Evolution AND Creationism

[OpenMind]

Jives, what makes you think that God is alone? I have already posted concerning this.

This brings me back to Spot's question asking for clarification. I have so far presumed that you are referring to God of the Jews and Christians. Is this presumption correct? If so, then my previous post applies.

[Jives]

Beats me, I just don't see any evidence of a "team effort" so I'm thinking monotheistic.

One of my friends told me today, "I think Pi is the best evidence for a Creator because that number is just too cool to be a coincidence.":wah:

[OpenMind]

My previous post, as I referred to it, is at the bottom of page 1 of this thread.

[Jives]

spot wrote: That, I think, is a major problem that was posed as long ago as by Epicurus, three hundred years before Christ: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not Omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is God both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"


Is it possible that evil doesn't even exist? Perhaps things that we think are evil actually have a value that we just don't understand.

Everyone considers Hitler evil, but he taught the world a powerful lesson about fascism and iconism, all before total destruction was possible. If evil existed, wouldn't it have been better to have him come to power after the invention of atomic bombs?

Hmmm...that sounds like a good idea for a story. A man travels in time, eliminating evil, creates an agrarian utopia....which is utterly powerless to defend itself when really evil aliens come to Earth.:rolleyes:

[spot]

Jives wrote: Is it possible that evil doesn't even exist?Yes. But in a world where people suffer what appears to them, personally, to be evil, it's just as malign and unforgiveable.

[OpenMind]

Evil exists as a concept. As such it is subjective and open to idealism. I wonder if animals have any conception of evil. If they do, then this would prove its existence. But, the Bible appears to give the knowledge of evil only to Man.

[spot]

OpenMind wrote: Evil exists as a concept. As such it is subjective and open to idealism. I wonder if animals have any conception of evil. If they do, then this would prove its existence. But, the Bible appears to give the knowledge of evil only to Man.And, you'd have thought, to the angels. And, without question, to God.

[OpenMind]

However, this detracts from the subject of the thread.

I guess I would tend towrds Creationism. I believe that what we refer to as evolution is just a form of adaptation on the one hand, and the tendency for the forces of the Universe to try every possible combination of energy and matter.

[spot]

OpenMind wrote: However, this detracts from the subject of the thread.

I guess I would tend towrds Creationism. I believe that what we refer to as evolution is just a form of adaptation on the one hand, and the tendency for the forces of the Universe to try every possible combination of energy and matter.That's fine, but it's a lousy description of Creationism. You seem to have watered it down to the point where it allows evolution to do all the work without any divine intervention at all. At which point, yes, go for it, they're compatible with each other and there's no tension.

[OpenMind]

spot wrote: That's fine, but it's a lousy description of Creationism. You seem to have watered it down to the point where it allows evolution to do all the work without any divine intervention at all. At which point, yes, go for it, they're compatible with each other and there's no tension.


On the other hand, the nature of quantum mechanics provides a perfect medium for a divine being to influence any aspect of the Universe and it would only be discernible as an act of nature to the humble human eye.

[spot]

OpenMind wrote: On the other hand, the nature of quantum mechanics provides a perfect medium for a divine being to influence any aspect of the Universe and it would only be discernible as an act of nature to the humble human eye.Given that it weren't statistically deviant, yes. And you can extend that to the Multiverse eventuating all outcomes, from which a timeless Armageddon can strip away all evil leaving a purified Creation beyond the end time. I suspect that all such speculation is too distant from either Creationism or Evolution to be of practical value in debating this issue.

[OpenMind]

spot wrote: Given that it weren't statistically deviant, yes. And you can extend that to the Multiverse eventuating all outcomes, from which a timeless Armageddon can strip away all evil leaving a purified Creation beyond the end time. I suspect that all such speculation is too distant from either Creationism or Evolution to be of practical value in debating this issue.


I have to agree with you in general. The subject is on the same par as determining the existence of God.

Back to Evolution and Creationism. I have a problem with Creationism as well. Seeing as (within current scientific thought) there was no Big Bang, and I have always tended towards favouring the steady state universe theory, in a universe that has existed for an infinite amount of time, then Creationism just doesn't get a starting grid.

[nvalleyvee]

Is there room here for creative evolution? Does not creative evolution involve all people's beliefs without discrediting any of them? Are we talking about the spirit that is humanity meeting the natural way of life? Does anyone think that humans will exist on this Earth in ........say.........10 million years - or 65 million years? Will other species exist in our place? These are things I ask myself. We may only be another interim species as the dinosaurs were.

