Abiogenesis and Evolution

Abiogenesis is generally considered to be a viable theory among those who examine the origins of life and certainly a lot of scientific work is done to try to figure out how it could have happened.

It is logically possible to seperate the idea of evolution from the idea of the origin of life, and the evidence comes down for evolution. The origin of life is obviously a more difficult thing for scientists to solve scientifically. Many would say it is impossible to solve scientifically. Maybe somebody will prove that's true someday.

What if someone creates life in a test tube? Would that mean life could have arisen spontaneously?

We Christians that accept mainstream science are already committed to viewing Genesis as having value for us more as an allegory than a literal history. In this, we are under the impression we are merely facing facts. Very few of the strictist fundamentalists actually take Genesis completely literally in the creation narrative anyway. A literal interpretation would come down for a flat earth and a firmament for a sky that holds back water above the firmament from falling in on us.

For some reason the modern literalists are not truly literalists. We might term them, therefore, neo-literalists. Neo-literalists accept the space related findings of science and revise their biblical interpretations accordingly while denying the time related findings of science.

In so doing, they put a barrier between those who understand the nature of deep time as well as space and the message of salvation through Jesus as revealed in the Bible. This is to be deplored, but Jesus is of course still able to save and redeem even those who unknowingly hinder others coming to Him.

 

Helen, I come down with you on this one, with respect to Paul.

This seems like a good plae for me to "poke my nose in the door" on what is obviously a board in which I'll be out of my depth scientificly speaking.

I am not completely unlearned in the subject, but neither am I anything like an expert.

The arguments of Ken Ham, Phillip Johnson, Micheal Behe and others seem to me to carry some weight but I cannot defend them from my depth of scientific training, just from logical reasoning.

conversly, the leading evolutionist arguments (and by extension of course abiogenesis thinking) strikes me as held together with the "bubble gum and bailing wire" of wild assumptions and wishful speculation.

To just use the tiny example of the panspermia idea - the very concept that otherwise intellegent people would resort to postulating an entirely new planet with another gigantic number of species including at least one of superior intellect to our own as the source of life on Earth without one single credible scrap of evidence for even the existance os said life let alone it's ability to carry out the mission presumed for it - that they could take seriously for one SECOND such a fanciful notion and then in the next breath dismiss any and all notions of creationism out of hand is VERY revealing of their thought processes.
It's not necessary that all evolutionist accept such a notion to illustrate the point, because they all reach a point in which they run into a road blocak and have to invent something out of whole cloth which would account for it in a naturalistic fasion, no matter how outlandish the supposition might be, it is more to be accepted than a supernatural answer.

And that brings me to the first of the fundamental rubrics in my thinking on the subject:
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Principle #1:
All Origin Theory is founded on an unproveable assumption.

Despite scienctist claims to the contrary, BOTH creation and evolution start with an unproved and unproveable assumption, to wit:
Creation ASSUMES the supernatural is possible and did play a role in the origin and development of life in the universe;
Evolution ASSUMES the supernatural is impossible and whatever may be found to have happened MUST have, therefore, a naturalistic explaniation. The time or other circumstances necessary for these events to have occured MUST be POSTULATED (i.e. ASSUMED) because the supernatural has been pre-judged to be non-existant or, at best, irrelevant.

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Principle #2

The theological principles of Christ's attonment are dependent on the special creation of man.

Whatever else may be conceded about the pre-existance of the universe or the planet, if Paul and the rest of the NT is trustworthy, Man MUST have been a special direct creation of God.

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Principle #3
There is no indication that Christ understood Genesis to be alogorical.

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Principle #4
Genesis MUST have been written, under the insperation of God, (and the story conveyed orally before that) in such a manner as to speak to Joshua and Saul, and Daniel, and Matthew, and Origen, and Augustine, and Edwards, and Moody, and ME one just as well as another. Thus it is not a compromise of "literalism" to suggest that more complex truths might have been written in a manner which could have been understood by less "informed" men.

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Principle #5
None of the evedince I have seen, with the possible exception of astronomical data, is contradictory to the concept - the quite logical concept - of God's having created a "Mature Creation."

Note, this does NOT imply intentional deception on the part of God and DOES requires the understanding that evolutionary understandings of some geological data is a product of intentional rationalizations or subconscience self-delusion.

I assume veterans of this debate are familiar with the "Mature Creation" concept but for those passing through:

MC, to explain it in a shorthand fasion, would argue that if you got in a time machine and traveled back to the 8th day and encountered Adam, you would not encounter a 2 day old infant but a mature, perhaps fully grown individual who would appear to be 20 years old or more. Any and all scientific tests preformed on him would be utterly unable to ascertain his age as 2 days.

