Religion vs. Science

[KarlMarx]

If evolution were indeed true, then I have to ask, why are there no differences between the remains of ancient Egyptian mummies (some of which are over 3,000 years old) and those of modern humans?

If I were to accept Darwin's theory of natural selection, then I would expect to see a difference, albeit a slight one.

Again, modern humans arose 50,000 years ago in the plains of Africa, why are we still the same as those humans? The only differences seem to be in race, which is an adaptation to the sun, not necessarily evolution.

Furthermore, I would expect that humans should be very different from one continent to another and perhaps have become separate species by now. After all, the environment of the Sahara is very different than that of the tropical jungle. Why for instance haven't Eskimos become furry to adapt to the cold?

[Missileman]

If I were to accept Darwin's theory of natural selection, then I would expect to see a difference, albeit a slight one.

What about differences in immune systems from one region to another?

[KarlMarx]

What about differences in immune systems from one region to another?

tell me about it

[Missileman]

tell me about it

Things like the Mexicans can drink the water, but it makes tourists ill, or Amazon natives being wiped out by the flu virus because they had no immunity to it. Eskimos have developed the ability to digest blubber, etc.

[Nienna]

Things like the Mexicans can drink the water, but it makes tourists ill, or Amazon natives being wiped out by the flu virus because they had no immunity to it. Eskimos have developed the ability to digest blubber, etc.

Natural selection fits in perfectly with the Biblical Creation model. It's the philosophy of materialism and macroevolution that don't work with Creation, and, also, have very little (if any) scientific evidence to back them up.

[Hobbit]

Not only that, but the examples Missleman gave are all things that can change within a single person and do not require generations of natural selection. If I drank a little bit of Mexican water one day, and increased the dosage each day, I would eventually be able to drink it with no ill effect. My parents are immune to smallpox, but I would possibly die if exposed to it in large amounts. As for the blubber, there's a Guiness World Record for eating glass.

[Gaffer]

What a bunch of crap. I could only stand to watch three of them. But I took away from those three, no PROOF of anything. A lot of demonizing Darwin, and "it's say so right there in the bible".

Evolution is still a theory. It has not been proven. Therefore the theory changes as more information is added to the theory. That's how science works. They are still working on proving evolution. If creationism wants to be considered it has to be proven too. And since creationism relies of the bible entirely it cannot be proven. As the bible only goes back about 4000 years. But the chinese have records that date back over 5000 years. Which means there's a discrepancy in the bible, which according to believers there cannot be. So they begin to manufacture their own data to disprove scientific and historical fact. Psuedo-science.

And there are intermedia fossils of many animals. Horses are a prime example.

As I have said before. Evolution is a slow processes that takes thousands and millions of years. We as a species have only had the ability to observe changes for a few hundred years. As for skin color being effected by the sun. If that's the case then its an evolutionary process. As people adapted to their enviroment. Developing immunity to a virus is an evolutionary process as well.

To deny evolution because it doesn't fit in biblical skeem of things is as bad as evolutionists saying there could be no creator because there is no proof.

[Missileman]

Natural selection fits in perfectly with the Biblical Creation model. It's the philosophy of materialism and macroevolution that don't work with Creation, and, also, have very little (if any) scientific evidence to back them up.

Unlike the mountain of pseudo-scientific evidence that supports the earth being ony a few thousand years old and Noah carrying dinosaurs on the ark, right?

I've yet to have any reasonable explanation of how a handful of middle-eastern Jews morphed into non-Jewish Asians, Africans, Australian aborigines, Native Americans, etc with totally different languages, alphabets, and religious lore within a few generations. There's not even a shred of evidence that Noah and company had the ability to make a ship capable of crossing an ocean. They would have to have constructed several navigable mini-arks to carry all of the indigenous wildlife to each of the continents as well...funny how that's not mentioned.

The bottom line is that I place more credibility in the observable than in the supernatural. You can try to wish away the scientific evidence that the earth is billions-of-years-old and that we are descended from lower, pre-historic lifeforms, but the evidence exists and is irrefuteable.

Let the Bible serve as a moral compass. Trying to use it as a scientific guide will always leave you pointed in the wrong direction.

[5stringJeff]

Please note that not all Christians believe in a six-day creation. Some of us believe in a billions-of-years-old universe, based on scientific evidence, created by God, as the Bible states.

[Nienna]

Unlike the mountain of pseudo-scientific evidence that supports the earth being ony a few thousand years old and Noah carrying dinosaurs on the ark, right?

You'd have to give me an example of the "pseudo-science." The age of the universe in the materialist model has been increasing more & more over the years, because of the idea that evolution needed TIME to progress as far as it did. Radioisotope dating methods are questionable.

And Noah did not CARRY dinosaurs onto the ark. He probably led or herded them. It might interest you to know that, based on FOSSIL EVIDENCE, the average size of a dinosaur was comparable to that of a goat.

