I grew up in a Christian home, and learned all of the usual Bible stories about Adam and Eve, and the seven-day Creation. Even though I had some issues with the literal acceptance of God creating the whole universe in seven days; I just accepted it as something that I didn't really understand, one of the many mysteries that the Bible is full of.
Later, I read about the theory of Evolution, and that it actually took millions of years for this world to develop. Since the Creation belief at that time said that the world was actually only 6,000 years old; this was a HUGE discrepancy.
So, I started reading more about the evolution theory, and that we somehow started as single cell-amoebas (or something like that), and amazingly developed into all of the animals that now exist, as well as human beings.

Questions nagged at me. If we supposedly evolved from the apes; why are there still lots of apes that didn't evolve ?
There was also what is called the "missing link" where we became our modern man selves instead of an apelike caveman. Big Bang theory sounded as implausible to me as the seven day creation did.

Then, somehow, I stumbled upon the theory  of Intervention, which seems to me like it blends both theories together, and makes a lot more sense than either one on its own.
Basically,  Intervention theory says that some life did evolve here, in kind of a micro-evolution, and at critical times in the development; something/someone came and gave us the needed push to further development. This happened over and over as the earth evolved. When the first humanoid type of upright apes appeared, then there were gene splices that enabled the change from an upright walking ape, into an early human that had the vocal cords to actually  speak.


Although this is a radical distinction from either of the accepted theories, to me it makes as much sense as anything else that I have read about the development of life here on earth.




Thus

If you have a group of dogs in Antarctica and a group of dogs in Africa, both sets of dogs are going to adapt to their separate environment. So in this case maybe some of them turn into malamutes/huskys/wolves/etc and some of them turn into hyenas/dingoes/etc. Even then let's say we have one group of them, say there's 30 of them and as one is born one dies so 30 is the number we stick with.

One dog is born with a new gene that makes its fur darker, and it passes the gene on until 10 of the 30. Then another dog is born that has a smaller body, and then passes its gene on too. In the end, we've had 2 mutations and at least 3 different breed possibilities from them. Evolution isn't always adaptation sometimes it's luck or even bad luck. Sometimes it's not even mutations sometimes it's simply breeding.


For example every domesticated animal has floppier/smaller ears than its former breed. It's called domestication syndrome and pretty much explains how we can breed for or against specific traits...

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Breeding for tameness tends to produce animals with floppy ears, patches of white fur, juvenile faces, small jaws and other features, a new study reports.

Authors of the paper, published in the journal Genetics, believe the suite of features are tied to what they call "domestication syndrome," which can apply not only to mammals like dogs, foxes, pigs, horses, sheep and rabbits, but also to domesticated birds and fish, even if the latter two groups don’t display all of the anatomical changes associated with tame mammals.

"When humans bred these animals for tameness, they may have inadvertently selected those with mild neural crest deficits, resulting in smaller or slow-maturing adrenal glands," Wilkins says. "So, these animals were less fearful."

Because the neural crest influences more than the adrenal glands, the domestication process could also lead to all of the aforementioned physical signs of tameness. They aren't always beneficial. Floppy ears, for example, may look adorable on dogs and rabbits, but they actually are a result of malformed ear cartilage. An animal hoping to hear well isn't going to benefit from having the ear flopped down alongside its face.

Domesticated animals even have smaller brains than their wild counterparts. The authors suggest that the reduced forebrain size of most domestic mammals could be an indirect effect of neural crest changes, because a chemical signal sent by these cells is critical for proper brain development.

Watch a video

I believe in evolution. I think there's an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence to support that theory over creationism. As someone who grew up in a very conservative Christian faith, I never quite understand how people couldn't reconcile evolution with faith. You can still believe in God and evolution at the same time. As for the "why are there still apes if we are descended from apes" question- humans are not descended from a modern species of monkey, but rather descended from a common ancestor predating the modern monkey by millions of years. A helpful way to think about it is that evolution is not a step by step progress, where everyone makes the same leap at the same time. Species adapt to their environments and evolve according to those needs.

happyflowerlady (10:40am Mon, Sep  8, 2014)

I just accepted it as something that I didn't really understand, one of the many mysteries

This doesn't just go for the Bible, I think. We aren't millions of years old or thousands of years old to count every second. The past is only a memory, it could be a faulty one like a dream.