Likewise, any and all test on the rock upon which he sat or the tree whose shade he enjoyed would demonstrate the tree to be many years - perhaps decades - old; the rock perhaps millions of years.

Yet both would, IN FACT, be less than a week old.

I concede that astronomical data in regards to the speed of light and distances do not easily reconcile with this theory, but since there are several hypothesies(sp) out there in regards to the variations in the past in such measurments, I am content to wait for the evidence to gather.

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Principle #6
Given that scientific theory, not only by their own admission but as a point of pride, is constantly in flux, there is no reason for Christians to "throw out the baby with the bathwater" regarding origins.

As Scince establishes something firmly proveable, we intigrate that into our understanding, as long as they are putting forth patched together assumptions and leaps of logic, we wait quietly for them to do better.

For instance, if one wants to accept that the various breeds of domestic canine, the wolf, the fox, the dingo, the Hyena - all arose from a common ancestor, likewise the various types of feline, no problem. The is scientificly unassailabley possible. It still does not REQUIRE - because it is POSSIBLE - that it happened, but if science thinks it has good evidence for it, fine. No need to stand against it.
However, when they ask us to believe that organisms developed male and female reproductive organs gradually over countless generations without any use for them - or that they spontaniously mutated mutual compatable genders in the same generation and the same geographic location - we, at a minimum, remain skeptical.

It's a simply logical thing to do.

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Principle #7
The Scriptures claim divine origin for themselves from begining to end. This is theologically undeniable. Thus, the Bible must either be accepted or rejected as a whole. If one presumes that no supernatural explination is available for Creation or the flood, one is constrained, thereby, to reject the supernatural existentials of Christ.
contrawise, if one conceeds a supernatural conception, life, and resurrection of Christ, then one is constrained to concede the POSSIBILITY of supernatural influance on creation.

If one concedes the supernatural AT ALL in creation matters, one need not accept wild leaps of supposition employed in evolutionary theory in order to have a naturalistic account.

In short, it is intellectual thumb twiddling to place ones faith in a supernatural ressurection in order to call oneself a Christian, and then in the next breath suppose that this MUST have been God's only intervention in time and space.

All that said, why would any Christian rush to accept something which even it's strongest proponents admit is wldly improbable? If even the strongest believers in naturalistic origins admit that we, in effect, defied the most colossal odds imaginable not once but repeatedly in order to be here, that does not, IMO, constitute an irresistable intellectual force which requires someone who has already conceded the existance of the supernatural to get on board.
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Finally, may I apologize to Helen for a post which has the potential to hijack her thread. It is not my intention to do so and I hope that others will reply to her train of thought more so than mine.
I chose to do this here because so many of these threads are so long and involved that there was no natural place. Neither did I want to start yet another thread as that would have implied a "throwing down of the gauntlet" in which I would have appeared to have been willing to engage in longwinded debate on each point.

I confess that I am not prepared to go to the depths some of these debates go to.
This is mearly my way of "introducing myself" to this part of the boards so that any comments I make in the future will have a context.

Thank you Helen (and Paul and the rest) for overlooking this bit of rudeness.

You may now return to your previously scheduled debate.

 

"Origin theory" is not a scientific term, so I'm not sure what you mean.

No. All science, evolutionary theory included, is methodologically naturalistic, and looks for natural causes but does not rule out supernatural causes. It is, however, limited to natural causes, and so miracles, if they happen, cannot be addressed by science.

Actually, we can (and have) find compelling evidence for evolution. The origin of life is not a concern of evolutionary theory, nor does it make any claims about that. Whatever the origin of life, evolutionary theory merely describes how existing life changes.

The special creation of man is the creation of an immortal soul. We are animals, but that's not all we are. God (as He says in Genesis) made us from the Earth like other creatures, but then He also gave us a soul. And that changed everything.

True, but most scientists agree with this. This is perfectly consistent with evolution.

I see no indication that He expressed an opinion one way or the other. His citing allegory does not change it from allegorical to literal.

Science procedes by steps, modifying theories as the facts indicate. But keep in mind, very little humans do works better than this. It's a highly successful way of understanding the universe.

Actually, the Hyena is more closely related to cats. If you go back far enough in the fossil record, you will find that cats and dogs are indistinguishable. Hyenas are just a rather primitive kind of cat, with a lot of doglike traits.

True. What happens is that the farther back you go, the more the categories blur together. There's really no limit to it anywhere.

And you'd be justified in being skeptical. If evolutionary theory was like that, I'd be skeptical as you are.

Often, as a teacher, I get to talk to parents who are concerned about evolution. In my state, it is required in 8th grade science.

After speaking to me, and learning that many of the things they had been told about it are false, they are less worried.

I'm wondering if you have a verse that says it is inerrent.

Including the errors? Many of them have been found and corrected, but surely many remain.

