Evolution... a kids fairytale

reply to post by Haxsaw


Even if this is addressed to Nosred, I won't let such an opportunity pass me by.

You wrote:

["Nice try, clearly you slept through math and probability, or you wouldn’t be saying the universe is how it is by chance, but instead of getting too caught up in your attempt at patronising me, let me address the rest of what you had to say."]

You see, the whole theist argument of non-randomness rests on ONE thing. That cosmos wouldn't look like the cosmos, we are observing. Other initial conditions, other inter-active forces would just lead to ANOTHER cosmos. And as cosmoses build on the principles of asymmetrical polarization mainly would lead to high complexity (e.g. biological life), the high complexities in such other cosmoses would say: "Isn't it fantastic, that we fit so well with the initial conditions".

Quote: ["........at least those who believe in a CREATOR are humble enough to admit it takes faith....."]

You have turned faith into a VIRTUE. Now that's interesting.

Quote: ["The only difference then in regard to this issue between most peoples definition of science and religion is that on one side we have scientists who are too arrogant to admit it takes faith to believe in their theories and on the other side we have "creationists" who will openly admit their theories require faith."]

You do seem to be rather unfamiliar with how real science functions, if you can generalize so much concerning its methods and results. Some scientific conclusions are as steady, as you can wish for. Other science can still be disputed.

Quote: [" The main problem is that 99% atheists think the word "faith" is so abhorrent that they have lost the definition of it,"]

I take that this is an aphorism.

Quote: ["A definition of "faith": Complete trust or confidence in someone or something."]

AND subjective, valid for the individual or a group only.

Quote: ["I don’t think creationists have any issues with science co-existing with their religion at all,"]

Creationists aren't exactly known for their diplomatic talents or willingness to peaceful co-existence between doctrines.

Quote: ["Basically the main law of science is that if you can prove something wrong then you’re right and for some scientists it’s that science is right until it has been proved wrong,"]

Now where did you learn THAT kind of science.

Quote: ["In conclusion it’s faith V faith, but only the creationists are humble enough to admit it."]

Now I know, that your science is of the 'in-official' type, and that your logic also could do with a helping hand. But that's almost a thread on its own.

I'm going to quote the same article several times as a response to your post Haxsaw. You can read this entire article here:

skeptoid.com...

Originally posted by Haxsaw
Nice try, clearly you slept through math and probability, or you wouldn’t be saying the universe is how it is by chance, but instead of getting too caught up in your attempt at patronising me, let me address the rest of what you had to say.

I find it a bit ironic that you don't seem to understand that scientific discovery is based entirely on mathematics, and that mathematics are in fact a branch of science. However I will still post this;

nother effort to fight science using logic states that It's too improbable for complex life forms to develop by chance. This is the old "747 in a junkyard" argument. How likely is it that a tornado would go through a junkyard, and by chance, happen to assemble a perfect 747? The same argument was made centuries ago by William Paley, except he referred to the exquisite design of a pocketwatch, and pointed out that such a thing is so complex and delicate that it had to have been designed from the top down by a creator. This argument is simply reflective of ignorance of the extraordinary power of evolution's bottom-up design mechanism. Once you have an understanding of multigenerational mutation and natural selection, and also understand how structures with irreducible complexity evolve, there's nothing unlikely or implausible about evolution at all. In fact, genetic algorithms (the computer software version of evolution), are starting to take over the world of invention with innovative new engineering advances that top-down designers like human beings might have never come up with. Bottom-up design is not only probable, it's inevitable and nearly always produces better designs than any intelligent creator could have.

Firstly, oh, but none of his friends would be too slow if their parents/ancestors lived under the same environmental conditions according to your theory, so you shot yourself in the foot, instead of belittling me you belittled yourself and your own faith.

Not if the monsters had just shown up themselves. I'll use another modern example here: Fishing (mainly because I just got back from fishing). Now you see, a lot of fishing places such as lakes have rules on what size a fish has to be in order for you to keep it. If a fish isn't big enough you have to throw it back. Now this sounds like a good idea right since evolution and natural selection obviously don't exist right?

Wrong. The average size of cod has decreased from 95 centimeters to 65 centimeters over the past sixty years alone. For a while this had people baffled and was ignored, never being connected to the size regulations until now. A study was done by a marine scientist at New York State in which a batch of Atlantic silversides were divided up into three tanks. In the first tank 90% of the fish culled were large, in the second tank 90% of the fish culled were small, in the third tank the fish were culled at random. The results? Turned out the second tank ended up having larger fish over long periods of time.

whyfiles.org...

Now I know you're asking "How could this happen if all animals are exact genetic clones of each other?" and the answer is, "They aren't, you're being ignorant. This is observable natural selection in action". You see, as we're removing all the large fish from the water while at the same time protecting the smaller fish, we're teaching the genetic structure of fish to favor a small size and slow growth.

I welcome you to explain this phenomenon if natural selection doesn't exist. Let me guess, "God did it."?

Oh, I get it, so when two normal healthy people give birth to a baby with cancer, down syndrome, cerebral palsy or some physical deformities, this is actually evolution in progress., hmmm, interesting.

