Evolution: Anyone care to Fill in the Huge Blank?

the teaching of religion is against the law since it violates the separation of church and state laws.
the reason that creaionism is allowed to be taught is the first admendment of freedom of speech also creationism and ID are necessarily based on anyone religion although many believe that it is all Christian based. Creationism has it's roots in all religions not just one. ID, is a sort of a middle of the road attempt to bridge the gap between religion based beliefs and the scientific theories

It's obviously christian based.. and I'm quite certain the creationalist movement is void of all other religions that are not based on the bible [unless you count the flying spaghetti monster]. I again ask how creationalism can be taught in schools that are suppose to not teach religion. Just because other faiths have creationalism it doesn't suddenly make these 'theories' not religious and therefore legal. It's a contradiction.

Yet there is NO scientific evidence for ID so there is no gap.. which makes it just a loophole to get religion [chirstianty] into schools. To link science and religion together is not practical as one requires FACTS and the other requires FAITH. They are incompatable.

I notice the new trend of calling evolution a 'religion' and creationalism a 'science'. This is complete bs and is designed to eleveate creationalism ['christian science'- an oxymoron] to the same status as evolution as though it is scientically credible enough to be taught along side it. This is called propaganda.. if a lie is repeated a thousand times it won't be made true no matter how many people are convinced it is.

[edit on 30-8-2005 by riley]

Question: why is ID being forced in to the classroom?

Answer: To recruit school children, the one generation that right now is moving away from the church.

The reason is because Christians think 'evolution' is taking over the school day. When in fact it could not be further from the truth, as I have said before: 'evolution makes up a small part of science, and an even smaller part of the syllabus'. Every person has a choice, whether they are religious or not, to go to church. Their choices are not swayed toward evolution because it's taught in schools, it's swayed toward evolution because fundamentally the 'church' is no longer trustworthy or believable.

It is no longer the dark ages, where you could tell people what to believe. People think for themselves and because of this free-thinking, church numbers have dropped.

You're right, shaunybaby, and one might also debate political motivations given the present power structure. And any tactic is used to further "the cause." Often, underhanded though utterly meaningless methods are employed.

The details queried in creationistic postings are highly digressive. Most often, people do that only as a debating technique. Certainly, the debate may be important, however no inconclusive result is ascertained by bandying about with words. Of course, observations, hypotheses and repeated testing are used to reach conclusions. But they are not reached by simple acceptance a priori.

If creationism has merit, do the science, prove it. Period.

I choose to believe that God created the universe. Importantly, we are discovering how it was done. And we are endowed with God-given reason in that course of discovery. How great is the sin of not using the means we have of thinking?

Thought and reason are among the finest attributes of humans. Hopefully, that is a reflection of the Creator. But the sciences are indicative of origins that diverge widely from Genesis. Perhaps that is a function of the writers and editors of the Bible, in that scientific thought was alien to them. With certainty, however, science based upon careful observations and reasoning simply does not confirm the Biblical creation narrative.

Science can not prove God. If it could, that would be anathema to religion, which emphasizes belief and faith, not proof. And saying that "God did it" is not an explanation. You might as well assert "It's because I say so."

One science that, IMHO, could provide evidence of Divine structuring is quantum physics (QP). Presently, the incomprehensibilty of its tenets are reminiscent of attributes ascribed to the ultimate Godhead. Otherwise, it appears that QP describes "ordered chaos" that permeates every stretch of the universe. Even space-time itself seems to be somehow impressed with an order. After all, we know that mass does warp space-time, so can energy.

Without offending God in any way, we may use reason, which led inexorably to science. Moreover, it would be an offense not to think, being that it is one of our greatest gifts.

you know what, the topic of this thread is the big hole in evolution. IMO I think evolution is a big hole, but that is a different story.
they big hole in the evolution theory is life evolving from a rock.
thats basically where we came from if evolution if true.

form a Rock, what is the gene pool of a rock? its nothing.

EC

rock? who said humans evolved from 'a rock'. are you on about an asteroid/comet/meteor hitting earth, and it carrying some sort of bacteria/elements for life to spring in to action etc...

evolution cruncher you seem more intent on throwing ideas around without thinking them through very thoroughly. that's like me going in to a thread titled 'creation, where's the proof'? and saying ''haha, yeah god made adam and eve...out of what?...oh, adam out of dirt and eve from one of his ribs, yeah right, nice one mate''

see my point?...it adds nothing to the topic in question.

