The Evolution Debate

[Ptichka]

With the recent debate in the news, I've been wondering where the people on this forum place themselves. On the one hand, there is a liberal majority here; on the other hand, most people here do seem to be religious. So, which "theory" best suits your believes?

 

[Skatehappy]

Here is an interesting link; it is a commentary on the debate.

http://catholicexchange.com/vm/index.asp?vm_id=2&art_id=29664&sec_id=#section57113

 

[Joesitz (RIP)]

Everything I've read from science, shows that homo erectus began some 40,000 years ago If a supreme being made the world in seven days, as pointed out in the OT, what was going on between the origins of the OT (4,000 years ago) and the arrival of man as we know it, some 40,000 years ago?

Faith and science occasionaly agree, but for me, science has the answers to the origins of the universe (not just our world). Faith comes from family upbringing. Many cultures have belief in a god. The Egyptians came first with the one god but the people wouldn't have it.

Joe

 

[Antilles]

I'm all for the evolution theory. I'll keep my theories on religion to myself.

 

[Grgranny]

This is pretty strange. I cannot vote. It says I already voted when I had not. No big deal, just strange. And, of course, you know I'm with the God theory. After posting this, it says I can vote! Weird.

 

[bronxgirl]

to me, science is science and faith is faith, and as a scientist, I have never had any problems reconciling the two. I accept evolution as how H. sapiens and all other species came to be, but I prefer to keep my religious views to myself

 

[Ladskater]

Everything I've read from science, shows that homo erectus began some 40,000 years ago If a supreme being made the world in seven days, as pointed out in the OT, what was going on between the origins of the OT (4,000 years ago) and the arrival of man as we know it, some 40,000 years ago?

Faith and science occasionaly agree, but for me, science has the answers to the origins of the universe (not just our world). Faith comes from family upbringing. Many cultures have belief in a god. The Egyptians came first with the one god but the people wouldn't have it.

Joe

Creation did not take not six 24 hour days as we know it, but six thousand years - God rested on the seventh.

 

[bronxgirl]

not to sound blasphemous, or to denegrate anyone's religious views, but what is 6,000 years to the Eternal? A blink of an eye? Why should H.sapien's perception of time have the same meaning to the Eternal? This is one of the points I get very hung up on whne discussing "intelligent design" or "creationism". What is the meaning of an hour to God?

 

[Joesitz (RIP)]

not to sound blasphemous, or to denegrate anyone's religious views, but what is 6,000 years to the Eternal? A blink of an eye? Why should H.sapien's perception of time have the same meaning to the Eternal? This is one of the points I get very hung up on whne discussing "intelligent design" or "creationism". What is the meaning of an hour to God?

Not to be blasphemous. I do respect others religious beliefs but I cannot become part of any of it.

I think an hour on what we call earth (that name from the Greek Gods?) would not be the same as an hour on Jupiter. Do the crreationists believe that their God created the universe with different hours?

Joe

 

[Mathman]

This is pretty strange. I cannot vote. It says I already voted when I had not. No big deal, just strange. And, of course, you know I'm with the God theory. After posting this, it says I can vote! Weird.

GrGranny, maybe God was waiting to see which side you were on before He let you vote.

 

[Mathman]

Time line?

Well, according to the best estimates of present day cosmologists and extra-galactic astronomers, who devote their careers to sifting the evidence as best they can...

The universe was created (by God, or by Someone whose mysteries lie equally beyond the reach of scientific inquiry) about 14 billion years ago.

According to what has become, since the 1960s, the "standard big bang model, with inflation and cold dark matter," at first the universe was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

After about 300,000 years (as we humans came later to divide time into days and years), the primordial plasma of mass/energy cooled to the extent that atomic hydrogen could form. This astonishing and singular event released high energy photons (particles of light) formerly trapped in an opaque labyrinth of interactions with quarks and leptons -- and there was light!

We can still "see" this fireball from the dawn of time. After all, it filled the universe and there is nowhere else for it to go, so it must still be here, all around us! This is the Cosmic Background Radiation, now diminished in intensity by the expansion of the universe, first detected in the microwave band in 1965 by Penzias and Wilson, for which discovery they won the Nobel Prize.

The days went by, and about 5 billion years ago (so the geologists tell us) the earth was created out of a small remnant of the cloud of hydrogen gas that condensed to form the sun. And the earth evolved and in due course the waters under heaven were gathered unto one place, and the dry land appeared, and the dry land was called Earth and the waters were called the Seas.

Well, according to the researches of evolutionary biologists, life began in the sea, and the waters brought forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life, the fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of the heavens, and great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind. And after this (maybe a couple of billion years ago) the dry Earth also brought forth living creatures after their kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the Earth.

Personally, I do not see anything in this scientific account which could cause offense to the religious temperament.

The only point of contention, it seems to me, is this: What does the Bible mean when it says that all these living things were brought forth “after their kind.” If it means that two monkeys are likely to produce a baby monkey rather than a baby elm tree, biologists do more than merely concur -- they can explain to us the exact mechanisms at the sub cellular level that mediate these processes.

Biologists specializing in the mechanisms of natural selection attempt to come to a similarly satisfactory understanding of the details of how “the Earth brings forth creatures, according to their kind” (Gen. 1:24). I applaud their efforts. I think they have come up with some pretty cool stuff.

 

[Grgranny]

Larry ---

I started to read your last answer but will have to wait until it's in english!

 

[Skatehappy]

Another link to the debate:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-08-14-evolution-debate_x.htm

As for me, evolution seems too random, so I have to go with either Intelligent Design or Creationism.