[_ Old Earth _] Are you guys serious?

[jasoncran]

augustine while a genious was wrong as herien lies the problem for the rcc, they must logically accept calvinism as adam and eve werent real and thus a story and who was the father and mother of abel or if they were real then god made men to be damned with no choice in the matter.

if that's the case you want a god that damns some without a chance to repent.

jesus talked about abel being a prophet.

 

[Evointrinsic]

Not precisely jason, There are many Christians (including many on this forum [The Barbarian as an example]) who can still be Christians without taking the bible as 100% literal. Which is why they can both accept the facts of many of sciences topics yet still fully follow Christianity.

It's only those that take the bible as 100% literal that cannot accept anything else without them believing that they are committing blaspheme.

Even I take most of the stories of the bible as truth. Perhaps not as they are precisely read, but with a more metaphorical sense to things.

For example, I can accept that the story of the flood was probably written of an actual flood. Would it be to the extent of covering the entire planet? Probably not because evidence says otherwise. Would it more likely be describing a smaller scale yet with similar actions and outcomes? That I can believe.

 

[jasoncran]

barb's exegesis was poor,

the problem here is this if the man adam wasnt real then what the lord blabbering about? when called abel a prophet, at some point god has to give men a soul that can sin.

the bible is clear for by one man death entered the world and he calls that man adam.

cant avoid that.

if adam evolved he alone sinned , what of all those inocent proto-men(h.neatherndalis) that have brains to make tools and abstract thought? were they not worthy of the lord, and made to be hell fireword?

they cant go to heaven if so that is a most calvinistic position to which barb didnt hold.

when one cherry pics the bible it tends to bite you in the butt so to speak.

 

[Evointrinsic]

I can't fully speak for what barb believes in, But he has stated before that he doesn't take the bible as 100% literal.

 

[jasoncran]

no he doesnt.

if you are interested in what he and i have discussed on that browse some of these threads. i have discussed that with jwu and him in some thread here.

the main problem is where do you stop.

if this person isnt real what does he represent, abel?
if this concept of death entering the world by adam why would you say God isnt unjust and not believe in calvinism

think about you are eve and your child is dying from sickle cell anemia. you havent sinned and ask god heal my child.

he doesnt and you ask why?

his response so that your genes are perfected.

 

[Sparkey]

I'll concede that I know...

Evolution is Evolution. (Sorry, but this point cannot be over-emphasized.)

In the case of single-celled and other simple organisms, millions of years of different selective pressures resulted in wildly different phenotypes.

One of the reasons I do not like debate is that things change over a course of years. No, I'm not referring to evolution. The "macro evolution" of acceptable terms (something that happens over decades and not mere months) teaches now us that there are more than two "kingdoms" of life. What is next? As our ability to comprehend creation grows so also does our language to describe it evolve. That does not mean that the process or processes have changed. Only our understanding (or lack thereof). When protozoans were included in the animal kingdom, the kingdom had 2 phylums: protozoans and metazoans. Metazoans is now the same thing as animals, back then it meant pluricelullar animals.

Let's talk specifics here regarding "macro" evolution. You speak of "selective pressures" implying they participated in "Natural Selection." By what precise method did this occur? Time itself did nothing. How did one mîyn (or "kind") evolve from another? Given that one mîyn was somehow able to produce another (not that I believe that for a single instant) it, by definition, could not mate nor reproduce. No others of its kind would be in existence. Now when we further complicate things by adding millions of years before a potential mate could be found, the problem becomes problematic? Did organelles arise as a result of symbiotic co-evolution? How?

How did the process of meiosis "evolve"? Why? Could it have evolved over millions of years? If we say it must have the question becomes, "How?"

 

[Evointrinsic]

Then I must have misunderstood him, I'll let him answer that then.

as for...

Sparrowhawke: What your missing is that it's not one single organism that makes this drastic change and then requires a mate to make the same drastic change, it's all in very minor incidents, which is why both macro and micro evolution are the same thing essentially (Macro evolution is made up of micro evolution).

let's take for example a type of frog. It brown, large in size, has a clutch size of 100 eggs (clutch is like a litter) and is relatively slow (because there's no predators in it's water) (also it's mainly an aquatic species).

