More on why I reject evolution

[SilverBear]

Nobody observed the Big Bang, or the first non-life becoming life. This is the problem with evolution.

neither of these has anything to do with evolution

It does not fall into "operational science". There is nothing to be observed, tested, or measured in the laboratory that will validate this theory. It is pure speculation, not science.

yes that describes creationism.

All the fossil evidence for human evolution between 10-5 million years ago, several thousand generations of living creatures, can be fitted into a small box, according to Henry Gee, senior science writer for Nature magazine.

Gee was talking about the idea that humans are exceptional or somehow superior to any other species. he goes on to point out that we never stopped being animals and there is no missing link in that 10 to 5 million year time span.
It's also worth noting that the first species we would consider to be human, australopithecus afarensis came about 4.4 million years ago

Speaking of the evolutionary requirement of intermediate forms between species, the late Dr. Colin Patterson at the British Museum said, "I will lay it on the line - there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument."

"In November 1981, after an invitation from Donn Rosen [a fish systematist at the American Museum, now deceased], I gave a talk to the Systematics Discussion Group in the American Museum of Natural History. Donn asked me to talk on 'Evolutionism and Creationism', and it happened that just one week before my talk Ernst Mayr published a paper on systematics in Science (Mayr 1981). Mayr pointed out the deficiencies (in his view) of cladistics and phenetics, and noted that the 'connection with evolutionary principles is exceedingly tenuous in many recent cladistic writings.' For Mayr, classifications should incorporate such things as 'inferences on selection pressures, shifts of adaptive zones, evolutionary rates, and rates of evolutionary divergence.' Fired up by Mayr's paper, I gave a fairly radical talk in New York, comparing the effect of evolutionary theory on systematics with Gillespie's (1979, p. 8) characterization of pre-Darwinian creationism: 'not a research govering theory (since its power to explain was only verbal) but an antitheory, a void that had the function of knowledge but, as naturalists increasingly came to feel, conveyed none.' Unfortunately, and unknown to me, there was a creationist in my audience with a hidden tape recorder. A transcript of my talk was produced and circulated among creationists, and the talk has since been widely, and often inaccurately, quoted in creationist literature." Colin Patterson 1994

 

[East of Eden]

Quantum physics rips a big hole in Kalam subatomic particles pop into existence all the time with out any cause

Debatable whether they really come from nothing, so now the law of cause and effect is dead? It does not disprove the idea that the effect cannot be greater than the cause.

 

[East of Eden]

neither of these has anything to do with evolution

So you have no clue how the first non-life became life?

yes that describes creationism.

No more than it does your theory. For some reason Catholics have to be 'in' with the world's explanation of things, don't ask me why.

Gee was talking about the idea that humans are exceptional or somehow superior to any other species. he goes on to point out that we never stopped being animals and there is no missing link in that 10 to 5 million year time span.
It's also worth noting that the first species we would consider to be human, australopithecus afarensis came about 4.4 million years ago

Really, I would be interested in seeing this panoply of missing links, many evolutionists have commented on their complete absence. Darwin assumed they would be found and said if not it would disprove his theory. Check.

"In November 1981, after an invitation from Donn Rosen [a fish systematist at the American Museum, now deceased], I gave a talk to the Systematics Discussion Group in the American Museum of Natural History. Donn asked me to talk on 'Evolutionism and Creationism', and it happened that just one week before my talk Ernst Mayr published a paper on systematics in Science (Mayr 1981). Mayr pointed out the deficiencies (in his view) of cladistics and phenetics, and noted that the 'connection with evolutionary principles is exceedingly tenuous in many recent cladistic writings.' For Mayr, classifications should incorporate such things as 'inferences on selection pressures, shifts of adaptive zones, evolutionary rates, and rates of evolutionary divergence.' Fired up by Mayr's paper, I gave a fairly radical talk in New York, comparing the effect of evolutionary theory on systematics with Gillespie's (1979, p. 8) characterization of pre-Darwinian creationism: 'not a research govering theory (since its power to explain was only verbal) but an antitheory, a void that had the function of knowledge but, as naturalists increasingly came to feel, conveyed none.' Unfortunately, and unknown to me, there was a creationist in my audience with a hidden tape recorder. A transcript of my talk was produced and circulated among creationists, and the talk has since been widely, and often inaccurately, quoted in creationist literature." Colin Patterson 1994

Colin backpedaling, noted.

