[QUOTE=tomndebb]
Leave the personal insults in the Pit.
[ /Moderating ]
[/QUOTE]
I thought of it as more a laconically mordant comment than an insult, tomndebb, but okay.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
Do you believe God created the Earth?
If so, God created all the fossils in the rocks. These fossils tell a very clear story about evolution, one that is consistent.
This story is in direct contradiction to what is in Genesis, a book, I might remind yo, written by men, whereas the fossils were placed by God. If you believe in the book, but doubt the direct word of God, you are doubting God, and placing man above God. I suspect God would not be very happy with you about this. Scientists who believe in God, and accept evolution, believe in God’s word more than man’s, and are thus more god-fearing than you are.
I politely suggest you had better start believing in God’s word, not man’s, or you had better start hoping that we atheists are correct, since otherwise you might not end up where you think you will.
Better think about it.
[/QUOTE]
The creation story written in Genesis has two writers according to the view adopted by the majority of religious studies scholars. This is called the Documentary Hypothesis. The first creation story was created by an olderly neat priestly source who took the Torah during the time of Ezra (~600 BCE) and added his own creation story before the original in Genesis 2.
I mentioned in another thread that cave paintings were found on the coast of France in 17,000 BCE. The creation story of Genesis was intended to explain the beginning of time. Unfortunately Genesis isn’t even the earliest composed work in the Bible, this is poetry (The songs of Hannah .. I believe found in Joshua). Nevertheless, scholars believe Genesis’ composition happened around 800 BCE.
I do not think the OP took the creation story literally. It was a creation story designed to associate meaning with life… only when something is created from nothing can it put into “meaning” and this is exactly the theory prescribed by the author of Genesis 1. The creation story also parallels another Mesopotamian myth called the Enuma Elish creation story in which one of the Gods created the world in 7 days.
It is also worth noting that in Genesis 1 man and woman are created at the same time. In Genesis 2 it’s man first, not woman. Woman will eventually be created from Adam’s rib and then doom the entire race into sin through no fault of her own, the talking snake convinced her although God didn’t tell her of the powers of the tree. Adam then ate from the tree, sin entered through him.. and this is why life is associated with him as ‘bad’ and salvation ‘good’ in Christian theology. You can even find forgiveness among children for the sins committed by their ancestors, the Christian God is not so forgiving.
I find it a bit of a mockery that we are pretend we are evil at birth so we are told death is not death… but eternal life in heaven. This would be fine of course if others weren’t thrown into perdition.
[QUOTE=Miller]
A petard was a type of bomb used in medieval warfare to breach walls and gates during a siege. To be “hoist” by one means to be blown into the air by an explosion. No heavy lifting required.
[/QUOTE]
Especially since the explosions were rather small, as indicated by the derivation of the word:
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
The Evangelische and Lutheran groups…
[/QUOTE]
Tom, I got a deal for you: You don’t call me an Evangelische Lutheran and I won’t call you a Romae Catholic. Deal? 
Tom, while you’re at it you should probably lock me out of Great Debates. 
[QUOTE=pragmatic55]
The creation story written in Genesis has two writers according to the view adopted by the majority of religious studies scholars. This is called the Documentary Hypothesis. The first creation story was created by an olderly neat priestly source who took the Torah during the time of Ezra (~600 BCE) and added his own creation story before the original in Genesis 2.
[/QUOTE]
I’m quite familiar with this, in fact researching it nearly 40 years ago turned me into an atheist. However, I doubt our Creationist friend is, or if he is, I’m sure he doesn’t believe it.
But my point was that Creationism has internal contradictions. To accept it, one must reject the evidence of the rocks, which the Creationist must think was put there by God. My argument follows. It’s kind of pointless to use evidence arguing against people like this - as we’ve seen, they’re quite well innoculated from admitting there is evidence. It is sometimes useful to try a different tack, like a mathematical proof by contradiction.
[QUOTE=Colibri]
Especially since the explosions were rather small, as indicated by the derivation of the word:
[/QUOTE]
[French Soldier]
I fart in your general direction!
[/FS]
Surprising to know (well, actually not 
) that it came from the French and it was more damaging than I thought!
Regarding the age of the layers of rock, if the readings are wrong, we could expect new techniques to show wildly different ages than the ones found so far, that is not the case:
[QUOTE=dropzone]
Tom, I got a deal for you: You don’t call me an Evangelische Lutheran and I won’t call you a Romae Catholic. Deal?
