Christianity and Evolution
A blog debate about a Christian response to various creation/evolution combination theories
Thanks for starting the debate. Unfortunately, you will get a lot of absolutist (fundamentalist???) arguments on both sides of the issue and it is unlikely that much will be gained. That said, here are my talking points.
1. God created everything.
I don’t know how long it took, but that is irrelevant. Until man decided to measure time by the sun or the seasons or his heartbeat, there was no time. Therefore, when we read that it took 6 days, those six days are God days - not man days.2. Evolution is a theory.
In science there are WAGs, theses, postulate, theories and laws. These all are used to label a different level of confidence in a description of something that exists. Theories are not laws. These names are a descriptive tool to try to explain complex phenomena. Evolution, as it is used to show how species adapt or disappear is a useful tool and is supported by the fossil record. However, it is insufficient. It cannot explain how we got from star dust to Mozart. There are many truths that cannot be explained by our current scientific knowledge. Those who believe evolution is the answer are making as big a leap in faith as those who say that God created the earth in 6 days.3. Just because you have trouble with believing the Bible’s description of creation does not mean that it is not true. One of the best things I have seen written was by Robert Heinlein. In order to explain the Biblical math used to age the earth and the fact of the fossil remains of dinosaurs, he said that God created the world 6000 years(or some similar number) ago, but he made it very old. Remember, a God who is omnipotent could do that…
Posted by Spike72AFA
12/22/2007 at 11:49 AM
I don’t want to create a tangent, but let’s be clear on what a theory is to scientists. When you or I use the word we use it in a context of “I have a loose idea about how something happened”. When science calls something a theory it means an idea that has stood up to every criticism and counter idea they could find to throw at it, and still hasn’t fallen apart. So no, theories are not laws, but they’re very close to them.
Sorry Mr. C, but I have to disagree with your position. All a Christian needs to believe in is the expiation of sin through Christ’s resurrection, that they can get in on that deal through honest contrition and asking forgiveness in His name, the Lord’s Prayer, and trying to live by the Golden Rule. Everything else is important - the moral teachings for example, but not really mandatory. Did I miss the part in Genesis where God shows up and tells some guy the story of creation and the eventual Fall of Man? If not, then its a nice oral tradition handed down from a stone age culture.
I don’t get why so many people can’t see that evolution can be another one of God’s miracles. How small minded they are to lock rules onto God, that once a creature exists it stays that way forever. I think a dynamic earth populated with flexible life shows that God is far more complex and deep than the “fixed world” crowd acknowledges.
Sorry I have nothing to add, This trousered ape is hopelessly stuck on trying to figure out how something can be created from nothing.
By introduction, I am a long term Christian; some nearly fifty years now. I am an ordained preacher in the Southern Baptist denomination. I’m not sure if I’m a fundamentalist; to the liberal theologians I am very fundamental, to fundamentalists, I’m pretty loose. Go figure.
Day
Your point about an Nth day is taken. However, most other instances specify a ‘zone’ of time; like the first day of the month, or the first day of the festival. I think the first chapter of Genesis is figurative for a couple reasons. One reason is the account has the Earth existing prior to the stars. Another reason is the first day has light and darkness, evening and morning… but the Sun isn’t made until the fourth day. Sorry, but evening and morning are concepts based upon and totally dependant on the relationship between Earth and Sun. No Sun, no evening or morning.
If this account is literal, it’s in big trouble. If it is figurative, those details don’t matter.Death
What death did not occur until after the Fall? God told Adam and Eve if they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would surely die. But they didn’t die when they ate, they didn’t even die that same day. They lived many years later. So God wasn’t serious?Nonsense.
And look at John’s gospel, chapter 3 verse 16: “… whosoever believeth shall not die but have everlasting life” And a verse later in Chapter 5 of Romans - verse 21: “That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.” So believers will not die, right? That’s what it literally says.
But in this case, it’s talking about spiritual life, not physical life, right? And how is it the Genesis account isn’t referring to spiritual death? Which it clearly is…
God pronounced it Good
So what does God mean by ‘good’? The same thing we mean by good? I think our concept is a bit flawed in copy. Death is not something to be feared by Christians. It is simply the event by which we go home. I’m a bit apprehensive about the method and manner of passing, but passing into God’s presence in Eternity is nothing to fear in my life.I think that is what death was like for all things prior to the Fall. Not a penalty, but a graduation from the temporal to the eternal.
