Evolution and Religion

[dusken]

Originally posted by Anonymouse
You never addressed how evolution is mathematically improbable, you just gave an example of Dawkins and a monkey experiment playing the piano keys. Now the best you can do is to smear Eden and me for using him to state a position against evolution.

Actually, Dawkins wrote a computer program simulating the randomness of a monkey using a typewriter coupled with generational selection, which is not random. It does disprove Eden's math. Read the Blind Watchmaker already.

[loseyourname]

Originally posted by Anonymouse [BTo be sure, some new intermediate or transitional forms have been found, particularly land vertebrates.

This is all that needed to be said. We don't dig for fossils at the bottom of the sea, and land creatures without skeletons are not likely to leave fossils - in fact, most paleontologists would say 90% of all species that ever existed likely left no record. This is no threat to anything. What Darwin expressed as the gravest threat to his theory would be an organ or system so complex that it could not have reasonably arisen through cumulative selection. Such a thing has never been found.

In fact, how do you explain that so many land vertebrates do show a perfect progression? If evolution didn't happen, why would any species show a perfect progession through morphological intermediates? If all species were independently created, there is no reason for them to show any relation at all. There is no reason for the existence of vestigial organs. There is no reason why the human backbone should be so perfectly suited to quadrapedal locomotion. There is no reason why human beings should so show such a remarkable genomic similarity to single-celled archae. How do your competing theories explain any of this? Evolution explains it all. The simple fact is, creation doesn't make sense, because it can't explain any of these things, nor can it explain complexity without postulating pre-existing complexity. For this reason, belief in creation requires a huge leap of faith, in that many pieces of evidence are completely ignored that seem to invalidate the theory. Evolution does not require this leap. Evolution is perfectly logical and explain every bit of evidence ever found. Nothing found has ever contradicted the theory.

You never addressed how evolution is mathematically improbable, you just gave an example of Dawkins and a monkey experiment playing the piano keys.

I told you that Eden is calculating the probability through single step selection. Evolutionary theory does not postulate single-step selection. He is making a straw man argument, and again, this was realized almost immediately after he made the argument. Why you continue to cite it, forty years later, when no one else but completely ignorant creation scientists do, is beyond me. Check the math yourself. The flaw is very obvious.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname This is all that needed to be said. We don't dig for fossils at the bottom of the sea, and land creatures without skeletons are not likely to leave fossils - in fact, most paleontologists would say 90% of all species that ever existed likely left no record. This is no threat to anything. What Darwin expressed as the gravest threat to his theory would be an organ or system so complex that it could not have reasonably arisen through cumulative selection. Such a thing has never been found.

In fact, how do you explain that so many land vertebrates do show a perfect progression? If evolution didn't happen, why would any species show a perfect progession through morphological intermediates? If all species were independently created, there is no reason for them to show any relation at all. There is no reason for the existence of vestigial organs. There is no reason why the human backbone should be so perfectly suited to quadrapedal locomotion. There is no reason why human beings should so show such a remarkable genomic similarity to single-celled archae. How do your competing theories explain any of this? Evolution explains it all. The simple fact is, creation doesn't make sense, because it can't explain any of these things, nor can it explain complexity without postulating pre-existing complexity. For this reason, belief in creation requires a huge leap of faith, in that many pieces of evidence are completely ignored that seem to invalidate the theory. Evolution does not require this leap. Evolution is perfectly logical and explain every bit of evidence ever found. Nothing found has ever contradicted the theory.

Evolution doesn't "explain it", it assumes it all. It assumes we evolved because the fossil record shows progression. By the way, for record purposes, Darwin did state in his Origin of Species that the lack of intermediates would prove dangerous to his theory. And it remains the case today. Belief in creation requires no more of a leap in faith than belief in random haphazard evolution. The reason why nothing has ever contradicted the theory is because the theory itself is ever changing, always being patched up and corrected to fit whatever is found to hold fast to an immutable theory. That the divisions between kingdom, phyla, classes and orders suggest a structual plan with no room for intermediates, is obvious. Where are the links between these groups? The only answer that a Darwinist can give is extinction. The only thing geologists have discovered in the fossil record are species that appear suddenly out of nowhere. One would expect that a hundred years after Darwin geologists would continually find transitional forms, but this has not been the case. At some point we need more than ingenious excuses to fill the gaps. One look at the Cambrian explosion reveals another great problem of evolution.

Originally posted by loseyourname I told you that Eden is calculating the probability through single step selection. Evolutionary theory does not postulate single-step selection. He is making a straw man argument, and again, this was realized almost immediately after he made the argument. Why you continue to cite it, forty years later, when no one else but completely ignorant creation scientists do, is beyond me. Check the math yourself. The flaw is very obvious.

