How do you define evolution?

[Polymath257]

I would have to go over the dating process in order for me to investigate the claims of dates about when the city came about. Or the cave paintings. I remember when I was in college and took an art history class, yes, the instructor did say the cave paintings were discovered that were 10,000 years old. That was a while back, though, and since then I think estimates are even older about wall carvings or paintings. But since I really do believe what the Bible says about human history, I also do believe that the dating of these things is wrong. Part of that is the dating process of the combined materials (that of rock and paint, for instance).

I find it interesting that you aren't willing to change your views when the evidence points to something else. We have art that is 30,000 years old and various tools going back far before that.

If you don't know about the dating methods and the checks and balances used to make sure they are accurate, how can you say they are wrong? At most, they simply disagree with your intuition based upon your faith. But that only means your intuition or faith might need to be updated to be in line with the evidence.

 

[shunyadragon]

I cannot answer right now for all of the points. But I do believe that God made the first man and woman about 6,000 years ago. Whether there were look-alikes, I don't know. Apparently there were in a matter of speaking. But as for man, it is said He decided to make man in His image. Different psychologically and spiritually from others. As for the rest of creation pertaining to the earth, it could have been millions if not billions of years. Why he made man was one of my first questions, and the only answer that makes sense to me is that He is God, a (or rather, 'the') creator and originator of life. Beyond that I cannot answer you, I have not found any viable explanation of why life is -- how it originated -- other than there is a creator.

Dating of Tree rings in ancient trees is older than any of your 'belief' based estimates of time. Lake sediment annual lamella in Japanese lake dates over 50,000 years

 

[YoursTrue]

Dating of Tree rings in ancient trees is older than any of your 'belief' based estimates of time. Lake sediment annual lamella in Japanese lake dates over 50,000 years

You don't know what my "belief based estimates" of time are. But you claim you do.

 

[YoursTrue]

I find it interesting that you aren't willing to change your views when the evidence points to something else. We have art that is 30,000 years old and various tools going back far before that.

If you don't know about the dating methods and the checks and balances used to make sure they are accurate, how can you say they are wrong? At most, they simply disagree with your intuition based upon your faith. But that only means your intuition or faith might need to be updated to be in line with the evidence.

No, I am going to say that the art is not dated correctly. There are reasons for that. The primary reason I read about and reason on is the analyzing of the "canvas," or rock upon which the art has been made. That's like saying that the foundation of a building excavated is the same age as the soil upon which it rests. There are other reasons why the dating of such art is not in harmony with actuality. By actuality, I mean the substance used to date it.

 

[YoursTrue]

it is true that none of the individual chemicals in your body are alive. But, the way they interact (the chemical reactions) is what makes them alive. Life is a process, not an added thing.

Like I say I'm not a scientist, but are viruses alive? Are chemicals alive?

 

[YoursTrue]

JW will basically cast doubt on our dating method of these things as their defense (From JW):

"Dating by certain radioactive clocks cannot corroborate evolutionists’ claims. The reliability of these clock instruments is seriously questioned. Results are open to wide speculation."

Which is not incorrect, not all dating methods work well within the same time period. But the way they write it here is highly manipulated to sound as if these dating methods are very flawed. Which is not the case. The people which perform these dating tests are well aware of these things and also why we use different ones for different things. But when JW doesn't provide any details to how this actually works and people don't care to examine it, obviously it sound like a good argument. Here is a list of some of the most common ways of dating including a brief explanation:

View attachment 53372

Given that these people are open about how all these dating methods works, highlight potential problems with them, having figured out why certain methods have issues and only work well in a given timespan. Why would they use them if they didn't work?

Look at this list and just imagine how much research and time have been put into figuring these things out. And then compare it to the explanation that JW give as counter argument:

"Dating by certain radioactive clocks cannot corroborate evolutionists’ claims. The reliability of these clock instruments is seriously questioned. Results are open to wide speculation."

Almost 1.5 line of text without any explanation or anything, just throwing out some general statement as if it was a fact. And people just eat it raw as if this is true.

Wouldn't you assume that these people that actually date things, know what to look out for when they date stuff?

And why on Earth, if you want to learn about dating methods or archaeology or any fields of science for that matter, would you get your information from JW.org, it is not a science website? Why not get your information from people that actually base their knowledge on hundreds of years of studies, which have been put to the test, to make it possible to create a list as above?

Again look at the list, how do you think they figured out about all the decay rates, the magnetic fields and chemistry etc. that have gone into this. And to me this is a huge problem with some religious people's way of getting information. For things you highly want to be false, you go to the worse sources possible in order to get your information on a given topic, rather than going to those that are considered the most accurate ones, because they can be backed up by scientific studies.

