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Post by TheEaterofWorlds on Sept 3, 2004 22:57:40 GMT -5
Joking has no place in a serious debate, especially when it's unclear that you are joking.
Also, I adore how quick everyone is to point out that carbon dating is flawed, when I admited it was myself.
There are many, many, many different ways to date fossils. the great thing is, while there is a margin of error in any method, when you compile the results together, they agree with each other.
I'd like to point to a fantastic article: 'Radiometric Dating: a Christian Perspective'. It details a great many methods of dating fossils. (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html)
I believe that religion and science only seem to stand against each other. Evolution only appears to go against God because we do not yet understand it. To paraphrase, now we see but through a glass, darkly. One day when the scope of life and how we developed on this Earth is better understood by us, it will all become clear, and we can get to the next big arguement like Planetary motion was in the past. (Earth revolves around the sun and all that good stuff. The Vatican only recently admited this.) I don't understand why people assume that God's master plan would have to be simple, why we'd have to be able to understand it. God is eneffable, any way we came to be on this Earth, God could have done it. We don't understand how it fits into the Bible, because we are stupid. The highest order of angels has six wings. Two to fly, two to cover their feet and two to cover their eyes in the presence of God. Even an angel cannot look at God. That is a being beyond comprehension. He put his message into words for us so that we can understand it. Language has flaws, because the languages of Earth were made by humans. So we look to the wording and try to dismiss what we see around us.
(My personal, flawed, and highly opininated veiw of God and science is this. I go ahead and look to science, I believe science, and figure that's just how God put it together. Am I wrong? Probably. I'm human after all.)
At any rate, since you are unable to take this debate seriously, I am unable to take your argument seriously. I will have to step out of this discussion until a more mature view is taken by the participants.
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Post by Stal on Sept 3, 2004 23:19:09 GMT -5
Joking has no place in a serious debate, especially when it's unclear that you are joking. Also, I adore how quick everyone is to point out that carbon dating is flawed, when I admited it was myself. There are many, many, many different ways to date fossils. the great thing is, while there is a margin of error in any method, when you compile the results together, they agree with each other. I'd like to point to a fantastic article: 'Radiometric Dating: a Christian Perspective'. It details a great many methods of dating fossils. (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html) I believe that religion and science only seem to stand against each other. Evolution only appears to go against God because we do not yet understand it. To paraphrase, now we see but through a glass, darkly. One day when the scope of life and how we developed on this Earth is better understood by us, it will all become clear, and we can get to the next big arguement like Planetary motion was in the past. (Earth revolves around the sun and all that good stuff. The Vatican only recently admited this.) I don't understand why people assume that God's master plan would have to be simple, why we'd have to be able to understand it. God is eneffable, any way we came to be on this Earth, God could have done it. We don't understand how it fits into the Bible, because we are stupid. The highest order of angels has six wings. Two to fly, two to cover their feet and two to cover their eyes in the presence of God. Even an angel cannot look at God. That is a being beyond comprehension. He put his message into words for us so that we can understand it. Language has flaws, because the languages of Earth were made by humans. So we look to the wording and try to dismiss what we see around us. (My personal, flawed, and highly opininated veiw of God and science is this. I go ahead and look to science, I believe science, and figure that's just how God put it together. Am I wrong? Probably. I'm human after all.) At any rate, since you are unable to take this debate seriously, I am unable to take your argument seriously. I will have to step out of this discussion until a more mature view is taken by the participants. I tend to disagree....joking (when clear) does have it's place in a serious debate. Otherwise things can get a little too intense. But that's not the point of your post...still, though. Joking provides a small effect that I can agree with in this context (as long as it's clear) |
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Post by Oily on Sept 4, 2004 9:29:56 GMT -5
Ah, the debate is slowing down again. I have to say TEOW, you debate very well ^^
