Evolution? How?

anonymouse, Its funny you quote Father Pierre.
Because evolution, unlike a TRUE religion, isreally quite malleable. Its basis of theory is continually modified as new FACTS are uncovered.
As a theory in science , evolution is merely the present body of explanation for which ALL PRESENT data fit, and NO data refute.
So Father Pierre, along with his cohort DAwson, claimed to have found the famous Eoanthropus, which later was the faked Piltdown mas.
The benefit of data was not on his mind at all, in fact,(at his defense) Chardin said he never knew that Dawson had married the underjaw sections by taking a chemically(K Dichromate) hardened recent mandible. Chardin, before his death , tried to ressurect his reputation by being a major supporter of Leakeys finds and was also a primary theorist of Gaia. (which is , at least a great deal more data based than is Creationist thinking)
All that we know that underpins evolution is hard discovered fact not a "pre pressed story from a mythology book" in which we try to find bits of stuff to support.
As you see the fun that parados is having just eviscerating that "ANSWERS"in genesis.com site.

EORL, Ive just returned so I saw youre quote of me and your post
about the fossils on the south rim of the Grand Canyon and the upside down formations"
When you carefully think about how entire formations get turned upside down , you must make a mental picture of a giant 10000km rug that is made of layers of earlier sediments. These layers are squashd against a foreland, just like the formations of the Himalayas that resulted from India smashing into the soft underbelly of Asia. All the formations get mooshed and crumpled like a throw rug your cat may drive ino a folded bunch. Throw in some time and the formations (by the way, there are at least 3 non adjacent formations that are eitjher vertically opposed to the next higher formations or are upside down in the Canyon) Starting with the Vishnu on the bottom, the next layers lie at angles to the vertical Vishnu. The theory is that all sediments were laid down in horizontal layers. When they get folded, then eroded, next layers get laid on top at screwy angles. We have , in the Appalachians, more of such kinds of Tectonics from at least 3 events of continental collisions that we have formations upside down and sideways within a few miles of each other. The Upper Ordovician rocks at the time of the ACADIAn orogeny, have been floded into a multi state model of complex folds that only now, with high speed computers are we able to show what this looks like when first folded (these are called palinspastic maps) On top of this folded mess were the basal Silurian sANDS, called the Tuscarora. Then these formations were folded again in a new orogeny in the late Paleozoicand that left a pattern of folds , faults, and scratches on the rocks that can only be decoded in the light of continental drift.
The subsequent formations , after the last orogeny , the Alleghanian, showed that since the Triassic , everything was being pulled apart as the oceans opened and Africa separated from the US.
We have elegantly simple, data driven forensic evidence that shows this was what happened. Theres no
beleif" necessary, just an interest and an understanding.

parados--one of the reasons I dont go to ansqwers in genesis much anymore is because you can kill an entire day finding all the bugs in their honey. The people that follow that stuff never give it much thought or careful reason. Its like the "National Enquirer" of the web

-----------
ci answering a question from SundAY. Continents have drifted earlier than 600 my ago. We just have very scant evidence from the continental cratons as to which directions they took. We only have good vidence from about 600 mya and up. Its like a hard drive, once its written over a few times , the evidence gets befouled

Evolution is not a cause, or a principle, or a system of beliefs. It's a scientific theory. You are confusing the philosophy of naturalism (which is a system of belief, and upon which science is based) with evolution itself. They are two different things.

The premise has not changed because the underlying science hasn't changed. When you can present a better possible explanation with as much observed and testable science that can be repeated by anyone willing to do so then we can discuss this logically.

By your argument, then phsyics is religion, driving a car is religion, the simple act of breathing becomes religion.

The theory is changed because new evidence is presented that shows that the theory in its present form is slightly flawed. That is the way science works. A theory is formed. The theory is tested. The theory is modified or discarded based on evidence. Give us evidence that would make the theory completely flawed and we will be happy to throw it out.

