Proof of Evolution

[ParkertR]

I believe everything evolved from single celled organisms which kreator kreated.

lol! technically i would agree... but instead of single celled organisms, i would go lower into atoms/energy

 

[widdly]

how is it a bit narrow? you refuse to take into account the creationist idea just because it has the word God in it. evolutionists believe in the big bang because they have no other choice, despite it defying almost all possible logic and proper science. new theories have to keep being invented, and unsubstantiated just to support the BIG BANG THEORY. and people take all of this as fact..and they disregard creationists for being narrow-minded? seriously..

You are putting words in my mouth. I don't refuse to except the creationist's idea because it has god in it. I refuse to except the book of genesis as a LITERAL work of non-fiction. As an allegorical fable, Genesis is a great work that has a beautiful poetry to it but as a factual historical account it seems to me to be improbable.

I'll leave aside the 7 days of Creation part because it is clearly an emotive issue. Concentrating on the rest of the text, the following items are example that to me seem implausible for a work of non-fiction....

003:001 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field
which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea,
hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

Talking snakes. Not something you see everyday.

004:017 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and
he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the
name of his son, Enoch.

Cain knew his wife.....because she was his mother? The problem of incest in Genesis is difficult.

005:005 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty
years: and he died.

Adam lived to be 930 years old. Not something you see in the our world.

007:008 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of
fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth,
007:009 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and
the female, as God had commanded Noah.
...
007:021 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl,
and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earth, and every man:

If evolution doesn't provide new species and the book of Genesis is literal, then we can only deduce that every animal that exists today must have existed in those times and been on board the gopher wood arc. The logistics of constructing a wooden boat of that nature to support the quantity of livestock and feed for a period of 40 days is implausible.

007:011 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month,
the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the
fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of
heaven were opened.
007:012 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

Not only did Noah build an immense wooden boat, he did so when was 600 years old. Quite a feat!

So, in my opinion, a reading of Genesis should not be literal. And further, a belief in a higher power and a understanding of evolutionary biology need not be mutually exclusive.

 

[EngelFaeuste]

lol! technically i would agree... but instead of single celled organisms, i would go lower into atoms/energy

I don't think you actually got what I meant. , go google Kreator.

 

[growlingsoulpup]

eh screw this, nobody is gonna convince anybody. I'm just gonna go reply to threads about guitars again. But before I do that remember this: Evolution is not as much as a theory or religion as creationism. Because in science the word "theory" is not used the same way as you would use in everyday life. its used like 'music theory' or mathematical 'theory'. In science its pretty much a fact. and evolution requires NO FAITH, just look at the evidence and understand it.

I'm afraid you've got it the wrong way about. In science, the term theory is used to describe a hypothesis that cannot be completely substantiated, unlike in music, where theory describes the intellectual study of that which we put into practice.

And you still don't understand. Evolution requires as much faith as creationism as capitalism as communism as anarchism. Evolution is a theory based on YOU taking the word of SCIENTISTS on good faith. You assume that scientists are not lying, that the evidence provided is real and consistent, and that there has been no distortion of information in the communication process. Civilisation is based on mutual faith and assumption. Without faith in your fellow man, civilisation as we know it will cease to exist.

Evolutionists have as much faith as creationists do. Evolutionists place faith in the word of biologists. Creationists place faith in biblical authors. Still faith. The man who lives by fact and the proof of his senses alone is the man who lives in a cave by the sea.

 

[empihsrow]

this is the ignorant speaking. i'm not trying to be offensive, but this IS life. there's not really much more to do? you live your life enslaved to the government, paying off your HDB flat (a space in the sky) that doesn't even belong to you. you believe whatever you read in the newspapers, that HDB is losing money. seriously? singapore housing costs almost 50x more than housing in other countries. with 50kUSD you can buy LAND in US. you can buy a mansion in Bali with 20-30k. and you pay 400k for something that you have to return in 99 years? and what do you get out of it? CPF benefits? baby bonuses? you're asleep, it's time to wake up..and look into the things in life that actually matter.

You are the epitome of an ignorant man. If you think that's your life, I'm fine with it.

Evolutionists, Creationists, whatever. What do you seek, young hot-blooded people? Answer me. What do you seek?

