[figment]

Originally Posted by Rios929

The birds evolved through adaption. Like I said at the end of the 100 years, some of the different groups couldn't even breed with each other. This basically means that they are two different species.

Evolution takes many many generations. An example would be if the birds you mentioned traveled to the island, and only some of them could get to the available food. Perhaps they ate certain seeds that required a longer beak to get to. Some of the birds had slightly longer beaks just by chance, like humans have varying hights. Anyway, only the birds with the longer beaks survived long enough to breed. The next generation is produced. And again only the ones with the longer beaks survive. Every generation for thousands of years has a slightly larger mean beak size than the last....

As for the morality thing....that may be more of a nature vs nurture debate. If you raise a child to do the "normally considered" wrong thing. Will they still have a desire to do right? Or does God, and his wishes only get the the child through word of mouth?

I think you are gettin hung up on the term evolution. It has a very loosely defined meaning. When creationist talk about evolution as fact, they are talking about the observed kind, not the theoretic, spontaneous kind like rocks combining to form life after a lightning strike or men being the decendants of frogs and monkeys. Largely, this is where the "evolutionist" and the "creationists" differ. There is also a separation amoung creationists about old and new earth theories (as there are differences among evolutionists in some areas)

[Rios929]

As I understand it, creationist thinkg that some species become extinct, and then god creates new species. Like dinosaurs became extinct, and god replaced them with humans. Evolutionist thing that species have a common ancestor. Some even believe that all species have one common ancestor, there are many factors to lead them to this conclusion.

Among the elite scientific community, creationists pretty much have no leverage at all.

Originally Posted by figment

It is obvious that the universe has a size to it that can be measured. That is a scientic observation and a Biblical one as well. You have no argument from me on that subject.

I never said I thought the universe had a size, just an age. I would say its definately not obvious that the universe has a size. Most famous physicists, for example Einstein and Hawking, think the universe has an infinate size.

[ER]

Originally Posted by Rios929

The birds evolved through adaption. Like I said at the end of the 100 years, some of the different groups couldn't even breed with each other. This basically means that they are two different species.

Evolution takes many many generations. An example would be if the birds you mentioned traveled to the island, and only some of them could get to the available food. Perhaps they ate certain seeds that required a longer beak to get to. Some of the birds had slightly longer beaks just by chance, like humans have varying hights. Anyway, only the birds with the longer beaks survived long enough to breed. The next generation is produced. And again only the ones with the longer beaks survive. Every generation for thousands of years has a slightly larger mean beak size than the last....

As for the morality thing....that may be more of a nature vs nurture debate. If you raise a child to do the "normally considered" wrong thing. Will they still have a desire to do right? Or does God, and his wishes only get the the child through word of mouth?

Are they different creatures, or did their environment produce different results within the same species? Those with longer beaks might have had better success, survived longer, and bred more in one environment, resulting in a next generation of longer-beaked birds. That's not evolution. That's the result of their environment promoting a specific genetic breed (i.e. the long-beaks survive). They're still birds. If you placed 1000 humans on an island, and their food source was 7ft up in the air, you'd eventually have a taller (on average) group of people, because the shorter would starve. Does that mean that they evolved, or selectively bred (i.e - shorter die out before reproducing)? Make sense?

Evolution talks about simple life-forms evolving into much more complex organisms. Funny how the natural order of things age and decay over time, yet Evolution tries to be the one exception. Evolution will tell you that an unthinking, non self-aware organism eventually grew into you and I -- sitting here having an intelligent conversion. Where did that intelligence and self-awareness come from?

Then there's that obvious question that is often asked of Evolution: if we evolved from apes, why do apes still exist?

Regarding morality...while some behaviors may be learned, others are not. I knew that when I used to drink and have casual sex with women, I was full of lust. No one told me that, but I knew it in my heart. In fact, it was considered the thing to do by all my friends and my family never condoned it, yet I had a sense of guilt I never could shake. Did that type of awareness of right and wrong evolve (since I wasn't taught that) - OR - was there something else there tugging at my heart, trying to lead me in a different direction?

Thanks for the discussion, by the way.

[Rios929]

Originally Posted by figment

The math behind my statement about life being formed by accident is based on statistical analysis of the time required for the conditions to be present to create a spontaneous event and the theoretic age of the universe. The statiscal analysis (numbers came from scientifc research) showed that this would take many factors of time more than 17 billion years. I can get the formula and the rationale in greater detail if you wish.

I'm having a hard time understanding how this could be possible. Wouldn't we need to know the frequency of which spontaneous life creating events occur, which is obviously impossible. Supposadly there are an unfathomable number of stars and planets in the universe, billions and billions and billions. For all we know there could be billions of planets that resemble earth.

