Posted on 06/10/2007 6:38:21 PM PDT by kathsua
Empirical science and religion differ in some fundamental ways. Scientists look for questions to ask. Priests (preachers, rabbis, etc) just provide answers.
Science has theories that are subject to change. In 1896, physicists believed that atoms were the smallest particles of matter. A year latter J.J. Thomson overturned this theory by reporting his discovery that atoms were actually comprised of smaller charged particles he called "protons", "electrons" and "neutrons". Later research demonstrated that Thomson's particles were comprised of even smaller particles.
Religion has truths that are to be accepted without question. Those who question these truths may be treated as heretics.
Real scientists encourage questions. They even ask questions about established theories including aspects of the Theory of Relativity and try to find ways these theories might be wrong. Stephan Hawking demonstrated what a real scientist does when he suggested he had been wrong when he suggested that information cannot escape from a black hole. Physicists have a model of the atom they are satisfied with, but that hasn’t stopped them from checking to see if they might have missed something. They are currently colliding heavy nuclei to test the model.
Relgion gets its truths from prophets or dieties. Science has to do things the hard way by conducting repeated observations and experiments. Science cannot verify theories about physical processes that cannot be examined.
Some people who call themselves scientists want science to become a substitute for religion, or at least function more like a religion.. Some believe that science can provide an explanation for events in the distant past that is so accurate it cannot be questioned. Such a claim is illogical because insufficient information is available. For example, those who talk about greenhouse gases state they can precisely determine past temperatures by examining tree rings or ice cores. The width of tree rings depends upon availability of water and the amount of time temperatures are within the range the tree can grow in, not average temperatures. The religious fanatics of the greenhouse gas religion have been accused of practicing censorship of those who disagree with their doctrine.
The subject of the origin of the universe and life on earth has traditionally been the province of religion. Science can only deal effectively with the present. It cannot observe or manipulate the distant past to verify theories. The subject of the origin of the universe and life on earth is interesting and scientific studies of the present might provide useful information, but science cannot provide a definitive answer to the question of how the universe or biological life came to exist. Science can only say what might have happened.
There can be light without the Sun and stars. A hint of this, is that for the new Earth, there won't be a Sun. God will be the light.
And you point out that the order of creation in the Bible does not fit into the Macroevolutionist model. While disagree that this constitutes 'whackiness,' agree that this just goes to show for the Christian Macroevolutionists out there that the Bible and Macroevolution aren't reconcilable. It comes down to who is more trustworthy, Man or God?
Was going to add to the earlier post to you: it just goes to show how similar in their opinions Creationists and Macroevolutionists are—if one is being religious/dogmatic/zealous, then so is the other.
You prefer to believe things you do not understand? It ain't real easy to see the wisdom in that.
And that's arrogance and pridefulness to deny the supernatural - you think man is supreme and nothing is above it. Since you can't understand how it happens then it's an impossibility to you.
Not impossible. Unproven. Unsupported by evidence. There are a great many things I don't understand, and I consider myself a pretty smart guy. But lay it out for me, and the odds are pretty good I'll be able to follow.
Narrow thinking.
Editorial suggestion: Your sentence fragment has an unneeded word. "Thinking" would suffice.
Since you deny the supernatural Awesomeness of God
Like, the supernatural Awesomeness? Dude. Are you quoting from the Gospel according to Keanu?
On the contrary, sir. I have witnessed the supernatural,
When, where and how? Because unless you have more senses beyond the customary five, anything you can witness is by definition natural. Light hits your retinas, sound enters your ears, warm or cold or pressure or pain reaches your nerve endings in the skin, and chemicals reach your tongue or nostrils.
Don’t be a dufus. You know liberal/scientists today already have the answers and are only looking for evidence to support that answer (and also get some gov’t funding along the way). Man made global warming, darwinism and experiments on unborn babies are just a few examples.
Is this like turtles all the way down? There's a designer for the designer for the designer for the designer. . . If everything "designed" needs a designer, who designed God?
