If God didn’t create the world as it is- if we had it the way most people want it when they ask, “Why didn’t He just do this or this… Why this? Etc.” we would be in Heaven already or we would simply be robots and nothing would ever progress or change, OR there would simply not be life. God had to set things up for everything to not only be believable but also livable. If He simply created man, gave them all the answers and walked the earth the entire time we’ve been here, proving He exists- creating everything we ever need for survival, there would be no learning, there would be no point, or what we continue to search for, purpose to life. You start from being naked, not a care in the world, knowing God personally, to descending into having to look over your shoulder every other minute, working for what you’ve got and in order to keep it, learning, evolving, questioning, analyzing, having fashion statements, and basically- LIVING. [ side note: He says we’re all born in sin. Meaning those ‘innocent’ children weren’t innocent. He knew what they would be (site instances of genocide). He had to let them do what they wished, freewill (site Abraham along with Sodom & Gomorrah, He wasn't being an unjust God)], or again there wouldn’t be any beauty to life- why? Because you wouldn’t know what beauty is- you wouldn’t know because you wouldn’t know what ugly is. Why- because you wouldn’t be allowed to learn, or form an opinion, or progress through life if you didn’t have freewill. You’d simply be. You have to have both in order to have one. That’s the issue with evolution. Yes we've 'evolved' but not in the creation of the world, BIG BANG, sense. I'm talking about the historical sense, learning over time, evolving our ways over time, technology, medicine, fashion- that sort of sense.
If we all came from slime, or one single bacterium, or a single cell, whatever the case maybe- science CAN disprove the ‘evolution theory’ where we evolved from those simple molecules into monkeys and so on. Just study people- we’re all different, we have personalities, characters, life experiences and influences that have molded and shaped us into who we are today. PLUS in order to reproduce you need a woman and a man, their sex organs, their DNA(holding all their personality traits and such making them who they are individually) and genes, reproductive liquids. Yes, today we can take an egg and sperm, fertilize, and make a baby with science- but we didn’t have any of that back then- which again has been proven. BUT if you were to take the lab baby (which you still NEED the repro’s from both the male and female- the two completely different cells DNAs genes etc) to ‘produce’ the zygote, it would need an incubator (which were not available back then- proven) to nurse the baby, here’s another thought- where is it’s food? It’s common knowledge that you need nutrients to survive, even animals and plant life. Yes bacteria feed on other germs but as simple and nondescript this argument/question is, where did those other germs come from? Did they branch off of the ‘original’ bacterium then? Where did the original one come from? "...on the back of crystals..."? Seriously? Where did the crystals come from? WHATEVER I can keep going- You need outside sources to live, different sources to live, just for kicks&giggles- take a bite of your finger- now what you pee and poop out, eat it- pee and poop it out again, eat it again- you can’t survive off of that because of the way our bodies work. We absorb all the nutrients needed or present in whatever we eat- excreting the stuff we don’t need. Even if there were a few nutrients leftover in your feces, after eating and processing it over and over again, it will be thoroughly cleansed of any nutrients your body can retrieve from it. Not to mention the fact that babies cannot survive without a mother and/or someone to raise them and show them the ropes. You would die, period, animals and humans alike. Oh and I have another thought for whomever- the whole ape evolving into man thing is stupid. No other way to put it. If that were true then why hasn’t any ape, gorilla, or other monkey specimen, evolved into a human since humans have existed hmm? Just compare our bone structure- like our thumbs and junk. We don’t match. I don’t care if you don’t believe in God, to each his own- but if you’re bent on proving that God doesn’t exist and He didn’t make us, come up with a better theory. My so-called ‘ape-like brain’ just can’t handle such vacuous notions you 'humans-are-advanced-monkeys' followers have been spouting.
Whoa, too many topics to cover in one comment. For starters, I'd like to point out that the scientifically accepted theory (different from vernacular use of "theory") of evolution is extremely misrepresented here. The concept of evolution is not too complex to be understood by people outside of the scientific "elite," they simply need to take a small bit of effort to actually understand the concepts. As summed up by Robert Wright in "The Moral Animal" (excellent book, BTW):
ReplyDelete"All the theory of natural selection says is the following: If within a species there is a variation among individuals in their hereditary traits, and some traits are more conducive to survival and reproduction than others, then those traits will (obviously) become more widespread within the population. The result (obviously) is that the species' aggregate pool of hereditary traits changes. And there you have it. Of course, the change may seem negligible within any given generation."
One common misconception among those who have not been educated as to the actual process of evolution is that humans descended from "an ape" - like some of the apes that now exist. This is not at all believed to be the case by any scientist. Modern apes (and other primates) simply evolved from the same *ancestor*. This is millions and millions of years ago.
Now if we can, by applying selective pressure, breed a wolf down to a Saint Bernard AND a chihuahua within a few thousand short generations, how is it so difficult to think that the selective pressures of our environment could cause such phenotypically distinct primates as chimpanzees and humans over MILLIONS of years? We, in fact, share 97% of our genetic code with chimpanzees. Every little thing that happens in geologic history changes the path of every creature's future, and thus their breeding history. Therefore, as modern primates evolve, it would be IMPOSSIBLE for them to evolve into humans because they are not made of the exact genetic stock of the ancestor we share - they too have evolved new traits, not to mention they are in a completely different environment. We won't know what chimps will evolve into for another million years, perhaps. By then, who knows what we might look like, feel like, act like?
