Amen, brother. We never observe increases in the genome. And the few people try to argue, either don't work, or it comes back to the fact that they are still outweighed by losses in the genome millions to one. The fact is we observe creatures everywhere LOSING existing information, not gaining.
The word "evolution" has taken on a lot of connotations in the world in which we live. If I were to get into an argument with an Evolutionist, we'd probably both agree that evolution is a force of nature that functions on our planet. However, an Evolutionist and a Christian SHOULD disagree on the particulars. An Evolutionist will tell you that evolution, given enough time, can create more complexity than previously existed. Like has been touched on in this thread already, Christians should understand that evolution does in fact lead to change in a population over time ... although not by increasing the amount of information (DNA) available before. Look at the dog; Noah took aboard the ark some dogs that carried the genes for long legs, short legs, long fur, short fur, red fur, black fur, brown fur, low intelligence and lower intelligence still. And why shouldn't God have created His creatures to have just the genes needed to survive in a variety of environments? Heck, if *I* were to create creatures to inhabit a world that changed, I'd hope I'd have given them the genes to adapt along with it. ... although maybe He forgot the "extra survival genes" for the unicorns, which is why we don't see any around anymore? :ROFL: The point though, is that no matter how many poor genes we select for, no matter how rat-like, how diminutive and puntable a chihuahua is, it's still a dog, not a new species. The genes for the chihuahua existed on the ark, it just took some cruel humans and a whole lot of inbreeding to bring those genes out.
Is anyone here familiar with the "Cambrian explosion"? How can anyone believe in evolution and be familiar with the Cambrian explosion?
*You may have noticed that I capitalize the word "Evolutionist" in my writings. I do this because they are a religion: they have their own prophets (like Darwin), holy books (grade school textbooks) and clergy (we call them teachers). Though I also may not agree with a Buddhist, I'll still capitalize "Buddhist."
According to a 1991 Gallup Poll, of the scientists and engineers in the US, only about 5% were creationists. Considering only those working in the relevant fields of earth and life sciences, there are about 480,000 scientists, but only about 700 believe in "creation-science" or consider it a valid theory (Robinson 1995). This means that less than 0.15 percent of relevant scientists believe in creationism. And that is just in the US, which has more creationists than any other industrialized country. In other countries, the number of scientists who accept creationism drops to less than one tenth of 1 percent.
This was in 1991, way before the human genome project, after which evolution was basically established as a fact. No real scientist denies the fact of evolution anymore. The debate is over. Face it.
My question is, no one in this discussion (and I would venture to say on this site) is a scientist. I am not a science major but I took some hard sciences in college and even that was very challenging. I can't even imagine how difficult it must be to get a PhD in science. Imagine all the writing, publishing work, thousands of pages and articles to read; it's ridiculously difficult.
What astonishes me is the sheer arrogance of certain religious people without any serious training in the sciences who dare stand up to the whole, world-wide academic institution of science, and who dare to say that scientists are wrong on evolution because of [insert creationist argument].
Seriously, don't you think scientists have thought of that objection? Just imagine, hundreds of thousands of evolutionary biologists around the world who devote their daily lives ONLY to the study of evolution--and they all come to the same basic consensus. Don't you think they've thought of your silly creationist objections? Seriously.
I actually am going to play devil's advocate here and say straight up that the assumption that random events in machines do not lead to more increasingly complex machines is absolutely wrong.
I've worked with a field of study called artificial life -- it's essentially creating computer programs that have constrained design parameters and then letting them run to see what happens. MOST of the time, my programs typically see a short blip of activity and then the agents -- or the "machines" do in fact break down and "life" ceases to exist.
Every once in a while, though, I am able to create a program that just goes..and goes... and goes. Agents will become larger, move faster (in graphical 2D or 3D environments), live longer, or reproduce more -- just ONE of these test-runs proves the case that "evolution" does in fact exist, and these can (and have) been duplicated over and over. These are not guided systems -- they were started with some basic rules and not interfered with at any point.
Now, I'm going to stop right here and say that EVOLUTION, despite how its portrayed in media, is NOT the study of the origin of life. If's the study of change in life over time. In this context, evolution is NOT exclusive to Christian belief and can exist parallel to it.