[nomad]

Originally Posted by Rios929

I'm having a hard time understanding how this could be possible. Wouldn't we need to know the frequency of which spontaneous life creating events occur, which is obviously impossible. Supposadly there are an unfathomable number of stars and planets in the universe, billions and billions and billions. For all we know there could be billions of planets that resemble earth.

Apparently current research claims the universe is a finite size. You can't assume there are infinit planets like ours because space is limited - That's not my opinion, just what I've read.

This whole debate about life, the universe and everything has been done thanks to Mr. Adams and any number of university students with the munchies.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

[ER]

Originally Posted by Rios929

As I understand it, creationist thinkg that some species become extinct, and then god creates new species. Like dinosaurs became extinct, and god replaced them with humans

On an interesting note, the Book of Job (Chapter 40, verses 15-19) says this:

"Look at the behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly! His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron. He ranks first among the works of God, yet his Maker can approach him with his sword."

This text is debatable. Some believe that the Lord was describing an elephant or a hippo; others feel He was talking about a dinosaur such as the Brontasaurus (sp?), since He compares the tail to something as large and sturdy as a tree. If the latter is correct, that would place dinosaurs living along side men 3000-5000 years ago. Something to consider and investigate. Carbon-dating will tell you that selective fossils are millions of years old, but Creationists feel differently (i.e. the Flood during Noah's time could have produced the type of fossilization archaelogists find today). Since both sides have fairly thorough research, it's worth reading both.

[figment]

Originally Posted by Rios929

As I understand it, creationist thinkg that some species become extinct, and then god creates new species. Like dinosaurs became extinct, and god replaced them with humans. Evolutionist thing that species have a common ancestor. Some even believe that all species have one common ancestor, there are many factors to lead them to this conclusion.

Among the elite scientific community, creationists pretty much have no leverage at all.




I never said I thought the universe had a size, just an age. I would say its definately not obvious that the universe has a size. Most famous physicists, for example Einstein and Hawking, think the universe has an infinate size.

Science is all about observable facts and measurments. Evolutists require MUCH MORE faith to believe their theories of spontaneous life and common ancestry than the creation story....

I never heard a theory on the universe being infinate supported by science....and I never heard or read anything about God "replacing" dinosours with men.

If the universe has an age, it also has a distance measurment in light years. These are very basic concepts which are not seperate. They both support each other.

[Rios929]

Originally Posted by ER

Are they different creatures, or did their environment produce different results within the same species? Those with longer beaks might have had better success, survived longer, and bred more in one environment, resulting in a next generation of longer-beaked birds. That's not evolution. That's the result of their environment promoting a specific genetic breed (i.e. the long-beaks survive). They're still birds. If you placed 1000 humans on an island, and their food source was 7ft up in the air, you'd eventually have a taller (on average) group of people, because the shorter would starve. Does that mean that they evolved, or selectively bred (i.e - shorter die out before reproducing)? Make sense?

Evolution talks about simple life-forms evolving into much more complex organisms. Funny how the natural order of things age and decay over time, yet Evolution tries to be the one exception. Evolution will tell you that an unthinking, non self-aware organism eventually grew into you and I -- sitting here having an intelligent conversion. Where did that intelligence and self-awareness come from?

Then there's that obvious question that is often asked of Evolution: if we evolved from apes, why do apes still exist?

Yes, what you're describing is natural selection. A mechanism of evolution. Our theoretical birds changed into the long beaked birds in a few generations. A time that when compared to the age of the Earth is incredibly insignificant. But as you stretch that time more and more, more radical differences and many different branches from the original bird may be observed. Maybe some of them would become flightless and look like penguins.

This simple non-aware organism doesn't have to be anything besides just that. Natural selection will work on it regardless of whether it can think. You can do this yourself. You can't just jump from this simple organism to us though. There was millions and millions of years in between.

The big changes may be due to drastic changes in the environment. For example, 65 million years ago dinosaurs were the cream of the crop. Then something happened and they weren't able to adapt, but other animals could. So now there was new factors that influenced natural selection...

Originally Posted by ER

Regarding morality...while some behaviors may be learned, others are not. I knew that when I used to drink and have casual sex with women, I was full of lust. No one told me that, but I knew it in my heart. In fact, it was considered the thing to do by all my friends and my family never condoned it, yet I had a sense of guilt I never could shake. Did that type of awareness of right and wrong evolve (since I wasn't taught that) - OR - was there something else there tugging at my heart, trying to lead me in a different direction?

Thanks for the discussion, by the way.

Why didn't just god not make you lust in the first place? Why doesn't he have the same effect on all people? Maybe you felt the guilt because you were aware of the concept of god before you started drinking and lusting.

