Creationism vs. Evolution

estreet --
You are the most loyal music fan this side of Irish Jack.
(Who fans will know what high praise that is.)

 

This is the camp I'm in. Obviously, there are facts that support evolution. But when you go back far enough, there always had to be something that came before. How did IT get here? If you want to say "that's yet to be discovered" or "all the facts aren't in yet", then fine. But until you can definitively prove to me how everything started, who's to say God didn't cause evolution? If we think of the billions of stars and planets out there, it'd certainly be a timesaver for Him.

I always thought that's what Intelligent Design was. An effort to compromise between the two camps. OK, you guys believe in evolution? You folks believe in creationism? Fine, let's merge the two. Creationism begat evolution. Next problem.

 

But the child, in your analogy, has some familiar things from which he/she can discern a plausible explanation. He/she likely has been picked up and carried before; therefore, he/she might reasonably conclude that is how he/she ended up in the car.
In the case of scientific explanations for the existance of life and the universe, we are asked to consider that unliving material became living material. That is something for which we have no touchstone, other than religion.
Further, we are asked believe that there is an eternal pattern of matter and energy, contracting and expanding, without end, which involves more concepts for which we have no touchstone, other than religion.
Also, the child in your analogy is likely not to question how he/she got into the car at all. He/she is likely to see the familiar surroudnings of the car, the familiar presence of parents, and not give a thought to how he/she ended up in the car.
We, as thinking, questioning adult humans do not have that luxury often. We want to know things, to understand.
If you say all life evolved from bacteria, I'm obviously going to ask where there bacteria came from.
If you tell me things like methan, acetylene and hydrogen cyanide combined with liquid water to form amino acids which eventually became life, I'm going to ask you how.
If you tell me we don't know yet and we're still studying it, I can accept that; all the information isn't in yet. But that's not a lead-pipe lock of a theory, even if it's the best one we've got and it's a damn good one.

 

The problem with I.D. is it was created with a motive. It is people trying to sneak a form of creationism into the scientific arena so they can get teachers preaching.
That isn't how science works. You don't try to bend the evidence to support what you believe. You decide what you believe based on the evidence.
I believe in God and I believe He created things. But that is my faith. I don't want that to be taught as science, even to my children by a hypothetical teacher who agreed with me on every point. I want them to be taught actual science in a science class. Then they can come to their own conclusions about what they believe (and I'll be happy to help in anyway they want in reconciling the two).

 

i like how you think. the two should be separate.

 

Also interesting:
The search for the missing link, once thought to be some kind of half-man/half-ape, is really the search for the the last universal common ancestor.
Since archaea, bacteria and eukaryotes share similarities, it's hypothesized that they share a common, as yet unknown, common ancestor. That is the missing link.
And when we find out what that was, we'll still be asking 'So where did that come from?'

 

More interesting stuff:
The first planet with water outside of our solar system was discovered. It's called HD 189733b and it's a gas giant that's bigger than Jupiter in the Vulpecula constellation.

 

No. There is no missing link. He went to basic training at Ft. McClellan in 1996 and his name is Nick Feller. He was from Kansas, and got stationed in Korea. He either got fragged or kicked out. I'm sure of it.

 

yeah, and god just wagged his finger and adam appeared. that's a real plausible alternative.

 

I'm not arguing in favor of creationism or intelligent design, although both are interesting topics.
I'm simply pointing out that science has yet to answer some very big questions, and those questions are essentially at the very foundation of the attempt to explain existence.
We know that dinosaurs existed although they are not mentioned specifically in the Bible; we know that at least species of man became extinct and that many species of ape, some of them quite man-like, became extinct. However, that doesn't explain how matter that was once not alive became alive.
Or how matter came to be, for that matter.

 

You fools...the world was created by Oden out of the remains of Ymir. His blood is the water of this planet. His bones comprise the lands. The sky is contained in his skull. The clouds are floating bits of Ymir's brain matter.

 

then i fully retract my sarcasm, buck.