Just Accidental?

[It Aint Necessarily So]

"Yohm" can be used for an unspecified period of time. The creative days could not have been 24 hours long.....the creative process was lengthy and the earth itself is old. The Bible does not disagree with that.....some Christians do themselves no favors by hanging onto false beliefs.

The Bible specifies creation in just under a week. We know this in at least two ways.

First, the scriptures say that these days had a sunrise and sunset:

"And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning - the first day.

"And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning - the second day."


Second, we are commanded to emulate God and rest on the seventh day, which has always been understood to be a 24 hour period, from a Friday sundown to the next sundown on Saturday if you're an orthodox Jew.

I'm surprised to see you call that metaphor given your hostility to evolution. You have to have accepted the science that rules out a literal reading of the Genesis creation story, but not the science supporting evolution. Fundamentalism is usually across the board, not selective.

I have a hypothesis about why the Genesis story occurs over six days followed by a day of rest:

Go back a few millennia, before the advent of the week and the weekend, when people worked every day, and it was likely socially unacceptable for able bodied people not to work every day. Perhaps it was taught that the gods expected it. This was very likely true in man's nomadic days of hunting and gathering, and probably applied even when he settled into a farming and herding life.

Now, fast forward to the advent of monotheism, organized religion, temples, and a priesthood, which would like it to become necessary for every head of the household and probably everybody else as well to periodically come to the temple with shekels to sustain this activity, which meant taking time away from work. I'm guessing that they chose every seventh day then as it still is today.

How do we manufacture support for that idea that it is OK to take a day off if work is considered sacred and holy? Easy. Make taking a day off once a week even holier. In fact, make it a Commandment. Even the Lord rested on the seventh day, and you will, too.

This seems very plausible to me. It explains an otherwise inexplicable and counterproductive idea - that a god needed to work for six days or to rest. That story was written to imitate the cycle in man's life that the priests had concocted.

Another possible clue: Look at how artificial the week is. A day, a month, and a year are each natural units of time reflecting celestial events: one rotation of the earth about its axis, one revolution of the moon around the earth, and one revolution of the earth around the sun.

But these apparently just won't do for this purpose. The day is too short and the month and year too long. And so, the week was created, and with it, the weekend, or Sabbath as it was originally known - a "yom" of rest - a literal 24 hour day just as the Bible writers intended.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I, for one, do not believe there has been enough time [for life to have evolved]. Can anybody prove to me that there has been enough time?

We don't prove in science. We analyze evidence, draw inductions from it, and test them. If they bear fruit, we are content that we have useful knowledge.

We have ample evidence for a 4.5 billion year old earth, and that 4.5 billion years is enough time.

That evidence is readily available to you on the Internet if you are interested. If you have trouble with what you find, I'll be happy to walk you through it. But first, I require a good faith sign from you that you are really seeking information. My experience is that such questions as yours above are not really a sincere effort to learn more, but part of a faith based position that wasn't arrived at by evidence, cannot be modified with evidence, and is not interested in evidence.

Take a peak at this, and then we can talk some more:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_against_a_recent_creation

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Yep, the ducks designed themselves just to impress their women.

Take a close look at them and tell me that again.....



They do not assume that something is true unless they have actual proof, not just unverifiable assumption. There is no hard evidence for macro-evolution. There is evidence for adaptation but scientists who support macro-evolution want to take that beyond observable boundaries.That is fantasy, not fact....it is based on belief and faith in your teachers, not evidence-based science. You criticize us for that.



This con is eagerly believed by those who who have a problem with brainless religionists (as do I) who insist on the literal 7 day creation and who want religion to 'go take a hike and get real'.....the problem is, the scientists went past "real" themselves and on into a world of their own fantasy. They threw the baby out with the bathwater and went right down the path that eliminated any supernatural cause of life because they can't prove he exists. Just because religion got it wrong and misrepresented what the Bible says, doesn't make the Creator go away. It doesn't make all life on this planet "just accidental". And you guys appear to demand less "proof" than we do.

In case you haven't noticed, peer acceptance is extremely important in the world of academia. When anyone questions the validity of the theory of evolution, what is the first thing they experience? Ridicule and character assassination. Egos can only survive when a widely promoted belief is upheld by all of the sciences. The evidence for macro-evolution is flimsy to say the least, but tell people its true long enough and present concocted explanations and diagrams and 'voila'....it must be true. Such is the power of suggestion and who is suggesting it.



Gladly. One of my favorite evolutionary fairly tales is whale evolution......

Now look carefully at the creatures that science has chosen to imply that each of these is a step in the evolution of a whale.
According to them, about 48 million years ago we see an extinct whale cousin......who said?

