Evolution or Creation

Now, for this Adam and Eve thing... I think that Adam and Eve is actually a referance to the first actual Human Beings, therefor they are the Human Race's beginning. Adam represents the male, the yin (or yang?), and eve the female and yang (or yin?).

 

One of the earliest topics.

 

My question: since when is evolution science? Lets look at how evolution "works": daddy monkey and mommy monkey get together and "know" each other (see--I read the Bible! ). A little baby monkey is born over a certain span of months. This monkey doesn't have leopard fangs or anything. It's a normal, up-in-the-trees monkey. How "Man" comes from this, I'll never know . .

Not quite. Let's say there's a race of shaggy, hunched-over apes. Apes born without the fur die, because they freeze to death. But over thousands of years, the climate warms up. Those who are deformed in that they don't have fur no longer die; they stay in the gene pool. At first there aren't many, but they, being different from the norm, aren't very sexy, and will mostly be mating with those who have the same problem. Give it a few hundred years, now you have hairless apes. These apes are now driven out by the shaggy ones, for their strangeness, and in their new habitat, the trees are taller, and there's not as much game. So they have to devise methods to get up the trees to the fruit. But then, one day, a baby ape is born with deformed hips and spine. He grows up, and though deformed, he's taller and straighter, can balance on only his hind legs. Now he can reach into the trees more easily than the others. Suddenly he's got great appeal. His genes will be carried on.

Now, that's a very basic, unscientific, and made-up version of basic evolution, but I didn't really want to write a textbook, so there it is. My point is that mommy ape and daddy ape don't one day randomly birth a human -- it's a series of little changes, mutations, that due to changing conditions in the surroundings, aren't flushed out of the genepool.

Like the appendix. It used to be a vital organ. Those born without it would die. Not it's standard practice to have it removed, even if there's no problem with it, if they're doing any surgery in that area. Now, due to modern medicine and hygiene, if people are born without it, they don't die. Eventually human beings will probably be completely appendix-less.

 

In my millitant atheist opinion, the creationism perspective is a joke, promoted by an evil and manipulative organisations (organized relgion in all forms) intent on maintaining it's control on the minds and attitudes of those gulllible enough to beleive their sinister propoganda.......


Seriously though there seems to be far more evidence that modern scientific theories are a closer explanation, as oppposed to these old (in human terms) religious based ideas.

 

Evolution: Lots of evidence
Creation: No evidence









What? You need more?

 

All right, first off, I want to say this: no matter how much you try, you're not going to convince the other person that your beliefs are the right ones. ;-)

Having said that. I am a Christian. Thus, because of my faith, I believe that God created the world, all the animals, etc.

However, I am also a scientist. Thus, I believe in evolution.

As I am also logical, it is very difficult to believe in both of these things in their separate forms.

Thus, I believe that God created the world and the animals, etc., and evolution took over from there. (If that makes any kind of sense.)

Side note 1: I also believe that the '6 days' in Genesis is figurative. Who knows how long it took?

Side note 2: I believe that the world is several billion years old. All the evidence that we have points to this as being the case.

Side note 3: As someone pointed out before, science is not set in stone. Science is ever-changing as we learn more about the world we live in.

Side note 4: Bithysith, excellent post! I love the examples you gave--very fascinating indeed.

Also, someone argued that Creationism is a moot point if you're not Christian. But...the belief in creation is not confined to Christianity.

 

Just as some of the other evolutionists here have said, there is no evidence for creation. There IS evidence for evolution.

 

Evolution: good
Creationism: bad

And I also believe in the big bang theory!

I actually did a speech about this topic in my speech class.

JediFarfy

 

the creationism perspective is a joke, promoted by an evil and manipulative organisations (organized relgion in all forms) intent on maintaining it's control on the minds and attitudes of those gulllible enough to beleive their sinister propoganda

Have you heard that joke with Perdue and the Pope?

 

Evolution. It is repeatable, and observable. Genetic bottle-necking is demonstrable and noticable in populations (human and animal).

There is a great book on the subject - it notes the implicit differences between creationism and evolution, noting the rigorous scientific basis upon which evolution is based, as well as the extremely tenuous basis of creationism. Abusing Science - it was one of the texts in my history and philosophy of science class (grad school).

 

MD, that book is old. It?s one of the textbooks I used in college?

You want to talk genetic bottlenecking? Isn?t one of the founding principles of creationism the fact that we should be able to trace human origins back to Adam and Eve? Geneticists are doing just that by measuring the mutation rate of the DNA in the Y-Chromosome and the DNA in mitochondria. Since we inherit our Y-Chromosome from our father and our mitochondria from our mother, scientists are able to gauge just when humans first appeared on the earth along with their migration patterns. What they?ve found is that the entire human race descended from a small population of men and women that migrated out of Africa. Interestingly though, geneticists have run into a snag when it comes to this dating method: Y-Chromosonal dating puts the human race at 37,000 years old while mitochondrial analysis puts it at around 50,000. At first glance, these findings suggest that women have been around a lot longer than men, which is impossible. However, this is explained via genetic bottleneck.

