How to choose between creation and evolution.

[LordKroak10]

I think there is a general lackadaisical attitude permeating society that accounts for much of that. My parents didn't give a rats patoot if I passed or failed at school, but my teachers did and I did pretty well mainly because of their discipline. If such discipline were maintained from the earliest grades we could take parental attitudes out of the equation. Sadly permissiveness begins in the early grades so any sense of discipline has been long lost by the time kids get to your mother's classroom.

I didn't mention what grade my mother taught, but it's not important. Teachers are not allowed to discipline children any more, not in a very meaningful way. The worst they can do is have the kids stay in at recess to make up work. That means the teacher has to give up their lunch break to sit with a problematic child because they refused to do work the first time. Not fun for anyone. Many teachers are told they're not even allowed to raise their voices to students anymore. And whatever a teacher tries to do to discipline a child, the discipline doesn't carry over to home. Parents don't discipline their kids either, in many cases. It's a lack of discipline and consequences that is causing poor education.

 

[VirOptimus]

Trolling isn't allowed, but provocative topics, like this one, are.

Why the trolling?

 

[Speedwell]

I could ask where teachers general attitudes come from, and I'll bet that the ToE will figure prominently as it's the basis of their education. Remember that we expect much from our teachers, yet our education system functions rather poorly. Whyzat do you think?

The basis of their education? You mean a two-week unit in tenth grade biology is the basis of their education?

 

[USincognito]

Now hold on there. There is no 'evidence' for evolution, only supposition.

No, just no. Creationist magic words and scare quotes don't make the evidence go away. How about instead of hand waving you actually address the evidence I presented?

 

[USincognito]

I think scientists have too much time on their hands.

Frankly scientists, nor any one else, cares what you "think".

 

[r4.h]

You are, as the saying goes, comparing apples with oranges. There is no scientific theory of biology that provides as good an explanation of the facts of life as the theory of evolution; therefore, until somebody comes up with a better one, it is the only theory that should be taught in schools. It's similar to Newton's theories of dynamics and gravitation; they were wrong, and they were eventually superseded by Einstein's theories, but they were better than the idea that the planets were pushed round their orbits by angels.

However, scientific theories of astronomy, geology and biology can't prove that God didn't create the universe in six days, with light already in transit from galaxies and quasars millions and billions of light-years away, rocks already containing fossils and with radiometric ages of millions and billions of years, and living things with genetic and anatomical evidence of a long history of evolution. All that the scientific evidence can show is that that is the universe looks as if it is 13.8 billion years old, the solar system looks as if it is 4.57 billion years old, and living things look as if they have evolved over several billion years.

Very well. I used to be a Christian, but when I started studying the Bible in detail, and reading Josephus's Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews, I realised that the Bible is not historically accurate and that it is like the literature of other nations, a collection of books written over a long period of time by a great number of people with very different views of theology and morality. No doubt your experience was different from mine. Still, it would be interesting to know what you thought about the Bible and Christianity when you were an atheist.

("However, scientific theories of astronomy, geology and biology can't prove that God didn't create the universe in six days")

Atleast you admit it could be wrong and that 6 day creation cannot be disproved.

When you say you used to be a Christian, thats not possible as a Christian is born again and cannot be unborn. When Jesus asked His disciples if they would leave with the crowds who love His miracles, but couldnt bear His teaching, they responded "where else can we go, you are the truth"

I was very anti the bible, though I`d never read it, and I adopted the attitude christians were hypocrites as i saw some who partied Saturday night and churched Sunday morning.

The bible is historically accurate, unless you apply a wrong understanding of the facts and fall in the ditch. What do you think about the bibles written geneology from Adam to Christ? No other tribe or people can claim geneology from the beginning, yet people believe we were once stoneage cave dwellers. There is no hint of that in biblical history, just nothing then Adam.

Dont you think it highly unusual that language and writing go from zero to 100?

 

[r4.h]

Actually God laughs at your folly, and the bible has already said none will have any excuse as creation is enough evidence to prove His existence. Rom 1:20

Now why would that be there?

And before you say it, I did not turn to God out of fear and I do not serve Him out of fear or intimidation by the church. Just because there are bad eggs, doesnt mean all churches are,
Jesus already warned many false churches would rise up and many anti-Christs in the last days.
One would have to include all evolutionist in the last group as Christ clearly taught Adam and Eve were the first parents and that Genesis account of creation was the begining.

 

[Gene2memE]

The bible is historically accurate, unless you apply a wrong understanding of the facts and fall in the ditch.

Giggle. Love the carve out there "a wrong understanding of the facts"

What do you think about the bibles written geneology from Adam to Christ?

They're patently ridiculous.

