Do you believe the theory of Evolution to be true?

http://www.pepperdine.edu/pr/releases/2007/november/milleraudio.htm

Participant

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 09 2007,02:20)

Quote (Morningstar @ Dec. 09 2007,00:16)

Stu,

Would you please listen to the lecture on the link found on this webpage when you have a chance?

Hi Morningstar

As you know, and is discussed in this programme, Kenneth Miller was instrumental in demonstrating intelligent design to be not worthy of teaching in science classes in Dover, Pennsylvania.

In this he goes on to advocate a form of intelligent design of the deist kind you wrote about – the creation itself is completely preordained and would seem to have irreducible complexity contained in it for humans to be the final destination of evolution. This directly contradicts the known mechanism of evolution and his own scientific testimony against IDiocy. It assumes that evolution could not possibly take any other route, which is not supported by evidence and again is contradicted by how evolution is known to work.

Frankly his parading of a series of scientists who were also christian is cheap, demonstrating nothing about the actual truth of the claims of christianity and, it is not even the kind of thing Dawkins would do to promote atheism.

He has glossed over a lot of details, for example he mentions but does not explain the apparent contradiction between the cruel and indifferent natural world and the special loving, purposeful concept of life he has. He claims that the assertion that life is purposeful is equivalent to the case that it does not have a particular purpose specified from outside. However the evidence mounts up very high on the 'no particular purpose' side of that.

What do you make of it?

Stuart

I was mostly hoping you would see that evolution and science only gives data of processes.

The final conclusions made in both camps are usually just philosophy.

December 9, 2007 at 3:51 am#74323

Participant

Quote (Morningstar @ Dec. 09 2007,12:48)

I was mostly hoping you would see that evolution and science only gives data of processes.

The final conclusions made in both camps are usually just philosophy.

To the best of our knowledge, gravity force changes in proportion to the inverse square of the distance everywhere in the universe. This is an established fact and it would be perverse to deny it. The atomic theory of chemistry has the same status. I don't think these truths are merely philosophy.

Stuart

December 9, 2007 at 4:25 am#74325

Participant

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 09 2007,14:51)

Quote (Morningstar @ Dec. 09 2007,12:48)

I was mostly hoping you would see that evolution and science only gives data of processes.

The final conclusions made in both camps are usually just philosophy.

Stuart

I meant concerning the “first cause” of these things.

December 9, 2007 at 5:36 am#74333

Participant

Quote (Morningstar @ Dec. 09 2007,15:25)

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 09 2007,14:51)

Quote (Morningstar @ Dec. 09 2007,12:48)

I was mostly hoping you would see that evolution and science only gives data of processes.

The final conclusions made in both camps are usually just philosophy.

Stuart

I meant concerning the “first cause” of these things.

OK, well I don't see how the video is particularly relevant to that. He discusses your 'set in motion' idea but not the philosophical results of applying science to a question.

Just to boringly repeat myself, a first cause is a hole that science fills with nothing and deism fills with a being. If anything is a human invention it is the being.

I think the laws of cricket apply just as well. They state that if the umpires are in disagreement the state of things shall continue. You must conclude that the state of things is 'nothing' in the face of no evidence to the contrary. Thus the MCC has final say on this question: there is no deity.

Stuart

December 9, 2007 at 6:36 am#74339

Participant

Hi Stu,
Does meaningless life treat you well?

December 9, 2007 at 7:07 am#74341

Participant

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 09 2007,16:36)

Quote (Morningstar @ Dec. 09 2007,15:25)

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 09 2007,14:51)

Quote (Morningstar @ Dec. 09 2007,12:48)

I was mostly hoping you would see that evolution and science only gives data of processes.

The final conclusions made in both camps are usually just philosophy.

Stuart

I meant concerning the “first cause” of these things.

OK, well I don't see how the video is particularly relevant to that. He discusses your 'set in motion' idea but not the philosophical results of applying science to a question.

Just to boringly repeat myself, a first cause is a hole that science fills with nothing and deism fills with a being. If anything is a human invention it is the being.

