The lie of evolution

[paidagogos]

Originally posted by Paul of Eugene:
[snip]

It's one thing to ask somebody to give up sin and selfishness. Its a whole other thing to ask somebody to deny a fact they believe to be the truth. Who can do such a thing as that?

It would seem that you are confusing facts, beliefs and truth. Since there are no brute facts, your so-called fact must be interpreted. Whereas no one is questioning the facts, some do question the interpretation. There may be other interpretations as viable. If Genesis is not a literal account of creation, then what do we trust? How can we arrive at the truth from allegory that is open to pluralistic interpretations? We are reduced to a state where supposed Divine Revelation has no practical import. We have fought the battles over inspiration and inerrancy only to give it all up by resorting to allegory. It is a “what the Bible means to you” sort of thing. Perhaps Stanley Fish is right. Sounds rather post-modern, doesn’t it?

 

[Paul of Eugene]

To begin with, I think it sounds rather "post modern" to assert, as you did, "that there are no brute facts".

Care to defend that? Is it a brute fact?

 

[JWI]

Yes, if Genesis is an allegory, then perhaps the whole Bible is an allegory.

Evolution not only poisons people's minds against believeing the Bible. It has resulted in the death of hundreds (yes, hundreds) of millions of people.

Adolf Hitler was a firm believer in evolution, as was most of the German population at the time he rose to power. Thus, teaching that certain peoples (Jews, Negroes, Gypsies) were inferior and less evolved, and thus should be destroyed by the far superior Aryan was accepted as "scientific".

Stalin, Lenin, and Mao Tse-Tung were evolutionists and openly admitted so. To them life is a struggle (survival of the fittest). They used this to kill literally hundreds of millions of peoples. The Crusades are minuscule in comparison (an evolutionist WILL make the comparison). Those inferior "religious" peoples who did not accept the enlightenment of socialism were necessarily killed to promote the advancement of evolution of mankind.

Today, human fetuses are considered "a lump of cells" not worthy of being thought human. Millions have been aborted since Roe vs. Wade.

Evolution is not a harmless theory.

 

[Johnv]

Originally posted by Paul of Eugene:
And yet, we are here - some of us who have been Christian all of our lives, faithful with our tithes and offerings, faithful in our service to our Lord and our church, who have become convinced by the evidence in the favor of evolution and the ancient age of the earth.

And those people will continue to get attacked, have their faith in God questioned, have their faith in scripture questioned, and have thier salvation questioned, on that one issue and that one issue alone. Sad.

 

[JWI]

Johnv

Who has attacked someone's faith? Show me the quote.

I attack the Theory of Evolution, I cannot judge anyone's faith.

Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung openly admitted their belief in evolution. And look at the results.

 

[Johnv]

Originally posted by JWI:
Who has attacked someone's faith? Show me the quote.

Just wait. It's a simple matter of time until someone says "if you don't believe in a 6x24 creation, you don't believe the Bible", or "a person who is saved cannot support evolution", or "the person who denies the 6 day creation is a loberal religionist" and on and on.

 

[Bro. James]

Some unsolicited "kibbitzes": just because someone with letters wrote a book does not mean what the book says is true.

The problems arises when we put the writings of men on the same level as the Word of God while using human writing as a standard to which the Divine Revelation is compared.

To regard the Word of God as basically uncorroborated myth, fable and fantasy is a fatal mistake.

God said what He meant and meant what He said.

"Let God be found true, and every man a liar"

Selah,

Bro. James

 

[JWI]

Johnv

I do not blame anyone for believeing evolution. It is taught from the time people are a child. My 3 year old loves dinosaurs and has many books on the subject. I am not against this, dinosaurs truly existed. I just believe it has been in the last 6000 years or so since creation. You will see evoltionary teaching in there. For instance, you might see a crocodile described as an animal that has not "evolved" since prehistoric ages. Little comments like that. And watch any natural show on TV and you will hear many evolutionary teachings and comments. Probably most people do not notice, but I always listen for these types of comments. Listen and you will hear for yourself.

As I wrote earlier, people are taught this by sincere people whom they trust and love. And in most cases these people mean well and think they are teaching their children or students the truth.

Most people just accept evolution because they respect higher education and believe in it. But if anyone truly examines evolution they will find it has tremendous problems.

And some people have been so indoctrinated with this theory that they have real trouble looking at the substantial evidence against it. It truly shakes up their entire belief system.

So, I do not judge people who believe in evolution to be evil, just misinformed.

However, there are a FEW people who willingly believe this lie, even after convincing evidence has been shown them.

