proving evolution as just a "theory"

[Jimmy D]

Theory is the only way you can present it/it's all you got, and how dare you call it fact suddenly.

Kenny. I wrote out a long post to you, Maybe you missed it?

 

[Kenny'sID]

I'm merely pointing out your errors, your expectation of some sort of simplistic example which "proves" such a complex theory is unrealistic, especially as you refuse to accept more technical genetic evidence such as SFS mentioned . When viewed as a whole the evidence we have observed in the natural world paints an inescapable picture. Here are a few examples for you to think about, I'm not trying to prove evolution to you, just demonstrate why I accept it.

1.

We have evidence from the fossil record......

Evolution of the horse - Wikipedia

During the Eocene, an Eohippus species (most likely Eohippus angustidens) branched out into various new types of Equidae. Thousands of complete, fossilized skeletons of these animals have been found in the Eocene layers of North American strata.

In the early-to-middle Eocene, Eohippus smoothly transitioned into Orohippus through a gradual series of changes

In response to the changing environment, the then-living species of Equidae also began to change. In the late Eocene, they began developing tougher teeth and becoming slightly larger and leggier, allowing for faster running speeds in open areas, and thus for evading predators in nonwooded areas

In the early Oligocene, Mesohippus was one of the more widespread mammals in North America. It walked on three toes on each of its front and hind feet (the first and fifth toes remained, but were small and not used in walking). The third toe was stronger than the outer ones, and thus more weighted; the fourth front toe was diminished to a vestigial nub.

Mesohippus was slightly larger than Epihippus, about 610 mm (24 in) at the shoulder. Its back was less arched, and its face, snout, and neck were somewhat longer. It had significantly larger cerebral hemispheres, and had a small, shallow depression on its skull called a fossa, which in modern horses is quite detailed.


Miohippus was significantly larger than its predecessors, and its ankle joints had subtly changed. Its facial fossa was larger and deeper, and it also began to show a variable extra crest in its upper cheek teeth, a trait that became a characteristic feature of equine teeth.

Etc, etc until we find the modern horse fossils which date back about 3.5 million years.

Maybe you've got a more "logical" hypothesis as to why we see thousand of fossils that represent a gradual change from a little dog-like little creature to the horses we see today?

..................................................................


2. We can observe speciation in action.

I know you creationists don't like the fact that we can observe speciation in the lab (bacterias are still bacterias! etc) so here's an example of natural selection in action.....

Speciation in real time

The Central European blackcap spends its summers in Germany and Austria and, until the 1960s, had spent its winters in balmy Spain. About 50 years ago, however, backyard bird feeding became popular in Britain. With a ready supply of food waiting for them in Britain, blackcaps that happened to carry genes that caused them to migrate northwest, instead of southwest to Spain, were able to survive and return to their summer breeding grounds in central Europe. Over time, the proportion of the population carrying northwest-migrating genes has increased. Today, about 10% of the population winters in Britain instead of Spain.

This change in migration pattern has led to a shift in mate availability. The northwest route is shorter than the southwest route, so the northwest-migrating birds get back to Germany sooner each summer. Since blackcaps choose a mate for the season when they arrive at the breeding grounds, the birds tend to mate with others that follow the same migration route.

In December of 2009, researchers from Germany and Canada confirmed that these migration and mating shifts have led to subtle differences between the two parts of the population. The splinter group has evolved rounder wings and narrower, longer beaks than their southward-flying brethren. The researchers hypothesize that both of these traits evolved via natural selection. Pointier wings are favored in birds that must travel longer distances, and rounder wings, which increase maneuverability, are favored when distance is less of an issue — as it is for the northwest migrators. Changes in beak size may be related to the food available to each sub-population: fruit for birds wintering in Spain and seeds and suet from garden feeders for birds wintering in Britain. The northwest migrators' narrower, longer beaks may allow them to better take advantage of all the different sorts of foods they wind up eating in the course of a year. These differences have evolved in just 30 generations and could signify the beginning of a speciation event.

