Answers to athiest's dum disputes

Except for minor points, like the Earth being immovable.....

Funkman, were you looking at a translation when you decided that there were errors and contradictions in the Quran?If you were, then why is there a different standard for the Bible, (which you regard as inerrant in its original form, even though no original copies exist) and the Quran?PE

---

"Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the devil." - Emo Philips

funkman,The only reason you don't find errors and contradictions in the Bible is because you've already decided that if it's in the Bible, there can't be anything erroneous or contradictory about it. Anyone who points out a passage that appears contradictory is immediately given an ad-hoc explanation that won't suffice for anyone who doesn't already assume the inerrant nature of the Bible.Schraf's paradox, as we at EvC like to call it: "The Bible is the inerrant Word of God, since it says in the Bible that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God."Typical creationist cart-before-the-horse deductive reasoning. The flaw in the reasoning is that everyone has to accept the conclusion before they affirm the validity of the supporting logic. Sound scientific methodology should allow people to arrive at the same conclusion given the same evidence regardless of their religious, metaphysical or philosophical assumptions.regards,
Esteban "Ed Hawk" Hambre

Actually it runs a little deeper than that. In the thread Can God lie?, funkman writes (regarding Biblical contradictions): The reason funkman doesn't find any contradictions in the Bible is that starts from the premise that there aren't any, despite the fact that he's never seen the originals. And yet, he can, at the same time, blithely assert that there are errors in the Quran, even though I stongly suspect that he doesn't have any more than the most rudimentary knowledge of Classical Qurayshi Arabic.A classic case of doublethink. Or maybe he's confusing "faith" with "hope"?PE[This message has been edited by Primordial Egg, 04-14-2004]

---

"Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the devil." - Emo Philips

I teach biology for a living and this is the weakest argument people use for macroevolution. This along with peppered moths. All things have genetic variation. Just liked humans. We all have slight variations that make us different. If you came up with some poison which killed all the people who have allergies then only people without allergies would survive. It's a variation which already exists. What has always baffled me is how you then say this is proof that all things evolved from an earlier organism. That is a huge jump to make. If you really want to show something show me a bacteria evolving into a protist. or a protist evolving into a simple animal, plant or fungus. I'll even take an invertebrate evolving into a vertebrate. While you are at it I would like to see any evidence of an organism increasing in complexity. That would be great.Sorry this is off the topic.

keith63,I agree that we all have a certain degree of genetic variation, but I'm wondering how as a biology teacher you would explain the differing degrees of genetic variation among life forms on Earth. Obviously evolutionists such as myself argue that the degree of genetic variation between any two organisms is directly proportional to the time that has elapsed since the ancestor of those two organisms existed. Isn't this prediction borne out in the molecular phylogenies that have been constructed using comparisons of the patterns of divergence in a particular molecule among various species?Would we expect any correlation at all if creationism were true? Shouldn't all species be equally distant, genetically speaking, if (except for extremely minor interspecies variation) they are all products of separate acts of creation?regards,
Esteban Hambre

I still have a lot of questions that I don't know the answer to but my feeling is that all living things were created with genetic variation built in to our DNA. According to the Bible all things were created and it was all very good. Now after the fall of man and sin entered the world things were allowed to deteriorate. And we know there are a variety of things which cause mutations in genes.I also think the Bible allows for microevolution. It says in Genesis that things will "reproduce after their kind". My personal belief is that all dogs came from a common dog ansestor, all cats from a common cat and so on. This would certainly make the ark story more plausable.Some things I have questions about are the radiometric dating of materials. I don't know how to reconcile that with the Earth being 6 to 10,000 years old. I have always guessed that the Bible is just the record of the creation of earth with humans. It does say that "in the begining the earth was formless and without void" That sounds to me like it was here already. I think their is room for something to have been here before creation as it is written in Genesis. Obviously if God has always been in existance He must have done things prior to us.Well those are just a few thoughts

Desdamona,Since you are such an expert in DNA, from all your assertions about DNA being evidence of God's divinity, could you tell the rest of us what the 4 nucleotides of DNA and the 4 nucleotides of RNA are?Edited: changed spelling of divinity from devinity to divinity.[This message has been edited by Lam, 04-14-2004]

quote:

---

I also think the Bible allows for microevolution. It says in Genesis that things will "reproduce after their kind". My personal belief is that all dogs came from a common dog ansestor, all cats from a common cat and so on. This would certainly make the ark story more plausable.

