Evolution What It Really Is

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adren@line

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Feb 24, 2008
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What you're all referring to when you speak of "adaptation" is actually "micro-evolution" and it constituted 100% of Darwin's observations.The fundamental problem with "macro-evolution" (the notion that one species became another through micro-evolution) is that it:-Assumes that there are no limits to structural adaptation (ie. if 200 generations of salamanders pass and the average length of their legs decreases by 1.5mm than it's perfectly plausible that the legs would disappear entirely and we'd have a snake!)To the evolutionist this is perfectly plausible because he, along with most of the scientific community believes that "The present is the key to the past"This is the only way they can use empiricism (scrutiny using the five senses) to explain things that we obviously can't observe... because they claim that they happened millions of years ago.But this ignores the mathematical principle of "limit."
^Most of that is based on mis-information or is just wrong.I wont bother explaining why because you probably wont buy it anyhow. Im sure if you care enough, you will find out on your own. If you don't care, then no skin off anyones back.
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arniem

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Mar 17, 2008
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(papa time;45914)
What you're all referring to when you speak of "adaptation" is actually "micro-evolution" and it constituted 100% of Darwin's observations.The fundamental problem with "macro-evolution" (the notion that one species became another through micro-evolution) is that it:-Assumes that there are no limits to structural adaptation (ie. if 200 generations of salamanders pass and the average length of their legs decreases by 1.5mm than it's perfectly plausible that the legs would disappear entirely and we'd have a snake!)To the evolutionist this is perfectly plausible because he, along with most of the scientific community believes that "The present is the key to the past" This is the only way they can use empiricism (scrutiny using the five senses) to explain things that we obviously can't observe... because they claim that they happened millions of years ago.But this ignores the mathematical principle of "limit." I could talk about this stuff all day.
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Our God really is so glorious. What a wonderful thing to marvel in the beauty and complexity of his creation!I don't have a problem with people believing in evolution. I do have a problem with people taking glory from God, glory he is due.
Very good point papa.I would go even further and challenge any die-hard evolutionist to do a study by gathering all the salamanders in a pond and carefully surgically remove all the legs.Then release them back to see if they will survive. Of course they will not survive , but when you confront the evolutionist with this scientific observation they will then proceed to assure us that if these same legs were slowly removed over millions of years .... then they will survive. Yeah right !! And then they call that science !!!!From now on everybody , if you listen carefully , the evolutionist uses this same equation (millions of years) to support every argument for evolution. Remove this equation from all the teachings and there is nothing left to build upon.If you also observe carefully , you will notice that through the years the evolutionist has run into so many snags that they had to change the equation from millions of years to billions of years to escape from their dilema. I would not be surprised if one day they start saying trillions and trillions of years ago there was this salamander ..........
 

papa time

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Apr 8, 2008
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(adren@line;46092)
^Most of that is based on mis-information or is just wrong.I wont bother explaining why because you probably wont buy it anyhow. Im sure if you care enough, you will find out on your own. If you don't care, then no skin off anyones back.
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Don't assume so much.
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This is a place for friendly dialog and occasionally, discourse.I know I oversimplified uniformitarianism but if most everything I said is blatantly wrong, I'm sure you have a somewhat simple retort.Indulge me. I assure you I'll pay attention.
 

David161099

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Nov 19, 2007
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(InterestedAtheist;45861)
"But if you really want to see the theory of evolution in action, and what can go wrong with this type of thinking - just look at the holocaust.Was it a co-incidence that the theory of evolution was used as an excuse to exterminate the Jewish race?"I find this type of thinking detrimental to any sort of positive conversation... Do you really believe that people who acknowledge evolution as a scientific theory are predisposed to violence?Please, don't invoke the tragic deaths of others in order to prove a point. What you're doing is paramount to accusing 'evolutionists' with conspiracy to commit murder, and that’s not something to undertake lightly. What it comes down to is that even if Hitler had done every despicable thing’s he did in the name of 'Darwinism'; it would not disprove anything in the evolutionary theory. Perhaps he was just a psychopathic and greedy murderer with a superiority complex?
You actually didn't counter any argument, you just wished I didn't "go there'.
Please, don't invoke the tragic deaths of others in order to prove a point.
Please show me where Eugenics was not part of the Nazi genocide program?
 

