Arguments against evolution

[Charlemagne_II]

Evolution is a scientific fact weather you wish to accept it or not, people like you could bring this world back to the dark ages.

Fortunately for the world, Christianity tempered the savagery men and, by degrees, ushered the world out of the Dark Ages. The Catholic Church created the European university system, and many great Catholic scholars slowly and painstakingly built up a new civilization. But you will only know this if you have read some history other than that written by infidels and atheists.

What may well bring us into a new Dark Age is the arrogance of a science that, full of it own importance, is willing to prove that importance by making it possible to blast us all to smithereens with nuclear weapons. After which, Christianity will be the only force left, once again, to bring daybreak to the darkness.

 

[edwest2]

Ed, you clearly know more about evolution than the thousands of scientists out there who disagree with you. I would suggest submitting a paper on the subject for review. Seriously dude get yourself a science book, eventually you may realize how wrong you are on the subject of evolution and how foolish you come across trying to argue against it. Evolution is a scientific fact weather you wish to accept it or not, people like you could bring this world back to the dark ages.

“bring this world back to the dark ages.” Let’s just say this happens. What exactly would be the results? Can you describe the dark ages?

Peace,
Ed

 

[buffalo]

The Vatican already has an excellent panel of scientific advisers, who are far more qualified than I am.

rossum

The Pontifical Academy of Atheists?

 

[rossum]

Where are the transitional fossils filling all the lines?

You claim that I am descended from Adam, yet you do not have a detailed genealogy leading from me to Adam - the detailed genealogy only reaches as far as Noah. Had you actually read the quote from the expert that you yourself touted, Stephen Gould, you would have seen that he said: “Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level”. Just to make sure that you get the message I will repeat that: “Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level”. The thin lines show where some species are lacking, just as Gould said. Just as there are gaps in your line of begats between Adam and me, there are gaps in the fossil record. We do not have a fossil of every animal that ever lived.

This is what intrigues me about evolutionary trees. The palaeontologists find a few fossils that seem to share a feature or two of some specific genera, and suddenly the whole transitional sequence falls into place.

Yes, that is right. Again to quote your own chosen expert: “but they are abundant between larger groups”. We have abundant transitional fossils that show us the links between larger groups and we can classify the individual fossils into those larger groups. That is as good as the scientific evidence gets, and it is getting better as we find more fossils and narrow the gaps. That is what the diagram shows. The coloured blocks are the larger groups and the thin lines are where we do not have a fossil of every animal that ever lived. The thick lines show where we do have fossils. Welcome to science, where we do not do absolute proof and all theories are provisional.

In actual fact, the “lines” are hypothetical.

As hypothetical as your alleged line between me and Adam, which has an enormous gap which creationists are unable to fill.

rossum

 

[rossum]

You also mentioned that dating methods were supposed to be consistent. Yet Argon dating has no dependable starting point, if my understanding is correct.

It is not. We can get acceptable starting dates by using the Isochron Method. See Isochron Dating.

And there is the problem of undispersed helium as shown in the following article.

icr.org/article/302/

Two points. Firstly, ICR is another creationist site that lies to you. They require all their employees to agree to their Doctrinal Statement. Everything they produce is filtered through that YEC doctrinal statement.

Secondly, that article is scientific rubbish. In the first paragraph they say:Recent experiments commissioned by the RATE project indicate that “1.5 billion years” worth of nuclear decay took place in one or more short episodes between 4,000 and 14,000 years ago. The results strongly support our accelerated decay hypothesis, that episodes with billion-fold speed-ups of nuclear decay occurred in the recent past, such as during the Genesis flood, the Fall of Adam, or early Creation week.
No doubt you are aware that radioactive decay releases heat - that is how we generate power in nuclear power stations. If you speed up radioactive decay a ‘billion-fold’ then you have to multiply the heat produced a billion-fold as well. The seas would have boiled dry (Flood? What flood?) All life on earth would have been killed and much rock would have melted. You will notice that the ICR article conveniently does not mention the heat problem. As I said, they are lying to you.

ICR are not alone in this; whenever anyone attempts to contract billions of years of history into 6,000 years the heat problem gets them every time. Billions of years of radioactive decay, of volcanic eruptions, of meteorite impacts and of plate tectonics produces a great deal of heat. Allowed billions of years to dissipate this heat is not a problem. Allow it merely 6,000 years to dissipate and Noah’s Ark was a wooden boat floating on a sea of molten lava with all the animals and crew roasted to death. It is not surprising the YE creationists generally avoid the heat question.

As to the supposed helium problem, this is an old creationist PRATT which is covered here.

The ICR are lying to you, just as AiG were lying to you. Yet more practitioners of Christianity-Lite[sup]TM[/sup] - the one with 10% fewer Commandments.

rossum

 

[Calliso]

Wanstronian

Evolution is far and away the most coherent theory we have at the moment. There is no contradictory evidence.

