Help Me Understand

[TheRocketSurgeon]

People who don't understand it generally fall flat at the bolded part. We're talking hundreds of thousands of generations, at least, before you see any obvious big changes. I understand it is hard for the human mind to think in such long time spans when we are ourselves only here for a century or less. Also, people who say "evolution says dogs give birth to cats" don't have the slightest clue at all what evolution is. It would me like me saying Jesus was a roller coaster in Essex. Yes, what you think is evolution is false; but that's because it's not evolution. It's your misinformed ideas about evolution.

This.

What's most frustrating to me, when faced with opponents who make so many mistakes about what evolution actually is and make so many bad arguments in attempting to defeat it, is when they get even the most rudimentary elements of population genetics wrong. We not only know  that evolution in a genetically-reproducing population happens, we know how it happens, to an incredible degree of detail, to the point that we can actually track forward and backward in time of previous generations based on what we read in the present population's genome markers, and can even track specific groups and their migrations as a result of this.

They are concerned with origins, and thus like to argue about abiogenesis, and that's okay. It's the least-known area of the whole concept of how life came to be the way it is, and it's thus the most comfortable arena in which to argue, as well. I get that.

But when we can point to the exact places in our genome that prove we are cousins of the chimpanzees, as well as the exact degree of kinship, based on the rate of known change within those marker-regions, and the marker-tracing works just as well for differences between human population-groups as well as it does between us and related species, it should be the end of the argument about "Macro" evolution. Boom. There it is, right there. Mitochondrial mtDNA lineages, transposed DNA elements, endogenous retrovirus "scar" loci, End of Discussion™.

[Thumpalumpacus]

No, what I demonstrated is that your church is fallible. Your church argued that the Earth does not orbit the Sun.  It argued against what is a physical fact. That really puts a kink in its "infallibility". I don't care about your indoctrination; I don't care what you think. History shows that the Catholic Church got it wrong, and that renders your "doctrine" of an infallible church nugatory.

You can either argue against your own church's records, or you can argue against physics; that choice is yours, the leisure of shooting it down is mine.

I understand what you're saying, PT. But what we refer to when we say "Church doctrine" are official matters of faith and morals. That's the only part of the Church that is "infallible." The earth being the center of the universe was never official Church doctrine.

It was an official Church position.

And even if infallibility refers to faith and morals rather than facts, you'd still have to explain the moral lapses that caused even the highest members of the Church hierarchy to shelter criminals. You'd have to explain the popes who in the past maintained mistresses, or came into the position by foul play. I know what you're going to say, "The Church is infallible, but the people are human", but the Church is the people.

The idea that your church is infallible is laughable. You should know better.

[Catholic_Lady]

I understand what you're saying, PT. But what we refer to when we say "Church doctrine" are official matters of faith and morals. That's the only part of the Church that is "infallible." The earth being the center of the universe was never official Church doctrine.

It was an official Church position.

And even if infallibility refers to faith and morals rather than facts, you'd still have to explain the moral lapses that caused even the highest members of the Church hierarchy to shelter criminals. You'd have to explain the popes who in the past maintained mistresses, or came into the position by foul play. I know what you're going to say, "The Church is infallible, but the people are human", but the Church is the people.

The idea that your church is infallible is laughable. You should know better.

I agree, PT. The only positions that we claim are infallible are Church doctrine. The people within the Church can and do still make mistakes or do things that are very wrong. No Catholic should claim otherwise.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The only positions that we claim are infallible are Church doctrine.

You mean like transubstantiation?

1376 The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation."

[emphasis added -- Thump]

That too is factually incorrect.

"Infallibility" is an absurd and indefensible position.

[Thumpalumpacus]

<double-post edited>

[downbeatplumb]

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Ok, As I thought I did discuss this in another thread by Shuffle title "History Repeats itself"

Here are my views:

I would disagree despite the "consensus".  Label me as you will but I think there are immense leaps being made and assumptions based on presuppositions.  I'm sure I will be flamed for taking a presupposition to God's existence as a refutation for evolution, but that's not the case.  The mathematical improbability for increased complexity by gene mutation and natural selection does not lend any credence to the "macro" evolutionary model in my mind.  

This candid admission is from the evolutionist journal Nature:  

"Darwin anticipated that microevolution would be a process of continuous and gradual change.  The term macroevolution, by contrast, refers to the origin of new species and divisions of the taxonomic hierarchy above the species level, and also to the origin of complex adaptations, such as the vertebrate eye.  Macroevolution posed a problem to Darwin because his principle of descent with modification predicts gradual transitions between small-scale adaptive changes in populations and these larger-scale phenomena, yet there is little evidence for such transitions in nature.  Instead, the natural world is often characterized by gaps, or discontinuities.  One type of gap relates to the existence of 'organs of extreme perfection', such as the eye, or morphological innovations, such as wings, both of which are found fully formed in present-day organisms without leaving evidence of how they evolved."-- Reznick, David N., Robert E. Ricklefs. 12 February 2009. Darwin's bridge between microevolution and macroevolution. Nature, Vol. 457, pp. 837-842.