[spot]

nvalleyvee wrote: We may only be another interim species as the dinosaurs were.Not according to Saint Paul, and he's fairly high up as authority figures go. It's a brave Christian who'd stand up to him in a fight over these matters.

[nvalleyvee]

spot wrote: Not according to Saint Paul, and he's fairly high up as authority figures go. It's a brave Christian who'd stand up to him in a fight over these matters.


:yh_rotfl :yh_rotfl I don't mean to demean any person's religious beliefs - I know they give great comfort in a person's life. I respect that belief.

They happen to not to be my beliefs. I find these comments funny according to MY BELIEFS.

[OpenMind]

Could someone tell me exactly how the human race has evolved since it came into being?

[spot]

OpenMind wrote: Could someone tell me exactly how the human race has evolved since it came into being?Human is a species, Homo Sapiens. Various other Homo species have existed in the past, but none are still around. We're primates. Earlier primates existed from which all Homo species descend. That bit's charted on http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigi ... _tree.html

http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigi ... imate.html takes the story back a bit further in time.

Here's a rough guide to how to become human, assuming you're a small mammal on four legs fifty million years ago. Get into the trees and stretch those limbs. You have to shift your fingers around so that the thumb is opposed to the palm so you can grip. Leave the forest for the plains - you have to walk on two legs to see far enough to be safe. Increase the size of your skull severalfold so that your 400g brain can get over 1000g. Start to talk, and bingo, you're practically there.

The point of that silliness is that there are fossils of each of those forms of mammal, with each change showing as their distance from our time decreases. All the way through each of the forms of primate and homo shown on the first hyperlink.

[OpenMind]

The link between Sapiens and Neanderthalus is contentious. This is stated in your first link and I came across this contention in a documentary also. Seems that Neanderthalus occurred after we did, going by your link.



Several features of the skeleton unique to Neanderthals appear to be related to cold climate adaptations.

. I copied this from your first link. This is my contention, that life adapts rather than evolves. I admit that this is a contrite example. I would love to answer these questions more fully, but by the time I would have managed to do the research, we would all have long white beards.

Reading the second link caused me to look up the definition for the term evolution. Now I understand it to be a progression as opposed to an advancement or improvement. And yet, I am still stuck with the idea that evolution is forced by the need to adapt to the environment.

Up until now, I was aware of the idea that there was a missing link between Homo Sapiens and other primates, but your second link shows that we have a common ancestor which has been established by a study of DNA.

I understand that evolution is based upon the conjecture that 'nature' improves upon its design according to which strains survive. It has so far shown that many strains can survive. Yet I am sure that the dinosaurs would have reappeared if this were the case as they were a successful strain and their disappearance apears to be linked to a major calamity. I am sure that if we were to face the same calamity as the dinosaurs, then we would also disappear into history in the same way, never to re-emerge again.

The second link also counters Creationism. 55 million years ago goes way before the creation of Adam and Eve. The Jewish calendar is a precise measurement to this day (being as accurate as NASA's relatively recent calculation of the moon's orbit). The Jewish calendar starts on the first day of Adam's creation. Thus, there are only five days to account for before the start of the Jewish calendar.

Thus, evolutionism and creationism are only compatible if we either throw out the Bible as fallacy or completely bend the meaning of its text to fit (perhaps the Jehovah's Witnesses are onto something here).

[spot]

OpenMind wrote: This is my contention, that life adapts rather than evolves.I don't know of any expression of evolution that doesn't involve a changing environmental pressure as one of the main drives to selection. If you've been thinking that adaptation to change is separate from evolution, dismiss the idea. Another is that gaps appear in the consumption of natural resources which can be filled by species which can adapt to fill them, again by selection of those which take advantage of the gap most effectively. Yet another route to selective adaptation is separation of a population into two distinct regions by a boundary that the species can't cross - a hill range, or a river, for example, or in extreme cases an island drifting from a continent (as with Madagascar becoming isolated from Africa). As different environmental changes apply different pressures on each population, the species can drift so far apart genetically that eventually, even if they reunite, interbreeding is no longer possible.