 

[The Barbarian]

Quantum physics rips a big hole in Kalam subatomic particles pop into existence all the time with out any cause

Yes. Turns out, these "virtual particles" actually exist and have physical effects. Last I heard, they were one of the reason that "black holes ain't so black" (Stephen Hawking).

 

[The Barbarian]

Debatable whether they really come from nothing, so now the law of cause and effect is dead?

Since quantum mechanics, it's gotten weird:

The word causality in this context means that all effects must have specific physical causes due to fundamental interactions.[4] Causality in this context is not associated with definitional principles such as Newton's second law. As such, in the context of causality, a force does not cause a mass to accelerate nor vice versa. Rather, Newton's Second Law can be derived from the conservation of momentum, which itself is a consequence the spatial homogeneity of physical laws.

The empiricists' aversion to metaphysical explanations (like Descartes' vortex theory) meant that scholastic arguments about what caused phenomena were either rejected for being untestable or were just ignored. The complaint that physics does not explain the cause of phenomena has accordingly been dismissed as a problem that is ontological rather than empirical (e.g., Newton's "Hypotheses non fingo"). According to Ernst Mach[5] the notion of force in Newton's second law was pleonastic, tautological and superfluous and, as indicated above, is not considered a consequence of any principle of causality.

None of this has anything to do with biological evolution, when merely assumes that populations of living things exist and describes how they change over time. Darwin, for example, just assumed that the first living things were created by God.

 

[The Barbarian]

Really, I would be interested in seeing this panoply of missing links, many evolutionists have commented on their complete absence. Darwin assumed they would be found and said if not it would disprove his theory. Check.

Well, let's ask a knowledgeable YE creationist, then. Here's Dr. Kurt Wise, who accepts YEC as true:

Evidences for Darwin’s second expectation — of stratomorphic intermediate species — include such species as Baragwanathia27 (between rhyniophytes and lycopods), Pikaia28 (between echinoderms and chordates), Purgatorius29 (between the tree shrews and the primates), and Proconsul30 (between the non-hominoid primates and the hominoids). Darwin’s third expectation — of higher-taxon stratomorphic intermediates — has been confirmed by such examples as the mammal-like reptile groups31 between the reptiles and the mammals, and the phenacodontids32 between the horses and their presumed ancestors. Darwin’s fourth expectation — of stratomorphic series — has been confirmed by such examples as the early bird series,33 the tetrapod series,34,35 the whale series,36 the various mammal series of the Cenozoic37 (for example, the horse series, the camel series, the elephant series, the pig series, the titanothere series, etc.), the Cantius and Plesiadapus primate series,38 and the hominid series.39Evidence for not just one but for all three of the species level and above types of stratomorphic intermediates expected by macroevolutionary theory is surely strong evidence for macroevolutionary theory. Creationists therefore need to accept this fact. It certainly CANNOT be said that traditional creation theory expected (predicted) any of these fossil finds.
Dr. Kurt Wise, Toward a Creationist Understanding of Transitional Forms
https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j09_2/j09_2_216-222.pdf

We find new forms almost monthly. When I was an undergraduate, we lacked transitional forms for land animals to whales, reptiles to mammals, anapsids to turtles, dinosaurs to birds, and many others. Now we have all of those.

Dr. Wise doesn't believe that evolution is true. He's just honest enough to admit that the many transitionals he cites are very good evidence for evolution. He expressed confidence that YEC would someday have a good explanation for them.

 

[East of Eden]

None of this has anything to do with biological evolution, when merely assumes that populations of living things exist and describes how they change over time. Darwin, for example, just assumed that the first living things were created by God.

You mean Adam? How can there be millions of years of evolution leading up to Adam if death began with him?

 

[The Barbarian]

You mean Adam? How can there be millions of years of evolution leading up to Adam if death began with him?

That's actually not a bad question, and God answers it in Genesis. He tells Adam that Adam will die the day he eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam eats from that tree, but lives on physically for many years thereafter.

The death God spoke of was a spiritual death, not a physical one. He always tells the truth, and if it was a physical death, Adam would have died physically, that day. That's the death Jesus came to save us from. If He came to save us from physical death, He failed. We will all die someday. But if we trust in Him, we are saved from spiritual death and can have fellowship with Him for eternity.

 

[East of Eden]

That's actually not a bad question, and God answers it in Genesis. He tells Adam that Adam will die the day he eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam eats from that tree, but lives on physically for many years thereafter.

The death God spoke of was a spiritual death, not a physical one. He always tells the truth, and if it was a physical death, Adam would have died physically, that day.