Evolution does not explain the origin of life. There is no evidence that life randomly evolved from inorganic matter to organic. The mathematical odds are virtually nil. No coherent theory has been offered in that direction, and every practical attempt to show how it could have happened has been, and will always be, doomed to failure.

You are talking about abiogenisis…the theory of evolution doesn;t deal with the origin of life it deals with what happened next.

 

[wanstronian]

Evolution is a scientific fact weather you wish to accept it or not, people like you could bring this world back to the dark ages.

Fortunately for the world, Christianity tempered the savagery men and, by degrees, ushered the world out of the Dark Ages. The Catholic Church created the European university system, and many great Catholic scholars slowly and painstakingly built up a new civilization. But you will only know this if you have read some history other than that written by infidels and atheists.

Yes, shame on you, Greebus, for not reading the Catholic version of history!!!

What may well bring us into a new Dark Age is the arrogance of a science that, full of it own importance, is willing to prove that importance by making it possible to blast us all to smithereens with nuclear weapons.

Oh not this old chestnut again.

After which, Christianity will be the only force left, once again, to bring daybreak to the darkness.

It didn’t do it the first time, why would it do it the next?

 

[edwest2]

You are talking about abiogenisis…the theory of evolution doesn;t deal with the origin of life it deals with what happened next.

This is wrong. The origin needs to be dealt with. I do not accept as a given that life assembled itself from dead chemicals.

Peace,
Ed

 

[rossum]

This is wrong. The origin needs to be dealt with. I do not accept as a given that life assembled itself from dead chemicals.

No ed, you are wrong and Calliso is right. The theory of evolution deals with the evolution of life after it got started. Abiogenesis is the study of how life got started.

You are right that scientists do want to study the origin of life, but that study is properly called abiogenesis. We do not yet have a working theory of abiogenesis, we do have a working theory of evolution. The two are different. Darwin called his book, “On the Origin of Species”, not “On the Origin of Life”.

There is no difference at the atomic or molecular level between “dead chemicals” and “live chemicals”. The water in your blood is chemically the same as the water in the sea.

rossum

 

[tjm190]

This is wrong. The origin needs to be dealt with. I do not accept as a given that life assembled itself from dead chemicals.

Peace,
Ed

I dont accept string theory, but we’re talking about evolution- so I’m not going to discuss string theory.

 

[redneck22]

This is wrong. The origin needs to be dealt with. I do not accept as a given that life assembled itself from dead chemicals.

Peace,
Ed

It takes a** huge amount of faith** to believe lifeless chemicals could assemble themselves into living reproducing organisms. Far more faith than merely believing the Creator was responsible since all the experiments in science have shown it cannot happening naturally . There are plenty of theories that go against the Word of God but the facts don’t.

 

[rossum]

It takes a** huge amount of faith** to believe lifeless chemicals could assemble themselves into living reproducing organisms.

No, it takes a reasonable inference from known results and observations. Please show us any observations you have of a supernatural creator assembling some of the parts required for a living organism. We do have experiments and observations of natural chemical processes assembling some of the parts required for a living organism. So far natural processes are ahead of supernatural creation. You have faith, we have the experiments and observations.

Far more faith than merely believing the Creator was responsible since all the experiments in science have shown it cannot happening naturally.

We have many experiments in science that show no such thing. The Michelson–Morley experiment showed that the luminiferous aether did not exist, it did not show that abiogenesis cannot happen naturally. The majority of scientific experiments say nothing at all about the possibility of abiogenesis one way or the other - you are getting carried away by your own rhetoric here. Of those experiments that do say something about abiogenesis, none of them show that it is impossible. How does the production of amino acids in the Miller-Urey experiment show that abiogenesis is impossible? On the contrary, it shows that one required step on the path to living organisms is perfectly possible.

Creationism has zero experimental evidence. Abiogenesis has some experimental evidence. Can you guess which one really needs more faith?

rossum

 

[cassini]

No, it takes a reasonable inference from known results and observations. Please show us any observations you have of a supernatural creator assembling some of the parts required for a living organism. We do have experiments and observations of natural chemical processes assembling some of the parts required for a living organism. So far natural processes are ahead of supernatural creation. You have faith, we have the experiments and observations.

We have many experiments in science that show no such thing. The Michelson–Morley experiment showed that the luminiferous aether did not exist, it did not show that abiogenesis cannot happen naturally. The majority of scientific experiments say nothing at all about the possibility of abiogenesis one way or the other - you are getting carried away by your own rhetoric here. Of those experiments that do say something about abiogenesis, none of them show that it is impossible. How does the production of amino acids in the Miller-Urey experiment show that abiogenesis is impossible? On the contrary, it shows that one required step on the path to living organisms is perfectly possible.

