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Dissent from Darwinism

You are telling me not to assume things about history, yet you are assuming that written history is true. You were not there to witness the records written, thus we cannot assume they are correct.
Hello GeoFestiva.

Never take what I write as an attack on your person or an attack on what you may believe.
I am just declaring that there are sides to some scientific endeavor that utilize assumptions.
That is why I refer to these areas of science as ideologies, they are involved in speculative
claims rather than in verifiable fact.

As for written history GeoFestiva, read the following;

The Roman historian and senator Tacitus referred to Christ, his execution by Pontius Pilate
and the existence of early Christians in Rome in his final work, Annals (written ca. AD 116),
book 15, chapter 44.The context of the passage is the six-day Great Fire of Rome that burned
much of the city in AD 64 during the reign of Roman Emperor Nero. The passage is one of the
earliest non-Christian references to the origins of Christianity, the execution of Christ described
in the Canonical gospels, and the presence and persecution of Christians in 1st-century Rome.

Scholars generally consider Tacitus's reference to the execution of Jesus by Pontius Pilate to be
both authentic, and of historical value as an independent Roman source. Eddy and Boyd state
that it is now "firmly established" that Tacitus provides a non-Christian confirmation of the
crucifixion of Jesus.
(wikipedia)
 
@DHC no worries, I didn't take the comments as an assault. I just want to be clear that if we make the "you didn't see it personally" argument, then it must apply across all bounds. Sheer it be Nature's historical record, or man's historical record, we are both making assumptions that they are true. I believe nature's record because it is incapable of false stories.

@Chad AiG is hard to credit due to their lack of proper scientific argument. Many professors are quoted out of context by their website, and their obvious angst against the scientific community is what discredits many of their articles.
 
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@Chad AiG is hard to credit due to their lack of proper scientific argument. Many professors are quoted out of context by their website, and their obvious angst against the scientific community is what discredits many of their articles.

Really? What "journal" do you need? What "journal" do you have to back up your claims? I noticed you deliberately ignored my last post as well.

The bible has ample proof on the other hand:
Fulfilled prophecies
Miracles
Presence of God in a believers life
Archaeological discoveries
Consistency of all 66 books authored by the Holy Spirit

The above is a small portion of proof. For more, check out the evidence and prophecy forum.

It's 2014. What happened 2014 years ago that globally the time is based off of?

Nothing to say about this?
 
Really? What "journal" do you need? What "journal" do you have to back up your claims? I noticed you deliberately ignored my last post as well.

  • Nothing to say about this?
I am not picking sides but imputting Biblical truth: I don't think he really has anything substantive to offer, because of 1 Corinthians 2:14
 
I would need a journal to dispute evolution in a testable way.
I would use any Journal of Paleontology to back up my claims,

I didn't mean to ignore the last post, I was in a rush on my last post and didn't have the time to answer it, my answer to that would be if we are still abiding by the "you weren't there" attitude towards creation, evolution and science, then we also weren't there to witness the Romans write those passages, which would make them non-creditable by your own standards.

For the Proof that you've stated on that post. I would also note that other religions also have miracles and fulfilled prophecies which their time in history can be verified. The Honchō Hokke Reigenki is a book from Japan filled with stories of Buddhist miracles.

Nothing of significance happened 2014 BP (before present). 2020-2018 BP would be the time Jesus was born, if we want to be technical, though some say 2016-2021BP
 
@RJ

If there was a testable way to prove the existence of god, I would happily change my views. But beyond incredible stories and hearsay, there is no testable evidence.
 
Hello GeoFestiva

Not sure whether I would agree with your claim that 'evolution is a fact'.
Have a read of the following and get back to me.

Exploring the Limitations of the Scientific Method by John Baumgardner, Ph.D.

