Do you believe in the Theory of Evolution?

[Sean]

I'm curious to see where everyone stands on this issue, especially our Christian posters. In my opinion, if you are religious, then this is a question that you must address if you are to take your belief seriously. It would also be interesting to see the opinions of people who, though not all that religious themselves, merely think that the West is in decline, and that decadent materialism is the cause think. Also, please discuss why, if this be the case, you disbelieve in evolution: whether it's due to religious or ideological leanings, or due to a belief that you think that the theory is flawed.

By "evolution," I'm referring to the notion of common descent (species evolve from one another, and that they can all trace their lineages to a common ancestor), and that the main (though not the only) guiding force of the process is unguided natural selection. That is, the traits which get passed on are those most likely to bestow upon the organism a chance to pass its genes on.

[Captain Marinesko]

I accept, not "believe" in evolution as scientific fact. That being said, I see nothing wrong with those who see evolution and the natural world as being the product of some creator, so long as that is a kept a personal matter(i.e. out of schools).

[Sean]

I accept, not "believe" in evolution as scientific fact.

I know that this is pedantic, but I don't think that the term "belief" aught to mean merely blind faith. A belief can be justified, or held on good evidence, just as it can be held without reason. One can believe, based on examining a good deal of evidence, that evolution provides a good explanation for the diversity of life.

[Jake Featherston]

I voted for the "intelligent design" option, but I'm not at all sure that's my position. I believe in evolution, but I can't explain why it came about. It might have been pure natural selection; it might have been something else, including the Will of God, an alien civilization, or some kind of universal consciousness that the human brain is incapable of conceptualizing in any adequate sense. Any opinion I would have on the matter would just be a lot of ignorant nonsense anyway; how the Hell do I know?

[Sean]

Any opinion I would have on the matter would just be a lot of ignorant nonsense anyway; how the Hell do I know?

I probably should have added an "I don't know" option to the poll. Maybe one of the mods can add one?

[Kodos]

I believe that life evolved from other forms of life, and I believe Darwin's theory explains to some degree evolution within species.

I believe however (and I am not a christian) that the probability of any random process adding all the new data to the genome that has arisen upon the earth since the time the 1st amino acids were formed has a lesser probability of a tornado building New York City out of debris. There are things about evolution we don't understand and that Darwin didn't adequately explain.

[Jake Featherston]

I probably should have added an "I don't know" option to the poll. Maybe one of the mods can add one?

I wouldn't have selected that option, however. I do believe evolution, in some sense very similar to how its generally conceived, does occur. I just don't claim to know how it is that came about. Pure natural selection seems perhaps the likeliest explanation, but we live in a mysterious Universe, where things are not quite as the materialists would have us believe. So that leaves the door open pretty widely.

[Kodos]

I accept, not "believe" in evolution as scientific fact. That being said, I see nothing wrong with those who see evolution and the natural world as being the product of some creator, so long as that is a kept a personal matter(i.e. out of schools).

Darwin's theory does not adequately explain speciation. The probability of such a thing would be more infinitismal then Planck's constant.

[Kodos]

. Pure natural selection seems perhaps the likeliest explanation, but we live in a mysterious Universe

No primate or man has ever grown feathers not even in the circus.

[Jake Featherston]

No primate or man has ever grown feathers not even in the circus.

I've seen miraculous things. I know people who've seen miraculous things, and had miraculous experiences.* I'm willing to write some fraction of them off as bona fide neurological disturbances, lies, etc., but the realization there is something more going on in this Universe, other than molecules vibrating against each other, has been innate to the human condition since prior to recorded history. There's an/some other intelligence(s) out there (or perhaps our intelligence has the ability to act out in ways other than through the movements of our bodies). Not that one precludes the other, of course.


*I'm sure numerous other Phorans could report similarly.

[Starr]

I probably should have added an "I don't know" option to the poll. Maybe one of the mods can add one?


I will add it if you really want me to, but the "I don't know" option is a potentially boring one. None of us can truly say we know about any of these things and too many people might start choosing that answer. We can, however, select the answer that makes the most sense to us or the one we believe is most likely the case. That is what I did.(I believe in evolution brought about by an intelligent guiding force) Of course, I don't know that I am correct.

I've seen miraculous things. I know people who've seen miraculous things, and had miraculous experiences.*

Yes, exactly, I know too many people who have had these kinds of experiences. Normal, credible people, some of whom are not even religious at all, to just write off the idea that there is anything "more."

[Empress Cheesatine]

How much proof is there for evolution? We have species of monkeys that have changed little to nothing in millions of years, while we're still lacking the missing link.

I'm not sure where I stand on this position. The idea that the universe and life came into being just because, without some person or people behind it somewhere is ludicrious. At the same time, the idea that this fucked up planet could be made by someone intelligent is ludicrous.

[Starr]

How much proof is there for evolution? We have species of monkeys that have changed little to nothing in millions of years, while we're still lacking the missing link.

I'm not sure where I stand on this position. The idea that the universe and life came into being just because, without some person or people behind it somewhere is ludicrious. At the same time, the idea that this fucked up planet could be made by someone intelligent is ludicrous.


Atheists will always try to trip you up with the question of what created "god" or this higher force, whatever you want to call it and that is a good one to trip people up with. The idea that this "force" just always was isn't really much more nonsensical than the idea that the universe and life originally came into being from nothing, however. I lean towards believing there is a "higher power." I am just not sure if I lean this way merely because it makes more sense to me or if it is because I want to believe that.

[Sean]

For people who aren't all that familiar with the ideas behind evolution, I would recommend reading Dawkins' books on the subject (e.g. The Blind Watchmaker, or the Ancestor's Tale). They deal with just about every standard objection and misconception of the theory that you can think of. Those who are turned off by his aggressive atheism (or whatever) need not worry, as these books are geared mainly towards describing evolution and biology to the layman, and not proselytizing atheism. Of course, they won't make anyone an expert on the subject, but they are quite informative--in fact, I have gained most of my knowledge of the subject (as well as that of other subjects) from such types of books.

I believe that life evolved from other forms of life, and I believe Darwin's theory explains to some degree evolution within species.

I believe however (and I am not a christian) that the probability of any random process adding all the new data to the genome that has arisen upon the earth since the time the 1st amino acids were formed has a lesser probability of a tornado building New York City out of debris. There are things about evolution we don't understand and that Darwin didn't adequately explain.

The problem with your argument is that you mistake evolution by natural selection to be a random process. It's not. Mutations are random, but what mutations are selected by the environment is not random. Further, it should be remembered that evolution doesn't work by giant leaps. The eye, for instance, doesn't just pop into existence--for a fully functional eye to just appear as a random mutation would be incredibly against the odds (as the example you give). Rather, the eye such as we have has had lots and lots of precursors. In fact, in nature today, there are several examples of eyes which could be deemed proto-eyes, and which could fit into many of the stages needed for such a required process.

[Kodos]

The problem with your argument is that you mistake evolution by natural selection to be a random process. It's not. Mutations are random, but what mutations are selected by the environment is not random.

What evolutionary advantage is a mere stub of a bone for a wing, a mere eye socket with no functioning of an eye, or feathers by themselves?

[Ahknaton]

How much proof is there for evolution? We have species of monkeys that have changed little to nothing in millions of years, while we're still lacking the missing link.
Different species change at different rates due to the amount of selectionary pressure. I don't agree that there is no missing link either. What about homo erectus and all the other intermediate forms?
I'm not sure where I stand on this position. The idea that the universe and life came into being just because, without some person or people behind it somewhere is ludicrious. At the same time, the idea that this fucked up planet could be made by someone intelligent is ludicrous.
I feel the same way, but I think that the real question that science can't answer is how and why did the universe come into existence in the first place. Evolution on the other hand is pretty much established fact.

[guy]

Countless reproducible and verifiable observations support the theory of evolution (and its general basis in natural selection), so I think this theory is likely true.

No reproducible or verifiable observations support the theory that God (or some other conscious force) guided the process, so I don't think this theory is likely true.

[Mike]

Evolution on the other hand is pretty much established fact.That seems questionable. Even if one accepts a scientific materialist paradigm, evolution seems established only insofar as there simply are no alternate theories available. There is no watertight proof that one species ever evolved into another. Nor can evolution make falsifiable predictions outside of trivial things like shifting allele ratios in a given population. So if it's a scientific fact, it's of an unusual sort.

[Impérialiste]

Atheists will always try to trip you up with the question of what created "god" or this higher force, whatever you want to call it and that is a good one to trip people up with. The idea that this "force" just always was isn't really much more nonsensical than the idea that the universe and life originally came into being from nothing, however. I lean towards believing there is a "higher power." I am just not sure if I lean this way merely because it makes more sense to me or if it is because I want to believe that.

You're a bit out of your league on this one.

First, Atheists don't argue creation came from nothing. Scientifically, energy always existed and is still conserved. The Big Bang is a subset of the Conservation of Energy.

Two, the concept of God can be bizarre. The best argument is the cosmological argument, and I don't think it holds much water. Also, at least an all-powerful God causes a paradox to be formed: Could an all-powerful, all-knowing God create a stone he couldn't move himself? The point of this paradox, besides the paradox itself, is the general absurdity of the idea of God. Theologians have yet to even address theodicy to any reasonably coherent degree.

Three, I don't understand the general rationale for God creating the world as being any more rational than not having had anything at all. Indeed, one must presuppose a God who creates is creating a perfect world when nothing could be further from the truth (which puts a dent in William Paley's argument of intelligent design). Indeed, why would humans even need to evolve if God could create in such a way that had flaws in itself? I haven't heard of this analogy though it's a valid analogy given Paley's structural format: Can a perfect mathematician make mistakes? Can a perfect creator create flawed creations? How does the evolution of our eyes and our deficiencies with the peripheral vision converge with God creating us? Is evolution contingent if God is creating? Why does there need to be a change in us when Newton's Laws aren't changing over time (unless one approaches the speed of light)? The concept of God, at least with how God tends to be centrally defined ontologically in the Western world, is indeed counterintuitive.

[Captain Marinesko]

There is no watertight proof that one species ever evolved into another.

That is the whole point of science- a theory is the best available explanation based on emperical evidence and testing. The theory that the Earth revolves around the sun is still considered a "theory" as well.

[Kodos]

The Omnipotence paradox (I disbelieve in a personal Abrahamic type god, I lean towards a pantheistic/taoistic eternally existing 1st cause) is a rather poor arguement to use, as someone with your degree of mathematical training (much higher then mine) surely you are aware of its logical flaws.

[Ahknaton]

That seems questionable. Even if one accepts a scientific materialist paradigm, evolution seems established only insofar as there simply are no alternate theories available.
Sure, same as any scientific theory.
There is no watertight proof that one species ever evolved into another.
Watertight proofs exist only in mathematics. There is a great deal of evidence: the fossil record, greater genetic overlap between species that share more recent common ancestors and so on. There are plenty of other "scientific facts" that can be subjected to the same degree of skepticism e.g. the temperature of the surface of the sun, what goes on inside a black hole, the theory of continental drift etc.
Nor can evolution make falsifiable predictions outside of trivial things like shifting allele ratios in a given population. So if it's a scientific fact, it's of an unusual sort.
Since it operates over such a large timescale you can't set up a controlled lab experiment like you can for say, chemistry, but other scientific disciplines have the same problems (e.g. astrophysics) so evolution isn't unique in that regard. Also, it depends what you mean by a prediction. Does it necessarily imply forecasting an event in the future? If a biologist predicts from the theory of evolution that species A will share approximately X% of its DNA with species B (based on their most recent common ancestor, which can be estimated by other means) and DNA analysis confirms this then I would say it is a falsifiable, correct prediction. There are plenty of other ways that evolution could be falsified too (mammalian fossils on a lower geological strata than dinosaur bones etc).

[Mike]

That is the whole point of science- a theory is the best available explanation based on emperical evidence and testing. The theory that the Earth revolves around the sun is still considered a "theory" as well.Evidence? The ToE claims that every species descends from a common ancestor, but it has no way of demonstrating that any species ever evolved from another. Testing? What will ladybugs evolve into 100 million years hence, if anything? Even if you cared to predict, it can't be tested. Thanks for playing. The movement of the earth, in contrast, can be directly observed (evidence) from a spacecraft and its position can be predicted (testable) using a calendar.

Side note - It dawns on me that the word "evolution" is being used loosely on this thread. Precisely defined, "evolution" means the common descent of species via natural selection (poll option #1). On this thread, "evolution" seems to mean the common descent of species, via any means (any of the first three poll options). Ironically, biologists like Dawkins makes the precise claim when even the loose claim cannot be absolutely proven. Therefore it seems that some biologists are invoking "natural selection" to explain a phenomenon whose existence isn't even proven.

[Helios Panoptes]

The Omnipotence paradox (I disbelieve in a personal Abrahamic type god, I lean towards a pantheistic/taoistic eternally existing 1st cause) is a rather poor arguement to use, as someone with your degree of mathematical training (much higher then mine) surely you are aware of its logical flaws.

Can you elaborate?

[Petr]

That is the whole point of science- a theory is the best available explanation based on emperical evidence and testing. The theory that the Earth revolves around the sun is still considered a "theory" as well.
Here's an approach that a Marxist should appreciate.

There is an interesting cynical theory in creationist circles that the second biggest reason - that is, besides tickling the inherent anti-God sentiments of fallen men - that Darwin's theory took academia by storm in the latter part of the 19th century was that it provided the newly emerging class of biological professionals (a class which was positively huge compared to what had existed before) a perfect feeding trough.

One might call this a social explanation for the rise of Darwinism - the "class interests" of Darwinian ideologues hiding behind neutral facade:

http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev1203.htm

How Darwinism Produces Job Security

12/22/2003

One thing Darwinism has going for it: it provides endless opportunities to research stories that are nearly impossible to prove.

...

Caught in the act! This is an important principle to understand about Darwinism, and why it has become so successful, and why it has taken over the intellectual world. It no longer matters whether a hypothesis is true or not, but only whether it keeps lazy scientists employed as storytellers. Evolutionary science has been liberated from repeatability, testability and observability. The key word is now plausibility, which being translated, means science has become fiction. After all, any good novel or short story is plausible, isn’t it? (Since there are no Laws of Plausibility, at least it will be plausible to somebody, especially the storyteller.)

For Darwinists studying the evolution of birds from dinosaurs, to really do their job rigorously, they would have to identify every beneficial mutation or gene duplication, connect it to an actual functional advantage, and monitor its spread through a population. They would have to find every transitional fossil, know its date accurately, trace the development of all the flight-related hardware and software in the genes (including feathers, perching feet, hollow bones, avian lungs, specialized organs, modified brain, body size, metabolic rate, specialized muscles and tendons, and behavioral instincts, such as knowing how to take off and land and use thermals), explain how these morphological changes proceed from embryo to adult, and much more. Clearly, doing all this is impossible. Moreover, they would need to uncover, by experiment, new natural laws that create increasing levels of complexity and information against the inexorable pressure of entropy. Even if in some fantasyland they could perform these impossible experiments, they would never know if it matched prehistory without getting into a time machine and watching the whole story unfold.

This is too hard, so evolutionists changed the rules. They don’t like doing science the old way, the way Joule and Faraday and Mendel did it. It’s so much easier to just flop on the sofa and speculate. When the NSF comes around and wonders how the grant money is being spent, the Darwinist can show the photo album from the last vacation in the Bahamas (see Dec. 03 headline), or show a home-video clip of partridge chicks running up a ramp in the lab, or demonstrate the latest computer games (see May 8 headline) enough to look busy. And so that Eugenie Scott can brag about all the scientific literature that supports evolution, the Darwinist can have his or her grad student write it up in specialized jargon for Nature or Science or National Geographic, ending with the typical benediction about all the wonderful stories that the latest new twist on the plot opens up. Look through the Chain Links on “Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory” and check if this is not indeed the situation.

...

