Origins

[Mechagodzilla]

I'm too lazy to do anything but skim-read the arguments any more (I think I'll leave it to Mecha to argue the point) but isn't that exactly the assumption evolution DOESN'T make?

Yep, he's made another straw man argument.

No-one I know of made such a claim, and it definitely wasn't me.

I actually explicitly stated that that evolution is a fluid and continuous series of minute improvements.
(And, also basically proved that they occur.)


All the guy is doing is going "Ya well my argument is flawed but it's equally flawed as yours so nurr."
And then invents those flaws through straw men.

All

while

quoting

every

mundane

sentence.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

There's no need for a creationist argument, evolution can be Christianity compatible. The end.

Like Angry Lawyer said, it's been coded.

YOU'RE WINNER!

-Angry Lawyer

 

[W4E]

hmm not sure.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

Christianity accepting evolution is just a back pedal.

As it begins to accept more and more scientific values over past beliefs it will eventually become obsolete.

Hence ID. They're waging a war on logic, which is the church-state's mortal enemy.

Angry Lawya's got it right though. Religion and logic needn't be mutually exclusive. You just need to sit down and accept that anything pertaining to a god is inherently faith, and thus has no place being shoehorned into secular affairs that are meant to be enjoyed by all.

Do you really think god would enjoy being 'proven' to the masses through distribution of misconceptions and pseudo-science?
So if you're going to prove god, I think he'd want a solid point.
Otherwise, it sounds to me like a case of false prophets.

 

[JCampbell]

It is a verified fact that animals adapt, over generations, to their environments.
You've accepted this as fact already.

Correct.

It's a verified fact that any population of animals can split into two groups and enter seperate environments.
Surely you accept this a fact.

Correct.

Therefore it is a fact that one group of similar animals can split into two groups and, over time, become dissimilar.

Since this has never been demonstrated on the scale that you propose (ie goo to you), and since you have given no sources to support this "fact" of macroevolution, your point stands on nothing. You simply extrapolate the given evidence of microevolution and make a huge leap of faith to assume that this is how all species have formed.

This is the correct concept of speciation.

Speciation is a fact, and it shows that new animals can evolve from old.

It's shown how existing animals can adapt in their environment. And since there is no documented case of one animal (with a certain genetic composition) increasing its total genetic content (via new and unique genetic material) and becoming a new animal, you can not make the assumption that life of here arose this way.

Now, you can disprove this straight away by simply defining god's matrixes, but you've repeatedly shown (and now you've admitted) that you cannot.
Since this is the most fundamental element of your argument, you cannot simultaneously say that your failure to define it does not matter.

Since you assume that because I can not define that matrixes that they are not define-able, I suggest you do some reading on baraminology. They do the topic far better justice than the admittedly sparse explanation I gave it.

It's simple logic.
Suppose there are two nucleotide sequences A and B. If some particular mutation X can transform sequence A into sequence B, there is another particular mutation Y which can transform sequence B into sequence A. If mutation X is one which subtracts information from a sequence, it follows that sequence A must contain more information than sequence B -- and mutation Y must, therefore, be one which adds information to a sequence.

Easy to deduce into A and B and X and Y, but hardly proven. Again, where are the sources?

Yours is also a straw man argument. No-one has claimed that entirely new features appear from nowhere.

You have! The fossil record also indicates it, as the "Cambrian Explosion" attempts to explain. For a single celled organism to transform into a human requires the addition of new features.

Evolution follows the idea that basically all changes appear through minor modifications of pre-existing features.
This leads to an improvement called speciation, and we've established it here as a fact.

At least you admit that it's modification to preexisting features. Somehow, you still can't account for how these features got there in the first place.

Speciation is based on beneficial mutations to pre-existing features, which are also shown to occur.

A general overlook of beneficial mutation.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB101.html
Beneficial mutations in humans.
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoHumBenMutations.html
Beneficial mutation in algae
http://www.science-writer.co.uk/award_winners/16-19_years/2002/winner.html
Polyploidization (this is a big one)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyploid

It is possible for a beneficial mutation to occur without an increase in genetic information. Bacteria developing resistance to certain antibiotics is a good example.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/0408lab_evolution.asp

But you needn't read those links because you've already agreed that speciation occurs.

