Evolution, It's only a theory

reply to post by littlebunny


It's funny how you don't understand what you've even posted

Nothing you've shown discredits evolutionary research. At best you've shown modifications to the theory not the invalidation of it.

I could go on and on explaining why you're wrong but you won't believe me as it would, in your mind, conflict with your set of beliefs and we can't have that now can we

The reality is that when a belief is more important then reality, bad things can happen (ie the inquisition, salem witch trials, etc...)

WARNING, THIS POST CONTAINS OWNAGE - VIEWERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED

(this is what you get when you base your claims on Christian website propaganda.)

Piltdown man:

darwinwasright.homestead.com...

100 years ago, the only human fossils yet known were a few Neanderthals, Cro-Magnon, and Homo erectus. Then an English attorney and amateur archaeologist presented bones and associated artifacts of what appeared to be an as-yet unidentified species. British Imperialists were generally accepting of the news, but French and American scientists were skeptical, doubting that the skull and jaw even belonged together. The British museum touted the “Piltdown man” as authentic, but the American Museum of Natural History displayed it only as a “mixture of ape and man fossils”, which is what it eventually turned out to be.

There was no way to adequately examine such things back in 1915. Chemical tests –common today- didn’t yet exist and we didn’t yet have a practical understanding of radiation. And before the first australopiths were discovered, we didn’t know exactly what to expect of the links that were then still missing between humans and the other apes known at that time. But as we began filling in the gaps in human evolution with thousands of legitimate fossils, a pattern emerged which left Piltdown an increasingly obvious anomaly. Consequently it was taken off display and stored away almost continuously for decades. It lost importance in most discussions because, in light of everything else we discovered over the next few decades, it just never fit, and was eventually dismissed from the list of potential human ancestors for that reason.

As the years wore on, criticism arose against everyone who ever promoted the Piltdown collection because there seemed to be so much wrong with it. Finally, in the 1950s, it was taken back out of the box and scrutinized via more modern means. First fluorine dating revealed that it was much too recent, and it was shown to have been chemically-treated to give a false impression of its age and mineral composition. Then it was finally determined that the jaw must have come from an orangutan, and that it had been deliberately reshaped with modern tools in a well-crafted and deliberate forgery.

No one knows who did it either. And more importantly, why? Errors were already known and previously reported, but few ever suspected fraud because, what would be the motive? Nearly everyone who stood accused was a man of high reputation and credentials. Maybe that was the motive. Maybe Piltdown man was just a joke that had gone too far. But no one was laughing, and they weren’t going to let it happen again.

Nebraska man:

darwinwasright.homestead.com...

Even before the Piltdown hoax was officially exposed, an American paleontologist earned himself a life-time of embarrassment when he found a tooth from an extinct species of pig in Nebraska, and mislabeled it, Hesperopithecus. The cheek teeth of pigs and peccaries are fairly similar to ape molars, and this one was badly worn such that Henry Fairfield Osborne initially believed it to be human. But the real embarrassment came when he publicized his find in a popular magazine rather than submitting it for peer review first.

Creationists like to say that scientists were as duped by Nebraska man as they were by Piltdown man. But they weren’t. Everyone who saw the fossil agreed that it did look like an ape’s tooth. But with only a couple tentative exceptions, the entire contemporary scientific community either immediately rejected the accuracy of Osborne’s assertions, or they demanded more substantial evidence to back them. He obviously couldn’t provide that evidence despite another five years of searching. Eventually, he came to the sad realization that his fossil probably wasn’t really human after all. His more skeptical associate, W.K. Gregory then published a formal retraction in scientific journals.

Creationists often accuse scientists of contriving the illustration of Nebraska man and of conjuring a whole skeleton and facial construct out of a single tooth that was never even human in the first place. But the fact is that the magazine commissioned their own ‘artist’s impression’, and scientists of the day, including Osborn himself, immediately reacted with harsh criticism. As a result, the article was never reprinted.

Now even though Piltdown man was eventually exposed by evolution itself; and even though Nebraska man was simple stupidity, honestly and voluntarily admitted, and even though there were no other such examples in the history of paleoanthropology, -creationists still portray both of these events, and many others, as if they were all part of some ridiculous unified international conspiracy intended to fool the world into believing evolution over creation ex-nihilo. These paranoid propagandists also commonly contend -based only on these exceptions- that each of the thousands of fossil hominids we’ve found and confirmed before and since were all proven to be fakes too –even when the alleged authorities making these claims are already-exposed charlatans currently imprisoned for fraud.

Java man:

darwinwasright.homestead.com...

