Why Christians Attack Evolution

[Bittersmart]

The theory is more than flawed, it is false.
As I stated- a scientific method goes like: we did this, we got that.
Demonstrating a real result. Tangibility.
If you have a theory- you need to show demonstrable results from your test.

Um...they do have evidence of evolution. Okay, first off, here's the definition of the theory of evolution:

Evolution is the change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.

Now, we have observed many different populations of species changing over time, and there is evidence of this change. We see it in Ring Species, in the study of genetics and DNA, in the fossil record. There is ample evidence. If you think any of these are flawed, please provide evidence for your claim.

We are testing bearings.
We make an actual change. We document the OBSERVED change. We decide if that change was beneficial to our desire.
That is how the entire world of engineering works and has worked since time began .

The theory of E has none of that. It has grand guesses.
It has supposed results from uncertain starting points.

No, we observe changes in species. I think Ring Species are a very compelling argument for speciation.

Calling what we do in engineering "Evolution" is very convenient for the promoters of the theory.
Giving it a connection to the real world by association.

I'm not sure what you mean here. I'm thinking you don't actually know anything about the Theory of Evolution, you only try to discredit it by saying weird stuff.

Is it a Conspiracy?
The very word means:" to breathe the same air". Con = "with" and Spirit= "Breath".
That word has been intentionally maligned to protect the guilty.

A football huddle would be a perfect example.
No one calls that a conspiracy, but by definition, it is.

Unlike certain high level groups, the people breathing the same scientific air do not have evil intent.
They are more like a high school clique.
Having position, having power, having financial security.

The last thing they will do is break rank.
Historically, only by extreme pressure has this type of group ever relented to let go of long standing dogma.

When someone with credentials calls them out- the historical pattern is followed.
The dissenter is maligned, his sanity or honesty is questioned.

It is more than a clique.
It is a cult.

That is the most ironic thing I have ever read. You just defined how many religions function (including most Christian denominations), yet this does not describe the scientific community whatsoever. In fact, the scientific community is full of skeptics and people all too ready to scrutinize. When a current scientific idea has been found to be flawed, it is immediately outed as false. There is no room for untruths in science. Alternatively, religion is incredibly insular and defensive against criticism.

If you have ANY evidence showing that the Theory of Evolution is flawed please present it now. Everyone here would want to see it. We would want to know if we're wrong. So, please. Anything you have.

Otherwise, everything you say is just mere opinion and nothing more. It isn't worth a squat.

---

The burden is not mine to bear, you refuse to accept scientific fact. If you cannot accept the work of those in the field of science, then the burden is yours to bear to prove them wrong. You're up to bat little man and we, those who subscribe to rationality and science, are waiting.

I subscribe to both. I just do not worship them as you do.

Respect is not worship. We do not bow at any altars or humble ourselves before icons. We respect the process, nothing more. Trying to equivocate respect for science with religiosity is intellectually dishonest, IMO.

[Chas]

Barrow and Tipler are simply wrong in their views on the anthropic principle and clearly out of their depth on evolution.

Craig is a dishonest buffoon. Have you never watched any of his so-called 'debates'? He doesn't debate since he doesn't listen to or respond to his opponents' arguments.

I love this stuff...

And you have no useful response.

You don't see that the strong anthropic principle has the cart before the horse?

You don't see that maybe physicists don't have the same grasp of biology as, say, biologists?

And, seriously, Craig?

[Bad Writer]

Yup, Craig.

Discipulus, if you love science so much, then why do you know practically nothing about it?

[popeyespappy]

I just do not worship them as you do.

No, you worship the angry desert god of Bronze Age goat herders.

I grant you the point that special creation is a possible answer for the abiogenesis problem. It is however not the only possibility no matter how many times you throw probability calculations full of statistical and biological fallacies at the other possibilities. The fact remains that life could have arisen without god. So if you want to argue god did it, then let's hear you argue that your god did it. I say your god exists only in stories that were in great part plagiarized from the fiction of other religions. I can provide evidence to back up my claims. If you think otherwise then let's hear why your god is any different than the multiple other gods often attributed with creation throughout the history of humankind.

[Rampant.A.I.]

:roflol:

Yea, I guess Barrow and Tipler and Craig need to sit under you old wise one and learn a thing or too as well.....right?

:roflol:

Barrow and Tipler are simply wrong in their views on the anthropic principle and clearly out of their depth on evolution.

Craig is a dishonest buffoon. Have you never watched any of his so-called 'debates'? He doesn't debate since he doesn't listen to or respond to his opponents' arguments.

I'd wager he's watched more than a few. It's the same technique Disciplus uses: Sidestep and repeat the same rhetoric, ignoring any counter-arguments.

It's probably where he learned it.

[Bob Kelso]

Barrow and Tipler are simply wrong in their views on the anthropic principle and clearly out of their depth on evolution.

Craig is a dishonest buffoon. Have you never watched any of his so-called 'debates'? He doesn't debate since he doesn't listen to or respond to his opponents' arguments.

I'd wager he's watched more than a few. It's the same technique Disciplus uses: Sidestep and repeat the same rhetoric, ignoring any counter-arguments.