Well, no. The flood, for example, could be completely allegorical, and the Resurrection historical.

True. But a supernatural creation is consistent with a natural creation of specific things. This is what God says in Genesis.

Perhaps you've also been misled about the "wild leaps". Could you tell me about them?

Yep. But that's not what scientists who are Christian think.

I don't know any strong proponent of evolution who thinks it's "wildly improbable".

It's not that difficult. The biggest problem is that many people are familiar with a "Cartoon Theory" of evolution, and don't know much about the real one. It's worth your time to go to the library and find a good college text on evolution, and see what it says. It would save you a lot of trouble early on.

Good luck. I hope to see you taking part soon.

 

Few note of clarification re Galtians post:

1. By "Origin Theory" I mean any and all varieties of theories concernng abiogenesis and common desent evolution. I for one have no problem with diversification of species among the "kinds" created by God, but I have considerable difficulty with common ancestory between man and animal and between different major groupings of animals (i.e I consider it rediculus that a man, a dog, a fish, a bird, a snake, and a grasshopper all descended from a common protazoa or whatever).
In other words it's a catch-all term for everything from ID to literalism to Hoyle to standard Darwinianism, etc.


2. The admission that the supernatural is beyond the scope of science has the same practical effect as saying that it rules out the supernatural as a predetermined assumption. Since science, by it's very nature, seeks to answer every question, if it aknowledges that certain "answers" are beyond it's scope, then it is forced to seek answers where it can - even contrived answers if necessary - since it is not scientific to say "We don't know, we suppose it was a miricle"

3. Again, I have no problem with existing life changing within kinds. Almost all creationist will aknowledge that this creture or that may be different in superficial ways from it's ancestor - a lizard may have a longer tail or a monkey may have larger ears...but they are still lizard and monkey respectivly - but the evidence for more serious evolution is tenious at best and constantly changing. Just recently an article in a major publication (Nature?) called into question the reptile/Bird connection which has become evolutionary gospel in the last few decades. Anything that nebulous MAY be consistant with Darwinism but is not COMPELLING.

4. I'd be interested in man's special creation being "perfectly consistant with evolution"...I'd never heard that claim made by anyone on either side. Quite the contrary in fact.

5. I did not mean to imply that Christ expressed an opinion. I do however infer that he would not have left us deluded about something so important.

6. RE Hyenas. It was inevitable that I would make some such example that would be incorect in such a manner. I do not presume to debate the genetic roots of the species. Merely to indicate that it did not arise from a reptile or a fish or a kangeroo. But your point is taken.

7. No example about the genders and secual as opposed to asexual reproduction may not be a technically accurate representation of evolutionary thinking, but I presented this discussion to my Masters holding biology teacher and she did not correct my thinking (albeit she to is skeptical of evolution), to wit:
IF all life arose from single cell protist, then at SOME point, sexual reproduction evolved from asexual reproduction. Now, as I understand the matter, strictly in layman's terms, either the organs had to have devloped previous to their usefullness, which does not fit the evolutionary model, or they must have occured spontaniously which would have required the coincidence of a compatalbe gender at the same time and place.
What is the third model?

Another example, out of many that might be given, are animals which have some natural function which is dictated by their enviornemnt which either had to pre-exist the need for it or the race would have died out before it had time to develop it- Mcdowell's example of the Surinam toad for just one instance.

8. I have no doubt there are a great many falsehoods and misunderstandings circulating in this debate, on both sides. Some of which I may be victim of, but I consider myself ahead of the curve on the matter. AiG is particulary good about pointing out the flaws in creationist more popular canards.

9. 2 Peter 20-21

20Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. 21For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

And I hope that you will not argue this refers only to the prophets since the context of the passage is clear that Peter is refering even to the letter he is at the moment writing.

I think it's a valid assertion that what is inspired by the divine is inspired without error. Others may disagree. There are other Scriptures on the matter but I'm frankly too lazy to beat that horse.

10. I'm not at all aware of errors in the original manuscrpit. There are of course transmission errors that have been found and corrected. Are you asserting that it's likely that we will an error which places the Genesis account in doubt as to it's authinticity?

11. The fundamental principles of hermanutics would be seriously violated by reading the flood as allagory. That's not the way Bible interpretation works. Then again, a skeptic would ask you how you knew the resurrection was a historical fact and not an alagorical event "like the flood." How would you answer? There is scarecly more extra-biblical evidence for it - and almost all is circumstantial - than their is for the Noahdic Flood.

Furthermore, if one ignores proper hermanutics to alagorize the Flood, by what well-established method does one decide what is alagory and what is true?

12. Wild leaps like Crick's panspermia, like birds from dinos, like every supposition which has ever been paraded to account for an artifact which later turned out to be a fake or a misunderstanding, like the suppositions accepted whole necessary to understand things such as potassium/argon dating. Every significant evolutionary idea I've ever been exposed to EXCEPT change WITHIN kinds has had, at it's foundation, some unproveable, untestable ASSUMPTION.

