Why is evolution even still a debate?

[Valjean]

In general, if two things can breed together, then they are of the same kind.

But that equates to species. I thought you said kind = family.
CF: post #438.

Oh, so the other side can go with bare claims but if someone supporting creation does that it's invalid. Got it.

Because the claims of "evolutionists" are well evidenced and tested. The claims of the religious are faith based, unevidenced, emotional outbursts.

 

[Valjean]

And by the exact same token you can't hold every one of these experiments in mind and see that our interpretation is wrong. It should be relatively easier since there are so few experiments that support any gradual change in species or that shows some individuals are less fit or less conscious.

It's a lot harder to observe a change over 100,000 years, in a laboratory, than it is to observe bacterial evolution over a week.
Evolution can be fast or slow. Both are well evidenced.
Is your belief only in fast evolution related, in some way, to your belief that species were magically 'poofed' into existence, by the hand of God?

 

[Valjean]

Oh, so the other side can go with bare claims but if someone supporting creation does that it's invalid. Got it.

The ToE isn't based on bare claims. Creationism is.
How do you not see the difference?

Wildswanderer said: ↑
Species is a rather vague term that has changed a lot.

Yes, but it was all we had before the advent of modern genetic analysis.
Now, who's descended from whom is much clearer.

 

[Valjean]

One has to transition into another somehow. Look at a tree of life illustrated and tell me that one species doesn't transition into another according to the ToE.

Look at the transition of Latin into French. At what point was the first French speaker born?

 

[Valjean]

This isn't about "those who reject evolution". It's about the proposition that evolution is not really a theory, but a proven fact. Which is it isn't.

But there are no 'proven facts' in science. You need to brush up on your terminology.

 

[Brian2]

Except that if go into the fossil record, there were no cats or dogs or elephants or giraffes 60 million years ago. Those are ALL 'new kinds' that have been produced since life got started.

60 Million years ago is part of the creation period that ended with the creation of man.

 

[Brian2]

The land existed before the oceans. The liquid on the surface of the early earth was lava:

View attachment 61552View attachment 61553

Genesis tells us that God created the heavens and the earth and then at some point in the early earth starts telling the story from the pov of being on the earth. At that time there was thick cloud covering a dark earth over which was ocean,,,,,,,,,,,,,and possibly land but it does not tell us about that. Genesis is not a science manual that tells us every detail of what happened.

Science says that the first life was marine and unicellular.

That was part of the production of plants. Then the first life that developed from that was plant life.

We never get a mechanism for how God does anything, but the Bible does give an account of the order of creation (two actually, which are also mutually exclusive, since they are contradictory)

The second account that some say is a contradictory account of creation is actually a summary of human creation and it seems to have begun on maybe day 3 of Genesis 1 when no plants were growing. Hence it agrees with evolution. The body of man was begun when the cellular organisms were created and man developed from them just as all other life did, beginning with plants.

That's a religious belief held by faith. I'm a strict empiricist. I don't use faith to decide what is true about the world, just reason applied to evidence, which doesn't support the biblical narrative..

No, your beliefs are just as much based on faith as my beliefs. That is what the whole naturalistic methodology is. It works in science because science is only able to study the material universe and even admits that it can say nothing about the existence of God. When people step past that and start saying that science tells us that God does not exist, that is stepping out in faith.

Science has not found a deity, nor any physical finding that needs one to account for its existence, so there is no reason to posit the existence of one.

There is reason to believe in the existence of a God both in what we see in the universe around us and in the historical accounts of God's dealings with people.
If you are a strict empiricist then you eliminate those things automatically from your reasoning.
But even if you do eliminate them, you cannot, using empiricism, say that God does not exist.

 

[PureX]

But there are no 'proven facts' in science. You need to brush up on your terminology.

But there are no 'proven facts' in science. You need to brush up on your terminology.

Then no theory ever becomes a 'proven fact'. Thank you.

 

[Valjean]

60 Million years ago is part of the creation period that ended with the creation of man.

Inasmuch as life first appeared c. four billion years ago, this 'creation period' must be a pretty long-term, if not ongoing event.

When do you date the creation of man? What species was the first man? Why do you say the creation period has ended?
Did no new species appear after the creation period ended?

 

[Valjean]

Then no theory ever becomes a 'proven fact'. Thank you.

Exactly! Now you're catching on.

