Newsgroups: alt.atheism,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Where does Adam and Eve Fit In?  Attn:  Jeff West
From: kmagnacca@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Date: 26 Jan 93 22:34:25 EST
 <1993Jan25.113326.6860@walter.cray.com> <1993Jan26.175900.4662@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
Organization: Wesleyan University

In article <1993Jan26.175900.4662@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>, brian@lpl.arizona.edu (Brian Ceccarelli 602/621-9615) writes:
> 
>      I wouldn't mind feeling comfortable with evolution.  But to my
> knowledge, there is not enough facts to show that that is true either. 
> I have more problems with evolution that I have with God's creating
> the animals.   The following may be a rumor, but did not  Darwin 
> say that if scientists do not find evidence of transitional species
> in the fossil record, then his Evolution theory doesn't hold water?
> By a transitional species, he meant an in-between animal--an animal 
> between a lower order and a higher order. 

   Yes, but there are quite a few.  Not for all changes, which is 
part of what prompted the punctuated equilibrium theory.

> For example, skeletons of
> men with but half a tail, a quarter of a tail, etc. and all variations
> between.  There should be lots of evidence since the changes were 
> gradual.  However, as far as I know, such has never been found. 
> There is no evidence.   Do you know anything on these lines? 

   There should be no skeletons of men with a short tail since the
tail was lost long before the change to a more human-like form.  Take
a look at a chimpanzee or gorilla sometime if you don't know what I 
mean.  Also, although there is a gap in primate fossils in the transition
from definite apes and monkeys, _Australopithecus_ was most definitely not 
human, and is certainly a transition from an earlier, more ape-like form
to humans.  In a sense, all species are "transitional forms"

>     What appears to have happened, is that new species simply 
> appear--significantly disjoint from their predecessors, as if the
> animals were placed on earth intermittently throughout time.  This
> would concur with Genesis.  Also, in the entire recorded history of
> man, no one has wrote down an observation of a transition from a
> lower ordered species to a higher ordered one. 

   What exactly does this mean?  Are you expecting an amoeba to evolve
into a dog in twenty years?!?

> If animals are in transition all the time, where is the
> evidence?  All we see are animals dying off, going extinct, as if
> the cosmic clock began at point T and is winding down.  

   No we don't, we also see them surviving.

> This also would concur with Genesis and the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

   *Groan*  Not the 2nd law again...

> I also learned from a neurobiologist friend of mine that there is new
> biological evidence in the human genome, for a great bottleneck in the
> human species which happened some thousands of years ago.   (Perhaps
> Noah.)  There should actually be far more variations within the human 
> species than we see today.   Also, there is new biological female-traceable
> genome data that suggests we all originated from a single woman, the
> so-called Eve of humanity.

   This evidence suggests that the human race is descended from a 
relatively small population whose progeny were better adapted and
able to overtake their neighbors; I believe the latest guess was somewhere
around 200,000 years ago for the date.  If all humans were descended from 
one pair, it would be entirely impossible for even the diversity we have 
now to exist.

>      If it comes to a shooting match between Darwin's Evolution and
> God's Genesis chapter 1, to me, Jeff, it would take me more faith 
> to believe in Evolution than to believe that God created the whole 
> thing. 

   I don't.  Certainly not in the way described in Genesis.

> I see design in the universe.  I see design in the intricacies
> of living things. 

   The design argument is a very bad one.  I can give you some examples
if you like.

> To me, I have to commit intellectual suicide to believe
> that we were all a soup of atoms without a plan. 

   Why?

> I would have to
> believe that a computer program could simply make itself and 
> design itself to work better and better without human intervention
> despite power outages, disk failures, circuit rust, etc.

   Let's take BASIC as our language in an example.  What do you think
the probability of the program 

10 let x = 3" 
20 x = x + 1
30 goto 10

coming up given a random choice of letters and numbers?  Not very high, 
but if you try enough, it's almost certain to come up.  From then it only
takes random change, selection to root out nonsense, and a long time for
it to evolve into a complex program.

>     What also adds to my faith in the Genesis creation, is the
> reliability of the rest of Genesis and the Bible.  Starting with the time 
> just after Noah (Genesis 6), the people and places recorded in the Bible 
> become historically and archaeologically provable.  The Smithsonian and the 
> National Geographic Society back that up.  My archaeologist professor,
> some ten years ago, Dr. Machinist, simply stated the Bible has never
> missed in its observable historical record.  Anthropology and archaeology
> pursue the factual level of the Bible.  These sciences are in the Bible's wake
> and are playing catch up. 

   What do you call the "observable historical record"?  Certainly 
Abraham, Jacob, and the other patriarchs are mentioned nowhere other 
than the Bible.  I would like to know where the NGS said that everything
after the Flood is archaeologically proven.  Also, there are a few 
places later where Kings and Chronicles contradict each other on the
reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah, not to mention the noted
four-legged insects and bats=birds lines.

>    To conclude, if it came to a decision betwen man's theory of creation,
> or that of the Bible's, I would go with the Bible's any day.  Man has been
> known to be wrong.  As far as I my understanding goes, I am confident that
> God's word to man, the Bible, is never wrong.  If something in the Bible seems 
> contradictory, then it has always turned out to be something I have failed
> to understand myself or had a false presumption about.  Never has the Bible
> let me down by its lack of authenticity or veracity.  

   Well, I'd like you to explain how the items above aren't either 
wrong or contradictory.  Also, I have a file of other Biblical 
contradictions if you'd like to explain those.

>     To me, my God is a rock.  He doesn't lie.  He doesn't change.  He is 
> a God of order.  He has and does reveal himself.  You yourself can read
> about Him.  You can actually get to know him.  Imagine that!  

   I have.  I can't see it bearing any relation to reality though.

> I have one
> suggestion though:  just don't take your false assumptions with you when
> you do.  You'll just cause yourself grief.   The God of the Bible has a 
> personality all His own.  You can't make up one for him, although it is
> tempting and self-flattering to do so.  You cannot read about God and 
> try to fit your own personal ideas about him into Him.   I tried that a 
> decade ago, and boy was I wrong.  The God of the Bible was not who I made
> him out to be.  In one respect, He was more dreadful than I had ever 
> thought, but at the same time, incredibly more loving than I could have 
> ever imagined. 

   Sorry, but this makes the least sense of all you've said so far.  
Someone who loves me should not be the same one who throws me in a
pit of fire for eternity for not kowtowing to him and his nonsensical
instructions.

>      If you know anything with regards to the evidence of
> transitional species, let me know.  I am very interested.  

   I have an FAQ on them from talk.origins if you'd like.  Also one with
a few dozen reasons why the Flood could not have happened.

Karl

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