Evolution - the illusion of a scientific theory

[Subduction Zone]

If God wants to chastise me for telling people that, in His Word, which He calls truth,

2 Timothy 3:16

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,

Please note, this does not say that the Bible is literally correct.

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

Again the vague "your word". This does not say that the Bible is the word of God.

He says that He formed Adam from the dust and breathed life into him and he became a living being. And that for this reason I believe that humans did not evolve from other life forms and that He created everything in six literal days......

Yes and we know that this is not true. So it seems taking it as a morality tale still would keep it in the possible realm of being of use.

Then, I guess, I'll take what punishment He sees as just.

You, can then tell Him that when He said all these things that you just thought He sorta didn't mean it that way.

No where does it say that God said those things. It only says that man was inspired by God at best.

 

[Dizredux]

You, can then tell Him that when He said all these things that you just thought He sorta didn't mean it that way.

I suspect the Bible was written as it was for God's purposes, not necessarly ours.

For some reason on his own, he made Genesis look like a young universe, young earth, a global flood and no evolution.

But, again for his own purposes, he made his works look like an old universe, old earth, no global flood and evolution as the way he made the diversity of life happen.

I don't know why he did it that way but he did.

If you want to believe in YEC as part of your religious faith, I have no problem with that.

For myself, I have to try why to understand the apparent contradiction between Genesis and God's works. I have ideas but no answers, I just trust in God enough to believe it will someday make sense to us. God's truth cannot contradict God's truth but we may not understand what God means by this.

Dizredux

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

Ya sure. This is very educational to see how people can take a simple, very explicit description and stretch it into what you just described.

I am more interested in what shape you can stretch this scripture....

John 11

40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” 41 Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying.[d] And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. 42 And I know that You always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.” 43 Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” 44 And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Loose him, and let him go.”


There are times when scripture is record of actual events, like the account of Adam and Eve and the account of Lazarus. What is your interpretation of this one.

I accept the narrative as a straightforward description of a miracle.

The reason why I accept the age of the earth as 4+ billion years is because of the evidence, not because of a whim.

The reason I accept the common descent of all life via evolution is because of the evidence, not because of a whim.

Of course, I also accept God as Creator of all things. But i do not reject the evidence as to how the creation was done. To me, it seems ridiculous to disregard some of God's evidence while accepting others, based on what I'd like to believe instead of what God's evidence actually shows.

 

[JacksBratt]

I understand that scientists are promoting "evidence" for an old earth. Creationist scientists are also promoting "evidence" for a young earth.

No one here will accept any documentation or papers that state data that backs a young earth due to the fact that they all come from "Creationist" or Christian websites and are thus deemed biased.

The same people will post data and papers from "non creationist" web sites and papers and for some reason it is not biased.

There is a lot of information and evidence that both sides use to back arguments for each camp.

I have also read a lot of papers and documents that back the sad state of evidence being hidden, destroyed, or covered up if it goes against the popular theories.

With all this he said, she said and this observation and that observation. I will stand on the Holy Bible and trust that, all in due time, it will be the rock of truth that it is.

Satan is a liar and a true deceiver. His best efforts to discredit the Bible are fantastic.
When I see Christians stating that the Bible was written for God's purpose and not ours, I am even more convinced. God doesn't need the Bible, We do.

 

[Delphiki]

Evidence isn't promoted, it's discovered or demonstrated.

You can have all the "papers and documents" you want that can say anything you want, but that doesn't make them evidence.

It's simple. Scientists do things like dig real things up and map genomes, then figure out what those things indicate. These things are not only noted, but they are put in museums, tested by peers, and confirmed with results.

Creationist propaganda, however is (even admittedly, on their part) simply a matter of taking what the bible says, twist any evidence found in such a manner that it can vaguely be used to support it, if at all possible, and then ignore all the evidence that contradicts it.

In short, with creationism, you're either one of those who are in on the scam or you are among the gullible. The way you can usually tell which one you are is whether you're the one selling books and event tickets or the one buying them.

 

[Split Rock]

I understand that scientists are promoting "evidence" for an old earth. Creationist scientists are also promoting "evidence" for a young earth.

No one here will accept any documentation or papers that state data that backs a young earth due to the fact that they all come from "Creationist" or Christian websites and are thus deemed biased.

The same people will post data and papers from "non creationist" web sites and papers and for some reason it is not biased.

There is a lot of information and evidence that both sides use to back arguments for each camp.

I have also read a lot of papers and documents that back the sad state of evidence being hidden, destroyed, or covered up if it goes against the popular theories.

With all this he said, she said and this observation and that observation. I will stand on the Holy Bible and trust that, all in due time, it will be the rock of truth that it is.

