Evolution is Wrong?

[FreedomFighterXL]

[quote]Flop Hat wrote:
FreedomFighterXL wrote:
merlin wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
Sounds like a good book. Where can I get it?

This is a trainwreck of a thread ZAP. Was the political thread you were in TOO boring? You don’t want to be in here you’ll get amnesia. You are wise beyond your years ZAP, do yourself a favor and go make fun of some democrats …its healthier for you. Besides evolution is kinda boring anyway …a bunch of monkeys, floods, and holes in the wall …not good times for political pundits.

merlin

I guess you’re right. This thread was originally created so one guy could get some idea for why people are skeptical of claims that random mutations and the like can caused such drastic complexity.

Now it’s just a train wreck.

But hey, since I promised more things to come… ; P

Of course its only a train wreck because of loony creationist who post incredibly long cut and paste post, that were never intellectually honest and have been passed by years ago.

I can’t wait for those things to come. More challenges to evolution that just can’t seem to get published in a peer reviewed journal
[/quote]

Could you show me where I described myself as a creationist? You may as well say the same thing about FD, who posted a who cut and paste from talk origins that she probably doesn’t even understand. Wasn’t too hard to rebut though.

And maybe when the peers who review these journals become acceptant of facts that don’t align with their beliefs, you’d see more and more of this in NG, or Discover.

[merlin1]

[quote]Flop Hat wrote:
What do you mean they don’t explain theory? That’s all there is is theory. Theory is just the model used to explain everything we know in science. Please tell me one thing you learned in your biology and chemistry class that wasn’t based on modern scientific theory?[/quote]

Bio101 is supposed to prove the mathematical impossibility of evolution? This class was cell division with a bunch or greek and latin prefixes and suffixes if I remember, been a while.

Statements like this make me doubt that you have ever taken a science class. I don’t think you even understand what a scientific theory is.

Like I said. I’ve taken all the curricula for math & engineering majors. Chem 1,2 Physics 1,2, & so on …how does F=MA & period table of elements prove the mathematical impossibility of evolution?

There is no doubt that if you took any of these classes, you certainly didn’t pay attention to anything. The point of taking them, is that not nearly as much is as unknown as you seem to think. Furthermore, without the basic understanding you have no chance of “understanding the unknown” After 150 years of study and research maybe there is some “known” to evolution that you could learn?

You act like we’ve solved everything. You act as if you know more than REAL scientists that have been at this for hundreds of years …fuck! even Einstein couldn’t answer these unknowns. Since you’re such a smart ass college kid who thinks he knows it all, I asked for your thoughts on these unknowns.

ummm… I live with a biologist. She has taken the senior level courses. She says that you are an idiot and that I am wasting my time trying to explain anything to a person who knows less about biology then our gerbils. She might be right.

My theory is you both were brainwashed by a couple gerbils and you believe you evolved from that gene pool.

Of course anynoe that disagrees with evolution is an idiot. She is the true genius just like you. Fuck those guys like Da Vinci & such, idiots! Believing in a GOD …MORONS!

I’m not sure how the refrigerator analogy fits with anything. So let me get this straight, studying ways to extrapolate information from a population, studying the forces that act on subatomic molecules, and studying the physics of heat and pressure on systems did not prepare you for the manufacture of a large complicated piece of machinery? surprising.

Of course you don’t understand, you never took a Thermodynamics class …had you taken one, you’d understand basic refrigeration. even a basi heat transfer class isn’t going to tell you how to rix a refrigerator. You’re still lost.

When I was a kid I took an EMT class, an A&P class, and an electrician course, but still I can’t reanimate dead animals. Shocking. Anyway, how does that relate to having a better understanding evolution after a basic biology course?

I don’t think a course in parallel and series circuits is going to be enough for the Frankenstein project. Maybe if you took a philosophy class you’d have a better chance at it. I don’t know why you don’t …lets examine those words… “philos” love of …“sophia” wisdom or knowledge you seem to want to be smart, but don’t show it. Maybe you need to take some of your useless geology classes and trade them in for a greek philosophy class… or how about some Greek?

[quote]I won’t be “fixing” any of these so called “holes” in biology. People like my wife and gotaknife are working on the next generation of discoveries. And every year that passes, as more and more information is gathered, people who believe in creation or who are biological “agnostics” will look more and more like flat earthers, or witch doctors.
[/quote]

Of course! The basic reason why an obsolete theory still exists, although it has been torn to shredds by scientists for years …people need jobs. Why else would you be trying to claim the need to study this mathematically impossible ridiculous theory, you want money in the field. Get a real job! This one is as dead as neanderthals teaching sanskrit. Since you like geology, we need ditch diggers. You’d accomplish more with that job.

Think about picking up a shovel at your local hardware store.

merlin

[FreedomFighterXL]

I can’t help but totally agree with Merlin on this one, the entire field of biology needs a quick and simple explanation for how things came to pass, so it’s only natural for people to hold onto a theory for years to come even if it becomes less and less consistent with newly available evidence.

A good example of this would be the Chengjiang fossils that indicate that major pyhla occurred almost overnight, and this gradually reduced into less and less species over time.

Is this new information supportive of evolution? Not at all, in fact since there is no easy secular explanation for this many paleontologists try to avoid the issue all together.

Chengjiang Maotianshan Shales

[TerraFirma]

[quote]FreedomFighterXL wrote:

…in fact since there is no easy secular explanation for this many paleontologists try to avoid the issue all together.

[/quote]

Now, that is an astonishing claim. I assume you have evidence to back it up? No doubt you’ve attended paleontology conferences and noticed how quiet the room gets when the Cambrian is mentioned.

No?

Okay then, you no doubt have subscribed to a lot of paleontology journals and noticed a strange absence of articles about the Cambrian.

No?

Okay then, you no doubt read popular science books by paleontologists such as Stephen Jay Gould or by evolutionary biologists such as Dawkins and noticed how they skim right over the Cambrian? (Gould’s book devoted to the entirely to the Cambrian explosion and the Burgess Shale, of course, would have to be excepted.)

No?

Did you pull that right out of your ass then?

I thought so.

Here is something for you to think about: who do you think is digging up all those Chengjiang fossils? Who do you think is doing the careful and painstaking analysis needed to assign the fossils to their phyla? Who do you think is writing up their findings and publishing in peer-reviewed journals,and sharing their discoveries with the entire world? Who do you think is actively trying to preserve the Chengjiang shale from destruction?

Oddly enough, it is those very paleontologists who you suggest would have a problem the new findings coming from the Chengjiang fossils.

Everything we know about the Cambrian is result of the hard work of palentologists, palentologists who are actively trying to push back the boundaries of our knowledge about the Cambrian and who happily and vigorously debate the significance of their findings. Virtually none of these scientists would agree that their findings are not supportive of evolution. In fact, they’d be quite happy to bend your ears on how their findings fit into the evolutionary history of the earth. All you have to do is be willing to listen and learn. You could start by reading–that is, really reading for comprehension–the web site you linked to.

[Fitnessdiva]

[quote]TerraFirma wrote:
FreedomFighterXL wrote:

…in fact since there is no easy secular explanation for this many paleontologists try to avoid the issue all together.

Now, that is an astonishing claim. I assume you have evidence to back it up? No doubt you’ve attended paleontology conferences and noticed how quiet the room gets when the Cambrian is mentioned.

No?

Okay then, you no doubt have subscribed to a lot of paleontology journals and noticed a strange absence of articles about the Cambrian.

No?

Okay then, you no doubt read popular science books by paleontologists such as Stephen Jay Gould or by evolutionary biologists such as Dawkins and noticed how they skim right over the Cambrian? (Gould’s book devoted to the entirely to the Cambrian explosion and the Burgess Shale, of course, would have to be excepted.)

No?

Did you pull that right out of your ass then?

I thought so.

Here is something for you to think about: who do you think is digging up all those Chengjiang fossils? Who do you think is doing the careful and painstaking analysis needed to assign the fossils to their phyla? Who do you think is writing up their findings and publishing in peer-reviewed journals,and sharing their discoveries with the entire world? Who do you think is actively trying to preserve the Chengjiang shale from destruction?

Oddly enough, it is those very paleontologists who you suggest would have a problem the new findings coming from the Chengjiang fossils.

Everything we know about the Cambrian is result of the hard work of palentologists, palentologists who are actively trying to push back the boundaries of our knowledge about the Cambrian and who happily and vigorously debate the significance of their findings. Virtually none of these scientists would agree that their findings are not supportive of evolution. In fact, they’d be quite happy to bend your ears on how their findings fit into the evolutionary history of the earth. All you have to do is be willing to listen and learn. You could start by reading–that is, really reading for comprehension–the web site you linked to.
[/quote]

Didn’t you know? As long as you ignore the evidence and ask the same questions that were answered there is still a hole in evolution that all true scientists have been saying for centuries. No scientists support evolution!

On a serious note, you can’t debate these guys, they ignore responses. I pasted responses to their questions from talk orgins, which were written by actual scientists in the field. I haven’t studied evolution since college and it isn’t something I sit around thinking about on a regular basis, so every answer isn’t something I’ve retained. Supposedly that makes it erroneous. I guess I am supposed to be the foremost expert on evolution. They just ignore any responses and ignore your questions about their crack pot ideas. Plus their lack of understanding of even basic biology and evolution is so bad they can’t even begin to comprehend what they themselves are saying.

It’s not worth the effort, it’s like talking to a brick wall. Not that I expect to change their beliefs or anything, but they don’t even analyze and interpret what you say, they just spout rhetoric and call you names.

[gotaknife]

[quote]FreedomFighterXL wrote:
I can’t help but totally agree with Merlin on this one, the entire field of biology needs a quick and simple explanation for how things came to pass, so it’s only natural for people to hold onto a theory for years to come even if it becomes less and less consistent with newly available evidence.

A good example of this would be the Chengjiang fossils that indicate that major pyhla occurred almost overnight, and this gradually reduced into less and less species over time.

Is this new information supportive of evolution? Not at all, in fact since there is no easy secular explanation for this many paleontologists try to avoid the issue all together.

Chengjiang Maotianshan Shales

[/quote]
The Cambrian “explosion” occurred over a period of around 50 million years, with the largest “jump” occurring over approx 10 million years. This is overnight for a geologist but it is still a long time for small organisms with fast generation times. There has been a great deal of research into this period and genetic studies have shown that many of the animal lineages were established before the Cambrian period. What this means is that what we are seeing in the fossil record is an “explosion” in morphology (especially embryonic development) but not in basic phyla. Recent fossil finds support this view, demonstrating that the Bilateral phyla actually evolved in the Proterozoic period. The driving force of the Cambrian explosion was an explosion of new ecology. The oxygen levels in the oceans were rising, plankton was diversifying and, with increases in body size, higher level predation became a powerful selector.
It would be great if there were more fossils of this period but the Burgess Shale and Chengjiang is all there is (except for a few bits and pieces here and there).

Some people on this thread seem to have a problem with the apparent “sudden appearance” of species in the fossil record and Darwin himself found this a problem. BUT this was explained by Eldredge & Gould in 1972 with their “theory of punctuated equilibrium” and this theory is heavily supported by genetic and fossil evidence. The debate ran hot on this theory for a while but it was clear that this stemmed from misunderstanding of the theory, not problems with the theory itself (Mostly Gould’s fault. He wrote a lot of pop-science articles on the issue and muddied the water). If you are going to read up on this theory be careful because even some prominent authors got muddled on this one, but these days it is pretty much sorted and solid. There is a Wiki on it but it is not that good, IMO.

[unbending]

[quote]MisterAmazing wrote:
Notice how Iceland has the highest percentage of evolution belief along with the highest literacy rate…hmmm[/quote]

Jane: Bertha! I heard from Lurleen, who heard from Goober who asked his wife who read a book called ‘The Origin of Species’ by Charles Darwin.

Bertha: Heard wha?

Jane: She said that we evolved from a retarded fish! Its called ‘evo-lotion’ or something like that.

Bertha: I ain’t no retarded fish baby!

[unbending]

[quote]FreedomFighterXL wrote:
the entire field of biology needs a quick and simple explanation for how things came to pass[/quote]

You mean like on family guy?

VideosHub | Popular Internet Videos

[DrSkeptix]

Now that this thread is almost dead–dissolving past name-calling and counterpointed challenges of minutiae–an observation.

Maimonides, almost one thousand years ago, tasked himself with the reconciliation Aristotle (“science”) and the Bible (“faith.”) As he reasoned it, the boundary of faith and science was mobile. Faith is the belief in the unprovable; science is he rigor of empiric observation and applied reason.

If men are created with powers of observation and reason, they are obliged to use those faculties to expand knowledge, to explain what can be explained. It is through this process that faith is strengthened, and knowledge increased, and not presumably through border skirmishes. It is therefore the obligation of the faithful to expand science.

A thousand years and we are still having the same discussion?

Some, here on this forum, deny or misunderstand the scientific method at its core, and so “theories” aren’t static enough, or do not explain every little perceived “fact.” Others feel that scientists must be elitists because they do not respect opinion in the absence of rigor. Real faith is harder work than this.

In short, a society that respects neither philosophers nor plumbers will have neither ideas nor pipes that hold water.

[Neuromancer]

I agree.Good post ,Dr.Post more often!