Posted on 01/13/2006 8:24:51 PM PST by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at capitolhilljournal.com ...
Bull. That is not what it says. Genesis 2:19 clearly says "and every fowl of the air". 'Every fowl' means all of them, and that can't be true if some of them have already been created.
/imperfect self replicator/ or similar terms, are used in more areas of study than Evolution.
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Indeed. But the term "planet earth" is used in more contexts than just geography.
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Dawkins may not have come up with the concept, but he defined it in '76 as far as I know.
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Then you dont know much. The term has been around for far longer than that.
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You might be more current on the history of toe though.
As to the TOE /imperfect self replicator/ it is yet another concept with more questions than real answers about it.
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What questions exactly did you have in mind?
Genesis 1:20 says "Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven." It does NOT say "and water fowl that may fly above the earth.
You are reading the bible like a liberal reads the constitution.
That's not true that there are millions of transitional fossils. They are not there. I can provide alot of links to prove that if you would like. It's just not honest to say that; if your transition fossils were there the controversy wouldn't be happening.
That's not true that there are millions of transitional fossils. They are not there. I can provide alot of links to prove that if you would like. It's just not honest to say that; if your transition fossils were there the controversy wouldn't be happening.
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Sorry to burst your bubble, but in the scientific world, there is no controversy. There is a controversy in the religious world, where some theologians refuse to absorb any possibility of anything other than a literal reading of Genesis. But meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of actual biologists are happily ignoring that little furore and continuing with their work.
What about the human appendix example that I used? Have you heard that one?
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No. I have not heard and scientist actually suggest that. Neither have I seen it suggested in any peer reviewed science journal.
//the human appendix example//
I remember that.
Also I remember the suggestions that we were all about to be replaced with a higher level of humans. They were to be born into our midst and had 'descended' from us. As with other evo conclusions/predictions, there were nice illustrations to go along with it.
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And which scientific journal did this appear in?
Depends on the environment they have to adapt to. That is essentially unknowable.
I can, however, make a prediction about human evolution:
Our descendants, whether human or another species, will not have wisdom teeth.
Proof: Even with modern dentistry, people still occasionally get fatal infections from impacted wisdom teeth before they have had any children. This eliminates one copy of the genes responsible. Eventually (depends on how often this happens, which is impossible to predict), the genes are gone.
Please provide a few examples.
How sad for you that you have to resort to ad hominems.
"Bull. That is not what it says. Genesis 2:19 clearly says "and every fowl of the air". 'Every fowl' means all of them, and that can't be true if some of them have already been created."
"and every fowl of the air" in the 5th day account. At the end of the 5th day, how many fowl of the air had God created? All of them, or 'Every fowl'.
In 2:19 additional details of Gen 1:26 - 27 are given, which are the creation of man and the animals and birds from the ground. Of every bird that God formed out of the ground on the 6th day, how many did He form? All of them, or 'Every fowl'.
So it stands to reason, if God created all of the fowl of the water on day 5 and all of the fowl of ground on day 6, He created all of the fowl.
"that can't be true"
God's Truth is absolute. Our refusal or inability to see, understand or believe it, does not change it one iota.
Asking about the *origins* is really a logical step. If you keep going back to the simplest forms, eventually you get to the first one and it only makes sense to ask where that came from. I don't see that that is an unreasonable question to ask.
You're absolutely right.
However, the techniques of the ToE can't be used to investigate beyond that first cell: ToE assumes discrete organisms that reproduce, mutate, etc. By definition, at least one of these isn't happening before the first life, otherwise you'd count it as life.
Abiogenesis researchers have hypothesized that a process analogous to Darwinian evolution was taking place in the "primordial soup" or on the surface of the "primordial pizza", that is that various molecules were forming and decomposing, and that some survived at the expense of others. This is sometimes called "chemical evolution".
The math may turn out to be similar to the ToE's math, but it's working in a fundamentally different domain.
That's one reason why ToE and Abio are different - One is a branch of biology, the other is a branch of chemistry.
Another reason is that ToE is independent of the origin of the evolving life. If God (or some other intelligence) designed and assembled the first cell(s), or if the cells self-assembled in some fashion, evolution works the same afterwards.
I wasn't the first. Besides, it's true.
But the bible does not say "the fowl of the water", nor does it say "the fowl of ground". What I said to Echo Talon also applies to you: you are reading the bible like a liberal reads the constitution. You are making it up as you go along.
One of the biggest problems in cosmology and astrophysics is whether it does in fact hold true in galaxies and clusters. If it does, you need to hypothesize "dark matter" to account for the observations. If it doesn't, we need a new Einstein to revise General Relativity.
Give a few examples of this please.
What actually has been said is that teaching ID/creationism as though it were science could very well have that effect.
But that goes against Islam more than it does Christianity - most Christians don't have a problem with ToE, but Muslims are much more united against it.
Usually, it's for the purpose of distinguishing facts, theories, laws, etc, by using a familiar example. See post 139
Actually, ToE is much better supported than General Relativity (the theory of gravity)
GR can't work with quantum theory at subatomic scales. At very large scales, either there's a problem with it, or there is a mysterious "dark matter" that accounts for 90% of the mass of the Universe.
ToE on the other hand, has withstood every test. It has made predictions which were later found to be true.
There is nothing like the "dark matter" problem for evolution theory. The real question is why do physicists insist that GR is as sound as ToE.
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