Evolution: Science or Religion?

Endo, LOL, have you really seen one, even on a photograph? No, you haven't. You think you have? Please provide a photograph of an electron. I think you are probably confusing this with something else. NO scientist has seen an electron, & nor have you. They are too small, you never know exactly where they are, & they don't reflect photons, much less other electrons in such a way an image can be formed. It would be like taking a photograph of an elephant with a camera that fired elephants out of the flash bulb.So, I repeat, given that no one has observed an electron, do you still think their existence scientific, or not? That is, are you prepared to concede that for something to be scientific, it need not be observed? In fact, it's rather a requirement, or science would have cleaned up centuries ago. That's right. Science might be false. Just like all other scientific theories that have gone by the wayside but were still scientific...... I wouldn't have said irrelevant. But yes, that's about right. Different theories are qualitatively different. It's all about getting the level of tentativity to a minimum. A theory might not be wrong as such, just require tweaking when new data becomes avaliable. Take the atomic theory I outlined in my last post. With each new observation we get closer & closer to reality, we can just never know when we are there.......The theory gets less & less tentative... If you ever arrive at a point where someone says, "hey, this is the absolute truth", there can be no room for improvement. How do we know there is no room for improvement? We don't, so we never pretend we have the truth. That's what theists do. That's all it means. That's a huge gap between that & saying something is 50/50 because it is tentative. Take my ol' favourite, phylogenetic analyses, for example. This takes sequence data & produces an "evolutionary tree" with it. Now how many potential evolutionary trees are there taking in ten organisms, do you think? If evolution is true, there is only one true tree, so this type of data should return similar, if not identical results....... There are 34,500,000 possible trees for a ten organism phylogeny. Why is it that phylogenies return such similar results at such vast odds of it occurring by chance? That's 34,500,000:1 for just two ten taxa phylogenies that are 100% congruent, with this data alone we can reduce the tentativity that evolution occurred by an alarming degree, wouldn't you say? No scientist says evolutionary theory is 100% true. This is probably the crux of your misunderstanding, creationists often judge others by their own standards, ie Adhere by blind faith in claiming the absolute truth of something, & assume others who disagree do the same. Not so.I maintain there is enough independent corroborating evidence that evolution occurred to indicate that it is unreasonable to deny. But there is still much to know as to how it occurred. I wouldn't hold your breath that there is going to be a revolution that reinterprets the data in such a way that evolution never occurred. It would require too many disciplines to be fundamentally rewritten & interpreted a different way. This is why most creationist literature is exposed as the shite it is. It is simply not consistent with all known data.In summary, I maintain that evolutionary theory meets the standards of the scientific method, & is therefore science.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

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No one has ever observed an "ape" evolving into a Man, nor has Evolution been proven to be true, nor has the missing link ever been found.

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I don't know what your brand of creationism is, but I am wondering whether you have considered the following:No one has ever observed a "firmament" holding the sun in orbit around earth,
Nor has the existence of God been proven to be true;
Nor has the missing God ever been found.db

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It would be like taking a photograph of an elephant with a camera that fired elephants out of the flash bulb.

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ROTFLMAO!!!That is the best thing I have read in a long time!What an image!

Not true
We can observe gravity every day, evolution from ape to man cannot be observed everyday.
Your faulty claims about there being no evidence for a Creator are utter hogwash, the Universe itself and why life exists instead of nothing is evidence by itself.

Hi Endo,We observe the "effects" of gravity everyday. The Theory of Gravity, how it happens, is still just a theory. Evolution, a change in the frequency of alleles in a population over time, is observed all the time. I believe it's the "Theory" of Evolution you are arguing against.------------------
Asgara"An unexamined life is not worth living" Socrates via Plato

In fact, Asgara, there is some chance that the current theory of gravity is not right. We don't have a theory of quantum gravity yet. It is more likely that the ToG is wrong than that the ToE is wrong.

These things are predicted by both sides in the same way. Therefore they are not useful evidence to distinguish between the conflicting ideas. This is not unequivocal evidence for God.

Hi Ned,Thanks, you are absolutely right. Maybe we could start a forum to discuss how the TOG is unscientific and get it taken out of our school text books. Seriously, I don't understand the whole conflict concerning the TOE. The general arguments against it would apply equally to most scientific theories and I don't see anyone arguing that the TOG or GToD is unscientific.------------------
Asgara"An unexamined life is not worth living" Socrates via Plato

Not so, We observe the same mechanism that got us from ape-like ancestor to Homo Sapiens generating new species every day. Did you miss my other post? The one where I said we use natural selection + random mutation to generate circuit designs and jet airplanes? How much more observation do you need? Why do you think there was ever nothing? How do you know the universe ever didn't exist? Maybe all this "something" exists because it's not possible for it not to exist.Existence is not evidence for a Creator, because you don't always need a creator to get something. It's just evidence for existence.

By Gravity one must assume that I meant effects of gravity, because we don't really even know what gravity is, we know what it does, much less know where to actually observe gravity itself.

Not so, We observe the same mechanism that got us from ape-like ancestor to Homo Sapiens generating new species every day. Did you miss my other post? The one where I said we use natural selection + random mutation to generate circuit designs and jet airplanes? How much more observation do you need?True, But Those circuit designs in jet airplanes would not have occured if an intelligent creator/designer didn't actually design the airplane and all of its components and the circuit boards and everything else first. It can't just appear out of nothing.
It's not that simple. New species are generating everyday? I don't think so, and just because by random chance a circuit rewired itself by random chance doesn't mean that apes evolved into humans, you're taking a giant leap of faith right there and making too many assumptions. As we all know, Evolution hasn't been proven 100%, therefore I'm not going to believe it until it has, and I'm not going to assume it's true simply because a circuit board wired itself by chance, which wouldn't have happened anyway unless there was an intelligent designer making it all possible, and actually designing the circuit board first.

Not possible for it not to exist? Explain that.

Hi Endo,I believe YOU are the one arguing that So, in light of your last message, when are you going to start arguing that the TOG is unscientific.------------------
Asgara"An unexamined life is not worth living" Socrates via Plato

I'm arguing that Creationism it too complex to fall into a simple category of man's science. Creationism is everything, not simply science.

No, that's exactly what happened. It's called "genetic programming", and it's a process of generating functional circuits or jet planes in a computer simulation, through processes of natural selection and random mutation. At no point is a circuit design actually designed by a human. Natural selection and random mutation - evolution - does all the designing.You can read about it here: No webpage found at provided URL: www-personal.si.umich.edu/~rfrost/courses/SI110/readings/EvoInventions.pdfYou think wrong. It's very well documented. Look through a biological journal and you'll see new species arising through reproductive isolation. It's a very well-understood phenomenon. There isn't a creationist group today who argues that new species don't arise. The only assumption I'm making is that natural processes can account for all natural phenomenon - the same assumption used by all the sciences.Now, believing in a Creator God - that's a leap of faith, and that's making too many assumptions. If you compare you'll find I'm actually making a lot less untestable assumptions than you. It's been proven as well as anything else in the sciences. Perhaps that's what you mean by "100%". Why else would it have near-universal acceptance in the biological community? Like I said, there's no intervention in the GP process except to set inital conditions. The circuits are designed through the same process that gives rise to new species.If evolution can make circuits and jet airplanes, why can't it turn an ape-like ancestor into two populations of men and apes?[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 07-20-2003]