Evolution vs. Creation?

[Voodoo Child]

As much as we genetically share in common with those primates and as smart as some of them became, they never have or will hold the capacity to have the "free will" or wherewithall to dominate their environment

They already have shown this capacity. The species that you think to be the sole possessor of freewill IS a primate. They have the same endogenous retroviruses in their DNA.

.. to move outside the natural course set for them, as man does

The natural course is not set, the nature of nature is that it is insentient, seeking no particular state and possessing no goals. Since man is a product of nature he can not move outside its bounds: it is natural for him to do what he does because his actions are determined by his nature.

as man does...shaping and altering our enviroment to suit our will.

Beavers build dams, apes and birds use tools. Countless creatures shape their environment.

Mental faculties are one thing, free will and choice are another.

Indeed. Prove free will exists. Prove that man has it. Prove that animals don't.

No ape will ever evolve into or live on a "Planet of the Apes" where they can govern over their environment like man does the earth.

Planet of the Apes was earth. Who says man governs the world? I say plankton do. They are at the base of food chain and therefore have dominion over all that depend upon it. Additionally, man is ruled by his environment as much as he rules it: they are interdependent. Just like every other creature on the planet.

Knowlege or the pursuit thereof is not sin; disobedience was the sin! Scripture clearly holds knowledge as a prize to be sought after and coveted, to be held onto as if it were life itself.

Humankind was prohibited from gaining knowledge of sin. That knowledge was coveted and they were punished for it.

The 5% of the brainpower most humans utilize has produced all we have today, including Science; the 100% of the brainpower we were imbued with in Adam and Eve's original form is the True knowledge that was subsequently lost when Eve bit the Fruit!

The 5%(usually 10%) statistic is a pseudoscientific myth. Try to find a primary reference for it. Anyway, chimps probably use 5% of their brain given the similiarities that you acknowledge. It seems one bad apple can spoil the lot of primates.

 

[Katazia]

CosmicOne,

The knowledge of right and wrong is different from being obedient; they may not have known right from wrong but they understood when God told them to be obedient to his words.

How? If they didn’t know the difference between right and wrong then how would they know that disobeying God was wrong? They couldn’t until they ate from the tree. Oops – too late.

You cannot separate the two requirements. To comprehend obedience one must appreciate right and wrong, i.e. to disobey is wrong – they didn’t know that. Without the knowledge of right and wrong the option to obey or disobey has no meaning.

They were given a choice to obey or disobey; there is an inate sense being disobedient, as there is now the sense of right and wrong in humans.

We only understand disobedience because we understand the difference between right and wrong. Adam and Eve didn’t possess that knowledge. Where did this innate understanding that disobedience was wrong come from if it wasn’t from the tree that gave the knowledge of right and wrong? If this innate knowledge of right and wrong came from somewhere else then what is the purpose of the tree of knowledge of right and wrong?

The essential point, that I see you are trying to avoid, is to explain why they were punished for doing something wrong when they had zero compression of what is meant by right or wrong.

As the link explains –

It's like giving a bottle of bleach to a child who is too young to read the warning labels, and then being surprised when they poison themselves with it.

Why would you punish the child?

Try again – a bit harder this time.

Kat

 

[Katazia]

CosmicOne,

The 5%/10% brain usage is pure myth.

http://www.csicop.org/si/9903/ten-percent-myth.html

You need to re-think your rationale where you have made that error.

Kat

 

[Katazia]

CosmicOne,

If there were true evidence we would not be having this discussion!

You agree then that the idea of God must be entirely due to human creative imagination since that is all that is left if you admit there is no evidence.

Do you offer evidence of His non-existence; I'd like to hear about that!

Certainly – consider the total absence of evidence for his existence. Given thousands of years that man has been making claims for gods, not one has ever appeared or been shown to exist.

Sometimes the silence of secular history screams, but Christians just can't seem to hear it.

While absence of evidence is not proof of absence it is very much real evidence of absence especially when the period of the claims has been in thousands of years.

Kat

 

[mrmufin]

Adam's got Balls!

Did he have a belly button, too?

Just curious,
mrmufin

 

[SnakeLord]

The 5% of the brainpower most humans utilize has produced all we have today, including Science;

And including the bible and all the stories contained therein. These poor bastards had even less understanding of anything than we do, so why listen to a word they say? If you say god was sitting on a mountain telling them everything, (but only the jews), I would ask why he doesn't do the same right now, thus removing any modern day human confusion. Those barely open eyelids of knowledge that we have today, would have been firmly closed eyelids of knowledge 2000 years ago. They could only label everything as being caused by an almighty ruler because that's all they knew of anything. The world consisted of leaders and followers, thus the most simplistic conclusion is that all man would have yet another leader. In many cases this was the sun, the moon, the stream up the mountain, the wind in the air, or a big invisible guy in the clouds.

Remember the Garden had no bacteria or anything that could harm man

Where does it say that?

If there were true evidence we would not be having this discussion! Do you offer evidence of His non-existence; I'd like to hear about that!

This is quite frankly the most ignorant statement that can ever be made during a religious discussion/debate. Give me some evidence to the non-existence of the giant invisible lemon-merangue pie who sits on planet thwobble plop.

Death; No death before the fall! Each creature played it's role in the Garden

Adam: "Say Eve, why do you suppose that tyrannosaurus rex has incisor teeth when it only eats plants? Surely it's mouth would only contain molars."

