Is Darwin's Theory of Evolution True? Part Three

[Glark]

We have photographs, and there are plenty of documentaries that show people digging up fossils.

Here’s the thing that baffles me about a certain brand of Christian-- you will argue until you’re blue in the face about facts that you yourself could go confirm if you doubted them. Doubt that fossils are real? Go to China and help dig one up. Go to museums where they are stored and ask them questions.

This is not just my BS internet link vs. your BS internet link-- facts are things you can actually track yourself.

If I were to set out to confirm what is in the fossil record, first of all I would need to get a degree in paleontology. Then I would need to spend several decades studying the millions of fossils that have been discovered (as opposed to reading other people opinions about them). I will presume you have not done this - on the contrary, you merely believe what the scientific community (an evolutionist cult) tells you.

The scientific community is ruled by people who believe that all life on earth evolved from microbes - regardless of whether there is evidence for that theory or not. If there were no evidence at all that humans evolved from microbes, the atheist-ridden scientific community would still believe that’s what happened. To them, evolution is not a theory; it is a fact. And they are determined to deny any evidence of design or creation in nature, because that is evidence for the existence of God. This is the sort of tendencious mentality we are dealing with here.

As for me, I don’t consider such a mentality can be trusted to be objective when interpreting the fossil record. I suspect they see what they want to see - evolution.

 

[Aloysium]

Your explanation goes like this:

My explanation is based on science fact not fiction. Some of it involves studies such as that provided by Techno somewhere earlier In this or a preceding thread. It could have been this one:

https://relay.nationalgeographic.co...-bacteria-caves-diseases-human-health-science

My vision of how this all came to be is a bit weird, since it happens from Eternity, and all time is moulded around our free will. This would be a totally different world had we chosen correctly at the Centre of time, which is when we drove the stake into our own hand in Christ, as reached for the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, which is the cross.

The story about bacteria, is just as sad, they with what would have been a perfect genome, got all scrambled and broken, some becoming toxic, to other life. Their role of providing some of the basic nutrients for more complex forms of life and returning living matter back to the dust that is its random behaviour, was corrupted and now much of it participates in bringing about death.

No evolution but rather a fallen creation, brought into being in an instant, all time and space, temporally unfolding its ontological structure, centred around Here and Now, where we, all of us, wherever and whenever, meet God.

Told you it was weird.

 

[Glark]

Knowledge is useful because people like to know things.

Knowledge is another word for facts. The theory that all life on earth evolved from microbs wiill never be established as as fact. It is nothing more than a useless bedtime story.

You still haven’t given me an example of how the theory of microbe-man evolution is useful in applied science.

 

[Glark]

“Medical science doesn’t care if life evolved from microbes or not - it is only interested in facts, because facts can be useful.”

Indeed. Facts like evolution.

Microbe-man evoltuion is a fact? If so, how has it proven useful to medical science?

 

[Techno2000]

I love your icon. I’m gonna start reading the Aeneid soon.

I worry that alot of Dante and Virgil gets lost in English translations though and I don’t know much other than English.

Yeah… I can only imagine how awesome it would be know and read it in italian.

 

[benjamin1973]

If I wanted to know everything about how planes fly, then I’d need an engineering degree and training as both a pilot and an air traffic controller. However, at no point has anyone tried to confound my understanding of planes. When I look for answers, they are readily enough available in books and online. I’m satisfied that if I wanted to confirm any of those things, then I could join a flight school, or apply for University, and follow up. But for now, I’m happy enough just to buy a ticket and let all that stuff work for me.

The same goes for studies of evolution. If I want to know more, I google it. I see comparative pictures of fossils, and there is some explanation what the differences and similarities are. Sometimes, I want to know a little more, and I dig a little deeper. I’m confident that if I visit a University or museum, and ask them questions about evolution, they will provide me with all the facts that they can, and will be happy to give me advice on how I can follow up.

Your comments about the scientific community being “ruled” by evolutionists is silly, and also highly ironic. If I ask an evolutionist why he believes that, he’ll talk about genetic similarities going back through many ages. He’ll describe what kinds of life are found in records from various times. He will, in fact, explain WHY he holds that view-- why he thinks it’s the best explanation of how life has arrived at its current state. Nobody is being forced to hold those views, except insofar as they are willing to learn what evidence is available. Scientists disagree ALL the time, pretty much by definition, until some ideas become so obviously useful that arguing against them become an exercise in futility. At this point, evolution has reached this status.

What will you do to prove to me that YOUR idea about reality is better than his? Wave the Bible around? Talk about divine inspiration?

I don’t mind you holding whatever views you want, but if you want any non-literal-Bible-Christians to adopt your views, you will have to come up with a real detailed explanation of how things work. You don’t have that. All you have is a general distrust of science because it doesn’t exactly match the literary musings of ancient desert-dwellers.

I’d recommend a more enlightened approach: one that doesn’t attempt to pit God against the truth as we are currently best able to describe it. There’s plenty of room for God in everything-- have a little more faith in the living God and a little less in the literary works of people who knew very much less about the physical world than we do today.

 

[Glark]

Except scientists across many disciplines disagree with you.

“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” – Eastern Orthodox Christian Theodosius Dobzhansky

Instead of appealing to aurhority, try supplying some facts. Nothing in applied biology depends on the theory that life evolved from microbes, and you cannot prove otherwise. Face it - you’ve devoted large chunks of your time to studying something that is as useless a fairy tale.

