Evolution vs. Intelligent Design redux

further clarification:
a FAN is a foolish man...put those two terms together and you get what is called a FAN.

ok cool, and actually foolish man means man without God, which I obviously am not.

im a baseball fan, among other things

I see you take things very literally. If i wanted to call you a 'foolish man' i would have written just that. You see a FAN is different. It was sprouted originally as a mistake, and has been turned into a word of common usage. It is used more to describe someone who is saying something dumb, or foolish, but is not nerely has harsh as directly saying someone is a fool. it is used in more of a light-hearted context.

I think I might seem like I'm being a little harsh...

First off, I have nothing against Christian people. A lot of my friends are Christian, and I don't like them less because of it. However, I'm not such a big fan of Christianity as a whole because it spawns hate and ignorance like no other. For instance, some of my friends live as second-class citizens in this country just because they happen to be gay. They get subjected to hate every day. That's just not cool. How about the pro-life movement and restrictions on stem-cell research? I just don't agree with any of the main issues religious fundamentalists bring to the table, period. Plus, the church tells me that unless I believe in their God, I'm going to hell, and that kind of statement just seems totally stupid to me.

I don't believe any form of Christianity is compatible with science just because of the fundamental difference between the two- science is founded on Proof, and religion on Faith. Unfortunately, Proof denies Faith, so the two can never complement each other.

I find it funny whenever someone tells me I'm going to hell... all my religious friends always throw that one in as a joke whenever we're discussing this kind of thing. I have a pretty thick skin on that front. I don't know if gotama was kidding or not, but I don't really take offense, and he seems like a decent guy in general on this site.

Let's just take a step back and not let this get angry... I think this is a great discussion, even though we're all disagreeing on a lot of things.

Religion without science is lame, science without religion is blind.

- Albert Einstein.

that's a stupid saying.

If you have an argument read what JD May wrote.

Any religious argument is based on one peice of literature that was written 2000 years ago, recopied countless times (purple monkey dishwasher), has been debunked on several occasions (universe revolving around earth?) and is completely baseless when it comes to what is reality.

believe what you want to believe, but no one of a reasonable mind should be trying to debunk fact with that.

"Any religious argument is based on one peice of literature that was written 2000 years ago," unless you're buddist, hindu, taoist, mormon, etc. you have a beef with christians, say it.

"has been debunked on several occasions (universe revolving around earth?)" correction, the official church doctrine has been debunked several times, not what the Bible said, and in your example, the bible never claimed universe revolving around earth. sorry.

"and is completely baseless when it comes to what is reality." your own personal opinion, which is an unenlightened absolute statement, so not proof for anything.

as for what JD wrote, it is all fine and dandy, assuming human knowledge of all creatures if unfaillible, that our comprehension of the world is complete, and based on one's own opinion as to how animals should ahve been created oppose to how they are.

for example, when he spoke of eyes in animals that don't need them, and that don't work anyways, here it is assumed th were created at their origin with non functionning eyes, ignoring speciation and the fact that these creatures could very well have come from the one original created kind, and that their eyes have atrofied over time, though i don't know the process, ask an expert on speciation (micro evolution) for that answer.

also, when it cane to "waste"in fish and acorns, it assumes that if the tree or fish made only one egg instead, it would survive each time. but, fish eggs produce enough fish for the species to propagate, and enough to be part of plankton that millions of animals feed on, same goes for acrons, millions of creatures feed on these, and they fertilize the soil when decomposed, and if all acorns grew into trees, they would be a competition to the original tree, and one of the other woudl die, most likely the sapplings. so it is not a waste at all.

once again, his list assumes we fully understand each creature where this "waste" is, that we can know what is "better" for each species and waht is "wasteful", that we understand the Creator fully too, to be able to tell him where he screwed up, and the list doesn't take the whole eqautions into account each time. Main question: does it hinder the animal to have them, and how is it wasteful for them to have em? if it hinders them, then biological selection would choose these genes not.

