11 Dec 05
Originally posted by yousersIt is relatively rare for scientific theories to be changed wholesale. For example, Newton's theories of gravity have remained relatively unchanged for the last 5 centuries or so. Darwin's theory of evolution is, itself evolving, but has not significantly changed since Darwin penned it in 1859. The revisions that are being made in science are made typically made through technological breakthroughs, such as when we're able to measure things we were previously unable to measure. WHen scientists find new information we assimilate those ideas into our theories to make them stronger. When creationists find new iformation that doesn't fit with their world view, they try to change the world to fit in with their own prejudices.
I disagree. God has created man with the ability conceptualize and reason. Science is a human establishment of reason designed to describe the world that God has created. The laws of science are continously being edited through revolutions, modifications, etc. This is indicative of their inability to describe all things, their imperfection, and their ins ...[text shortened]... d does not care or need to align his word with the current scientific trend, whatever it may be.
11 Dec 05
Originally posted by scottishinnzYour right, you probaly are wasting your time, as I am mine, the point is that this thread was about, the poster was asking why God would do somthing that conflicts with science. I see no conflict, and evolution is more of a belief system, dont believe me? go here to caculate how much faith it takes to believe in evolution
What absolute crap. If you don't realise that evolution is the truth then you simply don't understand it properly.
Creationists always point to systems as they are now and show how unlikely it would be to evolve. However, these systems never evolve prima facie. Take, for example, the eye. Creationist will describe the fantastic sophistication o ...[text shortened]... ou've already made your closed, shrivelled, mind up, and nothing I can tell you will change it.
http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/timechan.htm
Will Everitt said that the Bible disagreed with science, It dont, it disagrees with macro-evolution
When point at how unlikely evolution is, Common sense comes into play, take building lumber for example, and drop it from space unto the earth, you know that the odds of it becoming a house is very little, (impossable) no matter how many time you do it, if you do it for eternity, it still wont ever build itself a house. Then consider the most simplest form of life, It is far more complicated then a house. Scientist take these simple forms of life and expose it to bacteria, and they adapt to it, Evolutionist say that this proves macro evolution, but notice no one ever made any form of life more complicated? just adaptive, Theres no science that proves macro evolution, its just not there. So how can the Bible be in conflict with that when there is nothing that ever showed us macro evolution. Its not science, its an evolution theory
as far as the other "evidence" about evolution, such as fossils, dating methods etc. One word of advise, take a couple ID courses via internet, it will totaly change at how you look at things, and explain how, and why they are that way.
11 Dec 05
Originally posted by flyUnityThat post tells everyone who reads it that you have no idea about how evolution actually works. The lumber from space is another tornado in a junk yard analogy. Meaningless and misleading.
Your right, you probaly are wasting your time, as I am mine, the point is that this thread was about, the poster was asking why God would do somthing that conflicts with science. I see no conflict, and evolution is more of a belief system, dont believe me? go here to caculate how much faith it takes to believe in evolution
http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs ...[text shortened]... et, it will totaly change at how you look at things, and explain how, and why they are that way.
11 Dec 05
1 edit
Originally posted by XanthosNZOk, so you disagree with him. Why don’t you explain how evolution really works and why his argument is meaningless and misleading?
That post tells everyone who reads it that you have no idea about how evolution actually works. The lumber from space is another tornado in a junk yard analogy. Meaningless and misleading.
11 Dec 05
Originally posted by scottishinnzOne thing you got to get straight, there are two main types of scientist, Evolutionist scientist, and ID scientist, From you post you act like all scientist are not creationist. look it up on the interenet, you will see many creationist scientist, many whom have advanced degrees.
It is relatively rare for scientific theories to be changed wholesale. For example, Newton's theories of gravity have remained relatively unchanged for the last 5 centuries or so. Darwin's theory of evolution is, itself evolving, but has not significantly changed since Darwin penned it in 1859. The revisions that are being made in science are made ...[text shortened]... 't fit with their world view, they try to change the world to fit in with their own prejudices.