You know, those faolks that witnessed wolves taking to the sea,
This is not proposed by evolutionists.
lizards leaping into the air and hten later developing wings because of the ‘need’ to feed in an environment other than the ground etc etc.
Again, not proposed by evolutionists. Evolution does not come about because of need. It is the result of multiple small changes occurring by chance and being selected for because they are useful, although they might not have the same use millions of years down the road.
Yes, you are arrogant, saying that I’m not anti-science because in my ignorance I don’t even know what science is.
In my 40 years on earth, I’ve earned two bachelor’s degrees and two master’s degrees, earning a staight 4.0 in grad school. I tell you that so that you understand that I am not ignorant. Your assumptions about me, and about those who believe Scripture to be true (and that therefore evolution is not true), is wrong.
“How far wrong am I, really?” You are so arrogant, you don’t even realize how arrogant you are.
Do you ever wonder why you expend so much energy resisting God? Do you ever wonder why with your reason you denounce the One who gives meaning? Do you ever wonder why you even try to find meaning if your presumption is that ultimately no meaning exists?
In science?
It's perfectly possible to be knowledgable about some things and ignorant about others. For instance, my opinion on Chinese poetry isn't worth a plugged nickle.
I can’t remember which, but we have a state public official in Georgia that subscribes to that philosophy.
[If you apply the same criteria to faith as you do to science, then the faith dies. And that is not a good thing.]
I wasn’t suggesating that- but that science can strengthen faith by pointing out the biological facts that show design. Many people set out to disprove the existence of God through science but came away beliving in Him because they found enough fingerprints of God in science and found out evolution just has too many biological, mathematical problems to be viable.
[One of the beauties of faith is that it asks to make the jump beyond logic.]
I don’t necessarily think that is the case- while the majority of folks, including myself, took that leap of faith, and had little knowledge of science at hte time, I think we needn’t suspend logic as their is enough evidences in science to highly suggest a Designer- so if the logic is available, then all of us who did take the leap of faith aren’t taking that leap with nothign to back up a reasonable leap of faith- even htough we may not be aware of the logic at the time.
I wasn’t necessarily talking about ID when I mentioned the “jump beyond logic.” If anything, I was referencing the comfort that faith provides during adversity. For instance, parents who see their kid mowed down by a truck. The comfort faith provides allows them to “know” he’s in a better place rather than simply reduced to hamburger.
Those who call belief “myth” and “fairy tales” would rob people of that kind of comfort.
The existance of God can’t be proven by science, hence, scientists cannot see his “fingerprints.” They can only see complexity that may be beyond their understand. It is not a fine distinction.
Note: Nowhere in the bible is the existance of God challenged or proven. His existance is assumed and only faith is tested.
[Is this like turtles all the way down? There’s a designer for the designer for the designer for the designer. . . If everything “designed” needs a designer, who designed God?]
Who designed the Eternal God? Think about it. God is eternal- that is what makes Him God. Suggesting that someone or something must have designed Him suggests that eternity is not a reality. It suggest there must have been a ‘starting point’, and a ‘starting point’ before that, and a starting point before that etc etc etc. See where that is going? There would need to be infinate ‘starting points’- in other words, an eternal existence in which the ‘starters’ began their/it’s ‘starting points’
[You know, those faolks that witnessed wolves taking to the sea,
This is not proposed by evolutionists.]
The sea mamals are said to come from land animals much like wolves.
[Again, not proposed by evolutionists. Evolution does not come about because of need.]
‘Environmental pressures’ don’t constitute ‘need’? One of the tenents of evolution is that natural selection ‘evolves’ creatures because environmental pressures cause a need. For isntance, hummingbirds with shorter beaks all of a sudden find that the shallow flowers they were feeding on have died off, but there are other deeper flowers, but only the longer beaked birds can feed- the shorter beaked birds get weeded out, while the longer beaked birds survive and pass along their long-beak genes- pretty soon only long beaked birds are present. Need shaped the bird.
