The Evolution Conflict

StrangeQuark said:
If you define evolution as "the process of creation," as I do, then why must there be any contradiction between evolution and the Biblical account of creation?
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You are right, there is no true contradiction. Those early spiritual writers wrote their mythical account from the best of their intuition. So it may make some sense if you see it as a symbolic representation of what "really" happened. Similar representations can be found in the Hindu scriptures.

The problems arise when certain people take the views of scientific thought as being at odds with what "God tells us through His holy word". They then feel they have to chose one or the other and chose to reject the results of science. In Europe such people are a tiny minority but I believe in the US in some schools the whole idea of evolution has been declared a taboo, which strikes me as a sad thing in this day and age.
 
Andreas said:
You are right, there is no true contradiction. Those early spiritual writers wrote their mythical account from the best of their intuition. So it may make some sense if you see it as a symbolic representation of what "really" happened. Similar representations can be found in the Hindu scriptures.

The problems arise when certain people take the views of scientific thought as being at odds with what "God tells us through His holy word". They then feel they have to chose one or the other and chose to reject the results of science. In Europe such people are a tiny minority but I believe in the US in some schools the whole idea of evolution has been declared a taboo, which strikes me as a sad thing in this day and age.
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In schools I don't know, but there is a tendency to literally fight anything that doesn't fit with traditional concepts. Some people want to ban Holloween, for instance, because it is a "pagan" sabbat. It's completely unconstitutional if nothing else, but they still want to do it.

I have some friends who are either Catholic or Protestant who accept the evidence of evolutionary processes and little more. However, there are many that vehemently quote line after line of the Bible as "proof," not only that evolution is wrong but also that practictioners of any other belief are going to hell.

Here's another little tidbit:

Are you familiar with Pat Robertson? Of course, I have nothing against fundamentalist Christianity per say, yet sometimes I can't help but wonder about some of its followers' behavior. I have on occassion watched the 700 Club (I like to hear everyone's side of the story, even if I don't agree). After the war started, there was a guest on the show who was a converted Muslim. Together, he and Pat Robertson proceeded to rant about how the Qu'ran says something about "kill anyone who has a different religion."

I haven't read the Qu'ran, so I'm not sure of the accuracy of their claims. Yet, even if it's true, I couldn't help thinking "What of it?" The Bible says the same thing, in Exodus: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." And that's not the only point it makes either!

I understand that there have been numerous translations of the Bible. The problem is that people like Pat Robertson apparently do not. All they see is "the True and Revealed Word of God."
 
Kindest Regards, StrangeQuark!
StrangeQuark said:
In schools I don't know, but there is a tendency to literally fight anything that doesn't fit with traditional concepts. Some people want to ban Holloween, for instance, because it is a "pagan" sabbat. It's completely unconstitutional if nothing else, but they still want to do it.

I haven't read the Qu'ran, so I'm not sure of the accuracy of their claims. Yet, even if it's true, I couldn't help thinking "What of it?" The Bible says the same thing, in Exodus: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." And that's not the only point it makes either!

I understand that there have been numerous translations of the Bible. The problem is that people like Pat Robertson apparently do not. All they see is "the True and Revealed Word of God."
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I think I understand what you are saying, and I hear it an awful lot. The problem I see, is how pagan Christianity is in practice, and how Christian paganism is in practice. Just a thought, from my perspective.
 
Kindest Regards, StrangeQuark!

Of course!

Since this is headed off topic, might I suggest taking this aspect to a separate thread if we desire to continue so we do not derail this one?

In the strictest sense, evolution is the morphology of life forms. In a more liberal sense it can include the morphology of society and culture, which includes history. I suspect where these comments were heading deals in the more liberal sense. :D
 
Thank you, juantoo3. Very sensible idea about the new thread--no problem!

My sincerest apologizes to all for leading the topic so far astray.
 
the thread is so long so I am just going off the last page here. yes I agree the majority of Christianity and most all religions -including the new ones- are in steep pagan myth without realizing it.

