Do you accept the theory of evolution? - Part 1

[KalMart]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears that you and jmc are agreeing with one another.

Basically yes, but even referring to 'it' as a creator would be like a paramecium calling gravity Bob...heck, even that would be closer in scope.

 

[KalMart]

Of course, one side thinks that the other is guilty of flawed reasoning. But both sides are engaged in a rational debate inasmuch as they’re using logic and reason (and not appeals to faith, revelation or scriptural authority) as their tools of persuasion. Philosophy is not theology.

When it comes to evolution, there really shouldn't be 'two sides', though...especially if one is fueled by religion. As we've discussed before, from the outset, if you're going to refute the science of evolution, you need to refute it scientifically. Religion has nothing to say about it just as music or pottery does. To somehow think it does is an essential flaw in logic and reason. When it comes to that, it is not evolution's duty to accommodate scripture, it's religion's duty to realize that we know better now than we did in times past, and that it has to reassess its information.

 

[Marvolo]

Basically yes, but even referring to 'it' as a creator would be like a paramecium calling gravity Bob...heck, even that would be closer in scope.

The Theory of Bob. I like that.t: Bob's a right bastard.

 

[Marvolo]

We were discussing "God of the Gaps" the other day, and I found something that really sums up the problem with it.

The God Delusion Richard Dawkins Pages 132-133

A message that an imaginary 'intelligent design theorist' might broadcast to a scientist:

If you don't understand how something works, never mind: just give up and say God did it. You don't know how the nerve impulses work? Good! You don't understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photo-synthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don't go to work on the problem, just give up and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don't work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries, for we can use them. Don't squander precious ignorance by researching it away. We need those glorious gaps as a last refuge for God.

St Augtsiune said it quite openly:

'There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.'

If it wasn't for scientists researching those mysteries and secrets we would not even have an understanding of the immune system nor medicine. Thankfully we have men and women who work hard in obscuirty to understand the immune system and a many other things that were once gaps.

 

[KalMart]

We were discussing "God of the Gaps" the other day, and I found something that really sums up the problem with it.

The God Delusion Richard Dawkins Pages 132-133


If it wasn't for scientists researching those mysteries and secrets we would not even have an understanding of the immune system nor medicine. Thankfully we have men and women who work hard in obscuirty to understand the immune system and a many other things that were once gaps.

And maintained as chasms by some.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

Since this is discussed in a thread it does not really belong to, I will give in and say what I think of Evolution, and thoughts similar to this last post made by Marvolo in this thread, but I will say this little and not post again in this thread, cause I'm fairly bored of debates, they are more exhausting when some say they "state the obvious" and stick to it, but they obviously did not read the source they cite as they want us to believe

As a Muslim I'm attached to the Qura'an, it's and important part of my life, that 1400+ years old script still stand as it was for all these generations, and we strongly and firmly believe it's from God/Allah

Some of the contents of the Qura'an is science subjects; 'Big Bang' (which I honestly think is the source of scientists telling about the Big Bang, studying it, and presenting it), 'pregnancy and birth', 'stages of the child in the womb', 'planets and space', 'birds flying and staying airborne', and more. The science in this scripture is accepted and approved by scientists from all eras and beliefs, so I will stand by it, and believe science is part of religion, so the God is not just for the gaps, the God is the designer of the known and the unknown

Other subjects discussed are historical, first, how man was first created by God, and the reason we "Humans" exist, so this is one reason I don't believe in Evolution from Ape -> Man, or from any other living creature to be honest, man was there as man, no different stages, the God who created us debunked the idea of Evolution centuries before it became a theory
Another historical event we read in the Qura'an (I can't go into details about it, although it's a historical event, site rules don't allow it) of people morphing to apes, as punishment for disobeying a strict rule directed at them

 

[TheBat812]

You are fightiong a losing battle. Gods and higher beings and belief is too tied into the evolution of the human psyche. Doing away with it, no matter how childish a notion it may be, is no easy task. It won't happen in our lifetime.