Not necessarily, explained here: Why Didn’t Adam and Eve Die the Instant They Ate the Fruit?

 

[East of Eden]

More on the famous Dr. Colin Patterson quote:

That quote!—about the missing transitional fossils - creation.com

Another good one from Patterson:

‘That was quite a shock that one could be misled for so long … I’ve tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people: “Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing that you think is true?” I tried that question on the geology staff in the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago … and all I got there was silence for a long time, and then eventually one person said: “Yes, I do know one thing. It ought not to be taught in high school.”

 

[The Barbarian]

Not necessarily, explained here: Why Didn’t Adam and Eve Die the Instant They Ate the Fruit?

Sorry, not compatible with God's word. He was quite direct about it, and left no wiggle room for creative theologians.

Even your source admits it:
It is true that Adam and Eve didn’t die the exact day they ate (Genesis 5:4–5) as some seem to think Genesis 2:17 implies. So, either God was in error or man’s interpretation is in error.

AIG is wrong; God didn't "imply" anything here. He unequivocally stated that Adam would die the day he ate from the tree. This is how we know it wasn't a physical death. If God tells the truth, it has to be a spiritual death. As your source admits, either God was in error, or man's interpretation of it is in error.

It's man's interpretation of it as a physical death that is faulty.

 

[The Barbarian]

‘That was quite a shock that one could be misled for so long … I’ve tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people: “Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing that you think is true?” I tried that question on the geology staff in the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago … and all I got there was silence for a long time, and then eventually one person said: “Yes, I do know one thing. It ought not to be taught in high school.”

Let's see...
"Evolution is a change in allele frequencies over time." By definition, and observation.

"Populations tend to evolve to fit their environments." Observably true.

"A well-fitted population in a constant environment, will not evolve very much." Observably true.

"There are numerous series of transitonal forms predicted by evolutionary theory." - See above. Even YEC Dr. Kurt Wise admits this.

"Favorable mutations arise randomly and do not appear in response to need." Demonstrated by Luria and Delbruck, for which they got their Nobel prizes.

"Although there are many, many transitional forms, there is no known transitional form where evolutionary theory says there should be none.

"Favorable mutations tend to increase in a population over time." Repeatedly demonstrated.

"When a species enters an environment with many open niches, there is usually disruptive selection, resulting in a number of new species to fill the niches." Most notable cases; Darwin's finches and Hawaiian Drosophila species.

"Naturally inbreeding species tend to have a low number of harmful recessive alleles." by observation.

"There must be many transitional forms between dinosaurs and birds." Thomas Huxley over one hundred years before the predicted forms began to be found.

How many more would you like to see? Maybe your guy isn't very familiar with the evidence?

Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well.

I say these things not because I'm crazy or because I've "converted" to evolution. I say these things because they are true. I'm motivated this morning by reading yet another clueless, well-meaning person pompously declaring that evolution is a failure. People who say that are either unacquainted with the inner workings of science or unacquainted with the evidence for evolution. (Technically, they could also be deluded or lying, but that seems rather uncharitable to say. Oops.)

Creationist students, listen to me very carefully: There is evidence for evolution, and evolution is an extremely successful scientific theory. That doesn't make it ultimately true, and it doesn't mean that there could not possibly be viable alternatives. It is my own faith choice to reject evolution, because I believe the Bible reveals true information about the history of the earth that is fundamentally incompatible with evolution. I am motivated to understand God's creation from what I believe to be a biblical, creationist perspective. Evolution itself is not flawed or without evidence. Please don't be duped into thinking that somehow evolution itself is a failure. Please don't idolize your own ability to reason. Faith is enough. If God said it, that should settle it. Maybe that's not enough for your scoffing professor or your non-Christian friends, but it should be enough for you.
Young Earth Creationist Dr. Todd Wood.

 

[SilverBear]

So you have no clue how the first non-life became life?

I didn't say that....thank you for putting words in my mouth.

I said that neither the big bang or biogenesis are part of the theory of evolution

No more than it does your theory. For some reason Catholics have to be 'in' with the world's explanation of things, don't ask me why.

what a bizarre statement

Evolution can be observed in many way including but not limited to the geographic distribution of species, the distribution of species through time, comparative anatomy, taxonomy, embryology, cell biology, molecular biology, genetics and paleontology.

And yes evolution can be tested.

