Evidence For And Against Evolution

Polymath257 said:

And what evidence do you have to support this belief? Why should science take it seriously?

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Furthermore, it is possible to examine such things as genes and bacteriological matter, including the making of vaccines, yet still believe that evolution is not how life in its different forms came about.

Polymath257 said:

And what evidence do you have to support this belief? Why should science take it seriously?

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I actually don't ask science to take it seriously. I am merely giving my opinion on this. I appreciate doctors and researchers, etc. I think God supersedes them all, since you ask why should science take it seriously. But thanks for the inquiry.

YoursTrue said:

I actually don't ask science to take it seriously. I am merely giving my opinion on this. I appreciate doctors and researchers, etc. I think God supersedes them all, since you ask why should science take it seriously. But thanks for the inquiry.

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It isn't ultimately a question of whether 'God supersedes them all'. It is a question about whether the particular statement you believe about God supersede the evidence that science has collected. In other words, why should anyone think your interpretation of what God said or did is valid?

YoursTrue said:

You say I am a literalist. A literalist in what sense? How am I a literalist? I am learning from you and the other people here. Just as I would have been learning but in a different sense (because I yes, literally believed -- almost -- everything a teacher said) when Haeckel's theory was being taught, and we were taught as well without question that there were nine planets in the solar system. There was no question about it, no doubts, no questions in school. That was THE truth.
Now as Stephen Jay Gould said (and I knew his cousin, but that does not apply here ... just to say), the New York City school system taught without question (I know that for a fact) that the embryo went through every stage of evolution in the womb. And the students had to memorize the name of his theory, which is: ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Gould didn't make things up about that. But you keep applauding Haeckel in your responses. I am only speaking of what is truth as scientific taught by the powers that be, and what is not truth. I have nothing against Haeckel in particular, and who knows? He may be delighted to know it was not true. Yes, I believe time will tell.

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The way that you react to changing definitions is how a literalist would react. For example when you asked how many planets existed. Only a literalist would tend to mind that the definition of "planet" had improved. And you may have had a bad teacher when it came to Haeckel's drawings. Unless you are terribly old that teacher had no excuse for teaching as he did or perhaps you merely misunderstood. I was not there so I cannot say, but you do seem to have a hard time picking up new ideas at times. You were corrected at least ten times on your question about embryos by several posters here. That is one of the reasons I quit responding to that question.

Right now it looks to me as if you did not learn properly more than being taught improperly. You tend to have a bit of an attitude and have trouble saying "Oops, I screwed up".

YoursTrue said:

There are those who believe in the Bible and are scientists as well. My entire position on this subject now--I was not always a believer in God--is that God created the heavens and the earth. Does that mean to me that He created two-headed snakes? No. Does He allow mutations? Yes. And that's where I stop right now. So if you call that a literalist, I guess that's your position about me. ;-/

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Very few scientists believe the Bible literally and that belief hurts their ability to do work. There are no serious creationist papers on biology for example. Not because of a bias in the scientific community but rather because those scientists appear to know that they are wrong. In biology there are only a handful of people that believe the creation myths. Yet there are biologists that are Christians. They simply do not believe the myths of Genesis.

Also if you truly understood the Garden of Eden myth you would see that it paints God as incompetent and evil. Why would you even want to believe that about your God? Look at it without bias. Your God made Adam and Eve without a sense of right and wrong. The tree that they ate from was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Read the myth again. They did not know that they did wrong until after they ate from the tree. One cannot be blamed for disobeying before someone understands what right and wrong is. So your God designed Adam and Eve with a design flaw. If they took the fix for the design flaw, eating from the tree of knowledge, he promised to kill them. In short God, who is supposedly all knowing, screwed up in his creation and then blamed and punished his creation for his mistakes. That is not good theology.

YoursTrue said:

Because I believe that there is a Creator who began life on this earth, including the different life-forms. Not all life-forms, but I'm not able to discuss that in depth right now. I don't believe life came about by itself.

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The why did he make it look exactly as if they evolved and leave no evidence at all for his work?

Why should we care what the Bible has to say about it?

YoursTrue said:

Schoolchildren and adults alike were taught that there were NINE PLANETS in the solar system just a few years ago. That was TRUTH for them. Now it's not truth, is it? Or is it? I'd love to hear your explanation about this.

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Pluto is still there, it hasn't disappeared or anything. It's not made up. It's just classifed as a dwarf planet now.

