Just Accidental?

[Sapiens]

And the survival advantage in these stunning blue 'shoes' is obviously.......not camouflage....?

Is it true that 'boobies' are attracted to blue shoes?

Looks like someone is a rebel.....

No, the foot color has been shown to signal the birds' immunological health to possible mates.

 

[Deeje]

No, the foot color has been shown to signal the birds' immunological health to possible mates.

I guess the guy with the red feet is in trouble then....?

What is this guys feet saying....?

 

[Looncall]

Those questions are based on the assumption that human beings know all there is to know about themselves, about their planet, their existence and about the universe. That could not be further from the truth. We are infants in our present knowledge.

The one thing we do know is, just by the exercise of common sense, that design with purpose requires a designer who understood that purpose and fulfilled it. Even the first humans understood that and acknowledged God's role as their Creator. In their limited knowledge, what good would it have done to provide them with all the technical data when they would not have understood any of it? Humans were designed to learn in an ongoing manner, building a solid knowledge base as time went on, adding to it continually.

Even today, if God provided all the technical stuff, we would still be like babies having a conversation with Einstein on the theory of relativity. One day we may be in a position to assimilate that knowledge, but for now, we will wait and educate ourselves with true science, rather than the speculations of people who think they know everything already.

"People who think they know everything already" Ah, you mean the religious.

Gaps in knowledge are not an excuse for turning to silly legends from humanity's time of ignorance, or for succumbing to the scams of present-day scoundrels.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The odds of even a "simple" life form coming into existence by chance is next to zero....no matter how much time you throw at it.

Actually, there is evidence that suggests that life forms whenever and wherever possible. There is a reasonable chance of finding life in the oceans of the moons of a few of the gas giants in our own solar system. If that happens, it will go a long way toward supporting that hypothesis.

Those who support macro-evolution are pressured by the old "you have to be ignorant or stupid to believe in ID"...

No, you have to be a faith based thinker to accept the unsupported intelligent design hypothesis as fact. Faith is an obvious error - a logical misstep - and the only way that it is possible to accept an unsupported hypothesis that has produced nothing of value over a competing scientific theory that unified mountains of observations, makes predictions about what can and cannot be found that have never been falsified after over 150 years, and has had technological applications that have improved the human condition.

You used the words ignorant and stupid to describe how rational empiricists describe making that choice. I say illogical.

...but they ignore the fact that science has no substantiated, conclusive evidence for their 'beliefs' any more than we do.

You have steadfastly spent a lifetime avoiding scientific understanding. Nobody expects you to know what the scientific evidence and arguments are, and nobody should be surprised that you think that they are as weak and unsupported as the religious argument.

I doubt that you'll find too many people that are facile in the sciences taking advice about them from somebody that is not.

You do understand that science cannot "prove" that evolution ever took place, don't you?

You can see it happening with your own eyes:

 

[metis]

Since you were once a teacher of Catholic theology metis, it makes me ask why you haven't taken into consideration the fact that no human is perfect anymore. (Romans 5:12)

You assume that man and woman were perfect to begin with, but I don't make assumptions like that.

I mean if 20/20 vision is adequate for human beings and the life God intended for them, but not adequate for eagles for example, then are not all things designed for their own existence in their own environment?

You avoid the point, namely why is it that God supposedly didn't make the eye better? Also, can you also explain why a "loving God" supposedly made miscarriages and serious birth defects?

There is no doubt that adaptation is a wonderful mechanism that ensured that all creatures could adapt to a change of environment or food source, and survive as a species....but that is a far cry from suggesting what macro-evolution is supposed to have done.

Present objectively-derived evidence, not just your opinion, that there's some sort of magical wall that separates "micro-evolution" from "macro-evolution"? The reality is that you can't and I would hope that you would know that or you and some others would have long ago produced it. Again, your position is just another assumption.

The plain fact of the matter is....science has suggestions and assumptions about all of it.

The plain fact is that you are actually defining the theistic position with the above, not a scientific one. Science is not based on "suggestions and assumptions", but theistic positions generally are since they generally are not "falsifiable".

IMO, those who believe in direct creation have as much real "evidence" for their 'beliefs' as science does....maybe more.

Then produce the evidence that one deity made the entire universe. Again, logically, you cannot do that because in order to do so people using objectively-derived evidence would have had to actually see this process take place or at least have overwhelming evidence that one deity made all with there being no other possibilities.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

So you are an expert on the Bible too?