I went to a party last night, so forgive my lateness…
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Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2004 9:38:48 GMT -5
I tend to disagree....joking (when clear) does have it's place in a serious debate. Otherwise things can get a little too intense. But that's not the point of your post...still, though. Joking provides a small effect that I can agree with in this context (as long as it's clear) I, personally, see joking as a sign that a person is not serious about the debate. Although, it depends on the joke. Anyways, this debate isn't over joking. Now, I have a few points to note. Stal: You contradicted yourself earlier. You said you believe in natural selection. You also said that evolution has no proof. And yet, natural selection is a major portion of evolution, if the not the biggest. Ikken: You said that you and Stal were arguing Macroevolution, and not Microevolution. Okay, that's fine. But if the other side is arguing for both of those forms of evolution, don't you think that you should, too? Otherwise, you're only debating one topic. That'd be like debating for President based on only one of that President's platforms. I don't have much more to say, except that I stand by everything I've already said. I'll only be able to repeat myself now (unless I magically remember every detail from my Biology book). |
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Post by Stal on Sept 4, 2004 12:46:08 GMT -5
I, personally, see joking as a sign that a person is not serious about the debate. Although, it depends on the joke. Anyways, this debate isn't over joking. Now, I have a few points to note. Stal: You contradicted yourself earlier. You said you believe in natural selection. You also said that evolution has no proof. And yet, natural selection is a major portion of evolution, if the not the biggest. Ikken: You said that you and Stal were arguing Macroevolution, and not Microevolution. Okay, that's fine. But if the other side is arguing for both of those forms of evolution, don't you think that you should, too? Otherwise, you're only debating one topic. That'd be like debating for President based on only one of that President's platforms. I don't have much more to say, except that I stand by everything I've already said. I'll only be able to repeat myself now (unless I magically remember every detail from my Biology book). No, you just put way too much on the outcomes of natural selection. To me, it's very minor changes and "mutations" within a person. But so minor that it's really nothing. Not only that, but you guys act as if passing it on to offspring is automatic. Come on. We all did Pundit Squares (Or was it Punnet? Pundent? I can never remember). And then the chance of their offspring passing it on and so forth...you can't assume it'll happen. As well, in all the times that Humans have been studying one another's anatomy, there's been no changes that are major. Minor things like height, yeah. Then of course the harmful mutations and outcomes of some children. But there's never been anything remotely close to the greatness you all ascribe to Natural Selection throughout all this time. Everything has remained the same. So it's not a contradiction at all, Comedian, if you actually know to what level Natural Selection is happening and then the level you all ascribe to it. As for the joking, I don't want to make this a major issue, but yeah. It depends on the joke, too. Some jokes are inappropriate but the ability to work a bit of humor in shows that the writer also cares about audience. Doesn't mean he's serious or not. You can tell that by the content of the arguments. Not by whether there's a sense of humor or not. |
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Post by Stal on Sept 4, 2004 12:47:42 GMT -5
Wait 20 000 years and I'll go and check back on those hermit crabs that may be splitting into two different species ^^ I think by then the two of us will have had this nice meal with God asking Him all the questions we have. And after that, the hermit crabs are a moot point.  |
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Post by Ikkin on Sept 4, 2004 13:36:04 GMT -5
Joking has no place in a serious debate, especially when it's unclear that you are joking. Also, I adore how quick everyone is to point out that carbon dating is flawed, when I admited it was myself. There are many, many, many different ways to date fossils. the great thing is, while there is a margin of error in any method, when you compile the results together, they agree with each other. I'd like to point to a fantastic article: 'Radiometric Dating: a Christian Perspective'. It details a great many methods of dating fossils. (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html) I believe that religion and science only seem to stand against each other. Evolution only appears to go against God because we do not yet understand it. To paraphrase, now we see but through a glass, darkly. One day when the scope of life and how we developed on this Earth is better understood by us, it will all become