DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Question for the Religious....

You are free to feel however you want but
since you believe in Jesus I would advise
you not Diss His Dad!

Agnostics believe in a God

Yea your right, just looked it up under wishy-Wahsy.

The problem with those who don't want to read the Bible, and I speak from experience as one who managed to avoid it for decades on end, is that we run the risk of falling into idolatry. The Bible tells us who God is, and who Jesus is, and what God expects from us. It is an instruction book for living a Christian life. If we don't read the Bible, and base our Christianity on what the Bible says, we run the risk of just assuming what God "meant", (instead of what He said) and we create our own god .... one who, not surprisingly, allows us to do all of the things we, in sin, want to do.

I know. I have been there. I had tons of conversations with people who felt exactly the same way. I got along with everyone, because no matter what they wanted to do, we could find a way to portray a god who would say that whatever we wanted to do was perfectly ok.

However, God gives us His instructions in the Bible. It is not easy to get through, and some parts can be extremely confusing. However, I feel that it is important that I study God's Holy Word, because I don't want to be creating my own god, I want to follow, and obey, the one TRUE God, the God I love and do my very best to honor.

I am almost through Psalms, and it is amazing how many things I have found that apply to the life of Jesus in the Old Testament. I heard this on TV one day, and I really don't now how to calculate it, but there was a mathematician who said that the odds of Jesus fulfilling all of the prophesies he did would be something like 1 in 10 to the 27th power. That tells me that the Bible is not to be discounted, or trifled with.

God became man, so that He could easily teach us, and could be the perfect sacrifice for us. That is how far He went to come to us. I think that He will help us understand His Word, if we approach it with an attitude that desires to learn, and that asks God for His help in understanding it.

i think thats inaccurate, that we fall into idolatry. people who say this typically can't point to any hard proof in regards to the masses about that. sorry.

and then here's another thing, you keep saying the bible, yet there's hundreds of other religions out there. you got some saying "nah, i'm the right religion", and some going "who cares what religion, it leads to god".

i mean, i'm not going to listen to ANYBODY talking about "y'all need to worship God, but not this religion, pick mine instead", which is exactly what you and Razor advocates.

Can't do it.

Hard proof? Idolatry is worshiping something more than God, seeking something more than you seek God... and that defines a whole lot of people, outside and inside the church... sex, drugs, money, fame, power... idolatry doesn't mean you worship flying squirrels, it means anybody who does not put God first in their life... so I don't think you need much hard scientific proof to show that a significant number of people are idolaters...


Here is the big difference... Jesus. Christians believe that seeking God means having a relationship with Jesus... other religions don't. God is not the problem in most religious debates, Jesus is. Can you get to God without going through Jesus? Not according to the Christian Bible... so I say, seek God... seek him hard, pray to him often... if the way to Him is through Jesus, then He will probably lead you in that direction....

idolatry:

worship of idols.

extreme admiration, love, or reverence for something or someone.

please don't put your own spin on the definition. it won't work. thats the book definition. that's what i go off of.

Has nothing to do with something more than God.

cut that nonsense out.

An Idol is something worshiped in place of God. It is a man made creation.

If we say we worship the God who is in the Bible, yet we change His character, and what he says, allows, and does, in order to suit our own desires, then we have created our own "new" god, and that is idolatry.

Now I have to lay down for a while.

even with your twisted definition, i don't worship anything. not God, not anything man made. that goes for countless others.

The book definition is not your definition.

Swish what religion is it you claim I advocate? I don't recall me me claiming any of them other than Christianity in general.

I little to no use for religion. Most churches are run so poorly I don't even view them as a house of God. Even when I do find a decent church they end up having some weird custom that has nothing to do with the Bible. I strictly follow what the bible tells me. If it's not in the bible then I don't subscribe to it. Period.

If I had to choose a denomination, like really forced to, it would probably be Southern Baptist since that is where I went to seminary or Pentecostal because I like their passionate preaching. I am also fond of many Black churches for their fine singing. I enjoy the peace of Southern Baptist churches though too.