---

I am an invert hobbyist. How the heck do you explain the 2,000 different species of tarantulas that exist today?Don't tell me that they are only spiders. The reason they are different species is because each and every one of them absolutely CANNOT interbreed with each other. With cats, they can breed all they want with each other.[This message has been edited by Lam, 04-14-2004]

they obviously had to come from a common spider ancestor. What is the reason they can't interbreed? Is it chromosomal differences or an unwilling to breed? In a test tube you may be able to breed a cat and a lion but I highly doubt in nature that the two would breed. That doesn't mean they didn't come from a common cat ancestor. Just think of the mechanical difficulties of breeding a great Dane with a Chihuahua.

keith,

quote:

---

I still have a lot of questions that I don't know the answer to but my feeling is that all living things were created with genetic variation built in to our DNA.

---

And what I asked is why we'd be 'created' with exactly the differing degrees of genetic variation that we'd expect to see if common ancestry were true. If all primates (including man) have a common ancestor that lived more recently than the last common ancestor of all mammals, etc., we would expect certain patterns of genetic and morphological similarity. This is what we observe, although you interpret this to mean that we were all created separately. Oh. Kay.regards,
Esteban Hambre

quote:

---

I also think the Bible allows for microevolution. It says in Genesis that things will "reproduce after their kind". My personal belief is that all dogs came from a common dog ansestor, all cats from a common cat and so on. This would certainly make the ark story more plausable.

---

Define kind.Every attempt at doing so has failed.You either end up with a)too many "kinds" to fit on an ark, or b)kinds that must have hyper-evolved at impossible rates to give the species seen today in the amount of time claimed by YECs.

Hey zephyr!It's like Old Home Day around here. First Parasomnium makes his triumphant return, now you. I only wish Mammuthus were here.Un verdadero gusto verte otra vez,
Esteban

quote:

---

Now after the fall of man and sin entered the world things were allowed to deteriorate. And we know there are a variety of things which cause mutations in genes.

---

Where is the scientific evidence that points to mutations starting only 6,000 years ago?

quote:

---

It says in Genesis that things will "reproduce after their kind". My personal belief is that all dogs came from a common dog ansestor, all cats from a common cat and so on. This would certainly make the ark story more plausable.

---

So are we humans part of the human kind, the ape kind, the primate kind, the vertebrate kind, the metazoan kind, or the animal kind? What kind of experiments do you do to place humans in one kind or another? There are enough morphological similarities to place us in the primate kind if we are comparing primates to the diversity of cats in the cat kind. More than enough similarity to place us in the vertebrate kind. Where do we stop, and by what objective scientific evidence do we base our judgements? If we base kinds by which species can interbreed, then a new species that is not able to interbreed with the parent stock is the formation of a new kind, or macroevolution. If this is the criteria, then macroevolution has been observed.Also, cats are cats only because we call them cats. If there was a new breed of feline that we decided to name a felinocine, would that be macroevolution simply because we call it by another name? The "kind" argument usually collapses into a naming game (eg, its a different cat, but it's still a cat). I could just as easily say a transitional fossil from reptiles to mammals is not macroevolution since they are still vertebrates. There needs to be a better test of what a kind is besides what we decide to call the new species.

quote:

---

I think their is room for something to have been here before creation as it is written in Genesis.

---

My own personal feeling is that the Genesis account on the creation of humans is trying to relate to the start of civilization. The Garden of Eden was an allegory for humanity's innocence before they were "corrupted" by city life. Instead of living off the land and working with the land, humans moved to societies where stealing was rewarded more so than in a pastoral or rural setting. Just my opinion though.

desdamona This raises a problem in that in the same book {Genesis}
Noah and his wife,their son's and their wives were the only people remaining therefore the children of these marriages would have to be first cousins and therefore closely related.Is first cousin marriage ok?

---

'Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts.'
(Daniel Patrick Moynihan)