- who created the first 2 atoms in the big bang if there was no creator?
- How come we don't see millions of transitional fossils on earth?
- carbon-dating is false
- Many examples of evolution contradict eachother
- Biology disagrees with evolution (or at least i here, i don't know much about this one)

These are just a few from top of my mind. Can anyone give me some tips on getting them were it hurts? I really want to show these athiests that they are wrong, which could possibly lead to saving them in the future. Thank you to those who reply.

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Mr BLonDe

No it isn't, the young earth theory is probably wrong.

Actually the obvious one to me is that in nature things tend from order to chaos, not vice versa.

However, 'showing them where they are wrong' is pretty useless, it just causes fights, which is great for self righteousness and not much else. The Christian message is the power of God in a persons life, not an argument. That's what the Pharisees did.

By all means stand up for evolution if asked, but move the focus to the experience of recieving the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, and the difference that walking in the Spirit makes to your own life. That's real, and cannot be argued with. Without meeting the Creator, creation and evolution are empty theories that mean nothing.

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Mr BLonDe

The original Hebrew does not say God made the world in six literal days, only six time periods. If it was six days or not is moot - in that time He created men and women, and in Genesis two, at a different time, He *formed* one man and then a woman. I would *never* use science to try and prove the Bible wrong, but the fact is the Bible doesn't say it, and it's easy to prove it's not true - if we all came from Adam and Eve, we'd all be the same colour, and so hopelessly inbred at this point that we would all be gibbering morons with high foreheads, and probably sterile.

You see, mentioning stuff other then facts (such as the good feelings you get by being a christian and other stuff like that) makes athiests laugh.

If that's what you think being a Christian is, you need to read the Bible. The Bible says not to trust your feelings, I'm not talking about emotion, but physical proof of God in the life of every Christian.

Evolution has nothing to do with the creation of the universe and the big-bang theory.

The biological definition taken from (www.freedictionary.org) is:
A general name for the history of the steps by which any living organism has acquired the morphological and physiological characters which distinguish it; a gradual unfolding of successive phases of growth or development.

Therefore it is possible to believe that God created us in his image, but that he did through evolution (which is his tool).

Some well meaning Christians have tried so hard to make the evidence fit their belief that the earth is 6000 years old and failed. You will do more damage to people's perceptions of christianity by making unfounded claims (like carbon-dating is false, and biology disagrees with evolution) than good.

On the other hand some parts of the bible clearly contradict the current scientific understanding of creation.

So I am not sure what I believe about evolution but I don't think its that big of an issue

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Rowan / GODCENTRIC Christian Demoscene

Until then...

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Mr BLonDe

[This message has been edited by Mr BLonDe (edited January 22, 2002).]

[This message has been edited by Mr BLonDe (edited January 22, 2002).]

before adam and eve, there was no killing of animals for meat (in fact, no killing whatsoever!, and only BEFORE A & E sinned), so believing that carnavors existed and that evolution relies on animals eating others then it isn't true (in my opinion).

Wow - prove THAT from the Bible.

meanman:
I believe it is possible that God had used evolution, having a perfect plan doesn't mean you don't use tools.. i.e an artist uses paint and canvas. even though he may have a perfect image of the outcome...
However I don't believe he did use evolution. I believe it as genesis said.. in six days , he spoke, his word has enough power to do all the creating needed. and in six days creation happened..

sure it is possible that due to the theory of relativity 6 days could be very different in todays terms due to the slowdown of the speed of light and other such things... that is conjecture.. (just like most of modern physics anyhow) could be true, might not be... maybe the universe just have 4 dimentions maybe 10 which i and quantum physics think..
however i will just believe the old testament with a simple faith like a child...

and mr blonde:

I think you touched on something..
Before the fall, creation was perfect.. no pain yada yada
and no death.. there would not havce been carnivores..
and even after creation man did not eat meat...
(which is really cool when you think about it, it means able was a sheep farmer (other than for clothes) soley for the purpose of having lambs to sacrifice to God)...there is richness in there..

meanman:
if you want a scripture... read in genesis when noah comes out of the ark,
and God tells him that he can now begin eating animals and that they will be scared of people etc...
begin eating animals assumes that previously they didn't..
however its just one scripture and it doesn't affect the central themes of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and not important for our salvation... so it doesn't matter for us to disagree on this fact..
some people take this so far to say that we should be vegetanarians etc, which reeks of legalism, but i just think its an interesting little tidbit.

but rowan:
if there had been carnivorous dinosours before the fall from eden (even God created man), that wouldn't have been a perfect creations..
the bible says that all creation is growning for the redeption of mankind.. animals suffer pain because of man's sin... prophecy talks of new earth, heaven sort of themes of being like eden, and that is a place where the lion and the fox (or whatever) lays down side by side...
not eating each other... and thats how i assume from contenxt of the bible and from my understanding of the nature of God, what pre fall earth would have been like..
its possible God used some evolution type method, but highly unlikely, and not the way that the word 'evolution' means

God Bless..

Karl

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Karl Prosser
Karl / GODCENTRIC
Klumsy / Surprise ! Productions.
ME / Redeemed by the Living God :)
Klumsy@xtra.co.nz
May God Bless you, he sure does me.

Whatever you do, remember:
2Ti2:23
1Cor1:22-24

For the sake of space, and with the ulterior motive of getting you to search through your Bible and find these passages, I won't quote the text here

I have studied this topic intently for a number of years, and have gone from the evolution side to the creation side. What it boils down to is that science is never very good at explaining something that nobody was there to see. In fact, science even claims that about itself: if you didn't see it, it didn't happen. Cf: the works of Shrodinger, Heisenberg.

In other words, nobody can reliably say that either creation or evolution is 'right' or that young earth/old earth is 'right'. But since we have a recorded account of creation, and nothing on evolution, hmmm...

You don't need to check your brain at the door to believe in creationism. Actually, I think it's the other way around. People look at you like you have two heads if you don't believe the mainstream view that we all evolved from an amoeba or whatever - a view predominantly taught in public schools in the U.S. as LAW, not the theory which it actually is. This gets off into politics real fast, but just let me say this: just because you heard it on CNN, or were taught it in school, don't assume it's true.

Anyway, Mr BLonDe, there are a lot of problems with the 'science' used to back up evolution and the old earth theory. To be brief, old earth is based on two primary fields of study, which have some inherent problems:

The geological/fossil record. This basically tells us the earth is x years old because we know it takes x years for a bone to fossilize, or for rock strata to develop. Therefore if we find a fossil x feet deep in rock strata, it must be x million years old. This is just patently false. Rock strata vary hugely in the time they take to develop depending upon environmental conditions. Fossils occur under widely varying conditions as well. The deposition of the materials which create rock strata could be greatly accelerated by asteroid impact or volcanic activity (settling of huge amounts of rock dust in the air). Or by a flood of Biblical proportions Bottom line here is, you can't tell how old something is by how deep in the ground it was.

Radiocarbon dating. This tends to be a very unreliable technology. In pricinciple, it should work. Unfortunately, it isn't quantitative, and it's extremely hard to do. I spent 10 years working in a research laboratory on radiation counting equipment. If I couldn't get the same answer in a test 10 times in a row, the assumption was that something was wrong with the equipment, the process, the technician, or all of the above. What's more, anyone else in the laboratory should've been able to get the same answer as me quite easily. RCD virtually NEVER gets the same answer even twice in a row, yet we are just supposed to accept whatever number they get which matches what they think the age of something is. Counting carbon-14 emissions from a piece 'o rock is a really difficult thing to do. There are problems with the equipment, repeatability, and technician dependence. I just don't feel comfortable basing any sort of decisions on the results you get from RCD. In a word, it sucks.

There's much more, but I've gone long. Once again, remember: you don't have to believe what they tell you. Question the mainstream.

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</gp>

I think we forget that we are not fighting "flesh", but spiritual powers, and Satan has blinded the minds of evolutionists so that they just can't see how Creationism is so much more logical for explaining everything than evolution.

(Evolutionist will probably say that I have been brainwashed)

But I really don't care, because "I" know there is a God, and the God in the Bible created this earth, and no one can argue against my conviction, because it is based on my personal relationship with the Creator.

By the way, welcome back MeanMan (he he)

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www.revelatorgames.com

http://www.christiananswers.net/dinosaurs/j-trex.html

To me this makes a mockery of the creation theory. If we are going to insist on explaining creation by science, then we should at least be scientific about it.

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Rowan / GODCENTRIC Christian Demoscene

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Mr BLonDe

neat, you start the thread, get the ball rolling and finish the thread with T-Rex's being scavengers

T Rex's being scavengers ? There is no mention of T Rex's in the bible let alone them being scavengers, why is this ?

well let's GO BACK before the time of "scavengers"

just how DID the earth begin ?

Karl quotes "the bible says that all creation is growning for the redeption of mankind"

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from your old mate
c h i e f y
global chiefy to yer old seadog seafarin' mateys

access chiefy's worklogs

MeanManInOz, you are mistaken about the Hebrew terms used in the beginning of Genesis. The term Yom in Hebrew is used for time periods other than strict day/night cycles. However, it is NEVER used in any way except as literal days when combined with a numerical designation. Hebrew scholars are in almost unanimous agreement over this, even those who don't take the account as literal.

I think it is important to spread the Gospel message in love and humility, so while I think creation is a great way to break down people's berriers to Christianity, it should be done carefully. I've heard from a creationist named Bill Jack, and he refers to our job as Christians as "planting seeds of doubt" in unbelievers hearts.

BTW, radioactive-dating methods depend on many assumptions which are completely unjustified. When they are used in combination with un-uniformitarian assumptions, i.e.-with a flood, they give results much more inline with the creation account. There are also many dating methods that point to a young earth, such as errosion rates, radio-halos, comets, the earth's magnetic field, the sun's energy, too much helium in the ground and not enough of it in the atmosphere, fossils with protiens still intact....

If anyone wants to take a closer look at creation science, I would suggest visiting the following sites: http://www.icr.org http://www.answersingenesis.org

If you read one book on creation this year, make it the Bible:-) But if you read two, I recommend "The Evolution of a Creationist" by Jobe Martin. It goes through his search for evidence as a theistic evolutionist, and his eventual turning to creationist.

-Krylar

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The bible is a book about redemption and just barely touches on creation in
like 2 or 3 chapters. It should be obvious to all people that GOD created
everything. That all this [the creation] doesn't happen on its own. There
are alot of people who would reject GOD no matter what the proof.

Scientists are fallen humans with their own motives for their research.
They lie and fake inteligent speak about stuf they know nothing about, to
get funding, popularity, or just to feel smarter than everyone else.
Scientists in this society are placed upon a pedistal and what they say is
taken as fact and truth. Many times this goes against the scientific method
and peer review. They disregard experiment sometimes I believe out of fear
of being proved wrong. Scientists make assumptions in their theories that
cannot be proven right or wrong especially when extrapolating back in time,
they hold decay rates constant in radio active dating methods, people cannot
account for the unknown. Its hard enough for people to predict whats going
to happen in Star Wars Ep. III when we know what happens in IV, V, VI, I,
and II. My opinion is that science should stick more with measured
experimental fact and less with interpereting a hand full of facts and
teaching those theories as fact. Scientists should stick to the scientific
method. The lab was always the funnest part of science anyways.

I thought there was a quite interesting article in Scientific American
ricently about Scienceism, a religion of the evilutionist, as described by
an evilutionist. Where's seperation of Church and State now?

Love in Christ
Gift

It seems to me the main difference of opinion on this board is about the time God took to accomplish his work. I would ask then, which do we believe, an account that uses very specific words regarding timeframes (and it does if you look at it and know the language it was translated from) in the book we say we believe, or 3% of the available dating schemes that can result in long ages when used with faulty assumptions (and yes I can back this up)? I hope that nobody here would say God COULDN'T finish creation in six days, because our God didn't need any time at all to create what was in His mind's eye. I would ask what the point of God using evolution would be? If I could create something out of nothing, and I had infinite wisdom, would I wait billions of years for my creation to cool, then create progressivly more complex systems over millions more? Why would I then further confound my creation by giving them a record of that creation that uses specific speach but bears only slight resemblence to what actually happened?

Further, someone has implied that by teaching the creation account as an actual, literal event, we might put people off of Christianity. I believe that this is just another way of saying we should sugar-coat the Gospel (I know it sounds harsh). The Bible says Jesus would be "a stone that makes men stumble and a rock that makes men fall." While we are to spread the Gospel in love, we are also to spread it in truth. You put a happy smiley face on the man who routinely called wicked people "brood of vipers" and other good analogies, and you take away the other side of Jesus, the side that will be at the second coming. His disciples said more than once that he gave "hard teaching". So, we are not called to make Christianity look good, we are called to be faithful, so that not only will others possibly be saved, but so that the unrighteous will have no excuse.

They're both theory because no one alive was available back then to accurately measure with fact what really happened. We do have the Bible which clearly states what happened. Why didn't God give specific detail in the Bible? Because it's not our job to know that yet. The Bible is about Jesus, plain and simple. It's always been about Jesus even before the fall of man. There was God, and his Word. His Word was made flesh in Jesus. Therefor God's Word = Jesus = God.

I had the mindset that God could use evolution for a while. I agreed that maybe what I was indoctrinated as a kid in school could be right. Theres FAR too much data proving evolution as false on a broad scale. Sure some of the methods they use are possible, but 90% of its bogus. They invented it so that they wouldnt need God. They wouldn't need to repent, and somehow this was going to save their souls from the reality of God Almighty.

The first part of the Bible is pretty literal. But it doesn't follow a certain order. In the beginning God created the heavens and earth, then it goes on to say how many days it took. This doesnt mean it was crated, destroyed, and created again. The first verse is a summary. Its an introductary sentance.

I once believed God could use evolution as a tool. Why? Why would he allow millions of years to go by? He could because He's outside of time. We have no grasp of this concept because we're in time ourselves. God created time for us, as a tool to get things done. We're put on this planet to show our love for him. Why did he blind us? So we have to WORK to show him our love. Adam could have loved God completely, but being that he had free choice he had to CHOOSE to love him. Love is about choice. The angels are servants, no free choice. He says "Do you love me?" They automatically respond "Yes" its basically a robotic instinct. We were created so He could ask us the same question and we could reply however we chose. Luckily Christians choose Yes, and we'll be rewarded for that choice.

I'll give you one important fact before I stop. The Jews saw miracles DAILY. Moses and all of the miracles of the staff. Moses was in the presence of God for 40 DAYS and they had already built a golden calf to worship. They saw pilars of fire by night and smoke by day. They LIVED supernaturally and they still didn't know who Jesus was. The Jews were his chosen people and they were still blinded. Jews believe in the Old Testament as fact. Jews existed and do exist today. This leads me to believe that the Bible in itself from cover to cover is fact. I know if I saw and heard the voice of God audibly as loud as Moses I think I'd be pretty devout. Moses saw the burning bush and didn't even want to circumcise his child. He almost was killed by God because of it but his wife saved him. This was a man who saw the rod turn into a serpent.

The point of being a Christian is to willfully be different. When the world agrees on a subject I believe, I change what I believe in. If the world believes evolution is real, well I disagree completely. If they were all Christians in a day I would have some problems unless God himself told me it was okay. I take pride in being different and unique. The problem is we like to settle because going against the tide of the world is almost too much in the natural realm. Thats why I make sure I remember God is with me every step of the way. I couldn't go one day without him, I'm living proof.

Thanks to all for posting. This is some good stuff. My head logically makes sense of a good portion of it. I just hope I threw some logic into the mix to maybe clear up some common misconceptions.

One more point. If you compromise on how old the earth is, you not only compromise on when Adam was created, you must also compromise on when the Flood occured, or at least how much it covered. Think about it. If Noah's Flood covered the entire earth, as the Bible clearly states, then most of the geography we see today was formed by that flood, as well as most of the fossils. So, by saying that those numbers given for fossil ages smushed into evolutionary timescales are accurate, you are saying that Noah's Flood occured millions and millions of years ago.
There are many reasons why this just could not be, for one errosion of the earth's surface would have leveled it since, for two it's been estimated by an evolutionist that the human genome could only last 10,000 years (promptly altered to 100,000 to fit their notions). Even though the genes of the early humans would have been healthier, in the fallen world the human race would not and could not have lived millions of years.

Just a minor detail, but angels must have some freewill, otherwise Lucifer and his ilk would not have been able to rebel.

BTW Jeremy, the thing you mention with regard to God waiting millions of years is interesting (I see you don't hold to it now). I would say that God created time itself at the same time He created matter, and what effect does time have without matter anyway? Secondly, I think the Bible is further specifying God's timeframes for creation in the account when it says He called the light day and the darkness night. He is defining those times by Earth rotations. Now, this part gets interesting because it has to do with starlight. Here's a clip from a discussion I am having with some fellow students....

Back to the question of starlight, I have heard a relatively new approach to this obvious dilemma, which I think fits better. This theory was developed by Dr. Russell Humphreys, a physicist who has worked at General Electric and Sandia National Labs. Put quite simply, the stars and galaxies are billions of years old, but the earth is only around six thousand. This comes about because of relativity. Gravity has already been shown to effect time; time being a measurement of the rate at which processes occur. In this model, our solar system and the entire universe were created at a center close to our sun before expanding, and because of the increased gravity of all of the masses, time actually elapsed very quickly for the stars and galaxies over the first few earth rotations. By the time Adam showed up on day six, the universe had gone through billions of years worth of change. This is why we see starlight today, and why we see stars dying out that should not if they were only six thousand years old. This theory also correlates with several references in the Bible about God "stretching out the heavens". Along with this is also the theory that God caused a very different "big bang" when he started by creating water (as is in the text) and caused a black whole that sucked this in until it exploded back out creating the universe. Just as a note, the explanation gets a lot more technical than this, but I am not a physicist, so I am still trying to get my brain around this one.
This theory is in contrast to the Big Bang theory, which presupposes that the universe has no center and no boundary, which obviously cannot be proven. However, Big Bang theory has several counts against it. The main problem is that the theory holds that the universe is then made up of basically uniformly distributed stars and galaxies, but from what we have observed so far, they are not. There are huge clumps that just should not be in a uniform universe. The variation in the makeup of the planets in our own solar system is just one example of non-uniform processes.
There are more obstacles with the theory which I will bring up later....

#1 The Bible contradicts evolution theory repeatedly.

#2 The rest of the Bible is based on it. The whole story rests on redemption of the human race because of the sin of one man and all his offspring. According to the Bible, man isn't just another type of animal but a special creation. A special creation made from genetic leftovers? I don't think so.

#3 Atheists see the conflict of believing in evolution and God, it's about time that the Church did. It's sad, but many secular colleges are more willing to allow creationist teachers into the classroom than "Christian" colleges. I can't help but feel that the modern Church is doing no better than the Catholic Church at the time of Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. Like them, these scientists are being shunned by a Church that is stuck in the past and unwilling to stand against worldly wisdom.

#4 It avoids detrimental thinking on topics such as conservation of species. Right now because of evolutionary thinking classification of species has become stupidly narrow-minded. Thus, different members of the same species are often kept from mating because they are considered disimilar. This causes a shallowing of the existing gene pools of these species, leading to extinction. This is happening in species such as the cheetah and the panther. Also, "superbugs" are being increasingly feared as bugs evolving into more defensive and potent creatures as a result of pesticides and other causes, when all that is really happening is that the mix of certain existing genes is shifting in their populations. The trick is that a shift that causes better resistence to one thing probably causes weakness against another. So instead of cowering in fear over something that doesn't exist, we can deal with it.

#5 It fits the facts. The more science discovers, the more it agrees with the creation account, and the less it agrees with evolution. Evolutionists are increasingly having to ignore what they see with there own eyes and just say that "we don't know how, but evolution did it."

#6 It's really cool to study. As Christians, we should be more fascinated with creation than any atheist. For one thing, everthing happens much more rapidly! We aren't looking at dusty old fossils of eons ago, we are looking at recent history that has undergone rapid changes! Legends that are largely ignored by secular science such as dragons are suddenly a major point of interest, since these may very well have been recent living dinosaurs after the Flood. We can be doing what Newton called, "thinking God's thoughts after Him", which is really something we are called to do.

I don't think that Young Earth Scientific Creationism has been validated, and there are much better approaches to debunking evolutionary theory (As it is defined by Phylogenetic trees derived from a single celled organism).

The first trouble is that the very first phylogenetic trees were based on gross morphology (How things looked similar to one another). Modern phylogenies are based on genetic structure. The trouble is that there is a disconnect since the evidence leading from gross morphology does not lead to the same conclusion as evidence leading from genetic phylogeny.

Further, Even if one concedes that the universe is 14 BILLION years old, that is STILL NOT ENOUGH TIME for a VIABLE rate of mutation in the ambient environment on earth to account for the ENTIRE diversity of life from a single celled organism. A mutation rate which could account for it would not be considered viable, but rather LETHAL!

Evolutionists will counter argue that evolution occurs in spurts, but this completely contradicts Darwin's insistance upon a gradual buildup of genetic mutations which slowly evolve into a new species. The Catastrophic induced evolutionary spurts proposed by Stephen J. Gould in reality only explain how fast biological systems can adapt to new environments. They do not account for the vast amounts of genetic information that existed in the Pre-Cambrian explosion, for example.

The fact remains that the origin of life is still unknown. But as Christians, we can argue that Evolutionary theory is not a fact, but just another attempt at explaining our existance without the need for a theistic worldview.

It is, and always will, remain a theory, and it is useful as far as it allows us to explain adaptive mechanisms which may have been originally designed by our Creator.

- Sturmritter

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quote:

---

...in the immortal words of Socrates who said, "I drank WHAT?!?!?"

---

One other thing that evolutionists won't often tell you, different animals such as fish, mammals, and birds, have different cellular structures. "All flesh is not the same flesh." This isn't mentioned often becuase it's hard enough for someone to believe that a single cell was able to evolve, but believing that these evolved seperately is rediculous.

I think you understand this, but I'd clarify that the origin of life is known, it's the Word. "For by Him all things are made." You might say that this is by faith, well faith is knowing in your heart what you can't know in your head.

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time. :)

My previous comment was stated according to the strictly scientific/naturalistic viewpoint from which most evolutionists come.

- Sturmritter

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quote:

---

...in the immortal words of Socrates who said, "I drank WHAT?!?!?"

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Unknown chemicals in the primordial past...through...
Unknown processes which no longer exist...produced...
Unknown life forms which are not to be foundbut could through...
Unknown reproduction methods spawn new life...in an...
Unknown atmospheric composition...in an...
Unknown oceanic soup complex...at an...
Unknown time and place.

God's word gives us a clear account of how God chose to create the physical world, and there is no reason to doubt it. God could have used 6 billion years or 6 nanoseconds to finish creation, but the simple truth is He didn't. The language in Genesis is emphatic. How about that little verse in the middle of the Ten Commandments? "For in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is,..." Why is this verse slapped in the middle like this? It's in regard to keeping the Sabbath, but why make a connection between a time period lasting millions of years with a six day work week? This is exactly why God chose a seven day model for creation, as a parallel for man's life. "For the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath."

Zookey, I would definately agree with you, shoving Christianity down someone's throat is not going to do them any good. One caveat though, Jesus still responded in truth to people who were not going to listen to Him. The main reason I see a difference between originating from monkeys or dirt is whether you trust God's word or popular opinion. If we as Christians don't get into heated debates at some times with humanistic evolutionists, they will simply continue to destroy our rights. They are already trying their hardest to take away the freedom of even mentioning an alternative to evolution. The organization I've already mentioned, ICR, had an attempt by the state of California to take away their rights to teach creation alongside evolution at their private college.

Sturmritter, that makes more sense, but you have to understand I've talked to some people with some very strange notions in trying to align the Bible with their preconceptions...

quote:

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Originally posted by Crptc_Prgrmr:
[B]Zookey, I would definately agree with you, shoving Christianity down someone's throat is not going to do them any good. One caveat though, Jesus still responded in truth to people who were not going to listen to Him. The main reason I see a difference between originating from monkeys or dirt is whether you trust God's word or popular opinion. If we as Christians don't get into heated debates at some times with humanistic evolutionists, they will simply continue to destroy our rights. They are already trying their hardest to take away the freedom of even mentioning an alternative to evolution. The organization I've already mentioned, ICR, had an attempt by the state of California to take away their rights to teach creation alongside evolution at their private college.B]

---

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, I think that evolution is a lie through and through and that there is a lot of people who are very ignorant in not letting others believe differently. I even got frustrated at our school when they would talk about evolution 100 times a day and maybe bring up the fact that it was just a theory once. But, as far as taking away the right to teach creation, you need to realize this is Satan's world, when Adam and Eve sinned they gave him they keys, so almost everything has some obscure attempt in it to thwart God. But, either way, creation and evolution are still out there enough that most people know about them. You are not going to change a person's belief system by bashing their beliefs-they are only going to think you are a holy roller jerk and their belief system will be strenghtened. I guess that is what ticked my off about this topic, if you look to bash evolution, you are going to get the opposite effect of what God wants. Jesus did not go around the country side making comments to people like, "How can you say that", to people that believed differently from him. He showed love and acceptance-and that is what won the majority of them over. Not bashing them or their beliefs, but showing them that no matter what God loves them and they always have a free ticket into Heaven just for the asking. So what I am saying is, instead of wasting time finding ways to bash evolution and the athiest lifestyle, certain people in here (not all, but certainly the ones who make 'How can you say that?' comments) should start walking the walk of the Jesus life style and let their light speak for itslef rather than finding empty statistics that will only tick other people off rather than win them over for Jesus. That is what I am trying to say....that people get turned off by creation not mostly because of the theory, but because a lot of the people presenting it want respect and recognition for their views but won't give the same to others. That attitude makes a lot of people in the audience, bot christian and non christian alike, realize how selfish the speaker is that he/she won't let others think for themselves.

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time. :)

First off, the earth is the Lord's, not Satan's. Satan may have a degree of power now, but that does not mean that as Christians we are to run in fear because of him. We are to be salt and light to the earth. Salt is bitter. The world will hate us becuase it hated Jesus. As to heated debates, it seems nearly impossible to have one that isn't heated, creationists get blasted for nearly everything including their ties (I kid you not).

As I said before, we should spread the Gospel in love and humility as well as truth, which can be hard at times when you have to swallow ego, and at others because others will slam you. There is a time and place for everything, so you will have to confront stone-hearted people as well as those who are open to the good news.

You say this:
Jesus did not go around the country side making comments to people like, "How can you say that", to people that believed differently from him.

You are right, because it wasn't on side issues. How about when Jesus healed the Paralytic?

Mark 2:6-9
Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, "Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Immediately Jesus knew that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, "Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to the paralytic 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take your mat and walk'?"

Jesus called people on these kinds of things. Love without truth is an oxymoron.

I'm just glad that ICR did not take your advice and give in to the bullying, because instead of being forced to stop teaching creation science to students who came for that purpose, they won in court in a case that has wide implications for freedom of teaching alternatives to evolution. The battle is not against flesh and blood. But make no mistake, it is a battle.

quote:

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Originally posted by Crptc_Prgrmr:
I'm just glad that ICR did not take your advice and give in to the bullying, because instead of being forced to stop teaching creation science to students who came for that purpose, they won in court in a case that has wide implications for freedom of teaching alternatives to evolution. The battle is not against flesh and blood. But make no mistake, it is a battle.

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HOLD IT-I am not saying give into the bullying. If someone is challenging you on your beliefs or saying you cannot talk about your beliefs with others, that is a new card game. What I am saying is why go looking for a fight? It seems people here are wanting to go out and start up controversy on the subject. If someone comes up to me and challenges me on my beliefs, then I will calmly defend my beliefs but I will not get into a heated arguement-cause that will not win them over. Getting heated is more likely to cause them to act more aggressively and extremely against my beleifs and therefore perpetuates the problem. But, I don't go out looking for a fight against people that believe differently than me. And the person my last quote was directed to was Mr Blonde, who went nuts with comments like 'How can you say that' and 'no no no' when other people posted their opinions. That is what is really annoying about religion sometimes, you get people in there who worship their egos or their (imaginary) ability to always be right rather than worshipping the risen lord. This is what I am saying: WHen you are in a situation like the ICR-then yes defend yourself to all ends, because that is huge. But when you are the street and someone is being a jerk to you cause you believe differently that they do on man's origins, just realize you are probably not going to win them over by a heated confrontation and you can be the better person by not giving in to their little arguement game. In the latter situation, also remember what my mom once learned from a boss she worked for:
It is not surprising people are ignorant, what is surprising is how far they go to show off their ignorance.

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time. :)

quote:

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Originally posted by Crptc_Prgrmr:
Now we are in better agreement. Christians should not go looking for a fight, but looking for open hearts. I think you are still a bit naive about heated debates, they are VERY difficult to avoid. Most of the creation scientists I have met are extremely giving, most of them were staunch evolutionists at some point, yet they still get people on the other side angry. There are still times and places where we should be on the offensive...

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Well, I understand that About being niave, I was opinion editor on the school paper, and I write alot in the local paper now, so I know about heated discussions and what affects people. I have taken flak for what I have written many times, and from that what I have learned is get in the heated debate when it is big and important, but when an individual is trying to start a heated debate with you, you are giving them what they want by reacting-a fight in which you (in their mind) come out the bad guy and thus their beliefs are enforced. People all around me know I am a christian, and I have been in many situations before where a heated debate was a likely outcome, but I had to use restraint and realize that I am playing into this person's hand by getting all bent out of shape on an issue that I cannot alter their opinion on because they are so dead set in it. That is just my take, but if an institution such as a college is challenged by a state government, then that is totally different, that is 1rst amendment violation and that is where I say a heated confrontation is necessary and can yeild positive results, but with an individual that is just trying to make you feel less about yourself and your beliefs, a heated arguement won't go anywhere, it will just tick both of you off and make for prolonging the problem.

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time. :)

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time. :)

Recently there was also a big bru-ha-ha about some creation lectures conducted in England by AIG at a private school auditorium, rented by the organization. Evolutionists were up in arms saying it infringed upon their rights, Dawkins was flaming mad, even Tony Blair was asked about his view, and when he said it seemed okay he was labled a creationist fanatic and the evolutionists were saying he should step down simply because of his personal view (which we still don't really know). This is the way a lot of propogandists on the other side work. While arguing with THEM may be fruitless, we have to stand up to these attacks.

quote:

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Originally posted by Crptc_Prgrmr:
I understand that, but at first you seemed to come back with the fatalistic view that the world is Satan's. Also, do you think that if a college is not private it shouldn't allow creation science to enter it's classrooms?

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Well, with the world being Satans, I say that because I read this article in a chirstian magazine and it talked about how the world does belong to satan-and that is why the Bible refers to him as the prince of this world and that is why a lot of the bad stuff happens in this world-all of it is his attempts to get people away from God. But, back to the college thing, no I don't think creationism should be censored at non private colleges, but I do know it would be harder for a non private college to fight a battle like the ICR did. This is because non-private colleges get a lot of federal funding, which means the Gov is paying part of the price and somewhat gets a say in what is taught. If the Gov takes on a non provate college for teaching creationism (which many, if not all, connect with religion), you start to enter legal grey area. This is because you are back to the first amendment, while the Gov cannot make a law banning a religion, they cannot make a law or legal move that holds one up either. SO, they are in a corner there, if they take out creationism, people take it as they are trying to destroy Christianity. If they keep it in, evolutionists would say they are trying to hold up Christianity. So, that is what I meant by that, when you are dealing with a private, non-federally-funded college the answer is a lot more clear to everybody, but when you are dealing with a federally funded non-private college things get a lot more tricky. My personaly view is that a little bit on each theory should be taught EVERYWHERE, and that after teaching a little bit the students can be told where they can research the two theories on their own time-that each person makes his or her own decision about their beliefs instead of a textbook and you drop a lot of the legal hassle that comes along with only teaching one or the other.

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time. :)

God created Man
the earth and the heavens and all in it BELONG to God
God gave man dominion and authority over the earth... a gift..
Man through sin defaulted that authority to Satan
he is the ruler of the earth, man in their sin have given him authority..
Jesus through His blood , died for all, and gave all the oppertunity to have the authority back (as well as other things ) - (in matt somewhere, jesus says afterhis resurrection - i have all authority under heaven and earth - go and make disciples)..
so the chuch has the AUthority, Christ died on the Cross and won the battle - it is finished.. However the church has to possess the land it was given.. the way the devil works is to decieve us with this or that so that we default the authority back to Him,, rather than walking in it and submitting it back to GOd..

read it a few times and think about it..

Karl

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Karl /GODCENTRIC
Husband of my amazing wife Aleshia
Klumsy@xtra.co.nz

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time. :)

To clarify some things, as I said before I think it can be profitable to get into heated debates with evolutionists. I do think that it is important we do not become heated ourselves or intentionally cause them to be. Often times, it may not be the people we are debating which will get anything out of it, but bystanders who see if nothing else just how nasty and futile their reasoning can get.

What really saddens me is that "Christian" people and bishops can be the bitterest opposition. Dawkins said of the American-creation-invasion into Britain that he and other atheists should have kept their "big mouths shut" and just let the bishops go at it. This is not Christianity.

I also have to mention this because it's already been brought up. There is only one reason why the T-Rex's are assumed to have even eaten meat much less been vicous carnivores. They had large-sharp-pointy-teeth. Big deal, so do pandas. There are three main reasons to believe they were not that dangerous based on calculations based on their fossils. One, their gums weren't strong enough to keep their teeth in if the animal it were chewing on were alive. Two, if they'd fallen, they would have knocked their brains out and died, that would make me a bit uneasy about running about the forest. Third, a newer study indicates that for the mass involved in proportion to the muscle in their leg's, the T-Rex could run at most 25mph, probably more like 10mph.

[This message has been edited by Crptc_Prgrmr (edited June 20, 2002).]

[This message has been edited by Crptc_Prgrmr (edited June 20, 2002).]

quote:

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Originally posted by Crptc_Prgrmr:
I also have to mention this because it's already been brought up. There is only one reason why the T-Rex's are assumed to have even eaten meat much less been vicous carnivores. They had large-sharp-pointy-teeth. Big deal, so do pandas. There are three main reasons to believe they were not that dangerous based on calculations based on their fossils. One, their gums weren't strong enough to keep their teeth in if the animal it were chewing on were alive. Two, if they'd fallen, they would have knocked their brains out and died, that would make me a bit uneasy about running about the forest. Third, a newer study indicates that for the mass involved in proportion to the muscle in their leg's, the T-Rex could run at most 25mph, probably more like 10mph.

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Well dude, there is much more compelling evidence in the line of fighting evolution as well. For instance, evolution is the idea that one species slowly is phased out to transform into another. SO...if we evolved from monkeys and apes...why are monkeys and apes here and not phased out? But yeah, I remember hearing that Trex stuff before, and also there is a lot of missing links in the actual evolution theory-I researched some of it my sophomore year so I could write an opinion piece on it in the school paper (now, we are finally getting into some ground where we agree on stuff!)

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time. :)

You are right, there is a lot more compelling evidence against evolution, missing links being a major one in spite of attempted explanations such as "punctuated equilibrium", the idea that evolution builds up useless genetic information in an organism until "poof" it changes into a distinctly new species. So, the process of evolution takes so long that it can't be observed by modern science, but happened too quickly to be preserved in the incredibly slow process of fossilization (according to their gradualistic uniformitarian beliefs). Tell me this isn't stretching:-)

An evolutionist once said there are no more bones of (supposed) human ancestors than could fill a coffin. Most of these are so fragmentary any conclusions made by them have to be considered suspect. Each of them seem to either be fully human or fully animal. The idea that some apes started walking upright on a regular bases is totally unsupported by the fossils, the hip-bones show animals that walked on all four's.

You might want to get a look at a copy of Creation magazine published by AIG, they cover a lot of aspects of these issues. I know what you mean by asking why monkeys and apes haven't been phased out, and I would have agreed a while ago, but this magazine recently had an article on arguments they think we should stop using, and this was one of them.

Here's what they said about it:
'If we evolved from apes, why are ther still apes today?' Some evolutionists also miss the main point, by protesting that they don't believe that we descended from apes, but that apes and humans share a common ancestor. The evolutionary paleontologist G.G. Simpson had no time for this 'pussyfooting', as he called it. He said, 'In fact, that earlier ancestor would certainly be called an ape or monkey by popular speech by anyone who saw it. Since the terms ape and monkey are defined by popular usage, man's ancestors were apes or monkeys (or successively both). It is pusillanimous [mean-spirited] if not dishonest for an informed investigator to say otherwise.'
Many evolutionists believe that a small group of creatures split off from the main group and they became reproductively isolated from the main large population. Most change supposedly happened in such a small group, which can lead to allopatric speciation (a geographically isolated population forming a new species). So nothing in evolutionary theory requires the main group to become extinct.
It is important to be aware that this mechanism is not the sole property of evolutionists-creationists believe that most human variation occured after small groups became isolated (but not speciated) at Babel, while Adam and Eve probably had mid-brown skin colour. The quoted erroneous statement is analogous to saying 'If all people groups came from Adam and Eve, then why are mid-brown people still alive today?'
So what's the difference between the creationist explanation of people groups ('races') and the evolutionist explanation of people origins? Answer: the former involves seperation of already-existing information and loss of information through mutations; the latter requires the generation of tens of millions of 'letters' of new information.

quote:

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Originally posted by Crptc_Prgrmr:
You are right, there is a lot more compelling evidence against evolution, missing links being a major one in spite of attempted explanations such as "punctuated equilibrium", the idea that evolution builds up useless genetic information in an organism until "poof" it changes into a distinctly new species. So, the process of evolution takes so long that it can't be observed by modern science, but happened too quickly to be preserved in the incredibly slow process of fossilization (according to their gradualistic uniformitarian beliefs). Tell me this isn't stretching:-)

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Actually, I have heard of a similar theory called 'quantum leap'. It is more new age than anything, but it says similar stuff, that when a species is ready an awakening happens all over the planet and-in less time that it takes to blink-the species changes into the next stage. New ageists have even given the next human stage a name-homo universalis. That name basically means that man will become 'God'. One new ageist was even quoted as saying-'if we came from the amoebas, then we are destined to be gods'. They even say that this next quantum leap will happen soon, and that when it does only about half of humanity will be ready, so when that twinkling-of-an-eye-fast moment happens, those who are not ready will simply dissappear and cease to exist because they did not accept their on god like ness in themselves. In other words, new ageists (in our words) are already trying to have an explaination for the rapture before it even happens. That is the main reason why I am against evolution-it basically says that we do not need God, because we will eventually be gods ourselves.......

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time. :)

quote:

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Originally posted by Crptc_Prgrmr:
Zookie

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BTW-no meaness meant by this, but it is Zookey, like Zoo and Key put together

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time. :)

That is interesting about the new-agers. Even stranger is the fact that I learned about this "punctuated equilibrium" from my college biology textbook, how can this be presented as science?

quote:

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Originally posted by Crptc_Prgrmr:
Sorry zookey, I realized I'd misspelled your ID later and didn't have time to change it. I was curious about what it meant though...

That is interesting about the new-agers. Even stranger is the fact that I learned about this "punctuated equilibrium" from my college biology textbook, how can this be presented as science?

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Well, when I was little, my dad asked me what a zookey was, and I went into this long story about monkeys in asia. When I was done, he said, 'Oh really? I thought it was what the zookeeper used to open the zoo every morning". That has been my nickname ever since With the textbook thing, it sounds like a watered down version of the quantum leap theory, so I am not terribly surprised that they are now trying to present that as fact, although it is incredibly ignorant for the text book authors. Well, I have to say all either theory is is people not able to let go of the evolution theory, and when evidence came up that they were wrong they had to put new pieces in to make their phony little puzzel complete. BTW-in my sophomore year biology class, we learned we are 90% related to monkeys and that is why evolution happened. At the end of the year, the teacher quickly brought up the fact that we are 90% related to ALL organisms that have DNA-so I jokingly said (to my neighbor-not the teacher) that I would start a new cult that believed we eveolved from zebras Just thought you all would like to hear that

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time. :)

You know a good tree bears good fruit, so this should be one way in which we judge evolution.

Here's an excerpt from an article on "The Creation Basis For Morality" in Creation magazine written by Steve Cardino:
Evolutionist zoology professor Ernst Haeckel, whose fraudulent drawings of embryos continue to feature in some school textbooks, and whose influence laid much of the foundation for Hitler's Germany, argued in his book Natural History of Creation that 'the church with its morality of love and charity is an effete fraud, a perversion of the natural order'. He said this was because Christianity '...makes no distinction of race or of color; it seeks to break down all racial berriers. In this respect the hand of Christianity is against that of Nature, for are not the races of mankind the evolutionary harvest which Nature has
toiled through long ages to produce? May we not say, then, that Christianity is anti-evolutionary in its aim?

By now we know that there is more variation within each "race" than between different "races", but the main point that Haeckel makes is still valid (though which is the fraud is the dispute). You know that the least hypocritical man who every lived (aside from Jesus) was probably Hitler? He did exactly what he said he would and he never went against his beliefs which were founded on evolution. The point is, people who take evolution to its natural conclusion can be thouroghly consistent in murdering, stealing, and treating others badly. Christians can and do commit the same evils, but we do so in spite of what we say we believe.

Christianity is anti-evolutionary in its aim, and thank God for that!

quote:

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Originally posted by Crptc_Prgrmr:
You know that the least hypocritical man who every lived (aside from Jesus) was probably Hitler? He did exactly what he said he would and he never went against his beliefs which were founded on evolution. The point is, people who take evolution to its natural conclusion can be thouroghly consistent in murdering, stealing, and treating others badly. Christians can and do commit the same evils, but we do so in spite of what we say we believe.

Christianity is anti-evolutionary in its aim, and thank God for that!

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Man, that is true but very creepy I have a little problem with a lot of christians I know who are very hypocritical. I cannot tell you how many I have met that find blind reasons to hate each other or 'different' people and then turn around and look at themselves as demi-gods because they can act just like a christian. Nearly every church I or my family has attended, we have had run ins with at least one person that fits that personality profile. SO, that is true, true evil is less phony than a person who attempting to be seen as true good to his/her peers.

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time. :)

It's interesting with Nazi Germany, because Germany had been a (fairly) Christian country. I have ancestors who emmigrated from there before the war and a grandfather who fought against the Nazi's. From some of the things he has said I think this part confuses him. If they were Christians, why did they exterminate jews and obliterate others? While the whole war was caused by many factors, I would say that evolutionary teaching was influentual. The main thing is that the Nazi's were not Christians, in fact there are documents discovered by the Allies detailing their plans to destroy Christianity from the inside, and at one time they had 700 pastors arrested when the Protostant Church. Christians helped jews escape their borders. But the question remains, why was this allowed to happen in the country of Martin Luther? It seems that in part the more liberal churches of the time were willing to change their doctrines to fit what the fuhrur wanted rather than standing up for the truth of the Bible. Compromise on the truth of origins as told by the Bible allowed Nazi's to destroy others. It's also quite likely that up until people started dying more rapidly under the Nazi's boots the whole fascist movement was seen as "political". Today in our country it seems that we are being increasingly told to "keep our religion to ourselves", and that Christianity shouldn't get messed up in politics. Well, I'm warning you all that if we do not get ourselves "messed up", we will have the same kind of environment that was cultured into Germany.

[This message has been edited by Crptc_Prgrmr (edited June 24, 2002).]

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time. :)

You have to read his book mein kampf, before making any judgements about him. Let me stress i am in no way a Nazi, and i do not glorify anything he did, what he done was sick full stop.

Anyways im about to get flames for saying that so im ducking for cover.

--D-SIPL

quote:

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Originally posted by D-SIPL:
WWII was started because hitler wanted to make a better life for his people. He beleived the way he could do that was by denying basic human rights to other races, which was both extreme and wrong. But it he didn't wake up one day and say i hate these people, lets kill them. That's way it has been portrayed.

