“Intelligence,” OUT OF NOTHINGNESS!

[Harris]

"'Intelligence,' OUT OF NOTHINGNESS!" is an apt description of God's own existence.

“Intelligence out of Nothingness,” cannot be a description of God’s own existence.

For the sake of argument, I say, “there is no God (The Grand Designer)”. This statement leads to the idea that everything in the universe, universe itself, and space are popped out from nowhere or came into existence without a cause, which is similar to say, everything came out from “Nothingness.”

If everything came out from “Nothingness” and ends back into it that means “Nothingness” encapsulate every existing being and thus it is “Something” rather than “Nothing.” However, something is a contradiction to the meaning of “Nothingness.” “Nothingness” means “Not Anything.” “Nothingness” cannot be a metaphor for something. “Nothingness” is that which neither is created nor creates. In other words, there is no world, there is no space, there is no time, and there is no being. Mind is even powerless to grasp the idea of total annihilation since the world of being can only function because it is not nothingness. No experiment could support the hypothesis “There is Nothingness” because any observation obviously implies the existence of an observer. Science by no means explain “Nothingness” as it only deals with cause and effect. In the absence of cause and effect, science has no meaning.

The only alternate option to “Nothingness” is God Who is an appropriate explanation for the existence of every being. He is the ultimate cause of every created being however, He is not a created being because if you ask what caused the cause that caused the universe, then let’s continue. What caused the cause that caused the cause that caused the universe? And that goes on and on and on backward to infinite regressions. So in essence, to ask who created God or what caused the cause of the universe is equivalent of saying that we do not have a universe. At one point, there should be an uncaused cause else there would be no explanation for all existing beings in today’s universe.

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Then the foam lied to you. Energy does not equal Mass multiplied by lightspeed doubled - E is equal to MC squared. The real quantum foam would know this.

While writing E=MC2 I did not apprehend that people, in this forum, might face problem in understanding this well-known equation.

There is nothing in the universe that comes into existence spontaneously.

How do you know this? Have you been everywhere in the Universe and looked behind every planet and every star?

For sure I had not been anywhere in the universe. Nature around me is more than sufficient for my loud statements. I do not need a voyage through the universe in order to assert that everything in it has a cause.

However, you seem to be very confident in your verdict that the universe popped out from nothingness. On what bases can you make this claim? Does Nature exhibit spontaneous appearances of things! Or, perhaps you had visited every planet and every star in the universe!

Even virtual particles and even for a Nano-Second!

Hawking Radiation would like a quick word with you.

Hawking radiation around black holes is due to the quantum foam. Close to the event horizon, the gravitational sheer is so enormous that there is a very tiny amount of mass that seemingly appears from the quantum foam itself. How these virtual particles appear and disappear in a stroboscopic fashion, the answer is E=mc2. Quantum foam is vacuum energy.

But one problem arises here, how one can testify Hawking radiation at the event horizon?

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[

Sorry Harris, but "nuh-uh!" isn't an answer, especially when the science seems to disagree with you. Simply denying that just makes you seem juvenile.

It would be better if you show why science seems to disagree with me and why E=mc2 is not an appropriate scientific answer. This way your words would get more weight in them.

This has literally nothing to do with what we were talking about. And, uh, you are the one without scientific evidence, not I.

The examples that you had given from the web are not scientific facts. On the contrary, I had given substantial scientific reasoning against Theory of Evolution. You can review my responses in case you have missed something.

Why in nature these chemicals react together in a deterministic manner!

Laws of physics?

Okay! Then from where these laws of physics came?

Paleontology and genetics have done nothing but confirm that evolution occurs. What are you even talking about, here?

“The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations has been urged by several paleontologists—for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwick—as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or amilies, have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection.”
Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 302.

“When trying to unravel the origins of the animal phyla . . . the hardest to examine is the phase between the actual cladogenic origin of a phylum and the time that it acquired its first phylum-specific characteristic(s). Even if we have fossils from this phase in a phylum’s history, we will not be able to prove their kinships at the level of phyla.”
Marshall and Valentine, “The Importance of Preadapted Genomes in the Origin of the Animal Bodyplans and the Cambrian Explosion,” 1190, emphasis added.

“This really is evolution’s big unanswered question. Darwin talks about the Cambrian explosion in the Origin of Species back in 1859 and he was puzzled by how quickly organisms appeared. We like to know what were the triggers that caused this real explosion of life.”
Bruce Lieberman University of Kansas

It's not a double standard because time and again certain theories are confirmed by the advancement of science, and others aren't. You quoted a thirty year old source that hasn't been accepted by the scientific community, meaning that, evidently, the science has moved on and found the source to be incorrect or lacking in evidence. By contrast, the centuries that have passed since evolution was first proposed have only ever discovered evidence that reinforces and refines the theory, and never disagreed with it.
That's the difference.

Yes, you are right that certain theories are confirmed by the advancement of science but that is not the case with evolution. I gave you decent number of reasons, which only confirm why theory of evolution is still a mere postulate and not a scientific fact.

What is your counter proposition to the thirty years old source that you rejected bluntly without any recourse?

You are again spot-on that theory of evolution had enjoyed criticism free environment for about more than 100 years. But, did you ever give a thought why scientists are not criticising theory of evolution even when there are humongous loopholes in it? Why teachers are not allowed to discuss gaps in the theory? I will tell you the reason.

