New film tackles evidence for evolution

[glorydaz]

Your problem is you want evolution to do things it has no business doing:

Heck, it can't even do the things it's supposed to be doing.

 

[Stripe]

Heck, it can't even do the things it's supposed to be doing.

Yep. The evolutionists picked out the easiest of the challenges presented in the video. And by easiest, I mean the one on which they can waffle on about nothing the most.

 

[noguru]

Psst. You may not have noticed, but you have Christian listed as your belief. Just saying.....

Yep, it says Christian and I am honest and a Christian. Unlike like you who is deceitful and yet claims to be Christian. So why should we believe that you are a Christian, if we can't believe you about science?

 

[glorydaz]

Yep, it says Christian and I am honest and a Christian. Unlike like you who is deceitful and yet claims to be Christian. So why should we believe that you are a Christian, if we can't believe you about science?

That's kind of a dumb thing to say. Perhaps you'd like a do-over.

 

[The Barbarian]

Yep. The evolutionists picked out the easiest of the challenges presented in the video. And by easiest, I mean the one on which they can waffle on about nothing the most.

I invited you to tell us what you think the most convincing evidence from your video is. You cut and ran.

So I'm thinking there's no substance whatever to your complaint. You could always step up and answer that question, of course. But I don't think that's going to happen.

 

[The Barbarian]

It's odd, Stripe. Out of all living things, man is the only one with choice. All the rest of living things do instinctively what is required to exist. They do exactly what God created them to do....multiply according to their own kind....according to the seed that is in them. Man, alone, chooses.

The evidence indicates otherwise. Some animals are capable of thought and decision-making.

Some are even capable of inferring what others are thinking.

That's really not what separates us from other animals.

 

[Alate_One]

Yes, people can believe in a god and evolution. However, that does not answer the challenge. If evolution is responsible for all of the diversity of life, how does it account for morality?

Why should it account for morality? That's like asking why the Big Bang doesn't account for economics. Or why the cell theory doesn't explain high rise architecture.

Your "challenge" is a non-sequitur based on a misunderstanding of what science is.

The challenge is that morality is a nonphysical part of reality and thus cannot be explained by evolution, which removes evolution as a complete explanation of what we see.

That's not a challenge for anything, it's a known limitation for science. That's the plain and obvious point you seem to be missing. :doh:

 

[Alate_One]

Heck, it can't even do the things it's supposed to be doing.

It doesn't?

It makes predictions . . . that can be tested and are confirmed. Like Darwin's predicted moth.

Darwin's Comet Orchid

Its predictions that can be tested with a wide range of scientific disciplines. That's pretty much what any scientific theory is supposed to do.

 

[Stripe]

Why should it account for morality?

Evolutionists hate reading.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

That suits me. I ought to be able to commit to a post at least every thee days, and sometimes more quickly, I would think, so we may not even need to go past two weeks, depending on how the timing ends up.

Knight has approved and I have started the One-on-One thread located here:

http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103958
and will be making my opening post in next few days. If there is anything you see in the "about this One-on-One" post therein that you want clarified or additions made, let me know I will make any needed changes.

AMR

 

[Selaphiel]

The lengths you people will go to in order to deny your Creator exists is beyond me. Look outside your window....it's clearly seen and understood by all men. The reason you deny it is you would have to bow to someone besides yourself were you to do so.

What he said does not amount to denying a Creator, it amounts to denying that God created the universe by making it appear in more or less its current state with a poof. There simply is no necessary link between affirming scientific explanations of natural phenomena and denying the reality of God, they are perfectly compatible. God is not a scientific hypothesis, discussions about God belongs to the realm of metaphysics.

Creationism on the other hand makes God into a demiurge. A powerful being, but not God in any classical sense of the word. He is more akin to Zeus than to God. According to the creationists, he is a being among other beings, just far more powerful. Creationism is horrible science and it is also horrible theology.

That is one thing. The other thing is that the theory of evolution is a strong scientific theory. If your reading of the Bible was the only possible valid reading of the text, then I am sorry to say that the text should be considered nonsense.

