The Religion of Science (Evolution as Faith!)

CHJ ^ | Jan 14, 2006 | Nathan Tabor

[WatchYourself]

How can someone observe, study or experiment on evolution? Evolution is the process of something moving from one stage of development to another. What do we really have to scientifically prove evolution?

A scientist might have a fossil, but we can only speculate as to the age and appearance of the animal creating that fossil. No one has ever witnessed evolution of life, no one here now was there to observe, study and experiment. Like it or not, we can only form theories and beliefs about what might have been. As sound as these theories might be, they are and will always be theories. Evolution is simply a system of belief based on what we think might have happened. Those who believe in evolution have faith in the scientist’s abilities to speculate and imagine what might have been. This is not science. This is faith.

It is time we removed the phony and inaccurate label of ‘science’ from evolution and see it for what it really is - a religion, based on faith and a system of belief. If public schools are not allowed to teach religion, then the theories of evolution have no place in a public school classroom. If they are allowed to teach theories based on faith, like evolution, then creationism should be taught also.

[From many - one.]

1. You omit Gen 1:22
2. You omit the fact that nowhere in Gen 2 is there a mention of what you are delimiting as waterfowl.

I see nothing on your interpretation that makes it appear more valid than mine.

[Dimensio]

a pseudo cult intent on the debasing, perversion, ridicule, belittling, deameaning and ultimate destruction of Christianity and its Western Culture and peoples.

Repeatedly asserting that evolution is a "plot" to destroy Christianity and Western Culture doesn't make you right. It does, however, make you look paranoid and delusional. You have repeatedly made this assertion and you have not once provided any evidence to support your claim. You have, however, repeatedly lied about evolution and lied about people accepting your false claims regarding evolution.

[From many - one.]

Ostriches, Emu, Dodo

[loboinok]

"Ostriches, Emu, Dodo"

Land birds.

[fabian]

actually I didn't know it was said by George Karlin. But you didn't address the other part of my post that there would be many thousands of transitional fossils throughout the fossil record if evolution were true. Those are missing and Darwin himself said that his theory would not stand up if those fossil were not present.

[Baraonda]

"Repeatedly asserting that evolution is a "plot" to destroy Christianity and Western Culture doesn't make you right. It does, however, make you look paranoid and delusional. You have repeatedly made this assertion and you have not once provided any evidence to support your claim."

Which is it, dimo, am I paranoid if I do not support my claim, OR am I paranoid whether I do support my claims or not?

I just did support my claim, and I'll gladly do it again: evolutionists are anti-christians intent on the destruction of Christianity and Christian societies. They (evolutionists) are of their father the devil.

"Evolution is a cult of the devil's propagation." (copyrighted)

[Dimensio]

Which is it, dimo, am I paranoid if I do not support my claim, OR am I paranoid whether I do support my claims or not?

You're paranoid for making the claim. You're fundamentally dishonest for not even trying to support it.

I just did support my claim, and I'll gladly do it again: evolutionists are anti-christians intent on the destruction of Christianity and Christian societies. They (evolutionists) are of their father the devil.

Repeating a claim is not "supporting" it. You demonstrate that you are delusional.

[loboinok]

1. "You omit Gen 1:22"

What problem are you having with this?

2. "You omit the fact that nowhere in Gen 2 is there a mention of what you are delimiting as waterfowl."

The problem may be that one of us is not understanding the distinction between landfowl and waterfowl.

[Baraonda]

"You're fundamentally dishonest for not even trying to support it." I'm my own support, Or do you want a link to another person's views? How imbecilic!!

[Baraonda]

"Repeating a claim is not "supporting" it."

Exactly!

Your repeated claims for the cult of evolution is also not lending support to its pseudo claims.

Evolution is a progressive/leftist movement intent on the destruction of Christianity. I won't let it happen.

[Dimensio]

You have again dishonestly presented my statement out of context. You are a shameless liar, you have nothing honest to say, and so I have nothing more to say to you.

[spunkets]

"Evolution is a progressive/leftist movement intent on the destruction of Christianity."

It's a successful scientific theory, nothing more.

[From many - one.]

I have no problem with Gen 1:22. You seem not to get it, though.

I may have missed it. Quote me waterfowl from Gen 2

[Coyoteman]

Evolution is a progressive/leftist movement intent on the destruction of Christianity. I won't let it happen.

So, evolution is out to do all of this? When did this start? Was it with this cute little guy, or before? Or after?

