NationStates Jolt Archive

Look mate, what you personally BELIEVE is totally irrelevant. It's not any proof in any sense at all. I could believe in invisible smurfs and that still wouldn't make it true.
That is not true. Personal experience is a very strong tool of proof. You are sitting on a chair, I think. You sat on the chair believing it to support your weight. Why? Did you measure it? Did you put weights on it to check? Did you calculate how much pressure it could take? No. You are sitting on your chair because you've sat on it before, and through personal experience you have believed that the chair is stable and will not collapse under your own weight. Moreover, if millions told you repeatedly that the chair is stable, and that you've sat on the chair yourself, it overrides the need of empirical evidence.

Besides, mentally retarded (sorry if that is a politically incorrect word) people believe loads of stuff, like they're the messiah, meatballs on wheels or any other stupid thing...still doesn't make it true does it? And if we're going to make anything any person believes is true really true then it's going to be a whacky world we live in.
It doesn't make it true, but it makes it knowledge. What makes knowledge true is the amount of proof there is.

You go on and believe in your God and stuff but don't be a rude bastard and disregard evolution, which I myself BELIEVE in. By your own standards that is enough to make it true. Besides, emipirical evidence isn't interesting is it? After all you have zero in that department when it comes to your god.
It makes it true and it's knowledge, but it doesn't mean it's right. I mean no disrespect at all. Please forgive me. I'm really here to have fun and earn knowledge, true or not, right or not. Sorry!!
:fluffle:

Let's do this peacefully, no? :)

I'll also bring my argument from the other thread in:

How can human desire have evolved? Evolution is about survival, but a lot of our current desires aren't about survival, for example, spreading butter and jam on bread to make them tastier.
Fat and suggar are highly demandet energy providers.

It's the sole purpose of nature science to ask "how". The question "why" is for philosophy and theology. Also two fine sciences, if they stuck to their subject.
It is hardly enough just to rely on one area of knowledge. The Theory of Evolution and the Theory of Creation not only strings up science, it also affects all other areas of knowledge. Think wider.

There is no purpose of evolution.
Really? Isn't evolution about survival? :confused:

Muscles. Primitive animals, like plathelmintes, posses muscles but no bones.
So bones evolved because...

Clearly no. See above. To ad to your confusion. Muscles need some kind of skeletton, but not nessessarly bones.

Clearly no. To add to your knowledge, there are muscles between your rib bones to allow its movement so you can breathe.

Gosh did I see a singular speciation event, no I didn't se the evolution of a primates into other forms, but I have evolved basic yeasts into specialised yeasts for fermenting certain worts for making very tasty by products. which have properties to other yeasts,

so what we have is aadapt and survive for cells that need to exist within a specific set of conditions, which is why I have a Brown ale yeast a pale yeast and a Stout yeasts,

now if you start saying did you evolve the yeast from {insert name of quickly googled non autotrophic plant here} te answer is no, I Designed my yeast strains by selective harvesting and biological mucking around with acidity etc, as such I now have some very specialised cells.

being highly speialised a failure in the colony can be quite catastrophic and can result in me chucking 9 gallons of disgusting liquid away instead of having a firkin of decent ale.
So you still haven't proven that evolution begins without planning and design. I applaud your effort in meddling with the yeast, which is icky ;) , but that is rather insufficient evidence in proving that apes can evolve to humans.

You need to incorporate everything into explaining anything. It's called "taking account into". If the beginning of life was as the Bible stated it then evolution wouldn't even become a topic. If it is true what you say then why is there such a fierce debate between Evolution and Creation? You need to look at the wider picture when discussing Evolution and Creation. It is why it is such a fierce and, really, fun debate.

How can you argue anything if you incorporate everything into every argument? Do I have to argue about photosynthesis to explain the plot of Monty Python and the Holy Grail? :D

Fat and suggar are highly demandet energy providers.

Then why aren't you just eating fat from meat and sugar from sugar cane? Why are you eating jam and butter which is delicious, but still with a number of chemicals which are always detrimental to the body?

In other words, the vestigial bones should have disappeared by now, according to evolution, because they are "slight disadvantages". But no. For every generation of dolphins the vestigial bones exist, and for the dolphins that don't, we call them "abnormal", and they usually are more disadvantaged than other dolphins that have the vestigial bones.
No, "neutral evolution theory" shows that neutral traits and slight disadvantages don't disappear. Only disadvantages which result in an lesser mating chance have a higher probability to disappear.
For every generation of dolphins the vestigial bones exist, and for the dolphins that don't, we call them "abnormal", and they usually are more disadvantaged than other dolphins that have the vestigial bones. Coming to think of it, we call organisms with mutated genes "abnormal", even if they have another arm (which usually inhibits their movement further). Anyway, to evolutionists, what's "normal"? How do we classify organisms if every generation is different than the previous one?
Nobody calls mutations abnormal these days.

That is not true. Personal experience is a very strong tool of proof. You are sitting on a chair, I think. You sat on the chair believing it to support your weight. Why? Did you measure it? Did you put weights on it to check? Did you calculate how much pressure it could take? No. You are sitting on your chair because you've sat on it before, and through personal experience you have believed that the chair is stable and will not collapse under your own weight. Moreover, if millions told you repeatedly that the chair is stable, and that you've sat on the chair yourself, it overrides the need of empirical evidence.

You're right. I didn't measure it or build it (I can't build anything more complex than what comes in a kinder egg ;P) but I'll tell you what....I know that the engineer/designer who DID build the prototype of the chair DID measure and test the chairs qualities. I don't have to have some fuzzy personal belief to know that. Further I don't have to believe that the chair will hold my weight because as soon as I sit my butt down on it I have empirical evidence that the chair works...for sitting on at least :D

Besides...old chairs CAN collapse you know...so I'll demand to have a test-sit anytime my life depends on me sitting down on a chair.

It doesn't make it true, but it makes it knowledge. What makes knowledge true is the amount of proof there is.
It doesn't. Since you have no proof at all that your God exists it can't be knowledge. Don't confuse, or try to distort words, to make your own belief become well proven knowledge. My chair holding my butt X amount of inches from the ground in a comfy way is knowledge (if not mine then the engineers who made it!) but me believing invisible smurfs are behind todays terrorism isn't...that's a belief that can't be proven in any way, just believed in.


I mean no disrespect at all. Please forgive me. I'm really here to have fun and earn knowledge, true or not, right or not. Sorry!!
:fluffle:

Let's do this peacefully, no? :)

Amen to that, I'd rather have peace than getting my teeth kicked in. It's hard to appreciate my chairs ecellent comfyness with brolen teeth :D

How old are you? You saw the ape turn into a human?
No ape never tuned into a human.

So you still haven't proven that evolution begins without planning and design. I applaud your effort in meddling with the yeast, which is icky ;) , but that is rather insufficient evidence in proving that apes can evolve to humans.

Evolution doesn't prove that evolution didn't begin with planning or design. All it is is an attempt to accurately explain how species diverged. Period. It has nothing to do with God.

What is sufficient evidence of a common ancestor of apes and humans evolving into apes and humans is DNA, the fossil record and many many other bits and pieces that you would best served by finding in a text book or by reading scientific articles online.

I suppose now is as good a time as any the whip out the big guns.

Would an evolutionist please explain to me why and how sexual reproduction came about?
It sems to me that an organism would be able to survive MUCH better if it did not require any other organism to participate in the reporoductive process. Furthermore, which evolved first, male or female? The mechanims for each are somewhat different and I'm not sure how one sex could survive until the other sex happened to evolve...

I can tell you the reason.
Sexual reproduction brings about much greater genetic variability, which is good, because it reduces the chances of inbreeding, and it speeds up change, and it reduces the damage caused by mutations. Sexual reproduction is the main cause for the present mammal, bird reptile specices we see today, if not for it, we would have been required to evolve simply by random external influences, like radiation etc. and thats very very very slow, compared to sexual reproduction.

As for the which evolved first, i believe the first male / females were probably actually Hermaphrodites(such as earthworms are now), heres the definition from wikipedia:
====================================================
In zoology, a hermaphrodite is an organism of a species whose members possess both male and female sexual organs during their lives. In many species, hermaphroditism is a normal part of the life-cycle. Generally, hermaphroditism occurs in the invertebrates, although it occurs in a fair number of fish, and to a lesser degree in other vertebrates.

Sequential hermaphrodite: The organism is born as one sex and later changes into the other sex.

Protandry: When the organism starts as a male, and changes sex to a female later in life. Example: The seabasses (Family Serranidae).

Protogyny: When the organism starts as a female, and changes sex to a male later in life. Example: Wrasses (Family Labridae)

Simultaneous hermaphrodite: The organism has both male and female sexual organs at the same time as an adult.

Gonadal dysgenesis, a type of intersexuality formerly known as "True Hermaphroditism", occurs in about one percent of mammals (including humans), but it is extremely rare for both sets of sexual organs to be functional, usually neither set is functional. In many cases, these manifestations are altered, sometimes only cosmetically, to resemble standard male or female anatomy shortly after birth.
from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermaphrodite
======================================================

Yes i know that was a bit long, but anyway, i think it more or less explains the question of which came first.

I think evolution favours the species with better mechanisms for survival (lets count out chance for now), and speedy reproduction ( the strength of the non-sexually reproducing organisms) is just one of them. Sexual reproduction allows for faster development of other features that may be beneficial ( we assume that the bad features die out fast, as they usually do) and thus would be able to get an edge over other organisms in their fight for food and resources or to escape predators.

For example, eagles. Eagles are at the top of the food chain, and they reproduce at a very slow rate ( one or two eggs at a time, and not very often too, i think it is twice a year at most.)
Now, if more is better, shouldn't the Eagles have evolved to spawn hundreds of eggs at once? No, right? this is because they would have overpopulated ( due to the fact that they have no natural predators)and exhausted their food supply in short order. ( or at least sustain massive population losses.)

While the salmon, they at somewhere in the middle of the food chain, they spawn THOUSANDS of eggs at once, in the hope that at least some of them would survive to reproduce. now, this came about because the salmon, unlike the eagles, have dozens of natural predators and i believe even more eat the fry (which are very vulnerable)( if you want to see an example of such a mechanism, go watch a documentary of a sea turtle clutch hatching, as they hatch, hundreds of gulls, herons, even rats, come to pick off the hapless newborns as they rush to the safety of the sea.)

thus, they NEED to have the numbers. its something like a quantity or quality thing.

yea anyway if you have any other questions, just reply to this thingy.

No ape never tuned into a human.

But apparently apes post to forums.

heh, ignoring everything else, i just want to comment on this:


now if you start saying did you evolve the yeast from {insert name of quickly googled non autotrophic plant here} te answer is no, I Designed my yeast strains by selective harvesting and biological mucking around with acidity etc, as such I now have some very specialised cells.

Did you actually create any NEW genetic information?? No! You refined, and actually DISCARDED genetic info already there, and maybe grafted some from another bacteria, but unless you actually wrote the DNA with some tool yet to be invented, you designed nothing.

So you still haven't proven that evolution begins without planning and design. I applaud your effort in meddling with the yeast, which is icky ;) , but that is rather insufficient evidence in proving that apes can evolve to humans.

so from a generic strain of yeast used to make bread I have a high flocc yeast that can brew a pale ale but would be useless at making buns,

Tigers and Lions are both different, ome from different continents as well, however they can interbreed and produce viable ofspring Liger and tigons, these can further reproduce to form the lili and titi varients, that would suggest that these two species share common heritage and so evolved via adaptation to enviromental demands, including camoflage patenation.

yeast isn't icky, it's wonderful stuff

That is not true. Personal experience is a very strong tool of proof. You are sitting on a chair, I think. You sat on the chair believing it to support your weight. Why? Did you measure it? Did you put weights on it to check? Did you calculate how much pressure it could take? No. You are sitting on your chair because you've sat on it before, and through personal experience you have believed that the chair is stable and will not collapse under your own weight. Moreover, if millions told you repeatedly that the chair is stable, and that you've sat on the chair yourself, it overrides the need of empirical evidence.

But what if you sat on the chair, and it collapsed?
You'd be screwed then.
Personal Experience sucks.

heh, ignoring everything else, i just want to comment on this:



Did you actually create any NEW genetic information?? No! You refined, and actually DISCARDED genetic info already there, and maybe grafted some from another bacteria, but unless you actually wrote the DNA with some tool yet to be invented, you designed nothing.

did I discard information, or did I strengthen traits, cited in last post I have a pale yeast that cannot make bread too well, however my stout yeast is exceedingly robust in making bread, as for the creation of genetic material do you mean did I increase or change the number of chromosomes or the length, I ouldn't tell you not having acess to a well equipped DNA facility,

the 2 strains of yeast have very different properties that would imply a genetic adaption both to te enviroment and also the types of food available, as well as alcohol tolerance, I believe that would be classed as a speciation event as I have now (even if by selective culling) got a strain that bears only similarities to it's primary form,

If evolution is right, then where are mishapen humans in zoos that start evolving? And don't say it takes a long time, because eventually you'll be able to see it. And why does almost every single differently located and culturally isolated human race have marriage almost all the time? Read Dinosaurs and Creation by Donald B. DeYoung. It'll help you not go to hell.

so from a generic strain of yeast used to make bread I have a high flocc yeast that can brew a pale ale but would be useless at making buns,

Tigers and Lions are both different, ome from different continents as well, however they can interbreed and produce viable ofspring Liger and tigons, these can further reproduce to form the lili and titi varients, that would suggest that these two species share common heritage and so evolved via adaptation to enviromental demands, including camoflage patenation.

yeast isn't icky, it's wonderful stuff
No that is one very reasonable argument but they could have been designed that way. You example along with other goes to support evolution but is not proof. The yeast has been breed by man, just because man does something does not mean nature also does it.
So you give more evidence for evolution but not proof.

It is hardly enough just to rely on one area of knowledge. The Theory of Evolution and the Theory of Creation not only strings up science, it also affects all other areas of knowledge. Think wider. Once upon a time there was a country where nature science asked wide. The people called it the "third reich". I don't want this times back.

Really? Isn't evolution about survival? :confused: Survival is the reason but not the purpose of evolution. Evolution has no purpose.


So bones evolved because... No because. They just evolved and proved handy. Again, evolution has no purpose.



Clearly no. To add to your knowledge, there are muscles between your rib bones to allow its movement so you can breathe. This is an example of a bone and muscle combination. But there are animals like plathelmintes who posses muscles but no bones and manage to move with this muscles. They have a hydroskeletton.

No that is one very reasonable argument but they could have been designed that way. You example along with other goes to support evolution but is not proof. The yeast has been breed by man, just because man does something does not mean nature also does it.
So you give more evidence for evolution but not proof.

Belgian trappist beers are brewed as Lambic beers, the wild yeasts that land in the beer that are most suited to that enviroment flourish, whilst others die ( I merely remove that chance, and go more for scientific method)

as for te mishapen humans, most religious zealots in the past threw them off cliffs hunted them down and killed them, or put them on mountains for th wolves,

hey I am a mutant I am highly colour blind,

If evolution is right, then where are mishapen humans in zoos that start evolving? And don't say it takes a long time, because eventually you'll be able to see it. And why does almost every single differently located and culturally isolated human race have marriage almost all the time? Read Dinosaurs and Creation by Donald B. DeYoung. It'll help you not go to hell.

Erm... since when do we put the mis-shapen humans in zoos? Marriage forms naturally, because of the way humans are drawn togrether by affection to help the race survive. The affection is pleasurable, so the two people develop an attachment. No offense, but in a swap up between heavan and hell, ill choose hell. Endless monotany and clouds can go home as far as I'm concerned. Plaus, heavan will be full of creationists, so an eternity of "I told you so" beckons.

If evolution is right, then where are mishapen humans in zoos that start evolving? And don't say it takes a long time, because eventually you'll be able to see it. And why does almost every single differently located and culturally isolated human race have marriage almost all the time? Read Dinosaurs and Creation by Donald B. DeYoung. It'll help you not go to hell.

I don't think the IDers and Creationists want you on their side.

Heck, I've seen more coherent arguments in a bowl of Alpha Bits.*

*or cheerios :D

Explain to me exactly everything yeast can possibly do. There is a large chance I'm wrong, since i don't study science, but I was under the impression that it metabolised sugars and *shudders* excretes a different chemical...

Also, with lions and tigers...well, that is a whole 'nother story. Being a Christian, as I am, I beleive in Creation, in the garden of Eden. If God created only two humans, how do we have so much variety in the present day? Answer: God created the first Humans with ALL the genetic information contained in humans today (except genetic diseases, etc...they came later, with sin).

The same with cats. Lions and Tigers are both Panthera, i believe (correct me if i'm wrong). Which is why they can interbreed.

Belgian trappist beers are brewed as Lambic beers, the wild yeasts that land in the beer that are most suited to that enviroment flourish, whilst others die ( I merely remove that chance, and go more for scientific method)

as for te mishapen humans, most religious zealots in the past threw them off cliffs hunted them down and killed them, or put them on mountains for th wolves,

hey I am a mutant I am highly colour blind,
Not being religious my self but being interested in the books, I can't find any reference to why they should do this other than they were wrong. The bible does not say mutants should be killed. It does say alot about stoning in the old testament, but that's more for behavious than for what you can't help.

Then why aren't you just eating fat from meat and sugar from sugar cane? Why are you eating jam and butter which is delicious, but still with a number of chemicals which are always detrimental to the body?
Because fat never exists in nature in raw form as sugger is never found in raw form. Fat is in many things, because it is very hany for storing energy. Suggar is found in fruits to attract fruit-eating animals. So we evolved towards craving for this foods.

Because fat never exists in nature in raw form as sugger is never found in raw form. Fat is in many things, because it is very hany for storing energy. Suggar is found in fruits to attract fruit-eating animals. So we evolved towards craving for this foods.Honey...hmmmm honey!

Belgian trappist beers are brewed as Lambic beers, the wild yeasts that land in the beer that are most suited to that enviroment flourish, whilst others die ( I merely remove that chance, and go more for scientific method)

as for te mishapen humans, most religious zealots in the past threw them off cliffs hunted them down and killed them, or put them on mountains for th wolves,

hey I am a mutant I am highly colour blind,
My sister is also a mutant. She got three kidneys.

My sister is also a mutant. She got three kidneys.

Ironic. A friend of mine, only 31 years old, will soon have no working kidneys at all.

My sister is also a mutant. She got three kidneys.

wow, are all three viable?

to be a bit bizarre at least your female family members have a better chance in the case of renal failure.

wow, are all three viable?

to be a bit bizarre at least your female family members have a better chance in the case of renal failure.
They are working fine. She thought of becoming a X-men, but the only superpower she has, is to have to pee earlier than then other people. ;)

They are working fine. She thought of becoming a X-men, but the only superpower she has, is to have to pee earlier than then other people. ;)

Lol, she is also likely the opposite of a cheap date. :D

Explain to me exactly everything yeast can possibly do. There is a large chance I'm wrong, since i don't study science, but I was under the impression that it metabolised sugars and *shudders* excretes a different chemical...

Also, with lions and tigers...well, that is a whole 'nother story. Being a Christian, as I am, I beleive in Creation, in the garden of Eden. If God created only two humans, how do we have so much variety in the present day? Answer: God created the first Humans with ALL the genetic information contained in humans today (except genetic diseases, etc...they came later, with sin).

The same with cats. Lions and Tigers are both Panthera, i believe (correct me if i'm wrong). Which is why they can interbreed.

with lions and tigers I don't happen to have a class list on me at the moment, but felidae-panthera would be right, it is more what sort of level class sub class species and subspecies etc do we need to go down before we say a specieation even has occurred,

yeasts are chemotrophic they take in sugars and oxygen respire take energy grow reproduce and die, (hey thats life) fermentation of alcohol is performed by all plants I believe in anaerobic conditions where the yeast enters a tickover state it takes in sugars and breaks them down into numerous byproducts of which ethanol is the end result, similar to the lactic acid reaction in animals, upon reintroduction of oxygen the ethanol is respired into O2 H2O and energy again, if it doesnt oxidise into ethanoic acid first.

why shudder at the excretions of fungi and bacteria without gut flora most animals would not survive with the inability to break down cellulose for example . also a world without cheese yoghurt wine and beer, fermentaion is a good example of food preservation as only a small amount of the energy from the initial sugars are lost in anaeorbic respiration and so a lot of energy is still left in solution and keeps for a long time. (and yes I know that it is only an enzyme reaction to produce these and that you can ferment with immobilised yeast or just an enzyme shot into solution, similar to the modern cheese making process.)

Lol, she is also likely the opposite of a cheap date. :D

She could prob down a pin of ale and still walk.

Explain to me exactly everything yeast can possibly do. There is a large chance I'm wrong, since i don't study science, but I was under the impression that it metabolised sugars and *shudders* excretes a different chemical...

