Literal Interpretation of the Bible

Great Debates
21

Of course “irreducible complexity” doesn’t “destroy” any thinking. One can academicize oneself out of logic by means of logic!

The point that Evolution religious fanatics miss is the amazing degree of coincidence in evolution, how all of life hangs by a hair’s breath. (if the earth weren’t just this shape, with this path around the sun, with this temperature, with this particular satellite…)

One can discover a mousetrap and think it evolved, or it was created. Obviously, a mousetrap is not “alive” like an organism such as a bird or human or bacteria, so it won’t evolve. We know that it was “created” because we have a direct teaching that we rely upon that a person invented it and that people, even today, construct them. A mistake in logic is to assume that, since we can discover complex items today, such as a mousetrap or a computer, and we know for certain that it was created, therefore everything that is complex must have been created. However, to find something that is complex and assume that it wasn’t created, that it evolved, without knowing the source, also cannot be done completely based on faith, since there is no logic. However, one can surmize that one can, however, make a good educated guess, that if something, was created, you should be able to recognize it. This is an idea that Evolutionists must rely upon since there are no witnesses to the Big Bang. Where Evolutionists become followers of a religion is the point in which the Evolutionists decide that the earth and everything within it had undergone change gradually (relatively speaking), i.e. through evolution. And that’s the only way it happened. To disagree is be a heretic, or a even an antiqated pagan or follower of a false religion.

Thus, the Evolutionist is close-minded and won’t even hear of such ideas like “Creation”, or a “divinely-guided evolution”, or anything that cannot be disproven, yet is not what they have always practiced in belief.

But on with the Evolutionist Jihad!

22

Why oh why don’t the American public schools do a better job of teaching science basics? Such as what is meant by the term “scientific theory,” how the scientific method works, why it’s important, etc.

23

Yoyo has the most appropriate user name since Chumpsky.

Funny how he changes his diatribe every time he’s refuted. First half a leg was impossible; then half of a fifth finger; now we’re on to some general epistimological ranting and solipsistic nonsense about how no one witnessed the Big Bang (which has nothing to do with evolution anyway), how evolution is a religion, the anthropic principle, and the age-old argument from design. Yawn.

I guess I have to do a thread like this once in a while to remind me why I generally don’t do GD anymore.

24

Well, I’ve seen mudskippers scooting along, so I’ve got an idea of how it could have happened.

25

Opus, you so easily dismiss these ideas with insults, but I still don’t think you have thought without hubris. I haven’t been refuted, only shown horse-sense.

26

What?? How did you get that? I meant his link trounces Behe and ID.

Jeez, this little rhetorical ad-hom is quite annoying. I bet you were all read in the face when you said that. Evolution=religion, it is to laugh! I think you can do better than that, why don’t you call us darwinists.

And the mousetrap analogy comes out. Pay attention to the following links and you will see why you are so severly wrong:

It has pictures to make understanding easier:
http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mousetrap.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/icsic.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/review.html

Oh please, grow up a little.

27

Insults? Hey, take the plank out of your eye there!

28

A link to the mousetrap idea was already provided.

You are not a Darwinist because Darwin didn’t believe in Evolutionism with the same zeal as Evolutionists do.

Again, I am not refuted, merely the recipient of insults. This shows some insecurity…

29

I can guarantee you that everyone posting here has sort of half-organ. It’s called the appendix.

Then there is the tailbone, the coccyx. Even yoyo3500 has a tailbone, I’d bet. Creationists argue that it serves a function today, and therefore cannot have been a tail in ancient times (muscles connect to it, giving the body structural support). Peculiar logic. But I think the tailbone’s moder usefulness shows that the vestigial tail has been adapted for the modern human body. Hence, on the way to evolving fingers and losing tails, the body can make use of the intermediate forms as it changes.

30

Nice ad-homs! Seriously, equating science with religion is just silly. There is no “evolutionism” except in the minds of creationists, because they believe a big bad spooky conspiracy is afloat in science, that seeks to promote a bankrupt evolution.

You know, in order to get the most from links, you have to read them. The link demolishes the mousetrap idea.

Also, don’t you try to take the moral high ground, you are throwing poop with the rest of us!

Equating science (evolution) with religion is illogical.

31

yoyo3500, first of all, let me assure you I am a Bible-believing Christian, if not a literalist. Second, have you heard of a creature called thewalking catfish? While I suspect it came along a lot later than amphibians, it may come close to your description of a “creature that was evolving legs, but they weren’t quite legs yet, but the creature had to drag them around anyway.” Actually, for this creature it’s legs/fins serve a useful function in getting it from one food source to another.

This site has an example of how natural selection leads to evolution which has happened within the past 200 years. To summarize it, at the start of the Industrial Revolution in Manchester, England, there was a particular species of moth which was usually light colored to blend in with the bark of birch trees. As the Industrial Revolution got started, pollutants (mostly coal dust, I suspect) settled on the trees turning their bark dark-colored. Light-colored moths lighting on dark colored trees tended to get eaten, so by 1898, 95% of these moths were dark colored. Evolution in action. By the way, I understand that now that pollution in Manchester has decreased, light colored moths are again the majority.