Then we have the whale ancestor who is apparently older than his cousin by a few million years. Now it gets interesting....ambulocetus is also supposed to be about 48 million years old. But when you google images of these creatures, you begin to realize how much of them is fact and how much is produced by an artist's imagination. Some evolutionists have even distanced themselves from ambulocetus because of the placement of the eyes, more like an alligator than the placement of a whale's eyes.

Now rodhocetus was originally depicted with a fluke tail and flippers like a whale....but they never did find a fossil with a fluked tail and they now admit that the fluke and flippers were an assumption. The structure of its arms were not consistent with them ever being flippers.

One of my favorite evolution sites is The evolution of whales

Let me quote the opening sentence on the evolution of whales.....along with this graphic.....

"The first thing to notice on this evogram is that hippos are the closest living relatives of whales, but they are not the ancestors of whales. In fact, none of the individual animals on the evogram is the direct ancestor of any other, as far as we know."

The article goes on to point out one of the main reasons why Pakicetus is thought to be the ancestor of a whale.....

"These first whales, such as Pakicetus, were typical land animals. They had long skulls and large carnivorous teeth. From the outside, they don't look much like whales at all. However, their skulls — particularly in the ear region, which is surrounded by a bony wall — strongly resemble those of living whales and are unlike those of any other mammal. Often, seemingly minor features provide critical evidence to link animals that are highly specialized for their lifestyles (such as whales) with their less extreme-looking relatives."

So what is it that links pakicetus to a whale?......an ear bone that "strongly resembles those of living whales". That is supposed to be "critical evidence" for their claim?

I think that sets the tone for the entire evolutionary argument.

The truth be told.....evolutionary science is a con of mammoth proportions. It is not based on real evidence but on what scientists assume "might have" happened in the dim dark past when there was not a soul around to verify any of it. They have woven their own fairytale around the fossil evidence and led themselves down a path that makes them look very foolish to those of us who are believers in an Intelligent Designer.



You're welcome.......I hope it will expose this fraud for what it really is. You can be a genius and still be deluded. Its not about your intellect...its about what is in your heart and how much real evidence you need to convince you that something is true. It is nothing more than the power of suggestion. If you market anything the right way, the world will beat a path to your door.

Virtually every argument I've seen from you contains one of a few fallacies:

Argument from incredulity - you just can't fathom it, so it didn't happen

Argument from ignorance - if you can't prove A, and B is the only alternative, B must be true

No argument in either form is valid. Things are not disproven because you can't see them happening or I can't prove they did.

The only way to disprove evolution is to falsify it with a finding that the theory forbids - the classical precambrian rabbit comes to mind - or to produce a creator. Short of that, the theory is here to stay.

And why should we toss it out when it unifies, explains, and predicts so much so well. If you can come up with an idea that outperforms evolutionary theory, scientists will surely consider it impartially and open-mindedly notwithstanding your insinuation that they are foolish frauds trying to profit by marketing an idea. I assure you that most are more noble people than their critics. Their agenda, methods, and values are all more honorable than those of creationist apologetics.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Why is it that some theists here refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence for the simple fact that life on Earth has evolved over billions of years, and yet they blindly believe in a deity or deities that we cannot find any objective evidence for whatsoever?

However, I'm not saying that such deities could not exist.

That's a rhetorical question, right? I'm sure that you know the answer.

 

[savagewind]

We don't prove in science. We analyze evidence, draw inductions from it, and test them. If they bear fruit, we are content that we have useful knowledge.

We have ample evidence for a 4.5 billion year old earth, and that 4.5 billion years is enough time.

That evidence is readily available to you on the Internet if you are interested. If you have trouble with what you find, I'll be happy to walk you through it. But first, I require a good faith sign from you that you are really seeking information. My experience is that such questions as yours above are not really a sincere effort to learn more, but part of a faith based position that wasn't arrived at by evidence, cannot be modified with evidence, and is not interested in evidence.

Take a peak at this, and then we can talk some more:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_against_a_recent_creation

I have never even once considered young Earth creation.
I understand that life might have begun 4.5 billion years ago. I can't imagine that was long enough.
Have you given it any thought? Am I right that 4.5 billion is only 999,999,999 times four and a half?
I have to say, that isn't enough time imo.

 

[savagewind]

One million is only 999,999.999 times ten. Correct?

Maybe.....years were much longer at some time past?

 

[savagewind]

@It Aint Necessarily So I think you are old enough to realize how very short an Earth year is.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I disagree with you because without objective evidence there is no science, and without any science we couldn't have produced much of anything that actually works. The fact that we can produce highly complex machinery and send people to the moon is proof that they must have relied and used objective evidence.