"The probability of life having originated through random choice at any one of the 10^46 occasions is then about 10^-255. The smallness of this number means that it is virtually impossible that life has originated by a random association of molecules. The proposition that a living structure could have arisen in a single event through random association of molecules must be rejected" Henry Quastler, The Emergence of Biological Organization

"To get a cell by chance would require at least one hundred functional proteins to appear simultaneously in one place. That is one hundred simultaneous events each of an independent probability which could hardly be more than 10^-20 giving maximum combined probability of 10(-2000.)" Michael Denten, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis

"The more statistically improbable a thing is, the less we can believe that it just happened by blind chance. Superficially the obvious alternative to chance is an intelligent designer." Richard Dawkins, The Necessity of Darwinism

I assume you are familiar with Borel's single law of chance are you not?

[loseyourname]

Originally posted by Anonymouse "The probability of life having originated through random choice at any one of the 10^46 occasions is then about 10^-255. The smallness of this number means that it is virtually impossible that life has originated by a random association of molecules. The proposition that a living structure could have arisen in a single event through random association of molecules must be rejected" Henry Quastler, The Emergence of Biological Organization

"To get a cell by chance would require at least one hundred functional proteins to appear simultaneously in one place. That is one hundred simultaneous events each of an independent probability which could hardly be more than 10^-20 giving maximum combined probability of 10(-2000.)" Michael Denten, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis


I assume you are familiar with Borel's single law of chance are you not?

You are really doing yourself a disservice here. All of these guys are again talking about single-step selection. No evoutionist postulates that a fully living cell spontaneously assembled itself. They are arguing with no one, and so are you. You are making up improbable theories that don't exist and then refuting them.

[loseyourname]

Originally posted by Anonymouse One would expect that a hundred years after Darwin geologists would continually find transitional forms, but this has not been the case.

Give me a couple days or so. I don't know what school of paleontology you are following, but thousands of intermediates have been found. I have already mentioned several species for whom every intermediate going back millions of years is known.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname You are really doing yourself a disservice here. All of these guys are again talking about single-step selection. No evoutionist postulates that a fully living cell spontaneously assembled itself. They are arguing with no one, and so are you. You are making up improbable theories that don't exist and then refuting them.

This is not about single-steps, it is the chance of evolution occuring period. Dr. John Ankerberg and Dr. John Weldon write:

The Origin of Pre-biological Systems, edited by Sidney W. Fox, states:

A further aspect I should like to discuss is what I call the practice of infinite escapeclauses. I believe we developed this practice to avoid facing the conclusion that theprobability of self-reproducing state is zero. This is what we must conclude fromclassical quantum mechanical principles as Wigner demonstrated (1961).

Further, if, in ultimate terms, there are only two possible answers to the question oforigins, then the disproving of one should logically prove the other. If the chances of evolu-tion occurring are e.g., “one” in 10^1,000,000,000,000, then the chance of creation occurring wouldhave to be its opposite—the odds being 99.9 (followed by one trillion more 9’s). Again,George Wald of Harvard has stated that a 99.995% probability is “almost inevitable.” Then what of 99.999999999999999 (plus one trillion more 9’s)?—the “chance” that creationhas occurred?

For example, the Archaeopteryx dscovery seemed to satisfy many of the believers of Darwin, and from then on it was one discovery after another, with human ancestors, and ancient mammal like reptiles, a good sequence for the horse, etc. That still doesn't make out any evolution. It only shows more perfectly complete species appearing suddenly out of nowhere. If the intermediates are true, and did exist for a long time, why are there very little evidence of intermediates, but much more evidence of fully formed species in the fossil record? I know there are more excuses for this as well. The truth is the fossil record does not convincinglydocument a single transition from one species to another. Moreover, the fossil stasis posed by say, the whale and the bat, poses another problem for evolutionists' gradualism, as those have remained unchanged for more than ten million years.

[Anonymouse]

Hahaha he said "fundamentalist". One would argue you are a fundamentalist since you believe in Darwinism like a Bible thumper believes in God.

[loseyourname]

If a bible-thumper could produce all of the evidence that Darwin did, then I would lend creedence to your statement. Besides, I don't cling to the theory; I use it. There is a huge difference. I don't pray to Darwin and tell people they will go to hell if they don't do the same. I don't even honestly care whether or not he's right. The point is, his theory explains everything observed in the biological sciences, and so it serves as a framework in which all new hypotheses are formulated. It has had a tremendously advantageous impact; arguably more than any other theory in the history of man. Nitpickers like you that are for whatever reason threatened by it can complain 'til the cows come home, and science will keep churning away, making new discoveries that heighten our understanding of the world and improve lives, based on evolutionary theory.

[Anonymouse]

All the "evidences" Darwin produced is essentially the work of intelligence and design. There ya go. Theories are theories, treat them all the same. The root is belief.

[loseyourname]

How is proclaiming intelligent design supreme treating all theories the same? I have already posted numerous examples of evidence against intelligent design. You have failed to address even one of them.