Your cites do not provide evidence. They present theory--ideas about what they think happened. They have observed various organisms, and have put together a construct about what they imagine happened. That is not evidence. The same evidence of the observed organisms supports alternative theories as well, such as Intelligent Design.

[quote=bevin]

But that makes it seem as if you don't put your faith in the Bible so much as in your life experiences. It seems to me that we can only know God from what He has revealed about Himself in the Bible. We can't really be certain of anything we think we know about God apart from special revelation. That is because the natural world is not as God wanted it to be, and therefore we are liable to misunderstand it if we go by what we see around us instead of by what God has revealed in Scripture.

In other words, we are in danger of getting some very bad ideas about life and the world if we allow our experiences to determine how we understand or interpret the Bible, rather than letting Scripture determine how we view life.



How do you harmonize a God of love with the God who deliberately chose to use evolutionary processes to bring about life and human beings? And why would God plan to rid the universe of pain and suffering when He made it a universe of pain and suffering? If God chose evolution as the means of making life, then he obviously can't object too much to pain and suffering, because pain and suffering were built into his original plan for this earth.



I agree. I am not out to win an argument. I am out to try to understand and to know what is true. We all need to be honest with ourselves and with others and admit when things are uncertain and when we are not sure of something. But at the same time, we have to realize that we cannot always determine for others when they can be certain. That is why it is best to be modest and humble in our statements of the truth, because we could be wrong; and even if we are right, the really important thing is to treat others with love and respect, even if they don't deserve it or return it.

to get that number, he must be counting each molecule rather than the kinds of molecules.

Most of the molecules are water. No organisation required. They are inside a membrane - anyone who has blown a bubble has achieved much the same effect - little organisation required. In the membrane are a variety of channels and receptors, but their location is not fixed, anywhere will do. Nor are all of them required - some are just 'nice to have'.

Within the membrane, dissolved in the water, are a variety of chemicals. They get there by the semi-permeable nature of the membrane.

This is ALL you need to have a self-replicating organism, provided that - like soap bubbles - they can shrink, grow, divide, and pop. Heck, you don't even need the membrane, provided that the molecules inside form a droplet instead of dissipating - eg: fat globules floating on water. The membrane and the water content can come later.

Within the membrane are various organelles. These organelles are not all required. They can be mix-n-matched. You can take organelles out of one cell and place them in another, and they continue to work.

We also know you can get colonies of several different kinds of cells living together - we are such a colony.

We know that viruses carry fragments of DNA, and retrovirus RNA. We know that it is possible to splice more DNA into the existing DNA, and we know that the resulting longer DNA still copies and works - and that the addition also works.

In short, we KNOW that the processes of mutation, replication, and selection apply to cells, and apply to much simpler cells than the full range of eukaryote cells.

So calculations based on the complexity of a modern eukaryote cell are meaningless - the cell did not come together randomly - in either the creation or the evolution model.

/Bevin

Well, now, that is progress. For decades, evolutionists asserted that, in fact, organic evolution did occur as a result of unguided, random events. I think they finally gave up on that. Finally, they acknowledge that there must be some form of guidance--although still unwilling to acknowledge the Creator! Instead, many are now turning to 'self-organization of matter.' Hmmmmm. I wonder how long they will try that one, before giving up on it?

[quote=bevin]



Based on my reading, I thought the cell was highly organized and proficient. We are made up of 100,000,000,000,000 cells and each cell has 200,000,000,000,000 groups of atoms called molecules.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that there is no organization required. All the various parts of the cell are made up of molecules. As you know the cell consists of the cell membrane, which controls what enters and leaves the cell; the Ribosomes, which are structures on which amino acids are assembled into proteins; the Nucleus, which, enclosed in a double-membrane envelope, is the control center that directs the cell's activities; Chromosomes, which contain the cell's DNA, its genetic master plan; Nucleolus, the site where ribosomes are assembled; Endoplasmic retiulum, which are sheets of membranes that store or transport the proteins made by the ribosomes attached to them (some ribosomes float free in the cell); Mitochondria, which are production centers for ATP, the molecules that supply energy for th cell; Golgi bodies, a group of flattened membrane sacs that package and distribute proteins made by the cell; and Centrioles, which lie near the nucleus and are important in cell reproduction.

That sounds very organized to me, and to think that we have 100 trillion of them!

The National Geographic said that "if writtten out, the DNA of the cell would fill a thousand 600-page books. Each cell is a world brimming with as many as two hundred trillion tiny groups of atoms called molecules...Our 46 chromosome 'threads' linked together would measure more than six feet. Yet the nucleus that contains them is less than four ten-thousandths of an inch in diameter."

Newsweek magazine uses an illustration to give an idea of the cell's activities: "Each of those 100 trillion cells functions like a walled city. Power plants generate the cell's energy. Factories produce proteins, vital units of chemical commenrce. Complex transportation systems guide specific chemicals from point to point within the cell and beyond. Sentries at the barricades control the export and import markets, and monitor the outside world for signs of danger. Disciplined biological armies stand ready to grapple with invaders. A centralized genetic government maintains order."




If the first cell or cells did not come together randomly, how did they come together? Who made them, or directed their organization? Can you explain how they came together, then?

It's also possible that millions of years ago, God made the material the earth is made up of and then did nothing further with it until about 6,000 years ago. When He made life on this earth, God created mature animals and people, so that if anyone had seen them the day they were made, they would have assumed those things had been on earth for quite a while. Perhaps God made things so that their "clock" doesn't accurately reflect how long they've existed. There are lots of things that could have made the earth's "clock" unreliable, as far as scientists' attempts to determine its age is concerned.

It depends on what you mean by "organized". Would you describe a couple of grains of salt in a tea-spoon of water "organized"? Would you describe three people randomly floating in a swimming pool as "organized"?

The cell is more like a team or a society than an entity. The various pieces in it are semi-independent, and it is worth while learning how cell growth and division actually works - something we can watch happening.



Some chemicals cause copies of another chemical to form in a soup of very simple molecules. These other chemicals might, or might not, be stable - they may break down after a while into the simple molecules again. This sets up a system with mutation, replication, and selection - but one that does not have cells!

Google "autocatalyst cell origin"

The GRI has some stuff on the concept - although they are against it (but look at the date - 1989!!!)
http://www.grisda.org/origins/16040.htm

Read and understand this abstract - http://www.springerlink.com/content/cpw4d9wdk90haqxu/

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005AdSpR..35.1643B

The fundamental idea is this...

The autocatalysts worked better in synergistic teams, and the occassional rare improvement that made its team more competitive caused that team to destroy its weaker competitors - creating a huge pool of almost identical players mutating until the next improvement caused the next revolution...

The very first replicating unit more complex than a single molecule was possibly a blob of them that grew by aggregation and replication, and (once it got too large) splitting purely by physical stresses.

/Bevin

We still have to understand how so many fossils got buried inside of rocks. I don't think anyone is suggesting that God created the rocks with fossils already inside of them.

However the world was drastically different before the flood. Over a few generations, man's life span decreased 90% after the flood. Doesn't that seem to indicate that something was drastically different?

I am just tagging on here:

Re: Robert Gentry

Yes, I heard him speak many years ago.

I will point out that his theory is considered faulty by Phds in his area, whom I personally know, are SDA and are quite respectable.

I think taht we shoudl be careful about automaticly accepting what Gentry says.

Certainly we do! Fossils occur in sedimentary rocks. Under the cataclysmic conditions of the Flood, with tremendous pressure applied almost instantaneously, the sediment both compacted and hardened quickly. That is your key. The evidence of that is that, in many cases, the organisms are preserved in detail.

Dave