Evolution or Creation?

[Andro Man]

Lucky for us, the Fundamentalists are on guard and protecting us with their forward-looking, objective views making the world safe for all mankind.

It's not an either/or situation, more like more of the same.....
Once upon a time the ' knowledgables' represented the Holy Church. The only problem with institutions is the the politiking and asslicking that creeps into it after a while....so when times change, and the previous knowledge should be refuted it gets hushed up or people get expelled.
This happened with Gallileo for his observations that contradicted the Church. But similar things happen in the 'scientific' community be it in medicin, history, etc.

How man can suddenly come into being in different parts of the world.....and that's only from what's been found. The different calimities that have plagued the earth (supervolcanos, polar shifts, etc), whose to say there haven't been civilisations before that were as advanced lost under the oceans?how would you know?
If homo sapiens have existed for about 200000 years why would progress not have cum sooner? See how quickly progress came about just in 5000 years(and especially the last 300)

Anyways I think you can dismiss a lot of the evolution theory without being dismissed as a religious fundamentalist(like ppl before were burned on the stake for saying earth wasn't the centre of the universe; believer or witch)

 

[Andro Man]

Fittest, as in most fit for purpose. It's a no brainer really.?

ah purpose....no man could ever say what the purpose is, the sheer randomness(for man) doesn't permit that....no, to me 'survival of the fittest' implies knowing what is best and being able to apply it....like the nazis wiping out the untermenschen coz they were ubermenschen.

Not something random like 100 s of millions of years of dinosaurs(no dinosaur sapiens evolution strangely enough) getting wiped out by meteorites changing things on earth

 

[fortiesfun]

It's not an either/or situation, more like more of the same.....
Once upon a time the ' knowledgables' represented the Holy Church. The only problem with institutions is the the politiking and asslicking that creeps into it after a while....so when times change, and the previous knowledge should be refuted it gets hushed up or people get expelled. But similar things happen in the 'scientific' community be it in medicin, history, etc.

Examples of the latter?

 

[HazelGod]

Science also does a great job of explaining "what", "when", "where", and "how"...but has a really hard time explaining the "who" and "why". I'm glad you know that the speed of light is 3.86x10^6 k/s (that's probably wrong...I haven't been in physics in so long) and that when it hits at this perfect distance between the Earth and the Sun that plants grow. But "why" does it? "Who" put it in place. Science has no answers for that.

:tongue:
An interesting fusion of units, my man! C is roughly 3.0x10^6 km/s, or 1.86x10^6 miles/s.

As to your question of "why," the answer is gravity, not god. Gravity is the first link in the causality chain for everything in the universe in scales above the subatomic. Ironically, within the realm of quantum mechanics, gravity is the least influential of the elemental forces in existence.

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

As to your question of "why," the answer is gravity, not god. Gravity is the first link in the causality chain for everything in the universe in scales above the subatomic. Ironically, within the realm of quantum mechanics, gravity is the least influential of the elemental forces in existence.

The answer is gravity?
Well, I don't believe in god, but I don't believe in any answers to the question why, on this level of inquiry, either.
Some questions we can't presume to answer.

 

[chico8]

It's a model for understanding how something works, and it's a model which has been validated over and over and over again.

In the same way that gravity is "only a theory", evolution is "only a theory", but it's a theory that has been so well-tested that it deserves the same level of acceptance as gravity.

I agree.

There's simply too much hard evidence not to take evolution as fact. I don't know that all assumptions about evolution are factual but there's simply no denying that life evolves.

 

[playainda336]

As to your question of "why," the answer is gravity, not god. Gravity is the first link in the causality chain for everything in the universe in scales above the subatomic. Ironically, within the realm of quantum mechanics, gravity is the least influential of the elemental forces in existence.

Using "gravity" as an explanation is like using a word to define a word.

Gravity is apart of the design. It cannot define the design or be the causing force. What places all this in motion and why?

It still doesn't explain a thing.

