Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Evolution theories

I was wondering if anyone could point me to which are the most commonly accepted scientific theories on the appearance of human on Earth. I've heard Darwin's one has been discarded...

Thank you,
AnnaBtG.

Well, Anna, I'm not an expert here, but I'm somewhat interested, and I'll try to explain what I think I know. First, the overwhelming majority of the scientific community believes in the theory of evolution, which was first described by Charles Darwin in 1859, in his book "The Origin of the Species". Darwin's main problem was that, while he insisted that the species slowly changed over time, he couldn't explain how this change came about. It was Gregor Mendel who, later in the 19th century, demonstrated that mutations can take place. Most of those mutations are harmful and will lessen an individual's chances of surviving and reproducing, but a few mutations are very advantageous indeed. We actually see such mutations and changes taking place in viruses, bacteria, insects and rodents all the time. For example, just a few months ago I read that rats here in Sweden are becoming immune to the poison that has been used to kill them. Consider. We have fought rats with the same poison for decades. Now imagine that one rat is born with a mutation that makes it immune to this poison. Suppose it survives and reproduces, and suppose it passes on its immunity to rat poison to its offspring. While those rats which are vulnerable to rat posion will die of it, the new species of rat is insensitive, and will thrive. This way, nature, through evolution, has come up with a new species of rat. In a similar way, nature comes up with bacteria that are resistant to penicillin, and with new strains of bacteria and viruses which cause new illnesses like AIDS and bird flu.

As for how the human race actually came about, details are hazy. The thing you must remember is that for most of the time that humanity has existed, probably a few million years, the number of individuals has been very small. Today, when there are six and a half billion humans on the Earth, it's hard to realize that there has ever been very few of us. But there has. For a long time, the very survival of the human race was a very precarious thing. That's why it's so hard to find very many fossils of human skeletons from very long ago. Actually, anthropologists really have found several hugely interesting human and pre-human fossils. The latest find was the discovery of a very small human-like being, dubbed the hobbit. It lived on an island somewhere and didn't become extinct until perhaps fifty thousand years ago, which is really quite recent. (I must stress that I'm not sure about the exact time when this "hobbit" became extinct.)

The main point I want to make is that as far as I can understand, the small size of the population of early Homo Sapiens means that the available number of fossilized skeletons is also very small, and therefore it may be impossible to ever learn exactly when the first true human being was born on this Earth.

Ann

Um...not as such. There is a fundamentalist Christian school of thought, in the US primarily, which has adopted a campaign against Darwin's Theory, but that's by no means a universal agreement that it should be discarded. It's simply an alternative viewpoint. One among many.

LabRat

AFAIK, Darwin's theory hasn't been discarded in the scientific community, and it was actually Darwin who suggested Natural Selection (environmental pressures that weed out unfavourable mutations, like in TOC's example with the rats. And I thought Mendel's biggest breakthrough was showing the inheritibility of traits and their persistence through generations, but he may have also shown mutations.) Of course, Darwin's theory has since been built on, but it's still the basic one taught to first year science students.

As for the evolution of man... I think the current theory is that all humans evolved from a group of about 10 000 who left Africa. There is some evidence, to do with mitochondrial DNA which supports this theory, but there isn't (and probably never will be) solid proof.

The theory says that basically, the 10 000 founders moved out of Africa and slowly spread into different parts of the world. Different mutations, such as height, body fat and skin tone, offered different chances of survival in different regions of the world, and over time, they became more dominant in certain regions. For instance, the further north you went, the less sun exposure you obtained. We need sunlight in order to synthesize vitamins (like Vitamin D), and so lighter skinned people thrived, since the darker your skin is, the more sunlight you block out. The reverse was true for continents closer to the equator.

I can't really remember, off the top of my head, the names or the mechanisms for how those 10 000 came about, but I know they evolved (or so the theory says) from an ancestor common to the apes. The main reason we evolved differently was because we stood up onto two legs. This postural change allowed for greater development of the frontal lobe and other higher order centres in the brain.

And, since I should be revising physics, and not biology, I'll stop before the urge to dig out my text book and look up the order of the Homo-evolution over takes me. <g>

Dave

Actually, the arguments against Darwin's theory of macroevolution are not just a fundamentalist religous view. (And I specify *macro* evolution; the evidence for microevolution -- changes *within* a species is without dispute. Macro, however -- change from one species to another -- has a great deal of scientific evidence to the contrary.)

Michael Behe, for one, wrote a book called Darwin's Black Box which lists, with detailed scientific explanations, some of the biochemical problems with the theory of macroevolution. He is not a Christian, iirc, but an agnostic.

The great thing about that book is that while it has incredibly detailed scientific explanations for the people with the deep science background, he also explains what those scientific explantions mean in terms the rest of the population can understand. It's still a read that requires major thinking to fully understand, but it can be understood by those without a scientific PhD. :p

Bethy

In fact, there is so very much we don't know about macroevolution, and about the origin of life in the first place. I am a space buff, and I always get irritated when astronomers say that there is probably life on Mars, just because there was liquid water there a long time ago. We don't know if conditions on Mars were ever right for life to arise there, because we honestly don't know how life gets started anyway.

