If man evolved?

by tornapart 427 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  cofty

  I believe in animal evolution to a certain extent but believe God's hand was in it at certain stages.

  Where do you have reservations? The evidence for human evolution is absolutely solid. The same techiques that we use to convict murderers and rapists also proves that humans shared a common ancestor with all other living things millions of years ago.

  Please see The Common Ancestry thread for details...

  How does adding god to the process help in any way?

  It's as if man's growth was stagnant for 490,000 years and then took off in the last few thousand years.

  Modern humans have been around for about half that time you suggest. Populations grew slowly for lots of reasons that have been given in this thread already. There would be many occasions when disaster would have decimated populations as well.

  wouldn't you have to be sure that the atmosphere now is the same as it was when the object you are looking at first appeared/died?

  No that's not how it works at all. It is not necessary to make any assumptions for radiometric dating to work accurately. Multiple independent clocks all point to the very same dates. We know the age of the earth from many lines of evidence.
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  jgnat

  tornapart, you don't see exponential growth for any mammal, excepting perhaps rabbits in Australia. And that was because they had no natural predators. As has been mentioned several times, there are limits such as food availability, disease, and predators. It was darn tough for a couple to remain alive not to mention raise at least one child to adulthood.

  Consider how gunpowder gave humans an edge over, say, a wolf.

  Before that, agriculture, which gave us a steady food supply. Then the green revolution in our generation, which under the right conditions, increases productivity ten times.

  I bow to Cofty to matters of radiometric dating, but I believe contentions about atmosphere content would only affect results of Carbon-14 dating. There's also Uranium, Samarium, Potassium, and Rubidium radiometric dating. "Correlation between different isotopic dating methods may be required to confirm the age of a sample. For example, a study of the Amitsoq gneisses from western Greenland used five different radiometric dating methods to examine twelve samples and achieved agreement to within 30 Ma (million years) on an age of 3,640 Ma."

  I see from the linked Q&A that Carbon-14 has been fluctuating, not increasing through the ages. This is known from sampling the tree rings of bristlecone pines.
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  tornapart

  Adding God to it isn't a case of it 'helping'. I see the complexity of the single cell and the DNA code and find it impossible to believe it evolved like that. That is the evidence I see. Also that a huge amount of life came about very suddenly during the Cambrian age.

  If changes came from animals reproducing and passing their DNA on and different species come about, I can accept that but the code within the cell that acts like a blueprint... I just see intelligent design.
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  tornapart

  jgnat, yes.. it's really the Carbon-14 I was questioning.

  So as a christian how do you balance man being around for 100s of thousands of years with Jesus Christ and what he taught and his reasons for coming to earth? Wouldn't it negate it? (just asking out of interest) :)
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  jgnat

  I don't recall Jesus ever talking about evolution, carbon-14 dating, or even Adam (JK). I am assuming you are speaking about Romans 5:15 (Just as sin entered the world through one man....). That was Paul, after the fact. I see the stories of creation and the garden as allegories, not to be taken literally.

  How about the genealogies? Generated after the fact. We even have modern examples of exalted leaders who have a genealogy constructed to reinforce their authority.
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  tornapart

  So what do you believe is the reason Christ came to the earth then? I'm just curious because I'm trying to balance in my own mind how someone can believe in evolution and still belive in Christ. I know many do and I'm certainly not being judgemental in any way, I just want to understand. There's so many new ideas and beliefs I've been taking on board over this last year... my own evolution I suppose! LOL
• 

  cofty

  I see the complexity of the single cell and the DNA code and find it impossible to believe it evolved like that.

  We call this an argument from personal incredulity.

  How much have you studied about the evolution of the prokaryotic cell or of DNA?

  It used to be things like the eye that creationists pointed to as evidence for design. Now science has explained those things they point to smaller things like the cell or the bacterial flagellum. Its a strategy known as "god-of-the-gaps".

  You would love the book "Life Ascending - The Ten Greatest Inventions of Evolution" by Nick Lane. He describes the cutting edge of research into abiogenesis, the evolution of the cell, DNA, sex, etc. It shows that real progress is being made in all of these questions.

  Resorting to "Intelligent Design" raises more questions than it answers. Why does our genome contain so much code that originated in viruses or through copy-paste errors? Our genomes contain the ultimate proof of our evolution.
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  jgnat

  I think Jesus presented himself as the Messiah, prepared to bring in a new age of peace and prosperity.
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  rawe

  Hi Tornapart,

  "A few statistics.... they say man was about a population of 1 million about 10, 000 years ago. There are about 4 generations (for arguments sake) in 100 years. So to get from 2 people doubling each generation (going by the bacteria illustration), that would be roughly 20 generations. At that very slow rate it would take only 500 years to reach a million. We are talking about 500,000 years, a thousand times longer!"

  I'm not sure if this is the correct way to look at the math. I tend to think of population as hour glass with a hole also in the bottom. You add to population by giving birth to children and subtract by having people die. If the rate of birth and death were in perfect balance it would not matter how many generations you had the number would not go up.

  To make the number go up, you need a rate of birth that exceeds the rate of death. If you had a perfect 50-50 split between male and female and they all were mated, all pairs would need to produce at least two children to keep the population from declining. If instead a few produced 3 and most produced 2, then it could increase. So you need to think in terms of all the variables that could impact the birth rate -- for example polygamy could increase it, but polyandry (where a woman has more than one husband) could decrease it. If either men or women are compelled to spend a lot of time in pursuit of something other than sex, then birth rates would decline. Then you would need to think of all the things that could impact death rate, including things that kill humans before they are old enough to reproduce.

  The very odd thing about this argument is the theory of evolution actually faces the other problem. The theory of evolution demands time and reproduction bumped up against selective pressures. Thus if the rate of reproduction is too slow the time variable becomes a problem. Darwin tackled this directly in Origin of Species by working out rates of reproduction for elephants. His conclusion was there is indeed enough time available even with animals that take a long while to reproduce.

  Cheers,

  -Randy
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  LisaRose

  The fact is, due to famine and disease, the population was stable for a long time, as many people died as were born. Modern farming and medical advances have changed that, resulting in the current population. I don't know why that is so hard to comprehend.