You have to read his book mein kampf, before making any judgements about him. Let me stress i am in no way a Nazi, and i do not glorify anything he did, what he done was sick full stop.

Anyways im about to get flames for saying that so im ducking for cover.

--D-SIPL

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Actually, I do kind of see what you are saying, which is almost in line with what I am saying. Hitler did want to raise the German people up, which is why he stressed the aryan race so much. But, I was saying the WWII was cause by a lot of different groups thinking they were the best around to the degree of hating all other groups-and all atrocities comitted by both axis and allies during WWII pretty much was born of the hatred. But yeah, I knew that Hitler's main goal was to make Germany #1-I mean he saved the entire country from massive debt caused by the WWI treaty (I know how to say the name of the treaty, but man I could not even begin to spell it and hope to do so correctly ). But still, he obviously thought that the only way to the top was to act on his hatred of other people-that was what I was trying to say in my last post.

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time. :)

As I said in the original post, I do not believe evolution was the only influence on the war, nationalism was a big one as well. I've also heard rumors that the Jews in Germany were acting a bit badly before the war and also held a lot of the high-paying jobs, which probably caused jealosy. The Treaty of Versailles did seem like a slap in the face to a country that really got caught into the war by alliance. There are many, many reasons that the war erupted...

But I would still maintain that evolution was the foundation of Hitler's thinking. There is plenty of evidence for this, he wanted to make a master race that would dominate, this was based totally on evolutionary teaching. In fact, what he did would very quickly make a race of humans that was so depleted of variation they would become weak with genetic disorders.

[This message has been edited by Crptc_Prgrmr (edited June 25, 2002).]

quote:

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Originally posted by Crptc_Prgrmr:
But I would still maintain that evolution was the foundation of Hitler's thinking. There is plenty of evidence for this, he wanted to make a master race that would dominate, this was based totally on evolutionary teaching. In fact, what he did would very quickly make a race of humans that was so depleted of variation they would become weak with genetic disorders.

[This message has been edited by Crptc_Prgrmr (edited June 25, 2002).]

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Well, evolution says that the next form of human or species is better. According to Hitler (I am a nut about WWII-so I have seen and read ALOT on it), the aryan race of which the germans were descended from was an achient race going back to BC times, that is not evolution, cause evolution would say that older race was worthless compared to the newer ones, and Hitler was saying that his people were from an acient race-and the reason for exterminating different people was to get rid of any contaminated blood that could water down the aryan bloodline and aryan society.

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time.

I too have been fascinated by WWII for a while now, and this discussion is quickly trailing off in a new direction:-)

Also, here's a link to some quotes by der fuhrur regarding Christianity: http://answers.org/Apologetics/Hitquote.html
Quite a character wasn't he...

Like I said, Hitler was consistent. He was also wrong and will bow his knee to the "Jewish" God.

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time.

I agree with you both completely btw.

--D-SIPL

quote:

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Originally posted by Crptc_Prgrmr:
You know it's a funny thing, but that same creation astrophysicist I mentioned before on starlight and time was also able in 1984 to predict the strength of Neptune's magnetic field, two years before it was actually measured. When the Voyager II measured it he was proven correct and naturalistic evolutionists were left having to theorize how come it is so strong (along with a number of other oddities that argue against naturalistic origins). This is exactly what creationism is all about, making better assumptions based on knowledge from the Bible (including young ages for the planets meaning stronger magnetic fields at the present time) in our exploration of science.

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That is kind of funny, and what irritates me about both evolutionists and the vast majority of christians (both of whom can be filed under phony). What I am irritated by is that people will let you know about their theory and how holy or right it is. BUT!!! when evidence comes up to present another view or show something they said is wrong, they do not give it the time of day. They won't even listen to it themselves and they start believeing that you are ignorant/zealous/stupid/brainwashed/out there because you believe differently than they do. But either way, way to go for the scientist dude, he showed up the instituted belief just by placing his faith in God and that ROCKS!

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Ignorance is bad, if you have it you will not have a good time.

Maybe this will sound heavy-handed, but I would have to say that the creation view is holy, because it is the picture the Bible clearly gives us, there just aren't two ways about it. Whenever people try and make it fit 'science', you know which one gets changed? Not the perceptions of science...I understand that many people won't be willing to accept this, and it doesn't make me any hollier than them, maybe it gives me better understanding, but it has nothing to do with myself.

I have discussed creation with a pretty open theistic evolutionist, and very quickly she had come to saying that the Bible includes 'exaggerations', particularly on the life-spans of early humans. How do you explain that the Bible is accurate in every way without getting away from naturalistic assumptions? Jesus himself said that the Scriptures could not be broken. The Bible does not have exaggerations, not in the first sentence, not in the last. My understanding of it may be limited and incomplete, but I can say with assurance that Adam and Noah and others lived to be quite old, because the Bible says so. This is the same with the story of Noah, and creation itself. I may not know how God accomplished them, but I can know that it happened within the specifications given, because God's word is accurate.

quote:

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Originally posted by D-SIPL:
I avoided getting flamed, woohooo!!!

I agree with you both completely btw.

--D-SIPL

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cause we understand it's true, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, mind you, that's a bit of an understatement in regard to that subject

>>>>Scientists are fallen humans with their own motives for their research.
They lie and fake inteligent speak about stuf they know nothing about, to
get funding, popularity, or just to feel smarter than everyone else.<<<

well I really think the above para is going a BIT far, come on, what is said there applies to a lot of ppl other than scientists

without scientists you wouldn't be reading these words now, finito

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from your old mate
c h i e f y
global chiefy to yer old seadog seafarin' mateys

why not access chiefy's NEW worklogs ?

There is only one reason I believe creation and not evolution: it's what the Bible tells us, and God's word is absolutely accurate. You know, even if there wasn't a shread of evidence supporting the creation account, and if there was a more believable alternative on origins such as aliens doing genetic experiments on our planet, I'd still believe God's word.

We should be zealots. You know, a lot of people act like the pharisees were wrong in that they were dogmatic. Granted, there is room for disagreement between Christians and we should not be dogmatic in those areas. Jesus told the Jews that they should do as the pharisees said and not as they did. This is what the real problem with the pharisees was, they honored God with their lips and not with their lives. We should be dogmatic about the truth of God's word, both by our words and by our actions, which is why creation is not simply a side issue to Christianity.

Every time people have tried to justify extrabiblical origins, they ignore the book of Genesis. Tell me, if Genesis can be interpretted as meaning eons of evolution, why can't you support it by Scripture? There are words in Hebrew such as 'olam' which means a long period of time or even eternity. God had words He could've used to give us the idea of long ages, but He chose not to, and actually specified it in a way that is nearly impossible to misunderstand. Then He even chose to put it in the middle of the Ten Commandments, as if pointing out once again that this is important.

As a young boy it struck me as funny how people could ignore what the first chapters say so clearly and emphatically. God used the word day in every single sentence. If I were to tell you that on Sunday I drove my car and that was on Sunday the first day, on Monday I washed my car and that was on Monday the second day, on Tuesday I waxed it and that was on Tuesday the third day, on Wednesday I vaccumed it and that was on Wednesday the fourth day, on Thursday I changed the oil and that was on Thursday the fifth day, on Friday I changed the spark plugs and that was on Friday the sixth day, and on Saturday I rested and that was on Saturday the seventh day, would you assume that I did all of this over billions of years? Perhaps I am telling you a parable or giving you an analogy? To what? Genesis is not a good analogy to evolution which says that animals do not reproduce after their own kinds, has the sun created before the earth and plants after the sun and land animals after sea animals, and the list goes on...

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You're really right about people's ideas. This remains a concern in creation science, keeping what we do know based on Scripture seperate from what we theorize, such as with starlight and time and a possible pre-flood vapor canopy (though they both may have some evidence in their favor).

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Exactly, and mans' theories change, even amoung creationists - currently, the "Fountains of the Great Deep" theory is favored over the vapor canopy.

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c010.html

Thank the Lord that that his word never changes!

http://www.tektonics.org/index2.html

Even though evidence supports me, I would still believe if the evidence didn't exist. My faith should be, and is, enough.

One of my problems with trying to "fit" Evolution with Genesis is just that - you're trying to make the Bible fit man's theories, not the other way around. Genesis read with no presupposition of Evolutionary thinking at all reads with 24 hour days. Period.

Very simple syonpsis-it attacks evolution logically on a biochemical level. Please understand that what follows is my own thoughts gathered from my own reading (and common sense), not those of the author, neccessarily. But basically, I'm getting at the same point.

Take a bicycle, and an unlimited supply of bicycle parts. Can you build a motorcycle?
You can't add a piece at a time and have a working (or sound) bike every step. Even if you did add something that resembled a gas tank, wouldn't that extra weight render the bike either too heavy, or simply too awkward?
Also, can you remove parts to find an antecedent? No, because a bicycle is irreducibly complex, i.e, as simple as it can get. Animals and people are like that as well. The simple process of vision requires dozens of chemical processes that, if you remove one step, become useless. Doesn't it follow that these processes had to be in place all at the same time? A jellyfish's light sensitive spots aren't going to pick up all those steps in one or even a dozen mutations, but too many changes renders the jellyfish blind.
DNA is a fantastic (IMHO) proof for the existence of God. It's the most powerful programming language ever made, and like a programming language, you can't just cut and paste code from anywhere and expect it to work. And while mutation, by nature, can add or subtract code lines, you don't get whole new sequences out of the air.
A believer in evolution is putting faith in the words of men.
I put mine in the word of God. He makes a whole lot more sense.

-J

You're also right about believing in creation without evidence, faith is enough.

There's also a good article that looks at whether Genesis is meant to be taken literally at http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1231.asp

Also, I got into a discussion with Zookey, and something I've written while discussing creation with a member of the College I attend seems to follow some of that:

I realized my last message probably needs more explanation. As I said, leaving creation as simply the truth is just fine. It just doesn't seem fair that people who have an unquestioning belief in evolution should ask us to have all of the answers for our belief system. So, it can be really great to know a few of the major answers to the questions people will ask, but how you answer them will depend on your audience (this is a lesson I am newly learning). If people ask you in that manner of "explain away the ice age or dinosaurs", they are not honestly looking for answers, so a good response would probably be something really short like "Why should I explain them away? The Bible seems to mention both of them..." After this if they start asking honest questions you can point them to more complete answers, in this case the book of Job mentions Behemoth, a creature that nearly had to be a dinosaur, as well as ice in the north which was probably during the ice age caused by the flood. A creationist I have heard from named Bill Jack describes our job as Christians as "planting seeds of doubt in the unbeliever's heart." Starting into a whole thesis on creation will be a waste of time if the listener is only looking for an argument, but if you give a brief answer like this it may be that "seed of doubt" that makes them question what they've been told, and maybe they'll come back later on to ask you openly.

I know it sounds like I've spoken both ways, I was really talking more about public speaking before, we have to challenge evolution publically and constantly, the above describes the way I think we should handle person-to-person confrontations. If you look at the way Jesus taught, this is what he did, he gave answers to the parisees, but they were quick answers that left them scratching their scalps. Ignoring people who ask you on the street just doesn't seem to cut it, I think this strategy works more often.

[This message has been edited by Crptc_Prgrmr (edited July 12, 2002).]

Check out http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1231.asp for a look at the context of the Genesis account. It is not myth, it is not idle talk, it is God's word. John 7:18 "He who speaks on his own does so to gain honor for himself, but he who works for the honor of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him." So, you tell me, if we seek to uphold the truth of God's word in its entirety, who's honor are we seeking?

BTW meanmanfromoz, please stop furthering the myth that two original ancestors (Adam and Eve) would mean genetic devastation, and look into the science involved. Evolution also assumes that at one time a certain pair of ape-creatures broke off to start the lineage towards humans. http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4376letter9-11-2000.asp

Creation does matter - if molecules-to-man happened, then death and suffering (and all other types of sin) existed long before original sin. Death and suffering existed in a world that God called "very good."

I place God's word above "science," not "science" above God's word. Man's studies are subject to error; God's are not.

"Science is a tool. If the tool works, we use it. If it's true, that's great, but if it isn't, it doesn't matter" -- ("Desert Fox" from GameDev.net)'s physics teacher

I wonder if MeanManInOz is still reading this topic.

I'll answer the question about carnivores anyway.

First of all, it seems God created animals that had a LOT of built-in traits to begin with - the original kinds. However, forces such as geological seperation may have seperated different traits, causing animals to be different. Hence Darwin's finches. Note, however, this works against evolution: This causes the species to be less able to adapt and change to new environments, since some of the variability is gone. As species seperate more, the worse they are, not the better.

It may be that the ability to be vegitarian may be hindered or lost in many cases.

Second, carnivores being carnivores only may be be the rule, but it seems to exceptions to the rule are possible.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v22n2_lion.asp

One thing that bothers me about any type of radiometric dating: The assumed daughter/mother ratio of the elements to begin with - how do we know what the ratio was when the fossils were formed? Especially since they were formed supposedly thousands, millions of years ago? How do we know what the ratio was then? If the ratio is unknown, we cannot get an age!

Don't be decieved falkone, our belief in the literal creation account is founded on nothing but faith, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. However, it is not a misplaced faith and just as God chose to show his masterfulness in the physical creation, I believe he has given us just as much evidence for the accuracy of his word in the physical record (if looked at objectively). We should not be so vain as to think that we know how God accomplished his many miracles, but just as doubting Thomas was given something to stick his fingers in, the doubters of today are given very real reasons to put their faith in Jesus.

Also, see what else Paul affirmed (not a controversy if you take God at his word) Romans 5:12-14 "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned-for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come."

Wow, I read down a little further and I get to some stuff about mutation. *Digs out his psychology book* You guys are helping me study, wonderful. Let me throw some word of man at you. Cover your eyes, its quite bright.
Something we "men" like to call Natural Selection.

Natural Selection:
the principle that, among the range of inherited trait variations, those contributing to reproduction and survival will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations.

And now mutations.

Mutations:
random errors in gene replication that lead to a change in the sequence of nucleotides; the source of all genetic diversity.

Now a little exerpt from the book for further explanation.

"In natural environments, a mutant shark with keener than normal smell would find more prey, enabling it to live longer and leave more offspring. As nature continued over countless generations to give an edge to sharks best suited to their ecological niche, an exquisitely effective predator came into being. Natural history has similarly favored bull moose with large antler racks, enabling them to prevail against rivals for access to females."

"A jellyfish's light sensitive spots aren't going to pick up all those steps in one or even a dozen mutations, but too many changes renders the jellyfish blind."

Over millions of years through countless generations of Jellyfish, a Jellyfish can and will emerge that will have that ability. But anyway on to something else.

"You're also right about believing in creation without evidence, faith is enough."

Umm, whatcha smoking buddy? To believe in something blindly is a tad ignorant. People believe in things when evidence is presented to them. If you cannot back up your views and beliefs of creationism without some hardcore solid evidence then you are only reafirming the beliefs of your other blind faith friends. I see very little people posting here for the other side, the evolutionist side. But that doesnt surprise me, this is a "christian msgboard". I myself am a christian, I believe in god, I believe that god created the earth and everything else. However I dont just stop there blindly. I question my faith constantly, if I didnt question it then how could I hope for it to become stronger. It is like working a muscle, you have to work it over and over again and it will become stronger. Don't be afraid to listen to what the other side has to say. Don't be afraid to say, "well maybe God only laid down the foundation and everything else just fell into place". Also don't be afraid to ask an even deeper question. "Which is right? Evolution, or Creation? or is it both? Or does god even exist? When I die will I go to heaven? If god doesnt exist then I will simply cease to exist. If he does exist then I suppose I'll go to heaven because I have been saved as the bible says. That is about all I have to say here. I know I'll get flamed for presenting a different view than everyone else. But that is life. Hopefully I've opened someone's eyes. Blind faith is foolish. Carbon Dating has years and years of documented research backing its testing method as valid. Scientists are not a bunch of liers. I think that about covers it. Oh, and "non believers" are not the enemy just waiting to be converted to "your religion".

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-Xsniper-

that aside...

many many Christians who hold 6 day creation belief, (not the fanatical ones whose only aspect of their religion is dealing with evolution vs creation) but christians who live a balanced christian life in all areas of these lioufe.. anyway many such a christian, held beliefs that maybe God used evolution etc etc etc, but as their relationship, prayertime with God etc progressed, they came to believe (without any outside propaganda) in a 6 day creation, based on the revelation of the Holy Spirit indwelling in them, in Faith, absolutely in Faith... they came to a part "Lord you are God, you created physics and everthing and its a great privelege to discouver the wonders of your creation, but i know that i - a finite human cannot fully comprehend your creation, and when looking from one angle may get things wrong, so i choose to trust you, and trust the bible, as though other theories may hold some weight in evidence , there are aspects of them that completely contradict the bibles, and also the nature of God, so in Faith, knowing you are the creator of the World, Jesus and its sustianer, i choose to believe in the literal account, LIke a young Child, for Child-like Faith is what is pleasing to God"

personally having knowing the theory of relativity, the 6 day creation to me, whether literally 6 modern days or different doesn't matter to me at all... but to accept darwinism has very serious consequences, and takes more faith considering the complexity of life as modern science has found, and the probability of evolution..

but for me the biggest thing that stops evolution and my understanding of creation from aligning in the least is the fact that evolution requires death, and i don't believe that there was death of animals before the fall of man... you see when that comes up you aren't just dealing with the cration of the earth, its not just evolution, you are dealing with God's plan of redemption , His Nature etc... the whole fact that history is still going on, because Man fell, and God loved man so much that he made an elaborate plan of redemption , sacrificing Jesus for our Sins... And the reason History is continueing is that God wishes that non would perish , and the end will come once the gospel has been preached to all ethnos..

Karl

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Karl /GODCENTRIC
Husband of my amazing wife Aleshia
Klumsy@xtra.co.nz

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Regards,

Brice

Is our relationship with God restricted , and goes according to our own intellect...

do we just fit God in where he is convienent in our lifes, do we really sit let him be Lord and sit on the throne of our lives, or do we sit on the throne ourselves, trying to have God be our servant to give us what we want... or do we put Him on the throne..

what is our perspective?

God is too big for us to fully comprehend, so do we restrict HIm to our understanding, do we actually make our MIND, our INTERLECT, our RATIONALISING ABILITY a god about God, is it an idol, or do we submit that as with all other aspects of our life before the throne of Christ..

romans 12:2
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.

in its full context also

1Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual[1] act of worship. 2Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.
3For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.

God Bless.
one of the interesting paradoxes of our post modern world, is the fact that REASON has become a God , yet many have lost the ability to truely objectively reason.. i am not elequent to explain this.. but somebody like ravi zacharias can do a good job at that..

Karl

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Karl /GODCENTRIC
Husband of my amazing wife Aleshia
Klumsy@xtra.co.nz

I think that is great. That kindof "blind faith" is a good thing in the aspect that you have elevated to that level. To start from nothing and blindly believe in something is foolish, to start from nothing and question your faith again and again until you can reach a level of true "blind faith" is good.

"xsniper, though i haven't been involved in these posts much at all, i have a few things... most people who advocate creation vs evolution do have a lot of evidence and are highly respected scientists as well... modern science goes against darwinian evolution, and for many secular scientists this causes a headache because they beleive in evolution , almost like a reigion, and have to try and tie ends together..."

I don't have a problem with this, everyone is entitled to their beliefs. My biggest problem with this thread is there was a lot of bashing of beliefs and theories and just people in general. I don't think there are very many people who have the right to say if someone is right or wrong, surely not to blindly call scientists a bunch of liers. I mean that is like me coming in here and calling all of you a bunch of liers, or saying you are stupid for believing what you believe in. <-- BTW, I'm not saying that, notice the word "like" in the beginning of the sentence. I feel I have to be very careful, wouldnt want anyone to jump down my throat because they misunderstood me.

"but for me the biggest thing that stops evolution and my understanding of creation from aligning in the least is the fact that evolution requires death, and i don't believe that there was death of animals before the fall of man... you see when that comes up you aren't just dealing with the cration of the earth, its not just evolution, you are dealing with God's plan of redemption , His Nature etc..."

This again gets to beliefs, and something I didnt say earlier that I perhaps should have said is this. I don't think using your beliefs as evidence to support your beliefs is a good idea. Example:

Definition of the word canteloupe.
A canteloupe is a canteloupe.

I'm defining the word using the word itself, it just doesnt work. If people do not believe in what you believe in then they will not see your beliefs as evidence.

My main purpose of making a reply to this thread was because I felt that the "evolutionist side" was horribly misrepresented here. If there is to be a debate then let both sides have their say.

Now to lost reflections who said:
"Hmm... there is actually somebody worse than me on these forums..."

I'm sorry that I have offended you in such a way. May peace come to you.

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-Xsniper-

quote:

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Originally posted by Xsniper:

I'm sorry that I have offended you in such a way. May peace come to you.

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You haven't offended me in the least. I am not a Christian and could care less about the debate. I was merely making a comment, because I am usually the one who makes posts such as yours

Try to behave myself here though, but imagine I will eventually be banned from this board as well.

"But, if you cannot understand how this could have been done in six days, then grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being more learned than you are."
-Martin Luther

Natural selection was first described by creationist Edward Blyth 24 years before Darwin, and has absolutely zip support for evolution. You are free to ask evolutionists on this point.

How about some quotes by people who rely on their intellect (all atheists as well)?

‘Christianity has fought, still fights, and will continue to fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the Son of God. If Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing.’

G. Richard Bozarth, ‘The Meaning of Evolution’, American Atheist, p. 30. 20 September 1979.

‘If all the animals and man had been evolved in this ascendant manner, then there had been no first parents, no Eden, and no Fall. And if there had been no fall, then the entire historical fabric of Christianity, the story of the first sin and the reason for an atonement, upon which the current teaching based Christian emotion and morality, collapsed like a house of cards.’

Wells, H.G., The outline of history — being a plain history of life and mankind, Cassell & Company Ltd, London, U.K., (the fourth revision), p. 616, 1925.

'People seem to think that Christianity and evolution do or can go together. But I suggest this is only possible for the intellectually schizophrenic. Biological theory does not require or allow any sort of divine guidance for the evolutionary process."