You can't throw out what is creation and its perfection of design (DNA, just think about it) just because you think there is waste to a creature you don't understand fully. For example: there cannot be a Creating God because he created wasteful things from my point of view, like the hip bones in whales that are only superficial. The ONLY way you can verify that statement is to genetically alter a whale to ahve NO hip bones, and see if they trully are useless. I am pretty sure they give structure to the animals, and play some role we cannot fathom as observers of the animals.

another thing: people didn't know why the heck humback whales had bumps on the front part of their pectoral fins, thinking it increased drag, or that they were superfluous. But in wind tunnels, people realized that they created vortexes of flow, reducing drag and helping them turn easier. an educated guess was wrong.

that is all i have to say for that list, which is fascinating, but assuming too much of human omniscience.

i believe the question in the first post was meant for opinions.

Church doctrine is a weak arguement and is not based on fact and does not evolve (not intended) with newly gathered information.

Science, is not based on a complete human understanding of the world. It is based on repeatedly tested hypothesis and theories that are backed up by knowledge gathered in the feild. It changes as the information changes. Should one day, concrete evidence be found that there is an intellegent designer, then it should be taught in the classroom. Until that point, i think it makes sense to teach what we know, not what religions want to believe.

as for the original question, darwinian evolution was the 1st theory on the subject. Many concepts he had are not held today. A more up to date literature is out there. Robert Winstons 'human instinct' is a good one, and the last chapter includes a support for teaching creationism in the classroom...though i felt that chapter and the rest of the book clashed with each other.

I think that really the Bible is based around fact. Historians use it as a historical document and its been found historically correct iin many cases.

Science is based on a human understanding of the world. Thats why we do not have the answers, and that we are not even close. No one jhas yet to explain to me how nothing blows up and turns into a universe or galaxies and stars and planets and such. With life. It could be just considered close minded both ways but my way has an explanation.

See, the problem with your counterargument here that you're not recognizing is that it's essentially "You're right, unless there's some purpose for all these myriad instances of what appear to be superfluity that we're not aware of." Very true. However, that is, by definition, a weak argument. There are many things that we can come up with a good explanation for which can be countered with "Well, maybe there's some way in which this is all wrong and we just don't understand it yet". It just reads like a cop-out, which is why I haven't bothered to continue. If you're going to stand on that as your rebuttal you're standing on thin ice as far as reasoning goes. A better way to argue would be to say something like "superfluity exists because...", in my opinion. I like what you have to say about waste. It's a good point that excess acorns serve some tangential purpose... but I would point out that surely there is a better way to do this. And what to millions of excess human sperm accomplish? That seems wasteful as well. I don't think your argument here, though you're going at it the right way in this case, will hold up, because of the following: (a) even if some instances of waste turn out to actually do something useful, there would be a better way to design things that would fulfill the purpose more efficiently, (b) the counter-argument to waste does not do much for the central problem of superfluity (the problem with your other argument already having been addressed), and (c) it doesn't seem to apply to all cases of waste, and (d) it certainly does not apply in equal measure to the cases it does apply to (the usefulness of "wasted" acorns exceeds that of salmon eggs which really add very little to the ecosystem).

i would formulate it more along these lines: "when dealing with the natural world, there is only so much that we humans at this point in time understand about it, and that your rebuttal is based on what we can know or guess of "superfluous" happenings in animals thta have not yet fully been studied and the experiments (read, removing whale hip bones for example) have not been done to further your argument".

what about salmon eggs? many, many bird species feed on salmon eggs not properly buried, many other fish and amphibians feed on them, and don't count grizzlies and bears that love those things to death.

human sperm? the strongest one reaches the egg, and the millions upon millions each have a unique genetic code. so it is thta many millions of "wasted" gametes that enable the diversity in human life.

again, your argument has this conclusion: there shpuld be a better way to do it, and therefore, only 1 gamete should eb made with a 100% success rate each time.
first off: how can you dictate as should be as a finite being.
secondly: can it not be feasible that we do not understand why there is a at first glance waste (though on those 2 cases your point seems rather weak)
thirdly: why is superfluidity a disproof of a creator, as there are many many variables that make this superfluidity necessary?

that last point: variations in water temperature, predators, currents, natural disasters are all variables for which superfluous fish eggs and other mass produced gametes is acounting for.
millions upon millions of gametes all with their own genetic code: all the more combinations for the animal, all the more richness int he species, all the more possibilities in creation (in theory: 1 million female gametes produced at a time=1 million babies, why the waste? because for example a human being cannot feasibly have 1 million babies).
is this what you would prefer?

