I've changed from my simplistic view that creation took six days (me age, very young), to creation took several periods of a thousand years (early teens) through to the creation was a specific re-organisation of existing material with no attempt to limit time span. To my latest synthesis:
Part of the organisation was the creation of everything heavenly:
(Old Testament | Genesis 2:1)
1 THUS the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
Which specifically meant everyone and every animal has a spiritual existence prior to life as a soul (physical body + spiritual body)
(Old Testament | Genesis 2:7)
7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
I see no evidence that creation of the earth has finished in a literal sense and it is constantly being 're-organised' according to the laws of physics therefore I see no reasons why biological creation need be considered finished according to the laws of evolution. I was struck by the following passage:
(Old Testament | Genesis 1:20 - 22)
20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
...
22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
Which suggests that the waters would be the source of life (i.e. not God physically generating each and every template though I suspect certain designs are specifically created/organised) and the repeated instruction to all 'life' is to 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the ' - now we have a God having made laws designed to allow life and then for that life to propagate and fill the earth what is more likely than for that life to be written using the same basic design (dna - life doesn't use several different competing languages for passing on genetic info), and that design to actually have inherant in it adaptation capacity so rather than random mutation working with natural selection (an achilles heal for evolutionists v creationists - mutation is not the best way to add genetic info or to 'organise' existing info in new useful ways.)? 'Life' sees/is forced into a niche and like water flowing downhill takes the path of least resistence and immediately begins turning genes on and off to fill the new niche. In a very practical and very smart move/law there is an internal cut off point where there are enough gentic changes made to require that breeding stops between the original unadapted source species not filling that niche and the adapted species so that both species are able to co-exist but fill different niches and not dilute the gains made by each.
Creation is therefore ongoing (life is designed to rapidly adapt - not just adapt over slow times but that is also not a problem!) - I once read somewhere about the speed in which descendents born to parents living in high altitudes begin to be born with increased lung capacity within a few generations not hundreds of years later and how it was fairly consistent i.e. not the odd child here or there - forgive me I can't find the article - but it would be a good experiment to see if there was a consistent pressure on a fast reproducing life form whether the majority of changes where exactly the same in seperate controlled experiments?
This allows me to marvel in life without rejecting a Creator, understand explosions of life following mass extinctions (life doing exactly what its designed to), I overcome the need for abiogenesis (why did physical matter have to preceed spiritual? it is entirely possibly to have a start to mortal life from an immortal spiritual source.) and the problem of cellular life just appearing from strands of self-organising but 'dead' molecules, the scriptures square with science (so all the tension moves away from some supposed differences to absolute shared awe and excitment as WE discover more) and then we get the exciting possibilities:
1/ If life is coded so that it can , within reason, adapt to almost any environment (and blocked subterranean caves, black sea bed smokers and ultra acidic or salty water pools seem pretty harsh to me) we have all we need to colonise the universe and spread life where it is not yet.
2/ Life on other planets is almost guaranteed (if you believe in God then to think this universe was made just for us is a not plausible and if you don't believe in God then abiogenesis 'must' happen and ergo is possible elsewhere.) - and it would be in fabulous variety.
3/ God himself need not be de-humanised - when He said we were in His image - why not?
4/ Creationist and evolutionist viewpoints can be accomodated together rather than as opposing views and we don't need to fight- just accept that our differences are aimed at solving different questions.
Evidence for evolution, Installment 4: Atavisms and vitamin C
by seattleniceguy 22 Replies latest jw friends
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kid-A
4/ Creationist and evolutionist viewpoints can be accomodated together rather than as opposing views and we don't need to fight- just accept that our differences are aimed at solving different questions.
No, because religious mythology and evolutionary biology have no common ground whatsoever. Cultural mythologies are merely stories passed on through the history of a particular society. They have no basis in fact, observation, or empirical experimentation. They serve only a sociocultural or psychological purpose.
Evolutionary science, either at the anatomical, biological, molecular, genetic or anthropological subdisciplines is based solely upon rigorous, replicated, observable and TANGIBLE evidence. All science is based upon the testing of falsifiable hypotheses and is subject to peer review, modification and refinement.
Creationism is RELIGION, plain and simple. Evolution, is SCIENCE. There is no overlap, no common ground and no REASON for common ground.
The only "fights" that emerge are when religionists attempt to push pseudoscientific "intelligent design" agendas into the legitimate realm of scientific research. They have failed in the past, and will continue to fail in these efforts. If you want a god, keep it in your church where it belongs.
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skeptic2
seattleniceguy - thanks for taking the time to write these articles, they are greatly appreciated.
Have you written about duplication of hox genes as an evolutionary mechanism? I'm sure people would appreciate the picture of the fruit fly with a leg where it's antenna would normally be.