How do you define evolution?

[Dan From Smithville]

This assumes that the layers represent time periods, which is highly debatable.

Except you just claim it and run. Disagreeing with something over your personal, shaky, unfounded personal opinion is not a debate.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Yup. You can bet your whole life's savings on it, if you are willing to respond to parroted nonsense.

I respond to you all the time.

 

[infrabenji]

Hmm. You mean the Barnasha is a newer usage in comparison to the Hebrew Ben Adam.

How about Pistos Doolos. What would be the Aramaic translation or rather, think of it from the Aramaic origin. I mean Palestinian Aramaic. If Pistos Doolos was translated from the original Aramaic, what do you think the original would have been?

Pistos Doulos faithful servant, right? My Aramaic is so rusty. But! I do have a friend in Palestine who can answer your question. I’ll talk to him tomorrow and get us an answer. I’m curious too. Aman or Emun Avahdeem may be close. But honestly, I could be way off. I’m going off memory here. I believe emun is the masculine form. My friend Khaleel will know. He was studying language in the West Bank during the first intifada interestingly enough. No one can say that you don’t ask the hard questions lol.

 

[Etritonakin]

The word was applied to the development of life forms, but really applies to all change.

That said, I believe everything is a life form overall -which evolved.

Even with life forms on Earth, where do you draw the line? Is it correct to say that RNA evolved in DNA, for example?

 

[firedragon]

Pistos Doulos faithful servant, right? My Aramaic is so rusty. But! I do have a friend in Palestine who can answer your question. I’ll talk to him tomorrow and get us an answer. I’m curious too. Aman or Emun Avahdeem may be close. But honestly, I could be way off. I’m going off memory here. I believe emun is the masculine form. My friend Khaleel will know. He was studying language in the West Bank during the first intifada interestingly enough. No one can say that you don’t ask the hard questions lol.

ITs like this. Pistos means faithful. But not necessarily. It could also mean leading. Doolos could mean servant, but it in fact could also mean slave. Servant seems like a more contemporary approach to it, which is why its good to try and understanding from an original point of view. traditionally Diakonos is servant, and Doolos is slave. Yet, if someone has the knowledge of Palestinian Aramaic, they might be able to render it more precisely. But they need to know both languages, otherwise the exercise will not work.

I must say that in Palestine no one speaks Aramaic (as far as I know). Thanks a lot for your help. Really appreciate it.

Cheers.

 

[infrabenji]

ITs like this. Pistos means faithful. But not necessarily. It could also mean leading. Doolos could mean servant, but it in fact could also mean slave. Servant seems like a more contemporary approach to it, which is why its good to try and understanding from an original point of view. traditionally Diakonos is servant, and Doolos is slave. Yet, if someone has the knowledge of Palestinian Aramaic, they might be able to render it more precisely. But they need to know both languages, otherwise the exercise will not work.

I must say that in Palestine no one speaks Aramaic (as far as I know). Thanks a lot for your help. Really appreciate it.

Cheers.

So my friend who’s a polyglot and lives in Palestine and America who went to college in Palestine, America (masters in mathematics), and Norway where he received his doctorate in linguistics can’t help us with an Aramaic problem? I honestly can’t think of anyone smarter or better credentialed to ask? Can you?

 

[firedragon]

So my friend who’s a polyglot and lives in Palestine and America who went to college in Palestine, America (masters in mathematics), and Norway where he received his doctorate in linguistics can’t help us with an Aramaic problem? I honestly can’t think of anyone smarter or better credentialed to ask? Can you?

Oh no. Dont get offended. Of course he could help. Not only help he probably will clear it conclusively.

I am ignorant in the subject so I cannot.

Apologies.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Languages evolve. from Proto- to Indo-European to old Vedic, to Vedic, to Sanskrit, to the various Indo-European group of languages in India. Nothing constant in the world except change.

 

[infrabenji]

Oh no. Dont get offended. Of course he could help. Not only help he probably will clear it conclusively.

I am ignorant in the subject so I cannot.

Apologies.

Not offended excited more so. I thought that a little background on my friend might make you feel the same way. He’s been a valuable resource in the past as he is a teacher of languages and could certainly probably help us. If not, we’re not so much worse off than before lol.

