One-third of Americans reject evolution, poll shows

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Farsight001 said:
DNA changes in the pathogens themselves IS evolution.

And it is precisely due to studying evolution that we discovered that humans and pigs were similar enough to use pig valves. It did have a lot to do with physiology and anatomy, but genetic similarities are also necessary. Too different and the body rejects it. Hence the study of the human body and pigs in the context of evolution was quite crucial.
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It’s not through study of evolution. It’s through study of the animals and humans themselves and drawing conclusions that they fit. You can reject various aspects of evolution, such as “common descent” and still accept that pigs are similar to people and their tissues are interchangeable to a degree. You can be a YEC and a Creationist of the literal Genesis variety and still do useful scientific research and applied work in the fields of medicine, genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry etc.

Note that, as said before, many people who deny evolution, don’t deny all aspects of it. Behe does not deny all aspects of it.

Faulty logic u have.
 
Farsight001 said:
And what mechanism do they postulate by which this reuse occurs? And what tests and experiments have they attempted to do to support the claim that they are reused?
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That question is irrelevant, or are you really so confused? The point is that you can deny evolution and still be an excellent molecular biologist, pathologist etc. Accepting all aspects of neo-Darwinian evolution is not applicable to the vast bulk of modern scientific work. You don’t really know how these fields work do you???

In terms of evolution there are no experiments you can run to see a unicellular organism become multicellular and ultimately yield a mammal or some other complex animal. These changes are thought to have occurred over billions of years. It’s in theory impossible to do this directly. But people draw inferences.

There is also no experiment you can run to show that early life or more advanced life was designed by advanced aliens or God. But people draw inferences and I think some of these ID guys have published and written about this.
 
edwest2 said:
Gregor Mendel found that “… certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance. The profound significance of Mendel’s work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century, when the independent rediscovery of these laws initiated the modern science of genetics.” A google search would find the story.

Modern drug discovery is based on trial and error. It is not predictive. Since a virus like HIV/AIDS has the built-in ability to change its outer protein coat, scientists are having a hard time dealing with it. In general, drug discovery, as practiced today, involves hundreds of containers filled with the virus/bacteria/cancer cells and different chemical combinations are tried. Those that did not harm the target get marked off, those that did are examined further. Animal models are next. They contain the virus/bacteria/cells and the drug is injected. Side effects are observed. For example, if the animal dies, a lower dose is tried, but if the lower dose does not have an effect on the target, other candidates are injected. Once an effective drug is found, the side effects are measured. If the animal shows minimal side effects, then an application has to go to the FDA to get permission to try the treatment on human subjects.

A general google search will reveal the time and money needed to find a successful drug candidate, but generally speaking, some side effects may appear in some percentage of patients if the drug passes clinical trials and gets FDA approval, which can take years.

Recently, a brand name drug has been shown to cause diabetes in some women, who are now entitled to some form of compensation. It would be inappropriate to name it here.

Viruses and bacteria have well-known built-in machinery to deal with outside threats. Human beings have some, but not others.

Peace,
Ed
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Ed, we’re wasting our time. Obviously some of these guys group everything under “evolution” and equate disagreement over some minor aspect as denial of all evolution, and moreso, denial of all science. The logic is so incredibly bad here…even Dawkins and EO Wilson have disagreements about aspects of evolution. Both are anti-science. If a scientists disagrees about a theory he is anti-science. This is so painfully ridiculous.

As illustrated by me, following this line of bad thinking, one has to conclude all physicists are anti-science. Likewise for those scientific theories which were wrong or which were initially thought wrong (and laughed at) but are now accepted, we should conclude all these people were irremediable “anti-science” insults to modern humanity or I don’t know what. These people must have been worse than Hitler I guess.

Equating common descent of man from other animals with some mutation and gene transfer in bacteria is pure nonsense.
 
Tenofovir said:
Ed, we’re wasting our time. Obviously some of these guys group everything under “evolution” and equate disagreement over some minor aspect as denial of all evolution, and moreso, denial of all science. The logic is so incredibly bad here…even Dawkins and EO Wilson have disagreements about aspects of evolution. Both are anti-science. If a scientists disagrees about a theory he is anti-science. This is so painfully ridiculous.

As illustrated by me, following this line of bad thinking, one has to conclude all physicists are anti-science. Likewise for those scientific theories which were wrong or which were initially thought wrong (and laughed at) but are now accepted, we should conclude all these people were irremediable “anti-science” insults to modern humanity or I don’t know what. These people must have been worse than Hitler I guess.