 

[empihsrow]

And you still don't understand. Evolution requires as much faith as creationism as capitalism as communism as anarchism. Evolution is a theory based on YOU taking the word of SCIENTISTS on good faith. You assume that scientists are not lying, that the evidence provided is real and consistent, and that there has been no distortion of information in the communication process. Civilisation is based on mutual faith and assumption. Without faith in your fellow man, civilisation as we know it will cease to exist.

Evolutionists have as much faith as creationists do. Evolutionists place faith in the word of biologists. Creationists place faith in biblical authors. Still faith. The man who lives by fact and the proof of his senses alone is the man who lives in a cave by the sea.

You, my friend, have reached Enlightenment.

 

[hifi_killer]

evident, let me try to address you concerns. If i didnt misunderstood what you said.

evolution can be defined as the change in genetic material of one population of organisms from one generation to the next.

as Ymmak, et al. mentioned, such genetic changes can be random or it can be catalysed by an environmental event

Theres little empirical evidence for evolution that has resulted random mutation because one would have to conduct a longitudinal study across many generations to come up with a significant result.

As for genetic changes that is accounted by environmental events, the idea of gene-environment interaction is a well researched and empirically validated idea. It has been observed to occur with the manipulation of environmental variables in lab mice, monkeys and human beings.

Also, look at the article in the 1st post. According to the website, the study is that of a longitudinal design. Observations were carried out continuously throughout the entire duration of the study. I have not read the methodology in the original published article. But if the rest of the
methodology is sound and valid, then one could say that this give us more power to contend that evolution of mankind happens like that too.

I'm aware that some creationists do agree with such 'micro-evolution' too

Now i guess the problem would be to generalise such idea to a larger context of evolution of mankind. It is not possible to longitudinally observed the evolution of mankind. This is a quantitative issue, not a qualitative one.

The grand over arching theory of evolution of mankind may not be entirely empirically validated, but at the very least, its built on empirically validated scientific concepts, perhaps more so than creationism?

Regardless of the outcome of evolution vs creationism. Evolution theory has contributed a lot to the social sciences, evolution will continue to be a powerful theory.

 

[predz23]

Ok I cant help it, this is too much fun, I wanna keep replying to this.

First of all believing in evolution does NOT require faith, there is plenty of evidence for evolution to support you believing in it. Creationism holds no credibility in the scientific community and has NO evidence. If you believe in something without any evidence = faith. the evidence for Evolution has become to the point where its overwhelming so that evolution is now considered a scientific fact.

And no theory is not a hypothesis. Hypothesis is an untested idea whereas theory is a proven science. Like the theory of gravity, the cell theory etc. Does it require faith to believe in those?

Just youtube some videos of proof of evolution if you have some time to kill hopefully I dont overreact when I look back at this thread later on

 

[empihsrow]

And no theory is not a hypothesis. Hypothesis is an untested idea whereas theory is a proven science. Like the theory of gravity, the cell theory etc. Does it require faith to believe in those?

Dude, you got it all wrong. Theories are NOT proven science. They, yes, explain but they're not validated nor totally proven.

It's like Einstein's theory of relativity. Scientists now use it as a model to explain things. They think it's the most probable explanation of gravity and space-time but until the truth comes out(ironically), it's not yet proven as a totally correct, fundamental law of the Universe.

There's a reason why Newton's discoveries are presented as laws, while Einstein's mind-boggling ideas still remain as a theory.

And since theories remain debatable and questionable, it does require faith to believe in them. :/

It's like the people who used to believe that the Earth was in the centre of the Universe. It's theory which people used to explain how the Universe was like(despite the flaw) and could you believe how many people actually believed them?

 

[ymmak]

Aiya, predz23 just doesnt get it. He/she just take and swallow what others (on youtube or wiki or what not) have said wholesale without inputting any of his own thoughts into it, and considers it truth, and nothing but the absolute truth.

Yes, there are fossils that suggest (suggest, not prove, because the significance of the fossils are interpreted differently from different individuals) that we are evolved from a common ancestor. However scientists cannot conduct an "evolution" experiment of one specie to another, and replicate this experiment over and over and over again, yielding the same empirical results, with high accuracy and precision; unlike the way scientists conduct experiments on Newtonian mechanics.

So in a way, evolution of one specie to another, has not been tested yet, and to believe in it, requires some sort of faith, trust, assumptions, preconception, gullibility, ignorance etc, or whatever you call it.

 

[growlingsoulpup]

Ok I cant help it, this is too much fun, I wanna keep replying to this.

First of all believing in evolution does NOT require faith, there is plenty of evidence for evolution to support you believing in it. Creationism holds no credibility in the scientific community and has NO evidence. If you believe in something without any evidence = faith. the evidence for Evolution has become to the point where its overwhelming so that evolution is now considered a scientific fact.

And no theory is not a hypothesis. Hypothesis is an untested idea whereas theory is a proven science. Like the theory of gravity, the cell theory etc. Does it require faith to believe in those?

Just youtube some videos of proof of evolution if you have some time to kill hopefully I dont overreact when I look back at this thread later on

I really don't know what to say to someone who's learnt all of his science off Wikipedia or Youtube. Sigh. Tell me, have you ever TOUCHED a copy of Origin of the Species?

 

[j_m_s]

it does take faith to believe that you actually have brain no?

How about the electrons in atoms? How about the cells in your body?

Have you seen those with your own eyes?

It does take faith to believe in the theory of gravity. It might be "right" as of now, but what if, in the future, somehow someone discovers a loophole in the theory? Not an outlier or an anomaly, but some solid evidence that its wrong?

 

[empihsrow]

The theory of gravity as part of the 4 fundamental forces of the Universe isn't right, by the way. Where is the graviton?

Faith, however you want to name it, put it, disguise it... It is still faith. You need faith to believe in almost everything, especially when the things are unproven or seemingly unreal.

I repeat, believing in evolution makes you no different from believing in Genesis because no matter what, both ideas, both concepts, both beliefs DO NOT tell us absolutely at all how and why do we even exist!

 

[Vaiyen]

... and to believe in it, requires some sort of faith, trust, assumptions, preconception, gullibility, ignorance etc, or whatever you call it.

Same applies for creationists.

 

[Vaiyen]

....our point is evolution is not science. it's as much a theory or religion as creationism is...

The difference is that there's evidence for evolution, and there isn't for creationism.
Creationism is A LOT more FAITH-BASED than evolution.

C'mon, admit it.

 

[ymmak]

Same applies for creationists.

Exactly what I have said. It requires some sort of faith (or call it by any other name you want), irregardless of which camp you belong to. But predz23 just doesnt get it.

And indeed, believing in creationism seems to require more faith than evolution, but I can live with it.

Oh, this is my 100th post. Yea!

 

[Whitestrat]

Y'know guys, the variety of thought and depth of knowledge in this thread amazes me.

It makes me wonder why we have countless "which pickup should i go for" or "which guitar should I buy" or "what pedal should i get" threads when you guys can argue about Evolution vs Creationism on a level that is way beyond me for 10 pages.

Can you guys go apply this brain power to your guitar playing and GAS? Saves me a lot of typing...

:twisted:

 

[widdly]

It's like the people who used to believe that the Earth was in the centre of the Universe. It's theory which people used to explain how the Universe was like(despite the flaw) and could you believe how many people actually believed them?

Galileo proposed the earth rotated the sun in the 1600's. The Catholic church didn't accept it as a fact until 1992.

That highlights quite nicely the difference between believing in scientist and believing in literal biblical interpretations. Scientific thought is built on dynamic ideas that change as more data is gathered and better models are proposed. Biblical literalism on the other hand is by its very nature static and doesn't accommodate man's innate desire to question and understand the world around him.

 

[taypeng81]

I think this thread is going no where haha. evolution will never be disproved because so its such a popular theory and is a foundation for many other studies. So any evidence against it is often ignored or overlooked especially if it comes from "creationists". i think v few will shoot themselves in the foot and risk their reputation/career to qns it, since the validity of evolution doesn't have much practical application in most projects. e.g. we could have still mapped out the human genome for the sake of finding cancer cures.

on the other hand, the creationists - meaning those who try to marry biblical accounts and science - came up with misguided theories like "young earth" theory. in doing so, they had to discredit carbon dating, expert geographical studies etc.in my view, they are not doing much good. the Bible's main concern is not to provide scientific explanations and details on creation we shouldnt rely on it as a framework for scientific studies.

there may not be much evidence for the 7 days of creation but there is historical and anecdotal evidences for the Maker.

 

[ymmak]

To clarify, there is no biblical literature that ever says that the sun orbits around the earth. People of that time believed in the Catholic church's accepted model (it is the accepted model by the church that they believe in, not the bible) that the sun orbits around the earth, for there is not such model mentioned in the bible. So your example may not be so valid, but it does show how religion can be slower than science to embrace new ideas.