Any JW want to take a stab at this one?

[ImmortalFlame]

The "book" is not proof of the designer! The design is proof of a desingner who must be VERY intelligent. The book just gives us details about Him...

This is called circular logic. The point is that you have no good reason to assume that life is the result of design - all arguments put forward for such a position thus far have been seriously fallacious.

 

[JayJayDee]

This is called circular logic. The point is that you have no good reason to assume that life is the result of design - all arguments put forward for such a position thus far have been seriously fallacious.

I strongly disagree...all the arguments put forward in support of intelligent design are logical and reasonable to those of us who believe in a Creator.

What is seriously fallacious is calling evolution an established fact. It is a "belief" based on faith in the interpretation of the "evidence" that scientists examine with pre-conceived ideas to uphold. That is the truth of it.

Would you like to take a stab at the questions posed in Post # 35?

 

[ImmortalFlame]

I strongly disagree...all the arguments put forward in support of intelligent design are logical and reasonable to those of us who believe in a Creator.

I'm not going to get into a "yes they are", "no they're not" debate as I feel neither of us have the patience for that kind of malarky. Still, if you would like to put forward what you feel are the best arguments in support of intelligent design, I and many others on these forums would be happy to review them and see for ourselves. I'm always pleased when presented with a new argument or a fresh perspective.

What is seriously fallacious is calling evolution an established fact. It is a "belief" based on faith in the interpretation of the "evidence" that scientists examine with pre-conceived ideas to uphold. That is the truth of it.

Actually, evolution is an observed fact. We have seen it in action - we have directly observed speciation multiple times. The theory, on the other hand, is a theory. It is a framework utilised to explain the fact through inference and observation of the available evidence. Evolution is not a pre-conceived idea, but a conclusion reached over a hundred years of careful study across many fields, including biology, geology, paleontology and genetics. There is no pre-conceived bias involved, nor does there need to be.

Would you like to take a stab at the questions posed in Post # 35?

I shall have a look at them tonight when a have an hour or so to spare. I look forward to seeing them!

 

[Pegg]

From the Jehovah Witnesses publication,

AWAKE! JANUARY 2014

"WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS

God did not make life in a simple form and allow it to evolve into more complex forms. Instead, he created basic “kinds” of complex plants and animals, which then reproduced “according to their kinds.” (Genesis 1:11, 21, 24) This process, which continues today, has resulted in the earth being filled with the same “kinds” of life that God originally created.—Psalm 89:11.

The Bible does not specify how much variation can occur within a kind, as might result when animals within a kind interbreed and adapt to their environment. While some view such adaptations as a form of evolution, no new kind of life is produced. Modern research supports the idea that the basic categories of plants and animals have changed little over vast periods of time.
WHY IT MATTERS

The Bible’s scientific accuracy in describing basic “kinds” of life strengthens its credibility in other areas, including history and prophecy.
source

​

Show where the Bible describes the basic "kinds" of life with scientific accuracy. And it will help if you tell us exactly what a kind is so we're all on the same page.

Gen 1:11 Then God said: “Let the earth cause grass to sprout, seed-bearing plants and fruit trees according to their kinds, yielding fruit along with seed on the earth.” And it was so. 12 And the earth began to produce grass, seed-bearing plants+ and trees yielding fruit along with seed, according to their kinds.

20 Then God said: “Let the waters swarm with living creatures,* and let flying creatures fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.”*+ 21 And God created the great sea creatures* and all living creatures* that move and swarm in the waters according to their kinds and every winged flying creature according to its kind.

24 Then God said: “Let the earth bring forth living creatures* according to their kinds, domestic animals and creeping animals* and wild animals of the earth according to their kinds.”+ And it was so. 25 And God went on to make the wild animals of the earth according to their kinds and the domestic animals according to their kinds and all the creeping animals of the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said: “Let us+ make man in our image


within each category there is a wide range of animals. The bible does not name each different type of animal within a kind, it only details what each kind is.

