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Liam O'Doherty
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Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Jun 13, 2009
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This thread is intended for discussion about the origin of our species and universe. Must the
theories of Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design be opposed to each other?
Check out this article in the Guardian and this video from new scientist for more
info on the ida fossil who has recently renewed the debate.
This post was edited on: 2009-06-13 at 07:42 PM by: Liamjod (Moderator)
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siddiqua
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Jun 15, 2009
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In the Gallup poll, only four people out of ten believed in Darwin's theory. I don't think any one
theory could be conclusive or should be taught as the truth of what happened because we don't know
for sure. I've always been confused about evolution. In my personal view God created everything, but
that fact doesn't have to mean that evolution could be discounted. Because maybe divine decree meant
that species evolve, that newer galaxies form, etc. I certainly don't believe that human beings
evolved from anthropoids or lesser intelligent beings. But I'd apply evolution to quite a lot of
aspects of life. Take any infectious organism, a virus that infects a living creature, I mean their
sheer adaptability to change their proteins, to become a new strains etc,to change their host etc.,
is evolution. Even how a few plants develop resistance to disease when the otehrs succumb, that's
evolution for me. But I think all species were, are, essentially the same. They were either there,
or not there, but didn't evolve into newer different forms. So this statement makes me a creationist
? I think so.
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siddiqua
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Jun 15, 2009
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On the whole, I don't think people should get so worked up about whose theory is right and whose
theory is wrong. I find it futile that teaching evolution in schools is strongly opposed. Its not
like you have to go away from your beliefs if you study about it.
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Jim Bailey
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Jul 1, 2009
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I look fwd to this debate - For me God created as Genesis claims - for better understanding view
www.creation.com - Onward - Jim
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Md. Farhad Hussain
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Jul 1, 2009
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I am not going to question "Who created universe?" or "Is Darwin's theory correct?" or "Is
Intelligent Design the right way to explain the creation of universe?"
My question is the following:
"If the so called God is the creator of everything, then who have created God?" I think we will
never be able to answer this question.
If we can conclude that God has come from nowhere then why it is not possible to conclude that the
universe has appeared from nowhere?
I don't know whether God exists or not but after seeing the suffering of majority of the people
living in this earth, I can conclude that the reputation of our so called omnipotent God is very
very bad.
It seems to me that it will be better for the mankind if God does not exist.
This post was edited on: 2009-07-02 at 01:44 AM by: mfhussain
This post was edited on: 2009-07-02 at 01:49 AM by: mfhussain
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Ned Hamson
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Jul 1, 2009
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 I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. Just across the river from the museum created by
creationists and I.D. folks to celebrate their limited view of the universe created/that is God.
I understand that creationists and ID folks are afraid that if their belief that human beings a
special and apart from nature is not true their belief in God must be false. Human beings are
different but as we see almost everyday we are not above or apart from nature.
I think that fear is based on a belief in magic and that God is apart from or outside of nature and
something like a supreme magician.
They cannot get comfortable with the idea that God is omnipresent - in and apart of everything but
not constantly dabbling with the universe.
Evolution is a theory about a work in progress since everything is still evolving. If things were
not evolving, we would not be here and the dominate form on earth would - grin - be a clam, perhaps
or a turtle.
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Len Rosen
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Jul 1, 2009
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Everyone needs to read "The Blind Watchmaker" to begin to really understand Darwin's theory of
evolution. The human species has trouble getting a perspective on the sheer immensity of time that
plays out through the evolutionary history of life on this planet. Time and numbers are keys in the
evolutionary chain that has led from single cell life, to complex multicellular life, to greater
complexity in specialized organs within living creatures. We live on this planet less than a
century. Ten thousand centuries make up a million years. Life on this planet has been around for
more than 2.5 thousand million years. DNA and genes can do a lot of random things in all that time
with selectivity from best adaptations to the environment driving the evolutionary process. It's all
about giving it the time to work the wonder that has led to the complex life that covers our planet
today. There have been many setbacks through catastrophic climate altering events throughout that
history. Some have created mass extinctions leading to the opening of new bio niches for better
adapted species of life to enter and flourish. We as a species are constrained in our perception of
all of this because we have a biological clock that delimits our lifespan to a very small segment in
the very big picture. It's like looking at a single pixel and trying to figure out the entire
picture.