Aslo you note that when they find new information, that they revise their theory. I wonder if they are gonna revise it when they see this
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/
no their not, they stilll think that dinasours became extinct 65 million years ago becasuse it will conflict with their other flawed data. According to their data, its impossable for soft tissue to be 70 billion years old
11 Dec 05
Originally posted by XanthosNZOf course I dont know how macro evolution work, even the most educated evolutionist scientist dont know how it works because no one has ever seen any evidence of macro evolution. Sure they got theorys, but no evidence. And btw, adaptive evolution is no evidence!!
That post tells everyone who reads it that you have no idea about how evolution actually works. The lumber from space is another tornado in a junk yard analogy. Meaningless and misleading.
11 Dec 05
Originally posted by flyUnityOften the degrees creationist scientists have are meaningless for the fields they claim to be experts in or are honorary degrees (read: not worth the paper they are printed on).
One thing you got to get straight, there are two main types of scientist, Evolutionist scientist, and ID scientist, From you post you act like all scientist are not creationist. look it up on the interenet, you will see many creationist scientist, many whom have advanced degrees.
Aslo you note that when they find new information, that they revise their ...[text shortened]... flawed data. According to their data, its impossable for soft tissue to be 70 billion years old
Could you please explain how your lumber from space analogy represents evolution in any way? Are you familar with the tornado in the junk-yard building a 747 analogy and how it misrepresents evolution?
Also, try taking some internet courses about English.
11 Dec 05
Originally posted by flyUnityI'll agree that not all scientists agree on evolution. Some people find a way to crowbar their religion and a scientific career together. Most scientists are unable to do this, simply because they are unable to take things on faith the way creastionism requires.
One thing you got to get straight, there are two main types of scientist, Evolutionist scientist, and ID scientist, From you post you act like all scientist are not creationist. look it up on the interenet, you will see many creationist scientist, many whom have advanced degrees.
Aslo you note that when they find new information, that they revise their ...[text shortened]... flawed data. According to their data, its impossable for soft tissue to be 70 billion years old
I agree that the tissue in the website you cite cannot be 70 billion years old, for the simple reason that the universe has only existed 18 billion years. No, the tissue to which you are referring is 70 million years old. Just a mere three orders of magnitude out - that's relatively precise for you guys!!!
Science IS all about theories. You fellas always say 'just a theory' without realising that a theory represents the highest possible credulity that we can give to an idea. IT MEANS THAT PEOPLE HAVE TRIED REPEATEDLY TO DISPROVE THE IDEA AND HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO DO SO!!! If you want to post on science at least go out and read a book or something on it before you come in here with baseless assertions.
The bible does disagree with science. For example, the bible states that land vegetation was created before the sun. It also states that birds were created before land animals, such as the dinosaurs that birds evolved from. The evidence for evolution is large (such as the fossil record, stretching back some 3.95 billion years) and compelling.
The whole dropping lumber from space analogy merely shows you didn;t bother to read my original post.
11 Dec 05
Originally posted by XanthosNZThat's your opinion, however I disagree with you.
Often the degrees creationist scientists have are meaningless for the fields they claim to be experts in or are honorary degrees (read: not worth the paper they are printed on).
Could you please explain how your lumber from space analogy represents evolution in any way? Are you familar with the tornado in the junk-yard building a 747 analogy and how it misrepresents evolution?
Also, try taking some internet courses about English.
My lumber from space analogy went right over your head. I don't got time to explain tonight.
And btw, for your information English is one of my next courses on 06 spring semester. I do suck at it, and typing in a hurry don't help any.
Goodnight 🙂 wow 2:14 am
11 Dec 05
Originally posted by flyUnityThe eccentric astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle once famously said that evolution was as likely as a tornado blowing through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. This saying was gleefully seized upon by creationists, who have promulgated it ever since as "proof" of the impossibility of evolution producing complex, highly ordered forms.*
That's your opinion, however I disagree with you.
My lumber from space analogy went right over your head. I don't got time to explain tonight.
And btw, for your information English is one of my next courses on 06 spring semester. I do suck at it, and typing in a hurry don't help any.
Goodnight 🙂 wow 2:14 am
As will be shown, this argument is not even close to being an accurate representation of evolution. It is a straw man, a ridiculous caricature of how evolution works. However, it is first necessary to establish a few things about the credentials of its author. As stated above, Fred Hoyle was an astronomer -- he was not trained in biology, paleontology, population genetics, or any other field having to do with evolution. He was no more qualified to make pronouncements about evolution than any layman, and indeed his comments demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the theory. Nevertheless, whatever he was, he was certainly not a creationist.