.........................................................

3. Biogeographic Distribution - Modern biogeographic research combines information and ideas from many fields, from the physiological and ecological constraints on organismal dispersal to geological and climatological phenomena operating at global spatial scales and evolutionary time frames. (link)

An example....

The history of marsupials also provides an example of how the theories of evolution and continental drift can be combined to make predictions about what will be found in the fossil record. The earliest marsupial fossils are about 80 million years old and found in North America; by 40 million years ago fossils show that they could be found throughout South America, but there is no evidence of them in Australia, where they now predominate, until about 30 million years ago. The theory of evolution predicts that the Australian marsupials must be descended from the older ones found in the Americas. The theory of continental drift says that between 30 and 40 million years ago South America and Australia were still part of the Southern hemisphere super continent of Gondwana and that they were connected by land that is now part of Antarctica. Therefore combining the two theories scientists predicted that marsupials migrated from what is now South America across what is now Antarctica to what is now Australia between 40 and 30 million years ago. This hypothesis led paleontologists to Antarctica to look for marsupial fossils of the appropriate age. After years of searching they found, starting in 1982, fossils on Seymour Island off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula of more than a dozen marsupial species that lived 35–40 million years ago.

link
............................................................

4. ERV evidence

I know this can get a little technical but I remembered you asked for it to be explained in terms a five year old could understand. Essentialsaltes did that for you but I don't think you commented....

When mommies and daddies love each other very much, they make a recipe for a baby. They mix a copy of half of daddy’s recipe with a copy of half of mommy’s recipe to make a baby recipe. The recipe is so long that it takes nine months to make a baby!

And by looking at your recipe later, you can see that you are related to your mommy and daddy because you can see bits of their recipes in you! (Or you’re adopted, but your mommy and daddy still love you!)

And this can go back through the generations. If half of grandpa’s recipe goes into your mom, and half of mom’s recipe goes in you, then one quarter of your recipe comes from grandpa!

Now, if you have first cousins, that means one of your parents was the brother or sister of one of theirs. And those siblings had the same parents… your grandparents. By comparing your recipe to the recipe of your first cousin, you can see that you share a common grandparent. This is called common ancestry. Since recipes get shared in an unbroken chain from ancestor to descendant (that means a baby!), if you have enough information, you can determine whether two recipes have a common ancestor. Fortunately, those recipes are really long, so there is a lot of information.

But sometimes little accidents happen to the recipes. This is really important, but we’ll save that for when you are six. But one particular kind of accident is when you get sick. Sometimes a germ will leave its cooties in your recipe. Ew!

Before, maybe your grandpa had a recipe with a line that said:

Step 146734 Make five itty-bitty toes on the end of each foot.

And afterwards, it might read

Step 146734 Make five itty-bitty toeGERM COOTIESs on the end of each foot.


And now that might be part of your recipe! Because he is your ancestor.

Your friend on the playground might have this in her recipe:

Step 146734 Make five itGERM COOTIESty-bitty toes on the end of each foot.

Do you have a common ancestor with her?

Did you say no? Because the cooties are in the wrong place? Haha, the joke’s on you. The answer is actually yes. All human beings are related. But looking at this one tiny piece of the recipe, we don’t have any evidence that your friend descended from your grandpa. (Don’t ask him about it in front of your grandmother.)

Since grandpa got the cooties in his lifetime, it can only show up in that exact spot in his descendants, or in someone else who coincidentally got the cooties in the same exact place in the recipe. But the recipe is so long this is very unlikely.

But if we look at the whole recipe, you and your friend actually have a lot of recipe cooties in common. Ew! I know. But it’s pretty harmless. Everyone has them. Thousands of them. And because a lot of them are in the same place, we know you share common ancestors. But since a few of them are different (like the one from your grandpa) we know that your common ancestor was further back in generations than your grandpa.

So by comparing the number of shared cooties to the number of unshared cooties, you can see how closely related you are.