So?

YoursTrue said:

So you refuse to answer if the human embryo is always human or does it pass through related but nonhuman stages? I detect from the image you posted that you believe yes, it passes through earlier nonhuman stages until it reaches full human stage.

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You seem to have missed Dan From Smithville's post:

"it would always be a human embryo. Similarities that it shares with other species wouldn't change that. It bears similarities to embryos from other animal classes. It doesn't become those other organisms in some cascade of fantastical and unclaimed leaps through the animal kingdom. At the beginning of it's existence, it is a single cell, but it a human cell and not bacteria even though both are one-celled."

There's your answer. Now you can move on.

SkepticThinker said:

You seem to have missed Dan From Smithville's post:

"it would always be a human embryo. Similarities that it shares with other species wouldn't change that. It bears similarities to embryos from other animal classes. It doesn't become those other organisms in some cascade of fantastical and unclaimed leaps through the animal kingdom. At the beginning of it's existence, it is a single cell, but it a human cell and not bacteria even though both are one-celled."

There's your answer. Now you can move on.

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He really seems to be bother by the fact that embryos, and even Haeckel's drawings are still evidence for evolution. He is having trouble separating the fact that because Haeckel's recapitulation has been refuted and therefore his drawings are no longer evidence for recapitulation, that does not mean that the traits he shows do not exist and that does not mean that those observable traits, such as pharyngeal arches, are not evidence for evolution.

YoursTrue said:

I agree that ideas and facts change. But there are so many things which have been taught as unfailing, unflagging truth and then these same things are changed when, let's say, it's found that Pluto is NOT a planet. But we are really speaking of evolution here, and/or scientific posits, conjectures, and discoveries.

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Excuse me, but I wasn’t the one who brought up Pluto’s status or the Big Bang in this thread.

I have lost track of who said what in this thread because it is moving faster than I keep up, but correct me if I am wrong, wasn’t it you who brought up Pluto first?

If it was you, but you don’t want to discuss Pluto with me, then why did you bring this up in the first place.

In any case, whether we argue over Pluto or over Evolution, my points will still remain the same, because it is relevant to Evolution.

Charles Darwin, as well as his contemporary, Alfred Russel Wallace, have both done their fieldwork. Darwin in South America, South Africa and Australia, and Wallace in the Amazon and the Malay Archipelago, have both come up with the theory of Natural Selection, one of the mechanisms of Evolution.

They have both observed the wildlife and plant life in respective regions, and both tried to explain the diversity of life, due to times and places, can have impacts on how we understand biology.

The problems with creationism, is that scriptures (eg the Bible’s Genesis) never explain how life works, nothing about anatomy or physiology or genetics. It never explained what “kinds” are, and the “God did it” isn’t an explanation, let alone answer.

So for the life of me, I cannot understand why creationists go to great length in denying how biodiversity work, or resort to misinformation or outright lying just to prove creationism or to debunk evolutionary mechanisms?

Polymath257 said:

It isn't ultimately a question of whether 'God supersedes them all'. It is a question about whether the particular statement you believe about God supersede the evidence that science has collected. In other words, why should anyone think your interpretation of what God said or did is valid?

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On that point, if you read the Bible, you will see that many of those involved one way or another did not believe in God. So it's an interesting take you bring up on that point. Certainly many do not agree in any case in their biblical interpretations. But when examining nature with how it came about, evolution seems evident to you, and a Creator causing life to exist is a better explanation for me.

gnostic said:

Excuse me, but I wasn’t the one who brought up Pluto’s status or the Big Bang in this thread.

I have lost track of who said what in this thread because it is moving faster than I keep up, but correct me if I am wrong, wasn’t it you who brought up Pluto first?

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Yes, probably. I did so because of the scientific truth taught at a point and then changing when further information is determined.

gnostic said:

If it was you, but you don’t want to discuss Pluto with me, then why did you bring this up in the first place.

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I brought it up because of the changes taught as truth. Pupils are generally not taught that scientific truth changes based on evidence. And you have a valid point in that biblical thoughts and ideas can be contested by some. It is, I guess, what strikes the person. Or...what a person has been taught.

gnostic said:

Charles Darwin, as well as his contemporary, Alfred Russel Wallace, have both done their fieldwork. Darwin in South America, South Africa and Australia, and Wallace in the Amazon and the Malay Archipelago, have both come up with the theory of Natural Selection, one of the mechanisms of Evolution.

