Just Accidental?

[Deeje]

Yours is not a belief -- it's a bigoted ego-trip so you can feel better-and-holier-than-thou.

It doesn't impress me.

I wasn't aware that I was supposed to impress anyone.....least of all yourself. You asked a question and I answered it as best I could.

You are free to believe whatever you like about my God...but I assure you he really doesn't care about what any atheist thinks of him.
I believe it's what he thinks of us that counts in the long run.

Have a nice day.....

 

[TheSecretAntitheist]

LOL...you do realize that evolution is just a claim too.....it has no real evidence either?

All they have is a bunch of fossils, supposedly millions of years apart, but not a single shred of evidence that there is any link between them except in the imagination of science. All their "evidence" is suggestion and conjecture and can just as easily be explained by ID.

Lol. Please easily explain it. This should be fun.

 

[Sapiens]

LOL...you do realize that evolution is just a claim too.....it has no real evidence either?

That is so, so wrong it is laughable.

All they have is a bunch of fossils, supposedly millions of years apart, but not a single shred of evidence that there is any link between them except in the imagination of science. All their "evidence" is suggestion and conjecture and can just as easily be explained by ID.

Complete and utter twaddle. There are a bunch of fossils that indicate certain probable relationships, based on structure, between species. There probable relationships are confirmed by alternate independent lines of evidence such as immunology and genomics. ID provides no alternative, only a ineffective critique and belief system for presuppostionists.

I'm afraid it isn't....science would like it to be though. Adaptation has NEVER been proven outside of a single species.

Since you can not define "species," the sentence is claptrap. When you do define "species" the sentence is simply false.

Consult the Wiki article on speciation and you will see that the flies remained flies...the fish remained fish and no matter what species you can name, no creature transformed itself into another kind no matter how much time you throw at it.

Now you are changing your tune. You are admitting that evolution can produce new species, but you are pretending that a species is much larger and more inclusive that it is, e.g., you are pretending that all flies are the same species. What's next? When the "all flies are the same species" analysis becomes inconvenient are you going to claim that all insects are the same species?

They may have adapted color or other superficial traits but even the Galapagos creatures were still true to their mainland cousins.
The finches were still finches and the iguanas were still iguanas....they had simply adapted to a different environment as part of their design.

You are stuck on the "tree" or "ladder" model known as anagenesis,, that is species by changing, or 'phyletic evolution'. The model accepted today is that most species arise by previous species splitting, the "bush" model know as cladogenesis.

If you want to believe that Pakicetus became a whale because of an earbone, then go ahead..

The progression and evolution of auditory ossicles is indicative of the evolutionary pathway. The immunological and genomic evidence is confirmatory.

...you can then go on believing that the closest living relative to T-Rex is a chicken.....

From The Guardian:

Scientists have at last uncovered the closest living relative of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex, the most feared and famous of all the dinosaurs. For the first time, researchers have managed to sequence proteins from the long-extinct creature, leading them to the discovery that many of the molecules show a remarkable similarity to those of the humble chicken.

The research provides the first molecular evidence for the notion that birds are the modern-day descendants of dinosaurs, as well as overturning the long-held palaeontological assumption that delicate organic molecules such as DNA and proteins are completely destroyed during the process of fossilisation over hundreds of thousands of years. It also hints at the tantalising prospect that scientists may one day be able to emulate Jurassic Park by cloning a dinosaur.

Mary Schweitzer, a palaeontologist at North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, led a team of researchers in analysing the 68m-year-old leg bone of a T-rex, recovered in 2003 in Montana. To her surprise, she found that it still contained a matrix of collagen fibres, a protein that gives bone its structure and flexibility. Working with colleagues at Harvard University Medical Centre and with the help of equipment normally used to identify and sequence tiny amounts of protein in human cancers, Prof Schweitzer managed to extract and sequence seven different T-rex proteins.

The results are published today in a series of papers in the journal Science.

"The analysis shows that T-rex collagen makeup is almost identical to that of a modern chicken - this corroborates a huge body of evidence from the fossil record that demonstrates birds are descended from meat-eating dinosaurs," said Angela Milner, the associate keeper of palaeontology at the Natural History Museum in London. "So, it is very satisfying that the molecules have provided a positive test for the morphology.​

 

[Deeje]

That is so, so wrong it is laughable.

Is it Sapiens? I have considered your evidence and all I see are "suggestions" that something "might have" happened in the dim, dark past when no one was around to tell us anything. I believe that ID explains everything very well and in line with whatever "evidence" science can produce. Their educated guesswork is only backed up by biased interpretation of said "evidence".
If scientists did not give the fossils a voice, I think we would hear them tell a very different story.

