evolution or creation? lets talk...

by Sam87 537 Replies latest jw friends

Seeker4

Cat wrote: "Both theories lack rationality on their own... "
I couldn't disagree more. Part of the beauty and appeal of evolution is that it so rationally explains the development of the varieties of life, and all of the evidence we have substantiates the theory, which is why it is a scientific theory to begin with. One of evolution's most substantial proofs is that new species appear right where they should, if the theory is accurate. Which so far it is. One of the other beauties of science is that theories can be fine tuned and adjusted as more evidence comes to light, making them progressively more and more accurate.
S4
Satanus

elderwho
Even if you hold a mystic position or mystisism, are you not curious of a start?
The word 'of' in that sentence is an unusual construction. Could you explain how you mean that phrase? Maybe my fuzziness in understanding is because english is not my first language.
S
trevor

This is a huge thread which is appropriate for such a huge topic. I have not yet commented because I am still evolving and have not yet reached a definitive conclusion.
Evolution has undoubtedly played a part in the manifestation of the world. Religion, with all its faults, has attempted to explain the unexplainable. Taken alone it has failed. Evolution taken alone, has failed. Taken together we have at best a few clues.
I do not think we have yet got close to knowing the truth. Looking past this small planet there are many unanswered question regarding the source of life and all exploration and debate is healthy and necessary.
The human race may not live long enough to ever full realize what is behind the awesome universe in which our planet is just a tiny speck of cosmic dust.
Anyone that thinks they have the answer has missed the whole point. As time bound physical creatures we can not even begin to grasp the totality of the sum.
I have just ordered Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion, in an attempt to educate myself. I doubt if it will offer any outstanding answers to the riddle of life. Still it will be entertaining and make me more ‘knowledgeable.’ In the end most believe what they want to. We embrace viewpoints that fit into the model of the world we have created in our own minds. It takes courage to step outside of that security and make and honest search for truth. It is for that reason that I admire the people who have contributed to this enjoyable debate. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
We climb a stair every day - or every million years if we but knew it and the greatest asset we can posses is humility. If you have read this far you may be wondering what my point is. I don’t have one. I just like being involved and expressing myself. That that could be the motivation that drives the whole universe.

skeptic2

Here's my sensible contribution to the debate:

LOL on all of the "Creationists" posting on this subject......LMFAOROF

Here's my less sensible contribution to the debate, questions for creationists:

The Genesis flood: Where did all that water come from? Where did it go? more flood information
How could the Genesis flood form the Grand Canyon? more information on the Grand Canyon
How do you explain the universally consistent radioactive dating results obtained with different radioactive elements, and the consistent correlation with objects of known age? more radioactive dating information
What scientifically factual information can you supply to support your contention that the universe is only a few thousand years old?
How do you explain the astronomical evidence that the universe is billions of years old, without resorting to the preposterous assumption that the speed of light was millions of times faster in the past than it is now? more information
What mathematical proof can you supply, based on the known equations of thermodynamics, that order can not spontaneously arise from disorder? more thermodynamics information
If your claim that thermodynamics will not permit the evolution of complex living structures is true, then how do you explain, without resorting to make-believe special mechanisms that have no basis in thermodynamics, the development of a chick in an egg?
If creationism is scientifically valid, then why is it necessary to emphasize that the sectarian religous dogma of the Book of Genesis is the ultimate scientific authority?
If you believe that God can override nature to create living things as described in the Book of Genesis, then what reasons do you have, other than your religious beliefs, that God could not have created living things through a process of evolution?
The standard creationist explanation for the distribution of fossils in geological strata, with most primitive life forms in the lower strata, and mammals and humans in the upper strata, is that clever mankind was smart enough to climb to higher ground to escape the rising flood waters. How do you explain the fact that thousands of persons drowned in the recent Central America floods, in an area contiguous to higher ground? How do you explain the position of the fossils in the geologic layers, with small fossils below large fossils, which is contrary to hydraulic sorting in which large objects settle deeper than small objects?

11. Why is there the coherence among many different dating methods pointing to an old earth and life on earth for a long time - for example: radioactivity, tree rings, ice cores, corals, supernovas - from astronomy, biology, physics, geology, chemistry and archeology? These methods are based on quite distinct fields of inquiry and are quite diverse, yet manage to arrive at quite similar dates. (This is not answered by saying that there is no proof of uniformity of radioactive decay. The question is why all these different methods give the same answers.)

12. In the contemporary world, different animals and plants live in different places. Why is there the present distribution of animals and plants in the world? For example, how is it that marsupials are restricted to Australia and nearby islands and the Americas, monotremes to Australia and nearby islands, and few placental mammals are native to Australia? Or why are tomatoes and potatoes native to the Americas only? (This is not a question merely of how they could have arrived there, it is also of why only there.)

13. There is a large body of information about the different species of animals and plants, systematically organized, which is conventionally represented as reflecting genetic relationships between different species. So, for example, lions are said to be more closely related to tigers than they are to elephants. If different kinds are not genetically related, what is the explanation for the greater and less similarities between different kinds of living things? That is to say, why would special creation produce this complex pattern rather than just resulting in all kinds being equally related to all others?

Coherence of many different dating methods.
Chronological distribution of fossils.
Spatial distribution of living things.
Relationships between living things.

14. Has creationism ever made a true prediction? (as compared to evolution which has made countless subsequently validated predictions, which is partially how it qualifies as a scientific theory)

Any good scientific theory can make predictions, either of what we will observe, or what we should find. If it cannot make such predictions, then it has nothing to do with reality. If it fails at its predictions, then it is false or incomplete.

