Evidence For And Against Evolution

[Audie]

So the big dominant land creatures you say made a stab at re-evolving. But I guess they just didn't make it all the way to the big dinosaurs that were before that extinction.

Here's a question for you, really for SubductionZone as well, since it was brought up in another post. And, of course, horrible is in the eyes of the beholder then, is it not? Because many supported the Nazi death camps and Hitler, and many support other forms of cruelty beyond that. Some would say that cruelty is ok. Bad is good, and good is bad, some might say. So maybe one thinks there is no such thing as good or bad, that it's subjective, completely.
But then for SZ (and you if you wish to consider it), while some animals can be trained to be vicious and cruel to each other, such as dogs and roosters, others are simply fearsome (alligators come to mind). So here is the question: how does evolution affect one's thinking as to good, bad, or evil? Does it? Is it just a fact of life that humans have biologically evolved to the warfaring and vicious state that as a human population we are subjected to now?
Perhaps you have been reading about the young woman who was stabbed to death in Morningside Park in NYC. Is that also simply a product of evolutionary ways, since this is, after all, a thread for-and-against-evolution. Therefore, discussing evolution, how do you feel about it? We know from history that cruelty, if you in fact think that maybe dragging people with hooks on their noses or ripping their limbs apart while they were alive is neutral, not good or bad, did not start yesterday, viciousness and cruelty has been going on for thousands of years ago until now. What do you think? Is this type of behavior a product of evolution?

Is it a product of a loving and just god??


All behaviour is a product of evolution. Must you pick the worst?
Why?

As usual you dont "get" how any of it works.
Evolution is not just a simple "survival of
fittest" with optimum results for all.)

Toothaches, cancer, psychosis, filaria worms,
music, a mother's love, all products of, or by products
of evolution.

If evolution were intentional, we'd call a lot of that
"unintended consequences".

Evolution is a clumky and highly inefficient mechanism.
A "god" could do way way better. A lot of products / by
products of unguided evolution would never pass
intellgent inspection. See genesis for an "explanation"
for these ills.

Evolution explains in marvellous detail how the trigeminal
nerve came to be where it is. Check on trigeminal neuraglia
to see if maybe its a flawed "design".

Sickle cell- in areas where malaria is endemic those with
the genes will be immune to malaria- though a third will
die from it, but maybe not till old enough to be grandparents.

They will be far better off than those with immunity.

A vaccine that completely failed 25% of the time, worked 75,
but killed 33% of those would be a poor vaccine. It is, though, what
evolution produced.

The 25% fatal is an "unintended" by product of a flawed
clunky inefficient process, same with allergies, bipolar
disorder etc.

But it makes sense, if you underdtand it; it is like
calculus (an easier study than ToE) that way.
Makes sense if you understand it.

It sure makes more sense than "god" getting p.o.
coz someone chomped an apple.

 

[leroy]

More games.

I and several others have asked you questions or made requests you ignore or evade.

It is well-known and established in this thread that you refuse to support your assertion that intelligent design is the best explanation for the alleged universal fine tuning.

The reason why I can't answer to that is because there are potencialy infinite alternative explanations for the FT of the universe, in order to show that design is the best explanation I would have to compare it with an infinite number of other explanations (which is humanly impossible to do)

But what I could try to justify is that design is a better explanation than your personal favorite naturalistic explanation. All you have to do is provide such explanation, quite frankly I don't understand why are you avoiding a direct answer, why wouldn't you provide an example of a naturalistic explanation?... It seems to me that you willingly want to keep your view vague and ambiguous so that you can hide if you can't deal with a hard question

 

[Subduction Zone]

The reason why I can't answer to that is because there are potencialy infinite alternative explanations for the FT of the universe, in order to show that design is the best explanation I would have to compare it with an infinite number of other explanations (which is humanly impossible to do)

But what I could try to justify is that design is a better explanation than your personal favorite naturalistic explanation. All you have to do is provide such explanation, quite frankly I don't understand why are you avoiding a direct answer, why wouldn't you provide an example of a naturalistic explanation?... It seems to me that you willingly want to keep your view vague and ambiguous so that you can hide if you can't deal with a hard question

How is a concept that has no supporting scientific evidence superior in any way at all to an idea that does have supporting scientific evidence?

 

[Skwim]

There are varying translations, and of course, a translation is as good as the translator and perception.

So how did you decide which is the best translation? Typically translations are selected by how closely they agree with one's theology, which is hardly a practical or valid way of deciding a best translation.

You brought up that bats were classified as birds, and that is not accurate, because the Hebrew word for that scripture about bats is really FLYING CREATURES.