RaddSpencer

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Mar 28, 2008
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(InterestedAtheist;45861)
"But if you really want to see the theory of evolution in action, and what can go wrong with this type of thinking - just look at the holocaust.Was it a co-incidence that the theory of evolution was used as an excuse to exterminate the Jewish race?"I find this type of thinking detrimental to any sort of positive conversation... Do you really believe that people who acknowledge evolution as a scientific theory are predisposed to violence?Please, don't invoke the tragic deaths of others in order to prove a point. What you're doing is paramount to accusing 'evolutionists' with conspiracy to commit murder, and that’s not something to undertake lightly.
No one is calling evolutionists murderers. In fact all Creationists and ID researchers acknowledge that evolution does exist. I'll explain this below:Evolutionists believe that evolution is the begin-all and end-all of all things. However, Creationists and ID proponents see evolution as a mechanism that works within species (one dog evolves into another). However classical evolutionists see evolution as being more powerful than that (a dog can evolve into another dog AND a monkey can evolve into a man).THAT is where the beef is. Creationists go against the idea that one animal can evolve into another.As Christians accusing evolutionists with murder. I don't think anyone is accusing anybody of anything. As far as I can tell, atheists/agnostics want a future similar to Star Trek. Everyone reaches an "enlightenment" and they learn how to get along.The problem is this. Current Evolutionary theory is... well... rather violent. I've seen the shows on evolution on the Discovery channel. Its just flat out violent. Its survival of the fittest.Well, if nature has always followed this course, why should we stop now? I mean shouldn't mankind be interested in transmitting the best genes to the next generation and preventing the people with bad genes from reproducing? Thats kind of the whole point behind evolutionary theory --- right? Look at this quote from wikipedia: Its about Richard Dawkin's Book The Selfish Gene.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene"A crude analogy can be found in the old saying about a chicken being just an egg's way of making more eggs. In a similar inversion, Dawkins describes biological organisms as "vehicles" or survival machines, with genes as the "replicators" that create these organisms as a means of acquiring resources and copying themselves. At the level of organisms, we can see genes as being for some feature that might benefit the organism, but at the level of genes, the sole implicit purpose is to benefit themselves. A related concept here is outlined in Dawkins' later work, The Extended Phenotype, in which the consequences of the genes to the environment outside the organism are considered."It seems like to me that making better humans would be in humanity's interest. According to this school of thought. So why not remove the poor genes from the cycle, and keep the good genes? That is what Hitler was basically trying to do (with this "superior" Aryan race, malarky).Christianity has the opposite approach. Jesus talks about loving your neighbor. Loving your enemy. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Where is that in Atheism?The problem is not the Atheistic Evolutionary scientists. They are probably just trying to make a living along with the rest of us. And they probably want a peaceful society (like Star Trek). The problem is that some people (like Hitler) WILL take Atheistic Evolution to its logical conclusion -- that humans are basically gene bags -- we can keep some and throw the "undesireable" ones away.
 

sexymadison69

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Apr 15, 2008
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I think most people who speak against evolution actually know very little about it, and what they do know comes from creationists who speak with authority but also do not know about it.Every person has about 100 "mutations" added to them when they are born, DNA is never replicated with 100% accuracy. These might not be any change, or they may change the way a protein is folded, or may cause a protein to not be made, and this may benefit the person, it may be a negative for the person, or more likely given the size or our genome, do nothing. Now this isn't just people, this is all organisms, obviously organisms with larger genomes (more base pairs in the DNA) are more subsceptible to this.Now to consider evolution, you need to understand that evolution occurs mainly in small population sizes, unlike humans. If one of these traits enables the organism to reproduce more successfully than another, then that trait is passed down in a greater frequency, and the next generation will have more organisms with that trait. Lets say some of these organisms leave the group, maybe there was a storm and they got split up, it's irrelevant. The ones that left ended up in a different environment, an environment that produces different frequencies of traits, since the trait that enabled the one organism to reproduce more was most likely environmental based (as in, the trait benefitting the organisms ability to reproduce in a particular environment).So this carries on, mutations are automatically introduced, and in small populations these traits quickly move through the population (obviously the quicker the new generations come around the quicker this happens) and incorporating isolation of groups, this leads to evolution.Sometimes, after a long time, the mutations can be enough so that if the 2 groups that split apart are re-introduced, they are actually unable to produce offspring, or maybe they can but the offspring is infertile (like the mule, which is a product of a donkey and a horse)Why is this so hard to understand? How do people say this doesn't happen? We observe the mutations in the lab. That's why when you put antibiotics on some bacteria, well, not all the bacteria have the exact same DNA, due to mutations, and so some actually have some form of defense, or the antibiotic is "less lethal" to them, maybe it takes longer to kill them. And when the antibiotic has killed all the others, the only ones left are the ones that can survive better, so ALL the offspring from the group now has that ability.There is this misconception about speciation as well, as if species are distinctly different from each other. Yes we all know dogs are different from cats, but to class animals into species is a human tool to make biology easier. Why is it so hard to think that maybe some ancestor to dogs, well, there was a group, some of the group ended up on one side of a river and the others didn't, and through the processes I described, one group changed slowly over time, and ended up as foxes, and the other group stayed as dogs? (I don't know my canine biology too well, but it's the same process for all organisms) Why is that impossible to believe?I sometimes think that the only thing that stands in the way of people believing this isn't that they can't, it's because it contradicts what they believe the bible says so it MUST be wrong, despite all the proof. And the more proof the biologists role out in favour of evolution, the more crazy compromises creationists/IDrs need to come up with to explain it away.Science searches for the TRUTH through PROOF. It's not out to disprove God, just use PROOF of things to discover the TRUTH, whatever that may be.Oh, and people who bang on about how evolution is a THEORY need to actually find out what that means, not just what they THINK it means. GRAVITY is a THEORY too, but every single one of us knows that it exists 100% and is undoubtable.
 

