Science indicates evolution of species.

originally posted by: whereislogic

What sets man apart from all other creatures on earth is his brain. ... The power of abstract thought and of speech sets man far apart from any animal..

I have talked at length about our ability to think in the abstract. You should look at some of my older posts on this.

Consider: The brain enables us to breathe, laugh, cry, solve puzzles, build computers, ride a bicycle, write poetry, and look up at the night sky with a sense of reverential awe. Is it reasonable​—indeed, consistent—​to attribute these abilities and capacities to blind evolutionary forces?

You could just be describing what can happen if IQ exceeds 80, so what happens if IQ exceeds 500? We do know that people with lets say 160+ can fathom things that you and I would not even attempt in our life time. We physically can't, but they can and at ease.

Another feature that makes the gulf between man and animal the greatest one of all is man’s moral and spiritual values, which stem from such qualities as love, justice, wisdom, power, mercy. This is alluded to in Genesis when it says that man is made ‘in the image and likeness of God.’ And it is the gulf between man and animal that is the greatest chasm

What seems to really have set us apart from Chimps is that we had one chromosome fuse together and that moved us from 24 pairs to 23. The orangutan is actually farther from chimps than us, but are much closer still since they still have 24 chromosomes. It seems that mutation changed us to devote a lot more energy to our brains. Due to this we are physically weaker since there are limits where all that energy can go. A chimp can easily rip your arm off as example with a crazy strength to body ratio as is pretty much with all other animals compared to us.

That abstract ability allows us to think about things that do not exist. If you look around you everything was an abstract thought first, so we can pull abstract thoughts out of thin air and make them real like magic. A byproduct of that ability is we can also think that abstract thoughts are real when they are not. There is a real monster under my bed...never seen it, but I know it is real..as example. Religion fits right in there that we use religion for things we can not explain....yet. Once we can explain something it is no longer religion such as we had 100s if not 1000s of Gods in the past to explain everything we just didn't know about yet. Now we have one God to do the same job....seems convenient doesn't it?

What is the fossil record really saying?

Fossils in general are extremely rare. Conditions need to be exactly right to make it happen, so not everything becomes a fossil. We are trying to decode our past with .0000000000001% of information in the fossils we do have.

The big take away is if there is even one fossil from before snowball earth as we have with cyanobacteria then it means life was there though all in simple forms up until 600 million years ago. The 20% oxygen we have today was created by past life as exhaust such as trees do today. We have fossils going all the way back to Trilobites 600 millions years ago being some of the first more advance life.

There was a massive amount of C02, like 100 times today and this not only corrected snowball earth, but started a massive life explosion that used C02 as fuel, and that started a massive O2 exhaust build up allowing life that used O2 as fuel to explode too with the Cambrian explosion.

How do we know this... We can find evidence in rock formations such as C02 levels, rust levels (O2), glaciers at the equator etc etc AND guess what we have life today that uses C02 and O2 as fuel...Take a big breath you O2 user and feed a tree hmmm

This what I wrote is extremely simplistic as to the levels our experts know and tools they use, but it gets my point across.

Now if you want to say God caused all this to happen I will not debate you on that....

It's important to remember what the science of evolution says and what it doesn't say:

1. Evolutionary biology has never said that an orangutan turned into another species ("There is more evidence for the immaculate conception than there is for an orangutan turning into another species" Cooperton, ad nauseaum).
Cooperton has been asked dozens of times to produce even a single journal article citing the transformation of any primate into a human or any other primate. To date, he has not produced that article. That's because he can't.

2. Evolutionary biology does say that living organisms on this planet share a common ancestry. That means the commonality of DNA across all living organisms on this planet.

3. Evolutionary biology is NOT about abiogenesis or the origin of life on this planet. Evolution science is only about the progressive evolution of species on this planet and how they adapt and change over long periods of time.

In biology, evolution is the change in the characteristics of a species over several generations and relies on the process of natural selection. The theory of evolution is based on the idea that all species are related and gradually change over time.

Neither Cooperton nor any of his acolytes has ever produced a single citation supporting their claims. It's the creationist fraud over and over again, hoping that someone will buy into their garbage.



