S
SocaliCatholic
Guest
We are getting off topic.
- Status
S
SocaliCatholic
Guest
Yeah. What I am trying to say is that I agree with you about evolution on whatever constraints YOU SAY are neccessary for it to be possible.
N
Newman60
Guest
Orogeny (Tim),
We do not know with certainty what happened nor when it happened concerning the Grand Canyon, the creation of the world,the evolution or creation of man or many other wonders. We can only offer conjecture. With any conjecture there must be assumptions. To dismiss out of hand the assumptions made by one person or group just because they are not in lock step with those assumptions which lead to a conclusion that you already agree with, is not honest scholarship.
I ask again what are you afraid of? For instance if Stephen Austin is so wrong, why have so many people responded to this merely fringe argument? I would think many would be grateful to have a straw man to knock down without having to create one. How dull it must be to never have intellectual opposition. Be assured Austin has the intellect and scholarly credentials to forcefully hold a differing position.
I don’t understand God but I do believe in the existence of a Triune God and the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. There are many who do not agree. Some are protestants of thousands of differing denominations or belief systems. Some are Muslims with a vastly different theology. Some are atheists.
They are not all intellectually obtuse. They certainly do not share my beliefs. Millions do and millions don’t.
Why do you consider your faith in evolution to be more sacred than faith in God?
Newman60
We do not know with certainty what happened nor when it happened concerning the Grand Canyon, the creation of the world,the evolution or creation of man or many other wonders. We can only offer conjecture. With any conjecture there must be assumptions. To dismiss out of hand the assumptions made by one person or group just because they are not in lock step with those assumptions which lead to a conclusion that you already agree with, is not honest scholarship.
I ask again what are you afraid of? For instance if Stephen Austin is so wrong, why have so many people responded to this merely fringe argument? I would think many would be grateful to have a straw man to knock down without having to create one. How dull it must be to never have intellectual opposition. Be assured Austin has the intellect and scholarly credentials to forcefully hold a differing position.
I don’t understand God but I do believe in the existence of a Triune God and the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. There are many who do not agree. Some are protestants of thousands of differing denominations or belief systems. Some are Muslims with a vastly different theology. Some are atheists.
They are not all intellectually obtuse. They certainly do not share my beliefs. Millions do and millions don’t.
Why do you consider your faith in evolution to be more sacred than faith in God?
Newman60
N
neophyte
Guest
Um, well…yes, in fact this thread got off topic before the 10th post.
P
PhilVaz
Guest
Newman60 << I ask again what are you afraid of? For instance if Stephen Austin is so wrong, why have so many people responded to this merely fringe argument? >>
Who’s afraid? I’m interested in good science and good theology, melding the two where they can be reconciled. You’re the guy comparing Darwin, Kenneth Miller, and Stephen Jay Gould to Hitler.
You’ll have to explain who are these “so many people” who have responded, are you saying these “so many people” believe the Grand Canyon was formed in a matter of weeks or months a few thousand years ago (as is ICR’s and Steve Austin’s position). Maybe a few links would help. Who are these “so many people” ? I’m the one usually providing all the fantastic wonderful informative links
maybe your “side” can provide a few. And ask your geology questions and make your geological objections and I’ll watch Tim (Oregeny) answer.
It doesn’t take very long to see the flaws in creationist science, and while the general public is normally quite ignorant of science which may explain the seemingly strong creationist movement in this country, they have no excuse now with the availability of the Internet and resources like TalkOrigins. Laziness and ignorance with regards to scientific issues, that explains the acceptance of creationism by the general public.
Three of my favorite books to help:
Finding Darwin’s God by Ken Miller
What Evolution Is by Ernst Mayr
The Age of the Earth by Dalrymple
If you can (1) buy these books, (2) actually read them, and (3) still think there is no good reason to accept the earth is very very very old, or that there is no good evidence for evolution, I would conclude you are very stubborn or not interested in science.
And yeah, this thread has veered off topic, but the Monogenism vs. Polygenism question was answered (somewhat) in post #29.
Phil P
Who’s afraid? I’m interested in good science and good theology, melding the two where they can be reconciled. You’re the guy comparing Darwin, Kenneth Miller, and Stephen Jay Gould to Hitler.
You’ll have to explain who are these “so many people” who have responded, are you saying these “so many people” believe the Grand Canyon was formed in a matter of weeks or months a few thousand years ago (as is ICR’s and Steve Austin’s position). Maybe a few links would help. Who are these “so many people” ? I’m the one usually providing all the fantastic wonderful informative links
maybe your “side” can provide a few. And ask your geology questions and make your geological objections and I’ll watch Tim (Oregeny) answer. It doesn’t take very long to see the flaws in creationist science, and while the general public is normally quite ignorant of science which may explain the seemingly strong creationist movement in this country, they have no excuse now with the availability of the Internet and resources like TalkOrigins. Laziness and ignorance with regards to scientific issues, that explains the acceptance of creationism by the general public.