So when we try to formulate scientific theories about life on Earth, there are just all these questions that we can't answer at all. We just have no clue. Observations and standard dating of rocks show signs of bacterial life forms on Earth at least three billion years ago. (One way to detect the presence of past bacterial life forms is, or so I believe, to search the rocks for an abundance of certain chemical isotopes that are found in living beings, e.g. an abundance of Carbon-13 instead of Carbon-12, or maybe it was the other way round.)

Interestingly, however, we find no signs of higher life forms until the so called Pre-Cambrian explosion, about 600 million years ago. All of a sudden, the major, basic families of higher life forms were all there. (Please note that "higher life forms" include such things as mosquitos and slugs.) In rocks that age, we find a fantastic variety of fossils. And since then, these major families of life forms that seemingly appeared from nowhere (I even think they are called phyla) have produced a bewildering array of life forms within those families. As far as I know, there have been no signs of any real crossovers. So don't ask yourself how a human being ever evolved from a mosquito or a slug, because I do believe that never happened.

And don't ever think that the theory of evolution can explain everything! It definitely can't. But it is the best theory we have so far. Also, the theory of evolution is a scientific theory. That means that it was formulated in order to explain things that can be observed in the natural world. In Darwin's case, he said that there are so many different species because new species evolve out of old ones. But if this is so, we should be able, given enough time, to observe actual changes within species taking place. In viruses, bacteria, insects and rodents, we do. Also, the more we examine species that are closely related, the more similarities we should find. Geneticists have found that 99% of human DNA is identical to simian DNA.

This is by no means perfect "proof" that everything about the theory of evolution is correct, or that Darwinism can tell us everything about life on Earth. It simply can't. But it is the best scientific theory we have about life on Earth.

A popular recent theory is called Intelligent Design, ID. According to this theory, life is too complex to have arisen purely by chance. Also according to ID, higher life forms are too complex to have arisen out of bacteria. And since science honestly doesn't know how either of these processes actually came about, it's hard to argue.

The problem with ID, however, is that it is not a scientific theory. ID states that a higher being, i.e. God, created and designed life on Earth. That may be so, but the problem is that the suggestion that God created life on Earth simply can't be tested. There's just no way to do it. And a theory that can't be tested at all isn't a scientific theory, but an article of faith.

I think it was just this week that there was an official statement from the Vatican saying that Intelligent Design shouldn't be taught as a scientific theory. I'm sure the Vatican would like us all to believe that God created life on Earth, but the centre of Catholicism nevertheless recognizes that the theory of Intelligent Design can't stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Ann

So... just like evolution, then?

What little I've read about ID doesn't even try to provide any proof for any specific kind of god or higher intelligence -- just can't see any *other* way to explain what's happened (the Pre-Cambrian explosion, for instance).

PJ

I'm taking Earth Sciences and Archaeology and if I were more up-to-date with my readings I'd be able to contribute more, but I just wanted to pop in that the Big Bang Theory is also really popular. A good site with a simple explanation of it could be found here .

/me scurries back to homework

No, Pam, not quite. Evolution does allow us to make certain tests. As I said, if evolution is real, we should be able to observe true changes taking place in some species. And whenever we see bacteria, viruses, insects or rodents becoming immune to our attempts to destroy them, we are indeed watching evolution taking place.

Also, before scientists began unravelling the DNA code, nobody could have predicted how closely related humans and apes are. The fact that our DNA is so similar strengthens the case for evolution.

I'm not at all suggesting that evolution can explain everything about life on Earth, or that everything it says can be tested or proved. But I am saying that there is a difference between evolution and Intelligent Design, in that evolution really can be tested to some degree. For example, if no vermin ever became immune to our pesticides, that would have dealt the theory of evolution a blow. And if our DNA had been very different from the DNA of apes, that, too, would definitely have weakened the case for evolution.

The difference between evolution and Intelligent Design is that I have never heard anyone suggest any tests that could strengthen the case for an intelligent designer. (Please note that the fact that evolution can't explain everything is in itself not acceptable proof of Intelligent Design.) Still worse, I have certainly never heard anyone suggest any tests that might conceivably weaken the case for Intelligent Design. And this, the ability to come up with any tests at all which could prove the theory wrong, is in fact the ultimate litmus test of any scientific theory.

Ann

Reading the discussion here has helped crystalise my own thoughts on the subject.

I think one of the things that bothers me about theories which put the existence of an extraordinary being at the centre of the evolution of the human race is that it puts a block on curiosity and the thirst for knowledge. It says that there's no point in trying to understand events like the Pre-Cambrian explosion because they were caused solely by this being; that there is no process to investigate and research and understand. That makes me sad, because surely we are at our best when we're learning and developing our understanding of the world in which we live and how it works.