Old Charlie was clever. He had a vivid imagination and a gift of gab, and instead of proving his story, he said, “It’s plausible, isn’t it? Prove me wrong!” So we took the bait and headed off on an impossible quest, trying to prove a universal negative, instead of calling his bluff and making him prove his story right. While we were distracted, he rounded up the Starving Storytellers, gave them lab coats and became their patron saint. They have been in his debt ever since.

Antievolutionists have been snookered into trying to prove that this or that alleged feathered dinosaur really isn’t an ancestor to birds, or that this or that microevolutionary change cannot be extrapolated endlessly, without realizing that they are trying to beat Hobbes at Calvinball. As long as the Darwinists are free to make up stories that can never be proved, it’s hopeless to call them on the carpet. The one who sets the rules controls the game.

The reason Darwin Party members are so vehement against critics is that their jobs are at stake. The founding fathers of science declared independence from speculation by framing an unwritten constitution which demanded that scientific results be observable, testable and repeatable. But later presidents, giving into pressure from special interest groups that found the work too hard, started entitlement programs like the Great Society for Storytellers. The GSS took over labs, removed the flasks and ammeters, and set up couches surrounding banquet tables filled with “tantalizing speculations” (see Sept. 18 commentary). Eventually, Big Science became a bloated bureacracy distributing limited grant money to more and more storyteller banquets, while those rugged individualists who still believed in the founding principles of science were being burdened to support the growing welfare state. Those few who called for fairness were accused of hate speech, and ridiculed as irrational, superstitious obscurantists who simply didn’t understand “science.”

...
Thus on the material basis alone (to say nothing about hidden spiritual factors), we might consider every pro-Darwin academician a biased commentator.


Petr

[Angler]

I voted "Yes, by unguided natural selection," but I don't rule out the second option, that some kind of Creator, conscious universe, or other unknown entity is behind evolution.

That seems questionable. Even if one accepts a scientific materialist paradigm, evolution seems established only insofar as there simply are no alternate theories available. There is no watertight proof that one species ever evolved into another. Nor can evolution make falsifiable predictions outside of trivial things like shifting allele ratios in a given population. So if it's a scientific fact, it's of an unusual sort.Falsifiable predictions have definitely been made by evolution. For example, the theory has been used to make predictions about where on earth certain kinds of fossils would be expected to be found. Those predictions have turned out to be correct.

Here's a more specific example. Evolution has long predicted that humans and apes share a common ancestor. Now, with the availability of DNA sequencing technology, we can see that one of our human chromosomes looks exactly like two chimp chromosomes fused together:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXdQRvSdLAs

[Omniel]

The problem with your argument is that you mistake evolution by natural selection to be a random process. It's not. Mutations are random, but what mutations are selected by the environment is not random.

What evolutionary advantage is a mere stub of a bone for a wing, a mere eye socket with no functioning of an eye, or feathers by themselves?
The phased evolution of the eye isn't really much of a problem to explain, however much ID advocates would prefer to portray it as too complex to be accounted for by natural selection.

[NeoCornelio]

I've no idea. I cannot 'believe' in such theories as they are unverifiable. I might think that life is too complex, which might lead me to think that there might have been a creator. But how can I build an ideology, a worldview, upon such a feeble foundation? I prefer not to think about it; total waste of time, imo.

[Omniel]

ID/Creationist theory is advocated by wishful thinkers, intellectually honest or otherwise. On the other hand, I don't doubt that most supporters of natural selection and evolution would prefer nothing more than to be wrong about this particular subject. Who woudn't prefer to believe in a theory that validates the existence of a benign, protective supernatural force that rewards believers, preserves good and punishes evil, as well as ensuring us all eternal life? It's a far nicer thought than simply 'switching off' and rotting in the ground.

[Joe McCarthy]

[QUOTE]Originally Posted by Impérialiste
Also, at least an all-powerful God causes a paradox to be formed: Could an all-powerful, all-knowing God create a stone he couldn't move himself? The point of this paradox, besides the paradox itself, is the general absurdity of the idea of God. Theologians have yet to even address theodicy to any reasonably coherent degree.
[/QUOTE

I agree completely, except where you say it demonstrates the absurdity of God. This argument is airtight except that it neglects one out - that God is NOT all-powerful. And who could be so astute as to think that? Why, a Gnostic of course!

[Joe McCarthy]

I also want to say that I believe in evolution, though I see it as a brutal, unforgiving process. Knowing the horrors that must have abounded for evolution to be true, I'm unsure how any Christian approaching anything close to orthodoxy could believe in it. This is a point that Henry Morris made years ago, and in my estimation it has yet to be refuted.

[Petr]

ID/Creationist theory is advocated by wishful thinkers, intellectually honest or otherwise. On the other hand, I don't doubt that most supporters of natural selection and evolution would prefer nothing more than to be wrong about this particular subject. Who woudn't prefer to believe in a theory that validates the existence of a benign, protective supernatural force that rewards believers, preserves good and punishes evil, as well as ensuring us all eternal life? It's a far nicer thought than simply 'switching off' and rotting in the ground.
There are, and have been, other options available for people besides traditional Biblical theism and Western post-Christian materialistic atheism. Pantheism for example, joining into universal spirit after death.

And non-believers of the Bible have great emotional investment in not believing in Last Judgment and eternal punishment. Darwin himself was one of those people.


Petr

[Ahknaton]

I also want to say that I believe in evolution, though I see it as a brutal, unforgiving process. Knowing the horrors that must have abounded for evolution to be true, I'm unsure how any Christian approaching anything close to orthodoxy could believe in it. This is a point that Henry Morris made years ago, and in my estimation it has yet to be refuted.
I've thought that before. When you think of all the trillions of deaths that must have happened for us to have evolved to the point we are now it's horrifying. I just hope that for 99% of our evolutionary history we were below the threshold of sentient consciousness, but there's no reason to believe that. How many of our ancestors had to be eviscerated by sabre-toothed tigers just for us to gain an extra IQ point, or run 0.1 km/h faster or whatever? It makes dysgenic breeding seem even more perverse, since it's basically flushing away gains that were made in the most painful and brutal way possible.

[Anarch]

I accept evolution as a fact until I see evidence that demonstrates otherwise. I also think that is the only sane answer.

[Kostya Novoselov]

Evolution is an observable fact.

One of the Universe principles may be short-term development of primordial soups into more complex organizations including what we call life and consciousness in our time-space interval.

[Kostya Novoselov]

Evolution is an observable fact.

One of the Universe principles may be short-term development of primordial soups into more complex organizations including what we call life and consciousness in our time-space interval.

And it seems obvious to me that our ontology will never be able to conquer and fully comprehend these principles.

[Kostya Novoselov]

I might think that life is too complex, which might lead me to think that there might have been a creator. But how can I build an ideology, a worldview, upon such a feeble foundation?

The notion of a creator is fundamentally no different of that conceived by the first cave painters twenty-ten thousand years ago.

It carries the baggage of animal and post-animal confusion. It is therefore too human and weak.

I need something that gives me ontological wiiiiiings.

So that I can fly.

[Felix the Cat]

That word "theory" seems to cause a lot of confusion

[Felix the Cat]

It makes dysgenic breeding seem even more perverse, since it's basically flushing away gains that were made in the most painful and brutal way possible. Even "christian" societies used to disapprove of that sort of thing. The belief in inherent universal human equality is not a christian notion, but a secular one. Contemporary christians are vocal but powerless: the most formidable opponents of genetic science are egalitarian socialists, who are generally irreligious.

[Kodos]

Can you elaborate?

Certainly, an omnipotent god could both create and then move a rock of any size. He could also create one that he couldn't move, but to do so he would have to surrender his omnipotence.

[Geist]

I voted for the second option, but I really need a new one.

I do not think it is purely random, nor do I think God or an unconscious force drives the process. I do however think there is an inherent purpose or telos, and that all things seem 'destined' toward to their own end (and are therefore open to adaptation by neccessity). I actually dislike the options forced upon by science and religion in their seemingly endless pissing match regarding creation.

The wonder is in the things themselves; not the why, the how or the where from.

[Omniel]

There are, and have been, other options available for people besides traditional Biblical theism and Western post-Christian materialistic atheism. Pantheism for example, joining into universal spirit after death.

And non-believers of the Bible have great emotional investment in not believing in Last Judgment and eternal punishment. Darwin himself was one of those people.
Petr
Yes I'm sure that some non-believers may have an emotional stake in atheism because they fear judgement, but given that there is no credible reason to believe there is any God to fear, it's a moot point. Why reject religion out of fear when you can reject religion because it fails to provide empirical evidence? Voodoo is a pretty scary religion too, but who cares, it's bullshit.

ID is just another religious doctrine, and once you strip away the weak pretense of scientific enquiry, it merits no more credibility than the Aborigine Dreamtime cosmology. On the contrary, natural selection is an objectively observable process, and evolution is its logical conclusion. In the face of rational scrutiny, it easily outclasses silly self-indulgent theological rambling.

[Petr]

Yes I'm sure that some non-believers may have an emotional stake in atheism because they fear judgement, but given that there is no credible reason to believe there is any God to fear, it's a moot point.
It's annoying how shallow unbelievers like you solipsistically project your own attitudes and beliefs on all the rest of mankind.


Petr

[Omniel]

It's annoying how shallow unbelievers like you solipsistically project your own attitudes and beliefs on all the rest of mankind.
Petr
What is a 'shallow unbeliever'?

[Joe McCarthy]

Certainly, an omnipotent god could both create and then move a rock of any size. He could also create one that he couldn't move, but to do so he would have to surrender his omnipotence.

Once he surrendered it how could he get it back? One could say he could so because he's omnipotent, but that'd be a priori false.

So we're back to the paradox.

[Helios Panoptes]

Certainly, an omnipotent god could both create and then move a rock of any size. He could also create one that he couldn't move, but to do so he would have to surrender his omnipotence.

Yes, so it seems to me as well. I am curious as to how this is an objection that reveals a logical flaw of some type. It appears, rather, to be the intended conclusion of the argument. That is, there is something incoherent in the notion of something being necessarily omnipotent because then it cannot cease to be omnipotent; therefore, there is a power that it lacks and it is not omnipotent, which contradicts the assumption that it is. Since attributing necessary omnipotence leads to a contradiction, nothing can be necessarily omnipotent.

Of course, there is no paradox if you believe that God is contingently omnipotent.

[Angler]

What is a 'shallow unbeliever'?It's one of the many canned ad hominems Petr uses when he finds himself unable to respond to a point.

[Scryllak]

ID/Creationist theory is advocated by wishful thinkers, intellectually honest or otherwise. On the other hand, I don't doubt that most supporters of natural selection and evolution would prefer nothing more than to be wrong about this particular subject. Who woudn't prefer to believe in a theory that validates the existence of a benign, protective supernatural force that rewards believers, preserves good and punishes evil, as well as ensuring us all eternal life? It's a far nicer thought than simply 'switching off' and rotting in the ground.

Great point, one that's almost never brought up. I've yet to hear of a Creationist/IDer who holds his beliefs grudgingly, wishing life weren't so, while there are a number of atheists/agnostics (myself included) who would take the regular comfort from the notion of supernatural benevolence if they could bring themselves to believe in it.

[Captain Marinesko]

Great point, one that's almost never brought up. I've yet to hear of a Creationist/IDer who holds his beliefs grudgingly, wishing life weren't so, while there are a number of atheists/agnostics (myself included) who would take the regular comfort from the notion of supernatural benevolence if they could bring themselves to believe in it.

I second this- I would prefer knowing there is an omnipotent being that is concerned with morality and rewards the just while punishing the bad.

[Helios Panoptes]

I fall on the opposite end of the spectrum. I do not believe in the existence of gods and I'm happy about it. First of all, the idea that there is some being that is infinitely more powerful than anything in existence and whose level we can never hope to achieve is embittering. Also, the existence of such a being would make life too tidy. Everything would work out for good people in the end, etc. That notion arouses sheer contempt in me. It seems childishly saccharine and I would rather it not be true. Lastly, if there were a god, there would probably be absolute values decided upon by it. I like to operate in an intrinsically meaningless landscape where we alone impart significance to our actions.

Whether you want there to be a god to coddle you and strike down bad people or you prefer atheistic chaos depends on which you desire most: power or comfort.

It's quite possible for someone to be glad there's no god, but I do agree with the others that there are no creationists who'd rather that we inhabited a godless universe. I've never encountered anyone like that.

[Transcendentally Challenged]

I do believe that life on earth was either created or was brought here from somewhere else

OK, and how did life come to be so complex somewhere else, where it came to earth from?

Its not even an answer its an evasion.

[Petr]

Also, the existence of such a being would make life too tidy. Everything would work out for good people in the end, etc. That notion arouses sheer contempt in me. It seems childishly saccharine and I would rather it not be true.
You know, in Christian theology "being good" is not enough. Christians have always had somewhat different notions about good and evil than pagan or humanist moralists.

I invite you to read this following Chick tract and ponder about its message:

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0037/0037_01.asp

I do not find this tract by any means perfect, but in all its crude simplicity, it does strikingly suggest what potential threat to conventional morality (as understood by non-Christians) is contained in the unadulterated Christian doctrine of salvation.

http://www.chick.com/tractimages60884/0037/0037_22.gif


Petr

[Helios Panoptes]

You know, in Christian theology "being good" is not enough. Christians have always had somewhat different notions about good and evil than pagan or humanist moralists.

I invite you to read this following Chick tract and ponder about its message:

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0037/0037_01.asp

I do not find this tract by any means perfect, but in all its crude simplicity, it does strikingly suggest what potential threat to conventional morality (as understood by non-Christians) is contained in the unadulterated Christian doctrine of salvation.

http://www.chick.com/tractimages60884/0037/0037_22.gif


Petr

I was aware of that, but Christians often believe that atheists behave in a less ethical manner than fellow believers, so "good people" do get rewarded, ultimately.

[Transcendentally Challenged]

Yes, so it seems to me as well. I am curious as to how this is an objection that reveals a logical flaw of some type. It appears, rather, to be the intended conclusion of the argument. That is, there is something incoherent in the notion of something being necessarily omnipotent because then it cannot cease to be omnipotent; therefore, there is a power that it lacks and it is not omnipotent, which contradicts the assumption that it is. Since attributing necessary omnipotence leads to a contradiction, nothing can be necessarily omnipotent.

Of course, there is no paradox if you believe that God is contingently omnipotent.


It doesn't even have to be a rock, you can just say 'is God so omnipotent, as not to be omnipotent?'

the paradox is only a linguistical one. A flaw in reasoning and in the whole understanding of 'omnipotence'.

If God can create 10 in 10th degree of Universes, but can't create 10 in 11th degree of Universes does it make him not omnipotent? Moreover, doesn't infinity of choices make any idea of omnipotence senseless?

[Jake Featherston]

the idea that there is some being that is infinitely more powerful than anything in existence and whose level we can never hope to achieve is embittering.

That is far from innate to the concept of God. Although one would have to delve into theological precepts with associations beyond the establishment sects, in order to find validation of my point. I know members of eccentric, Christian sects who believe it is the destiny of all Humanity (other than for some relatively small minority of irredeemably wicked individuals, who's existence will be eternally annihilated, the fate for which "Hell" is but the tame parable) to eventually reach spiritual perfection, and thus to become an omnipotent peer of God. Bit of a minor quibble, in the sense such a conception of God is so uncommon, never-the-less, its important (in so far as critiquing your above remark goes) to note that God is not necessarily associated with one of the apparently principal attributes which you have assigned to him.

[Jake Featherston]

You know, in Christian theology "being good" is not enough.

A fact which has tended to make the utterances of Christian theologians seem suspect, to me.

[Transcendentally Challenged]

On topic,

I voted for the second option. The idea that evolution is accidental seems like an evasion. Dice have to be thrown to start rolling. Whether the dice are loaded or not is another question.

On the whole, I'm a bit sceptical about the whole idea of evolution. Many here said 'hey its the best we have to explain the facts'. Well, not really. You can pretty much explain EVERYTHING with the Bible.

