"If evolution is (true)/(not true)....

There is also a deceiver who goes around like a roaring lion seeking those to devour, or have you forgotten about that part?
We can prove the motion of the planets in our solar system. You cannot prove evolution, it's part of your faith as you intimate. But, go ahead if you wish... just don't claim it to be FACTUAL... it is not FACTUAL.
You must take a LOT of it on blind faith, and even though I was once as you are now, I am now convinced by the evidence from God's own universe that evolution (one kind changing into another kind, non-canine to canine for example) is impossible.

 

Hi, JJ! No I havn't forgotten about the deciever. Of course, we have different opinions about who is being decieved.

So what evidence from God's own universe do YOU propose that shows evolution is impossible? (And I wonder why Darwin and Gould missed it?)

 

They were deceived... They've changed their tune over time, haven't they. Slow changes over time... no, wait.. punctuated equilibrium.

We'll find evidence in the fossil record, but wait... there is no evidence anywhere in the fossil record. If there was, museum curators would be clamoring over it to display it prominently in their collections. Sorry, the "scientific" evidence for evolution doesn't exist, only wishful thinking and a lot of blind faith.

God doesn't change. He spoke and it came to be. Today I believe God's Word, not man's fantasies as I used to.

 

IMHO you are deceiving yourself, or being deceived at least, if you think there is no evidence in the fossil record. Since you brought up punk eek, here is a quote from Gould.

Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory," Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, 1983, Norton, New York.

There are a limited number of transitionals known between species. But as you move up the taxonomic ladder you find more and more examples of transitions.

The most amazing part is how all of the various lines of evidence comes together. There are many different ways of producing trees of ancestors and descendants, each of them independent from the others, and they quite remarkably tell the same general story.

 

HA HA HA the only things bones prove is that something was alive, and then it died.

 

That is why I said that the most amazing part is the way all the pieces fit together.

If all you had was the line of fossils going from Tetraclaenodon to modern horses and from Tetraclaenodon to rhinos, well you might have a point. It still would be strange to have all those animals that simply lived and died to have so many different morphological traits changing together but you could assert it.

But then why would horses and rhinos genetically test as being so close together? In your view, what is it about these two that make them test as genetically closer to each other than any thing else?

You also have occasional atavisms that show up in modern horses. In modern horses, the tibia and fibia are fused. Occasionally though, a horse will be born with these two bones unfused just as they were in what the fossils tell us are its ancestors. Horses have one toe per foot and have two degenerate toes called splints on each foot. Occasionally, horses will be born with these two extra toes fully formed just a they were in what the fossil record tells us are its ancestors. Why would they have the genes for making these parts if they never had them?

I also like the example of whales. YOu have this series of fossils going all the way back to a land dwelling ancestor. A group of modern land dwelling animals with an even number of toes on each hooved foot can also trace their ancestry back to this same group of fossil animals. The creatures included are animals such as deer, antelope, pigs, camels, and hippos.

Amazingly, genetic testing shows whales as being most closely related to these very animals. Why.

The fossil whales went through stages with legs that gradually changed. The rear legs basically went away and the front legs turned into flippers. DUring development, whale embryoes still make little hind legs that are later reabsorbed. Some whales are born with fully formed rear legs. Why would they have genes for making rear legs if they did not have ancestors with rear legs? The front flippers still have the humerous, radius, ulna, carpals, metacarpals and phylanges just like your arms do. The pelvis remains up in there somewhere.

Genetic testing revelas another curious aspect of the whales. Olfactory genes fall into two general categories. Animals such fish have genes for making a sense of smell to detect odors in water. Land dwelling animals have genes for detecting odord in air. Whales have dozens of genes that match the olfactory genes of land dwelling animals. Furthermore, since these genes are useless in the water, they have accumulated enough mutations to be not functional. Why would whales have genes that are only found in land dwelling ancesotrs if they did not have land dwelling ancestors?

There are many, many more such lines of evidence. Individually, you might be able to dismiss them in turn. But taken together, they present a compelling picture whose only conclusion is common descent. There is no other explanation for the wide range observations.

 

There is another explanation. God created them as they were to do what they did. I've been in your camp, I choose to believe that God created all things, fully formed, and the only thing we see today, and have ever seen, is variation of the kinds. Evolution (change from non-canine to canine for example) is impossible and unbiblical.

 

And how does this explain why whales have genes for making a useless sense of smell?

How does this explain why whales have genes for making rear legs?

How does this explain why we have these fossils intermediate between other forms who are also found in the same order in the fossil record?

