Why the theory of evolution is so important

[MJFlores]

Which is considered to be a "hypothesis" in the ToE as we do not know with any certainty how life first occurred here on Earth. Even with the acceptance by many of the concept of "divine creation", evolution clearly has occurred and still is occurring as all material forms, including life forms, appear to be constantly changing.

Many people make the mistake of believing that the ToE is counter to the concept of divine creation, but the reality is that we simply do not know with any certainty whatsoever how life, or even our own universe, actually started.

That is why my friend, I left the Catholic faith.
We are starting to believe theories when
The Bible says God made the universe in 6 days.

 

[shunyadragon]

That is why my friend, I left the Catholic faith.
We are starting to believe theories when
The Bible says God made the universe in 6 days.

Delusions of ancient Sumerian/Babylonian/Canaanite/ Ugarit mythology.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Creationists use probability the way ENRON did bookkeeping.

So are you saying my stock is not worthless?

 

[MJFlores]

Humans were never fish in the sense that you seem to mean it, but our ancestors were.

I think that would be your ancestors,
please leave my ancestors out of it.
I do not have faith in evolution.

One does not need to calculate the odds of something to prove that someone else's odds are wrong.

Calculating the odds is reasonable.
Because it is a test of probabilities.
Is it really feasible?
That is the question that must be answered.

Most of them are dentists and computer engineers. They may be "scientists" but their opinion is all but worthless.

Worthless opinions or not,
These must be determined.
Is it possible for non-life elements
to produce living things?

Here is the periodic table of elements

How can these non-living [no life] elements produce a single microscopic life?
Have you seen somebody do such simple feat?

 

[sealchan]

Delusions of ancient Sumerian/Babylonian/Canaanite/ Ugarit mythology.

Creative reachings of the spirit written by inspired poets and later sadly mistaken as literal pronouncements of fact.

 

[metis]

That is why my friend, I left the Catholic faith.
We are starting to believe theories when
The Bible says God made the universe in 6 days.

IMO, using the creation accounts as science or history makes so little sense to me, especially since it defies almost everything we now know scientifically on the creation of our universe, planet, and human life itself.

Instead, most Christian theologians today, according to surveys I've seen, believe that these accounts are best taken as being allegorical and a rebuttal against the polytheistic Babylonian narrative that predates the writing of Genesis and was known in eretz Israel. IOW, it's sorta like "The Babylonians say X but we believe in Y".

Also, Catholic theology does very much allow Catholics to believe in a literal 6-day creation, so your abandonment of the faith was based on your not understanding that teaching.

BTW, for what it's worth, I'm really quite familiar with the CoC.

 

[MJFlores]

billions of years in the making

That is what I am waiting for somebody to say
The steps of scientific process on Evolution cannot be applied:

Steps in the Scientific Process

• Step 1: Ask a question.
  
• Step 2: Do background research. ...
• Step 3: Construct a hypothesis. ...
• Step 4: Test your hypothesis by doing an experiment. ...
• Step 5: Analyze the data and draw a conclusion. ...
• Step 6: Share your results.

Step 4 and 5 can never be done.
Because it would require....

...of years
So just share your results
Have faith on them as truth science.

 

[shunyadragon]

Creative reachings of the spirit written by inspired poets and later sadly mistaken as literal pronouncements of fact.

There is considerable gray area in the understanding of this statement. It is more likely evolved traditional writing that resulted in the Hebrew Genesis which had an evolved spiritual interpretation.

The problems result from the church fathers and/or the writers of the Christian Bible believed in a dominantly literal interpretation of Genesis, that resulted in the doctrines of the 'Fall' and Original Sin' that remain at the heart of contemporary Christianity.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

"Life coming about" is abiogenesis. How life types developed is evolution.

Correct. Coming about would seem to imply the origin of life and not the evolution of life.

Why not tell @Wild Fox to get it right?

It is not a mistake I would expect from Wildfox and perhaps it was just an error of writing. I will have to leave it to him to correct and explain, since I cannot.

The study of how life itself came about is about abiogenesis and that has not been explained sufficiently yet.

Correct. We do not know the origin of life. There is sufficient evidence to hypothesize, but not to test.

Life had to happen before evolution ever did.

Yes. Evolution could not take place without the presence of living things expressing variation and passing that variation on through reproduction.

 

[sealchan]

I think that would be your ancestors,
please leave my ancestors out of it.
I do not have faith in evolution.



Calculating the odds is reasonable.
Because it is a test of probabilities.
Is it really feasible?
That is the question that must be answered.