But as Popper correctly noted, whether theory is really a scientific one and not an ideology is observed not by the amount of facts it explains, but whether it leaves the door open for the chance to be proven wrong. I don't see, how one can prove that evolution is wrong and never happened - we never found any example of any species actually evolving into something else, so what, keep on digging.

As for theological matters, I do believe in the Creator, but I'd actually prefer him either not to exist (and thus death to be final), or to provide a solution to a more troublesome matter, than to be saved or not - that is, self-awareness. The whole idea of remaining self-aware, sentient and existing as a personality forever sounds like Hell regardless of whether this eternity is spent in communion with God or not.

[klipgeit]

Different species change at different rates due to the amount of selectionary pressure. I don't agree that there is no missing link either. What about homo erectus and all the other intermediate forms?


Homo Erectus the elusive one.
He was on all the continents and we-somehow- have him as our ancestor not the apes.
Feature --------------Most Apelike---------- Least Apelike
Nose ---------------- Negroid--------------- Caucasoid
Jaw------------------Negroid----------------Mongoloid
Body hair-------------Caucasoid------------- Mongoloid
Lips------------------Caucasoid--------------Negroid
Hair form-------------Mongoloid--------------Negroid
Eye colour-----------Mongoloid--------------Caucasoid

The above let me to believe that We as well as the Apes have come from the Erectus or earlier specimen
I have no proof,but I have spent hours in the Ape zoo to study them and the passer-by(me included)
I believe too that isolation has contributed to the various shapes and differences as shown above, for adaption to survive.
We may have been able to or we would have been able to adapt our arms to wings if we were forced to.
If you look at the long limbs of the African,it appears that they adapted to the intense African heat to provide an efficient cooling system,add to this a female's extra large bum,which could be attributed to having extra fat for leaner days.
Then his tough and hard and dark skin is a protection against ultra violet light,insect bites,which the Norwegian-for instance-does not need,but he needs vitamin D.
We may reasonably suppose that the races are comparable in the sum total of what we call intelligence,but different in such details as colour sense-mechanical reasoning- and abstract thought.
The different aptitudes that do appear to exist may be the result of cultural and social selection-the product of a people's emphasis on certain cultural and social skills,which meant that those who possessed such aptitudes were chosen more frequently as mates.Those without the preferred skills were less likely to find a mate.
Example.An Arab on horse back and using it as a pack animal in the desert is less likely to find a mate than an Arab with a camel,which is made for a desert.

[Helios Panoptes]

It doesn't even have to be a rock, you can just say 'is God so omnipotent, as not to be omnipotent?'

The answer to that question should be "yes." An omnipotent being can cease to be omnipotent. However, a necessarily omnipotent being cannot, so it is not truly omnipotent. There is something that it cannot do, but which a contingently omnipotent being can. This is the incoherency in the idea of necessary omnipotence.

the paradox is only a linguistical one. A flaw in reasoning and in the whole understanding of 'omnipotence'.

If God can create 10 in 10th degree of Universes, but can't create 10 in 11th degree of Universes does it make him not omnipotent?

I'm not sure what you mean, but I think you're asking if god's inability to do the logically impossible renders him not omnipotent. Philosophers have differed on the question of whether an omnipotent god can act contrary to the laws of logic (whatever those are...classical logic or maybe today you'd want a quantum logic), but being that I am a radical empiricist when it comes to logic, I do not think logic is metaphysically binding. At the very least, I am not comfortable affirming that because we cannot conceive of how a logical principle could be violated, it cannot be violated.

Moreover, doesn't infinity of choices make any idea of omnipotence senseless?

Please elaborate.

[Helios Panoptes]

That is far from innate to the concept of God. Although one would have to delve into theological precepts with associations beyond the establishment sects, in order to find validation of my point. I know members of eccentric, Christian sects who believe it is the destiny of all Humanity (other than for some relatively small minority of irredeemably wicked individuals, who's existence will be eternally annihilated, the fate for which "Hell" is but the tame parable) to eventually reach spiritual perfection, and thus to become an omnipotent peer of God. Bit of a minor quibble, in the sense such a conception of God is so uncommon, never-the-less, its important (in so far as critiquing your above remark goes) to note that God is not necessarily associated with one of the apparently principal attributes which you have assigned to him.

You are right. There are other conceptions of God which might be more congenial to my mindset. I was merely addressing the most common one in my region of the world. I wouldn't mind it if there were an impersonal prime mover that kick-started the universe and which pays not a jot of attention to our activities.

[Petr]

There are other conceptions of God which might be more congenial to my mindset. I was merely addressing the most common one in my region of the world. I wouldn't mind it if there were an impersonal prime mover that kick-started the universe and which pays not a jot of attention to our activities.
I believe that that is what most non-atheistic evolutionists believe in. Ancient Greeks already had the notion of "absentee God".


Petr

[klipgeit]

I believe that that is what most non-atheistic evolutionists believe in. Ancient Greeks already had the notion of "absentee God".


Petr

A lot of wisdom in this thread,but must we not analyze a godhead, what would be the qualities of an omnipotent god.
If we are an image of god,then we will know god eventually the more we open doors of the unknown.
We become god,so to speak.
I love knowledge by observation,I do not always like my interpretation of my observation.This is due to my lack of absolute knowledge.
I am an Atheist through and through.
I believe in Action demands Reaction.
I believe in a dynamic human being and(if there is a god)god is static,he rested on the 7th day and is still sleeping,therefore he is unable and unwilling to meddle in human affairs.
He may have started the Big Bang(no one knows how it started).
We humans will only get to observe up to the split second after the Big Bang.
So what are the qualities of an omnipotent god.

[DonkeyKong]

I'm using evolution in an algorithm I'm programming. To not believe the theory is absurd.

If that affected the way organisms came to be... well that's a different question.

[Sean]

I'm using evolution in an algorithm I'm programming. To not believe the theory is absurd.

If that affected the way organisms came to be... well that's a different question.

I probably should have made myself more clear. I'm referring to it in the latter sense; namely, whether or not you believe that evolution provides a good explanation for the diversity of life.

[Hippias]

The answer to that question should be "yes." An omnipotent being can cease to be omnipotent. However, a necessarily omnipotent being cannot, so it is not truly omnipotent. There is something that it cannot do, but which a contingently omnipotent being can. This is the incoherency in the idea of necessary omnipotence.

Omnipotence is a perfection or "great-making" quality a hypothetical being might have. A contingently omnipotent being can effectuate a change in its nature such that it's not omnipotent in some worlds. But that change diminishes its status as a perfect being. This power doesn't make the being greater, it makes him lesser. The necessarily omnipotent being is more powerful lacking that ability.

[Kodos]

Once he surrendered it how could he get it back? One could say he could so because he's omnipotent, but that'd be a priori false.

So we're back to the paradox.

If he surrendered he would no longer be omnipotent and then may not be able to get it back. Seems resolved to me.

[DonkeyKong]

If God created the universe, and the universe is subject to logic and reason, does God have to be?

[klipgeit]

I probably should have made myself more clear. I'm referring to it in the latter sense; namely, whether or not you believe that evolution provides a good explanation for the diversity of life.

Not totally.

Natural selection is not the same as evolution.
The word evolution embodies 2 concepts,the first being the meaning of the word itself.
It was derived from evolve,which denotes to unroll,to unfold,develop gradually by a natural process.
The second concept is about the mechanics of that natural process.
When darwin published his famous book"On the origin of Species by means of Natural Selection,the concept of gradual development had already been known for some 50 years and was accepted by the intelligentsia(my grandparents dreaded my arrival decades later) of the day,including grand papa Erasmus Darwin.
The father of the theory of evolution was Jean Baptiste Lamarck,But when it comes to the mechanics of the process,Gregor Mendel(the famous pea experiment) came closer to the truth than Lamarck and Darwin.
Evolution could be summarised as "the gradual development from earlier simple forms to more complex"
No plant or animal can change from one species into another in its own lifetime-the only place where evolution can take place is in the mother's womb,or the equivalent thereof
A species is mature when it cannot breed anymore with its group of origin.
Evolution's key words are:geographic isolation,mutations and inbreeding,concepts that are fully understood by mother nature and by breeders of cattle,dogs and parrots alike even god, who favoured the inbreeding of Adam and Eve to 6 billion psychopaths and mamzers:bbbat:
Isolate a breeding group and the interaction between mutations and inbreeding will gradually remove the differences between members.
Natural selection is ugly; it is about death and destruction,it has already removed about 99 percent of all species that ever lived.
Evolution on the other hand,is beautiful-it is about creation of new life forms.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum

[Kostya Novoselov]

If God created the universe

Man created the Universe.

[DonkeyKong]

Man created the Universe.

I imagine an all-powerful being would allow us to believe this.

[klipgeit]

Man created the Universe.

Only if man was god made visible

[KerguelenExileDissident]

I voted for Guided by God. That isn't something I can prove scientifically but overall believe in it due to metaphysical aspects. I do find it rather mentally retarded that people still think the world was created by God 6000 years ago and all that the scientific study, geological studies, biological studies etc are completely wrong because it fits their understanding of Planet Earthowicz.

Yes yes, radio isotopes don't decay, they are really Jew stars that emmit particles of subversion causing Japanese buddhist monks to listen to rap music and have sex with monkies

Pass the Gefilte Fishes w/ rabbiniate saucies

[Saqqara]

I believe in spiritual evolution. The body reflects the soul, and the soul changes and evolves (or de-evolves) over time throughout its various reincarnations.

[Dynamic]

I voted No because I do not believe that humans evolved in the way they teach us in schools. I don't believe there was a Divine God who magically created people either. However there is a growing scientific theory that all human beings were either genetically engineered or arrived on this planet from far away. I personally believe in the latter.

[ScottishStalinist1]

I am by no means greatly educated on biology and I really should start studying it for its importance. However I am more sympathetic to Lamarck-Lysenko than to Darwin in terms of how evolution works.

[Kostya Novoselov]

I imagine

Paraphrasing Shakespeare, I say:

There is the Universe. And it is only dreamt in your ontology, Horatio.

[klipgeit]

I believe in spiritual evolution. The body reflects the soul, and the soul changes and evolves (or de-evolves) over time throughout its various reincarnations.

If you speak of the brain(mind),then you seem to be correct.
BUT:Do we have a brain because we think or do we think because we have got a brain

If the former than "spiritual" evolution must ,as a consequence ,influence the body changes. A dog's body could never exist with a human mind

[Lord Nengwen]

I believe in devolution.

I believe that Whites were extra-terrestrially seeded and called Hypherboreans and since then racial miscegenation has been slowly destroying our Pure Race.

I draw inspiration from Baron Evolas ideas but have added a Ufological aspect.

[Jake Featherston]

I believe in devolution.

I believe that Whites were extra-terrestrially seeded and called Hypherboreans and since then racial miscegenation has been slowly destroying our Pure Race.

I draw inspiration from Baron Evolas ideas but have added a Ufological aspect.

Objectively, there's no such thing as devolution. If people are becoming less intelligent, than that means nature is selecting for lower intelligence, for example. Some evolutionary changes may seem more preferable to us as compared with other ones, but that's a matter of subjective preference.

[New Dawner]

J5nGNn7s3Ig

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5nGNn7s3Ig

AntimatterRadio | August 08, 2010
Antimatter Radio's continuing series on the death of evolution pseudoscience, www.AntimatterRadio.com.

xf9RS51wmyo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf9RS51wmyo

AntimatterRadio | May 24, 2010
The Antimatter Radio Show 5-24-10. www.AntimatterRadio.com. Host: Jeffrey Grupp. The end of Evolutionary Theory: the refutation of chromosome 2 fusion being evidence for human evolution.

[Mary Magdalene]

Most people who believe in God also believe that their ancient religious scriptures are evidence for the existence of God. They pray for miracles to help them through life and they hope for a heavenly reward after death. Their faith may give them comfort, but unless they are prepared to question the beliefs that were passed down to them by tradition, then they will never have anything meaningful to contribute to a philosophical debate about God's existence.

The problem with trying to debate the existence of God is that the word 'God' means so many different things to different people. God is described by the various religions as being anything from an interventionist judge to an incomprehensible observer. Traditional religious myths have 'him' doing everything from angrily flooding the world in order to punish the sinners, to walking around in the form of a man, preaching love and forgiveness.

Until only recently, it was dangerous to openly debate the existence of God. Even today, in some parts of the world, religious leaders still condition their followers to react violently whenever their teachings are questioned. However, with the total freedom of expression now made possible by the Internet, with the ideological battle heating up between traditional religious morality and modern democratic freedom, and with potential nuclear conflicts brewing around the world between the followers of different faiths, it seems like the inevitable showdown over the existence of God has finally begun.

For thousands of years, the traditional religions have undoubtedly played an important role in promoting social justice and preserving community and family values. But now the moral dictates of ancient religious scriptures often cause more problems than they solve. Religious opposition to birth control has condemned much of the developing world to overpopulation and poverty, and strict religious morality still forces many women to remain uneducated, live in fear, and cover their faces in public.

The traditional religions are now so heavily associated with ignorance, superstition, and oppression, and they have such a long history of being opposed to science and democracy that it seems like a miracle that any educated person can still believe in them. It is not surprising that many people living in free democratic societies today reject the idea of God, when the only God they are familiar with is so burdened by conflicting myths, oppressive morals, and hateful prejudices.


A question of purpose

One way to debate the existence of God without causing confusion or provoking anger is not to mention the word 'God' at all. The question can instead be phrased ... whether or not there is any purpose behind the existence of the universe or any intention behind the evolution of intelligent life.

There is more than enough evidence to safely assume that human beings evolved from self-replicating organic molecules through the process of random mutation and natural selection. However, despite the passionate claims of both theists and atheists, we simply do not have enough evidence to conclude whether or not our collective consciousness is progressing towards greater awareness in order to fulfill some kind of higher purpose.

Although it is possible that the entire cosmos is just a mindless cosmic machine that has either existed forever for no reason or else somehow sprang into existence like an island of order in a sea of chaos, it is also possible that the formation of this universe, the evolution of life, and the rise of consciousness happened in accordance with some kind of purposeful creative process.
Cont..
http://www.evolutionary-metaphysics.net/evolutionary_metaphysics.html

[Kriger]

The scientific theory of evolution is a two-dimensional concept in a three-dimensional world that has yet to accept the presence of a third-dimension let alone a fourth dimension.

Scientists are just recently beginning to alter viewing this three-dimension world through two-dimensional mindset and observation devices. One notable and most well-known change is the satellites viewing the Sun.. there are now two of them that have been calibrated with each other so that the Sun is being viewed three-dimensionally..which to me is appropriate in a three-dimensional world.

As DNA research is refined and advanced many three-dimensional concepts are being brought into Darwin's theory resulting in major changes in the theories of "Where do we come from?" Darwin's theory is fast-becoming a stepping stone to the answer rather than an answer. A necessary stepping stone that was brought into being by Darwin.

Theory of Parallel Evolution From Washington State University
http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/images/ovr10.gif

Theory of Radiation Evolution From Washington State University


Self-Help Reading Material

http://www.serpentfd.org/humanevolutionintro.html


http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_longfor/timeline/029_alt_theories.html

[Transcendentally Challenged]

One question to evolutionists:

Why have single-celled organisms, instead of replicating forever to create copies of themselves, started becoming more and more complex, turning into multi-celled organisms?

[Monty]

No primate or man has ever grown feathers not even in the circus.

Remember how it looked before you shaved your back?

[LeoAlbus]

Of course I believe in evolution.

[Angler]

Here's a good video showing the shocking ignorance of creationists (and how they brainwash impressionable young children with their nonsense):

9PF6O9g6kYE

[Parapliers]

The billions of years that evolutionists rely on don't exist. Years are a steady state concept involving seasons. If the world is locked in a ball of ice do the years pass? If the earth is in a state of volcanic turmoil with poison gasses blocking out the sun do years pass? Has the earth always been in the same orbit around the sun? Even given years as we know them there are many simple things one can think of that will never happen in a billion years.