We've seen it before; the church blocking scientists from further research because their theories challenge the fundamental beliefs of the church. Now, we've come a long way since the days of Galileo (or was it Copernicus?) and the church is a much more enlightened body of people than it was back in those days, but I'd hate for us to take any steps backwards from the position we've reached.

And just to balance things out, I do want to say that I have great respect for religion and the church. A tremendous amount of good work is done in the community by its officers and members, and I hope that what I'm saying here doesn't sound patronising, because I mean it very sincerely.

Yvonne

Actually, the reason I asked this question was my attempt to answer this question:

'If Christianity and science don't contradict each other, how do you explain this?'

'This' being the following story:

I am a Christian (Orthodox). At the same time, though, I have a great interest in natural sciences and try to explain the environment the scientific way. Since I was old enough to be able to understand the concepts of both Genesis and Darwin's theory, I (thought? or did someone offer this explanation to me? can't remember) that Adam and Eve were an allegory for something that didn't really happen, but it's there to explain how we are really the work of God - who was up there watching and controlling our evolution, which took place like Darwin said. Last year, at Religion class, the book supported this theory. So I was rest assured.

And then, a few weeks ago, we had an argument with my mom. She likes studying books on the Orthodox faith, and she said that all books agreed that Adam and Eve were really the fathers of every other human being on Earth and took the Genesis literally, word for word. I turned to my Religion teachers at school. One of them stuck by the book. The other one (who is a priest) said that the school books aren't always right, and, in that particular example, the explanation offered is wrong. He did agree that Christianity and science don't contradict each other and he brought over some books that supported my mom's theory, so that we could have a discussion on the subject. The problem with those books, though, is that if Darwin's theory is the one accepted scientifically, then they really, really contradict it.

The teacher in question was the one who told me that Darwin's theory had been discarded, but he didn't know what it had been replaced with, so I thought I'd search myself, hence my post here. What's interesting, though, is that the school Biology book supports Darwin's theory (although it's in the last chapter, which is never taught for lack of time. I did read it, though.).

Thanks for your replies, everyone, and keep them coming; I feel in need of 'food for thought' right now

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Okay, Anna, I feel I'm sticking my neck into a hornet's nest here, but...

If you are going to read my post here, the first thing you must remember is that I'm not a Christian. I'm not religious at all. I grew up very close to some slightly crazy Christian fundamentalists, and I tried my best to be a Christian when I was a kid. When I'm saying that I'm not a Christian now, that means that I have actively rejected Christianity. I'd like to tell you that I can discuss religious questions in a totally objective and disinterested way, but I really don't think that is true. So you have to take everything I say here with a grain of salt.

There are, I think, basically two ways of being Christian. One way is to embrace the general spirit of the Bible, perhaps especially the way it is expressed in the teachings of Jesus. The other way is to believe in absolutely every word of the Bible. Here's what I think about these two approaches to Christianity:

Number one, you are inspired by the spirit of the Bible and by Jesus: Yes, yes, yes, that's lovely. I must honestly tell you that some of the people I admire most belong to this category. They are the ones that make me feel that if more people were like them, the world would just be a so much better place.

So, if you have this faith, can you easily believe in both Christianity and science, possibly expressed as Darwinism, simultaneously? Absolutely, if you ask me. Having such a faith means that you believe that God is the force behind everything in existence. I guess it means believing in Intelligent Design. But I also think that if you have this faith, you won't feel the need to push and fight for the concept of Intelligent Design. You certainly won't need to try to turn it into a scientific theory. I think that, basically, you take an intellectual and rational approach to science and try to judge science on its own merits. But you take a different approach to your faith. You take your faith on faith, to put it very simply.

I sometimes call myself an atheist. But I'm well aware that an atheist is a person who believes that there is no God. The truth is that nobody can know that there is no God. Consider. God is, per definition, superhuman. That means that whatever we do to try to find God, to prove or disprove his existence, God is always one step ahead of us, and we can never, ever catch up. Therefore, on those occasions when I call myself an atheist, I'm aware that I'm stating a position of faith. The thing you should remember is that we can never disprove the existence of God. This also means that whatever science is going to discover in the future, you will always be able to embrace those findings and still keep your belief in God, if you wish. Because, like I said: Whatever science is going to find, whatever it is going to prove, it will never disprove the existence of God. (And if you want to know what I think, you won't have to worry too much about what science will find about Jesus, either. Jesus was most definitely a real person, if you ask me. And he was just amazing. And no, I don't believe that he was the son of God, but I could never prove that to you if I tried. And it wouldn't make me happy in any way if I managed to convince you of it.)