Also, with lions and tigers...well, that is a whole 'nother story. Being a Christian, as I am, I beleive in Creation, in the garden of Eden. If God created only two humans, how do we have so much variety in the present day? Answer: God created the first Humans with ALL the genetic information contained in humans today (except genetic diseases, etc...they came later, with sin).

The same with cats. Lions and Tigers are both Panthera, i believe (correct me if i'm wrong). Which is why they can interbreed.
If God Created the first two humans they would die out after seven generations because of inbreeding. They would not survive.

Not being religious my self but being interested in the books, I can't find any reference to why they should do this other than they were wrong. The bible does not say mutants should be killed. It does say alot about stoning in the old testament, but that's more for behavious than for what you can't help.

I think it omes from either the god created man in is own image so a form of ritual eugenics existe, or maybe they thought that they would not survive and so removed them from the gene pool for QOL rather than life at any cost,

If evolution is right, then where are mishapen humans in zoos that start evolving? And don't say it takes a long time, because eventually you'll be able to see it. And why does almost every single differently located and culturally isolated human race have marriage almost all the time? Read Dinosaurs and Creation by Donald B. DeYoung. It'll help you not go to hell.

HUMANS DID NOT DECEND FROM APES SILLY! We share a common ancestor, so shut yer pie-hole ;)

Marriage does nothing to disprove or prove evolution, I don't even understand the argument.

Read up on the logical fallacies, it will help you stop using appeal to authority.

If God Created the first two humans they would die out after seven generations because of inbreeding. They would not survive.

</sterotypical humour>woohoo ID will die out pretty soon then. strange that creationism ID and social retardation tend to be in areas where inbreeding recognised worldwide, not that would want to breed with us progressive ET types anyway </sterotypical humour>

lol i shudder because "excretes" reminds me of going to the toilet.
anyway.

You say that under anaerobic conditions, yeast already produces alchohol? So what has changed??? You have removed the gas making capability, and focuse entirely on the alchohol. Due to genetic variations, etc, some strains are better at alchohol production than others. You have just taken these, and knocked out the gas making bit, and left yourself with alchohol making bits.

If God Created the first two humans they would die out after seven generations because of inbreeding. They would not survive.

What is inbreeding? Isn't it that the genetic material is being re-used too often, and is lost somehow? Well, how do you explain that the first sexually reproducing creatures, according to evolution, did not inbreed????? The first himans did not inbreed because they had stacks and stacks of genetic information piled away. So, between all the children Adam and Eve had, there is the possibility that they share only the information generic to humans everywhere, and no more!!

Intelligent design/creationism (though not the 7 days, 6,000 years ago version) and evolution are both correct and do not contradict each other.

there the debate is over, issue solved - move on people. :headbang:

Well, I am going to attempt to help with this thread. I am in no way providing answers or telling anyone they are wrong, just trying to help. First let me say that ID is fundamentally against the first amendment. Not even by saying "christianity," by having teachers say there is SOMETHING it infringes on the rights of anyone wanting their child to grow up atheist. Teaching ID is obviously different then teaching that there IS a God, but it is a stone on the path. Also, I had a physics teacher who said that you can believe in evolution by means of natural selection, and God, what does it matter that we discovered the method of how we got here, and that is all a theory does.

Secondly the word "Theory" when used commonly means something unimportant, a semblance of ideas creating a larger one. In science a Theory is created after a ton of proof is brought forth in support. Also, all christians must believe in evolution if they believe the stories in the bible. If they didn't there would be no ethnicities. Also it has been proven that Noah's boat could not have been built in the time span required in order to house EVERY animal on earth. The answer some people say is he used "kinds", instead of every dog he used one pair. If this is true, how are there wolves, coyotes and foxes? Some people will say wolves can breed with dogs, meaning wolves are a different breed. This however brings up the concept of "Ring Species" which is a further proof of evolution.

Thirdly entropy cannot disprove evolution. Again the common use of the word "organized" comes into effect. If entropy was set in stone as some people think (i.e. nothing can get organized), forget refrigerators, how does someone build a house? Stack papers? Most life adds to disorganization anyway, we produce heat and tend toward spontaneus reactions causing an overall decrease in entropy.

Fourthly, on Earth there are two types of amino acids. Left handed and right. Only one is used by life. It would be more efficient if we could use both, did the ID-Creator simply "miss" this idea?

Lastly, It must be recognized that however life started, the first bacteria we know of can exchange DNA. Well not exchange, it can absorb the DNA from dead bacteria causing a recombination of its own, aka genetic variability. This trait has been passed on. And over the years, areas of the body modified to provide areas for such things.

If anyone really wants to get a good source on the subject please pick up a Carl Sagan book. Also people believing in ID have never published this is because, without a leap of faith, it is impossible to go back and back and back then just go "Oh, THERE'S GOD!" I believe in him, i think he started life. But since he knows everything, couldn't he have set up the universe let's just say "Big Bang" and on that setup he knew we would be here? He knew by the initial set-up all this would happen and let it proceed by natural means? Like dominos, if I set up a huge complex line of dominos, pushed the first one and left, anyone happening by wouldn't know whether I pushed the first one to start everything or if the first one naturally fell. Same idea. and FINALLY, EVOLUTION DOES NOT STATE WHETHER OR NOT THERE IS OR IS NOT A GOD OR HIGHER POWER OF ANY SORT, JUST HOW A BACTERIA GOT SOPHISTICATED ENOUGH TO LAUNCH SATELLITES. Thanks and sorry for the long post.

All I'm hearing, STILL, in this thread is useless chit-chat. Everyone who has beliefs outside of this debate are unwilling to see that so does everyone else.

Examples:

Christians: God is all-powerful, can do whatever He pleases. He can bend the rules of genetic process for a couple of generations. Hell, He created the universe and later got a virgin pregnant.
What Christians don't recognize and understand is that this background information doesn't mean shit to non-believers.

NonChristians: Believe that the rules and trends of science dictate the world as we know it.
What NonChristians don't recognize and understand is that science doen't mean shit to believers.

And lastly, WHO CARES!!!! We're here, if one way or another is proven correct, the other half ain't gonna disappear. How 'bout we leave the religious debates in the religious threads and create some more scieince debates.

lol i shudder because "excretes" reminds me of going to the toilet.
anyway.

You say that under anaerobic conditions, yeast already produces alchohol? So what has changed??? You have removed the gas making capability, and focuse entirely on the alchohol. Due to genetic variations, etc, some strains are better at alchohol production than others. You have just taken these, and knocked out the gas making bit, and left yourself with alchohol making bits.


not at all I do not knock out the aerobic respiration bits, fermentaion is completed in 2 stages an aerobic phase and the anaerobic phase,

I create te medium for the yeast, sugar concentration and type, acidity temperature etc, I the add the yeast, the O2 dissolved in the unferented wort is then consumed by the yeast and used to reproduce, the most sucessful yeast type in that enviroment will fluorish and will become the dominat type, when te oxygen is consumed the yeast enters its anaerobic phase which is much slower, no more new yeast cells are produced and te ethanol content increases, this is toxic to te yeast and if left unchecked will kill the yeasts and lead to autolysis (which is not nice to drink) there have been cases when starting with generic yeasts that I have had a wonderful rocky head during aerobic phase only to have a relatively low alcohol %age kill off the predominant yeast strain and leave me with little working yeast for te second phase, this does give me a good crop of active high tolerance yeasts for the successive fermentation of that beer,

lol i shudder because "excretes" reminds me of going to the toilet.
anyway.

You say that under anaerobic conditions, yeast already produces alchohol? So what has changed??? You have removed the gas making capability, and focuse entirely on the alchohol. Due to genetic variations, etc, some strains are better at alchohol production than others. You have just taken these, and knocked out the gas making bit, and left yourself with alchohol making bits.


What is inbreeding? Isn't it that the genetic material is being re-used too often, and is lost somehow?
No, it's not getting lost somehow. A species cannot decend from just one female and one male individual. It is biologically impossible.

All I'm hearing, STILL, in this thread is useless chit-chat. Everyone who has beliefs outside of this debate are unwilling to see that so does everyone else.

Examples:

Christians: God is all-powerful, can do whatever He pleases. He can bend the rules of genetic process for a couple of generations. Hell, He created the universe and later got a virgin pregnant.
What Christians don't recognize and understand is that this background information doesn't mean shit to non-believers.

NonChristians: Believe that the rules and trends of science dictate the world as we know it.
What NonChristians don't recognize and understand is that science doen't mean shit to believers.

And lastly, WHO CARES!!!! We're here, if one way or another is proven correct, the other half ain't gonna disappear. How 'bout we leave the religious debates in the religious threads and create some more scieince debates.
This is only happening because some silly people are trying to pass ID as a scientific theory, which is it not.

Fourthly, on Earth there are two types of amino acids. Left handed and right. Only one is used by life. It would be more efficient if we could use both, did the ID-Creator simply "miss" this idea?

lol do you presume to know everything there is to know about microbiology??? If so, you're pig-headed.

Scientists used to think that the appendix was useless. They have now found out that it may be an important part of a child's immune system.

Till you know everything, don't say anything is useless.

I gotta go to bed. Tomorrow there's gonna be about 30 more pages in this thread, so i probably won't be back here again.

Bye all. I had fun debating :D

I gotta go to bed. Tomorrow there's gonna be about 30 more pages in this thread, so i probably won't be back here again.

Bye all. I had fun debating :D

night Rrawthem,, I'm going to go to the pub and enjoy some of my favorite type of Microbiology, only 30 pages, nahh unless te thread splinters... should be at least 50

[QUOTE=Rrawthem]lol do you presume to know everything there is to know about microbiology??? If so, you're pig-headed.

Scientists used to think that the appendix was useless. They have now found out that it may be an important part of a child's immune system.


This isn't a question of an organ. Our bodies don't use it. If you gave someone the wrong amino acids it passes, unabsorbed in waste/urine.

No, it's not getting lost somehow. A species cannot decend from just one female and one male individual. It is biologically impossible.

All creatures (or almost all) possess in their DNA certain recessive traits that are not conducive to survival. Inbreeding makes it more likely that those traits manifest. This is why many pure bred dogs are less healthy (for example, a higher percentage of dalmatians are deaf,) than mutts, because dog breeds are primarily the result of controlled inbreeding.

Again I say, until you know exactly what every amino acid could possibly do/be in any given environment, you do not know it's useless. You only THINK you know, which is very different from actually knowing.

Now, this really is my last post :P

http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/evol.html

There are branches....

We're directly related to Cro-Magnon man, but we're not related to Neandethals at all but rather share a common ancestor.

Don't forget those hobbits they discovered lately in Java.

[QUOTE=Rrawthem]Again I say, until you know exactly what every amino acid could possibly do/be in any given environment, you do not know it's useless. You only THINK you know, which is very different from actually knowing.





http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/html4ever/030805.Cooks.chiral.html

(QED)

No, it's not getting lost somehow. A species cannot decend from just one female and one male individual. It is biologically impossible.
Not to mention a second similar event with similar problems

The flood and the culling of humanity to one family

This is only happening because some silly people are trying to pass ID as a scientific theory, which is it not.

Your comment is a prime example of what I'm saying. To Believers it fits perfect with scientific theory, though to a nonbeliever it doesn't. The two sides have different background beliefs which means their interpretations of science are different.

Your comment is a prime example of what I'm saying. To Believers it fits perfect with scientific theory, though to a nonbeliever it doesn't. The two sides have different background beliefs which means their interpretations of science are different.
Then the believers are wrong

God may or may not exist

But what CAN and CANOT be scientific theory is absolutely set … there is no “relative” right or wrong here

God is a non falsifiable proposition as such any theory relying on a god is also non falsifiable therefore making it NOT a scientific theory

This has nothing to do with it being right or wrong but it is NOT science

The two sides have different background beliefs which means their interpretations of science are different.


While I agree with this statement I really think it is the point of origin of life. Evolutionists are not unified on how life started but from bacteria to us they do. I think, from the debates I have heard, most creationists focus on that point and make the jump to God. I believe in God and like I said before I think He/She/It set it up and let it fly.

And Upward Thrust, that is the core of why it cannot be taught. I personally think a series of undead arcane liches manipulate us, and I think THAT should be taught in public schools. Prove me wrong.

Your comment is a prime example of what I'm saying. To Believers it fits perfect with scientific theory, though to a nonbeliever it doesn't. The two sides have different background beliefs which means their interpretations of science are different.

To anyone with basic scientific training, it doesnt fit with scientific theory.

To anyone with basic scientific training, it doesnt fit with scientific theory.
Exactly I think he is getting his terms confused

Irregardless the correctness of ID because god is non falsifiable it is not scientific

Your comment is a prime example of what I'm saying. To Believers it fits perfect with scientific theory, though to a nonbeliever it doesn't. The two sides have different background beliefs which means their interpretations of science are different.

And there there ID believers have a problem.
ID is not science and can never be science. For the simple reason that science deals with the measurable and God cannot be measured. So down to eternity ID can only be a believe.

What I think it boils down to is this. There ARE...ARE certain blank spots and inconsistencies that contradict evolution to a slight degree. Raising questions. There are also cases for how many mistakes are made during surgery, and how many words destroy spelling rules. We still have surgery and have rules for spelling and accept evolution. Evolution is a theory and it, itself has changed since The Origin of Species. Not the overall idea, but there have been tuneups as we learn more. One thing that I have always found interesting is that creations never speak of DNA...I mean, our DNA has partial DNA for crabs claws and birds wings WHY? It is in noncoding/binding etc sections of DNA. (Carl Sagan, Shadows of forgotten Ancestors)

It seems to me that an organism would be able to survive MUCH better if it did not require any other organism to participate in the reproductive process. Furthermore, which evolved first, male or female? The mechanims for each are somewhat different and I'm not sure how one sex could survive until the other sex happened to evolve...

I'm not a scientist, but I do know that asexual reproduction 'reproduces' the parent organism exactly. Thus, no change. Survival - i. e. the ability to adapt to changing climate, food sources, etc. is made more likely if an organism receives its make-up (genes) from two individuals.

I would think - contrary to the fantasies of paternalistic societies - that the female life form came first since, in sexual reproduction, the male is only needed once. cf. black widow spider, praying mantis, etc.

But we are speaking about a development of several millions of years. I do not know when the first sexual act occurred or if the participants even knew what they were starting, but I am grateful for a wonderful invention! ;)

What I think it boils down to is this. There ARE...ARE certain blank spots and inconsistencies that contradict evolution to a slight degree. Raising questions. There are also cases for how many mistakes are made during surgery, and how many words destroy spelling rules. We still have surgery and have rules for spelling and accept evolution. Evolution is a theory and it, itself has changed since The Origin of Species. Not the overall idea, but there have been tuneups as we learn more. One thing that I have always found interesting is that creations never speak of DNA...I mean, our DNA has partial DNA for crabs claws and birds wings WHY? It is in noncoding, binding etc sections of DNA. (Carl Sagan, Shadows of forgotten Ancestors)
Feel free to let us know what inconsistencies you see

And there there ID believers have a problem.
ID is not science and can never be science. For the simple reason that science deals with the measurable and God cannot be measured. So down to eternity ID can only be a believe.

ID = intelligent design

Give me a break. Any idiot could have designed a better human (limited eye sight, limited hearing, limited sense of smell, the human knee [what a joke] etc.), and no intelligent being would have designed anything as gross as a mosquitos, a leech, a tick, etc.

One should call 'a spade a spade.' ID is no more than the belief of a group of unhappy people in that great 'father figure' in the sky. They try to have the rest of us accept their warped belief as scientific fact.

I am an evolutionist and believe in the theory. But there are certain highly complex organs that are very hard to explain and I have not heard of any yet, if you know the answers PLEASE let me know because it would strengthen my own understanding. A common example of this is some beetle has glands that produce some sort of stink (I think) and the chemicals produced, if mixed in any other amount or way would explode and it is very hard to get my head around it.

And there are many gaps in the fossil record. But I understand that there are transition fossils ( like "archie" and "lucy") and there is a very small amount of the earth covered by water that the fossils may be as well as a large amount of the earth left un-exscavated or impossible to do so. I accept these with a realistic attitude, as it is impossible to make a full fossil record, but I also understand that such gaps are easy to exploit to raise doubts against evolution.



And of course if we evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys?




Kidding :).

So that beetle is the bombardier beetle and I just found a great article explaining it...way to answer my own question I guess. It is a great site and sites a ton of papers through the article. And it doesn't produce a stink rather a highly toxic acid...thing...it is worth checking out just to debunk a common ID example.


http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/bombardier.html

...
And there are many gaps in the fossil record. But I understand that there are transition fossils ( like "archie" and "lucy") and there is a very small amount of the earth covered by water that the fossils may be as well as a large amount of the earth left un-exscavated or impossible to do so. I accept these with a realistic attitude, as it is impossible to make a full fossil record, but I also understand that such gaps are easy to exploit to raise doubts against evolution.


The fact that the human evolution fossil record is incomplete is not very surprising. Forming a fossil requires very specific conditions to be met, and the occurence of such is thus rare. We find fossils from dinosaurs, trilobites etc. relatively often, because those species existed on the planet for millions of years. Humans and ancestors, however, have not existed that long, so it's only natural that it's harder to find fossilized remains.

A common example of this is some beetle has glands that produce some sort of stink (I think) and the chemicals produced, if mixed in any other amount or way would explode and it is very hard to get my head around it.



all of the beetle that mixed it in the incorrect ratio exploded and took themselves out of the genepool.

strangely I've also noticed that the creationists seem to be also against social evolution as well as genetic

The fact that the human evolution fossil record is incomplete is not very surprising. Forming a fossil requires very specific conditions to be met, and the occurence of such is thus rare. We find fossils from dinosaurs, trilobites etc. relatively often, because those species existed on the planet for millions of years. Humans and ancestors, however, have not existed that long, so it's only natural that it's harder to find fossilized remains.



Oh I totally agree. Getting transition species is hard enough, but for a specific species is nearly impossible. And I know humans are young, its starting to get hypothesised that we are going to get screwed by new virus some time in the future.

also, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#pred4 and that website is friggin' awesome. It contains a ton of stuff I never knew and I used to debate this all the time, since freshman year in highschool I think. I strongly suggest people check it out.

Oh I totally agree. Getting transition species is hard enough, but for a specific species is nearly impossible. And I know humans are young, its starting to get hypothesised that we are going to get screwed by new virus some time in the future.

also, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#pred4 and that website is friggin' awesome. It contains a ton of stuff I never knew and I used to debate this all the time, since freshman year in highschool I think. I strongly suggest people check it out.
Lol we have thats why the no comment :) we use it all the time (I know I know you are new)

But lets just say talkorigins is a regular around here lol

Then the believers are wrong

God may or may not exist

But what CAN and CANOT be scientific theory is absolutely set … there is no “relative” right or wrong here

God is a non falsifiable proposition as such any theory relying on a god is also non falsifiable therefore making it NOT a scientific theory

This has nothing to do with it being right or wrong but it is NOT science

You also are doing it. You are declaring your definition of the possiblities to be correct and saying their's is wrong. I agree with you on the accord that in all the scientific debates about what is a theory and junk, you say that science is the whole truth and theories are the whole truth. If you disagree with either of these, then you are leaving the possibility of God playing a role in science whether you believe that or not. To say that we don't know it all is the same as saying a god may exist and play a part in it.

[QUOTE=Puddytat]all of the beetle that mixed it in the incorrect ratio exploded and took themselves out of the genepool.


That may be a simplistic way to look at it but the way it would need to be mixed would be a trial and error which would probably lead to extinction. BUT in the later post I had the website explains a step by step probable evolution based on reputable, published scientific papers.

You are declaring your definition of the possiblities to be correct and saying their's is wrong. You say that science is the whole truth and theories are the whole truth. If you disagree with either of these, then you are leaving the possibility of God playing a role in science whether you believe that or not. To say that we don't know it all is the same as saying a god may exist and play a part in it.

The basis is thus. There is no PROOF of God. If there was there would be no such thing as Faith, which I feel is the whole point. if God plays a role prove it. I am not saying he doesn't. All science is is figuring out stuff on our own without jumping to conclusions. I can say that before I was born I was a giant spider living in the center of the sun. No one can disprove me, nor can I prove it. It won't be put in any textbooks and no one will figure out how I could do that. Same with God, no proof in either direction so science ignores it and finds out what we can empirically.

God may have invented every physical law, every chemical reaction.....but we can't say for sure so we just define what they are.