Now, all of a sudden we have a secondary pond that is near by and growing, it has an organism in it that can eat these frogs. once a year when the rainy season hits, a few of these predators manage to get to the new pond because of rising waters and little flow ways in between the ponds that rarely occur. Their life span is only half a year though.

The average temperature in the area is cooling, alowing for longer rainy seasons and more plant growth both ponds. The frogs eat the insects that eat the vegetation, and because of this extra food the insects grow larger and become greener because they are eating more of this green vegetation and it's tinting their color. Because of this new factor some of the brown frogs acquire green spots. Not because it's entirely random, but because their food source has changed slightly and that's altering what happens to the females during gestation. All of a sudden 20/100 of the eggs produce tadpoles that have green spots, which then mature into frogs that also have green spots.

The rainy season comes and the predators manage to make it into the original pond. They eat more of the brown frogs than they do the brown frogs with green spots because the brown frogs with green spots are now harder to see.

Now we have more frogs with green spots surviving and breeding than plain brown frogs because of natural selection (predation). In turn, more and more brown spotted frogs are surviving and breeding, and the offspring of these frogs are getting a double dose of that green spotted coloration producing even greener frogs. This new coloration is virtually invisible to the predators, so their population grows while the brown ones shrink and the brown spotted ones fluctuate mildly.

over the years a new pond forms near by and during the rainy season a few of each species is carried over to that pond through small waterways and so on. The vegetation there is different, it's a different plant with different insects. the plant is brown. All of a sudden the brown frogs begin to survive much better in that pond than anywhere else because their more suited to that environment.

As the years go on and more and more minor changes happen to the environment, the same incidences occur (temperature changes, more or less predators, more or less food, and so on). because more of these incidences occur, it forces the population of these three ponds to adapt or a specific part (or whole) population may die off, or decrease.

In the first pond we talked about we now have a whole lot of pure green frogs as well as Brown spotted frogs, and some pure green frogs with red spots because of a newly introduced plant that some of the insects are eating.

In the second pond with the predators we have the predators as well as some of the green frogs because that pond has a lot of green vegetation and the same insects, but the predators don't see those frogs very well.

In the newest pond we have brown frogs and some even darker frogs but very few green colored frogs because they stand out too easily in that pond and get eaten.

The original brown frogs can't breed with the green/red spotted frogs because those new frogs are too far down the genetic train, thus creating a new species. The green spotted frogs can still breed with the brown ones, as well has the pure green ones. and the brown ones can breed with every other coloration excluding the red spotted ones.

And so on and so forth. The changes continue to occur and they seem dramatized if we compare the "newest" species to it's ancestor or relative.

Now, take note that this is a very simplistic version of it, and i can explain how more physical changes can (and have) occurred, but it's the exact same process.

 

[Deavonreye]

Evointrinsic, I liked that analogy of how evolution plays a role in how species change over time. It was easy to read and understand, and gives it as a summation of a more complex system. Well done!

 

[Evointrinsic]

Thanks! I have many more :yes

 

[Sparkey]

"The original brown frogs can't breed with the green/red spotted frogs because those new frogs are too far down the genetic train, thus creating a new species."

You miss my point. I used the word mîyn, meaning "kind" and not 'species' for reason. You've gone into great detail describing how a sub-species of frogs may have formed and missed my point entirely. Was that perhaps on purpose?

Thanks in any case for the reply.
~Sparrow

 

[caseagainstfaith]

As far as whether evolution is a "fact", well, nothing is ever proven beyond all doubt in science. It could be that tomorrow, gravity will fail and hammers will stop dropping.

On the other hand, there are things that are sufficiently accepted by most scientists that they are treated as settled fact. Evolution happens to be one of them.

Someone asked why do we still look for fossils and the like. And the short answer is, more knowledge. We will never know everything, we will never know every step in the evolutionary line. But, we can always learn more.

