Serious Evolution/Creation debate

[Woodchuck]

If God was so good at designing living creatures then why did so many species die out?

And you can't say "let's see YOU do better" when we're speculating that an omniscient and omnipotent being would do better at creating living creatures... not a human. (Although once humans get better at bioengineering it will be highly amusing to see the theological ramifications.)

 

[mattj]

Why would a god who drowned all but a handful of every species and says he's going to burn all of creation to cinders be concerned with whether or not some species last throughout the entire story.

 

[Codraroll]

Now let me tell you guys, if I ever designed a computer it would have a 20 inch flexible screen and be solar powered and have a Terrabite of RAM and weigh an ounce! That's how I'd do it!

Well... we're assuming an omnipotent thingy was doing the design, and that doesn't just means he could create whatever he wanted, but he could also bend the rules defining what would work and what wouldn't. No restrictions, no limitations, and any rules - obeyed or not - would have to be defined by the god in question at the point of creation anyway. In other words, any difficulty or clashing design requirements would be a self-imposed challenge, by definition.

Then again, Genesis is a pretty good argument that the Abrahamic god is a terrible designer, so I guess the Christians have got that bit covered. "Intelligent design" wouldn't imply "perfect design", as examplified by the whole mess at the Garden of Eve.

 

[Jorgen]

Backtracking like that kinda reneges the point about perfect-tuning that makes an ID claim compelling to begin with.

Or maybe it doesn't. Really, this whole "omni" thing is something you can get around by just revising the claims to "very". If you just back up a little bit and say "okay, he's not all powerful, I mean he can't be a paradox, but he's still capable of creating the universe and having a lot of (but not unbounded) control over it", then the problem of evil is more or less averted. This probably causes other problems that I can't immediately see, because otherwise I don't see why backtracking on the "omnis" isn't just standard practice at this point.

 

[mattj]

I've yet to see a reason why the god of the Bible should want to design perfect creatures, other than disgruntled teens on the internet think he ought to have.

 

[New World Order]

I don't really care much about the whole creationism vs evolution argument. But lets take a look at the skink, within a span of just a couple decades, these seemingly insignificant beings have started to develop placenta like tissue, with more and more found with each passing year. If that's not sufficient evidence for the reality of punctuated equilibrium for you, then I'm sorry you're an ignorant dumbfuck and there's no help for you. The reality of evolution doesn't necessarily mean that creationism is definitively false, the two are not mutually exclusive. However, anyone that just outright denies the existence of evolution in the face of overwhelming evidence is beyond reasoning with, and based solely on DSM-IV criteria, is borderline schizophrenia.

 

[New World Order]

Fun fact: I tried looking up information on the anti-evolution argument in Japanese-- it doesn't even have its own Wikipedia page. There is a 2 line sentence mentioning it exists under the page on the theory of evolution. Discussion on this topic flat out doesn't exist. (Same with Chinese when I looked around...)

I will say that I consider myself Christian and have my doubts on the actual mechanics laid out in the theory (change seems too fast to be completely reliant on random mutations/I personally wonder if there isn't some intelligence or process in the modifications DNA makes that speeds the process), but doubting the broad frame work of evolution and laws of survival just seems silly.

I can confirm this. In China, creationists are widely mocked. The argument around creationism revolves around non-falsifiable data, no reason to give it any legitimacy in the form of a Wikipedia page.

If you are Catholic, please be noted that Pope Francis has declared
'Evolution and Big Bang theory are real and God isn't 'a magician with a magic wand'
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...snt-a-magician-with-a-magic-wand-9822514.html

This is more like what I had previously been taught in another Church.
"Evolution is not contradictory to Creationism, but rather, God may have included evolution during creation."
In which, this theory had been circulating in theology for quite some years by now.
(The argument of the book of Genesis shouldn't be in the bible is rather new compared to this one)

Interesting read for sure.

 

[Minwu]

Testicles are outside the body to preserve the optimal temperature for sperm.

Tons of animals don't have this.

 

[shade]

Why would a god who drowned all but a handful of every species and says he's going to burn all of creation to cinders be concerned with whether or not some species last throughout the entire story.

is your argument here essentially that god is a dick so wouldn't care about a few billion living beings?

 

[mattj]

If I answer that will your side move the goalpost further? Or is that objection adequately addressed?

