This is a new section being rolled out to attract people interested in exploring the origins of the universe and the earth from a biblical perspective.
Debate is encouraged and opposing viewpoints are welcome to post but certain rules must be followed.
1. No abusive tagging - if abusive tags are found - they will be deleted and disabled by the Admin team
2. No calling the biblical accounts a fable - fairy tale ect. This is a Christian site, so members that participate here must be respectful in their disagreement.
Because the sediments the whales are found where laid down in a worldwide flood. You might not believe that because you ignore science, but that's not my problem and I don't even have to use that evidence to show you are wrong. I can still show you are wrong even on your terms.
If you were using a scientific approach, you'd want to know the number of changes in the DNA that would be required to change a land animal into a whale, and even the number of differences from a whale common ancestor to whales we see today. In fact, your story requires at least some estimates on the number of changes to even be a theory. But common descentists don't even ask the question! How can we expect you to present a scientific idea if you refuse to be scientific? And this isn't the only question that would be asked by scientists if they were interested in the truth of the matter, but common descent is not first about what science leads us to.
In some sense we are in agreement on this point, as I believe God designed through evolution. Perhaps it's you that doesn't understand how God did the designing?
Your the one claiming God had no reason to design whales the way He did unless He did things the way you say.
But, since common descent can't work via mutation+natural selection, how do you propose He did it? And don't forget because of genetic entropy you only have a few thousands of years to get it done in.
That's because the gatekeepers of academia make research, but they aren't interested in truth. I showed how this was the case just above, and that's just one point in many that shows the same thing.
Scientists said on Wednesday they had discovered the 43 million-year-old fossil of a previously unknown amphibious four-legged whale species in Egypt that helps trace the transition of whales from land to sea.
www.reuters.com
There's also the matter of the DNA evidence clearly tying hoofed mammals to modern whales more closely than anything else and then the pattern of anatomical structures that also link to hoofed mammals found in these ancient whales.
And here we have another point that shows common descentists aren't interested in the truth, in science, because they actually propose, as if it matters, that whales have some DNA that is similar to the DNA of hoofed animals. If you were interested in the truth you'd want to know some actual numbers.
But further, your links don't show known ancestors of whales any more than Nebraska man was an ancestor of humans.
Showing you isn't for you. Trying to show someone they are wrong is nearly impossible. Showing people the argument between your side and mine is the point, which is why common descents have been advised to run away from debates with YECs because then people can see both sides.
Biologically speaking we are animals. Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Chordata, Subphylum Vertebrata, Class mammalia, order primates. This is simple biology, not under debate by anyone save the most hardline YEC ...
Explain why we get diseases, like COVID19 from animals if we aren't animals? Why do we test medications on animals if we are not animals?
Ugh no. Not across all living organisms. Plant viruses and fungal viruses don't bother humans. Not all animL viruses do either because some animals are more similar to humans than others. Why is that so if, common design should be the same across all organisms?
And why would God use the same design across all mammals so viruses can jump species. God could have made us so different that it was virtually impossible for viruses to jump to us.
Here, again, you have decided how God had to design things. How do you know the design decisions God was faced with when making man's body? What makes you think designing man's body so it couldn't get the same viruses as animals is so easy?
The DNA similarity between humans and other primates is more than between one bacteria and another, and many times between one fruit fly and another. So your objection isn't based on scientific evidence, it's based on your belief system.
DNA similarity does not force assumptions of blood-related connections between humans and animals. The whole construct is fiction science driven by a desire to reject the truth in exchange for the lie.
Uhh nobody says monkeys evolved from humans, nor that humans evolved from plants. However humans ARE animals still. The fact that viruses can easily jump between animals and humans should be a pretty obvious clue that our cells almost identical.
Poor students of real science like to call humans animals and what they say can be true if their definition of animals is so widely vague as to include life forms that breathe air and reproduce.
Evolution is definitely a theological belief and construct based upon atheistic interpretations of real-world data. Nobody has ever seen macro-evolution because macro-evolution is not fact but faith.
Biologically speaking we are animals. Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Chordata, Subphylum Vertebrata, Class mammalia, order primates. This is simple biology, not under debate by anyone save the most hardline YEC ...
Explain why we get diseases, like COVID19 from animals if we aren't animals? Why do we test medications on animals if we are not animals?
God calls different species "kinds." Humans have dozens of varying classifications for different species and all are man-made, not God-centered. Humans can call the moon a block of cheese but that does not make it one.
I am not saying we are the same as all other animals. We are learly quite different and chosen by God to be so. But that does not mean we are not animals. Dust we are and to dust we shall return.
