Can Creationism and Evolution coexist?

Originally posted by daniel58
I want too cure you of yours, so you must want to cure a lot of peoples "delusions".

so?

Why not try it by engage in reasoning? -that would require you to actually explain the evidence against your hypotheses.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
so?

Why not try it by engage in reasoning? -that would require you to actually explain the evidence against your hypotheses.

So if you believe in evolution and the "big bang" what exactly is it?

Originally posted by daniel58
So if you believe in evolution and the "big bang" what exactly is it?

We both know what it is (at least I do) so I don’t see the point of your question.
I suppose I could go to the bother of defining each but you would be much better off
just look it up in wiki if you actually don’t know what each is and wiki would probably
do a better job at defining each than me anyway.

Note that I don’t say “only God knows” as an escape clause to avoid reasoning/talking about it or to avoid saying “I don’t know“.
If I honestly don’t know an answer to the question (which is often) then I just say “I don’t know”.
I have answered all your questions to the best of my ability so I challenge you to answer one of mine without giving the none-answer of “only God knows”:

How would you account for why a “God” would create such apparently blatantly obvious flaws in the arrangement of the anatomy of human beings and other animals?

-If you don’t know why a “God” would apparently blatantly obvious flaws (which I strongly suspect is the case) then your answer should be a simple honest “I don’t know” which would be a perfectly reasonable response.

-if you make a hypotheses why then I would really like to hear it so that we can analyse it 🙂

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
We both know what it is (at least I do) so I don’t see the point of your question.
I suppose I could go to the bother of defining each but you would be much better off
just look it up in wiki if you actually don’t know what each is and wiki would probably
do a better job at defining each than me anyway.

Note that I don’t say “only God knows” a ...[text shortened]...
-if you make a hypotheses why then I would really like to hear it so that we can analyse it 🙂

I don't know, I have never really studied the anatomy of anything to tell you the truth, I had no idea what you were talking about when you told me the flaws, but as I said before "Only God knows" (which is not a dumb statement), why don't you ask Him?

Originally posted by Conrau K
Catholics are free to choose whichever side on the evolutionary debate, even if modern popes have accepted evolutionary theory.

The ex director of the vatican observatory George Coyne makes an excellent argument for gods creation via evolution. Some videos are available on the web. Anyway he ended up getting the big boot for his beliefs. I tend to lean toward his beliefs myself. He shows observational evidence that in fact the stars themselves go through an evolutionary process to get the chemistry for our bodily makeup. He claims god set it to motion to create. The different religions around the world may not agree, but in this particular case not only do they coexist but are the same.

Originally posted by daniel58
I don't know, I have never really studied the anatomy of anything to tell you the truth, I had no idea what you were talking about when you told me the flaws, but as I said before "Only God knows" (which is not a dumb statement), why don't you ask Him?

…I don't know,
….

I appreciate your honesty.

…I have never really studied the anatomy of anything to tell you the truth, ...

I have (just out of curiosity).

…I had no idea what you were talking about when you told me the flaws,
….

Why not have a quick study of them -well, for this purpose, lets just concentrate on a couple involving flaws in the human eye:

1, the blood vessels for the retina are in front of the retina instead of behind and thus partly obscure light from reaching the retina. At usual, evolution does its best at a bad job and makes those blood vessels extra thin to minimise the blockage of light but, never a less, we would clearly see a bit better if those blood vessels where placed behind the retina.

2, the nerve-cell connections from the retina cells to the optic nerve are placed in front of the retina rather than behind and, as a result, scatter and bend some of the light before it reaches the light-sensitive cells of the retina. Again, at usual, evolution does its best at a bad job and makes those connections extra thin to minimise the scattering of light but, never a less, we would clearly see a bit better if those connections where placed behind the light-sensitive cells of the retina and, as a result, we also have a blind spot where all those connections are most concentrated in front of the retina which is where the retina connects to the optic nerve.

Here is a link that says something about both flaws:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/change/grand/page05.html

…but as I said before "Only God knows" (which is not a dumb statement),
…..

But it is a dumb statement: since you cannot know though logic nor evidence that there is a ’God’ to ’know’ things, saying "Only God knows" is, for all practical purposes, equivalent to saying “I don’t know” -it’s a none answer that avoids explaining anything that apparently contradicts the hypothesis that there is a ‘God‘ (such as flaws in our anatomy).

…why don't you ask Him?
...

That’s like asking me “why don’t you just ask Santa?”

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
[b]…I don't know,
….

I appreciate your honesty.

…I have never really studied the anatomy of anything to tell you the truth, ...

I have (just out of curiosity).

…I had no idea what you were talking about when you told me the flaws,
….

Why not have a quick study of them -well, for this purpose, lets just concentrate o ...[text shortened]... ]…why don't you ask Him?
...[/b]

That’s like asking me “why don’t you just ask Santa?”[/b]

Well I thought that the blockage of light was supposed to be good so it doesn't blind us or so that we could see through the light, so it doesn't damage the eye, am I right or not?

Originally posted by daniel58
Well I thought that the blockage of light was supposed to be good so it doesn't blind us or so that we could see through the light, so it doesn't damage the eye, am I right or not?

No -it doesn’t help to stop light ‘blinding’ us (and I am sure there has never been a credible scientific hypotheses that it does).

1, we have an adjustable iris that blocks off excessive light that would otherwise ‘blind’ us and without blocking off much light in dim-light so there would be no advantage in having extra non-adjustable layers blocking off a fixed proportion of the light (i.e. regardless of whether it is bright or dim light) especially when you consider the fact that this would reduce our vision in dim-light which can have fatal consequences if we don’t see danger approaching.

2, many other animal groups don’t have blood vessels and retina connections in front of their retinas and they are not particularly prone to being ’blinded’ by light -at least I see no evidence that they are particularly more prone to being blinded by light than us.

-there is absolutely no doubt that having blood vessels and retina connections in front of their retinas instead of behind hinders our vision and gives a clear net disadvantage -there is absolutely no doubt that it is a flaw.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
-there is absolutely no doubt that it is a flaw.

I disagree. You are making the assumption that humans should be perfect. Surely once you make that assumption you can call just about anything (such as the fact that we do not have x-ray vision) a flaw.
To demonstrate my argument, a cat has exactly the same configuration of blood vessels and nerves as humans do, yet it sees much better in low light situations due in part to an iris design that allows much more variation in size (so it can get much bigger in the dark). Yet would you call our lack of such a design a flaw?

I fully agree that our eyes demonstrate that they are not perfect, and that if they have a designer he was not particularly intelligent (or had unknown reasons for making them not as good as he could have), but the word 'flaw' just doesn't work for me as it implies a particular design is intended but not achieved.