involved.
""Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,'"