At some point in human history the population shrunk for some unknown reason. If you?re familiar with the Bible, then you?re also familiar with its account of Noah and the flood. At the end of this cataclysmic event, the Bible states that Noah, his sons, and their wives, were the only people left alive. Thus, since the only men that stepped off the ark were Noah and his sons, a genetic bottleneck occurs given that they all have the same Y-Chromosome. Conversely, the only women left were their wives, who were not blood related and thus would have genetically different mitochondrial DNA. In other words, a genetic bottleneck occurs in Noah?s Y-Chromosome (all men have inherited their Y-Chromosome from Noah) and a genetic bottleneck occurs in Eve?s mitochondria (everyone inherited their mitochondria from Eve).

 

Interesting. Where is the mitochondrial vs. Y-chromosomal study documented? I'd love to give it a look-see.

Yes, the Kitcher book is fairly old (1980s, for those who have not checked the link). Age, however, does not necessarily detract from analysis. There are distinct methodological advantages that evolution enjoys that creationism does not.

BTW- biblical accounts of population shrinkage and explosion are interesting, but not compelling. The Black Plague recently took out a third of Europe's population (from the perspective of the species life-span), which accounts for genetic bottle-necking as well. How was the record-keeping 37,000 - 50,000 years ago?

 

I'm a creationary evolutionist. Basically, I believe in a creator/god. But, following original creation,it let life go. I don't believe in miracles,faith-healing,pre-ordination, and televangelists. I'm basically a deist.

 

Funny how I was just reading in a Euro text book about how this religious fellow Ushers I believe the name was pronounced in the 18th century that the Earth was created in 4004 BC after a thorough research of the Bible. The text then went on to say that this idea was not even believed during his time period, yet there are still fundamentalists that believe it today!!

Just thought I'd throw that out there since it seems to fit into the themes of this discussion.

 

I think both go hand in hand. I am not a Chrsitian, but I believe in G-d, but not the Christian perception of G-d.

But I still maintain they both go hand in hand.
Second, the verse in Genesis is and is not vague. It is not vague because it never said the word "day" or "days".

The original word in the original language, mistranslated, is period of time. Once again, the bible gets a shoddy translation over time.

But again it is vague because a period of time can mean about any amount of time. Days, months, years, etc, etc.

So to those who say that they belive what the bible says in a literal sense, remember that much was lost when it got translated and translated and translated again. But in the original form, it did no specify "days".

 

I found an excellent site that discusses this, and other topics, like the evolution of the idea of Satan and the impossibility of Noah's Ark.


http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_proof.htm#species

Why almost all scientists believe in evolution:
It is impossible to prove that the theory of evolution is absolutely true. The theory maintains that plant evolution, animal evolution and the major geological changes to the earth unfolded over billions of years. Thus, the full theory cannot be demonstrated in the laboratory. Processes like mountain building and erosion are simply too slow to be observed during one person's lifetime. Elements of the theory (e.g. species evolution of fruit flies in the laboratory and of Tilapia fish in East African lakes) have been observed. But nobody was on hand to observe what the world and its life forms looked like hundreds of millions of years ago.

However, sufficient evidence exists in support of evolution to convince 99.85% of America's earth and life scientists that the theory is true. Evolution is the key unifying theory that unifies many different branches of science, from cosmology to biology.



Why almost all conservative Christians believe in creation science:
One of the most fundamental assumptions held by almost all conservative Christians is that the Bible was inspired by God and thus is without error, as originally written. Since the book of Genesis clearly describes that God created the universe, then it must be true. No other possibility exists.

The Answers-In-Genesis 1 web site explains this clearly in their statement of faith, Section D, sub-section vi: "By definition, no apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record." 2 Thus, if some observation, some fossil, some measurement, or some theory seems to supports the theory of evolution, then it is automatically false and is to be rejected. There is no possibility that any evidence will be accepted in the future that contradicts the Bible.

A second belief of conservative Christians is that, unless otherwise indicated, biblical passages should be interpreted literally. Thus, when the Genesis creation story or stories state that God created the world in six days, it is normally interpreted to mean six literal, 24 hour, days. Using various genealogies and intervals of time in the Bible, it can be concluded that the creation week happened sometime after 8000 BCE. The earth is young. That is, that God created the world, the various forms of life on the earth, and the rest of the universe less than ten thousand years ago. Since the universe was created recently, there could not possibly be enough time between creation and the present time to allow species to evolve by purely natural forces. That would take many hundreds of millions of years. Thus, conservative Christians believe that evolution due to naturalistic or spiritual forces over 4.5 billion years of earth's history could not have happened.



Can evolution be proven to be wrong?
Evolution is fragile, like all other scientific theories. A single finding could prove that at least part of the theory is false. For example, the discovery of an unmistakable fossil imprint of a human foot inside a dinosaur footprint would show that dinosaurs lived on earth when people were alive. Quite a few footprints of this type have been claimed to have been found. However most have been shown to be pious forgeries created by some very enthusiastic and devout believers. The rest are heavily eroded footprints of non-humans. A single observation which proves beyond doubt that the earth has been in existence for less than, say, 1 billion years would greatly weaken the arguments in favor of evolution. There simply would not have been sufficient time for all of the natural geological and biological processes to produce the complexities of the present world.

