nsTeam2RO, nsTeam2RW, nsTeam2_talkRO, nsTeam2_talkRW
13,254
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 144:
Line 144: − + Line 199:
Line 199: + + + + + + + + +
Talk:Debate:Listing the Earth's most pressing needs in urgent order of fixing (view source)
Revision as of 12:09, May 16, 2007
, 12:09, May 16, 2007→Noah's Arc: Fact or Fiction: Natural selection, pop. growth, God.
:::: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 12:08, 13 May 2007 (EDT)
:::: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 12:08, 13 May 2007 (EDT)
== Noah's Arc: Fact or Fiction ==
== Noah's Ark: Fact or Fiction ==
:I do attempt not to revert to simply bible bashing etc. What I would like to know is why you feel that the bible must be taken literally? There are a lot of christians and theologists who don't, not that that means you are wrong, simply that there are differences of opinion even amongst christians. I just explained how evolution is falsifiable. If fossils turn up in the wrong rock then evolution is wrong. There have been plenty of attempts to disprove evolution yet it is still regarded as a scientific fact by the majority of biologists.
:I do attempt not to revert to simply bible bashing etc. What I would like to know is why you feel that the bible must be taken literally? There are a lot of christians and theologists who don't, not that that means you are wrong, simply that there are differences of opinion even amongst christians. I just explained how evolution is falsifiable. If fossils turn up in the wrong rock then evolution is wrong. There have been plenty of attempts to disprove evolution yet it is still regarded as a scientific fact by the majority of biologists.
[[User:Bolly Ottihw|Bolly Ottihw]] 10:22, 16 May 2007
[[User:Bolly Ottihw|Bolly Ottihw]] 10:22, 16 May 2007
:Of course they "admit" that natural selection occurs: A creationist discovered it before Darwin!
:The example of the wolves involves environmental pressures removing ''all'' the wolves with the genes for short hair. But this is not always what will happen. In the case of the peppered moths, the environmental pressure caused ''most'' of the dark/light moths to be eliminated, but not ''all''. So when the environment changed back, there was still a small population of the other form around to repopulate. By the way, although the story of the peppered moths is probably true, and is actually a nice example of natural selection without ([[information]]-gaining) evolution, the evidence (the photographs of the moths on tree trunks) was faked.
:When I referred to a "static growth" for human population, I was meaning over the long term. Sure, in the short term, it can fluctuate up and down, which means that if you select just the right time period (some increase, some decrease), you can show the population remaining static. But to sustain that stasis for a long, and especially a very long, time, where the wars, plagues, etc. exactly balance out the growth, is a very unlikely ad hoc explanation.
:I believe that infertility is not a direct result of inbreeding, but an indirect result. That is, it is not due to sexual intercourse in a small group, but to the rapid accumulation of genetic defects that results from that. If Noah and his family, living only a few generations after Adam and Eve, still had very few genetic defects, then there would have been no problem.
:Your questions about the nature of God are things that I mostly can't answer, simply because His very nature is so unlike all that we understand. We can glean much about Him, especially from what He has revealed to us, but there is so much more that we don't yet know and probably never will (until we join him in heaven). You ask how he could influence time and space if He is outside of them. Rather, I'd ask why you think that's a problem. The question seems to presuppose that you know something about how these things work to know that it shouldn't be possible. But to give a possible answer, you and I can influence things outside ourselves. We don't have to be in someone's family, for example, to influence what happens in that family.
:Omniscience can be hard to understand, I'll grant, but I don't see, for example, how praying is useless. Sure, God knows before you pray that you will pray, so He already knows what He is going to do, but if you don't pray, He instead already knows that and doesn't act on that non-prayer.
:Just in case you misunderstand, the secular scientists who have proposed that the speed of light was different in the past did not propose that it was different by anything like the amount that the creationist had earlier proposed, or for as long. About the only similarity between the two ideas was that it was not the constant (for all time) that is generally believed.
:[[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 08:09, 16 May 2007 (EDT)