No other tribe or people can claim geneology from the beginning,

Not a fan of Egyptology, or Sumerian history, are you? Both claim genealogies that stretch much further back than the Jewish genealogies. If you accept the Biblical geneologies, why not the equally accurate Egyptian or Sumerian lists?

yet people believe we were once stoneage cave dwellers. There is no hint of that in biblical history, just nothing then Adam.

That's because the Semitic peoples that copied what would become the Biblical creation account had no idea about the evolution of anatomically and behaviourally modern man.

The evidence is what suggests we were "stoneage cave dwellers". There's that whole paleontology and archeology thing.

Dont you think it highly unusual that language and writing go from zero to 100?

I would, except that's not what happened.

Written language developed at least 9000 years ago, from proto-writing comprised of very basic symbology, through mnemonic representations and pictographs, then ideographic systems. From there transitional systems developed - think hieroglyphs - and then we progressed into true phonetic systems, like cuneiform. This was a process that lasted at least 4000 years. 'Modern' style written language didn't come around for another 1000 years or so.

Seriously, did you research ANYTHING before you wrote it?

 

[Jjmcubbin]

The only evidence is the theory itself. It is as devoid of "flesh" as those old bones.
Every single piece of evolutionary evidence is connect by suppositions. It's a chain under construction, with missing links.

Nice pun.
Clearly, you have not read any textbook on biology.
Please, what assumptions does evolution make.

 

[r4.h]

Giggle. Love the carve out there "a wrong understanding of the facts"



They're patently ridiculous.



Not a fan of Egyptology, or Sumerian history, are you? Both claim genealogies that stretch much further back than the Jewish genealogies. If you accept the Biblical geneologies, why not the equally accurate Egyptian or Sumerian lists?



That's because the Semitic peoples that copied what would become the Biblical creation account had no idea about the evolution of anatomically and behaviourally modern man.

The evidence is what suggests we were "stoneage cave dwellers". There's that whole paleontology and archeology thing.



I would, except that's not what happened.

Written language developed at least 9000 years ago, from proto-writing comprised of very basic symbology, through mnemonic representations and pictographs, then ideographic systems. From there transitional systems developed - think hieroglyphs - and then we progressed into true phonetic systems, like cuneiform. This was a process that lasted at least 4000 years. 'Modern' style written language didn't come around for another 1000 years or so.

Seriously, did you research ANYTHING before you wrote it?

If you want me to accept carbon dating as accurate or having as much weight as written record without break of Adam to Christ your wasting your time. Dismissing it is simply disingenious.

Im happy with my beliefs which have far more substance than theoretical hypothesis.

 

[AnotherAtheist]

Here is the link you provided as "comprehensively proved" evidence of evolution.

Evolutionary History of Chordate PAX Genes: Dynamics of Change in a Complex Gene Family

I didn't say anything of the sort. Here's what I wrote:

I didn't ask for an unsupported claim that there is a God.

So, no you don't have an objective testable model for God then.

I guess that means I win then and evolution is comprehensively proved. At least by your logic of previous posts.

This was directly in response to your posts asking for unreasonable evidence of evolutionary details and providing no evidence yourself for even the most basic part of your argument: that there is a God.

So, we can see that you have mis-quoted me.

Did you even read it? If so did you notice the dozens of suppositions?

Do you think a believer of evolution should understand what is in this article? If not, why not?

How many who 'believe in evolution' have the foggiest idea what this article is saying?

How can one believe something that they don't understand, when the experts themselves don't understand it?

This is one small step in evolution. There is no need for a believer in evolution to be aware of every single step in evolution. There is plenty of evidence supporting evolution beyond any reasonable doubt, and this is far from the most important.

From your link. Is this your answer?

"Although the PAX family is specific to the animal lineage, the evolutionary history of these genes remains uncertain."

I'm not intimidated or bewildered by the scientific terms in these articles. They are mostly supposition. You and others throw this stuff against the wall thinking that I won't find the flaws in it. If such articles are scientific "holy writ" I'm afraid they won't 'save' you.

You call this 'supposition', but this is actually creating theories that match the evidence. They are nothing like 'holy writ' and they don't 'save' anybody. You are confusing science with claims for religion.

In science, we have evidence (e.g. sequencing of the genes to identify the evolutionary history of genes) and supported theories for even small details of evolution. Where is your evidence for God? I've asked you for a testable model of God. So far: crickets.

You are trying to play the creationist game of claiming that exceptional knowledge is required for evolution (with the bar reset higher when you are provided with that evidence), but you don't have ANY testable evidence for your own view. I specifically point out the hypocrisy of that.

 

[AnotherAtheist]

no. i actually made a prediction about id model. the prediction is that we cant show how a simple eye can evolve step by step. this is because even the simplest eye cant evolve stepwise so no one will be able to show a stepwise way to evolve it. and as you can see now: even after all those papers we still have no answer for this question.