---

Fossil: Taung Child

Site: Buxton Limeworks, Taung, South Africa (1)

Discovered By: M. de Bruyn 1924 (1)

Estimated Age of Fossil: 2.3 mya * determined by Faunal & geomorphological data (1, 4, 5)

Species Name: Australopithecus africanus (1, 3, 7, 8)

Gender: Unknown (1)

Cranial Capacity: 405 (440 as adult) cc (1, 3)

Information: First early hominid fossil found in Africa (7, 8)

Interpretation:

• Juvenile (3 years old based on deciduous teeth, first permanent molars) (1, 3, 4, 7)
• Bipedal hominid (based on position of foramen magnum, brain endocast, small canines) (1, 3, 4, 7)
  
• Killed possibly by bird of prey (based on fractures and puncture marks on skull) (1, 10)

See original source for notes:
http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/fossilview.php?fid=27

[Dimensio]

See! Evolution kills children!

[Coyoteman]

This poor little guy was possibly killed by a bird of prey (based on fractures and puncture marks on skull).

That's just one example of selection pressure at work. This poor little tyke was out of the game early, leaving no descendants.

No hits, no runs, one error.

[From many - one.]

I think you lost track ofthe argument.

If, as in your interpretation, waterbirds (which fly over the earth) were created in Gen 1 and Gen 2:19 from the ground every "fowl of the air"...whence flightless birds?

[Ichneumon]

["So I reckon it would be quite possible to store the complete design for a human being in less than 1 gigabyte."]

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Actually, he does.

There are 15 billion brain cells in the human brain, all with specific connections to hundreds or thousands of other brain cells.

They have connections, but they aren't "specific" in the sense that every single neuron has "predefined" connections, like, "Neuron#10,386,688,132, you need to connect to the following exact list of other neurons: #9,885,282,110, #12,306,478,264, ... etc."

Instead, large-scale regions of the brain (consisting of hundreds of millions of neurons) grow according to the same "recipe" from the DNA, which results in growth behaviors that, if put into English, would be like, "follow the basic neuron growth pattern, but include 10% more than the standard number serotonin reputake vesicles, while extending an axon in the aft direction to a distance determined by the destination's local hormone gradient, while branching dendrites into surrounding neurons in a preferentially ventral direction until the local concentration of biomarker UYL is depleted."

Gene expression/transcription factors, of course, would determine the various parameters, and for the most part the same basic "growth program" would be used by all neurons everywhere in the brain, while large-scale features would have their growth parameters modified by brain-related analogs of the HOX genes (which determine the positioning of body part placement in most multi-celled animals).

This is why errors in portions of the DNA result in things like brain-wide deficits in a particular aspect of neural growth, instead of, say, a clean gaping hole where a quarter of the cerebellum used to be. DNA controls *global* behavior of cells (even when certain genes are expressed only in certain regions), and does *not* contain "lists" of individualized "instructions" for each one of the vast number of cells in the body.

This is basic embryological development, which is understood pretty well in a broad sense, even though of course there are a vast number of details yet to be determined when it comes to the fine details of every organ and substructure. The above description is based on a ton of real research, and is not speculation.

Covering epigenesis in even moderate detail is way beyond the scope of what can be done in a single post. For a proper treatment, you should really take a course in embryology/developmental biology from a university which offers a good biology degree.

But there are some decent layman's introductions on the internet, for example:

Developmental Biology Online

Rediscovering Biology: Online Textbook: Unit 7 - Genetics of Development

Dynamic Development Main Page

Dynamic Development at a Glance

Gradients That Organize Embryo Development

Epigenetic plasticity and polarity of the embryo BIOL114: Chapter 11. Development: Differentiation and Determination

FLY MORPH-O-GENESIS (amazing)

To get a flavor of the kind of research that has been and is being done on this topic, see for example:

From radial glia to pyramidal-projection neuron: transcription factor cascades in cerebral cortex development

NONLINEAR MODELING OF EMBRYONIC SALIVARY GLAND DEVELOPMENT and EMBRYONIC SUBMANDIBULAR SALIVARY GLAND DEVELOPMENT (excellent)

Xenomics

UCSD BIOLOGISTS VISUALIZE PROTEIN GRADIENT RESPONSIBLE FOR DIVIDING EMBRYO INTO NERVOUS SYSTEM, EPIDERMIS

Mohawk is a novel homeobox gene expressed in the developing mouse embryo

Ontogenic changes of the spinal GABAergic cell population are controlled by the serotonin (5-HT) system: implication of 5-HT1 receptor family

