Evolution

[LoveNeverDies]

You've made a positive claim:



Here the burden of proof is on you. Demonstrate your claim. If I wanted to use your ridiculous standards I could ask you to prove that these scientists are "mad" and to prove that their inner motives are malicious. But I'm fair and reasonable, so I'll just ask you to prove the hoax. We've met our burden of proof. Just because you haven't looked at the evidence doesn't mean it hasn't been provided. We're not going to spoon-feed it to you.

If you haven't seen any convincing evidence for evolution, you don't understand it. You don't make such claims about germ theory, or atomic theory, or gravity so why evolution? Evolution is just as established as those. Could it be because you have an assumption that evolution would destroy your religion? You assume that if evolution is true, that means the Bible is false, even though many people have demonstrated that that's not the case.

So you study one side - the side that agrees with you and your religion - and dismiss all else without seriously considering it. Is that honest? By the way, all Jesus says is that God made us male and female, he never mentions Adam and Eve as literal people (I think you're getting a little big for your britches questioning people's Christianity for believing evolution).

Dr. Francis Collins (an evangelical Christian) says that, even if we had never found a single fossil, the DNA evidence alone is enough to establish evolution as an absolute fact.

I'll issue to you this challenge: We can provide an army of religious people who accept evolution. Find us one [1] informed, non-religious person who disagrees with the theory of evolution.

Until you do this I cannot take you seriously.

No, the burden of proof is on you because you're the one claiming evolution is true. I haven't seen any convincing evidence for evolution simply because there isn't any. The DNA evidence doesn't support evolution in any way shape or form. It's all based on lies, frauds, hearsay, brain washing, intimidation, and manipulation. You have no hard evidence to support macro evolution.

 

[Zoness]

You caught us, evolution is a big lie so we can trick religious people out of their belief system.

 

[Bravo Year]

I think that if you were 3 billion years old and saw the birth of every living creature, slowly watching them change from species to species, you would say, "These animals have put a spell on me and made me think they're changing."

What we have provided to you is the best evidence we could possibly provide on an internet forum, yet you will not study phylogeny, specifically speciation, you will not not look at a photo, read a sentence, watch a video, or click on a link without first concluding, "I am not going to accept this as evidence." Deny it if you wish, but it is evidence.

On one of the earlier pages of this thread, TG123 made a post saying basically, "I don't accept evolution, I believe the Bible." You know what my response was?

"Okay. Just want to know where people stand."

But here you come, claiming you know the intentions of all scientists, claiming it's all intimidation, lies, claiming that it's all a conspiracy and that people who believe it are dummies. I hope you understand the difference between the two posts, and why I couldn't leave yours as it lies (and I mean both definitions of that word).

 

[awitch]

Well thanks for the long reply. By the way, do you have any evidence for evolution? Just wondering.

I suspect there is no amount of evidence anyone can provide that you would accept. It's not hard to find the evidence so if you really were interested you would have looked it up and found it by now.

 

[LoveNeverDies]

I think that if you were 3 billion years old and saw the birth of every living creature, slowly watching them change from species to species, you would say, "These animals have put a spell on me and made me think they're changing."

What we have provided to you is the best evidence we could possibly provide on an internet forum, yet you will not study phylogeny, specifically , you will not not look at a photo, read a sentence, watch a video, or click on a link without first concluding, "I am not going to accept this as evidence." Deny it if you wish, but it is evidence.

On one of the earlier pages of this thread, TG123 made a post saying basically, "I don't accept evolution, I believe the Bible." You know what my response was?

"Okay. Just want to know where people stand."

But here you come, claiming you know the intentions of all scientists, claiming it's all intimidation, lies, claiming that it's all a conspiracy and that people who believe it are dummies. I hope you understand the difference between the two posts, and why I couldn't leave yours as it lies (and I mean both definitions of that word).

But what you consider to be evidence I do not. I consider it to be speculation, assumption, lies, fraud, etc. It doesn't even qualify as real science. You cannot observe something that apparently takes millions of years. Evolution, the way it's taught, is nothing but foolish poppycock.

 

[LoveNeverDies]

I suspect there is no amount of evidence anyone can provide that you would accept. It's not hard to find the evidence so if you really were interested you would have looked it up and found it by now.

Why are evolutionists so arrogant to think that anybody who rejects evolution hasn't bothered to do the research? I studied all this before I decided to become a dedicated Christian. But I never found any hard evidence. All I found was a load of speculation and assumptions among scientists, as well as a history of lies and deception. It's impossible to find the evidence, simply because it doesn't exist.

 

[Bravo Year]

Why are evolutionists so arrogant to think that anybody who rejects evolution hasn't bothered to do the research?

Because it's as much of a fact as gravity. The only reason there is any opposition to it is religion.

You're not being honest, you're being a clown - or a troll. Either way, I'm done with you.

 

[LoveNeverDies]

Because it's as much of a fact as gravity. The only reason there is any opposition to it is religion.

You're not being honest, you're being a clown - or a troll. Either way, I'm done with you.

What a ridiculous statement. I hope you're not being serious, for humanity's sake. Evolution is not supported by hard evidence. It is not in the least bit scientific. Real science can be observed. Evolution is for dummies.

 

[LoAmmi]

I feel I need to ask you this again:

So, what you're saying is that if I enter a room to find a man standing over a dead body, with the bloody knife in his hand, in the act of raising it above his head, and he himself is covered with the blood of the victim and he's screaming that the person deserved what they got....

I cannot reasonably conclude anything from this because I could not observe the actual event?

 

[awitch]

Why are evolutionists so arrogant to think that anybody who rejects evolution hasn't bothered to do the research? I studied all this before I decided to become a dedicated Christian. But I never found any hard evidence. All I found was a load of speculation and assumptions among scientists, as well as a history of lies and deception. It's impossible to find the evidence, simply because it doesn't exist.

No, you don't see it because either you don't understand it, you were deluded, or you don't want to see it because you feel it threatens your religious beliefs. What sources did you study? Answers in Genesis? Ken Ham? Institute for Creation Research? Michael Behe?

 

[morningstar2651]

Well thanks for the long reply. By the way, do you have any evidence for evolution? Just wondering.

Yes, but as I stated previously, you will not accept evidence.

• Reason: You won't be convinced by evidence due to fear of going to Hell.
• You have set up a conflict between evolution and your belief in Jesus. In your mind, you cannot accept evolution without rejecting the omnipotence of Jesus.
• You believe that evolution is blasphemy against God, and imply that any Christians that disagree with you are going to Hell.
• If we follow this chain of reasoning as you have, to accept evidence of evolution is to accept evolution, to accept evolution is to blaspheme, and to blaspheme is to be hellbound. Therefore, to accept evidence of evolution is to be hellbound.

And I will not waste my time on you.

 

[morningstar2651]

Maybe there is a reason that everyone says you don't understand evolution.

• Reason: You don't understand evolution.
• You claim that evolution states that a frog can evolve into a prince. Evolution states no such thing.
• Your incorrect statements about evolution reveal to us that you either don't understand it, or are intentionally misrepresenting it (See also Straw Man Fallacy).
• Since you are Christian, I will assume that you would not willingly give false testimony, so I must conclude that you simply do not understand how evolution works.

I alter my conclusion. Based upon further posts by LoveNeverDies, I can only conclude that he is intentionally misrepresenting evolution.

 

[Crandaddy]

Ought we, though? Truly? Now it seems you're smuggling in agency where it needn't be. Sometimes it is beneficial to believe things that aren't true (type A cognition errors for example), just as there are things that are harmful to believe are true, yet we survive and reproduce just fine. Rather than say that we ought or ought not grasp something as true, I'd probably say that we either do so, or fail to do so.

But are our cognitive faculties not generally reliable for producing true beliefs? Reliability is normative--we rely on our belief-forming structures to form true beliefs because we take it that that's what they're supposed to do, as their function, not because we take it that that's what they just happen to have done in the past. If that's not what they're supposed to do, then why continue to rely on them to give us true (or at least mostly true) beliefs?

And I fail to see how grasping the validity of things like axioms and logical syllogisms could not possibly come about from an evolved, functioning brain.

Because evolution is essentially a mechanistic process. It essentially builds 'machines' that preserve and replicate themselves, in that preservation and replication of individual organisms are the two fundamental principles underlying all evolutionary processes. All evolution 'cares' about (please pardon the anthropomorphic language, but it's the best way I know to make my point) are the mechanisms that cause organisms to survive and replicate themselves. Strictly insofar as a brain is a proper component of a 'machine' that has been built according to evolutionary processes, its functionality must derive from the fundamental principles that guide those processes. Thus, the evolutionary answer to the question of why we have any organs that function the way they do essentially boils down to this: Our ancestors' having those organs with those functions is what enabled them to survive and reproduce.

From an evolutionary perspective, the reason why we have brains that work the way they do is because our ancestors' having brains that worked that way is what enabled them to survive and pass on their genes to us. But having beliefs that are true is irrelevant to the evolutionary 'concerns' of physically getting an organism's body parts to where they need to be in order for that organism to survive and reproduce. If causal processes involving wildly false beliefs, or no beliefs at all, would get the job done more efficiently than those involving true beliefs, then evolution would 'gladly' cast off true-belief-forming structures as garbage in favor of whatever works better.

This is why I say that naturalistic evolution--i.e. evolution strictly via blind mechanistic causation operating on random variation--is fundamentally incapable of producing belief-forming structures as selective adaptations insofar as those belief-forming structures produce beliefs that are true. Evolution doesn't 'care' about what's true; all it 'cares' about--indeed, all it can 'care' about--is what works according to its 'purposes' of preservation (survival) and reproduction. True beliefs would be an evolutionary afterthought, and so they can't be a proper function according to an evolutionary paradigm.

Mmmm.... okay, accept. I don't know why I feel the weight of some unnecessary baggage, but... accept.

Well, I can think of a couple of points you might like to consider:

How might we go about explaining truth as some sort of actual entity that can actually cause mental states to occur in explanatory terms that do not invoke, or presuppose, the very truth we're trying to explain? In other words, how could we explanatorily reduce, or break down, truth itself into simpler terms, while at the same time preserving both it and its causal power (i.e. so that it can still, somehow, properly be said to exist and cause, and not be entirely illusory)? If we can't do this, then I don't see any way that we can preserve physicalism.

Can truth (or a true proposition, if you will) by itself be sufficient to cause the formation of a true belief? Doesn't there need to be a mind to be able to grasp it? And if grasping truth is a capacity that minds inherently have as part of their essential nature (i.e. as per what it is to be a mind), then might we not say that, in some sense, grasping truth is what minds are for?

You'll have to define the term proper, and demonstrate its distinction from currently evolved. I now can't help but see your posts through the lens of agency attribution, and you seem to have this idea that this was always the end goal of the brain. Our brains are still evolving, just as they are quite a bit more evolved than they were 250,000 years ago when we were a different species.

I might need to expand on this later, but for right now, let's define a function of some entity as proper if it is an activity of that entity that is in accordance with some intelligible principle by which the entity itself is causally explained. This principle needn't have been literally designed in the entity by some rational agent in order to satisfy this definition. It might very well have formed the entity via entirely natural (non-agentive) processes. What's important is simply that there be an intelligible modus operandi at work in the entity's functioning that reflects its causal origins.

I don't think I'm a fan of the term evolution does or doesn't care, so if you don't mind, I'll rephrase it: While it's true that natural selection rewards utility and reproduction, the beings that successfully reproduce do care about things being true. At least the ones who survive seem to have a better grasp of reality than the ones who do not survive. In that sense natural selection does reward the truth of a proposition through the species who tend to grasp that truth.

But when all is said and done, they survive, not because what they believe is true, but because whatever causal processes are at work in their behaviors get the job done in terms of survival and reproduction. You are right, of course, that some organisms (we humans at least) do tend to care about truth, but this doesn't mean that we actually get truth from our belief-forming structures. The carrot of truth that natural selection holds before our eyes might be nothing more than a hologram put there in order to get us to go through the right motions. Of course, I don't believe that it is a hologram. I believe that we really can acquire truth. But in order to do this, I must believe that our minds are reliable for producing beliefs that are actually true, and this requires that I believe that acquiring truth is what our minds are properly for.

 

[LoveNeverDies]

No, you don't see it because either you don't understand it, you were deluded, or you don't want to see it because you feel it threatens your religious beliefs. What sources did you study? Answers in Genesis? Ken Ham? Institute for Creation Research? Michael Behe?

I didn't see it because it doesn't exist.

 

[LoveNeverDies]

Yes, but as I stated previously, you will not accept evidence.


And I will not waste my time on you.

I won't accept it because I don't believe it is evidence. I studied this before I became a Christian. I was passionate for truth. I wasn't prepared to give my life to God if I thought that we had all evolved. I have being 100% open minded and researched the "evidence" but it was more speculation and assumption than evidence.

 

[SithDoughnut]

I didn't see it because it doesn't exist.

If you don't see it, you have no way of knowing why you don't. You're starting from the conclusion and trying to justify it afterwards, which is not honest looking. If you were honestly looking, you would merely have reached the conclusion of "I don't see it".

Or, to use your logic differently - I don't see God because he doesn't exist.

 

[LoveNeverDies]

If you don't see it, you have no way of knowing why you don't. You're starting from the conclusion and trying to justify it afterwards, which is not honest looking. If you were honestly looking, you would merely have reached the conclusion of "I don't see it".

Or, to use your logic differently - I don't see God because he doesn't exist.

I can't see God but I can see creation. Macro evolution apparently takes millions of years. If it can't be seen then it's not real science.

 

[Bravo Year]

If it can't be seen then it's not real science.

You heard it here first - the study of energy is not real science; forensics is not real science (you never answered LoAmmi's question, by the way); archaeology and paleontology is not real science; gravity is not real science... what am I forgetting?

 

[awitch]

I didn't see it because it doesn't exist.

I didn't see Jesus therefore...

I believe you've been asked at least 3 times about the sources you claimed to have studied and have ignored or dodged each time.

 

[LoveNeverDies]

You heard it here first - the study of energy is not real science; forensics is not real science (you never answered LoAmmi's question, by the way); archaeology and paleontology is not real science; gravity is not real science... what am I forgetting?

Then let me educate you. Energy can be felt. Macro evolution is something that can't be seen, felt, or tested. You cannot test or observe something that apparently takes millions or billions of years. That's called blind faith. There's nothing scientific about it whatsoever.