clear, and we can get to the next big arguement like Planetary motion was in the past. (Earth revolves around the sun and all that good stuff. The Vatican only recently admited this.) I don't understand why people assume that God's master plan would have to be simple, why we'd have to be able to understand it. God is eneffable, any way we came to be on this Earth, God could have done it. We don't understand how it fits into the Bible, because we are stupid. The highest order of angels has six wings. Two to fly, two to cover their feet and two to cover their eyes in the presence of God. Even an angel cannot look at God. That is a being beyond comprehension. He put his message into words for us so that we can understand it. Language has flaws, because the languages of Earth were made by humans. So we look to the wording and try to dismiss what we see around us. (My personal, flawed, and highly opininated veiw of God and science is this. I go ahead and look to science, I believe science, and figure that's just how God put it together. Am I wrong? Probably. I'm human after all.) At any rate, since you are unable to take this debate seriously, I am unable to take your argument seriously. I will have to step out of this discussion until a more mature view is taken by the participants. I'm sorry about the joking, and I promise I won't do it again. Anyway, my quotes were not just about Carbon 14 dating, but about all types of dating (except the ones that specifically mentioned C-14, of course) One of the major problems in using the internet as a resource is that you can never be sure what is true, false, or misleading, and, from your link, it seems that I was mislead. This was proof only for Young Earth, anyway, and it would not hurt Old Earth, as you mentioned. There is always the fact that this is the apparant age- for all we know, the universe could have been created already aged, as Adam was created a fully-grown human. Just a possibility. |
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Post by mushroom on Sept 4, 2004 18:28:42 GMT -5
School started a couple of weeks ago for me, and our first band competition is at the end of the month, so I really don't have much time to debate anymore--it takes me a long time to articulate my arguments--and I probably won't be posting on this debate again for a while unless I see something I really want to comment on. There are a few more things I want to point out, though: A theory is separate from a law--it isn't a matter of proof or its lack. A law is a statement of behavior (under x conditions, y will always occur). A theory is an explanation of that behavior. Either a theory or a law can be disproven (if under x conditions, z occurs, the law is invalid--that's what happened to Newton's law of gravitation with Mercury's orbit). A disproof of evolution is not a proof of creation (there's always just plain not knowing). A proof of creation is not a proof of Biblical creation (don't forget the Greek creation story, etc.). A proof of Biblical creation is not a proof of Biblical infalliability or even general Biblical accuracy. It doesn't really make sense to say that a favorable mutation may not be passed on. That's certainly a possibility, of course, but there's a fifty-fifty chance for each altered gene per offspring; most animals have more than one offspring, and so a good chance of passing on any given gene at least once. (For two offspring, the chances are one in four that the gene will *not* be passed on. For ten, it's one in twenty. For millions, it's tiny.) Also, the chances are infintesimal in asexual reproduction--that would require the gene just mutated to mutate again before the organism reproduces. Of course, in sexual reproduction, the mutation may not be expressed if it isn't dominant--but it will remain in the population. Taxonomy: the sequence is: Kingdom (Animalia) Phylum (Chordata: vertebrates, lancelets, tunicates) Class (Mammalia) Order (Primates: lemurs, tree shrews, monkeys, apes, etc.) Family (Hominidae: apes) Genus ( Homo: humans, a few extinct other species), Species ( Homo sapiens) Other groupings are sometimes useful, such as subphyla or supergenera. Vertebrates, for example, is a subphylum containing the four classes of fish (one extinct, one rare, and two still common) and the four classes of terrestrial and semiterrestrial vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians). This is from a book by mathematician Emil Borel, quoted from www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/borelfaq.html, regarding the probability of abiogenesis. |
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Post by althechia on Sept 6, 2004 1:19:47 GMT -5
I'd be massively surprised to see evolution in human beings in my lifetime. You see, humans are a species that are relatively new to the planet. We're only a couple thousand years old. It would take a couple thousand more years to see any dramatic difference to, say, make a new subspecies, and even longer for a new species entirely to emerge. It'll be so normal, however, that we really won't seem to notice.
