Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
That's your belief, and I respect your right to hold it. But I believe this discussion is about evolution within the context of a Christian religion. Chritstians necessarily place a higher value on the words of the Bible.Hagbard Celine said:The story was written over 2000 years ago by smelly, camel-riding desert nomads. Must we continue to analyze it with such tenacity? See it for what it is: A creation fable.
Where is the scientific evidence or verifiable data needed to have a scientific investigation of the creation myth in the Bible? The closest you'll ever get is philosophical debate.mom4 said:That's your belief, and I respect your right to hold it. But I believe this discussion is about evolution within the context of a Christian religion. Chritstians necessarily place a higher value on the words of the Bible.
Anyway, isn't analysis an intrinsic part of any scientific debate? Or useful in the search for religious/philosophical truth?
Here was a debate I held with a member called IControlthePast. It shows how science could be applied to both the theory of evolution and the Biblical "creation myth."Hagbard Celine said:Where is the scientific evidence or verifiable data needed to have a scientific investigation of the creation myth in the Bible? The closest you'll ever get is philosophical debate.
I read a little, but I didn't see what you were referring to. The thread is over 11 pages long. My beef with what you're saying is how can you have a valid scientific inquiry when there is no observable data to test? It's impossible to test the existence of God unless he put his signature under some rock somewhere. The evidence just doesn't exist. Belief in God is based solely on faith and there isn't anything, not even so-called miracles that cannot be given alternate and usually more realistic explanations through scientific inquiry. If there is ever a golden mean to be reached on this issue it will be that those who believe in God believe that God created the universe with built-in systems like evolution.mom4 said:Here was a debate I held with a member called IControlthePast. It shows how science could be applied to both the theory of evolution and the Biblical "creation myth."
http://www.usmessageboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20528
mom4 said:Actually it says that to God, 1000 years is as a day. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm 90;&version=31;
Language us not mathematics. We cannot interpret every instance of the word "day" to equal one thousand years. Like in English, we say "on that day last week," or "in my father's day." Obviously, in the first example, the person is talking about a 24-hour day, and in the second example, the word "day" means a longer period of time, perhaps a lifetime. In the Bible, we cannot use the simple formula 1 day=1000 years. If so, the sun wouldn't have stood still (for Joshua) for 1 day, it would have been 1000 years. Or Jesus wasn't in the tomb for 3 days, it was 3000 years. So when does a day mean 24 hours, and when does it mean a longer period of time? Look to the text for clues. God specifically mentions "morning and evening" for each mention of the word "day," giving it parameters. These days are periods of time between a morning and an evening. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Also, if you read through the entire Psalm, you can see that this is a song of praise, and the phrase "to You, a thousand years is as a day" is not a mathematical formula to be applied to all of Scripture, but rather a tribute to the eternal nature of God.
I beg to differ. It tells exactly the "tool" God used. His spoken Word. It doesn't imply that any other "tool" was used or that any working time elapsed between the "speaking" and the "existence."
I have never suggested such a thing, nor do I believe it would be misleading to suggest that his Spoken Word created the Universe if his Spoken Word started the Big Bang and through his will evolution was completed.No doubt about His ability; the doubt seems to be about His honor. He could do whatever He wanted. This is about what He said He did. Is God a liar? Would He mislead His people this way?
Bullypulpit said:Hmmmm. The scientific record indicates that earth is billions of years old. According to Christian doctrine, however, the earth is only some 6,000 years old. That's some discrepancy...Don'cha think?
Avatar4321 said:It could be interpreted as such. However, when science and revealed religion appear to contradict, I merely wait for science to catch up.
Hagbard Celine said:The story was written over 2000 years ago by smelly, camel-riding desert nomads. Must we continue to analyze it with such tenacity? See it for what it is: A creation fable.
If you read through (narrow it down to just my posts and IControl's posts), you'll see that we touch on several areas of science, such as genetics, geology, and biology. In each case, I applied creationism to the scenario.Hagbard Celine said:I read a little, but I didn't see what you were referring to. The thread is over 11 pages long. My beef with what you're saying is how can you have a valid scientific inquiry when there is no observable data to test?
Creation scientists do believe that God created the universe with built-in systems... just not macroevolution. Physics (eg, gravity), natural selection, etc. are very much a part of creationism's science. But macroeveolution and the Big Bang are no more observable than Creation Week and the Global Flood. We can only take what we see around us, apply it to either theory, and see which one best fits the observable evidence.It's impossible to test the existence of God unless he put his signature under some rock somewhere. The evidence just doesn't exist. Belief in God is based solely on faith and there isn't anything, not even so-called miracles that cannot be given alternate and usually more realistic explanations through scientific inquiry. If there is ever a golden mean to be reached on this issue it will be that those who believe in God believe that God created the universe with built-in systems like evolution.
