Rethinking Evolution: A Few Reasons an Evolutionary Origin of Life Is Impossible

Almost everyone this thread seems to equate belief in evolution with atheism and belief in the Christian creation mythos as Christian and ne'er the twain shall meet.

Certainly I believe the Rev. Gish is not only wrong but dishonest in his debates favoring the creationist mythos; none of his arguments (nor those of other "scientific creationists") seem to hold much water when you start questioning their assertions about, for example, reducing and oxidizing atmospheres the effects -- and very existence -- of a putative flood, the "flash-freezing" of mammoths with daisies in their mouths, and so on. Indeed, after my point-by-point rebuttal of OPie's original cut-and-paste, he has been conspicuous by his absence.

And yet ... I consider myself a Born-Again Christian, probably to the dismay (or at least discomfiture) of Mr. Campbell Randt and other esteemed colleagues on this forum!

Perhaps you might wonder why I would defend Darwin's work and the various spin-offs thereof, but to me there is nothing surprising about it.

Let us examine this apparently contradictory belief set from a theological viewpoint. No Christian religion with which I am familiar, including the Catholics, Orthodox, various Protestants, and Latter-Day Saints, maintains in its canon that a belief in the literal-ness of its scriptures is a requirement for Salvation.

I personally see no discrepancy in the belief of:

A sixteen-Gyear-old Universe that came into existence rather abruptly, creating both matter and time from TBD non-matter and non-time;

A four-plus Gyear-old solar system created from leftover matter from first-generation stars with the help with our old friend, Mr. Conservation of Angular Momentum, into a disc the center part of which was large enough to collapse via our other old friend, Mr. Gravity and begin to fuse its hydrogen, blowing most of the dust away and leaving some rocky and some gas giant planets, one of which became the Earth;

The evolution of that Earth via cooling to a solid where plate tectonics and other orogenies built and rebuilt the continents, cooling allowed vapor to condense and makes seas;

Chemical interactions take place which resulted in simple life, which evolved due to environmental pressure to more and more complex life;

And all this going on as we speak with the resultant Earth and its inhabitants being as foreign to us as we are to Pithecanthropus erectus ...

*******************

... and a Creator, a Program Manager potent and knowing beyond my comprehension, Who started the whole thing going, Whose Project Plan has a Period or Performance of at least one hundred billion years; Whose Oversight is such that "not a sparrow shall fall"; and Whose Management Reserve was sufficient for Him to send His Son Jesus Christ to take my sins away.

Soon I will be called into His Office for my Performance Appraisal; I am looking forward to a very long-range assignment immediately thereafter, where the meetings are never boring, the PowerPoint Presentations breathlessly beautiful, and the coffee-pot and donut-tray will never empty.

I believe through faith (and only faith) that the Program Manager would not play tricks on His employees by giving us a questing mind and the ability to reason -- and then try to trick us into confusion and despair.

Obviously, His Memos to the early Children of Israel were couched in language and concepts they, with their limited understanding of technology, could understand; in other words, I believe the Creation Mythos is simply an allegory, just as is the parting of the Red Sea, the Parables of Jesus, and the somewhat unpleasant dream of St. John the Divine which ends the New Testament.

But I believe through faith (and only faith) the message is true, and we should take comfort from whatever stories we use to decipher the message.

Whether it is a burning bush or the Hertsprung-Russell diagram of stellar evolution or the Chandrasekhar Limit driving supernovas, it will bring us closer to understanding the Mighty Program, so that we will be able to discuss it to a limited extent during our final Performance Evaluation.

And I hope my unbelieving friends will not jump to the conclusion that, just because one is a Christian, he is automatically ignorant and narrow-minded; indeed, such attributes seem to be here irrespective of one's faith or lack thereof.

And I hope my brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ will realize that one can believe through reason as well as faith and that, not only are they not mutually exclusive, they can both contribute into what we all long for: blessed assurance and the peace that passeth all understanding.

Does anyone else have anything to share on this thread?

Here is some good information for you all:

[link to www.chick.com]

Slightly Off-Topic, but still relevant to the "Bible-Believers" out there in fantasy land:


When I was in college, my campus atheists and skeptics group sponsored a "Blasphemy Bonfire."

I burned my Bible then and there.

