Evolution

There are four main points that are accepted as historical fact by the majority of New Testament historians regarding Jesus. First, after his crucifixion, Jesus body was placed in a tomb; second, within a few days of his burial, his tomb was discover empty by a group of his women followers; third, after his crucifixion, Jesus' disciples had experiences in which they saw Jesus alive from the dead; and fourth, there was an incredible explosion of Christianity across the Roman Empire on the basis of their belief in his resurrection. These facts are not just believed by Christian historians, but the wide spectrum of critical, liberal and conservative historians, including atheists and skeptics. The list includes people such as James Crossley and John Dominic Crossan. Not even Bart Erhman, a very skeptical scholar could deny these facts in his debate with Mike Licona http://www.youtube.com... Most scholars accept these facts because they pass the tests of historical reliability: "In his book Justifying Historical Descriptions, historian C. B. McCullagh lists six tests which historians use in determining what is the best explanation for given historical facts.6 The hypothesis "God raised Jesus from the dead" passes all these tests: 1. It has great explanatory scope: it explains why the tomb was found empty, why the disciples saw post-mortem appearances of Jesus, and why the Christian faith came into being. 2. It has great explanatory power: it explains why the body of Jesus was gone, why people repeatedly saw Jesus alive despite his earlier public execution, and so forth. 3. It is plausible: given the historical context of Jesus" own unparalleled life and claims, the resurrection serves as divine confirmation of those radical claims. 4. It is not ad hoc or contrived: it requires only one additional hypothesis: that God exists. And even that needn"t be an additional hypothesis if one already believes that God exists. 5. It is in accord with accepted beliefs. The hypothesis: "God raised Jesus from the dead" doesn"t in any way conflict with the accepted belief that people don"t rise naturally from the dead. The Christian accepts that belief as wholeheartedly as he accepts the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead. 6. It far outstrips any of its rival hypotheses in meeting conditions (1)-(5). Down through history various alternative explanations of the facts have been offered, for example, the conspiracy hypothesis, the apparent death hypothesis, the hallucination hypothesis, and so forth. Such hypotheses have been almost universally rejected by contemporary scholarship. None of these naturalistic hypotheses succeeds in meeting the conditions as well as the resurrection hypothesis." http://www.google.com... "If we start with the cross approximately 30 AD and call that ground zero, 1 Corinthians 15 checks in at about 55 AD whatever the writer, conservative or not conservative, we have 25 years. In ancient historiography this is incredible in a time when the best known biography of Alexander the Great is that of Plutarch almost 400 years after Plutarch. When we learn about the early Caesars from Tacitus to Suetonius a 'good gap' is 100 years; 25 is incredible [for Jesus]. Paul says, 'I am passing onto you as first importance that which I also received' (1 Cor. 15.3)." http://www.google.com... In fact, the New Testament sources are closer to the time of writing than most documents of ancient antiquity. http://www.google.com... So what does all this has to do with evolution? Well, if God did raise Jesus from the dead, we have in the first case evidence for God, and thus creation by God becomes more probable as an alternative to evolution. In the second case, Jesus' resurrection vindicates his claim to be the Son of God and Messiah, thus we can trust him when he says man was created. (Matt 19:4) Jesus didn't teach evolution. We also have proof of miraculous power surrounding Jesus' resurrection. Scientific evidence validates the Shroud of Turin as the burial cloth in which Jesus was wrapped. It contains a three dimensionally encoded photo-negative image, the radiation technology required to even make such a thing was only RECENTLY invented by humans, and still we are unable to duplicate anything on the impressive level of the Shroud. So either ancient people 2000 years ago were smarter than all the world's modern scientists, or else, a miracle really occurred. I am giving in this debate the links showing the long list of experts in various fields of science which validate that the Shroud came from the Jerusalem area in the time of Jesus, and was wrapped around someone who was crucified in the same manner he was. http://www.youtube.com... http://www.youtube.com... http://www.youtube.com... http://www.youtube.com... A competent team of 31 scientists working on the Shroud concluded in 1978: "No pigments, paints, dyes or stains have been found on the fibrils. X-ray, fluorescence and microchemistry on the fibrils preclude the possibility of paint being used as a method for creating the image. Ultra Violet and infrared evaluation confirm these studies. Computer image enhancement and analysis by a device known as a VP-8 image analyzer show that the image has unique, three-dimensional information encoded in it. Microchemical evaluation has indicated no evidence of any spices, oils, or any biochemicals known to be produced by the body in life or in death. It is clear that there has been a direct contact of the Shroud with a body, which explains certain features such as scourge marks, as well as the blood. However, while this type of contact might explain some of the features of the torso, it is totally incapable of explaining the image of the face with the high resolution that has been amply demonstrated by photography." https://www.shroud.com...... Here is another link showing the evidence for the shroud http://www.google.com... 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus, though not a Christian, admits to Jesus' resurrection. (Jewish Antiquities 18.3.3) There wasn't even enough time for myths about Jesus to replace and remove the core historical facts from the minds of his contemporaries who record them. As for evolution, there is no proof of evolution, because first of all, the dates of the fossils given in millions of years cannot be proven. Most are based on decay rates of one element into a daughter product which takes place over thousands of years for even a tiny sample to decay. C-14 is claimed to have a half-life of 2, 570 years. Nobody has observed an atom of carbon that long to test the equations to see if they are correct, so this has no basis in real life. If they could measure how much decays per day, or per month, then do simple multiplication to get the amounts that would decay over longer periods, fine. But if it were true that a single atom of carbon takes 2, 570 years for just half to decay, the amounts decaying in days, months or even a year would be too small to be detected and measured. The half-lives of C-14 and all the other radiometric dating methods are simply based on speculation, not observation, thus are not scientific. Scientists have observed many mutations in bacteria and insects over many years in many labs all over the world, and they have seen many small changes occur in these organisms. However, the accumulation of these small changes have never amounted to any radical difference, so that one could tell by looking that it was now a totally different creature. Like bacteria becoming algea or fungi. After 60 000 generations, e-coli were still e-coli http://www.google.com... Based on such observations, I can say that within another 60 million generations they will remain e-coli. Its pure speculation to say that the small changes which were failed to evolve the bacteria into anything new, someday would. Evolution teaches that life evolved from simple beginnings, but a simple beginning has never been found. "Going back in time to the age of the oldest rocks," says Evolution From Space, "fossil residues of ancient life-forms discovered in the rocks do not reveal a simple beginning. Although we may care to think of fossil bacteria and fossil algae and microfungi as being simple compared to a dog or horse, the information standard remains enormously high. Most of the biochemical complexity of life was present already at the time the oldest surface rocks of the Earth were formed." (Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, 1981, p. 8) Language studies show that ancient languages are more complex than modern ones, which would not happen with evolution which goes from the simple to the complex. I look forward to my opponents arguments.