But evolution itself is a system of belief - that we evolved. It is asserted and believed. It is not proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, therefore remains a guess, and evolution if it is to be maintained requires faith in that guess. It is a system of thought and belief. It is the religion that liberates us from a belief that something higher controls humanity (God). All Darwinism accomplished was simply substituing a belief in God and orthodox religion to a belief in science, which, yes, is another form of religion, using different criteria and curricula. Do you know we evolved or do you believe we evolved? The difference between a theory and a law is immense.



I believe science can tell us about limited truths. I have no problem with science so long as it behaves like science, true to its scientific method of what is observable and reproducible. When it goes beyond that and makes bold claims, then I have a bone to pick. There is no more reason to believe in evolution, than there is to believe in God or Alien astronauts. But since existence is all about belief, one is as good as the other.



Science changes through time as new models replace old ones as the case from Newtonian physics to modern physics. It is to the point that we delude ourselves into thinking that we are very clever to have been able to figure out how nature really works. We will even go so far as to imagine that we have achieved understanding of the world around us and teach is as holy writ, even to the point of belittling others. But on a more serious reflection we realize that all we did was add another name or another word or another guess in the form of a theory. Science uses words such as "electromagnetic field", "black hole", or "quantum" as if they were the same things of everyday experience such as rocks and plants. There is a huge difference between real and invented concepts. Hypothetical alterations of a scientific models may absolve the need of some concept such as a black hole as a conceptual entity, but it can't do away with a rocks or forests. The idea that we can find absolute truths is naive and arrogant. The best we can do are pale approximations as Socrates would say.

Quote, "The idea that we can find absolute truths is naive and arrogant." It's no wonder you don't understand what science is all about.

It is no wonder that you need get personal in order to validate your belief in evolution. Apparently only those who know science, or claim to know science, are possessors of the truth and everyone else is toiling in the fields of misanthropy.

I don't need to validate evolution; all those scientists working confirm it over and over and over...ad nauseum. All you do is make claims that cannot be supported by facts; only your personal suppositions and interpretations that refutes science. You leave nothing to discuss.

We can discuss if you want. It is interesting that you claim I do not leave anything to discuss when in fact I have been very open to discssion and it was you several times that resorted to getting personal for what, I do not know. It is a fallacy to claim that because many scientists say evolution is true, therefore it makes it true. Only human arrogance, and arrogant people claim to know all the answers to everything. This usually springs from an insecure attitude of not knowing the whole truth which threatens ones grip on reality. Thus by creating dogmas it forms a prism that allows them to breath safely within those confines.

How can you say there is no such thing as evolution? I've experienced it myself hundreds of times.

For the most basic evolutions, you just need to get your starter Pokemon to level 16 (usually).

If any of you are having trouble getting a particular Pokemon to evolve, I would refer you to this excellent site by RAMS.

http://db.gamefaqs.com/portable/gbadvance/file/pokemon_rs_evolution.txt

Anon's quote, "Only human arrogance, and arrogant people claim to know all the answers to everything." You seem to be one of them. Nobody on this forum has ever claimed such. It's all in your imagination. Your charges of arrogance doesn't respond to why evolution is a false concept. You seem to know more than most of the scientists. That is arrogance!

Me? I guess I am kind of arrogant. I'm sorry.

No, it's not. You are still confusing philosophy with science. Naturalism is a belief system because it is predicated on an assumption with no empiracle support; it's a belief. Science is a methodology which is predicated on the assumption of Naturalism, and the theory of Evolution is a scientific theory which explains the evidence collected by empirical observation and deduction.

You can claim that Evolution is a "belief system" only be assigning every thought as a belief system. Your definition is too vague to be meaningful.



Yes, but it's not "believed" on the basis of faith, it's believed on the basis of evidence. Your original selected definition of religion specified that a religious belief system must be held to with "ardor and faiith". It didn't say "ardor and evidence". We don't need faith in evolution, for that we have evidence. We have "faith" in Naturalism as the foundation of science, but we have evidence for scientific theories, and there's a world of difference.



Nothing is ever proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Science proves things beyond a reasonable doubt. And it proves things within the bounds of science.

You are trying desperately to make a semantic argument which equates thought with religion, but no stretch of symantecs can turn belief into evidence.