Creationism has zero experimental evidence. Abiogenesis has some experimental evidence. Can you guess which one really needs more faith?

rossum

Oh Rossum, the Mitchelson - Morley experiment is something I know about. If your evolutionary faith depends on ‘The Michelson–Morley experiment showed that the luminiferous aether did not exist’ then it confirms that evolution is the product of ASSUMPTION. The M&M test used the supposed motion of the earth through space as it supposedly orbits the sun. It was expected this would slow light as it traveled in the direction of the supposed flight path. The M&M test FAILED to find the calculated delay. The initial results convinced all that the only real result was that the earth DOES NOT MOVE THROUGH SPACE. For 17 years this remained the position of science and physics. But this would mean the Bible was correct and the Church of 1616 never erred, in other words the Bible is LITERALLY correct. NOW WE COULDN’T HAVE THAT, COULD WE? So what did SCIENCE do? They INVENTED ad hocs, anything that could get the earth going again, some of them ABSURD. Eventually a guy called Einstein ANNOUNCED that the ETER does not exist. THAT is how modern science DECIDES what is true and what is not. The valid result, that the earth does not move was dismissed on IDEOLOGICAL grounds alone and non existent ether on the same IDEOLOGICAL grounds.

That said, evolutionists can try to worm all they like out of the abiogenesis question but the theory of evolved life of course depends on it. Unless you are a theistic evolutionist of course where they get God to bypass all the absurd bits.

 

[rossum]

Oh Rossum, the Mitchelson - Morley experiment is something I know about. If your evolutionary faith depends on ‘The Michelson–Morley experiment showed that the luminiferous aether did not exist’.

My acceptance of evolution does not depend on the result of the M-M experiment. If it were shown that the sun orbits the earth rather than vice versa then there would be no impact at all on biology or evolution; a day would still be 24 hours and the sun would still rise in the east.

I used the M-M experiment as a single example to counter redneck22’s absurd statement that “all the experiments in science” show that abiogenesis could not have happened naturally. I merely picked the M-M experiment as a well known scientific experiment that failed to show that abiogenesis was impossible. I could equally well have picked the Curies’ experiments on radioactivity or Faraday’s experiments on electricity - any experiment with no relevance to abiogenesis would have done as well. My intent was to point out the egregious error in redneck22’s post.

rossum

 

[buffalo]

It takes a** huge amount of faith** to believe lifeless chemicals could assemble themselves into living reproducing organisms. Far more faith than merely believing the Creator was responsible since all the experiments in science have shown it cannot happening naturally . There are plenty of theories that go against the Word of God but the facts don’t.

Well that is exactly what the evo’s are thinking of now. The EES is all about self-organization, like the bubbles in your bathtub gathering together.

 

[buffalo]

No, it takes a reasonable inference from known results and observations. Please show us any observations you have of a supernatural creator assembling some of the parts required for a living organism. We do have experiments and observations of natural chemical processes assembling some of the parts required for a living organism. So far natural processes are ahead of supernatural creation. You have faith, we have the experiments and observations.

We have many experiments in science that show no such thing. The Michelson–Morley experiment showed that the luminiferous aether did not exist, it did not show that abiogenesis cannot happen naturally. The majority of scientific experiments say nothing at all about the possibility of abiogenesis one way or the other - you are getting carried away by your own rhetoric here. Of those experiments that do say something about abiogenesis, none of them show that it is impossible. How does the production of amino acids in the Miller-Urey experiment show that abiogenesis is impossible? On the contrary, it shows that one required step on the path to living organisms is perfectly possible.

Creationism has zero experimental evidence. Abiogenesis has some experimental evidence. Can you guess which one really needs more faith?

rossum

Scientists no longer believe the earth conditions were capable of it. The experiment shows nothing.

 

[rossum]

Scientists no longer believe the earth conditions were capable of it. The experiment shows nothing.

Reference please. You are presumably aware that the Miller-Urey experiment has been repeated many times with varying models of the early atmosphere, and that in all cases biologically significant molecules were produced from simpler molecules?

rossum

 

[buffalo]

Reference please. You are presumably aware that the Miller-Urey experiment has been repeated many times with varying models of the early atmosphere, and that in all cases biologically significant molecules were produced from simpler molecules?

rossum

Here

 

[cassini]

My acceptance of evolution does not depend on the result of the M-M experiment. If it were shown that the sun orbits the earth rather than vice versa then there would be no impact at all on biology or evolution; a day would still be 24 hours and the sun would still rise in the east.

I used the M-M experiment as a single example to counter redneck22’s absurd statement that “all the experiments in science” show that abiogenesis could not have happened naturally. I merely picked the M-M experiment as a well known scientific experiment that failed to show that abiogenesis was impossible. I could equally well have picked the Curies’ experiments on radioactivity or Faraday’s experiments on electricity - any experiment with no relevance to abiogenesis would have done as well. My intent was to point out the egregious error in redneck22’s post.

rossum

I accept your point rossum.

 

[rossum]

Here

Thank you for the reference. That book is from 1997 so it is not up to date with current work on the early atmosphere. Here is a reference from 2005: Calculations favor reducing atmosphere for early earth.

<mode=nitpick>A book by one author does not constitute “scientists”, as written in your post #154. A single author can at most be “scientist”. The book would need at least two authors to allow the use of “scientists”.

rossum