So a theory or idea should be judge on how easy it is to believe using current accepted knowledge? The theory of evolution is a good one but it does not disprove the creationsit or disprove God exists. It is not a truth so does not eliminate any of the multiple other posibilities. It just presents the most satisfactory current solution to the origin of species (satisfactory to some I correct myself).
I like the theory but think it stange that people have such a fanatical, near religious furvour towards it that any challenge to it is greated with shouts of BAckwards Morons!
What disproves creationism is the evidence that evolution is built on. We simply wouldn't expect to see a fossil record that shows transitional forms with creationism. However, the ambulocetus, feathered dinosaurs, archaeopterix, and other transitional creatures including hominids that led to humans have been found.

The reason we "evolutionists" have a "near religious furvor" towards anything that challenges it is that nobody but creationists challenge it. They do so with a complete lack of understanding about how science works and use misinformation, old discredited arguments, and sometimes even outright lies in order to take science out of the schools and replace it with their religious doctrine. They're literally trying to turn the clock back to the dark ages and must be stopped.

[QUOTE=Puddytat]all of the beetle that mixed it in the incorrect ratio exploded and took themselves out of the genepool.


That may be a simplistic way to look at it but the way it would need to be mixed would be a trial and error which would probably lead to extinction. BUT in the later post I had the website explains a step by step probable evolution based on reputable, published scientific papers.

I merely compressed the timeframe ;)
plus i've found that it is better to be simplistic with the anti evolutionists

You also are doing it. You are declaring your definition of the possiblities to be correct and saying their's is wrong. I agree with you on the accord that in all the scientific debates about what is a theory and junk, you say that science is the whole truth and theories are the whole truth. If you disagree with either of these, then you are leaving the possibility of God playing a role in science whether you believe that or not. To say that we don't know it all is the same as saying a god may exist and play a part in it.
What did you completely miss my argument

I was not saying if I am right or wrong I am saying that BY DEFFINITION any hypothesis that involves a god CAN NOT BE A SCIENTIFIC THEORY

This has absolutely NOTHING to do with if ID is right or wrong or the intervention of god

Yep great, well thought out and eloquently put. However it does not preclude or disprove creation or intelligent design, it is for most a more plausable explanation.
As I said evolution is a good theory and works for me, but it still has many holes and still only explains the changes in species and development, not how they initially came toexist or how matter was created. and the throeries that explain these matters are riddled with holes and disputed by the scientific communities.
Criticizing evolution for not being able to explain abiogenesis is about as smart as criticizing a car for not being able to fly.

I agree with all you say, I only argue against those that state evolution is a good idea so all others must be wrong.
Because we can't test for something or detect it does not mean it does not exist, hence many of the questionable sub atomic particles we have names for.
God is outside of nature. He's supernatural.
Science is the study of the natural world. The universe of matter and energy, time and space is what science concerns itself with.

Therefore, god cannot be tested scientifically. The idea of a god or gods are ignored by science because they're outside the natural world.

The subatomic paricles you speak of are theoretically in the natural world. We've got math to suggest they may exist, and we design experiments to try to find them. If the experiments that are supposed to detect them fail to do so we rule them out.

You've answered the question "how". Can you answer the question "why"? I mean, things live perfectly without bone structures. Why did bone structures evolve? Which evolved first? Bones or muscles? Because they are both very dependent on each other. Without muscles bones wouldn't be able to stand, but without bones muscles wouldn't be able to move.
Slugs have muscles and no bones. They move. So do Jellyfish. Squids have only one bone, and it has no connection to their tentacles. Tentacles move with great dexterity and strength.

Science isn't concerned with why. It's only concerned with how. Why doesn't matter. There doesn't need to be a reason. If you're looking for why then take up philosophy and religion.

No. If we are all designed by the same creator the designs would be similar, no? Also the same beginning, but of a different sort.
No. Look at man made designs. Show me the similarities between my house and my computer. One hardly looks to have evolved from the other.

Evolution! Sounds plausible? Right? Well, How do you explain the origin of such complex organs like the eye? What about the gaps in the fossil record and sheer lack of fossils in the the Precambrain era? It can be mathematically proven that natural selection and chance mutations cannot lead to such biological innovations. Clearly this can be logically explained that some designer - call him God - at certain intervals helped evolution along. Clearly Intelligent Design makes a lot of sense?

Well, Intelligent Design is flat-out wrong and not accepted by credible scientists. If there are two schools of thought one is held by scientsists and the other by religious nut-jobs.

Development of complex organs can be explained because Evolution by natural selection is not by chance. Evolution is a theory of gradual, incremental change, eventually achieving greater complexity. Lets take the eye as an example! An organism eventually develops light sensitive cells. these light sensitive cells, help it notice changing light and therefore when a predator is approaching. Well, it evades the predators long enough to pass its genes to it children who inherit the light sensitive cells. After many generations, as organisms who lack said cells have a lower chance of passing on their genes die out, what we know as the Eye develops. I can also explain the giraffes long necks: only the ones who were able to reach the leaves on the tree were able to pass on their genes. Intelligent Design, in fact, removes the origin of complexity.

Lack of fossils in Precambrian Era? Why would their be?

As for the gaps in the fossil record, do detectives have to account for every second of a crime based on what they found on the scene to prove that it exists? Also scientists use the genetic code to back up evolution.

But what about everyone's good friend Math? Well, do we really have the information to guess the probability of the development of an eye? Also, Evolution, while random mutations do play a part, mostly relies on natural selection.

As a final note, Evolution did not seek to explain the origin of life, but rather to explain the origin of the variety of species on earth. In no way does science produce evidence against God. To quote Martin Nowak, a Harvard proffessor of mathematics, "Science and religion ask different questions."

Sounds like you began with a refutation: and ended with a supporting argument.

I'd guess, in the end, your argument ended with a stance entering the realm of Evolutionary Creationism (that is, an active God/Creator guiding the force).

Evolution in no way is designed to: nor has, negated a concept of "God" or "Creator".... Indeed each ask (science and religion) and answer, different questions: Science the "how things happen"; religion the "why things happen".

I'll also bring my argument from the other thread in:

How can human desire have evolved? Evolution is about survival, but a lot of our current desires aren't about survival, for example, spreading butter and jam on bread to make them tastier.
Fat (butter) is a great source of energy for animals. Jam is sweet, which indicates sugar (another great source of energy) and fruity which is a dead giveaway that it contains vitamins and minerals. We desire it because we evolved to see such flavors as healthy food.

Only if the point of design was to produce a perfect creature.
Only playing devils' advocate here mind you.
A designed human without a vestigial appendix wouldn't be perfect, only more competantly designed.

In other words, the vestigial bones should have disappeared by now, according to evolution, because they are "slight disadvantages". But no. For every generation of dolphins the vestigial bones exist, and for the dolphins that don't, we call them "abnormal", and they usually are more disadvantaged than other dolphins that have the vestigial bones.

Coming to think of it, we call organisms with mutated genes "abnormal", even if they have another arm (which usually inhibits their movement further). Anyway, to evolutionists, what's "normal"? How do we classify organisms if every generation is different than the previous one?
One doesn't expect perfection from evolution. One expects to see living things that were just rigged together with modified parts from their ancestors. Perfection might be expected only from creation.

Taxonomists are aware of differences between individuals and differences between populations of the same species. There are things called ring species, where populations of animals live around a natural barrier. Animals from two opposite ends of the ring won't be able to breed. Animals from populations closer to each other on the ring can breed. It's an example of speciation in progress. Taxonomists know that species fade into one another like that. It's what you would expect with evolution.

And just the right by-products for us to enjoy our life immensely. How many by-products would that take? And how exact and specific? By-products can be detrimental too. What happened to them?
Also by-products that produce crippling mental illness, occasional mental retardation, and an overactive pattern recognition function that reads too much into many coincidences. Like I said before, we would expect a flawed result from evolution. We could only expect perfection to come from creation.

I've been reading this thread for a few days now, and one thing that stands out is how the creationists ask the questions, get replys and then disappear before or dodge questions address to them. There is no talk about how points made have affected their beliefs. They provide evidense for ID or creationism, and then forget it when it is turned against them. Most mysterious.
Actually quite typical of this sort of debate. That's why it's hard to win a debate against a creationist in front of a non-scientific audience. They ask a dozen simple questions with complex answers in a few minutes, but it takes the scientist much longer to explain the answers thoroughly. The audience tunes out during the scientist's response, and assumes the creationist won.

You need to incorporate everything into explaining anything. It's called "taking account into". If the beginning of life was as the Bible stated it then evolution wouldn't even become a topic. If it is true what you say then why is there such a fierce debate between Evolution and Creation? You need to look at the wider picture when discussing Evolution and Creation. It is why it is such a fierce and, really, fun debate.
Not true at all. That's like saying an auto mechanic needs to know about smelting metal from ore. He's only concerned with fixing the car, not how the metal came to be. There's another guy in charge of smelting.

Evolution explains the diversity of life. Abiogenesis is concerned with the origin of life.

The two parents thing is sort of a modern invention I think. Check out the bible for how many wives some dudes had.
No it's really not. Humanity is alike to many other species in that we classically form life long mating pairs. In some cultures that number is expanded, however these are the exception to the rule, and in fact for the most part they accept the general idea of a man and (in those cases) multiple women forming life long mating pairs. Secondly, the Bible doesn't really make sense. If Solomon had all those wives, then why didn't he have any kids? And let's not even mention the classic conundrum of how it is even vaguely possible that Cain could go around "founding cities" and finding people, when there should have been a mere handful of people in the world...his family!

Returning to the general point of polygamy however, in many cases it derives from two things. Either ego (see: Kings, rich Muslims), or long term culture causes it to happen over time as either more women are being born/surviving then man or some other factor makes attaching more women to a single man a better solution.



Attack time! Creationists, explain the presence of vestigial structures, you know, things like your appendix. You don't really need it, it doesn't really do anything, so why do you have it? Furthermore, considering that some less advanced primates (apes for instance) actually have expanded appendix structures which they use in digestion, isn't this direct evidence that we share a common ancestor and thereby evolved in separate branches? We didn't retain the use of the appendix, they did. The same applies to whale fins. Why are their fins full of the exact same bones found in the human hand? Multiple digits split into multiple pieces...all in a flipper. I can keep making these examples if you keep refusing to face reality. How about tonsils? The fact a whale has pelvic bones in the middle of its body that don't do anything? You have muscles around your ear that move them, and do nothing else. Why would you have developed those independently?!

So you still haven't proven that evolution begins without planning and design. I applaud your effort in meddling with the yeast, which is icky ;) , but that is rather insufficient evidence in proving that apes can evolve to humans.
Well, there's just too much evidence to support apes and humans having a common ancestor to really deny it at this point. We've got the DNA, which is nearly identical, we've got the fact that the apes we are most closely related to, chimps and bonobos, inhabit the same landmass as the earliest hominid fossils, we've also got similarities in chimp and human behavior, and we've got a chain of hominid remains that looks ape-like at the oldest point and human at the youngest.

Then why aren't you just eating fat from meat and sugar from sugar cane? Why are you eating jam and butter which is delicious, but still with a number of chemicals which are always detrimental to the body?
micronutrients dude, Jam contains vitamins and minerals that the body needs to survive.

Evolution, as of now, is totally false. For one, every species branches off into at least 2 different branches as it evolves. Always. That's what scientists say. Now, evidence comes along saying that human evolution might have been a straight line. Several species. No branches. An absolute is proven to be false. Who knows what other "laws" of evolution aren't completely true.

Edit: prepare for a bashing from evolutionists. They often can't deal with the fact that they might be wrong. After all, they demand evidence of god, yet believe in evolution even though it is based on tests that have a slight chance of giving false readings.

It is nowhere a "straight line" of development... in fact a mere 200,000 years ago, Homo Heidelbergensis branched into two different groups; Homo Sapien Sapien and Homo Sapien Neaderthalis..... Homo Sapien was a descent from Homo Habilis; which was in turn a "cousin" of Australopithecus Robustus; each one in descent of Australopithecus africanus... Australopithecus afarensis was the line from which africanus descended, but was contemporary with another "cousin" Australopithecus anamensis; each descendant from Ardipithicus ramidus..

In no way is this a straight line...
Ardipithicus ramidus
________________
Australopithecus afarensis | Australopithecus anamensis
_____________________
Australopithecus africanus
______________________
Homo Habilis___________| Australopithecus Robustus
_____________________
Homo heidelbergensis
_____________________
Homo Sapien Sapien | Homo Sapien Neaderthalis

Actually quite typical of this sort of debate. That's why it's hard to win a debate against a creationist in front of a non-scientific audience. They ask a dozen simple questions with complex answers in a few minutes, but it takes the scientist much longer to explain the answers thoroughly. The audience tunes out during the scientist's response, and assumes the creationist won.

No I have it on porof that I do not like green eggs and ham it says so in a book, that is not a Theory but documented evidence, and although I apparantley did like them in the end of the King seuss the First version, There is a different ending recently uncovered in 1980 by a midwest american, that when Sam gives him the eggs he suffers anaphalectic shock and falls into a coma, and sam is tied to the train track, and gored by the goat..

no you cannot Prove that I do like green eggs and ham Science Fails miserably and the great Green Arkleseizure is the source of tuniverse...

MWAHAHAHAHAHA, nurse I am ready for my medication now

heh, ignoring everything else, i just want to comment on this:



Did you actually create any NEW genetic information?? No! You refined, and actually DISCARDED genetic info already there, and maybe grafted some from another bacteria, but unless you actually wrote the DNA with some tool yet to be invented, you designed nothing.
What makes you think that new genetic information wasn't evolved in the yeast? Ever hear of polyploidy? It's a mutation that gives a new organism extra DNA. That DNA is usually a double of existing DNA, but if it mutates somewhere down the line you get an organism with more and different DNA from it's ancestors.

If evolution is right, then where are mishapen humans in zoos that start evolving? And don't say it takes a long time, because eventually you'll be able to see it. And why does almost every single differently located and culturally isolated human race have marriage almost all the time? Read Dinosaurs and Creation by Donald B. DeYoung. It'll help you not go to hell.
What makes you think that modern apes would evolve into humans? What makes you think I want to read a book of lies and misinformation?

intelligent design is not a science. their is no proof of God. and in order for something to become a science, their must be something physical to test. God is not physical. religion is faith-based. and faith-based science isnt a science at all. and to clarify, i am a christian. and i believed that God influenced evolution. however, i am not about to say that intelligent design is a science. and idea? yes. a belief? sure. but not science.

lol

What is inbreeding? Isn't it that the genetic material is being re-used too often, and is lost somehow? Well, how do you explain that the first sexually reproducing creatures, according to evolution, did not inbreed????? The first himans did not inbreed because they had stacks and stacks of genetic information piled away. So, between all the children Adam and Eve had, there is the possibility that they share only the information generic to humans everywhere, and no more!!
snipped original post

The first creatures of a new species are not evolved as individuals. They are a population of animals that has accumulated mutations and spread them among each other through breeding. A velociraptor doesn't become a chicken with one mutation in one generation. Therefore the new species arises as a large enough breeding population to avoid the dangers of inbreeding.

Some people, by nature, stutter. Some just don't get sick as often as others. Some of us, from a genetic standpoint, have thicker bones than others, or have better vision, or are more sensitive to the motion of fluids in our eustatian tubes to facilitate better equillibrium. Are you really so sure that evolution has never occurred and isn't happening all around us as we speak? Evolution is not some overnight thing; it's gradual, subtle changes.

This is way I am agnostic, and not atheist. There is obviously a higher power that designed a sort of evolution of us. Just because a link is missing, however, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

This is way I am agnostic, and not atheist. There is obviously a higher power that designed a sort of evolution of us. Just because a link is missing, however, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Actually, if you are sure of a higher power, you aren't agnostic.

no you cannot Prove that I do like green eggs and ham Science Fails miserably and the great Green Arkleseizure is the source of tuniverse...

MWAHAHAHAHAHA, nurse I am ready for my medication now

The Heretics shall know the truth at the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief; when they shall be wiped from the Great Green One's nose...

I wanted to clear up something about this "marriage" issue. Marriage is a (relatively) new construction. Anthropological and biological evidence (such as testacle size) indicates our ancestors were serial monogamists. A series of long lasting mates rather than just one.

just to add a little to your defination: a theory can never be proven, only disproven (either mahmatically, experimentally, etc.) whereas a law can be directly proven (mathmateically, you can prove the law of entropy)...remember though, that evolution (macroevolution- the quantum leap from one species to another, rather than microevolution) is still just a theory! as is creationisim. untill either is disproven by one piece of evidence, they will both continue to be just that--theory- all though, there is a general consusenus to accept some theories as law, becasue thay cannot be disproven (ie. theory of relaivity) nor can they actually be proven.......

and yes, even though i am a scientist (chemist and biologist in fact) I still believe in creationisim........blind faith, i guess.. :headbang:

Not everything that hasn't been disproven yet is a theory. It has to have strong evidence in favour, and has to have predictive abilities, among other things. Relativity predicted some pretty weird stuff, which nobody had ever seen before, which turned out to be there when we looked.
It's fine that you believe in creationism. That's your right. But please don't call it a scientific theory, because it is not.

i find it hard to believe a chemist/biologist didn't know what makes a scientific theory, and the intrinsic problem with ID being one. That's something I have been taught since junior year of high school...

The problem here is:
Many creationists here are closed-minded.

Many evolutionists here are closed-minded.

Some evolutionists here are ignorant enough to make false accusations about religion and its followers based on little, if any, evidence.
True... unfortunately :-(

There are very few truly open-minded people here, like me. I accept the fact that scientists have a point. I just find some things in science as false. Do I have to believe everything someone tells me? I, like many other religious people, don't take the bible too literally. Many close-minded atheists soil the very meaning of atheism by taking the bible too literally and, thereby, making false accusations of ignorance and stupidity among the religious.
True, but there are some Christians who fit those accusations perfectly. And I'm not talking about in the coincidental sense, either. Obviously there will be people like that in any subgroup... ok maybe not Mensa or Nobel laureates, but you know what I mean. I'm talking about ignorance because of religion. Is it the religion's fault? Heck no. But is it the cause, because of how it's used in some cases? Yup.

Religion and science are not the cause of wars and death. People are. Islam teaches peace and understanding. Many muslims are violating the quran by resorting to terrorism. Christianity teaches peace, love, and understanding. The bible demands that you forgive the sinner and hate the sin. Yet, there are many Christians willing to kill non-Christians. Yes, there are atheist extremists. The problem isn't bad religion. It's bad followers of said religions.
You have no idea how impossible it is to explain this to some people on this forum. It's sad. There are many many many many many Christians on these fora who are convinced that all Muslims eat babies (not literally, I mean that as an example of a type of belief, if that wasn't obvious). They think that the Qur'an teaches to go blow up marketplaces in Israel and office building is America. These are the kinds of people that get the accusations of "ignorance and stupidity among the religious".

I completely agree but you have to remember, disregarding something in the bible is much different than science. science you can do more research on the subject to see other evidence, like the website I posted.

While religions themselves don't start wars it is clearly the misguided clergy who do. look at the inquisition. the witch trials. I feel the same way, a few usually ruins it for everyone. I am a registered republican. I think the war is ill planned, I don't like most of bush's policies, I voted for Kerry, and I personally am pro-life but I think anyone besides myself should do whatever they feel is right. However in a new group of people I get shunned because of stubborn religous zealots as well as extremists. I think it happens to every group.

I got another picture of evolution

http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news0301/evolution1.gif

:) hehehhe
Lol! I love it! So sarcastic! I also read the article provided later... even more sarcastic! :-D

I believe in evolution on the basis that I hate creationists for their chronic stupidity....

1) A trilobite wasn't an insect
2) I need a link to info about trilobite eyes. I'm not taking your word for it because you made the mistake of calling a trilobite an insect, which indicates some ignorance of biology, and soft tissue doesn't fossilize well, so I doubt we've got trilobite eyes to study.
3) Your odds mean nothing. It happened step by step. Partial "eyes" can be observed in modern animals as light sensitive patches of skin, more developed eyes run the gamut from colorblind eyes that only really notice movement to the fine eyes of a squid or octopus.
You're right about everything except the problem of soft-tissue fossilization... they're still around! You don't need a fossil, because you can watch living ones.

Say, on the topic of evolution and general topics which anger people, have you heard of this 'intelligent falling' theory? Evangelical scientists claim it disproves gravity.

You're right about everything except the problem of soft-tissue fossilization... they're still around! You don't need a fossil, because you can watch living ones.
trilobites? Seriously? I thought they were only found as fossils nowadays. I've never seen one on a nature program or anything.

Lol! I love it! So sarcastic! I also read the article provided later... even more sarcastic! :-D
Gota love it :)

Not to mention that a single mutation would not result in an entirely NEW ability. Not to mention that not all mutations are passed on genetically (i.e. a deformed arm in a human). Not to mention that the newly-mutated creature could be killed simply by accident before having a chance to reproduce...


Ok i dont know if this is in the previous 23 pages, as i am only on page 2... so bear with me...