Creationists are scared to death of real science. That's why they don't do it. That's why they don't publish in scientific journals. That's why it is impossible for them to defend their case.

originally posted by: Phantom423
Creationists are scared to death of real science. That's why they don't do it. That's why they don't publish in scientific journals. That's why it is impossible for them to defend their case.

If God created creation there would be no better scientist than him.

I figure the science you are talking about must be foolishness.

a reply to: Xtrozero
Thanks for demonstrating...

...the old timeworn dodge of evolutionists [and their flock]: “Our fossil record is so imperfect.”

Arguments from ignorance don't work that well on me though. Like the chromosome #2 fusion myth, also promoted by means of playing people's ignorance, leaving out inconvenient facts, using half-truths and twisting logic.

I quoted something about it before on page 7:

PROBLEMS WITH THE “PROOF”

What, though, of the fossils that are used to show fish changing into amphibians, and reptiles into mammals? Do they provide solid proof of evolution in action? Upon closer inspection, several problems become obvious.

First, the comparative size of the creatures placed in the reptile-to-mammal sequence is sometimes misrepresented in textbooks. Rather than being similar in size, some creatures in the series are huge, while others are small.

A second, more serious challenge is the lack of proof that those creatures are somehow related. Specimens placed in the series are often separated by what researchers estimate to be millions of years. Regarding the time spans that separate many of these fossils, zoologist Henry Gee says: “The intervals of time that separate the fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definite about their possible connection through ancestry and descent.”34*

Commenting on the fossils of fish and amphibians, biologist Malcolm S. Gordon states that the fossils found represent only a small, “possibly quite unrepresentative, sample of the biodiversity that existed in these groups at those times.” He further says: “There is no way of knowing to what extent, if at all, those specific organisms were relevant to later developments, or what their relationships might have been to each other.”35*

WHAT DOES THE “FILM” REALLY SHOW?

An article published in National Geographic in 2004 likened the fossil record to “a film of evolution from which 999 of every 1,000 frames have been lost on the cutting-room floor.”36 Consider the implications of that illustration.

Imagine that you found 100 frames of a feature film that originally had 100,000 frames. How would you determine the plot of the movie? You might have a preconceived idea, but what if only 5 of the 100 frames you found could be organized to support your preferred plot, while the other 95 frames tell a very different story? Would it be reasonable to assert that your preconceived idea of the movie was right because of the five frames? Could it be that you placed the five frames in the order you did because it suited your theory? Would it not be more reasonable to allow the other 95 frames to influence your opinion?

How does that illustration relate to the way evolutionists view the fossil record? For years, researchers did not acknowledge that the vast majority of fossils​—the 95 frames of the movie—​showed that species change very little over time. Why the silence about such important evidence? Author Richard Morris says: “Apparently paleontologists had adopted the orthodox idea of gradual evolutionary change and had held onto it, even when they discovered evidence to the contrary. They had been trying to interpret fossil evidence in terms of accepted evolutionary ideas.”37

“To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story​—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”​—In Search of Deep Time—​Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life, by Henry Gee [wiki: paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and senior editor of the scientific journal Nature], pp. 116-117

What about evolutionists today? Could it be that they continue to place fossils in a certain order, not because such a sequence is well-supported by the majority of fossil and genetic evidence, but because doing so is in harmony with currently accepted evolutionary ideas?* [See, for example, the box “What About Human Evolution?”]

Note the contrast with the impression given in this statement regarding the supposed fossil evidence:

...A brochure published in 1999 by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)...

Does the Fossil Record Document Macroevolutionary Changes?

The previously mentioned NAS brochure leaves the reader with the impression that the fossils found by scientists more than adequately document macroevolution. It declares: “So many intermediate forms have been discovered between fish and amphibians, between amphibians and reptiles, between reptiles and mammals, and along the primate lines of descent that it often is difficult to identify categorically when the transition occurs from one to another particular species.”

This confident statement is quite surprising. Why? In 2004, National Geographic described the fossil record as being like “a film of evolution from which 999 of every 1,000 frames have been lost on the cutting-room floor.” Do the remaining one-in-a-thousand “frames” really document the process of macroevolution? What does the fossil record actually show? Niles Eldredge, a staunch evolutionist, admits that the record shows that for long periods of time, “little or no evolutionary change accumulates in most species.”