[OpenMind]

spot wrote: I don't know of any expression of evolution that doesn't involve a changing environmental pressure as one of the main drives to selection. If you've been thinking that adaptation to change is separate from evolution, dismiss the idea. Another is that gaps appear in the consumption of natural resources which can be filled by species which can adapt to fill them, again by selection of those which take advantage of the gap most effectively. Yet another route to selective adaptation is separation of a population into two distinct regions by a boundary that the species can't cross - a hill range, or a river, for example, or in extreme cases an island drifting from a continent (as with Madagascar becoming isolated from Africa). As different environmental changes apply different pressures on each population, the species can drift so far apart genetically that eventually, even if they reunite, interbreeding is no longer possible.


Boy, you're quick to answer. Took me nearly half an hour to write my reply!. Seems that we tend to agree on this one point at any rate. Nonetheless, the term evolution, for most people I think, tends to imply something more.

[spot]

OpenMind wrote: Boy, you're quick to answer. Took me nearly half an hour to write my reply!. Seems that we tend to agree on this one point at any rate. Nonetheless, the term evolution, for most people I think, tends to imply something more.OK, that's a fairly pivotal moment then - the bit I'm missing, to be able to discuss it further, is "evolution ... tends to imply something more" - I've no idea what the "more" is. String a couple of paragraphs together that might point me toward it, and a few more barriers might fall away on either side.

[OpenMind]

spot wrote: OK, that's a fairly pivotal moment then - the bit I'm missing, to be able to discuss it further, is "evolution ... tends to imply something more" - I've no idea what the "more" is. String a couple of paragraphs together that might point me toward it, and a few more barriers might fall away on either side.


It is as I said, looking at your second link concerning primates caused me to look up the definition for evolution. All words have two types of meaning. The first is definitive, this is what it actually means. The second is connotative, this is the associations attached to it.

I have fallen into the trap of the connotative meaning. This tends to imply that evolution is an improvement on the previous 'model', so to speak. Technologically, this is probably true, and this is the world I live in day in, day out. Particularly as I work within the production industry as a panel wirer and machine assembler and tester. In fact, this industry adapts to need as well.

I think I speak from the common view. Am I right, or am I wrong?

[spot]

OpenMind wrote: It is as I said, looking at your second link concerning primates caused me to look up the definition for evolution. All words have two types of meaning. The first is definitive, this is what it actually means. The second is connotative, this is the associations attached to it.

I have fallen into the trap of the connotative meaning. This tends to imply that evolution is an improvement on the previous 'model', so to speak. Technologically, this is probably true, and this is the world I live in day in, day out. Particularly as I work within the production industry as a panel wirer and machine assembler and tester. In fact, this industry adapts to need as well.

I think I speak from the common view. Am I right, or am I wrong?Focus down to a single change - it's possibly marginal, it might be major. The vast number of such changes never reach life, they are so detrimental.

If the individual changed can survive to breed successfully, then that change is inherited, and continues to be inherited through the generations until it either becomes ubiquitous or it fades down to nothing and dies out.

Some changes will enhance the likelihood of reaching that point of successful breeding - basically staying alive long enough! - and some will diminish it. Some of either will live that long through luck, some will die through accident.

The overall evolutionary pressure on such a change is statistical - will a lot of inheritors find an overall advantage or not, in either their original setting or in the new environment into which that species has found a niche into which to expand its territory.

Over a long enough timespan, many such changes, each beneficial in a given environment, will accumulate as pervasive within that species. The species ends up more genetically varied, more niches can be occupied, the species becomes more successful.

If there's a sudden setback to the species - a freak weather event, for example, that takes millions of individuals down to thousands - then a lot of that variation will be lost among the descendents of the survivors. That's a genetic pinch, or a bottleneck.

Bear in mind that a single change can be subtle or gross - experimentally, introducing a single genetic variation into a fruitfly can move its wings to different parts of its body, change the number of wings or legs. You can see why the vast proportion of changes are instantly deleted from the gene pool by death.

The early Cambrian is an interesting part of the fossil record, though, in that there were so few environmental pressures in the early diversity of multicellular life that lots of counts can be seen of legs, toes, bones, before the commonplace counts became established as most advantageous.

How are we doing so far?

[OpenMind]

So far, this appears a good argument. However, I want to go back to the dinosaurs.

It has so far been agreed that this was a successful evolutionary development. But, they were wiped out by a calamity of one sort or another. The nature of the calamity is so far undecided. There is, perhaps, not enough evidence to determine what happened.

