I personally do not believe that we all came from a "big bang" or an amoeba floating around in some primordial soup.
It was suggested in the move "Intelligence Expelled" that we were not created by some random course of events, but rather by a being with a higher status than that of ourselves. Call this being whatever you like: God, Aliens, etc.
If you really think about it isn't it easier to believe that we were intentional, rather than a complete coincidence?
In the movie stated above people were proposing intelligent design through their professions and they were getting blacklisted. There is something that is being hidden here if their bosses do not want them to be spreading this around.
Why have we not evolved more? Is there something that has strangely stopped the cycle?
But we have evolved since then! And we are still evolving now (think of the wisdom teeth)! Your request that wings in humans be a necessary proof that evolution happened is ludicrous in the light of evolution, and does nothing more than reveal your ignorance of the topic you're debating.
If you think about it, it really was "created" If God really did create everything he must have created the sun, the physics behind the Earths rotation and orbit.
If you look at your argument, you are basically saying "It really is created, because if it was created, it must have been created." Even you must realize that this is an unsound, logical flaw.
I beg to differ sir. Fossils of sea creatures found high above sea level.
No idea about geologic events, huh? People realized already almost 300 years ago how those fossils got there. Way to be recent.
I agree that creatures do change over time, but not in the context that you are referring. You are thinking Macroevolution, which is such drastic changes in an organism that a whole new creature is created.
Speciation is actually explainable by an accumulation of 'microevolutionary events'. Speciation doesn't necessarily involve big changes; separation of subpopulations over a certain timelapse will already lead to similar but distinct species. What you're thinking of can be termed megaevolution; like how our limbs developed from fins. We have a continuous fossil record evidencing how it happened gradually. There may be debates about whether megaevolution is explainable in terms of microevolutionary events alone or whether other processes are involved as well, but the whole scientific community agrees that it did happen. And again, we have literally rocksolid proof, something you still lack.
There is also evidence that this is false. In the recent years there have been dinosaur fossils found with soft tissue, branching blood vessels, and even intact cells! Lab tests have concluded that there is no possible way that the biological material could last more than thousands of years.
Another example of how blatantly scientific evidence is misrepresented. No, there is no such proof as you claim. The soft tissue were long ago replaced by stone, we just see the imprints of it (which is still very cool, but not impossible). And cells are also long gone, we only see the lacunae that they left in the bone. The fibres that you see in paleohistological thin sections have the same orientation because the hydroxyapatite microcrystals between the collagen fibrils are inorganic and oriented along the long axis of the fibril. The organic parts are replaced by inorganic materials that arrange in the same orientation. There is no organic tissue left in most older fossils, but we find their traces after they have been replaced by inorganic molecules.
What do you have against Science and Creationism coinciding?
The beef is due to people pushing pseudoscience into science and claiming this is what actually happened. They are breaking rule number one of Science, which is "do not actively try and get your claim proven true".
A true scientist or a team of scientists presents a claim, provides the data supporting the claim, and provides the hypothesis to several independent peer-reviewed committees. If their findings do not match what they found, they MUST stop and do it over. You do not manipulate your findings to help your case. Scientists MUST actively DISPROVE what they are questioning themselves.
Scientists challenge theories every day. So that brings us to the word Theory, which is a word you have trouble with. Evolution has been a theory since several years after its conception, and hasn't been debunked in its near 200 years. What does this tell us? There are mountains upon mountains of evidence supporting the Scientific Principle of Evolution, and we get evidence for it every day.
My own university publishes papers and researches new avenues in Evolution. They go through the same process, and sure enough, what they find does not disprove Evolution, but only strengthens it, despite actively trying to disprove what they are questioning, because they are geniune scientists with Ph.Ds.
So I managed to find this documentary on YouTube and watched it. I'm far more interested in talking about the film rather than evolutionary theory, so I'm going to stick to that. Based on the criticism of evolution I've seen so far in this thread, I'd recommend that everyone else do the same.
Just so we're clear, this is (what I take to be) the main claim that is developed and defended in the film. I'll call this claim Intelligent Design should be Taught (IDT): Intelligent Design should be presented in schools as a rival theory to evolution.
Within (IDT) are several related claims - all of which are independent. But I want to take some broad criticisms that would demotivate (IDT).
1) IDT is false because Intelligent Design cannot be considered a competing theory.
