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Does anyone else find creationism insulting to God?

Most commonly, though, people just don't seem to understand anything about what evolution/common descent actually says; and instead they think it says all sorts of bizarre things that it acutally doesn't. Just look at cxsx's post above. He seems to believe that evolution means "that God isn't all powerful or has no method behind what he does." (!!!!!) Evolution / common descent is a scientific framework describing the course & history of life on earth.... it doesn't have anything to say about God, any more than eg meteorology does!


Exactly. Many people just don't understand when science or religion are appropriate methods of getting an answer to something.

Science tells us why it rains, and allows us to predict when it might rain. This is obviously quite useful in our daily lives, such as in deciding what to wear to the outdoor Bob Dylan concert on Tuesday, depending on whether or not it rains. Or science will teach us how a disease spreads, so that it can be contained and treated. Religion is not very useful for this sort of thing, and attempting to replace science with religion in these areas is not going to be successful.

On the other hand, religion does give people a sense of man's interaction with nature, with society, and man's struggle with the concept of morality. Religion teaches people how to lead a moral and "right" life according to each religion's code. Science cannot tell you how to live your life, what the "right" path is (aside from giving advice on how to live a healthy life, ie nutrition information).

If more people used these two tools in the manner that each does best, the world would be a far better place.
 
the thing with god is that is if god created anything how did god possibly have any knowledge base to draw upon if god is a singular being? Wouldn’t creating something require thought? And wouldn’t thought require self awareness but how does something become self aware if it is all that exists?

Maybe none of my points make sense. I don’t know it just seems that what ever god is, he/she/it would first have to realize what he/she/it is, and maybe what we give god credit for creating is really just god trying to figuring out what it is, thus we are all in fact god :)
 
I think its sad that people need a religion for morals. I know not to kill people because it seems like a fundamental concept to me. I feel that I have a right to live, and therefore other people also have a right to live. It's kinda fucked up that people need God threatening them with Hell, or a law against it, to keep them from doing something.

Edit: And its also sad that people need religion to tell them the "right" path to take. To me thats one of the greatest things about life, figuring it out yourself. But to each their own I guess.
 
Have you guys ever really thought about the purpose of your eyes? how bout your ears? the atom? light? a leaf? there is brilliant purpose behind every detail. so i really dont see the insult to God at all.

Hyperion: blood and species are radically different in the animal kingdom. lions are not turning in to birds, frogs are not turning in to kangaroos. i'm saying even animals are not capable of turning in other species. the species were created by God and ordained to create after their own kind. so how much more different is the life and blood of an animal to that of a man? animals aren't turning into eachother and humans did not form out of an animal either.

Johnny Apple: i think God does realize what he is. we were created in his image.

Roger&Me: i understand that you say you want this to be a scientific discussion but how you gonna keep it scientific when you're talking about spiritual matters ? did you just not want the christians to reply?
Genises says that God created the heavens and earth in six literal morning to evening days.
if the bible does not mean what it says, how can we ever know what it means at all?

elemenohpee: how do you think you got that fundamental concept? maybe God put it there. the Bible says He did.
"I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts."

it's prolly just all man made bullshit to you guys.
but so is evolution to me. ;)
 
cxsx said:
lions are not turning in to birds, frogs are not turning in to kangaroos.
You clearly completely misunderstand what the theory of evolution is if you are making such statements. How can you argue against a theory you don't even know properly?

I would suggest you read this thread : http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=187600 . It has some excellent posts which show how much evidence there is for evolution.
 
Have you guys ever really thought about the purpose of your eyes? how bout your ears?