Stuart

did you listen to the whole thing? he discusses the philosopy of those who share Richard Dawkins view and how they interpret scientific evidence.

December 10, 2007 at 7:37 am#74415

Participant

Quote (Nick Hassan @ Dec. 09 2007,17:36)

Hi Stu,
Does meaningless life treat you well?

Hi Nick

I wouldn't know. My life is full of the meaning I have given it, as I hope is yours.

Stuart

December 10, 2007 at 7:42 am#74416

Participant

Quote (Morningstar @ Dec. 09 2007,18:07)

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 09 2007,16:36)

Quote (Morningstar @ Dec. 09 2007,15:25)

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 09 2007,14:51)

Quote (Morningstar @ Dec. 09 2007,12:48)

I was mostly hoping you would see that evolution and science only gives data of processes.

The final conclusions made in both camps are usually just philosophy.

Stuart

I meant concerning the “first cause” of these things.

OK, well I don't see how the video is particularly relevant to that. He discusses your 'set in motion' idea but not the philosophical results of applying science to a question.

Just to boringly repeat myself, a first cause is a hole that science fills with nothing and deism fills with a being. If anything is a human invention it is the being.

Stuart

did you listen to the whole thing? he discusses the philosopy of those who share Richard Dawkins view and how they interpret scientific evidence.

Hi Morningstar

From what I remember Miller says that Dawkins describes the blind, pitiless indifference of the universe and evolutionary processes. Miller does not actually make any point about that statement. Can you remind me what he said about philosophical interpretation of data by scientists like Dawkins?

Stuart

December 11, 2007 at 8:04 am#74472

Participant

Hi What Counts (part 1 of 3)

Quote

I have nothing against science or the scientifc method to attain knowledge, modern technology and all the conveniences it has allowed us in day to day living. i am just saying scientists do not have the WHOLE picture. BUT if i were to compare the regular man-in-the-street with a scientist using the earlier frog-in-the-well analogy, most of us would be myopic frogs (in the well).

Let’s raise the stakes then. Science is the only reliable way to get knowledge. Science works, as exemplified by modern medicine, to name just one area. Faith healing by comparison never works.

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yes there are many sets of “facts” on both sides of the evolution debate that are myth. don’t get me wrong, both sides twist data or conveniently leave data out for a wrong conclusion to form. it makes for a swamp of junk science that one must wade through to form an educated opinion on the subject..

Give me one fact that disproves evolution by natural selection.

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so we both agree, that science is imperfect. which is fine. what is important for me though is this. when a hypothesis has NOT YET been proven to be a fact, it is WRONG to teach it as fact. it remains a hypothesis, a tentative explanation for a phenomenon. to be used as a basis for further investigation.

It is right to call things what they are. Evolution is a fact. Natural selection is the theory that explains how the fact of evolution happened. The historical existence of Jesus is an hypothesis.

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globally taught in textbooks, scientists present their account of the origin of life as the only possible scientific conclusion. we have all heard it at school in the science class… in the begining there was nothing… and from that nothing came a big bang (Big Bang theory). it created all the mass of the universe, from this mass, all the planets were formed, set into motion, all orbiting around the sun. a “primordial soup” ('primordial soup', dr stanley miller) consisting of amino acids, proteins and other essential ingredients came together and life gradually arose from these chemicals. in a nutshell, life was created by chance from matter. today many scientists propagate the belief that life originates from matter. however, there is still no ample proof, either experimentally or theoretically, that life comes from matter. numerous lab experiments have been attempted to create life, consciousness from chemical experimentation, but so far the stance that life originates from matter is still unsubstantiated. without observation (we weren't there) and without experiments to prove it, this scientific conclusion as to the origins of life can only remain as mental speculation. scientists and evolutionists, yes evolutionists, argue amongst themselves in peer-to-peer reviews and journals, where they acknowledge that this theory is beset with intractable problems. yes amongst themselves, this unanimous front breaks down. yet in popular presentations and textbooks one finds little hint of such widespread doubt. they hold on to this stance fervently despite all sorts of scientific objections.

