The Bible and the word of God, was the main belief in our society before Darwin came along. His opinion made everything think twice at what they were accepting. As time grew longer and people got older, he had a mojority of the people inhabiting this beautiful planet inwhich we live that chance and randon mutation created all of which we see today. Darwin said himself that after he dies, there will be never ending evidence proving his theory of Evolution. It's really depressing to hear so many people turning to something as random chance to be the cause of so many supernatural occurences instead of just begining to think the simple conclusion of a wonderful intelligent Creator who lives outside of universe, time, and life itself.
This seemed to me to be the most logical cycle, the Big Bang expands until all the energy is expended and then the Big Crush begins as all the black holes in the universe coalesce back to a point of singularity and Bang again. I find the new theory of dark energy and an accelerating expansion puzzling.
Those of you who are on the other side of the wall from me in this argument, please read this: .Cheating with Chances The argument from probability that life could not form by natural processes but must have been created is sometimes acknowledged by evolutionists as a strong argument.1 The probability of the chance formation of a hypothetical functional ‘simple’ cell, given all the ingredients, is acknowledged2 to be worse than 1 in 1057800. This is a chance of 1 in a number with 57,800 zeros. It would take 11 full pages of magazine type to print this number. To try to put this in perspective, there are about 1080 (a number with 80 zeros) electrons in the universe. Even if every electron in our universe were another universe the same size as ours, that would ‘only’ amount to 10160 electrons. These numbers defy our ability to comprehend their size. Fred Hoyle, British mathematician and astronomer, has used analogies to try to convey the immensity of the problem. For example, Hoyle said the probability of the formation of just one of the many proteins on which life depends is comparable to that of the solar system packed full of blind people randomly shuffling Rubik’s cubes all arriving at the solution at the same time3—and this is the chance of getting only one of the 400 or more proteins of the hypothetical minimum cell proposed by the evolutionists (real world ‘simple’ bacteria have about 2,000 proteins and are incredibly complex). As Hoyle points out, the program of the cell, encoded on the DNA, is also needed. In other words, life could not form by natural (random) processes. Evolutionists often try to bluff their way out of this problem by using analogies to argue that improbable things happen every day, so why should the naturalistic origin of life be considered impossible. For example, they say the odds of winning the lottery are pretty remote, but someone wins it every week. Or, the chances of getting the particular arrangement of cards obtained by shuffling a deck is remote, but a rare combination happens every time the cards are shuffled. Or the arrangement of the sand grains in a pile of sand obtained by randomly pouring the sand is extremely complex, but this complex and improbable arrangement did occur as a result of random processes. Or the exact combination and arrangement of people walking across a busy city street is highly improbable, but such improbable arrangements happen all the time. So they argue from these analogies to try to dilute the force of this powerful argument for creation. You probably realize there is something illogical about this line of argument. But what is it? In all the analogies cited above, there has to be an outcome. Someone has to win the lottery. There will be an arrangement of cards. There will be a pile of sand. There will be people walking across the busy street. By contrast, in the processes by which life is supposed to have formed, there need not necessarily be an outcome. Indeed the probabilities argue against any outcome. That is the whole point of the argument. But then the evolutionist may counter that it did happen because we are here! This is circular reasoning at its worst. Note several other things about these analogies: Creationists do not argue that life is merely complex, but that it is ordered in such a way as to defy a natural explanation. The order in the proteins and DNA of living things is independent of the properties of the chemicals of which they consist—unlike an ice crystal where the structure results from the properties of the water molecule. The order in living things parallels that in printed books where the information is not contained in the ink, or even in the letters, but in the complex arrangement of letters which make up words, words which make up sentences, sentences which make up paragraphs, paragraphs which make up chapters and chapters which make up books. These components of written language respectively parallel the nucleic acid bases, codons, genes, operons, chromosomes and genomes which make up the genetic programs of living cells. The order in living things shows they are the product of intelligence. The result of the lottery draw is clearly the result of a random selection—unless family members of the lottery supervisor consistently win! Then we would conclude that the draw has not been random—it is not the result of a random process, but the result of an intelligent agent. The arrangement of cards resulting from shuffling would not normally suggest anything other than a random process. However, if all the cards were ordered by their suits from lowest to highest, we would logically conclude that an intelligent agent arranged them (or ‘stacked the deck’ in card-playing parlance) because such an arrangement is highly unlikely from genuine shuffling—a random, non-intelligent process. The arrangement of the sand grains in a pile would not normally suggest it resulted from intelligent activity rather than natural processes. However, if all the sand grains were lined up in single file, or were in a neat rectangle, we would attribute this to an intelligent agent, or a machine made by an intelligent agent, as this would not be likely from a natural process. The