Evolution vs. Creationism

Great Debates
1

I have sat back and watched people debate over this subject for a long time. I have never posted anything because I really don’t know much about the subject. I have skimmed through Darwin’s Origin of Species, but that is about it. In one of the other debate rooms, someone said, “there are a lot of people on the fence…” Well, I am one of those people. Actually, I have a few questions:

  1. I believe that God created us. Is it possible to believe that and believe in evolution at the same time?

  2. Why are Creationist and Evolutionist always arguing? Aren’t the Bangists (you know the scientist that believe in the Big Bang Theory) the one’s with the views that contradict creation?

  3. Last question, I promise, I always here that the evidence of Creationists is bogus. Don’t they have evidence to “prove” why the earth is 10,000 years old, etc…?

Thanks for your input.

C.

2

Yes, it is. Evolution only means a change in species over time. Evolution is related yet different than abiogenesis (life from non-life).

Actually the Bangist theory, as I understand it, supports the doctrine of ex nihilio (sp?) ‘Out of Nothing’.

The main reason I can tell the CvE debate rages is that neither side reads the others material, because both have a certain amount of disrespect for the others motives. Motives that may or may not be true, but are usually an based on an a priori assumption.

Both sides claim the others work is bogus. I think both sides exaggerate the claim, though I think the YEC are somewhat deficient in this category.

stands by for the inevitable flames…

3

**

With all due respect, Navigator, you make it sound as if science is saying that there was nothing, i.e. “no God,” and that isn’t the case.

Science is saying, we believe that things came about where things did kick off in some manner which is not dependent upon a non-testable entity. They only preclude God from having to be there, but do not say he ISN’T there.

**

Are you saying that I never read creationist views, Navigator?

Yer pal,
Satan - Commissioner, The Teeming Minions

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4

My 2 cents, …

Tricky one - yes and no. If you are to take the Bible as the infallible word of God, then no. Adam and Eve, all the world and its creatures created in 6 days with one day off, etc., just doesn’t jive with the theory of evolution. But believing in the existence of God doesn’t automatically make you an anti-evolutionist. You just have to take the Bible with a grain of salt.

I could be wrong about this one but a “Bangist”, as you put it, would be an evolutionist. I doubt there many “Bangist” who will argue that the universe was created in a cataclysmic explosion at which point God took over an started molding woodchucks and platypi.
Is an evolutionist necessarily a “Bangist”? I don’t know. Being a Bangist, I’m not really qualified to answer the question. But it seems to me that the two theories have a cozy relationship with each other.

I can only cite anecdotally here, but I think all the “evidence” produced to prove that young age of the earth comes directly from scripture. I’m not going to explain circular logic, as I’m fairly sure everybody here is already quite familiar with it.

5

Brian,

Ex nihilio, IIRC is a church doctrine that God created out of nothing, something that some say the ‘Big Bang’ asserts.

I agree with your assessment of the scientific theory.

yer second point, I’ll modify that ‘some’ on both sides never read the other sides argument. Some actually do read both sides, and don’t change their minds.

Peace, Brian, I’m trying not to personalize the argument.

6

That would be between you and your god. What characteristics to you ascribe to your god? Are those characteristics consistent with evolution?

Creationism postulates the whole enchilada: God made the universe, the Earth, created all the animals and the people, and people, and He did it all in seven days and He did it a few thousand years ago. (They also tend to believe that there really was a worldwide flood that covered Mt. Everest, too.)

This view is at odds with much of modern science: astronomy (not just “Bangism” as you call it, but also observational astronomy which tells us things are billions of years old), geology, palentology, molecular biology, etc.

You are correct that any given Bangist (damn, that word is *growing * on me!) will most likely believe in the theory of evolution. However, Big Bang Theory does not imply evolution. If the Big Bang turned out to be wrong tomorrow (fat freakin’ chance, but hypothetically. . .), it would not automatically imply that evolution was wrong. . . and vice versa.

Yeah, it’s bogus. By all means, check out the talk.origins archive. It concisely and thoroughly documents the errors in many common creationist claims:

http://www.talkorigins.org

Ya know what really butters my toast? When creationists take a thirty-year-old study that has been disproved in the literature ten times and continue use that as evidence. It’s even worse when they misinterpret the results of a study, perverting the hard work of people who are dedicated to enriching humanity’s store of knowlege. And they have the audacity to call themselves “scientists.”

Do they do it out of ignorance, or deliberate malice? I dunno. Which is more insulting? That might be the topic of another Great Debate.

7

First, I’d like to preface this by saying that 1)I’m not a Christian and 2)my degree is in Anthropology, so I “believe” in evolution just like I “believe” in gravity.

**Davie Crockey wrote:

  1. I believe that God created us. Is it possible to believe that and believe in evolution at the same time?**

Yes. Quite easy. In fact, this is the view of the Catholic Church. In fact, most of Christianity seems to believe this. Only the people who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible do not.

2. Why are Creationist and Evolutionist always arguing? Aren’t the Bangists (you know the scientist that believe in the Big Bang Theory) the one’s with the views that contradict creation?