 

[Charles Meadows]

JWI,

The problem is that for those who have been heavily educated in the sciences evolution seems to have a great deal of supporting evidence. As someone heavily trained in the biological sciences prior to my salvation I can honestly say that scientifically speaking the evidence for evolution is considerable, and the evidence for an old earth is overwhelming.

I do not profess to be an evolutionist - but I do believe that we as Christians must be honest in what we report.

Actually I have no problem with those who believe literal creationism solely because of the Bible. Those with whom I have a problem are the people like Hovind who put out material that intentionally misrepresents the facts just to discredit evolutionists. The end does not justify the means.

 

[Petrel]

JWI, you could turn that post right around and say that most people who believe in a young earth creation believe that because they were taught so by people that they trust as children, it has been presented as truth by others around them all their lives, and they have a great respect for theologians who teach a literal interpretation of Genesis 1. However, if anyone truly examines young earth creation, they will find it has tremendous problems. Some people have been so indoctrinated with this theory that they have real trouble looking at the substantial evidence against it. It truly shakes up their entire belief system. However, there are MANY people who willingly believe this lie even after convincing evidence has been shown to them.

In my case, I grew up being taught young earth creation (I learned about evolution as well by my own reading, but I always vehemently thought it was false). It is only recently after a lot of independent reading and thought that I've decided an old earth creation and evolution was the method God chose to make the universe and life. I certainly have not been brainwashed into believing evolution by pro-evolution teachers. I'm not sure I ever had a pro-evolution teacher. My college education was at a Christian university that taught a young earth creation, and my high-school biology education was in public school by a teacher who taught evolution but pointedly never told us if she thought it was true or not (my education before that was at a private Christian school--YE). At the graduate level evolution has been mentioned in passing in literally three of my courses. In the realm of evolution and cosmology I am essentially self-taught.

Regarding some people's misapplication of the theory of evolution to justify genocide, what relevance does that have to the truth or untruth of evolution? You've left the bounds of science and entered the territory of philosophy. It's also true that some people have taken the biblical teaching of different gender roles and used it to justify essentially turning women into slaves. I trust you don't think that we should just throw this principle out because some people misuse it.

Regarding paidogogos, I think that if you take Genesis 1 as literal, you destroy all hope of a meaningful and knowable revelation from God through nature. There is no point in studying geology to find out when various strata were laid down because radiometric dating is completely invalid since (choose your poison) God created the rocks to look millions to billions of years old when they were brand new, decay rates used to be much higher and have dropped off in an unpredictable way so that it is impossible to accurately date rocks, or all of the strata were laid down at a known point 4000 years ago in the Flood anyways--don't try to reconcile the fossil record in the strata of the Grand Canyon and the radiometric dating of those rocks with an origin 4000 years ago, you'll just fry your brain. Moreover, there is no point in studying genes to determine what animals are related. Certainly we can assume some came from an original kind, like the wolf-like canids, and we might be able to say from their genetic similarity that they are related, but then there are the foxes which certainly didn't come from the same kind, yet their genes show they are related to wolves. Clearly then genetic studies are pointless and can contribute nothing useful to our knowledge. All of this still leaves the question: Why would God make the earliest rocks at Creation appear ~4.4 billion years old, consistent with an age of ~4.6 billion years for the oldest meteorites, and ~4.5 billion years old for the moon? Why not make them appear 0 years old, or mere millions? Why leave evidence showing that the earth, moon, and the rest of the solar system originated billions of years ago when it isn't true? If God really does go about leaving such false impressions in the natural world, then studying it is useless.

Kind of takes all of the fun out of science doesn't it?

 

[Scott J]

Originally posted by Petrel:

JWI, you could turn that post right around and say that most people who believe in a young earth creation believe that because they were taught so by people that they trust as children, it has been presented as truth by others around them all their lives, and they have a great respect for theologians who teach a literal interpretation of Genesis 1.

If you gave someone with no presuppositions about origins the Bible and told them that it was reliable and truthful then asked them to tell you how the world came to be according to Genesis as interpretted by the example of other OT and NT writers... they would tell you it was a literal account.

Simply put, no where does the Bible allude to the notion that Genesis is an allegory. The most devastating testimony against your assertion comes from the NT writers themselves. They don't treat Adam, Noah, the Flood, or creation as anything other than historical accounts and persons.

 

[JWI]

Petrel

I was not raised in a religious home whatsoever. My parents are well educated and really did not talk about religion at all. My father always called God "the man upstairs" and believed in God, but he never really taught us anything, or read the Bible. Same for my mom.

