neither has religion.  However it (religion) has given our souls eternal life.

here is a real wrench thrown into the gear box

Those are all examples of microevolution not macroevolution. Still human- same number of genes. Doesn't prove a thing with regards to people coming from apes.

It's really that simple.  There hasn't been any serious debate about the basic facts of evolution among actual scientists for more than 150 years.

Apparently religion has given man the ability to dodge uncomfortable questions.

In looking at info on the historical record, or by simply
looking up in a clear night sky, it should be readily
evident that the universe is millions or billions of
years old. But none of that mattered until the first
being was created that had an intellect. Before that,
who would care about creation or any aspect of our
universe. No one. Because without intellect, it all
means nothing. What does a dog care if he is alive?
He operates on instinct, so it means nothing. So the
same can be said for a rock. Without intellect, it still
means nothing.

When God breathed life into Adam, then our world
or universe became real to us. Not before. But it still
existed before that. Kind of like when a tree falls in
the woods, and there is no one to hear it, does it
make noise? Of course it does, but no one cares.

I believe God created time for us. Without time,
the human intellect as we know would not exist,
so we could not exist.

Also the scientists by their nature are searching
for the why of our universe. They see & recognize
that a higher being has created life where it should
not exist, but here we are. We have to accept on
faith that God created us & this universe, for his
purposes. When the last being with an intellect
dies, time will end.

How does all of that fit in with the Bible? I take
it on faith that I don't understand all that I
might read there, but that doesn't invalidate
it.

Great discussion.

God Bless.

John

Tag for the eventual resolution to this query.

Nope.

This drives me batty.  I believe in God but realize that Genesis must be read metaphorically.  But 99% of every other religious person feels they much bend reality to fit a literal interpretation.  There is no way the mental gymnastics of that will win out over time.

Debunked.

Soot once covered the trees, then the air got cleaner, and the dark moths stood out. Soon the surviving moths were lighter.

Been thoroughly debunked, if you bother to check. It can be broken into three sections, and the genes for the three sections all existed in prior living critters.

It makes sense, but I still wonder....if we evolved from apes, why are there still apes?

Abiogenesis is a pretty far fetched theory that is required for a belief in molecules to man (macroevolution)

The first cell, would have needed RNA, a way to replicate, a membrane to separate it from its environment, transport proteins, complex amino acids, a method of acquiring and metabolizing energy.  If you understand anything about cell structure and function (prokaryotic, of course)  you can see that even our most simple examples today are filled with complex, interdependent systems, without which the cell cannot survive.

My undergrad is in biology and organic chemistry, and the biggest flaw with molecules to man evolution is starting with life in the first place.  a question that science has only been able to speculate at, at best.

Abiogenesis is not measurable, observable or repeatable (despite efforts to recreate spontaneous life in the lab).

there are other problems, such as the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record (which darwin himself said must be abundant if his hypothesis were to be proven true)  We see few examples of forks in the evolutionary tree in the fossil record.

another problem is that we have never observed the creation of new genetic information.  We see recombination through sexual reproduction and we see the incorporation of fragments of gentic material in plasmids in bacteria, for instance, but not new code that should be necessary for the formation of new species.  We also don't see speciation today, that is, we don't see entirely new species of animals arising that did not exist previously.

We do see natural selection and micro evolution (small changes in species over time, like changes in birds beaks that darwin observed )  New breeds of dogs are still dogs, they can still interbreed, which is what defines the boundries of a species.  Dogs do not ever give rise to something that is a non-dog, to put it in simple terms.

This fits with what we see in genetics.  New information is not created.  Information is recombined, resulting in a new breed of dog or a drug resistant bacteria, but the type of animal does not change to some other kind.

the theory of evolution is unproven speculation and extrapolation that cannot be confirm by the scientific method, and is much a belief or tenet of faith in some scientific circles as creationism is in some religious ones.  neither of these can be scientifically proven.

My biggest issue would be that we are so indoctrinated with "science, falsely so called"  is that we have been taught and are still being taught that all of this is fact and settled science, and we are being spoon fed it from an early age.  When I was in school, the earth was 40 million  years old. this was taught as fact.  now it's over 4 billion.  why?

Because time is the evolutionists magic wand.  when you ask them how it is possible for a single cell to ultimately become a man, their response is, given enough time, anything is possible.

we don't see a progression of new species today, we don't see widespread transitional forms in the fossil record, we don't see the creation of new genetic information (unless you want to count mutation, which I would argue still doesn't lead to new species)   Science still cannot explain how the first life happened.  when you can answer those questions with something approaching real science, then feel free to teach it as truth.  until then, lets teach real science (law of conservation of momentum) for instance, instead of passing off what amounts to a belief system as fact.

