Evolution is NOT science: A challenge

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Perhaps I was too soft in my last post. The wild stretch of the imagination is such a wild stretch it is nothing short of faith/belief.

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Without supporting evidence, evolution would be a wild stretch. However, it passes every test put up against it. Just because you accept things on blind faith doesn't mean that science does as well. Evolution would not be part of mainstream science if it wasn't supported by the evidence.

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And I also believe that evolution tends to remove God from the minds of people (not all) when they view his creation.

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People claimed the same thing about geocentrism. The Catholic Church claimed that if their interpretation of the Bible was not adhered to people would drift away from the church and take God out of their lives. Do you think this happened?Bible Interpretation Rule #1: If Science and the Bible conflict it is usually the interpretation of the Bible that is wrong. (NOTE: I did not say that the Bible was wrong, but the INTERPRETATION).

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And I think evolution is a cornerstone of humanism hedonism atheism and other anti-God systems of thinking.

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Again, the Catholic Church claimed the same thing about heliocentrism. Christianity is still going along just fine. Science also excludes God from:1. The Germ Theory of Disease.
2. The Theory of Gravity.
3. Theory of Thermodynamics.
4. Quantum Mechanics.
5. Special Relativity.I could go on and list EVERY scientific theory in existence, but I think you get the idea. The question is why you aren't objecting to these other theories as being the basis for hedonism, etc. If God is left out of the rest of science, why aren't you screaming bloody murder when you were in chemistry class?

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If the Bible can't even get the creation right, what good is it beyond a moral code?

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The Bible is not a science book, it is a book on theology. If you get sick, do you see a doctor (science) or read Romans? Personally, I go to the doctor and I am guessing you do to. If I want to learn something about God and how to have a relationship with God I don't go to a biochemist, I read the Bible and talk to another christian. Again, I am guessing you do the same as well. The Bible was written by men as an interpretation of how God relates to man, it is not meant as a scientific explanation for geology, astronomy, and biology.Secondly, the phrase above is actually detrimental to people's faith. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming, whether or not you choose to ignore it. A majority of people that actually investigate the science that went into constructing the theory of evolution understand the validity of the theory. If they took the position you took, then it would most certainly damage their christian walk. However, using the understanding that the Bible is NOT a literal interpretation of historical events, nor was it meant to be, it is easy to combine both correct scientific investigation and one's faith.

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The entire Bible, God, life, and his creation in general make a WHOLE lot more sense without evolution.

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You need to add "to me" on the end. As mentioned earlier, many christians (dare I say a majority) find no disagreement between the Bible and evolution. Are you saying that they are taking God out of their lives, being hedonistic, or denying that God exists? The problem that you and some others have is that evolution, whether right or wrong, gets in the way of your personal interpretation of the Bible. Somehow you think that the way in which you read the Bible trumps what we see in reality.I would also like to comment on the verses that you listed. Growing up as a Protestant I viewed the Catholic Church as inferior (just a personal view, no hate mail please). However, they did get one thing right. The Catholic Church does not hinge their tenets of beliefs on one or two verses, in fact they warn against using selective verses for strict interpretations. Instead, they try to meld the whole Bible into a whole to extract its meaning. They are also quick to learn from previous mistakes and use man's ability to investigate nature to help their own interpretations.I mentioned geocentrism vs. heliocentrism earlier, and I will try to expand on it here. One interpretation of the Bible can support the idea that the sun revolves around the earth. How do we know if that interpretation is right or wrong? Easily, by using science. One interpretation of the Bible says that the world is 6,000 years old, there was a global flood, etc. Another interpretation says that these stories were used to differentiate the Hebrew's God from the Babylonian gods, hence they use the same stories but insert YHWH in for the Babylonian gods. How do we decide which is right and which is wrong? Again, science.On a personal note, I was a christian for 22 years. I say WAS as I have since fallen out of the faith. However, this had nothing to do with the evolution vs creation debate. I had long ago reconciled the two and found it very comforting that both science and the Bible could be correct at the same time, just in different realms of knowledge. I never fealt like the Bible couldn't be trusted just because a literal interpreation of Genesis didn't jive with what we see in nature. And, I never felt that evolution gave me an out in order to stop going to church. Man (and woman) is fallible, and hence our interpretation of the Bible needs to change as new information and new problems arise. What amazes me is that a 2,000 year old document (in the case of the NT) can still speak to people in todays society and help guide their lives in a loving manner. This is one of the greatest aspects of the Bible, how it is able to guide people's lives while being flexible enough to cope with new info and new situations.

