A well thought-out argument against anti-evolutionists

*Sigh* They said we couldn't recover DNA from fossilized bone. What they have found is not fossilized bone, it's unfossilized, yet still preserved, soft tissue. You creationists sure do love warping the truth to support your Bible.

 

Dude, you don't even need fossils to show evolution. Here's what you do: Take a couple of cultures of bacteria, poison 'em with increasing concentrations of antibiotics, and BAM! Anti-biotic resistant bacteria! That's evolution. You can deny it all you want, but there are plenty of people who can show you why you're wrong.

 

Campbell34 attaches too much significance to jewish fables. He has his head buried in the sand, so to speak. Read timothy and titus to find the warnings against attaching to much significance to Jewish Fables (Genesis) and endless genealogies (evolution). God made everything, including Jewish Fables and the Theory of evolution.

Maybe you just like talking about this stuff, which is fine. I am sure God would be more than happy to prove that both Jewish Fables and the Theory of Evolution do not offer exact descriptions of how God creates and molds the creation.

 

I'd just like to get one thing straight: nowhere in The Bible does it say that the Earth and its creatures is 6,000 years old. Nowhere!

All The Bible says is that Adam was the 'first man'. And we know Adam lived a few thousand years ago.

Even if you take this to mean that Adam was literally the first human on Earth, there is absolutely no logical way you could derive from The Bible any information about how old the Earth and its creatures is!

The evidence to suggest the planet, and life on it, are millions of years old is overwhelming. You would have to be a complete and utter nutcase to believe the opposite (or alternatively just uneducated).

So why does The Bible call Adam the 'first man'? I can think of only two explanations:

1. The first explanation is that Adam was fundamentally different from his ancestors. Perhaps God decided to let humans evolve to a certain point before giving them his 'spirit'? I mean, amoebas with God's spirit are pretty useless, right?

2. The other explanation (this is my personal theory) is that Adam was originally the first human, while the universe was still under construction, but ultimately, after a few changes, Adam ended up not being the first human.

If you follow the creation of the universe through logically, it isn't hard to see how this could be possible: The Bible says that originally, when God was creating the universe, there were no other animals, only Adam. So obviously Adam would be the only thing on Earth and there would be no need for any kind of evolution, or even death. At that stage, life in this universe was very simple: it consisted of Adam alone!

But God didn't stop there, he decided to add other animals, and presumably found the simplest and neatest way of doing that was to make evolution of species. So instead of Adam being unique, he became part of the progression of evolution. Therefore Adam was the first human, but in this — the final draft of God's universe — Adam had parents, and ancestors.

 

^they dervive the age of the planet by using the geneologies in the bible, so according to that its about 6000 years old.

well if you have reading comprehensine skills (which appears you lack) you'd know according to genesis man was the last of gods creations after he made animals and plants and the universe.

but if your sane you'd know the genesis account is a fable

 

quote: they dervive the age of the planet by using the geneologies in the bible, so according to that its about 6000 years old

I've found and held paleo-indian spear points that are at least 5,000 years older than that.

 

^ never said i believed it, just said how creationists came up with the idea the earths 6000 years old

 

Oh I'm sure you don't believe it.


Anyone who does believe the Earth is 6,000 years old has serious mental problems...I'd like to see how the Colorado river could have created the Grand Canyon in that short amount of time.

or did god just suddenly create that too?

 

^^ they say the Great Flood did it.

Think "agricultural revolution". That would have change dramatically the way people see the world. We know that thousands of years ago, ancient cultures thought they had always lived as farmers (the bible says Adam was made to work the garden, then later to till the soil for himself). It's sort of like forgetting all those thousands of years as hunter-gatherers and rewriting history as agriculturalists.

 

LOL! That's just proof that the Bible's true...not evolution.

 

I'm not sure I follow your logic...The residual leg stumps in snakes (to me, at least) would imply either an evolution from legless reptiles to legged reptiles, or a de-evolution from legged reptiles to legless reptiles. They're kind of synonymous with wisdom teeth, the appendix, and the tailbone in humans. They're just leftovers from a previous evolutionary form.