 

[PureX]

Exactly! Now you're catching on.

You really weren't following this conversation, were you. That ole knee was a-jerkin' an you just went a-typin'.

 

[Polymath257]

Then no theory ever becomes a 'proven fact'. Thank you.

It is a proven fact that planets orbit the sun and not the Earth.

It is a proven fact that water is made from oxygen and hydrogen.

It is a proven fact that the Earth is billions, not just thousands, of years old.

General theories cannot be proven to hold in all cases simply because we cannot test all cases. But we *can* know what happens in specific cases.

 

[Polymath257]

Inasmuch as life first appeared c. four billion years ago, this 'creation period' must be a pretty long-term, if not ongoing event.

When do you date the creation of man? What species was the first man? Why do you say the creation period has ended?
Did no new species appear after the creation period ended?

Furthermore, many species appeared and went extinct during that time period. And, we see that the species that existed 60 million years ago were not those that existed 100 million years ago.

So, even if you want to claim this is all in one 'day of creation', there was *still* evolution of life *during that day*.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Are you familiar with the anhedonia of major depression? It's characterized by the loss of feeling and emotions, and is a risk factor for suicide. THAT gets in the way of survival, not emotion.

Thanks for proving my point. There's no reason we should have emotion or a spirit in a world created by random chance. The fact that we NEED emotion is telling us we are not just animals.

You think I supported your point? I showed you the survival advantage of emotion. That is THE reason for these mental states to be selected for.

And the beasts experience emotion, which confers a survival advantage there as well. We inherited that capacity from them. Our reptilian brain issues fight or flight commands. Our mammalian brain feels in grief following deaths in mammals just as it does in ours.

we are expected to believe we know what happened billions of years before we existed.

You are offered the opportunity to lean why those things are believed correct by science, to see the evidence and follow the arguments that led to those conclusions. Did you do that? If not, no, you are not expected to know what happened billions of years before we existed.

I'll tell you the same as I've told several others of late. When a person who hasn't learned the science tells you that he sees no evidence in support of it as we've seen repeatedly in this thread alone, the comment has no persuasive power. It says nothing about the science, just the person who hasn't learned it and thinks that nobody has or can.

 

[PureX]

It is a proven fact that planets orbit the sun and not the Earth.

It is a proven fact that water is made from oxygen and hydrogen.

It is a proven fact that the Earth is billions, not just thousands, of years old.

General theories cannot be proven to hold in all cases simply because we cannot test all cases. But we *can* know what happens in specific cases.

An observed fact is not a "proven" fact, except in the minds of those who have forfeited their ability to be skeptical. Funny how many of these atheist 'super skeptics' suddenly aren't anymore, when it comes their own 'beliefs'.

 

[Brian2]

Inasmuch as life first appeared c. four billion years ago, this 'creation period' must be a pretty long-term, if not ongoing event.

When do you date the creation of man? What species was the first man? Why do you say the creation period has ended?
Did no new species appear after the creation period ended?

Birds and sea creatures and plants were all created by the time man was created.
I don't know when exactly man was created.
Imo the forming of the human body happened through evolution and man was created when God breathed spirit into that body.
In that way humans became a special creation, children of God.
But yes the creation period was a long one.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Evidence of what? That things change? Sure any creationist would agree. Evidence that we evolved from another critter? Very debatable. Evidence that everything started with a single celled organism? Again, very debatable.

Evolution is the change in allele frequencies in populations over time.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Right! There is no reason.

Really? Is your imagination really that limited?

That they do anyway is evidence of a soul made in God's image.

How so? Does God wonder at "his" mistakes?

 

[SkepticThinker]

This isn't about "those who reject evolution". It's about the proposition that evolution is not really a theory, but a proven fact. Which is it isn't.

It's called a theory because it is a theory. In science, a theory either works (elicits predictable results) or it doesn't, within the context of it's testing. If the theory works, it stands as a viable theory, if it doesn't it is rejected as a viable theory. For it to become an accepted truth, as some here seem to be suggesting that it has, it will have to had ALL possible questions springing from it resolved. And in the case of evolution, that very clearly has not happened. As there are still some very big questions left unresolved.

That allele frequencies in populations change over time is a fact.
The theory of evolution explains that fact.

 

[SkepticThinker]

60 Million years ago is part of the creation period that ended with the creation of man.

Can you demonstrate that?