Your objection is to Naturalism as a philosophy, not to Evolution as a science. You arguments at this time are missing the target because you are aiming at Evolution but throwing darts at Naturalism. And you're missing on all counts.

Rather an interesting argument, using words to claim that words mean nothing. It is too bad your argument is devoid of any logic. Let's examine it point by point. Science doesn't claim that it has achieved understanding of the world around us. It is an attempt to but I don't know of any scientist that claims they have actually done it.

"taught as holy writ" - Now there is a lovely example of throwing words out there as if they have meaning. A black hole I can understand because the math points to it but this statement has no basis in reality.

When did science ever state the purpose of "Black holes"was to do away with rocks or forests? Black holes really have little to do with rocks unless you are attempting to talk a unified theory.

"The idea that we can find absolute truths is naive and arrogant." - This statement made me stop and ponder if you were serious here or not. In one breath you make statements about the "absolute truth" of what science is and why you despise it but then say there is no way to find "absolute truth." I am not sure that you see the irony of your statements here.


"There is a huge difference between real and invented concepts." I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. I have to say your concept of "science" is harldly a real one but appears to be an invented construct so you can attempt to build a logical argument. Your statements are a house of cards that collapses when your basic assumption is seen for the invention it is.

The "fallacy" seems to be in your claim Anon.

Because all relevent science points to a theory doesn't mean the theory is an "absolute truth." The theory of evolution remains a theory and is the best explanation based on all the observed "rocks and forests." If you have evidence to disprove the theory, then present it so that the science can be moved forward. If your only action is to attack science through your own "prism of dogma" then we really have nothing much to talk about. You can dance around the topic here for the next 40 days but until you present actual facts that have a "grip on reality" the prevailing theory will stand as the best possible explanation.

Quote, " If you have evidence to disprove the theory, then present it so that the science can be moved forward. If your only action is to attack science through your own "prism of dogma" then we really have nothing much to talk about." That's what I said! LOL

You said it much better, though.

Farmerman, I don't think it was me. I've not had any discussions about the Grand Canyon. It's a subject with which I am most unfamiliar.

But I'm pleased to see your sensible head in this dog's breakfast of an argument all the same!

Well this has been going on for quite a while. I'm having a problem with a topic of this thread being started then going off on another tangent. The way I feel is that BOTH Creationism and evolution should be taught together side by side. Freedom of speech seems to favor evolution as the U.S. Circus court of appeals says take God and anything to do with God out of the schools. Give me a break! Freedom of speech...Freedom of religion. If you are going to teach one you have to teach the other AS THEORY. Make the students think. Make them use their brains. Don't brainwash them. Give them options to examine and see where it leads. For another discussion on separation of church and state see:
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=47421&highlight=

How about the true scientist who just happens to believe in Jesus and who developed the MRI (which has nothing to do with creation or evolution) and yet was denied a nobel prize most likely because of his creationist views. Go here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v26/i4/nobel.asp I'm getting a little weary of trying to defend so many different facets of this discussion. It seems to go somewhat off topic all too often.

BTW I was the one who posted about the Grand Canyon :wink: (Was this off topic?)

sorry this is rather lengthy
Here is an excerpt from an article about Charles Darwin:
FAT CHANCE:
The Failure of Evolution to Account for the Miracle of Life1