So I guess this is goodbye?

Hardly.

Did you just call some of your own words mundane? If so, keep them out, as I will contunie to debate point-to-point style for as long as this goes on.

 

[Sulkdodds]

You have! The fossil record also indicates it, as the "Cambrian Explosion" attempts to explain. For a single celled organism to transform into a human requires the addition of new features.

No he hasn't. He's claimed that small changes eventually add up, which they do. It's not implausible at all. The genetic material isn't just coming from nowhere.

 

[Kmack]

No he hasn't. He's claimed that small changes eventually add up, which they do. It's not implausible at all. The genetic material isn't just coming from nowhere.

caught it before i did >.<

but i second this

 

[staticprimer]

You know, I always wondered what it must feel like to beat my head against a brick wall. This is as close as I have ever gotten.

 

[Jintor]

Out of intrest, what is the buddhist outlook on all this? I note that we don't have a creation myth (well, we do, but it's of buddhism).

 

[Mechagodzilla]

Why are you continually seperating macro and micro evolution?

They are the same process over different scales of time.
It is utterly irrational to accept one and not another without proof of your matrices.

Speciation exists. Speciation continues to exist every day of your miserable life and has existed for the entire span of human history. It has existed long before you were born and it will exist long after you die.

Now, what do you have saying that this, by all evidence, constant process suddenly began with a magic menagerie of X instant animals at approximately RANDOM GUESS DATE B.C. in the area of BULLSHIT, IOWA?

The only reason to believe in your creationism is your assumption of matrices.
The only reason to believe in your matrices is the assumption of your creationism.
This line of 'reasoning' is called CIRCULAR LOGIC.

Let's do the circular logic test on evolution, shall we?

The only reason to believe in evolution is the assumption of speciation.
The only reason to believe in speciation is THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATION AND HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

So if you're going to claim that magic created all the animals on Earth in matrices, you had better damn well have proof of magic or proof of matrices or both.

You have proof of NEITHER.

Evolution theory is just speciation extrapolated backwards.

Your matrices are speciation extrapolated backwards into a big red wall of ghosts.
You assume the wall exists based on a god you assume to exist who uses magic you assume to exist to create an assumedly instant supply of animals that you assume managed to skip over the developmental stages of birth thanks to the assumed magic.

Notice the word ASSUME?

This is summed up by an extremely simple MS Paint chart:

http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/6868/asimplechart5bd.gif

You have provided one good bit of evidence against evolution though:
The fact that after all these millions upon millions of years of subtle improvements, then thousands of years of development in scientific process, all we have are people like you throwing it away for a land of make-believe where the world is flat and everything is so easy to understand. Because everything you can't understand must be magic and ghosts.

 

[short recoil]

lol, owned
This thread is nearing the end now.

 

[Absinthe]

I found that diagram to be ****ing hilarious.

 

[Ikerous]

"There's no need for a creationist argument, evolution can be Christianity compatible. The end."

Why the hell does everyone say that? Am i the only one who doesnt think thats true?

Christianity is based on the Bible... the Bible clearly contradicts evolution

 

[Lemonking]

all friggin fairy tails

 

[Sulkdodds]

Why the hell does everyone say that? Am i the only one who doesnt think thats true?

Apart from JCampbell, I think so.

 

[Ikerous]

Sweeet, im in the cool group then ^_^
Mind explaining how my thinking is wrong though? I'd apppreciate it

 

[Mechagodzilla]

Because if you follow a strictly literalist version of the bible, then your version of christianity is basically disproven by science. It's pretty common knowledge that the earth was not created in a week, etc.

That is why the majority of people accept that most (if not all) of the more fanciful aspects of the bible are metaphors or fiction.

That, however doesn't mean that the bible doesn't contain some historical elements or few decent morality lessons to live by.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Of course, there is no room for evolutionism if you take Genesis literally. Which I really don't think you should...

