Posted by Xavier on October 28, 1998 at 10:37:43:
In Reply to: Explanations posted by John on October 27, 1998 at 21:43:13:
: : Which literal account of Genesis do you accept? The order of creation as described in the first story of Genesis or the creation described in the 2nd one? For example; According to GE1:3-5, On the first day, God created light, then separated light and darkness.
: : GE 1:14-19 says that the sun (which separates night and day) wasn't created until the fourth day. According to GE 1:11-12, 26-27, trees were created before man was created. But in GE 2:4-9, man was created before trees were created. In GE 1:20-21, 26-27 Birds were created before man was created.
: : But in GE 2:7, 19, man was created before birds were created. Also, in GE 1:24-27 Animals were created before man was created. But again, in GE 2:7, 19, man was created before animals were created. As far as Adam and Eve, in GE 1:26-27, man and woman were created at the same time. However, in GE 2:7, 21-22, man was created first, woman sometime later.
: : Archaeopteryx lithographica (the fossil you eluded to) is indeed a transitional form. It has been classified as a bird almost arbitrarily because it has feathers, not because it is "truly" a bird. The avian features Archaeopteryx possess are, 1) a wishbone, 2) feathers, and 3) a bony sternum in one of the latest specimans. Archaeopteryx has many more reptilian characteristics, such as, 1) a pubic peduncle, 2) a long, bony tail, 3) no pygostyle, 4) three well-developed fingers (with the same number of bones as in most dinosaurs), 5) three well-developed metacarpal bones,
: : 6) unfused metacarpal bones, 7) separate metatarsal bones, 8) no hypotarsus, 9) abdominal ribs
: : Archaeopteryx has many more reptilian characteristics than the modern birds that many like to link it to. Even Fred Hoyle, who erroneously claimed that Archaeopteryx was a forgery, claimed that it was a reptilian fossil with fake feather impressions. Archaeopteryx is not a transitional form merely because of its remarkable blend of reptilian and avian characteristics - Archaeopteryx also existed at the same time as the theropod reptiles and resembled them very highly. Given its temporal and physical correlations to reptiles, plus its less numerous - yet distinct - avian qualities, Archaeopteryx lithographica
: : stands immune to any creationist attack. What is the evidence that you have seen that would lead you to believe that this fossil could not be millions of years old? You make that claim but fail to provide support.
: : You are correct in stating that hundreds of years ago, humans had incorrect views of the world, such as believing in a flat earth, etc. Fortunately, man's quest for the truth about his world lead him to discover that the earth was a sphere, the earth orbited the sun, the earth was not the center of the universe, etc. The beauty of scientific thought is that it has the ability to refine and correct itself when presented with new data. Keep in mind though, that scientific ideas and theories are neither accepted or rejected on a whim. They encounter rigorous scrutiny before acceptance. And in order to reject
: : or modify them, a similar preponderance of evidence must be presented to the scientific community at large, and also given careful scrutiny. Literal Creation will be accepted when, and if, a significant amount of physical evidence, observations, experimentation, etc., is presented to the scientific community and tested for its validity. Scientists don't necessarily have a stake in protecting one over the other. They are only concerned with evidential support for the mechanisms of the universe. The main reasons that I do not believe in the Great Flood are that it is physically implausible based on accepted
: : laws of science, and all the credible geological, anthropological, and historical evidence gathered denies it. My disbelief has little to do with a simple rejection of your Bible. It has to do with the fact that all science known today rejects it.
: : While it may be true that Darwin had to use some speculation in order to explain the evidences he gathered, modern science has advanced light years since he wrote his book (by the way, the idea of evolution preceded Darwin; he mainly tried to describe one possible mechanism for it).
: : As to the answers to your questions concerning early life forms and their evolution of reproduction, you need to study biology more. I'm sorry to say that I have no easy answer for you on those, as they would take up much of this board.
: : If all you have is your faith that the Bible is inerrant and some, if not most, was meant literally, then there is not much that I could say to convince you otherwise. It is obvious to me based on the fact that there are many diverse Biblical beliefs among a myriad of different Christian denominations, that your Bible was written in a very ambiguous manner, and is open to many individual interpretations. I would venture to guess that your individual interpretation and the belief that your interpretation is without error, are based on faith alone. But then again, that is the very nature of religion.
: : Physical evidential support and reason need not be a part of it. The main difference between you and I is that although I agree that both are essential to society in some fashion, I believe that religion is religion and science is science. I make no attempt to either try and reconcile them, combine them in some form, or confuse one for the other. One is based on the rigorous study of physical laws and evidence and the other is based almost solely on faith.