 

[Deeje]

Billion, not million. There is a big difference.

Does science really know what took place billions of years ago....? They can assume a lot of things, based on what they believe to be true....but they don't have *proof* that all life altered itself over billions of years, starting with a single celled organism and ending with intelligent human life. They can see that creatures appeared over time, but creation explains their appearance too, without having to excuse the missing links.

First, the changes in finches and moths were *genetic* changes. This is different than individual adaptation. It is a change of *species* since the different finches cannot interbreed (or, like lions and tigers, give sterile offspring).

Whatever adaptive changes occurred, no creature ever morphed outside of its taxonomy. All science's assumption begin with a single celled organism that they imagine "must have" been the beginning of all life forms on this planet, so they invent a chain of evolution to explain their ideas......but there are no links to their chain, so they invent them......those phantom "common ancestors" that science can never identify.....yet there must be evidence for billions of them lurking somewhere. Without all those "common ancestors", there can be no evolution.

Now, what mechanism *prevents* further changes from happening after speciation occurs? What prevents large scale change from happening because those smaller changes add up over generations?

What *proves* that these large scale changes ever happened beyond the imagination of science? It looks as if science has jumped on the "if a little is good, a lot must be better" bandwagon, because there is not a shred of evidence that proves that any creature can morph itself through adaptation into something other than a new variety of what it already was.

Darwin did not observe the finches becoming anything but new varieties of finches......the iguanas were clearly recognizable as a different variety of iguana....and so were the tortoises a different variety to their mainland cousins. No new species of creature was emerging....and never would.
The Creator loves variety.....can't you see that in nature?

So, we see otters adapting to a more and more water-based lifestyle. Do you not see it as *possible* that in another 10000 generations they will be able to stay under water for longer and not go back to land at all? And then that they will become more streamlined so as to move through water even better than they do now?

Not if the Creator made them to be otters...those fabulous little clowns that we love to watch in the water. They are so at home there, what makes you think they were designed for a better life? Or any other creature for that matter. If there were going to be new varieties of otters adapting to different environments, they would still be otters......wouldn't they? The habitats that were created for every living thing are perfect for them, if humans would just leave them alone....all creatures function perfectly without any help from us and have done so for many thousands of years before we came along.

And, to bring it back to the whale ancestors, what is the barrier for a land based animal adapting over generations to living more and more in the water? Especially when we have the fossils showing the changes involved?

What do the fossils really show? They can't speak, so they show exactly what science wants them to show...its called interpretation of the evidence and science sees what it wants to see. We can take the very same evidence and show you the work of a very powerful and inventive Creator. The greatest scientist in existence....his intelligence is clearly seen in how it all works.

But lets also add that there were NO whales anywhere prior to 50 million years ago. But, at that time there *were* animals that showed similarities in their skulls and shared unique characteristics in their ears to modern whales.

To call Pakicetus a whale is bordering on the ridiculous...and to base that assumption on a 'similarity" in an ear bone...??? Seriously? You are very easily convinced....but I guess you have to be to swallow all of that with no proof....don't the science buffs say the same about us? What makes science so special?

Since I am not a YEC, and not confined to 7/24 hour "days" of creation, I am not stuck when explaining why some creatures are older than others by hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years. Or why there are no longer dinosaurs. Genesis does not argue with an old earth and very long creative periods that took eons to complete.
The Creator is not a magician....he carefully crafted his creatures as their many designs clearly shows us.

Now, modern whales came from *somewhere*.

They did......and science knows that all life came from pre-existing life.....this applies to the first forms of life as well which could have been bacteria and that would have been needed to condition the soil for vegetation to grow. A self-sustaining, and never ending food and water supply ready and waiting for all the creatures to follow.

They clearly had an ancestor 50 million years ago. But there were no whales then. So the ancestor 50 million years ago was NOT a whale as we currently see them.

Which to us indicates that whales as we know them, were probably created at a later time. Science is looking for a chain that does not exist in reality.....individual creation with adaptive capabilities fits what science knows and can demonstrate.....but not what they want to assume. I don't understand why a Creator is so hard to accept?
It takes as much "faith" to believe in what science can't prove, as it does for us to believe in God.

The *evidence* based on similarities of skulls is that certain land animals, Pakicetus and ambulocetus were those ancestors.

