Need Some Education On EVOLUTION? Start Here! Perry & Axal take note!

by Seeker4 178 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • hillary_step
    hillary_step

    dark angle,

    very hot & interesting discussion here! well, i've discovered a very great attractive & unifying concept for us. i call it EVOLUTIONARY CREATION! IT MIGHT ACCOMMODATE ALL OF US HERE. ITS AN IDEA THAT GOD MIGHT HAVE USED THE FORCES OF NATURE (E.G. EVOLUTION) TO SHAPE THE WORLD WE KNOW TODAY. just a cooling & closing remark for this action pack site!!!!

    This is called Intelligent Design. It has been making headlines in the theological and national journals for the past decade!

    It has become the fall-back position for Creationists who have finally accepted the impossibility of the Genesis account and seek to dress their Creator in different, more fashionable clothes. HS
  • Golf
    Golf

    To your question, "Need some education on evolution?" Thanks, but no thanks. My belief in a Creator did not come about by reading the Bible or any other reading material. For anyone to call me ignorant for not believing in evolution is presumptuous. I don't IMPOSE my belief in a Creator on others, I respect the beliefs of others, it's their CHOICE!!!! Have a good day.


    Golf

  • dark angle
    dark angle

    SEEKER4, THANKS FOR POSTING THAT WEBSITE. VERY HELPFUL FOR ME, ESPECIALLY IM QUITE EAGER TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR NATURAL HISTORY. IVE READ THE EVOLUTION VS CREATION BOOK OF THE WT ABOUT 7 TIMES ALREADY SINCE I WAS A KID. BUT IT SEEMS I WANT TO KNOW & INCLINED TO BELIEVE MORE ABOUT WHAT THE MAJORITY OF THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY HAS TO SAY ABOUT IT. THANKS

  • proplog2
    proplog2

    RAF

    I have no argument with you. I know you call it faith. Those of us who have followed your posts (including french baby face) know you as having a contagious optimism. This comes naturally for you. I am sure you don't have to work at it. You have a way of letting things just happen (including adversity). It's like water off a ducks back. It is a gift - and is part of your inherited constitution.

    You are NOT an enemy of evolution. The enemies are silenced on a regular basis in court battles. As long as we don't get nuked back to the stone age those who need to understand evolution and do research based on that paradigm (genetics, mutating viruses, curing diseases) are going to get the right start by learning evolution in their educational process.

    Evolution works for those who need it to do their work.

    I hate to see your good nature attacked by those who take this discussion too seriously.

    I believe in evolution because it is a very useful model for the way I live my life. Compete, cooperate whatever it takes. The odds increase in your favor the more often you place your bets (buy stocks, explore product niches, select right people for right jobs, go to the audition, put in job application etc.) the better your chances to succeed. That's what I get from evolution. Faith in God has some of the same effects - God helps those who take calculated risks.

    The arguments come when people become afraid. The largest Christian Faith (Catholics) acknowledges evolution as fact - I don't think scientists have to be allergic to theists.

    You have a lively mind - the mind of a survivor. That kind of mind makes the world safe for science.

  • RAF
    RAF

    OH MY ... Prolog2 this looks so sincere ...

    I've wanted to PM you right then when I've read you (I will) but I for once fell like to grabb you and kiss you all over !!! because a plus you have actually been able to state and expressed clearly what I'm thinking about why this can become battle when there is no reason to ... So here another BIG KISS.

    What you've said about the reasons why people rather believe in this instead of that, is just what I'm thinking about it, it just works better for them - for there own personnal raison (And I understand it even more from former JW which I know about how bad the religious experience have been spirituality - and JW actually confuse religion/cultic pratice and beliefs / with spirituality).

    We all have a spirituality it is moved by what is more important to us (and of course it is related to what works better for us it's just that to me the christian spirituality includes the need to take care about what is better for everybody - and that doesn't mean the same thing for each one of us).

    Eddited for last add : So to me being christian is not a question of religion but State of mind (anyone can call it the way he wants)

  • SixofNine
    SixofNine

    Why do you keep saying there is no proof for evolution Corinne?

