On Evolution...

[QUOTE="Particular, post: 2557066, member: 15651———— I find humans are amazingly arrogant in their foolish ignorance of God.[/QUOTE]

One, if not the most, UNDER statements I’ve seen on this forum!!!!!
All I can add is ————A M E N!!!

 

Well we've reached Page 8.
I don't exactly know the page limit in this forum but I'd like to thank KeyserSoze for his participation in the thread before it is closed.

We don’t know much of your background.

You’ve certainly posted on Christian boards before; your responses are practiced and quite to the point.

I hope you haven’t come away from this encounter with a negative attitude towards us.

Baptists as a whole can be rather conservative. Many here on the BB have only a basic background in the sciences. It takes a quite a long time and an abundance of patience to shift a group’s long held convictions about anything, let alone when it deals with origins.
Forbearance, gentle persuasion, and once in a while a good kick-in-the-pants helps.

You’ve labeled yourself a “Non-Baptist Christian” so we might assume you’re a believer in our Savior. But it’s so easy to click that without really meaning it to insure acceptance by the moderators.
Recognizing your pseudonym is based upon a heartless and adversarial criminal, please forgive me if I have some doubts and concerns.

As you’ve repeated here, science deals with evidence.
The emphasis of the Christian faith is about developing a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ.

Like those who work in scientific fields, there are ups and downs, there are good practitioners and some not-so-good ones.

Our God honors faith, and that’s something that can’t be measured by any scientific instrument.

I hope that if you have not looked into the place’s science can’t go, you might venture there, that you might possess faith in our Savior.

I hope you might have a peace that surpasses all understanding, worshiping a God who created all things in his own special way.

“So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for
“ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,
“ ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”” (Acts 17:22–31, ESV)​

Rob

 

Of course its a real answer.. You simply do not understand it.
Life on earth is made up of simple elements. Hydrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, Phosphorus, etc..
All those elements were present on the primordial earth
The thing that makes life, is the order of those elements. The bonds they create.
So first, elements on the periodic table bond into molecules (just as 2 hydrogen atoms bond with one oxygen atom to make water)
Once those elements bond into molecules, available energy in the environment can cause those molecules to grow into more complex chain molecules.. That's what DNA is.. a chain molecule..
Now once you have that chain molecule encased in a protective layer.. (ie: the lipid sphere created in thermal vents), then you end up with the first simple protocells.. And none of that requires any interference from magical outside sources.
Elements can and DO bond all on their own.

 

No, that does NOT support an intelligent designer.
DNA is a trial and error proposition. When geneticists study DNA, they don't see design. They see scavenging .
Whole sections of DNA duplicated and later co opted from one part of the genome and used (in many cases rather poorly) to fulfill other cellular obligations.. Designers don't create programs that way..
In DNA , we see millions of years of jury rigged mistakes .. NOT design.
And of course, no one designs broken DNA that doesn't function, and then put that useless DNA into multiple species to mimic common ancestry.. lol

 

The Catholic Church didn't "cave".. They simply accepted what the evidence shows.
You see, once you free yourself from that rigid interpretation, then you are no longer required to spend the rest of your life trying to explain away the tons of evidence for evolution.. You can simply accept the data for what it actually shows.. That we evolved.

 

Why would he.? No one 3000 years ago would have been able to understand the explanation..
No one knew what DNA was back then.. No one knew what molecular bonds were..
It would be like trying to explain college level biology and chemistry to a kindergartener.

 

But that's the whole point of science.. To explain "how".
Creationists simply run around saying everything just "poofed" into existence..
And such useless explanations will never advance human understanding of a complex universe.

 

I cant say i agree with you hear Particular.
From where i sit, its the creationists who are arrogant here.
You see, when i look at the universe, i see tons of SCIENCE going on..
Gravity holding planets in their orbits, as well as atmospheres on their planets. I see stars using nuclear reactions that end up generating energy to power entire solar systems.. etc..
So if God exists, he would undoubtedly be a master scientist.
And yet, despite all this complex science strewn all across the universe, creationists turn God into the side show magician and limit him to only one way of creating.. "magic poofing"..
Seems to me that with all the science that is going on in the universe, that relegating God to such simplistic methods is the arrogance of those who don't want to take the time to study how he might have really did it..?