To date, scientists worldwide have unearthed and cataloged some 200 million large fossils and billions of microfossils. Many researchers agree that this vast and detailed record shows that all the major groups of animals appeared suddenly and remained virtually unchanged, with many species disappearing as suddenly as they arrived. After reviewing the evidence of the fossil record, biologist Jonathan Wells writes: “At the level of kingdoms, phyla, and classes, descent with modification from common ancestors is obviously not an observed fact. To judge from the fossil and molecular evidence, it’s not even a well-supported theory.”

Evolution​—Fact or Myth?

Why do many prominent evolutionists insist that macroevolution is a fact? After criticizing some of Richard Dawkins’ reasoning, influential evolutionist Richard Lewontin wrote that many scientists are willing to accept scientific claims that are against common sense “because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.”* Many scientists refuse even to consider the possibility of an intelligent Designer because, as Lewontin writes, “we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” [*: Materialism, in this sense, refers to the theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality, that everything in the universe, including all life, came into existence without any supernatural intervention in the process.]

In this regard, sociologist Rodney Stark is quoted in Scientific American as saying: “There’s been 200 years of marketing that if you want to be a scientific person you’ve got to keep your mind free of the fetters of religion.” He further notes that in research universities “the religious people keep their mouths shut,” while “irreligious people discriminate.” According to Stark, “there’s a reward system to being irreligious in the upper echelons [of the scientific community].”

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?

Source: Is Evolution a Fact? (Awake!—2006)

originally posted by: whereislogic

What is the fossil record really saying?

originally posted by: Xtrozero
Fossils in general are extremely rare. Conditions need to be exactly right to make it happen, so not everything becomes a fossil. We are trying to decode our past with .0000000000001% of information in the fossils we do have.

The big take away is if there is even one fossil from before snowball earth as we have with cyanobacteria then it means life was there though all in simple forms up until 600 million years ago. The 20% oxygen we have today was created by past life as exhaust such as trees do today. We have fossils going all the way back to Trilobites 600 millions years ago being some of the first more advance life.

There was a massive amount of C02, like 100 times today and this not only corrected snowball earth, but started a massive life explosion that used C02 as fuel, and that started a massive O2 exhaust build up allowing life that used O2 as fuel to explode too with the Cambrian explosion.

How do we know this... We can find evidence in rock formations such as C02 levels, rust levels (O2), glaciers at the equator etc etc AND guess what we have life today that uses C02 and O2 as fuel...Take a big breath you O2 user and feed a tree hmmm

This what I wrote is extremely simplistic as to the levels our experts know and tools they use, but it gets my point across.

That you're running out of any decent red herrings regarding anything or everything I brought up concerning what the fossil record actually supports and points to (and how it doesn't support the evolutionary storyline of common descent for that matter)? Including much of the stuff I already brought up on page 7 as linked in my previous comment. You know, those inconvenient facts that show that:

In reality, the vast majority of fossils show stability among types of creatures over extensive amounts of time. The evidence does not show them evolving from one type into another. Unique body plans appear suddenly. New features appear suddenly. For example, bats with sonar and echolocation systems appear with no obvious link to a more primitive ancestor.

As David M. Raup puts it:

“Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life,” says evolutionary paleontologist David M. Raup, “what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record.”32

32. Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, “Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology,” by David M. Raup, January 1979, p. 23.

The fossil record still shows the same.

Why Some Scientists Believe in God (Awake!—2004)

...
A Spotty Fossil Record

A third mystery that has puzzled some scientists is related to the fossil record. If evolution proceeded over aeons of time, we should expect to find a host of intermediate organisms, or links, between the major types of living things. However, the countless fossils unearthed since Darwin’s time have proved disappointing in that respect. The missing links are just that​—missing!

A number of scientists have therefore concluded that the evidence for evolution is too weak and contradictory to prove that life evolved. Aerospace engineer Luther D. Sutherland wrote in his book Darwin’s Enigma: “The scientific evidence shows that whenever any basically different type of life first appeared on Earth, all the way from single-celled protozoa to man, it was complete and its organs and structures were complete and fully functional. The inescapable deduction to be drawn from this fact is that there was some sort of pre-existing intelligence before life first appeared on Earth.”