Really, I would be interested in seeing this panoply of missing links, many evolutionists have commented on their complete absence. Darwin assumed they would be found and said if not it would disprove his theory. Check.

try actually reading Gee. he said that the idea of a missing link is just wrong there is no missing link because humans are animals and still part of evolutionary history

Colin backpedaling, noted.

not caring wheat the person you are misquoting actually said....noted

 

[Aussie Pete]

Quantum physics rips a big hole in Kalam subatomic particles pop into existence all the time with out any cause

No known cause. I was introduced to science at an early age. My teacher told the class that science knew everything there was to know about everything there was to know. And in the very rare exceptions, science was about to discover those also. How wrong can you be?

I'm not anti science. I am anti guesswork being presented as facts, preconceived notions warping interpretation of observations, out and out fraud and shutting down scientists who have a different point of view from the status quo of the day.

 

[The Barbarian]

No known cause.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of presence.

I was introduced to science at an early age. My teacher told the class that science knew everything there was to know about everything there was to know.

Such idiots are great creationist-makers. Misrepresenting science is one way to degrade confidence in it. In fact, the more we know absolutely,the more we see we don't know relatively. Every great scientific breakthrough raises more questions than it answers. Otherwise, it's dead.

And it's always been true that the greatest rewards in science go to the scientists who manage to overturn existing paradigms. It's just that for every genius who manages a major refinement of our understanding, there are 1,000 well-meaning, but mistaken people who just think that they have.

 

[The Barbarian]

BTW, although the origin of life is not part of evolutionary theory, there are scientists making all sorts of discoveries as to the way it began. For a layman-accessible discussion of recent findings, this is a good choice:

As God says, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the earth did bring forth life.

 

[SilverBear]

No known cause. I was introduced to science at an early age. My teacher told the class that science knew everything there was to know about everything there was to know. And in the very rare exceptions, science was about to discover those also. How wrong can you be?

I'm not anti science. I am anti guesswork being presented as facts, preconceived notions warping interpretation of observations, out and out fraud and shutting down scientists who have a different point of view from the status quo of the day.

yeah that describes creationists

 

[East of Eden]

Sorry, not compatible with God's word. He was quite direct about it, and left no wiggle room for creative theologians.

Even your source admits it:
It is true that Adam and Eve didn’t die the exact day they ate (Genesis 5:4–5) as some seem to think Genesis 2:17 implies. So, either God was in error or man’s interpretation is in error.

AIG is wrong; God didn't "imply" anything here. He unequivocally stated that Adam would die the day he ate from the tree. This is how we know it wasn't a physical death. If God tells the truth, it has to be a spiritual death. As your source admits, either God was in error, or man's interpretation of it is in error.

It's man's interpretation of it as a physical death that is faulty.

We disagree, look at the original language and the context of that same word being used in other parts of scripture.

 

[East of Eden]

And yes evolution can be tested.

Littered with silly statements, such as:

"If humans are the product of evolution, we would expect for them to share similarities with other animals that they shared a common ancestor with."

The similarities simply show there was a common designer.

try actually reading Gee. he said that the idea of a missing link is just wrong there is no missing link because humans are animals and still part of evolutionary history

Which directly contradicts the Bible. This ridiculous, corrosive notion that humans are animals IMHO let to the mass murder of the last century, see 'From Darwin to Hitler', https://www.amazon.com/Darwin-Hitler-Evolutionary-Eugenics-Germany/dp/140397201X

Such crimes were more or less sanctioned by Darwin's book, the one on the 'favored races'. Hitler would not have disagreed with the following statement, he was simply accelerating the process.

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”
― Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

Nobody would agree with that who believed man is made in God's image, with great value and an eternal destiny. Jesus sought out the 'inferior' of his time, such as Samaritans.

not caring wheat the person you are misquoting actually said....noted

Admit what evolutionists have said in rare moments of honesty, that the great number of transitional fossils which Darwin predicted would be found and that his ideas depended on, haven't been discovered. Instead we see new species appearing fully developed, as the Bible states.

 

[The Barbarian]

AIG is wrong; God didn't "imply" anything here. He unequivocally stated that Adam would die the day he ate from the tree. This is how we know it wasn't a physical death. If God tells the truth, it has to be a spiritual death. As your source admits, either God was in error, or man's interpretation of it is in error.

It's man's interpretation of it as a physical death that is faulty.

We disagree, look at the original language and the context of that same word being used in other parts of scripture.

Depends on whether you put more faith in God or in man's interpretations, I suppose. If you think the Bible is wrong as it has been translated in this case, what makes you think that there aren't other errors in it that we don't know about?