David Oldroyd, The (Australian) Weekend Review, March 20–21, 1993, p.5. (David Oldroyd is associate professor in the School of Science and Technology Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia.)

‘Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion — a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint — and Mr [sic] Gish is but one of many to make it — the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.
‘… Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.’

Michael Ruse, professor of philosophy and zoology at the University of Guelph, Canada (recently moved to Florida), How evolution became a religion: creationists correct? National Post, pp. B1,B3,B7 May 13, 2000. Ruse was the leading anti-creationist philosopher whose (flawed) arguments seemed to convince the biased judge to rule against the Arkansas ‘balanced treatment’ (of creation and evolution in schools) bill in 1981/2. At the trial, the anti-creationists loftily dismissed the claim that evolution was an anti-god religion.

‘The origin of life by chance in a primeval soup is impossible in probability in the same way that a perpetual machine is in probability. The extremely small probabilities calculated in this chapter are not discouraging to true believers … [however] A practical person must conclude that life didn’t happen by chance.’
Note: In these calculations, Yockey generously granted that the raw materials were available in a primeval soup. But in the previous chapter, Yockey showed there was much evidence that a primeval soup never existed, so is an act of faith.

Just one challenge I have for you Xsniper, read all of this: http://www.icr.org/research/jb/debatehighlights.html is this "hardcore solid evidence"?

Aside from that, it is very important that we do not get to believing anything, literal creation included, only based on our own understanding. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path."

Is there evidence of literal creation? You bet, and I challenge you to take a real look at it. Should you believe it because I or someone else tells you it's so, or because it looks like the only possible explanation intellectually? NO. So go ahead and look into this, but do so with a thirst for God's truth.

[This message has been edited by Crptc_Prgrmr (edited July 25, 2002).]

Then I started questioning the scientific facts - as hard as I question any of my beliefs. It now seems to me that the scientific community, whilst they joke about proving/disproving God are commited to the removal of God from our understanding of the universe. It's only when you can't bring yourself to believe in the all powerfull creator and intelligent design that you need theories about random mutations over millions of years.

My relationship with God has been strengthened and my understanding of scripture improved. May the world call me wacko and my faith blind.

2 Timothy 4:3-4

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

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Rowan / GODCENTRIC Christian Demoscene

Believe me, scientifically minded non-Christians are not impressed by people who cop-out on the beginings of Scripture:

'They [most Americans] believe that the Earth is billions of years old and that life evolved gradually from simple to complex forms. But they also believe that evolution was a means by which God carried out a plan to create humans. For tactical reasons, Darwinists don't rush to tell all these people that they are missing the point, but all in good time. Let people first learn that evolution is a fact. They can be told later what evolution means.'

Phillip E. Johnson, Professor of law at Boalt Hall, University of California at Berkeley. 'Unbelievers Unwelcome in the Science Lab', Los Angeles Times, November 3,1990.

Einstein's theory of relativity has no meaning without physical masses, which were not existent until God spoke them into being.

Is God outside of time? You bet. Who is His audience for Scripture? Humans. God did not say creation was finished in a snarfblak, but in real-literal-Hebrew-days. Scripture is God's word to us and does not contain made-up words and concepts but human language.

There are two qualifiers given to the time periods of Genesis, both numbers and evening/morning specifiers. In the Ten Commandments it equates keeping the Sabbath every seven days with the seven days in the creation account. Perhaps it means something like "Johny, it took your father 6 billion years to create the universe. I think you can finish cleaning your room in 6 days.."? At any rate this stuff is clearly reading into the account rather than reading out of it. And guess what, there are words in Hebrew for long time periods if that is what he intended to put across. The entire Bible is written earth-centrically, so time in Scripture is given relative to earth, period.

Some people have stated that evolution does not require death and bloodshed before original sin. This is clearly mixing terms. The account itself says that God created Adam from the dust of the earth. This is evolution any way you slice it, increased order out of chaos. However it was a controlled act, not a naturalistic-millions-of-years-process. Darwinian evolution does in fact require culling of existing organisms in order to create increasing complexity (assuming it were even possible).

Many people have suggested that perhaps Genesis is figurative/parable/analogy...
Here are a few conflicts that remain with these views aside from the previous time discrepency....

Bible: Ocean before land (Gen. 2:3)
Evolution: Land before oceans

Bible: Atmosphere between two hydrospheres (Gen. 1:7)
Evolution: Contigous atmosphere and hydrosphere

Bible: First life on land (Gen. 1:11)
Evolution: Life began in oceans

Bible: First life was land plants (Gen. 1:11)
Evolution: Marine organisms evolved first

Bible: Earth before sun and stars (Gen. 1:14-19)
Evolution: Sun and stars before earth

Bible: Fruit trees before fishes (Gen. 1:11)
Evolution: Fishes before fruit trees

Bible: All stars made on the fourth day (Gen. 1:16
Evolution: Stars evolved at various times

Bible: Birds and fishes created on the fifth day (Gen. 1:20,21)
Evolution: Fishes evolved hundreds of millions of years before birds appeared.

Bible: Birds before insects (Gen. 1:20,21)
Evolution: Insects before birds

Bible: Whales before reptiles (Gen. 1:20-31)
Evolution: Reptiles before whales

Bible: Birds before reptiles (Gen. 1:20-31)
Evolution: Reptiles before birds

Bible: Man before rain (Gen. 2:5)
Evolution: Rain before man

Bible: Man before woman (Gen. 2:21-22)
Evolution: Woman before man (by genetics)

Bible: Light before sun (Gen. 1:3-19)
Evolution: Sun before any light

Bible: Plants before sun (Gen. 1:11-19
Evolution: Sun before any plants

Bible: Abundance and variety of marine life all at once (Gen. 1:20,21)
Evolution: Marine life gradually developed from a primitive organic blob

Bible: Fixed and distinct kinds (Gen. 1:11,12,21,24,25,1 Cor. 15:38-39)
Evolution: Life forms in a continual state of flux

In short Genesis makes a very bad analogy to evolution, especially chronologically.

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Rowan / GODCENTRIC Christian Demoscene

BTW Xsniper, have you taken a look at the link I gave you? It covers a wide range of current creation research, including evidence for a young earth. To me two of the stronger arguments against really-long-ages are the earth's strong magnetic field and the space junk that should have been vacuumed up by the sun's energy by now. Evolutionists have had to create elaborate hypothesis for keeping magnetic fields strong over billions of years, which have been rebutted by creationists. Who's going against the evidence now?...

*shakes my head in sorrow*

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Regards,

Brice

Lost Reflections -- When your life comes crumbling down around you, can you count on the one person who has never been there for you? Lost Reflections is a heart warming story of personal redemption and second chances.

http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/yeclaims.html

It would be fair to say that creation scientists and atheist evolutionists have jump to wrong conclusions as often as each other, because they are both determined to prove something. The creation scientist wants science to verify what the Bible says, and the atheist evolutionist wants to disprove what the Bible says.

People shouldn't be surprised that creationists focus on disproving evolutionist theories. Creation science is for theists. You can't prove creation to an atheist regardless of your evidence, because in his godless understanding of the world, everything HAS TO BE explained naturally. And should you present something to him he can't explain, he will be content to wait until someone makes a "natural law" for him which can explain it.

And so I don't think we should have beliefs in creation based on the observations of men (even though they be christian scientists), but based on the Word of God, and our relationships with God. The role of creation science SHOULD BE to show us that the theories which try to remove God from our universe are not based on sound science or truth.

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Rowan / GODCENTRIC Christian Demoscene

quote:

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Wow, I couldnt even finish reading all these posts and I just happened to stumble in here anyway. But you guys are amazing. To blatantly call scientists liers, say Carbon Dating is false, just throw everything around and say things are not correct, saying they are wrong just because you believe that God created everything in a literal 6 days exactly as layed down in the bible. Use your brain man, don't take things soo literally. BTW, I really think you should be careful before just saying scientists are a bunch of liers that dont know what they are talking about. I'm sure you know this already but I'll point it out anyway.

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If I remember right, I gave actual reasons why I think there's trouble with radiocarbon dating. The question is: How do we know the initial mother/daughter ratio?

quote:

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Who is to say that your side is right and theres is wrong.

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The same goes both ways - both creationism and molecules-to-man evolutionism are faiths, until either one or the other can be proven unequivocally. Unfortunately, time machines do not exist to allow direct observation.

quote:

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Umm, whatcha smoking buddy? To believe in something blindly is a tad ignorant. People believe in things when evidence is presented to them. If you cannot back up your views and beliefs of creationism without some hardcore solid evidence then you are only reafirming the beliefs of your other blind faith friends.

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Just because we believe in something blindly does not neccessarily mean that we are wrong - as long as there is no proof beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that molecules-to-man evolution is correct, then I have every right to question it and pursue studies into other beliefs. Saying I'm "ignorant" is only an attack of my character, and doen't affect the validity of my claims.

Since evolution has not been proven unequivocally, every scientist in the world has some degree of blind faith that what hasn't been proven is correct anyway!

quote:

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Carbon Dating has years and years of documented research backing its testing method as valid.

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Give me at least one instance where the ratio of mother/daughter elements were measured thousands of years ago. The method cannot be tested for validity, as carbon dating hasn't even existed that long!

My faith is not completely blind; it could be, but it isn't.

AIG just answered US News on a few points:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/0730usnews_response.asp?srcFrom=fpl

Also, take a look around AIG, it's got plenty of material.

[This message has been edited by CobraA1 (edited July 30, 2002).]

CobraA1, you're still accurate about carbon-dating. Not only that, but radiation such as X-rays can increase the decay-rate. The same energies that are supposed to have sparked life would make rocks look old for their age! Also, Carbon^12 has a half-life of 50,000 years, so it can't prove anything is millions of years old (sceptics are encouraged to check this out)! Another question that comes up again is helium. As a gas that slips through incredibly tight spaces it is used to test nuclear reactors. But it is present in large quantities in rocks supposedly millions of years old. Why hasn't it escaped yet?

Here's another strong argument for special-creation, something I'd call "irreducible complexity". Organisms exhibit complexities that present no real means of increasing their function without at some point having killed them off during supposed evolution, or requiring a leap of faith once again in cosmic gambling.

Darwinists dismiss the reasoning behind the intelligent-design movement, contending that living organisms were produced by mindless processes of random mutation and natural selection. But advances in molecular biology are shredding that claim.
For example, consider the little outboard motor that bacteria such as E. coli use to navigate their environment. This water-cooled contraption, called a flagellum, comes equipped with a reversible engine, drive shaft, U-joint and long whip-like propeller. It hums along at 17,000 rpm.
Its complexity is enormous. According to microbiologist Scott Minnich of the University of Idaho, you need about 50 genes to create a working flagellum. Each of those genes is as complex as a sentence with hundreds of letters. What's more, the requirements for a working flagellum are extremely tight.
"Mutations in any single gene knock out function or in lesser cases dimish function," Minnich says. "So, to swim you have to have the full complement of genes, There are no intermediate steps."
The same is true of many other systems. For example, the relatively simple process of blood clotting requires a cascade of finely tuned chemical reactions. If any of the protiens involved is missing, the clot may not form, may form in the wrong place, may not stop growing or may fail to dissolve at the right time. Such systems simply defy Darwinist explanations.
-Mark Hartwig PH.D., 'Whose Comfortable Myth?', Focus on the Family, June 2002.

------------------
There's a difference you know, 'tween having faith and playing make-believe. One will make you grow, the other one's just a fantasy...

Faith without works is like a song you can't sing, it's about as useless as a screendoor on a submarine...

Discovery Channel also threatened AiG with lawsuit for a video series using the word "discovery" in its title. I like the new title and if it means more of the videos sooner I say God bless 'em, but man are these people's tactics blatant.

------------------
There's a difference you know, 'tween having faith and playing make-believe. One will make you grow, the other one's just a fantasy...

Faith without works is like a song you can't sing, it's about as useless as a screendoor on a submarine...

I cannot believe they are proudly proclaiming that the one book is endorsed by D. James Kennedy. The man is a blatant Satanist. Whether it is on the radio, TV or his books, his purely Satanic teaching on Astrology or as he calls it "Gospel in the Stars" and even "Biblical Astrology". This man has been one of the leaders in bringing occultism, pyramidology, and numerology into mainstream Christianity.

------------------
Regards,

Brice

Lost Reflections -- When your life comes crumbling down around you, can you count on the one person who has never been there for you? Lost Reflections is a heart warming story of personal redemption and second chances.

quote:

---

Originally posted by lostreflections:
Christians would be best served to stay away from AiG due to their Satanic connection.

I cannot believe they are proudly proclaiming that the one book is endorsed by D. James Kennedy. The man is a blatant Satanist. Whether it is on the radio, TV or his books, his purely Satanic teaching on Astrology or as he calls it "Gospel in the Stars" and even "Biblical Astrology". This man has been one of the leaders in bringing occultism, pyramidology, and numerology into mainstream Christianity.

---

Interesting. They've acknowledged him and a couple of his books, but there's not much material - I had to go to a search engine to find information about the guy.

Hmm . . .

You seem to be partially right, but AIG clearly isn't endorsing satanism, astrology, or anything else of that nature - they just found his ideas on creationism interesting. The "connection" that you claim AIG has to satanism and astrology is nonexistent. I seriously doubt this guy represent's AIG's viewpoints on these subjects.

I can hardly call AIG a bad webpage just because of this "connection" anyway - that does not make the rest of their pages junk!

In all seriousness, I am not a Christian and could really care less. I was merely pointing out what I see as a hypocrisy demonstrated by AiG.

I generally avoid any thread with Christian topics, but this one has been hilarious on both sides. Christians who obviously have never read their Bible, and if they have, do not understand it and the pro evolutionists who seem to be lacking understanding on some very basic science matters.

Reminds myself to totally avoid ALL Christian threads from now on.

Peace

------------------
Regards,

Brice

Lost Reflections -- When your life comes crumbling down around you, can you count on the one person who has never been there for you? Lost Reflections is a heart warming story of personal redemption and second chances.

quote:

---

Reminds myself to totally avoid ALL Christian threads from now on.

---

That might be rather difficult considering this is a Christian board and most threads will contain some reflection of the people who post them.

BlazeQ

------------------
I'm out of my mind... and into the mind of Christ -G.S. Megaphone

quote:

---

Originally posted by BlazeQ:
That might be rather difficult considering this is a Christian board and most threads will contain some reflection of the people who post them.

BlazeQ

---

Your point is taken and I will leave the board. I am sorry to have bothered you.

------------------
Regards,

Brice

Lost Reflections -- When your life comes crumbling down around you, can you count on the one person who has never been there for you? Lost Reflections is a heart warming story of personal redemption and second chances.

------------------
I'm out of my mind... and into the mind of Christ -G.S. Megaphone

quote:

---

Originally posted by lostreflections:
You are right, heck all Christian sites should seek endorsements from antiChristians, rofl.

In all seriousness, I am not a Christian and could really care less. I was merely pointing out what I see as a hypocrisy demonstrated by AiG.

---

Looks like an appeal to anger to me. You've failed to supply sound reasoning as to why this makes the entirety of AIG incorrect. Not only that, you've only expressed your opinion of an author! I hardly consider you qualified to asses AIG's credibility.

quote:

---

I generally avoid any thread with Christian topics, but this one has been hilarious on both sides. Christians who obviously have never read their Bible, and if they have, do not understand it

---

Why should I believe you are qualified to tell us if we can "understand" our bibles or not? What don't we understand? Do you have a degree in theology, or any other subject related to biblical interpretation?

Hilarious? I'm glad you find us amusing. Too bad your laughter only amounts to an ad hominem.

quote:

---

and the pro evolutionists who seem to be lacking understanding on some very basic science matters.

Reminds myself to totally avoid ALL Christian threads from now on.

Peace

---

k. Bye.

You are 100% correct about AiG. There is nothing wrong with a Christian service seeking endorsement from somebody who promotes non Biblical beliefs, (such as astrology) which are expressely forbid by the Bible.

However in doing so, they severely damage their credibility. This would be the equivalent of a child care service seeking endorsement from child molesters.

>Not only that, you've only expressed your opinion of an author!<

Correction, I expressed facts not an opinion about a televangelist/author. Perhaps you can find a Bible. If you can, you can easily expose Mr. Kennedy's teachings for what they are. Visit his site and you can easily get copies of his teachings. I suggest this one:

The Real Meaning Of The Zodiac: Dr. D. James Kennedy

>I hardly consider you qualified to asses AIG's credibility.<

Nor do I you.

>Do you have a degree in theology, or any other subject related to biblical interpretation?<

Actually, yes I do, 3 as a matter of fact.

>Hilarious? I'm glad you find us amusing.<

Sorry, but I do. I find double standards to be sad when applied to religion. You claim to worship God, but obviously have some major disagreements with His written word if you think the Bible supports your belief that it is ok for Christians to indulge in practices like astrology, numerology, fortune telling and various forms of occultism. Don't deny it, remember YOU are the one who sees nothing wrong with a Christian service seeking endorsement from a Satanist.

But God allows us freedom of choice and I fully support that 100%. You are free to believe whatever you want. You can worship goats for all I care.

------------------
Regards,

Brice

Lost Reflections -- When your life comes crumbling down around you, can you count on the one person who has never been there for you? Lost Reflections is a heart warming story of personal redemption and second chances.

quote:

---

Originally posted by lostreflections:
You are 100% correct about AiG. There is nothing wrong with a Christian service seeking endorsement from somebody who promotes non Biblical beliefs, (such as astrology) which are expressely forbid by the Bible.

---

If what you claim is indeed true, then AIG seems to be ignorant to what you seem to "know." I'm not sure I'm willing to believe that yet. I'll suspend my judgement about AIG until I have further evidence.

quote:

---

However in doing so, they severely damage their credibility. This would be the equivalent of a child care service seeking endorsement from child molesters.

---

If what you claim is indeed true.

quote:

---

Correction, I expressed facts not an opinion about a televangelist/author. Perhaps you can find a Bible. If you can, you can easily expose Mr. Kennedy's teachings for what they are. Visit his site and you can easily get copies of his teachings. I suggest this one:

The Real Meaning Of The Zodiac: Dr. D. James Kennedy

---

I'll see if I can take a look. I'll also see what others besides you have to say about this subject - I've found some more resources, and I'll have to sort through it. It also seems he's responded to such claims, and I'll have to take a look at that also.

quote:

---

>I hardly consider you qualified to asses AIG's credibility.<

Nor do I you.

---

I guess I'm going to have to do some research.

quote:

---

>Do you have a degree in theology, or any other subject related to biblical interpretation?<

Actually, yes I do, 3 as a matter of fact.

>Hilarious? I'm glad you find us amusing.<

Sorry, but I do. I find double standards to be sad when applied to religion. You claim to worship God, but obviously have some major disagreements with His written word if you think the Bible supports your belief that it is ok for Christians to indulge in practices like astrology, numerology, fortune telling and various forms of occultism. Don't deny it, remember YOU are the one who sees nothing wrong with a Christian service seeking endorsement from a Satanist.

---

I haven't even accepted the claim that he is a satanist. I guess I'll suspended my judgement about both him and AIG until I've got further evidence.

quote:

---

But God allows us freedom of choice and I fully support that 100%. You are free to believe whatever you want. You can worship goats for all I care.

---

I'm not claiming to accept AIG's theology. They're not claiming to accept Dr. D. James Kennedy's theology. I'm not sure how this applies to AIG's content.

Hmm . . . He's Presbyterian, I'm Lutheran - we probably disagree on many theological issues already.

http://www.lcms.org/cic/presbyt.html

AIG does, however, offer good information about creationist theories; you may have been able to call into question their judement about other people's character, but you haven't been able to show how this invalidates the material on their web pages.

What exactly does their endoresement of this man have to do with the scientific content of their site?

[This message has been edited by CobraA1 (edited August 05, 2002).]

Dr. Kennedy's works and beliefs are well documented, and he has come under attack repeatedly for his perversion of God's word. I am merely stating his beliefs in astrology.

>>It also seems he's responded to such claims, and I'll have to take a look at that also.<<

I remember his responses, all of which are negated by his continuing to support his original beliefs on Biblical Astrology by selling his booklets and tapes, and still running them on radio & TV.

In a way it is really sad. Until these biblical truths on "Biblical Astrology" were "revealed" to him, he was one of the more credible televangelists. Granted the majority of the televangelists like to dress up like Liberace and spend the whole show begging for money and whacking people in the forehead to heal them by the "miracle of God". But there are a few decent televangelists that adhere to the Bible instead of putting on a circus show.

When I was in Florida years back, in Bible College/Seminary we attended Dr. Kennedy's church quite often, and they were really good services. 99% of the time there is nothing wrong with his TV or Radio shows. I used to listen to his daily radio show and weekly TV show on a regular basis. Several years back, while listening to the radio show, my jaw completely dropped when I heard the man explaining the Zodiac and how we can find the birth of Christ in it and various other things. I ordered the tapes and books offered and when I received them could not believe the "crap" I was reading. Over the years he has continually come under attack for his adherence to these unbiblical beliefs.

>I haven't even accepted the claim that he is a satanist.<

The Bible is 100% clear in its stance on astrology. There is absolutely no "acceptable" form of Astrology, regardless of how bad you choose to pervert the word of God. Anything against God, naturally is for Satan. All it takes for Satan to destroy any Christian church is to bring in one false doctrine that is against the Bible.

>>Hmm . . . He's Presbyterian, I'm Lutheran - we probably disagree on many theological issues already.<<

hehe... I seriously doubt Kennedy in any way speaks for Presbyterians anywhere. On the other hand, my experience with a Presbyterian church: When I was a child, I attended a Presbyterian Church with my Grandmother in Alexandria, VA. I remember on Halloween when they set up a Haunted House in the Church. I can remember the room where the kids would file through and there would be a table set for a seance and as you would walk by, somebody underneath would push it up to make it "levitate". Many other such things for Halloween. How "Christian"

>>AIG does, however, offer good information about creationist theories; you may have been able to call into question their judement about other people's character, but you haven't been able to show how this invalidates the material on their web pages.<<

Let me be more clear. AiG is a very good site for resources on Creationism. I own some of the resources offered there. The only problem I have with most of the books on Creation is they often only look to Genesis to support the Creation story, which excludes parts of the creation story. They ONLY problem I have with AiG is they are letting D. James Kennedy endorse one of their books. Perhaps it is easy for some to overlook the verses in the Bible that tell us about astrology.

