Evidence For And Against Evolution

gnostic · Jan 2, 2020

leroy said:
If you ask me where do this natural mechanisms come from, I would say God, but that would be a completely different and independent issue

If you ask me why the God of the Bible and not Thor, I would say that there are arguments in support of the God of the Bible that would exclude Thor as a possibility.... But this would also be a different and independent issue.

That’s what is called superstition, no matter if you say thunder and lightning were caused by Zeus, Thor, Teshub, Indra, Susanoo, or any names, epithets or titles of the Abrahamic deity (eg Yahweh/Jehovah, Elohim, Allah, Almighty, Creator, Father, etc). They all superstitions.

“Job 38:25” said:
25 “Who has cut a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a way for the thunderbolt,

“Job 38:35” said:
35 Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go
and say to you, ‘Here we are’?

“Job 38:” said:
Have you an arm like God,
and can you thunder with a voice like his?

All I see in Job, is a petty and boastful god, sprouting nonsensical superstitions about his powers.

Did god really say all he said in Job 38 to 41, or is the author portraying god as petty tyrant?

randix · Jan 2, 2020

I believe a god exists, although not as characterized by the various religions. However, I believe that virtually all creation stories including the two somewhat conflicting ones in the Bible are just mythical or highly imaginative tales, created by people who simply did not know and didn't have or understand the evidence. Things have come a long way. Evolution and diversification of life over time is a well-established and very-well-supported fact.

All land animals evolved from sea creatures (fish to flat-headed coastal tetrapods such as Tiktaalik which had both gills and lungs). The progression is now well documented with new discoveries from about 2000 to the present.

"Your Inner Fish," a book by paleobiologist Neil Shubin and video series hosted by him, is a great place to start with this subject and includes fascinating information, technical enough but also very accessible and interesting to an average non-scientific viewer.

I don't see any reason why an "intelligent designer" could not have created the conditions for life to develop from purely physical processes and continue to develop and diversify by means of evolution.

Dan From Smithville · Jan 2, 2020

leroy said:
Meaningful to anyone, the only condition is that it has to be an independently given pattern.

If you invent your own language today and tomorrow we find a book written in that language the text would be:

1 Complex: many letters

2 specified: with meaning, or function

(where most combinations of letters would produce a meaningless text)

In the context of life, the first self replicating molecule would be

1 complex : with many aminoacids

2 specified: with a meaning or function, (in this case the fuction of self replication)

(where most possible combinations of aminoácids would not produce that) function)

Therefore both the book and the self replicating molecule came from a mind because both have the attribute of specified complexity

The argument would be
1Specified complexity can only come from a mind
2 self replicating molecules have the attribute of specified complexity

Therefore self replicating molecules came from a mind

Each of the premises is testable and falsifiable and could be explored via the scientific method.

So this my positive argument for ID

Would you provide a positive case for natural abiogebesis? Show your premises

How are they testable? Set it up for us. Use nylonase as an example. With average life expectancies what they are these days, you have roughly 25 years to dodge it before my demise.

Polymath257 · Jan 2, 2020

gnostic said:
All I see in Job, is a petty and boastful god, sprouting nonsensical superstitions about his powers.

Actually, a pretty standard Canaanite storm deity. But yes, superstitions.

Did god really say all he said in Job 38 to 41, or is the author portraying god as petty tyrant?

I've never understood how anyone sees the deity in Job as anything but a malicious tyrant. he makes series of bets with the Devil. That allows a faithful servant to be tortured and humiliated. Then, when that servant questions why, that deity comes out with full-on fury about being asked to justify himself.

And yes, if a piece of pottery had consciousness, it *should* be able to ask the potter why it is treated poorly.

gnostic · Jan 2, 2020

Landon Caeli said:
With scale free, bifurcating systems, reductionist math fails and becomes useless. This is how our body codes for random useful mutations -in a way that cannot be mathematically calculated.

Chaos exists in nature. And life is adaptable to it.

Maths are merely part of explanation in a scientific theory or falsifiable hypothesis, as a form of statements that are useful in science, logically expressed with numbers, variables, constants.

