No one should believe in evolution!

[ChristineM]

You are write

I learned this from just watching people replacing their hips or knees in the hospital where I work. They suffer a lot of problems after surgery let a lone possible complications from iunyielding infections.
they will be crippled with limited range of movement and they are not even near to normal. If evolution is true why it cannot normalize every thing for these poor people?

Because evolution is not magic, it works slowly over many generations

 

[ChristineM]

Aww, that's not really the same, gravity is an attraction between two bodies of mass and is easily proven. I can drop an elephant to the ground from 10 metres and it's gunna go splat. If I get an elephant into a room with a mouse, I'm not going to get a elemouse any time soon.

 

[gnostic]

Because believe implies a choice, and to most people, evolution is a fact, not something you can choose to believe.

Evolution is fact, in which (A) scientific theory explain this fact, and (B) the explanation are supported by empirical verifiable evidences.

Without the evidences, there are no scientific theory.

And the “theory of evolution” is backed by evidences from a multiple of different scientific disciplines, not just biology.

That, I pretty much understand.

What I don’t understand is you, saying there are “no choice” in how evolution is accepted.

Can you elaborate by what you mean?

 

[gnostic]

Having looked at the evidence over the years, I believe things can change given time, so while I don't believe in the Darwinian mechanics of evolution, I believe things can change given time. For example, we can breed a species of cat that has a fair chance of having green eyes. This, of course, proves that things can change given time.

First off, this “Darwinian mechanics” is actually called “Natural Selection”, not “Darwinian mechanics”.

And second, your example described “sexual selection” and basic genetics, not “Natural Selection”.

Both sexual selection and Natural Selection required genetics, but in evolution, Natural Selection deal with changes at population-level changes, and unless it concern bacteria, the changes are lot slower, in term of many thousands of generations.

Sexual selection come from breeding program, and nothing to do with adapting/survival to changing environments.

For example, people breed horses for either speed or stamina or the ability to pull heavier carts or wagons. This is sexual selection, not natural selection. It has nothing to do with the horse survival.

And in Natural Selection, you are forgetting that the “environmental” factors that drive evolution.

Meaning that external forces as factors for changes, like the combination of changes to climate, terrain, the availability of food supply (changes in diet), etc, these can cause life (eg animals) to adapt to new environment so future generations can survive and thrive better than ancestors, or go extinct.

Changing the colours of eyes have nothing to do with Natural Selection. There are no reason to think or to believe that changing a breed of cats having green eyes will assist in cats adapting to new environment and ensure cats with green eyes in survival in generations to come.

To give you example, I want to focus on one family and genus - the bears.

Before the most recent Ice Age or a series of glaciation periods (known as the Quaternary Ice Age or Quaternary Glacial Cycle), the brown bears predominantly thrive in the North America and the Eurasian continents, with no polar bears.

When the first of glaciation periods arrived some regions in Europe, Asia and America were covered in ice sheets, but some parts weren’t.

Below, is the maximum extent of the Quaternary Ice Age, as you can see, the ice sheets didn’t cover the whole continents:

Those places that weren’t covered in ice sheets, continued to have annual summer and winter seasons. The brown bears that live in regions with no ice sheets, as a species, remained unchanged; the brown bear continued to find food, eating meat (eg seals, fishes) and sometimes fruits air leaves, and come winters, they would find shelter and hibernate through the coldest time of the year.

But those brown bears that found themselves living in regions, covered in ice sheets, there would be no summer seasons for thousands or even tens of thousands of years.

So these brown bears have to adapt in Arctic-like region during the glacial periods, where they have to adapt physically, and change the way they lived, or else go extinct.

The brown bears that do survive, began to change slowly, adapting better and better with each new generations. And at some point in time, the polar bears exist, and they are only species that can survive better than their ancestors, the brown bears. The divergence from the brown bear species occurred somewhere between 150 and 110 thousands years ago; the oldest polar bear remains are about 130,000 years old.

What they (brown bears) used to eat, like fishes that catch in rivers or near the bank of lake shore, are not enough to survive in regions with no summer in their lifetime.

So their diets have to change, to something with higher fat contents, like from sea seals and sea lions. Eating a lot of fat, will allow bears to retain fat in their bodies, to insulate themselves better from the icy winds and icy water.