Consider also, why was there a ‘Tree of Life’ in the garden if death did not exist?
I have no doubt God the Creator designed, engineered, built and sustains the Universe and all therein. I know God in a personal manner. I’m sort of a limited evolutionist; I think it’s essentially on the right track, but hasn’t answered all questions yet. I find the concept of a young Earth rather silly.
You know of course, the concept of the age of the Earth as 6000 years or so is the work of the Bishop of Armaugh, James Ussher? It’s not in the Bible, it’s Bishop Ussher’s work. He also said the end would come in 1996 or 1997. Did I miss it?
Ussher is totally wrong on the last one Archie. The world will end on December 23, 2012. Ask any Mayan, they’ll tell you.
But to get back on track ... naturally there’s something on the TV tonight (considering the season) about the books stricken from the bible - the apocrypha and the septuagint. That got me thinking about all the early sects of Christianity that were wiped out - murdered and/or declared heretical by the nascent Roman Catholic Church. The gnostics in Alexandria, Pelagians in Briton, Albigensians in southern France ... its a large list. Whatever beliefs they held have been eradicated. Can you say whether they were right or wrong?
How many versions of the Bible have there been since it was translated from Hebrew or Arameic into Greek and from Greek into whatever? I can name 4 off the top of my head and I am not at all a Bible scholar. If changes were not put in (man getting in the way via power politics of some kind) no new version would be necessary. Today we even have simplified and modified versions for folks who can’t deal with Thee and Thou. When you change the words, is it still the word of God? When you add a few chapters, or do some editing, is it less than truthful? What happens when a word is not translated properly? Do you get people thinking they should be pacifists and vegetarians cuz it says “thou shalt not kill” instead of “thou shalt not murder”?
Remember the fairy tale of Cinderella? It’s an old French story. In Old French, one “r” is the difference between the words for fur and glass. Put the “r” back in, and the fairy tale becomes a porno story, where the prince goes around the whole kingdom trying on the “fur slipper” of each maiden to see which one fits best. Let’s not even talk about Little Red Riding Hood, or Rumplestiltskin, except to say that the real and hidden meaning of allegory can be totally lost in translation and over the course of time.
well, I am Roman Catholic and have read the Bible in three languages, Spanish, English and German. Currently, the only copy of The Bible I have is written in German and I consider it the best version thus far. I really enjoy reading it now as an adult, while trying to remember how I interpreted The Bible as a child. As a child, I tried exploring the logic behind metaphysics. Six days for a healthy child growing up are not the same amount of time as for an old man waiting to meet his maker. I have come to believe, that Time is only important for mortals, so I believe the six days of creation could have been six seconds or six eons. When I die, I will find out if it was important to know it it took six 24-hour-days or not. We as humans try to put a time-stamp in everthing, we don’t even know if a day really has 24 hours or not, so why should we try to explain faith?
Just as me an my family celebrate the Birth of Christ every year, without having the need to know the exact date, we believe God created everything. <--- Period
Plants grew on the Earth in the third day. How is this possible if the sun wasn’t created until the fourth day ? And it mentions on the fourth day that the lights in the sky were intended to set the times and the seasons. To divide the day ( morning and evening ). On Day 4. How was there a morning and evening on days 1,2,3 ?
The other common argument is “well evolution is just a theory”. True, but other things like electro-magnetism and gravity are just theories. All three are common human observations of the results of unseen forces in the world about us and the theory part comes into trying to understand how they work. But the condition must exist in reality for the theory to come into being in the first place. The more that is observed the more honed the theory becomes. So far we have done quite well with the theory of gravity and electro-magnetism not knowing everything about it.
It is a strawman argument that a Christian cannot believe in the theory of evolution. Creation theory is about how it all got here and evolution is a theory of how it all manage to stay here post-Creation. The fundamental tenet of evolution is adaptation to the environment for survival. God build us this way to survive in a dynamic world where the only constant is change.
