The Origin of Life/Evolution?

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  • Will Galen
    Pacer Junky
    • Jan 2004
    • 10308

    Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

    Originally posted by Hicks
    Personally, I don't buy the allegation that the 7 days stuff could mean some kind of 'special God days' versus just plain old 24 hour days. The only reason I can see for anyone to assume that spin is to make what would otherwise be a square peg fit in a round hole, in my opinion.

    The Hebrew word translated “day” can mean various lengths of time, not just a 24-hour period. So in Hebrew the context gives meaning to the word. In this case the context does not support the conclusion that each creative period was a 24 hour day.


    The Bible doesn’t say how long each creative day was, however there are things we can deduce that logically indicate the creative days were longer than 24 hours.


    The first example is the first words of the Bible which say, ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ The Bible doesn’t say how long it took God to do this, however, science says the universe is 13.7 billion years old and the earth is 4.5 billion years old. So God had apparently been creating for eons before turning to an earth which verse 2 says ‘was formless and waste.”’


    The point? Do you think during all these billions of years God was holding himself to 24 hour work periods? That's totally unlikely, so why think so just because on the first creative day God created a 24 hour time period for the earth? By insisting a 24 hour time period is what was meant by the word day, you are actually holding God to a time period he created for man's use, not his own.


    Another example found in Genesis the 2nd chapter. Before Eve’s creation the Bible says that God began bringing to Adam all the creatures he had formed and let the man decide on a name for each one. The point I want to draw attention to is that when God brought Eve to meet him, Adam said,“This is 'at last' bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one will be called Woman, Because from man this one was taken.”


    Adam’s words, ‘at last’ apparently indicates that he had waited for some time to receive his counterpart of the opposite sex.


    The account further shows Adam didn’t just arbitrarily call Eve ‘woman,’ we know he reasoned on it because he tells us why he settled on that name, “because from man this one was taken.”


    This means he likely had a reason for giving all living things their names too. For example he probably said something like, ‘this one will be called a dog, for such and such reason.”


    All this indicates it’s very unlikely Adam did this in one day. Remember too, Adam wouldn’t have had a full 24 hour day to name everything. For example, you would have to subtract his sleeping hours and other daily requirments.


    Another point, the Bible says at the end of all the creative days, ‘And there came to be evening and there came to be morning, a first day, a second day, a third day, etc. Chapter one of Genesis ends with the words, “And there came to be evening and there came to be morning, a sixth day.”

    However, nowhere in the Bible do you find a closure for the 7th day, “And there came to be evening and there came to be morning, a seventh day.”


    Genesis the second chapter starts with these words, “Thus the heavens and the earth and all their army came to their completion. 2 And by the seventh day God came to the completion of his work that he had made, and he proceeded to rest on the seventh day from all his work that he had made. 3 And God proceeded to bless the seventh day and make it sacred, because on it he has been resting from all his work that God has created for the purpose of making.


    Did you notice what it says about God on the 7th day? It says, “he has been resting from all his (creative) work,” indicating the 7th day was still ongoing when Moses wrote Genesis. Moses wrote the Genesis account some 1,500 years after creation.


    There’s more evidence to indicate God’s rest day is still ongoing. Consider Jesus’ words to opposers who criticized him for healing on the Sabbath, which they construed as a form of work. Instead of disputing whether it was work or not Jesus said, “My Father has kept working until now, and I keep working.” (John 5:16, 17)


    What was the point of Jesus words? Jesus was being accused of working on the Sabbath. His reply: “My Father has kept working” answered that charge. In effect, Jesus was saying since my Father has kept working during his millenniums-long Sabbath, (The 7th day) it is quite permissible for me to keep working, even on the Sabbath.’ Thus, Jesus implied that as regards the earth, God’s great Sabbath day of rest, the seventh day, had not ended in his day.


    There’s more, but I think it’s already clear that rather than the earth being created in 24 hour time periods, the days are most likely much longer.


    A thought. If someone still believes God created the earth in 24 hour time periods, did he just work in the day time, or did he work at night too?

    Comment

    • Blue&Gold
      Banned
      • Apr 2013
      • 88

      Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

      [QUOTE=Will Galen;1649700]More questions answered.

