By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - General Discussion - Why can't some Christians accept Evolution?

Why don't spurgeoryan's thread ever die? They seem to slowly simmer away until one day, when the thread is forgotten, the thread just seems to be reborn by some random post which gets a discussion going again. This cycle then continues for all of eternity, with the discussions being less and less active, but never dying, as time goes on.

What's the deal?



Around the Network

spurgeonryan said:

You know his initials actually stand for Jesus Christ right? 


If this is true, then where does the 7 come from? Are you messing with me?



spurgeonryan said:

I would never mess with you. Like I said before. You and 4 others are members that have too sharp of wit for me to mess with. I do not know why members  put random numbers in their username. But I am sure JC7 will be back in this thread tomorrow. You can ask him. Maybe because on the 7th day God rested. After writing the type of wall of words that he rights I can imagine that he needs to take a rest as well. All on a smart phone! Got to hand it to him for being dedicated like that.


@Bolded. Are you trying to kiss up to me to prove your loyalty? Because if you are, it's working.

 

I will come back to this thread and ask JC7 tomorrow. If what you say is false, then I will never forgive you.



Joelcool7 said:
Rather knows what he's talking about. As for the other reply ummm no the link does not support Macro evolution also my understanding of evolution comes from my biology class and secular text books which defined Macro evolution as evolution of one species into another.

The evidence that we all contain DNA road maps belonging to other species really proves nothing. Assuming a God created us their is no reason to believe he did not design us using such traits. We really don't know precisely how God created us the Bible defines a time line it does not explicitly give us a road map.

The idea that big bang theology and abiogenesis can never be accepted as factual is even if they are proven to be possible nobody can ever prove that they did occur and nobody could prove even if they did that God did not cause or use them.

As for living fossils. The coelecanth was declared extinct it was gone no record in the fossil record of it living recently. Then suddenly it was found alive and the fossil record was corrected. Just watching Discovery channel and History Channel you will notice very fast that the record is constantly changing and that even discoveries we have made get proven and disprove on a regular basis. Example a megaladon tooth was found it was dated only thousands of years ago. The researchers pulled the tooth out to re-test it. They said they couldn't test it the documentary left it as unknown but it was then classified as millions of years old with no evidence.

Constantly if you watch science programs their are inconclusive results or things that cannot be dated. Different groups then twist the evidence to support their theories.

I do not reject science. I however only rely on scientific fact not theory I am skeptical and will always question any science that cannot be observed and repeated. I take science for what it is.

It wasn't all that long ago that science claimed the earth was flat their was evidence to support that. If you lived at that time you'd look at the ground and say ya its flat. But as we improved we realized hey it isn't flat. Wow the earth isn't center of the universe. Holy crap we rotate around the sun not vice versa?

Scientific theory should always be questioned and always improved upon.

The idea of evolution being both theory and fact is true. But one does not have to say all evolution is fact because it isn't. And one can't say all evolution is false because it isn't.

Things are more complicated then that. Also yes I only have a Bio 11 education in evolution but of course that is also a Canadian one.

Again I do not reject science, I question anything that cannot be observed and repeated. I don't think its a bright idea to throw your entire belief system behind a set of theories.

Lastly the Bible does not disprove evolution or refute it for that matter. Anybody with any kind of Biblical education is aware of this. As a matter a fact the Bible actually suggests micro evolution, the Ark carried two of every animal now was that two of every breed? Was it two Dalmatians and two Doberman? No it was two dogs and so fourth. So how do we have so many species today? Well obviously the Bible clearly suggests they had to have evolved.

It is fairly ignorant to say a Christian cannot believe in evolution. Evolution does not disprove the existence of God nor does the proven facts refute the Bible. In fact even Macro evolution doesn't disprove the Bible. Again if you study the Bible and by that I mean the Hebrew texts and study biblical theology you will not make a claim that a Christian cannot believe in evolution.

Assuming this is to me.

I don't really know how to have a "proper" debate with you if you already have your own pre-conceptions. You already assume God created organisms, I didn't make assumptions either way, I never said God didn't start life of earth and I definitely didn't say a christian cannot believe in evolution or evolution disproves the existence of a God. The proven fact that evolution occurs, the proven fact of common ancestry, more specifically human evolution disproves the story of Adam & Eve which is the basis of christianity, this is just one example, so unless you take a lot of things in the bible metaphorically, it's pretty hard to believe in both the bible and well-supported science.