Every skeptic posting here is sufficiently familiar with the Christian Bible to critique it adequately. It takes only a casual familiarity with it to recognize that it is replete with internal contradictions, failed prophecies, unkept promises, moral and intellectual error ascribed to a deity, and errors in history in science. Somebody unfamiliar with the Bible can Google those ideas and benefit from the legwork that others have already done collecting examples of each, and be up to speed in under an hour.

Bible Inconsistencies - Bible Contradictions
Failed Prophecies
What Are the Bible's Biggest Scientific and Historical Errors?

This level of complexity needed no designer and no intelligence to produce those cones and rods...or the brain that interprets the images?

Complexity does not imply intelligence. Even the ID people understand that, which is why they focus only on what they call specified complexity and irreducible complexity.

Its only obvious to those who believe in it.......or those who can be conned with nothing but suggestion and assumptions..... The bullying tactics are legendary. ....who wants to feel like an uneducated moron in the eyes of one's peers?

You're projecting. You've already explained the bullying tactics your church uses on those that question its dogma, and you assume that other communities have the same values and methods.

That whole "don't you know who I am?" thing is a bit laughable actually.

You are being rude here. The man says he is a credentialed scientist, and I believe him for many reasons. His opinion is more valuable than that of a faith based thinker with ensconsed in an anti-intellectual subculture with an anti-scientific agenda. You don't negate that with unwarranted ridicule.

The Raven Paradox shows the inherent danger of relying on falsifiability, because very few scientific experiments can measure all of the data, and rely upon generalization.

https://explorable.com/raven-paradox

No insights were offered there, nor any justification for the use of the word danger.

Itis an error to imply that scientists rely on falsifiability in any way. It's a necessary condition to call a proposition scientific. What scientists rely on is reason applied to observation, observations including confirming predictions made by generalizations induced from prior observations. When an idea proves useful in explaining, predicting and/or controlling aspects of nature, they are considered confirmed empirically. Falsifiability was present from start to finish, but played no role in the process.

Falsifiability does not mean that if an idea is false, that a falsifying discovery will necessarily be made. It only means that it is in principle possible that if an idea is false, it can be demonstrated to be so if the evidence for it being false exists and can be found.

And we already know the limitations of induction, a topic well covered by Hume. That site appeared to have been intended for students who might not know about those limitations.

Furthermore, the "All crows are black" comment is a straw man. Scientific pronouncements are understood by scientists and students of the sciences to be tentative, that is, less than 100% certain. It is implicit to the trained reader that "All crows are black" is shorthand for "All crows found so far have been black." Young people might not know that yet.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The fact is, it is not possible to say that an Intelligent Creator doesn't exist just because humans have never seen him. All science can say is that, to their way of evaluating things, there is a possibility that no Creator exists. That is a far cry from making statements that claim there cannot be a Creator. Or that powers can exist that science has not yet discovered. Egg on the face can happen any time in science

Science has no egg on its face. It makes no comment at all on gods or the supernatural, even that there is a possibility that no creator exists. That's a statement from pure reason with no empirical component, and can be made by anybody.

Most atheists are sophisticated enough to understand why they cannot justify a claim that gods do not or cannot exist in the absence of any test, measurement, observation, argument or algorithm that can preclude their possibility.

The whole issue as I see it, is that people who are full of their own importance are not in a position to tell others what to believe

People with expertise are not necessarily full of themselves. In my experience, most are not.

And most academics don't tell others what to believe. They are advocates of critical thinking - for each reader or listener to come to his or her own conclusions by applying reason to the same evidence he has. That's the difference between the values and methods of academia and those of the church. The Sunday school teacher cares very much that you believe what you are told. The Monday through Friday school teacher won't even ask you what you believe. If you are a formal student taking a test on the material, you will be asked to demonstrate that you learned it, but not that you believed it.

I believe in an old earth and a long and deliberate process of creation over many millenniums...can science categorically state that it couldn't have happened that way?

No. Nor does it try to. If what is observed can be accounted for without invoking a god, why do so?

Academia is not a place that attracts me at all, possibly because of the people who make it their home and their temple.

You didn't need to say that.

I can also tell you why most creationists feel that way. Academia's methods, values, and agenda are antithetical to those of the church, the creationist contingent of which emphatically wants its children to avoid secular education, hence the political and social efforts to inject prayer and creationism into public schools, and to divert its children to parochial schools or home schooling in the meantime.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The fossils are only speaking through a biased interpreter.

The fossils speak to each of us directly, not through any other interpreter. When you see a morphological progression from older, more chimp-like skulls to older, more human-like skulls, no interpreter is needed. By analogy, if you found an old shoebox full of dated polaroids with very similar but slightly different facial features that could be ordered from less recent and less mature to more recent and more mature, you wouldn't need an interpreter to realize that they probably represent the growth and development of an individual over time. No biased interpreter is needed.

