Flare Sci-Fi Forums: An alternative to "Intelligent Design"

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Posted by Baloo (Member # 5) on :

[Another Christian perspective and then I'll concentrate on sillier stuff for awhile.]

I am not a theologist and have not run this one past anyone with a degree in divinity. I comfort myself with the thought that degrees in divinity are a relatively recent invention, and by my observation that a college education is not invariably a sign of superior (or any) intelligence).

At one time I subscribed to the Intelligent Design theory of creation. After all, it's very difficult to reconcile creation with the fossil record. Charles Darwin, great mind that he was, tried and could not.

The reason I finally stopped believing in Intelligent Design was pointed out by a foamin'-at-the-mouth preacher I heard on the radio. He was preaching that Evolution was an abomination and various other "true-believer" things when he said something that gave me pause:

"Evolution, 'red in tooth and claw', is inconsistent with the creation as described in the Bible!"

I thought about that observation and decided that although I could discount most of the rest of his tirade, I could not contradict that one sentence. I pride myself in logical (if somewhat slow and deliberate ) thinking, and this had never occurred to me.

One basic tenet of the Scientific Method is that when observation does not confirm a theory, either the theory is wrong or you are misinterpreting the data. For the short term (actually several years) I decided that evolution and creation-in-7-days (C7) were both true, but my understanding of one or both was incomplete.

A few years ago, a thought occurred to me (HEY! be NICE! It happens! ). In Christian doctrine, there is an effect that propagates both forwards and backwards in time. This effect is the salvation of the Cross.

The Bible refers to Jesus as "the Second Adam". Wheras Adam was responsible for the fall of creation from a perfect, created state, Jesus is responsible for salvation from this fallen state.

If salvation extends forwards and backwards throughout time from its origin point about 2,000 years ago, then perhaps the effects of the fall did likewise. I presume time exhisted before creation, or God would not (according to Genesis) have been "hovering over the waters" before the first day. Therefore (here's the leap, folks) the fall extended backwards through time to create the entire expanse of history and evolution as we know it, red teeth, claws, and bell-bottomed pants included, as well as forward from Adam to the rest of us.

Now: Pick it apart, but please, be gentle.

--Baloo

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Don't call me a Yank.
I prefer to be referred to as a "Pull with a Sudden Movement".

Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

I don't need to rip it to bits. Occam's Razor does that by itself.

It would require a VAST number of miracles to reshape the entirety of the universe so that, in effect, it recreated the timeline so that what happened had ALWAYS been so.

It's simpler just to say that the Fall never occured, and that the universe HAS simply always been so.

Theological, unverifiable beliefs aside, events simply don't propagate through time in such a manner. It's a nice paradox: Change the past, and the past has ALWAYS been that way, so there was no need to change it, and no possibility to change it ever arose.

(and of course, if Time existed before the Universe - which physics seems to tell us it didn't - this begs the question of what God did beforehand, and whether Time, if it preexisted the Universe, Preexisted God.)

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*I only SEEM Normal*

Posted by bryce (Member # 42) on :

I would like remind all of you science-types that Evolution is a theory, also. It has never and can never be proved by the entire scientic method.

-Thanks God for having a Christian Chem. teacher-

Nice theory, Baloo!
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Anyone remember how they felt the day after Rich Mullins died?

[This message was edited by bryce on April 13, 1999.]

Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

*Would like to remind bryce that God is only a theory*

And actually, since every premise of evolution has ben found to be true (ie. mutation, Natural Selection and microevolution, the pillars of Evolution, are all observable and proven), the theory of evolution is as close to fact as can be reasonably expected, as close as the Theory of Gravitation, electromagnetics, or the FOIL or Pythagorean Theorums.

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*I only SEEM Normal*

Posted by Warped1701 (Member # 40) on :

I also suggest reading Charles Darwin. He did very detailed work and came to the conclusion of something he called "Natural Selection". The strong survive, the weak perish. If you look back through evolution, you can see how many of our own characteristics are similar to those of lower forms of life, such as fish. In an obscure way, we are related to every living thing on earth, from the ants, all the way to the blue whale. In a way, it promotes the idea of "Oneness" in all things. The lower lifeforms (fish, reptiles, etc.) have an interesting story, if you bother to listen.