Yes it is interesting that you don't understand natural selection. If an animal's offspring is born with a genetic disorder that is harmful to them, chances are they'll die before they're able to reproduce meaning they can't pass on their genes. Only the offspring born with strong genes live long enough to reproduce.

No you don’t have to throw in some magic beard men, your faith in throwing a few million years at an ape and turning it into a man is a good enough laugh by itself, in regards to your dog breeding being the best example well when the dog evolves into something other than a dog then get back to me

We have bred wolves into the dozens of different breeds of dog you can see with your own eyes today. There are in fact human records of the creation of several breeds of dog. Are you implying that the different breeds of dogs are all genetic clones of the wolves they were bred from?

until then your theory is based on faith whether you are too arrogant to admit it or not, at least those who believe in a CREATOR are humble enough to admit it takes faith. What you ape’eists need to understand is that REGARDLESS of your excuses, until you see an ape turn into a human you are relying on faith that your ancestors were apes, turning around and saying “you imbecile it takes a few millions years for this to happen” does not negate the fact you need faith to believe what you do, like it or lump it.

The theory is not based on faith, it is based on observations and empirical evidence.

Young Earth Creationists also like to argue that Evolution cannot be observed. Part of what you need to do to validate a theory is to test it and observe the results. Although there are evolutionary phenomena that can be directly observed like dog breeding and lab experiments with fruit flies, most of what evolution explains has happened over millions of years and so, quite obviously, nobody was around to observe most of it. This is true, but it misstates what observation consists of. There's a lot of observation in science where we have to use evidence of an event: certain chemical reactions, subatomic particle physics, theoretical physics; all of these disciplines involve experimentation and observation where the actual events can't be witnessed. The theory of evolution was originally developed to explain the evidence that was observed from the fossil record. So in this respect, every significant aspect of evolution has been exhaustively observed and documented, many times over.

Young Earth Creationists also argue that Evolution is not falsifiable, therefore it's not science. One of the fundamentals of any science is that it's falsifiable. If a test can be derived that, if it were to fail, falsified a proposition, then that proposition meets a basic test of being a science. Something that cannot be tested and falsified, like the existence of gods, is therefore not a science. Young Earthers accept this to the point that they use it as an argument against evolution's status as a science.

he next argument to be prepared for is that Evolution is itself a religion. This argument has become increasingly popular in recent years as creationists have tried to bolster their own position by decorating it with scientific-sounding words like intelligent design. And as they try to convince us that their own position is science based, they correspondingly mock evolution by calling it a religion of those who worship Darwin as a prophet and accept its tenets on faith since there is no evidence supporting evolution. Clearly this is an argument that could only be persuasive to people who know little or nothing about the concept of evolution or Darwin's role in its development. This argument is easily dismissed. A religion is the worship of a supernatural divine superbeing, and there is nothing anywhere in the theory of evolution that makes reference to such a being, and not a single living human considers himself a member of any "evolution church."

Say what?, you just finished saying that one of the best things about science is that it corrects itself as it goes along, so this of course means your so-called evidence has on many occasions been proven to be based on false faith.

From Wikipedia:

Science (from Latin: scientia meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world

In other words, science is a way of explaining observable facts in nature by reaching conclusions based on a testable hypothesis'. You have heard of the "scientific method" right? It requires no faith. You see something in nature, you form a hypothesis about what causes it, you test your hypothesis, you conclude whether or not your hypothesis was correct. If your hypothesis was not correct, form a different hypothesis to explain what you just saw in nature and try again.

The only difference then in regard to this issue between most peoples definition of science and religion is that on one side we have scientists who are too arrogant to admit it takes faith to believe in their theories and on the other side we have "creationists" who will openly admit their theories require faith. You can't prove GOD doesn’t exist,

Yet you can prove that evolution exists. Hmmm, it's tough to pick the winner here.

you can have faith that he does or doent exist sure, the same as you can have faith in the easter bunny existing or not existing,

This is an excellent example. Why is it alright for you for adults to believe in something such as the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus? I see it as a sign of a mental or emotional disorder for a grown adult to be unable to distinguish fact and fiction.

and at the same time creationists can't prove that our ancestors aren't apes but nor can anyone prove that they were.

Can and have. Look at the fossil records.

Originally posted by Haxsaw
Yeah, we'd still be human.

Yeah, over a few thousand years we still are human. I'm talking about this happening for a million years or more, without technology and conveniences interfering.

You're welcome, everybody

Originally posted by bogomil
Even if this is addressed to Nosred, I won't let such an opportunity pass me by.
You see, the whole theist argument of non-randomness rests on ONE thing. That cosmos wouldn't look like the cosmos, we are observing. Other initial conditions, other inter-active forces would just lead to ANOTHER cosmos. And as cosmoses build on the principles of asymmetrical polarization mainly would lead to high complexity (e.g. biological life), the high complexities in such other cosmoses would say: "Isn't it fantastic, that we fit so well with the initial conditions".

More hypothetical situations based on faith, proves nothing.

Originally posted by bogomil
You have turned faith into a VIRTUE. Now that's interesting.