 

[jonathan180iq]

What deliberate act on the part of any creature made them change color or height or anything else to benefit their existence or well being? Can a creature make his neck as long as a giraffe because his ancestors wanted to eat from the treetops? Can a plant manufacture the replica of an insect to sit on the cusp of its flower to fool an unsuspecting male looking for a mate, to pollinate it? It also added the insect's pheromone to make the masquerade complete. What a clever thing for a brainless plant to do!

You don't even understand why your questions are ridiculous, do you?

No individual animal chooses to stretch its limbs, or change its color, or grow extra features. That's not at all what evolutionary science teaches.
Over time, populations adapt to certain environmental pressures. Populations...Not individuals. Humans are scarce of body hair because of environmental pressures, not because some guy willed himself to have less hair and then all of his kids had less hair...

How do birds and butterflies know how to migrate to places, thousands of miles away when they have never been there?

They have receptors which sense the Earth's magnetic field. They also have eyes and they can smell.
How Do Birds Navigate? - National Geographic Education

All About Birds : Navigation

How Do Birds Navigate?

Then you might like to explain the "natural" process that ensures that we don't bleed to death when we cut ourselves. If this automatic process did not know when to stop, it could coagulate our entire blood stream. Just a product of blind evolution?

Thrombin and fibrin... (or fibrinogen or whatever it's called)

What makes a wound stop bleeding? • The Register

Thrombin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fibrin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Then we like to talk about water...good old H2o. The most miraculous substance in existence. Where did water come from and why does it behave like no other liquid? Why does every creature on this planet require it when it has not been found anywhere else in our solar system?

Like no other liquid? Water is a Newtonian fluid, just like almost everything else you can think of. There's nothing magical about it. And it's been found in ample abundance in our solar system... Hell, there's water on Mercury even.

Newtonian fluid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Newtonian fluid | physics | Encyclopedia Britannica

Hunt for Dwarf Planet Ceres' Mysterious Water Begins : Discovery News

The Chance for Life on Io - Astrobiology Magazine

First Photos of Water Ice on Mercury Captured by NASA Spacecraft

Surprise! Water Once Flowed on Huge Asteroid Vesta

Water on Mars - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

23 Places We've Found Water in Our Solar System

Methane Lakes on Titan

See those geysers? That's water on Encleadus being blasted out into space.

Why is the greatest percentage of water on earth so salty that it is undrinkable? Did the clouds just know how to draw up water by evaporation and dump it on land to accidently keep living things alive? Did the process of precipitation just invent itself?

Good question...What could possibly cause all of this fresh water to be so tainted with salt? Also, why can we intelligently designed organisms only consume a very small percentage of our most precious resource? Why can't our intricately designed kidneys filter out that much salt? Since God made the oceans, and God made us, why can't we use the oceans? Why is it possible to dehydrate to death in the middle of the sea? Why do we depend on natural processes to provide us with drinkable water? I mean, other organisms can function just fine in it. Indeed, there are more aquatic organisms than there are non-aquatic...

Why is the sea salty?

Also, precipitation happens elsewhere in the solar system. All weathering is caused by the natural processes of heating and cooling, and the physical properties of the substances involved, be it liquid or atmosphere. The same natural and physical properties that cause liquids to evaporate on other planets, and at varying temperatures, cause air flows to rise and fall, creating differing pressures. There's nothing magical or unique about it. Every single astronomical body which has an atmosphere experiences weather...

Mars has precipitation
Venus has precipitation
Titan has precipitation
Encleadus has precipitation

Here Are Photos of Snow on Mars - The Atlantic

NASA - Venus Weather Not Boring After All, NASA/International Study Shows

But what does man know? You have the unchanging word of god...

 

[rusra02]

I think I cannot do better than quote what the Bible itself explains:
" Then God said: “Let the earth cause grass to sprout, seed-bearing plants and fruit trees according to their kinds, yielding fruit along with seed on the earth.” And it was so. And the earth began to produce grass, seed-bearing plants and trees yielding fruit along with seed, according to their kinds. Then God saw that it was good."
And God created the great sea creatures and all living creatures that move and swarm in the waters according to their kinds and every winged flying creature according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said: “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, domestic animals and creeping animals and wild animals of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. And God went on to make the wild animals of the earth according to their kinds and the domestic animals according to their kinds and all the creeping animals of the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good."
Genesis 1

 

[Parsimony]

I am not a proponent of a young earth. The Bible allows for the earth itself to be very ancient.

