Dear Cybacat,

It sounds like you agree with natural selection, but disagree with evolution. This is an interesting viewpoint on the topic and one that I have not heard before.

First of all, I am glad that you agree that trees can get taller by natural selection, and also giraffes' necks can get longer by the same principle. This, in itself, is evolution on a small scale.

You say you find it hard to believe that cats can evolve into dogs, or giraffes can evolve into elephants. No biologist is suggesting this. Giraffes and elephants evolve from a common mammal ancestor, which is now extinct. The species of giraffe and elephant are related as cousins. As for cats and dogs, their evolution has been modified by humankind: they have been bred and domesticated.

You say it is hard to believe that radical changes could take place to a species, even over a long period of time. But look at the time scales involved. There has been life on Earth for 3,000,000,000 years. That is an unimaginably vast period of time, compared to the average lifespan of a human, about 75 years. We have no concept of how much time this is. According to calculations made by scientists, evolution from, eg, a woolly mammoth to a modern elephant could happen on a timescale such as this.

Moreover, there is hard empirical evidence that this has actually happened in reality. There is the fossil record, which contains the fossilised bones of ancient creatures that are now extinct. Scientists are able to date these fossils, using techniques like radio-carbon dating.

You have expressed skepticism that a wide range of different species could evolve from a common ancestor. This is known as "speciation" and is dealt with by evolutionary theory and natural selection. It is a logical consequence of changing environments. Organisms adapt as the environment changes. Also, some mass migrations take place, and species adapt to the new environment they have moved into.

If you are not convinced by any of what I have said, I beg you not to give up on evolution just yet! Please, at the very least, read one of the many books explaining and justifying these ideas, eg, the ones by Stephen J. Gould. 

fred 

I'm not aware of any hard scientific data demonstrating one species changing to another.  Afaic fossils merely show previous versions of a species that may have changed due to natural selection.  They also show a range of plants and animals that are now extinct.  What they don't demonstrate is a change from 1 species into another, which is the cornerstone of evolution theory used to explain the variety of species in the world.

Within the species I have no argument - clearly there is variation due to the passing of time and changing conditions combined with natural selection.

Damn, that was funny! I bet he thought up a couple more uses for that banana before they cut him short.

x-ray
if your back's against the wall, turn around and write on it...

Dear Cybacat,

We are in agreement that natural selection can cause a species to change its physical characterisitc, eg, a giraffe's neck may get longer, as it adapts to its environment.

Now, suppose this process continues for about 4 million years. The species will keep changing and changing very gradually, but after a very long time period, it will have changed so much that it qualifies as a new species. This is what happenend to the woolly mammoth: it gradually changed and changed until after several million years, it became the elephant. This explains why there are no longer any woolly mammoths, and also where elephants came from.

It is really just a matter of where you draw the line between one species and another. "Species" is just an arbitrary designation. If two organisms are sufficiently similar, we say they belong to the same species. There are other desingations, such as "genus", "phylum", "kingdom", etc.

Finally, given that elephants have only existed for X million years, and given that the planet Earth has existed for much longer, then if the elephant did not evolve from a previous species, where did it come from?

Maybe they just magically appeared one day, like the Bible says.

x-ray
if your back's against the wall, turn around and write on it...

I am not sure the bible says that x-ray.

From Genesis 1:

20 And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.’ ²¹So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. ²²God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’ ²³And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

24 And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.’ And it was so. ²⁵God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

Seems pretty clear to me, Kevin.

x-ray
if your back's against the wall, turn around and write on it...

Well, that's the other possibility: God intervened directly and caused the elephant to appear.

However, I think that the elephant would have evolved anyway from the elephant-ancestor, given enough time. Evolution is a realistic possibility, and there is a vast, vast amount of empirical evidence to support it.

It could be that God designed the Universe in such a way that the later species would evolve from the earlier ones in a way that required no direct intervention. This would show greater efficiency on the part of God.

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

Beauty is momentary in the mind -
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.
The body dies; the body's beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
the cowl of winter, done repenting.
So maidens die, to the auroral
Celebration of a maiden's choral.
Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings
Of those white elders; but, escaping,
Left only Death's ironic scraping.
Now in its immortality, it plays
On the clear viol of her memory,
And makes a constant sacrement of praise.

('Peter Quince at the Clavier' by Wallace Stevens)

What I mean is that when I have talked to Atheist before and I am not talking about evangelism, the Atheist always want me to prove something.  I don't have anything to prove.  The Christian walk is a walk of faith.  It is like they want me to win them over with some kind of argument or facts, but I can't win anyone over.  The bible does command for Christians to share their faith or spread the word, but it doesn't say you can debate someone into having a relationship with Christ.  Even though Paul sometimes did get into debates with people, but he also had manifestataions of power.