  • GetBusyLiving
    GetBusyLiving

    :Very poor speeling by the way

    OMFG.. bwahahaha.

    GBL

  • RAF
    RAF

    Sixy, did you read me?

    I mean, I know my english and spelling is awfull but if there is someone from this board I've talked a lot with already it's you ... and about this topic ... I'm just fed up with it ... I'd rather have a big laugh rightnow than getting into what really don't matter to me at this point there is really nothing to add.

    So right now can you just forget about this please?

  • Abaddon
    Abaddon

    RAF

    Racisme (ok that's a good example) there was a time when scientists where giving "facts" about the "fact" that "some people" were less evoluate than other - even women versus men (I don't care who said what - but you know it).

    Good, now you're cooking with gas, as your example allows me to introduce the "hidden" truth about scientists. They get it wrong. Evidence can be interpretted wrongly, incomplete evidence can give a misleading idea, and conjecture can be utterly wrong. However, scientific 'belief' is not revalatory.

    Darwin did not get off the Beagle glowing with the radiance of the god of evolution carrying Origins in stone tablet form. There were numerous editions as he responded to criticism of his theory and as new evidence was discovered.

    The theory has been tweaked and changed, twiddled and poked quite endlessly, as people have fab insights, new evidence gets discovered, or old evidence is re-examined with new techniques. A sharp contrast to religious books; no new edition of Genesis when the creative account and the Flood were shown to be false.

    There are several things we learn from this.

    • First of all evolutionary theory is largely evidence lead.
    • Secondly it is revisable and improvable.
    • Thirdly, although it has been twiddled and improved, the basic theory has never been disproved.
    • Fourth, the original understanding of what descended from what (based on the bones) have been confirmed by a totally different strand of evidence, that of genetics.
    If to you this theory from the start is good enough ... Well again what can I say? ... why not? but is it a proof. Is it?

    Ok, evolution is not proved in any way that would satisfy you at this point. I'd actually like you to come back to me with what WOULD prove evolution to you.

    Evolution is a theory, an explanation for a set of facts or evidence.

    Now what other ideas do we have about the development of life? Creative myths from various cultures; Islam, Christianity and Hinduism all have creation myths, and all have groups of creationists who insist that the creation myths are literally accurate... which is lovely, as none of the creative myths are compatable with the others. As a Christian, what is your opinion of Islamic and Hindu Creationism? All creative myths can be described in a nice way as 'hypotheses'; a hypothesis is a theory without evidence.

    And sorry, the Bible is no more evidence of the Genesis creative myths accuracy than the Qu'ran is of the Islamic myths' accuracy or the Bhag-gad-va-vita of the Hindu myths truth. We have no proof of Adam and Eve. We do have rather a lot of proof for dinosaurs.

    And your beliefs are just as sincere as a Suffi's belief in Allah, a Hindu's in Brahman. Are they wrong? Are you? As none of you have evidence, and you all have belief, how do we determine who is right? Or is no one right?

    Evolutionary theory is the only theory (which is better than a hypothesis) in town.

    It is a theory, never disproved and much improved from its birth, which is confirmed by multiple strands of evidence and which can be used to make predictions about things.

    Is my opinion more worthy? I don't know I'm still wondering (I'm not even sur if it is interesting to know and even if we can know it all ... So I won't say that my opinion is the right one (it's a theory - from the same observation : one will say the natural process is creating with a survival process and an other one can say then we might have way more things to deal with at our stage if it was juste that) ... it is my view on the matter NOW.

    You are talking to me as if I don't know about evolutioniste statements (part of proof and part of theory) Why? I wonder?

    Again is it the "fact" that I'm saying that I'm a believer that make you all think that I do avoid any other proof on any matter? It's weird because I don't. Cause that would be stupid (there's no way to talk against a PROOF).

    Maybe it's the language. I do understand your beliefs in god and Jesus, but don't understand why these make you want to deny evolutionary theory being generally accurate. There is proof the Genesis account, if taken literally, is just wrong.

    If you accept this, and view it as an allegory, then why cannot god be clever enough to make a Universe that works like what we have proof for?

    Why do you limit god's abilities?