 

[mephistopheles]

perhaps you believe evolution cannots be proven to the 100% mark, maybe, maybe not... the point is that evolution has a lot more proof behind it than creationism, and is much more logical.

 

[Love-it]

I just remembered one christians belief that god created adam, eve and earth, then at some point man bred with the primates and here we are.

 

[mephistopheles]

then at some point man bred with the primates and here we are.

And because of that we have AIDS too.

 

[Drifterwood]

Gravity you say - that sounds serious.

Why does there have to be a why? What is wrong with what is being what is?

 

[LeeEJ]

I hate the word "suddenly" when it's used to describe evolution.

Nobody -- and I mean nobody -- really understands the scope of even a hundred thousand years, let alone a million years' worth of a single layer of the ground.

Make dirt. Go ahead. Start with raw materials -- plants, animals, etc -- and turn it into dirt. You can't use accelerants. You can't grind them up with mortar & pestle. Just put down fifteen pounds of lawn & garden trimmings and a squirrel corpse and make it all become dirt.

Getting the picture? Imagine how LONG it's going to take for you to create, from scratch, a square foot of dirt half an inch deep. Then, after that, compact it so that it becomes stone. Maybe even settle for mere sandstone. Bada-bing! - now you have a fraction of a millimeter's worth of flaky sandstone.

That's far from the size of a layer that you'd see in the wall of the Grand Canyon, isn't it?

The biggest enemy of evolutionary theory * is our own inability to realize the kind of scale we're dealing with. You know the visualization of taking the whole of Earth's geologic history, then illustrating it all on a basketball court like a calendar, leaving all of recorded human history with a couple square inches in the bottom corner? That may be the neatest one I've seen yet, but it's still not enough.

To say that humans "suddenly appeared" is a total mistake. One million years is not "sudden". It's a hundred hundred hundreds. It's a LOT. We have recorded physical changes in modern humans in our own time; we have recorded, and publicized, changes in other animals such as newly drug-resistant bacteria. Try -- try -- to imagine how many changes can take place over all the years that we weren't around to see.

To dismiss evolution, IMO, is a cop-out. It's a way to take the quick answer -- or make one up -- versus trying to wrap one's feeble brain around geological history.

* (as much as I think it's true, it will forever remain a theory in my mind unless we invent time travel and can see it happening firsthand. It's still better than biblical myths, though.)

 

[Andro Man]

I hate the word "suddenly" when it's used to describe evolution.

Nobody -- and I mean nobody -- really understands the scope of even a hundred thousand years, let alone a million years' worth of a single layer of the ground.

Make dirt. Go ahead. Start with raw materials -- plants, animals, etc -- and turn it into dirt. You can't use accelerants. You can't grind them up with mortar & pestle. Just put down fifteen pounds of lawn & garden trimmings and a squirrel corpse and make it all become dirt.

Getting the picture? Imagine how LONG it's going to take for you to create, from scratch, a square foot of dirt half an inch deep. Then, after that, compact it so that it becomes stone. Maybe even settle for mere sandstone. Bada-bing! - now you have a fraction of a millimeter's worth of flaky sandstone.

That's far from the size of a layer that you'd see in the wall of the Grand Canyon, isn't it?

The biggest enemy of evolutionary theory * is our own inability to realize the kind of scale we're dealing with. You know the visualization of taking the whole of Earth's geologic history, then illustrating it all on a basketball court like a calendar, leaving all of recorded human history with a couple square inches in the bottom corner? That may be the neatest one I've seen yet, but it's still not enough.

To say that humans "suddenly appeared" is a total mistake. One million years is not "sudden". It's a hundred hundred hundreds. It's a LOT. We have recorded physical changes in modern humans in our own time; we have recorded, and publicized, changes in other animals such as newly drug-resistant bacteria. Try -- try -- to imagine how many changes can take place over all the years that we weren't around to see.

To dismiss evolution, IMO, is a cop-out. It's a way to take the quick answer -- or make one up -- versus trying to wrap one's feeble brain around geological history.