But they are part of explanation, they are not themselves tests or evidence.

It is evidence that can independently test, verify or refute a hypothesis or scientific theory, not the maths. It is the evidence that determine if the hypothesis or theory to be true or false, to be scientific or not scientific.

It is the evidence that either support the explanation and maths, or debunk/refute the explanation and maths.

Don’t get me wrong, Landon, maths can provide some proposed solutions to the problem and they are useful tools that can provide insight into understanding nature, but they are not by themselves solutions.

Maths, is only providing a logical tool, so the solution is abstract representation of the real world, and since logic is man-made, then their logic or maths can be wrong.

If you want real world solutions, then if you were a scientist, then as a scientist, you need evidence - empirical and verifiable evidence - not merely maths.

Dan From Smithville · Jan 2, 2020

leroy said:
You completely missed my point, the point that I made is that the diversity of life could be explained by completely natural mechanisms, am simply suggesting that the darwinian mechanism (random variation +natural selection) is not the only nor the most importan mechanism

Particularly, I am suggesting natural mechanisms such as NGE that produce fast, big and non random changes in the genome.

If you ask me where do this natural mechanisms come from, I would say God, but that would be a completely different and independent issue

If you ask me why the God of the Bible and not Thor, I would say that there are arguments in support of the God of the Bible that would exclude Thor as a possibility.... But this would also be a different and independent issue.

It is simple. We can believe in God, but there is no way to objectively demonstrate the existence of non-existent of any god. People can, based on a body of evidence and reasoning, determine subjectively they have no reason to believe. But knowing that a god exists or does not is an impossibility.

I would bet that your reasons for believing are much as mine, it is faith-based and there may be some subjective reason(s) that you cannot demonstrate. Probably the biggest factor is because you were raised in that culture.

Jim · Jan 2, 2020

leroy said:
Google the article, there are free pdf versions of the complete article that show the math.

leroy, I hope it’s okay for me to come into this conversation with you without reading all the previous posts. I might have asked you once before about your interests in this discussion and you might have answered. Someone said that they were trying to understand how some people are thinking. Is that what you’re doing? It looks a little bit to me like repeatedly poking an anthill to see what the ants will do. If you’ve learned anything from this discussion, I’d be interested in what you’ve learned. From responses to the questions that I’ve asked about people’s science beliefs, it looks to me like mostly virtue signaling, and people defending literal interpretations of the models and metaphors that are used in the sciences. All that might be partly to validate their animosities and hostilities across belief lines.

gnostic · Jan 2, 2020

Dan From Smithville said:
It is simple. We can believe in God, but there is no way to objectively demonstrate the existence of non-existent of any god. People can, based on a body of evidence and reasoning, determine subjectively they have no reason to believe. But knowing that a god exists or does not is an impossibility.

I would bet that your reasons for believing are much as mine, it is faith-based and there may be some subjective reason(s) that you cannot demonstrate. Probably the biggest factor is because you were raised in that culture.

For years, I used to believe in the Bible without question, including the Genesis creation and flood narratives. From the time my sister joined her church and given me my first bible to read, when I was 14 or 15, to when i was 34 in 2000.

During that time, I never thought of comparing science or history/archaeology with the Bible.

But it wasn’t history or science that first made me change my view, when I was 34.

2000 was my 2nd year building my website Timeless Myths, and I was doing research on Joseph of Arimathea, for my grail pages, that I re-read the gospels that I noticed the discrepancies that I didn’t see earlier, in the story of Jesus’ birth, particularly the gospel’s quote of Isaiah’s sign, Immanuel.

When I first read the Bible, from cover to cover, I didn’t know the gospel has taken Isaiah’s sign out of context. Perhaps because when I was younger and less experienced in scholarship, I did not bother to check the two passages, taking both of them at face value.

My experiences as civil engineer taught me a valuable lesson in science. Example, test and re-test, alway double-check, triple-check, and if you have check some more. And when I began my website (Timeless Myths), I have to check my sources.

