Creation vs. Evolution

[gary-ramey]

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.

No. You have the freedom to logoff before you hurt yourself. The kind of stressful posts you put up can't be good for your ticker.

 

[gary-ramey]

Quote:
Originally Posted by ce4jesus
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.

While its true that Nero's persescution of the church destroyed most of the viable documents, the scripture that remains was enough. There are many more artifacts including letters and sermons from the early church which were used to reconstruct missing pieces. Furthermore, the essentials of the Christian Faith are accounted for with original documents. As for the trinity, Jesus himself talks of the holy spirit. Trinity is a later term used to describe the Godhead ..Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is a limit of our language capacity to adequately describe 1 God, in 3 persons.

 

[gary-ramey]

Quote:
Originally Posted by ce4jesus
As for faith, if the Bible doesn't stand up to the same type of scrutiny, then following it is useless.

Why? Is your faith in Jesus or in a bunch of greek scraps compiled by church bureaucrats?

Do errors in Chronicles vs Kings make the wisdom of proverbs any less true?

What I know of Jesus is based on the bible. If in fact the Bible is full of mistakes, then the Jesus I know is a lie. After reading through "Evidence that demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell, I find these so-called mistakes in the Bible nothing more than the musings of the unbeliever. However, even with that. the biggest testimony of Christ is how he reveals himself in unmistakable ways in the life of the believer.

 

[gary-ramey]

If anything, its a huge understatement. In order for this system to work one of several large things would have had to happen:


Evolution of the Cit antiporter to use another source of energy to pump citrate.
Evolution of the Cit transporter to a channel (i.e. would allow passive transfer of citrate).
Another transporter has evolved to move citrate, independent of the Cit transporter.
Alternative processing of succinate which somehow bypasses the Krebs cycle.

Microevolution at its finest. Call me when it jumps families.

 

[Thalassamania]

No. You have the freedom to logoff before you hurt yourself. The kind of stressful posts you put up can't be good for your ticker.

My ticker is just fine thanks, wish we could say the same for the plaques that seem to clogging your thought processes.

Got that item yet? No? Well that's about what we all expected. You're a looser, your god's a looser.

What I know of Jesus is based on the bible. If in fact the Bible is full of mistakes, then the Jesus I know is a lie.

Wow! You finally got one right.

After reading through "Evidence that demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell, I find these so-called mistakes in the Bible nothing more than the musings of the unbeliever. However, even with that. the biggest testimony of Christ is how he reveals himself in unmistakable ways in the life of the believer.

Josh McDowell holds no discernible credentials in any of the areas in which he professes expertise. He remains, however, one of the most widely-believed liars for the Christian pantheon in contemporary times. These archives debunk his religious beliefs utterly.

I'm glad your belief in Jesus makes you a more tolerable person, without it I guess you'd be unendurable.

 

[Warthaug]

Microevolution at its finest. Call me when it jumps families.

Ahh, backpedaling at its finest. Must hurt, having each and every one of your "points" disproven with nothing more then actually reading the article you "cited"

And I know we've gone over this before, but microevolution and macroevolution are the same thing; its just a matter of scale. But lets not loose track of the main point - this study yet again completely refutes your former claim that evolution cannot lead to beneficial mutations or increases in fitness.

Divisions like species, genus, families, etc, are purely many-made and don't represent the natural world in the least. None-the-less you're asking for an impossible experiment - one, which if observed, would disprove evolutionary theory. To observe the degree of change needed to generate a new family would take tens of thousands of years in the lab; longer in the wild.

The very fact you continually demand findings which would disprove evolutionary theory as "proof" of evolution should some sort of sign for you, like maybe a sign that you know far less about evolution than you pretend...

Bryan

 

[gary-ramey]

Considering that the book has a tendency to be wrong, we're right to question it. Under your rational we should stop believing in heliocentrism, as the bible pretty clearly lays out that we live in a geocentric universe...

Clearly a colloquialism much as it was when I watched the morning weather report, but that clearly eludes you as it did the early church.

I never once claimed that they taught it, rather that they accepted it. As for the second part, you are completely wrong.

Pius the XII said it first:
"there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation"

Humani Generis (1950)



JP the II expanded this:

"Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis.* In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies—which was neither planned nor sought—constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory"

MESSAGE TO THE PONTIFICAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES:
ON EVOLUTION, October 22, 1996, John Paul II

...and Popes have never been wrong. The point is unless it becomes an official church position, what Pope XXX says has little bearing on this discussion. The kind of evolution the Pope is clearly referring too is theistic at best.

That's a humorous observation on your part. And completely in opposition to my experience growing up . . . as a catholic.

Have you read a confirmation study guide lately? The Church is very clear about its "must" subscribe to list and interpretation of Genesis wasn't one of the items on that list. Therefore it falls under the catagory that each believer has the capacity to make up their minds about. Unless all Catholics are robots, then that belief can range from literalism to evolution.

Quote:
Originally Posted by ce4jesus
The vast majority of Christians believe in theistic evolution and/or the biblical account regardless of what the Pope of the day says in a speech.

