Evolution? How?

Thank you for that answer. You obviously put a lot of thought into your perspective. I disagree with most of your conclusions, but you already knew that.:wink:


When you consider how important one word can be as with "was", what do you think the chances of thousands of words surviving centuries of oral tradition unchanged? What do you suppose was the method of transmission of the word from God to men....voices in the head, maybe dreams? What is real, what is hallucination?


I think most creationists scoff at the idea of the big bang.


Some good, some bad, some downright ugly. It is commonly said that there is something for everyone in the Bible. Since it is associated with a Deity and is wildly open to interpretation, therein lies the danger.



John 15:6
If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

Comment:

Many a man has died a horrible death due to that one.

Blind watchmaker or blind gunman?
Thought this was interesting concerning Richard Dawkins book The blind Watchmaker. Are genetic mutations good? I haven't seen it. Thus, the question remains: What do we actually see in the world around us when we use scientific tools of measurement and observation? Do we see this "blind watchmaker" at work in any real-life examples, or do we see the opposite?
For the whole article: http://christiananswers.net/q-eden/genetic-mutations.html

"How often we are moved to admit the intelligence exhibited in both the designing and the execution of some of His works. Take the fly, for instance. The planning of the fly was an application of pure intelligence, morals not being concerned. Not one of us could have planned the fly, not one of us could have constructed him; and no one would have considered it wise to try, except under an assumed name. It is believed by some that the fly was introduced to meet a long-felt want. In the course of ages, for some reason or other, there have been millions of these persons, but out of this vast multitude there has not been one who has been willing to explain what the want was. At least satisfactorily. A few have explained that there was need of a creature to remove disease-breeding garbage; but these being then asked to explain what long-felt want the disease-breeding garbage was introduced to supply, they have not been willing to undertake the contract.

There is much inconsistency concerning the fly. In all the ages he has not had a friend, there has never been a person in the earth who could have been persuaded to intervene between him and extermination; yet billions of persons have excused the Hand that made him -- and this without a blush. Would they have excused a Man in the same circumstances, a man positively known to have invented the fly? On the contrary. For the credit of the race let us believe it would have been all day with that man. Would persons consider it just to reprobate in a child, with its undeveloped morals, a scandal which they would overlook in the Pope?

When we reflect that the fly was as not invented for pastime, but in the way of business; that he was not flung off in a heedless moment and with no object in view but to pass the time, but was the fruit of long and pains-taking labor and calculation, and with a definite and far-reaching, purpose in view; that his character and conduct were planned out with cold deliberation, that his career was foreseen and fore-ordered, and that there was no want which he could supply, we are hopelessly puzzled, we cannot understand the moral lapse that was able to render possible the conceiving and the consummation of this squalid and malevolent creature.

Let us try to think the unthinkable: let us try to imagine a Man of a sort willing to invent the fly; that is to say, a man destitute of feeling; a man willing to wantonly torture and harass and persecute myriads of creatures who had never done him any harm and could not if they wanted to, and -- the majority of them -- poor dumb things not even aware of his existence. In a word, let us try to imagine a man with so singular and so lumbering a code of morals as this: that it is fair and right to send afflictions upon the just -- upon the unoffending as well as upon the offending, without discrimination.

If we can imagine such a man, that is the man that could invent the fly, and send him out on his mission and furnish him his orders: "Depart into the uttermost corners of the earth, and diligently do your appointed work. Persecute the sick child; settle upon its eyes, its face, its hands, and gnaw and pester and sting; worry and fret and madden the worn and tired mother who watches by the child, and who humbly prays for mercy and relief with the pathetic faith of the deceived and the unteachable. Settle upon the soldier's festering wounds in field and hospital and drive him frantic while he also prays, and betweentimes curses, with none to listen but you, Fly, who get all the petting and all the protection, without even praying for it. Harry and persecute the forlorn and forsaken wretch who is perishing of the plague, and in his terror and despair praying; bite, sting, feed upon his ulcers, dabble your feet in his rotten blood, gum them thick with plague-germs -- feet cunningly designed and perfected for this function ages ago in the beginning -- carry this freight to a hundred tables, among the just and the unjust. the high and the low, and walk over the food and gaum it with filth and death. Visit all; allow no man peace till he get it in the grave; visit and afflict the hard-worked and unoffending horse, mule, ox, ass, pester the patient cow, and all the kindly animals that labor without fair reward here and perish without hope of it hereafter; spare no creature, wild or tame; but wheresoever you find one, make his life a misery, treat him as the innocent deserve; and so please Me and increase My glory Who made the fly.