Three of my favorite books to help:Finding Darwin’s God by Ken Miller
What Evolution Is by Ernst Mayr
The Age of the Earth by Dalrymple
If you can (1) buy these books, (2) actually read them, and (3) still think there is no good reason to accept the earth is very very very old, or that there is no good evidence for evolution, I would conclude you are very stubborn or not interested in science.
And yeah, this thread has veered off topic, but the Monogenism vs. Polygenism question was answered (somewhat) in post #29.
Phil P
M
Monarchy
Guest
Ever hear of the Sun?
M
Monarchy
Guest
How do you know it is divine revelation?
O
Orogeny
Guest
Do you believe that Paul Bunyon and his ox Blue created the Grand Canyon? Why do you dismiss that arguement out of hand?
You are correct. However, his credentials don’t mean a thing once he joins an organization that doesn’t allow legitimate scientific research. Don’t know what I am talking about? Here is the oath he (and any scientist) must take to be employed by AIG.
answersingenesis.org/home/area/about/faith.asp
Specifically, look at statement 6 in section D. Looks like, by your definition, he is not capable of honest scholarship.
We agree on that statement.
You can think what you want. I can’t change your mind or make you listen. Luckily for me, I don’t have to convince you of anything. Instead of attacking me by comparing me to a nazi or questioning my faith, why don’t you make an argument for your position rather than immediately resorting to ad hominem attacks?
Peace
Tim
W
wanerious
Guest
john doran:
It is? To whom? It is a mathematical fact.
Because the proof is deduced from a set of axioms that we all hold to be true. You can believe mathematics or not, but that doesn’t change it’s objective truth.
W
wanerious
Guest
Your mathematics is lacking. It is mildly interesting that the 23 characters have not been matched already, but you seem to take it as proof that it will never appear. If I flip a coin 5 times and get all tails, do you triumphantly say that it is impossible to get heads? You neglect to calculate how many matches we would expect when conducting an ensemble of these experiments, so we can determine if this result is really out of the ordinary.
And, if this was really meant to simulate nature, we would be interested in keeping those letters that matched our “fitness test” (matching the desired string) and only randomly varying the others. Here, then, we’d expect a match somewhere in the string every 67 iterations, so we might think we’d arrive at a complete match in only 1541 iterations (67 * 23), on the average. This is more nearly how nature works, building on (and keeping) those changes that increase the level of fitness. Much more likely than a completely random process.
H
hecd2
Guest
I’ve been engaged in the evolution/creation debate long enough to realise that evidence, logic and reason manage to persuade few creationists. So my ambition in that regard is limited. I am, however interested by the psychology behind creationist ‘arguments’ and fascinated by the RC version of fundamentalism. Before I first visited this board, I thought that anti-evolutionism based on ignorance, misrepresentation and misunderstanding was limited to fundamentalists - I never thought that I’d find it amongst Catholics. But here it flourishes in as pig-headed and obfuscating a form as in any bible-belt community.
Don’t get me wrong. I respect those who honestly reject the authority of science and cleave to a literal interpretation of the bible or a blind adherence to what they think the magisterium of the church teaches - that at least has some intellectual integrity. But to pretend to refute the Theory of Evolution on a scientific basis by piling error on error, and by claiming expertise where none exists, is to undermine the very truth that Catholics should, by their own lights, hold dear.
DavidFilmer:
asquared:
Apologia100:
SocaliCatholic:
David Filmer:
Every attempt to use the second law to refute the theory of evolution that I have ever seen is characterised by either a fundamental misunderstanding of the thermodynamics or a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary theory or both. Such is the case here.
To be continued
Don’t get me wrong. I respect those who honestly reject the authority of science and cleave to a literal interpretation of the bible or a blind adherence to what they think the magisterium of the church teaches - that at least has some intellectual integrity. But to pretend to refute the Theory of Evolution on a scientific basis by piling error on error, and by claiming expertise where none exists, is to undermine the very truth that Catholics should, by their own lights, hold dear.
Here is a case in point. It is inconceivable that any competent scientist would make as many elementary errors as David does here. In quick succession, others rushed to praise David’s muddled and error strewn ‘refutation’ of evolution by the second law of thermodynamics :
That, then, was the response that David got to such nonsense as this:
David Filmer:
Well, there are three Laws of Thermodynamics, popularly described by C P Snow in the form David quoted (without attribution I note), but these are by no means the only fundamental physical laws - we cannot, as he implies, derive the rest of physics from a knowledge of these laws - there are many others.