The two modern skulls weren’t fifty feet away; they were found in a cave over sixty miles away! Despite the many lies repeated by Duane Gish and other creationists, Java man was just one out of hundreds of Homo erectus individuals documented thus far.

Also, Homo floresiensis wasn’t microcephalic; there was a whole community of them. Similarly “Lucy” wasn’t assembled from bones found miles apart; those were different individuals who each bore their own independent evidence of strict bipedality.

Orce man:

www.talkorigins.org...

Gish (1985) tells the story of "Orce Man", a fossil discovered in 1982 near the Spanish town of Orce and claimed to be a human cranial fragment. The fossil comes from the Venta Micena site, and is designated VM-0. A symposium on it was planned for late May, 1984. Earlier that month, says Gish (citing a UPI news report from May 14, 1984):

"When French experts revealed the fact that "Orce Man" was most likely a skull fragment from a four-month-old donkey, embarrassed Spanish authorities sent out 500 letters cancelling invitations to the symposium."

Two French scientists had suggested the fragment "may have come" from a donkey. Another scientist quoted in the news report admitted there was some doubt as to the bone's identity, but thought it was still quite likely human. A third scientist quoted in another news report from Associated Press claimed it was definitely humanoid. Instead of it being a "fact" that the fragment is "most likely" a donkey, a fairer assessment would be that it was still unidentified, but possibly an equid (not necessarily a donkey).

By the next paragraph, Gish is exaggerating even further, and is calling the disputed fragment a "donkey's skull". It is not a skull, and it was not necessarily from a donkey.

It is easy to score cheap rhetorical points by implying that scientists are so incompetent that they cannot tell the difference between a human and a donkey. A more charitable explanation, which turns out to be the correct one, is that the bone is genuinely difficult to identify, as proved by the fact that debate over its status has continued for over 10 years.

Neanderthal:

en.wikipedia.org...

The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus that is known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia. Neanderthals are either classified as a subspecies of humans (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) or as a separate species (Homo neanderthalensis).

Originally posted by skeptic_al

Originally posted by B.A.C.
This is my FINAL post on this thread. Quote me all you want. You won't get a response.

Some good points have been made on both sides. I'm not wasting my energy on this debate any longer.

Evolution is not fact. Plain and simple. Maybe a good theory, but not fact.

littlebunny burned this thread.

Later.

[edit on 4-3-2009 by B.A.C.]

OMG

The god squad has done a proper job on you

Evolution is not Fact, goog one dude.
I must remember that one when I'm down at the
Improve Theatre.

You are just like all the others, unable to answer questions or
take critisism so you just run away.

OK one more post.

Run away? Maybe you should look at the 150+ responses I have on this thread before you spout off. Trust me, you're not the best adversary on this thread. There were much better than you.

Last post.

Haekel’s faked embryonic drawings

darwinwasright.homestead.com...

Ernst Haeckel was a pioneer zoologist and taxonomist whose numerous contributions to biology go largely unnoticed compared to a couple rather odd errors. First, he proposed that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", suggesting that embryonic development reflects the organism’s evolutionary ancestry. To illustrate this, he produced about a hundred drawings of embryos at various stages. But he later admitted that about a half-dozen of them were ‘falsified’ due to a lack of visual references. The fact that any of his drawings were admittedly without reference has disgraced Haeckel’s name in the annals of science.

Darwin wrote that embryology contained compelling evidence of evolution. Creationists dismiss this on the assumption that Darwin’s theory was inspired by Haeckel’s fraudulent drawings, and that consequently, evolution is a fraud. But of course the truth is the other way around. Darwin referred to real embryos; Haeckel’s drawings didn’t even exist until years after Darwin’s final publication.

What is especially sad about Haeckel’s “embellishments” was that they were unnecessary. Creationists adamantly complain that textbooks referred to his admittedly inaccurate drawings for so long. But for some reason, they continue to accuse those authors of fraud even when those books replace the drawings with microphotographs which still indicate those same evolutionary parallels which Haeckel envisioned. Now his original assumption that embryonic development would indicate adult species in an organism’s ancestral history was proven false by 1910. But the fact Darwin recognized, that embryology does provide testable confirmations and predictions of phylogeny was already evident before Haeckel ever picked up his pencil, and has recently began a new embryological study known as “evo devo”. Among other discoveries, this field revealed the evolutionary origin of the feather, as implied by transitional stages in the fossil record, and summarized in the formation of feathers in developing chickens.

It is no hoax that mammalian embryos temporarily have pharyngeal pouches, which are morphologically indistinguishable from the gill slits in modern fish embryos, and that the divergence of development from there matches what is indicated in the fossil record. This is fact, not fraud. And none of these facts should be true unless evolution were true also.