I would argue that it's engrained in human culture more so than it's 'tied into the evolution of the human psyche.'

Religion is a cultural thing devised to give understanding to things we did not understand, not some innate thing. Curiosity is, however.

 

[moviedoors]

I would argue that it's engrained in human culture more so than it's 'tied into the evolution of the human psyche.'

Religion is a cultural thing devised to give understanding to things we did not understand, not some innate thing. Curiosity is, however.

I disagree, I think it's directly related to the pattern recognition skills that made us a successful species thousands of years ago. Being able to hold disparate ideas in our head is a huge advantage, but it also paves the way for magical thinking, confirmation bias, making connections that don't exist, etc.

 

[Thundercrack85]

To me debating whether or not you are an ape is just... strange. Perhaps hindsight is 20/20, but when I look at a gorilla or a chimp, and then at a person, the resemblance alone makes the relationship obvious. Any alien looking at Earth would see that similarity immediately. All the later science just confirms it.

Just put your hand up against a chimp's.

 

[Joshua_B]

If by "evolution", you're referring to limited variations we've seen and tested to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, then my answer is yes. If you're talking about "molecules to man", a.k.a. "the goo to you, via the zoo", then my answer is no.

 

[The Question]

If by "evolution", you're referring to limited variations we've seen and tested to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, then my answer is yes. If you're talking about "molecules to man", a.k.a. "the goo to you, via the zoo", then my answer is no.

Which is funny, because that has also been tested and proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

 

[JJJ's Ulcer]

When people deny evolution, what comes first? Their religious beliefs or their logic. Usually religion informs or influences their logic, even if they try to distance it to appear more credible. But at its core it always comes back to "God creating man", which there is absolutely no scientific evidence for, verses "molecules to man" as Josh put it, which there is a ton of evidence for.

Josh, do you think perfectly formed animals just dropped out of the sky one day? Every species alive has evolved from the tiniest molecules in to their current forms. Nothing came whole.

 

[NickNitro]

Aliens genetically created us. Now they watch from a far like a child with an ant farm.

 

[The End]

Since this is discussed in a thread it does not really belong to, I will give in and say what I think of Evolution, and thoughts similar to this last post made by Marvolo in this thread, but I will say this little and not post again in this thread, cause I'm fairly bored of debates, they are more exhausting when some say they "state the obvious" and stick to it, but they obviously did not read the source they cite as they want us to believe

As a Muslim I'm attached to the Qura'an, it's and important part of my life, that 1400+ years old script still stand as it was for all these generations, and we strongly and firmly believe it's from God/Allah

Some of the contents of the Qura'an is science subjects; 'Big Bang' (which I honestly think is the source of scientists telling about the Big Bang, studying it, and presenting it), 'pregnancy and birth', 'stages of the child in the womb', 'planets and space', 'birds flying and staying airborne', and more. The science in this scripture is accepted and approved by scientists from all eras and beliefs, so I will stand by it, and believe science is part of religion, so the God is not just for the gaps, the God is the designer of the known and the unknown

Other subjects discussed are historical, first, how man was first created by God, and the reason we "Humans" exist, so this is one reason I don't believe in Evolution from Ape -> Man, or from any other living creature to be honest, man was there as man, no different stages, the God who created us debunked the idea of Evolution centuries before it became a theory
Another historical event we read in the Qura'an (I can't go into details about it, although it's a historical event, site rules don't allow it) of people morphing to apes, as punishment for disobeying a strict rule directed at them

There are a number of mistakes in reasoning and skeptical thinking contained in this post.

First, I'll take the "even if" approach.

Even IF the Quran did contain scientific information (which is not to concede that it does at all), how could we say that this information could ONLY be revealed by a god? This is a massive leap.

This fascinating video goes into further detail on the 'even if' approach to religious claims.