BTW, It would be good if you could proof read your responses and correct your quoting mistakes. It makes responding to you a little difficult especially on an iPad.

 

[Deeje]

Lol. Please easily explain it. This should be fun.

Easy as....read Genesis. But make sure you throw out all notions of the Creator as some kind of magician. His power is not fairy story magic. He is simply the source of a power that science has not yet acknowledged.

 

[TheSecretAntitheist]

Easy as....read Genesis. But make sure you throw out all notions of the Creator as some kind of magician. His power is not fairy story magic. He is simply the source of a power that science has not yet acknowledged.

Ha! No evidence then? Dismissed without it.

Ha, lols.

 

[Deeje]

@Sapiens

Scientists have at last uncovered the closest living relative of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex, the most feared and famous of all the dinosaurs. For the first time, researchers have managed to sequence proteins from the long-extinct creature, leading them to the discovery that many of the molecules show a remarkable similarity to those of the humble chicken.

The research provides the first molecular evidence for the notion that birds are the modern-day descendants of dinosaurs, as well as overturning the long-held palaeontological assumption that delicate organic molecules such as DNA and proteins are completely destroyed during the process of fossilisation over hundreds of thousands of years. It also hints at the tantalising prospect that scientists may one day be able to emulate Jurassic Park by cloning a dinosaur.

Mary Schweitzer, a palaeontologist at North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, led a team of researchers in analysing the 68m-year-old leg bone of a T-rex, recovered in 2003 in Montana. To her surprise, she found that it still contained a matrix of collagen fibres, a protein that gives bone its structure and flexibility. Working with colleagues at Harvard University Medical Centre and with the help of equipment normally used to identify and sequence tiny amounts of protein in human cancers, Prof Schweitzer managed to extract and sequence seven different T-rex proteins.

The results are published today in a series of papers in the journal Science.

"The analysis shows that T-rex collagen makeup is almost identical to that of a modern chicken - this corroborates a huge body of evidence from the fossil record that demonstrates birds are descended from meat-eating dinosaurs," said Angela Milner, the associate keeper of palaeontology at the Natural History Museum in London. "So, it is very satisfying that the molecules have provided a positive test for the morphology.

I guess it's not how absurd something is, it's who says it and how many people believe it because of who said it.....of course it has nothing to do with the fact that the Creator used the same basic design for many of his creations, as well as using the same materials in their construction.

I can see how a diagram could explain it......I'm trying to keep a straight face....

 

[Deeje]

Ha! No evidence then? Dismissed without it.

Ha, lols.

We can dismiss evolution on the same grounds then.....

 

[savagewind]

LOL...you do realize that evolution is just a claim too.....it has no real evidence either?

How about the FACT that generations of humans who have lived in cold climates with little sun have light skin and generations of humans who have lived in hot climates with lots of sun are dark skinned?

 

[TheSecretAntitheist]

I wouldn't worry about anything he types. He's got nothing. No method, no evidence, no periodicity, no testability, no peer review, no falsifiability. Nothing. Just a great big ol' argument from ignorance, lols.

 

[Sapiens]

Is it Sapiens? I have considered your evidence

No, you have not. You have admitted (and even boasted) that a great deal of the evidence is far beyond your academic abilities.

and all I see are "suggestions" that something "might have" happened in the dim, dark past when no one was around to tell us anything.

That is because you are unfamiliar with most of the evidence, that is why you keep falling back on the fossil record as though it were all there is.

I believe that ID explains everything very well and in line with whatever "evidence" science can produce.

You believe wrong. You do not understand, comprehend or even know of most of the evidence, yet you are ready to run your mouth on the subject. Empty barrels make the most noise.

Their educated guesswork is only backed up by biased interpretation of said "evidence".

I rather doubt that, but even if it were so, you are in no position to pass such a judgement.

If scientists did not give the fossils a voice, I think we would hear them tell a very different story.

Go ahead, make my day ... tell a different story that is consistent with the evidence that you don't know.

BTW, It would be good if you could proof read your responses and correct your quoting mistakes. It makes responding to you a little difficult especially on an iPad.

Sorry.

 

[TheSecretAntitheist]

@Sapiens


I guess it's not how absurd something is, it's who says it and how many people believe it because of who said it.....of course it has nothing to do with the fact that the Creator used the same basic design for many of his creations, as well as using the same materials in their construction.

I can see how a diagram could explain it......I'm trying to keep a straight face....