Give me examples of established scientific facts being completely disproved (not the explanations of facts being improved) in modern science. I'm not getting into the "science is always changing!" argument based on people thinking the world was flat how many hundreds or thousands of years ago.

Evidence in Genetics (DNA) not only proves common ancestry (I have no idea how you think this doesn't prove macro-evolution) with the fact that we all share DNA and can map out an accurate evolutionary tree based on how much we share with eachother, but a crapload of other ways as well, one being what I mentioned myself in my previous post, another being Chromosome #2. Again, in the talkorigins link I posted, you'll find a giant amount of evidence supporting macro-evolution specifically. I think it's pretty ridiculous that you're even considering the Noahs ark myth as true. We can focus on Noahs ark if you want, but PM me if you will please because it's not OT. I do agree though, if it were true and we found most fossils on one sedimentary layer dating back to 4000 years (tell me if that date's wrong pls) and the evolutionary tree led out of the middle east for all organisms, than noahs ark would make sense, and the bible would suggest evolution. But this is on the assumption that Noahs Ark and the global flood actually happened and the evidence supported it, which it absolutely doesn't.

I don't base my "entire belief system" around a set of scientific theories. I base my understanding of the natural world around a set of scientific theories and laws. 

I didn't see many direct replies to what I actually said or the evidence I presented, and although I don't like making the distinction between micro/macro evolution since they are practically the same thing, just on different scales I said macro-evolution has been observed and posted a link to it, I explained some of the evidence myself and then posted a link to a huge compilation of supporting evidence, did you not read that? 



spurgeonryan said:
Jay520 said:

spurgeonryan said:

You know his initials actually stand for Jesus Christ right? 


If this is true, then where does the 7 come from? Are you messing with me?

I would never mess with you. Like I said before. You and 4 others are members that have too sharp of wit for me to mess with. I do not know why members  put random numbers in their username. But I am sure JC7 will be back in this thread tomorrow. You can ask him. Maybe because on the 7th day God rested. After writing the type of wall of words that he rights I can imagine that he needs to take a rest as well. All on a smart phone! Got to hand it to him for being dedicated like that.

xD You know this is kinda weird, but the first thing that made me question christianity was God needing to rest on the 7th day, I never quite understood that :P



Around the Network
Andrespetmonkey said:

xD You know this is kinda weird, but the first thing that made me question christianity was God needing to rest on the 7th day, I never quite understood that :P

Hmm... Maybe that's proof that there actually was a "big bang" :P

Only one question remains though: Who did he bang?! xD



IIIIITHE1IIIII said:
Andrespetmonkey said:

xD You know this is kinda weird, but the first thing that made me question christianity was God needing to rest on the 7th day, I never quite understood that :P

Hmm... Maybe that's proof that there actually was a "big bang" :P

Only one question remains though: Who did he bang?! xD

I think Family guy provides a fairly scientific explanation (it was a different kind of bang):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoqSas2uFKw&feature=BFp&list=WLD64278338B213B69 



Andrespetmonkey said:
IIIIITHE1IIIII said:
Andrespetmonkey said:

xD You know this is kinda weird, but the first thing that made me question christianity was God needing to rest on the 7th day, I never quite understood that :P

Hmm... Maybe that's proof that there actually was a "big bang" :P

Only one question remains though: Who did he bang?! xD

I think Family guy provides a fairly scientific explanation (it was a different kind of bang):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoqSas2uFKw&feature=BFp&list=WLD64278338B213B69 

Seems legit! :D



Joelcool7 said:
Rather knows what he's talking about. As for the other reply ummm no the link does not support Macro evolution also my understanding of evolution comes from my biology class and secular text books which defined Macro evolution as evolution of one species into another.

The evidence that we all contain DNA road maps belonging to other species really proves nothing. Assuming a God created us their is no reason to believe he did not design us using such traits. We really don't know precisely how God created us the Bible defines a time line it does not explicitly give us a road map.

The idea that big bang theology and abiogenesis can never be accepted as factual is even if they are proven to be possible nobody can ever prove that they did occur and nobody could prove even if they did that God did not cause or use them.

Theology? That's a misrepresentation of the big bang. Also while it likely can never be proven that life began by abiogenesis the big bang theory can be proven. We can observe the edge of the universe. We have observed the edge of the universe. The big bang theory fits the evidence exceptionally well and the more evidence that is gathered the more it backs the big bang theory up. You are correct that there is no way to prove that God did not cause the big bang.