There is also the 'missing link (s)' in the evolution theory.
That is all I can say.:)
 
Mohsin said:
Evolution is nothing more then a theory and is totally unaccepted by the Quran.
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For over 20 years 2 British scientists studied Finches on an island in the Galapagos starting 1975.

Following a volcano only 1 species existed on the island.

Due to a chance biological mutation a chick was born with a larger stronger beak. It did well as it was able to crack seeds the existing population couldnt. Its offspring had the same beak. This new species persisted and flourished alongside the other group.

A while later another 'mutant' was born. It had a longer beak which suited other plant food sources. That also lead to the establishment of a new colony alongside the others.

That is evolution and survival of the fittest in action.

Afterall, there are over 20000 species of Longhorn beetle in the UK and there are many other types of Beetle besides the Longhorn and Beetles are only one type of insect. Why would any God go to such trouble? Surely one type of Longhorn Beetle would have been fine?
 
Wow. This is a post so long that I just haven't the time or patience to read all of it. My contribution will simply be that in my experience most people who don't "believe" in evolution, or see a problem with evolution and creationism being held as compatible beliefs, 1. don't know what a theory is 2. don't know a lot about how science works and generates theories, and why creationism can't be a theory 3. don't know much about genetics, population genetics, and evolution itself and 4. have never read Darwin, and so they think he's against God and/or an atheist when he was actually a believer. Once you become educated in those four, the evolution/creationism argument generally becomes rather moot.

Finally, I just can't see how it matters. Unless you're a population biologist, or a person working on new antibiotics, or a paleontologist... it's kind of irrelevant. Interesting, but irrelevant. It is odd to me how much energy and time and money is wasted by Christian churches to fight against evolutionary theory when there's a lot more important and immediately relevant things to work on- like taking care of the poor (which was a big deal to Jesus). Imagine all that effort being put into educating people about the evils of materialism! Overall, the belief in the mechanism of how all these species came to be (not the cause of it all- evolutionary theory is about mechanism, not causal factors) seems like a minor point that for some reason has become this huge debate in the U.S. Very strange.
 
Throughout most of the last century, researchers developing the synthetic theory of evolution primarily focused on microevolution, which is slight genetic change over a few generations in a population. Until the 1970's, it was generally thought that these changes from generation to generation indicated that past species evolved gradually into other species over millions of years. This model of long term gradual change is usually referred to as gradualism or phyletic gradualism. It is essentially the 19th century Darwinian idea that species evolve slowly at a more or less steady rate. A natural consequence of this sort of macroevolution.

Random mutations provide variations that help a species survive. Muntations in regulator genes in particular can provide radically new variations in the organization of the body and its important structures. As a consequence changes in these genes can result in a greater likelihood that at least some individuals will have variations that will allow them to survive during times of extinction level events. In this situation, subsequent generations would be significantly changed from the generations before the period of severe natural selection. In other words, regulator genes probably play an important part in the rapid change phases of punctuated evolution.

THUNK I believe what you are speaking of is microevolution. A species changing to adapt in order to survive.
 
Actually Faithful is correct. Not one "new" species of animal, plant or microbe has developed (that can be proven) in the past 10,000 years. Only modifications to existing species to help survive, while maintaining their base origins. However, 100s of thousand of species of life have gone extinct during that same time. The Galopagos finches are still finches, just like humans are still human, even though some are bigger, faster and live longer than before, which can be attributed to better health and diet behaviors.


v/r

Q
 
But, Q, "finch" is a folk category, not a species designation. There are many species of finches. Species, by definition, don't interbreed and produce viable offspring. So, any population of finches that no longer breeds with the parent population is, by definition, a new species. "Human" is both a folk category and a species, only because there is only one living species of human, H. sapiens sapiens. However, something like "pine tree," is only a folk category that corresponds roughly to a genus, not a species. People are awful at making specific and varietal distinctions if they aren't trained to do so (see Brent Berlin's famous "Ethnobiological Classification"), but it doesn't mean those species distinctions don't exist.

