Evolution or Intelligent Design

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I hadn't heard the phrase "intelligent design" in about a decade and I'd been happy to keep it that way.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I don't know what's worse, the people who just flat-out refuse to accept the evidence for evolution, or the people who go through some tortured logic to say that the Bible doesn't preclude the possibility of natural selection.

There is no real evidence for evolution; it is all either circular, falsified, or at best circumstantial. Evolution was an ancient Greek philosophy, which Charles Darwin used as a justification for rasism. You probably don't know that the actual title of his book is this: "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." Other people went after the idea for other reasons, primarily as an attempt to justify atheism. People like Earnst Haeckel made several hoaxes as the first generation of "evidence" for evolution. The "evidence" constantly changes as more of it is falsified and more hoaxes are made.

If you think there is real evidence, tell me about it. Otherwise, I'll stick to my Bible which has constantly been proven right time and time again and which has guided me well.

Very little of this is true. Welcome to the forum.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I don't know what's worse, the people who just flat-out refuse to accept the evidence for evolution, or the people who go through some tortured logic to say that the Bible doesn't preclude the possibility of natural selection.

There is no real evidence for evolution; it is all either circular, falsified, or at best circumstantial. Evolution was an ancient Greek philosophy, which Charles Darwin used as a justification for rasism. You probably don't know that the actual title of his book is this: "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." Other people went after the idea for other reasons, primarily as an attempt to justify atheism. People like Earnst Haeckel made several hoaxes as the first generation of "evidence" for evolution. The "evidence" constantly changes as more of it is falsified and more hoaxes are made.

If you think there is real evidence, tell me about it. Otherwise, I'll stick to my Bible which has constantly been proven right time and time again and which has guided me well.

Very little of this is true. Welcome to the forum.

Your response is exactly like what I was expecting. I shall enjoy emphasizing that you did not bring up any evidence and you just said that my claims are not true. I have done plenty of research and watched plenty of debates and speeches. I think I know what I am talking about here.

Which parts of my comment were not true? How were they not true? What evidence do you have for evolution? Have a good night.

1. "Evolution" may have been "an Ancient Greek philosophy" but natural selection was not.
2. "Races" in the title of On the Origin of Species means "species". Darwin didn't address the question of human origins until The Descent of Man, which is a completely different book. Indeed, he specifically avoided the question in On the Origin of Species, due largely to wanting to respect the importance of human origins to certain religious doctrines. Of course, this doesn't mean that evolutionary theory wasn't used to justify racism; it very much was, and indeed still is. There's no reason that this needs to be the case, however, even if "human biodiversity" is real (which it's not), since racial equality or inequality in law and in society is a question of values, and questions of scientific fact are by definition value-neutral.
3. I've never heard of Ernst Haeckel before today and I would have been happy to keep it that way.
4. The most cursory look through the fossil record will reveal clear similarities between extinct species that are consistent with change over time.
5. Viruses and bacteria evolve so fast that vaccines eventually stop working due to being designed for inoculation against old strains of the disease; this is why people get flu shots every year rather than once in childhood. Larger organisms reproduce and thus evolve more slowly.
6. Some closely related species can reproduce together and produce fertile offspring, such as wolf-dogs or those hybrid bears that are sometimes being born now as polar bears interbreed with grizzlies in response to climate change. There are also examples of introgression where genetic material from one species is introduced gradually into another due to repeated interbreeding of hybrids with one of the parent species; this is why most modern humans have some Neanderthal DNA despite Neanderthals qua Neanderthals being extinct. This is not consistent with the idea of species as unchanging absolutes; it's not even consistent with the older evolutionary definition of a species as a group of organisms capable of reproducing with one another!
7. I have other things to be doing with myself tonight so I'll just leave you with what I've written so far.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I don't know what's worse, the people who just flat-out refuse to accept the evidence for evolution, or the people who go through some tortured logic to say that the Bible doesn't preclude the possibility of natural selection.

There is no real evidence for evolution; it is all either circular, falsified, or at best circumstantial. Evolution was an ancient Greek philosophy, which Charles Darwin used as a justification for rasism. You probably don't know that the actual title of his book is this: "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." Other people went after the idea for other reasons, primarily as an attempt to justify atheism. People like Earnst Haeckel made several hoaxes as the first generation of "evidence" for evolution. The "evidence" constantly changes as more of it is falsified and more hoaxes are made.

If you think there is real evidence, tell me about it. Otherwise, I'll stick to my Bible which has constantly been proven right time and time again and which has guided me well.

Very little of this is true. Welcome to the forum.

