Just Accidental?

[gnostic]

I understand completely. Science has no direct evidence for anything but adaptation. Adaptation is not evolution.

You haven't read Darwin's works, have you?

Natural Selection (as are mutation and genetic drift) is all about adaptations, and therefore adaptations are evolution.

1. You haven't provide a single evidence to counter evolutionary biology.
2. You have no evidences to verify that God was responsible for creation.
3. And those images of different animals in different colours, in no way debunk evolution, nor validate creationism, because they are photographs without contexts.

With point 3, about those pictures you posted up in your replies, don't contain any scientific explanation as to why you think God was responsible for their creation other than your personal belief and personal opinions.

And those opinions and belief of your those merit in any way to biology. And they are very subjective, and not to mention very biased.

 

[Deeje]

You haven't read Darwin's works, have you?

Darwin had a theory that seemed to fit what he saw on the Galapagos Islands.....he was mistaken then, and people who have carried on his fantasy are just as mistaken now, grasping at imaginary straws to prove their case. The finches were still finches...the iguanas were still iguanas and the tortoises were still.....tortoises.

Scientists have never proven that one creature can ever morph into another creature altogether.....all they have done is make educated guesses about what "might have" taken place, and then try to pass them off as facts. A bit of scrutiny is all it takes to see through the whole ruse. Supposition is not a substitute for facts.
You all seem to fall at the feet of your science gods, just as I fall at the feet of my Creator.

I believe that you actually need more faith to believe in your 'religion' than I do.

With point 3, about those pictures you posted up in your replies, don't contain any scientific explanation as to why you think God was responsible for their creation other than your personal belief and personal opinions.

What makes you think we all need scientific explanations for creation? I see design and purpose in all that God has made, including the things that have nothing to do with evolution. Things like the size and shape of this planet...the speed of its rotation and the precise angle of its axis....its placement in the galaxy so that its distance from the sun is just right....its gravitational force and the function of its single moon.....the gases in its atmosphere.....the water cycle.....the existence of fire and ice.....just to name a few.

All these things exhibit purpose and thoughtful design.....yet none of it evolved accidentally....just like no life on this planet evolved accidentally either. Purpose requires intelligence. The only intelligence powerful enough to accomplish all that, is the Creator. That is my belief.....but you are welcome to yours.

And those opinions and belief of your those merit in any way to biology. And they are very subjective, and not to mention very biased.

Since God created biology, I guess you'll have to take that up with him.....and the mention of bias is just plain funny.

Of course there is no bias at all in your estimation of things....?

 

[Polymath257]

Simulations based on what? Pre-conceived ideas about what 'must have' happened as opposed to what actually did?
Simulations are interpreted to match the fossil record. The fossils do not have a voice until scientists give them one.....a very biased one. You have no actual proof...only guesses. That is not very scientific.

Actually, it is typical scientific method.

There have been many different simulations based on many different assumptions. One of the first ones was a program called 'Tierra' which used 'organism' that were small programs and the environment was the memory of the running computer. As in all these simulations, these organisms reproduced, had mutations, and had to survive in their environment. Nothing other than this was programmed. The results were surprising at the time. Spontaneously, high complexity eco-systems were formed with predators, prey, species that changed over time, and even things like parasites.

Again, this was a very early version, but the basic results have held up through many different variations. What has been found in these simulations is that as long as there is reproduction, mutation, and some sort selection based on the environment (some live and some die based on genetics), then highly complex systems do spontaneously form. The exceptions are if the mutation rate is too low for how fast the environment changes or if it is too high and mutations destroy adaptation in too few generations.

This is a stable enough discovery in the simulations that a whole way of programming developed based on evolution. In this, programs are randomly changed and the ones that best do the job are selected, reproduced, mutated, and the process is repeated. This *usually* gives very good ways to optimize programs without humans doing the basic programming.

You admit that evolution is "beyond the ability to test directly" because of the timeframe.....that means that all your conclusions are based on assumptions and biastly interpreted evidence. You have what science "thinks" happened, but you have no real evidence that what you "think" happened, actually did. You want it to, that is clear.

This is a fact about any historical science. So you are, essentially, saying that it is impossible to know about any processes that take longer than a few thousand years. And that is something I will deny. We *can* and *do* acquire knowledge about such processes by using what we can verify at that day-to-day level and extrapolating the laws we find. These give testable predictions that can be then either verified or shown wrong. And his way historical sciences *can* learn about the deep past.