The arguement seems to come from the Creationists who insist their viewpoint be given equal time (especially in public schools) since it’s just as valid as evolution is. Several courts have ruled that Creationism is not a theory (in the same sense that evolution is) and is tantamount to promoting a religion in public schools.

“Bangists” as you call them, physicists who specialize in astrophysics to the rest of us, have a variety of religious beliefs. Not all of them are Christian, so you’d have to ask them on an individual basis.

3. Last question, I promise, I always here that the evidence of Creationists is bogus. Don’t they have evidence to “prove” why the earth is 10,000 years old, etc…?

Most Creationist arguements stand on the Bible as the infallible Word of God as their evidence for a young earth. The evidence as presented by geology, physics and biology overwhelms any evidence the Bible gives. Again, it seems that only the people who insist on a LITERAL interpretation of the Bible believe this. Most other Christians take Genesis (at least up to the point where Abraham enters the story) as mythology.

Otherwise, Creations try to pick holes in evolution. What they have done is show that not all biologists agree on some details of evolution. They ignore the fact that biologists agree that evolution happens, but disagree over details such as it’s rate and exact mechanisms. That’s sort of like saying that since mechanics will argue over the best way to get maximum preformance out of an engine, automobiles don’t exist.

8

Greetings. I wish to reply specifically to the OP’s third question, as the first two were answered quite admirably by other posters.

David Crockey wrote:
"Last question, I promise, I always here that the evidence of Creationists is bogus. Don’t they have evidence to “prove” why the earth is 10,000 years old, etc…? "

One of the pieces of evidence that I find most interesting is the creationsist viewpoint that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics disproves evolution(listen to the collective groans :slight_smile: ). The second law basically states that any closed system will tend toward more chaos and disorder. However, evolution asserts that order, i.e. life, was created from the disorder of the primeval Earth. The flaw in this logic is that creationists assume the Earth, and only the Earth, as the closed system. Our planet is anything from closed, receiving energy from the sun. This energy is what drives natural selection, and thus evolution. If the sun did not exist, we would be hard pressed to explain where everyone came from.

Respectfully yours,
Mixlplix :slight_smile:

9

Freyr wrote:

And I gotta wonder why these same literalists don’t also insist that the sun goes around the Earth (Joshua 10:12-13), that the Earth is flat (http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm), and that the Earth is rectangular (Revelation 7:1).

10

The sun doesen’t cause order, it is merely unfocused energy. Now if something was directing that energy into a ordered state yes, but otherwise the sun and sunlight tends towards entropy like everything else.

11

I’ll lump these two together even though the evolution of life is not the same thing as the ‘evolution’ of the Universe. The word is used sometimes for both processes, but they are not parallel cases.

It all depends on how you define “Christian”. The conflict in believing in either a Big Bang, or evoluition comes from attempting to reconcile these scientific theories with a literal interpretation of the Bible. If you believe that God created the world in six days then, obviously, you cannot believe in either a Big Bang model or biologic evolution.

I’ve known plenty of people who describe themselves as Christians, who believe in both a ‘Big Bang’ model of the universe and biologic evolution. By the same token, I’ve also known other Christians who claim that you cannot truly be a Christian without a literal interpretation of the Bible. If you think that a literal interpretation of the Bible is a requirement to be a Christian, then it becomes difficult to also believe in the above scientific theories.

However, there are at least a billion Catholics in the world who shouldn’t have much difficulty in accepting both a divine causation and any one of the “Big Bang” models of the beginning of the Universe:

[QUOTE]
“…in 1981 my interst in questions about the origin and fate of the universe was reawakened when I attended a conference on cosmology oganized by the Jesuits in the Vatican… At the end of the conference the participants were granted an audience with the pope. He told us that it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God.”
Steven Hawking A Brief History of Time.

12

Hey, I wasn’t even trying to have an argument! :smiley:

Thanks for the clarification…

Yer pal,
Satan

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13

Nope.

Locally, any influx of energy can and does offset disorder. Planets orbit suns, for example–order, but not directed, except by physical law. Another example: two cells, say a sperm and an egg, merge and begin to reproduce, eventually forming another lifeform. Eventually, entropy has its way (lifeforms die), but the growth and increasing order of that embryo as it develops is in defiance of entropy. Why? An influx of energy.

In a nutshell, with sufficient energy, 2LT goes out the window. There are articles at http://www.talkorigins.org that go into more detail here and here.

14

I thought Freyr (for whom I’m growing to have immense respect) covered this very well in his post above. I’ve posted my POV on YEC (young-earth creationism) before in several places, but here’s a capsule summary:

Whatever may be the inspiration of Genesis 1, the decision on how to read it is a human one. And contextually, it is written in myth style – which is not to controvert its truth value, but to describe its literary genre. Now, one may conclude from this that it is a straightforward account of what God did one week in October 4004 BC or a poetic retelling of his work – or, of course, that it’s a myth in the modern usage – a fable made up by a bunch of nomads.

