Evolution Bashing Thread

[finallyhappytt]

A good point. I didn't think about that. That is the same concept, but still not really alike because when the lava and fire destroys, nothing new is created. The seeds and everything needed for plant life still remain, the fire simply makes the ground more fertile. It's like burning underbrush in a forest, just makes room for new stuff to grow. It isn't the destruction itself that causes the life to grow.



I agree, but the same excuse could be used to support the research for creation. I'm not saying it's not a good excuse, but both sides have evidence, each side denies the validity of the other's evidence.

 

[RodriguezBeefCurtain]

This is bollocks. Half an eye is better than 49% of an eye. The notion that the eye must have been whole and complete to function is ludicrous; are you really suggesting that short-sighted people, or those with cataracts, are better off going around with their eyes shut, because they see blurrily rather than with 20-20 vision? So it is with the evolution of the eye. A primitive eye that can see shadows can enable a creature to escape a predator, which gives it an advantage over its sightless compatriots, and so enhances its chances of breeding the next generation. As the eye improves, so the functions it performs improve. But you certainly don't need a 100% functioning eye for light sensitivity to be an improvement on sightlessness. Never is it "all-or-nothing". There is also the issue of scaffolding. A gene mutates to serve a new, additional but not necesary, function. Then, as the organism in question evolves, the "scaffolding" that supported the unnecessary addition atrophies to nothing, so the mutation now becomes essential.

 

[katielovee0794]

Nah, you're thinking of William Dembsky. He's not a scientist; like Graham Hancock, he's a pseudoscientist. There was uproar in the real scientific community over the UoM conference, because using a university implied legitimacy, whereas the university administration simply saw renting out their conference facilities as a quick wqay to make a buck.
BTW, Dembsky has NOT "discovered a theory of intelligent design" (i.e., creationism). He has offered no evidence to support any such creationist hypothesis. Instead, he bashes strawmen (which means he doesn't understand evolution), and then thinks that this proves creationism. Even if he could prove that Darwinism were fatally flawed (which will never happen), falsifying Darwinism does not equate to proving ID.

 

[dinnn]

The only problem with that is that there's no god involved; none is necessary to explain evolution, nor the existence of the universe.

 

[frankgreyy]

But there is no evidence for creationism at all! Evolution is a certainty; nothing else fits the facts. All we're doing now is tweaking the details.

 

[RebelMan]

Quite bluntly, this is the most erroneous thing I've read on this thread. "Only a theory" is an oxymoron; it's like calling an athelete "only an Olympic gold medallist". In science, a theory is the gold standard; it's what we arrive at after subjecting a hypothesis to a battery of tests (experiments) and having it pass them all. Evolution has done so with flying colours. As with all theories, it is open to the possibility of falsification, as is Einstein. Want to bet? Evolution will never be falsified, any more than relativity will be; we can add to the body of such knowledge and fine-tune it, but we'll never turn it on its head,. It's too well-proven for that.

 

[musikartguy05]

Well, looks like this is still going.



AikiMac, the reason I used that example was to break it down nice and simple. Apparently, I'll have to do it a little more. Sorry I skipped over myself.



That's why. Genetic mutations aren't just harmful. Sometimes they produce beneficial characteristics in life-forms that assist them in surviving in their environment. These new characteristics allow the creature to be more successful in survival and procreation and increases the chances that it will help create a new generation of creatures that possess this superior quality. These creatures, in turn, will also survive better than the other local life-forms, and will propagate their new quality throughout the species, slowly outnumbering the animals who don't have this quality, who die off quicker and produce less offspring. After awhile, the quality is a standard, and the animal has evolved.


And herein, ladies and gentlemen, is the fundamental issue in Evolution vs Creation. Stratiotes has provided an excellent post about being open-minded while still outlining his viewpoint. And, he made a handy definition of the conflict.

This all boils down to whether you believe that change in nature is random and controlled by competition, or controlled by an exterior, sentient force (God, or whoever you worship.)

I'm in the boat that believes that a number of random forces, chance encounters and lucky events have taken us to where we are today. Other people believe that something is intentionally controlling this progress. This is all fine by me, until someone attacks my ideas. In that case, I am willing to defend them by overwhelming use of reason, but not by insulting or deprecating their ideas.

 

[Ped]

Evolution and Creation I believe both, though I present a complex case. I'll try not to make my case very detail. After all, not too many Evolutionists believe in a God.