And that’s what I did in 2000, check the source of the Gospel’s Immanuel, and re-read the entire chapter 7 of Isaiah.

Re-reading both passages together, just made think more clearly, coming to realisation that the Bible isn’t perfect. And the gospels quoted other passages from OT, that I found more Christian interpretations that don’t match with original contexts of OT scriptures.

That was the start of questioning the Bible, and the start of my road to agnosticism. And my agnosticism had nothing to do with science or history, not back then.

I only began questioning Genesis creation several years later, when I joined my first forum (Free2Code) in 2003, when I read for the first time, the debate between creationism and evolution.

I was absolutely clueless about Evolution, because my biology education stopped at Year 9 in high school, because the following years I chose to maths, chemistry and physics, and after high school, i did civil engineering course, which doesn’t require biology.

And though I had believe in Genesis creation, I was also clueless about “creationism”, and the people who called themselves “creationists”.

So I began to research on both subjects, Evolution and Creationism. Only then, that I finally looked at science, history and archaeology and compare it against the Genesis narrative.

Despite that I find the creation and flood of Genesis to be myths, they are still my favourite parts out of the whole Bible. My disagreement isn’t with the narratives themselves, but with creationists attempting to turn Genesis into science.

Subduction Zone · Jan 2, 2020

Dan From Smithville said:
It is simple. We can believe in God, but there is no way to objectively demonstrate the existence of non-existent of any god. People can, based on a body of evidence and reasoning, determine subjectively they have no reason to believe. But knowing that a god exists or does not is an impossibility.

I would bet that your reasons for believing are much as mine, it is faith-based and there may be some subjective reason(s) that you cannot demonstrate. Probably the biggest factor is because you were raised in that culture.

Or to put it in another way. Science does not refute God. What science does is to tell us if God exists how he made the Earth. One runs into problems as a theist when one begins to try to tell God how he had to create the Earth. Whether it is a slight case like @leroy 's or an extreme case as we see in Bible literalists. Telling God how he had to make the Earth always smacked of blasphemy to me.

gnostic · Jan 3, 2020

I wish to add to my last post, that between 15 and 34, I was more inclined to accept Christian or church teachings relating to the entire Bible, therefore interpreting the scriptures through Christian lenses .

But since 2000, and since the Old Testament (Tanakh) wasn’t originally intended for Christian readers, I have tried to look at the Hebrew scriptures through Jewish lenses (or Jewish interpretations).

Now, it might not mean much to any Jew, but lot of things that I didn’t understand before because I was using Christian interpretations, everything (well, not everything) began to fall into place, once I have tried to see it from a Jew’s perspective, thereby giving me a better understanding of the scriptures.

Of course, I won’t insult any Jew to say that I am Jewish now, but I do appreciate now that Jews can provide information about the Tanakh/OT, that cannot be found from a Christian perspective.

Dan From Smithville · Jan 3, 2020

gnostic said:
For years, I used to believe in the Bible without question, including the Genesis creation and flood narratives. From the time my sister joined her church and given me my first bible to read, when I was 14 or 15, to when i was 34 in 2000.

During that time, I never thought of comparing science or history/archaeology with the Bible.

But it wasn’t history or science that first made me change my view, when I was 34.

2000 was my 2nd year building my website Timeless Myths, and I was doing research on Joseph of Arimathea, for my grail pages, that I re-read the gospels that I noticed the discrepancies that I didn’t see earlier, in the story of Jesus’ birth, particularly the gospel’s quote of Isaiah’s sign, Immanuel.

When I first read the Bible, from cover to cover, I didn’t know the gospel has taken Isaiah’s sign out of context. Perhaps because when I was younger and less experienced in scholarship, I did not bother to check the two passages, taking both of them at face value.

My experiences as civil engineer taught me a valuable lesson in science. Example, test and re-test, alway double-check, triple-check, and if you have check some more. And when I began my website (Timeless Myths), I have to check my sources.

And that’s what I did in 2000, check the source of the Gospel’s Immanuel, and re-read the entire chapter 7 of Isaiah.