No wonder, that evolution seems highly unlikely, if the sources you get your information from have no clue what they are talking about or misrepresent things. How often do you not hear religious people make the statement that "I can't believe in evolution, because I don't believe humans descended from monkeys!!". Well evolution doesn't teach that, if they cared to learn about it, they would know that and stop making that statement.

The reason that JW and other religious people can even make the claim as above about some dating methods being flawed, simply proves that science works, because it is science that have figured this out, that in some cases things seems to be dated wrong and therefore gives very wrong results. So what they do, is to figure why that is the case and they correct the method. How do you think that they figured out that radiocarbon dating works best in that age range and not so much outside it and only for some materials? I highly doubt that they figured this out from reading a religious text.
So when JW and other people cast doubt on this, they are referring to cases which have been corrected, which initially gave the scientists problems, but later have been fixed. Exactly as the age of Earth and the Universe have been better dated, because of better and better methods for determining things. That is not a flaw in science, it works exactly as it is suppose to, we improve our methods as more and more knowledge gets discovered. The problem is that these religious sites where people get there information doesn't tell that side of the story, because if they did, they would conflict with the religious text. Which is why religions can't and never will lead to any new knowledge, it is not science and constantly have to adjust or fit into what science figures out, meaning that it is always steps behind.


Yes and im one of them, because it have never been demonstrated.

It is not unfair of people to be skeptical about this as they would about any other claim. The problem is that religious people are more than happy to claim that there is no evidence for evolution and therefore they dismiss it. Yet, when it comes to a statement like the one you made, there is absolutely no questioning being done, why is that? Why don't you demand evidence for it? What would evidence even look like, how does divine inspired things look like, how do you know that it is divine and not something else?

Yet, no questioning is being done, don't you think that is a bit inconsistent?


Again, that is simply not true, what you have a problem with is macroevolution, because I doubt you would disagree that medicine, animal breeding, food that have been modified etc. doesn't work, right?

The issue is, that there is no difference between micro and macroevolution when it comes to the mechanism they are using, it is the exact same thing, one is just on a large scale and the other on a small scale.

Microevolution happens on a small scale (within a single population), while macroevolution happens on a scale that transcends the boundaries of a single species. Despite their differences, evolution at both of these levels relies on the same, established mechanisms of evolutionary change: mutation. migration.


Evolution doesn't talk about how things came about, others are working on that. Evolution is purely about how living organisms evolves.

From my understanding of things like cave paintings, like I said, I used to believe whatever I was taught about evolution and the history of the human 'race.' But looking at the dating process itself, the soil (on the walls of a cave) is OBVIOUSLY much older than the cave painting.

 

[Nimos]

From my understanding of things like cave paintings, like I said, I used to believe whatever I was taught about evolution and the history of the human 'race.' But looking at the dating process itself, the soil (on the walls of a cave) is OBVIOUSLY much older than the cave painting.

Yes? Not sure what that has to do with anything. What issues do you have with cave paintings?

 

[ratiocinator]

From my understanding of things like cave paintings, like I said, I used to believe whatever I was taught about evolution and the history of the human 'race.' But looking at the dating process itself, the soil (on the walls of a cave) is OBVIOUSLY much older than the cave painting.

Do you really think scientists are that stupid? I had no idea how cave paintings were dated but it took me just a few minutes to find out that you can use radiocarbon dating if the pigments used are organic (charcoal, for example) or you can use uranium-series dating on calcium carbonate crusts that overly the paintings, so are OBVIOUSLY younger than the paintings.

 

[shunyadragon]

You don't know what my "belief based estimates" of time are. But you claim you do.

Well, ah . . . then start getting serious and real about science. Your fundamentalist Christian view of dating our physical existence based on the Bible, which is faith based, and not science.

Yes, your religious faith based view is as obvious as the sky is Carolina blue on a clear day at noon on the 4th of July, This is abundantly clear by your own posts. See below in bold.

I cannot answer right now for all of the points. But I do believe that God made the first man and woman about 6,000 years ago. Whether there were look-alikes, I don't know. Apparently there were in a matter of speaking. But as for man, it is said He decided to make man in His image. Different psychologically and spiritually from others. As for the rest of creation pertaining to the earth, it could have been millions if not billions of years. Why he made man was one of my first questions, and the only answer that makes sense to me is that He is God, a (or rather, 'the') creator and originator of life. Beyond that I cannot answer you, I have not found any viable explanation of why life is -- how it originated -- other than there is a creator.

 

[We Never Know]

Unicelluar=single celled.

But, I am guessing you are asking if all *multicellular* life evolved from single celled life. Yes. The first unicellular life appeared about 3.8 billion years ago. The first multicellular life appeared about 1 billion years ago. That's almost 3 billion years of *only* single celled life.