 

[Ortheore]

Saying that a deity wouldn't give a shit about whether some creatures are flawed or not is largely baseless (given that we're talking about a supposedly perfect being, there's a measure of inconsistency involved in said being designing creatures that are blatantly flawed) and is really being fickle lol. It's also largely irrelevant, since it allows you to blather on about this while avoiding discussion of the original point- that humans, which are supposedly created in god's image, possess a number of features that make absolutely no sense as originating from an intelligent designer (Testes being located outside of the torso in the scrotum, eyes receiving images inverted and relying upon the brain to reverse that, the largely redundant appendix, etc.). You can't simply brush this off by saying "why would he bother designing perfect creatures" since you, god's own image and all that

 

[mattj]

Being able to control the temperature of your sperm "makes absolutely no sense"? Vestigial structures have already been addressed in this thread, testes on this very page iirc. I'm not retreading that defeated argument. Keep up.

 

[Ortheore]

I know perfectly well the reasons for the testes being located externally, that doesn't mean that having them located externally isn't a design flaw, since they're undeniably exposed- surely it would make more sense for a god-being to tweak the biochemistry of sperm cells so that they would be able to exist inside the body? Also cbf to go through pages of this lol

edit @below: ty for restoring my perspective on this, I'll just shut up now

 

[Jorgen]

Why do we keep going back to balls? I suppose it is a pretty elegant argument:

God -> ~Balls
Balls
by Modus Tollens:
~God

 

[mattj]

surely it would make more sense for a god-being to tweak the biochemistry of sperm cells so that they would be able to exist inside the body?

Maybe some other god, but not the God of the Bible.
I Corinthians 15:42-53 and verses like it state that our current bodies are imperfect in many ways. Genesis 3 says that we were made in the "image" of God. This has always been understood to mean an imperfect image, not a clone or copy.

I understand how it could make for a more interesting or likeable story if an all powerful being would create flawless creations. And if the Bible would have said something along those lines, then yeah, the fact that our bodies could theoretically be more efficient would be strong evidence that the Bible is mistaken. But that isn't the case. The Bible says our bodies are imperfect. Obviously we see this to be true. It also says they, and all other life is relatively temporary, which is a reasonable explanation for why perfection doesn't matter atm. Testes do their job. They sag when they're hot and they scrunch when they're cold. I've never had a hernia, nor torsion, nor racked myself. Most men don't because they work great most of the time.

If anyone sees external testes as a reason to doubt Genesis, it's not because they know internal testes will work better on humans. And it's not because the Bible says humans are perfect. And it's not because external testes are some serious problem.

So why do people keep bringing it up?

 

[Jetstream Infinity]

We've been disproving spontaneous generation like every other century now and it doesn't matter how small the creature or organism is. Since Evolution assumes that spontaneous generation is true even though it's been disproved thousands of times, the rest of the theory kinds just falls apart for me.

And why do we have a sense of what is right and wrong?

Also, if evolution is indeed true... what will happen to us? There is no such thing as justice or law. There is no reason why I, or anyone, shouldn't be allowed to murder thousands of people? We have no purpose. We might as well git rekt by a meteorite while we're doing a piss poor job of preserving our only home.

 

[Cresselia~~]

We've been disproving spontaneous generation like every other century now and it doesn't matter how small the creature or organism is. Since Evolution assumes that spontaneous generation is true even though it's been disproved thousands of times, the rest of the theory kinds just falls apart for me.

And why do we have a sense of what is right and wrong?

Also, if evolution is indeed true... what will happen to us? There is no such thing as justice or law. There is no reason why I, or anyone, shouldn't be allowed to murder thousands of people? We have no purpose. We might as well git rekt by a meteorite while we're doing a piss poor job of preserving our only home.

Humans will just continue to evolve if we don't get wiped out.

If you murder, then you are making your team of humans less suitable for survival. That's why other people would have stopped you, since you are ruining the team and not fulfilling "survival of the fittest" as a group.
Humans are social animals, and a group counts.
However, solitary animals like tigers do not follow this rule.

What do you mean by disproved?

 

[nitrox116]

We've been disproving spontaneous generation like every other century now and it doesn't matter how small the creature or organism is. Since Evolution assumes that spontaneous generation is true even though it's been disproved thousands of times, the rest of the theory kinds just falls apart for me.

And why do we have a sense of what is right and wrong?

Also, if evolution is indeed true... what will happen to us? There is no such thing as justice or law. There is no reason why I, or anyone, shouldn't be allowed to murder thousands of people? We have no purpose. We might as well git rekt by a meteorite while we're doing a piss poor job of preserving our only home.

