Evolution, 2 cents.


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Originally posted by username

Yes, I said I was a Catholic, I know you christain conservatives don't think we are. I also listen to that stuff on AM radio a lot just for laughes when I travel. All modern day science is based on this so please don't argue with me anymore. The reason you get innoculated is because you don't want to wait around for humans to be immune to that specific antigen via evolution, because by the thene there will be all new ones and you would be dead.

Evolution is humans now is just about dead or close to it because we no longer mate based on servival of the fittest. Adaptations, mean nothing these days. We also allow people who should have died from disease or negative mutations to have children and still pass on those bad genes. It will eventually catch up with us, but because evolution is very slow, we have time.

I am one of those "people who should have died". I have a hereditary disese called multipleostiocomdromatosis. If it wasn't for science I would have died ten years ago. But it also has benefits. One is a very strong immune system. things that would kill almost anyone else hardly even effects me. Most drugs don't eeven effect me. I have a photographic memory. My IQ is over 200. I can read at over 1000 words a minute. This is just a few benefits. The dis-advantage is I have bone spurs all over my body. they can be very painful if not removed. I'm sorry if I got to personal but you need to research a subject before you go throwing around comments like that.

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You can't prove evolution nor creation. You have to believe in both. There is no empirical evidence to support evolution. True sciience is testable, observable and repeatable. Evolution fits none of these 3 thefore it's just a philosophy or better yet a form of secular religion. That's why neither one should be tauhgt in schools. Certainly evolution shouldn't be taught as a fact when it isn't. This is my point. Get evolution out of the schools. Why should we all pay for it ?

JimF, I suggest you do a little bit more research before making further posts. Evolution in and of itself is a proven fact, evolution of the human being from another organism is not (though it certainly appears to be likely). Many experiments have been peformed involving bacteria that have produced new types of bacteria which fully fit the criterion for a separate species. If you would like to argue the validity of human evolution, there may (or may not) be reasonable evidence you can provide. However, simply attacking the idea of evolution itself only serves to weaken your credibilty.

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Originally posted by JimF

You can't prove evolution nor creation. You have to believe in both. There is no empirical evidence to support evolution. True sciience is testable, observable and repeatable.

Laws, yes. Theories, no.

Originally posted by JimF

Certainly evolution shouldn't be taught as a fact when it isn't. This is my point. Get evolution out of the schools. Why should we all pay for it ?

Are you suggesting we should all pay to study the Bible?

Originally posted by JimF

If you don't agree then I will give you a fish and 20 yers from now I want you to evolve it into a dog. If you can do that then I will accept evolution.

And if you can show me the big man in the sky who zapped everything into being, I will accept creationism.

You still haven't referenced any reputable souce who has done any study giving any credence to creationism.

You just don't get it. Creationism is fixed. 'This is what happened because my bible told me so'. Evolution is our current best guess based on studying the world around us.

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Shadow771:

I am not against medicine and I am glad you are here today. I am trying to get the point of evolution across. I am just showing how if this was survival of the fittest, you would not be here, I had pneumonia when I was a few weeks old so hell I could not even been here if it was survival of the fittest. I just posted as an example of how evolution works.

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Found this bit of linguistic info over at www.creationscience.com. Thought this might hold some relevance:

13. Languages

Children as young as seven months understand grammatical rules.a Furthermore, studies of 36 documented cases of children raised without human contact (feral children) suggest that language is learned only from other humans. Apparently, humans do not automatically speak. If this is so, the first humans must have been endowed with a language ability. There is no evidence language evolved.b

Nonhumans communicate, but not with language. True language requires both vocabulary and grammar. With great effort, human trainers have taught some chimpanzees and gorillas to recognize a few hundred spoken words, to point to up to 200 symbols, and to make limited hand signs. These impressive feats are sometimes exaggerated by editing the animals? successes on film. (Some early demonstrations were flawed by the trainer?s hidden promptings.c)

Apes have not demonstrated these skills in the wild and do not pass their communication skills on to others. When a trained animal dies, so does the trainer?s investment. Also, trained apes have essentially no grammatical ability. Only with grammar can a few words express many ideas. No evidence exists that language evolves in nonhumans, but all human groups have language.

Did language evolve? Charles Darwin claimed it did. If so, the earliest languages should be the simplest. On the contrary, language studies show that the more ancient the language (for example: Latin, 200 B.C.; Greek, 800 B.C.; and Vedic Sanskrit, 1500 B.C.), the more complex it is with respect to syntax, case, gender, mood, voice, tense, and verb form. The best evidence indicates that languages devolve; that is, they become simpler instead of more complex.d Most linguists reject the idea that simple languages evolve into complex languages.e (See Figure 135 on page 250.)

14. Speech

Speech is uniquely human.a Humans have both a ?prewired? brain capable of learning and conveying abstract ideas, and the physical anatomy (mouth, throat, tongue, larynx, etc.) to produce a wide range of sounds. Only a few animals can approximate some human sounds.

Because the human larynx is low in the neck, a long air column lies above the vocal cords. This is important for making vowel sounds. Because apes lack this long air column, they cannot make clear vowel sounds. The back of the human tongue, extending deep into the neck, modulates the air flow to help produce consonant sounds. Apes have flat, horizontal tongues, incapable of making consonant sounds.b

Even if an ape could evolve all the physical equipment for speech, that equipment would be useless without a ?prewired? brain for learning language skills, especially grammar and vocabulary.

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my final post... maybe

Life is not possible without evolution, nobody knows how the first cell was started for sure, but without the constant changing in DNA and adaptation to diverge to specific niche, life would not be possible.

If there was no evolution, all higher living things would be killed off by basic bacteria and viruses. The common cold could be the end for all and then the basic bacteria and viruses would die because they have nothing more to live off of. Sure some niches would still be around. (the bacteria in the bottom of the ocean and others) but life as we know it would not be possible. Life demands the constant changing see that one species does not become too dominant over another causing a total crash in the biome EARTH.

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Whether you believe in evolution or not you cannot deny the opportunities for discovery its paradigm gave us. A radical new direction in which to study and view the world around us. Is it 100% correct? Odds point to no but it is our best guess right now. DNA research has exploded along with many other fields thanks to this theory. Has creationism helped us map our DNA? Have they offered up a competing theory? (You can't call creationism a theory cause there is nothing to test/disprove) Have they shown how similar different species really are? Besides spending 100% of their time debunking a theory what have they contributed?

PS: Why are they teaching 'creationism' in grade school? I was in every accelerated class and we did not even touch this until jr/high school. Why ingrain these 'truths' to children who can't understand the necessary background information?

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bah crap!

Nice, now I got your attention. Too much to read anyway. Only two things:

What we have for...

- Evolution is at least a minimum amount of indices/hints, fossils and DNA records which partly prove it.

- Creationism is no proof at all. Just a bunch of whackos running around and preaching it, and naturally that so-called inerrant bible. w00t :dead:

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tauf:

Apes have their own niche in the world and they do just fine. Evolutions goal is to be able to talk and think, it is for an organism to find its own niche where is can grow and multiply and have an posative fitness level. Again, its all about an organisms DNA finding a better way to multiply itself even more. Humans niche is very different and successfull. As you can see, human DNA will probability leave this planet someday and multiply someplace else.

DNA is very scary if you think about it, only 90% of is our genes that codes for proteins. Nobody knows what the rest is. When we leave this planet we will take other DNA (organisms) with us, futher continuing its goal of finding new niches and futher reproducing itself.

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Originally posted by Eth3l

werejag -

F off. Take your self serving, self centered closed mind ideas else where.

an open your mind you closed minded twit

do all christians act like you! angy at the world?

you seem a little off! do you get out enough? are you angy at your mom? did your preacher molest you? did your dad share his secret crossdressing lifestyle with you?

i have an open mind but not empty like yours.

to liven things up, i'll tell you a joke!!

whats the difference between a catfish and a fundementalist?

ones a scum sucking bottom dweller and they other is a fish!!!