According to evolution, life is older than we can possibly comprehend. Singular-cell organisms tooks perhaps millions of years just to develop stomachs. Dinosaurs existed over (buzzdate!) 65 million years ago. The earth itself is a lot more than twice this number. Isn't it fun to think that we're just a tiny little zit on the vast possibilities that this little planet carries for intelligent life in the future? ;D
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Post by Ikkin on Sept 6, 2004 15:59:30 GMT -5
I, personally, see joking as a sign that a person is not serious about the debate. Although, it depends on the joke. Anyways, this debate isn't over joking. Now, I have a few points to note. Stal: You contradicted yourself earlier. You said you believe in natural selection. You also said that evolution has no proof. And yet, natural selection is a major portion of evolution, if the not the biggest. Ikken: You said that you and Stal were arguing Macroevolution, and not Microevolution. Okay, that's fine. But if the other side is arguing for both of those forms of evolution, don't you think that you should, too? Otherwise, you're only debating one topic. That'd be like debating for President based on only one of that President's platforms. I don't have much more to say, except that I stand by everything I've already said. I'll only be able to repeat myself now (unless I magically remember every detail from my Biology book). Macroevolution and microevolution are much farther apart than you seem to be making them. Microevolution says that organisms change genetically. Macroevolution, if you are going from the first living creatures to humans, involves an INCREASE IN INFORMATION. Change within species, or maybe even genuses (genii?) would be considered with this. This is all that has been proven. There has never been a case in which an organism gained information, as judged by number of genes. It has been predicted that life could arise with as little as 300 genes, while human cells have 80,000 genes. If life could arise from abiogenesis, it would most definitely be close to this number, just by probability. Has an organism ever been shown to have a gain in the number of genes it has? Has it ever been shown to pass it on? Would there be any reason for this to help the organism? Or would it get selected out? If this cannot be proven, Macroevolution cannot be proven, despite all the evidence in the world for Microevolution. We can believe in the process that is said to make up a theory without believing in the theory itself. Parts of the theory cannot be evidence if they cannot provide for all the components of the theory, or if they all don't fit together (if natural selection got rid of increased gene organisms, even if there were such organisms, they couldn't be used for proof) and not only does Microevolution not provide for an increase in genes, but there is no proof that an increase of genes by itself would be helpful to the organism. |
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Post by Ikkin on Sept 6, 2004 17:44:48 GMT -5
School started a couple of weeks ago for me, and our first band competition is at the end of the month, so I really don't have much time to debate anymore--it takes me a long time to articulate my arguments--and I probably won't be posting on this debate again for a while unless I see something I really want to comment on. There are a few more things I want to point out, though: A theory is separate from a law--it isn't a matter of proof or its lack. A law is a statement of behavior (under x conditions, y will always occur). A theory is an explanation of that behavior. Either a theory or a law can be disproven (if under x conditions, z occurs, the law is invalid--that's what happened to Newton's law of gravitation with Mercury's orbit). A disproof of evolution is not a proof of creation (there's always just plain not knowing). A proof of creation is not a proof of Biblical creation (don't forget the Greek creation story, etc.). A proof of Biblical creation is not a proof of Biblical infalliability or even general Biblical accuracy. It doesn't really make sense to say that a favorable mutation may not be passed on. That's certainly a possibility, of course, but there's a fifty-fifty chance for each altered gene per offspring; most animals have more than one offspring, and so a good chance of passing on any given gene at least once. (For two offspring, the chances are one in four that the gene will *not* be passed on. For ten, it's one in twenty. For millions, it's tiny.) Also, the chances are infintesimal in asexual reproduction--that would require the gene just mutated to mutate again before the organism reproduces. Of course, in sexual reproduction, the mutation may not be expressed if it isn't dominant--but it will remain in the population. Taxonomy: the sequence is: Kingdom (Animalia) Phylum (Chordata: vertebrates, lancelets, tunicates) Class (Mammalia) Order (Primates: lemurs, tree shrews, monkeys, apes, etc.) Family (Hominidae: apes) Genus ( Homo: humans, a