Theory in Crisis

[Ouroboros]

They said we came from chimpanzees, or close relative,

We share ancestry. A species that evolved one way to chimpanzees and one way to humans. We also share ancestry with all the other apes, and all other animals, but the shared ancestor is at different distant past. I've looked at and examined (very amateurishly, but still) australopithecus and other such ancestral fossils, and it's amazing how the skulls have changed from those ancestors to the modern species. I don't remember the details at all, but just looking and comparing skulls was convincing enough.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You were very poorly educated in biology. You don't understand the basic principles. You don't understand the mechanism's of the ToE. Moreover, you don't understand evidence or how to evaluate it.
You don't have to see something happen to know it happened, and to piece together how it happened. Juries convict people of crimes everyday, from evidence they haven't directly witnessed.

We have fossils showing a succession of changes over time. We don't have every step in the process, and this is to be expected, considering how rare fossilization is, and how rare finding one is. It's remarkable we have the fossils we do. The fossils we do have clearly show a series of changes.
You don't need every piece of a jigsaw puzzle to discern what's depicted.

I was looking for a particular jigsaw puzzle of a yellow duck. I may have to search again. But I did run into this very similar example:

 

[Valjean]

They don't, insofar as I know, explain the 'how'. They just say they did. And talk about climate change, so perhaps you can direct me to the scientific evidence of genetic changes from fish, let's say, to the next form. Drawings of these organisms said to have evolved is not proof. Or evidence. So is there genetic proof or evidence of fish becoming land crawlers extracted from fossilized remains? That could be closer to 'how' rather than drawings.

O but they do explain how. That's what science does. It explains how. The ToE explains each step in the process, why it occurred, how it occurred, and shows many examples of the process occurring today.
How do you not know this?

Science is not like religion. It doesn't make baseless declarations, it has no doctrine; it tests its hypotheses and rejects those that are disproved, it's always open to change.

We have many examples of fish moving to "the next form." Even today we have examples of living fish in transition. We also have many examples of land animals transitioning to water animals.
Drawings? No-one is claiming drawings as evidence. The drawings just depict what's already been deduced from actual evidence.

Do you believe organisms have changed at all, over time? Do you believe the plants and animals we see today have always existed, or that there were never any plants and animals that no longer exist? If so, how do you explain all the evidence of change; of extinction, of new species developing?

Genesis speaks of a single creation event, in which everything that exists and ever will exist was poofed into existence at once. Yet there is no evidence of this, and there is voluminous evidence of an ongoing process of creation and extinction. How do you explain this?

You demand evidence. When we give you evidence you demand more -- but refuse to examine it when provided. You discount valid evidence. You find some way of discounting or ignoring every fact that threatens your mythological world-view -- a view that is, itself, entirely unevidenced.

You, yourself, have no evidence. You have only an unsupported, mythological creation story -- untested, untestable, incoherant and at odds with volumes of empirical evidence to the contrary.

Science: Mountains of tested, predictive, demonstrable, consilient evidence. Criticism encouraged. Change welcomed. All evidence and conclusions strictly evidence-based -- and provisional.
Religion: Mythology based, untested, untestable, incoherent, non-predictive, unfalsifiable. inconsistent with evidence, criticism discouraged. Based on supernatural events unlike any ever witnessed today; events that no-one today would believe were they reported in the paper. Support dependent solelyon finding fault with the scientific alternative.

Which option seems reasonable?

 

[Valjean]

I have no idea if these numbers are correct. However I do know that a large number of respectable scientist risk their reputation and career by going against popular trends by standing up to mainstream teachings. It is understandable that the majority of scientist do not want to lose their position or tenure as some of their colleagues have in the past. The consencus amongst scientist is simple: scientist must believe in evolution if they want to maintain their job regardless of the lack of evidence this theory has to offer.

Seriously? Is this the best you can do? Scientists are cowed into confessing belief in evolution only because they fear for their jobs?

Science believes in evolution because it's the only theory consistent with the evidence, indeed, it's the only theory with evidence. There is no other reasonable, evidenced alternative.

You seem to think millions and millions of scientists confess faith in evolution only because some Vast Evolutionist Conspiracy demands it. Who are these evolutionist overlords? What is their goal? How do they manage to hide so vast a conspiracy?

Evolution, unlike religion, is not faith based. Science is evidenced based, and most scientists are only too happy to outline every step in their reasoning, in excruciating detail, to anyone willing to listen.

It's religion that's faith-based. It's religion that's motivated by consensus and fear of retribution. Science is its complete opposite, but the faithful -- unable to conceive any motivation other than their own -- cannot conceive of an evidence-based system that encourages criticism and testing.

History has taught us, the majority is often wrong.