Originally posted by littlebunny

What is the first process of growing a eye?

Because you don't know you need eyes, how do you know were to place them?

Denying the argument exists doesn't mean you won the argument! I'm just sayin!

Here is some info about how the human eye could have evolved.
There are much more detailed articles but this sums it up nicely.

Biologists use the range of less complex light sensitive structures that exist in living species today to hypothesize the various evolutionary stages eyes may have gone through.

Here's how some scientists think some eyes may have evolved: The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature gave it some tiny survival advantage, perhaps allowing it to evade a predator. Random changes then created a depression in the light-sensitive patch, a deepening pit that made "vision" a little sharper. At the same time, the pit's opening gradually narrowed, so light entered through a small aperture, like a pinhole camera.

Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.

In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species. The existence of this range of less complex light-sensitive structures supports scientists' hypotheses about how complex eyes like ours could evolve. bThe first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.

www.pbs.org...
bold mine for emphasis

Originally posted by jfj123

Originally posted by littlebunny

What is the first process of growing a eye?

Because you don't know you need eyes, how do you know were to place them?

Denying the argument exists doesn't mean you won the argument! I'm just sayin!

Here is some info about how the human eye could have evolved.
There are much more detailed articles but this sums it up nicely.

Biologists use the range of less complex light sensitive structures that exist in living species today to hypothesize the various evolutionary stages eyes may have gone through.

Here's how some scientists think some eyes may have evolved: The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature gave it some tiny survival advantage, perhaps allowing it to evade a predator. Random changes then created a depression in the light-sensitive patch, a deepening pit that made "vision" a little sharper. At the same time, the pit's opening gradually narrowed, so light entered through a small aperture, like a pinhole camera.

Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.

In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species. The existence of this range of less complex light-sensitive structures supports scientists' hypotheses about how complex eyes like ours could evolve. bThe first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.

www.pbs.org...
bold mine for emphasis

That's impossible according the Bibleism, because the Universe is at
most 10,000 years old.

Originally posted by skeptic_al

That's impossible according the Bibleism, because the Universe is at
most 10,000 years old.

And of course dinosaurs were also on noah's ark. That must been one noisy ship
Hope they didn't put he raptor pens too close the the sheep pens

Ah wait the whole noah's ark thing is a completely different, non-provable story

Oh and bunny...
What about the fraud of noah's ark? Noahs ark could not have existed and put 2 of every animal on the planet on it so does that mean since there is one instance of fraud, that god does not exist? That's the logic you're using on us so if it's legit for us, it must be legit for you

[edit on 4-3-2009 by jfj123]

reply to post by rickyrrr


Dude your post got heaps of stars, but from whom, those that think your post supports ET or from IDers and creationists?
You really need to think about what you just described though.

Originally posted by rickyrrr


I am no biologist, so I can't speak for the precise answers to your questions. However I am a computer scientist and I can provide a compelling example that lends credence to evolution.

In artificial intelligence, there exists a technique known as Genetic Algorithms or GA.

A genetic algorithm is a program written to quickly find solutions to equations or other problems, by a process of random mutation and selection.

Did the system of GA used in AI create itself? Were the laws governing the parameters of GA a process of evolution itself, how did they get set? This sytem needs a creator. GA was DESIGNED for a specific perpose using a language and code, only conscious beings create such systems and codes and launguages. DNA is a code. This is a bad analogy i am afraid. Although it may sound cool, its a system reliant on a pre-existing logic applied by a conciousness that sets the rules, the codes and languages for the system to eventually bring about a result with a specific intention. I hope you can see what I mean.

It more or less goes like this:

A population of solutions with randomized attributes is created. Because it is randomized, they are pretty much all crappy solutions.... some crappier than others.

So randomness is a law that is required and inbuilt into the system with an intent, it is not purely random then is it. The solutions are preset and already a population, they do not evolve from just one simple solution do they? They do not evolve from a simple solution that caused itself or was a result of an enviroment that conspired to bring about an original solution, something caused the solutions. Created them and inserted a law of randomized attributes.

In as much as GA represents a "model" of life and reproduction, then it could be said to be laboratory evidence for evolution. It is up to you to agree or disagree as to whether GA mimics life and reproduction.

You mean a system like GA that is produced by a consciousness that sets the system up with a genesis equaling preset solutions with randomized attributes(characteristics), is actually supporting Evolution? Ok.

One thing is certain: Genetic Algorithms are proof that a random process coupled with a selection component will result in accurate solutions, so anybody claiming that evolution is impossible because it contains randomness, should probably come up with a new counterargument.