I have been to Catholic churches since my father is Catholic but I am not catholic. When I want to talk with God I just pray to him. I don't need a third party. I don't agree with their idea of penance and working off sin or buying it away. I just ask Jesus and I know he forgives me. I also don't agree with unmarried priests. A man with no family has no business telling people who do how to run theirs IMHO.

Muslim is a false religion established by a murdering, raping pirate, so no, I don't subscribe to it.

All Christians are also Jews so I got no problem with them choosing to burn in hell instead of accepting Jesus. I don't believe you can force a person to accept Jesus. Doesn't mean I wont try though =)

i get what you're saying. However, as a follower of jesus, that makes your Christian.

Jews don't believe in Jesus, doesn't that mean they are going to hell, in your POV?

Anyone who does not accept Jesus will be thrown into the Lake of Fire according to the Bible and according to Jesus. Some jews accept Jesus some don't. THe ones who don't will not make it into heaven according to Jesus.

My problem with "scientific" dating methods is how do you test them? How do you account for changing environmental conditions? How do you account for catastrophic events? How do you create that pressure/heat that exists deep within the Earth? If people can skew the results of these tests intentionally, how can you ensure their accuracy? People can make "man-made" diamonds which supposedly take an extensive amount of time/pressure to form.

Because this happened over the course of my 1 year experiment with a limited within my laboratory scope this is what would happen over a million on a universal scale just doesn't make sense to me. I'm not a hardcore Christian, but ~6,000 years is just about as good a guess as millions/billions to me.

I feel the same about evolution. The evidence is pretty scant. People could have evolved or people could have been placed fully formed by an intelligent designer. Both views are based upon a lot of supposition. Adaptation clearly takes place, but it is generally due to the loss of genetic information. I've seen no solid evidence of changes in kind.

I'm really not sold on either side of the argument, but it is an interesting topic.

My only problem with what you said- Denominations


Just because you're "Christian" doesn't mean you believe in the same interpretations. Catholics, Pentecostals, Methodists, Protestants, Baptists, etc. definitely don't share the same interpretations of scripture.

I attend a Pentecostal Church. There's things I disagree with, but we're very similar to Southern Baptist.

In the case of C14 dating, it uses isotope decay. And the simple answer is isotope decay doesn't change. For man to even change it would require the application of quantum theory we don't even understand yet.



If we took the application of something based on just 1 person over a short time period, then yes that would be something to question. And scientists do. We may consider C14 dating for example to be a consistent way to age dead organisms now, but it took two decades to refine the process. And even then, C14 dating has limitations beyond organisms over 20,000 years old or organisms that didn't exist on land (C14 uses cosmic radiation and this level changes in water)



Evolution can be hard to imagine because of the long time periods involved, but there are definite scenarios on the planet right now that support it. Take brown bears. When the brown bears ended up hunting in arctic conditions (due to ice age), most likely died due to the harsh conditions. Their brown fur became a disadvantage. Bears that were born with white fur gained an advantage, so they lived longer and healthier. They gained webbed feet to swim in the waters. Their diet adjusted to become that of seal fat to better utilize their new food source. Their claws became scooped so they could dig ice. They have much more fat/blubber than brown bears. All of these started as genetic mutations that stuck with the community of bears that would become Polar Bears. They stuck because they made the subsequent generations better able to survive.

From a genetic standpoint Alaska Brown Bears have more in common with Polar bears than even other Brown Bears. Is it possible that these creatures were all formed fully formed and have not changed in their entire existence? Perhaps. But there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

That is true. However, often the differences are minimal. To me, a Christian church, of any denomination, should teach the 10 Commandments, how and why man breaks God's laws, the penalty for violating God's laws, God's plan for the salvation of man, the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and man's need to accept Christ as Lord and Savior. (and that accepting Christ as Lord means obeying what He said, and following Him to the best of our abilities) The rest, while important, is not as important as establishing the need for salvation, and the path to salvation outlined in the Bible.

