To all Creationists/Evolutionists

interesting thread. It reminded me something heard a while back. That there some gene that sparked our rapid evolution and there was no reason for it(i also think i remember something about it not being found in anything else). Sounds like aliens to me. any one know what im on about?

reply to post by TechUnique

This doesn't completely disprove the idea of creationism.

You see we don't know exactly what caused the big bang.

Creationism Definition: The literal belief in the account of creation given in the Book of Genesis.

So with Genetic Evidence we know that humans have only been on Earth for a few million years.

And the Earth is 5 Billion Years old.

So I know the Big Bang Theory Isn't Proven 100% Yet

But i think they have confirmed that the universe is definitely Billions (14billion) of years old. So how does this silly book humans wrote have anything to do with the Universe.

The Book is written and contrived by humans as well as the terms God/Religion

They are fallacies created by humans.

I am Agnostic i cannot know whether there is a supreme being creator and/or not one and/or whatever other infinite theories of Existence there are; but i think we have quite a bit of evidence against Creationism.

And many of the other Silly religions on Earth that think their so special in the Vast universe.

Earth is nothing Its not even an atom.

reply to post by TechUnique

Our genetic code could have been written by someone/something to allow evolution to happen.

give up now - you clearly have zero grasp of evolutionary theory

I love these topics. For those of you still on the fence about "the big bang" i suggest you read "The grand Design" it explains a bunch, in quite easy to understand terms, and also explains that no, the big bang doesn't rule out a creator, but it also doesn't require one. To elaborate on that is past my ability, so I do suggest you read that book, you can finish it probably in an hour if you find the stuff at all interesting.

Anyways........ We're actually getting past the big bang and starting to think outside the box, various theories out there now challenge it.

Who's to say there was "nothing". All we know, from our observations of the universe, and the movement of galaxies, is that it appears that everything in our reality came from a single point in space time, expanding incredibly fast. Now they think it's actually speeding up, instead of slowing down, which brings up dark matter and dark energy to help explain what we are seeing.

don't believe in the big bang at all? Well hell, you can actually go look at a picture of the "cosmic background radiation" which is the echo of the big bang. You can actually SEE this with your own eyes.

Now they are event saying the universe isn't infinite, but also doesn't have any "edge". A hyper cube is one example, another is a torus. On the outside of the torus, you can continue moving in 1 direction and never reach an edge, as well as from inside the torus.

Think of the game asteroids. Move out the top, reappear in the bottom. No definable boundaries so it seems infinite, but in reality, it's not.

Then you've got the membrane theory that we are all inside giant branes floating in "ether" and when they collide and combine, you've got a big bang.

the big bang for us is the beginning, it could very well have been the end of another universe.

Originally posted by megabytz
reply to post by vjr1113

 

creationism is not dis-proven and not proven. so why even argue for it?

Creationism is disproved in the way they present it. We know that man did not just appear in its current form. We know the earth was not created in 6 days. We know the earth is not 6,000 years old. We know man did not walk with dinosaurs. We know there was not a world wide flood etc. etc. etc.

It is not science and should never be presented as science.

That thing about the Earth being only 6,000 years old was proposed by a vicar with an amatuer interest in geology, no one apart from serious fundamentalists has actually ever taken that as a fact. Interestingly though, it's only relatively recently that the scientific community have come to any kind of loose agreement around the age of the planet.

The 6 days thing is interesting though and the more you think about it, the more it makes you wonder. Not that I'm suggesting the Bible should be treated as a scientific tome for one second, but it's postulated that the big bang actually produced all the matter that will ever exist in the universe within seconds, or minutes. Kind of puts six days to shame doesn't it?

reply to post by IKTOMI


As opposed to your belief:

First there was nothing, then god magicked the universe into existence

You can't ridicule the big bang as 'something coming from nothing' when you believe the exact same thing

reply to post by mb2591


Nope, a law explains what something does in nature, i.e. the law of gravity states that an object will fall to the ground when dropped

A theory attempts to explain why this happens

reply to post by Viking9019


Observed instances of speciation

Some more instances of speciationp

Not to mention bacteria that have evolved immunity from drugs: methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), extremely drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) or rats that have evolved immunity from rat poison.

I know what you are going to say next, "But that's not evolution, it's adaptation."

Evolution and adaptation are synonymous with one another

reply to post by Bixxi3


Yes, it was the fusion of two of the chimpanzees chromosomes to give human chromosome 2. That doesn't mean that it was caused by aliens though as it is not a rare mutation, it happens in about 1 in 1,000 live births.

Although it's pretty likely, we still don't know if aliens exist either, so don't go jumping the gun on that one

reply to post by Griffo

I’m glad you’ve decided to teach the remedial class, Griffo, because I certainly couldn’t be bothered.

