[_ Old Earth _] Big Bang and Evolution

[Jam]

I would suggest reading it again.

I have read it several times: without taking it each sentence at a time just in case it is relevant, I cannot explain to you why the writing does not prevent a reconciliation of evolution with scripture unless you specify which parts of it that you believe do.

The God's?....And your understanding of scripture is lacking, which is why you come to the conclusions you do.

A typo - I didn't meant to put "the" in there.

Without an explanation of how or why my "understanding of scripture is lacking", I'm afraid that I cannot respond to this.

But it sounds as if you're pretty set on your view so I'm not sure there's much more to say.

Where do you stand?

I thought I'd reply to these together, because my replies will be relevant to each other.

I said this in another thread, I think, but I basically don't know what I believe about evolution... To the original idea of this thread, I don't consider the existence (or non-existence) of magnetic monopoles to be relevant to the big bang theory. To the idea of evolution, like I say; I don't know. It seems to me that it almost certainly does happen, but I remain unconvinced that it has happened to the extent that is widely believed (i.e. that we evolved gradually from something non-human). Although I believe it possible to reconcile evolution with scripture, I think doing so probably requires a little too much fiddling for my liking: we should draw our understanding from the intended interpretation of scripture; we should not interpret scripture to fit our current understanding of it.

Now, it is for this reason that I object to you saying that I am set in my ways - the exact opposite is the case! I don't consider the existence/happening of evolution as being important to my relationship with God and, like I say, I don't know what I think at the moment, and so I have no reason not to accept any adequately supported reasoning that contradicts my own! My beliefs in this area are not at all strong!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I don't necessarily agree with the arguments that I've made in this thread; I simply propose them because I sense that you believe evolution to be necessarily in conflict with scripture, and I don't believe that this is necessarily the case.

You say that it is not possible for God to speak, then you dance around by saying "even if God creates by speaking". I suppose God never spoke to Moses either huh?

I did not say that it was not possible for God to speak.

No offence, but you and I see scriptures vastly different and honestly, I don't think I have the patience or graciousness to argue our differences. I wish you well.

I genuinely struggle to see how you can assume to know so much about my understanding of scripture simply from my posts in this thread I feel I must ask you, though- why the sudden change of tone? Your last post was perfectly civil, and this most recent one comes across as almost hostile... I wasn't aware that I'd said anything at all rude in my last post, but please explain to me where I have offended you if that be the case, so that it is possible for me to avoid doing so in the future.

 

[stovebolts]

I genuinely struggle to see how you can assume to know so much about my understanding of scripture simply from my posts in this thread I feel I must ask you, though- why the sudden change of tone? Your last post was perfectly civil, and this most recent one comes across as almost hostile... I wasn't aware that I'd said anything at all rude in my last post, but please explain to me where I have offended you if that be the case, so that it is possible for me to avoid doing so in the future.

Well, when I'm frustrated, perhaps I come off a bit hostile. Maybe I prefer the word blunt? So what frustrates me? See below.

The God's

Sorry, you sounded like an atheist. Once bitten twice shy I suppose.

I did not say that it was not possible for God to speak.

and you actually said,

But is it not possible for God to speak,

Which I read as:

But it is not possible for God to speak,

My apologies. I suppose it didn't sit well when we were talking about monkeys, and your reply was:

It's cool; I was just being a little pedantic.

In my mind, it's one thing to be pedantic, and it's even ok to be pedantic. Heck, I can get pretty pedantic at times myself. However, wen I think about being pedantic, I think of narrowing in on the details. Dotting every i and crossing every t. But to say that Science isn't teaching evolution from the perspective that man evolved out of apes based on a 'technicality' came across as deceptive to me, and not pedantic at all.

But I do have to thank you for your honesty when it comes to you stating that you really don't know where you stand. I can respect that.

 

[stovebolts]

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I don't necessarily agree with the arguments that I've made in this thread; I simply propose them because I sense that you believe evolution to be necessarily in conflict with scripture, and I don't believe that this is necessarily the case.

And you would be correct. I do believe that scripture is in direct conflict with evolution by the plain reading of the creation account.