13. Quote: " Yep. But that's not what scientists who are Christian think"

Then that begs the question: Why do thes folks strain so hard to reconcile a theory which might be here today and discredited tomorrow with their faith which, by it's very nature, is immutable?
IF- IFIFIF - one is a "Christian Evolutionist" and one says "God started it all and left it/directed it to the state we find it in today, then WHAT is the difficulty in accepting the creation of various species "after their kinds"?

Once you allow the supernatural into the equation at all, then many of science's assumptions are no longer necessary.

11. Crick, for one, athiest and evolutionist, who's quoted as saying that the possibility that even a single molecule of DNA arrising from undirected reactions is so mathmatically improbable as to be essentially impossible. I don't have a database of quotes, but I've seen dozens in which it's strongly implied that the prevading understanding in th evolutionary leadership is that we, on Earth, "got lucky" on a collasal scale. not just once, but repeatedly.

12. I am familiar with basic college level evolution. I've read far more than the average layman including purchasing some used texts and studying the matter.
On another board I masde an assrtion which an aedent athist evolutioist ridiculed as a "rediculus characature of evolution which no evolutionist believed" - then I quoted him chapter and verse from my latest edition college Gen. Biology text and he had to apologize.

that said, I cannot plumb the depts of those who have higher level degrees and specilizations in the area. I have been caught short in these debates before when an evolutionist made an assertion about an ID position which, though I thought it "smelled funny," I was intellectually unprepared to find the flaw in - assuming there was one of course.

Thanks for the gracious response.
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Helen:

Thanks for the kind words, a few notes:

1. You are right of course, I meant independently of Scripture, naturally.

4. I think it helps to read those descriptions from a "man's eye view"...

5. The speed of light research you mentioned is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of. Again, the higher math sometimes leaves me shaking my head but I am aware that it's an area of ongoing research and I await with giddy anticipation a firm understanding of the matter.
I'll have to check out the site you linked and see if I can handle it.

Oh, and by "rude", I simply meant potentially starting a tangent which would detract from your intentions in strating the thread.

Intresting reading here, but too much for my frazzeled brain I think.

 

Hello WillRain! Thanks for jumping in! are we having fun yet?

The traditional evolutionist rejoinder at this is to invite the you to define what a "kind" is in this context. Cats, including tigers and pussycats? Mammals? Creatures with backbones? What we need is a biological clue so we can tell that, say, lions and housecats are or are not of the same kind.

How about regarding the creation of man from the dust of the earth being symbolic for the evolutation past of the physical nature of man?

I think mankind was utterly unprepared to accept most of modern science at the beginning of the first century A.D., and reticence on the part of the Divine is understandable.

Genetic swapping is such a fantastic advantage to a living species! It is impressive in its ability to facilitate removal of defective genes. It also helps somewhat in spreading successful genes faster through a population. The initial genetic swapping methods arose in single celled bacteria. As multicellular life arose, genetic swapping was maintained. The specialization and development of sex organs was part and parcel of the specialization and development of all the organs. That is to say, multicellular life had to solve that problem one step at a time just like all the others. Which is why evolution absolutely requires millions of years for it to work. Just don't think evolutionists believe the animals all evolved and then afterwards evolved sex. Sex was present from the beginning of multicellular life.

Transmission errors have been corrected but in many cases the judgement call is that the correction is only probable, not certain. There are enough of these that on probalistic grounds we can be sure some of those calls are in error, no matter who the editor is!

It's not that the text presents the flood story as an allegory. Its that the geological evidence - such as a hundred thousand plus annual layers of ice in Greenland - proves there was no world wide flood, and therefore it must be re-interpreted.

In my own mind, the "world wide" nature of the flood is in the mind of those who endured it, the world as they knew it. In somewhat the same fashion as when Caesar ordered that all the world should be taxed.

Some of what you mentioned is truly a wild leap. Some of it is not. What's wrong with dating by means of analyzing the results of radioactive decay over the years? What kind of "wild" idea does that involve? Perhaps that God would keep the rules of His universe constant over the years? How wild is that?

The teachings of the church are not immutable. It wasn't so long ago that all the church teachers, Catholic and Protestant, came down against the upstart views of Copernicus, for what they considered valid scriptural reasons. Today the followers of Copernicus (including updates to his basic idea, of course) have won the field. The current dispute between some factions of christianity and evolution is a repeat of that history.

But when you say this, you are disregarding the evidence for a world older that 10,000 years and the positive evidence that evolution did, in fact, take place.

Any literalist will reinterpret scripture in spite of the literal statement of scripture when they absolutely KNOW it can't be true. You can watch them do it before your very eyes.