And, yes, these are touted in popular press as evidence of evolution, precisely because it is doubted by so many layman. Scientists themselves don't think of it the same way. They already accept evolution.

I'm not a paleontologist. I don't know how much of it results in information that has practical application. If we learn of another dozen human ancestors, will that information be of practical application, or is it just for the joy of learning? I don't honestly know. But, I suspect a lot of it is indeed just for the joy of learning.

 

[Evointrinsic]

You miss my point. I used the word mîyn, meaning "kind" and not 'species' for reason. You've gone into great detail describing how a sub-species of frogs may have formed and missed my point entirely. Was that perhaps on purpose?

Thanks in any case for the reply.
~Sparrow

Actually, you missed my point. That being, now all of a sudden a species (not a sub species, but a separate species) was produced. It doesn't just end there, it continues in that manner. Like i've stated before, Macro evolution is made up of Micro evolution. It has the same processes, it's just an accumulated amount of micro evolutionary changes before the changes are so great you wouldn't recognize the modern organism to it's ancestor way way back.

 

[Deavonreye]

Evo, perhaps the disconnect comes from ideologies from people like Hovind, who likes to talk about "kinds", . . . "dogs can't have a non-dog offspring", or something like that. I believe it is the "how can that amphibian go from the brown color . . . to a bird". They [not anyone specific, btw] expect there to be a frog that has bird wings starting to form on its back.

 

[lordkalvan]

Evo, perhaps the disconnect comes from ideologies from people like Hovind, who likes to talk about "kinds", . . . "dogs can't have a non-dog offspring", or something like that. I believe it is the "how can that amphibian go from the brown color . . . to a bird". They [not anyone specific, btw] expect there to be a frog that has bird wings starting to form on its back.

I think the misrepresentation is deliberate and intended to discredit even the possibility of evolutionary theory and extends to asserting that evolution is 'wrong' because no one has even seen one animal give birth to an entirely different sort of animal, hence the oft-repeated canard that a monkey can't give birth to a human. Either the people who propagate these ideas are completely ignorant of evolutionary theory or they are willfully deceitful about what it postulates.

 

[Sparkey]

Guys, quit all the geegaw and listen for a second. I don't understand the term "macro evolution" but do understand what God meant when He said He created different "kinds" of animals.

One of the problems that I have is with the language we both use. To me, both "Time" and "Evolution" have no life force and are inanimate. When I want to use a phrase like counter-intuitive for instance there comes a pause. How can a process that isn't intuitive be described as being counter-intuitive? It can't. But that's how I would describe sexual reproduction compared to asexual reproduction. Why would a process as critical to survival as reproduction make a counter-intuitive change?

How did sexual reproduction develop? Surely this wasn't the product of green spots on frogs. What mechanism is responsible for such drastic changes? Why would some animals develop a such a process?? What non-intelligent process (time???) would favor splitting the number of chromosomes in half and further make this split critical to survival?

When an asexual animal became sexual - how much time did that take? Huh? Where was the mate of THAT monster? Time can not explain what some call the process of evolution. That's all I'm saying.

 

[lordkalvan]

Guys, quit all the geegaw and listen for a second. I don't understand the term "macro evolution" but do understand what God meant when He said He created different "kinds" of animals.

Hi Sparrow. Good to talk with you again. Different people use 'macroevolution' in different contexts. Berkeley University's Evolution 101 site has a useful description:

'Macroevolution generally refers to evolution above the species level. So instead of focusing on an individual beetle species, a macroevolutionary lens might require that we zoom out on the tree of life, to assess the diversity of the entire beetle clade and its position on the tree.

Macroevolution refers to evolution of groups larger than an individual species.

Macroevolution encompasses the grandest trends and transformations in evolution, such as the origin of mammals and the radiation of flowering plants. Macroevolutionary patterns are generally what we see when we look at the large-scale history of life.'