      [2] the earth really is at the center of the universe
      I asked for the scriptures that say the earth is the center of the universe. You never got back to me on this.

      Copernicus will be glad to hear this. He was threatened with excommunication for suggesting the earth rotated around the sun, not the other way around.



      In March 1616, in connection with the Galileo affair, the Roman Catholic Church's Congregation of the Index issued a decree suspending De revolutionibus until it could be "corrected", on the grounds that the supposedly Pythagorean doctrine[99] that the Earth moves and the Sun does not was "false and altogether opposed to Holy Scripture".[100] The same decree also prohibited any work that defended the mobility of the Earth or the immobility of the Sun, or that attempted to reconcile these assertions with Scripture.

      [3] the sky (firmament) forms a "roof" over the world.
      Again, you have yet to provide me with the scripture that says this. However, if you look up the definitions of ‘roof,’ the sky can be termed a roof.

      The word is used in the Genesis creation narrative:


      Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.[7]

      [7] dragons (fiery serpents) are real.
      Are you referring to the angel that rebelled and became the devil? From the Greek drakon, depicting a terrifying monster, a serpentlike devourer. It occurs 13 times, but only in the highly symbolic book of Revelation, and it represents Satan the Devil, not a Hollywood type flying dragon.


      [8] giants were real.
      Since no scripture was provided I will assume this is referring to Goliath from the story of David and Goliath, which everybody is somewhat familiar with.

      No, the very beginning of Genesis says: There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. Genesis 6:4 (KJV)

      Apparently God created the Giants and then married them off to the daughters of men. Where those women came from is a mystery isn't it. It seems like you talk about the Bible a lot but have not bother to read it and see just how absurd some of it really. How do those giants fit in with science and theology?

      Comment

      • Will Galen
        Pacer Junky
        • Jan 2004
        • 10308

        Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

        Originally posted by Slick Pinkham
        Human emotions are certainly complex, but I would not say that emotion is limited to us humans.

        That being said, then couldn't a non-human ancestor have had some emotions?

        Darwin believed that emotions evolved into higher complexities when they were beneficial for evolution, and that emotions more often than not improved chances of survival. For example, the brain uses emotion to keep us away from a dangerous animal (fear), away from rotting food and fecal matter (disgust), in control of our resources (anger), and in pursuit of a good meal or a good mate (pleasure and lust).
        The problem with all that is it doesn't tell how emotions evolved. It's hypothesizing they did and reasoning on it from there. This is basically how evolutionary scientists reason about everything involving Evolution. They run into something they can't explain they just hypothesize it did and reason from there. Because they are scientists people listen to their reasoning, and give little thought to all the hypothesizing they do. Ask them how something happened and they go into reasoning mode, but can't explain any of their hypothesis.

        Evolution is like a house of cards, it's built on one hypothesis after another that scientists can't prove.

        For example in post # 308 I gave an account of scientists trying for 40 years to cause good mutations, and couldn't. In post #310 you replied, "Given hundreds of millions of years, rather than 40 years using a misguided protocol of gamma radiation to induce all change, absolutely and emphatically yes."

        Isn't your hundreds of millions of years, just another hypothesis?

        Comment

        • Kstat
          Rebound King
          • Jan 2004
          • 34207

          Rainmaking: if I'm right, it's because. I have magic powers. If I'm proven wrong, I come up with more excuses (you're not translating the Hebrew correctly, you're not understanding gods powers correctly, etc.) why I wasn't.

          Science is built on accumulated knowledge. Genesis is built on accumulated fairy tales.
          Last edited by Kstat; 05-22-2013, 08:37 PM.

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          Comment

          • Will Galen
            Pacer Junky
            • Jan 2004
            • 10308

            Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

            Originally posted by Blue&Gold
            Nice challenge since it happened hundreds of thousands of or perhaps even millions of years ago. What do you want now, a time machine? I don't have any objection to what you believe. I do object when people try to get around the separation of church and state and get their mythology into the schools...
            I agree to the separation of church and State, but how about schools teaching theories as fact?