 

[Ikerous]

Because if you follow a strictly literalist version of the bible, then your version of christianity is basically disproven by science. It's pretty common knowledge that the earth was not created in a week, etc.

That is why most people accept the most (if not all) of the more fanciful aspects of the bible as metaphors or fiction.

That, however doesn't mean that the bible doesn't contain historical elements or few decent morality lessons to live by.

Every christian i know (My whole family, my church and my friends) accept the Bible as literal fact... :/
Perhaps thats the root of my confusion

"It's pretty common knowledge that the earth was not created in a week"
Not to creationists

I've actually never met a Christian in real life that believed the stories were just metaphors :/
So it can't be as common as you think

 

[Sulkdodds]

Look, I know it didn't happen because I WAS THERE.

If you find Genesis literally believable, do you find that believable?

 

[Ikerous]

Look, I know it didn't happen because I WAS THERE.

If you find Genesis literally believable, do you find that believable?

No.. because its perfectly possible for an omnipotent god to create a planet in under a week.
It however isn't possible for you to have been there

 

[Sulkdodds]

AND HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?

I'm not really arguing the point, but I certainly think Genesis sounds far more like a metaphor than a factual account of real events.

 

[CptStern]

No.. because its perfectly possible for an omnipotent god to create a planet in a week.
It however isn't possible for you to have been there

why a week? why not instantly? he's omnipotent he can do anything ..right? ...why a week? ..and what's a week? if there's no sun to judge how long a day is how would they know how long it took?

 

[Mechagodzilla]

I've actually never met a Christian in real life that believed the stories were just metaphors :/
So it can't be as common as you think

I said the majority of people in general. Non-christians outnumber christians, and not all christians are literalists.

An omnipotent god can do anything. Apparently he even went so far as to create an entire geological history of Earth that erased all trace of everything he'd done.

You might say genesis is non-canon to reality.

 

[short recoil]

The thing that pisses me of about it is people who try and argue a spiritual/god side to it can just use "it's beyond physics" which is rather annoying.

I mean for god to be able to create the world in 7 days his intellect would mean a physical proccessor (brain) something the size of our solar system, even on a mollecular level processor.
"oh but he's magic"
Great, thats no better than ancient gods "holding up the sky", dated ideas, dated thinking.

 

[Ikerous]

why a week? why not instantly? he's omnipotent he can do anything ..right? ...why a week? ..and what's a week? if there's no sun to judge how long a day is how would they know how long it took?

Why not a week?
And if the sun suddenly stopped existing would the length of time that is a week stop existing? Of course not.
And i think god is smart enough to keep track of time w/o the sun or a watch

I said the majority of people in general.

I assumed we were talking about christians since its pretty obvious that non-christians arent going to take it literally...

 

[CptStern]

Why not a week?

if he's all powerful why wouldnt he do it instantly ...the bible says god "rested" ...well why would god have to "rest"?

And if the sun suddenly stopped existing would the length of time that is a week stop existing? Of course not.

but that doesnt pan out because we understood time before the sun ceased to exist

And i think god is smart enough to keep track of time w/o the sun or a watch

...then why would he need 6 days? again ...what's a day if there's no sun?

 

[Mechagodzilla]

Right, well this is going nowhere.

Since we're discussing what omnipotent god may have done, I posit that he wrote the bible as a total punk-out to test how much nonsense people can swallow.

I also posit that god sent his army of unicorn-piloted starcruisers to defeat the original earth, and then sent in a 'nega-earth' from the backwards dimension to replace it.
Luckily, we have grown accustomed to backwardsness in the intervening years.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Handy, that.

 

[Angry Lawyer]

Just as food for thought, and something that keeps me awake at night.

If God doesn't exist for the sole reason that something had to have made him, because of cause and effect violations...
Then what came before the big bang? And before that? And before that?

There's always a "Before that". Logic doesn't quite work as well as we believe it to.

