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Why is evolution even still a debate?

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
But only in America, it seems. Where dividing into two sides seems somewhat of an all pervasive phenomenon.
And not nearly to the extent of, say, twenty years ago, leading up to the Dover trial ─ after which the wave seems slowly to have subsided, though not disappeared.
 

Brian2

Veteran Member
And this thread is asking why because all the evidence we have overwhelmingly supports evolution while strongly suggesting if a Biblical Genesis is true then Jehovah left a lot if very deceiving signs and evidence to the point we could say he is deliberately lying.

The Biblical Genesis was written for all people of all ages and as such it fits with evolution as well as saying that God created all things.
You seem to agree with the dichotomy that if evolution is true then Genesis is not.
It is the mechanisms for evolution which are in dispute and God is not allowed in there as a mechanism and He is seen as not needed. My faith tell me that supposition is not true.
The thing is that even though science cannot say whether there is a God or not or if that God is needed but some people try to make science say those things.
Those things are said by faith ( or lack thereof),,,,,,,,,,, the belief that the naturalistic methodology of science is the truth instead of just a working hypothesis for science.
 

Brian2

Veteran Member
I think that's what Creationists do not understand or comprehend. We have such an ocean of evidence supporting evolution that the Biblical Genesis being true still doesn't disprove, shut down, or silence evolution. It's still going on regardless.

It's still going on regardless but is not producing any new kinds of life. They have all been produced and now it is a case of each kind reproduces that same kind.
The creation was made by God to have a certain outcome, that which was seen as "very good" on day 6 of creation. .
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
Evidence of what? Only that current evolutionary mechanisms have “explanatory deficits,” which means they explain how organisms *survive*, but not how they *arrive.*

For example, how did the first functional bacterial flagellum originate? You can’t explain it. No one can, without falling back on suppositions, i.e., philosophical iterations.
The evidence isn’t there…. about any of the cell’s complex molecular machinery self -organizing themselves.

Absolutely these things can be explained. Species 'arrive' by modifications of previous species. The bacterial flagellum is a modification of a previous secretory protein.
 
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Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
If you think that theists in the 14th century didnt teach evolution just because you or I were never alive at that time, you are wrong. It is not hearsay. People know about these things very well.

No, they did not. They had no idea about the mechanisms of genetics. They had very little understanding of the fossil evidence. They had various superstitions, but no actual scientific investigation.
 
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Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
In answer to the OP, the question of whether evolution occurred is not under debate among the relevant scientists. The *mechanisms* and their importance is definitely being debated, but the basic fact that species change over geologic time is well established.

The only 'debate' is from religious literalists and they don't actually debate: they simply deny that the evidence is actually evidence. They deny the dating methods that are well-established. They deny the genetics that shows the relation between different species. They deny the fossils, which show how species have changed over time.

That isn't debate. It is simply saying that their religious beliefs trump the scientific evidence.
 

firedragon

Veteran Member
No, they did not. They had no idea about the mechanisms of genetics.

I said "Evolution", not "Mechanism of genetics".

Maybe in another 100 years humans will discover more evidence and a paradigm shift. That does not mean "Polymath257 in the year 2022 had no idea about evolution".
 

wellwisher

Well-Known Member
Evolution and Creationism are saying the same things, if you frame the argument in terms of natural selection versus manmade selection; respectively. Modern humans are not under natural selection, since culture makes so many selections for you, which do not have to be natural or even rational. The question becomes when did the path of natural selection, diverge, into a new path, called manmade selection, thereby altering the path of natural evolution?

If you go to any large city, the animals become limited to a few wild city animals like squirrels. The natural environment, that was there, before these cities were built, was developed and manmade potentials were added. This altered the previous state of natural section with many animals driven out or made extinct.

As another example, humans altered the evolutionary path of the wolf, causing a split from which over 150 different breeds of dogs would appear. This divergence in canine evolution was not natural. It was due to will and choice; selective breeding not based on natural selection. This divergence was manmade and was often subjective; selection based on fur color. This required will power and choice apart from the instinctive path of natural selection. It was not natural selection.

Genesis describes this sudden divergence from the path of natural selection and evolution; garden of Eden, to one of manmade selection and evolution. This is why the authors of Genesis created Adam and Eve in ways that were not natural biological. Adam forms from the dust; abiogenesis start, and Eve is cloned from the stem cells in Adam's rib. They were intellectually instead of biologically created. This new branch of human evolution, connected to will and choice, did not come from a natural biological path. The genealogy after Adam and Eve is based on biological breeding, but it was based on the willful constraints of a pure bloodline, instead of natural selection.

In modern culture, for example, humans spend more on the sick than is done by nature. Natural selection does not operate this way. Natural selection is based on the top, down. Manmade selection is philosophical selection that can be bottom, up or even side to side.