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The further and further you push God away from his Creation the less you think about him or need him.

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So the only reason you need God is for creation? How about being saved? Isn't that important to you, or do you only want God's importance forced into his creative power?

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To my knowledge no one teaches the hydroplate theory in school.

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And no one teaches that the earth is flat, either. This is what happens to falsified theories.

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But please do not do like this guy did and only read a very little of it. You would not expect a person to understand evolutionary theory if they only read a few pages about abiogenisis. Almost every refutation of the HP theory I've ever heard ignores major tenets of that theory and goes on evolutionary assumptions.

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Before we all go off topic, you might want to check out the Hydroplates unchallenged young earth explains Tectonics shortcomings! thread in the Free For All forum. There is 14 pages of debate with input both from those who support hydroplates and from actaul geologists. Secondly, tectonic plate theory is a geologic theory. It just so happens that geology and biology came to the same conclusion of an old earth through independent sets of data. Corroboration is a strong indication of truth. Thirdly, abiogenesis is a separate theory from evolution. Darwin wrote the Origin of Species not the Origin of Life. Evolution deals with biology while abiogenesis deals with chemistry.

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Blah bla bla... I'm sorry but information and complexity never increase by natural random chance. There is NO proof of this.

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Actually, the creationist version is "Stick fingers in ears and chant 'lalalalalala'". If you want to blissfuly live on in your ignorance you may not want to read the rest of this post.Increase in complexity, a unicellular organism becomes a multicellular organism to avoid predation (increase in complexity): Information increase (Shannon information) due to random mutation and selection: The above are the observations that you say don't exist. Sorry bub, you have been misinformed.

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Oh come on... We've already established that Catholic Church in the middle ages went off the deep end in MANY ways. Furthermore I know of know statements in the Bible that describe where the earth is.

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The RCC used the following verse to support their view that the sun orbited the earth:Joshua 10:12-13
Then spoke Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the men of Israel; and he said in the sight of Israel, "Sun, stand thou still at Gibeon, and thou Moon in the valley of Aijalon." And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. (Joshua ordered the sun to stand still, not the earth)1 Chronicles 16:30
tremble before him, all earth; yea, the world stands firm, never to be moved. (the earth does not move, therefore it is not able to orbit the sun)Psalms 93:1
The Lord reigns; he is robbed in majesty; the lord is robbed, he is girded with strength. Yea, the world is established; it shall never be moved. (same as above)Psalms 96:10
Say among the nations, "The Lord reigns! Yea, the world is established, it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity." (same as above)Psalms 104:5
Thou didst set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be shaken. (there are several verses that have this same theme, that the earth has been put upon a foundation and therefore doesn't move)The Bible seems to be quite emphatic that the earth does not move, and when Joshua asks the Sun to stay in the sky he does not ask for the earth to stop rotating, but the Sun to stop moving. If we were to take a literal interpretation of the Bible, then the Bible would be falsified. There is support for the earth being the center of the solar system. However, just like Genesis, only through incorporating evidence from the natural world can we make a true interpretation of the Bible.

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None of these [theories] [eg gravity, germ theory] have to do specifically with God's creation of everything. I have no problem with these theories. In fact they help us to understand his creation far better.

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The methodology that went into constructing the theory of evolution is the same methodology that went into constructing the above theories. All theories in science were created using methodological naturalism. Not once has light been shed on the our investigation of the natural world by first assuming supernatural causes. Can you name one scientific discovery that relies on someone believing in a supernatural diety? I can't.

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More blah bla bla... sorry... but if the Bible is written by God through the hands of men it must be perfect. God does not create imperfection.

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But man does create imperfection. Even within the theology of christianity, no one believes that God DIRECTLY wrote the Bible. Therefore, if the Bible is incorrect then it can be blamed on the authors, not on God. The scientific ignorance of the biblical authors should not be blamed on God, but rather on how that society described the natural world in the absence of the evidence that we have now. Even 2,000 years ago, Jewish scholars did not necessarily believe that Genesis should be taken literaly.

