I'm afraid that could be the opposite

Oh but it is not in that exact sense. Evolution involves in something changing, adapting to something else. Faith in God is solid as a rock. Has been the same since the creation of man. Even having the old covenant fulfilled and given another doesn't constitute as a change. As the old covenant prophesied this happening, so it is still in line with it.

Now I'm speaking of specifically evolution as in if we evolved from a primate or something of such. "Evolution" does exist and God created us as so. It's call adapting to our surroundings. If our bodies did not adapt to our surroundings, we would be stuck where we are.



Our spirits in general are the same as they were when man was put on this Earth. Yes our spirits grow in strength over time. But nevertheless they aren't "evolving", they are just growing.

No, I was talking about the Midianites. Moses was even married to a Midianite woman. There was a sham excuse made up for their slaughter having to do with the rather nebulous 'They offended the Lord Thy God' via collusion or sexual impropriety or somesuch.

Unlike in modern morality where we don't hold children responsible for the sins of the parents, they killed them without mercy.

And let's not forget that supposedly, God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his child, but changed his mind at the last minute or something. What kind of sick test was that?

Again, in these times, any parent doing something like that would have the child taken from him and put in jail to rot. And "God told me to do it' would NOT be a defense.

Oh yeah, I know--- different times, different mores. Except when it comes to things like homosexuality, which is still morally wrong in the modern book of Fundie morality.

-Kerry O.

You're right, @SPIDERCOMB, in the evolutionary process there are a number of deformation or mutations that are "small" in our opinion, and there also has been a number of mutations that affected several body parts of animals, and affected their sense of beauty and desirability for them.

Take note, for instance, that man as a species and spiders both have the same ancestors probably in some really-really far evolutionary past, but ladies don't find spider males attractive, and I daresay spider women don't find human males that hot either.

This is important when we consider that male humans like those felames that are beautiful, and the "beautiful" females have a high chance of successfully producing offspring. Yet the two have no logical link. So when females and males appeared that are basically our kins in internal biological structure, there were those in both sexes who preferred the ugly females and the ugly males; and yet they died out, because uggs tend to have fewer children, and not for the lack of copulating activities. Take my parents, for instance. Oophs, wrong thing to say.

Anyhow: sexual attraction is not formed by a magic bond to those who are fertile, but sexual attraction has been formed by CHANCE MUTATIONS of who finds what attractive. And then, those who marry the attractive with the reproductive, will be fathering and mothering more humans than those who do not.

Where was I... oh, yes, there have been by human valuation many mutations that have been big, big, big, like the crainal capacity of humans from a couple of parents to their offspring, or from four-handed monkeys or apes to two-handed, two-footed apes or pre-humans. I am not aware of fossil finds of baby monkeys that had feet on their arms and hands on their legs, but they would not survive to sexual maturity; so the reason no such finds have been made is not because they did not happen, or exist, but because they did not exist for a long time, probably a few months to a few years, tops, then they died.

Think of the knee caps, too... feet and locking kneekaps have mutated out of ordinary monkey legs together, because one without the other would yield zero survival advantage.

You are absolutely right, @SPIDERCOMB, there are mutations that are "hugely differentiating" between father and son, but differences have not found yet a measurement value in our quantitative, numerically descriptive categorical definitions, so we just say they are "large" changes or "big" changes.

But in essence, you are right, survival advantage is not always and not necessarily gained by gradual small mutations, but sometimes through huge and giantly differentiating mutations.

There is no "O", it's just SpiderCMB. I'm not sure what a "spider comb" is and I don't think I would recognize one if I saw it, but I get the feeling I wouldn't like it.

Spirit is as you state...

and yet...

Mankind has not yet evolved to the point where full spirit is realized on an indivdual level.

So indeed 'spirit' can 'evolve'... and the more individual spirit evolves the more also will our species evolve to meet the wonder of the image that we were created in.

My spirit has evolved to the point (from Abraham) that I would tell God no...

For my child I would die first that the child live.

and God would be pleased with that answer.

Your "spirit" has not evolved though. YOU have evolved in your spirituality. You have learned and discovered more of your spirituality. On a personal level, your spiritual level may have evolved, but the spirit inside of you has been the same since the day you came into existence. You've just learned more about it and have realized more spirituality in this world then you once realized.

Orly?


The fossil record actually has examples of both. You can see gradual incremental changes (such as some examples of whales) and you can see explosions of evolutionary change during times such as the Cambrian.

Change is always occurring, its what gets selected against, and when the environment changes in such a way to kill off large amounts of species then it leaves an ecological niche for more transitional species that adapt more fluidly to fill those niches. This is why we tend to find many new species in environmentally transitional stages of history.

However we have thousands of fossils that show gradual changes slowly accumulating.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_51
Here is a good write on this exact topic.

You more or less have become more one with you're spirit. Feeding it what it desires. More in touch with it and understanding what it's saying to you.

Cowboy, you are very engaged in this thread so I hope to continue that, this is one of my favorite topics to discuss and I always appreciate when someone is engaged.

I realize you are a Christian, but I have to be honest in that I am not sure of your position, YEC, ie a literalist, or something else.

This thread has a few different dicussions running through it, and hey thats all cool, but it has made it difficult for me to keep up with any one position, that is without going back and reading it all, hehe I am being lazy and hoping you will humor me.

I am curious do you follow the modern theory of evolution? Do you accept that we have gradually evolved from Homo Habilis to Erectus to antecessor and on to Homo Sapiens?