The Origin of species was an instant success, but its popularity due more to the ideological implications of the book rather than its scientific worth. Darwin’s ideas provided considerable support for the materialistic philosophy, which deny the existence of God. Secular states are doing everything (by any means and at any cost) to abstain social structure from the idea of God at whatsoever level to favour secularism.

First of all, it's a dead link: the video won't play.

Sorry for the inconvenience but I asked you to download that video. You can download that by pressing black downward arrow near the top left corner of the page.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7JspPJ...sp=sharing

Second, you should be able to articulate the argument you wish to make on your own, else you'll run afoul of Rule One of the forum eventually.

You have given me tons of references and when I gave you one, it is a foul play. You asked something from this decade and I provided what you asked for. Simple as that.

There is one scientific community, and it's made up of a mix of theists and atheists, many of the former, by the way, accept evolution. In fact, the majority of theists working in mainstream science accept evolution, as they are a part of the majority of scientists that accept evolution. Your attempt to imply some kind of atheist conspiracy falls flat because it's simply factually incorrect.

When scientists today, express an overwhelming level of confidence that evolution is true it reflects several realities. One reality is that for the most part evolution has not been subject to critique for over a hundred years not because it is a perfect an unarguable science but because of political reasons. That means the scientific process has effectively been short-circuited. The normal corrective process in science where some scientists observed problems with the current theory, they analyse it and changes are made where appropriate. That process is not operating as far as theory of evolution is concerned. Therefore, for the most part Theory of evolution has survived without that type of critique. Many people assume that theory of evolution has a solid foundation simply because they are not hearing scientific critiques.

Wrong again, because evolution is not atheism, and there's no requirement for an atheist to accept evolution. You can't "disprove" atheism by disproving evolution. And the only people giving positive reviews for the book in question, from memory, were known frauds like Ken Ham, which is extremely telling.

Please, give your counter argument on the following statement.

To produce any fundamentally new biological forms these mutations would—at the very least—have to produce a number of new proteins. But natural selection can act only on what mutations first generate. Thus, for mutation and selection to produce new functional proteins or protein folds—the smallest unit of selectable function—new proteins or protein folds must first arise by chance—that is, by random mutation. If the probability of this were extremely low—beyond the reach of available probabilistic resources—then this would undermine the plausibility of the neo-Darwinian mechanism.

How rare or common are functional protein folds within their corresponding amino acid–sequence space? If functional sequences were common enough for mutations to stumble upon them relatively easily (within the time required for relevant evolutionary transitions), mutation and selection might be able to build otherwise extremely improbable structures in small incremental steps. On the other hand, if functional proteins are extremely rare within sequence space, such that mutations will not have a realistic chance of finding them in the available time, selection will have little or nothing to work on, undermining its ability to produce biological information.

Second, Ken Ham has nothing to do with this argument.

Third, Theory of Evolution is one of the most important tool to support atheism. It was perhaps that reason the founder of dialectical materialism Karl Marx dedicated his book Das Kapital to Charles Darwin. On the cover he wrote “Given to Charles Darwin from a devoted admirer.” Atheist were the first who adopted Theory of Evolution to boost up their ideology to the firmament.

If Theory of Evolution collapse that would give a hard blow over atheism and secularism. Sure! you can be atheist even if Theory of Evolution falls apart.

No, it isn't. Evolution concerns genetic changes over time in populations, which you'd know if you'd bothered to research this at all.

Did Darwin know anything about Genetics?

Is there any scientific endorsement that makes evident “Evolution concerns genetic changes over time in populations?”

I know what I am talking and I am giving you scientific evidences, which you are flatly rejecting without giving any counter scientific recourse. What you have given so far is only “ifs” or fragments of so-called scientific information that is not science at all.

And if those variations within the same species keep happening, and the species keeps varying more and more, eventually there will come a point where that population is so different from the species if begins at that it can't be called the same species anymore.

You have used two “ifs” in that concise statement of yours. Science is not “assumptions”

Nylon eating flavobacteria. Look it up.

Have a look on the following two articles.

http://www.trueorigin.org/b_cell_maturation.asp
http://creation.com/the-adaptation-of-ba...ylon-waste

If these articles are hard for you to understand then ask Dawkins for help.

We don't know how exactly, but we have strong evidence that it's possible for life to form naturally, which removes the requirement for a designer completely.

Is there any mechanism for “NATURALLY?” Even if everything is happening automatically then again through which mechanism? Perhaps, everything is happening out from nothing!

We have thousands of examples, including near complete lineages in some cases. Here's a big ol' list of them. You're wrong again.

Please read Wikipedia carefully which says;

“This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.”

Further it goes on

“This is a tentative list of transitional fossils” …
“As noted already by Darwin, the fossil record is incomplete.”

I’ll give you few quotes from Darwin to contemporary palaeontologists without inserting my own commentary. If you’ll find is insufficient then I’ll give you more.


“The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, (must) be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

“I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it… Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin's authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils… It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test.”
Dr Colin Patterson, a senior palaeontologist at the British Museum of Natural History
(correspondence w. Sunderland)

What Wikipedia is showing as transitional fossils are few species that by no scientific means be recognised as transitional fossils. They are few links of a ginormous missing chain of life.

The eye. We know how the eye evolved, in fact we know how it evolved along multiple independent evolutionary paths, hence the differences between, say, our eyes and squid eyes. Oh, and there's a species of skink here in Australia that are developing the ability to live birth their young, rather than using eggs as lizards generally do.