How old do you believe the Earth to be and what studies do you use to support that age?

 

[Salvador]

Define "natural" selection. What is "natural" about a giraffe? Do you know what physical mechanism is needed to pump blood to the brain of something with a neck that long? Or the mechanism that requires its intake of water to be pumped an equal distance uphill in order to reach its stomach? No other animal has this problem.

Or a plant wearing a replica of a pollinating insect...complete with the correct pheromone? How does natural selection explain that? How did the plant know it would be beneficial to make that evolutionary change to ensure its survival?

Tell me how natural selection teaches a bird to build a nest that is exclusive in design to that particular species when the babies were not around to be taught by their parents?

How do birds and butterflies know how to migrate to places, thousands of miles away when they have never been there?

Then you might like to explain the "natural" process that ensures that we don't bleed to death when we cut ourselves. If this automatic process did not know when to stop, it could coagulate our entire blood stream. Just a product of blind evolution?

Then we like to talk about water...good old H2o. The most miraculous substance in existence. Where did water come from and why does it behave like no other liquid? Why does every creature on this planet require it when it has not been found anywhere else in our solar system?
Why is the greatest percentage of water on earth so salty that it is undrinkable? Did the clouds just know how to draw up water by evaporation and dump it on land to accidently keep living things alive? Did the process of precipitation just invent itself?

C'mon...I would like to hear how natural selection brought about those extraordinary processes.
They all sound like the work of an intelligent designer to me.

How the giraffe got its long neck II « Why Evolution Is True

Coevolution and Pollination

How do birds learn to build their nests?

How Do Migrating Birds Know Where To Go? | The Fact Site


The Water Cycle summary, USGS Water Science School

 

[Skwim]

Gen 1:11 Then God said: “Let the earth cause grass to sprout, seed-bearing plants and fruit trees according to their kinds, yielding fruit along with seed on the earth.” And it was so. 12 And the earth began to produce grass, seed-bearing plants+ and trees yielding fruit along with seed, according to their kinds.

20 Then God said: “Let the waters swarm with living creatures,* and let flying creatures fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.”*+ 21 And God created the great sea creatures* and all living creatures* that move and swarm in the waters according to their kinds and every winged flying creature according to its kind.

24 Then God said: “Let the earth bring forth living creatures* according to their kinds, domestic animals and creeping animals* and wild animals of the earth according to their kinds.”+ And it was so. 25 And God went on to make the wild animals of the earth according to their kinds and the domestic animals according to their kinds and all the creeping animals of the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said: “Let us+ make man in our image


within each category there is a wide range of animals. The bible does not name each different type of animal within a kind, it only details what each kind is.

Okay, so what constitutes a kind? Noah is said to have taken 2 or 7 pair of each "kind" on board the ark, and according to your post here these kinds would constitute:

7 pair (14 animals) of the clean (domestic?) kind.
2 pair (4 animals) of the creeping kind.
2 pair (4 animals) of the wild kind.
2 pair (4 animals) of the water kind.
7 pair (14 animals) of the flying kind.
​

And we haven't even touched the plant and fungi kinds that had to have been saved.

So, Noah took 40 animals on board the ark, and from these 40 animals we got the 953,434 animal species* that have so far been described and cataloged (it's estimated that the total number of animal species in the world is close to 8,000,000). I hope you realize what an incredibly massive amount of evolution that had to take place in the intervening 5,363 years since the flood to produce this many species. Additionally, what do you suppose these 40 individuals looked like? Did the four wild kind look like a tiger, a racoon, or an anaconda? Did the four water kind look like a goldfish, a whale, or a sponge?

