Question About Evolution

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Judging from the bones, those hunter gatherers did not have a particularly long life span either.

ruveyn

Will agree evolution is a fact..depending on how the term evolution is defined. Do living organisms change over time due to adaptation and mutation? Yes. Darwin made some great observations proving that point. What Darwin did not prove is..do simpler life forms turn into different and more complex species over time? No. The stumbling block for Darwin was his lack of understanding that simple life forms are far more complex than was speculated in his day. He even presented a disclaimer on this issue and took the theory back prior to his death. It has been determined a "simple" organism such as a single cell Amoeba is complex beyond our wildest imagination. Unfortunately a number of unbelievers..who's goal is to attempt to offer some type of rational Creation account while leaving God out of the equation...took Darwin's self confessed erroneous theory and turned it into dogma to support a Faith based religion called Evolutionism. There is much more science supporting The Bible than can be found to support Evolutionism. There is zero evidence to support the religion in the fossil record. Theistic evolutionism as professed by some is bad science and bad religion.

Though in all fairness, that's because of the lack of modern medicine. Until comparatively recently, most people didn't live all that long.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

That is apparently the case. Three cheers for modern life!! !

ruveyn

Seconded. But to give credit where credit is due, Upper Paleolithic man had one hell of a high protein diet.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

A fat lot of good that did him in the long run. He could not cope with the climate changes.

The real accomplishment of Homo Sapien Sapien (our kind of human) is that our forebears had sufficient wits to survive the ice age and to flourish in the warmer climate. Our Neanderthal cousins simply could not make the grade.

Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if there were two distinct species of humans living side by side.

ruveyn

I provided proof that this in fact occurs on page 1 in this thread .

Darwin was one of the greatest geniuses of human history, but we understand a lot more now than he did then. Darwin knew nothing about DNA for example. Also, we have found many many many more transitional forms in the fossil record than were known in Darwin's day. The genetic evidence is even stronger than the fossil record and stands alone, but is also backed up by the fossil record with no contradictions.

bigwheel, whatever your sources of misinformation on this subject, they are lying to you. You're a grown man. You know how to use the internet. Google is your friend. IF you are a sincere seeker of truth, it is very easy to find out how false the young earth creationist claims are especially the way they misrepresent evolution.

A comparison I have seen many places is there is at least as much evidence humans share common ancestry with chimpanzees and other creatures as there is evidence that the earth orbits the sun. That is NOT an exaggeration. It might even be an understatement. Some people not even Christians go for something called "intelligent design" as an explanation, but did you know that even Michael Behe (the star "scientist" of the intelligent design movement) concedes the earth is ancient and humans share common ancestry with apes and other living things?

A long time ago it was the stated position of official Christianity that the sun goes around the earth. Galileo got in trouble for saying otherwise. Eventually the weight of evidence convinced the Church it was wrong. That is the same position evolution is in now with certain denominations that use the same style of Biblical interpretation that suggested it was the sun that orbits the earth instead of vice versa.

You gotta ask yourself, would God lie to us in His Creation? Would God plant all this evidence (basically every scientific observation ever made) that all clearly shows the earth is billions of years old and life evolves if it didn't happen? Some have proposed an "Omphalos" argument that the earth and lifeforms were created instantly but with the appearance of great age and the appearance of having evolved. Doesn't that seem just a little sneaky or duplicitous of God to do that though? You can go further and claim we were all created last Tuesday with memories of lives we never actually lived. What's the point?

And no, it isn't just a matter of looking at the same evidence with a different viewpoint. Much of the evidence only makes sense if evolution happens (such as the patterns of nested hierarchies of many different types of genetic data that all produce the same tree of life as other types of genetic data, and that also match what is found in the fossil record). The only alternative would be a God who is trying to deceive us by planting false evidence that, if we use the reasoning abilities He gave us, could potentially damn us for eternity. Does that sound like your idea of God to you?

There is CLEAR evidence that we did not evolve from chimpanzees. Just the fact that our eyes have white around the pupils, whereas, chimpanzees do not. This is evident enough that evolution from chimpanzees is not scientifically possible. Chimpanzees also have four feet (like it or not) and humans only have two.

No one has ever said that we evolved from chimpanzees, only that chimpanzees and ourselves have a common ancestor.

NO we did NOT evolve FROM chimpanzees. You apparently misunderstood something somebody said. There is abundant clear evidence of many types (the fossil record and genetic data) that we share a recent common ancestor with chimps.

The strongest evidence is human chromosome 2. We have found the corresponding two chimp chromosomes and can see exactly where the end to end fusion of the two ape chromosomes took place in the human ancestor.

It sounds very much like you have a dogmatic irrational position on this subject, one NOT based on evidence. The reason you gave is b.s. and you are ignoring the actual evidence. Educate yourself.

Since we are the only species of hominid left on the planet our closest cousins are the Chimps and the Bonobos. Our common ancestor lived perhaps 6 million years ago or so.

At one time our closest cousins were the Neanderthal but he has died out.

ruveyn

That depends on usage:

If the Religion of Evolutionism were true we would expect to find at least a vestige of a conscience in lower life forms...which we don't find of course. Only humans come so equipped. The religion also has trouble reconciling at what point the soul evolved. When did Darwin claim that happened? Thanks.

bigwheel, you seem to have a tremendous misunderstanding of what the differences are between religion and science.




IF evolution did NOT happen, kindly explain to me why your God would plant all the evidence of the physical world that all clearly shows it does happen. Please explain the genetic evidence and the fossil record in a way that is consistent and logical without using evolution. Go for it.

Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 26 Nov 2012, 8:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.

The problem with these questions is that (some) religious people keep asking them from their religious perspective, which often makes the questions invalid.

The theory of evolution isn't a religion. It's science. Evolution itself is a fact, just as much as gravity is. The theory attempts to explain how evolution works. Many people, before and after Darwin, have made contributions to this theory. Darwin is honoured because he had a fundamental insight into how evolution works, but the ToE is much more than natural selection.

Understanding the difference between religion and science is so fundamental a difference that if you don't understand that difference , any debate is meaningless. You also won't understand what people who are scientifically educated are trying to tell you.

If it's any consolation to you: studying science doesn't mean you have to give up your faith. I know lots of scientists who are also religious. Indeed, many scientists that contributed to the ToE were religious. One such example is Gregor Mendel, who, without knowing about Darwin (they lived at the same time), made a contribution that explained why offspring is different from their parents (Medelian genetics). It's fundamental to Darwin's four propositions, but Darwin didn't know about genetics.

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