That was one way of approaching Christianity, of embracing the spirit of it rather than the letter. The second approach is to approach the letter of it. And as you might have guessed already, I totally, completely reject religious fundamentalism. To be honest with you, few things scare me more than than this utter conviction that you can know and embrace the most crazy or horrible things just because they are in the Bible. Actually, I don't know what I will put past people who are, well, totally, totally unreasonable like that. (All right: I can see that I'm being unreasonable here. Of course I know that not all religious fundamentalists are the same; my little old aunt, for example, who believes in every word in the Bible, nevertheless knows for a fact that nothing is more important than loving thy neighbour as thyself. Nevertheless, the things I've heard some fundamentalists say, and the gleam I've seen in their eyes, is enough to give me nightmares.)

So I really should warn people here: Watch it. If you want to defend the literal truth of every word of the Bible, watch it. I'm so ready to do battle with you, except I wouldn't like to say some of those things that I would probably be saying.

But this I will say. Anna, honestly. You should not believe in the literal truth of Genesis. Genesis is not literally true. It simply isn't. If you have to choose between accepting Darwinism and believing in the literal truth of Genesis, please pick Darwinism. But if you want to accept Darwinism and science and still want to believe in God, in Jesus and in the idea that God has, in one way or another, created us people, and that he wants to save us, go ahead. Please just go ahead. There is no conflict. Really.

Ann

As an aside, the issue with Intelligent Design is a subset of whether belief in God can be scientific. Note that the question isn't whether it can be right but strictly scientific.

For any given test of whether God exists and intervenes in the universe, there are only two possibilities. Said God may be consistent and do the same thing every time -- in this case, God's action is indistinguishable from the laws of nature. Alternatively, God may act only in specific situations, leaving natural law in force the rest of the time. This would be considered a miracle, and is inherently untestable.

Science cannot test the existence of God. Science is a very useful tool, but only when applied to its proper domain -- if it can't be tested, it can't be approached. Science can tell us, e.g. that the physical parameters of the universe and the location of Earth are *just* right for life to have arisen. What science can't actually tell us is whether that's the case because Someone made it that way, or whether with so many planets in the cosmos it had to eventually happen somewhere.

Microevolution, the development of specific traits within a species, is more or less unchallenged. There are some, including me, who question whether macroevolution adequately explains everything and whether there's sufficient evidence for it. Other Christians take the view that macroevolution could be the tool God used. There are some who stand on a boundary -- C.S. Lewis (I forget which book) presents a possible story by which Adam and Eve are partially allegory. Evolution progressed to a certain point, and God chose two of the pre-simian creatures and invested them with souls and the capacity to understand right and wrong. There are a lot of views out there....

Okay, this is going to be a long post. Prepare yourself.

I am speaking not as a scientist, but as a well educated and fairly well informed layman on this subject. And yes, for the record, I am also a Christian.

Basically, I study this (and yes, I'm still constantly finding out new stuff about it) because I believe that if I am going to accept certain portions of the Bible as Truth, then I have to accept the entire thing as true -- I can't just pick and choose the portions I want to believe.

However, the reason I can feel confident accepting the entire Bible as Truth is because I've tested it. Actually, I am constantly testing it. I am not a "check your brains at the door and accept things on blind faith" kind of person. And one thing I love about my church (contrary to what Yvonne said about religious institutions stifling the pursuit of knowledge and science) is that they encourage questions. They encourage us to ask questions of our leaders there, and even to go out and research on our own to see if our findings support what they've said or not.

No, I cannot prove the supernatural stuff -- the existence of God, miraculous events, etc. Nobody can. That's what makes it supernatural.

But there is a ton of other historical information in the Bible that can be verified. Archeological findings are constantly supporting Biblical tellings of events. And even those that don't directly support, also don't contradict.

In contrast, though, for Darwin's theory of macroevolution, there is very little evidence to support it and a great deal that contradicts it.

Things like the Cambrian explosion (his theory requires a constant progression of slow change; so why instead does the fossil record show a sudden explosion of hugely varied life forms?).

Faked evidence. (Have you ever heard of Haeckel's embryonic drawings? He claimed that since most embryos were similar at the earliest stages of development, that supported evolution -- we all start out the same, because we used to be the same, and then later development differentiates us. However, his embryos were actualy in mid-development, not early -- and the early development embryos are very different. For some reason, we all start out different, hit a stage where we're similar, and then go back to being different again. Plus, he purposely chose embryos of animals that were naturally more similar -- choosing a salamander to represent amphibians, for example, instead of a frog, which is much more different.)

Irreducible complexity. (Darwin's theory says that evolution comes about because mutations "try" something, build on it if it works, and reject if it doesn't. However, that would be like saying, "Okay, I'm going to build a mousetrap. I've got a board. That doesn't work. Let's add a spring. Nope, that doesn't work. Let's get rid of the spring and add some cheese. Nope, still doesn't work. Let's get rid of the cheese and add a metal snap thing. Nope, still doesn't work." And it never will. A mousetrap is irreducibly complex -- It needs every single piece of its complexity to work together to function. Take away one portion and it won't work at all. Adding each new piece didn't continue to improve it -- it was junk all the way until it had all of them. The same is true for life. Not just human life -- even the tiniest forms of life.)

