Comprehension of Evolution and Creation

[Dan From Smithville]

I have no idea what you mean, but that is probably more on your ability to articulate than on my ability to comprehend.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

It is ridiculous in simple wording, and it is science fact in scientific wording.

It is not a scientific fact. It is an irrational statement that means nothing.

 

[questfortruth]

It is not a scientific fact. It is an irrational statement that means nothing.

Simple wording: "the modern fish is originated from your grandmother Diana."
Scientific wording: "All life on Earth shares a last universal common ancestor (LUCA)" Wikipedia.

 

[Yazata]

I am rewriting:

AXIOM: It is better to have no theory than to have a false one.

I guess that I'd say that it's better to embrace theories that are more truth-like than theories that are less truth-like. Or pragmatically more useful. Or better corroborated. Or something. (It's a work-in-progress.) But not always, not in every case, since what is seemingly the less truth-like theory today might actually be more fruitful tomorrow once it's improved and its deficiencies are addressed.

Hereby to know that theory is certainly false, and to know what is false with it and what place in the theory is false, but to pretend that it is not false.

Yes, I fully agree that people shouldn't pretend that theories are something more than our fallible human approximations at the truth. I'm very much a fallibilist.

And I think that it's just wrong to pretend at knowledge that one doesn't possess, to pretend at more metaphysical certainty than is justified. It's especially wrong in science. Hence my own agnosticism about the deepest fundamental questions. (It's where I most often deviate from the atheists I guess.)

But that being said, I do think that the broad outlines of the theory of biological evolution by natural selection are very good. Probably not perfect in every detail, but very good overall. It forms my own working assumption about the history of life. So I definitely embrace (and am frankly fascinated by) the revolution in biological thought since Darwin and Wallace.

 

[Yazata]

EVOLUTION-IDEOLOGY:
On the other hand, the Theory of Evolution (the founder is the christian
Charles Darwin) says that the lineage of the modern fish is originated from
your grandmother Diana. It is ridiculous in simple wording, and it is science
fact in scientific wording.

Simple wording: "the modern fish is originated from your grandmother Diana."
Scientific wording: "All life on Earth shares a last universal common ancestor (LUCA)" Wikipedia.

Questfortruth has edited his initial post to read as above.

While I would say that neither of my grandmothers was named Diana and neither was the ancestor of today's fish (that's ridiculous), I fully agree that humans and fish share a common ancestor (or ancestral population) back there somewhere. What's more I agree that all existing Earth life seems to share a common ancestor (LUCA).

So what do the rest of you who are trying to insult Questfortruth into oblivion think? Do you really want to fight the common ancestry idea? It's mainstream evolutionary biology.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

There are many species within each Biblical kind, for example, yellow-skin and
white-skin humans.

Really? Now tell me about how red haired humans and brown haired humans are different SPECIES as well!

Definitely one of the first things that caught my eye.

@questfortruth - pay close attention to @QuestioningMind's post. Read it well and do some study. Once again, you are only making a fool of yourself in front of anyone with better understanding of this material you just keep trying to cover. You don't know the first thing about evolution, or biology as they are currently esteemed by the sciences.

Your inane quotes like calling various skin-colored humans "different species" within these long posts that you make (all the while thinking you've just trumped us all and proven evolution "false") is like you laying down your hand in a poker game to display nothing but the BACKS of the cards - because the whole time you were playing you were holding your hand backward and fully displaying the faces of the cards to the rest of us. You are constantly displaying to us all how badly you are going to lose these arguments you try to start. It is just the saddest thing... really.

Please stop. I am starting to develop a complex from all of the vicarious embarrassment I feel for you.

 

[NewGuyOnTheBlock]

This "ideology" is not ideology, but my religion -- Christianity.

The Bible, while unclear on the path of Salvation, at least has this part: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotton son " etc. etc. Nowhere do I see in the Bible where one must accept Genesis as literal historical fact in order to be Christian. Nor do I find in the Bible where one must believe in special creation in order to be Christian. The idea that one can not be Christian without holding to literal interpretations of the Bible (which didn't even exist during Christianity had long since been established) is an afterthought put forth by apologists,

 

[questfortruth]

Yes, that's a very good question. If life has evolved tremendously since the appearance of bacteria, and if evolution selects for evolutionary fitness, why do bacteria still exist?