Ages make more sense than years for prehistoric measurement of time. There has been no historic evolution so maybe it occurred in the age of magic.

[Universe-Hun]

There should be a poll answer with the option of "Devolution". That is what i am leaning towards.

[Gull]

why is that so important?
are we going to watch and wait will some animal eventually evolve?

[Arcturus]

One question to evolutionists:

Why have single-celled organisms, instead of replicating forever to create copies of themselves, started becoming more and more complex, turning into multi-celled organisms?

Because environmental conditions confered some benefit to organisms possessing a particular trait that was not universal among existing organisms. If that trait happened to increase complexity, then, as organisms that mutated to more closely approximate the trait enjoyed differential survival/reproductive success rates over the organisms that did not, that class of organisms in general would increase in complexity.

[Transcendentally Challenged]

Because environmental conditions confered some benefit to organisms possessing a particular trait that was not universal among existing organisms. If that trait happened to increase complexity, then, as organisms that mutated to more closely approximate the trait enjoyed differential survival/reproductive success rates over the organisms that did not, that class of organisms in general would increase in complexity.

Like... what sort of trait would that be?

And from the point of view of survivability, such huge complex constructions of cells like men are many times more vulnerable - a hit on the head and the whole multimillion organism is dead, with all the organs following the brain, while each single cell, if it avoids 'division of labor' and remains single, is pretty much immortal in its self-replication and completely self-reliable.

Is it not so?

[Arcturus]

Like... what sort of trait would that be?

And from the point of view of survivability, such huge complex constructions of cells like men are many times more vulnerable - a hit on the head and the whole multimillion organism is dead, with all the organs following the brain, while each single cell if it avoids 'division of labor' and remains single is pretty much immortal in its self-replication and completely self-reliable.

Is it not so?

Yes, if you measure success by sheer number of offspring produced, then bacteria are more successful than humans. It does not make sense, however, to compare the reproductive strengths vs. weaknesses of humans and bacteria, because they are so vastly removed from each other on the evolutionary ladder. Evolution is manifested in countless incremental steps, each step confering some advantage over the previous one. It would make more sense to compare a one-celled microorganism with that of a two or three-celled microorganism. Under some circumstances, such organisms may possess an advantage over their one-celled variants that would allow them to become established as a distinct stock. Another set of environmental circumstances may come along and favor increasing complexity of these new multicelled organisms. The set of environmental circumstances which favor the evolution of the one-celled organism into the two-celled organism may not be the same set that favor the further evolution of the two-celled organism into a three-celled organism(for example).

In other words, evolution is not just a 'numbers game'. It does not 'care' about the sheer volume of offspring produced. In some circumstances, one varient that is slightly more complex may establish itself. These circumstances may be quite narrow, and the differentiated population may be small in size compared to the original population, and the genetic differences slight, but that does not matter. All that matters is that it gets established; then it may(or may not) proceed to the next step. Humans are a result of this very long chain process.

[Dreadnought]

The billions of years that evolutionists rely on don't exist. Years are a steady state concept involving seasons. If the world is locked in a ball of ice do the years pass? If the earth is in a state of volcanic turmoil with poison gasses blocking out the sun do years pass? Has the earth always been in the same orbit around the sun? Even given years as we know them there are many simple things one can think of that will never happen in a billion years.

Ages make more sense than years for prehistoric measurement of time. There has been no historic evolution so maybe it occurred in the age of magic.

Uhhhhh no, a year is measured by the world going around the sun.

[Parapliers]

The theory of the billions of years meets the myth of evolution when we uncover all the near fossils. How many times has this happened to you? There you are merrily collecting fossils when you uncover a cache of stinking near fossils. They must only be less than a thousand years old. Give them a few million more years and they should be well defined.

[President Camacho]

There should be a poll answer with the option of "Devolution". That is what i am leaning towards.There seems to be increasing conjectures towards such theories. Recent Phora hot topic Edgar J Steele in a column called Robogroid: Cheetah Meets Pinhead (http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/columns/robo.htm) writes:
In their landmark book, "Forbidden Archeology," Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson make a compelling case for the human race being much, much older than conventional wisdom allows, with there having been several advanced civilizations before this, each torn asunder by, presumably, global catastrophes like mile-wide meteors, pole shifts or the eruption of supervolcanoes. That would explain a great many things, the unduplicatable Great Pyramid among them, or that spark-plug-like-device found hundreds of feet below ground, encased in undisturbed coal which had formed around it and carbon dated to well before the Stone Age. Or flash-frozen wooly mammoths found in the Siberian ice, standing upright and with seemingly fresh buttercups still frozen in their mouths.

Now Cremo has just come out with a new book, entitled "Human Devolution," in which he posits that humanity is not evolving. In fact, says Cremo, we are devolving from something akin to angels. As I look around myself in America today, I confess that Cremo's thesis certainly has merit. Watch MTV for just an hour if you don't believe me.

..............

On every front, it seems the quality of life is declining, and at an accelerating pace - similar to how the vortex quickens just as the toilet bowl empties. (For extra credit, identify the ethnic group that pushed the flush handle.)

Is it just me, or has there been a serious uptick in meteors, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes and the like just lately? Feels like we are racing to a date with Destiny in the near future. If it isn't an inbound Planet X, with the leading edge of its orbiting asteroids and assorted space clutter now impinging upon the solar system, according to some, then perhaps it is an overdue eruption from the Yellowstone supervolcano.

[Kuniklo Nigra]

No.

Energy patterns matter, not the other way around.

Serious issues with evolution theory:

1. Darwin thought cells were simple
2. Neo-Darwinism depends on positive mutation, though everyone has pretty much figured out by experience (and scientists by fruit fly experiments) that mutation is negative (is the lack of certain genes and causes deformity in general)
3. The millions and billions of fossils needed for selection out of mutations, then there being some positive mutation, then it being selected - the layers and layers of fossils of mutated or defective animals just aren't there
4. There's no fossil record of these intermediary animals (i.e., when they slap one together it gets front-page news, because they are so special...though wait a minute, you'd need millions of these things to show selection...)

The pattern (design) was there, and dead matter listened. Fossils of animals started out perfect and represent the same animals that are here today. (There are living fossils, more and more "extinct" animals that show up alive, the oceans depths are mostly unexplored, the oceans have shifted...)

And yes Ill Ragno, I don't believe in the carbon 14 or any other radiation-based dating system. If you don't know how much you started with, and the object isn't isolated from influence, you can't tell how much you've lost and thus the date of the object.

[Ahknaton]

1. Darwin thought cells were simple
How is that an issue?
2. Neo-Darwinism depends on positive mutation, though everyone has pretty much figured out by experience (and scientists by fruit fly experiments) that mutation is negative (is the lack of certain genes and causes deformity in general)
No it doesn't, it assumes that mutations can be either positive or negative, however they are mostly negative. All that is required is for at least some mutations to be positive, and for negative ones to be removed by natural selection faster than they occur so that they don't accumulate.
3. The millions and billions of fossils needed for selection out of mutations, then there being some positive mutation, then it being selected - the layers and layers of fossils of mutated or defective animals just aren't there
You wouldn't expect to see many fossils of animals with serious defects because they wouldn't have survived beyond a single generation (or even to adulthood).
4. There's no fossil record of these intermediary animals (i.e., when they slap one together it gets front-page news, because they are so special...though wait a minute, you'd need millions of these things to show selection...)
All fossils are intermediary.
And yes Ill Ragno, I don't believe in the carbon 14 or any other radiation-based dating system. If you don't know how much you started with, and the object isn't isolated from influence, you can't tell how much you've lost and thus the date of the object.
You do know how much you started with, which is the ambient amount of carbon 14 in the atmosphere. The actual amount of carbon in the sample doesn't matter, it's the proportion of carbon 12 to carbon 14. The atmospheric levels of C14 vary over time so you don't know the exact starting amount, however this is taken into account and the dating process only gives a range of possible ages, it's not like they claim accuracy down to the nearest year or anything.

[Jake Featherston]

At least half of the ten people who voted "No," are lying. Liking the idea of not believing in evolution is not the same thing as actually not believing in it.

[mladikov]

I accept that evolution is scientifically plausible -- more so than the alternatives -- but I reject the compatibility of the evolutionary narrative with that of the Christian narrative of creation, and I therefore withhold my assent to the former. An awkward position, to be sure. Simone Weil once said that Necessity is the veil of God -- if so, then perhaps evolution, even if 'true', is the veil which every Christian must pull aside as his duty to revelation.

I didn't know which poll option this would fall under, so I answered "no".

[Man of Ash]

No, because it is irreconcilable with Christianity. Either we are descended from a perfect, primordial, theomorphic man Adam, or we are descended from apes. One or the other; take your pick. I understand that Epicureans need a creation myth, but Christians, don't try to tell me that Adam came from the womb of an ape-woman - and that Jesus of Nazareth was descended from her too. Better atheism than such a parody of Christianity. Either we are made in the image of God, or we are mutant apes, but not both.

No again, because it is irreconcilable with any kind of realist ontology. It makes a nonsense of the idea of 'species' and rests on the shaky foundation of an assumed nominalism (where all categories are mere creations of the human mind), which is certainly not the only plausible solution to the problem of universals, to say the least. A deeply ingrained Darwinism causes us to think of everything in terms of nominalism and transformism, creating a false picture of the kind of universe in which we dwell; it causes us to think that we occupy the kind of universe where things have no real essence and are always transforming into other kinds of things, but that does not actually appear to be the case. Things that we can observe change in two ways only: they either grow, i.e. unfold their innate potential, or they degenerate, i.e. become less perfect manifestations of their essential form - but 'evolution' is a kind of process that just doesn't seem to happen. It is contra naturam.

By the way, the options in the quiz are poorly worded: nobody denies that natural selection occurs. Common descent, and speciation by random mutation, are the controversial hypotheses.

[Petr]

I accept that evolution is scientifically plausible -- more so than the alternatives -- but I reject the compatibility of the evolutionary narrative with that of the Christian narrative of creation, and I therefore withhold my assent to the former. An awkward position, to be sure. Simone Weil once said that Necessity is the veil of God -- if so, then perhaps evolution, even if 'true', is the veil which every Christian must pull aside as his duty to revelation.

I didn't know which poll option this would fall under, so I answered "no".
This little piece might interests you - how the hidden (or not-so-hidden) anti-theistic bias systematically influence evolutionist minds:

In the 1954 movie The Caine Mutiny, Humphrey Bogart plays the compulsive-paranoid Captain Queeg who is relieved of duty when unable to deal with a dangerous storm at sea. Upon return to port two officers face a court-martial for mutiny. The trial goes badly for them and they appear to be destined for prison until the final testimony of Captain Queeg where his underlying paranoia is suddenly revealed. In the courtroom sideways looks and wide eyes reveal a collective revelation: "Ohh, noooowwww I understand."

Bogart's masterful portrayal of Captain Queeg, nervously rolling ball bearings in his hand as he defended himself against the world, shows how underlying motivations, sometimes bizarre, can work and how they can suddenly manifest themselves at points.

Evolution is full of such teaching moments. Darwin's book, for instance, could ramble on for pages with meaningless speculation and thought experiment as boring as any courtroom. But then, suddenly, Darwin would pronounce that this or that collection of biological facts was "utterly inexplicable on divine creation."

Darwin could only speculate about how his theory could create such marvels, but he knew they must have evolved. Ahh, now we understand. The theory may make no sense, but it must be true.

Today it is no different. The evolution literature is loaded with metaphysical claims that come out of nowhere and reveal the underlying calculus of evolutionary thought. This is where the certainty comes from. This is why evolutionists agree, their theory must be a fact.
http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2009/08/bogey-moment-human-chromosome-count.html


Petr

[Parapliers]

If we evolved from earlier life forms we have essentially evolved from rocks. Rocks to plants to animals.

[Angler]

No, because it is irreconcilable with Christianity. Either we are descended from a perfect, primordial, theomorphic man Adam, or we are descended from apes. One or the other; take your pick. I understand that Epicureans need a creation myth, but Christians, don't try to tell me that Adam came from the womb of an ape-woman - and that Jesus of Nazareth was descended from her too. Better atheism than such a parody of Christianity. Either we are made in the image of God, or we are mutant apes, but not both.It is an incontrovertible fact that humans and chimpanzees have common ancestry. This can be seen most clearly by directly comparing the chromosomes of the two species:

BXdQRvSdLAs

The creationist response when confronted with such facts is that if the facts conflict with Christian dogma, then so much the worse for the facts.

Setting aside the point that our desires have no bearing on the reality of evolution, I don't see what's so terrible about having common descent with apes. That is not equivalent to being an ape. And what's so great about being directly descended from dirt as stated in Genesis, anyhow?

[Man of Ash]

It is an incontrovertible fact that humans and chimpanzees have common ancestry. This can be seen most clearly by directly comparing the chromosomes of the two species:
Ah, your favorite video. Well I looked into that matter before and provided an alternative explanation of the facts, but you ignored it. I'm not going to do it again. There are far too many posts of mine already from which you have sidled (http://www.thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=874893&postcount=144) away with your tail (http://www.thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=877181&postcount=71) between your legs (http://www.thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=877606&postcount=99).

[Angler]

Ah, your favorite video. Well I looked into that matter before and provided an alternative explanation of the facts, but you ignored it. I'm not going to do it again. There are far too many posts of mine already from which you have sidled (http://www.thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=874893&postcount=144) away with your tail (http://www.thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=877181&postcount=71) between your legs (http://www.thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=877606&postcount=99).Um, yeah, that's right. You're just too smart for me, so I slunk away, utterly defeated by your awesome intellect. :rolleyes:

Perhaps a better explanation is that I'm a pretty busy person IRL and don't always have time to address everyone's posts or engage in endless debate. I'm especially reluctant to spend a lot of time trying to convince someone who is either incapable of understanding the evidence or is just unwilling to accept it.

And BTW, you're right that that's one of my favorite videos. Why shouldn't it be? It gives one of the clearest explanations of the proof of common descent that I've ever seen.

Do you have a link to your alternative explanation that I missed? And do you have an explanation for this sort of thing:

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=775781&postcount=10

[Rogerius Josephus Boscovich]

Never mind Dawkins. This is one more thing creationists just cant explain, while evolution explains it perfectly well.

cO1a1Ek-HD0

[Mike]

Never mind Dawkins. This is one more thing creationists just cant explain, while evolution explains it perfectly well.


My first thought is that vocalizing requires coordination of the diaphragm and larynx. Perhaps there is a reason for bundling these nerves together.

At any rate, the route of one nerve strand is only a small part of a giraffe's overall complexity. I agree that it seems like evidence for common descent, but it doesn't seem like a proof.

[Kshatriya]

No, I believe in the traditional doctrine of involution.

[Man of Ash]

Um, yeah, that's right. You're just too smart for me, so I slunk away, utterly defeated by your awesome intellect. :rolleyes:

Perhaps a better explanation is that I'm a pretty busy person IRL and don't always have time to address everyone's posts or engage in endless debate. I'm especially reluctant to spend a lot of time trying to convince someone who is either incapable of understanding the evidence or is just unwilling to accept it.
Well, you know, it's just a little tiresome when you keep jumping into threads with these canards which I believe I've already refuted in previous discussions with you, but you never bothered to deal with those refutations and prefer to now act as if they never occurred. I mean, I know you're busy saving all our lives through physics or something, but you're actually wasting my time when you solicit responses from me and then don't bother to respond in kind. Especially as you evidently have the time to repeat your one-note comments endlessly, but suddenly run out of time when the debate becomes more complex.

As for "evidence", you seem a little naive about that, as about epistemological issues in general. "Evidence" is never self-evidently such. A material fact can only provide you with a minor premise for an argument; you still have to make your major premise explicit and argue for the proposed conclusion. Most evolutionist arguments, like your photo-argument, seem to take the form:

1. The Theory of Evolution is true.
2. This snake has a leg!
3. Therefore, the Theory of Evolution is true.
And BTW, you're right that that's one of my favorite videos. Why shouldn't it be? It gives one of the clearest explanations of the proof of common descent that I've ever seen.