Do you believe in supernatural forces? I'm not referring to weather or gravity. I know of a person who went into a house to visit the people that lived there; the house was taunted with spiritural activity.
Anyway, everyone was sitting down in the living room, there lay a book on a coffee table, the book flew up, shot across the room, and hit the wall - while everyone was talking. You don't have to believe it, but it is true. You can't ignore the fact that people have reported to have experienced similiar cases. Acknowledging this can leave open the possibility of a higher being that creates life with a purpose or not.

Secondly, in every religion there lays a story of the creation of man and usually these stories have striking similiarities. With such similiarities this points to one common origin of religion. Which must have some truth behind it all, and leaving the possibility for creation of man.

Now as to where my case becomes confusing starts with in the story of man being created. The question I present is 'What if man was created and evolved among themselves?', because evolution by itself can't satisfy the question "how can life come from pure chaos to being organized?"

Evolution tries to answer "How" and instead of "why" stuff was created.

 

[crazynoob202]

Firstly, no I don't beleive in the supernatural. The weather and gravity are not supernatural forces, they are complex natural ones. Lack of understanding does not equate to supernatural.
As to your anecdote, it's bunk. Unless you allow the phenomenon in question to be examined scientifically, it's just a Halloween tale with which to frighten kiddies. I'll bet you $1 million this event cannot be demonstrated under proper observing conditions. I'll also wager that the stories are greatly exaggerated, like with fish stories ("I caught one this big!"), and what started this fish story growing was that the participants in whatever miniscule event this really was experienced something they couldn't explain. And as I wrote above, unexplained does not mean unexplainable.
Your point about every religion having a creation myth is true, but you've applied it backwards; the existence of creation myths doesn't mean there must be some truth to them; creation myths exist as a prescientific attempt to explain life. Science has proven them all wrong.
And, finally, you've committed the most egregious error of all; the evolution of the first self-replicating molecule (life!) isn't to do with evolution; it's a different branch of science called abiogenesis. You're looking in the wrong place.
As for organisation out of chaos, Illya Prigogene answered that question and won a Nobel prize for it in 1977. Entorpy within a closed system increases all the time, but can undergo localised decreases, so long as the overall increase within the closed system continues. Well, the only closed system we know is the universe. Go outside and feel the sun shining on your face. That is energy that is converted for use by plants--localised decrease in entropy to make use of available energy. That is order out of chaos. Get it?

 

[indecisionpersonified]

I understand I put it that way some people might relate them to be supernatural, might think like Zeus and lighting or Gravity as the power of god.




Like I said you don't have to believe it. Besides if it was exaggerated, can you come up with some scenerio as to what the person(s) saw that caused them exaggerate?



I never believe such, but since you brought it up. Can you provide any articles that maybe along those lines? As to how something could be lifted without anything touching it?



How may you define evolution? A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form?

You misunderstand me.

The question I propose to you is "What if man was created and evolved among themselves?" Think about it. It has more elabrate thought, than that! What my question has to deal with different cultures. It has parallelism with Darwin's Theory of Evolution. You have different races all have different body types and skills to suit their surroundings. Just like lions and tigers both have similiar body types yet the way they live is totally different based on their environment.





You just a balance. Now, think about this:



Something with intelligence has to balance the universe. Just like a car if you let someone who doesn't know how to tune car precisely, oh boy.....

 

[smashly]

Not necessarily. Just because something is in balance doesn't mean that someone put it there. We find rocks weighing thousands of pounds balancing perfectly on cliffs all the time, set there gradually by glacial movement and slowly left alone by erosion. Communities of millions of organisms reach balance naturally as predator and prey ratios equate. Balance is not an expressly intentional event.

We've been talking about belief before. I believe that all of this universe is a massive, amazing coincidence. I believe that we are only here because of a set of randomly initiated, purely coincidental events. Just because they happened with precarious balance and resulted in what some people think to be an amazingly well-laid plan doesn't mean that there was a plan in the first place.

In my opinion, it was all a series of lucky coincidences.



Well then. Lucky us.

 

[jss26]

Then they would be wrong. You are confusing unexplained with inexplicable. The former means we don't know yet; the latter that there it can never be known.