Humans are living creatures just as are animals. But God gave humans special gifts, attributes, and abilities that animals do not have, making humans clearly separate from animals in many points that matter.
Natural atheistic science does not involve itself with issues it cannot deny nor explain, like the reality of the human spirit that gives humans the ability to think and talk. What can an evolutionist say about thinking, for example, that it was developed through unknown, unexplainable, and unobserved processes and can be attributed to chemical or electrical reactions and inputs, but not to God? Science to an atheist is extremely limited and biased toward atheistic foolishness.
Ugh no. Not across all living organisms. Plant viruses and fungal viruses don't bother humans. Not all animL viruses do either because some animals are more similar to humans than others. Why is that so if, common design should be the same across all organisms?
And why would God use the same design across all mammals so viruses can jump species. God could have made us so different that it was virtually impossible for viruses to jump to us.
Questioning why God made things as He did does not imply God did not make things Himself instead of some other causes or forces atheists can neither replicate, observe or explain.
Yet because we humans are MORE than just our physical bodies, we still exist after we die. As per Scripture, which you seem to be completely leaving out of your worldview. I can tell you right now, your lack of scripture adherence has led you to stumble, and it shows.
Though I would like to point out a slight correction:
Plants have only a physical body. They do not have souls, they do not have spirits. You can't form a relationship with a plant, and a plant can't form a relationship with God. It's a plant. You could say it's just a biological machine.
Animals have a soul and a physical body. I say soul because it is the soul that allows animals, to the extent that they have a soul, to form relationships with humans. For example, dogs, cats, horses, birds, elephants, can form strong relationships with humans, but animals like fish, insects, and others, cannot, or at least, not very well.
Humans have a physical body, so we can interact with the world around us, a soul, so that we can interact with each other and with animals, and a spirit, so that we can interact with our Creator God. That is what sets us apart from animals. We have a spirit. Plants and animals do not.
What I said is true and answers your question. The reason we can get viruses from animals is because humans and animals share the same genetic system that uses DNA, RNA, etc. But that doesn't mean that all WILL cross over. It just means they use the same system.
Why is that so if, common design should be the same across all organisms?
A good programmer can produce code that is efficient and can accomplish the task that it is designed to do.
A great programmer can do the same, but use fewer lines of code.
An outstanding programmer can reuse the code in a different program and also have the same lines of code accomplish multiple different tasks depending on the use case.
How much more amazing of a Programmer would there have to be to make code that can not only make and use the above code, but do it in a such a manner that the code says one thing when being read in one direction, and say another thing in the opposite direction, and says yet another thing when only reading one side of it, and something completely different when reading the other side?!
That's God!
And YES! DNA is THAT SOPHISTICATED!
Spoiler
* DNA is a Multidirectional Story: Information is coded in our genome in different directions so that to get the instructions necessary to build proteins and for other functions, our DNA must be read in many different ways including forward and backward. Imagine someone tells you about the most amazing short story you will ever read, and then hands you a normal-looking sheet of paper with print on only one side, normal except that the text is in the Courier non-proportional font. The story about a school play performed on a riverboat immediately grabs your attention. It opens, "Madam, I'm Adam." As you continue reading down the page, you're fascinated. But you've come to the last word on the last line and realize the story is nowhere near its end. Your friend sees your puzzled look and says, "Keep reading." You turn the page over, but the other side is blank. "There's nothing else to read." He says, "Just continue reading. But backwards. You know, not left to right, but right to left." You look at him like he's crazy, and then you look again, at the last six words. They form the headline of an article reviewing the play that was about the first week of Adam and Eve wearing fig leaves: PUPILS BRAG ON 'SEVEN EVES' TUB. Hmm. Weird headline. Rather condensed, but you get the point. Then you look at the letters in reverse order and realize that by reading backwards, the story continues, reporting a second review headline. This review focuses on the layers of meaning revealed through the plot of the play. As you continue reading backwards from right to left you work your way back up, line by line, to the first line at the top of the page. Then you look up for help because the story is not done but your friend just looks back at you, as though you should be able to figure out how to read the rest of the story. You look again at the very first word, and then the first word of the second line, and suddenly you realize that the first letter of each of the first five lines spell out the word, "sword." And as you pick out the first letter in order as you scan down the lines of the page, you begin reading not left to right, nor right to left, but downward, top to bottom, down the first column of letters. And the story continues. And when you get to the bottom of the page, then you read down the second column, formed by the second letter of each line, and so on, top to bottom, top to bottom. Then for the second time, you've come to the bottom right corner of the page, and again, though the story is almost at its climax, it's still not finished. But you've run out of letters. Except that now, you're convinced of the supreme brilliance of the author, and so without hesitating you reverse course, and start reading upward, bottom to top, bottom to top, up the last column, then the penultimate column, and so on, until you finish the story which ends in all its glory in the top left corner of the page at the first letter of the first word of the first line. And this multidirectional story gives us a glimpse of how we are formed, fearfully and wonderfully made in secret in our mother's womb, beginning at that moment of conception, even before the first day passes, when our substance (DNA) has yet to knit together our body, which itself is made in God's image.
