And then God created...

[G10]

The 6k time is basically is figuratively speaking that 1 day to God is 1000 years to us. That is listed as an example to give people an idea of distance between our time-scale and Gods (if he even has a timescale).

Science points out that time breaks down when it comes to certain objects within our univers, e.g. black holes. Under this principle, if God was to have created everything and time breaks down when it comes to this, then this would state that time does not hold him/her as it does everything else.

That said though, if I recall correctly, the bible does say that God made everything according to it's kind, which kind of closes the door on evolution (from a biblical perspective).

I do believe that people or animals can adapt over time according to environment but evolution is something different.

It just depends if one follows the scientific or the biblical route.

[Atom]

Originally Posted by Atom

The creature is simply a stylized fish. I think it's a direct contradiction, as G10 indicated, which would be amusing to some. The two stroke symbol was actually used by early Christians to identify each other, as I recall.

Sorry everyone, I just noticed that the fish had legs. I don't know why I didn't notice that last night. Please forgive me. That is hilarious.

[littleFella]

Originally Posted by G10

The 6k time is basically is figuratively speaking that 1 day to God is 1000 years to us. That is listed as an example to give people an idea of distance between our time-scale and Gods (if he even has a timescale).

Does it say in the Bible that 1 day = 1000 years?

Originally Posted by G10

I do believe that people or animals can adapt over time according to environment but evolution is something different.

It just depends if one follows the scientific or the biblical route.

Isn't adaptation over time the essence of evolution?

[South]

Originally Posted by littleFella

Does it say in the Bible that 1 day = 1000 years?

Sort of

2 Peter 3:8
But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

[G10]

Originally Posted by littleFella

Does it say in the Bible that 1 day = 1000 years?

Was this figuratively or literally? - Just curious as to a view on this.

Originally Posted by littleFella

Isn't adaptation over time the essence of evolution?

Human adapting, altering or changing over the period of time is still human, not another species.

You could be right regarding that but I would class it as adaptation.

Human altering into another species over a given period so that it is detached from the human species, (e.g, monkey -> Man) that to me is evolution.

[littleFella]

Originally Posted by South

Sort of

2 Peter 3:8
But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

Thanks for the passage.

What kind of time scale did the pre-Gospel believers use?

Now, would that mean that when Genesis says "Seth lived 912 years" he in fact lived 333108000 years (assuming 365.25 days per year) in human terms? If not, how do we tell a difference? Do you see the problem with literal interpretation of the Bible? And that's just one example.

[G10]

I know you already know the answer to that as you seem to know your stuff but I can see how some people may not be able to differentiate between the figurative and the literal.

When read chapter by chapter, I think that most will though.

[littleFella]

Originally Posted by G10

Human altering into another species over a given period so that it is detached from the human species, (e.g, monkey -> Man) that to me is evolution.

Actually, the way I understand evolution is this:

 primitive___/ Less primitive Monkey
monkey      \ Even less primitive monkey
                           \     still less primitive monkey
                            \__/
                                \ sophisticated monkey (homo sapiens)

Once a species develops enough diveristy and the various species separate the follow different development path due to different environmental, individual and genetic mutations. Eventually the difference are such that the subspecies are no longer able to inter-mate (is that a word?).

I saw an interesting thing on national geographic. They showed evolution in action, in a span of just a few years. This, in short, is what happened:

A species of some insects lived on an island. Females lived on one side of the island, while males on the other. They met only periodically to mate. Some of the male insects were were more handsome than the others, although both groups were genetically the same species. The femal insects refused to mate with the ugly types and so the species was going on pretty much unchanged for as long as the could determine through fossils (don;t remember the timeframe, I think it was in 100's of years).

Then some kind of undersea volcano blew a part of the island up destroying all the handsome buggers, while the ugly ones remained alive. The ladies had no choice so they mated with those they would have rejected before. Within a couple years a new species developped, with some individuals genetically incompatible with previous generations of their own genetic source, but able to perpetuate their own, now brand new pool of genes.

