Evidence for God from Science

bippy123 wrote:This isn't proof for evolution. Here is a very old post...

Modern genetics has proven Darwin totally wrong.

Yet evolutionists look at these micro - adaptation changes (whether natural or artificial) and say something silly like "Presto - proof of Evolution!"

They forget the foxes are still foxes, and that many types of foxes with different colorings already exist.

But note also the surprise many expressed how fast the depth of change happened - in "only" 10 generations. That actually fits the young earth interpretation that a single pair of 'wolf-hounds' could have gotten off the ark and 1000's of years later you can have extreme variation developing from that pair.... based on survivability in the environments and human intervention.

By the way, Mutations also do not help evolutionists. They are always a loss of information, such as in this case.

A good book recently published on how the mutation rate is higher than previously thought and makes Darwinian evolution impossible is "Genetic Entropy" by Dr. John Sanford, the inventor of the Gene Gun.

Kurieuo wrote:To clarify on Theistic Evolution, it actually doesn't believe God created new organisms from pre-existing "stuff" except God doing so very indirectly. Similar to the "big bang" and how all stars and planets unfolded (God didn't directly create Earth in the sky, the moon or our Sun), Theistic Evolution has it that God planted the initial seed of life (perhaps even set in motion in the very beginning of the cosmos for life to naturally unfold). This "seed" had the potential to unfold according to natural laws and evolve into all lifeforms which have roamed Earth. There is no direct input from God throughout time, other than His simple sustaining of the universe and all laws within, and divine planning in the very beginning. If there is any divine guidance, such isn't direct intervention, but rather based upon God's foreknowledge of how each particle bouncing around and ripple would happen, He put in motion the one universe where all conditions would be met to have what we now see.

hughfarey wrote:
As for the New Testament miracles, I'm afraid I don't take many of them at face value. Turning water into wine was child's play compared to turning a couple of fish into twelve baskets of leftovers. Maybe if I was there I could come up with an explanation, but I wasn't, so I won't. A Miracle is defined by the mind of the observer, not by Physics, I think.

RickD wrote:The obvious question I would have for you, is do you believe in the virgin birth of Christ, and his resurrection, which are both New Testament miracles?

hughfarey wrote:

RickD wrote:The obvious question I would have for you, is do you believe in the virgin birth of Christ, and his resurrection, which are both New Testament miracles?

Yes, I thought you might. The answer, as I wriggled away with just now, is that I don't know. In several circumstances we have an undisputed before - a dead body in a tomb - and an undisputed after - men being put to death for the preaching the message of the resurrected Christ - but not, at least to me, a clear description of the middle. I think it foolish to deny that something occurred, but will not be drawn as to what without further evidence. The same applies to some extent to the other miracles. If the Feeding of the Five Thousand happened, then what, exactly, went on? I just don't know, and neither, I venture to add, did those who later reported it. Miracles, as I said, depend more on the observer than on Physics anyway.

Hugh: Yes, I thought you might. The answer, as I wriggled away with just now, is that I don't know. In several circumstances we have an undisputed before - a dead body in a tomb - and an undisputed after - men being put to death for the preaching the message of the resurrected Christ - but not, at least to me, a clear description of the middle. I think it foolish to deny that something occurred, but will not be drawn as to what without further evidence. The same applies to some extent to the other miracles. If the Feeding of the Five Thousand happened, then what, exactly, went on? I just don't know, and neither, I venture to add, did those who later reported it. Miracles, as I said, depend more on the observer than on Physics anyway.

Hugh: "I think it foolish to deny that something occurred, but will not be drawn as to what without further evidence."

hughfarey wrote:

RickD wrote:The obvious question I would have for you, is do you believe in the virgin birth of Christ, and his resurrection, which are both New Testament miracles?

Yes, I thought you might. The answer, as I wriggled away with just now, is that I don't know. In several circumstances we have an undisputed before - a dead body in a tomb - and an undisputed after - men being put to death for the preaching the message of the resurrected Christ - but not, at least to me, a clear description of the middle. I think it foolish to deny that something occurred, but will not be drawn as to what without further evidence. The same applies to some extent to the other miracles. If the Feeding of the Five Thousand happened, then what, exactly, went on? I just don't know, and neither, I venture to add, did those who later reported it. Miracles, as I said, depend more on the observer than on Physics anyway.