[/QUOTE]
Over time, I have encounterd a number of people (both in the U.S. and in the Germanic and Scandinavian countries) who have asserted that while the North American and European groups definitely derive from Luther’s exposition of theology, that they are not really the “same” groups. I am open to correction on that point, in that I have no idea how much authority any of my correspondents had to make the (quite similar) claims they did. You will note that I did not use Evangelische as an adjective modifying Lutheran, but as a parallel group (even joined by the conjunction “and”).
If it makes more sense to simply say “Lutheran,” I am more than willing to put aside typing up an extra (rather long) word and italicizing it.
[QUOTE=srmclauren]
The romance languages have all been influenced by the language spoken in the Roman Empire. […] . Ergo, some of it got incorporated into the indigenous speech of the regions as the local tribes adapted to the change. .
[/QUOTE]
Actually, no. It’s the other way around. Romance languages are the direct descendants of Latin, and they might have been slightly influenced by the indigenous speech spoken previously. There are extremely few words of (Gallic? Gaulish?) origin in french, for instance.
[QUOTE=Raygun99]
For an overwhelming majority of scientists, the god of the religion they were brought up in.
[/QUOTE]
Martin Gardner, OTOH (not a scientist as such, but a prominent debunker of creationism among many other things), is a “philosophical theist” who believes in a personal God (one capable of answering prayers and providing a personal afterlife), while rejecting all traditional religious revelations, as explained in his book The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener.
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
What you’re saying sounds like Lamarckism, where, for example, mice with their tails cut off should give birth to tail-less mice. It’s been pretty roundly debunked because, well, for one reason, the mice have tails, even if their parents’ tails were cut off.
But maybe you meant something else, in which case, do go on.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, there have been recent experiments that suggest that something called “soft inheritance,” environmental factors affecting inherited traits, is found in mouse populations. It’s extremely controversial, but it’s not an entirely dead issue.
Here’s a link I found about it: http://news-info.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/7408.html
[QUOTE=Voyager]
Do you believe God created the Earth?
If so, God created all the fossils in the rocks. These fossils tell a very clear story about evolution, one that is consistent.
This story is in direct contradiction to what is in Genesis, a book, I might remind yo, written by men, whereas the fossils were placed by God. If you believe in the book, but doubt the direct word of God, you are doubting God, and placing man above God. I suspect God would not be very happy with you about this. Scientists who believe in God, and accept evolution, believe in God’s word more than man’s, and are thus more god-fearing than you are.
I politely suggest you had better start believing in God’s word, not man’s, or you had better start hoping that we atheists are correct, since otherwise you might not end up where you think you will.
Better think about it.
[/QUOTE]
The problem with this from a theological standpoint is that a believer in a God of the book must believe that God wrote both books. (Nice invocation of the medieval Book of Nature, by the way.) If the two books disagree with each other, or appear to, that’s a theological problem. But I think your point should be well taken – anti-evolutionist creationism is lazy theology. It’s simply the demand that the two books match, and a facile explaining-away of any discrepancy between them.
It’s also lazy hermeneutics, but “hermeneutics” is a very big word, no?
[QUOTE=srmclauren]
Some things are not subject to the type of evolutionary change languages have undergone. We are again talking about different kinds of evolution. The gradual changes in a language could be compared to micro-evolution or interbreeding between similar species, but not to a change from an ape to a human.
It’s that last small difference, where the genetic similarity ends, that sets us apart as a totally different species, with only other humans as ancestors. You can say that you don’t believe it but it doesn’t change the fact. Proponents of the idea that we have common ancestors will take many scientific facts and make many more illogical inferences.
[/QUOTE]
Hi there. I have a question for you. You seem to accept that what you call “micro-evolution” occurs. I’m assuming you mean that evolutionary change can occur within species, such as, beak shapes and sizes in finches. So what about, say, a common housecat sharing common ancestry with wild cats or even lions and tigers? And maybe, say, a domesticated dog sharing common ancestry with wolves?
So here’s my real question: where do you draw the line? If you can accept that a bulldog can share the same ancestry as a wolf, despite their obvious morphological differences, can you accept that perhaps a wolf shares the same ancestry as a bear, or that a bear shares ancestry with a sea lion?
If not, why not? Why can’t enough “micro-evolutionary” events to occur so that the accumulated changes produce “macro-evolution”? Can you tell us what barrier or limitations exist so that the mechanisms that can “change” a wolf into a bulldog can’t allow for bears and sea lions a common ancestry?