Don't give a rats behind what some Hebrew word means. It's what is said in English language Bibles that's important. And in Lev. bats aren't classified, but "called." Bats are almost always called birds or fowls in Leviticus 11:13.

Yes, many translations do have that as birds or fowl, but not all do, and given the context and proper translating techniques, winged creatures is better, because of course, a bat is not a bird, anyway.

Of the 51 Bibles I consulted only three, the Complete Jewish Bible, the International Standard version, and The Voice, use the word "Creature" instead of "bird" or "fowl." That's only 6%!..... 94% of the Bibles use "BIRD" or "FOWL."

But it does have what are considered as wings. Note from LiveScience: "Bats are more efficient fliers than even birds, thanks to a novel ... Unlike insects and birds, which have relatively rigid wings that can move in only a few ... wave them up and down like relatively rigid paddles the way birds do."
So far everything I've read about bats says that they have WINGS. Just not quite like birds' wings. But wings they are called.

So what? Penguins and ostriches have wings but don't fly. What does that prove.

The International Standard Version is more accurate for that scripture, just so you know.

According to whom, your preacher, who doesn't like bats being called birds?

 

[YoursTrue]

Yes, of course they are. And, so are gravity, electromagnetism, the planet Jupiter, etc. MOST of the universe is indifferent to human desires.

So do you believe anything is cruel?

 

[YoursTrue]

So how did you decide which is the best translation? Typically translations are selected by how closely they agree with one's theology, which is hardly a practical or valid way of deciding a best translation.


Don't give a rats behind what some Hebrew word means. It's what is said in English language Bibles that's important. And in Lev. bats aren't classified, but "called." Bats are almost always called birds or fowls in Leviticus 11:13.


Of the 51 Bibles I consulted only three, the Complete Jewish Bible, the International Standard version, and The Voice, use the word "Creature" instead of "bird" or "fowl." That's only 6%!..... 94% of the Bibles use "BIRD" or "FOWL."


So what? Penguins and ostriches have wings but don't fly. What does that prove.


According to whom, your preacher, who doesn't like bats being called birds?

Proper understanding says bats are not birds. Bats are said to fly. And it is said that they have wings. So if 94% of the Bibles use bird or fowl, does that mean that they are correct? Because they're not. You brought it up about the bat thing and I checked. And to say that bats are birds because that is what 94% of the Bibles (you say) use that word instead of flying creatures does not mean that those translations are correct. But then, a person has to have a proper mindset to really figure things out. So since you like to argue over what is decidedly factual, all I can say now is hope you have a good evening.

 

[YoursTrue]

Well, let's first take a step back. You seem to be making a big distinction between 'living matter' and 'non-living matter'. I think that is fundamentally incorrect. In fact, everything we know shows that life is a matter of a complex system of chemical reactions. There is nothing 'extra' required: once you have the chemicals in the right places, you will have life.

Part of the problem is also when you talk about 'inert elements'. But most of matter is quite far from being 'inert'. Matter will spontaneously interact with other matter. In fact, that is what the whole subject of chemistry is about: learning *how* matter interacts with other matter to produce new substances. In particular, the atoms that make up living things (carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, phosphorus, etc) tend to be very reactive elements. And it is exactly this reactivity that makes life possible.

I'm not sure why you think there was a 'divine reason' for the meteor that 'knocked out' the dinosaurs. It seems to be like a bit of bad luck for them and good luck for mammals like us.

But then aren't you saying what's good and bad for you? Isn't that a bit subjective? According to evolution, since brains are supposedly evolved, do you think the way people and birds, monkeys, crocodiles, sharks act be considered either good or bad? Who makes those determinations? You? Or the crocodiles? Maybe the crocodile likes human flesh, you think? So chomping off a leg or two is good, not bad, to the croc.

 

[YoursTrue]

Yes, of course they are. And, so are gravity, electromagnetism, the planet Jupiter, etc. MOST of the universe is indifferent to human desires.

God is not indifferent. He cares. And promises in the Bible to change the present human condition to something very good and wonderful. He doesn't need to depend on evolution to do it. Or humans.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

The reason why I can't answer to that is because there are potencialy infinite alternative explanations for the FT of the universe, in order to show that design is the best explanation I would have to compare it with an infinite number of other explanations (which is humanly impossible to do)

This literally makes no sense. If the alternative is not based on evidence and is not testable, then i t is a belief and you cannot demonstrate that it is a viable explanation or is better than a scientific explanation.

Congratulations, you refuted yourself.

