DNA - belief destuction (page 6)

donkey

This is one of the imminent problems that arise when the Bible is taken as a literal truth. Sure, some events did happen as corroborated by other historical sources, but when it goes into the paranormal, it is best to read it in the spirit in which it was written: Parables and metaphores to ilustrate concepts .

So when it is proven wrong it becomes a parable?

Is there no absolute truth to the bible? If not then how can it be authoritative? How can you have faith in a parable or fable? How can a parable or fable govern your whole life?

The more I observe people ignoring true reality and hard evidence because it compromises their ?faith? the more I regress to my former statements that the religious ones are mentally ill. I mean that in the sincerest sense and in no way as an insult. If we took a person and observed him behaving, speaking to and governing his life by some other book or thing we would all agree the person was mentally ill.

For instance, let?s say that Englishman believed that there was a saskquatch that visited him and he had a document written (supposedly by his hairy friend) we would all examine the document and any protestation by Englishman that his Sasquatch Bible was a mixture of truth and parable would meet with derision by all of us. We would surely say Englishman had been bitten by one too many fleas or choked on his soup. However, this is entirely what we are expected to do for God and believers in him. Englishman can probably find more evidence of the existence of a sasquatch than you can find evidence of God. But because it?s ?god? the believers get a pass.

BTW: Englishman really does believe in the supremacy of a sasquatch.

funkyderek

aChristian:

To know what? If everything which we presently believe to be true really is true? Obviously not. Not in this life anyway. For instance, the only way anyone will ever know for sure if there is life after death is to die. I believe we will then have opportunity to get answers to all our questions. For, as Paul said, "Then we will see everything with perfect clarity." (1 Cor. 13:12)

But isn't there any way to distinguish between a true statement and a false one? A lot of the Genesis account has to be dismissed as false if taken literally. If you decide it's figurative, then you can say that it may be true. But that's it. You can just about interpret it in such a way that we can't prove it completely false, but even to do that you have to jump through hoops. Little or none of it is true in any significant way. This can easily be done with any document if you're willing to designate any demonstrably false statements as figurative. The question is why would anybody do this? How do you know which document to pick? Or don't you think it matters?

Human beings are less righteous than God. The events in Eden clearly demonstrated that fact.

According to your take on things, the events in Eden actually only demonstrated that two human beings - no, facsimiles of human beings - fell for a trick played on them by two vastly superior beings.

Because of our unrighteousness we do not deserve to live forever. We deserve to die.

Because of the unrighteousness of two pretend humans, you mean?

However, God sent His Only Begotten Son into this world to pay the penalty for our sins, to die in our place. In order to have God forgive all of our sins, and to be given eternal life by Him all we have to do is truly accept what He has done for us.

OK, let me get this straight. Because of the "sins" of two facsimiles of humans, God condemned their descendants and the real humans to death. To atone for this sin, he had another facsimile of a human killed. For this atonement to take effect, we have to believe without evidence that this is the case. Is that a fair summary?

Jesus once told His disciples, "I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now." (John 16:12) If, for instance, God used evolution as His means of creation, as I believe He did and as I believe the Bible itself indicates, God may well have known that many people would have trouble dealing with that reality. So, rather than clearly saying such a thing in the Bible I believe God told the story of His creation in broad figurative terms, terms which all Bible readers would be able to live with, regardless of their level of maturity or their particular sensibilities.

Why do you believe that? I can't see any reason other than that you already believed the Bible, and you need to try to make it compatible with observed reality. Couldn't this be done with any holy book or even a work of fiction? Would it not have been possible for God to use parables and fables that corresponded more closely with reality.

But since we know mankind has been on earth far longer than 6,000 years "context" tells us, if the Bible is God's Word, Adam could not have literally been "the first man."

That's not context. It's not even "context". It's a contradiction between the text and observed reality. It can only resolved by making the account figurative. Nothing in the actual context of the account indicates that it should be read figuratively. donkey:

For instance, let?s say that Englishman believed that there was a saskquatch that visited him

I think that was Valis

Midget-Sasquatch

Seattleniceguy

Sorry for the delay. I didn't check back on this thread till this morning.