That said, the formulation of this question is a tad dishonest, since evolution of the kind you're looking for takes millions of years.

Unfortunately, father of evolution said something different.

“To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivance for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”
The Origin of Species, John Murray, p. 186.

Genetics only talks about variations in same species. Genetics do not talk on transformation from one specie to another.

Accumulations of the former result in the latter.

I cannot say there is no evidence of mutational degradation (of the functional genome) over time. The genome does display evidence of past viral insertions, deletions, transpositions, and the like, much as digital software copied again and again accumulates errors. Nevertheless, the vast majority of base sequences on the genome, and even the many sequences that do not code for proteins, serve essential biological functions. Hypothetically, you can assert positive values for mutational accumulations but there is no scientific confirmation that accumulation adds new information and correspondingly adds new organ.

There's a reason the majority of the species on this planet are extinct, you know. The rest of this section is just another argument from ignorance from you.

What makes you so sure that species extinct due to mutational trial-and-error process? Do the fossils exhibit mutational processes or you have all links in the missing chain of life?

Instead of saying “argument from ignorance,” give the proper scientific or philosophical reason for your verdict. Otherwise, “argument from ignorance” is no more than empty words in thin air.

I am still waiting for your counter scientific argument to my following assertion.

To produce any fundamentally new biological forms these mutations would—at the very least—have to produce a number of new proteins. But natural selection can act only on what mutations first generate. Thus, for mutation and selection to produce new functional proteins or protein folds—the smallest unit of selectable function—new proteins or protein folds must first arise by chance—that is, by random mutation. If the probability of this were extremely low—beyond the reach of available probabilistic resources—then this would undermine the plausibility of the neo-Darwinian mechanism.
How rare or common are functional protein folds within their corresponding amino acid–sequence space? If functional sequences were common enough for mutations to stumble upon them relatively easily (within the time required for relevant evolutionary transitions), mutation and selection might be able to build otherwise extremely improbable structures in small incremental steps. On the other hand, if functional proteins are extremely rare within sequence space, such that mutations will not have a realistic chance of finding them in the available time, selection will have little or nothing to work on, undermining its ability to produce biological information.

You literally don't know what evolution is, do you?

Go and ask Neo-Darwinists who are trying to incorporate mutation with natural selection.

Flavobacteria. Seriously. Fruit flies too. Silver foxes. Look up any of those things in a search with the word "evolution."

I look forward to you coming back here and demonstrating how little you know about the subject you're babbling about by protesting, "but they're still the same species!"

Honestly, if you don't care to understand evolution, then stop disagreeing with this strawman version of it you've cooked up.

Have a look on the following two articles.

http://www.trueorigin.org/b_cell_maturation.asp
http://creation.com/the-adaptation-of-ba...ylon-waste

It was the Kitzmiller vs Dover trial, back in 2005. A quick google search should furnish you with everything you need to know, but the short version is that intelligent design advocates presented their best "evidence" for their idea, and the judge in charge of the case ruled that intelligent design wasn't scientific and could not be taught in schools in that area.

Intelligent design and Evolution are science or not that was not the only issue before Dover’s court. Court was considering a question stemming from different line of evidence that when they introduce the intelligent design to the classroom, were members of the Dover’s school board motivated by religion. If so that would amount to a violation of part of the first amendment of the constitution “The Establishment Clause” which says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”. This mandates the separation of state from the church. That trickles down to any state action and in Dover’s case the actions of the school board.

Evolution won based on political agenda not on the merits of scientific competency. It can’t be because it is only a postulate, not an established science. It has gaps and missing links. Intelligent design lost because court had transformed intelligent design into creationism to crush it under the political footings by using secular law namely “The Establishment Clause”. In the trial’s concluding argument Eric Rothschild compelled the idea that intelligent design is religious, he said,

“This trial has established that INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL because it is inherently religious proposition. A modern form of creationism. It is not just a product of religious people, it just not have religious implications, IT IS IN ITS ESSENCE RELIGIOUS.”

Judge had given the verdict that it is unconstitutional to teach intelligent design (religion) in a science class as it goes against the constitution (of secular state.)

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DNA didn't just pop into existence all built up. It must have evolved from simpler self-replicating structures... RNA being a close relative.

I see Evolution as the process from zero to human in mother’s womb. This is an established science and I am not reluctant to regard it as scientific evolution. However, this evolution is equipped by DNA code. This DNA code keeps woman away from giving birth to a crocodile. From where that DNA code comes, you don’t have answer to that. You say natural selection and evolution but again you don’t know what are the forces working behind natural selection and evolution. What is the scope of Natural Selection? If Natural Selection exist then why it exist?

Neo-Darwinism is desperate and in this desperation, it is giving postulates which leads to the ideas that there is a possibility that human might develop wings in due course of incorporated activates of genetics and Natural Selection.

Start on wikipedia, follow the references, seek them out on google scholar and learn.... it will be a slow process, given that there are now tons of articles on the subjects and few are attempts at summarizing it, but it will be worth it.

Most of the books and articles on evolution are based on ideological grounds. They are far from scientific realities. I have given considerable amount of examples. In response I got no explanation of scientific or philosophical worth.

Like I said somewhere else, probably to someone else, your logic fails you due to wrong premisses. Endeavor to make your premises as correct as possible and you can't be faulted for them...
Do what you've been doing... and you're dismissed like a pigeon playing chess.

Dismissals in thin air is not a news for me.