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13. Languages

Children as young as seven months understand grammatical rules.a Furthermore, studies of 36 documented cases of children raised without human contact (feral children) suggest that language is learned only from other humans. Apparently, humans do not automatically speak. If this is so, the first humans must have been endowed with a language ability. There is no evidence language evolved.b

Notice all the different languages being spoken in past and how they became extincted. Also notice the complexity increase between past and present languages. Or are you trying to tell me there is no diff between "Uga uga!" and "Hello how are you?"

14. Speech

Speech is uniquely human.a Humans have both a ?prewired? brain capable of learning and conveying abstract ideas, and the physical anatomy (mouth, throat, tongue, larynx, etc.) to produce a wide range of sounds. Only a few animals can approximate some human sounds.

Who ever said it's prewired? Just coz the human has extended sound generation capabilities (brain capacity and larynx etc) it doesn't mean it's prewired. That's even more creationism FUD.

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Lies? Give examples, and a reason why it's a lie. At least there's stuff to back evolution up, which doesn't exist at all for creationism, which mainly bases on FUD.

And tell me WHY it's so obvious.

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JimF, I suggest you do a little bit more research before making further posts. Evolution in and of itself is a proven fact, evolution of the human being from another organism is not (though it certainly appears to be likely). Many experiments have been peformed involving bacteria that have produced new types of bacteria which fully fit the criterion for a separate species. If you would like to argue the validity of human evolution, there may (or may not) be reasonable evidence you can provide. However, simply attacking the idea of evolution itself only serves to weaken your credibilty.

The problem on the human is that it is a WAY MORE complex organism than a bacteria, thus the evolution takes proportionally longer. You can't really observe it due to that. And since there are no real pictures of early time (e.g. around year 0), you can't compare and partially prove it. Also coz the human lives with the evolution and is going so slow, he won't notice evolution in it's own species. And since you can't see it/don't notice it, it doesn't happen according to the creationists, thus there is no evolution. They sometimes don't seem to have an idea what 4 billion years mean. That's the time the first bacterias needed to evolute into more complex species like we see now.

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Tom Serve: Do you know Evolution happened or do you BELIEVE ?

You cannot possibly know since it hapened 4 billion years ago acording to you. I don't care what you believe, but I don't like my tax $$$ to go into teaching it in schools. I think neither one should be in schools, or better yet we shouldn't even have public schools period.

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Originally posted by JimF

Tom Serve: Do you know Evolution happened or do you BELIEVE ?

You cannot possibly know since it hapened 4 billion years ago acording to you. I don't care what you believe, but I don't like my tax $$$ to go into teaching it in schools. I think neither one should be in schools, or better yet we shouldn't even have public schools period.

Your complete ignorance is showing. Evolution is happening now.

You're totally self-centred and care nothing at all about the future of your children. No wonder the educational system in the USA is rated so low, it is because of greedy, and selfish fools like you.

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I'm quite a bit taken aback by how many bitter, angry, and spiteful comments have been posted on this thread. Tolerance, friends, tolerance. A little bit of tolerance goes a long way towards having a civil discussion of our very different beliefs.

A little bit of tolerance would have gone a long way towards preventing the events of September 11 and countless other tragedies that have taken place for as long as we have recorded history.

Now, as for my own thoughts on the topic, I was raised a Christian and I believe in God. In my opinion, neither evolutionism nor creationism are easy paths to walk. Why? No proof for either (I know that many of you will disagree with this.) As someone who believes in the existence of God, I cannot pull any empirical facts, any hard data, any incontrovertible evidence out of my backpack and clobber anyone over the head with it (not that I'd want to, even if I could -- from what I remember, Jesus didn't do very much clobbering.)

And, likewise, from the standpoint of the evolutionists, I don't believe that you have any empirical facts, hard data, or incontrovertible evidence to pull out of your backpacks and clobber me over the head with (if you did then some of you have made it very clear that you would have already done so.)

