Evolution and Religion

[dusken]

It does not fail to answer that; you just have not read anything.

[Crimson Glow]

Evolution also still fails to answer one other thing. How did the evolution begin? As in, where did the first species, person, what have you come from in order to start the process of evolving into what we have today?

[Anonymouse]

Evolution explains everything and anything. Proposing a mechanism which looks plausible to human beings and mechanisms which are consistent with other mechanisms which have been discovered, it is still an unfalsifiable theory. Evolution cannot be observed and the theory is non-falsifiable. It thus fails to satisfy the criteria of a scientific theory. The same can be said of creation theory. We do not see God creating anything today, and as a theory, creation is non-falsifiable. Anything that is non-falsifiable false outside the realm of scientific theory per what Karl Popper has said, and places them in the realm of religion.

[loseyourname]

I'm completely certain this won't be good enough for you, because you seem to actually want a change in genus or even family, but these all fit the criteria of speciation according to the biological species concept. Just so you might quit saying no one has ever observed one species change into another:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html#part5

[Anonymouse]

Now, it seems that evolution is just too addictive to let go. Sort of like nicotine in your body, you just gotta have it because it just explains everything yet explains nothing. It seems that the last thing evolutionists can say is that this theory is the "most plausible" theory, since it explains everything, kind of like Marx' dialectic, which explained everything. Theories that explain everything, also explain nothing, but yet why do people cling to it?

They contend, much like Darwin that changes are there, visible, for everyone to see. But the variations that are actually observable today, and which Darwin cited in this book as evidence for evolution, are changes within a species. No one has ever observed one basic kind of plant or animal naturally change into another basic kind. Is evolution theory falsifiable? I remember Karl Popper the philosopher of science stating that all theories are falsifiable, yet time and again evolution seems to be holy, and can not be falsified. It's become so dogmatic and so plastic that no matter what the data are, they can be made to fit the theory.

[spookyghost]

*slaps her forehead and walks out of the thread*

[Anonymouse]

If you are going to claim that you aren't lying, go back and refute anything I posted. All you do is dismiss it.

I've repeatedly shown why the probability calculations you've posted are wrong, and you keep posting them anyway. Why is that? Are you honestly that lacking in evolutionary and mathematical knowledge that when I spell something out in front of your face you still can't see it?

I'm not going to sit around here and just argue with you. Either post something (and not the same damn thing I've refuted 30 times already) or stay out. I'll be back with more shortly.

This is pointless drivel nothing to do with the discussion. Thus I will ignore it.

[loseyourname]

If you are going to claim that you aren't lying, go back and refute anything I posted. All you do is dismiss it.

I've repeatedly shown why the probability calculations you've posted are wrong, and you keep posting them anyway. Why is that? Are you honestly that lacking in evolutionary and mathematical knowledge that when I spell something out in front of your face you still can't see it?

I'm not going to sit around here and just argue with you. Either post something (and not the same damn thing I've refuted 30 times already) or stay out. I'll be back with more shortly.

[Anonymouse]

I don't even know where to begin with this one. I've told you before that yes, the chance of anyone sequence arising in a single step is astronomically small. Nobody argues that this has ever happened. The theory says that very small changes build upon each other. The chance of one mutation taking place and catching on is not nearly so small, and given that DNA is replicated millions of times by millions of individual organism each day, there are plenty of opportunities for this to happen. It is observed all the time in the lab. Microbial lifeforms are constantly evolving resistance to drugs. You put them in a new environment and they'll seemingly adapt to it instantly, due to nothing more than advantageous mutations. You have absolutely no argument here. But if you still feel the need to go on about this, by all means, post more calculations, and I will show why those ones are wrong too. We can do for the rest of our respective lives. I guarantee you that you will never post one single piece of evidence that I can't refute, whereas you will not even address any of mine.

This is Alice in Wonderland all over again. We go back to the same tautological statements that got us here. The chance of anything of the millions of mutations, be they nucleotides or otherwise, causing the changes that we see are infinitismally small, to the point where they are so small there is no need to even mention them. It is improbable, given the amount versus the time it would take. Your whole argument is that all these micromutations, if accumulated are exactly that which account for these changes. The problem with that is that it is simply stated, ignoring the mathematical improbability to the contrary. It is shifted to the argument of how microbial lifeforms are constantly "evolving" resistance to drugs and this is used as a vague proof for evolution. I have already explained the ramifications of semantics involved. Changes that are so small, adaptation, or micromutations mean "evolution", macromutations mean "evolution", so there is virtually no way one can disagree with evolution, since evolution is anything and everything from the bggest to the smallest, and so the semantic implications are that evolution is a giant single process and to disagree would be foolish. That is, however, untrue. Adaptation is not macromutation, it is a micromutation and usually it goes both ways, as in the case with moths. There is no need to believe that micromutations lead to macromutations ( other than assuming it does ), any more than there is a need to believe in God.

I'm hung up on the fact that you keep lying. What you said was wrong. This is the not the only instance of that.

When did I lie? I could say the same about you. You are lying. What you said was wrong. This is the not the only instance of that.

Atomic theory holds that atoms are made up of protons and electrons and neutrons, and yet no one has ever seen any of these particles. In fact, given that the best device we have is the electron microscope, it is not even theoretically possible to see an electron. If what you said about evolutionary theory were true, then atomic theory would be inscientific. There is no flaw in the analogy. Same holds for relativity. Nobody has ever observed space or time, and yet we hold that they are curved and that gravity comes from this curvature.

My contention was that the atom was observed. As far as what makes up the atom, it is a theory, no more than relativity is a theory, no more than how we came to be is a theory. Do you not understand the difference between a scientific law and a theory? Is this your best attempt at trying to have a case for upholding eovlution, by making spurious analogies that don't mean anything? The history of science is a process of finding descriptive models of the nature around us and with each epoch they change (i.e. from Newtonian physics to Modern Physics ). It is to the point that we delude ourselves into thinking that we are very clever to have been able to figure out how nature really works. We will even go so far as to imagine that we have achieved understanding of the world around us. But on a more serious reflection we realize that all we did was add another name or another word or another guess in the form of a theory. Scientists speak of energy, momentum, wave functions as if they were on the same status as objects of everyday experience such as rocks, trees and water. There is a difference between real and invented concepts. A hypothetical change of a scientific model may do away with some concept such as a black hole as a conceptual entity, but it can't absolve a lake or a canyon. The idea that we can find absolute truths is naive and arrogant. If there are any underlying "truths", our models are just pale approximations of them.

I meant to say what I said. Had I worded it the way you did, it would only have removed the nuance. It still says the same thing. I shouldn't even say that I have the stronger case, though. I have a case, period. You have nothing.

Yes, you have a case, but not a valid one.

[spiral]

apparently there's a disorder- the complete opposite of ADD.