Evolution
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brother Willi
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Re: ref evolution
Re: ref evolution
:think:
:thumb:
Re: ref evolution
:think:
:thumb:
brother Willi
New member
because i know God is.
i serve God
YEP, thats how it works.
it leaves everything up to you.
almost like it was planned.
you can see that if you like, it makes for interesting talk.
think how boring things would be without free will.
brother Willi
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i cant answer that other then i have.
brother Willi
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is the bacterial still bacterial?
i dont know about that million years.
but hey, go for it.
careful it dont eat you:chuckle:
brother Willi
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life is as old as the Bible says it is.
do you know what the Bible says?
aharvey
New member
Sorry guys, I've been pretty sick lately. Here's a quick catchup.
Morphy,
First off, I am an evolutionary biologist by trade. I came across this forum several months ago while trying to understand the true nature of the problem that Creationists have with evolutionary theory. Please do not mistake my ability, such as it is, to describe these problems as meaning that I share them!
Jukia,
The ironic thing is that the Bible doesn't ever say how old the Earth is. This is inferred by YECs by adding up the ages of people (I think the age at which a named child was born, at least I hope so!) in the Biblical lineage. This of course assumes that everyone is mentioned in an unbroken lineage, but I've seen arguments by some YECs (have you ever heard of a guy named Barry Setterfield?) that this is probably an incorrect assumption.
Brother Willi,
You made this comment:
"the only real difference i see is, i would say "one common Creator"
This is a point I'd love to expand upon, though I don't think I'm up to it now. I want you to ponder this, though. The commonalities shared by all living things could imply a common Creator, of course, on the other hand, an all-powerful Creator wouldn't be so limited, so in fact if we found instead that organisms were fundamentally different from each other, you could claim that to imply the hand of an all-powerful Creator as well, right? Now, we do see a rich array of similarities and differences across all life; evolutionary theory can explain, can make sense of, a great deal of this pattern (and the rest is probably understudied at this point). And I mean this in a very specific way, no floppy generalities here. At the level, for example, of "Why do whales have hair? Why are bat's bones more similar to our bones than to pterosaur bones?" Do you think that a non-evolutionary Creationist perspective could make sense of these patterns? In a way that is more profound that "God must have thought that was the best way, and who are we to question His eternal wisdom?"
Morphy,
First off, I am an evolutionary biologist by trade. I came across this forum several months ago while trying to understand the true nature of the problem that Creationists have with evolutionary theory. Please do not mistake my ability, such as it is, to describe these problems as meaning that I share them!
Jukia,
The ironic thing is that the Bible doesn't ever say how old the Earth is. This is inferred by YECs by adding up the ages of people (I think the age at which a named child was born, at least I hope so!) in the Biblical lineage. This of course assumes that everyone is mentioned in an unbroken lineage, but I've seen arguments by some YECs (have you ever heard of a guy named Barry Setterfield?) that this is probably an incorrect assumption.
Brother Willi,
You made this comment:
"the only real difference i see is, i would say "one common Creator"
This is a point I'd love to expand upon, though I don't think I'm up to it now. I want you to ponder this, though. The commonalities shared by all living things could imply a common Creator, of course, on the other hand, an all-powerful Creator wouldn't be so limited, so in fact if we found instead that organisms were fundamentally different from each other, you could claim that to imply the hand of an all-powerful Creator as well, right? Now, we do see a rich array of similarities and differences across all life; evolutionary theory can explain, can make sense of, a great deal of this pattern (and the rest is probably understudied at this point). And I mean this in a very specific way, no floppy generalities here. At the level, for example, of "Why do whales have hair? Why are bat's bones more similar to our bones than to pterosaur bones?" Do you think that a non-evolutionary Creationist perspective could make sense of these patterns? In a way that is more profound that "God must have thought that was the best way, and who are we to question His eternal wisdom?"
brother Willi
New member
life aint that old
brother Willi
New member
life takes shape within itself.
it is the way it was meant to be.
the "kinds" is the real question, and to that i have no real answer, not enough is writen
brother Willi
New member
what is the nytch bacteria fills?
brother Willi
New member
what year is the Jewish calender in?
do we know how long the time in the Garden of Eden was?
are they combined?
aharvey
New member
Since all life as we know it would be impossible without bacteria, I would agree that bacteria would be a poor example of the death and corruption brought on by man's sin. On the other hand, some bacteria do indeed cause death and maybe corruption (not a scientific term, so I'm not sure what you specifically mean by it). An evolutionary biologist can explain this; what's the YEC interpretation?
So what is the reason we do find dinosaur bones?
aharvey
New member
It's a work in progress. My first response to Morphy gives you some of what I've found. Reviewing the history of the dispute has been most enlightening. I think it's no accident that most of the current YEC arguments involve things like abiogenesis, information theory, the Big Bang, and the second law of thermodynamics. All of these are irrelevant or at best peripheral to evolutionary theory per se, and all are therefore likely to be outside the areas of expertise of practicing biologists.
Of course, there is also the irreducible complexity class of arguments, which includes the "wow! look how complex cells/genes are!" This entire class of arguments is based on some faulty premises, and, unexpectedly, a healthy dose of appeal to emotion.
In general I have not had good luck getting positive evidence for a young earth creationist view of the world, only arguments against evolution. I have also had little success getting YECs to even provide a logical YEC-based explanation for the few interesting situations I've presented. Brother Willi's post is typical: "it is the way it was meant to be." This may be true, but it's not very useful.
I have also learned that my colleagues are pretty uninformed about the YEC world, even those that work here in the Bible Belt. They tend to be harshly dismissive, but have often never tried to have a reasonable discussion with Creationists. Although I don't get the impression that I've reached many minds here, I do think my level of understanding is far greater than it was last summer.
By the way, it's worth repeating that when I talk about "reaching minds," I don't mean "convert to heathen evolutionism." I take my TOL signature very seriously. If I have a goal besides expanding my own knowledge base, it's that I want people to think more deeply about what they say, what they believe. My goal is not to convert anyone to an Old-earth, evolution-based worldview. My goal is to be able to intelligently discuss, compare, and contrast the assumptions, models, predictions, evidence, and implications of these different world views.
Stratnerd
New member
To me the primary difference between creationists and scientists is epistemology. Creationists believe that revelation via diety to man is a superior episteme. That is, what is written in the people is absolute Truth. All you need to do is visit AIG or CRC and read their statement of faith to see this. Science, on the other hand, believes that inference, though fallible, is a superior episteme. Revelation doesn't play any role since science seeks to be objective in data gathering and interpretation.
Creationists beef with evolution has nothing do with evidence for creation. In fact, evidence is irrelevent to the creationists position since revelation is their source not inference. This is why creationists create and seek conflicts with evolution like information theory and why they have a difficult time creating a comprehensive theory. The other difficultly is that any creationist theory is likely to conflict with the world. Why? Because the world, via inference, looks to be several billion years old and whose inhabitatants appear to have evolved from each other.
Creationists beef with evolution has nothing do with evidence for creation. In fact, evidence is irrelevent to the creationists position since revelation is their source not inference. This is why creationists create and seek conflicts with evolution like information theory and why they have a difficult time creating a comprehensive theory. The other difficultly is that any creationist theory is likely to conflict with the world. Why? Because the world, via inference, looks to be several billion years old and whose inhabitatants appear to have evolved from each other.
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