Evolution

[keithprosser3]

Given the nature of reproduction and of natural selection isn't evolution inescapable?
How can evolution not happen?

[SEMyers]

[Replying to Danmark]

Greetings Danmark

Evolutionists are merely religious pontiff's who are able to use science sounding words but are unable to actually do any real science because their anti-God philosophy gets in the way.

How many times have we heard the evolutionist say that they would change their scientific beliefs when new data arises. This is just words. Noah recorded the notable scientific event and they scorn it and reject it because the philosophy points to a sovereign God.

It isn't the science that is in question. It is the philosophy of who is God. True science would welcome data of a world wide catastropy. Religious philosophy that is against God rejects it. The science debate is not really about science. It is about religious philosophy.

No evolutionist is a reputable scientist.
S. E. Myers

[Star]

It isn't the science that is in question. It is the philosophy of who is God. True science would welcome data of a world wide catastropy. Religious philosophy that is against God rejects it. The science debate is not really about science. It is about religious philosophy.

Science actually does welcome data of world-wide catastrophes.

There have been five global mass extinctions. They were caused by dramatic events such as super volcano eruptions, and impacts from asteroids and comets. We might be in the midst of our sixth, which is being caused by humans.

There was also a massive collision that formed the moon and tilted Earth on its axis before life appeared.

Your argument is one of incredulity. You're not aware of this information, therefore you assume modern science must avoid it. But science doesn't care what you don't know.

The glaring problems with the Noah's flood fairy tale are 1) there's absolutely no evidence supporting it, 2) as per all known evidence, it's physically impossible, and 3) it's logically incoherent.

[Jashwell]

[Replying to post 1360 by Jashwell]

I have nothing new to add. You believe your views and I believes mine. You see your views as reasonable, just as I see mine. I do not see you dealing substantively with the issues I raise, and apparently you don't believe that I deal substantively with yours. Let's simply agree to disagree, and end this fruitless exchange.
kenblogton

A.I) Given that less than 1% of species are fossilized, why would modern evolutionary biology require evidence of an entire evolutionary lineage?
A.II)Why is a fossil of every generation required rather than occasional stages?

B.I) In what way does evolution directly and necessarily relate to theism?
B.II) Why do theists accept evolution and still believe in a God if evolution was made to avoid God?

C) Why should we expect to observe abiogenesis in a number of small lab environments in less than 100 years given that it only had to occur once across the entire planet in up to 500 million years?

D) Given that Adam & Eve each only had to be an ancestor of every living human, why would they need to be an ancestor of every human ever?

[Elijah John]

[Replying to Danmark]

Greetings Danmark

Evolutionists are merely religious pontiff's who are able to use science sounding words but are unable to actually do any real science because their anti-God philosophy gets in the way.

How many times have we heard the evolutionist say that they would change their scientific beliefs when new data arises. This is just words. Noah recorded the notable scientific event and they scorn it and reject it because the philosophy points to a sovereign God.

It isn't the science that is in question. It is the philosophy of who is God. True science would welcome data of a world wide catastropy. Religious philosophy that is against God rejects it. The science debate is not really about science. It is about religious philosophy.

No evolutionist is a reputable scientist.
S. E. Myers

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[Danmark]

[Replying to post 1364 by SEMyers]

The forum has an excellent page on evidence:
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... hp?t=16903

The page details what kind of evidence is acceptable to support a statement or claim and the strength and weakness of various sources to support an argument.

[kenblogton]

[Replying to post 1346 by Danmark]

I gave you evidence against evolution - evidence which you didn't acknowledge or deal with in your reply. People, including scientists, are biased in favour of their views, and tend to rationalize contrary views. The psychological theory of cognitive dissonance of Leon Festinger explains it well.

You gave no evidence against evolution. You've given nothing to rebut.
It seems odd to me that you bring up cognitive dissonance, since that is exactly what Young Earth Creationists and anti evolutionists have to deal with on a daily basis. The ever increasing mountain of fossils, facts and evidence that support evolution and the fact the Earth is billions of years old runs counter to the religious belief of a young Earth and causes the cognitive dissonance of which you speak, but do not attempt to explain.

As a former instructor of Sociology I am familiar with cognitive dissonance. It is exactly what a fundamentalist Christian, who interprets the Bible literally, experiences when he is confronted with the deluge of facts that undermine his beliefs. One of the ways such a person deals with CD is to restrict his research to Creationist blogs and out dated non scientific books that are exercises in amateur efforts to cherry pick and misquote actual scientific findings. Rather than admit their YEC beliefs are not based on fact, they claim all scientists who disagree with their beliefs are biased.

Here's an example of the phenomenon:
"Knowing is, in modern times, essentially knowing something scientifically. This kind of knowing is anti-authoritarian and deeply deeply subversive. In its heyday, before and during Galileo’s time, Catholic church was in absolute control of the society. But, even with inquisitions, burnings at the stake, boiling people alive in a cauldron of oil, the Church could still not keep people from learning sensible things, such as, god did not place earth at the center of the universe. Once a sensible idea takes hold of ones mind–we all know this from personal experience–, it causes friction among those mental cogs that turn irrationally.

The convoluted explanations that religious people and creationists give, especially when their untainted young ones ask simple questions about the world, is an expression of cognitive dissonance."
http://scienceblogs.com/thescian/2009/0 ... and-cogni/

As I see it, your parade your ignorance proudly.

You mention some of the nasty things people who call themselves Christians have done. The atheists Stalin & Chairman Mao did much worse - why do you choose not to mention them - a person giving a balanced account would do so.

I have never mentioned young earth theories in my postings. Why do you accuse me of views which I have never stated. This sounds like venting. Perhaps cognitive therapy would help?

I was an Assistant Professor of Behavioural Science and taught Dissonance Theory.

I gave you ample evidence against evolution - evidence which you repeatedly choose to ignore. Let me review:
1. There is no substantive evidence for the spontaneous generation of life in the primordial soup of early earth's oceans; the attempts to replicate such life formation in the lab has NEVER been successfully simulated.
2. There is no solid evidence for the actual evolution from 1 specie to another which shows the trail of intermediate or transitional species leading from 1 to the other. None! Of course, evolutionists point to morphological or genetic similarities between species, but that only proves they have similarities, it does not show the evolutionary trail. Because there is no proven evolutionary trail from any 1 species to another, similar species are used as surrogates because that's the best there is. But this "best" is woefully inadequate to demonstrate evolution.

How can you believe a theory which requires such rationalization? Festinger & Aaronson could have used such examples in their writings.
kenblogton

[Jashwell]

[Replying to post 1369 by kenblogton]

1. Spontaneous generation is not a requirement for evolution.
Argument from ignorance & once again just wrong.

As I asked in a post yesterday, "Why should we expect to observe abiogenesis in a number of small lab environments in less than 100 years given that it only had to occur once across the entire planet in up to 500 million years? "


2. "There is no solid evidence that I was speeding, just a series of photos showing my car's displacement that have falsely been treated as part of a continuous picture"
"There's no solid evidence that I walked into the house. Sure, there are a series of muddy footprints leading up to me wearing muddy boots, but not one continuous transition"

And as I asked earlier, "I) Given that less than 1% of species are fossilized, why would modern evolutionary biology require evidence of an entire evolutionary lineage?
II)Why is a fossil of every generation required rather than occasional stages? "

[Danmark]

2. There is no solid evidence for the actual evolution from 1 specie to another which shows the trail of intermediate or transitional species leading from 1 to the other. None! Of course, evolutionists point to morphological or genetic similarities between species, but that only proves they have similarities, it does not show the evolutionary trail. Because there is no proven evolutionary trail from any 1 species to another, similar species are used as surrogates because that's the best there is. But this "best" is woefully inadequate to demonstrate evolution.

How can you believe a theory which requires such rationalization? Festinger & Aaronson could have used such examples in their writings.

Festinger & Aaronson probably declined to use such an example because it would have been a poor one to use. In fact Festinger used religious belief as an example of cognitive dissonance in When Prophesy Fails. [introduction by Aaronson]
http://cogsciblog.wordpress.com/2011/05 ... festinger/

The failure to accept the overwhelming evidence of evolution is another example of cognitive dissonance since, for some, accepting the fact and theory of evolution conflicts with a literal approach to the Bible which is a false interpretation they are unwilling to let go of.

'Universal common descent is a general descriptive theory concerning the genetic origins of living organisms (though not the ultimate origin of life). The theory specifically postulates that all of the earth's known biota are genealogically related, much in the same way that siblings or cousins are related to one another. Thus, universal common ancestry entails the transformation of one species into another and, consequently, macroevolutionary history and processes involving the origin of higher taxa. Because it is so well supported scientifically, common descent is often called the "fact of evolution" by biologists. For these reasons, proponents of special creation are especially hostile to the macroevolutionary foundation of the biological sciences.'
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
This site lists 5 examples of intermediate and transitional forms.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc ... ermediates
Feel free to choose the one you consider the weakest example of macro evolution and critique it.

[kenblogton]

[Replying to post 1369 by kenblogton]

1. Spontaneous generation is not a requirement for evolution.
Argument from ignorance & once again just wrong.

As I asked in a post yesterday, "Why should we expect to observe abiogenesis in a number of small lab environments in less than 100 years given that it only had to occur once across the entire planet in up to 500 million years? "


2. "There is no solid evidence that I was speeding, just a series of photos showing my car's displacement that have falsely been treated as part of a continuous picture"
"There's no solid evidence that I walked into the house. Sure, there are a series of muddy footprints leading up to me wearing muddy boots, but not one continuous transition"

And as I asked earlier, "I) Given that less than 1% of species are fossilized, why would modern evolutionary biology require evidence of an entire evolutionary lineage?
II)Why is a fossil of every generation required rather than occasional stages? "

Reply to 1. Of course spontaneous generation is a requirement for evolution. How else to explain the origin of life on planet earth? As I've previously shown, at http://darwin200.christs.cam.ac.uk/page ... page_id=f8, it states "Secretly, Darwin did have his own ideas about how life kicked off; he thought that life probably began spontaneously from the chemical soup that existed as the earth began to calm down a bit following its violent birth. He wrote to his friend Joseph Hooker expressing this idea:

‘But if (and Oh! What a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity etc., present that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes’

Darwin had actually hit the nail on the head, the origin of life is a problem for chemistry and biochemists.

In 1953 two people created Darwin’s warm little pond. Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, working at the University of Chicago mixed water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen in a glass bulb and added heat and sparks of electricity; they were trying to recreate the atmosphere that existed during earth's early days to test whether organic molecules such as amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins, could have spontaneously formed. They ran the experiment for a week and amazingly, when they analysed their concoction, found over 10 different types of amino acids. When Miller’s old tubes were reanalysed in 2008 with new equipment, they discovered they had actually created over 20!"

And still, no successful abiogenesis. It doesn't take 500 million years to achieve. On early earth, life generation was due to chance. In the lab, it is deliberate recreation of the early earth life generation conditions. Replicability is a cornerstone of Science. No abiogenesis, no spontaneous generation of life.

Reply to 2. Please don't change the subject or try to obscure it. There is no solid evidence. As I've previously noted by Johnson, P.E. 1991. Darwin on Trial. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, "According to Steven Stanley, the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming contains a continuous local record of fossil deposits for about five million years.… Because this record is so complete, palaeontologists assumed that certain populations of the basin could be linked to illustrate continuous evolution. On the contrary…“the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to the next.” (51)"
Given 5 million years of continuous fossil data, evidence of evolution would be expected. No supporting data, no confirmation of evolution. It takes great faith to believe in a scientific theory for which there is no solid evidence. And remember, Steven Stanley is a respected scientific researcher, as noted at http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/people/g ... ley_s.html.
kenblogton

[kenblogton]

[Replying to post 1371 by Danmark]

Danmark stated, in part, "The failure to accept the overwhelming evidence of evolution is another example of cognitive dissonance"

kenblogton replied "The failure to reject evolution in the face of underwhelming evidence, as my posting indicated, is another example of rationalization or desperation or delusion or?
kenblogton