I don't assume anything.
I am simply reporting what the scientific data tells us --
Your problem is: in rejecting the theory of evolution, you must also reject virtually all of science -- from physics and chemistry to astronomy, astrophysics, geology, biology, paleontology and even mathematics.
Virtually no scientific discipline is untouched by the theory of evolution.
So, you can't just deny evolution without also denying the rest of science.
OneWingedShark: "*Granted, I’m not sure that we can call the first several days in Genesis “literal days” as ‘day’ is defined to be the time it takes the Earth to rotate one revolution in relation to the sun... which was uncreated in the first several days."
Would it not logically follow, that if God is eternal, omnipotent and omnipresent, then distinctions between a nanosecond, a "day" and hundreds of billions of years are utterly irrelevant to Him?
Why should God care if evolution takes a "day" or a billion years?
OneWingedShark speaking of scientists: "They proclaim themselves to be the ultimate purveyors of knowledge (just look at how they, as a society, treat the dissidents of their “established scientific fact” [i.e. “Global Warming Deniers”])... "
Not of all knowledge, only of scientific knowledge.
In that, they are correct -- so if you wish to influence a scientific debate, you must yourself first become a recognized scientist, learn to speak the "language of science," and debate scientific topics on scientific terms.
And this is precisely what many opponents of "man made global warming" have done.
And that's the reason we non-scientists have a leg to stand on in this debate -- because we can quote real scientific data and ideas from real scientists who have not been corrupted by government handouts supporting "Global Warming research."
Similar scientists do not exist supporting I.D./Creationism.
Indeed, nearly all of those scientists who "question" evolution theory, do so merely for the sake of supporting more research.
Of course any scientist will support calls for more research. It doesn't mean they have jumped on the I.D./Creationists bandwagon.
Responding to BroJoeK: "Or do you imagine God is so nearly human?":
OneWingedShark: "What? Where are you getting that from?"
You obviously missed my point, pal.
Here you are, brazenly demanding that mere human scientists replicate in a test tube, in a just few years, evolutionary processes which the scientific data says took literally billions of years to evolve.
I'm saying: what makes you think mere scientists could be so Godlike -- or that God would make one of His greatest creations (life) so easy for pathetic humans to figure out?
I hugely doubt if any humans will ever figure out all of God's secrets.
OneWingedShark: "And this even flies in the face of the assertion that the “less useful” developments of an organism will be “pruned away” by the evolutionary theory."
There are innumerable examples of evolutionary "pruning," throughout the biological world.
If as you say, the full purpose of some organ like the appendix was not entirely understood, that does not invalidate the fact of evolutionary "pruning."
Specific to this subject: Asexual or "semi-sexual" reproduction still exists for the obvious evolutionary reason that under certain circumstances it confers survival advantages.
OneWingedShark: "Like I said, evolutionary theory does NOT, IMO, adequately explain the state of life that we see today; in fact, your earlier appeal to God [”Do you expect scientists to replicate in a test tube what it took God billions of years to evolve?”] is acknowledgment thereof..."
You're stretching way too far there.
All I intended was to doubt if God's amazing actions in creating and managing the evolution of life are going to be replicated by pitiful human beings in a test tube any time soon.
Why would you expect otherwise?
Whoa buddy!
You go too far assuming I’m not a “scientist,” I’m a programmer (Computer Scientist) and as such I must be familiar with logic. So that is the point where I will start my rebuttal; Mathematics is the ONLY Science wherein one can prove/disprove something — That is to say that in order to prove something you must use logic which is a subset of Mathematics.
>I don’t assume anything.
>I am simply reporting what the scientific data tells us —
>
> * the Universe is circa 13 billion years old.
> * the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old.
> * the earliest evidence of primitive life on Earth are found in rocks dated around 3.9 billion years (all numbers here from memory, subject to minor corrections)
There are assumptions in the data that you are citing; or rather in the interpretations of the data.
Let’s start with radioactive decay; it has a nice, steady rate of decay where every period of some length of time that elapses half of the material decays into another material these are termed the parent and daughter materials, respectively.
Let’s say that I give you a package containing only the elements of the parent & daughter materials and, after one halflife [let’s call it a week, for convenience] your curiosity as to when I filled the package becomes overwhelming so you open it up, test and find that the contents are exactly a ratio of 3:1 (that is 1/4 parent material and 3/4 daughter). Using that data you could assume that I had the package a week before giving it to you; this would be correct IF I were to have filled the package with only the parent material... however, I could ALSO have filled it with half parent material and half daughter material on the same day that I gave it to you.
