Creationism Museum

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
161

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Lorisco wrote:
Is designing the evidence to fit the model really science?

Actually, the models are based on evidence–not the other way around. You just keep splitting hairs. Evolution and The Theory of Evolution are based on observation whether one is fact or not they are still both considered science. What do you not understand about science?

Theories begin as inspiration and empirical data. Scientists do not just decide to theorize concepts just for the pure joy of it–though we certainly derive some sort of joy from it. We know that empirical data is not enough for science. This is why other scientists are trained to design precision experiments that are both falsifiable and repeatable so that the data can be checked and rechecked. They must stand the test of scrutiny many times over.[/quote]

And when a theory that supports the premise of evolution is proven false, why does evolutionary science never re-evaluate their original premise? In medical science that would be an automatic. Because in medical science wild-ass theories that are not repeatable in a controlled setting get people killed.

So my issues are theses:

  1. Actual intermediary species between complex organisms have not been verified in the fossil record and have not been demonstrated empirically.

  2. Adaptation within a species is not evolution until it becomes a new species

  3. Evolutionary science does not have an open mind to other premise and that is what makes it not strong science

  4. Evolutionary science seeks to explain how the species of humans originated but ignores and doesn’t attempt to explain the system in which those changes/process are allowed to function. So how can they truly hope to understand the process of human life origin without having a clue to the system the started matter and allowed life in the first place?

You say I’m splitting hairs, but according to evolutionary theory, it’s in those details (hairs), very small distant intermediary species, where the true evolutionary process can be demonstrated. So without verification of thousands of actually fully distinct intermediary species of complex organisms, you got nothing more than a theory. Which is fine. But to see what most people on this site are writing they clearly think it is fact and not theory.

162

[quote]Lorisco wrote:

And when a theory that supports the premise of evolution is proven false, why does evolutionary science never re-evaluate their original premise? In medical science that would be an automatic. Because in medical science wild-ass theories that are not repeatable in a controlled setting get people killed.

So my issues are theses:

  1. Actual intermediary species between complex organisms have not been verified in the fossil record and have not been demonstrated empirically.

  2. Adaptation within a species is not evolution until it becomes a new species

  3. Evolutionary science does not have an open mind to other premise and that is what makes it not strong science

  4. Evolutionary science seeks to explain how the species of humans originated but ignores and doesn’t attempt to explain the system in which those changes/process are allowed to function. So how can they truly hope to understand the process of human life origin without having a clue to the system the started matter and allowed life in the first place?

[/quote]

I’m not sure which theories you think have been proven false. Experimentation is not generally designed to prove something false. There is difference between being able to call something “Not true” verse “false”. Usually hypotheses begin as very specifiaclly stated assumptions. They, by virtue of the scientific method, must be falsifiable. This means that when a hypothesis does not meet the requirements of scientific rigor it must be thrown out. It does not mean it has been “proven” false. Either a new way must be derived to test the hypothesis or the hypothesis must be restated.

Some of these examples you provide are stated as a negative which scientists do not do because proving that something does not happen requires that every possible way that something could happen be tested in order to prove that it doesn’t indeed happen. I’m not sure if I have clearly explained this or what the implications of this mean but suffice it to say that science does not seek to disprove theory. It doesn’t need to be disproven because it isn’t taken as fact to begin with.

Again, yes, the theory of evolution is just that. One of its hypotheses states that all life is descended from a common ancestor–genetics alone could determine the validity of this statment. Until we have a better map of genetics this will remain a hypothesis until it is either validated (not proven) or invalidated (nor disproven).

The systems that you speak of have nothing to do with that hypothesis. For all intents and purposes it is a “black box” and can be treated as a seperate hypothesis. For example, I do not need to understand general relativity in order to understand how gravity behaves close to the Earth’s surface.

163

actually, to disprove a negative all you need to do is supply 1 example where it is true. Well, at least that’s how we did it with mathematical theories back in college.

164

[quote]Ren wrote:
actually, to disprove a negative all you need to do is supply 1 example where it is true. Well, at least that’s how we did it with mathematical theories back in college.

[/quote]

Actually, he is speaking about “proving a negative” which is impossible.

165

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Ren wrote:
actually, to disprove a negative all you need to do is supply 1 example where it is true. Well, at least that’s how we did it with mathematical theories back in college.

Actually, he is speaking about “proving a negative” which is impossible.[/quote]

that it is.

166

Despite the fact that the Theory of Evolution doesn’t itself cover the subject, there is considerable scientific interest in understanding how the basic mechanisms of living organisms first came together from non-living matter, then became self-reproducing.