The higher fat contents also give them better buoyancy in icy sea water. All large species of bears can swim, but for polar bears they can stayed in water for days. Since sea seals swim and rest on some icebergs, in order to hunt and feed, the polar bears often spent days in sea water to reach those icebergs.

Other changes occurred, such as the polar bears’ fur. It is not just the whiteness of the fur, that allow them to hide and hunt among the ice, but the texture of the fur, make it more windproof and more waterproof.

Their paws are also larger than brown bears, allowing to swim better with more control in the sea. And their claws are different in size and shapes that give them better grip on ice.

And lastly, since newer species of bears might not experience summer and warmer climate during their lifetime, the polar bears don’t hibernate in winter, like their southern cousins, the brown bears.

Even when the ice sheets retreated to the now, Arctic region, the polar bears continued to live in much regions, because their bodies have fully adapted to Arctic climate and terrains.

The polar bears have to pass on the necessary genes and genetic traits to new generations of polar bears for their continued survival. And the polar bears have over hundred thousand years to perfected their adaption in such climate and terrain.

Do you now understand the difference between natural selection and sexual selection?

Sexual selection don’t require species to change due to changes in climate, terrain or diet (any combination of the three). Natural selection do.

 

[gnostic]

If I get an elephant into a room with a mouse, I'm not going to get a elemouse any time soon.

That one of the most absurd things I have ever heard from any creationist.

That’s not evolution. That’s not how evolution works.

Even mutation-based evolution don’t work like this.

It is just ignorant and dishonest strawman.

 

[Audie]

You are write

I learned this from just watching people replacing their hips or knees in the hospital where I work. They suffer a lot of problems after surgery let a lone possible complications from iunyielding infections.
they will be crippled with limited range of movement and they are not even near to normal. If evolution is true why it cannot normalize every thing for these poor people?

Think of it this way.

A dog will live what, 15 yrs? By then, everything is
worn out, failing. A human being is just getting started.

In the wild, a wolf would never get anywhere near
old enough to start wearing out- so why invest in
a 250,000 mile car if it will never make it for
2 years in traffic?

See what I am getting at?

With a rare genetic exceptions peopleard made to last
well past their reproductive years but few lived their
potential lifetime, did not live long enoough for
the debilities of an 18 yr old dog to kick in.

Hence- no selective pressure toward a more
durable design.

Does that make sense?

Oh and another-

The surprise is that evolution manages to work as well as it does,
it is a goofy system. Dont be surprised if it isnt perfect!
well as it does

 

[Audie]

Why do you think that evolution would correct such defects? Your appear not to understand the concept.

Come on, that is what he's saying, he doesnt get it!
Does not call for a put.-down.

 

[Rival]

What I don’t understand is you, saying there are “no choice” in how evolution is accepted.

I am not saying this, but explaining what the OP is saying. He is saying that one shouldn't believe in evolution anymore than one should believe in grass or trees. He's saying one ought know. Not something that can be merely believed in or accepted or unaccepted as though it were ambiguous.

 

[Thaif]

Evolution is fact, in which (A) scientific theory explain this fact, and (B) the explanation are supported by empirical verifiable evidences.

Without the evidences, there are no scientific theory.

And the “theory of evolution” is backed by evidences from a multiple of different scientific disciplines, not just biology.

That, I pretty much understand.

What I don’t understand is you, saying there are “no choice” in how evolution is accepted.

Can you elaborate by what you mean?

Just because you say Evolution is fact, does not make it so, You might try and suggest hereditary traits or natural selection prove evolution but you might as well jump that extra hurdle and say evolution proves that extra-terrestrial life is a thing even though there is zero proof of that let alone any scientific evidence. Evolution in your sense (I'm suspectiing changing of one species to another, I was going to say shrubs to salamanders but i'm going with lizards to birds because that seems to be an untested scientific theory which sometime is sprouted as fact) any in case your A) is not a scientific theory as it cannot be repeatedly tested and proved in that sense because it would simply take too long. Your statement B) is simply restating A), Empirical evidence is information acquired by observation or experimentation, it doesn't cut it with me in A) and neither am I convinced by B).