Do you have a link to your alternative explanation? And do you have an explanation for this sort of thing:

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=775781&postcount=10
I previously wrote a post in which I responded to both your favorite video and your favorite photo - and you ignored it. Tell me why I should do it again?

Oh, what the heck. Miller's evidence indicates that humans once had 48 chromosomes: so what?

And your snake? Again: so what? It's a horrific degeneration from the normative form of a snake. No one denies that such mutations can occur. I take it your argument goes something like this:

1. Snakes are descended from lizards.
2. This snake has a leg.
3. Therefore, this snake has a vestigial lizard leg.
4. Therefore, snakes are descended from lizards.

BTW, no one says we are "descended from dirt" except materialists. And I'm not really a "creationist" per se, more of an "emanationist"; I read Genesis through the lens of a realist ontology, so I don't really get to be part of the fundie club. With or without Genesis, my metaphysics would insist on the reality of species.

[Kuniklo Nigra]

Evolution can't be true because mutations are almost never advantageous, nor are they numerous, nor can you have the number of selected advantageous mutations necessary to construct extremely complex and interdependent organic structures necessary for life. Essentially, evolutionists have several retarded tendencies:

1. to fill in the blanks around bones (84% to be exact)

2. to fill in where there isn't bone (with plaster etc.)

3. to arrange the bones how they please

4. to make tons of money off of these bones, which magically regular people in many construction sites and farmlands and hobbyist fossil hunters (like yours truly) around the world amazingly never find

5. to find "living fossils"

6. to find their odd inter-species fossils out in deserts where nobody can watch

7. to make huge headlines with their odd inter-species fossils (though according to the theory, the species between the species should far, far outnumber the species we have today)

8. to confuse intra-specie evolution (which is common) with speciation (which is impossible)

9. to sit there after great leaps in science and still pretend life is simple. Animals are made of bones, skin, eyes etc. without talking about the billions of differences on the microscopic level between the systems of different species (for example, between the skin of chimpanzees and man)

10. to use carbon 14 and other forms of dating based on radiation when they don't know the amount of said element started with nor how much the specimen was contaminated by its surroundings - i.e., to use invalid dating

11. they assume either you follow their stupid theories or you follow modern interpretations of the Bible - there are no other theories or ideas in the universe. "We are the only ones making intelligent guesses about the origins of life"

What I like about creationists and various species thereof, even though they are often just apologists for ridiculous parts of their religions, is

1. they emphasize the complexity of life and how amazing it is
2. they can at least express a correct logical sequence about how things happen in the world, i.e., energy first, patterned matter later.

[Kuniklo Nigra]

On a moral level, Darwin cannot be right because he married his cousin and made good friends with the evil Jew Karl Marx. Magically at the time of his publication came the discovery of dinosaurs - wow! - for the first time...in the 1850's. And to think that in 5,000 years of civilization man has never come across such a thing when digging in the ground. But cool! Jews found it just now! And they come out right with the publication of "Evolution" (i.e., speciation by selection).

So lemme get this straight. God made a huge mistake. Made all these big dinos and they all died out. Oops on that one. Then later, all the animals we see now were speciated out by selection. Wait that doesn't make sense. In the 20th century let's start claiming it happened by mutation, because the general public doesn't really understand much about that. Makes God look like a fool, doesn't it?

[Kuniklo Nigra]

It is an incontrovertible fact that humans and chimpanzees have common ancestry. This can be seen most clearly by directly comparing the chromosomes of the two species:
Even after the massive failure of genetic engineering and the promises of genetics curing all human ailments falling on their face, you still think that genes are the essence of life?

For crying out loud, they still can't find a genetic difference between chihuahuas and wolves.

[Parapliers]

The similarity of chromosomes just proves that there is similarity in the two creatures. Wolves are exactly like chihuahuas because they both have four legs and a tail.

[Kuniklo Nigra]

The similarity of chromosomes just proves that there is similarity in the two creatures. Wolves are exactly like chihuahuas because they both have four legs and a tail.
And they both like to bite the mailman, except when a wolf bites a mailman, the mailman has antlers. ;)

[Saqqara]

The most logical answer is quite simple:

Energy is conscious.

All life forms are made of energy, and the energy shapes and reshapes itself over time to best suit its environment. At some point it reaches its peak and there is no need for changes, you see the species remaining unchanged.

From the looks of things there is probably not any omnipotent God, just some beings who are better at controlling this universal force which makes up everything.

It goes along well with the fact that the universe is expanding, that the energy is also expanding and diversifying, and over the course of billlions of years the energy probably both expands and contracts cyclically. When the energy of the universe contracts, what you see is highly concentrated energy all in a small point, this energy is full of vitality, eagerly waiting to solidify into forms - like buds in springtime that are about to bloom into roses... Except that this energy has boundless potential. As the energy spreads out it diversifies to form stars, planets and life, and so forth. It's also probable that the energy does not uniformly expand and contract either.

[Kuniklo Nigra]

From the looks of things there is probably not any omnipotent God, just some beings who are better at controlling this universal force which makes up everything.
There have been many terms in the past which have then been changed, parodied or bastardized in the present. Humans were probably a lot happier before, when more of them understood and believed in God/Krishna/Buddha and before people thought lots of self titillation was the answer. I assume that the real definitions of these religious terms were more authentically scientific in their day, and that our making these terms more pure, noble and true today is like "polishing" them and returning them to their former glory.

I'm guessing, but I think God and like terms were expressing consciousness, and that there also at times expressed the whole of this consciousness (of which the beings you speak of were part of).

[Monty]

Energy is conscious.

Not only that, energy is consciously plotting your doom.

[Angler]

Well, you know, it's just a little tiresome when you keep jumping into threads with these canards which I believe I've already refuted in previous discussions with you, but you never bothered to deal with those refutations and prefer to now act as if they never occurred. I mean, I know you're busy saving all our lives through physics or something, but you're actually wasting my time when you solicit responses from me and then don't bother to respond in kind. Especially as you evidently have the time to repeat your one-note comments endlessly, but suddenly run out of time when the debate becomes more complex.I've already told you the truth. Sometimes I don't have the time to respond. Sometimes I forget about a thread after a few days away from the board. And sometimes I simply lose patience with a debate if the person displays excessive obtuseness or stubbornness, or if the debate seems to be going in circles. What is the point of endlessly debating someone who is simply not willing to change his mind no matter what evidence or arguments are presented?

As for "evidence", you seem a little naive about that, as about epistemological issues in general. "Evidence" is never self-evidently such.If by this you mean observations need to be processed by the brain before they become evidence, I think that's pretty obvious. But some observations require much less processing.

If I were to fire a bullet at a distant glass bottle and then the bottle immediately shattered, the latter observation would be clear evidence that the bullet hit the bottle. What wouldn't be self-evident about that?

There are, of course, other times when in order for an observation to be seen as "evidence," some subtle reasoning and background knowledge is necessary. This is often true in science.

A material fact can only provide you with a minor premise for an argument; you still have to make your major premise explicit and argue for the proposed conclusion.It sounds like you think all reasoning has to be deductive.

Most evolutionist arguments, like your photo-argument, seem to take the form:

1. The Theory of Evolution is true.
2. This snake has a leg!
3. Therefore, the Theory of Evolution is true.That's a silly caricature. Again, you're assuming that all reasoning is deductive. A great deal of the reasoning the human brain uses to understand the world is inductive.

The real reasoning goes more like this (it's not a deductive argument):

-- The fact that a snake was born with a leg is explained by the theory of evolution.
-- Evolution also explains innumerable other observations in a consistent manner.
-- There are no observations that rule out evolution, although evolution IS a falsifiable theory.
-- No other scientific theory explains the aforementioned observations while avoiding falsification.
-- Therefore, the probability that evolution is true is so high as to be essentially unity.

I previously wrote a post in which I responded to both your favorite video and your favorite photo - and you ignored it. Tell me why I should do it again?I asked you to provide a link to that post, as I obviously didn't see it. Is there any reason why you won't provide it?

Well, never mind if you're going to repeat it here anyway.

Oh, what the heck. Miller's evidence indicates that humans once had 48 chromosomes: so what?Why, then, do the sequences on either side of the telomeres that are "misplaced" at the center of that human chromosome look like chimp chromosomes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_2_%28human%29

What you're doing here is the equivalent of, "It didn't have to be the bullet that hit your bottle -- it could have been a tiny meteor from space!" Yeah, right. It's just a coincidence that human chromosome #2 looks essentially identical to two chimp chromosomes fused end-to-end.

You don't want to face the truth.

And your snake? Again: so what? It's a horrific degeneration from the normative form of a snake. No one denies that such mutations can occur. I take it your argument goes something like this:

1. Snakes are descended from lizards.
2. This snake has a leg.
3. Therefore, this snake has a vestigial lizard leg.
4. Therefore, snakes are descended from lizards.Again, this is a ridiculous caricature of the argument, and you're failing to understand why the clawed hand is such strong evidence of evolution. Either you lack the background knowledge and/or ability to understand it, or you are unwilling to think about it hard enough because you're afraid to understand it.

So you think random mutations occurred in a single generation, in just the right combination, to form a clawed hand in a snake. Do you have any idea how low the probability of such a thing happening is? No, I'm sure you have no idea. It's probably about the same as that of a tornado passing through a junkyard and assembling a 747 (to borrow the classic creationist argument and use it properly).

In order for a useful structure such as a clawed hand to be coded from random mutations, those mutations have to be subjected to a gradual selective process due to environmental pressures over millions of years. It cannot happen in just one generation.

The only reasonable explanation for a snake being born with a clawed hand is that genetic code for that clawed hand was lying dormant in the snake and "awakened" by a relatively small number of random mutations. If you can't understand this after acquiring the proper background knowledge and thinking about it, then I can't help you, and probably no one can.

BTW, no one says we are "descended from dirt" except materialists.The Bible quotes God as saying, "For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return."

Materialists would say that we are formed primarily of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Human beings are mostly water, not dirt.

[Saqqara]

Not only that, energy is consciously plotting your doom.

Now that I know the culprit.... :crusader:

[John the Savage]

The true test of whether or not two organisms are of the same species is whether or not they can breed with one another and produce fertile offspring. The genetic makeup of some breeds of cattle have diverged from one another so radically that they have trouble producing fertile offspring when mated with one another. If artificial selection can do this over a timescale of just a few thousand years, then just think of what natural selection could do over billions of years.

Evolution seems like the most likely theory to me. It's certainly more plausible than all that Bronze Age sky-god stuff in Genesis.

[Saqqara]

Evolution seems like the most likely theory to me. It's certainly more plausible than all that Bronze Age sky-god stuff in Genesis.

As if those were the only two possibilities...:deadhorse:

[Steinbrink]

I think evolution, like most but not all science, is empirical madness.

[Man of Ash]

What is the point of endlessly debating someone who is simply not willing to change his mind no matter what evidence or arguments are presented?
Heh. You tell me.
If by this you mean observations need to be processed by the brain before they become evidence, I think that's pretty obvious. But some observations require much less processing.

If I were to fire a bullet at a distant glass bottle and then the bottle immediately shattered, the latter observation would be clear evidence that the bullet hit the bottle. What wouldn't be self-evident about that?
Yes, and the derivation of Neo-Darwinian theory from a photograph is just that simple.
There are, of course, other times when in order for an observation to be seen as "evidence," some subtle reasoning and background knowledge is necessary. This is often true in science.

I'm pretty sure that should be "always".
It sounds like you think all reasoning has to be deductive.
No, but only deductive reasoning can give you "incontrovertible facts", "stone cold facts", or whatever simpleminded slogan you're using this week:
Inductive reasoning, also known as induction or inductive logic, is a kind of reasoning that allows for the possibility that the conclusion is false even where all of the premises are true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning
That's a silly caricature. Again, you're assuming that all reasoning is deductive. A great deal of the reasoning the human brain uses to understand the world is inductive.

The real reasoning goes more like this (it's not a deductive argument):

-- The fact that a snake was born with a leg is explained by the theory of evolution.
-- Evolution also explains innumerable other observations in a consistent manner.
-- There are no observations that rule out evolution, although evolution IS a falsifiable theory.
-- No other scientific theory explains the aforementioned observations while avoiding falsification.
-- Therefore, the probability that evolution is true is so high as to be essentially unity.
I.e., this piece of evidence can be interpreted in a way that is consistent with the TOE. It doesn't obviously falsify the theory, therefore it proves it.
I asked you to provide a link to that post, as I obviously didn't see it. Is there any reason why you won't provide it?
Yes there is: I don't remember what thread it was in.
Why, then, do the sequences on either side of the telomeres that are "misplaced" at the center of that human chromosome look like chimp chromosomes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_2_%28human%29

What you're doing here is the equivalent of, "It didn't have to be the bullet that hit your bottle -- it could have been a tiny meteor from space!" Yeah, right. It's just a coincidence that human chromosome #2 looks essentially identical to two chimp chromosomes fused end-to-end.
So we are now moving from the claim of a fusion event in the human lineage, which proved nothing, to a claim of similarity, which also proves nothing. We already knew that there are lots of similarities between human and chimp genomes, which doesn't prove common descent, and would be expected on the basis of their biological similarities anyway.
You don't want to face the truth.
It never takes long for the materialists to start rolling out the genetic fallacies.
Again, this is a ridiculous caricature of the argument, and you're failing to understand why the clawed hand is such strong evidence of evolution. Either you lack the background knowledge and/or ability to understand it, or you are unwilling to think about it hard enough because you're afraid to understand it.
Yes, I'm trembling! Not like you, you big, brave man, staring down the cold, hard truth. That's obviously your narrative about yourself, and it makes me LOL.
So you think random mutations occurred in a single generation, in just the right combination, to form a clawed hand in a snake. Do you have any idea how low the probability of such a thing happening is? No, I'm sure you have no idea. It's probably about the same as that of a tornado passing through a junkyard and assembling a 747 (to borrow the classic creationist argument and use it properly).

In order for a useful structure such as a clawed hand to be coded from random mutations, those mutations have to be subjected to a gradual selective process due to environmental pressures over millions of years. It cannot happen in just one generation.

The only reasonable explanation for a snake being born with a clawed hand is that genetic code for that clawed hand was lying dormant in the snake and "awakened" by a relatively small number of random mutations. If you can't understand this after acquiring the proper background knowledge and thinking about it, then I can't help you, and probably no one can.
No, I agree that this snake's genome contains the coding for claws. There are snakes with such appendages in the fossil record. But they are snakes. They have the unique spinal structure of a snake, by which it propels itself along the ground. These appendages are part of the potentiality of the snake genome. This is an example of loss of features by some kind of deactivation of part of the existing genome, not an addition of new information, i.e. degeneration, not evolution.

Funnily enough, creationists have always suspected that snakes once had legs: "And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou [art] cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." (Gen 3:14, KJV)

This is all, of course, presuming that this is not one of the many fake organisms to come out China which have fooled wishful-thinking evolutionists before (ahem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archeoraptor)), or an example of, you know, this:

http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/cga/lowres/cgan625l.jpg

The Bible quotes God as saying, "For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return."

Materialists would say that we are formed primarily of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Human beings are mostly water, not dirt.
What are you getting at? No one mentioned the composition of the human body. Only abiogenesis could be coloquially described as the idea that we are "descended from dirt."

[Angler]

What is the point of endlessly debating someone who is simply not willing to change his mind no matter what evidence or arguments are presented?Heh. You tell me.It was a rhetorical question. Obviously there is no point, though from time to time I'll do it anyway against my better judgment.

As for me, I'm entirely willing to change my mind on a subject when I'm presented with countervailing evidence and solid arguments. But I haven't been shown any yet on this subject.