I don't remember being born or the years immediately after that, for example, but the common opinion that I was conceived and born and grew up is good enough for me.

That said, I speculate that creation myths are cultural constructs to keep people entertained and grant some community identity, whereas evolution was constructed by people who did their best to figure things out and researched evidence and hashed out with their peers what so-and-so natural philosophy meant.

So...What would be the motive for Intervention Theory? Is it to acknowledge the work of evolutionary researches in formulating the theory, while incorporating the prominent cultural presence of an intelligent designer?

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Although this is a radical distinction from either of the accepted theories, to me it makes as much sense as anything else that I have read about the development of life here on earth.

Ah, I'd be wary of that. The truth doesn't have to make sense...we make sense of the truth (for the given value of "truth").

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Questions nagged at me. If we supposedly evolved from the apes; why are there still lots of apes that didn't evolve ?

There was also what is called the "missing link" where we became our modern man selves instead of an apelike caveman. Big Bang theory sounded as implausible to me as the seven day creation did.

While I'm still only a layperson when it comes to those things, evolution is far, far, far more complex than our great-exponent-grand-mother/father was an ape.

One misunderstood concept in the simplified version of evolution is that future generations are objectively better, therefore if there were superior humans then there should no more inferior monkeys existent. Actually, "survival of the fittest" refers to environmental context when it says "fit", not accomplishment as in time-to-throw-those-drafts-away. Apes aren't drafts as they still have a niche in the environment as much as human beings do.

The relation between human beings to other apes is more to do with considering/tracing the development of the genetic code that says stuff like, "short tail bone, opposable thumbs, two eyes" and all that.

As for Big Bang Theory, it sounds implausible but that's the conclusion you get to when you make a lot of observations of outer space, familiarize yourself with how this sphere of the natural world seems to operate, see that it's expanding, work backwards...argue with your colleagues, big bang maybe.

The BBC Horizon's documentary series on parallel universes featured prominently how scientists hashed out the origins of the universe from multiple Singularity points where branes had jostled into each other. The observations of empirical evidence, and the mathematics tied in with the physics, all works out to support that.

I say, as I mentioned, as a layperson, so...I believe all of the above. I believe in the professionalism of scientists, for the most part, and my own understanding of evolution is good enough for me that I wouldn't wander off into Intervention Theory, basically. If science could answer everything, there would be no need of the scientific process anymore. Science is comfortable with not being able to explain some things, and it's necessary to science that there are mysteries--but it's just that "comfortable with mystery" doesn't mean "complacent"; and it certainly doesn't mean jumping to a conclusion of an intervening force just because we want one to be there because that would be culturally comfortable if there's no material call for it.

I think that we all have to make our own decisions about this, just like we do with other things in life.  That is why some of us are vegetarians or vegans, and some of us are omnivores.
We all see things differently; and sometimes , we see them differently at different times of our lives.

To actually be interested in learning about something as unusual as Intervention Theory takes a mind that is open to studying things that are not the mainstream opinion.  That seldom happens, which is why mainstream opinion is just that.

I believe that it is both Creation and Evolution. I actually got the idea from Anne Rice's Memnoch the Devil.

When God created the world in 7 "days", it doesn't literally mean days. The concept of time before varies greatly with what we have now. So, when God created the world, it took years and years. In between those years, some of his creations evolved and adapted into their environment, etc.

This is what I believe. I believe that there is no cause without an effect, but the first cause must have been made by a Higher Power, right? Nothing just sprouts out of thin air.

Umbrella, that is very similar to what I have come to believe, that there IS a creator (or creators), and that our development took thousands of years, and that some of what happened was a natural evolution.
 Some of it was by design,that consistantly headed mankind in a progressive development.

That I why I am so impressed with the intervention theory; it ties everything together in such a neat and tidy package.
It is just something that you have to either listen to the video or read the book to really understand all of what he is saying. I basically understand it, but can't explain it properly.

Being  a Christian I obviously believe in creation. Like my mother always said it takes more faith to believe in other theories. The Word of God makes everything sweet and simple. Why must we complicate what God made so simple.

John 1: 1 - 5

1.) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2.) The same was in the beginning with God. 3.) All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4.) In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5.) And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

Why is it so hard to believe we all come from one man and one woman who was created by one God?

SCIENCE says, seeing is believing

FAITH says, believe without seeing

John 20:29

29.) Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.