What_Is_a_Human_Being

What is a Human Being' God vs. Cod Outline THESIS: Human beings have come into existence due to Evolution, Creationism or some type of a combination of them both. I. Human beings came into existence by a biological way of means A. Darwinism B. Materialism C. Empiricism D. Determinism II. Problems with Section I A. Technical Details B. What it means for the world III. Human beings came into existence by a religious/mystical way of means A. Creationism B. Intelligent Design IV. Problems with Section III A. Technical Details B. What is means for the world V. My Point of View What is a Human Being' God vs. Cod “Human being -noun 1. any individual of the genus Homo, esp. a member of the species Homo sapiens. 2. a person, esp. as distinguished from other animals or as representing the human species: living conditions not fir for human being; a very generous human being.” (Dictionary.com) The total area of Planet Earth is approximately 510 million square kilometers. In those hundreds of square kilometers live around 6 million to 100 million different species of animals, almost one million known species of insects and an estimated 10 million undescribed group, and over 30,000 species of fish (Tree of Life). Is it possible that all of that was the lucky byproduct of a random occurrence' Or perhaps it was all the handiwork of a mighty Creator above' People have believed in their Gods for centuries before Charles Darwin’s Evolution, but now they are finding holes in this theory and are starting to question their beliefs. Was life as we know it made by a man who popped out of nowhere or has it evolved through monkeys and pond scum' And what exactly does that mean for us humans' Darwinism is essentially a term to identify various movements or concepts related to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and how it works, otherwise known as natural selection. His idea was that animals evolved over a long period of time as nature selected the stronger individuals in a species based on the characteristics they used for survival to live on and reproduce (Darwinism). Over this period of time, the individual would keep a certain characteristic it had obtained due to a mutation at birth that helped it to survive, and pass it on to future generations. Any offspring which lacked the characteristic would probably have died off leaving only the offspring with that particular characteristic, and then that organism would eventually grow up to have offspring of it’s own. The process is commonly described as the “survival of the fittest”. So according to Darwin, human beings have just evolved from a lower organism on the food chain and have changed, mutated and adapted to fit their surrounding environment. So which animal would we have evolved from' It is most commonly said that humans descended from apes, but human beings have been found to be descended from the hominid family. The family of Hominidae of the order of Primate include both humans and apes, but we did not evolve from them. Instead, we share a common ancestor and are considered “cousins”. Our—Human being’s—closest relative would have to be Chimpanzees because we share a 99% match when it comes to DNA protein sequencing. When a human’s protein sequencing is compared to a gorilla’s, there are only two differences in the match with hemoglobin, red blood cells and amino acids. And also, the antigen-antibody reaction for humans is 97% similar to a chimpanzee’s and 50% similar for baboons (Evolve From Monkeys). Dictionary.com says that a Materialist is a person who is markedly more concerned with material things than with spiritual, intellectual, or cultural values. A materialistic perspective (where God is removed) implies that human beings should be seen according to physical characteristics rather than social or religious ones. And that approaching people from a materialistic point of view stresses what we all have in common. For a Materialist (and for a Darwinist), a human being is only a person’s physical body. And that physical body is all that the Materialistic person has. For them, there is no eternal soul or some kind of life after death. When you die, you really die and stay dead. Instead of devaluing human beings, it actually places a bigger sense of materialistic value on one’s physical body. Instead of harming the body of a person who will get a new body or some sort of life after death, you are hurting the body of a person who only has one chance at life and has more at risk. The body of a Materialistic person becomes valuable to that individual because they know they don’t have another shot at living once they die. Empiricists share the idea that there is no such thing as innate knowledge. Innatism (innate knowledge) is a principle that says the mind is born with ideas and knowledge already in it and that the mind is not a “blank slate” at birth. Instead, empiricists believe that knowledge is obtained through one’s experience through their five senses or reasoned with the brain or mind after birth. A human being to an Empiricist could easily enough become a puppet to another person. Going along with Empiricism means that a human being could be easily manipulated. If a human can only do something based off what it was taught or experienced, someone could control what that one human was doing through what experience it provided for that one individual (empiricism v. rationalism). To a determinist, the future is set in stone. Anything that didn’t happen already couldn’t have ever possibly happened, and everything that did happen was the only possible thing that could have