As an interested layman, would you be kind enough to check out my critique of Setterfield faster than light theory? Jump down to the thread on Setterfield variable light speed theory. The post I want you to check out is on page 5 in the middle of the page, the post with the thought experiment in it. I tried very hard to make a very clear and simple to understand. Did I succeed? Please let me know! By the way, I'm also a layman in the sciences.

 

Paul:

1. RE: "Kinds"...I'd have to look it up to be sure I'm on the right level but my top of the head guess is "families" though that could go up order or MAYBE Class, or down to Genus. I'm too much a laymen to be well versed in the distinctions below Phylum.

2. Actually, what I was wondering was where the scientific distinction between man's physicality and his spirituality arose from. Also, if Adam was the first to have been given some special status, then do we further extrapolate that there was no reproduction between his (fallen) decendents and the non-spiritualized "men"...or is this a means of explaining the Nephelum(sp) contreversy? In any case, one would assume God would disaprove of such interaction and it seems surpassingly odd that these "almost men" were wandering about and Genesis makes absolutly no mention of their interaction with the decendents of Adam.

3. I agre that the people in Christ's presence would not have understood a refutation of a literal Genesis creation, but there is an implicit acceptance of Genesis in several NT passage whcih a perfect Almighty could have easily avoided without confusing his first century hearers, IMO.

4. I was not trying to imply that they evolved first then adapted new sexual devices...though I may be revealing a key bit of ignorence by saying so, I understand the GenSwaps are another form of "reproduction" inasmuch as you can learn about it in GenBiology...but I fail to see how it could, would, or should account for the progression from asexual to sexual reproduction.

Specilization and development of many, many organs are questionable in my mind *the ever present Eye example for instance) but I chose the sexual example because of the compounding of the problem by the "two tracks" necessary for both male and female to develop in a time and place and comatapility to be useful

5. I agree with you about Transmission corrections. I merely ment that they had been corrected to the current best understanding. But I move the previous question: It is quite a leap from debating the authinticity of the Comma Johnian to indicting the veracity of the Genesis account which, I presume, is the only relevence of transmission errors to this thread.

6. RE: Greenland.
NOW, here's a chance for me to learn something!
I do not ask this to be "smart mouthed" it is a genuine request for information...
How do the ice layers in Greenland establish that the whole place was not at some point underwater? How is the existance of all those layers of ice inconsistant with all the layers which existed in Noah's day having been submerged? I don't see the connection

7. As to the local flood concept, I am curious what purpose the story serves if this is so - and why would God have done it that way?
Why tell him to build a boat when he could have just said "Move to the mountains?
Why save all those animals when there were plenty of other similar animals in other parts of the world?
Why use it as an allogory for salvation in Christ when other people in other places would have been SAVED in other ways?
Why would Christ use it for an illustration if ALL those who were "eating and drinking and getting married" did NOT get chaught unaware and die?
Furthermore, how is a flood deep enough to put a boat the size of the Ark deep in the Turkish mountains any less of an event than a world wide flood?

I submit that we try to impose on the Biblical world the physical conditions of our own world in terms of altitude of highest land and sources of water among other things.
I realize it's problematic in terms of some "accepted" geological thinking, but I lean towards the concept that the "Pangia" (sp) mega-continent was in existance at the begining of the flood and that there was a water canopy in the atmosphere and that both of these were broken up by one or more astoroid strikes which created enough upheavel to achive a world-wide flood.

I do not pretend to be enough of a geologist to defend that, but it's my version of your "in my own mind" opinion.

8. The "leap" in radioactive dating is primarily that one can know how much of the mother element and how much of the duaghter element were in the original sample and whether or not there has been some outside influance on the total other than decay. There is a good bit of data from the Mt. St. Helens lava flows which indicates that these dating methods have huge flaws. (lots of stuff that calls into question things like fossilization methods and petrified trees and so forth too)

9. I do not say that the teachings of the church - ESPECIALLY in non-theological matters - is immutable. What I am saying is ones personal comitment to faith in a Christ which rose from the dead is, by definition, immutable. whatever else may be debated, if one is a genuine Christian, one has aknowledged AT LEAST ONE supernatural fact which they are firmly commited to.

10. I am not so much disregarding evidence of an older universe as I am reserving judgement on a body of thought that is in flux in favor of a matter which is - in my mind - firmly established: that there IS a Supernatural being and he HAS involved himself in time and space.

Whatever other "facts" come to light, I am REQUIRED by intellectual honesty to evaluate them in light of THAT salient fact.
Take the debate about the change of light speed for instance.