1) There is a single point mutation of Adenosine to Cytosine that changes a multisegmented creature into a three segment creature (from Phylum Onychophora to Phylum Insecta, in Group Ecdysozoa, Kingdom Animalia/Metazoa)

2) All mutations in the germ line are passed on. Mutations occuring in the somatic cells (not germline/reproductive cells) are not passed on.

3) True... but it wont be the only mutation - replacement of a species with a "better" one is a multigenerational thing.

Alrighty. I don't have the patience to read andd respond to all 18 pages, so I'll just do with the first 7.

Lack of fossils in Precambrian Era? Why would their be? The predominance of soft-bodied organisms without easily-fossilizable shells/bones (easy compared to soft tissue, anyway), plus the extreme age of such fossils which makes it very likely that a large fraction of those that formed have since been destroyed by erosion and tectonics.

But what about everyone's good friend Math? Well, do we really have the information to guess the probability of the development of an eye? Also, Evolution, while random mutations do play a part, mostly relies on natural selection. Not precisely, but we can estimate. In the presence of usuable light, it seems that the evolution of an eye is *extremely* probable, seeing as how it has happened independently something like 7 times here on Earth.

As a final note, Evolution did not seek to explain the origin of life, but rather to explain the origin of the variety of species on earth. In no way does science produce evidence against God. To quote Martin Nowak, a Harvard proffessor of mathematics, "Science and religion ask different questions."*Claps* Right. Abiogenesis and evolution are two different fields.

Science says nothing about God, because God is not scientifically testable and has no bearing on the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Similarly, Religion runs on a completely different system of thought from science, and has a different purpose. Religion is intended to answer those untestable questions that science can't, but only secondarily, in my opinion. The primary purpose of religion is to keep people in line- to establish moral codes and promote the pursuit of a happy life for yourself and everybody else. I happen to be a christian myself, and believe in an all-powerful God, the afterlife, Jesus's atonement for sins, and all that stuff, but my religion neither says nor needs to say anything about evolution or much any other scientific principle because those things just plain *don't have a freakin' whit of influence* over whether or not you are a moral person. On the rare occasions where I find that Religion and Science contradict each other, it is usually because one of them has stepped out of its sandbox, and the issue is easily resolved by putting them back where they belong. In promoting literal Creationism, Religion is stepping into Science's sandbox. It needs to be put back where it belongs.

I suppose now is as good a time as any the whip out the big guns.

Would an evolutionist please explain to me why and how sexual reproduction came about?
It sems to me that an organism would be able to survive MUCH better if it did not require any other organism to participate in the reporoductive process. Furthermore, which evolved first, male or female? The mechanims for each are somewhat different and I'm not sure how one sex could survive until the other sex happened to evolve...It's been done a couple of times already, but I'll see what I can do to put it all together and condense it.
First, neither male nor female evolved first. They evolved together following the emergence of isogametic gametes. Way back in the depths of time, when everything was prokaryotes, single cells often fused and fissioned, not always keeping their original genetic material grouped together, leading to gene shuffling and swapping. Eventually, some mutation arose which allowed its originator and all of that cell's descendents and Software EXchange partners to actively control this gene swapping in addition to reproducing themselves by binary fission. Actually, that probably happened multiple times, as we see many different mechanisms by which it occurs. That still used by most single-celled organisms involves simply forming a brige bewteen the plasma membranes of the two cells involved across which genetic material is passed. But this, unfortunately, doesn't work too well for isogenetic colonies (the simplest multicellular organisms) wishing to exchange genetic material with other isogenetic colonies. Some other single-celled organisms (such as the malaria plasmodium) have a two-stage life cycle in which the adult stage undergoes binary fission to produce two immature isogametic sexual daughter cells each with only half of the parent cell's genetic material. These then seek out other immature sexual cells to fuse with to form a new adult cell. Eventually, a specialization was evolved which allowed only certain cells in any isogenetic colony to release these generic gametes which would then float about until they fused with another gamete, hoepfully from a different originating individual, and begin growing into a new colony. Organisms, both multicellurla and single-cellular, gained vast nefits from being able to control gene-swapping this way because it supresses the expression of some harmful mutations, vastly increases population diversity to increase adaptability in the face of disease, predation, or other environmental change, and, as is essentially explained by the previous item in this list, vastly sped up the process of evolution. All of those things allowed sexual reproducers to quickly outcompete the vast majority of organisms that were only capable of asexual reproduction.

Back to my reproduction problem:
assuming evoltionary thoery to be correct, at one time, no organism and any genetics-swapping abilities. Then, by random mutation some organism developed ALL the gens necessary to exchange genetic information. with whom did this lone organism share the information if no other organism had the information-swapping gene?Fortunately, ALL the genes necessary aren't very many genes. It's quite possible that it happened very accidentally all the time and the major innovation was actually the prevention of unwanted fusions. In any case, we might suppose that it was only necessary for one organisms to have the necessary genes to form a plasma bridge over which to exchange genetic material (actually, we pretty much know this to be the case as there are some bacteria that are capable of transferring plasmids into plant cells), in which case the pool of mates was every other organism around, and in the opposite case the cell would still produce many descendants with the genes who could then swap among themselves.

There would be millions (if not billions) of non-swapping organisms, and very very few (if even more than the one) swap-capable organisms. How do you know that the swap-capable(s) would be able to survive...? Because obviously they did. :) We don't know that the first ones survived. It might have taken several hundred tries before it finally caught on. But once it did, those that could engage in Software EXchange outcompeted the rest. And the fact that there were billions of other organisms around is part of the point- the pool is so incredibly huge that there's plenty of opportunity for potentially imporbable things to happen. The bigger the population, the faster it will be able to evolve and the more diverse it will be able to become.

Not to mention that a single mutation would not result in an entirely NEW ability.Why not? Maybe not in higher animals, but prokaryotes generally have, and certainly had, very simple genetic codes in which very few, very small alterations could have very big effects.
Not to mention that not all mutations are passed on genetically (i.e. a deformed arm in a human). Not to mention that the newly-mutated creature could be killed simply by accident before having a chance to reproduce...Until another one mutates to get the same ability.

ID is put forward as a kind of evolution process that is helped along by god. In other words, God created, then saw that improvements are in order and tinkered a bit so that his creatures could see, for example. And now the question:
What kind of image of god is that? God as the almighty tinkerer? Why didn't he get it right the first time?
I'm very glad that my faith allows me to see and accept the scientific solution without a conflict of faith.I can't speak for everybody, but my view (which probably does not count as Official Intelligent Design Doctrine) is that God *did* get it right the first time. He created the Universe and all of the laws and processes therein, and the process which he instuted for the purpose of creating man was evolution. He knew what He wanted, and 'tinkered' with things until they were right.

THEORY of evolution. LAW of entropy. entropy rules out evolution. all things go from order to chaos. not the other way around. all systems move toward maximum entropy. is a LAW.Entropy does not rule evolution. This is because Life is not a closed system. There is energy flowing in from the sun and from geothermal energy leaking through the crust, and out via radiation into space. Therefore, the second law of thermodynamics does not apply to Life on Earth or its evolution. If it did, not only would evolution be impossible, reproduction would be impossible (organising abiotic material into living offspring), and that's obviously false.

I've been reading this thread for a few days now, and one thing that stands out is how the creationists ask the questions, get replys and then disappear before or dodge questions address to them. There is no talk about how points made have affected their beliefs. They provide evidense for ID or creationism, and then forget it when it is turned against them. Most mysterious.

why do we ask then questions and then leave? i am not akin to having my beliefs, thoughts, etc. being called idiotic, stupid, etc. becuase i do not necessasirily see your point of veiw-- if there could be a refrain from the name calling, insults to intellegence, etc., then may be we would stick around and defend our "crackpot" ideals more.

as for points made that affect my beleifs, i have read this forum religously for the past few days (no pun intended) and no, it has not changed my core set of beliefs- even though I have had my intellegence questioned, told that i was not a good scientist (to put it a little more tactfully than it has been put here by others), that I am stupid, iditioic, etc., i still see the points that made. until I have concrete proof, no missing links, no missing anything, that supports the theory of evolution or completely anhilates the thought of a an ID or OEC (Old earth cration theory), then i will resign myself to every person on this board who beleives in evolution. until then, I will continue to beleive in the idea of an ID rather than macroevolution. microevolution- well,yes, of course I beleive in that, but the thought of evolving from the primordial ooze does not seem plausible. in this instance, my faith influences my scientific thought (I said influences- not blinds), and maybe, to those out there, that makes me a horrible scientist, but in MHO (which on this board seems to mean nothing and justs gets repeatedly slammed) it is your core set of beleifs and your faith which shapes a person into a great scientist.....but, ths is why i stopped posting on the forum- didn't want to deal with the namecalling, the fourth grade antics, etc.

as for points made that affect my beleifs, i have read this forum religously for the past few days (no pun intended) and no, it has not changed my core set of beliefs-

Of course not. You belive that evolution attacks your religion. As such you will not give it an "honest" examination.


even though I have had my intellegence questioned, told that i was not a good scientist (to put it a little more tactfully than it has been put here by others), that I am stupid, iditioic, etc., i still see the points that made.

Your ability of being a scientist is put to question when you introduce faith based arguements.


until I have concrete proof, no missing links, no missing anything, that supports the theory of evolution or

Evolution does not deal with absolutes.
Missing link theory is from about 20+ years ago.
Expecting it laid out a-z will never happen. Science only offers an explanation. It does not designate truth.


completely anhilates the thought of a an ID or OEC (Old earth cration theory), then i will resign myself to every person on this board who beleives in evolution. until then, I will continue to beleive in the idea of an ID rather than macroevolution. microevolution- well,yes, of course I beleive in that, but the thought of evolving from the primordial ooze does not seem plausible. in this instance, my faith influences my scientific thought (I said influences- not blinds), and maybe, to those out there, that makes me a horrible scientist, but in MHO (which on this board seems to mean nothing and justs gets repeatedly slammed) it is your core set of beleifs and your faith which shapes a person into a great scientist.....but, ths is why i stopped posting on the forum- didn't want to deal with the namecalling, the fourth grade antics, etc.
Nothing wrong with having Religion. Science doesn't work with faith.

So to ease your feelings repeat after me

"Evolution has never set out to prove or disprove the existence of God"

Repeat about 100 times.

If evolution is right, then where are mishapen humans in zoos that start evolving?

Actually we did once. Otoa Benga was put into the New York(or was it the Bronx Zoo?). He was a pygmy. In his time that was considered strange if not mishapen.

Hmmmmm why do we have pygmies?


And don't say it takes a long time, because eventually you'll be able to see it. And why does almost every single differently located and culturally isolated human race have marriage almost all the time?


Pair bonding has existed for awhile. Marriage is new concept in the matter of time.

Marriage is not the same everywhere. In some areas you can have mulitple wives. I think in Nepal a woman can have Mulitple husbands.


Read Dinosaurs and Creation by Donald B. DeYoung. It'll help you not go to hell.

Oh no not the dinosaurs lived with man arguement.

I thought you had to read the Bible to not go to hell?

Well, aren't you contradicting yourself? You are a chemist, you said that. Organic and Physical chemistry work on principles similar to evolution. SN-1/2 reactions can't be seen. But because of the energy involved we know it is how it probably happens. And what about physical chemistry? all it is is knowing what is in the begining and at the end and educatedly guessing at what happened to entropy/heat/energy etc throughout. How can you take these at face value and be a chemist and not believe the theory of evolution by means of natural selection? I am a Biochemist and pray everynight, but believing in an earth that is 10,000 years old is contrary to simple halflives of elemental isotopes that are around now. I am not promoting the existance or lack there of of God but neither does evolution it simply takes what we have and tracks back to what we are pretty sure there was. If you believe in chemistry without the reaction/statics laid out a-z which is impossible to be sure of then how do you expect evolution to be laid out? You are asking for every animal that ever lived, including single celled ones, to be catalogued....we can't find where the hell the MAYANS went...

You need to incorporate everything into explaining anything. It's called "taking account into".

which is why i always take into account the number of sheep in new zealand before trying to figure out why my computer won't start up properly.

How old are you? You saw the ape turn into a human?

well, if you mean to ask if i saw the evolutionary divergence between humans and the rest of our ape cousins, then yes. yes i did. i saw it much better than your average detective sees how a murder was committed and who did it. i personally looked at the evidence available and was able to make a determination of what happened beyond any reasonable doubt - and most unreasonable ones too. the only doubts left to hold are batshit insane incoherently unreasonable doubts.

You may or may not have read a book called The Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson. This is a rough guide to science, and almost covers the point of life from nowhere. Recently, scientists filled a thermos flask with everything they thought the prehistoric atmosphere to contain, shook it up and electrocuted it (lightning). When they analysed the results they found lots of protein and amino acids, the basic ingerdients for life.

It is my theory that the atmosphere differntiated around the world, and it took time for all the ingredients to accumilate in one place, the oceans. considering all the deep water currents this is quite possible, though i am not sure how likely.

until then, I will continue to beleive in the idea of an ID rather than macroevolution.

you do realize that id holds that 'macroevolution' quite obviously happened, right?

[QUOTE=Obsideo]You may or may not have read a book called The Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson. This is a rough guide to science, and almost covers the point of life from nowhere. Recently, scientists filled a thermos flask with everything they thought the prehistoric atmosphere to contain, shook it up and electrocuted it (lightning). When they analysed the results they found lots of protein and amino acids, the basic ingerdients for life.[QUOTE]



I read that, weren't some of those also surrounded by a lipid bilayer as well?

well, if you mean to ask if i saw the evolutionary divergence between humans and the rest of our ape cousins, then yes. yes i did. i saw it much better than your average detective sees how a murder was committed and who did it. i personally looked at the evidence available and was able to make a determination of what happened beyond any reasonable doubt - and most unreasonable ones too. the only doubts left to hold are batshit insane incoherently unreasonable doubts.

How about we freak him out by showing him video of Oscar the Chimp who was bipedal all the time? ;)

... It is my theory that the atmosphere differntiated around the world, and it took time for all the ingredients to accumilate in one place, the oceans. considering all the deep water currents this is quite possible, though i am not sure how likely.
I would bet at the ocean shores, because I learned that frequent change between watery solutions and dry conditions would most likely lead to the formation of nucleic acids.

all im hearing is moo moo complex structures moo moo,

you're all morons if you consider this crap as even being plausable.

I'm sorry to put it so bluntly but I'm sick of shit talking on the subject of evolution.

all im hearing is moo moo complex structures moo moo,

you're all morons if you consider this crap as even being plausable.

I'm sorry to put it so bluntly but I'm sick of shit talking on the subject of evolution.

What a rivetting and compelling argument. I think those were close to the Pope's exact words to Gallileo.

snip--until then, I will continue to beleive in the idea of an ID rather than macroevolution. microevolution- well,yes, of course I beleive in that, but the thought of evolving from the primordial ooze does not seem plausible.--snip--

2 points:

If you have read this forum religiously as you state, then why do you continue to suggest that evolution has anything to do with the primordial ooze becoming life?

Also, if you believe in micro-evolution but not macro-evolution, then you must believe that something stops micro-evolution from happening after a few generations. A series of minute changes inevitably-and I can't stress this enough-inevitably results in a substantial change. For example, if I changed a single letter in the Bible, and then repeated that process a couple million times, the Bible would fail to even resemble the Bible, even though each individual change was incredibly tiny.

Before I start, thanks for at least being civil. That is a quality lacking in many, on both sides.

I'm going to have the sense to post only one post on this thread, but I have to put in something.
Meaning that you probably won't read this. Oh well.

Probability is evolutions biggest flaw, and really not just evolution, but everything that leads up to it and after. I would honestly say that the odds of the entire universe exploding with the big bang or whatever origin of the universe you people believe in how the earth and our solar system was formed, just happened to create a planet that happened to have just the right kind of distance away from a star to keep it warm but not burn it up and be able to sustain life, just happened to have enough of a correct atmosphere to be life-sustaining, just happened to have the essential degree of tilt in its position from the sun so not to have other problems that would not allow life to exist, and then on top of that have all the ingredients necessary to have life somehow create itself and multiply instead of dieing in what were probably harsh conditions considering there was nothing but water and land and the atmosphere. Somehow life just appeared. Hmm, I personally didn't think it was in the scientific method to just guess at a question like how did life begin and then just accept it as fact as many of you all have. We haven't figured out what combination of chemicals or what situation might have caused life to appear, and extensive research in chemistry and biology haven't come up with any tangible credible theories. If you think about it, a planet covered with nothing but gases in the atmosphere, water and land, no organic material of any kind, because there was no life at all, and somehow life appeared. How many different chemicals get thrown together at the same time when in nature with no external factors such as any kind of organism, and then for just the right chemicals to be thrown together to create life, and sustain it without that small single-celled organism dieing. And then that life-form multiplies, and then eventually evolves into other types of beings.
Yes, there are some rather unprobable things. But consider this: we're dealing with an infinite (or near-infinite) timescale. The latest estimate puts this Universe at around 15 billion years old or so, but there is evidence to suggest that the matter in the Universe may have exploded, collapsed, exploded, collapsed, tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, trillions of times before the current one. There is no limit to how many times this could work, and, if it were able to collapse all of the radiant heat with it, it would be the one exception to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. EVERYTHING would get smushed back together (and yes, that's the technical term ;-) ) and explode again. Also, there are unfathomable numbers of galaxies, each containing unfathomable numbers of stars. Some of these stars have planets. We've found planets around other stars, in fact. And so, I'd say that it was inevitable for it to happen eventually that a planet would be at the right distance and angle.

Then there are other things. There are creatures that are complicated enough in design that it would be very far fetched to say that they just simply evolved from lesser beings. As an example, a woodpecker has several very distinct features that would be really hard to just happen by random chance and the woodpecker to survive and become what they are today.
That makes it a desireable trait, and encourages evolution.

A woodpecker has a very strong beak for one, so that it can withstand the blows that it takes when the bird is digging into a tree. It also has a very solid skull so that the skull doesn't just crush itself in the first time a woodpecker tries to dig into a tree. Another handy little feature that they have is that their tongue, which I forget all the details of, is different in such a way as to be very much specialized in pulling things out of a hole in bark, like worms or whatever they eat.
A perfect example of evolution at work. There is going to be natural variation in beak and skull strength (and whatever tongue characteristics) in the population. The ones with thicker skulls and stronger beaks would be more likely to survive (because they had a source of food nobody else had) and then this repeats and repeats and repeats. Think giraffe necks.

There were other examples also, but just this one creature being very unique and complicated in itself makes evolution seem inadequate to answer all questions about life around us.
Evolution doesn't claim to have all of the answers. But you should never underestimate the powers of a tremendously huge timescale.

Probability in humans: I'm quoting this from a book I have. (the numbers with smaller numbers after them, the smaller ones are supposed to be superscript, but either you can't superscript them, or I don't know how, sorry.)

"Let's say you had a cup with twenty dice, each labeled with a letter of the alphabet (a, b, c, etc.), and you wanted to roll the dice and have them come out in alphabetical order. The chance of this occurring is 1 in 2.4 x 1018!1 And that is for only twenty things to occur in order. We have 206 bones in our body; how long would they take to appear in order? For 200 things to occur in order, the probability is 1 in 10375. Mathematicians say that anything over 1050 is absolutely impossible."
This is silly, at best. The ones with the bones in the wrong order would die out or become a variation and possibly a new species. Also, we could have been formed very differently... to say that the chances of ending up like this were small doesn't matter especially, because no matter how we ended up that would have been "normal" for us, and equally unlikely. Evolutionary pressures make statistical odds useless the way you are using them. Your model would work if evolution were completely random: however, the whole point is that only positive adaptations will be passed down to the next generation.

Mathematics actually does point out that evolution is highly improbable to have occurred. The design of human beings is just much too complicated to have been done by chance. If 1050 is impossible, then 10375 is extremely impossible. Yes, I see your big numbers. I fail to see the relevence of them, however.

The way I see it, it takes less faith to believe that God created the world by intelligent-design, whether it was through evolution or 6 day creation, than how much faith it takes to believe in evolution springing life from absolutely nothing, and evolving into beings as complicated as ourselves. God is a more likely answer. And I haven't even mentioned things such as the fossil record, and many other things that do not prove evolution as correct.
First of all, evolution doesn't make claims about how the most primitive life-forms "sprang from nothing", as you put it. Some of the same scientists work on it, because it is a logical extension, but it is not the same discipline.
You say that it takes equal faith for both? There are mountainloads of scientific evidence to support evolution, in its basic tenets. In fact, there is no debate in the scientific community anymore about whether or not the basic principles of evolution are true. The evidence is insurmountable. As opposed to the complete lack of evidence in intelligent design or creationism. I won't knock you for believing in God. Most people do, in fact. However, I do find it a shame that you assume those beliefs contradict the practically proven points of Evolution (some of which we can observe in a laboratory setting).