Natural selection stopped applying to humans, about 6000 years ago with the invention of written language and the resulting formation of sustainable civilization. Civilization had its own unique needs that were not always natural.

In the beginning was the word and the word was God; god was the first word application of the new invention; written alphabet, that would alter the path of natural evolution. Written language was key to sustainable civilization. It had important applications in commerce, logistics, science, engineering, law, etc. Word of mouth was not as affective as written records, causing earlier civilization start up to abort. Adam from the dust of the earth was stone dust from writing on stone tablets; new inside and outside potentials not directly from the DNA.

As civilization expanded, natural selection faced mounting man made pressures. Today there is a claim that man is causing global wide climate change, which could alter the global path of natural selection, by adding manmade potentials all over the world. The change in evolution can now reached everywhere, even remote places, in only about 6000 years.

Evolution is more about the days of the distant past. Creation is about the here and now, and is due to manmade pressures on nature and man on himself. We can now directly manipulate the DNA, based on choices. This is not natural selection anymore. There is no reason both Evolution and Creation cannot both be right and talking of the same things. It is based on the time scale of its application. Darwin needed to find a remote place to see natural selection since manmade pressures on selection was everywhere in England.
 
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cladking

Well-Known Member
?? How do you duplicate a god in a lab?

All observed change in life is invariably sudden. Even all observed speciation is sudden. Our minds fill in the blanks between different fossils but there is a blank. There is no gradual change and there is no "survival of the fittest" because all life is individual, life is consciousness, and all individuals are equally fit.
 

cladking

Well-Known Member
As for consciousness, much more definition is required before that can even be a proposed mechanism.

I'm in general agreement with most of your points other than this and your conclusion. "Evolution" as it exists at least in the minds of lay people does not exist. There is no gradual change (genetic drift is more an effect than a cause) and there is no "survival of the fittest" as a causation.

"Consciousness" is the means every individual has to survive and procreate. We can't see it because we "think" instead of experience like other life. Consciousness in other life is a product of the wiring of the "brain"," language", knowledge, experience, and genetics. It leads to the "Holy Trinity"; Knowledge > Understanding > Creation. Without understanding the nature of life it is impossible to even study the means by which it changes. Without understanding that there is no such thing as "species" then it's impossible to see any change caused to individuals which are the only concrete living things. Everything else is an abstraction that doesn't exist (or live) in the concrete world.
 

Suave

Simulated character
Evolution and Creationism are saying the same things, if you frame the argument in terms of natural selection versus manmade selection; respectively. Modern humans are not under natural selection, since culture makes so many selections for you, which do not have to be natural or even rational. The question becomes when did the path of natural selection, diverge, into a new path, called manmade selection, thereby altering the path of natural evolution?

If you go to any large city, the animals become limited to a few wild city animals like squirrels. The natural environment, that was there, before these cities were built, was developed and manmade potentials were added. This altered the previous state of natural section with many animals driven out or made extinct.

As another example, humans altered the evolutionary path of the wolf, causing a split from which over 150 different breeds of dogs would appear. This divergence in canine evolution was not natural. It was due to will and choice; selective breeding not based on natural selection. This divergence was manmade and was often subjective; selection based on fur color. This required will power and choice apart from the instinctive path of natural selection. It was not natural selection.

Genesis describes this sudden divergence from the path of natural selection and evolution; garden of Eden, to one of manmade selection and evolution. This is why the authors of Genesis created Adam and Eve in ways that were not natural biological. Adam forms from the dust; abiogenesis start, and Eve is cloned from the stem cells in Adam's rib. They were intellectually instead of biologically created. This new branch of human evolution, connected to will and choice, did not come from a natural biological path. The genealogy after Adam and Eve is based on biological breeding, but it was based on the willful constraints of a pure bloodline, instead of natural selection.

In modern culture, for example, humans spend more on the sick than is done by nature. Natural selection does not operate this way. Natural selection is based on the top, down. Manmade selection is philosophical selection that can be bottom, up or even side to side.

Natural selection stopped applying to humans, about 6000 years ago with the invention of written language and the resulting formation of sustainable civilization. Civilization had its own unique needs that were not always natural.

In the beginning was the word and the word was God; god was the first word application of the new invention; written alphabet, that would alter the path of natural evolution. Written language was key to sustainable civilization. It had important applications in commerce, logistics, science, engineering, law, etc. Word of mouth was not as affective as written records, causing earlier civilization start up to abort. Adam from the dust of the earth was stone dust from writing on stone tablets; new inside and outside potentials not directly from the DNA.

As civilization expanded, natural selection faced mounting man made pressures. Today there is a claim that man is causing global wide climate change, which could alter the global path of natural selection, by adding manmade potentials all over the world. The change in evolution can now reached everywhere, even remote places, in only about 6000 years.

