Evolution falsifies God/s?

I'm a fourth option, because I refuse to be boxed in:4. Atheism cannot be true, therefore the opposite must be - thus God exists. If God exists, then He must be perfect which means He has value. We are made in His image (even you), thus we have value which comes from God.01100010 01100001 01100100 01100001 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100010 01100001 01100100 01100001 01100010 01101111 01101111 01101101

You definitely put a lot of time into your posts. There's so much in there, they're like DoS attacks. I take it you're not married? Depends on if you've already made up your mind or not. If by "wrong" you mean results which don't fit your evolutionary paradigm, then no it's not logical to assume there is a flaw in the model. Ah no, I didn't mean it to be read that way. Actually you have been asking me for the definitions. I've personally used "horizontal" and "vertical", but I know you don't like those. Then I've heard from others that it's macro vs. micro. From here on, in the interest of communcation, I'll use your preferred terms: ToE and evolution. Will that work? In the case of cancer, I'd say the information is quite useless.I'll take a look at that "remedial" link you provided, as a show of appreciation for such a lengthy post. Can you give me a sneak peak, will it show that the "theory of evolution" has been proven to create new genetic information? Either way, I'll read it.

Not a conscious lie, but they are borrowing from a theist's worldview to make sense of their own. If morality is a product of evolution, then it could not be objective, it would be arbitrary. Rape and murder, however, are universally detested.

A super natural, ultimate authority should trump nucleosynthesis, which would simply be a creation of that authority. Would that mean an unborn fetus has value, since it is capable of thought and feelings? Yes, but when we say that we're made in God's image, that doesn't necessarily refer to a physical resemblance. The Bible says that God is without flesh and bone. To be made in His image, I believe, is to inherit many of his attributes, to be built with a moral compass that evolution cannot explain.

There is a well developed evolutionary account of human morality. Your apparent need to believe that the bible is the inerrant word of god will doubtless preclude you personally from accepting that evolutionary explanation. But that is no reason to say that no such thing exists.

Probably, but send it my way and I'll have a look at it.

While that's true, everyone here seems to like a good argument. I find your logic full of holes. I don't expect you to agree or change your mind just because some one presents an argument. But when you don't even bother to provide good arguments yourself, you come across as a smug fool. I won't bother with you any further.

faceman - you should be schooled by Faith. You are so dense. Spend some huddle time with her so you arent embarrassing yourself so badly. I dont know what happened to you. Something terrible.
Good luck, dude.

Hey I'm being the nice guy here, I agreed to read his "Evolution 101" article. I do have a day job though, so it's not always helpful when someone posts an entire encyclopedia in a debate forum.Turn that frown upside down - you know you're a fan!

Then you need to refresh your understanding of what it means to be disingenuous.Given that, before responding to your comments about evolution and morality, I'd like to know what you consider the definition of arbitrary to be, and how your God's purported actions are not arbitrary. However, since your God dictates morality based on his sensibility and will alone, like any good atheist, for openers I'd have to say it would be difficult to surpass him in the matter of arbitrariness...commonly defined, of course.Rape and murder are clearly not universally detested; they are both widely practiced. Most of those imprisoned for those offenses in the U.S. profess to be Christians.Your Bible records your God instructing his people in their use; since that God is, to you, the sine qua non of universal, one would have to say that, for Christians who hold the Bible to be inerrant, rape and murder are universally endorsed.

By comparison you posted a bare link and expected me to read it and respond to it ... so you don't get to complain about length or detail. Department of Sanitation? I'll go with "denial of service" attacks ...Curiously, being shown there are some error/s of your thinking could seem like a denial of service attack to you making the same thinking errors in the future ... or it can be considered education. No, I mean wrong because the results did not match reality, objective evidence, fact.And I provided you with examples of objective evidence that demonstrated that the results were bogus.The point of computer models is that they always need to be checked against reality -- and if they fail to model reality then it is the program input and construction that are in question, not reality. So you alter the program or the input until you get results that match reality.This was not done by the authors of your highly dubious paper.Once you test the program and inputs and correct them to match reality, THEN you can use the program to make predictions, which then can be used to test the program further. In other words a model is like a theory, it is an explanation of how you think reality works, but it is not reality. The map is not the mountain. Reality always outranks theory and models. That is why science continues to test theories and refine models.As you appear to be a fan of computerese and logic I assume you would know these simple facts. Correction: it is not logical to assume there is no flaw in the use of the model until you test it against reality and modify it as necessary to get real results that match the objective evidence of the world around you. An uncalibrated tool doesn't provide accurate information.Say you are driving a car with an uncalibrated speedometer and are pulled over by a cop, you tell him you were going 30 and the cop says that he has evidence from radar, his speedometer and the calculated speed from a helicopter that you were going 50 ... which do you believe the uncalibrated speedometer or the objective evidence from other sources?Do you not agree that a computer model is a theoretical construct?Do you not agree that a machine\device\model\construct needs to be calibrated before it can be trusted to give good results? It's not that I don't "like" them, but that they have no defined meaning in biological evolution, so it leads to confusion and muddy thinking. Which I find somewhat problematic because the "common" (under educated) view of "macro" is quite different from the scientific definition and use, involving rapid large scale change by some kind of transformation\morphing process rather than long term evolution. Yes The website is designed as a teaching aid for high school science, so it should be readily accessible for understanding the basic concepts involved in the science of evolution. It is also self-guided, and you can search for specific terms (like "macro" and "evidence").Certainly if you are going to make a claim about evolution it might be a good idea to check that the site doesn't show it to be some silly misunderstanding. The ToE doesn't create ... evolutionary processes create. The ToE explains how the processes work to create new "information" or -- in the vernacular of science -- different traits.A small step but a good one.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : typosEdited by RAZD, : yes

Well, it would be a question of judgement. If I read everything the ancient Romans wrote about the history of Rome, I am skeptical, for example, about the bit about Romulus and Remus. Some children are suckled by she-wolves, yes, but they don't grow up to build cities, they grow up to run around thinking they're wolves. On the other hand, I am certain of the existence of Julius Caesar. In order to be certain of this, I don't have to declare the entire canon to be true, I don't go saying "But if I can't believe in Romulus, how can I believe in Caesar?" Drawing this conclusion requires the hidden premise that evolution is the only thing that could make anyone doubt the existence of God. I'd point out to him that since other people have abandoned atheism for different religions due to unexplained personal convictions, such convictions are known to be unreliable in religious matters (since not all religions can be true).

