Why Evolution is True (3)

[Jeffwhosoever]

You realize there is a General Theology subforum specifically for these theological topics? You have long left the domain of creation vs. evolution.

 

[Jeffwhosoever]

Forgive me but for someone who has your qualification you do not seem to be very knowledgeable about life in general,
were you very religious before you went to collage? were you raised to be a Christian? if not when did you decide to become a Christian?

"highly competitive university in the USA". I am curious, where did you obtain your bachelor's?

BTW, I bet all those people you mentioned were religious before they were educated, how many brilliant Muslims and Hindu's are there?
The real question should be, how many brilliant people decided to become religious after they were educated?

Sorry, since you won't answer questions, I won't invest anymore time with you. But, I will leave you with the biography of an American Creationist, so you don't live thinking all are as uneducated as you imply:

http://www.thetruthproject.org/about/deltackett.aspx

 

[Loudmouth]

your whole argument goes down the tubes when you say we are related to fruit flies. Thats discusting. I mean really. And immoral.

It isn't my argument that just went down the tubes.

Appeal to consequences - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Loudmouth]

now if you can prove common ancestry to fruit flies,

I just showed you that evidence. Fruit flies are within the nested hierarchy that includes humans and all other bilaterians. It is the nested hierarchy that demonstrates common ancestry.

Bilateria

kent hovind has a 250,000 dollar challege for anyone to prove common ancestry to distant relatives, like say monkeys, or fruit flies for that matter (now)

The problem is that Mr. Hovind gets to decide which evidence you are allowed to present, and Mr. Hovind is also the judge as to whether or not your prove common ancestry. It isn't an honest challenge.

"speciation is not evidence for macroevolution, because variation within groups of organisms (however you wish to define those groups) only proves that creatures can adapt to their environments, but does not qualify as evidence that these adaptive changes are without limitation. That is like saying “I watched someone jump really high, so that is proof that they used to be able to fly.” Evolutionists commonly use the bait ‘n switch method of using “microevolution” to prove “macroevolution.” "
above quotes from above link

Speciation is proof that populations can be split into subpopulations, and that those subpopulations will diverge over time. That is macroevolution, by definition.

 

[Loudmouth]

One estimate I read is 50,000 genetic changes to change from one life form (say a fish) to another (say an amphibious creature). Since all 50,000 changes are required, the fossil record should have many transitions that failed because statistics shows permutations of 50,000 changes has very poor odds.

There are many logical failures in this argument.

1. You are only focusing on the changes that would lead to a specific amphibious creature. What you don't factor in is all of the viable evolutionary pathways that do not lead to your specific result. This is known as the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.
Texas sharpshooter fallacy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2. You act as if the fossil record does not have many transitions for extinct lineages. This would require you to search the entire fossil record to make such a statement, which obviously no one has done. In fact, I doubt we have searched even 0.00001% of the fossil record. On top of that, you also make the assumption that every single transition produced a fossil, and that this fossil survived to the modern day. I don't see why these assumptions should be true.

You have better odds of winning the lottery.

I guess that you are unaware that people win the lottery all of the time?

And to think all of these changes occurred without a designer (God) making those changes seems difficult to believe.

We call this an argument from incredulity, which is a logical fallacy.

Argument from incredulity - RationalWiki

Reality has this strange property of not caring what we humans find believable. If we find it hard to believe that it is the Earth that is moving, and not the Sun, reality doesn't care one wit. The Earth is still the one that is moving, in reality.

How many of these transitional fossils between life forms have been found? If this theory is true, we should see many more transitional fossils than non-transitional fossils.

We have many exmaples of transitional fossils.

List of transitional fossils - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

More importantly, all of the transitional fossils, and fossils in general, fall into the predicted nested hierarchy. All of the fossil evidence supports the theory of evolution.

 

[Usus Vox Tractus]

Testimony? hahahaha!

Hebrews 9:17:
For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth.

Hebrews 9:16:
where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator.


Jesus came, died for the world, and is seated at the right hand of God. It's done..the first part of the bible was fufilled. While he was in the world he was the light....now that he is not in the world...we the saints are the light. There is no reason for God to reveal any more "scriptures"...like men keep digging out of the ground........ or "talk directly" to people.

I highly doubt you had a "personal interaction" with Jesus. Jesus is god, period.

He appeared to a great many people after the crucifixion.

The knowledge of Daniel and John is sealed until the Revelation. The Comforter will lead us into all truth. If we had it all already, there would be no need.


Joel 2:29 28"It will come about after this That I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; And your sons and daughters will prophesy, Your old men will dream dreams, Your young men will see visions. 29"Even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days.