Abiogenesis is very poorly understood. A chemical event that happened over three billion years ago is going to be difficult to describe. Evolution by natural selection is well established. When the religious actually have a Theory of Divine Creation then maybe there can be some kind of scientific debate. They don’t. All creationsists have is bluster.

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J.S. Huxley, prominent evolutionist:
“A little calculation demonstrates how incredibly improbable the results of natural selection can be when enough time is available. Following Professor Muller, we can ask what would have been the odds against a higher animal, such as a horse, being produced by chance alone: that is to say by the accidental accumulation of the necessaryfavourable mutations, without the intervention of selection. To calculate these odds, we need to estimate two quantities the proportion of favourable mutations to useless or harmful ones; and the total number of mutational steps, or successive favourable mutations, needed for the production of a horse from some simple microscopic ancestor. A proportion of favourable mutations of one in a thousand does not sound much, but is probably generous, since so many mutations are lethal, preventing the organism living at all, and the great majority of the rest throw the machinery slightly out of gear. And a total of a million mutational steps sounds a great deal, but is probably an under-estimate after all, that only means one step every 2,000 years during biological time as a whole. However, let us take these figures as being reasonable estimates. With this proportion, but without any selection, we should clearly have to breed 1,000 strains to get one with one favourable mutation; a million strains (a thousand squared) to get one containing two favourable mutations; and so on, up to a thousand to the millionth power to get one containing a million. Of course, this could not really happen, but it is a useful way of visualizing the fantastic odds against getting a number of favourable mutations in one strain through pure chance alone. A thousand to the millionth power, when written out, becomes the figure 1 with three million noughts after it: and that would take three large volumes of about five hundred pages each, just to print! Actually this is a meaninglessly large figure, but it shows what a degree of improbability natural selection has to surmount, and can circumvent. One with three million noughts after it is the measure of the unlikeliness of a horse the odds against it happening at all. No one would bet on anything so improbable happening (my emphasis); and yet it has happened. It has happened, thanks to the workings of natural selection and the properties of living substance which make natural selection inevitable.” (Huxley, J.S., “Evolution in Action,” [1953], Penguin: Harmondsworth, Middlesex UK, 1963, reprint, pp.49-51)

Your point being? I think you have shot yourself in the foot here, Huxley is demonstrating the difference that natural selection makes over completely chance genetic mutations. At least you have included the point he was making, to some extent. The usual creationist trick is to stop the quotation half-way through to remove the context.

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Taylor, also an ardent evolutionist, wonders how color filters got into the eye:
“There are no precursors for the lens, the origin of which, in the words of Gordon Walls of Wayne University, who has made the study of the vertebrate eye in all its forms his life work, is 'a tantalizing mystery'. (Part of the mystery is how the lens comes to lie inside the coats or 'tunics' of the eye, which derive from the meningeal coats of the brain. It is, so to
say, a bit of skin which has got inside the coating of the brain.) “In the course of evolution various refinements were added, notably the ability to distinguish colours. Less well known is the fact that the eye employs various red and yellow filters to enhance acuity. The pigeon, for instance, has yellow filters which take out the blue of the sky in that part of the retina it uses when looking upwards, and red filters which separate the greens in that part it uses in looking downwards. (G.R.Taylor, Great Evolution Mystery (1983), p. 99.)

So what? Eyes are stunningly complex organs, yet the slow process of evolution has made them, several times over. Complexity is not a good argument against evolution.

