(August 27, 2010 at 1:13 am)Tsidkenu Wrote: absolutely. I agree. I think microevolution ans speciation is true. It happens. What i do not believe, is in common ancestry. I don't think evidence leads to this direction.

Micro and macro evolution are not scientific concepts. What you would call micro evolution, when spread over long time periods equates to what you would call macro evolution.

How can you believe in speciation but not common ancestry? So, what, you believe evolution works species to species but if you go back far enough at some point it wasn't working? If you accept that evolution can work species to species, then why do you not accept that the first species there ever was evolved into more species and hence we are descended?

Futhermore, you are being completely illogical by asking proof for evolution. There is no proof of any science. Scientific facts are not proven facts they are based very heavily on evidence.

The only proof there is are tautologies.... i.e. natural selection is somewhat a tautology in the sense that whatever survives is left to multiply, so those better at surviving stay to be multiplied while those worse at surviving, not so much. IOW: Whatever survives survives, and only what survives can multiply.

(August 27, 2010 at 1:13 am)Tsidkenu Wrote: You believe, what you believe is true, because some experts or scientits said it.

No, it is not "because some experts or scientist said it". It is because the experts and scientists have devoted many years of study and the evidence leads them to certain conclusions. The evidence and conclusions have been PEER REVIEWED and found to be valid (at least to this point). It is rather illogical to NOT believe the experts are correct in this matter.

Quote:So it must be true.

No. It's just very highly likely to be true as nothing has been found thus far that contradicts the theory.

Quote:Thats blind faith. Do you realise that ?

And here is the stupid, asinine, ridiculous, moronic, dopey, idiotic, dumbass, bullshit argument from the Creationist playbook labeled "How Atheists Have Faith in Science!".

I'll type this very slowly so you will hopefully understand and not embarrass yourself again in the future.

"Blind faith" is believing something to be true when there is no evidence (or even contradictory evidence) that what you believe is true. You must have "blind faith" that Jesus rose up from the dead because there is no evidence to support this notion. This DOES NOT apply to scientific theories such as ET as these theories are supported by mountains of evidence.

I'll give you an example. A scientist claims he has measured the speed of light at 186,000 miles per second. Other scientists repeat his experiments and come to the same conclusion. After more years of experimentation by numerous scientists all over the world, everyone reaches the same conclusion; the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. Now, if I believe that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, that IS NOT "blind faith".

On the other hand, if some guy in a robe declares that the speed of light is a billion miles a second, and he bases this conclusion on an ancient text written by unknown authors, and there is no independent evidence to support this conclusion, then believing such a thing to be true would indeed be "blind faith".

Got it now?

(August 27, 2010 at 1:13 am)Tsidkenu Wrote: absolutely. I agree. I think microevolution ans speciation is true. It happens. What i do not believe, is in common ancestry. I don't think evidence leads to this direction.

And why don't you believe in common ancestory?

P.s no answer to my comment on all the evidence from the physical sciences supporting an old universe and evolution?

Quote:Micro and macro evolution are not scientific concepts.

Oddly, neither is creationism. That might be the one thing they have in common.

Conceptually remove all of mankinds (man made) classification system. Just looked at the whole of life on this planet and ithe facts:

- there is a common heriatge to us and all other life forms
- we share common structures
- we pass through similar development stages in the womb as other creatures
- we contain a myriad of useless vestigial structures
- we contain (as all other life forms do) junk DNA which has no value to us but if activated would lead to the re-introduction of lost features
- older structures (with different uses in animals sharing a common lineage) have been co-opted for new uses

You could conclude with no evidence at all that a designer (whomever it was) used common materials, morphed them a bit and then capriciously left us with deliberate design flaws. Or you could conclude after studying, taxonomy, phylogeny, ontogeny, biology, paleontology and evo-devo that ALL the facts support evolutionary theory (a blind causal bottom up process) which also has powerful predictive powers used and applied today in farming for one example.

Micro and macroevolution are just words used to describe the transition of life through a man made classifcation system. Attacking evolutionary theory by stating I accept speciation and/or micro evolution, but not macroevolution is just ignorance and incredulity. Evolution does not rely AT ALL on macroevolution being true as it is just a convenience to describe large passages of time. It relies on small gradual changes to life forms as phenotypes do not copy perfectly from generation to generation. The speed of change is driven by environmental forces and the ability of the factors which drive mutation to accelerate or hold back change. Epigenetics has shown us that these changes can if needed happen far faster than anyone imagined. We have discovered all of these things through a lot of hard work and failed experimentation over 10s of years. None of it was gleaned from our armchairs reading bronze age myths. Those who deny evolution are in denial. But because Science is open to review and revision the door is always open to respectable counter theories which can explain more...so far despite millions of pounds the fundamentalists have turned up ...nothing. Still waiting!

(August 25, 2010 at 4:22 pm)Thor Wrote:

(August 25, 2010 at 3:44 pm)The_Flying_Skeptic Wrote: hahaha dolphins can't accomplish what we can? so what if cockroaches can't do what we can? cockroaches will probably out live us even if they can't build skyscrapers and nuclear bombs.