Creationism would imply that these parts have purposes, no?

 

What do you mean, 'the outer earth's crust collapsed'? Every geologist on earth would tell you that the continental and oceanic crusts are perfectly in tact. Your theory is very vague, could you elucidate it for me?

There are many examples on earth of rock which formed in aqueous environments being a part of a mountain. This is no problem for geologists. I am currently living on the north coast of California, and we have huge oceanic basalt formations (which form at submarine vents) on our beaches. There is a large fault about 100 miles or so offshore, and magma rises through it to create this oceanic basalt. Over the span of a couple million years, the spreading of the sea-floor transports the submarine rock toward the coast and eventually onto land. The sea floor acts as a very slow conveyor belt. We have observed and measured these processes, they are no mystery.

Take Hawaii for example. The islands are made entirely from the interaction of magma and water. The islands are arranged in a chain as a result of a 'hot-spot' which exists under the continental crust. Basically, there is a stationary plume of magma arising from the mantle which heats and melts a specific area of the crust. The crust melts and an underwater volcano is created. The plume stays still, but the crust moves (very slowly) over the top of the plume, thus the crust melts in a line, or chain. The reason that these islands which form on the sea floor are able to rise above sea level, is because the process happens so slow that the cooling magma can accumulate. The oldest islands are well over a million years old. See image.



(The direction of the arrows indicates the direction of plate movement.)



See, Kauai used to be directly over the hot spot, but it has since moved many miles away; and again, it did so very slowly, or else no islands would be between it and the youngest island.

 

*SIGH* Could you tell me the last time they found a 70 million year old bone with soft tissue in it that was not fossilized? That's the problem, if bones are 70 million years old, they could only exist if they are fossilized. It takes a bone about 10,000 years to fossilize. If this bone has soft tissue in it, then we are not looking at millions of years, we are looking at thousands of years. Sorry thats the unwarped truth. And the reason the scientists were shocked, and tested the sample bone no less than 17 times, is because they knew what that finding would mean.

 

but 1 unique case doesnt prove anything? also could you provide a link to this, just so i know your not pulling this out of your ass (not saying you are).

Coelacanth (long thought extinct fish) were recently discovered to be still alive off the coast of africa. this relates to your point by saying it is 'possible' some dinosaurs exsisted long after most dinosaurs became extinct.


also to prove a larger point, while its true fossils themselves cannot be dated, volcanic matter and other sediments can be dated using radioisotope dating, so whats underneath the fossils is dated and then what above it are dated and thus comes while not an exact date a relible time frame is achieved. all dating proves that all the fossils dated are much older than a few thousand years, in fact they are in the millions.

 

Which is funny, I think. We assume that constants such as nuclear decay rates have always been what they are now. This is unverifiable. However, I have heard people say "then you just undermined all of science because if the constants can change then we cannot know anything about our world." This is sort of irrelevant. We know what the constants are *now*. So we CAN make accurate judgements about our world as it stands. However, to presume that the constants have not ever or will not ever change (specifically speaking in terms of the constants assumed in many dating methods) is simply a matter of faith.

I am not saying that the earth is only a few thousand years old, but I am not saying that it is a few million either. I am just pointing out necessary scientific presuppositions that, to the best of my knowledge, must be taken on faith. This is a fundamental weakness of the empirical thought process (upon which much of science is based).

 

Given that I only saw a short bit on the news, I only know that it was inside the bone, in the marrow. I'd assume the outside bone fossilized around the marrow inside.

But there's not getting through to a young-earther, so I'm leaving this thread. Peace.

 

Yes, one could think the snake's legs 'evolved' off!
BUT, before there was even knowledge in science about it, the Bible
states that God punished the snake. It's a major point, because it was Satan's first apperance.
Let's check out Genesis 3, shall we?