Now, I realize that Intelligent Design is not scientifically testable. As Ann said, it doesn't have that basic 'litmus test' that is necessary for valid scientific theory. However, whether or not we have a viable theory to replace it, Darwinism and macroevolution do have that litmus test -- and have failed it spectacularly.

(Not that I'm knocking Darwin -- he had a great idea for his time, with the knowledge and resources available to him. However, subsequent scientific discoveries and advancements have consistently not supported his theory.)

Oh, one more thing. Ann said, Of course we are seeing evolution take place. Microevolution. Change within a species. There is gobs and gobs and gobs of scientific evidence for microevolution. Heck, just look at all the breeds of dogs and you can see that. :p

Macroevolution... Not so much. Take fruit flies. They live such a short life that we can study generation upon generation upon generation. Enough that there should be some progression into the next species. And guess what? There isn't. Ever.

Plus, Darwin came up with this theory based on an infinitly existing universe. An ageless one, so to speak. The comes...The Big Bang. Which does have scientific proof. And scientists recently pinned down the age of our universe to 13.4 billion years. (give or take a day <g>) The age of the Earth itself is only supposed to be a few billion years. It seems like such a huge number to us, but frankly, it isn't enough time for the entire spectrum of life as we know it to evolve according to Darwin's standards. This is well known among the upper echelons of the scientific community, but they aren't publicizing it, certainly aren't putting it into the lower level schools, because, aside from the not-very-scientific-theory of ID, they don't have anything to replace it with.

I warned you it would be a long post. :p Anyone who made it this far, you have my congratulations.

Bethy

I reject the idea of a god or anything superatural, to me such things are equivalent to "things we haven't found an explanation for, yet."

Consequently I reject the idea of ID, but on a lighter note I found another evolutionar y theory.

I have been feeling very torn over whether I should respond to Bethy's post, and if so, how I should do it. In my last post I basically issued a challenge to anyone who wanted to defend the literal truthfulness of everything in the Bible. That is exactly what Bethy does, when she says this:
To prove the infallibility of the Bible (and possibly her own testing of it), Bethy refers to unspecified archaeological findings. But, while she demonstrates very many shortcomings of Darwinism - little scientific support for macroevolution, faked drawings of embryos, irreducibly complex workings of mousetraps, the stubborn refusal of fruit flies to evolve into other species and Darwin's concepts about the ages of the universe and the Earth - Bethy offers practically no details at all to demonstrate the credibility of the Bible. Specifically, she never once discusses the words of the Bible. These words, after all, must be the carriers, the receptacles of the absolute truth that she claims to have found in the Holy Book. Without the words the Bible is meaningless; without the words, the Bible is nothing. Yet never once does Bethy quote the Bible; never once does she try to demonstrate the obvious veracity of its writings, scrutinized as chapter and verse. It's like claiming that you have found an old letter which contains a fantastic piece of scientific evidence, but when you are asked demonstrate the truthfulness of its message, all you can do is describe the paper quality of the envelope in which the letter was found.

Well, I could do exactly what Bethy isn't doing: I could quote the Bible very carefully. I could dissect important passages from it and hold up statement after statement for your consideration. I could exhort you to ask yourself truthfully if you find these statements convincing. I could challenge you to say if you would ever, ever have believed in them, if they hadn't been there in the Bible. And if you do say you believe in them, I could ask you if do so because you honestly discern the hallmark of truth in them, or if you believe because you simply can't stand the idea of ever betraying, or losing, your faith.

But I'm not going to dissect the Bible like that. Not here. And the reason why I won't is that I believe that many of you would be extremely hurt and upset if I did it. This puts me in a strange situation. I feel that I have very good arguments to support my conviction and my position, but I can't voice those arguments, because many people will find them too hurtful.

It's not as if I can't sympathize with the hurt and discomfort many of you would feel if I actually posted my own arguments about the Bible here. Because I have felt your fear myself. When I was a kid, I really, really tried to be a Christian. I was no more than eight when I realized that I would never be good enough to make it into heaven. After that, it really shouldn't have mattered if I lost my faith in God, since I considered myself doomed to go to hell anyway. But instead I was actually terrified of losing whatever faith I had. And because I held on to my faith so frantically, I was terrified of Darwinism, of the possibility of finding the theory of evolution so convincing that I might have to accept it, thus losing my faith. Similarly, I was deathly scared of the Bible, of the possibility of finding it wanting and having to reject it and so, again, losing my faith.

I know how totally life-defining it is to have a faith. I can understand that when people fight for their faiths, they do to some extent fight for their lives. I realize that I must respect other people's faiths, as long as those faiths don't prompt them to do totally unacceptable things.

In the end, I can only ask you this. Don't let your faith totally control you. Try to find the strength in yourself to define what you believe in. Ask yourself how you would define the concept of being good, of doing good.