Your response is exactly like what I was expecting. I shall enjoy emphasizing that you did not bring up any evidence and you just said that my claims are not true. I have done plenty of research and watched plenty of debates and speeches. I think I know what I am talking about here.

Which parts of my comment were not true? How were they not true? What evidence do you have for evolution? Have a good night.

1. "Evolution" may have been "an Ancient Greek philosophy" but natural selection was not.
2. "Races" in the title of On the Origin of Species means "species". Darwin didn't address the question of human origins until The Descent of Man, which is a completely different book. Indeed, he specifically avoided the question in On the Origin of Species, due largely to wanting to respect the importance of human origins to certain religious doctrines. Of course, this doesn't mean that evolutionary theory wasn't used to justify racism; it very much was, and indeed still is. There's no reason that this needs to be the case, however, even if "human biodiversity" is real (which it's not), since racial equality or inequality in law and in society is a question of values, and questions of scientific fact are by definition value-neutral.
3. I've never heard of Ernst Haeckel before today and I would have been happy to keep it that way.
4. The most cursory look through the fossil record will reveal clear similarities between extinct species that are consistent with change over time.
5. Viruses and bacteria evolve so fast that vaccines eventually stop working due to being designed for inoculation against old strains of the disease; this is why people get flu shots every year rather than once in childhood. Larger organisms reproduce and thus evolve more slowly.
6. Some closely related species can reproduce together and produce fertile offspring, such as wolf-dogs or those hybrid bears that are sometimes being born now as polar bears interbreed with grizzlies in response to climate change. There are also examples of introgression where genetic material from one species is introduced gradually into another due to repeated interbreeding of hybrids with one of the parent species; this is why most modern humans have some Neanderthal DNA despite Neanderthals qua Neanderthals being extinct. This is not consistent with the idea of species as unchanging absolutes; it's not even consistent with the older evolutionary definition of a species as a group of organisms capable of reproducing with one another!
7. I have other things to be doing with myself tonight so I'll just leave you with what I've written so far.

1. Selection doesn't make new genetic information or even change genes at all. Nature cannot select, nature eliminates.
2.There isn't really anything important to add to that at this point
3.Earnst Haeckel was a German scientist who read Charles Darwin's book and became an activist for evolution. He made 4 hoaxes to support it: in 1869 he made purposefully inaccurate drawings of embryos to make it look like they are very similar when they actually are not (he admitted they were fake in 1875); he made up the "monera," a supposed single-celled creature; he made up "pithecanthropus alalus" (speechless apeman) to try to fill the gap between speaking and not speaking; in 1890 he sent Eugene Dubois to Indonesia to "find" a "missing link." He found a femur, skullcap, and a tooth, which were all found separately over the course of a few years. It was given the name "Java Man" and is now called "homo erectus." In 1923, Dubois admitted that he also found 2 normal human skulls, which he had hidden in his home to cover up the hoax.
4. The fossil record shows many organisms looking exactly the same as they do now. It shows a great variety, but no order can be proven. The fossils are generally in order of the elevation of their habitats, with the higher up organisms being buried later in the global flood. Many rock layers are folded without breaking, which can only happen if it was all folded at once when it was still mud. The coelacanth is supposed to be an "index fossil" for ~400 million years ago, but they are still alive today in the Indian Ocean. Many organisms are much larger than today, contradicting evolution and instead corroborating the Bible, which describes how the organisms were cursed to mutate after Adam sinned. Mutations have never been observed to create new genetic information, they only degrade the existing genetic information. In South Carolina, the Ashley Phosphate beds contain fossils of mammals and reptiles, and constain human artifacts, all together. In West Virginia, a bell was found in a lump of coal which supposedly was ~300 million years old. Petrified trees are found going through multiple layers, proving that they layers cannot be millions of years apart.
5. Viruses and bacteria become "resistant" when they have a mutation that deletes or degrades the part of their body that the vaccine or antibiotic targets. They are weaker overall and have less genetic information than the previous viruses and bacteria. Humans have been mutating negatively also, causing higher rates of cancers, Alzheimer's, autism, and other genetic diseases and disorders. Human females pass down mitochondrial DNA. There are 3 main haplogroups of this, corresponding to the wives of Noah's 3 sons. The differences in mitochondrial DNA indicate a common ancestor only thousands of years ago. Y-chromosomes are only passed down my males obviously. The differences in the Y-chromosome indicate a common ancestor only thousands of years ago.
6. Your claim of the idea of "species as unchanging absolutes" is a strawman. Based on the definition of "kind" given in the Bible, the absolutes are at the family level, not species. Members of the same family can interbreed. Members of different ones cannot. The separate species are the result of different location and genetic bottleneck. Neanderthals have bigger brains than modern humans, and have long brow ridges. Neanderthals were stronger also, think about how the Great Pyramid could have been made without modern equipment. The brow ridges indicate longer lifespan, as described in the Bible. Their bigger brains show that we are geneticly inferior to them as we have devolved just as all organisms devolve. Neanderthals are likely post-flood, post-Babel humans that were living to 100-200.
7. Think about finding some debates or speeches on Youtube. Maybe take a look at creationist sites. The truth is that the Bible is coherent and accurate. The Bible even contains many scientific statements that predate many scientists' discoveries. Have a good day.