And science encourages seekers to challenge the majority; to test and criticize their doctrines; to reject blind faith.
Science has a long history of challenging accepted wisdom, and frequently getting in trouble for it.

"The only acceptable explanation of the origin of life is creation. There is not a shred of evidence to support the hypothesis the life began spontaneously". (Physicist H.S. Lipson)

This is simply ignorant. Creation is a doctrine of spontaneous creation but, unlike the ToE, it posits magic -- rather than chemistry -- as an "explanation."
It is not an explanation. It explains nothing, it merely asserts, and there is "not a shred of evidence" supporting it.
Does Lipson explain why chemical abiogenesis, using known, observable, testable mechanisms, is unsupportable?

"I feel compelled to look to a first cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man" (Charled Darwin)

Why?

 

[Valjean]

Yes, there is scientific evidence. I'll start with the fact that there are absolutely no known or discovered genes showing that bonobos or chimpanzees or said "close relative" thereof, developed in the evolutionary way to start speaking in order to transmit their history. I don't think fish did that either. That is scientific evidence that humans are an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT form of organism from chimpanzees and fishes. That 98-99% genes are said to be similar from bonobos or chimpanzees, for homo sapiens does not prove humans evolved by "natural selection," whatever that means but I know you don't like the term 'chance,' so I'll use natural selection. Perhaps you can advise me on a term better suited to your belief in evolution, rather than "natural selection," as if the organism's genetic structure selected which genes to evolve from or into, from fish to whatever came after that until human beings.

This is simply wrong!
Where are you getting this? The evidence is right in front of you: online, in every library, in every school. How are you unaware if its existence?

 

[gnostic]

May I ask if you think a scientist can make/produce gravity? I mean we know it exists because of the effect. It's invisible. And birds do fly, but of course, they don't defy gravity. Humans can't fly in general, by themselves. They need to go in a plane, or attach rockets to their backs, etc. Big super rockets have to rev up their engines to leave the gravitational force of the earth. That's evidence of gravity, as well as proof. You are teaching me. So again the question, do you think a scientist can ever make/produce gravity similar to the enormous force we have on the earth and in the universe as gravity exists now -- no human exercise involved in making the current gravitational forces as they are now, keeping one's feet on the ground, as the saying goes. Do you know the elements that cause/make gravity in such huge forces?

Reading your post here, especially what I’ve highlighted in bold, is the steps in the right direction. I can see that you talk of gravity and gravitational forces, and so on, but you have not mentioned once what “causes” all these gravity or these forces.

Your questions sound more like a challenge to anyone who don’t agree with you on Evolution and on biology, and questions sound more like rhetoric than you wanting to know, to learn or to understand the answers.

What does the Earth’s or the universe’s gravity and gravitational forces have to with biology, to do with this thread about a theory, in this case - on Evolution - have to do with physics, Earth science and astronomy?

Do you really want answers to these questions because you really don’t know the answers that you could have and should have learned in high school basic physics and 1st year university physics?

It doesn’t seem to be the case, so I am guessing that you having other motives for asking such questions that you should have learned in physics, in high school.

The parts of your reply that I have highlighted in RED, showed that you are not interested in learning what anyone have to say for yourself, to learn and understand gravity, but to challenge and test their knowledge.

Are you trying to test us, or do you really don’t know the answers already?

I will only give my answer to your question if you really don’t know and want real answers because you want to learn.

But I won’t give you answers if you are simply testing us with these challenges.

 

[gnostic]

Let me remind you that you refuse to learn what is and what is not evidence. Nor do you seem to understand what "proof" is either.

And I probably understand gravity far better than you do. Your rather inept questions tell me this.

Are you ready and willing to learn the basics?

I’ve suspect that his questions are not motivated by wanting to learn the answers but to challenge us.

If my suspicions are right by what’s really motivated him to ask such basic knowledge that he could have learn in high school physics , then I have no interests in playing his silly game of challenge.

 

[YoursTrue]

We share ancestry. A species that evolved one way to chimpanzees and one way to humans. We also share ancestry with all the other apes, and all other animals, but the shared ancestor is at different distant past. I've looked at and examined (very amateurishly, but still) australopithecus and other such ancestral fossils, and it's amazing how the skulls have changed from those ancestors to the modern species. I don't remember the details at all, but just looking and comparing skulls was convincing enough.

