The lie of evolution

[paidagogos]

Originally posted by Petrel:

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).

The fact is that we don’t know what Biblical “kinds” are. It’s all conjecture. You affirmed my point by relating “kind” to speciation or interbreeding. There may have been very few “kinds”. We have no way of knowing how our modern concept of species relates to “kinds” or if there is any comparability. Even species of dogs, wolves and foxes were in one “kind” , we do not know about their interfertility that may have been lost at some point in the past. We simply can’t say that interbreeding is the test.

 

[JackRUS]

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.

We can't help it if we see the sky to be blue - it just looks blue to our eyes. We can't help it if the earth looks 4 and a half billion years old to our investigations - it just turned out that way. We can't help it if the earth bears a history of previous life going back millions and millions of years - its there and more of it keeps coming along. We can't help it if the tree of life that came out from the analysis of the fossils came to be confirmed to the same branches and twigs when the chemical and genetic signatures became available for investigations.

Even if it means we can't accept the literal interpretation some of us have accepted in the past.

Its a psychological impossibility.
Who amoung us would start saying the earth doesn't rotate, as a cause of day and night? We can't do that any more.

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?

I'm sorry to say that most people if not all that mave been "Christians all of their lives" (please note the word "all")have never been born again. They were only born into a religion. That may or may not be the case with you, but it's true.

And BTW, the answer to your last question is this. The One Who did it for me when I was saved at the age of 44 after being and ardent evolutionist all of my so-called educated life was the Holy Spirit through His Word.

 

[JackRUS]

Originally posted by Magnetic Poles:
Paul of Eugene and Petrel,

Very well said. I too would not call God a liar. If observation is not in accordance with any particular interpretation of scripture, then the interpretation is wrong. God does not lie.

The dogmatic insistence on a literal approach to the Genesis account is a major stumbling block to many who think they must accept it literally to be saved by God's grace. Jesus did not say "Believe on me and accept a young earth and you will be saved." Scripture does not tell us "that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him, and accepts the idea of a young earth and that evolution didn't happen, shall have everlasting life."

That's true, but do you have the real Jesus? (2 Cor. 11:1-4)

If your Jesus created a large rock and waited for a Big Bang and then let nature take it's course while He either played golf or took a long nap, then you have "another Jesus". And the Holy Spirit hasn't been doing His job of revealing the real Jesus to you. Which is a red flag that you may have never been born again.

And as I have noted here many times before, Jesus also took a literal view of Genesis. Why don't you?

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Originally posted by JackRUS:
I'm sorry to say that most people if not all that mave been "Christians all of their lives" (please note the word "all")have never been born again. They were only born into a religion. That may or may not be the case with you, but it's true.

And BTW, the answer to your last question is this. The One Who did it for me when I was saved at the age of 44 after being and ardent evolutionist all of my so-called educated life was the Holy Spirit through His Word.

Just to lay to rest any doubts about my own case, I walked the aisle to accept Christ as my personal saviour at about the age of nine. I recall the moment today, as I was walking towards the preacher, and Christ came into my heart between one step and the next. I was raised by a Christian family and they taught me to tithe my allowance, and so I can say to this day every penny I have ever earned has been tithed all of my life. I know that doesn't save me, but I simply submit that as evidence, in line with Christ's words, "where a man's treasure is, there will his heart be also".

 

[Paul of Eugene]

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

Racism is found in Christians, in Communists, and in all the other isms you can name. It is a human failing, and there is no logical connection to evolution.

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

Real scientists will continue to ignore religous objections to what they study.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Originally posted by JackRUS:

And as I have noted here many times before, Jesus also took a literal view of Genesis. Why don't you?

Jesus never said anything that opposes interpreting Genesis to be in accord with the findings of science. In order to believe this, you have to add to what He said.

 

[just-want-peace]

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 thread IS NOT about YE vs OE, but evolution.


But to answer your statement here though;

Gen 1:1-2 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

These two verses have NO mention of any time factor, so they could be ten trillion years, OR, if attached to the next 3 verses;

Gen 1:3-5 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Then the time frame is the 6,000 +/- years of the YE'ers.

Point being that personally I won’t argue for a YE , but I believe that there is a DIRECT connection between the first two verses, and the next three.

Specifically, my belief is that verses one and two are part of the same “creation period” as the light and darkness; IE And the evening and the morning were the first day., and therefore a YE

Regardless of the earth’s age, I know that ALL of creation from verse three on is, without a doubt, YOUNG EARTH!!!

How do I know that? Simple, “The Bible tells me so!”

