evolution or creation? lets talk...

by Sam87 537 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  hillary_step

  AlanF,

  Of course. The trick is to know when you're ignorant and keep your mouth shut.

  Unfortunately it is not just a matter of ignorance. When you mix ignorance with a very cheap French wine you end up with this :

  You'er getting a bald spot AlanF ...losing more and more scales...watch out...you'll never fly off the ground that way! Maybe you can glue them back on. LOL calling people ignorant like that...now I KNOW your coming UNGLUED> hahahha Is that the only defence you have? Even your IDOL, Dawkins amits evolution can't be proved.

  HS
• 

  LittleToe

  Dido:

  i know you are trying to be diplomatic and `feel sorry` for me, but please don`t as i don`t need anyones sympathy when it comes to this subject.

  Diplomatic, aye; "sorry" for you, no. I'm perfectly sure you can fight your own battles

  I remember a time when I thought the WTS Creation books (the old small one and the more recent larger one that most folks here remember) were accurate and scientifically presented research. Then I found out just what kind of rigour was required by the scientific community and peer review.

  I recall making ignorant (merely meaning uneducated, because I simply didn't have enough information) comments about all life needing oxygen, before being presented with the fact that anaerobic bacteria exist in sulphur pools. That particular one came when I was on the doorstep of a scientist, with a fellow Elder who was a science teacher sadly nodding in agreement to what the householder was suggesting. I was embarrassed as heck, I can tell you! It wouldn't be until several years later that I would explore the subject for myself, after I had left the confines of the WTS. I had to make an about-face, as I believe there is strong evidence for evolution being the manner in which life developed on this planet. It doesn't yet explain how it all started, but that may eventually come.

  Did you know that Charles Darwin didn't discount the idea of there being a God who started everything

  While a number of scientists are atheists (Richard Dawkins being a voluble and rather smug example) many are not. Even so, a goodly number accept evolution as the method by which we have such a variety of life on this planet. These aren't men who blindly folow the crowd, but ones who have sought out the answers to how this is all possible and the mechanisms that make it possible. They have staked their reputations and a good chunk of their lives on unravelling the mysteries of life.

  Hence I am quite at ease with a world about which much is being discovered, infact welcome it, as well as enjoying the mysteries of spirituality. I would suggest that the aim of a true mystic is to explore the mechanisms of the universe in which we live, rather than cede to superstition. In days of yore the mystics and alchemists were the scientists, and many co-existed happily in the church. The language and frameworks change slowly, as we understand more, but the general pattern of observation changes little. For that reason I understand the Genesis account as a reasonable explanation of how life got her for that time, and the steps are generally correct, but things have moved on apace in the last 3000 years.

  None of this takes away a jot from my own experiences with the "Divine". There are still many unexplained things in the world, and I look forward to understanding more and more of these. However, while science is shrinking the "god of the gaps", I continue to believe strongly in a personality behind it all. This isn't merely through blind faith but through interaction. As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, the duck-billed platypus has to be a cosmic joke, right?!!

  Everyone is entitled to their opinion, especially if their framework of belief enables them to get through life with as much comfort as possible while traversing their internal world map. That, alas, is something that many "intellectuals" appear to forget. Maybe they need a supplimentary course in psychology, to see how our brains are wired for cartography and how our personal beliefs are integral pieces that enable us to survive.

  Just my 2p.
• 

  TopHat

  Of course not, but it was ONLY the Royals that YOU mentioned as if that were some sort of mark intellectually. It is not. I would rather you intone the qualifications of some of the students who did not need to buy their way into edifices of higher learning. It may have made your point more effectively.

  HS

  MR. hillary step, I can tell you have been drinking that same cheap wine you accuse me of drinking...LMAO at least my joke was original. You are the Master of tired OLD jokes. Drink better wine next time it will help your brains cells last longer.
• 

  hillary_step

  TopHat,

  MR. hillary step, I can tell you have been drinking that same cheap wine you accuse me of drinking...LMAO at least my joke was original. You are the Master of tired OLD jokes. Drink better wine next time it will help your brains cells last longer.

