Originally Posted by 100_Percent_Juice
Rob, I admire your passion about what you feel but, I don't totally understand your post.
What is your definition of evolve? There are many different views on evolution. Do you believe that man came about by chance from a puddle? If so, where has that been proven as fact? I think they still call this the theory of evolution. Even Darwin himself said this "To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree." Also, if humans are supposed to be an evolutionary improvement over monkeys, why do humans suffer from emotional problems that do not afflict monkeys?
I believe the generally-accepted theory of evolution. The first living organism was a single-celled, bacteria-like being. That slowly evolved into a multi-cell organism, into a fish, into amphibians, into reptiles, into birds, into mammals. I don't know how much more detailed you want my definition, but j hope that answers your question.
In order for this to have happened, there needed to be a spark of energy to get the atoms to align in a way that created life. This is where my agnosticism comes in. That spark could have been a natural phenomenon, but it could have been the "hand of God". This is why I say that if there is a God, he is not all-powerful. He is simply something that exists outside of our universe that can influence our universe.
Over the course of evolutionary history, there are plenty of animals that have less-than-desireable traits, such as our emotional volatility. For all we know, we could be the stepping stone to the next great evolutionary stage. It could also be argued that in our developmental stage, the angry people killed the apathetic people, and therefore they were the ones that propagated the species.
After more than a century of searching, how much fossil evidence is there of “ape-men”? Richard Leakey stated: “Those working in this field have so little evidence upon which to base their conclusions that it is necessary for them frequently to change their conclusions.” New Scientist commented: “Judged by the amount of evidence upon which it is based, the study of fossil man hardly deserves to be more than a sub-discipline of paleontology or anthropology. . . . the collection is so tantalizingly incomplete, and the specimens themselves often so fragmentary and inconclusive.”
Similarly, the book Origins admits: “As we move farther along the path of evolution towards humans the going becomes distinctly uncertain, again owing to the paucity of fossil evidence.” Science magazine adds: “The primary scientific evidence is a pitifully small array of bones from which to construct man’s evolutionary history. One anthropologist has compared the task to that of reconstructing the plot of War and Peace with 13 randomly selected pages.”
Just how sparse is the fossil record regarding “ape-men”? Note the following. Newsweek: “‘You could put all the fossils on the top of a single desk,’ said Elwyn Simons of Duke University.” The New York Times: “The known fossil remains of man’s ancestors would fit on a billiard table. That makes a poor platform from which to peer into the mists of the last few million years.” Science Digest: “The remarkable fact is that all the physical evidence we have for human evolution can still be placed, with room to spare, inside a single coffin! . . . Modern apes, for instance, seem to have sprung out of nowhere. They have no yesterday, no fossil record. And the true origin of modern humans—of upright, naked, toolmaking, big-brained beings—is, if we are to be honest with ourselves, an equally mysterious matter.”
Modern-type humans, with the capacity to reason, plan, invent, build on previous knowledge and use complex languages, appear suddenly in the fossil record. Gould, in his book The Mismeasure of Man, notes: “We have no evidence for biological change in brain size or structure since Homo sapiens appeared in the fossil record some fifty thousand years ago.” Thus, the book The Universe Within asks: “What caused evolution . . . to produce, as if overnight, modern humankind with its highly special brain?” Evolution is unable to answer.
Another difficulty for evolution is the fact that nowhere in the fossil record are found partially formed bones or organs that could be taken for the beginning of a new feature. For instance, there are fossils of various types of flying creatures—birds, bats, extinct pterodactyls. According to evolutionary theory, they must have evolved from transitional ancestors. But none of those transitional forms have been found. There is not a hint of them. Are there any fossils of giraffes with necks two thirds or three quarters as long as at present? Are there any fossils of birds evolving a beak from a reptile jaw? Is there any fossil evidence of fish developing an amphibian pelvis, or of fish fins turning into amphibian legs, feet and toes? The fact is, looking for such developing features in the fossil record has proved to be a fruitless quest.
Wow, modern science isn't infallable? That isn't news. They've only been searching for fossils or 100 years? Of course they won't uncover the millions of years of evolution in 100 years. They're still finding and naming new species in the ocean to this day. This is where our differing beliefs come in. I fill in the gaps with evolution, you fill them in with creation.
There are fossils showing fish with the beginnings of legs, and snakes as well.
There are also mutations that just pop up in certain offspring, instead of slowly coming to fruition. For example, that octopus baby that was born in India, I think it was. That particular example wasn't helpful, but if it were, she would have mated and passed the mutation along.
How can you say that the Earth is not the only place with life and then say, "I know life hasn't been found yet"? All the other planets that scientists have probed are devoid of life. But Earth teems with life, sustained by very complex systems that provide light, air, heat, water and food, all in exquisite balance. It shows evidence of having been specially built to accommodate living things comfortably. Imagine that you are in a barren desert, devoid of all life. Suddenly you come upon a beautiful house. The house has air conditioning, heating, plumbing and electricity. Its refrigerator and cupboards are filled with food. Its basement contains fuel and other supplies. Now, suppose you asked someone where all of this came from, in such a barren desert. What would you think if that person answered, “It just happened to appear there by chance”? Would you believe that? Or would you take for granted that it had a designer and builder?