We hear much about His patience and forbearance and long-suffering; we hear nothing about our own, which much exceeds it. We hear much about His mercy and kindness and goodness -- in words -- the words of His Book and of His pulpit -- and the meek multitude is content with this evidence, such as it is, seeking no further; but whoso searcheth after a concreted sample of it will in time acquire fatigue. There being no instances of it. For what are gilded as mercies are not in any recorded case more than mere common justices, and due -- due without thanks or compliment. To rescue without personal risk a cripple from a burning house is not a mercy, it is a mere commonplace duty; anybody would do it that could. And not by proxy, either -- delegating the work but confiscating the credit for it. If men neglected "God's poor" and "God's stricken and helpless ones" as He does, what would become of them? The answer is to be found in those dark lands where man follows His example and turns his indifferent back upon them: they get no help at all; they cry, and plead and pray in vain, they linger and suffer, and miserably die. If you will look at the matter rationally and without prejudice, the proper place to hunt for the facts of His mercy, is not where man does the mercies and He collects the praise, but in those regions where He has the field to Himself.

It is plain that there is one moral law for heaven and another for the earth. The pulpit assures us that wherever we see suffering and sorrow which we can relieve and do not do it, we sin, heavily. There was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not relieve. Does He sin, then? If He is the Source of Morals He does -- certainly nothing can be plainer than that, you will admit. Surely the Source of law cannot violate law and stand unsmirched; surely the judge upon the bench cannot forbid crime and then revel in it himself unreproached. Nevertheless we have this curious spectacle: daily the trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these ironies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without examination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without examination, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself. It does seem as if we ought to be humble when we are at a bench-show, and not put on airs of intellectual superiority there."

Mark Twain(early 1900s)

Marx,Hitler and Mao
Seems Marx believed in evolution to such an extent that he wanted to further the cause by speeding up the process by keeping the fittest and doing away with the lesser/inferior of our species. Hitler and Mao bought into this also. Yes evolution is a good thing? Ask the Jews that were sent to the death camps. Ask the millions that Mao had put to death. All hail Darwin.

Mark Twain and the fly
I enjoy the writings of Mark Twain. I live about 45 min. away from Angles camp the site of the world famous frog jump commemorating his work on the Jumping Frog of Calavaras county. Iv'e even gone up to Jackass Hill to see his cabin. Another interesting insect is the Dung (or Scarab) beetle. If this little critter wern't around the fly population would be out of control. http://www.museum.unl.edu/research/entomology/sm-beetle.htm This is very interesting. Although The smithsonian says it evolved to it's present state I don't believe that. I believe that God in his infinate wisdom created both the fly and the scarab beetle to work as a team to help fertilize the soil. Anyway it makes sense to me :wink:

About the billion years in Genesis and whether if I am a linguist, Bible scholar and all that stuff...

You can judge for yourself...

We will start at the form of the verb "to be"... which are as follow:

am is are was were be being been...

There are no form of the verb "to be" in the Hebrew language of the old testament... They just never wrote them in or had them. This is why all through the OT you will see that wherever there is a form of the verb "to be", it is italicized.

This is the main reason why I read exclusively the King James Bible... because every word "added" is italicized. But, then if the Hebrews never used the form of the verb "to be" we come back to the second verse of the whole Bible and why is this "was" not italicized?

This should give the reader pause yet it goes undetected... Well the simple answer is (and possibly this is why God chose to have the Bible written originally in Hebrew) so this would never be misunderstood. Yet, today it is completely lost.

It is not supposed to be translated as the word "was". One of the only form of the verb "to be" that the Hebrews actually wrote into the OT was the word "became".

So let's read this again correctly then...

Genesis 1:1
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth

Comment:
This is the big bang... all to this point agrees with science

Genesis 1:2
And the earth was [became] without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Comment:
Became without form? That sounds like evolution...

A.) God creates the heavens and the earth (God creates light and life here)

B.) The earth "became" dark (spiritually), lost it's shape, and became void or empty... (for reasons I will address later)

C.) God says, "let there be light" (God just has to speak light back into being)

Between Genesis verse one and two are billions if not trillions of years.

