Evidence for God from Science

It is by By James Perloff



Has anyone here read the book? If so what are the facts from it? I read it and I believe most of what he says except for the young Earth theory. I have tried to find out what the facts are and it is so hard. I keep going to evolution sites and comparing the two but the evolution sites really do not give good answers that backed by facts. They are also very biased. I can not find a non biased site at all. A lot of this book makes sense to me. Especially the pats about if evolution were fact how come we do not see it today and where are all the transitional animals? Wouldn't there be more crossbreads if evolution were true? I would love to read other opinions about this.

I read about 8 pages of it on the pdf you linked to...There were lots of elementary mistakes about evolution, and a ton of misconceptions about evolution that he uses as evidence against evolution. He also spends a great deal of time pulling out quotes from creationists who mostly just say "evolution isn't true." So, in my brief experience, it's not a highly scientific or intellectually credible source.

Once he busts into his young-Earth part, then he just gets wacky, in my opinion.

Ivellious wrote:I read about 8 pages of it on the pdf you linked to...There were lots of elementary mistakes about evolution, and a ton of misconceptions about evolution that he uses as evidence against evolution. He also spends a great deal of time pulling out quotes from creationists who mostly just say "evolution isn't true." So, in my brief experience, it's not a highly scientific or intellectually credible source.

Once he busts into his young-Earth part, then he just gets wacky, in my opinion.

thank you for your opinion. I agree the whole young Earth stuff just sounds crazy but does that really mean everything else he says is? I am just trying to find out the facts and its hard.

Mitzy wrote:It is by By James Perloff



Has anyone here read the book? If so what are the facts from it? I read it and I believe most of what he says except for the young Earth theory. I have tried to find out what the facts are and it is so hard. I keep going to evolution sites and comparing the two but the evolution sites really do not give good answers that backed by facts. They are also very biased. I can not find a non biased site at all. A lot of this book makes sense to me. Especially the pats about if evolution were fact how come we do not see it today and where are all the transitional animals? Wouldn't there be more crossbreads if evolution were true? I would love to read other opinions about this.

What evolution is accoording to what I have been able to understand is gradual change over time due to 3 mechanisms. Mutation, natural selection and genetic drift. From there the claim is transitional species are all around us. They occur on a genetic level so we can't tell them part. They even claim from generation to generation of humans we are evolving. Bottom line is they arrange what appears to be progressive evolutionary fossils of a species to demonstrate this as if we could live the expanse of time required we would see the new species emerge.

See that just does not make a whole lot of sense to me. I believe in small adaptations through time but not that a species can change into a new one. Like sea creatures becoming land animals and such. If that were true then we would see it today.

I agree the whole young Earth stuff just sounds crazy but does that really mean everything else he says is?

That's not at all what I meant. I'm not saying because his YEC views are out there, his evolution ideas are also out there. But from what I read, his writing on evolution is either dishonest/deceitful or just bad reasoning.

They even claim from generation to generation of humans we are evolving

To be fair, there is actually a fairly interesting debate among people as to whether humans are evolving or not. I believe that we are not, mostly because we are no longer bound by natural selection in the majority of the world. In bypassing this, it would be illogical to say that we could evolve by normal means.

Like sea creatures becoming land animals and such. If that were true then we would see it today.

Just curious, how would you expect us to see it today? Evolution would not expect you to be able to go to a pond and witness creatures evolving before your eyes from fish into frogs. So I'm curious as to what you think we should be able to see.

Ivellious wrote:

Like sea creatures becoming land animals and such. If that were true then we would see it today.

Just curious, how would you expect us to see it today? Evolution would not expect you to be able to go to a pond and witness creatures evolving before your eyes from fish into frogs. So I'm curious as to what you think we should be able to see.

We should see evolution in more simple organisms that go through millions of generations a day. e.g. yeast becoming multi cellular or virus's etc.... but we don't do we.

Ivellious wrote:

Like sea creatures becoming land animals and such. If that were true then we would see it today.

Just curious, how would you expect us to see it today? Evolution would not expect you to be able to go to a pond and witness creatures evolving before your eyes from fish into frogs. So I'm curious as to what you think we should be able to see.

I don't know little sea creatures with arms trying to become land animals. Which I also haven't heard of any in the fossil records either.

Mitzy wrote:

Ivellious wrote:

Like sea creatures becoming land animals and such. If that were true then we would see it today.

Just curious, how would you expect us to see it today? Evolution would not expect you to be able to go to a pond and witness creatures evolving before your eyes from fish into frogs. So I'm curious as to what you think we should be able to see.

I don't know little sea creatures with arms trying to become land animals. Which I also haven't heard of any in the fossil records either.

Little sea creatures with arms? Google "mudskipper".

Besides that, if you really want to know about evolution, I would recomend "Finding Darwin's God" by Kenneth Miller. He gives a pretty good overview of evolution and how his faith doesn't get in the way of the evidence. I think it's a good start for any theist interested in evolutionary theory.

Pierson5 wrote:

Mitzy wrote:

Ivellious wrote:

Like sea creatures becoming land animals and such. If that were true then we would see it today.

Just curious, how would you expect us to see it today? Evolution would not expect you to be able to go to a pond and witness creatures evolving before your eyes from fish into frogs. So I'm curious as to what you think we should be able to see.

I don't know little sea creatures with arms trying to become land animals. Which I also haven't heard of any in the fossil records either.

Little sea creatures with arms? Google "mudskipper".

Besides that, if you really want to know about evolution, I would recomend "Finding Darwin's God" by Kenneth Miller. He gives a pretty good overview of evolution and how his faith doesn't get in the way of the evidence. I think it's a good start for any theist interested in evolutionary theory.