I wonder why this juvenile bunfight is being permitted in a forum we were told was going to be more strictly policed.

We come from infinity and to infinity we will return.

We are infinity but we are only aware of a portion of it. This makes us apparently finite.

When we evolve, we become aware of a greater portion of infinity. It is a greater portion of ourselves.

Love is the key. If you don't love everything in this smaller portion of infinity, then a larger portion would be too much to handle.

Or....
We are all wrong. We are going on the information we have now. Just like our ancestors before us. In another hundred years, we may or may not have an answer.
For all we know we could be a result of a galactic cafeteria food fight between space slugs.

reply to post by TechUnique

Evolution happens, you can't really refute that in my opinion.

Agreed.

This doesn't completely disprove the idea of creationism.

Nor should it. Science works based on positive evidence. There is positive evidence for evolution, there is no positive evidence for creationism.

You see we don't know exactly what caused the big bang.

I’m not sure what the origins of the universe have to do with the observations surrounding biodiversity and the theory that describes those observations. At least not directly, beyond the fact that you need a universe to have life to be observed.

Our genetic code could have been written by someone/something to allow evolution to happen.

True, it could have been. There’s just no evidence to support that.

Actually seriously consider this for a moment. The make up of life is so in depth and complicated that it isn't absurd to lean towards the idea that this beautiful code of life could have been written by someone or something.

Arguments from complexity are founded on an unsupported premise – namely that what we observe in nature is too complex to have occurred naturally.

This means that Creationism and evolution could co exist to a certain extent.

This hinges on what “creationism” is defined as.

Stop banging your heads against each others walls. Open your eyes to different possibilities. Close minded science is just as bad as closed minded religion.

I’m still trying to understand the fascination with trying to bash religion and science together into some amorphous lump as if it’s going to actually solve some fundamental problem. Religion is religion, it’s based on faith and it’s an understandably important component in most people’s lives. Science is science, it’s based on fact and it’s an understandably important component in most people’s lives. I find trying to use science to disprove religion, which is by its very nature beyond scientific proof, or trying to use religion to disprove science about as useful as poking at an open wound with a dirty stick.

reply to post by TechUnique

Don't refute something indefinitely because it goes against your current paradigm of belief.

What if my "paradigm of belief" means I require objective evidence? Should I believe things for which there is no evidence? I'm not sure that doing say would make me "open minded".

This thread is a non-argument. The two sides are addressing different questions. To achieve argumentative stasis, the positions need to be clarified.

A little history:

The first scientists were called natural philosophers because they were philosophers who decided to go and verify their ideas in the world through experiments and tests. These were philosophers who made the assumption that the world is static, as opposed to pre-Socratic thought, which held that the world is constantly in flux, hence their saying "you can never step in the same river twice."

Scientific thought is based on philosophic thought, not "irrefutable truth," and the first scientists (like Aristotle) knew this well, since they were first and foremost philosophers. Aristotle, whose philosophy is the basis for scientific thought and Western civilization, based his philosophy on his metaphysics, which has "God" built into it as one of his four "causes."

During the Middle Ages, Aristotelian thought proliferated among priests, friars and other religious men and later formed the basis for education in the first universities. Then there were the scientific advances made by Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Tesla, etc. What these minds all had in common was an assumption of God's existence. Even the father of genetics, Gregor Mendel, was a monk. If the great majority of the scientific minds in history have mixed "God" with science and achieved staggering advancements in understanding, then why is there now such resistance to the the possibility of God's existence in the "scientific" community?

When contemporary evolutionists remove the mysterious influences of God from their equations, what do they replace them with? They replace them with the mysterious influences of nature! How is God different from nature? Saying something is "natural" is scientifically identical to saying that something is "magical," because both explanations admit the "cause" is unknown.

Ironically Aristotle already anticipated this limitation of science with his four causes. Material causes are questions like "what is it made of?" Efficient causes are questions like "what made it move/change?" Formal causes are questions like "what kind of thing is it?" Final causes are questions like "what kind of potential does it have?"

en.wikipedia.org...

Science identifies and describes efficient and material causes, while philosophy identifies and describes formal and final causes. Metaphysics merges science and philosophy into one structure. An explanation of evolution that denies God's existence is then metaphysics and should be treated as such. Creationism is also metaphysics and should also be treated as such. Once we establish that both groups are doing metaphysics, not just science or philosophy, the argument will be much more productive.

Are not all the interactions of the material Universe governed by laws, known or unknown to us?

Did the Universe not possess the potential to create suns, planets, humans etc. - at the beginning - the big bang?

Are humans not a creation of the Universe and its laws?

Is Human intelligence not also a creation of the Universe and its laws?

We humans are part of the universe and so also our intelligence is part of the universe.

Intelligence as we know it and define it had its potential for existence within the laws and material of the universe.