The second law states no such thing. A correct statement of the second law is that in an isolated system, entropy, a measure of energy unavailable to do useful work, tends to increase. The dilapidation of a house has nothing to do with second law - the dimensions of entropy are joules per degree kelvin not ‘flakes of paint’. There is nothing in the second law which prevents a local reduction in entropy - every living thing represents such a local reduction in entropy fuelled mainly by the energy of the sun (but in some cases by other energy sources such as the heat from deep sea thermal vents), at the expense of an overall increase in entropy in the universe.
Every attempt to use the second law to refute the theory of evolution that I have ever seen is characterised by either a fundamental misunderstanding of the thermodynamics or a fundamental misunderstanding of evolutionary theory or both. Such is the case here.
To be continued
H
hecd2
Guest
Continuation
Alec
evolutionpages.com
This is just silly. By what process is the world supposed to have crumbled into dust long ago without God’s miraculous intervention?
David’s lack of knowledge sits poorly with his pedagogical tone. For what it’s worth, chaos theory is a perfectly respectable branch of science, also known as dynamical systems theory, that deals with systems that are deterministic, but difficult to predict either because their development is analytically intractable, or because their sensitivity to starting conditions is so great that the subsequent state varies greatly even when the starting conditions are closer than our ability to measure them. It is a heavily mathematical science, based on the foundations of topology, computational complexity and differential geometry. As Levitt and Gross pointed out in ‘Higher Superstition’, chaos theory is often misrepresented by those who cannot recognise, much less solve a first order linear differential equation. Such seems to be the case here.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
H
hecd2
Guest
Well, I am someone who understands and defends both the Theory of Evolution and the concordance model of cosmology against ill-informed attacks. For the life of me, I cannot see where these branches of science are in conflict.
Alec
H
hecd2
Guest
Dear neophyte,
The evidence against monogenism and for polygenism is strong and although I have posted it on other threads in this forum at least twice before, here it is for convenience. (By the way, your statement about descent from a single female is a reference to the so-called Mitochondrial Eve - this concept has also been discussed in some detail on previous threads and provides no evidence for monogenism - I can pick this up - again - if you want me to).
Anyway here is the evidence that humans are not descended from a single pair of biological ancestors:
Analysis of common alleles in highly polymorphic loci in human and chimpanzee indicate no severe bottleneck below 10,000 individuals since the divergence of human and chimpanzee lineages.
This is supported by:
- analysis of the major histocompatibility complex - specifically the human leucocyte antigen - DRB1:
Ayala, ‘The myth of Eve, Molecular biology and human origins’, Science 270, 1930 - 1936 - Beta-globin:
Harding et al, ‘Archaic African and Asian lineages in the genetic ancestry of modern humans’, Am J Hum Genet 60, 772 - 789 - Apolipoprotein C II:
Xiong et al, ‘No severe bottleneck during human evolution; evidence from two apolipoprotein C II alleles’, Am J Hum Genet 48, 383 -389
This minimum population size of 10,000 individuals throughout hominid history is also supported by mitochondrial genetic diversity:
Takahata, ‘Allelic genealogy and human evolution’, Mol Biol Evol 10, 2 - 22;
By Y-chromosome data:
Hammer, ’ A recent common ancestry for human Y-chromosomes’, Nature 378, 376 - 378
By nuclear DNA:
Takahata et al, ‘Diversion time and population size in the lineage leading to modern humans’, Theor Popul Biol 48, 198 - 221
At its absolute simplest, if we consider a highly polymorphic locus like DRB-1 in the Human Leucocyte Antigen complex we find 58 human alleles. By carrying out analyses of the pan-speciific alleles we can determine the likely coalescence dates of alleles, by derivation of a phylogenetic tree from pan-specific divergence of individual alleles. That indicates that all 58 alleles persisted through the last 500,000 years of human evolution. The 58 alleles coalesce to 44 lineages by 1.7 Myr BP and to 21 lineages by 6 Myr BP (the apptroximate date of divergence of human and chimpanzee ancestors). Since anatomically modern humans emerge at 125,000 years BP and culturally modern humans at 60,000 years BP, and the human lineage polymorphism at this locus is 58 alleles during this period, this puts a mathematically logical lower limit on the minimum human populatrion size during culturally modern human existence of 29 individuals which in itself destroys the concept of monogeny.
Formal population genetics demands a much larger population than 29 individuals for the maintenanence of 58 alleles in a situation of neutral drift and balanced evolution (where heterozygosity has more fitness than any homozygosity), and the conclusion from these quantitative evolutionary analyses is that the minimum human population bottlemneck was around 10,000 individuals.