Too bad for Aristotle, but the world around us doesn’t work in a true/false way. So there are ‘living things’ like retroviruses, and then again there are ‘living things’ such as elephants. We agree both live, but what that means in either case is very different. Phenomena ranging from inanimate matter to elephants and human beings fall out on a continuum. For example, viruses need some other organic host in order to reproduce, so in some sense they are less ‘alive’ than organisms that don’t. However don’t look to virii for a model of primordial life, they are really highly evolved. But they do illustrate the point that there is ‘living’ and then there is ‘really living.’

The first life to come about would have been able to reproduce in some fashion, by definition, but it might not have had much of any other attribute we customarily associate with living things.

The chemical properties of the elements in the periodic table - the so-called curve of binding energy - and their relative abundances here on Earth, make nuclear weapons and the destruction of life possible. Perhaps in some way they and planetary conditions here billions of years ago made primordial life, whatever it was, inevitable.

Science doesn’t give up on trying to understand this because it’s not covered in current theories. Science merely hasn’t gotten there yet. Be patient, we’ve only been at this science stuff for a few centuries now, and we’re trying to understand billions of years of natural history.

Getting there will be half the fun, the rest will be watching the shit-fest staged by religious rejectionists.

Logic, especially two-valued logic, is a limited tool, mainly useful for lawyers and mathematicians. At some point however, if you want to understand the universe you live in, you have to get out and look at it in detail.

What you see may surprise you.

167

[quote]Lorisco wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Lorisco wrote:
Is designing the evidence to fit the model really science?

Actually, the models are based on evidence–not the other way around. You just keep splitting hairs. Evolution and The Theory of Evolution are based on observation whether one is fact or not they are still both considered science. What do you not understand about science?

Theories begin as inspiration and empirical data. Scientists do not just decide to theorize concepts just for the pure joy of it–though we certainly derive some sort of joy from it. We know that empirical data is not enough for science. This is why other scientists are trained to design precision experiments that are both falsifiable and repeatable so that the data can be checked and rechecked. They must stand the test of scrutiny many times over.

And when a theory that supports the premise of evolution is proven false, why does evolutionary science never re-evaluate their original premise? In medical science that would be an automatic. Because in medical science wild-ass theories that are not repeatable in a controlled setting get people killed.

So my issues are theses:

  1. Actual intermediary species between complex organisms have not been verified in the fossil record and have not been demonstrated empirically.

  2. Adaptation within a species is not evolution until it becomes a new species

  3. Evolutionary science does not have an open mind to other premise and that is what makes it not strong science

  4. Evolutionary science seeks to explain how the species of humans originated but ignores and doesn’t attempt to explain the system in which those changes/process are allowed to function. So how can they truly hope to understand the process of human life origin without having a clue to the system the started matter and allowed life in the first place?

You say I’m splitting hairs, but according to evolutionary theory, it’s in those details (hairs), very small distant intermediary species, where the true evolutionary process can be demonstrated. So without verification of thousands of actually fully distinct intermediary species of complex organisms, you got nothing more than a theory. Which is fine. But to see what most people on this site are writing they clearly think it is fact and not theory.
[/quote]

What’s your arguement?

Nothing evolved, God just did a whole mess of creations, creating and killing over and over till he was happy?

The life from nonlife has already been proven possible, as long as CO2 made up most of the atmosphere 4 billionish years ago.

As for the start of the universe, that can only be used as fallacious evidence for some sort of power. Not a personal, existent, current God.

Evolutionary science is INCREDIBLY open minded. It is constantly being challanged and changed.

However, creationism is not science. Not viable. Not an option. It does not need to be even considered. It is fictional, based on faith.

168

[quote]Beowolf wrote:

What’s your arguement?

Nothing evolved, God just did a whole mess of creations, creating and killing over and over till he was happy?

The life from nonlife has already been proven possible, as long as CO2 made up most of the atmosphere 4 billionish years ago.

As for the start of the universe, that can only be used as fallacious evidence for some sort of power. Not a personal, existent, current God.

Evolutionary science is INCREDIBLY open minded. It is constantly being challanged and changed.

However, creationism is not science. Not viable. Not an option. It does not need to be even considered. It is fictional, based on faith.[/quote]

Why is the existence of a higher power so hard to investigate scientifically and the origin of all matter is not? Neither can really be tested and yet we have a load of scientific theories that people take as valid without a shred of proof?

Your ideas are like a one celled organism stating that there is no larger power than they because they cannot see or observe it, when in reality it is all around them. Why can’t our universe be the size of the head of a pin to some other power or entity much larger than we are?