And when we compare your cooties to those of a chimpanzee, we find a lot of cooties in different places, but a lot of cooties in the same place! We also have common ancestors, but it wasn’t in your grandpappy’s day or your great great great grandmammy’s day. It was 5 million years ago.

In fact, orthologous cooties fall into a nested hierarchy among primates.

..........................................................


Now, these are just a couple of trivial lines of evidence, not so much the tip of the iceberg, more like a pebble on Everest. Taken individually I'm sure you can handwave them away or find excuses not to accept them, for anyone with an open mind the conclusion to be drawn from all these disparate observations is inescapable. Let's be honest, the only reason to deny that conclusion is because you've hung your faith on a particular interpretation of the bible, that's up to you of course, but it's not a view shared by most christians.

You have to know if someone tells you they cannot prove something because it's to complex, that many of us are going to have out doubts.

How bout this... God is too complex, I don't understand much of how he does anything/who he is, but he exists because it make perfect sense he does. It makes perfect since he created the universe because creation is the only way we have ever seen something come to be

Should I expect that to convince you creation is simply an act of God? Should you just believe it as you expect me to believe your end of this?

One might claim "your explanation is just to simple" and basically it is, but in reality, it's so complex, I don't even pretend to know how it was done.
God at least explains a beginning to life, where those that tout evolution have no clue...they even use the trick, "It doesn't matter" in order to try to weasel out of a very important part of any process...the beginning. A process is a beginning, an end and everything in between, yet still y'all will argue with that.

Just like the bizarre argument on the burning hand as scientific evidence/proof, in trying to hold on to the desperate perception that science proves nothing, something that is completely ludicrous. Point being, what tricks are they using to conclude what they do, they sure have a bag full around here.

So, in the end I would be foolish just to take anyone's word for it... I need proof.

You too can do a hand-wave at all I just said, call it an excuse, but it's not, it's reality, and fair reasoning.

But I think I've even seen them try to disallow fair reasoning/logic here as an argument too so, what can I say.

 

[Kenny'sID]

Kenny. I wrote out a long post to you, Maybe you missed it?

Was working on it as you posted that.

 

[Kenny'sID]

That wasn't the question in the OP. The question was, is there anything the poster could say to prove the friend wrong. The answer is, no.

I was sure the question was how to prove Evolution is just theory. I'll go check...hope you aren't wasting my time.

 

[Kenny'sID]

If you answered what? If you answered my question, rather than dodging it as you just did, you would start engaging with the reasons that scientists accept evolution rather than playing word games.

I didn't dodge it at all, I told you all that may be wrong with it, and why you didn't have what you think you had. I was very detailed. But for an answer, I don't know, and don't know that it matters, I thought I said that but whatever...now what? Seems to me the claim I dodged it wasn't exactly the truth, and here is another that wasn't:

And on the reason for the thread not being about what I claimed, fortunately you didn't waste much of my time by speaking untruths, the very title says you are wrong.

Is it any wonder I don't take anyone's word for evolution?

 

[pitabread]

No, of course not. Don't be daft.
Evolution is based on historical evidence at best, since it takes a LOOOONG time.
What we can observe is that mytations occur and natural selection too.
Ascribing creational power to it is another story though, that takes either a giant leap of faith or thorough brainwashing.

Have you ever gone out into space and sat there observing the Earth rotating around the Sun? No?

Exactly. It's a belief.

 

[pitabread]

no. because we have evidences for heliocentrism. but we dont have evidence for evolution.

We have the same evidence for evolution that we have for heliocentrism.

 

[Kenny'sID]

Head-in-the-sand-effect.

Agree, comon' out a there and prove evolution.

 

[rjs330]

I'm merely pointing out your errors, your expectation of some sort of simplistic example which "proves" such a complex theory is unrealistic, especially as you refuse to accept more technical genetic evidence such as SFS mentioned . When viewed as a whole the evidence we have observed in the natural world paints an inescapable picture. Here are a few examples for you to think about, I'm not trying to prove evolution to you, just demonstrate why I accept it.

1.

We have evidence from the fossil record......

