The Religion of Evolution

[Meatros]

This is an apparent attempt to confuse microevolution with macroevolution. Immunizations have everything to do with how organisms adapt and/or possess self-defense mechanisms. It is not in the least dependent on the notion that all life forms evolved from a simpler lifeform.

... and you would accuse me of lying or ignorance?

Micro-macro is a distinction touted by creationists, but not really by those prescribing to evolution. After all, with the concept of what constitutes a species (the blurry lines), the immediate answer is "there is nothing to prevent micro from becoming macro", aside from time.

Unless you have some evidence you'd like to share? Give the proper timescale, what prevents micro from becoming macro?

You seem to be redefining evolution in order to fit your paradigm. Evolution does not only involve a species changing into another species.

 

[Meatros]

... and therefore at least this much ahead of the "proof" for evolution. I have observed these things and these things are observable. Evolution was not observed and cannot be observed.

So you deny immunizations? Evolution has been observed and can be observed:
Here's 29 evidences of MACRO evolution; But I'm sure you won't accept them.

Here's horse evolution.
Whale evolution.
Insect origins

You asked earlier about falsification:
Here's a few examples
Here's how it's not a religion-Said much better then I did.

A yeast prion provides a mechanism for genetic variation and phenotypic diversity

Here's a "missing link".

I suppose I could go on a lot more, but I doubt this list of websites will do much good. You don't want to accept it, that's fine, but please don't label evolution something it's not.

 

[Meatros]

Actually I take that back: I have no idea whether you will accept it or not, I'd guess that you wouldn't, but I shouldn't pronounce judgment.

 

[Meatros]

By the way, here's a good, brief overview of evolution.

Evolution is a change in the gene pool of a population over time. A gene is a hereditary unit that can be passed on unaltered for many generations. The gene pool is the set of all genes in a species or population.

Evolution is not progress. Populations simply adapt to their current surroundings. They do not necessarily become better in any absolute sense over time. A trait or strategy that is successful at one time may be unsuccessful at another. Paquin and Adams demonstrated this experimentally. They founded a yeast culture and maintained it for many generations. Occasionally, a mutation would arise that allowed its bearer to reproduce better than its contemporaries. These mutant strains would crowd out the formerly dominant strains. Samples of the most successful strains from the culture were taken at a variety of times. In later competition experiments, each strain would outcompete the immediately previously dominant type in a culture. However, some earlier isolates could outcompete strains that arose late in the experiment. Competitive ability of a strain was always better than its previous type, but competitiveness in a general sense was not increasing. Any organism's success depends on the behavior of its contemporaries. For most traits or behaviors there is likely no optimal design or strategy, only contingent ones. Evolution can be like a game of paper/scissors/rock.

Also Taken from here:

Conclusion

There is no difference between micro- and macroevolution except that genes between species usually diverge, while genes within species usually combine. The same processes that cause within-species evolution are responsible for above-species evolution, except that the processes that cause speciation include things that cannot happen to lesser groups, such as the evolution of different sexual apparatus (because, by definition, once organisms cannot interbreed, they are different species).

The idea that the origin of higher taxa, such as genera (canines versus felines, for example), requires something special is based on the misunderstanding of the way in which new phyla (lineages) arise. The two species that are the origin of canines and felines probably differed very little from their common ancestral species and each other. But once they were reproductively isolated from each other, they evolved more and more differences that they shared but the other lineages didn't. This is true of all lineages back to the first eukaryotic (nuclear) cell. Even the changes in the Cambrian explosion are of this kind, although some (eg, Gould 1989) think that the genomes (gene structures) of these early animals were not as tightly regulated as modern animals, and therefore had more freedom to change.

 

[Rakka Rage]

"The more scientists testily insisted that the big bang was unfathomable, the more they sounded like medieval priests saying, "Don't ask me what made God." Researchers, prominently Alan Guth of MIT, began to assert that the big bang could be believed only if its mechanics could be explained. Indeed, Guth went on to propose such an explanation. Suffice it to say that, while Guth asserts science will eventually figure out the cause, he still invokes unknown physical laws in the prior condition. And no matter how you slice it, calling on unknown physical laws sounds awfully like appealing to the supernatural."

Wired 10.12: The New Convergence

 

[Meatros]

Rakka, The scientists are talking about what created the singularity, not the actual big bang. It seems as though you are trying to create a strawman.