Do you think this is accurate with perhaps some gaps, or lesser known transitions or do you think we were created as Homo Sapiens and have just had some minor adaptations and not large morphological changes?

If you accept the rather significant morphological changes that occurred over the ~2 million years of evolution from Habilis to Sapiens do you then also accept that we evolved from earlier proto primates?

We did not evolve from another species. Our bodies adapted. With a long period of time with multiple different adaptions, we can view it as evolution if you wish.

Our bodies transform to fit the surroundings we're in. Say your blood line comes from an area like Alaska or somethin. I mean your family was one of the original groups of people there, or at least your blood line. You would tend to have more body fat then someone that has blood from say the desert. And so on and so on.

We may have appeared to be ape like in our earlier times. More ape like as in more body hair, more body fat, and more of a muscular appearance as we would have to do everything with our hands and physical along with hunting, ect. But our bloodline would not have changed. And our skin at that time was probably fairly leathery say our hands and what not, along with thicker bone structure.

Apples... Oranges... Both from a tree. Both from the same seed as Adam. The Earth.

All from the same source...

The spirit is god.

Our spirit has not yet caught up to its full potential.

as MANKIND.

that requires that at lest 2/3rd of all living humans.

Start behaving as adults.

and evolve.

Your spirit will reach it's full potential when you want it to. As long as you keep feeding it will continue to grow. When you stop feeding it, it will cease to grow. You can never reach it's complete potential, it will never end growing if you continue to feed it.

My spirit, and yours. (indeed every human's) IS at full potential...

It is attached to God by the Holy Spirit.

it belongs to God.

My evolution is not in 'growing' my spirit but in learning the ways to open that communication that is the holy spirit.

Mankind grows as I grow (and as each of us grow in our billions)

a small trickle that becomes a might river.

Another poster said something about de-evolution (entropy).

Life exists to balance entropy. (all things have balance).

While entropy decays. Life grows more complex.

Does it make sense that when we are digging up things that as sediment gets laid down it creates layers?

Do you understand the basic concepts behind dating techniques such as Dendrochronology? Where we use tree rings to help get a basic understanding of time lines?

When we look back into the fossil record, we can trace history to before humanity. We find examples of human like creatures, and in one case we where even able to get DNA to verify that it was not human.

So, it doesn't take a huge leap from even these basic facts to realize that humans in our current form have not been around as long as life has been around.

Have you ever considered the vast differences in dogs over just the last 1500 years? Selective breeding has taken canines from wolves to Chihuahua to an Afghan hound.

I think once a person starts to really dig into the actual science, and leave behind any preconceived notions it starts to become more and more challenging to hold on to the idea that human beings are some kind that is immune to large morphological changes.

If you then start to learn a little bit of physics, and consider more advanced methods of dating, such as Uranium-lead, Potassium-argon, and Radiocarbon then it becomes clear that life on earth has been around a LONG time and that humanity has been here a blink of an eye compared to life in general.

I used to spend a great deal of time arguing irreducible complexity, and not wanting to consider alternatives, in no small part because the topic was not a quick read and at that time in my life had felt I had better things to do.

The arguments against evolution are fairly easy, simplistic, and generally only take a quick sit down to read and memorize. The fact is that the 200 years of cross disciplinary research that has comprised evolutionary theory is not so easy to sit down and understand no less memorize good arguments for why it is true nor make them in a compelling format in a short read.

To truly appreciate modern Evolution you have to learn about dating methods which require a bit of knowledge about physics and chemistry. Genetics plays the key role and you need some advanced biology to really appreciate that aspect. Archeology helps us understand how we have formed a picture of the path evolution has taken, and understanding environmental pressures is another factor.

To really have an opinion about the validity of Evolutionary theory, one needs to take the time to honestly understand why it is held as the central theory of modern biology and that is no easy feat.

Yes it does. And that goes along with just what I was saying. Through the different layers you can see the progress of evolution, through our different adaptations in the different rings. Again, we did not evolve from a separate species, just our species adapted to the different terrains in this world, different environments, different parts of the world.

Simple example -

Say in the first layer we had no thumbs. Then in the second layer we had thumbs but we only about 5 foot tall. Then in the third layer we had thumbs, ranged with heights from 5 to 6 foot. Then in the fourth layer, our bone structure started to become thinner for we were more civilized and not so animal like and weren't doing as much physical things such as fighting.

And so on and so on.

if evolution is not an acceptable theory to the faithful....then why according to the bible does God have hands and legs and other assorted body parts ....clearly he must have "evolved" them for some need

according to the bible God created Man in his own image which is proof that God has body parts

that God needed body parts or had body parts is an indication that God was under the jurisdiction of the laws of physics or some other force stronger than himself which place limitations on his movements and required or forced him to use extentions or develop appendages

so evolution since it is only a theory can be argued or denied by the faithful ....but there is no getting around that one question

why does God have hands and legs

What is your definition for species?

Hello Funches!

In spite of the use of anthropomorphisms in Genesis, it is not hard to understand that the author was referring to history...This worked for "the church" until "science" intervened and compromise became necessity......."A necessary evil"

Let's see here God made Adam from dust and instead of making Eve from dust he used a rib from Adam.See the dust makes sense cause all this mythology did supposively happen in the middle eastern desert and the desert is mostly sand and dust.The thing i can't understand is why people believe it,even though the human body is mostly water.Hell Prometheus and how he made man is more believable he used clay and WATER.