Evolution of the horse - Wikipedia

During the Eocene, an Eohippus species (most likely Eohippus angustidens) branched out into various new types of Equidae. Thousands of complete, fossilized skeletons of these animals have been found in the Eocene layers of North American strata.

In the early-to-middle Eocene, Eohippus smoothly transitioned into Orohippus through a gradual series of changes

In response to the changing environment, the then-living species of Equidae also began to change. In the late Eocene, they began developing tougher teeth and becoming slightly larger and leggier, allowing for faster running speeds in open areas, and thus for evading predators in nonwooded areas

In the early Oligocene, Mesohippus was one of the more widespread mammals in North America. It walked on three toes on each of its front and hind feet (the first and fifth toes remained, but were small and not used in walking). The third toe was stronger than the outer ones, and thus more weighted; the fourth front toe was diminished to a vestigial nub.

Mesohippus was slightly larger than Epihippus, about 610 mm (24 in) at the shoulder. Its back was less arched, and its face, snout, and neck were somewhat longer. It had significantly larger cerebral hemispheres, and had a small, shallow depression on its skull called a fossa, which in modern horses is quite detailed.


Miohippus was significantly larger than its predecessors, and its ankle joints had subtly changed. Its facial fossa was larger and deeper, and it also began to show a variable extra crest in its upper cheek teeth, a trait that became a characteristic feature of equine teeth.

Etc, etc until we find the modern horse fossils which date back about 3.5 million years.

Maybe you've got a more "logical" hypothesis as to why we see thousand of fossils that represent a gradual change from a little dog-like little creature to the horses we see today?

..................................................................


2. We can observe speciation in action.

I know you creationists don't like the fact that we can observe speciation in the lab (bacterias are still bacterias! etc) so here's an example of natural selection in action.....

Speciation in real time

The Central European blackcap spends its summers in Germany and Austria and, until the 1960s, had spent its winters in balmy Spain. About 50 years ago, however, backyard bird feeding became popular in Britain. With a ready supply of food waiting for them in Britain, blackcaps that happened to carry genes that caused them to migrate northwest, instead of southwest to Spain, were able to survive and return to their summer breeding grounds in central Europe. Over time, the proportion of the population carrying northwest-migrating genes has increased. Today, about 10% of the population winters in Britain instead of Spain.

This change in migration pattern has led to a shift in mate availability. The northwest route is shorter than the southwest route, so the northwest-migrating birds get back to Germany sooner each summer. Since blackcaps choose a mate for the season when they arrive at the breeding grounds, the birds tend to mate with others that follow the same migration route.

In December of 2009, researchers from Germany and Canada confirmed that these migration and mating shifts have led to subtle differences between the two parts of the population. The splinter group has evolved rounder wings and narrower, longer beaks than their southward-flying brethren. The researchers hypothesize that both of these traits evolved via natural selection. Pointier wings are favored in birds that must travel longer distances, and rounder wings, which increase maneuverability, are favored when distance is less of an issue — as it is for the northwest migrators. Changes in beak size may be related to the food available to each sub-population: fruit for birds wintering in Spain and seeds and suet from garden feeders for birds wintering in Britain. The northwest migrators' narrower, longer beaks may allow them to better take advantage of all the different sorts of foods they wind up eating in the course of a year. These differences have evolved in just 30 generations and could signify the beginning of a speciation event.

.........................................................

3. Biogeographic Distribution - Modern biogeographic research combines information and ideas from many fields, from the physiological and ecological constraints on organismal dispersal to geological and climatological phenomena operating at global spatial scales and evolutionary time frames. (link)

An example....

