Furious evolution debate hits Kenyan museum

[Cheese]

Originally Posted by Phaneuf3

and theistic evolution remains possible today. we know a lot more about our surroundings then we ever have before but there is still a LOT that remains a mystery. exactly how the first spark of life was created, how everything (matter) came to be, etc.

also, even if you find all the physical steps that occurred throughout the creation of the universe, life as we know it and the evolution of our species you won't be able to disprove theistic evolution until you can prove that god had no hand in the circumstances. you're only going to be able to completely disprove that when you prove that god doesn't exist (read: never)

edit: talking about god in a supreme being sense here. not in any perticular dogmatic faith context.

well your right...I cant prove or disprove God.

[Phaneuf3]

glad too see that you can step back from the issue and look at everything objectively. these conversations are pointless cause most of time the participants (on both sides of the debate) refuse to hold their beliefs to the same standards and scrutiny as the other side.

for that i tip my hat to you good sir.

[RedMan12]

I heard Satan made dinosaur bones and other fossils to confuse the pagans and turn people away from god.

[Five-hole]

Originally Posted by Superflyer

it is becuase after looking at both sides of the story, evolutionism and creationism, I think that the theory of evolution makes more sence to me. There are to many holes in the theory of evolution.

What? Which is it?

Also I will say that neither theory has been proven, that is why they are "Theories". So maybe we were all created from a single power, who knows, I just personally doubt it.

That line is such a crock. It shows blatant misunderstanding of both the scientific process and the verifiability of evolution. Evolution has been shown to happen in many instances. "Theory" doesn't mean it's just a whizbang idea that's floating around that nobody has bothered subjecting to scrutiny.

[mykalberta]

Originally Posted by someguy51

I don't consider myself religious and I believe in the theory of evolution. However, my parents are hardcore Christians and they also believe in the thoery of evolution. They think that Adam and Eve were the first fully evolved humans. Remember that the bible was written by people who make mistakes and assumptions...

That theory is as good as any since the missing link has never been found.

Until there is proof of an ancestor in which the male has 1 less pair of ribs than the female than any theory is just that, a theory. Most in the scientific community will bash that, but the have no proof that A&E werent the missing link.

MYK

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

That theory is as good as any since the missing link has never been found.

Until there is proof of an ancestor in which the male has 1 less pair of ribs than the female than any theory is just that, a theory. Most in the scientific community will bash that, but the have no proof that A&E werent the missing link.

MYK

OK. I also have no proof that my dog isn't made of plutonium. That doesn't make it so.

The fact is, religion and science offer answers to very different kinds of questions. As soon as you begin treating the bible as a testable historical hypothesis, you're going to encounter the problem that it's demonstrably incorrect. For one thing, all humans did not descend from two individuals. That's just silly. If, on the other hand, you consider religion to be part of a conversation about the larger, cosmic meaning of life--and a source of moral truth for you personally, then you're probably on safer ground. That doesn't mean that religion always has positive moral effects on the universe--it quite often doesn't--but it generally positions itself as the source of our moral, spiritual and ethical universe, as opposed to our physical, empirical universe.

This is why "intelligent design" theory is so goofy. If you argue for intelligent design, you end up either asserting something that's not falsifiable and therefore not scientific (i.e. "evolution was orchestrated by God") or saying things that are demonstrably false (like "we don't understand how evolution happened.") I believe it was Richard Dawkins who said "evolutionary theory has not explained everything. Creation science doesn't even attempt to explain anything."

[troutman]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

That theory is as good as any since the missing link has never been found.

Until there is proof of an ancestor in which the male has 1 less pair of ribs than the female than any theory is just that, a theory. Most in the scientific community will bash that, but the have no proof that A&E werent the missing link.

MYK

"Missing link" is a metaphor:

Charles Sullivan and Cameron Mcpherson Smith go on to explain in the May 2005 issue of Skeptical Inquirer that while the metaphor is seductive, it's mistaken:

But the metaphor is as misleading as it is attractive. The concept that each species is a link in a great chain of life forms was largely developed in the typological age of biology, when species “fixity” (the idea that species were unchanging) was the dominant paradigm. Both John Ray (1627-1705) and Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1797), the architects of biological classification (neither of whom believed in evolution), were concerned with describing the order of living species, an order they each believed was laid out by God (Ray suggested that the divinely specified function of biting insects was to plague the wicked).

But while the links of a chain are discrete, unchanging, and easily defined, groups of life forms are not. We generally define a species as some interbreeding group that cannot, or does not, productively breed with another group. But since species are not fixed (they change through time), it can be difficult to be sure where one species ends and another begins. For these reasons, many modern biologists prefer a continuum metaphor, in which shades of one life form grade into another. Life is not arranged as links, but as shades. The metaphorical chain is far less substantial than it sounds.

Thus the chain metaphor is wrong. It doesn’t accurately represent biology as we know it today, but as it was understood over four centuries ago. The myth persists because of convenience; it is easier to think of species as types, with discrete qualities, than as grades between one species and another. In school, we learn the specific characteristics of plants and animals; this alone is not a problem, except that we are not often exposed to the main ramification of evolution: that those characteristics will change through time.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

OK. I also have no proof that my dog isn't made of plutonium. That doesn't make it so.

I bet you it could be proven that your dog is not made out of plutonium...

hehehehe

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

I bet you it could be proven that your dog is not made out of plutonium...

hehehehe

Yes, it could be proven. But I HAVE no proof. Nor do I have the means at my disposal to get the proof.