I do think that the rest of the Bible tells the whole story of why we need salvation, and what God went through to bring salvation to us, but as long as the basics are there, the interpretations of the more minor parts can be debated in god conscience.

It's too late for me to break this down/sort out the tags, so I'll just try to address things in order.

As far as isotope decay, decades are really short in the time span that evolutionists advocate. If a million years were a day, we're talking what seconds? Also, who said anything about man effecting the results? How would a "Big Bang" effect isotopes? How would you account for changes in the atmosphere i.e, meteor bombardment, greenhouse emissions, etc.? I'll admit I'm not the most knowledgeable about these dating methods, but how would the results differ from an item a million years ago with X amount of whatever isotope, with an item that started 6,000 years ago but with a proportionally less amount of whatever isotope? How do you know what the hypothetical item a million years ago started with?

As far as water effecting C14 dating numbers, many major religions have a global flood story. How would you take such an event into account in an experiment?

My imagination is good and I can make-believe evolution, but that doesn't make it a fact. As far as bears in evolution, I'm not saying adaptation and "micro-evolution" don't take place. I've just not seen evidence of macro-evolution. Brown bear, polar bear, crazy Alaskan bear: they are still bears. The webbed feet change is interesting, but was genetic information gained or did the gene that controls cellular growth in that area just lose information. Or was the webbed feet "switch" already in the generic bear DNA, but just needed an external stimulus to trigger its activation. Changes in kind could have happened, but the evidence is lacking. Evolution is a theory and it does have many merits, but it gets thrown around as fact way too often.

Which iteration of the Bible are you talking? There's the New International Version, King James, there's the "original" Hebrew/Greek, etc. How do you know the one you're using is the right one? Since the Bible has obviously changed between versions, how do you rule out its corruption in a fallen world?

As far as the mathematical odds of prophesy fulfillment, it's easy to do if you write the prophesy after the "fulfillment". Or you could purposefully stage the fulfillment to meet the prophesies. Statistics are often misleading, and one can be come up with to support just about anything if you try hard enough.

If you believe, good for you. I've tried for years. I just can't rationalize the fire and brimstone, wipe out the world's population except for one family God of the Old Testament with the loving, forgiving God of the New Testament. I just can't make that compute. Some higher being, sure, I can see that. A never-changing God that can kill everyone one moment, then offer forgiveness to everyone later doesn't add up in my mind. It "smells" like a conspiracy by those in power at its "founding" to control a population.

I use the NIV version of the Bible.

Here is some information about this translation:

New International Version (NIV) - Version Information - BibleGateway.com
https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/New-International-Version-NIV-Bible/

Version Information
The New International Version (NIV) is a completely original translation of the Bible developed by more than one hundred scholars working from the best available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts.

The initial vision for the project was provided by a single individual – an engineer working with General Electric in Seattle by the name of Howard Long. Long was a lifelong devotee of the King James Version, but when he shared it with his friends he was distressed to find that it just didn’t connect. Long saw the need for a translation that captured the truths he loved in the language that his contemporaries spoke.

For 10 years, Long and a growing group of like-minded supporters drove this idea. The passion of one man became the passion of a church, and ultimately the passion of a whole group of denominations. And finally, in 1965, after several years of preparatory study, a trans-denominational and international group of scholars met in Palos Heights, Illinois, and agreed to begin work on the project – determining to not simply adapt an existing English version of the Bible but to start from scratch with the best available manuscripts in the original languages. Their conclusion was endorsed by a large number of church leaders who met in Chicago in 1966.