As for living fossils. The coelecanth was declared extinct it was gone no record in the fossil record of it living recently. Then suddenly it was found alive and the fossil record was corrected. Just watching Discovery channel and History Channel you will notice very fast that the record is constantly changing and that even discoveries we have made get proven and disprove on a regular basis.

Ah you are talking about Lazarus taxon, species which disappear and reappear in the fossil record. The fossil record is without a doubt not perfect due to the fact that fossilisation is a very rare event. Sometimes purely down to the way that fossilisation randomly 'samples' the population you do get interesting things like that.

Example a megaladon tooth was found it was dated only thousands of years ago. The researchers pulled the tooth out to re-test it. They said they couldn't test it the documentary left it as unknown but it was then classified as millions of years old with no evidence.

This is anecdotal evidence about a documentary you watched. It's not very convincing.

Constantly if you watch science programs their are inconclusive results or things that cannot be dated. Different groups then twist the evidence to support their theories.

Science programs are not usually thorough, scientific journals are where the real research is.

I do not reject science. I however only rely on scientific fact not theory I am skeptical and will always question any science that cannot be observed and repeated. I take science for what it is.

Once again you fundamentally fail to understand what a theory is in science.

It wasn't all that long ago that science claimed the earth was flat their was evidence to support that. If you lived at that time you'd look at the ground and say ya its flat. But as we improved we realized hey it isn't flat. Wow the earth isn't center of the universe. Holy crap we rotate around the sun not vice versa?

Scientific theory should always be questioned and always improved upon.

Firstly the scientific method has only truly existed for a few hundred years, well after the ideas of flat earths and geocentricism had been abandoned. Secondly while scientific theory should always be questioned (afterall a key idea in science is falsifiability) scientific consensus generally falls behind the theory with the most evidence. In terms of the origin of species there is only currently one scientific theory with any evidence at all - evolution.

The idea of evolution being both theory and fact is true. But one does not have to say all evolution is fact because it isn't. And one can't say all evolution is false because it isn't.

The fact of evolution (in the scientific sense) is the observed change in species. That is the observation.

Things are more complicated then that. Also yes I only have a Bio 11 education in evolution but of course that is also a Canadian one.

Again I do not reject science, I question anything that cannot be observed and repeated. I don't think its a bright idea to throw your entire belief system behind a set of theories.

Lastly the Bible does not disprove evolution or refute it for that matter. Anybody with any kind of Biblical education is aware of this. As a matter a fact the Bible actually suggests micro evolution, the Ark carried two of every animal now was that two of every breed? Was it two Dalmatians and two Doberman? No it was two dogs and so fourth. So how do we have so many species today? Well obviously the Bible clearly suggests they had to have evolved.

It is fairly ignorant to say a Christian cannot believe in evolution. Evolution does not disprove the existence of God nor does the proven facts refute the Bible. In fact even Macro evolution doesn't disprove the Bible. Again if you study the Bible and by that I mean the Hebrew texts and study biblical theology you will not make a claim that a Christian cannot believe in evolution.

I don't think I've ever claimed Christians can't accept evolution, or that evolution disproves God. It does raise a pretty damned good argument against a literal intepretation of the bible though.





TC_Squared said:
Before anyone tries explaining what evolution is to Christians, I think that you must make them aware of what a theory is in the fields of science. Disbelievers misinterpret a theory for a hypothesis.

Here is how the two are contrasted via Wikipedia, which is identical to how my science professors have explained it.

"Hypotheses are individual empirically testable conjectures, while theories are collections of hypotheses that are logically linked together into a coherent explanation of some aspect of reality and which have individually or jointly received some empirical support."

A perfect example of how the word theory has been misinterpreted, in the United States at least, is the term "Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy 'Theories'". There has not been a single theory to the conspiracy claims of the Kennedy assassination, as none of the claims have contained "collections of hypotheses that are logically linked together into a coherent explanation of some aspect of reality and which have individually or jointly received some empirical support."

Additionally, the only subject that is truly factually based is mathematics. Even gravity is a theory, via Newton's Theory of Gravitation. If Christians are going to disbelieve evolution, they should also disbelieve gravity.



but christians dont have a problem with evolution. what they have a problem with is the notion that every living organism has a common ancestor. just wanted to clear that up for.. i dunno, i think the third time? because people cant seem to grasp this concept for whatever reason.