Perhaps the most prominent example in this category is the hypothesis that mutation and natural selection produce continuous genetic improvement in a population of higher plants or animals. For the past 90 years, scientists in the field of population genetics have developed sophisticated mathematical models to describe and investigate these processes and how they affect the genetic makeup of populations of various categories of organisms. The work of R. A. Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright between 1918 and 1932 laid the foundation for the field of population genetics. This work in turn, over a period of about a decade (1936-1947), led to the formulation of what is referred to as the neo-Darwinian synthesis or the modern evolutionary synthesis. This so-called modern synthesis integrated the concept of natural selection with Mendelian genetics to produce the unified theory of evolution that has been accepted by most professional biologists.

But does this theory of evolution, formulated essentially in its present form more than 60 years ago, truly deliver on its claims, especially in light of what we now know of how living systems work at the molecular level? The answer is an unequivocal no! In brief, the proteins that make up living systems require such a precise level of specification to be functional that a search based on random mutation can never succeed.2 It is complete scientific foolishness to claim otherwise. That is why there are no papers in the professional genetics literature that explicitly demonstrate this to be a reasonable possibility.

Perhaps even more surprising, natural selection does not deliver the sort of upward genetic improvement that is generally believed and claimed. The reason is that natural selection is "blind" to the vast majority of mutations--it cannot act upon a favorable mutation to accentuate it or a deleterious mutation to eliminate it unless the mutation has a sufficiently large effect on the fitness of the organism in its environment. Because the vast majority of mutations are below the threshold for natural selection to detect, most bad mutations accumulate unhindered by the selection process, resulting in a downward decline in fitness from one generation to the next.4,5 Because bad mutations outnumber favorable ones by such a large factor, their cumulative effect utterly overwhelms that of the few favorable mutations that may arise along the way.

For more than 30 years, professional population geneticists have been aware of the profound difficulties these realities present to the theory of evolution. These problems were treated as "trade secrets" to be researched within their own ranks but not to be publicized outside in the broader biology community. Thus, the crucial
step of hypothesis testing has been "postponed."

Most professional biologists have therefore been misled into believing that the theoretical foundation of the neo-Darwinian synthesis is secure when, in reality, the foundation is a sham. The neo-Darwinian mechanism can readily be shown to produce exactly the opposite consequences to those that are believed and claimed. The reason for this state of affairs is that the scientists involved have allowed their personal biases to interfere with and to short circuit the usual hypothesis-testing step of the scientific method.

The claims here seem completely untrue. For one, proteins do not have to be specific - different species have the same but slightly different proteins.
Natural selection and mutations are not about a specific organism, but organisms over a period of time. I would like to know his evidence for people within the field no publicizing their material. Researchers need to publish in order to attain funding.

The guy mentioned has a phD in geophysics, not biology.
 
@RJ

If there was a testable way to prove the existence of god, I would happily change my views. But beyond incredible stories and hearsay, there is no testable evidence.

  • Like I said Geo, I completely understand were you are coming from: 1 Corinthians 1:18
  • I minored in Archeology in school and have a deep interest in digging up and finding things. As a Christian, I can not separate evolution and creation and know there is a perfect answer waiting for me someday.
  • But, before you make such a positive statements of incredible stories and heresay, with out any spiritual knowledge of what your talking about, I wouldn't jump to conclusions.
  • You are a researcher...a scientist and a relier on hard facts, far enough!
  • But before any of us Jesus loving people will give you any credibilty, then you need to prove yourself. If you are really interested in getting down to the truth, then do this and after you have honestly done it, let us know what you think?

  1. Sit down and begin giving the Bible a fair test, you are familiar with testing , right?
  2. Read the New Testament starting with John and finish all the way through revelations.
  3. Be open minded, don't quite develop ( or dwell) any negative thoughts yet, just read as sort of a bibliography on a very famous man in history, that. in fact, all cultures believe existed and is in many of their own books.
  4. Just refer the Old testament when a verse is mentioned.
  5. I am not asking you to agree to anything. But when you have a question, come back to T.J. and ask it. You may get varied answers sometimes but roll with the flow and always stay positive; you are just learning about the other side.
  6. Once, you have diligently and honestly given it your best shot, just like you were on the brink of discovering a new species, then let us know what you think and if it is still all just heresay!
  7. If you can treet this as if your life depended on it!
  8. If not, so be it!
 