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Let me ask you this: If the mainstream view held by scientists today was that evidence supported the fact that the earth and universe came into existence about 6000 years ago and that about 4600 years ago there was a world wide flood, do you think this would have affected your decision to stop being a Christian or not?

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Nope. There is actually more evidence for alien abductions than there is for the existence of God. Therefore I would have to go with alien terraforming. Perhaps "solyent green" was meant for aliens and not us.

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Is not a colony different from an organism?

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Is not a cooperative colony more complex than a unicellular organism?

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It is interesting that evolutionists must resort to a simulation to get the desired results.

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It is interesting that random mutation AND selection create shannon information within genetic systems. It doesn't matter how it is modeled, those mechanisms when treated as an algorithm do produce what you claim they can't. Also, the computer simulation takes "front loaded" or trigered mutations out of the picture. I have heard some creationists claim that the mutation in the nylon bug was a "pre-planned" mutation that already existed. The computer simulation contains exactly zero information at the start and no pre-planned mutations.

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However, at first glance I notice that the sun and moon refraining from moving through the arc of the visible sky is far different from ceasing movement altogether. Although it seems as though all solar system motion stopped or slowed for a day.

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My argument is that it COULD be translated as suggesting the sun orbits the earth, not that it SHOULD be translated in that way. The only way to pick which translation is right is by referencing the translation to the findings of science. This is the process that a majority of christians apply to translations of Genesis in reference to evolution.

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Actually the word you've translated move in all the passages you listed means waver as on the verge of decay or destruction. The word translated "stands firm" means established. So in other words God established a self-sustaining world without danger of being cast off course or destroyed.

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And again, this is a matter of translation. It could also keep a LITERAL translation and be used to support geocentrism. However, science has shown us that a literal translation is incorrect. Again, when comparing the realities of science to the multitude of biblical translations it is usually best to match our translations to the findings of science. However, science makes no claims about morality or theology, those are left solely to the theologians.

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Ah yes! this provides me with more confirmation of my theory about aliens/demons and the coming great deception... anyway..

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It was meant to be sarcastic, sorry if that wasn't apparent. What I am trying to establish is that even if life on earth was shown to be 6,000 years old that doesn't automatically make Genesis correct. There are other explanations that have equal evidenciary support, even alien abductions which have been witnessed by humans first hand.

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You're proving my point! Evolution has absolutely NOTHING to do with our creator. Evolution makes it FAR easier for a rational scientifically minded person to look at nature and choose to ignore the existence of God because he simply is not needed for the theory to be true.

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I get your point Dawg, but the theory of evolution doesn't require you to deny God's existence either. The choice is still left up to the individual based on his religious faith, not on scientific findings. It is just as easy to believe in God today as it was 1,000 years ago. That hasn't changed. The existence of God is a personal choice, and people use different criteria and different evidence to base their choice on. For instance, I am agnostic. I have seen nothing that confirms the existence of God, but I am willing to admit that the supernatural could exist. Crashfrog goes a step further and claims that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. In other words, if God exists then why doesn't he show himself? And then we have you Dawg, who takes the evidence of your personal walk in the faith such as answered prayer, emotional epiphanies, and the such. However, we can't change reality, and the reality is that the earth is billions of years old. It is not science's fault that this is where the evidence led. In fact, it was young earth creationists who found the first evidence that the earth was much older than Bishop Usher proposed. It was the evidence of God's creation that led them to the conclusion that the earth and earth's life was ancient, not an agenda to preclude God from the lives of the populace.

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It takes a leap of faith to believe that evolution can make the jump between cells and invertebrates, invertebrates and vertebrates, reptiles and birds, fish and amphibians, amphibians and reptiles and reptiles and mammals especially when out of place fossils are often found.

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No faith is needed. The evidence is in the fossil record and in the DNA in your cells. Again, evolution is not faith based, it is based on evidence. Please show me any part of the theory of evolution that is solely supported by faith and no evidence whatsoever (remembering that abiogenesis is not part of the theory). Just because you accept things on blind faith doesn't mean that science does the same thing. Also, there are transitional fossils for every body type transition that you list above, and also observations of unicellular organisms creating multi-cellular structures. Again, observation is how science works.

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What???? [evolution] deals with where we came from. Is this not origins?

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Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, that is how the different species of life arose. The Origin of Life is a chemistry question, and is dealed with through abiogenesis. All you need for evolution to occur is one form of life and limited resources. How that life got there is not a question that evolution asks. Origins of the Humans species IS a question answered by evolution, and it deals with already existing life, our ape-like ancestors. Of course, ape-like ancestor to human is microevolution since they are both primates.