I would like to see transitional fossils between the ones science presents in its diagrams. Since millions of years transpired between these 'species', there has to have been many thousands, if not millions of these transitional forms that prove your theory. Where are they all? The ones you have do not demonstrate relationship, but only similarity. I question the assumptions of scientists of a link between them because the "gaps" are all still unbridged by anything material. There are no real links in your chain....just imaginary ones. How does that make your beliefs more reasonable than mine?

You won't get a generation to generation detail. Given the nature of the fossil record, you won't even get detail at the level of 10,000 years to the next. That doesn't mean the conclusions are uncertain. It just means that you need to use the data we have.

LOL....I have always been *reasonable*.....just not compliant with your reasoning, based on your "evidence'.....which is thin to say the least. I am demanding more real evidence than you can apparently provide. I have real evidence for my Creator all around me and nothing you have produced to date tells me otherwise.

No, your viewpoint essentially denies the possibility of historical sciences that deal with processes that take millions of years. That is unreasonable.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The more I explored evolution, the more I saw it was not based on facts but on pre-conceived assumptions that were founded on Darwin's theory.

Your posting demonstrates that you have never learned about evolution.

Every conclusion was made to fit that theory.

The theory is the conclusion, and every datum to date supports it.

I see the whole scenario of macro-evolution as based on the irrational opinion of scientists trying to prop up a fantasy, without scientific facts.

The skeptics here have a different opinion of what you see and why.

The Bible speaks of the figurative heart, not the physical organ that pumps blood, but the depth of feeling that is tied to our emotions.

That's unlikely to be correct:

"During the 4th century BC Aristotle thought that, while the heart was the seat of intelligence, the brain was a cooling mechanism for the blood." History of neuroscience - Wikipedia

There were also speculations that the brain was the seat of intelligence, but this wasn't considered fact, and was probably unknown to most people. When we get emotional, we often feel a suffocating or squeezing sensation in the chest, likely the thoracic division of the autonomic nervous system. Similar phenomena felt elsewhere include "butterflies in the stomach" when nervous, and being "weak in the knees" when standing at the edge of a steep precipice. The mind refers the sensation to the body.

Our physical heart is affected by stress and tragedy, and people can literally die of a "broken heart".

Yes, but hearts don't literally break too often. You can blow out the wall of the left ventricle if an aneurysm forms there and bursts.

It is inextricably tied in with love. Can you deny this?

The heart is inextricably tied in with love? Yes, that can be denied, unless you mean in some trivial way such as that when your heart stops, you stop loving (and living)

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

You think you have real freedom now? It is a sad delusion. People who defect from the Creator have just opted for a different form of slavery.....their 'master' is neither kind nor loving. He is cold like the cash that drives their selfish lives.

I think that you have that backwards.

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." - James Madison

I was born again in my late twenties when I cast off the fetters of religion, and have been becoming progressively freer ever since. I have never been more free than I am now, and could not be more free.

How free is one if he or she feels like a spirit trapped in base flesh in a world that one wants no part of, and is constantly desirous of escaping to go to another place?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

According to your beliefs, Creation is just an accident and so are we.

According to your beliefs, God is just an accident.

There is an abundance of evidence, but again you just see 'accidents' where I see deliberate design and carefully executed ingenuity.

What I see are your presuppositions chosen to fit your theories. Isn't that your usual answer to the evidence for evolution, except that in this case, the description is accurate. You sift evidence through a confirmation bias. The body of evolutionary scientists do not, even if a few do so individually. Collectively, they eliminate confirmation bias.

I see what he has accomplished and the way he has organized events from the beginning, yet keeping his distance so that the devil can prove his case completely without unnecessary interference

My comment was, "He has done nothing as always. It's the signature of this god and how you know it is Him: He always perfectly imitates a non-existent god"

You call that "keeping His distance." I call it the perfect imitation of a non-existent god. If no god exists, that is exactly what we would expect from a non-existent god: Inaction.

And the reason for this? To help Satan.

Hasn't this god done enough for Satan at our expense already? He gave him rein over hell and earth, an army of demons, most of the souls ever born to torture, let him tempt the children in the garden and cause the fall of mankind, and gave him Job to toy with also allegedly to prove some imagined point.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I have a close and personal relationship with God that I could not begin to describe to an unbeliever.