No, but only deductive reasoning can give you "incontrovertible facts", "stone cold facts", or whatever simpleminded slogan you're using this weekAlthough in a strict philosophical sense nothing is ever considered to be 100% proven in science, it is entirely commonplace to use expressions of certainty when referring to probabilities close to unity or extremely high degrees of confirmation.

Would you object if I said, "it is an incontrovertible fact that some human diseases are caused by viral infection," even though no one can prove that statement deductively? If you did, then most would accuse you of intellectual wankery -- and rightfully so, since all sensible people understand that the evidence for the above statement is overwhelming. What you obviously don't realize is that the evidence for evolution is just as strong.

The real reasoning goes more like this (it's not a deductive argument):

-- The fact that a snake was born with a leg is explained by the theory of evolution.
-- Evolution also explains innumerable other observations in a consistent manner.
-- There are no observations that rule out evolution, although evolution IS a falsifiable theory.
-- No other scientific theory explains the aforementioned observations while avoiding falsification.
-- Therefore, the probability that evolution is true is so high as to be essentially unity.
I.e., this piece of evidence can be interpreted in a way that is consistent with the TOE. It doesn't obviously falsify the theory, therefore it proves it.Nice strawman. The snake's leg by itself does not prove evolution, but it is one piece among innumerable pieces of evidence for evolution; also, evolution is the only existing scientific theory that explains the snake's leg.

Do you have a better explanation for all the snakes' legs, whales' hip bones, suboptimal designs (like the laryngeal nerve shown in the video posted earlier (http://www.thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=917474&postcount=109)), human chromosome #2, and all the thousands of other observations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent) that evolution explains? Even if you could come up with an ad hoc explanation for each of these pieces of evidence, what is the probability that a single theory could explain them all -- without being falsified by even a single observation -- if that theory were not true?

Yes there is: I don't remember what thread it was in.Okay, fine. It's enough that you made the argument here.

So we are now moving from the claim of a fusion event in the human lineage, which proved nothing, to a claim of similarity, which also proves nothing. We already knew that there are lots of similarities between human and chimp genomes, which doesn't prove common descent, and would be expected on the basis of their biological similarities anyway.Complete nonsense. Let's look at this diagram again:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Chromosome2_merge.png

There is no reason whatsoever to expect on the basis of human and chimp phenotypes that human chromosome #2 would have two telomeres back-to-back in its center, and a centromere at the center of each of its two halves. If anything, someone unfamiliar with the human genome or the idea of common descent (but familiar with ape genomes) would expect that humans would have the same number of chromosomes as the apes, since we're so physically similar to the apes.

Again, this is a ridiculous caricature of the argument, and you're failing to understand why the clawed hand is such strong evidence of evolution. Either you lack the background knowledge and/or ability to understand it, or you are unwilling to think about it hard enough because you're afraid to understand it.
Yes, I'm trembling! Not like you, you big, brave man, staring down the cold, hard truth. That's obviously your narrative about yourself, and it makes me LOL.Well, okay. I guess that rules out the second of my two options above.

No, I agree that this snake's genome contains the coding for claws.Was that your position when you made your previous post? Well, I guess it doesn't matter.

There are snakes with such appendages in the fossil record. But they are snakes. They have the unique spinal structure of a snake, by which it propels itself along the ground. These appendages are part of the potentiality of the snake genome. This is an example of loss of features by some kind of deactivation of part of the existing genome, not an addition of new information, i.e. degeneration, not evolution.Ah, so you admit that genomes can change over time, even if only through deactivation of preexisting genetic code. We're making progress.

Now, would you care to explain why human beings are sometimes born with vestigial tails? In fact, every human has a tail during part of his or her development in the womb:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_vestigiality#Coccyx

Did God create Adam and Eve with tails? Why is the loss of tails by humans not mentioned in the Bible?

Funnily enough, creationists have always suspected that snakes once had legs: "And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou [art] cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." (Gen 3:14, KJV)Snakes eat dust? I thought they ate rodents.

Please don't even get me started on all the factual inaccuracies in Genesis.

This is all, of course, presuming that this is not one of the many fake organisms to come out China which have fooled wishful-thinking evolutionists before...Don't worry, there are PLENTY of other examples of atavism and vestigiality for us to consider. Some examples are here:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html

What are you getting at? No one mentioned the composition of the human body. Only abiogenesis could be coloquially described as the idea that we are "descended from dirt."I've already explained what I was getting at. A lot of creationists find it objectionable to think that humans and apes are related; I was making the point that there's nothing particularly noble about being created directly from dirt, which is how Genesis says Adam was made.

[Monty]

I've already told you the truth. Sometimes I don't have the time to respond. Sometimes I forget about a thread after a few days away from the board. And sometimes I simply lose patience with a debate if the person displays excessive obtuseness or stubbornness, or if the debate seems to be going in circles.

In other words, Angler hates losing arguments to me.

[Kuniklo Nigra]

chimp chromosomes
I haven't really seen you establish that DNA is the essence of life. In the womb we looked the same as chicken fetuses. It's just a material manifestation. We won't be growing out feathers any time soon.

Chimps are land animals with land animal skin that lacks an extremely complex layer of fat beneath it that among other things allows for swimming. Humans can be born directly into water. We have that layer. It isn't just like oh I've got chromosome X so I have that. With current technology, we see that each cell in that layer is as complex as a whole New York City, and each system depends on the other (i.e., couldn't have developed separately). I keep seeing you evolutionists simplifying things and underestimating the creation.

Sure, species adjust themselves and change a bit. The human head is growing bigger on average, I hear, for example. But speciation is far too radical. A different species has totally different systems, and the addition of these systems by random mutation has no mechanical science to prove it, nor does the fossil record back it up.

Evolutionists are dreamers.

Re: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

The general context is that of a religious book, which inherently confirms the importance of spirit. That passage is just saying that our bodies are material, which is impermanent (like the spirit). This passage is used in funeral eulogies because it emphasizes that death (leaving of the body by the spirit) does not destroy the spirit.

[Man of Ash]

Although in a strict philosophical sense nothing is ever considered to be 100% proven in science, it is entirely commonplace to use expressions of certainty when referring to probabilities close to unity or extremely high degrees of confirmation.
It may be commonplace, but it's not true. There are no 100% certainties outside of pure math and logic; in physics, laws can be established with a high degree of certainty as long as we assume the uniformity of space-time, but even such laws can famously turn out to have limited applicability; and from there on down there is a scale of decreasing levels of certainty, until we reach things like natural history stories about the development of life on earth over the last few billion years.
Would you object if I said, "it is an incontrovertible fact that some human diseases are caused by viral infection," even though no one can prove that statement deductively? If you did, then most would accuse you of intellectual wankery -- and rightfully so, since all sensible people understand that the evidence for the above statement is overwhelming. What you obviously don't realize is that the evidence for evolution is just as strong.
Good rhetorical trick - take a testable, observable, repeatable phenomenon and assert that the evolution story has the same epistemological status. It's absurd.
Nice strawman. The snake's leg by itself does not prove evolution, but it is one piece among innumerable pieces of evidence for evolution; also, evolution is the only existing scientific theory that explains the snake's leg.
It's not a straw man, because you wave that photo around as though it is self-evident, unquestionable proof of your beliefs. Now you're saying that a vast number of such pieces of evidence are required. How many, exactly?
Do you have a better explanation for all the snakes' legs, whales' hip bones, suboptimal designs (like the laryngeal nerve shown in the video posted earlier (http://www.thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=917474&postcount=109)), human chromosome #2, and all the thousands of other observations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent) that evolution explains?Even if you could come up with an ad hoc explanation for each of these pieces of evidence, what is the probability that a single theory could explain them all -- without being falsified by even a single observation -- if that theory were not true?
No, I don't, personally, have an explanation for every phenomenon of nature. I'm sure evolutionists can concoct a just-so story for every one, though. It's an amazingly flexible, self-verifying theory. Darwin knew his theory required at least 100 million years, so the Cambrian explosion should have put the boot in it. But somehow it adapted.

Regarding "suboptimal" designs, they often turn out to be nothing of the kind. It's just typical materialist arrogance: "I don't understand the purpose of this, therefore it has no purpose." Evolutionists used to love talking about the "inverted" retina - but it's now known to be an elegant design for a whole range of reasons. I'm sure the purpose of the detour of the laryngeal nerve will be discovered too (if it hasn't already been), and long before an example of speciation by random mutation.

Don't bother with Wikipedia pages, please. They are useless as references for controversial issues. And what am I meant to do, write a refutation of the whole page? Maybe you'd like to write a full refutation of darwinspredictions.com (http://darwinspredictions.com)? I don't think either of us has time for that, so let's stick to the examples at hand.
Complete nonsense. Let's look at this diagram again:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Chromosome2_merge.png

There is no reason whatsoever to expect on the basis of human and chimp phenotypes that human chromosome #2 would have two telomeres back-to-back in its center, and a centromere at the center of each of its two halves. If anything, someone unfamiliar with the human genome or the idea of common descent (but familiar with ape genomes) would expect that humans would have the same number of chromosomes as the apes, since we're so physically similar to the apes.

I'm looking, but I'm not seeing what you're seeing. We have two telomeres back to back etc. because two chromosomes merged. It sure looks like our ancestors had 48 chromosomes. Again: so what? It seems like you're going to keep switching back and forth between the evidence for a fusion event, and the similarity to the chimp genome, neither of which I deny - but this combination of two bad arguments does not make a good one.

Here's a little diagram for you:
http://www.ideacenter.org/stuff/contentmgr/files/3d4270ba32fabc3a8c5b1f6ce9cfa484/misc/chromosomalfusionevent_title.gif

Figure 1. This animated gif shows how even if the empirical genetic evidence mandates a chromosomal fusion event, this doesn't tell you anything about whether or not humans share ancestry with apes. The "Separate Ancestry" slide shows that the chromosomal fusion event may have simply taken place in a separately-designed basic type which, initially, had 48 chromosomes. The "Common Ancestry" slide shows how the chromosomal fusion event may have also taken place in a line which led back to a hypothetical common ancestor of humans and modern apes. The point is that all we have is evidence for a fusion event, but that fusion event is equally compatible with either separate ancestry from apes, or common ancestry with apes. The fusion event itself does not provide any independent evidence for common ancestry with apes. To argue that it is evidence for common ancestry requires special pleading.
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1392
Well, okay. I guess that rules out the second of my two options above.
Yeah, I know, everyone who expresses skepticism about the materialist creation myth is either ignorant, stupid or afraid. The question is, why do materialists always roll out these genetic fallacies if their case is so strong?
Ah, so you admit that genomes can change over time, even if only through deactivation of preexisting genetic code. We're making progress.
No one denies changes occur within species boundaries, particularly degenerative changes involving loss or obsolescence of information.
Now, would you care to explain why human beings are sometimes born with vestigial tails? In fact, every human has a tail during part of his or her development in the womb:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_vestigiality#Coccyx

Did God create Adam and Eve with tails? Why is the loss of tails by humans not mentioned in the Bible?
Sure, Angler, you keep throwing shit at the wall and hoping something will stick. I'm not going to field everything you throw at me; not until you've admitted the uselessness of your favorite video and photo for proving anything whatsoever, anyway. Regarding 'vestigiality' though, it's an obvious example of interpreting the evidence through the lens of a theory and then using your results to verify the theory, i.e. question-begging. Evolutionists used to love talking about our 'vestigial' tonsils too, until their purpose was understood. That was a bit too late for all the people who'd had pointless and immune-damaging tonsilectomies as a result of evolutionist bullshit, though.

Human embryos don't have tails; the developing coccyx merely sticks out of the tiny body of a month-old foetus. Look at how that wikipedia crap describes the actual function of the human coccyx as its secondary function in order to make it fit with evolutionary theory. If you think your coccyx is a useless evolutionary leftover, why not get it removed? You wouldn't be able to walk.
Snakes eat dust? I thought they ate rodents.

Please don't even get me started on all the factual inaccuracies in Genesis.

Don't let me stop you, but like I said, I'm not a biblical literalist, so it won't have much effect on me. I just thought it was funny that your devastating proof of Darwinism can not only be easily accounted for by the most hardcore creationist, but is actually predicted in Genesis!
Don't worry, there are PLENTY of other examples of atavism and vestigiality for us to consider. Some examples are here:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html
Hey, let's throw websites at each other! Why don't you want to stick to the topic?
I've already explained what I was getting at. A lot of creationists find it objectionable to think that humans and apes are related; I was making the point that there's nothing particularly noble about being created directly from dirt, which is how Genesis says Adam was made.
Who said there was? Being created in the image of God is the thing.

[Kostya Novoselov]

I accept that evolution is scientifically plausible -- more so than the alternatives -- but I reject the compatibility of the evolutionary narrative with that of the Christian narrative of creation, and I therefore withhold my assent to the former. An awkward position, to be sure. Simone Weil once said that Necessity is the veil of God -- if so, then perhaps evolution, even if 'true', is the veil which every Christian must pull aside as his duty to revelation.

I didn't know which poll option this would fall under, so I answered "no".

If I may say so - this conflict seems to me as superficially self-induced. I would think that a man of your caliber must have enough inner and true contradictions to be able to leave the group ideology behind.

Correct me if I am wrong but I do remember that several months ago you said something along the lines that you (christians) must honestly face the scientific facts related to human evolution and adapt accordingly. It was also in perfect sync with your later points - where you maintained that eastern orthodox tradition has taken a direction and evolved (some pun here :)) to allow one more flexibility and spirit when interpreting the letter of traditional Christian narrative. I thought that later point was perhaps well demonstrated on the pages of this very joint - if we remember how most of those, who fancy themselves as catlicks, never fail to stick to psychopathic (and always hypocritical) group-think while blathering on all things religious dogma and related political ideology.

[Angler]

It may be commonplace, but it's not true. There are no 100% certainties outside of pure math and logic; in physics, laws can be established with a high degree of certainty as long as we assume the uniformity of space-time, but even such laws can famously turn out to have limited applicability; and from there on down there is a scale of decreasing levels of certainty, until we reach things like natural history stories about the development of life on earth over the last few billion years.I'm aware of all this. My point is that there's no sense in nitpicking phrases such as "confirmed fact" when they're used in non-deductive contexts, since the meaning of such terms when applied to empirical science is perfectly well understood by everyone.

Good rhetorical trick - take a testable, observable, repeatable phenomenon and assert that the evolution story has the same epistemological status. It's absurd.No, what's absurd is the suggestion that evolution is not testable or observable. Evolution has been tested countless times without ever having been found wanting. Most of the observations that support evolution are necessarily indirect observations -- humans don't live for millions of years -- but there have been some directly observed instances of speciation in both plants and animals.

Of course evolution is not repeatable in the same way as a tabletop experiment might be, but just because something can happen only once does not imply that it cannot be confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt.

Let's say a woman has been raped and murdered in her own home. Mr. X is arrested, and his fingerprints are found all over the inside of her house, even though he never had any reason to be in there. His semen is found inside the woman, confirmed to be his based on DNA analysis. Is there any doubt that Mr. X is the killer? Do we need to repeat what happened to be sure? Of course not. We might never be able to learn ALL the details, but we can certainly confirm from evidence collected after the fact that certain things must have occurred.

This is analogous to evolution. There are still a great many details of evolution that are uncertain, but there is no reasonable doubt that the overall theory of evolution is correct.

It's not a straw man, because you wave that photo around as though it is self-evident, unquestionable proof of your beliefs. Now you're saying that a vast number of such pieces of evidence are required. How many, exactly?Evolution is the only theory that explains the photo, because even a loss of legs over generations due to the deactivation of DNA sequences falls under the definition of an evolutionary adaptation.

I agree that more evidence than the snake's leg is needed to prove that features can be acquired rather than lost over generations. That's where all that other evidence I mentioned comes in. You know, stuff like the tendency of fossils of simpler extinct organisms to be found buried deeper than fossils of more complex extinct organisms.

Again, it may be possible to find ad hoc explanations for each piece of evidence for evolution, but the probability that an incorrect theory can be used to predict so many observations without ever being falsified is extremely close to zero.