 

Why thank you Rob.. You're very kind.
My story is a simple tale.. Raised Catholic . Did the whole Baptism, Communion, Confirmation thing.. Catechism, etc.
But i've always been kind of a skeptic and lover of science, So once i got older, i started doing research into various fields, & i found evolution to be an interesting subject matter to discuss..
So every so often i used to pop into a message board and check out the latest comments and see if i could help explain some aspects of the science. (evolution does tend to have lots of misconceptions from people)
I used to regularly stop by AOL chat rooms back when that was a thing.. lol

As for "coming away from this with a negative attitude towards baptists.."?
Hardly..
In fact this is one of the most congenial message boards i've ever been on..
Back in the day, some of these forums used to get downright ugly..
You guys have treated me much better than i'm used to.. lol

 

Tons of science?
Science is a method of observation.
When we observe the universe we see the creator. From the largest to the smallest, we observe the creator.
Scientific method was developed by Christians so they could observe the creation of the Creator.
The blessing of scientific method is that it points us toward God and we are humbled by the glory of God.
Unfortunately, humans tend to replace God with themselves so that they can worship themselves. Sadly there are scientists who have substituted the Creator for creation and worship themselves rather than God.
Thankfully, there are still scientists who see God when they observe what God created. Science becomes a blessing from God when scientists recognize their Creator. History is replete with such scientists who gloried in God through their observations of God's creation.
Perhaps you can't understand this. I'm sorry if you can't.

 

Scientists should be free to speculate scientifically, but not insist hypothesized scenarios must be true based on assumptions of strictly natural processes, or of highly respected authorities.

The entrenched paradigms of the ether and geocentricity greatly inhibited scientific progress. Much more often than not, hypotheses are wrong, even wildly so. That is the nature of scientific pursuit.

The point of science is not to explain how, but to discover both what and how. Much of the time, scientists don't even know what they are looking at, much less able to explain how it works.

But when it comes to explaining how it got there or how it got that way, the task becomes even more difficult. When it comes to discovering why, scientists are completely out of their element. Most of them make very poor philosophers, their view of science being a major hindrance.

 

You're not following me..
This universe is operating under complex scientific laws.
The sun in our solar system is a nuclear furnace. So God is using atomic theory to create stars. He'd be an atomic scientist.
The Earth is in orbit around our sun.. So God would be using Gravitational theory to maintain orbits.
Plants are creating our oxygen for us.. So God would be using Photosynthesis to replace our oxygen..
These are all complex processes.. What we dont see in nature is God "poofing" new oxygen into our atmosphere..
Or "poofing" heat and light from our sun.. He's using complex scientific processes..
And creationists are perfectly happy to accept that he uses such scientific processes all throughout the cosmos..
Except for life..
If you dare put forth the idea that he used a complex process like abiogenesis of evolution to create and modify life,
then they lose it.. For the creationist, when it comes to life, God ceases to be a scientist, and is relegated to the status of David Copperfield who's ONLY option is to magically pull life out of his hat..

 

First, all Christians are creationists, so using it pejoratively so generally is falling into the atheist/secular trap. However, if you do not accept Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1-3, then you really need to explain yourself, as you would sound much like atheist Stephen Hawking, "What need then for a Creator?"

Second, using a strawman, and a bad analogy. Copperfield doesn't "magically pull life out of his hat," nor does God. The best the pretender Copperfield could do is steal from God, just like an atheist. Regarding life, Genesis says, "God said," and life came forth from the planet just as God planned.

You can label the process abiogenesis and speculate on what precisely occurred, but definitively demonstrating how it actually happened is another matter entirely, and no one yet has even come close.

How closely the complex biological computer code matches from life-form to life-form is far from established, as is how it really works. In fact, one hindrance has been the evolutionary paradigm that labeled some DNA "junk."

 

Thats the problem roby.. Its TOO "simple"

Creation is proof of only one thing, and that's proof of what got created.
That doesn't mean you can assign that creation to a "someone"..
The fact of the matter is that once the Big bang occurred, it wiped out a massive amount of evidence for what may have preceded it..
Now, people like to speculate that the cause for our universe was a "someONE" rather than a someTHING, because we like that idea.. But from an "evidence only" standpoint, we really have no way to know for certain what caused it all..

 

The process of operation is complex for humans. For God, He spoke and it was so.
When we observe the processes taking place, we observe the handiwork of God.
Francis Collins is a good example of a person for whom scientific method pointed him toward God. As the principle scientist of the genome project, he was amazed by what he observed and saw that there must be a Creator.
Roger Wiens, in his book Red Rover, shares how observing the heavens pointed him toward God. He is the principal scientist for Chem Cam, an instrument on the the Mars Rover, Curiosity.
It is a blessed thing to use scientific method to gain deeper appreciation and awe for the Creator.

 

Many Baptists have advanced Dr degrees, do hold to science and faith, but just totally reject evolution, as its flawed science, just assuming what cannot be proven from the evidence! It basically is godless humanity trying to discredit God Himself, but creating a universe that would not need Him to even exist. Its not that we are ignorant of science, but that we hold to the truth that Scriptures are inspired and infallible in all that they teach, and does not teach evolution!

 

Are you an Atheist than?

 

God caused changes with same species though, not into separate and distinct new species!