We have such limited ability to measure our world and yet our arrogance is limitless!

If you really researched and determined all the little variables in balance that is keeping our universe functioning it would boggle your mind. All these thinks (like the earth’s axis) we had nothing to do with and yet it just happens to be perfect to support life. If you put all these things together that allow life to exists it demonstrates significant order and evidence that it could not have happened by chance.

So at some point I believe that science may just get advanced enough to learn that there are other forces at work in the world much greater than we.

So is science really open minded? They are only open to what they believe to be true. That is why it took so long for man to figure out that the world was not flat.

169

[quote]Lorisco wrote:
All these thinks (like the earth’s axis) we had nothing to do with and yet it just happens to be perfect to support life. If you put all these things together that allow life to exists it demonstrates significant order and evidence that it could not have happened by chance.
[/quote]
The universe is a very large place. It’s much larger than you think. And then it’s even larger than that. Into the bargain, there may be an ever expanding super-infinity of universes.

That’s a lot of licks on the slot machine. To say that this cannot have happened by chance is to fail to understand the scale of what is going on.

Mind you I’m not saying that it did happen purely by chance, I’m merely saying that to insist that it did not shows, well, if not arrogance, a sort of parochialism.

Maybe this is how God prefers to work: through sheer probability and enormous scale of space and time. Who are you to say, human? It seems to me a quiet dumbfoundedness would be more reverent.

170

[quote]Lorisco wrote:
So is science really open minded? They are only open to what they believe to be true. That is why it took so long for man to figure out that the world was not flat.
[/quote]
It is very true that scientists have often not been open-minded. But the history of this actually operates against your argument. Great advances have often been received with excessive skepticism from scientists, most especially including the Theory of Evolution.

It, Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics were all particularly hard sells. All of these theories punctured human-kind’s self-importance, upset competing theorists, and defied common sense. Scientists are only human. They sometimes hope too much that the story has a happy ending.

Science is not a religion, just an enterprise being carried out by human beings, and it’s subject to human error. We know this because of the large number of errors that have been detected and fixed, and documented in excruciating detail.

Consider the alternative: we could stop trying.

171

People who are arguing against evolution are not smart. I have posted about an experiment where researchers did get a NEW SPECIES from breeding many generations of flies. What don’t you god people understand about that?
All this drivel about not being able to test it in a laboratory is tiring me out. I’ll paraphrase the typical argument from mental giants like stevo and lorisco: I can’t measure evolution. I can’t measure god. Therefore evolution is wrong and god is right. You people are religious because you aren’t smart enough to really understand science. Your life is apparently meaningless without beleiving some invisible guy who watches you while you masturbate and then cry afterwards is going to give you a big hug after you die. Some of the smartest people on the planet are working on evolutionary science, don’t insult them by ignoring their hard work.

172

[quote]Lorisco wrote:

Why is the existence of a higher power so hard to investigate scientifically and the origin of all matter is not? Neither can really be tested and yet we have a load of scientific theories that people take as valid without a shred of proof?

Your ideas are like a one celled organism stating that there is no larger power than they because they cannot see or observe it, when in reality it is all around them. Why can’t our universe be the size of the head of a pin to some other power or entity much larger than we are?

We have such limited ability to measure our world and yet our arrogance is limitless!

If you really researched and determined all the little variables in balance that is keeping our universe functioning it would boggle your mind. All these thinks (like the earth’s axis) we had nothing to do with and yet it just happens to be perfect to support life. If you put all these things together that allow life to exists it demonstrates significant order and evidence that it could not have happened by chance.

So at some point I believe that science may just get advanced enough to learn that there are other forces at work in the world much greater than we.

So is science really open minded? They are only open to what they believe to be true. That is why it took so long for man to figure out that the world was not flat.

[/quote]

It took us longer to realize that the sun didn’t evolve around the earth, which the church didn’t approve of if I remember my history correctly.

But on a more interesting note, how would you propose to investigate the existence of a higher power?

173

John Paul II in his papal letter in 1996 proclaims that there is no essential conflict between evolutionary science and faith.

For those of you who haven’t read The Origin of Species, Darwin proclaims the only aspect of christian philosophy he wishes to refute is that god created everything in 6 days. Popes (who are infallible, remember) have claimed over the last 20 years that there is absolutely no conflict between evolution and faith, with one (the name escapes me) claiming that god had chosen a brilliant way to create all the world’s creatures, that being evolution.

now before anyone claims I made this up, or that i’m a douchebag, do some research, and read the origin of species.

174

[quote]Mikel0428 wrote:
John Paul II in his papal letter in 1996 proclaims that there is no essential conflict between evolutionary science and faith.

