Disproving the Bible

[SteveII]

8. Mathematical improbability of enough time.

What are the mathematical improbabilities of a being who exists outside of space and time and who just poofed everything into existence one day for shits and giggles?

Sometimes you people amaze me with your inability to consider your statements.

Okay, I should not bring up the probability issue (even if it part of the body of legit scientific inquiry) because you have no answer to it so and are therefore tempted to resort to juvenile responses like what are the odds of God existing. Noted.

[Bibliofagus]

@SteveII: Other members here are a lot more qualified than me to answer the stuff you claimed and challenged. So I would just like to ask you 2 questions that relate to the subject of believing evolution is true.

Do you agree with the claim that the theory of evolution gave humanity many advances in the medical field?

If the answer is yes - Let's say the theory of evolution is wrong: What are the odds the medical profession get's so much right on the basis of a theory that is wrong?
If the answer is no - Where did these advances in the medical field come from?

[Crossless2.0]

I can't wait to hear the explanation for the functionality of vestigial structures in snakes.

[vorlon13]

Related topic;

Had a Christer lady I work with scoffing that 'science' knows what makes the sun shine.

I asked her maybe she should find some people from Hiroshima or Nagasaki to explain the significance of the strong nuclear force to her.

And a rarity, it shut her up.

(Never did convince her that the Post Office makes money on stamps people collect and never use, thus saving the post office the expense of delivering the actual letter)

[FatAndFaithless]

Wow. Some of your numebred points make me wonder if you've done any research into any of the responses to your claims at all. The quesiton about 'intermediate forms' is horseshit, been disproven I can't count how many times. I've already addressed your "tree of life" statement and how evolution is not linear and is very inefficient in many cases, and that a bush would be a much more accurate metaphor, with many branches that end, each with innumberable branches that also end, sudden truncations and useless deviations, beacuse evolution is not a goal oriented process. Whenever you bring up 'odds' or 'probability', I have to ask how you exactly calculated that probability, especially considering your misunderstanding of evolution in the first place.

As for vestigal organs, are you serious? Just to list a few that occur in humans: The appendix, the coccyx, wisdom teeth, the vomeronasal organ, certain ear muscles that do not function, the plica semilunaris tissue of the eyes, certain parts of genitalia and embryo development, and not to mention the list of junk DNA in our genome that doesn't appear to do much of anything. Seriously dude.

And just to your last point, again I ask to see your calculations of this improbability.

Are you kidding me about the fossil record. Do you really think it shows what you think it does. If evolution were true, there would have been ancestors and transitional creatures between each genus, family, order, class, and phylum in the layers below the Cambrian Explosion. Where are they.

Your tree of life explanation? You simply stated that it was confusing and inefficient and that it was a bush. Well, it's not. A bush does not branch low and then reconnect further up so some genes can get from that branch to the other branch to match the observation. Genes are telling different evolutionary stories and drawing them does not explain them.

It seems the vestigial parts list is getting smaller--starting with the appendix. It now seems to "serve an important role" http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl...tion-of-t/ Also, plenty of mammals have appendixes. The coccyx is an anchor point to muscles--hardly useless. Other examples--perhaps remnants of the past, but perhaps, like the appendix, we just don't know the purpose yet.

Junk DNA? Read http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6099/1159.summary

Taking your points in reverse order.

The junk DNA point: If you would actually read the articles you linked, it says it debunks the thought that our DNA is mostly useless DNA, I never claimed that our DNA was mostly useless. The studies finds that around 80% of our DNA has function. That last 20% is what I'm talking about. It's DNA that has no major function that we can determine. Try reading your sources.

Vestigal organs: The appendix is one that I'll concede, if they find that it is doing something vital, then I wouldn't call it vestigal. However, stating that 'other animals have appendices' is vapid, as I was referring to vestigal organs in humans. The coccyx itself may not be utterly useless as a bone for muscle grounding, but the fact that it is ltierally defined as a remnant of our vestigal tail should give you some insight as to what I meant. And ignoring all my other examples, just saying 'we might find out someday they have a use' is not an argument for your claim of 'we don't have any vestigal organs'.