 

[alwight]

Man being formed from the dust of the ground by a higher being, and then multiplying according to like kind is a miracle compared to his slowly evolving from pond scum? That kind of thinking only proves man is not getting one bit smarter since the beginning. :chuckle:

But there isn't even the slightest attempt by YECers to assess the evidence and provide their own rational and reasoned sequence of events as an explanation, just a supposed number of miraculous events, requiring no evidence at all.

The ToE, whether you like it or not, as an explanation takes us through time from the earliest and simplest of beginnings to explain, from the evidence, what probably did happen to give us the current state of play. But for all their Creationist eye candy videos and trotted out "scientists" YECers are left simply asserting that complex life somehow simply appeared out of thin air 6000 years ago because that's what a literal Genesis says.
Creationists typically make selected attempts to obfuscate or to play stump-the-evolutionists, as though that would make a miraculous creation somehow more rational.

No YECers, abiogenesis (the origin of life), despite what YEC "scientists" may say in the video, does not have to first be explained in minute detail. Darwinian evolution is an explanation of the evidence not a bald assertion nor is it an explanation of life's origin.

If Darwinian evolution is wrong then come on, it simply must be falsifiable by some evidence from somewhere, surely! But no, the reality is that YEC "scientists" nor anyone else can apparently do that, YECs won't even try any more, they prefer to stick to eye candy and wilful ignorance.

 

[Stripe]

What he said does not amount to denying a Creator.

It is at odds with what the creator said.

That's the thing about evolutionists, their religion comes first, even at the expense of the clear teaching of the bible.

Denying that God created the universe by making it appear in more or less its current state.

The world was not created anything like what we see today.

Evolutuonism is horrible science and it is also horrible theology.

The Bible ... should be considered nonsense.

If only evolutionists could be so consistent. Instead they insist that the words God wrote be allowed to mean anything.

 

[alwight]

The Bible ... should be considered nonsense.

If only evolutionists could be so consistent. Instead they insist that the words God wrote be allowed to mean anything.

Quote mining is very dishonest Stripe.

 

[Selaphiel]

It is at odds with what the creator said.

That's the thing about evolutionists, their religion comes first, even at the expense of the clear teaching of the bible.

Wrong. I just do not think that a particular way of reading sacred texts, one that is not even orthodox historically speaking, trump the results of the analysis of natural science or any other field of knowledge. If your religion cannot be integrated into a system that is coherent with our best knowledge, or in your case put in direct opposition to it, then it is not of much value in my opinion.

Evolutuonism is horrible science and it is also horrible theology.

It is sound science and it is no theology at all. The conceptual analysis of God is not an object of study for biology.

If only evolutionists could be so consistent. Instead they insist that the words God wrote be allowed to mean anything.

It is quite telling that you have to misrepresent me to make your point. You are making a point, but it is not about what I said, it is rather about your own attitude to honesty.

 

[alwight]

It is at odds with what the creator said.

That's the thing about evolutionists, their religion comes first, even at the expense of the clear teaching of the bible.

The world was not created anything like what we see today.

Evolutuonism is horrible science and it is also horrible theology.

Being horrible or not has no bearing on its veracity.
What I think would be more horrible might be that an omnipotent and omniscient God would have created perfection knowing full well that it was not going to stay that way, that pain, cruelty, disease, death and disaster would be normal, and then not do anything about it, in fact bring it about!
Blaming it all on some poor dupe called Adam is a complete crock and nonsense, a scapegoat? Really God?

 

[musterion]

it is no theology at all.

You're right. It's actually worse because it invariably results in an anti-theology. Every single time, Man is elevated to the position of God over other men; note how Lenin's waxen corpse was kept ever on display for the perpetual adoration of the masses. Such idolatry is creepy enough when Catholics vie to touch toe bones of purported saints or bow down to a vial of a dead man's blood. These were ATHEISTS who made an idol of a religiously preserved corpse.