Is it such a leap to consider the possibility that the universe as a whole may possess this intelligence or greater that is manifest in just one small part of its own creation - humans?

BTW, I am not Christian and I subscribe to no religion.

South Park also addressed this topic in the "Go, God, Go" episodes, science damn you! Stan said something like "Couldn't evolution just be the how, and not the why?"

I'm an Emanationist, so I am technically not a creationist or an evolutionist, but I'll assume you're also talking to me.

The problem with your theory is that if someone wrote our DNA, then someone had to have written THEIR dna. And on, and on, an infinite loop. So in other words, the FIRST had to have created itself, in that it is not created but the creator. It creates, nothing creates it. That is the ONLY position that makes logical sense. Prove to me there is another way to cut the gordian knot of the chicken and the egg.

Originally posted by TechUnique

Originally posted by megabytz
reply to post by vjr1113

 

creationism is not dis-proven and not proven. so why even argue for it?

Creationism is disproved in the way they present it. We know that man did not just appear in its current form. We know the earth was not created in 6 days. We know the earth is not 6,000 years old. We know man did not walk with dinosaurs. We know there was not a world wide flood etc. etc. etc.

It is not science and should never be presented as science.

Actually there is evidence to suggest that there WAS a great flood and that man DID walk with dinosaurs. I'm not arguing the case for Christianity but you really did annoy me with those comments.

Search for evidence of the great flood and man walking with Dinosaurs, I've got things to do but I assure you there IS evidence out there.

I don't think there is anything that comes close to evidence that man ever walked with dinosaurs. There is what looks like human footprints that appear to be embedded in rock alongside dinosaur footprints, but it's nowhere near conclusive that it's actually a human footprint.

reply to post by Awen24

There is a single set of evidence. It's by and large empirical, verifiable and freely available to all of us... in fact, it's all around us. The difference here is in interpretation. Anyone who has observed evolutionary science will note that it works in a backward manner. Evidence is interpreted according to the theory; the theory is not defined by the evidence. This is primarily because evolutionists cannot and will not accept the idea of an all-powerful creator God.

Given the degree to which the theory of evolution has been used as a predictive tool, your conclusion that scientists working in that field are doing nothing but creating post hoc rationalizations doesn’t seem to be true.

Creationists, on the other hand, interpret that same set of evidence from their own preconceived notion of a creator God. There is no difference here; no greater validity to one viewpoint over another. The arguments that so often bounce back and forth around here (and everywhere else) are essentially over the validity or value of one set of interpretation over another.

Scientific theories aren’t just interpretations of evidence, they are also predictive tools. They live and die by the accuracy of those predictions. So while a creationist can certainly interpret the data to fit their conclusions, I’d be interested to see what their “theory” would predict in order to make it potentially falsifiable.

...and while you may argue that God and evolution aren't mutually exclusive... a literalist interpretation of the Bible and evolutionary origins (note: origins) ARE mutually exclusive.

Can you clarify what you mean by “evolutionary origins”? Origin of life? Origin of species? Something else?

The fact is, you'll struggle to find a creationist who doesn't believe in evolution.

Struggle? I can find them readily here on ATS.

Most creationists, however, will differentiate between macro and micro-evolution; the difference being that while we (yes, I am a creationist Christian, though that's not the point I'm trying to make here) agree that evolution occurs within a species,

I’m assuming that evolution within a species is what you’re defining as micro-evolution. Therefore speciation would be macro-evolution. And we’ve witnessed speciation, so we’ve observed macro-evolution.

we would argue that evolutionary mutations, while occasionally beneficial, never result in an increase in genetic information. An increase in genetic CONTENT, perhaps... but not new information (e.g if I were to type the same sentence twice, I may have more content, but I don't have more information - mutations either destroy or duplicate genetic information, they don't create new data, and there isn't a single case where this has occurred).

I’m going to ask you to very clearly and objectively define “genetic information” in the context of this assertion. I ask because we’ve observed increased the evolution of genetic variety within a population, increased genetic material, novel genetic material, and novel genetically-regulated abilities. So obviously your particular definition of “genetic information” excludes all of these.

For this reason, creationists believe that the world has in fact DEvolved... that, as God created everything in perfection, the fall created circumstances where everything on this earth has begun to decay and devolve; this has resulted in speciation and genetic variability etc.

So there must be some kind of evidence that we, and all other species, were genetically perfect prior to the fall, right?

Creationists do NOT, however, believe in evolution-driven species transition; nor in evolution-driven transition from simple to complex forms. Personally I don't believe there is any evidence in nature for this whatsoever.

Speciation has been observed and, as I pointed out above, increases in “genetic information” has been observed, which would add to the “complexity” of an organism. There are algae that form pairs of cells and bacteria that engage in quorum-sensing, so we’ve observed unicellular life forming colony organisms that act as a single organism.