Equating common descent of man from other animals with some mutation and gene transfer in bacteria is pure nonsense.
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You are the ones going out of your way to call change anything but evolution. Nobody here has followed your line of bad thinking.
 
Farsight001 said:
Please go back and read the previous posts. Everything you said has been covered. I don’t feel like we should have to repeat ourselves. Clearly, since we already had an answer to all your objections, we have thought about this longer. And how does a denial of evolution not equate to a denial of science? Evolution IS science. If you deny evolution, then you deny science. Basic logic.
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No it’s basic question begging.
 
Tenofovir said:
You haven’t answered the objections. So I can’t go back to your previous posts.
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I did answer your objections in the previous posts, which is why I recommended you go back and read them in the first placed.
Evolution is a scientific theory. However as you know even scientists have disagreements over what they accept. Take for example Quantum Theory. There are many different interpretations of that.
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Not really.
By your faulty logic those scientists who deny one of the different interpretations of QM are “denying science”.
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I was talking about evolution itself, not the theory of evolution. Evolution is the fact that populations change from generation to generation. The theory of evolution is the body of evidence and the explanation for how this change happens. You can disagree on the how without denying that it happens. However, those that deny that it actually happens are, in fact, denying science.
Also you can’t equate denial of one scientific theory with denial of all science.
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I didn’t. Did I at any point say “ALL science”? Nope. Stop making ridiculous assumptions.
You’re incredibly wrong about this.
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Says the person who clearly doesn’t understand half of what he’s saying.
 
Tenofovir said:
It’s not through study of evolution. It’s through study of the animals and humans themselves and drawing conclusions that they fit.
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Its not only about physically fitting. Its about genetically fitting as well. I went over this already and I would appreciate you not ignoring the bulk of my argument so you can just repeat yourself like a broken record.
 
Tenofovir said:
That question is irrelevant, or are you really so confused?
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The question is hardly irrelevant. It was an aside to point out how ID is in no way science despite the ramblings of its supporters. I was not talking about denying science or pig valves or anything else. That’s why it was in a separate post.
You don’t really know how these fields work do you???
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I’m IN the field, genius. The problem is that you keep jumping to wild conclusions about the meaning of what I say.
In terms of evolution there are no experiments you can run to see a unicellular organism become multicellular and ultimately yield a mammal or some other complex animal.
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So? that’s completely unnecessary.
These changes are thought to have occurred over billions of years. It’s in theory impossible to do this directly. But people draw inferences.
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No. People look at the evidence left behind, just as those who investigate a crime scene no one witnessed, to determine what happened. If you really think that is “inference”, then we’re going to have to throw out a whole lot of trials and free a whole lot of convicted murderers for lack of evidence.
There is also no experiment you can run to show that early life or more advanced life was designed by advanced aliens or God. But people draw inferences and I think some of these ID guys have published and written about this.
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They have published and written about it. Have you read their stuff? It’s a joke. I couldn’t write stuff of that quality and get a passing grade in HIGH SCHOOL.
 
lightbeamrider said:
Well there was whining about it not being answered, now there is whining about the way it is answered.
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No. Still whining about it not being answered because throwing out a scripture quote and expecting us to know what you mean by it is still not an answer. A proper answer can incorporate the question into the answer, i.e. “Yes, I believe God is a trickster” or “No, I do not believe God is a trickster”. Throwing out a scripture quote is a classic misdirect - its not technically an answer. In the psych world, at least when dealing with suspects in a case, that’s a classic sign of deception.
 
Peter_Plato said:
No it’s basic question begging.
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Lol. In what way? Begging the question is assuming the conclusion. I presented a clear line of reasoning for how I arrived at the conclusion. Here, lets try an example of the exact same line of reasoning on an issue that might hit more closely to home.

Mary is the mother of Jesus.
Jesus IS God.
Therefore, Mary is the mother of God.

John Doe denies evolution.
Evolution IS science.
Therefore, John Doe denies science.
 
I was very fortunate to first learn about evolution in Presbyterian Sunday school as a small kid in the 50s – I guess they thought we’d be learning about it in school, so they wanted to situate it within religious thinking. Since then I went on to become an anthropologist who has taught human evolution.

What strikes me most about evolution is that it really opens one’s eyes to the greatness of God beyond our puny, finite, anthropocentric and anthropomorphic thinking. When I studied calculus as a teen and we got to the concept of infinity (within calculus), it was like a mystical experience for me. There is nothing science teaches me that does not increase my awe and praise of God.