Actually, on the subject of one's ears: Reptilian jaws contain more bones than mammalian jaws do. Reptilian and Mammalian skulls are shaped differently. However, we do see homologies that exist. Specifically, with regards to ears and jaws, we find that while mammals have fewer bones in our jaws, we have more bones in our inner ear. Guess what? The bones of your inner ear are homologous to the bones in a reptile jaw. In face, extinct synapsid fossils (extinct reptile lineage that gave rise to mammals, distinct from extant diapsid reptiles and birds and anapsid turtles) show a stead progression of fewer jawbones and more complicated inner ears. So yes, I have thought about my ears, and the thinking about my ears makes it pretty damned clear that they are the result of evolutionary change.

Oh, incidentally, further thinking regarding thinking of ears reveals another important homology: Your eustachian tubes. In a human embryo, structures form which are homologous with the structures that form gills in fish embryos. You may have noticed that we do not have gills. These structures in the human embryo develop into your eustachian tubes, the air-filled passages that keep out ears pressurized.

so how much more different is the life and blood of an animal to that of a man?

Depends on which animal, but chimp DNA is somewhere between 95-98% similar to ours. On the other hand, arthropods don't technically have "blood," but hemolymph, since they lack a closed circulatory system. Incidentally, We find that our particular blood (constant temperature, un-nucleated red blood cells) has more in common with other mammals (and to a lesser extent a similarity to birds) than it does to reptiles, amphibians, or fish. It has even far less in common with the blood-like substances present in animals from phyla with open circulatory systems.

and humans did not form out of an animal either.

You might wish to explain this insight to the FDA, which requires that all drugs in this country be tested on two mammalian species before it's tested on humans. If humans do not share a common ancestor with other mammals, then clearly this policy is misguided, so you really should submit a paper to the FDA warning them about this.

Genises says that God created the heavens and earth in six literal morning to evening days.

Actually, this is false. Genesis ch2 does indeed say this, but the preceeding chapter says simply that G_d created the heavens and the Earth and does not give a timeline. There are actually two creation stories in the Bible.

Oh, and those six days were evening to evening, not morning to morning.

if the bible does not mean what it says, how can we ever know what it means at all?

A: Do you know what it actually, literally says, as opposed to the English translation? Because, and I know this may be a bit of a shock to you, the Bible was not written in English.

B: There is this thing called allegory. If you managed to pass fourth grade English class, I'm sure you're familiar with it. Many passages in the Bible use allegory so as to make a religious point, and it is clear from the context that it is an allegorical story. In fact, the allegory, symbolism, and other literary techniques in the Bible would not become widely used again in western literature until the Renaissance, which I think goes to demonstrate the beauty of the good book.

You know what, in retrospect it seems that the original question of this thread was a good point. Creationism really is insulting to G_d.
 
hyperion: that's why i don't believe that by some chance life began from a chemical broth. we are far too complex for me to believe that we were just thrown together with no goal or form of order. there is no documented proof that evolution occurs cross species, i do believe that within a species it does occur. like when moths develope spots on their wings.
testing products on animals does not proove that they are our ancestors, sorry.
also, in the book of Mark chapter 10, the bible mentions that God created male and female in the beginning. is this a third creation story? no, it's just stating again that God is the creator.
you're wrong. it's not Gen ch.2 it's Gen ch.1 , the very first sentence in the Bible that tells us God created the heavens and the earth. it restates in more detail in Gen. ch. 2 the creation of man and God breathing a living souil in to him. you feel that's a whole other creation story altogether? i don't.

about the morning to morning or evening to evening being a day, it's neither. it's evening to morning. :)

it's not a shock that the bible was not written in english. however, i have faith that God enabled His word to be translated perfectly and meaning was not lost through translation.
by allegory, do you mean parable? because the bible points out when Jesus spoke to the people in parables.
 
hyperion: that's why i don't believe that by some chance life began from a chemical broth. we are far too complex for me to believe that we were just thrown together with no goal or form of order.

