Creation-Evolution-Creative Days-Age of the Earth-Humanoid Fossils-Great Flood

[AlanF]

5 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

1 in 87975475759743070457957297455720475475904747362684672096775579457390253949573490969696739874328509598435095453459345.

Happy?

And here I thought your idiot girlfriend was the stupidest poster here.

Do you know what a calculation is? HInt? It's not a ratio.

You JW apologists are pure bluff.

[xero]

The design argument is used all the time. It's an inference to the best explanation. It's used in archaeology and it's used in forensics. The arguments against it's use in the case of OOL is that those who exclude it are doing so out out a philosophy, namely philosophic materialism.

The argument is quite simple and circular

God doesn't exist, therefore OOL arrived out of an undirected material process.

If you point out that the chemistry and physics doesn't work, it's suggested that this is proof of the power of time + chemistry + physics.

Also most people don't differentiate between micro and macro evolution. Micro is true - we see this happen all the time. The finches in the Galapagos ...an example given all the time relative to finch beak size which is merely demonstrating that during various environmental variations finches have differential reproductive rates favoring larger beaks at one time and smaller beak sizes at another time.

Still, they remain finches.

Fossil records are even more incomplete and unconvincing today than they were fifty years ago.

Of course, now that we have a better understanding of DNA and the chicken and egg problem this presents, as you can't have DNA (manufactured out of protein) without DNA already there along w/the rest of the organism, we see it as even more problematic.

Of course evolutionists of the sort we see today are better at polishing the turd, but it remains a turd.

You still see in some texts Haeckel's faked embryos, w/the demolished ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny argument.

You still see the Miller-Urey experiment cited, though this produced a random assortment of left and right chiral forms of amino acids and in the design had a trap and used an atmosphere that's known today to be the wrong type for the early earth. No, this was simply a primitive, yet designed peptide synthesizer, nothing more than that. Yet it's still cited.

The artists renderings of early man are fanciful, and are in the main fictional representations based on artists imaginations. These are just a few.

https://iconsofevolution.com/category/criticism/

The mathematics behind the chemistry is overwhelming. If one accepts that the Cambrian explosion of life forms occurred some 600 million years ago, you have a finite number of seconds to work with. So you don't have enough time, you don't have the right kind of atmosphere, and you have to produce not one single cell but a myriad of living creatures all differentiated into different reproducing groups.

Of course most either say they agree or disagree based on various reasons, most of which have nothing to do w/understanding what's being proposed or even how it's all supposed to have happened.

Evolution as taught today resembles a catechism you memorize and regurgitate on demand.

Ask anyone what the supposed mechanisms are for evolution and you'll get, if anything.

"Mutations and natural selection."

If they're clever, they'll say "It's all about differential reproduction, my dear fellow."

Meanwhile you listen to or watch a just so story not much different than the Mother West Wind stories of Thorton W. Burgess. "Why Jimmy Skunk wears stripes"

 

 

 

[xero]

Plate tectonics needs something to get it started.

https://www.newgeology.us/

[TrueTomHarley]

9 hours ago, AlanF said:

And here I thought your idiot girlfriend was the stupidest poster here.

It could be off by plus or minus 8

[TrueTomHarley]

9 hours ago, xero said:

Of course evolutionists of the sort we see today are better at polishing the turd, but it remains a turd.

Yes. A turd is a turd is a turd. No way is it a diamond.

Down with Mommy Macro.

[Srecko Sostar]

12 hours ago, xero said:

Also most people don't differentiate between micro and macro evolution.

I have neutral questions:

If God created lions and tigers and bears (today predators) and other animals in Paradise Earth of Eden and outside of Eden to eat grass and fruits, Did He created them with teeth and claws and digestive system just for plant foods?

After the fall of Eden or after Great Flood, how did these animals become omnivores or carnivores?

Did their teeth and claws grow later, so they could catch food?

If not, why did God create them with such teeth and claws?

If their teeth and claws grew later, was it "micro or macro evolution"?