arrangement of people crossing a busy street would not normally suggest anything other than a random process. However, if all the people were ordered from shortest to tallest, or some other ordered arrangement, we would suspect that an intelligent agent was responsible for putting them in this order—that it did not result from chance. If 20 people were arranged from shortest to tallest, the odds of this happening by chance are less than one in a billion billion (1018), so it would be reasonable to conclude that such an ordered arrangement was not due to chance whereas there would be nothing to suggest intelligent involvement if there was no meaningful pattern to the arrangement of people. Many scientists today claim that an invisible ‘intelligent cause’ is outside the realm of ‘real’ science. These scientists have redefined science as naturalism (nature is all there is). However, scientists recognise the evidence for an invisible intelligent agent when it suits them. For example, forensic science determines if past events were the result of accident or plan and purpose (‘Who done it?’). The Piltdown ape-man fraud was discovered, after some 40 years and numerous postgraduate research theses, when researchers had the opportunity to examine the original bones and not just replicas, and they noticed file marks on the teeth.4 Such marks do not happen by natural processes and the researchers recognised the involvement of a human (intelligent) agent—a hoaxer. Likewise, United States tax-payers are spending millions of dollars yearly in funding the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). If those listening hear a radio signal with random noise, it is clearly the product of a natural process, but if there is a pattern such as ‘dah-dah-dah-dit-dit-dit-dah-dah-dah’, it will be hailed as evidence for an intelligent, although invisible, source. If such evidences indicate an intelligent source then surely the incredible amount of information on the DNA in living things, equivalent to a library of a thousand 500- page books in a human being,5 shouts Creation by a Creator! The more we know about the biochemical workings of living cells, the stronger the evidence becomes for the intimate involvement of a creator. We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made and no amount of illogical and irrelevant analogy will counter the clear evidence for this.
I was going to rebut the creationist view, but someone beat me to it. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...8452788/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/104-5565923-5525514 The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Richard Dawkins is not a shy man. Edward Larson's research shows that most scientists today are not formally religious, but Dawkins is an in-your-face atheist in the witty British style: I want to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence. The title of this 1986 work, Dawkins's second book, refers to the Rev. William Paley's 1802 work, Natural Theology, which argued that just as finding a watch would lead you to conclude that a watchmaker must exist, the complexity of living organisms proves that a Creator exists. Not so, says Dawkins: "All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way... it is the blind watchmaker."
Woofer- - What scientific evidence is there to favor Evolution (the theory of people involving from animals, which involved from a prebiotic soup which converted into a Big Bang by randon mutation and chance) ?
LooneyToon, There are a number of problems with the Creationist argument using probability that you keep advancing. 1. In order to calculate the odds of something happening, you have to know the number of possible outcomes. 2. You are assuming that all outcomes are equally probable. Just because there are billions of possible outcomes, doesn't mean each outcome is equally probable. 3. The number of attempts are completely ignored. For the sake of argument, if the chances are 1 in a billion and there are a few trillion 'attempts' in a single day, the chances are pretty good of a sucess. 4. If every possibility is equally likely, then it is also true that every possibility is equally unlikely. The formation of a protein molecule, then, is not more unlikely than any single instance of a non-formation. It isn't more unlikely simply because the results were good for us. Thus, if the attempted assembly only happened once, there had to be some result - and the protein-forming result is just as likely as any other. Some number has to win the lottery - the fact that protein won that lottery isn't any great mystery. If you buy a lottery ticket and your chances are one in a million - and you win - is it an Act of God? No, just good fortune...for you. Bad fortune for the others. That's how you'd expect things in a non-created universe. If, for example, you have a deck of shuffled cards in front of you and draw five from the top, the odds against any combination of five are equal - no matter what the combination is. Drawing a royal flush might seem supernatural to people with a superstitious mind, but only because of our subjective preferences for it. Just because an outcome is favorable to us doesn't mean that it cannot have purely naturalistic origins.
Essentially you are asking me to explain basic physics, chemistry, and biology and build the entire argument up from cellular and molecular biology. The original post of this thread was essentially the question William Paley tried to answer in Natural Theology with an *analogy* and was rebutted many times, most recently in the book I linked with science. If you are going to argue creationism, there's no arguing with you since creationism is based on faith, not the scientific method, and nothing will convince you otherwise, regardless. That's fine if we leave it at that. Even your last argument quoted is a strawman - it does not mention billions of billions of stars and billions of years to run the experiment. That creationist argument is a repeat of the Paley analogy updated, it's still a bad analogy, not a scientific proof of anything. If you read the Dawkins book, he even explains how the human eye is conceivable through evolution, forget simple proteins.
