it' s never going to be answered, so state what you believe and let it be...kinda like what I did, you can't make someone else believe the same thing as you, no matter how hard you hit them over the head with it! :banghead:
Evolution Debate ...
- Thread starter Planet_EN
- Start date
Re: RE: Evolution Debate ...
Exactly. They have to come to their own conclusion.
Scientific and studied evidence just helps the research in forming that opinion.
manda said:
Exactly. They have to come to their own conclusion.
Scientific and studied evidence just helps the research in forming that opinion.
I don't think evolution is a matter of belief, it's a matter of proven science. You can still believe in God and evolution. I don't get it :?
I think not said:
You're not supposed to ITN, that's the point, people use topics like evolution to create a stir, or an argument...we're just stupid enough to keep getting sucked in, me included :wink:
I think not said:
Exactly. I have no idea what the difficulty is either.
Just to regurgitate something that I said on the third post here:
Jo Canadian said:
That's a serious thought that deserves a thoughtful answer.
The difficulty, at least as I see it, is that Intelligent Design is metaphysical pseudoscience pretending to be real science, and many of its supporters claim it should be taught in science classrooms as an alternative to the legitimate science of evolution. Not so much in Canada, but it's a big deal in some parts of the United States. The main purpose of ID appears to be to prove the existence of God, using the claim that design is empirically detectable in nature and that it can be explained only as a consequence of intelligent, purposeful actions by some initially unspecified being that, on closer examination, invariably turns out to be the Christian deity.
Granted, and I was going to respond to that remark at the time, but reality intruded with multiple distractions. There's nothing in evolutionary theory anywhere that precludes the existence of a deity. Maybe Gawd--or God, or G-d, or Allah, or Thor, or Odin... whoever, pick one you like--designed evolution to operate on random variations with natural selection. But from science's perspective, believing that nature was designed doesn't help explain how it works. It also generates some other difficulties. For instance, how can we reasonably proceed to study something created by an intelligent designer that's of an incomprehensibly different order of being than we are? Any question we ask about it can always be answered, "That's the way the intelligent designer wanted it." It explains everything, and nothing. It's just not a useful idea, and it strikes me as a cop-out.
As Robert Carroll observes in his Skeptic's Dictionary, science attempts to describe the workings of nature without reference to their creation, design, or ultimate purpose, and a deity is an unecessary, and in fact a limiting, hypothesis in that context, because it answers everything without providing any deeper understanding or insight. Creation, design, and purpose, are metaphysical issues, not scientific ones. People who can't keep them separate I find deeply irritating, and my personality appears to be such that I can't let them go by unchallenged.
"These are my friends who died, died, died."
Oops, wrong Carroll...I was thinking of the Basketball Diaries guy. Jim Carroll. Hell of a poet. Not much of scientist, although rumour has it that he did dabble in chemistry a bit. :wink:
That's the real problem. Until these people are willing to let me wander into their Sunday schools and give my personal version of their creation myth, then their creation myth has no business in a science class.
Reverend Blair said:
I think I'd like to read that. You appear to be a fairly inventive guy, I'd be interested in your take on it. Something about meddling long-haired weirdos coming to save us from ourselves, perhaps? :wink:
I've never really developed it much. It seems to have a lot to do with incest and a stripper I saw once who had a boa constrictor as a prop. Oh, and an invisible T-Rex named Bolan.
Personally I don't care what they believe, its their lies, and slander and taken out of context legitimate scientists that makes my blood boil :twisted: Can't prove anything the legitimate way, so cheating and the back door is okay! Blah!
Think is exactly correct when he says, you can believe in evolution and god if you choose. Not once in this entire thread has extrafire shown one crumb of legitimate science to back his claims. Nada..nothing...just a steady stream of junk science.
Think is exactly correct when he says, you can believe in evolution and god if you choose. Not once in this entire thread has extrafire shown one crumb of legitimate science to back his claims. Nada..nothing...just a steady stream of junk science.
peapod said:
Yep, have to agree with you on that, Pea. All the creationists and IDers I've ever encountered focus on difficulties with evolution, things that are hard to understand about it and things it can't currently explain to their satisfaction. They don't get it, that trying to poke holes in the legitimate science in no way supports their position. They're making an empirical claim about the nature of reality, and jabbing at other and contradictory claims doesn't improve the probability that their claims are correct. They have to produce positive evidence in support of their claims; ripping at other claims counts for nothing.