Anglo-Saxons have evolved lactose tolerance in our history. That's a pretty big change in a pretty short period of time. Some people are already beginning to go through life without developing wisdom teeth - it's a genetic advantage, though as dentistry advances it will not likely remain vital to breeding chances (although back when people were killed by dental issues, like Victorian times, one might have been far more likely to breed if they had an anomaly like no wisdom teeth). Genetic anomalies arise all the time, whether they be Down's Syndrome (a negative selective pressure) or Sickle Cell anemia (a positive selection pressure in Malaria-ridden countries since the heterozygous condition causes Malaria-resistance, a negative pressure as well since the homozygous condition is fatal) or anomalies like double jointed fingers, which currently seem to serve no purpose, but who knows in the future?
I myself have double jointed fingers (I can literally bend them backwards far enough to lay flat on the back of my palm, and I was born this way). Now if this can happen to me in one generation via mutation (none of my family members have this anomaly), who KNOWS what kind of cool genetic leaps have occurred in our past to cause us to develop opposable thumbs?
As for your qualms with abiogenesis (the development of life out of inorganic matter by purely non-spiritual means), this is a topic currently being researched - scientists would hate to know everything already - they love to learn new things. We don't know how it's possible, we simply know that it happened somehow that there was non-life, and then there was life. I do NOT claim to know how that happened - what I do claim, though, is that it is a far greater leap to say that some great and intelligent and vastly complex being with human characteristics blinked it into being rather than to say that we currently don't understand the process. If so, what blinked God into existence? So somehow, he is immune to the argument you use against others? Well, what if I say that your God was created by the residents of the previous universe who evolved enough to become god-like and create him in a great explosion which we now know as "The Big Bang" and that process has been repeating itself eternally with no beginning, just continuing in a cyclic pattern. That would be silly right? So when I say that we're still trying to work out the beginning of life and the universe, and that it's immensely complex, what gives you the right to put a non-scientific and far-fetched super being in front of my theory (which considers only the evidence at hand)? And then to suggest that I am "vacuous" for refusing to accept something simply because a lot of other people accept it (creation), despite the fact that it cannot be backed up by physical evidence.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the concept of not being able to live off the nutrients in your own body - there is nothing in science that even comes close to suggesting that. It's the carbon cycle - carbon dioxide, light, and water are converted by plants into simple carbohydrates. These carbohydrates power the process of cellular respiration, which produces cellular energy and carbon dioxide. In between, a whole bunch of stuff happens that would take a lot of typing. In any case, plants make food. We eat plants, or we eat other animals who have eaten plants. We exhale carbon dioxide, which allows the plants to produce more food. We also poop, which provides broken-down compounds that assist in fueling plant processes (think fertilizer). This is VERY simplified, but absolutely fascinating.
I'm personally very disappointed that you would call "vacuous" those who go out and seek, with every breath they have, scientific truths that help us to understand life, the universe, and everything. You owe evolutionary and genetic science for developing anti-biotics against the evolution of resistant bacteria strains. The process of antibiotic development is entirely based on evolution. You place your confidence in evolutionary science when you go to the doctor to get rid of strep throat.
I believed in evolution long before I stopped believing in God. I never used evolution as a way of disproving God's existence - I used to believe that God used evolution to build us (he had to have a method, right?) Many people believe this. I believe evolution gives us a mechanism that explains the life of this world and understanding it can be one of the many steps that lead to considering the concept of a creator god obsolete, but not on its own merits. I came to my conclusion that a god doesn't exist by a gradual process of inquiry and absence of answers.
I have not called you stupid or vacuous. I have simply pointed out that you are disrespecting science by dismissing it with little to no knowledge of the process against which you rail. I have not done this to the Bible or creationism - I came to a full understanding of them before reaching a conclusion. This courtesy is VERY VERY rarely attempted by creationists. It is always extremely disappointing and irritating.
Whoa woman! No disrespect intended to all scientists, just specifically a young man who was so ignorant he made me irritated, which lead to the blog. I blogged it because I figured I could vent out into nowhere without taking it out on him. He misinterpreted science by thinking that the "evolution theory" is revolved around apes=humans (as if there weren't humans until they came about over time from a monkey species). He then attempted to use a quote from the Atheist Tapes about "on the backs of crystals" for creation. It was bleak and lacked substance of any kind. He was putting forth a 'god doesn't exist' argument that had nothing to do with my topic at that point in time. I simply wanted to get the point across that I am not from an ape, I suppose like a cat and dog, both animals, both mammals, but neither can mate or turn into the other over time. He didn't even understand how amazing and complex the human body is. When it comes to the eating your finger thing- I'm referring to if you were simply one single molecule with NOTHING at all around you- there's too much involved, but you know that, he didn't grasp this concept. He was calling me naive and unintelligent for believing in God, I in turn said my having faith in God doesn't make me naive nor does it make me unintelligent. Rather he's straight up dumb for putting forth "facts" that are really hearsay comments. They had to be hearsay because anyone using only 5% of their brain would know better. Like I said- I believe and support "evolution" we wouldn't be where we are without it, or the brilliant people who tried again and again to get us here. I just refused his argument/reasoning and anyone who agrees with him. He's inhibiting himself. I probably should have mentioned, or gave my reason of my circumstance for writing it huh?
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