happened at that time; every outcome is unavoidable. Biological determinism on the other hand is a theory that our genes and genetic makeup decide every feature and aspect of our being and of our personality, rather than a other-worldly force. With biological determinism, things like our favorite foods, music preferences and the will to commit crimes is all in our genetic makeup (NurtureorNature.com). Once again, this sort of puts a human being as a living puppet again. Basically, a determinist has no choice in anything they do. Everything is already decided for them and they really have no say in it. There are many problems with Darwin’s theory of evolution, a couple starting with the body’s cells. The instruction for how to build, operate and repair living cell are an enormous amount of mental information that can never arise from a natural process and is always the result of an intelligence. Modifying the DNA through mutation like in the theory of evolution can never produce new genetic information (In The Beginning). Another problem concerning the cells of an organism is that non-living chemicals can not become alive on their own. Darwin’s day dream about lightening hitting some pond in the middle of nowhere will never produce life. The Law of Biogenesis also says that life can only come from prior life (which was proved true in Louis Pasteur’s experiment that showed Spontaneous generation to be false and throughout other efforts to create life from nonliving things such as the Miller-Urey experiment) ((Why biogenesis is impossible)). There is also the problem of evidence. In Darwin’s Theory of Evolution it talks about species evolving and adapting into a new species but we have yet to see many fossil records of animals going through that process of cow to manatee or snake to loch ness monster. The oldest fossils for any creature are already fully-formed and don’t change much over the fossil timeline. Birds are said to have evolved from retiles but no fossil has been found of a half- scale half-wing dinosaur. The only one, Archaeopteryx, was actually just a bird where the designers went a little crazy and stuck scales on the model even though there were no evidence of scales in the fossil (Evolution: the Grand Experiment). There are many more, thousands actually, of missing links that do not add up to the confirmation of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Things such as the idea that “nothing works until everything works”, how in some organisms it’s so complex that design is very apparent and like how the theory of the Big Bang contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law of Thermodynamics refers to how the things tend to “mix” with their surrounding environment. Somehow, the energy of the Big Bang structured itself into stars, galaxies, planets and living things without following the Second Law. Not only does Darwin’s Theory Evolution go against the science it tries to build itself on, but it puts a real damper on things, too. Just think about it! You have no ultimate meaning in life, no ultimate foundation for ethnics exist, and free will' Yeah, that’s a human myth. Not only that but once you die, your really dead (Evolution: the grand experiment) No afterlife, heaven, nothing. When you die your put 6 feet under and eaten by insects in the dirt or possibly a tree. History also shows that the idea that human beings are just animals lead to people like Adolf Hitler and his posse of Nazis starting a massive genocide. We are only animals, right' “Creationism is the religious belief the humanity, life, the Earth and the universe were created in some for by a supernatural being or being.” It usually refers to the rebuff that biological processes (such as evolution) can sufficiently account for the history, diversity and the complexity of life on Earth. In the Christian and Jewish faith, creationism like such is usually based on the readings of the Genesis creation myth—or the account of the beginnings of the Earth, life and humanity as described in the first two chapters of the biblical Book of genesis. Other religions have deity-led creation myths—which are supernatural stories or explanations that describe the beginnings of humanity, earth, life and the universe usually as a deliberate act by one or more deities (Creationism). Creationists are taught they are a product of love from God or perhaps just because he could or he willed to. In the concluding book of the New Testament, John records the words of the twenty-four elders who fell down before the Almighty. In praise they proclaimed: “Worthy are you, our Lord and our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power: for you did create all things, and because of your will they were, and were created” (Rev. 4:11). But the main idea is that the people who believe in their God have a plan, a purpose, and special creative acts of God in their life until they die and then they are sent to heaven (or possibly hell). Wiki says that Intelligent Design is the claim that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Intelligent design is pretty much just a modern form of the traditional argument for the existence of God but it avoids specifying the nature or identity of the designer. However, Intelligent Design is often mistaken for creationism. The big difference though is that creationism is focused to defending the readings of the Genesis account while the scientific theory of intelligent design is an effort to distinguish whether the “apparent design” in the nature around us observed by biologists in actually a genuine design or if it’s the outcome of