By the way, Dobzhansky believed human embryos had “gills” - I’d be too embarrassed to quote him.

 

[edwest211]

From all my readings here, and in the scientific literature, that is very, very clear. Acknowledging design would be suicidal. The illusion would fall apart. But design is all scientists are seeing. Design so intricate and interrelated that they are trying to reverse engineer it - now. Right now. They have no other way to decipher the complexity. Fossils are just old bones of dead animals. Scientific research can only deal with things that are alive today.

 

[Aloysium]

the factor that made the difference between dying off and not dying off was already present in some of the colonies and not in others before the first exposure. It is not the result of exposure, as your explanation would have us believe. My explanation fits the data. So the mutation that provides penicillin resistance does not arise from exposure but is simply present in some bacteria and not in other - i.e. is random.

You do address the point made by the experiment, but why would you say it fits any one explanation better that another, especially evolution? And, where is the randomness that Rossum was talking about? It may be random whether we know a particular bacterium is penicillin resistant, but it either is or it isn’t - that’s not random. We are changing the distribution through the use of penicillin by killing off those that are not resistant. This is common sense and is related to the concept of adaptation. Darwinism as the explanation for the diversity of life is not validated by that study.

 

[PaladinSword]

One thing that really made me appreciate the impermanence of life here was going to the Getty villa and seeing all the Greek and Roman artifacts… like these people were not that different than us.

Other experience has made me a believer sure…

But to really appreciate the gravity of these concepts face to face is quite a thing when you look at or readily accept possibility of death directly.

It’s not so much what we believe as what we do.

 

[Glark]

The same goes for evolution. If you want to know why species across time and geography end up having certain similarities or differences, it doesn’t really matter if God made them that way-- you will still need to dig up as many details as you can to understand in what way God related those species. And that digging points to evolution.

And how is this “knowledge” about apes evolving into humans and rodents into whales useful to applied science?

 

[benjamin1973]

It’s a pretty simple process. There were only microbes, and now there are many kinds of living things. If you look through fossil records, you will see more and more variation among animals as time marches forward, and more and more complexity.

That all life starts from microbes is an inference, not an observable fact. But the question, given how time works, is “What else?” Where did the various forms of life around today come from, and how? Your view is that God did it all from scratch. That view isn’t well supported by the evidence; therefore either you have to view the Bible as a figurative work, or you have to pit yourself against the available evidence.

You have pretty high standards with regard to expecting “proof” of the theory of evolution (you know that “proof” isn’t even a thing in science, right?). But the standards which science provides, compared to YOUR evidentiary standards, is about a thousand orders of magnitude higher. What, exactly, do you have to support your view?

A very old book? The proclamations of a few popes? Nope. . . not even that last one.

 

[edwest211]

So did Ernst Haeckel. He produced drawings of embryo development that showed our “evolutionary” progression from a primitive fish form with gills to a more human form They were fake. A fraud. A fraud that was published for over 100 years as ‘evidence.’ Look it up.

Haeckel’s Embryos

Pictures from the past powerfully shape current views of the world. In books, television programs, and websites, new images appear alongside others that have survived from decades ago. Among the most famous are drawings of embryos by the Darwinist Ernst Haeckel in which humans and other...

press.uchicago.edu

 

[PaladinSword]

That the universe created itself isn’t well supported by evidence either…

Yet here we are…

If you were a Buddhist you would believe that there is no beginning.

 

[Glark]

Some scientists do lie, but professional YEC proponents lie more.

Richard Lewontin says microbe-man evolution is a fact. That’s a lie.

 

[benjamin1973]

Why do you keep asking about usefulness? How does the story of Adam and Eve serve useful in applied science?

People want to know things. They make observations in the real world, and then develop ideas to explain those observations. If their ideas hold up at first, they continue developing them into full-fledged theory. The use of evolution is that it allows us to understand a great many things about existing animals, including ourselves.

Why, for example, do so many men cheat on their wives? Is it because the Devil made them do it, or is it because sexual activity with more partners in our ancestors led to their reproductive success? The latter answer is more useful.

Why do we have vestigial organs? Your answer: God is perfect, and we just don’t understand it. The evolutionary answer-- we have genetic remnants from our ancestors which are mostly dormant, but are not enough of a problem to be selected out.

Why do whales have finger bones? Your answer: God is a super-intelligent designer, so he re-used the best techniques, like putting 5 fingers in everything. The evolutionary answer-- whales evolved from animals which had ACTUAL USE for fingers, and the presence of those bones wasn’t enough of a problem to be selected out.

See. This is all useful stuff if you want to actually understand things. If you want to keep your faith in the literary truth of the Bible, then it will not be useful for you. Then your current approach to knowledge will be more useful.

 

[Glark]

Are you all seriously still going on about this thread, haven’t you reached a definitive conclusion yet?

There are several evolutionists here who are confused, deceived and brainwashed as a result of years of cult indoctrination. They need guidance and care until the fog lifts.

 

[edwest211]

Pretty much. 16 characters.

 

[PaladinSword]

Your use of the world “real” is in the context of automatically dismissing possibility of theological concepts.

Also there is a difference in connotation between the words “fact” and “truth” in understanding that alot of people miss these days.

 

[Glark]

They are lying because they have nothing else. They have one, among many, interpretations of Genesis and masses of scientific

I think the YECs have misinterpreted Genesis. This has led them into error.