[littleFella]

Originally Posted by G10

I know you already know the answer to that as you seem to know your stuff but I can see how some people may not be able to differentiate between the figurative and the literal.

When read chapter by chapter, I think that most will though.

I could never find the smooth transition from interpretting one day as 1000 years. Do you have any material supporting that at some point, or under some circumstances 1day=1day, while elsewhere 1day=GodKnowsHowLong? Or that the "1day=1000" years assumption even makes sense? Why would God wait some 4K years to reveal the time formula (as quoted by South)? And would that them mean that Jews believe in an "incomplete" word of God since they do not recognize the Gospels as the word of God?

[South]

Originally Posted by littleFella

If we, humans were given free will, why wouldn;t the rest of natural world be given free will also? Why would not the free will in hmans consists (among others) of the way we evolve on the biological level?

Most of nature was not given free will, but rather operates on instinct without reason. The biological changes in man are like your heartbeat and your skin healing, it happens by design, not by will.

I respect your view and approach, and I hope you respect mine when I say I can't accept an individual experience as something to build my onw views upon. They may trigger some reflection and lead me to some revisions or my views, in the end perhaps even to rejecting the evolution, but I need more than one person's word. As of now evolution makes sense to me. Creationism with its 6K years of human history doesn't. Actually, never did.

Men make mistakes, and men frequently distort facts to "prove" a point based on their desired outcome. I would seldom take one persons word either, but the Christian faith is far from one persons word, and above all this I trust my personal experience. That cannot be tainted unless I let it be.

I do not hold science as my religion. I do not pray to scientists or mathematical formulas

What I meant was where you put your faith. Everyone puts it somewhere.

I am a Christian by circumstance, birth and such. But I decided my money is better spent on real people's needs rather than a priest's new BMW. Like you, I Have also seen this and that and I just do not accept the entire Bible where it doesn't seem to add up in my mind. It doesn't even seem to add up the same way in the minds of various devout Christians.

The "this and that" I've seen are supernatural events that have no natural explanation, both in myself and others. I don't know any ministers with BMWs and wouldn't contribute to one who did. People follow Christianity, and where there are people there will be those attempting to prey on them. My church has open books and gives full accountability as to where all money is spent. Most churches do.

As I posted elsewhere, the Bible is impossible to be interpretted literally and as a factual document. Otherwise we would not have so many Christian denominations, each claiming that their reading of the Scripture is the only correct one.

Most denominational differences are about minor things such as baptism, women in ministry, ect. More than that they differ in styles of worship. The denominatyions do argue too much over these simplicities which have no bearing on the overall message, but they do serve the purpose of offering a style of worship suited to the individual.

I left my last church over the "King James only" mentality.

[John Scott]

Can somebody cite even a single case of one species evolving into another?

And, I think it's pretty far fetched to think that a cell from the ocean evolved into a human, and it still doesn't explain where the ocean came from or the cell came from or, the biggest question of all, where life came from.

Inanimate objects do not suddenly spring to life. Life is a force that can be generated only from life.

[G10]

If you have noticed, evolutionary theories seem to fall down as man gets more intelligent (not sure if we are actually getting more intelligent but it was the only word I could think of)

Darwin came along and almost blew creationism out of the water but years later, where do we stand with Darwinism, modern science have proven most, actually nearly all of his theories wrong.

Years later, science goes onto explain how we are left with organs (appendix etc) left over from our evolutionary period and are no longer used. Years later they find that they do have a use within protecting the immune system and more.

Modern science discusses 'junk dna' left over within our system from an earlier time. As they find out more, they have now come to realise that this so called 'junk dna' is actually being used within our bodies.

Man is just not yet intelligent enough to understand but it seems like they are slowly getting there

[littleFella]

Originally Posted by John Scott

Can somebody cite even a single case of one species evolving into another?

Oenothera lamarckiana (Evening Primrose) evolved ino Oenothera gigas during genetics studies by de Vries (1905). The chromosome number of the former is 2N = 14 while that of the latter is 2N = 28. The two are unable to breed with each other.

