Evolution, as many percieve it, is wrong.

[Runlikethewind]

Agreed. There is no such thing as randomness or chance. Everything has a cause, we just use these words when something is too complex to explain.

Well said, randomness and chance are terms used to describe things who's causes are to difficult to discern for one reason or another. I like that it sounds right. I think your onto something here Prometheus.

 

[Scuba Pete]

It's like the definition of "pure". How pure is pure?

For all intents and purposes, an event which can not be accurately predicted is a "chance" event.

 

[fantome profane]

The idea is quite simply this:
Chance can not answer the question of creation because chance is replicable and homogenous. His favorite experiment, though rudimentary, is to take a small container and make a sand painting, doesn't matter what it is, then pick up the container and shake it around. After the first shake, what do you notice? The second shake? Each successive random jumbling of the sand particles doesn't create a more complicated sand painting. It homogenizes. Walking on the beach no one is going to see a perfect sand painting of, say, a turtle, completely by chance.
Granted, that's not my favorite experiment.

The sand picture analogy is a good one, but I think it only tells half of the story. Nature does tend towards unorganized uniformity, but there are also examples of where nature can create ordered patters out of chaos. Like pebbles on a beach that can be organized by size and weight by nothing more that the tides, there are countless examples of self-organizing systems that exist in nature. Our solar system is another example of a self-organizing system that “selects” stable orbits, while rejecting unstable ones.

Natural selection is one of those self-organizing systems. It is like a filter that allows some genetic structures through, while eliminating others. The genetic structures that create viable organisms are able to replicate themselves. Genetic structures that do not create viable organisms are removed. The result is organisms that seem perfectly suited for their environment. And all this is accomplished through the laws of nature without the need for a “Guiding Organizing Designing process”.

 

[logician]

What does evolution have to do with creation? Evolution is only the change of life thru time.

 

[Yerda]

It's like the definition of "pure". How pure is pure?

Depends on the context. Is it relevant?

For all intents and purposes, an event which can not be accurately predicted is a "chance" event.

In colloquial usage, yes I would agree. 'Chance' as meaning random or uncaused is not an accurate description of the events in genetics such as mutation.

 

[sandy whitelinger]

I know you probably came here thinking I was going to give the same evidences that many before me have given and you'll just laugh and walk away.

However, the basis for this argument is *not* belief (I dislike belief) but rather a novel by the name of "The God experiments." I'm going by memory here so I can't remember the authors name, though I don't mean to plagerize.

The idea is quite simply this:
Chance can not answer the question of creation because chance is replicable and homogenous. His favorite experiment, though rudimentary, is to take a small container and make a sand painting, doesn't matter what it is, then pick up the container and shake it around. After the first shake, what do you notice? The second shake? Each successive random jumbling of the sand particles doesn't create a more complicated sand painting. It homogenizes. Walking on the beach no one is going to see a perfect sand painting of, say, a turtle, completely by chance.
Granted, that's not my favorite experiment. Mine was the one with the computer. In that experiment he had a computer randomly generate numbers (1-100) a hundred times then take the average of all the numbers. The average of the numbers (No matter how many times he did it.) was *always* around 50. **And got closer to 50 the more times the computer randomly generated numbers.** If randomization is trully random than why don't we ever get averages of 1? (meaning that 1 was randomly picked a hundred times.) According to chance, this is possible.

*yet every time this experiment is reproduced no strange averages occur*

His proposition, albeit you should probably read the book, was that the universe was ran by a Guiding Organizing Designing process or G.O.D process based on the fact that nothing can be created randomly.

It's completely illogical to say that sand paintings *could* be created if we waited a million years. There's no way to prove that statement and it's a painfully annoying escape route of evolutionists.

I think, based on this book, that some sort of G.O.D. process, as he calls it, made everything through a kind of evolution simply because, like he said, it is the most probable explanation.

I have a suspicion that you are confusing evolution with abiogenesis.

