Argument #2: Evolution Of Species

[pocaracas]

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Why would you like to refer us to yet another "wrong understanding of the world"?

Can you understand that we are not interested in anything related to any god that has been conjured up by man?
Without a god to fall back on, we take reality... or our best abilities to understanding it... and that, old boy, is where science excels.
Among many other things, science has brought us the theory of evolution of the species by natural selection.... a theory that got a huge boost when DNA was discovered and it confirmed that we are all made up of the same building blocks.. all animals, plants, fungi... all life.
What the conditions were for the first spark of life on this planet... we can only speculate. We can show that it is possible to have energy put into a particular system and get proteins out and, on some occasions, it is possible for these proteins to clump into some form of self replicating structure.
There is no absolute way, except time travel, to find out exactly how it happened... but we know it's possible.
Life - and Evolution - is the continuation of this self-replicating process, where the better suited individuals formed new populations in diverse habitats, which then specialized further and further, and further... and BANG... and perform a few system restores to a previous state... ahah, no... not a previous state, it's just that many habitats that were taken by other more powerful creatures got mangled and those creatures disappeared, leaving new niches for the few who remained... And now here we are, sharing this small blue marble with an astounding variety of life, brought on by a simple principle: stay alive, procreate.

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I used big strokes on this painting, because I know that any fine stroke requires way too much time to research... and ultimately, without a time machine, we can't know for sure.... we have educated guesses.

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The model, "evolution by natural selection" has withstood all new evidence that's been thrown at it, since Darwin was first mocked for his idea. Through DNA sequencing, ice core analysis, radio-isotope dating, fossilization and mummification (think Mammoths)... our educated guesses have been time and again corroborated.


You wish for mankind to throw it all out the window, because your special book has in it that some magic entity made all of this by itself... and, if the chronology accountancy is right, it was all done some 6000 years ago and done in such a way as to make it look much much much older...

Please, stop embarrassing yourself.
The magic entity that the book mentions seems to be no more real than Darth Vader or Harry Potter. Work with reality.... not against it. You'll lose.

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You make it sound that straightforward and simple, but it is not.

I see you missed the part where I said just that.... I left it out of the hidden tags, above just for you...

It's not simple, it's very complex... it's millions and millions of years of tiny events....most beyond our ability to discover them.... all we have is fossils, dated by the rocks where they were found.... DNA... perhaps a few other details.

But, you know?... the theory of evolution by natural selection is, as all scientific theories, a model. A simplification of reality which tries to depict the way that the living species we see in the world have come to be as they are.
All the evidence fits in with the model.
You find one piece of evidence that doesn't fit and wither the model has to be revised, or the evidence is faulty and the model stands.

So, instead of trying to redefine what the model is, just give us a piece of evidence that challenges the model.
It's all we ask.

As long as you shy away from that, I see no point for you to bring this argument forward.