Stuart

December 11, 2007 at 8:07 am#74473

Participant

Hi again What Counts (part 2 of 3)

Quote

“Could our modern synthetic theory of evolution be wrong, as were its predecessors, evolution through the inheritance of acquired characters (Lamarck) and instant new species by mutations (De Vries)? What will scientists say a hundred years from now about Neodarwinism, the current theory? I have my doubts about one point in the concept. Of course, that isn't bad; it is how science progresses. Someone doubts an
accepted point, and other scientists, being fundamentally conservative about the things they have learned, immediately pounce on the doubter (providing the point he brings up can be taken seriously). Eventually this leads to one of two situations, both of them good for science: either the doubter is proven wrong or he is proven right. If he is wrong, much will have been learned in marshaling the facts required to settle the question. If he is right, whole new areas of understanding may have been opened.” (Salisbury, F.B., “Doubts About the Modern Synthetic Theory of Evolution,”The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 33, September 1971, pp.335-338, p.354)

Since Darwin, atomic theory and Newtonian physics have been overturned. Darwin is still right, and the evidence only piles up in his favour. Creationist arguments disappear in the face of each new fossil or DNA comparison.

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“The Origin of Variability The problem is the origin of variability. Both Lamarck and De Vries put forth their theories to account for this. Darwin was fully aware of the seriousness of the problem, and he retreated with misgivings to Lamarck's ideas. The modern theory emphasizes the importance of genetic recombinations but ultimately rests upon mutations as the source of the variability acted upon by natural selection. This is where I run into problems. … Gene frequencies do change in populations as a result of selection pressures. This has been observed in the field and duplicated in the laboratory. … But will changes in gene frequencies in response to selection pressures account for evolution in the broadest sense: life originating in the ancient soupy seas and developing over eons of time until the earth is covered with flowering plants and thinking men? Only if there is a continual source of new genes for selection to act upon .

Chages in gene frequency will not give us abiogenesis. Before then, there are no genes! This is a dishonest conflating of two different concepts.

If gene copying was like photocopying then this argument might hold. Genes are ‘copied out by hand’ and plenty of copying errors arise, including copying pages twice. Those double copies are just one way that we get new genes.

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If, somewhere back in the dim reaches of time, a cell evolved the process of photo-synthesis, it is because, according to the present theory, the proper genes and their enzymes were there for selection to act upon. Could random changes in the nucleotide sequences of DNA (mutations) provide these genes and ultimately the enzymes? At the moment, I doubt it, and my reasons for doubting are based upon discoveries during the past 20 years that have indicated to us how really complex living systems are. We have known for a long time that man's body is an intricate and complex machine. Now we know that the cell itself is far more complex than we had imagined. It includes thousands of functioning enzymes, each one of them a complex machine itself. Furthermore, each enzyme comes into being in response to a gene, a strand of DNA. The information content of the gene (its complexity) must be as great as that of the enzyme that it controls. One might begin (as I did) to get the intuitive feeling that genes and enzymes are too complex to originate by randomly changing nucleotide sequences.” (Salisbury, F.B., “Doubts About the Modern Synthetic Theory of Evolution,” The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 33, September 1971, pp.335-338, p.354)

Intuition is about the worst argument for anything. In this case it is also the argument from personal incredulity, which is the argument from personal ignorance.

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“Elementary textbooks of biology relate a simplistic tale about the origin of life on earth which may be true, or partly true, but may be quite false. They describe a prebiotic world in which a rich mix of simple chemicals was formed and underwent reactions which produced the chemical building blocks of life today. They tell of short chains of nucleic acids forming spontaneously, and then becoming able to encourage their own replication in a manner similar to the replication of DNA today. If such nucleic acids did form spontaneously on the early earth, and were able to encourage their own replication, then evolution guided by natural selection would have begun. These primeval nucleic acids would have been the first things able to make other things which are very similar to themselves, but usually slightly different. The first letters in the code of life would have become linked together. Undirected mutations in the first self-replicating nucleic acids would have allowed new, more efficient, nucleic acids to evolve. Some of these might have been `more efficient' because they encouraged other components of the primordial world to cluster around the nucleic acids and form the earliest simple `cells'. At some point, of course, some of the nucleic acids would have become capable of the great `trick' of encouraging specific protein molecules to form. Nucleic acids would have begun to encode proteins, and, with the awesome catalytic powers of the proteins available, life would have really been on its way. It is an appealingly simple tale. Many think it is far too simple to be taken seriously. Some suggest alternative scenarios in which modern life evolved from completely different beginnings, in which the nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA played no immediate part. Some suggest that the earliest living (or at least evolving) things were not composed of organic chemicals, but were composed of inorganic minerals which eventually gave rise to the organic chemicals which displaced them.” (Scott A., “The Creation of Life: Past, Future, Alien,” Basil Blackwell: Oxford UK, 1986, pp.184-185)

Yes. Give me the scripture that says this is not a reasonable hypothesis.