 

[Barbarian]

Wow, I must be much older than you because when I was in elementary and Jr. High they were teaching us that we evolved from monkeys...

Evolutionary theory never claimed humans evolved from monkeys. Monkeys are too evolved in other directions to be our ancestors. We do have a common ancestor, though. Some states, particularly in the Southeatern U.S., have had some horrible standards for science teachers in the past. Sorry about that.

If they're no longer teaching this, then I'm glad Science is changing it's views.

Well, hopefully, Alabama is improving.

 

[stovebolts]

Evolutionary theory never claimed humans evolved from monkeys. Monkeys are too evolved in other directions to be our ancestors. We do have a common ancestor, though. Some states, particularly in the Southeatern U.S., have had some horrible standards for science teachers in the past. Sorry about that.



Well, hopefully, Alabama is improving.

Well, Washington State is one of the most liberal states in the US.... Maybe they hired their teachers from Alabama? :waving

 

[Barbarian]

Well, Washington State is one of the most liberal states in the US....

East of the Cascades, anyway. I've been west of there, and it's pretty conservative.

Maybe they hired their teachers from Alabama?

Maybe so. Hard to imagine any biologist being that ignorant.

 

[stovebolts]

East of the Cascades, anyway. I've been west of there, and it's pretty conservative.

California is conservative :toofunny Western Oregon, especially Eugene is full of the Rainbow family and an assorted array of hippies that congregate for the mushroom harvest each October, and they've migrated up to the Okanagan in Washington State. And speaking of Washington, they have the highest concentration of psychiatrists and coincidentally the highest rate of mental illness within the country. But I'll give you conservative with Idaho, maybe even radically conservative within the pan handle... neonazi's and aryan nation ya know...

I was talking to my Step Mom last summer and I laughed when she said she was conservative. I told her, no Mom, your actually pretty liberal. Her reply was, "no, we're conservative compared to West of the Cascades, they're the liberal ones". The whole conversation was started over something I read in the newspaper that the city was trying to do, and I just shrugged my shoulders in awe.

But anyway, I grew up in Spokane Washington. My 8th grade Science teacher was Mr. Humphries. Great Science teacher. He ingrained it into our head that Scientific theory was not fact, but rather it was a conclusion based on facts. That being said, as the facts either changed or more facts were found, a theory could become obsolete or could simply be modified to accommodate the new facts. You see, that's the beauty of a theory, it's not static. It has room to move.

And I recall him having to teach that we evolved from monkeys... well, that was a theory anyway and I remember the book we used was pretty convincing about the matter. But I got the idea that Mr. Humphries never bought into that theory all the way.

Maybe so. Hard to imagine any biologist being that ignorant.

Perhaps the biologist aren't the ones writing the class school book...

 

[Asyncritus]

That we 'evolved' from some ape-like ancestor, not from apes themselves is the usual cop out.

The highly touted 'common ancestor' is non-existent, as is the first imaginary 'common ancestor' of all life.

The genetic differences are ridiculously small and completely fail to account for the massive differences that I have already brought to this board, for the feeble to gainsay.

Here's an extract from answersingenesis.org which bears heavily on the subject of the genuineness of the 'finds':

Artistic imagination has been used to illustrate entire “apemen” from nothing more than a single tooth. In the early 1920s, the “apeman” Hesperopithecus (which consisted of a single tooth) was pictured in the London Illustrated News complete with the tooth’s wife, children, domestic animals, and cave! Experts used this tooth, known as “Nebraska man,” as proof for human evolution during the Scopes trial in 1925. In 1927, parts of the skeleton were discovered together with the teeth, and Nebraska man was found to really be an extinct peccary (wild pig)!

View attachment 2191

Pilbeam says some interesting things:

Perhaps generations of students of human evolution, including myself, have been flailing about in the dark; that our data base is too sparse, too slippery, for it to be able to mold our theories. Rather the theories are more statements about us and ideology than about the past. Paleoanthropology reveals more about how humans view themselves than it does about how humans came about. But that is heresy.4

American Scientist 66:379, 1978.