It's probably where he learned it.

A fair assessment if I've ever heard one. Classic shampoo argument.

Sidestep, rhetoric, rinse and repeat.

[shep]

disciplus wrote: If your worldview cannot account for the origin of life, the very thing that is a prerequisite for evolution in the first place, then as I stated earlier, Creationism is superior in explanatory scope and power

So do you believe that God set the parameters of the universe (ie, setup how everything would pan out including evolution) ? Because if not I don't understand how you can believe in evolution and also believe in creationism. Do you believe the earth is 6,000 years old? Do you realize that evolution is not a theory of how life originated - that theory is called Abiogenesis. I don't understand how you can jump from 'I don't know' to the world being magicked here - and to your last point, creationism does not explain.. if anything it creates more questions than it solves; for example, who created the creator?

shep

[Esquilax]

I agree that things evolve i.e change and adapt over time. We observe that no doubt.

Hi Disc. I'm going to take your post here seriously- I can't take professor seriously since he doesn't seem to want to engage in discussion- and attempt a point by point analysis, even though I've debunked this stuff numerous times for others. Given this, I rather hope you'll engage too.

But the atheist who is a proponent of the theory of evolution by natural selection is a person of great faith! He does not simply say that things change or adapt over time, but rather that homo sapiens owe their existence to a series of natural processes acting on matter originating from some primordial soup which somehow happened to come into existence in the midst of a chaotic, mindless, unguided, unplanned, cosmos.

Gotta stop you there: you stopped describing evolution after the first sentence. The rest of what you say describes abiogenesis, a separate theory from evolution. It's its own thing, with some pretty good- not slam dunk stuff, but solid- scientific findings that back up that it's possible, sufficient to be the best current scientific conclusion. That's not to say we perfectly accept it, just that the evidence is there.

Meanwhile, the rest of what you say doesn't follow at all; the majority of us atheist will simply stop at "we don't know, but here's what the evidence shows so far." To tell us what we say is hugely presumptuous, not to mention wrong, and you present a false dichotomy; there's no reason a creative agent couldn't have been involved with the universe without being involved in planetary formation or evolution.

I find it interesting that you'd take everyone else to task over claims of knowledge or misrepresenting you, and then in the very next breath you demonstrate a misunderstanding of the science you're trying to discuss, and an attitude about what atheists think of origins that doesn't reflect any of our views. Please try and stick to the facts, in future.

The proponent of said theory asks me to believe something that is so improbable ......

This is an argument from personal incredulity, and hence fallacious. More importantly, have you done any calculations of probability, to come to the conclusion that the above is improbable? What comparisons were you able to make, given that you have a sample size of one?

Well just read:

This idea that evolution could have occurred without an intelligent Designer is so improbable as to be fantastic. This has been demonstrated by Barrow and Tipler in their book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. In this book, they list ten steps in the course of human evolution, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the odds of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4-360 (110,000), a number which is so huge that to call it astronomical would be a wild understatement. In other words, if evolution did occur, it would have been a miracle, so that evolution is actually evidence for the existence of God! And here the Christian can be much more open to where the evidence leads. He could say, "Well, God could have used evolution; He could have used special creation. I'm open to the evidence." But, you see, for the naturalist evolution is the only game in town! No matter how fantastic the odds, no matter how improbable the evidence, he's stuck with it because he hasn't got an intelligent Designer. So it seems to me that the Christian can be far more objective on this point. (Portion of a debate transcript, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, United States – 1998 - Dr. William Lane Craig)

William Lane Craig isn't particularly well regarded among atheists, for the simple reason that he's... well, something of a charlatan when it comes to debate. You're going to need to do better than that. More importantly, his argument here is, again, an argument from incredulity, made especially ridiculous because we can see evolution happening today. The fact that he phrases it as something that happened in the past tense leads me to believe that, again, we're discussing abiogenesis and not evolution, an area of science that still isn't perfectly understood. There's simply no way to calculate the probability of such things, as Craig claims to have happened, because the initial conditions of the earth, and all the ways an abiogenetic event might be possible, simply are not known. Any calculation hence made is being done with incomplete data, the kind that real scientists without an ideological bias simply would not publish as representative of the facts.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Do not switch the burden over to me Deidre.

I want you to substantiate what you have said.

Translation:

If you try to discuss with me or ask me questions, I'm going to ignore it and ask questions to which you've already given ample answer to. Since I don't like your answers, I'm going to stomp my feet like a whiny bitch, refuse your answers and ask again in an arrogant tone, or I'll just make bare assertions that you should just go ahead and accept as truth, my little sheeple.

[discipulus]

Yes, saying that we came into existence by numerous, highly improbable events that can be proven to have happened takes more faith than a magical being that cannot be proven to even exist invented the entire universe, that on just one of the billions upon billions of worlds there is just one species among millions that currently exist on that one tiny planet that the magical creator of everything is super concerned about how they act and what they believe.

This is what you have decided is a more logical conclusion and takes less faith to believe.

What proof do you have that the ten improbable events I listed earlier happened by purely naturalistic means?