The theory of evolution has always been

 

What evidence is there that life arose from non-living matter? What made the original matter in the Big Bang, if there was one?

 

Hmm nobody's answered that.

 

The first question actually peaked my curiosity, as I had written an undergraduate paper on this topic for a Genetics class. There were two articles that describe the chemical processes by which certain chemical attributes are aligned to the right, rather than the left (bear in mind, what I am writing is from memory from my sophomore year (1995-1996)), and that this right-alignment is what allowed individually non-responsive ("dead") chemicals to bond with other non-responsive chemicals to create the most primitive form of life. Or left-alignment. Advanced biochemistry was never really my forte, and I haven't had much occasion to think about the articles since 1996.

I'll have to check my library for the paper (it should be in there). When I find the specific citation, I'll post it here.

EDIT-

I may have to start pulling up old papers on disk, as the materials from my Genetics class are not within immediate reach. So, to answer the first question (partially), there are articles describing the chemical necessity for binding in a certain way, which explains how non-life can give rise to life. Check your local library and run a periodical search. The articles I found were from the late 80s-early 90s, as I recall.

Concerning your second question, I studied this topic in an undergraduate class called Science and Values, which traced the evolution of ethical theory from a scientific perspective. We examined the eras of the early universe (hadron era, lepton era, galactic and stellar coalescence, early life (archaebacteria, prokaryotes, eukaryotes), complex life, early society (and advent of first social norms), and complex society.

Concerning the physics and the "something from nothing" question, the book covering that was The Self-Organizing Universe by Erich Jantsche (pronounced /yungst/). It's out of print, but it's a fascinating read. A little tricky at times (each chapter usually took me 2-3 readings), but interesting proposals.

 

Do a search on the web for "RNA" and "abiogenesis" and search this website:

Talk.Origins

If you're really interested in learning.

 

up sorry

 

What about the Third law of Thermodynamics? Doesn't that say that Evolution isn't possible? It essentially says that everything is getting worse.

Yes, but the sun is getting more and more disorderly, moreso than the earth is becoming orderly. The energy let out by the sun becoming disorderly allows us to become more orderly. But eventually this will fail, as everything is steadily getting worse.

Then how did Stars first form? Wasn't everything Hydrogen and Helium gas? How did they compress? Was there a black hole produced by the Big Bang? And how did they form heavier elements? You have a ton of gas equally spread out. How will it bond?

I have not the answers, as I am not versed extremely well in stellar evolution.

 

OZK, you're misunderstanding the laws of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics is the infamous "you can't break even" law which states that the entropy of the universe is increasing. But that statement refers only to the entire universe, not to a smaller system such as the sun and the earth. A small system enclosed within the universe is not subject to that law. For example, if I gave you a box with a bunch of mixed coins in it, couldn't you manually sort out the coins by value and decrease entropy in the box? The small system can either become more orderly or more disorderly. If it becomes more orderly, that implies that somewhere else in the universe, something has become less orderly, so the universe as a whole obeys the laws of thermodynamics. But the second law isn't applicable to the earth and the sun.

Edit: To answer your question, light elements (atomic weight less than that of iron) are produced by fusion in stars. Heavy elements (iron and up) are produced in supernovae.

I still don't understand how this relates to evolution, though?

 

I love it when people don't understand the science they are attempting to refute.

So far, in all my posts here on the Senate Floor, covering topics from religion to, well... religion... I have not once seen a Christian fundamentalist who can quote even one passage from another religious scripture... much less know the magnitude of religious scriptures that exist outside the Bible.

Likewise, in all the scientific arguments that I've presented supporting evolution... some of which have already been mentioned in this thread... I have seen three things occur with phenomenal consistency:

1. Creationists support creation theory only by refuting evolution, not by proving creation. This deductive, rather than inductive, approach might work on figuring out what polarity a dipolar transistor switch is in... because it only has two states...on and off. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't fly when applied to the explaining something as complex as the vast spectrum of life (except maybe in the imaginary world of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny). In other words, without challenging evolution theory, Creation theory has no legs of its own upon which it can stand.

2. Creationists clearly present no scientific evidence with which to combat science. However, there is much scientific, theological, anthropological, archaeological and other evidence to refute Creation theory's exclusivity over any other scientific or religious concept of life.

3. Numerous JC'er creationists who vehemently oppose evolution have clearly demonstrated they bear little or no theological or scientific knowledge nor a proper understanding of either upon which they can combat evolution theory with any credibility whatsoever.

For those reasons, I won't even go into debating the actual point or presenting the evidence... because it's futile. Creationists will continue to believe what they want, which is fine by me. You could never prove Creation in a court of law or in a scientific study because correlation does not imply causation... Just because "B" doesn't have evidence, in your opinion, doesn't make "A" true.

Evolution theory has demonstrated clearly that those who can't adapt to their ever-changing world will not thrive for long.

 

And History has demonstrated cleary that whenever a nation begins to get too prideful (i.e., thinking they have all the answers, and those answers contradict God) that nation falls.



God's Word will "thrive" forever, as will those who follow It.