* (as much as I think it's true, it will forever remain a theory in my mind unless we invent time travel and can see it happening firsthand. It's still better than biblical myths, though.)

What's geology got to do with it.

Stating it happened suddenly is exactly my critique of evolution, coz on the grand scale of things what's a million years?
Look how long the dinosaurs were around for, why didn't they evolve?
How come we are not seeing monkeys turn into humans every so once in a while?

We'er talking species that 'suddenly' became a different (though related )species at a certain point in time....and suddenly coz on the cosmic scale of things it happened in less than a blink of an eye....in a certain period...and not just in africa but all over the place.

Dinosaurs on the other hand had been around for hundreds of millions of years, but somehow the change with them (if any) happened much slower.

We're not just talking slight changes in DNA, but major...not being able to reproduce with the species it so called evolved from.

And just because humans only have a vague understanding of billions./millions of years(apart from the more evolved that understand the evolutiontheory hehe)doesn't mean it's right.....just like the trend these days is to explain the vagues theories with quantum fysics (which very few understand)to give it a scientific basis....so they can say:"just coz you don't understand the fysics doesn't mean the theory isn't right"

 

[Drifterwood]

The creation myth of the bible is just one of many hundreds of recorded creation myths and of many thousands that have not survived. The genesis myth is one of the most simple, if i remember there is no other reason than god seeing that it was good (maybe god is a hedonist). Some myths are allegorical (maybe genesis is meant to be), but as I said it is rather simple and does not contain a strong spiritual element as many others do.

Buddha is supposed to have said that there is no point in humans trying to understand the whys and wherefores of creation as that was not the purpose of life and besides you would go mad or die before you got the answer. I wonder if Newton knew Buddha's thoughts.

Anyway, as far as I am aware we still can't get to the moment of creation within the big bang theory. Perhaps if we do then we may have an idea of why and what.

The why of evolution theory is simply to improve the chance of being. The why of being is a different question.

 

[Andro Man]

The creation myth of the bible is just one of many hundreds of recorded creation myths and of many thousands that have not survived. The genesis myth is one of the most simple, if i remember there is no other reason than god seeing that it was good (maybe god is a hedonist). Some myths are allegorical (maybe genesis is meant to be), but as I said it is rather simple and does not contain a strong spiritual element as many others do.

Buddha is supposed to have said that there is no point in humans trying to understand the whys and wherefores of creation as that was not the purpose of life and besides you would go mad or die before you got the answer. I wonder if Newton knew Buddha's thoughts.

Anyway, as far as I am aware we still can't get to the moment of creation within the big bang theory. Perhaps if we do then we may have an idea of why and what.

The why of evolution theory is simply to improve the chance of being. The why of being is a different question.

I'd say the why of improving the chance of being would be reproduction that isn't hermaphrodite, that needs genes from male and female to reproduce.

I'm not giving any alternatives to evolution, all I'm stating is the era it was conceived could have influenced it's content(as is the case with most ideas) and why I doubt it

 

[D_Humper E Bogart]

Well hermaphrodites are awfully rare and an interesting debate goes over their rarity, because when it comes to mass-populations of areas, those kind of critters rule, but then they all catch a similar disease and die!

Or do they?... (thinks about earthworms).

As for evolution, I do feel there are gaps involved, but then again, I find it funny that others belives the God of the Jews did it instead?

Question time...(wait for it)...so why are their muslims then? That's anti-intelligant design if I saw it from His POV.

 

[DC_DEEP]

An interesting fusion of units, my man! C is roughly 3.0x10^6 km/s, or 1.86x10^6 miles/s.

If you are going to be approximately precise, use the SI units, please!:biggrin1: 3.0x10^8 m/s.

As to your question of "why," the answer is gravity, not god. Gravity is the first link in the causality chain for everything in the universe in scales above the subatomic. Ironically, within the realm of quantum mechanics, gravity is the least influential of the elemental forces in existence.