Is honesty not a virtue now? I'm clearly pointing to the fact that creationists will admit the definition of the word applies to their beliefs, while you seem to have fallen well short, obviously you won’t admit it.

Originally posted by bogomil
You do seem to be rather unfamiliar with how real science functions, if you can generalize so much concerning its methods and results. Some scientific conclusions are as steady, as you can wish for. Other science can still be disputed.

Nope, your evidence would not stand up in a court of law to prove that your ancestors were part of the sun or even a simple cell for that matter. Last time I checked sun worship was not part of the judicial system in any country.

Originally posted by bogomil
[Quote] Originally posted by Haxsaw
The main problem is that 99% of atheists think the word "faith" is so abhorrent that they have lost the definition of it,"

I take that this is an aphorism.
Call it what you will, if you think evolution in its entirety doesn't take faith then it applies to you.

Originally posted by bogomil
[Quote]: ] Originally posted by Haxsaw
A definition of "faith": Complete trust or confidence in someone or something."

AND subjective, valid for the individual or a group only.
The same as evolution being truth as a complete theory is also subjective, and based on faith.

Originally posted by bogomil
Creationists aren't exactly known for their diplomatic talents or willingness to peaceful co-existence between doctrines.

Let me try your concept of semantics. That's subjective, and some of the most pig-headed zealous individuals I've come across are atheists who can't even admit their theories require faith to swallow. Go on tell me this is subjective, and I'll tell you that you're reply is subjective.

Originally posted by bogomil
[Quote]: ] Originally posted by Haxsaw
Basically the main law of science is that if you can prove something wrong then you’re right and for some scientists it’s that science is right until it has been proved wrong"

Now where did you learn THAT kind of science.
From the same source you learnt evolution.

Originally posted by bogomil
[Quote] ] Originally posted by Haxsaw
In conclusion it’s faith Vs faith, but only the creationists are humble enough to admit it.

Now I know, that your science is of the 'in-official' type, and that your logic also could do with a helping hand. But that's almost a thread on its own.
Nope, let me remind you I was talking about evolution just in case you'd forgotten and got wound up in your own ego. I mentioned that a ‘biological adaptation’ is one thing, but evolution in its entirety is another, the latter requiring a great deal of faith regardless of how much you attempt to play dodgeball.

Originally posted by Nosred
I find it a bit ironic that you don't seem to understand that scientific discovery is based entirely on mathematics, and that mathematics are in fact a branch of science. However I will still post this;
nother effort to fight science using logic states that It's too improbable for complex life forms to develop by chance. This is the old "747 in a junkyard" argument. How likely is it that a tornado would go through a junkyard, and by chance, happen to assemble a perfect 747? The same argument was made centuries ago by William Paley, except he referred to the exquisite design of a pocketwatch, and pointed out that such a thing is so complex and delicate that it had to have been designed from the top down by a creator. This argument is simply reflective of ignorance of the extraordinary power of evolution's bottom-up design mechanism. Once you have an understanding of multigenerational mutation and natural selection, and also understand how structures with irreducible complexity evolve, there's nothing unlikely or implausible about evolution at all. In fact, genetic algorithms (the computer software version of evolution), are starting to take over the world of invention with innovative new engineering advances that top-down designers like human beings might have never come up with. Bottom-up design is not only probable, it's inevitable and nearly always produces better designs than any intelligent creator could have.

More hypothetical situations based on faith being passed off as utter truth.

Originally posted by Nosred

] Originally posted by Hawsaw
Firstly, oh, but none of his friends would be too slow if their parents/ancestors lived under the same environmental conditions according to your theory, so you shot yourself in the foot, instead of belittling me you belittled yourself and your own faith.

Not if the monsters had just shown up themselves.

More hypothetical situations based on faith being passed off as utter truth. Lame. But let me play your snakes and ladders game for a bit. Firstly, if the monsters had just shown up then the boy himself would barely have any inherited characteristics of a fast runner apart from his own fitness from running from them most of his life, which the rest of his friends would have to.

Originally posted by Nosred
I'll use another modern example here: Fishing (mainly because I just got back from fishing). Now you see, a lot of fishing places such as lakes have rules on what size a fish has to be in order for you to keep it. If a fish isn't big enough you have to throw it back. Now this sounds like a good idea right since evolution and natural selection obviously don't exist right?
Wrong. The average size of cod has decreased from 95 centimeters to 65 centimeters over the past sixty years alone. For a while this had people baffled and was ignored, never being connected to the size regulations until now. A study was done by a marine scientist at New York State in which a batch of Atlantic silversides were divided up into three tanks. In the first tank 90% of the fish culled were large, in the second tank 90% of the fish culled were small, in the third tank the fish were culled at random. The results? Turned out the second tank ended up having larger fish over long periods of time.

lol, all that proves is that there is another force at work which is helping the fish to survive(what that force is is where the faith comes into it), or is this your attempt at proving that your ancestors were a simple cell?, either way evidently you’re way out of your league.

