Creation, evolution, ???

by Freedom rocks 77 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Onager

  cofty15 hours agoFreedom Rocks - Yes I have investigated creationism in all its forms. To be fair there isn't much to study. Every argument can be distilled down to - 'complexity; therefore god'.

  To further that, creationism has no predictive power. You can't Do anything with it, because the answer is always God. Where did this flower come from? God made it. Why does the lion have big teeth? Because that's how God made it.

  With evolutionary theory though, you can actually make predictions about the world and then prove (or disprove) them.

  Take the story of the orchid, moth and our old friend Mr C. Darwin. https://www.calacademy.org/explore-science/darwin%E2%80%99s-hawkmoth

  The world view of Relgion is stuck in amber, preserved unchanging for all time in its holy books, and of no practical use.
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  Beth Sarim

  tddt

  '''It has been so saddening to see a good % of people here who won the lottery and escaped a cult, just to take on a different cult, even if its in their own mind.''

  The fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me, scenario I guess.
  
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  Finkelstein

  All religious beliefs have to enact as a cult because they are wholey support without evidence and held together by emotive theory.

  Science can never offer redemption from sin or a pleasant afterlife though.
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  Perry

  Every argument can be distilled down to - 'complexity; therefore god'.

  To further that, creationism has no predictive power.

  Hi Onager,

  Every assumption provides a basis for claim making. But, both the assumption and the claims are not testable, repeatable science when it comes to examining history. History is unique in this regard. Therefore, historical assumptions are not science in the commonly understood definition of the term as in Scientific Method. It is deceptive to use "science" in conjunction with theories, assumptions and postulates when this is the common understanding.
  
  What we can do is formulate assumptions that we believe best fits testable science.

  

  A creation model looks something looks like the above with different kinds of animals having distinct histories. Instead of a single ancestor, there are many.

  
  Speciation and adaptability would occur within each KIND of animal. In other words, there are limits on speciation "according to its kind". Species and Kind are somewhat difficult to define, on both sides of the issue, but a creation model would generally predict that speciation would occur from a lack, or rearrangement of information, not more of it.... which is exactly what the evidence shows.

  
  

  An evolution model looks something like the above.

  Consider this sampling of quotes from EVOLUTIONARY scientists, not Creation Scientists.

  1. “No consistent organismal phylogeny has emerged from the many individual protein phylogenies so far produced. Phylogenetic incongruities can be seen everywhere in the universal tree, from its root to the major branchings within and among the various taxa to the makeup of the primary groupings themselves.”, The Universal Ancestor, PNAS, 1999
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  3. “I have been particularly struck by the adjectives that accompany descriptions of evolutionary convergence. Words like, ‘remarkable’, ‘striking’, ‘extraordinary’, or even ‘astonishing’ and ‘uncanny’ are common place…the frequency of adjectival surprise associated with descriptions of convergence suggests there is almost a feeling of unease in these similarities. Indeed, I strongly suspect that some of these biologists sense the ghost of teleology looking over their shoulders.”, Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans, pp. 127-128, 2003
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  5. “Heat map analyses were used to investigate the congruence of orthologues in four datasets (archaeal, bacterial, eukaryotic and alpha-proteobacterial). We conclude that we simply cannot determine if a large portion of the genes have a common history. … Our phylogenetic analyses do not support tree-thinking. … We argue that representations other than a tree should be investigated”, Do orthologous gene phylogenies really support tree-thinking?, Evolutionary Biology, 2005
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  7. “An average prokaryotic proteome represents about 3,000 protein-coding genes, the 31-protein tree of life represents only about 1% of an average prokaryotic proteome and only 0.1% of a large eukaryotic proteome. … The finding that, on average, only 0.1% to 1% of each [microbial] genome fits the metaphor of a tree of life overwhelmingly supports the central pillar of the microbialist argument that a single bifurcating tree is an insufficient model to describe the microbial evolutionary process. … When chemists or physicists find that a given null hypothesis can account for only 1% of their data, they immediately start searching for a better hypothesis. Not so with microbial evolution, it seems, which is rather worrying. Could it be that many biologists have their heart set on finding a tree of life, regardless of what the data actually say?”, The tree of one percent, Genome Biol. 2006
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  9. “Hierarchical structure can always be imposed on or extracted from such data sets by algorithms designed to do so, but at its base the universal TOL [tree of life] rests on an unproven assumption about pattern that, given what we know about process, is unlikely to be broadly true. This is not to say that similarities and differences between organisms are not to be accounted for by evolutionary mechanisms, but descent with modification is only one of these mechanisms, and a single tree-like pattern is not the necessary (or expected) result of their collective operation.”, Doolittle and Bapteste, Pattern pluralism and the Tree of Life hypothesis, PNAS, 2007
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  11. “Many of the first studies to examine the conflicting signal of different genes have found considerable discordance across gene trees: studies of hominids, pines, cichlids, finches, grasshoppers and fruit flies have all detected genealogical discordance so widespread that no single tree topology predominates. These examples highlight the issue of ‘incomplete lineage sorting’ and the need to account for gene tree discordance in phylogenomic studies.”, and “Conflicting [phylogenic] topologies are likely to become the norm”, and listed as an outstanding question, “For data sets with high levels of gene tree conflict, how can researchers determine whether an AGT [anomalous gene tree] is likely? How often do AGTs arise in real data sets?” Gene tree discordance, phylogenetic inference and the multispecies coalescent, Cell, 2009
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  13. Evolutionary biologist Eric Bapteste: “We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality” and evolutionary biologist Michael Rose: “The tree of life is being politely buried. What’s less accepted is that our whole fundamental view of biology needs to change.”, Charles Darwin wrong about tree of life, The Guardian, January 2009
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  15. Lynn Margulis, when president of American Scientist, wrote: “many biologists claim they know for sure that random mutation (purposeless chance) is the source of inherited variation that generates new species of life and that life evolved in a single-common-trunk, dichotomously branching-phylogenetic-tree pattern! ‘No!’ I say. Then how did one species evolve into another? This profound research question is assiduously undermined by the hegemony who flaunt their “correct” solution. Especially dogmatic are those molecular modelers of the ‘tree of life’ who, ignorant of alternative topologies (such as webs), don’t study ancestors.” The Phylogenetic Tree Topples, 2006
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  17. “The irrefutable demonstration by phylogenomics that different genes in general have distinct evolutionary histories made obsolete the belief that a phylogenetic tree of a single universal gene such as rRNA or of several universal genes could represent the ‘true’ TOL.”, How stands the Tree of Life a century and a half after The Origin?, Biology Direct, 2011
      