: Based on your past responses,I feel compelled to clarify a few misconceptions that I think you have about me and my views on creation and evolution. First of all, I do not at all have a problem with scientific method. I was an aspiring scientist as a youth but circumstances in life sent me down another road. I do not think that people deliberately made up things that refute what the bible says just on a whim or just because they were trying to deceive others. I believe that in an effort to elude ultimate accountability they looked and looked until they found something to provide them that zone of comfort. To say that all life happened by chance is to say that God didn't create it, and if God didn't create it then He doesn't exist, and if He doesn't exist then we are ultimately accountable to absolutely no one. I bought The Origin of Species this past week and although I've only gotten through 2 chapters I can already tell that my concept of evolution is in line with what Darwin was trying to convey and I still stand on what I have said in the past, that living things do in fact change to adapt to their environment but they do not change from one species to another, gradually or suddenly. There is no proof of that. Darwin himself posed questions in the book that he knew he would eventually face, such as why do we not see the transitional species in the world today. That's a good question, however his answer is based on his theory, not fact. He starts the book by referring to how one plant will vary depending on whether it is domesticated or not (different environments) and he uses wheat as an example. He says that wheat has been cultivated for thousands of years and we still get different varieties even today. My viewpoint on that is that after thousands of years of changing, you still have wheat. On the other hand, time is the evolutionists cure-all. If it doesn't happen in thousands of years then the only logical conclusion is that it must happen in millions of years, and if it doesn't happen in millions of years then it must happen in billions of years. You mentioned Drosophila in a previous response. I experimented with them in high school. We exposed them to a variety of different outside influences and crossed groups of anomalous flies with others and the amazing thing was that besides all the white eyes and all the shriveled wings we still had a bunch of fruit flies. And if we let the mutated ones continue to breed we came up with normal fruit flies again. Of course these were experiments in genetics at a rather rudimentary level but you don't always have to expend enormous amounts of time and money to arrive at a simple truth. Truth is most often staring someone right in the face but if it's a truth that is not well received then that person will just look for something else that sounds logical. Let me ask you a question. Do you think that if a world wide flood of biblical proportions were actually considered fact instead of fiction, that it would have an impact on widely accepted scientific methods. For example, if every living thing were killed, save those on the ark, would it not drastically affect the amount of c14 in the atmosphere so that dates obtained by that method were actually incorrect? Wouldn't the stratagraphic data be completely skewed? Bear in mind that the words used in the bible (Tetragrammaton) to describe the violence involved in the flooding of the earth describe the absolute worst of catastrophes. The bible says that the fountains of the deep burst forth and the floodgates of heaven were opened up and the rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights(Gen. 7:11). Notice that the water did not only come from above but from below also. In Genesis 1:9 God said to let the waters be gathered into one place and let dry land appear. Because the water was gathered into one place that should leave one land mass, right? Pangea was the land mass and that's where man lived there were hills and mountains but Mt. Everest was not in existence back then. When the land was split apart it happened in a hurry. Water came from above, below, and the oceans rushed in from the sides. The trilobites and other bottom dwelling creatures were wiped out from the mud and sediment that covered them quickly. Faster moving creatures would have been together and on higher ground (higher at that time). Of course slower animals would be lower in the strata because they were covered up first. This is only a part of what can be explained by using the bible as the foundation. The canopt theory that you told me about is either wrong or outdated because the canopy was not a vapor but a jacket of ice. And it was 11 1/2 miles above the earth's surface. It was held in place by the same effect that causes a magnet to levitate over supercooled superconduvtive material. I have the exact explanation at my home. I'll send it to you when I remember to bring it in.
: To answer your questions on those supposed contradictions, the first thing you need to realize is that I believe in a soverign God. He doesn't need the sun to have light. I understand that being a scientist you believe that there are laws which govern all nature. The laws had to have started sometime and somewhere, but what about before that? Rev. 21:23 says that in heaven, the city needs no sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light. This was the light in Genesis 1. Trees were in fact created before man was created. If your notice the trees and shrubs referred to are "of the field." It also says that there was no man to work the ground. God was not going to make a man work the ground on the entire planet so he could create plants to put there. The shrubs and trees referred to are crops. In verse 7 He FORMED the man out of the dust of the earth... In verse 19 he HAD FORMED out of the ground the beasts of the field and the birds of the air... The chapter is not that long and if you read it I'm sure that when the scriptures are read in context your eyes will be opened and you will know that that book you have was written just so someone could make a buck and the author is probably counting on the fact that anyone who would buy it would have no reason to go back and REALLY check it out for themselves. The last thing you asked about was whether or not Adam and Eve were created at the same time. Once again all you have to do is read the passage. Gen. 1:26 says God created man in His own image to rule over all the creatures. Verse 27 says ...in the image of God HE CREATED HIM (referring to man), male and female HE CREATED THEM (referring to the animals).
