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Darwinian evolution - still a theory in crisis.

1Tonne

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It's not about philosophy. Does Intelligent Design make any testable predictions such that, if they fail, it's falsified?
Yes, intelligent design does make testable predictions. For example, that functional systems will exhibit specified complexity, that mutations will degrade function more often than improve it, and that truly novel, irreducibly complex systems will not arise through unguided processes. If we consistently found the opposite, random processes building new integrated systems without guidance, ID would be seriously undermined. But that’s not what we observe.
 
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1Tonne

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With respect, I don’t believe the claim that ID has ‘no explanatory power’ holds up. ID offers a positive framework: it infers that certain patterns, like specified, functional complexity, are best explained by an intelligent cause, just as we infer intelligence when we see code, language, or machines. It doesn’t explain everything, but no theory does. And saying methodological naturalism must always guide science, even if the evidence suggests intelligence, sounds like a philosophical boundary, not a scientific one.
I’m not asking you to convert; I’m asking whether the door is truly open to follow the evidence wherever it leads, even if it points beyond material causes.
 
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Ophiolite

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He said, "In the beginning God made them male and female."
For a Christian, this should blow evolution out of the water.
From your perspective, how did asexual reproduction come about and where, if at all, is this referenced in the Bible?

Please give a specific(!) example of specified, functional complexity, demonstrating quantitatively its validity. A reference to a published work (specific details required) will be sufficient.
 
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Warden_of_the_Storm

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Then you shouldn't be in the science subforum of the website but the philosophy subforum then. And yes, the response can be dismissal because again, this is nothing new and not everything deserves to be given an answer.


Because I don't need to respond to them.


If science or anyone could conclusively point to an intelligent designer that could be substantiated by data, not by, as you've admitted before, in just an interpretation of said data, then I would consider it, 100%.

UNTIL YOU CAN DO THAT, it's not worth considering since there is no concrete data behind it, it's just an assumption based on post hoc logic coming from a minority sect of Christianity that wants to badly try and mesh a literal Bible with world history and the science of.


Show actual concrete evidence for the supernatural, and for an intelligent designer then.


Show actual concrete evidence for the supernatural, and for an intelligent designer then.

Because if your framework excludes even the possibility of design before the evidence is reviewed, then this is not a scientific discussion, it’s dogma dressed up in a lab coat.

And, speaking of dogma: Show actual concrete evidence for the supernatural, and for an intelligent designer then.
 
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trophy33

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That’s not following the evidence wherever it leads, that’s philosophical bias disguised as science. And I believe that this is your standpoint. In a way, it is very close-minded.
And are you willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads? That the universe is not 6,000 years old, that there is no firmament, that the stars are not in the firmament, that there are no waters above the firmament, that no tower can literally reach heavens, that there was no global flood etc.?
 
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Warden_of_the_Storm

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Intelligent Design doesn't have any explanatory power. It is the simplest and purest example of post hoc ergo propter hoc - it starts with the premise and then has to work backwards to justify their logic. That is not sound science in any shape or form and is nothing more than religious dogma masquerading as science.
 
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Hans Blaster

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Cosmology and the origin of the Universe are not the topics of this thread (and there are other threads in this section on it or you could start a new one). Despite that I will note a few things.

You shouldn't expect actual physical cosmologists to consider the Universe arising from philosophical nothingness (no properties, no space, no fields, no physics, etc.). That is left to the philosophers as it is not scientific. Cosmological models are generally built from some preexisting "something" with physical properties/laws/etc. How did that come about or why? Don't know, probably can't ever know, but if "philosophical nothing" was the state of "reality" then there is no physical mechanism from which physics, matter, fields, etc. could arise. (Ever notice that no one ever asks why there is nothing and not something? Must be due to the lack of minds located within the nothing.)
 