[YT]XYqJ5zwE4k0[/YT]

That aside, its pretty easy to spin poetic texts as containing scientific truths when we look at them in hindsight. On closer examination, these texts are usually very open to interpretation, do not contain ideas that were new at the time, or state things that are basic and require nothing extraordinary, and the reasoning requires ignoring other totally inaccurate texts. Joseph dreamed of 11 planets; does that mean there are 11 planets?

Does the sun orbit the Earth? Is the Earth flat?

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/13/index.htm#2

And indeed, there ARE muslims that believe these things.

[YT]g84g2KJcUV0[/YT]

More scientific absurdities.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/science/long.html

This seems rather unreliable.

In a nutshell, your post seems to me to be a reiteration of "my book says it, I believe it, that settles it".

That is not an honest path of inquiry. No discussion of the evidence whatsoever.

If you wish to inquire about the facts of evolution, the discussion MUST be centered around the evidence. If a scientist wants to disprove evolution, he must figure out how it can be falsified, and proceed to falsify it. One method of falsification is to find and date fossils to a period in which they simply would not belong according to our understanding of evolution (finding a rabbit from the pre-cambrian is one famous hypothetical example). Such a thing has never been found. When fossils are found and dated, scientists find exactly what they'd expect to if evolution is true; transitional fossils dated to very specific periods that show change over time.

Another example of falsification would be to observe some sort of limit to change. The Lenski e-coli experiment had ran for 25 years and just recently finished. After 25 years and 50, 000 generations, no upper limit to change had been found.

The evidence for evolution is massive. The genes; that scientists can point to the specific chromosomes (so specific they can tell you which centromere and telemere in the chromosome) in chimps and humans that shows our relation ALONE confirms the fact of evolution.

Any attempt to discredit evolution must consider the evidence.

 

[childeroland]

Discovery of 1.4 million-year-old fossil human hand bone closes human evolution gap

Humans have a distinctive hand anatomy that allows them to make and use tools. Apes and other nonhuman primates do not have these distinctive anatomical features in their hands, and the point in time at which these features first appeared in human evolution is unknown. Now, a University of Missouri researcher and her international team of colleagues have found a new hand bone from a human ancestor who roamed the earth in East Africa approximately 1.42 million years ago. They suspect the bone belonged to the early human species, Homo erectus. The discovery of this bone is the earliest evidence of a modern human-like hand, indicating that this anatomical feature existed more than half a million years earlier than previously known

 

[jaymes_e06]

Oh my!

 

[NickNitro]

I believe an alien race engineered us in their image. Prometheus style.

 

[Feenix]

This sums it up for me:

 

[NickNitro]

so that's a no then?

 

[Superwoman Prime]

When exactly does evolution stop being a theory?

 

[Superwoman Prime]

I'm not a science buff. Please school me.

Someone on YahooAnswers says, in short, that it will always be a theory because theories "explain" a process, whereas laws can basically be confined to one sentence.

But I was always taught that a theory is a claim that has evidence to back it up, but lacks definitive proof. I've never once heard the "theory explains" answer, but it's curious.

 

[Warhammer]

As I understand it, the theory of evolution isn't what we perceive the word theory to be. For example, I have a theory that if I don't eat for a week, my muscles will begin to catabolize. Then I proceed with the experiment to test if it actually happens. In this case, a theory is more like a proposition and I will use the experiment to see if my hypothesis matches what I thought initially.

A scientific theory is pretty much an explanation.

 

[Superwoman Prime]

Thank you.

 

[Dr.]

A scientific theory is pretty much an explanation.

Yes. A scientific theory is an explanatory model that reconciles a wide variety of facts. E.g., the existence of gravity is self-evident; but Newton’s theory of gravity explains how it works. Likewise, the theory of evolution (by natural selection) puts an explanation to the fact that organisms have changed through the eons.

Of course, creationists get traction by using/conflating “theory” in its vernacular sense - as a hunch or guess.

 

[Feenix]

so that's a no then?

I'm a very staunch believer in evolution.

"Believer" is the wrong word to use for this, though. I "believe" in evolution like I "believe" in the sun or the moon. It's a fact, there's nothing to believe, just accept.