Evolution or creation.....

by searching4? 81 Replies latest jw experiences

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  hooberus

  Again, if you had actually taken the time to UNDERSTAND the implications of this study, you would realize this was NOT referring to some ridiculous notion of an "Eve" frolicking about in the garden of Eden. THis was a study based solely on the transmission of mitochondrial DNA present in a POPULATION of early humans about 150,000 years ago in Africa. If anything, this completely disproves the biblical account of creation.

  
  

  The problem with arguments such as this is that they actually start with anti-biblical presuppositions to begin with, and then based on these assumptions build arguments which are then used as "evidence" against the Bible.
  

  For example most of the "long age" Mt eve dates of "150,000" years ago; "171,000" years ago; "200,000" years ago etc. are based on comparisons between human and chimpanzee Mt dna combined with the assumption of evolution to generate such dates. Thus, they are really not independant "evidence" against the Bibilcal Eve.
  

  Estimates based on human studies (with a variety of other assumptions) have yielded a wide variety of dates (some very close to the Bible- others much older) and are an active part of creationist research (indeed they are discussed in links already provided by myself on this thread).
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  hooberus

  theories of creation are based on an unfalsifiable. how could any subsequent hypotheses be falsifiable, if the very hypothesis that they are founded on is unfalsifiable?
  

  really now. i have read what you have given me, and i have seen nothing that gets creationism anywhere even remotely close to evolution.

  TS

  
  

  
  Here are the previous resources that I was referring to:
  

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/99116/1710730/post.ashx#1710730
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  hooberus

  to those honestly interested, here is some documentation from talk origins archives regarding evidence for evolution. for those of you who say there is no evidence for evolution, please start by responding to these basics.

  ---

  29+ Evidences for Macroevolution

  The Scientific Case for Common Descent

  Version 2.85
  
  Copyright © 1999-2004 by Douglas Theobald, Ph.D. [Last Update: August 28, 2005]

  Permission is granted to copy and print these pages in total for non-profit personal, educational, research, or critical purposes.

  Responses to many of these claims can be found in a variety of literature. For example, several of them are dealt with in the publication The Biotic Message.

  http://www1.minn.net/~science/contents.htm
• 

  kid-A

  Thus, they are really not independant "evidence" against the Bibilcal Eve.
  There is no reason to provide evidence "against" the biblical Eve because there is no evidence for a biblical eve. I could make the argument that there is as much evidence that "Zeus" is the present god of the universe and that he was created by Kronos! You are just relying on a single piece of "cultural" literature. There are probably hundreds of thousands of creation myths from every corner of the earth, each of them completely unique and completely believed (at one time) by the cultures that invented them.

  Science transcends these culturally biased assumptions and proposes a hypothesis that can either be proven or disproven by the dependent variable. Religion is entirely enmeshed in the specific "cultural" domain from where it arises and is dictated by those constraints. You begin with the assumption that gods existence is a fact. Science takes no position either way, because god as a theory is entirely unfalsifiable.
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  Darth Yhwh

  Ten thousand years ago, there were no dairy cows or ferret hounds or large ears of corn. When we domesticated the ancestors of these plants and animals-sometimes creatures who looked quite different-we controlled their breeding. We made sure that certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When we wanted a dog to help us car for sheep, we selected breeds that were intelligent, obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in packs. The enormous distended udders of the dairy cattle are the result of a human interest in milk and cheese. Our corn, or maize, has been bred for ten thousand generations to be more tasty and nutritious than its scrawny ancestors; indeed, it is so changed that it cannot even reproduce without human intervention.

  The essence of artificial selection-for a Heike crab, a dot, a cow or an ear of corn-is this: Many physical and behavioral traits of plants and animals are inherited. They breed true. Humans, for whatever reason, encourage the reproduction of some varieties and discourage the reproduction of others. The variety selected for preferentially reproduces; it eventually becomes abundant; the variety selected against becomes rare and perhaps extinct.

  But if humans can make new varieties of plants and animals, must not nature do so also? This related process is called natural selection. That life has changed fundamentally over the aeons is entirely clear from the alteration we have made in the beasts and vegetables during the short tenure of humans on Earth, and from the fossil evidence. The fossil record speaks to us unambiguously of creatures that once were present in enormous numbers and that have now vanished utterly. Far more species have become extinct in the history of the Earth than exist today; they are the terminated experiments of evolution.

  The genetic changes induced by domestication have occurred very rapidly. The rabbit was not domesticated until early medieval times (it was bred by French monks in the belief that new born bunnies were fish and therefore exempt from the prohibitions against eating meat on certain days in the Church calendar); coffee in the fifteenth century; sugar beet in the nineteenth century; and the mink is still in the earliest stages of domestication. In less than ten thousand years, domestication has increased the weight of wool grown by sheep from less than one kilogram of rough hairs to ten or twenty kilograms of uniform, fine down; or the volume of milk given by cattle during the lactation period from a few hundred to a million cubic centimeters. If artificial selection can make such major changes in so short a period of time, what must natural selection, working over billions of years, be capable of? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world. Evolution is a fact, not a theory. - Cosmos by Carl Sagan

  This excerpt from Cosmos had a profound impact on me when I first read it years ago.
• 

  hooberus

  The genetic changes induced by domestication have occurred very rapidly. The rabbit was not domesticated until early medieval times (it was bred by French monks in the belief that new born bunnies were fish and therefore exempt from the prohibitions against eating meat on certain days in the Church calendar); coffee in the fifteenth century; sugar beet in the nineteenth century; and the mink is still in the earliest stages of domestication. In less than ten thousand years, domestication has increased the weight of wool grown by sheep from less than one kilogram of rough hairs to ten or twenty kilograms of uniform, fine down; or the volume of milk given by cattle during the lactation period from a few hundred to a million cubic centimeters. If artificial selection can make such major changes in so short a period of time, what must natural selection, working over billions of years, be capable of? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world. Evolution is a fact, not a theory. - Cosmos by Carl Sagan

  
  

  
  The problem with this is that domestic breeding involves primarily the recombination and loss of already existing genetic information, whereas evolution (in the molecules-to-man sense) would have also required an opposite process:

  http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/OneBlood/chapter2.asp
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  Midget-Sasquatch

  The problem with this is that domestic breeding involves primarily the recombination and loss of already existing genetic information, whereas evolution (in the molecules-to-man sense) would have also required an opposite process

  Well consider the anti-freeze protein in some fish and its likely evolution. There's evidence pointing to that novel function being derived from a new combination of "existing genetic information" as well as non-coding DNA. So we're talking about creation (heh) of new genetic material.

  http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/94/8/3485
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  searching4?

  This could be debated on and on and on. Why not meet in the middle, God is the creator, yes, but evolution cannot be ruled out. I think God was helping things evolve evry step of the way. It doesn't have to be complicated or philosified, evolution happened through creation, but God didn't just let some big bang happen and then just sit back and watch. He was there for every transformation, every new creature was lovingly created.
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  Seeker4

  God is just a myth that humans created to help us deal with the problem that started when we became conscious of death. Sorry searching4? (interesting how close your name is to the one I chose 10 years ago...), but you need to start facing what is real, and none of that has to do with the God of teh Bible.

  It's time to grow up and face the future. There is no god. We're responsible for our own life.

  How freeing and how scary I found that idea....

  S4
• 

  tetrapod.sapien

  Why not meet in the middle,

  because there is no evidence for the existence of god(s).

  no empirical, conclusive evidence. zero. nothing. ever.

  TS