If this proves troublesome perhaps it's because the Bible does not, in fact, describe the "basic 'kinds' of life" with any kind of scientific accuracy as asserted by the author of the Awake article, which makes him either a liar-liar-pants-on-fire or just plain stupid.


* Source

 

[Ouroboros]

it's estimated that the total animal number of species in the world is close to 8,000,000

Yup, or more. Most of them are insects and microbes and such. And the total biomass of microbial life in the soil is many times larger than the visible animal biomass (including humans). If I remember it right.

Yesterday, I was thinking, what kind if "kind" is a platypus according to the Bible? And did Noah take them and put them back in eastern Australia? Just like kangaroos, emus, and all those other weird animals they have there? What kind is a kangaroo to the Bible? It's own or part of another?

I hope you realize what an incredibly massive amount of evolution that had to take place in the intervening 5,363 years since the flood to produce this many species. Additionally, what do you suppose these 40 individuals looked like? Did the four wild kind look like a tiger, a racoon, or an anaconda? Did the four water kind look like a goldfish, a whale, or a sponge?

And how did Noah bring on all the sea life that can't survive without partial land or fresh water? With a turbulent storm like that, there won't be any flies of any kind. The eggs can't hatch. Which means certain sea life have no food. What about plankton, seaweed, and such? Too many questions and no answer, simply because it's just a story. *sigh* It's so strange that grown up people can't see that.

If this proves troublesome perhaps it's because the Bible does not, in fact, describe the "basic kinds of life" with any kind of scientific accuracy as asserted by the author of the Awake article.

Yup. And according to the flood story, ravens and doves are two different "kinds". They are their own specific kinds in the Biblical taxonomy, but consider how many relatives under the same family of dove and raven. Are they separate kinds (thousands of them), or did all those other sibling species evolve from dove and raven?

It just doesn't make sense!

 

[Sapiens]

So I need you to tell me what I believe.....what incredible arrogance.

I'm not telling you what you believe, I'm just telling you what the world calls people who hold your beliefs. Don't like it? Too bad. Show us where your beliefs differ significantly from those of the YECs.

Nature can be read like a book by those who aren't blind. The existence of a Creator contradicts what scientists assume about nature. You have no facts...you have educated guesses....what someone "thinks" the evidence "looks like".... I showed them to you in my previous post. Your foundation has huge cracks and missing chunks, yet you still assert that it is fact...that is dishonest. You have no more "proof" for what you believe than I do.

I'd take educated guesses over abject mythology any day. The dishonesty, however, is in your misrepresentation of scientific views ... e.g., there are no "facts" only probabilities.

It succeeds only with those who believe what the scientists assume. You are free to believe whatever you like...just don't call it fact when it isn't fact at all. It is a belief....just like mine.

I never call anything a "fact" but that does not make your beliefs equal to my probabilities. I have data to support my views, you have disproven and falsified mythology ... let's not pretend that's an even-steven situation.

I am not a proponent of a young earth. The Bible allows for the earth itself to be very ancient.

Only with your bizarre lie concerning the length of a day. A day is defined as 24 hours, end of story.

Care to take a stab at the questions I posed (post#35) instead of hurling your meaningless insults? C'mon...someone as educated as you should be able to answer them without hesitation.

Be glad to, but Google will serve you every bit as well, so it's rather a waste of my time. I've not insulted you, you just can't handle the truth.

 

[Sapiens]

...

So, Noah took 40 animals on board the ark, and from these 40 animals we got the 953,434 animal species* ...

... and all with just micro evolution over the course of 6,000 years.?

 

[McBell]

The "book" is not proof of the designer! The design is proof of a desingner who must be VERY intelligent. The book just gives us details about Him...

Ah, so outside wishful thinking it is a double fail...

 

[McBell]

I strongly disagree...all the arguments put forward in support of intelligent design are logical and reasonable to those of us who believe in a Creator.

Of course it makes sense to those who accept the circular reasoning.

What is seriously fallacious is calling evolution an established fact.

You have thus far shown that you do not have even the vaguest idea of what evolution is.
Which of the many strawmen are you referring to this time when you use the word "evolution"?