I've had my say on this subject, have fun with it, I'm sure many of you won't care (if you read this at all), and maybe some of you will open your eyes to other possibilities. I can't and won't say that there isn't some really amazing chance that evolution is true, but if it were even proven to be true, I believe that it would have to have been by some really amazing miracle of God for evolution to have happened, because the odds of mathematics and logic are against it.
No, they're not, due to the timescale and the mechanisms of evolution. But thanks for the sentiment.

The problem with many people is that they don't ever give a chance to the possibility that there might just be a God who created this universe rather than just random chance.
Those are the people who want proof for their beliefs. The evidence for the fundamental points of evolution (as opposed to specific models) is almost as solid as the evidence for Relativity.

I have given a chance to the theory of evolution, and it hasn't shown me anything credible.
Have you been looking?

And you know, maybe some creationists don't do a very good job at explaining why they believe in intelligent design rather than evolution, but then, I haven't seen any good evidence or reasoning in this thread to prove evolution true either, so apparently you all aren't representing your beliefs very well either.
That's because most of us aren't scientists, we just understand the basic principles of it. In fact, if an evolutionist (meaning a scientist who works on evolution, not the insult many have turned it into) did explain it, it would be in words few of us (certainly not me) would understand.
Whereas anyone can say "It was God!!!!11!1!eleventkyone!!1" because that's pretty much the extent of the evidence. All other arguments are trying to disprove evolution based on very limited understandings of how things work. However, this doesn't provide any evidence for creation. Even if we didn't have any other theories, doesn't mean yours is right.

Here are a couple of links for creation evidence:
http://www.drcarlbaugh.org/
http://www.creationevidence.org/

I haven't thoroughly looked through them, but what I've seen is very good.

Later,[/QUOTE]

So a theory or idea should be judge on how easy it is to believe using current accepted knowledge? The theory of evolution is a good one but it does not disprove the creationsit or disprove God exists. It is not a truth so does not eliminate any of the multiple other posibilities. It just presents the most satisfactory current solution to the origin of species (satisfactory to some I correct myself).
I like the theory but think it stange that people have such a fanatical, near religious furvour towards it that any challenge to it is greated with shouts of BAckwards Morons!
You're right, some people get really fanatical about evolution, even people who know nothing about it. However, there's something that you have a little bit off... it's not just "the best guess we have right now"... the fundamental bits (meaning the part where evolution is the origin of species, and that it works by natural selection) are as proven as anything in Science. It's the details where all the work is going on at the moment... specific ways that certain species developed, questions about how fast it moves, and whether it's constant and gradual versus sudden changes separated by constancy.

You're right it doesn't have anything to do with evolution. But it's not true that it doesn't exist because you can't test its existence. Existence is objective. Testing existence is subjective.
For the last time, nobody's trying to prove God doesn't exist. However, the point you just conceded makes God irrelevent to Science. If it can't be tested, it's not Science. There are many things that are true that aren't Science. This may be one of them. But in a Science classroom, where people are supposed to be learning science, Creationism has no place, because it isn't science, it's religion.

The bones in our body were not somehow existent and rearanged from generation to generation until they were placed in the right order. To make it simple, early ancestors of us only possed a chorda. During the following generatons, this structure calcified and a spine was formed, making the chorda superfluous. The whole rest of bones was most probably developed later, but by having a kind of basic anatomy, additional bones won't develop wholy randomly but by the dictate of this anatomy. ( Don't know to express it better)
Also, another thing to add: if you go by the math of the person you're refuting, the chances are 1: 10^(bignumber) that the bones in the human body are in their specific "order". He then claims that this is equivolent to impossibility. Well, then, what would the chance be of God happening to pick this specific form? Exactly the same. Which you say is impossible.
By your logic, there is no way we could exist, period, because the chances of us having this particular shape (either by creation or by evolution) are nil. Think again.

I'll also bring my argument from the other thread in:

How can human desire have evolved? Evolution is about survival, but a lot of our current desires aren't about survival, for example, spreading butter and jam on bread to make them tastier.
Evolutionarily, good and bad tastes would have had had (possibly, I'm no evolutionary scientist) roughly the same purpose as orgasms and the pain of being kicked in the nuts. The first is a reward for reproducing (an evolutionarily favourable act) while the second is to get you to protect them better next time, so that you can reproduce. It was evolutionarily beneficial for healthy things to taste "good" while unhealthy things tasted "bad".
Since then, artificial sweeteners have been invented that turned this from a good thing into a bad thing: nowadays, something that tastes good can often be assumed to be bad for you. However, this was not the case before. "Desires" are evolutionary impulses.

And just the right by-products for us to enjoy our life immensely. How many by-products would that take? And how exact and specific? By-products can be detrimental too. What happened to them?
::cough:: murder ::cough::

That is not true. Personal experience is a very strong tool of proof. You are sitting on a chair, I think. You sat on the chair believing it to support your weight. Why? Did you measure it? Did you put weights on it to check? Did you calculate how much pressure it could take? No. You are sitting on your chair because you've sat on it before, and through personal experience you have believed that the chair is stable and will not collapse under your own weight. Moreover, if millions told you repeatedly that the chair is stable, and that you've sat on the chair yourself, it overrides the need of empirical evidence.

It doesn't make it true, but it makes it knowledge. What makes knowledge true is the amount of proof there is.


It makes it true and it's knowledge, but it doesn't mean it's right. I mean no disrespect at all. Please forgive me. I'm really here to have fun and earn knowledge, true or not, right or not. Sorry!!
:fluffle:

Let's do this peacefully, no? :)

Knowledge is, by definition, "justified, true belief". You can't possibly "know" something that isn't true. That's a contradiction. Can you "know" that 1+1=3? Of course not. Can you believe it? Sure, if you're mathematically deficient. Get your words straight, please.

heh, ignoring everything else, i just want to comment on this:



Did you actually create any NEW genetic information?? No! You refined, and actually DISCARDED genetic info already there, and maybe grafted some from another bacteria, but unless you actually wrote the DNA with some tool yet to be invented, you designed nothing.
Do you have to dig up the ore yourself to design a car?

If evolution is right, then where are mishapen humans in zoos that start evolving? And don't say it takes a long time, because eventually you'll be able to see it. And why does almost every single differently located and culturally isolated human race have marriage almost all the time? Read Dinosaurs and Creation by Donald B. DeYoung. It'll help you not go to hell.
It takes millions of years and depends on the habitat. In a zoo, the only advantageous trait would be cuteness. That's quite different from the plains of Africa. Please don't post things that you are completely knowledgeless about.

Greetings one and all. My name is Seth.

This thread has become absurd. Pacific Northwesteria. You have taken up an entire page to quote people and then write small quips at the end. As a thought, perhaps you could simply reference the name and we could go back and look for ourselves?

Quick comment to Dragon's Bay. The universe is objective? Tell me, what universe? What you see, what I see, what Joe Schmoe sees, all different universe. Which one is the objective one? Perhaps there is an objective universe, but perhaps there is not. What proof do you offer for this "objective universe"?

But anyways, onto the meat of the discussion. The theory of evolution has been highly debated for centuries. From the highly atheistic staunch evolutionary idealists to the right wing "religious nut-jobs", no single scientific theory has endured more arguments than this one. Thus stated, I wish to present my personal opinion as to the way evolutionism, creationism, and intelligent design should be approached.

All theories must be seen as simply that, a theory. Not a fact, nor a universal truth, nor a belief. Simply a theory, a thing that states that something may be true and makes predictions for if the prerequisites were satisfied. Now I ask you, nations of the world, what theory is flawless here? Is it evolution, the theory which has no records of the middle, which cannot provide the first 7 thousandths of a second of the universe, the theory that fails to adequately show why this astronomical probablity came to be despite Darwin's own skepticism of it's effects on humans? Is it creationism, the theory with no empirical evidence, with a distinct lack of scientific support, a theory based upon books who's very authors are disputed? Or finally is it intelligent design, a theory based upon a combination of science and faith, a theory with a little but not much empirical evidence, an idea of combining "God" and reason?

Obviously none of these ideas are acceptable, all revealing gaping holes as they are studied. Thus stated, my opinion is thus. Is evolution incorrect? Evolution is as incorrect as creationism and intelligent design are, all failing to adequately prove the true origin of the human race.

- Seth
Head of Medicine, Tyslan

Remember that it is called Theory of Evolution, not Law of Evolution. Our science of biology isn't sufficiently advanced enough to upgrade the Theory of Evolution into a Law of Evolution.

You need to look up the definitions first before judging something.

hypothesis - an assumption made in especially to order to test its logical or empirical consequences

theory - a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle offered to explain observed facts

law - a rule or principle stating something that always works in the same way under the same conditions

So as you can see the Theory of Evolution is a work on progress, not a finished product. No one from either side of the issue can put a final say on the matter.

Comparing religious theory to scientific theory is like comparing a tree to an automobile. Therefore religion based proofs are automatically invalid.

A parallel example.

The Catholic Church held the scientific view that the Earth is the center of the universe. It was disproved by Copernicus and a host of other astronomers that believe that the Sun is in the center of the Universe.

Early 20th century astronomers discovered that Copernicus and et.al. are partially correct. The Sun isn't in the center of the Universe but it is one of the stars of the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy is the new (and for a time believed to be the only galaxy) center of the Universe.

Late 20th century astronomers now have valid scientific evidence that our Galaxy is not alone but there are others like it out there. Present day astronomers can now see that our Galaxy is a part of a cluster of galaxies. They can also see that our local cluster is a part of a supercluster which in turn one of the hundreds (or possibly thousands) of superclusters in the known Universe.

Are you catching my drift here?

--snip--Now I ask you, nations of the world, what theory is flawless here? Is it evolution, the theory which has no records of the middle, which cannot provide the first 7 thousandths of a second of the universe--snip--

Goddammit. What does this have to do with evolution? How many times does this have to be said? The Big Bang and Evolution are completely different theories based on completely different scientific disciplines.

Goddammit. What does this have to do with evolution? How many times does this have to be said? The Big Bang and Evolution are completely different theories based on completely different scientific disciplines.

Goddammit. What does this have to do with evolution? How many times does this have to be said? The Big Bang and Evolution are completely different theories based on completely different scientific disciplines.

Goddammit. What does this have to do with evolution? How many times does this have to be said? The Big Bang and Evolution are completely different theories based on completely different scientific disciplines.

Goddammit. What does this have to do with evolution? How many times does this have to be said? The Big Bang and Evolution are completely different theories based on completely different scientific disciplines.

Get it yet? Jeez, how can you go through this thread without learning this yet. You make yourself look like a friggin idiot, and you go far in invalidating anything else you might say.

Evolution has nothing to do with God, the Origins of the Universe, or the genesis of life on this planet. It is about natural selection and the diversification of species. Period.

[long string of unintelligible swear words.]

There are no higher powers.

Evolution is real.

Evolution happened.

It is very probable that threre have been at least 50 billion species on Earth.

Lack of fossil evidence is explained by weather.

Those things in the sky are weather baloons....

Anyway, I just spent a big space saying very little, as all of you are prone to do. Apparently you think it will be more convincing. Who here can prove god existed? Anyone....nobody? Thought so.

I will not be checking this thread in the furture, please do not respond to me in any way, I will not know.

If you knew anything about probability, you would know that in "almost" infinite time (thousands of millions of years), anything can happen, no matter what.

Besides, there's much more evidence for evolution than for "intelligent design". Intelligent design is just a way to make things lazy. "I don't know what happened, so SOMEONE must have done it ;)!". Putz.

"As for the gaps in the fossil record", you think THAT is proof AGAINST evolution? The only thing that proves is that several paths of evolution could have been taken. Why does the whole scientific community accept evolution anyway? Are they nut-jobs that just want to contradict god?


"In no way does science produce evidence against God", you don't need science, asshole, you need logic. Maybe he created the singularity and he is out of the bounds of logic, but assuming he isn't:

"God doesn't exist, PROOF:

God exists: Therefore (by definition), God is good and God is perfect. God is everything and everything is god. Then, everything is good, and everything is perfect.


Breviary:

Humans body isn't "intelligently designed" and therefore it isn't perfect. Neither many animals. If we're perfect, how come we make so many mistakes? And animals too? Or how come plants can't even move? There are many imperfections. Then:


Some things are not perfect. But some things are not perfect and everything is perfect is a contradiction. Therefore, god isn't good or god isn't perfect. But that contradicts his existence, therefore, GOD DOESN'T EXIST".

Moron.

(sighs rather loudly)

I'm not sure if I was clear, but I was arguing FOR evolution and AGAINST intelligent design. I figured my title would attrach readers and I felt it would be more effective to begin by attacking evolution and then attacking the attack... I belived my statement of "Well, Intelligent Design is flat-out wrong and not accepted by credible scientists. If there are two schools of thought one is held by scientsists and the other by religious nut-jobs." I also argue against using probabilty here, "Well, do we really have the information to guess the probability of the development of an eye?"

I'll be sure to clarify my stance next time. Sorry.

Sounds like you began with a refutation: and ended with a supporting argument.

I'd guess, in the end, your argument ended with a stance entering the realm of Evolutionary Creationism (that is, an active God/Creator guiding the force).

Evolution in no way is designed to: nor has, negated a concept of "God" or "Creator".... Indeed each ask (science and religion) and answer, different questions: Science the "how things happen"; religion the "why things happen".

I'm actually an agnostic, leaning closer to athiesm then to any religion. I don't think anyone can prove or disprove God. I put in this paragraph so this wouldn't turn into religion-bashing or a how-did-life-begin thread... Neither of my wishes were granted.

--snip--
I'm actually an agnostic, leaning closer to athiesm then to any religion. I don't think anyone can prove or disprove God. I put in this paragraph so this wouldn't turn into religion-bashing or a how-did-life-begin thread... Neither of my wishes were granted.

It seems to me that the gross majority of people arguing against evolution don't know jack about evolution, the scientific method or probability. They even seem to lack basic reading comprehension skills, since they keep repeating the same things that have been repeatedly demonstrated to not be germane to the conversation.

I find it funny. People who know nothing of cars would usually not dream of standing over a mechanic's shoulder trying to argue about a fuel injector. People who don't know medicine aren't usually inclined to advise a doctor as to how to transplant an organ. They are willing to accept a lawyer's opinion about law.

Why then, are they so willing to argue with people who know much much more about evolution than they do? I mean, most people arguing against evolution here don't even seem to have a grasp of the bare basics. They don't even know what evolution means! They try to apply it ot things that aren't connected in any way, shape or form! It's extremely aggravating.

Please people, please read the mountain of information contained in this thread. Chances are, someone (several people, likely,) has already asked the question on your mind, and it's been answered many times over. If you can't even bother to absorb basic information, and I do mean basic, why the hell are you even here?

http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/8701/fedup9wr.jpg



got this off someone on these forums

These are not "just theories", they are repeatedly proven in tests and there are mounds of evidence to back them up.




excellent.

when we build a theory, whether it's gravity or relativity or evolution, there are two points to begin at: the observations and the axioms. now, the theory itself must follow from the axioms, but they must lead to the observations/conclusions.

hence, if you wish to argue with a theory - any theory - you're only choice is to argue with the axioms, or assumptions. this is what newton did when he trashed aristotle and what einstein did when he built a more solid framework for newton. whether the parallel postulate is right or wrong is debatable......whether nothing can move faster than the speed of light or not is questionable......the logic that brought einstein to relativity is simply not.

....and so it is with evolution. the system is extraordinarily cohesive, one of the best that science has ever produced. no good attack on evolution can be grounded in questioning 150 years worth of observation and deduction unless you wish to debate the very essence of logic itself.....you must take away the axioms/assumptions iif you wish to discard evolution and present something else.

personally, i'm mostly happy with evolution, but i don't like "natural selection". that's my only qualm.

j

But natural selection is the critical part of evolution. In fact if you felt like being long-winded instead of saying evolution you'd say "evolution by natural selection"...

If Evolution is not about trying to disprove God, please explain the actions of the "scientists" at the Smithsonian. Open-minded, looking for honest debate? Or simply fascistic advocates of scientism, defending their faith by suppressing all debate, by simply declaring that anyone who criticizes any aspect of evolution is incompetent, unqualified, insane, religious nut-case, and that anyone who even allows any criticism to be published is in that same garbage heap?

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42600

This article details how open-minded scientists, tolerant of dissent from colleagues, have ostracized a colleague who simply allowed an article to be published which criticized evolutionary theory. He did not write the article, was just the editor.

Believers in evolution say that they must use ad-hominem attacks because their "enemies" dare to question them, and that must be prevented at all costs. This makes me doubt the scientific credentials of all evolution advocates, because I was brought up to believe in the objectivity of scientists, which seems to be lacking in this debate. In other sciences, when a noob asks a basic question, the scientists are happy to answer without animosity. But when anyone dares to question evolution---watch out, put your flak jacket on, and your anti-rant helmet down over your ears!

That is why I like the article by a questioning non-religious journalist, who simply could not get his questions answered.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reed/reed59.html

He perfectly expresses my own doubts and reservations. Call me back when there is a Law of Evolution, with processes actually defined and explainable in lay terms. Other sciences can do it, why not evolution? Why is there just this hand-waving and "it must have happened because we are here, aren't we?" stuff? That is what all the pro-evolution explanations on the preceding pages boil down to---that, and lots of ranting about how God cannot be proven.

Does anyone know what evidence is? According to most of you, I get the impression that none of you could serve on a jury in a court of law, because you (pro and anti-evolution alike) don't have any idea that eye-witness testimony is considered evidence. Not just CSI forensic stuff. And the Bible is full of eye-witness testimony and historical facts, which are verifiable. And archeologists and historians verify those facts all the time. Which makes it difficult for the truly open-minded to dismiss the supernatural unverifiable claims which are preceded and followed by verifiable eyewitness accounts of mundane events and verifiable historical facts. That is why people like Simon Greenleaf and other legal minds, having examined the evidence for themselves, became Christian.

But don't examine the evidence. You don't want to go to heaven, because you are afraid that the people there would be saying "I told you so" for eternity, and you would rather go somewhere you can be alone, in darkness, smelling the stench of your own body burning forever, cause that sounds like your idea of a party.
"And there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth..."

Like anyone who has eternity to explore the universe would bother spending one second saying "I told you so" when you could be seeing quasars close up, and enjoying the spectacles of black holes devouring stars, and whatever else is out there! Bah, just accept what the man in the white coat tells you. After all, he is a scientist! :headbang:

:mad: Angry Christian tired of being called stupid because I believe in God, and yes, I know, Jesus said it would happen, and to just get over it. But I am just tired of it. :(

If evolution is about disproving God, please explain the words of Pope John Paul II, in which he explained that evolution is reconcilible with faith. Who are we to decide the means by which God creates the diversity of life on Earth?Evolution, remember, is a theory explaining the complexity and diversity of life, not the creation.

Maybe several scientists seek to disprove God, but Evolution, as a theory does not "seek" to disprove God. Remember, a heliocentric universe technically goes against the Bible, but I'm sure you, like most of us. believe the Earth revolves around the sun.

:mad: Angry Christian tired of being called stupid because I believe in God, and yes, I know, Jesus said it would happen, and to just get over it. But I am just tired of it. :(

I seriously doubt any evolutionist called you stupid, unless you have the belief that the world was created 6000 years ago.


Furthermore, for many its a matter of proof.

Sure that word gets tossed arounf a lot on this site, but the simple fact is that evolution has far more evidence to support its claims, than does Creationism.

For instance, I myself, would only call you stupid, if you knew that Chimpanzees and humans share 97% of the same DNA, and you made attempts to trivialize that fact.

I dont understand why its so hard not to accept the fact that life as we know it, evolved from other life, millenia ago, on this very planet.
I dont see how it negates the possiblity of your God, nor do I think its wise to take such literal adhereance to a 2000 year old text, that was written long before people were educated enough to actually have any idea of where we came from.

I mean...one dinosuar skeleton pretty much throws the biblical idea out the window.

65 million years......or 6000 years?

Not too hard to swallow.

However, as I said, even though evolution is the only sane answer, I dont see how it negates your religion.

How do you know that God didnt set off the Big Bang?

*assorted goddammits*

*pat pat* Shhh. It's just a bad dream. There aren't really people who believe that complete ignorance is a reasonable position from which to argue. And no one could possibly be foolish enough to think that theories have to explain totally irrelevant things in order to be valid!

Right?

...right?

*sigh*

If Evolution is not about trying to disprove God, please explain the actions of the "scientists" at the Smithsonian.

ID /= God. Not accepting ID as a valid scientific theory (which it isn't) has no bearing whatsoever on one's belief in God or lack thereof.

Or simply fascistic advocates of scientism, defending their faith by suppressing all debate, by simply declaring that anyone who criticizes any aspect of evolution is incompetent, unqualified, insane, religious nut-case, and that anyone who even allows any criticism to be published is in that same garbage heap?