Worthless opinions or not,
These must be determined.
Is it possible for non-life elements
to produce living things?

Here is the periodic table of elements

View attachment 27921
How can these non-living [no life] elements produce a single microscopic life?
Have you seen somebody do such simple feat?

Read an organic chemistry text...life is not an atom but a complex, dynamic organization of atoms forming molecules forming structures interacting in an environment involving auto-catalytic and self-reproducing chains of interaction.

So we have in the realm of chemistry chains of chemical interactions taking place in such a way as to introduce positive feedback loops (runaway reactions). Then we have molecules that act as catalysts which influence the rate of other reactions. This produces naturally occurring molecular interactions which can effectively control each other due to changes in recent activity or environmental factors. Organic molecules are simply those molecules which exhibit these capabilities in the greatest abundance and as a result became the source ground for the processes which take place inside of cells which are themselves evolved out of a rich environment of pre-cellular structures containing biochemical systems of organization.

All of this is a rich ground for higher level organizations of matter to produce adaptive and locally aware closed systems of molecular and super-molecular order.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Lol!

Evolution proposes no explanation as to how life arose. (Don't you know what your science gods teach?)

The theory of evolution does not propose an origin of life. How is that so difficult to understand?

Despite the efforts of creationist cults to undermine science, they continue to fail at every turn.

 

[shunyadragon]

I think that would be your ancestors,
please leave my ancestors out of it.
I do not have faith in evolution.

Unless you were beamed down as an alien we are all related by blood as well as related to all the life on earth.

Calculating the odds is reasonable.
Because it is a test of probabilities.
Is it really feasible?
That is the question that must be answered.

The problem is Fundi Creationists, like you, they dishonestly misused math and science to justify a religious agenda ignoring sound science.

Worthless opinions or not,

Yes you have the problem with this having a religious agenda.

These must be determined.
Is it possible for non-life elements
to produce living things?

Here is the periodic table of elements

View attachment 27921
How can these non-living [no life] elements produce a single microscopic life?
Have you seen somebody do such simple feat?

Simply yes, over a period of billions of years determined by the objective verifiable evidence.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

This is an interesting video about evolution:

There is an assumption made in most schools, universities and even in the production of documentaries on nature, that all scientists are unanimous in their belief that life as we know it on earth, evolved over time from rudimentary non-life into viruses and cells that then, over eons of time, developed into the lifeforms we know today. Is this assumption correct? Does science support Evolutionary Theory?

This video contains nothing more than all the popular theist tripe about "complexity" and "fine tuning." Things that have been explained to be insufficient grounds for making any sort of determination time and time and time and time again.

00:36 - "The theory that life has evolved on Earth from non-life..."
That's your Mr. Smart-guy narrator for the video completely missing the mark with respect to what evolution actually encompasses. This has also been pointed out to theists time and time and time again. "Life from non-life." isn't part of evolution - so you aren't knocking holes in evolutionary theory by claiming that life can't arise from non-life. To make a statement like this and claimi it is evidence against evolution, you're basically loading your gun with poop, turning around - aiming 180 degrees away from the target and firing with an idiotic grin on your face. That's how dumb the content of this video sounds to anyone who has any idea what they are talking about.

I also love all the testimonials given from scientists where they use a featureless silhouette as a stand-in for actual photographs. Shows how much these people truly want to be married to these statements.

 

[shunyadragon]

That is what I am waiting for somebody to say
The steps of scientific process on Evolution cannot be applied:

Steps in the Scientific Process

• Step 1: Ask a question.
  
• Step 2: Do background research. ...
• Step 3: Construct a hypothesis. ...
• Step 4: Test your hypothesis by doing an experiment. ...
• Step 5: Analyze the data and draw a conclusion. ...
• Step 6: Share your results.

Step 4 and 5 can never be done.
Because it would require....

...of years
So just share your results
Have faith on them as truth science.

The science of evolution has been demonstrated and falsified beyond any reasonable doubt by the scientific methods which you dishonestly misrepresent.

The list of scientists (yuch yuch!!!) you cited is as phoney as a stack of 3 dollar bills.

 

[MJFlores]

BTW, for what it's worth, I'm really quite familiar with the CoC.

I doubt it.
But I will take your word for it.

Also, Catholic theology does very much allow Catholics to believe in a literal 6-day creation, so your abandonment of the faith was based on your not understanding that teaching.

You are right.
There were more reasons than that.