This is why in Eden things were just formed and made because they had been created earlier.

The earth "becoming" without form and void is evolution... When God speaks light (logos) back into being this is the opening of the week when humans first experience spirit upon them. This is roughly when the seven day period of Eden begins. Remember... the only thing in Eden that is created is spirit. All else is either formed or made from existing "stuff" from the first heaven and earth of Genesis verse one.

So Eden is the "second" heaven and earth period...

Why did the first earth become without form and void? That I will write about in a later post. (it has to do with lucifer's fall and him "shutting off the light or corrupting the light till it became an abyss or "spiritual" black hole.) What a wonderful place for paradise... But, the untold confusion this incorrectly supplied word "was" has costs is incalculable. First, if that word is "was" and not the word "became" then God created an evil, dark and empty world... That is a lie from hell... God created a perfect heaven and earth in the very beginning (long before Eden) full of light and substance and in the course of billions of years it "fell" as Adam and Eve did...

So it is not like each day is a thousand or million or billion years (as some theologians have suggested) but that between verse one and two of Genesis chapter one, there are billions if not trillions of years...

During the seven day period, the Bible doesn't say "God created this, and God created that", but God only "created" one thing in the second heaven and earth (Eden) and that was "holy" spirit.

The chaos of the first heaven and earth before Eden was total anarchy. From asteroids and a gigantic rock hitting the earth and making a moon, ice ages, floods and rising sea levels... God in his wisdom and foreknowledge has ordered the heavens and made them to be signs and seasons through the ages. God's story is written in the stars... But there was little or no spirit on earth to interpret them...

So it is evolution "and" creation not evolution "or" creation...

The first heaven and earth was where evolution took place

The second heaven and earth was Eden and God made a new law... "everything after it's kind".

A third heaven and earth are written about in the Book of Revelation.
The book of revelation refers to them as the "third" heaven and earth... How can there be a third heaven and earth if Eden was the first? Thus the Bible confirms itself..

First with, was/became and second with the "third" heaven and earth.

One note: It has been thought by theologians that the third heaven was vertical like levels of heavens (i.e seventh heaven and erroneous doctrines of purgatory came from the misunderstanding of the "third heaven and earth" scripture.) but it is horizontal as in time and ages. Three periods successive in time where the heaven and earths are somehow transformed in spiritual ways.

Another note: Paradise is always a place on an earth... heaven and paradise are different places but are dynamically connected in the third heaven and earth period. "Heaven comes down to earth"...

So, the Bible "does" teach evolution... but only to those who don't' think God is so out of touch to have forgotten about the millions of fossil records in the ground or not capable of a small thud let alone a big bang...

mesquite wrote"

John 15:6
If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

Comment:

Many a man has died a horrible death due to that one.


The Bible has the tree of life
The tree of knowledge of good and evil
the blessed tree on the bank of the river
Jesus referring to himself as a tree

The Bible should not be held responsible for what freaks (excuse my choice of word) do when they read it. Especially when the true intended meaning is so vastly contorted. They would have done the same reading a box of cheerios. I did not read into that scripture what you indicated. I do not think it is encouraging people to go out and burn another person in a fire...

Jesus Christ is saying that like a tree in nature, when a branch is broken, it falls to the ground, withers and dies unless it is grafted to anther living organism. Sadly people waste themselves. He is tenderly instructing them about living waters and he is trying to connect to people, not alienate them... the reality of life is that many do lose the battle with life and are suddenly cut off from their own existence. It is not like one has to be in a certain organization, party, club etc but one should be connected to a larger reservoir of life, for instance, the source.

Black flies bites may turn on a young childs immune system.. they also may be used in the future to change DNA in a cell.