few extinct other species), Species ( Homo sapiens) Other groupings are sometimes useful, such as subphyla or supergenera. Vertebrates, for example, is a subphylum containing the four classes of fish (one extinct, one rare, and two still common) and the four classes of terrestrial and semiterrestrial vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians). This is from a book by mathematician Emil Borel, quoted from www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/borelfaq.html, regarding the probability of abiogenesis. Thanks for that information! It seems that I was wrong about the theory/law thing (though I'm pretty sure I have school to blame for that...) and I had been confused about the taxonomy stuff, too (that's where trying to remember stuff from memory gets me) I understand that disproof of evolution does not equal proof of creation and so forth, but as there are few other notable ideas about where life came from and such, a disproof of evolution would be good for creationist theory. Speaking of theories, as theories seem to be explanations of laws, then what kind of law would evolution be supporting? What exactly does the theory of evolution state? (in the technical meaning of the word theory, not the popular meaning) With the probability argument, there has been no evidence of a force that would make amino acids form themselves into a chain of left-handed molecules that would be viable for life. All evidence points to random chance being the way the amino acids would come together in a lifeless world. The passage quoted seems to underestimate the complexity of even a single-celled organism, which, while simple compared to a human, is still incredibly complex. A crystal would be no comparison- crystals do contain some "information," but it is simple and repetitive- think a book filled with the words "I love you," over and over again, against a well crafted, 300 word essay. Not much of a comparison. |
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Post by mushroom on Sept 12, 2004 16:34:08 GMT -5
Speaking of theories, as theories seem to be explanations of laws, then what kind of law would evolution be supporting? What exactly does the theory of evolution state? (in the technical meaning of the word theory, not the popular meaning) With the probability argument, there has been no evidence of a force that would make amino acids form themselves into a chain of left-handed molecules that would be viable for life. All evidence points to random chance being the way the amino acids would come together in a lifeless world. The passage quoted seems to underestimate the complexity of even a single-celled organism, which, while simple compared to a human, is still incredibly complex. A crystal would be no comparison- crystals do contain some "information," but it is simple and repetitive- think a book filled with the words "I love you," over and over again, against a well crafted, 300 word essay. Not much of a comparison. Sorry, that was stated incorrectly. A theory isn't necessarily an explanation of any law, just an explanation of a collection of observations. Evolution explains, or is supposed to explain, quite a few things, such as the fossil record and the degrees of similarity between living organisms. *shrugs* Evolution just states that species evolve and change over time. Today it's generally accepted that this evolution occurs because changes in the genetic makeup of organisms enable some organisms to survive longer than others and produce more offspring. Because this organism and the offspring inheriting the trait are better able to survive and produce offspring, after many generations the organisms with the helpful trait far outnumber the organisms without, and the unhelpful traits are nearly eliminated from the gene pool of the species. Also, sometimes groups of a species are separated and unable to interbreed (for example, they may end up across an ocean as a result of continental drift), and the different groups face different pressures; what is helpful in Group A may be deadly (and quickly eliminated) in Group B, and a mutation arising in Group B may never occur in Group A. After many generations the groups become too different to interbreed even if brought together and are, therefore, two different species. (That's the basic idea, anyway. *shrugs*) I was under the impression that the mathematician was stating that we just don't know all the variables involved and can't possibly calculate the probability involved. Simply looking at the structure of a crystal, it would seem unlikely that the crystal would form by chance--but given that various forces favor the formation of a crystal, it's very likely. Unless we take into account the forces involved, which we don't know enough about with abiogenesis, any probability we calculate is not likely to be accurate. |
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If I found conclusive proof against evolution, I go straight to the top science journals and try to get it in. Same if I found conclusive proof for.