Re-reading both passages together, just made think more clearly, coming to realisation that the Bible isn’t perfect. And the gospels quoted other passages from OT, that I found more Christian interpretations that don’t match with original contexts of OT scriptures.

That was the start of questioning the Bible, and the start of my road to agnosticism. And my agnosticism had nothing to do with science or history, not back then.

I only began questioning Genesis creation several years later, when I joined my first forum (Free2Code) in 2003, when I read for the first time, the debate between creationism and evolution.

I was absolutely clueless about Evolution, because my biology education stopped at Year 9 in high school, because the following years I chose to maths, chemistry and physics, and after high school, i did civil engineering course, which doesn’t require biology.

And though I had believe in Genesis creation, I was also clueless about “creationism”, and the people who called themselves “creationists”.

So I began to research on both subjects, Evolution and Creationism. Only then, that I finally looked at science, history and archaeology and compare it against the Genesis narrative.

Despite that I find the creation and flood of Genesis to be myths, they are still my favourite parts out of the whole Bible. My disagreement isn’t with the narratives themselves, but with creationists attempting to turn Genesis into science.

I began questioning the veracity of some of the biblical mythology when I was about 10. My questions were awkward for some of the adults in church, eventually, I learned to stop asking them and saved them for my parents and my own reading. I like those stories of Genesis too, but they are clearly mythology and belief in God doesn't require they be considered more than myth. That is a demand of people that requires that you either treat the Bible as an idol or reality as a lie. Neither fits Christian values in my opinion, but obviously that is not the opinion of creationists.

Personally, I don't care what a person believes if it doesn't create problems when discussing history or science. But I find it is far easier to discuss those topics with agnostics and atheists. With a few exceptions the discussions are rational and based on evidence. My religion is purely faith-based. It is not so weak to rely on deification of the Bible or ignoring reality. I do not feel threatened by the contradictions in the Bible, since I have not artificially elevated it and need to pretend they don't exist. Fortunately, there are many wise Christians and members of other religions that have mature understanding of their own views and are not threatened by science. In my personal view of belief, I would not have been gifted with the intelligence I have if it were intended that I ignore what I can see for myself.

Samantha Rinne · Jan 3, 2020

Perhaps I'm weird, but I'ma bigger fan of Lamarck's theories, than those of Darwin.

The thing is, Darwin's oft-quoted "survival of the fittest" imagines this sort of antagonistic struggle. The thing is, it doesn't pan out.

1. Cooperation, and not conflict, is the real foundation for survival. If there is a struggle for survival, people tend to be trying to get rid of each other because they see others as rivals. Sound familiar? What about Nazi mentality? Or eugenics experiments?
2. Any attempts to show altruism (that is, putting aside one's own life for the survival of the group) have been in vain. Supposedly lemmings jump off cliffs, but this turned out to be a wive's tale based on a faked Disney movie, where they actually pushed them off. No joke.
3. For another thing, some of those who survive are clearly not the fittest. Obese people get to stay alive and drink beer, while our fittest? They go to war to be killed. Lest you think this is humans only, the biggest fish tend to be caught, while the weakest and smallest tend to survive.
4. On the other hand both environmental adaptations and natural aptitude seem to be real things.

YoursTrue · Jan 3, 2020

ecco said:
Why do you care what science believes and doesn't believe or what scientists do or do not agree with each other about?

You think they are all wrong because they disagree with your bible.

I am not exactly sure of what you call scientists. Because there are some that believe in God. The theory of evolution is not correct, even if they say it's based on evidence (which is really not there, otherwise there would not be continual changes of thought and direction among them). What is there are fossils and dating criteria to some extent. This does not mean that evolution is true in the main respect. Or that God did not have a hand in the matter. You may say evolution can be verified, proved, ascertained, however you want to say it, but I believe there is no real evidence proving the assertion that it came about by chemical reaction without someone behind it. Because there is no real evidence that life came about (and by life I mean evolution) without a divine force. Again -- this does not mean that mutations causing deformities were made by God via evolution or God period.