The reason for this claim is simple. First off, Intelligent Design (ID) offers no positive claims. Broadly construed, ID is simply a rejection of evolutionary theory. A strong implication of the film, however, is that ID offers no positive account that could fills the supposed problem areas of evolution. Furthermore, ID is not a testable hypothesis. As such is cannot possibly be considered as a rival to a scientific theory.
2) IDT does (despite the film's claims) require a grounding in a god.
What this means in that, in order to accept ID, one must also accept the notion of an uncreated creator. There's a part of the film that talks about the complexity of cells and the absolute inconceivability of these sorts of things arising without a designer. They claim that this doesn't require a god because some other sufficiently advanced species could have designed us. But this just moves the question back one step, and actually complicates things. They've created this complexity gap and, in suggesting some alien race as our designer, have created an even larger complexity gap! So either the proponent of IDT is holding some deeply incoherent beliefs or does, in fact, rely on a deity as the intelligent designer.
3) IDT is false because ID is false.
This one is really straightforward and also one of the most forceful objections to the film's thesis. It's also never addressed within the film. There is no argument on offer that ID is true. As such, this incredibly forceful objection stands without argumentation needed. To be fair, there are some objections to evolutionary theory on offer. One of these hinges on how life first began. Of course, anyone who is even barely informed about evolution would know that it is distinct from this question. There are some fair responses to this objection, but the film doesn't examine them - so I won't assess them.
I meant if the earth evolved like that, and humans came from monkeys, how do we have pictures of humans 500 years ago looking just like they do now?
Because 500 years really isn't that long of a time..and there hasn't been a reason for the evolutionary course to take us on a route that would change us as we have adapted quite comfortably.
Evolution is adaption, it isn't unnecessarily random change, but necessarily random. Change to help a species survive against a predator, change to help a species adapt to the environment, etc. etc.
Here are just a few links related to my previous post (links I took directly from the websites I linked you to previously, by the way, so I did some of your homework).
Oh, and for the soft tissue issue, I have to apologize first. After some browsing I've found articles about the controversial findings of Mary Schweitzer, which is what you meant. I realize that what I wrote in my previous post (while not wrong) does not address this.
But then I found this more recent article from 2013:
[url]http://www.livescience.com/41537-t-rex-soft-tissue.html[/url]
The same researcher, Mary Schweitzer, here presents an explanation for her controversial findings. In essence, the iron preserved the proteins before they decayed, enabling it to survive for so long. This may turn out to be a bit of a boomerang to you, because the same person who discovered those ancient proteins now can explain its old age, meaning it can well be 65 million years old. Moreso, the similarity of the proteins to modern bird proteins she had found in her earlier analysis supports the evolution of birds from theropod dinosaurs.
I meant if the earth evolved like that, and humans came from monkeys, how do we have pictures of humans 500 years ago looking just like they do now?
Evolution happens very slowly. 500 years isn't enough to see much change, especially if every tiny little thing wasn't being documented. If we knew our genome then and compared it to now, we would find small differences that aren't significant, but still present.
We didn't come from monkeys either - humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor.
If God really did create everything he must have created the sun, the physics behind the Earths rotation and orbit.
"If." We know how stars form and why planets have orbits and why things rotate in space. Putting God behind that is just adding another step for no reason. There's nothing in what we observe that requires a supernatural being to be the cause of it. Note that this isn't related to evolution at all, as evolution only describes how organisms change over time by passing on small differences to their offspring.
I beg to differ sir. Fossils of sea creatures found high above sea level.
Yes, due to geological movements. When tectonic plates collide they slide over each other, causing parts to rise and others to subduct. This is how mountains are formed. Where we find fossils of sea creatures are places that used to be underwater long ago. We know that it wasn't a world wide flood that deposited them there because of the layering of fossils and their ages. If you look at where the plates are and where they're colliding, and look at all the places we find these sea fossils above sea level, plates are colliding there guaranteed, or did so in the past.
You are thinking Macroevolution,
Microevolution and macroevolution are the exact same thing. The only difference is the timescale we're looking at.
In the recent years there have been dinosaur fossils found with soft tissue, branching blood vessels, and even intact cells!
What makes you think this is impossible? You say there's no way it could last that long, but provide no sources for that claim. I'm sure you aren't a biologist or archaeologist, so you're just assuming this is the case and arriving at an answer. This is a logical fallacy called "begging the question."
could you list your sources please?