A self-governing body of fifteen biblical scholars, the Committee on Bible Translation (CBT) was formed and charged with responsibility for the version, and in 1968 the New York Bible Society (which subsequently became the International Bible Society and then Biblica) generously undertook the financial sponsorship of the project. The translation of each book was assigned to translation teams, each made up of two lead translators, two translation consultants, and a stylistic consultant where necessary. The initial translations produced by these teams were carefully scrutinized and revised by intermediate editorial committees of five biblical scholars to check them against the source texts and assess them for comprehensibility. Each edited text was then submitted to a general committee of eight to twelve members before being distributed to selected outside critics and to all members of the CBT in preparation for a final review. Samples of the translation were tested for clarity and ease of reading with pastors, students, scholars, and lay people across the full breadth of the intended audience. Perhaps no other translation has undergone a more thorough process of review and revision. From the very start, the NIV sought to bring modern Bible readers as close as possible to the experience of the very first Bible readers: providing the best possible blend of transparency to the original documents and comprehension of the original meaning in every verse. With this clarity of focus, however, came the realization that the work of translating the NIV would never be truly complete. As new discoveries were made about the biblical world and its languages, and as the norms of English usage developed and changed over time, the NIV would also need to change to hold true to its original vision.

And so in the original NIV charter, provision was made not just to issue periodic updates to the text but also to create a mechanism for constant monitoring of changes in biblical scholarship and English usage. The CBT was charged to meet every year to review, maintain, and strengthen the NIV’s ability to accurately and faithfully render God’s unchanging Word in modern English.

The 2011 update to the NIV is the latest fruit of this process. By working with input from pastors and Bible scholars, by grappling with the latest discoveries about biblical languages and the biblical world, and by using cutting-edge research on English usage, the Committee on Bible Translation has updated the text to ensure that the New International Version of the Bible remains faithful to Howard Long’s original inspiration.

As far as this part:



You are missing the fact that God is also a just God, who hates sin. Mankind, according to the Bible, and at the time before the flood, had descended into absolute immorality and the worst kinds of sin. They had completely turned their backs on God, and had given themselves over to evil completely. Just like in Sodom and Gomorrah, there was only one man found to be just and good, and God allowed this man to live, and also saved his family. (However, S&G was a much smaller scale)

God had to make sure that the world was ready for salvation. I am not really sure how to word this ..... but how would the world appreciate salvation, without knowing why they were being saved, and from what? God has said that the wages of sin are death, but who would believe this if there were no examples of this cost? One man dying in his sleep can be ignored. The entire world being destroyed, except for a few dozen people .... that is much harder to ignore. God hates sin. His wrath showed just how much He hates sin. No one could "earn" their way our of sin, and that's why God offers us salvation through Jesus Christ.

It's not a conspiracy .... it is God teaching people that they need salvation, and then offering His gift to the world, in the form of Jesus Christ's life, death, and resurrection.

I only used the C14 example as one example of how we date things. We use other decay rates, not C14 dating in the case of dinosaur fossils. This applies to the age of rocks as well as the age of the Earth.

Claiming that evolution is just a theory is a bit simplistic. Scientific theories are more than just "I have an idea." Either way, the core of evolution is gene frequency and this is indisputable fact. Most people believe in the law of natural selection as well due to it's occurrence in nature that is readily observed. The law of common descent is supported by reading the genes of the various species. And gradualism, while hard to detect, has been detected in cases such as the Faroe Islands house mouse.

Gene research is the reason that common ancestry seems more likely than the animals/humanity showing up separately.

Different isotopes don't effect my argument which you didn't respond to.

Claiming evolution is a theory is just common good sense. Being simplistic doesn't make something less accurate. Macro-evolution has never been proven through the scientific process. Natural selection and evolution are two entirely different issues. Common descent is ludicrous. All matter is made of the same basic building blocks. Of course there is some overlap. With the common descent logic, I could claim an SUV is the descendant of a pickup truck (a little over the top, I know). Give me one example of a change in kind.

The more we map the human genome, researchers are discovering there is more genetic difference between humans and apes than previously thought and put out as fact by evolutionists. Common ancestry seems more likely to people who have a vested interest in evolution. Your (generically speaking) take on evolution pro or con is affected by your paradigm. I'm not afraid to say I don't know something, and I'm not going to go around claiming something is fact when the logic is faulty. It could be true, but it hasn't been proven. Therefore, I'll continue to call it a theory.

My apologies, I made an assumption that would you do some research on the subject, rather than rely on me to do so. Either way, isotope decay rates do not change in a meaningful way, and this has been observed both on earth and in cosmic activity.