"The creationist is a sham religious person who, curiously, has no true sense of religion. In the language of religion, it is the facts we observe in the world around us that must be seen to constitute the words of God. Documents, whether the Bible, Qu'ran or those writings that held such force for Velikovsky, are only the words of men. To prefer the words of men to those of God is what one can mean by blasphemy. This, we think, is the instinctive point of view of most scientists who, curiously again, have a deeper understanding of the real nature of religion than have the many who delude themselves into a frenzied belief in the words, often the meaningless words, of men. Indeed, the lesser the meaning, the greater the frenzy, in something like inverse proportion." --Fred Hoyle & Chandra Wickramasinghe, Our Place in the Cosmos, p.14
"We are inescapably the result of a long heritage of learning, adaptation, mutation and evolution, the product of a history which predates our birth as a biological species and stretches back over many thousand millennia.... Going further back, we share a common ancestry with our fellow primates; and going still further back, we share a common ancestry with all other living creatures and plants down to the simplest microbe. The further back we go, the greater the difference from external appearances and behavior patterns which we observe today.... Darwin's theory, which is now accepted without dissent, is the cornerstone of modern biology. Our own links with the simplest forms of microbial life are well-nigh proven." --Fred Hoyle & Chandra Wickramasinghe, Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe, p.15-16
With that established, we turn to the tornado in the junkyard. It is the purpose of this essay to show that this analogy says nothing about the validity of evolution because it fails to represent evolution on at least four crucial counts.
1. It operates according purely to random chance.
2. It is an example of single-step, rather than cumulative, selection.
3. It is a saltationary jump -- an end product entirely unlike the beginning product.
4. It has a target specified ahead of time.
The first point is the most important. The tornado in the junkyard is an example of intricate, complex and highly ordered forms being produced by nothing more than random chance. But evolution is not chance. (See here for more on this.) Rather, it operates according to a fixed, deterministic law -- the law of natural selection -- which has the power to favor some assemblages over others; it preferentially selects for those adaptations which improve fitness and selects against those that do not. The tornado, by contrast, slams parts together and tears them apart with no preference whatsoever, thus completely failing to represent natural selection, the force which drives all of evolution. To more accurately represent evolution, one would have to grant the tornado some power to recognize assemblages of parts which could serve as part of a 747 and prevent it from tearing them apart.
Secondly, the tornado analogy is an example of single-step selection -- in one step, it goes from a random pile of parts to a fully assembled airliner. This is completely unlike evolution, which operates according to a process of cumulative selection -- complex results being built up gradually in a repetitive process guided at each step by selective forces. To more accurately represent evolution, the tornado could be sent through the junkyard not once, but thousands or millions of times, at each step preserving chance assemblages of parts that could make up a jumbo jet.
Thirdly, in relation to the point above, the tornado in the junkyard is an example of saltation -- a sudden leap in which the end product is completely different from the beginning product. Evolution does not work this way; birds do not hatch out of dinosaur eggs and monkeys do not give birth to humans. Rather, species grow different over time through a process of slow change in which each new creature is only slightly different from its ancestor, the whole forming a gradually shading continuum in which any two steps are almost indistinguishable from each other, though the creatures at the beginning and end of the continuum may be very different indeed. If we sent a tornado through a junkyard once, we would not expect to see a complete airplane; but if we repeated the process thousands or millions of times, at each step preserving useful assemblages, we might see a jumbo jet gradually taking shape out of slowly accreting collections of parts. The idea is the same with living things. We do not see complex new creatures appearing suddenly in the fossil record; rather, we see them gradually forming by a process of modification from a line of increasingly similar ancestors.
And finally, the tornado analogy fails to represent evolution in one more significant way: it has a target specified ahead of time. Evolution does not. Natural selection is not a forward-looking process; it cannot select for what may become useful in the future, only what is immediately useful in the present. To more accurately represent evolution, we might add the additional stipulation that the tornado would be allowed to assemble, not just a jumbo jet, but any functional piece of machinery.
