Evolutionary Science-v- Creationism

[Brown Thrasher]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

The problem is not in the cites, it's in how they're used.

Your post #485, for example, uses cites to determine the nature of a small part of the entire big picture of geology, and then makes a massive, UNCITED leap in paragraph three.

That's not science, it's dumb people trying to understand things without looking at the overall picture because the overall picture doesn't fit their conclusions.

It's as if one took measurements of the rate of cars driving down the highway between 8 and 9am, and made a massive leap to say that more cars drive east than west which proves that there is a car deficit in the west.

So they say they have shown sediment of dirt rolling into the sea. Where, then, are their cites which show how other geologic processes create MOUNTAINS of dirt OUT of the sea?

Duh?

It's all about your starting presuppositions and the way the evidence is interpreted. If you throw away some of the evidence, or just prefer to ignore it, you can come to any conclusion you like. Probably the wrong one though.

I find it hard to believe anyone involved in this post is actually "dumb". However, I'm not sure what you may consider dumb. An I.Q. of 90 or an opinion different from your own. I saw something humorous in one of the post about teaching fact was somehow providing morality. To me this is an oxymoron. Maybe I'm just a moron. Let's give this evolution vs. creationism a break. Maybe we could find out what some of the smarter people view as the facts concerning morality.........you may find the overall view does not fit mine or your conclusions.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Lady Sidhe

Ok...not sure if this will cause the globe to wobble on its axis, but I agree with Sycamore. I believe in a creator, by whatever name one chooses to call him, her, or it, and I think that if that creator chose to create the world through evolution, who's to say no?

One of the best issued of The Economist is after they have taken a week off to eat well. In the 1 Jan 2005 issue is this stunning piece entitled "It ain't necessarily so".

Why people of the book have such trouble with language, truth, and logic
Whatever meaning this well-known version of the Christmas story may have, it does not seem to be very accurate history. Father Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, a distinguished biblical scholar, lists the difficulties he sees. First, it is said elsewhere in the New Testament - and this is central to the story that Jesus was born in the last days of his would-be persecutor King Herod, who died in 4 BC. (The Christian system for dating Christ's birth was established at least three centuries later, so an error of a few years is not surprising.) But according to Josephus, a secular historian, the big census around that time (and the start of Cyrenius's governorship) took place in what Christians would call the "year of our Lord" 6 or, as today's secular historians now prefer, 6 CE (common era).

The problems do not stop there. For example, when the Romans counted their people, they insisted that everyone had to stay put, so a last-minute dash from one city to another seems unlikely. And as a protectorate under Herod, Palestine would not automatically have been included in an imperial census.

As a Dominican monk, whose views on some things, such as the virgin birth of Christ, are conservative, Father Jerome is unfazed by these contradictions. "The Gospels should be read spiritually, but with critical intelligence", he believes. Given that the two main accounts of Christ's birth - those of Matthew and Luke - are inconsistent, he prefers to rely mainly on the first, which moves from Christ's origins in Bethlehem to his upbringing, after an interlude in Egypt, in Nazareth. Moreover, in all the biblical material about Christ's beginnings, Father Jerome and other scholars see a deeper meaning: Christ is both a blue-blooded monarch from the royal city of Bethlehem, and a poor boy from the hardscrabble town of Nazareth from which nobody expected anything good. Even under the watchful eye of Pope John Paul II, who has reaffirmed the unchangeability of the truths maintained by the church, and the church's role as interpreter of the Bible, such bold readings of the New Testament are permissible. "What the church insists on is the spiritual message of the Bible, not its literal truth", says Father Jerome. If ordinary literal-minded worshippers said he was undermining their faith, he would conclude they were the victims of "bad preaching" and point out the impossibility of believing every word of an internally inconsistent text.

[tw]

So how can a president so immoral be elected by those who call themselves moral - the evangelicals? Again from the article entitled "It ain't necessarily so"

For the 70m or 80m people in the United States who call themselves evangelicals, the Bible is "the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative word of God", according to a definition by America's National Association of Evangelicals. So whenever the Bible seems inconsistent with beliefs held on other grounds, the instinct of an evangelical is to insist that the contradiction must be apparent, rather than real. Either secular historians are mistaken, or there has been some simple and easily rectifiable mistake - such as the mistranslation of a word - in the reading of scripture. Somehow the information received from holy writ and the evidence from other sources must be made to fit; and if that cannot be done, then the non-scriptural information must be dismissed.

