gadgetlady

So do you believe Jesus was the Son of God and He was resurrected on the third day after He was crucified? (BTW, I disagree with your analysis of the accuracy of the Bible -- and I believe I have the facts to back me up -- but that's another subject altogether.)

I'm having trouble with this, too, so please help me understand. When Jesus quoted the Old Testament, which he did frequently, he didn't refer to what he quoted as allegorical. He treated it as literal. So this is a question for all of you who call yourselves Christ-followers but don't accept the Bible as literal: do you believe 1) the Old Testament is not literal (I think I know the answer to this but I'm trying to be inclusive), 2) the New Testament is not literal, and 3) the Gospels specifically are not literal (i.e. things did not happen the way they are written).

OK, after this I am STEPPING AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER. From the "horse's mouth" (Wells) at http://www.arn.org/docs/wells/jw_tbookreport900.htm (emphasis added): Haeckel's Embryos Darwin believed that all animals with backbones (including humans) evolved from fish-like ancestors, and he thought the best evidence for this was that the early embryos of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals are similar to fish embryos. Many biology textbooks carry drawings (originally by Ernst Haeckel) to illustrate this, and claim that human embryos possess "gill slits." But embryologists have known for over a century that such drawings are false, and that early embryos of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals do NOT resemble fish. Human embryos pass through a stage when they have wrinkles in their necks, but they never have "gill slits." A = does not use misleading drawings or photos, and does not call pharyngeal pouches "gill slits"; points out that vertebrate embryos are most similar midway through development, after being dissimilar in their earliest stages; acknowledges this as an unresolved problem for Darwinian evolution, and considers the possibility that Darwin's theory of vertebrate origins could be wrong.

Sorry; I didn't post a link: www.csfpittsburgh.org/2002OI/Mar02.PDF

From the same .pdf, posted without comment because I'm out of time: EVOLUTION SCIENCE The Evidence Must be Made to Fit the Theory THE REST OF SCIENCE The Theory Must Be Supported by the Evidence From the point of view of evolutionism science: The evidence: The first stages of vertebrate embryos don’t resemble each other as much as do the middle stages. The embryos of all classes of vertebrates are easily distinguishable at an embryological stage. The inference: Therefore, early stages of developing embryos evolve much easier than we thought while middle stages must be prevented from evolving. [see Wray. 1995. Punctuated Equilibrium of Embryos. Science 267 and Raff. 1996The Shape of Life]

Here's what I found, from a downloaded .pdf: Haeckel's drawings misrepresent the embryos they purport to show and Haeckel entirely omitted the earliest stages of development in which the various classes of vertebrates are morphologically very different. Haeckel, however, deceived most people by omitting the first stages and starting at the middle stages of development when the embryos appear to be more similar. What I glean from a very cursory review (I'm running out of time tonight) is that the embryos appear very dissimilar at early and late stages of development, but more similar at middle stages. So a photograph of the middle stages with the omission of the early and late stages could be misleading.

This is a fascinating subject for me and I'll spend a little more time researching because, as I've just discovered, Wells is a vertebrate embryologist. So now I really am curious as to what he felt was misleading. I'll let you know if I come up with anything of import.

Oops, sorry. I missed the link. Do you have any idea why he called it "misleading"? I don't either. But, again, what one person says about embryonic photos or how he grades a textbook was not my point. My point was that so-called "facts" take on a life of their own and it is difficult to get an entrenched group of any philosophy to reject their sacredly held tenants. And I do mean ANY group, including those who espouse philosophies which I believe.

I haven't seen the "misleading photos" so I can't comment.

In re: but, in what I consider the most amusing line in this entire chapter, Wells expresses indignation that "Some textbooks, instead of reproducing or redrawing Haeckel's embryos, use actual photos." How dare those nefarious textbook authors use photographic data to support their ideas! I read this totally differently. I read the quote to mean that the textbooks, instead of using photos of Haeckel's original drawings, should be redrawing them to be accurate. In other words, they're using photos of drawings that are inaccurate when they could just as easily correct the errors that Haeckel made -- but to do so wouldn't fit with their agenda. I could be wrong, but this is how I read it.

