It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
originally posted by: puzzlesphere
a reply to: edmc^2
You have proven absolutely nothing... but... sure mate, you win.
originally posted by: puzzlesphere
a reply to: edmc^2
Russell's Teapot... oh yes, you are definitely winning... lol
Philosopher Brian Garvey argues that the teapot analogy fails with regard to religion because, with the teapot, the believer and non-believer are simply disagreeing about one item in the universe and may hold in common all other beliefs about the universe, which is not true of an atheist and a theist.[3] Garvey argues that it is not a matter of the theist propounding existence of a thing and the atheist simply denying it – each is asserting an alternative explanation of why the cosmos exists and is the way it is: "the atheist is not just denying an existence that the theist affirms – the atheist is in addition committed to the view that the universe is not the way it is because of God. It is either the way it is because of something other than God, or there is no reason it is the way it is."[3]
Garvey successfully pointed out a weakness in the teacup argument, but the teacup argument still seems to successfully illustrate the fact that it is most rational to reject the existence of strange entities unless there is sufficient evidence. Moreover, Garvey failed to give us any good reason to think that arguments can’t help us decide if God’s existence is sufficiently reasonable. He seems to think that either science or religion must be able to provide us with knowledge and just seems to reject the possibility that secular philosophy can provide us with knowledge without a second thought.
This is nothing more than a common prejudice people have against philosophy. The fact that Garvey assumes that the teapot argument only discusses scientific evidence seems strange considering that the argument’s creator, Bertrand Russell, was a philosopher, logician, and mathematician with a large interest in nonscientific philosophy. The fact that virtues and vices of reason can involve logic is at least one good reason to think that philosophy can help us figure out which beliefs are the most reasonable.
originally posted by: edmc^2
originally posted by: Akragon
a reply to: edmc^2
Hasn't been explained like... a million times... that evolution isn't about how life started
Its about how it changes over time
Funny how that never seems to hit home with you people
nah, it's just two peas in a pod I call evolution.
you know, abiogenesis+biological evolution = evolution theory. It keeps it simple and makes people like you remain confused.
Then again there are many more theories besides abiogenesis, but I'll just keep it there for simpletons like me.
originally posted by: Akragon
originally posted by: edmc^2
originally posted by: Akragon
a reply to: edmc^2
Hasn't been explained like... a million times... that evolution isn't about how life started
Its about how it changes over time
Funny how that never seems to hit home with you people
nah, it's just two peas in a pod I call evolution.
you know, abiogenesis+biological evolution = evolution theory. It keeps it simple and makes people like you remain confused.
Then again there are many more theories besides abiogenesis, but I'll just keep it there for simpletons like me.
Well when people tell you over and over that it has nothing to do with how life started... and you insist it does...
you are the only one that is confused here...
but hey... bang your religious drum bro
originally posted by: puzzlesphere
a reply to: edmc^2
...
You are welcome to offer an alternative, but even if you do, it won't change the reality that, rather than being impossible... EVOLUTION IS FACT.
“EVOLUTION is as much a fact as the heat of the sun,” asserts Professor Richard Dawkins, a prominent evolutionary scientist. Of course, experiments and direct observations prove that the sun is hot. But do experiments and direct observations provide the teaching of evolution with the same undisputed support?
Before we answer that question, something needs to be cleared up. Many scientists have noted that over time, the descendants of living things may change slightly. Charles Darwin called this process “descent with subsequent modification.” Such changes have been observed directly, recorded in experiments, and used ingeniously by plant and animal breeders.* [Dog breeders can selectively mate their animals so that eventually the descendants have shorter legs or longer hair than their forebears. However, the changes dog breeders can produce often result from losses in gene function. For example, the dachshund’s small size is caused by a failure of normal development of cartilage, resulting in dwarfism.] These changes can be considered facts. However, scientists attach to such slight changes the term “microevolution.” Even the name implies what many scientists assert—that these minute changes furnish the proof for an altogether different phenomenon, one that no one has observed, which they call macroevolution.
You see, Darwin went far beyond such observable changes. He wrote in his famous book The Origin of Species: “I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings.” Darwin said that over vast periods of time, these original “few beings,” or so-called simple life-forms, slowly evolved—by means of “extremely slight modifications”—into the millions of different forms of life on earth. Evolutionists teach that these small changes accumulated and produced the big changes needed to make fish into amphibians and apes into men. These proposed big changes are referred to as macroevolution. To many, this second claim sounds reasonable. They wonder, ‘If small changes can occur within a species, why should not evolution produce big changes over long periods of time?’* [While the word “species” is used frequently in this article, it should be noted that this term is not found in the Bible book of Genesis, which uses the much more inclusive term “kind.” Often, what scientists choose to call the evolution of a new species is simply a matter of variation within a “kind,” as the word is used in the Genesis account.]
The teaching of macroevolution rests on three main assumptions:
1. Mutations provide the raw materials needed to create new species.* [See the box “How Organisms Are Classified.”]
2. Natural selection leads to the production of new species.
3. The fossil record documents macroevolutionary changes in plants and animals.
Is the evidence for macroevolution so strong that it should be considered a fact?
Can Mutations Produce New Species?
...
Does Natural Selection Lead to the Creation of New Species?
...
Does the Fossil Record Document Macroevolutionary Changes?
...
Evolution—Fact or Myth?
...
If you are to accept the teaching of macroevolution as true, you must believe that agnostic or atheistic scientists will not let their personal beliefs influence their interpretations of scientific findings. You must believe that mutations and natural selection produced all complex life-forms, despite the fact that a century of research, the study of billions of mutations, shows that mutations have not transformed even one properly defined species into something entirely new. You must believe that all creatures gradually evolved from a common ancestor, despite the fact that the fossil record strongly indicates that the major kinds of plants and animals appeared abruptly and did not evolve into other kinds, even over aeons of time. Does that type of belief sound as though it is based on fact or on a myth?
originally posted by: whereislogic
...
Thus, the evidence is clear that belief in “ape-men” is unfounded. Instead, humans have all the earmarks of being created—separate and distinct from any animal. Humans reproduce only after their own kind. They do so today and have always done so in the past. Any apelike creatures that lived in the past were just that—apes, or monkeys—not humans. And fossils of ancient humans that differ slightly from humans of today simply demonstrate variety within the human family, just as today we have many varieties living side by side. There are seven-foot humans and there are pygmies, with varying sizes and shapes of skeletons. But all belong to the same human “kind,” not animal “kind.”
...
originally posted by: edmc^2
...
Glad to know you were once a peer-reviewer. As such, I'm sure you're very aware of the problems facing the scientific community when it comes to peer-review, especially when it comes to something that can't be replicated or falsified over a period of time - i.e. biological evolution.
As an example of the pitfalls of peer-reviewed journals.
...
originally posted by: whereislogic
French science writer Philippe Chambon wrote: “Darwin himself wondered how nature selected emerging forms before they were perfectly functional. The list of evolutionary mysteries is endless. And today’s biologists have to humbly admit, with Prof. Jean Génermont of the University of South Paris in Orsay, that ‘the synthetic theory of evolution cannot readily explain the origin of complex organs.’”
originally posted by: puzzlesphere
a reply to: edmc^2
...
You are welcome to offer an alternative, but even if you do, it won't change the reality that, rather than being impossible... EVOLUTION IS FACT.
originally posted by: whereislogic
"The phrase "Evolution is fact" or "Evolution is a fact" works a bit like a mantra. Can you already call it a meme?
Is Evolution a Fact?
...