You seem to be using spontaneous generation to mean an entire range of ideas that essentially say "life can come from non-life." While original ideas of spontaneous generation like the idea that bees come from rotting cow hides or something have been disproved, the general concept of life coming from non-life has not. Nowadays, the term "spontaneous generation" almost always refers to the disproved archaic theories.

There are plenty of theories about how the first organism came to be – none of them have been totally confirmed, but they're still perfectly valid options. Life is just a specific combination of elements, so why wouldn't it be possible for elements to create life?

jynx addressed your comment on ethics (it does have an evolutionary purpose, since humans are inherently social). Justice/law are just systems we've set up to enforce ethics and create a functional society, and the idea of a human purpose doesn't mean much: how do we know if we have a 'purpose' anyway?

 

[Codraroll]

We've been disproving spontaneous generation like every other century now and it doesn't matter how small the creature or organism is. Since Evolution assumes that spontaneous generation is true even though it's been disproved thousands of times, the rest of the theory kinds just falls apart for me.

Long story short: No, it doesn't.

The theory of evolution considers what happens to life over time. It doesn't really "care" where said life came from, or how it got there. That's a subject for other theories, or other fields of science.

 

[Kingpoleon]

Multiple people here have stated ignoring evolution(when one species turns into another) is practically impossible. Several creationist and atheistic scientists alike have stated "All scientists believe in evolution. It is the extent of this belief that is different between scientists."

Theistic evolution believes more in adaptation ushered in by God, while not turning into a separate species. This is proven and borne out by the fact that a single cell at 4.5 billion years could have barely evolved into a miniature bass. If you are trying to argue the universe is in fact over ten billion years old, then why are there no stars that old? It would be like a human in the 1950's living to be 100: barely possible. However, there is a nearly infinite number of stars:people ratio. The only thing problematic is that the existence of God cannot be proven, only the age. A flood nearly eight thousand years ago would put the age of earth at approximately four to five billion years old, depending on the rate of drying.

For a few more interesting non-Biblical references I recommend reading these:
https://answersingenesis.org/evidence-for-creation/six-evidences-of-young-earth/
http://www.icr.org/article/evidence-for-young-world/
http://www.missiontoamerica.org/genesis/six-thousand-years.html
Interesting archaeological proof:
http://www.bibleevidences.com/archeology.htm
http://www.icr.org/geological-strata/

 

[dwarfstar]

Theistic evolution believes more in adaptation ushered in by God, while not turning into a separate species. This is proven and borne out by the fact that a single cell at 4.5 billion years could have barely evolved into a miniature bass.

Care to back that up?

If you are trying to argue the universe is in fact over ten billion years old, then why are there no stars that old?

There ARE stars that old. Quite a lot of them. Well, to be more specific, there are stars that were around longer than ten billion years ago (they've long since gone nova or supernova at this point). We've estimated the size and age of the visible universe based on calculations involving the wavelengths of starlight that's been traveling for much longer than ten billion years.

 

[CaptKirby]

then why are there no stars that old?

do you even stargaze?

 

[Kingpoleon]

Do you mean this star:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...iverse-and-its-right-on-our-galactic-doorstep
The one that is theoretically impossible unless it was either extremely large or extremely tiny(for a star)? A rapidly expanding Galaxy over this "gas bubble" would result in a star of epic proportions through the expansion of the galaxy over time and at extreme speed causing either this amazingly huge star quite close to us or a giant explosion which would stop the galaxy's expansion there, resulting in the galaxy going around the explosion and eventually a black hole there without being inside a galaxy. Either way, this defies the laws of expansion of physics unless the star was placed that old into the galaxy by God, which completely defeats the possibility of a practical secular argument against this?

Also: "The selective-mutation theory results in less than 250 billion cells, with the brain cells being at less than a third the capacity of a hominid, so a basic salamander or fish intelligence is the most possible." - my science book

 

[nitrox116]

Also: "The selective-mutation theory results in less than 250 billion cells, with the brain cells being at less than a third the capacity of a hominid, so a basic salamander or fish intelligence is the most possible." - my science book

Can we get a title and author at least? "My science book" doesn't mean anything.

 

[Kingpoleon]

8th Grade Life Science; Published by Bob Jones University. I don't remember the author's name, unfortunately. I hope that you don't assume that I make these sources up.