My issue is not with some random person's rating of a textbook and how or why they arrived at that rating. My issue is that biology textbooks still present the drawings even though, in the words of your author, they are "deplorable", a "waste of space", and you have to go through "contortions" to "rationalize" them. My claim is that it is difficult to recant or remove supposed evidence for a theory even when it's not accurate. And then that so-called "evidence" takes on a life of its own. The fact that the drawings are still evident in modern-day textbooks when they were discredited in the 19th century proves my point. Just because your author doesn't like someone's commentary on the drawings doesn't make them, the drawings, any more valid. It just means he disagrees with someone else's reasons.

Yup, I read it again to make sure I didn't miss anything. YOUR author says: This is not to suggest that textbooks are without flaw. I agree with Wells that the contortions by Balinski in his 1975 text to rationalize the biogenetic law are deplorable. I also concur that textbooks that are already giving short shrift to this particular subject ought not to be wasting space with Haeckel's illustration, which is not good biological data and is only of historical interest. (emphasis added) So I guess the author's complaint is the manner in which the creation scientists criticized the textbooks or the underlying philosophy from which those creation scientists came, not that the textbooks were wrong. Methinks the [man] doth protest too much.

From that website, Haeckel's work was discredited in the 19 th century, and has not been relevant to biology since the rediscovery of Mendel's laws of genetics. Then why is it still in textbooks? Why do evolutionary textbooks still call on it? I agree that it's been discredited; I'm speaking to the issue of how difficult it is to recall an entrenched theory, regardless of whether or not it's true.

I think that requires a leap of faith, as much as religion does. I don't see how chance can be an architect. The theory of evolution has been around since philosophers in ancient Greece espoused it. So it had been around for a while. Furthermore, the age of a theory doesn't determine its veracity.

And that is the problem with your knee-jerk reaction to the theory. You refuse to even consider its scientific basis because you hold a philosophical and/or political disagreement with where you presume it comes from. You will not even entertain the notion that evolution could be wrong because to do so would cause your other beliefs to crumble. And so you disregard and mock a theory about which you know very little.

It is universally true that once something is implanted in the minds of any establishment or even of the general public, it is difficult to reverse it. It's true for bigotry, for politics, for religion, and for urban legends. I don't advocate putting anyone to death for their beliefs, past, present, or future.

What I'm saying is that at some point evolution theory had to go from not being generally accepted by the scientific community to being accepted enough by the scientific community to be taught in schools. The same situation could be extended to intelligent design; while the proponents of it do not number as many as the proponents of evolution theory, they may one day do so -- and they may also be right. Just as evolutionists once fought an uphill battle -- and won -- so are creationists fighting an uphill battle now. To dismiss any theory because the scientific community doesn't accept it would mean that no new theory is EVER accepted.

Well that's definitely true, because there are blatant lies that are still presented in evolutionary textbooks, such as Haeckel's drawings of various life forms in different stages of development. Once an establishment has spouted something as truth, it takes a heck of a lot of time to reverse and/or recant.

So you don't consider that the complexity of life even remotely could suggest that a designer was involved? If you came across a fully constructed building, would you believe there was no architect?

So before the majority of the scientific community accepted evolution theory, it should have been taught? Because there was a time when this was reversed. BTW, you're right. I used faulty language. The theory is accepted by many, many more than just me. Well, that's slightly idiotic. You could start with the fact that there is no correlation between piracy and global temperatures. That comparison is a little of a stretch.

If I have a hypothesis and I believe the evidence substantiates it, and you can produce no evidence to contradict it, isn't that the same thing?

And yet an avowed evolutionist says: At the present stage of geological research, we have to admit that there is nothing in the geological records that runs contrary to the view of conservative creationists, that God created each species separately, presumably from the dust of the earth." You disregard my viewpoint because you say it lacks scientific research, but an avowed evolutionist says there's nothing in the geological record that negates creationism. So who's right? I think you're disregarding it either because you don't like what it stands for or you haven't researched it. Not because it's not scientific. As an aside, you can believe in ID and not believe in God as the Creator.

