Evolution a proven fact? LOL

by Rex B13 30 Replies latest jw friends

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  larc

  Jason,

  Some more stuff to munch on.
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  Simon

  This is a good site with lots of arguments on the subject: http://www.talkorigins.org/
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  Zep

  BOOKS TO READ:

  Abusing Science: The case against Creationism - Philip Kitcher

  And anything by Dawkin's. Especially 'The blind Watchmaker'.

  Who's laughing now eh!

  Hey, if you looking for laughs, then go read that little blue creation book the WT press put out years ago. Creationism has never been so funny!!!!
• 

  voltaire

  This was my first clue that JWs don't have the truth. Any thinking person surely will ask themselves, "Why do they teach it if there is no evidence for it and they don't believe it themselves?" This led me to begin investigating the origional quotes. The crass dishonesty and/or ignorance of anyone who misuses the quotes of another in such a fashion is the only proof I need that such a person(and the organization that supports its publication) is not from God. I sincerely hope that the society merely lifted these quotes from other sources. I truly suspect this is the case. If so, they are at worst uninformed. If they have read the origional sources and continue to use them, they are guilty of fraud.
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  patio34

  I hesitate to enter this discussion with such erudite participants as AlanF, JanH, and Amazing, et al. But 'fools rush in. . . '

  To begin with, I can't find the reference now, but Dawkins or Jared Diamond has stated that something like 98% of biologists believe that evolution has happened. They are the scientists who know. How can anyone seriously propose that they are conspiring against the Bible?

  Secondly, the creationists' arguments are mostly just attacks on the evolutionists. They don't present much on the positive side, except the like of 'God did it and we don't know everything.'

  Thirdly, creationists are wont to use the term 'random chance.' As Dawkins states repeatedly in 'The Blind Watchmaker,' it is anything BUT random. Natural selection thru the environment makes it very SELECTIVE. It is correctly called 'non-random.'

  Ahem, thank you for your attention. That's all I have to say for now.

  Pat
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  patio34

  One more point: Amazing, that was on-point about what a theory is and is not.

  Even if evolution were to become out-of-date as the working theory, it by no means that creation would be true. There may be other explanations that will prove plausible one day. Just because 'B' may be wrong, doesn't prove 'A' theory; there may be 'C,' 'D,' and so on later.

  Pat
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  Disillusioned JW

  Cygnus, thanks for providing context for the quote of Mark Ridley. But I am surprised that Mark Ridley says that it is a "... false idea that the fossil record provides an important part of the evidence that evolution took place. ... no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation." Apparently he is not the only scientist convinced of evolution who had that view prior to the year 1982. That surprises me because when I read science books and science articles published from 1970 through 1981 I see good fossil evidence for evolution! I wish I had been much more aware of them prior to early 1981, however. Fossils of Australopithecus afarensis, Australopithecus africanus, ER-1470, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalis had been found and published - collectively providing strong evidence of human evolution from ape-human-like beings. There were also fossils of jawless fish, early fish with jaws, Eusthenopteron (a lobe finned fish which had a passage which linked its nostrils with the roof of its mouth, unlike the earliest fishes that had nostrils), early amphibians with fish-like tales, reptile-like amphibians, mammal like-synapsids (at the time called mammal-like reptiles), early mammals, Archaeopteryx, Aegyptopithecus zeuxis, Dryopithecus, and more.

  I now have a college textbook (with CD-ROM), copyright 1996, called "EVOLUTION - Second Edition", by Mark Ridley. Chapter 19 of that book is called "The Fossil Record". Page 548 of that book says "The origin of mammals is the fossil record's best transition for the origin of a major taxon. Section 21.1 (p. 582) discusses this development as an example of a macroevolutionary change."
  
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  TD

  Twenty years is a long time. Some of these people have passed away. Others are very old. Still others no longer participate in JW discussion of any sort
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  mickbobcat

  Evolution is a fact we see it in the fossil record. Simple animals becoming more complex. The thing about science is that they don't know it all and must adapt the thinking when new facts become available. Personally I can not see life in its complexity coming into existence by itself but I also know the Bible is a lot of shit. The idea that there is not a lot of fossil record is not an argument. The way things become fossilized its amazing we have any record. But what we do have contradicts the bibles bull shit totally.
  
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  OnTheWayOut

  Evolution is a theory like gravity is a theory.
  We know gravity exists but the way it works can only be called a theory.
  Still, it is beyond hypothesis- A hypothesis proposes a tentative explanation or prediction. A theory is a substantiated explanation for an occurrence.
  
  A theory is a carefully thought-out explanation for observations of the natural world that has been constructed using the scientific method, and which brings together many facts and hypotheses.
  
  So gravity is a fact that must be called a theory. Evolution is a fact, but the way things evolved is in theories and a few hypotheses.