Evolution - Spin Off from the School Vouchers Thread

[Alissa_Sal]

Gloria,
You never answered my question; since none of the evidence I posted is actual evidence to your mind, what sorts of things would you accept as evidence? Specifics please. I will do my best to find them for you if they are out there, but I'm not going to waste any more of either of our time producing scientific evidence (that the scientific community considers evidence, using the scientific method) if none of it will be acceptable anyway.

Here's a funny website in answer to the lists of the few scientists who believe in creation that people always dredge up.

Project Steve | NCSE

[ClairesMommy]

I don't know can you explain how they knew what dinosaurs looked like thousands of years ago if they had never seen them?

Um, possibly because even primitive or ancient human cultures have been stumbling across dinosaur fossils for millenia. What you offer as 'proof' isn't proof at all. All it means is that human culture likely had knowledge of dinosaurs and other extinct species through what was left behind. Just because I draw a picture of me holding Darwin's hand doesn't prove that we co-existed.

[ClairesMommy]

Though it's ironic, isn't it, that so many creationists are quick to rely on carbon dating to, in their opinion, accurately date the Shroud of Turin, yet don't believe in the same technology being able to date archaeological finds that are millions of years old. Either you believe in it, or you don't. Can't select certain scientific tests and their results to support your beliefs and not those of others.

[kris_w]

I don't think anyone would argue against evolution in its entirety. There is plenty of evidence of some evolution. I do argue with the teaching that we all evolved from a single cell or primordial soup. And teach that as fact is wrong, because it a theory - meaning it has not been proven scientifically. Intelligent design is also a theory and should be taught as such.

Look at cellular biology and all the amazing machines that make up our cells (mitochondria and stuff) and explain to me how that happened by chance, without design. Look at DNA, study how it works, how it replicates, how it is so complex we aren't even close to fully understanding it, and explain how that came out of nowhere, without design. DNA contains information! Digital code basically. Where did that come from? Nature doesn't randomly produce information (when Gloria posted those pictures we all know a person drew them, no one assumes that appeared by chance). I don't know why it is so ludicrous to propose an intelligent source put it there. Except that people don't want there to be a god and so won't even entertain the notion.

[GloriaInTX]

Gloria,
You never answered my question; since none of the evidence I posted is actual evidence to your mind, what sorts of things would you accept as evidence? Specifics please. I will do my best to find them for you if they are out there, but I'm not going to waste any more of either of our time producing scientific evidence (that the scientific community considers evidence, using the scientific method) if none of it will be acceptable anyway.

Here's a funny website in answer to the lists of the few scientists who believe in creation that people always dredge up.

Project Steve | NCSE

The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics.
Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.
Michael Crichton

I really don't think there is any evidence you could come up with because it doesn't exist. There are no fossil records showing macro-evolution. Evolution within a species is not a problem, but there is no evidence that a cat and a dog came from the same ancestor. The fact that they can breed flies with specific traits is not evidence that a fly can become something else. It just isn't. Then there is the question of how life began in the first place. No scientific experiment can cause life to happen. It is strange that over all these supposed billions of years that the earth existed that the spark from lightning or chemical reaction that you believe generated life only happened once. Why has it never happened again? It seems like it would have happened over and over again and we would have all kind of things mutating at different levels.

[GloriaInTX]

Though it's ironic, isn't it, that so many creationists are quick to rely on carbon dating to, in their opinion, accurately date the Shroud of Turin, yet don't believe in the same technology being able to date archaeological finds that are millions of years old. Either you believe in it, or you don't. Can't select certain scientific tests and their results to support your beliefs and not those of others.

If that is the choice I would choose don't. I don't believe in the shroud of Turin anyway. It doesn't even match how they were buried from historical records.

[GloriaInTX]

Um, possibly because even primitive or ancient human cultures have been stumbling across dinosaur fossils for millenia. What you offer as 'proof' isn't proof at all. All it means is that human culture likely had knowledge of dinosaurs and other extinct species through what was left behind. Just because I draw a picture of me holding Darwin's hand doesn't prove that we co-existed.

Well it's a good thing that those cave men and ancient people in Peru had time to dig up dinosaur fossils and figure out how they looked with skin on. They must have been some archeologists. Then to make up pictures of them riding and fighting them, they must have had quite the imagination too. I wonder why we don't think any of the other pictures they drew were made up?

[Alissa_Sal]

Gloria, at least you admit that there isn't any proof that you would accept, so I can stop trying. About the consensus in science, I do and don't agree. From The Steve Project website:

CSE's "Project Steve" is a tongue-in-cheek parody of a long-standing creationist tradition of amassing lists of "scientists who doubt evolution" or "scientists who dissent from Darwinism."

Creationists draw up these lists to try to convince the public that evolution is somehow being rejected by scientists, that it is a "theory in crisis." Not everyone realizes that this claim is unfounded. NCSE has been asked numerous times to compile a list of thousands of scientists affirming the validity of the theory of evolution. Although we easily could have done so, we have resisted. We did not wish to mislead the public into thinking that scientific issues are decided by who has the longer list of scientists!

I agree with that, and agree with what you posted. On the other hand, if the vast majority of scientists who have devoted their lives science and know the ins and outs of the scientific method and what constitutes "evidence" in a scientific setting all agree that evolution is the best theory we have going right now, I tend to believe them.

To the micro-macro, I would question what mechanism you believe allows species to change, but stops them just short of speciation? If an species can change and change and change over millions of years, what would prevent it from eventually changing into a new species? And do you realize that "species" is a classification that humans made up? "Species" simply means a group of organisms that are capable of breeding and producing fertile offspring. Why would the natural limits of evolution honor a classification system put in place by human beings?

[Jessica80]

Well it's a good thing that those cave men and ancient people in Peru had time to dig up dinosaur fossils and figure out how they looked with skin on. They must have been some archeologists. Then to make up pictures of them riding and fighting them, they must have had quite the imagination too. I wonder why we don't think any of the other pictures they drew were made up?

You really think that the ancient Peruvian people who were advanced could not have the imagination of fighting "monsters' are we the society who could/can?

[GloriaInTX]

You really think that the ancient Peruvian people who were advanced could not have the imagination of fighting "monsters' are we the society who could/can?

Sure they could. Just seems a little strange that they all match dinosaur bones that we have found. Thousands of them. They don't depict wild crazy monsters. They depict dinosaurs. And it is strange that people in different places drew the same monsters, or sculpted them.



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