It is a "belief" based on faith in the interpretation of the "evidence" that scientists examine with pre-conceived ideas to uphold.

Again, which of the many strawmen are you referring to this time when you use the word "evolution"?

That is the truth of it.

Yes it is.
For your strawmen that is, not for actual evolution.

Would you like to take a stab at the questions posed in Post # 35?

To what end?
You do not know enough about actual evolution to understand the answers.

Instead, you will plug the answers into your strawmen and make an even bigger fool of yourself.

 

[SkepticThinker]

If this is good enough for God...sorry it isn't good enough for you. The Bible does not pretend to be a science textbook, but when it touches on matters of science, it is very accurate.

You call that science?

 

[SkepticThinker]

I am not a YEC and I do not care what anyone claiming to be Christian said or wrote in the period after the canon was closed. There is a reason why we can reject most of the teachings of the church from those early centuries. Christ himself said that it would become corrupted, just like Judaism before it. This is what took place.

The book of nature does not contradict the Bible. Humans with their own ideas corrupted what the Bible taught and evolution is designed to corrupt Christians. You cannot merge the two into a compromised belief, hedging your bets whilst trying to retain credibility with your peers. Either there is a Creator who purposefully designed and made all that we see, or there isn't.

I believe the evidence speaks for an intelligent designer.

I have plenty of Christian friends that accept evolutionary theory as something designed by the god they believe in.

They think their god is quite intelligent and easily capable of creating evolution, while I guess you do not.

I do not subscribe to the teachings of mainstream "Christianity", which I believe is not Christianity at all. It is the weeds of Jesus parable, sown by God's enemy. Compromised Christianity is not what Jesus taught. Regardless of what the scientific community would have us believe...they are assuming that things occurred as they imagine.



Hard for whom? You image that the one who brought those molecules into existence has problems keeping them in existence? Really?



Funny how there is only 21% of the stuff eh? Enough oxygen to keep living things alive and to light fires for warmth without blowing themselves up....just an accidental mixture of just the right gases. And the beneficial accidents just keep coming....



Yes, we have these organisms still in existence doing exactly that. Isn't photosynthesis another amazing accident?



Assumption. Now look at the next bit....this is classic.

"But roughly 2.45 billion years ago, the isotopic ratio of sulfur transformed, indicating that for the first time oxygen was becoming a significant component of Earth's atmosphere, according to a 2000 paper in Science. At roughly the same time (and for eons thereafter), oxidized iron began to appear in ancient soils and bands of iron were deposited on the seafloor, a product of reactions with oxygen in the seawater.

"What it looks like is that oxygen was first produced somewhere around 2.7 billion to 2.8 billon years ago. It took up residence in atmosphere around 2.45 billion years ago," says geochemist Dick Holland, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. "It looks as if there's a significant time interval between the appearance of oxygen-producing organisms and the actual oxygenation of the atmosphere."

So a date and a culprit can be fixed for what scientists refer to as the Great Oxidation Event, but mysteries remain. What occurred 2.45 billion years ago that enabled cyanobacteria to take over? What were oxygen levels at that time? Why did it take another one billion years—dubbed the "boring billion" by scientists—for oxygen levels to rise high enough to enable the evolution of animals?"

Of course it did..... Those "boring billions" of years were just another accident in the saga of evolution. How opportunistic of nature to do that.

Just read what is written. "What it looks like" is hardly a statement of scientific fact. You cannot be serious!



The Bible does not argue with an ancient earth. And seeing as how vegetation was first to appear, we have no problem with them being ancient as well.



There are many animals (microscopic and otherwise) that would never make it to the cover of National Geographic for the most beautiful or significant either. That doesn't mean that beautiful and significant animals don't co-exist with the less spectacular ones.

There are still very insignificant flowers growing in every part of the earth at this moment...so what?



Of course it always boils back down to my lack of education. What if your education is way off.....how would you know?
You all blindly accept what you are told...the very thing you accuse us of doing.