 

[Petrel]

Originally posted by paidagogos:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Petrel:

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).

The fact is that we don’t know what Biblical “kinds” are. It’s all conjecture. You affirmed my point by relating “kind” to speciation or interbreeding. There may have been very few “kinds”. We have no way of knowing how our modern concept of species relates to “kinds” or if there is any comparability. Even species of dogs, wolves and foxes were in one “kind” , we do not know about their interfertility that may have been lost at some point in the past. We simply can’t say that interbreeding is the test. </font>[/QUOTE]Danger, Will Robinson! You are playing into the evil theistic evolutionists' hands! The reason most young earthers seem to limit "kind" to interbreeding species is because on initial examination it appears to give a concrete cap to the amount of evolution that is allowed to occur. If we extend "kind" to species that seem to be related genetically and morphologically yet are dissimilar enough that they are incapable of interbreeding, why can't we push back the definition of "kind" further? If we expand the wolf-like canid kind to include all canids, why can't we push it back to a common ancestor between the canids and bears? Once we've made that step, how about including raccoons and weasels with the bears and canids in an original kind? Where will it all end!

That is the trouble, all attempts to define what a kind is and to cap the maximum allowable amount of evolution have been arbitrary. Either we render genetic studies meaningless by arbitrarily excluding evidence of a evolutionary relationship in species "too different" to be related or we accept the evidence of evolutionary relationships beyond what the young earth framework will allow.

just-want-peace, having the earth hang in limbo aging for billions of years will help fix some of the radiometric dating (excluding the problem of where the fossils in those rocks could have come from), but there is still the problem of dating of the moon and meteorites showing an origin of the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago. I suppose God could have made the asteroids before the first day along with the earth, but the moon would definitely post-date them (being made 6000 years ago) and thus should appear younger. Unless God is purposefully attempting to make the universe look like it originated billions of years ago when it didn't--but why would he do that?

 

[bapmom]

Unless God is purposefully attempting to make the universe look like it originated billions of years ago when it didn't--but why would he do that? [/QB]

I know this has probably been said before.....but if God created a fully formed moon, just created it with the spoken word, so that it appeared as it is essentially today.....than wouldn't it "look" much older than it in fact is?

Think about it, the Bible indicates that Adam and Eve were created as fully grown adults. Does this mean God "lied" or created a "deception" so that if there were an observer they would think that Adam had already lived on earth for 30 years, when in fact he had been created that very day? No, its just a function of God having created the first two humans as adults.
Its the same with the earth. He created it with fully formed rocks, and fully formed water, and a fully functioning magnetic field, and a fully functioning set of universal laws.

Now please do not claim that Im saying God added fossils. There is no proof anywhere that the fossils are actually as old as evolutionists claim they are. Carbon dating? The same carbon dating that claimed that a branch from a living tree was something like 3 million years old? Ok, you trust carbon dating if you want to. But even evolutionists don't consider it all that trustworthy anymore.

 

[JWI]

Radiometric Dating is very controversial and has been shown to very inaccurate in a number of cases.

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/dating.html#Why%20methods%20in%20general%20are%20inaccurate

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Babmom, carbon dating only goes back to about 40-50 thousand years at the most. For the earlier dating, other elements are involved, including the uranium to lead series, for example.

But I'm curious about your sentence "even evolutionists don't consider it all that trustworthy anymore". I wonder if you have any evidence anywhere of scientists who go along with that sentence? Because I have not noticed that happening yet. This would be big news if it were true.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Here's a link where a real scientist exposes the fallacy of "creationist" attacks against radioactive dating:

http://www.tim-thompson.com/radiometric.html

 

[Paul of Eugene]

It is an interesting thing to contemplate the creation of the moon. There it is out there, complete with - craters. Indeed, every airless body in the entire solar system bears mute testimony to a great deal of bombardment having occurred througout the solar system. Such would have destroyed our earth; but most of it occurred so many millions of years ago that on earth, where erosion and weathering and tectonic plate movement occur, the evidences are weathered away.

There is no place in the creationist time table for this massive cratering. Yet it is perfectly feasible to imagine a moon created without impact craters. So why would God create a lie, that is, a history of impacts on the moon that never happened?

He didn't. The history really happened.

 

[UTEOTW]

Originally posted by JWI:
Radiometric Dating is very controversial and has been shown to very inaccurate in a number of cases.

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/dating.html#Why%20methods%20in%20general%20are%20inaccurate

And here is a two part response to that very website.

http://www.tim-thompson.com/plaisted-review.html
http://www.tim-thompson.com/plaisted-review2.html

And to show I am a sporting fellow, here is the response to the criticism by the author of the page to which you linked.

http://www.tim-thompson.com/plaisted-review3.html

Just give it all a good read.