A tornado racing through a junkyard hundreds of thousands of times, at each step somehow preserving rather than tearing apart functional assemblages of parts, with the aim of ultimately producing some sort of working machine, be it a 747, a station wagon or a personal computer. This is still not a very good analogy to describe evolution, but it's a lot better than the implausible caricature of random, single-step saltation with a predetermined target the creationists put forth -- an analogy that utterly fails to represent evolution in every significant way.
* The "tornado-in-a-junkyard" argument has since mutated into several variants -- one of the most common is "if I disassembled my watch and shook up the pieces in a box, I wouldn't get my watch again" -- but the basic idea, and the basic flaws, are the same.
http://www.ebonmusings.org/evolution/tornado.html
11 Dec 05
Originally posted by XanthosNZGood quote, I thought it was an original piece of your own until i read the 'see here for more info' in parentheses!!! Anyhoo, I was going to write a similar rebuttal but couldn't be bothered before... might do it tomorrow, g'night.
The eccentric astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle once famously said that evolution was as likely as a tornado blowing through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. This saying was gleefully seized upon by creationists, who have promulgated it ever since as "proof" of the impossibility of evolution producing complex, highly ordered forms.*
As will b ...[text shortened]... c idea, and the basic flaws, are the same.
http://www.ebonmusings.org/evolution/tornado.html
11 Dec 05
Originally posted by scottishinnzAs the self-proclaimed biologist on this forum, I'm sure you'd be able to help me.
I'll agree that not all scientists agree on evolution. Some people find a way to crowbar their religion and a scientific career together. Most scientists are unable to do this, simply because they are unable to take things on faith the way creastionism requires.
I agree that the tissue in the website you cite cannot be 70 billion years old, for ...[text shortened]... hole dropping lumber from space analogy merely shows you didn;t bother to read my original post.
One of the processes in the greater Theory of Evolution is abiogenesis or spontaneous generation. Has science ever produced life from non-life? Perhaps simulated within the crude pre-biotic environments that were supposed to spawn so great a process. By life I mean the culmination of a micro organism capable of crude-locomotion and reproduction; so please don't give me the many experiments where amino acids were produced with a lovely wishful-thinking explanation of how this would produce life.
11 Dec 05
I have a few points i would like to raise
You say that science is a human creation but if there was a god and if he created light im sure he would of thought "hmmm what speed do i want light at"(in whatever language he speaks). There are also many other laws such as gravity that he would of had to of made. I belive in science and not religion as it seems the logical choice for one can tell what will happen in a situation whereas the other holds no such infomation and to me seems fiction as it has no proof to back it up. I Would expect that if something created the universe it would be mathmatical it just seems a universal language that can't be disagreed with unlike "and he said let the be light....". Someone asked me the bibles flaws well i guess this my feelings that anything in there that disagrees with science is flawed but you you it might seem the other way. Evolution i think is true and i belive in it it seems footed in very logical ideas
1) every induividual is unique
2) something that makes the individual unique gives them a better edge over there rivals
3) someone with a better edge is more likely to survive/more offspring
There are places where this can be seen for example islands with flightless birds as the ones that spent more time on the ground would of got more food /more offspring and thus the cycle continues.
11 Dec 05
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Originally posted by Will EverittErm, that is micro-evolution - a process that most (sensible) creationists fully endorse. Sensible, because it's fully observable in nature. "Natural selection" has been used so much that it seems to be purely an evolutionary term. This is not the case. Wouldn't you expect a creator to instil variation within an animal kind? Natural selection is like nature's quality control, it ensures the survival of the strong and resilient.
I have a few points i would like to raise
You say that science is a human creation but if there was a god and if he created light im sure he would of thought "hmmm what speed do i want light at"(in whatever language he speaks). There are also many other laws such as gravity that he would of had to of made. I belive in science and not religion as it ...[text shortened]... ent more time on the ground would of got more food /more offspring and thus the cycle continues.
The difference in opinion lies when this process is credited with the formation of the most complex animal from the most simple (and yet incredibly complex) micro organism - a process called macro-evolution. This process cannot be put under the rigorous scrutiny of the scientific method, and yields rather to the forensic, soft-science of palaeontology.