[figment]

Originally Posted by Rios929

Why didn't just god not make you lust in the first place? Why doesn't he have the same effect on all people? Maybe you felt the guilt because you were aware of the concept of god before you started drinking and lusting.

The concept of good and bad, right and wrong take some time to fully consider. If God created humans without the capacity to do wrong, they could not do anything "right". They would just be "robots". God gave us something unique, called free will.

[Rios929]

[quote=figment]Science is all about observable facts and measurments. Evolutists require MUCH MORE faith to believe their theories of spontaneous life and common ancestry than the creation story....

QUOTE]


Well, The genetic code for all life on Earth is exactly the same. Four nucleotide bases in different orders and ammounts. From there a limited number (20 if i rember correctly) of amino acids combine in different ways to produce different proteins.

You can take a dna sequence from a human, splice it into the plasmid (circular chromosome) of a bateria, and replicate it as much as you want.

I think the similarities amoung life on earth far outweigh the differences.

[BDA116]

Science has always been wrong as often as they are right. Science is nothing more than making up theories and trying to prove them right. The "most knowledgeable" scientists of their times used to think the Earth revolved around the sun, the Earth was flat, the Earth revolved around the moon, etc.
Fact is, later scientists proved them wrong. Scientists prove each other wrong all the time, and what is belived as solid fact by the elitist scientists today may well be proven absolutely false later down the line.
Maybe even when man evolves into some higher creature - I mean, it is time for that to happen, right? Man has been existed for how many thousand years? Shouldn't we have a "new man" by now?
How can anyone prove that the dinosaurs actually walked this Earth? If the "big bang" was the result of many particles coming together to form our planet, is it not possible that another planet where the dinos existed is exploded and sent it's chunks to our planet?
Like Figment said, all the scientific crap takes more faith to believe in than religious beliefs. It is funny how those that choose to believe it try to force it as fact, although it can never be proven, down everyone's throats while whining about the religious trying to teach them "creationist" beliefs.
Believe in the unprovable scientific theories if you wish, your great to the 100th power grandfather was an ape. Good for you.
I choose to believe we were created by a God and in his image. Good for me.
Neither can prove with a complete certainty that either is true with means known to man. Both take faith, and the argument is silly.

[figment]

Originally Posted by Rios929

I'm having a hard time understanding how this could be possible. Wouldn't we need to know the frequency of which spontaneous life creating events occur, which is obviously impossible. Supposadly there are an unfathomable number of stars and planets in the universe, billions and billions and billions. For all we know there could be billions of planets that resemble earth.

The numbers were garnered from current understanding about chemical and organic activity at a molecular level. I can provide you with a quote from my reference later....

[Rios929]

Originally Posted by figment

The concept of good and bad, right and wrong take some time to fully consider. If God created humans without the capacity to do wrong, they could not do anything "right". They would just be "robots". God gave us something unique, called free will.

So why didn't he create us with an inclination to do right with the knowledge of what would be wrong and a capacity to do so? The bible says masterbation and premarital sex are wrong, but everyone inheritly wants to do these things.

If there was a kid who was born secluded and lived a secluded life who had never heard or seen another human, and had no way of hearing about god. Do you think that kid would beat his meat when he hit puberty? And if so, would he feel guilt?

[figment]

[quote=Rios929]

Originally Posted by figment

Science is all about observable facts and measurments. Evolutists require MUCH MORE faith to believe their theories of spontaneous life and common ancestry than the creation story....

QUOTE]


Well, The genetic code for all life on Earth is exactly the same. Four nucleotide bases in different orders and ammounts. From there a limited number (20 if i rember correctly) of amino acids combine in different ways to produce different proteins.

You can take a dna sequence from a human, splice it into the plasmid (circular chromosome) of a bateria, and replicate it as much as you want.

I think the similarities amoung life on earth far outweigh the differences.

Your argument here points to the argument for creation-by-design more than chaos. THINK about it. In fact, this is a popular "creationist" argument....

[figment]

Originally Posted by Rios929

So why didn't he create us with an inclination to do right with the knowledge of what would be wrong and a capacity to do so? The bible says masterbation and premarital sex are wrong, but everyone inheritly wants to do these things.

If there was a kid who was born secluded and lived a secluded life who had never heard or seen another human, and had no way of hearing about god. Do you think that kid would beat his meat when he hit puberty? And if so, would he feel guilt?

I have no idea what the child would or would not do. Sin (rebellion) requires KNOWLEDGE. If he did not know right from wrong, he could not do "wrong". Adam had to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to fall...