Satan is a liar and a true deceiver. His best efforts to discredit the Bible are fantastic.
When I see Christians stating that the Bible was written for God's purpose and not ours, I am even more convinced. God doesn't need the Bible, We do.

There is no "evidence" (as you put it) for a young earth. No one.. and I mean NO ONE has ever examined the earth and concluded it is only 6,000 years old.

 

[Dizredux]

Satan is a liar and a true deceiver. His best efforts to discredit the Bible are fantastic.

One of the problems is that so many creationist sites are also liars and deceivers. I feel that with their dishonesty they are actively discrediting Christianity.

This kind of behavior is one of the reasons many young people are leaving the church and not coming back.

Family Life Council says it's time to bring family back to life -
88 percent of the children raised in evangelical homes leave church at the age of 18, never to return.

T.C. Pickney and Bruce Shortt of the Southern Baptist Convention submitted a resolution in June 2004 which cites a SBC study conducted in 2002. The study found that 88% of all children are leaving the church permanently.



Here is a good article from the Barna group discussing the reasons young Christians are leaving the church and often not coming back.

https://www.barna.org/teens-next-gen-articles/528-six-reasons-young-christians-leave-church
Reason #1 – Churches seem overprotective.
Reason #2 – Teens’ and twentysomethings’ experience of Christianity is shallow.
Reason #3 – Churches come across as antagonistic to science
Reason #4 – Young Christians’ church experiences related to sexuality are often simplistic, judgmental.
Reason #5 – They wrestle with the exclusive nature of Christianity.
Reason #6 – The church feels unfriendly to those who doubt.


Please note #3.

Jack

When I see Christians stating that the Bible was written for God's purpose and not ours, I am even more convinced. God doesn't need the Bible, We do.

I said it was written for God's purposes not for Gods benefit. Reading comprehension skills are important.


Dizredux

 

[Delphiki]

One of the problems is that so many creationist sites are also liars and deceivers. I feel that with their dishonesty they are actively discrediting Christianity.

I don't see that as a problem. Maybe it's simply a clear indicator that creationists are satanists.

 

[Loudmouth]

It is also more prevelent in animals than first thought.

It is still exceedingly rare, and overwhelmed by vertical inheritance.

But there is also a case for cross breeding as well especially earlier on when species may have been able to mate successfully more often. This can also blur ancestral lines as creatures could create new types of animals through cross mating.

In the early stages of incipient speciation the hybrids between the species would not be a new type of animal, and would probably be hard to differentiate from the other two populations.

Horizontal gene transfer is increasingly described between bacteria and animals.

They are also easy to find, and are used as phylogentic markers for vertical heredity. Like ERV's, these transfer events produce lineage specific insertions.

Such transfers that are vertically inherited have the potential to influence the evolution of animals.
Horizontal gene transfer between bacteria and animals

Genetic analysis in the Collaborative Cross breed... [Genome Res. 2011] - PubMed - NCBI

Transduction by viruses works in eukaryotic organisms as well. The discovery that large blocks of genetic instructions can be swapped and transferred among creatures is a clue that the insertion of new genes could be the mechanism behind evolutionary advances. If viruses can transfer eukaryotic genes across species boundaries, and can install their own genes into their hosts, the case for the new mechanism is even stronger. As we will see, viruses do just that.
Viruses and Other Gene Transfer Mechanisms. by Brig Klyce

Yes, mutations can lead to new and beneficial features. We have been saying this for a long time now.

 

[stevevw]

It is still exceedingly rare, and overwhelmed by vertical inheritance.

In the early stages of incipient speciation the hybrids between the species would not be a new type of animal, and would probably be hard to differentiate from the other two populations.

They are also easy to find, and are used as phylogentic markers for vertical heredity. Like ERV's, these transfer events produce lineage specific insertions.

Yes, mutations can lead to new and beneficial features. We have been saying this for a long time now.

The problem is before 580million years ago most life was simple and HGT was prevalent everywhere. So most of the basic forms that went onto become particular species and lines in the tree of life would have had much of the framework for vast variety within their genetics anyway. So obtaining a new feature may have come from existing combinations. So now it’s a case of working out whether an animals ability to change and get new features was from Darwinian evolution or just what was there anyway. Natural selection can be still at work but it is not so much as a self creating mechanism.

All the ingredients for the great variety of animals we see could have already been there and available to be tapped into. So it is a less chance and random process. Its really just like a bigger extensions a great variation not just within a single species but between all species. So this starts to diminish the power of the Darwinian model or natural selection and common decent. Its all muddled up and harder to tell if there were really isolated lines of vertical decent or that all creatures just had that ability anyway all the time and from very early on in time. But also there is evidence that HGT is was and is still at work through viruses as well as more cross breeding than was thought.

[FONT=&quot]But more recently, evidence suggests that complex organisms also have an evolutionary history of horizontal gene transfer and hybridization. It seems that viruses are constantly cutting and pasting [/FONT][FONT=&quot]DNA[/FONT][FONT=&quot] from one genome to another; in humans, up to half of our [/FONT][FONT=&quot]DNA[/FONT][FONT=&quot] may have been imported horizontally by viruses.
[/FONT]Darwin's Tree of Life May Be More Like a Thicket

And evidence is piling up that Lateral Gene Transfer also occurs abundantly in eukaryotic organisms. Gene sequencing techniques further prove that also viruses contribute to the evolution of life. They might have played a crucial role in the development of the genetic code, and viral genes are abundantly present in non-coding DNA regions that used to be designated as "Junk DNA". Such horizontal evolutionary phenomena pose major challenges to the Modern Synthesis that makes a clear distinction between ontogeny and phylogeny, emphasizes germ-line transmission, and that defines speciation as a splitting or "branching off" process. Horizontal evolutionary studies have consequences for how we define units of evolution, biological individuals, how we draw the tree of life, and how we conceptualize speciation.
For ten years after the genome project, scientists could not find enough mutations in the human genes to explain diseases and new developments in evolution. There just aren’t enough mutations in the 1.5% of the DNA that were supposed to be the genes. - See more at: http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/jumping-...eal-drivers-of-evolution#sthash.9VJ52njb.dpuf

AppEEl AAA2012
Fifty percent of the human genome consists of copies of jumping genes. -
[FONT=&quot]Long thought to be “junk” [/FONT][FONT=&quot]DNA[/FONT][FONT=&quot] the large amount of “jumping genes” in all animals and plants may be the driving force behind all of evolution.[/FONT]
http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/jumping-genes-versus-epigenetics-the-real-drivers-of-evolution

Genetic tests on bacteria, plants and animals increasingly reveal that different species crossbreed more than originally thought, meaning that instead of genes simply being passed down individual branches of the tree of life, they are also transferred between species on different evolutionary paths. The result is a messier and more tangled "web of life".
Evolution: Charles Darwin was wrong about the tree of life | Science | theguardian.com

 

[Subduction Zone]

stevevw, instead of spamming the site with many articles that you have questions about could you please bring them up one at a time. It is hard to understand what you are trying to claim when you do so. And if you have multiple errors it is too difficult to deal with them properly. All that ends up happening half of the time is that incorrect assumptions are simply pointed out to be wrong. It takes much more time to show how an idea is wrong then it takes to post an incorrect idea. In fact there is a dishonest debating technique called the Gish Gallop based upon this. Gish used to spew all sorts of incorrect ideas and outright falsehood so fast that it was impossible to even correct one tenth of them in the limited time available in a public debate.

 

[stevevw]

stevevw, instead of spamming the site with many articles that you have questions about could you please bring them up one at a time. It is hard to understand what you are trying to claim when you do so. And if you have multiple errors it is too difficult to deal with them properly. All that ends up happening half of the time is that incorrect assumptions are simply pointed out to be wrong. It takes much more time to show how an idea is wrong then it takes to post an incorrect idea. In fact there is a dishonest debating technique called the Gish Gallop based upon this. Gish used to spew all sorts of incorrect ideas and outright falsehood so fast that it was impossible to even correct one tenth of them in the limited time available in a public debate.

Well sorry if it came across that way but that was not my intention. I am not spamming but linking a few sites as support. I have learnt that when I post some support some people say that the site is no good or even try to say they have a connection creationist sites. So I tend to link a few to overcome this.In saying that I have only linked 3 sites and some of the sub links are from one of those 3 sites. I dont class that as spamming but a reasonable amount of support for what I was saying. But basically the sites I posted covered a couple of different ways in which scientists have found some evidence for HGT. I could understand what they were saying and I'm a layman. Though I'm not going to say I understand it completely as I'm not a geneticist. But thats why I have questioned it and are wondering what it represents. At the very least it is putting a question mark on what roles mutations play in the Darwinian theory of evolution. But you havnt given any rebuttal to any of it but instead criticized my technique. So I'm wondering why. Never the less I will single out a site in which it brings up evidence for HGT in more complex animals and you can address that one alone. Then I can go through each one so you can address them.
http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/jumping-genes-versus-epigenetics-the-real-drivers-of-evolution

 

[Subduction Zone]

You really need to discuss this with sfs, he knows the topic much better than I do, but that article still clearly supports the theory of evolution. It merely is trying to explain some possible mechanisms of it.

Now there are some problems with the article that I can see. First it bought project ENCORE's line. More of the genome may be functional than first thought, but Project Encore still shows that there are tons of junk DNA in our system. They were too quick to claim functionality and many if not most scientists believe that they overstated their case.

This article clears up some of the ENCORE hype:

Fighting about ENCODE and junk : Nature News Blog


What most scientists seem to agree on is that gene sharing occurs mainly in very simple life. It does not debunk the "tree of life" at all.

 

[stevevw]

You really need to discuss this with sfs, he knows the topic much better than I do, but that article still clearly supports the theory of evolution. It merely is trying to explain some possible mechanisms of it.

Now there are some problems with the article that I can see. First it bought project ENCORE's line. More of the genome may be functional than first thought, but Project Encore still shows that there are tons of junk DNA in our system. They were too quick to claim functionality and many if not most scientists believe that they overstated their case.

This article clears up some of the ENCORE hype:

Fighting about ENCODE and junk : Nature News Blog


What most scientists seem to agree on is that gene sharing occurs mainly in very simple life. It does not debunk the "tree of life" at all.

As I said that the Darwinian model for the TOE may well still be the valid basis for change. But this does put a question mark over at least how much it influence change. If HGT is a fair amount of the reason or is a bigger contributor to spreading genes between creatures then it muddies the waters. You cant then stand firmly on darwinian evolution through natural selection and common decent being the only driving force that created new creatures from a random and chance process of mutations adding new genetics to a creature. If the junk DNA has a role to play then there is a whole lot more genetic ability that can be tapped into for adding new features to creatures. For all we know all the genetics of the basic features or a greater deal than we think of every creature may well already be within every creatures genetic makeup sitting there waiting to be used when needed. I am not a geneticists and this is my observation. It may be to simple but I suspect there is some truth to it.

 

[Subduction Zone]

As I said that the Darwinian model for the TOE may well still be the valid basis for change. But this does put a question mark over at least how much it influence change. If HGT is a fair amount of the reason or is a bigger contributor to spreading genes between creatures then it muddies the waters. You cant then stand firmly on darwinian evolution through natural selection and common decent being the only driving force that created new creatures from a random and chance process of mutations adding new genetics to a creature. If the junk DNA has a role to play then there is a whole lot more genetic ability that can be tapped into for adding new features to creatures. For all we know all the genetics of the basic features or a greater deal than we think of every creature may well already be within every creatures genetic makeup sitting there waiting to be used when needed.

So are you only arguing details about evolution? I have no problem with that. All of the claims still accept the core idea of common descent. It might be muddied a bit by gene exchange, but we all came from one source ultimately. And also gene swapping, etc. is mainly limited to very simple life forms. Once you get into multicellular life it is not the main driving force.

 

[JacksBratt]

Evidence isn't promoted, it's discovered or demonstrated.

Once it is discovered and demonstrated it can be presented or promoted.

You can have all the "papers and documents" you want that can say anything you want, but that doesn't make them evidence.

Great statement of facts here.

It's simple. Scientists do things like dig real things up and map genomes, then figure out what those things indicate. These things are not only noted, but they are put in museums, tested by peers, and confirmed with results.

OR, hidden, covered up or destroyed and denied, while your peers try to destroy your reputation if you go against the status quo.

Creationist propaganda, however is (even admittedly, on their part) simply a matter of taking what the bible says, twist any evidence found in such a manner that it can vaguely be used to support it, if at all possible, and then ignore all the evidence that contradicts it.

Each camp accuses each other of this.

In short, with creationism, you're either one of those who are in on the scam or you are among the gullible. The way you can usually tell which one you are is whether you're the one selling books and event tickets or the one buying them.

Again, you can say this about evolutionists too.

Who is right? When your eyes close at the last beat of your heart.....the truth will be known to you. At that point, it's too late if your wrong.

 

[USincognito]

Each camp accuses each other of this.

Yeah, but there's actual evidence of it on the Creationist side.
Are Humans as Close to Chickens as They Are to Chimps?
The title of this article is "Are Humans as Close to Chickens as They Are to Chimps?" and it's absolute propaganda. Analysis of chimp and human Y chromosomes found that they had as much divergence as the human and chicken genomes. The study said nothing even close to the misleading article title.

 

[Loudmouth]

OR, hidden, covered up or destroyed and denied, while your peers try to destroy your reputation if you go against the status quo.

More baseless allegations. Creationists don't have evidence, so they have to cast aspersions at every turn instead of dealing with the facts.

Each camp accuses each other of this.

We can actually demonstrate that creationists lie repeatedly, and often.

For example, creationists back in 1982 were arguing that some proteins from distantly related species were closer to humans than chimps were. Here is a list:

Molecule________________Nearest Relative to Human

Fetal hemoglobin________________Horse

Tear enzymes__________________Chicken

Albumin_______________________Bullfrog

Blood antigen A_______________Butterbean

Cholesterol level______________Garter snake

Milk chemistry__________________Donkey

A Closer Look at Some Biochemical Data that "Support" Creation | NCSE

Of course, those were all flat out lies. This, in part, gave rise the cat call "Bullfrog" that many creationists had to face. Over and over and over, creationists are caught telling massive lies. When you point them out, they just ignore it, and jump to the next lie.

Who is right? When your eyes close at the last beat of your heart.....the truth will be known to you. At that point, it's too late if your wrong.

Why can't you open your eyes and look at the evidence around you?

 

[Split Rock]

OR, hidden, covered up or destroyed and denied, while your peers try to destroy your reputation if you go against the status quo.

Conspiracy theory nonsense.

Who is right? When your eyes close at the last beat of your heart.....the truth will be known to you. At that point, it's too late if your wrong.

What does this have to do with accepting or rejecting objective reality?

 

[Loudmouth]

The problem is before 580million years ago most life was simple and HGT was prevalent everywhere.

Why is that a problem for determining common ancestry amongst complex species that evolved after that point, and that did not participate in HGT?

So most of the basic forms that went onto become particular species and lines in the tree of life would have had much of the framework for vast variety within their genetics anyway.

Variation is not a problem for constructing phylogenies.

So obtaining a new feature may have come from existing combinations.

None of those features are the derived ones we see in modern species. We are talking about early, early eukaryotes that may have only been loose colonies. Even in sponges (the least derived animal group) we only see a very early and basic homeobox gene family that is much more complex and derived in later complex life.

So now it’s a case of working out whether an animals ability to change and get new features was from Darwinian evolution or just what was there anyway.

Baloney. The genomes of modern complex life is far removed from early eukaryotes. Your scenario is ludicrous in the extreme.

All the ingredients for the great variety of animals we see could have already been there and available to be tapped into.

Flat out false. None of the ancestors of chimps had the genes necessary for creating humans. At the same time, chimps and humans share a common ancestor. The only way that humans evolve is through the addition of new genetic material by mutation.

[FONT=&quot]But more recently, evidence suggests that complex organisms also have an evolutionary history of horizontal gene transfer and hybridization. It seems that viruses are constantly cutting and pasting [/FONT][FONT=&quot]DNA[/FONT][FONT=&quot] from one genome to another; in humans, up to half of our [/FONT][FONT=&quot]DNA[/FONT][FONT=&quot] may have been imported horizontally by viruses.
[/FONT]Darwin's Tree of Life May Be More Like a Thicket

And evidence is piling up that Lateral Gene Transfer also occurs abundantly in eukaryotic organisms. Gene sequencing techniques further prove that also viruses contribute to the evolution of life. They might have played a crucial role in the development of the genetic code, and viral genes are abundantly present in non-coding DNA regions that used to be designated as "Junk DNA". Such horizontal evolutionary phenomena pose major challenges to the Modern Synthesis that makes a clear distinction between ontogeny and phylogeny, emphasizes germ-line transmission, and that defines speciation as a splitting or "branching off" process. Horizontal evolutionary studies have consequences for how we define units of evolution, biological individuals, how we draw the tree of life, and how we conceptualize speciation.
For ten years after the genome project, scientists could not find enough mutations in the human genes to explain diseases and new developments in evolution. There just aren’t enough mutations in the 1.5% of the DNA that were supposed to be the genes. - See more at: http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/jumping-...eal-drivers-of-evolution#sthash.9VJ52njb.dpuf

AppEEl AAA2012
Fifty percent of the human genome consists of copies of jumping genes. -
[FONT=&quot]Long thought to be “junk” [/FONT][FONT=&quot]DNA[/FONT][FONT=&quot] the large amount of “jumping genes” in all animals and plants may be the driving force behind all of evolution.[/FONT]
http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/jumping-genes-versus-epigenetics-the-real-drivers-of-evolution

Genetic tests on bacteria, plants and animals increasingly reveal that different species crossbreed more than originally thought, meaning that instead of genes simply being passed down individual branches of the tree of life, they are also transferred between species on different evolutionary paths. The result is a messier and more tangled "web of life".
Evolution: Charles Darwin was wrong about the tree of life | Science | theguardian.com

That is just more science that you don't understand, and continue to misrepresent.