Quote: i would formulate it more along these lines: "when dealing with the natural world, there is only so much that we humans at this point in time understand about it,"

That's where I'm pointing out weakness. Saying "Maybe there's a counterargument we don't know about yet" is inherently weak. If you're going to stand on it you're at a disadvantage, get a better position.

Quote:"your rebuttal is based on what we can know or guess of "superfluous" happenings in animals thta have not yet fully been studied and the experiments (read, removing whale hip bones for example) have not been done to further your argument"."
Inference to the best explanation. Is there a slim chance these things might have a purpose? Maybe... but it's hard to see how, and as a result it's far more likely that they don't. Especially when any rational "finite being" could probably come up with a better way of achieving whatever that elusive purpose might be. Essentially, you come across as stretching to try to account for things that seem pretty evident.

Quote: "human sperm? the strongest one reaches the egg, and the millions upon millions each have a unique genetic code. so it is thta many millions of "wasted" gametes that enable the diversity in human life. "
Why bother with the other millions then, why not have just the strongest one that's going to make it anyway? You hardly enable the "diversity of human life" any more by having millions of sperm that won't reach their destination than by not having them. Logically speaking there is no difference between having the strongest one make it and millions go to waste and having the strongest one make it and millions not exist.

Quote: "first off: how can you dictate as should be as a finite being."
I'll assume you mean "what should be". I'm making an argument. If you're trying to imply that in order to argue that efficiency is logically dictated by how much is wasted and how much is pointless I have to be a God, you might want to take a step back and examine how you're looking at things. All we have is our finite selves and rational minds.

Quote: secondly: "can it not be feasible that we do not understand why there is a at first glance waste (though on those 2 cases your point seems rather weak)"
Actually, I'd beg to differ, first of all, I think you sound like you're stretchhing to explain something that for the most part appears to be intuitively true. As for "we do not understand", I've already explained why that's not a worthwhile argument.

Quote: "that last point: variations in water temperature, predators, currents, natural disasters are all variables for which superfluous fish eggs and other mass produced gametes is acounting for."
Biological concerns aside, you're now taking the other road: superfluous excess is not so because it's needed to take variables into account. This does not seem like very good design... why not design a fish egg that will survive better in a variety of water temperatures? Surely water temperature is a problem that an intelligent designer could have forseen when creating FISH.

Quote:"millions upon millions of gametes all with their own genetic code: all the more combinations for the animal, all the more richness int he species, all the more possibilities in creation "
Restatement of earlier point already addressed.

Quote: "(in theory: 1 million female gametes produced at a time=1 million babies, why the waste? because for example a human being cannot feasibly have 1 million babies).
is this what you would prefer?"
No, just the opposite: 1 baby, and skip the other 999,999 potential ones that never pan out.

"Especially when any rational "finite being" could probably come up with a better way of achieving whatever that elusive purpose might be."

probably.... ehh, not.

anyways, im not going to go further in the discussion. However weak it is, not having the knowledge necessary in biology today to make an argument about its efficiency is a valid point, and ill stay on that "thin as ice" ground. Refer to the humpback whale example i gave.

Well, okay, that's up to you. I just think there must be stronger arguments out there... a couple of devil's advocate points; rather than highlighting the complexity of nature and other such amateurish examples, why not point to the mathematical constants causing the universe to function as a source of evidence? I don't know enough about physics to be able to argue for or against that, unfortunately, but it seems ostensibly the best argument for ID (and the only one that really stands up over time... just about all of the "reputable scientists" quoted as "coverting" to ID have done so because of the abstract, not because of anything biological). I wish gravteck were still around.