 

[Moey]

Evolution happens slowly over a long time. Creatures will change to match the invironment as the invironment changes. Man didn't one day just appear.

 

[Torgo]

The whole "sand shaking around" analogy is not really applicable to evolution, its more like a "proof" that living things in general cannot exist. It reminded me of the way that all of our life processes are ultimately composed of incalculable numbers of molecules vibrating and zipping around at hundreds of meters per second, hitting each other and reacting. Despite the seeming "randomness" of this process, you have egg cells with the appropriate DNA and mechanisms to read that DNA into proteins following a recipe to grow into whole organisms. We resist the second law of thermodynamics for a few decades - we couple the breakdown of food and production of heat to a smaller increase in the organization and energy content of our bodies. Self-organizing systems DO exist.

That being said, a living thing by definition reproduces. Organisms that can reproduce well become more common. Those traits that allow faster reproduction spread until they also become common within a population. DNA can undergo a fantastic array of rearrangements and duplications and changes every single time a cell divides, and there are occasions when this does not harm or kill the cell but could have an overall effect on a creature that carries this genetic change. The "shaking" analogy really has nothing do do with evolution.

 

[Willamena]

His proposition, albeit you should probably read the book, was that the universe was ran by a Guiding Organizing Designing process or G.O.D process based on the fact that nothing can be created randomly.

Yeah, we call it "Nature."

 

[doppelganger]

Agreed. There is no such thing as randomness or chance. Everything has a cause, we just use these words when something is too complex to explain.

Just as physics will dictate how dice will land every time, but so much factors into the simple throw of the dice that we just call it random.

This understanding of the nature of "chance" and probability is quite correct. I posted a similar explanation here: http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/showpost.php?p=669370&postcount=98

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Well said, randomness and chance are terms used to describe things who's causes are to difficult to discern for one reason or another.

I think it's worth pointing out that, at the quantum level, there are things whose causes are not simply 'difficult to discern' but nonexistent even in principle.

As for the OP....yes, randomness alone will not produce anything interesting. It's when you couple randomness with nonrandom, constant forces that you get things like stable atomic nuclei, solar systems, snowflakes, oil droplets separating out from water, etc. So, the "Guiding Organizing Designing" process may be equated to the laws of physics, which are constant.

 

[Anti-World]

"The result is organisms that seem perfectly suited for their environment. And all this is accomplished through the laws of nature without the need for a 'Guiding Organizing Designing process'."
That's a contradiction.


I'm not a theist. I'm especially not a "believer". I see laws in physics down to the microscopic that support destruction and homogenization yet at the macroscopic I see very well defined and controlled environments. Evolution, at it's basis, preposes that the macro came from the micro-chaos, so-to-speak, and it does not make sense. No matter what, evolutionists accept "laws" and theories that they avoid to find the basis of.

Am I saying there's a God? No. I'm saying that the principle at the basis of evolution (Generally that we came from a random process) does not make sense especially when coupled with the laws and theories that are arbitrarily used to patch-up the evolution theory.

I see evolutionists spout out the word "Nature", I've seen theists spout out the word "God", and they are generally both associated with the same laws and theories that cannot be proven but are accepted, on both sides, by belief.

I just laugh because of the obvious hipocrasy. There are so many evolutionists that refuse to believe in a god so they call it nature. Call it what you want but you all should accept the idea that evolution is guided by processes that lay outside of the supposedly "self organizing processes".

As redundent as that may sound that has a huge impact on the way evolution is viewed because processes that work to organize the universe denotes a kind of sentience.

To what degree I have no idea, nor do I really care. Whoever dabbles in belief should know both sides of the coin.

 

[camanintx]

I'm saying that the principle at the basis of evolution (Generally that we came from a random process) does not make sense especially when coupled with the laws and theories that are arbitrarily used to patch-up the evolution theory.

Please explain what "random process" is the basis of evolution in your understanding.