      
      
      
      
      
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  Onager

  Hi Perry,

  Every assumption provides a basis for claim making. But, both the assumption and the claims are not testable, repeatable science when it comes to examining history. History is unique in this regard. Therefore, historical assumptions are not science in the commonly understood definition of the term as in Scientific Method. It is deceptive to use "science" in conjunction with theories, assumptions and postulates when this is the common understanding.

  You have an incorrect understanding of how science works. Science comes up with theories, claims and laws to define a working model of the world around us. It's the best model that it can come up with using the data and tools available. Every single part of that model can change, even the laws, if new data or new tools become available. It's not perfect and some parts of the model are decidedly "fudgy" (Dark Matter, for example in my opinion), but the model works. And when something doesn't work, the model is changed.

  The creation model does not work this way. In your example it is fitting the reality of the diversity of life into the Kinds model, because that's what the bible says. The creation model can never change because it starts from the assertions of an allegedly infallible book, so it doesn't matter WHAT THE EVIDENCE IS, the creation model cannot and will not change.
  
  
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  Vidiot

  For me, one of evolution's biggest selling points was how much better a job it did explaining the weirder shit found in nature.
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  Perry

  Onager,

  I can see that if that is your assumption about "science", how you could easily come to that conclusion. However, it just doesn't work that way in the real world.

  Professor Richard Lewontin, a geneticist , probably said it best concerning evolutionary researchers:

  He wrote this very revealing comment. It illustrates the implicit philosophical bias against Genesis creation—regardless of whether or not the facts support it.

  ‘Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, [like Cofty believing he is related to an oak tree] in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

  
  It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

  
  

  This is why I have written quite a bit on the nature of illusion, deception / perception and how our assumptions dramatically impact our view of reality. It has little to do with intelligence or education level.
  
  If you take the time to read some of the quotes that I posted above by EVOLUTIONARY Scientists regarding the phylogenetic tree that Darwin suggested, you can plainly see and grasp the struggle that they are having, as well as why. While accepting that the data does not support a common ancestor assumption, they express bewilderment and frustration at the discordance. The cause is their assumption.

  I also have an assumption. Genesis 1: 1-11 : God created animals according to their kinds. Neither assumption is "science"; but which fits the facts better?
  
  Remember the optical illusion I posted previously? Assumption is a powerful thing. No matter how certain that someone believes that squares A & B are different.... they are identical. Our assumptions cause the discordance.

  

  And, I cannot repeat this often enough: ASSUMPTIONS ARE NOT SCIENCE, especially when dealing with histories that you can't replicate.
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  cofty

  Evolution is a fact as certain as the knowledge that the earth is not flat.

  There are absolutely no assumptions necessary. It is not even a controversy any more. Actual scientists simply ignore the wilful ignorance of creationists, there is nothing more to be said about their superstitious nonsense.

  Perry admits that he has never read a book that presents the scientific evidence for evolution in his entire life. This is absolutely typical of biblical creationists. He has posted dozens of times insulting and misrepresenting the rational side of the debate but never once has he attempted to actually refute the evidence.

  Perry you are a primate. So are your parents. We have the fossils, we win. Get over it.

  Edited to add - Is the best you can do to quote Richard Lewontin, the ideologically driven communist, 'Radical Science' disciple? FFS!
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  ttdtt

  Perry - I got some free tickets to the Noahs Arc museum.

  Come by, drop off your brain, and pick up your tickets.
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  cofty

  Perry I checked out your list above. Not one of them supports the point you are trying to make.

  I'm busy decorating at home but if I get time in the next few days I will go through them.

  It is so annoying when ignorant creationists do violence to science they don't begin to understand to try to support their superstitions. Why are Jesus' biggest fans so fucking dishonest?