Actually, even as a small child I was very skeptical of evolutionary teachings. Now this may sound ridiculous, but I actually remember our school textbooks teaching that eyes originated as sort of sunspots or freckles on top of creatures heads that over time evolved into eyes. Don't laugh, this was actually taught in schools at one time.

Even as a kid I knew this was ridiculous. Anybody who goes out and stares at the sun will go blind.

And the story of giraffes developing long necks because of famine. Only the tall giraffes would survive, so over millions of years giraffes developed long necks. Again, don't laugh, this is how evolution was taught. Well, even as a kid I wondered how the young giraffes survived. I mean, they aren't born 18 feet tall. It takes a while. I don't think they stay on mother's milk for years.

So a lot of this "science" seemed downright foolish to me even as a child.

And over the years I have done much study. The more I studied, the more I came to believe that evolution is false.

But it wasn't my parents or teachers who taught me this. I had to read for myself.

I have presented several links where leading evolutionists have been honest enough to admit there is no REAL transitional fossils found. No bizzare explanations like puncuated equilibrium can explain this away. They very fact that this bizarre theory exists proves the lack of transitional fossils.

But there are many other problems. Evolution is mathematically impossible. Even the famous astronomer Carl Sagen admitted that the chance of man evolving was something like 10 to the 38,000 power (I might be wrong on the exact number). That is a 10 with 38,000 zeros behind it. Try writing that out on paper. Yet, Sagen still believed in evolution, simply because man exists. He could not accept creation.

I freely admit that I believe creation by faith. But evolutionists call their THEORY science. It is not. It is a belief and a religion.

The lack of transitional fossils (which in reality is a true scientific fact)agrees with creation completely, but is a disaster for the theory of evolution.

And this belief in evolution has affected society in many ways. That is what my post about Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao-Tse-Tung was about.

 

[paidagogos]

Originally posted by Petrel:

In my case, I grew up being taught young earth creation (I learned about evolution as well by my own reading, but I always vehemently thought it was false). It is only recently after a lot of independent reading and thought that I've decided an old earth creation and evolution was the method God chose to make the universe and life.

Congratulations! You’re arrived.

I certainly have not been brainwashed into believing evolution by pro-evolution teachers. I'm not sure I ever had a pro-evolution teacher.

Since you’re making this a personal testimonial, may I propose that you may have been self-deceived? Of course, we can find any number of personal testimonials on any number of subjects from fad diets to get-rich-quick schemes. Testimonials prove nothing. So, what have you proven?

My college education was at a Christian university that taught a young earth creation, and my high-school biology education was in public school by a teacher who taught evolution but pointedly never told us if she thought it was true or not (my education before that was at a private Christian school--YE). At the graduate level evolution has been mentioned in passing in literally three of my courses. In the realm of evolution and cosmology I am essentially self-taught.

I conclude that your so-called Christian university did not do a very good job convincing you of creation or you simply chose not to believe it. This happens. Men have denied the doctrines that they once professed. What about inspiration, inerrancy, miracles, etc.? Do you believe these? Ernest Campbell got his undergrad degree from BJU and attended Union Theological Seminary. He later pastured the very liberal Riverside Church. He said, “I got my wife at BJ but I got my theology at Union.” Men have lost their faith or never really had it.

[ October 10, 2005, 06:32 PM: Message edited by: paidagogos ]

 

[paidagogos]

Originally posted by Petrel:

JWI, you could turn that post right around and say that most people who believe in a young earth creation believe that because they were taught so by people that they trust as children, it has been presented as truth by others around them all their lives, and they have a great respect for theologians who teach a literal interpretation of Genesis 1.

This is true as well as JWI’s observations about evolutionists. It’s a question of antithetical paradigms. Both are believed by faith. It is simply a matter of what you believe—a literal interpretation of a Divine Revelation, the Bible, or various human theories to explain certain phenomenon according to an already accepted position.

However, if anyone truly examines young earth creation, they will find it has tremendous problems.

This is your opinion unsubstantiated by evidence. YE creationists can find as many problems with the whole host of evolutionary theories.

Some people have been so indoctrinated with this theory that they have real trouble looking at the substantial evidence against it. It truly shakes up their entire belief system.

And it ought to shake up their belief system if they understand the irreconcilable conflict between evolution, not science, and Christianity.

However, there are MANY people who willingly believe this lie even after convincing evidence has been shown to them.

You are begging the question. You have not established that YE creation is a lie. This is all hot air and bluster. Some folks think if they yell loudly enough then they have made their point. You haven’t with all your adamant statements. Where is your unbiased, scientific attitude? Do you think that you have finally comprehended it all and arrived at the TRUTH?

