How do You Reconcile Evolution with Your Religion?

[PackJason]

I'm not saying Evolution is false...I'm not even saying it is a bad theory. I do have just one question: If the theory of Evolution is true, where are the millions of bones within the first stage, and today?

I have to ask ... Why do you have the word "theory" in bold?

Please don't tell me you're one of those people who doesn't understand the difference between a scientific theory and the word "theory" as used in common dialog.

 

[sandy whitelinger]

If X enriches lives, that does not entail that X is true. Actually, if it does enrich lives, without additional independent evidence of being true, then it is likely not true.

Ciao

- viole

Well shatter my illusions thank you.

 

[Domenic]

I have to ask ... Why do you have the word "theory" in bold?

Please don't tell me you're one of those people who doesn't understand the difference between a scientific theory and the word "theory" as used in common dialog.

Okay, lets say evolution is a proven fact. There should be billions of bones from all the stages of human from whatever to now...where are they?

 

[PackJason]

Okay, lets say evolution is a proven fact. There should be billions of bones from all the stages of human from whatever to now...where are they?

I think you mean fossils, right? Well, there are many, many, many fossils to observe, the thing is, is that the circumstances have to be just right for a fossil to form. The VAST majority of living things don't leave fossils. Their remains just biodegrade.

Crude oil, for example, is made up of past organic matter.

 

[johnhanks]

Okay, lets say evolution is a proven fact. There should be billions of bones from all the stages of human from whatever to now...where are they?

Why should there be billions? As others have explained, the vast, vast majority of remains just degrade.

As an advance on your earlier post, you have now made clear (well, a little clearer, anyway) that you are asking specifically about human and pre-human remains. Happily, despite most individuals in the hominin lineages having long ago gone to dust, we still have plenty:

A is a modern (non-human) ape; not our ancestor, as you will know. None of B-M need be direct human ancestors either, but they illustrate the remarkable diversification of hominin populations over the past few million years.

 

[gnostic]

It fits quite well with my faith, actually. the Celtic base of my faith doesn't have a creation myth (due to most Celtic myths not being written down), but the ones we do have describe us being descended from the god of the underworld (Arawn or Donn, Dispater, or which name he has in Celtic mythology) and that we came from somewhere else. I believe some myths even detail the flood myth that's observable in nearly every mythology.

By the time, the Irish and Scots began recording the "Celtic" Irish myths, in the late Middle Ages (after 1100 CE), they were written down by Christians, who incorporated some biblical events with Irish "pagan" oral traditions.

So we have certain events, like the Flood, the Tower of Babel, and Jesus' death being mention in some of the timelines of Irish myths. And of course, there's St Patrick, who was said to have met the son of Fionn.

But older myths are largely lost.

 

[gnostic]

My religion values science and intellectualism so it is irrelevant. Anyway, evolution is best-fit proof and I currently think it is best-fitting too much. I am not against the idea, but it is just really an idea at this point.

No, it isn't.

You can't understand diseases, viruses and the human bodies, without understanding of evolution. Medicine and understanding the behaviour of viruses could not be possible without evolution. So it is hardly just an "idea".

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Ones like mine it goes well together. Most of us believe Gods themselves continue to evolve. All things, beings, environments...everything, continues to change and evolve. "Creation" is an on-going, natural, interactive process - not a past event.

Same. All living beings must, by necessity change, transform, progress and evolve.

"The personal Gods are not immutable
The only possible deities which are immutable (unchanging) are the impersonal or abstract concepts, ideas such as Justice and Freedom, forms as identified in the dialogues of Plátohn (Plato; Gr. Πλάτων). It is illogical to think of the personal Gods as unchanging. The great Gods, deities such as the Titánæs (Titans; Gr. Τιτᾶνες) and the Olympians, arose from Earth and Water and through eons of time progressed to become the mighty beings which they are, worthy of worship by their nature and accomplishments. They also continue to progress and become greater. A sentient being which does not change is not possible; a sentient being which does not change is.....dead. "
http://www.hellenicgods.org/the-nature-of-the-gods

 

[Mindmaster]

No, it isn't.

You can't understand diseases, viruses and the human bodies, without understanding of evolution. Medicine and understanding the behaviour of viruses could not be possible without evolution. So it is hardly just an "idea".

Wow, let's pull out the sniper scope here. There are definite problems in evolutionary theory and some of them go back to just not being able to get DNA out of anything that's over 50,000 years old -- so scientists are making educated guesses, and if you can't admit that there is no point to even continue speaking on the subject. Also, what can happen with viruses as far as "evolution" sort of doesn't apply so much to the rest of the animal kingdom. There is even some debate as to whether they are truly even living in the conventional sense of the term.

Anyway, what viruses do and what the rest of the living creatures do is largely so different that there are few correlations at all.

 

[Maponos]

By the time, the Irish and Scots began recording the "Celtic" Irish myths, in the late Middle Ages (after 1100 CE), they were written down by Christians, who incorporated some biblical events with Irish "pagan" oral traditions.

So we have certain events, like the Flood, the Tower of Babel, and Jesus' death being mention in some of the timelines of Irish myths. And of course, there's St Patrick, who was said to have met the son of Fionn.