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James An
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Jul 1, 2009
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I see evolution is being quite compatible with belief in God. After all, we can easily suppose God
created the mechanisms that the theory of evolution explains. Maybe God made natural selection
random. Faith and evolution are not mutually exclusive.
The debate between evolution and creationism (and it's new brand, intelligent design or ID) is
largely a political and cultural one that flourishes in the public confusion on scientific
terminology.
In common usage, "theory" often refers to conjectures, hypotheses, and unproven
assumptions. However, in science, "theory" usually means "a plausible or scientifically acceptable
general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena." [1]
In fact, the debate around ID has stirred enough controvery that some of the world's most reputable
and prolific scientific communities have declared their rejection of creationism and ID and
affirmation of the theory of evolution. [2] The collection comprises of some of the greatest minds
of our time and the greatest scientific institutions.
Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different
things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are
structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate
rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did
not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors
whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.
[3]
Simply observe your daily life to convince yourself of our reliance on the theory. Much of what you
come into daily contact with has been shaped, created, or designed because of an application of the
theory of evolution. Medicine. Food. Clothing. And probably most of all - fossil fuel and all the
energy we derive from it.
The fact that we observe bacteria mutate into antibiotic-resistant strains is proof that they
evolve. That we take annual flu shots because the strains evolve is another fact. So is the whole
scare over H1N1 (aka. the swine flu). All the genetically-modified foods (and there's a lot!) we eat
is based on an understanding of genetics and evolution. Even farming methods that breed crops have
an understanding of genetic inheritance. The cotton in your clothes is grown with such an
understanding
Our reliance on gas and fossil-fuel derivatives is more everyday proof of evolution and a clear
validation of what we know in paleontology. That the world isn't 10000 years old is a fact we have
unknowingly embraced by driving our cars, by turning on our lights, by using City treated water,
because the median age of the world's oil is 35 million years [4]. There's definitely no shortage of
examples on our usage of fossil fuel.
Not only is much of this explained through a reliance on the theory of evolution, a lot of these
technological and scientific breakthroughs happened in the 20th century because of the theory of
evolution.
So, somehow belief in evolution seems a bit irrelevant, at least to me. That we live how we do is
proof that there is a lot of truth in evolution.
[1] Wikipedia, Creation–evolution controversy. Retrieved July 1, 2009.
[2] Wikipedia, Creation–evolution controversy. Retrieved July 1, 2009.
[3] Gould, Stephen Jay (1981), Evolution as
Fact and Theory, The Unofficial Stephen Jay Gould Archive. Retrieved July 1, 2009.
[4] Paul Mann, Lisa Gahagan, and Mark B. Gordon, "Tectonic setting of the world's giant oil and gas
fields," in Michel T. Halbouty (ed.) Giant
Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade, 1990-1999, Tulsa, Okla.: American Association of Petroleum
Geologists, p.50. Retrieved July 1, 2009.
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prieten47
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Jul 1, 2009
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Wow, my hat's off to the last four posters. I was worried Evolution would find few defenders here at
TIG.
Evolution is obviously the best theory for explaining all life forms here on Earth.
The question of the origin of the universe, of course, Evolution doesn't shed much light on. Most
scientists subscribe to the Big Bang theory, based on the still observable expansion of the
universe.
Many people adhering to one of the Abrahamic religions will cling to the Big Bang theory as their
last hope, the "last refuge" for their Genesis version of the origin of the universe.
But there simply isn't any evidence to support this wishful thinking that some deity is behind it
all.
Why can't we accept the awesome fact that there are probably few inhabited worlds in this universe.
We are extremely lucky to be alive and evolved enough to appreciate it. I wish we could spend less
time trying to fight over silly man-made differences and more time acting like the brothers and
sisters we truly are on this paradise in the universe called Earth.
