Creationists

See what I mean. BEFORE it was considered a whale, it crawled on land. Then it slowly adapted to the water, which was easier for it to move in.

This probably took millions of years, it's not an instant change, they don't just go *poof* and turn into another animal.

Just as I believe we didn't go *poof* and turned from dust to people.

It is true that whales used to live on land. Just as humans occassionally are born with "tails" because we used to have them, some whales are born with legs becuase they used to have them

How about you DB, have we convinced you that evolution is not only possible, it's much more credible than religion.

Originally posted by Estragon
The �two creations� notion is a trifle misleading as it refers only to the creation of man. Some will see contradictions between Genesis 1:26-28, and Genesis 2:6-7.

Try using the rest of the bible to understand what is meant with the first Creation story (Chapter 1). Use the key from Psalms and 1Peter that says that one day for God equals a thousand years for man. Also remember that the day is counted from sundown to sundown. And know also that we are currently in year 5763 after the Creation according to the Hebrew callendar...

#1 Verses 1 through 5: On Earth gods (angels+God) lives together with Man and Woman.
#2 Verses 6 through 8: God makes a border between Man and the gods. A border between human knowledge (water under the firmament) and divine knowledge (water on Earth).
#3 Verses 9 through 10: The flood.
#4 Verses 11 through 13: The patriarchs (trees)
#5 Verses 14 through 19: The birth of Jesus (Sun) and the Eclesia (Moon) or perhaps even Mohammed (Moon)
#6 Verses 20 through 23: Sea beasts (first beast of Revelation)
#7 Verses 24 through 31: Earth beasts (second beast of Revelation) and man and woman (mapped human DNA?)
#8 Verses 2:1 through 3: Peace millennium.

Pretty awesome that it's also prophetic aswell as an adequate survey or a plausible step by step explanation of how Creation was experienced from Earth ground zero.

Blessings,
Mikromarius

Originally posted by Osobad28
It is true that whales used to live on land. Just as humans occassionally are born with "tails" because we used to have them, some whales are born with legs becuase they used to have them

Why is it that evolutionists say that human tails and whale limbs have to do with their ancestors? Couldn't it be that this phenomena shows how humans and whales will evolve further? I believe neither. I am a strict creationist who believe in adaptation and biology. All mammals are built on the same frame. Even birds are built on much the same frame as humans and whales. Look at their bones, it's the same structure. The bone genes are variables in the DNA, but they show that we all have one rational creator, not one common animal ancestor. Evolution "science" is the product of civilisatorical mutiny!

Blessings,
Mikromarius

Originally posted by Estragon
...The Hebrew and the Greek of the accepted texts are quite unambiguous: it�s a straightforward past tense in Hebrew of �bara�� =�make�; ...

It's important to note that the word for create in Hebrew, bara' is only used with God as subject:

Bara'
1. to create, shape, form
a. (Qal) to shape, fashion, create (always with God as subject)
1. of heaven and earth
2. of individual man
3. of new conditions and circumstances
4. of transformations
b. (Niphal) to be created
1. of heaven and earth
2. of birth
3. of something new
4. of miracles
c. (Piel)
1. to cut down
2. to cut out

2. to be fat
a. (Hiphil) to make yourselves fat

Blessings,
Mikromarius

A very good point, Mikro-M: Bara in its range of forms is associated with the Divinity.
The rather odd words "Qal" etc. should not be disconcerting, cyber-chums.
When we learn French, Spanish, Italian, German: we are used to adding "endings" to a stem - habl-o; habl-as; habl-a etc. In the Semitic languages the various changes are made within the verb itself: consonants are "re-connected" with differing vowels and occasionally doubled -usually to make a verb's meaning more intense e.g. Arabic "kasara" to break "kassara"- to smash up.
The various patterns are arranged in grammars according to certain largely hypothetical patterns of consonants and vowels (such as Qal). Hebrew tenses don't correspond very well to English ones; but the Qal is a perfect tense meaning - essentially "did".
The other terms are similar patters which can indicate "cause to happen"; a passive or an intensive.
The standard work on all this is the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament edited by R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer, Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke.
It is somewhat academic but very clear.

Originally posted by Estragon
...The various patterns are arranged in grammars according to certain largely hypothetical patterns of consonants and vowels (such as Qal). Hebrew tenses don't correspond very well to English ones; but the Qal is a perfect tense meaning - essentially "did"...

Qal. Doesn't that control the acusative? It's been a while since I had German in school, but I still remember my durch, f�r, gegen, ohne, um, wieder �. What do you call "kasus" in English (acusative, genitive etc.)?

