evolution: The greatest conspiracy

Originally posted by ZombieOctopus
Why do you think everyone that's taken the time to sit down and put some real effort into the learning process should take additional time to teach you because you're unwilling to do the work yourself?

Translation: only G*d can save your soul, and no one is going to do it for you.

I don't even buy your feigned willingness to learn. You started a thread with the sole purpose of arguing against evolution using arguments from ignorance and bare assertion.

Translation: G*d loves you and I refuse to believe that you don’t want to love him. You hate G*d and lash out at those who love him because you don’t understand him.

Why should anyone try to tutor you when you don't want to learn?

Translation: why should G*d save your soul if your not willing to love him?

It's as if someone were to argue that there are gnomes living inside your TV that hand draw the images because they don't understand how electricity works. If they aren't willing to learn how electricity works, how would you then explain the TV? You don't.

Translation: You don’t see G*d cause you’re not looking for him and you don’t understand the way he works. G*d works in mysterious ways!

A person who is ignorant of a concept, is unwilling to learn it and still asserts expertise dealing with that concept, is a fool.

Translation: If you haven’t read the bible and if you haven’t gone to catholic school I really don’t expect you to understand me because I’m that much more learned on the subject. So get a bible read the whole thing a billion times until you’ve convinced yourself it is true and get back to me.



[edit on 10/3/2009 by JPhish]

The Bible talks about during Jesus' time on earth, how the masses and even some of His own disciples doubted Him - even standing there being witness to His miracles.

Doesn't shock me that in 2009, so many people, of the "masses", are doubting Him as well.

None of us have ever seen Abraham Lincoln in person - but the history books tell us all about him. Would that mean he really didn't exist?

For any doubters, you can read about these people - alot of them were doubters as well - until they died, and were brought back.

It's incredible that their accounts are so similar - like there being "no time" where they went. And feeling such an incredible amount of love while there. And how none of them wanted to be sent back here - they all did not want to leave.

Some of these just can't be explained away - except by the hand of God.

Link

[edit on 3-10-2009 by nomorecruelty]

Now let's debunk a few of the things said by Jon Gary Williams. He said that there is no evidence of the change from reptile to mammal. this is in fact not true. in this link: cambrian.tripod.com... there is ample evidence of "transitional" species from one group to the next.

This is the definition of a mammal. www.dictionary.com
Most of what was listed in that site were features MOST mammals have.
It has also recently been discovered that many dinos had feathers. Most of these had no wings and were very much reptiles.

Also, it is important to be aware that what Jon Gary was having problems with is not evolution itself, but [www.msu.edu...]taxonomy[www.msu.edu...]. taxonomy separates species in different groups, but this is highly subjective, for if we humans lived several millions years ago our taxonomy would have been completely different.

But isn't leaping from species to species what evolution is all about!? Isn't that what this debate is based on? I don't think many people have a huge problem with how animals are classified.

Now the spiders. the spider does not have "semi-evolved" organs-it's organs are good enough for the survival of this species. In fact, there actually is evidence that spiders were also subject to evolution. blog.taragana.com...

This still doesn't show a half-formed spinneret. The spider could still make threads. The sheet spoken of in the article sounds like what the wolf spider does to me. The tail is interesting though...

Here is some interesting info about the bees. They in fact appeared before the flowers they pollinate: www.nytimes.com...

Dr. Michener agreed that the fossil nests looked like the clusters of chambers, or cells, that make up the nests of modern bees. But like other scientists, he cautioned that more research would be needed to confirm the findings. It is always possible that some insect no longer extant made bee-like nests back then. The best evidence, of course, would be to find some fossil bees associated with the nests, he said.

It is very interesting that they found a bee-like nest but don't wasps, dirt dobbers (I don't remember the real name) and other similar insects make nests? I suspect that this was some creature that fed on sap.

Also, there are plant fossils that demonstrate plant evolution; a little fact that apparently was left out. en.wikipedia.org... I know it's wikipedia and not viewed very well by many of you, but check the sources offered in the site if in doubt.

Lol. Even though it's wiki, I'll allow it. But the article says nothing about how flowering plants developed. It just says they appeared.

I admit. I did not learn about evolution in school, although I did do my own research into it and wrote several reports on the subject. I will be sure to read up a bit more on evolution with the link you provided.

But now I must clean house! I'll try to check back from time to time to check this thread.

Originally posted by JPhish

Originally posted by newworld


Translation:

“you are no not a sinner. It's probably that you don't completely understand the bible. It is possible to know about G*d and still believe in the basic principles of evolution. intelligent design i think is how christians of a scientific background call it.