Originally posted by Nosred
Now I know you're asking "How could this happen if all animals are exact genetic clones of each other?" and the answer is, "They aren't, you're being ignorant. This is observable natural selection in action". You see, as we're removing all the large fish from the water while at the same time protecting the smaller fish, we're teaching the genetic structure of fish to favor a small size and slow growth.

Nope, I'm not asking that(thanks for your concern though), but what I will say is that you are no closer to describing what governs this force that you call 'natural selection' as a creationist is to describing how GOD governs 'natural selection', that is to say if you think science can answer exactly how 'natural selection' works then you're more naive than most, and 'survival of the fittest' is simply pointing out the obvious, something dies and something lives and we call the living fitter than that which is dead, how profound lol.

Originally posted by Nosred
I welcome you to explain this phenomenon if natural selection doesn't exist. Let me guess, "God did it."?

You're very confused, natural selection in cases similar to what you described above clearly do exist, natural selection extending to turning simple cells into a human being (or a dinosaur for that matter) when you throw a few billion years at it has obviously never been witnessed and is another issue altogether, it involves a huge amount of FAITH to swallow it, and while you call it "natural" selection some creationist may call it "GOD's" selection.

Originally posted by Nosred
Yes it is interesting that you don't understand natural selection. If an animal's offspring is born with a genetic disorder that is harmful to them, chances are they'll die before they're able to reproduce meaning they can't pass on their genes. Only the offspring born with strong genes live long enough to reproduce.

No, by default natural selection is not totally explainable, or else it wouldn't be called 'natural', it's funny how you are professing to know it all though. The word "nature" is derived from the Latin word natura, or "essential qualities, innate disposition", saying something has an "essential quality" or "innate disposition" explains nothing in regards to how that phenomena became to be.

Originally posted by Nosred
We have bred wolves into the dozens of different breeds of dog you can see with your own eyes today. There are in fact human records of the creation of several breeds of dog. Are you implying that the different breeds of dogs are all genetic clones of the wolves they were bred from?

Nope, I don't know how you missed this one (well I do but I'm trying to be kind), but what I'm claiming is that they are all dogs, have you seen any of them give birth to something other than a dog? No, but you still insist your ancestor was an ape, and that this apes ancestor was a simple cell, and that this simple cells ancestor was what? lol

Originally posted by Nosred
The theory is not based on faith, it is based on observations and empirical evidence.

What a surprise, in all your so called wisdom you still can’t fathom the definition of "faith".

Originally posted by Nosred
[Young Earth Creationists also like to argue that Evolution cannot be observed. Part of what you need to do to validate a theory is to test it and observe the results. Although there are evolutionary phenomena that can be directly observed like dog breeding and lab experiments with fruit flies, most of what evolution explains has happened over millions of years and so, quite obviously, nobody was around to observe most of it. This is true, but it misstates what observation consists of. There's a lot of observation in science where we have to use evidence of an event: certain chemical reactions, subatomic particle physics, theoretical physics; all of these disciplines involve experimentation and observation where the actual events can't be witnessed. The theory of evolution was originally developed to explain the evidence that was observed from the fossil record. So in this respect, every significant aspect of evolution has been exhaustively observed and documented, many times over.

Wow, talk about side-stepping the fact that it takes faith to believe in evolution as a whole, for anyone with a decent grasp on the English language it's clear that's what they're trying to articulate, scientific arrogance at its best there.

Originally posted by Nosred

Young Earth Creationists also argue that Evolution is not falsifiable, therefore it's not science. One of the fundamentals of any science is that it's falsifiable. If a test can be derived that, if it were to fail, falsified a proposition, then that proposition meets a basic test of being a science. Something that cannot be tested and falsified, like the existence of gods, is therefore not a science. Young Earthers accept this to the point that they use it as an argument against evolution's status as a science.

lol, I guess we'll have to wait for someone to show us an experiment of a simple cell turning into a homo-sapien until we can even call evolution “science” as opposed to a “belief system” .

Originally posted by Nosred

he next argument to be prepared for is that Evolution is itself a religion. This argument has become increasingly popular in recent years as creationists have tried to bolster their own position by decorating it with scientific-sounding words like intelligent design. And as they try to convince us that their own position is science based, they correspondingly mock evolution by calling it a religion of those who worship Darwin as a prophet and accept its tenets on faith since there is no evidence supporting evolution. Clearly this is an argument that could only be persuasive to people who know little or nothing about the concept of evolution or Darwin's role in its development. This argument is easily dismissed. A religion is the worship of a supernatural divine superbeing, and there is nothing anywhere in the theory of evolution that makes reference to such a being, and not a single living human considers himself a member of any "evolution church."

Agreed, monotheistic religion requires belief in an intelligent (unseen in many cases) force behind all forces, evolution does not, nonetheless as mentioned above it's a belief system that clearly revolves around 'faith', let’s call evolution a cult under this definition: "Obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle, or thing"

Originally posted by Nosred
From Wikipedia:

Science (from Latin: scientia meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world

Yerp, evolution clearly doesn’t come under the umbrella of totally testable, it can't be tested in its entirety, you could of course put it in the predictions category though, along with dooms day.