We are told that lizards couldn’t compete with bigger lizards for ground food, and that the smaller lizards leapt into the air to catch flies, and over millions of years, a miraculous morphological change took place with many many mutations all working together to create wings- don’t you watch the National geographic channel? lol
I agree with you that this is not how sceicne states evolution is proposed to happens, however, the discovery channel, national geographic, and even some supposedly reputable scientific publications propose that this is how it happend. They even go to great lengths to show this by trotting out the Mexican flat lizards that all congregate at water falls and leap into the air to catch blackflies.
I agree with what you said- however, there is one major problem with what you/science says [It is the result of multiple small changes occurring by chance and being selected for because they are useful,] There is no proof that the many steps needed for systems were ‘useful’ as all the components of the systems gathered in the species awaiting final assembly, and so, each piece of the final complex systems would have been useless until fully assembled.
Science can make a weak, shaky case for perhaps some individual pieces of perhaps a few systems being useful, but my gosh, the rest takes an amount of faith to beleive because there simply is no physical proof that the many varied systems that are unique to certain species evolved. We can’t show through the fossil records that these systems slowly evolved. Even when there is some scant evidences that APPEAR to be evolving are present, it still takes a tremendous amount of faith to believe- as in the case of the supposed ear hearing system evolution- there are huge gaps and when the case is being made, there is much that is left out like the fact that more direct relatives showed not a progression of the evolution, but a regression- these facts are left out of hte equasion and not brought to our attention, because it isn’t conducive to the hypothesis
"Much like" =/= "exactly like" Phylogenies are important. Whales are descended from a genus called Pakicetus, which was an animal adapted to an aquatic existence (new research from Jan. 2007 shows they were not terrestrial as thought before) and descended from similar solely terrestrial animals.
‘Environmental pressures’ don’t constitute ‘need’? One of the tenents of evolution is that natural selection ‘evolves’ creatures because environmental pressures cause a need.
Natural selection provides a driving force for the propagation of beneficial mutations, but the hummingbird doesn't flit about and suddenly think, "Golly, these flowers are too deep, I'd better mutate so my kids don't starve." Mutation is wholly disconnected from need. If you're lucky, you get a mutation that matches your need, if you're not, you die.
There is no proof that the many steps needed for systems were ‘useful’ as all the components of the systems gathered in the species awaiting final assembly, and so, each piece of the final complex systems would have been useless until fully assembled.
We don't see this in the fossil record. What we do see is small changes leading to other small changes, with perfect functionality at each step, but an entirely different functionality later down the road. For instance, in early tetrapods a domino-effect cascade of changes was involved in the transition to land, in which one change had an effect that made a second change more easy. You can read a bit about this here.
You are describing microevolution pretty well. This is another canard constantly thrown out there by the darwinists, i.e. talk about provable microevolution evidence, and then make the jump to macroevolution with no evidence at all, except for the fact that a designer seems absurd to them.
“Scripture states that God stretched out the heavens like a curtain.”
also ‘rolled up like a scroll’:
I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood;
and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind.
The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
Rev 6:12-14
And all the host of heaven will wear away,
And the sky will be rolled up like a scroll;
All their hosts will also wither away
As a leaf withers from the vine,
Or as one withers from the fig tree.
Is 34:4
A good scientist will clearly state their assumptions.
There is an unstated assumption built into many ‘scientific’ articles that assumes that the speed of light (c = 299,792,458 m/s) was constant for last the x number of years....
There has been some intesting work on the subject of the varible speed of light theory over time the last few years.... first peer reviewed published by Setterfeild in 1987....
Setterfield and Norman SRI in July 1987
Dr. Joao Magueijo, a physicist at Imperial College London
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo%C3%A3o_Magueijo
Dr. John Barrow of Cambridge
Dr. Andy Albrecht of the University of California at Davis Dr. John Moffat of the University of Toronto
have all published work advocating their belief that light speed was much higher – as much as 10 to the 10th power faster in the past...