If, however, despite all the evidence you still think G*d is BS, then I can't do anything but shake my head in sadness while the more agressive individuals start insulting you.”

i can tolerate the religious fanatics, but you people who THINK you are scientific yet really have no idea what you're talking about, really put me on edge. You're worse than they are . . .

star and flag for you OP, we have similar views, i think both fairy tales are ridiculous.


[edit on 10/3/2009 by JPhish]

dude, what the heck is your problem? are you implying I'm a fanatic? i placed effort to show as much evidence for my claims and show that evolution is in fact a well-supported scientific theory. and you go and say we have no idea what we are talking about?

check the info, educate yourself, and if you still make these ignorant statements then I simply lose even MORE hope of humanity

I am pleased to see another ATS member that has some divine sense.

Someone mentioned that chimps are close in DNA to humans. There has been a lot of DNA research and papers published about this recently.

I believe DNA similarities are the signature of a Divine artist's common design features.

Read about DNA similarities here:
DNA Similarities

Earlier this week I watched a scientist on CNN news saying that what they now believe is that humans represent one line of evolution and chimps are a totally separate line.

So now the theory has evolved again.

Another article I found about that 3.2 million year old partial set of bones discovered recently has scientists saying that they now believe that all of the so called transitional skulls and bones they have collected are likely just variations of the same human species.....LOL.

This, in fact, is what creation scientists have said all along.....except that the variations are not due to natural processes or mutations....they are simply encoded into the human DNA. Same goes for horses, dogs, cats, and all species that show variations.

reply to post by John Matrix


Why thank you! I'm pleased to see that I'm not the only Christian on here that can find some scientific evidence to back up my claims.

I have so far seen some interesting (if not convincing) fossil evidence. Anyone got anything on the Man of War?

No system currently exists for accurately dating anything from Earth's past.

Carbon dating is grossly unreliable. That's been proven time and time again.

Knowing this, how can anything of the subject be said with any empirical certainty?

That the Earth is 4.5 billion years old? Thats a GUESS...an estimation with about a 4.5 billion year margin of error.

Evolution? That's barely a hypothesis. It certainly doesn't qualify as a theory.

Why do our schools teach these things? Why do the general populace believe them?

Because we live under a "secular priesthood" - no different than any other kind of priesthood that's ever existed in any other culture throughout history.

This "secular priesthood" is a loose conglomeration of scientific elites who, across many generations now, have dictated secular belief systems under the guise of "science".

Here's the true nature of the "evolution conspiracy" you speak of. It doesn't matter to the secular priesthood whether or not evolution is a true phenomenon.

All that matters is that the idea undermines the Christian ideology that has dominated western culture for the past umpteen centuries.

It's a power struggle between ideologies. Truth and science have nothing to do with it.

Originally posted by sisgood
reply to post by John Matrix

 

Why thank you! I'm pleased to see that I'm not the only Christian on here that can find some scientific evidence to back up my claims.

I have so far seen some interesting (if not convincing) fossil evidence. Anyone got anything on the Man of War?

Man of War is a Jelly fish. They are living fossils that haven't changed in hundreds of million years.

Originally posted by Alpha Arietis

Evolution? That's barely a hypothesis. It certainly doesn't qualify as a theory.

Why do our schools teach these things? Why do the general populace believe them?
.....

Here's the true nature of the "evolution conspiracy" you speak of. It doesn't matter to the secular priesthood whether or not evolution is a true phenomenon.

All that matters is that the idea undermines the Christian ideology that has dominated western culture for the past umpteen centuries.

It's a power struggle between ideologies. Truth and science have nothing to do with it.

did you read my post in the first page? Evolution is not "merely" a hypothesis, it's the strongest scientific theory out there. also who says evolution undermines Christianity? science and religion can exists side-by-side.
also, as far as I'm aware, most of the western world dismisses evolution due to the mistake that it would go against their faith.

Correction, the Man of War is often thought of as being a jellyfish but it's actually a siphonophora....it's found in the fossil record as well.

creationwiki.org...

reply to post by Alpha Arietis


I didn't even mention that one. I was saving it for a rainy day! lol!

Not to mention that the "layers of the earth" have been so mixed up by earthquakes, volcanoes, and continental shift over the years that the "layers" in most places are nothing more than a glorified puzzle with millions and millions of pieces.

Science even admits that carbon dating has some very serious flaws

Dating rocks by radioactive timekeepers is simple in theory, but almost all of the different methods (except for the isochron methods - see below) rely on these few basic assumptions: 21

Interweaving the relative time scale with the atomic time scale poses certain problems because only certain types of rocks, chiefly the igneous variety, can be dated directly by radiometric methods; but these rocks do not ordinarily contain fossils.

