Creation vs. Evolution

[Warthaug]

Nice explanation but in reality doesn't that assume there was a wombat with a pouch upright? ...and if they were burrowing mammals a fossil or two would be highly likely

No, it does not assume that. It assumes that there was an ancestor before there was a pouch that had a simpler structure - a skin fold or "pit". This ancestor would then have evolved into the two forms we see today - one group with forward-facing pouches, one with backwards-facing pouches.

And I didn't say there were no fossils - fossils of marsupials are quite common. What is exceedingly rare is fossils of soft tissues - there is no bone in the pouch to leave a fossil. As such we have no idea what the proto-pouch looked like. And unless we're really lucky, and find a soft-tissue fossil, we may never know.

It's been a while since I went to church, but if memory serves me, satan is the father of lies... Where's the lie? Ultimately if God created Adam and Eve as sexually mature adults, why is it a deception to say the Earth was also mature.

The lie would be in creating something to appear as it is not. Say 14 billion years old verses 6000...

So you run upon a fossil. You either give God the glory or you don't

Avoiding the question again...why am I not surprised? Clearly, religious individuals who use science to understand the universe are attributing it to god. One can know evolution to be true, and believe that god's hand is behind it. So I ask again, how is science/scientists making god irrelevant?

I'd point out (for the what, 200th time now?) that science makes no conclusions vis-a-vis god. God, if he/she/it exists, is an unquantifiable things and therefore is outside of the universe which science describes.

First, I would never judge another's salvation. Its not my place. Secondly, there are "essentials" of the Christian faith and oddly enough none of them have to do with one's interpretation of Genesis. Someone asked for another theory (for short I assume they mean't hypothesis) and I gave them one. I think your statement about evolution being accepted by most denominations is incorrect. Especially not as it has been defined on here

Your assumption would be wrong. That the vast majority of Christians belong to faiths which explicitly support evolution is a matter of public record. Catholics alone make for a majority, but add into that the Church of England, Anglicans, and a whole plethora of protestant off-shoots, and you've got the vast majority of Christians.

When you get down to it, old-testament style creationism and biblical literalism are rare things in the Christian world - limited to the US, a few parts of Canada, and the odd little enclave elsewhere in the world.

If the Bible doesn't stand as God's inerrant word then where does that leave Christianity?

The majority of Christians take parts of the bible to be largely allegorical, and yet their churches seem to be doing just fine. Guess they don't see the issue. Even literalists like yourself pick and choose the parts you take as inerrant - the old testament sets the ground rules for slavery, and in the new testament Jesus endorses slavery through his commands to slaves to respect their masters. And yet I cannot think of a single literalistic church which promotes a return to slavery. And yet, slavery is spelled out in black and white, by god. So why aren't you treating that as his inerrant word?

I guess its a lot like the Brontosaurus issue with me. If something stands as incorrect, then it brings into question the entire field/product/book.

Brontosaurus hardly threw the whole field into question. If anything, it was a valuable lesson in comparative physiology.

So if Genesis didn't occur as described, then was it metaphorical or was it inaccurate? Now, before someone points me to the billion or so percieved errors in scripture, suffice it to say I've read most of them. Furthermore, we could dedicate another 600 or so posts to the subject. Something most of us don't have time for. So, while I don't pretend to know the exact answer...ie God behind evolution, I don't dismiss this view either.

And yet so readily dismiss science. Strange though, that the meat of your argument is, in essence, if the bible has factual errors your faith becomes meaningless.

Doesn't exactly make for a strong foundation.

Bryan

 

[boulderjohn]

If the Bible doesn't stand as God's inerrant word then where does that leave Christianity? COLOR]

Quite a few pages ago in this thread I referred to the book Misquoting Jesus: The story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart D. Ehrman. This graduate of the Moody Bible Institute and and unquestioned expert on the Greek texts that were used by relatively modern editors to create what we call the Bible shows how there are many thousands of scraps of Greek originals used to create that Bible. They are riddled with discrepancies. Some are caused by scribal error, and some are quite intentional alterations designed to support the theologies of particular sects of that young religion. Earlier in this thread someone referred to the trinity. This is one of those instances where someone living hundreds of years after Christ added that concept to support his belief--it does not appear in any of the earlier versions of the text.

Very few, if any, of these fragments are originals. Almost all are copies that have been changed in many clearly documented ways in their various version.

So which of these thousands of fragments represents "God's inerrant word"?

And if the Bible does not stand as God's inerrant word, as it clearly does not, then where indeed does that leave Christianity?

There is an answer to that that is fully acceptable to Christianity if you can just get past the rooted fundamentalism and use some common sense. The ordained ministers in the religion department of my college who taught me the classes related to this had no trouble maintaining their faith while acknowledging that the Bible was a flawed, man-made attempt to explain the tenets of that faith.

 

[Spencermm]

Earlier in this thread someone referred to the trinity. This is one of those instances where someone living hundreds of years after Christ added that concept to support his belief--it does not appear in any of the earlier versions of the text.

