Creation vs. Evolution

[Thalassamania]

But Mr. Heisenberg is soooo uncertain in his opinions.

Sorry, bad science joke. I'll go crawl back under my rock now :geek:

Bryan

Keep it up and we're going to make you clean out Schrödinger's Cat Box

 

[Hank49]

So where did he put the 700,000 beetles that he had to carry, not to mention all the other insects?

This is a tough one. There had to have been some qualified zoologists on board to house and feed all the different insects with varying diets. Ones that eat nectar from only some plants had to have the food source carried along....others would have required some rotting flesh, and imagine keeping the predators apart from the prey....that was intended for future breeding. For 40 days....someone, or other, had their act together.

 

[Soggy]

So should we ignore all information about evolution that comes from a pro-evolution source?

No, but it is telling that their work has not been published in a reputable scientific journal.

Why not examine the merit of the individual quotes based on the content and the individual it comes from?

Well, the individuals that they come from are suspect, which is part of the problem. A museum curator (who does appear to have experience in the field), a chemist, and a civil engineer....One has merit, the other two, not so much.

 

[Warthaug]

"A current leading evolutionist, Jeffrey Schwartz . . . the formation of a new species, by any mechanism, has never been observed."

I spent a while looking for this supposid quote, and could not find it anywhere but in creationist page - why is that? For that matter, if he doesn't believe in speciation, then why does he study it?

http://www.pitt.edu/~pittanth/faculty/schwartz.html

Secondly, even if he did say it, doesn't mean that he is right. In fact, this statement is easily shown to be false. Speciation, by multiple mechanisms, has been observed and recorded in the scientific literature OVER 2000 TIMES. Here's a list of a few references, you'll notice the first one is OVER 100 YEARS OLD.

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

And so, at first glance, one might have to conclude that life could never, in fact, have originated by chemical means. Leslie E. Orgel, "The Origin of Life on the Earth,

And once again, we're looking at yet another distortion of what was actually said. If you read the actual statement he made you'll see that he is not, in fact, stating that this could not occur. He uses this statement to describe the scientific evidence at the time (late 1960's), and then uses this statement as a springboard to explain why he then began looking at RNA as the potential origin of life:

"During the past 10 years, a fair amount of evidence has lent credence to the idea that the hypothetical RNA world did exist and lead to the advent of life based on DNA, RNA and protein"

The full text is here:
http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/lab/2948/orgel.html

The Cambrian explosion was the most remarkable and puzzling event in the history of life.8 Stephen Jay Gould

And the point is? Why the cambrian explosion happened is a mystery - before then life was rather simple, and almost entirely single-celled. Afterwards, it was multicellular. Why this change occurred isn't known. But that in no way, shape, or form throws doubt on evolution. We KNOW the cambrian explosion happened, we know what it lead to. It is only the why that is unknown.

So in no way does Dr Gould's statement represent a lack of "faith" in the theory - rather, it is an accurate statement about one of the outstanding questions we have.

I am hoping that because of the above quotes everyone will see that the supposed concrete evidence for evolution is far from that. There is lots of supposing in taking the evidence we have today and making it fit both models of the origin of the universe.

Actually, what you've shown is that creationists like to lie about the statements made by evolutionary biologists. In each and every quote you used (aside from the atheist things, which are a different issue), I showed that you either couldn't prove that the statement was actually made, or that the statement was a clear distortion of what was actually said.

And creationists wonder why scientists get so frustrated with this stuff. They claim the moral high ground, while at the same time spewing lies and distortions. Now, its been a while since I read the bible, but if I recall correctly lying is in the "don't do" category of gods laws.

Why is it then that these creationists do it so often?

Bryan

 

[Warthaug]

Keep it up and we're going to make you clean out Schrödinger's Cat Box

Hmm, but so long as I don't open the box it'll be both clean and dirty at the same time...

Bryan

 

[Soggy]

Hmm, but so long as I don't open the box it'll be both clean and dirty at the same time...

Bryan

Good one.

 

[Thalassamania]

So should we ignore all information about evolution that comes from a pro-evolution source?

Why not examine the merit of the individual quotes based on the content and the individual it comes from?

If you look at the creationist sites, what do you find? By and large, one of three things:

1. ridiculousness penned by religious zealots who know nothing about science, or
2. ridiculousness penned by religious zealots who have credentials in engineering or p-chem but know nothing about biology, or
3. Lies, in the form quotes taken our of context, what when read in their complete form do not mean when they being presented as.

It is frankly, a bloody waste of time and energy, in years of looking at that offal, I have yet to find any merit. Project Steve really sums it all up, and I'm thinking of changing my name just so I might participate.<G>

 

[Thalassamania]

Hmm, but so long as I don't open the box it'll be both clean and dirty at the same time...

Bryan

Bravo!

 

[H2Andy]

Why not examine the merit of the individual quotes based on the content and the individual it comes from?

unfortunately, even someone like me, with only a basic college understanding of evolution, can tell that pretty much all the pro-creation arguments out there are crap

i can imagine that the guys with advanced degrees in biology or who have spent a lot of time studying the subject probably go crazy every time they read that crap

imagine, if you will, reading a site on diving and finding the following words: there is still debate as to whether narcosis is caused by elevated partial pressures of certain inert gases, including nitrogen.

how seriously would you take that site?


it's THAT basic, Mike. it just blows me away that people can still think evolution does not work.

 

[Uncle Pug]

This is a tough one. There had to have been some qualified zoologists on board to house and feed all the different insects with varying diets. Ones that eat nectar from only some plants had to have the food source carried along....others would have required some rotting flesh, and imagine keeping the predators apart from the prey....that was intended for future breeding. For 40 days....someone, or other, had their act together.

Actually Hank... that is the easy one.