Evolution is more about the days of the distant past. Creation is about the here and now, and is due to manmade pressures on nature and man on himself. We can now directly manipulate the DNA, based on choices. This is not natural selection anymore. There is no reason both Evolution and Creation cannot both be right and talking of the same things. It is based on the time scale of its application. Darwin needed to find a remote place to see natural selection since manmade pressures on selection was everywhere in England.
Please allow us to posit the locus cloned in cosmids c8.1 and c29B as being the relic of an ancient telomere-telomere fusion and marks the point at which two ancestral ape chromosomes fused to give rise to human chromosome 2 whereby t he first individual of the genus Homo-species formed from a couple of Australopithecus hetero zygotes, each of whom had the same type of chromosome rearrangements formed by fusion of the whole long arms of two acrocentric chromosomes, mated together and reproduced viable and fertile offspring with 46 chromosomes.

This first generation of Homo habilis then incestuously bred with each other and reproduced the next subsequent generation of Homo habilis.

6aacc5e58278ad71da46bd753113f69f.png


References:
  1. J. Tjio and A. Levan. 1956. The chromosome number of Man. Hereditas, 42( 1-2): 1-6.
  2. W. Ijdo et al.1991. Origin of human chromosome 2: an ancestral telomere-telomere fusión. PNAS, 88: 9051-9056.
  3. Meyer et al. 2012 A high-coverage genome sequence from an archaic Denisovan individual. Science, 338:222-226.; K. H. Miga. 2016. Chromosome-specific Centromere seq
 
And no one has shown a god created man from dust.
Do we have to? Genesis describes how creation came to be, here we are, when we die our bodies return to dust. I don’t have to use the same rules that Science does, I can but I’m a Spirit, Soul and Body so why would I? I know God and this is in the Spirit not a material means that Science can test. Science is blind to the spiritual world. If someone saw a person rise from the dead, science would explain that away, wouldn’t see the spiritual power but only detect the result and explain it away.

Science has its own set of rules that tries to explain life, as far as I can tell Science is inadequate at explaining life, all it can do is look at the material things and try to explain but cannot test or know spiritual matters. Cannot determine the origin of life, how we get our consciousness, intellect etc.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Why is evolution even still a debate?

You might as well ask why a spherical earth is still a debate.

As you well know, there's no debate within the scientific community any more than there is about whether the earth is flat. There are probably more creationists than flat earthers since the shape of the earth is easier to see than the evolution of the tree of life over geological time, but the dispute is of the same nature. The evidence for evolution is just as obvious as that for a spherical earth to a prepared mind.

The whole evolution vs creation argument breeds hate and distrust world wide

I don't get that, at least not any more than is typically present when theists encounter atheists, many of whom have been taught to distrust and disesteem atheists, seeing them as immoral.

Like many others here, I've been involved in dozens of these threads, and don't feel either hate or distrust going in either direction, although I do sense frustration at times coming from the creationist when his apologetics are refuted, but that's common to any discussion between the two camps.

One side has evidence, one side has hope.

And there's your answer. You have a group of people that are empiricists and a group of faith-based thinkers. They decide what is true about the world using different methods, and consequently hold different beliefs, beliefs refractory to the method used by the other. One side uses reason applied to evidence (empiricism) to do that, and offers the same to the other. The other isn't moved by that, and offers his apologetics, which is also impotent to change minds unresponsive to unsound arguments. Here's what Sam Harris has to say about this "debate":

Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. What if someone says, "Well, that's not how I choose to think about water."? All we can do is appeal to scientific values. And if he doesn't share those values, the conversation is over. If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?

That's why I say that there is no debate, just disagreement, just dissent from creationists. Debate requires counterargument (rebuttal) which is smore than mere dissent.

Evidence that we evolved from another critter? Very debatable. Evidence that everything started with a single celled organism? Again, very debatable.

Not outside of creationist circles.

Remember, when you position yourself as somebody qualified to evaluate and reject the evidence that others cite as their reasons for accepting the theory, you need to give a counterargument that explains why you believe the other side cannot be correct, why you think that they are misunderstanding the evidence they cite. Simply saying "debatable," or that it seems impossible without an intelligent designer, or that macroevolution is impossible, or mutation cannot add information is not rebuttal.

There is still that mountain of evidence that the theory unifies by explaining why it is there. A rebuttal has to address why that evidence should be interpreted differently. What's the creationist's answer to that evidence and the conclusions the empiricist draws from it if not some form of Sam Harris' comment that that is not how he chooses to view that evidence, and perhaps cites one of the comments I just listed, none of which are a rebuttal to the argument for evolution? And as Harris states, at that point, the conversation, which was never debate, just mere dissent, is already over.
 
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