No, I don't, personally, have an explanation for every phenomenon of nature. I'm sure evolutionists can concoct a just-so story for every one, though.The "just-so" story happens to be essentially the same every time -- organisms either possessing or lacking certain features/genes are more likely to get weeded out of the gene pool, leaving others to breed.

It's an amazingly flexible, self-verifying theory. Darwin knew his theory required at least 100 million years, so the Cambrian explosion should have put the boot in it. But somehow it adapted.On the contrary, evolution is highly falsifiable in principle.

Regarding "suboptimal" designs, they often turn out to be nothing of the kind. It's just typical materialist arrogance: "I don't understand the purpose of this, therefore it has no purpose."The arrogance is entirely on the part of the critics who tell the experts that they're wrong about evolution even though the critics have no expertise of their own. Literally anyone can be an "expert" in religious matters, since it's never possible to be proven wrong when talking about God, angels, etc.; but science is another matter entirely.

Moreover, if a particular anatomical feature of an organism has a design, then the burden of proof is on you, the anti-evolutionist, to show as much. By no means is it arrogant to point this out.

Thus, it falls to you to explain the function of the nipples on the human male; why blind mole-rats and other blind creatures have eyes; why the laryngeal nerve is so long in the giraffe; and all other such apparently pointless features of various organisms.

Evolutionists used to love talking about the "inverted" retina - but it's now known to be an elegant design for a whole range of reasons.It's "known" to be a design. Right. :rolleyes: I don't suppose you can explain how it's known to have been designed (or at least provide a link)?

I'm sure the purpose of the detour of the laryngeal nerve will be discovered too (if it hasn't already been), and long before an example of speciation by random mutation.I'm sure if no purpose is ever discovered, then religious dogmatists will invent one.

Don't bother with Wikipedia pages, please. They are useless as references for controversial issues.What's the point of typing out a list of examples of some phenomenon when a link to the list can be provided? If you want confirmation what's posted on Wikipedia, just use the references provided in the entry, or search for details elsewhere on Google. Wikipedia is merely intended to provide an overview.

And what am I meant to do, write a refutation of the whole page? Maybe you'd like to write a full refutation of darwinspredictions.com (http://darwinspredictions.com)? I don't think either of us has time for that, so let's stick to the examples at hand.No, I'm not asking you to refute any pages. I'm simply providing those links so you can get a quick idea of the volume of the evidence out there. The only people who have time to endlessly study individual pieces of evidence regarding evolution are the experts who do that for a living -- and they are the ones who almost unanimously agree that evolution is correct.

I'm looking, but I'm not seeing what you're seeing. We have two telomeres back to back etc. because two chromosomes merged. It sure looks like our ancestors had 48 chromosomes. ...Yes, it does look that way -- and two of those chromosomes happen to look almost identical to chimp chromosomes (i.e., nearly the same DNA sequences).

Yeah, I know, everyone who expresses skepticism about the materialist creation myth is either ignorant, stupid or afraid.That is correct. In many cases the problem is a lack of proper scientific education. Often religious brainwashing is responsible as well. Show me someone who denies evolution, and I'll show you a Bible-thumper or other religious zealot. These things go hand-in-hand 99% of the time. The furious resistance to evolution is especially ridiculous because even if evolution were somehow disproved tomorrow, the book of Genesis still CANNOT be literally true, and by no means would the Bible have been proven correct. (It is entirely possible that if a God exists, that God has nothing whatsoever to do with any known religion.)

The question is, why do materialists always roll out these genetic fallacies if their case is so strong?Because their case is so strong. It's just like someone who claims the earth is flat or that it's only 6000 years old. One must be ignorant, at best, to believe such things.

No one denies changes occur within species boundaries, particularly degenerative changes involving loss or obsolescence of information.If frequencies of certain genes can change within a species, then there is absolutely nothing stopping one species from changing into another. If a population of species X gets divided into two groups (by migration, environmental catastrophe, etc.), then each group can be subjected to different environmental pressures. You seem to admit that this can cause changes in the frequencies of the various genes in the two groups. Once that has happened long enough, the two groups will no longer be able to produce viable offspring. Two different species have just been produced.

There is no need for changes to be "degenerative" (most are neutral), and whether a mutation is harmful or helpful can depends a great deal on the organism's environment.

Sure, Angler, you keep throwing shit at the wall and hoping something will stick. I'm not going to field everything you throw at me; not until you've admitted the uselessness of your favorite video and photo for proving anything whatsoever, anyway.The video shows that human chromosome #2 is essentially two chimp genes (not two human genes, unless our human ancestors were chimps) fused together. The photo proves that the ancestor of that snake had legs and provides an example of the phenomenon known as vestigiality.

Regarding 'vestigiality' though, it's an obvious example of interpreting the evidence through the lens of a theory and then using your results to verify the theory, i.e. question-begging.No, vestigiality is an example of evidence that helps to confirms a preexisting theory that was already well-supported by other evidence (e.g., comparative anatomy). Vestigiality fits right in with the same theory that explains this sort of thing --

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Homology.jpg

-- and that also just happens to explain the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the speciation that has been observed in some plants and animals.

Look at the big picture and how evolution ties it all together. You would have me believe that it's only a coincidence that all those observations are explained by this one single theory.

Evolutionists used to love talking about our 'vestigial' tonsils too, until their purpose was understood. That was a bit too late for all the people who'd had pointless and immune-damaging tonsilectomies as a result of evolutionist bullshit, though.I wasn't aware that tonsils were once considered vestigial, but I'll take your word for it. I always thought that tonsils were generally taken out only when necessary -- much like the gall bladder, the function of which is known but which is sometimes removed if deemed medically appropriate.

Anyway, whoever claimed that evolutionists never make mistakes? Like I said earlier, there are many details regarding evolution that are still in dispute. That does not diminish the confirmation of the basics: common descent and natural selection. If all organisms were designed, then the Designer did everything he possibly could to deceive man into thinking otherwise.

Human embryos don't have tails; the developing coccyx merely sticks out of the tiny body of a month-old foetus. Look at how that wikipedia crap describes the actual function of the human coccyx as its secondary function in order to make it fit with evolutionary theory. If you think your coccyx is a useless evolutionary leftover, why not get it removed? You wouldn't be able to walk.Obviously the coccyx has a function -- no one has ever denied that. But your other statements regarding the embryonic tail are false:

Humans are classified by taxonomists as apes; one of the defining derived characters of apes is the lack of an external tail. However, human embryos initially develop tails in development. At between four and five weeks of age, the normal human embryo has 10-12 developing tail vertebrae which extend beyond the anus and legs, accounting for more than 10% of the length of the embryo (Fallon and Simandl 1978; Moore and Persaud 1998, pp. 91-100; Nievelstein et al. 1993). The embryonic tail is composed of several complex tissues besides the developing vertebrae, including a secondary neural tube (spinal cord), a notochord, mesenchyme, and tail gut. By the eighth week of gestation, the sixth to twelfth vertebrae have disappeared via cell death, and the fifth and fourth tail vertebrae are still being reduced. Likewise, the associated tail tissues also undergo cell death and regress.
Source: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#ontogeny_ex4

Thus, the human embryonic tail is NOT just the coccyx; it actually has extra vertebrae apart from those that eventually become the coccyx. Those extra vertebrae die off during development.

So, again I ask: how do you explain this?

Don't let me stop you, but like I said, I'm not a biblical literalist, so it won't have much effect on me. I just thought it was funny that your devastating proof of Darwinism can not only be easily accounted for by the most hardcore creationist, but is actually predicted in Genesis!It is kind of a funny coincidence, but that's clearly all it is, given the number of inaccuracies also stated about the snake. Most cunning of the animals? Eating dirt? Sorry, not buying.

Hey, let's throw websites at each other! Why don't you want to stick to the topic?Silly me, I thought we were discussing whether evolution is true. If so, then I'd expect websites that show evidence for evolution to be relevant. Like I said, I'm not asking you to refute everything on any website -- I'm simply pointing to examples of evidence that you are free to read about or ignore at your discretion. (I'm quite sure you'll ignore all of it.)

[Monty]

Maybe you'd like to write a full refutation of darwinspredictions.com? I don't think either of us has time for that, so let's stick to the examples at hand.

Interesting find. Of course, Real Hard Materialist Science (RHMS) never makes a mistake. When it finally finds one, it ignores history and pretends the old views didn't exist.

If you want to make materialists squirm, look up what the weird ideas that free thinkers had about origins before Darwin. Then look up what mainstream science held about human biology into the 20th Century.

[Ahknaton]

Interesting find. Of course, Real Hard Materialist Science (RHMS) never makes a mistake. When it finally finds one, it ignores history and pretends the old views didn't exist.

If you want to make materialists squirm, look up what the weird ideas that free thinkers had about origins before Darwin. Then look up what mainstream science held about human biology into the 20th Century.
What does this prove other than that science has progressed over the last 150 years? There is no pretense that scientific theories are infallible, only that they cohere with the evidence found so far. Previous theories are not covered up, that's a simple lie. Read any science textbook or popular science paperback and you will find a description of previous theories and how they were disproved or had to be modified to adapt to new evidence. Also, you forgot your obligatory mention of SWPLs.

[Impérialiste]

What does this prove other than that science has progressed over the last 150 years? There is no pretense that scientific theories are infallible, only that they cohere with the evidence found so far. Previous theories are not covered up, that's a simple lie. Read any science textbook or popular science paperback and you will find a description of previous theories and how they were disproved or had to be modified to adapt to new evidence. Also, you forgot your obligatory mention of SWPLs.

Scientific theories are labeled as theories because they have experimentally held up over time. They're not proven only due to existential induction (a term I made up). The implication of existential induction is a theory cannot be tested to sustain itself in other possible universes or even in other galaxies. Unlike a logical or mathematical system, the premises aren't established a priori.

[Philosophy]

No, I believe Evolution is a half-truth rather than a complete falsehood, however. Evolution has it backwards in that consciousness does not derive from matter, but the other way around. Consciousness is extracted from the cosmos and reconstituted in the forms of species according to the micro/macrocosmic principle. It can be said that evolution is 'half-true' in that some species are more fully constituted from the cosmos to varying degrees of completion and success: Man being more constituted than other animals; animals being more constituted than plants, giving a semblance of 'evolution' but species do not change into other species and there is no record of this happening.

Question to evolutionists: since nobody says man has stopped evolving; man is relative to this on-going process: how can you suddenly step out of this process by making absolutist statements regarding an on-going process?

[Hevace Eveeloj]

I believe in evolution. I believe in natural selection. But I do not believe natural selection explains evolution, even if it may be an important influence on it.

It just seems improbable in the extreme that things would grow more organized and more complex on their own. Once or twice, maybe. But over and over again, for billions of years?

[Péter]

I'm curious to see where everyone stands on this issue, especially our Christian posters. In my opinion, if you are religious, then this is a question that you must address if you are to take your belief seriously. It would also be interesting to see the opinions of people who, though not all that religious themselves, merely think that the West is in decline, and that decadent materialism is the cause think. Also, please discuss why, if this be the case, you disbelieve in evolution: whether it's due to religious or ideological leanings, or due to a belief that you think that the theory is flawed.

By "evolution," I'm referring to the notion of common descent (species evolve from one another, and that they can all trace their lineages to a common ancestor), and that the main (though not the only) guiding force of the process is unguided natural selection. That is, the traits which get passed on are those most likely to bestow upon the organism a chance to pass its genes on.

Greetings.

Though I'll only be touching on the theory of evolution, in what follows I will, with the aid of relevant selections from Titus Burckhardt's "Traditonal Cosmology and Modern Science" from Mirror of the Intellect and Frithjof Schuon's "Fall and Forfeiture" in Light on the Ancient Worlds and "Survey of Integral Anthropology" from To Have a Center--works to which I'll refer readers in their entirety for a more comprehensive exposition--attempt to illustrate the phenomenon of the emergence of the myriad creatures, or, said differently, the origination of species, from the point of view of traditional cosmology. Now, my exposition will take as axiomatic certain metaphysical principles, such as the relationship between freedom and necessity in divinis, and more especially as such pertains to creation; thus I will not be systematically expounding my own presuppositions, though I will be happy to refer the interested reader to appropriate sources.

As stated the fundamental relationship between freedom and necessity will be good to keep in mind, such that we may not lose sight of the relationship between the manifestation of individuals (forms precisely) and the archetypes which serve as their divine prototypes, which involves a sort of precipitation starting from the supra-formal spiritual or angelic realm, though the subtle or animic realm in which "condensation" occurs, finally "crystallizing" in the gross or corporeal realm. The process is analogous but not identical to the condensation of water vapor into liquid, and finally, freezing into ice through a progressive solidification--all the while remaining the same substance--hence my use of such terminology; but again, we speak here of analogy and not identity, and so properties of water as described according to modern chemistry or physics must not be grafted onto our model.

Of course, as the modern scientistic perspective considers the physical universe to be the sole reality, it must reason to posit the development of causes in an altogether horizontal manner, for according to such a model no vertical axis exists: without any ontological hierarchy of which to speak, the traditional cosmological model has been as it were flattened. On this Burckhardt has written, "Strictly speaking, a modern cosmology does not exist, in spite of the misuse of language whereby the modern science of the sensible universe is called cosmology." There is almost no means of comparison between what was conceived traditionally as cosmos and what is understood to be the universe in the modern sense, and one who has been educated in a purely modern setting will have no point of mental reference by which to conceive of the hierarchical levels of Reality--and this is why debate with modernists is, for the most part, futile on this point. From the traditional point of view, however, the locus of origination, if such an expression be permitted, always involves the interplay of dimensions, a notion on which more will be said later.

Having made this distinction, I will defer to Burckhardt at some length in order to address your specific question (pardon the pun):

Fundamentally, the evolutionist thesis is an attempt to replace, not simply the 'miracle of creation', but the cosmogonic process--largely suprasensory--of which the Biblical narrative is a Scriptural symbol; evolutionism, by absurdly making the greater derive from the lesser, is the opposite of this process, or this 'emanation'. (This term has nothing to do with the emanationist heresy, since the transcendence and the immutability of the ontological principle are here in no wise called into question.) In a word, evolutionism results from an incapacity--peculiar to modern science--to conceive 'dimensions' of reality other than the purely physical ones; to understand the 'vertical' genesis of a species it is worth recalling what Guénon said about the progressive solidification of the corporeal state through the various terrestrial stages.[27] This solidification must obviously not be taken to imply that the stones of the earliest ages were soft, for this would be tantamount to saying that certain physical qualities--and in particular hardness and density--were then wanting; what has hardened and become fixed with time is the corporeal state taken as a whole, with the result that it no longer receives directly the imprint of subtle forms. Assuredly, it cannot become detached from the subtle state, which is its ontological root and which dominates it entirely, but the relationship between the two states of existence no longer has the creative character that it possessed at the origin; it is as when a fruit, having reached maturity, becomes surrounded by an ever harder husk and ceases to absorb the sap of the tree. In a cyclic phase in which corporeal existence had not yet reached this degree of solidification, a new specific form could manifest itself directly from the starting-point of its first 'condensation' in the subtle or animic state; [28] this means that the different types of animals pre-existed at the level immediately superior to the corporeal world as non-spatial forms, but nevertheless clothed in a certain 'matter', namely that of the subtle world. From there these forms 'descended' into the corporeal state each time the latter was ready to receive them; this 'descent' had the nature of a sudden coagulation and hence also the nature of a limitation and fragmentation of the original animic form.

[27] Guénon, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times.

[28] Concerning the creation of species in a subtle 'proto-matter'--in which they still preserve an androgynous form, comparable to a sphere--and their subsequent exteriorization see Frithjof Schuon, Light on the Ancient Worlds and Form and Substance in the Religions.