by Hank Hanegraaff



Eye
In his landmark publication, The Origin of Species, Darwin avowed, "To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree possible."8 He called this dilemma the problem of "organs of extreme perfection and complication."9
Consider for a moment the incredible complexity of the human eye. It consists of a ball with a lens on one side and a light sensitive retina made up of rods and cones inside the other. The lens itself has a sturdy protective covering called a cornea and sits over an iris designed to protect the eye from excessive light. The eye contains a fantastic watery substance that is replaced every four hours, while tear glands continuously flush the outside clean. In addition, an eyelid sweeps secretions over the cornea to keep it moist, and eyelashes protect it from dust.10
It is one thing to stretch credulity by suggesting that the complexities of the eye evolved by chance; it is quite another to surmise that the eye could have evolved in concert with myriad other coordinated functions. As a case in point, extraordinarily tuned muscles surround the eye for precision motility and shape the lens for the function of focus.11
Additionally, consider the fact that as you read this article, a vast number of impulses are traveling from your eyes through millions of nerve fibers that transmit information to a complex "computer center" in the brain called the visual cortex. Linking the visual information from the eyes to motor centers in the brain is crucial in coordinating a vast number of bodily and mental functions that are part and parcel to the very process of daily living. Without the coordinated development of the eye and the brain in a synergistic fashion the isolated developments themselves become meaningless and counterproductive.12
In Darwin's Black Box, biochemist Michael Behe points out that what happens when a photon of light hits a human eye was beyond nineteenth-century science. Thus, to Darwin, vision was an unopened black box.13 In the twentieth century, however, the black box of vision has been opened, and it is no longer enough to consider the anatomical structure of the eye. We now know that "each of the anatomical steps and structures that Darwin thought were so simple actually involves staggeringly complicated biochemical processes" that demand explanation.14
Behe goes on to demonstrate that one cannot explain the origin of vision without first accounting for the origin of the enormously complex system of molecular mechanisms that make it work.15 Phillip Johnson, author of Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, has aptly summarized Darwin's dilemma regarding the eye: "Evolutionary biologists have been able to pretend to know how complex biological systems originated only because they treated them as black boxes. Now that biochemists have opened the black boxes and seen what is inside, they know the Darwinian theory is just a story, not a scientific explanation."16
1This article is taken from Hank Hanegraaff's forthcoming book, The FACE (Word Publishing), which uses the acronym F-A-C-E to reveal the farce of evolution (the "C" in FACE represents Chance).
2Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 112-13, as quoted in John Ankerberg and John Weldon, Darwin's Leap of Faith (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1998), 21.
3R. C. Sproul, Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994), 9.
4Ibid., 3.
5Chance as an ontological entity does not exist. So, when it is appealed to as an agency of cause, it is utterly impotent and meaningless. This sense of chance as a causal agency is what one gropes for in order to assert that universes appear out of nothing. On the other hand, chance can quite usefully refer to formal mathematical probabilities, not at all signifying something that happens without a cause. In common parlance, when we say something has happened by chance, we don't mean that the event had no cause, but that the actual cause is unknown to us. (See Sproul.)
6Perhaps we should be generous and give evolutionists the benefit of the doubt at this point by assuming that when they refer to chance they do not mean an ontological causal agency (referring to the illogical notion of uncaused effects). Instead, we can assume that chance is used as the formal term for mathematical probabilities. The evolutionist presupposes the existence of the material universe with its attending properties and suggests that atoms randomly bumping into one another produce (cause) living things. As we will see, life cannot be accounted for in this way either.
7James F. Coppedge, Evolution: Possible or Impossible? (Northridge, CA: Probability Research in Molecular Biology, 1993), 218.
8Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, chap. 6, "Difficulties of the Theory," sect. "Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication," in Robert Maynard Hutchins, ed., Great Books of the Western World, vol. 49, Darwin (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), 85.
9Ibid. Of course, Darwin's life work intended to show that all biological organisms, with their attending "organs of extreme perfection and complication," were indeed formed through natural selection.
10Eye description adapted from Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery (New York: Harper & Row, 1983), 101-2.
11See ibid., 98-103.
12See Coppedge, 218-20; Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Bethesda, MD: Adler & Adler, 1985), 332-33.
13Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York: The Free Press, 1996), 18. "Black box" is Behe's term for a device that accomplishes a purpose but whose inner workings remain mysterious. For the average person, computers are a good example of a black box (p. 6).
14Ibid., 22 (see 15-22).
15In ibid., 18-21, Behe describes the biochemistry of vision.
16Phillip E. Johnson, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 77.
for the whole article see: http://www.equip.org/free/DC745.htm
Just my $.02, but I don't figure I'm going to sway anyone, but maybe it will get you to think.

El-Diablo wrote: Show me examples of where this has happened with ANY animal that has been observed by science(and not tampered with by science). Is it still a chicken? Where did you get this information? I'm very curious?