Evolution

Genesis 1:5 surely spoke of literal day and literal night, and the inference from the statement, “And the evening and the morning were the first day,” is that it was a literal day of evening and morning, 24-hours. There is no Biblical evidence that the days of this chapter were longer periods.

 

lol.

 

I'm not a religious person.

But if God wanted to use Evolution as His means to create life. Well fine.

 

I am in lines with you. I am just unsure of any theory. People have been proven wrong before and it makes me a little uncomfortable whenever any theory becomes unquestioned. It's like, "THAT'S IT! Evolution has already been proven. Time to move on and increase our understanding of it. Most of the scientific community agrees with it's validity therefore it's true and anyone who offers up an alternative explanation is either an idiot, living in fantasy land or both." But that can be pretty frustrating. How we are accused of being mindless, yet we ask questions concerning it's validity which is exactly the very ideal that science supposedly runs on.

 

Nice try, but your interpretation clearly is at odds with the plain language of the Bible. Creating the heavens doesn't imply the sun, the moon and the stars. Genesis 1 says, after God created vegetation,he created the sun, the moon and the stars. 14... "let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years., 15 let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth". ...16 God made the two great lights, the grater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night. He made the stars also. 17 God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth..." So it seems that it was not as you said that the lights already there became visible. The Bible clearly says they were put there after the creation of vegetation.

 

That's kind of a complicated question. It is not different from saying it didn't happen, but it is different from saying "Man is a product of evolution". Basically, the difference is that, if you talk about evolution as a statistical inevitability, I don't have to find 100 discrete generations of "intermediate species" or whatever it is you think would be sufficient physical proof. Statistically evolution would happen. What statistics don't prove is that it led to the evolution of the species around us.

What it boils down to though is that, if you believe that the Earth is as old as it is suspected to be (something like 13.7 billion years?), then evolution pretty much definitely would have happened. If you believe that the Earth was created by means beyond the understanding of science, and that God/Satan made it look older for whatever reason, then you can believe that it was created whenever you like. If the Earth was the oft-cited 6000 years old (which you have pretty much said you don't believe), then evolution would not be inevitable, because the number of generations, number of organisms, etc. wouldn't be large enough that it would near-definitely happen. That doesn't mean it couldn't have happened, but one would need a lot more evidence to believe it.

Bet you wish you hadn't said all that stuff about days being billions of years long and stuff now, don't you.

It's good that you added "always" there. Because "God's first assertion" is known only through the Bible, which is unequivocally written by men. Those men's assertion was that God told them what to write, but if you believe that, you are believing man's assertions, regardless of whether they accurately represent those of God. So you are trusting in a human assertion, and one which humans would have every reason to falsify.

I have very little interest in proving evolution to you. I hope that doesn't bother you. I can't work out what your interest is in the subject, to be honest, and I certainly don't feel any more obligation to prove anything to you. You are very demanding of proof (of something which is only a theory, and from people who make no claim to being scientists), but you've shown no inclination to prove anything back. Can you prove, or indeed provide any reason at all, for anyone to believe that a day in Genesis refers to thousands of years?

 

I think the frustration is with those who exploit any hole in the theory. That is to say, because the theory of evolution isn't perfect, every theory is equally valid. You can see in this thread, there is a massive imbalance in burden of proof - those demanding absolute proof of evolution, but offering little more than the possibility of "misinterpretation" or ambiguity in Bible quotes as evidence of their own beliefs.

I have no problem with people believing whatever they want out of faith. But I have a big problem with science being misrepresented by those desperate to prove their own belief to others. Doubt of one theory is never evidence for another, and it's a bit of a myth that Big Bad Science is absolutely certain of evolution and dismissive of all other theories, purely because it is dismissive of the ones which jar with pretty much all available evidence. In the case of this "creative day" stuff OWB is talking about, it requires such an astronomical leap of faith and such a convolution of the English language to believe that, really, no-one should feel troubled to disprove it.

 

There's a very good reason not to believe that the term "day" would be used to mean two completely different periods of time in the same book, though.