About the diamond thing.  I saw the diamonds at a sign and wonder meeting.  It wasn't something someone could fake like some kind of magic trick, because the diamonds formed right in front of me just a few feet away.  People began to see the diamonds form in the air in front of them.  This is common for a signs and wonder meeting.  Diamonds has never appeared in my private prayer time with God, but oil has come through my hands and forehead land gold dust has appeared on my hands and body.  Also at the signs and wonders meeting gold teeth appeared as well.  This is all in the bible.  Once when Jesus needed some money for taxes he told Peter to look in a fish's mouth and he found a gold coin.  Also Jesus spoke of focusing on treasures being stored in heaven.  The Kingdom of God is a real place with real treasures.  How do you tap into that?  I don't know.  I just know the treasures have manifested at times during prayer and worship or when I have been praying for people in the streets.  I would like to see more of it so then I could help the poor etc....

And yes Freshly Squeezed if you think with logic and reason I have lost a lot of creadablity because the Kingdom Mind does not work that way.  I am not saying logic and reason is bad, you do need it and it is important but to flow in the Kingdom it will not make any kind of sense at all at times.

So if Freshly Squeezed and Booth are interested in these kinds of meetings I will send you some links.  Just tell me what area you live in and maybe one will be coming to a city in your area and you can check it out yourself.  These meetings are usaully small but can sometimes be large.  There are different kinds of meetings depending on what Kingdom experience you are hungery for.  If it is healing then their are healing meetings, if it is to feel the presence of God then there are itimacy meetings.  The type of manifestations I talked about usaully occur at Signs and Wonders meetings or even in you private prayer time.  I can't say there will be diamonds but you will see some kind of sign and a wonder it depends on how God chooses to manifest.  It may be diamonds, gold teeth, manna, gold dust, awesome weight loss, angels, angel feathers, etc....  And if you check it out you can decide for yourself if what you see is fake or real.

Dear Kevin,

I don't think evolution is necessarily incompatible with what you believe as a Christian.

It is not so much a question of "Could God make an elephant materialise out of thin air?" as "Why would God choose to do that?" If God designed and created the Universe, would it not make more sense to design it in such a way that he did not have to continually make adjustments to it in the form of divine intervention? If a person designed a clock, that person would probably want to clock to run with the minimum of fuss and without interruption, instead of having to make alterations to the mechanism every five minutes.

So, it would make more sense for God to design the Universe in such a way that life emerges by collision of molecules in the primordial ocean, and then species gradually evolve over the course of billions of year, on the own, based upon the principle of natural selection. The alternative possibility is for God to create a similar Universe in which the species do _not_ evolve and then having to make each new species appear out of thin air.

Now given that God is all-powerful, or at least, powerful enough to create the Universe, surely God designed and created it in the most efficient way possible, ie, with natural selection as a mechanism leading to the emergence of new species.

To put this idea in a nutshell: Just because evolution has happened and is still happening now, it does not mean there is no God. Evolution could be part of God's grand design, as it were. So there is no need for Christians or other religious people to keep denying that evolution ever happenend. It did happened. We know it happened. At the risk of repeating myself, there is a lot of evidence to show that it happened.

Fred

My pov is that God created the universe (and theologians can argue about whether that was an actual 7 day period, or symbolic of something else).  There were numerous species created, and over time these have changed and adapted due to natural selection.  We can see from fossil evidence that some species have since died out (dinosaurs being the most well known example), and over time more and more organisms have died out...and will continue to do so.

What we have today is a subset of what originally existed.  We are not looking at a handful of species that have evolved into millions of others over time.  I just can't buy that - even given the massive timespans involved, the odds of it happening are ridiculously large.  One of the cornerstones of science is reproducability - I'm not aware of scientists observing a species transform into another.

So, it comes down to faith.  Some will accept the world and all the living creatures in it which just so happen to work together so incredibly well that it points to Intelligent Design.  Others, due perhaps to religious intolerance, can't allow themselves to accept this...so they go for the only popular alternative - the theory that species evolve into other species over time.  Imho it's fanciful when you look at the science involved...but it's the best they've come up with so far. 

I have little doubt evolution theory will go the way of the equally popular Flat-Earth theory, and be replaced as more knowledge is gained.  Ultimately, I hope we will all come to know the truth of the matter.

Dear Cybacat,

Well, I think your viepoint is interesting and original. Most people seem to be either totally "scientific" or totally "6-days of creation".

But how would you account for the following:

1. Vestigial organs, eg, a whale has tiny little back leg bones. A snake has little hip bones. Humans have the tail bone (or coccyx), wisdom teeth and the appendix. If they were created directly, why would God put in these unnecessary organs?

2. The appearance of the HIV virus in circa 1985. If it did not evolve from an earlier species, where did it come from?

3. Antibiotic resistance. How are bacteria managing to become resistant to antibiotics such as penecillin? Also, the resistance of insects to insecticide used by crop-farmers.