 

[Scott J]

Originally posted by Meatros:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />... and therefore at least this much ahead of the "proof" for evolution. I have observed these things and these things are observable. Evolution was not observed and cannot be observed.

So you deny immunizations? Evolution has been observed and can be observed:
Here's 29 evidences of MACRO evolution; But I'm sure you won't accept them.</font>[/QUOTE] I didn't read nor critic it all but I have seen the major arguments before and their refutation. Once again we are dealing in the realm of interpreting evidence. This will always be subject to the limitations and biases of the interpreter.

Here's horse evolution.

I have seen horse evolution before. I would be just as impressed if you lined up various sports "spheres" from marbles to beach balls and claimed that they prove evolution. The fact that there are many animal forms that were similar to one another, possibly descended from a common ancestor through the processes of microevolution does not prove that one ascended from the other.

 

[Rakka Rage]

Originally posted by Meatros:
Rakka, The scientists are talking about what created the singularity, not the actual big bang. It seems as though you are trying to create a strawman.

strawman... strawman... strawman... ? do you even know what that means? did you even read the quote?

"The more scientists testily insisted that the big bang was unfathomable, the more they sounded like medieval priests saying, "Don't ask me what made God." Researchers, prominently Alan Guth of MIT, began to assert that the big bang could be believed only if its mechanics could be explained. Indeed, Guth went on to propose such an explanation. Suffice it to say that, while Guth asserts science will eventually figure out the cause, he still invokes unknown physical laws in the prior condition. And no matter how you slice it, calling on unknown physical laws sounds awfully like appealing to the supernatural."

 

[Scott J]

Originally posted by Meatros:
Actually I take that back: I have no idea whether you will accept it or not, I'd guess that you wouldn't, but I shouldn't pronounce judgment.

I would simply question it based on my presuppositions in the same manner that you accept it based on yours. My question is not whether the explainations are plausible but whether a)they are likely and b)they are the only possibility.

I don't think I have denied that my presuppositions come from my biblical faith. Working in sort of a backward manner: I believe in a literal heaven and hell, a literal God, a literal Satan, a literal supernatural realm that is just as real as this natural realm. I believe that God will judge all humanity in the future based on their acceptance or rejection of Him through His redemptive plan as presented in the Bible. I believe that Christ literally ascended, literally passed through walls, materialized in the presence of people walking along a road. I believe that Jesus literally, bodily rose from the dead (not a swoon, not a fake- He was DEAD). I believe that He established and demonstrated complete sovereignty over natural laws through literal miracles that have absolutely NO naturalistic explaination.

I believe that it can be proven that the proofs for the biblical text are far more conclusive than any proof for any explaination of pre-historic natural history. Therefore, I have no problem whatsoever with the statement "In the beginning God created..." being a literal account of an omnipotent, supernatural Being creating a natural world. The natural world is a subset of reality governed by time and space... it is not the whole of reality.

I am not ashamed that I place primary faith in the Bible. It demonstrates trustworthiness. You have placed your faith in scientists that are working from naturalistic presuppositions. I acknowledge your prerogative.

I reject evolution on two main premises: First, its basis is philosophical. Whether you accept or reject it is largely a function of whether you expect everything to be explained by materialistic means or not. Second, it only accepts as 'real' that subset of reality that can be measured and tested by human beings. This fails logically and morally.

[ July 15, 2003, 10:07 AM: Message edited by: Scott J ]

 

[A_Christian]

To hear Evolutionists tell it, AGING is a
demonstration of evolution in progress. Creationists would say that it is the body's
GOD GIVEN ability to cope with what is still
working.

 

[john6:63]

Originally posted by Scott J:
I reject evolution on two main premises: First, its basis is philosophical.

As Robert Griffiths (Heinemann prize in mathematical physics) stated in Christianity Today:

"If we need an atheist for a debate, I go to the philosophy department. The physics department isn't much use."

All the things that are impossible in our universe are so because they are defined to be impossible. If you restrict God to our four dimensional universe, He would, likewise, be unable to do those things mentioned in Scott Js post. However, God is not restricted to our universe. In addition, God can do anything if He changed the laws of physics, which He promises to do in the New Creation.