There once was a little boy born to a young girl who wasn't married to the boy's father. She married another man instead, who probably made it very clear to one and all that the boy wasn't his offspring. The boy lived in apocalyptic times, in times of great upheaval, when a mighty empire was taking over the boy's land, and more and more people talked about the coming of an envoy of God. A man of the wilderness called to people to make amends, to cleanse themselves, and the boy, now a young man, was swept up in the religious maelstrom. He took to the roads, accompanied by followers. He visited people, talked to them, comforted them, exhorted them, blessed them, cured them. He stood up to authorities and defended the weak and the despised ones. Again and again, he defended women. Women in general, and "fallen", "questionable" women in particular. Again and again. He wanted to make a better world. In the end, the authorities of the mighty empire which had occupied his land had had enough, and they executed him. After about three hundred years, the same empire embraced this man as their savior. They changed his name so that it accorded with the grammatical rules of their own language; they amended the story of his life and death. They created the religion that bears his name. And if that man were to come back to the Earth today, he might not have recognized the things that are being taught in his name.

Please remember him, the little boy without an Earth father, the boy regarded by his own society as an illegitimate child. The boy aching for the poor and the wronged-against in this world, and for the children. And for the women. The boy who grew into a man who risked everything to help usher in a better world, and who eventually perished for his efforts. Perhaps he rose from the dead afterwards. I don't think he did, but that doesn't matter. Just remember him. And ask yourself: if this man were to return to the Earth today, would he recognize you as one of his own?

Ann

Interesting discussion... it's widened a bit since I last checked in

Ann, I'm quite certain we all have lots of arguments jostling around in our brains (at least I do, and I assume you and I aren't the only ones). You've raised a ton of issues and I don't intend to answer all of them. If you want to e-mail me, I'm fine with that, but... as you say, we've got two different faiths going here, and it's darn near impossible to argue someone into believing something they're heavily invested in *not* believing.

If you were interested, I'd recommend you check out a couple of books by Lee Strobel -- "The Case for Christ" and "The Case for a Creator." (Anna, you might be interested in that second one, too) He's an ex-journalist who, like you, started off in a church, but then left the faith. Later, he started having second thoughts, and did what journalists do -- he interviewed the experts They convinced him. It was convincing to me, too, but then it would be, wouldn't it? Since I believe it to start with. But I learned a lot nonetheless.

Well... that's kind of the whole point. Nobody will ever be good enough to make it into heaven. That's why Jesus came, to die in our place and make it possible for us to get into heaven anyway -- by *his* righteousness. We don't earn that. We can't. God knows I can't.

One last thing -- if Jesus wasn't the son of God, then he was either lying or he was out of his flippin' mind. I can see why someone would try to lie to gain a following -- it wasn't at all uncommon at the time (or now, either, but that's a whole other topic <g> ) but why wouldn't he recant under torture? It seems to me that he must have believed what he was saying -- so if it wasn't true, then he was nuts.

Of course, that's assuming the Bible accounts are accurate, but that's been reasonably well established, historically speaking, with corroborating accounts in non-religious records.

But that's really neither here nor there. It's not my job to convince you of anything, even if I could, which I don't imagine I can. You're a smart lady and you've given this lots of thought. It'd be pretty foolish of me to assume I could change your mind in just a few paragraphs. I just wanted to lay out my side of it.

A little bit back more on topic -- I think science is a good thing, and has benefitted us immensely. It's a study of nature, and therefore (IMO) of the God of nature -- he's the one who made us curious. We're not going to discover anything that contradicts God -- things we don't understand, maybe, but that's not the same thing. I don't like the parts where people (not anyone here, I hasten to add) take a shaky theory and use it to call me a knuckle-dragging idiot... but hey, I've been called worse. You should have seen those flame wars around the Kerths we had a few years back

Anyway... great job, everybody, in staying civil. We're all grown-ups here; we can disagree without being disagreeable, if you see what I mean

PJ

Ann,

I’m sorry if I gave the impression that I was trying to convert you with my post. I never intended it to be a treatise on why the Bible is trustworthy, or I certainly would have given more citations/sources. Actually, I probably wouldn't have posted that at all -- as Pam said, mere words here will not convince you of something you have decided not to believe.

Instead, I put that information in there to show where I am coming from. Yes, I am a Christian. Yes, I look at science and the world through a Christian paradigm.

However, and this is why I even brought it up, this is not synonymous with blanket acceptance of whatever my pastor tells me to believe. I am a questioner. All my life I have wanted the ‘why’ answers. And I am fortunate enough to go to church that encourages that attitude. So when I say something I believe, it is usually something for which I have found information from multiple sources – not just because ‘the church told me.’

No, I have not researched every single word of the Bible. If you’ll recall, I said that I am “constantly testing it.” Anyone who says they have researched/proved everything in the Bible is either a flat-out liar or a fool. But, then again, neither have I researched every single aspect of aerodynamics. And yet I still trust that airplane to get up in the air and land safely with me where I want to be. While I am always coming up with new questions and seeking out more answers, I also am operating with the attitude that what I have discovered offers enough “proof” for me to trust the rest – until something comes up in my search that flat out contradicts it. Even then, just as a scientist will accept one random anomaly outside all the nicely clustered points on his graph, I’m not going to throw out years of study over one detail.

