YoursTrue
Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
Yes. We have so much to learn and right now so little time in which to learn even what we want to know.
So thanks for that.
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What convinced you that Evolution is the truth?
- Thread starter Estro Felino
- Start date
So thanks for that.
What do you think of this one a few chapters earlier (Matthew 10:34): "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."
That's by choice, which is a reflection on how you choose to process evidence and not an indication that the evidence doesn't exist.
Yes, we are unique, but not because we are sentient. Many animals have inner lives that include consciousness, sensory awareness, feelings, urges, recollections, and the like. Like us, they are also sentient.
What distinguishes the human mind is intellect, or the ability to reason and communicate using abstract symbols (language and mathematics).
Life is probably extremely common. It probably exists everywhere that it is possible for it to exist. There is very likely simple life in our solar system outside of earth. Why because everything else that can happen does happen every time the conditions are right for it, such as water freezing then melting as ambient conditions change.
I'm an atheist and that isn't my belief. As has been explained, claiming that gods don't exist is not essential to atheism, but not claiming that they do is. Some atheists - so-called hard or gnostic atheists - do both, but the agnostic atheist only does the latter.
And no, there is never enough evidence to justify a belief if it is false. A false belief cannot be shown to be true and a true belief cannot be shown to be false (falsified). Supernatural creationism cannot be shown to be correct, and evolution hasn't been falsified. In fact, it has been shown to be correct beyond reasonable doubt.
What creationists offer as evidence of supernatural intelligent design is consistent with a godless universe that evolved naturalistically from an initial hot, dense state to the world we see around us. What's your best evidence? Scripture? The complexity of life? A fine-tuning argument? Philosophical arguments like the existence of moral feelings?
None of them support a supernaturalistic explanation better than they do a naturalistic one. All of those arguments can be successfully refuted. Scripture contains errors and is indistinguishable from the other words of ancient men. Complexity arguments are a combination of incredulity and special pleading fallacies. A fine-tuning argument is an argument that reality is natural as is a god is constrained to a set of physical parameters that it has to discover and conform to. And the conscience has adaptive value and confers reproductive advantage.
As you have already been told, those are not things that can evolve into existence like stars, heavy elements, and life. They do evolve, but only in the trivial sense that ink fades, pages yellow, and metal rusts.
Yes. If there is no god, then nobody created man and man has no purpose apart from the sense of purpose that he creates himself.
I agree with the Christian creationists on this. The scientific order of creation contradicts the biblical account of the appearance of various types of life, science says there was no first man, and the science doesn't allow for man to be created in the image of a deity.
TLK Valentine
Read the books that others would burn.
That's right - they don't. At one point in the distant past, neither did we.
I don't see the problem.
I get that you don't believe it, but I'm still not seeing the "why" you don't believe it, aside from the good feelings... which, if that's all you're looking for, fine.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Lots of life is sentient. My cat is sentient. What people claim is sapience, but considering our history, I'm beginning to question the claim..
Rare and valued? Have you done a survey on the prevalence of life in the universe?
Define "created."
We're adapted to only one planet, and even if we could live on others, how would we get there? They're light-years away.
"As we become more populous?" Even on our own planet, our sapience has rendered our future here very much in doubt.
Perhaps, but I'm not holding my breath...
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Of course you don't. You seem to have confidence in engineering, but the scientific method, and anything to do with biology you either don't grasp, or reject out of hand.
You either don't understand or refuse to accept the consilient evidence the claim is based on.
You're like the papal envoy who would not look through Galileo's telescope, refusing to gaze upon something the church taught was false.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Here's a challenge: try and come up with a definition of "ape" that includes all apes while it excludes humans, without adding arbitrary stuff to the definition added for the sole purpose to exclude humans.
You can try and do the same with the word "mammal", to include all mammals yet exclude humans.
Or "eukaryote". Or "animal". Or "tetrapod". Or "vertebrate".
Go ahead. Try.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Right, so it is a religious belief taken from a bronze age myth and not from actual biological facts we can observe in reality.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
No. According to independently verifiable genetic facts.
Yes, we have been over this a gazillion times. It has been explained to you more times then I can count how you argue a strawman there.
Why do you insist on these falsehoods?
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Newsflash 1: the majority of theists have no problem at all with evolutionary biology.