Revelation 21:1 speaks of a new earth and if it took God millions or billions of years to create this earth, then He’d had to start the new earth mentioned in Revelation that John saw, shortly after the creation of this earth. Wickedness has infested this earth and I believe and am looking for the return of our Lord soon. A few others and I here don’t put any restrictions on God, just b/c science says so, and I believe God spoke and it was done as in Genesis and He will do the same with the new earth mentioned in Revelation.

 

[Meatros]

Originally posted by Rakka Rage:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Meatros:
Rakka, The scientists are talking about what created the singularity, not the actual big bang. It seems as though you are trying to create a strawman.

strawman... strawman... strawman... ? do you even know what that means? did you even read the quote?

"The more scientists testily insisted that the big bang was unfathomable, the more they sounded like medieval priests saying, "Don't ask me what made God." Researchers, prominently Alan Guth of MIT, began to assert that the big bang could be believed only if its mechanics could be explained. Indeed, Guth went on to propose such an explanation. Suffice it to say that, while Guth asserts science will eventually figure out the cause, he still invokes unknown physical laws in the prior condition. And no matter how you slice it, calling on unknown physical laws sounds awfully like appealing to the supernatural." </font>[/QUOTE]Try reading the rest of the article.

 

[Meatros]

Originally posted by Rakka Rage:
strawman... strawman... strawman... ? do you even know what that means? did you even read the quote?

Yes I do: Here's a definition.

Please explain to us all what the big bang has to do with the validity of evolution, or how the big bang somehow converts evolution into a religion.

 

[Meatros]

Originally posted by Scott J:
I didn't read nor critic it all but I have seen the major arguments before and their refutation. Once again we are dealing in the realm of interpreting evidence. This will always be subject to the limitations and biases of the interpreter.

And one of the limitations seems to be in looking at the evidence.

[QUOTE I have seen horse evolution before. I would be just as impressed if you lined up various sports "spheres" from marbles to beach balls and claimed that they prove evolution. The fact that there are many animal forms that were similar to one another, possibly descended from a common ancestor through the processes of microevolution does not prove that one ascended from the other. [/QUOTE]


To which the site I linked asks you this:

How can you explain the sequence of horse fossils? Even if you insist on ignoring the transitional fossils (many of which have been found), again, how can the unmistakable sequence of these fossils be explained? Did God create Hyracotherium, then kill off Hyracotherium and create some Hyracotherium-Orohippus intermediates, then kill off the intermediates and create Orohippus, then kill off Orohippus and create Epihippus, then allow Epihippus to "microevolve" into Duchesnehippus, then kill off Duchesnehippus and create Mesohippus, then create some Mesohippus-Miohippus intermediates, then create Miohippus, then kill off Mesohippus, etc.....each species coincidentally similar to the species that came just before and came just after?

Creationism utterly fails to explain the sequence of known horse fossils from the last 50 million years. That is, without invoking the "God Created Everything To Look Just Like Evolution Happened" Theory.

[And there is other evidence for evolution that is totally independent of the fossil record -- developmental biology, comparative DNA & protein studies, morphological analyses, biogeography, etc. The fossil record, horses included, is only a small part of the story.]

Creationists are thus forced into illogical, unjustified attacks of fossil dating methods, or irrelevant and usually flat-out wrong proclamations about a supposed "lack" of "transitional forms".

Also, please provide the mechanism that prevents microevolution from becoming macroevolution.

 

[Meatros]

Originally posted by A_Christian:
To hear Evolutionists tell it, AGING is a
demonstration of evolution in progress. Creationists would say that it is the body's
GOD GIVEN ability to cope with what is still
working.

Name one, A_Christian. You are presenting a dishonest stereotype.

 

[john6:63]

The non-evolution of the horse

Quote from the article:
"As the biologist Heribert-Nilsson said, ‘The family tree of the horse is beautiful and continuous only in the textbooks,’ and the famous paleontologist Niles Eldredge called the textbook picture ‘lamentable5 and ‘a classical case of paleontologic museology.’ As shown in a detailed thesis by Walter Barnhart, the horse ‘series’ is an interpretation of the data. He documents how different pictures of horse evolution were drawn by different evolutionists from the same data, as the concept of evolution itself ‘evolved.’

‘It takes a great deal of reading to find out for any particular genus just how complete the various parts of the body are and how much in the illustrated figures is due to clever reconstruction. The early papers were always careful to indicate by dotted lines or lack of shading the precise limits of the reconstructions, but later authors are not so careful.’