That is all assumption......science really has no idea whether they were even related, or just different species of marine animals who lived in different times in different parts of an ocean. Evidence is not proof.....and if that evidence is interpreted only in a biased way, how will the truth be ascertained? Does it matter? I believe it does......especially if we have to account to the Landlord of the home we are destroying with our clever applications of science.

You can believe them if you wish......I'll pass.

It's always good to have more evidence. But there is enough evidence to show the broad patterns. Species change over many generations. All species today had ancestors 50 million years ago and many we would not recognize as being in the same 'kind' as the animals today. That is evolution.

That is your assumption to make.....I see the hand of a brilliant Creator at work in the universe and on this earth with immutable laws governing everything....I'd love to introduce you to him some time.....He is not going to jump up and down and wave his arms for those who choose not to believe in him.....he doesn't need to, as I believe his creation speaks for him.

 

[Nimos]

Who gave it its meaning? Don't tell me...let me guess. The same ones who designed the clades.....no?

Its a word which have a different meaning. Same as you can have a car theory test for new drivers, that doesn't hold the same meaning as the general use of the word theory either or how it is used in science.

Same word different meanings/understandings.

See that line on the bottom...? It says "Primate Ancestor"......what was that exactly? And who are all those other "common ancestors" pictured by the branch points that we see routinely on these graphs that remain unidentified to this day? Lots of speculation.....but no actual proof that they ever existed. Why can science never produce or identify a single one?

Because the tree is not suppose to be understood in such way.

Its not like at each branch point you have one couple and they have two babies, one is a chimpanzee and the other one a homo sapien (or modern human).

If you zoom in on the branch point between chimpanzees and humans. It would look like this:

So I found some of these and added them so you can see them. These are artist recreations of how they believe that some of them may have looked based on examining the fossils. And they all belong to the blue line of humans after the split in the branch in the picture you linked. So they are not in the chimpanzee line.

Since evolution is an on going process, which is constantly going on its not exactly easy to say that, this exact place is where the branching happened. A good example of this is like how it is with language. Lets take Danish and Norwegian, its very easy for us to understand each other, despite being from different countries, neither modern day Danish or Norwegian originally were like that, but have evolved from former versions, its not exactly easy to say that at exactly the 1st may in 900 AD the language changed to what it is today, its a long process that happened over time.

So you can look at the same with evolution, those above are not all the same, but all belong to the hominids, which all came from a common ancestor (or branch point between chimpanzees and humans in your picture.) Again there are millions of years of evolution going on here, from that point until today.

No you cannot "see it happeneing".....no scientist has ever observed evolution....at best they have observed adaptation in a lab with fish, flies or bacteria......all remained true to their taxonomic families, producing new varieties within their own families. Not a single one started to become something other than what they were at the beginning. Darwin didn't see that either. All adaptations remained true to their "kind".

Selective breeding is genetic manipulation by man....not nature.

Again as above, its a long process. A scientist don't have millions of years to spend observing evolution happening. I don't know if the closest to this is with horses and mules.

Horses and donkeys mate to produce mules, which are sterile (most of the time - there are occasional exceptions), so they do not violate that particular species definition.

That is why they look at fossils and based on which features and which are missing they can see how they fit together. Im not an expert on this, but you can examine how they do this in greater details if you want, they are not just guessing left right and center. You can actually see some of this in the first image I linked if you read the text and look at the red break lines. Then you can see why they are thrown into humans rather than chimpanzee.

A scientific theory is a hypothesis...

No, that is simply wrong. A hypothesis would be more like the general use of the word theory. You have an idea that something is a certain way, so you create an hypothesis that you want to test to see if it is true or not.

Sorry but that theory would be quite easily provable.....you would have to take the leap first of course....but no doubt about the conclusion ...eh?

Yes but it would still be a theory (guess) in general terms. That is not the case when we are talking about a scientific theory. Because it is what explain the facts. Einstein theory of relativity is also a scientific theory, do you also think that he was completely wrong? and we should simply refer to that as scientists merely guessing?

For some reason people that doubt evolution, get extremely caught up in the word theory here, but not so much when its Einsteins theory, there is no difference in the meaning!!.

