I don't understand evolution.

a reply to: ObservingTheWorld

You make it all sound so intentional.

a reply to: randyvs

Why don't you try to understand evolution first before claiming that it's a lie with agenda and conspiracy?

Creationinalistism (or whatever they're calling the belief that the Christian god entity made everything) is complete bunk because the god entity itself is bunk...and I can easily prove it.

If you're a believer in the god then ask yourself this question with "yes" or "no" only: If God told you to murder your children right now, just to prove your faith, would you do it?

If you answer "NO" then you're not a believer, nothing needs to be proven to you.

If you answer "YES" (and really mean it) then you would kill your children because an invisible deity told you to and you're 100% insane. Insane people aren't competent enough to determine what is and what is not reality. Nothing can be proven to you.

If you break the rules I clearly stated and answer "Well, it's not that black and white..." or "God would never command me to do that..." or something along those lines then your answer is "NO" and you're not a believer, nothing needs to be proven to you.

It really is that simple IMO. I'm usually pretty good at not being baited into such stupid debates aimed at causing confrontation but it's been a long few weeks and I'm not feeling very Christ-like today

Carry on.

a reply to: Titen-Sxull

Do you call this science.

Fraudulent claims made in support of the Theory of Evolution
Nebraska Man
Consisted of nothing more than a single tooth. From this tooth, extensive pictures are shown of monkey people. The tooth was later found to be from an extinct pig.
Ramapithecues
A manufactured fossil formed out of a fragment of a jaw and several teeth. Dr. Pillbeam Yale of the Harvard Peabody Museum says that Ramapithecues was nothing more than an orangutan.
Kanapoi Elbow Fossil
Just the lower end of an upper arm bone was found in an area considered 4 to 4.5 million years old. When studied by multi-variant analysis, the bone was found to be “indistinguishable from a modern human." Nevertheless, because a human bone “could not pre-date the Australopithecines from whom we are supposed to have evolved, it was labeled Australopithecus africanus – our 'immediate, non-human ancestor'.”
Piltdown Man
Between 1908 and 1915, a skull, a jawbone, and a canine tooth were found in a gravel pit in England. They were articulated to create an example of primitive man. Later study proved that only the skull could have been originally buried there. The other fossils were from orangutan bones which had been tampered with and placed there as a hoax. The truth was not discovered until the 1950s after as many as 500 doctoral theses and dissertations were written on the “find" – and references to its supposed scientific significance still exists in some texts today. It turned out to be a pure fraud.
Recapitulation Theory
“This theory was set forth by the German professor, Ernst Haeckel in the last century. Haeckel was one of the avid supporters of Darwin. However, some years later, when his sketches of the fetus were carefully considered and as more information about the fetus became known, distortions were seen which were determined to be intentional. Prof. Haeckel was tried by the Jena University Court and was found guilty. He ‘contritely’ confessed his forgeries which had been made to supposedly support the doctrine of evolution.”

Clearly I see the need for and the willingness to lie.
How predictable is that?

a reply to: randyvs

O.K., here's the deal. I'll try to help you understand "evolution".

All you really need to know about "evolution" is that its o.k. to question it or to outright not believe it. But........its not o.k. to voice that opinion in public.

Its kind of like AGW; you may think its hokum, but to get along and not appear to be a knuckle dragging neanderthal, you just keep quiet. If someone mentions it, you just shake your head knowingly as in agreement and get on about your day.

At the end of the day, you see, none of it really matters because.....at the end of the day, the only evolution we'll ever experience is delivery into a grave in a pine box. And at that point............none of any of it really matters.

If you've ever seen a person of a different race you're seeing evidence of evolution.

One of the cool things about evolution is that it will still go on happening even if you don't believe in it.

originally posted by: randyvs
a reply to: amazing

I appreciate your post?
For me, as I can only answer.
It's about Gods power.
In Genesis he merely spoke and it was so.
The sound ( vibration ) in his voice causes
everything. We are barely scratching the
surface of sound resonance science are
we not? So again over and over and over
all thru out. I see that extraordinary piece
of ancient literature vindicated.

If only more posts were like yours.

Good reply. This to me though...speaks of the big bang and evolution and quantum physics...where we are all just energy or vibrations.

My only disagreement with you is literal Genesis vs evolution which we have fossils for. Even if God did dictate Genesis and it's true, it was spoken to ignorant people with no knowledge of Science...we've moved on? Where is the modern part that we're ready for now?

Taken a step further. I don't believe God would have stopped speaking to us back then. So there must be modern prophets or scribes or books?

a reply to: randyvs

Are you really going that route? Those have been debunked many, many times.