1. What is the origin of living cell?

Was there anyone around back then who could document it reliably? I'd wager that no, there wasn't. So, we may never know that.

If evolution does not have answer on the origin of living cell in modern scientific world then how comes you are sure about origin of species? Were you the monitoring agent of Cambrian’s life explosion “the Big Bang of life”?

There are, however, people working on how life could come from lifelessness... and they have come to quite a few promising results, like Esq said...

These are only promises, nothing else. Check my answers to Esq.

Also, have fun:
http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html

When Vatican can publically confess and apologise on the gay act in the church then recognition of evolution as biblical is not a surprise.

Secondly, if you are following Natural Selection (blindly), then you should have the answer on why there is Natural Selection. Is Natural Selection a chance or something out from nothingness? Perhaps Natural Selection is God!

2. Where are the transient animals?

They're dead. If we can't find fossils of them, then it's because fossilization is an extremely rare process. It's actually a wonder we have managed to find as many fossils as we have. Again, refer to Esq's reply for examples.

Please check my response to esq.

Some are still around us... yous see, according to the theory, evolution is still taking place and so we are all transitional forms into something else.

Humans are a special case, as they've learned to mold the environment to suit themselves, instead of having to adapt to the environment.... which just renders evolutionary pressures somewhat null and thus we are evolving very, very slowly, compared to the remaining life on Earth.

Do you hope that humans would have wings sometime in the future?

You seem to be under the impression that a single mutation can result in a new fully functioning organ, from one generation to the next.

You are correct because this is the exact impression which Neo-Darwinism propaganda machine is spreading around, of course not for a single mutation. If looking natural selection from your perspective then is not it strange that small successive changes are occurring in a very systematic manner without any errors as if some intelligent being is controlling all these changes.

This is not how the theory of evolution proposes new structures to form.
I'll have to refer to my original post where I ask you to learn about the theory of evolution, before you reply, as it will be beneficial for our conversation to proceed. Refusal to do so, may be met with sarcasm, mocking and/or taunting.

I had given thought provoking arguments against theory of evolution and proven that it is only a theory not scientific fact. You can go back and check all of my reasoning in this relation.

If you have actual doubts which you wish addressed by someone who may be aware of their responses, then feel free to post them. But refrain from strawmanning.

So far, I am the only one who have given scientific and logical reasoning. Instead of having, counter scientific and philosophical arguments, I only bumped into the language that normally is the property of street hooligans.

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Please explain for my benefit because I'm trying to understand what the fallacious opening your reply to esq was supposed to prove or add to the discussion.

Theory of Evolution is not a conventional scientific fact. It is an ideological tool for atheism and secularism. This is what I am proving and adding to the discussion.

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Yes -- the total mass/energy of the universe is ZERO. So, this flat universe we live in could only have come from nothing. The only other thing you missed is there is no god.

Susskind might not like your statement.

[Rampant.A.I.]

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Please explain for my benefit because I'm trying to understand what the fallacious opening your reply to esq was supposed to prove or add to the discussion.

Theory of Evolution is not a conventional scientific fact. It is an ideological tool for atheism and secularism. This is what I am proving and adding to the discussion.

Ok, so, to translate, you don't really have any explanation as to why you used fallicious reasoning, then?

Again, you'll have to elucidate how in a earth evolution is linked to either atheism or secularism? I want you to demonstrate the link for me, please.

Do you have any idea what the terms you're using actually mean? Or what they even are?

Can you demonstrate, clearly and concisely for my benefit, how a reformation demand for independence in sovereign state craft from the papacy, culminating in the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, was impacted at all by evolution? A couple of centuries before evolution was even theorised?

Again, I'm trying to work out how you've managed to try and sidestep stating a reason for using fallicious reasoning that added nothing to the discussion by outright lying about the the links between evolution and secularism and atheism (until proven otherwise).

Please don't let yourself become another lunatic on there Internet. I demand to see reasoning behind your post.

Thanks in advance.

[Esquilax]

It would be better if you show why science seems to disagree with me and why E=mc2 is not an appropriate scientific answer. This way your words would get more weight in them.

Why bother? As demonstrated by a part later on in this very post I'm quoting, whenever someone does show you science that you don't like, you just wave it away by asserting that it's "not science." This is the issue here: you're just dismissing whatever disagrees with what you want to believe, and emphasizing the small amount that agrees with you.

The examples that you had given from the web are not scientific facts. On the contrary, I had given substantial scientific reasoning against Theory of Evolution. You can review my responses in case you have missed something.

So, I spent all that time showing you real evidence, with sources that go back to actual scientific studies rooted all throughout them, and you've just dismissed them with an assertion. Given this, you haven't addressed my rebuttals at all, and I have rebutted every one of your arguments.

Okay! Then from where these laws of physics came?

Who says they need to come from anywhere? Why can't they just be features of the universe?

“The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations has been urged by several paleontologists—for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwick—as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or amilies, have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection.”
Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 302.

Sorry, science has moved on since 1859; we've found many more fossils since then, some of which we were able to predict what they would be, and in which layer, based on evolutionary models, and all of them have fit into the theory perfectly fine. You don't get to bring up Darwin's intellectual honesty from over a century ago as if things haven't changed since, you quote mining prick.