Are you familiar with the phrase "seamless universe of self" from the eighties sci-fi novel Neuromancer?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I don't know what's worse, the people who just flat-out refuse to accept the evidence for evolution, or the people who go through some tortured logic to say that the Bible doesn't preclude the possibility of natural selection.

If nothing else, I think this thread has answered this question for me.

You're welcome.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Petrified trees are found going through multiple layers, proving that they layers cannot be millions of years apart.

Obviously you've never heard of pudding stones, or you'd easily realize that this example disproves nothing.

I have never heard an evolutionist mention that before. Please explain what you are talking about. Perhaps you could also entertain me by attempting to rebut all of the other evidences for a young earth and against evolution.

A pudding stone is a fairly common sedimentary rock that has a mixture of other rocks embedded in a finer grained sedimentary stone. Given a large object such as a petrified tree, it's perfectly reasonable that it would take multiple layers of sediment to cover it.

As for the others, there's absolutely no need to rebut the bell that was supposedly entombed in coal as its "discoverer" supposedly fully extracted it from its coal matrix, thus making it impossible to distinguish it from a complete fabrication.

I've read more than enuf pseudoscientific mischararacterizations of what science entails presented by YEC Biblical literalists over the years that I'm not going to bother trying to dissolve your preconceived notions by rebutting all your assertions because based on my past experience, my rebuttals, even if accepted by you, will only yield a "but what about ..." from you. The only way to prevent that would be for you to be willing to learn the difference between science and pseudoscience from someone who knows how to teach the difference to someone who has been previously been exposed to pseudoscience presented as if it were science. That's not a skill I have, nor do I have any particular reason to learn it.

Calling it pseudoscience does not make it pseudoscience.

Both sides do it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

All you did was make assertions. Several scientific laws prove the existence of God, such as the Law of Biogenesis. The Bible gives a great explanation for starlight: God makes the starlight in Gen 1:14 and makes the actual stars in Gen 1:16, remarkably distinguishing stars and starlight, and describing how the distant starlight can be seen. Chapters 38-41 of the Book of Job are a transcript of God talking to Job, and that is backed up by the fact that those chapters contain some of the most amazing scientific statements including light being in motion and deep sea springs, written thousands of years before the human discovery of those facts. The Bible mentioned "paths of the sea," which directly led to the discovery of ocean currents.

I don't think you understand just how wacky from a modern perspective the Biblical concept of the natural universe is. And this isn't me blaming the authors, because to be fair they were writing 2,500 years ago when only the most rudimentary cosmological facts were known, mostly thanks to Babylonian astronomers (and much of Genesis is borrowed/reworked Mesopotamian mythology).


Genesis tells us that above the sky there is a cosmic ocean separated from the earth by a solid dome (Genesis 1:7: "So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome"). To be a Biblical literalist you have to believe this picture over the most basic and obvious natural facts, like how space is actually a vacuum and not filled with water, and the Earth's atmosphere does not contain a solid vault separating us from the heavens.

Now, maybe you can argue the author of Genesis is being metaphorical here, but then there is no reason not to accept e.g. the story of Adam and Eve as metaphorical either.

First of all you misquoted the Bible. It actually says this: "And 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."

Genesis 1:20 says this: "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven."

According to the Bible, the firmament is heaven, which is split into 3 parts: Earth's atmosphere, space, and the third heaven where God lives. The waters between the atmosphere and space fell during the flood as rain, while most of the floodwater came from the water below the earth's crust. Part of the reason for the long lifespans before the flood, which are documented by ancient civilizations all over the world, was the obstruction of radiation due to the water, and the increased air pressure. There was also more oxygen.

If you are going to criticise the Bible, don't do it my lying about what it says.

I recognize both the translation of Genesis 1:7 that Statilius was citing and the version that you're citing. They're different translations of the same concept, which at the time that the Hebrew Bible was written was, yes, understood to refer to a solid dome of sky over a flat and stationary earth (see the Jewish Encyclopedia's article "Cosmogony"). By the Middle Ages this had been interpreted as the Ptolemaic cosmos we're all vaguely familiar with today, but that required a synthesis of the Biblical cosmos and the Neoplatonic cosmos that occurred over the course of the first millennium. Here is Aquinas's take on the subject.

