Posted on 08/28/2022 5:13:37 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The theory says that all life began as relatively simple & small organisms and evolved over geological time scales into larger more complex organisms, such as ourselves.
The evidence confirming it is all around, notably in the form of fossils which consistently show change from oldest to youngest, from simplest to more complex.
No physical evidence has ever been confirmed to falsify evolution theory.
Out of time now... more later...
Boy howdy I can’t hang with that theory. Not for a microsecond.
I do appreciate the forthright explanation of it, however.
Says our science denying featherweight while looking into a fun-house curved mirror which reflects his own image as much bigger & stronger than reality admits.
plain talk: "When one makes assertions at this site they should be prepared to defend them with facts.
Especially a significant assertion that single celled life evolved into humans."
Curiously, I never made that particular assertion, it's just one you projected as something I might well say, and then you went berserk demanding I defend something you said!
Who is the "lightweight" here?
plain talk: "Whether one is religious or not that is an incredible assertion.
If one can’t defend it then they don’t understand the assertion and cannot explain it."
Why would I want to defend your statement?
plain talk: "They have just been brainwashed.
No different than the climate change zealots."
"Brainwashed" I think describes yourself, plain talk.
Having never studied real science, having no true ideas about how science works or what it says, you announce to the world that science is "lightweight" and you own the only true knowledge.
Well, I doubt that -- instead, your "knowledge" seems to consist of denying what is observed and substituting for it what can never be seen.
Evolution is a confirmed scientific theory, so nobody is required to "hang with that", not for a microsecond.
In strict scientific language, scientific theories are not "proved" and nobody "believes in" or has "faith" in them.
Instead, a falsifiable hypothesis can be tested and if the test fails to falsify it -- in other words, if the theory correctly predicts test results -- then scientists can consider the hypothesis a confirmed theory.
Very rarely can a theory be confirmed as observed fact, but one example is: the Earth is sphere shaped.
For many centuries that hypothesis had been mathematically calculated, and then confirmed as theory by explorers who circumnavigated the globe.
Finally, in the 20th century the Earth was photographed from space and theory became observed fact.
But that's unusual, most theories, for example gravity, cannot be observed and so remain as theories, regardless of how many times theory is confirmed.
Evolution is another such scientific theory, but here is a fact: as a result of explorations and tests over the past two centuries evolution related theories have changed a lot, but the basic ideas have never been falsified -- evolution results from 1) descent with modifications and 2) natural selection.
Both 1) & 2) are observed facts and evolution is a theory to explain them.
The first fully developed male human being was created by God from actual clay of the actual earth. Name of Adam.
The first fully developed female human being was created by God from an actual rib of first man Adam.
The above is no theory. It is the Word of God and is therefore 100% factual. No further discussion is required.
“The theory says that all life began as relatively simple & small organisms and evolved over geological time scales into larger more complex organisms, such as ourselves. The evidence confirming it is all around, notably in the form of fossils which consistently show change from oldest to youngest, from simplest to more complex.”
There is evidence of changes in organisms over time. However complex organisms could have been created over time just as the single-celled organisms were created. The fact that complex creatures appeared over time doesn’t mean they evolved from simple organisms.
You are a FReeper who may have studied this in depth as I have but you came to a different conclusion.
Besides the fact that complex creatures appeared over time — what is the evidence that single celled organisms over time evolved into complex organisms with eyes, ears, a brain and consciousness?
Sure, and that is your belief, to which you are 100% entitled.
There's no need to debate or discuss it, unless you expressly wish to.
I would only advise that if you begin to call such beliefs "scientific", then you will force defenders of actual science to point out how they are not.
Have a great day!
Sound theology supersedes science.
Well, I'm glad to see we at least agree on one fundamental -- the fossil record in geological strata does show changes over time, from relatively smaller & simpler to often larger & more complex.
So the question then becomes, how do we explain that?
And I understand that you wish to explain the fossil record as all the products of special (supernatural) creation.
And I agree that is one possible explanation.
However, by definition of the word "science" supernatural creation is not science, and should not be taught to children as if it were science.
The proper place to teach such ideas is in classes devoted to the specific religion of a child's family, I.e., in church or private religious school.
Specifically, definition of the word "science" includes the search for natural explanations of natural phenomena.
So anything supernatural -- whether a phenomenon or an explanation -- by definition is non-scientific.
Of course, that doesn't automatically mean it's wrong -- some things have no natural explanations, but it does put them beyond the reach of natural science.
plain talk: "Besides the fact that complex creatures appeared over time — what is the evidence that single celled organisms over time evolved into complex organisms with eyes, ears, a brain and consciousness?"
Aside from the fossils themselves, the second major line of confirming evidence comes from comparing the similarities and differences in DNA of different species.
These show striking similarities in ALL DNA, and nearly identical DNA in closely related species.
Further, DNA recovered from "recently" extinct species, like mammoths or Neanderthals, show just the expected similarities and differences evolution theory predicts.
Further, by counting up the differences in DNA of two different species, it is possible to calculate roughly the time period of their common ancestors, calculations confirmed in the fossil record.
Another line of confirming evidence, though often ridiculed & mocked by anti-evolutionists, remains the similarities in new embryos & fetuses of most animals.
Early drawings of similarities were later shown to be unrealistic, however current photographs still show many similarities.
And another, any extensive physical comparison of living species shows great similarities among more closely related with increasing differences among more distantly related -- notice the term here "related".
Species can only be related if they have common ancestors.
Evolution explains how different species can have common ancestors.