Neo-Darwinism make predictions, and those predictions are confirmed with every archaeological discovery. All life on Earth is derived from common ancestors, and finding organisms without DNA would disprove that. Yet all lifeforms on Earth have DNA. All life on Earth is hierarchical, and both the morphological and molecular hierarchies converge. Our discovery of transitional forms follow this hierarchy : we have plenty of transitions between reptiles and birds and reptiles and mammals, for example, but none between, say, birds and mammals. If we did find such a form, it would be a problem for Neo-Darwinism !

We can explain why vestigial organs exist in a given species, by looking at the past of its genome. If whales were fishes instead of mammals, it would be rather hard to explain why they have vestigial legs. Indeed, those vestigial legs could be called the "smoking gun" of Neo-Darwinism. Or to take a previous example, we should not find mammals with vestigial feathers. There are millions of ways by which Neo-Darwinism could be falsified, and yet all the data we find confirm its obvious truth.

15. What is the physical evidence that species cannot evolve beyond "kinds" ?

One prediction made by most Creationists is either that species cannot evolve into another species, or from "kind" to "kind". Now here we have a problem already, since the notion of "kind" is not defined by Creationists. Some claim that a "kind" is identified visually. For instance, all "dogs" are a "kind". However, it is unclear why "terriers" or "mammals", for instance, are not kinds instead of "dogs".

At any rate, this question applies to all Creationists. If there is such a barrier to the progress of evolution, then where is it in the DNA ? Where is this barrier and how is it expressed in the DNA ? If somehow DNA could not change beyond a certain limit, then we should see this somewhere. Why is all DNA the same, and does not seem to have any such barrier at all ?

Neo-Darwinism is clear on the question : all adaptation proceeds from the same mechanisms. Speciation or "kind-to-kind" is no different from adaptation within a species or "kind", just more extensive. And the proof is, as they say, in the pudding : the transitional forms we observe in the fossil record are smooth gradations, thus showing the beauty and power of the processes of evolution.

16. Why do you believe that all living things popped up from nothing ?

Creationists believe that organisms do not evolve from prior organisms, or that they emerge from some other form of matter : rather, they believe that some (or all) popped up from nothing, by divine intervention. This is magick fairy tale stuff, and yet millions of people believe this.

What is the actual empirical evidence we have about this ? Do we observe organisms popping out of nothing ? As I pointed out, spontaneous generation has been disproven a long time ago, and no one seriously believes it, not even Creationists. We have never, in all of history, seen an organism popping out of nothing.No possibility exists of such a thing. It would go against pretty much all the laws of physics, for one thing. Nothing less than a complete re-write of science would be necessary before we can accept such an event.

17. Why do we have plenty of transitional forms in the fossil record ?

Do we have many transitional forms ? You bet. We have many species in the transition between fish and amphibians, and amphibians and reptiles, and almost all species in the transition between reptiles and birds, and reptiles and mammals. We also have a fine picture of mammalian transitions, especially that between Australopithecus to modern humans. See the image below for the skulls of these transitions (first skull is modern chimpanzee, for comparison).

This sequence goes all the way from B - Australopithecus africanus, 2.6 million years ago - to G - Homo erectus, 1.75 million years ago - to N - Homo sapiens sapiens.

As we have discussed, many Creationists believe that speciation cannot occur. The question they must answer is, how do you explain the gradation above ? Random chance ? The probability of it coming about by random chance is astronomically small. Some may reply that God made the fossil record look like it has transitional forms. Is God a deceiver ? And if God's actions look just like evolution, where is the need to invoke God to explain it ? Like it or not, the only obvious answer is Neo-Darwinism.

skeptic2

What is the creationist explanation for new species over time (millions of species over billions of years)? Does God parachute another fully-formed species onto the planet every few years? The creationist's God is a simpleton, incapable of the breathtaking simplicity of natural selection, they blaspheme God for their own political ends.
Evolution might bug you, nothing wrong with that, keep researching and it will bug you less. No evolution should bug you more.
For example, are these transitional fossils from land mammal to sea mammal (i.e. whales), or is God/Satan playing a trick on us? Note that ambulocetus is adapted to spending some of it's time in water (think wolves that hide on the water's edge), while Dalanistes is fully adapted to spend ing all it's time in water (think crocodile).
For example, when did God invent the fully formed bird? Did he invent all existing species at once?
What explains extinct bird-like species and their place further back in the fossil record?
Archaeopteryx, 140 million years ago
Sinornithosaurus, 130 million years ago, rudimentary feathers/hairs on body
close up of head
Caudipteryx, 120 million years ago
artists impression
Gansus yumenensis, 110 million years ago
artists impression
Hesperornis, flight-less bird with teeth, 90 million years ago
Presbyornis, 50 million years ago
Diatryma, 50 million years ago
This is just a handful of bird and bird-like species. Did God drop them onto the planet fully formed? Does he still drop species onto the planet fully formed? What year was the last one?
ellderwho

ew: Even if you hold a mystic position or mystisism, are you not curious of a start?
The word 'of' in that sentence is an unusual construction. Could you explain how you mean that phrase? Maybe my fuzziness in understanding is because english is not my first language.
Seems like you have a better hold on my primary language than I do. Maybe if I asked you in another way. What is the start of your origins?
Big Tex

I do not agree with you that evolution lacks rationality and I would be interested to hear why you believe so.
Unless you're satisfied with "because I believe it", I suspect you'll have a long wait.
Satanus

elderwho
Me, my body is animal. Yup, the animal instincts are there, the results of evolution. Me, the spirit, i think i came from the light.
S

evolution or creation? lets talk...

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