Of course you think evolution is a bighole, it directly opposes your beliefs which is why you come here and try to "disprove" it. A lot of christians like yourself were told as a child that god exists, bible is god's words, hell is where you will go if you don't accept jesus as your savior, blah blah blah. What you fail to realize is that you first accepted the christian god with blind faith but because of years of constant sermons, lectures, etc. by parent's and others you've been programmed, and most likely nothing will change your mind.

Again, evolution doesn't deal with the origin of life, theories like abiogenisis do so get your facts straight.

[edit on 4-9-2005 by Agentdemon]

Dear Readers,

I know this topic is one of the hottest ones to be debated, and it never seems to have a winner, at least in the mind of its strongest proponents.

However, there is a compromise position available that might be worthy to consider.

To those who do not know my background, my interest is in the information received from the universe intelligence. I study what has been revealed and what is currently being revealed about the great questions of the day for nearly 50 years of which 30 were parallel to a career in civil engineering. That does not make me an expert, and I claim no special relationship to God or science because of my interests. It's just a lot of fun to do for me.

The truth seems to be this:

The universe is interested in raising the human species on as many planets that can support life as is possible. Once a sphere begins cooling and stabilizes in its relationship to its primary star (the sun), living, spiritual beings investigate the possibilities of that sphere to serve as a life planet.

Although science is ignorant of other inhabited planets (referring to empirical evidence which does not yet exist), they are quite plentiful throughout the grand universe. Our own planet was looked upon favorably as a potential life planet, and when it reached its present size, and began to cool sufficiently to produce rain, the specialized spiritual beings called Life Carriers were dispatched to determine just how life implantation would be inititiated when land and seas began to take shape.

Here is a direct quote about the Life Carrier activities that initiated life on earth from celestial sources:

"The story of man's ascent from seaweed to the lordship of earthly creation is indeed a romance of biologic struggle and mind survival. Man's primordial ancestors were literally the slime and ooze of the ocean bed in the sluggish and warm-water bays and lagoons of the vast shore lines of the ancient inland seas, those very waters in which the Life Carriers established the three independent life implantations."

Once the germ plasm of life is implanted in various places on a sphere that is to hold life, the Life Carriers must let the potentials of the seeded plasm take hold and may not overly manipulate conditions to foster any particular development that evolves.

Evolution proceeds from the implants from the simple to the complex and in an established order. The appearance of man is timed to develop after all other forms of life have evolved for man is dependent not only on the physical and biological developments of his form on the animals, but for his sustenance to be maintained by vegetative evolution as well. Even man's spiritual development is dependent on all preceeding life.

Once man evolves, and on our earth the definiton of what constitutes man was not reached until just a little less than one million years ago from today, the Life Carrier must retire from the planet, and man is left to develop his culture along with his mind development to overcome ghost fear and personality cohesion.

Evolution is a law as well as a process, but its ancestry is to be found in the creative prerogatives of Deity who establish the parameters of what evolution is to produce, when it shall be applied, and where it is to be established. Evolution when launched, becomes a self-realizing mechanism, although a living one. There is nothing supernatural about evolution except its pre-existing design potentials to produce a faith son of God. And such a product, as a universe potential, is unlimited as it continues to evolve growth stages even beyond its material existence.

The evolution on earth has been unusual, and because of this fact, and because evolution itself has periodic jumps of development without intervening steps, mankind can not just rely upon the fossil record to write the story of life as it has appeared on earth. Man's only living early relative on earth is the frog which has remained unchanged since his appearance, but he gave rise to other forms which have all disappeared only to be taken up again in the fossil record of the primates.

From our celestial teachers comes this simple statement:

"The frog is one of the earliest of surviving human-race ancestors, but it also failed to progress, persisting today much as in those remote times. The frog is the only species ancestor of the early dawn races now living on the face of the earth. The human race has no surviving ancestry between the frog and the Eskimo."

I hope that someday most of mankind will come to some peace of mind about his origins. I have mentioned but a few things that are already spoken to by our spiritual superiors that should smooth the rough corners of thought as to what God's role is, and is not. in the production of intelligent life in the universe. These things will become better known by nearly everyone someday as the line between the first cause of science begins to merge with the Original Cause of spirit.

organic evolution is the origin of life.
sponateous generation has been proven wrong years ago. it doesnt happen.