DNA similarities between creatures does not prove complex creatures evolved from simple ones. The creator could reuse code and package DNA any way He wishes.
Your response offers no evidence that complex creatures evolved from simple ones.
No, I guess I don’t agree, and that is because a literal belief in the Garden of Eden story is a religious belief. I respect those, especially those based on the Bible.
I took a “refresher” course in my faith decades ago, and one of the first questions asked was whether we should believe the Bible literally. The teacher said “You can read the Bible either way. Both ways of reading it are fine.”
When these stories were told around the campfire or whatever, before they got put into writing, I bet no one ever asked that question. Maybe they didn’t even make that distinction in those days.
The fossil record is biased—what we see there must be preserved, and humans, as a rule do not live well in environments which are conducive to preservation.
As for that record, preservation is a problem. Create two of every species. In a few hours, there will be millions of bacteria, millions of single cell organisms, reproducing at a phenomenal rate compared to more complex organisms, and generally in environments more conducive to their preservation.
More complex critters have longer gestation periods, spells between those, and, by virtue of their complexity, are more difficult to preserve intact or even as recognizable parts in even a marine environment. Again, preservation is key.
There is additional bias against finding, say, a Teleost (”bony Fish”) bone in Cambrian Strata, partly because of denial, and partly because the strata, if the discovery was confirmed, would be re-dated to a different era or some other explanation for how that bone got there concocted—such would be the bias against the discovery. Of course, claims of misidentification and fraud would be rampant because the find would fly in the face of accepted theory.
Move on to land creatures, like humans, with a generational gap of fifteen years or more, and the proliferation rates compared to the less complex forms drop precipitously, making fewer individuals to be preserved, living in environments far less likely to preserve them than aquatic species.
For that reason, the time of a species inception becomes more difficult to ascertain than the time of their extinction—and even that has proven problematic on occasion.
So, the question becomes one of not whether or not all species existed at one time, or even when they existed so much as one of have we found all the fossils yet>
Fewer people are doing actual, get out and bang on rocks fieldwork, the laws and regulations pretty much discourage that on Federal Land, which is almost always tied to a University to get the permit. I have been places where I was literally surrounded by Eocene Turtle fossils eroding away, but to pick up a bone, much less the entire turtle, would be to invite prosecution, a Felony conviction, and a minimum of a $10,000 fine. Find a human bone there? No thanks.
The entire setup, though would discourage any paleontologist who wanted to keep their university job from finding a 40 million year old human fossil.
Circular reasoning will win, especially when tenure could be at stake. It can’t be human, because there were no humans then. OR The age of the beds is incorrect.
What’s a mutha to do?
All physical evidence confirms evolution theory, none of it falsifies evolution -- that is a fact.
The evidence can also be said to support special supernatural creation, but that is not a scientific explanation and should not be taught as science.
Supernatural creation can be taught in classes devoted to a child's family's specific religious denomination.
plain talk: "Your response offers no evidence that complex creatures evolved from simple ones."
By that you mean you closed your eyes and refused to see what is there right in front of you.
And that is your right, you don't have to see the obvious.
But you can't call your blindness "science", because by US law, it's not.
What you here call "literal" I call "traditional" and the reason is, nobody really knows the "literal" meanings of ancient words from, say, 3,000+ years ago.
Yes, we can make educated guesses and there are traditional translations & exegeses.
But every word today is freighted with meanings it acquired over the millennia since then.
So, nobody today knows for certain exactly what the original shepherds & priests understood by the words they first heard at the time.
So it's impossible today to have a "literal" understanding of Biblical words.
Fortunately... fortunately... and again this is all just my opinion -- it doesn't really matter if we understand exactly, precisely what was originally intended.
The reason is that God always speaks to us in language we do understand, He does not hide His intentions in indecipherable code words.
His clear words always call us to our highest natures, our profoundest understandings, our clearest visions and our most moral behavior.
In Genesis we learn that God created the Universe, the Earth and life.
The text does not tell us how He did it but does leave some fascinating clues -- interesting but irrelevant since what matters are God's intentions, plans & reasons for creation, all of which fly in the face of modern nihilistic understandings.
At least as early as Christian theologians like St. Augustine of Hippo (circa 400 AD), it was understood that the Bible and science might **seemingly** contract each other.
Augustine's answer (like yours) was, in such cases, to treat the Bible as metaphor.
Here is the famous quote from St. Augustine on that.
Right, I "get" all that.
If I were working in the field and found a human looking skeleton in a stratum said to be 40 million years old, before I'd accept my first impressions, I'd examine every assumption -- is it really human? Is the stratum really 40 million years old? Was the fossil reburied at a later date? Etc., Etc..
I would not immediately believe anything that was totally unexpected -- you remember the old saying: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
On the other hand, if a scientist is ethical and the evidence after careful reconsiderations truly does stand up, then he/she has an obligation to publish it.
Wasn't there a dinosaur in recent years with amazingly preserved collagen, which had anti-evolutionists going berserk -- "see, see, see! No way can DNA survive millions of years, therefore must be Young Earth!!"
Well... there was no dino-DNA, but there were bits of collagen which showed that dinosaurs taste like chicken.
And I suppose that's good to know, right?
Bottom line: no evidence falsifying basic evolution theory has ever been confirmed.
Of course, evolution as understood today is vastly different from what Darwin published in 1859.
But his basic idea remains unimpeached -- evolution results from 1) descent with modifications and 2) natural selection.
This chart doesn’t provide much support for Intelligent Design.
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