I never said nor implied that life has no design, and please note that I am not an atheist*. @Deeje keeps trying to put me into the atheistic camp after I have repeatedly told here what my position has been that you can read at the bottom of this post.


* a belief that there is/are no god/gods-- I'm more of what is called a "skeptic"

Increasingly, the skeptical community is calling itself atheistic. I call myself an atheist, but have no such belief as the one you cited. I have no idea if there are any gods.

The religious community would like to impose an older nomenclature on us, one that contains three mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive (MECE) categories: atheist, agnostic, and theist. According to that view, everybody is one of those and nobody is two.

It's not clear why they care, although I have a hypothesis, but many are adamantly opposed to a newer formulation that is more useful and being used more. We can be theists or atheists, another MECE situation once you define a theist as anybody who believes in a god or gods,and an atheist as anybody that doesn't. We are all one of those, and nobody is both.

At the same time, we are said to be gnostic if we claim to know if gods do or do not exist, and agnostic if we say that we do not, also a MECE situation. Everybody is one of those, and nobody can be both.

That means that everybody is either a theist or atheist according to whether the accept a god claim, and everybody is either a gnostic or agnostic according to whether they claim that they have knowledge about gods.

By that reckoning, I am an agnostic atheist.

I am also a skeptic - a rational skeptic. By that I mean that I believe that no idea should be accepted without questioning it or without having supporting evidence including this one. I am an atheist because I am a skeptic. I have no reason to believe in gods, so I don't. The evidence supporting rational skepticism is its amazing success relative to faith based systems.

And I am also an empiricist. I believe that useful knowledge about the world is uncovered by examining it critically, not through faith - a belief well supported by evidence.

And I am secular humanist. I embrace Enlightenment values. I believe that man is a creature capable of great nobility, and is the only hope for a better future for himself and the beasts.

You might be all of those things as well.

My hypothesis alluded to is that the religious community would like to keep our apparent numbers small. By the definition I just gave, America is about 75% theist and 25% atheist. By the theists definition of an atheist - somebody who doesn't merely not believe in gods, but goes so far as to call gods impossible or nonexistent, which is very few of us, our number drops to more like 5%.

Why else would they care what we call ourselves or object to this usage? On another thread, a believer was and still is forcefully trying tell people like me that I am not an atheist - I am an agnostic. Me not an atheist? Because I admit that knowledge about gods is unavailable to me?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I have never even once considered young Earth creation.
I understand that life might have begun 4.5 billion years ago. I can't imagine that was long enough.

OK. That's fine. If you read my last post to Deeje, I commented on "I can't imagine" rebuttals.

Have you given it any thought?

Yes. I've also collected information.

Am I right that 4.5 billion is only 999,999,999 times four and a half?

No, but you're very close - close enough.

I have to say, that isn't enough time imo.

Once again, that's fine.

If you ever want to take me up on my offer, do the reading, and we can discuss what you read and any questions or objections you might have regarding what you read. You will then have an informed opinion rather than just a hunch, and we will have a basis for discussion.

 

[savagewind]

OK. That's fine. If you read my last post to Deeje, I commented on "I can't imagine" rebuttals.



Yes. I've also collected information.



No, but you're very close - close enough.




Once again, that's fine.

If you ever want to take me up on my offer, do the reading, and we can discuss what you read and any questions or objections you might have regarding what you read. You will then have an informed opinion rather than just a hunch, and we will have a basis for discussion.

I would need evidence of significant change in the DNA. Something that proves the organism might be headed toward a new form of life. In a hundred years, there isn't that. Is there? How many words (and time spent) must I read to find something that proves that only a little time is required for it?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

One million is only 999,999.999 times ten. Correct?

Maybe.....years were much longer at some time past?

When multiplying by powers of ten, add zeroes. A million, which is 10E6 (a one followed by 6 zeroes) times ten is ten million (10,000,000). Just stick those 6 zeroes onto the 10.

Or, with decimals like 999,999.999, move the decimal to the right for every power of 10. Ten times 999,999.999 is 9,999,999.99 - just under ten million.

 

[savagewind]

When multiplying by powers of ten, add zeroes. A million, which is 10E6 (a one followed by 6 zeroes) times ten is ten million (10,000,000). Just stick those 6 zeroes onto the 10.

Or, with decimals like 999,999.999, move the decimal to the right for every power of 10. Ten times 999,999.999 is 9,999,999.99 - just under ten million.

So, am I right?