They have both observed the wildlife and plant life in respective regions, and both tried to explain the diversity of life, due to times and places, can have impacts on how we understand biology.

The problems with creationism, is that scriptures (eg the Bible’s Genesis) never explain how life works, nothing about anatomy or physiology or genetics. It never explained what “kinds” are, and the “God did it” isn’t an explanation, let alone answer.

So for the life of me, I cannot understand why creationists go to great length in denying how biodiversity work, or resort to misinformation or outright lying just to prove creationism or to debunk evolutionary mechanisms?

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As far as explaining the details as to how God did it is not why the Bible was written. Scientists can offer an explanation as to how it was done to a degree, even though at this point the explanation no longer makes sense to me, since the only observable things are fossils and the idea generally taught that one lifeform mysteriously morphed slowly into another, since there are no specimens living or dead showing the actual biological movement of the cells and changing dna selection. What is considered as evidence is determined from fossils and then saying it seems related by DNA or physical similarity to something else which is said to be related by evolutionary development.

YoursTrue said:

Yes, probably. I did so because of the scientific truth taught at a point and then changing when further information is determined.


I brought it up because of the changes taught as truth. Pupils are generally not taught that scientific truth changes based on evidence. And you have a valid point in that biblical thoughts and ideas can be contested by some. It is, I guess, what strikes the person. Or...what a person has been taught.


As far as explaining the details as to how God did it is not why the Bible was written. Scientists can offer an explanation as to how it was done to a degree, even though at this point the explanation no longer makes sense to me, since the only observable things are fossils and the idea generally taught that one lifeform mysteriously morphed slowly into another, since there are no specimens living or dead showing the actual biological movement of the cells and changing dna selection. What is considered as evidence is determined from fossils and then saying it seems related by DNA or physical similarity to something else which is said to be related by evolutionary development.

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We can observe so much more than fossils. And even the fossils tell only one tale. It is not a matter of "believing" you are trying to avoid learning since you seem to know that learning would show your beliefs to be wrong.

YoursTrue said:

Because I believe that there is a Creator who began life on this earth, including the different life-forms. Not all life-forms, but I'm not able to discuss that in depth right now. I don't believe life came about by itself.

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So your "reason" for not believing the findings of science, is because you "already believe something else"?


Also: you completely changed the subject here. Your statement was that you don't believe that "the similarities are due to evolution". Meaning, you spoke of shared traits between different species. Ie, the origins of diversity and shared traits. That's a different subject then the origins of life itself.

Having said that, when your reason to not accept Y is "I already believe Z", then your reason is invalid.
This means that you will never be able to correct your false beliefs if you should hold such. Because every time when you learn something new by correcting a false belief, you are replacing one belief with another.

But if the beliefs that you already hold always takes precedence over new explanations - purely by virtue of you already believing something else, then correcting false beliefs becomes impossible.

if what you "already believe" takes priority merely because you "already believe it", then you'll be stuck with a false belief, if that belief is false, due to irrational reasoning.

See, this is the problem with dogma...

YoursTrue said:

There are those who believe in the Bible and are scientists as well.

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And when their scientific study of reality disagrees with their biblical beliefs, they don't assume that reality is incorrect.

My entire position on this subject now--I was not always a believer in God--is that God created the heavens and the earth.

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Right, because that's what the bible says and you believe the bible and "that settles it".
Just like in your answer in the previous post.... The reason you don't accept the findings of science has nothing to do with rational reasoning or evidence. The actual reason, as per your very own admission, is merely because you already believe something else: the bible, and that "settles it" for you.

Does that mean to me that He created two-headed snakes? No. Does He allow mutations? Yes. And that's where I stop right now. So if you call that a literalist, I guess that's your position about me. ;-/

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If you are going to argue against solid established science like evolutionary biology due to what you read in your bible, I can't conclude you being anything other then a literalist.

I'm sure you believe in the physically impossible biblical flood as well. And a literal adam and eve, who in your worldview were the 2 only (created) humans at some point in history.

Likely, you also believe that at some point in history, the sun "stood still in the sky" for a couple days as well.

Amirite?

All these things are scientifically demonstrably impossible.
But you don't mind, right? You can invoke god-magic for all these impossible things to become possible, because nothing is impossible if you allow for magic.

After all: the bible says it and that settles it, right?