On the other hand, the fossil record closely matches the general order of the appearance of living forms found in the Bible book of Genesis. Donald E. Chittick, a physical chemist who earned a doctorate degree at Oregon State University, comments: “A direct look at the fossil record would lead one to conclude that animals reproduced after their kind as Genesis states. They did not change from one kind into another. The evidence now, as in Darwin’s day, is in agreement with the Genesis record of direct creation. Animals and plants continue to reproduce after their kind. In fact, the conflict between paleontology (study of fossils) and Darwinism is so strong that some scientists are beginning to believe that the in-between forms will never be found.”

Facing the Evidence

The foregoing represents just the tip of an iceberg of unanswered questions that puzzle those who dismiss the evidence of a Creator. Some scientists realize that the rejection of God is a path paved, not by hard evidence and careful logic, but by hopeful assumptions and conjectures.
...
The fossil record has failed to prove that life evolved

One of the reasons why you get people to twist the meaning of "evolved" in such a context, and pretend it's OK to use to refer to just any kind of change over time*, ignoring the claims involved in the terms "macroevolution" and the notion of "common descent". *: or interpret it as such when responding to a phrase such as the one above that is clearly referring to what others refer to as "macroevolution", that's the context that phrase is used in.

originally posted by: Xtrozero


That abstract ability allows us to think about things that do not exist. If you look around you everything was an abstract thought first, so we can pull abstract thoughts out of thin air and make them real like magic. A byproduct of that ability is we can also think that abstract thoughts are real when they are not. There is a real monster under my bed...never seen it, but I know it is real..as example. Religion fits right in there that we use religion for things we can not explain....yet. Once we can explain something it is no longer religion such as we had 100s if not 1000s of Gods in the past to explain everything we just didn't know about yet. Now we have one God to do the same job....seems convenient doesn't it?

Are you sure you weren't pulling abstract thoughts out of thin air and making them real like magic?

originally posted by: Phantom423
Neither Cooperton nor any of his acolytes has ever produced a single citation supporting their claims.

You're a liar. Your fraudulence needs to stop. Here's an example of me using a citation on this thread:

originally posted by: cooperton
If the adaptation was dormant in the organism to begin with, then obviously it is part of its pre-set arsenal to handle various stressors. Take for example bacteria turning up production of detoxification genes to handle antibiotics... it's not evolution, they are simply using something they already had to handle an environmental stress.

source (real empirical science)

You make a claim that is proven wrong so easily... It's because you don't care about truth.


I've tried discussing empirical science with you, but you will refuse any science that disregards your theory. You even tried to argue that you don't need initial half-life concentration to determine the time duration of a radioactive sample... It's because you hate science. You just want to cling to your narrative no matter how much evidence shows you how obsolete the theory is.

originally posted by: TzarChasm

originally posted by: Raggedyman
a reply to: TzarChasm

Oh come on TC we have been down this road, you and I, for such a long time.

I know you don’t want to know and I am not here to preach
You can be a big boy and find out for yourself, this thread isn’t about me

Maybe you can stop making excuses and demanding worthy evidence to change your mind, and instead tell us what you think the most logically defensible answer is for the current phylogenetic model and how the animal kingdom graduated from enzymes. Or if you prefer, tell us your creation hypothesis and demonstrate its feasibility and/or inevitability. Maybe you have a destiny equation that could point us toward that empirical evidence of a creator being.

Still waiting for a convincing answer that matches the data.

a reply to: cooperton

And says absolutely NOTHING about an orangutan turning into another species - or anything similar.
You make it up as you go along, picking out bits and pieces of articles which you think support your
case. However, we are all aware of your scam tactics and how you operate.
You wouldn't accept empirical data if your life depended on it.

Once again: "There is more evidence for the immaculate conception than there is for an orangutan turning into another species". Prove it with a credible citation. You can't. You won't. Get lost.

Science finds things that indicate evolution is happening as we speak while on the other hand there are things found that lead to the debunk of the evolution theory.

I think some people are too optimistic.

How would you disprove the evolution theory, and how would you do it so it doesn't make them ridicule the God idea?

Maybe the idea of evolution is so wrong it can't be disproved or it simply being a happy delusion to live in. How do you prove a delusion to the deluded?

