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.

[H.sapiens]

[Replying to post 649 by Blastcat]

Denying a fact doesn't make it go away, yes, there is an enormous amount of evidence for evolution. So much so, that many call evolution "a fact".

I understand.
I remember saying almost the same words concerning belief in God.

You seem to be having trouble differentiating between what you say and what is actual evidence.

[theStudent]

Blastcat. In 33 statements, you used the word you 29 times.
If I did the same thing, wouldn't you make a complaint?
It appears to me that theStudent has become the topic for debate rather than the posts to be debated - what he is, what he isn't, what he has, what he doesn't have...

Anyway, I'm just making an observation. Don't let me cramp your style B.

...any old argument qualify as evidence for God, where as solid, physical and scientifically verified observation does not count as evidence for evolution.

Actual observed instances of evolution should be more than enough proof? The latest darling in evolutionary science being Lenski's long term evolution experiment on E.coli.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_l ... experiment

CHAPTER 2
- Part 1

E. coli long-term evolution experiment

The E. coli long-term evolution experiment (LTEE) is an ongoing study in experimental evolution led by Richard Lenski that has been tracking genetic changes in 12 initially identical populations of asexual Escherichia coli bacteria since 24 February 1988. The populations reached the milestone of 50,000 generations in February 2010 and 65,000 in June 2016.

...all 12 populations showed a similar pattern of rapid improvement in fitness that decelerated over time, more rapid growth rates, an increased cell size. Half of the populations have evolved defects in DNA repair that have caused mutator phenotypes marked by elevated mutation rates. The most striking adaptation reported so far is the evolution of aerobic growth on citrate, which is unusual in E. coli, in one population at some point between generations 31,000 and 31,500.

Nutrition and Growth of Bacteria

Physical and Environmental Requirements for Microbial Growth
The procaryotes exist in nature under an enormous range of physical conditions such as O2 concentration, Hydrogen ion concentration (pH) and temperature. The exclusion limits of life on the planet, with regard to environmental parameters, are always set by some microorganism, most often a procaryote, and frequently an Archaeon. Applied to all microorganisms is a vocabulary of terms used to describe their growth (ability to grow) within a range of physical conditions. A thermophile grows at high temperatures, an acidiphile grows at low pH, an osmophile grows at high solute concentration, and so on. This nomenclature will be employed in this section to describe the response of the procaryotes to a variety of physical conditions.

The Effect of Oxygen
Oxygen is a universal component of cells and is always provided in large amounts by H2O. However, procaryotes display a wide range of responses to molecular oxygen O2

What does this have to do with evolution?
NEWS FLASH Bacteria lives in virtually everything! They live in your gut! Of course they can survive citric acid! Bacteria cleans virtually anything, including your intestines. Yes bacteria does some amazing things. They (E.coli) multiply every 20 minutes (that's why you have so many). They were designed that way.

Newly identified bacteria cleans up common plastic
Bacteria made to turn sewage into clean water " and electricity
Super bacteria cleaning up after oil spills
............

Experimental evolution

Unwittingly, humans have carried out evolution experiments for as long as they have been domesticating plants and animals. Selective breeding of plants and animals has led to varieties that differ dramatically from their original wild-type ancestors. Examples are the cabbage varieties, maize, or the large number of different dog breeds. The power of human breeding to create varieties with extreme differences from a single species was already recognized by Charles Darwin. In fact, he started out his book The Origin of Species with a chapter on variation in domestic animals. In this chapter, Darwin discussed in particular the pigeon.

Altogether at least a score of pigeons might be chosen, which if shown to an ornithologist, and he were told that they were wild birds, would certainly, I think, be ranked by him as well-defined species. Moreover, I do not believe that any ornithologist would place the English carrier, the short-faced tumbler, the runt, the barb, pouter, and fantail in the same genus; more especially as in each of these breeds several truly-inherited sub-breeds, or species as he might have called them, could be shown him. (...) I am fully convinced that the common opinion of naturalists is correct, namely, that all have descended from the rock-pigeon (Columba livia), including under this term several geographical races or sub-species, which differ from each other in the most trifling respects.

"Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

God made out of one man every nation of men to dwell on the entire surface of the earth.
He created animal kinds to multiply, and produce varying offspring.

So bacteria produces bacteria. Mice produce mice. Sheep produce sheep... so what?
They were created that way - that's what.

I can't answer yes, because men make errors in their checking systems, and their judgment, and their understanding, and their theories...
For example, there is evidence that some scientists have questioned the theory of gravity, and this article shows, there is still a question mark against it.
http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/fo ... rk-energy/

Moreover, just because I have a theory, does not mean my theory is right.
Just because species have similar materials and makeup, does not mean we evolved, according to the theory of evolution.