 

[Anti-World]

Generally, evolution states that when the universe exploded into existence from the big bang (A random occurence) different atoms formed together (From the basic "laws" that *govern* the universe) and eventually compounded enough to create stars and planets over billions of years. Eventually, due to an absurd amount of random occurences on a massive scale, the Earth was generated. After the Earth was created another set of random occurences happened in some sort of life soup (I forget the name of it.) creating a very miniscule organism.

That's my *basic* understanding of the evolutionists theory of the creation of the universe. The problem, of course, is that it's built on the assumption that over infinite amount of time (I'm not even going to bother asking where the matter came from to begin with.) atoms can create life through randomness within the confines of the laws of "nature".
The sand and computer experiments show repeatedly that no abnormal or heterogenious creations formulate on their own in nature, not even over large amounts of time. Yet we see many examples in nature where abnormal and heterogenious creations exist.

 

[Yerda]

Generally, evolution states that when the universe exploded into existence from the big bang (A random occurence) different atoms formed together (From the basic "laws" that *govern* the universe) and eventually compounded enough to create stars and planets over billions of years. Eventually, due to an absurd amount of random occurences on a massive scale, the Earth was generated. After the Earth was created another set of random occurences happened in some sort of life soup (I forget the name of it.) creating a very miniscule organism.

That's my *basic* understanding of the evolutionists theory of the creation of the universe. The problem, of course, is that it's built on the assumption that over infinite amount of time (I'm not even going to bother asking where the matter came from to begin with.) atoms can create life through randomness within the confines of the laws of "nature".
The sand and computer experiments show repeatedly that no abnormal or heterogenious creations formulate on their own in nature, not even over large amounts of time. Yet we see many examples in nature where abnormal and heterogenious creations exist.

This has nothing to do with what we would call evolution however. Evolution is biological.

 

[Zeno]

Generally, evolution states that when the universe exploded into existence from the big bang (A random occurence) different atoms formed together (From the basic "laws" that *govern* the universe) and eventually compounded enough to create stars and planets over billions of years.

Well that has absolutely nothing to do with evolution. That is a question for physicists, cosmologists (astrophysicists), and chemists - not biologists.

The only "random" event that occurs in the evolutionary process is genetic mutations. Nucleotide base pair changes in DNA are random; evolution is not.

 

[Slightly Perfect]

It's completely illogical to say that sand paintings *could* be created if we waited a million years. There's no way to prove that statement and it's a painfully annoying escape route of evolutionists.

I think that's a common misconception theists have about evolution, though. You're starting with the end product and trying to develop the process. Evolution is the other way around. When certain conditions are present, certain beings result.

Humanity is not an end product.

 

[Slightly Perfect]

The only "random" even that occurs in the evolutionary process is genetic mutations. Nucleotide base pair changes in DNA are random; evolution is not.

Random events? I include American Idol in that category. So, let's say gene replication, mutation, and American Idol.

 

[Slightly Perfect]

Well, gene... meme...

 

[camanintx]

Generally, evolution states that when the universe exploded into existence from the big bang (A random occurence) different atoms formed together (From the basic "laws" that *govern* the universe) and eventually compounded enough to create stars and planets over billions of years.

The "Big Bang" is mathematical singularity where the equations of general relativity break down and any theory can only describe what happened starting approximately 10^-43 seconds after that point. If any description of what might have caused the big bang is purely speculation, how can you claim that it is a random occurrence?

Eventually, due to an absurd amount of random occurences on a massive scale, the Earth was generated.

Do you consider gravity a random occurrence? After matter and energy were created in the big bang, gravity drives matter to collect into objects called stars and planets unless other forces oppose it. Given all of other the stars and planets we've discovered, why would you think Earth is a fluke?

After the Earth was created another set of random occurences happened in some sort of life soup (I forget the name of it.) creating a very miniscule organism.

Do you think it is possible to win the lottery? Despite the odds of any one person winning, someone still manages to win almost every time. With billions and billions of stars in the universe, having a planet with all of the right conditions for life is not only probably, it is virtually guaranteed.