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“This is not the place to enter into a deep analysis of the mystery of the origin of life. … For our present purposes it should be sufficient for me to say that I am not able to reveal to you how life began, because I do not know for sure, and neither does anyone else. Scientists have developed a few plausible ideas on the subject, and quite a few less plausible ones. The attempts to recreate the chemistry involved in life's origin are at a very early stage and have met with no really dramatic and convincing successes. It will be some time, at least, before we can describe the precise chemistry of life's origin with the same confidence as we can describe the chemistry which sustains life today. That is no disgrace. It is difficult to descri
be with precision events which occurred at least 4,000 million years ago when nobody was around to witness them. (Scott A., “The Creation of Life: Past, Future, Alien,” Basil Blackwell: Oxford UK, 1986, p.185-186)

Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more with the gentleman.

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these are just a few quotes from published work of scientists and peer-to-peer journals. and yet in schools and popular presentations, they teach and present evolution to us as unquestionable FACT. WHY???

Because evolution is a fact. Abiogenesis is at best an hypothesis. You seem now to be confusing the two.

Stuart

December 11, 2007 at 8:10 am#74474

Participant

Hi Stu,
Darwin would not agree with you.
And it is his theory.

December 11, 2007 at 8:12 am#74475

Participant

Hi What Counts (part 3 of 3)

Quote

biologist W. H. Thorpe writes, “thus we may be faced with a possibility that the origin of life, like the origin of the universe, becomes an impenetrable barrier to science and a block which resists all attempts to reduce biology to chemistry and physics.”

Yes. He is right, except that biology is applied chemistry anyway.

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Theodisius Dobzhansky, prominent evolutionist, writes, “our scientific knowledge is, of course, quite insufficient to give anything like satisfactory accounts of these transitions [from no life to life, from no mind to mind].” Dobzhansky goes on to call the origin of life “miraculous.”

Sure. Except he was a theistic evolutionist. He is wrong about ‘no mind to mind’.

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i could go on and on and find more quotes and writings from scientists, but the point im trying to make is this: evolution and the scientific explanations for the origins of the universe and life are far from proven and tested. life originating from matter has not (and will not i believe) ever be proven. yet everyday i see life originating from LIFE (birth, creation) and i see monkeys still swinging from trees. darwin has said that some species become extinct in the struggle for survival. those which are capable of surviving will survive, but those which are not will become extinct. so survival and extinction, according to darwin, go side by side. the monkey is NOT extinct. our supposed immediate forefather, the monkey, is still existing.

Evolution is a fact and natural selection is a well-established theory that explains it. To say that life comes from life is trivial; it does not demonstrate that life cannot come from abiotic chemistry. Monkeys have never been our ancestors. We are descended from a common ancestor with the great apes, and much earlier a common ancestor with modern monkeys. They are another branch on the tree of life. It is not a single twig of life – there is no special requirement for an ancestor species to go extinct. We shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees 5.7 million years ago, but the ancestors’ other descendents, chimpanzees, are still around because we have not directly competed for their resources in their niche. We have competed with our closer ancestors who occupied the same niche, and we were more successful than they were. Hence we are the only species of homonid left on the planet.

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scientists, no doubt, have more specialised knowledge than the regular man-in-the-street. my point is that they don't yet have the WHOLE picture yet and shouldn't paint it as such.

Any decent teacher or textbook will point out that the answers give by science are always provisional, contingent on no-one coming along with a theory that better explains the evidence. If they get carried away and forget this, it is because there is no alternative explanation. What is the Theory of Divine Abiogenesis? Man was made from dirt! No mechanism is given. There is no other theory.