Informed evolutionists now realize that the picture, even in their own framework, is not a straight line at all. While they still believe in horse evolution, the modern view of the horse fossil record is much more jumpy and ‘bushy.’

Note the part of "...different pictures of horse evolution were drawn by different evolutionists from the same data..." Sounds typical. Which scientists do I believe? This is why I reject anything a scientists says when it comes to evolution.

Why was there a debate in the US Senate concerning Clinton and Monica? Both sides knew he lied, they were arguing about the interpretation of the data.

 

[Meatros]

You actually take Jonathan Sarfati seriously?

Disturbing....

Do you really think he put those quotes in context


I have a question John: Do you scientists have *ever* claimed to know everything? No.

I'll inform you on how science works. Science works by building off of information-it's never static.

If you notice here, the idea of horses evolving in a straight line was first put forward in 1870!

Check out some actual information:

As new fossils were discovered, though, it became clear that the old model of horse evolution was a serious oversimplification. The ancestors of the modern horse were roughly what that series showed, and were clear evidence that evolution had occurred. But it was misleading to portray horse evolution in that smooth straight line, for two reasons:

First, horse evolution didn't proceed in a straight line. We now know of many other branches of horse evolution. Our familiar Equus is merely one twig on a once-flourishing bush of equine species. We only have the illusion of straight-line evolution because Equus is the only twig that survived. (See Gould's essay "Life's Little Joke" in Bully for Brontosaurus for more on this topic.)
Second, horse evolution was not smooth and gradual. Different traits evolved at different rates, didn't always evolve together, and occasionally reversed "direction". Also, horse species did not always come into being by gradual transformation ("anagenesis") of their ancestors; instead, sometimes new species "split off" from ancestors ("cladogenesis") and then co-existed with those ancestors for some time. Some species arose gradually, others suddenly.

 

[Scott J]

Originally posted by Meatros:
And one of the limitations seems to be in looking at the evidence.

That knife, my friend, cuts both ways. Your bias against creation is no less powerful nor filtering in its effect than my bias against evolution.

Also, please provide the mechanism that prevents microevolution from becoming macroevolution.

Anyone truly interested or devoted to the logical pursuit of scientific should never make such a flawed request. It's cliche but this amounts to "when did you stop beating your wife." If something never was, it simply never was. The proof is in its lack of existence.

What would guide us away from such a conclusion is that we are not observing cases where simpler lifeforms are becoming more complex. Changing, adapting? Yes. Evolving? No.

 

[Meatros]

Originally posted by Scott J:
Anyone truly interested or devoted to the logical pursuit of scientific should never make such a flawed request. It's cliche but this amounts to "when did you stop beating your wife." If something never was, it simply never was. The proof is in its lack of existence.

What would guide us away from such a conclusion is that we are not observing cases where simpler lifeforms are becoming more complex. Changing, adapting? Yes. Evolving? No.

Again it seems as though you are skewing the definition of evolution. Evolution is a change in alleles over time, it cares nothing about becoming more complex or becoming "better". Whatever mutation is more successful in being passed on, is the mutation that takes hold. So again, what prevents microevolution, which is a change in alleles from becoming macroevolution over time?

 

[john6:63]

Originally posted by Meatros:
You actually take Jonathan Sarfati seriously?

You actually going to take Kathleen Hunt seriously?

Disturbing indeed…

“I'm a zoologist, currently working on my Ph.D. thesis in endocrinology and behavior at the Department of Zoology, University of Washington. I am not a paleontologist; rather, I am a vertebrate biologist who primarily studies living animals (not extinct ones). Most of my own research is on birds. I have a broad training in physiology, anatomy, behavior, and conservation biology, and I have taught or TA'd vertebrate anatomy, vertebrate natural history, vertebrate evolution, and general evolution. The history of vertebrate evolution is a pet side interest of mine. Writing this FAQ was a wonderful excuse to burrow into the primary literature and read a lot of fascinating textbooks and articles about vertebrate evolution.”


What does birds have to do with horses? Unless she thinks a horse evolved from a bird!

I believe I will stick with AiG and Dr. Sarfati, over some student still working on her thesis. Note that she isn’t even a paleontologist. Please Meatros, don’t tell me you’re putting your faith in a paper written by a grad student…who’s to say she didn’t take her quotes out of context.