If you believe that God wrote the Bible with the intention of it being read by humans, there is no logical reason for him to refer to the creation in such needlessly confusing terms. If the days of the creation took thousands of years, there is no logical reason not to just say that, is there? There is every reason to say it if the author has absolutely no insight into how the creation actually happened, and there is every reason to say it if the author did have that insight and the creation actually did take six days. But that's it - unless you have a reason to believe that the omniscient God of Man wrote the Bible for Man, but did not foresee in his omniscience that referring to thousands of years as a day - a word which pretty much his entire audience relates to "24 hours" - would be confusing, I'd say you were fairly unequivocally clutching at straws.

What I really don't understand though is, why is it so hard for you to believe what the Bible actually says, that God made the world in six days? Is it just because some jerks have presented some evidence that it isn't true? Because that would denote a weakness of faith, and if that were the case it wouldn't explain why you're so willing to spend hours patiently/stubbornly refuting the same jerks' arguments about something else.

 

I am just saying that I feel that one day science could give a more complex understanding on how we got here. It really isn't about my belief and trying to use it as a leverage to change others minds about it. The only place I really ever discuss this is in this forum. I don't claim to offer a better idea of what happened but I am interested in seeing an alternative because I feel that the theory may be lacking somewhere within the logic and within the proofs I just can't fully articulate it at the moment.

I always loved the theory of evolution. Actually, I was hooked on the whole idea since I started becoming interested in science at around ten years old. It is just over the years I have wondered if there is something missing in this understanding... somewhere. That perhaps that the underlining logic behind understanding evolution is somehow wrong. I am beginning to understand what OWB is saying I just can't exactly articulate it back to myself or others but I can see where it is leading.

Also, I don't think that it is fair for you to say what kind of motives anyone has in this. It's not really up to you to decide. It just assumes so much. All I want to do is question something that I feel should be questioned. It's not about going on some kind of crusade to kill of the evil science man, to paraphrase what you said. I love science. I always found it fascinating. But that's just it, people fall in love to much. Just like how someone can fall in love with faith, scientists can fall in love with evolution and possibly, maybe this can cloud their judgments a little, but that assumes a motive. All I am saying is that people can latch onto theories just as strongly as people can latch onto faith and this may be the case with evolution.

I don't know what to say about your last statement, and I don't know if it's even up to me to comment on. I can't speak for anyone.

 

Well if that's what you want to believe go right ahead but then the Bible makes no sense at all, which to me means that your interpretation is more than likely incorrect.

 

The Bible does go into how the greater and lesser lights were created after.

Maybe Ukr was right when he said that genesis was meant to be poetic while still remaining true.

 

I wasn't accusing you. But it's true of a lot of people, that they have a theory to push and do so under the guise of merely "questioning" someone else's. In those situations there always an imbalance of proof - the theory has to defend itself to the hilt, the "alternative" theory barely has to bother because it's just "questioning", and yet before you know it, they're telling you their theory and all the evidence they need is "your theory isn't any better". Which is pretty iffy even if it isn't, but you have no way of knowing.

I always loved the theory of evolution. Actually, I was hooked on the whole idea since I started becoming interested in science at around ten years old. It is just over the years I have wondered if there is something missing in this understanding... somewhere. That perhaps that the underlining logic behind understanding evolution is somehow wrong. I am beginning to understand what OWB is saying I just can't exactly articulate it back to myself or others but I can see where it is leading. [/QUOTE]

I think the underlying logic is solid. I think it's wrong when people assert that evidence exists if it doesn't, but the mechanism seems pretty sound and observable. Proving that it happened in one particular instance, rather than showing the odds that it would happen in that instance, is always going to be incredibly hard, and it doesn't help that a lot of people set themselves up as the ones that you have to convince and move the goalposts whenever they feel like it. At the end of the day, whatever happened happened, whether someone believes it or not. I just have more respect for those who are willing to spend their lives being accused of all kinds of stupid things for trying to find out, or for those who just accept that they don't know, than those who get a thousand-plus-year-old theory handed to them and don't question how it was arrived at.