Variable speed of light theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light
The Variable Speed of Light theory is advocated by scientists with atheistic presuppositions of ultimate reality and scientists with theistic presuppostions.
also note: ‘the variable speed of light cosmology has been proposed independently by John Moffat and the two-man team of Andreas Albrecht and João Magueijo to explain the horizon problem of cosmology’
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6092.html
if c changes over time, it also alters ‘red-shift’ calcuations regarding expansion/contraction of universe
[What we do see is small changes leading to other small changes, with perfect functionality at each step]
Mmm not really- what you see are, as in the case of hte supposed evolution of the ear bones, are examples of VERY distantly (supposedly) related species, and you see differences in their jaw bones- what hte record doesn’t show are these bones migrating and assembling in the ear canal, bit by bit until a fully formed ear hearing system is inplace- There are large gaps in the record showing these bones asssembling, and those gaps are ‘filled in’ by mere assumptions and hypothesis.
In the case that is cited in the link you provide, a scant 3 fishes are examined and it’s concluded that there must have been an evolution going on there- but as I previously pointed out, these suppsoed scant 3 supposedly related species ignore the fact that more direct descendents show somethign entirely different in regards to any supposed evolution of feeding abilities. All this study shows is that there were 3 unique species and anythign further is simply assumptions that are riddled with huge gaps. We know that some species were capable of duel mechanisms for things like eating or breathing both out of water and in water, but al lthis proves is that they are uniquely created creatures. To take a species that is similiar to a dual breather, and point out that their breathing mechanism is similiar, but slightly different is nothign but a hypothesis without any real concrete supporting evidences- it’s like comparing two unique fruits, like an apple and a pinapple, pointing out that they both have stems, and suggesting that the one evolved from the other- you can bring in any number of other unique species that have different stems, and attempt to suggest it shows a ‘clear evolutionary progression’ but it all boils down to an opinion on the matter and not truly an objective science- it’s a subjective science that ignores the major differences that seperate the fruits from the ones being compared to. Another point to be made is that the subjects being compared are seperated by supposedly millions of years, and we’re given just a few scant ‘evidences’ of supposed progression of systems such as hearing? As mentioned, this totally ignores the thousands of steps in between the two species that showed somethign entirely different- I’ll continue with hte hearing issue because it illustrates this nicely- there were many direct descendents that showed the jaw bones moving in the opposite direction when compared side by side- not toward hte ear, but toweard the front of the animal- away from the ear- But again- what is being done here is VERY similiar to setting a 5 million year old apple next to a 1 million year old pineapple- pointing out the stems, showing that one is different fro mthe other- claiming the two are directly related, and suggesting that it shows a clear evolution.
In the case of the supposed ear evolution (which we’re told by scientists is ‘clearly documented and extensively catelogued and strongly agreed upon)- they take a 1 million year old (not sure hte real age- but just using the 1 million as an example) hippo sized animal’s jaw, setting it next to a 5 million year old rat sized animal’s jaw (You wouldn’t know this looking at the drawings that supposedly show this ‘clear progression because the two drawings were EQUAL in size) and stating that the movement of hte bones in the jaw show a ‘clear evolutionary progression’. We also aren’t informed that the Cynodont- one of the key players in the ‘evolution of hte ear’ chart, doesn’t even have a distant relative, and isn’t related to the rat sized animal on display.
To look at that chart of the supposed evolution of hte ear hearing, it looks impressive, and looks plausible- that is, until you start to dig deeper and realize that the gaps are so huge you could drive an army of feathered Brontosauraus’, side by side, miles and miles long, through it
[Natural selection provides a driving force for the propagation of beneficial mutations, but the hummingbird doesn’t flit about and suddenly think, “Golly, these flowers are too deep, I’d better mutate so my kids don’t starve.”]
I never suggested that is how it happened- I DID however point out that national geogrphic, the discovery channel and some supposedly reputable science magazines maKe those insinuations and people gobble it up as though it were the gospel truth.
We’ve gone over this before, I presented evidence from several hundreds of animals throughout cynodont evolution and you said there were thousands that they threw out, without providing any evidence that this was the case. It looks like you’ve simply made up your mind not to pay attention to any evidence on this subject.
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