Yes. Its was late and I was on my phone while riding back from Texas.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

From my understanding of things like cave paintings, like I said, I used to believe whatever I was taught about evolution and the history of the human 'race.' But looking at the dating process itself, the soil (on the walls of a cave) is OBVIOUSLY much older than the cave painting.

Huh?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

You don't know what my "belief based estimates" of time are. But you claim you do.

You don't tell us a lot. You just deny all the evidence presented.

 

[Polymath257]

Like I say I'm not a scientist, but are viruses alive? Are chemicals alive?

Viruses are a border case. So the answer depends on where you draw an arbitrary line.

Chemicals are not alive. But they are involved in life, which is a complex collection of chemical reactions.

 

[metis]

...fundamentalist Christian view of dating our physical existence based on the Bible, which is faith based, and not science.

I grew up in such a church and I know how hard it is to leave a place whereas I spent so many years in and was very active. I even had thoughts of going into the ministry. But what stopped me was the continuous anti-science sermonizing that also was anti all other non-Protestant denominations and also other religions. It was hard to leave, but the Truth is the Truth, so I had to go with that.

How about you?

 

[SkepticThinker]

I'm beginning to think that while there are evidences of structures (like cells) in many venues, there truly is no evidence of evolution by "natural" occurrences, as if it all just happened. And here's one reason why -- despite the claim that evolutionists keep saying that abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution, it absolutely does, and must. Because a dead sparrow can't fly.

What do dead sparrows have to do with abiogenesis?

Do you acknowledge that we can understand how something operates without having to know where it originated? Like, we can study how gravity operates without having to know where/when/how it came from?

 

[YoursTrue]

What do dead sparrows have to do with abiogenesis?

Do you acknowledge that we can understand how something operates without having to know where it originated? Like, we can study how gravity operates without having to know where/when/how it came from?

First, no one really knows what happened when the first cell started "growing". In other words, a cell without life is...dead. and when a sparrow dies, it goes back to the ground, or elements. It can't keep growing. But the point is that regardless of transfer of genes, the organism probably has to be ALIVE to continue, even if mutating. I say probably because I'm not sure what science says about what's dead and what's alive. Once the flesh dies, it's not evolving, that is if one believes in the innate process of forming new species, etc. Can I explain it all? No. And apart from theories sometimes now called law or a sure thing no one really has the answer.

 

[YoursTrue]

I find it interesting that you aren't willing to change your views when the evidence points to something else. We have art that is 30,000 years old and various tools going back far before that.

If you don't know about the dating methods and the checks and balances used to make sure they are accurate, how can you say they are wrong? At most, they simply disagree with your intuition based upon your faith. But that only means your intuition or faith might need to be updated to be in line with the evidence.

Ok so go over the dating methods. And explain them as you answer questions. See that's what I find, you make assertions and call me ignorant, etc. But don't explain.

 

[Polymath257]

Ok so go over the dating methods. And explain them as you answer questions. See that's what I find, you make assertions and call me ignorant, etc. But don't explain.

Well, should we start by talking about dating methods? There are many, many different types of dating methods, each based on a different physical principle.

Do you want to emphasize one particular example? Say, the dating of cave paintings? Even there, several different dating methods are used. And the fact that they all agree is part of the evidence we have the right date.

 

[Polymath257]

First, no one really knows what happened when the first cell started "growing". In other words, a cell without life is...dead. and when a sparrow dies, it goes back to the ground, or elements. It can't keep growing. But the point is that regardless of transfer of genes, the organism probably has to be ALIVE to continue, even if mutating. I say probably because I'm not sure what science says about what's dead and what's alive. Once the flesh dies, it's not evolving, that is if one believes in the innate process of forming new species, etc. Can I explain it all? No. And apart from theories sometimes now called law or a sure thing no one really has the answer.

One issue is that the line between 'living' and 'non-living' is not as sharp as you seem to think. So you may well have something that is 'not alive', but still shows many of the properties of life.

I also see some other misunderstandings. For example, individuals do not mutate. So growing and mutating are not related. Mutations happen between one generation to the next. They are a change in genetics. Evolution also does not happen in individuals. So death of 'the flesh' is unrelated to evolution. By the time of death, any changes that would happen have already been passed to the next generation.

 

[YoursTrue]

Well, should we start by talking about dating methods? There are many, many different types of dating methods, each based on a different physical principle.

Do you want to emphasize one particular example? Say, the dating of cave paintings? Even there, several different dating methods are used. And the fact that they all agree is part of the evidence we have the right date.

Was it you who mentioned about the 30,000 year old cave painting? If you have more information about that, please do let me know