All of this evidence refutes the possibility that humans derive genetically from two individuals within the last 6 million years.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
P
PhilVaz
Guest
hecd2 << David’s lack of knowledge sits poorly with his pedagogical tone. >>
To defend David a little, he’s seems pretty knowledgeable in other areas of Catholic doctrine. He’s apparently teaching a class on apologetics. But indeed he should leave science to the scientists and at least try to read responses to his arguments against evolution before posting them. And he just joined this board Nov 13 so he seems to have missed out all the great creation-evolution threads we have had already.
There is definitely a “wing” of Catholicism that seems to oppose evolution with bad creationist arguments, for example this book and this book by Tan Books and this video and this video by Ignatius Press (both orthodox Catholic publishers), and the Kolbe Center, but they are in the minority. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is very pro-science and pro-evolution.
David, go to the search, type “evolution” and spend the next week reading all those threads.
Phil P
To defend David a little, he’s seems pretty knowledgeable in other areas of Catholic doctrine. He’s apparently teaching a class on apologetics. But indeed he should leave science to the scientists and at least try to read responses to his arguments against evolution before posting them. And he just joined this board Nov 13 so he seems to have missed out all the great creation-evolution threads we have had already.
There is definitely a “wing” of Catholicism that seems to oppose evolution with bad creationist arguments, for example this book and this book by Tan Books and this video and this video by Ignatius Press (both orthodox Catholic publishers), and the Kolbe Center, but they are in the minority. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is very pro-science and pro-evolution.
David, go to the search, type “evolution” and spend the next week reading all those threads.
Phil P
C
clmowry
Guest
So this would require that human beings evolved from 10,000 different sources?
I thought a fundamental thought of evolutionists is that we all (every living thing) have a single common ancestor?
Chuck
hecd2:
I thought a fundamental thought of evolutionists is that we all (every living thing) have a single common ancestor?
Chuck
O
Orogeny
Guest
Not to sound too much like a parrot, but I agree with Alec. I really don’t have a problem with people believing that Genesis is a historically correct story of the creation of the earth and that the earth is young and that God created all plants and animals in a couple of days. The problem I have is when people of good faith (and I do believe it is done in good faith) distort science to support that position.
I believe our ability to reason and apply that reason to observations of nature is a gift from God. Unfortunately, some people of faith feel threatened by science and therefore attack it (ie the earlier nazi comparison). I don’t have a problem with scientific attacks on evolution or any other scientific theory. That is part of the scientific process. However, it seems to me that if someone is going to attack evolution with science, then proper scientific methodologies should be followed.
For those who missed it before and have therefore questioned my faith, let me state once again that I am a devout Catholic. I don’t have a problem with debate regarding evolution (although I am a geologist and not a biologist). I would, however, ask that the questions be directed towards my knowledge and not on my faith.
Peace
Tim
I believe our ability to reason and apply that reason to observations of nature is a gift from God. Unfortunately, some people of faith feel threatened by science and therefore attack it (ie the earlier nazi comparison). I don’t have a problem with scientific attacks on evolution or any other scientific theory. That is part of the scientific process. However, it seems to me that if someone is going to attack evolution with science, then proper scientific methodologies should be followed.
For those who missed it before and have therefore questioned my faith, let me state once again that I am a devout Catholic. I don’t have a problem with debate regarding evolution (although I am a geologist and not a biologist). I would, however, ask that the questions be directed towards my knowledge and not on my faith.
Peace
Tim
H
hecd2
Guest
Dear Chuck,
The evidence is that all living things evolved from one or a very few common ancestral types (not necessarily individual ancestral organisms), based, in part, on the phylogeny of ribosomal RNA - but that is irrelevant here as what we are considering is the ancestral lineage of modern humans in the last six to seven million years, the time since the divergence of human and chimpanzee lineages - during that period the molecular evidence I referenced shows that the population of the human lineage did not drop below about 10,000 individuals. The conclusion that behaviourally modern humans are no more than 50,000 years old but that for at least 100 times longer than that the lineage leading to modern humans does not drop below 10,000 individuals is well supported and does not violate any evolutionary principle. The modern human population does not derive from only two recognisably human ancestors.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
N
Newman60
Guest
Wanerious,
This is exactly what Orogeny and PhilVaz refuse to admit. You have said “…proof is deduced from a set of axioms” (assumptions) “that we all” (apparently not) “hold to be true. You can believe” (act of faith) “or not…”
While they have complained because I said there was no debate in Nazi Germany, in this thread anyone who doesn’t “believe” the same “set of axioms” or assumptions is therefore ignorant, using bad science and a continuing assortment of pejorative terms like obfuscation. But never an answer of why an honest debate cannot be held without continual reductio ad absurdum?
Gentle folks, please get a grip. It isn’t necessary to bulldoze anyone who dares to disagree. Have patience and love.
Peace.
Newman60
N
Newman60
Guest
Thank you for this kind of learned response to Chuck and all the rest of us.
Newman60
- Status