I think the Catholic guy is right--2000 years after desert nomads wrote down their version of how the universe was created, just as every other primitive culture did the same, there's just too much physical evidence to refute the Bible's version of events. A belief that the Bible should be taken literally in its account is solely a faith-based belief because it has no base in observable reality IMO.
Billions of years to form the universe does not equal seven days. Sorry, I fail to see the timetable accuracy there.Avatar4321 said:If we accept your view that it is merely a fable, I have to ask how do you explain those camel riding desert nomads being so accurate on the time table of the process?
There's where you're mistaken. We can view the universe through telescopes and make observations and can calculate with mathematics and physics what conditions were like right at the moment of the big bang. It's like rewinding a series of events to a single event based on the final outcome. Like if your kid had pie on its face you could reconstruct what happened...it ate a pie. I've read several articles and seen several studies on the science involved. It's only a matter of time before pre-bang conditions have been calculated and added to the theory. You can't scientifically investigate God because there's no evidence of his existence available.mom4 said:If you read through (narrow it down to just my posts and IControl's posts), you'll see that we touch on several areas of science, such as genetics, geology, and biology. In each case, I applied creationism to the scenario.
Another point we covered in that debate was that Biblical Creationism is no less observable than the Big Bang and materialistic theories of origin/development.
There's no evidence of a global flood in the geological record. It just didn't happen. If the story of Noah is based on a real event at all, it is based on a smaller, localized flood that occurred in the middle east a long long time ago. I just told you how scientists are working to reconstruct the conditions of the Big Bang based on observable evidence. We can see the big bang's afterglow for crying out loud. Big Bang Afterglow Big Bang Afterglow A Map to Scientific Mysteries What Powered The Big Bang?Creation scientists do believe that God created the universe with built-in systems... just not macroevolution. Physics (eg, gravity), natural selection, etc. are very much a part of creationism's science. But macroeveolution and the Big Bang are no more observable than Creation Week and the Global Flood. We can only take what we see around us, apply it to either theory, and see which one best fits the observable evidence.
Yeah I had a brain fart and you caught it! Congrats. The Christian Bible was only put together 2000 years ago. The Old Testament or Torah, Nebiim and Kethubim was compiled from the oral traditions of the 12 tribes of Israel around the time of Moses according to Jewish lore. My bad.Actually, Genesis was written down thousands of years before Christ.
Hagbard Celine said:Billions of years to form the universe does not equal seven days. Sorry, I fail to see the timetable accuracy there.
Avatar4321 said:I am. God didn't create man through evolution :teeth:
We happened to be studying creation last night in my religion class. Interesting how the creation timeline is very similiar with regards to both the scriptures and the scientific record.
Avatar4321 said:I am. God didn't create man through evolution :teeth:
We happened to be studying creation last night in my religion class. Interesting how the creation timeline is very similiar with regards to both the scriptures and the scientific record.
Phony Theory, False Conflict
'Intelligent Design' Foolishly Pits Evolution Against Faith
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, November 18, 2005; Page A23
Because every few years this country, in its infinite tolerance, insists on hearing yet another appeal of the Scopes monkey trial, I feel obliged to point out what would otherwise be superfluous: that the two greatest scientists in the history of our species were Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and they were both religious.
Newton's religion was traditional. He was a staunch believer in Christianity and a member of the Church of England. Einstein's was a more diffuse belief in a deity who set the rules for everything that occurs in the universe.
Neither saw science as an enemy of religion. On the contrary. "He believed he was doing God's work," James Gleick wrote in his recent biography of Newton. Einstein saw his entire vocation -- understanding the workings of the universe -- as an attempt to understand the mind of God.
Not a crude and willful God who pushes and pulls and does things according to whim. Newton was trying to supplant the view that first believed the sun's motion around the earth was the work of Apollo and his chariot, and later believed it was a complicated system of cycles and epicycles, one tacked upon the other every time some wobble in the orbit of a planet was found. Newton's God was not at all so crude. The laws of his universe were so simple, so elegant, so economical and therefore so beautiful that they could only be divine.
Which brings us to Dover, Pa., Pat Robertson, the Kansas State Board of Education, and a fight over evolution that is so anachronistic and retrograde as to be a national embarrassment.