YoursTrue · Jan 3, 2020

Samantha Rinne said:
Perhaps I'm weird, but I'ma bigger fan of Lamarck's theories, than those of Darwin.

The thing is, Darwin's oft-quoted "survival of the fittest" imagines this sort of antagonistic struggle. The thing is, it doesn't pan out.

1. Cooperation, and not conflict, is the real foundation for survival. If there is a struggle for survival, people tend to be trying to get rid of each other because they see others as rivals. Sound familiar? What about Nazi mentality? Or eugenics experiments?
2. Any attempts to show altruism (that is, putting aside one's own life for the survival of the group) have been in vain. Supposedly lemmings jump off cliffs, but this turned out to be a wive's tale based on a faked Disney movie, where they actually pushed them off. No joke.
3. For another thing, some of those who survive are clearly not the fittest. Obese people get to stay alive and drink beer, while our fittest? They go to war to be killed. Lest you think this is humans only, the biggest fish tend to be caught, while the weakest and smallest tend to survive.
4. On the other hand both environmental adaptations and natural aptitude seem to be real things.

Oh, wow, I've been talking about eugenics in relation to Darwin's theory for some time now, thanks for bringing it up again. It's a sad story. Be prepared for denials and excuses. (Thanks for being here.)

YoursTrue · Jan 3, 2020

ecco said:
That would have been me.

I believe it was also Skwim (sp?).

YoursTrue · Jan 3, 2020

ecco said:
It may be unfathomable to your mind, but you are wrong when you say it is unfathomable to the minds of scientists.

It is unfathomable to your mind because you "do take it at its word -- that God made Adam from the dust, and Eve from Adam's rib".

Yes, you are. The reason you must turn off the lights is what you stated above: "I do take it at its word -- that God made Adam from the dust, and Eve from Adam's rib". No one can hold two diametrically opposed beliefs. You choose to believe in the bible, therefore you must disbelieve those portions of science that conflict with the bible.

We all know this. That's the main reason that you arguments against science ring hollow.

Again -- let's say evolution is true for the sake of discussion. So 'scientists' say that "life" (yes, I know abiogenesis is not evolution) may have emerged from water, isn't that right? But they don't know and would you say there is evidence that is true? It's about the same evidence there is with the so-called first emergence from non-living water/matter/whatever of a "unicell." No, I am not against science. I go to doctors who are trained in research, trial and error, even though they can and do make mistakes and also change opinions from time to time. That's just one example. I also like to listen to music on my computer sometimes. A result of science.
So you don't really know if life came from the soil or water or something flew in from outer space. Do you?

Skwim · Jan 3, 2020

YoursTrue said:
I believe it was also Skwim (sp?).

I did. Post 3022.

.

McBell · Jan 3, 2020

Samantha Rinne said:
Perhaps I'm weird, but I'ma bigger fan of Lamarck's theories, than those of Darwin.

The thing is, Darwin's oft-quoted "survival of the fittest" imagines this sort of antagonistic struggle. The thing is, it doesn't pan out.

1. Cooperation, and not conflict, is the real foundation for survival. If there is a struggle for survival, people tend to be trying to get rid of each other because they see others as rivals. Sound familiar? What about Nazi mentality? Or eugenics experiments?
2. Any attempts to show altruism (that is, putting aside one's own life for the survival of the group) have been in vain. Supposedly lemmings jump off cliffs, but this turned out to be a wive's tale based on a faked Disney movie, where they actually pushed them off. No joke.
3. For another thing, some of those who survive are clearly not the fittest. Obese people get to stay alive and drink beer, while our fittest? They go to war to be killed. Lest you think this is humans only, the biggest fish tend to be caught, while the weakest and smallest tend to survive.
4. On the other hand both environmental adaptations and natural aptitude seem to be real things.

"Survival of The Fittest" is misleading because it implies at first glance that organisms who are physically stronger are better at topping the competition. ... Generally speaking, “survival of the fittest” actually means that the organism fitting most into its environment will survive better than others.

Dan From Smithville · Jan 3, 2020

Samantha Rinne said:
Perhaps I'm weird, but I'ma bigger fan of Lamarck's theories, than those of Darwin.