Originally posted by Nosred In other words, science is a way of explaining observable facts in nature by reaching conclusions based on a testable hypothesis'. You have heard of the "scientific method" right? It requires no faith. You see something in nature, you form a hypothesis about what causes it, you test your hypothesis, you conclude whether or not your hypothesis was correct. If your hypothesis was not correct, form a different hypothesis to explain what you just saw in nature and try again.

You're very very confused, science corrects itself as it goes along, which goes hand in hand with the fact that many conclusions drawn from testable hypothesis' that you are calling 'observable facts' have been proven wrong, for the blind this means that they were in fact never "facts" at all. I will also reiterate that unless you have a working time machine evolution as a whole is not "testable" and remains a theory that requires faith no matter how zealous you are in preaching it.

Originally posted by Nosred
Yet you can prove that evolution exists. Hmmm, it's tough to pick the winner here.

Nope, no matter how biased you are you can only prove that biological adaptations and certain areas of evolution exist, you can in NO WAY prove that evolution as complete theory exists at all. Maybe your descendants will evolve into aliens and invent you a time machine in order to really make your "hypothesis" fully "testable", for now though you remain just a blind zealot of your popes in the white robes.

Originally posted by Nosred

Originally posted by Haxsaw
you can have faith that HE does or doesn’t exist sure, the same as you can have faith in the easter bunny existing or not existing,

This is an excellent example. Why is it alright for you for adults to believe in something such as the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus? I see it as a sign of a mental or emotional disorder for a grown adult to be unable to distinguish fact and fiction.

The fact you dont seem to be able to distinguish between evolution as a whole and some of the biological adaptations contained within this belief system shows us all who has a predisposition towards gullibility.

Originally posted by Nosred
Can and have. Look at the fossil records.

You're going around in circles chasing your own tail, and still ignoring the fact that showing some dead animal bones and some minor biological adaptations and then jumping to the conclusion that your ancestor was a simple cell goes beyond "testable" and fits under a faith based belief system. You're just blinded by your zealous arrogance, let's say your arrogance has surpassed your level of knowledge.

Originally posted by Hydroman

Originally posted by Haxsaw
Yeah, we'd still be human.

Yeah, over a few thousand years we still are human. I'm talking about this happening for a million years or more, without technology and conveniences interfering.

Oh, yeah, how dare we forget the secret untestable ingredient of a few million years.
One can only wonder what your descendants will be hey, aliens, chocolate frogs, or maybe evolution will do a complete flip and realise that it's inevitable that all living things will die so your descendants could evolve back into simple cells and then earth might journey back to the sun as a gas or rock realising its been a fruitless mission of "natural" selection to begin with.

Originally posted by ExistentialNightmare
Why are there still chimpanzees?
youtube video

lol, oh that clears it right up, their your cousins, hilarious :lol

sweet zombie jesus an anti-evolution thread

Just out of interest – how many creationists on this thread are not American?

Any way my contribution to the thread

Originally posted by racasan
sweet zombie jesus an anti-evolution thread

Just out of interest – how many creationists on this thread are not American?

Any way my contribution to the thread
youtube vid.

Maybe, just maybe, if the creationists are favoured down the track by the random 'force' you call "natrual selection", then we can all evolve into zealous arrogant tough guys who need to rant and swear every second word to get our point across, or better yet maybe the autor of the vids decendants will evolve into a "fitter" than human breed of Galápagos tortoise and live in captivity for almost 200 years so no-one has to listen to them, orrrrrr better yet perhaps they end up evolving into being "fitter" than the average captive Galápagos tortoise and become Great Basin Bristlecone Pine trees who can live for almost 5000 years, then we wont even have to listen to them groan.

Oh the insanity.

reply to post by Haxsaw


Oh I thought he had captured the essence of the evolution/creationist argument exceptionally well

I love that “jesus is a chicken” bit

reply to post by Haxsaw


You wrote (on the probability-aspect of intelligent design):

["More hypothetical situations based on faith, proves nothing."]

First of all, the model I presented isn't build on faith. It's a logic chain (don't you know the difference?) And then it isn't meant to 'prove' anything, it's actually a parallel to YOUR version, which doesn't 'prove' anything either.

Quote (on faith as a virtue): ["Is honesty not a virtue now? I'm clearly pointing to the fact that creationists will admit the definition of the word applies to their beliefs,..."]

I wrote "faith as a virtue". What has that to do with 'honesty'. Faith isn't necessarily honest.

Quote continued: ["..... while you seem to have fallen well short, obviously you won’t admit it."]

Fallen short of ...what?

Quote: ["Nope, your evidence would not stand up in a court of law to prove that your ancestors were part of the sun or even a simple cell for that matter."]

Where have I presented 'evidence' of that kind? You must be talking to someone else. Try to sort out what the various positions are, who have them and what they are about.

Quote: ["Last time I checked sun worship was not part of the judicial system in any country."]

And .....?

Quote: ["Call it what you will, if you think evolution in its entirety doesn't take faith then it applies to you."]

As I've written elsewhere, I'm not well-informed in biology (being more in the physics department), but even from there I can see SOME knowledge-gaps in 'evolution'. But to do the same as is done in physics and logic, filling those gaps with mythological postulates, is just an extension of faith. Not an addition of science/rational reasoning.