**************

So far, all you have given is a lot of word salad. You've tried, very poorly I might add, to debunk evolution. You've shouted, you've tried to sound like you know what you're on about, you've ad-hommed and yet, you have not presented ANY proof that has been backed up by ANY reputable science, not only that, but you have not presented ANY other system that explains population mechanics, other than saying 'the bible says so'. Is your god such a bumbling buffoon that it has to have some late night, provincial theist on some backwater website going around butt-hurt about evolution which, btw if it WERE proven to be false, would still not prove that your god exists? Do you have ANY claim that can be falsified and backed up by ANY data whatsoever?

 

[Sapiens]

@Sapiens


I guess it's not how absurd something is, it's who says it and how many people believe it because of who said it.....of course it has nothing to do with the fact that the Creator used the same basic design for many of his creations, as well as using the same materials in their construction.

I can see how a diagram could explain it......I'm trying to keep a straight face....

Considering the truly bizarre things that you espouse, a straight face should be easy for you.

 

[Deeje]

How about the FACT that generations of humans who have lived in cold climates with little sun have light skin and generations of humans who have lived in hot climates with lots of sun are dark skinned?

Its called adaptation.......adaptation is limited to within a species, as Darwin observed on the Galapagos Islands.....the finches were still finches and the iguanas were still recognizable as iguanas, but adapted to aquatic life and food sources. All living things have this ability....its part of their design.

Man's experiments with speciation come to the same conclusions....the flies remained flies and the fish remained fish, just with small adaptations. It is not possible to take it further because there is no way to test the hypothesis. There is not a shred of solid conclusive evidence that one "kind" of creature can transform itself into another "kind" altogether.

Chickens did not evolve down some imaginary line from T-Rex....unless you believe scientists who merely compare similarities in biology and come to their own strange conclusions.

Pakicetus was a whale with legs in case you were wondering.....here he is with his "evolutionary links" to the whale.....but strangely there are no transitional species in existence, supposedly millions of years apart. Pakicetus was obviously determined to become a whale.....

....and if you look at the diagrams of Pakicetus, you will find him looking something like this.....a bit like a large weasel.

.....or if you want him to look more "aquatic", he can even look ,like this......

What did they really find that precipitated these amazing drawings?

Can this be true? Is imagination really the basis for what science presents as facts?

 

[gnostic]

I wouldn't worry about anything he types. He's got nothing. No method, no evidence, no periodicity, no testability, no peer review, no falsifiability. Nothing. Just a great big ol' argument from ignorance, lols.

Deeje is a "she". And she is a JW, so it is understandable that she has been indoctrinated in creationism.

 

[metis]

How successful do you think you have you been up to now?

I'll let those who know me make that judgement.

 

[TheSecretAntitheist]

Deeje is a "she". And she is a JW, so it is understandable that she has been indoctrinated in creationism.

Fair point. Thanks

 

[SkepticThinker]

It seems to me that "natural selection did it" is science's substitute for "God did it". Call it whatever you like.....you still cannot provide a single link for the "chain" of slowly evolving creatures that evolution claims. You have assumptions galore, and lots of speculation, but no actual evidence.


See post 1807 Just Accidental?

Natural selection is demonstrable as previously discussed. So, no, it’s not the same because “god did it” has never been demonstrated.

Who said 99.99999% of species have gone extinct? Again we have a 'guestimate', not a fact. Science is good at throwing those around. If the Creator was creating and chose only those species he wanted to share the planet with man, what is that to anyone? He has the power over life and death as its source....we do not.

Reality says that. I’m sorry you have to ignore it to force your belief system to make sense.


I think you’re contradicting yourself now. Before you were saying that god has created every animal perfectly fit to its environment and now you’re saying that god created a whole bunch of animals not necessarily perfectly fit for their environment, killed a bunch of them off and saved a few of them? What are you saying??

Can science explain extinction? The Bible never mentions it probably because it had nothing to do with Man.

Of course science can explain extinction. That’s how we know about it.

The Bible never mentions it probably because the people who wrote it didn’t know anything about it.

There are many reasons, but to those who put no store by what the Bible says, why bother enumerating them? You either believe the Bible is the word of the Creator or you don't. You apparently put no store by what it says at all......but have you ever really examined it in any depth?

My question is, what reason do we have for believing the Bible is the “word of the Creator.” I don’t just believe something or not based on arbitrary reasons. I believe things for which I have good reason to believe them. I don’t believe things if I don’t have good reasons for believing them.

I’ve read the Bible cover to cover. It’s one of the reasons I no longer follow Christianity. I see no reason whatsoever to believe it is was written by any kind of god at all, and all the reason to believe that it was written by human beings. It shows.

Evolution is built on what science never saw and cannot test.