I have yet to hear some accounting for the origin of any of man's psycho-spiritual abilities.

Even more significant, is the utter failure of evolutionary theory to account for the origin of women, and the meiotic cell division which is at the bottom of every piece of sexual reproduction extant.
​

 

[Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
Maybe so. Hard to imagine any biologist being that ignorant.

Perhaps the biologist aren't the ones writing the class school book...

Good point. Can you show me a science textbook that says we evolved from monkeys?

The highly touted 'common ancestor' is non-existent, as is the first imaginary 'common ancestor' of all life.

Turns out, there are a remarkably large number of anthropoid primate fossils around, given that most lived in forests where fossilization is very rare.

The genetic differences are ridiculously small and completely fail to account for the massive differences that I have already brought to this board, for the feeble to gainsay.

As people noticed, your differences sort of collapsed when we took a close look at them.

Here's an extract from answersingenesis.org

Since they got caught doctoring the statements of scientists to make it look like they believed things they did not, I don't have much confidence in them. I just wish they'd stop peddling dishonesty and pretending that it's Christian behavior.

Artistic imagination has been used to illustrate entire “apemen” from nothing more than a single tooth. In the early 1920s, the “apeman” Hesperopithecus (which consisted of a single tooth) was pictured in the London Illustrated News complete with the tooth’s wife, children, domestic animals, and cave! Experts used this tooth, known as “Nebraska man,” as proof for human evolution during the Scopes trial in 1925. In 1927, parts of the skeleton were discovered together with the teeth, and Nebraska man was found to really be an extinct peccary (wild pig)!

So a newspaper came up with an imaginative story about a supposed ape-man and his family, and a primatologist debunked it when he checked out the fossil.
Oh, and a lawyer touted it as a great find.

Not all that interesting from a scientist's point of view.

 

[lordkalvan]

That we 'evolved' from some ape-like ancestor, not from apes themselves is the usual cop out.

Your phrasing is a bit 'off'. Homo sapiens sapiens is classified taxonomically as a primate, as are the modern great apes. Evolutionary theory (and the best evidence we have available) indicates that all modern great apes (including Homo sapiens sapiens) share common ancestors at various points in the past. All of these recent ancestral species were themselves primates.

The highly touted 'common ancestor' is non-existent...

Plenty of fossil specimens have been identified as sharing traits with modern great apes (including Homo sapiens sapiens), but given the sparsity of the fossil record is is scarcely surprising that a specific fossil can be identified as directly ancestral to one pair or group of great ape species rather than another.

...as is the first imaginary 'common ancestor' of all life.

Well, the best evidence suggests that such a last universal common ancestor did, in fact, exist, in just the same way as it suggests a last common human female ancestor and a last common human male ancestor. So not entirely imaginary.

The genetic differences are ridiculously small and completely fail to account for the massive differences that I have already brought to this board, for the feeble to gainsay.

But, as you will recall, they have indeed been gainsaid.

Here's an extract from answersingenesis.org which bears heavily on the subject of the genuineness of the 'finds':

Artistic imagination has been used to illustrate entire “apemen†from nothing more than a single tooth. In the early 1920s, the “apeman†Hesperopithecus (which consisted of a single tooth) was pictured in the London Illustrated News complete with the tooth’s wife, children, domestic animals, and cave! Experts used this tooth, known as “Nebraska man,†as proof for human evolution during the Scopes trial in 1925. In 1927, parts of the skeleton were discovered together with the teeth, and Nebraska man was found to really be an extinct peccary (wild pig)!

This is a rather twisted version of events surrounding Hesperopithicus haroldcookii. AiG is quite misleading you if they are telling you that it featured in the Scopes' Trial at all. Would you like to learn about the actual history and 'disappearance' of hespeoithicus haroldcookii?

Pilbeam says some interesting things:

American Scientist 66:379, 1978.

Do you think that that research may have progressed at all in the last 40-something years?

I have yet to hear some accounting for the origin of any of man's psycho-spiritual abilities.