"But," says your imaginary counterpart, "nucleosynthesis is the source of all things, well, OK, except hydrogen and helium. Without it we wouldn't exist, which is more than one can say of your God, who is imaginary. Nucleosynthesis is therefore infinitely more important than your God, and surely therefore humans are important as being the end-product of nucleosynthesis? All hail the Triple Alpha Process!"(Remember, I think he's as wrong as you are, this is not what I would say. I think that the value of humans is intrinsic.) To the extent that it is, yes. This is why no-one in his right mind gives a stuff about a mere zygote, but why late-term abortion is permitted only in cases of medical necessity. And that matters because?What you, like so many Christian apologists, are trying to do, is present me with a position of complete nihilism, skepticism, and relativism from which you then offer me God as the only escape from the prison you've built for me. But if you could talk me into such a position, which you can't, then God would not, in fact, be a way out. Consider the following dialogue: Me : I'm so mad at Jack right now. You: Why don't you kill him? Me : What? You: Kill him. Stab him with a knife. Me : But that would be wrong. You: Why? Me : He's a human, like me, and like me, he doesn't want to die. You: But these are mere facts, to which you assign an entirely arbitrary value. Why should you do so? Why is it important that Jack shares a species or a sentiment with you? Me : OK, you talked me into it. I'm gonna stab Jack. After years of trying, a Christian apologist has finally convinced me that life is meaningless and human life is worthless. Congratulations. Have you seen my knife? You: Wait! I have a reason for you not to kill Jack! Me : Yeah? You: He's made in God's image! Me : But that, if true, is merely a fact, to which you assign an entirely arbitrary value. Why should you do so? Why is it important that Jack shares some ill-defined characteristics with God? "Jack is like God" is just one more factual proposition like "Jack is like me", which we agreed was of no significance. You have shown me the error of attaching arbitrary values to merely factual propositions, and now it's STABBIN' TIME!---In order to escape this sort of nihilism, we both have to attach value to something. You attach it to God, I attach it to, well, real things, such as people. But if someone really said that nothing had value, we could not reason him into thinking that they did based on merely (purportedly) factual, non-value-laden premises such as "Roses are red" or "God made man in his image" or "Elephants are large" or "People have feelings". While acknowledging any or all of these propositions to be true, he could always add "And so what? Big whoop."Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Not by rapists and murderers, they seem quite keen on the old rape and murder. However, we may say that people are generally born with similar moral principles, or, at least, born with a propensity to acquire similar moral principles. Well, they're generally also born with the same number of legs and feet and toes, and a propensity to learn to walk in the same sort of way. This is not contrary to evolution, it's a consequence of it. Well no. You can tell that that's not the case because this supposed borrowing is not wholesale. Give an atheist a Bible (for example) and he will class the rules in it as wicked (stoning people to death for picking up sticks on Saturday) stupid (the prohibition on wearing mixed fabrics) or acceptable (the one about not killing people). So clearly the atheist doesn't borrow his morality from the Bible, since he must have had a sense of morality, prior to reading the Bible, that allowed him to identify some commandments as good and the others as bad.Moreover, where did the rhesus monkeys get their sense of morality from? "A majority of rhesus monkeys," says the paper, "will consistently suffer hunger rather than secure food at the expense of electroshock to a conspecific." Did they "borrow" this attitude from a theist? Who's been preaching to the monkeys?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

It's nice to see a Young Earth Christian linking to a John Sanford "genetic meltdown" paper. Fortunately for you, there are a number of problems with his view. I say "fortunately" because, as a YEC, the last thing you need to do is to encourage the idea that humans could face genetic deterioration at current mutation rates.The standard YEC model requires the argument that past mutation rates since the Flood were far higher than they are today. This is necessary to explain the current diversity that can be directly observed on human genomes. Either Noah has to be pushed back more than 100,000 years in time to make the necessary number of generation transfers at the current mutation rate, or the past mutation rate has to be increased to be more than 20 times today's.As the first option destroys YEC, the second is your only choice.But there's hope! I can help you slightly on your way with this paper: A Resolution of the Mutation Load
Paradox in HumansThe authors are probably right in suggesting that the fitness effects of deleterious mutations should be determined by relative measurement rather than by comparison to a mutationless genome. Their model is good news for you, because not only does it show that purifying selection can cope with the current mutation rate, but that it should be able cope with hypothetical higher ones.Here's one reason Y you need a super-high mutation rate.The paper calculates the age of our most recent common "Y" chromosome ancestor (necessarily Noah in your model) at over 100,000 years assuming current mutation rates. It is just one of many observations we can make which mean that YECs require a massively increased past mutation rate from the flood to the present. The last thing you need is to argue that the current mutation rate would cause "meltdown". But John Sanford is no problem as his model is easily contradicted by observations made in the wild and the lab, as well as by points like the one made in the paper I linked to. Perhaps you should write to him and explain how he's hindering the cause.I hope all this helps you update your YEC genetics.Edited by bluegenes, : typo