I've yet to have any reasonable explanation of how a handful of middle-eastern Jews morphed into non-Jewish Asians, Africans, Australian aborigines, Native Americans, etc with totally different languages, alphabets, and religious lore within a few generations.

This is simple genetics. Ppl with light brown skin are the optimum ancestors if one wanted to produce all the variations of skin color. Say "M" is a gene for a large amount of melanin, and "m" is the gene for a small amount. A person with light brown skin may have the genetic combination "MmMm." If two parents with this genetic set were to produce offspring, their children might have any of sixteen combinations, including "MMMM" (which would be a very dark-skinned, or "black" person) and "mmmm" (which would be a very light-skinned, or "white" person. This can occur in ONE generation. Factor in isolation, inbreeding, and natural selection, and you have the basis for different "races," within maybe a couple hundred years.

The Bible accounts for the difference in languages, also (In the story of Babel), and there are some striking similarities between ancient religions. For instance, many include a Flood story. Wonder why that might be. Hmmmmmm....

The variation between the "races" is trivial. There is much wider variation between two people within the same race than there is between the characteristics that define the separate "races." Even evolutionists agree that separate people groups did not arise from separate animals, but all came from one original population.

There's not even a shred of evidence that Noah and company had the ability to make a ship capable of crossing an ocean. They would have to have constructed several navigable mini-arks to carry all of the indigenous wildlife to each of the continents as well...funny how that's not mentioned.

Noah's ark did not STEER. It was made for maximum STABILITY and capacity. It did not cross an ocean. That would not have been possible, since the entire world was an ocean during the flood. The ark was essentially a gigantic floating box, made to keep its contents safe during a storm. Noah had no destination; his aim was simply to stay above water. The ark's dimensions are recorded in Genesis, and scientists now know that its proportions are ideal for stability.

Neither did Noah carry wildlife to the different continents. The animals dispersed on their own.

The bottom line is that I place more credibility in the observable than in the supernatural. You can try to wish away the scientific evidence that the earth is billions-of-years-old and that we are descended from lower, pre-historic lifeforms, but the evidence exists and is irrefuteable.

Let the Bible serve as a moral compass. Trying to use it as a scientific guide will always leave you pointed in the wrong direction.

If you place more credibility in the observable, how is it that you believe in macroevolution? There has NEVER been one instance of the spontaneous appearance of new genetic information, recorded and observed. This is the lynchpin of the argument for macroevolution. Without it, the model folds. What we OBSERVE is that mutation involves a LOSS of genetic information, and a build-up of mutations renders a creature DISfunctional.

The Bible is not a science text. However, wherever it touches on science, history, etc, it will be proven correct. The great God and CreatOR of the universe knows more about his creation than a bunch of creatURES in white lab coats.

[eighballsidepocket]

Things like the Mexicans can drink the water, but it makes tourists ill, or Amazon natives being wiped out by the flu virus because they had no immunity to it. Eskimos have developed the ability to digest blubber, etc.

I'm perfectly serious, so please don't turn this into some joke now, but I remember the first time I ate a tinnee weenie piece of a fresh Jalopeno pepper as a kid, and thought my mouth was being stung by a hundred bees.

My family didn't make fresh Jalopenos a daily part of our staple diet. Now with that, I've grown up around Mexican American kids and have many adult Mexican American friends, and they can eat Jalepeno's like I eat raisins, without even breaking into a sweat. They can even eat hotter types of peppers than those and not even blink an eye. They relish the flavor and enjoy those little hot buggers with their meals.

With that said, did they evolve separately from us Norte Americanos and now have some genes that allow them to tolerate hot peppers and us Anglo's can't? Hardly.

If I were to have those little hot buggers from the time I was put on solid food from being weaned of mother's milk and grew up on them, I'd develop the ability to stand the pain, and probably my metabolism and taste buds would somehow adapt. Living proof is my Dad, who comes from about as Northern European stock as you can have. My father's parents were both from central Sweden.

I remember seeing my dad eat those hot Mexican peppers as a kid. He wasn't supposed to be pre-disposed to handle those buggers as he's from a culture and human subspecies of Northern European humans that lived on very bland diets of fish and grains, with a few berries thrown in. My dad said the first peppers were tough as a kid, but he gradually in some mysterious bodily way, got used to the "sting" and began to enjoy the peppers not as a challenge to his manhood, but as tasty, wholesome food.

Us humans do have certain micro-evolutionary qualities, but not to the extent to become other than humans.

As Marx mentioned, you have the lighter skinned Homo Sapiens in the Northern climbs, who need that sun light to penetrate the epidermis to produce sufficient Vitamin D, yet in the equatorial regions we have most dark skinned races or Homo Sapiens that have more than enough sunlight for Vitamin D production, and need the extra Melanin to protect them from over exposure and skin damage.

Us upper lattitude humans want to mimic the skin tones of the equatorials, and end up with leathery skinned bodies, and lots of skin cancer as a reward for our vanity.

