You simply don’t know what the term “evolution” means. It isn’t a creation theory.
As has been pointed out many times on this board, evolution could be directed by the hand of God. Thereby making it creation. Then we say the universe was created by God, it doesn’t necessarily mean the Christian God.
And one more thing: at some point (in the theory of evolution) one must bring the creation of the world from randomness to order. That is no small task and requires intelligence, or God.
The nature of randomness is chaos, hardly a fit universe for human existence.
Love
I have to agree with Zagadka here, you don’t know what evolution is, no offense. Evolution isn’t about the creation of the world, at least not biological evolution. The validity of evolution does not rest on how the world was created, nor the universe, nor how the first life forms were created. The validity of evolution rests on the evidence for evolution, after life began, in this respect evolution has enough evidence to render it fact.
The question pitted evolution against creation, non-God against God.
But in reality evolution could be either. Directed by God or not.
Yes, I am intelligent enough to know evolution is mainly about the creation of man, or How did man come about on planet earth?
What I have said before still remains true. There is no argument because we don’t know whether God is or is not, at least from the standpoint of real evidence we just don’t know. Neither do we know where matter and energy came from.
These things remain for now, unknowable.
Now that’s what I meant about science doctrine, which leads people to believe evolution means “there is no God”, and that is simply not true.
Evolution does not mean there is no spirit world, no God, it furnishes no evidence of such, yet so many of our children have been told this lie.
But the big question remains how did randomness turn into order with no intelligent direction.
The largest element of Science doctrine is that anyone who believes in the spiritual things is ( here put any number of nasty names. )
I look out on the world and its history and wonder how science can come to such a conclusion.
In all recorded history, people of all cultures have believed in, and experienced spiritual things. Now we have science telling us that all these people were merely having delusions, hallucinations and such. Science can’t really prove what they say, but they say it any way.
Love
No it is not. The origins of man represent a tiny piece of evolution. It is blown out of proportion because of our egocentricity, and because some religious people have a problem of how it contradicts certain parts of the Bible.
Actually we do know where matter came from. It froze out of the energy of the Big Bang. The ratio of hydrogen to helium in the universe fits the model exactly.
Get it through your head. There is no such science doctrine. And, who has told our children this lie? They didn’t hear it in schools, which are extra careful to describe the boundaries of what evolution tells us.
Happens all the time in our world, from the growth of plants to the formation of snowflakes. What’s the big deal?
Any cites where scientists have come to the conclusion, through scientific study that there is no spiritual world and anyone who believes in that is ( here put any number of nasty names )? Anything beyond someone simply expressing a personal opinion I mean?
As numerous people have commented on here, science does not posit the existence or non existence of a spirit world, or God etc. If people study the evidence that science presents and reads into it that there is no God, that is not the fault of science. There is no ‘science doctrine’ that we are taught in school and are forced to uphold.
About randomness becoming order, from what I’ve read of these types of arguments, the whole randomness thing is fallacious. It is a strawman. As someone else posted, we can see, with the aid of Hubble, stars and planets forming as we watch. Shold we not believe our own eyes?
Evolution is not about the creation of Man, Creationism is. Evolution is about the umm… evolution… of life from a common ancestor, not limited or mainly focussed on Humans, although that would be of primary interest to most of us. 
The only reason that evolution is ‘pitted’ against creationism is that creationists insist on saying that evolution conflicts with the biblical creation story and is therefore suspect. Evolution explains the concepts of natural selection and so on as others have described. Creationists area pparently threatened by this as they think it renders their view of Genesis invalid, which it does. However, that was not the aim of scientists, just a byproduct.
Voyager covered this pretty well, but I have a couple things to add.
Yes, the OP set up a false dichotomy: belief in evolution versus belief in intelligent design. We have, through three pages, explained that the theory of natural selection (and the other theories often wrapped up with evolution, such as abiogenesis) are theories, in that they make predictions which can be (but have not been) falsified through experimentation. Intelligent design is not a scientific theory. It makes no predictions. Intelligent design is a guess. We can admit we don’t know for certain how (or if) the universe began. But it makes no sense to deny our children the preponderance of scientific evidence that life evolved from some common ancestor; either this is what happened, or something else happened that looks exactly the same. Either way, biology makes far more sense when you look at it in the light of this evidence, rather than simply making guesses.
Yup. Or it could be directed by aliens, or by an extremely powerful secret society, or by an invisible pink unicorn. None of these should be taught in schools, because there is no evidence for them. If you wish to teach them to your own children, you’re welcome to do so.
Not at all. A very small subset of evolution deals with the original and evolution of man. Evolution deals with the relationships between organisms, and how modern organisms seem to have arisen from past organisms over the billions of years that the Earth appears to have been here. The process–natural selection–is the most important (because it helps put all of biology into a logical context), but it is also important to note that everything is related, so we don’t have to learn separate biologies for every organism on Earth.
Whether God is or is not is unknowable, and, indeed, completely untestable. Where matter and energy came from can be hypothesized based on available evidence, and we can test these hypotheses when we get further evidence. I’m not sure what any of this has to do with the OP, though.