We may be very complex, but it does not follow that early life was so complex. Furthermore, the origin of life is not part of evolutionary theory. The theory of evolution explains our current biodiversity, how species change over time, why species change over time, and explains how we evolved from a common ancestor or group of ancestors. The actual origin of life is outside of the scope of evolutionary theory. Now, you are correct that all current thinking regarding the origin of life are merely hypotheses, and in fact this is an excellent method for demonstrating the difference between hypothesis and theory. The myriad of explanations for the possible origin of life are hypotheses, they have some evidence to support them, but do not fully explain observed phenomena and have not yet been confirmed. A theory, on the other hand, is an explanation which fully explains observed phenomena and makes predictions that have been tested.

there is no documented proof that evolution occurs cross species,

Yes, yes there is. Aside from observed evolution in laboratory bacteria, the fossil evidence, including "transitional" species, is abundant. Archeopteryx and other archosaurs with feathers have been found, including early toothed seabirds. Whale ancestors bearing vestigial hindlimbs that get progressively more atrophied through several different species across several million years have been found and documented. Synapsid reptiles species with progressively more mammalian skulls have been found and documented.

i do believe that within a species it does occur. like when moths develope spots on their wings.

And when you multiply this process by several billion years, it becomes very obvious how evolution above the species level occurs. If you accept the peppered moth changes, then you understand natural selection and how it works. Actually, humans provide similar evidence, in the form of varied racial characteristics, like when my Jewish nose gets stuffed up in this fucking humid weather that it was never adapted for, or how my black friends can sit out in the sun with me and not get sunburned in five minutes. However, because no human population has been continuously reproductively isolated for more than ten millenia, these variations have not resulted in speciation, as evidenced by the fact that the various races can interbreed. However, it should be noted that certain medical issues like lactose tolerance or liver enzyme polymorphism vary from race to race.

testing products on animals does not proove that they are our ancestors, sorry.

You completely and utterly missed my point on that one, which is a bit frustrating for me. My point was that the FDA tests drugs on animals because of common descent, not that their testing proves common descent. And by the way, the current species tested on are not our ancestors, but they share a common ancestor with us. Now, the point was that if, as you assert, there is no common descent, then there is no reason to expect that tests of drugs on mammals would be a better prediction of their function in humans than tests on reptiles or amphibians, or even other phyla. If this is the case, then you ought to go down and explain it to the FDA, because you seem to be asserting that they have made their decision based on incorrect assumptions.

you're wrong. it's not Gen ch.2 it's Gen ch.1 , the very first sentence in the Bible that tells us God created the heavens and the earth. it restates in more detail in Gen. ch. 2 the creation of man and God breathing a living souil in to him.

Well, certain things are a bit different. Ch 1 implies the creation of man and women at the same time, Ch 2 says that they occurred separately.

however, i have faith that God enabled His word to be translated perfectly and meaning was not lost through translation.

This faith, no doubt, stems from being unable to read it in the original language, meaning that you have not considered the multiple possible translations involved. It's not a question of whether the people were enabled to translate it perfectly, but that Hebrew simply does not translate to English perfectly. Any translation is by definition an interpretation, and cannot be considered literal.

by allegory, do you mean parable?

Similar, but not quite. "Parable" refers more to an entire story whose point is meant as a lesson. A parable is allegorical, and could be considered a form of allegory, but "allegory" can also refer to details within a story, in which, for instance, the White Whale has an allegorical meaning as unbridled ambition. In fact, Moby Dick is a good way to explain my point: Reading the Bible as having literal meaning is like reading Moby Dick as being a documentary on New England whaling traditions.

because the bible points out when Jesus spoke to the people in parables.

Yes, but the parts to which you are referring were written down at least a half-millenium earlier, and came from oral traditions that may date back several millenia. Just because the New Testament may specifically mention when a particular story is meant to be taken allegorically does not mean that the far more ancient stories will have such a footnote.

