It's Always Sunny - evolution versus Christianity

[downbeatplumb]

Oh not this vapid argument AGAIN!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraminology

Baraminology has been heavily criticized for its lack of rigorous tests and post-study rejection of data to make it better fit the desired findings. Baraminology has not produced any peer-reviewed scientific research.

In contrast, universal common descent is a well-established and tested scientific theory. However, both cladistics (the field devoted to classifying living things according to the ancestral relationships between them) and the scientific consensus on transitional fossils are rejected by baraminologists.

Some techniques employed in Baraminology have been used to demonstrate evolution, thereby calling baraminological conclusions into question.

[Huggy Bear]

Oh not this vapid argument AGAIN!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baraminology

Baraminology has been heavily criticized for its lack of rigorous tests and post-study rejection of data to make it better fit the desired findings. Baraminology has not produced any peer-reviewed scientific research.

In contrast, universal common descent is a well-established and tested scientific theory. However, both cladistics (the field devoted to classifying living things according to the ancestral relationships between them) and the scientific consensus on transitional fossils are rejected by baraminologists.

Some techniques employed in Baraminology have been used to demonstrate evolution, thereby calling baraminological conclusions into question.

I'm actually not familiar with "baraminology", otherwise I would have referred to it. I came to my conclusion simply based what the bible said. Also I don't think were saying the same thing based upon that last paragraph.

[Huggy Bear]

Yeah, I've read your discussions. I've seen you blatantly lie about what it says in the bible so that your assertions appear supported by it.  I'll stick to my own brand of common sense; the kind that tells me you can't take a book about flying angels and talking snakes too seriously.  Thanks, though.  

*emphasis mine*

Again everyone ASSUMES serpent = snake.

Why as a punishment would God make a snake crawl on it's belly? wouldn't it already be crawling on it's belly?

The Hebrew word for serpent is "Nachash" which means "a shining one".... that doesn't describe a snake at all, does it?

[LadyForCamus]

Yeah, I've read your discussions. I've seen you blatantly lie about what it says in the bible so that your assertions appear supported by it.  I'll stick to my own brand of common sense; the kind that tells me you can't take a book about flying angels and talking snakes too seriously.  Thanks, though.  

*emphasis mine*

Again everyone ASSUMES serpent = snake.

Why as a punishment would God make a snake crawl on it's belly? wouldn't it already be crawling on it's belly?

The Hebrew word for serpent is "Nachash" which means "a shining one".... that doesn't describe a snake at all, does it?

Lol, okay, fine. So what was it then? What about magical apples of good and evil? I'm sure you've got an answer for that too. How long did it take you to go through every supernatural claim in the bible and come up with ways to spin them in a non-supernatural light? This has to have been a life long endeavor for you.

[Esquilax]

remember kind = species

So each species must produce offspring "whose seed is in itself", in other words, fertile.

For example a wolf and a dog can produce fertile offspring, but a horse and donkey cannot, and therefore would be of different "sorts", meaning the wolf and dog would qualify as belonging to the same "sort" and Noah would only need to take one of each.

This means Noah didn't need to take very many animals on to the ark at all, he just took a few and evolution did the rest

While I'll congratulate you on being one of the very few willing to use the "kinds" argument that actually goes on to define what a kind even is before making the argument, I also need to say that your knowledge, either of interbreedable species, or the dimensions of the ark, is fairly limited if you think the number of species he'd need to take was just "a few." We're still talking in the order of at least a million species, and that's just within the insect kingdom.

For that matter, how did Noah know these lines of demarcation? Did he have to breed every species of animal with every other, just to see whether they could produce offspring and what "kind" they belonged to? Are you even aware how hybridization works, when you assert this to be the case? For example, you are aware that a horse and a donkey can produce offspring (making them the same kind and thus making one or the other a redundant pairing for the ark) yet that offspring will be infertile (meaning that using your definition of kind would render those species that produce hybrid offspring extinct)? Have you factored in the major genetic drift involved in making it so that one of the parents of an entire lineage of animals would be an entirely different subspecies of animal, and thus fifty percent of the genetic material would not match the species intended for preservation?

This is the problem with these insipid ark apologetics: they might "work" in the broad strokes, but in the end you're still defending a story written by people with no concept of genetics, biology, or evolution: those gaps in their knowledge will hobble the story no matter how hard you ad hoc to make it seem reasonable. In this case, all you've done is added a huge new task for Noah, revealed your own ignorance of the basics of cross-breeding, and failed to make the story any less literally impossible.

... I mean come on, science even tells you that a bunch of animals went extinct all at once, but when the bible says it, it's ridiculous.

Couple things. A: when science mentions mass extinction events, they do not imply that the extinctions happened "all at once." Rather, they describe an entire era of time in which an unusually large number of species went extinct within a comparatively short span at a biological time scale (read: much longer than forty days) due to verifiably accurate environmental events. Which leads me to...

B: the reason the flood claim is ridiculous is not that it describes a mass extinction, that's pure equivocation. No, the reason the bible's claim is ridiculous is that we can demonstrably show that it could not have happened. Geology shows us continual deposits in many areas that would be impossible were the area ever submerged. Anthropologically, we find many civilizations that continued on, rather rudely, without ever realizing that they'd been completely wiped out in a flood, almost as though it had never happened at all. Biologically, we know for a fact that two examples of a species, no matter how you bend to redefine the criteria, could not sire an entire species (let alone the multitude of species that you're asserting here) due to the well established problem of genetic bottlenecking and, frankly, simple fucking logic (the carnivores need meat. The only meat around just so happens to be the only breeding pair of every possible animal. If the carnivores eat anything at all, suddenly the plan starts going to shit.)