Evolution pushes as fact a spontaneous appearance of cellular life as a core tenet but at t this point I might point out that even Dawkins says in his book the God delusion that the onset of cellular life as proposed by evolutionists was a matter of luck. Here's what is supposedly an eminent scientist suggesting luck plays a part in what the average evolutionist considers a fairly essential part of evolution, that being the spontaneous creation of life, another non-repeatable event which is quoted as scientific theory.

Okay, I'm ranting a bit here so that's probably enough from me.

 

[Audie]

Just because you say Evolution is fact, does not make it so, You might try and suggest hereditary traits or natural selection prove evolution but you might as well jump that extra hurdle and say evolution proves that extra-terrestrial life is a thing even though there is zero proof of that let alone any scientific evidence. Evolution in your sense (I'm suspectiing changing of one species to another, I was going to say shrubs to salamanders but i'm going with lizards to birds because that seems to be an untested scientific theory which sometime is sprouted as fact) any in case your A) is not a scientific theory as it cannot be repeatedly tested and proved in that sense because it would simply take too long. Your statement B) is simply restating A), Empirical evidence is information acquired by observation or experimentation, it doesn't cut it with me in A) and neither am I convinced by B).

Evolution pushes as fact a spontaneous appearance of cellular life as a core tenet but at t this point I might point out that even Dawkins says in his book the God delusion that the onset of cellular life as proposed by evolutionists was a matter of luck. Here's what is supposedly an eminent scientist suggesting luck plays a part in what the average evolutionist considers a fairly essential part of evolution, that being the spontaneous creation of life, another non-repeatable event which is quoted as scientific theory.

Okay, I'm ranting a bit here so that's probably enough from me.

I guess it was a rant if you say so. All I read was this sentence:

Evolution pushes as fact a spontaneous appearance of cellular life as a core tenet

"Evolution" "pushes" nothing. Even the use of the word 'push"
is deliberately invidious. Science does not "do" facts,
it does probabilities. Far from being at the core, abio is not even a part of the ToE, which-btw- operates exactly the same with or without divine intervention or other odd means of life originating

And, finally, science does not do "tenets".

Where ever you got these ideas is an ill-informed
source at best,or more likely is deliberately
distorting and misrepresenting science for its
own purposes.

 

[metis]

Evolution pushes as fact a spontaneous appearance of cellular life as a core tenet but at t this point I might point out that even Dawkins says in his book the God delusion that the onset of cellular life as proposed by evolutionists was a matter of luck. Here's what is supposedly an eminent scientist suggesting luck plays a part in what the average evolutionist considers a fairly essential part of evolution, that being the spontaneous creation of life, another non-repeatable event which is quoted as scientific theory.

But that's because it is only one hypothesis out of many, thus it is not considered to be a fact. How life started is simply beyond our ability to know, and chances are high we may never know. Yes, Dawkins has his opinions, but he's hardly the final word on this.

We know life forms have evolved and continue to evolve, but how it all started is beyond our grasp. The ToE does not eliminate the possibility of theistic causation, and there are a great many scientists that fully accept the basic ToE and also believe in God.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

As we are constantly pointing out to people on this forum, scientific theories can never be proved true, because they can in principle always be shown inadeqate if new observations are made that do not fit them.

At the same time, scientists do describe proving hypotheses or proving theories. For example:

"Given the size of vertebrate genomes (>1 × 10^9 bp) and the random nature of retroviral integration (22, 23), multiple integrations (and subsequent fixation) of ERV loci at precisely the same location are highly unlikely (24). Therefore, an ERV locus shared by two or more species is descended from a single integration event and is proof that the species share a common ancestor into whose germ line the original integration took place (14)."
Constructing primate phylogenies from ancient retrovirus sequences

That's a peer reviewed paper in a well respected scientific journal, and there they are describing how something has been proven.

What I think we need to admit is that human language is not perfect and it is driven by context. If you really pressed the authors of the article above they would probably agree that common ancestry would not be absolutely proven by shared retroviral integrations. They would also go on to explain how they were never making such a claim. Rather, they were making a claim of proof beyond a reasonable doubt which is the way in which almost everyone uses the term.

The same for belief. That word can mean many things in many different contexts. What we should be doing is figuring out what people mean when they say they believe in a theory instead of deciding what they are saying for them.

Should people use language more precisely and consistently? Absolutely. Will they? No.