I believe in God the Creator, Christ our savior and Jesus my friend but I cannot believe in a shake-n-bake Creation. If someone believes that the world is only 6,000 years old but we find fossils millions of years old it implies that God created a deception. This is not possible. By God’s own design carbon-14 will decay at a certain rate, bone and trees will fossilize at a certain rate and our discoveries of these type thing date back millions of years. So which is most likely incorrect; the natural law of the creation or the interpreter of the verses ?
Genesis was given to a human society with nothing resembling our current knowledge and the Creation story was delivered to Man the same way a father would explain a complex situation to a child. “Well grandma went to be with Jesus”. Explaining in this form is not a falsity. It is just suited for the level of understanding of that particular audience.
There is nothing in Genesis that denies evolution as a possibility. If one has never bothered to study evolution then the only opinion that can be expected is an uninformed opinion. What loving father would not prepare his children with the ability to adapt, survive and possibly flourish in a dangerous outside world?
And to jump ahead in this very common discussion path on this subject… who did Cain marry ?
Posted by iopian
12/23/2007 at 05:06 PM
God told Adam and Eve if they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would surely die.
From what I remember in studying this - death, die - have different meanings - as in sleep, lost to Me etc. And perhaps this particular passage is a message to all - if you don’t listen to Me, you will be dead to Me. Or a simple warning about sinning and falling from protected Children of God, to human.
I believe that all things are from God and that the ‘evidence’ presented here on Earth to question Creation are for those who question God and faith. But most of the questions, distortions and interpretations are man’s and foisted on the World by religions created by those questions, distortions and interpretations. Doesn’t make them from the Bible or God. . .
The final question of jopian also brings up the idea as to what was going on in the West while all this was going on in the Holy Lands - perhaps that is where Cain’s wife came from - as the Earth was populated from the beginning - just because those who got to the Word first got to write it their way. . .
A few centuries ago, religious leaders rejected Galileo’s notion that the earth wasn’t the center of the solar system. They believed that a heliocentric solar system disagreed with the Bible. Of course, we now know that the Bible wasn’t wrong; it was people’s interpretation of the scriptures that was wrong.
I feel that it’s the same situation regarding the age of the universe and evolution. How does accepting that the universe could be billions of years old conflict with God’s plan for salvation through Jesus? Furthermore, whether God created the entire universe from nothing in 6 days or in as many billions of years, it doesn’t change the fact that He’s all-powerful and majestic.
It’s a shame that so many people see a conflict between the Bible and science. In either case, there’s no denying the facts. The truth is the truth. The only thing that’s negotiable is people’s opinions.
Posted by DaGeneral
12/23/2007 at 07:13 PM
I am going to side with the literal translation.
We can not prove what happened in a scientific manner. For a proof by scientific method, one needs a repeatable experiment that supports the hypothesis and would negate the hypothesis if it did not work.
What we are really talking about is closer to the process in a court hearing than in a scientific laboratory. Something happened in the past and different parties have different versions. They bring evidence to try to support their case and convince others their story is the one that accurately reflects what happened. The problem here is the evidence can be interpreted different ways based on assumptions, and the assumptions are based on your starting position. Given all this I make the following statements in support of my belief in creation in six days:
1. The closer I look at the supposed evidence for an old earth and universe, the weaker it seems. (carbon dating, fossil formation, radiometric dating, circular dating between sediment layers and fossils, gradual evolution of items that don’t function in intermediate stages, etc.)
2. If you decide God did not really mean what he said in Genesis, why would you believe He really means anything else in the bible?
3. The long history of fraud put forth as evidence for evolution/long age development. (Piltdown, Haekel’s embryos, even the peppered moths.) I this theory is so obvious from the evidence, why do they have to resort to falsification to produce the evidence?
4. Jesus quoted and referred to the writings of Moses and took and taught them literally in the gospels. The other new testament authors also took Genesis literally and warned against those that did not.
Luk 16:31 “But he said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.’”
Joh 5:46 “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me.
Joh 5:47 “But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”2Pe 3:1 This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder,
2Pe 3:2 that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles.
2Pe 3:3 Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts,
2Pe 3:4 and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.”