  If I had made a joke to begin with, your strange post may have made some sense, as I did not it gets thrown on the heap of trash where it belongs, and possibly where it began its dismal little life.

  HS
• 

  AlanF

  TopHat said:

  : . . . I am well educated on evolution . . .

  Really. Your question:

  : So now that we have evolved into humans...what is the next stage for evolution

  proves that you're entirely ignorant of evolution. I won't bother to explain. Pearls before swine and all that.

  You also said:

  : AlanF is ignorant of what I know and don't know

  Not at all, because what I know of what you know and don't know is based entirely on your posts. Your refusal to list even a couple of books on evolution that you've read, and your refusal to provide any facts at all in support of creation, prove that you yourself know that you're abysmally ignorant of the subject.

  You can't even argue coherently. In one post you say about Richard Dawkins:

  : Even your IDOL, Dawkins amits evolution can't be proved. But then again he will speak as though it was a fact. Very contradictory the man is on his belief. He even keeps open the possiblity of there being a God yet thinks God does not exist. HUH???

  Yet in another post you say about me:

  : So because he has no proof he wants to challenge creationist to prove there is a God. Knowing very well they can't. How dumb can he be!

  So, while admitting that creation cannot be proved, you take Dawkins to task for 'admitting' that evolution can't be proved and then claiming it's a fact. Yet you obviously believe that creation is a fact. How dumb can you be?

  It's painfully obvious that you know nothing about what facts in science are. In science, a fact is a notion that has been so well established over time that, as Stephen Jay Gould wrote, it would be perverse not to accept it. Not accepting that planets go round the sun by means of gravity, or that the earth is a globe, are example of such perverseness.

  Had you actually understood anything that Dawkins wrote, you could not have made the above comment. Dawkins always carefully explains what scientific proof is. His statement that evolution cannot be proved means that it cannot be proved in the absolute sense that mathematicians construct proofs of ideal math theorems. However, Dawkins also explains that there are mountains of evidence in favor of evolution, whereas there aren't even molehills of evidence in favor of creation. So you've misrepresented Dawkins in your ignorance. And again, your inability to cite any evidence whatsoever in favor of creation proves my contention.

  I can easily cite bits of that mountain in favor of evolution. Here are a few:

  There exist in nature certain defects in animals called atavisms, or throwbacks. For example, when whaling was common, from time to time whalers would pull up a whale that had hind legs in various stages of development. The legs were not usually functional, but some contained all the structures of normal mammalian legs, including bone, muscle and sinew. These could only grow if the whale's genes contained a blueprint for legs -- perfectly sensible in the context of evolution, but nonsensical in terms of creation. The fossil record of the evolution of whales indicates that they evolved from land animals, and it makes genetic sense that evolution gradually turned off the expression of hind legs. But like an intelligent computer programmer who deletes unnecessary program instructions, an intelligent creator would be expected to delete unnecessary genetic instructions for hind legs in whales.

  In genetic experiments, scientists have taken chicken eggs and innoculated them with certain growth hormones to see what would happen. Some of the eggs developed tooth buds, which shows that birds still contain genes for teeth -- again completely consistent with the evolution of birds from toothed, reptile-like ancestors but inconsistent with a Supremely Intelligent Creator.

  From time to time, horses are born with three toes -- the normal big one that has the hoof, and small ones on either side of it. This atavism proves that horses still contain the genes for the ancient condition of three toes -- completely consistent with the fossil record of the evolution of horses but inconsistent with a Creator.

  Now, I have no doubt that you'll dismiss the above facts with your usual ridiculous comments. But I welcome such comments, just as I welcome idiotic comments from JW defenders, because it shows just how badly blind religious belief can affect people with normal intelligence.