Giving a well known word a different meaning just because it is prefixed with the word "scientific" doesn't change anything, except for those who want to believe it matters.....I don't happen to view science as my religion.....that is not my scripture.

But it does, as explained above. We sometimes use the same word for different things and they have different meanings.

In Danish for instance you have the word "Have" which is not pronounce as in English, but rather you drag it out or split it in the middle when you say it, "Ha..ve", not sure how to explain it.

Anyway, it can mean both "Garden" and "Oceans" (When you are referring to more than one ocean), and besides that, it can also mean "used to have" as well.

Hvor mange have er der i verden? (How many oceans are there in the world?)

Jeg kan lide at være i min have. (I like being in my garden)

Han plejede at have tre venner (He used to have three friends)

Same word completely different meanings. There is no difference when it comes to the word theory.

Ps. Even the word "lide" above also have different meanings in danish.

As I used it, "to like something" but it can also be used to mean "to suffer from something".

 

[exchemist]

When you say natural selection doesn't equate common ancestry, I would say that's true, but do those "naturally selected" have a common ancestor is the question.

The biochemical evidence for that is fairly strong.

It is not impossible that a number of competing proto-life forms could have been present at the start, but it looks as if everything that survives today came from the same starting point and the chain of relationships in the fossil records does not contradict that hypothesis. So most likely if there were several separate forms of life at the beginning only one became dominant early on and the others - if there were any - disappeared.

 

[shunyadragon]

While the theory of evolution may not be redefined, the placement of artifacts in the branch of theory certainly may be when fossils portray something different than what first thought.

The knowledge of all sciences change with time, and the sciences of evolution new discoveries and research add information all the time. What is wrong with this? In Physics Einstein redefined Physics with new information than first thought in Newtonian physics.

 

[leroy]

I would say so. But that's what I'm asking about the entire theory.

if I could answer I'll be a Nobel price winner.

nobody (except for fanatic evolutionists from YouTube) knows how organisms evolve,

 

[shunyadragon]

I would think that if a scientist theorizes something, there should be/could be, a matter of reason (proof perhaps?) as to why he said that.

The falsification of theories and hypothesis is, of course, a matter in evolution like all the sciences. No, there is only proofs in math and logic not in science.

Pleas make an effort to understand Methodological Naturalism.

 

[shunyadragon]

if I could answer I'll be a Nobel price winner.

nobody (except for fanatic evolutionists from YouTube) knows how organisms evolve,

Tens of thousands of scientists (98%+ of all scientists in fields related to evolution) and most educated people know basically how evolution occured in the history of life.

It is fanatical fundamentalists that live in the denial of self-imposed intentional irrational ignorance that cling to ancient mythological narratives.

 

[shunyadragon]

When you say natural selection doesn't equate common ancestry, I would say that's true, but do those "naturally selected" have a common ancestor is the question.

It is a too simplistic comparison, and there is more to the relationship than that. Again . . .

Evolution is not redefined, and no natural selection does not automatically equate common ancestry. More than 200 years of scientific research, Objective verifiable evidence, and discoveries involving Physics, Biology, Organic Chemistry, Geology, Paleontology, Genetics, Comparative Anatomy determined that the common ancestry of evolution of life on earth is the only explanation that fits the evidence.

 

[leroy]

Tens of thousands of scientists and most educated people know basically how evolution occured in the history.

It is fanatical fundamentalists that live in the denial of self-imposed intentional ignorance.

ok but you won't support your assertions.

 

[Polymath257]

Well I guess that all depends on whether the people who purport to "know what they are talking about" ....actually do.

I see that science likes to blur the line between what they know and what they assume to be true. A large part of the evolutionary theory (especially its first premise) is based on assumption...not provable facts.

And which 'assumptions' do you think they make that are wrong?

Nothing about the real world is proved beyond any doubt. Even that there is a real world cannot be proven absolutely.

But it is a reasonable assumption that everything alive 10 million years ago has an ancestor 50 million years ago.

 

[metis]

I'm looking up definitions, and the first one I came across is this (short and sweet) --
"the process by which different kinds of living organisms are thought to have developed and diversified from earlier forms during the history of the earth."
Do you agree with it?

Here's a simple definition of evolution that's 100% accurate: change.