And I've NEVER been sorry!

wow a free thinker well said!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I find it most humorious when the school boys start talking bout what is known to be true or so they say but have no hard proof of

the BIBLE, ultimately, is a program that teases, explores, and sometimes violates the liminal space between social ideals that are themselves constructions. It needs to be addressed as a complex and ambiguous work of fiction that explores the decay of ’normal’ as it intersects with the fantastic and the grotesque—specifically the Bakhtinian grotesque, representing a form “not separated from the rest of the world…[but rather] unfinished…transgressing its own limits” (Bakhtin 26).

Duncan!! A well thought out post. There is no reason to put down evolution and the big bang theory other than it scares fundies for some reason. Me thinks it's the notion that we are NOT the center of the universe that bothers believers in religious dogma the most. I believe in a creator and a grand design. I just do not adhere to main stream religion in general thru experience. Thats just me. EOM

Some people see a 747 and think:

"That is incredibly complex and must have been designed"

Others see a 747 and think:

"That must have randomly come together by accident"

I've never really seen any reason to make such a big fuss about it anyway.

Evolutionists would say that based on a set of rules in the universe, things over time form combinations, if that happens enough under certain conditions then life would form and continue to change until an equilibrium is reached......etc etc

Creationists would say that the creator spoke the universe and everything in it into existance.

The creator designed the universe with rules that govern everything that happens.....that is by design. Now tell me why you want to limit exactly how the creator would do things? The creator could have decided to do things exactly the way the evolutionists believe or not.

I know.... it's because everyone wants to think that they have a monopoly on ideas and that they are correct. We all want to know the Truth, but our brains give each of us a slightly different reality. As long as we can not see, feel and touch it we can only make suppositions.

The OP makes a fundamental mistake: the universe had over 7 billion years (7,000,000,000) to make every possible combination of aminoacids and nucleotids...

Scimitar



I believe God's creation has evolved.

There IS no debate about evolution - it is been established as the explanation by such an overwhelming body of evidence that there is no possibility of it being wrong!

The Bible nuts - just want to endlessly throw up spurious arguments, to make it seem that the debate continues, most scientists simply would not get on a platform with creationists, as to do so would lend respectability to their ridiculous intellectually dishonest credo.

Do you know that some aerofoil shapes are too complex in their behaviour to be designed by engineers - instead they set up an evolutionary program - where succsesful designs breed new generations with slight random modifications and so on - the resultant designs outperform anything that could be engineered.

Fact or Theory is for morons. So is belief and faith. Evolution is flawed, so is creationalism. We keep making opposites so we can't find the answer, instead we bicker about things we don’t understand, and cannot understand.

No debate about evolution?

What have you been smoking?????

Could you please post the best evidence for evolution below and end the debate for us?

In my seemingly endless years of public education I seemed to have missed learning about all that "evidence".....

The very first argument about 'free oxygen' is completed and utter BS. Oxygen is always found in diatomic form except in instances of high energy conditions where it may form ozone.

When your first argument is complete nonsense, there is no need to read the rest.

Good points! If we get down to the fundamentals, as Duncan seems to have done, then what we have is "Intelligence" within the manifestation. Even if the billions of years of life provides the opportunity for everything that's been manifested, as if by an extended period of chance, at the basis of "CHANCE" is the INTELLIGENCE within to do so. Life is thus, driven by fundamental INTELLIGENCE from within.

Evolution is God's Intelligence in motion.

Since evolution is about life, the term Evolutionary Origin of Life is nonsensical.
The term real scientists use is abiogenesis, the emergence of life from a non-living origin
(Somehow clay was involved.)

And that's just the title of the Gish piece.


Remember folks:

Science is neither atheist, agnostic, deist, or theist.
It just doesn't deal with such matters.
Science tries to uncover natural causes for natural events.
And that's it.

In the matters of evolution of life it became an ironclad convention to start the debate with one of the only two options currrently available - metabolism-first or replication-first. However we forget that the guidance with which life has formed came in the form of awareness. I beleive we have a good starting-point when we start with an awareness-first theory. I have a proposition here.

Evolution is fact.

Evolution is not the result of random processes however.

Evolution is intelligently guided.

Yes, evolution is probably more Lamarckian than Darwinian - and was (and is!) possibly more intelligently guided. What actually I meant was that, the origin of life itself needed awareness first - which led to the development of metabolism and reproduction. The guidance was from the phenomenon of awareness of surrroundings. We have to workout a way by which the origin of awareness appeared first. I have a theory that this awareness has originated in the primordial membranes, and has led to the formation of cellular life, capable of metabolism and reproduction.