4. Molecular evidence from DNA strands, showing shared genetic sequences from humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and baboons. If they were created separately, why so much similar genetic info?

5. Why does DNA exist at all? If God did not want his creatures to evolve, why did he put DNA molecules into their cells, which would cause them to evolve by natural selection?

Also, you compare evolution to the "flat earth theory". This is not a valid comparison. The "flat earth theory" was pre-scientific. It was the best idea people has, before they had accumulated enough scientific evidence to see things the way they are. Thanks to scientist like Copernicus, Galileo and Newton, evidence was collected and a mathematical framework was developed to show that the Earth is spherical and moves in an elliptical orbit around the Sun. There was huge pressure from the religious people to stop this idea, including putting Galileo under house arrest, but eventually freedom of speech triumphed and the scientists managed to publish their research without hindrance.

Likewise, the idea that all species were created separately at the same time is the best idea you have if you have no other evidence, which is why it was first proposed in ancient societies, between 1000 BC and 500 BC (This is the approx date Genesis was written, according to Biblical scholars). Evntually, scientific knowledge progressed to the point where the age of the Earth was determined to be about 4.5 billion years old, fossils were found, a mechanism for natural selection was proposed, and the structure of the DNA molecule and its role in natural selection was worked out. Yet all the time, in the background, there were (and still are today) voices of dissent from the religious people who did not like the idea, and wanted to disprove it, but failed utterly to do so. By about 1900, most scientists had accpeted evolution by natural selection, but even today, you get non-scientists arguing about it, as if there is still a serious debate.

You say that evolution has not been observed happening in the way that other phenomena have. Well, if you read "The Beak of the Finch" by Jonathan Weiner, it explains how two scientists conducted detailed observations of a group of finches on the Galapagos Islands over a period of 20 years, including blood samples and DNA tests, which showed the finches actually evolving into new species.

Dear Cybacat,

I would just like to say one more thing: I am very glad that you agree that dinosaurs did actually exist, and then they became extinct.

Sometimes, I have talked to Christians who say "dinosaurs never existed, because they are not mentioned in the Bible..."

So, IMHO, you are thinking along the right lines, Cybacat, and if you look into evolution a bit more, maybe read a couple fo books about it, eventually you will be agree with it. (And you won't have to stop believing in God, IMHO. The two ideas (God and evolution) are not mutually exclusive.)

I don't know who these Christians are or where they live, but I've never encountered them and I've lived in three corners of the US from Ohio-Michigan, to Florida, to California. But if the non-dinosaur believing Christians DO exist in any large numbers, they are about as significant as those fans of Tupac who claim he's still alive recording new albums in the Bahamas. And if they do exist, conversations with them have to be taken for what they're worth -- very little. I mean, you hear all sorts of dumb things from people including educated people who might make a claim that there were no Muslim Arab men in US commercial planes on September 11, 2001. That shouldn't, in and of itself, be a representative statement about those with higher education.

The only time I ever saw/heard such a lame dinosaur claim was in a didactic episode of my beloved Sopranos which was written by the criminally bad screenwriting team of Frolov and Schneider. Season 6. But even they wrote the "stupid Christian" character as saying he believed dinosaurs and humans coexisted a few thousand years ago. Ha ha ha.

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Booth, if you highlight it from your end, and then click on that little color palette to the right and THEN click on black, you should have visible ink.

I read it and see that it's a comedy routine, right?  

Susan 

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Yes, it's comedy and it was funny too! (Good thing it wasn't delivered by Michael Richards) But the joke is based on stereotypical stoopid Christians, and as such, it's funny. Two of the only jokes I can remember are hilarious based on stereotypical Jews and Indians, so I get the humor.

But the comedy routine backs up my claim that these types of fundamentalist dinosaur doubters are mostly irrelevant backwoods types or concoctions created by comedians and Hollywood screenwriters. They are not mainstream Christians. Am I right, Cybacat and Jordan? (hahaha, yes, of course I'm 'right.')

What a nightmare, huh?

Susan

PS  Having to use that old prison trick of invisible ink makes the Bill Hicks routine all the funnier, now that I think about it!   

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Well, all I can say is that I really did meet two Christians, both of whom said that dinosaurs never existed. One of them belonged to the Church of England, which is hardly a fringe organisation. It's still the state religion of the UK.

They also expressed doubts about the formation of the solar system, and various other established scientific ideas.

Maybe a mainstream Christian would like to weigh in on the topic of the literal Biblical version versus the mainstream science version? Myself, I don't think the two have to be contrary. But I also don't claim to know. And I care even less. It's impressive in any event and frankly I don't pretend to understand something as complex as the origins of the universe. I just take it for granted that it was quite a grand achievement and leave it at that.

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin