What If...?

[theStudent]

Currently, I am doing what was suggested by some on these forums.
I am researching information both for, and against evolution, and trust me - I am doing so objectively.
While I am still researching, I want to put this out, to hear the different views on it.

During my research I discovered that lately, just over the last decade or so, a lot of informations has been surfacing about fake fossils.
In fact it has now become common place for fossils sold at museums to be checked for genuineness.
I find this interesting.

Why now, is this happening?
Could it be that evidence as it always does, is now surfacing?

For example
Remember the dinosaur hoax - the one that was said to be put together using different bones?
It has recently been found out that it wasn't a hoax after all.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2015/02/ ... ecies.html

That is quite interesting.

The fossils aren't the only things that were/are claimed to be fake.
There are the drawings, and pictures as well.
Right now, I am going through a very long document considered a case against some of Darwins picture illustrations.
But have you ever come across this one?

Pictures from the past powerfully shape current views of the world. In books, television programs, and websites, new images appear alongside others that have survived from decades ago. Among the most famous are drawings of embryos by the Darwinist Ernst Haeckel in which humans and other vertebrates begin identical, then diverge toward their adult forms. But these icons of evolution are notorious, too: soon after their publication in 1868, a colleague alleged fraud, and Haeckels many enemies have repeated the charge ever since. His embryos nevertheless became a textbook staple until, in 1997, a biologist accused him again, and creationist advocates of intelligent design forced his figures out. How could the most controversial pictures in the history of science have become some of the most widely seen?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Haec ... eks4-6.jpg
English: The pictures illustrate Ernst Haeckel's biogenetic law. In the beginning embryos of different species look remarkable similar, later different characteristics develop. The images initiated controversies and charges of fraud.

All of this lends to a possibility.
Consdering the fact that fossils can be faked, we must accept the fact that Darwin, and other scientists could have lied.

My question here, isn't whether he did lie or not, but rather, Does this not place evolutionists in the same position as the Christians they claim are believing in fables?

Consider:
Christians accept the Bible, as the word of God.
Here are just a few facts about the Bible.
With estimated total sales of over 5 billion copies, the Bible is widely considered to be the best-selling book of all time.
It has estimated annual sales of 100 million copies.
It has been a major influence on literature and history, especially in the West where the Gutenberg Bible was the first mass-printed book.
It was the first book ever printed using movable type.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible

Archaeological findings of the Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls

The evidence is there however, that the book we hold in our hand today (the Bible), contains information written centuries ago.

Atheist call the book fables - the reason I have yet to find out.
Maybe one of the reasons is that they have not seen God, or seen him write any book - whatever.
So they claim that Christians' belief in them and what they present is blind faith, and belief in stories.

However, is this not the case with those who accept the theory of evolution, where all they have to go by, is what scientists claim to be evidence?

By the way...
No one, to this day have seen them recreate the theories.
Any data they give you on species, is usually what already existed (at least what I have come across so far).
As regards other claims, all we have are pictures, and claimed fossils, which could have been edited.

So evolutionists are really believing what men claim - without any substantial proof of their claim.
How is this different to believing a book?

And what if Darwin, and others lied?


I'm just interested in you different opinions and thoughts, on the above.
Here is a nice short video of someone's opinion. Reasonable too.

[theStudent]

I am convinced...
The world has gone mad.
Why don't you mate a pig with...

And that gentle readers signals an uncivil defeat. The Student, you should, now, join the rest of us, at least on the refutation of your "What if..."

We have at least shown, nobody was lying...
Tions and Ligers and Vestigial tendons... Oh my!
Warts and Whale-feet and Neurons... Oh my!


Peace.

I have played games before.
I know how some end when persons realize they are losing the game.

As I said before.
The proof is in the pudding. Read my posts.

[Willum]

[Replying to theStudent]

I would have to admit the entire scientific community was wrong since 1986. Tall order for me. Keep playing games, if you're the only one playing, you win.

As for the the rest of us, we see a completely different picture of ya. Enjoy your time here.

[theStudent]

[Replying to theStudent]

I would have to admit the entire scientific community was wrong since 1986. Tall order for me. Keep playing games, if you're the only one playing, you win.

As for the the rest of us, we see a completely different picture of ya. Enjoy your time here.

I seemed to have caused offense.
Sorry about that.
Didn't mean to.
Peace.

[H.sapiens]

I am convinced...
The world has gone mad.
Why don't you mate a pig with...

And that gentle readers signals an uncivil defeat. The Student, you should, now, join the rest of us, at least on the refutation of your "What if..."

We have at least shown, nobody was lying...
Tions and Ligers and Vestigial tendons... Oh my!
Warts and Whale-feet and Neurons... Oh my!


Peace.

I have played games before.
I know how some end when persons realize they are losing the game.

As I said before.
The proof is in the pudding. Read my posts.

There is no pudding, or anything else there, unsubstantiated claims and willful ignorance done up into Pigeon Chess. That's all it.

[theStudent]

Theory of Evolution, whether we accept it or not, is still a theory.

hypotheses
1. A proposal intended to explain certain facts or observations
2. A tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena
3. A message expressing an opinion based on incomplete evidence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

Evolution
[NOTE* - This article deliberately - no mistake - does not add the phrase Theory of in front.]
Evolution is change in the heritable traits of biological populations over successive generations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules.

All life on Earth shares a common ancestor known as the last universal ancestor, which lived approximately 3.5"3.8 billion years ago, although a study in 2015 found "remains of biotic life" from 4.1 billion years ago in ancient rocks in Western Australia.

• Origin of life
  [NOTE* - hypothesis]
  Highly energetic chemistry is thought to have produced a self-replicating molecule around 4 billion years ago, and half a billion years later the last common ancestor of all life existed. The current scientific consensus is that the complex biochemistry that makes up life came from simpler chemical reactions. The beginning of life may have included self-replicating molecules such as RNA and the assembly of simple cells.
• Common descent
  [NOTE* - hypothesis]
  All organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor or ancestral gene pool.

Currently, where does Evolution (Like the article above, I'm not inclined to use the phrase Theory of) stand against the scientific method?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

Scientists continue to study various aspects of evolutionary biology by forming and testing hypotheses, constructing mathematical models of theoretical biology and biological theories, using observational data, and performing experiments in both the field and the laboratory.

Despite the fact that certain processes have been observed...
NOTE* - Evolution remains a theory. Not a fact.


Fossils
Let's take a close look at the fossils record.
How are they doing against the scientific method?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil

• Limitations
  Organisms are only rarely preserved as fossils in the best of circumstances, and only a fraction of such fossils have been discovered. This is illustrated by the fact that the number of species known through the fossil record is less than 5% of the number of known living species, suggesting that the number of species known through fossils must be far less than 1% of all the species that have ever lived. Because of the specialized and rare circumstances required for a biological structure to fossilize, only a small percentage of life-forms can be expected to be represented in discoveries, and each discovery represents only a snapshot of the process of evolution. The transition itself can only be illustrated and corroborated by transitional fossils, which will never demonstrate an exact half-way point.
  
  The fossil record is heavily slanted toward organisms with hard parts, leaving most groups of soft-bodied organisms with little to no role. It is replete with the mollusks, the vertebrates, the echinoderms, the brachiopods and some groups of arthropods.

Gathering fossils dates at least to the beginning of recorded history.
The fossils themselves are referred to as the fossil record.
The fossil record was one of the early sources of data underlying the study of evolution and continues to be relevant to the history of life on Earth.
Paleontologists examine the fossil record to understand the process of evolution and the way particular species have evolved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleontology

Paleontology
The simplest definition is "the study of ancient life". Paleontology seeks information about several aspects of past organisms: "their identity and origin, their environment and evolution, and what they can tell us about the Earth's organic and inorganic past".