* Beginning Conditions Known
* Beginning Ratio of Daughter to Parent Isotope Known (zero date problem)
* Constant Decay Rate
* No Leaching or Addition of Parent or Daughter Isotopes
* All Assumptions Valid for Billions of Years
* There is also a difficulty in measuring precisely very small amounts of the various isotopes

The assumption for the K-Ar method is that all argon escapes at the time of rock formation because argon is a gas while potassium is not. Likewise, the other non-isochron dating methods, such as uranium-lead, also fall short because who is to say when the "zero date" was when there was only parent isotope and no daughter? Because of this problem, it might be a significant error to simply assume that all original isotopes present in a given rock were parent isotopes.

"The primary assumption upon which K-Ar model-age dating is based assumes zero 40Ar in the mineral phases of a rock when it solidifies. This assumption has been shown to be faulty." CEN Tech. J., Vol. 10, No. 3, p:342 1996

In summary, many scientists assume that since argon is a gas, all of it should have escaped from the lava before it cooled. Therefore, all the 40Ar in the rock should be the result of decay from potassium. Based on the measured potassium, argon, and the decay rate, they calculate an age. That is why it does not matter how long the magma was in the volcano before it erupted. They believe that when the volcano erupts, all the 40Ar escapes, and the atomic clock gets reset to zero. If all the argon escaped from hot lava of volcanoes that erupted long ago, then all the argon should escape from the hot lava of volcanoes that erupt in modern times too. But modern lava does have 40Ar in it. This is known as the "excess argon problem". Scientists are well aware of this problem and use various calibration methods to "correct" for this problem. However, how are these calibration methods established? Upon what basis are they validated?

A problem with fission-track dating is that the rates of spontaneous fission are very slow, requiring the presence of a significant amount of uranium in a sample to produce useful numbers of tracks over time. Additionally, variations in uranium content within a sample can lead to large variations in fission track counts in different sections of the same sample.42

... and I ran out of room on this post lol!

Here's the article

[edit on 3-10-2009 by sisgood]

reply to post by sisgood


sisgood, that right there is a completely different issue. Now this one about the age of Earth is more open to debate in my opinion.
Is this your "proof that certain theories are faulty or false" thread?

Originally posted by newworld
did you read my post in the first page? Evolution is not "merely" a hypothesis, it's the strongest scientific theory out there. also who says evolution undermines Christianity? science and religion can exists side-by-side.
also, as far as I'm aware, most of the western world dismisses evolution due to the mistake that it would go against their faith.

Sorry, I'm not saying that evolution, itself, undermines Christianity, I'm saying that the IDEA of evolution is used to undermine Christianity by those that would seek to do so.

It's easy to see how the two ideologies can co-exist, sure. But that co-existence isn't part of the context in the average classroom...or even in forums such as this. There usually exists a vivid dividing line in these debates, and this is due to the ideological struggle between the secular viewpoint and the spiritual one. Or whatever you want to call it.

There are strong cases made for evolution, I'll admit, and you provided some excellent links. But it's hardly every piece of the puzzle. The full picture has yet to be empirically realized. There may be enough circumstantial evidence to convince you and others, but you're still jumping to a conclusion. And that, only because the conclusion is already there for you to jump to.

The span of man's knowledge once contained just enough circumstantial evidence to conclude that the sun revolved around the Earth.

There are alternative views to evolution with just as much "science" to back them up.

Originally posted by newworld
reply to post by sisgood

 

sisgood, that right there is a completely different issue. Now this one about the age of Earth is more open to debate in my opinion.
Is this your "proof that certain theories are faulty or false" thread?

Evolution requires a long age of the earth to be feasible.

If it turned out the Earth was much younger than assumed, then evolution may suffer a bit of contradiction.

jus' sayin'...

reply to post by sisgood


Yes, I am well aware we get 'better' nutrition, but our species getting taller is still evolution. We're getting fatter too btw, maybe that's not evolution as defined in a text book but it is an adaptation caused by environmental factors (availability of food).

We do look like chimps, both externally and genetically, we act a lot like them too. Now I'm well aware there are differences, plenty of them, but there is no doubt that we are apes and they are apes and therefore we are related.

Like I said, I've got no issue with people who question evolution but I've yet to see anyone come up with an alternative that makes more sense...

reply to post by Alpha Arietis


Allright, I might have misunderstood your point. Yes evolution is used by some to undermine religions, that's true, but I am sure you understand that is not what evolution was meant to be used for.

Now about the classrooms. It's a good thing that it is not taught together with religions, for the simple fact that people of all walks of life and belief systems share the classroom. Showing any religious slant in a science classroom would play as favoritism to a single group. If evolution is taught in a science classroom with a religious context, then it would be necessary to teach it with ALL other religious points of view. Obviously that won't work.

also it is true that if the age of the Earth happens to be younger, it would ruin the theory of evolution and something completely new would have to be implemented. After all science is ever-changing. however do not forget that there is also the possibility that Earth is much older than we think.