Now, whilst there are dinosaur type creatures on the planet today, they are mostly small lizards (exception aside, can't remember their name, the large lizards that live on an island). Birds, likewise, are generally small compared to their dinosaur counterpart.

It's almost as if to say that nature decided that since the dinosaurs didn't survive whatever their calamity was, they were not worthy of reproduction on the same scale.

Instead, against all the odds, we have become the dominant species on this planet. The main and overtly obvious difference between the human race and the dinosaurs is intelligence. The question is, are we intelligent enough to survive the same calamity as (or even worse than) the dinosaurs. It may seem an unfair test, but that's life. Survival of the fittest.

The idea that nature would try something different would actually suggest to me that there is a sentient superbeing. But then I would argue with myself that as conditions are changing all the time, the next generation of creatures are dependant on the conditions prevailing at the time. We are now aware that oxygen and sunlight are not necessarily preconditons for animate life.



So, the question now is, are we being tested, are we just subject to Universal conditions, or do both apply?

[spot]

Firstly, dinosaurs. There are none left, the last died (as best I know) 65 million years ago - to the best of my knowledge, no dinosaur descendant fossils have ever been found more recent than that date. Once a species is gone, once that genetic pattern is no longer around to procreate, it can't be brought back into being. For chance and natural selection to repeat that genetic pattern, the dinosaur would have to re-evolve from whatever it evolved from originally, and I doubt if anything like their anticedents are around any longer either. The lizards on the planet now didn't descend from dinosaurs, there were lizards around when dinosaurs were at their peak and today's lizards descend from them. They may look more like dinosaurs where they have taken over the ecological niche that dinosaurs once occupied, but that's an evolutionary pressure pushing species from different lineages in similar directions. It won't ever make them the same. As to intelligence, incidentally, I have no idea how to measure the intelligence of a dinosaur. Maybe there's a scale on which they were quite bright, who knows? Nobody has ever found traces of dinosaur technology. I'd expect traces of ours to still be detectable 65 million years from now.

Could we survive whatever wiped them off the planet? I doubt it, just at the moment. I expect we'll get to a point where we could, fairly soon (whatever that means on an evolutionary timescale). I also doubt whether we're subject, as a species, to the selection process any longer. Medicine has stepped in and stopped the killing of the weak. Good eyesight used to be a key to living long enough to breed, I expect. Nobody had the advantage of spectacles. Poor eyesight is becoming a lot more common - though that might not be a genetic drift, that might just be too much reading and close-up work from early youth.

Nature doesn't need to try anything different for natural selection to have been active. Nature's passive and unconcerned. Mutation is passive. The selection process is the statistical accumulation of change which benefits the individuals carrying it.

Here's another aspect of an evolutionary, or adaptive, pressure - look at sickle-cell anaemia. In most people, in most environments, it's a bad thing to have - to the extent that therapy to correct it would be a fine development and researchers are trying to get one. It happens when two people carrying a mutation have a child which, in a quarter of the children, is very ill and dies - "When someone inherits two mutant copies of the hemoglobin gene, the abnormal form of the hemoglobin protein causes the red blood cells to lose oxygen and warp into a sickle shape during periods of high activity. These sickled cells become stuck in small blood vessels, causing a crisis of pain, fever, swelling, and tissue damage that can lead to death. This is sickle cell anemia". You'd think that this would be a bad thing.

The reason that the original change spread is that for the parents, or any children (half) that inherit a single parent's copy of it, it provides an immunity to malaria. Where malaria is endemic, up to 40% of the population carries a copy of the protection. So, for them, it allows them a greater chance of survival in that environment.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/libra ... 12_02.html is a longer account of the detail.

[OpenMind]

Once a species is gone, once that genetic pattern is no longer around to procreate, it can't be brought back into being.
I have to take you up on a point here. How did anything come into being in the first place. I don't think that it's a case of lost and forgotten, but rather a case that the dinosaurs had sufficiently changed the environment within a changing environment. I am fairly confident that given the same conditions, 'nature' could reproduce the dinosaurs without a problem.

I am going to make a radical statement here. This, to me, cuts through to the chase.

Throughout my life, one thing seemed to bother me. The fact that not only can I think, but I can perceive things I have never seen or that have ever existed. Imagination.

Then, one day, it occurred to me that if I have intelligence, then, 'nature' must also have intelligence since I am a product of nature.