Actually I think you do care, because you almost never answer my posts with relevant material, just anti-young-earther stuff, which I pretty much agree with you on. I think that you're basicly trying to portray all creationists and ID'ers as fundementalist young-earthers (that caricature I was talking about) because they're so easy to argue against.
Actually I have, but you've only answered with anti-young-earth arguments, which makes it seem to me that you're trying to direct attention away from things you have trouble with.
In spite of all that, however, you've made another rare posting of something that is actually relevant to my post, even though it's contained in another anti-young-earth paste. I refer to the part about the gene for bat wing mutation. That kind of sounds like an attempt to validate punk - eek that is so popular with Dawkins. However, it still has the same major problem that I previously mentioned:
Focus on the last sentence. A transitional form (climbing creature with half wings) wouldn't stand a chance of survival from predation. Can't climb worth a sh*t, can't fly, can't jump worth a sh*t, can only fall slowly as an advantage and once on the ground wouldn't be able to run worth a sh*t either. Such a transitional creature wouldn't live long enough to reproduce. So Sears has suggested that Dawkins was totally wrong in his description of an evolutionary pathway for the bat wing, but his own explanation is equally untenable.
I think not said:
There are lots of people who claim that evolution is a mater of proven science, but when pressed to present that proof, never are able to and want everyone to trust them because they are scientists, after all. That is why the debate still exists, and why there are scientists who do not accept evolution.
Yes, and as I answered that earlier post, that's a popular belief known as Deism, and you're correct, it very well could be. But although Dex recognizes the validity of that view, the official scientific elite absolutely reject it, and want to suppress it.
Not so. The fossil evidence, for example, shows an ever increasing and complexity of lifeforms, but no trasitional forms. A transitional form would show up as creature A, gradually evolving over the years till it became another species B. Instead, each form appears complete in the fossil record and stays basically unchanged until extinction. The species never start out as one and gradually change into another. It’s always a series of unconnected steps.
Many evolutionists agree with me on that one and not you.
It’s even been admitted that the theory is seriously flawed but only kept because there is no other naturalistic explanation. The idea that there could be a creator is disqualified at the outset because of an a priori belief in naturalism.
ID is a conclusion based on an open minded study of where the evidence points.
Doubt if you will, but that’s the truth. I did indeed have pre-existing religious beliefs, but my education and subsequent interest in science caused me to re-think them. After much examination of all my knowledge on both sides, I came to an acceptance of a deist position. Over time, with the increase in information that has come to me, my position has moved more toward a theist belief. Unlike most people of my acquaintance, I have had to opportunity to make an informed (from both sides) decision.
Well, you can test gravity by jumping off a cliff. Since evolution cannot be tested, it remains a theory. And when prominent evolutionist point out the flaws in each other’s arguments, conflicts that cannot be reconciled and without which the theory will not work (paradox) that’s pretty good evidence for serious problems with the theory itself.
I will not blindly accept what I am told without a valid explanation to back it. A few years ago on another forum I asked a PhD evolutionist why, if evolution was such a fact, did textbooks teaching it for decades, right up to the present, use outright fraudulent examples. He danced around the question for a few posts and finally admitted that there weren’t any real ones, and it was OK to use these just to illustrate so students would understand.
When Dawkins was confronted with the fraudulent examples, he admitted that he had known for 20 years that they were fakes, but figured it was OK to use them for the same reason, and that in later studies the students would learn that they weren’t actually true. Trouble is, there’s nowhere in the later studies that this happens. Even prof’s who were teaching the stuff thought they were true.
When scientists use fraud in order to promote a theory, I get suspicious. To not do so would be to deny evidence and logic.
Not so. It is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God.
That is the purpose of ID if you leave out the word “only”.
There are those who argue for other deities but there is no way to tell for certain. However, only the Judeo/Christian creation story coincides with the physical record.