Newsflash 2: there is no "atheist core belief", as atheism is defined by the disbelief of a very specific thing.
Since everything that you wrote after this continues to build on this giant strawman, it falls in the category of "not even wrong".
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
The nonsense that follows the bolded part, shows that the bolded part is incorrect.
Saved by grace 2
Member
I know the Evolution belief changes from day to day, year to year, I apologize for not staying up on the latest version, this would not be a problem except that with these ever changing versions they are taught to the naive as fact. Mainly the most vulnerable, our children in Public schools, and then our universities as Fact, which is wrong. Which you even speak as most of what you have said as fact, which in most cases are nothing more than assumptions. For instance evolution has not once been proven, only variations within the same Kinds of life forms, NO PROOF of any creature evolving from one kind of creature has ever been proved to have evolved,......And you know that, so to say anything is as mythical as you call religion.
So I dont claim to be an expert on the origin of life or an expert on debunking the so called claims that evolutionist make as (Fact), but are not true.
The link iI have attached s a well written article that uses many quotes and findings from the very ones that you quite possibly got your beliefs from.
Please read the entire article and tell me where the author who is an expert, has it wrong. He of course believes in intelligent design, not evolution, but presents facts not opinions.
I look forward to your response.
Saved by grace 2
Member
Very true, Living things are different, So what is your opinion on how life (living things came to be.........Le't start with the building block of all living organisms. The cell.
Saved by grace 2
Member
Ok, well spoken! so what are these (proven, not assumed) mechanisms that you are referring to? And as for Evolution as you define it, still must have a starting point of how evolution (change) began. And a proven plausible plan of action for the mechanisms to function, from simpler forms of life to the more complex life forms that you are going to educate me with.
What is an evolution belief?
How do you know? What are the changes?
I'm have no reason to know that you have anything to apologize for regarding the theory.
The facts of evolution are the evidence. Facts would by definition be taught as facts.
The theory is the explanation for those facts.
Educating children in science is wrong?
You have to establish that and given that you claim not to be an expert, I wonder how you would go about that.
No theory is proven. Proof is not a standard of science. Germ theory, atomic theory, all the theories associated with computers. None of those have been or ever will be proven. Yet here we are using computers to communicate.
What is a kind?
You are correct. No proof. But lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of evidence that are explained by the theory of evolution.
It isn't established as mythical. It is science and not a religion. If you are claiming it is, straw men are not the means to go about that.
That wouldn't matter, since the theory is about the change in past and existing life and not about the origin of living things.
I agree.
It isn't well written. Here is a heading title. "CONFESSIONS FROM EVEVOLUCIONISTS".
It isn't a peer reviewed article. It is someone's opinion piece dressed up to look like a science review to those that don't understand science and would be convinced by the confusing details that look so sciency.
"Chandra Wickramasinghe describes the reality he faced as a scientist who had been told throughout his life
that life had emerged as a result of chance coincidences"
It think this says it all. It conflates the theory of evolution with the origin of life. It misidentifies what is actually said in science using a trite creationist cliché that everything is said to happen by chance.
Did you read the article? It is entirely an opinion piece.
It isn't science. Here is another heading title that is completely wrong. "THERMODYNAMICS FALSIFIES EVOLUTION" There are others on here that could explain thermodynamics much better than I, but I know enough to know this is a dead end idea with no validity. If the SLoT precluded evolution, it would also preclude life.
I'm guessing you probably won't.
The starting point for evolution is living things with reproduction, heritable variation and the environment acting on that.
Natural selection is the main mechanism, but genetic drift, immigration and emigration also effect change in populations over time.
These have been observed and are not assumed.
The origin of living things is a different problem than the evolution of living things. Evolution is not dependent on a specific origin for living things. I cannot emphasize this enough I suppose, given that it gets repeated so often by creationists. On this forum, it gets repeated by the same creationists on a regular basis even after many people have corrected it too.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
It doesn't. We learn more about evolutionary history. The core thesis of the evolutionary process remains virtually unchanged: reproduction with variation followed by selection, in a nutshell.
Evolution theory, like all other theories, are taught as being scientific theories.
The facts of evolution, like all other scientific facts, are taught as being scientific facts.
Your insinuations here are either plain lies, or stem from scientific illiteracy / ignorance.