10,000 years is not enough time to see new genera, but I have no doubt there have since been new species; we've only really been catalogueing this stuff for the last couple hundred years. The end of the Ice Age saw the rise of at least thousands of new species as the rain forests of the Americas rose. We are currently in the middle of a major extinction event, caused primarily by humans, so we'll have to see in another long bit what comes of it. So far, though, we are getting rid of natural habitats faster than their inherent species can cope with. And sometimes we're just downright exterminating species, like the buffalo wolves and passenger pidgeons.
 
Thats if you believe that the earth is older than 10,000 years.. There is substantial evidence proving that you cannot get an accurate cardon date for many different reasons..which can only read in the "thousands of years" catergory the same goes for radiometric dating which is supposed to age things in the millions and billions of years.. there are too many occurances of getting "bad dates" for it to be a reliable resource for dating fossils. Something as old as a billion years gets a c-14 reading when it should not be possible for there to be a carbon reading.

All of these following things I have read about in different places and I was looking around I found them all listed in one place discussing radiometric dating.. so here it is. There are many more but I think these are the most easily understood.
Many physical evidence contradict the ‘billions of years’

Of the methods that have been used to estimate the age of the earth, 90 percent point to an age far less than the billions of years asserted by evolutionists. A few of them follow.

  • Evidence for a rapid formation of geological strata, as in the biblical flood. Some of the evidence are: lack of erosion between rock layers supposedly separated in age by many millions of years; lack of disturbance of rock strata by biological activity (worms, roots, etc.); lack of soil layers; polystrate fossils (which traverse several rock layers vertically—these could not have stood vertically for eons of time while they slowly got buried); thick layers of ‘rock’ bent without fracturing, indicating that the rock was all soft when bent; and more. For more, see books by geologists Morris and Austin.
  • Red blood cells and hemoglobin have been found in some (unfossilized!) dinosaur bone. But these could not last more than a few thousand years—certainly not the 65 Ma since the last dinosaurs lived, according to evolutionists.
  • The earth’s magnetic field has been decaying so fast that it looks like it is less than 10,000 years old. Rapid reversals during the flood year and fluctuations shortly after would have caused the field energy to drop even faster.
  • Radioactive decay releases helium into the atmosphere, but not much is escaping. The total amount in the atmosphere is 1/2000th of that expected if the universe is really billions of years old. This helium originally escaped from rocks. This happens quite fast, yet so much helium is still in some rocks that it has not had time to escape—certainly not billions of years.
  • A supernova is an explosion of a massive star—the explosion is so bright that it briefly outshines the rest of the galaxy. The supernova remnants (SNRs) should keep expanding for hundreds of thousands of years, according to physical equations. Yet there are no very old, widely expanded (Stage 3) SNRs, and few moderately old (Stage 1) ones in our galaxy, the Milky Way, or in its satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds. This is just what we would expect for ‘young’ galaxies that have not existed long enough for wide expansion.
  • The moon is slowly receding from the earth at about 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) per year, and this rate would have been greater in the past. But even if the moon had started receding from being in contact with the earth, it would have taken only 1.37 billion years to reach its present distance from the earth. This gives a maximum age of the moon, not the actual age. This is far too young for evolutionists who claim the moon is 4.6 billion years old. It is also much younger than the radiometric ‘dates’ assigned to moon rocks.
  • Salt is entering the sea much faster than it is escaping. The sea is not nearly salty enough for this to have been happening for billions of years. Even granting generous assumptions to evolutionists, the sea could not be more than 62 Ma years old—far younger than the billions of years believed by the evolutionists. Again, this indicates a maximum age, not the actual age.
Ma = Maximum age btw
 
Kindest Regards, path of one!

Thank you for your participation in this!
path_of_one said:
But, Q, "finch" is a folk category, not a species designation. There are many species of finches. Species, by definition, don't interbreed and produce viable offspring. So, any population of finches that no longer breeds with the parent population is, by definition, a new species. "Human" is both a folk category and a species, only because there is only one living species of human, H. sapiens sapiens. However, something like "pine tree," is only a folk category that corresponds roughly to a genus, not a species. People are awful at making specific and varietal distinctions if they aren't trained to do so (see Brent Berlin's famous "Ethnobiological Classification"), but it doesn't mean those species distinctions don't exist.