Only in the US, the rest of the developed world is the exact, polar opposite:
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2005-11.pdf

For a fairly extensive listing of US churches who believe in evolution, see the Clergy Letter Project.

Your first link clearly states 3rd world countries (ie more than 2/3 of the world's population) are almost unaccounted for. So it did nothing for your argument.
Your second link was unaccessible.

I have the statistics to support my claim. All you have is your own assumptions, which don't stand up to even the most modest of investigation.

Yes...figures lie and liars figure. I have my first hand knowledge of hundreds of churches across the US along with laisons in several poor countries throughout the world.

 

[gary-ramey]

How did you come up with that idea? You have a proto-marsupial, (which lived over 125 million years ago, based on fossils from china). This pre-marsupial did not have a pouch, and instead had a simpler structure. Over the intervening millions of years this primitive system diverged, giving rise to the current 2 types of pouch - forward verses rearward facing. Even assuming a very long generation time of 10 years, that is still far more than enough time for gradual change to lead to both forms of pouch.

Are you saying the pouches developed simulaneously? What are the odds on that? and even if that were the case, is this pouchless marsupial the most recent relative of the wombat? clearly we can't tell the direction of a pouch by a fossil but we can ascertain whether it had a pouch or not? So did the distant cousin of the wombat dig first, or after, the pouch was rotated?

Indentured servitude is considered to be slavery, and is explicitly banned by several international treaties. Slavery is slavery, regardless of what euphanism you use. Call 'em slaves, indentured servants, or gigglewots - at the end of the day they are individuals forced to work, and are deprived of their freedoms.

And yet again, this assumption of yours doesn't even hold upto the most basic scrutiny. Throughout roman rule (i.e. Jesus's time), slavery was extremely common - people could be sold into slavery, individuals captured in war became slaves, and so forth. Slavery remained common long after Jesus's death - it existed throughout medieval Europe and the medieval middle east, right through until the beginnings of industrialization.

What has that got to do with Jesus not endorsing it as you claimed?

Far from. The law doesn't prevent us from leaving our work. If we leave, we are not forced to return. We are not deprived of our basic rights when we work (in fact, a multitude of laws protect our rights in the workplace). We even have the option of not working, although a life in mom&pop's basement, or on the street, doesn't appeal to many...

The ramifications for dropping out of the workforce, by nature, FORCE us to go to work to receive food, clothing, shelter. However, I knew you'd cling to the letter of the law on this. Yes its not slavery, but metaphorically speaking, it can be.

 

[deco_martini]

What I know of Jesus is based on the bible. If in fact the Bible is full of mistakes, then the Jesus I know is a lie.

So by that logic, is a car a lemon if if has one repair issue? I'm curious about this "scorched earth" Christianity you believe in where if any part turns out to be in err the entire thing is wrong.

 

[gary-ramey]

"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favorwhen their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free."

So where's the endorsement? Christ acknowledged it existed and spoke to Christian Slaves on how they should act. That is far from an endorsement.

This old egg again, you'd think creationists would have learned by now. Firstly, from a genetic standpoint, races do not exist. There is simply too much gene flow for that. It is not possible to determine a persons race on the basis of the DNA - period.

Secondly, there is no quantifiable differences in intelligence, strength, disease resistance, etc among the human "races"; no real inequities, aside from the ones which arose from human ignorance and superstition.

As for Hitlers eugenics plan, that represents a prime example of ignorance of evolution. He may have cloaked his idea in the name of evolution, but 70 year earlier, in Darwins time, it was already understood that variation, not "perfection", is what creates a strong species.

On your first point...clearly there are adaptations in humans which give them advantages in their respective environments. Are you denying those exist? If I isolate the gene for blond hair I can't determine that they're caucasion? I think forensics would disagree with you.

Secondly - This just doesn't pass the common sense smell factor. While I agree that in mixed cultures these lines are certainly blurred one only needs to see some isolated tribes in South America and Africa to know this is false.

Brontosaurus was corrected. Questions were actually raised about it two years before the initial results were ever released by Elmer Riggs, 1903 edition of Geological Series of the Field Columbian Museum. And that was in a period of time where science was preformed by a small number of people from the "elite" part of society.

Which just goes to show why science is to be trusted over faith - it has a self-correcting nature. Today, with millions of people involved in research (as compared to a few thousand in the brontosaurus days) errors and lies don't last long. Your options are simple - own up (and look good), or let someone call you on it (and quite possible loose your job, funds, and life's work).

Just as an example of how well this works in the modern world, Hwang Woo-Suk's forgeries were identified a few months after they were published.

Which is why science used it as a lure to kids for 70 years in text books. Go sell your correction to anyone who will buy it. If the correction were authentic, it wouldn't have been written into 1970's high school science books.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ce4jesus
I see science today being agenda driven and you only need to look at the whole global warming debate as an example.

The only agenda there is at the political level; scientifically its quite sound. But that's another debate, which was (maybe still is) ongoing in another thread...

Yes ostracize anyone in the science community who disagrees with you. Very sound indeed.