The history of marsupials also provides an example of how the theories of evolution and continental drift can be combined to make predictions about what will be found in the fossil record. The earliest marsupial fossils are about 80 million years old and found in North America; by 40 million years ago fossils show that they could be found throughout South America, but there is no evidence of them in Australia, where they now predominate, until about 30 million years ago. The theory of evolution predicts that the Australian marsupials must be descended from the older ones found in the Americas. The theory of continental drift says that between 30 and 40 million years ago South America and Australia were still part of the Southern hemisphere super continent of Gondwana and that they were connected by land that is now part of Antarctica. Therefore combining the two theories scientists predicted that marsupials migrated from what is now South America across what is now Antarctica to what is now Australia between 40 and 30 million years ago. This hypothesis led paleontologists to Antarctica to look for marsupial fossils of the appropriate age. After years of searching they found, starting in 1982, fossils on Seymour Island off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula of more than a dozen marsupial species that lived 35–40 million years ago.

link
............................................................

4. ERV evidence

I know this can get a little technical but I remembered you asked for it to be explained in terms a five year old could understand. Essentialsaltes did that for you but I don't think you commented....

When mommies and daddies love each other very much, they make a recipe for a baby. They mix a copy of half of daddy’s recipe with a copy of half of mommy’s recipe to make a baby recipe. The recipe is so long that it takes nine months to make a baby!

And by looking at your recipe later, you can see that you are related to your mommy and daddy because you can see bits of their recipes in you! (Or you’re adopted, but your mommy and daddy still love you!)

And this can go back through the generations. If half of grandpa’s recipe goes into your mom, and half of mom’s recipe goes in you, then one quarter of your recipe comes from grandpa!

Now, if you have first cousins, that means one of your parents was the brother or sister of one of theirs. And those siblings had the same parents… your grandparents. By comparing your recipe to the recipe of your first cousin, you can see that you share a common grandparent. This is called common ancestry. Since recipes get shared in an unbroken chain from ancestor to descendant (that means a baby!), if you have enough information, you can determine whether two recipes have a common ancestor. Fortunately, those recipes are really long, so there is a lot of information.

But sometimes little accidents happen to the recipes. This is really important, but we’ll save that for when you are six. But one particular kind of accident is when you get sick. Sometimes a germ will leave its cooties in your recipe. Ew!

Before, maybe your grandpa had a recipe with a line that said:

Step 146734 Make five itty-bitty toes on the end of each foot.

And afterwards, it might read

Step 146734 Make five itty-bitty toeGERM COOTIESs on the end of each foot.


And now that might be part of your recipe! Because he is your ancestor.

Your friend on the playground might have this in her recipe:

Step 146734 Make five itGERM COOTIESty-bitty toes on the end of each foot.

Do you have a common ancestor with her?

Did you say no? Because the cooties are in the wrong place? Haha, the joke’s on you. The answer is actually yes. All human beings are related. But looking at this one tiny piece of the recipe, we don’t have any evidence that your friend descended from your grandpa. (Don’t ask him about it in front of your grandmother.)

Since grandpa got the cooties in his lifetime, it can only show up in that exact spot in his descendants, or in someone else who coincidentally got the cooties in the same exact place in the recipe. But the recipe is so long this is very unlikely.

But if we look at the whole recipe, you and your friend actually have a lot of recipe cooties in common. Ew! I know. But it’s pretty harmless. Everyone has them. Thousands of them. And because a lot of them are in the same place, we know you share common ancestors. But since a few of them are different (like the one from your grandpa) we know that your common ancestor was further back in generations than your grandpa.

So by comparing the number of shared cooties to the number of unshared cooties, you can see how closely related you are.

And when we compare your cooties to those of a chimpanzee, we find a lot of cooties in different places, but a lot of cooties in the same place! We also have common ancestors, but it wasn’t in your grandpappy’s day or your great great great grandmammy’s day. It was 5 million years ago.

In fact, orthologous cooties fall into a nested hierarchy among primates.

..........................................................


Now, these are just a couple of trivial lines of evidence, not so much the tip of the iceberg, more like a pebble on Everest. Taken individually I'm sure you can handwave them away or find excuses not to accept them, for anyone with an open mind the conclusion to be drawn from all these disparate observations is inescapable. Let's be honest, the only reason to deny that conclusion is because you've hung your faith on a particular interpretation of the bible, that's up to you of course, but it's not a view shared by most christians.