Genes and the bush: Good lord, the bush is a metaphor, it's used to say that the system of evolution can be convoluded, complex, inefficient and unclear at times, I wasn't saying anything about a literal bush. I was more referring to the emergence of biodiversity more than gene transmission in specific, so I can't comment too much on exactly what you're getting at.

Fossil record: No really. I'm honestly asking if you're serious about there not being any transitional fossils. Fossils are rare in their own right, and the conditions for fossil formation aren't something we'd expect to see everywhere all the time, as the climate and earth conditions have been changing since the Earth formed. That being said, we have vast quantities of them, more than is enough to justify common descent. This literally takes about 30 seconds on google to see. I'll link two pages that are pretty basic in getting the point across, but there are tons of articles and studies that have thoroughly trashed that old creationist canard you threw out abut 'transitional forms'.

http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html
http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200_1.html

And to answer your smaller question: Yes, the fossil record appears to say what we think it says, at this point in time. The only people that are so opposed to actually looking at the facts and studies from an objective view are the folks from crackpot organizations like the Institute for Creation Research and carm.org. The people that have a vested interest in convincing people their pre-supposed conclusions are true. They appropriate scientific terminology and the labcoats, and then utterly disregard the methods and processes of self-correction by which science is defined.

EDIT: responding to what you posted at the top of this page, it's not juvenile to question your methods of ascertaining probability. It's juvenile to stick your fingers in your ears and refuse to acknowledge that you have no mechanism of determining that possibility, while simultaneously refusing to provide probability for the existence of your god, which you claim is the force behind events in reality.

[SteveII]

@SteveII: Other members here are a lot more qualified than me to answer the stuff you claimed and challenged. So I would just like to ask you 2 questions that relate to the subject of believing evolution is true.

Do you agree with the claim that the theory of evolution gave humanity many advances in the medical field?

If the answer is yes - Let's say the theory of evolution is wrong: What are the odds the medical profession get's so much right on the basis of a theory that is wrong?
If the answer is no - Where did these advances in the medical field come from?

I don't see that the choices make sense. Medical advances are because of scientific inquiry. If you are going to bring in microevolution, everyone believes that occurs and is even useful in most cases. Is there some other field that relies on the common decent hypothesis that has helped medicine?

[The Grand Nudger]

Okay, I should not bring up the probability issue (even if it part of the body of legit scientific inquiry) because you have no answer to it so and are therefore tempted to resort to juvenile responses like what are the odds of God existing. Noted.

Goose and gander Steve. If you're willing to toss it out there, your own position ought to be able to stand under that same scrutiny. There's no difference in mechanism or effect between micro and macro evolution. They're terms used to denote a level of scale in observation. Conceding micro is conceding macro, all you need to do is take a step back for a wider field of view.

[Bibliofagus]

What are the mathematical improbabilities of a being who exists outside of space and time and who just poofed everything into existence one day for shits and giggles?

Sometimes you people amaze me with your inability to consider your statements.

Okay, I should not bring up the probability issue (even if it part of the body of legit scientific inquiry) because you have no answer to it so and are therefore tempted to resort to juvenile responses like what are the odds of God existing. Noted.

It's a legitimate question. It's got to do with you not answering this one:

And just to your last point, again I ask to see your calculations of this improbability.

Edit: Apparently the expression for this situation in English is 'Goose and Gander'.

[The Grand Nudger]

Hehehe, you gotta be quick Biblio, I hover over creatard arguments like a buzzard. Guess I just can't resist the smell of a fresh carcass. It's probably vestigial.

[Bibliofagus]

@SteveII: Other members here are a lot more qualified than me to answer the stuff you claimed and challenged. So I would just like to ask you 2 questions that relate to the subject of believing evolution is true.

Do you agree with the claim that the theory of evolution gave humanity many advances in the medical field?

If the answer is yes - Let's say the theory of evolution is wrong: What are the odds the medical profession get's so much right on the basis of a theory that is wrong?
If the answer is no - Where did these advances in the medical field come from?

I don't see that the choices make sense. Medical advances are because of scientific inquiry. If you are going to bring in microevolution, everyone believes that occurs and is even useful in most cases.

Okay. Then explain to me why millions and millions of micro-evolutionary (whatever that is) events can never result in a big change over time.