Paleontology is one of the historical sciences, along with archaeology, geology, astronomy, cosmology, philology and history itself. This means that it aims to describe phenomena of the past and reconstruct their causes. Hence it has three main elements: description of the phenomena; developing a general theory about the causes of various types of change; and applying those theories to specific facts.

When trying to explain past phenomena, paleontologists and other historical scientists often construct a set of hypotheses about the causes and then look for a smoking gun, a piece of evidence that indicates that one hypothesis is a better explanation than others. Sometimes the smoking gun is discovered by a fortunate accident during other research.

The other main type of science is experimental science, which is often said to work by conducting experiments to disprove hypotheses about the workings and causes of natural phenomena " note that this approach cannot confirm a hypothesis is correct, since some later experiment may disprove it. However, when confronted with totally unexpected phenomena, such as the first evidence for invisible radiation, experimental scientists often use the same approach as historical scientists: construct a set of hypotheses about the causes and then look for a "smoking gun".

Despite the fact that fossils have been found...
NOTE* - The scientific method is still being applied. Incomplete.
The search continues, as Paleontologist search for the "smoking gun" - leading to more and more...
Hypotheses
There are many hypotheses about the universe, earth, life...

• Earliest history of Earth
• Origins of life on Earth
  • Biologists reason that all living organisms on Earth must share a single last universal ancestor, because it would be virtually impossible that two or more separate lineages could have independently developed the many complex biochemical mechanisms common to all living organisms. As previously mentioned the earliest organisms for which fossil evidence is available are bacteria.
    The lack of fossil or geochemical evidence for earlier organisms has left plenty of scope for hypotheses, which fall into two main groups: 1) that life arose spontaneously on Earth or 2) that it was "seeded" from elsewhere in the Universe.
  
  

The number of hypotheses are astronomical.
Yet none of them include God.
The theory of evolution totally ignores the possibility of a supernatural being, but hypothesizes extraterrestrial life. Amazing.

The Theory of Degredation
Try this.
Randomly pick any man on the street.
Say to him, "Do you know that you are from a family of snakes?"
Then pause, and stand there for a response.

Or maybe you can say this: "Your ancestors were rats. Some were dogs, or maybe even frogs."
Don't forget. wait for the response.

The theory of evolution says that man owes his existence to such animals as his forefathers.
The theory of evolution degrades man to the level of beasts.
The theory of evolution has lowered the intelligence of man, to that of a beast. Man whose qualities should reflect, according to the Bible, a God of supreme intelligence.
The theory of evolution is nothing more than a degrading and blasphemous theory, to the extreme, and gross idolatry!

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 222 by theStudent]

Oh sweet god...the 'it's just a theory!" line? I thought you said before you had studied all this! Try looking up next what a scientific theory is, NOT what the common parlance of theory is. These are two different things.
Do you reject gravity because what we have is a 'theory of gravity'? A theory is the highest status one can get to in science.

[Willum]

[Replying to post 223 by rikuoamero]

I've put 'the Student' on ignore - is he denying that Creationism, deism, Christianity, et&al, don't even merit being a theory, only, what we'd call in the field, a "virtual model," a model that can not be reproduced based on physics or reality, but something like a cartoon, where if you can draw it, it can happen?

[H.sapiens]

[Replying to post 223 by rikuoamero]

I've put 'the Student' on ignore - is he denying that Creationism, deism, Christianity, et&al, don't even merit being a theory, only, what we'd call in the field, a "virtual model," a model that can not be reproduced based on physics or reality, but something like a cartoon, where if you can draw it, it can happen?

I'm in about the same place.

Here's wiki on scientific theory:

A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation.[1][2] Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge.[3]

It is important to note that the definition of a "scientific theory" (often ambiguously contracted to "theory" for the sake of brevity, including in this page) as used in the disciplines of science is significantly different from, and in contrast to, the common vernacular usage of the word "theory". As used in everyday non-scientific speech, "theory" implies that something is an unsubstantiated and speculative guess, conjecture, or hypothesis;[4] such a usage is the opposite of a scientific theory. These different usages are comparable to the differing, and often opposing, usages of the term "prediction" in science (less ambiguously called a "scientific prediction") versus "prediction" in non-scientific vernacular speech, the latter of which may even imply a mere hope.