I see the skin color distribution as very much a micro evolutionary work within God's creation of the human species, but don't expect the human species to develop into a computer nerd, woose, type of species just because we have culturally changed our means of survival. I doubt that we will develop extra digits to enhance our keyboard abilities over the 10 digit species of Homo Sapien.

Naked we were born, naked we leave the earth.

We are one of the very few species that can't survive on our own after birth without a long duration of nurturing by our parents. In many ways this goes "flap" in the face of hard core evolutionists. You'd think by now that we as a human species would have babies popping out of the womb and walking and talking within days or hours of their birth, as we see with myriads of animal species. Antelope babies must get up, run, and stay with the herd or they are food for predators. Why do we continue to maturate so slowly. Why do we have to rely for so long on parental wisdom and instruction as compared to the myriads of species? Why haven't we evolved as the others?

Low and behold, we still take 9-12+ months to take that first bipedal step, we still take that same amount of time to say Ma ma or Da Da. We still become breedable creatures until a pre-set time on each one of our biological clocks, that really hasn't changed over thousands of years.

Sure some cattle steroids may have skewed some of our clocks and cause our females and males to prematurely grow into puberty type ways earlier than the norm, but the gene clock hasn't changed.

Never the less the micro evolutionary work still is present within the species, as in others. There are color variations, and bodily shape variations, of every species.....Just look at cats and dogs.........Every size/shape and color of the rainbow exists, but the cat family is the cat family and the dog family is the dog family. Dogs can't breed with cats and vice versa.

Yes, we live longer, but that's a "no brainer" as we have developed medications, safer foods, safer living environments, and less strenuous work on our bodily frames through the thousands of years.

Man, thousands of years ago, had a nice big brain, but his learning/knowledge was exponentially growing as he gradually conquered his environments, obstacles and dangers to his benefit his well -being.

Ever wonder why computer science only a few years ago is now obsolete? Not evolution, but exponential compounding of knowledge and learning continuing at an ever accellerating pace. It's not unlike the first litter of rabbits. You start out with a small group of 6 bunnies, and then three of the six have 6 more offspring. Now you have 18 bunnies and 9 have 6 more offspring and there's 54 bunnies.......and on and on and on....

Man started with fire making, man compounded his knowledge upon that to forging or foundrying metals from the earth, then compounds upon that knowledge to design weapons or tools to further his convenience or alleviate hardship of survival. By the time we were to Roman times, man had Siege engines, cross bows, aquaducts, sewer systems, and even had learned how to make concrete. We had a copper age, then a bronze age, then an Iron age, and then an Aluminum/steel/titanium age, and now we live in the Carbon Fibre/Kevlar age. Man's knowledge is exponentially growing because he's sourcing an incredibly growing back log of previously learned knowledge.

The first guy that had to bust a piece of rock to make it sharp edged to use as a knife to skin a carcass or make an arrow head, didn't have a big old back log of previously learned knowledge to build upon, but every strike of the rock, every little happen stance discovery within his environment added another growing point in knowledge to build upon.

A brain with the capacity was provided.

If you could take a baby from 10,000 years ago and put him/her in a 21 century family, he/she would have the same capacity to learn and be up to speed with the modern times as ourselves.
*****
Just picture what you would do, "modern man" if you were dropped into an environment 10,000 years ago. Would you be able to find or create your 21 century life, and it's leisure type tools and refinements? With your backlog of history and possible scientific understanding of the environment, you could accellerate your fellow ancient man's life, and knowledge. Never the less, you would have to start with the same raw materials and the absence of an electrical grid, or cultural substructure built upon those thousands of years of gained knowledge to start or get anywhere.

Even the bible says in the last days that knowledge will go, "exponential". Funny how so many overlook that statement, as it's happening now and we know it full well.

Also the seeking of knowledge, aside from seeing it's source from a divine Creator is also predicted in scripture.

Intellect and knowledge is man's credo, and religion. To be smart is to be advanced, to be vernacularly blessed is to be venerated. Man desires all the "kudos", as he has already "written off" the existence of a devine Creator or source for all that exists, both materially and immaterially. Magazines with titles such as: Self, People, etc.. are just the evidences of man's love fest with him/herself.

Man is where he is because he built upon previous knowledge. Not because he has evolved into a better species. In fact, if evolution is indeed working within our species, we'd have the absence of war and be living in utopian societys by now. Instead we daily and yearly affirm the biblical scriptures that we are a most spiritually shipwrecked species that was once created to reflect God's image and nature, but have sorely lost that in our quest to be our own little gods.

[Missileman]

Us humans do have certain micro-evolutionary qualities, but not to the extent to become other than humans.

Who said anything about a new human species?

[Pale Rider]

What about differences in immune systems from one region to another?

Mutations.

[Missileman]

Mutations.

Okay, and?

[The ClayTaurus]

If evolution were indeed true, then I have to ask, why are there no differences between the remains of ancient Egyptian mummies (some of which are over 3,000 years old) and those of modern humans?

Evolution is not something that HAS to happen, only something that can happen.

We seem to be doing pretty well as we are... what need to evolve is there?