• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

A Challenge To All Creationists

SkepticThinker

Veteran Member
interesting. How is human life precious, I ask, in a materialist paradigm? In the context of the Scriptures, human life is valued as the progeny of Yahweh. There is no guarantor in evolution. What you have are competing narratives at that point. Might makes right, and the State is all of the former, and none of the latter. Before evolution was affirmed, people had inalienable rights ascribed to Deity (Declaration of Independence). Now, what is there? The State has no limit to its' power; if you pay attention to history, that never ends well. Your life will treated as precious as your resources allow. If you are marked for dehumanization, that co-efficient drops to zero.
I thought I just explained why I think life becomes more precious. Because we only get one shot at it. Why not do our best to make everyone's one shot the best it can be? There are no do-overs.

You didn't really respond to my point.
I wonder how people were able to dehumanize others before the theory of evolution was published. You know, like for the vast majority of human history
 

SkepticThinker

Veteran Member
The problem here is that his idea of "dehumanizing" is to take away an imagined "divinity" from people.

In other words, he believes that humans are somehow "special" do to god and that evolution takes that "special" from people.
Ahh I see. Thanks for clarifying. I didn't quite get that.
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
We humans are animals (beats being a vegetable or a rock), and there's evidence to feel that we are likely genetically linked to all life forms, as the genome testing and the fossil record are seemingly indicating.
 

savagewind

Veteran Member
Premium Member
We humans are animals (beats being a vegetable or a rock), and there's evidence to feel that we are likely genetically linked to all life forms, as the genome testing and the fossil record are seemingly indicating.
Does that mean you think, ""Science doesn't tell us......... that we come from "low orders of animals."" isn't true?
 

Skwim

Veteran Member
I am sure the theory of evolution holds the opinion that humans DO come from a lower order of animal.
No it wouldn't because "coming from a lower order" is a meaningless phrase. Like all life, humans evolved from previous species of primates. Nothing evolves directly from a genus, or a family, or an order. AND, there is no such thing as a "lower: order. All orders are equal in position. Order is the taxonomic rank that fits between the rank of Class and the rank of Family.

0640.Classification.png



.
 

savagewind

Veteran Member
Premium Member
No it wouldn't because "coming from a lower order" is a meaningless phrase. Like all life, humans evolved from previous species of primates. Nothing evolves directly from a genus, or a family, or an order. AND, there is no such thing as a "lower: order. All orders are equal in rank. Order is the taxonomic rank that fits between the rank of Class and the rank of Family.

0640.Classification.png



.
Is it not semantics?
 

McBell

Unbound
If all orders are equal in rank then none should be evolving anywhere. Equal as in as good as it gets.
Only if you are of the mind that mammals are in a "higher order" than say reptiles...

Of course, you would have to define "higher order" in a meaningful and or useful manner.
 

savagewind

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Only if you are of the mind that mammals are in a "higher order" than say reptiles...

Of course, you would have to define "higher order" in a meaningful and or useful manner.
Me thinks you are now making stuff up. Go ahead........knock yourself out!
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
How is it that what is "invisible" is "clearly seen?" How is it that "God" you speak of made so many mistakes that it even took millions upon millions of murders to fix them up? You see what you want to see -- but it certainly does not appear that you are using any part of your reason to make it work.

My "excuse" is really quite simple: if God is so perfect, why is what He is supposed to be responsible for so completely messed up? My "excuse" is that I blame the person responsible, not try to pass it on to somebody else. If God's perfect, and we're not, then God gets the blame -- and my lack of respect.
 

Skwim

Veteran Member
If all orders are equal in rank then none should be evolving anywhere. Equal as in as good as it gets.
Let me explain the concept of order. Ranks like Order, and Class, and Genus are simply levels of hierarchical classification that group together organisms with similar traits. For example, we've found that all the vertebrate animals in the world can be grouped into one of five mutually exclusive groups. Groups we call Classes.