: In closing I want to make sure that you understand exactly where I stand because you seem to think that I think all science is a farce and is staight out of hell. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's just that it seems to me that once a scientific conclusion is reached it is not changed unless the truth of the matter stands up and slaps the scientific community in the face. I'll be willing to bet that if we had never actually walked on the moon all the classroom history books would say that the monn was covered with a layer of dust from 50 - 900 feet deep. It actually took us walking on the moon to prove that scientific "fact" wrong. On the other hand it's because of science that we got there in the first place. If you have looked into creationism and have found it lacking it's either because you looked in the wrong places or because the very presence of biblical overtones turned you off. Please consider my question of the effects of a catastrophic flood on the condition of the earth in your next response. Lastly I want to say that I'm not sure how to take your previous remark about our discussions being entertaining to you. Could you also tell me what you mean by that?
The reason why I said our message traffic had been entertaining is that I have had enough conversations with "true believers" to realize that there is NO amount of discussion, facts, theories, evidences, experiments, etc., that they will entertain if it calls their religious beliefs into question. It has also been my experience that those "true believers" have arrived at their conclusions first (vs. how science approaches the truth) and then search out any and all misinformation, twisted logic, out of context quotes, etc., to support their foregone conclusion. Your viewpoint that science and scientists put forth a goal of doing anything necessary to disprove God so we have no one to answer to is rather comical to me. I know of no scientist or research that is being conducted for that purpose. Theories are only put forth and sustained when their has been an OVERWHELMING amont of scrutinized evidence to support it. It is for this reason that an enormous amount of heavily scrutinized evidence is put forth contrary to the theory before it is modified. Science is ultimately self-correcting, although it may not change as rapidly as you would like. It is also falsifiable, as we have seen in history. Simply because our views of the nature of the universe have changed does not indicate that science is inherently flawed in its search for the truth; rather it shows that it is science and not dogma. The reason that the idea that evolution occurred is fact is based on the overwhelming support of it. So far there is no reliable scientific evidence available that refutes it. The details of the specific mechanisms that were at work in evolution are still somewhat debated though. That is why the entire credible scientific community worldwide considers evoultion as both fact AND theory. There is NO arguements in the professional scientific community at large over the FACT of evoultion, contrary to what your Creationists tell you. There may be many scientist that have not even read the Bible so have little information as to what you claim they feel they must refute. There are also many who are of various religions, who are able to seperate religion from science and continue to do their job. In fact, there are many Christians worldwide, specifically Roman Catholics and mainstream Protestants, who believe in God and his power but also believe that God used the laws of nature and evolution to mold the universe over billions of years. I'm sure though, in your mind, you have come to your conclusion that these are not "true believers".
Science does not put forth the idea that the earth is billions of years old in order to support evolution; the age of the earth, dating techniques of rocks, fossils, etc. were examined seperately. There have been several dating techniques used and all seem to point to a very ancient earth and universe. The continental drift you elude to could not have happened in the 6,000 years that Creationists accept as the Earth's age without global catastrophy that would have destroyed all life. As far as the Ark, the Bible states that Noah had two of each animal, and other passages state that he had seven of each (clean animals). Many believers also believe that there were no carnivores preflood and that dinosaurs were on the Ark. First, zoology shows us that a species CANNOT survive when the population contains 20 or less in a population (includes humans). Also, how did the saltwater fish survive? That much rain would so change the slinity of the waters, that all would die. With that much water (as I mathematically showed in one of my responses), where did it all go? Why does the fossil evidence, archeological evidence, geological evidence, etc., all dispute a flood of this magnitude? Also, if all animals were vegetarians, why do we not find fossil evidence of past carnivores showing a different physiology and teeth structure to support a vegetarian diet? If the tiger, lion, T-Rex, wolf, etc., were once vegetarians, they must have once had the digestive system and teeth structure necessary to consume only vegetation. However, there has NEVER been any fossil evidence discovered that supports it. If dinosaurs lived with man, where did they go? Why have we NEVER found remnants of humans near dinosaur fossil evidence? Simply because they were seperated by MILLIONS of years. How can the Hubble telescope spot stars billions of light years away, if the universe is only 10,000 years old? There is absolutely NO CREDIBLE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE available that even remotely supports a young Earth and Universe and literal Creation. However, it is NOT and NEVER will be the goal of science to attempt to dispute God. It is impossible to dispute or prove wrong, religious dogma, simply because it is religion. Religion is based on faith and does not require evidence for its support, so evidence to the contrary can not shake a "true believer", because they have decided to ignore any and all information in dispute. I have no real quarrel with any religion. Religion has shown itself to be very influential in Man's history and culture. It has helped him to explain the unknown when science was not available for explanaition; it makes him feel less insignificant in the vast universe, and it gives him hope for a possible existance beyond death. The only problem I have with religion is when it claims to be science, and makes attempts to intrude not only in the scientific community, but also in our public schools and in our democratic and pluralistic form of government.