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1Tonne

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When Jesus said, “He who created them from the beginning made them male and female” (Matthew 19:4), He was directly addressing humans, not all living creatures. The context is a discussion on marriage and divorce, where He affirms the created distinction between male and female as the foundation for human marriage.
So yes, Jesus was specifically referring to people, not animals or forms of asexual reproduction. His statement doesn't contradict the existence of asexual reproduction in nature because it wasn't meant to describe the reproductive mechanisms of all creatures, only the design and purpose of human relationships as established by God.
Of course, it’s also worth noting that His reference affirms that humanity was made deliberately and distinctly male and female “from the beginning”. Pointing to design, not gradual emergence. That’s the core of the point I was raising earlier.
Hope that helps clarify.
 
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Bradskii

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Exactly right. ID is Creationism wearing a wig and a false nose trying to sneak in the back door of the science block.
 
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Ophiolite

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Thank you for the clarification. However, this position appears at odds with your earlier position in regard to Genesis. In reference to that you said:
"He said, "In the beginning God made them male and female." For a Christian, this should blow evolution out of the water."

How so? If anything were blown out of the water it would be the accuracy of the Biblical account. I don't think that is the case. When I was a practicing Christian I saw no conflict with evolution and remain bemused by those Christians who do.

I am also eagerly awaiting your demonstration of the soundness of specified complexity.

Edit: I notice you are engaged in a couple of detailed discussions with other members. Feel free to put your response on specified complexity on the backburner until you have dealt with them.
 
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BCP1928

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If those are your tests, then ID has failed them decades since. Specified complexity was an invention of Demski which turned out to be bogus, Irreducible complexity has never been demonstrated to exist in biological systems and "random" processes can indeed be shown to build new integrated systems without "guidance."

What I observe is a rather imprecise use of terms like "random" and "guidance" You appear to be looking for Telos but you won't find it in the contingent causality which science studies.
 