I will look into it. I hope it isn't too biased.

I understand your concern. Obviously I'm not a theist. The author is a cell biologist and is also a roman catholic. You could always google a summary and see if it interests you. Just throwing it out there. I hope you find what you're looking for.

I will look into it. I am interested in the facts. I have my beliefs but i like them to be backed by facts. I have gone round and round till my head spun trying to figure out if what one site said was factual or not because then I would find another site with evidence that so called disproves what i just read from the other site. Like the whole mutations debate. I read from a Christian site that evolutionist believe that mutations are the cause of evolution and there are lots of evidence that makes that theory sound crazy then I look at a evolution site and I read that mutations are not the only thing that contributes to things evovling, but they do not go into it further than that. i also read that a college professor at Harvard admitted that they don't have the answers to a lot of questions but the students have faith in the teachers so they use that faith to brainwash them and only show them evidence for the most accepted theories and omit evidence that is against that. So that is my issue.

Mitzy wrote:I will look into it. I am interested in the facts. I have my beliefs but i like them to be backed by facts. I have gone round and round till my head spun trying to figure out if what one site said was factual or not because then I would find another site with evidence that so called disproves what i just read from the other site. Like the whole mutations debate. I read from a Christian site that evolutionist believe that mutations are the cause of evolution and there are lots of evidence that makes that theory sound crazy then I look at a evolution site and I read that mutations are not the only thing that contributes to things evovling, but they do not go into it further than that. i also read that a college professor at Harvard admitted that they don't have the answers to a lot of questions but the students have faith in the teachers so they use that faith to brainwash them and only show them evidence for the most accepted theories and omit evidence that is against that. So that is my issue.

I know how you feel. There are always "experts" on both sides and it's very difficult to decide which is the most believable. This is true for me in many subjects. There are plenty of things in science where I find myself at a complete loss. So who do we listen to? For example: Kenneth Miller is an advocate for evolutionary theory, Michael Behe is an advocate for intelligent design. Both have PhDs, are college professors, have their own publications, have written popular books and were both called to testify at the Dover trial.

So who do we believe? We need to look at which side has evidence for what it proposes. You can look back on, I think page 7, on the evolution/ID thread I started regarding the break down of publications for each side. When less than 0.01% of the papers published on a topic are in support of an alternative explanation, you can pretty much guarantee that there’s no debate. If an “expert” has no direct evidence in support of his own position, but can only attempt to tear down the opposing position, you can reasonably conclude that he doesn’t have anything meaningful to offer. From your previous posts, it sounds like this is the reason we don't give a lot of credit to young earthers, correct?

Oh, and one more thing. Just like every scientific theory, evolution does not have ALL the answers. But, just like atomic theory or germ theory, this does not discredit the validly of all the other evidence in support of the theory.

Mitzy wrote:I believe in small adaptations through time but not that a species can change into a new one. Like sea creatures becoming land animals and such. If that were true then we would see it today.

There are many evidences within the fossil record that do provide us with the ability to make rational logical conclusions. Many people try to slant the evidences to back their preconceptions though. One of the evidences that was particularly significant to me was the cambrian explosion which when compared to darwinian logic should not have occured. We should not see a vast array of body plan types existing in the beginning as the logic would be that the common ancestor of all life as envisioned by evolutionary theory would over long periods of time gradually change and become more complex in structure and eventually vary to fill environmental niches. So the cambrian explosion which is understood to contain 'all' the body types to ever exist occuring at nearly the beginning of the fossil record with no ancestral form preceeding them is in complete opposition to what one could logically posit to have occured using evolutionary concept as the basis of rationale.
This one observable part of the fossil record alone requires a logical explanation that evolution cannot provide but, it is not the only evidence to be seen. Many people are unaware that just prior to the cambrian was another explosion of complex living forms... this is now termed the Avalon Explosion which occurs in the fossil record within approximately 33 million years just prior to the cambrian explosion. What is absolutely unbelievable about this explosion of life forms is twofold 1) they also have no predecessors in the fossil record, seemingly just appearring fully functional and with a wide array of types 2) none of the cambrian life forms can be traced as ancestral to any of the avalon life.

Two Explosive Evolutionary Events Shaped Early History Of Multicellular Life
ScienceDaily (Jan. 3, 2008) — Scientists have known for some time that most major groups of complex animals appeared in the fossils record during the Cambrian Explosion, a seemingly rapid evolutionary event that occurred 542 million years ago. Now Virginia Tech paleontologists, using rigorous analytical methods, have identified another explosive evolutionary event that occurred about 33 million years earlier among macroscopic life forms unrelated to the Cambrian animals. They dubbed this earlier event the "Avalon Explosion."

"These Ediacara organisms do not have an ancestor-descendant relationship with the Cambrian animals, and most of them went extinct before the Cambrian Explosion," said Shen. "And this group of organisms -- most species -- seems to be distinct from the Cambrian animals."

...these earliest Ediacara life forms already occupied a full morphological range of body plans that would ever be realized through the entire history of Ediacara organisms. "In other words, major types of Ediacara organisms appeared at the dawn of their history, during the Avalon Explosion," http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 144451.htm

Strangely all these avalon types go extinct just prior to the cambrian explosion that magically produces life forms that have no connection to the avalon ones.
There are evidences to be seen by each of us. There are interpretations that can be asserted by anyone. I would say it is best that you look at the actual evidences and form your own conclusions. My conclusions of the evidences caused me to seek an answer that evolution cannot provide.