However, if one believes in God, one comes face to face with the question of whether he ever prevaricates. And one is faced with this question quite strongly here, because the vast majority of the geological and paleontological evidence points strongly to a multi-billion year span for Earth and for life on Earth. Granted that science may be in error on any given interpretation of the evidence, it will not be consistently in error (and in self-consistent error) on the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence. The conclusion then becomes: either God lied in Genesis 1 or in the evidence found in his creation, or else the literalist interpretation of Genesis 1 is in error. I prefer to believe that man makes mistakes, and God does not lie.

One quick point to show the complementarity of science and the Christian religion, taken with one’s mind in gear: the best evidence of cosmologists as to conditions immediately after the Big Bang indicate a very short period (nanoseconds) that is indescribable in human perceptual terms, because there was a chaotic flux of strange and charmed particles. Immediately afterwards, the universe settled to something we can (barely) comprehend, and that something was a mix so hot that subatomic particles could not survive, but only one thing: photons – the vehicles for light. Anyone for whom that does not raise echoes of the first three verses of Genesis has no poetry in his soul.

15

Genesis is pretty accurate in describing how the world came to be, if you look at it poetically. I was reminded of this when reading Anne Rice’s ‘Memnoch the Devil’. In it a fallen angel re-tells how the world was created, going into detail how God shaped life.

It has TONS of inaccuracies, including flowers existing before fish and other things I can’t recall at the moment. This modern retelling of creation is further from scientific truth than the original.

16

Here’s a thought: what if everyone were right? The creationists, the evolutionists, and everyone with totally other views.

One of the wonderful things about the universe is that there is infinite possibility. Paradoxes exist.

It is possible for two or more ideas to be true, even when they contradict one another.

I do not believe in YHWH. I do, however, believe that he exists for those who believe in him. I also do not believe in Hell. But that’s where Bad people go when they die. YHWH, Odin, Jesus, Brahmin, Chronos, they all exist.
Existence of the divine is proven by one thing: belief.
Why should one set of beliefs rule out the possibility of contradictory beliefs also being true? Of course, that would end up making the majority if the GD threads completely pointless.

17

I think that one thing that is often overlooked by Christians believing in the Big Bang and Evolution is that it makes it tricky to explain why God plays favorites with (1) Earth, (2) humanity, (3) Jews/Christians. In all the billions of years that the universe has existed, with all of the stuff out that has no role in the Biblical Word of God… why? I’ve never heard a reason as to why God would make a universe that’s billions of light years across and billions of years old just so little ole humanity could go through cycles of divine punishment/retribution. Anyone have a good reason?

Q

18

Who says we’re all there is? G-d may be taking an interest in hundreds or even thousands of other planets too.

–John

19

**PolyC wrote:

I thought Freyr (for whom I’m growing to have immense respect) covered this very well in his post above.**

Awwwww, stop it, Poly! You’re making me blush! :slight_smile:

Whatever may be the inspiration of Genesis 1, the decision on how to read it is a human one. And contextually, it is written in myth style – which is not to controvert its truth value, but to describe its literary genre. Now, one may conclude from this that it is a straightforward account of what God did one week in October 4004 BC or a poetic retelling of his work – or, of course, that it’s a myth in the modern usage – a fable made up by a bunch of nomads.

What is fascinating is to compare the Creation Myth of several cultures (all from the same general area) and note the similarities.

One major point I’ve noticed is the use of water in them all. Often the stories describe the vast expanse of ocean or a huge body of water out of which all of Creation comes.

Another point to consider is that at the time, water was considered the “universal element” the substance out of which everything was composed. One could hypothesize that the philosophers of the time were simply using the best available theory to tell how the world came about; hence the use of water in so many Creation tales.

20

Nice job. You mean that according to the Bible, Thales got it right, and philosophy’s going downhill ever since? :slight_smile:

Actually, I don’t find the similarities between myth structures to be all that significant. In all the threads that have been debated here, nobody has ever addressed the significance of the hoopoe, nor discussed under what circumstances the use of Vaseline is moral. Quite simply, because the issue has never come up. If the Babylonians said this about Ishtar and Tiamat, then the Ugaritites (or whatever they were called) would explain in their mythos what Astarte was really doing about Tiamat. And the similarities of Genesis to the Babylonian myth may come from the same concept: remember that under the JEPD view the Priestly strand was being compiled during the Exile, when the typical Jew was very exposed to the Babylonian myth system, in the same way that an American child knows all about Santa, the Easter Bunny, George Washington and the cherry tree incident, Abe Lincoln splitting rails, and all the other cultural paraphenalia we load 'em down with. To explain the issues the Babylonian myth system addressed in terms of what YHWH did would only make sense. Regardless of what stock you put in belief in Him.

Quixotic…no sane Christian thinks that God created everything particularly for Man. The point is that Earth and humanity are what we happen to be involved with. And He, being omniscient, has plenty enough capacity to be concerned both with what you and I are thinking at this particular moment, what a particular trilobite did one afternoon in the late Silurian, what Xpofltg did in defiance of his (only) parent’s command on Gamma Reticuli IX last weekend, and the need to keep that quasar from moving through the middle of that elliptical galaxy about 7,000,000,000 light years from here.