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The philosophical issue here is not Creation versus Evolution.

It is "comprehension before competence", versus "competence before comprehension".

The fundamental idea behind Darwinism is that "in order to make a perfect and beautiful machine, it is not a requisite to know how to make it".

I think it is practically undeniable that comprehension or intelligence is not required in order to produce a "perfect and beautiful machine", particularly if we look at the biological world around us and the technology that we rely upon every day.

An example is a colony of white ants. Each ant does not know how to build a complete structure of itself, not one ant has any concept of "design" or is an architect, but through simple interactions they can create effective and enormous dirt structures with complex arrays of tunnels, that does not collapse and which stands strong for many years.

Another example is the personal computer. A computer doesn't understand math, and never went to school to learn it, but by adding two numbers together and storing it in memory and repeating this process over and over, it can do complex arithmetic, beyond the capabilities of a human being. And to think that it shows such intelligence knowing only two simple things, at the basic level - 0 or 1 (binary).

Evolution has been observed in the lab with e-coli bacteria. This proved that complex traits can evolve as a result of seemingly unlikely events, effectively negating the argument that evolution cannot result in improvements over time.

So it is impossible for simple organisms to evolve into more complex ones, simply through the act of random processes.

Evolution works and it works quite well, this is why evolutionary methods have been adopted for solving complex optimization problems in the field of artificial computer intelligence.

Evolution happens all the time around us. Seemingly random events causing complex changes to take place. Sure, these changes are not always improvements, but improvements do happen.

Examples are virus and bacteria adapting to the drugs used to treat them, creating 'super bugs'. Or pest species of animals becoming immune to the chemical or biological methods used to control them. From the point of view of those species, they are improvements, even out of a difficult situation where we think they should not survive.

Now who is in control of randomness?

Prov 16:33 "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD"



 
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I tried picking up the NT that I received from someone passing them out, and gave reading it another shot. After reading some of the Bible, as well as listening to a bit of Christian radio, I have fully migrated to militant atheism for the time being. Thank you for providing some debate, but the recent month or two on here has gotten me to look more into Christianity (and religion in general) and has solidified my position. I will likely take my leave, but I'll get back to the original post.

There really is no Dissent from Darwinism among those who will take evidence into account. The theory of Observational vs. Historical science cannot hold due to changes we see in the earth. The gaps in the fossil record are also not proof that there is a god but rather a lapse in current evidence which science has yet to find. I know this will not change opinions on here but please see through the fallacy of religion and what it can do to the mind. Don't be content in a simple "God did it" answer, and always seek the truth.
 
Charles Darwin at one time believed in God. The turning point is when his much beloved sister died several years after he wrote Origin of the Species. Darwin reacted negatively to that incident. For GeoFestiva, the point of Creationism vs Evolution is that God chose a path of creation with which we can deduce counter revelations. The Bible (the point which most missed) is primarily a book of faith. We all have faith in something be it ourselves, our mentors, etc. For reasons I cannot easily explain, God chose a path for us in that we either believe he exists or he does not. The only way we know for certain is how he reveals himself to us. The problem is circular in that we cannot readily prove he exists, yet we cannot prove he does not.

Evolution is primarily forensics: legally defining an incident to the best of our knowledge. What you choose to believe is up to you and I'm certain that you can justify it. I'm also certain if your are determined that God, as the Bible describes him, you will also justify that. Again, the Bible is a book of faith, not unlike the Qu'ran, or the Septuagint, or anything we read in history books. You are correct in that we have no direct knowledge of what occurred before us, and memories can be fuzzy, too. We can deduce certain things did occur. It has been said that the winners write the history books.

