[_ Old Earth _] Is evolutionism compatible with the Bible?

[Roro1972]

Geologic time is tough to get one's head around. But nature isn't obligated to follow our expectations.

Ok today I was reading an article and it said horses evolved from rhinos 54 to 58million years ago. Is there any absolute proof of this statement. And how can half of them still stay rhinos and half evolve to horses. Its guess work.

 

[Cygnus]

Ok today I was reading an article and it said horses evolved from rhinos 54 to 58million years ago. Is there any absolute proof of this statement. And how can half of them still stay rhinos and half evolve to horses. Its guess work.

here's more...
It is now acknowledged that horse evolution as recorded in the fossils follows no recognizable pattern, and that the evolutionary "tree" looks more like a multi-branching "bush." The successive forms indicating straight-line evolution appear only in textbooks; they do not appear in the fossils. Sometimes fossils of different types that supposedly lived at different times appear together in the same strata layer. In Oregon, the three-toed grazer Neohipparion (very much like Merychippus) has been found with Pliohippus. In the Great Basin area, Pliohippus has been found with the three-toed Hipparion throughout the timeframe supposedly represented. Evolutionary scientists freely admit this situation--and to their credit often attempt to correct the misconceptions--but still the horse series appears in the textbooks.

Click here for the rest of the article.

 

[OzSpen]

Sure, then i realized what great damage that theology does to scripture. I started to aask questions and kept getting the Mr. Bojangles dance from people such as you and Barbarian.

....i noticed they all fall flat on their face when they try to show why mankind is a sinner. Will you like to try and explain it to us now that you have had some time to reflect upon the subject of our sin nature?

Cygnus,

That is the meaning of 'theology'? It is composed of 2 Greek words: theos = God and logos = word or message. Theology is a discipline that pursues the message about God.

Therefore, it is not the discipline of theology that damages Scripture. This damage relates to the interpretive framework that some theologians bring to Scripture. Some do not have a high view of Scripture. I do have.

You and I know the human race is sinful and the sin nature comes from the fall into sin by Adam and Eve in Genesis 3.

Rom 5:12 (NIRV) states, 'Sin entered the world because one man sinned. And death came because of sin. Everyone sinned, so death came to all people'. Adam is blamed for it.

Now is that dancing around anything?

Oz

That's how human nature was

 

[OzSpen]

No you didn't. You just showed me some fossils you speculate as being transitional forms. Considering they were formed as a result of the flood of noah...it would be impossible for them to be transitional.

Have you not heard of Archaeopteryx?

(image courtesy Wikipedia)

Oz

 

[Cygnus]

Cygnus,

That is the meaning of 'theology'? It is composed of 2 Greek words: theos = God and logos = word or message. Theology is a discipline that pursues the message about God.

Therefore, it is not the discipline of theology that damages Scripture. This damage relates to the interpretive framework that some theologians bring to Scripture. Some do not have a high view of Scripture. I do have.

You and I know the human race is sinful and the sin nature comes from the fall into sin by Adam and Eve in Genesis 3.

Rom 5:12 (NIRV) states, 'Sin entered the world because one man sinned. And death came because of sin. Everyone sinned, so death came to all people'. Adam is blamed for it.

Now is that dancing around anything?

Oz

That's how human nature was

Evolutionism denies that. Plain and simple. Evolutionism denies sin came because of one man.

 

[Cygnus]

Have you not heard of Archaeopteryx?

(image courtesy Wikipedia)

Oz

Sure....poor creature got caught by the flood of Noah.

 

[Barbarian]

Ok today I was reading an article and it said horses evolved from rhinos 54 to 58million years ago.

Yep. Numerous transitional forms exist, precisely where they would have to be for such a divergence. Hyracotherium is very close to the actual common ancestor of rhinos and horses. Recently, they found one even closer.

A portly hoofed animal about the size of a wild pig just might help solve a 55-million-year-old mystery of evolution and continental drift.

The mammal, which likely weighed 45 to 75 pounds, probably occupied a branch of the evolutionary tree right beside a broad group that has since radiated out into the modern rhinoceros, horse and hippopotamus, according to a study published online Thursday in the journal Nature Communications.

Cambaytherium thewissi, first described nine years ago, comes as close to being described as a “missing link” as any paleontologist might dare (most eschew the term). It retains features later lost among its sister mammals, the perissodactyls – which includes tapirs, rhinos and horses.

“It’s a transitional form; it’s a missing link, if you like,” said the study's lead author, Kenneth Rose, a paleontologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “I don’t like that term, because all fossils really are missing links. Anything new is a missing link in your understanding.”
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-a-rhinohorse-india-20141120-story.html

Is there any absolute proof of this statement.

Science never "proves" anything. It merely gathers enough evidence to make it absurd to deny what the evidence says. It's like the way you confidently anticipate the Sun appearing in the east every morning. You can't prove it, but it's absurd to deny that it will happen.

The discovery of yet another predicted transitional is pretty convincing, but even more convincing is that there are no transitionals where they should not be. Nothing between bears and horses. No transitional wolf/kangaroos. And so on.