Well, the evidence for evolution goes a lot further than spotting species have similar materials and makeup. Just as gravity goes a lot further than dropping different weighted balls off the leaning tower of Pisa. But fundamentally, you are not wrong, which is why I kept asking you what you meant by "prove." Nothing in science is ever proven in the strictest sense of the word. All of science is tentative, theory exists as working models awaiting further corrections. You might have heard the phrase "proof is for alcohol and mathematics."

Why dismiss creation?

Because it is unscientific. Methodological naturalism is the essence of science. Recall the passage you and I both quoted, so beautifully stated by Professor Richard Lewontin:

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

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."

How can it be ruled out, when it fits.
To my mind, that's leaning toward a preferred explanation.

None of that matters because it invokes the supernatural. It ruled itself out by stepping outside of material explanations. It's not science no matter how well you think it explain things.

Think of it another way, the day Creationism become eligible for scientific consideration, is the day when God allows himself to be studied under the microscope, as we scrutinise the creatures that swarm in a drop of water.

- Part 2

Nothing in science is ever proven in the strictest sense of the word. All of science is tentative, theory exists as working models awaiting further corrections. You might have heard the phrase "proof is for alcohol and mathematics."

You can say that again... and again.
The only thing is, those words are not applied correctly, are they? They seem to be a twist.
It doesn't matter however, as it is clear what are considered facts in science.
Facts of science does not add up to facts of reality if they are as unscientific as the evolution theory.

A bacterium will always be limited to the domain of bacteria. What they are not limited to is being unicellular microorganisms. While all bacteria today are unicellular microorganisms, one day they might become very different, but that doesn't stop them from being bacteria.

...it could never turn into an animal that has gills, or has hair and feeds its young milk, or has scales and is cold blooded. Animals are Eukaryotes, bacteria are Prokaryotes. What bacteria could turn into, are bacteria that have gills, or hair and feeds its young "milk," or scales and cold blooded.

...it is actually limited physically to remain in the bacteria domain. We could reclassify existing families in different ways, but that's just an exercise in taxonomy. Actually evolving new families is not possible. That would involve going back down the tree of life, away from the leaf nodes, and somehow spawning a new branches from the middle of a tree. That would mean going back in time! We can only ever get new species, because species exist at the tips of the evolution tree, the only place where evolution can occur.

I don't doubt creationists will latch onto that and think a single cell organism will always remain a single cell organism, but that's no reason to sly away from the correct terminology: animals are members of the kingdom Animalia. A bacteria could never evolve into something that is no longer a bacteria. A bacteria could become a bacteria that looks very much like an animal, with fur or gills, or maybe even both, but it will never be an animal.

As an example of what I mean, Pigeons produce "crop milk" for their young, but they are not mammals and never will become mammals, despite their evolved ability to produce milk to feed their young.

Another example are bats, in spite of their superficial similarity with birds, they are not birds, and will never evolve into birds no matter how much more bats and birds converge in physical form.

What you are suggesting here, is akin to chimpanzee evolving into human. The split has already happened, chimpanzees may well evolve in to a tall, upright, smart and hairless ape that looks superficially like us, but it will never be human.

We need to hammer this point home to creationists, having such misconceptions about evolution is what leads to "show us a cat giving birth to a dog" style challenges.

You are using a cladistic view of evolution (one that I happen to agree with) but one that most non-taxonomists have trouble grasping. Let me recommend this to those who can't see it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladistics

- Part 3

While all bacteria today are unicellular microorganisms, one day they might become very different, but that doesn't stop them from being bacteria.

Yes. That's what I keep saying, and after 3.5 billion years they are still unicellular. Thanks for using the word might. Clearly you are speculating.

Cladistics

Cladistics is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized based on shared derived characteristics that can be traced to a group's most recent common ancestor and are not present in more distant ancestors. Therefore, members of a group are assumed to share a common history and are considered to be closely related.

Today, cladistics is the most popular method for constructing phylogenies not only from morphological data but also from molecular. Unlike phenetics, cladistics is specifically aimed at reconstructing evolutionary histories.

The cladistic method interprets each character state transformation implied by the distribution of shared character states among taxa (or other terminals) as a potential piece of evidence for grouping. The outcome of a cladistic analysis is a cladogram " a tree-shaped diagram (dendrogram) that is interpreted to represent the best hypothesis of phylogenetic relationships. Although traditionally such cladograms were generated largely on the basis of morphological characters and originally calculated by hand, genetic sequencing data and computational phylogenetics are now commonly used in phylogenetic analyses, and the parsimony criterion has been abandoned by many phylogeneticists in favor of more "sophisticated" but less parsimonious evolutionary models of character state transformation. Cladists contend that these models are unjustified.