It IS a matter which can be debated. One which has some conflicting matters at hand. If you believe it is not, then bare with me and let's assume it does for the sake of this point:

Let's assume that I accept the traditional constant which has been firmly accepted for most of a century. Having done so, I am forced to concede an ancint earth as at least a possibility if not a requirement. In doing so, I call into question the statements of God's word and "re-evaluate then to make them fit the "facts" concerning light speed.

THEN, lo and behold, someone comes along and PROVES that c is not infact constant but is slowing. Thie theory catches on and withn a decade or two it's an "everybody knows" fact.

What of my compromise of Scripture? Turns out I question God's word for nothing.

Now, Setterfield et al MAY FAIL to make their case, but as long as that and other matters are still subject to change, who am I to throw out God's testimony - or at least my understanding of it - in favor of theory which might or might not change next week?

I reiterate, that which is beyond dispute, I am forced by intellectual honesty to fit into my concept of Scripture, but VERY little of what falls under the Darwinian rubric is so firmly established, IMO.

11. RE the Setterfield post...

I think you made your point clearly (if I understand it correctly of course ) but I'm not enough of a mathmatician to know if it follows. My gut reaction is that the properties of radio waves and even planetary orbits cannot be asumed to be unaffected by the difference in c and thus the signal could possibly have been, to use a lay term, compressed in some manner so that as c "stretched" so the signal would have stretched to a year in length.
But I'd be WAY out of my depth to calculate why that would be.
I can only presume that honest researchers will give thought to the matters you present and they will either be reconciled, or the theory modified (the scientific way after all). It stands to reason that such a radical new way of thinking would be beset for years with the ancilary concerns (much like the "frying" radiation mentioned in the paper Helen suggested) which would have to be considered and reconciled to the theory.
I would suggest that it is WAY to early in the process to suggest the matters you mention DISPROVE Setterfield, merely they are matters yet unresolved sufficiantly for the theory to gain acceptance.
Until these (and no doubt other as yet unpresented concerns) are addressed and said address either does or does not withstand scrutiny, the hypothisis cannot be said to have been either proved OR disproved.

 

Hello again, WillRain! With a name like that, you'd fit right in over here in Oregon.

Does this mean you'd agree with the idea of tigers and pussy cats having a common ancestor? That's a lot of evolution to accept!

You know, I've always wondered about the Nephelim passage. Does it represent a mingling of the seed of men with their physical equivalents after God made Adam a living soul? I have no idea. The literal interpretation would be that angels had sex with men, which would appear to contradict our Lord's comment that they neither marry nor are given in marriage. But I think we're going to have to wait for heaven to learn the definitive answer.

Not really. The stories of Adam and Eve would have been passed down through oral tradition over the mellinia and each time it was passed on, only the details understood by the receiving generation would survive. Finally they would have been reduced to written form. In saying this, I am accepting the findings of mainstream science as to the amount of time men have been on the earth. The generations are necessarily truncated - oral tradition can only carry down so much.

When Christ quoted the Old Testament, He was wanting to lend the authority of scripture to His statements, and this is why he quoted them.

Well this is the essense of the contribution of Darwin to evolutionary theory. Prior to Darwin's publication, men of science were becoming aware of the antiquity of life and the need for evolution, but were at a loss to explain how it could possibly work. A feeling you can understand, I'm sure! What Darwin came up with was a mechanism that could explain it all.

a) The arrival of variation (Darwin phrased it that way because the science of genetics was still to come)

b) the winnowing out of impractical or hermful variation via natural selection and

c) The adding of new functions in a cumulative fashion, bit by bit, here a little, there a little, over eons of time.

The whole theory of evolution is there in a nutshell. There is the grand declaration that it is actually possible to bring about the full complexity of the eye, the sexual organs, the liver, the whole complex, one mutation at a time.

Once one sees a thing to be clearly true - or thinks one has, which to one's self is the same thing - one must interpret accordingly! We just aren't left with any other choice! And that's my state with regard to evolution. I see it to be true so clearly - the evidence seems so complete and definitive . . .

Well, think about it. What would six months of being underwater do to the ice? If it didn't make it all break loose and float away, it would erode the top part, and leave a very dirty, very thick layer in the ice.

Now it is possible in the ice layers to detect the transition between summer and winter. Counting these layers down has been done past 100,000 years in a reliable, steady fashion. This shows no flood touched the Greenland ice fields for the past one hundred thousand years. It also shows the Greenland ice fields date back that far, which disproves all interpretations of the age of the universe that go back only 6 to 10 thousand years.

Maybe to preserve primarily the domestic, clean animals for the use of men post flood? Maybe to facilitate the local ecology replenishment?

Perhaps the traditional location is incorrect.

As the premier method of dating ancient material, the use of radioactive decay elements has been extensively analyzed and refined. Daughter elements differ from natural elements by having differing isotopes. In addition, it is possible to take a given sample and compare several different chains and by simultaneously solving for the various equations each suggests, come up with the one age that gives a consistent result for them all; this allows one to compensate for an unknown number of contaminates.