Blessings,
Mikromarius

Good Lord, Mikro-M. What's left of Estragon's grey matter is creaking away here (bis, durch, f�r, gegen, ohne, um, wider, entlang: I remember chanting them at the Academy for Little Estragons)
Indeed a Qal form can take an accusative (the cases don't map easily onto Indo-European ones, rather as the tenses don't) but as a "definite direct object": the Ancient Hebrew is close enough.

Wow, was n`t expecting this level of response to a poor old heathens questions. I expect it may continue but cheers to Mikromarius and Estragon particulary.

My original slightly insensitive question went something like this

"Is this just a question of rabid faith over hard evidence or is there something I`m missing"

I see the arguements are somewhat complex and involved. However, we are asked by the bible to accept the word of God, the problem is the Bible is not the word of God but the word of man. And when man meets a problem with his faith, like the advancement of the understanding of the early earth, he accordingly shifts his faith to accomadate. This in the past would have led to the editing and changing of the bible books.

Whilst I do not consider the idea of creationism "to be the most laughable I have yet across" I have been more convinced watching the thread progress that there is nothing more to it than faith and I have missed nothing. The hard evidence of the fossil record does it for me, perhaps I would be more sympathetic to the bible if I did not see the hand of man in it so much.

"The bone genes are variables in the DNA, but they show that we all have one rational creator, not one common animal ancestor. "

This is a funny assertion because it really does nothing of the kind. These happen as a result of evolution.

"Using the methods and figures evolutionists use we're not only alone in the universe, but we never existed. The chance for life to emerge without being created is so small it is not just improbable, but totally absurd."

Why? If you look at the universe and its size you understand it is not only possible but likely that life will evolve.

anyway these arguements a left to better debaters than me.

yours a true heathen and non believer

Cassini

All quotes originally posted by cassini
"Is this just a question of rabid faith over hard evidence or is there something I`m missing"

For me Genesis is the very foundation of my whole faith in God so to speek. With all it's keys and principles. Perhaps the most important letters in the Word that became flesh in King Jesus. It tells the story of the beginning, the way and the end and the new beginning. It explains what was before the beginning and what's after the end. To me it's some kind of a firmament as if a definition of God. It's a spiritual book, dictated by God, recorded by humans.

I see the arguements are somewhat complex and involved. However, we are asked by the bible to accept the word of God, the problem is the Bible is not the word of God but the word of man. And when man meets a problem with his faith, like the advancement of the understanding of the early earth, he accordingly shifts his faith to accomadate. This in the past would have led to the editing and changing of the bible books.

The OT is a a collection of books that was canonised by some 70 Jewish Priests if I'm not mistaken. The complete book we call the bible is a wider collection of books and epistles that includes besides the Jewish Tannakh, also a selection of books and letters canonised by the Catholic Church. The reason there are four gospels is because one of the "church fathers" loved the number four. The only gospel I can fully accept as a gospel inspired by the divine is the book we call the gospel of John. The other three are rather fantastic and sensationalistic. The bible was never intended for the masses, but was rather a compendium for the priests. If the Spanish inquisition had found a copy of the bible in your house back in the dark ages, you would've been bunrn at the stick. It wasn't until the sixties that the Catholic Church allowed it among common Catholics. To say that the New Testament is God's word is like saying that a compendium on the theory of relativism is the word of Einstein. There are three books within the NT I feel can be called true divinely inspired or dictated with some certainty, and those are the Gospel of John, the Letter to the Hebrews and the Book of Revelation.

Whilst I do not consider the idea of creationism "to be the most laughable I have yet across" I have been more convinced watching the thread progress that there is nothing more to it than faith and I have missed nothing. The hard evidence of the fossil record does it for me, perhaps I would be more sympathetic to the bible if I did not see the hand of man in it so much.

Yes unfortunately the bible is full of obvious contradictions and undefined terms etc. because the schools of theology has changed over time.

"The bone genes are variables in the DNA, but they show that we all have one rational creator, not one common animal ancestor. "

This is a funny assertion because it really does nothing of the kind. These happen as a result of evolution.

If you believe in that crap that is

"Using the methods and figures evolutionists use we're not only alone in the universe, but we never existed. The chance for life to emerge without being created is so small it is not just improbable, but totally absurd."

Why? If you look at the universe and its size you understand it is not only possible but likely that life will evolve.