Originally posted by Alpha Arietis
No system currently exists for accurately dating anything from Earth's past.

Carbon dating is grossly unreliable. That's been proven time and time again.

Actually Carbon dating is extremely reliable (especially with the invention fo the accelerator mass spectrometer) for anything contaning carbon. I doubt you actually know the process of how it works by your above statement. By the way its just not carbon that has proven efficient. They have also dated aluminium and chlorine.

Also, ice cores have proven their efficiency time and time again too.

en.wikipedia.org...



[edit on 3/10/2009 by OzWeatherman]

Concerning the "evolution of man"

I learned all about this in school and it's nice to have everything in one place.

This is long, I'm tired. I'm not quoting much at all. All the information presented is sited with references.

The quotes I will focus on (but I am pointing to the entire article as "proof") is in reference to the Cave in France that Germaine Henri-Martin found evidence of how the "early families lived". And the ancient human footprints found in volcanic ash.

Link

Germaine did indeed discover plenty of evidence to very nicely flesh out a very good story of how the first French people lived. For example, the site is full of flint, which was interpreted as being worked into tools. Various "hearths" were also found throughout the site where the first families cooked, prepared their food, and ate. Evidence of these meals, in the form of animal bones, were everywhere. And, she found the hominids themselves, or at least their bones. So, the evidence for a rather complete an intricate life for the earliest French people seemed rather obvious and fairly easily interpreted. After the1950s, the years rolled by without any similar finds of modern human remains below those of Neandertals. In the early 1970s, a young graduate student, Erik Trinkaus, started asking some questions. He found that the reason the skull fragments lacked browridges was because that area was completely broken off. Given this evidence, the interpretation of modern human features seemed to be based on little more than wishful thinking.

The animal bones were problematic as well. They showed no signs of deliberate butchering and they were generally oriented in a parallel or perpendicular fashion with respect to the cave walls and to each other. Such orientation is not consistent with people randomly dropping these bones on the ground of the cave-home surface. They would have to be extraordinarily neat and unusual people indeed to place the remains of dinner in such neat alignment. Of course, such orientation is much more consistent with a watery deposition, and that is exactly what McPherron and Dibble concluded.

Germaine had interpreted the flint stones as very "primitive" tools, even more primitive than those used by Neandertals. Little did she know how primitive these tools really were. As part of their research McPherron and Dibble noted that known manmade tools all have certain features, like a sharpened regular modification of a flint edge. None of the "tools" found out Fontéchevade had such features. They were in fact indistinguishable from naturally broken rocks!

An excellent example of a dating problem in the news appears in an article from National Geographic magazine. It describes some footprints made in volcanic ash that are said to be 3.6 million years old.
As I kneel beside the large print and lightly touch its sole, I am filled with quiet awe. It looks perfectly modern. "I thought that at three and a half million years ago their prints might be somehow different from ours," says Latimer. "But they aren't. The bipedal adaptation of those hominids was full-blown." 23
Mary Leakey discovered this 73-foot long trail of fossilized footprints consisting of 20 prints of an individual the size and shape of a modern 10-year-old human and 27 prints of a smaller person. The paleoanthropologist Timothy White, who was working with Leakey at the time, said:
"Make no mistake about it, they are like modern human footprints. If one were left in the sand of a California beach today, and a four-year old were asked what it was, he would instantly say that somebody had walked there. He wouldn't be able to tell it from a hundred other prints on the beach, nor would you. The external morphology is the same. There is a well shaped modern heel with a strong arch...

[edit on 3-10-2009 by sisgood]

reply to post by Alpha Arietis


What he?she? said!

And no I don't believe that the earth is only thousands of years old. I don't really believe it's trillions of years old either.

I tend to think it's somewhere between 50,000,000 - 200,000,000 years old. Just my thoughts on the matter. No scientific data to back up my thoughts just.. thoughts.

Another problem of dating... Science can't even accurately predict a growing stalagtite! I was visiting Mammoth Cave as a child and the guide there was telling us about a passageway in the cave.
In that passageway (which had been opened about 40 years previous) a stalagtite was growing over the steps.
The guide told us that scientist estimated it would take 200 years for the stairs to be covered...
They were already almost half-way covered!

I asked the guide about it and she was just like... uhhhhh...
Later, I tried writing a science magazine about it... I don't remember which. It was a LONG time ago and I got no response.

And that is when I lost much of my respect for some sciences.

[edit on 3-10-2009 by sisgood]