Of course, I believe in the Big Bang and the like. Just, God went and set up all of the formulae that caused our universe to come into being, and after that (barring Jesus) hasn't really touched us on Earth. Lots of other species in our infinite Universe need their own Jesuses, after all. We can't be the centre of attention all the time

-Angry Lawyer

 

[Ikerous]

Ill try and explain better this time

Lets say you put a watch on and go back in time before the sun existed. If you use your watch to record time, is it possible to spend one week reading a book? Clearly it is, time doesnt stop cuz theres no sun.

Now note that god is smarter than a watch, and that he has knowledge of the future and would obviously want to relate the creation story in a way we'd understand...

make sense? :/

 

[Angry Lawyer]

The whole "created in a week" thing is a metaphor. The universe probably was created instantaneously, because time didn't exist before it was created. However, the formation of everything inside to took ages.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[CptStern]

Ill try and explain better this time

Lets say you put a watch on and go back in time before the sun existed. If you use your watch to record time, is it possible to spend one week reading a book?

Now note that god is smarter than a watch, and that he has knowledge of the future and would obviously want to relate the creation story in a way we'd understand...

And god rested on the seventh day as an example to what we should do

.........so now you're saying that the actual creation of the universe may not have happen as it is written in the bible? ...it's just far too speculative to ever take seriously ...it's right back to the same "well god works in mysterious ways, how do you know he just didnt make it look like that? ...he is god"

 

[Ikerous]

.........so now you're saying that the actual creation of the universe may not have happen as it is written in the bible?

Um.. no?
I was talking about you wearing a watch...

 

[Laivasse]

"There's no need for a creationist argument, evolution can be Christianity compatible. The end."

Why the hell does everyone say that? Am i the only one who doesnt think thats true?

Christianity is based on the Bible... the Bible clearly contradicts evolution

If Christianity were truly based on the Bible, then most Christians would be happy to follow principles like execution of disrespectful children, adulterous women, blah blah, and a whole host of ridiculous concepts. There are parts of the Bible that everyone seems to dismiss as a matter of course, or take as having a less than literal meaning - which is reasonable, after all why should a spiritual text be referred to like a car manual?

The only bits people seem to remember and find impossible to literally dismiss are Genesis, because it's the beginning and everyone reads that and then gives up, or the bits with Paul cussing homosexuals because, well, it's nice to have a prejudice handily backed up like that.

One thing to remember is that when you are arguing the case for an onmipotent creator, arguing that he can ONLY have done things in this ONE certain way is retarded. People like to say "he moves in mysterious ways", but even while saying that they don't like to entertain the concept that those ways are too mysterious to comprehend.

Like Mecha says, religion requires faith and science requires facts, and never the twain shall meet. You can try to use one to fight against the other, but it is mere ego-wanking because there can never be a conclusion in that kind of debate. I also echo his sentiment that if there is a creator, then he wouldn't be anything less than embarrassed at insecure people trying to argue his case with flawed logic and pseudo-science, as opposed to the faith that is required.

 

[CptStern]

Um.. no?
I was talking about you wearing a watch...

yes you are:

Now note that god is smarter than a watch, and that he has knowledge of the future and would obviously want to relate the creation story in a way we'd understand

 

[Ikerous]

Nope, still lost
Sry stern, im not so bright, you'll have to spell it out for me i guess
I was saying it happened in the same amount of time as the current week..

 

[Angry Lawyer]

.........so now you're saying that the actual creation of the universe may not have happen as it is written in the bible?

Well, yeah. And I always have.
The Bible's written by people, you know. It's falliable, just like this post, and any other piece of text humans write

-Angry Lawyer

 

[Angry Lawyer]

Laivasse's got my opinions down in one.

-Angry Lawyer

 

[CptStern]

Nope, still lost
Sry stern, im not so bright, you'll have to spell it out for me i guess
I was saying it happened in the same amount of time as the current week..

yes but my point is "what is the point of reference used to determine how long a week is" ...in other words ..if god is omnipotent why would he need a week to create the universe? time is immaterial in a vacuum so no judge of time could possibly exist except god himself ...so if that were the case why would he arbitarily say it took him 6 days? I understand that you think god could have just said that so that we'd understand ...but that contradicts your earlier assessment that the bible is a literal account of events that actually happened