There is lots to be revealed and much reason for it.


Ah, so you doubt the eye witnessing account of a faithful living man. How can you believe anything in the bible? Jesus is the singular expression of the Infinite Invisible God. The Infinite God remains wholly whole outside creation, undiminished in the act of Genesis. God the Son, "Jesus" remains inside creation until it is fulfilled.


How do I know it was Jesus? 1: He could read my mind and answered questions I had thought. 2: When I hugged him, there was a transfer of Holy Spirit and I became transparent to myself, as I was to Him....and there was no escape from the Spirit of God. There was also no escape from my own righteous judgment against myself now aided by the Consciousness of All Truth.

How do I know it was Jesus? Because I saw/felt the Author and eventual perfection of my own soul. Because of the leap of joy and love that burst right through my ego. Because of the burning I went through as He opened me up to my Self and there was no escape from God Consciousness....only absolute awe and trembling terror as the fires of Spirit cleansed me.

That and all the subsequent visions that followed for years.


I do not care if you do or don't believe me. I no longer deal in the realms of belief so I do not have to defend them. I know God exists as Ultimate Reality to the core of my soul by direct experience , authored by "Jesus". This is the source of my living faith.


I had figured my experience might edify Christian faith, but it seems it is just too unbelievable to entertain...by believers. Quite strange and non-sequitur.

 

[createdtoworship]

I just showed you that evidence. Fruit flies are within the nested hierarchy that includes humans and all other bilaterians. It is the nested hierarchy that demonstrates common ancestry.

Bilateria



The problem is that Mr. Hovind gets to decide which evidence you are allowed to present, and Mr. Hovind is also the judge as to whether or not your prove common ancestry. It isn't an honest challenge.



Speciation is proof that populations can be split into subpopulations, and that those subpopulations will diverge over time. That is macroevolution, by definition.

speciation is involved in macro evolution but no scientific articles state that speciation and macro evolution are synonymous. Macro evolution is evolution at above the taxonomy level of species, and thus is above the level of speciation as well.

 

[createdtoworship]

It isn't my argument that just went down the tubes.

Appeal to consequences - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I question some of your sources, wikipedia has error. see below. If your sources are invalid, your whole argument is in question, again.

Up to six in ten articles on Wikipedia contain factual errors | Mail Online
Most Wikipedia entries about companies contain factual errors, study finds -- ScienceDaily
Examples of Bias in Wikipedia - Conservapedia
Study Finds 90% of Health-Related Wikipedia Articles Contain Errors - iHealthBeat

 

[createdtoworship]

If you think about, we are more closely related to snakes than to fruit flies; at least snakes are vertebrates.

thats discusting too. If you can associate with an animal that eats it's prey whole and living, and you can associate with live food wiggling inside you, then you are correct here.

 

[createdtoworship]

Ahhh you are operating on the Hovind level of discussion. No wonder you seem very confused at times.

Dizredux

sorry I don't respond to your posts until you respond to mine. So have a good day.

 

[createdtoworship]

*emphasis mine


Too funny.

not sure we get the joke . But whatever, as long as you are enjoying yourself, thats what matters.

 

[Dizredux]

sorry I don't respond to your posts until you respond to mine. So have a good day.

We were discussing macroevolution and you were being shown wrong so you tried to change the subject to my religious beliefs. It is called running away and is a rather dishonest tactic.


Dizredux

 

[Jeffwhosoever]

There are many logical failures in this argument.

1. You are only focusing on the changes that would lead to a specific amphibious creature. What you don't factor in is all of the viable evolutionary pathways that do not lead to your specific result. This is known as the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy.
Texas sharpshooter fallacy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2. You act as if the fossil record does not have many transitions for extinct lineages. This would require you to search the entire fossil record to make such a statement, which obviously no one has done. In fact, I doubt we have searched even 0.00001% of the fossil record. On top of that, you also make the assumption that every single transition produced a fossil, and that this fossil survived to the modern day. I don't see why these assumptions should be true.



I guess that you are unaware that people win the lottery all of the time?



We call this an argument from incredulity, which is a logical fallacy.

Argument from incredulity - RationalWiki

Reality has this strange property of not caring what we humans find believable. If we find it hard to believe that it is the Earth that is moving, and not the Sun, reality doesn't care one wit. The Earth is still the one that is moving, in reality.



We have many exmaples of transitional fossils.

List of transitional fossils - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

More importantly, all of the transitional fossils, and fossils in general, fall into the predicted nested hierarchy. All of the fossil evidence supports the theory of evolution.