Quote: ["Let me try your concept of semantics. That's subjective, and some of the most pig-headed zealous individuals I've come across are atheists who can't even admit their theories require faith to swallow. Go on tell me this is subjective, and I'll tell you that you're reply is subjective."]

And what has "pig-headed atheists" to do with me?

You are moving into the area of 'philosophy of science' and general epistemology now, and if you want to follow that direction (which is OK with me, as long as we can stay somewhat on topic), you'll need to be precise about what, where and how your (sofar only vaguely defined) opposition falls short or needs 'faith'.

Concerning the semantic aspect it's apparant, that you are so unfamiliar with how real science/logic is used and its procedure, that you are mainly talking ABOUT it (from your misapplied idea of what you believe it to be), instead of using it, as it is meant to be used.

Quote: ["Now where did you learn THAT kind of science. From the same source you learnt evolution."]

I learned in our local equalent of college, where I graduated in hard science. This is a self-defined system, telling what it is and what it does. Shall I take it, that you somehow are challenging this system?

Quote: ["Now I know, that your science is of the 'in-official' type, and that your logic also could do with a helping hand."]

Ofcourse my science is of the 'official' version, what else? My logic is far from being at professional academic level, but I believe it's sufficient in the present context.

Quote: ["Nope, let me remind you I was talking about evolution just in case you'd forgotten"]

I can similarly remind you, that my initial 'bid' on this thread was to consider the misapplications of physics and 'philosophy of science' used as starting-points by some christians ignorant of these subjects

Quote: [".........and got wound up in your own ego."]

What has your character-analysis to do with science, logic, evolution?

Facts and rational arguments, please. At least if you want to include objective procedure in your reasoning (no-one is forcing you to do so).

A simple chart showing how natural selection works for those of you who apparently don't understand it:

Young Earth Creationists also like to argue that Evolution cannot be observed. Part of what you need to do to validate a theory is to test it and observe the results. Although there are evolutionary phenomena that can be directly observed like dog breeding and lab experiments with fruit flies, most of what evolution explains has happened over millions of years and so, quite obviously, nobody was around to observe most of it. This is true, but it misstates what observation consists of. There's a lot of observation in science where we have to use evidence of an event: certain chemical reactions, subatomic particle physics, theoretical physics; all of these disciplines involve experimentation and observation where the actual events can't be witnessed. The theory of evolution was originally developed to explain the evidence that was observed from the fossil record. So in this respect, every significant aspect of evolution has been exhaustively observed and documented, many times over.

3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.

This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time—changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related. These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in Grant’s studies of evolving beak shapes among Galápagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms—such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization—can drive profound changes in populations over time. The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not—and does not—find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (65 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly. Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence. It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.

www.swarthmore.edu...

11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life. Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species.

Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved.

Same link as above ^

You're very confused, natural selection in cases similar to what you described above clearly do exist, natural selection extending to turning simple cells into a human being (or a dinosaur for that matter) when you throw a few billion years at it has obviously never been witnessed and is another issue altogether,

Yes, those dinosaur bones were just put in the ground by God to fool us. Humans have obviously always existed in their current form since life began, fossil records be damned.

and while you call it "natural" selection some creationist may call it "GOD's" selection.

Are you saying God causes evolution? That's something I can settle for, since I can neither prove nor disprove a god having a hand in the natural process.

If the theory of evolution is correct then that means there was no Garden of Eden and no Fall, the whole talking snake hypothesis fails
With no talking snake there is no need for Jesus to redeem man (from a Fall that never happened) and so christianity fails
If christianity fails than that means christians will have to acknowledge they have wasted a whole lot of time and money on a fairytale

So from that it’s clear that getting a christian to admit they understand evolution is never going to be easy – ok I get that

What I don’t understand is why christians insist everybody else (none christians) has to go along with their creation thing?

Originally posted by ExistentialNightmare

You're welcome, everybody

Yeah, your High Priest is a real genius. If he doesn't have the answer then no one does. Let's take a closer look if you dare

:

This is what I think:

Good thread, not allot of moderation, in the thread.. Its become a decent debate, but in the end..

We cannot prove who is right..

There are allot I mean, allot of things we do understand..

Evolution is one of them, we can see evolution around in perpetual aspects, yet at the same time its hard to understand.

Then you have the ways we try to understand things we do not, with religion or some form of philosophy..

A digression we have had to accept all throughout life..

I think that is just the way it will always be.

What is important is what makes sense to you.

In the scheme of it all,
will never fully understand life, our existence or even our purpose..

Perhaps we will one day but until we can change how we think it is not happen, it may not be meant to happen as well..

As far as evolution is concerned you can see it around us. Science nature,etc. etc.

Is it an excuse for our existence....

Dunno

You can try to answer it by using your instincts thou..

Originally posted by bogomil
First of all, the model I presented isn't build on faith. It's a logic chain (don't you know the difference?) And then it isn't meant to 'prove' anything, it's actually a parallel to YOUR version, which doesn't 'prove' anything either.