And, of course, the fossils are just the beginning of the evidence for evolution. We don't need the fossils. The genetic data alone confirms the theory.

You only have to read the posts of most of the scientists here to see the how much they value their own opinion

You have only to read the words of the reason and evidence based thinkers reading those scientists' posts to see how much many us value their expertise as well.

and how they despise anyone who disagrees with them

Despise is too strong a word. What you are experiencing is a rejection of anti-intellectualism, willful ignorance, and bad faith argumentation, by which I mean habits such as ignoring rebuttals and then repeating yourself with there being no evidence that you even looked at the rebuttal.

You're still committing the same fallacies that you were on the first pages of this thread - straw men about what science claims, demanding proof of scientific theories, expecting the past and processes that occur over millions of years to be observable, incredulity arguments ("It looks too complex to me to have arisen by blind, natural processes, therefore it is impossible, therefore God"), and more.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I guess the guy with the red feet is in trouble then....?

What is this guys feet saying....?

Do you think your god made them that way so they'd be pretty to human beings?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

And the survival advantage in these stunning blue 'shoes' is obviously.......not camouflage....?

Is it true that 'boobies' are attracted to blue shoes?

Looks like someone is a rebel.....

Blue-footed boobies?

What do you think of these birds? Warning: slightly bawdy humor follows.

Spoiler: racy bird names

This first image below didn't appear on my computer when I opened the spoiler. It is the great tit, a small yellow passerine bird like a wren

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I only have to look at the responses here from the macro-evolution supporters to see that once again the pics have touched a raw nerve. It is obviously so much harder to convince someone of the lack of intentional design in nature when it is staring you in the face. I might just keep posting them. .......

Look carefully....these exhibit artful design, not accidental evolution or mindless natural selection.

Who could argue that art requires an artist? What an eye for color he displays.

Keep on denying guys....your defensiveness looks like desperation talking......I think you are shooting yourselves in the foot.

but that's just me interpreting your responses.

I think It's perfectly understandable, we grow up with natural beauty as a given, it's just 'natural' to us. So no matter how stunning the art, or how sophisticated the engineering it is displayed upon- intuitively It can all be put down to 'natural mechanisms'- of course we can't replicate, observe, measure these mechanisms directly, but 100's of millions of years of natural history provide cover for any empirical evidence, while providing the imagination endless possibilities, where all sorts of miracles are 'bound' to emerge from simple mechanisms 'eventually'

But as we learn more about what is objectively, mathematically required to produce art and engineering like this-'time' is not the crucial factor, information is. These creations above are not the sort of thing that would tend to blunder into existence with simply 'replicating' being the sole requirement. Attractive as this simple mechanism seemed in the Victorian age, it simply lacks the necessary creative power. This is not just a skeptical position, evolutionists are seeking to solve the same problem. (Pop-science convention not withstanding)

It's becoming ever more clear, that these forms developed by similar mechanisms as did the physical reality that set the stage for them, according to excruciatingly specific predetermined instructions. But once again, the implications of that are still extremely irksome to many, hence the strength of emotion and visceral reactions you see here. Objective assessment is impossible with this.

 

[gnostic]

And the survival advantage in these stunning blue 'shoes' is obviously.......not camouflage....?

Is it true that 'boobies' are attracted to blue shoes?

Looks like someone is a rebel.....

Again, you have posted pictures without context, and certainly none that explain this is creation or designed by intelligent being.

 

[gnostic]

The thing that most people take for granted is that science has irrefutable proof for what it claims......the hard fact remains....there is no proof and there never was.

You still don't understand the differences between proof and evidence.

Proof is a logic construct, usually presented as solution of mathematical equation, with some explanation to go with it. Proof falls under the realms of mathematics and theoretical science.

Evidence is observation and data that are detectable, verifiable, measurable, quantifiable and testable. Evidences are what determine the probability of theory to be scientific and factual.

It is evidence that make a theory "factual", not proof. Scientific theory required evidences not mathematical proofs.

Scientific theory explained the fact of nature, through observation, i.e. testing or evidences.

Evolution is not theoretical, it is experimental biology, where conclusion are based on evidences, not on proof.

And lastly, there are no such thing as "irrefutable" proof in science.

Nothing in science is irrefutable. Science only deal with what is probable and what isn't probable, and this is determined by evidences; the number of empirical evidences will -

(A) either be "false", therefore "refuted" it,

(B) or be "true", hence "verified" and "validated",

(C) ...and the 3rd probability that if it is untestable (no evidences whatsoever), it would be the same as (A), as "false" and "refuted".​

Both creationism and Intelligent Design fall under C, as they are unfalsifiable and unscientific, because God, Creator, Intelligent Designer or whatever you want to call it, is not testable.