The answer is gravity?
Well, I don't believe in god, but I don't believe in any answers to the question why, on this level of inquiry, either.
Some questions we can't presume to answer.

Well, yes, gravity is the first and primary answer to questions about "big bang" theory.

perhaps you believe evolution cannots be proven to the 100% mark, maybe, maybe not... the point is that evolution has a lot more proof behind it than creationism, and is much more logical.

And before Lavoisier, scientists thought they had enough proof to state their views as fact; from Lavoisier to Menedleev, the same; from Mendeleev to Bohr, the same. My point is that, at any given time in history, people look at the available information, and make "conclusive" determinations as fact, but as more information becomes available, they discover that those determinations are either inaccurate or completely false. The phlogiston theory, in its time, was considered to be very logical, and was accepted as fact. It's easy for us to look back and say, "well, our methods are much more sophisticated than theirs were; we now know the absolute truth." But who's to say that in another 200 years, scientists won't be saying the same things about our "conclusions" of evolution?

*(Interesting side note: the hard-core creationists have had the same explanation, without modification and without any proof other than the genesis story, for several thousands of years. The evolution theorists at least hone their theories as new information becomes available.)

I still say neither side should be claiming their views as "incontrovertible fact."

 

[D_Gunther Snotpole]

Well, yes, gravity is the first and primary answer to questions about "big bang" theory.

Yes, but is it an answer to Why?
You could say, Well, certain things happened because there is this force.
But why is there that force?
You get an infinite regress, don't you?
So you can't reach a bedrock answer to Why.

 

[DC_DEEP]

Yes, but is it an answer to Why?
You could say, Well, certain things happened because there is this force.
But why is there that force?
You get an infinite regress, don't you?
So you can't reach a bedrock answer to Why.

Yes, you do. The only answer to "why" in that respect would have to be a circular logic.

 

[fortiesfun]

Stating it happened suddenly is exactly my critique of evolution, coz on the grand scale of things what's a million years?
Look how long the dinosaurs were around for, why didn't they evolve?

But, of course, they did. Not all dinosaurs existed simultaneously. In fact, part of the clearest evidence for evolution is that we can see how dinosaurs started from very small creatures, eventually turned into mega-fauna, branched into many directions, slowly changed to fit new ecological niches, and eventually moved back towards small as they developed into their evolutionary successors, birds.

How come we are not seeing monkeys turn into humans every so once in a while?

That would be the "sudden" change that you started out critiquing. If evolution worked by instantaneous change then you would have monkeys giving birth to the occasional human, but that is precisely how it DOESN'T work.

We'er talking species that 'suddenly' became a different (though related )species at a certain point in time....and suddenly coz on the cosmic scale of things it happened in less than a blink of an eye....in a certain period...and not just in africa but all over the place.

No, we're not. Without suggesting that one must believe evolution theory, I would say that you have to understand it a lot better before you can offer a reason for not believing it.

Dinosaurs on the other hand had been around for hundreds of millions of years, but somehow the change with them (if any) happened much slower.

Just dead, dead, wrong. Dinosaurs changed over time just like all other species. This is, I am afraid, simply a case of your not knowing very much about dinosaurs.

We're not just talking slight changes in DNA, but major...not being able to reproduce with the species it so called evolved from.

It takes remarkably little DNA drift to separate species. Humans differ from chimpanzees and bonoboes by less than 4% of our total DNA, but that is an insuperable barrier. There are even more closely related species, some with less than 1% difference, that are already reproductively separated.

And just because humans only have a vague understanding of billions./millions of years(apart from the more evolved that understand the evolutiontheory hehe)doesn't mean it's right.....just like the trend these days is to explain the vagues theories with quantum fysics (which very few understand)to give it a scientific basis....so they can say:"just coz you don't understand the fysics doesn't mean the theory isn't right"

Something sort of funny about claiming superior knowledge of "fysics." The irony abounds.