Similar with many other animals in food chain. Birds eats insects. One sort of insects eats other sort of insects. They all killing (murder) each other.  

And so on and so forth.

[xero]

18 minutes ago, Srecko Sostar said:

I have neutral questions:

If God created lions and tigers and bears (today predators) and other animals in Paradise Earth of Eden and outside of Eden to eat grass and fruits, Did He created them with teeth and claws and digestive system just for plant foods?

After the fall of Eden or after Great Flood, how did these animals become omnivores or carnivores?

Did their teeth and claws grow later, so they could catch food?

If not, why did God create them with such teeth and claws?

If their teeth and claws grew later, was it "micro or macro evolution"?

Similar with many other animals in food chain. Birds eats insects. One sort of insects eats other sort of insects. They all killing (murder) each other.  

And so on and so forth.

Good questions. I remember a 1946 Awake article on Dinosaurs and carnivorous activity and thought it stretching things a bit. Too many look designed for them to not be designed for carnivorous activity. You do have examples of animals like Pandas who have the kind of teeth predators have, and I've seen videos of snakes eating grapes, but there seem to be so many of these kinds of things to be explained away as it were. If we look at the chain of life we have carnivorous activity at the roots of plants wholly needful for plant and all life. This is where you (me) start asking how far and why we (me) are willing to stretch all this. Cats have to eat meat because they don't produce a certain amino acid, but then it turns out some plants have this in abundance. Can all animals be vegetarian? These are the kinds of things people who have no interest in the bible are asking. Some because they have instinctive moral feelings about it all, like PETA. Then there's the case of some who are culturing meat in vats, so that one can imagine eating a steak or a hamburger that was never alive as an animal (there's a TED talk on this).

Is my concern moral squeamishness, or scriptural squeamishness? What's wrong with death, if you dont know you're alive, and when you die, you have no pain, only feeling some pressure, like a lobster, or some other animal w/o a nervous system like ours.

Do Pigeons Know They're Alive?

Is pain the issue? Physical pain? Or ...is it psychological pain, the pain of loss, and anticipation of loss and the fear it brings which is the issue? Why life at all?

I read a book years ago entitled "Programs of the Brain" and one line in it got my attention - "The meaning of life is to live"

It seems that we're programmed to desire life, and we want it to keep going.

Do we concern ourselves w/the lives of others out of genuine altruism, or because we simply don't want someone to move the furniture around in our lives w/o permission?

In regard to the DNA modifications necessary to alter the morphology and behavior (yes there is behavioral DNA) of animals, I think it not likely that animals, post creation were modified. The whole evolutionary process is more one of filtration and information-loss over time.

 

[TrueTomHarley]

1 hour ago, Srecko Sostar said:

I have neutral questions:

You have triggered one of these silly fallacies Michael Shermer carries on about, dressed up in Latin verbiage to make clear that whoever uses it is educated.

In English, it means, “just because I don’t have the answer to something, that does not mean that your answer is correct. (“Fallacy of negation,” I think it is. My bad—no Latin)

It is a fallacy to be employed when you are criticizing a evolutionist position. It MAY NOT be employed for the opposite position, criticizing one who thinks creation. 

Therefore I will let the question stand, with the caveat that it doesn’t mean anything, as it wouldn’t were it used to criticize evolution.

This is very much like when @AlanFcarries on about no poop being found in the Sinai desert and thinks he has struck logical pay dirt. Yet when you cite something contradictory in his evolution mantra, he will wag his head and cry “fallacy of negation.”

@Araunais right. It is almost like the priesthood of a religion—abounding in so many ‘heads I win/tails you lose’ scenarios.

[xero]

Truth be told, there are either atheists who are convinced that God doesn't exist and they are happy with that belief, or there are atheists who are convinced that God doesn't exist and they are unhappy with that belief. The latter can and likely will shift over time. The former won't because it suits them.

I prefer that God exists and I'm convinced that he does. I, like many other theists have questions about things and anyone who says he or she doesn't isn't being honest with themselves. 