But what I could try to justify is that design is a better explanation than your personal favorite naturalistic explanation. All you have to do is provide such explanation, quite frankly I don't understand why are you avoiding a direct answer, why wouldn't you provide an example of a naturalistic explanation?... It seems to me that you willingly want to keep your view vague and ambiguous so that you can hide if you can't deal with a hard question

Hilarious! You beat around the bush. You dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge every request to provide support for your assertion. Now you falsely claim you do not understand why I am not supporting your asdertion. It is your assertion that it is the best explanation dude. You support it.

You have not been vague or ambiguous in providing support, since you have been hiding and providing nothing that could even be considered to rise to the level of vague or ambiguous.

I know you are not going to support your asertion. You cannot do it. You cannot justify your assertion that about design. If you could, you would. You cannot be honest and must resort to this deceitful chicanery as your only means of response. False witness is a sin. You need to think on that in great detail before you respond again.

If design is the best explabation, then it would trump ALL other explanations. You don't seem to have enough understanding to get even that.

If I were doing what you have been doing. If I had to resort to all the tactics, tricks, fallacies and deceptions you have exercised, I would feel ashamed.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Can you be more explicit about each part's involvement. I generally don't like to guess. How does creation come into the picture?

That is funny, since all I have seen from you is guesswork.

 

[YoursTrue]

Huh? No, *different* animals evolved to fill in the niches left by the dinosaurs. The terror birds were NOT 'making a stab at re-evolving'.

Audie said that about making a stab at re-evolving. I did not. She said a few posts back, "actually in the years after the great extinction that wiped out nearly all of the dinosaurs, "they" ( big dominant land creatures) did make a stab at re-evolving."

 

[YoursTrue]

Well, let's first take a step back. You seem to be making a big distinction between 'living matter' and 'non-living matter'. I think that is fundamentally incorrect. In fact, everything we know shows that life is a matter of a complex system of chemical reactions. There is nothing 'extra' required: once you have the chemicals in the right places, you will have life.

Part of the problem is also when you talk about 'inert elements'. But most of matter is quite far from being 'inert'. Matter will spontaneously interact with other matter. In fact, that is what the whole subject of chemistry is about: learning *how* matter interacts with other matter to produce new substances. In particular, the atoms that make up living things (carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, phosphorus, etc) tend to be very reactive elements. And it is exactly this reactivity that makes life possible.

I'm not sure why you think there was a 'divine reason' for the meteor that 'knocked out' the dinosaurs. It seems to be like a bit of bad luck for them and good luck for mammals like us.

From what I was reading in a scientific publication, life on this planet requires water. From what I understand now, at least the human person does. Seems they found some living matter that does not require oxygen though. But water is apparently essential. And the Bible speaks about the waters of life. Revelation 7:17, "because the lamb in the center of the throne will take care of them and guide them to springs of waters of life; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” So here the Bible speaks about waters of life.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

From what I was reading in a scientific publication, life on this planet requires water. From what I understand now, at least the human person does. Seems they found some living matter that does not require oxygen though. But water is apparently essential. And the Bible speaks about the waters of life. Revelation 7:17, "because the lamb in the center of the throne will take care of them and guide them to springs of waters of life; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” So here the Bible speaks about waters of life.

You just now understand that humans need water?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

From what I was reading in a scientific publication, life on this planet requires water. From what I understand now, at least the human person does. Seems they found some living matter that does not require oxygen though. But water is apparently essential. And the Bible speaks about the waters of life. Revelation 7:17, "because the lamb in the center of the throne will take care of them and guide them to springs of waters of life; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” So here the Bible speaks about waters of life.

People back then knew that living things need water. They used it symbolically in their oral and written stories. It all sounds like a big 'so what' to me.

 

[leroy]

This literally makes no sense. If the alternative is not based on evidence and is not testable, then i t is a belief and you cannot demonstrate that it is a viable explanation or is better than a scientific explanation.

Congratulations, you refuted yourself.
Hilarious! You beat around the bush. You dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge every request to provide support for your assertion. Now you falsely claim you do not understand why I am not supporting your asdertion. It is your assertion that it is the best explanation dude. You support it.

You have not been vague or ambiguous in providing support, since you have been hiding and providing nothing that could even be considered to rise to the level of vague or ambiguous.

I know you are not going to support your asertion. You cannot do it. You cannot justify your assertion that about design. If you could, you would. You cannot be honest and must resort to this deceitful chicanery as your only means of response. False witness is a sin. You need to think on that in great detail before you respond again.

If design is the best explabation, then it would trump ALL other explanations. You don't seem to have enough understanding to get even that.

If I were doing what you have been doing. If I had to resort to all the tactics, tricks, fallacies and deceptions you have exercised, I would feel ashamed.