“When trying to unravel the origins of the animal phyla . . . the hardest to examine is the phase between the actual cladogenic origin of a phylum and the time that it acquired its first phylum-specific characteristic(s). Even if we have fossils from this phase in a phylum’s history, we will not be able to prove their kinships at the level of phyla.”
Marshall and Valentine, “The Importance of Preadapted Genomes in the Origin of the Animal Bodyplans and the Cambrian Explosion,” 1190, emphasis added.

So what? Again, you're quoting from a paper written by people who accept evolution and actually feature it in their writing; if we were to accept, as you believe, that evolution isn't true, then what this means is that you've quoted from an incorrect paper as support for your position. If we accept your position as true, then this source cannot be used as evidence in support of that position because it's wrong. If we accept my position as true then the paper functions as intended. You just got logicked, son.

“This really is evolution’s big unanswered question. Darwin talks about the Cambrian explosion in the Origin of Species back in 1859 and he was puzzled by how quickly organisms appeared. We like to know what were the triggers that caused this real explosion of life.”
Bruce Lieberman University of Kansas

Lots of things wrong here! First of all, appealing to an "unanswered question" as support for your position is an argument from ignorance fallacy. Second, Lieberman studies evolution, he accepts that it happens, so the same paradox applies as above- if you're quoting him to prove that evolution is wrong then he's wrong too and thus not an accurate source on this issue- and he clearly doesn't agree with your quote mine of him, so that's dishonest of you. Thirdly, and this is strange, I can't find your quote anywhere but creationist sources; I can't even find the original source for it...

Yes, you are right that certain theories are confirmed by the advancement of science but that is not the case with evolution. I gave you decent number of reasons, which only confirm why theory of evolution is still a mere postulate and not a scientific fact.

And I rebutted every one, meaning this assertion you've made here is yet another "nuh uh!" If evidence doesn't continually confirm evolution perhaps you'd like to explain why the entirety of the mainstream scientific community, including the theists among them, continues to accept it and operate under the premise that it's true? To say nothing of modern medicine, and so on?

What is your counter proposition to the thirty years old source that you rejected bluntly without any recourse?

Probably "Things have moved on since then," coupled with "one source doesn't destroy the scientific consensus against that source." Cherry picking your data doesn't get you anywhere, but it does make you look desperate.

You are again spot-on that theory of evolution had enjoyed criticism free environment for about more than 100 years. But, did you ever give a thought why scientists are not criticising theory of evolution even when there are humongous loopholes in it? Why teachers are not allowed to discuss gaps in the theory? I will tell you the reason.

Oh, here we go with the bullshit conspiracy crap.

The Origin of species was an instant success, but its popularity due more to the ideological implications of the book rather than its scientific worth. Darwin’s ideas provided considerable support for the materialistic philosophy, which deny the existence of God. Secular states are doing everything (by any means and at any cost) to abstain social structure from the idea of God at whatsoever level to favour secularism.

Citation needed.

You do realize that you sound insane, right now, right? If the best you can do to explain away the massive consensus on this- and I'd remind you that christian scientists are also universally in on this, where they're actually real scientists- is to whine about everyone being against you, well... that's not actually an argument. That's toddler logic; everyone disagrees with you because they're against you! Give me a break.

You have given me tons of references and when I gave you one, it is a foul play. You asked something from this decade and I provided what you asked for. Simple as that.

Can you understand why I might be wary about downloading mysterious large files at the behest of strangers on the internet?

What's so hard about just summarizing the arguments presented, and making reference to the actual, peer reviewed science (not single quote mined paragraphs formulated to say the opposite of what the source actually says) involved?

When scientists today, express an overwhelming level of confidence that evolution is true it reflects several realities. One reality is that for the most part evolution has not been subject to critique for over a hundred years not because it is a perfect an unarguable science but because of political reasons.

Evolution is under constant criticism, both from within the scientific community and from religious sources too; if the evidence against it was as rock solid and obvious as you claim then it would be the work of but a moment for your side to present it using the multi-million dollar media powers the christian market possesses. The fact that you haven't is sort of a hint.

Oh, and these mysterious "political reasons"? Come on, man. The majority of the US government is christian, are you kidding me?

That means the scientific process has effectively been short-circuited. The normal corrective process in science where some scientists observed problems with the current theory, they analyse it and changes are made where appropriate. That process is not operating as far as theory of evolution is concerned. Therefore, for the most part Theory of evolution has survived without that type of critique. Many people assume that theory of evolution has a solid foundation simply because they are not hearing scientific critiques.

Assertion, assertion, assertion.

Please, give your counter argument on the following statement.

To produce any fundamentally new biological forms these mutations would—at the very least—have to produce a number of new proteins. But natural selection can act only on what mutations first generate. Thus, for mutation and selection to produce new functional proteins or protein folds—the smallest unit of selectable function—new proteins or protein folds must first arise by chance—that is, by random mutation. If the probability of this were extremely low—beyond the reach of available probabilistic resources—then this would undermine the plausibility of the neo-Darwinian mechanism.

This first part is just factually wrong: mutations happen, every generation, without fail. You are not a perfect clone of your parents, because your genes mutated as they were replicating. That's mutation, and it happened to you. False starting premise, means the rest of the statement is non-functional. Done.

How rare or common are functional protein folds within their corresponding amino acid–sequence space? If functional sequences were common enough for mutations to stumble upon them relatively easily (within the time required for relevant evolutionary transitions), mutation and selection might be able to build otherwise extremely improbable structures in small incremental steps. On the other hand, if functional proteins are extremely rare within sequence space, such that mutations will not have a realistic chance of finding them in the available time, selection will have little or nothing to work on, undermining its ability to produce biological information.