 

[sealchan]

I think it is a bit disingenuous for someone to say that the Theory of Evolution says nothing about the origin of life. Understanding ToE leads deeply into the realization that the Universe is a deeply, naturally creative phenomenon and produces amazingly adaptative systems that can respond and persist under a wide range of changes. At some point it should become obvious that just as species didn't come out of a vaccuum, their progenitors didn't either. If species show change and adaptation, then their pre-cellular underpinnings might also show this ability.

Understanding this we might, then, also look at the physical Universe again and realize that the various structures and objects we find there also have undergone a historical development and produced similar forms in a wide variety of expressions of their shared underlying physical "media". This includes stars, galaxies and planets.

 

[MJFlores]

Read an organic chemistry text...life is not an atom but a complex, dynamic organization of atoms forming molecules forming structures interacting in an environment involving auto-catalytic and self-reproducing chains of interaction.

So we have in the realm of chemistry chains of chemical interactions taking place in such a way as to introduce positive feedback loops (runaway reactions). Then we have molecules that act as catalysts which influence the rate of other reactions. This produces naturally occurring molecular interactions which can effectively control each other due to changes in recent activity or environmental factors. Organic molecules are simply those molecules which exhibit these capabilities in the greatest abundance and as a result became the source ground for the processes which take place inside of cells which are themselves evolved out of a rich environment of pre-cellular structures containing biochemical systems of organization.

All of this is a rich ground for higher level organizations of matter to produce adaptive and locally aware closed systems of molecular and super-molecular order.

English only please

 

[Dan From Smithville]

1. Darwin "discovered" adaptation.....the ability for a single species to adapt to a changed environment. Producing new varieties in one species is not grounds for assuming what science cannot ever substantiate with its current evidence, that we all come from a common ancestor. Science assumes this with very little actual substantiated evidence.

Of course you never define what adaptation is. Probably you never will, since I have no reason to consider that you understand what it is.

Darwin formulated an explanation for the differences and similarities he observed in living things, and for the evidence of change that he saw in the fossil record. He developed a mechanism for that change.

The creation account links all of the natural world because we are all made out of the same basic materials....we all breathe the same air, and ingest food, drink water, and process it to maintain our life. Life is designed to be self-regenerating with little or no assistance from its Creator.

And the evidence indicates that natural processes in this shared environment could result in the relationships and diversity of life that we see and that the bulk of the evidence is not only unexplained by creation, is not mentioned at all in any account of creation.

Giving the humans unique characteristics to enable them to act as the Creator's representatives in caring for God's creation does not make us superior....it just gives us greater responsibility and accountability.

Then why do you shirk your responsibility and accountability to explain yourself and support your explanations?

We demonstrate every day that we can barely take care of ourselves, let alone our planet and its other inhabitants.

What does this have to do with the validity of a scientific theory or that you belief trumps everything and your belief is the default?

But none of it was planned .....it all just happened by accident.....how many fortunate flukes does it take to run out of zeros in the statistics? What you have written there screams evidence for intelligent design and guidance for the whole process.There are no fortunate flukes in your scenario.

You are going to be hard pressed to convince anyone that your near zero understanding of science is supported by a real understanding of statistics.

Where is your evidence of all this screaming?

They are the only explanations for those who are spiritually blind IMO. If there is no Creator whose immense power created this Universe, then extinction is all we can look forward to.....OTOH if there is a Creator who had a purpose in our being here, then we can count on the fact that he did not create any of it for nothing and we will see his hand in matters before we mess things up completely.

You can believe whatever you want, but that belief is not evidence that can be used to undermine science and it has not. Another person with another belief making claims without evidence is no different than you are.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

I don't want to use math and calculus but if you insist...

Don't ask me for follow up questions because I did not do the math.
They did.

This means absolutely nothing. You know what the specific value "settings" of the universe are evidence for? That the universe operates within the confines of these specific values. That's it. That's all you can claim knowledge of once you have observed the "laws" or "rules" in play within the universe. Putting anything else on top of it is pure make-believe.

 

[MJFlores]

Unless you were beamed down as an alien we are all related by blood as well as related to all the life on earth.




The problem is Fundi Creationists, like you, they dishonestly misused math and science to justify a religious agenda ignoring sound science.




Yes you have the problem with this having a religious agenda.



Simply yes, over a period of billions of years determined by the objective verifiable evidence.

That is what Baha'i Faith teaches about creation? Oh evolution.
Evolution is sound science...sure whatever you say.
Tested and proven...I bet.