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I know a lot of Evolutionists throw around the book as a reference much the same way as Creationists throw around the Bible. The difference is that Creationists actually quote their one and only source. Evolutionists do not.

My friend Mike just purchased it and randomly flips to pages and reads the little chapters, and he says that it should be mandatory reading, because it COMPLETELY DEBUNKS CREATIONIST THEORY. We've all said that Creationists are wrong, but we've never offered concrete evidence to them, and all they reply with is: "The Bible is the truth".

So I actually have two questions; who has actually read Darwin's Origin of Species, and do you think it should be mandatory reading for school?

   

I have read most of it on and off over the years....but then again i can say the same for the bible....both are get reads and full of very interesting thoughts.
You can not make it mandatory reading for school for the same exact reason the bible isn't...it will offend someones beliefs.

   

Read some of Herbert Spencer's work, but not a lot. You can't really use people who believe in God as a direct contrast to those who believe in evolution. Even, the Rum 'n' Catlick Church accepts evolution now and teaches it in their schools. It's only the hard core, inbred, corn fed hill billies that take the Book of Genesis as literal. The biggest arguement nowadays seems to be whether or not the original spark of life was initiated or just 'happened'.

   

That's very true...

   

I had to read it in college and it was somewhat less dreary than other books, but not nearly as good as The Hunt for Red October which was #1 at the time.

Darwin himself never meant to replace any religion with one of his own and he, in his time, rebuked people who thought his work meant to disprove God. He had studied to be a clergyman at one point and in his preferred studies as a naturalist I find that he blended science and faith quite properly.

He never once posited the origin of life. Never. Too many people on both sides of the evo/cre. argument get that wrong.

He addressed the observation of adaptation within populations that laid the groundwork for other people, such as Mendel, to expand upon.

For those who adhere to a literal interpretation of the Bible or the koran, Darwin and darwinism are intolerable.

For me, Darwin's investigations into the complexities of our universe only serve to reinforce my own faith because in a universe where deterministic chaos is the proven norm for complex life to arise and evolve defies the very laws of the universe.

Something wanted us to exist because the nature of the universe prohibits accidents such as life.

Maybe someday we'll understand this.

I personally view humanity as being on the shore of a great, vast sea of knowledge and we've barely gotten our toes wet in the past four or five thousand years of our civilizations.

And only in the last fifty of those years have we really started to appreciate the universe of the stars and the universe that is within our very bodies.

We have so much more to learn.

   

So true, Bart.


However, to me, evolution makes a lot more sense than somehow we all came from Adam and Eve despite the fact that they had only two children who were both men and one ended up killing the other.

In Darwin's Origin of Species, I found it very interesting to note the utter lack of amphibians in truly isolated islands like Hawaii and much of Micronesia, due to the fact that they die in salt water. You can learn a lot from this book...

   

Curiously, recent genetic research with the Human Genome Project showed that everyone in the human race comes from the same maternal line.

About four million years back we all, all of us, share a common mother and, likely, a common father, as well.

One of my liberal friends said about this that the Adam and Eve thing turned out to be true, just the Bible had the date off by about 3,992,000 years.

   

True, I just don't believe it's Adam and Eve. Plus, oldest human remains/remains of relatives have been found in the heart of Africa.

   

They more likely went by "Grunt" and "Arrghh".



The Olduvai Gorge was once a very lush and fertile place. Garden of Eden? Maybe.

Considering that so many cultures have similar creation stories I imagine the Adam & Eve thing is a part of our collective consciousness much the same as our fear of snakes, fear of predatory cats, and so many other things that we all share. The Polynesians on some of those isolated islands, for instance, fear snakes even though they don't have any.

***

The arrogance of young men and of old physicists is to assume that they know it all.
- Stephen Hawking


***


Don't believe that it's Adam & Eve, but don't be so arrogant as to rule that out unless you have proof.

   

Interesting stuff...


This is the kind of religious talk/debate I like...



While I think that Genesis is full of crap and creampuffs, I know that I(along with every other religion) could be wrong. Unlike B_C who preached the bible as divine truth.

Anyway, while we clearly have had to come from two humans of the opposite sex, I find that evolution can explain things more clearly and make sense of things, whereas the bible cannot, although it does have some interesting things in it depending on how you interpret them.

Your interpretation of the Olduvai gorge as the Garden of Eden for example.

Granted, I know that any religious text cannot be taken literally.

   

Let me say from the outset that I am a firm believer in GOD. Now having said that I will say this, why must the two be separated? One need only look around to see evidence of evolution. People are taller, birds nest in areas never before used by 'wild' creatures. Now it can be argued that these vague examples are adoptation and not evolution, but I contend that one leads to the other. In order; or in an effort to adapt to new situations, a creatures thinking/instinct must evolve to include the new data. Who is to say that evolution is not a phenomenon instituted by GOD himself?

   

How could everyone be descended from Adam and Eve if they had two sons, Cain and Abel? The last time I checked male humans cannot give birth.

And does anyone seriously believe that God suddenly decided to create humanity so that all of a sudden Adam just appeared out of nowhere and wasn't even born properly like other humans beings?

I've noticed that most of this Creationism rubbish is believed mainly in the US and Canada, whereas elsewhere in places such as Europe and Asia and Australia we are much more sensible and use SCIENCE and palaeontologyto try and find out how life started, rather than just reading the Bible - written 1000 to 2000 years ago by normal human beings (not God) who had less knowledge about the start of life on earth than we do nowadays.

The ancestors of modern humans (Home Sapiens) are primates such as Australopithecus and Home Erectus, NOT Adam and Eve.

   

I see it more along the lines of Nature/laws of the universe to be God. Not a creation of his...

   

Adaptation does not lead to evolution.

Say, for example, that I lose function in my legs and I learn to use a wheelchair. It's really hard for me at first, but I get the hang of it; I've adapted to my circumstances.

Then let's say that after this accident, I settle down and have children. My children are in no way going to be more inclined to operate a wheelchair than I was when I first learned. Although my adaptation has permitted me to continue life and thus have children, the adaptation cannot be passed on to my children because it isn't genetic. I can teach my children to use a wheelchair, even, but that's still adaptation, and will never cause my offspring to evolve.

In another instance, though, let's say everyone in North America got some crazy virus that causes nerve damage and everyone's legs stop working - some people are going to be more apt to learn to function without their legs than others, and they'll be more likely to do survive. Genetic traits that perhaps cause above average muscle growth in the upper body (for example) would become a distinct advantage, and those with that advantage would rise to the top (passing on their beneficial traits to their children as well). People with genetic tendencies to have very weak arms would not do so well, and may not survive (or, if they do, their children are less likely to survive).

That's a brief analogy to explain it, but an important one - the first example is adaptation, while the second is natural selection (which tends to lead to evolution). Adaptation is often confused with evolution, but it's not the same at all.

   

Wanna know how I know the bible isn't true?






















































































Cause GOD told me!

   

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