It is a demonstrable fact that mutations happen. The average human infant has at least sixty, sometimes upwards of two hundred, mutations at birth, and develops more over time. Done again.

Second, Ken Ham has nothing to do with this argument.

He kinda does, when you present a source that all the real scientists review as shoddy work, and the ideologically driven conmen rave about as brilliant.

Third, Theory of Evolution is one of the most important tool to support atheism. It was perhaps that reason the founder of dialectical materialism Karl Marx dedicated his book Das Kapital to Charles Darwin. On the cover he wrote “Given to Charles Darwin from a devoted admirer.” Atheist were the first who adopted Theory of Evolution to boost up their ideology to the firmament.

No, the lack of evidence for a god is the most important tool to support atheism. There are atheist groups that don't accept evolution, which blows your claim out of the water.

If Theory of Evolution collapse that would give a hard blow over atheism and secularism. Sure! you can be atheist even if Theory of Evolution falls apart.

That's an argument from ignorance too; if you could prove evolution false right now that wouldn't be evidence for a god existing. Can you go one sentence without a fallacy?

Did Darwin know anything about Genetics?

Darwin observed the physical expression of those genetic changes.

Is there any scientific endorsement that makes evident “Evolution concerns genetic changes over time in populations?”

Considering that genetics are the dictator of physical traits in an organism, what else would you think was behind evolution? Do you know what population genetics is?

I know what I am talking and I am giving you scientific evidences, which you are flatly rejecting without giving any counter scientific recourse. What you have given so far is only “ifs” or fragments of so-called scientific information that is not science at all.

What the fuck are you talking about? I've been presenting real, peer reviewed sources all along, and you're the one sitting here dismissing them all as "not science" without providing why! Could you be any more up your own ass on this?

You have used two “ifs” in that concise statement of yours. Science is not “assumptions”

Given that we're talking in the abstract and not about a specific case, it'd be inappropriate to use another word. I can't talk about what did happen when we're talking in abstractions without a subject at hand.

Have a look on the following two articles.

Got any reputable sources instead? Ones that don't premise their objections on the faulty claim that this was all just random?

Is there any mechanism for “NATURALLY?” Even if everything is happening automatically then again through which mechanism? Perhaps, everything is happening out from nothing!

Argument from ignorance.

Please read Wikipedia carefully which says;

“This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.”

Of course it's an incomplete list; aside from the fact that new discoveries will continue to happen, nobody is saying that we should expect a complete lineage in every case, that's absurd. But appealing to the incompleteness of the list in order to pretend that the evidence on it doesn't exist is, again, an argument from ignorance.

Maybe you're just ignorant in general.

Further it goes on

“This is a tentative list of transitional fossils” …
“As noted already by Darwin, the fossil record is incomplete.”

Do you understand how rare fossil formation is? That's why this is said, you blithering imbecile.

I’ll give you few quotes from Darwin to contemporary palaeontologists without inserting my own commentary. If you’ll find is insufficient then I’ll give you more.

First you quote a book from 1859, and then you quote a guy who's been dead for over fifteen years.

What Wikipedia is showing as transitional fossils are few species that by no scientific means be recognised as transitional fossils. They are few links of a ginormous missing chain of life.

"Nuh uh!" still isn't an argument, especially since the trained scientists disagree with your uneducated ass.

Unfortunately, father of evolution said something different.

“To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivance for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”
The Origin of Species, John Murray, p. 186.

And now we're done, you dishonest fuck. This, you awful, ignorant conman, is one of the most well known quote mines of Darwin's entire work. Here's the full quote:

"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility"

And here's a source for that. You abhorrent fucking liar, Darwin is actually saying that this idea is counter-intuitive, but that so called "common sense" shouldn't blind one to the evidence that the eye has, in fact, evolved. What you did was stop the quote in the middle of the paragraph to make it say something different than what was actually said, and I demand that you retract this vile lie and apologize for this dishonesty before we continue further. Until then, I will have nothing further to say to you.

[pocaracas]

DNA didn't just pop into existence all built up. It must have evolved from simpler self-replicating structures... RNA being a close relative.

I see Evolution as the process from zero to human in mother’s womb.

And, with your very first sentence, you show just how deep your ignorance runs.
I told you to go learn about evolution.
You refuse to do so and, instead, provide us with your version of what "evolution" means. Thank you, but that's not what the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection states as "evolution".
Either you go learn about it, or remain in your own delusional world.... but don't mix them, as they're clearly not compatible.

[Cyberman]

However, you seem to be very confident in your verdict that the universe popped out from nothingness. On what bases can you make this claim? Does Nature exhibit spontaneous appearances of things! Or, perhaps you had visited every planet and every star in the universe!

I am not a creationist; I have not ever made that claim. You are making it for me, so you tell me on what basis you are making it.

Incidentally, I have visited every star and planet in the Universe. So there.

[Cyberman]

Crap - double post. Stupid 'phone.

Consider this a blatant and shameless attempt to increase my post count.

[LostLocke]

Genesis 1:3 "Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light."

"Light," OUT OF NOTHINGNESS!

[Mudhammam]

Well looks like Harris was exposed for another dishonest unoriginal hack. I love when they get that snobbish tone and then trip over their own arrogant misapprehension of the facts, trying to quote Darwin to refute Darwin and failing miserably as anyone with half a brain could have predicted they would.