The big issue, unspoken in many cases is the reasons given for pain and suffering.

Read carefully the book of Job, and you can intuit or insert that in the end Job was made aware of his role and all that was presented there, but that's not explicitly stated.

Job simply is confronted with God and asked various questions w/regard to things and his response is :

 ⁶  Then Jehovah answered Job out of the windstorm:+ ⁷  “Brace yourself, please, like a man;I will question you, and you inform me.+ ⁸  Will you call into question* my justice?Will you condemn me so that you may be right?+

And also...

⁷  After Jehovah had spoken these words to Job, Jehovah said to Elʹi·phaz the Teʹman·ite:“My anger burns against you and your two companions,+ for you have not spoken the truth about me+ as my servant Job has.

 

Perhaps you can conclude, that all that Job said about Jehovah was true, but perhaps not. Was the "truth" the actual things Jobs said, or was the "truth" the intent and the spirit that Job had while saying these things. 

God's justice and his ways are his and I can only conclude that if his ways don't look adjusted right, it's likely me who either doesn't understand things as they really are or were, or my sense of justice is colored by my own limited state. --- Probably both.

I don't have the apex of all possible viewpoints.

If God exists, and I think he does he would have that viewpoint.

I see some things as "good" and some things as "bad" and I admit my faculty of conscience appears to be built-in to me and other humans regardless of how this compass appears to be calibrated.

What I think is "good" could be "bad" and the reverse as well, for reasons already listed.

So if perceptions as to "good/bad" come built-in as a semi-programmable entity in humans, then God would have had to design it. I can imagine being "conscience-free" and that strikes me at times as perversely liberating, and yet if I am designed such that ignorance of the designer is ultimately damaging to me - then I get concerned, even if it's simply a narrow self-oriented concern, so I don't go there, though it's clear some have in human history and I don't know whether this was a choice, or whether these were like those mentioned by the psalmist "perverts from the womb".

In any case if I'm physical (and I am) and the universe is as well (and even if there are other inaccessible parts to it) I would imagine a certain kind of thermodynamic equation w/regard to the quality of "goodness" such that being downstream from God, I'd necessarily be less "good".

This of course reminds me of Jesus reply to someone who called him "Good Teacher" when he said "No one is good but God". In this he seems to be recognizing that the source of all good is from God the Father. --- The Son, as good as he is and was as our exemplar, messiah and King, was a reflection, an image of that goodness.

Our duty in all this is to try to understand as well as we can, the apex of all viewpoints (which hith-palel --- what prayer to God is about...it's about getting as close as possible to that apex so as to see ourselves in context so that we might know what to do or not do next might be) and having done this try to reflect that good. 2 Cor. 3:18

[xero]

Another way of calculating how long man and other creatures have been here is examined:

Genetic Clock Ticking - Fast or Slow

[Srecko Sostar]

3 hours ago, xero said:

animal (there's a TED talk on this).

In Eden God made law for human to eat vegetables. And God said after every Creative Day; It is Good, Perfect. So, eating vegetables is/was Good and Perfect...in Eden and up until Flood.

After Flood God said to Noah; Eat Meat. It is not Perfect Solution and you will have problem with Ecology, Economy and all those stuffs in the Future, but don't worry, i will bring Armageddon on all people who ruined Earth with Global Meat Production and similar things. :))

[xero]

Just to be a contrarian, I note:

²⁹  Then God said: “Here I have given to you every seed-bearing plant that is on the entire earth and every tree with seed-bearing fruit. Let them serve as food for you.f ³⁰  And to every wild animal of the earth and to every flying creature of the heavens and to everything moving on the earth in which there is life,* I have given all green vegetation for food.”g And it was so.

So you can read that and say meat was off limits, or you can say it was simply not mentioned, but assumed. Not that this is the view I'm taking, but strictly speaking we'd have to say it just wasn't mentioned. Then just outside the gate in Genesis 4 you have meat being offered, and no doubt eaten as well. 

There's a lot assumed about Genesis, and a lot unwritten.