10,000 years is not enough time to see new genera, but I have no doubt there have since been new species; we've only really been catalogueing this stuff for the last couple hundred years. The end of the Ice Age saw the rise of at least thousands of new species as the rain forests of the Americas rose. We are currently in the middle of a major extinction event, caused primarily by humans, so we'll have to see in another long bit what comes of it. So far, though, we are getting rid of natural habitats faster than their inherent species can cope with. And sometimes we're just downright exterminating species, like the buffalo wolves and passenger pidgeons.
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Since I was already involved in a very lengthy discussion of this, I will simply direct the interested reader to around pages 6-8 of this thread (@ 15 posts per page, should be around post #90 - #120). That should narrow the reading down somewhat.
 
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Kindest Regards, Faithful Servant!

Thank you for your addition to this discussion!
There is substantial evidence proving that you cannot get an accurate cardon date for many different reasons..which can only read in the "thousands of years" catergory the same goes for radiometric dating which is supposed to age things in the millions and billions of years.. there are too many occurances of getting "bad dates" for it to be a reliable resource for dating fossils. Something as old as a billion years gets a c-14 reading when it should not be possible for there to be a carbon reading.
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We also covered a lot of this, I believe in the pages immediately following the ones I just listed. There is also some info, if I remember correctly, about page 11 or 12. Carbon dating is not used on fossils.

For everyone, I realize this is a long thread, but I assure it is well worth the time to read. I learned a great deal. Some of my questions were answered, some not. Some of the answers raised other questions. In the end I realized that it is all an educated guess. If it is stated as an educated guess, I don't really have any problem with it. It is when someone who doesn't really know claims it as fact and insists it as such and tries to use it as "proof" to devalue my God, my Bible and my faith that I get a bit defensive. I tried very hard to be logical and original in my presentation. This is one area I find of great interest. Perhaps evolution is how God does things, I don't know for sure, but the evolution that is preached to the common folk is rife with discrepencies, and too many people come across with it as a religious dogma of sorts.

Anyway, I hope I haven't derailed anything. Enjoy the discusson everybody! :D
 
Kindest Regards, again, path of one!

But, Q, "finch" is a folk category, not a species designation. There are many species of finches. Species, by definition, don't interbreed and produce viable offspring.
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I cannot speak to the specific finches in question, but I did find enough conflicting examples of species interbreeding, successfully and with viable offspring, that I seriously question the distinction. :D It is covered in the material I referenced.

The end of the Ice Age saw the rise of at least thousands of new species as the rain forests of the Americas rose.
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In the material I have been covering pertaining to primitive human migration into America, it seems most scholars suggest these animals, or at least most of them, migrated here. The humans were simply following the herds, their source of food. I can see these creatures adapting to their new environs, but a mammoth here is closely related to a mammoth in Siberia. Likewise sloth, saber-toothed tigers (lions?) and other creatures that seem peculiar to the Americas. Even Llamas are related to camels. And often, very often, related species can and do interbreed.

"Human" is both a folk category and a species, only because there is only one living species of human, H. sapiens sapiens.
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I have even heard the suggestion that humans may be able to interbreed with bonobos and/or other great apes. Of course, it was also pointed out that conducting such tests would be unethical. However, there is a well known and documented find of a Neandertal-Cro Magnon hybrid child that I referenced in this thread, and it has been extensively peer-reviewed. So even humans are not immune to this.
 
With regard to inter-species mating, it's more than just a matter of whether the male-female, ahem, plumbing functions between two different species. The alignment of the chromosomes is quite important because without sufficient homology (similarity in DNA sequence) from the two parents, the fertilized egg can't get through correct mitosis (required for cell division), which is needed for all further growth. There can be immunological rejections between sperm and egg from different species as well. I really am going from memory on this and don't know the amount of similarity required, but I know it is rather high. The definition of species given by Path Of One is the one I know too, although it strikes me also as rather a somewhat fuzzy thing. But, population bio is not my field. I would wager that DNA sequencing and mapping is putting new criteria to the definition, as it is to the relationships between different species and different genera. (I always found classification a bore :) ).

lunamoth
 
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