evolution or creation? lets talk...

by Sam87 537 Replies latest jw friends

  • M.J.
    M.J.

    I'm still kicking this topic around in my head, but here are a few thoughts.

    Creationism clearly has a few unexplainable problems

    We just don't know where the heck we came from from a pure analysis standpoint. There IS no way to know, at the current time. Some have faith that a personal creator is behind it, which to me is not as far fetched as many say, given the truly puzzling questions related to how life could have sprung up from non-life in the first place. As for who could have created a creator...who says everything needs an origin?

    It appears that there are big problems with evolutionary theory as well. While it is apparent that adaptation, optimization, & speciation through narrow ranges can happen through genetic mutation/natural selection, can any natural process compose genetic programs for new evoutionary features in a closed system?

    There is a $100,000 challenge to anyone who can demonstrate this possibility. It's called "The Evolution Prize": http://www.evolutionprize.org/

    In the challenge description is the following:

    Consider the following conjecture : The evolutionary potential of any system based on encoded instructions is forever limited to that provided by the available instructions. If the system is closed to additional instructions, true innovations will not evolve and the limit will be reached. The challenge may be stated conversely: disprove the above conjecture.

    The point of this prize is not to demonstrate "proof" for creationism, but rather to suggest the probability that the genetic material for highly evolved life originated from beyond our world. In any case, I believe it is a demonstration that the commonly accepted notions of evolution aren't as much of a sure-bet as many believe.

  • dido
    dido

    I believe in creation purely and simply for the fact that human beings are too complex to `just happen`.

  • stevenyc
    stevenyc

    whyizit.

    Darwin believed his theory of evolution right to the end. The question of his belief in the existence of God is what creationist confuse, sometimes deliberately. Basically, Darwin was not an atheist.

    The story that you are referring to is from Lady Elizabeth Hope story, appears in an American Baptist newspaper the Watchman Examiner on August 15, 1915. You can read it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Hope#Denial_by_Darwin.27s_children.

    This story was absolutely denied by everyone surrounding Darwin up to the time of his death.

    Denial by Darwin's children

    Darwin's family all denied the story and campaigned against it. Darwin's son Francis wrote in a letter on May 28, 1918:

    Lady Hope's account of my father's views on religion is quite untrue. I have publicly accused her of falsehood, but have not seen any reply. My father's agnostic point of view is given in my Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. I., pp. 304–317. You are at liberty to publish the above statement. Indeed, I shall be glad if you will do so."

    After the story had been revived in 1922, Darwin's daughter Henrietta Litchfield stated in The Christian for February 23, 1922 in an article titled: Charles Darwin’s Death-Bed: Story of Conversion Denied by Mrs. R.B. Litchfield:

    I was present at his deathbed, Lady Hope was not present during his last illness, or any illness. I believe he never even saw her, but in any case she had no influence over him in any department of thought or belief. He never recanted any of his scientific views, either then or earlier. We think the story of his conversion was fabricated in the U.S.A. ... ...The whole story has no foundation whatever."

    In 1958 The Autobiography of Charles Darwin was republished edited by Darwin's granddaughter Nora Barlow, which restored various passages edited out by Francis Darwin in the original 1887 edition. These included Darwin's perspective on God, as well as harsh criticisms of Christianity.

    steve

  • stevenyc
    stevenyc

    A question to creationists:

    Which entity do you believe created all life now living and extict? Please be specific as would be deficult for me to understand the statement "GOD", if that is what you belive, without defining what you mean by "GOD".

    steve

  • dido
    dido

    God= creator

  • stevenyc
    stevenyc

    dido, thanks for responding. I understand that you believe God is the creator, but, what do you mean by "GOD"?

    steve

  • AlmostAtheist
  • kid-A
    kid-A

    "I believe in creation purely and simply for the fact that human beings are too complex to `just happen`." Ironically, it is only the "creationists" who make the claim that human beings "just happened", even more incredulously, this supposedly occurred in a mythical garden populated by talking snakes, using "dust" as the building material. Thus, is the implication that it is more intelligent to believe the literary account of some nomadic, primordial bedouin desert dwellers written 2000 years ago, or accept the overwhelming factual proof, at the molecular, anthropological, phylogenetic and biological levels of evolution science? Evolutionaly theory provides for increasing complexity over millions of years, beginning with simple molecular interactions. Multicellular lifeforms are still, simply the composite result of structured configurations of very simple components: proteins, amino acids, biochemical reactions. More importantly, modern h. sapiens are very poorly constructed even for upright posture as evidenced by a spinal cord poorly adapted to the stresses of gravity...this is not to mention our propensity for endless diseases, infections, genetic mutations, etc etc. If the human animal had a "designer", the designer was a complete idiot.

  • daystar
    daystar
    "I believe in creation purely and simply for the fact that human beings are too complex to `just happen`."

    To add to Kid-A's post, this argument is also due to a lack of understanding of simple and complex systems. Complex systems can and do "just happen" as you put it.

    Very simple mathematical equations have shown very complex results.

    http://www.complex-systems.com/

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal

  • Satanus
    Satanus
    human beings are too complex to `just happen`.

    Snowflakes are too complex to `just happen`.

    S

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