1,000 years.

<div class="version-KJV result-text-style-normal text-html "><h1 class="passage-display"> 2 Peter 3:8King James Version (KJV)</h1>

<sup class="versenum">8 [/sup]But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Being primarily German-American, I've often wondered why there are still Germans.

The thing about science is, it does not depend on you believing or not.

I am a fucking animal

Do you have any objection to "God started it all, including evolution which is just the process by which life adapts to changing conditions"?

Funny but stupid.

I believe in evolution, but I think there is a lot of it we do not know.

This.  God and science are not mutually exclusive.  Natural laws are God's laws and he uses them and natural processes to create.  Nothing magic about it - God is a great scientist.

I personally am not an atheist.  I used to lean that way, but changed my philosophy over time.  At this point, I am a deist-leaning agnostic.  But I have no problem with Christianity as a religion, even though I don't believe in it, per se.  I think it's better than the other religions as far as ushering humans into sustainable civilization.  But my mind has frequently boggled at the need of some Christians to turn the Bible into a science textbook.  Even if you believe that every word in the Bible is inspired by God, it was intended to guide humans MORALLY.  At no point in the Bible does it say that it's to be used as a science textbook or even a history textbook.  It doesn't say that it tells you everything, it says it tells you what you need to know to follow God and be obedient to Him.  It never says, "don't look at nature and try to figure out how it works, I'll tell you everything you need to know."

WHY do some Christians get so hung up on this stuff?

No, it's not required and it has nothing to do with evolution.

Evolution is not a sound theory.

Even Charles Darwin said so himself.

Even Charles Darwin thought his own theory was "grievously hypothetical" and gave emotional content to his doubts when he said, "The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder." To think the eye had evolved by natural selection, Darwin said, "seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree." But he thought of the same about something as simple as a peacock's feather, which, he said, "makes me sick. " Of course, anyone who has knowledge of the intricacies of the human eye and other living structures immediately realizes the problem Darwin sensed. How could an organ of such an intricate magnificence ever have a originated via random chance? Oller and Omdahl (CH) Page 274

It's like saying you could grab a box of parts to build a TV, or a car, or an airplane, and throw them into a tornado or hurricane, and then when the hurricane is over, all the parts have magically assembled themselves.

We live as designed and created people.  If I could get a box of AR parts together, put them on a blue angel's jet, and let the pilot do all the aerial acrobatics he wanted, and when he landed, a complete rifle was made, would you say that's possible?

I began as a hard core evolutionist, but examining the theory reveals numerous holes and chicken and egg sort of problems.  (did the selection pressure cause an animal to evolve, if so, how did it do so in time to keep from becoming extinct by the selection pressure.  you can't explain all of those changes with mutation.  I'm not talking about different colored moths, that's natural selection, that in no way explains a moth giving rise to something that is not a moth.)

I'm sure I'll be ridiculed for this, and that's fine.  Having tried as much as possible to examine the issue as dispassionately an as unbiased as possible. (I don't believe it is possible to be completely unbiased).  I believe that neither position can be proven, both are accepted on no small amount of faith, and the two are exclusive of eachother.  I say this as one who used to straddle the fence

Again, trying to look at things as objectively as I can the evidence that we see around us, as a whole, seems to fit with the notion of a global flood better than abiogenisis and millions of years.

there are millions of pounds of organic material (dead plants and animals) laid down in layers of sedimentary rock (rock that is deposited by water)  all over the earth.  Often with signs of rapid preservation.

Polystratic fossils are another great contradiction to what is called the geologic column.  fossilized mulloscs found at great altitudes.  dinosaurs found with intact red blood cells, any many many more.

If you look at the evidence to support a global flood, it's there in abundance.  If you at the evidence without the flood, it's harder to make the pieces come together, and you end up with some pretty improbable explanations.

If you took the brightest minds of the 1800s and put an atom bomb in front of them but told them it was established fact that atoms do not exist, they would come up with the best plausible, reasonable explanation they could about what they were observing, but it would be wrong, or at best incomplete.

That's where we are with our understanding of our origins, and i believe teaching incomplete hypothesis that are unlikely at best as establish fact actually hampers the next generation of scientists.

I'm not saying that we should teach creation either, there is plenty of real science to teach children.  Then let them reach their own conclusions with sound facts, not science, falsely so called.

