Creation vs. Evolution

[Wolverine]

Replicate view experimentation? If you have been reading the whole thread, there are already a lot of examples of evolution in the current world. Experimentation? Look around the natural world! Its happening right this moment.

And the "explosion of life" has been timelined (of course, at this point, Creationists start to discredit radiometric dating). So not all life appeared at the same time. Where they claim fossils were fake??
http://www.lisashea.com/lisabase/biology/art17467.html
http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/No_Apologies....Young_Earth_Creationism_CANNOT_Explain_Dinosaurs!
This is one example. Go to the net. Search Creationist websites. Plenty around which say the same.

So where are we again? Creationism is a science?? How can it be when Creationism falls back on God and the Bible when faced with contradiction? Where is the experimentation? Where is the observations? Facts? Creationism relies only on a body of text called the Bible, which is not even interpreted in its original language.

The only thing Creationists can do to justify themselves is to try to debunk Evolutionism. That is not Science. That is evangelism. And that should never be taught in school as Science.

 

[Green_Manelishi]

Why would God take a rib of Adam if he was to replace it with another rib? Why not use the spare part in the first place to make Eve?

I dont think these scriptures were meant to be taken at the first degree, they are symbolic. I dont say God had no part in the creation, just that the Bible's version, written by humans, is not literally the way it happened, IMO.

Which "spare part"?

Some parts of scripture are symbolic, others are clearly not. The Bible might have been written by humans but it was inspired by God. Considering all the myths and other crap filling the world it was time for the truth to be told.

 

[Green_Manelishi]

Replicate view experimentation? If you have been reading the whole thread, there are already a lot of examples of evolution in the current world. Experimentation? Look around the natural world! Its happening right this moment.

And the "explosion of life" has been timelined (of course, at this point, Creationists start to discredit radiometric dating). So not all life appeared at the same time. Where they claim fossils were fake??
http://www.lisashea.com/lisabase/biology/art17467.html
http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/No_Apologies....Young_Earth_Creationism_CANNOT_Explain_Dinosaurs!
This is one example. Go to the net. Search Creationist websites. Plenty around which say the same.

So where are we again? Creationism is a science?? How can it be when Creationism falls back on God and the Bible when faced with contradiction? Where is the experimentation? Where is the observations? Facts? Creationism relies only on a body of text called the Bible, which is not even interpreted in its original language.

The only thing Creationists can do to justify themselves is to try to debunk Evolutionism. That is not Science. That is evangelism. And that should never be taught in school as Science.

Are those links supposed to be meaningful? Claims made on the first, but no supporting references. Fantastically, here is a quote from the main page:

"Books have had an enormous impact on my life, and two that have guided me have been the Honesty of Aragorn - Lord of the Rings and the Environmentalism of Dune." Is she aware that "Lord" was written by a Christian?

Additionally, she is not a scientist; she's a database developer !!!

The second says there is no text. :shakehead

Where is the evolution happening? Adaptation? Adaptation ("micro-evolution") is meaningless. Noone has observed cows (or hippos, or whatever) turning into whales or dinos turning into birds. The evolutionists believe that's what happened, based on the same fossil record that creationists reference for creation.

 

[Arete]

So I've come in late... 46 pages late...

A little digging and I found this link (click the words PDF to open the article). It's a pretty good summary of evolutionary theory albiet a little dated (1990).

http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/....050190.001533

I'd like to point out that gravity is a theory. Most people I've met believe in gravity, even though it's only a theory.

The ID argument I've found best stated by William Dembski

http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q...i_Theologn.pdf

I'm an agnostic PhD student in a molecular ecology lab. I've never met or heard of a Young World creationist who was also a biologically oriented academic. Even the ID'ers a few and far between.

I study amazonian flooded forest fish. The Nannostomus genus to be precise. They live in the Rio Negro floodplain and being 15mm in length (not highly mobile across vast stretches of river) and having a lifespan of approximately 2 years, the genetic population structure is a complete patchwork (using microsats, nuclear intron segments and mitochondrial DNA).