You need first to tell us how you define these alleged 'abilities' and what 'accounting' you have sought.

Even more significant, is the utter failure of evolutionary theory to account for the origin of women, and the meiotic cell division which is at the bottom of every piece of sexual reproduction extant.

I guess you need to do more research, then, if you believe that evolutionary theory is quite devoid of hypotheses to explain the origins of meiosis. As to the 'origin of women', I suggest you do some reading around the differentiation of sexually reproducing species, bearing in mind the fact that sexual reproduction does not itself require separate sexes. Some species today have both 'male' and 'female' organs and others change from 'male' to 'female' at different times of their lives.

 

[stovebolts]

Perhaps the biologist aren't the ones writing the class school book...

Good point. Can you show me a science textbook that says we evolved from monkeys?

Gad, I don't even remember what book we used back in Jr. High... Do you have any idea how hard that would be to track, and then get a hold of?

What I did find though, was this video put out by PBS for High School students. What I found, is if you pay special attention to their words, they are now saying that we share a common ancestor, and that we are not directly related. But they do state that we are related. What bothers me, is that they say it so factually with no absolute proof. They should at least disclaim that it's their theory that we share a common ancestor based on DNA findings simply because they do not have the proof that we did indeed come from a common ancestor. If they could prove that, then they would have the evidence. But they don't, so it remains a theory, not a fact as they assert.

The below video requires Real Player.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/11/2/real/e_s_5.html

 

[Asyncritus]

Your phrasing is a bit 'off'. Homo sapiens sapiens is classified taxonomically as a primate, as are the modern great apes. Evolutionary theory (and the best evidence we have available) indicates that all modern great apes (including Homo sapiens sapiens) share common ancestors at various points in the past. All of these recent ancestral species were themselves primates.

Given the absolutely vast differences between Homo sapiens and any other given animal, primate or otherwise, sapiens should be in a separate kingdom, not merely another species.

Those differences have been put on the board already, and been fudged as is usual in these matters.

Plenty of fossil specimens have been identified as sharing traits with modern great apes (including Homo sapiens sapiens), but given the sparsity of the fossil record is is scarcely surprising that a specific fossil can be identified as directly ancestral to one pair or group of great ape species rather than another.

Oh yeah. The usual cop out. It all happened someplace else that we can't find, despite centuries of digging. When are you guys going to see through this threadbare excuse and stop playing that card?

Well, the best evidence suggests that such a last universal common ancestor did, in fact, exist, in just the same way as it suggests a last common human female ancestor and a last common human male ancestor. So not entirely imaginary.

I'm really asking 'how did the sexes evolve?' Did men and women evolve separately, or did they appear at the same time? Genesis says 'at the same time'. The record makes a point of reiterating 'male and female created He them', and does so several times, indicating that sexual reproduction appeared suddenly, in one go, in many different organisms.

I could quote you writers who quite simply admit that the whole sexual thing is a mystery - but doubtless between you and Barbarian, you can concoct some fairy tale.

He, of course, is quite likely to produce some foolish article presenting some vapid new hypothesis or other which explains nothing, and achieves nothing besides highlighting the fact that they don't know anything about it, but here's the latest piece of guesswork from Nature, PNAS or some other magazine.

C'est la vie, as they say in Portugal.

But, as you will recall, they have indeed been gainsaid.

They have been nothing of the sort. If you suppose that saying that the mathematical and musical abilities of mankind, among others, are different from the primates' abilities merely in degree, and call that 'gainsaying', then you are sadly mistaken, and your critical faculties are on a par with barbarian's.

Let me know when the next baboon, orangutan or chimpanzee produces a new theory of relativity, won't you. I'll consider my statements gainsaid, but till then, permit me to retain my skepticism.

This is a rather twisted version of events surrounding Hesperopithicus haroldcookii. AiG is quite misleading you if they are telling you that it featured in the Scopes' Trial at all. Would you like to learn about the actual history and 'disappearance' of hespeoithicus haroldcookii?

I know the story quite well, and whether or not it took part in the Scopes trial is immaterial to the speed and willing swallowing exhibited by the scientific community.

Good for them that they discovered the stupidity - but it does cast a huge shadow, along with Piltdown man's - on the palaeoanthropologists' inability to distinguish between concrete fact and hopeful fiction, doesn't it?

How do I know that 'Lucy' et al are not also figments of the Leakey's imagination etc? Indeed, how do you know?

AIG said that only very restricted supporters of the evolutionary theories advanced by the discoverer's were permitted to view and handle the specimens. Can you shed any light on that comment of their's?

Do you think that that research may have progressed at all in the last 40-something years?

I would hope so, indeed - but it hasn't progressed at all as far as rejecting Darwinism is concerned. That theory is so full of holes, it's like a sieve - yet, it is clung to with the desperation of a drowning man to a straw.

You need first to tell us how you define these alleged 'abilities' and what 'accounting' you have sought.

They have been described fully in the article 'Do Chimpanzees need a Chiropodist?'

I guess you need to do more research, then, if you believe that evolutionary theory is quite devoid of hypotheses to explain the origins of meiosis. As to the 'origin of women', I suggest you do some reading around the differentiation of sexually reproducing species,

[SIZE=-1]When Maynard Smith reverse-engineered sex... he created a paradox. Sex should not exist; natural selection will favor asexual reproduction. The solution to the paradox is almost the Holy Grail of a large theoretical sub-branch of evolutionary biology, but it still has not been satisfactorily tracked down. — Mark Ridley, 1997[/SIZE]

In other words, guess what, 'we dunno'.

"However, one of the most glaring failures of this alleged lineage is its inability to account for the origin of sexual (as opposed to asexual) reproduction, and the existence of a male and female within each species that reproduces sexually." Thompson and Harrub http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=162

Sir John Maddox, who served for over twenty-five years as the distinguished editor of Nature, the prestigious journal published by the British Association for the Advancement of Science (and who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994 for “multiple contributions to science”), authored an amazing book titled What Remains to be Discovered in which he addressed the topic of the origin of sex, and stated forthrightly:

The overriding question is when (and then how) sexual reproduction itself evolved. Despite decades of speculation, we do not know. The difficulty is that sexual reproduction creates complexity of the genome and the need for a separate mechanism for producing gametes. The metabolic cost of maintaining this system is huge, as is that of providing the organs specialized for sexual reproduction (the uterus of mammalian females, for example). What are the offsetting benefits? The advantages of sexual reproduction are not obvious (1998, p. 252, emp. added, parenthetical item in orig.)
http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=162

Perhaps you can do better than these guys.
​

...bearing in mind the fact that sexual reproduction does not itself require separate sexes. Some species today have both 'male' and 'female' organs and others change from 'male' to 'female' at different times of their lives.

Whether they do or not, that is no answer to the questions both Maddox and I have posed.

The only answer that makes any sense at all it that given by Genesis:

"...male and female created he them."

 

[Asyncritus]

Just to go back to the question of whether men evolved from apes or not.

Here are 2 statements:

John Rennie, editor of Scientific American:

“This surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor†(2002, 287[1]:81).

The late evolutionary geneticist and Nobel laureate, Hermann J. Muller, writing in the May 1957 issue of Scientific Monthly, blistered his evolutionary colleagues for making such a ridiculous assertion rather than simply accepting the fact that monkeys gave rise to apes, which then gave rise to humans.

It is fashionable in some circles to refer slurringly to the inference that apes were ancestral to man, and to insinuate that it is more proper to say that men and apes, perhaps even men, apes, and monkeys, diverged long ago from a stem form that was more primitive than any of these. This is mere wistful thinking on the part of those who resent too vivid a visualization of their lowly origin and their present-day poor relations (84[5]:250).


George Gaylord Simpson of Harvard—was equally outspoken against what he viewed as such a cowardly approach to the discussion of human evolution.

On this subject, by the way, there has been too much pussyfooting. Apologists emphasize that man cannot be descendant of any living ape—a statement that is obvious to the verge of imbecility—and go on to state or imply that man is not really descended from an ape or monkey at all, but from an earlier common ancestor.