But if you base your figures on observations, this is indeed a scientifically valid statement or argument. I read somewhere that the probability for there being life elsewhere in the universe was something like 1 to -(minus)billions and billions again. Alot less than one. Andt when you look at evolution theory, it says that life once came from outer space perhaps riding on a comet or a meteorite. The bible is obviously not the only thing that contradict itself

anyway these arguements a left to better debaters than me.

yours a true heathen and non believer

Cassini

If you're a good person who treat the ones you meet in your life with love and respect and love the principle behind that attitude -- Love, I believe there is just as great a possibility that you'll be allowed to enter the Final Kingdom and be transformed into divinity, than that a common church-goer is allowed in. Infact the Bible tells us that many who say Lord! Lord! shall not enter the Kingdom of God, this makes me into believing that it isn't enough to say that you believe in God to be saved. One must have an attitude to life and everything that reflects your divine heritage. Those who have their names written in the Book of Life and to the end are faithful to Love, will be transformed and will be like the angels. After that, the cyclus starts again, on a new Earth under a new Heaven. Life is like a spiral, a word that is eternal of nature, but is carnal because of our ansestors' desire for knowledge and for trusting in others deities before the Lord God.

Blessings,
Mikromarius

My dear Cassini and Mikro-M.
Fascinating posts, gentleman, and may I add without any hint of condescension, a credit to the barren drivel-deserts of �religion�.
I fancy you may find that the thrusts of your points are not beyond compatibility.
Frankly, the �empirical� approach will not sit with the devotional, nor vise versa. And this is at heart a matter of the �approach�. Other things being equal, empiricism justifies itself because, in the presence of new data, it changes. This cannot be so in a devotional Christian approach. There are no �new data� in a sense: and belief is not tied to data in a �scientific sense�, in any case.
I won�t bore fellow-posters with Estragon�s views, but I will venture to assert that all the geology in the world is ultimately irrelevant to religion and that the converse applies.
We come, as ever, to Paul: �faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen�, and I would ask how this might, in a non-trivial sense, ever be applied to Science?
Yet we also recall that what Paul meant, exactly, was at the heart of the rift between Rome and Protestantism and the still-smoldering fire of �justification�.
Furthermore, we recall that Paul said that �charity� (in effect the practical application of love for one�s fellow humans) was even more important.
And Paul did not anchor this to some vague humanitarianism: he effectively said that, without complete belief in the resurrection, it was all chowder: �And if Christ be not risen, then [is] our preaching vain, and your faith [is] also vain. (1 Corinthians 15:14).
Such apparent contradictions would be intolerable in Science: they are at the heart of a Mystery for any who believe.
Either side offers ample resources for speculation and self-inspection; but the idea that there is any sort of rivalry here for the one answer is surely a mark of heads not being right. There is no reason why one cannot both accept that science contradicts the scriptures, that the scriptures often appear to contradict themselves, and yet that faith means that this must be part of our uncertainty.

"rabid faith over hard evidence": "faith" is not "rabid" -though, arguably, many who profess it are - it is simply "faith".
there is no "evidence", "hard" or otherwise that needs to be adduced: faith is not in the dock of empiricism. You'll know when you can't tell anybody else.
And in this world, it is not altogether to our credit that we continue to bleat "I wanna know". there are things you just can't. Or not in any way that you can know the capital of Arizona or the tangent of 68 degrees.
It is hard to find a great deal of patience for the scientifically semi-literate who assail religion, or the "religious" who fly in the face of scientific fundamentals.
They are two different planets. Or, there is only one planet.
Accept this and all is easy (not).

"Let that, therefore, abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father" (1 John 2,24).

"Hold that fast which thou hast" (Rev. 3,11).

But there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than
that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed" (Gal. 1, 7-8).

The prophecy of the Apostle that

"in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be... having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof" (2 Tim. 3, 1-5).

Before our own eyes mankind is increasingly failing to understand why the Scriptures are called sacred, and that it is "given by inspiration of God" (2 Tim. 3,16) and "is not after man" (Gal. 1, 11)

Helen I would be most grateful if you could refrain from just quoting from the bible in this thread. It really makes very little sense to just quote and I`m more interested in what you THINK rather than what you can regurgitate.

One final thing intrigues me with this subject. The religious societies that exist now are not those that existed into far (not recent) antiquity. The modern forms of religion have coalesced from far older religions. The far older religions did not contain *God* within their domain. They were frequently goddess worshipping or tree stump worshipping etc. Now if the word of God has been with us since the start of time as presented by Genesis, and we are ALL the children of Adam and Eve, (later Noah) why did God not see fit introduce (for many thousands perhaps even tens of thousands) himself to these people.