Valid criticism is always welcome. Statements to the effect of, "Well, I think several generations of scientists are ALL WRONG! And to support this I have....NO EVIDENCE!" really don't belong in scientific journals, however. Aspects of evolution, like any other theory, are criticized, modified, and polished on a regular basis, though, as any scientist will tell you.

In other sciences, when a noob asks a basic question, the scientists are happy to answer without animosity. But when anyone dares to question evolution---watch out, put your flak jacket on, and your anti-rant helmet down over your ears!

I have yet to meet a scientist who refuses to answer basic questions. In fact, if you read this thread, I doubt you will find a basic question that was not answered (and answered quite civilly). I'm well aware that many scientists have gotten to the point of dreading questions from creationists, but that seems to be largely because a lot of creationists (NOT all) have a nasty habit of ignoring the responses and/or damning the scientist to hell every few minutes. Wouldn't you get a little tired of debating someone who kept telling you that you were an offense against God and refused to listen to anything you said?

He perfectly expresses my own doubts and reservations. Call me back when there is a Law of Evolution, with processes actually defined and explainable in lay terms. Other sciences can do it, why not evolution?

First, this has been said several times in this thread alone, I think, but laws are not superior to theories. They're on the same scientific stratum. The "law" of gravity is a theory. Okay? Second, evolution has been explained in layman's terms many, many, many times. Pick up an introductory biology textbook and find the chapter on evolution. If anything there is too confusing, you're welcome to PM me about it and I'll do my best to personally explain it to you, and I promise I won't insult you. :)

Does anyone know what evidence is? According to most of you, I get the impression that none of you could serve on a jury in a court of law, because you (pro and anti-evolution alike) don't have any idea that eye-witness testimony is considered evidence. Not just CSI forensic stuff. And the Bible is full of eye-witness testimony and historical facts, which are verifiable.

I feel compelled to point out that the Bible is a translation of a translation of something that claims to be an eyewitness account - not quite the same thing. ;)

But don't examine the evidence. You don't want to go to heaven, because you are afraid that the people there would be saying "I told you so" for eternity, and you would rather go somewhere you can be alone, in darkness, smelling the stench of your own body burning forever, cause that sounds like your idea of a party.
"And there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth..."

See, this is the sort of comment that puts people off and makes them not want to talk civilly to you. I believe someone you respect once suggested that doing unto others as you would have them do unto you was a good idea. If you want people to listen to your arguments and respond without being rude or making idiot generalizations, you might want to try being polite and not telling everyone who disagrees with you that they're stubborn jerks who'll be damned for eternity.

:mad: Angry Christian tired of being called stupid because I believe in God, and yes, I know, Jesus said it would happen, and to just get over it. But I am just tired of it. :(

If anyone has called you stupid for believing in God, I'm very sorry. That's a completely inappropriate comment. But I do hope you recognize the difference between thinking that religion is not science and thinking that religious people are "stupid," because it's a pretty friggin' huge difference.

If Evolution is not about trying to disprove God, please explain the actions of the "scientists" at the Smithsonian. Open-minded, looking for honest debate?

Evolution isn't about disprove or proving the existence of God. The creationists want to inject God into the equation. Or I should say their new name IDers.

Sorry but it is junk science and it's already getting debated. If it withstands the abuse then it can see about getting into the classroom. However, not the science classroom. At the very least when you hear arguments such as "look at the eye. So complex it must be the work of God."


Or simply fascistic advocates of scientism,


Ahhh your one of those "ism" users.


defending their faith by suppressing all debate,

Ahh science is a religion :rolleyes:


by simply declaring that anyone who criticizes any aspect of evolution is incompetent, unqualified, insane, religious nut-case, and that anyone who even allows any criticism to be published is in that same garbage heap?

Yes. Scientists basically refer to each other like that all the time. For every theory you publish, there will be scores that will call you retarded and make comments about your degree.

If you think there is this tight bonded brotherhood, you are wrong.

Criticism is good. Faith based criticism bad. Judgement with an obvious lack of biological understanding does deserved to be tossed on the trash heap.


This article details how open-minded scientists, tolerant of dissent from colleagues, have ostracized a colleague who simply allowed an article to be published which criticized evolutionary theory. He did not write the article, was just the editor.


Criticising evolution is ok. Talking about God having a play in it? Bad. You can't test for it so it's a question you don't ask.


Believers in evolution say that they must use ad-hominem attacks because their "enemies" dare to question them, and that must be prevented at all costs.


Now you made that up. I don't know of anybody who says I use ad-hominems because they dare question me.


This makes me doubt the scientific credentials of all evolution advocates, because I was brought up to believe in the objectivity of scientists, which seems to be lacking in this debate.

Objectivity does not mean you have to take things on faith because some Christian is going to be offended.


In other sciences, when a noob asks a basic question, the scientists are happy to answer without animosity. But when anyone dares to question evolution---watch out, put your flak jacket on, and your anti-rant helmet down over your ears!

Yes. It's called debate. Evolutionists fight over the aspects of it all the time.


That is why I like the article by a questioning non-religious journalist, who simply could not get his questions answered.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reed/reed59.html

Sorry the author is combing abiogenises and evolution. They are different. I suspect he has read Hoyles math attempt which was disproven. The monkey and keyboard bit was used before as well.

He perfectly expresses my own doubts and reservations. Call me back when there is a Law of Evolution, with processes actually defined and explainable in lay terms.

Do you understand the difference between a law and a theory?

Theories are things that have value.


Other sciences can do it, why not evolution? Why is there just this hand-waving and "it must have happened because we are here, aren't we?"

Nobody makes that claim. Well the IDers kind of do with their "it must be a designer" analogy.


stuff? That is what all the pro-evolution explanations on the preceding pages boil down to---that, and lots of ranting about how God cannot be proven.

Yes. That is correct. Define a test that we can use and we will use it. Problem is you can't. So you take things of faith. That's not science.


Does anyone know what evidence is? According to most of you, I get the impression that none of you could serve on a jury in a court of law,

Actually I have. This is a bad analogy as everything is not black and white. There are no absolutes in science. What you considered valid could very well be proven wrong. It's self correcting.


because you (pro and anti-evolution alike) don't have any idea that eye-witness testimony is considered evidence. Not just CSI forensic stuff.


Oberservation is one of the powerful tools of science.


And the Bible is full of eye-witness testimony and historical facts, which are verifiable.

Oh oh. The Bible can't be validated completely. Things are taken of faith. Historical facts? Wrong. History can offer evidence. Ever been to a Cathedral? You have to have a religious artifact in one. When I was in Italy, I saw splinters from the cross that crucified Christ. Chains that held him. Chains that held Peter. You know what? More then one Rector said they have no way to prove the claim. It's taken on faith.

When I was in Israel I saw the tomb of King David. The Tomb has inscriptions and was ornate so the belive it. I also saw the spot where Christ was crucified. They can't prove it but they guess it was there. Faith.


And archeologists and historians verify those facts all the time. Which makes it difficult for the truly open-minded to dismiss the supernatural unverifiable claims which are preceded and followed by verifiable eyewitness accounts of mundane events and verifiable historical facts. That is why people like Simon Greenleaf and other legal minds, having examined the evidence for themselves, became Christian.


Ok I have have subscribed to Bible Archeology a couple times and I didn't read many absolute cases as you suggest.


But don't examine the evidence. You don't want to go to heaven, because you are afraid that the people there would be saying "I told you so" for eternity, and you would rather go somewhere you can be alone, in darkness, smelling the stench of your own body burning forever, cause that sounds like your idea of a party.
"And there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth..."


Aren't we talking about evolutution?

Ok repeat after me.

Evolution has never set out to prove or disprove the existence of God.

Repeat 100 times.

God is not introduced into the equation because there is no way to test for him.

Define a valid test and guess what? You will rewrite abiogensis, convert millions of people and fill all the churches of the world.


Like anyone who has eternity to explore the universe would bother spending one second saying "I told you so" when you could be seeing quasars close up, and enjoying the spectacles of black holes devouring stars, and whatever else is out there! Bah, just accept what the man in the white coat tells you. After all, he is a scientist! :headbang:


You have made a faith based argument.


:mad: Angry Christian tired of being called stupid because I believe in God, and yes, I know, Jesus said it would happen, and to just get over it. But I am just tired of it. :(

Most evolutionists won't call you stupid for beliving in God. Evolution != athiesism.

When you debate using crap debunked arguments pulled off some theologians site proclaiming to know biology; yes you will be considered ignorant. That usually leads to ad-hominens.....

If you study biology and offer plausible arguments, then you will get a heated debate.

Remember that it is called Theory of Evolution, not Law of Evolution. Our science of biology isn't sufficiently advanced enough to upgrade the Theory of Evolution into a Law of Evolution.

theories are never 'upgraded' to become laws. theories and laws are different things. the theory of evolution is on much more solid footing than newton's law of gravity.

besides, the use of the term 'law' to refer to specific relations between objects or events has kind of fallen out of favor since the 19th century.

got this off someone on these forums

I was just about to come here and post that! You beat me to the punch.

Putting that aside, the Evolution/Creation argument is older than my socks, and that's old.

If Evolution is not about trying to disprove God, please explain the actions of the "scientists" at the Smithsonian. Open-minded, looking for honest debate? Or simply fascistic advocates of scientism, defending their faith by suppressing all debate, by simply declaring that anyone who criticizes any aspect of evolution is incompetent, unqualified, insane, religious nut-case, and that anyone who even allows any criticism to be published is in that same garbage heap?

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42600

This article details how open-minded scientists, tolerant of dissent from colleagues, have ostracized a colleague who simply allowed an article to be published which criticized evolutionary theory. He did not write the article, was just the editor.

and if you follow up on it, it turns out that he just made up a bunch of bullshit and the complaint he filed was dismissed.


Call me back when there is a Law of Evolution, with processes actually defined and explainable in lay terms. Other sciences can do it, why not evolution? Why is there just this hand-waving and "it must have happened because we are here, aren't we?" stuff?

laws are inferior to theories in science. every law hopes to one day become a vital part of a theory. that's where all the scientific glory is.

anyway,

evolution = variations between individuals + reproduction that (imperfectly) copies those variations across generations + selective pressures that make some traits more advantageous than others in terms of producing more offspring.

that is all you need to have evolution. if you have those things, then you have evolution.

eye-witness testimony is considered evidence. Not just CSI forensic stuff.

yeah, one of the worst kinds of evidence. witnesses are notoriously unreliable and prone to misremember things or just plain make shit up. give me the csi shit any day. fact don't lie. witnesses do.

though one of the major things worse than eye-witness testimony are things claiming to report what the actual eye-witnesses claimed to have seen, but second or third hand.

However, as I said, even though evolution is the only sane answer, I dont see how it negates your religion.

perhaps their religion requires that they only hold insane explanations for things

But natural selection is the critical part of evolution. In fact if you felt like being long-winded instead of saying evolution you'd say "evolution by natural selection"...

i guess my problem with natural selection is that it in some ways personifies nature, almost instituting a sort of direction to evolution. i equate natural selection very heavily with the concept of orthogenesis, an evolution to an ideal form. i think this is ultimately a platonic idea that has yet to be entirely discarded. the result of this thinking is that evolution is a gradual process and this concept has certainly been promoted heavily here. it is the majority view as far as i can tell. as a mathematician, i might suspect that the reason for this is that biologists generally find continuous models easier to understand than discrete ones.

however, there are two schools of thought on the subject and although one is more prevalent than the others, this is an axiomatic difference that is not yet settled. some of us see a punctuated model as a better one than gradual change.

now, that doesn't mean that mutations don't occur slowly and gradually, making little if any change at all from generation to generation. it means that the actual process of a population evolving is generally due to outside effects rather than the genetics itself. in this case, populations do not evolve due to "natural selection". they evolve due to chance, chaos and ultimately little more than luck.

these are the kinds of evolutionary arguments that are worthwhile. a religious person may need to keep the concept of natural selection in the evolutionary theory because it makes room for some kind of guiding force. intelligent design, to me, seems nothing more than a bunch of religious people grasping on to this concept of natural selection and so to say "running with it". the fact is that it leaves a lot of room to play with because, like much of their actual theology, it is ultimately an idea of plato. in fact, it's the same idea, skewed two different ways. there IS a logical flow from natural selection to intelligent design even if it's not a scientific one.

but personifying (even deifying) nature by allowing it to select which species are "better" and which are not is, i think, somewhat naive. i'm more convinced by modelling it as luck, chance, chaos.....

j

and if you follow up on it, it turns out that he just made up a bunch of bullshit and the complaint he filed was dismissed.


to be more specific, he lost no privileges and was not kicked out of his office, etc.

hell, if you ask me, the smithsonian was a little too nice to him. i mean, this guy abused his position (http://www.biolsocwash.org/id_statement.html) on the editorial board of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington to sneak a really fucking shoddy article (http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000430.html) into a peer-reviewed journal just so IDiots could claim that they have in fact published something.

this was never about anything real, not the science and not the complaint. like all other discovery institute operations it was entirely about pr.

i guess my problem with natural selection is that it in some ways personifies nature, almost instituting a sort of direction to evolution. i equate natural selection very heavily with the concept of orthogenesis, an evolution to an ideal form. i think this is ultimately a platonic idea that has yet to be entirely discarded. the result of this thinking is that evolution is a gradual process and this concept has certainly been promoted heavily here. it is the majority view as far as i can tell. as a mathematician, i might suspect that the reason for this is that biologists generally find continuous models easier to understand than discrete ones.

however, there are two schools of thought on the subject and although one is more prevalent than the others, this is an axiomatic difference that is not yet settled. some of us see a punctuated model as a better one than gradual change.

now, that doesn't mean that mutations don't occur slowly and gradually, making little if any change at all from generation to generation. it means that the actual process of a population evolving is generally due to outside effects rather than the genetics itself. in this case, populations do not evolve due to "natural selection". they evolve due to chance, chaos and ultimately little more than luck.

these are the kinds of evolutionary arguments that are worthwhile. a religious person may need to keep the concept of natural selection in the evolutionary theory because it makes room for some kind of guiding force. intelligent design, to me, seems nothing more than a bunch of religious people grasping on to this concept of natural selection and so to say "running with it". the fact is that it leaves a lot of room to play with because, like much of their actual theology, it is ultimately an idea of plato. in fact, it's the same idea, skewed two different ways. there IS a logical flow from natural selection to intelligent design even if it's not a scientific one.

but personifying (even deifying) nature by allowing it to select which species are "better" and which are not is, i think, somewhat naive. i'm more convinced by modelling it as luck, chance, chaos.....

j

Ahhhh. So basically what you're saying is that you're working off of a lousy definition of natural selection. :p

More seriously, I think most evolutionists would agree that both the "gradual and constant" model and the "punctuated equilibrium" model have some validity - which is more accurate for a given trait within a specific population depends entirely on the circumstances. Essentially, the number of generations it takes for a certain trait to become predominant in a population will tend to be inversely proportional to the amount of environmental pressure placed on those organisms lacking the trait. (To really simplify that, if being purple has a 99% chance of killing you in childhood, the "purple" genotype is going to become very rare a lot faster than if being purple has a 1% chance of killing you.) Natural selection isn't the idea that some anthropomorphized mother-figure picks the species she likes best to survive, but rather the idea that, quite simply, the better adapted you are to your environment, the more likely you are to survive long enough to reproduce.

In other words, I think you actually agree with natural selection - just not the name. :p

i equate natural selection very heavily with the concept of orthogenesis, an evolution to an ideal form.

why would you go and do a stupid thing like that?

i think this is ultimately a platonic idea that has yet to be entirely discarded.

ah, because you haven't discarded your platonic ideals yet. well, do try to catch up with the rest of us then.

Also, another thing to add: if you go by the math of the person you're refuting, the chances are 1: 10^(bignumber) that the bones in the human body are in their specific "order". He then claims that this is equivolent to impossibility. Well, then, what would the chance be of God happening to pick this specific form? Exactly the same. Which you say is impossible.
By your logic, there is no way we could exist, period, because the chances of us having this particular shape (either by creation or by evolution) are nil. Think again.
My logic? I never wrote that? :confused:

I seriously doubt any evolutionist called you stupid, unless you have the belief that the world was created 6000 years ago.

snipped

It's fine by me if people believe the earth is only around 6000 years old. I just get p***ed when they tell my I'm stupid or will go to hell or whatever when I don't believe it.

The scientifically illiterate use the human eye as an example of evolution being false. As in, the one that is wired backwards, as to require unnesessary extra work. If an "intelligent designer" (aka wink-wink, nudge-nudge God) designed the eye, he's a stupid moron, for there are other animals by which have the eye wired correctly, such as the squid (if memory serves). So why not make the human eye wired correctly? If even there were not other animals with the eye wired correctly, it'd still be no excuse for such a pathetic design flaw.

I recommend, for anyone, the reading of Evolution and the human eye (http://www.2think.org/eye.shtml). The aforementioned example is also included in the following:

Symptoms of jury-rigged design

Consider the following pieces of evidence supporting the theory that biological organisms are the result of trial and error, jury-rigged, evolutionary design rather than deliberate, "intelligent" design:
We were cobbled together from previous designs. Analysis of the human genome shows that every single piece of our genetic code is either a direct copy of other animals' codes, or a very minor modification upon said codes. Of course, by sheer coincidence, these animals just happen to be the ones that have been identified as our evolutionary precursors.
Dangerous design flaws. Because mammals evolved from the Devonian lungfish (Osteolepiformes) which swallowed air to breathe, we have inherited a respiratory system in which we use the same tube to breathe and swallow. A piece of food lodged in this double-duty windpipe can cause death! In real life engineering, the duplication of a dangerous design flaw from a previous design is considered an example of serious incompetence. In fact, if we imagine that an engineer had designed apes and then separately designed humans, he probably would have lost his license for negligently duplicating a serious, known design flaw!
Poor design aspects. For example, the human eye is wired backwards. Our photoreceptors face the wrong way, so that the side which connects to the nerve fibres is on the inside of the eye rather than the outside. This means that the nerve fibres actually "get in the way", and it also means that the eye has a hole in the back, through which these fibres must be bundled and passed through in order to reach the brain! This design increases the length of wiring for no good reason, decreases visual acuity, and creates a blind spot! A creationist would no doubt claim that God had a very good reason for doing it this way, but if so, then why did he design cephalopods (squids and octopi) with eyes wired correctly?
Failure to copy design corrections/improvements If a GM engineer discovered and corrected an intake manifold design flaw that restricts airflow for no good reason, it's a safe bet that this correction would make its way not only into future versions of that particular car, but every other GM vehicle which suffers from the original design flaw, irrespective of product line. However, the properly wired eyeballs of cephalopods were never incorporated into the vertebrate evolutionary branch. In other words, we share a poor design with all other members of our evolutionary branch. A better design exists, but only on another evolutionary branch! If this was the result of "intelligent design", then it begs the question: what kind of idiot would confine design improvements to a particular product line? Why don't humans incorporate the best design aspects of every animal species which preceded us, irrespective of evolutionary lineage? <Gasp!> Could it be that we have descended from one particular family of animals?
Poor manufacturing yields. Creationists take great pleasure in pointing out how precise our biological systems are. They love to cite, over and over, the fact that even the most miniscule alteration of certain parameters would cause the entire system to fail. However, any engineer familiar with basic quality control theory would consider such a design totally unacceptable. It is not "robust", meaning that it cannot withstand even the most minor alteration to optimal conditions. This leads to extremely low yields: out of millions of sperm in a typical ejaculation, fewer than 1,000 even reach the fallopian tubes, at which point half of them will go into the wrong tube. Only one will fertilize the egg, and the majority of fertilized eggs will not successfully implant in the uterine wall. Moreover, even successful fertilizations and implantations do not necessarily go to term; many pregnancies end in miscarriage, sometimes so early that the female may not even realize she was pregnant. We are talking about manufacturing yields below 0.0001%, people! By any engineering standard, this is awful! But by the standard of ruthless "survival of the fittest", it makes perfect sense.
Tendency to modify instead of add. Also known as "transformed organs". When a component of a design is modified to perform some new function at the expense of its original function, engineers generally describe the result as "jury-rigged". Nature is full of examples of such jury-rigging (eg. insect mouth-parts that used to be legs, dolphin fins that contain a full set of finger bones), but the best example is your arms. We have two arms and two legs because we are bipedal, but bipedal locomotion is ridiculously inefficient (for example, a typical dog can easily outrun a human despite its short legs). Worse yet, we are horribly inefficient runners even for bipeds (compare a human's running speed to the land speed of an ostrich or any other landed bird). Our poor speed and our lack of natural defenses make us easy prey for predators, so if not for our ability to make weapons, we would have been the footstool of the animal world. Even today, people are regularly killed by wild animals because they can't run quickly enough to get away. So why were we "designed" this way? Why would a competent engineer cripple us in this manner, rather than giving us four legs and two arms? This question is difficult to answer with "intelligent design", but it's easy to answer with evolution: we evolved from creatures with four legs, and two of those legs were transformed into our arms. The evolutionary advantage was presumably reproductive: we could carry food, so we could shelter our mates and our young in protected caves while we foraged.
Creationists open a dangerous can of worms when they suggest that we consider biological structures as engineered designs. Any engineer can examine the entire "product line" and see widespread evidence of massive, inexplicable incompetence. Dangerous, potentially lethal design flaws are mindlessly propagated through entire product lines, design improvements are mysteriously confined within product lines, manufacturing yields are horrendous, and every design has been cobbled together from previous designs, and new features are often jury-rigged from old ones instead of being added as genuinely new systems. Any engineer who takes a serious look at biological organisms from an engineering standpoint (as opposed to mindlessly accepting creationist propaganda about its "perfection") will have no choice but to conclude that there was no intelligence whatsoever behind it.
-- Michael Wong; Intelligent Design "Theory" (http://www.creationtheory.org/Essays/IntelligentDesign.shtml)

Throughout the numerous decades, a great amount of fossils have been uncovered, and the work of thousands upon thousands of individuals helped build up the theory of evolution. The sweat and tears of so many people made the scientific theory that is evolution, and now creationists come along, having not done anything that is required to build a scientific theory, and they declare that their theory is valid. And numerous adherents of creationism sprout out in the thousands defending it, arming themselves by reading up on material provided at creationist propoganda sites.