My favourite example of adaptative evolution is pepper moths in Europe. Very (very very) simply, the moths used to be white with black specks and hid on tree limbs during the day. The Industrial Revolution came and the trees got covered in coal dust. The whiter moths stood out on the blackened trees and were picked off much easier by birds. The moths eventually took on a darker phenotype - they became black with white spots. The Industrial Revolution settled down and the black soot stopped being on the trees. Now the moths are predominately white with black spots again. Either God magicked the moths, or black, then white moths were selected for but either way they evolved.

I also fail to see how religion and evolutionary theory are mutually exlusive. The how is a different issue to the why. Evolution describes a methedology, not a motive for creation.

That is, unless you believe in Adam, Eve and a talking snake giving apples away. In my opinion, Genesis is a creation story, like the Australian Aboriginal Rainbow Serpent story and all the other cultural tales describing how earth came to be. I acknowledge its cultural significance but taking it literally seems pretty dark ages.

 

[Warthaug]

This is rich...

From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution



So, lets see if I got this straight. The ooz comes to life although we don't seem to even have a plausible theory as to how that might have happened.

Actually, we have several theories which can explain how life came to be. They're called theories of abiogenesis, and there is about a half-dozen considered to be scientifically plausible, as in they obey all known scientific laws and have the possibility of occurring in the early earths environment.

Wiki has an OK overview, although it leaves out a huge amount of info and is missing some stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life

One of the more "popular" theories among scientists is the RNA world. This one is well liked for a variety of reasons:

1) All chemicals required for this to occur exist naturally, and can be created through natural reactions which do not require the presence of a biological catalyst.
2) RNA is self-polymerizing, so nothing "extra" is needed to initiate the process.
3) "Molecular fossils" exist which suggest an RNA origin to life (ribosomes, RNA splicases, catalytic RNA's, tRNA's).
4) Self-replicating RNA molecules have been made in the lab
5) Given the rate of self-catalysis, even the most pessimistic estimates of RNA concentrations in the primordial seas predict that several thousand self-replicating molecules should have been produced through random chance every day.

As for how you get from self-replicating molecules to life, this page does a much better job of explaining it then I:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

Then around the time of the dinos we have a bat-monkey kind of thing.

No. All modern mammals appear to have evolved from a small number of mammalian species which existed at the time of the dinosaurs. These mammals were nothing like what we have today - the closest would be something like a lemur.

Overview of early mammals:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com:...70000201/chap_tutorial/ch12/chapter12-17.html

Once the dios went away these mammals had free reign to evolve. The idea that bats and primates evolved from the same early species is based largely on genetic findings.

But...we can't explain or show evidence of the path in order argue it one way or the other.

Actually, there is a fair amount of evidence - a variety of DNA sequences, some fossil evidence, etc.

Is it just me or do we have about a billion times as many blank pages in our book as we do pages that are filled in? They can't even do a complete job of getting from the various other primates to man, never mind from batmonkey to primate or from ooz to batmonkey.

I'm not a biologist but I spent a good number of years as an engineer and I can tell you this...I would have never been able to get dollar number ONE from the finance guys with a story this full of completely blank holes and pure conjecture. They would have taken away my engineering c-card and sent me to work on the dock.

But that's the difference between a scientist and a engineer - your job is to take pre-existing science an apply it. Our job is to discover new science. Hole are to be expected in science - we're delving into the unknown, and we only uncover one little piece at a time.

I don't know where creationists get the idea that we have all the facts in -we've only been studying evolution for ~120 years, and have only had the serious tools - DNA sequencing and accurate radiometric analysis - for less then thirty. But at the end of the day ALL of the evidence that we've collected is self-agreeing, and points to the same conclusion:

Life Evolves.