I don’t understand why everyone thinks science = denial of religion. Religion is pervasive in culture, including in science; atheists are a minority in science, just as we are in the rest of society. Scientists simply acknowledge that the unknowable does not belong in science, and therefore focus their studies on the knowable.
This is only an issue when you look at a small subset of the big picture. Am I more organized than the air I breathe and the food I eat? Chemically speaking, not really–O2 is far less entropic than O spread into numerous compounds throughout my body. That aside, we are a small island of life in a solar system which appears to be otherwise lifeless. A pocket of order between an area of high energy and an area of low energy is far from unheard of (and far from disallowed) in the rest of science.
This statement has nothing to do with science. Perhaps scientists sometimes insult people. They are not, at that time, practicing science; they are practicing humanity. There is just as much vitriol slung at scientists as there is by them. However, yes, some scientists caution against believing in things for which there is no evidence, particularly when there is evidence that the belief is untrue. If the believers choose to ignore the evidence, that’s their choice.
Until Galileo discovered acceleration, nobody believed in acceleration. That didn’t mean acceleration didn’t exist. Just because “that’s how it’s always been”, that doesn’t mean it’s correct.
That said, science (nor scientists, who tend to do more talking than the methodology called “science”) does not tell us that everyone who has ever experienced anything spiritual was hallucinating. Scientists might find evidence that certain things linked to spiritual experiences are also linked to chemical and physiological effects; if that casts doubt on the experiences of others, I’m sorry. Scientists only seek to understand.
I’d be interested to see your evidence that “Science can’t really prove what they say, but they say it any way.” For someone so interested in spreading love, I find it odd that you’d make such an indictment of people making unproven assertions if you cannot prove your own assertion.
People! People!
This is lekatt you are attempting to educate. He has already demonstrated in multiple past threads that he chooses his odd world view over any fact or evidence.
Save your electrons and typing for bodswood or any other poster who will actually engage you in discussion. I’m sure that lekatt is a very nice person in his own realm (off the internet) but he will continue to ignore the fact that evolution does not address abiogenesis (to say nothing of the origins of the universe) until you are exhausted and he will continue to post falsehoods such as
and
until one (or more) of you feels compelled to drag him into the Pit, and you will never shake him from his distorted view of reality regardless.
I am one who has often argued that we need to address the cranks and the liars so that the “audience at home” can see the errors of their positions, but lekatt has such a long history, here, and is so intransigent in repeating his errors, that even I think that it is a waste of time to try to debate him.
Your entire post is a personal attack and says nothing about the debate on the board. These things are not supposed to happen on this board.
Love
Really good post.
Yes, science does not posit there is no spiritual world or no God, but unfortunately scientists do. They take each religious experience, which they never had, and explain it away using opinions not provable evidence. Then they call the religious crazy or having delusions. If you say science doesn’t teach that, then where does it come from. Science teaches random forces brought the world into existence and man is only so many pounds of meat, neither of which they have been able to prove. Yes, this is teaching a non-God world. It wouldn’t be so bad except that a belief in higher intelligence brought hope and meaning into people’s lives. It also brought a since of divine morality enforced by the rules of this God whatever they they were. Science has destroyed a very good thing without showing any real proof or evidence. It is very sad and in my opinion has caused increases in emotion stress in the people who believe what science teaches.
Now science doctrine is the “methods”, “laws” and “procedures” that science says must happen before anything is proven or evidence is accepted. I know, these methods are laws and true and the only way. Religion says we have no doctrine either just the truth of the Bible.
These items are developed as doctrine in the same way religious doctrine is developed.
I personally don’t believe the non-God teaching will spread farther than the 10 percent or so who believe it now. There are real signs people want science to back up their claims with some real proof. They won’t be able to do so.
Love
Please provide a citation for this. I have never heard any scientist make claims similar to what you claim here.
Those would be atheists, not scientists. Most scientists (like most anyone else) in America are Christian.
Lekatt, you do more to discredit theism on these boards than every atheist put together.
On the contrary, I pointed out explicit posts where you have made false statements–statements that have been demonstrated to be false on several earlier occasions, but that you continue to repeat–thus indicating that you are actually attempting to steer this thread into another of your odd (and factually false) discourses.
I’m simply trying to prevent a hijack.
Look, there does not need to be any invisible force that creates order out of chaos. That is anthropomorphizing, putting Man on pedestal and stating if things can’t be explained in a way we understand, it couldn’t possibly happen. For instance, we have to figure out how to put things in order in so as to build objects, thus we expect that the Universe must also do the same thing. The God centered view often strikes me as being about using God as a placeholder to hold up human egos. Any such order out of chaos need be nothing less than a fortuitous alignment of necessary conditions, a statistical anomaly. Disprove it.