One product of such intellectual contortions is "creation science" and an insistence on the literal truth of the proposition that God took seven days to create the world, with the evidence from fossils as a kind of decorative, but confusing, extra. Even wackier, from the secular viewpoint, is America's "biblical astronomy" movement which insists, under the guidance of a Dutch-born astrophysicist, Gerardus Bouw, that the sun goes round the Earth.

No problem as long as these extremists don't do the math for manned space flights. Then they would be imposing their religion on others - the real and original sin.

Do you take the bible literally - or just in its early spiritual sense?

[Troubleshooter]

From a biblical astronomy site: (note the domain)

http://www.parentalguide.com/Documen..._Astronomy.htm

A highlight from each portion.

1-BIBLICAL FACTS ON ASTRONOMY NOW PROVEN TO BE TRUE

Throughout much of the world’s history, people thought that the world was flat. Yet thousands of years ago, the Bible showed it was round. The Bible was right, people were wrong.
Isa 40:22-IT IS HE THAT SITTETH UPON THE CIRCLE OF THE EARTH.

2-BIBLICAL FACTS ABOUT NATURE NOW PROVEN TO BE TRUE
(God’s established order)

It has recently been learned that the eagle could see very small objects from great distances. Yet thousands of years ago, the Bible told of this.
Job 39:27,29-THE EAGLE…SHE SEEKETH THE PREY, AND HER EYES BEHOLD AFAR OFF.

3-THE UNIVERSE IS EXPANDING:
THE AREA IT IS STRETCHING OUT TO IS EMPTY

Throughout much of the world’s history, people did not understand the universe is expanding and stretching out into empty space. Science, in recent years, has confirmed that this is true. The Bible told about this thousands of years ago. The Bible was right, people didn’t understand.
Job 26:7-HE STRETCHETH OUT THE NORTH OVER THE EMPTY PLACE.

4-OTHER ITEMS ABOUT THE UNIVERSE

One might ask, "How is it possible the Bible recorded thousands of years ago such things as the bands of Orion and other astronomical information?" The answer remains the same—there is a God, and the Bible is the Word of God. He has also told us the future in His Word. As every single prophecy in the Bible regarding the past has been fulfilled, likewise, every single prophecy of the future will come to pass.
Job 38:31-CANST THOU BIND THE SWEET INFLUENCES OF PLEIADES, OR LOOSE THE BANDS OF ORION?

5-INVENTIONS

Could this be the telephone?
Job 38:35-CANST THOU SEND LIGHTNINGS (or we might say, electrical currents), THAT THEY MAY GO, AND SAY UNTO THEE, HERE WE ARE?

6-INSIGHTS ON ASTRONOMY

Astronomers, with their huge optical telescopes, radio telescopes, space telescopes, satellites, and many new types of detection devices are trying to measure "space." It is evident—the more they learn, the more vast the universe seems to be. They have found that "space" seems to extend billions of light years, and the galaxies seem to be almost without number.
The Bible told of this thousands of years ago. The Bible was right, yet many still don’t understand.
Jere 31:37-THUS SAITH THE LORD; IF HEAVEN ABOVE CAN BE MEASURED, AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE EARTH SEARCHED OUT BENEATH, I WILL ALSO CAST OFF ALL THE SEED OF ISRAEL. Since we know God will never cast off His people, we know that indeed heaven cannot be measured!

7-SOME OTHER THINGS THAT THE WORLD’S WISDOM MAY NOT UNDERSTAND

Ps 32:9-AS THE HORSE, OR AS THE MULE, WHICH HAVE NO UNDERSTANDING: WHOSE MOUTH MUST BE HELD IN WITH BIT AND BRIDLE, LEST THEY COME NEAR UNTO THEE (or they will not come to you-NIV).

8-ALL THINGS WERE CREATED BY JESUS CHRIST
As the previous things are true, so the following is true.

Col 1:16-FOR BY HIM WERE ALL THINGS CREATED, THAT ARE IN HEAVEN, AND THAT ARE IN EARTH, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE, WHETHER THEY BE THRONES, OR DOMINIONS, OR PRINCIPALITIES, OR POWERS: ALL THINGS WERE CREATED BY HIM, AND FOR HIM.