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Koopinello
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Jul 2, 2009
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It is sad to think that there are so many people who still believe in the existernce of a god, one
that created the universe and is omnipotent and omniscient. There is absolutely no evidence for this
at all. At the moment we do not understand the existence of matter and anti matter, however it is
only a matter of time before scientists can both create life from inanimate matter and can fully
understand the forces that have created the universe. People who believe in a god have either been
indoctrinated into an unsustainable faith or have hope of an afterlife. They cannot face the fact
that we are entirely responsible for our own destiny and must determine our own future , not one
that is ordained by some non existent intelligent designer.
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Len Rosen
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Jul 2, 2009
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I am enjoying reading the various postings for this discussion. God is a wonderful concept, a great
explanation of things we don't know or understand. I am sure that our requirements for an alpha
figure are a construct of our species social nature. We always need a leader. Chimpanzees defer to
an alpha female and male. Gorillas do as well. We don't see this pattern in orangutan because they
tend to be loners. Gibbons and other primates also have social constructs with alpha leaders. So God
is our ultimate alpha, higher than a President, a Prime Minister or a queen or king.
How difficult it is for us a species to get outside our "boxed view" to recognize what constrains us
from understanding just how rich this universe is in the constructs that have led to the rise of our
species on a small rocky planet, rotating around a moderately-sized star, half-way up the arm of one
of the pin-wheel arms of our galaxy, a galaxy containing hundreds of millions of stars in a universe
with hundreds of millions of visible galaxies.
We are not unique. The building blocks of life, the chemistry is all around us in the galaxy and in
intergalactic space. We're just starting down the path of beginning to understand what is in this
universe. It is even harder for us to envision other universes in what string theory predicts, the
multiverse.
When I was a child I used to go to the river near our house and just look at what was in that river,
the range and variety of life, the way different plants and animals interacted, how changes in the
chemistry of the river altered life. I continue to study even in my backyard as I watch ants
organize their social existence, or bumblebees attack my flower garden in search of nectar. The
behaviours are not random. They are built on a foundation of millions of generations of life that
preceded them, constructing and deconstructing filaments of DNA that have led to creating a
sentience that is beautiful to watch.
What an absolute rush to continue to explore this amazing existence, the consciousness of being, the
ability to pose questions, theorize, speculate, without constraint, knowing that there is no single
entity that governs any of it because you can view it from outside the boundaries of our species
genetic engineering. This is not the engineering of intelligent design. This is the engineering of
survival based on thousands of millions of years.
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DominicT
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Jul 3, 2009
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These are God's best kept secrets, may be we should just let them be.
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Dominic is an internet marketer helping other internet marketers Make Money From Home and getting Targeted Traffic to their sites.
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prieten47
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Jul 5, 2009
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Right you are, Koopinello!
And Len Rosen, that's one of the nicest posts I can remember reading here at TIG.
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siddiqua
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Jul 5, 2009
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Maybe we should have two categories in this debate - the realists and the 'fantasists' because
belief in god seems to be a fantasy to most. I agree with Jame An. why can't it be that a divine
hand allowed evolution to take place over millions of years. because i don't see how belief in the
divine is separate from scientific theory, evolution or a study in biology. I find it impossible
that we can "create" new life. Koopinello suggests that in the future scientists could create life
from inanimate matter. But the questions is, where did this "matter" come from. Who "created" these
building blocks. We could create viruses in a lab, but who created a virus's building blocks? Let's
get to say, the basic microbial construction here. Who created the carbon atom, the building block
of life? Or electrons or their spins. You can't expect me to convince me that it just "happened".
How did the first tiny particle come into being ? If you'd have to convince someone about evolution,
there must be some place where it all originated. And how did that "place of origin" come into being
there ?
This post was edited on: 2009-07-05 at 04:10 AM by: sidsayed
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siddiqua
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Re: Creationism, Evolution and Intelligent Design
Jul 5, 2009
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mfhussain wrote:
I don't know whether God exists or not but after seeing the suffering of majority of the people
living in this earth, I can conclude that the reputation of our so called omnipotent God is very
very bad.
mfhussain
If God really alleviated the suffering of the world, I don't think there would be scope to see the
depth of M. Hussain's, 'compassion' ? or your ingenuity in helping solve a problem ?
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