 

[paidagogos]

Originally posted by Petrel:

Regarding some people's misapplication of the theory of evolution to justify genocide, what relevance does that have to the truth or untruth of evolution?

Evolution is inherently racist. Certain concepts justify all kinds of atrocities. Nazism made a kind of crazy logic if you were an evolutionist.

You've left the bounds of science and entered the territory of philosophy.

Well, that is exactly what evolution is. It is beyond the limitations of science.

It's also true that some people have taken the biblical teaching of different gender roles and used it to justify essentially turning women into slaves.

They have misapplied and skewed the Scriptural teaching about women but evolutionary concepts taken to their logical ends are inherently racist. Sorry but that is just the way it is.

I trust you don't think that we should just throw this principle out because some people misuse it.

Again, you are begging the question. You have not established that they misused evolution. IMHO, they correctly carried the evolutionary principles to their repulsive extreme in societal application. Sometimes, a falsehood becomes apparent when pushed to its limits.

 

[paidagogos]

Originally posted by Petrel:

Regarding paidogogos, I think that if you take Genesis 1 as literal, you destroy all hope of a meaningful and knowable revelation from God through nature.

I am not a Thomist. I don’t think you can arrive at God, Christ and salvation through nature. It takes Divine Revelation, the Word of God.

There is no point in studying geology to find out when various strata were laid down because radiometric dating is completely invalid since (choose your poison) God created the rocks to look millions to billions of years old when they were brand new, decay rates used to be much higher and have dropped off in an unpredictable way so that it is impossible to accurately date rocks, or all of the strata were laid down at a known point 4000 years ago in the Flood anyways--don't try to reconcile the fossil record in the strata of the Grand Canyon and the radiometric dating of those rocks with an origin 4000 years ago, you'll just fry your brain.

Even evolutionists cannot reconcile the record. You’re flailing the air here. You are not accurately representing my position here.

Moreover, there is no point in studying genes to determine what animals are related.

Nonsense! Their relation is functional, not homological.

Certainly we can assume some came from an original kind, like the wolf-like canids, and we might be able to say from their genetic similarity that they are related, but then there are the foxes which certainly didn't come from the same kind, yet their genes show they are related to wolves.

You’re lost in cyberspace. How do you know foxes and wolves did not come from the same kind? What is a kind? I don’t think we are referring to species. As a self-taught evolutionist, who was educated as a YE creationist, you surely don’t know what creationists teach about the Biblical “kind”.

Clearly then genetic studies are pointless and can contribute nothing useful to our knowledge. All of this still leaves the question:

This doesn’t follow from your original premise. You’re making unwarranted assumptions and outlandish conjectures.

Why would God make the earliest rocks at Creation appear ~4.4 billion years old, consistent with an age of ~4.6 billion years for the oldest meteorites, and ~4.5 billion years old for the moon?

How do you know that He did? You are assuming that your dating theory is correct. Until you can establish your dating theory, we don’t need to second-guess what God may be doing.

Why not make them appear 0 years old, or mere millions?

Again, you have not established that He did. The appearance of age is not something that God necessarily did but it appears old according to your theory which may or may not be true.

Why leave evidence showing that the earth, moon, and the rest of the solar system originated billions of years ago when it isn't true?

Did God do this? Or, did you presume it according to your dating theory.

If God really does go about leaving such false impressions in the natural world, then studying it is useless.

You took a wrong turn and have arrived at a dead end. Perhaps you ought to have looked at the signs before you turned. This is childish nonsense.

Kind of takes all of the fun out of science doesn't it?

Well, you haven’t shown me any science yet. All you have done is tell me a fairy tale. Unfortunately, it’s a fairy tale that you believe.

 

[Bunyon]

"The actual process is one of slow degrees of change.The actual process is one of slow degrees of change."

Ok then, UTEOTW, neither can I imagine a succession of tornados coming through a junkyard over thousands of years assembling a ball point pin or anything of any complexity-ever.

 

[Petrel]

Scott J:

This is still an unresolved problem for me. First of all, I think that Adam and Eve did probably exist, although not 6000 years ago. But I tend to think that they were the first real humans with souls, and that they did experience a real fall. As for the treatment of the creation week and the Flood as literal, I've read that the classification of a mythic story as "true" or "false" is a relatively new concept. In times before Greek philosophy it may not have been an issue. Additionally, even if the stories are not literally true, they teach true principles which I think are really the key.

JWI:

Interesting that we apparently both learned about science and evolution on our own and have come to different conclusions. Also interesting that six years ago my beliefs lined up pretty well with yours.

paidogogos:

Holy moly, that's enough replies!