 

[savagewind]

In the last one hundred years has there been any change to suggest that beneficial change in the DNA is something common? If you think that I might want to spend hundreds of hours looking for the evidence of that so that I need not believe in God anymore, you would be what I call, "nuts". Just know that I am not calling you nuts. @It Aint Necessarily So

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

@It Aint Necessarily So I think you are old enough to realize how very short an Earth year is.

I know with unusual accuracy how long a year is thanks to my investigation of how and why the rules for leap years are what they are: 365.2422 days. Here's an article I wrote some time back on the subject that is off topic, but hopefully will be of interest to some:

"Y2K, or 2000 A.D., was an interesting year number apart from the bruhaha generated over its anticipated crippling of computer assisted functions. Like Geraldo’s unlocking of Al Capone’s vault live on television in the seventies, this was a big nothing.

"What was interesting, and went almost unnoticed, is that it was a leap year. This doesn’t seem strange if one merely considers that like other leap years, 2000 is evenly divisible by four. But there are more rules than just that one in determining if a year is a leap year.

"The idea of adding an extra day every fourth year stems from the fact that the earth orbits the sun not in 365 or 366 days, but in a decimal number between these two which is close to 365.25, the average length of a year when adding a February 29th every four years. This refinement had been in the Julian Calendar since shortly before Christ (45 B.C.).

"But the actual length of a year (rounded) is about 365.2422 days, and after more than sixteen centuries of compounding this error, a difference of about eleven minutes a year, the seasons and the stars were coming noticibly early notwithstanding several occassional and arbitrary single day corrections introduced from time to time over the ages. Thus, the Julian Calendar was replaced by the Gregorian Calendar in 1582 which advanced the date ten calendar days overnight in October of that year.

"But by 1751 when the Calendar Act was passed in England, another eleven days had accumulated and were again dropped overnight, but this time with a revision of the method for calculating leap years. September 2, 1752 was immediately followed by September 14th, and a new rule was added. By overlooking leap year once a century, the average year would be 365.24 days long. Thus 1800 and 1900 were not to be considered leap years, and they were not.

"Our year 2000 would have also not gotten its February 29th save for one additional refinement added to the century rule. If the leap year was skipped only three out of four centuries, the average day would edge up to 365.2425 days, a very near match to the 365.2422 figure. To accomplish this, century years divisible by 400 would remain leap years.

"The first and only century year to be treated thusly since the passage of the Calendar Act was 2000, and it was allowed to be a leap year. 2100, 2200 and 2300 will not be leap years, but 2400 will have the leap day February 29th, 2400.

Notice that the refining process keeps coming up with better approximations first by starting too low and adding a correction that makes the year length too high, but closer: (365 -> 365.25).

Next, we give up (subtract) one of 25 per century, the opposite process, which takes us too low again, but closer yet: (365.25 -> 365.24).

Now we go the other way again by adding back 1/4th of the century years and end up too high, but closer yet (365.24 -> 365.2422). A more accurate figure for a year is 365.242199 days, so this is very close.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

So, am I right?

No, but you were very close.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

Here's a question that is obviously too difficult to answer, since it's ignored every time it's posed: What could stop smaller evolutionary changes over shorter periods of time from accruing into larger ones? What barrier would prevent that.

I've answered that, many times. Apoptosis and sexual selection..

An organism's difference from others in that population, if not resulting in death, at the least results in its shunning, not its acceptance. It certainly lends no credibility to account for the sheer diversity in the flora & fauna we observe! To state otherwise requires either extreme ignorance or incredible naïveté.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

In the last one hundred years has there been any change to suggest that beneficial change in the DNA is something common? If you think that I might want to spend hundreds of hours looking for the evidence of that so that I need not believe in God anymore, you would be what I call, "nuts". Just know that I am not calling you nuts. @It Aint Necessarily So

I didn't think you were calling me nuts.

I am not trying to make an atheist of you. It wouldn't serve me to do that, and if you have lived all of your life as a Christian, and that is 50 or more years, you would probably be worse of as an atheist. My worldview has to be grown into.

My life has meaning and purpose to me without a god. Many Christians would have difficulty making that transition. How many have told us that life without a god belief is ungrounded and meaningless. They're telling us that they have never learned to find meaning in the things around them or the life that they are living if it doesn't end up with an afterlife. They would be empty trying to navigate life without that belief until they learned to think otherwise, and if they are in the last third of life, that's uncommon.

I get my ethics from reason applied to compassion, not a holy book or a preacher. Many Christians simply aren't used to that. For example, I was not raised to see homosexuals as abominable, so naturally, I would have no objection to same sex marriage. How many times have we read Christians telling us that there is no reason for an atheist to not go berserking and murder people. That tells us that they have never developed an internal moral compass. They would be lost at sea without a rule book.