Nebraska Man was not a intentional hoax. The tooth was misidentified. Most scientists didn't accept it at that time.

The rest of them from what I have just researched show that few have been misidentified or found to be hoaxes. BUT! The scientists were skeptical and didn't accept them. So you see the "evolutionists" are the ones who didn't accept them and proved them to be false.

Those rare fakes or misidentifications do not disprove theory of evolution.

Nice try.

originally posted by: RedParrotHead
Creationinalistism (or whatever they're calling the belief that the Christian god entity made everything) is complete bunk because the god entity itself is bunk...and I can easily prove it.

If you're a believer in the god then ask yourself this question with "yes" or "no" only: If God told you to murder your children right now, just to prove your faith, would you do it?

If you answer "NO" then you're not a believer, nothing needs to be proven to you.

If you answer "YES" (and really mean it) then you would kill your children because an invisible deity told you to and you're 100% insane. Insane people aren't competent enough to determine what is and what is not reality. Nothing can be proven to you.

If you break the rules I clearly stated and answer "Well, it's not that black and white..." or "God would never command me to do that..." or something along those lines then your answer is "NO" and you're not a believer, nothing needs to be proven to you.

It really is that simple IMO. I'm usually pretty good at not being baited into such stupid debates aimed at causing confrontation but it's been a long few weeks and I'm not feeling very Christ-like today

Carry on.

Oh, you're one of those "If God was real why do people suffer?" kinda guys aren't you?

You're just as bad as the opposite end of the spectrum. The "7 day" creation, God on a cloud kinda folk.

This was a bold post. I don't fully understand evolution either. Because It hasn't been observed enough (at all? OOoooooo) to understand it fully.

I think the theory has merit. But it doesn't discredit intelligent design.

originally posted by: MrConspiracy
This was a bold post. I don't fully understand evolution either. Because It hasn't been observed enough (at all? OOoooooo) to understand it fully.

I think the theory has merit. But it doesn't discredit intelligent design.

on the contrary, intelligent design regularly uses the legitimate science of evolution to bolster itself. the evolutionary theory is the flotation device by which creationism keeps itself from drowning.

originally posted by: randyvs
a reply to: Titen-Sxull

Do you call this science....(snip)

No, much of that is fraud, made by fraudsters, which any reputable scientist will admit is crap.

Are you implying there is NO fraud, lies, hoaxes, deceiving, suppression or ignorance perpetrated by religion, in the name of religion?

Is your stance so perfect?

You see, the BEAUTIFUL thing about science, is it can admit when it's WRONG and further its knowledge through that failure.

Religion cannot. My sig says it...

originally posted by: Deaf Alien
a reply to: randyvs

Are you really going that route? Those have been debunked many, many times.

Nebraska Man was not a intentional hoax. The tooth was misidentified. Most scientists didn't accept it at that time.

The rest of them from what I have just researched show that few have been misidentified or found to be hoaxes. BUT! The scientists were skeptical and didn't accept them. So you see the "evolutionists" are the ones who didn't accept them and proved them to be false.

Those rare fakes or misidentifications do not disprove theory of evolution.

Nice try.

Yeah, so I wasn't trying to disprove evolution there DA. It would
take more than my self to do that I believe. I was trying to show
the possibilities for the question posed in the thread. That absolutely
no one has addressed so far.

Could it all be a lie? If you can believe people wrote the Bible as a means
to control the masses. Then you can believe the same people concocted
this lie to pull people away from God. And you have to admit, if that is the
truth of matter? It has pulled a massive amount of people away from God.

There you have the purpose of this thread. Do I still get to be a Giant
###KING TROLL