Freud sees it differently:

"A personal god was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and for life to go on forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshiped by human beings out of an abiding sense of helplessness. Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race" - Sigmund Freud

So does this guy:

"It's weird, isn't is, that when we're taught about Thor and Odin, it's called Norse mythology, but when it's about Jehovah and Allah, it's called religion. It's like saying. ‘I know that Batman and Superman don't exist, but I have a personal relationship with Spiderman' " - anon.

O, I answered you already.....but you must have dismissed it. It was prophesied that God would remain unknown to those who don't want to know him. How many of the world's population are willing to give up their own ideas about God to accommodate the truth? He already said that "few" will even enter the gate that leads to the road to life. There is a superhighway that most prefer to travel. It makes little demand on them apart from some superficial performance. Those who think Jehovah merely wants mindless performance are kidding themselves.

Remember I pointed out Matthew 7:13-14? This is Jesus' own words.....
“Go in through the narrow gate, because broad is the gate and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are going in through it; 14 whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are finding it."

No, you didn't answer, "Why is a god that wants to be known still unknown to the majority of the earth's population?"

Where do you see "why" answered there? All I see is "what." That's a statement of what will happen, not why it was chosen.

 

[Polymath257]

Your wish may well be granted I find your myths to be much more life threatening.....

Which wish? That I not live in a theocracy or dictatorship?

Good!

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

God loves those who love him......don't you do the same?

I do better than that.

Do you love people who hate you

No.

Doesn't your Bible suggest that you love your enemies? I agree that that's terrible advice as you seem to judging by your comment.

However, this god has no enemies unless you count Satan, and I'm not sure that they are enemies as depicted.

Among humans, however, we are all only believers and unbelievers. I am not your god's enemy, just a skeptic waiting for a reason to believe before believing.

or who want to deny your existence?

The god of the Christian Bible is logically impossible by virtue of having been ascribed mutually exclusive qualities. If a god or gods exist, they do not fit the description of the god of the Christian Bible.

Another way that we know that that god doesn't exist is because He is said to want to be known, loved, and worshiped by man as mans creator and benefactor. Yet we not only never see this god, we find evidence everywhere that we were not created.

Incidentally, is it characteristic of Jehovah's Witnesses to not capitalize the personal pronouns referring to God or Jesus? I, an atheist, do that more than you do.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I have not seen a single shred of solid evidence for macro-evolution from any of you that did not require a measure of faith to believe it.

If we accept your claim, all that does is reduces belief in evolution to the level of a belief in God, and makes the choice to believe evolution by faith alone as valid as being a Jehovah's Witness.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Science has no direct evidence for anything but adaptation. Adaptation is not evolution.

Biological evolution is physical and physiological adaptation of populations to their habitats and the niches they fill in them over multiple generations. Other kinds of adaptation, like converting the study to a nursery in anticipation of the new baby, are not part of the scientific theory.

I have read the evidence posted here by evolutionists themselves. I have already demonstrated many times that it's not what it purports to be.

I've never seen that. All I've seen is you making the claim, not demonstrating its validity.

You also offer no alternative explanation for what we observe. Where did all of those extinct apemen like Lucy, Java man and Turkana boy come from and then go to? Why do they exist to be found? Jesus put them there?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

God's love has to be 'conditional' because he could not carry out the death penalty on his opposers otherwise.

Doesn't seem like an adequate reason - certainly not for a god.

And where is this love? I'm told of a god that created our world and species to collect a few percent willing to worship Him on scant evidence, and throw the rest away. I'm told of a god that doesn't bother to show himself to me, gives me free will and reason, fills the earth with evidence that His Bible is wrong, and then will punish me for connecting the dots.

 

[Polymath257]

I have real evidence for my Creator all around me and nothing you have produced to date tells me otherwise.

OK, please explain how you determine whether something is 'created' or not. What tests do you run? How do you eliminate alternative possibilities?

Does *all* complexity imply a creator? Or just complexity that you find to be beautiful? Is it possible to have complexity without a designer?

How does the assumption of the existence of your creator explain, say, ring species? How does it explain the similarities between theropod dinosaurs and early birds? If Homo erectus isn't a human ancestor, how does that species fit into the overall picture? How would you test your explanation?

What sort of evidence would serve to decrease your belief in a creator? What sort of evidence would increase your belief in evolution?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

You admit that evolution is "beyond the ability to test directly" because of the timeframe.....that means that all your conclusions are based on assumptions and biastly interpreted evidence. You have what science "thinks" happened, but you have no real evidence that what you "think" happened, actually did. You want it to, that is clear.