Dover distinguished itself this Election Day by throwing out all eight members of its school board who tried to impose "intelligent design" -- today's tarted-up version of creationism -- on the biology curriculum. Pat Robertson then called the wrath of God down upon the good people of Dover for voting "God out of your city." Meanwhile, in Kansas, the school board did a reverse Dover, mandating the teaching of skepticism about evolution and forcing intelligent design into the statewide biology curriculum.
Let's be clear. Intelligent design may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species but also says that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science -- that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution -- or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?
In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase " natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying -- by fiat of definition, no less -- that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and science.
The school board thinks it is indicting evolution by branding it an "unguided process" with no "discernible direction or goal." This is as ridiculous as indicting Newtonian mechanics for positing an "unguided process" by which Earth is pulled around the sun every year without discernible purpose. What is chemistry if not an "unguided process" of molecular interactions without "purpose"? Or are we to teach children that God is behind every hydrogen atom in electrolysis?
He may be, of course. But that discussion is the province of religion, not science. The relentless attempt to confuse the two by teaching warmed-over creationism as science can only bring ridicule to religion, gratuitously discrediting a great human endeavor and our deepest source of wisdom precisely about those questions -- arguably, the most important questions in life -- that lie beyond the material.
How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too.
[email protected]
Vatican astronomer says 'intelligent design' doesn't belong in science class
VATICAN CITY, Nov. 18, 2005 (The Canadian Press delivered by Newstex) -- The Vatican's chief astronomer said Friday that "intelligent design" isn't science and doesn't belong in science classrooms, the latest high-ranking Roman Catholic official to enter the evolution debate in the United States.
Rev. George Coyne, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, said placing intelligent design theory alongside that of evolution in school programs was "wrong" and was akin to mixing apples and oranges.
"Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be," the ANSA news agency quoted Coyne as saying on the sidelines of a conference in Florence. "If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."
His comments were in line with his previous statements on "intelligent design" - whose supporters hold that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.
Proponents of intelligent design are seeking to get public schools in the United States to teach it as part of the science curriculum. Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism - a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation - camouflaged in scientific language, and they say it does not belong in science curriculum.
In a June article in the British Catholic magazine The Tablet, Coyne reaffirmed God's role in creation, but said science explains the history of the universe.
"If they respect the results of modern science, and indeed the best of modern biblical research, religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God or a designer God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly."
Rather, he argued, God should be seen more as an encouraging parent.
"God in His infinite freedom continuously creates a world that reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater complexity," he wrote. "He is not continually intervening, but rather allows, participates, loves."
The Vatican Observatory, which Coyne heads, is one of the oldest astronomical research institutions in the world. It is based in the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo south of Rome.
Last week, Pope Benedict waded indirectly into the evolution debate by saying the universe was made by an "intelligent project" and criticizing those who in the name of science say its creation was without direction or order.
Questions about the Vatican's position on evolution were raised in July by Christoph Cardinal Schoenborn of Austria.
In a New York Times column, Schoenborn seemed to back intelligent design and dismissed a 1996 statement by Pope John Paul that evolution was "more than just a hypothesis." Schoenborn said the late pope's statement was "rather vague and unimportant."
A few random thoughts on the subject....mom4 said:Actually it says that to God, 1000 years is as a day. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm 90;&version=31;
Language us not mathematics. We cannot interpret every instance of the word "day" to equal one thousand years. Like in English, we say "on that day last week," or "in my father's day." Obviously, in the first example, the person is talking about a 24-hour day, and in the second example, the word "day" means a longer period of time, perhaps a lifetime. In the Bible, we cannot use the simple formula 1 day=1000 years. If so, the sun wouldn't have stood still (for Joshua) for 1 day, it would have been 1000 years. Or Jesus wasn't in the tomb for 3 days, it was 3000 years. So when does a day mean 24 hours, and when does it mean a longer period of time? Look to the text for clues. God specifically mentions "morning and evening" for each mention of the word "day," giving it parameters. These days are periods of time between a morning and an evening. Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Also, if you read through the entire Psalm, you can see that this is a song of praise, and the phrase "to You, a thousand years is as a day" is not a mathematical formula to be applied to all of Scripture, but rather a tribute to the eternal nature of God.
I beg to differ. It tells exactly the "tool" God used. His spoken Word. It doesn't imply that any other "tool" was used or that any working time elapsed between the "speaking" and the "existence."
No doubt about His ability; the doubt seems to be about His honor. He could do whatever He wanted. This is about what He said He did. Is God a liar? Would He mislead His people this way?
