Evolution vs the Bible

As catholic as I am, I support Charles Darwin's theory of evolution over the Bible as there are enough facts and evidence to support Darwin's theory while with the Bible - well, to be blunt, it's too vague and can't be taken seriously as a history book.

 

Both sides seem pretty unreal. One states instant creation while the other states dramatic change (little tiny single celled sea creatures to giant reptiles for example). Choosing a side, I'm with Evolution. It's much easier to agree with when we have things like tadpoles to frogs and caterpillars to butterflies to physically support the theory. When looking at creation, I just see things springing out of the ground or a carved rock coming to life. Pretty much magic.

 

lol.


anyways, i'm with evo on this. anybody that believes the bible version either is blind to reality or is a moron for ignoring it.

 

Looks like one of my college classes, Physical Anthropology to be exact, is gonna be a bit of help here. Not too long ago, I had an assignment. Basically, it was going to this one website and learning all about Darwin's life. Now, an interesting little tidbit they had on that site was that Darwin would say that his theories do not conflict with religion. So what is my opinion? I support both.

 

I personally only believe in the theory of evolution, and thus think that spontaneous generation is implausible. I do not approve of the Adam and Eve story; the story should only be studied in psychology/literature classes.

 

Holy crap, I get to use my Anthropology class again as an example. Answer Man, what you just said, about it being just a theory is a very common misconception.

The theory of evolution is a scientific theory. Scientific theories are not the same as a regular theory. Scientific theories have tons of evidence to support them, and they are true until proven false.

And for additional things. Along with evolution, there are no species that are 'higher' than others. Everything has genetically evolved off of some common ancestor. Imagine a line. On this line are multiple branches, each representing some species, including us humans.

 

Oh goody, one that I can answer.

Here's how it works: We share a common ancestor, but aren't directly related, or as you say 'evolved from them'. As we evolved through variables in genetics, the others evolved in different ways. Unlike pokemon which change forms completely in one instant, evolution comes around from random variables in the gene sequence, mutations as they are more commonly referred to. We adapted to suit our environments, lo and behold, we thrived and reproduced across six different continents.

And again, you confuse scientific theories with basic theories. Reread DW's previous post.

 

Evolution is not something that can be attempted. It just happens by chance. When offspring are concieved, their genes may mutate. That is the most likely chance of macro evolution occuring. That itself takes a very long time. If you go back and look at the infamous finches Darwin noticed were all similar (That in itself is actually incorrect. Darwin just thought they were an assortment of random birds. It was some guy he sent the birds to that pointed out they were all finches). These finches took millions of years to evolve whatever differences they have.

As Requiem pointed out, primates and humans share a common ancestor. At some point, we split off, evolving in our own separate ways. We just happened to be lucky enough to evolve into what we are today.

The world being flat was not a scientific theory because it was neither empirical or falsifiable. And people knew the world was round at the time of Darwin's writing The Origin of Species because Darwin sailed around the world years before writing his book.

Please read what I pointed out in my last point. I'll bold it for you:

And for additional things. Along with evolution, there are no species that are 'higher' than others. Everything has genetically evolved off of some common ancestor. Imagine a line. On this line are multiple branches, each representing some species, including us humans.

From a purely scientific standpoint, every creature on Earth had evolved from one common ancestor billions of years ago. For the most part, human DNA is very similar to every other animal's DNA, from a dog to a monkey. But our DNA is more similar to primates than dogs.

I also wanted to comment on Toph's post with the link. I didn't do it before because I wasn't able to open the link. I'm assuming the link goes to EbAl's opening post in that thread. What he said is something I completely agree with.

 

I will be blunt, I am a protestant Christian.
I have studied more than just my own and have made my own decision accordingly.
Now, I do, however, believe that evolution, to an extent, is real.
Evolution is not really what everyone keeps saying it is, evolution is a changing over a period of that that happens little by little.
There is no quick fixes.
This in meaning is that things adapt.
That is all we have seen, adaptation.
We have never actually seen, what most evolutionists say is evolution, but we have seen Adaptation, time and time again.
Which is what Darwin was talking about in "Survival of the Fittest".
This means that a small amount of it was, granted, chance, but the bigger sum was adaption kicking and weeding out all the problems, so that the new off spring will be able to survive in the region.

Now one thing I want to state before I am done, is about the chance of evolution.
Ok the chances for a man to grow a second pair of arms and hands is countlessly rare, and too high for people to count.
And If I where to tell you it was possible, you would think I was crazy.
Now think of the chances of a universe randomly appearing, then for a world with the ability to sustain a life, then find the equation for the chance of a single cell organism becoming a "monkey", then that "monkey" becoming man.
Now figure out the odds of those odds happening is succession as they, supposedly, have.
The odds are very^10000 or more, which has been equated against the possibility's of creationism.
The result where...well, where that have a sentinel being is more possible than having the random succession of evolution.