I guess what I was trying to say was that yes, I do have faith. But my faith is based on and extrapolated from research and facts.

Now, as for the detailed evidence I did put in my post – with regards to Darwinism, the whole topic of this thread. If you would like more detailed references to where I found them...

The Cambrian Explosion – fairly commonly known in both the scientific and layman communities. I have heard it from multiple sources.

Irreducible Complexity – Michael Behe’s book, Darwin’s Black Box. As mentioned earlier, not a Christian book.

Haeckel’s drawings – Lee Stroebel’s book, The Case for a Creator. As Pam said, yes, he is a Christian and is writing from a Christian viewpoint. However, he is also a very well respected journalist (used to be the legal editor for the Chicago Tribune) and went about all his books with the same attitude towards research that he used for researching stories for the newspaper. The Haeckel information is from the interview with Jonathan Wells, a PhD in molecular and cell biology from Berkeley, who works for the Discovery Institute in Seattle.

For the purpose of this discussion (whether or not Darwinism is a valid scientific theory any more), it doesn't matter whether you accept the Christian worldview or not. It doesn't matter whether ID is a valid scientific theory or not.

You can remove religion and ID from the equation completely, look at Darwinism from a scientific point of view, and it still doesn't cut it. From where I’m standing, there is simply not enough evidence for it and too much against it.

As always, it’s a pleasure to discuss things with such an intelligent and reasonable group of people. Courtesy and a willingness to listen to the other side of the story is part of what I love so much about the people on these boards!

Bethy

The problem with Intelligent Design, as with most Creationist theories, is that it's essentially describing God as a con-man, creating a world which to every test that science can make to date appears to work by rules that do not require divine intervention. It's also impossible to verify, except by personal conviction.

I have no problems with a theory that God created the universe as a whole including the basic conditions for life then let natural phenomena do the rest; I have severe problems with anything that requires continual adjustment by God, because everything we see seems to work pretty well without it.

Evolution isn't perfect, because there are huge gaps in the fossil record and in our knowledge of the fine details of the processes involved, but every new bit of evidence either supports it or does nothing to disprove it. It isn't telling us that the universe as a whole has been created so as to mislead us. Intelligent Design does exactly that.

I probably shouldn't, but I do feel the need to explain at least a little bit of how I came by my views of the Bible. When I was twenty, I reached the conclusion that religion is basically a social thing: people believe in the same things as their families, friends and communities believe in. Sharing your friends and family's specific religion is a very important way of showing your loyalty to them. Having the right religion can, therefore, actually be thought of as a civic-minded thing to do. (Similarly, by the same token, being an atheist is suspect and community-threatening.)

So I had come to the conclusion that people use their faith mainly to prove that they belong to a specific community. (Of course I now realize that people have other reasons for being religious, too.) Interestingly, while Christian people will almost always point to the Bible as the ultimate justification of their own faith, they will very often be surprisingly ignorant and uninterested in this supposed cornerstone of their religion. (Which is exactly my point: Religion has little to do with 2,000-year-old books, and everything to do with the lives we live here and now and the people we want to be friends with.)

So when I was twenty, I rejected Christianity for the simple reason that I felt that being Christian was little more than an attempt to fit in and be a part of Christian communities. It didn't seem to have anything to do with the Bible and the things the Bible tells us. In other words, I rejected what I perceived as the "social dance", the "going through the motions" of acting like a Christian. (And since I grew up between two different Christian churches, one liberal and one fundamentalist, the idea of what a proper Christian social dance should be was anything but clear to me.) Rejecting the outward show of Christianity left me with no clue of what I thought of the Bible as such, the actual foundation of Christianity.

So the year I turned thirty, I sat down to actually read the Bible. I spent much of the summer of 1985 cooped up in our public library, reading the Bible with Encyclopedia Britannica lying next to me to be used as a reference book.

What was I looking for? What did I hope to find? The point I want to make is that I approached the Bible with an open mind. Specifically, I want to make it very clear that it never occurred to me to reject the Bible simply because it tells us about miracles. If an all-powerful God exists, if he has made the laws of nature, then we should expect him to be able to temporarily revoke those laws of nature, if he so wishes. There was no way I could reject the Bible out of hand, simply because I knew it would tell me stories of miracles.

But what I was looking for was something else: call it "character assessment", "witness reliability" or "logical coherence". Imagine that you are a member of a jury and you are hearing a witness giving testimony. This witness is describing an event which is in the past, and there is no way ever that you can go back in time and find out for yourself what really happened. All you can do is try to assess the witness. Does he seem reliable to you? Does he appear to be an attentive observer? Does he seem to have a hidden agenda of any sort? If you possess any special expertise, and the witness's account touches on something which your expertise makes you particularly good at judging, does the witness appear to have seen those particular little details that you would absolutely expect him to see, if his story is true?