The five vertebrate classes

1 Birds
2 Fish
3 Reptiles
4 Amphibians
5 mammals

Like wise, all the mammals in the world can be further divided among 13 to 19 smaller mutually exclusive groups we call orders (the number of orders depends on who's doing the classification). Taking the 19-order mammal classification we have

1. Order Artiodactyla (even-toed hoofed animals) of infra-order Ungulata

2. Order Carnivora (meat-eaters)

3. Order Cetacea (whales and porpoises)

4. Order Chiroptera (bats)

5. Order Dermoptera (colugos or flying lemurs)

6. Order Hyracoidae (hyraxes, dassies)

7. Order Insectivora (moles, shrews)

8. Order Lagomorpha (pikas, hares, and rabbits)

9. Order Marsupialia (pouched animals)

10. Order Monotremata (egg-laying mammals)

11. Order Perissodactyla (odd-toed hoofed animals) of infra-order Ungulata

12. Order Pholidata (pangolins)

13. Order Pinnipedia (seals and walruses)

14. Order Proboscidea (elephants)

15. Order Rodentia (gnawing mammals)

16. Order Sirenia (dugongs and manatees)

18. Order Tubulidentata (aardvarks)

19. Order Primates (primates)​

The primate order of animals is further divided into two suborders

1) Strepsirrhini: (lemurs, galagos and lorisids)

2) Haplorhini: (tarsiers, monkeys and apes}​

Two of the several families of the Suborder Haplorhini are the families

1] Hylobatidae: (gibbons or "lesser apes" (17 species))
2] Hominidae: (great apes, including humans (7 species))

Within Hominidae we have five genera

1} Pongo (orangutans)
2} Gorilla (gorillas)
3} Pan (chimpanzees)
4} Bonobo (pymy chimps)
5} Homo (humans)

within Homo we only one living species

sapiens
From this we can see that starting with the rank of Class human taxonomy is
Mammal (class)
Primate (order)
Hominidae (family)
Homo (genus)
sapiens (species)
(I purposely skipped the suborder Haplorhini)
Thing is, just like the order of humans, Primates, which contains many evolved species, the orders of mice, Rodentia, and rabbits, Lagomorpha. have also evolved many species of animals. So there is no lower or higher order, just different orders. And, as I said, it isn't the orders themselves that produce new species, but the species themselves. Species only evolve from other species.

Now, If you feel that because humans are the most highly evolved of all species that all the other genera of the family Hominidae are "lower genera," fine. And if feel that because humans belong to Hominidae, that the Hylobatidae is a lower family, fine. And if you feel that because humans belong to the Haplorhini suborder, that Strepsirrhini is a lower suborder, and on up the line to orders where you feel that because humans belong to the primate order all the other orders are lower, fine, but in my opinion it's a rather childish conceit.




.
 
Last edited:

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
It doesn't imply anything. Bones don't tell stories. You can look at a bone and make up a story about it that sounds logical, sure. But the bone can't tell you how old it is, where it came from, etc. You have to guess.
That is only true if your knowledge of science extends only up until the third grade. There is so much that everything in the world can tell you, if you only have the wit and knowledge to look. If you don't, then you're guessing -- which I suppose you are, but science most assuredly is not.

I hate to repeat myself, but ignorance of any topic is not really the best reason to pretend to be able to talk meaningfully about it.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
To the science-deniers on this thread, let me just relate a little story -- and you probably won't believe it anyway, cause science is all nonsense:

Recently, a Canadian woman was kept alive for 6 days WITHOUT HER LUNGS, which had to be removed because they were so diseased, while she was awaiting a transplant donor. While she waited without breathing for 6 entire days, a donor was found, and new lungs were transplanted. She is now alive, and happily hugging her daughter.

Through most of my life, such a thing would have been utterly impossible. My life -- not all of history, just my little life. And yet, this is something that science has accomplished. Maybe you don't like science. Maybe you think she should have been left to die and her daughter orphaned if that's they way your God wanted it, but human science would not. And she's alive today.

You despise science for one reason, and one reason only -- it seems to deny your literalist notion of creation 6600 years ago. And it does that for a very good reason. That "history" is complete and utter rubbish.
 
Top