But older myths are largely lost.

Those of us who study those myths usually read between the lines and can see a deeper origin to them. We basically weed out most of the obviously Christian myths to get to the original myth.

 

[gnostic]

Wow, let's pull out the sniper scope here. There are definite problems in evolutionary theory and some of them go back to just not being able to get DNA out of anything that's over 50,000 years old -- so scientists are making educated guesses, and if you can't admit that there is no point to even continue speaking on the subject. Also, what can happen with viruses as far as "evolution" sort of doesn't apply so much to the rest of the animal kingdom. There is even some debate as to whether they are truly even living in the conventional sense of the term.

Anyway, what viruses do and what the rest of the living creatures do is largely so different that there are few correlations at all.

You don't need 50,000 years or fossils, to see, to know or to understand that evolution have to taken place.

Evolution isn't just about a complete physical change, but also about tiny changes, that you wouldn't notice from external look of the physical. Not all evolution involve in outward physical changes, not all evolutionary biology involved speciation.

Any biologists and biochemists, who have studied medicine, would also study viruses. Researchers make medicine or vaccines to combat viruses. And for a period of time, the vaccines would work, but viruses have innate abilities to change, and when they multiple, they would mutate and a new strain of virus would be immune to the existing vaccine.

Then scientists would have to study this new strain of virus, and begin making a new vaccine to combat this virus. Two different evolutionary mechanisms are at work here:

1. Natural selection
2. Mutation

We know that mutation take place with viruses. But natural selection is also occurring.

Natural selection is essentially define as life adapting to change from external forces, like environmental changes, such changes in the climate, terrains, availability of food, etc.

Going back to the subject of viruses and vaccines, viruses are the lifeforms, and vaccines can be seen as the external forces that would force the viruses to adapt to survive in new form (strain) that prove to be more hardier than the original viruses. If the viruses cannot adapt to changes, it would eventually die out with no new strain to infect us.

The medicine or vaccines we take, also have some effect in our body. Because the vaccine have absorbed into our bodies, in our blood, we have developed tolerance in which often cannot the same vaccine as we did last time. And because we also developed immunity to vaccines, any children we have, any previous vaccines that parents, we would pass on in our genes to the children, in which past vaccines would not work on them.

Like I have said evolution is more than just a mere "idea". It is happening as we speak.

Charles Darwin wrote about natural selection, because he had observed different species living in different environments. Although On Origin Of Species was written and published in 1869, they are all based on his notes taken during his voyages around the world, on the HMS Beagle, when Darwin was a younger man, during the 1830s.

Perhaps the most interesting of his stop, is the islands of Galápagos, in which observed different species of life flourishing in different islands. One of the example of natural selection at work, are the tortoises living in different islands.

In one island, the tortoise is small, have domed shells, with short legs and short necks. The lived on the island in which there was abundance of low vegetation, in which food are within easy reach. They don't change much, because the environment have been good to them: the climate is less dry, the terrain is not as rough and rocky, and the soil are good and fertile.

On the neighbor island less than a mile away, the terrain is different, more rocky, less fertile soil, and the climate is drier than the other island. And because of the conditions, the edible vegetation is harder to reach. The tortoises here have to adapt where they are living or they would die out. And they have to pass on genes, that would make them grow large than their smaller cousins; the necks and legs need to be longer, and they have to have a different shape she'll than just mere domed-shaped. Known as the saddleback shells, this allow the tortoises to stretch their longer legs, and crank their necks upright, so they can reach the edible leaves, from branches that are higher off the ground.

The giant tortoises needed to pass on the right genes to the next generation, or else they would die out.

And the tortoises are not the only ones. Other wildlife, including birds and fishes, have become different because of the different islands they flourished in.

If you were a biologist, and were to travel to Galápagos, you could observe how different islands affected the life they support, isn't merely an idea.

Although, Darwin didn't know about DNA, or have the technology, and though his theory may be outdated, but other scientists since his passing, have updated his theory, so natural selection is still relevant and strong today. We just have more technology anfd more knowledge about nature that didn't have, but he did provide a very good framework for other biologists to discover new mechanisms during the 20th century.

My problem is with you lot, who refused to see all the evidences available in that area of science. And this is coming from one who have never studied biology beyond year 9 high school biology. My study veered in the physics direction, when I began studying civil engineering.

The problem with creationists is that they still cling to primitive myths and primitive superstitious belief.

 

[gnostic]

Those of us who study those myths usually read between the lines and can see a deeper origin to them. We basically weed out most of the obviously Christian myths to get to the original myth.

I may not have study myths as a formal study, like at the university, but I have done enough reading and research to create my website on Greek, Norse and Celtic mythology - Timeless Myths.

And I may not be a profession in this field (like a professor), but I have teachers (and students) and authors in the past, asking me questions or for advices on the matter - would surely tell you that I am no novice when it come to myths.

I have also been reading literature (translations, of course) from ancient Egypt, Sumer-Babylonia, Ugarit, and even from China and Japan, that I was hoping to do a sister-site to timeless myths. I have got enough notes on the Egyptian and Babylonian myths, but not the time to transmit as webpages. I don't have as much as free time that I used to have.