Such exaggerations happen all the time; it is part of the human psyche to want to please by supplying what you think the listener wants to hear. A case in point was several years ago, when as an April Fool's Joke, the astronomer Patrick Moore said on BBC Radio 4 that Pluto would pass behind Uranus, causing the Earth's gravity to temporarily weaken, and the BBC was inundated with over 1,000 calls detailing "reduced gravity" events that simply never happened, including one lady who reported that she and her friends rose from their chairs and floated around the room. Similar to your tale, and not a grain of truth in it, either.

You're still assuming that any lifting took place, without any evidence to that effect. As to articles, certain books might be better, I recommend the following to start you off: "Why People Believe Weird Things" by Michael Shermer, and "The Demon-Haunted World" by Carl Sagan.

No; the accumulation or "ratcheting up" of what works by natural selection.

I don't really see what you're getting at here. Are you hypothesising, "what if certain tribes of humans had evolved in cultural isolation?", because if so, you only need look at the Yamomami of the Brazilian Amazon to see the results. If, however, you mean, "what if mankind somehow retroactively caused our own evolution" in the fashion of a certain Star Trek: Next Generation episode, then you're into fantasyland, and there the best rebuttal I can think of comes from Richard Feynman. When asked by a hippy type how to build an anti-gravity machine, Feynman replied that the best example of an anti-gravity device he could think of was the cushion on which the hippy was sitting! To use a quotation from Star Trek again, "Ye canna change the laws of physics, Cap'n".

No, nothing with a consciousness has to balance anything. You're assuming again; namely, that the universe requires a Creator. That's analogous to saying that everything in existence must have had a purpose. The universe has no purpose; it is just one slice, a cross-section, of the multiverse. No design required. The watchmaker is blind. The anthropic argument is bogus. It's akin to Dennis Thatcher who argued that there was no poverty in Britain, because he never saw any. What he's really testifying to is his lack of experience (his never seeing any poverty doesn't mean poverty doesn't exist; rather, it shows up his lack of experience) and his paucity of imagination. If this universe were any different, we wouldn't be here to marvel at how great the universe is. But the universe doesn't exist to suit our niche in it; we evolved to adapt to it. Were the universe greatly different but still capable of supporting life, we would still exist, but not in the form we have now. (Whether we were intelligent enough to realise this distinction is a separate point.) There is no one driving the car; it's just that the mroe anthropocentric we are, the more we feel there must be someone driving us. But it is very childish to assumethat because it feels like someone's driving, therefore they must be. See the difference?

 

[kcmb0903]

A new day.....

Kimpatsu:

You said:



I wanted to keep neutral from involving any religious points, but have to use it:






So either thats just pure luck, or the persons who wrote this were far more intelligent, or something divine or higher being must gaven them inspiration to write such.

 

[decepticons_rulez]

Whats wrong with my avatar? It's a complete real life likeness of me

 

[ny21tb]

Right. New day.



Congratulations. That's basic cellular biology, and proves nothing about your case. And as far as the bible being a source of science, I'm afraid I disagree. It's been rewritten and translated so many times that it's almost impossible to quote it as the original word handed down. As a religious document, it's fine, but as historical or scientific record, it's basically inadmissable.



I'm afraid I don't quite understand. You're saying that all scientific research must be divinely inspired? Just because something is complicated, a person couldn't have possibly figured it out for themselves through research and experimentation, and it must have come from GOD ABOVE!

Congratulations on discrediting the very research you were trying to quote to prove your point.



Sorry son, but religious points are inadmissable here. We're talking about the science of each point. Someone else on this board put it best earlier, so I'm only quoting them, but here goes: Religious arguments prove nothing but the faith of the writer. Religion has no bearing on the scientific conflict in this thread.

 

[RamanD]

Hey, sunshine! You're telling me it's been rewritten because of science? For years and years the "same scripture of man being created from dirt has been the same!" Surprise, not until recently has science found that skin contain minerals and protein that dirt contains. And also sunny boy! You're telling my that the translation just happen to be translated to dirt!??!



Science has done experiments based on events found in the bible, mate! Scienctist sampled dirt at the ruin cities they thought were SODOM AND GOMORRAH mention in the bible. Well, mate they found traces of Sulphur!

Genesis 19
24 Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven;

Brimstone-

1.Sulfur.