Interestingly, the current denial of a global flood, or even the possibility of one, confirms the words found in second peter.  "for this cause they were willfully ignorant, that the world, being overflowed with water, perished."

I am a Christian, and a lover of science.  It is possible to be both and I make no apology for either.  More and more biologist are questioning this flawed theory from the 1800s.

No, he didn't.  And since he didn't yet have genetic science as we do, even if he had, his opinion would have been hampered by lack of the data we now have.  Please stop being disingenuous.

you have to start with something living at some point.  so please enlighten me.  you do understand that abiogensis means life from non-life, correct?  that means that at some point in earth's history there was nothing living, and at some point later the first life form / simple cell, something was formed?

No, that still has nothing to do with evolution.  Evolution is the change in past forms resulting in later forms.  How that life got there is a separate argument, a separate field of study.  However life got here, whether by God, comet, space spores, chemical reactions, whatever, once it got here, it evolved.

Learn how mutation, natural selection, environmental pressures, adaptation, and evolution all work. Then you won't ask such a stupid question.

It is not sound.  First, their is no real evidence that one specie changed into another.  Second, it has not been repeated experimentally.  Third, the missing link is missing, because it does not exist.

False, read up on entropy

WAT?
What has entropy got to do with it?

Can you turn that watermelon into a tomato?

Both wrong. Google it before you spout it, you might learn something.

For a particular species changing some characteristics over time - yes.
For one species changing into another - no.

Actually, life increases complexity to minimize energy required to survive. Following the second law.

The problem with "intelligent design" is that it is nothing more than kicking the can down the street for someone else to deal with it.

Ultimately, the first "designer" has to EVOLVE from a lesser being,  as it is ludicrous in the ultimate extreme to suggest that a fully capable "intelligent designer" could simply self-create out of nothing.

The origin of god....what was god like as a kid and what were his parents like?

Well, keep following the chain of successive gods and you will eventually have to encounter the Original Originator, which, lacking a god in his past, must therefor have been the product of EVOLUTION since there's no third option.

And if evolution could evolve a god X million years ago,  then it's no challenge for evolution to create something less than a god NOW.

Intelligent design is an outright lie.  Myth.  Fabrication.  Take your pick.

All facts and all evidence point to evolution and IN NO OTHER DIRECTION.   Those who think otherwise are lacking in some aspects of their education and/or critical reasoning skills.

Yes, but that is simply greater efficiency of energy has a greater advantage (and so by evolution) dominates, I don' think it is entropy driven.
The argument is that more complex life is against the second law of thermo.
Generally because they have no idea what entropy is and what a closed system is.

OK, I'll play.

Which Theory of Evolution are you referring to?

Hell no. I was created by the god of the desert right after he created light.

We can agree to disagree, but you clearly had to remove what Darwin said to make this reply.  I can promise you my sincerity isn't to be questioned, because I value intelligent conversation.  When I think someone is trying to move the conversation off the topic at hand, I will tell them it's entirely possible they're committing a red herring fallacy (Norman Geisler/David Brooks) and it really does nothing to promote good discussion.

I will stand by statement, because I am a firm believer that we are created in the image of the Trinity, and there are many reasons why I don't believe evolution is sound.  I think it requires more faith to believe in random changes which have led up to humanity as we know it than an intelligent designer and Creator.

I assume your being sarcastic...  Just in-case, it does not say we evolved from apes.  It says we had a common ancestor.

My belief is that we were created in God's image like in the Bible, and that God is the result of evolution as well.  God could have at one time been a different type of being and metamorphized into what he is now.

Also while writing this on my phone I noticed Google refuses to put the word Bible with a capital B into their Swype interface.  More proof of the moral decay of our society.

It's both observation of available evidence (fossils, genes, etc.) and interpretation.

There isn't a distinction between them. You can't have one without the other. Macro is the same a micro just over much longer periods of time and POTENTIALLY varying/multiple selective pressures.

I can tell you that we did not evolve from bananas. We all did evolve from a common ancestor. Most likely our closest relative a single celled organism of some kind.

That's cool. Can you give us tangible and repeatable evidence that the soul exists and it has an eternal life?

Which honestly, is much better than being the regular kind. Thier no fun.

Of course not.
Science makes no statement about god (even if some scientists do).
A scientist I used to work with was one the most adamant Christians I have ever met.

I often wondered if it doesn't follow some sort of plan or blueprint of life built into the fabric of the universe or something.  Just think about it for a sec.  Going from loose organic compounds to the first organized Cell is a huge leap.  I mean a bigger event then going from that cell to humans big.