First of all, it's possible that I'm self-deceived. It's also possible that you're self-deceived, and it's also possible that some unknown person on the other side of the earth is self-deceived. And?

Oh, and I did not mean to "prove" anything by saying I arrived upon my conclusion on this on my own except that JWI's paradigm of people believing evolution only because they are brainwashed is false.

Secondly, thanks for giving some evidence to the person who was aghast a few pages ago that a young earth creationist would ever say that a theistic evolutionist is un-Christian or spiritually immature. Yes, I believe in Scriptural inspiration and inerrancy and in miracles--sorry to disappoint.

You are begging the question. You have not established that YE creation is a lie. This is all hot air and bluster. Some folks think if they yell loudly enough then they have made their point. You haven’t with all your adamant statements. Where is your unbiased, scientific attitude? Do you think that you have finally comprehended it all and arrived at the TRUTH?

I thought you had noticed that I was poking fun at JWI's post regarding theistic evolutionists by rewording it from the opposite point of view. Now that you have reprimanded me for assuming that my position is true, I hope you will be fair and correct JWI, who posted originally, as well.

Evolution is inherently racist.

Oh good, company for jcrawford!

And you're off-base. Evolution taken to its logical conclusion does not result in racism. If you say that this is true, then you are providing a foundation for those who say that morality can be derived from the evolutionary process rather than morality depending upon God. Evolution is a description of what is, it is not a statement about what ought to be. The people who commit "ethnic cleansing" act out of selfishness and pride, and the theory of evolution is just an excuse. In the same way, misogynists act out of selfishness and pride, and biblical gender roles are just an excuse.

I have no idea why you think that I, "educated as a YE creationist," have no idea what a biblical "kind" is. My definition of biblical "kind" is based upon a common YE definition of kind, which is a group of species capable of interbreeding to produce live young. All of the wolf-like canids can interbreed, but they cannot interbreed with foxes (and most foxes cannot interbreed to produce live young).

Regarding gene studies and radiometric dating, I would be interested if you could propose another model that would explain the data. Right now all I'm seeing from you on that front is hand-waving, rhetoric, and assumptions.

I did not go heavily into the scientific data because this didn't seem the place for it. If you would like to talk about that, there are some threads open in the Science forum.

 

[JWI]

Petrel said,

"Evolution taken to its logical conclusion does not result in racism."

Oh no??

RACISM
Darwinian racism. *Charles Darwin's 1859 book, The Origin of the Species, had as its subhead: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.

Both Darwin and many of his followers were racists. They wanted to exterminate any group of people who stood in their way or were less fortunate.

Darwin, himself, openly taught that the whites would kill all the blacks, as well as other "lower races" within a century or two—and that it would be merely ongoing evolutionary development in progress.—pp. 31-33.

OTHER ASPECTS
Eugenics. *Sir Francis Galton, Darwin's cousin, coined the word, "Eugenics." He taught that the best way to improve mankind was to kill off the less-favored people.

But, of course, the practical outworking of such a theory would be that the ones deciding who should not be eliminated—would be those with the most guns—whether it be white Europeans, black Africans, or yellow Asiatics. "We are the best race" can be applied by anyone to themselves.

The fruits of this theory were carried out by *Adolf Hitler in the extermination camps of Germany and Poland. Eugenics was another gift of Darwinism to the world. The "German experiment" revealed the objectives of the evolutionists.—pp. 33-34.

Care for the poor and needy. *Charles Darwin believed that the poor and needy should be left to die, unhelped by their neighbors. Apparently the only people who favored the Darwinists were the well-to-do members of the white race.—p. 34.

Big business. Powerful leaders of both business and labor unions looked to *Darwin as their guiding light. They saw, in his theories of biological evolution, the justification for what they wanted to do to get ahead.

Men like *John D. Rockefeller and *Andrew Carnegie were strong Social Darwinians. They justified ruthless competition as the price of evolutionary progress.—p. 34.

Public education. *John Dewey, a zealous evolutionist, founded the "progressive education movement" in America. He called his philosophy "instrumentalism." Based on evolutionary concepts, it advocated strong government-controlled education.

But "progressive education" was nothing more than careful animal training. In 1933, Dewey became a charter member of the American Humanist Association and its first president. The AHA was the successor to the earlier American Association of Atheists. Atheists now call themselves "humanists."

The indoctrination of the youth into acceptance of evolutionary theory has been seen as a prime objective of the evolutionists.—pp. 34-35.

Taken from;

http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/21soc02.htm

 

[JWI]

Here is a page with many quotes from evolutionists admitting the lack of evidence.

http://www.bibleuniverse.com/creation/evolution.asp