Evolution is full of false starts and dead ends. I no more believed it happened in one steady flow than I believe I wrote this post without back-spacing or even deleting a few phrases. Oh, and as for it being “only a theory”, in that sense, so’s gravity.

Respectfully,
CJ

32

cjhoworth-Good post, but I did want to emphasize that even though Gravity is a theory, a lot of people think it’s an infallible law. To which I say: Why was Einstein such a big deal then?

33

I dunno. Darwin was a pretty strong proponent of his theory, as was Wallace (poor Wallace, everyone forgets about him)

And, with all due respect, it seems like people did respond to the arguments you made. Some posters, including myself, pointed out fish like the mudskipper and walking catfish to show the use of protolegs, Opus discussed the relative ease in which extra digits can form, and Meatros posted links pointing out problems with the irreducable complexity theory. Your free to disagree with any of us, of course, but please don’t say you are “merely the recipient of insults”. That isn’t true, and it trivializes those posters who actually are debating with you in a reasonable manner.

34

Well, in all fairness, second place sucks.:smiley:

35

I would wager that you have no idea what Darwin believed, beyond what you’ve read off of some creationist website.

**

See this thread for a brief discussion on fingers. Note that even the five-fingered ancestral condition is a reduction from the even more primitive condition of 7 or 8. New fingers haven’t evolved since; they’ve only ever been lost.

36

Surely you were around when God created the heavens and the earth! Surely you can vouch for the accuracy of historical documents by having lived during all those periods in time, and witnessed the events therein firsthand!

The study of evolution is a historical science, rather like forensics (the criminal science-type, not the debate-type). In order for your implication that “evolution cannot be true because no one was around to see it happen” to be logically consistent (aside from the point that it has been witnessed in action), you would have to reject all accounts that you have not witnessed first-hand. I suspect, however, that you do not.

37

Given the nature of the development of Historiography, in which the very notion of recording history as a factual exercise only became prevalent in the eighteenth century and the notion that Scripture adhered to that factual presentation only arose shortly thereafter, I would need to see some evidence that anyone actually believed that Scripture was a literal record even one thousand years ago, much less at the time it was written.
From the Encyclopædia Britannica, Historiography:

While Herodotus and Thucydides (each writing after the period of the bulk of the Jewish canon was completed) began a new trend of citing earlier works to support their stories, they and their successors continued to write in a manner intended for exhortation and inspiration.

We know that Philo Judaeus of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo (in the Jewish and Christian traditions, respectively) each noted the underlying themes of the Biblical stories, as against a too-literal acceptance of the events of the stories.

Given this background, I would say that it is incumbent on those who claim a literal interpretation of Scripture to demonstrate that it was actually written for the purpose of a literal record.

38

:slight_smile: Yeah, but that’s not really fair to Wallace either. :slight_smile: I think he actually wrote about his theory before Darwin did. And didn’t Wallace and Darwin agree to share credit for the theory?

I think it’s more likely that people forget about him because he came from a lower-class family and was REALLY into spiritualism. :slight_smile:

39

You people are unbelievable.

First off I am not a Creationist. I firmly believe in Evolution and I hate it when I see schools teaching creationism…leave that to your religion to take care of.

I don’t know what universe you live in but in my universe 2+2=4 is a fact. Evolution is a theory. Period. End of story.

As the definition above indicates evolution theory is derived from facts. I have a bone a million years old…fact. I have another similar but slightly different bone that is 500,000 years old…fact. I think the two are related to the same animal that somehow changed somewhat in the intervening 500,000 years…theory. Maybe an alien put it there to mess with biologists heads…who knows (I am NOT saying that is the case…just tossing it out for fun).

Some theories are better than others so saying that a theory of evolution is like a theory of gravity is like saying an apple is like an orange. Both fruits but the similarities don’t go much further. Each theory stands on its own…how good or bad other theories are is irrelevant (unless the theory in question incorporates other theories).

I think evolution is a good theory and one a wholeheartedly buy into as I think it explains a lot. However, it is not 100% complete, it does have some unexplained holes and so it remains a theory. Any biologist will tell you as much.

Still don’t believe me? Here’s some suggested reading then:

THE CURRENT ROLE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL THOUGHT Part I
Explore the theory of evolution.
Evolutionary Theory
Evolutionary Theory
HISTORY OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

Hopefully that’ll do…

40

In this debate, I can offer only my opinion, which is…

Both creationist AND evolutionary theories are correct. Despite the half-assed, as well as the convincing, arguements on both sides of the aisle, I think that one is a by-product of the other. Creation happened, and because of that, evolution began. Who, What, When we were created, this is an unanswerable question, since;

  1. No one witnessed a thing in either case. 2. Since humans are fallible, it can therefore be assumed that their methodology in the attempts to determine which is “right” and which is “wrong” is fallible too. 3. The Bible is the book of man, (see number 2) and therefore subject to much righteous scrutiny.

In summary, I think in this case, both groups are right, and that most of this debate is pointless. ( that belief, however, will in no way stop me from participating)