On the other hand, all you theists out there, how does ID even help you that much? I'm assuming most of you are Christians... but the point that Flying Spaghetti Monster theory makes is actually relevant: ID says nothing about the nature of the designer, it could just as easily be a flying spaghetti monster as anything else. And you know you have a problem when something that absurd is making a good point. Why couldn't our designer be a big council of Gods? For all we know, Zeus and his crew are up on Mount Olympus right now wondering why we've all forsaken him for all this Jesus bullshit when they went to the trouble of desigining everything so nicely. In fact, why would they have to be God(s) at all? I think I'm going to adopt a theory of ID whereby the world was designed by aliens manifesting themselves as white mice and some guy named Slartibartfast who designed the coastline of Norway (and won awards for it, even) as a grandiose biological computer to be used to determine the answer to the question of life, the universe, and everything. What in ID could tell me I'm wrong about that? Answer: nothing, at least not in the way it's typically presented.

Now I wish they taught Douglas Adams in biology classes.

well the physical world is not what was being discussed, was it? i like to stay on topic. i agree, it is a very good example of how complex Creation is. Gravity, magnitism, electricity ( which, we know what is the cause, but not what it really is) and other physical laws are in such perfect unison in our world.

In questions of origins, where do concepts such as gravity come from? they are not made of matter, but acting upon matter. Unless they are eternal, i haven't heard an explanation for them (im sure JD you have some reference on that).

Also, i have read about how the Earth is placed in such a way for us to discover the extent of our universe and its magnitude. just a thought.

and JD: you must realise there is a limit to your, my, our knowledge. its upon this we make assumptions and arguments, and if the knowledge is insufficient, its moronic to base ones argument on it.

you lost this argument on your first post

"In questions of origins, where do concepts such as gravity come from? they are not made of matter, but acting upon matter. Unless they are eternal, i haven't heard an explanation for them (im sure JD you have some reference on that)."
Abstract concepts are necessarily "eternal" in many ways. A concept like gravity can exist independently of its acting upon anything.

"Also, i have read about how the Earth is placed in such a way for us to discover the extent of our universe and its magnitude. just a thought."
That would be a possible "purpose" for "creation", but there's obviously no way to verify that. Or anything else related to a purpose. Unless you've recently installed a hotline to our alleged creator. That's not even insufficient knowledge... it's no knowledge at all. It basically amounts to a guess.

"and JD: you must realise there is a limit to your, my, our knowledge. its upon this we make assumptions and arguments, and if the knowledge is insufficient, its moronic to base ones argument on it."
I'm sorry to be blunt, but this is one of the straight up densest things you've ever said and I feel a need to call you out on it. There's a limit to our knowledge so we can't argue anything? Ridiculous. Do I know everything about... anything? No, of course not. But that doesn't mean I can't form a consistent set of premises that lead to a conclusion. The logical funtionability of an argument has nothing to do with the "knowledge" base of the person making that argument. In general, we draw conclusions on what data we can gather, and short of a census that comprises every bit of information in the known universe, which is pointedly absurd given that it's infinite and constantly changing, there's no way to be utterly certain that there isn't some unknown bit of data out there that disproves anything and everything. That's why we go with what we have... and by reasoning about it we can have a hell of a lot. I don't "know" that the sun is going to come up tomorrow. There are plenty of possible eventualities that I can't with complete certainty deny will take place that could prevent it. But that shouldn't immediately evoke skepticism, should it? If I wandered around the streets saying "I Believe the sun won't come up tomorrow for some reason, and my belief is equal to yours because there might be something you don't know about", they'd lock me up. Come on now. Surely you can see how the point you're trying to make here doesn't work at all.

Unrelated question: Do you people believe what you read when you are reading someone's biography?

dense? dude, look, i gave you an example of where an educated guess on something in a humpback whale turned out to be false. same thing goes for what you gave as 100 points of superfluous creation.

you acn argue it, and trust me, i know that you don't need to know everything about everything to argue. But, the points you gave were shallow (the eyes part, the acorns part, etc...), and you need to see that you do not have all the knowledge you NEED to say that something in an animal is USELESS. that is all im saying. again, the whale hip bone argument, you can't know AT ALL wether it is not useful to the animal. same thing for the rest. Now, you acn draw conclusions for sure, but again, you don't ahve the information you need to make that claim.

its like if you looked at a rocket ship, and were like: hmm, this nut doesn't look liek it serves any purpose, because there is one right next to it that tightens the same part, and nowhere else is this bolt needed. i guess its useless. But what happens if you take it off? would the ship perform the same as it was expected to? maybe that one bolt provided the stability in vibrations of the materials so it dodn't fall apart. but you acnnot know that unless you take it out, or observe what happens when it is off.

there is a limit to your knowledge man. and to base a proposition on not enough knowledge to prove the premise is what you are doing.

but as i said, i will keep my thin as ice position that we don't have the knowledge in biology to state what is unnecessary to an organism.

last thing im going to say: you in fact do NEED to know everything there is to know about biology and specific animals to be able to say something is a waste. i think that makes sense.