False.
No scientific theory has been "proven" because by very definition, they can not be "proven". Only supported with evidence.
This is as true for evolution as it is for gravity, germs, plate tectonics, atoms, relativity, etc etc etc
If anything other would occur, evolution would be falsified.
Talk about arguing a strawman....
Why is it that creationists consistently make this basic mistake?
Again: if that were to happen, evolution would be disproven. Learn what evolution actually says before trying to argue against it and making a fool of yourself in the process.
Not only are you not an expert, you don't even seem to understand the basics of the basics of the basics....
IOW: you literally understand virtually nothing about the theory.
ID is no more then an argument from ignorance.
We get it: the cell is complex and you find that overwhelming and impressive.
Your argument from complexity (which is just a variation of the argument from ignorance) is noted.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Reproduction with variation followed by natural selection.
It's not that complicated.
And that starting point is: life exists, competes over limited resources and reproduces with variation. That's it.
Once you have that, evolutionary processes are inevitable.
See above: reproduction with variation, competition and inevitably from those two: natural selection.
Astrophile
Active Member
What would you accept as compelling evidence for evolution? Scientists have the evidence from comparative anatomy, evidence that led Linnaeus to classify humans with the apes decades before Charles Darwin was born, the evidence from the pattern of genetic similarities and differences that links all living things, and the fossil evidence that living things have changed radically through geological history. There is the evidence that animal and plant breeders have produced strikingly different forms of dogs, horses, cabbages, roses, etc. by selective breeding over a few centuries.
There is the evidence that living things reproduce themselves, that their offspring are not identical either to the parents or to one another, and that only some of the offspring live to produce the next generation. These changes from generation to generation, and the differential reproductive success of members of the same generation, are bound, over long periods of time, to produce large changes.
Why do you regard this evidence as insufficient, and what would you accept as valid evidence for evolution?
What do you mean by 'Kinds of life forms'? Do you regard all snails as belonging to the same kind, or all butterflies, or all jellyfish, or all primates? Please give me a precise definition of a kind, and explain why variations beyond the limits of a kind are impossible.
Rhetorical question, right? You probably know the answer. The moderator in the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye on whether creationism is a viable scientific pursuit asked, “What would change your minds?” Scientist Bill Nye answered, “Evidence.” Young Earth Creationist Ken Ham answered, “Nothing. I'm a Christian.” Elsewhere, Ham stated, “By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record."
The creationist isn't trying to learn the science. The opposite is the case. He goes to apologetics sites to read specious arguments so that he can reproduce them. When he asks questions, it's not for answers. He will never learn a single thing from you or me. Next year, the year after that, and for every year to come, he will continue to make the same mistakes he made last year. He will go on telling you what hasn't been proved, that man is not an ape or an animal, that cats can't become dogs, that living things adapt rather than evolve, and make the same logical errors about complexity implying a god. Year after year after year.
Why? They're not mistakes to him. You can't make him see them as such, and he has no incentive to change. Au contraire. He is highly motivated to never change. It's the path he's chosen, and with rare exception, there's no turning back for him just as critical thinkers have chosen a different path and there is generally no turning back for them, either.
The creationist's job is to try to make others believe that he is interested in learning the science and uses reason applied to evidence in these matters, so he asks questions the answers to which he either doesn't read or cannot understand. We see both. Some seem sincere with their questions, but they don't do any better than those for whom it is obvious that they aren't even looking at the replies or links provided.
So why do this? Why read and post on RF? It has to be for other reasons than helping such people, because they actively resist learning, and if they're in the second half of their lives, they probably couldn't learn now even if they lost their faith and began studying science at age 50 or 60. I don't think I'm telling you anything you don't already know or suspect.
Here's why I'm here: I call this activity humanist school. It has lecture and lab sections. The critical thinkers get to hone their writing and rhetorical skills, and teach and learn from one another. That's the lecture aspect. The lab is simply looking at how faith affects thinking. We see a wide spectrum of people here from those with no god belief or religion to those with just a little religion who are essentially indistinguishable from atheistic humanists except that they embrace Christian culture, to those so deeply shaped by religious beliefs and whose means of processing evidence is so radically different from critical thought that it makes them impossible to exchange information with. Where else can you see and learn such things?