More side-stepping, evolution requires "faith" to swallow hook line and sinker, full stop. In regards to my "version" well I'm not the one claiming my "beliefs" don't involve "faith" to believe, you are.

Originally posted by bogomil
I wrote "faith as a virtue". What has that to do with 'honesty'. Faith isn't necessarily honest.

Your head must be spinning with all the circles you've done thus far. I'm clearly referring to the fact that when two people have a belief system(one says they came from GOD, another says they came from the accretion disc revolving around the sun) both of which take faith to believe, and one of them admits it takes faith to believe what they believe in while the other refuses to admit that their belief system requires any faith at all and attempts to pass their belief system off as nothing other than complete truth involving no faith whatsoever, then the former is obviously more honest in this particular issue.

Originally posted by bogomil
Fallen short of ...what?

OMG, lol. Admitting that it takes faith to believe that your ancestor was an ape, simple cell, or part of the accretion disc revolving around the sun.

Originally posted by bogomil
Where have I presented 'evidence' of that kind? You must be talking to someone else. Try to sort out what the various positions are, who have them and what they are about.

No, you try to sort out what you believe and go from there. I'm talking about believing in evolution in it's entirety, I only mentioned this about 10 times os far.

Originally posted by bogomil

Originally posted by Haxsaw
Last time I checked sun worship was not part of the judicial system in any country.

And .....?

Oh dear, I'm referring to the scientific theory of evolution that tells you earth formed from the accretion disc revolving around the sun. Hang on, what's this now we have a creationist teaching an evolutionist about evolution, madness I say.

Originally posted by bogomil

Originally posted by Hawsaw
Call it what you will, if you think evolution in its entirety doesn't take faith then it applies to you.

As I've written elsewhere, I'm not well-informed in biology (being more in the physics department), but even from there I can see SOME knowledge-gaps in 'evolution'. But to do the same as is done in physics and logic, filling those gaps with mythological postulates, is just an extension of faith. Not an addition of science/rational reasoning.

Well done sir, finally, right there you have the admittance that evolution as a whole requires "FAITH" to swallow. Not much more needs to be said.

Originally posted by bogomil
Concerning the semantic aspect it's apparant, that you are so unfamiliar with how real science/logic is used and its procedure, that you are mainly talking ABOUT it (from your misapplied idea of what you believe it to be), instead of using it, as it is meant to be used.

Nope, I'm going by what your superiors zealously attempt to push down our throats.

Originally posted by bogomil
I learned in our local equalent of college, where I graduated in hard science. This is a self-defined system, telling what it is and what it does. Shall I take it, that you somehow are challenging this system?

Take it exactly how I've presented it, and that's that evolution as whole requires faith, it is a belief system, and science itself corrects itself, obviously proving that it is often wrong(or right until proven wrong as some scientists have said before).

Originally posted by bogomil
I can similarly remind you, that my initial 'bid' on this thread was to consider the misapplications of physics and 'philosophy of science' used as starting-points by some christians ignorant of these subjects.

Well then you've clearly steered in all sorts of wrong directions, I for one am not a christian but do however have faith in an INTELLIGENT UNSEEN FORCE behind all forces, and my initial bid was to present the fact that evolution as a whole requires faith to swallow, and you have admitted that above, intentionally or not, so I don't think you needed or continue to need to present a single thing to me. Thanks anyway.

Originally posted by Nosred

Young Earth Creationists also like to argue that Evolution cannot be observed. Part of what you need to do to validate a theory is to test it and observe the results. Although there are evolutionary phenomena that can be directly observed like dog breeding and lab experiments with fruit flies, most of what evolution explains has happened over millions of years and so, quite obviously, nobody was around to observe most of it. This is true, but it misstates what observation consists of. There's a lot of observation in science where we have to use evidence of an event: certain chemical reactions, subatomic particle physics, theoretical physics; all of these disciplines involve experimentation and observation where the actual events can't be witnessed. The theory of evolution was originally developed to explain the evidence that was observed from the fossil record. So in this respect, every significant aspect of evolution has been exhaustively observed and documented, many times over.

An observation of a fossil is one thing, attempting to preach that one set of fossils gave birth to another requires faith, unless of course you've witnessed this first hand. "Most of what evolution explains has happened over millions of years and so, quite obviously, nobody was around to observe most of it", exactly the good old secret ingredient of "millions of years", until one of your cousins evolves(cough, cough) far enough to make us a time machine then evolution in its entirety remains in the faith basket.
"Every significant aspect of evolution has been exhaustively observed and documented, many times over". Ummm, lol, no it hasn’t, pulling fossils out of the ground and saying we conclude that man has come from an accretion disc revolving around the sun(or even a simple cell), has not been observed at all, what baloney.

Originally posted by Nosred

3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.
This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time—changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related. These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in Grant’s studies of evolving beak shapes among Galápagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms—such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization—can drive profound changes in populations over time. The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not—and does not—find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (65 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly. Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence. It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.