Gen 1:1-3:19

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said, 'You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?"
And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'"
Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, "Where are you?"
So he said, "I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself."
And He said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?"
Then the man said,"The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate."
And the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said,"The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
So the LORD God said to the serpent:
"Because you have done this,You are cursed more than all cattle,And more than every beast of the field;On your belly you shall go,And you shall eat dust All the days of your life. And I will put enmity Between you and the woman,And between your seed and her Seed;He shall bruise your head,And you shall bruise His heel."
To the woman He said:
"I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;In pain you shall bring forth children;Your desire shall be for your husband,And he shall rule over you."
Then to Adam He said,"Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it':
"Cursed is the ground for your sake;In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,And you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground,For out of it you were taken;For dust you are,And to dust you shall return."
NKJV

 

oh wow. So before this, the serpent was a lizard? Why give it a name indicating it is a legless animal? Does that mean snakes are still evil? Wouldn't god do a good enough job of getting rid of legs that there wouldn't be vestigial bones? In the passage directly after that (Genesis 3:23) it says the east wall was guarded by an order of angels and a "flaming sword flashing back and forth." You seem to take the bible fairly literally. Do you believe that somewhere in the middle east (on the Tigris somewhere) there is a divine garden guarded by angels and a flaming sword that flashes back and forth? Or is that one of those many inconsistencies you choose to ignore?

Also, I'm pretty sure there's nothing in the bible about people being punished with wisdom teeth, appendixes (appendices?), and tailbones.

I've noticed you only reply to a very select few of my points...why is that?

 

The garden used to be there. After the flood it got destroyed.
Maybe He left the legs as proof that his word is true.

And lizards and snakes are totally different. Thare are these thing called 'glass lizards' , they're LIZARDS that have no legs. And they're totally different from snakes. For one thing they've got ear sockets, and another thing, that they've got totally different skin from snakes. Therefore it was NOT a lizard.

The tailbone is no more than the end of the spine, without it there'd only be a hip...eww...we'd have more trouble sitting.

Wisdom teeth? What do THEY have to do with evolution?!

 

Ah, the ark. So you also believe that one man and his family went and got two of every animal (do you know how many species there are?), and enough food and fresh water to keep all of them alive for 40 days of rain and 150 of flood, and put it on a 450-foot boat? And then what about when the water receded? Why would there be plants to eat? Or even soil? After that much flooding, the soil, along with the plants, would have been washed away.

But anyways...snakes and lizards are indeed totally different. However, they have the same roots. I think it's safe to say that the evidence points to snakes evolving from lizards. Not all snakes have these leg stumps. Did god leave legs on only some snakes and take them completely away on others? Why would he do that?
Here are a couple of links. I don't expect you to read the 200 page article, just look at the diagrams:
http://www.geocities.com/hartwig_dellmour/Tetradactylus_1985.html
http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/articles/snake_vestigial_limb.html

And here's a link on the tailbone:
http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/top10_vestigial_organs-7.html
Note how it says there have been many well-documented cases of people having the tailbone removed with little or no adverse effects. Those well-documented cases are here:
http://www.coccyx.org/personal/ectomy.htm
The tailbone serves no purpose, regardless of how many anti-evolutionists may claim it anchors muscles and whatever else.

Wisdom teeth are just another left-over body part from a previous evolutionary form. They are not needed, can be removed to benefit a person, and often cause people pain because the lower jaw we have now is smaller than that of the form that came before Homo sapiens. But the number of teeth are the same, so they don't always fit. They're another evolutionary leftover, along with the tailbone (coccyx), appendix,

A couple more of these (if you want to look around that livescience site a bit) are the body hair on humans, and the fact that it puffs out when you are scared. Body hair doesn't keep you warm like it did your ancestors, and puffing it out will not make you look bigger and therefore less desirable prey, like it does many other mammals. Also, whales have hind leg bones and pelvis bones that are tiny and serve no purpose. There are more, all over the place, like the blind cave-fish and the flightless birds, but that's not for now.

By the way, I just want to let you know, if it sounds like I'm being an asshole, as it may sometimes (I dunno), sorry. I tend to get really into my debates.