What i can't understand about evolution....

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interestingly The science journal 'Nature' reported in 1997 that almost 40 percent of biologists, physicists, and mathematicians surveyed believe in a God. So where does that put the research of these individuals? Does the fact that they believe in God make their research any less accurate then an athiest/evolutionary scientist??

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No. I suspect you'd be surprised to learn that the vast majority of those people accept the ToE and have no problem reconciling it with their religious beliefs. There's a tremendous difference between being a creationist and being a scientist who believes in a supreme being. The reason science rejects creationism has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that creationists believe in god. It's because their work doesn't comport with generally accepted principles of science.

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I'd be interested to know what you think of these statements...these scientists hold doubts over evolution and some could be creationists...

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I'd be very interested to see what your source for these quotes is. I suspect you won't say. I also suspect it's a creationism website of some sort or other.

I haven't the inclination to investigate all of them, I'll just talk about one, Harold Morowitz. He testified on behalf of plaintiffs who were challenging the Arkansas Balanced Treatment Act in McLean v. Arkansas. You can read all of his testimony, it's not very long. But it's more or less summarized at the end with the following:

Q: Are you aware of any creation science literature- I'm sorry. Are you aware of any creation science publication of his theory of the origins of life in any reputable scientific journal? A: I'm not aware of it in any of the journals that I read. Q: Doctor Morowitz, we have been speaking mostly about the book, Scientific Creationism. What is your opinion about the other creation-science literature you have read, with respect to its attributes as science? A: Well, I think it's all very comparable. I think this is a paradigm example, and insofar as this is not science, the rest of the literature also is not science. Q: Doctor Morowitz, in your professional opinion, does the creation-science treatment of abiogenesis, the origins of life from non-life, have the attributes of science? A: No. Q: In your professional opinion, does the creation science treatment of the second law of thermodynamics have the attributes of science? A: No.

I strongly suspect that he never actually said anything even close to what you quote. It's difficult to tell for sure if you don't provide a source for your quote.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

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a kind as in a species that can reproduce together.

eg, various breeds of chickens can reproduce together, but a chicken and a duck cannot, therefore they are different 'kinds' or 'species'

im sure i have explained this previously.

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If you are committed to this definition, then the game is over and your position is defeated. The evolution of new species, that are incapable of interbreeding with the parent species, has been observed to occur in nature, and in a laboratory setting as well. Thus, evolution beyond "kind" is a well-known, observed phenomenon.

This is where you back track, and try to redefine "kind" so as to preserve your preconceived notion, despite the evidence.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

a kind as in a species that can reproduce together. eg, various breeds of chickens can reproduce together, but a chicken and a duck cannot, therefore they are different 'kinds' or 'species' im sure i have explained this previously.

Yes I know you have said this before. Yet when for example in Message 228 you describe evolutions role in diversification, the examples you use include parrots, cats, dogs, and horses. Most of those are classed as genera which contain many species, the exception being parrots which is actually classed as an order which contains many genera.

Anyway this was a side issue. My main issue was your conflating evolution with abiogenesis. Since you had nothing to say on what I wrote on that issue, I will assume you don;t have a problem with my examples showing how they are separate considerations.

subbie writes: No. I suspect you'd be surprised to learn that the vast majority of those people accept the ToE and have no problem reconciling it with their religious beliefs. There's a tremendous difference between being a creationist and being a scientist who believes in a supreme being. The reason science rejects creationism has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that creationists believe in god. It's because their work doesn't comport with generally accepted principles of science.

believe it or not, its only been in the last day or two that i've come to realize what you all mean when you use the term 'creationist'. I thought i was a creationist, but now i realise that term is reserved for those who adhere to the young earth theories.

i've inadvertently been arguing for something i dont agree with LOL

but darwinian evolution and the spontaneous generation of life on this planet is not logical to me either, not in the slightest.

subbie writes: I'd be very interested to see what your source for these quotes is. I suspect you won't say. I also suspect it's a creationism website of some sort or other.

Leslie Orgel quote "Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide" p. 188
Robert Shipiro quote "Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide" pp. 173-4.
Michael Dentons quote "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis," p. 250.

Harold Morowitz quote "Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide" pp. 32, 49, 128

Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

I thought i was a creationist, but now i realise that term is reserved for those who adhere to the young earth theories.

Creationist isn't reserved just for the young earthers. "Creationist" generally applies to anyone who wishes to replace science with magic.

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soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden i found myself in love with the world
And so there was only one thing I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang along ling long - Jesus Built my Hotrod Ministry
Live every week like it's Shark Week! - Tracey Jordan
Just a monkey in a long line of kings. - Matthew Good
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist! - Get Your War On
*not an actual doctor

Peg, you have got to stop allowing creationist websites to spoonfeed you shite.

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these scientists hold doubts over evolution and some could be creationists...

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Francis Hitching, an evolutionist and author of the book The Neck of the Giraffe, stated: “For all its acceptance in the scientific world as the great unifying principle of biology, Darwinism, after a century and a quarter, is in a surprising amount of trouble.

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Scientist? I think not. Here are what some other sources have to say about Hitching.

Hitching is basically a sensational TV script writer and has no scientific credentials. In The Neck of the Giraffe he claimed to be a member of the Royal Archaeological Institute, but an inquiry to that institute said he was not. He implied in the "Acknowledgements" of The Neck of the Giraffe that paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould had helped in the writing of the book, but upon inquiry Gould said he did not know him and had no information about him. Hitching also implied that his book had been endorsed by Richard Dawkins, but upon inquiry Dawkins stated: "I know nothing at all about Francis Hitching. If you are uncovering the fact that he is a charlatan, good for you. His book, The Neck of the Giraffe, is one of the silliest and most ignorant I have read for years." Source

J. Francis Hitching is a British author and dowser. His books often focus on paranormal phenomena. Source

Hitching, Francis Paranormalist, dowser; into UFO's, cosmic cataclysms, miraculous healing, Atlantis, ESP, pyramidology, astrology; British tabloid TV writer for such shows as Leonard Nimoy's In Search Of; author of the book The Neck of the Giraffe (Ticknor & Fields, New Haven, Connecticut, 1982); no scientific credentials Quoting him as an evolutionary authority has no more significance than quoting Bozo the Clown. Source

It appears that Hitching is just another crank. He's not a scientist. Whichever creationist website you got this claim from is either lying, incompetent or (most likely) both. And that's just the first on the list.

Face facts; the overwhelming majority of experts in biology are convinced that evolution occurs, including most of those who believe in God. Quoting a few kooks and quote-mining a few scientists won't change that.

Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

subbie writes: The evolution of new species, that are incapable of interbreeding with the parent species, has been observed to occur in nature, and in a laboratory setting as well. Thus, evolution beyond "kind" is a well-known, observed phenomenon.

could you provide some examples of this with perhaps links to the actual laboratories and the research you are referring to ?

Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

i has been said by others that it is a separate issue.

abiogenesis and evolution have nothing to do with each other, evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life etc etc

but its one thing to say that evolution is how species evolved from other species then not back up where the species began in the first place

thats why they are very much linked together

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believe it or not, its only been in the last day or two that i've come to realize you all mean when you use the term 'creationist'. I thought i was a creationist, but now i realise that term is reserved for those who adhere to the young earth theories.

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In fact, you are incorrect. Anyone who attempts to invoke anything other than natural means to explain the development of life on this planet because they believe the ToE is insufficient is a creationist. This includes YECs, OECs, the transitional species cdesign proponentist, and the latest crop, intelligent design theorists. They all use the same basic playbook, with slight alterations in terminology.

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but darwinian evolution and the spontaneous generation of life on this planet is not logical to me either, not in the slightest.

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If you were to simply state that you haven't studied enough of it to understand it and, thus, couldn't express an opinion, I'd be willing to let it go at that. However, you go beyond that. You quote creos of every stripe, swallowing the distortions and lies that they liberally spoon out. You challenge scientists who've spent their entire careers studying the ToE, making arguments in the process that do nothing so much as they show how little you know about the subject.

