Science Disproves Evolution

[godless dave]

The closest living relative to whales in terms of DNA is the hippo.

Again, so what?

 

[Marduk]

The closest living relative to whales in terms of DNA is the hippo.
You're not looking to any "point". You seek no dialogue.
You are a committed atheist, as demonstrated in your very screen name.

There is a splendid book titled The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict.

It is probably the best documented book I have ever read, with hundreds and hundreds .

I have heard it referred to as " The New Evidence That Demands a refund" and its written by an evangelical who does the same quote mining and deliberate misinterpetation that you have excelled at so far.
wiki states

McDowell's approach to apologetics falls under what Protestant theologians classify as "classical" and "evidential." In either of these approaches to Christian apologetics, it is assumed that arguments defending the Christian faith can legitimately be directed to both believers and unbelievers because the human mind is viewed as able to comprehend certain truths about God. Presuppositional apologetics, by contrast, regards the effects of sin on the human mind as so pervasive that the value and usefulness of apologetics for unbelievers is called into question.

The Emerging Church's Tim Keel regards McDowell's approach to apologetics as coercive: "apologetics [is] a particularly Western way of arguing people into submission by anticipating every possible argument they might come up with and having a rational argument prepared in response. Josh McDowell's book betrays this cultural context: Evidence That Demands a Verdict."[9]

they were generous and you neglected to mention that the book isn't science, its religion aimed specifically at christians
there is an extensive and scientific rebuttal here
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/jury/
but I don't expect you'll read it
ignorance is bliss eh

 

[JonathanQuick]

A hypothetical clade diagram. What of it?

Darwin's cladogram was blank. Not one tip, not the base, nothing was labelled.

Today, you can look up the most sophisticated cladogram ever produced. The branches remain blank, all the way down to the base. The promise of all those "missing links" remains quite unfulfilled.

Would you want a society based on Ohm's laws? /

A more inane question than that I cannot recall.

I must put you on ignore. Discussions with you are clearly impossible.

 

[RoboTimbo]

You are a committed atheist, as demonstrated in your very screen name.

So is it now ok to bring in your holy book?

 

[Shalamar]

The closest living relative to whales in terms of DNA is the hippo.
You're not looking to any "point". You seek no dialogue.
You are a committed atheist, as demonstrated in your very screen name.

There is a splendid book titled The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict.

It is probably the best documented book I have ever read, with hundreds and hundreds of citations, referencing college professors, historians, archaeologists and other scholars.

If you were really interested in learning, you would read this and other books of a similar nature, which run counter to your dogma.

I do this all the time. The problem with leftists is that they have this knee-jerk reaction to anything outside their own narrow credo.

The problem with the right, is that they have this knee-jerk reaction to anything outside their own narrow credo.

You demonstrate this well. The Theory of Evolution is not a Credo. It is Science, well documented with the evidence.

God, and Religion is Dogma. Unsupported, except by the ancient books. They talk of morality, but do nothing to help us understand the world around us. The Dogmatic fundamentalist religious are the ones standing at the cave mouth, screaming that lighting is gods work, because he is angry, trying to keep the tribe cowering in fear. The scientist is the one looking up at the clouds wondering 'How is this possible?'

You *know* the truth already, and your bile against the 'left' shows it. Religion and god is the answer, therefore, science is wrong.

Science doesn't care for religious or political affiliation. It doesn't care about morality, or if you are an atheist or a believer. It is, in our knowledge, the best explanation on how the world around us, and the universe, works.

Science also checks itself. Theories are often replaced, or updated as new information and evidence comes into play. Darwins original work bears little resemblance to what is today, the theory of Evolution. It should also be noted that even if the Theory of Evolution should be shown to be false, it does not mean that creationism wins. Creationism would need to stand on it own legs with testable, provable evidence. Of which, creationism has none whatsoever.

 

[Simon39759]

You are terribly misinformed. You confuse "creationist" with having legitimate doubts about the 150 year old theory first formally posited by Charles Darwin, long before we knew the profound complexity of life.

Meh, no.
As I mentioned, there are a lot that Darwin did not know. While Darwin's theory is still recognizable in the modern incarnation of the theory of evolution, it still is markedly different. So all 'evolutionists' would have 'legitimate doubt about the 150 years old theory first formally posited by Chuck Darwin'.

If you are talking about people that reject the current incarnation of the theory, yes, they virtually all have a religious chimp on their shoulder, or have been taken up by the chimpy folks. After all, all the available evidences point to the theory being correct. So, either you don't have access to these evidence and rely to incorrect information (the passive victims of creationist propaganda) or you have access to this information and reject it based on dogmatic reason... And in our cultural context where the only dogmas that oppose the TOE are religious ones, that mean you are some variety of creationist...

You pretend that YOU have all the answers, and anyone who does not march in lockstep with you is an ignoramus, a victim of "propaganda." This is the identical hateful and condescending tactic taken by global warming fearmongers, bent on controlling everyone else. It is anti-scientific and it is shameful.

a) I never said I had all the answers.
b) In this case, the scientific debate is indeed closed. Has been for a looong time too. It could be reopened, of course, if evidences surfaced that contradicted the TOE, so far, none have been forthcoming... It's likely none ever will...
c) Lol, random, but yes, the scientific consensus now appears to be on global warming being real and man-made. It certainly is not as solid a conclusion as the TOE, but it still seems pretty solid.
d) Quite revealing that you also reject this piece of science out of hand. Just go on to illustrate what I initially said, science denialism is based on ideology and ulterior motive, rather than a careful examination of scientific facts.

Now since you pretend to know so very much about Darwinism, let's compare notes, shall we?

Name for me the ONE SINGLE DIAGRAM inside Darwin's book The Origin of Species. What is that diagram? And what is wrong with it?

That'd be a tree of life, if I recall...
I don't remember anything wrong about it... I mean, it is an approximation for illustration purpose, Darwin himself explains so in the text, but it does a pretty good job at illustrating the idea of common descent...
I guess he put the various descendant equidistant from each other which is arguably an oversimplification... But still not too bad, heck, scientists today still draw such diagrams...
What is the glaring mistake you are talking about how enlightened one?

Sorry but you do exactly that. Not only with Darwin, but also with Al Gore.
tsk, tsk

But... but... I never mentioned Al Gore...
I mean, I don't know him that well, he would probably had made a better president than Bush, but then, so does the blind, wood-alcohol addicted mountain goat in my grand-mother backyard...
The "inconvenient truth" was a pretty cool movie, and certainly it deserve much prop for its role to bringing the (to the best of our knowledge very real and serious) problem of global warming to the forefront of public opinion...
Now, there is the issue, often trotted out, of Al Gore's personal energy consumption, that would make him a bit of an hypocrite...
But, blah, I don't know the guy, and don't really care about him...
Once again, he could be a puppy rapist, that wouldn't make what he says about global warming wrong... (not that he is the one saying that, he is merely repeating the scientific consensus).
You keep on attacking the theory based on some (in Darwin's case, mostly imaginary) flaws in its -perceived- originator. That's a bit like saying that, because Nazi Germany was the first nation to create anti-smoking campaign, smoking no longer causes lung cancer... It's a non, freaking, sequitur...

 

[Foster Zygote]

If I start another thread can I find out how Exodus 21 doesn't tell me how to sell my daughter into slavery?

 

[Simon39759]

Let me give you just one silly example: "An elephant consists of about a trillion colonies of bacteria."

It is another quote mine...
Here is the real quote:

A mouse is a large edifice of perhaps a billion cells. An elephant is a colony of about 1,000 trillion (10¹⁵) cells, and each one of those cells is itself a colony of bacteria.

.

Here, Dawkins is talking the endosymbiotic theory. For those familiar with it, it is the theory that the eukaryotic cells are the product of multiple bacterial invasions. It is the a pretty solid and well supported theory, and a generally accepted one...
Anyway, Dawkins' quote make perfect sense in this context, he is not mistakenly thinking that elephant's cells are bacterial in nature as the quote mine makes it look...

You see Johnathan, you were wondering why creationists were so often called out on their quote mine. Here is a good example why. Your quote mine is a lie crafter to make Dawkins sound ignorant or stupid...
Now if you ever find atheists doing the same thing with the Bible, and I am sure it can and will happen, please be assured that I will condemn their action as loudly as I condemn the creationists'. Such dishonest debating techniques truly are shameful, wherever they come from.

 

[Hellbound]

Interesting.

So, let em see if I've gotten your argument correct.

First, let's ignore the observed instances of speciation. Also, we aren't going to look at teh genetic evidence, showing lines of DNA that are preserved between related species, and that can be traced to show the changes over time fairly well (not to mention the amazing level of commonality between the code for all living things, another strong argument for common descent). We're going to hand-wave the transitional fossils that have been found, and the "irreducibly complex" things that have been shown to be not so irreducible.

Instead of looking at the huge number of things that evolutionary theory explains, and explains well, you focus on the things we haven't figured out yet. And because current evolutionary theory can't completely account for 100% of all possible biological knowledge, then your conclusion is "it's false".

This is a common theme in these arguments, and an invalid one. We KNOW that current evolutionary theory is not 100% complete. We know there are some specific things we don't have hard evidence for. But what we do know is supported by evidence. Despite how it appears you would like to hand-wave it away, everywhere you look there is evidence for evolution (similarity of species, extinctions, greater complexity of species with time, vestigal structures, observed speciations, ring species, genetic evidence, and more). Yet, because 100% of everything can't be explained right now, we should toss it out.

Evolution is based on a few basic principles.

First, it only comes into play when life exists. The creation fo the first forms of life are outside it's scope. So we'll ignore that one for now, as the topic is evolution, not abiogenesis (even if the first life was created supernaturally, evolution would still not be falsified...it's a seperate theory).

So, what principles do we have?

1. Species change and adapt. I think we can all agree that organisms adapt to their environment, as there's ample evidence of this. We observe this in nature, pretty easily.

2. The mechanism for this action appears to be environmental pressures acting on genetic traits, with those creatures whose traits are more advantageous in the current environment being more successful in reproducing, thus passing these traits on to offspring. As the environment changes, the set of traits that are advantageous may change, leading to different selection pressures; the process repeats.

3. Mutations in DNA (transpositions, duplication and/or removal of gene sequences, changes to "stop" codons, and so forth) provides additional raw material for the process in 2 to work on.

And that's pretty much it. That being said, my question to you is: what part of those do you have a problem with?

I'd suggest (both to you and the others here) we pick one of the factors above, and let's limit discussion to that one, before either agreeing or agreeing to disagree and moving on to the next. With the arguments scattering all over the place, it's hard to build up any kind of comprehensive case, and the arguments get more confusing than enlightening. Or, if you think there should be a fourth factor, something additional to add, then mention that and we can start with it. This could be a productive and educational discussion, but the insults and political comments (on both sides) pretty well put paid to that. Responding in kind doesn't geenrally help, either.

Let me know if you're interested.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

"You are stupid." - Richard Dawkins in an e-mail to me after I found many errors in his books.

Let me give you just one silly example: "An elephant consists of about a trillion colonies of bacteria.".

You've misquoted him but even your misquote could be considered accurate. He said an Elephant consists of a quadrillion cells and each cell is a colony of bacteria. That's accurate.

 

[Craig4]

Here are just a few of your mistakes.

1. MY "story" is really quite irrelevant to neo-Darwinism. Science must stand, or fall, on its own. While it is often the case that an old theory, such as the Caloric Theory of Heat, falls to a newer one, viz. Molecular Motion, it is not necessary.

2. Neo-Darwinism is compelling in a variety of ways. It is plausible.
But so too were many other theories, such as the Steady State Universe.
Very troubling was the reaction of Albert Einstein and the entire scientific community, when Catholic Priest George LeMaitre proposed the Primordial Atom, which we now call the Big Bang.

Einsteiin's reaction, that of rejecting God, was identical to the reactions of Darwinists - deny, deny, deny. Einstein had an ax to grind. I suspect that you do as well.



What a cheap shot that was. I divulged Albert Einstein's inexcusable bias against science, and you call that "cheap rhetoric." I point out Darwin's hateful racism, and you denigrate ME, pretending to be enlightened yourself.
What cheap rhetoric you display.





Show one link to any post I have made citing "holy books." Just one.
You see, you engage in the cheapest of cheap rhetoric - lies.

Now as to evolution, please explain the mechanism for the synthesis of human hemoglobin. State the number of amino acids in the alpha and the beta chains. Tell readers how many amino acids are used in this sequence, and state the probability of producing this formulation from random mutation, followed by natural selection.







There is SO "no controversy" that National Geographic magazine featured a "missing link" a few years ago on its cover. It was, like so many other "missing links," a fraud, but hey, to Darwinists, frauds are "no controversy."

And the smooth transition of millions of fossils.... nowhere to be found.
They were promised, but new finds almost always create bigger gaps instead of filling them in.

I am reminded of the words of a prominent Darwinist when a fossil supposed to be transitional between land based mammals and the whales was claimed to be "the most beautiful a Darwinist could hope for."

What does this transition to a whale look like? A crocodile.

This is a perfect example of why the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment to the Constitution is so important. The Creationists aren't interested in dialogue. They aren't interested in science. There is no amount of evidence that will ever satisfy them. The only agenda is to betray America's (I'm referring American creationist here obviously) founding ideals but forcing their religion on our kids by disguising their theology with some scientific jargon. The reality that the Federal Judiciary is a far more effective weapon against the enemies of reason than honest discussion.

Tell you what, go find Pre Cambrian bunny rabbit then try having a scientific discussion.

 

[Simon39759]

If I start another thread can I find out how Exodus 21 doesn't tell me how to sell my daughter into slavery?

It is often argued that Jesus' covenant made the old laws moot, I guess...
And, obviously, these laws, chocking as they are to our eyes, made sense within the cultural context of the time. Of course, if you are arguing, like the Bible does, that they come from the all-wise and timeless mind of a celestial being, such a morally subjective view might be contradictory...

A fascinating discussion for another thread, I'd say.

 

[JonathanQuick]

It is another quote mine...
Here is the real quote:
.

Here, Dawkins is talking the endosymbiotic theory. For those familiar with it, it is the theory that the eukaryotic cells are the product of multiple bacterial invasions. It is the a pretty solid and well supported theory, and a generally accepted one...
Anyway, Dawkins' quote make perfect sense in this context, he is not mistakenly thinking that elephant's cells are bacterial in nature as the quote mine makes it look...

You see Johnathan, you were wondering why creationists were so often called out on their quote mine. Here is a good example why. Your quote mine is a lie crafter to make Dawkins sound ignorant or stupid...
Now if you ever find atheists doing the same thing with the Bible, and I am sure it can and will happen, please be assured that I will condemn their action as loudly as I condemn the creationists'. Such dishonest debating techniques truly are shameful, wherever they come from.

An elephant is a colony of about 1,000 trillion (1015) cells, and each one of those cells is itself a colony of bacteria.

So we see that you engage in dishonest debating techniques.

Dawkins did NOT explain. He did NOT cite endosymbiotic theory. He did NOT claim that cells evolved this way. He specifically claimed that an elephant IS itself a colony of bacteria."

This is clearly nonsense, and you know it. Unfortunately you chose to excuse and temporize rather than be honest. How shameful of you.

 

[brenn]

i think if someone said the same things as Darwin said then, today, that it would clearly be racist, but when you take into account the political climate and common ideology of the time, its just an observation based on his surroundings

I don't think they would "be" racist, I think they would be "called" racist. Unfortunately, that is exactly the point - we now live in an environment where issues involving race cannot be subjected to the same skeptical discussion as any other controversy, for fear that we will be called racist and subjected to the treatment received by any modern social scientist, biologist, etc., who is perceived as being on the wrong side of such an issue.

I think I posted a comment on another thread about issues of race being that point where the skeptics reverse themselves and water runs up hill.

 

[I Am The Scum]

I really don't see why you guys keep chasing red herring. Just ask him to state a case and prove it. I seriously doubt he can.

 

[Simon39759]

An elephant is a colony of about 1,000 trillion (1015) cells, and each one of those cells is itself a colony of bacteria.

So we see that you engage in dishonest debating techniques.

Dawkins did NOT explain. He did NOT cite endosymbiotic theory. He did NOT claim that cells evolved this way. He specifically claimed that an elephant IS itself a colony of bacteria."

This is clearly nonsense, and you know it. Unfortunately you chose to excuse and temporize rather than be honest. How shameful of you.

A colony of bacteria would be multiple bacteria, by the definition of the word 'colony'. So clearly saying that one cell is a colony of bacteria can not mean that one eukaryotic cell is one bacterium. It can only mean that one eukaryotic cell is several such bacteria.
Because an eukaryotic cell is bound within the envelope, this statement can only refer to multiple bacteria living within the bound of on cell membrane.
So, yes, this statement can only refer to the endosymbiotic theory... I don't care if he used this exact word, that is the only thing he can be talking about...

By defending the quote mine so vehemently, even after being shown while it was such, mark you as a willing participant in the lie...

 

[JonathanQuick]

Interesting.

So, let em see if I've gotten your argument correct.

First, let's ignore the observed instances of speciation.

"Ignore the observed instances of speciation" are your words, not mine.
I quoted a biologist who said that no speciation has been observed.
Someone dismissed his claim and pretended to know more.

Also, we aren't going to look at teh genetic evidence, showing lines of DNA that are preserved between related species, and that can be traced to show the changes over time fairly well (not to mention the amazing level of commonality between the code for all living things, another strong argument for common descent).

A cloud and a watermelon differ by about 4% in terms of their composition. Are we to assume, a la Darwin, that they are related?

We're going to hand-wave the transitional fossils that have been found, and the "irreducibly complex" things that have been shown to be not so irreducible.

The problems with "transitional fossils" are many.

A. There are geographical problems. Many transitional fossils are far removed from where their so-called "descendants" are found.

B. There are temporal problems. Many transitional fossils come at the wrong time, before or after, when they should have appeared.

C. There is the Darwinian bias, which is unfortunately no different from the Global Warming bias now plaguing science. Conform or be ostracized, personally, professionally, and financially. This is a deplorable, inexcusable way for *science* to operate.

We ALL believe this. If you argue, we will destroy you!

Fortunately we have men like Wilbur and Orville Wright, who overturned the science of Lord Kelvin, president of the Royal Society, when he said only 8 years earlier, "Heavier than air flight by humans is impossible."

Instead of looking at the huge number of things that evolutionary theory explains, and explains well, you focus on the things we haven't figured out yet. And because current evolutionary theory can't completely account for 100% of all possible biological knowledge, then your conclusion is "it's false".

Where did I say once "It's false"? There you go again, putting words into my mouth.

How anti-scientific of you.

Yet, because 100% of everything can't be explained right now, we should toss it out.

I didn't say that either. You keep putting words in my mouth.
My point is that Darwinism has far more problems than its advocates claim, or admit.
My point is that the slightest indication of doubt or question quickly results in a relentless assault of ad hominem attacks, as you show here in your own response, which I concede is far more civil than most.

Nevertheless, you put words in my mouth, and overlook anything that is convenient for you.

Evolution is based on a few basic principles.

All principles are basic.
If is is so simple, then why do Darwinists relentlessly engage in personal attacks, calling others "stupid" and "flat earthers"?

And why do you and your enlightened friends not admonish such Darwinists!

1. Species change and adapt. I think we can all agree that organisms adapt to their environment, as there's ample evidence of this. We observe this in nature, pretty easily.

Microevolution does not remotely compare with macroevolution.

In fact, evolution is defined in terms of microevolution and that alone.
Therefore Darwinists feel very smug making this claim, and calling it "evolution" only to fall back on the infinite extrapolation when convenient.

3. Mutations in DNA (transpositions, duplication and/or removal of gene sequences, changes to "stop" codons, and so forth) provides additional raw material for the process in 2 to work on.

Transpositions provides no new information.
Duplication provides no new information.
Removal provides no new information.
And yet you pretend that these actions are operative in descent from a single ancestor.

This is breathtakingly anti-scientific.

And that's pretty much it.

Yes it is. Pretty much it.

 

[JonathanQuick]

A "cell" is NOT, repeat NOT a "colony of bacteria."

A colony of bacteria in a cell is an infection.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

A cloud and a watermelon differ by about 4% in terms of their composition. Are we to assume, a la Darwin, that they are related?

Do you think that Momy and Daddy clouds "like each other a lot" and make baby clouds? And that the 96% similarity is in the inheritance mechanism of clouds or the watermelon??

A "cell" is NOT, repeat NOT a "colony of bacteria."

Repeating it doesn't make it true. A eukaryotic cell is a colony of bacteria.

Transpositions provides no new information.
Duplication provides no new information.
Removal provides no new information.
And yet you pretend that these actions are operative in descent from a single ancestor

Then exactly how do these changes cause differences in the organisms that posess them? They very definitely do.

 

[Simon39759]

Transpositions provides no new information.
Duplication provides no new information.
Removal provides no new information.
And yet you pretend that these actions are operative in descent from a single ancestor.

But... They do...

By definition, it alters the genetic sequence, so the sequence (the "information") after the event is different from the one before, aka, it's "new".

If you have mutations following duplication, as is the case in most cases, you get two genes, one being the 'original' and the other one accumulating most of the mutations and becoming increasingly different, increasingly 'new'.
So, yes, you soon get a second 'new' gene, a paralog.