Critics of the process generally push the boundaries and stress the methods and examples known to be indeterminate anyway. These things have been calibrated, for example by checking carbon 14 dating against tree ring counts going back 20000 years more or less . . . enough to prove YEC theories wrong.

This idea that science is always changing anyway is an idea that has come up in several posts recently. It is true that there are areas of science that are in the forefront of development, and we see news releases about them. There are also areas, however, that are much more firmly settled. I would be flabbergasted if scientific progress ever made obsolete the notion that water is composed of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. In my mind, that just can't happen! It is a matter of ongoing investigation how to fine tune the hominid evolutionary tree. The fact of common descent for all life is, in the judgment of most students of science, firmly established.

Well, there we differ, apparantly. Perhaps we can discuss that along the way.

Well, Setterfield theory explicitly states that when the speed of light slows, the wave lengths - and hence the length of an entire single year's information stream - does not change.

Should Setterfield alter his theory and suggest that, instead, light altered the wave length, then the fact that light arrives at identical wave lengths today implies it was generated at much longer wave lengths in the days of living men. These much longer wave lengths would be impossible to focus by the small lens within the human eye and all the people alive during that time would be blind, only able to tell light from dark. Setterfield doesn't go that route, I merely point out this problem if he did.

In addition, Setterfield theory requires that energy conservation be abandoned, that Einstein's theory of Relativity cannot apply, and besides he hasn't reconciled gravity with it yet anyway. The energy conservation abandonment alone is enough to cause horror among physicists. The conservation of energy is one of the foundations of modern physics.

You're not going to have to worry about any theory stating the speed of light has changed withing the past 10 billion years. Astronomical observations just flat rule them out!

Certainly God intervenes to cause miracles. But one expects the miracles to afterwards leave a discernable trace. A healed man, grave clothes left in an empty tomb, for example. Twelve baskets of food fragments when before there was so little food.

Where are the flood traces in the geological arena? They certainly aren't in the Greenland ice core data.

 

This is a good point Helen.

It is JUST as "unnacceptable" to the atheist evoltionist to say that God came down and CREATED living cells supernaturally - as to say that God came down - formed man out of the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life "And man BECAME a living Soul". BOTH are "unnacceptable" to our atheist evolutionist friends.

But what is "more apparent" is that the mythologies proposed by evolutionism are "far LESS effecient" than making mankind on day 6 - after 5 "Evening and Morning" cycles of light and dark.

So it is indeed a "compromise" to claim that God supernaturally MADE life - but then had it evolve in the MOST blood-thirsty carnage-centric starvation-and-extinction-prone innefficient system that could be imagined by our evolutionist friends.

And yet some Christians choose that compromise in spite of the damage it does to the Gospel of Jesus Christ "Maker of Heaven and Earth".

Bob

 

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

"World Wide evidence that all land was under water and teaming with sea life - SURE but where is the evidence of a world wide flood?"

"World Wide evidence of catastrophic world wide extinction event - SURE but where is the evidence of a world wide flood"?

"WHEN they maintain this it ESCAPES their notice that by THE WORD of the Lord the heavens EXISTED long ago and the earth was FORMED out of water and BY water, through which the World AT THAT TIME was DESTROYED, being flooded with water. But the PRESENT heavens and earth by His Word are being reserved for FIRE".
2Peter 3:5-6.

So even though our evolutionist friends suffer the indignity of not being able to show "abiogenesis" let alone major information injection via minor mutations within "a kind" leading to a "new kind" - yet still "the Bible is wrong" while "guesswork is to prevail" among those who cling to the atheist's trump card - the mythologies of evolutionism.

Bob

 

Hi Bob! Let me assure you, this particular evolutionist has no concerns or fears about the "danger" of discovering God created life. If it someday is proven life could not start on its own, then we know the creator gave it that start. If it is someday proven that life can be started by natural means, then we know it is at least plausible that the Creator allowed life to begin by natural means. I eagerly await more information along that line but however it turns out, that issue will not shake my faith in God.

 

Greetings, Helen! May God continue to help you with the health issues you've mentioned and give you every blessing.

WillRain, I trust you'll understand why I'm addressing this reply to my reply to Helen primarily just for the sake of constructing the reply, but feel free to jump in any time. That goes for Bob and everybody else, of course.

Helen, are you under the impression that the great cats - Lions, Tigers, Cheetahs, Leapords, Mountain lions, Wildcats, Housecats . . . . are all as interchangeable as our current breeds of dogs? ( )yes ( )no

Oh, you mean look for verses referring to Sons of God? Try these:

The interpretation that the "sons of God" represent angelic beings goes way back to the book of Enoch and is still found today.