You're still not getting it Ex, and I doubt you ever will, but let's go around it one more time.
A complete fabrication. The record is full of obvious transitional forms for all sorts of critters, but if you actually understood the evidence for evolution you'd know that every form is transitional, by definition. The "absence of transitional forms" argument is completely specious. Even when obvious transitional forms are produced, creationists and IDers respond by pointing to the gap between them. You're never going to be content.
Does it indeed? You have just shot yourself in the foot, and given your true position away. I'm calling bullshit on that one too.
You mean as it's laid out in the Old Testament? That's the only place I've ever seen what is supposedly the authoritative version of the Judea-Christian creation mythology. Six days of creation, the earth is created before light and stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants before any animals? Is that what you mean? The true order of events was just the opposite. God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day, but he didn't make the light producing objects until the fourth day. Plants are made on the third day before there was a sun to drive their photosynthetic processes. And there's much more. You're claiming that bullshit coincides with the physical record?
It's not enough to pick away at evolution Ex, weaknesses and holes in it aren't evidence for your position. You have to produce positive evidence that supports your position, but all you've done so far is present things inexplicable in your understanding of evolution (which is deeply flawed) and claim that supports Intelligent Design. It doesn't. It says nothing at all about Intelligent Design.
Extrafire said:
A complete fabrication. The record is full of obvious transitional forms for all sorts of critters, but if you actually understood the evidence for evolution you'd know that every form is transitional, by definition. The "absence of transitional forms" argument is completely specious. Even when obvious transitional forms are produced, creationists and IDers respond by pointing to the gap between them. You're never going to be content.
How many is 'many?' Name a dozen and provide citations.
By whom? Name them, provide citations. And even if the theory is seriously flawed, another point you're not getting is that that is not evidence for your position.
There's another thing you're not getting. The notion of a creator is disqualified because it isn't useful, explains everything (i.e. God did it) and illuminates nothing.
Bullshit. It's a pre-existing religious position that looks for confirming evidence and ignores contrary evidence.
Bullshit. You don't seem to know what a theory is in the scientific sense either. A theory that can't be tested isn't science, it's metaphysics,which evolution emphatically is not. Evolution's tested every day, nothing in any modern biological laboratory makes sense without it. It's used to guide research into new antibiotics and antiviral medications, for instance, and the over-use of antibiotics in recent decades, and the arrival of resistant infectious agents, is an ongoing experiment in evolution.
So what? The experts disagree, the theory's not complete. That's not evidence for your position. Your position's a cop-out: God did it, that covers everything we don't know and don't understand, without being at all helpful as a guide to further investigation and thought.
So he's as ignorant as you are.
You're going to have to provide a citation for that, with full contextual information.
If you leave out the word only, you leave open the possibility of other explanations, and if that's true of you, you must be the only person in the creationist/ID camp who'd allow that. Sure, a creator is a possible explanation for it all, but not a useful one. It provides, as I've said before, no new insights, no explanations, points to no new hypotheses to be tested, it closes the door on all of it. God did it, that's all we can know.
Does it indeed? You have just shot yourself in the foot, and given your true position away. I'm calling bullshit on that one too.
You mean as it's laid out in the Old Testament? That's the only place I've ever seen what is supposedly the authoritative version of the Judea-Christian creation mythology. Six days of creation, the earth is created before light and stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants before any animals? Is that what you mean? The true order of events was just the opposite. God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day, but he didn't make the light producing objects until the fourth day. Plants are made on the third day before there was a sun to drive their photosynthetic processes. And there's much more. You're claiming that bullshit coincides with the physical record?
It's not enough to pick away at evolution Ex, weaknesses and holes in it aren't evidence for your position. You have to produce positive evidence that supports your position, but all you've done so far is present things inexplicable in your understanding of evolution (which is deeply flawed) and claim that supports Intelligent Design. It doesn't. It says nothing at all about Intelligent Design.
not sure what there is to "debate"......
evolution cannot occur without a creative force (creation). Creation is part of evolution (and change)
it is not an either /or proposition (IMHO)
evolution cannot occur without a creative force (creation). Creation is part of evolution (and change)
it is not an either /or proposition (IMHO)