Evolution or Devolution?

[theophilus]

It is a widely held belief that life began with a simple single celled organism and over time the descendants of that first lifeform changed in various ways and became more complex to produce all the different forms of life we have today. This process in called evolution.

An alternate explanation is found in the Bible. It tells us that every form of life, including man, was created by God already perfect and fully developed. But because of sin all forms of life became imperfect and subject to death.

Genesis 5 shows us that originally it was normal for people to live to be over 900 years old. After the flood the human lifespan gradually lessened until now it is unusual for someone to live even 100 years. In recent years improvements in sanitation, nutrition, and medicine have enabled people to live longer that in the past but this doesn't mean that our normal lifespan has increased. It only means that more people are able to live out their full life rather than having it cut short by disease or injury.

We no longer live as long as people did in the past. It seems reasonable that we are physically inferior to them in other ways and the same thing is true of other kinds of life. We could call this process devolution.

There is no doubt that over time changes occur in organisms so that the descendants are different in many ways from their ancestors. Two example of this are the different races of humans and the different breeds of dogs and other domesticated animals. But is this change the result of evolution or devolution? Are we seeing a process that began with simple lifeforms and has led to the development of more complex life or are we seeing a process of degeneration from an original state of prefection?

Change comes about by a process called natural selection. Individuals within any species differ from each other and sometimes some individuals possess some characteristic that makes it easier for them to survive in a specific environment. They are more likely to survive and produce offspring than others of their species. Over time it is possible that all those lacking this survival characteristic will die off and the remaining members of the species will be different from their ancestors.

Some people would say that this species has evolved, but is that really the case? Evolution requires that species develop new genes that didn't exist in their ancestors. Natural selection does just the opposite; it eliminates genes that reduce the chance of survival. It may bring about changes but the end result of those changes is organisms that have less genetic variation that their ancestors did. This is exactly what we would expect to see if the Biblical account of creation were true.

[Darwinian]

Did you actually write all this with a straight face?

And if you are right then what have those thousands of evolutionary biologists been wasting their time on for all of these years. Perhaps they know something that you don't, like science

[Tiberius]

1) Evolution does not necessarily mean that organisms get more and more complex. Evolution through natural selection only pushes species towards their optimal environmental genetic state. That is to say, if the environment a species was living in changed such that losing complexity ensured survival, that species would become less complex in order to better fit the environment. This is still evolution; "devolution" is a misnomer and doesn't make any kind of sense, even in the context you put it.

2) Genesis 5 doesn't show this. Genesis 5 *claims* this, and there is a big difference. At no point does it substantiate the claim that people lived to over 900 years. There is of course, no evidence that any human has ever lived to over 900 years.

3) Given that your first point about human ages in the past is flawed (see above), you have no basis other than your faith in the words of a book to say that we are somehow physically inferior to our ancestors. Again, I call into question the use of the word "devolution". Even if humans had changed so that we lived shorter lives, it is still evolution (assuming that the environment was pushing us towards that).

4) The fossil record provides the answer to your question about whether the process began with simple lifeforms or fully-formed beings. The answer is of course, the former. The different fossils we find (dated at different times) piece together the evolution of life on Earth from the first vertebrates to the present day. You do not find complex fossils or fully-formed beings in old rock layers; you only find them after the Cambrian era, and in varying degrees of complexity all the way to the top (barring extinction events of course).

5) Change comes about by natural selection and random mutation. You are correct to say that natural selection cannot create new genes; it only either passes them on, or removes them. However, random mutation can produce new genes easily. It is this new genetic information which can then be passed on (or removed) by natural selection.

Behold:



This is exactly what we would expect to see if Evolutionary theory is true, and is exactly what we predicted before these facts were known.

[Anomalocaris]

Genesis 5 shows us ..........

Why is this thread under life science?

[theVOID]

So we can dismiss it scientifically

[Minimalist]

An alternate explanation is found in the Bible.

That is not an alternate explanation. That is fucking lunacy.

[solja247]

There needs to be a place where a new subforum called 'pseudoscience' and creationists can 'disprove' evolution with answersingenesis.com. As Chuck said, 'How is this science at all?'

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Genesis 5 shows us that originally it was normal for people to live to be over 900 years old.

900 years? pft. You should read some ancient Summerian texts, they lived to over 13,000 years old.

[theVOID]

Fuck 13,000 years, the Maori's could take the form of fucking mountains

[Zen Badger]

Fuck 13,000 years, the Maori's could take the form of fucking mountains

What do you mean they could? they do!

I've never met a Maori that wasn't the size and shape of a medium sized mountain.

Apparently the Kiwi army has no need to buy any tanks, thye just strap a heavy cannon to their Maori soldiers and send them into battle

[KichigaiNeko]

The problem with genesis chronology is the fact that they authors were deliberately lax with their time keeping.

Are we talking lunar years, solar years, or what ever the fuck years.????

Remenbering that January wasn't added until recently (read long after "genesis" was supposedly written) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar