[/quote]Carbon dataing? For every 10 people that swear by it, there are 10 that refute it. Carbon decay in a controlled environment may be relatively accurate, but over millions of years, and a diversity of environmental conditions, it’s not exactly a nail in the coffin of creationism. Do you have any better evidence to offer?[/quote]
Do you understand the concept of atomic decay at all?
This is not something that is responsive to simple environmental conditions…
[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:
Zap, point on the bacteria well taken. But has anyone ever documented a bacteria evolving into a more complex life form, like a multi-celled organism?
…[/quote]
No idea.
[quote]tuffloud wrote:
The theory of evolution explains nothing. Did you even read my post. There has been absolutely no proof given that a species can jump from one species to another. Where is YOUR proof? It is a theory, period. Explaining how God got here is not for us people to explain.
[/quote]
You mock science and show your own ignorance. What reputable references do you cite other than the bible and your own deluded opinion. You don’t even cite one credible scholar.
Ay, here lies the rub…
What many who are of a religious nature don’t seem to realize is that the morals and behaviors brought about by religion can easily be developed by first principles.
We don’t need a reward after death to be good in this life. There are rewards in this life for treating others well.
It is the same reason that animals that don’t have souls are able to socialize and work together in packs or colonies. You don’t see them operating in a state of complete anarchy either… and they don’t even have souls. Oh my God, something else must be at work… and it can’t be an eternal reward can it?
An external force is not required to develop rules and societies. Well before Christianity came along, the human population of the planet lived in cities, developed writing, mathematics, philosophy and all kinds of things.
Holy shit, how could this have happened without any religion in place to force them to work towards some type of reward?
Time to put on that thinking cap…
[quote]PGA200X wrote:
You infered that I did.[/quote]
No, no I didn’t.
[quote]
Prove that you exist? Well this isnt the Matrix, well I dont think it is, so there must be a person on the other end typing.[/quote]
This really isn’t proof, but keep thinking about it.
[quote]
Its radioCARBON (shortened version…carbon dating) dating not radiometric dating. When someone looks at a fossil they’re not trying to measure radient energy…and yes it debunks the 6/7 day “creation” of everything as we know it.[/quote]
I still think you would have rather used radiometric.
[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:
If the scientific community has solid evidence that evolution is in fact the explaniation for the diversity of life on the planet, why is it still considered a theory? Wouldn’t it be a fact. [/quote]
I forgot about our little bacterial friend…That reminds me, what about viruses? We seem to not be able to lick that common cold because its MUTATING and EVOLVING.
Theory in the scientifc community is not what you think theory is. When something is given the “Theory” title its considered beyond a reasonable doubt i.e. FACT. They do not throw around that term like the general population. Hence there are only a FEW “Theories.” The rest are hypothesies…Know what a theory is before you use the term “Theory of Evolution.”
So I will ask this question once again…There is proof, along with some common sense, that says we have evolved from a lesser form of life. So…where is the religious folks proof of the existance of god other than someones word/belief/faith? THERE ISN’T ANY!
Let me end this argument once and for all. Creationism is not science–it is faith. To agrue creation from a philosophical standpoint is one thing but to try and discredit evolution because it doesn’t give “enough” of an answer is a completely different–and does not offer any proof of truth of the opposite argument.
Science is the act of questioning the world in which we live, including the heavens and subatomic world.
Testable = science
where as, I belive because I was brainwashed to do so = faith
You cannot argue one against the other.
[quote]PGA200X wrote:
Theory in the scientifc community is not what you think theory is. When something is given the “Theory” title its considered beyond a reasonable doubt i.e. FACT. [/quote]
Theory doesn’t mean FACT. It means generally accepted among the educated scholars who deduced or are working to prove it. Also it can mean a working model–for example, gravitation. There is a mathematical model to predict behavior that will give an answer to a degree of uncertainty. This uncertainty is what makes it a theory only and not a law.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Carbon dataing? For every 10 people that swear by it, there are 10 that refute it. Carbon decay in a controlled environment may be relatively accurate, but over millions of years, and a diversity of environmental conditions, it’s not exactly a nail in the coffin of creationism. Do you have any better evidence to offer?
Do you understand the concept of atomic decay at all?
This is not something that is responsive to simple environmental conditions…[/quote]
Uh, I’m no rocket scientist but how about this.
"While carbon dating is fascinating, it uses several assumptions…
Not participating in this topic, but will none the less use it for a shameless plug.
[quote]PGA200X wrote:
ConanSpeaks wrote:
If the scientific community has solid evidence that evolution is in fact the explaniation for the diversity of life on the planet, why is it still considered a theory? Wouldn’t it be a fact.
I forgot about our little bacterial friend…That reminds me, what about viruses? We seem to not be able to lick that common cold because its MUTATING and EVOLVING.
Theory in the scientifc community is not what you think theory is. When something is given the “Theory” title its considered beyond a reasonable doubt i.e. FACT. They do not throw around that term like the general population. Hence there are only a FEW “Theories.” The rest are hypothesies…Know what a theory is before you use the term “Theory of Evolution.”
So I will ask this question once again…There is proof, along with some common sense, that says we have evolved from a lesser form of life. So…where is the religious folks proof of the existance of god other than someones word/belief/faith? THERE ISN’T ANY![/quote]
The words fact and theory cannot be used interchangably. They are not synonyms of eachother.
If you look at the definition of the word theory, it doesn’t say anywhere that it is infallable. “Theory - A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.”
Based on that definition it would be interesting if someone who was arguing could actually provide some insight on exactly when Darwins Hypothis became “widely accepted” and thereby adopted by the scientific community as a theory.
Anybody arguing evolution know?
[quote]ConanSpeaks wrote:
Uh, I’m no rocket scientist but how about this.
"While carbon dating is fascinating, it uses several assumptions…
The assumptions that you state are correct except for a few generalizations you make either because you didn’t know or because you over looked it.
Statistically speaking this is true because carbon 14 is made from nitrogen 14 when it is bombarded by energy (radiation) from the sun. We assume the rate at which it is made is the same becasue in order for the earth to evolve to the point it has the intensity of energy of sun would have to remain at about the level.
Carbon 14 will always decay at the same rate due to the intrinsic energy it contains–it is this property that makes it reliable. If it decayed at a different rate it would cease to be carbon 14 but a different element. (any freshman physics student could explain this ad e = mc^2).
this is not even necessary to calculate the an eage. It is given as the ratio between C12 to C14. All you need to know is this ratio and plug it into a simple equation to figure it out. We could use any element but carbon is the most convenient element to use in terms of evolutionary time frames. The decay rate is about 6000 yrs–a mere blink of the eye in terms of human life.
Creationism = HMB
I have felt the presence of the Lord, and it is just like Deca.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
What you do not understand is how the egg or the child came to be, and this is your stumbling block. :)[/quote]
No Lothario1132, this is your stumbling block.
[quote]
Unless you realize and learn what genetic mutation is, you will never understand how an organism different from its parents can be born.:)[/quote]
I know exacly what genetic mutation is and will explain the FACTS below.
[quote]
BIG HINT:
Remember those Down’s Syndrome babies I told you about who have more DNA per cell than their parents? They are real. There really are people with Down’s Syndrome. And they really do have a genetic difference from normal people. And their parents aren’t like them.
OPEN THAT BRAIN!!! :)[/quote]
Open that Brain? Ok.
Increased amounts of DNA don?t mean increased function. Biologists have discovered a whole range of mechanisms that can cause radical changes in the amount of DNA possessed by an organism. Gene duplication, polyploidy, insertions, etc., do not help explain evolution, however. They represent an increase in amount of DNA, but not an increase in the amount of functional genetic information?these mechanisms create nothing new. Macroevolution needs new genes (for making feathers on reptiles, for example), yet people who believe what you do completely miss this simple distinction:
Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism?s DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features.
In plants, but not in animals (possibly with rare exceptions), the doubling of all the chromosomes may result in an individual which can no longer interbreed with the parent type?this is called polyploidy. Although this may technically be called a new species, because of the reproductive isolation, no new information has been produced, just repetitious doubling of existing information. If a malfunction in a printing press caused a book to be printed with every page doubled, it would not be more informative than the proper book. (Brave students of evolutionary professors might like to ask whether they would get extra marks for handing in two copies of the same assignment.)
Duplication of a single chromosome is normally harmful, as in Down?s syndrome. Insertions are a very efficient way of completely destroying the functionality of existing genes. Now is the time for you to “open that brain”, lothario1132. Biophysicist Dr. Lee Spetner in his book Not By Chance, analyzes examples of mutational changes that evolutionists have claimed to have been increases in information, and shows that they are actually examples of loss of specificity, which means they involved loss of information (which is to be expected from information theory).
The evolutionist?s “gene duplication idea” is that an existing gene may be doubled, and one copy does its normal work while the other copy is redundant and non-expressed. Therefore, it is free to mutate free of selection pressure (to get rid of it). However, such “neutral” mutations are powerless to produce new genuine information. Dawkins and others point out that natural selection is the only possible naturalistic explanation for the immense design in nature (not a good one, as Spetner and others have shown). Dawkins and others propose that random changes produce a new function, then this redundant gene becomes expressed somehow and is fine-tuned under the natural selective process.
This “idea” is just a lot of hand-waving. It relies on a chance copying event, genes somehow being switched off, randomly mutating to something approximating a new function, then being switched on again so natural selection can tune it.
Furthermore, mutations do not occur in just the duplicated gene; they occur throughout the genome. Consequently, all the deleterious mutations in the rest of the genome have to be eliminated by the death of the unfit. Selective mutations in the target duplicate gene are extremely rare ? it might represent only 1 part in 30,000 of the genome of an animal. The larger the genome, the bigger the problem, because the larger the genome, the lower the mutation rate that the creature can sustain without error catastrophe; as a result, it takes even longer for any mutation to occur, let alone a desirable one, in the duplicated gene. There just has not been enough time for such a naturalistic process to account for the amount of genetic information that we see in living things.
Dawkins and others have recognized that the ?information space? possible within just one gene is so huge that random changes without some guiding force could never come up with a new function. There could never be enough “experiments” (mutating generations of organisms) to find anything useful by such a process. Note that an average gene of 1,000 base pairs represents 41,000 possibilities?that is 10,602 (compare this with the number of atoms in the universe estimated at “only” 10,80).
If every atom in the universe represented an “experiment” every millisecond for the supposed 15 billion years of the universe, this could only try a maximum 10,100 of the possibilities for the gene. So such a “neutral” process cannot possibly find any sequence with specificity (usefulness), even allowing for the fact that more than just one sequence may be functional to some extent.
So Dawkins and company have the same problem as the advocates of neutral selection theory. Increasing knowledge of the molecular basis of biological functions has exploded the known “information space” so that mutations and natural selection?with or without gene duplication, or any other known natural process ? cannot account for the irreducibly complex nature of living systems.
I think the main issue in this discussion for me is this; neither evolution nor creation can or have been proved using the Greek-based scientific method currently used as the excepted standard of investigation in all scientific disciplines in the US and abroad.
So, on one hand we have people who have faith in the bible believing creationism. On the other, we have people who believe in man believing evolutionism. Since there is no scientific basis to believe either as scientific fact, both sides are basing their position on faith, because there is nothing else to base it on. This means that Creationists have the God of the bible as their God and Evolutionists have their God as man (Humanism).
Now having established that both positions are theory, that can’t be scientifically proved, and require faith to believe, I ask you; why is evolution taught in public schools in the US as fact? The constitutional requirement to keep church and State separate should apply to all forms of religious faith/believes, which would include humanism, or man as his own deity.
So to be consistent and no-biased towards any particular belief system, both evolutionary theory and creationary theory should be taught as they are both only theory.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
PGA200X wrote:
Theory in the scientifc community is not what you think theory is. When something is given the “Theory” title its considered beyond a reasonable doubt i.e. FACT.
Theory doesn’t mean FACT. It means generally accepted among the educated scholars who deduced or are working to prove it. Also it can mean a working model–for example, gravitation. There is a mathematical model to predict behavior that will give an answer to a degree of uncertainty. This uncertainty is what makes it a theory only and not a law.
[/quote]
You are preaching to the choir. Most of these threads get opinion confused with fact.