The fossils are not talking so science has to speak for them.....its all made up of guesswork. Its about diagrams and graphics, assumptions, conjecture.....not verifiable facts.

The "evidence" is interpreted to fit the theory by those who have an agenda. Yet evolutionists accuse us of the same thing. Neither is provable, so pick your belief system.

This is nonsense. As demonstrated throughout the thread. Please stop repeating claims that have been refuted ad nauseum and shown to be in error.

Also, evolution is not a belief system. It is an extremely well-evidence scientific theory. We’ve been over this one many times.

Its not fascism.....the Creator is actually a benevolent dictator who has a perfect sense of justice. If we were all governed by such a ruler, our lives would be so much simpler, way more peaceful and secure and much more rewarding. I look forward to his rulership...the one Jesus taught us to pray for..."Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven"....bring it on!

Oh okay, it’s not fascism, just a dictatorship! LOL!

I don’t want a simpler life. I want a free life where I can make my own choices. If the Bible is true (and I don’t assume it is) then your god has made a great deal of actions and decisions that I find to be completely immoral. I don’t want to live under a dictator who condones slavery and orders the murder of babies. I fail to see what is peaceful, secure or rewarding about such terrible things.

Its harder to deny the evidence when you have to confront it face to face. Seeing what God has created makes belief in evolution an act of denial. Your eyes are telling you the truth, whilst science is telling you to deny it.

Yes, that is why I accept the theory of evolution, I’ve confronted the evidence, face to face. Hence, why I ask for evidence supporting your assertions.

We live in an artificial world where we are not face to face with the wonders of the natural world, to a large extent. Seeing what science is denying should make people think twice. Science has no more "evidence" for their theory than we do. What nature does is speak to our senses, not just to our cold intellect.

Science is the tool scientists use to carefully observe and measure things found in the natural world. They have much more evidence for their theories than you appear to have for your hypothesis about god. Which again, is why I point out that you have no evidence to offer for your hypothesis about a creator god.

Spirituality is what makes some people seek out spiritual things, which includes worship, knowledge of the Creator, appreciation for what he has created and also what he has done and is doing to bring us back to the Edenic conditions we long for. You think its just a strange co-incidence that we all desire to live in paradise? Why is every paradisaic location crawling with tourists and vacationers? They all seem to want to go there even if its just for a short time.

So spiritually is just believing in and worshiping god(s)? Sounds like the definition of religion to me.

I don’t long for “Edenic conditions.”

The Bible tells us about 'extra-terrestrial beings' (which simply means that they do not come from planet Earth) who inhabit a realm that is unseen to human eyes. It tells us that these beings are "spirits" or lifeforms that have great power but cannot be contained by any material constraint. The natural human reaction to them is fear.....the hairs on the back of our neck stand up as we physically prepare for 'flight'.

Great. So where do we find these extra-terrestrial beings so that we can observe and measure their properties? That was my question. I didn’t ask for empty assertions.

There are forces in the universe that are powerful...science knows about them, but their knowledge is pretty sketchy at present.

What forces are you referring to?

What makes you think that these beings cannot exist just because mere humans cannot test for them? There is enough proof in the world for their existence, but these are not good enough for scientists who would rather just relegate personal experience to the trash can because it cannot comprehend them. Puny human methods of testing are a joke to them.

I didn’t say “they cannot exist.” I asked where we can find these life forms so that we may observe and measure their influence on our world.


Science doesn’t accept “personal experience” because it is necessarily subjective and not open to verifiable testing methods. Also, personal experiences are often unreliable, subject to bias and error and everybody has different personal experiences which often don’t correspond or stand in direct contradiction to others’ personal experiences.

They are wreaking havoc in the world right now, pitting nation against nation and causing a level of evil that should be unheard of in this day and age. Man's inhumanity has reached new heights in an age where they should have been overcome.

More empty assertions lacking any verifiable evidence at all.

I have to ask at this point, have you read the Bible? The kinds of things people were supposedly doing to each other back then were pretty deplorable. I’m not sure so that man’s inhumanity has reached new heights. At least we now have international agreements as to how human beings should be treated with dignity and respect, although some nations do not adhere to them.

I like the use of the word "inhuman" because it means "not human"......this level of evil is not coming from humans, but they are being manipulated from behind the scenes to perpetrate this horrible situation. Man has no solutions and is heading for what the Bible calls "the great tribulation"...a time of trouble so great, that it has never been experienced before...and will never happen again. (Matthew 24:21) Imagine the worst atrocities you have ever seen in the world up to now and then imagine them worse. This is what the Bible predicts.....and we are seeing the fulfillment right before our eyes...it will only get worse before God steps in. (Daniel 2:44; Matthew 24:22)

You are full of empty assertions.