I think I may have. To think that a programmer of a preset enviroment knows a criteria of randomness is essential and intentionaly places it there amongst an EXISTING population of solutions(life) so that once the system is set off it will see it come up with more or better "solutions" by encoding and inserting "attributes" is some how an arguement for evolution is pretty cool.
I know evolution exists.
Some people even know who the programmer is. Cool post by the way.
IDers will be loving it.

Look at the meaning of a language.





[edit on 4-3-2009 by atlasastro]

reply to post by B.A.C.


BAC you shouldn't even bother. I've proven their ideologies illogical so many times that i've lost count; they're like cockroaches . . . mechanical, spineless, flat, obtuse, “in the dark” and nothing seems to stop them; not even logic . . .

still waiting for someone to address my first post . . . but it probably won't since it might nip this thread in the butt.

[edit on 3/4/2009 by JPhish]

Originally posted by jfj123

Originally posted by skeptic_al

That's impossible according the Bibleism, because the Universe is at
most 10,000 years old.

And of course dinosaurs were also on noah's ark. That must been one noisy ship

Hope they didn't put he raptor pens too close the the sheep pens

Ah wait the whole noah's ark thing is a completely different, non-provable story

Oh and bunny...
What about the fraud of noah's ark? Noahs ark could not have existed and put 2 of every animal on the planet on it so does that mean since there is one instance of fraud, that god does not exist? That's the logic you're using on us so if it's legit for us, it must be legit for you

[edit on 4-3-2009 by jfj123]

But that also means all the animals siblings were all having
sex with each other in order to populate the again.
And Noahs family must have been shagging their brains out
in order to re-populate the earth.

No wonder so many church ministers are into Incest and Paedophile
behaviour, they must believe they are direct decendants.

reply to post by B.A.C.

To say it's a fact is just wrong, facts don't have gaps, facts don't say "Well MOST of the evidence proves this to be right" Facts don't say "Well do you have a better explanation?" Facts don't say "There are mountains of evidence to back this up". Facts are apparent, even to the uninformed.

Facts are facts, unless science has also redefined the word fact?

This is a transcript i just finished of the video i showed in the op discussing what facts, hypothesis, laws and theories are in scientific terms.

Most people think that theories are guesses or hunches or something that you don't have to take terribly seriously, it's not such a big deal - completely opposite in science. Theories are the most important things in science. What a lot of unfortunitly textbooks lead people to misunderstand is that a really good theory grows up into a law, as if theories are refined and then beomes laws and laws are some how more important then theories.

In science actually what a law is, is a descriptive generalisation, so we talk about the laws of thermodynamics that tell you about heat under different curcomstances. You hear about the laws and study the laws of heredity, the mental developed, the live independent assertment and so forth. Because theories explain laws, so in general the hierarchy of explanation is very different in science then it is in the general public. The general public puts facts on top, laws next, hypothesis and then theories - maybe theories and hypothesis can move around a little bit. In science on the other hand theories are the most important thing, laws are the next most important, hypothesis are the next most important and perhaps the least most important part of the scientific explanation is facts - because facts are a dime a dozen.

A fact is actually the most trivial construct in science, it's an observation. We say sometimes it's a confirmed observation but if somebody else doesn't confirm it which is often the case, it's really just a reported observation and that's fine, maybe it's wrong later on. And people sometimes think its weird wow a fact can be wrong, that it's not a fact, well that's right facts can be wrong - they're just pieces of data. A hypothesis is more complex, it's a proposition about how something works in the world that you generally propose after you have some hard evidence after you have gathered some facts and you wont to propose something to explain it or to explain something else related to it.

And the hallmark of a hypothesis is that you have to test it somehow, you have to be able in principle or in practice really, to find some evidence that would work for or against it. Maybe you cant do that exactly now but at some point it is testable in the natural world - if it's not, it's not a scientific hypothesis. Now a theory of course the word everyone confuses, people think it's what scientists dream up after they've had too much coffee too late at night and yeah we can get like that but that's not what a theory is in science. And this is the scientists fault because many scientists talk as if a theory is just some kind of wild idea, that's not the way they should use the word and when they use the word like that - either they're just fooling or just not thinking serisouly because that would never be called a theory in any science. A theory is the strongest construct in science, it actually is a body of knowledge that purports to explain some major body of fact, hypothesis - some big component of a natural science.