Not at all. You encounter a dead body. You have no direct test that the person was once a baby. So what? Is the matter in doubt?

I would like to see transitional fossils between the ones science presents in its diagrams.

Why? So that you can note that every time a transitional fossil occupies a place in a gap, it creates two more? Gaps are just fine in science. They are expected.

Since millions of years transpired between these 'species', there has to have been many thousands, if not millions of these transitional forms that prove your theory. Where are they all?

They died. Most dissolved, some were found, and some remain to be found. That is expected and not evidence against the theory.

The ones you have do not demonstrate relationship, but only similarity.

Similarity is a relationship.

I question the assumptions of scientists of a link between them because the "gaps" are all still unbridged by anything material.

That's what a gap is.

There are no real links in your chain....just imaginary ones. How does that make your beliefs more reasonable than mine?

If there are no links in the chain, how can there be gaps between them?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I find your myths to be much more life threatening

Our beliefs don't include a welcome fiery apocalypse.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Darwin had a theory that seemed to fit what he saw on the Galapagos Islands.....he was mistaken then, and people who have carried on his fantasy are just as mistaken now, grasping at imaginary straws to prove their case.

No, Darwin had a theory that fit what he saw and contradicted your faith based beliefs.

The finches were still finches...the iguanas were still iguanas and the tortoises were still.....tortoises.

Exactly as they should be.

Scientists have never proven that one creature can ever morph into another creature altogether

Creatures only morph from zygotes to babies to mature forms. Science has witnessed populations morphing.

You all seem to fall at the feet of your science gods, just as I fall at the feet of my Creator. I believe that you actually need more faith to believe in your 'religion' than I do

We have no need to believe in evolution. There is no pie-in-the-sky reward promised if one does.

I see design and purpose in all that God has made, including the things that have nothing to do with evolution. Things like the size and shape of this planet...the speed of its rotation and the precise angle of its axis....its placement in the galaxy so that its distance from the sun is just right....its gravitational force and the function of its single moon.....the gases in its atmosphere.....the water cycle.....the existence of fire and ice.....just to name a few. All these things exhibit purpose and thoughtful design

Yet we can account for most of it without a god, and have viable naturalistic hypotheses to account for the rest. When we need a god, we'll posit one.

Of course there is no bias at all in your estimation of things....?

Bias is a good thing if rational. Some call it learning.

 

[Jose Fly]

I understand completely. Science has no direct evidence for anything but adaptation. Adaptation is not evolution.

You're going to just keep repeating this crap no matter what, aren't you? Even though we've been over this twice, and each time you just ran away? Even after it's already been shown by your own sources that "adaptation" and "evolution" are the same thing?

Your consistent and persistent dishonesty is unbelievable at times.....truly a sight to behold.

I have read the evidence posted here by evolutionists themselves. I have already demonstrated many times that it's not what it purports to be.

You're lying again. When I posted some articles describing some of the evidence, you admitted that you didn't understand any of it, but rather than taking the time to learn the material, you bizarrely accused the authors of deliberately using technical terminology to hide a lack of evidence.

See, this is the sort of behavior that fascinates me. I would love to know how someone can be so blatantly dishonest, but also be completely oblivious to it as well. Makes me wonder how you even function in day to day life.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I would love to know how someone can be so blatantly dishonest, but also be completely oblivious to it as well. Makes me wonder how you even function in day to day life

Have you heard of Morton's demon? You might be interested.

 

[Deeje]

Actually, it is typical scientific method.

Doesn't say much for the other conclusions reached by the same scientific method then, does it?

Spontaneously, high complexity eco-systems were formed with predators, prey, species that changed over time, and even things like parasites.

"Spontaneously"....."without apparent external cause or stimulus." IOW it all popped up out of nowhere by Mr Nobody....with the aid of his wife "Mother Nature". Yep, no fantasy involved here.

What has been found in these simulations is that as long as there is reproduction, mutation, and some sort selection based on the environment (some live and some die based on genetics), then highly complex systems do spontaneously form.

But the method of reproduction, and the method of selection are just flukes of nature...nothing designed or planned....right?
How much do you guys take for granted? How often are mutations ever beneficial and how many of them had to happen to produce all that we see?