Stuart

December 11, 2007 at 8:15 am#74476

Participant

Quote (Nick Hassan @ Dec. 11 2007,19:10)

Hi Stu,
Darwin would not agree with you.
And it is his theory.

What would Darwin disagree with?

Stuart

December 11, 2007 at 10:34 am#74477

Proclaimer

Participant

Could someone (including apes) explain to me how nothing became the cosmos.

I am not interested in the matter vs antimatter war, or how matter came to be and clumped together to form bodies and systems. No I have heard all that before, and it proves naught that God created the cosmos.

No what I want to know is how nothing actually became something.

When I think of nothing, all I can think of is nothing resulting from it. In fact no result at all.

Please explain how nothing turned into something, or how something came out of nothing.

I really would like to know, because I could apply that knowledge to some inventive ideas I have, such as making 1 million dollars appear out of thin air.

Thanks in advance and I will give away 10% of the 1 million dollars to your favourite charity, if I can make it appear from nothing at all based on your explanation of how something can come from nothing.

December 11, 2007 at 2:43 pm#74482

Participant

Quote (t8 @ Dec. 11 2007,21:34)

Could someone (including apes) explain to me how nothing became the cosmos.

No what I want to know is how nothing actually became something.

When I think of nothing, all I can think of is nothing resulting from it. In fact no result at all.

Please explain how nothing turned into something, or how something came out of nothing.

I really would like to know, because I could apply that knowledge to some inventive ideas I have, such as making 1 million dollars appear out of thin air.

t8,

The way I understand it, scientist realize this conundrum. I don't think any of them think everything came out of nothing. I think they believe that at one point in time, the basic rudementary needed “things” existed before the creation of big bang / time.

These “things” must have existed eternally (hard to find words in a no time universe) in some form of a steady state until some reaction occured causing them to “start up” the creation process.

December 11, 2007 at 2:45 pm#74483

Participant

Quote (Morningstar @ Dec. 12 2007,01:43)

Quote (t8 @ Dec. 11 2007,21:34)

Could someone (including apes) explain to me how nothing became the cosmos.

No what I want to know is how nothing actually became something.

When I think of nothing, all I can think of is nothing resulting from it. In fact no result at all.

Please explain how nothing turned into something, or how something came out of nothing.

I really would like to know, because I could apply that knowledge to some inventive ideas I have, such as making 1 million dollars appear out of thin air.

t8,

Thus they replace a sentient god with an inanimate god.

The great inanimate eternal, source of all.

May the Force be with you.

December 11, 2007 at 5:46 pm#74487

Participant

Hi,
THe problem is that men have come to glory in what they think is knowledge
-science-
a partial view at best of what is-
instead of weeking wisdom, which begins in fearing God.

A 19 yr old's knowledge may lead him to by a WRX car because he finds it is the most powerful and reasonably priced vehicle available
but without wisdom he is likely to die at the wheel.

December 11, 2007 at 6:09 pm#74489

Participant

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 11 2007,19:15)

Quote (Nick Hassan @ Dec. 11 2007,19:10)

Hi Stu,
Darwin would not agree with you.
And it is his theory.

What would Darwin disagree with?

Stuart

Hi Stu,
You.
He produced a theory
and godless men grasped it like dying men reach for water
elevating it to the status of an essential fact.

December 11, 2007 at 6:26 pm#74493

Participant

Quote (Nick Hassan @ Dec. 12 2007,05:09)

Quote (Stu @ Dec. 11 2007,19:15)

Quote (Nick Hassan @ Dec. 11 2007,19:10)

Hi Stu,
Darwin would not agree with you.
And it is his theory.

What would Darwin disagree with?

Stuart

Hi Stu,
You.
He produced a theory
and godless men grasped it like dying men reach for water
elevating it to the status of an essential fact.

So in fact you are wrong. Darwin would agree with what I wrote (and be fascinated by the bits discovered since that he didn't know about but fit perfectly into his theory).

You have not disproved the fact of evolution. Straw-grasping is the stock-in-trade of the creationist.

Stuart

December 11, 2007 at 6:33 pm#74495