And what about animals that can do amazing things that we can't? We can't fly, swing through trees, open nuts with our teeth, sniff out food that is miles away, see a rat move through grass from a quarter mile away, hear extremely high (or low) pitched sounds, dive into the deepest parts of the ocean, run 50 miles an hour, or use our own personal radar to find things in the dark. Try dropping a naked human into the ocean, middle of the desert, the arctic, or the wilderness and see how long he survives. In many ways, animals are superior to us!

This is how I see things as well. We are really useless animals.

Why (if you ignore the claims of an 8000 year old earth and go along with the religious who claim ID behind evolution) would god give all these other creatures brilliant tools for survival, like wings, better vision, better sense of smell or the ability to swim under water for long periods and yet after billions of years of learning what's good for survival and what's not leave us with what we have today?

Why do you find creatures with attributes in one part of the world that would also help the survival of another creature who dosen't have that attribute somewhere else? Could God not have gone back and changed the design of this creature? Learned from his other animals? Could God not have foreseen where his creations would go extinct and give them the tools to survive? Or could it be that there isn't design behind us, or anything, and we, and all living things, have survived by adaptation and evolution over billions of years?

Would also like to mention this is the first long winded thread I have read through on this site where so much evidence, and ideas and suggestions have been blind ignored by a obviously close minded person who already has his own answers formed for everything due to his faith. My frustration levels were high to say the least. I am now questioning whether it was a good idea to join this site at all. haha

(September 9, 2010 at 12:12 pm)Skipper Wrote: This is how I see things as well. We are really useless animals.

I really can't accept that as any kind of truth.
Humans have certrainly done something right, as we're the top animal on the planet right now with the potential to spread to ecological systems never meant for any creature (the antarctic, the moon, mars, venus, etc). Further, we got the way we are precisely because nature evolved us into what we are and even our closest relatives couldn't readily compete with us.
This is because we've evolved in the manner that we have and has given us a very important (and biologically expensive) tool for our survival - our brains.

Some of you are right though, if you pluck us into the ocean, the desert, or a frozen savannah, we're not going to survive very well - much in the same way that if you pluck a polar bear into the middle of death valley, you're going to have a very dead bear before too long. Humans are social and group-oriented creatures who are biologically adapted to plains and warm forests (like many places in the mid-southern africa - particularly in and around the congo forests), but humans have adapted technologically (thanks to our natural evolutionary advances) to places where not only where humans were never evolved to survive but even in some places where only the most extreme of adapted creatures (extremeophile bacteria) can survive or even nothing (like the moon).

So, I can't in good concience say that humans are an evolutionarily useless animal.

Don't take my words out of context mate. That was clearly a reply in the context of what Thor wrote.

I went on in the rest of the post to pretty much say evolutionarily we are top dog. Just that if a god meant us to end up in this form why didn't he give us all the other great things we could benefit from in terms of survival that are present in other species.

(August 25, 2010 at 3:44 pm)The_Flying_Skeptic Wrote: hahaha dolphins can't accomplish what we can? so what if cockroaches can't do what we can? cockroaches will probably out live us even if they can't build skyscrapers and nuclear bombs.

Actually cockroaches won't survive if humanity dies, it'll be the first species to be extinct after humanity(common house cockroaches)
They depend too much on heat of humanity buildings, they would die very quickly after us

(September 9, 2010 at 12:37 pm)Skipper Wrote: Don't take my words out of context mate. That was clearly a reply in the context of what Thor wrote.

I went on in the rest of the post to pretty much say evolutionarily we are top dog. Just that if a god meant us to end up in this form why didn't he give us all the other great things we could benefit from in terms of survival that are present in other species.

That was entirely my mistake. I mistook the direction the conversation was going and responded inappropriately. I will certainly agree that the idea of an intelligent designer is, in a sense, not out of the cosmological question because science has only come so far - but creationism as depicted in virtually all religious faiths in the world are all absolutely wrong.

The reason intelligent design is not science is because it bases scientific premises (like evolution) on assumptions that cannot be proven or tested, which in turn makes it not science as well as other scientific suppositions that aren't (like irreductable complexity.)

The problem with intelligent design, however, is just as with creationism - we have no reason to believe a creator spurred any development we've witnessed as a species - be it life on earth or the manner to which the universe has come to be for many of the same reasons that many of you have already posted.

Modern life forms on this planet are rife with traits that serve no purpose, hinder us (in some manner minor enough to avoid being erased from the gene pool), or even the parts of our and other animal's biology can possess a number of fatal flaws, and even parts of our biology that we often use and readily need for day-to-day work can catastrophically fail at what they were meant to do (eyes, pancreas, etc.)

Life on this planet is far from any kind of perfection and there is no sign of any intentional design anywhere. THe proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Humans are getting to the point to where we'll be able to build better humans than nature ever could. Humans have already doubled their own life spans and advancements are only increasing in frequency as time marches on.

Faith in a higher power is nice, but not a necessary component of anyone's life in any manner any longer, if it ever was.