In all honesty, would ANY parent knowingly send their child to a day care center that is endorsed by child molesters? No, of course not. But strangely people are so willing to put their beliefs in God, the Bible and their Salvation in the hands of organizations that seek endorsements from people like Kennedy who clearly promote non Christian beliefs (like Astrology). Would you go to your local Christian Church if they had Lord Egan http://www.churchofsatan.org as a Deacon? I would hope not!

CobraA1, hopefully you have not taken any comments personally. They were not intended to be against you personally, and in rereading some posts they were not worded very kindly towards you and for that I am tuly sorry. I also have a dry sense of humor which rubs people the wrong way. If I avoid the Christian threads from now on all should be fine

To get this back on Topic:

I do not believe in evolution as the term is generally used. The millions of missing links are a pretty huge stumbling block. I have 2 years of Oceanography, 2 years of Geology and 2 years of Archaeology, none of which support "traditional" evolution.

I suggest "Darwin on Trial" by: Phillip R. Johnson and "The Collapse of Evolution" by: Scott M. Huse as primers for debunking evolution.

I do not consider this evolution, but, I do believe that a species will adapt to a small extent to its environment. Please NOTE I said ADAPT, not evolve into another species. Even a human will adapt to conditions in some cases. For example, if you went right now and tried to climb Mt Everest without stopping for anything, you would die. Because of the altitudes, your body would not get enough oxygen, your brain would swell and you would die. Climbers have to acclimate themselves at various elevations to give their body the time it needs to adjust. How does it adjust? The body produces larger than normal amounts of red blood cells. Since the air is thinner, this allows the blood to carry more ogygen from the lungs to the rest of the organs and body. In most climbers who actually reach the summit, they average around twice the number of red blood cells of what is considered "normal".

As far as Creation, when you take in all Bible verses pertaining to Creation, you certainly have a completely different picture than what the normal Creation story is. Some interesting links:

http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/didgod.htm
http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/pubs/Migration.htm
http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/pubs/CreateEvol-Life.htm
http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/pubs/CreateAdam.htm
http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/pubs/WhaleTale.htm
http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/evolutio.htm
http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/biblefact.htm

The theories here would certainly explain why there are "cavemen" of various types and various prehistoric creatures, which vanished suddenly and left us with the millions of missing links that would have existed if evolution were true.

I do not believe that a flood or a meteor wiped out the world at that time. Although meteors/asteroids have certainly hit the earth. Since in the Alsaka gold rush, Wooly Mammoths were found that were frozen solid and so quickly that the meat was not rotten when thawed, and there are reports of the sled dogs eating the carcasses and not getting sick and the other animals who have been found with undigested food in their stomachs, whatever happend was instant. These hulking creatures were flash frozen.

In my opinion, a pole shift could have caused all this instantly, temperate parts of the globe would have instantly been turned into freezing climates, other catastrophies would have hit, including land being flooded, land masses moving, earthquakes, eruption of volcanoes, etc.

When it comes to Creation, I have stumbling points resulting from various science beliefs. Nothing to do with evolution, but I have some things that just do not add up. I honestly do not know what I believe in regards to Creation anymore. And, I honestly do not know what I believe in regards to God anymore.

Arguing about any aspect of any religion is an exercise in futility. It never does any good. The world is in turmoil because of religions who cannot get along.

Anasgvti nihi nigohilvi uha nvwato hiyadv.

(From my native Tsalagi. Roughly translated to English: "May you always have peace")

------------------
Regards,

Brice

Lost Reflections -- When your life comes crumbling down around you, can you count on the one person who has never been there for you? Lost Reflections is a heart warming story of personal redemption and second chances.

[This message has been edited by lostreflections (edited August 05, 2002).]

I have no idea what James Kennedy's personal views are, if he does in fact believe in practicing astrology then he should be kicked out of the Church, Paul states this stuff pretty clearly, but I have learned not to believe much of what I hear, sorry but I can't just take your word for it.

I have personally met face-to-face their founder Ken Ham and many of their scientists and speakers. These people worship the true and living God, not Satan and not the vague emotional "God" of society that might as well be a nice persian rug or a two-by-four.

If you think that Christianity is here to bring peace to the world you are sadly mistaken. Jesus himself said He came not to bring peace but division.

BTW lostreflections, you're absolutely right. Animals do adapt, via-natural-selection existing information is mixed or destroyed which allows a population to "adapt" to different environments. This isn't evolution and it seems to display a masterful mechanism for sustaining life on our planet. The ice-age is also a fascinating topic, and something that deserves more attention. I attended a lecture by a meteorologist from ICR on the wooly mammoths and you're accurate in saying it had to be rapid, all of the evidence points to it. Bones would have broken, flesh would rot, scavengers would, um, scavenge, if it had taken any amount of time. A polar shift does seem possible, and the cool-down could very likely have been caused as a result of changing conditions after the flood including this shift.

BTW, secular scientists will continue to employ meteors/asteroids and just about anything else to explain extinctions because they are afraid of water (localized flooding is okay in limited cases). The same meteorologist who discussed the mammoths gave quite a bit of geological evidence for a global flood, things such as the continental-shelves having slopes mere fractions of degrees for miles out, and rocks that are hundreds of miles from any possible origin, and landmarks where water cut channels through high ground instead of taking the easiest paths, and where wind is said to have cut hard rock while leaving softer types alone, all pointing toward fast-moving water. The rocks cry out, don't they?

------------------
There's a difference you know, 'tween having faith and playing make-believe. One will make you grow, the other one's just a fantasy...

Faith without works is like a song you can't sing, it's about as useless as a screendoor on a submarine...

------------------
There's a difference you know, 'tween having faith and playing make-believe. One will make you grow, the other one's just a fantasy...

Faith without works is like a song you can't sing, it's about as useless as a screendoor on a submarine...

Also, i'm working on a futuristic RPG, where evolution is disproven on the grounds that that cloning thinking humans is impossible. this is of course since they are just pices of flesh without a spirit. If a spirit is required for life, then obviously some god exisits, and created us, and our spirits. (as the game progresses it'll be clear that God made the world, not other gods) Also i'm buting in alot of pro-christian propaganda, leading the character to some very clear arguments for christ, but really arguments are not the way. The best way to convert people, or get them to listen to you is through supernatural acts of God. Jesus preaching was usually was proceed by miricols. If they see something imposible, they will either belive in God, or reject what their own eyes see.

Just a few ideas to ponder

Veritech

------------------
"If you even breathe a word of what you've heard here, I hope Gandalf will turn you into a spotted toad, and fill the garden full of grass-snakes" - "Fellowship of the Ring" by JRR Tolkien (p91)

This is something that would fit in with the beliefs of Ted Armstrong. This is specifically mentioned in Jimmy Swaggart's book on evolution.

When one sees recent discoveies like the underwater city off the coast of Cuba and still not being told what truly went on at Antartica a year or so back, one can only imagine...

------------------
Regards,

Brice

Lost Reflections -- When your life comes crumbling down around you, can you count on the one person who has never been there for you? Lost Reflections is a heart warming story of personal redemption and second chances.

As I've shown before I think there is plenty of evidence that the earth and our solar system are young while the rest of the universe may be billions of years old (because of relativity). As a few examples the strength of the magnetic fields of our planets remain strong compared to their decay-rates, the sun's energy should have sucked up all the space junk, their is not enough helium in the atmosphere and too much in the ground, comets have life-spans in the thousands and unless there is a "factory" producing them they should be gone, bones with intact protien and blood-cells, and more. Scientists already know that fossilization and other processes assumed to take millions of years naturally can occur whithin months or years in the right conditions, the flood seems to provide such. You can check out a list including more evidence for a young earth at: http://www.biblicaldiscipleship.org/Creation%20vs.%20Evolution/youngearth.htm

However, the idea of an advanced civilization being wiped out by a worldwide flood fits very neatly with the Genesis account. You know evolutionary propoganda has so indoctrinated people with slow-like-tar-uniformitarian-gradualistic-upward-change that people see the earliest humans as barely better than apes, thus having barely more intelligence. This is not what the evidence we have shows, from their earliest appearance man seems to have been remarkably intelligent, creating batteries at least as early as the Egyptians (along with their pyramids) and metal tools that have been petrified. Believing a literal creation I think humans have always been smart, and before the flood they had probably advanced quite alot technologically. Noah's ark itself would take a bit of knowledge and skill to build, even though I think God gave him a perfect design to work with. Standard barge-hull-type testing with the dimensions of the ark as described in the Bible show a design that could withstand incredible swells and was almost impossible to flip.

------------------
There's a difference you know, 'tween having faith and playing make-believe. One will make you grow, the other one's just a fantasy...

Faith without works is like a song you can't sing, it's about as useless as a screendoor on a submarine...

quote:

---

Originally posted by lostreflections:
>>If what you claim is indeed true.<<

Dr. Kennedy's works and beliefs are well documented, and he has come under attack repeatedly for his perversion of God's word. I am merely stating his beliefs in astrology.

>>It also seems he's responded to such claims, and I'll have to take a look at that also.<<

I remember his responses, all of which are negated by his continuing to support his original beliefs on Biblical Astrology by selling his booklets and tapes, and still running them on radio & TV.

In a way it is really sad. Until these biblical truths on "Biblical Astrology" were "revealed" to him, he was one of the more credible televangelists. Granted the majority of the televangelists like to dress up like Liberace and spend the whole show begging for money and whacking people in the forehead to heal them by the "miracle of God". But there are a few decent televangelists that adhere to the Bible instead of putting on a circus show.

When I was in Florida years back, in Bible College/Seminary we attended Dr. Kennedy's church quite often, and they were really good services. 99% of the time there is nothing wrong with his TV or Radio shows. I used to listen to his daily radio show and weekly TV show on a regular basis. Several years back, while listening to the radio show, my jaw completely dropped when I heard the man explaining the Zodiac and how we can find the birth of Christ in it and various other things. I ordered the tapes and books offered and when I received them could not believe the "crap" I was reading. Over the years he has continually come under attack for his adherence to these unbiblical beliefs.

---

I'll have to check the age of the articles about Kennedy to see how long ago they were made. It makes me wonder how recent they are - if they're old, it may be they've silently stopped endorsing him.

(back later) I'm not sure what AIG's stance is towards him - I might have to write them. The article doesn't have a date on it.

I think we both agree that Kennedy's theology/beliefs/whatever are wrong by now.

quote:

---

CobraA1, hopefully you have not taken any comments personally. They were not intended to be against you personally, and in rereading some posts they were not worded very kindly towards you and for that I am tuly sorry. I also have a dry sense of humor which rubs people the wrong way. If I avoid the Christian threads from now on all should be fine

---

Nothing taken personally. I get caught up in point/counterpoint mode when getting into creation/evolution debates on messageboards sometimes.

quote:

---

To get this back on Topic:

I do not believe in evolution as the term is generally used. The millions of missing links are a pretty huge stumbling block. I have 2 years of Oceanography, 2 years of Geology and 2 years of Archaeology, none of which support "traditional" evolution.

I suggest "Darwin on Trial" by: Phillip R. Johnson and "The Collapse of Evolution" by: Scott M. Huse as primers for debunking evolution.

I do not consider this evolution, but, I do believe that a species will adapt to a small extent to its environment. Please NOTE I said ADAPT, not evolve into another species. Even a human will adapt to conditions in some cases. For example, if you went right now and tried to climb Mt Everest without stopping for anything, you would die. Because of the altitudes, your body would not get enough oxygen, your brain would swell and you would die. Climbers have to acclimate themselves at various elevations to give their body the time it needs to adjust. How does it adjust? The body produces larger than normal amounts of red blood cells. Since the air is thinner, this allows the blood to carry more ogygen from the lungs to the rest of the organs and body. In most climbers who actually reach the summit, they average around twice the number of red blood cells of what is considered "normal".

As far as Creation, when you take in all Bible verses pertaining to Creation, you certainly have a completely different picture than what the normal Creation story is. Some interesting links:

http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/didgod.htm
http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/pubs/Migration.htm
http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/pubs/CreateEvol-Life.htm
http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/pubs/CreateAdam.htm
http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/pubs/WhaleTale.htm
http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/evolutio.htm
http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/biblefact.htm

The theories here would certainly explain why there are "cavemen" of various types and various prehistoric creatures, which vanished suddenly and left us with the millions of missing links that would have existed if evolution were true.

I do not believe that a flood or a meteor wiped out the world at that time. Although meteors/asteroids have certainly hit the earth. Since in the Alsaka gold rush, Wooly Mammoths were found that were frozen solid and so quickly that the meat was not rotten when thawed, and there are reports of the sled dogs eating the carcasses and not getting sick and the other animals who have been found with undigested food in their stomachs, whatever happend was instant. These hulking creatures were flash frozen.

In my opinion, a pole shift could have caused all this instantly, temperate parts of the globe would have instantly been turned into freezing climates, other catastrophies would have hit, including land being flooded, land masses moving, earthquakes, eruption of volcanoes, etc.

---

Hmm. . .

Interesting.

The first article is somewhat confusing; it makes some extrapolations I might not agree with. It might take some time to study this article.

An initial reading reveals that they acknowledge a perfect creation (I believe that creation was initially created perfect also), but make it much older than the current creationist theories. Possibly unneccessarily so. From what I can tell, there's no mention of a large timescale while this is taking place - I still don't see a problem for a six-day creation. I haven't looked at the other articles yet, however.

(Later)An initial skimming of the other articles, and I get the impression they're simply refuting evolution, and don't say much about what happened during creation. If I have more time, I'll do a more in-depth reading and study.

The idea of a pole reversal is interesting, but I wonder how large the effects would really be. Off the top of my head, the biggest effect I could think of would be a temporary loss of protection from the radiation from the sun - but this would cause a temopary gain, not loss, of heat.

quote:

---

When it comes to Creation, I have stumbling points resulting from various science beliefs. Nothing to do with evolution, but I have some things that just do not add up. [b]I honestly do not know what I believe in regards to Creation anymore. And, I honestly do not know what I believe in regards to God anymore.
[/b]

---

I'll pray that you'll be able to sort thigs out.

Some links that might help:
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/
http://www.tektonics.org/

They don't deal with creation as much, but they do deal a lot with God and the Bible.

I've also got links to web pages and articles I've found interesting:
http://www.backflip.com/members/jmoss
DISCLAIMER: The articles and webpages in my links do not neccessarily reflect my views or beliefs! I have links to articles representing both sides of various issues in some cases.

quote:

---

Arguing about any aspect of any religion is an exercise in futility. It never does any good. The world is in turmoil because of religions who cannot get along.

---

There's plenty of turmoil shared between people seeking power, land ownership, communism/marxism/nazism/other similar things, and other non-religious reasons also . . . people will fight about anything.

quote:

---

Anasgvti nihi nigohilvi uha nvwato hiyadv.

(From my native Tsalagi. Roughly translated to English: "May you always have peace")

---

[This message has been edited by CobraA1 (edited August 06, 2002).]

(back later) I'm not sure what AIG's stance is towards him - I might have to write them. The article doesn't have a date on it.

I think we both agree that Kennedy's theology/beliefs/whatever are wrong by now."

I know people in AiG personally. I've in fact been to their headquarters. I never saw the name James Kennedy anywhere. Probably they endorsed him before he went off the rails. Anyway, if I can be of service in contacting AiG, let me know. It is feasible to get a response from Ken Ham himself.

If nothing else, the Armstrongs certainly come up with some unique outlooks on things Off hand, I cannot think of any booklets or articles they have released over the years that I have found Biblically sound and that I have agreed with, with the exception of various ones on parenting and marriage. Anything written By the Armstrongs or their offshoots dealing with doctrines is usually far-fetched at best.

>>The idea of a pole reversal is interesting, but I wonder how large the effects would really be. Off the top of my head, the biggest effect I could think of would be a temporary loss of protection from the radiation from the sun - but this would cause a temopary gain, not loss, of heat.<<

A pole shift, not a reversal. A difference in the effects. I have read many studies by scientists who believe the Earth has not always had its wobble, also something that a pole shift could theoretically be responsible for.

>>I'll pray that you'll be able to sort thigs out.<<

I'm not sweating it.

I will be sure to check out those links though.

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Regards,

Brice

Lost Reflections -- When your life comes crumbling down around you, can you count on the one person who has never been there for you? Lost Reflections is a heart warming story of personal redemption and second chances.

Veritech

PS, when i say its not worth arguing about, i mean you probably wont get someone saved by talking to them about stuff they dont belive. let them see a miricle, then they'll have to belive or turn away.

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"If you even breathe a word of what you've heard here, I hope Gandalf will turn you into a spotted toad, and fill the garden full of grass-snakes" - "Fellowship of the Ring" by JRR Tolkien (p91)

As to arguing with non-Christians, creationism will not save anyone by itself. Standing firmly on the Bible will. I know from personal debate that non-Christians may not always respect Christians, but they often see the inconsistency of naturalistic-theism and respect that even less. After 9/11 AiG had an incredible demand for material by people searching. They are indeed having an impact.

Evolution is not helping anyone. One word. Columbine. Maybe you haven't heard but one of these screwed-up kids wore a "survival of the fittest" t-shirt on that day. What is more disconcerting is that some survivors said they understood why they did it. The message of evolution is clear, "We are animals, no ultimate judgement awaits you, do what you want and everyone else be damned." These kids got the message, and Dawkin's "That's just tough," response will not keep people's sense of morality alive.

Tell people that death is a natural part of life and you deny the meaning of the Gospel. Jesus wept at funerals and in cases really messed them up Death is not natural, and while we may look forward to heaven, that is only because we have assurance that Jesus has taken the fall for us so that death has lost its power. Tell people that THIS world is what God called "very good", and they will point to the carnage and laugh in your face. "A cruel God", they will say, "not one I would care for."

If you want a miracle, how about someone who actually lives what they believe?

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There's a difference you know, 'tween having faith and playing make-believe. One will make you grow, the other one's just a fantasy...

Faith without works is like a song you can't sing, it's about as useless as a screendoor on a submarine...

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Originally posted by MaxX:
I know people in AiG personally. I've in fact been to their headquarters. I never saw the name James Kennedy anywhere. Probably they endorsed him before he went off the rails. Anyway, if I can be of service in contacting AiG, let me know. It is feasible to get a response from Ken Ham himself.

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Go ahead. Since you have a closer connection to AIG, I guess you'd be the one to ask. I'm getting busy getting ready for the next school year anyway. I'll probably have to drop out of the Christian Coders forums before I get addicted.

I need some ways of saying what i think about evolution where he can't make a come-back. I am also willing to accept e-mail from anyone who has some evolutionary-disproving facts.

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n@te

[This message has been edited by Slantsixx (edited July 06, 2004).]

Being quick witted means he's pretty much always going to have a comeback - but that doesn't mean his comebacks are always going to be right.

Most of the time when I discuss something, I tend to go deep and spend some time thinking about it, so I'm not exactly one to discuss with quick-witted people.

Oh, I got one: You could try asking him to say something that creationists can't make a good comeback for.

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Reasoning with non-believers without encouraging them to read the Bible, I have found, is quite useless. God's word convinces - not our own reason.
--CobraA1

Switch Mayhem now available! Get it here
Codename: Roler - Writing object code and GUI.

Bad idea. All this leads to, as illustrated by two pages of threads, is a never ending debate. One side argues theory commonly taught as fact in universities. I have seen this for my self as I've held some of the skulls the evolution of man theory is based upon in college cultural anthropology. The other side argues faith a concept that is spiritually discerned and entirely impossible to convince on an intellectual level.

What I don't understand is why science and the church seperate themselves from one another. Now before my bretheren start freaking out thing I'm some cultist hear me out.

I believe that God knew, when he breathed life into my frail body, how many chromosones where required to make me human. He knew the chemicals my brain needs to be healty and gave my mind the ability to produce just the right amount of dopomine and saratonin. I believe that God knew there were toxins out there that can kill me and gave my body the ability to produce white blood cells. I also believe that some humans make poor choices and become addicted to substances that interfere with the brains ability to produce dopomine. I believe God gave knowledge to modern science and medicine to be able to produce dopomine and saratonine for those of us who have done things to our bodies and minds that cut off the production of these chemicals. I believe God gave medical science medicine so that Brimstone would no longer suffer from chronic depression. I also believe that somewhere out there is the cure for AIDS/HIV and God will give to man when they are ready. I just wish there were more praying scientists and medical professionals out there so that God might quicken such information to them. I believe that God not only put the stars in the sky, numbered them and calls them by name but created the process involved in birthing a star, the defined the parameters for determining its gravitational pull, and its orbit, and the process of its decay.

My point being here that it is incredulous for us to believe that God created the world in 7 days and not believe that he knew the inner workings of all creation down to the smallest of particles.

Natural selection is a real process. Go hunting sometime - you'll see it. Or go watch a herd of Elk sometime you'll see the competetition played out before your eyes. Have you ever applied for a job and been beaten by someone smarter and more qualified? I have.

Now, I don't believe my distant ancestors are monkeys. (Although sometimes, the behavior of many of our race makes me wonder if some of us aren't shy a few chemicals, LOL) I don't believe we were tiny water born creatures. I believe we were created in God's image just as the bible says, however, to say that the human race hasn't evolved is to ignore history entirely. I do believe that, without our evolved modern science, medicine and comforts that many of us would be the weak that would die just trying to survive.

But the real issue here is the whole argument thing again. (see my post on the Do all Christians Speak in Tongues post)We accomplish nothing by bashing their beliefs. We accomplish nothing by participating in a never ending debate, and YES, I realize I just fell victim to the same debate.

I have been doing a bible study on what I call an argumentative spirit. How to recognize it, how to deal with it. They are the ones that argue just about everything. You know - the ones who'd tell you the sky wasn't blue. If anyone's interested I'll post it.