adren@line

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Feb 24, 2008
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^ There is quite a bit of misinformation and mis-application in there about evolution. Have you read a science book on evolution from a non-Christian source? Have you ever personally chatted with a scientist?
 

RaddSpencer

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Mar 28, 2008
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(adren@line;46175)
^ There is quite a bit of misinformation and mis-application in there about evolution. Have you read a science book on evolution from a non-Christian source? I have you ever personally chatted with a scientist?
I get the idea that you look down on us with a smug attitude. So why should we entertain your questions? (Especially that last sentence). This isn't digg.com you know.
 

adren@line

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Feb 24, 2008
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Im not looking down on you nor do I visit digg. What I am seeing is misinformation and people discussing a topic they arent that familiar with.For example, many on this site will surely state that their religion is right and all other religions are wrong. When one asks how much they actually know about other religions, most will say not much, or nothing.The point is that debating against a topic that one isnt familiar with is isnt the wisest thing to do. One should know what they are capable of and what they arent. For example, Robin mentioned earlier about her knowledge on the civil war. I really dont know that much about the civil war and hence I was not willing to debate that topic with Robin since I wouldn't know what the "heck" I was talking about.In these days, evolution and religion are hot topics and everyone seems to think they are an expert or capable of making grandiose statements about either. Im not stating that I am an expert on either topic, but I make it a point not to make strong statements on subjects that I am not familiar with.If you are indeed knowledgeable on evolution than I do apologize.
 

RobinD69

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Oct 7, 2007
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adren@line;46194]Im not looking down on you nor do I visit digg. What I am seeing is misinformation and people discussing a topic they arent that familiar with.For example said:
I addressed your questions concerning Buddhism, you just werent willing to look at at any other aspect of the faith that you didnt know about and I did.[/b]The point is that debating against a topic that one isnt familiar with is isnt the wisest thing to do. One should know what they are capable of and what they arent. For example, Robin mentioned earlier about her knowledge on the civil war. I really dont know that much about the civil war and hence I was not willing to debate that topic with Robin since I wouldn't know what the "heck" I was talking about.Hey, I am a guy and I believe I have shared that repeatedly.In these days, evolution and religion are hot topics and everyone seems to think they are an expert or capable of making grandiose statements about either. Im not stating that I am an expert on either topic, but I make it a point not to make strong statements on subjects that I am not familiar with.If you are indeed knowledgeable on evolution than I do apologize.
Many are and you just dont want to accept that.
 

Jerusalem Junkie

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Jan 7, 2008
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Let me ask this. Is arguing over a stupid theory such as evolution going to change anything? Its obvious every one is right and no one is wrong so who's the winner? There are arguments for and agianst both sides as I see it. If evolution is wrong then it will play out in the end, if its right then some of us have a lot of crow to eat. I myself have no opinion on the subject its null and void as far as I am concerned. Because G_d did not say it in the Bible does that mean its wrong? Because Darwin had a theory and expressed it does that mean hes wrong? Who knows, I don't, don't care....
 

adren@line

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Feb 24, 2008
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^I actually dont disagree with you.The whole reason that evolution is such a hot topic these days is because certain Christians (and practically no one else from any other religious group) are meddling in science and the public schooling system and trying to alter and influence both as based on a Christian world-view and the Bible, when religion has no place in the public sphere in a secular country (The USA isnt Iran, where religion dictates all/most policies).However, those that meddle dont realize this and insist on subjecting everyone to their POV, or at the minimum presenting Christian ideas as "alternatives" when they are not in the realm of science.
 

arniem

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Mar 17, 2008
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(adren@line;46257)
^I actually dont disagree with you.The whole reason that evolution is such a hot topic these days is because certain Christians (and practically no one else from any other religious group) are meddling in science and the public schooling system and trying to alter and influence both as based on a Christian world-view and the Bible, when religion has no place in the public sphere in a secular country (The USA isnt Iran, where religion dictates all/most policies).However, those that meddle dont realize this and insist on subjecting everyone to their POV, or at the minimum presenting Christian ideas as "alternatives" when they are not in the realm of science.
I absolutely agree with you on this , but we need to go one step further and remove the religious belief system of evolution from the schools..Both the Christian and the evolutionist should have their own teachings outside the public school system.Arnie M.
 