    I'm just fed up with the "We have supportive materiel as theory to be able to state that we are the product of an hasardous developpement" from one cell (some things just do not happen by hasard even with the natural process that we human can make it happen ... wherever it leads - so it's all about the intelligence of the material from the start (God = Essence at matury / not God = a cell at matury) Again it is not fare one from the other (it actually almost means the same to me)

    I suggest you read 'The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins. You seem to think that there is something random or chaotic about evolution. There is nothing random about the biggest stag siring the most fawns, or the peacock with the grandest tail the most chicks. There is nothing random about how under certain circumstances the legs of a lizard will change length over a few generations.

    Those organisms in a population that because of their individual characteristics pass their genes on with greater frequency than average will see those features spread across a population over time. That is not random. It is as un random as one can get.

    If you wonder why there is not a perfect record of impercetably different skeletons going back from modern species, you need to learn about how rare fossilisation is.

    You will also need to lean how gradual yet significant change can be.

    Go to the seaside. Note there are two similar gulls, the lesser black-backed and the herring gull. Note they are different species, they don't interbreed. Take two baskets and catch two lesser black-backed gulls. Travel 500 miles north or east along the coast, let one go, and catch one of the local ones. Repeat this process every 500 km, keeping the remaining original gull each time.

    What will happen by the time you have gone round the world on the coasts boardering the Arctic, is that the gulls you released at each point quite happily bred with the gulls at that point.

    The gulls will also get greyer, and a little bigger.

    When you get back home, you have two (one by now very hungry) gulls. One is the original black-backed gull. The other is a herring gull.

    One species blending into another over thousands of kilometers so you can't see where one ends and the other begins. Change kilometers for years and you have a good model of much evolution.

    Apostate Kate

    RAF evolutionists believe that evolution is a theory AND a fact. They will apply adaptation and claim that there is proof that this sytem will create a higher functioning, more complex life form. Though there is no proof of this happening.

    There is proof. The oldest organisms are simpler, there are no ancient complex organisms, and although there are always simple organsims over time more complex organisms arise.

    If you have an alternative THEORY to evolution, please do tell. If evolution has been disproved, please say how. In your own words at preference over cut and paste. If you have scientifically acceptable proof for your beliefs then you have a theory. If you don't you have a hypothesis.

    Michael Behe, big dude in the ID lobby, admitted in an Australian court that ID was a hypothesis, and that if ID was taught in schools, you would logically have to allow astrology to be taught, as that's a hypothesis too.

    They will point to the fossil record yet the facts are that there are periods of teeming life, and periods of die offs.

    And? That doesn't disprove evolution. How on Earth can you credibly criticise evolution when you know so little about it you make a massive mistake like that?

    You can't evolve a suitable reaction to a meteor landing on your head, or to a volcano exploding, the time scale is too short! What it does prove is that whenever loads of species die off, their places in the available biological niches are taken by what looks like, over time, some of the surviving species of the event CHANGING. You actually gave a good proof FOR evolution, LOL.

    The Cambrian explosian is but one.

    I suggest if you extended your research to something other than strip-mining anti-evolution websites for supporting arguments or fallacious arguments from authority, and actually look at some facts, you could do no better than start by typing 'Ediacaran' into a web browser. You will then probably learn how before we discovered Ediacaran fossils it LOOKED like there was a 'Cambrian explosion'. Ediacaran fossils are pre-Cambrian. They were complex multi-cellular life forms, but were soft-bodied and rarely fossilised, even by fossilisation's standards.

    It's pretty easy to see how many soft-bodies species could give rise to many hard-bodies species over time, yet leave a fossil record that makes it look like many hrd-bodied species appeared without any origin.

    The lack of transitional fossils is another problem they will overlook.

    I suggest the above example of a 'ring species' (the gulls), some research about fossilisation, and some research on talkorigins under 'transitional fossils' might help you understand your point is a little wide of the mark.

    Do you realise how old and out of date your arguments are? It's like an anti-evolutionist tract from the 1970's. If you're gonna be so all-out confident evolution is wrong, you could at least have the courtesy to field arguments that have been credible in the last twenty years.

    Why not start on irreducble complexity? I mean, that hypothesis has been disproved too, but at least it is more up to date.

