Large part of the reason why Creationist arguments against evolution can sound so persuasive is beca

Somebody wanted me to make this thread...

I can make this a conspiracy issue which it is

www.talkorigins.org...

Quote here

The five propositions below seem to be the most common misconceptions based on a Creationist straw-man version of evolution. If you hear anyone making any of them, chances are excellent that they don't know enough about the real theory of evolution to make informed opinions about it. Evolution has never been observed. Evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. There are no transitional fossils. The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance. Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved. Explanations of why these statements are wrong are given below. They are brief and therefore somewhat simplified; consult the references at the end for more thorough explanations.

Hey they dared me

reply to post by Deaf Alien

Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved.

This one gets at me...

I do not think they understand the concept of what a theory means (science)

I just love sitting back and watch the little school children pointlessly bicker about stupid crap.

But who or what is beca and why does she make people sound more persuasive?

I have found these two links to be helpful in understanding scientific process, and how it works. They give you some basic guidelines and rules which are helpful in understanding what a theory is, and how it is formulated.

What science is..., and What science is not...

ETA: Number 12 on what science is not:

12. Scientific Theories are not "tentative ideas" or "hunches".
The word "theory" is often used this way in everyday conversation, but a theory in science refers to a highly probable, well-tested comprehensive explanation, usually for a large collection of observations.

Originally posted by Deaf Alien
reply to post by Deaf Alien

 

Evolution is only a theory; it hasn't been proved.

This one gets at me...

I do not think they understand the concept of what a theory means (science)

Actually, I think that their point (those who say that it's a theory) is to differentiate it from a law. Some people treat evolution like it is a law, when it is not.

I did have to laugh at this error on your page, though:

"The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance."

There is probably no other statement which is a better indication that the arguer doesn't understand evolution. Chance certainly plays a large part in evolution, but this argument completely ignores the fundamental role of natural selection, and selection is the very opposite of chance. Chance, in the form of mutations, provides genetic variation, which is the raw material that natural selection has to work with.

There is probably no other statement which is a better indication that whoever wrote that doesn't understand logical argument, because he even disputes himself in the next sentence. While it is true that natural selection doesn't involve chance (much... an argument can be made that chance also plays a minor role there, in that environments can be random,) the fact is that without randomness to act upon, natural selection does nothing. If there is no randomness which results in genetic mutation, there is no natural selection, and no evolution.

Evolution is utterly dependent on randomness, so to say that it does not proceed by random chance is a logical fallacy.

(Kindly note that I am not a creationist, but rather a proponent of evolution. But I am also a proponent of rational statements, hence my issue with that page.)

Originally posted by adjensen
Actually, I think that their point (those who say that it's a theory) is to differentiate it from a law. Some people treat evolution like it is a law, when it is not.

Scientific theories are backed by evidence. Laws are measurements of forces that cannot change. A theory doesn't become a law when proven. This line of thinking is simply ignorance of scientific terminology. A good example of this is the theory of gravity and the law of gravity. We know 100% the law of gravity is true, and it is included in the THEORY of gravity. A theory is a working model of how something works. A hypothesis is an educated guess. A Law is a measurement. Get your terminology right before appealing to that fallacious argument. Theories don't become laws and I've never heard a single proponent of evolution refer to it as a law. It's a theory because its backed by evidence. If it wasn't, it would be a hypothesis.

Evolution is utterly dependent on randomness, so to say that it does not proceed by random chance is a logical fallacy.

That's not true. Evolution is "utterly dependent" on BOTH genetic mutations AND the environment. If there was no natural selection, creatures would never change beyond genetic variation and drift. If genetic mutations didn't happen, creatures would simply go extinct whenever major environment changes happened. The direction of evolution is dictated by the environment, not the mutations themselves. If it wasn't the mutations would be irrlevant and nothing would change. Mutations can add up over years and years and years but go unnoticed until a major change in environment which makes a certain species adapt or die out.