2Pe 3:5 For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water,
2Pe 3:6 through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.------------
I was raised going to Catholic school, and they taught me evolution. I am saddened by that. I looked into the evidence and the bible and find the biblical account makes more sense to me. I feel I lost a great deal by spending so many years believing in evolution.
An interesting bit, mostly on topic:
<center><font size="+1" color="GREEN">Israeli Scientists Create Nano-Sized Bible</font></center>
JERUSALEM — Israeli scientists have inscribed the entire Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible onto a space less than half the size of grain of sugar.
The nanotechnology experts at the Technion institute in Haifa say the text measures less than 0.5 square millimeter (0.01 square inch) surface. They chose the Jewish Bible to highlight how vast quantities of information can be stored in minimum amounts of space.
“It took us about an hour to etch the 300,000 words of the Bible onto a tiny silicon surface,” Ohad Zohar, the university’s scientific adviser for educational programs, told the Associated Press.
Gosh, when these guys say to read the fine print, they really mean it!!
More diverse than I expected. Here’s a few from me.
1) Stephen Hawking described a “Big Bang” as the beginning of the universe. What evidence is there that Hawking isn’t describing the events that occurred when God said “Let there be light”?
I had one Christian believer tell me that the difference was that the Bible was true and literal while Hawking was simply putting forth a theory. While that was a nice statement of belief, it certainly didn’t have much logic to it. Sorry, that argument will not convince me. Like Einstein, I cannot believe in such an orderly universe without God, but I also do not believe that the Bible should be taken literally.
2) OK, after Adam and Eve “ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” what were they sent out into the world to do? Yes, Adam would eat in the sweat of his face and such, but what else? Weren’t they sent out to learn? As we learn, we adapt and grow. That’s a pretty functional definition of evolution.
So, not only do I not have a problem reconciling the Bible with science and evolution in particular, I really believe that rejecting evolution will hamper your spiritual growth. So, what’s the final truth? None of us will know as a certainty until we die.
A last thought: One major problem with finding the exact truth of this matter is that it requires a belief in something that generally can’t be perceived with any of our 5 senses. Unfortunately, such a belief can also be defined as a form of insanity - just ask any Communist.
1. The Hebrew word for “day” used in this passage is “Yom”. As in English, this word can have a couple of meanings. It can be “day”, as in 24 hours, but it can also mean “time”, as in a passage of time as well as other things. But, when it is used with a number, or with the phrase “evening and morning”, it always has the meaning of a 24 hour day. What do we find in the Genesis passage? Both “evening and morning” as well as “the 2nd day, the 3rd day”, etc. Syntactically, it means a 24-hour day.
See #1 above. If the creation of the universe is a metaphor, then the idea of literal days doesn’t apply, no matter which words were written down when the Old Testament made the transition from oral tradition to written document. That’s assuming the correct words were written in the first place.
2. Christians believe that the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 was when death was introduced into history. This is backed up in Romans chapter 5, verses 12-14, which says:
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.
If we are to believe that creation took hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years, how could death have been introduced with Adam? If nothing died before Adam’s fall, then the plants and animals would have had to live without dying as well.
Poke around in the Old Testament a bit more. What you’ve missed is that even a Heathen can make it to heaven for the righteous acts in his life. Is it better if you’re Jewish and believe in One God? It certainly is unless you count that the rules are more stringent if you’re supposed to know them, but it’s not mandatory. I would also recommend checking through the Talmud (commentaries on Jewish law, about the size of a small encyclopedia) for some guidance here.
3. At the end of the creation process in Genesis 1:31, God declares everything he has created as “very good”. If there were death and disease before this time, how could He have declared it as “very good”?
Good and bad in our context is irrelevant. Death, disease and all the rest are part of what God has made that we are to learn from. God was obviously pleased with his design.
Great points on both sides of the discussion. Here is a link to my first response on 12/22, since I think Mr. Christian has fallen behind on his Christmas wrapping.
http://ramblingordinaryguy.blogspot.com/2007/12/christianity-and-evolution.html
Posted by Lucid Guy
12/24/2007 at 05:37 PM
I pondered a number of questions on this subject for years and in the end the Lord answered it for me.