And how can half of them still stay rhinos and half evolve to horses.

In Cygnus' doctrine of "evolutionism", they can't. But evolution doesn't work that way. Typically, populations diverge into different groups and these can evolve into different kinds of organism, like horses and rhinos.

 

[Barbarian]

Have you not heard of Archaeopteryx?

(image courtesy Wikipedia)

Really interesting case. It's not a bird, but it's very, very close to the line that gave rise to birds.

It actually has more dinosaur characteristics than avian characteristics.

 

[Roro1972]

here's more...
It is now acknowledged that horse evolution as recorded in the fossils follows no recognizable pattern, and that the evolutionary "tree" looks more like a multi-branching "bush." The successive forms indicating straight-line evolution appear only in textbooks; they do not appear in the fossils. Sometimes fossils of different types that supposedly lived at different times appear together in the same strata layer. In Oregon, the three-toed grazer Neohipparion (very much like Merychippus) has been found with Pliohippus. In the Great Basin area, Pliohippus has been found with the three-toed Hipparion throughout the timeframe supposedly represented. Evolutionary scientists freely admit this situation--and to their credit often attempt to correct the misconceptions--but still the horse series appears in the textbooks.

Click here for the rest of the article.

Thank you for the link it is full good info.

 

[Roro1972]

Yep. Numerous transitional forms exist, precisely where they would have to be for such a divergence. Hyracotherium is very close to the actual common ancestor of rhinos and horses. Recently, they found one even closer.

A portly hoofed animal about the size of a wild pig just might help solve a 55-million-year-old mystery of evolution and continental drift.

The mammal, which likely weighed 45 to 75 pounds, probably occupied a branch of the evolutionary tree right beside a broad group that has since radiated out into the modern rhinoceros, horse and hippopotamus, according to a study published online Thursday in the journal Nature Communications.

Cambaytherium thewissi, first described nine years ago, comes as close to being described as a “missing link” as any paleontologist might dare (most eschew the term). It retains features later lost among its sister mammals, the perissodactyls – which includes tapirs, rhinos and horses.

“It’s a transitional form; it’s a missing link, if you like,” said the study's lead author, Kenneth Rose, a paleontologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “I don’t like that term, because all fossils really are missing links. Anything new is a missing link in your understanding.”
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-a-rhinohorse-india-20141120-story.html



Science never "proves" anything. It merely gathers enough evidence to make it absurd to deny what the evidence says. It's like the way you confidently anticipate the Sun appearing in the east every morning. You can't prove it, but it's absurd to deny that it will happen.

The discovery of yet another predicted transitional is pretty convincing, but even more convincing is that there are no transitionals where they should not be. Nothing between bears and horses. No transitional wolf/kangaroos. And so on.



In Cygnus' doctrine of "evolutionism", they can't. But evolution doesn't work that way. Typically, populations diverge into different groups and these can evolve into different kinds of organism, like horses and rhinos.

thanks for the info.

 

[calvin]

Often, a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances, … and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience.

So, a 5th century 'non Christian' knows all about the size of the stars? Seriously? They also know all about Galactic rotation and drift? Really? Or did they and Augustine erroneously believe from 'reason and experience' that the Earth was flat? According to Leo Ferrari he did.
But we shouldn't be honest and upfront in discussing Augustine's somewhat tragic view of the limitations of a spherical Earth should we.
He, Augustine could not wrap his head around the idea that men (descended from Adam) had sailed the seas to the other side of the Earth. In reading his verbiage on this subject it is clear that he subscribed to a flat earth understanding and found that the preposterous idea that the antipodal geography of a spherical Earth being applied to his flat earth was simply untenable.
So please stick to the Word of God and leave Augustine to fight his own battles.

 

[Barbarian]

So, a 5th century 'non Christian' knows all about the size of the stars?

Aristarchus of Samos, for example, found that the Sun was gigantic, and argued that stars were just suns that were very distant. With only very crude instruments, he came up with a remarkably good estimate for the size of the Sun, and correctly predicted that the stars would not show parallax. So yes.

Seriously?

Yep. He knew that the Earth went around the Sun, too.

Or did they and Augustine erroneously believe from 'reason and experience' that the Earth was flat?

You can't be serious. Since classical Greek times, every educated person knew the Earth was a sphere. There are Roman coins showing it as a sphere. The Greeks portrayed Atlas as holding up a spherical Earth. Educated people knew that Eratosthenes had accurately determined its circumference.

According to Leo Ferrari he did.

You've taken a joke seriously. Ferrari was the satirical originator of the Flat Earth society. It was a joke. Augustine of course knew the Earth was round:

As to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets on us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, there is no reason for believing it. Those who affirm it do not claim to possess any actual information; they merely conjecture that, since the earth is suspended within the concavity of the heavens, and there is as much room on the one side of it as on the other, therefore the part which is beneath cannot be void of human inhabitants.
St. Augustine The City of God

But we shouldn't be honest and upfront in discussing Augustine's somewhat tragic view of the limitations of a spherical Earth should we.
He, Augustine could not wrap his head around the idea that men (descended from Adam) had sailed the seas to the other side of the Earth. In reading his verbiage on this subject it is clear that he subscribed to a flat earth understanding

See above. Antipodes were imagined humans living on the other side of the Earth. Augustine knew very well that the Earth was round, and had a good idea of how big it was.
http://isaw.nyu.edu/exhibitions/space/banner03.html

These things being so, you can see why St. Augustine was so unhappy with foolish believers making up stories about things of which they had not understanding.