Personally, I feel that without definite proof that there is no God, or any such phenomenon, the possibility of their existence remains open. However, without any evidence, such phenomenon are so statistically miniscule that in the scientific realm that they have to be overlooked in general barring some real evidence for or against God (or other such metaphysical entities) arising. Otherwise we’d be tripping over flying monkeys, Great Caesar’s ghost, Invisible Pink Unicorns (blessed be Her name), and other ponderables all the time while trying to figure out things work. Not dismissing them out of hand simply keeps curiosity and cultural artifacts alive and may, in some far future, provide an understanding of some new discovery should flying monkeys provide a viable explanation that fits the bill. Just don’t hold your breath.
You know very well that for centuries things that people did not understand, such as why the winds blow, and why the sun rises and sets where explained away by the gods. Over time these series of explanations become very involved and codified leading to entire religious systems and doctrines. As was stated here earlier, the displacement of these myths by actual proof is simply a byproduct of science. Science has no aim of destroying religions. The religious simply feel that they are under attack when it happens, after all no one likes their beliefs to have holes poked in them.
Yet, there are mathematical proofs that demonstrate how order is created, that it does so on its own. There is also entorpy which will ultimately undo it all. Sorry if you don’t like it, but that is how it is. Also, few think in such reductionist terms to consider that people are nothing more than “a few pounds of meat”. Most rationally minded people find that description vastly incomplete and offensive and not representative of a scientifically based worldview.
Anyway, science is nothing more than a systematic examination of basic truths about the universe as best we currently observe and understand them. If your God is Truth, why should you fear this? God will hold up within the framework of science as this is the universe that such a God created. We know evolution is a real, provable process. Thus, it would have to be the method by which God chooses to work when advancing life through changing conditions. If you do not accept this, you reject the truth of God’s work. When you start rejecting truths because they disagree with previously held beliefs, how can that be a pathway to knowledge of God?
Oops, I meant to state that" For instance, we have to figure out how to put things in order in so as to build objects, thus some expect that the Universe must have an intelligent, sentient Builder to also do the same thing."
One more time. Randomness didn’t “turn into order.” Randomness offers lots of options and natural selection determines which ones stick around.
As has been said over and over, the probability argument is a non-starter. The use of probability, after the fact, to claim some supernatural effect is an invalid use of probability. The probability of any event whatever happening exactly the way it did is so close to zero that all things are either impossible or supernaturally directed. The latter being the creationis position.
I see now, natural selection determines which ones live.
So natural selection is the intelligence used, where did natural selection come from? and what is it?
As for probability, you tell me you are making the rules, so what else is new.
Love
Wow, your ignorance astounds me.
Natural selection is the natural process of certain species being favored, and others being eliminated.
Lets say a massive meteor hits the earth.
The creatures that can live without much light and food live. Specifically, mammals. Since all the dust blocks all the light, many plants die. During the era of the dinosaurs, this would mean that many herbavoirs would die. Consequently, this means that many carnivores would die. Thus, the extinction of the dinosaurs and the rise of mammals. Natural selection.
I am surprised that you would even venture into a discussion like this when you admit you don’t even grasp the most basic element of evolutionary mechanisms!
But, in the interest of fighting ignorance, I shall attempt to explain. Natural selection is a logical conclusion based on the following facts:
- Resources are limited. This results in competition between individuals for those resources.
- All organisms are capable of generating more offspring than can survive, given the available resources. This is true even for organisms which reproduce infrequently, or have long gestation periods (e.g., elephants). Simple mathematical models can be used to demonstrate that after X generations, you’ve got more elephants than can even fit on the planet.
- Variation between individual organisms exists, and is to varying extents, heritable.
The conclusion, then, is that those individuals who, by virtue of their individual variations, are better able to obtain resources will be more likely to mate and generate offspring. If those variations which provide them their “edge” are heritable, then those same traits will be passed on to their offspring, allowing the benefit to persist unto the next generation, and so on. Over time, then, the general trend of a population will be such that those individuals best suited for life in a given environment (those which are better able to take advnatage of whatever resources are present) will mate preferentially and the population as a whole eventually becomes “adapted” to the environment - they are better at procurring resources within that environment than other, neighboring populations.
Adaptation, however, is not an “end goal” - it is simply the eventual result given a steady-state type of environment. If the environment changes drastically, then those previous adaptations may well count for naught. If the environment changes slowly or gradually, then the population will change along with it.
Also note that “environment” is not limited to climate effects; rather, it consists of the sum of all factors which influence any individual, including other individuals of the same population.
As one can see, then, natural selection didn’t “come from” anywhere - it’s the expected result of variation and competition for limited resources. Were variation absent, or were resources truly infinite, then natural selection would not exist.
At risk of being branded unnecessarily pedantic, I feel that I should point out that the facts are rather more complicated than that. Not least of which is the fact that it is not a given that meteor impact caused the K-T extinctions (there are at least two other suspected killers, and the fossil record does not provide fine enough detail to truly differentiate between them at this time). Second, many species besides non-avian dinosaurs died out, including a large number of lizards and sharks, for example - groups that really should not have been adversly effected were the scenario as you described. Third, counting birds as dinosaurs (and there is no reason not to, given that current evidence yields the conclusion that birds are dinosaurs), dinosaurs have always been more diverse than mammals from the very beginning, and continuing to this day.