(sorry did n`t manage to word that quite how I meant but I`m sure it`ll come out in the wash)

[Edited on 28-4-2003 by cassini]

Originally posted by cassini
Helen I would be most grateful if you could refrain from just quoting from the bible in this thread. It really makes very little sense to just quote and I`m more interested in what you THINK rather than what you can regurgitate.

One final thing intrigues me with this subject. The religious societies that exist now are not those that existed into far (not recent) antiquity. The modern forms of religion have coalesced from far older religions. The far older religions did not contain *God* within their domain. They were frequently goddess worshipping or tree stump worshipping etc. Now if the word of God has been with us since the start of time as presented by Genesis, and we are ALL the children of Adam and Eve, (later Noah) why did God not see fit introduce (for many thousands perhaps even tens of thousands) himself to these people.

(sorry did n`t manage to word that quite how I meant but I`m sure it`ll come out in the wash)

[Edited on 28-4-2003 by cassini]

You almost sound like Jesus in a dream I had the day before I was baptised He read to me from the bible and asked me afterwards if I had understood. Well stupid as I was I started recollecting what he had read as close to word by word. He then got angry at me. The wisdom would be something like this: Don't quote scripture, understand it. BTW he didn't look like the church Jesus at all. He had short black hair for instance and Mother Mary was very beautiful and kindlooking.

Blessings,
Mikromarius

In his monograph "29 Evidences for Macroevloution", Dr. Douglass Theobald
(www.talkorigins.org...) goes to great length to support
common descent due to the fact that all life on earth uses the same 22 amino
acids, and that all DNA uses the same basic components. This suggests that all
life on earth arose from a single organism. To qoute Dr. Theobald "Common
Descent is the hypothesis that all living organisms are the lineal descendants
of one original living species". In other words, all the variations of life
on this world can traced to a single starting point. It seems that Dr. Theobald
does not show any surprise at this. His monograph doesn't deal with the subject
of abiogenesis (the theory that life originally arouse from non-living matter).
given the proper conditions on the early earth). He states "Abiogenesis is not
a part of evolutionary theory, it is an independent hypothesis". However at the
same web site (www.talkorigins.org...), you can find a short dissertation
on the theory of abiogenesis which contends that simple life will result by random
coombinations of complex molecules over a period of time. Dr. Theobald stresses
that since all life on earth uses to same basic proteins in the same manner that is
a evidence of common descent since some other form of portein could be used for the
same process. He talks about the phlyogenetic tree which is used to classify how
all life is genetically related. There is only one phylogenetic tree for all life
on this planet.

My question is: If life just occurs randomly or as a result of normal conditions
at the beginning of the earth), why don't we see several different types of life that
can be traced back to several different common ancestors? Why don't we see animals or
plants that use 22 amino acids different than ours? Why don't we see animals or plants
whose DNA structure is fundamently different than ours? I would expect that if life
ere to just arise out of the primordial ooze, then we should find all kinds of creatures
which would have celluar structures different than ours (not one phylogenetic tree, but
three or four or more). Can anyone hazard a response to this question.

I`m not a biologist and don`t have a great understanding of some of these processes. However, I will hazard a guess

"why don't we see several different types of life that
can be traced back to several different common ancestors?"

This I would have thought is down to prevailing climate on the planet of evolution. The conditions for micro life on the early planet would have been the same across most of planet, therefore, conditions for evolution the same. After this early period the single celled organisms have become multi cellular and so forth to animal etc. After this has happened, having moved along a few hundred million years, the conditions are no longer right for basic organisms to develop into things the way the origianls did and therefore give a cellular diversity.

I`m more persuaded, although definitely not convinced, by arguements like this,

www.nexusmagazine.com...

www.nexusmagazine.com...

Well cassinni, I have heard of this theory before. That life was planted on this planet by et's. But that brings up another question. How did their life originate?? Sooner or late, you must deal with the fact that at one time there was no life forms, then there was life forms and how did it happen. Saying that aliens planted life on earth just moves the problem of explaning the appearance of life in the universe to another planet.

"Saying that aliens planted life on earth just moves the problem of explaning the appearance of life in the universe to another planet."

Ahhh, well I`m not so sure it does. Mathematically speaking in an infinite universe anything is not only possible but likely at some point.

I`d suggest reading the article attached in this thread.

www.abovetopsecret.com...