arniem

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Mar 17, 2008
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(adren@line;46417)
Evolution aint' religion buddy. Neither is gravity.
Evolution is only a theory without proof. Otherwise we would not be having this discussion. It takes faith and is a beleif system. The religion of evolution is used to answer the questions and meaning of life in the absence of a creator. It has all the elements of a religion. Nature and mother earth is the god. The evolutionist scientist is the prophet. You are a beleiver based on your faith in Darwinism.As far as gravity , we can observe it but we do not know if it is a pull from below or a push from above or some other cause. Higher level physics has been leaning toward the push theory.
 

RobinD69

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Oct 7, 2007
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(arniem;46427)
Evolution is only a theory without proof. Otherwise we would not be having this discussion. It takes faith and is a beleif system. The religion of evolution is used to answer the questions and meaning of life in the absence of a creator. It has all the elements of a religion. Nature and mother earth is the god. The evolutionist scientist is the prophet. You are a beleiver based on your faith in Darwinism.As far as gravity , we can observe it but we do not know if it is a pull from below or a push from above or some other cause. Higher level physics has been leaning toward the push theory.
I must agree, if evolution was a factual science rather than theory, then there would be no arguement. If evolution remains in the public schools then all theories should be there such as the theory of creation which the Christians hold as fact. There is much in nature that cannot be explained by science where creation gives theories just as comparable and there is plenty of archeological evidence for the creation theory.
 

ForYou

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Jan 21, 2008
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I am really looking at all of these answers,some have said my teacher is wrong and this is a lie of Satan. All my teacher is telling us is we adapt to different places. She did not say we use to be monkeys etc. IDK
 

adren@line

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Feb 24, 2008
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Evolution is only a theory without proof
A theory based on observations in nature with supporting evidence.
Otherwise we would not be having this discussion.
Im sure we would. For quite a while, Christians were arguing that the earth was flat and that the sun revolved around the earth, regardless of the fact that other peoples and civilizations believed otherwise.100 years from now, there will be no more creationism vs evolution debate.
It takes faith and is a beleif system
Belief in the tooth fairy (for example) is not the same as belief in string theory. Surely you know this.
The religion of evolution is used to answer the questions and meaning of life in the absence of a creator
Nope.Evolution answers where humanity came from. "Meaning" is subjective and differs from person to person.
It has all the elements of a religion
Not really. If you state this then you need to read this article:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EvolutionAnd then compare it to this:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity
Nature and mother earth is the god
sounds sensible to me.
The evolutionist scientist is the prophet.
By all factual accounts, Prophets were men who simply made stuff up while claiming divine inspiration. Scientists do no such thing.
You are a beleiver based on your faith in Darwinism.
nope.
As far as gravity , we can observe it but we do not know if it is a pull from below or a push from above or some other cause. Higher level physics has been leaning toward the push theory.
Your arguments still apply, so by your logic gravity is also a religion.
 

medicalmatt

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Jul 22, 2007
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*raises hand* Degree in Neurobiology, Physiology & Animal Behavior here.Problems Christians have in debating evolution: Microevolution is a non-debatable, observable, scientific fact. This is the common scientific usage of the generic term "evolution." Thus, saying "evolution is a theory" or "evolution doesn't exist" is like saying the moon doesn't exist. It does.Macroevolution is the extrapolation (ie guess) that if species can change their beak size, skin color, etc, then over a REALLY large amount of time, a species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, even kingdom of living things can turn into another. I don't personally believe this, but it's hard to argue one way or another from a scientific point of view. There just isn't enough data to concretely support or deny this theory.Where Christians can really weigh in, is naturalistic biogenesis: basically the theory that life arose from nonlife. There is absolutely no scientific proof for this, and no one can even come up with anywhere close to a plausible mechanism by which it could have happened. Trust me, knowing the INCREDIBLE complexity of the cellular level (and pretty much ALL of the structures would have had to have ALL spontaneously arranged themselves ALL at the same time...you can't just have one and then add another etc etc because without them all you don't have life, and it just falls apart according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics...all things tend toward chaos).Like I said, I don't believe in macroevolution, but my reasons for that are mostly relgious (conflicts with the Bible), although there are definitely some scientific arguments against it. I'd rather not get bogged down in something I can't scientifically disprove though, with an athiest. So, I just stick to naturalistic biogenesis, which is incredibly easy to shoot down from an entirely scientific point of view. It's sheer absurdity.My couple of cents
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