Eve: "Oh Adam, look at this poor vulture. I feel it isn't well. I've been feeding it bananas and grapes but it just doesn't seem to help. Maybe I'm not much of a scientist Adam, but it appears this vulture requires dead flesh."

Adam: "What's dead flesh?"

Eve: "Fucked if I know."

We'd all look at each other, naked, much as animals view each other today, without clothes, but unaware that they are naked.

In short: We'd all be animals, not men. Your statement is warranted; the serpent simply turned a bunch of monkeys into men, and ruined gods plan for a petting zoo. While you might like to be in the garden of eden, swinging through trees and picking nits out of your wifes bum, I prefer being a human.

 

[spidergoat]

We are too vain to realize that the eyelids of our knowledge are barely open.

No, we are not. Science does not claim to explain everything, it is doubt in what we know that pushes scientific research further. Science is a methodical way of figuring things out, acknowledging what we don't know is the first step. Are you so vain that you have to rationalize the whole world was made for man? Christians are certianly entitled to their opinions, but I find the story of the fall a metaphor for an actual, gradual event- man's escape from nature through knowledge and technology. It is a fall from paradise, but hardly a call to set us up as dominators of a domain that needs no domination.

Do you truly believe that the infinitely complex creation that is man could form from creative goo? From goo to Mars in sevreal billion year?

First of all, man is not infinitely complex, we are complex to be sure, as most animals are. Instead of being created, consider that we may have grown instead, through a process of accumulating complexity. We would not have adapted certain traits if they were not desireable, now we find ourself with many desireable traits, and forget the process of accumulating them, thinking instead that we got them all at once. You are reducing the description of initial conditions to the word "creative goo", showing a measure of distain and ridicule, basically a lack of humility regarding your origins. The primordial crucible for life was not creative in any way. Our bodies are based on chemical interactions that have no choice in occuring, once placed in proximity through circumstances.

Remember the Garden had no bacteria or anything that could harm man;

Are you aware that our digestive systems require bacteria to work? Adam and Eve must have had some severe diarrhea, especially with all that fruit around.

 

[Q25]

If there were true evidence we would not be having this discussion! Do you offer evidence of His non-existence; I'd like to hear about that!

maybe,
since no one can prove the existence of gods,
isnt that proof enough they dont exist?

 

[Q25]

The consequences of Adam and Eve's actions are profound and have changed the ability of Man to perfom the functions of his original role as grand creation of the Creator.

there never was Adam & Eve nor the garden,
if they were we would all have the same blood type,dna etc,dont you think.

also where did the other people in the bible story sudenly popped out from?

 

[Q25]

Knowlege or the pursuit thereof is not sin; disobedience was the sin! Scripture clearly holds knowledge as a prize to be sought after and coveted, to be held onto as if it were life itself.

so the knowledge is the prize but eating fruit of knowledge is wrong?
how the fuck else would A&E get the knowledge?
dont make much sense does it?

 

[Q25]

Do you truly blieve that the infinitely complex creation that is man could form from creative goo? From goo to Mars in sevreal billion year?

no I dont believe,I KNOW,
we have very good EVIDENCE of evolution,
man didnt just poped into existence from a pile of dust as your story book says,
what is a human sperm made of?drop of water mostly,some dna,minerals etc,
dont they teach you sex ed in school?

so why believe in this man from dust nonsense?

we evolved over very long,long,long,long time,Earth is what about 4 billion years old itself!plenty of time imo,for some big evolutionary changes.
unfortunately the bible freaks dont like it b/c it goes against their book!

www.atheists.org

 

[ConsequentAtheist]

If there were true evidence we would not be having this discussion! Do you offer evidence of His non-existence; I'd like to hear about that!

That was a really stupid statement. No matter. At least you acknowledge that you have "no true evidence" for your beliefs, and that shows the beginnings of wisdom. So, the question remains: In the absense of evidence, how did you come to believe in God(s), and on what basis did you select your favored fantasy over competing theologies?

 

[spidergoat]

The primordial crucible for life was not creative in any way.

Let me clarify, or augment, my statement here. The event of life rising out of the primitive oceans was pure creativity, which doesn't need a creator, as opposed to the kind of creativity practiced by intelligent beings. Our kind of creativity is derivitive, based on previous knowledge or ideas, expounded upon, or rearranged. Nature is spontanious, with no plan. I don't see any great plan in nature, do you? We project our own ideas onto nature and imagine it to be well-ordered.

 

[SnakeLord]

Made in response to Cosmic One's statements on page 1. Apologies for putting it all the way down here

Being made in HIS image, they had the original connection to the Creator and knew, as Adam reiterated to Eve,that they were about to disobey God's instructions.

So umm... because they were made in HIS image, they disobeyed, because he would also disobey? I propose that he should have made them in something elses image - something that wouldn't disobey. :bugeye: :bugeye:

However, your quote still falls apart instantly. You cannot say that they had any understanding of right or wrong UNTIL they had eaten the fruit. god even agrees to this and says "man has now become like one of us.. (just how many of them are there? or is god a schizo?).. knowing good and evil."

Quite clearly, god is stating that they did not know what good and evil was until they had eaten the fruit. You can't cop-out with the claim that adam and eve could read gods mind. That's plainly stupid, and goes against the statement made by god to the other god buddies of his.