Here is a proposed idea for the reason for the existence of things like viruses and mosquitos:
God, in his infinite wisdom, wants to create creatures that will live a long time, and He wants to use a system that would make it so that fighting diseases that would eventually arise simply due to the natural break down of any system (not even God can create a perpetual motion machine) would be something that is accomplished automatically by the system He created.
So He designs microscopic machines, what we today call "viruses," that are capable of transmitting genetic code that would be used to correct errors that are introduced through mutations between creatures, and he designs larger machines, what we call mosquitos, that are capable of carrying these viruses and therefore spreading the helpful genetic information contained within them.
In other words: Viruses were originally intended as a way to spread helpful genetic code that would correct any errors that had arisen from damage to the genetic code inside an organism.
God could have made us so different that it was virtually impossible for viruses to jump to us.
Sure, He could have. But then what was proposed above wouldn't be a possibility, and He would have had to think of a different error correction method.
What I linked you to was a free-to-read article that is worded in layman's terms and is easy to read, and has links on the page to other resources that corroborate what is said.
You linked me to a store page to buy a long book that I will likely never have the time nor willingness to read, and is not easy to read by the layman.
Do you have anything that is free-to-read and can be, at the very least, skimmed through in a short period of time,
And yet, it likely has very little to do with the topic I was responding to you about, whereas the article I linked to is at least somewhat relevant, and has links to other online articles that corroborate what is being said.
Though I would like to point out a slight correction:
Plants have only a physical body. They do not have souls, they do not have spirits. You can't form a relationship with a plant, and a plant can't form a relationship with God. It's a plant. You could say it's just a biological machine.
Animals have a soul and a physical body. I say soul because it is the soul that allows animals, to the extent that they have a soul, to form relationships with humans. For example, dogs, cats, horses, birds, elephants, can form strong relationships with humans, but animals like fish, insects, and others, cannot, or at least, not very well.
Humans have a physical body, so we can interact with the world around us, a soul, so that we can interact with each other and with animals, and a spirit, so that we can interact with our Creator God. That is what sets us apart from animals. We have a spirit. Plants and animals do not.
This is a great deal more complete. I'd only like to point out that growing up Lutheran we seemed to switch Soul and Spirit (all humans and animals had a spirit but only humans had a soul). I'm not sure why. But you see it in the quote attributed to CS Lewis, and certainly no one at the time would question he would not have said it, "You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.". Although a similar quote from a 1959 book should probably get the credit. Beyond that, when God uniquely breathed into man and not animals, that is what the kjv says made man "a living soul" so it was easy to convince people of the switch.
This just shows some of the confusion arising from religion separate from a relationship with Christ. This is part of Alate's problem in that she connected the truth of the Bible with the cartoon science proffered by people of the same scientific level as Kenneth Copeland.
This is a great deal more complete. I'd only like to point out that growing up Lutheran we seemed to switch Soul and Spirit (all humans and animals had a spirit but only humans had a soul). I'm not sure why. But you see it in the quote attributed to CS Lewis, and certainly no one at the time would question he would not have said it, "You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.". Although a similar quote from a 1959 book should probably get the credit. Beyond that, when God uniquely breathed into man and not animals, that is what the kjv says made man "a living soul" so it was easy to convince people of the switch.
This just shows some of the confusion arising from religion separate from a relationship with Christ. This is part of Alate's problem in that she connected the truth of the Bible with the cartoon science proffered by people of the same scientific level as Kenneth Copeland.
I'd have to say that the reason I use "soul" to describe what both humans and most animals have, despite that the two could be seen as interchangeable, is that God is Spirit, and we are made in His likeness. It is our spirit that allows us to relate to God, who is spirit. Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the word of God can divide the soul from the spirit, which seems to agree with the idea, or at least suggest, that they are so closely bound together, so it's no wonder that they seem to be able to be used interchangeably, though in the greater context of things, man is described as tri-partite (made of three parts; a reflection of God, who is tri-une (threes are everywhere, man!)), made of body, soul, and spirit.