Perhaps the most disconcerting information for young earth creationism is that if radioactive decay rates were at the level required to support a young earth, the earth would have melted.



It sounds less like you want to learn about evolution and more like you made up your mind and are fitting your arguments to counter it. Natural Selection is one of the laws of evolution. They are not entirely different as you claim. For evolution to function natural selection must exist. Why exactly is common descent ludicrous? Building a straw man can be cute but doesn't answer why you think it's ludicrous. We use the knowledge of chromosome fusion, RNA sequences, embryos, etc. to support the common descent. If we disregard common descent as "everything is matter" then the only way that works is if you believe gold or silver to be living things.

You are a christian, so you believe in God without him revealing himself to you, yet you demand that macroevolution be shown to your very eyes otherwise it clearly must not be true. To believe in God requires faith, to believe in evolution is to take the sum product of all available evidence we have discovered on this planet to answer the question "how did we get here?"



So scientists both show a willingness to publish papers that challenge prior findings, yet want to hide unsavory information that may go against vested interests. Which is it?

I would say that when you tell me I need faith and to trust in an unproven science that science has failed. Faith is for God not science.

When theories are taught as theories instead of as laws or facts I have no problems with it. I enjoy good scientific practices.

There are many parts to the Theory of Evolution that are worthwhile but the simple facts are that it has not yet been proven to be completely true. Otherwise we would be talking about the Law of Evolution. It's possible that it may at one point in time be proven to be fact and I have no problem with that. Till then it's a fact that it is an unproven Theory.

Either way it's just semantics.

If you write that sterile and inanimate objects magically come to life after getting struck by lightning, which oddly enough doesn't seem to have happened since or even happen currently ...

or

My Bible says that God, while trying to explain the creation of life to a goatfarmer like Moses, said that he made man from the Earth itself and breathed life into him ...

I really don't see that much difference to be honest. Neither version can be proven scientifically and both require faith to accept them. As I said earlier I'll leave issues of faith up to God. When it comes to science I won't believe it until you can prove it.

Fair enough?

I can rock with that.

BTW I love a God who can create these =)



and




I do believe God loves his creations and loves showing us little signs here and there to know it can't all be an accident =)

A rose anyone?

Absolutely amazing.

None of us can ever really comprehend 1/one millionth of what is in either of those places, yet God knows each and every atom in each one, its place and purpose.

Just incredible.

I always thought this one was rather cool.

Who said anything about faith? There is far more evidence that evolution occurs than the 8.7 million species being created individually and spontaneously. I'm just pointing out the contradiction that one would say "I believe in something I cannot see" yet claim that because something happens in a long period of time that they can't believe that. Geologic formations occur over very long periods of time. But because we don't see it happen with our eyes, it does not??



You are confusing scientific theory with linguistic theory. You are thinking of a hypothesis. A scientific theory is an explanation for why something occurs within a system. Evolution would never be law because the system of evolution is too broad. Instead the system components of evolution are formed into laws. To reduce scientific theory as "just an idea" would mean that the entire scientific community, for a period of over 150 years, just accepted Darwin's book and ran with it. History shows us this is not the case. The worldwide scientific community was very skeptical of Darwins findings at first.



And semantics are linguistic, not scientific.



Show me where evolution explains how life came from nothing. Evolution does not attempt to explain how life began. It explains how life progressed once it got here.

How do you know how much of an isotope an item started with? If it's a constant decay, how do you know the beginning wasn't further along that path than projected? How would a big bang effect radiation or are you proposing some other "genesis"?

Evolution requires natural selection to exist, but natural selection does not require macro-evolution. You still haven't given me an example of change in kind. Where is there any evidence of a change in kind which would be required for common descent? How do you explain the formation of complex organs that don't have a viable intermediate stage (i.e, the anatomy of woodpeckers' heads [tongue wrapped around the back of the skull], bombardier beetles innards, etc.)? When has there ever been an observed natural increase in genetic information within a species (as opposed to a corruption, degradation, or loss [which admittedly can be benificial in a given environment])?