I am not afraid of ceasing to exist after death. That might be an unnerving existential crisis for a new atheist of advancing years.

My social situation is what it is in part because of my atheism. Nobody in my social circle is disappointed in me or shunning me for it. You might face cataclysmic social upheaval, especially if you are a regular church goer and live near, work with, or are related to many Christians and fellow congregants.

This is not the time for you to switch horses, and it would be cruel of me to knock you off of your if I had that power. You might be living a life that feels meaningless to you, berserking in the park if you thought that you could get away with it because you had no reason not to, afraid of death, and without friends or family.

I also think it's probably too late to expect you to begin studying and learning science and math. It's not that you couldn't learn it. It's just that you've apparently never had enough interest in it to learn it, and that doesn't often change later in life, either. It's more or less why I didn't want to invest much energy in your call for evidence. Unless you are a rare exception, I pretty much know what you would do with it. You're not really interested in the answers or you'd have them already.

No disrespect intended. In fact, I hope you got a sense that I respect your peace of mind.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I've answered that, many times. Apoptosis and sexual selection [are barriers to "microevolution" eventually producing "macroevolution"]..

An organism's difference from others in that population, if not resulting in death, at the least results in its shunning, not its acceptance. It certainly lends no credibility to account for the sheer diversity in the flora & fauna we observe! To state otherwise requires either extreme ignorance or incredible naïveté.

Thanks for that. You're the first to offer me an answer.

I don't see a role for apoptosis in preventing what creationists call macroevolution. Apoptosis and cellular death apply to how long an individual can live, not whether his (or her) offspring can vary from him or one another, so I don't see its relevance here.

Also, what shunning are you referring to, and why would shunning be relevant? Sexual selection is a key concept in evolution, which really isn't so much about survival as successfully competing with other members of your population to reproduce. This, of course, requires surviving to and through the reproductive age. Among the scarce resources individuals compete for are mates.

Thanks for your answer. Would you like to be more specific about how apoptosis and sexual selection can prevent what is sometimes called "macroevolution"? What is the mechanism?

 

[savagewind]

If a life form was born with enough difference, the other life that it could mate with wouldn't have it to mate with it. That is his point, imo. For evolution to work like some people say it works, much sex between different DNA carriers would have to have been necessary. I think we do not see that much, if at all, in the observed wildlife.

Do you know what I mean?

If something came out different, the other members of the group would shun it or kill it.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

God requires faith and those who accept God as Creator on his terms without reservation, are at least heading down the right track. There are those who choose "theistic evolution" because it fuses the two opposing belief systems, but this is not supporting what the Bible says. We have to make a choice. Either the Creator is all that he says he is....or he isn't.

Why should I believe that there is a god or that it wants me to have faith unless I already have faith in that?

"If there is a god, that god should know exactly what it would take to change my mind...and that god should be capable of doing whatever it would take. The fact that this hasn't happened can only mean one of two things: 1. No such god exists. 2. Whatever god exists doesn't care to convince me, at this time. In either case, it's not my problem and there's nothing I can do about it. Meanwhile, all of those believers who think that there is a god who does want me to know that he exists - are clearly, obviously, undeniably... wrong." - Matt Dillahunty"

Also, faith isn't an option for me. I understand why it is a bad idea and why it cannot be a path to truth.

And finally, I am not free to choose what seems believable to me, or believe what doesn't.

That's probably all alien to you.

I have said all through this thread that we have no more proof for our Creator than science has for macro-evolution...which puts us on equal footing IMO.

Then where's the argument against evolution? What you are saying is that even without any supporting evidence, it would still be as good as a creation belief.

And that is correct, which underscores the flaw in faith and why we can say that is not a path to truth. If any idea or its polar opposite can be believed by faith, then it can't be use to determine truth.

Actually, faith isn't a path to anything. A path is a connection from a starting point to ending point. It limits where you can go, like a driveway or a tunnel.

Faith is more like the open ocean. You can go north, or northwest, or south by southeast.

1 + 2+ 3 = 6. You can think of the equal sign as a little path taking us from the addends to sum. There is no other destination that is true (or correct). This is pure reason, and it is a path to truth.

Now look at this:

“If somewhere in the Bible I were to find a passage that said 2 + 2 = 5, I wouldn't question what I am reading in the Bible. I would believe it, accept it as true, and do my best to work it out and understand it."- Pastor Peter laRuffa

He's telling us that he is capable of believing by faith that 2 + 2 could add to 5. Presumably, by faith, he could believe that they can also add to 13 and 246. There is no path there, and no truth. He's in intellectual free-fall.