Belief seems as good a word as any. You could even call it faith. I would not be ashamed to say I have faith in Newton's laws of motion, for example, or Bernouilli''s principle, even to the extent of getting into an aeroplane whose operation relies on such things!

The point of difference with religious belief, surely, is that the belief or trust we have for scientific theories is due the observational evidence we have that they work.

Religious belief or faith derives from different things: subjective experience of spiritual feelings, aesthetic or moral sense, the need for tribal belonging etc. None of these is observational evidence in the scientific sense.

I think we would agree on most points.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

Evolution in your sense (I'm suspectiing changing of one species to another, I was going to say shrubs to salamanders but i'm going with lizards to birds because that seems to be an untested scientific theory which sometime is sprouted as fact)

On the flip side of this whole discussion is how people can disbelieve in a theory with absolutely no knowledge of the facts or the theory of evolution itself.

Let's just dissect the above statement, shall we? You define evolution as change from one species into another species. You then say that lizards evolving into birds is evolution. Neither lizards nor birds is the name of a species. You also claim that the theory of evolution is untested, which isn't true:

29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent

There are 29 tests at the link above.

So how can someone not believe or not accept a theory that they know nothing about, and a field of science that they know nothing about?

Evolution pushes as fact a spontaneous appearance of cellular life as a core tenet . . . .

False.

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."--Charles Darwin, "Origin of Species"

If the first life forms were created by God and all the species we see evolved from that original ancestor then the theory of evolution would be unchanged. The theory of evolution could care less where the universal common ancestor came from.

 

[exchemist]

At the same time, scientists do describe proving hypotheses or proving theories. For example:

"Given the size of vertebrate genomes (>1 × 10^9 bp) and the random nature of retroviral integration (22, 23), multiple integrations (and subsequent fixation) of ERV loci at precisely the same location are highly unlikely (24). Therefore, an ERV locus shared by two or more species is descended from a single integration event and is proof that the species share a common ancestor into whose germ line the original integration took place (14)."
Constructing primate phylogenies from ancient retrovirus sequences

That's a peer reviewed paper in a well respected scientific journal, and there they are describing how something has been proven.

What I think we need to admit is that human language is not perfect and it is driven by context. If you really pressed the authors of the article above they would probably agree that common ancestry would not be absolutely proven by shared retroviral integrations. They would also go on to explain how they were never making such a claim. Rather, they were making a claim of proof beyond a reasonable doubt which is the way in which almost everyone uses the term.

The same for belief. That word can mean many things in many different contexts. What we should be doing is figuring out what people mean when they say they believe in a theory instead of deciding what they are saying for them.

Should people use language more precisely and consistently? Absolutely. Will they? No.



I think we would agree on most points.

Yes I think you are really saying that if one was being a pedantic stickler for the strict philosophy of science, the writer in this case should not have used the term "proof". But we know what was meant from the context. We can't expect the authors of science papers to be constantly alert to the risk they might get quote-mined by a tiresome creationist!

 

[MonkeyFire]

Faith can be proven just like a theory or evidence. Just because I say no to evolution doesn't mean I accept creation.

 

[Audie]

Faith can be proven just like a theory or evidence. Just because I say no to evolution doesn't mean I accept creation.

Oh dear.

 

[ecco]

If evolution is true why it cannot normalize every thing for these poor people?

You could ask this about a god, not about evolution.

If you believe in god(s) then you can ask, why would a perfect god make imperfect people.

If you believe in, and understand, evolution, then you would know evolution isn't about perfection, it's about "good enough".

 

[Skwim]

Faith can be proven just like a theory or evidence. Just because I say no to evolution doesn't mean I accept creation.

What do you accept?

"The diversity of organisms on earth is due to ________________________fill in the blank__________________________________________________ .

.

 

[ecco]

If I get an elephant into a room with a mouse, I'm not going to get a elemouse any time soon.

That one of the most absurd things I have ever heard from any creationist.

That’s not evolution. That’s not how evolution works.

Even mutation-based evolution don’t work like this.

It is just ignorant and dishonest strawman.

So now I'm thinking, if I take the sperm from a mouse and an ovum from an elephant and fiddle with them, can I make an elemouse?

 

[Audie]

So now I'm thinking, if I take the sperm from a mouse and an ovum from an elephant and fiddle with them, can I make an elemouse?

elephant shrew - Yahoo Image Search Results