Firstly, "However, I'm not such a big fan of Christianity as a whole because it spawns hate and ignorance like no other"....Who's ass did you pull that out of. You are generalizing so much, unless you are referring SPECIFICALLY to CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS...like G. Bush who claims to be a christian, yet he is a total dick. He puts a damn bad image on the label of christianity. A lot of churches these days do not condemn gays, but embrace it to try and help out the situation. it is not the church to decide if someone has some genetic differences that results in a liking for the same sex. Rather, some churches are, and others should follow, to show grace to gay people, and welcome them into their congregation. How does it spawn hate? I do not now any christians who are full of hate...rather i know more non-christians who hate religion. I agree that gays are subjected to hate...but that is done so by the idiotic conservative bastards. The label 'chrisitanity' is used very poorly and sometimes you don't even want that label b/c people will automatically think you are some dick who thinks everyone is going to hell and gays are evil. That is fucked.

"restrictions on stem-cell research", I am not sure of what churches do this. Maybe some b/c they feel that we should fuck with something that is naturally occurring. I know a lot of people, non-christians who think cloning people and shit like that is way over the top. That is another issue. Once again you are generalizing hugely. By your statement of restrictions on stem cell research: my guess is christians do not want fucking clones running around, as we are messing with some crazy shit; but, there is absolutely nothing against stem-cell work to produce tissues such as ears, that can be used in reconstructive surgery or any surgery for that matter.

"Plus, the church tells me that unless I believe in their God, I'm going to hell, and that kind of statement just seems totally stupid to me": WHAT CHURCH? do you have name for it, or is this in general. If people, or churches say that to you, they are idiots. Christians in general have an idea of what may happen in the afterlife, however, churchs and people in NO WAY have the right, or ability to judge whether or not you are going to hell or whatever. Obvisouly you have not read my previous posts, where i specifically already said this, but you continue to repeat the same shit about " oh people say i am going to hell, i don't like that"...

If you religious friends throw a "your going to hell" in there every once in a while, they are idiots. That is stupid, and a complete cop-out. That is not the ideas behind christianity which are to show love and grace to fellow people, not hate. There is a big problem with the label of christianity b/c the general public will hear one thing and assume all christians feel like that.

Look dude, I have an open mind, so should you...

As i have stated before (in previous posts if you are too lazy to read them),RELIGION AND SCIENCE CANNOT AGREE MORE. If you disagree with this, which many of you have, READ THE DAMN BIBLE- GENESIS

(accidently pressed enter too soon)...READ GENESIS and tell me that that information does not agree exactly with science. stop trying to hate religion when you know fuck all about it.

The whole "The world is about 6000 years old" thing in Genesis raises an eyebrow or two...

give me exact verse where it says that.

well ya, if you are foolish enough to believe the world was created in 7 days...haha...then maybe 6000 years makes sense.... something known as a metaphor

"Basis for dating the creation of Adam and Eve from the biblical text:

The creation stories in the Bible start at Genesis 1:1. They are undated. To compute a probable date of creation from the biblical record, it is necessary to work backwards from a date that is known from the historical record.

The earliest event in the Bible that can be dated with reasonable certainty is the beginning of Saul's reign as the first king of Israel. It is generally believed to have occurred about 1020 BCE, at a time when Egypt and Assyria were weakened and the Israelites were able to assert domination over their own territory. Many theologians have attempted to compute the date of creation by working back from this or a similar known date, through the various time intervals mentioned in the Bible. For example:

Most contemporary historians establish a base date of Saul's accession to the throne of Israel to have happened 1020 BCE. However, Bishop James Ussher, a 17th century Irish archbishop from Armagh, Ireland, estimated this date as 1095 BCE in his work: Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti
Work backwards through the Book of Judges. Ussher computed 330 years for the duration of the rule of Judges. He based this on the intervals specified in the Hebrew Scriptures. Modern theologians believe that the "Judges" did not rule over all of Israel in a regular sequence. Instead, each Judge controlled separate tribe(s), so that their interval of rule overlapped. A modern estimate for the duration of time covered by the Book of Judges is perhaps 180 years.
If Joshua's conquest of Canaan happened, it would have occurred circa in the 13:th century BCE which was a time when Egypt's influence over the area was at a low ebb. Bishop Ussher estimated that it began in 1451 BCE; that is unlikely because Egyptian power was at its peak at that time and completely dominated the area. In reality, if it did happen, it probably occurred in about 1237 BCE under Pharaoh Rameses II, a time when Egypt was in steady decline.
Ussher dated the arrival of Abraham in Canaan to 2126 BCE and the Noahic flood at 2349 BCE. The latter is unlikely, because historical records in China and Egypt continued without disruption through that date, and contain no record of a massive world-wide flood that would have wiped out their civilizations.
Ussher was able to use the ages of famous pre-flood personages in the Bible to estimate the number of years between creation and the flood. In 1650 CE, he published his book "Annales veteris testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti" ("Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world.") He calculated that God had created the Earth in 4004 BCE. A decade earlier, Dr. John Lightfoot, (1602 - 1675), an Anglican clergyman, rabbinical scholar, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge had already arrived at an estimate of 4004-OCT-23 BCE, at 9 AM. (We assume that this was either Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or Jerusalem time). Unfortunately, Ussher gets most of the credit; Lightfoot's contribution is rarely cited.

This would make the time interval between the creation of the world and a common estimate of the birth of Christ at precisely 4000 years. Some people believe that Ussher fudged the data to make it come out this neatly. This date found general acceptance among many Christians; "...his dates were inserted in the margins of the authorized version of the English Bible and were soon practically regarded as equally inspired with the sacred text itself..."

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_date.htm

I forget who it was, but a religous figure of somesort a hundred years ago calculated the age of the earth to the exact date, and it was like 6,000 years old.

MELVS AND J.D._MAY you dont need to fucking write your fucking life story

you total fan. that was a hundred years ago...also when plate tectonics did not exist, and a bucnh of other science did not exist. Why would you even consider trying to use something from so long ago.

no reason, I just thought it was interesting how someone calculated the birth of the earth to an exact date, thats all

Great story Hansel. do you know what a metaphor is?....you cannot calculate the earth's age like that, and people do not do that anymore. Those dating methods are ridiculous, and as i have stated in a few posts in this thread: it is only the stupid and uber-conservative bondars that actually believe that ridiculous dating shit that the earth is so young. It is extremely hard to find someone who believes that (unless they are like 90 years old).

I can throw the same kind of shit out as you: i could write how back in the early 1900, early scientific dating methods (the best methods known at that time), dated the earth to be only around 1 million years old (one method was salinity in the ocean). Do you believe that...it's science so why wouldn't you....Because it isn't 1900 anymore.

ahh, i c. yes, numerous scientific methods actually have dated the earth to exact dates, but like the 6000 year old method, these have all been changed with increasing scientific knowledge.

Yes, I am generalizing. However, are you saying that Christian values didn't produce all these things that I dislike? How about the crusades? That was Christianity too. Religion as a whole produces things I don't agree with at all.

I'm not saying that there aren't some offshoots of Christianity that don't all have their heads up their asses, but I am saying that most of the people in this country with their heads firmly lodged in their assholes are in that position because they are Christians of some kind or another.

I do have an open mind. I go to a religiously affiliated university, and I probably respect that religious presence more than most self-proclaimed Christians who actually attend mass, etc.

Religion and science CANNOT work together. The moment science proves that God exists, it ceases to be religion because it is not founded on faith, but on proof. I know you've stated the opposite of this in all your posts, because I have read them, but you're totally wrong.

i agree with you that there are many people of the religious type with their heads up their asses. But for fucks sake you are basing your concluding statements on unfounded statements you pulled out of your own ass. If you actually acted on all your talk, about having an open mind, you would read genesis and see that according to the bible and to SCIENTIFIC GEOLOGIC TIME they are 100% coninciding. You cannot say shit about religion ans science against each other until you do so. Do you see may making bullshit comments about christians know all and science is bunk...hells no.

well i think this thread is going to die soon. there are of course no conclusions in conversations like these, just a lot of information transfer. i'm out.