Subduction Zone said:

Also if you truly understood the Garden of Eden myth you would see that it paints God as incompetent and evil. Why would you even want to believe that about your God? Look at it without bias. Your God made Adam and Eve without a sense of right and wrong. The tree that they ate from was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Read the myth again. They did not know that they did wrong until after they ate from the tree. One cannot be blamed for disobeying before someone understands what right and wrong is. So your God designed Adam and Eve with a design flaw. If they took the fix for the design flaw, eating from the tree of knowledge, he promised to kill them. In short God, who is supposedly all knowing, screwed up in his creation and then blamed and punished his creation for his mistakes. That is not good theology.

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Or as The Hitch once put is so elegantly: Created sick and commanded to be well.

SkepticThinker said:

Pluto is still there, it hasn't disappeared or anything. It's not made up. It's just classifed as a dwarf planet now.

So?

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Gotta love the memes though

YoursTrue said:

On that point, if you read the Bible, you will see that many of those involved one way or another did not believe in God. So it's an interesting take you bring up on that point. Certainly many do not agree in any case in their biblical interpretations. But when examining nature with how it came about, evolution seems evident to you, and a Creator causing life to exist is a better explanation for me.

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How many times must it be pointed out to you that evolution theory doesn't address the origins of life itself, before it will sink in?

Eventhough your "god created life" is obviously just a religious belief with no evidence, it's actually compatible with evolution, because it addresses a different scope.

Your creation myth addresses the origins of life. Evolution addresses the development of life over generations.

If tomorrow we find out that the creation of life was a supernatural act by some deity, evolution theory would remain unchanged and as valid as ever.

Having said that, what you are refering to as an "explanation", is -off course- not an explanation at all.
The origins of life are presently a mystery, and you can't explain a mystery by appealing to an even greater mystery.

YoursTrue said:

Yes, probably. I did so because of the scientific truth taught at a point and then changing when further information is determined.

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It's called progress and learning. It's a good thing.

I brought it up because of the changes taught as truth. Pupils are generally not taught that scientific truth changes based on evidence

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Your school must have been terrible. One of the very first things we learned about science, is that research is always ongoing and new discoveries are made every day - which can and will trigger us to re-evaluate that which we thought we understood and knew.

It was even clarified by several examples, like how we first considered geocentrism and then new data made us re-evaluate into heliocentrism. How we went from a static universe to an expanding one. How Einstein corrected / further refined Newtonian gravity. Etc.

It was made clear right from the start that science is always tentative / provisional.

As far as explaining the details as to how God did it is not why the Bible was written. Scientists can offer an explanation as to how it was done to a degree, even though at this point the explanation no longer makes sense to me, since the only observable things are fossils and the idea generally taught that one lifeform mysteriously morphed slowly into another

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If that is what you think to be the "only" evidence (a few fossils and an idea) and the entirety of what constitutes evolutionary science... no wonder you're having problems accepting it.

It might be a good idea for you to actually inform yourself a wee bit on modern evolutionary biology and genetics, and how we know the things that we know.

Because ironically... fossils are among the weakest of evidence for evolution theory. Don't get me wrong, the fossil record is very good evidence. It's just that in the big scheme of things, evidence from genetics is far far more conclusive. And the biggest one of them all, is when we take all the independent lines of evidence (comparative anatomy, genetics, fossils, geographic distribution,...) and put them side by side and observe ALL of them converge on the exact same answer.

That's when you know that you have an extremely solid theory: when multiple independent lines of evidence, ALL, without exception, converge on the exact same answer.

, since there are no specimens living or dead showing the actual biological movement of the cells and changing dna selection.

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Except for every single breeding / agricultural program on the planet.
Not to mention observed instances of speciation, both in the lab as well as in the wild. In lab cases, key mutations are also identified in specific generations. They'll also typically keep reference samples from specific generations. That's how they can go back and see if a specific genetic sequence was also present in previous generations.

It's clear that you are extremely ill-informed about all of this.

Doesn't it bother you that you so actively try to argue against a scientific subject that you clearly know next to nothing about? How do you think this makes you look?

You sound like someone who's arguing against gravity by pointing out how hammers keep floating and thus don't fall down inside the international space station.

What is considered as evidence is determined from fossils

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No, it isn't.

and then saying it seems related by DNA or physical similarity to something else which is said to be related by evolutionary development.

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Relationships infered from DNA comparisions, are pretty factual.
It's how we can tell your biological sibling from an adopted sibling.