Another thought came just now: The modern bacteria Tomy and LUCA look the same. Because the genus of Tomy was not evolution-ing. The explanation for this is the "factory" parable in the thread: namely genus of Tomy was not lucky enough. Thus, the modern fish were the same as their ancestors the time the grandmother Diana (look up the name in the thread) has started their ancestor line. Therefore, the Diana was ordinary fish.

 

[ChristineM]

SIMPLE FACT:

Why stop at 'Your great-great-grandmother"?

Why not go back say 400,000 generation's?

 

[Irate State]

I'll accept your "Christian-Dogma" section as an accurate account of Biblical "kinds".



That's ridiculous on its face. But I'll accept the underlying idea that biological evolutionary thought does think that if we trace back the phylogeny of both fish and humans, we will indeed arrive at a common ancestor. (Or perhaps a single ancestral population.)

Since early fish seem to have been the ancestors of land tetrapods, the common ancestor of both would seem to have been a very early chordate of some kind.



You would have to go back a lot farther to find a common ancestor of chordates and arthropods. Probably back to the early "Cambrian explosion"



Yes, the current idea is that all life on Earth is descended from LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor. It needn't be a particular cell, it probably was a population of very similar cells. I have no good reason to doubt this account and think that it explains the similarity of all Earth life down at the cellular level.



LUCA might not have been a bacterium. It might have been something simpler. It's presumably what both the bacterial and archaean lines diverged from at some unknown early date.



Yes, that's a very good question. If life has evolved tremendously since the appearance of bacteria, and if evolution selects for evolutionary fitness, why do bacteria still exist? All of the later developments would presumably have superior fitness, right?

My reply would be to observe that there has been lots of evolution in the bacterial lines. We still call them "bacteria" largely because they all share the same simple prokaryotic cellular anatomy. But bacterial evolution hasn't been a matter of acquiring an ever more sophisticated anatomy -- teeth, claws, feathers or brains. Bacteral evolution has been biochemical evolution.

Bacterial cells are far more diverse than our eukaryotic cells in the kind of biochemistry that they can undertake. So that bacteria can occupy all sorts of ecological niches that are impossible for other organisms.

There are even bacteria living deep inside tiny voids in the rocks of the Earth almost as deep as the Earth's crust goes. Some of them may have been isolated down there for most of the history of life on Earth. They survive because they don't require the kind of conditions that life like us requires and they have the ability to metabolize the minerals that surround them.

Mysterious Microbes Found Deep in Earth's Crust | Live Science

Here on Earth's surface, bacteria have survived almost everywhere, largely because of their metabolic efficiency and adaptability. And that's almost certainly the result of evolution. Admittedly evolution will be hard to trace in bacteria. For one thing they all look alike, more or less. It's only the last few decades that microbiologists have been able to examine them at the genomic level. Even at that "molecular bar-code" level, there are complicating factors like horizontal gene transfer. But even if it's difficult or even impossible to trace clear phylogenies/family-trees among bacteria, we can be reasonably sure that they have been evolving over the last 3.5 billion years.



Yes, I think that's almost certainly true. If we reran the history of life on Earth, from the origin of life to today, the result would probably be totally different the second time. There's probably a chaotic aspect to it.



Again I agree. I suspect that the initial appearance of life might have been a fortuitious event. Life might be very rare out there in the universe. (Biologists still need a good definition of what the word 'life' means before exobiologists can hope to even recognize hypothetical alien varieties.)

Then we can't just assume that evolutionary history on planets with life will lead to beings like us. There's lots of directions that evolution can go, a huge possibility space.

That's why it's my guess that intelligent life is very rare out in the universe and why I believe that alien extraterrestrial life might be far more alien than we expect.

You're too kind, I wouldn't have had the patience to break down his bíblical ramblings and translated them into coherent questions. A very fine example of the principle of charity indeed.

 

[halbhh]

AXIOM: It is better to have no theory than to have a false one. Hereby to know that theory is certainly false, and to know what is false with it and what place in the theory is false, but to pretend that it is not false.

SIMPLE FACT:
Your mother gave birth to you.
Your grandmother gave birth to your mother.
Your great-grandmother gave birth to your grandmother,
Your great-great-grandmother gave birth to your great-grandmother...

CREATION-DOGMA:
Creationists and the God of the Bible believe that all of your grandmothers
are ordinary people. All your relatives compose the Human-kind with its own
Last Common Ancestor (LCA), the Biblical Adam and Eve. Analogously, all
relatives of monkeys compose the monkey-kind with its own LCA (which is the
very first pair of monkeys). There are no beings, who belong to both those
kinds.

