Facts of Evolution - Cassiopeia project:
Want to know why people accept evolution ?
by snare&racket 84 Replies latest jw friends
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kaik
One of the issue people have with evolution is the understanding of the timeframe involved. For many it is hard to imagine thousands or hundreds of thousands of years and not to mention millions. The Age of Mamals is lasting about 65 million years where thousands of generations passed, and mutuations and adaptability was often very slow process that evolved into the world as we see. Many people follow ancient view of the world as a static place where each follows exactly the same every day for thousands of years. Science until 1930's did not know anything about plate tectonics, collision of continents, orogenies that uplifted mountaisn, nor were aware ridges in the oceans that spreads continents appart or trenches where old earth's mantle sinks. The oxygen level changed, so did the Earths atmospheric temperature, ozone, the ocean currents, and each of these changes affected how the life evolved. It will be ridiculous to think that present flora and fauna could survive Ice Ages where temperature were lower or Permian with much distinct continental, dry weather. Flora is often the best way to observe evolution as forest biome took several million years to develop and phase out. Today forest Northern America is much different from the forests during Ice Ages where many trees we take for granted like Magnolia, did not exist at that time in southern USA. Today we protect many spruce reserves because they are the last remants of the glaciation. If flora changed, so did animals and insect that lived of it and entire food chain on much larger scale covering hundreds of thousands of square miles.
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Make Lemonade
Now you all have provided some great information. Although I would not introduce Lewis Black to some of the faithful I know. LOL. He is just brutal. I did like the part about reaching in his pocket and pulling out a fossil. Very funny and thought provoking.
The video about evolution and defining the argument is excellent. I will be absorbing that information for some time to come.
Cofty somewhere gave a link about the reliability of dating (not men and women). That was more my speed. It also came from a "believer". Accepting that life is older than 30,000 to 50,000 years is a real obstacle in my mind.
I believe this statement: "If you ask a question you can appear to be a fool for 5 miniutes, If you never ask a question you can be a fool for life".
I will trade being a fool for a brief period if I can avoid being a fool for life.
Great information. Thanks
Can someone recomend a book on evolution, for a man who did not attend college. Has only basic math skills. I tried to read a book that used math formulas that completely lost me. Does not mean I did not get out of it what I wanted. Just have to say that the math was way over my head.
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snare&racket
had a busy few days and long shifts, ill write some answers 2moro x
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kaik
Make Lemonade, the best book to explain evolution will depend on your interest. Some of them are rather complex. Do you like gardening? Rock science? Zoology? So it is easier to understand in topic you can follow and understand, and relate in your every day life. I went to college and studied several topics like oceanography, forest biome, and some naturally occuring radioactive decay material for papers. I can the most relate in my garden, trees, shrubs, and grass where evolution is for me the most visible. I traveled both Appalachians and Europe where I could see how flora was affected through past tens of thousand years. There are national and state parks which have traces of original flora of Ice Ages. The insects, bees, and birds also evolved with the flora in such simple things like pollination and berries consumption for wildlife.
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Aunt Fancy
Marked
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Make Lemonade
Thanks, Snare & a Racket, Congratulations on your new job!
Kaik I just learned that "origin of life" and "evolution" are two different discussions. I am also seeing that my knowledge of evolution goes back to the "Did Man Get Here by Evolution or Creation" book. That puts me way behind in the current knowledge/thinking of science.
Also, between 1965 & 1987, I was taught (by the WT) and believed that each "creative day" was 7,000 years long. Now, in the March and January 2014 Awake magazines, I can see a recognizable pattern developing when the WT wants to change a teaching. When the WT changes a viewpoint (like the 7,000 year creative day) they never come out and say "we were wrong about this," they simply STOP talking about it, and slowly introduce changes, using vague desciptions (using "thousands of years" to allow people to think it could be 50 or 100,000 years) as if no one will notice.
In the Awake magazines, 'young earth creationists', who believe in 24 hour creative days, become an easy target for criticism by the Awake magazines. Most readers are unaware of the reality that JW's are a version of these 'young earth creationists' themselves. Instead of 24 hour creative days, they taught, and believed in, 7,000 year creative days. So, I am stuck needing information and facts that will allow me to have a conviction that the '7,000 year creative days' are either fact or fiction.
I am interested in gardening and birds, but I am reallly interested in proof that life is older than 30,000 years. I do appreciate the common conclusion that life is millions of years old, I just have a need for evidence. Evidence that will help me explain to myself, and others, how to have confidence in the length of time that life has existed on earth.
thanks for being patient with me
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kaik
Make Lemonade, have you been in Redwoods where trees grows for several thousands of years? Chestnuts, olive trees, lindens, giant sequoas can live between 1200-3500 years. We can still pick olives from trees that were planted by ancient Romans. Trees leave traces like trunks, pits, pollen for thousands and tens of thousands years. We can excavate pits from old fruits that were eaten up by pharaos. These trees were here much longer before date when Adam and Eve would be alive. It is not unusual to detect trees that did not decompose like from bogs, peat moss, or elsewhere that could be tens of thousand years old. We mine peat moss which cover up to 2.5% of Earth surface, and we can reassemble by the tree ring the years and climate going way back million years. But back to the tree rings, they indicate growth season which can be counted. Some trees mineralized or petrirfied, while other mummified. We can piece by piece build knowledge about climate of the past from them.
Some tree traces are mutually exclusive as they show a change of climate like during interglaciar period. For example magnolias exist since cretacous era (65 mil and more), they had disappeared from Europe during the Ice Age. Today you will not see forests mixed with warm climate magnolia and fir, yet we have fossils of both from the same area as the weather went back and forth in since K-T extinction event that whipped out dinosaurs. This indicate that our planet changed weather over the time when it was either much warmer, dryer, colder, or wetter.
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Make Lemonade
Kaik: Visited Yosemite and have seen the Sequoias. WWW.nps.gov./yose/naturescience/sequoia-research.htm.
Dendrology, Ice cores, sediment layers. These are just words and concepts to me now. I would enjoy looking into this by reading more.
I can see in the Watchtower publications contradictions about dates in relationship to the flood and tower of Babel. Flood is 2370 BCE and Pyramid dates to 2500. That means that the flood did not destroy the Pyramid. It also means that Egyptian civilization existed before the flood. I have a file started to save these points. Lack of knowledge is a prison of sorts. When you see inconsistencies in teachings of the Wt. you want to know more.
You said "we can reassemble by the tree ring the years and climate going way back millions of years". That is something that I want to "sink my teeth into". What would you recomend as a good book on this subject?
I am supposed to be sleeping now. Woke up and decided to see if anyone had more to say. Glad I checked and found your comment. Thanks.
I will be back in about 16 hours or so. Going back to bed to catch a little more sleep. Then off to work.
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disposable hero of hypocrisy
I'm benefitting from this thread immensely as I'm sure others will as well.. Thanks everyone for spelling it out to us!