2. Damnation to hell.
Fiery or passionate rhetoric: “the great American evangelist of Yankee bargain-hunting, converting us... with the brimstone of his secular preaching” (Rushworth M. Kidder).

www.dictionary.com

Now, can you say its admissable?

http://tm.wc.ask.com/r?t=c&s=a&id=30780&sv=za5cb0d75&uid=0388C1E65BD10B804&sid=167DC2037A424C804&p=%2flinks&o=0&u=http://www.arkdiscovery.com/sodom_

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=\ForeignBureaus\archive\200108\For20010821a.html






I was being sarcastic.
**No it couldn't be pure luck for people at that time, for one and if they ahead of their time, still there is stuff to consider. They never developed a system of science or any known system and nor did they have the tools to even be close! or maybe they watched the bodys of the dead decompose and came to some conclusion of dirt. Better yet they may have smoked a bowl, wrote the book of genesis, and said man was made from dirt to make us think it was all divine. After, they probably had the munchies!



Why is it admissable when you're trying to disprove the existense of A GOD! or higher being? You claim that religion is confusing due to the mass of different beliefs? Yet, evolution is just the same! Evolutionist can't agree on one theory!

Sorry, I was alittle upset.

 

[lovetotalk]

Alright. First off, no, the bible has not been rewritten and translated so many times because of science. It gets rewritten and translated because of internal conflicts or divisions within the church or to be passed on to new congregations so they can understand it in their own language. Unfortunately, this means that the writings are tainted because it has been opened for thousands of translators to use their own words in situations where the translation could have a number of meanings. So, we don't even know if the bibles many creationists quote today are even close to the same thing they started as. They've gone from Aramaic to Greek to Latin to French to German to Spanish to English to whatever comes next. Remember that at each step, there are words used that could have 3 or 4 meanings in that context, and it was the translator's prerogative which he wanted to use.



Well then, congratulations for them. Test my fireplace and you'll find traces of sulphur from matches, etcetera. Finding sulphur is like finding carbon. Doesn't prove anything. "Brimstone from heaven" isn't the sole provider of sulphur on this planet.

And by the way, both of your links are dead. You'll have to do better than that.



I'm not really sure what you're saying here. Are you saying that passage came out of the bible? It sounds like you copied it out of a grade 11 biology textbook. It definitely isn't older than 100 years. Anyways, you still haven't answered how that pedantic little description of basic energy transfer applies at all to your point.



I've never tried to do that. As a matter of fact,















Seeing any similarities? I have never tried to disprove the existence of God in any way. As a matter of fact, I have overwhelmingly encouraged people to believe in Him/Her no matter what their opinion of evolution is. Faith is fine, but allow me to defend my ideas without trying to turn this into a discussion on your faith. We're talking science here, not the existence of God.



I've also never claimed that. Please, find the post and quote it, or retract your statement.

 

[on_the_bb]

I agree with you. It doesn't hurt me if you don't believe the same way I do, so there is no reason for me to feel the need to attack your ideas and beliefs. I also don't think it is right for anyone to expect that everyone should believe the way they do, just because it is their belief that their way is the only way. I think everyone should debate without expecting to 'convert' anyone. Just share knowledge, opinions, state ideas and evidence, but respect everyone no matter what they choose to believe.

 

[xxtlovintxx]

Ideas exist to be attacked; this is called science. If the idea survives the assault, it lives to fight another day, but if it is destroyed by better reasoning, it is discarded in favour of a better idea. That's how intellectual life improves. The idea that certain ideas and beliefs--religions--are beyond examination or criticism, that they should somehow be respected just for being about the Great Juju in the Sky, is an absurdity. It doesn't matter how deeply held or heartfelt these ideas are; if they are wrong, they must be exposed as such.

 

[JoyJ]

Excellent post Stratiotes, good points (And not just because you agree with me).

Kimpatsu, I think you're on the right track in challenging ideas. All ideas and paradigms need to be challenged in order to stay meaningful and relevant. I do disagree with you on one thing though. Remember that in some cases there is no such thing as "wrong". Things aren't always boolean, sometimes there are shades in between that need to be discussed and agreed upon. Debate and discussion aren't always about right and wrong. Sometimes we need to learn from each other and come to a compromise. I know I sound like a hippy, but I've been to both sides of the spectrum, and I now know that no one is right all of the time. We need to keep an open but skeptical mind, keep challenging theories and ideas, and keep those that fit your outlook. Just respect people who are doing the same, even if they don't agree with you.