A functional screen for sonic hedgehog regulatory elements across a 1 Mb interval identifies long-range ventral forebrain enhancers

Transcriptional profiling of the developing rat brain reveals that the most dramatic regional differentiation in gene expression occurs postpartum

Role of X-Delta-2 in the early neural development of Xenopus laevis

Sculpting the nervous system: glial control of neuronal development

Essential roles for the FE65 amyloid precursor protein-interacting proteins in brain development

There are databases of known genes and processes involved in the control of embryological development. For example:

The Interactive Fly: A cyberspace guide to Drosophila development and metazoan evolution

For example, here is the page from that database listing the 40+ genes found to be involved in neural differentiation: Genes involved in neural differentiation. Here's the entry for one of those genes: Gene name "lola", involved in the growth and guidance of axons. Also see Embryonic origins of a motor system: Motor dendrites form a myotopic map in Drosophila from the same site.

(If they're not connected correctly you can end up with a disfunctional schirzophrenic person.)

If the neurons are not connected "correctly" in the sense of with the correct topology and biochemical properties, yes, but it's not a matter of "if neuron #11,383,987,232 doesn't have a direct connection to #7,362,254,234"...

I'll esimate very low and say that it takes 1 kb of data to store the correct connections for each cell. That's 15 gigabytes of data required just to store information on how brain cells connect to each other, not to mention the design of the brain cells themselves.

Read the above material. It's quite incorrect to assume that each neuron requires its own "blueprint data". It doesn't. Everything that has ever been discovered about embryological development (and that would fill entire libraries) indicates that body (and brain) development is done on a much "higher level" than that -- regions of the body are biochemically tagged with a "map" of organ and tissue positions, and then the cells in each region react en masse by triggering specific differentiation programs for the appropriate regions, based on the biochemical markers (which directly affect gene expression/transcription). There's also a lot of cell-cell interaction and feedback, which again is done on a gross "where am I map" basis, which causes cells in the area to, for example, join up together with their neighbors as tissues, or to extend nerves into surrounding muscle, or to spread a network of blood vessels through tissues which are not yet supplied, etc.

Development is not like an instruction manual where every screw and part has its exact position and assembly operations specified. It's more like the opeation of an ant colony, where each ant has the same "programming", but takes on a different task based on where it is, which chemical cues it runs across from other ants or larva, and which environmental triggers it encounters like food or an obstacle in the underground tunnel and so on. Individual ants don't get or need daily instructions saying "ant 382, your task is to walk north four inches, pick up food morsel, return to hill, descend to level 4Q, hand food to nursery ant, etc." Instead, simple behavioral reflexes (triggered by specific cues) "built" into each and every ant interact with the actions of other ants in the colony and environmental conditions to produce a remarkably flexible and emergently complex cooperative behavior which keeps the colony running smoothly and successfully.

Similarly, the DNA of every cell in the body contains "how to act if you're a cell in the XYZ region" 'recipes', with lists of biochemical responses to be triggered in response to external biochemical cues. The result is the growth and subsequent life processes of a multicellular organism, from a relatively "simple" set of cellular "instructions" (the DNA). Okay, "simple" is relative in this case - it's still very complex, but far simpler than would be needed if you were to try to individually "blueprint" every single cell and give it its own unique "intruction manual".

[ChessExpert]

"And you know, those who think statistics are against evolution -- they're against evolution from the beginning."

How can you possibly know this?

I think any argument involving statistics, mathematics, logic, and perhaps especially, observation should be taken seriously. I see no reason to rule out criticism, or support, based upon statistics.

It seems natural selection from the available genetic material can only go so far. It seems plausible that it can serve a conservative role. This would include the elimination of three legged dogs and nearsighted eagles. Cats come in several colors: white, black, gray, orange. Perhaps strong selective pressures could reduce the gene pool to black cats only. But that is merely subtraction of genetic information. I don't see how selection can add information and give us a fire-engine red cat or a green cat. Nor is it likely that selection alone can get us from the first mammal to a bat or to a whale.

So that is where mutations come in. But what is the probability that a cosmic ray to groin will provide an improvement? It's kind of like taking a magnet to your hard disk to upgrade your software. Given enough time - sure. But is there enough time? I think math and statistics is critical, and should not be ruled out