[Mister Agenda]

Many contemporary scientists believe that universe came into being about 15 billion years ago. Despite of this fact, a clear majority of scientists in today’s world agree that universe has a beginning.

To be precise, the universe began to exist in this form. Prior to that, it was in a very hot, dense, state. We have no idea how long the universe existed in this state. We know it suddenly began to expand, and we have several plausible hypotheses, but we don't really understand what preceded the expansion very well.

At the beginning of 20th century, scientists believed that the universe has always existed and matter-energy had always been around. That was, “The Steady-State Model.” In the last hundred years, the counter evidences have blown that model away.

Yes, the universe has definitely not always existed in a steady state. It may, however, have always existed in some form. Disproving a steady state doesn't disprove an eternal universe. I suspect quantum vacuum fluctuation may turn out to be the case, but an eternal universe can't be ruled out.

Some facts that we agree with you on and already know about snipped here.

If the universe has a beginning then it should has a cause and that cause should be immaterial and beyond space and time.

Mere assertion, unsupported. It could be dismissed on those grounds alone, not just the fallacy of composition that because effects in the universe must have causes, the universe itself must have one; or the counterfactual that virtual particles begin to exist without a cause.

There are only two things, which can fit to explain this cause.

a. Abstract objects and
b. Embodied mind.

The problem with the abstract objects is that they are causally effete, meaning, they cannot cause anything.

There are several plausible hypotheses that explain how the universe could have begun or wound up in it's current state, none of them violate the laws of physics or contradict the evidence. No abstractions or embodied minds needed.

The laws of nature (including entire mathematics) are abstract concepts and they cannot produce any event.

The laws of nature are descriptions of ways in which nature behaves consistently. If nature behaved differently, the laws would be different. They are not abstract in the sense that you need them to be in order for your argument to work.

The rules of arithmetic state the Pattern to which all transactions with money must confirm, if only you can get hold of any money. Consequently, in one sense, the laws of nature are existent only because there exist a physical universe.

No kidding.

To think the laws can produce, it is like thinking that you can create real money by simply doing sums. As said by Hawkins, “it is the laws of physics, not the will of God, that provide real explanation to how the universe came into being. The big bang,” he argues, “was the inevitable consequence of these laws.”

Does that lead to the concept, if the law says; gravity controls the motion of earth around the sun so is it the gravity that endeavoured the creation of sun or other celestial objects or is it other way round. Law is descriptive and predictive but not creative. It is even worse as laws of physics cannot even cause anything to happen. It is logically impossible for a cause to bring about some effect without already being into existence.

Nonsense remains nonsense even when talked by world famous scientists.

Nonsense is a good description of the above paragraphs and your misrepresentation of Hawking.

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.”
Stephen Hawking.

One of the outdated philosophical clichés, “who created God?” is an oblivious platitude because if there is no cause which is uncaused there simply be no existence.

Or existence always existed. In any case, a first, uncaused-cause, does not imply that it was a conscious being. It seems quantum foam may have the property of necessarily existing, and is, at least in theory, capable of generating a universe, maybe even trillions of universes.

Laws of physics are extremely precise to enable complex life to exist.

If you know (and can show your work) why the laws of physics are what they are, there's a Nobel Prize in it for you. If you know (and can show your work) they could have been otherwise, there is a Nobel Prize waiting for you. The reason you're not getting a Nobel Prize is because the idea that the laws of physics are fine-tuned is a thought experiment based on no evidence whatsoever.

It is exceptionally unlikely that this precision could have happened by chance.

To know the odds, you have to know what the possible range of values could have been and exactly how the different laws relate to each other. That is unknown. For all we know, it is inevitable for the laws of physics to be what they are, or very close to it. If there are trillions of universes, ones that are capable of harboring life may be very rare or very common, no one knows, including you.

Irrelevant factoids snipped here for brevity's sake.

It is rather hard to estimate what the probability is, but it is clearly very, very unlikely that those fine tunings, which allowed this Pyramid of complexities to arise, would be there as consequence of chance.

It is completely impossible to estimate what the probability is. For instance, we do know that the 'energy budget' of our universe is either exactly zero or so close to zero that we can't tell the difference. It may be impossible for a universe without an energy budget of zero or nearly so to be produced by a quantum vacuum fluctuation. If that is the case, it narrows the range of possible values for the physical constants dramatically: only physical constants consistent with a zero energy universe may be possible. It's entirely possible that our particular physical constants are highly probable, or even inevitable.

As we look at the details of nature, one thing stands out:
This is the order, the pattern, and the symmetry. Everything in the universe has a mathematically precise structure.

Mathematics is a language we invent to describe things precisely. If the universe were different and there were beings capable of inventing math in it, they would invent different math from ours. You're mistaking the map for the territory.

As one example, consider Double helix of DNA in living beings. Try to assess how likely is it that we find a protein by chance with all the amino acids in that Pre-biotic soup interacting with each other for, say, billions of years?

Proteins form spontaneously all the time in nature, so I'm going to go with 100%. If you meant the odds of DNA forming spontaneously, no one thinks that's how DNA first formed, so you're barking up the wrong tree.

“Welcome Collection” in London has a unique publication. This publication is 100 volumes long each with thousands of pages and text so small that it is barely legible. Together, these books represents only a single human genome. Only four chemicals or letters made this Genome, 3.2 billion of them. A disorder of only one letter in the sequence leads to serious illness in the living being.