"You are a christian." Really?? I've clearly stated that I'm not. Go figure, an evolutionist making another assumption. I'm someone looking for answers that make sense. There is not enough evidence and there are too many gaps for me to buy into the (yes I'm simplifying it) single cell organism -> fish -> amphibian -> reptile -> bird -> mammal -> ape -> human progression as a stone cold fact.

As far as publishing/hiding information, it's both. Academia has it's divisions like every other collection of humans. And I suppose you are going to tell me a scientist has never "fudged" his/her results or planned an experiment with an end result in mind. The real world is not a carefully controlled lab, and crazy stuff that no one ever expected happens. Scientists thought the earth was flat and that everything revolved around it, but we've learned that it isn't so. A lack of evidence doesn't disprove something, and neither does contrived evidence prove something. We may fill in the gaps some day and prove macro-evolution, but if you think we are there now you are lying to yourself.

Christianity doesn't claim that God created 8.7 million species individually. It claims that God created 2 of each kind with the embedded genetic variability to become those 8.7 million species over 6,000 years.

As far as geologic formations, we've also seen that they can change quickly in the event of volcanoes and flash floods. What would happen if there had been a global flood? Have you ever done the experiment where you take a bunch of dirt, put it in a jar of water, shake it up, and watch it settle into the different layers? It takes like minutes.

As I've stated previously, 150 years is a miniscule amount of time in the grand scheme of things. How long did people believe the Earth was flat, etc? It has been shown that length of a belief has no correlation to its accuracy.

...so how did life begin?

I am curious ...... just what evidence is there for evolution taking one kind of creature, and changing it into a completely different class and species of creature? What evidence is there for a fish, for example, becoming a dog, or any other land creature? A fish has fins and gills. Where is the intermediate evolutionary step that shows a fish becoming an amphibian, adding feet, legs, lungs, as well as skin and eyes (and everything else) that would be able to work outside of a water environment? Where is the intermediate step for any kind of creature "gaining" the lightweight skeletal structure required by a bird in order for it to fly?

I watches a thing on TV about "life after man", and I was fascinated by some of the suppositions. They saw a massive building in NY becoming this massive cat palace, and the cats evolving into creatures with paws, claws, and also a wing like structure. How do you get there? If there is such a kind of evolution, then there has to be an example somewhere, and that genetic trait has to be so strong that it not only passes on to progeny, but it also has to wipe out the rest of the previous kind. In fact, if such a thing is possible, then we are doing our progeny a real disservice by not throwing people off of buildings so they can adapt to be able to fly. (or glide) How can we assume that nature does what the creature wants?

There is one major problem I have with evolution, this being that the intermediate steps are assumed, rather than proved. There may be one animal assumed to be such a step, but as many of those that have been surmised to be intermediate evolutionary steps, darn near as many have been disproved.

Further, from what I understand, damage to DNA is extraordinarily difficult to not only survive throughout the whole birth process, but into life. (and mutations that would somehow create such massive changes, even over time, would be the result of major changes/damage to DNA) From what I have read, DNA has a great ability to repair itself. Are there occasional cases where an offspring with damaged DNA is born? Sure. What are the most common outcomes of such genetic damage? Isn't it disease? I admit that I am not a geneticist, and I am not even a biologist, but based on what I have read, it is extraordinarily difficult to damage DNA to start with, and it is extraordinarily difficult for such damage to replicate itself.

Is this an incorrect conclusion? If so, why?

I do find it odd that you say that evolution only allows for the process of changes, not the creation of life, when Darwin's purpose in the theory was to find a way to remove a God he no longer believed in from the equation of creation. Darwin saw suffering in the world as proof that God does not exist, and tried to arrive at a theory that could explain everything great and small on this earth, without God. As such, he had to have taken into account the creation of whatever we evolved from.

How did Darwin handle this problem?

"Probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some primordial form, into which life was first breathed"

I suppose he left off the "somehow" from the end of that statement on purpose. He didn't believe in God anymore, yet he used the same language the Bible used in telling how man was created. Even in his theory, life has to begin ....... somehow. I love the theory of hos chemicals together in some chemical soup not only created the 1st life, but also allowed, somehow, for that life to not only come into being, but also to thrive, multiply, and succeed. I have heard of scientists trying (desperately?) to try to create life in such a way, and also that mathematicians allow such a small chance that such a thing could happen that it is really placed into the completely not possible category.

The problem is that we know that the universe had a beginning. Somewhere, no matter what the theory, life has to have begun somewhere. Even if we assume that some alien race planted life on this planet, then they would have had to have developed from something, somewhere.

So, in evolution, we have a theory that has no possible explanation for the beginning of life, and little to no evidence of the intermediary steps necessary to prove the processes assumed by the theory. So, how does the theory manage to survive to this day? It seems as though there are major, universe sized holes in it.

The same could be said of the stories contained in the Bible, Talmud, Koran, etc. You don't accept the theories of evolution due to scant evidence, yet you appear to accept the parables of the Bible, which is on far, far, far shakier ground than evolution when it comes to logic and evidence. You seem intent on painting evolution as a grasping at straws, and yet you quote from a book of obvious fiction as if it were undoubted fact. How do you reconcile such disparate approaches? Or do you not take a literal approach to the Bible? A lot of what I've said here are assumptions based on this thread, so forgive me if I'm painting you in a shade not your color.

While I'm not a believer in the Bible myself, to call it obvious fiction seems unfair. Potentially fiction sure, but if it had been scientifically disproved don't you think everyone would have heard about it. Much of the Bible does coincide with documented historical events. This could be explained by its being written/updated post-events, but whether this is the case is unclear. The parables are written as fictional stories, but you can have a non-fiction book that includes someone telling a fictional story.

As far as quality of the evidence, both seem to be lacking. Scientists rely on theory while Christians rely on faith. Both amount to things unseen. I'm skeptical of most things. However, personal experience shades everyone's paradigm. If I were really bored I could go into philosophical debate about the nature of reality, but who wants to go there? *shrug*

It's actually real easy. Uranium 238 for example stabilizes to lead 206. I can take an item, and given the ratio of U238 to Lead, tell you roughly the age of the item. And you are correct in that some factors can change that maybe we learn later that says oh ya know what, decay rates were 2% faster or slow in the million years following the big bang. But they will either be small enough to not care about, or, surprise, scientists will adjust the experiments! Just because we are going by our known knowledge does not mean that if a variable changes it falls apart like a jenga block.



Evidence for humans evolving from a common ancestor with chimps (note: NOT CHIMPS THEMSELVES), is found in chromosomal fusion. All hominidae have 24 chromosome pairs except humans, which have 23. If you study chromosome 2 in humans you will find that it fused two chromosomes from a common ancestor, and that this fusion parts match the two chromosomes you'd find in chimpanzees. We can even see common descent at a larger level by comparative anatomy. Chimps and Humans have a similar bone structure.

I'm not sure where you are going with woodpecker tongues. All birds have the same configuration, woodpeckers are just more exaggerated. Chickens have the same hyroid features that woodpeckers have. Insofar as Bombardier Beetles, what exactly could not be made intermediate about them? All I found is a Dr. Gish who claimed the beetles would explode without an inhibitor, but that is not true. The chemicals emitted by the beetle do not spontaneously explode, instead the beetle uses a catalyst.

As for mutations not adding information, this is simply not true. Mutations by their very nature add or subtract information. This occurs even within the DNA copy phase.





You didn't clearly state anything. Saying you're not hardcore in something could mean you are completely opposed to it, but why not say so? Why not say you are atheist, or Buddhist? Typically when someone says "Im not hardcore X" they mean they are casual X. Apologies for making an assumption, but when you are using creationist rebuttals to evolution and then say you aren't a hardcore christian, what is the most likely thought that would enter ones mind?