The first time and the second time I voiced this, I was ridiculed. On both occasions, I argued that nature's intelligence would not necessarily be akin to our own. We wouldn't necessarily understand it, but that nonetheless, it must be intelligent, otherwise, how could we, the human race, have any means to be intelligent.

Still, to this day, I find a negative reaction to this concept. Yet, in everything that I research, I find a common denominator that goes beyond intelligence. I have yet to find an argument that makes sense of this.

It seems to me that intelligence is merely a tool, a tool that nature uses to advance its purpose. Take, for instance, engineering numbers, or complex numbers, as some call them. We didn't invent these numbers, because nature was already using them to create the nautilus seashell's shell. We merely discovered them.

Thus, my reckoning is that if I can think, if I can conceive things that don't apparently exist, how much more so can 'nature' since I am nothing more than a product of 'nature'?

However, since those early days, I have come to realise that 'nature' demands something more than intelligence if we are to survive. To me, it is fairly obvious, although I have yet to find a scientific proof for it.

[spot]

OpenMind wrote: I have to take you up on a point here. How did anything come into being in the first place.Neither genetics nor evolution have anything to say about that - neither science addresses that topic. If you mean the Universe, that's addressed by high-energy physicists. If you mean life, that's addressed by chemists with a bizarre tendency toward molecular biology - if you find a scientist researching extraterrestrial biology (and, strangely enough, they do exist) then they'd have more information though I doubt whether they'd have a lot of hard certainties as far as life on earth is concerned. If you want to go in that direction, by all means let's try it.

I don't think that it's a case of lost and forgotten, but rather a case that the dinosaurs had sufficiently changed the environment within a changing environment. I am fairly confident that given the same conditions, 'nature' could reproduce the dinosaurs without a problem."given the same conditions", I'm sure you're right. You'll never have those again on this planet, though. Beyond that, the odds of chance reproducing the same mutations - and there's not just a few, there's billions of them - at the same stage of development in the same environment are astronomically remote. It's a big universe, but finding the *exact* duplicates of a dinosaur out there would involve a very big search. Finding things *like* dinosaurs is quite different to reproducing the dinosaurs without a problem.

One of the interesting aspects of genetics is the staggering longevity of genetic information. A significant percentage of the genetic code of a banana, for example, is still identical to the code for humans, came from the same antecedent common ancestor, and continues to perform the same function. You can still find the same chunks of code, from way back, driving you and a yeast, and you're a lot more different to a yeast than you are to a banana. The pre-history of genetic adaptation, before multicelled life sprang into being, will be an amazing story once it gets unraveled.

it occurred to me that if I have intelligence, then, 'nature' must also have intelligence since I am a product of nature.

The first time and the second time I voiced this, I was ridiculed. On both occasions, I argued that nature's intelligence would not necessarily be akin to our own. We wouldn't necessarily understand it, but that nonetheless, it must be intelligent, otherwise, how could we, the human race, have any means to be intelligent.I don't know of any branch of science that would attempt to discuss this, it's probably a question beyond the remit of the scientific method. It's a metaphysical question rather than a physical one. It's philosophy. I'll have a go at it, but the way you come to a conclusion is going to be based on belief rather than enquiry. Humans are intelligent. Either that intelligence arose as a survival mechanism for the species (from whatever level of intelligence other mammals already had, which in my opinion is considerable - go and interact with a dog some day!), or it was a "gift" of something already intelligent which wanted to uplift someone to interact with - what you call nature here, if you regard nature as intelligent rather than a setting. You've got no nearer the source of intelligence by painting that picture, you've just pushed it back one step. The question of where and how nature became intelligent is no different to the question of where or how life became intelligent. If nature isn't God, then you can put it back another step (not that you have, I'm just pushing it myself) by saying God made nature - or man - intelligent, but again you've just pushed it back another step. Somewhere, intelligence came into being. Either it was self-created - the religious answer - or intelligence is one of many mechanisms to aid survival (and, for any intelligence you can recognise as such, not a common one, and fairly recently arrived). Choosing between those two philosophies is a religious response, not a scientific one.

[OpenMind]

That's an interesting reply, Spot. The trouble is that we, the human race, just do not know enough about any of this.

For all we know, the way things developed may have been the only option in this universe and may not have been random at all. On the surface, the forces of the universe appear to be random. But, as we know, nothing happens randomly but is subject to rules.