I actually wouldn't have a problem with your views, but for a few problems: You seem not to understand the basics of evolutionary theory, you seem not to understand the difference between faith and science, and you seem to have only a rudimentary understanding of the Bible. The last one is not really a problem, I mean, you have the right to interpret the Bible as you see fit, and I'm not going to say which is right and which is wrong, but science is not like that. In science, there often are right and wrong answers.
 
I'd also like to refer everyone here to http://www.talkorigins.org if you want more information on current evolutionary understanding. The vast majority of the articles on that site are written by PhD biologists for a lay audience.
 
Jeez Hyperion, lighten up, its like watching someone kick a puppy. So helpless and defenseless. Actually, on second thought, keep going, i'm rather enjoying this. =D

lions are not turning in to birds, frogs are not turning in to kangaroos. i'm saying even animals are not capable of turning in other species. the species were created by God and ordained to create after their own kind. so how much more different is the life and blood of an animal to that of a man? animals aren't turning into eachother and humans did not form out of an animal either.

cxsx:
I think you're misunderstanding this. No frogs are not going to turn into kangaroos. What evolutionary theory says is that at some point in the distant past there was a branch, some animals continued to develop as amphibians, some as marsupials, mammals, reptiles, whatever. Of course kangaroos are not going to turn into frogs, these are two animals that evolved seperately. That would mean that kangaroos' DNA would have to happen to mutate into the exact DNA sequence of a frog. And at 9 billion base pairs long, that would be highly unlikely. But it is not so hard to see how a fish would turn into a frog, then a toad, then a reptile, then a bird, etc.

(edit:nvm, HUMAN dna is 9 billion base pairs long, I don;t know how long a frog's is, if anyone knows please post it)
 
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cxsx said:
we are far too complex for me to believe that we were just thrown together with no goal or form of order. there is no documented proof that evolution occurs cross species, i do believe that within a species it does occur. like when moths develope spots on their wings.
Congratulations on still missing the whole point of what Evolution says, even after I posted a link to a thread where several people brought up exactly the same things as you have and were given explainations as to why they are incorrect in what they think evolution is actually supposed to be.

Perhaps you'd like to actually read the thread I posted to see why you are full of misconceptions.
 
elemenohpee: if you have a moment this may interest you:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/re1/chapter4.asp

Alpha: yea i did read the link, so what.. you're expecting me to believe that a fish became a philosopher over billions of years? no, i dont believe that a fish is our ancestor. i admit i did just glance through that thread you posted, but it just seemed to be about fish.
i'm not going to continue with the evolution vs. creation debate cos like i stated, they both require faith to believe.
but now it all makes sense to me why you guys might think that creation is an insult to God. the Bible states :

"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him" 1Cor ch. 2:14
 
Creationism is an insult to human intelligence and reasoning.
 
cxsx said:
i'm not going to continue with the evolution vs. creation debate cos like i stated, they both require faith to believe.

if that's really what you think, then you don't understand faith at all.

i don't see where anyone has said 'a fish became a philosopher.' the fact that you continue to regurgitate such nonsense in this thread makes it clear that you don't actually understanfd anything about evolution. do a little reading. it doesn't hurt.
 
this is what i believe faith is :
Hebrews ch.1:1-3
"1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 2 For by it the elders obtained a good report. 3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."

so maybe your definition of faith is different, so what.

no one said that a fish became a philosopher, but they are suggesting that fish are our ancestors. i'm simply saying that i believe my ancestors were human. i believe a fish reproduced after its own kind and had more little fish,
and humans reproduced after their own kind and had more humans. i have faith that what the bible says about creation is the truth. just like these guys have faith that what the evolutionist books say about evolution is the truth. that's why i quote the bible and you refer me to your resources. we both have faith that our material is the truth. least i do anywayz...
 
cxsx said:
i admit i did just glance through that thread you posted, but it just seemed to be about fish.
It began about fish, but quickly moved onto general evolution, try looking beyond the first page, taking particular note of posts by Zorn.
cxsx said:
they both require faith to believe.
Evidence for creationism : Zero
Evidence for evolution : Millions of fossils. Lab observations of adaptation. Logical consistency. DNA records. Most of the field of biochemistry.