And there are spider-kind with its own LCA (the very first pair of spiders).
There are many LCA-s in the "pseudo-" Science of Creation, compared to only
one LCA in the Theory of Evolution.

There are many species within each Biblical kind, for example, yellow-skin and
white-skin humans. I am not a racist! Jesus Christ has died for all species of
humankind.

EVOLUTION-IDEOLOGY:
On the other hand, the Theory of Evolution (the founder is the christian
Charles Darwin) says that the lineage of the modern fish is originated from
your grandmother Diana. It is ridiculous in simple wording, and it is science
fact in scientific wording.

Simple wording: "the modern fish is originated from your grandmother Diana."
Scientific wording: "All life on Earth shares a last universal common ancestor (LUCA)" Wikipedia.

And from grandmother Zina - a line of spiders. From
grandmother Veronica - a line of monkeys.
But since they are very distant ancestors (and the very first grandmother was
the simplest unicellular bacterium: the Universal LCA), grandmother Diana was an ordinary fish,
and grandmother Zina is an ordinary spider. Veronica is a monkey in your genus.

The modern bacterium (named Tomy) was produced by his mother Huna, who was
also a bacterium. The bacterium-grandmother Vika has produced Huna, and so on.
All creatures in Tomy's lineage were bacteria.
Why the evolution into humans does take place with some
bacteria but not with the genus of Tomy? And you don't need to tell me the
parable, that "a factory worker can become a factory director, although other
workers are simply unlucky and they will remain unskilled forever." Nature and
biology are not a factory! And this also means that the Theory of Evolution
includes non-computable randomness. Therefore, it is possible that on the best
planet for living nothing special will happen, except the boring life of a
colony of bacteria.

Another thought came just now: The modern bacteria Tomy and LUCA look the same. Because the genus of Tomy was not evolution-ing. The explanation for this is the "factory" parable in the thread: namely genus of Tomy was not lucky enough. Thus, the modern fish were the same as their ancestors the time the grandmother Diana (look up the name in the thread) has started their ancestor line. Therefore, the Diana was ordinary fish.

God made nature.

Therefore, for a believer, it follows that whatever nature does is operating according to His design also (e.g., by the design of nature, the laws of physics).

That includes the interesting natural effect that some random mutations in genes can end up being advantageous (even though most are not). And that accumulated variations that slowly accumulate (the non fatal ones) can some of them end up being especially advantageous for a species when the climate or other conditions like available range changes, so that certain less common traits some individual lines in the species have are suddenly a survival advantage.

Ergo, (many) believers in God often see evolution as a pretty good design.

They have faith.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

AXIOM: It is better to have no theory than to have a false one. Hereby to know that theory is certainly false, and to know what is false with it and what place in the theory is false, but to pretend that it is not false.

SIMPLE FACT:
Your mother gave birth to you.
Your grandmother gave birth to your mother.
Your great-grandmother gave birth to your grandmother,
Your great-great-grandmother gave birth to your great-grandmother...

CREATION-DOGMA:
Creationists and the God of the Bible believe that all of your grandmothers
are ordinary people. All your relatives compose the Human-kind with its own
Last Common Ancestor (LCA), the Biblical Adam and Eve. Analogously, all
relatives of monkeys compose the monkey-kind with its own LCA (which is the
very first pair of monkeys). There are no beings, who belong to both those
kinds.

And there are spider-kind with its own LCA (the very first pair of spiders).
There are many LCA-s in the "pseudo-" Science of Creation, compared to only
one LCA in the Theory of Evolution.

There are many species within each Biblical kind, for example, yellow-skin and
white-skin humans. I am not a racist! Jesus Christ has died for all species of
humankind.

EVOLUTION-IDEOLOGY:
On the other hand, the Theory of Evolution (the founder is the christian
Charles Darwin) says that the lineage of the modern fish is originated from
your grandmother Diana. It is ridiculous in simple wording, and it is science
fact in scientific wording.

Simple wording: "the modern fish is originated from your grandmother Diana."
Scientific wording: "All life on Earth shares a last universal common ancestor (LUCA)" Wikipedia.

And from grandmother Zina - a line of spiders. From
grandmother Veronica - a line of monkeys.
But since they are very distant ancestors (and the very first grandmother was
the simplest unicellular bacterium: the Universal LCA), grandmother Diana was an ordinary fish,
and grandmother Zina is an ordinary spider. Veronica is a monkey in your genus.