Another thing I’ve considered in recent years is the striking parallels. Of course God is infinite, omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient (by definition), but the large and expanding universe started as the tiniest of things thru the big bang, and life started as the tiniest of things – DNA molecules that reproduced – and God came to us as a tiny, vulnerable babe, and comes to us as a tiny piece of bread that He may be welcomed into us, as we are welcomed into Him.
 
While I respect others’ opinions, I can’t see why evolution and God are incompatible in some peoples’ eyes, both religious and atheist. I’ve studied evolution in school and in my free time, and it makes more sense that God would use evolution to create man and animals. It just seems so… planned out. If anything, evolution makes God more amazing and patient, and it makes humans seem that much more important. God waited billions of years just for us!
 
RinoaHeartilly said:
While I respect others’ opinions, I can’t see why evolution and God are incompatible in some peoples’ eyes, both religious and atheist. I’ve studied evolution in school and in my free time, and it makes more sense that God would use evolution to create man and animals. It just seems so… planned out. If anything, evolution makes God more amazing and patient, and it makes humans seem that much more important. God waited billions of years just for us!
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I am not sure how the random mutation of genetic material constitutes “planning” so much as properly sequencing a series of random events, which is, in any case, denied by “evolutionists” since the entire process is supposed to have been unguided according to extreme evolutionists like Dawkins and Lewis Wolpert. Taken to its extreme, the implications are that evolution denies any need for God to “plan” since the mechanisms are embedded in nature and not in any supernatural guiding hand.

The question in contention on this thread is whether the theory does actually succeed in explaining the development of life in its entirety strictly as a result of unguided natural mechanisms acting on random genetic mutation. “Unguided” and “random” do not equate to “planned” so you might be not be accounting for everything that the theory proposes to be true.
 
Farsight001 said:
Please go back and read the previous posts. Everything you said has been covered. I don’t feel like we should have to repeat ourselves. Clearly, since we already had an answer to all your objections, we have thought about this longer. And how does a denial of evolution not equate to a denial of science? Evolution IS science. If you deny evolution, then you deny science. Basic logic.
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Cats ARE dogs. If you deny cats are dogs, you deny basic logic because cats are dogs.

How does that show cats are dogs?

Evolution is science. If you deny evolution is science you deny basic logic because evolution is science.

How does that show evolution is science? Or that denying evolution is denying science?

You haven’t demonstrated that evolution IS science, you assume it is in order to claim that denying one is the same as denying the other.

It’s not basic logic, at all. It is engaging in begging the question of whether evolution is science by merely stipulating that it is.
from Wikipedia:
Begging the question means “assuming the conclusion (of an argument)”, a type of circular reasoning. This is an informal fallacy where the conclusion that one is attempting to prove is included in the initial premises * of an argument, often in an indirect way that conceals this fact.*
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Let’s be honest: if the primary sacred texts of the majority of the world’s population said that God created the universe with a “Big Bang” creating the elements including carbon that joined together for the building blocks of all life, creation science would not exist. No one in their right mind would look at the evidence and say that “Well, it all started 10,000 years ago.”
 
colmywaykurtz said:
Much of the current thinking in evolutionary theory takes into account the lack of “transitional forms,” and postulates more drastic transitions, if I’m not mistaken.
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Book Review: Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design

Slowly but surely we are finding life is more complex than we ever thought. From the review: Darwinism and Materialism: They Sink or Swim Together He quotes the information theorist Henry Quastler who stated that “the creation of information is habitually associated with conscious activity.”

“Will Stephen Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt be “the most despised science book” of 2013?”

“Recently the Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer published Darwin’s Doubt, a book that raises many questions about the theory of evolution. As his title tells us, Darwin himself shared one of these doubts. The book has sold well, reaching #7 on the New York Times bestseller list, #4 on the Los Angeles Times list, and #10 on Publishers Weekly.” “Darwin said that speciation occurred too slowly for us to see it. Gould and Eldredge said it occurred too quickly for us to see it. Either way we don’t see it.”

“Organisms are intelligently designed, says Meyer, who has a PhD from Cambridge University in the philosophy of science. His book is an education, demanding attentive reading but no specialized knowledge. To a large extent it uses the facts and arguments of professional biologists, some bordering on open dissent from the orthodoxy.”

So we see more support for IDvolution - God “breathed” the super language of DNA into the “kinds” in the creative act.
 
edwest2 said:
Nope. That is not correct.

Peace,
Ed
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Agreed. We may have been further ahead had evolution not been involved. Think of all the missed opportunities in medicine because we were not focused on the design of the body. Many appendixes and tonsils have been removed because of it.
 
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