What exactly qualifies a mutation as "random"? It's such a poor description of what actually happens. It could be something like cosmic radiation that causes a genetic change. If we know the cause, and why it happens, how can it be considered random?

Originally posted by Barcs
Get your terminology right before appealing to that fallacious argument.

I didn't say that it was MY argument, I was just pointing out why people say that.

Evolution is utterly dependent on randomness, so to say that it does not proceed by random chance is a logical fallacy.

That's not true. Evolution is "utterly dependent" on BOTH genetic mutations AND the environment.

... argh ...

You're not a big one on logic, either, are you?

If something requires randomness (as we both seem to agree that it does,) then it is dependent on randomness, period. End of story. Stop arguing. I never said it wasn't dependent on anything else, I said it was dependent on randomness, which it is, and which the original article said it was not.

Evolution cannot happen without genetic drift, but it can happen in an unchanging environment -- to say that the environment need change implies that species improvement can only happen in relationship to the natural environment.

What exactly qualifies a mutation as "random"? It's such a poor description of what actually happens. It could be something like cosmic radiation that causes a genetic change. If we know the cause, and why it happens, how can it be considered random?

Because knowing how something happens is not knowing "why" something happens. If it is unpredictable, as any sufficiently chaotic system is, then the change is random.

Originally posted by adjensen
I didn't say that it was MY argument, I was just pointing out why people say that.

And I pointed out why they were wrong.

If something requires randomness (as we both seem to agree that it does,) then it is dependent on randomness, period. End of story. Stop arguing.

Dependent on randomness is not equal to driven by randomness. People make that argument to suggest that evolution is random. It's not. Besides, that argument can be made for any situation in the history of planet earth. It doesn't prove anything. "Randomness" is a factor in everybody's day to day lives. But what is randomness? It's usually a natural process that we might not fully understand. It's not like there's a random number generator determining these things. They are governed by natural processes, natural events and reactions to such events. Cause and effect. Imagine an asteroid collides with another and breaks off orbit. It eventually reaches earth and enters earth's atmosphere. It travels down to the surface and strikes a person in the chest, fatally wounding them. Was this person killed by a meteorite or randomness?

Evolution cannot happen without genetic drift, but it can happen in an unchanging environment -- to say that the environment need change implies that species improvement can only happen in relationship to the natural environment.

The improvement happens when the trait in particular becomes dominant amongst the species. Yes, it is pretty much always directly related to the environment and sexual selection.

Because knowing how something happens is not knowing "why" something happens. If it is unpredictable, as any sufficiently chaotic system is, then the change is random.

But they can predict certain things about the mutations, and they do know many of the causes. If you really want to get into the semantics of using How and Why, you need to get into philosophy. I'm talking about science, which describe the how. The why is irrelevant and may not even exist beyond an advanced description of the how.

free book on catastrophies/evolution

earth in upheaval by immanuel velikovsky

Originally posted by Barcs

Originally posted by adjensen
If something requires randomness (as we both seem to agree that it does,) then it is dependent on randomness, period. End of story. Stop arguing.

Dependent on randomness is not equal to driven by randomness. People make that argument to suggest that evolution is random. It's not.

There is no "driving process" in evolution -- that implies intelligence and direction. I'm not making the argument that evolution is driven by randomness, I don't think it's "driven" by anything. What I said was, from the first post, that it is dependent on it.

Let's do a thought experiment... imagine a planet with an environment that never changes, but is favourable to life. Some ideal temperature, distance from the sun, gravity, etc. Now, let's imagine that there is one homogenous type of life on this planet, single celled; mushrooms; cats; whatever, and that on this planet, there is no genetic drift, no random mutations... like the environment, life never changes.

Roll the clock forward a million years, and what would we expect to find on our hypothetical planet? Business as usual, of course -- the environment can't change, and neither can the life forms, so it is not likely to look any different than it did a million years prior.