"Mutations are random changes in genetic systems"....correct?
"Natural selection is considered by evolutionists to be a sort of sieve, which retains the "good" mutations and allows the others to pass away"....is that right?

"Since random changes in ordered systems will almost always decrease the amount of order in those systems, nearly all mutations are harmful to the organisms which experience them." Is this not true?

"Nevertheless, evolutionist insists that each complex organism in the world today has arisen by a long string of gradually accumulated good mutations preserved by natural selection".....as you have stated.

But the fact is that "no one has ever actually observed a genuine mutation occurring in the natural environment which was beneficial (that is, adding useful genetic information to an existing genetic code), and therefore, retained by the selection process." Can you deny this?

For some reason, science's scenario seems completely reasonable to many people—until it is examined using science's own methods.

For example....
"The successful production of a 200-component functioning organism requires, at least, 200 successive, successful such "mutations," each of which is highly unlikely. Even evolutionists recognize that true mutations are very rare, and beneficial mutations are extremely rare."

"Elementary statistical theory shows that the probability of 200 successive mutations being successful is then (½)200, or one chance out of 1060. The number 1060, if written out, would be "one" followed by sixty "zeros." In other words, the chance that a 200-component organism could be formed by mutation and natural selection is less than one chance out of a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion! Lest anyone think that a 200-part system is unreasonably complex, it should be noted that even a one-celled plant or animal may have millions of molecular "parts."

Do any of you ever read what the opposition has to say? How much of the information presented above is false?

Info taken from: The Mathematical Impossibility Of Evolution | The Institute for Creation Research

We *can* and *do* acquire knowledge about such processes by using what we can verify at that day-to-day level and extrapolating the laws we find. These give testable predictions that can be then either verified or shown wrong. And his way historical sciences *can* learn about the deep past.

Or they *can* make many assumptions that sound convincing but cannot be verified.

your viewpoint essentially denies the possibility of historical sciences that deal with processes that take millions of years. That is unreasonable.

I find evolutionary science to be way more 'unreasonable' about the data it actually has, as opposed to the data it manufactures out of a vivid imagination.

 

[Deeje]

According to your beliefs, God is just an accident.

The Creator is not an accident. He is not quantifiable by mere mortals. All he tells us about himself is that he is "spirit" and that he is the Creator of all things.

The Psalmist wrote: Psalm 40:26....
“Lift up your eyes to heaven and see.
Who has created these things?
It is the One who brings out their army by number;
He calls them all by name.
Because of his vast dynamic energy and his awe-inspiring power,
Not one of them is missing."

That is what I believe to be true, backed up by what I observe with my own eyes.

Do you think that there can't be powers or lifeforms out there in the reaches of reality or in other dimensions that are unseen or unknown to us at present? Do you limit all knowledge to just what is observable by an infant race on a small planet in a large universe? That is a very narrow minded view IMO.

What I see are your presuppositions chosen to fit your theories. Isn't that your usual answer to the evidence for evolution, except that in this case, the description is accurate. You sift evidence through a confirmation bias. The body of evolutionary scientists do not, even if a few do so individually. Collectively, they eliminate confirmation bias.

I disagree of course. But this is what I have maintained all along.....you have no more solid evidence for your belief in evolution than I have for my Creator.

Your own confirmation bias is backed up by those of like mind, because you have a belief system that is sold to an adoring public (who treat the words of scientists like scripture) and brainwashed students (who are sold on this belief even before they leave High School) who accept evolution as undeniable fact.....but if science has no solid proof for its assumptions, then how are you all any different to ID supporters? All I see is that you have better marketing.

My comment was, "He has done nothing as always. It's the signature of this god and how you know it is Him: He always perfectly imitates a non-existent god"

You call that "keeping His distance." I call it the perfect imitation of a non-existent god. If no god exists, that is exactly what we would expect from a non-existent god: Inaction.

And the reason for this? To help Satan.

There has been a lot of action.....and still is right now......the world is falling apart and there is a groundswell of angry humans making known their discontent with the system as it stands.......but you don't really know what you're witnessing.

Hasn't this god done enough for Satan at our expense already? He gave him rein over hell and earth, an army of demons, most of the souls ever born to torture, let him tempt the children in the garden and cause the fall of mankind, and gave him Job to toy with also allegedly to prove some imagined point.

Good grief.....if that is what you believed, then any wonder you defected from Christendom.....I did too but I didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.