Intelligient Design or Evolution?

Question

I am a born again Christian, but I have no problems with accepting evolution. I believe that He creates the necessary "ingredients" to start the evolutionary process and evolution brought us here today.

What troubles me is that manyfundamentalist keeps insisting that I.D is the truth, whereas evolution is false.

Can you all enlighten me on that? If you a strong believer in I.D, what are your main reasons for believing so? If you believe in evolution, why?

For fundamentalist, is there a better explanation than "God Did It?" Can you provide a proof for I.D? Please do not use "Evolution lacks evidence" or "Evolution is Satan's lie" as a means of arguement. You are suppose to prove that I.D is real by providing supporting proofs for it, not basing evolution.

Also please refrain from using the typical psuedo science arguements like the irreducible complexity of the eye, the watch etc. as your main arguement. This has been done to death, and disproved so many times. It's tiring really.

As expected, I see many people (notably fellow Christians, sadly) providing me with "Bible says it, so it must be true" as the proof for Intelligient Design.

I am a born again, but that doesn't mean I have to believe in Bible Inerrancy. I trust that any rational being will not agree 100% with the Bible. While I use many well-meaning verses as a guide, there are definately some parts of the bible that are questionable (for i.e 1 Timothy Chapter 2). Thus, I do not have to believe everything the Bible has to say.

What I want is a PROOF of I.D. Stop using Genesis because it is quite clear that Genesis is just a metaphorical story.

The post on psuedo science like moon dust, age of earth, flood has actually been debunked long ago. They are NOT proof of ID. The design of camera etc - not making any judgment here, but... they are the strangest arugement I've ever heard. Posting in CAPs doesn't help either. By those arguement, does it mean it is impossible to come up with any inventions?

Answer 1

If you profess Christianity, there should be no higher authority and no more proof needed than God's word.

Genesis 20-22
20 And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

24 And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

MY NOTES---The key recurring term is "according to its/their kind". The Bible doesn't say he created land animals from sea animals. They were all created, individually, by God.----

Genesis 26-27
26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, [b] and over all the creatures that move along the ground." 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

MY NOTES---Here, God specifically forms man in His image. Agreeing that a human may have evovled from an ape directly conflicts a Christians ultimate authority. You cannot serve two masters, either you agree with God or you do not.---

Answer 2

As far as evolution, or any other scientific theory or law goes, it concerns me that so many people were educated to believe that science proves things. This is a failure of our educational systems.

Science never proves things. Science comes up with reasonable (and useful) theories that make predictions. Experiments are performed to see if the predictions hold true. No matter how many experiments are performed, no matter how many correct results are found, the theory is not proven.

Think of Newton's Law of Gravity. For centuries every test performed verified the equations were accurate, within a margin of error. But in the early 1900's, it was shown that Einstein's Theory of General Relativity gave different and more accurate results in some instances.

There is nothing wrong with this. It is not a problem. Newton's law continues to be valuable and useful. When Einstein's theories are found to fail, we will better understand where they work and where they don't.

The creationists actually have one thing right. Science books should emphasize that evolution is a theory, not proven. It should not be presented as something to be "believed". That should be stated about every single scientific theory or law. None of them is ever proven. But they are very, very useful.

So no one should "believe" in evolution. I know I don't. I just think that given our current knowledge it is the best explanation of what we know and leads to fascinating questions. So it is a great theory. It successfully predicted that we would continue to find fossils that are related to ones we have found. It successfully predicted that we would find evidence that the earth is very, very old, long before we had radio carbon dating or any other technology to verify that prediction. One of the amazing things about evolution is how many different fields of science are closely related to and supportive of evolution: molecular biology, genetics, physics, chemistry, for starters. It is intertwined with all of them.

But it, as with the rest of science, is just a theory.

This is unlike ID or Creationism, which lead nowhere, make no useful predictions. and hence are not science. And waste a lot of time and resources.

Answer 3

You poor Poor Christian. Must be hard to be torn like that. I can't see how a christian could accept evolution as the truth. If you are truly a christian you should have to look no further than Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God CREATED the Heavens and the Earth. Simple as that. In the following verses after 1:1 it tells what he CREATED on what day ( day 1, day 2, day`3...) no mention of anything evolving. Only God CREATING.

Many scientists are finding that many things in the Bible are true. Scientists also believe the universe began with a single burst of pure energy, thus the BIG BANG, GOD CREATED.

Answer 4

Thank you for asking this (your first) question! It is a very good one.

I am a ''born again" Christian as I believe you are. (I have no reason to doubt that you ARE one and that I will meet you in heaven one day!) I would like to give you my opinion on this subject. This is NOT a "copy and paste job" like the (excruciatingly long) answer before mine. I hope you will prayfully read my response.