I have put a lot of thought into Evolution vs Creationism. The former is completely by chance; the latter is planned. The planning may have included flaws which allow certain events, but I cannot prove nor disprove that. When all is said and done, it's about faith, works with that faith, and the knowledge that faith gives us whether it be with or without God. Phil 4:8.

Cheers,
John
 
I tried picking up the NT that I received from someone passing them out, and gave reading it another shot. After reading some of the Bible, as well as listening to a bit of Christian radio, I have fully migrated to militant atheism for the time being. Thank you for providing some debate, but the recent month or two on here has gotten me to look more into Christianity (and religion in general) and has solidified my position. I will likely take my leave, but I'll get back to the original post.

There really is no Dissent from Darwinism among those who will take evidence into account. The theory of Observational vs. Historical science cannot hold due to changes we see in the earth. The gaps in the fossil record are also not proof that there is a god but rather a lapse in current evidence which science has yet to find. I know this will not change opinions on here but please see through the fallacy of religion and what it can do to the mind. Don't be content in a simple "God did it" answer, and always seek the truth.
Hello GeoFestiva.

You have made claims that may not be warranted when you mentioned 'evidence' in post # 31.

There really is no Dissent from Darwinism among those who will take evidence into account.
The theory of Observational vs. Historical science cannot hold due to changes we see in the earth.
The gaps in the fossil record are also not proof that there is a god but rather a lapse in current
evidence which science has yet to find. I know this will not change opinions on here but please see
through the fallacy of religion...

Darwinism is the current popular scientific theory that proposes that one species can transform
into another species. For if one species cannot generate into other species, evolution as a theory is
redundant.

The bottom line in the evolutionary ideology is this continual development of new species over
time. If we look back into the deep past in the fossil record we should find fewer and fewer
species the further back we go. Here is where the difficulties for the evolutionary ideology
seem to be the most profound.

Over time in the fossil record and this should be readily visible, is the proliferation of partially
successful variations in any given species. We will not observe a fully developed singular species,
rather we should see a proliferation of varying degrees of partly successful variations in any given
species. A dragonfly for example could never just suddenly appear in the fossil record given
that it's mechanism for flight is so absurdly complex.

If we cannot locate the evidence for the earlier variations of the dragonfly we are left with no
recourse but to examine another species. Choose any species you wish and you will strike the
very same problem every time. The evidence of the fossil record dictates sudden and peculiar
instances of the occurrence of fully evolved or developed species. The pre Cambrian explosion
of various species is a superb example of this phenomenon in the fossil record.

Evolutionary theory states categorically that any particular species must result from the
continual success or fitness of numerous variations in any species. These variations are
initiated by the continual mutations that occur within the genetic code of that species.

This is the pure and observable bankruptcy that is all too evident in the available evidence
of the fossil record. Evolutionary theory is clearly incorrect in the assertion that one
species gives rise to one or more different species. We need evidence and hard evidence
at that, to support the speculative claim that one given species generates other species.

Evidence, what evidence is proposed that supports the transition of any species into one or
more different species?
 
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An interesting thing about Darwin is that he was a believer. You would never know it from all the evolutionist theories that have sprung up differently
from what he originally proposed.

His daughter was a Christian also. However she did not believe in evolution. To this Darwin once said...
"We both believe that God did it, we just disagree on how long it took".
 
An interesting thing about Darwin is that he was a believer. You would never know it from all the evolutionist theories that have sprung up differently
from what he originally proposed.

His daughter was a Christian also. However she did not believe in evolution. To this Darwin once said...
"We both believe that God did it, we just disagree on how long it took".

Some of the worst evils and false doctrines come from "believers".
 
I'm sorry DHC but we have evidence of transitional fossils. I actually use these to be sure I'm analyzing the correct geology for metals. Crinoids to be exact. They aren't particularly rare either. Sure we may not have found the transition for the Dragonfly yet, but if the fossils haven't been destroyed yet by diagenesis, then it'll only be a matter of time. Please research more on transitional fossils.
 