Your post is one of the most dishonest misrepresentations of the Bible I have ever seen. Any mention of species is a total misrepresentation. Noah brought at least one pair of every FAMILY of land animal and bird. The word "kind" in the Bible is defined the same way as a family, not a species. Certain different populations from the same family/kind may have gone extinct, but not the family/kind as a whole. The reason different animals are in different places is because they migrated differently after they left the ark, it's so obvious. Why do you think the distant and relatively isolated Australia has some of the more passive and unique animals?

If you know where I can find a living scelidosaurid, hallucigeniid, or mylagaulid species, I'd love to hear it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

All you did was make assertions. Several scientific laws prove the existence of God, such as the Law of Biogenesis. The Bible gives a great explanation for starlight: God makes the starlight in Gen 1:14 and makes the actual stars in Gen 1:16, remarkably distinguishing stars and starlight, and describing how the distant starlight can be seen. Chapters 38-41 of the Book of Job are a transcript of God talking to Job, and that is backed up by the fact that those chapters contain some of the most amazing scientific statements including light being in motion and deep sea springs, written thousands of years before the human discovery of those facts. The Bible mentioned "paths of the sea," which directly led to the discovery of ocean currents.

I don't think you understand just how wacky from a modern perspective the Biblical concept of the natural universe is. And this isn't me blaming the authors, because to be fair they were writing 2,500 years ago when only the most rudimentary cosmological facts were known, mostly thanks to Babylonian astronomers (and much of Genesis is borrowed/reworked Mesopotamian mythology).


Genesis tells us that above the sky there is a cosmic ocean separated from the earth by a solid dome (Genesis 1:7: "So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome"). To be a Biblical literalist you have to believe this picture over the most basic and obvious natural facts, like how space is actually a vacuum and not filled with water, and the Earth's atmosphere does not contain a solid vault separating us from the heavens.

Now, maybe you can argue the author of Genesis is being metaphorical here, but then there is no reason not to accept e.g. the story of Adam and Eve as metaphorical either.

First of all you misquoted the Bible. It actually says this: "And 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."

Genesis 1:20 says this: "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven."

According to the Bible, the firmament is heaven, which is split into 3 parts: Earth's atmosphere, space, and the third heaven where God lives. The waters between the atmosphere and space fell during the flood as rain, while most of the floodwater came from the water below the earth's crust. Part of the reason for the long lifespans before the flood, which are documented by ancient civilizations all over the world, was the obstruction of radiation due to the water, and the increased air pressure. There was also more oxygen.

If you are going to criticise the Bible, don't do it my lying about what it says.

I recognize both the translation of Genesis 1:7 that Statilius was citing and the version that you're citing. They're different translations of the same concept, which at the time that the Hebrew Bible was written was, yes, understood to refer to a solid dome of sky over a flat and stationary earth (see the Jewish Encyclopedia's article "Cosmogony"). By the Middle Ages this had been interpreted as the Ptolemaic cosmos we're all vaguely familiar with today, but that required a synthesis of the Biblical cosmos and the Neoplatonic cosmos that occurred over the course of the first millennium. Here is Aquinas's take on the subject.

Your post is one of the most dishonest misrepresentations of the Bible I have ever seen. Any mention of species is a total misrepresentation. Noah brought at least one pair of every FAMILY of land animal and bird. The word "kind" in the Bible is defined the same way as a family, not a species. Certain different populations from the same family/kind may have gone extinct, but not the family/kind as a whole. The reason different animals are in different places is because they migrated differently after they left the ark, it's so obvious. Why do you think the distant and relatively isolated Australia has some of the more passive and unique animals?

If you know where I can find a living scelidosaurid, hallucigeniid, or mylagaulid species, I'd love to hear it.

You are trying to use extrabiblical sources try to change the meaning of the Bible, very dishonest of you.

As opposed to doing what?? Textbooks for learning Biblical Hebrew are "extrabiblical sources", dude. It's literally impossible for a native speaker of any modern language not to use "extrabiblical sources" at some point in the process of reading and interpreting the Book of Genesis. If you can't understand a point this basic then there's no reason to think that you understand any other aspect of Biblical exegesis either.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What exactly would constitute an "honest debate"? Conceding your interpretation of the Bible as a given from the get-go? Discussing this subject on your preferred terms and no other? That's not how things work on Atlas Forum, Jamison.