First, I believe that there are two types of evolution. The first is the kind posited by the vast majority of scientists who have devoted their lives to the study of this subject. Their belief is that evolution is a purely naturalistic process not involving any sort of supernatural influence (or God). The VAST majority of biologists, biochemists, etc., hold this belief. The second type of evolution is theistic evolution. The proponents of this view purport that evolution is a process orchestrated by God. They are not embarrased to say that God is the author of evolution. A large number of Christians hold to this view . Most "fundies" (fundamentalist Christians) retort that people who hold to this view are not bona fide Christians. They say that they are heretics! (Oh my!)

My belief is that there is a God who is the Ruler of our magnificent and marvelous universe. I am sure that as a Christian you adhere to this view as I do. How he "creates" is the subject of controversy among "true" Christians.

I believe that all Christians unite in disapproval of naturalistic evolution. The assertion that everything in the universe evolves by RANDOM mutations (which are almost always, as in the case of cancer, detrimental to an organism) without the influence of God's creative hand is unthinkable in my humble opinion.

The thought that the TEN TRILLION interworking cells and 60,000 MILES of blood vessels in the average human body (Source: the World Book Encyclopedia) happened by chance mutations (and beneficial ones, at that!) is absurd on the face of it. The stunning complexity and symmetry of the human body militates against the claim that it happened randomly without the agency of an infinitely ingenious supreme being Christians (as well as other theists) call "God."

To sum up, I believe that the view that everything in the cosmos happened by purely random means and forces is by and large a fairy tale for modern day man!

I hope this sheds a little light on this important subject. Keep your questions and answers coming.

P.S. I am a firm believer in the separation of Church and State, in letter AND spirit. I strongly believe that the Intelligent Design folks are trying to introduce a Trojan horse into public school science classes...merely to create doubt in the minds of impressionable students concerning the theory of naturalistic evolution. I feel very strongly that this insidious incursion of religious belief into the PUBLIC square is seriously wrong!!! If creationists want to teach their views to their children it should be in private schools and churches! Evangelism should begin in the home and in the church...not in the public school system!!!!!!

Answer 5

A scientist stood before God and said we have perfecting cloning we can make mankind just as you did, we don't need you anymore. God said okay show me, the scientist reached down and grabbed a hand full of dirt and God said wait a minute, make your own dirt.
So if you are a christian you are familiar with the book of Genesis right? You know the one where it tells us about God creating man and all the animals and bringing them to Adam for him to name then making Eve for Adam etc.?
Where did the particles and energy come from to supposedly make this cosmic clash that began it all. The Bible say "God created" it does not say he put some stuff in a bucket shook it and and said now lets see what happens. As a intelligent supreme being he would not be so random. He had a purpose and design from the beginning and that never changed. Malachi 3:6 says "For I am Jehovah, I have not changed".

Answer 6

Typically, rather than accepting evolution and considering it on it's own merits compared with Intelligent Design, fundamentalists start with literal belief in the Bible. Literal belief apparently says that all the creatures on the earth were created by God in the Garden and this conflicts with the view that all creatures are linked in a giant evolutionary tree starting from unicellular life. Note that this is not strictly evolution, since evolution merely states that animals adapt to their environment. However, evolution today is largely meant to refer to a specific set of evolutionary principles which says that not only does evolution exist, but evolution occurs through random mutation. This is where things really don't mesh well with ID, since this would imply that God did not personally design everything just so, and at most just fired things off. This futhermore conflicts with their idea of God creating man and man being above the animals, since it would further imply that the process of creating man was just a random process. While you could argue that God already knew exactly how the random process would turn out and fine tuned things just so that man would evenutally pop out, this is a relatively weak argument (and i'm not using the standard definition of weak here, but rather as it applies to logical/philosophical statements) that doesn't say much at all, and probably directly contradicts with the Bible multiple times (for example, God making Adam out of clay). To clarify, this viewpoint that God merely designed things to run through random processes to turn out as it is today implicitly allows a Universe where God is unnecessary. In fact, it shifts the burden of proof in the religious believer's direction that it would be far more sensible to believe God does not exist at all. Occam's Razor, you might say. But you appear to be familiar with the watch argument and it's fallacies, so I needn't go further into that.

So again, while evolution is pretty much proven, as well as our understanding of random mutations driving it is proven, this is irrelevant. Because Fundamentalists who believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible start from the Bible as absolute truth, thus evolution cannot be true, regardless of the evidence supporting it. In a way, they are following Sherlock Holmes's advice, "Once you discard the impossible, the remaining improbably must be true."

Of course, any rational thinker at the very least must hold that the Bible is not 100% literal. Unless you really believe two animals of every type in the world (excluding sea creatures) and food to feed them for 220 days (without rotting, no less) can fit on a boat built by a single man and his family using ancient technology.