  AlanF
• 

  AlanF

  Mysterious, here are some good recent books, in increasing order of technicality:

  The Ancestor's Tale, Richard Dawkins

  Climbing Mount Improbable, Richard Dawkins

  Evolution, Mark Ridley

  The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Stephen Jay Gould

  Good reading!

  AlanF
• 

  Leolaia

  There's a pretty interesting article on evolution I read about this week. In the ocean near Antarctica lives a family of fish (within the Notothenioidae) called the icefish which unlike any other fish (or vertebrate) on the planet has no red blood cells in its veins. In fact, even its white blood cell count is only 1%; in other words, their blood is literally ice water. For any other animal, this would mean instant death. But the icefish gets along just dandy because the near-freezing water of the Antarctic is more highly oxygenated than water at warmer temperatures. With so much oxygen in the water, the icefish does not need hemoglobin to circulate oxygen in its system. Moreover, not only is hemoglobin unnecessary, it is also a deteriment at freezing temperatures. Its viscosity increases the colder it gets and increased viscosity naturally interferes with circulation. Thus even red-blooded Antarctic fish have a dramatically lower percentage of hemoglobin in their blood.

  With no hemoglobin in their blood, a creationist might reckon that -- of all the fish in the world -- these fish were simply uniquely created that way. But when you look at their DNA, the two hemoglobin genes are indeed present in the code, exactly where they would be found in red-blooded fish. The two genes however are corrupted; the first gene is missing pieces of code whereas the second is almost entirely eroded away. These are mutations, plain and simple, and they explain why the fish do not have hemoglobin: the corrupted DNA cannot produce hemoglobin proteins.

  Now, these mutations (which represent not a single mutation event but a series of deformations or copying errors to the DNA) would have been absolutely fatal to a fish -- or person -- who lived in an environment that required the use of hemoglobin. If it was something that happened to a human egg, we would have a great example of how mutations can cause birth defects and death. But this is not what happened with the icefish, for they are all alive and well today. These mutations thus did not have a detrimental effect and indeed were beneficial. Antarctic fish that received mutations preventing the production of red blood cells would lack the viscocity posed by hemoglobin and thus have more efficient circulation systems that would allow a greater input of oxygen from the highly oxygenated ice water. This allowed mutated fish to live in colder waters than red-blooded fish could have lived and also prevented them from living in warmer waters where fish without the mutations could easily live. Rather than causing death, the corrupted genes were passed on to successive generations because they faciliated better adaptation to cold water.

  That adaptation was involved is apparent from the history of Antarctica. Prior to 65 million years ago it had a warm climate; dinosaurs lived there and ocean temperatures were warm as well. But the climate began to change in the Cenozoic Era and continental drift brought Antarctica down to the southern pole where it became surrounded all around by ocean. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current that circles this ocean effectively isolates Antarctic fish from those to the north, preventing them from migrating to warmer waters. Characteristics that helped fish to live in an increasingly colder environment, like the hemoglobin mutations but also larger gills (which admit a greater amount of water), would logically became more widespread in the population because such fish were more likely to spawn than less adapted fish. The mutations hindering the production of hemoglobin would have then become more and more common in the breeding population (isolated from their kin in warmer waters) over successive generations, with functioning genes becoming more and more scarce (e.g. selective breeding), until we have the breeding population we see today, with all known icefish in their respective species lacking any hemoglobin in their circulatory systems.
• 

  jgnat

  Though it must pain you to do so, Hillary-step, the inclusion of a does help the average reader. I see it is a handy symbol to indicate that you are writing tongue-in-cheek. You cheeky devil.

  Nice to see you around.
• 

  zagor

  Leolaia,That's a very good article, thanks for that

  ... and ladies and gentlemen, here is something else, just to put additional spin (like there's not enough to deal with already, I know, but couldn't resist)

  http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2005/11/message_in_the_sky.php

  It has nothing to do with religion, it is from cutting edge of physics. So I hope religionists will not take this as a "support" to their view. To accept this idea requires an open mind
• 

  TopHat

  Somebody needs to put this thread out of it's misery....It has out-lived it usefulness.