Every cladogram is based on a particular dataset analyzed with a particular method. Datasets are tables consisting of molecular, morphological, ethological and/or other characters and a list of operational taxonomic units (OTUs), which may be genes, individuals, populations, species, or larger taxa that are presumed to be monophyletic and therefore to form, all together, one large clade; phylogenetic analysis infers the branching pattern within that clade. Different datasets and different methods, not to mention violations of the mentioned assumptions, often result in different cladograms. Only scientific investigation can show which is more likely to be correct.

Until recently, for example, cladograms like the following have generally been accepted as accurate representations of the ancestral relations among turtles, lizards, crocodilians, and birds:


If this phylogenetic hypothesis is correct, then the last common ancestor of turtles and birds, at the branch near the lived earlier than the last common ancestor of lizards and birds, near the . Most molecular evidence, however, produces cladograms more like this:


If this is accurate, then the last common ancestor of turtles and birds lived later than the last common ancestor of lizards and birds. Since the cladograms provide competing accounts of real events, at most one of them is correct.

The cladogram to the right represents the current universally accepted hypothesis that all primates, including strepsirrhines like the lemurs and lorises, had a common ancestor all of whose descendants were primates, and so form a clade; the name Primates is therefore recognized for this clade. Within the primates, all anthropoids (monkeys, apes and humans) are hypothesized to have had a common ancestor all of whose descendants were anthropoids, so they form the clade called Anthropoidea. The "prosimians", on the other hand, form a paraphyletic taxon. The name Prosimii is not used in phylogenetic nomenclature, which names only clades; the "prosimians" are instead divided between the clades Strepsirhini and Haplorhini, where the latter contains Tarsiiformes and Anthropoidea.

How can these assumptions lead anyone to solid, verifiable, and observable evidence?
Obviously, they can't.

There is no evidence at all that clasifying organisms into groups give support to the evolution theory. To the contrary, the method confirm that the theory of evolution is unscientific.

Bioluminescence
the Luminous Organs of Insects
Luminous Organs of the Deep-Sea Squaloid Shark
Unrelated insects, worms, bacteria and fish have luminous organs giving off cold light.

Animal echolocation
Unrelated animals using echolocation - bats, dolphins, whales, shrews and birds.

Anticoagulant
Unrelated leeches and blood-sucking insects, such as mosquitoes, have anticoagulants to keep their victims blood from clotting.

Beetles Have Complex Rapidly Developing Vision System, Say Researchers
Bug with bifocals baffles biologists

University of Cincinnati researchers are reporting on the discovery of a bug with bifocals -- such an amazing finding that it initially had the researchers questioning whether they could believe their own eyes.

Bifocal Fish Sees Differently above and below Water Line
Unrelated fish and insects have bifocal eyes for vision in air and under water.

Animal Migration
In many unrelated animals, there are amazing abilities for migration.

They were all created according to their kind. (Genesis 1:20-25)

Of course. We'd have a new line of nucloid, but it would not be a eukaryotes.

So why not apply the same thinking to a potential new line of bacteria? It could be lung breathing, milk producing but it would not be an animal.

Semantics in my mind. My opinion is that they are not dinosaurs just like dinosaurs weren't reptiles. If we can call birds "dinosaurs" we could call them "reptiles" just as easily.

We can and we should, birds ARE reptiles, because birds are dinosaurs and dinosaurs are reptiles.

Then say birds are the last common ancestor. Why stop at dinosaurs?

We shouldn't stop at dinosaurs, birds are Chordata, birds are animals, birds are Eukarya and birds are life. We go all the way.

- Part 4

A little story...
If birds evolved from dinosaurs, would that make them reptiles too?
Usually what people mean when they say birds are reptiles is that birds are more closely related to reptiles than anything else, and this is true in a way, but there are many types of reptiles. Birds are most closely related to crocodiles.

To understand this, we should look at some history.
The first groups of reptiles evolved about 300 million years ago. About 40 million years later, (very quickly by geologic standards), a group of reptiles called therapsids branched off, which eventually became modern mammals. Other groups of reptiles split off over the next 120 million years, and one branch called the dinosaurs were very successful. These dinosaurs were only distantly related to modern snakes, lizards, and turtles, groups that had split off at different times. But 65 million years ago there was a massive extinction event, and all dinosaurs were killed except for a single group of feathered dinosaurs. These evolved over the next 65 million years into modern birds. So birds aren't just closely related to dinosaurs, they really are dinosaurs! This is what most people mean when they say that birds are reptiles, although technically according to the phylogenetic system mammals are also reptiles.