It's not enough for me to figure that means the organisms moved in the direction of homo sapiens, with their distinguishing mental characteristics, which seems quite evident to me. (Talking about evidence.)
The skulls are said to be similar and moving from one type to another type of "population," if that's the expression, but that does not mean the organisms came about without the mechanisms implanted or enabled by a higher power. And I know that the Bible says that God said, "Let us make man in our image." That is after it is said He made all other types of living matter. And that, even according to evolution, coincides with the progression of events. Funny they knew that thousands of years ago.
Please note, that although I surely cannot explain it all, I am not denying that it is possible genetically that the varying organisms were affected by means of transmission. I read the following quote and summation in "Science,"
"The unnecessarily long path of this nerve is shared by all vertebrates and only makes sense when considering the origin of vertebrates is from a fish-like ancestor," he said.
"We are just very highly evolved fish!" Bergman concluded."
Bergman is a lecturer in computational and evolutionary biology at the University of Manchester. He concludes that we are highly evolved fish, but that missing specimen of a "fish-like ancestor" is yet not discovered, is it. (A "fish-like ancestor, as yet undetermined I suppose.)
Furthermore, there is nothing to say that God could not have developed things from His perspective or had the Bible related from HIS perspective. The Bible does say that God took man (Adam) from the ground, and I believe that. As I remember it, our bodies are composed of elements of the earth. Do I believe that God made one man from the soil? Yes. Eve came from his rib. I believe that, too. When further understanding comes about that, I will accept that. But right now I believe the Bible in terms of creation rather than evolution from a unicellular organism to human being.

 

[Subduction Zone]

It's not enough for me to figure that means the organisms moved in the direction of homo sapiens, with their distinguishing mental characteristics, which seems quite evident to me. (Talking about evidence.)
The skulls are said to be similar and moving from one type to another type of "population," if that's the expression, but that does not mean the organisms came about without the mechanisms implanted or enabled by a higher power. And I know that the Bible says that God said, "Let us make man in our image." That is after it is said He made all other types of living matter. And that, even according to evolution, coincides with the progression of events. Funny they knew that thousands of years ago.
Please note, that although I surely cannot explain it all, I am not denying that it is possible genetically that the varying organisms were affected by means of transmission. I read the following quote and summation in "Science,"
"The unnecessarily long path of this nerve is shared by all vertebrates and only makes sense when considering the origin of vertebrates is from a fish-like ancestor," he said.
"We are just very highly evolved fish!" Bergman concluded."
Bergman is a lecturer in computational and evolutionary biology at the University of Manchester. He concludes that we are highly evolved fish, but that missing specimen of a "fish-like ancestor" is yet not discovered, is it. (A "fish-like ancestor, as yet undetermined I suppose.)
Furthermore, there is nothing to say that God could not have developed things from His perspective or had the Bible related from HIS perspective. The Bible does say that God took man (Adam) from the ground, and I believe that. As I remember it, our bodies are composed of elements of the earth. Do I believe that God made one man from the soil? Yes. Eve came from his rib. I believe that, too. When further understanding comes about that, I will accept that. But right now I believe the Bible in terms of creation rather than evolution from a unicellular organism to human being.

If you believe that you are calling God a liar. Most Christians do not believe in a lying God so they do not interpret the myths of Genesis literally.

 

[YoursTrue]

Reading your post here, especially what I’ve highlighted in bold, is the steps in the right direction. I can see that you talk of gravity and gravitational forces, and so on, but you have not mentioned once what “causes” all these gravity or these forces.

Your questions sound more like a challenge to anyone who don’t agree with you on Evolution and on biology, and questions sound more like rhetoric than you wanting to know, to learn or to understand the answers.

What does the Earth’s or the universe’s gravity and gravitational forces have to with biology, to do with this thread about a theory, in this case - on Evolution - have to do with physics, Earth science and astronomy?

Do you really want answers to these questions because you really don’t know the answers that you could have and should have learned in high school basic physics and 1st year university physics?

It doesn’t seem to be the case, so I am guessing that you having other motives for asking such questions that you should have learned in physics, in high school.

The parts of your reply that I have highlighted in RED, showed that you are not interested in learning what anyone have to say for yourself, to learn and understand gravity, but to challenge and test their knowledge.

Are you trying to test us, or do you really don’t know the answers already?

I will only give my answer to your question if you really don’t know and want real answers because you want to learn.

But I won’t give you answers if you are simply testing us with these challenges.

I'm asking you questions which I believe you really have no real-life, real-term basis for evidence in evolution, but I'd like to hear your answers, also by the progression by 'natural selection.' Is that what you say when you talk about evolution and possibly gravity, a non-living force supposedly, but apparently absolutely without doubt essential for life on this planet. Whilst you may look at skulls and the likeness as well as differences and say, "Well, that proves that homo sapiens came from these types, because they look somewhat alike," and because DNA is similar to a large degree in bonobos and humans, I do not believe it proves that there is no higher intelligence in forming living matter on this earth. But from my discussions with you, I can see you believe it does prove there is no higher intelligence in the formation of life on this earth. And that includes the necessity of gravitational forces in order to keep life going.