Both might take faith, but one requires complete faith with no evidence, the other requires almost no faith and has enormous quantities of data to back it up. Its like saying "You require faith to believe in gravity, therefore I decide not to believe in it, since thats just as likely to be true via my logic.".
cxsx said:
just like these guys have faith that what the evolutionist books say about evolution is the truth. that's why i quote the bible and you refer me to your resources.
The Bible is a single book written by men. Evolution's evidence is created by nature, without the influence of man. Hence, your "evidence" is open to enormous twisting at the hands of both the original authors and the dozens of translators who have copied and translated the Bible over the centuries. Evolutions data is free of such taint.

I would not consider The Bible a credible source of information any more than I consider "The Magic Roundabout" a detailed investigation into the behaviour of dogs and cows.
 
cxsx, I have only a rudimentary understanding of evolution, but I can still pick out many things that the writer of that article doesn;t understand. His main argument seems to be that dinosaurs and birds are different in many ways, therefore birds did not evolve from dinosaurs. A lot of times you don't see all the intermediate steps because something major DID change all at once. Its called developmental biology. Certain sections of the genetic code tell the embryo how to develop. A small change in one of these genes can mean major physical changes for the embro.

Archaeopteryx had fully formed flying feathers (including asymmetric vanes and ventral, reinforcing furrows as in modern flying birds), the classical elliptical wings of modern woodland birds, and a large wishbone for attachment of muscles responsible for the downstroke of the wings.3 Its brain was essentially that of a flying bird, with a large cerebellum and visual cortex. The fact that it had teeth is irrelevant to its alleged transitional status—a number of extinct birds had teeth, while many reptiles do not. Furthermore, like other birds, both its maxilla (upper jaw) and mandible (lower jaw) moved. In most vertebrates, including reptiles, only the mandible moves.
Okay, so he pointed out every way in which the two species were different, what does that prove?
‘It's biophysically impossible to evolve flight from such large bipeds with foreshortened forelimbs and heavy, balancing tails,’ exactly the wrong anatomy for flight.15
That's why the large bipeds didn;t fly, they had the wrong anatomy for flight. How does this disprove them evolving into birds?
New research shows that birds lack the embryonic thumb that dinosaurs had, suggesting that it is ‘almost impossible’ for the species to be closely related.17
Developmental biology. Why would it be any more impossible for a bird to lose an embryonic thumb than for a fish to evolve into a frog? If all hes going to is say is he doesn;t understnad how evolution works...well we already knew that.
But a gliding stage is not intermediate between a land animal and a flier. Gliders either have even longer wings than fliers (compare a glider's wingspan with an airplane's, or the wingspan of birds like the albatross which spend much time gliding), or have a wide membrane which is quite different from a wing (note the shape of a hang-glider or a flying squirrel). Flapping flight also requires highly controlled muscle movements to achieve flight, which in turn requires that the brain has the program for these movements. Ultimately, this requires new genetic information that a non-flying creature lacks.
OK this is getting boring. All this guy is saying is that "the DNA of these two animals is different. Therefore they are different." He doesn;t seem to be able to understnad how gliding animals could have evolved into flying animals. Yes, they have different characteristics, that's what we're explaining with evolution. This in no way proves that gliding wings couldn;t have evolved into flying wings.
However, reptiles and birds are very different in many ways. Flying birds have streamlined bodies, with the weight centralized for balance in flight; hollow bones for lightness which are also part of their breathing system; powerful muscles for flight, with specially designed long tendons that run over pulley-like openings in the shoulder bones; and very sharp vision.
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In chapter 2 we showed that every structure or organ must be represented by information at the genetic level, written in a chemical alphabet on the long molecule DNA. Clearly, the information required to code for the construction of a feather is of a substantially different order from that required for a scale. For scales to have evolved into feathers means that a significant amount of genetic information had to arise in the bird's DNA which was not present in that of its alleged reptile ancestor.
He has no way of knowing how different the DNA coding for feathers is from the DNA coding for scales. As I said before it does not follow that they would have to be that much different.
As usual, natural selection would not favor the hypothetical intermediate forms. Many evolutionists claim that dinosaurs developed feathers for insulation and later evolved and refined them for flight purposes. But like all such ‘just-so’ stories, this fails to explain how the new genetic information arose so it could be selected for.
does this guy not understand at all how dna works? i can't believe this guy could be that dense. The animals fucked and their offspring's DNA aquirred mutations, whats so dificult to understand?
I'm getting bored, someone else can finish up if they want to and cover the points I probably missed.