[Happy Monkey]

Well, Item 3 is wrong, at least. The empty space is expanding inside the universe.

[wolf]

[thinking really hard]but the size of the container cannot remain constant, unless there is some T.A.R.D.I.S. like effect to the edges of the universe ... [/head exploding]

[Happy Monkey]

There isn't a container. Imagine a 2-dimensional universe is the surface of a baloon, with a bunch of stars drawn on it. If the baloon is inflated, the stars get further apart, even though they aren't moving into empty space (remember, the air inside and outside the baloon aren't part of the 2d universe). Unlike ink on a baloon, matter has several forces stronger than the baloon holding it close together, so the stars themselves don't expand along with the empty space.

[wolf]

But the balloon gets bigger. That's what I meant. The stuff inside stays the same size and gets further apart, but the outside moves ...

[Happy Monkey]

No, the universe is the surface of the baloon, not the contents.

[wolf]

But the images on the balloon's surface are two dimensions ... and the universe as it is expanding is a three dimensional construct isn't it?

(I missed a lot of science classes along the way. My university considered "computer science" a "science" and that's how I filled my requirement ... no bio, no physics. I did take chemistry though, and promptly forgot all of it. Except the things that exploded.)

[Happy Monkey]

Perhaps our 3d universe is expanding into another dimension, but that's not visible from the point of view of us 3d creatures, just as the air woudn't be visible to 2d creatures on the baloon.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Perhaps our 3d universe is expanding into another dimension, but that's not visible from the point of view of us 3d creatures, just as the air woudn't be visible to 2d creatures on the baloon.

Welcome to string theory.

[Lady Sidhe]

Originally Posted by tw

One of the best issued of The Economist is after they have taken a week off to eat well. In the 1 Jan 2005 issue is this stunning piece entitled "It ain't necessarily so"...

etc., etc., etc......



According to some information I got a few years ago--and yes, I can probably find it if it's that big a deal--the census was taken in the spring...therefore, Jesus' birthday would be then, not on Dec. 25 (which was Mithra's birthday).

But I'm not sure what any of this has to do with creationism v. evolution.

And just to put in an extra two cents: no matter how it was done, whether by big bang, or an entity causing a big bang, or an entity slapping together some dust, we're here....believing in a creator doesn't hurt. Not believing in a creator doesn't hurt--unless you're talking to a bible-thumper who wants to save your soul, that is--we're here.

So what are we going to do about it?

Sidhe

[tw]

Originally Posted by Lady Sidhe

But I'm not sure what any of this has to do with creationism v. evolution.

Again from the Dominican scholar

"What the church insists on is the spiritual message of the Bible, not its literal truth", says Father Jerome. If ordinary literal-minded worshippers said he was undermining their faith, he would conclude they were the victims of "bad preaching" and point out the impossibility of believing every word of an internally inconsistent text.

Believe in creationism as we do 'Santa Claus' or 'Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf'. It is the spirit that counts. In the meantime, religion has no place in science.

Creationism is religion. Religion is about a relationship only between you and your god; often taught in parables. Evolution is science - taught with scientific tools, logical proofs, and numbers. Creationism is only the "word of an internally inconsistent text." It was a good first attempt at 'science'. Long since displaced by other and better science. Creationism is nothing more than religion - something only between you and your god. A spiritual concept not to be taken literally.

[OnyxCougar]

Originally Posted by Troubleshooter

It's worth the effort to copy and paste all of that stuff from other places but you won't read something that he actually took the time to compose and type?

No, and here's why:

Most of the things TW posts are long and I've had a tendency to disagree with.

And as to wolf's comment about basically, it would cause me to question my beliefs or be scared or whatever, no, it never occurred to me that anything TW had to say would be that impactful to me personally. Especially since I did answer the first incredibly long post, and I had to take it point by point, which TW seems to very much dislike. I fear if I would try to take those two very long posts point for point, he'd bust an artery.

Oh yeah, and because EVERY FREAKING TOPIC HE POSTS ON TURNS INTO GWB BASHING....

Not that I like GWB or agree with his policies or am "defending" him. I just don't think GWB has anything to do with this topic.