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Evolution makes it possible for people to deny God and believe that we are just here as products of nature so we might as well just do what we feel like and what is best for our species and the world in which we live. The physical is the only true reality.

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Or better yet, only physical mechanisms affect physical reality. This in no way rules out the existence of the supernatural, only segregates them from each other. Science deals with the physical and theology/philosophy deals with the supernatural. When you want to describe something in the physical universe you use science; when you want to describe the spiritual you use philosophy and religion. What is the problem with that?Also, you have not ruled out that Zeus could have created this world with the help of his numerous diety underlings. This was the quandry that humans were in during the beginnings of modern science. To what degree do we rule out one religion over the other? Is it even appropriate to use religion to test the physical world? Is lightening caused by eletrostatic charges or by Zeus throwing thunderbolts? Science found the correct path, ruling out the supernatural in describing the natural.

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I read all of it. It is filled with dubious "reported" and "claimed" facts.

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The only reason you are calling them "dubious" is because of your religious convictions. I myself am a scientist. This talk of scientists faking fossils is rather annoying. Either show evidence of fraud or shut the hell up. Whenever I call someone a liar I make sure to find evidence to back it up. You seem okay with slandering a whole field of scientists without evidence, a whole field that includes me as well. If there is evidence that the Archie fossils are fakes then I will gladly dismiss them. So far all you have offered is the school ground retort "IS NOT".For your information, there are more than two fossils with feather impressions. From On Archaeopteryx, Astronomers, and Forgery: So we have the original London and Berlin specimens (2 so far) we also have the Maxberg specimen with the feather impression going under a bone (impossible to forge), the Haarlen specimen, the Solnhofen specimen, and the Solnhofen-Aktien-Verein specimen. That is 5 altogether, one of which is impossible to forge. Sorry bub, your cries for justice are ringing hollow.

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If this is the greatest example of an intermediary fossil Evos can come up with, your theory is doomed.

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A body with wings and feathers that still has reptillian characteristics. I think it will do.

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I know I know... I know how fossilization occurs. That does not explain why we find hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dinosaur fossils as well as bird fossils, but all we can come up with for Birdosaurs is a couple of Archae like apparitions.

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At one time there were billions of passenger pigeons in North America before their extinction in the first part of the 20th century. Early european settlers witnessed flock so large that they would take an entire day to pass overhead. In fact, at the time they were the most numerous bird species in existence. Guess how many passenger pigeon fossils have been found. ZERO. Please tell us why we should find every single transitional fossil for bird evolution when we can't even find fossils for recently extinct birds that numbered in the billions.

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I think it is evolutionists who are the brainwashed ones. Certainly many Creationists are too. There's no excuse for intellectual laziness, which I admit I'm guilty of. But evolutionists are utterly repulsed by the idea of simply challenging their theory and considering other more sensical ways the evidence might be viewed.

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Evolutionists are not repulsed by the idea of challenging their theory. Every time a new fossil is dug up it challenges the theory. Each time a new gene is sequence the theory of evolution is challenged. Evolution is challenged and tested on a daily basis BY EVOLUTIONISTS. Evolution is potentially falsifiable. For instance, all you have to do is find a modern mammal in the same strata as trilobites. Bingo, evolution falsified. Find the same exact gene in plants and humans. Bingo, evolution falsified. Find a fossil with mammalian and avian features. Bingo, evolution falsified. Now, what are the potential falsifications of your theory so that we can challenge it? At least evolution and science are kind enough to construct their theories so that they are testable with objective observations and tests. How is creationism tested?

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Me too. But I do not think it is responsible for the creation and specification of life. And I still hold to the idea that earth as we know it and mankind are about 6000 years old.

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Philosophically, the earth as we know it now is only seconds old. Everything is chaning all of the time. Just like the old saw, "The only Constant is Change." The world we live in is totally different than the world of the biblical authors. The world now is a totally different place than the world our grandparents lived in. This applies to technology and to biology. The discovery of DNA may change life as we know it forever. Who knows.

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To describe the same thing in evolutionary terms, and creationist terms, would make for different descriptions of the same thing.