Read up on MRSA too. Pretty much evolved withing the hospital environements and due to antibiotics use. It use to be rare and nearly all cases confined to hospital environments. At the present time nearly 50% f skin infoections are MRSA related.

Originally Posted by John Scott

And, I think it's pretty far fetched to think that a cell from the ocean evolved into a human,

This is an argument from incredulity and has no scientific value. You claim: "I can't conceive that (fill in the blank)." Others might be able to find a natural explanation; and in many cases, they already have. Nobody knows everything, so it is unreasonable to conclude that something is impossible just because you do not know it. Even a famous antievolutionist acknowledges this point: "The peril of negative arguments is that they may rest on our lack of knowledge, rather than on positive results".

The argument from incredulity creates a god of the gaps. Gods were responsible for lightning until we determined natural causes for lightning, for infectious diseases until we found bacteria and viruses, for mental illness until we found biochemical causes for them. God is confined only to those parts of the universe we do not know about, and that keeps shrinking.

Originally Posted by John Scott

and it still doesn't explain where the ocean came from or the cell came from or, the biggest question of all, where life came from.

Theory of evolution doesn't deal with the origin of the oceans. As for "where" life came from, it is probably safe to assume that is came from within the Universe, of which the Earth is a part.

Originally Posted by John Scott

Inanimate objects do not suddenly spring to life.

I can't recall the theory of evolution to have made a claim that inanimate objects suddenly sprung to life. Could you offer a link to credible source wher I could verify it?

Originally Posted by John Scott

Life is a force that can be generated only from life.

Says who?

[littleFella]

Originally Posted by G10

If you have noticed, evolutionary theories seem to fall down as man gets more intelligent (not sure if we are actually getting more intelligent but it was the only word I could think of)

Darwin came along and almost blew creationism out of the water but years later, where do we stand with Darwinism, modern science have proven most, actually nearly all of his theories wrong.

Such claims have been made even before Darwin (theory of evolution actually didn't start with Darwin) and today it is nowhere near a a theory in crisis. Soon after Darwin published his work almost 100% of relevant scientists were creationists, right now less than 1% are.

Of the scientists and engineers in the United States, only about 5% are creationists, according to a 1991 Gallup poll. This number includes those working in fields not related to life origins (such as computer scientists, mechanical engineers, etc.). Taking into account only those working in the relevant fields of earth and life sciences, there are about 480,000 scientists, but only about 700 believe in "creation-science" or consider it a valid theory. This means that less than 0.15 percent of relevant scientists believe in creationism. And that is just in the United States, which has more creationists than any other industrialized country. In other countries, the number of relevant scientists who accept creationism drops to less than one tenth of 1 percent.

A panel of seventy-two Nobel Laureates, seventeen state academies of science, and seven other scientific organizations created an amicus curiae brief which they submitted to the Supreme Court (Edwards v. Aguillard 1986). This report clarified what makes science different from religion and why creationism is not science.

Also, check this reputable source out:

National Academy of Sciences

far from the evolutionary defeatism you suggest, isn't it?

[G10]

Interesting article.

They are still learning and my guess is that as time moves on, their theories will keep altering to fit their progress.

Science is a lot like the pharmaceutical companies and a lot of results that did not go their way, they do not go out of their way to publish.

Didn't they do experiments on altering fruit fly dna which produced what we would call mutant dna flies.

As these flies breeded, over time, the altered dna went back to the original dna structure and it became the original fruit fly again(so many flies down the line).

Something worth finding out would be what science/mathmaticians think the odds are of life springing up from nothing and then see what the sum is that odds no longer become viable.

I do have this info but would have to look it up in a book and at the moment, there is no need

Science is based on experiments people can do to achieve a given solution, otherwise it would just be hypothetical but science can not do the required experiments to prove their theories, so even though they like to stick to them, they are still hypothetical to some degree.

[sitetutor]

I have mixed feelings about evolution vs. The Old Testament.