The Bible makes several references that God’s ways are not our (even to the point of saying the Lord’s day is not what ours is - for example II Peter 3:8). I read over this many times and I thought about the subject of God creating the world as appearing old. Even more strongly I looked up at the sky and gazed at the stars and saw light that took millions of years to travel the distance to my eyes and again I asked why I would be able to see this light if the world was only a few thousand years old.
Could God have created this light and made it appear to us that the universe was very old?
Yes he could BUT it would be dishonest and God never lies to us.
For a long time I did not understand until we were reading Luke 2 and the Lord opened my eyes as a revelation when I reached verse 21 - “and Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day”. It appeared to me as if written in words a thousand feet high written in fire. Jesus was circumcised - His flesh and blood was shed for us on the eighth day OF CREATION.
The arguments over creation and evolution fade away. God lifted man up from the dust what matters is the Son and where we are. We are still in that eighth day of the Lord.
As the days of the Lord always ended at sunset, ask your self what will end this day - when the light of the Holy Spirit leaves this world and darkness again falls.
Babylonandon:
1. I agree creating things that are not as they seem, such as distant starlight, would be dishonest and not in keeping with the immutable character of God. You assume, though, that the speed of light has been constant. This cannot be proved and is amazingly hard to discern from available evidence.2. My opinion, fwiw, is that the point of 2Pet 3:8 is that God is patient and for him to wait a thousand years is as easy for him as it is for us to wait a single day. I do not read it to mean that God confuses the two or uses one term when he means the other.
Mr. Christy-aan! I’ve always wanted to yell that.
You nailed your first three points with very sound explanation. I’ll only add that there were no toilets in Eden. Think about it.
As for the responder’s retorts, well....
IMHO, evolution is not so much a theory, but a hypothesis, and not so much a hypothesis based on empirical science as a tenant in a philosophical belief system. That belief system is ‘naturalism’. More later.
As for plants on day three, but no sun until day four, yet God proclaimed the first, second & third day GOOD, He was simply instituting the concept of time. Tick, tock. He can do that you know. Gravity wasn’t specifically mentioned in the first chapter either, but I’m sure he implemented it just as he did the concept of time. And, just as there will be the perpetual light of THE SON to illuminate the new heaven and earth, God can provide his own light to work by without massive infernos of coalesced hydrogen gas.
JimT on post 11 cut to the heart on many of these matters - specifically his second point. Hat tip!
Back to naturalism. The problem with the Bible believing Christian adopting evolution as a mechanism for creation, is that he/she is attempting to glom a purely materialistic hypothesis on what is essentially a Theistic proposition. Oil & water. Here’s why:
Naturalism is a philosophical belief system that states nature is a closed system with never an outside influence. To propose a ‘super or extra’ natural influence would be fantasy at best, and delusional at worst. More over, natural laws and material are claimed to have created themselves, without any guidance or purpose, and from that ‘self creation’ came complex things like galaxies, planets, eco systems, worms, & people, etc. Darwin’s ‘theory’ is an attempt to put ‘scientific how’ to a philosophical ‘what’. Darwin admits as much. Folks like R. Dawkins expound on this purely material belief system & scientific mechanism with books like ‘the blind watchmaker’, etc. demanding that there is no god, and science can eventually explain all.
Except it’s not very scientific, and is fraught with fraud, incongruities,
and a glaring absence of evidence. Humans are fallible creatures. But it does fit into a philosophical belief system which takes faith to believe in its correctness.In short, I’ll take God’s word over man’s anyday. Plus, there were no toilets in Eden.
Merry Christmas!
Posted by Locomotive Breath 1901
12/25/2007 at 05:27 PM
1. Loco Breath: A minor point--day two did not get the seal of approval, but day three got the “was good” blessing twice. Hence the tradition for the third day being extra blessed and the wedding at Cana on the third day.
2. I have been told, but only by one good source I have not yet been able to verify independently, that the Hebrew for ‘evening’ and ‘morning’ are the same as for uncertainty/disorder and certainty/order. The relationship is that in the darkness one cannot clearly discern, but light brings clarity. From a thermodynamics standpoint, this makes a great deal of sense. You clearly move from less order to more order during the days of creation.