Yerp, exaclty what I've said already, areas of microevolution cannot be denied. Macroevolution, well as you just quoted is based on "Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related", see that word "MAY" that right there is telling you it takes faith to swallow it, and this; "The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation".
"Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly". Wow, not only does it take faith, now they're fortune-tellers as well. Let's also consider that the theory of evolution as a whole tells us that complex life forms have originally come(evolved as they put it) from inanimate matter. So that's, faith, fortunetelling, and magic, brillant, and here we have its believers throwing stones at those who believe in an a CREATOR.

Originally posted by Nosred

11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life. Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, IF a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it MIGHT be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. IF those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and ON ITS WAY toward becoming a new species.

'Might', 'if', 'on its way'. Wow sounds deep, lol. Let me narrow down the above paragraph for you: "We have yet to witness/observe anything that even we could call macroevolution, but we do have faith in it. Even though we might of observed some slight differences in genetic makeup, believing that a humans ancestor was inanimate matter would still take enormous amounts of faith".

Originally posted by Nosred

Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved.

"Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well." Again let me articulate what they’re getting at for you, "Natural selection is a way of pointing out the obvious while at the same time refusing to have faith in a higher intelligence, biologists are open to other possibilities as they know it pretty much explains nothing."
"Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved". Hang on, lol, so it's ok to push a theory of humans coming from inanimate matter with no observation of this whatsoever as long as you call it "natural". Now let me rephrase the above quoted sentence into English: "it's ok to worship nature and chance according to science, but don’t dare try and tell them that these forces are under intelligent control, no matter how intelligent they may seem to be".

Originally posted by Nosred
Yes, those dinosaur bones were just put in the ground by God to fool us. Humans have obviously always existed in their current form since life began, fossil records be damned.

No, of course, how imbecilic of me, those dinosaurs appeared by chance just by throwing a few million years at some inanimate matter, oh and so did the rest of life on earth.

Originally posted by Nosred
Are you saying God causes evolution? That's something I can settle for, since I can neither prove nor disprove a god having a hand in the natural process.

It's pretty obvious what I'm saying, and that's until we have observed humans form from inanimate matter, then I will put the theory of evolution in its entirety into the 'faith basket' that will have no benefit to me in this life or the next whether I believe it or not, and regardless of whether or not I'm fortunate enough to get my hands on a time machine and test this theory completely I will still keep my faith in an INTELLIGENT UNSEEN CREATOR until I die, and to be totally honest I think to do anything other than this would be the workings of a fool, but hey that's just me(oh, and over half of the rest of the worlds human population I believe). Hopefully this enough to keep the zealous wannabe white coat evolutionists from trying to pass fiction off as facts, as I’ve done the evolutionist dance of circles enough already in this thread.

I honestly feel like this is the 17th century and I'm trying to convince the village idiot that the Earth isn't the center of the universe.

Speaking of which, you don't believe the Earth is the center of the universe do you? Because I mean, if you did then you'd be even more laughable.

Originally posted by Nosred
I honestly feel like this is the 17th century and I'm trying to convince the village idiot that the Earth isn't the center of the universe.

Speaking of which, you don't believe the Earth is the center of the universe do you? Because I mean, if you did then you'd be even more laughable.

No, but nice try, I don't doubt you feel like your stuck in the 17th century with your faith in a miraculous being popping out of inanimate matter, reminds me of witches cauldron(kids fairy tale indeed OP), but anyway I'll keep my faith in an INTELLIGENT UNSEEN GOD, thanks for your fruitless efforts, you can move along now, nothing to see here.

Originally posted by Nosred
I honestly feel like this is the 17th century and I'm trying to convince the village idiot that the Earth isn't the center of the universe.

Speaking of which, you don't believe the Earth is the center of the universe do you? Because I mean, if you did then you'd be even more laughable.

Can you prove that it's not? Have you ever seen the center of the universe? Have you been to where the universe starts and where it ends? If so, where is your evidence?

Originally posted by Haxsaw
No, but nice try, I don't doubt you feel like your stuck in the 17th century with your faith in a miraculous being popping out of inanimate matter, reminds me of witches cauldron(kids fairy tale indeed OP), but anyway I'll keep my faith in an INTELLIGENT UNSEEN GOD, thanks for your efforts, you can move along now, nothing to see here.

So why do you believe that the Earth isn't the center of the universe then? The Bible says it is, you can't observe it, it has less evidence than evolutionary theory. Now you're sounding a bit hypocritical actually. Why accept one aspect of natural science then reject another that is just as valid? Like it or not you're the 21st century equivalent of a geocentrist or flat-earther, and you will be mocked just the same.

Edit:




^ This is what future textbooks will think of you. Enjoy being immortalized in this way.

Originally posted by Nosred
I honestly feel like this is the 17th century and I'm trying to convince the village idiot that the Earth isn't the center of the universe.

Every galaxy could make the claim that it is the center of the Universe since all distant objects are moving away from it. It's like we're on the outside of a balloon that's being inflated. All points are moving away from every other point.

reply to post by dbates


All right the center of the solar system then. The sun and the planets do not revolve around Earth. You do know that the term "geocentrism" is the belief that Earth is both the center of the universe, and that everything else orbits it right? What I said was valid, and defending geocentrism makes you look like even more of a fool than arguing against evolution.