All the other planets? All, what, 5 of them? That's just this solar system. Like Scott said, the universe is unfathomably large, with trillions, probably more, of galaxies and solar systems. I'd say that it is possible for at least one of those planets in those solar systems to have a planet that can and does support life.
In the desert example, it would have to be the Sahara, and I'd been wandering for 10 minutes before I found that house. That would lead me to believe that there are other houses with people in them somewhere in the desert.
Again, I don't claim to know where our universe came from. The house needing a builder doesn't feel like an accurate analogy, though. We know there is something that exists that builds houses. We don't know if there is something that exists that builds universes (multiverses?).
Among the many precise conditions vital to life on the earth is the amount of light and heat received from the sun. The earth gets only a small fraction of the sun’s energy. Yet, it is just the right amount required to sustain life. This is because the earth is just the right distance from the sun—an average 93,000,000 miles. If the earth were much closer to the sun or farther away from it, temperatures would be too hot or too cold for life.
As it orbits the sun once a year the earth travels at a speed of about 66,600 miles an hour. That speed is just right to offset the gravitational pull of the sun and keep the earth at the proper distance. If that speed were decreased, the earth would be pulled toward the sun. In time, Earth could become a scorched wasteland like Mercury, the planet closest to the sun. Mercury’s daytime temperature is over 600 degrees Fahrenheit. However, if Earth’s orbital speed were increased, it would move farther away from the sun and could become an icy waste like Pluto, the planet whose orbit reaches farthest from the sun. Pluto’s temperature is about 300 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
In addition, the earth consistently makes a complete rotation on its axis every 24 hours. This provides regular periods of light and darkness. But what if the earth rotated on its axis, say, only once a year? It would mean that the same side of the earth would be facing the sun all year long. That side would likely become a furnacelike desert, while the side away from the sun would likely become a sub-zero wasteland. Few, if any, living things could exist in those extreme circumstances.
As Earth rotates on its axis, it is tilted 23.5 degrees in relation to the sun. If the earth were not tilted, there would be no change of seasons. Climate would be the same all the time. While this would not make life impossible, it would make it less interesting and would drastically change the present crop cycles in many places. If the earth were tilted much more, there would be extremely hot summers and extremely cold winters
All of that info about earth is why it supports life as we know it. There could be other forms of life out there that are more resistant to cold, because they live on a planet slightly farther away from their sun than we do to ours. Are you saying that out of all of the solar systems in the universe, it isn't possible that there is another earth-like planet? There are 2 in our own solar system that are near misses! Venus used to look like earth, but over millions (billions?) of years, it has slowly gotten closer to the sun, and the sun has expanded. I'd suggest that life was possible on Venus back then. They haven't dug for fossils there, so how do we know there wasn't? There isn't any water there because of the extreme heat and small atmosphere. For all we know, it used to have water before it got closer to the sun. Maybe our water came from Venus when it was boiled off. Maybe earth caught the water floating in space.
No. I think you are asking the time period question based on the fact that many people believe that God created the earth in 6 literal 24hr days. The book of Genesis was written in Hebrew. In that language, “day” refers to a period of time. It can be either a lengthy one or a literal day of 24 hours. Even in Genesis all six “days” are spoken of collectively as one lengthy period. The fact is, the Bible reveals that the creative “days,” or ages, encompass thousands of years.
A person can see this from what the Bible says about the seventh “day.” The record of each of the first six “days” ends saying, ‘and there came to be evening and morning, a first day,’ and so on. Yet, you will not find that comment after the record of the seventh “day.” And in the first century C.E., some 4,000 years downstream in history, the Bible referred to the seventh rest “day” as still continuing. (Hebrews 4:4-6) So the seventh “day” was a period spanning thousands of years, and we can logically conclude the same about the first six “days.”
You're right, I lumped you in with them, I apologize. I can't assume what you believe just as much as you can't assume what I believe. Regardless of the time frame of a "day", accoring to the bible, earth was created before anything else in the universe, including the life-supporting sun. If a "day" is really thousands, millions, or billions of years, how did plant life exist for so long without a sun to provide them with life? How did light exist without a sun being yet created? Why doesn't that light still exist without the sun?
Sir Fred Hoyle explains in The Nature of the Universe: “To avoid the issue of creation it would be necessary for all the material of the Universe to be infinitely old, and this it cannot be. . . . Hydrogen is being steadily converted into helium and the other elements . . . How comes it then that the Universe consists almost entirely of hydrogen? If matter were infinitely old this would be quite impossible. So we see that the Universe being what it is, the creation issue simply cannot be dodged.”
The only thing that turns hydrogen into other elements is a fusion reaction in a star. Just as the age of the universe is unfathomable, so is the amount of matter in it. So is its age. This all leads back to the original question(s), of where did we come from and why?
To answer your question, I personally do not know how old the universe is. With what we as humans know today it would make sense that the universe is at least millions of years old. On a clear night, the light of Andromeda galaxy may be visible to the naked eye. Now, knowing how far away that island universe of stars is from the earth and that light travels at 186,282 miles [299,792 km] a second, scientists have determined that the light you see coming from the Andromeda galaxy is 1.5 million years old.
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