How can you prove these are transitional fossils and not merely individual extinct species?

 

[Dizredux]

How can you prove these are transitional fossils and not merely individual extinct species?

Transitional fossils may or may not be ancestral to more modern descendents although they could be.

As Wiki describes it

A transitional fossil is any fossilized remains of a life form that exhibits traits common to both an ancestral group and its derived descendant group.

In other words, a transitional fossil has characteristics of more than one group.

We cannot know if they are direct ancestors of a more recent group as it would take DNA to really arrive at this.

So, as an example, a dinosaur with feathers would be considered as a transitional form between dinosaurs and birds but it will not be possible to know if the organism is an direct ancestor of modern birds.

What the transitional fossils give is an idea of the evolutionary path that occurred moving from dinosaur forms to bird forms.

So to answer your question in a round about way, an extinct species could be a transitional species just not necessarly a direct ancestor.

When you look at the record, almost all of the species that ever lived did go extinct. Also an extinct species could also be ancestral to a more modern one but went extinct after the species split.

Fun stuff in lots of ways.

Dizredux

 

[Loudmouth]

How can you prove these are transitional fossils and not merely individual extinct species?

Why can't they be both a transitional species and individual extinct species?

Perhaps you are confusing the words "transitional" and "ancestral"? This is a common misunderstanding. When we say that a species is transitional we are making no claims of direct ancestor-descendant relationships. Transitional simply means having a mixture of characteristics between an earlier species group and a later species group (i.e. a mixture of characteristics between two taxa). Fossils don't come with birth certificates, so we don't make strong claims of direct ancestry. However, fossils do come with morphology, so we do use morphology to see how they compare to other species.

So to answer your question, a transitional fossil can be an extinct species. It can also be an offshoot of the direct ancestral line between modern species and a more distant ancestor. Darwin himself discussed how "collateral" descendants can be used to infer evolutionary pathways:

"In looking for the gradations by which an organ in any species has been perfected, we ought to look exclusively to its lineal ancestors; but this is scarcely ever possible, and we are forced in each case to look to species of the same group, that is to the collateral descendants from the same original parent-form, in order to see what gradations are possible, and for the chance of some gradations having been transmitted from the earlier stages of descent, in an unaltered or little altered condition."--Charles Darwin, "Origin of Species"
The Origin of Species: Chapter 6

Of course, separate creation of species will also result in species that have a mixture of features from two divergent taxa. So what is the real test here? The test is that the theory of evolution predicts that transitionals should fall into a nested hierarchy. For separate creation, there is absolutely no reason why we should see a nested hierarchy.

So what do we find? We only find the mixture of characteristics that the theory of evolution predicts we should find. We find dino-bird transitionals, but not bird-mammal transitionals. We find ape-human transitionals, but not ape-dog transitionals.

Also, we don't test theories with evidence we don't have. That is why the whole "missing fossils" argument fails right at the start.

 

[Loudmouth]

thats discusting too. If you can associate with an animal that eats it's prey whole and living, and you can associate with live food wiggling inside you, then you are correct here.

Asking a creationist to deal with evidence in an honest manner is like trying to ask a calculator to divide by zero. They just can't do it.

 

[Loudmouth]

I question some of your sources, wikipedia has error. see below. If your sources are invalid, your whole argument is in question, again.

Up to six in ten articles on Wikipedia contain factual errors | Mail Online
Most Wikipedia entries about companies contain factual errors, study finds -- ScienceDaily
Examples of Bias in Wikipedia - Conservapedia
Study Finds 90% of Health-Related Wikipedia Articles Contain Errors - iHealthBeat

This is all you have? This is your grand argument against all of the evidence I have presented you?

 

[Loudmouth]

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
above quote from:
Charles Darwin, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life," 1859, p. 162.

No mention of specified complexity.

the above is an example of specified complexity.

That is a claim. You have not shown that specified complexity fits the challenge given by Darwin. You actually need to show that SCI can not evolve.

 

[createdtoworship]

No mention of specified complexity.



That is a claim. You have not shown that specified complexity fits the challenge given by Darwin. You actually need to show that SCI can not evolve.

I already did three times with the peer review of avian design. that too is an example of csi.but nothing I can post will change your mind. as you dont even try to read the peer reviews posted while simultaneously denying their existence. I just keep posting them hoping you will address the evidence and stop the dishonest dodging.

 

[createdtoworship]

This is all you have? This is your grand argument against all of the evidence I have presented you?

yes its all I have and its sufficient as long as you use inaccurate sources.