I think scientists are as "guilty" as anyone of having "pet theories", and wanting a theory to be true more than pure objectivity would strictly allow. I don't think that's a weakness - it's incredibly boring when someone argues a point they have no passion for - as long as people are aware of it and don't let it cloud their judgment when it's important, e.g. if irrefutable evidence that they were wrong/that someone else was right is presented to them. While I can respect faith more than frantic justification, I don't think anyone should believe things which are provably false - there's plenty of things that aren't provably false or true to believe in and likely always will be.

As for motives, I can only guess based on available evidence. God knows in the case of some users there's a lot of available evidence! I don't think it's impossible to deduce anything about motive from people's behaviour as long as you're willing to accept that what you deduce can be wrong. In the case of OWB though, he tends to get grouchy about such suggestions about his motives, without really giving you any reason to doubt them.

 

You should make this post your signature. It speaks volumes.

 

What kind of answer is that? You've said that the Bible is literally true. I've told you what it seems literally to say. What these words mean might be my opinion, but what they say is a matter of understanding the literal language. It isn't a matter of "interpretation" or "what I want to believe". On the third day, God created vegetation. On the forth day he said "Let there be lights in the heavens..." Then he "made the two great lights..." and "the stars also" and "placed them in the expanse of heaven..." Note the words "made" and "placed" indicating that they weren't there before. That's from the NAS, the RSV, and the Good News Bible. The KJV uses the term "set" instead of placed, but same difference. What you seem to be saying is: "the Bible is always literally true, therefore this apparent problem in the literal language must not exist". Of course, you could give the same answer to any apparent inconsistency anybody could point out, which means you have a closed mind on the subject, and discussion with you is a sham. If humans can't be trusted to understand the plain meaning of language, how can fundamentalism operate? Of course, there's another way to resolve the problem: we could say that the sequence given in the Bible is correct, and science is wrong about the sun existing before the earth and vegetation. At least you haven't tried that one!

 

Statistical inevitability? You must be joking, have you really looked into it? The universe would have to be trillions of times older than the oldest predictions that scientist have come up with for evolution to become a statistical inevitability and that’s if evolution is even a possibility. After all evolution could be like trying to roll a 13 with a pair of dice, no matter how long you roll the dice, even billions of years it will never be a statistical inevitability that you will roll a 13.

Once again you are assuming like, all evolutionists, that evolution is a possibility. If you assume the moon is made of swiss cheese, then it’s inevitable that the moon will be found out to be swiss cheese. Thanks for proving evolution happened because you believe it is statistically inevitable that evolution happen.

Actually, I never said how long those days were but in any case; no, I’m not sorry I said that the “days” in the Bible can be of various lengths depending on context.

 

Okie, just so you know: you're right.

You're not going mad and there is no sensible argument against what you're saying. You are doing OWB the courtesy of arguing with him on his own terms (i.e. that the Bible should be taken literally, even though it obviously shouldn't be), and he is just refusing to hear anything you say. If someone claims that the Bible is literal, not allegorical, and then objects to a literal reading of it for no reason other than that it would suggest that the book doesn't make sense, that is denial.

I just wanted to reassure you. This isn't one of those occasions where "everyone's entitled to their opinion" and you deserve some kudos for the patience you've displayed in the face of someone abusing relativism.

 

There is much more about the Bible to prove it is the word of God than that the men who “wrote” it, said so.

 

Can I have a citation of this? Because I think what you've just said is desperate nonsense.

It could be if there was no evidence that any of the processes involved occur. But there is and they do.

You won't fool anyone into thinking that the above is a) an inherent weakness, or b) exclusive to "evolutionists". You've demonstrated incontrovertibly that you consider the Bible is self-evidencing - that the Bible must be the word of God because it says so in the Bible.

No, I'm sure you're not. You should be, because you should realise that as a position it is totally untenable and that more generally to assert literalism only when it suits you and cry "misinterpretation" when it doesn't is hypocritical. But I don't think you hold your own beliefs to the same account as you do those of others.