You will find that this link of yours, just like the others you have provided, is found to be wanting when weighed in the balances. It is another case of making hay with misepresention of the facts.

 

[Mercury]

Originally posted by JWI:
Yes, if Genesis is an allegory, then perhaps the whole Bible is an allegory.

Would you also say that if Song of Solomon is an allegory, then perhaps the whole Bible is an allegory? If the Psalms are poetic, does this mean the whole Bible is poetic? Why would anyone try to limit the Bible to a single type of literature?

Originally posted by JWI:
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.

Are you aware that the first "races" mentioned in Origin of Species are races of cabbage? (It's in chapter 1; the sentence reads in part: "...if we could succeed in naturalising, or were to cultivate, during many generations, the several races, for instance, of the cabbage, in very poor soil...".) Do you consider it racist to divide cabbage into races? Are you aware that the word "race" used to be nearly synonymous with "species", but has since taken on different connotations?

Would you also suggest that any writer from the 1800s who wrote about feeling "gay" was a homosexual? Or, is it only in special cases that you judge people's words from long ago by the words' present-day meanings?

 

[Travelsong]

Originally posted by UTEOTW:
You will find that this link of yours, just like the others you have provided, is found to be wanting when weighed in the balances. It is another case of making hay with misepresention of the facts.

Are you suggesting someone would do that deliberately????

 

[Mercury]

Originally posted by paidagogos:
Then, there's no literal Adam and Eve. So, it skews your theology of sin. If we evolved, when and how did sin enter?

Sin entered the world when humans sinned. Regardless of when or how this happened, sin has entered the world. This should be self-evident, except to those who claim to be sinless. And for such individuals, I would suggest that it is more important for them to be convicted of how they themselves fall short of the glory of God instead of convincing them that they inherited a defect from a distant ancestor. I don't think someone can truly repent if all they're repenting for is what Adam did. They also need to repent for their own rebellion against God.

So, in short, if a person's views on Adam cause them to lose the idea of sin, then they never really understood their personal responsibility for sin in the first place.

Besides, you have destroyed all hope of a meaningful and knowable revelation from God if you reject creation and allegorize Genesis.

One reason for not taking the Genesis accounts literally is because of accepting creation and what it says. Other reasons are within Genesis, such as how Genesis 1 reads unlike any historical account in the entire Bible -- totally unlike the style of Samuel/Kings or Acts, for instance. The closest parallel to the seven day account of creation would be the accounts of the seven seals, trumpets and bowls in Revelation. It is no more crucial to think that God's acts of creation occurred over literal days than to think that God's wrath will be poured out of literal bowls.

Originally posted by Plain Old Bill:
Well let's ask the question. Was there a literal Adam and Eve? I believe among Christian evolutionists there are several kinds of evolution ( I got that idea from Erickson)so let's give them a chance to share thier views.

Thanks, Bill. I've shared a number of times that I am undecided on this issue, but lean toward Adam and Eve representing the first humans (similar to how the Hebrew word "Adam" represents both Adam and Eve in Genesis 5:2, and perhaps also in Romans).

 

[Petrel]

Originally posted by bapmom:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Unless God is purposefully attempting to make the universe look like it originated billions of years ago when it didn't--but why would he do that?

I know this has probably been said before.....but if God created a fully formed moon, just created it with the spoken word, so that it appeared as it is essentially today.....than wouldn't it "look" much older than it in fact is?

Think about it, the Bible indicates that Adam and Eve were created as fully grown adults. Does this mean God "lied" or created a "deception" so that if there were an observer they would think that Adam had already lived on earth for 30 years, when in fact he had been created that very day? No, its just a function of God having created the first two humans as adults.
Its the same with the earth. He created it with fully formed rocks, and fully formed water, and a fully functioning magnetic field, and a fully functioning set of universal laws.

Now please do not claim that Im saying God added fossils. There is no proof anywhere that the fossils are actually as old as evolutionists claim they are. Carbon dating? The same carbon dating that claimed that a branch from a living tree was something like 3 million years old? Ok, you trust carbon dating if you want to. But even evolutionists don't consider it all that trustworthy anymore. [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]If young earth creationism is true, what I would expect is that we would attempt to date the moon and find out that it is apparently 6000 years old, meaning it suddenly sprang out of nothingness 6000 years ago rather than forming from debris thrown out by a massive asteroid's collision with earth billions of years ago. There is no reason God would need to make it appear billions of years old by radiometric dating. The moon is made of igneous rock, and igneous rocks can be formed in mere years--billions are not necessary. My interpretation is that God actually wanted to make the moon go through the billions of years necessary to accrete and cool. Also consider that the moon has remained essentially unchanged for a billion years--why did God not make the moon appear 3.5 billion years old, then? It is so arbitrary.