[This message has been edited by brimstone (edited July 10, 2004).]

It's okay to try, just be aware of the situation first. Your teacher is (maybe over) confident, and some people like that are not phased even if you come at them with the very best info. Plus, he's in a position of power, and older than his captive audience. If he doesn't hesitate to make fun of religion, then no matter what the evidence, he may just deride creationism in general as unscientific without bothering to address any specific argument. Being in the mainstream, he could easily dismiss other views without even making a case against them--that's not fair or logical, but people don't always care about that. And in a verbal conversation, who "wins" is pretty subjective and often is who controls the conversation rather than who has the best evidence. So just understand that in the classroom discussion environment, he's in the position of advantage here.

So, if you come out with a statement, he will attack it, and it will be easier to attack than defend considering all the above. But if you keep a keep a close eye on what he says, with a little research and some luck you may catch him saying something that is easily disproven. Then he would be the one in the defending position. People who are used to throwing their opinions around often get careless.

Curry

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I Eat Small GOATS!

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If the dream is big enough the facts don't count.-Dexter Yager

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I Eat Small GOATS!

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I Eat Small GOATS!

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Originally posted by Exekiel:
But Just because it can't be proved doesn't mean that it isn't true.

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Uh, oh. Don't give ammo to the evolutionists.

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If the dream is big enough the facts don't count.-Dexter Yager

I'm not giving the Evolutionist ammo. I'm just stating the obvious. Anyway Evolution has so many flaws in it that most of it can be disproven. One idea that can't work is when the Evolutionist have the idea that natural selection picks out the animals with the best DNA and overtime they turn into other Kinds. First of all natural selection decreases the amount of genetic material, in order of evolution to happen there needs to be an increase of genetic material. Not only can most evolution be disproved, but a lot of Christianity can be proved.

For example the Grand Cayon could have been carved out in a couple of days by a huge force of water. It has been proven that a small cayon was made when Mount St. Helens erupted. Mount St. Helen put huge piles of ash all over the place and a mud slide went through one of the piles and it formed a cayon 1/40th the scale of the Grand Cayon. This smaller scale was made in a couple of hours. This smaller scale also has Strata (layers)that have formed up to 600 feet thick since 1980. Trees were also deposited in an upright position in all the layers. So it is very easy to assume that the same thing happened with the Grand Cayon during the flood. The huge amounts of water could have built up behind a dam and when the dams burst open their force would create a huge water jet. Just think of what a water hose can do to the dirst in someones yard. After a couple of seconds anyone can erode about an inch of Dirt with a water hose. This huge amount of water from the Flood in Genesis could have created the Cayon in a couple of days and whats left of the water is the Colorado River. Anyway the river probably couldn't have carved out the Grand Cayon. If the water was spread out the width of the Cayon it probably would all evaporate before it reached the end of the Cayon.

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I Eat Small GOATS!

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Reasoning with non-believers without encouraging them to read the Bible, I have found, is quite useless. God's word convinces - not our own reason.
--CobraA1

Switch Mayhem now available! Get it here
Codename: Roler - Writing object code and GUI.

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I Eat Small GOATS!

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I Eat Small GOATS!

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Looking for stuff to disprove evolution implies that despite such proof, you have completely decided your position. How is that a logical way to go about things. People can come up with all kinds of seemingly plausible explanations for things they already believe to be true (think about all the conspiracy theories), which is why the scientific method is so important to try and eventually cancel this bias. Young-earth, literal-Genesis Creation theories etc are only going to be worth investigating if put together in a fully scientific manner you'd think. But since the Earth/Universe is created to appear so much older (why would God trick us with Carbon/Uranium dating) it seems there is no logical way to form a good theory and hence it's unprovable!

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as for Carbon/Uranium dating, they are based on the current rate of decay, which could have been very different in times gone past.
(what if we based calculations say on the oxygen content of the air, which in the 20th centry dropped a few too many percent values to my liking.)

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Karl /GODCENTRIC
Visionary Media
the creative submitted to the divine.
Husband of my amazing wife Aleshia
Klumsy@xtra.co.nz

Also, insisting that carbon dating is without its problems is actually a Catch-22, since organic samples from every portion of the Phanerozoic record show detectable amounts of C-14. Given the short C-14 half-life of 5730 years, organic materials purportedly older than 250,000 years, corresponding to 43.6 half-lives, should contain absolutely no detectable C-14... should.

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Originally posted by klumsy:
[QUOTE]
Looking for stuff to disprove evolution implies that despite such proof, you have completely decided your position. How is that a logical way to go about things. People can come up with all kinds of seemingly plausible explanations for things they already believe to be true (think about all the conspiracy theories), which is why the scientific method is so important to try and eventually cancel this bias. Young-earth, literal-Genesis Creation theories etc are only going to be worth investigating if put together in a fully scientific manner you'd think. But since the Earth/Universe is created to appear so much older (why would God trick us with Carbon/Uranium dating) it seems there is no logical way to form a good theory and hence it's unprovable!

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as for Carbon/Uranium dating, they are based on the current rate of decay, which could have been very different in times gone past.
(what if we based calculations say on the oxygen content of the air, which in the 20th centry dropped a few too many percent values to my liking.)
[/QUOTE]Well many people have written books and give talks to try and convince others that Chrisat is God and was raised etc. For instance the course of Lee Strobel's "the case for Christ", and Nick'y Gumbel's Alpha Course. If it's true, submitting it to logical scrutiny is not something we should be afraid to do. And also in Acts I believe, Paul apparently preached to 'Prove that Jesus was the Christ'. Note the word 'proved'.
And if the rate of decay changed that implies a complete change of our physical laws at an enormous rate. Which would invalidate all the theories, and I doubt you could change something like the Weak nuclear force that much so rapidly without everything falling apart - the 4 forces are very very very finely balanced.

many factors can affect the rate of different things (whether rate of decay as we are talking about or not).

question: do you personally believe that substantial changes occured in the universe/physics etc when the fall happened or not?

do you believe lions and other carnivores killed and ate other animals before the fall (in the garden of eden)?

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Karl /GODCENTRIC
Visionary Media
the creative submitted to the divine.
Husband of my amazing wife Aleshia
Klumsy@xtra.co.nz

I have already compared the facts and listened to many debates, and I have concluded that evolution is completely made up. I have had my share of evolution already. I am an armature herpetologist (study of reptiles and amphibians). I have read over 50 herpetological magazines (from front to back) and many books. I have also attended herpetological seminars some of which use the theory of evolution to explain the origination of species. I have also won species identification contest. I’ve also had many honors classes in school that go in depth of the evolutionary process. Last of all I have watched many upon many shows about reptiles and amphibians. I have watched almost all the Crocodile Hunter shows, Oshea’s big Adventure, programs on Animal Planet, programs on the Discovery Channel, and the National Geographic Channel programs, and Jeff Corwin’s Show. All of these have evolution as the source of creation. I’m not saying this meaning to brag; I’m saying it because I have actually heard more about Evolution that I have about Creation. Even thought I have gone thorough all the evolutionist’s propaganda I still am a creationist.

Evolution (being some theories of evolution, i.e. not all evolution theories believe in the big bang) goes against the Cell Theories, the Law of Conservation of Mass and the first and second Laws of Thermodynamics. One of the Cell theories state that a cell has to come from another living cell. The Law of Conservation of Mass states that matter cannot be created or destroyed. The first Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can not be created or destroyed and the second law states that the universe is becoming more and more disordered. For evolution to take place a cell has to come from a non-cell. Energy and matter have to be created out of nothing (which contradicts the Laws of Thermodynamics and the Laws of Conservation of Mass). The universe also has to become more ordered for the universe to create life (which would go against the second Law of Thermodynamics), but it keeps becoming more disordered. Carbon dating only works on formerly living objects (it doesn't work with rocks) and we do not know that the half life of Carbon 14 has stayed at a constant level.

Like I stated before, one idea that can't work is when the Evolutionist have the idea that natural selection picks out the animals with the best DNA and overtime they turn into other Kinds. First of all natural selection decreases the amount of genetic material, in order of evolution to happen there needs to be an increase of genetic material. For example, if there are black birds and white birds of the same species (that were offspring of an original pair of gray birds) and the black birds are better camouflaged, the white ones are most likely to die out. If they die out eventually the white gene in the birds will be lost. This can happen with many other traits which in turn can cause genetic information to be lost. If this keeps happening to the point that almost all the traits of the birds are the same, then inbreeding can occur and can result in many deformities.

If the Big Bang happened then all of the planets would rotate the same way (since the original mass was spinning), but there are planets that rotate different directions (clockwise, counterclockwise, some even rotate like a tire). The sun and moon also defy the theory of evolution. Every year the moon moves farther and farther away form the Earth. In fact, the moon would have to have been on top of the Earth during the time that dinosaurs “evolved”. The reactions of the sun also increase every year. This in turn increases the temperature. During “the time of the dinosaurs” the Earth’s temperature would have been colder because there would have been less reactions taking place on the sun. Actually during the time the dinosaurs “evolved” it would have been below freezing over the entire globe (Evolutionist even claim that the world would have been hotter than it is today). This colder temperature would make it impossible for the dinosaurs to live.

There is also a complete lack of transition fossils, at least that I know of (the transition fossils that I know of are made up).

There are too many reasons to state why evolution won’t work in this reply. I conclude that the only other option can work, which happens to be creation. Science hasn’t been able to disprove the Bible, but science has been able to disprove Evolution.

As for the scientific method, the theory has to be tested to eventually become a law, and evolution and creation cannot be tested and observed in a lab.

Now showing that I have not chosen a biased opinion like you stated I can attempt to explain why I think that the Bible is the word of God. I have to choose the only logical faith, Christianity. Isaiah 40:22 states that the world is round, many other religions don’t. Jonah 2:5-6 states that the oceans had mountains, which scientist didn’t know until the last couple hundred years. Job 26:7 states that the World hangs on nothing (rotates by its self); most religions believe that the world in on a turtle back, or elephants, or is held up by Atlas. Hebrews 11:3 also states that the world is made up of things not seen (sub-atomic particles). The list also goes on.

Enough said.

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I Eat Small GOATS!

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question: do you personally believe that substantial changes occured in the universe/physics etc when the fall happened or not?

do you believe lions and other carnivores killed and ate other animals before the fall (in the garden of eden)?

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[This message has been edited by d000hg (edited August 19, 2004).]

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Originally posted by d000hg:
a lot more plausible than a literal view of creation.

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Exactly what evidence/reseach leads you to this conclusion? There are those who say God must have naturalistic limitations in His interaction with His creation but otherwise I'm not sure why you'd think that.

Also, there were several small errors (incorrect information) in Exekiel's post but I'm not going to bother pointing them out. :P

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I Eat Small GOATS!

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I Eat Small GOATS!

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Don't know. I think I'd have to take the description of the fall as not being completely literal, although a lot more plausible that a literal view of creation. In that light, for lions to eat grass would mean they were't lions, just funny-shaped cows with different markings. It's not an area I've really thought about to be honest.

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so about the fall and literalness, what do you take as not literal?
i.e was it just adam and eve around at that time? was it a specific event that happened, and how did that affect our human nature, was it an instant change? and how is that fallen human nature passed down from generation to generation, anything genetic in it? (i know different people have genetic bents towards different sins - such as anger->violence etc) these aren't questions i expect you to answer, i can't answer them myself, they are just food for thought.

also what about the flood? literal? worldwide?
i read some secular scientists research recently about a dormant gene in all animals (or was it just mammals?) that was ability to hybernate, which is very interesting in the context of the ark.

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Karl /GODCENTRIC
Visionary Media
the creative submitted to the divine.
Husband of my amazing wife Aleshia
Klumsy@xtra.co.nz

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Exactly what evidence/reseach leads you to this conclusion? There are those who say God must have naturalistic limitations in His interaction with His creation but otherwise I'm not sure why you'd think that.

Also, there were several small errors (incorrect information) in Exekiel's post but I'm not going to bother pointing them out. :P[QUOTE]Sorry, I meant that a literal reading of the story of the fall is more plausible to me than a literal reading of the creation story.[quote]Biological evolution != cosmological models. Keep the two separate.

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By the way, evolution does violate the laws if it believes that the matter that exploded came out of nothing (which some evolutionist believe). I wan't meaning that all theories do.

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so about the fall and literalness, what do you take as not literal?
i.e was it just adam and eve around at that time? was it a specific event that happened, and how did that affect our human nature, was it an instant change? and how is that fallen human nature passed down from generation to generation, anything genetic in it? (i know different people have genetic bents towards different sins - such as anger->violence etc) these aren't questions i expect you to answer, i can't answer them myself, they are just food for thought.

also what about the flood? literal? worldwide?
i read some secular scientists research recently about a dormant gene in all animals (or was it just mammals?) that was ability to hybernate, which is very interesting in the context of the ark.

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And the flood - to cover the whole earth would require non-conservation of mass for all that water. Then where did it go? Why did the Earth not move in it's orbit? How did the animals survive in-breeding and populate the world? How did the lions get across the oceans and why are the species of animals in different continents/islands so different (e.g marsupials in Australia, rare birds/insects/flowers existing on just one tiny island)? What happened to the plants?

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If there were just 2 people, the whole factor of inbreeding comes up. Eve would be Adam's sister to start with...

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Also in 6000 years, I'm not sure 2 people could populate the Earth to the order of 10billion. We have to take only the generations listed as existing in a [iliteral[/i] reading of the Bible so you saying 'some are missed out' is like me saying 'Genesis misses out lots of science'.

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On the behavioural genetics, current thinking is that sexuality is definately genetic to some degree for example.

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And the flood - to cover the whole earth would require non-conservation of mass for all that water. Then where did it go? Why did the Earth not move in it's orbit? How did the animals survive in-breeding and populate the world? How did the lions get across the oceans and why are the species of animals in different continents/islands so different (e.g marsupials in Australia, rare birds/insects/flowers existing on just one tiny island)? What happened to the plants?

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the dangerous thing is you start not taking the bible literarry (literary in context) in the first chapter of genesis, and then that moves further down the line, and you don't take it literary alter on, whether because our interlectual pride is trying to protect us from looking shallow/uneducated/religious bigots/ to the point that alot of people don't even take jesus literarly, or at least just a good teacher yada yada yada.

i'm all for science, but i know in my life and heart, pride is a dangerous thing, and i've been on many university campuses, and known many academics and have seen the tragic results of interlectual pride, for God resists the proud,
so in the end i'll just believe the bible by Faith, because the bible says that God is pleased by faith, and i want to please God, i'm don't follow blindly, because i have a God who leads me step by step, a light unto my path, and i like to study and understand his amazing creation - its part of my role as his creation, part of my 'dominion', but i'm happy to surrender to God, saying "i don't need to understand it all, don't need to know the answers, i know that you know best adn i trust you, with my life, and also with the creation of the universe"

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Karl /GODCENTRIC
Visionary Media
the creative submitted to the divine.
Husband of my amazing wife Aleshia
Klumsy@xtra.co.nz

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i believe the incest laws (other than the ickyness, and bad relation aspect of it) of God is he understands genetics and our genetic diversity over the generations is quite low, as we have 'in breed' with our own tribes etc - take any race, each has lost a certian amount of genetic diversity and prone to certian diseases.. i.e you won't find a chinese person with blue eyes, and their are certian diseases they are prone to while others i am. I believe that adam and eve were perfect and contained the fullness of genetic diversity within them.

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well in the last '5500' or whatever years it would have to only incrase to 500 million (the population at 1500ad)
if the population of israel could come from abraham through moses time from 2 to probably somewhere like 3 million people in 400 years.. i don't see that unfeasable at all, (though many don't take that literally, and the israelites were never in eygpt) expecially considering the men there took many wives... but lets just say that a man just had one wife, and on average a couple had 8 kids.. so every generation the population is quadrupples.. and with marrying young, lets say a generation is 20 years (we are being conservative here, maybe even 15 years could be a generation)
so within 100 years, the population goes from 2 to 2048, in 200 years its over 2 million people.. so in 6000 years there is plenty of room to such expansion, given other factors of multiple wives, disease, wars etc.

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why do you believe on that? if so, is homosexual activity a sin? i personally believe that in a large percentage of cases social factors are consistant in male homosexuals (absent fathers/dominmant mothers etc), and if it were genetic then why such a large increase. but anyway i can accept that it is genetic to a point, just like different people are wired to loose their temper easy. i think that maybe our sinful nature is wired into us in a genetic way (because its a part of us), yet we are each responsible for how we react to it, some people may be wired to loose their temper, and have to deal with that, and choose not to kill people, while others might struggle with some 'inbuilt' homosexual tendency , and have to choose not to entertain thoughts/actions regarding it..

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the dangerous thing is you start not taking the bible literarry (literary in context) in the first chapter of genesis, and then that moves further down the line, and you don't take it literary alter on, whether because our interlectual pride is trying to protect us from looking shallow/uneducated/religious bigots/ to the point that alot of people don't even take jesus literarly, or at least just a good teacher yada yada yada.

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Well I'll assume you mean the 'big bang' cosmological model, and I don't believe it does violate the laws.

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We don't know what the mathematics behind it actually decribe the event as, although it is known that a vacuum contains energy in some form, just not on average (can elaborate if anyone likes); recent models such as quantum foam give more precedence to this.

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Which gives us nice little particles that dissapear instantly, not bug universes that last trillions of years. I'm still waiting for a Big Bang theory that doesn't violate mass/energy conservation.

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Why are you agueing about the big bang possibly breaking the laws but are quite happy to accept literal creationism which pretty much breaks every law?!

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Dr Russel Humphreys explains how this can happen without breaking known physical laws in his book Starlight and Time. I have a link to an article also in the other thread.

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Also in 6000 years, I'm not sure 2 people could populate the Earth to the order of 10billion.

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Have you actually done the math? We're talking exponential (even geometric?) growth, especially considering the family sizes and life spans back then.

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On the behavioural genetics, current thinking is that sexuality is definately genetic to some degree for example.

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Yes, everywhere we look females have XX chromosomes, while makes have XY chromosomes. This is something we can observe directly and test. This is unlike earth's history, which unfortunately we cannot repeat nor test.

OH, behavioral genetics. Could you specify a reference? Is this in reference to the homosexuality issue?

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And the flood - to cover the whole earth would require non-conservation of mass for all that water. Then where did it go?

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My current understanding is that it came from the earth, and returned to the earth. There's also the "canopy" theory that suggests some sort of canopy was around the earth pre-flood, but problems with the model makes it less popular these days.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/AnswersBook/flood12.asp

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Why did the Earth not move in it's orbit?

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Why would its orbit be affected?

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How did the animals survive in-breeding and populate the world?

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Supposedly the genetic material was much richer, and didn't have as many problems back then.

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What happened to the plants?

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http://www.icr.org/pubs/btg-b/btg-130b.htm

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why are the species of animals in different continents/islands so different (e.g marsupials in Australia, rare birds/insects/flowers existing on just one tiny island)?

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Genetic isolation. Try a biology textbook.

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Reasoning with non-believers without encouraging them to read the Bible, I have found, is quite useless. God's word convinces - not our own reason.
--CobraA1

Switch Mayhem now available! Get it here
Codename: Roler - Writing object code and GUI.

[This message has been edited by CobraA1 (edited August 20, 2004).]

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How do you propose that the Asian, Caucasian & Negro groups appeared from two people, especially over such a short time?

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The same way Mendel got pink roses from red and white roses. Look up "Mendel" and "Punnett". Should be in most biology books.

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Reasoning with non-believers without encouraging them to read the Bible, I have found, is quite useless. God's word convinces - not our own reason.
--CobraA1

Switch Mayhem now available! Get it here
Codename: Roler - Writing object code and GUI.

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Well we have to ban the 'this isn't taken literally', since that's the whole argument here. I'm not sure you've taken people dying into account in your sums, could you show more detail? I can't recall what realistic population growth rates are, can anyone else? But in this time, people have to also travel to England, New Zealand etc, Eskimoes have to come to being, the Aztecs have to rise etc... all from a bunch of people in Israel.

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I'm not sure I understand how 2 people can have a total genetic diversity. How could they have been perfect, if temperament is affected by genetics? How do you propose that the Asian, Caucasian & Negro groups appeared from two people, especially over such a short time?

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But in this time, people have to also travel to England, New Zealand etc, Eskimoes have to come to being, the Aztecs have to rise etc... all from a bunch of people in Israel.

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b.t.w do you accept the long lives of the genesis characters?
how about the tower of babel, and confusion of languages as literal?
i mightn't have had the time to develop my science as much over recent years, but antropology and linguistics yes.

an interesting thing is the mainstream of secular genetics these days are coming back to an adam/eve sort of situation, where just a small number of ancestors of the whole human race coming out africa/middle east (sure they think it took many hundreds of thousands of years)

but figure this.. races from ALL over the world have a common and very similar flood legend in their history/legends of not so long ago, just thousands of years, all this they have in common (whether it was global or just affected a small area) it affected all the races of the earth, who have since become distinct since that time.
how i wish that the libraries of old were not destroyed.

[This message has been edited by klumsy (edited August 20, 2004).]

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[QUOTE]why are the species of animals in different continents/islands so different (e.g marsupials in Australia, rare birds/insects/flowers existing on just one tiny island)?

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[quote]How do you propose that the Asian, Caucasian & Negro groups appeared from two people, especially over such a short time?

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OH, behavioral genetics. Could you specify a reference? Is this in reference to the homosexuality issue?

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Supposedly the genetic material was much richer, and didn't have as many problems back then.

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Which gives us nice little particles that dissapear instantly, not bug universes that last trillions of years. I'm still waiting for a Big Bang theory that doesn't violate mass/energy conservation.

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[This message has been edited by d000hg (edited August 23, 2004).]

[This message has been edited by d000hg (edited August 23, 2004).]

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For that matter how did the polar bears survive the heat in Eden, since it was evidently warm enough for humans to live naked in comfort?

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I don't think there were polar bears in the garden. The bear family probably didn't divide into all of its species until after the flood.

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Didn't that come from effectively mixing the colours or diluting one by the other?