Can I prove that God exists? No. But neither am I interested in proving His existence; that would be impossible. Instead I will live my life, asking for His help along the way, and striving to follow His example. Will I fail? Constantly. But the wonderful thing about Christianity is that failure does not mean failure. It just means that you're human; and because of the unquantifiable love of God, you will be given another chance.

I'm not trying to force my beliefs on anyone here, I'm not a religious-right political nut, I'm actually very far to the left and a devout civil libertarian. I believe in a person's right to make their own decisions (I think that prostitution, drugs, gambling, abortion, etc. should be legalized), and have their own opinions and beliefs; even when those decisions, opinions, and beliefs do not match up with mine.

Remember, tolerance is a good thing.

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Originally posted by JimF

Evolution is based completely on lies. It's so obvious.

OK, JimF is playing the make the longest thread game, its clear to me at least.

Close the thread please.

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Originally posted by buroja

Now, as for my own thoughts on the topic, I was raised a Christian and I believe in God. In my opinion, neither evolutionism nor creationism are easy paths to walk. Why? No proof for either (I know that many of you will disagree with this.) As someone who believes in the existence of God, I cannot pull any empirical facts, any hard data, any incontrovertible evidence out of my backpack and clobber anyone over the head with it (not that I'd want to, even if I could -- from what I remember, Jesus didn't do very much clobbering.)

And, likewise, from the standpoint of the evolutionists, I don't believe that you have any empirical facts, hard data, or incontrovertible evidence to pull out of your backpacks and clobber me over the head with (if you did then some of you have made it very clear that you would have already done so.)

Can I prove that God exists? No. But neither am I interested in proving His existence; that would be impossible. Instead I will live my life, asking for His help along the way, and striving to follow His example. Will I fail? Constantly. But the wonderful thing about Christianity is that failure does not mean failure. It just means that you're human; and because of the unquantifiable love of God, you will be given another chance.

Remember, tolerance is a good thing.

Amen, Christian brother.

Tolerance is a good thing, but I feel uncomfortable with the possibility of having my (future) kids taught something against what I believe. I believe that God is omnipotent. He could have created the world in 7 seconds, or 7 hours or 7,000,000 years, but he did it in 7 days. I believe that God is love. I believe that God doesn't lie. I believe God, being all powerful, would not let an "error" like "7 days" show up in the Bible, His Word, if it was an error. I believe it is the truth, and I don't want my children to be taught anything other than the truth. I will explain the theory of evolution, and my belief of creation, but I want (at least) equality, not a one sided story against my beliefs. You can't prove God doesn't exist. If God exists, and if He is who He says He is, then he can do *anything*, including create the world and everything in it in as little time as he wants.

God rocks, and He exists. The proof that I see (which many others won't see) are the changed lives of everyone who's given their life to Christ and is assured of eternal life with God in heaven. Some people have hardened their hearts so much that they don't want to see God. They want to live without God. But that's OK. They'll get exactly what they want forever. It hurts Him to know that, but God is perfectly just, and will not let sin enter his presence. If He did, He wouldn't be God...

Wow. OK. Sorry I got a little bit off-topic, but I still want to post this. I want to thank everyone for their tolerance and understanding of everyone else's ideas and opinions. This is a huge debate for a reason. If either side could be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt," there would be no discussion. Fortunately for me, you can't prove that God didn't do it, so I've got a Rock to stand on. =)

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I am not saying there is a god, i am not saying that god (or a superior being) created the first life.

However, evolution does exist, anyone who says else is living back in the past when the world was flat and the sun revolved around the earth.

Even the Catholic church supports the theory of evolution (not you right wing christians consider Catholics to be christians anyways).

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Username: I myself being a Catholic know that the church doesn't endorse evolution. It just says that a Catholic can believe in either creation or evolution. However if he decides to believe in evolution he MUST believe that evoluton was directed by God. You cannot believe in evolution without God. Actually you can, but then you cannot be a Catholic.

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