Evolution Test!

Greetings and peace be with you DR. Trax

I believe in one God the creator of all that is seen and unseen.

I believe that he created each species in a complete way, and each species adapts to its natural and changing environment.

I do not believe that some kind of single cell life can come from no life at all without the help of God.

I cannot see how single cell life could evolve in stages over four billion years to the life we have today.

I still retain these beliefs despite all the arguments I have read to the contrary.

Take care

Eric

From a simplistic point of view, I do believe in evolution as initially defined by Wikipedia, "Evolution is the process of change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms from one generation to the next." This sense of evolution as a means for change over time within a species is in agreement with what I understand Akhi Woodrow has posted previously.

However, I don't believe that evolution without a controlling Director/Designer/Creator is the process through which all existing and extinct species have originated over eons of time from a common unicellular, prokaryotic (no nucleus) ancestor through variation in the genetic constitution of individuals and populations that was created by random mutations, recombination of genes and migration which was then exploited by natural selection (survival of fittest) or just randomly changed over time through genetic drift.

Evolution ultimately relies upon a destructive process (mutation) as the primary source for genetic variation through which new, more complex species originated from a basic common ancestor. How many new and improved species have "evolved" from the genetic variation created by radiation mutations at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or Chernobyl? In contrast, how many thousands of individuals from various species as a result of this radiation exposure were born less fit than their parents?

If one comes upon three bricks laying on the ground _ _ _ , then he thinks nothing of it. If one comes upon three bricks stacked on top of each other end-to-end

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then he logically concludes that someone must have stacked them up. If this same person gathers the three bricks and throws them up in the air, how many times will he have to throw them up in the air for them to fall back to earth as he found them stacked end-to-end? Even if the probability is infinitesimally small yet greater than zero, over eons of time it must become a reality. Is not the probability actually zero, just like the probability that humans have evolved from a unicellular organism without the direction of a Creator? I believe that all existing and extinct species were created by Allah and through which means He chose to do so does not remove His ultimate control and guidance from the equation.

Greetings and peace be with you barney;

On the other side you have a talking snake in a very very old book.

If God can create the universe and life from nothing; then he should be able to make a snake talk, and cure the blind and lame.

In the spirit of searching for God

Eric

format_quote Originally Posted by barney

Lets say for the sake of arguement that the old "one day in gods time is a hundred thousand years in mans" (which to me is leaping through hoops more than a Police Stuntdog)

Allah's existence is not limited by our concepts of space and time.

Then God made adam and eve and they fathered and mothered mankind, who evolved into cavemen? Correct?

... and what do you have against cavemen? Do you think that Adam and Eve had the technological ability that we have today and drove around in cars and jet planes, lived in 3 bedroom-2 bath brick homes and cooked their meals with a microwave? Of course not. I doubt that they even had a tractor to plow the land or a razor-sharp steel knife to slaughter animals with. Man's knowledge and capabilities have indeed changed over time, but that does not mean that prior to being human that he was an unicellular organism that evolved without the direction of a Creator.

As far as I can tell, none of us remembers ever being a unicellular zygote from the union of a single egg and a single sperm. Yet it is a certainty that we were. This fertilization led to the "evolution" of each one of us within a period of only 9 months through a natural process from previously existing parents. Without those parents, could any of us ever have been born? Which brings us back to the seminal question, "Which came first - the chicken or the egg?"

Greetings and peace be with you barney

Evolution is not a big deal to me one way or the other. Before evolution has a chance to work the universe has to be created from nothing or have no beginning, and life has to start from no life. I cannot see how this is possible without God.

Man has put rockets on the moon, we have built amazing computers, bridges and whole range of stuff too numerous to mention. Even with all our present intelligence we cannot build a robot in the image of a man that has the same range of movements as the average man.

We have the blueprint, we know how skeletons, muscles, bones, tendons, and ligaments work together, but we cannot put materials together to make a working skeleton, the engineering is beyond us at the moment.

Man is just a heap of chemicals put together in a special way, chemicals always work in the same way and obey laws. If there is no creator, designer God; then I believe it to be impossible for random mutation; and natural selection to blindly make a working skeleton of a man, even over millions of generations.

In the spirit of searching for God

Eric

I sense that we have a dualistic understanding of evolution.

Theistic evolutionists recognize that species are dynamic and change over time through the basic processes of evolution, but they reject as implausible strict naturalistic evolution as the means by which all life forms have evolved from a common ancestor all without the intervention of a Creator.

Naturalistic evolutionists accept as scientific fact the whole evolution "ball of wax" as the process for the origin of all existing and extinct species from a common unicellular ancestor. They reject the involvement of a Creator due to the lack of tangible scientific evidence.

Scientists who understand evolution do not "believe" in it. They "understand" how evolution works.

Please use proper use of language when describing something scientific.

Then it looks like Dr.Trax's poll is skewed. The way it's worded I would have to say no, I don't "believe" in evolution. From the facts that describe evolution I understand how it works. But I do "believe" in a Creator even though that requires some level of "belief".

I don't see them as mutually exclusive, either.

It is not a case of 'belief'. Evolution by natural selection is a scientific theory, just like those of general relativity and quantum mechanics. As such it is generally accepted because it explains the empirical facts better than any other scientific theory or hypothesis, and it will only be generally accepted as long as that remains the case. However, in the continued absence of any remotely credible scientific alternative that is unlikely to change anytime soon.

If people prefer to reject (or 'disbelieve') pretty much the only scientific explanation in favour of religious based or other non-scientific alternatives that is up to them. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as they don't try and pretend those alternatives (the obvious one being creationism) have any scientific relevance. The point has already been made that a creator and evolution are not necessarily mutually exclusive, anyway.

format_quote Originally Posted by Science101

Then it looks like Dr.Trax's poll is skewed. The way it's worded I would have to say no, I don't "believe" in evolution. From the facts that describe evolution I understand how it works. But I do "believe" in a Creator even though that requires some level of "belief".

I don't see them as mutually exclusive, either.

I am glad that you believe in a Creator. What role do you see that He played in the "origin of species"?

I agree with Trumble that evolution is the only viable scientific theory to explain the origin of new species. Again according to Wikipedia, "In the 1930s, Darwinian natural selection was combined with Mendelian inheritance to form the modern evolutionary synthesis, in which the connection between the units of evolution (genes) and the mechanism of evolution (natural selection) was made. This powerful explanatory and predictive theory has become the central organizing principle of modern biology, providing a unifying explanation for the diversity of life on Earth."

What is a theory? According to Merriam-Websters Dictionary:

the·o·ry
1: the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another
2: abstract thought : speculation
3: the general or abstract principles of a body of fact, a science, or an art
4 a: a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action b: an ideal or hypothetical set of facts, principles, or circumstances —often used in the phrase in theory
5: a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena
6 a: a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation b: an unproved assumption : conjecture c: a body of theorems presenting a concise systematic view of a subject

Albeit far from proven fact, evolution is still "a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena". However, evolution does in fact take quite a few "leaps of faith" in explaining: 1) formation in prokaryotic unicellular organisms of nucleus and organelles like mitochondria and chloroplasts in plants, 2) development of bilateral symmetry in higher animals, and 3) development of sexual reproduction with the two sexes - male and female.