Now this is what I believe, You are inclined to what you believe, and I'm not trying to fight or argue.
These never end well when it becomes a religious feud.
Thank you for listening.

Edit: P.s. i've always wondered this, but if the most common beleive of evolutionists is that we just die after life, then why are you so uppity about people who beleive in Christianity? Why not just leave us be with our beleive? I mean, no one is forcing you to be one, so why? (This is a question I want the athiests to think about, and if you think you have an answer, pm me, don't post about it here, please. Thank you.)

 

Not to be the odd ball here but I kind of have my own opinion about this all. Sure we have the scientific side with evolution. And we have the idea of creation. I'm a very scientific person, if I can't see proof than it isn't real. There for the idea of creation in my opinion is wrong. As a civilization we have NOT seen any appearance of this so called God. However we have seen evolution, so I know evolution is plausible. But who says we weren't created by something other than what we call God. For anyone who has seen the movie The Fourth Kind, at the end when the mother is clearly abducted and the voice along with the translations say "I AM GOD". This movie was made plainly upon facts and video clips of real events. I have done my own research over the movies and my findings have proven that this movie is made solely on true stories and events. Thus brings me to my conclusion, we were created but not by what "we" see as God. But we did evolve from whatever created the first inhabitants left here by another living species. Sorry to speak, in a way "out-of-term" but I thought we might as well consider other facters other than just evolution and creation. Plus this doesn't really disprove either therory nor dose it prove anything major.

 

I'm a man of science, so I'll use a Robert Langdon quote that describes how I feel about God and Religion:

"Faith is a gift that I have yet to receive."​

 

Evolution and the bible might go hand in hand in my opinion. I will just keep my mouth shut but to me, the thought that humans have evolved from squirrels and monkeys will be the only idea that I am disgusted at. It is still a theory too.

 

Either state your opinion or don't post in debates. Every time you post saying you're not gonna talk in any way that contributes to the debate, you're spamming. Do not worry about offending people in an online debate. In fact, don't even worry about offending people face to face. Seriously, it doesn't matter.

Where on earth did you ever get the idea that we came from squirrels? Was it from one of my earlier posts saying that every living animal is connected to each other? And for the monkeys, this next statement is for everybody who believes that humans evolved from monkeys:

Humans and monkeys all evolved from a common ancestor. We did not evolve from monkeys themselves. And, genetically speaking, we have more in common with apes than we do with monkeys. Apes, as in orangutans, gorrillas, bonobos, and chimpanzees. And also, there is only a 1% difference in the DNA of a human and the DNA of a chimpanzee.

If anybody ever bothered to look at the classification of species, you'll see how we're all connected in one way or another. The entire organization of primates, for example, is broken down into two groups. One group is the lemurs and whatnot, the other are monkeys and apes and humans. And as you go further and further down into classification, there are less animals until you get to the specific animal itself.

 

For fuck's sake, seriously? Seriously? for the UMPTEENTH TIME,

 

As an agnostic (Or as Colbert states, "Atheists without balls!" =P), I purely support the Evolution idea.

Evolution can have many meanings and theories. I truly do believe that we weren't "created" by God, but that we did evolve from some other lifeform out there.

For example, it's kind of illogical to say that Adam and Eve were the first humans on the planet yet evidence shows that there were Neanderthals and Homo erectus beings WAY before them. How can we truly believe that the human race started with Adam and Eve yet also know that other human-like lifeforms existed before them? It doesn't make sense.

Christianity and it's teachings have only been around for some 2020 years now (since the Bible was created sometime after Jesus' death around 15 BC (that might be a little off, though)), yet we have thousands and thousands of years before Christianity that contains other primate-like life. Unless Adam and Eve time-travelled thousands of years, I have a really hard time believing that whole concept.

Anyways, with more of the Evolution side, Evolution can occur in different settings. Take the Chernobyl disaster (1986), for instance. In Belarus, that nuclear meltdown led several cities into being closed down for years. Scientists have said that the radiation there have made the flora and animal life there react and look different than originally sighted. Yes, you could argue this with mutation, but the animals aren't changing rapidly, it took about 6 years after the accident to notice the change of animal life in the abandoned city. This means that the animals are adapting to their new appearance, EVENTUALLY spawning new organisms that look just like them. Just goes to prove you that evolution, in a way, DOES exist.

 

I would like to add that in the bible there are several several several flaws. Sorry but no human can live for 500 years. If adam and eve wear the first and only people that how is it that cane wondered off to find a new wife. And I was just informed that in the bible they did find ruins of earlier people so adam and eve couldn't be the first people so the bible contradicts itself. And I'm sorry but not even the greatest magican alive couldnt part a freak sea. I dont't care who you are but it's impossable, but like I said we can easily place something of a forgin nature such as aliens could cause the sea to part so idk there is just so many possabilties that it's impossable to say for sure. I wish someone would just tell us exactly what happend and why.