And so on... The biggest problem with what you say is that it is arbitrary and capricious. There is no logical reason for anything. Everything can be explained away but no predictions can be made about what else we will find and nothing can be actually explained. It means that God, rather than being an intelligent designer, threw together a hodgepodge of traits with no logical rhyme or reason.

For that matter, define "canine" for us. Just dogs? Dogs and wolves? Dogs, wolves, coyotes, jackals and foxes? Dogs, wolves, coyotes, jackals, foxes, bears, weasals, ferrets, wolverines, raccoons and seals? Where do you draw the line and how do you know to draw the line right there?

 

The loss of body hair is an easy one.

The hair interferes with the evaporation of sweat. As humans evolved on the savannahs, they needed a better cooling system than before. Increasing the number of sweat glands helped, but extra sweat does little good if it just soaks the fur. So the body hair also became finer. Notice that the number of hair follicles did not change. These two changes are complemetary. It was intelligence, IMO, that then allowed the move to cooler climates. They figured out how to deal with that through something other than biology.

As for the rest, I don't know. I think some of the distribution of hair may have something to do with friction. I am not going any further down that line. I think I remember reading somewhere that hair loss can be correlated to testosterone levels. That would explain why men's hair is more likely to thin, but I do not know if it is true. Facial hair, body hair differences for that matter, could also be related to testosterone.

 

If evolution were true - the Gospel would not be true - but at least we would be getting really good results in the lab for things like abiogenesis and massive DECREASES in entropy etc etc.

New species would be popping out of the garden every day! Some would survive but most would die out as "Failed experiments".

 

Aw Bob, we appreciate your vote of confidence in the evolution mechanism, but since it has to work on single incremental improvements, it actually take eons to achieve what you are describing as taking place in days. On the other hand, I deplore the ease with which you cast the gospel aside just because of a few scientific discoveries.

 

The snakes that we see all around us (is this an Indiana Jones nightmare or what?) do not have legs. If snakes (or *some* snakes) had legs in the past, we have no record of anyone making that observation (that I'm aware of). Even if we had that record, we don't have a record of the timeline and physical changes that occured to snakes such that they "lost" their legs bringing them to be the snakes that we see all around us. All we have are bones buried in the ground that may or may not be laying in successive layers of sediment. That sediment could very well have been layered by hydrologic sorting during the great flood of Noah's time thus making the geologic column totally useless. That's the key for me. There is no observation or the hope of being able to go back and reconstruct the actual events of evolution. Since no observation can be done, and no reproduction of the process involved can be done, and we don't see it going on today, I cannot say that the scientific method is being properly applied to the question of evolution. "Evolution is science" is not only a horrible phrase, but the scientific method cannot be used to confirm a lot of the things that we are told prove that evolution ever occured. That being the case, faith must be employed in a large part of the question of the occurance of evolution. Now, who or what do you put your faith in? The god of time and chance, or the God that tells you in His written word, and by the greatly complex and finely-tuned physical universe, that He created it. Have you not read that *in the beginning* He created them male and female.

 

When we add our private doctrines to God's, we only make it harder to bring people to Him.

We may disagree on evolution and creationism, but when we say that one or the other rules out God, we do Him a grave disservice.

 

Have you not read that *in the beginning* He created them male and female. I see no wiggle room for evolution here. We we take God at his word, we honor Him.

 

Man (the human being) was created on the sixth day as recorded in Genesis 1:26-27. This is further explained, in a bit more detail, in Genesis 2:21-23. The phrase "in the beginning" is from Jesus. He clearly knew what happened and considered man's creation to be in the beginning.

 

If Genesis 1 were analogical, and we were living today in the seventh day, then this might not be the case.

Just a thought.

 

That's not the case at all. If we humans slowly adapt ourselves to, say, pond water, we'd build up some immunity to the naturally occurring critters. But few of us have speant a lifetime exposed to consumption of pond water. It's one of the reasons when you travel to, say Mexico or India, you're told to avoid the water there. The locals can consume it just fine, but foreigners might have a problem with it.

Now, this neither supports nor refutes Genesis 1. It simply provides an answer to the question you asked.

I dunno about that. Regardless of the evolution/creation debate, you and I still have an innate sinful nature that we need saving from. Last time I checked, the penalty for committing sins was spiritual death, a penalty which I cannot pay, but Jesus can.

Say what??? If one cannot see God in the natural, then one wil not be able to see God in the supernatural. Jesus is the great physician, not the great magician.

[ July 25, 2005, 01:35 PM: Message edited by: Johnv ]