I say men are responsible for their own actions. Putting our responsibility to each other off on someone else is one of the problems I have with Christianity.

People have been saying for centuries that we are in the “end times” and yet we never are. Ho hum.

Prophesy is one of the reasons why I trust the Bible.....these events were prophesied almost 2,000 years ago.

I’ve yet to see an actual prophecy from the Bible come true and like I said before, I fail to see how a prophecy actually coming true is proof of any god(s).

Denial really doesn't benefit anyone in the long run. We have to take steps now to preserve our lives.

I’ll accept your claims when you can provide demonstration of their veracity.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Its called adaptation.......adaptation is limited to within a species, as Darwin observed on the Galapagos Islands.....the finches were still finches and the iguanas were still recognizable as iguanas, but adapted to aquatic life and food sources. All living things have this ability....its part of their design.

Man's experiments with speciation come to the same conclusions....the flies remained flies and the fish remained fish, just with small adaptations. It is not possible to take it further because there is no way to test the hypothesis. There is not a shred of solid conclusive evidence that one "kind" of creature can transform itself into another "kind" altogether.

Chickens did not evolve down some imaginary line from T-Rex....unless you believe scientists who merely compare similarities in biology and come to their own strange conclusions.

Pakicetus was a whale with legs in case you were wondering.....here he is with his "evolutionary links" to the whale.....but strangely there are no transitional species in existence, supposedly millions of years apart. Pakicetus was obviously determined to become a whale.....

....and if you look at the diagrams of Pakicetus, you will find him looking something like this.....a bit like a large weasel.

.....or if you want him to look more "aquatic", he can even look ,like this......

What did they really find that precipitated these amazing drawings?

Can this be true? Is imagination really the basis for what science presents as facts?

The theory has always relied heavily on creativity, filling in the gaps with our imagination. At first these were supposed to be filled in later with the real fossils, but they never were.

Now we have 150 years worth of drawings which appear to reflect some compelling consensus. But as David Raup (Curator of Chicago Field Museum) said, we have even less examples of 'transitional' fossils than we did in Darwin's time, because many we thought we had then, have since been debunked as separate species.

Even the dinosaur to bird theory is looking ever more shaky now.

The lesson here has been, that two species that appear similar superficially, in no way suggests that one accidentally morphed from the other, no more than 2 similar looking cars from different makers.

 

[Sapiens]

The theory has always relied heavily on creativity, filling in the gaps with our imagination. At first these were supposed to be filled in later with the real fossils, but they never were.

A classic example of how religionists misunderstand science. The "gaps" are not filled, in a vacuum, with our imagination. Rather they are carefully filled with reconstructions that align with all the actual data. When the reconstructions are found to contradict any of the data they are adjusted so that the no violence is done to data. This will never be perfect, no one ever claims that it is. This means that are more data is discovered the reconstructions shift appropriately, sometimes in minor ways and rarely in major ones. That is as it should be.

Now we have 150 years worth of drawings which appear to reflect some compelling consensus. But as David Raup (Curator of Chicago Field Museum) said, we have even less examples of 'transitional' fossils than we did in Darwin's time, because many we thought we had then, have since been debunked as separate species.

There you go quote mining (a more polite way to say that you are lying, again). As has been pointed out repeatedly to you, Raup wrote in "Conflicts between Darwin and Paleontology", Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin Jan. 1979, Vol. 50 No. 1 p. 22-29):

Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information -- what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appear to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin's problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which does show change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection.​

You are erroneously implying that even Raup does not subscribe to the ToE ... and that is a lie.

Even the dinosaur to bird theory is looking ever more shaky now.

No, that is not true either. It now appears that the dinosaur line that gave rise to today's birds, was already feathered and warm blooded. The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County noted that:

"Recently, fossils of early birds and their most immediate predecessors have been collected at an unprecedented rate from Mesozoic-aged rocks worldwide. This wealth of new fossils has settled the century-old controversy of the origin of birds. Today, we can safely declare that birds evolved from a group of dinosaurs known as maniraptoran theropods-generally small meat-eating dinosaurs that include Velociraptor of Jurassic Park fame."​

The lesson here has been, that two species that appear similar superficially, in no way suggests that one accidentally morphed from the other, no more than 2 similar looking cars from different makers.

The actual lesson here is that if you apply a superficial analysis to a cursory examination, ignoring (out of ignorance) the more difficult to ascertain similarities, differences and multiple sources of evidence, you get led down the primrose path.