chance and mechanical natural laws (Intelligent Design And Creationism Aren’t The Same). Despite the differences between the two, the idea of what a human being is for Intelligent Design and Creationism are pretty much the same. That everyone has a plan, a purpose and special creative acts of whatever god there is in their life and that they actually have a meaning in their lives. There are some things wrong with Creationism simply with the fact that it doesn’t really make sense. One could start with the question: Where did God come from' The idea of God just being there, wouldn’t that also go against the Second Law of Thermodynamics or the Law of Biogenesis which says that life can only come from prior life' Another thing would be how the world came about in Creationism, apparently the Bible tells us in three completely different ways. The most familiar being the six-day creation that ends with the creation of humanity in the image of God and God’s seventh day rest. “God is depicted in Genesis 1 as the cosmic king who has so much authority that God can even command the primeval chaos to dismember itself and it obeys.” The next one Genesis 2, the “Garden of Eden” is also very familiar but it’s not the same as the Genesis 1 story. This story begins with chaos and the series of events are different. God creates human being, then plants, then animals, then another human. Here, God isn’t shown as a king but as a craft worker, sculpting a human, planting a garden and forming animals and carrying out surgery on one human to make another. Genesis 1’s God is “above the fray”, issuing orders and such while Genesis 2’s God had “dirt under the divine fingernails”. The third and often unrecognized third creation story is one where God is a divine warrior who defeats a chaotic monster and uses its body as materials to create environments for earthly creatures (Why I Am Not..). The most apparent expression of this model is in the Bible in the middle of Psalm 74: “Psa. 74:12 Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the earth.  13 You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.  14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.  15 You cut openings for springs and torrents; you dried up ever-flowing streams.  16 Yours is the day, yours also the night; you established the luminaries and the sun.  17 You have fixed all the bounds of the earth; you made summer and winter.” The Bible is a bit contradictory and cannot really be relied on coming from 40 different people. The problem with Intelligent Design is that there is no scientific evidence and that you can’t disprove it. Now, here comes my point of view on the whole matter. The problem is, I really don’t know what to believe. I’m pretty much a seeing-is-believing type of person myself (especially after my friend told my in 3rd grade that Santa left her some magic corn and she flew after she ate it). I find it pretty hard to believe in something without seeing some cold, hard evidence. I suppose that I believe in a sort of mix of Darwinism Evolution and being apathetic where Evolution makes pretty good sense but it just doesn’t fill all of the missing holes and I really don’t know what coule fill in those holes. Talking about the start of the universe and all that, whether it was God or a bunch of atoms I can’t really pick a side. One could ask: Where did God come from' But then again, you could also ask, where did the energy to start the Big Bang originate from' Or Perhaps the Flying Spaghetti Monster drank a whole lot a Mountain Dew and released a humongous burp which set off a chain of events that would ultimately lead to the creation of the universe. But seriously, the knowledge of how, well, everything came about if pretty much out of our understanding at the moment. To me, the survival of the fittest part makes sense. It works, and I can see it happening. So I guess that I would mostly lean towards Darwinism, but I guess I’m mostly just apathetic for now. Works Citied Biological Determinism NutureorNature.com morefocus group, inc. http://www.nurture-or-nature.com/articles/biological-determinism/index.php Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life." Narrated by David Attenborough. BBC EARTH DVD. 2009. "Creationism" Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism "Did humans evolve from monkeys'" Yahoo!Answers 2008. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index'qid=20080525153152AARaVUI "EMPIRICISM V. RATIONALISM" Dvid J. Yount. 2003. http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/~yount/text/empm-v-ratm.html "Evolution: The Grand Experiment", Dr. Carl audio visual consultants. 2009 DVD Werner "human being." Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 14 Feb. 2010. Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/human being" "Intelligent Design and Creationism just aren't the same" John G West Center for Science and Culture 1 Dec. 2002. http://www.discovery.org/a/1329 "In the Beginning was information" Dr. Werner Gitt. Creation Library Video. 2008. "Materialism and Ethics,Learning from Epicurus" John Sellars. http://www.the-philosopher.co.uk/epicurus.htm "materialist." Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 08 Mar. 2010. . The Bible "What is Darwinism'" Evolution-rome2009. 23 Nov. 2009. http://www.evolution-rome2009.org/what-is-darwinism.html "Why abiogensis is impossible" Jerry Bergman, Ph.D. 2000. http://creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/36/36_4/abiogenesis.html "Why I am not Creationist" Chris Heard Higgaion 18 Nov. 2005. http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/'p=253