In fact, that earlier ancestor would certainly be called an ape or monkey in popular speech by anyone who saw it. Since the terms ape and monkey are defined by popular usage, man’s ancestors were apes or monkeys (or successively both). It is pusillanimous if not dishonest for an informed investigator to say otherwise (1964, p. 12, emp. added, parenthetical item in orig.).
​

http://www.apologeticspress.com/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=1046

You were saying, LK?

 

[Barbarian]

It always drives creationists up the wall when they are reminded that humans didn't evolve from monkeys. We did, however, evolve from animals that would appear to be somewhat like apes and somewhat like humans.

Of course, all life having a common ancestor, someone could say we evolved from a single-celled organism, which would be true in the longest view, but completely misleading, seeing as our ancestors were hominins, not monkeys or amoebas.

 

[EricTheBaptist]

It always drives creationists up the wall when they are reminded that humans didn't evolve from monkeys. We did, however, evolve from animals that would appear to be somewhat like apes and somewhat like humans.

Of course, all life having a common ancestor, someone could say we evolved from a single-celled organism, which would be true in the longest view, but completely misleading, seeing as our ancestors were hominins, not monkeys or amoebas.

Am I the only who finds this rather silly? So my great great times 1,000 grandfather is some microbacteria in the ocean?

 

[Jam]

Am I the only who finds this rather silly? So my great great times 1,000 grandfather is some microbacteria in the ocean?

Personal incredulence is not a valid argument;)

"Silly"? I'd say it was amazing.

 

[Asyncritus]

It always drives creationists up the wall when they are reminded that humans didn't evolve from monkeys. We did, however, evolve from animals that would appear to be somewhat like apes and somewhat like humans.

So what do you make of Muller and Simpson above? Pair of idiots, huh?

Of course, all life having a common ancestor, :toofunny someone could say we evolved from a single-celled organism, which would be true in the longest view, but completely misleading, seeing as our ancestors were hominins, not monkeys or amoebas.

Maybe yours were. Not mine. I strenuously deny the honour.

But have a look at Dr Leakey's findings and comments on the Chimpanzee thread. Should give you pause for thought.

 

[jasoncran]

a miracle that we did get a brain that somehow we haven killed ourselves off , and yet also this

genetic entropy!

a book by sanford is done on that he isnt some chump.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Sanford

i find nothing in the toe to be amazed by.

i will have to dig in on that scopes trial. i wont do here i will go the other forum.

 

[Barbarian]

So what do you make of Muller and Simpson above?

Both had retired long before we discovered the large number of hominins that show our actual descent. So it's not altogether surprising that they didn't anticipate the evidence we have today.

Barbarian observes:
Of course, all life having a common ancestor, someone could say we evolved from a single-celled organism, which would be true in the longest view, but completely misleading, seeing as our ancestors were hominins, not monkeys or amoebas.

Maybe yours were. Not mine. I strenuously deny the honour.

Doesn't matter. You don't get a choice. Sorry.

But have a look at Dr Leakey's findings and comments on the Chimpanzee thread. Should give you pause for thought.

Don't see anything there that contradicts the evidence. Can you show us what you think does?

 

[stovebolts]

It always drives creationists up the wall when they are reminded that humans didn't evolve from monkeys. We did, however, evolve from animals that would appear to be somewhat like apes and somewhat like humans.

Not sure why it would drive me up the wall. From my perspective, it shows how Science has back tracked. Again, I was taught, and I've heard more than one teacher when I was in school state that we evolved from apes. Perhaps my teachers were mis-informed, or perhaps they didn't to a good enough job articulating the difference. But I'm not the only one who was left with the impression that we were being taught that we evolved from monkeys.

Of course, all life having a common ancestor, someone could say we evolved from a single-celled organism, which would be true in the longest view, but completely misleading, seeing as our ancestors were hominins, not monkeys or amoebas.

I would say that the common ancestor would be GOD, but I wouldn't say that we evolved from a single-celled organism. That would be a theory, not a fact and because it's a theory, doesn't mean it's true. It just means it's a theory.