To discuss your macroevolution stance, if we saw a fish mutate into a lizard in a few generations, that would be great evidence AGAINST evolution. We have observed microevolution and because there is known barrier to large change, microevolution supports macroevolution. Also we dont need to directly observe something to generate evidence in support therein. If we reduce science to this, then we have proved literally nothing in the existence of anything, because NOTHING can be proved with absolute certainty. All we can do is come up with a high degree of certainty. In the case of evolution, there is extensive evidence:

- All life shows common replication/heredity/metabolism
- We see life arranged within a common descent structure without any exception
- Fossils fit in this same tree. We have transitional fossils as well to support speciation
- Fossils appear in order (no dinosaurs in soil <100 years old for example)
- Many organisms have useless charateristics. We have an appendix, some animals have useless wings, etc.
- We will see a characteristic of an ancestor in a deep child species, supporting common descent, even if intermediate species did not show this characteristic.
- species distribution is in line with the generation of those species. Take for example australia and madagascar species that only occur there due to being locked away by water.
- Speciation has been observed

There are several other attributes that support evolution in life but you get the picture.



Yea, I was taught by creationist science that the sun revolved around the Earth because the Bible said so. I'm actually quite familiar with creationist science because I spent over 10 years growing up in a private fundamentalist Baptist school. At no point am I claiming that scientists are perfect. And scientists definitely do have agendas. Human nature is to come up with an idea for something and then see if the data fits. Sometimes we look at anecdotal data and say "this is proof of something." It took about 70 years before Darwins findings were accepted by the scientific community, because it took that long to generate enough evidence and consensus to support the concept.

All scientists, whether creation or evolution, let bias impact their thinking. This is why we need peer review and qualitative research. To use your beetles as an example, the only person who brought up this issue was Dr. Gish. The science was easily refuted, so therefore we should disregard his findings. Yet creationists push this information in the hopes that people will just blindly accept it.

Would you consider Greek mythology to be obvious fiction? I would. The only difference between the two is that one is considered defunct and antiquated, whole the other remains a prominent belief system. I think it's obvious to any rational thinking mind that these are fictional parables meant to teach greater moral lessons. I'm not one to disregard the obvious just because we're incapable of definitively proving that acts of magic didn't occur thousands of years ago. That sounds almost medieval in terms of remedial thought processes. By that logic, perhaps Babe Ruth was an alien/human hybrid sent from a faraway galaxy to dominate the human sport of baseball. If we can't definitely disprove that, then it can't be an obvious fiction and deserves consideration of merit? I simply can't get behind the logic of that.

The simple answer is that radioactive decay creates heat, and if radioactive decay rates were not in billions of years, but in hundreds of years to support a 6000 years young earth, the earth would have melted due to the heat.

Also life beginning is still an unknown question and evolution makes NO ATTEMPT to answer the question of how the first lifeforms were created.

You mention something very important in your post.

People say "How would Noah fit all of those animals on his ark?", but Noah did not take 2 of every possible iteration of animal onto the ark. He took 2 dogs ..... not 2 beagles, 2 retrievers, 2 German shepherds, 2 and so on. Man has shown that he can manipulate a species to gain certain outcomes, within a species, through selective breeding. recessive genes explain how certain appearance or relatively minor trait outcomes can happen.

This is where the story of the ark takes all kinds of turns. Some say "How could all of those animals have fit? A par of elephants alone would take up considerable room." However, nowhere in the Bible does it say that these animals were all adult animals. We can assume that water based species might not need to be brought aboard, and that would lessen the total number of "kind" brought abroad.

One other thing I find interesting. Around the time that man would have been removed from the garden of Eden is about the time we see the beginning of human communities.

After the flood is the rise of more modern civilizations. It does seem as though the Biblical account does have at least some merit.

So what you are saying, is that the precurser to chimps and humans dropped a chromosone and became human. That might make a lot of people in rural West Virginia happy.

The Bible is an instrument of Faith. (yet more and more evidence has been found supporting Biblical accounts, even though it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get permission from Middle Eastern governments to dig sites found by satellite.