So... hey. Is there anything else you want to be wrong about here?

[Huggy Bear]

---

remember kind = species

So each species must produce offspring "whose seed is in itself", in other words, fertile.

For example a wolf and a dog can produce fertile offspring, but a horse and donkey cannot, and therefore would be of different "sorts", meaning the wolf and dog would qualify as belonging to the same "sort" and Noah would only need to take one of each.

This means Noah didn't need to take very many animals on to the ark at all, he just took a few and evolution did the rest

While I'll congratulate you on being one of the very few willing to use the "kinds" argument that actually goes on to define what a kind even is before making the argument, I also need to say that your knowledge, either of interbreedable species, or the dimensions of the ark, is fairly limited if you think the number of species he'd need to take was just "a few." We're still talking in the order of at least a million species, and that's just within the insect kingdom.

For that matter, how did Noah know these lines of demarcation? Did he have to breed every species of animal with every other, just to see whether they could produce offspring and what "kind" they belonged to? Are you even aware how hybridization works, when you assert this to be the case? For example, you are aware that a horse and a donkey can produce offspring (making them the same kind and thus making one or the other a redundant pairing for the ark) yet that offspring will be infertile (meaning that using your definition of kind would render those species that produce hybrid offspring extinct)? Have you factored in the major genetic drift involved in making it so that one of the parents of an entire lineage of animals would be an entirely different subspecies of animal, and thus fifty percent of the genetic material would not match the species intended for preservation?

This is the problem with these insipid ark apologetics: they might "work" in the broad strokes, but in the end you're still defending a story written by people with no concept of genetics, biology, or evolution: those gaps in their knowledge will hobble the story no matter how hard you ad hoc to make it seem reasonable. In this case, all you've done is added a huge new task for Noah, revealed your own ignorance of the basics of cross-breeding, and failed to make the story any less literally impossible.

... I mean come on, science even tells you that a bunch of animals went extinct all at once, but when the bible says it, it's ridiculous.

Couple things. A: when science mentions mass extinction events, they do not imply that the extinctions happened "all at once." Rather, they describe an entire era of time in which an unusually large number of species went extinct within a comparatively short span at a biological time scale (read: much longer than forty days) due to verifiably accurate environmental events. Which leads me to...

B: the reason the flood claim is ridiculous is not that it describes a mass extinction, that's pure equivocation. No, the reason the bible's claim is ridiculous is that we can demonstrably show that it could not have happened. Geology shows us continual deposits in many areas that would be impossible were the area ever submerged. Anthropologically, we find many civilizations that continued on, rather rudely, without ever realizing that they'd been completely wiped out in a flood, almost as though it had never happened at all. Biologically, we know for a fact that two examples of a species, no matter how you bend to redefine the criteria, could not sire an entire species (let alone the multitude of species that you're asserting here) due to the well established problem of genetic bottlenecking and, frankly, simple fucking logic (the carnivores need meat. The only meat around just so happens to be the only breeding pair of every possible animal. If the carnivores eat anything at all, suddenly the plan starts going to shit.)

So... hey. Is there anything else you want to be wrong about here?

---

One quick point

Are you even aware how hybridization works, when you assert this to be the case? For example, you are aware that a horse and a donkey can produce offspring (making them the same kind and thus making one or the other a redundant pairing for the ark) yet that offspring will be infertile (meaning that using your definition of kind would render those species that produce hybrid offspring extinct)?

*emphasis mine*

This is incorrect, I stated that "a wolf and a dog can produce fertile offspring, but a horse and donkey cannot, and therefore would be of different "sorts"".

Before I address your post in full, explain your version of how life came to exist and subsequently evolve.
A horse and donkey are NOT of the same kind because they cannot produce fertile offspring.

[downbeatplumb]

Life came to be because of energy gradients and chemistry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW5XI1KCWLE

[Esquilax]

*emphasis mine*

This is incorrect, I stated that "a wolf and a dog can produce fertile offspring, but a horse and donkey cannot, and therefore would be of different "sorts"".

Fair point, and of course, one that Noah, master geneticist that he was, would have known. And then also comprehensively known the reproductive interactions of every other land-borne species on the planet, including the ones yet to be discovered.

Before I address your post in full, explain your version of how life came to exist and subsequently evolve.

We don't know the exact mechanism of abiogenesis yet, but that is where the evidence currently points. I'm also a little troubled that your response to the problems in your position seems to involve picking holes in mine... you are aware going into this that you'll need positive evidence for your position, and not just a reduction of those of the people who disagree with you, yes?

A horse and donkey are NOT of the same kind because they cannot produce fertile offspring.

Which, again, was well within the knowledge base of those famous bronze-age geneticists we all take our cues from, yes?

[Cecelia]

Evolution doesn't explain how life came to exist....

Neither does Christianity!

[robvalue]

Indeed. Christianity doesn't explain shit. It gives non-answers to difficult questions, raising even more questions in the process.

Sceptics immediately see the problem with a proxy answer, on the assumption that it is somehow true. Believers delight in special pleading and pretending one word answers everything and needs no explaining itself.