Does the word Trinity appear in later texts? It's not in my Bible.
Spencer

 

[Warthaug]

Does the word Trinity appear in later texts? It's not in my Bible.
Spencer

The holy trinity was a creation of the church, at the council of nicea, basically an amalgamation of differing versions of Christianity that existed at that time. Before the counsil there were large groups of christians who believed, among other things:

1) Jesus was not part of god, nor was he fully divine in nature (Arianism)
2) That lapsed christians couldn't re-join the church (Melitians)
3) Self-castration

All of this occurred after the new testament was written.

Catholicism still keeps the trinity as a part of its teachings, while many of its offshoots do not.

Bryan

 

[Spencermm]

The holy trinity was a creation of the church, at the council of nicea, basically an amalgamation of differing versions of Christianity that existed at that time. Before the counsil there were large groups of christians who believed, among other things:

1) Jesus was not part of god, nor was he fully divine in nature (Arianism)
2) That lapsed christians couldn't re-join the church (Melitians)
3) Self-castration

All of this occurred after the new testament was written.

Catholicism still keeps the trinity as a part of its teachings, while many of its offshoots do not.

Bryan

That was my (long held) understanding- that the word "trinity" was merely a word used to describe a concept, and not a word that is/was actually in the Bible.
I'm no Bible scholar, and certainly no science scholar- just trying to keep up so I can read along.
Thanks for responding Bryan,
Spencer

 

[Sordello]

What? We're supposed to put up with this crap to protect your ability to pretend that there is some sort of rational basis for your belief in fairy tales? Not a chance.

You should be kinder Thal. There is a difference between a Fairy Tale and Mythology after all. I am hoping all here understand this.

The Bible is the "Inspired word of God" and this we know from simple logic. God never wrote a single word we know of. All the words in the book were written by men. Argued over by men to determine whether they were true. Edited and assembled by men. Even written or printed by men.

Even with the words of Jesus there are many questions. The actual words were not written down until approximately 60 years after his passing. If anyone were to read these quotes/snippets that are the closest to his lifetime then you would defiantly come to the conclusion that he was a traditional thinking Hebrew from his words.

The biggest problem with the modern fundamentalist church it is locked into the words of the bible. These ministers preach it with little or no training in the meanings of the words or the historical contexts. There is no rituals left in the church and, they call it that old time religion - what a load of c**p. It is all new age stuff. Even the concept of the rapture is new age. It came from a Christian cult that developed in the mid 1800's and the concept of the rapture was annotated into the bible for the first time around 1909. It is never mentioned in traditional texts!

There is so much stuff I learned when growing up that were false teachings. I spent 30 years relearning it and studying now I have more questions than answers. Don't be asking me for answers - the answer will be in the form of a question... :11:

Do I believe in evolution? Of course... It is the most important thing to the survival of any life form.

Do I believe in Creative Design? Just more New Age C**P!

Do I believe in the Creation? Of course I do... I will just not explain the interpretation! That is for each individual to figure out!

I could write pages on this stuff and the hows, whys, and whens. It is of no consequence after all. In the end we make our own choices and have to live and die with them. The most important question is can we forgive ourselves?

Has anyone else here ever held someone in their arms while they passed away peacefully? and known that that was all they ever really wanted. Someone to show the care and love they needed at that moment...

 

[Spencermm]

"Has anyone else here ever held someone in their arms while they passed away peacefully?"
I have had that honor. To this day, 5 years later, I still can't quite wrap my brain around it, but I feel privledged for the experience.
Held 2 very recently drowned people in my arms. Not peaceful at all- had bad dreams about it for a while. Got one of them back to life though- that was pretty cool.
Spencer

 

[boulderjohn]

That was my (long held) understanding- that the word "trinity" was merely a word used to describe a concept, and not a word that is/was actually in the Bible.
I'm no Bible scholar, and certainly no science scholar- just trying to keep up so I can read along.
Thanks for responding Bryan,
Spencer

The term "trinity" is a descriptive term for 1 John 5:7. "There are three that bear witness in heaven, the father, the word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one."

This verse is an extremely late addition to the Bible and does not appear in any of the earlier Greek texts.

 

[coachpill]

Couldn't have asked for better timing:
Bacteria evolve; Conservapedia demands recount: Page 1

An article that just hit my RSS feed about a study showing evolution working in the lab environment and the outright denialism and attacks it was met with for daring to advance knowledge. Some people are just determined to try keep their fellow man stuck in the dark ages.

Yup.

Except that E. coli already have the ability to utilize citrate when oxygen levels are low. There is a citrate transporter that allows citrate to be taken into the cell an used. In high levels of oxygen the transporter either does not work or is not produced. So the idea that Lenski's experiment showed anything novel being produced is an exaggeration.

Also, they lost the ability to catabolize ribose, some lost the ability to repair DNA. Again, the benefit of citrate usage has come at a cost and if placed back in natural environments, these bacteria get out competed.

 

[Spencermm]

The term "trinity" is a descriptive term for 1 John 5:7. "There are three that bear witness in heaven, the father, the word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one."

This verse is an extremely late addition to the Bible and does not appear in any of the earlier Greek texts.

Yeah, I just looked at that in my Bible, the NIV. It points out that the way you have it quoted is found in later manuscripts only.
Spencer