There would be oh so many...If you want me to give you a source on something, you'll have to be more specific on what about, because if you want one on the theory of evolution in general, I'm just going to link you to an educational site.
To me this thread ceases to seem like a debate. More like people trying to force their beliefs and opinions on others.
I'm curious as to why you think this is so? Reading the posts in this thread... I don't see anybody who's force feeding you evolution. Rather, they're simply refuting your claims with evidence themselves, and offering some helpful insight on what evolution actually is. I mean, that's kind of what a debate is, yeah? You bring what you think is true to the table, we bring what we think is true that is contradictory to what you think and then we go back and forth.
We're not going to coddle you when you put your beliefs out there, but just know that it's your choice whether you want to listen to us or not. If you want to believe in God, go right ahead! It won't affect any of us in the slightest. What we're doing is simple: Debating. And we only debate when you post in the WEPR. =^)
What do you have against Science and Creationism coinciding?
As Freakenstein said it has to do with it being, not science. It will try to circumvent the processes that science uses. But I think it's even worse than that. It's entirely dishonest. These creationist proponents will often use fallacies such as strawmen (make up what is being said and attack that instead of what's really being said) and quote mines (taking something said out of context so it says something it doesn't) or even just use bold faced lies in order to support their claim. They do it to dupe people such as yourself who otherwise uneducated about science and the theories being proposed.
If they really had the truth, they wouldn't need to use such tactics.
In short, they're liars and con-artists , you're a victim and that bothers me.
If you head into the topic thinking that Creationism/Intelligent Design and Evolution are on par with the amount of evidence available for them, sure. The fact of the matter is that there's actually no evidence for Intelligent Design and that you're probably quite misinformed/ignorant of what evolution is, so you're both trying to argue a strawman and under the assumption that there's something to debate in the first place on whether Intelligent Design or evolution is true when that boat sailed more than a century ago.
How do you have a debate when one side has no evidence and doesn't understand what it is they think is wrong? It just turns into a lecture on how you're wrong on what evolution is and says and an explanation of what it is.
You're welcome to present to us what you believe is evidence for Intelligent Design/Creationism, but you can't complain it's not a debate when we tell you what we think and explain why in response to your claims, because that's exactly what a debate is.
It shouldn't bother you that I am "victim" in your perception. I have made my decisions on what I believe is the truth based on the environment I was raised in, the research I have conducted for myself over time, and how I view the world.
Personally I am on the opposite side of where you stand. I believe that God did create everything in 7 days, I believe that we were intentional, not just some biological organism spawned from nature. The human race is far to complex to have been a coincidence. I don't judge you for what you believe, or anyone else for that matter.
Although I do take offense to you saying that all of my information is a lie, all of the creationists are frauds, con-artists, and liars, and that you insist that you know everything.
One further question. Did you watch the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye? Just curious because I noticed that you were quoting Nye in your rant about creationism.
I believe that God did create everything in 7 days,
Why do you believe this? What evidence can you provide? Why should anyone believe what you believe? What do you know that convinces you that the version of the Christian god you believe in actually created everything as is in a constrained period of time and that life does not change over time?
Although I do take offense to you saying that all of my information is a lie, all of the creationists are frauds, con-artists, and liars, and that you insist that you know everything.
In the years I've been arguing with creationists, I've noticed that one (or more) of the following is always true:
1) They are not informed what the Theory of Evolution states.
2) They do not know what empirical evidence is.
3) They are educated and aware of what evolution is and says and disregard said evidence/explanations in favor of beliefs on faith.
4) They argue from fallacy (ie, the world is too complex to have naturally arisen).
I'm not saying all creationists are liars - on the contrary, relatively few are. Most creationists are ignorant of what the theory of evolution is an what it applies to.
Did you watch the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye?
I did, but I don't know if you're asking that question to everyone or just MGW.
Side note: Ken Ham is a perfect example of #3. He knows what evolution is and what it states, but treats it as false because by definition of his beliefs it cannot be true. This is known as intellectual dishonesty, which is probably what MGW is calling a "lie."
Why do you believe this? What evidence can you provide? Why should anyone believe what you believe?
The same reason people believe that people believe that unicorn's, Big Foot, etc. are/aren't real, or that soldiers at war are coming home. Its called faith.