            Comment

            • Will Galen
              Pacer Junky
              • Jan 2004
              • 10308

              Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

              Originally posted by Kstat
              Rainmaking: if I'm right, it's because. I have magic powers. If I'm proven wrong, I come up with more excuses (you're not translating the Hebrew correctly, you're not understanding gods powers correctly, etc.) why I wasn't.

              Science is built on accumulated knowledge. Genesis is built on accumulated fairy tales.
              Your definition of rainmaking is your own. How are people to understand each other if they make things up?

              As for Genesis being built of fairy tails, you are just making claims without merit.

              Apparently you have been though this type of discussion one to many times. I don't know what to tell you except to read the Bible and do deep research on your own.

              Comment

              • Slick Pinkham
                Member
                • Jan 2004
                • 10647

                Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                summation of the great many Bible references to Giants: http://www.answersingenesis.org/arti...7/n1/ot-giants

                ---------
                Earth as the center of everything:

                The most important biblical quote supporting a geocentric universe can be found in the Book of Joshua.


                Joshua 10:12-13
                Then spoke Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the men of Israel; and he said in the sight of Israel, "Sun, stand thou still at Gibeon, and thou Moon in the valley of Aijalon." And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day.


                The miracle of Joshua appears again as a reference in The Book of Habakkuk.


                Habakkuk 3:11
                The sun and moon stood still in their habitation at the light of thine arrows as they sped, at the flash of thy glittering spear.


                The evidence in support of a geocentric model is overwhelming here. Joshua commanded the sun to stand still. He did not order the earth to cease rotating nor did he qualify his statement with the divine knowledge that the sun was merely made to appear stationary. The sun was commanded to stand still because it is the sun that moves. Descriptions of its motion can be rather poetic.


                Psalms 19:4-6
                yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes forth like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs his course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them; and there is nothing hid from its heat.


                Ecclesiastes 1:5
                The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.

                ------------

                The Bible’s ‘kinds,’ are the boundaries within which creatures are capable of bearing offspring together. For example cats and dogs are two different ‘kinds’ and you can’t breed them together. Whereas science lists animals as different species even though they can breed and have young together. For example, there are reportedly 36 cat species.
                A species are the boundaries within which creatures are capable of bearing fertile offspring together. Cats and dogs are two different species and you can’t breed them together. Certain animals are classified as different species even though they can breed and have young together because those young are infertile and cannot carry on their lineage. Lions and Tigers can have infertile ligers. Horses and donkeys can have infertile mules. The Biblical "kinds" would have to be the exact same thing as "species" unless you accept that the "kinds" that were on the ark then later evolved into new "kinds".

                ---
                dragons in the Bible: http://www.dragonsinn.net/bible-1.htm

                ---
                unicorns in the Bible: http://www.bible-topics.com/Unicorn.html


                ------

                I admire your devotion to the Bible. I respect it. From a scientific point of view, though, it's frequently very very goofy. It's vague enough and the language is archaic and open to translation enough to explain away virtually everything, though. Which is convenient, because it's staunch followers can adopt radically different viewpoints over time as to what it demand of humans. One century women should just shut up, walk behind us guys, never own land, and never vote jsut because "the Bible says so" and then we decide that this is not really fair, so we then decide that the Bible does not say so.

                I'm not a Bible expert and I'm not really aiming to disprove chapter and verse of the Bible. I just hope to offer a scientific perspective, and ironically one that is widely accepted by Christians the world over.

                The Bible just isn't a great source of scientific knowledge and isn't a text to always be taken with exact literalness. The Bible tells you the value of pi, as an example. In the Bible it is 3.0. The legislature of Iowa supposedly once considered a resolution to make pi legally equal to 3, based on the Biblical passage!

                I Kings 7:23-26, describing a large cauldron, or "molten sea" in the Temple of Solomon:


                He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it. Below the rim, gourds encircled it - ten to a cubit. The gourds were cast in two rows in one piece with the Sea. The Sea stood on twelve bulls, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south and three facing east. The Sea rested on top of them, and their hindquarters were toward the center. It was a handbreadth in thickness, and its rim was like the rim of a cup, like a lily blossom. It held two thousand baths. (NIV)

                You can say that the Bible text "rounded off" but then isn't that sarificing the literal truth?

                link to pi in the Bible:

                The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

                Comment

                • Slick Pinkham
                  Member
                  • Jan 2004
                  • 10647

                  Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                  correction: It was none other than the great state of Indiana that, in 1897, unanimously passed a bill in the state House of Representatives to establish the value of pi within Indiana's borders as equal to 3.0. The bill, House Bill 246, died in the State Senate.