The extrapolation of macroevolution being possible because "there is enough time" is a presupposition that falls flat on its face.  There have been many discussions regarding it.  I understand it's still a highly debated topic, but I firmly believe it is based on unfounded assumptions.  Here is a good scientific peer reviewed article discussing it:


http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/...O-C.2012.4

Little snippet:

"Converting an enzyme to a new function is the kind of thing that should have occurred thousands of time in the course of evolution, given the vast array of biochemical functions carried out by extant enzymes. Yet recent work has shown that converting an enzyme encoded by a 1,200-nucleotide gene to a genuinely new function4 is likely to require seven or more coordinated mutations. This is true even though the starting and target enzymes have common three-dimensional proteinfolds and active-site chemistries— just no shared reaction [29].5 Getting seven specific changes in a gene 1,200 nucleotides long is a 1-in-10^22 event, not a 1-in-10,000 event. Even then it is by no means clear that significant changes in gene function can be had with just seven base substitutions."

In 2007, Durrett and Schmidt estimated in the journal Genetics that for a single mutation to occur in a nucleotide-binding site and be fixed in a primate lineage would require a waiting time of six million years. The same authors later estimated it would take 216 million years for the binding site to acquire two mutations, if the first mutation was neutral in its effect.  But six million years is the entire time allotted for the transition from our last common ancestor with chimps to us according to the standard evolutionary timescale. Two hundred and sixteen million years takes us back to the Triassic, when the very first mammals appeared. One or two mutations simply aren’t sufficient to produce the necessary changes— sixteen anatomical features—in the time available. At most, a new binding site might affect the regulation of one or two genes.

As for the hominids, some overzealous scientists have been rebuked by University of California (Berkeley) paleontologist Tim White, as he attempts to rein in the tendency of fossil hunters to classify every find as a new species.  He said, "To evaluate the biological importance of such taxonomic claims, we must consider normal variation within biological species. Humans (and presumably their ancestors and close relatives) vary considerably in their skeletal and dental anatomy. Such variation is well documented and stems from ontogenetic, sexual, geographic, and idiosyncratic (individual) sources."

Dr. Charles Oxnard completed the most sophisticated computer analysis of australopithecine fossils ever undertaken, and concluded that the australopithecines have nothing to do with the ancestry of man whatsoever, and are simply an extinct form of ape (Fossils, Teeth and Sex: New Perspectives on Human Evolution, University of Washington Press, 1987)

One of the world's leading authorities on australopithecines, British anatomist, Solly Lord Zuckerman has concluded (based on specimens aged much younger than Lucy) that australopithecines do not belong in the family of man. He wrote "I myself remain totally unpersuaded. Almost always when I have tried to check the anatomical claims on which the status of Australopithecus is based, I have ended in failure."

Evolution is presented as fact, yes, but there is not a consensus.  There is an entire site dedicated to scientists who wish to sign their scientific dissent from the darwinian model of evolution.  http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org/ and the 22 page list (updated and released June 2015) of scientists who publicly denounce the Darwinian model can be viewed here:  http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/...oad&id=660

This is bold because as soon as they do this they are essentially written off as intellectuals in the scientific community.  Look at atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel for example:  http://news.nationalpost.com/holy-post/w...-darwinism

Evolution as presented for the origin of all species has enormous gaps and holes and scientists fill those gaps with assumptions and presuppositions that it must be a natural process but it is far from "proven" or "consensus", irregardless of religious beliefs, but based on pure science.

This does NOT mean that creation theory can be proven or must be true. I'm not saying that. Yes it is what I believe, but I'm pointing out what I see the problem evolution theory has.

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[John V]

Can all christians that don't believe in evolution explain to me your problems with it. It is just really hard for me to rap my head around someone not believeing in evolution in the 21st century, so it would make it easier if I understood exactly why you don't. And maybe I can help you through your confusions, maybe not.

Thanks!

Simple - I haven't seen convincing scientific evidence of evolution.

[Shuffle]

Can all christians that don't believe in evolution explain to me your problems with it. It is just really hard for me to rap my head around someone not believeing in evolution in the 21st century, so it would make it easier if I understood exactly why you don't. And maybe I can help you through your confusions, maybe not.

Thanks!

Simple - I haven't seen convincing scientific evidence of evolution.

Like early hominid fossils? Would you consider that evidence?

[John V]

I consider evidence to be fulfilled risky, objectively testable, falsifiable predictions. 

Here's a good discussion of evidence:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/...l#evidence

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I consider evidence to be fulfilled risky, objectively testable, falsifiable predictions. 

Here's a good discussion of evidence:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/...l#evidence

Try genetics.

Endogenous retrovirus scars, transpositional elements, frame-shift mutations... the list goes on and on.

I can understand you are skeptical of nonbelievers as a source of information on science, so if you want to try an Evangelical Christian source for absolute, unquestionable proofs of evolution, I have a recommendation.

The director of the Human Genome Project, Dr. Francis S. Collins, wrote a book about it called The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, which does an excellent job covering the basic facts of genetics and how it relates to evolution, and why you can still be an evangelical Christian and a scientist.