Well here is the thing, my claim is and has always been that I can show that design is better than your naturalistic explanation.

Given that you haven't provided such naturalistic explanation, you can't accuse me for not supporting my claim.

At most you can accuse me for not following your rules.

Not to mention that I did answer to pollymath because he did provided a specific naturalistic explanation. So why cant you?

 

[leroy]

H

The problem is that Behe's ideas were addressed and shown to be wrong long ago. In the scientific community, the debate is over. It is only among those not aware of the science that the public debate continues.

Behes "ideas" are based on 2 premises

1 if a" step" requires multiple (say 3) independent random mutations in order for an organism to get a selective benefit, the this step will never occure

2 at least some steps in say the evolution of the eye require multiple independent mutations.... Therefore the eye could have not evolved by a process of random mutations and natural selection.

Has any of these 2 premises been refuted? I ask this because all the refutations that I've seen are ether based on a strawman or they refute minor secondary details.

........
In this context with step I simply mean a change that would produce a selective advantage,

 

[leroy]

Well, let's first take a step back. You seem to be making a big distinction between 'living matter' and 'non-living matter'. I think that is fundamentally incorrect. In fact, everything we know shows that life is a matter of a complex system of chemical reactions. There is nothing 'extra' required: once you have the chemicals in the right places, you will have life.

Granted life is made out of non living matter, in that sence there is nothing special about live.... But the thing is that in order to have life, one would have to organize all the matter (say all. The aminoacids) in the correct place and order in order to have life...... ... Given that atleast based on what we know about nature, there is no natural mechanism that would organize everything in the correct order, and given that it is statistically unlikely to have occured by chance, ID proponents would suggest that a designer was responsable for organizing everything in the correct order.


To give an analogy, there is nothing special about a robot, he is made out of copper, aluminum, chemicals and other stuff that exists in nature, but in order to have a funcional machine, someone has to organize all that matter in the correct place and order, and given that there is no bias in natural laws for creating robots, desegn will te d to be the best explanation.

 

[Polymath257]

From what I was reading in a scientific publication, life on this planet requires water. From what I understand now, at least the human person does. Seems they found some living matter that does not require oxygen though. But water is apparently essential. And the Bible speaks about the waters of life. Revelation 7:17, "because the lamb in the center of the throne will take care of them and guide them to springs of waters of life; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” So here the Bible speaks about waters of life.

All life on Earth requires water to live. Since water is made from hydrogen and oxygen, all life requires oxygen *atoms*. There are some forms of life for which oxygen *molecules* (like in the air) are toxic.

 

[Polymath257]

Granted life is made out of non living matter, in that sence there is nothing special about live.... But the thing is that in order to have life, one would have to organize all the matter (say all. The aminoacids) in the correct place and order in order to have life...... ... Given that atleast based on what we know about nature, there is no natural mechanism that would organize everything in the correct order, and given that it is statistically unlikely to have occured by chance, ID proponents would suggest that a designer was responsable for organizing everything in the correct order.

But this is *exactly* what the research into abiogenesis is all about! There *are* mechanisms for organization to appear. For example, lipids will spontaneously form into spherical structures. Amino acids will spontaneously be produce in many types of chemical environments. And nucleic acids will also. Furthermore, in the right environments, they will spontaneously polymerize (which is what forms information).

You are, in essence, begging the question when you say there is no known way for life to appear. From what we have found, there very well may be. We just have to investigate more.

To give an analogy, there is nothing special about a robot, he is made out of copper, aluminum, chemicals and other stuff that exists in nature, but in order to have a funcional machine, someone has to organize all that matter in the correct place and order, and given that there is no bias in natural laws for creating robots, desegn will te d to be the best explanation.

Robots and life are significantly different in that life is based on the chemical reactivity of its components. And that reactivity *does* produce spontaneous organization in many situations.

 

[Polymath257]

H


Behes "ideas" are based on 2 premises

1 if a" step" requires multiple (say 3) independent random mutations in order for an organism to get a selective benefit, the this step will never occure

2 at least some steps in say the evolution of the eye require multiple independent mutations.... Therefore the eye could have not evolved by a process of random mutations and natural selection.

Has any of these 2 premises been refuted? I ask this because all the refutations that I've seen are ether based on a strawman or they refute minor secondary details.

........
In this context with step I simply mean a change that would produce a selective advantage,

Yes, no example of irreducible compexity has stood up. The problem is that the steps in 1 may be beneficial, but not all directed to the end result. And, in fact, eyes have evolved multiple times through different pathways with stages actually known and with few adaptive mutations required at each stage.