I figured that maybe people would rather a "topic of the day" as it were rather than an in-depth blow by blow account of todays events. This morning's service was a Baptism service, Andrew and Dan were being baptised and it was really nice to be there. Afterwards we had lunch at the Thatched as per usual and I went home. My question is odly enough about Evolution and Creationism. The Christian Bible says that God created the world and all the creatures on it, hence the name Creationism. The theory of Evolution says that everybody evolved from Single Celled Organisms. I'm taking a lot of this form a talk Michael Ots did on Mission Week, the three I recorded are located here. There are 4 key questions to ask. 1) Where did the world come from? 2) Where did life come from? 3) Why did single celled organisms become multi-celled? 4) Why are humans so much more advanced mentally than any other animal? I'm not going to answer the question yet, as far as I can see, an Evolutionist would only be able to answer number 3 and possibly 4. If someone with a view on the theory of Evolution feels that they can answer 1,2 or 4 then I'd love to hear how evolution explains it, you might as well include 3 in there for continuity's sake. Incidentally, if this doesn't make you want a Polar Bear as a pet, odds are you already have one. |
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Evolution and Creationism
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5 comments:
P bear's alive!
1. This is the BIG question. Goddy people say God. Non-Goddy people say nothing. Both answers are equally valid, and equally unsatisfactory!
2. This is where Goddy people get a bit of an upper hand! Non-Goddy people have to say 'from nothing'. Goddy people can say 'God created it'.
3. Goddy and non-Goddy people can agree on the evolutionary principle of 'if it can happen, it probably will, and if it gives you a survival advantage and can reproduce, it will continue'... single cell organisms probably evolved the ability to form loose cooperative communities. No one really knows, but the best theory seems to be that the earliest colony bacteria were cyanobacteria. Present-day examples of biofilms include tooth plaque. Tooth plaque only has one predator, dental floss.
4. This one is debatable. We simply don't know what goes on in other higher mammal's heads. Dolphins seem to be quite bright. Whales also
1) Where did the world come from?
Depends on your definition of world, if you take it to mean universe then we can say it started with the Big Bang, a very well established theory with alot of evidence behind it. Its possible this occured on its own, but in my eyes I think existance itself needs a God to create it.
2) Where did life come from?
I think the current theory is that a certain set of chemical components working together somehow slowly lead to the first single celled organisms. Personaly I belive that this in some obscure way must be the case, but again as a Christian (albeit a very unorthodox one), I believe that God guided this process. Straight creationism however is plain stupid in my eyes, and denies every peice of evidence we have, its just the vestiages of ancient socities trying to invent science through logic which have somehow lasted to this day.
3) Why did single celled organisms become multi-celled?
This would be (ddrum role) Evolution! Evolution isn't so much a theory as something which DOES exist. Why can I say this? Because evolution can be used in simulations such as programming and thus DOES exist. The question is can it apply to animal evolution. We KNOW it does to some extent from animal breeding (ie. dog breeds). However for the long term stuff you need time, and logic/evidence tell us this did happen. As for the specific of multicellular as opposed to single cellular. A multicellular organism is able to better compete against a single cellular organism, and the process of mitosis already gives cells almost all they need to become multi-cellular, given time.
4) Why are humans so much more advanced mentally than any other animal?
Humans ARE the most "mentaly advanced" if you use tool use and domination of all other species as most mentaly advanced. Through evolution, predators gain the largest brains, whilst herbivours are usualy dumb (its not hard to hunt grass ;) ). So we can thank our inteligence on the fact we eat meat. However humans are differnt to having JUST inteligence. We have imagination, which as far as we know no other creatures has to any extent as us. This means we can apreciate music, beauty, art and means we can also use tools. It also means we wonder about the world around us, and assuming there isn't a God (for a minute) humans would invent one anyway, its a way of solving those unsolveable mysteries. But myself, I see human imagination and the inner soul as something slightly removed from the world itself (Plato actualy goes into this, I suggest reading his works), and for this we need a God.
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So from my comments you can see that I personaly belive in a God and in his involvement in creation, however I definitly do not belive in creationism.
Taking the Aetheist view for a moment (I like to argue all sides :p), I can see it very possible to answer all four questions on the basis of scientific knowlage. Sure you can't PROVE any or all of the aetheist viewpoints on the matter, but you can't PROVE the Christian ones either, so both are equaly viable.
Sure you can't PROVE any or all of the aetheist viewpoints on the matter, but you can't PROVE the Christian ones either, so both are equaly viable.
It takes more faith to believe that there is no creator than it does to believe that there is a God after all. The human body is so complex and proof is everywhere, to believe that all this came from pure chance....it really makes no sense at all.
Evolution *does* happen to a certain extent. But it's more like adaptation. Like people who live in mountainous regions all their life have a higher red blood cell count. But to say that people came from a single celled organism over millions of years is yet again non sensical. If this is the case, wouldn't we be seeing things crawling out of the oceans every time we go to the beach? If it is a continuous process...it wouldn't happen every million or so years.
Teif, maybe you should talk about how God cursed the Earth in one post, and parallel it to the fig tree, and how it withered from the roots up. Include carbon dating in it as well....it's a very interesting topic ;)
Ok, just a reply to some of the comments made (I do enjoy debates).
@emz
It takes more faith to believe that there is no creator than it does to believe that there is a God after all. The human body is so complex and proof is everywhere, to believe that all this came from pure chance....it really makes no sense at all.
Thats not realy a legitimate argument, you say life is so complex you can't comprehend it as not having a creator. I did not say that it came together because of "pure luck", there are actualy alot of reasons why life would develop on our planet, and its VERY likely there is life all over the universe. Believing in a set of physics/chemistry/biology driven reactions as the cause of the world is just as much a matter of belife (at the moment) as the belife in a God.
But to say that people came from a single celled organism over millions of years is yet again non sensical. If this is the case, wouldn't we be seeing things crawling out of the oceans every time we go to the beach? If it is a continuous process...it wouldn't happen every million or so years.
Single celled organisms can easily evolve into large complex structures, given the time to do so. As for creatures crawling out of the ocean, evolution dosn't work like that creatures don't suddenly sprout legs. Evolution isn't creature A suddenly becomes B. All creatures are ALWAYS intermediate stages, we're all constantly evolving. And there are creatures "coming out of the sea", they are called mud fish (or lung fish). But thats one example, evolution occurs in little steps, which over trillions of years become big steps. You say its non-sensical to think that can happen over millions of years, but I think its much more non-sensical to ignor all evidence of genetics, fossils, ect. all give us that point towards evolution.
@WG
BTW, im told if you dont be a total prig (like fundamentalists on both sides of the equation are), then evolution and genesis actually do work together, and are not incompatible.
Its very compatible, I myself am a firm Christian Evolutionist. My justification I won't go into here though because its pretty long winded (feel free to contact me anyone if you want to hear my unorthodx beliefs).
Finaly, an interesting point on Question 4:
Its quite possible, with the current dating of Earth, that civilisations could have reached our level of inteligence or beyond and have existed on Earth until being wiped out. The Earth is humungously old, and life has been around a long time, we ourselves developed inteligence over a very short period of time. What about traces though? Well after millions of years we ourselves might as well have NEVER been here, there will be no trace at all. At most we might have some of the stuff in space or on the moon (where there is no weather to beat things down) left, if that. So its very possible we ARN'T as special as we think we are.
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