I have no problem with "true believers" until they distort science to their own ends. If their faith is strong, why do they continue in their attempts to misuse science to support their religious beliefs? I believe that this is because their faith is NOT strong enough to sustain them. They may have looked at the advancing science, which may call some of their ideas into question (although not intentionally), and they may seek science to prop up their faith.
Biblical overtones don't necessarily turn me off, and neither does the Bible. I was raised as a Roma Catholic and it was NEVER our belief that the Bible was ever meant to be taken literally, in its entirety. Most Roman Catholics believe in whats called "theistic evolution" and are able to accept both God and evolution. If you feel that those folks are deceived, then so be it. Many may feel that Fundamentalists are deceived. I don't try to dispute the Bible simply because I wish to "renounce" God; I just wish to use logic, observation, and the scientific method to discover how the universe ticks. If through these methods, science "discovers" that there actually is a supernatural being that created all this, then great. If all we can find is predictable and stable natural laws, then that's fine also. I don't hear you stating that you don't believe the theory of gravitation, but there is as much, if not more, research and evidence in support of evolution than gravity. One of the only reasons that we call gravity a law is that the term was preferred back then. It does not mean that it has been proven better than evolution has. Modern bilogy simply makes NO SENSE what so ever if not examined in the context of evolution. If you wish to see more on transitional forms, or speciation (one species evolving into another) look at www.talkorigins.org. You will see that there have been several OBSERVED cases of speciation, not just mutated flies.
If you feel that I should abandon my notions of the scientific evidence supporting evolution and favor the Biblical account, you would need to show me credible scientific evidence that has held up to scrutiny supporting your Biblical account. Every site I have examined that states it does that has shown itself to be misinformation concerning the evidence, and what most would refer to as pseudoscience. If your belief in Biblical creation is based on faith alone, then more power to you. I have chosen to be a skeptic and have put my loyalty in the scientific method, and human reason and logic, for my understanding of the universe, based on its proven track record. Although scientific thought is constantly being refined when presented with better evidence, that does not call in to dispute the scientific approach. History has shown that the advancement of scientific thought has neither relied on religion nor has been deterred because of it. The purpose of science today is NOT to "disprove" God. The purpose is to understand the natural mechanisms of the universe. The reason that "natural laws" are emphasized is because they have been very successful in their explanations of the workings of the universe and has been shown be accurate in their predictions. Religious thought, however, has been altered along with our understanding of the world. The Bible believers used to feel that the earth was flat, it was the center of the universe, and that the sun revolved around it. These ideas were based on Biblical passages and man's interpretations of them. I am not convinced that early Biblical scholars, somehow misinterpreted the Bible and now we have the "proper" understanding of it, since there appears to be no proof that that is so. I believe that the ambiguous nature of the Bible has allowed "true believers" to modify their understanding of various passages in order to reconcile their beliefs with accepted science. I don't fully understand the Creation fervor over 70 years after the Scpes trial, but I believe it is related to the demise of the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union existed, "true believers" could have a rallying point against a supposed evil and Godless society and political regime. With the "enemy" gone, new enemies must take their place in order to raise funds, have scapegoats for the problems in society, and have a rallying cry. It is sad that those folks need to distort the truth and portray evolution as leading to fascism, communism, abortion, etc. There is no credible support for these fanciful notions, but it makes their cause seem all the more "holy". Unfortunately, evolution is not their only "cause". These same folks would like to relegate homosexuals to a subhuman status and deny them the equal rights they deserve. They are also against the idea of modern feminism (read Pat Robertson's famous quote concerning this). I guees all this fervor is in the name of God, so logic and reason need not apply to their arguements. Please examine what history clearly shows man has done to man all in "the name of God". When are the fundamentalists ever going to accept, "live and let live" and discontinue their assault on reason and their drive to an American theocracy?
I guess that's enough venting for now. I look forward to your responses.
P>S> I don't feel these are entertaining because I wish to ridicule...I just realize that both of us are p...ing into the wind in trying to convince each other of our opinions. Neither of us are destined for success.