Answer 7

Science is differentiated from philosophy by experiment. Philosophy seeks 'logical' proof. Scientists create hypotheses, then devise experiments to test them. Scientists know that their results are approximations, that their 'laws' are not immutable... not absolute. They do NOT (as creationists would have us believe) view their theories as absolute 'truth', in the same sense as creationists regard the Genesis story of creation as 'truth'.

What differentiates religion from both philosophy and science is that neither proof nor experimental confirmation is required. Religion can be summed up very succinctly: Where an obvious answer cannot be found in nature, make up an explanation based on the supernatural and accept it as a matter of 'faith'... faith in a 'truth' written in scripture as (claimed to have been) 'revealed' to someone by a transcendental, supernatural being.

Intelligent Design is NOT a scientific theory. It is a 'red herring'... a 'Trojan Horse'. It is a carefully orchestrated subterfuge intended to create the PERCEPTION that there is a scientific controversy where no such controversy actually exists. It is religion/creationism in disguise, tarted up to look like 'science'. Here is the difference:

* At the bleeding edge of science, at the point where it REALLY starts to get interesting, science says: "We don't know... OK, boys... let's roll up our sleeves, dig in and find out."

* At the bleeding edge of science, at the point where it REALLY starts to get interesting, Intelligent Design (imagine South Park - Officer Barbrady) says: "That's too complicated. God did it. Move along. Nothing to see here. Everybody go home now."

It would be easy to attribute Intelligent Design to intellectual laziness... but sadly, that is not the case. It is a conspiracy. The object is to sabotage science... to reintroduce religion to the public schools via subversion and subterfuge. The saddest thing about it is that a large percentage of Americans ARE intellectually lazy, and generally ignorant of the concept and processes of critical thought. They (enthusiastically) fall for this nonsense.

The objectives of the creationists who are promoting ID are spelled out in the Discovery Institute's so-called 'Wedge Strategy' (http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html), which is a political strategy. The main plan is to "teach the controversy"... that being the claim that many scientists reject evolution... except that it is a lie... there IS NO controversy within the scientific community. The ultimate aim is the subversion of science itself, changing the definition of science to include supernatural explanations, rather than it being restricted to natural explanations (methodological naturalism).

The Wedge Strategy's overall objective is this (quoted directly from the Wedge Strategy): "Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of (scientific) materialism and its cultural legacies."

You should check out the judge's opinion in the Dover School Board trial... that explains the issue quite nicely. (http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site515/2005/1220/20051220_085143_kitzdecision.pdf

If people want to introduce 'Intelligent Design' into the curriculum of our public schools, that is OK... in a elective 'Comparative Religion' class. But NOT in a science class; that would be a travesty.

Answer 8

considering an atheist does not have confidence in deities and clever layout argues a deity created existence i'd say its no longer something maximum atheists embody. in basic terms a droop. As for we did no longer come from monkeys, evolution by no potential mentioned we did. in basic terms creationists and IDers who don't be attentive to it ever say that. We do in accordance to maximum suitable evidence share a ordinary ancestor with apes contained in the distant previous. Chimpanzees have one extra chromosome than human beings do. whether it extremely is actual we share a ordinary ancestor we would desire to continually be waiting to make certain what got here approximately to that chromosome. Researchers have chanced on it. Chromosome 2 in human beings is actual the fusion of two chromosomes that have remained separate contained in the chimpanzee line. on the top of each and every chromosome is a marker called a telomere which generally seems in basic terms on the ends. yet in human chromosome 2 it additionally seems contained in the middle, marking the place the two ends fused. it relatively is barely one small reality that extremely demonstrates sturdy evidence of ordinary descent.

Answer 9

If you are a Christian then you should believe that God made man in His own image, as He said He did, at the time He said He did it. That in no way is compatible with evolution.

I'm not going to question your sincerity when you say you are born again because it's all a learning and growing process. I would say to put your trust in God and not man and He alone will be your guiding light.

Answer 10

Right, could I appeal for some peace and love here people. Personally, I am sick and tired of this Creation/Evolution debate. But I have had enough of the mud throughing. One can believe in G-d and accept a scientific theory of the development of organisms into more advanced life-forms, this is just a fact and I know this for certain because I am one. Because the "theory" of gravity works one hundred percent of the time does not negate the "religious truth" of the sun being stayed in the sky for longer than it should. Religious truth is still religious and moral truth without it needing to be scientific or historical fact. For example I do not believe Abraham to be a real historical figure (oops, off to hell I go), the very name betrays him as mythological; "father of many peoples." You are more than welcome to disagree with my pragmatism but I still believe in the Master and Creator of the Universe. I promise that, even despite many peoples refusal to accept scientific reasoning, I will still respect that they too believe and trust in G-d. Forget cells evolving and let us try and evolve into more accepting human beings.