I'll now segue into Burckhardt's reference of Schuon's "Fall and Forfeiture", describing more explicitly the development from subtle to gross manifestation:


The prototype of the fall is none other than the process of universal manifestation itself. To speak of manifestation, projection, "alienation", going forth is to speak also of regression, reintegration, return, apocatastasis; the error of the materialists--whatever subtleties they may employ in seeking to dissolve the conventional and now "obsolete" idea of matter--is to take matter as their starting point as if it were a primordial and stable fact, whereas it is only a movement, a sort of transitory contraction of a substance that is in itself inaccessible to our senses. Our empirical matter, with all it comprises, is derived from a supra-sensory and eminently plastic proto-matter; it is in this proto-matter that the primordial terrestrial being is reflected and "incarnated", which is expressed in Hinduism in the myth of the sacrifice of Purusha. Because of the tendency to segmentation inherent in this proto-matter, the divine image was broken and diversified; but creatures were still, not individuals who tear one another to pieces, but contemplative states derived from angelic models and, through them, from divine Names, and in this sense it could be said that in Paradise sheep lived side by side with lions; what are in question here are only the "hermaphroditic" prototypes--supra-sensorial and spherical in form--of divine possibilities, which stem from the qualities of "clemency" and "rigor", "beauty" and "strength", "wisdom" and "joy". In this proto-material hylê occurred the creation of the species and of man, a creation resembling the "sudden crystallization of a supersaturated chemical solution"; after the "creation of Eve"--the bipolarization of the primordial "androgyne"--there occurred the "fall", namely, the "exteriorization" of the human couple, which brought in its train--since in the subtle and luminous proto-matter everything was bound together and interdependent--the exteriorization or "materialization" of all other earthly creatures, hence their "crystallization" in the sensible, heavy, opaque, and mortal matter.


To recapitulate what has been already been said in the context of a traditional understanding of the creative descent of the human microcosm, I'll again quote Schuon, this time from "Survey of Integral Anthropology":


Original man was not a simian being barely capable of speaking and standing upright; he was a quasi-immaterial being enclosed in an aura still celestial, but deposited on earth; an aura similar to the "chariot of fire" of Elijah or the "cloud" that enveloped Christ's ascension. That is to say, our conception of the origin of mankind is based on the doctrine of the projection of the archetypes ab intra; thus our position is that of classical emanationism--in the Neoplatonic or gnostic sense of the term--which avoids the pitfall of anthropomorphism while agreeing with the theological conception of creatio ex nihilo. Evolutionism is the very negation of the archetypes and consequently of the divine Intellect; it is therefore the negation of an entire dimension of the real, namely that of form, of the static, of the immutable; concretely speaking, it is as if one wished to make a fabric of the wefts only, omitting the warps.


Thus again, we return to the idea of the interplay of dimensions in the process of manifestation, so necessary to a traditional understanding of creation. If the vertical dimension is static, the horizontal may be thought of as dynamic: think of the different parts played by the two hands used to play a stringed instrument, such as a guitar or violin; the analogy is completed, I think, in a consideration of the resulting sound: creation is an emanation of the music of the spheres.

One final consideration that I'll note is that, in opposition to modern theories of the origins of the universe, traditional accounts of the origination of species remain congruent with the larger cosmogony: microcosmic and macrocosmic "descent" are analogous phenomena. The modern model exhibits a logical discontinuity that, by its very absurdity, is insoluble: Why would the universe originate according to a particular process (a dispersion of mass and energy initiating entropic decay), only to have this process halted in order to allow for the emergence of life according to an altogether different process (an organization according to increasingly greater complexity)? Must not a systemic model retain some sort of integral continuity in its modus operandi?

I hope these reflections prove helpful. I would encourage anyone with related questions to seek out the references I have listed. One further source may also be useful: Sophia Perennis and the theory of evolution and progress (http://www.frithjof-schuon.com/evolution-engl.htm).

Pax vobiscum.

Peter

[Macrobius]

Yes, I believe in the Theory of Evolution. However, only 6000 years give or take have elapsed since 'The Fall' from Paradise and changes to Human Consciousness caused a Quantum Collapse in the known universe, which created a superposition of wave function states, according to the theory of Von Neumann and Wigner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics), hence that is the true age of the scientifically accessible universe -- more or less the same time line as writing has permitted human consciousness to record experimental results, and develop a single narrative based on them. As a consequence, Evolution has not had very long to act, except of course on the orthogonal basis states whose superposition composes our current reality (and the evidence for those are rather mixed up in the observable density matrix (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_matrix), as one might expect). Middle Earth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A6dmon%27s_Hymn) is a bit of a Mixed State (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_state#Mixed_states), all things considered, located as it is between Good and Evil. I am not dogmatic about this -- it is merely my opinion (http://thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=78061) as a Ph.D. experimental nuclear physicist.

In his treatise The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, John von Neumann deeply analyzed the so-called measurement problem (http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=63513). He concluded that the entire physical universe could be made subject to the Schrödinger equation (the universal wave function (http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=23970)). Since something "outside the calculation" was needed to collapse the wave function, von Neumann concluded that the collapse was caused by the consciousness of the experimenter.[22] This point of view was later more prominently expanded on by Eugene Wigner, but remains a view held by very few physicists.[23]

Logos is the basis for all measurement, of course, and 'Man is the Measure of all things' a heresy against Platonism, and yet 'Man the Measurer' is in the ancient lists, according to the Ents. Man is the Measurer, and the Perfect Man, the Ratio-Being, who connects Heaven and Earth, is the Lord of all Creation. Even Newton knew this much. The Second Adam is the perfection of the First, as the Apostle teaches us.

See also (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A6dmon%27s_Hymn):

Nu scilun herga hefenricæs uard metudæs mehti and his modgithanc uerc uuldurfadur sue he uundra gihuæs eci dryctin or astelidæ he ærist scop aeldu barnum hefen to hrofæ halig sceppend tha middingard moncynnæs uard eci dryctin æfter tiadæ firum foldu frea allmehtig.

Note the similarity to 'monk' and 'man-kind'. And welcome to Midgard, by the Way.

[Ahknaton]

As stated the fundamental relationship between freedom and necessity will be good to keep in mind, such that we may not lose sight of the relationship between the manifestation of individuals (forms precisely) and the archetypes which serve as their divine prototypes, which involves a sort of precipitation starting from the supra-formal spiritual or angelic realm, though the subtle or animic realm in which "condensation" occurs, finally "crystallizing" in the gross or corporeal realm.
There is almost no means of comparison between what was conceived traditionally as cosmos and what is understood to be the universe in the modern sense, and one who has been educated in a purely modern setting will have no point of mental reference by which to conceive of the hierarchical levels of Reality--and this is why debate with modernists is, for the most part, futile on this point. From the traditional point of view, however, the locus of origination, if such an expression be permitted, always involves the interplay of dimensions, a notion on which more will be said later.
Traditionalists often present this kind of view as something unknown to moderns that has been lost down through the ages. On the contrary, attempts were made to marry Platonism (in the form of Platonic biological forms), cosmic teleology and evolution since the 19th century, for example the hypothesis of Orthogenesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogenesis).

The stumbling block for such essentialist views is that individual species cannot correspond to Platonic forms since they are constantly in flux, there is no endpoint of evolution representing the final "crystallization" and transitional forms do not fit cleanly into an essentialist model. It's also possible for natural selection to cause the evolution of a species to go backwards from an "ideal" form (for example when a species no longer living in sunlight progressively loses its vision). However, it might be possible to say that some features that transcend individual species, and which repeatedly and independently manifest/"crystallize" into material reality through the mechanism of convergent evolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution) could be Platonic forms.

[Kuniklo Nigra]

If we're looking at the last 6,000 years, mankind has definitely gone through devolution.

However, we can say that everything is improving indefinitely, as universal consciousness "learns" its way into the future. Our troubled times are just part of a larger learning process.

I don't like that the incestuous, Marx/joo friend Darwin and incessant propaganda has spoiled the word "evolution" in the eyes of moderns. Darwin's theory, along with Newton's and others that get officially promoted, are overtly placing materialism in the place of science and rational thought.

[Man of Ash]

Traditionalists often present this kind of view as something unknown to moderns that has been lost down through the ages. On the contrary, attempts were made to marry Platonism (in the form of Platonic biological forms), cosmic teleology and evolution since the 19th century, for example the hypothesis of Orthogenesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogenesis).
The Traditionalists do not try to marry Platonism and evolution, they reject evolution more or less totally (at least in the sense of more complex organisms arising from simpler ones). They completely reject any modern synthesis like those of Bergson or Teillhard de Chardin.

You mentioned one problem, on the evolutionist side of things, for such attempts at reconciliation. The other problem, from the Platonist side, is that emanation from a perfect principle implies descent and devolution, not the contrary.

[Petr]

This Kinist article makes IMHO some good points (it's addressing "anti-racist" Creationist arguments, and their deficiencies):

http://faithandheritage.com/2012/02/refuting-the-naturalistic-evolutionism-of-carl-wieland-a-response-to-creation-magazine/

I was introduced to Creation Ministries International (http://creation.com/) when they held a seminar at our local church last year. I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation, and I appreciate much of the work CMI does in defending the inspired Scriptural account of creation and the age thereof, along with other similar organizations such as Answers in Genesis. Kinists agree with creationists that the Bible is infallible from cover to cover and that no scientific theory can serve to undermine the authority and historicity of the Bible.

However, there always remains a slight difference in exegetical emphasis, as creationists support the historical-literal exegetical approach to Scripture in favor of the historical-grammatical approach of orthodox Calvinism. This is due to the fact that creationists have (to a certain degree) allied with modernists in their conditional reception of Scriptural proof – from which they derive their endless drive to prove the truth claims of Scripture. History has always been viewed by the true church as God’s revelation of His acts, and we believe the account of Genesis as historically accurate in the same way we believe the gospels’ account of Christ’s resurrection.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with practicing science from a biblical perspective, but to seek to explain all of Scripture rationally easily leads to heresy. This has become evident in Ken Ham’s continual siding with Jacobin modernists and cultural Marxists on the issue of race and nationhood, the exact same people promoting evolutionary theories to undermine faith in God and His Word. Sadly, CMI seem to have fallen into the same heresy Ham has become so famous for promoting.

Or as it was expressed here - in their eagerness to support modern race-denying doctrines, creationists can ironically "become the very thing they oppose":

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?p=49058&highlight=cagle#post49058

The creationists like to raise a “scientific” smoke screen with genetics and interbreeding and melatonin, etc. But when all is said and done, the creationists, in this aspect, are acting exactly like the evolutionists. They are explaining a phenomenon exclusively in terms of natural, physical laws apart from God. The Bible answer is that God divided the races. Genetics and interbreeding might be the explanation for how He did it. But in the Bible, the important fact is that not how He did it, but that He did it.

[Petr]

Here's another perceptive point - anti-racist creationists oppose evolution in the field of biology, but surrender to it in sociology:

http://cambriawillnotyield.blogspot.com/2010/07/lost-faith.html

Because scientific thought is evolutionary and because scientific thought is presented as truth, the Christian faith has suffered greatly during the scientific 20th and 21st centuries. It survives only as an anemic subsidiary to science. Even fundamentalists who reject the theory of evolution as it pertains to man’s origins still attempt to fuse their Christianity with an evolving concept of man, democratic man being at the highest point of their evolutionary ladder.
http://cambriawillnotyield.blogspot.com/2009/01/polytheistic-hell.html

Every modern heresy, such as race-mixing, abortion, and sodomy, has been sanctioned under the umbrella of an evolving democratic system that is supposed to be self-evidently the process by which mankind, minus the recalcitrant white Europeans, will enter into the secular kingdom of the god who is not a god. Even those evangelicals who reject ape-to-man evolution have accepted the premises of democratic evolution. It is the task of the European to repudiate every single link in the evolutionary, democratic chain. You can’t take even one step with the swine. And why should we even consider it? Where is the evidence that the purveyors of democratic evolution have evolved to a higher stage of existence than our European ancestors?

[Basil Fawlty]

Let's say a woman has been raped and murdered in her own home. Mr. X is arrested, and his fingerprints are found all over the inside of her house, even though he never had any reason to be in there. His semen is found inside the woman, confirmed to be his based on DNA analysis. Is there any doubt that Mr. X is the killer? Do we need to repeat what happened to be sure? Of course not. We might never be able to learn ALL the details, but we can certainly confirm from evidence collected after the fact that certain things must have occurred.Hmm, I hope you never end up on a jury.
Where is the evidence that the woman was even raped? The only definite crime you have is murder. There is no necessary connection between the presence of this man's semen and her murderer. Solely on the evidence presented here, there is no alternative but to acquit Mr. X.
Your analogy does nothing for your argument.

[Milesian]

Time for a thread entitled - "Basil's Quick Guide To Epistemology?" ;)

[Angler]

Hmm, I hope you never end up on a jury.
Where is the evidence that the woman was even raped? The only definite crime you have is murder. There is no necessary connection between the presence of this man's semen and her murderer. Solely on the evidence presented here, there is no alternative but to acquit Mr. X.
Your analogy does nothing for your argument.That she was raped was assumed as part of my hypothetical situation. I didn't bother to present all the details of the case. Perhaps she had genital injuries consistent with forcible sex. Honestly, I'm not familiar with the forensics of rape investigations.

The important point, which you're dodging in order to nitpick the details of my analogy, is that it's frequently possible to scientifically conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that an event happened without having seen the event and without being able to do repeatable experiments.

Speaking of juries, how well do you think the evidence for any religion would hold up in court if subjected to the same standards of evidence that you demand of evolution? It never ceases to amaze me how people will question every detail of evolution, but religious claims are accepted at face value. That wishful thinking is at work seems obvious.

[Basil Fawlty]

That she was raped was assumed as part of my hypothetical situation. I didn't bother to present all the details of the case. Perhaps she had genital injuries consistent with forcible sex. Honestly, I'm not familiar with the forensics of rape investigations.

The important point, which you're dodging in order to nitpick the details of my analogy, is that it's frequently possible to scientifically conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that an event happened without having seen the event and without being able to do repeatable experiments.The important point is that your analogy failed. The onus is on you to construct a proper analogy. I only analysed what you presented.
It still doesn't work because even if she was raped, (difficult to establish when the victim is dead) that does not connect necessarily with her murder although the probability is raised.
Speaking of juries, how well do you think the evidence for any religion would hold up in court if subjected to the same standards of evidence that you demand of evolution?Probably much better because the majority of the human race believe in God in some way or another. But so what? Since when was the truth of a matter decided by a show of hands?
It never ceases to amaze me how people will question every detail of evolution, but religious claims are accepted at face value.No that's quite false. Enormous energies have been channeled into justifying the faith over two millennia. As a Catholic, albeit lapsed, you ought to know better, so there's no excuse for saying that.

[Ahknaton]

The Traditionalists do not try to marry Platonism and evolution, they reject evolution more or less totally (at least in the sense of more complex organisms arising from simpler ones). They completely reject any modern synthesis like those of Bergson or Teillhard de Chardin.
It's fine if they reject it, Traditionalists don't have a monopoly on the idea of hierarchical levels of reality if modern syntheses of Platonism and biology exist. Modernism isn't one and the same thing as "flat" materialism.
You mentioned one problem, on the evolutionist side of things, for such attempts at reconciliation. The other problem, from the Platonist side, is that emanation from a perfect principle implies descent and devolution, not the contrary.
I think that one can be solved by thinking of descent and devolution as happening vertically as you move from the Platonic realm down to the imperfect manifestations of the forms in the material plane, rather than laterally over the temporal evolution of the material plane.

[Aleksei]

Unguided evolution by natural selection is a proven fact, one which is in point of fact happening right before our eyes (http://www.cracked.com/article_19213_7-animals-that-are-evolving-right-before-our-eyes.html). To not believe it would make you re-fucking-tarded.

[Pastor Bill]

What I believe is that the "6th day creation" mentioned in the bible could have been evolution of the lower races but I also believe that whites were created as a seperate act of God through Adam and Eve. But of course I am CI

[Ahknaton]

Discussion about radioisotope dating has been split off here:

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=80384