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Correction: The book was using snapdragons, not roses. Oops. My mistake.
But the idea remains the same:
A pink snapdragon (Rr) comes from a red snapdragon (RR) and a white snapdragon (rr).

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Not quite the same as two eastern people directly leading to Asian, European, African - unless they evolved as such

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"Eastern"? Who said the first humans were "eastern"? A mix of all people is more like it.

*sigh*

Evolution = ??

Remember, you do not need mutations for independent assortment of alleles. Simply rearranging traits does not create new species.

Hence why I try to avoid using the term "evolution" by itself. It fails to distinguish between ordinary assortment and mutations.

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but is there any science to back this up or even to suggest the possibility of 'richer DNA'?

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There's no vast differences between the "races" of humans. Just different traits expressing themselves. Most traits AFAIK are just a combination of allele pairs. You only need to rearrange existing information, not create new information, to get the assortment of humans we have today.

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Well I can't explain the maths or even remember the theories I've read, but suffice to say there are 'workable' theories to support this. Hoewever I don't believe there are any proper theories as to why this would happen, other than those which sound good and don't explain anything (like many-worlds hypotheseses; how do you stop that word?!)

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Do you have proof of the many-worlds hypotheses, or just speculation? Unfortunately, this is a matter of faith, not science, since science cannot directly prove or disprove the existance of other universes.

Which means the Big Bang ultimately lies in the hands of faith, not science .

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Reasoning with non-believers without encouraging them to read the Bible, I have found, is quite useless. God's word convinces - not our own reason.
--CobraA1

Switch Mayhem now available! Get it here
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[This message has been edited by CobraA1 (edited August 23, 2004).]

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You got me on the migration question, I guess I'll have to do some more research. It's entirely possible that there was a Pangea, much like current scientific theories, but instead of breaking up over long periods of time, it could've broken up during the flood.

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Do you have proof of the many-worlds hypotheses, or just speculation? Unfortunately, this is a matter of faith, not science, since science cannot directly prove or disprove the existance of other universes.

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Oh and I just read that article about plants in the flood - weak. Firstly I don't know of any evidence that fossils, oil and coal can be formed in thousands of years. Then, was the flood water salt or fresh? Either would cause big problems - fresh would kill all the sealife like fish and many plants; salt would poison the water supplies for the whole world and also destroy many seeds - many plants have very low tolerance to salt, even their seeds. Poisoning the water and the fact it was rain implies fresh water on balance.

[This message has been edited by d000hg (edited August 23, 2004).]

Also, fossilization can occur in under a week depending on the conditions, as can the naturalistic production of oil and coal.

The world was created in 6 actual days.
There were literally two people at first, one created from the other's rib.
Before the fall, there were no carnivores.
Before the flood there was no rain.
The universe is under 10K years old or thereabouts.

You're probably correct in that the theories of how the universe could be created so fast so recently have evolved a lot from what I assume. But nobody's really presented such theories here. And to me it seems like such theories are clutching at straws a little - trying to find scientific explanations for things which pretty much totally run against standard scientific understanding. If that is the way things happened I don't think there are likely to be good scientific models to explain it, since it would be a huge sequence of massive miracles which by their very nature act against the normal rules of the universe.

And most of the creationists here seem to have in their heads very old 'finger-clicking' theories for the universe to form, too. Or at the very least have taken the popular news/science version of modern theories as what the theory actually says and picked holes in that. We're as bad as each other in that respect

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And to me it seems like such theories are clutching at straws a little - trying to find scientific explanations for things which pretty much totally run against standard scientific understanding.

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"'Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing,' answered Holmes thoughtfully; 'it may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different' . . . 'There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.'" --Sherlock Holmes, "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"

Our point of view view is different, yes, but I would hardly think of it as "clutching at straws". Not to mention if "clutching at straws" is the only argument you have, I'd say you have a pretty weak argument.

If you have specific problems to address, I'd be willing to go over them. Otherwise, my original argument stands: Science is a tool, not a set of beliefs.

------------------
Reasoning with non-believers without encouraging them to read the Bible, I have found, is quite useless. God's word convinces - not our own reason.
--CobraA1

Switch Mayhem now available! Get it here
Codename: Roler - Writing object code and GUI.

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If you have specific problems to address, I'd be willing to go over them. Otherwise, my original argument stands: Science is a tool, not a set of beliefs.

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Well which of these things don't 'modern' creationists believe:
The world was created in 6 actual days.
There were literally two people at first, one created from the other's rib.
Before the fall, there were no carnivores.
Before the flood there was no rain.
The universe is under 10K years old or thereabouts.

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Also, fossilization can occur in under a week depending on the conditions, as can the naturalistic production of oil and coal.

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Explain how science explains these without requiring a totally different set of physical laws

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Explain how these require different physical laws in the first place, because I don't see how or why I need different physical laws.

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Not just certain points, every part seems to contradict the evidence we see.

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Im waiting for even one contradiction to show up.

You seem to be forgetting the Sherlock quote I put on this thread. There's more than one way to look at things. The "evidence" only points in the direction you believe it to point because that's the point of view you've been taught.

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but even apart from things I see as basic flaws in thinking, they are done so with the outcome of the theory already decided

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Most dating methods assume millions of years before they even begin dating - the outcome is already decided.

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Evolutionary scientists may do something similar (I can see them deciding evolution must have happened and trying to explain it)

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I see. You can blame us for doing it and throw a fit, but when your scientists do it, it's OK.

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but I don't think physics really has that history.

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Physics also has little to do with the age of the earth, other than the distance of starlight problem - which I believe has been already addressed.

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Reasoning with non-believers without encouraging them to read the Bible, I have found, is quite useless. God's word convinces - not our own reason.
--CobraA1

Switch Mayhem now available! Get it here
Codename: Roler - Writing object code and GUI.

To require new laws - the flood. The floodwater covered the top of every mountain which means it was at least 5 miles above sea-level. The oceans off the continental shelf are approximately 2-3 miles deep on average. So the amount of water in the Earth pretty much had to double. It's been claimed this was underground but where exactly are these vast caverns, and how did untold billions of cubic miles of water just jump out?

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I see. You can blame us for doing it and throw a fit, but when your scientists do it, it's OK.

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As for dating, C14 is unreliable for long periods anyway due to short half-life, but what about uranium dating? We see a % of uranium. We know what it decays into. We see a % of that. We estimate how long it would take for that situation to arise. Or ice dating - each year you get a layer of snow/ice at the poles. A bit like rings in trees..

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Physics also has little to do with the age of the earth, other than the distance of starlight problem - which I believe has been already addressed.

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do you accept babel? God messing up the languages etc?

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Karl /GODCENTRIC
Visionary Media
the creative submitted to the divine.
Husband of my amazing wife Aleshia
Klumsy@xtra.co.nz

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Hmmm, a contradiction... How about plate tectonics? We can measure the rate at which different plates are moving so you can't deny the existance of plate tectonics. How do explain that they just happened to be a good shape to fit nicely together?

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I don't question plate tectonics. In fact, current flood theories include a LOT of plate movement. I'm thinking catyclismic proportions.

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To require new laws - the flood. The floodwater covered the top of every mountain which means it was at least 5 miles above sea-level.

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The result of catyclismic plate tectonics? Mountains. It's possible many of them formed around the same time as the flood.

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It's been claimed this was underground but where exactly are these vast caverns, and how did untold billions of cubic miles of water just jump out?

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You've heard of volcanos and geysers, right? Now put that in with catyclismic plate tectonics, and you've got *major* volcanic activity, supplying tremendous amounts of energy and heat.

Here's an article that goes over that very question:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/AnswersBook/flood12.asp

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the cosmologists don't just take one fact and build a theory around it you know. They got a model and then found other data later that tied in with it.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's exactly what Russell Humphreys does in Starlight and Time. He makes a model, and checks to see how well it fits the data.

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And on carbon dating - people keep saying 'it's wrong' like it's a big secret that scientists try to cover up.

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Who?

No, I don't think there's a big secret. Just some assumptions that are taken for granted.

In fact, it's a good dating method if you have a reliable way of getting the initial mother/daughter ratio.

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what about uranium dating? We see a % of uranium. We know what it decays into. We see a % of that. We estimate how long it would take for that situation to arise.

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Question:
How do you get the initial mother/daughter element ratio, and how do you know it's accurate?

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Or ice dating - each year you get a layer of snow/ice at the poles.

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You mean like WWII airplanes being buried underneath "thousands of years" of ice?
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-226.htm

------------------
Reasoning with non-believers without encouraging them to read the Bible, I have found, is quite useless. God's word convinces - not our own reason.
--CobraA1

Switch Mayhem now available! Get it here
Codename: Roler - Writing object code and GUI.

quote:

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Question:
How do you get the initial mother/daughter element ratio, and how do you know it's accurate?

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Meteors? How do meteors help?

------------------
Reasoning with non-believers without encouraging them to read the Bible, I have found, is quite useless. God's word convinces - not our own reason.
--CobraA1

Switch Mayhem now available! Get it here
Codename: Roler - Writing object code and GUI.

ie X -> Y. Y->Z.
But actually multuple decay paths are in existence so you get say 3 isotopes of uranium, some potassium, some different isotopes of lead... and the ratios of these to each other give evidence there wasn't just more lead to start with than we thought. Unless the amounts of each isotope of each element just happened to be created that way.

Where'd the universe come from? No one knows, yet.
For biology - natural selection works well. Nuff said.

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Karl /GODCENTRIC
Visionary Media
the creative submitted to the divine.
Husband of my amazing wife Aleshia
Klumsy@xtra.co.nz

[This message has been edited by CobraA1 (edited November 29, 2004).]

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Karl /GODCENTRIC
Visionary Media
the creative submitted to the divine.
Husband of my amazing wife Aleshia
Klumsy@xtra.co.nz

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Deleted the post - I figure it's better not to reply to a troll . . .

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the Coelacanth is still alive. was used as an index fossil and was believed to be extinct at the end of the cretaceous period. but, we found 'em. and they live.

mutations don't rule. Natural Selection does.

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Soterion Studios

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Or do you think God makes mutants, because he has a sense of humor?

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Believing in creation does not mean we don't believe mutations happen.

We do, however, have some doubts about how often "good" mutations happen, not to mention it takes a lot of mutations to account for every species.

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"The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike." -- C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963), "The Poison of Subjectivism" (from Christian Reflections; p. 108)

Switch Mayhem now available! Get it here
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Oh, and BTW, Creationists technically DO believe in evolution. Based upon scientific evidence they don't consider it a valid explanation for the origin of species nor vertical movement on the phylogenetic tree of life. They believe that natural selection combined with functions built into DNA were designed to protect the stasis of species while still allowing enough genetic variation to survive in varying environments.

On a side note even the "tree of life" is outdated but I wanted to use a term most people are familiar with. Today's biologists believe it is actually a "ring of life", but they cannot agree on how often lateral gene transfer and endosymbiosis have occurred in life’s history. The ring of life does not explain why this happened, but it does provide a broad phylogenetic framework for testing theories for the origin and evolution of the eukaryotic genome. The predictions of the "ring of life" have never been observed in a laboratory, so at this time it is only computer models.

[This message has been edited by Gump (edited November 30, 2004).]

First off, the issue of evolution vs. creation is ABSOLUTELY fundamental to worldview. I said fundamental, but really foundational is a better description. Virtualy every other important area of worldview rests upon what you believe about the origins of life. In christianity, most of the core doctrines of the faith have their foundation in the creation account and if you deny it you destroy the basis for everything else.

When most people say evolution they mean a body of theories about the origins both of the universe and of life on earth. In general this body of theories explains the existance of the universe and life, and the diversity of life as the result of random chance without the presence or intervention of any transendant or supreme being, this idea destroys the foundations of the idea that human life is unique and uniquely valuable and as a direct result has produced both communism and nazism which together have killed people on a scale almost unimaginable. In both cases the ideology was founded firmly in the idea of evolution. Evolution is not just a tangential inclusion in those ideologies, it is central to both.
In the rest of society in the 20th century evolutionary thinking has likewise removed the sacred value of human life allowing both abortion and euthenasia (euthanasia being practiced already on both old and young people in europe).
Evolutionary thinking is also at the core of relative morality and the denial of absolute truth, and absolute authority. This is the major reason why evolutionary philosophy tends to produce totalitarian states and destroys human freedom. Freedom depends upon the idea of authority (as C.S. Lewis said, it presupposes the existance of law). Society demands order, order can only be maintained one of two ways.. by the concept of authority (someone or something that has the right to tell people what they can't do) or power (someone or something that has the ability to tell people what they can't do). If authority is removed (as it is in relativism) power is all that remains. In evolutionary/relativist thinking all law is arbitrary and imposed simply because an entity such as government can impose it. Thus in soceties founded upon these ideas will always tend towards and end up in totalitarianism.

Some christians try to get around these problems by meshing evolutionary thinking with theism and christian doctrine. The problem with this view is that it is self contradictory enough that most people just won't buy it. Evolution destroys the foundations of the core doctrines of christianity to the point where they become artificial and unreasonable.

The psalms say "if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?" foundations are essential. They determine the character of what can be built upon them.

The philosophical aspects aside

Carbon dating: the fact is that carbon dating is known to be inaccurate even among the "evolutionary" community. I studied history and a little anthropology at a secular state university and I can tell you that my secular/atheist text book had a table in the back for "correcting" carbon dates. Why? because it is known that carbon 14 produces inacurate dates, and the older the date the more inacurate it is. So you may ask about the correction tables.. they are based on dendrochronology (counting tree rings). Scientists know that carbon dating produces inacurate dates, so they date tree samples that they can (so they think) establish a date on by creating a chain of tree rings, and thus they create a "corrected" carbon 14 date to refrence when dating other ojects. So does this work? not really. In egyptian history for example there is a conflict between carbon dating and the historical (based on documents) chronolgy and the archeological record. Carbon dating extends the time line of ancient egypt by a few hundred years creating a gap of about 300 years in the middle of egyptian history where apparently no one lived in egypt.
Basicly no date produced with carbon 14 beyond 5000 years is reliable. Even within 5000 years there can be variation of hundreds of years. Why is this?
Carbon dating, as with much of evolutionary theory is based on inductive arguments, which involve alot of assumptions and logical links which are not firmly established. In carbon 14 there are 3 major assumptions which are flawed.
#1 we can know how much carbon 14 was originaly in an object before it began to decay.. this assumption relies upon assumption number 2
#2 the level of carbon in an object is determined by the level in the atmosphere, this level has always been the same therefore the level in objects has always been the same as it is now. This assumption is bad because it is demonstrable fact that the level of carbon in the atmosphere changes and is affected by environmental conditions. This makes the first two assumptions invalid. Right now, for example, the level of carbon in the atmosphere is increasing due to environmental conditions. If we were to use the same assumption of uniformity that evolutionists do, then extrapolating back 8000 years there would have been zero carbon present in the atmosphere.
#3 the rate of carbon decay has always been what it is today. This assumption is more reliable than the firt two (which are both wrong). I don't know of any event in history that would change the rate of decay, but I suppose it is possible.
(there is actually at least one more assumption involved by I'm not going to go into it at the moment)

Basicly, as for the age of the earth, there are numerous scientific methods which should, if the assumption of uniformity is correct (the idea that nothing has changed in earths history), be able to correctly tell us the age of the earth... the problem is that they all produce widely varient results, literaly millions of years difference between them. What this should tell us is that the assumption of uniformity is not true. (at least). Something or things have happened in the hitory of the earth which make it nearly impossible for scientific dating methods to determine that age of the earth.

As for history, the major ancient civilizations (mesopotamia and egypt) spring into existence apparently out of nowhere, about 5000 years ago. Before that there is almost nothing.

The diversity of life: The "biological law of evolution" states that over time the frequency of a given allele in a gene pool will change. This is observed fact. Over time there are either more or less people with green eyes for example. Thats all the law of evolution says. This is taken in evolutionary theory to explain the existance and diversity of life on earth.
This function has no significant link to explaining the existance of life. As far as science knows it is impossible for life to be created randomly. We can't even create life in a lab on purpose, other than using sperm and egg from already living organisms.
This function also doesn't not explain the entry of new genetic material into the gene pool, which would be necessary if this function is going to be used to explain how different kinds of animals came to be. Evolutionist thinkers generaly rely on mutation to explain new genetic material getting into the gene pool, however there has never been an example of this working in the way that evolution requires it to work.

However, this law of evolution DOES explain some of the diversity of life that exists. Genesis says that God created each animal after its kind, and that when animals reproduce they do so after their kind. What that means is that God created dogs, horses, cows, etc.. it doesn't mean he created St. Bernards, german shepards, quarter horses etc. The vast number of species that exist is explained by the fact that God created each kind of animal with a wide, even huge degree of variation possible within their genetic make up. That is why we can breed animals to produce specific traits, and even create whole new breeds. But even as different as a pekinese and a st bernard are.. they are both still dogs.

There are dozens of different problems with the details evoltionary thinking that could be discussed, but I'm getting hungry so I'm going to just do one more, major problem

This of course is a problem from a theist, christian perspective, an atheist would refuse to recognise this (which in itself is part of the problem). Evolutionary thinking assumes that God, nor any other, supernatural force was not, and never has ever been involved in the creation, development, and history of the universe. Even if you try to believe in theistic evolution, the very concept of evolution itself assumes God was not involved. I shall explain.
Science, much as scientists hate to admit it, is limited in scope. Science can only address the natural world. It can only deal with things that can be observed and conroled. Science can not, by its very nature, comment on or consider the supernatural in its thought process. If the supernatural were involved in something that science was considering, the best science could possibly say is "it happened this way, but we have no idea how". In most cases, however, science can not accept that something could happen in a way that is totaly unexplainable, or even naturaly impossible. Thus a God who does the impossible can not be considered in scientific endevour. Scientist always deny the world wide flood, even though there is ample evidence for it, simply because its naturaly impossible.. and they are right, it is naturaly impossible.. Such a thing could not happen by simple natural means. But thats the point.. it didn't happen by simple natural means.

Science by its nature can not consider divine intervention, thus if science investigates an event in which divine intervention did indeed take place, science is almost guarenteed to produce incorrect results. The first assumption science has to make in order to rationaly investigate an event is that it happened by natural explainable means and process. If this is not the case, then science is almost guarenteed to be wrong.

As a final note, I'd like to comment on the big bang theory. Many christians attack the big bang theory because it is used by many to explain creation without God... However, if one compares the scientific account of big bang with the opening of genesis and looks at the details, there are some startling similarities. I was actually very suprised when I compared them.

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-- All that is gold does not glitter,
Deep roots are not touched by the frost,
The old that is strong does not wither,
Not all those who wander are lost.

@klumsy,

As I mentioned before a good deal of my recent historical study has been on mesopotamia, and part of that is the study of the languages. Its very interesting. All languages on earth are catagorized into families which are linked by both vocabulary and gramatical similarities etc. Tracing the movement of languages, while sketchy, is often the only way to also trace the movements of people groups in the ancient world.
Anyway, in mesopotamia, it is a very interesting situation.

When civilization sprang pretty much out of no where in mesopotamia around 3500 BC it started with city building, monumental buildings such as the "white temple" and the very beginnings of the first written language. At that point, we can tell from the scraps that survive, that there were two languages present in Mesopotamia. In the north was Akkadian which would become assyrian eventualy, its a semetic language related to aramaic and hebrew. In the south was Sumerian, the language for which cunieform writting was originaly developed, and indeed the first language to be written (known in history anyway).

There are several very unusual facts about this situation...
#1 normaly a linguistic difference, particularly a severe difference, would indicate seperate people/ethnic groups, yet every indication is that the people of mesopotamia were one common ethnic group that for some unknown reason spoke two different languages.
#2 Sumerian is not related to any other language known on earth. It is, as far as I know, the only language on earth that is not part of a linguistic family and stands completely alone.
#3 Sumerian is vastly different from semetic languages, like akkadian. The idea that these two languages simply happened to grow up next to each other would be like if english and japanese both originated at the same time from the same tribe of people on the same island. Its nearly an imposibility from what we normaly know of history, yet it is what happened.
#4 the final fact of interest is that some of the oldest place names in ancient mesopotamia do not appear to be either of sumerian or akkadian origin. This has lead many scholars to theorize that there was an even more ancient "sub strata" language which existed before both of them but was lost by the time they began to write.

As a side note, sumerian itself died out as a spoken language within the first thousand years of civilization.

I think those facts provide some interesting light for considering the account of Babel.

------------------
-- All that is gold does not glitter,
Deep roots are not touched by the frost,
The old that is strong does not wither,
Not all those who wander are lost.

I don't know details of neo-darwinism etc, but I gather they're scientific responses to the failure of Darwinism. How they explain the Cambrian explosion I don't know, or the very poor fossil records compared to Darwin's predictions. But in the case of complex biological systems don't such models say 'Well somehow the entire mechanism sprung into place at the same time' for instance. As I understand it these theories are just ways evolutionist can see they could use to explain the world, but there's no evidence that any of them happened. Without evidence they aren't on a scientific footing at all.

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Karl /GODCENTRIC
Visionary Media
the creative submitted to the divine.
Husband of my amazing wife Aleshia
Klumsy@xtra.co.nz

[This message has been edited by klumsy (edited December 01, 2004).]

Minimum Date: 1,300 years old
Maximum Date: 800,000 years old

That is the raw data... now for the fun part; the interpretation! There are scientists who believe Homo floresiensis is an ancestor somewhere on the evolutionary chart of man. There are those who believe it is some new type of ape. Then there are those like Dr. Teuku Jacob, who has possession of the bones, that believe it is a modern human specimen suffering from microcephaly. The problem is that with a dating spread like that you can pretty much choose a date that fits your preconceived notion of the "correct interpretation".

I've also been reading a lot of conflicting quotes from scientists who are saying that DNA cannot be extracted from the bones for a DNA comparison (they're supposedly not fossils but in a weird kind of rubbery state from all the moisture in the area). Some say DNA CAN be extracted (including Dr. Jacob). But needless to say, if you all read is Newsweek, BBC, or any of the other major news media all they're reporting is that Flore man is definitely a new evolutionary link and it's positively been dated at 18000 years with no doubt.