3. Light was created on day one. Therefore plants would not have had any problem.
4. Creating light and plants, night and day, before the sun and moon, makes little sense to natural man and, in a backwards way of reasoning, points to a non-human author. The Hebrew sages of the 13th through 15th centuries determined that not only matter, but time and space were also created on day one and believed Genesis describes a ten dimensional universe. This is very late 20th century physics.
5. Dr Jeff wrote in 13 “I really believe rejecting evolution will hamper your spiritual growth.” I really believe the opposite. Can’t prove it, just saying.
Locomotive Breath, in post 19 you stated,
“IMHO, evolution is not so much a theory, but a hypothesis, and not so much a hypothesis based on empirical science as a tenant in a philosophical belief system. That belief system is ‘naturalism’.”
In my opinion Evolution and Naturalism are not synonymous. Naturalism, as you rightfully point out, rejects the outside influence of a supernatural force (or God), which by definition would mean atheism. The theory of evolution does not suggest atheism.
You also stated that you believe evolution to be more philosophy than based on empirical evidence. Once again you are applying Naturalism beliefs to the theory of Evolution. Evolution proposes, based upon observable (empirical) evidence, one possible method through which life has changed over time to be as we see it today. There are certainly gaps in the evidence to fully support evolution, but there is more than enough evidence to support the theory.
Is it your position that God could not have chosen a form of evolution as his method of creation?
Posted by Lucid Guy
12/25/2007 at 10:01 PM
It will be interesting to revisit this after Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled” comes out this Feb.
I used to say all the things the evolution supporters are saying because that was what I had heard from people I knew to be smart and sincere. After I started digging I slowly changed my mind about evolution and embraced the literal Genesis. My acquaintances are smart and sincere people, but have not done the digging, yet.
Lucid guy. I did not mean to run on and suggest that I thought evolution & naturalism were synonymous. But time was short.
What I am suggesting is that based on Darwin’s own thoughts in his book “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, plus the demand of many current neo-darwinists that this process of evolution only be viewed in a purely natural (ie: scientific) framework , I am saying that the two propositions are enmeshed and aggressively defended by main stream academia to the exclusion of any theistic inputs. It is the evolutionists that make this demand for purely natural science, not I.
Hence, the current, vociferous denouncement of intelligent design as a legitimate concern of ‘real science’. The overwhelming disdain & ridicule for any sort of bible-thumper- intelligent-design-theistic-evolution crap on any university campus or published journal is downright dogmatically disgusting, but there it is.
As for, “Is it your position that God could not have chosen a form of evolution as his method of creation?” Nope. He can do whatever He pleases. I simply read the scriptures as 6 literal days; the chicken before the egg; and everything after its kind (right, gregor?).
Which ledes to this: “Evolutionary biology’s deepest paradox concerns this strange discontinuity. Why haven’t new animal body plans continued to crawl out of the evolutionary cauldron during the past hundred million years? Why are the ancient body plans so stable?” - Jeffrey S. Levinton
“But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them imbedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?” - Charles Darwin
(A conundrum to this day)“All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.” - Stephen J. Gould
“And we find many of the cambrian fossils already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists.” - Richard Dawkins
(uh, follow the evidence?)JimT: thanks for the ‘day 2’ clarification.
Great stuff, guys! Thank you. Happy new year!
Posted by Locomotive Breath 1901
12/26/2007 at 06:31 PM
PS: I found this monolog by Dr. Gary parker very interesting. It’s worth a listen.
http://www.coralridge.org/medialibrary.asp?mediaId=2124
Posted by Locomotive Breath 1901
12/26/2007 at 06:42 PM
Locomotive, thank you for the lively debate. I frankly believe that we will never know the truth, in this life anyway, and that is by design.
I also believe that the evolutionary process is the most intelligent design of all.
As far as “new animal body plans” emerging within the last 100 million years - most archeologists and geologists believe that a mass extinction event occured 65 million years ago. An event so massive that you can find the traces of ash around the entire globe - you just have to dig deep enough and know what to look for in the strata. Some changes in life must have occured for anything larger than a bug to be walking around today.
Mr. Christian, you asked for this debate my friend - where are you?
Happy Holidays All.
Posted by Lucid Guy
12/26/2007 at 10:25 PM
12/22/2007 at 10:18 PM
12/23/2007 at 02:53 PM
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