I would suggest that when the Bible says that when God imparted life to Adam, and man became a living soul, it was at that point that God fused body, soul, and spirit together, and that "living soul" could simply just be a synecdoche for the whole of tripartite man.
I'd just like to say the concept of a "soul" that cannot be destroyed, even by God is a Greek idea, not a Biblical one. Humans are clearly different, even in their biological characteristics from all other animals.
Biologos did a nice podcast series on humans and the image of God. Short answer, it's not really our physical appearance.
Part One in a six-part mini-series exploring what it means to be human.
biologos.org
The idea of a spirit literally means breath, as in breathing. At the time people thought it was a tangible thing that animals had as well rather than just the movement of gases.
Here, again, you have decided how God had to design things. How do you know the design decisions God was faced with when making man's body? What makes you think designing man's body so it couldn't get the same viruses as animals is so easy?
Because there are organisms on earth today that don't get the same viruses as us at nearly the same frequency. Fish, Amphibians and reptiles don't usually pick up mammal viruses. But any virus that infects a mammal has the potential to infect a human, because we are mammals. God could have created humans as a unique group of organisms, not directly related to anything. Our genes are such that each can be encoded in a very different way but produce the same function. If God wanted to make evidence that directly contradicted evolution, he could have done that.
But He didn't and I think it's because the process of creating is glorifying to God. Much as God created the nation of Israel over thousands of years for it to be ready for the birth of Christ. That process, with all of the human mistakes that happened along the way, was informative to us that read about it today and glorifying to God.
I'd just like to say the concept of a "soul" that cannot be destroyed, even by God is a Greek idea, not a Biblical one. Humans are clearly different, even in their biological characteristics from all other animals.
Biologos did a nice podcast series on humans and the image of God. Short answer, it's not really our physical appearance.
Part One in a six-part mini-series exploring what it means to be human.
biologos.org
The idea of a spirit literally means breath, as in breathing. At the time people thought it was a tangible thing that animals had as well rather than just the movement of gases.
Random electrical impulses and chance chemical combinations did not invent the human process of thinking and people think with their minds, not their bodies. Thoughts are not physical but spiritual, in a realm secular science professes to have no knowledge of.
Genders are socially determined, the sexes are biological however, there are a wide variety of expressions of biological sex.
Because there are organisms on earth today that don't get the same viruses as us at nearly the same frequency. Fish, Amphibians and reptiles don't usually pick up mammal viruses. But any virus that infects a mammal has the potential to infect a human, because we are mammals. God could have created humans as a unique group of organisms, not directly related to anything. Our genes are such that each can be encoded in a very different way but produce the same function. If God wanted to make evidence that directly contradicted evolution, he could have done that.
But He didn't and I think it's because the process of creating is glorifying to God. Much as God created the nation of Israel over thousands of years for it to be ready for the birth of Christ. That process, with all of the human mistakes that happened along the way, was informative to us that read about it today and glorifying to God.
God does not give a flip about evolution nonsense. He is not a man that He should try to help humans avoid being deceived about evolution fiction science.
Incorrect. There is just a very wide variety of ways for perverts to rebel against God.
The wickedness of man knows no bounds.
If a person claims to be something other than what they actually are, then regardless of what society thinks, we call that person "mentally ill," because denying reality is unhealthy.
You haven't been updated to the latest leftist's narrative. Biology takes a back seat to delusion. It isn't an "expression of biological sex" for a man/woman to claim they are a woman/man, it's just being wrong. Thus, when a conflict arises between reality and delusion, the latest leftist narrative dictates that delusion wins.
Or to put it another way; the expression of gender can only be the expression of of biological sex, because if it isn't then "biological sex" has no meaning. Consider - if a man says he is a woman, what does that mean? It would mean that he thinks he has the biological tendencies of a woman... but he doesn't.
But since common decentists have been confusing reality and delusion for a long time, they must accept the leftist narrative as truth. And once truth is jettisoned by the common descentist they can lie to themselves and others without a pang of conscience.
Because there are organisms on earth today that don't get the same viruses as us at nearly the same frequency. Fish, Amphibians and reptiles don't usually pick up mammal viruses. But any virus that infects a mammal has the potential to infect a human, because we are mammals. God could have created humans as a unique group of organisms, not directly related to anything. Our genes are such that each can be encoded in a very different way but produce the same function. If God wanted to make evidence that directly contradicted evolution, he could have done that.
But He didn't and I think it's because the process of creating is glorifying to God. Much as God created the nation of Israel over thousands of years for it to be ready for the birth of Christ. That process, with all of the human mistakes that happened along the way, was informative to us that read about it today and glorifying to God.
amp.theguardian.com
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www.reuters.com