The point still remains though for me. In general, scientists and theorists are pressing ahead and actually looking for answers. ID is a cheap answer, one with little scientific fact and more of a cover so Christianity can be defended.

That last line is going to piss a lot of people off, so here: I dont know what created the universe, I dont know why we are here. I would like to know however. Science offers "we dont know yet" while ID basically says "thats just the way it is". Id rather still look for answers, not just have some handed to me with no proof so I can blindly be happy with some answer.

You would not need a decrease in size of anything to compensate for the decrease in the size of something else. To suggest so, would be to say that for suvival of a species with one testicle, the penis would have to shrink as well. Instead, in the case of a loss or decrease in something, organisms tend to compensate with something else.


And conveniently enough, you have not mentioned genetic mutation, which happens in all of us, all the time. If that mutation happens to make us resistent to malaria (as in sickle cell anemia), people in the area with a high prevalence of malaria, would be selected for survival. However, where malaria is nearly non-existent, those with sickle cell will no survive as well as those without. Hence, the infinite environmental conditions account for the diversity of organisms. Organisms that are best fit for their immediate environment survive best. so don't give me the bullshit that evolution selects for the few best, because there are no few that are best fit for all varieties of environment.

Those are just my thoughts. An abridged version.

Well, sorry rodadeaco and almostaskiier, but it's just no use arguing with you. From the sound of it, if Jesus himself were to descend from the sky, hand in hand with Darwin, and say "hey dudes... Darwin was right", you still wouldn't believe it. You are completely blinded by the christian values that were taught to you, or that you "discovered".

Now I know it's hard, but try this. Distance yourself from your current values, look at them with an objective eye. Read scientific works about subjects of interests, or just great writers. Attempt to shut religion out of your mind, and, using your rationality (after all, it's what distinguishes us from animals), think about what you just read. (Or, just browse the internet) Just think. Hold inner dialogue.

But I don't hold any illusions, you probably won't try. I think J.D pretty much posted irrefutable evidence on the other thread, and you just quoted one sentence of that massive post and tried to trick him with his use of words. I'd like to see either one just to try typing (or copy/pasting) such a cohesive set of examples that disprove the evolution theory.

^ Wow I guess I posted that in the wrong thread. Never mind that and check the other one.

Who wants to learn something in only a few short hours?

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/dialogues/

Read that whole guide. I know it'd be too much to ask to read the actual dialogues, but at least read a friggin' summary. They figured this stuff out OVER 200 YEARS AGO, and you're still harping on it.

Amazing.

This thread is old.

my head hurts

answer me this: does happening to not have the answers to all questions mean i am wrong in what i know/believe?

I would hardly say what JD said is irrefutable proof against creationism, at least in this thread. although it asks many a question about intelligent design not actually being intelligent.
i went through the list of examples, not so much in depth because i really couldn't be arsed to, i have other things to worry about, but most of the examples didn't include part of the equatiion each time.
for the eyes that don't work in some cave dwelling animals, and that it's a waste for animals who don't need eyes to have them, i would agree, if it didn't completely forget that immutability of species is not what we find in nature. it assumes that the animal was created that way, and has not lost it's sight as it adapted to the cave life, as has been observed.

so im sorry canadianskigod, if what you consider irrefutable is refutable to some. you want a good read? pick up Michael Denton's Evolution: a Theory in Crisis. i trust you wont' since im using the logic that you really don't care what it is you read on the internet, and won't hange your mind either.

nevermind it's a huge insult to assume i am not coming at this from an open mind. what i believe is challenged everyday, and i have doubts every other day. it just so happens that i try to find an answer to what challenges me, and that nothing has yet convinced me of the macro evolution theory. sorry to dissapoint mate. nevermind i am an aspiring biologist and would consider myself a man of science. grant me the same thing as you ask, and you investigate through respected sources the case for a creator.

so please, next time, before you patronize me, at least figure out if what is irrefutable actually is so.