RickD wrote:

hughfarey wrote:

RickD wrote:The obvious question I would have for you, is do you believe in the virgin birth of Christ, and his resurrection, which are both New Testament miracles?

Yes, I thought you might. The answer, as I wriggled away with just now, is that I don't know. In several circumstances we have an undisputed before - a dead body in a tomb - and an undisputed after - men being put to death for the preaching the message of the resurrected Christ - but not, at least to me, a clear description of the middle. I think it foolish to deny that something occurred, but will not be drawn as to what without further evidence. The same applies to some extent to the other miracles. If the Feeding of the Five Thousand happened, then what, exactly, went on? I just don't know, and neither, I venture to add, did those who later reported it. Miracles, as I said, depend more on the observer than on Physics anyway.

Feeding of the fish, and water to wine aside, I'm curious as to how you think that not believing in Christ's resurrection, and Christ being conceived by the Holy Spirit and Mary being a virgin, affects the gospel. If those never happened, does that change the gospel in your mind?

hughfarey wrote:So, if what I say differs from somebody else's idea of what a Theistic Evolutionist is, then never mind. Where I think I differ from your definition above is in the current, immediate behaviour of God. I would put more emphasis on the words underlined below, and see the whole sentence as being a bit self-contradictory...

K wrote: "Theistic Evolution has it that God planted the initial seed of life (perhaps even set in motion in the very beginning of the cosmos for life to naturally unfold). This "seed" had the potential to unfold according to natural laws and evolve into all lifeforms which have roamed Earth. There is no direct input from God throughout time, other than His simple sustaining of the universe and all laws within, and divine planning in the very beginning. If there is any divine guidance, such isn't direct intervention, but rather based upon God's foreknowledge of how each particle bouncing around and ripple would happen, He put in motion the one universe where all conditions would be met to have what we now see."

I think that the "simple sustaining" bit is "direct input" and isn't at all simple, and constitutes a major part of what it is to be God. A contrary view which I dare say is held by a few Theistic Evolutionists, but which mostly constitutes a straw horse for others to shoot down, is that everything necessary for the unfolding of the universe was set off 15 billion years ago, since when God has been sunbathing in heaven waiting for it all to end.

What I don't go for is a sort of half-and-half idea, where God sets it all up and lets it go, but can't resist tweaking it here and there as it unwinds. This suggests that either he didn't really know what was going to happen and has to step in to correct unpleasant surprises, or that he keeps changing his mind and twiddles the knobs to achieve a different outcome, or some other version of events that inevitably implies a lack of Perfection, which is, as we know, one of God's characteristics.

hughfarey wrote:Fascinating living in the UK, and waking up to find all these interesting posts accumulating overnight!

Dogs. Yes, it took dozens of generations to make them look and behave like dogs rather than wolves, so I'm not very surprised that you can't produce a domestic dog from a wolf just by treating it like a dog. Although they are the same species and readily interbreed, they are certainly different varieties. However, I don't really follow Philip's suggestion that by now they should have evolved into different species, as if speciation were an inevitable result of variation, or as if there have been some sort of speciation attempts which have failed. Neither of these is true. Of course it could take more time - ten thousand generations might be the sort of thing - but unless there was some pressure to derive different species, then there is no reason why they should have diverged so far. I have no doubt whatever that if there was a determined breeding program to produce legless aquatic dogs, or winged flying dogs, it could be achieved, those animals being so different that they could be classified as different new families, let alone species, but to my knowledge that has never been attempted.

Mazzy wrote:I suggest God created a breeding pair or several that were either alike or had some variation, but were what we call wolves.

That's OK, and fits in with a spontaneous creationist belief. Presumably at more or less the same time he also created a breeding pair of some sort of cat. And probably, while we're on the subject of carnivores, another pair of ancestral bears. Would that be correct? The sudden appearance, in an appropriate habitat, of a pair of mature animals, with all their behavioural traits (the kind usually learned from their parents) complete, and sufficient diversity of DNA to produce the variety of descendants we see today. I can accept that as a coherent belief, although it is not one I hold myself. It is not unlike the sudden appearance in the USA of a pair of breeding hamsters in the 1940s, from which all modern pet and laboratory hamsters may derive.