The pope said it best:
"Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis.* In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies—which was neither planned nor sought—constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory."

http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP961022.HTM


Bryan

 

[Warthaug]

Where is the evolution happening? Adaptation? Adaptation ("micro-evolution") is meaningless. Noone has observed cows (or hippos, or whatever) turning into whales or dinos turning into birds.

No, but we have observed the formation of over 2000 new species. Here a couple of pages which summarize some of these findings, complete with references to the relevent scientific material:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html

One of the more exiciting thing (for evolutionary biologists) that is happening today is the on-going speciation events within rock wallabeys. Over 11 new species have formed in the time we've been watching them, and they have become a model of how speciation works. Pretty technical, but interesting none the less:
http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/ZO9910621.htm#search="speciation rock wallaby"
http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/ZO9890351.htm#search="speciation rock wallaby"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10382300&dopt=Abstract
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1095-8312.2006.00650.x


In terms of evidence for macroevolution, there is a lot of evidence - genetic, fossil, direct observation, etc:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

The evolutionists believe that's what happened, based on the same fossil record that creationists reference for creation.

We KNOW that is what happened based on numerous, separate findings, all of which point to the same conlcusion. Fossils are only one small part of the evidence on which these conclusions are based.

Bryan

 

[MikeFerrara]

Jesus said he would return while some listening to him would still be alive. it's been
2,000 years and he's not back yet.

I wanted to address this seperately and I tried yesterday but I haven't been able to log onto the the board.

I don't believe that's what he said but it's easier to discuss if you provide a chapter and verse.

 

[wreckchick]

First of all.... I love you guys! It is so very cool to have a bunch of people that cannot be stumped by any subject on the planet. One asks for modern day examples of evolution, biogenesis, Biblical contridictions, how to get grass stains out of denim, how to cook squirrel and KER-POW there it is.

The links you all have provided are fascinating and I'm having a blast updating myself on current research.

The only thing I have to react to specifically is that I feel like there are still some of you out there that really don't understand evolutionary processes. I'm not asking anyone to believe anything but I think it would be helpful to do a little research on what you're arguing against.

The idea of common ancestry is key to understading divergence and subsequent speciation. I put up a very long post with probably mediocre explanation of natural selection, but the ideas are there. As long as people think "we descended from monkeys" instead of understanding that we share a common ancestor, the harder it is to hold a meaningful discussion because the first thing the evolutionist has to do is replay the theory.

To whit, bats and primates share a common ancestor. All mammals share a common ancestry. The dino/bird not only had feathers but also hollow bone which is an avian characteristic.

New DNA sequencing techniques can actually go back and trace the number of mutations since any two given species shared an ancestor. This is actually causing a HUGE uproar in the scientific community because it disrupts the Linnean classification system and there are symposia all over on how to restructure. I'll tell you one thing, the way the taxonomy for higher primates should be rewritten to remove Chimps and Bonobos from Pongidae and place them under Homonidae with humans.

Side note, this is a really facinating article about a proposed new taxonomic system that deals with genetic relationships and common ancestry.

http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/44520

R

 

[Thalassamania]

I'm glad to see PhyloCode getting some coverage. If it catches on and is accepted it will make my life easier (and less profitable).

 

[MikeFerrara]

First of all.... I love you guys! It is so very cool to have a bunch of people that cannot be stumped by any subject on the planet. One asks for modern day examples of evolution, biogenesis, Biblical contridictions, how to get grass stains out of denim, how to cook squirrel and KER-POW there it is.

There are of course different opinions on how to cook squirrel but I prefer them fried with eggs. They're not bad with a little gravy either. I used to start every Sunday morning with a legal limit of them during the season. I've hunted them with 22 rifles, shotguns (in thick country) handguns of various calibers and most recently a bow. I've even picked up a few tricks for snaring them.

The only reason for eating beef instead of squirrel is the squirrels keep climbing over the fence and getting away.