This statement in particular has been getting a lot of attention from journalists:

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“The existence of Mini-Man should destroy religion”—Anthropologist Desmond Morris, speaking of the new “Hobbit Man.”

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Right... anyways, I'm not knocking the dating methods; you work with what you got. If there were better methods available scientists would use them for certain. The problem I have is with the interpretations of the data, which vary wildly.

EDITING DONE TO FIX MY STUPID GRAMMAR MISTAKES

[This message has been edited by Gump (edited December 01, 2004).]

There are alot of people, especially in the scientific community who agree that carbon dating is only reasonably accurate within about 5000 years. However, radio-carbon dating is routinely used as a "PR" ploy to validate dating of objects far far older. I'm not talking specificly about hard science but about the kind of thing that is put forth in magazines, tv shows, and even school books for lower grades. Wether the scientific community is complicit in it or not, the fact is that much of the raw data turned up by the scientific community is re-arranged to fit a certain bias before its fed to the public.

I"m not sure of the term neo-darwinism, but I know one of the chief responses to the failure of darwinism has been "puntuated equilibrium". This version of evolutionary theory holds basicly what d000hg describes. They address the cambrian explosion, and the general lack of evidence for evolutionary change in the fossil record by hypothesizing that evolutionary change does not happen gradualy or slowly over long periods of time, but rather it happens in leaps and bounds.. Thus they think there would be several hundred thousand years of no significant change then BOOM, there are massive massive changes that produce whole new species and geni. I'd have to agree with d000hg's comments about these ideas. They aren't on a truly "scientific footing" they have become more philosophical in nature, because the scientists who hold them are committed to worldviews, based on evolutionary thinking.

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-- All that is gold does not glitter,
Deep roots are not touched by the frost,
The old that is strong does not wither,
Not all those who wander are lost.

@simon_templar:
On neo-Darwinism and so on - yes as I understand scientists said 'well evidence doesn't back slow gradual changes. So the way evolution happens has to be through sudden jumps. Even though we can't think why it should. Or how it possibly could be as fast as evidence suggests.

On the other hand, if we can't trust dating methods then the fossil record may be false and the Cambrian explosion might hae never happened, gradual evolution could win! See that's what happens when you forget that scientific methods support God - attacking them weakens both sides until you can't make any arguments at all!

In both the cases of the evolutionary vision of earth's history and cosmology are built on a massive chain of unverifiable assumptions and guesses if any one of which is wrong the entire structure comes tumbling down. This is why the accepted model of cosmology has flip flopped a few times in the last 50 years or so. Just within the last couple of decades the cosmological model has changed almost to the complete opposite of what was believed before.

Just in the specific example of the "cambrian explosion" the massive number of fossils is seen to indicate a massive explosion of diversity in life due to sudden burst of evolution. Its relatively well known that fossils only form under very specific circumstances and in the vast majority of cases biological entities just decay away in a relatively short period of time leaving little or no trace. Most of the fossil record (particularly the so called cambrian explosion) also indicates that the fossils which were formed were caught in sudden death scenarios. They were alive when they were suddenly buried under an avalanche of mud and such which relatively quickly in geographic terms turned to rock.
From my point of view this indicates that the cambrian explosion is not an explosion of life, but rather a catastrophe that formed the unusual conditions necessary for fossilization on a grand, even epic scale.

as it happens with big bang, I think it is a relatively decent model considering that its the product of people looking at the vague bits we can percieve of the remnants of an event that humanity didn't even exist to witness and an event which very likely pre-existed the very laws of physics and reality as we know them. That in itself is an interesting logical/philosophical point.
We look at the big bang, prior to which nothing not even space existed. There is no particular reason to believe that the laws of physics or reality existed either, as neither physics nor reality themselves existed. Yet we do assume that.. which means scientists all, wether they know it or not, assume that the laws of physics existed before physics did. I'm sure the major reason we assume this is because we can't assume anything else and still pretend to build reasonable theories. However, if the laws of physics existed before physics, or before any other part of our physical reality, they must transcend physical reality. this strongly strongly suggests that there is a "law maker" which transcends physical realiy.. I'd say it almost demands it. Interesting.. I had never thought of that before.

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-- All that is gold does not glitter,
Deep roots are not touched by the frost,
The old that is strong does not wither,
Not all those who wander are lost.

Also, even if we had no working dating methods (except for women of course) the Cambrian explosion would still exist in that we'd know life appeared very suddenly full intact and working. We just wouldn't know the order in which it came or if it was all at once.

All in all, physics hangs together VERY well and one of the major amazing things is that the same physics explains chemistry on Earth used by life, the heart of a star, and the universe 1 second after it started. Something that holds together so well and is so testable seems like either it's correct or God was just messing about. It's just SO much better supported by evidence than evolutionary theories (though there are areas where currently we just have to find a theory which fits and hope to explain it later, this has always been so and many of the understood theories now started off like that).

quote:

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Suddenly, we’re imbedded in a frothy quantum foam of unlimited possibilities. It’s a free-for-all where each solemnly presented theory is soon changed or rebutted.
In one sense, it’s very cool. Imagination rules! It’s a unique period in cosmology’s history. Throw the math this way, that way, tweak the equations, set fire to the physics building, nothing matters. It’s Alice in Wonderland meets Stephen Hawking.
Unfortunately, cosmologists are starting to resemble naked emperors parading before the mass media. Hey, we love you, but you have no clue about the universe’s true origin or fate, and little knowledge of its composition. Yet each pronouncement is delivered with pomp and flair. Maybe you need a serious “time out.”

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Berman distances real astronomy, the kind that “deals with optics, gadgets, software, planets and nebulae, observations, beauty, and real science” – from the fantasyland that he feels modern cosmology has become. He suggests the following disclaimer before any cosmology articles in Astronomy: “Warning: The following contains contemporary cosmology. Reading it can produce disorientation and confusion. Nobody knows what’s going on and nothing you read here is likely to be true.”

Needless to say, I was choking up with laughter by time I was done with reading it.

Recently at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory the first two lectures in a JPL Origin of Life series called “Life Detection Seminar” have already contradicted each other:

quote:

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Another origin-of-life expert made a presentation to a filled auditorium at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Dec. 2. His scenario differed radically from last month’s. Instead of trying to get ribose (for RNA) to form in a desert, he put his speculative natural laboratory 4 to 10 km underwater at the bottom of the sea. Why? Because the surface of the Earth would have been a deadly place: under attack by UV radiation (“disastrous” on the early earth, he said), volcanoes, and meteorite impacts of world-wipeout class. For his model, he needed a safe haven “out of harm’s way,” and found one, he believes, near deep sea vents.
Dr. Michael Russell (geologist, U. of Glasgow) believes life began in an alkaline hydrothermal reactor. Russell has a simple view of life: “Life emerges because of a chemical disequilibrium,” he said, as a kind of natural feedback mechanism “to solve the problem” of the need for a catalyst between carbon dioxide (oxidizing) and hydrogen (reducing). “Don’t be vivocentric,” he cautioned the audience; a mineral-based catalytic cycle does the same thing as life, acting as a natural regulator between extreme conditions. He also emphasized that living systems rely on convection, and generate byproducts. “What does life do? It makes waste,” he began. (The waste in his model that might provide astrobiologists with clues on other planets is acetate or acetic acid, i.e., vinegar.) At another point, he dismissed life as simply “failed mineralogy.”
Building on his belief that life emerges in environments far from equilibrium, his scenario proposes an environment with strong gradients. His illustrations portrayed a battle between high temperature water, laden with alkaline substances and metals, rising up through cracks in the crust to face the cold, acidic ocean water, loaded with dissolved carbon dioxide. He explained that this sets up a temperature gradient, a redox (oxidation-reduction) gradient, and a kinetic barrier that produces a 500 millivolt energy source at just the right temperature, about 40° C (hot, but not too hot, “like California”), where life could start cooking. At the junction of all this turmoil, a “membranous froth” forms, providing a nest where organic chemicals like amino acids could form and evolve. He thought that 35,000 years or so (the presumed lifetime of the Lost City thermal vents), was plenty of time to get life started. Amino acids would link up, with help from mineral platforms, into chains up to six units long. These, in turn, through hydrogen bonding with nucleotides, could spontaneously induce a prototypical “coding” that would not have depended on one-handed (homochiral) peptide chains. Heterochiral polymers would have actually been preferable at first, he said, and might have been selected for homochirality later, the left-handed ones winning the luck of the draw over the right-handed.
Another thing life requires is compartmentalization – a membrane. With apologies to the biochemists, who assume today’s lipid membranes would have been a requirement for life, he proposed that iron sulfide (FeS) might have been just the thing at that early stage. It might have formed sandwich layers where the polymers of life grew, spalled off, with more forming in their place, producing a steady supply of prebiotic ingredients on which natural selection could act. He did not discuss harmful cross-reactions or interfering products, but made the setup appear like a “self organizing proto-enzymatic system,” a forerunner of the complex acetyl-coenzyme A pathway employed by today’s living cells, which is assisted by proteins called ferrodoxins that act as electron-transfer agents. The “extremely steep gradients” at the seafloor, he felt, could allow FeS to handle the electron transfer work.
In short, he proposed a “peptide world” first instead of an RNA world, the popular choice among those in the origin-of-life research community. In fact, he felt it a big mistake for most researchers to promote the RNA World hypothesis, because to him it is highly unrealistic, given the assumed geological conditions on the early earth. “You’re not going to get RNA in the early earth; it is too unstable in water,” he emphasized (yet failed to mention how it appeared in the primitive “coding” with peptides he described earlier.) Moreover, he flatly admitted the Urey-Miller experiment was completely unrealistic, because everyone since Darwin knows that carbon dioxide (not hydrogen or methane) must have been the predominant atmospheric gas.
By contrast, he sold his model as meeting all the realistic early-earth geological requirements, and getting free fringe benefits as a bonus. For instance, he touted his model as providing a mechanism for proton motive force (pmf), in addition to electron transfer. Pmf is observed in all organisms to build ATP. Understanding how pmf arose in prebiotic conditions is, for most researchers, a difficult problem, but he claimed his model produced it as a “free lunch.” This represented the tone of his talk: getting life is quick and simple. In a somewhat overconfident manner, he described life as a natural consequence of disequilibrium conditions readily available deep under the sea, here on Earth or on any world undergoing convection and chemical disequilibrium. The audience gave him a hearty round of applause.
Noting that the audience may have missed the fact that his scenario falsified the previous speaker’s (and vice versa), this reporter asked during the Q&A period about it. “Benner said that ribose was essential to life, yet is unstable in water, so he theorized it had to form in a desert with borate to stabilize it,” I said. “You are proposing that it formed in a deep sea environment. How do you reconcile your view with his?” “I don’t,” he responded without hesitation. “I’m a geologist – he’s a biochemist. To me, you must start with a realistic geological scenario for the early earth. There were no deserts! There was no borate, a rare mineral in cosmic terms. I consider that a highly unlikely scenario.” He had stated emphatically earlier in the lecture that organic molecules did not come from space, as some astrobiologists suppose. Regardless of what the cosmologists say, “There were no organic molecules on the early earth,” he said forcefully, “even from space.” He didn’t need special delivery anyway; all the ingredients cook up just fine in his frothy alkaline reactors. No primordial soup here; in fact, his first life has to invade the oceanic crust to survive, because the open ocean is the last place to put fragile early life forms. Like a desert, it would have provided nothing to eat.
When a listener asked him his opinion about when life originated, he speculated confidently it was about 4.4 billion years ago – in geological terms, almost immediately after the earth cooled enough for the oceans to form. He made it seem an almost automatic result of the circumstances. To someone not vivocentric, it appeared to be no big deal.

This reporter was given a chance to talk to the speaker in person after the conference. A series of questions were answered:

Like Benner, Russell admitted that 100% pure one-handedness is vital. He admitted during the talk that amino acids racemize immediately (i.e., they revert to mixed-handedness). His lecture had bluffed about heterochirality being acceptable at first, but he provided no means other than chance to achieve 100% homochirality later. He seemed to assume getting a six-unit peptide of one hand was plausible, and that was sufficient.

He confused chemical specificity with information when I charged him with pulling information out of a magic hat. “The small peptides you propose are no more informative than a child’s alphabet blocks bouncing around at random,” I said. When he tried to declare that a six-link peptide chain “has a lot of information, because it will only join with certain side chains and reject others,” I reminded him that such an arrangement provides no functional information (it doesn’t “do” anything useful). Information is not the same as natural law. I reminded him that sodium chloride (table salt) links up naturally, too, but provides no real information. How much information is necessary to provide function? As a real world example, he admitted that the simplest ferrodoxins are more than 53 amino acid units in length. But that is an exceedingly high degree of information for just one protein molecule, especially when each unit has to be one-handed. Getting something that size by chance is astronomically improbable.
I reminded him that Benner had warned against proposing too many genetic takeovers, because each one requires a radical overhaul of the conditions. Compounding ad hoc conditions raises charges of telling a just-so story. Yet his model invoked three takeovers: minerals, then peptides, then RNA. He responded that the first two were “co-evolving.” Does that really solve the problem? Is it not a personification fallacy?
He admitted that there is a huge gap between his proposal and the operation of the simplest living thing, especially considering the highly complex translation process between DNA and proteins involving transfer-RNA. Yet he did not mention this gap during the talk when the audience was present.

If a layman can nail a PhD chemist, it doesn’t mean the layman is bright; it means the chemist’s story is weak and shatters easily. After I hammered away with these pointed questions, he asked me in mild exasperation, “Well, you’ve got to start somewhere. What is your model?” “You wouldn’t like it.... ” I replied, then thanked him for his time and bid him adieu.

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Full abstract of Russell’s presentation free from comments:

quote:

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It is suggested that life got started when hydrothermal hydrogen reacted with carbon dioxide dissolved in ocean waters in a hydrothermal mound (pH ~10, T =100° C) partly composed of metal sulfide. This mound was the hatchery of life and the vent fluids bore life’s waste products back to the ocean. Bacterial life is characterized by its wastes, e.g., acetate, methane, oxygen and hydrogen sulfide. The first waste product of life was probably acetate. So we may think of the hydrothermal mound as a natural hydrothermal flow reactor in which iron and nickel sulfides catalyzed the formation of minor concentrations of amino acids and their polymerization to short peptides – peptides that got caught in pore spaces while most of the acetate was eluted to the ocean. These peptides wrapped themselves around inorganic metal sulfide and phosphate molecules, and also coated the inside of the pores. The efficiency of the acetate generator was optimized by the emergence of the first organic living cells through the intervention of nucleic acids in the metabolizing system.
The hydrothermal mound continued to support a community of cells through to the community’s evolution and differentiation to bacteria and archaea. The archaea added waste methane to the effluent. From the mound the only safe escape route was down, down into the ocean floor where nutrients and energy were still available. Any cells discharged to the ocean would have starved. Thus the ocean floor sediments and crust were colonized and the deep biosphere was born.

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A few notes:

- peptides do not form in water easily
- the huge leap to the "first organic living cell" is assumed without an explanation of how that occurred
- the same conditions are hostile to nucleotides

[This message has been edited by Gump (edited December 07, 2004).]

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Dr. Nicolas Commnilles (author of Darwin's Demise) visited our church last week in order to speak on this very topic. He had some very profound things to say. I'd definitely recommend his book!

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Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.
Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep.
O Lord , you preserve both man and beast.
How priceless is your unfailing love!

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Omnia Vos Estis Cordatis

quote:

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Originally posted by luke:
my personal opinion is that evolution is God's tool... No one ever said in the bible that God can only say 'let it be so' and it was so...

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what do you mean it doesnt say he can just speak and it is? What about in the desert when he provided he hebrews with mana to eat? Or when the poor woman poured out enough oil from her single vase to fill up every single container in her whole house? This proves God doesnt even NEED to speak and it is. I don't think that God used evolution as a tool, he would have no need to. God created the earth and everything on it in six days (or six time period whatevers), plain and simple. It says in the bible that God formed man from the dust of the ground, that means he didn't "evolve" man from monkey. I mean, I have nothing against natural selection, because that has been proven and has nothing to do with the creation of the world. But once you take natural selection a step further and say that one species slowly turned into another one over time, then thats when it starts contradicting the bible.

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" I hat typos..." - gamer4christ

[This message has been edited by questleader (edited January 23, 2006).]

I've actually been working on writing a "book". This book originally started as an online post/article and then quickly ballooned until I realized it had exceeded 21,000 words and it's still growing... I wouldn't mind getting feedback on small portions. Primarily I want to know if people not too familar with the subject matter can follow along with what I've written.

Here is a section that covers just one subject:

quote:

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Certain molecules in nature recognize each other and combine into predictable patterns as they settle into low-energy states. This fits very nicely with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and the formation of snowflakes. Biological RNA and DNA are not mere crystals or repetitive patterns. They are highly volatile and energetic, requiring cellular machinery to build and maintain. Most important, they contain genetic information not derivable from the atoms of which they are composed nor from the laws of physics that describe how their parts interact. Instances of spontaneous complexity in nature are not a new discovery. Another example of spontaneous complexity in nature is the structure of crystals which are strictly repetitive galleries of geometric repetition. Ocean waves can produce structures with right angles that highly resemble human-made buildings. I fully expect even more instances of spontaneous complexity to be found. The problem is that the complexity being generated in the laboratory has no direct relevance to the protobiological sciences or Darwinian evolution.

One natural mechanism for spontaneous complexity actively being seeked after is one that might solve the long-standing homochirality problem. Way back in the 1800's Louis Pasteur's experiments recognized this problem but it did not become directly relevant to the protobiological sciences until the discovery of DNA. Pasteur showed that certain organic molecules, such as amino acids, come in two mirror-image forms, one that rotates polarized light to the right, the other to the left. Such molecules are said to have a definite handedness, or chirality. Thus the problem is that the amino acids must be of all the same (homo) handedness (chirality). The structure of DNA requires polypeptide chains comprised of 100% left-handed amino acids. Anything less than 100% will result in non-functioning DNA; it's like having a distorted piece of a jigsaw puzzle that just refuses to fit. Now it is known that life itself can generate a particular "enantiomer" or chiral form of a particular molecule.

I found this published fairly recently (Nov, 2004) at the Proceedings of the National Acedemy of Sciences:

“Spontaneous emergence of homochirality in noncatalytic systems”

*add more description of this experiment*

Their theoretical model describes a dynamic system of amino acids joining and disjoining with a free flow of energy and ingredients. In the best-case scenario, provided that all the ingredients are present in the right conditions, this system might produce about 70% of one hand in a few centuries (a value that stabilizes and does not rise higher). Even this does not form polypeptide chains, only an excess of one-hand in the amino acids. They say that the formation of the first prebiotic peptides is not a trivial problem, as free amino acids are poorly reactive (peptide bonds tend not to form in water). To solve this part of the problem, they imagine alternate wetting and drying periods and the presence of N-carboxyanhydrides to activate the amino acids. The tests required fairly high concentrations of ingredients, and specific temperature and acidity. They couldn’t get any single-handed chains to result, but still feel their model is better than the usual direct autocatalytic reaction models, which they view as “dubious in a prebiotic environment.”

The homochirality problem is so immense that materialistic philosophers are forced to look to space:

Space radiation preferentially destroys specific forms of amino acids, the most realistic laboratory simulation to date has found. The work suggests the molecular building blocks that form the "left-handed" proteins used by life on Earth took shape in space, bolstering the case that they could have seeded life on other planets.

A key question is when this chirality came into play," says Uwe Meierhenrich, a chemist at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis in France. One theory is that proteins made of both types of amino acids existed on the early Earth but "somehow only the proteins of left-handed amino acids survived", says Meierhenrich.

Meierhenrich and colleagues have a different theory. "We say the molecular building blocks of life were already created in interstellar conditions."

The team believes a special type of "handed" space radiation destroyed more right-handed amino acids on the icy dust from which the solar system formed. This dust, along with the comets it condensed into, then crashed into Earth and other planets, providing them with an overabundance of left-handed amino acids that went on to form proteins. The radiation is called circularly polarised light because its electric field travels through space like a turning screw, and comes in right- and left-handed forms.

It is thought to be produced when dust grains become aligned in the presence of magnetic fields threading through regions of space much larger than our solar system. Circularly polarised light is estimated to make up as much as 17% of the radiation at any given point in space.

In 2000, an experiment showed that when circularly polarised ultraviolet light of a particular handedness was shone on an equal mix of right- and left-handed amino acids, it produced an excess of 2.5% by preferentially disintegrating one type.

But that experiment was done using amino acids in a liquid solution, which behave differently than those in the solid conditions of icy dust in space. To avoid absorption by water molecules, it was also necessary to use light at a wavelength of 210 nanometres – significantly longer than the peak of 120 nm radiation actually measured in space.

Now, Meierhenrich's team has performed a similar experiment. The group shone circularly polarised light at a wavelength of 180 nm on a solid film of both right- and left-handed forms of the amino acid leucine. Now, this research was published almost a year ago but I'm not aware of any major new developments. Circularly polarised light is only capable of producing an excess of 2.6% left-handed amino acids.

My intent in writing this article is to be as impartial as possible but as of yet the current empirical evidence indicates the percentage of left-handed amino acids generated by natural mechanisms plateaus at around 70%. Now this is under very specific, controlled conditions in labs. Now I believe it's "possible" that eventually someone will discover the correct conditions where some 100% left-handed polypeptide chains will arise naturally. Unfortunately for materialistic philosophers, based upon the current experiments these polypeptide chains will likely be produced in limited amounts and spread out over time so even then there wouldn't be enough all at once in order to combine into a significant structure. Never mind these specific laboratory conditions might never occur on Earth. Of course, that still doesn't solve how DNA came to form.

In short, while this view may later be discovered to be correct based upon the evidence as of now I must classify it as "implausible". This is not meant to disparage those who believe in this scenario as somehow being "stupid". I am merely trying to keep you informed with the most up-to-date data on this subject.

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Obviously this section is unfinished. I'm planning on going over all the other attempts to solve the homochiralty problem.

[This message has been edited by simon_templar (edited January 23, 2006).]