This is fantastic. It is a prime example of what I am speaking about. Point one is the horse thing. It's an assumption that the eohippus evolved. We have no observation of such a thing. We are guessing that is what happened. We believe in evolution and therefore believe that happened. We don't know if the transition actually occurred.

Point 2 is a prime example of what I often talk about. Creatures do adapt and change for survival and continuation of the creature. No problem there. Evolution of that type is observable and verifiable. But you already made the point for me in that the bird is still a bird. It's not turning into something else. It's adapting for the continued existence of the creature.

Point 3 is no big deal and not evidence of a common ancestor evolution. We would expect creatures to be broad based across the earth. It's really no surprise and not evidence of a common ancestor evolution where all thing including plants and animals came from one thing.

Point 4 Once again similarities do no price common ancestry. Apes and us have similarities. But that does not mean we have a common ancestor. Evolution assumes it does but there is no evidence that it really does. Evolution supposes that similarities mean common ancestry. That is it's biggest flaw. There are also great differences between us. All this erv stuff shows is there are similarities. Common design. Common things God did to create life on this planet.

 

[sfs]

I didn't dodge it at all, I told you all that may be wrong with it, and why you didn't have what you think you had.

That post must have been in some other universe, because I didn't see it in this one.

Anyway, to summarize: No creationist here knows why common descent makes better predictions than creationism. No creationist here seems to care.

 

[pitabread]

Except humans are creating humans and always have and always will. Same things with spiders and lizards.

We label things "human", "lizard", "spider" for ease of classification/identification of things. However, those classifications do not exist in nature and consequently neither do any biological barriers to evolutionary change beyond the obvious (i.e. basic biochemistry/physics).

Consequently the assertion that "Except humans are creating humans and always have and always will" is not demonstrably true. Or to put it another way, it's certainly possible that we may eventually evolve into something that based on today's classification of Homo sapiens, we may no longer classify as such.

 

[Kenny'sID]

I explained to you what a theory is in the context of science. Please, quit embarrassing yourself and other cdesign proponentsists, and refrain from using this worn out canard.

Yeah, I've seen some of the other bizarre cop outs here about how what is...isn't, and the convenience of making up rules for ones side of the argument, rules that are laughable at best.

Before I get into the embarrassment aspect, answer me this, does science prove anything?

 

[Hieronymus]

We have the same evidence for evolution that we have for heliocentrism.

Alright, both are beliefs then, convictions.

 

[rjs330]

You're stringing words together, but they don't form a coherent argument. A definition is not an assumption. That we came from a common ancestor is neither an assumption nor a hypothesis. A prediction is neither an assumption nor a definition.

Um, okay. Suppose I believe that John is guilty of murdering Joe and I go and start looking for evidence. I find John's fingerprints on the knife still in Joe's body, and I find John's DNA under Joe's fingernails, and I find video of John entering the room where the murder occurred -- none of that is evidence that John killed Joe, because it's what I expected to find.

You really think this is a logical position?

Evolution uses an entirely different process to define evidence.

In the crime world we first find the dead body with a knife in his back. An autopsy shows if the knife killed him which is provable when there is no other way his heart could have been punctured. It's observable and testable. But we don't know who did it. Evolution assumes evolution is true and we set out to see if it is and low and behold everything we find says evolution is true. But we can't test it or observe it or reproduce it.

In the crime we don't know who did it. And you know good and well if we think someone did it we can't investigate that way. We have to prove they did it. It would take a much longer discussion how this works than we have time for here. But the crime is observable testable and reproducible. Evolution isn't.

 

[rjs330]

Asking questions is not evidence, or proving someone wrong.

Allow me to turn the tables:


Sure. Ask your friend to show you real evidence for creation.
Ask for him to take you to any museum and share the evidence of species being created from dust of the ground
Ask him to show you how kidneys were created, or the liver or the spleen or the heart and circulatory
system were created. Ask for the evidence. Ask him to prove it.
In the end he can't.