Let me also ask you another question: how do you define a “species”? What is the big difference to you between a chimpanzee and a human or between a panda and a polar bear? If you are a biblical Creationist, you are no doubt familiar with the concept of a “created kind.” Perhaps you feel that a created kind is different than the concept of a species, and that micro-evolution can occur within created kinds, but one kind can never evolve differences so great that they appear to be a separate kind. Can you give us a way for us to define what exactly a created kind is and what actual, biological differences exist between the different kinds?
I don’t believe srmclauren ever answered this question in the other thread, so I’ll reask it here: In your view, is a belief in Creationism a necessary component of salvation?
[QUOTE=baronsabato]
Let me also ask you another question: how do you define a “species”? What is the big difference to you between a chimpanzee and a human or between a panda and a polar bear? If you are a biblical Creationist, you are no doubt familiar with the concept of a “created kind.” Perhaps you feel that a created kind is different than the concept of a species, and that micro-evolution can occur within created kinds, but one kind can never evolve differences so great that they appear to be a separate kind. Can you give us a way for us to define what exactly a created kind is and what actual, biological differences exist between the different kinds?
[/QUOTE]
I can’t speak for srmclauren, but from what i’ve seen most creationists actually don’t care all that much about fish turning into pigs or any kind of “animal” evolution. What they do care about is human lineage, mainly because if we’re evolved from animals, then we have in ourselves some primitive urges and other mental/physiological trappings from our ancestors; not only does this seem “wrong” to them, it also creates problems in other areas of belief (for example, sexual urges are a benefit from evolution, and not sent by the Devil to tempt. Altruism is also an evolutionary benefit, and not an example of how humans are different than other animals). The other problem of course is that we’re supposed to be made in God’s image; does that make Him a prehistoric primate?
I would guess that the Creationists are more concerned about debunking human evolution because the idea that we evolved from lower animals just like all the other animals did makes us “not special”. In other words, I think it’s an ego thing rather than necessarily a religious thing, though it takes form as a religious thing.
[QUOTE=baronsabato]
Hi there. I have a question for you. You seem to accept that what you call “micro-evolution” occurs. I’m assuming you mean that evolutionary change can occur within species, such as, beak shapes and sizes in finches. So what about, say, a common housecat sharing common ancestry with wild cats or even lions and tigers? And maybe, say, a domesticated dog sharing common ancestry with wolves?
[/QUOTE]
Not to mention that fact that the concept of “species” is a human construct, not inherently meaningful to nature itself. We put chimps and bonobos in differen species boxes because there is a phsyical barrier to their natural ranges preventing them from interbreeding in the wild. But they’re perfectly capable of interbreeding if they’re given the chance. We call “birds” and “reptiles” different kinds, but the more we look into that, the less it holds up. So, there is no such thing as “kind” except when we define there to be such a thing ourselves.
[QUOTE=baronsabato]
So here’s my real question: where do you draw the line? If you can accept that a bulldog can share the same ancestry as a wolf, despite their obvious morphological differences, can you accept that perhaps a wolf shares the same ancestry as a bear, or that a bear shares ancestry with a sea lion?
If not, why not? Why can’t enough “micro-evolutionary” events to occur so that the accumulated changes produce “macro-evolution”? Can you tell us what barrier or limitations exist so that the mechanisms that can “change” a wolf into a bulldog can’t allow for bears and sea lions a common ancestry?
Let me also ask you another question: how do you define a “species”? What is the big difference to you between a chimpanzee and a human or between a panda and a polar bear? If you are a biblical Creationist, you are no doubt familiar with the concept of a “created kind.” Perhaps you feel that a created kind is different than the concept of a species, and that micro-evolution can occur within created kinds, but one kind can never evolve differences so great that they appear to be a separate kind. Can you give us a way for us to define what exactly a created kind is and what actual, biological differences exist between the different kinds?
[/QUOTE]
I’ve asked him (or her) this same question twice in two different threads. I’d be amazed if (s)he actually tried to answer it with anything other than a completely inane non-sequitur.
Good luck.
[QUOTE=Pazu]
I’ve asked him (or her) this same question twice in two different threads. I’d be amazed if (s)he actually tried to answer it with anything other than a completely inane non-sequitur.
Good luck.
[/QUOTE]
If he does, let me know. Completely inane non sequiturs are MY department.
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer]
If he does, let me know. Completely inane non sequiturs are MY department.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, and his aren’t nearly as good as yours.
[QUOTE=Pazu]
Yeah, and his aren’t nearly as good as yours.
[/QUOTE]
Now you’re deliberately pressuring me to come up with one, you son of an ape. I can’t work under these conditions, Erudammit!