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"We choose to do this and more. Not because it is easy, but because it is hard."
-- John F. Kennedy

[This message was edited by Warped1701 on April 13, 1999.]

Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :

Warped: I should hope most of us are familiar with the theory of Evolution.

1of2: The Theory of Evolution can never be proven. It is a theory. Theories cannot be proven. In fact, Gallileo got busted by the church for claiming his theories were unfallible, and not for saying the sun goes around the earth as pop culture has it. Don't be a Gallileo.

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"......"
��-The Breen at Internment Camp 371

Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :

Nevertheless, The_Tom, it moves.

Oh, and check your history. Galileo said that the sun goes around the Earth??? Other way around.

And I never said that evolution can be proven (except that it WOULD be, if we only had a long enough lifespan to watch species evolve), I only said that its basic premises have already been proven, and that the evidence in favor of it was on a par with that for those other theories I mentioned.

Whereas (IMHO) the Theory of Creationism is rather on a par with the Stork Theory of child-making, or the Invisible Witches Theory of Orbital Mechanics. (In one of my philosophy classes, we discussed unprovable and yet undisprovable assertions like "The planets are pushed around in their orbits by invisible, undetectable witches with brooms" as examples of bad logic.)

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*I only SEEM Normal*

Posted by Jeff Raven (Member # 20) on :

Theories can be proven....just then they become laws...

And Galileo WAS right in his theories, one of them being that all objects fall at the same rate despite mass...WHICH started out as a theory, but has been proven so many times its a law....the law of gravity.

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Jeff Raven - Having more fun than any human being should be allowed to have

Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :

Wasn't that Newton?

And Tom was saying that Galileo WASN'T harassed by the chuch because OF his theories, but for saying that his theories were completely and utterly right, and that nothing would ever prove them wrong.

I think anyway.

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'Saying it in a stacato voice doesn't make it any more true'
-Stewart Lee

Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :

Galileo proved experimentally that objects fall at an equal rate regardless of mass. Remember the (embellished) Leaning Tower of Pisa story?

Newton determined the actual laws that gravity obeys, such as the inverse square rule.

Galileo was brought before the Inquisition for the crime of heresy. This included the crimes of: Observing the heavens with a telescope, claiming that the surface of the moon was not perfect in its smoothness, claiming that Jupiter had moons, claiming that Saturn had rings, and using experimental data to verify the Copernican claim that the solar system was heliocentric.

All of these statements went against Doctrine. After all, as any fool knew, heavenly bodies were perfect spheres without blemish, and the sun clearly went around the Earth. It was these "crimes" that Galileo was tried for.

My favorite story about the time involves the telescope. While Galileo was not its inventor, he was the first person we know of who was brave enough to point it up. At the local university, when he sought to prove his findings, he set up his telescope and allowed the professors to see for themselves. They refused to look.

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"And though I once prefered a human being's company, they pale before the monolith that towers over me."
--
They Might Be Giants

[This message was edited by Sol System on April 13, 1999.]

Posted by Cargile (Member # 45) on :

Evolution, evolution, evolution. Well now, how 'bout the evolution of the King James Version of the Bible? Blasphemy, you cry?
Not so.
The first chapters were verbal accounts of history and moral stories. Since the story-telling involved a speaker and an audience it was very interactive. The audience was there to ask questions concerning the story. If there was no immediate answer it is possible, and high probably that fiction was introduced into the tale. (Evolution Step 1.) After some time, and many renditions later, this tale was written onto scrolls in the language of the author. The scrolls that did survive were copied by scribes, who being very human were prone to making mistakes. (Evolution Step 2.) Eventually these written pieces were further translated into Greek and Latin. Well, we know what happens when that takes place. Some ideas and concepts are lost in the translation (Evolution Step 3.) The collection of works called the Bible continues to be translated into other launguages. Persons in power excersize their authority to censor and edit the books as they see fit, after all, Kings are appointed by Divinty (Evolution Step 4.) Even in modern times the Bible is rewritten to reflect the language of the times (Evolution Step 5.)
So there you have it. Evolution is merely change to make something New and Improved or to remove the parts that no longer apply. If the BIBLE can undergo Evolution, can't the species and the planet as well?

[This message was edited by Cargile on April 17, 1999.]