So I read the Bible as if the Bible was a witness giving testimony in court, and I was a member of the jury whose job it was to decide whether it was probable that the events that the Bible was recounting had actually taken place.

I said in my last post that I was not going to dissect the Bible. Well, I'm not going to do that - much. Seeing that this thread started as a discussion about evolution theories, however, I think it should be alright for me to say something about Genesis, about the Bible's account of how God creates the universe and the Earth. After all, most people who strongly reject Darwinism do so because they claim to believe in Genesis instead. That makes it reasonable to scrutinize what Genesis really says about the story of Creation.

So if you read Genesis 1:1-19, you'll see that the first thing God does is create light. The second thing he does is start the time cycle we are familiar with, the cycle of day and night. After that, he places a dome, apparently a cheese-dish-cover-shaped hemisphere, in the middle of a cosmos-sized water ocean. (Gen.1:6-7). By placing this dome in the water, God seemingly creates a bubble of air in the otherwise water-choked universe, a bubble of air where land-living creatures can breathe. (The dome is the sky, by the way.)The fourth thing God does is separate water from land (Gen.1:9-10). Next, God makes the land bring forth vegetation, plants and fruit trees. (Gen. 1:11.) Only after that, not until the fourth day, does God create the Sun. (Gen. 1:14-19.)

In other words, Genesis describes a situation where night and day exist, even though the Sun is absent. (As you know, we experience night and day because the Earth makes one full turn on its axis in twenty-four hours, rotating any spot on its surface (except the poles) first into the sunlight, then away from it.) Perhaps more seriously, the Bible states that the Earth is a green and living world, full of plants and fruit trees, before the Sun even exists. Is that possible? Well yes, because if God is omnipotent, anything is possible for him. But is it likely? No. As you all know, all green plants and trees are totally dependent on the Sun today, because they use sunlight to synthesize the nutrients they need through the process of photosynthesis. If - and I say if - God originally created the plants so that they didn't need sunlight at all, then he would have to go back and change them afterwards, to make them as Sun-dependent as they are today. Besides, how did he create day and night without the Sun? And why would he create night and day without the Sun in the first place, seeing that he would have to go back afterwards and change everything, so that day and night is created through the interplay between the Earth and the Sun?

Is there a reason why the Bible tells us such a weird tale about the interplay, or lack of it, between the Earth and the Sun? Well, I'd say there are two reasons. The first reason probably has to do with simple ignorance. The story about the dome in the sea is clear evidence to me that whoever wrote this story knew very little about the structure and workings of the universe. For the same reason, this writer may have understood next to nothing about our solar system and the role the Sun plays in it.

But there is another reason here, which I find even more interesting. During the time when Genesis was written down, Sun-worship was a popular religion in large parts of the Middle East. I think it is likely that whoever wrote down Genesis was well aware of the practice of worshipping the Sun as a God. To discourage people from thinking highly of the Sun in any way, the writer of the first part of Genesis may have deliberately played down the importance of the Sun. Actually, I find it hard to believe that most people who lived 2,000 or 3,000 years ago would honestly have believed that the Sun is so unimportant as it is made out to be here. Probably the writer of this text didn't necessarily believe it, either. (And if he didn't, he may actually not have fully believed in his own story, the story of the details of how God creates the world.) But he was pushing his own agenda, that of combatting Sun-worship and promoting belief in one of the Biblical Gods. (And if you want me to explain "one of the Biblical Gods", email me.)

So. I approached the Bible as if I was a member of the jury hearing the Bible giving testimony. And after I had heard the testimony of Genesis, I imagined myself telling the other jurors that I found the Genesis witness totally unreliable. And I have to tell you that things went on in much the same manner during the rest of the summer, and after I was done reading, the "truth" of the Bible had crumbled like sand running between my fingers.

I have rejected the Bible not because I have "proved" that it is wrong, but because I think that the Bible proved to me, again and again, that it is unreliable, to some extent ignorant, incoherent and self-contradictory. (And much of it is solemn, poetic, inspiring and beautiful - and some of it is horrendously, horrifyingly cruel.) That still doesn't prove that is is wrong. If God is indeed omnipotent, anything is possible for him, even making history unfold in exactly the same way that the Bible describes it. But when logic and reason strongly suggest that a Biblical story is untrue, and God's omnipotence (as well as his supposed desire to make everything in the Bible true) is the only thing propping it up, then I don't hesitate for a second to side with logic and reason, and reject the story as fraud. Or, if you'd rather I used another word, I don't mind saying I regard the story as poetry, not truth.

And to those of you who completely reject Darwinism, let me say this. I do believe that some of your criticism is valid, but not all of it, and not even most of it. And before you say that the Bible, unlike Darwinism, reveals the full truth of how everything was created, shouldn't you take at least an ounce of that criticism which you use against Darwinism to scrutinize the supposed truths of your own Bible?

Ann