Utter BS. The average human carries upwards of sixty mutations, most of which have no ill effect.

Question is how common or how rare are the functional sequences of amino acids among the big space of all possible amino acids there are?

The REAL question is how many times did a sequence of amino acids capable or replicating itself have to form out of all the hundreds of billions of potential life-bearing before natural selection would take effect to conserve sequences that are funtional and weed out sequences that aren't. The answer is: once.

Nobel laureate, organic chemist and a leader in origin of life studies, Professor deDuve writes in his excellent book, Tour of a Living Cell,

"If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one...”

That would be relevant if anyone thought that's how life started, instead of with a single self-replicating protein strand (probably RNA, which forms spontaneously under the right conditions).

Humans and all mammals have some 50,000 genes. That implies, as an order of magnitude estimate, some 50,000 to 100,000 proteins active in mammalian bodies. There are some 30 animal phyla on Earth by estimation. If the genomes of each animal phylum produced 100,000 proteins, and no proteins were common among any of the phyla (a fact we know to be false, but an assumption that makes our calculations favor the random evolutionary assumption), there would be (30 x 100,000) 3 million proteins in all life. Now let us consider the likelihood of these 3 million viable combinations of proteins forming by chance: Proteins are complex coils of several hundred amino acids.

Evolution is not guided by chance, it is guided by natural selection. You understand what you are arguing against so badly that you can't conceive what an effective argument against evolution would look like.

Take a typical protein to be a chain of 200 amino acids. The observed range is from less than 100 amino acids per protein to greater than 1000. Twenty commonly occurring amino acids join in varying combinations to produce the proteins of life. This means that the number of possible combinations of the amino acids in our model protein of 200 amino acids is 20 to the power of 200 (i.e. 20 multiplied by itself 200 times), or in the more usual 10-based system of numbers, approximately 10 to the power of 260 (i.e. the number one, followed by 260 zeros!). Nature has the option of choosing among the 10 to power of 260 possible proteins, the 3 million proteins of which all viable life is composed. In other words, for each one correct choice, there are 10 to power of 254 wrong choices! Randomness cannot have been the driving force behind the success of life.

It's called the theory of evolution, not the theory of randomness. Natural selection acts as a sieve that preserves variations that increase reproductive success and strains out variations that reduce it. This process basically encodes information about the reproductive fitness environment into organisms that survive to reproduce. It is a process with some random elements, not a random process.

Our understanding of statistics and molecular biology clearly supports the notion that there must have been a direction and a “Director” behind the success of life.

No serious scientist think that life is a matter of chance.

Yet you natter on as if they do.

Some modern Darwinists defend their case by asserting that about 98 percent of our DNA is similar to that of apes and that this difference is only a few spelling mistakes. Other say, more accurate figure is no more than 95 percent. However, considering that humans have three billion DNA information in each cell, even two per cent difference is actually sixty million spelling errors. Of course, this is not error, but 2,500 pages worth of new information. After all, we do share about 50 percent of our DNA with bananas, but that doesn’t mean that we are half banana.

In genetic terms, we are half banana. We share a common ancestor with bananas if you go back far enough, and most of the genetic similarity is what natural selection conserved as necessary to both bananas and humans.

Entire present-day science is based on the inductive reasoning. Using the same inductive reasoning, “one can compare the information stored in DNA molecule to a software program code only much more complex.”Bill Gates.

How much of your post did you mean to be filled with trivia we all already know?

We know information comes only from intelligent source.

That is assertion and begging the question, not knowledge. You have assumed your conclusion, sir. Or more likely, your copy pasta source has and you are just parroting their mistake.

When we see coded information in a DNA, the most logical thing to conclude, that too, has an intelligent source.

Only if you have established that information can only come from an intelligent source, AND that DNA is sufficiently analogous to a code (it is not actually a code, the components aren't arbitrary, they have chemical functionality, DNA is also analogous to a factory) to infer that the quality of being produced by intelligence applies. You have not supported either contention. Note: quoting someone agreeiing with you is not support, it is argument from authority.

“… If you look at the details of biochemistry and molecular biology, you might find a signature of some sort of designer. And that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe.”
Richard Dawkins
The R. Dawkins Foundation
R. Dawkins Answers Questions

Yet no such signature has been found, which is why Dawkins is a teacher of evolutionary biology and not of creationism.

And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the difference of your languages and colours. Verily, in that are indeed signs for men of sound knowledge.
Ar Ruum (30)
-Verse 22-
Quran

If there's nothing that you wouldn't count as a sign that you're right, the assertion that the signs are on your side is literally meaningless.

And in the earth are neighbouring tracts, and gardens of vines, and green crops (fields etc.), and date-palms, growing out two or three from a single stem root, or otherwise (one stem root for every palm ), watered with the same water, yet some of them We make more excellent than others to eat. Verily, in these things, there are Ayat (proofs, evidences, lessons, signs) for the people who understand.
Ar Ra'd (13)
-Verse 4-
Quran

And He shows you (always) His Signs: then which of the Signs of Allah will ye deny?
Al Mu'min (40)
-Verse 81-
Quran


Nay, here are Signs self-evident in the hearts of those endowed with knowledge: and none but the unjust reject Our Signs.
Al 'Ankabuut (29)
-Verse 49-
Quran

You had me thinking you're an idiot with how badly you were mangling science, but now that you're quoting scripture, suddenly you'll be convincing, eh?