How do you know God isn't dead?

[Statler Waldorf]

How you do observe a species evolving over millions of years? You can't.

Well then you’ve stepped out of the scientific realm and into the realm of “just-so” storytelling.

I you don't know what your own cutoff for human would be, how do you expect to have this question answered?

A healthy specimen having 46 chromosomes is a good place to start.

Of course not. How would a simple observation of human skin color lead to the conclusion that all life on earth had a common ancestor Stat?

You tell me, you’re the one who believes such nonsense.

Are you intentionally trolling me as above or did you suffer a reading comprehension fail? 140,00 years -before- a group of human beings migrated to australia..they were already physically modern. They were already -us-.

Perhaps you are trolling me since you completely ignored what I just said. First modern man appears 250,000 years ago, Aboriginals and Europeans have been separated for 140,000 years. There is absolutely no difference between these two people groups from a mental cognition standpoint. So how long did it take for this mental cognitive ability to develop from our supposed primitive ancestors that did not possess such ability? What selective pressures drove this mental development? Please be specific.

I didn't realize that you took issue to just about every corner of the physical sciences. I think that if this is the case, there's little possibility of me digging your way out of such a vast chasm of ignorance.

We’re not talking about the physical sciences here, we’re talking historical sciences. So you cannot establish that the fossil “record” is indeed a record of death and burial over millions of years? Your entire theory is now nothing more than un-established wishful thinking and “just-so” storytelling.

The designation of what is or is not an ape entails a little more than just calling any given animal an ape - otherwise we'd be calling zebras apes as well.

What does it entail then? Be specific.

Again, biology and physics (but I understand that you don't really believe in that sort of stuff).

How intellectually lazy can you be? So you cannot establish that homology is a result of a common ancestor? You’re not fairing too well here.

No, it doesn't. Natural selection requires selective pressures.

Yup, and natural selection is the driving mechanisms of Evolution, without natural selection you have no Evolution and without selective pressures you have no natural selection. You’re trying to assert that Humans developed the mental cognitive abilities to perform analytical thinking that was not necessary until thousands of years later. That’s not consistent with the theory at all.

Who told you this? It's horrendously inaccurate. All that is required for any given trait or set of genes to be preserved is that the creature successfully replicates.

No, not if that organism’s offspring are out competed by other organisms in the population that possess different traits, learn your own theory.

See above.

You do not understand the necessary driving mechanism of your own theory, it’s rather embarrassing.

Whereas common descent isn't so much useful or valuable as it is, well, existent and in evidence.

Yet you cannot present any evidence to actually support it; intriguing to say the least.

Observed instances of evolution, demonstrated mechanisms of evolution, and successful predictions made by the theory.

No specific examples? More storytelling.

Well, someone may certainly come along someday and demonstrate that modern synthesis is in error. Hasn't happened yet, and that someone is unlikely to be you...... but if you really buckled down and did some science you could always hold out on hope.

I wish we were talking about science here, but unfortunately we’re not.

Common biochemistry and code, selectively neutral similarities and phylogenetic trees based on rDNA. All converging - with nary a single point of conflicting data - upon the conclusion of common descent.

Back to homology again, but since you have not demonstrated that homologous traits and structures are necessarily the result of a common ancestor you cannot use this as evidence to support Common Descent. Do you have anything else?

It's difficult to familiarize yourself with the fantasies of another.

Apparently it’s difficult for you to familiarize yourself with the very theory you’re trying to defend.

Why is this alleged "supernatural being" not doing anything?

Who said He wasn’t doing anything?

sabatoge

Sabotage.

I feel like I have to ask: do you have any reasoning behind this by fiat assertion, or did you just decide it because it's convenient to your case? Done any research, at all? Anything?

I have actually done research, but not on origins. Have you done any research to support Common Descent? I’d be very interested in reading your work.

Then what is it? God sprinkling dino bones just to mess with us?

No a record of catastrophic burial and death over a very short period of geologic time.

And yet, they are not wolves.

They can still breed with wolves though, they are all still canines.

They are mere hundreds of years away from each other... far little time to produce a different species.

You’re not a believer in punctuated equilibrium? :-P

Maybe you need to look up more detail than we'd be able to provide you in the forum.
More perspective...

Perhaps.

But the bones uncovered are different from present-day apes and humans... that means that the apes at that time were different.

Yes I agree, apes and humans have changed over the years, but I do not believe that demonstrates they are relatives.

A snapshot of some features.... a different path on other features.

Ok, but what drove them to continue developing mentally? If they still live in the Stone Age shouldn’t they have Stone Age minds? I think this is strong evidence that supports the Creation model that holds that Humans have always possessed such mental cognitive abilities.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that both evolution and creationism are two competing models... not really for the same event, but they have some overlaps.

Ok, Darwinism vs. Creationism

If the evolutionary model is correct, what can we expect to find?
- If there was some way of finding out how animals looked like in the past and dating them, we'd expect that, some time ago, there were animals that resemble present day animals, but are somewhat cruder versions of them.... we'd expect that, these version would get cruder and cruder as time goes back.... we'd expect to find some animals that failed to continue their lineage and became extinct.

Again though, this is assuming that the fossil “record” is a record of death and burial over long periods of time, creationists do not accept this assumption.

- If the creation model is correct, we'd expect to find only the already existing animals... always the same... and, beyond some point, nothing.

Not quite, creationists believe in speciation through natural selection, in fact they require it. What you’d expect to see is natural selection producing a wide variety of species but never actually generating any new genetic information, but rather merely narrowing down the genetic information that was created in the original parent kinds of animals. I think that’s what we actually observe today.

Oh, and, of course, all this applies to plants as well!

Did you know that there are numerous plants found today that can be found in very early parts of the fossil “record”? Not only this, but the plants found there are identical to the ones we find today.

There's a whole science field called paleontology... thousands of people dedicate them selves to it. Which of the two models support their findings?

Scientific facts are not established by majority opinion within the scientific community.

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Relatively new guys, meet Statler, He is well known to us, the paradigm of his though is rather simple to explain in a simple image:

In other words, do ANYTHING but giving up to reason.

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Oh come on LastPost, are you really chastising me for defending my position? That’s kind of what we’re all supposed to do.

Yup, that about sums him up. And, I can go back and forth with anyone, regardless of how painfully deluded they are. But, one thing I'm not about to waste my time on is someone who doesn't accept any common basis for reality whatsoever.

You can’t even consistently define reality without God existing; you’ve helped to demonstrate that beyond a shadow of a doubt. That’s the ironic part.

When someone is willing to lie to defend their position, there's nothing conversation or debate can accomplish.

LastPost and I disagree on a lot, but he’d never call me a liar, but he’s a class act. You’ll learn how we do things on here eventually.