For those of you who haven’t read The Origin of Species, Darwin proclaims the only aspect of christian philosophy he wishes to refute is that god created everything in 6 days. Popes (who are infallible, remember) have claimed over the last 20 years that there is absolutely no conflict between evolution and faith, with one (the name escapes me) claiming that god had chosen a brilliant way to create all the world’s creatures, that being evolution.

now before anyone claims I made this up, or that i’m a douchebag, do some research, and read the origin of species.[/quote]

I fully agree.While I am an atheist,I could be wrong,and there is nothing in what I have read in the theory of evolution that excludes the existence of a god.

Just because we cannot at this time make sense of the puzzle,and how the two viewpoints may or may not converge doesn’t mean it isn’t the truth.
One does not negate the other.

175

To all those that think that the Theory of Evolution is a conspiracy:

Cui bono?

Who benefits from teaching it?

For such a massive conspiracy I?d expect massive advantages for its proponents.

176

[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
Lorisco wrote:
All these thinks (like the earth’s axis) we had nothing to do with and yet it just happens to be perfect to support life. If you put all these things together that allow life to exists it demonstrates significant order and evidence that it could not have happened by chance.

The universe is a very large place. It’s much larger than you think. And then it’s even larger than that. Into the bargain, there may be an ever expanding super-infinity of universes.

That’s a lot of licks on the slot machine. To say that this cannot have happened by chance is to fail to understand the scale of what is going on.

Mind you I’m not saying that it did happen purely by chance, I’m merely saying that to insist that it did not shows, well, if not arrogance, a sort of parochialism.

Maybe this is how God prefers to work: through sheer probability and enormous scale of space and time. Who are you to say, human? It seems to me a quiet dumbfoundedness would be more reverent.
[/quote]

Actually, you don’t seem to understand the enormous probability you are talking about. I’m not just talking about the first random occurrence that got everything going (not to mention where the matter came from initially).

I’m talking about the first a billion other random changes and adjustments in the solar system that keep us alive. I heard somewhere that the odds of this are 1 in a number too large to write on one page. So from a chaos theory perspective, the sheer number of continual “random” variations that occur to keep our world alive are astronomical.

177

[quote]Ren wrote:
Lorisco wrote:

Why is the existence of a higher power so hard to investigate scientifically and the origin of all matter is not? Neither can really be tested and yet we have a load of scientific theories that people take as valid without a shred of proof?

Your ideas are like a one celled organism stating that there is no larger power than they because they cannot see or observe it, when in reality it is all around them. Why can’t our universe be the size of the head of a pin to some other power or entity much larger than we are?

We have such limited ability to measure our world and yet our arrogance is limitless!

If you really researched and determined all the little variables in balance that is keeping our universe functioning it would boggle your mind. All these thinks (like the earth’s axis) we had nothing to do with and yet it just happens to be perfect to support life. If you put all these things together that allow life to exists it demonstrates significant order and evidence that it could not have happened by chance.

So at some point I believe that science may just get advanced enough to learn that there are other forces at work in the world much greater than we.

So is science really open minded? They are only open to what they believe to be true. That is why it took so long for man to figure out that the world was not flat.

It took us longer to realize that the sun didn’t evolve around the earth, which the church didn’t approve of if I remember my history correctly.
[/quote]

An excellent argument supporting separation from Church and State!

[quote]
But on a more interesting note, how would you propose to investigate the existence of a higher power?[/quote]

That’s a good question? I would say that the first focus should probably be on unexplainable occurrences related to faith. The problem is that these occurrences occur, and because science is not really open to all possibilities, their theory for how whatever happened happened does not include the existence of a higher power/force. But again, if you actually saw an angel, how would you prove it? So a lot still comes down to individual experiences.

178

[quote]Lorisco wrote:
Actually, you don’t seem to understand the enormous probability you are talking about.
[/quote]

The enormous probability vs. the infinite scale of the multi-verse? Don’t make me laugh.

179

[quote]orion wrote:
To all those that think that the Theory of Evolution is a conspiracy:

Cui bono?

Who benefits from teaching it?

For such a massive conspiracy I?d expect massive advantages for its proponents.[/quote]

Satan you fool! :wink:

180

[quote]endgamer711 wrote:
Lorisco wrote:
Actually, you don’t seem to understand the enormous probability you are talking about.

The enormous probability vs. the infinite scale of the multi-verse? Don’t make me laugh.[/quote]

The multi-verse concept only increases the probability factor. You don’t seem to get it; the more order/systems involved the increase in the odds calculation. So the multi-verse is even less likely than a single universe concept.