I'm telling you...
That was the best one yet. Thank you. Thank you. LOL

End of Chapter 2

[H.sapiens]

theStudent's ignorance when it comes to taxonomy boggles my mind. What he is finding so amusing is basically this: Foxes and Turtles and Parakeets and Amoebas are all animals. That is because they are all derived from the same original stock, a stem animal. In that same sense, all terrestrial terrapods are fish, and all birds are reptiles, as are all mammals. You never loose your ancestral names, at least to a cladistic taxonomist. You are a human, but you are also an Ape and a Mammal and a Reptile and an Amphibian and a Fish and a Vertebrate, but you likely only recognize Human, Ape, Mammal, and Vertebrate. theStudent is playing a really foolish word game because he knows nothing about taxonomy.

[Elijah John]

Moderator Intervention

theStudent, H.Sapiens, please watch your tone. Mutual sarcasm, derogatory comments and ridicule are not good ingredients for civil debate.

Rules
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______________

Moderator interventions do not count as a strike against any posters. They are given at the discretion of a moderator when he or she feels that some sort of intervention is required.

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 660 by H.sapiens]

theStudent's ignorance when it comes to taxonomy boggles my mind. What he is finding so amusing is basically this: Foxes and Turtles and Parakeets and Amoebas are all animals. That is because they are all derived from the same original stock, a stem animal. In that same sense, all terrestrial terrapods are fish, and all birds are reptiles, as are all mammals. You never loose your ancestral names, at least to a cladistic taxonomist. You are a human, but you are also an Ape and a Mammal and a Reptile and an Amphibian and a Fish and a Vertebrate, but you likely only recognize Human, Ape, Mammal, and Vertebrate. theStudent is playing a really foolish word game because he knows nothing about taxonomy.

I have to agree.

I wrote earlier in this thread that although I could fully understand IGNORANCE, I cannot condone arrogant ignorance.

Some creationists seem PROUD to get the science wrong. And then they RIDICULE the science... while displaying their utter lack of accurate information.

Their thinking is not sophisticated nor compelling. But.. some people WILL vote for Trump. Not everyone demands sound reasoning and facts. IN the USA.. millions don't.

Some people prefer fun sound bytes instead of dull logic and dull evidence.
Some people prefer entertainment over learning.

I'm pretty sure that SOME creationists in here are having a LOT of fun. But are they engaged in serious and HONEST DEBATE?

I'm not being impressed.

There's a big difference between digging in one's heels and debating honestly.

It's the same old boring story.. I have to wonder if apologists ever intend to debate honestly.

[Goat]

[Replying to post 649 by Blastcat]

Denying a fact doesn't make it go away, yes, there is an enormous amount of evidence for evolution. So much so, that many call evolution "a fact".

I understand.
I remember saying almost the same words concerning belief in God.

There apparently is one big difference. In the case of evolution, the evidence can be examined, and tested. In the case in the belief in god, not so much.

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 663 by Goat]

[center]
Fallacious Religious Reasoning:
Confirmation Bias[/center]

There apparently is one big difference. In the case of evolution, the evidence can be examined, and tested. In the case in the belief in god, not so much.

In the case of the TOE.. you are correct, the evidence CAN be examined by outsiders to the creationist faithful. Apparently, for creationists, the evidence can't be examined so well. Odd that.

Only whatever can cause a problem for evolution ( apparently ) can possibly be looked at by our fine friends the creationists. Funny how that works.

Could creationists be committing the reasoning fallacy known as CONFIRMATION BIAS?

Do most creationists even know what the term MEANS?
When people present evidence after evidence, from the scientific community that proves the TOE a fact of nature, creationists seem to just scoff.

Some creationists seem to be expert scoffers.
Some creationists seem to be expert deniers, too.

Scoffing and denying isn't evidence, however.. not for creationism, not for anything.

In the OP, theStudent asks us to consider "What if they have lied about evolution theory..."

But it seems that the same student cannot seem to consider.. what if they DIDN'T?

[theStudent]

[Replying to post 663 by Goat]

There apparently is one big difference. In the case of evolution, the evidence can be examined, and tested. In the case in the belief in god, not so much.

When you say belief in God has not been tested, do you mean in a lab?
How can that be done in a lab, ad why do you suggest it has not been tested?

[H.sapiens]

[Replying to post 663 by Goat]

There apparently is one big difference. In the case of evolution, the evidence can be examined, and tested. In the case in the belief in god, not so much.

When you say belief in God has not been tested, do you mean in a lab?
How can that be done in a lab, ad why do you suggest it has not been tested?

The existence of a God has been tested in many ways. It turns out that there is no god, or that he hates amputees, your choice.

[theStudent]

[Replying to post 666 by H.sapiens]

The existence of a God has been tested in many ways. It turns out that there is no god, or that he hates amputees, your choice.

...or you assume he hates amputees.
I choose the latter.