Plate tectonics is a theory, evolution is a theory, natural selection is even a theory because there's so much involved in natural selection - it's very complex. A theory is not liable to be slain by a single fact, it can be changed a bit and we change out theories all the time, the body of work that's in it. But we very seldom falsify theories based on things like this. Now a law is also another word that's used in a lot of different sciences, in different ways and i would differ on that to people who actaully are in sciences where laws are used, because in many sciences the term law is simply not used. If in some sciences it's an equation or reduced to an equation, then it should be called an equation.

If another sciences says it reduces to a tortology then it's simply restating what its premus is, then it should be called that. But if the law is a feature of nature that is inviolable, a lot of people think that is what a law is, but this depends on the discipline - where as theory is not like that, theiory is just a large construct of explanations of the natural world.

[edit on 4-3-2009 by andre18]

Wow. Now I see where all the government funding has gone. Evolutionists have been spending a lot of money, time and effort on expanding their propaganda machine to further push their brainwashing.

Meanwhile, Creation Scientists struggle along without government funding on a fraction of the budget that Evolution scientists get.

www.icr.org...

reply to post by andre18


It's not a theory, it's a hypothesis built on assumptions. The first assumption is that Creationists are wrong and there is no God.

The evidence is examined in light of the assumptions and the assumptions are added to and modified as required to fit the hypotheses.

The most absurd assumption is that time, slime and natural processes are responsible for all the thousands of species of life on earth.

From goo to you by way of the zoo!

Evolution is a system conceived in the mind of Satan and born in the minds of men.

When you teach that crap it's no wonder people "de-evolve" and act more and more like animals. Watch the news for proof.

Originally posted by John Matrix
Evolution is a system conceived in the mind of Satan and born in the minds of men.

Wow, this reminds me of the time that creationists argued that Dinosaurs were put in the ground by satan to blatantly steer people away from god....
Or the time that religion said that the earth was the center of the universe... Or the time that Religion said there was no chance for life to exist outside of our planet...

Originally posted by John Matrix
When you teach that crap it's no wonder people "de-evolve" and act more and more like animals. Watch the news for proof.

Spanish Inquisition? Crusades? Salem Witch Trials? Maybe it's not that "Evolution" makes us animals....Maybe it's that we ARE animals.

Originally posted by ExistenceUnknown
Wow, this reminds me of the time that creationists argued that Dinosaurs were put in the ground by satan to blatantly steer people away from god....
Or the time that religion said that the earth was the center of the universe... Or the time that Religion said there was no chance for life to exist outside of our planet...

Really? I studied Creation Science for two years, and I never heard any of that nonsense.
It's marvelous how the human mind correlates memories and data isn't it!
However, these correlations are often done with a faulty perceptual screen.
See above and below for results of a faulty perceptual screen.
My foundation is not shaken in the least by your comments.

Spanish Inquisition? Crusades? Salem Witch Trials? Maybe it's not that "Evolution" makes us animals....Maybe it's that we ARE animals.

This is so old. Haven't you got anything new to add?
Those events were due to the masses being kept in the dark for thousands of years. Even a few hundred years after the invention of the printing press(1440), the masses were still ignorant because books were too expensive, a bible costing as much as a years wages. So logically, when one understands the history of the development and spread of knowledge, as well as the history of authorities suppressing knowledge, one cannot blame those events on Creationists views today. Your assertions and assumptions are absurd.


[edit on 4/3/09 by John Matrix]

Yep...

Like the Electron Theory...

Or Quantum Theory...

Or Radio Theory...

You know... all those things we use everyday?





[edit on 4-3-2009 by HunkaHunka]

Originally posted by HunkaHunka
Yep...

Like the Electron Theory...

Or Quantum Theory...

Or Radio Theory...

You know... all those things we use everyday?





[edit on 4-3-2009 by HunkaHunka]

Your'e forgetting the most important theory of all, the attraction theory that defines how we are attracted to others. If that's such a theory why are people married?

Originally posted by John Matrix
My foundation is not shaken in the least by your comments.

My intent is not to shake the foundation of your beliefs. You are free to believe what you like.

Originally posted by John Matrix
This is so old. Haven't you got anything new to add?

Oh please, people have been behaving like animals long before evolution was even thought of. What is absurd is that you try to link these animal behaviors to evolution.




[edit on 4-3-2009 by ExistenceUnknown]

Spanish Inquisition? Crusades? Salem Witch Trials? Maybe it's not that "Evolution" makes us animals....Maybe it's that we ARE animals.

I don't understand why these episodes can't be mentioned or accepted? After all this was one of the methods that the creation "theory", "hypothesis", "fact"...whatever was imposed in the population. Why is it not relevant? Because it's so "old"?

Evolution vs Creation is always a dead horse. Check out this youtube video that deals with the debate.