[quote]tuffloud wrote:
Increased amounts of DNA don?t mean increased function. Biologists have discovered a whole range of mechanisms that can cause radical changes in the amount of DNA possessed by an organism. Gene duplication, polyploidy, insertions, etc., do not help explain evolution, however. They represent an increase in amount of DNA, but not an increase in the amount of functional genetic information?these mechanisms create nothing new. Macroevolution needs new genes (for making feathers on reptiles, for example), yet people who believe what you do completely miss this simple distinction:
Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism?s DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features.
In plants, but not in animals (possibly with rare exceptions), the doubling of all the chromosomes may result in an individual which can no longer interbreed with the parent type?this is called polyploidy. Although this may technically be called a new species, because of the reproductive isolation, no new information has been produced, just repetitious doubling of existing information. If a malfunction in a printing press caused a book to be printed with every page doubled, it would not be more informative than the proper book. (Brave students of evolutionary professors might like to ask whether they would get extra marks for handing in two copies of the same assignment.)
Duplication of a single chromosome is normally harmful, as in Down?s syndrome. Insertions are a very efficient way of completely destroying the functionality of existing genes. Now is the time for you to “open that brain”, lothario1132. Biophysicist Dr. Lee Spetner in his book Not By Chance, analyzes examples of mutational changes that evolutionists have claimed to have been increases in information, and shows that they are actually examples of loss of specificity, which means they involved loss of information (which is to be expected from information theory).
The evolutionist?s “gene duplication idea” is that an existing gene may be doubled, and one copy does its normal work while the other copy is redundant and non-expressed. Therefore, it is free to mutate free of selection pressure (to get rid of it). However, such “neutral” mutations are powerless to produce new genuine information. Dawkins and others point out that natural selection is the only possible naturalistic explanation for the immense design in nature (not a good one, as Spetner and others have shown). Dawkins and others propose that random changes produce a new function, then this redundant gene becomes expressed somehow and is fine-tuned under the natural selective process.
[/quote]
I believe none of the people arguing for evolution have suggested that all mutations are beneficial. In actuality, most are harmful, and this is also part of Darwin’s theory. Normally, these creatures die quickly and leave no offspring.
[quote]Lorisco wrote:
I think the main issue in this discussion for me is this; neither evolution nor creation can or have been proved using the Greek-based scientific method currently used as the excepted standard of investigation in all scientific disciplines in the US and abroad.
So, on one hand we have people who have faith in the bible believing creationism. On the other, we have people who believe in man believing evolutionism. Since there is no scientific basis to believe either as scientific fact, both sides are basing their position on faith, because there is nothing else to base it on. This means that Creationists have the God of the bible as their God and Evolutionists have their God as man (Humanism).
Now having established that both positions are theory, that can’t be scientifically proved, and require faith to believe, I ask you; why is evolution taught in public schools in the US as fact? The constitutional requirement to keep church and State separate should apply to all forms of religious faith/believes, which would include humanism, or man as his own deity.
So to be consistent and no-biased towards any particular belief system, both evolutionary theory and creationary theory should be taught as they are both only theory.
[/quote]
The difference is that evolutionism has been continually, and is still undergoing, the scientific method. It is impossible to prove that the theory is correct, but it IS possible to prove that the theory is wrong. The theory is then adapted to reflect our current knowledge to the fullest.
It is like a difficult math proposition. Usually people will try to find counterexamples first, because it may be easier just to prove that the supposition is false by example. It is rarely possible to prove something is true by example in a mathematical sense because there are usually infinitely many such examples. One counterexample though, and BAM, it’s outa there.
Certainly you are correct in saying that both are theories. No one should argue that. The difference is that evolution is a scientific theory, and creationism is a theory based on simple faith. As such, evolution should be taught in science class, and creationism can be taught in church, if the religion has faith in creationism.
[quote]graphicsMan wrote:
I believe none of the people arguing for evolution have suggested that all mutations are beneficial. In actuality, most are harmful, and this is also part of Darwin’s theory. Normally, these creatures die quickly and leave no offspring.
[/quote]
Actually,
lothario1132 was using genetic mutation and Down Syndrome as a means of explaining evolution and the possiblitly that life on this planet has miraculously “mutated” over billions of years out of nothing and is what it is today.