I think you missed what I've been saying all along, that no theory of origins can be definitively proven. My preference is to believe the theory that most closely fits the evidence in the world around us. Your preference seems to be to dismiss creation theory as a knee-jerk reaction because you don't want to consider the option that the Bible might be literal. The article I posted was one of hundreds that I could post which demonstrates some serious flaws in evolutionary theory.

There's another thing I love about this dialogue. It's inspiring me to do even more research than I've already done. This is an interesting article: It is well known that creatures which live permanently in water generally breathe through gills, not lungs. The lungfishes, which are able to survive long periods when their watery habitat dries up, are regarded as a peculiar exception. Most people, having been conditioned by evolutionary texts, believe that the only other permanent waterdwellers to have lungs are the whales and porpoises. These are believed to have descended from land creatures which later evolved back into the sea. The scenario goes like this: fish (no lungs) —› [out of sea] —› amphibian (lungs) —› reptile (lungs) —› land mammal (lungs) —› [back to sea] —› porpoise (lungs) Most fish have a gas-filled swimbladder, which helps their flotation. For a long time it was believed that this swim-bladder was a logical ‘first step’ towards the later development of lungs as vertebrates conquered the land. (A conquest existing only in the realm of fantasy, by the way, not demonstrated by fossils.) No one disputes the fact that swim-bladders and lungs develop from the same basic tissues, and from the same type of out-pouching of the foregut. In the evolution model, this is interpreted in terms of common ancestry; in the creation model, in terms of the same Grundbauplan (basic building plan), with creative variations on the same theme. Awkward So how do these neat evolutionary stories square up with reality? The first awkward fact, usually not mentioned in high school evolutionary texts, is that there are actually many modern species of fish (not mammals, but real fish) which have lungs as well as gills. For instance, among the so-called ‘higher’ bony fish (the teleosts) many species of electric fish have them. Of the chondrostei, the so-called ‘primitive’ bony fish, the Polypterus is so dependent on its paired lungs that this fish can drown if prevented from surfacing. An even more bitter blow for evolutionists (again seldom seen in basic texts) is that fossil evidence has come to light forcing a 180-degree reversal in the ‘swim-bladder to lung’ story. Lungs appear to be much more ‘ancient’ than swim-bladders, so by this reasoning, lungs must have evolved into swim-bladders! The renowned comparative anatomists Romer and Parsons tell us in their book The Vertebrate Body (Saunders Co., Philadelphia, 1978, p. 329) that there is evidence that the most ancient (according to evolutionary tenets) placoderm fishes already had functioning lungs, which would mean that all ‘primitive’ jawed fish had them. The diagram with its captions shows the distribution of lungs among living and a few fossil species of fish. All of this is of course consistent with the simultaneous creation of all water-dwelling creatures on day five of creation week, with variations on the Grundbauplane. Whether endowed with gills, lungs, or a combination of both, all fish, living or extinct, appear to be (or have been) well equipped for the requirements of their way of life. The ‘obvious’ evolution of lungs from swim-bladders turns out to be a myth. In addition, a literal evolutionary- chronological reading of the fossil record shows that evolution must have had remarkable foresight. In spite of the fact that lungs are not needed for survival (fish being able to cope well with gills) they appear and are prevalent among fishes at least 100 million years (on the alleged evolutionary time-scale) before their (imaginary) migration to the land. How wonderful of evolution to develop, all by chance of course, such a ‘test pattern’, ready to be taken out of mothballs when required. No wonder such awkward facts are not generally highlighted when presenting impressive-sounding evolutionary ‘just-so’ stories. Joachim Vetter, Dr. Med.hab., Ph.D. has medical and biological qualifications, and is a frequent contributor to the Swiss/German creation-oriented magazine Factum. His special interest is the comparative anatomy of fossil and recent forms.

I have really enjoyed this discussion. I think what makes it effective is neither of us is disrespecting the other. There have been others who have posted on this thread (and others) that have not been so respectful and I've had to bite my tongue, uh fingers, uh keyboard, and not respond. Glad to hear it. I don't expect anyone who believes in evolution to run out and espouse creation with no research, nor vice versa. We all have to reach our own conclusions based on the evidence and how it makes sense to us. Dialogue is good. I've always been amazed at those who mock or disregard, because to me it's like yelling, "Look at me! I'm narrow-minded!"