a reply to: randyvs

Nothing in the real world can be proved with absolute certainty. However, high degrees of certainty can be reached. In the case of evolution, we have huge amounts of data from diverse fields. Extensive evidence exists in all of the following different forms (Theobald 2004). Each new piece of evidence tests the rest.
• All life shows a fundamental unity in the mechanisms of replication, heritability, catalysis, and metabolism.
• Common descent predicts a nested hierarchy pattern, or groups within groups. We see just such an arrangement in a unique, consistent, well-defined hierarchy, the so-called tree of life.
• Different lines of evidence give the same arrangement of the tree of life. We get essentially the same results whether we look at morphological, biochemical, or genetic traits.
• Fossil animals fit in the same tree of life. We find several cases of transitional forms in the fossil record.
• The fossils appear in a chronological order, showing change consistent with common descent over hundreds of millions of years and inconsistent with sudden creation.
• Many organisms show rudimentary, vestigial characters, such as sightless eyes or wings useless for flight.
• Atavisms sometimes occur. An atavism is the reappearance of a character present in a distant ancestor but lost in the organism's immediate ancestors. We only see atavisms consistent with organisms' evolutionary histories.
• Ontogeny (embryology and developmental biology) gives information about the historical pathway of an organism's evolution. For example, as embryos whales and many snakes develop hind limbs that are reabsorbed before birth.
• The distribution of species is consistent with their evolutionary history. For example, marsupials are mostly limited to Australia, and the exceptions are explained by continental drift. Remote islands often have species groups that are highly diverse in habits and general appearance but closely related genetically. Squirrel diversity coincides with tectonic and sea level changes (Mercer and Roth 2003). Such consistency still holds when the distribution of fossil species is included.
• Evolution predicts that new structures are adapted from other structures that already exist, and thus similarity in structures should reflect evolutionary history rather than function. We see this frequently. For example, human hands, bat wings, horse legs, whale flippers, and mole forelimbs all have similar bone structure despite their different functions.
• The same principle applies on a molecular level. Humans share a large percentage of their genes, probably more than 70 percent, with a fruit fly or a nematode worm.
• When two organisms evolve the same function independently, different structures are often recruited. For example, wings of birds, bats, pterosaurs, and insects all have different structures. Gliding has been implemented in many additional ways. Again, this applies on a molecular level, too.
• The constraints of evolutionary history sometimes lead to suboptimal structures and functions. For example, the human throat and respiratory system make it impossible to breathe and swallow at the same time and make us susceptible to choking.
• Suboptimality appears also on the molecular level. For example, much DNA is nonfunctional.
• Some nonfunctional DNA, such as certain transposons, pseudogenes, and endogenous viruses, show a pattern of inheritance indicating common ancestry.
• Speciation has been observed.
• The day-to-day aspects of evolution -- heritable genetic change, morphological variation and change, functional change, and natural selection -- are seen to occur at rates consistent with common descent.

originally posted by: randyvs
Could it all be a lie? If you can believe people wrote the Bible as a means
to control the masses. Then you can believe the same people concocted
this lie to pull people away from God. And you have to admit, if that is the
truth of matter? It has pulled a massive amount of people away from God.

A lie that has evidence, and one which we're finding more and more all the time?

Conversely, the Bible, written by man, has NO evidence of burning bushes, waters parting or a man coming back to life and ascending to heaven.

Furthermore, many of the stories of the Christian faith are based on OTHER mythological tales dating back much, much further in history, strongly suggesting the story of Christ was fabricated.

I'm not sure how you defend that side of the argument yet blindly call evolution a lie, when there's far more evidence to suggest yours is a lie and evolution is the more likely explanation for how we came to be.

a reply to: randyvs

Were you CREATED or did you change/evolve from a single cell organism to and embryo to the adult you are today. The proof is in what you SEE and EXPERIENCE. Open your eyes and look around...observe what you see in Nature, take your eyes out of the bible for a while and know the truth.

a reply to: randyvs

Could it all be a lie? If you can believe people wrote the Bible as a means to control the masses. Then you can believe the same people concocted this lie to pull people away from God. And you have to admit, if that is the truth of matter? It has pulled a massive amount of people away from God.

You said that you don't understand evolution and yet say it's a lie. How can you say that it's a lie if you do not understand it?

And religious people have been proven to lie over and over again. Those evolution "hoaxes" are very rare and usually from non scientists.

There are many Christians who accept evolution so no it doesn't pull people away from God. That is not it's intention.

Why is it that so many people unable to prove that evolution is a lie? Think about it.

originally posted by: MrConspiracy
This was a bold post. I don't fully understand evolution either. Because It hasn't been observed enough (at all? OOoooooo) to understand it fully.

It is bold to claim evolution hasn't been observed at all, or enough to know it occurs. If you don't fully understand evolution it is because you have not studied it comprehensively, not for lack of it being observed. It is not difficult to understand, all the evidence and research and experiment is literally fre and available at your fingertips..

Again and again I see people mixing up the definitions of evolution, or failing to define to which one they are referring. When you say you do not understand "evolution", are you referring to the natural phenomenon we can clearly observe, the scientific theory that seeks to describe it, or the genetic processes and mechanisms identified through experiment by which it has been proven to occur?

Each area would require study of different materials and resources. Do you wish to learn more about the observable evolution of of a particular species in relation to its environment? Or the mecanisms by which changes in dna take place over generations of lifeforms? Do you wish to understand better the fundamental principles of speciation? Or do you require knowledge about the methodology and practices, specific goals or intentions of particular experiments in the field? "Evolution" is a broad subject, and without narrowing your area of interest or debate down to a particular part of it, it's hard to know which aspect of it you say you do not fully understand..