                  Thus pi in Indiana stayed the same as pi everywhere else!

                  Did the state legislature of Alabama redefine the value of pi according to Biblical precepts?


                  more on the Indiana pi bill:



                  A funny line:
                  "it was nearly passed, but opinion changed when one senator observed that the General Assembly lacked the power to define mathematical truth"
                  The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

                  Comment

                  • Lance George
                    Banned
                    • Jun 2009
                    • 3657

                    Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                    Hot off the peer-review presses...

                    Physiology is Rocking the Foundations of Evolutionary Biology - Denis Noble - Experimental Physiology

                    Originally posted by Abstract
                    What is the Topic of this review?Have recent experimental findings in evolutionary biology concerning the transmission of inheritance opened the way to a reintegration of physiology with evolutionary biology? 

                    What advances does it highlight?

                    The answer is yes, and that this requires a new synthesis between evolutionary theory and experimental physiology.

                    The ‘Modern Synthesis’ (Neo-Darwinism) is a mid-20th century gene-centric view of evolution, based on random mutations accumulating to produce gradual change through natural selection. Any role of physiological function in influencing genetic inheritance was excluded. The organism became a mere carrier of the real objects of selection, its genes. We now know that genetic change is far from random and often not gradual. Molecular genetics and genome sequencing have deconstructed this unnecessarily restrictive view of evolution in a way that reintroduces physiological function and interactions with the environment as factors influencing the speed and nature of inherited change. Acquired characteristics can be inherited, and in a few but growing number of cases that inheritance has now been shown to be robust for many generations. The 21st century can look forward to a new synthesis that will reintegrate physiology with evolutionary biology.
                    From the article...

                    Originally posted by Denis Noble
                    Evolutionary theory itself is already in a state of flux…

                    all the central assumptions of the Modern Synthesis (often also called Neo-Darwinism) have been disproven
                    Ouch.

                    Even better, the article is based on a recent lecture, the video of which is online:



                    And for those curious about Denis Noble (read: those looking for a cheap excuse to dismiss his views), here's his quick biography from Wikipedia:

                    Originally posted by Wikipedia
                    Denis Noble CBE FRS FRCP (born 16 November 1936) is a British biologist who held the Burdon Sanderson Chair of Cardiovascular Physiology at Oxford University from 1984 to 2004 and was appointed Professor Emeritus and co-Director of Computational Physiology. He is one of the pioneers of Systems Biology and developed the first viable mathematical model of the working heart in 1960. His research focuses on using computer models of biological organs and organ systems to interpret function from the molecular level to the whole organism. Together with international collaborators, his team has used supercomputers to create the first virtual organ, the virtual heart.

                    As Secretary-General of the International Union of Physiological Sciences 1993-2001, he played a major role in launching the Physiome Project, an international project to use computer simulations to create the quantitative physiological models necessary to interpret the genome, and he was elected President of the IUPS at its world congress in Kyoto in 2009.

                    He is also a philosopher of biology, and his book The Music of Life challenges the foundations of current biological sciences, questions the central dogma, its unidirectional view of information flow, and its imposition of a bottom-up methodology for research in the life sciences.

                    Comment

                    • Slick Pinkham
                      Member
                      • Jan 2004
                      • 10647

                      Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                      Originally posted by GrangeRusHibbert
                      Hot off the peer-review presses...
                      I haven't read it yet, but that is not a peer-reviewed research paper. It is clearly marked at the top as a "lecture article".

                      There is a difference between a peer-reviewed research paper and a review article / opinion piece. The first must go through peer review while the latter is published at the sole discretion of the publisher or journal editor.
                      The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

                      Comment

                      • Slick Pinkham
                        Member
                        • Jan 2004
                        • 10647

                        Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                        Noble would be absolutely appalled that you view his article as some sort of support for intelligent design or creationism.