I wonder if anyone here actually wonders why adherents of creationism are battling to have their theory taught by presenting their case to the political arena instead of the scientific community. I don't suppose one here believes that there's a global conspiracy by the scientific community to shun creationism because it goes against what they want to be considered valid.

I love this term: Intelligent Design, aka nudge-nudge, wink-wink God. We all know what's being implied. It's no secret that a great majority of adherents are Christian, if not also fundamentalist.

Probability is evolutions biggest flaw, and really not just evolution, but everything that leads up to it and after. I would honestly say that the odds of the entire universe exploding with the big bang or whatever origin of the universe you people believe in how the earth and our solar system was formed, just happened to create a planet that happened to have just the right kind of distance away from a star to keep it warm but not burn it up and be able to sustain life, just happened to have enough of a correct atmosphere to be life-sustaining, just happened to have the essential degree of tilt in its position from the sun so not to have other problems that would not allow life to exist, and then on top of that have all the ingredients necessary to have life somehow create itself and multiply instead of dieing in what were probably harsh conditions considering there was nothing but water and land and the atmosphere. Somehow life just appeared.
You of course right, it is improbable. Probably the only thing that is more improbable is there just happening to be some omnipotent being capable of creating the universe and everything within, and yet still petty enough to require constant reassurance in the form of worship from a bunch of higher primates, and stupid enough to have given these higher primates free-will, no knowledge of right and wrong, access to a tree you dont want them touch, and temptation in the form of serpent... :confused:

ah, because you haven't discarded your platonic ideals yet. well, do try to catch up with the rest of us then.

try reading it again.

maybe you'll understand it this time.

maybe you'll need a third run through.

i don't know.

but you missed it the first time.

I think most evolutionists would agree that both the "gradual and constant" model and the "punctuated equilibrium" model have some validity - which is more accurate for a given trait within a specific population depends entirely on the circumstances. Essentially, the number of generations it takes for a certain trait to become predominant in a population will tend to be inversely proportional to the amount of environmental pressure placed on those organisms lacking the trait.

....but this model does not take into account the existence of chaos, the one unifying reality in the cosmos. despite the obvious presence of perpetual genetic screw-ups/mutations that lead to variation, it's earthquakes and meteorites and pole shifts and sudden climate changes that seem to me to be the better explanation.

but, if there's a giant earthquake that kills 90% of a population (or an el nino that kills 90% of monarch butterflies or whatever else), it's not necessarily the best ones that survive, nor the ones most adaptive to change.

it's just the lucky ones.

my understanding is that we've been able to pretty much correlate mass speciation with mass extinction and that one leads to the other only through the catalyst of climate change.....but is it that certain traits allow some to survive and others not to or are some lucky enough to survive the catastrophe and others not?

Natural selection isn't the idea that some anthropomorphized mother-figure picks the species she likes best to survive,

let's not get marija gimbutas involved here.

but rather the idea that, quite simply, the better adapted you are to your environment, the more likely you are to survive long enough to reproduce. .

sure.....in general. there are exceptions.

look at humans, for example. who is more likely to reproduce - paris hilton or stephen hawking? well, maybe hawking is a bad example but you get the point.

but in general i agree that this is true, but this does not lead to speciation. earthquakes, bottlenecks, rifts, etc....these things lead to speciation, not longetivity and adaptation.

In other words, I think you actually agree with natural selection - just not the name. :p


i don't like the platonism and the darwinism behind it.

yeah....i'm ok with evolution but i can't stand natural selection because it stinks of darwinism.

that somehow makes sense to me. think it through.

The macrocosmos, of course it's the lucky ones that survive. It's just that the ones slightly more adapted to their environment, or more adaptable to new environments have a greater chance of being lucky and then "getting lucky".

Plus, are not earthquakes and whatnot natural?

The macrocosmos, of course it's the lucky ones that survive. It's just that the ones slightly more adapted to their environment, or more adaptable to new environments have a greater chance of being lucky and then "getting lucky".

i don't see the logic in this. adaptations cannot compensate for chance occurence and being adapted certainly does not increase one's luck unless they have adapted a way to predict the future.

anyways, i made my point....i don't like getting bogged down in these things.

Plus, are not earthquakes and whatnot natural?

yes, but....

i don't see the logic in this. adaptations cannot compensate for chance occurence and being adapted certainly does not increase one's luck unless they have adapted a way to predict the future.

anyways, i made my point....i don't like getting bogged down in these things.



yes, but....

Look at it this way. Have you ever played Texas Hold 'em? A strong starting hand is more likely to win, but is still often a victim of chance when the cards on the table favor a competitor. Likewise, a better adapted organism has no assurance of surviving to reproduce, but it has a better chance than it's less well adapted bretheren. Over time geological time, even that minute difference in survivability leads to more of that ever-so-slightly adapted organism's descendants surviving.

See, natural selection does not mean that a better adapted organism always survives. It merely indicates a tendency.

I don't know if this is the correct thread to adress this questions or if they had been answered in some thread before (I'm lazy with the search funktion), but since long I have two serious question about ID. I would be greatfull if someone would answer these .

1. If ID is not about the christian god, but about a rather unspecified entity, why is the age of the earth based on assumptions based on the christian bible and not on some other religios text? I think to remember that there are east indian texts which are thought to account for at least 15.000 years of history.

2. Did this higher intelligence create the universe at roughly the same time as the earth?

try reading it again.

maybe you'll understand it this time.

maybe you'll need a third run through.

i don't know.

but you missed it the first time.

what's to miss? you associate natural selection with something that it is not associated with. doing this leads you to silly conclusions. that about sums it up.

1. If ID is not about the christian god, but about a rather unspecified entity, why is the age of the earth based on assumptions based on the christian bible and not on some other religios text? I think to remember that there are east indian texts which are thought to account for at least 15.000 years of history.

the official IDiots agree with real science on the age of the earth, age of the universe, etc. they just are awful slow to correct the bandwagon IDiots who just call YEC ID now. almost certainly because the official IDiots are doing this all in a calculated attempt to overthrow modernism and all progress since the enlightentment and don't want to drive off their few allies.

as they said in the wedge strategy (http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html), their overarching goals are:

*To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
*To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God.

Evilution is wrong. Everybody knows it. Just that soem gay athiest sientists want to make the bible look wrong so that people will stop beleiving in Jesus and start acting all gay and athiest. Creation is true becaus it has proof behind it. We know that the wrld cant be as old as the athiest gays say becaus its still hot inside. If the world was as old as the satanic sientists say it wood have cooled down by now. Also theres no missing link between monkeys and people. Also theres still monkeys around. If they all evolved into people why are there still monkeys around. Anser that one evilutionists. I dare yoo.

:D :D :D

The scientifically illiterate use the human eye as an example of evolution being false. As in, the one that is wired backwards, as to require unnesessary extra work. If an "intelligent designer" (aka wink-wink, nudge-nudge God) designed the eye, he's a stupid moron, for there are other animals by which have the eye wired correctly, such as the squid (if memory serves). So why not make the human eye wired correctly? If even there were not other animals with the eye wired correctly, it'd still be no excuse for such a pathetic design flaw.

I recommend, for anyone, the reading of Evolution and the human eye (http://www.2think.org/eye.shtml). The aforementioned example is also included in the following:

Symptoms of jury-rigged design

Consider the following pieces of evidence supporting the theory that biological organisms are the result of trial and error, jury-rigged, evolutionary design rather than deliberate, "intelligent" design:
We were cobbled together from previous designs. Analysis of the human genome shows that every single piece of our genetic code is either a direct copy of other animals' codes, or a very minor modification upon said codes. Of course, by sheer coincidence, these animals just happen to be the ones that have been identified as our evolutionary precursors.
Dangerous design flaws. Because mammals evolved from the Devonian lungfish (Osteolepiformes) which swallowed air to breathe, we have inherited a respiratory system in which we use the same tube to breathe and swallow. A piece of food lodged in this double-duty windpipe can cause death! In real life engineering, the duplication of a dangerous design flaw from a previous design is considered an example of serious incompetence. In fact, if we imagine that an engineer had designed apes and then separately designed humans, he probably would have lost his license for negligently duplicating a serious, known design flaw!
Poor design aspects. For example, the human eye is wired backwards. Our photoreceptors face the wrong way, so that the side which connects to the nerve fibres is on the inside of the eye rather than the outside. This means that the nerve fibres actually "get in the way", and it also means that the eye has a hole in the back, through which these fibres must be bundled and passed through in order to reach the brain! This design increases the length of wiring for no good reason, decreases visual acuity, and creates a blind spot! A creationist would no doubt claim that God had a very good reason for doing it this way, but if so, then why did he design cephalopods (squids and octopi) with eyes wired correctly?
Failure to copy design corrections/improvements If a GM engineer discovered and corrected an intake manifold design flaw that restricts airflow for no good reason, it's a safe bet that this correction would make its way not only into future versions of that particular car, but every other GM vehicle which suffers from the original design flaw, irrespective of product line. However, the properly wired eyeballs of cephalopods were never incorporated into the vertebrate evolutionary branch. In other words, we share a poor design with all other members of our evolutionary branch. A better design exists, but only on another evolutionary branch! If this was the result of "intelligent design", then it begs the question: what kind of idiot would confine design improvements to a particular product line? Why don't humans incorporate the best design aspects of every animal species which preceded us, irrespective of evolutionary lineage? <Gasp!> Could it be that we have descended from one particular family of animals?
Poor manufacturing yields. Creationists take great pleasure in pointing out how precise our biological systems are. They love to cite, over and over, the fact that even the most miniscule alteration of certain parameters would cause the entire system to fail. However, any engineer familiar with basic quality control theory would consider such a design totally unacceptable. It is not "robust", meaning that it cannot withstand even the most minor alteration to optimal conditions. This leads to extremely low yields: out of millions of sperm in a typical ejaculation, fewer than 1,000 even reach the fallopian tubes, at which point half of them will go into the wrong tube. Only one will fertilize the egg, and the majority of fertilized eggs will not successfully implant in the uterine wall. Moreover, even successful fertilizations and implantations do not necessarily go to term; many pregnancies end in miscarriage, sometimes so early that the female may not even realize she was pregnant. We are talking about manufacturing yields below 0.0001%, people! By any engineering standard, this is awful! But by the standard of ruthless "survival of the fittest", it makes perfect sense.
Tendency to modify instead of add. Also known as "transformed organs". When a component of a design is modified to perform some new function at the expense of its original function, engineers generally describe the result as "jury-rigged". Nature is full of examples of such jury-rigging (eg. insect mouth-parts that used to be legs, dolphin fins that contain a full set of finger bones), but the best example is your arms. We have two arms and two legs because we are bipedal, but bipedal locomotion is ridiculously inefficient (for example, a typical dog can easily outrun a human despite its short legs). Worse yet, we are horribly inefficient runners even for bipeds (compare a human's running speed to the land speed of an ostrich or any other landed bird). Our poor speed and our lack of natural defenses make us easy prey for predators, so if not for our ability to make weapons, we would have been the footstool of the animal world. Even today, people are regularly killed by wild animals because they can't run quickly enough to get away. So why were we "designed" this way? Why would a competent engineer cripple us in this manner, rather than giving us four legs and two arms? This question is difficult to answer with "intelligent design", but it's easy to answer with evolution: we evolved from creatures with four legs, and two of those legs were transformed into our arms. The evolutionary advantage was presumably reproductive: we could carry food, so we could shelter our mates and our young in protected caves while we foraged.
Creationists open a dangerous can of worms when they suggest that we consider biological structures as engineered designs. Any engineer can examine the entire "product line" and see widespread evidence of massive, inexplicable incompetence. Dangerous, potentially lethal design flaws are mindlessly propagated through entire product lines, design improvements are mysteriously confined within product lines, manufacturing yields are horrendous, and every design has been cobbled together from previous designs, and new features are often jury-rigged from old ones instead of being added as genuinely new systems. Any engineer who takes a serious look at biological organisms from an engineering standpoint (as opposed to mindlessly accepting creationist propaganda about its "perfection") will have no choice but to conclude that there was no intelligence whatsoever behind it.
-- Michael Wong; Intelligent Design "Theory" (http://www.creationtheory.org/Essays/IntelligentDesign.shtml)

Throughout the numerous decades, a great amount of fossils have been uncovered, and the work of thousands upon thousands of individuals helped build up the theory of evolution. The sweat and tears of so many people made the scientific theory that is evolution, and now creationists come along, having not done anything that is required to build a scientific theory, and they declare that their theory is valid. And numerous adherents of creationism sprout out in the thousands defending it, arming themselves by reading up on material provided at creationist propoganda sites.

I wonder if anyone here actually wonders why adherents of creationism are battling to have their theory taught by presenting their case to the political arena instead of the scientific community. I don't suppose one here believes that there's a global conspiracy by the scientific community to shun creationism because it goes against what they want to be considered valid.

I love this term: Intelligent Design, aka nudge-nudge, wink-wink God. We all know what's being implied. It's no secret that a great majority of adherents are Christian, if not also fundamentalist.


Thanks for the cool info I will have to show this one to my engineering friend lol

Evilution is wrong. Everybody knows it. Just that soem gay athiest sientists want to make the bible look wrong so that people will stop beleiving in Jesus and start acting all gay and athiest. Creation is true becaus it has proof behind it. We know that the wrld cant be as old as the athiest gays say becaus its still hot inside. If the world was as old as the satanic sientists say it wood have cooled down by now. Also theres no missing link between monkeys and people. Also theres still monkeys around. If they all evolved into people why are there still monkeys around. Anser that one evilutionists. I dare yoo.

w00t the fruit is back ;)
yaaaaay! :p

w00t the fruit is back ;)
yaaaaay! :p


Wow I missed that!

Welcome back!

Jesussaves isn't really back. That post doesn't appear anywhere on this thread.

the official IDiots agree with real science on the age of the earth, age of the universe, etc. they just are awful slow to correct the bandwagon IDiots who just call YEC ID now. almost certainly because the official IDiots are doing this all in a calculated attempt to overthrow modernism and all progress since the enlightentment and don't want to drive off their few allies.

as they said in the wedge strategy (http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html), their overarching goals are:

*To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
*To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God.
A cousin of mine, who says he is an IDler, still insists of the earth being 6.000 years old. I also got the impression that many IDler here think the earth has this age. Do they disagree with their officials and admit that they didn't understand ID?

A cousin of mine, who says he is an IDler, still insists of the earth being 6.000 years old. I also got the impression that many IDler here think the earth has this age. Do they disagree with their officials and admit that they didn't understand ID?

i suspect that most people who claim to believe in ID haven't actually read any of the books and articles the IDiots have put out. you often see young earth creationists say that people should read michael behe's "darwin's black box". this always struck me as particularly silly as in it he specifically says that he finds the evidence for evolution and common descent to be quite compelling. and he has done so in many other places as well
http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/001108.html#c33664

either that, or they believe that the IDiots aren't actually committed to their stated acceptance of most science, and will gladly discard it once they win and bring back the dark ages.

Free Soviets responded to a post in a rather rude manner when if he stopped to think he would see they were right. It was on page 27 or 28 where someone said that they believed that Natural Selection is the means to which things are led to a perfect state, and he said NOTHING of it being guided by an IDer. You called him some name or insulted the idea. Please don't resort to an ID-ers level and just call names. But he was right GIVING the conditions of everything else is in stasis. If we were to somehow (impossibly) freeze the genome of every living and nonliving thing except humans, in an amount of time that I can't even estimate the human raise would have no diseases that weren't genetic and would be growing towards perfect. I don't mean to repremand you but give people respect. Please.


Also I think alot of IDers have very limited knowledge of Chemistry (organic and physical), Biology, Genetics, and molecular genetics. It seems like so many on this thread are posting the same arguements and get answered the same way over and over again. When I first learned about pseudo genes and their ability to "relocate" along with gene duplication, etc. It answered so many questions I had about the specificity of related species as well as similar organs/enzymes etc.

Read the wedge strategy (http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html). One of their 20 years goal is "To see design theory application in specific fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences, psychology, ethics, politics, theology and philosophy in the humanities; to see its innuence in the fine arts." Quite an aspiring goal. These guys seem to have discovered some kind of grand unification theory.

I will never buy the arguement that ' the eye is to complex' or works so 'perfectly'. First of all, they eye does'nt work perfectly. It is prone to blindness, blury vision and other ocular problems. When a child is born there is a chance of a multitude problems.


Also i'm sick and tired of kids and whino teenagers acting like they are an authority on biology or paleontology. There is almost no evidence of creation. Don't even act like their is. If their was we would be learning creation in schools and university.

my understanding is that we've been able to pretty much correlate mass speciation with mass extinction

if i understand you properly, that is incorrect. most speciation has not occured immediately after mass extinctions. mass extinctions do open up many niches to be occupied by new species, but it takes many many thousands of years of natural selection (aided by the founder effect and genetic drift, etc) for new species to evolve to fill them. in fact, the average recovery interval after the big mass extinction events is 10 million years.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/03/2/images/l_032_03_l.gif

to be more specific, he lost no privileges and was not kicked out of his office, etc.

hell, if you ask me, the smithsonian was a little too nice to him. i mean, this guy abused his position (http://www.biolsocwash.org/id_statement.html) on the editorial board of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington to sneak a really fucking shoddy article (http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000430.html) into a peer-reviewed journal just so IDiots could claim that they have in fact published something.

this was never about anything real, not the science and not the complaint. like all other discovery institute operations it was entirely about pr.

abused his position, according to the people who abused him?
how about a look at what the U.S. Office of Special Council investigation concluded? Office of Special Counsel letter (http://www.rsternberg.net/OSC_ltr.htm)
And the article was peer-reviewed, but he refused to reveal the names of the "peers" in accordance with standard professional ethics, despite pressure. the other side of the story (http://www.rsternberg.net/)
Subsequently, after the controversy arose, Dr. Roy McDiarmid, President of the Council of the BSW, reviewed the peer-review file and concluded that all was in order. As Dr. McDiarmid informed me in an email message on August 25th, 2004, "Finally, I got the [peer] reviews and agree that they are in support of your decision [to publish the article]."
BSW=Council of the Biological Society of Washington, in whose journal, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington the article was published, having nothing to do with the Smithsonian itself!

Objective scientists want debate with qualified peers, hah!
Not if the subject is evolution!! :sniper:
Remember, all scientists are human beings, and no human being wants to be wrong or to be found wrong, especially not by someone who may have less knowledge of the subject than they---scientific method notwithstanding! :headbang:

@Ruloah: Can you tell my where I can get that paper?

@Ruloah: Can you tell my where I can get that paper?

Eureka, I have found it!

ID Article by Dr. Stephen Meyer, Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University (http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2177&program=CSC&callingPage=discoMainPage)

abused his position, according to the people who abused him?

no, according to the people whose journal he used to publish such utter crap.

how about a look at what the U.S. Office of Special Council investigation concluded? Office of Special Counsel letter (http://www.rsternberg.net/OSC_ltr.htm)

yup, they concluded that they had no jurisdiction and couldn't conduct a proper investigation, and therefore took his claims at face value. its a completely obvious political maneuver by a bush-appointee, whose adminstartion has openly come out in favor of the IDiots.

but the facts on the ground are that he didn't lose any privileges and wasn't fired. if he finds that his peers don't think so highly of him after going out of his way to help publish a psuedo-scientific article in a peer-reviewed journal (and after they found out that he sits on the editorial board of a fucking stupid young earth/flood geology (http://www.bryancore.org/bsg/opbsg/) publication), tough fucking shit. you want respect from the scientific community, don't help the foes of science.