On what basis? What other theories besides a theory of evolution did he have?

Other than the recent discovery of epigenetics, which regards the packaging of DNA in the chromosomes, the general claim of Lamarck has been refuted. If you cut off the tails of mice, their offspring are not born without tails.

Samantha Rinne said:
The thing is, Darwin's oft-quoted "survival of the fittest" imagines this sort of antagonistic struggle. The thing is, it doesn't pan out.

This is a phrase coined by the economist Herbert Spencer and does not capture the modern understanding of fitness. It is not used by modern biologists much or at all, since it is a poor analogy.

Fitness is a measure of reproductive success and not physical condition or prowess in combat, though those traits may impact it.

Samantha Rinne said:
1. Cooperation, and not conflict, is the real foundation for survival. If there is a struggle for survival, people tend to be trying to get rid of each other because they see others as rivals. Sound familiar? What about Nazi mentality? Or eugenics experiments?

Please. How long before this old canard is finally put to rest? The abuse of knowledge reflects on the abuser and not on the abused knowledge.

Natural selection involve both cooperation and conflict. Any factor that impacts fitness has the ability to select. It can be negative or positive.

You are wasting your time trying to blame Nazi Germany or misguided attempts to artificially select people on the theory of evolution. Attempts to blame either on the science have been widely refuted.

Samantha Rinne said:
2. Any attempts to show altruism (that is, putting aside one's own life for the survival of the group) have been in vain. Supposedly lemmings jump off cliffs, but this turned out to be a wive's tale based on a faked Disney movie, where they actually pushed them off. No joke.

What does a myth about lemmings perpetuated by Disney have to do with the theory of evolution? This is just silly noise.

Samantha Rinne said:
3. For another thing, some of those who survive are clearly not the fittest. Obese people get to stay alive and drink beer, while our fittest? They go to war to be killed. Lest you think this is humans only, the biggest fish tend to be caught, while the weakest and smallest tend to survive.

More silly noise. You clearly do not understand selection or fitness. Members of a population with different fitness can still reproduce. Those with greater fitness reproduce at a higher average rate that eventually outdoes those lines with lesser fitness.

Do all obese people drink beer? Not that this poor analogy is of much value here.

So, human activities negate or alter selection. This is not news. Random events outside of the scope of the theory do not refute it. We and our behaviors are also selection pressures impacting our own fitness. It is a theory about biology and change in populations and not the cause or answer to everything. Your objections are ridiculous.of

Samantha Rinne said:
4. On the other hand both environmental adaptations and natural aptitude seem to be real things.

You are refuting your own claims. Adaptations that are heritable and selected by the environment are evolution by natural selection. It is unclear what you mean by natural aptitude or where you are hoping with it in this context. A person born with traits that make them a gifted athlete will pass those traits on if the impart a reproductive advantage. The theory explaining that is not falsified if that person is killed in some random event while out running.

Dan From Smithville · Jan 3, 2020

YoursTrue said:
I am not exactly sure of what you call scientists. Because there are some that believe in God. The theory of evolution is not correct, even if they say it's based on evidence (which is really not there, otherwise there would not be continual changes of thought and direction among them). What is there are fossils and dating criteria to some extent. This does not mean that evolution is true in the main respect. Or that God did not have a hand in the matter. You may say evolution can be verified, proved, ascertained, however you want to say it, but I believe there is no real evidence proving the assertion that it came about by chemical reaction without someone behind it. Because there is no real evidence that life came about (and by life I mean evolution) without a divine force. Again -- this does not mean that mutations causing deformities were made by God via evolution or God period.

The theory of evolution is based on evidence that exists. To claim otherwise is denial without cause. Arguments over evolution by scientists is over details and that some are claiming it does not occur. I thought you studied this stuff.

Are you claiming that life always existed? You will have to explain the paucity of any evidence for life in strata over a certain age to give that claim any legs.

All I see here is wishy washy, back and forth, partial acceptance and complete denial. Pick a lane.

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