                        I start with some definitions. I will use the term ‘Modern Synthesis’ rather than ‘Neo-Darwinism’. Darwin was far from being a Neo-Darwinist (Dover, 2000; Midgley, 2010), so I think it would be better to drop his name for that idea…

                        In some respects, my article returns to a more nuanced, less dogmatic view of evolutionary theory (see also Muller, 2007; Mesoudi et al. 2013), which is much more in keeping with the spirit of Darwin’s own ideas
                        ----
                        It's an interesting piece I need to study some more, since it's not my field. He advances the term "Integrative Synthesis" as his own term for a modernized view of Darwinian evolution more in line with Darwin than with some more dogmatic geneticists who followed him in the mid 20th century, before modern molecular biology allowed for the study of DNA.

                        Integrative Synthesis takes into account the known mechanisms of genetic mutation. For example, certain types of gene sequences are inherently more prone to copy errors than others and thus are "hot spots" for mutation. It's not occurring at random sites in the absolute sense. Transposons insert entire generic sequences.

                        The most important point IMO: He also points out the critical role of epigenetics: genes that can be silenced or altered during the course of the life of a single organism, often in response to the environment. It is a powerful evolutionary force that is unaccounted for by the basic concept of mutation and inheritance. You can inherit a gene and yet it may be silenced by another gene! So the loss of the trait didn't occur by a mutation in the corresponding gene encoding for a protein, but by a mutation in a regulator gene!

                        Fascinating stuff. An effort to clean up the language of evolutionary biology, in part recognizing the central role of epigenetics (basically the changes in the transcription of genetic material that occurs at some point AFTER you are born)
                        Last edited by Slick Pinkham; 05-24-2013, 05:31 PM.
                        The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!).

                        Comment

                        • indygeezer
                          Tree People to the Core!
                          • Jan 2004
                          • 15579

                          Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                          For those of you who know the poster known as Gamble1 (my nephew), one of his brothers is a Post-Doc in Genomics at Stanford. Which has nothing at all to do with anything I have ever posted....except I've had a bit of Jim Beam this evening.
                          Ever notice how friendly folks are at a shootin' range??.

                          Comment

                          • Lance George
                            Banned
                            • Jun 2009
                            • 3657

                            Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                            Originally posted by Slick Pinkham
                            I haven't read it yet, but that is not a peer-reviewed research paper. It is clearly marked at the top as a "lecture article".

                            There is a difference between a peer-reviewed research paper and a review article / opinion piece. The first must go through peer review while the latter is published at the sole discretion of the publisher or journal editor.
                            I've seen no evidence that this article, nor any article published in Experimental Physiology, isn't subjected to peer review.

                            From the Wikipedia article on peer review:

                            Originally posted by Wikipedia
                            Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers). It constitutes a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards of quality, improve performance, and provide credibility. In academia peer review is often used to determine an academic paper's suitability for publication.
                            Further down the article, under the subheading scholarly peer review:

                            Originally posted by Wikipedia
                            Scholarly peer review (also known as refereeing) is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field, before a paper describing this work is published in a journal.
                            So, contrary to your claims, peer review isn't applied only to articles which deal in the recent laboratory research of the article's author. Why would it be? Scientific data is open for interpretation amongst anyone, and these various interpretations and piecing together of the data is what often leads to progress. These interpretations of scientific data (ideas) are the basis for many peer-reviewed articles, including the one I posted above, which was based on the same ideas Noble shared during the lecture in the video.

                            Comment

                            • jeffg-body
                              Member
                              • Jul 2007
                              • 4061

                              Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                              According to my smartass daughter she said, "When your old butt got up and turned the lights on". She had the ammunition for that since her coach thought that I was her grandfather watching her softball game. lol

                              Comment

                              • indygeezer
                                Tree People to the Core!
                                • Jan 2004
                                • 15579

                                Re: The Origin of Life/Evolution?

                                Just wondering, how many posters here have had a peer reviewed article published?

                                How many of us are published at all?
                                Ever notice how friendly folks are at a shootin' range??.

                                Comment

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