Objective scientists want debate with qualified peers, hah!
Not if the subject is evolution!! :sniper:

the debate was held over 100 years ago. the same stupid shit was utterly destroyed then. bringing it up as if it was new now shows either gross incompetence or an anti-science agenda.

Eureka, I have found it!

ID Article by Dr. Stephen Meyer, Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University (http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2177&program=CSC&callingPage=discoMainPage)
Thank you, but if they really want people to convince them of their idea, they should make their articles a bit more printer friendly ;)

Objective scientists want debate with qualified peers, hah!
Not if the subject is evolution!! :sniper:
I don't know quite where you get the idea. There was and is debate over that paper.
For example, the link you quoted in that post. (http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000430.html)

But people are also questioning the intellectual honesty of the editor, due to the fact that not only was the article full of errors, but it was also outside the normal sphere of what is published in the PBSW, and that really makes me think that Sternberg used his post to get the article in. It's entirely possible that the article was peer-reviewed, and that the reviewers simply missed the mistakes, but that seems quite improbable, especially what with PBSW's later withdrawing of the article.

That said, it's a shame that people are making things so difficult for Steinberg, as this seems to make people think that the organised scientific community wants all other theories quashed through any means.

but the facts on the ground are that he didn't lose any privileges and wasn't fired. if he finds that his peers don't think so highly of him after going out of his way to help publish a psuedo-scientific article in a peer-reviewed journal (and after they found out that he sits on the editorial board of a fucking stupid young earth/flood geology (http://www.bryancore.org/bsg/opbsg/) publication), tough fucking shit. you want respect from the scientific community, don't help the foes of science.


Ewww well that paints a different picture on things.

Well I just fired him an email with a few harmless questions espeically one about introducing faith based arguments into the discussion.

Doubt he will reply but you never know. I worked to make sure it was harmless and not to agenda driven. ;)

That said, it's a shame that people are making things so difficult for Steinberg, as this seems to make people think that the organised scientific community wants all other theories quashed through any means.

Well? It probably doesn't matter since there are two camps in the issue. Even Ruloah's comments suggest there is a grand conspiracy going on.

It's a tough call on how to act. Especially when one agenda is driven by Religion. Look at how many people parrot the same tired old disproven arguments against evolution which they find on some creationist's web site.

I don't know quite where you get the idea. There was and is debate over that paper.
For example, the link you quoted in that post. (http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000430.html)

But people are also questioning the intellectual honesty of the editor, due to the fact that not only was the article full of errors, but it was also outside the normal sphere of what is published in the PBSW, and that really makes me think that Sternberg used his post to get the article in. It's entirely possible that the article was peer-reviewed, and that the reviewers simply missed the mistakes, but that seems quite improbable, especially what with PBSW's later withdrawing of the article.

That said, it's a shame that people are making things so difficult for Steinberg, as this seems to make people think that the organised scientific community wants all other theories quashed through any means.

Thanx for directing me back to that link. The review in Panda's Thumb, by its use of terms clearly meant to be condescending, says that there are all kinds of mistakes in the article. But after reading the portions of the article they reference in their criticisms, and looking at their links to articles to support their positions, (to be fair, I only looked at their number criticisms in the sections "Information and Misinformation" and the first criticism in the section "Of Text and Peptides.")

I stopped after that, because it was evident that they were only trying to find "gotcha" sentences in the original article and not provide an actual debate. For example, Of Text and Peptides (1) makes the statement "The origin of new genes and proteins is actually a common, fairly trivial event, well-known to anyone who spends a modicum of effort investigating the scientific literature. "

But when I go to their links, I find that what is meant by "new genes" means 25 million years old, rather than the implication that new genes are arising all the time, and the process has been observed in laboratories.

The Panda's Thumb review seems to be deliberately misleading, hoping to discredit the article by what I previously referred to as "hand-waving," not by actually refuting the author's points.

The section titled "Information and Misinformation" focusses on a few sentences refering to one cited researcher's term, "specified complexity”/”complex specified information," making it seem as though the author's argument rests entirely upon use of that term, when, upon scanning the article for that term, I find it only used as a term as a synonym for the phrase "functional biological information." The argument certainly does not rest entirely upon use of this term.

I guess that Panda's Thumb hopes no one will look further than what they wrote, because after all, they are wearing white coats.
:rolleyes:

I have just followed the comments at the bottom of the review, to see what is going on with the "debate." I already found that, in trying to discredit the rebuttal to their review, the commentators have created their own definition of a term they wish to discredit (straw-man), and proceeded to discredit it. The term? "hypothetico-deductive method," which they incorrectly assert is the only method identical with THE scientific method, ignoring the author's use of the term to point out problems with that method.
hypothetico-deductive method, amplified definition (http://copernicus.subdomain.de/hypothetico-deductive_method)
scientific method (http://copernicus.subdomain.de/scientific_method)

I stopped after that, because it was evident that they were only trying to find "gotcha" sentences in the original article and not provide an actual debate. For example, Of Text and Peptides (1) makes the statement "The origin of new genes and proteins is actually a common, fairly trivial event, well-known to anyone who spends a modicum of effort investigating the scientific literature. "

But when I go to their links, I find that what is meant by "new genes" means 25 million years old, rather than the implication that new genes are arising all the time, and the process has been observed in laboratories.

don't lie.

firstly, meyer himself is talking about an alleged problem with novel gene evolution and its effects on the fucking cambrian explosion. he isn't talking novel as in recent. he is talking novel as in fucking novel. so if somebody only responded with showing how novel genes developed millions of years ago, that would still fully contradict meyer's assertion.

but the cited sources do not only talk about millions of years ago. the processes they describe were observed in the lab too - for example, the gene duplication mentioned repeatedly in the huge number of citations the pt article lists. you clearly did not even look at all of the titles of the articles they cited. let alone the abstracts. let alone the full texts.

I guess that Panda's Thumb hopes no one will look further than what they wrote, because after all, they are wearing white coats.
:rolleyes:

yes, they certainly don't want people looking into things further. that must be why they directly linked to the original article, and to pubmed listings of some of the relevant lit, and to other compilations of the relevant lit, and they directly quoted meyer with page numbers and everything so you could check the context yourself, and they placed directly contradictory evidence right next to meyer's assertions.

yup, they totally don't want anyone looking further than what they say.

say, did the kind folks at the DI offer any links to the PT article? or any of the other articles that have utterly demolished the claims of the meyer paper?

Also i'm sick and tired of kids and whino teenagers acting like they are an authority on biology or paleontology.

Whoa there. I'm neither a kid nor a whino teenager, but back when I was, I still knew quite a lot more about biology and paleontology than the average person. Don't automatically equate ignorance with age - that's just pointlessly mean to the many, many intelligent teenage posters on NS. There are idiots and geniuses at every age. :)

Whoa there. I'm neither a kid nor a whino teenager, but back when I was, I still knew quite a lot more about biology and paleontology than the average person. Don't automatically equate ignorance with age - that's just pointlessly mean to the many, many intelligent teenage posters on NS. There are idiots and geniuses at every age. :)
I fully agree

don't lie.

firstly, meyer himself is talking about an alleged problem with novel gene evolution and its effects on the fucking cambrian explosion. he isn't talking novel as in recent. he is talking novel as in fucking novel. so if somebody only responded with showing how novel genes developed millions of years ago, that would still fully contradict meyer's assertion.

but the cited sources do not only talk about millions of years ago. the processes they describe were observed in the lab too - for example, the gene duplication mentioned repeatedly in the huge number of citations the pt article lists. you clearly did not even look at all of the titles of the articles they cited. let alone the abstracts. let alone the full texts.

I don't need to lie. How did I come up with the 25 million year figure? It is not in any title or abstract. Or did I just happen to pull a figure from one of the articles out of my sizable ass?

Polyploidy, so what? Not a brand new gene in a natural animal, observed in a lab? But that is what they implied... :rolleyes:

Stupid evolution promoters, promise a mechanism, get possibilities. I can imagine possible ways of overcoming gravity without standard means (without wings, propellers, jets, rockets, balloons), but that doesn't mean I have a flying car in my garage.

Oh well, this whole thing is overheating my atomic brain. Neither side can win, or score any points, or change any minds. I shoulda stayed at M.I.T. Maybe then I would have my flying car.

Bye for now. ;)

--snip--Oh well, this whole thing is overheating my atomic brain. Neither side can win, or score any points, or change any minds.--snip--

Sounds like your problem, not evolution's. It's sad that you intentionally keep yourself uninformed.

I don't need to lie. How did I come up with the 25 million year figure? It is not in any title or abstract. Or did I just happen to pull a figure from one of the articles out of my sizable ass?

i'm not sure. either you just made something up or you found somebody that went quote mining in long 2001 (which does mention 25 mya at one point). i suppose there is an outside chance that you did your own quote mining too, but if i were you, i wouldn't want to admit to that, since the very next sentence talks about a different gene that originated 5 million years ago. and that would just be embarassing.

Polyploidy, so what? Not a brand new gene in a natural animal, observed in a lab? But that is what they implied... :rolleyes:

polyploidy is not the same as gene duplication. anyway, as the conclusion to long 2001 says,

"Significant progress has been made in understanding the initial stage in the evolution of new genes, the creation of new gene structure. Detailed molecular mechanisms underlying exon shuffling have been found. The classic candidate mechanism for exon shuffling, illegitimate recombination, was demonstrated under laboratory conditions, revealing further detail of how an intereaction between topoiosmerase and a specific recognition sequence signal can lead to the generation of exon duplication. A quite different type of illegitimate recombination, a new mechanism called L1 element mediated 3? transduction, may not be a rarely used mechanism to recombine exons in genomes with high copy numbers of L1 elements, such as the human genome. Several other features of processes that create new genes have been detected or better understood as well, such as the generality of retroposition and gene duplication in the origin of new genes, and exaption of transposable elements into genes encoding cellular proteins."

--snip--

Unfortunately to someone unsophisticated in science or who is unwilling to look up terms, much of this probably looks like made-up gobbledygook on the same level as Scientology. It never even enters their consciousness. They scan right through it and then repeat, "but there's no evidence!"

Humans are funny creatures. I certainly hope we keep evolving in a meaningful way. Sometimes I doubt if we'll last long enough.

the two headed snake and stuff u r talking about are mutations so screw you

It's not just evolution that's wrong, it's gravity too.


http://theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2


I for one would like to see Intelligent Falling being taught in your schools as well

I found that article highly amusing.

The Onion delivers with quality satire yet again.

trilobites? Seriously? I thought they were only found as fossils nowadays. I've never seen one on a nature program or anything.
Science class. 3rd grade.
They might be significantly different now from how they were back then... the eye structure everyone's talking about may have gone away for increased efficiency (thus making my previous comment silly, about not needing the fossils) but I don't know that for sure, and I do know that there is such a thing as a modern trilobite.

Science class. 3rd grade.
They might be significantly different now from how they were back then... the eye structure everyone's talking about may have gone away for increased efficiency (thus making my previous comment silly, about not needing the fossils) but I don't know that for sure, and I do know that there is such a thing as a modern trilobite.

Ahem...

http://www.trilobites.info/trilobite.htm

Trilobites are hard-shelled, segmented creatures that existed over 300 million years ago in the Earth's ancient seas. They went extinct before dinosaurs even came into existence, and are one of the key signature creatures of the Paleozoic Era, the first era to exhibit a proliferation of the complex life-forms that established the foundation of life as it is today. Although dinosaurs are the most well-known fossil life forms, trilobites are also a favorite among those familiar with Paleontology (the study of the development of life on Earth), and are found in the rocks of all continents.

Greetings one and all. My name is Seth.

This thread has become absurd. Pacific Northwesteria. You have taken up an entire page to quote people and then write small quips at the end. As a thought, perhaps you could simply reference the name and we could go back and look for ourselves?
<insert small quip here> :rolleyes:
There were pages of posts between what I was quoting and where my post was going to end up. It would have led to significant confusion. As for the nature of my posts... correcting incorrect ideas about what Evolution Theory says, and how other things relates to it, seems like worthwhile material on this thread to me. If I succeeded in making my point in a small quip, all the better for me.

Quick comment to Dragon's Bay. The universe is objective? Tell me, what universe? What you see, what I see, what Joe Schmoe sees, all different universe. Which one is the objective one? Perhaps there is an objective universe, but perhaps there is not. What proof do you offer for this "objective universe"?
You just regained significant amounts of my respect, though I somehow doubt that you care. Congratulations. Uh oh! This is one of those "small quips", isn't it... Anyway, you're right about this point.

<snip>

All theories must be seen as simply that, a theory. Not a fact, nor a universal truth, nor a belief. Simply a theory, a thing that states that something may be true and makes predictions for if the prerequisites were satisfied.
This has been answered many times on this thread. The basics of Evolution (including the part where we evolved from lower primates) are proven to the limits of Scientific ability to do so. There is no scientific debate about whether or not Evolution happened. Any scientist with any credibility has accepted it, because of the mountains of proof. The debates, within Science, are about the fine details: gradual and constant, or with small periods of rapid change? This line of evolution or that? Saying that you don't believe in Evolution simply because not all of the evidence is available is like saying you don't believe in Gravity because we have no idea why matter would attract other matter. The fact is, all evidence to date points to Evolution, and it's no small amount of evidence.

Now I ask you, nations of the world, what theory is flawless here? Is it evolution, the theory which has no records of the middle, which cannot provide the first 7 thousandths of a second of the universe, the theory that fails to adequately show why this astronomical probablity came to be despite Darwin's own skepticism of it's effects on humans?
This proves a lack of research, both into Evolution in general and in this thread. The "astronomical odds" have been explained, repeatedly. Billions of years with billions of individual organisms with survival of the fittest helping it along make the probabilities quite good.

Is it creationism, the theory with no empirical evidence, with a distinct lack of scientific support, a theory based upon books who's very authors are disputed? Or finally is it intelligent design, a theory based upon a combination of science and faith, a theory with a little but not much empirical evidence, an idea of combining "God" and reason?
How does ID use Science? This isn't rhetoric, I'll admit I don't know much about what ID says, but from what I've heard they don't offer a scientific argument. However, feel free to prove me wrong on this.

Obviously none of these ideas are acceptable, all revealing gaping holes as they are studied.
Where, please, are the gaping holes in Evolution theory? You don't need to measure the attractive forces between every two potential masses in the Universe to accept Gravity. Why do you need to have every fossil ever to accept Evolution, when it already has more than enough evidence for its basic (and even most of its not-so-basic) claims?

Thus stated, my opinion is thus. Is evolution incorrect? Evolution is as incorrect as creationism and intelligent design are, all failing to adequately prove the true origin of the human race.

- Seth
Head of Medicine, Tyslan
You are welcome to your opinion, of course, however I take offense at saying that they are all "just as incorrect". One has been proven to the limits of Science. The others rely completely on faith.

Good day,

-Minister of the Bureau of Annoying Seth

but personifying (even deifying) nature by allowing it to select which species are "better" and which are not is, i think, somewhat naive. i'm more convinced by modelling it as luck, chance, chaos.....

j
"Better" in terms of natural selection means "more likely to live long enough to reproduce". Well, that's a bit simplistic... it also has to do with how their children's chances are, etc. etc., but you get the idea. Obviously, since reproduction passes on traits, traits that help you live longer will be passed down. That's natural selection: not some magical "I like you better, so you live" by a personified Nature.

My logic? I never wrote that? :confused:
Sorry... my wording was a bit clumsy. As I said in the beginning, I was adding to your refutation of the person you were responding to. I was talking to them. It was by their logic, not yours. Sorry for the confusion.

<snip>
Also i'm sick and tired of kids and whino teenagers acting like they are an authority on biology or paleontology. There is almost no evidence of creation. Don't even act like their is. If their was we would be learning creation in schools and university.
Some people do learn creation in schools :( :( :( the whole "complete lack of proof" thing doesn't stop them.

Ahem...

http://www.trilobites.info/trilobite.htm
Huh... apologies to everyone... then what the hell were they showing us??. I was pretty sure that they were trilobites. Maybe something that sounded similar to me when I was in 3rd grade...

Huh... apologies to everyone... then what the hell were they showing us??. I was pretty sure that they were trilobites. Maybe something that sounded similar to me when I was in 3rd grade...
Well, maybe a horseshoe crab (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_crab). I ever thought they looked like tribolites.

Sorry... my wording was a bit clumsy. As I said in the beginning, I was adding to your refutation of the person you were responding to. I was talking to them. It was by their logic, not yours. Sorry for the confusion.
I'm sorry. It seems that I just missunderstood you.

Well, maybe a horseshoe crab (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_crab). I ever thought they looked like tribolites.
No... the name sounded like them. It wasn't a "looks like" thing.

I'm sorry. It seems that I just missunderstood you.
I could definitely see where you were coming from. My wording was horrible. Anyways, I'm just glad it's all cleared up now :) what with my trilobite fiasco ;)

No... the name sounded like them. It wasn't a "looks like" thing.
Maybe tribolium (http://bru.gmprc.ksu.edu/proj/tribolium/)?

What a rivetting and compelling argument. I think those were close to the Pope's exact words to Gallileo.


there comes a point when you realise that rhetoric will get you no where, strange as it may seem but there are people in this world to who reasonable thought is an impossibility, by all means argue with them to your hearts content it's just that when we are in the situation when so called "intelligent design" is actually being considered for teaching in schools that we're really fucked unless someone sorts it out

the two headed snake and stuff u r talking about are mutations so screw you

:fluffle:

I didn't know you cared!

there comes a point when you realise that rhetoric will get you no where, strange as it may seem but there are people in this world to who reasonable thought is an impossibility, by all means argue with them to your hearts content it's just that when we are in the situation when so called "intelligent design" is actually being considered for teaching in schools that we're really fucked unless someone sorts it out

We will fight the good fight but even if the Christians get Creationism into the schools, the rest of the world will continue on and we will become a joke for science. When money is getting lost then a "correction" will happen.

It's just like stemcell. The shrub and his masters don't want it but the rest of the world will continue on. They are making some progress. I saw a blip that the Swedes use stem cells to rebuild skin on major burns. If it continues to work, they won't have to use skin grafts.....

Does anybody know if there is some poll of how old people think earth and the universe is? I would really like to know the opinions about that question.

I believe the biggest question for evolutionists is that “How did life start evolving from nothing?”

Now I’m fully aware of the theories, and they are just theories. Now, with the proof of divine acts on Earth what makes God less likely then just random chance?

yes, most everything we are taught in science class is THEORY! it is basically the truth until we can discover something new. but that in no way takes away from its legitimacy. evolution has to do with the adaptation of a living organism due to its environment. take a minute, read some darwin. he spent years watching how certain traits contained within the species would survive, while others would die off. evolution has nothing to do with apes or god or ooze, it is not some strange genetic jump, it is based on how the species changes with genetic abnormalities.

you take a very happy tree dwelling hamster-like organism, one is born with a genetic mutation that allows for living on the ground. suddenly all the trees are chopped down. the organism with the mutation will survive, while the other will slowly die seeing there will be less and less reproducing. see? its simple.

I'm reminded of a good quote I wrote down from an article I read recently:

"Evolution by natural selection, the central concept of the life's work of Charles Darwin, is a theory. It's a theory about the origin of adaptation, complexity, and diversity among Earth's living creatures. If you are skeptical by nature, unfamiliar with the terminology of science, and unaware of the overwhelming evidence, you might even be tempted to say that it's 'just' a theory. In the same sense, relativity as described by Albert Einstein is 'just' a theory. The notion that Earth orbits around the sun rather than vice versa, offered by Copernicus in 1543, is a theory. Continental drift is a theory. The existence, structure, and dynamics of atoms? Atomic theory. Even electricity is a theoretical construct, involving electrons, which are tiny units of charged mass that no one has ever seen. Each of these theories is an explanation that has been confirmed to such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts accept it as fact. That's what scientists mean when they talk about a theory: not a dreamy and unreliable speculation, but an explanatory statement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanation confidently but provisionally -- taking it as their best available view of reality, at least until some severely conflicting data or some better explanation might come along."
-- David Quammen; excerpt from Was Darwin Wrong?; National Geographic

<snip cool quote>
-- David Quammen; excerpt from Was Darwin Wrong?; National Geographic

Yeah, I read that... it was pretty cool. The title (advertised on the cover) is "Was Darwin Wrong?" You get to the page, and, IIRC, it said "NO" in huge type before going on to the rest of the article. Classic. Thanks for reminding me :)