 

[Papa Zoom]

(image courtesy Wikipedia)

Really interesting case. It's not a bird, but it's very, very close to the line that gave rise to birds.

It actually has more dinosaur characteristics than avian characteristics.

Its trans-species. It's really a bird but identifies as a Dino. It's also non binary. :shades

 

[calvin]

With only very crude instruments, he came up with a remarkably good estimate for the size of the Sun, and correctly predicted that the stars would not show parallax. So yes.

So no!
Closer stars do show a parallax. This was the means of measuring stella distances until other methods were devised.
But all this is secondary to the question of evolution's incompatibility with Scripture.
Did you know that measurements of Ocean floor sediment depths tend to favour a younger Earth than the Old Earth disciples want to hear about?

 

[OzSpen]

Evolutionism denies that. Plain and simple. Evolutionism denies sin came because of one man.

I expect that secular evolutionists would deny original sin. Do you have evidence that evangelical Christians who support evolution deny original sin? If so, please give us a few quotes and names.

I do not support macroevolution, but I do support microevolution, as we see it all around us with changes in various kinds of fruit and other products. I'm the son of a Queensland sugar cane farmer. On those farms when I was growing up, we had various varieties of sugar cane, e.g. CP, Q50, Q55, NCO, etc. All of those varieties are sugar cane but there are micro changes among them.

The same with bananas. I prefer Lady Finger bananas over Cavendish bananas, but both are still bananas with microevolutionary change.

On the farm, Jersey cows would interbreed with Herefords. But they were both varieties of cattle and examples of microevolution.

Do you believe in microevolution?

Oz

 

[OzSpen]

Evolutionism denies that. Plain and simple. Evolutionism denies sin came because of one man.

But you were the one bagging theology.

 

[OzSpen]

Sure....poor creature got caught by the flood of Noah.

What kind of creature is Archaeopteryx?

It may have been Noah's flood or some other devastating flood that caused it to be covered by sediment. When we lost all of our possessions in the 1974 Brisbane flood, there were lots of animals of various kinds that were covered by silt.

Yes, Noah's flood is the most likely cause of the fossils around the world, but other catastrophies could also be the cause - volcanoes, tsunamis, cyclones, hurricanes, etc.

Oz

 

[Barbarian]

So no!
Closer stars do show a parallax. This was the means of measuring stella distances until other methods were devised.

The Sun does, too. But Aristarchus' predictions remain valid. As you see, the ancients knew a good deal more about our universe than you thouight..

But all this is secondary to the question of evolution's incompatibility with Scripture.

No one who understands both, thinks they are incompatible.

Did you know that measurements of Ocean floor sediment depths tend to favour a younger Earth than the Old Earth disciples want to hear about?

Most creationists stopped using that one. Here's a few reasons why:
This is the other half of Nevins' argument (see point #15). Dr. Hovind has botched it further by asserting that only a few thousand year's worth of sediment is on the ocean floor! In the case of the Atlantic Ocean, the sediment varies in thickness. The thinnest sediment is near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where new sea floor is currently being generated. That is to say, sediment thickness there is zero. The thickest sediment hugs the continental margins, which certainly have more than a few thousand years of accumulation. Try around 150 million year's worth! Funny, that the measured rate of sea floor spreading, when extrapolated backwards in time, gives the same age for the Atlantic sea floor as does radiometric dating. Funny, how the sediment gets thicker and thicker as one moves away from the sea floor spreading zone! That is, the farther we get from the Mid-Atlantic ridge the thicker the sediment tends to get; that thickness correlates with increased age of the sea floor as determined by radiometric dating as well as the known rate at which the Atlantic is widening. (Funny, how Dr. Hovind always comes up with "a few thousand years" no matter what we are looking at!)
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-yea2.html

 

[Barbarian]

What kind of creature is Archaeopteryx?

It's a feathered dinosaur. It has a dinosaur skull, teeth, ribs, sternum, hips, tail, and legs. It just happens to have feathers, but then many other dinosaurs had feathers.

The big deal is that unlike most other feathered dinosaurs, Archie could fly. (we know this because it had assymetrical flight feathers). Few other dinosaurs could fly.

 

[Barbarian]

Its trans-species. It's really a bird but identifies as a Dino. It's also non binary.

Not sure what you mean by "trans-species." It's a well-characterized genus with several species known. Perhaps "trans-order" might be more appropriate, since it's a transitional linking reptiles and birds. The trend has been to put birds, dinosaurs, and crocodilians into their own order, the Archosaura, since they form a well-defined ingroup with all other reptiles as an outgroup.