The only thing that believe in irrefutable is faith-based religion and religious dogma.

Jehovah's Witnesses, with it Watch Tower bible and theology relied on blind faith and manipulative propaganda, and you are perfect example of such wilful ignorance and deception.

 

[Sapiens]

Again, you have posted pictures without context, and certainly none that explain this is creation or designed by intelligent being.

Context is easy to find: Blue-footed booby - Wikipedia

 

[Deeje]

You still don't understand the differences between proof and evidence.

You don't understand the need for one and justification for the other. Those who believe in an Intelligent Creator and evolutionists are equal in this position. You cannot provide proof for your theory any more than I can produce the Creator for you. You can make suggestions based on your interpretation of "evidence"....so can we. Why do you imagine that the words of your 'gods' are more are more valid than mine? Science is not my religion.

If you can excuse yourselves by justifying no need for verifiable proof...then so can we.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

The fossils speak to each of us directly, not through any other interpreter. When you see a morphological progression from older, more chimp-like skulls to older, more human-like skulls, no interpreter is needed. By analogy, if you found an old shoebox full of dated polaroids with very similar but slightly different facial features that could be ordered from less recent and less mature to more recent and more mature, you wouldn't need an interpreter to realize that they probably represent the growth and development of an individual over time. No biased interpreter is needed.

And, of course, the fossils are just the beginning of the evidence for evolution. We don't need the fossils. The genetic data alone confirms the theory.



You have only to read the words of the reason and evidence based thinkers reading those scientists' posts to see how much many us value their expertise as well.



Despise is too strong a word. What you are experiencing is a rejection of anti-intellectualism, willful ignorance, and bad faith argumentation, by which I mean habits such as ignoring rebuttals and then repeating yourself with there being no evidence that you even looked at the rebuttal.

You're still committing the same fallacies that you were on the first pages of this thread - straw men about what science claims, demanding proof of scientific theories, expecting the past and processes that occur over millions of years to be observable, incredulity arguments ("It looks too complex to me to have arisen by blind, natural processes, therefore it is impossible, therefore God"), and more.

So when we dig down and look at the remains, and see a historical record of generally older, simpler- branching out, diversifying, shared traits, some apparent sudden jumps, gaps, some dead ends.. but general progression towards more sophisticated and more specifically tailored to various environments.. what does it all suggest to you?

 

[Polymath257]

You don't understand the need for one and justification for the other. Those who believe in an Intelligent Creator and evolutionists are equal in this position. You cannot provide proof for your theory any more than I can produce the Creator for you. You can make suggestions based on your interpretation of "evidence"....so can we. Why do you imagine that the words of your 'gods' are more are more valid than mine? Science is not my religion.

If you can excuse yourselves by justifying no need for verifiable proof...then so can we.

Proof only exists in math and in alcohol.

On the other hand, science can and does show things to way beyond a reasonable doubt, at least for those who take the time to learn its methods and results.

The evidence for evolution (species change over geological time) is overwhelming. The types of 'interpretation' required to disbelieve are, themselves, counter to rational thought.

For example, we can, and do, know about how the Earth and universe were millions to billions of years ago. The evidence from those times is here now and is 'interpreted' based on the known laws of physics, chemistry, etc. To deny the results requires special pleading to an unreasonable extent.

Similarly, we know many species that lived in the past and *when* tey lived in the past. Given their anatomical similarities to other species living close in time and location, it is simple perversity to think they are not related and thereby show descent. And that *is* evolution.

Now, do we have pictures of every generation giving birth to the next? Of course not. But that simply isn't required to know that species evolve.

So, no, creationists and those evolutionary scientists are NOT in equal positions. One is based on faith and superstition and the other is based on established science and interpretation based on such. And yes, the creationists are the ones basing their ideas on superstition.

 

[Polymath257]

So when we dig down and look at the remains, and see a historical record of generally older, simpler- branching out, diversifying, shared traits, some apparent sudden jumps, gaps, some dead ends.. but general progression towards more sophisticated and more specifically tailored to various environments.. what does it all suggest to you?

That natural selection is a very strong force?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

That natural selection is a very strong force?

I was describing an automobile junk yard was there any other line of evidence you feel specifically supports Darwinian evolution?

 

[Polymath257]

I was describing an automobile junk yard was there any other line of evidence you feel specifically supports Darwinian evolution?

We know living things reproduce and cars do not? Mutation and selection are strong forces for reproductive systems.