POLL: Do you believe in evolution?

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It is funny because of exactly the same reasons, foradasthar, I do not believe in evolution, because every measuring device I've come across so far is based on a logical error. It goes like this: something takes this much time to occur, so if it has had the same time elapsing the world would be so and so old. Hey the world is so and so old because this process happens at this speed.

Foradasthar, I'd like to see some recent prove before I'm willing to reconsider my claims, because every theory or every supposed facts have been countered quite easily.

but again, as said before, I'm not having a problem, it is the evolutionist who's having the problem because he HAS to prove his stanse. A christian can believe either without causing his faithh to fall

 

Countered easily? I'm going to pull a couple of facts from my hat, let's see you counter them with counterfacts.

Firstly, it is an easily measured thing that the continental platforms of earth move a few centimetres every year. This change happens so slowly that it takes tens of thousands of years to make any noticeable changes.

Secondly, it takes, again, a certain amount of time relative to the surface and type of the earth for anything to be buried so deep into the earth. The way it has been buried, in what it has been buried in and with what else, can tell pretty much of the time and circumstances between present and the year that even happened.

3:rd, radiocarbon (I think it's that in english). It takes a certain, quite undisputedly proven amount of time for the radioactivity in this certain type of material to dissipate. VERY accurrate calculations can be made to prove how many years has passed from the first time the sample bones came into existence and were buried.

Different facts based on the position of the fossils relative to each other, and their ecological position and state (?).

Combined:

2 continents that were last together without a huge ocean telling them apart, about 45 million years ago.

In both, fossils of similar race has been found buried under several different locations, under different types of ground and substance. All these different types of locations still are calculated to be relatively close to the same age of time. Continent number one has substantially more fossiles than continent number 2, and the fossiles in this continent seem to have somewhat shorter/thincker bone structure than those on the other continent.

The race has with radiocarbon examinations been proven to exist around 50-65 million years ago.

...

I will damn this work I have to interrupting with the writing of this text for at least 20 times now. I assume it is illogical and incomprehendable enough due to my continuously cut thoughts, so I will leave it at this. There should be enough basic-information level facts, what can you offer in your turn against them?

Edit: Oh in case you were wondering. The story proves with many different methods that the has to be around 40-60 million years since all that happened. For in no way can there be completely different methods of proving the age of the race, the groundtype around them, the forming of land and continents, possibly even plantlife. And all different methods for measuring the time are connected to each other, resulting in the same amount of time since that event, further backing the proof that they HAVE to be true, each and every one. Since one single illogical result in that equation would lead into the theory breaking. Yet that does not happen.

[ January 21, 2003, 11:05: Message edited by: Foradasthar ]

 

How do religious people who reject evolution fight against the same argument they used against evolution? They say that evolution cannot be proven and has holes, but how can religion be proven? Isn't just a faith, and a belief? IMO, religion cannot be proven, it can only be grasped as a faith and used for people to feel better. It has no concrete proof and I believe it doesn't need any. Nothing proves God or what he does, so as far as I'm concerned, religion serves an essential purpose, but cannot be accepted as completely true.

Note that I'm not trying to bring down religion, only to offer a new point of view.

 

The learned BTA is right again- the problem is that the vast majority of people automatically think of evolution in terms of the differences between individual phenotypes and observable characteristics!

If you cannot actually see changes over time you are less likely to be inclined to believe that any changes have occurred (the classic conundrum of linking microevolutionary mechanisms to macroevolutionary processes).

However BTA, natural selection is not just evolutionary genetics (though what a wonderful and interesting subject that is -not that I'm biased or anything!), as evolution also occurs between cell lineages (cancer is an excellent example of this) and clades (the coexistence of asexual and sexual lineages within related groups of organisms for instance). Then of course there is also memetic evolution.

 

@the god;

Anyway. Mathetais I hope this was a joke. Even the pure logic that it tries to build up is wrong.

Adaption my friend. Heck you can even go out and study amphibia critters today.

And How can The Bible and Evolution go hand in Hand? I fail to understand that. Did the Adam and Eve tale, just change to a surreal evolutionary telling of mankind's origin from single celled organisms, in the religious society? Please let me know what the apple is? Genetic drift?

PS; I appreciate you took the time for doing thorough posts Foradasthar, BTA and the god.

EDIT;
@Aegron
You say you want to avoid flaming. You will in this forum, I am sure
But in other forums you would likely have been flamed for this rather arrogant remark:

Examples to support this. Not bogus ones, but pure enlightning ones? Or you "claim" to defy them at your very whim? All debates are worthless if people make the same stand as you intended to do with that quote. No offence, but that is a fact, not a theory

[ January 21, 2003, 16:15: Message edited by: Nobleman ]

 

Nobleman ... yes, that was a joke. Actually, its a quote from Francis Schaafer (not a relative of mine ), but I do agree about the adaptation and such.

I see that I opened a can of worms with the whole "you weren't there, prove it". We can discuss that later if someone wants to (too much work to do today in RL).