Lynn Margulis is the person who proposed the modern take of endosymbiosis. She laid out the evidence for it, in her book Symbiosis in Cell Evolution published in 1981 by Freeman, New York. There was a second edition of the book around the early 90s. I know she has a more recent book out called Symbiotic Planet but I haven't read it yet.

But if you have access to the journal Science, then you may find the following paper interesting, since its based on more recent evidence.

Mitochondrial evolution. Science 283 :1476?1481 (1999)

seattleniceguy

Thanks, Midge!

SNG

LittleToe

Setting aside biblical belief and concentrating on scientific belief, for a moment:
How did "Mitachondrial woman" and "Y-Chromosome man" get together?

These seem like strange ways to evolve, with better methods surely being available to the "fittest" genepool...

Derek:

So those bits are figurative?

Succinct. Well put

funkyderek

LittleToe:

How did "Mitachondrial woman" and "Y-Chromosome man" get together?

They didn't! They probably lived thousands of years (and thousands of miles) apart.

"Mitochondrial Eve" is defined as the most recent common ancestor of all humans in a purely matrilineal line.

The best way to visualise this is to take a specific case. You and I must have many common ancestors. It's inevitable. If we both trace our ancestry along the matrilineal line (mother's mother's mother's.....) we will eventually come to a shared ancestor. It's hard to know how many generations back we would have to go but it doesn't matter. We would eventually arrive at a woman who had at least two daughters, of whom one became your great-great-...-grandmother and one became mine.

If we add another person and try to find the most recent common ancestor of all three of us in a purely matrilineal line, we will probably have to go slightly further back (but not necessarily). We can continue adding more people, but at no point will the common ancestor we find recognise herself as the founder of a great dynasty. She will almost certainly be an insignificant person in her community. The only thing we can say for sure about her is that she had at least two daughters. This applies even if we include everybody who's alive today. This pushes the ancestor back to an estimated 150,000 to 250,000 years ago. But there was still nothing significant about her in her lifetime. In fact, at the time, the role of mitochondrial Eve would necessarily have belonged to someone else.

We all have many common ancestors and of course the matrilineal line isn't the only way to go. But it's used because mitochondria is only inherited from our mothers. Differences in mitochondria between different people allow scientists to estimate when Mitochondrial Eve lived.

"Y-chromosome Adam" is the male equivalent of Mitochondrial Eve. Again, if you and I try to find our most recent common ancestor in a purely patrilineal line, we will eventually arrive at someone who fits the bill, but it is vanishingly unlikely that he lived at the same time or place as his matrilineal counterpart.

These seem like strange ways to evolve, with better methods surely being available to the "fittest" genepool.

In what way? If it seems like a strange way to evolve, then it's certainly a strange way to create.

LittleToe

Derek:

...we will eventually come to a shared ancestor.

Given our Celtic heritage and propensity to fall asleep at Fests, I suspect it's not that far back

Taking this back to the more recent Adam and Eve story, what's to stop a SciFi explanation of ET's interfering with an evolving species and giving them a boost, sometime in the last 10,000 years?

outoftheorg

A christian sounds just like a christian. Flip flop.

Outoftheorg

funkyderek

Taking this back to the more recent Adam and Eve story, what's to stop a SciFi explanation of ET's interfering with an evolving species and giving them a boost, sometime in the last 10,000 years?

Nothing at all. 2001: A Space Odyssey is based on this idea. But there is no evidence that anything like this occurred.

Country Girl

Not to say that your revelations are wrong, but we also have to consider atmospheric, geological, geographical, etc. considerations in the equation of mitochondrial descendency. Sometimes, in an evolutionistic suppository structure, these natural factors have to be added in because the DNA evidence supports them, and oftentimes, these external factors cannot be included because of the pure speculation.

CG

DNA - belief destuction

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