I do appreciate you providing your sources. I'm going to have to add the Origins book to my reading list, I'm not familiar with it. I am familiar, however, with Denton's book. It's really nothing more than typical creo ramblings. You can find a more detailed discussion of it here.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

i has been said by others that it is a separate issue. abiogenesis and evolution have nothing to do with each other, evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life etc etc but its one thing to say that evolution is how species evolved from other species then not back up where the species began in the first place thats why they are very much linked together

They sure are related, but they are not the same thing. If you have an issue with abiogenesis, why don't you call it abiogenesis? calling it evolution just confuses everybody else and stalls the debate.

Edited by fallacycop, : typo

Edited by fallacycop, : more typos

Peg writes: i has been said by others that it is a separate issue. abiogenesis and evolution have nothing to do with each other, evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life etc etc but its one thing to say that evolution is how species evolved from other species then not back up where the species began in the first place thats why they are very much linked together

Peg, I heartily agree. It's like creationists advocating creationism and exempting Genesis from creationism in apologetics for creationism.

Similarly, it's like Biblicalists exempting Genesis from apologetics for the Biblical record.

Are you any relation to Ann Coulter? ;)

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

About Dawkins, i have to say that i completely and utterly dislike that man. He is the most arrogant and angry individual ever!

Strange, I always thought he was mild mannered and rather genial sex maniac.

i agree with you, but there is one small problem with this. Many of the scientists who do present a different view also happen to be creationists. and because they are creationists, they are not considered 'real' scientists.

'Many' is something of a poor choice of word here. Creationists who also happen to be practicing biologists are very very rare breeds indeed. I don't think I could name even a few. There are a couple of more that are Intelligent Design proponents.

So lets say you have five thousand electricians giving you one piece of advice and three that are giving you the opposite advise based on philosophical objections to the materialist electricity hypothesis. What do you do?

Im sure what will happen is less and less creationists will be in the field of science and this could lead to unbridled and unchallenged ideas.

You of course realize that for centuries Creationists dominated the field. Might there be a reason they are becoming less common other than some conspiracy to silence them? Maybe they are just not as good at convincing experts in the field that their arguments have merit. We could say the same thing here for any now largely forgotten idea. Those who have done any studying accept that world is at least somewhat spheroid and that in simple terms the common centre of orbit for the planets of the solar system is the sun, not the earth and that diseases are caused by bacteria and viruses rather than demons and spirits. Is this problematic in some way?

interestingly The science journal 'Nature' reported in 1997 that almost 40 percent of biologists, physicists, and mathematicians surveyed believe in a God. So where does that put the research of these individuals?

Well, lets get specific. Francis Collins believes in God. Let's see where that puts his research with a quick look at wikipedia:

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Francis S. Collins (born April 14, 1950), M.D., Ph.D., is an American physician-geneticist, noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes, and his leadership of the Human Genome Project (HGP). He was director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland until August 1, 2008.

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On pretty good grounds, I'd say, no?

Does the fact that they believe in God make their research any less accurate then an athiest/evolutionary scientist??

Nope. In fact, Francis Collins is/was both a practicing evolutionist and Christian, he says, "I am unaware of any irreconcilable conflict between scientific knowledge about evolution and the idea of a creator God; why couldn't God have used the mechanism of evolution to create?

And to visit a different discipline John Polkinghorne, who played a role in discovering the quark in the field of physics is also an ordained priest.

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astronomer Robert Jastrow said: “To their chagrin [scientists] have no clear-cut answer, because chemists have never succeeded in reproducing nature’s experiments on the creation of life out of nonliving matter. Scientists do not know how that happened.” He added: “Scientists have no proof that life was not the result of an act of creation

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I agree with him.

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Astronomers Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe “The problem for biology is to reach a simple beginning,” “Fossil residues of ancient life-forms discovered in the rocks do not reveal a simple beginning. . . . so the evolutionary theory lacks a proper foundation.”

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I have nothing much to say on Hoyle and Wickramasinghe. They aren't biologists as noted, but they are exploring panspermia, good luck to them. (well to Wickramasinghe, Hoyle passed away some years ago)

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Chemist Richard Dickerson comments on the chance that molecules could have formed in a primoridal soup: “It is therefore hard to see how polymerization [linking together smaller molecules to form bigger ones] could have proceeded in the aqueous environment of the primitive ocean, since the presence of water favors depolymerization [breaking up big molecules into simpler ones] rather than polymerization.”

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And indeed it is difficult. What do you think he spent the rest of the article (titled "Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life") doing but trying to show how that might have happened? This is called a quote mine. It is somewhat standard to start a scientific article by explaining to the reader what the problem is that you propose to discuss and maybe even solve before going on to do that very thing. You'll excuse me if I don't go into the rest, why don't you try investigating a few of them yourself?

1. without the right atmosphere there would be no organic soup. 2.Without the organic soup there would have been no amino acids. 3. Without amino acids we would not have proteins. 4. Without proteins there would be no nucleotides. 5. Without nucleotides there would be no DNA and without DNA there are no cells that can reproduce themselves. 6. Without a covering membrane, no living cell. Meaning NO LIFE 7. without life on earth, no evolution of the species. it all must come back to where it all began, otherwise its pointless isnt it?

What's pointless, exactly?

Evolution alone tracks the changes in species. I accept that. But evolution also discounts an intelligent designer by its very nature. According to evolution, a designer/creator had no hand in the species on earth

Again, not true. Evolution has no opinions since it has no brain.

Evolution is just the observed phenomenon that life changes over time. It might be the case that this is as the result of purely naturalistic causes or it might be the case that a supernatural agent is directing things. The modern evolutionary theory as yet has no supernatural agents included in its explanatory framework, to paraphrase Laplace: Peg, I have no need for that hypothesis. Some evolutionary biologists believe there is a supernatural guiding force, and that belief doesn't usually get in the way of them doing their job.

At this time, nobody has proposed a scientific method for discovering the actions of these intelligent agents that might be at work, nobody has proposed how they are changing life over time exactly and therefore there is no scientific theory.

according to evolution, the species on earth evolved from each other and this evolution began with simple celled organisms and progressed to all the species we see on earth today. With this in mind, evolution must by necessity be able to explain the origin of the first living cell and how that cell became a living organism, and how that organism developed and what it developed into ect

Explain why.

According to you, common descent (not evolution), is the proposal that all species on earth have evolved from other organisms and that all current life shares a common ancestry. Evidence from Natural History and the Theory of Evolution itself would suggest that this common ancestor was likely a single celled organism. From this, how does it follow that that common descent, the theory of evolution or evolution itself must by necessity be able to explain the origin of life. Can you show how they explain the origin of life - a Nobel prize await.

If God created the first life, then it stands to reason that the theory of evolution will never be able to explain the origin of life even if we assume it could otherwise. If Aliens created the first life, then we aren't going to get any closer by looking at how chemicals on prebiotic earth interact.

Obviously some evolutionary scientists see the need to offer such an explanation because many theories over the origin of life have been formulated by them.

The study of biological evolution and the study of biological origins are not unrelated studies. Indeed - I have already given you a simple ten minute video that explains how thermodynamics and other simple forces coupled eventually with ideas from the theory of evolution can generate a sort of proto-life form. I have not denied that the fields are related - it just doesn't serve well to say inaccurate things about what evolution is (the fact that populations change), the theory that explains those changes (inheritable changes acted upon by selective pressures etc) and the study of the history of nature (natural history) and the still somewhat disputed fact that all current living organisms are related by a single common ancestor.

As long as you don't get them confused we're doing fine.

Do we want to know how life might originate? Yes, that's why we spend millions researching it.
Do we need to know how life originated to know that Chimpanzees and Humans share a common ancestor? No.

Happy with that?

Here is a rather extensive discussion of observed speciation instances.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Gday Peg,

Peg writes: could you provide some examples of this with perhaps links to the actual laboratories and the research you are referring to ?

There are many examples of observed speciation, with details, here :
http://toarchive.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

Some more examples here :
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html

K.

interestingly The science journal 'Nature' reported in 1997 that almost 40 percent of biologists, physicists, and mathematicians surveyed believe in a God. So where does that put the research of these individuals? Does the fact that they believe in God make their research any less accurate then an athiest/evolutionary scientist??

Two important points

1.) It may surprise you that most of those scientists that believe in God are evolutionists.

2.) By using expressions such as "atheists/evolutionary scientist" you make me believe you might think all evolutionary scientists are atheists. I would like to point out that that's not the case.