Tell you what ... I'll give ground on the evolution thing, so long as you admit that it couldn't happen randomly. There needed to be an intelligence behind the design, or it wouldn't have come together like it has.

Deal?

 

Math - of course it was random. evolutionary (genetic) change (as discussed above - the god) is based on random gene changes. There is no "design" involved in it whatsoever.

 

C-Lee ... not even Darwin could bring himself to admit that it was completely random. Speaking of the human eye, he found himself unable to admit that the complexity was the result of pure chance.

 

Darwin was a devout christian and was mightily upset at the ruckus his theory had with the church. He didnt want to publish his work at first for just this reason but he was convinced by friends and collegues that he shouldnt let what he perceived to be the truth be silenced down by the ignorance of blind people. So it wasnt strange that he thought that there must be some machinations behind evolution. I am divided on that aspect, it would be a pretty nice comfort if it was, but then on the other hand as has been pointed out so does as to our knowledge work through randomness. Changes occur, those that are beneficial stay in the race and those that arent disapear. Basicly trial and error.

 

Mathetais. The eye. It is an organ sensitive to light. Even so is pigment. Even among the religious people I am studyin with at university agree, heck proclaim, that it is common sense that the pigment that once guided life forms of few cells towards microorganism food and such, evolved to a primitive eye, and from there naturally towards a more keen eye.

There is no magic about the eye or any other organ. I had a feeling you would come with this kind of "argument" ever since you posted that fish joke. And Christians don't put their faith in God to a test just because they argue FOR this. It is all about beliefs. No logic is necessary. There is no need for Evolution and religion to go hand in hand. Since either one is irrational next to the other.

Edit;
Heck, if you itch about the evolution of the eye, you would disbelieve even more if you knew how for example Ribosmes and and Amino Acids and everything else worked inside just a tiny little cell. The eye is just a phenotypical trait that is easy to point fingers at, but isn't really something really hardcore disbelievers worry about, since its evolutionary route is pretty straight forward to explain. Instead they put their critical eyes (no pun intended) to the microscope and study genetics and micro biology/evolution to find flaws there. Here the real wonders starts to unfold. And the real interesting discussions arise, In my honest opinion.

Edit 2;
And the can of worms you opened seems pretty empty to me . You are correct we weren't there. But the sun is hot, and radiactive Isotopes have half-lives. Nuff said. The point? The point is we can look into the past with simple tools. Deduct things from physical realities. It is pretty hard to put a bible to a lie detector and think it would spill its guts. And that's about the closest we come to scientifically reveal what happened back then.
An example without mixing religion into it:
If Russia blew up we weren't there, to prove it. But we can analyse the remains, or not? Someone just died and had written a letter that told us aliens had just visited him briefly at some point in his life, we weren't there either. But darn hard to either prove or not from just the writings. So neither of us were there in both cases, correct. But I don't see any further connection than the wording is the same. It has no relevance. I think the above example makes it crystal clear that no worms come out of the can. Ok perhaps a religious alien worm, which used to live in Russia.

[ January 22, 2003, 05:04: Message edited by: Nobleman ]

 

As far as Darwin goes, he didn't know the first thing about genetics- that's exactly what his theory lacked. He had no idea what was causing these changes chemically, just that they were occuring.

So Darwin is not an authority on the randomness of genetics. Gregor Mendel on the other hand, had set out to prove Darwin wrong, only to find that he not only was right, but why he was right, and that whereas breeding can follow general guidelines, there are such things as random mutations.

 

Believe? No. Evolution isn't a religion to me.

Accept it? Yes. It's a fact that has been proven, multiple times.

 

Math -

True, true. But Darwin was over a hundred years ago. I acknowledge him as the founder and father of evolutionary genetics, and very much a personal hero. However, 100 years after he published his "theory", and 80 - 90 years after that theory has been consolidated with genetics ("neo-Darwinism") I do not feel that there is any plausible claim for a "designer".

I remember hearing an interview with a chap who was taking a US state education board (whatever) to court proclaiming that "design" should be taught rather than evolution. This was very recent, and indeed I started a topic on these very pages on the basis of it.

Steve Jones remarked that he found this idea incredible, and lamented at the idea of trying to foster a "new ignorance" on school kids.

 

I know this is going to bring the discussion to a lower level but I just had tomention it: I met acreationist who claimed that the earth is only about 10000 years old and that our carbon dating is imprecise because god changed the rate of decay of radioactive carbon (!) making everything seem much older.

As far as the examle of the eye is concerned, that in my opinion is one of the most elegant examples of how natural selection would favour more and more complex things from a very simple one (light-sensitive pigment) and that it is easy to imagine a cascade where each more complex form of the eye is more useful and therefore selected for.

[ January 22, 2003, 13:46: Message edited by: Vukodlak ]

 

Hmm, so that means that god routinely goes atound trying to make us ignorent eh?

 

This quote from The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett:

Taken from: http://www.sorcerers.net/Books/excerpts_discworld.php - you really can find everything on this site...

 

Well I to make you laugh silly, people actually believed that the world stood on the back of a giant turtle, and that turtle on another and so forth..