I'm sorry DHC but we have evidence of transitional fossils. I actually use these to be sure I'm analyzing the correct geology for metals. Crinoids to be exact. They aren't particularly rare either. Sure we may not have found the transition for the Dragonfly yet, but if the fossils haven't been destroyed yet by diagenesis, then it'll only be a matter of time. Please research more on transitional fossils.

Hello GeoFestiva.

Hope you are well and thanks for the reply, sorry my reply was late GeoFestiva, but I have been so busy lately.
I'm sorry DHC but we have evidence of transitional fossils. I actually use these to be sure I'm analyzing the correct geology for metals.
Crinoids to be exact. They aren't particularly rare either. Sure we may not have found the transition for the Dragonfly yet, but if the fossils
haven't been destroyed yet by diagenesis, then it'll only be a matter of time. Please research more on transitional fossils.
I followed your advice and did some research on transitional fossils to broaden my ideological horizons.
I also noted your statement 'we have evidence of transitional fossils', so let's look at this evidence.
(Wikipedia)
A transitional fossil is any fossilized remains of a life form that exhibits traits common to both an ancestral group and its derived
descendant group. This is especially important where the descendant group is sharply differentiated by gross anatomy and mode
of living from the ancestral group. These fossils serve as a reminder that taxonomic divisions are human constructs that have been
imposed in hindsight on a continuum of variation. Because of the incompleteness of the fossil record, there is usually no way to know
exactly how close a transitional fossil is to the point of divergence. Therefore, we can't assume transitional fossils are direct ancestors
of more recent groups, though they are frequently used as models for such ancestors.
With your advice in mind I spent some time researching a famous transitional fossil. This transitional fossil has been identified by the
name 'Archaeopteryx', and you are no doubt very familiar with this example.

If you follow the ideology that Archaeopteryx is a 'transitional fossil' then you have been taught that this particular specimen represents
perhaps a link between dinosaurs and birds. Firstly I do object to the Darwinian ideology that presents Archaeopteryx as a transitional
fossil species. Since the definition of a 'transitional fossil' is a fossil or organisms that show the intermediate states between an ancestral
form and that of its descendants.
(evolution.berkeley.edu)

Since there are no ancestoral fossils of Archaeopteryx in the fossil record and there are no descendant fossils of Archaeopteryx that have
been found in the fossil record. It is very clear that the claim that Archaeopteryx is a transitional form is not supported by any fossil evidence.
This claim amounts to nothing more than pure speculation and is very unscientific in methodology.

We know very little about this fossil specimen and all that is available to date are a handful of snapshots of Archaeoptryx in the fossil record.
These fossil snapshots are from the same time period in the fossil record which increases the uncertainty of any evolutionary relationship
existing, between this species and any other species for that matter. What alarms me most about this particular example is that it just suddenly
appears in the fossil record. That is an impossibility by any stretch of the imagination, there should be thousands of variations of the species
of Archaeoptyyx in the fossil record somewhere.

So why has science not been able to find any transitional species which are supported in any way by the fossil evidence. Why does this example,
the fossil Archaeoptyx have no such supporting evidence given the claim that it is a transitional species. Simply because there are so few fossils
that are even offered as transitional species. It is the rarity of these transitional species that is the refutation in itself of the ideology that is called
the evolutionary theory.

The rarity of transitional species is the hard evidence against evolutionary theory because the opposite should be the case. The strata layers should
abound in transitional species since mutations are a continuous feature of DNA replication. A species cannot ever suddenly appear in any fossil strata
there must be a proliferation of mutational diversity.

Research was of little profit GeoFestiva, since all I discovered was speculative reasoning. I need some evidence and perhaps you may be able to suggest
a solid example of a transitional species. That has observable fossil evidence to support the rather strange claim of the existence of a 'transitional species'.
 
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