The strength of a scientific theory is related to the diversity of phenomena it can explain, and to its elegance and simplicity (see Occam's razor). As additional scientific evidence is gathered, a scientific theory may be rejected or modified if it does not fit the new empirical findings; in such circumstances, a more accurate theory is then desired. In certain cases, the less-accurate unmodified scientific theory can still be treated as a theory if it is useful (due to its sheer simplicity) as an approximation under specific conditions (e.g., Newton's laws of motion as an approximation to special relativity at velocities that are small relative to the speed of light).

Scientific theories are usually testable and make falsifiable predictions.[5] They describe the causal elements responsible for a particular natural phenomenon, and are used to explain and predict aspects of the physical universe or specific areas of inquiry (e.g., electricity, chemistry, astronomy). Scientists use theories as a foundation to gain further scientific knowledge, as well as to accomplish goals such as inventing technology or curing disease.

As with most, if not all, forms of scientific knowledge, scientific theories are both deductive and inductive[6][7] in nature and aim for predictive power and explanatory capability

[Bust Nak]

The common ancestor is life, but not species. True or false?

True.

These are the species being referred to. Yes?

Yes.

So species, life-form. Is there a difference?

Yes. Back to my analogy: species: teams; life-form: players. A solitaire has a player, but no teams. A game of tennis has s number of players and two teams.

Above you said

No, that's just life, not until it's has split to two branches.

in reply to this

Is the common ancestor a species?

Now you say this

Darwin referred to the universal common ancestor in a book called the origin of species.

Could you explain this, please?

No sure what the problem is. A book on the origin of the USA would refer to Britain, but would not explain the origin of Britain. Surely that much make sense?

And could you also rectify it with this

No. There seems to be a disconnect here - origin of the baboon's life is analogous to the origin of species, not the origin of life.

I was trying to explain that there are a two steps; a book trying to explain the origin of the second step would refer to the first step, but need to explain the origin of step one.

From what I understand, LUCA is the common ancestor, from which all life came. It's not a branch. Do I need to read that information again?

No, that's much is fine. What I don't get is how that information caused you to question if Darwin named his book correctly.

"They" are the evolutionist, who don't seem to know head nor tail, what to put in writing.

You say that, but when I read the text you quoted, they make perfect sense.

Considering the way the Bible describes the creator - invisible; unbounded; all powerful, that's what I would expect from the biased scientific view.
From an unbiased scientific view the opposite is true.

Physicist H. S. Lipson - Physics Bulletin, 1980, Vol. 31, p. 138

The only acceptable explanation is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it.

But the text in bold is agreed upon by all of science, even the part that you accused of being biased. The problem is with the un-bolded part. Creation is not an explanation, let alone an acceptable one.

"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."

You should know this, you've quoted it yourself.

[Kenisaw]

[Replying to post 176 by Kenisaw]

How does a quote from one person equate to, as you call it, "many scientists do not accept the evidence"? Every poll I've ever seen says at least 97% of all scientists accept evolution as a valid scientific theory on the diversity of life on Earth (religioustolerance.org has some historical data showing trends of this as well by the way). You can keep quote mining all you want, that percentage says it all.

And, as usual, you don't argue about the morphological studies on fossils, or the geological data on the age of the rocks, or the genetic data showing how things are related. No, you post quotes and link us to articles that are pseudo-science or that you use in the wrong context because you don't understand them. But you "love sceince"...

Kenisaw... Respectfully...
Do you read what I post, or you skim most of them?

Student, I read all of your posts. I read all of the posts by everyone.

Everyone will notice that once again Student fails to address specific points of my reply. He can't (or won't) explain how one quote from one scientist equates to "many scientists do not accept the evidence". He fails to discuss specific fields of research and the findings within them. But he did recently post a link to an article at the institute for creation research as if that is a scientific source....