You cannot, therefore, use that method of dating without imposing assumptions; assumptions which must be acknowledged.
>Your problem is: in rejecting the theory of evolution, you must also reject virtually all of science — from physics and chemistry to astronomy, astrophysics, geology, biology, paleontology and even mathematics.
I’ve refuted the mathematics claim there...
The paleontology claim was impacted by the discovery of soft-tissue in dino-fossils ( http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur.html ).
The geology and paleontology claims are too intertwined: they determine the age of the fossils by what layer they were found in & they determine the age of the geologic-layers by what fossils they contain. (This circularity even present in modern textbooks.)
Astrophysics presents its own challenges to the evolutionary theory; namely that their star-generation theory says in order to produce 1 star you have to use up 20 stars worth of nebulae... and of all the novae/supernovae [star-deaths] that we’ve seen we’ve yet to see a star-birth (the most we’ve seen are stars that “could be” being born).
And as for Biology, I think that it’s quite telling that our “best and brightest” are unable to engineer new life... or even “improve on*” existing life.
*A friend of mine who is in agriculture was telling me how they took a gene from Salmon [IIRC] that was resistant to some sort of disease, grafted it into their Alfalfa and when they loaded it into their analyzer they saw ‘ghosting’ which indicates the presence of a “double gene” — IOW, the pant they were working with already [naturally] contained that gene.
But were’re getting to the meat of why Evolution doesn’t work; the method that the theory uses as its engine [natural selection] is a purely subtractive procedure. In programming there is a language, Ada, which allows you to define your own types; you can narrow things down with subtypes so we can map numbers like so:
— Define Integer as a signed-type mapping onto the two’s-complement bit-pattern.
Type Integer is range -2**(System.Storage_Elements.Storage_Element’Size-1)..2**(System.Storage_Elements.Storage_Element’Size-1);
— Define Natural as all non-negative integers.
SubType Natural is Integer Range 0..Integer’Last;
— Define Positive as all positive integers, note that Natural is a superset of Positive.
SubType Positive is Natural Range Natural’Succ(Natural’First))..Natural’Last;
As you can see, during subtyping the possible range is cut down, it is NEVER expanded.
Evolution would say that subtyping could, in some way (if used often enough and given enough time) result in a range greater than its parent type; something like:
— Illegal in ALL Ada compilers; will not compile.
SubType Positive_And_One is Positive Range Positive’First-1..Positive’Last;
Now one COULD create a “supertype” that could take all the values of Natural plus that of -1 as follows:
Type Naturals_And_Negative_One is Range Integer’Pred(Natural’First)..Integer’Last;
Or you could subtype off of Integer
SubType Negative_One_To_Last is Integer Range Integer’Pred(Natural’First)..Integer’Last;
but those aren’t using subtyping Positive to gain a larger range than Positive.
> You obviously missed my point, pal.
>Here you are, brazenly demanding that mere human scientists replicate in a test tube, in a just few years, evolutionary processes which the scientific data says took literally billions of years to evolve.
>I’m saying: what makes you think mere scientists could be so Godlike — or that God would make one of His greatest creations (life) so easy for pathetic humans to figure out?
And if you look at the above example you’ll see why I feel absolutely justified in saying “prove it.”
>> OneWingedShark: “*Granted, I’m not sure that we can call the first several days in Genesis “literal days” as ‘day’ is defined to be the time it takes the Earth to rotate one revolution in relation to the sun... which was uncreated in the first several days.”
>
>Would it not logically follow, that if God is eternal, omnipotent and omnipresent, then distinctions between a nanosecond, a “day” and hundreds of billions of years are utterly irrelevant to Him?
Doesn’t this argument undercut your own “billions of years” statement? At the least it doesn’t support it.
>Why should God care if evolution takes a “day” or a billion years?
*shrug* - I never said that God cared about time. But let me give you something to chew on:
Time is defined, at least in mathematics/physics, as the changes between the position of two or more objects.
So then a Null universe would have no time because there would be no objects therein.
A universe containing one object, likewise, would not experience time. {Even the radioactive decay can be described as the movement of multiple objects.}
Space, as you know, has been linked to time via Einstein’s Relativity theory; using this we can say that if there is no time then there is no space.
So then, how can someone in a time-bound universe fully understand the transition of a non-time/non-space to a time/space? Or, for that matter, the transition of a time-bound universe to one not bound by time? {In Revelation there is an Angel who proclaims “there shall be time no more.”}