This is the problem with threads like these, we simply do not know enough. So, we keep learning and we are able to have debates like this to shake out the conjecture and the proof.



The intelligence theory I put forward interests me and I would like the time to research it further. (Mind you, there are lots of things that I would like to research further.) I use the term 'nature' very loosely since, as you say, I do not know the origin of intelligence. I visualise something along the lines of 'emergence', a term used, for instance, to explain the apparent intelligence of a colony of ants. This, however, is a form of intelligence that still controls from the organism rather than from an outside influence. Nonetheless, if the universe, or even the multiverse, can be viewed as an organism, then this would appear to us as a type of controlling intelligence. It would not be necessarily apparent to us because of the way the mechanics of it works. We, and everything else that makes up the organism would be contributing the information upon which the intelligence would make its 'decisions'. This is much the same as how intelligence works for an ant colony.

[spot]

Perhaps a primer on Jung would take you further, as far as intelligence external to the individual is concerned. You're outside of the realm of what I take to be scientific enquiry, though not outside the realm of reasoned speculation which has generated insight into the human condition.

Evolution is solidly within the scientific process, in that its hypotheses can be tested and refined in the light of experimental evidence and physical exploration. The presence or absence of these psychological insights seems to me to be transparent to the scientific process, which doesn't mean they're meaningless, just that they are a separate area of human enquiry. "nothing happens randomly but is subject to rules" is true at some levels, but certainly not all. Even where it's true, the appearance of randomizing as a statistical result of many interactions makes the final state of a system appear no different than purely random events would have caused. You can still analyse it as though all the events were random even if the causality wasn't, so long as the causality wasn't biased by the causer. In other words yes, you may have a conscious intelligence directing events, but if He's there then He's made His intervention invisible to scientific analysis. If the sun rises in the West tomorrow, I'll assume the likelihood of divine intervention as a cause but the historical record doesn't convince me that it's likely. Unless, of course, tomorrow tells a different story. Ask me again after it happens.

[OpenMind]

Well, I think I've exhausted my arguments on this matter. Though I have certainly benefitted from your clear, interesting, and informative posts, Spot. Thank you. Hopefully, we will debate again soon.

[Ted]

Good Lord, I'll be a monkey's uncle! LOL

Shalom

Ted:-6

[Ted]

Personally I have no problem with believing in evolution and in God.

I noticed on the news today that one of the Americans large scientific communitities came down hard on the "Intelligent Design" theory.

Shalom

Ted:-6

[OpenMind]

Personally I have no problem with believing in evolution and in God.




It seems to me that evolution, as it is called, had a very large head start on God. Or, at least, the God of the Jews.





I noticed on the news today that one of the Americans large scientific communitities came down hard on the "Intelligent Design" theory.




I will have to look this up before I can comment.



Peace.

[bigdaddy]

Ted wrote: Personally I have no problem with believing in evolution and in God.

I noticed on the news today that one of the Americans large scientific communitities came down hard on the "Intelligent Design" theory.

Shalom

Ted:-6
That is good for you, Ted.

I personally do see a problem in believing in evolution and God.

It really doesn't matter if large scientific communities come down on the "Intelligent Design" theory or not, it is what you choose to believe.

My faith happens to be larger then them.

They do not influence my choice of belief.

But this has been an interesting thread, I do want to thank Jives for the earlier links and Spot and OpenMind's debate. It just has not influenced me one bit, I choose to believe in Creation, and not evolution.

[Alfred]

these things can only ever fall down to personal belief as no amount of debating or evidence can ever bring a person to believe different. thats not to say that they only have one point of view on the subject.

personally i'd put my money on evolution, the evidence is too much for me to ignore. but as was mentioned earlier;



evolution cannot become a theorem untill all life in the universe has been tested and proven to fit the theory for all possible cases.

evolution does not prove or disprove the existence of a God.


equally creationism is a theory, the existence of a God must be proven for it to be a theorem.

but since neither is plausible at this stage its up to the individual to decide.

i skipped the last few pages of the thread so i hope this isn't just a repeat of what someone else said.

[chonsigirl]

Oh, you are so wise for your age, Alfred.

I want to see where you go when you graduate from MIT or some cool university!

[Alfred]

chonsigirl wrote: Oh, you are so wise for your age, Alfred.

I want to see where you go when you graduate from MIT or some cool university!


to infinity and beyond.

anyone wanna come?