Given that scenario - the spontaneous creation of breeding pairs - I wonder what timespan you see this happening over? Wolves, after all, mostly eat deer of various kinds, so presumably the deer had been created some time before, so as to have diversified enough to provide food for the wolves. And so on. At some point, I suppose, there was also the spontaneous creation of a breeding pair of Tyrannosaurus rex, and before that, the prey species they ate.

Is all this more or less how you see things happening, or am I being fanciful? I don't want to misrepresent anyone, but I do want to discover exactly what a spontaneous creationist really thinks.

Kurieuo wrote:

Kurieuo wrote:Re: Dogs and interbreeding, the question before a Progressive Creationist, Day-Age (and even YECs who believe "kinds" of animals were taken on the ark), isn't just declaring an interbreeding hypothesis. Or, perhaps it is, if one believes God initially created many different "breeds" of dog who can create unique offspring together.

A main question I see for a PC person like myself (or any non-evolutionary person really) to investigate re: dogs (and this is like a "first step" to what Hugh is perhaps wanting to know in regards to going as far back as Miacids) would be:

• Did God seed a number of initial dog "breeds" which then interbred, or did God create just one Canis lupus (which both 'grey wolves' and 'domesticated dogs' fall under) that then evolved other traits over time to provide our present-day wolves and wide variety of domesticated dogs.

Now this is about to get a whole lot interesting, because I'm also Traducian (believing that like biology gets transmitted from parents to offspring to certain degrees, so too an inheritance of our spiritual or soul-ish nature). And, it would seem to me, like the soul can be affected by physical ailments, that the soul can also affect the physical, change brain chemistry, we can stop our natural inclination to do something, etc. (this is something secular scientists largely reject, it is believed the physical can only influence consciousness and not vice-versa in what is philosophically known as epiphenominalism).

I'm just stating my beliefs here upfront, ok? Whether or not one agrees, I'm about to introduce something likely relevant to such. Which is, I stumbled across a documentary which seemed like something made for really odd "dog lovers". It was a PBS Nova documentary called "Dogs Decoded". In it, they have people try to raise wolves and foxes as domesticated animals.

The experiment has been running for more than a good 50 years. Wolves, they struggled to tame and had to release after several months. Foxes, there were approximately 1% on fox farms who didn't appear aggressive, which they took and raised domestically. By the third generation, in addition to loosing their aggression, foxes became as tame as domesticated dogs and even craved human companionship -- they'd adapted to have a new-found co-dependency upon humans. Then by I think 8th or 9th generation, something surprising happened, which was physical attributes started changing like floppier ears, shorter tails, and different coloured fur coats.

The video can be found here (I've fast-forwarded to the interesting bit fore-mentioned):
https://youtu.be/HHtN3sprvo8?t=26m20s

I'm still yet to confirm the authenticity of actual study, I remain skeptical as this documentary seemed to try justify a lot of seemingly odd claims that dog owner "freaks" would make. Nonetheless, if true, then such is quite fascinating on so many levels.

Study appears legitimate, of foxes domesticated by humans eventually changing in their appearance to have more "domestic dog"-like features:

• https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/gu ... stication/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_D ... ed_Red_Fox

hughfarey wrote:

RickD wrote:The obvious question I would have for you, is do you believe in the virgin birth of Christ, and his resurrection, which are both New Testament miracles?

Yes, I thought you might. The answer, as I wriggled away with just now, is that I don't know. In several circumstances we have an undisputed before - a dead body in a tomb - and an undisputed after - men being put to death for the preaching the message of the resurrected Christ - but not, at least to me, a clear description of the middle. I think it foolish to deny that something occurred, but will not be drawn as to what without further evidence. The same applies to some extent to the other miracles. If the Feeding of the Five Thousand happened, then what, exactly, went on? I just don't know, and neither, I venture to add, did those who later reported it. Miracles, as I said, depend more on the observer than on Physics anyway.