[Rios929]

Originally Posted by BDA116

Science has always been wrong as often as they are right. Science is nothing more than making up theories and trying to prove them right. The "most knowledgeable" scientists of their times used to think the Earth revolved around the sun, the Earth was flat, the Earth revolved around the moon, etc.
Fact is, later scientists proved them wrong. Scientists prove each other wrong all the time, and what is belived as solid fact by the elitist scientists today may well be proven absolutely false later down the line.
Maybe even when man evolves into some higher creature - I mean, it is time for that to happen, right? Man has been existed for how many thousand years? Shouldn't we have a "new man" by now?
How can anyone prove that the dinosaurs actually walked this Earth? If the "big bang" was the result of many particles coming together to form our planet, is it not possible that another planet where the dinos existed is exploded and sent it's chunks to our planet?
Like Figment said, all the scientific crap takes more faith to believe in than religious beliefs. It is funny how those that choose to believe it try to force it as fact, although it can never be proven, down everyone's throats while whining about the religious trying to teach them "creationist" beliefs.
Believe in the unprovable scientific theories if you wish, your great to the 100th power grandfather was an ape. Good for you.
I choose to believe we were created by a God and in his image. Good for me.
Neither can prove with a complete certainty that either is true with means known to man. Both take faith, and the argument is silly.

Well, I finally disagree with something BDA said. I usually agree with everything you say since I'm a conservative republican.

anyway, Yes man has been around for thousands of years. Thousands of years is nothing, absoulutely nothing. The univers is beleived to be 17 billion years old, the earth 4 billion, and homo Sapiens a few hundred thousand years. There is an analogy that goes something like....If the the age of the universe was brought down to the scale of a week, the earth would have formed a day ago, and humans would have emerged 8 seconds ago. I probably got that wrong, but its something like that. So is it time for humans to evolve? Absolutey not. Evolution occurrs slowly through millions and millions of years. I think humans have a higher chance of becoming extinct than evolving.


As for how can we prove that dinosaurs walked on the earth. We have tons of fossils. Did god put those bones in that configuration just to screw with us. There is a lot more proof that dinosaurs existed than there is that god exists.

[Rios929]

Originally Posted by figment

Your argument here points to the argument for creation-by-design more than chaos. THINK about it. In fact, this is a popular "creationist" argument....

I don't think so.

It's one of the most relevant "evolutionary" arguements. In fact evolution as we know it would not be possible without this common genetic code.

The bible sure doesn't mention anything about nucleotides when describing the creation of man.

[figment]

Originally Posted by Rios929

Did god put those bones in that configuration just to screw with us. There is a lot more proof that dinosaurs existed than there is that god exists.

Absolutely not. The Bible says that creation testifies to the existence of God. So we should be able to reconcile creation and its properties Biblicly.

[Rios929]

Originally Posted by BDA116

The "most knowledgeable" scientists of their times used to think the Earth revolved around the sun, the Earth was flat, the Earth revolved around the moon, etc.

It's funny that you use this as an example since the church wanted to have the scientists that discovered the truth about those things killed. In fact, isn't that how Gallilaeo died?

[figment]

Originally Posted by Rios929

The bible sure doesn't mention anything about nucleotides when describing the creation of man.

Your not taking into consideration the audience of the Bible or its purpose. It is not a "proof" as God requires faith. It was also written for people at all levels of understanding.

[nomad]

Originally Posted by figment

I have no idea what the child would or would not do. Sin (rebellion) requires KNOWLEDGE. If he did not know right from wrong, he could not do "wrong". Adam had to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to fall...

Sin and Rebellion do not require knowledge... ever met a 2 year old? It's only a sin once WE teach them right from wrong. That's why there are so many beliefs/cultures/religions/ways-of-life in the world.

I saw a strange show last night that followed the biography of a child who was abandoned (pretty much) and forced to live on the street/in some vacant building(??) with dogs... he learned their behaviours and picked up their traits. Many of our behaviours and values are from nurture, not nature.

[figment]

Originally Posted by Rios929

It's funny that you use this as an example since the church wanted to have the scientists that discovered the truth about those things killed. In fact, isn't that how Gallilaeo died?

People have done all manner of bad things in the name of religion. Does that make all Christianity bad. (no this is the falicy called "hasty generalzation") Like saying since a certain car mechanic ripped me off, all mechanics are dishonest...Scientists, (like BDA metioned) are always dicovering new things that contradict or refine our understanding. It is amazing to me that a book like the Bible stills stands as a resonable account after 3000 years.

[figment]

Originally Posted by nomad

Sin and Rebellion do not require knowledge... ever met a 2 year old? It's only a sin once WE teach them right from wrong. That's why there are so many beliefs/cultures/religions/ways-of-life in the world.

I saw a strange show last night that followed the biography of a child who was abandoned (pretty much) and forced to live on the street/in some vacant building(??) with dogs... he learned their behaviours and picked up their traits. Many of our behaviours and values are from nurture, not nature.

Look up the definitions for yourself. How can you rebel against something when you dont even know what it is? These are deep thoughts now