  • Seeker4
    Seeker4

    My apologies to any I've offended on this thread. It was a heated discussion - and with a few good laughs: Apostate Kate wrote, quoting myself in part "we are considered "intellecutally pathetic." Very poor speeling by the way you intellectually superior godman you." I don't know which is funnier, my spelling of intellectually or Kate's correcting my spelling while misspelling spelling! My only excuse was that it was late and I was beat, as I'm sure she was. And thanks for the compliment, Kate - intellectually superior godman, indeed! And you hardly know me! Okay, whose been talking??!!

    And thanks for the input AllTimeJeff, Asheron, Tetrapod, Minister Amos, Abaddon, kidA and propolog2. Many great points, and reasoning, as always.

    I wonder sometimes why I get so impassioned (and arrogant and downputting on occasions! Again, my apologies...) with subjects like this. I think a good deal of that is because I spent such a long time researching evolution when I was struggling with remaining a Witness. I really wanted it to be baseless. I wanted there to be a god who watched out for us, who had a plan for this great universe, who would give us everlasting life.

    I really wanted evolution to be like what I'd been led to believe by the WTS - a theory full of holes and doubts and missing links. What I found instead was that, while evolution, like all aspects of science, was a theory constantly being updated and improved by all the branches of science, it was not a theory in doubt. I came to understand that evolution was a fact proven by science, and that the body of evidence as to how it worked, the theory of evolution, was massive and constantly being refined and expanded by new data and research.

    So now, to hear some of these same old WTS and creationist arguments come up on this board, well it literally makes me cringe. The evidence was hid from us when we were JWs, it was twisted and misapplied. But now there is no excuse for scientific ignorance, and especially with the Internet, we have one of the greatest research tools ever, literally at our fingertips. I have to say, that I struggle with my attitude toward people who espouse ideas so out of touch with what we know about the universe. I think it was Abaddon who used the illustration of arguing with a Flat Earther while flying over the arch of the globe. To me, it's like listening to someone trying to diagnose and treat a disease with voodoo while standing in the room with a group of doctors and an MRI, X-ray and modern laboratory at hand. There just seems no excuse for such ignorance. If you've got evidence to the contrary, present it. But that simply never, ever happens in these discussions, which have developed a hundred times on this thread.

    Creationists make unsubstantiated statements, often statements that indicate they have no concept of science or the idea of evolution, while. evolutionists present evidence. It has happened every time, and these threads always end up simply verifying what I found from my own research as I was leaving the Witnesses.

    I guess what I'm saying is that I've come to understand, and to a degree share, Dawkins and Sam Harris' viewpoints and their passions to fight against a world view based on primitive mythology and a childish need to imagine a heavenly "big daddy" who will take care of all our worries and needs. I'm not sure that that is always the best approach - it is certainly off-putting to some folks, as this thread attests. But contrary to what Old Hippie asserted, I find that a worldview free of religion, god and superstition is quite the opposite of what he wrote. My world is full of wonder and awe, questions and doubts, mystery and passion. It was the world with a god with all the answers that was empty and shallow for me. Today my world is a thousand times more exciting and interesting than it ever was when Jehovah created it.

    Part of what is frustrating is that the thread started by pointing out a museum exhibit filled with evidence for evolution, room after room of proof, carefully explained, and then a few posters get on here, completely ignore the evidence, and declare over and over that there is no proof, like that Flat Earther in the airplane. They present no data for their assertion, they simply assert, and in a manner that makes it obvious they have no idea of what they are talking about. I have to say, and not to my credit, that my immediate response is to see these people as idiots, as people expressing a worldview hopelessly outdated and ignorant, instead of responding in a less emotional and more compassionate way. That is my personality flaw, one of many, and I again express my regrets.

    I must get back to my Taoist and Buddhist texts more frequently, which help me get a better handle on my passionate, and arrogant, nature.

    That having been said, I wish you all a wonderful evening. As I've been writing this I've also been sauteing chicken breasts in a mushroom, garlic and white wine sauce, which I will be eating over a bed of whole grain brown rice. It's just about ready, and smells wonderful!

    And then there's two hours of Jack and 24. Awesome!

    S4

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