Have you even considered what I've said, that maybe evolution is God's work? If you understood how our DNA works at all you would know that evolution is pretty much built into it, so if God created DNA...fuck it, if I say it a million times you;re not gonna listen.
 
just like these guys have faith that what the evolutionist books say about evolution is the truth.

Ummm, perhaps you have a fundamental misunderstanding of science in general, because nothing in science is taken on faith. Facts are cross checked, experiments repeated, every article published in a reputable scientific journal is peer-reviewed mercilessly and all scientists are required to prove any and all assertions. The scientific method itself was devised specifically to get around the idea of accepting assertions based purely on faith.

Do you think that scientists are just going around making these things up? Because if you do, then you have a conspiracy so large that it dwarfs anything the CIA, KGB, and Mossad put together have ever accomplished.
 
cxsx said:
Genises says that God created the heavens and earth in six literal morning to evening days.
if the bible does not mean what it says, how can we ever know what it means at all?
I'm not sure why you think the Bible is supposed to be a science textbook -- it's pretty clearly not.

None of the books of the Bible ever makes a point of teaching about some branch of science. When something about the world is referenced in passing, there's never any attempt to be literally scientifically correct. We know of course that the Earth doesn't have four corners, you can't see its entire surface from the peak of any mountain, and it rests neither on pillars nor a foundation. Nor is Ecclesiastes scientifically accurate when he says "The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose" since actually the sun doesn't move and the Earth spins in a circle. Of course, people say things like this all the time and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, since we realize they're not trying to teach an astronomy or biology lesson.

Genesis 1 & 2 isn't meant as a lesson on the method by which the creation of the world was accomplished, the time it took, or what order it happened in. It's about how God is responsible for all of creation, about the role of man in his creation, the relationship of man to God, and so on. I think it's a mistake to presume the only way God could have created the universe is in the particular simple way you imagined he did -- to figure that out, we have to look at the evidence and use our reason and see what we can figure out.

When you do that, you find that the theory of the simultaneous special creation of all species is completely impossible. Just for one, the briefest glance at the fossil record rules it out. eg, take a look at a this geological timeline. You can see that at the broadest level the history of life on Earth shows the gradual appearance and development/spread of different branches of life. Up to 500 million years ago you just have inverterbrate sea critters and algae. Then you start to see primitive bony fish. By 420 million years ago there are fossils of jawed fish, sharks, some primitive land plants. Between 350-400 million years ago the first amphibians show up in the fossil record, looking very fishlike & primitive. They are gradually followed by more and more amphibians, then later the first reptiles 300-350 million years ago. etc. -- you get the picture. If all species had been individually created at the same time, of course, we would find them all present in fossils from the beginning.

If you examine the fossil record closely, it's convincing proof of evolution by itself, but that's only a small portion of the facts that can prove it. What I find the most immediately compelling is the modern molecular (ie, DNA) evidence.... Essentially we can do a DNA paternity test on a bunch of different specie. It's a bit tricky to understand if you don't know anything about genetics, but once you understand what's going on, you see what ironclad proof it is of descent from a common ancestor.
 
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