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Honest question for you Syamsu. Would you say that a creationist explanation states that God created the laws of nature, which included natural evolution? Would you then say that scientific evolution leaves out the originator of the natural laws but describes the same process? I am not trying to trap you with anything here, just curious.

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Also, Genesis says; "let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind,"

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Would it be fair to say that this supports abiogenesis as well?

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So, did he make em or shape em? This is the problem in the wizbox. Maybe he created them using evolution. That remains a possibility in my own mind.

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I think the RCC has a consistent view. Evolution created the body and God supplied the mind. Afterall, God is non-corporeal, so it wouldn't make sense that he is comparing our physical body with his non-existent one. The RCC has come to the conclusion that science reached, that there is ample evidence to support the evolution of man from an ape-like ancestor. However, man's consciousness does not fossilize, nor can it be found in our DNA. I may not agree with the views of the RCC in all respects, but I do so without evidence one way or another.

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The hydroplate theory is creation science.

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This theory is creation science, but it is not science. Ad hoc hypotheses are not part of science, and ad hoc hypotheses are exactly what prop up the hydroplate theory. Any falsifying evidence for hydroplate theory is immediately met by another theory that has no evidence to support it. As AdminAsgara pointed out, there are several threads dealing with Mr. Brown's theory, specifics should be discussed there. However, the methodology that Brown uses is cogent to this discussion. Brown takes the Global Flood as being true in the absence of evidence. He then cooks up theories devoid of evidenciary support in order to support his already decided on conclusion. This is NOT how science is done. Walt Brown constructs his theory so that it describes any possible contigency, and in doing so it explains nothing. In other words, Walt Brown's theory is not falsifiable because the evidence for his theory resides solely in his head.

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It is a hypothesis with evidenciary support, predictions made and findings to verify, and it is falsifiable.

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Any theory can have evidenciary support, the hard part is the falsifying evidence against it, which Brown either ignores or creates ad hoc hypotheses to handwave them away. You seem to be a devout follower of Brown's. Perhaps you could start a new thread discussing hydroplate theory and we could all discuss it there.

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It means that many people who accept evolution theory, still have problems with it in regards to their Christianity, regardless if you think they should have problems with it or not.

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And where does this problem stem from? I think it stems from the dogmatic position that one must believe in a literal Genesis in order to be saved. It is not the fault of science that this problem occurs, but rather the need for church leaders to have control over their followers.

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As before the method of creationism is to trace back to the root cause, as the creation event, which had the effect of making the thing appear. It applies to anything, and is not just confined to what is in biblehistory. It is strange that you question a way of investigaiton which you probably practice every day.

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I know this was not addressed to me, but you know me.Let's take the creationist method and see if it does apply to everyday life. Let us say that my car keys are missing. If I were a creationist type thinker I would start with the conclusion. So, my conclusion is that some invisible fairies stole my car keys. Now, the fact that I can't see any fairies supports my conclusion. Next, I find my car keys in the sofa cushion. Starting from my conclusion, I now have to conclude that the invisible fairies live in my couch.Or, I could use the scientific approach. Observation: human memory is not perfect, so I may have left them in the car. Observation: previously, I lost my car keys because they fell out of my pocket. Observation: I don't remember having them after leaving the couch. Observation: I have never seen a supernatural event affect my keys. Test: I look in the couch and in the car, they are in the couch. Conclusion: The car keys probably fell out of my pocket while I was on the couch.This is how I do things. You seem to be ok with adding invisible fairies to the mix.

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The reason is it on topic is because the denial of evolutionists of creation is political / religious, which makes evolution a religion rather then a science in the context of the creation vs evolution controversy.

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Is being a heliocentrist considered being religious? Is being a roundearther considered being religious? Why is it a religious movement whenever science defends itself from pseudoscientists with a political agenda?

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As long as you don't compare the fairies, you should be OK. That doesn't happen in nature, or supernature.

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The only way to compare fairies is at the individual level. Fairy populations are not comparable, unless you subvert the Fairy Tales into a religious movement.

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Never heard it before as "theory". It's always been known as a "Law".

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Early on in the current scientific movement "Law" was used to in reference to theories that were well supported and thought to be indicative of reality. However, they are still potentially falsifiable, and they could in fact be incorrect. For example, Newton's "Laws of Motion" have been shown to be false at higher velocities. Einstien's Theory of Relitivity is actually more accurate than Newton's Laws.