Rex.Its been a fairly recent thing(within the last 75 years) when many religions first acknowledged that evolution was "worthy of consideration" to less than 50 years ago when many religions embraced evolution and accomodated their theologies to no longer deny the obvious.
Thats why, to me, the present force of will that is being mounted by a few of the Evangelical Christians, the Lubovitchers Jews, and a few sects of Islam (Wahab,) is so out of touch with reality that it threatens the US Constitution which, while guaranteeing most rights to all (in 2005 ), never conspired to afford special rights to a few. The special legislation that would be implied by teaching "Creation " in science was recognizedby the USSupreme Court at least twice in the last Century. Now the judicial system will once again be burdened by a more slyly wrought definition of Creation in a much more cynical form (Intelligent Design), which by its very format and display of data, is merely a weak attempt to circumvent the bounds of the bill of rights for a few crafty petitioners.
Isnt it miraculous how the IDers try to criticize and question the science that underpins evolutionary synthesis, yet havent a clue about with what it should be substituted . Theyve got a "theology based pseudo-science" that cannot even stand upright , let alone walk into a classroom and take questions.Its so laughable as to be scary in many cases, yet this is what some people confess.
Then when, theCreationists/IDers get close to being outed, they will slowly slink back into the midst of their standard Creation mantra that claims that evolution, too, is religious based (however it is evil atheistic, non God centered-sort of the loopy wanderings of Jack-off -all trades ).
As Lord Ellpus said on another thread "yall never get the Creationists to back down, so itll do no good to try to talk reason with em".
Thats never been my point in joining in here, sinceIm more concerned with the kids that wander in and out of any thread on A2k. If you look, there is usually only about a 10% response -to-visit ratio. Most people drop in, read, and go away. I dont want those kids to be laboring under a false impression that Evolution by natural selection is going anywhere. If anything , it is stronger than ever, and that just frosts the Creationists shorts. Also, believe it or not, unless this forum just blows away, there is a "public record" being established here that is already known to the principles in The upcoming Pa case, and by that fact, represents a "hosting cross section" of the publics perception of science and religion. Weve already been visited on this thread and some previous ones by some people who are well known in the Creationists Camps of the internet and the CRI.
Your own expressed accomodations that youve tried to patiently present as a means to reason your own religious beliefs and the findings of evolutionary sciences is not unnoticed by many of us, however,having said that, you are just as in dANGER OF BEING VILLIFIED BY THE id CROWD as are any of us who have joined in the discussion from the more secular side of paleo, biology, cosmology, philosophy, and good ole debate.
I think we well recognize that you speak of how much religion has "adapted" and actually has been made stronger by this adaptation rather than the almost mindless
"lets make up our science as we go" methods of the ID and Creationists, and for that, I am, at least thankful of your patience and politeness. I know its difficult to keep this up while all around,the arguments "pro-Creatam" just are on an endless "do-loop".There havent been any new or creative arguments posted "pro-Creatam" since I joined abuzz in 2001. They were going hot an heavy back then , and, here we are 5 years later going around the same barns.
One thing I miss was,Back on abuzz, when we had an earlier debate on this topic, we had a teaching minister give his views on evolution from his synod's POV. It was cogent, well crafted, and , unfortunaely, lost for posterity. I wish we could have the benefit of that position statement herein. It would present yet a third view that could be put in the pot.You arent perhaps, he?

Because it's been demonstrated and proven so many times. If you want to find the facts they're there to be found. I'm not going to go on another search or give long winded explanations. If people are happy with their ridiculous ancient superstitions, who am I to argue?

Wilso-ole man, welcome back, where ya been?

Working, studying and going out. Barely got time to scratch myself.............which is a pity, 'cause I enjoy scratching myself:-)

FFS.

0.Darwin reads/comtemplates his grandfather's work.
1.Darwin goes to Galapolas.
2.Darwin sees many different species.
3.Darwin "makes up" Darwinism/Evolution to explain different species.
4.Does Darwin see the species EVOLVE from one into another? No.

your point?
same with Newton and Descarte.
yet you don't see us debating whether F really does = M.A

my point is that Newton's science is really science,
Darwin's is... "science".

your point?

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/geology.asp

like what




Fossils are routinely found embedded in rocks which we *infer* to be millions of years old.

that's all i'm saying, "infer" (not to be confused with "extrapolate"/"hypothesize" and other such categorial words).

except when you try to look past Jesus' resurrection you see only literal history, like that he actually came back from the dead and is alive today looking down on me, and i guess in its implicit implication, he is looking down on you too.

"drown out the pleasures and treasures that bind us" - Rebecca St. James.

Have you read "The Heavenly Man"? the story of Jesus himself preaching to tribes in China during the Cultural Revolution and even till today (book published 2003). The Church (House Churches, not Government Churches - like the TSM etc.) is booming, while the Churches in the west lay asleep... kinda sad for us really huh.