With that said, my current theory is that my dog is not made of plutonium. It's currently supported by all the available evidence. It is, however, like evolution--just a theory.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Pffftt.... why would you use an example so obviously false.
I have two theories about dogs that I think at this point are irrefutable.

1) All dogs are invisible whenever no one is looking at them.
2) Dogs speak to each other in english (except french dogs, they speak porgugese), whenever no one is listening, this includes cats, as dogs do not want the cats to know that they speak english. This would cause them to lose their tactical edge.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by troutman

Thus the chain metaphor is wrong. It doesn’t accurately represent biology as we know it today, but as it was understood over four centuries ago. The myth persists because of convenience; it is easier to think of species as types, with discrete qualities, than as grades between one species and another. In school, we learn the specific characteristics of plants and animals; this alone is not a problem, except that we are not often exposed to the main ramification of evolution: that those characteristics will change through time.

Good post, troutman--###.

It's a metaphor that's mostly convenient for critics of evolutionary theory--but it has never held a lot of water, even when it could be plausibly argued that a large part of the fossil record is missing. The fossil record is necessarily incomplete--but its incompleteness doesn't invalidate an attempt to explain the data that currently exist. Evolutionary theory explains those data--creation theory, including so-called "intelligent design," doesn't even try.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

Pffftt.... why would you use an example so obviously false.
I have two theories about dogs that I think at this point are irrefutable.

1) All dogs are invisible whenever no one is looking at them.
2) Dogs speak to each other in english (except french dogs, they speak porgugese), whenever no one is listening, this includes cats, as dogs do not want the cats to know that they speak english. This would cause them to lose their tactical edge.

What language do they speak when they know cats are listening?

Besides, this is actually empirically proven--we all saw that movie about the secret cat vs. dog war, didn't we?

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

Good post, troutman--###.

It's a metaphor that's mostly convenient for critics of evolutionary theory--but it has never held a lot of water, even when it could be plausibly argued that a large part of the fossil record is missing. The fossil record is necessarily incomplete--but its incompleteness doesn't invalidate an attempt to explain the data that currently exist. Evolutionary theory explains those data--creation theory, including so-called "intelligent design," doesn't even try.

Even if there was not one fossil to look at, the evidence for evolution is still overwhelming.

FAQ about evolution:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/faq/

The Darwinian theory of evolution has withstood the test of time and thousands of scientific experiments; nothing has disproved it since Darwin first proposed it more than 150 years ago. Indeed, many scientific advances, in a range of scientific disciplines including physics, geology, chemistry, and molecular biology, have supported, refined, and expanded evolutionary theory far beyond anything Darwin could have imagined.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

What language do they speak when they know cats are listening?

Besides, this is actually empirically proven--we all saw that movie about the secret cat vs. dog war, didn't we?

It's not proven, the writers just stumbled onto something that they had no idea about, and don't kid yourself the dogs made sure that the writers never wrote another word (ask Lanny if you don't believe me, he's got a file on it right next to his "Why buildings shouldn't fall straight down when planes hit them, even if that is what physics predicts will happen" file).

Anyway, I should have been more clear. Dogs don't speak anything when cats are around they don't want them to know they know any language. Sure they bark when cats are around, but that's only when people are near by as well, and barking as we all know is just a bunch of gibberish used to throw us and cats off the trail.

[photon]

The theory of evolution is the scientific theory that describes the fact of evolution.. just as the theory of gravity describes the fact of gravity.

And since various religious people believe that gravity is a primal force of the universe and that it's not God actively "pushing down" on everything, why not see evolution in the same light (as a natural process).

Many people confuse evolution with abiogenesis which is about the origin of life. God, the primordial soup, and panspermia (life was planted here from elsewhere, meteorites or aliens) are all possibilities.

[Phaneuf3]

Originally Posted by photon

The theory of evolution is the scientific theory that describes the fact of evolution.. just as the theory of gravity describes the fact of gravity.

And since various religious people believe that gravity is a primal force of the universe and that it's not God actively "pushing down" on everything, why not see evolution in the same light (as a natural process).

Many people confuse evolution with abiogenesis which is about the origin of life. God, the primordial soup, and panspermia (life was planted here from elsewhere, meteorites or aliens) are all possibilities.

god's influence in influence may be more of a passive one than your gravity example. eg. go plant a garden with a bunch of a bunch of different random seeds. if you choose to water some areas of the garden, put others in the shade, etc... in effect artificially change the circumstances. certain species will thrive in areas and others will die off. which plants become dominant is decided by natural selection. but this 'natural' process is being influenced and could be controled by an outside 'artificial' source.

i'm not sure if i've properly explained this nor am i saying i necissarily believe this but its food for thought.

[photon]

Yeah I get what you mean. Fundumentally though if that's the case we would have no way of ever knowing if that kind of thing was going on, so the discussion becomes moot pretty quickly.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Phaneuf3

but this 'natural' process is being influenced and could be controled by an outside 'artificial' source.

Actually, evolution operates exactly how we would expect it to, if there was no outside controller.

[Phaneuf3]

Originally Posted by photon

Yeah I get what you mean. Fundumentally though if that's the case we would have no way of ever knowing if that kind of thing was going on, so the discussion becomes moot pretty quickly.

BINGO!

Originally Posted by troutman

Actually, evolution operates exactly how we would expect it to, if there was no outside controller.

True, but with no way to tell if circumstances are being influenced by god/a supreme being we can't tell if this is all completely 'natural'.

[Cheese]

Heres a lovely Penn and Teller take on Creationism...

Creation