I am looking for the part where it says "written form from the beginning". All I see is "written form at the present time". Please be careful not to add things to God's word that are not there, and to distinguish between your interpretations and what it really says.

Aesop might disagree with you there. Go ahead, tell us the works of Aesop are without value because they are fables. But Scripture allegories are more than fables, even if we know they are not literally true. Jesus quoted the scriptures because those to whom he spoke revered the scriptures, tho they misused them. If they are allegories, they are God's chosen allegories.

OK Your prediction is that genetic variation was greator in the past and is less now. Evolution predicts that genetic variation is normally increasing (except when major extinctions occur).
This looks like a possible test between your views and the views of evolutionists. Are you willing to agree that evidence for increasing genetic variation with time would be a valid test between evolution and your views? ( ) yes ( ) no

LOL! That's like saying if a bilge pump keeps water out of the boat then the bottom of the boat must ipso facto be perfectly dry. The pump can't even function until there's water to pump and genetic selection can't weed out genetic problems until there are some genetic problems to work with. This is such a no brainer I'm surprised you try to make your point that way. At any one time, there will be a steady state of genetic defects in a population, some being input by mutation, while natural selection aided by genetic exhange (sex) takes them out.

I think you're referring here to the conundrum for special creation that there are oddities in the design that no creator would have intelligently put there. Such things as the little toes on our feet, for example, or a coccyx moving muscle attached to an unmoveable coccyx, or ear wiggling muscles that most of us can't even use (tho some can). Now that you mention it, that is evidence for evolution, but I don't see your point about turning it on evolution . . .

Did I specify an extent? I only maintain natural selection is able to KEEP UP with genetic problems.

The evidence is all around you.

One must depend on one's own mind to decide to do that. You're not making any sense. One must depend on one's own mind to decide what one thinks is a statment from God. Besides, He told me differently:

I brought these two quotes together to point out to all a very interesting problem for Helen's geological history.

Note that she claims that in Greenland the additional layers of ice that fools all the scientists in the field into thinking there are a hundred thousand annual layers of ice are really due to multiple storms of a world wide nature that caused the exact same appearance as annual layers to come about on the ice fields.

Note that she further claims that in the forests of the world, all of them without exception wherever we are able to investigate, multiple heat and cold cycles caused trees to put out additional annual layers of wood that exactly simulate real years. Not thinner layers, mind you, whole complete new annual layers of wood, suitable for fooling the scientists in the field.

I ask all and sundry: Is it reasonable to expect all that extra tree growth under such conditions or wouldn't the trees be stress out and shut down or even die? Shall we subject a test tree to a few extra ice age storms and expect more wood as a result? Some of us think Helen's solutions to the dating results achieved in the field are unreasonable.

There was more to Helen's post that had to do with Setterfield's Variable Light Speed theory which I will respond to under that thread.

 

>>>>>Radio decay rates were much faster in the past.<<<

But there is not the slightest evidence of that.


>>>>>>>>>>>Using dendrochronology to check C14 dates is also inaccurate past just a few thousand years<<<<<<

You seem to be admitting that it is accurate up to a few thousand years. But if Setterfield's ideas are correct, it should be highly inaccurate even at 4 to 6,000 years, something you don't seem to be claiming - or are you?

 

Helen often provides a link in her posts to a discussion of C-14 dating on Setterfield's web site. I quote here a portion of the text from that web site, which is a quote from an article by Trevor Major. The article is referred to approvingly by Helen and Barry. Here is the quote, which is apparently accepted by Helen and Barry:

"Radiocarbon dating assumes that the carbon-12/carbon-14 ratio has stayed the same for at least the last hundred thousand years or so. However, the difference between production and decay rates, and the systematic discrepancy between radiocarbon and tree-ring dates, refute this assumption."

The problem with the above claim is that it is simply not true. Mainstream science has not assumed the the C-12 to C-14 ratio is constant, at least it has not been assumed in dating of samples during the last 40 years. It was discovered, I think in the 1960s, that the ratio was not constant back in time. All dating that is done now, and for the past 30 years or so, makes corrections for that potential problem. I can only wonder why the Setterfields continue to propagate that myth? What about it Helen, don't you think you need to update your site, to discuss what really is done in C-14 dating?

 

On the other hand, Peter, it needs to be pointed out that when we speak of correcting the carbon 14 age scale today, we are not talking about making a great big change. Its more like a minor adjustment.

 

Miller-Urey was merely a demonstration that abiogenesis was possible. However, the Murchison meteorite was a much more convincing example.

Not only does it have amino acids inside, there is an excess of L-forms, the sort used by living organisms on Earth.

While it remains true that abiogenesis is not required by evolutionary theory, we do see increasing evidence for abiogenesis as a theory of its own.