Science!

soon they will be able to evolve the ability to fire their tusks at poachers .. it’s only a matter of time

What a silly, ignorant claim. Adaptation within a species due to selective breeding does not evolution make.

God loves the elephants.

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I don’t understand the problem religious people have with evolution. If they can reconcile free will with the omniscience of god, why can’t they reconcile the existence of god and evolution. Surely an all powerful god can use evolution to create species, unless, of course, he created them all 6,000 years ago. Please somebody explain to me how evolution threatens your concept of god.

Doesn’t hurt my concept so much as it does others. Most people say with evolution there is no need for a God. An atheist friend of mine said why can’t it all just be an accident atoms just happened to come together to make us all. Or to quote from ‘Nacho Libre’

I don’t believe in God, I believe in science

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People that are claming the tusks to be evolution into a new better thing is like saying people are evolving/warming up to Allah… (because if they don’t, off with their head)

re: #7 meMarc

I don’t understand the problem religious people have with evolution. If they can reconcile free will with the omniscience of god, why can’t they reconcile the existence of god and evolution. Surely an all powerful god can use evolution to create species, unless, of course, he created them all 6,000 years ago. Please somebody explain to me how evolution threatens your concept of god.

Whether God created the world as a “new antique”* 6000 years ago or set things in motion billions of years ago is not really an issue if God has the ability to create this universe. I prefer to think of the creation stories in the Bible (in the Torah specifically) as a “true myth”. The basic outlines of the Biblical creation story are true, but the details (such as time frame) are told in a poetical way usually reserved for myths and legends. Although a “deistic evolution” may be true, I haven’t seen any version of the Evolutionary Theory that is not fraught with problems. Most of the Christians who are challenged by evolution are trying to be true to their understanding of the Bible. I was recently reading a book by an ancient saint, St. Gregory of Nyssa (c.450 AD), who was talking about the “spherical Earth”. A thousand years later, Christians were being treated atrociously for espousing the same views. Again the problem was taking parts of the Bible meant figuratively as literal. Many Christians, cut off from the ancient beliefs of Christianity are clinging to the only source of authority they know—the Bible. They get nervous when they cannot merely say it is all true as written—if they make a mistake will they go to hell? Roman Catholics often use the Pope of Rome as an authority the same way many Protestants use the Bible, but that’s an argument for another day. *the universe built just 6000 years ago, yet appears much older.

re: #3 gaw

What a silly, ignorant claim. Adaptation within a species due to selective breeding does not evolution make.

Um, that’s exactly how evolution works.

re: #16 David IV of Georgia

Whether God created the world as a “new antique”* 6000 years ago or set things in motion billions of years ago is not really an issue if God has the ability to create this universe.

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*the universe built just 6000 years ago, yet appears much older.

The theological problems with this are big, IMHO. If we have a God who makes things appear older than they are, then we open up the possibility that God is a liar and a deceiver. I, for one, reject that God lies and deceives, and therefore, a “new antique” Earth is impossible.

re: #15 hypothetical truth

People that are claming the tusks to be evolution into a new better thing is like saying people are evolving/warming up to Allah… (because if they don’t, off with their head)

Could you re-write that in a way that makes sense?

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re: #18 Honorary Yooper

re: #16 David IV of Georgia

Whether God created the world as a “new antique”* 6000 years ago or set things in motion billions of years ago is not really an issue if God has the ability to create this universe.

-snip-

*the universe built just 6000 years ago, yet appears much older.

The theological problems with this are big, IMHO. If we have a God who makes things appear older than they are, then we open up the possibility that God is a liar and a deceiver. I, for one, reject that God lies and deceives, and therefore, a “new antique” Earth is impossible.

I would be the last person to accuse God of lying. What would His motive be? Think of all the reasons people lie. Then assume you have all-power all-knowledge and no time restraints—why would you lie? I don’t think God would make things appear older than they are out of deceit, but more for aesthetics and to make things interesting. I realize this is a weak analogy, but people often make new furniture look antique because it fits their tastes—not because they want to pass it off as a 16^th century French table at an auction. If God created the Earth 6000 years ago, He must have created the rays of light from distant stars already streaming to Earth or changed the laws of physics. As all-powerful, He could do either. But He could have also created these things long ago and then directed Moses (or whomever you assume wrote the Torah) to write these things down in poetic language. I have no problems with either dating of earth because I don’t think that God would intentionally lie to me.

There is also the problems associated with carbon dating, nuclear half-life dating and such. These methods are sometimes wildly inaccurate. What may appear extremely old when dated by one of these means may not be that old at all.

All right, looks like the new link commenting system stands up OK to an evolution discussion.

As a Christian (biases admitted up front here), I have no problem believing in microevolution and natural selection. Elephants with smaller tusks are more prominent because the ones with larger tusks are being hunter and depleteing their side of the gene pool. And with natural selection: animals go extinct, and there is a reason that boas are not found in the antarctic and penguins are not found in the amazon.

The main problem exists in that both creationisn and evolution require faith. Think evolution doesn’t require faith? Then tell me of one animal that you’re personally seen evolve in front of your eyes. Otherwise, you’re relying on the evidence of others, some of which has been proven wrong in the past. The big bang and God speaking things into existence cannot be proven by science, and rely on outside evidence to support a theory.

Now, I’m 22 and not a scientist, so I’ll take my lumps like a man on this one, but I’m just putting my opinion out there on this one.