I showed you the evolution of the eye step by step. You're now just attempting the ever-smaller-and-smaller-and-more-inconsequential-missing-link argument by asking for

The explanation I have given is sufficiently detailed and the steps are small enough that it is an entirely reasonable description of the process. There are no steps in the process that are so big that they need individual explanation or further details. At least for anyone that understands evolution in general and the evidence for it. (Which might not include you of course.)

so if the watch i showed above will have all traits that we see in nature you will conclude that this watch were evolved by a natural process?

If the watch had ALL the traits that I list, then that would be enough to conclude that it evolved by a natural process. As I clearly said in my post. The analogies I see you posting are way off because you only posit a SINGLE such watch (or car or motorised marital aid or whatever else is your favourite gizmo of the day.) And it being a single item, that is way insufficient to assume natural processes.

Just in case you try to mis-quote me, I'll repeat the traits I listed here:

1. It needs to be able to reproduce and produce variant offspring.
2. There should be a population of these watches showing variety.
3. There should be other populations of watches that show greater or lesser degrees of similarity, but do not reproduce with other populations of these objects, forming species.
4. These species should fit neatly into a tree showing common descent.
5. The barriers between these species of watches should not be precise, and the more similar the species the less the barrier.
6. There must be some genetic code of the watches allowing us to independently verify relatedness, and then find that the tree of relatedness that we produce is sufficiently consistent with the one from 4.
7. There must be a fossil record consistent with a history of evolution of watches from simple ancestors over billions of years, again consistent with the tree of relatedness produced in 4 and 6.
8. Etc. etc. etc.

Evolution is a scientific theory that has been developed to explain ALL of life that we see, populations, species, and more. Not just one isolated thing.

 

[DogmaHunter]

so you have no answer to that question as i predicted. thanks for this clarification

My "clarification" was not that there are no answers to your question.
I suggest you read my post again, and this time: pay a bit of attention.

 

[DogmaHunter]

From the link on post #347

Abstract
Paired box (PAX) genes are transcription factors that play important roles in embryonic development. Although the PAX gene family occurs in animals only, it is widely distributed. Among the vertebrates, its 9 genes appear to be the product of complete duplication of an original set of 4 genes, followed by an additional partial duplication. Although some studies of PAX genes have been conducted, no comprehensive survey of these genes across the entire taxonomic unit has yet been attempted. In this study, we conducted a detailed comparison of PAX sequences from 188 chordates, which revealed restricted variation. The absence of PAX4 and PAX8 among some species of reptiles and birds was notable; however, all 9 genes were present in all 74 mammalian genomes investigated. A search for signatures of selection indicated that all genes are subject to purifying selection, with a possible constraint relaxation in PAX4, PAX7, and PAX8. This result indicates asymmetric evolution of PAX family genes, which can be associated with the emergence of adaptive novelties in the chordate evolutionary trajectory.

Would you briefly explain the highlighted terms to me as they relate to the topic?

No. I'm not a geneticist. This is far beyond my knowledge on the subject.

 

[DogmaHunter]

no. i actually made a prediction about id model. the prediction is that we cant show how a simple eye can evolve step by step.

ow my.... of all the stupidities you have shared on this forum, that one might take the cake.

So your prediction FOR id, has nothing to do with id, but is instead an invalid stab at evolution? LOL!

so if the watch i showed above will have all traits that we see in nature you will conclude that this watch were evolved by a natural process?

The watch you showed has none of those traits.

 

[AnotherAtheist]

No. I'm not a geneticist. This is far beyond my knowledge on the subject.

OldWiseGuy is countering me saying that he is not intimidated by the terms, but he then goes to you for an explanation?

I'll summarise for OWG. The paper is being intellectually honest and properly characterising our state of knowledge concerning these genes. Which is not complete, but there is sufficient evidence to have some confidence that we know where the genes came from.

Which compares very well to the utter lack of evidence for YEC. Ball is firmly in the court of the YECs.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Science never saved anyone anywhere.

Science saves people, like in hospitals, every single day.

I guarantee you that plenty of your very own loved ones are alive today, as a direct result of scientific knowledge. Perhaps even yourself.

 

[AnotherAtheist]

The creation puzzle has fewer pieces....two or three I think, and is already complete.

Actually, it only has one piece: Goddidit. However, the evidence for that is entirely lacking. Do you have a testable model of God yet?

There's no point having a 'complete' model of how things came to be if it's completely wrong.

 

[Jimmy D]

If you want me to accept carbon dating as accurate or having as much weight as written record without break of Adam to Christ your wasting your time. Dismissing it is simply disingenious.

Im happy with my beliefs which have far more substance than theoretical hypothesis.

How was man created?

 

[Brightmoon]

Carbon dating? Maybe you’d better define that. Creationists tend to mean radiodating when they say carbon dating and those aren’t the same thing at all.