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NxNW

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A snowflake is beautiful, yes, but it also lacks function and contains no information or purposeful arrangement of parts.
Who says it lacks function?
It’s not comparable to the specified complexity found in even a single living cell.
I dispute the concept of specified complexity. Specified by whom?
When a human being is conceived and born, are you saying that supernatural forces are involved? At what point? Conception, or during pregnancy?
I was explaining the difference between a pure vacuum (absolute nothing, not even empty space) and the vacuum of space. A pure vacuum would be inherently unstable.
True 'nothing' has no properties, no potential, no laws, no vacuum, and no time, it can’t ‘borrow’ anything.
See my prior descriptions of a pure vacuum.
So, when we say the universe came from ‘nothing,’ but then smuggle in gravity, quantum fields, and physical laws, we’re not explaining the origin, we’re just moving the question back a step.
The same goes for those who claim "God did it and that settles it."
Where did those laws and conditions come from?
That question is outside the scope of evolution, as I've stated earlier.
So it's something then. Not nothing? That is funny.
You're confusing empty space with a pure vacuum.
But that’s exactly the point. If what you're calling 'nothing' has structure, weight, instability, and can fluctuate, then it isn’t nothing.
Again, you're confusing empty space with a pure vacuum.
I'm not the one doing the redefining here. I'm saying (or rather, physicists are saying) that a pure vacuum is inherently unstable and gives rise to conditions from which the Big Bang can result. As for mass and energy, I'm saying they add up to zero, but I'm not saying that 'zero' is the same as a pure vacuum.
So, let’s just be honest about what’s being claimed: not creation from nothing, but you believe from a very real, structured something, one that still demands explanation.
I'm not saying I believe anything of the sort. You're confusing a pure vacuum with empty space. Empty space has structure and weight, from which virtual particles can form and then vanish. A pure vacuum (assuming it actually existed) is inherently unstable, and gives rise to conditions from which the Big Bang or empty space or mass/energy, can result.
(To be honest, this part of the discussion feels circular and unproductive. When 'nothing' is redefined to include structure, weight, and physical laws, it’s no longer nothing; it’s something.
I never defined it as such, see above.
You still haven't defined half-formed in any meaningful way. A partially-functioning eye is better than total blindness.
With Tiktaalik, we see an animal well-adapted to its environment, but we don’t see clear, step-by-step anatomical transitions from fish fins to tetrapod limbs.
If you compare a Tiktaalik 'limb' compared to a cheetah's leg, I don't think you can call it fully-formed. It's better than nothing, but it's not nearly as good as what would come along later.
So yes, it's interesting, but calling it a slam-dunk for evolution overlooks the fact that it appears suddenly, fully functional
What does fully-functional mean? It's limbs don't function as well as a cheetah's, do they?
, and without the detailed series of gradual modifications Darwin himself said would be needed if his theory were true.
You misunderstand Darwin.
Because there are massive, massive gaps. Evolutionists fill the gaps with speculation.
Completely false. Science continues to make correct predictions, and creationists continue to claim they're irrelevant.
Natural selection may act as a filter, but it doesn’t create; it can only select from what already exists.
Mutations do the creating.
Mutations do the creating, and natural selection does the selecting.
As for the fossil record, what we see are distinct, fully functional organisms, not a continuous record of step-by-step transformations. Saying 'legs lengthen' or 'brains grow' across epochs sounds neat in hindsight
It's not about sounding neat, but about observing the actual facts.
That's a different discussion. I'm still waiting for an example of how this 'intelligence' actually interfered. When did it interfere? Just once? Or many times along the way? Was it in the womb or egg? Can you make any testable statement about it?
You can’t isolate evolution from abiogenesis when both are used together to explain the full naturalistic story, from chemicals to conscious beings. So yes, ‘molecules-to-man’ still applies.
Nobody's claiming molecules turned into man. You're deliberately using a dishonest phrase, like the crocoduck.
You’re assuming that evolving parts separately with different functions can somehow, by chance,
Never said that. Natural selection is not chance.
coordinate into an interdependent, life-sustaining system and that this happens repeatedly across biology. That’s not evidence; that’s storytelling.
And yet, the eye evolved dozens of times independently in nature.
The ice fish doesn’t solve the problem. It’s still a fully functioning organism with an integrated system. It didn’t evolve half a heart or half a blood system.
Of course it did. It went from red blood to clear liquid. If that's not "less than blood", I don't know what is.
Its example shows loss of function (haemoglobin), not the origin of new complex systems from scratch.
And it developed a system that functions without hemoglobin, which is a new function.
IC makes a claim that 'it's absolutely impossible; it can't happen.' It's not necessary to demonstrate in detail how it happened in every case; it's only necessary to come up with a plausible explanation in order to refute the false claim that 'it's absolutely impossible; it can't happen.' It is, after all, simply the Argument from Incredulity. "I don't understand it; therefore it couldn't have happened."
Please provide clear, detailed transitional sequences that show gradual changes, not just isolated fossils put side by side. Which ones do you consider the best examples?
A series of fossils is a transitional sequence.
We have hundreds of examples from the sequence, which paint a clear picture. Given that the common ancestor of chimps and humans was about 200,000 to 300,000 generations ago, you're not going to have an example from each generation. Do you know each of ancestors going back 10,000 years? No? Can you prove then that you even had an ancestor that far back? No? Does that mean you had an ancestor created by magic? Of course not. There is enough data to make correct predictions and draw intelligent conclusions.
But similarity alone isn’t enough to prove ancestry. Humans share a significant percentage of DNA with bananas too — yet no one suggests we descended from bananas.
But we do share a common ancestor with bananas.
It just shows that genetic overlap doesn’t always mean common descent.
Actually, it does. You might read The Ancestors Tale, by Richard Dawkins. You can pick any two organisms, and if you go back far enough, they have a common ancestor.
If shared DNA proves ancestry, then I guess my great-great-grandfather was a banana too?
Your great great grandfather and a banana share a common ancestor, without question.
But that's not what we see.
So no, I’m not admitting defeat; I’m pointing out that the evidence fits my view just as well, if not better.
Your view does not make testable predictions.
Given that eyes can evolve from a single light-sensitive cell in a couple hundred thousand years, that's a pretty quick process.
 
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River Jordan

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That is simple. It is interesting to see how many people on this thread are atheists.
That's not what you said. You said, "I am asking this simply because I am interested in knowing how many Christians adamantly defend evolution".