That's a great point, combine that with the self-replication - genes, and everything else falls into place. I am still awed by the most basic things in the world that we can't explain very well- gravity, the structure of the atom, that do not require *nor* deny the existence of a deity. Trying to enforce our religious beliefs upon reality doesn't clarify matters.
I guess I'm not a normal Christian. A normal Christian shouldn't feel the need to try his best to express his point of views in hope that someone who doesn't understand the way I see things, open up a little more for a change and experience the wonderful evidence that proves God is the reason behind everything. The conclusion to this is if Evolution is what happened to cause everything, then there must be scientific evidence. Fossil evidence would be brilliant. Darwin said after his death, thousands of fossilized evidence would shallow up into the world of Creationist and prove us wrong. Darwin was wrong. His book "Origin of Species" seems to be more harmful then I thought: Certainly Darwin popularized a philosophy that has permeated the world and has become the foundation for all sorts of evil thinking. For example, Darwinian evolution fueled racist ideas—Hitler used evolution as a so-called ‘scientific’ justification for his racist attitudes. Scientists ordered the killing of many Australian Aborigines to be collected as museum specimens—all in the name of evolution. ---------- Evolution needs Scientific evidence. Creation can not be fossilized. We cannot find materialistic proof of God. To really find what you're looking for, you need to look inside to who you are and where you came from. And accept the fact of who Jesus is and the reason he died for us. Your judgement will be decided. The evidence is layed out in front of you. Choose carefully. Faith in God is living proof to Christians to why we're here. No evidence needed.
how many people have died in history in the nme of Christianity? Spanish Inquisition, Crusades, Salem Witch Trials, African Slave Trade, etc.
if the Bible is your authority here then why does it have 2 conflicting creation stories in Genesis itself? In Gen1 it says God created man after plants, animals, & rain In Gen2 it says God created man before plants, animals & rain in Gen1 it says God created man and woman at the same time in Gen2 it says God created man then made woman out of his rib And if God is ominpotent why would it take him 6 days (or however many thousands of years you can equate that to) to create the universe? Can't he just do it instantaneously? and why create all these stars and planets but only have life on one?
Actually it all happening by random mutation isn't what the theory of evolution says. That's what creationists paint it as saying. There are a number of great books. I would start with Dinasour in the Haystack by Stephen Jay Gould. He is a evolutionary biologist, who happens to also believe in God. Anyway his books are chocked full of evidence of evolution. He also wrote, Ontogeny and Phylogeny which deals even more with the issues at hand, and is a great book, but not as entertaining as the one I mentioned above.
I've come to see that there is no point in debating this anymore. Looney toon continues to refuse to accept that there is alot of evidence to evolution and has even refused to take up the challenge by taking a course in evolution or looking into reading some books on it to see the evidence and judge for him/herself even after I offered to read they book he/her cited. Looney Toon accuses those defending evolution as engaging in a circular argument when overlooking their own circular argument. There is a deity because the odds of things happening this way means there is a deity. When totatly ignoring that the odds of anything, say me having waffles for breakfast, on a universal scale are also incalculable. There is no point in debating someone who admantally refuses to even listen to the other side. I offered to read their evidence if they would follow the evidence for evolution. Looney Toon didn't take it up so there is no point to this.
Excellent post, Woofer. LooneyToon... (cool moniker, btw), we can't argue or discuss this subject if your answer to every good point made by the "other side" is to make a declaration of your faith and that if we just "got it", Creationism would be as clear as clear could be. Nevermind that it implies something wrong with the faith of those who disagree... it's implied. How can we respond to that unless we argue that your faith is the problem that prevents you from seeing the logic before your eyes. An argument based largely on science desolves into a faith versus science argument very quickly, if allowed to, and that turns into a dead end. And I'd say that is just where we are.
You could have posted these 3 words at the beginning of the thread & encapsulated your viewpoint perfectly, thus saving us all a lot of time.
This is probably pointless, but here goes anyway: Looney, that half-assed definition of evolution pretty much sums up why you don't have any clue about what the hell you are talking about here. Here's evolution as defined in a biology textbook; mind you, I posted this back on the first page of the thread: The definition that you proposed makes absolutely zero scientific or even grammatical sense. I don't think you can have a meaningful dialogue about something when you seem to have no clue at all what it is.
Did you in any way see what I just asked? I said the Evolution that everyone else is talking about. Not the fact that life does evolve, I mean we evolved from an egg fertilized with sperm. But Im talking about life and creation itself. Any evidence out there insisting that we came from a huge explosion? Yes or no. Or is it just... Faith?
\] I have given you two books which go into depth about the EVIDENCE supporting evolution. There are plenty of other books or articles by Gould is my favorite biologist on the subject. Sadly he's past away, but his writings on the matter are chocked full of scientific evidence, as well as entertaining to read.