EC

AGAIN.. as usual you fail to back your statements with evidence. It hasn't been proven wrong.. this is why it is still being researched. I also notice AGAIN you are using the same rhetoric.. claiming evolution is full of holes. All your attempts to point out 'failings' in the evolution theory have been refuted. There are no holes left.. you [c/o Hovind] have run out of arguments.

This thread should not have reached 6 pages. There is no "huge blank" in evolutionary theory. The theory is unrelated to abiogenesis.

Abiogenesis has absolutely nothing to do with spontaneous generation. Saying that spontaneous generation has been discredited years ago is akin to saying that snow is white.

If you have problems with abiogenesis, you should visit the abiogenesis thread. Evolution makes no claims as to the origins of life. It makes no implications, either. Evolution can, and often does, fit right in with people's perceptions of creationism. It does not presume dependence upon a more scientific theory such as abiogenesis.

Zip

It was shown that mice don't form from rubbish or that maggots aren't spontaneously generated from rotting meat and the like, which is what people really used to think in the pre-scientific eras. The chemical orign or life from non-living chemicals hasn't been disproven. Mice failing to pop up from haystacks doesn't disprove the rna world hypothesis.

there is no separation between church and state is not found in the constitution. it was in a letter from thomas jefferson. and its funny to hear you say that when our country was founded on Christianity. when the laws were based on the bible. when the 10 commandments are still in the supreme court. when what we call the "universe" means "single spoken sentence" [found in the bible]. when our dollar bill says "in God we trust" when our pledge says "one nation under God"
there are plenty of things that you shoudl be upset about if you want to get into separation of church and state.


evolution.

if you dont think so, then tell me, where did we come from?

EC

[edit on 11-9-2005 by Evolution Cruncher]

Simply because its not explicitly stated in the contsitution doesn't mean that its not part of our culture and governement. Even the most pious christians amoung the founders wanted a wall of seperation between church and state, to protect both from each other. If there is no seperation, then lets start taxing church property and requiring them to give equal time to evolutionary biology at their sermons and readings.


They are literally there as decoration. When the founders looked for a example to model the new state on, they looked to Rome and Sparta, not medeval christendom or the papal states. They looked to Plato's Republic for inspiration, not Augustine's City of God. The US is founded on the Constitution, not the bible, regardless of the peity of the Founders.

when what we call the "universe" means "single spoken sentence" [found in the bible].

you are missing the entire post Nygdan.

America uses these as everyday things, they are a part of life. and this country was founded on Christianity for a reason. separation of church and state was to keep the government out of the church, thats all. they dont mind blaming God when something goes wrong, but they dont mind kicking him out of school and many other things.

EC

Sorry, but seperation doesn't only work to keep the state off the church, it works to prevent the church from acting as the state. Teaching creationism in public schools would be just that. Its a wall of seperation between the two, the church and the state don't mix well, and its even worse when one does away with the other, so the founders saw to it that they were kept seperate from each other entirely. The bible is not a source of US law.

the reason why you won't learn intelligent design or creation theory in school is because you have people of all faiths. as for evolution and science, they have nothing to do with being atheist, as christians can also believe in evolution. however, if you teach that the christian god created everything then you're teaching fundalmental christian views. teaching evolution isn't teaching atheist views.

ok this is a bunch of bull.
the law does not ban teaching creation. teachers can teach it if they want there not law banning it at all. there are laws banning equal time or requiring creation to be taught.

and evolution is not science. Evolution does teach atheistic views. it teaches that we have to decide what is right from wrong, rather than following a standard. it teaches students that they are just animals and share a comman heritage with earth worms. it teaches students that complex life happened by soime blind change and that there is no purpose to life so if it feels good, do it. (which is where most of todays problems come from). it is based on faith as well.

you cannot prove that bacteria evolved into everything we see today. there is no prooof for that. and there is nothing that would lead anyone to believe that it could ever happen.
Christians believe in evolution? that is because they are lied to when people like you say that evolution has been scientifically proven, when it had not been proven. Divergent Evolution (Micro Evolution) is the only evolution that has been observed. varieties of dogs have been observed, and they all probably had a common ancestar. is was a dog. nothing else. but you as an evolutionist has to believe that a dog can come from a non-dog over millions of years. there is no proof for this whatsoever. Evolution requires faith. you have to believe that a dog can come from a non-dog and or that a dog can produce a non-dog over millions of years. there is no evidence for this whatsoever.