Now, let's say that we have the option of adding change, but only to one side. We can either make the environment variable, or we can make the life variable, through random mutation. Make your choice, then move forward a million years... with which choice will life still exist?

Opting for genetic drift, there's no telling what life might look like, but it is highly likely to still exist. Opting for natural selection through environmental change is almost certain to result in a planet wide extinction.

Because knowing how something happens is not knowing "why" something happens. If it is unpredictable, as any sufficiently chaotic system is, then the change is random.

But they can predict certain things about the mutations, and they do know many of the causes.

Everything that I've seen on this end have been attempts to "intelligence up" natural selection (and not always by the ID types -- I've read articles by evolutionary biologists who clearly are attempting to add some level of intelligent direction to natural selection,) and I've never been impressed by the rationale behind any of it.

It has been a long time since I did much research in complex systems and chaos theory (one of the things that I studied in Graduate School was meteorology and I wandered off into chaos from that,) but I'm of the mind that, while it is possible to make absolute predictions that remove the concept of randomness from complex chaotic systems, the computational needs to do so are likely beyond the abilities of anything now or in the future.

"Large part of the reason why Creationist arguments against evolution can sound so persuasive is beca"


is this the title of this thread [what's beca?]? ... or is this it ...

"Large part of the reason why Creationist arguments against evolution can sound so persuasive is because they are both wrong".

Over at
www.thechronicleproject.org...
The work being done there shows the actual original Hebrew as it was supposed to be translated.

Turns out both creationist and evolutionists were wrong and right LOL

Have any transitional fossils been discovered yet? Also theres a few more questions if you search. Such as this one.

HOW DID SEX ORIGINATE? Asexual reproduction gives up to twice as much reproductive success (‘fitness’) for the same resources as sexual reproduction, so how could the latter ever gain enough advantage to be selected? And how could mere physics and chemistry invent the complementary apparatuses needed at the same time (non-intelligent processes cannot plan for future coordination of male and female organs).

Id like to know the answer to this.

Perhaps the reason our arguments are so persuasive is that we point out scientific evidence that is ignored by many scientists because it doesn't fit into their theories. Here are some good sites where you can find out what some of this evidence is:

www.answersingenesis.org...

scienceagainstevolution.info...

www.piltdownsuperman.com...

I may be way off-base here, as this is not a subject I spend a lot of time looking in to, but why can't Evolution and Creationism co-exist?

Is it possible to have been "created" and then left to evolve over time through the same process' adjensen described?

Originally posted by sheepslayer247
I may be way off-base here, as this is not a subject I spend a lot of time looking in to, but why can't Evolution and Creationism co-exist?

Is it possible to have been "created" and then left to evolve over time through the same process' adjensen described?

That's effectively the argument of Intelligent Design, which is treated with disdain by most radical Darwinists (as opposed to simple proponents of evolution.)

reply to post by theophilus40


If only any of that was scientific in the least. It seems many folks need to understand that scientific means backed by objective evidence. Not a single link you posted contains that or actually talks about the theory of evolution. They refer to the creationist straw man of evolution and ask questions that are answered in a basic biology 101 class.

Originally posted by sheepslayer247
I may be way off-base here, as this is not a subject I spend a lot of time looking in to, but why can't Evolution and Creationism co-exist?

Is it possible to have been "created" and then left to evolve over time through the same process' adjensen described?

Whether or not the can coexist depends on your definition of evolution. If you use the term to mean simply that living organisms change over time there is no conflict with creation because this change is something we observe all around us. But some people use the word evolution in the sense that Darwin used it, to mean that all life is descended from a common ancestor. In this sense it completely contradicts the belief that God is the creator.

www.answersingenesis.org...

Originally posted by Barcs
reply to post by theophilus40

 

It seems many folks need to understand that scientific means backed by objective evidence

You are absolutely right and many of the claims made by evolutionists can't be backed up by objective evidence because they involve things that happened in the past and there is no way to test them.

www.answersingenesis.org...