God doesn't tell us how he did things.....but it doesn't mean that he didn't do them....just that we don't have the details. The Bible wasn't written for scientists...it was written for ordinary people.

What science "discovers" is merely educated assumptions about some details of creation. Sometimes they get it right...but sometimes they get it horribly wrong. That is what happens when you depend on guesswork. Tomorrow's findings may well undo the whole thing.

I am still waiting for an answer to my previous questions.....any evolutionists want to take a stab at them?

 

[savagewind]

I don't hear her arguing evolution. I hear her arguing dumb evolution.

 

[Ouroboros]

Define "natural" selection. What is "natural" about a giraffe? Do you know what physical mechanism is needed to pump blood to the brain of something with a neck that long? Or the mechanism that requires its intake of water to be pumped an equal distance uphill in order to reach its stomach? No other animal has this problem.

Or a plant wearing a replica of a pollinating insect...complete with the correct pheromone? How does natural selection explain that? How did the plant know it would be beneficial to make that evolutionary change to ensure its survival?

Tell me how natural selection teaches a bird to build a nest that is exclusive in design to that particular species when the babies were not around to be taught by their parents?

How do birds and butterflies know how to migrate to places, thousands of miles away when they have never been there?

Then you might like to explain the "natural" process that ensures that we don't bleed to death when we cut ourselves. If this automatic process did not know when to stop, it could coagulate our entire blood stream. Just a product of blind evolution?

Then we like to talk about water...good old H2o. The most miraculous substance in existence. Where did water come from and why does it behave like no other liquid? Why does every creature on this planet require it when it has not been found anywhere else in our solar system?
Why is the greatest percentage of water on earth so salty that it is undrinkable? Did the clouds just know how to draw up water by evaporation and dump it on land to accidently keep living things alive? Did the process of precipitation just invent itself?

C'mon...I would like to hear how natural selection brought about those extraordinary processes.
They all sound like the work of an intelligent designer to me.

You said: "Undirected chance is the basis for all you believe."

That's wrong. Evolution is not "undirected." It's directed by natural selection. I don't have to define what it is simply because there's so much information out there that you can search and read yourself. Selection is a direction. The environment is the baseline or "rule giver" to the directed selection, simply because if a new genetic trait makes it impossible to procreate, that genetic trait will not continue. That's not undirected at all.

 

[savagewind]

You said: "Undirected chance is the basis for all you believe."

That's wrong. Evolution is not "undirected." It's directed by natural selection. I don't have to define what it is simply because there's so much information out there that you can search and read yourself. Selection is a direction. The environment is the baseline or "rule giver" to the directed selection, simply because if a new genetic trait makes it impossible to procreate, that genetic trait will not continue. That's not undirected at all.

Natural selection is not intelligent. Please look up the meaning of direct, the verb.

 

[Ouroboros]

I have plenty of Christian friends that accept evolutionary theory as something designed by the god they believe in.

They think their god is quite intelligent and easily capable of creating evolution, while I guess you do not.

Exactly.

Also considering that evolutionary algorithms (which are based on the same principle as biological evolution) is used more and more in software. If it's good enough for smart programmers who realize that it actually improves efficiency and speed of production, then God can't be less than that. To creationists, God is more like the toy maker in the old stories. Tinkering with springs, rubber bands, cogwheels, and some screws. The hands on approach, instead of an efficient production process. It's an ancient image of the "grease-monkey" mechanic God rather than God being an engineer and mathematician.

 

[Ouroboros]

Gen 1:11 Then God said: “Let the earth cause grass to sprout,

What it says there is that Earth caused grass to sprout, on God's command. In other words, Earth produced the grass. It fits evolution better than "Then God brought out his hammer and screwdriver and started to hammer away on a grass DNA." God didn't directly do anything. God commanded the world to produce stars, life, light, etc. God didn't touch anything. The world produced everything on God's command. The whole story is to tell us that God is spirit, not physical, and that the world obeys God and produce what God wants. Evolution is a process in this world. That's how the world works. If God commanded it so, then so be it, and don't reject God's will.