You are well aware that in just the past 100 years, whenever and wherever atheists gained control over a society mass death has resulted. If evolutionary faith and atheism could ever produce the godless Utopia that's always promised, it's had several opportunities to do so. Instead, they result in mass graves, men condemned to starvation and torture and burial alive by men who make themselves God of the State. And here you are preaching the gospel that always leads to such coming to power. Your kind learns nothing.

 

[alwight]

You're right. It's actually worse because it invariably results in an anti-theology. Every single time, Man is elevated to the position of God over other men; note how Lenin's waxen corpse was kept ever on display for the perpetual adoration of the masses. Such idolatry is creepy enough when Catholics vie to touch toe bones of purported saints or bow down to a vial of a dead man's blood. These were ATHEISTS who made an idol of a religiously preserved corpse.

You are well aware that in just the past 100 years, whenever and wherever atheists gained control over a society mass death has resulted. If evolutionary faith and atheism could ever produce the godless Utopia that's always promised, it's had several opportunities to do so. Instead, they result in mass graves, men condemned to starvation and torture and burial alive by men who make themselves God of the State. And here you are preaching the gospel that always leads to such coming to power. Your kind learns nothing.

You have some very strange notions going on here, but I'll take a stab.
Communism as a doctrine is what Lenin represented not atheism, which is nothing more than a disbelief in gods.
Wars are fought over doctrines, whether religious or not.
Two world wars were clearly not about atheism.
Nobody fights wars for atheism because it is not a doctrine and atheists are not fooled by promises about an afterlife if they get killed or that a god is on their side.
Islamic Jahid rather relies on sexually deprived radicalised young men believing that all they need do is to die in battle for their supposed religious duty and paradise is theirs.
Religious belief and doctrines have far more to answer for than atheism, or simply "theism" for that matter.

 

[musterion]

You have some very strange notions going on here

Everything I just posted is factual. You simply don't like them.

 

[Selaphiel]

You're right. It's actually worse because it invariably results in an anti-theology. Every single time, Man is elevated to the position of God over other men; note how Lenin's waxen corpse was kept ever on display for the perpetual adoration of the masses. Such idolatry is creepy enough when Catholics vie to touch toe bones of purported saints or bow down to a vial of a dead man's blood. These were ATHEISTS who made an idol of a religiously preserved corpse.

You are well aware that in just the past 100 years, whenever and wherever atheists gained control over a society mass death has resulted. If evolutionary faith and atheism could ever produce the godless Utopia that's always promised, it's had several opportunities to do so. Instead, they result in mass graves, men condemned to starvation and torture and burial alive by men who make themselves God of the State. And here you are preaching the gospel that always leads to such coming to power. Your kind learns nothing.

What on earth does this have to do with a scientific theory that describes the process of how life diversify?

Scientific theories are descriptive, they are not normative. All the theory of evolution does is to describe the origin of different lifeforms by showing how lifeforms diversify through genetic variation and natural selection (and arguably other more complex mechanisms). If you try to deduce some morality from this process, you are no longer doing science. Natural science is a descriptive discipline, it does not deal with normativity.

I could just as easily turn it on its head. Since man shares common ancestry with other forms of life, this should magnify our view of the rest of nature, not devalue or view ofman.
There is nothing within the science of evolution that says that man is worthless or less worth because he is related to apes, that the value of man is lowered because of common ancestry. I could just as easily say that apes and other evolutionary antecedent creatures are amazing creatures, because they are related to man. That when we understand ourselves as part of a biological tree of life, that aggrandizes the entire tree and the tree aggrandizes man because we can see how beautiful and complex the entire system can be. You do not change a thing by explaining its origin, mankind does not suddenly lose its qualities by being understood according to the theory of evolution.

Social Darwinism != the theory of evolution. It is a horrendous moral theory, which is inspired by not a part of the scientific theory of evolution. It is also based on a simplistic view of evolution as a process that is just "red in tooth and claw".

My Christian ethics are not abolished by my affirmation of the theory of evolution. To claim that the latter necessarily implies an abolition of the former is simply to misunderstand what science is and what it can do.