Source: evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_48

More bluntly, macroevolution is change at or above the level of species; microevolution is change within species. On the other hand, I am surprised that you have no difficulty with what is meant by 'kind' as creationists have been trying to come up with a robust definition for seven decades and have quite failed to produce anything scientifically meningful.

One of the problems that I have is with the language we both use. To me, both "Time" and "Evolution" have no life force and are inanimate. When I want to use a phrase like counter-intuitive for instance there comes a pause. How can a process that isn't intuitive be described as being counter-intuitive? It can't. But that's how I would describe sexual reproduction compared to asexual reproduction. Why would a process as critical to survival as reproduction make a counter-intuitive change?

Put simply, the ability to combine different genetic material offers survival benefits as environments change.

How did sexual reproduction develop? Surely this wasn't the product of green spots on frogs. What mechanism is responsible for such drastic changes? Why would some animals develop a such a process?? What non-intelligent process (time???) would favor splitting the number of chromosomes in half and further make this split critical to survival?

Some of the best scientists in the field have written books pondering this question. The process that favours sexual reproduction seems to be a blend of various forces. You could try reading Matt Ridley's The Red Queen. though this favours one theory over others (W.D. Hamilton's that sex is advantageous in the never-ending biological war against parasites), Ridley does discuss in a readily accessible way the range of theories on offer.

When an asexual animal became sexual - how much time did that take? Huh? Where was the mate of THAT monster? Time can not explain what some call the process of evolution. That's all I'm saying.

You seem to be laboring under the misunderstanding that individuals evolved rather than populations. There was no 'first' bisexual 'monster' as such, any more than there was a first person to speak French or a 'first' fish to find advantages in a semi-aquatic lifestyle.

 

[Sparkey]

Hi Sparrow. Good to talk with you again. Different people use 'macroevolution' in different contexts. On the other hand, I am surprised that you have no difficulty with what is meant by 'kind' as creationists have been trying to come up with a robust definition for seven decades and have quite failed to produce anything scientifically meaningful.
...
Put simply, the ability to combine different genetic material offers survival benefits as environments change.
...
Some of the best scientists in the field have written books pondering this question.
...
You seem to be laboring under the misunderstanding that individuals evolved rather than populations. There was no 'first' bisexual 'monster' as such, any more than there was a first person to speak French or a 'first' fish to find advantages in a semi-aquatic lifestyle.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. The way I see it, people are trying to figure things out. It does no good for guys to bicker along the way - somebody is gonna have egg on their face if that continues along the natural course.

We have very different points of view and although I can understand what you're getting at when you use an analogy of the first person speaking French, my understanding includes what God did at the time of the tower of Babel. It's very interesting to me. The whole story of Babel lasts for only nine verses, Genesis 11: 1-9. It's not one that we should go into here, in the "Christianity and Science" forum - because it stirs everybody up but does describe a time right after the flood when men united. Suffice it to say, God acted, and before Abraham was called (after the flood) acted again.

[Genesis 11:4-6 KJV] - And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top [may reach] unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people [is] one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Mankind sought to glorify themselves and leave God out of it. I think it's possible that we can somehow unite even still but I could be wrong. My thought is that people need more tolerance and I'd go as far as to say Christians mostly. They are called by God to be peacemakers, are they not? Well, ahem... pardon me for not doing this well. But more to the point, in my view God is pouring out knowledge upon the whole earth. I'm not as interested in shoving my point of view down your throat (it's rather simplistic, I know) as I am in learning stuff. You can see stuff your way, I don't mind. Strange world it would be if this were not true, right?

So I'm currently pursuing my degree (yes = science) and find the educational process enlightening. I'm very surprised how much emphasis is placed on tolerance and diversity nowadays. Thanks again for the explanation and pardon me please when I overstep boundaries. Language is difficult but I trust you understand. So "macro evolution" happened amongst populations, a big bunch, at the same time. Yes, that would be a major point of my stumbling as you point out.

Cordially,
~Sparrow


"Behold, the people is one..."
I don't want unrestrained but peace and tolerance would be okay.