People who believe in God are said to be delusional and they try and prove this with science. Belief is simply a part of the spirit of someone, a part of the heart (non-physical)

They literally tell people they don't exist.

Psychology is done keeping the people in question in mind instead of spoon feeding the information which leads to nothing. You can't change someone's spirit with science. It's simply not done.

Open your eyes, look at the world and feel this is evolution. That you're a fish that came this far. Seemingly to some this makes sense.

It gives a peculiar twist to the reincarnation theory though.

a reply to: whereislogic

Much here I agree with, other parts I don't and some is inconsequential such your opening statement that size matters.

I suggest that whether everything is intelligent design or not life wasn't spontaneously popped on the earth. How old do you think the earth is, knowing your belief can help me in understanding where you are coming from.

a reply to: Xtrozero

Most of all, what does it matter how old the earth is?

originally posted by: whereislogic

That you're running out of any decent red herrings regarding anything or everything I brought up concerning what the fossil record actually supports and points to (and how it doesn't support the evolutionary storyline of common descent for that matter)? Including much of the stuff I already brought up on page 7 as linked in my previous comment. You know, those inconvenient facts that show that:

So anything that supports your beliefs is 100% correct and what doesn't is 100% wrong, got it....lol Your "inconvenient facts" are assumptions at best, so why are they 100% correct too? You also totally ignore the plethora of "inconvenient facts" that highly supports evolution in the modern way we see it today...Not Darwinism. You remind me of 911 when 10,000 engineers said that planes hit the buildings, but someone finds some guy in India that says it was lasers and that becomes their one and only truth.

BTW you are all about fossils, like Darwin theory, they are now just small pieces to the whole puzzle, you need to look more past Watchtower as your only source.

originally posted by: Out6of9Balance

Most of all, what does it matter how old the earth is?

Well I find it interesting in how long do you think humans have been on the planet. Have we been here 7000 years or 4 billion? Or does God kind of populate the planet at intervals like a garden rotating different crops?

BTW I can live with intelligent design... I just think God would allow life to progress to his plan and follow all the physical laws he created and not just spontaneously pop life into being as he sees fit. What you suggest is life can be spontaneously created as in going from nothing to a fully complex and unique thing with no connection to any other life form or timeline.

And you think evolution is crazy...lol

How does down syndrome fit in the theory of evolution?

a reply to: Xtrozero

The word goes that at first there was no death.

a reply to: Out6of9Balance

Well have you ever..

This article emphasizes that an older mother is more likely to die before she is able to provide the parental investment necessary to produce an ecologically self-sufficient offspring. Prolonged maternal investment is known to be essential for hunter-gatherers to master the skill intensive food procurement techniques that they will need in order to become independent of their mothers. Because Down syndrome individuals are much more likely to be born to older mothers, they must have been routinely deprived of maternal investment in the human environment of evolutionary adaptedness. This consistent paring of maternal deprivation to trisomy 21 conceptions, over time, may have caused natural selection to favor genes responsible for the energy conserving traits seen in modern day Down syndrome. These traits include muscle hypotonia, decreased cerebral metabolism, decreased hippocampal volume, a strong propensity for obesity and growth hormone and thyroid hormone paucity.

Just a theory like any other.

originally posted by: Xtrozero
BTW I can live with intelligent design... I just think God would allow life to progress to his plan and follow all the physical laws he created and not just spontaneously pop life into being as he sees fit. What you suggest is life can be spontaneously created as in going from nothing to a fully complex and unique thing with no connection to any other life form or timeline.

And you think evolution is crazy...lol

Science is about two things: discovery and evidence. That's it. If there's a discovery, the evidence has to back it up. To date, there is no discovery or evidence for a god(s). That doesn't mean that one doesn't exist. It only means that one has not been discovered and verified with hard evidence.

Science is pragmatic and unbiased. It doesn't matter what the subject is - the evidence must speak for itself. The idiots who think they can scam people into thinking that evolution is not possible or doesn't exist only appeal to like-minded ignorance.

The mountains of empirical evidence speaks for itself. Creationists ignore it because it upsets their apple cart, landing them in the slammer occasionally (remember the scammer, Hovind).

BTW, how's the crowdfunding effort going? Any suckers yet?