I dont know how you cant see that evolution requires just as much faith as creation does. they are both religious.

EC

well, in religious education we never learnt that god created everything, we learnt more about christian views and morals, the same as we did for muslims etc. it was just a way to learn about other religions so you could learn to be tolerant of them. also if you want to learn about ID or creation you learn about it at church or sunday school.



evolution cannot teach atheistic views, otherwise christians wouldn't accept evolution. the pope, the arch bishop of canterbury all accept evolution, yet accept it was put in motion by god. so they believe some parts of evolution, but not the parts of spontaneous life. so there's nothing saying someone from a religion can't believe in evolution, it's open for every individuals oppinion on the matter.



saying most of today's problems are because people believe in evolution is laughable. do you know the reason why 20 or so men blew up the WTC towers...because they were doing it for god. suicide bombers...the ones in london...all doing it for god. it's not just science that says we are just animals, if you watch programs like big brother and look at the psychological angle of it, then you can see very clearly that they act like groups of apes (but not in the sense that a young child might be 'acting like a monkey'). small things, but that natural instinct is still there, it's only very clearer when we have programs like big brother.



well if you believe in the dinosaurs, i'm not sure whether you beleive they existed 6000 years ago or what, or if their bones are a trick by god to test your faith. but... after the mass extinction, surely for the life on this planet to pick up again, there had to be some sort of evolution to bring forth all of the different species we have today?



you mean just like how they go to church and believe every single word that's being said to be the complete truth? they don't 'have' to believe in evolution, they can stick to their fundalmental christian views if they want, but obviously some think that if evolution is a process that god put it in motion after he created man.



you never observed anything that was said in the bible, yet you take it for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. do you not think that the fact microevolution has been observed, the vast variety of dog species, that there obviously is some truth to evolution. basically your belief you could accecpt evolution. because you accept it is a process by saying the varieties of dogs have occured, so why not believe that god created everything, and then also created evolution?



evolution is not a religion. do i go to an evolution lecture every sunday? pray to my evolution for forgiveness. go to confess my evolution sins? how in the world is evolution a religion? just because you say you need 'faith' to believe in evolution, doesn't make it a religion. there's more to christianity and religion than faith. surely then we need faith to believe the reality to which we are presented is real, and not some matrix. does that make all of life and this reality therefore a religion, because we need a little bit of faith to believe that this is the real reality etc.

And yet there are no public school districts that teach it, hmmmmm....


Evolution is science. Please explain why it is not science.


Evolution, being a science, doesn't teach atheism. Atheists state that there is no god. Evolution, and all science, says nothing of the sort.


This is absolutely wrong.

Human beings are a type of animal and share an ancestry with worms. Your discomfort with this is irrelevant.

Please demonstrate that it didn't.

Absolutely false, evolution and science teach nothing of the sort.

Completely false. Most of today's problems come from a lot of other places than hedonism.

Science requires no faith.

Agreed.

Agreed. You cannot prove anything with science. You can examine the evidence and consider it rationally, but your hypotheses never become facts.

Short of all the evidence that strongly suggests that it did.

The people who came up with evolution and were the cheif proponents of it were christians, and science does not claim that evolutionary theories have been proven. Its a fact that evolution, the change in allele frequencies over time, occurs, however.


False. Macro-evolution has been observed, and micro-evolution is not divergent or branching.


You cite no evidence to support this.

Short of the morphological, paleontological, and genetic evidence.

Please come up with a scientific biological definition of 'dog', and then show why something that doesn't meet this requirement can't evolve into something that does.

People don't see this because its simply not true.


Indeed, you yourself say you 'don't see' how people can miss this, and yet you are unable to address the reasons given for why none of these things you've brought up are true. IOW, you have no reasons for beleiving these things, you irrationally accept them as a matter of faith, you accept via faith that evolution does not occur, and therefore seem to conclude that everyone else is either wrong (because you have faith that evolution is wrong) or that they are all lying and beleive in some 'evolutionist' religion.

[edit on 13-9-2005 by Nygdan]