Moreover, the growth of a person to maturity is something that actually does happen all the time. The creation of the moon was a singular event, so essentially God make it look like it happened in a way that never did occur and never will (unless he decides to end the world by blasting us with another Mars-sized asteroid, of course).

Fossils are not generally dated by carbon dating, as it's only good up to a maximum of 50,000 years in samples containing residual carbon. It is definitely not useful in living creatures. I've searched the internet for this instance of dating of a living thing (one person recently said it was a moth, you said it was a branch) and cannot find it. However, I do find that some live clams dated with carbon dating have shown anomalous dates, but that is to be expected in some instances because the carbon in their shells comes not only from carbon dioxide in the air dissolved in the water but from carbon leaching from the limestone they are attached to, which indeed may be thousands to millions of years old. This is known as the "reservoir effect." Carbon dating is still considered a quite reliable dating method.

 

[UTEOTW]

Originally posted by Travelsong:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by UTEOTW:
You will find that this link of yours, just like the others you have provided, is found to be wanting when weighed in the balances. It is another case of making hay with misepresention of the facts.

Are you suggesting someone would do that deliberately???? </font>[/QUOTE]

Seriously...

Look closely at the arguments from each side. Whenever a sufficiently detailed YE argument is made (I must make that "detailed" qualification because many are so nebulous as to not really be an argument at all.) or when a link is provided to a YE source, it is inevitibly quite easy to show mistakes. You can show where facts are presented incorrectly. You can show where references are misrepresented. You can show where quotes are taken out of context. In short, you can show specifically and directly wherethey are wrong.

Contrast that with the arguments against science. If I present a list of transitional fossils, no one is going to give a detailed anatomical description of why they are not really a transition. It will merely be denied. If you make an argument based on homology, there will be no attempt to dispute whether the homologies really exist, the implications will merely be denied. Vestiges and atavisms will be ignored. The methods are observations of genetic testing will not be shown to be flawed, they will just deny what the testing indicates without giving a good reason why that it is the case.

Radiometric dating will be assailed without ever showing changing decay rates or demonstrating actual flaws in the process. And so on through every line of reasoning. Genetic changes and the genome. Geology. Astronomy. Taphonomy. (One of favorites for those who claim that the flood made all the fossils because they just ignore you when you bring it up. They have to.) Paleontology. Twin nested heirarchy.

In almost all cases, the response is to simply deny the data. No attempt to show specific flaws. No attempt to provide a better, predictive, testable idea to explain the observations. Deny, deny, deny. In the rare case where arguments are presented... Well go back to the first paragraph. Their flaws are easy to point out.

 

[UTEOTW]

"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."

With a different meaning of "race." In this case you should read it as species or as variation within a species. It does not mean what you think.

And by our modern standards, Darwind would probably be considered to be a bit racist in his personal opinions. But by the standards of the day, he was very much a progressive and liberal thinker on matters of race.

"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'."

I tried, but I could not let this one go. This argument, like everything else inYE, is built upon a false premise.

Quoting from Mein Kampf.

"Human culture and civilization on this continent are inseparably bound up with the presence of the Aryan. If he dies out or declines, the dark veils of an age without culture will again descend on this globe. The undermining of the existence of human culture by the destruction of its bearer seems in the eyes of a folkish philosophy the most execrable crime. Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent Creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise."

"What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproductionof our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purityof our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that ourpeople may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the Creator of the universe."

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

"The folkish-minded man, in particular has the sacred duty, each in his own denomination, of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually fulfill God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will."

"Then, from the child's story-book to the last newspaper in the country, and every theatre and cinema, every pillar where placards are posted and every free space on the hoardings should be utilized in the service of this one great mission, until the faint-hearted cry, "Lord, deliver us," which our patriotic associations send up to Heaven to-day would be transformed into an ardent prayer: 'Almighty God, bless our arms when the hour comes. ' "

So are you advocating that we should all give up our beliefs because Hitler was a creationists? You did try and advocate that we should consider evolution evil because of your false assertion of its association with the Nazis!

How pathetic it is that YE is such an unsupportable idea on the facts that YEers must resort to such tactics as mounting a slander campaign based on a false premise. Can YE not stand on the observations? Does it really need to resort to such?