I think the theory has merit. But it doesn't discredit intelligent design.

The theory of evolution is fully supported by evidence. That is what a scientific theory is. The word "theory" has a different definition in science than when it used in lay conversation. You seem to be implying through your use of bold text that the theory of evolution is nothing more than a hypothesis..

The theory of evolution says nothing about intelligent design. Intelligent design is unfalsifiable and therefore not able to be scientifically tested. There is evidence from recent experiments that evolutionary mutations are not entirely random, but this is easily explained by the process of these changes being guided by both the physical properties of the genetic code and the need to preserve the critical function of genetic proteins.

The only comment one can make about intelligent design after gaining an understanding of how evolution works, is that there is no physical evidence of it and it is not necessary for life as we know it to have evolved as it has and does. This does not discredit it, as you have pointed out, it only shows that it is an unverifiable hypothesis .

To the op:

I was trying to show the possibilities for the question posed in the thread. That absolutely no one has addressed so far.

On the contrary, numerous people have addressed this, including myself, throughout this thread.

Could it all be a lie? If you can believe people wrote the Bible as a means
to control the masses. Then you can believe the same people concocted
this lie to pull people away from God. And you have to admit, if that is the
truth of matter? It has pulled a massive amount of people away from God.

Simply put, no. It cannot be a lie. The physical evidence of the world around is objectively verifiable and not able to lie. (Unless God put it there to mislead us). If people have trouble reconciling scientific findings with their faith and therefore are pulled away from God, it is not the fault of scientific method. It is the fault of organised religion that promotes literal interpretation of myth as fact and resists change of any kind to its established belief system. Religion that does not itself evolve with the time and keep up with our understanding of the natural physical world will become extinct.

Belief in God says nothing about evolution. Evolution says nothing about belief in God. If a church indoctrinates its followers and outrght rejects evidence apparently incompatible with its teachings, it is the fault of said church and nothing else if people turn away from it when researching said evidence.

In the op you state that you are not inclined to study the theory of evolution because you immediately recognise it as an outright lie. You do not state how you recognised it to be this, only that it is. This is an "argument from assertion" and really just a statement of personal opinion, not fact. One has to assume you recognise it as a lie because it apparently contradicts what you have been taught, but how does one learn anything without investigating and studying those things which contradict what you have been taught.

Scientific method routinely does this. If a claim is made that contradicts the consenus, it is studied in order to see if it is in fact true. If it is, then theories are updated. Scientists love to proven wrong, it gives them more to study, and drives scientifc progress.

Fundamentalist religious teaching does not do this. If something is contradictory, it is simply considered wrong ans thrown out without any real due consideration.

And that appears to be the reason why you believe evolution to be a lie.

a reply to: randyvs

Could it all be a lie? If you can believe people wrote the Bible as a means
to control the masses. Then you can believe the same people concocted
this lie to pull people away from God. And you have to admit, if that is the
truth of matter? It has pulled a massive amount of people away from God.

and its all about what you can believe, right randy? as long as you can force yourself to swallow the pill, its gotta be good for you.

discussing evolution with you is a waste of time, and that means this entire thread has been nothing but a waste of everyones time. you never intended to listen or consider, you wanted an opportunity to make yourself look superior by resisting the evil temptations of science.

do you feel better about yourself now? more secure in your christianhood? was this exercise worth the exasperation?

a reply to: randyvs

I once discussed this topic with my mom, who I found myself re-framing the message because of her religious beliefs.

Evolution in a nutshell means nothing more than 'change can and often does occur over time'.

Evolution does NOT mean change is predictable. Evolution does NOT mean it's always physical. And evolution, is not always controlled or uncontrolled, either. Evolution is change over time.

For me, I've changed remarkably both physically and intellectually since I was a child. So for me, you can call that change 'over time' evolution', and that would be a correct categorization.

Darwinian evolution's a little different. And isn't the evolution people like me who believe and enjoy change accept. He suggests there's one and only one linear path to mankind's 'change over time' from our ancestry and that path is highly predictable.

For me; I call this revisionist historian. there's MANY paths which led to the engineered development of me, a human, and to say that this path holds more truth than all the rest is silly.

The question of evolution isn't one of faith. Religious nutjobs love making themselves the center of every new idea and think these ideas are put out there to get them to question their faith.

That's just narcissism. Evolution's a concept that says "Do you like change? If so. Then believe in me. If not. Then bugger off and go bother someone else"