You know dinosaurs had all the body components - skeleton; muscles, organs, digestive systems;
eyes; brains; spinal cords; etc etc etc - they died out some supposed 65 million years ago and
ruled the world for hundreds of millions of years before.
So if dinosaurs had everything to be complex warm blooded animals and reproduce then just when did
all these necessary body parts get created to allow for this? and from what?

When you get into the nitty gritty of the how of creation there is only supposition and hopeful
wishing. Show me the creation of the eyes and sight: eyeballs that are cameras, rods and cones
that are photographically sensitive to images; optic nerves; brain receptors; turning upside down
images into the right way up. Should be easy to show all the steps involved from light sensitive bacteria
right through to what we can visualize today.

Evolution is self evident, creation is continuing to deliberately deny the truth.

Evolution is only self evident to those who believe it is. It's based upon faith in an unprovable theory. It can't be tested observed or reproduced. You see it in the world around you. We creationists see God's magnificent glory and power. We base it on faith. Creation can't be observed tested or reproduced. So both systems are based upon belief.

 

[Kenny'sID]

That post must have been in some other universe, because I didn't see it in this one.

You're right, I think I wrote that stuff and decided to dump all the wordiness for what I thought addressed the question.

Anyway, to summarize: No creationist here knows why common descent makes better predictions than creationism. No creationist here seems to care.

But who really cares if *you* consider it better, and on something that may not amount to a hill of beans to begin with, so maybe there is a reason they don't care.

When I get more time I'll do a search on debunking what you *say*.

 

[rjs330]

Given your expertise on what is and is not science, and your claim that all you have seen is speculation and assumption, can you explain what, EXACTLY, is "assumption and speculation" in this link I provided to you:

Animals

The tree itself is an assumption based upon some similarities that are found. We find similarities in life therefore these similarities are supposed to be evidence. That is an assumption. That is speculation. I say similarities are evidence of common design, the building blocks of life as it were that God used to create all things after it's own kind.

 

[HitchSlap]

Yeah, I've seen some of the other bizarre cop outs here about how what is...isn't, and the convenience of making up rules for ones side of the argument, rules that are laughable at best.

Before I get into the embarrassment aspect, answer me this, does science prove anything?

sigh... you really should take a moment and educate yourself. You come across as a rube full of arrogant hubris based on the fact you find Hovind to be a credible source of anything. It's embarrassing.

Truths and Facts. Does Science prove anything? | A conversation on TED.com

 

[Hieronymus]

Evolution uses an entirely different process to define evidence.

In the crime world we first find the dead body with a knife in his back. An autopsy shows if the knife killed him which is provable when there is no other way his heart could have been punctured. It's observable and testable. But we don't know who did it. Evolution assumes evolution is true and we set out to see if it is and low and behold everything we find says evolution is true.

That's not true though.
I would agree there are things that look evolved, when that's your frame of reference.
And even without that frame, some animals look to be descendents of other animals.
And in fact one can wonder if they actually are.
Genes can be switched on or off, survival of the 'best fitting' can cause characteristics to dominate the species.

But we can't test it or observe it or reproduce it.

In the crime we don't know who did it. And you know good and well if we think someone did it we can't investigate that way. We have to prove they did it. It would take a much longer discussion how this works than we have time for here. But the crime is observable testable and reproducible. Evolution isn't.

What has to be proven for it to be convincing (besides the usual brain washing) is that DNA can write itself somehow, bringing forth new traits like organ(elle)s and architecture.
But that doesn't solve it completely either.
For living nature able to sustain itself, you need a variety of fauna and flora to start with.

 

[rjs330]

That post must have been in some other universe, because I didn't see it in this one.

Anyway, to summarize: No creationist here knows why common descent makes better predictions than creationism. No creationist here seems to care.

Common descent doesn't make better predictions. Creationism makes predictions too. We predict that life on Earth changes in order to survive. God made it that way. Life adapts to changing conditions of the planet. Those things that cannot adapt die out. It's part of the natural process. It doesn't mean we all came from a common ancestor.