 

[YoursTrue]

If you believe that you are calling God a liar. Most Christians do not believe in a lying God so they do not interpret the myths of Genesis literally.

I don't necessarily interpret it literally as you suppose. You say there is no God. I say there is. But you have made sweeping generalizations about me, and that's good, because -- well you know -- because -- I'll let you finish.

 

[YoursTrue]

If you believe that you are calling God a liar. Most Christians do not believe in a lying God so they do not interpret the myths of Genesis literally.

Further, your above statement has nothing to do with what I said. All you do is call me a liar by what you say is God's standards, someone you don't believe in. Is it enough to say you're a fraud? You call me a liar, then when I ask where did I lie, you then turn to God and don't answer.
I'll let you and others decide. You have proved to me quite a few things that others have said. I know you're not going to move from your position about life, God, and evolution. But as some scientists have stated, it isn't so simple. Unicellular organisms aren't so simple either, are they?

 

[Subduction Zone]

I'm asking you questions which I believe you really have no real-life, real-term basis for evidence in evolution, but I'd like to hear your answers, also by the progression by 'natural selection.' Is that what you say when you talk about evolution and possibly gravity, a non-living force supposedly, but apparently absolutely without doubt essential for life on this planet. Whilst you may look at skulls and the likeness as well as differences and say, "Well, that proves that homo sapiens came from these types, because they look somewhat alike," and because DNA is similar to a large degree in bonobos and humans, I do not believe it proves that there is no higher intelligence in forming living matter on this earth. But from my discussions with you, I can see you believe it does prove there is no higher intelligence in the formation of life on this earth. And that includes the necessity of gravitational forces in order to keep life going.

A large part of the problem is that you do not understand the concept of evidence making your asking for evidence rather pointless.

And no claimed that evolution proves there is no higher intelligence. There simply is no scientific evidence for one.

 

[YoursTrue]

Why? To what purpose? We don't need to know every step to know how the whale evolved.

No? If you did, then scientists would be able to duplicate or make a whale from scratch.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I don't necessarily interpret it literally as you suppose. You say there is no God. I say there is. But you have made sweeping generalizations about me, and that's good, because -- well you know -- because -- I'll let you finish.

When did I say there is no God? And what sweeping generalizations have I made about you?

 

[Subduction Zone]

No? If you did, then scientists would be able to duplicate or make a whale from scratch.

Why would they want to?


This is related to your lack of understanding of the concept of evidence.

 

[YoursTrue]

A large part of the problem is that you do not understand the concept of evidence making your asking for evidence rather pointless.

And no claimed that evolution proves there is no higher intelligence. There simply is no scientific evidence for one.

Evidence is such, I believe, that some of Haeckel's drawings were later proven to be untrue. This is not to say he was a bad man. Or deliberately misrepresented.
There have been trials demonstrating that the putting together of evidence DNA led the jury to the wrong conclusion. That is why under the Law of Moses, a false accuser was to receive the same penalty that was to be meted out for the wrongdoer. That is found in Deuteronomy chapter 19:16-19, a book I know you don't believe in as truth, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

 

[YoursTrue]

When did I say there is no God? And what sweeping generalizations have I made about you?

You call me a liar. Yet do not delineate what lies.
So are you now saying there IS a God? (Which is it?)

 

[Subduction Zone]

Evidence is such, I believe, that some of Haeckel's drawings were later proven to be untrue. This is not to say he was a bad man. Or deliberately misrepresented.
There have been trials demonstrating that the putting together of evidence DNA led the jury to the wrong conclusion. That is why under the Law of Moses, a false accuser was to receive the same penalty that was to be meted out for the wrongdoer. That is found in Deuteronomy chapter 19:16-19, a book I know you don't believe in as truth, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

Sorry, you still do not understand evidence or what was wrong with Haeckel's drawings. You also foolishly put the burden of proof on you again. Now you need to demonstrate that Haeckel's drawings were false.You

And there may be some cases where DNA led to a wrongful conviction, but those cases are extremely rare and usually due to incompetence. But again, your claim is worthless without some real world examples.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You call me a liar. Yet do not delineate what lies.
So are you now saying there IS a God? (Which is it?)

No, I have pointed out when you have posted lies. And I have told when you posted lies and explained them. After the third or fourth time an explanation is no longer necessary. Now you may not know that some of the claims you posted were lies or falsehoods. In that case you would not be a liar, but since what you posted was false witness against others it would be a case of breaking the Ninth Commandment.

And I did not claim that a God existed either. Black and white reasoning often leads to an error. It is best to avoid it.