Why is that important to you?
Yes, this is a Christian forum, which is exactly why the conversation belongs here.
So you have no illusion that anything you post here will have any effect on the science of evolutionary biology, right?

Evolution isn't just a scientific claim; it's a worldview-shaping idea that directly impacts how we interpret Genesis, the fall, sin, death, and ultimately the Gospel itself.
Maybe to you it is, but for a lot of other Christians that isn't the case. Evolution doesn't impact any of those things for me.

Seems to me like you're a little confused. You've been posting a series of oft-repeated and old creationist arguments that are about science, not scripture. Why? If your point here really is scriptural as you describe and you have no intention of affecting science, then I recommend focusing just on what you wrote above. Also, if the above is accurate, why are you interacting with atheists? They don't care about scripture.

Science doesn’t have to study God directly, but it also doesn’t need to exclude Him by default.
You seem to have been arguing that scientists should incorporate God into their work while also acknowledging that things in science must be empirically testable. But if you can't say how God could be empirically testable, you've defeated your own argument.

Whenever I see someone say something like that my response is usually to tell you, if you think you have a better way to do science then go forth and do it! Go show the world how much better your method is and they'll beat a path to your door!

Do you think agreeing with scientists on evolution is a salvation issue? Do you think such agreement will keep someone out of heaven?

Not in my experience. I've had kids bring me creationist material that quotes, cites, or refers to scientific work, and after I give them the original paper or book to read themselves they come back appalled at how the creationists completely misrepresented it. The practice of "quote mining" is particularly shady.

But you're persisting in characterizing people having different interpretations than you as "undermining" and "watering down" scripture. That type of language in itself puts people off because it immediately puts them on the defensive. If you want to persuade other Christians to your POV, that language is probably counter-productive.

That's not the same as me saying you have to listen to me or arguing from authority. You had made some unsupported claims about specific fields of science, which makes it reasonable to ask about your qualifications in those fields. If a random person came up to me on the street and told me the same things, my first question would be "who are you and how are you qualified to make such assertions".

Right, you keep making baseless claims about specific fields of science, so it's entirely in bounds to ask about your qualifications. If you had provided some support for your claims we could check into that, but because you posted them with nothing other than your own statements, you leave us no choice but to examine your qualifications to make them.

If you have no qualifications and give no support for your claims, why should anyone believe them over the conclusions of actual professionals?
 
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River Jordan

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This is what I was talking about in my last post to you.

Those are quite the series of claims about specific fields of science, but you posted them with no support, other than your authority. But if you have no qualifications, why should anyone believe your claims instead of the conclusions of actual professionals?
 
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River Jordan

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the question is whether random, stepwise changes, acted upon by natural selection, can realistically account for the emergence of complex, interdependent systems like the closed human circulatory system.
Have you done any work on that?
 
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River Jordan

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Apologies for interrupting, but have you ever studied or looked into the field of experimental evolution?
 
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Ophiolite

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Also, if the above is accurate, why are you interacting with atheists? They don't care about scripture.
This is somewhat off topic, but it is not unusual for atheists to be interested in scripture. This could be for all sorts of reasons:
  • An interest in comparative religion.
  • A holdover from a former believe in Christianity
  • Curiosity
  • Relevance to history
  • Exploration of different ethical principles
  • Etc.
But in the context of this thread I see what you are driving at and I am probably just being pedantic.
 
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River Jordan

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Oh no problem.

I was just expressing how to me his intent seems to be inconsistent. If he's arguing science with atheists then appealing to scripture is way off base, but if he's arguing scriptural interpretation with Christians then he should be posting in the Christians only section and focusing on scripture.
 
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Hans Blaster

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This can all be true, but none of scripture has anything to do with science and "scriptural arguments" are not going to work on non-Christians.
 
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AV1611VET

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This can all be true, but none of scripture has anything to do with science and "scriptural arguments" are not going to work on non-Christians.

Ecclesiastes 11:1 Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.

1 Corinthians 3:6 I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.
 
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