The modern bacterium (named Tomy) was produced by his mother Huna, who was
also a bacterium. The bacterium-grandmother Vika has produced Huna, and so on.
All creatures in Tomy's lineage were bacteria.
Why the evolution into humans does take place with some
bacteria but not with the genus of Tomy? And you don't need to tell me the
parable, that "a factory worker can become a factory director, although other
workers are simply unlucky and they will remain unskilled forever." Nature and
biology are not a factory! And this also means that the Theory of Evolution
includes non-computable randomness. Therefore, it is possible that on the best
planet for living nothing special will happen, except the boring life of a
colony of bacteria.

Another thought came just now: The modern bacteria Tomy and LUCA look the same. Because the genus of Tomy was not evolution-ing. The explanation for this is the "factory" parable in the thread: namely genus of Tomy was not lucky enough. Thus, the modern fish were the same as their ancestors the time the grandmother Diana (look up the name in the thread) has started their ancestor line. Therefore, the Diana was ordinary fish.

So let's return to the problem you've mentioned so often --- and consider why it is that literally thousands and thousands of good science minds get their work published on a regular basis, and you complain that you can't. And the fact that all those minds who do get published accept evolution as a fact, while you will not.

So why do you think that is, again?

 

[MatthewA]

I believe that a Christian can believe in the existence of God, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and also accept evolution for what it is; not sure if Evolution in that it is still a theory or an actual scientific fact?

I have not that information.

 

[Irate State]

So what do the rest of you who are trying to insult Questfortruth into oblivion think? Do you really want to fight the common ancestry idea? It's mainstream evolutionary biology.

There's not a single shred of supporting common ancestry ideas in these posts. He clearly does not adheres to them.
By means of strwamanning and exaggeration all that it's attempted is to discredit everything even remotely related to actual evolution.

 

[exchemist]

I believe that a Christian can believe in the existence of God, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and also accept evolution for what it is; not sure if Evolution in that it is still a theory or an actual scientific fact?

I have not that information.

It's often regarded as both, oddly enough.

Darwin's theory and its subsequent embellishments are just that: a theory. A theory like Relativity, Newton's Laws of Motion, or Quantum Theory, or Thermodynamics.

Bear in mind it is wrong to say these are "still" theories, as if one day they will become facts. They won't ever do that, because they are models of the world, that predict what behaviour we can expect to observe in nature. However many observations we make that agree with these models, the models can never be facts, because there is always the possibility that some new class of observation may one day be made that does not fit the theory. Such a possibility can never logically be ruled out - and the history of science is littered with examples where this has happened.

But in the case of evolution, not only is it a powerful and well-corroborated theory to explain our observations of fossils and DNA resemblances, but we can also see it operating, before our eyes in real time. Examples are the development of variants of SARS-CoV-2, or the way cancers become resistant to chemotherapy, or the development of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. So, since we can observe evolution happening in such cases, we would treat that as fact.

As for what you say about Christian belief and evolution, that is absolutely mainstream Christian thinking, certainly.

 

[MatthewA]

Okay, @exchemist that is helpful information. I believe that people can try to fight against people who believe in evolution or whatever, it is such a silly thing to get hung up on because there are much more pressing matters to address and attend to.

 

[tas8831]

What is sad is that Uncle Bob here probably wasn't duped into thinking that Reno 911 video was real.

Now THAT is a fun show!

 

[questfortruth]

Why stop at 'Your great-great-grandmother"?

Why not go back say 400,000 generation's?

QUOTE:

Thus, the modern fish are looking the same way as their ancestors the time the grandmother Diana (look up the name in the thread) has started their genus lines. Therefore, the Diana was ordinary fish.

Do not deny your 10000000 grandmothers' existence if you believe in them. Be respective to the original grandmother named LUCA. Do not call her the most primitive creature ever existed! Without her, there would be no grandmothers at all. Why? Because we need to feel our blood-relation to each other: we are someone's daughter, we are someone's son.

 

[ChristineM]

Thus, the modern fish are looking the same way as their ancestors the time the grandmother Diana (look up the name in the thread) has started their genus lines. Therefore, the Diana was ordinary fish.

Do not deny your 10000000 grandmothers' existence if you believe in them. Be respective to the original grandmother named LUCA. Do not call her the most primitive creature ever existed! Without her, there would be no grandmothers at all. Why? Because we need to feel our blood-relation to each other: we are someone's daughter, we are someone's son.

So you don't have an answer but waffling is just as good for you. Fair enough

 

[questfortruth]

So you don't have an answer but waffling is just as good for you. Fair enough

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