Nysus, will tackle this later. It's late here:(

CET, Colin, Stock, Johnny, guys, nice discussion. I'm happy you can take what I gave you and support your arguments. Let us keep questioning.

I will re-iterate. Science is the key as far as I'm concerned. I ONLY take issue with evolutionary theory. None of us are going to the stake because none of us are religious. This was merely a learning exercise. Thanks, and g'night phew:thumbsup

Same here. Heading to the gym. Thanks for the discussion. See ya all later.

Mike, try this book and let me know what you think. "The Ancestor's Tale" by Dawkins. Brand new.

oh what i posted was already said.

And 51% of them voted for Bush !

:glugglug

it was a good thread. :)

Whenever there is another evolution thread we should just link to this one and save people the trouble.

:glugglug

This has been my longest thread so far :)

Thanks everyone, shame I couldnt push it over the ten page mark

Okay, cool!

Just keep in mind, evolution doesn't require science, evolution is a definition of a process that says,

1. A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form. See Synonyms at development.

2. a) The process of developing. b) Gradual development.

3. Biology. a) Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species. b) The historical development of a related group of organisms; phylogeny.

4. A movement that is part of a set of ordered movements.

5. Mathematics. The extraction of a root of a quantity.


A definition doesn't require belief or not, it's just a definition of describing something, what all of the above states.

Good old Google for evolution resulted in this URL;

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evol...efinition.html

A quote from 1986 pretty well describes all variations of evolution;

"In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions."

- Douglas J. Futuyma in Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates 1986

Hope this helps some.

Matt

Perhaps you should read more about science. The only scientists who reject evolution are the Christian ones. Evolution is 100% proven.

550 homosapiens

cool, I made it to 10 pages :glugglug

You are wrong. They already have.

http://yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_14313.shtml

Park Service Sticks With Biblical Explanation For Grand Canyon
Promised Legal Review on Creationist Book Is Shelved
By: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
Published: Oct 14, 2004
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The Bush Administration has decided that it will stand by its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah?s flood rather than by geologic forces, according to internal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Despite telling members of Congress and the public that the legality and appropriateness of the National Park Service offering a creationist book for sale at Grand Canyon museums and bookstores was ?under review at the national level by several offices,? no such review took place, according to materials obtained by PEER under the Freedom of Information Act. Instead, the real agency position was expressed by NPS spokesperson Elaine Sevy as quoted in the Baptist Press News:

?Now that the book has become quite popular, we don?t want to remove it.?

In August of 2003, Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Joe Alston attempted to block the sale of Grand Canyon: A Different View, by Tom Vail, a book explaining how the park?s central feature developed on a biblical rather than an evolutionary time scale. NPS Headquarters, however, intervened and overruled Alston. To quiet the resulting furor, NPS Chief of Communications David Barna told reporters that there would be a high-level policy review, distributing talking points stating: ?We hope to have a final decision in February [2004].? In fact, the promised review never occurred ?

· In late February, Barna crafted a draft letter to concerned members of Congress stating: ?We hope to have a final decision on the book in March 2004.? That draft was rewritten in June and finally sent out to Congressional representatives with no completion date for the review at all;

· NPS Headquarters did not respond to a January 25th memo from its own top geologists charging that sale of the book violated agency policies and undercut its scientific education programs;

· The Park Service ignored a letter of protest signed by the presidents of seven scientific societies on December 16, 2003.

?Promoting creationism in our national parks is just as wrong as promoting it in our public schools,? stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, ?If the Bush Administration is using public resources for pandering to Christian fundamentalists, it should at least have the decency to tell the truth about it.?

The creationist book is not the only religious controversy at Grand Canyon National Park. One week prior to the approved sale of Grand Canyon: A Different View, NPS Deputy Director Donald Murphy ordered that bronze plaques bearing Psalm verses be returned and reinstalled at canyon overlooks. Superintendent Alston had removed the bronze plaques on legal advice from Interior Department solicitors. Murphy also wrote a letter of apology to the plaques? sponsors, the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary. PEER has collected other instances of what it calls the Bush Administration?s ?Faith-Based Parks? agenda.

buddy, we're only humans, not some spectacular miracle making species.

Oh, come on. I thought everyone had watched the little chimp use the straw/stick to get his termite snack. I know I've seen that a million times. :1orglaugh

That's both problem solving and the use of tools.

Jesus H fucking Christ! Here we go again. Equate scientists to criminals. The "mad" doctors who dared to go against god in a court of law. It is clear as day what this dickless fuckhead is trying to say and do: Throw Galileo back in the towers you infidels! All you've done is copy and paste a mountain of fossilized bullshit. The more you paste, the worse it smells. It smells like brimstone. Like the unwashed crotch of a fat, old monk.

How come we haven't seen any "sudden" appearance of a species lately? Do species evolve through mutation bound by genetics or are they really created from nothing through a divine lightening from above... when no one's looking? Is DNA and its function just a myth? Was it "invented" by mad scientists to control us? Or is it religion that controls the feeble, superstitious minds? How come god never shows off in front of a camera? How come all the miracles happened in the past, before there were TV's and cam corders to record them? How come god only speaks to people when they are alone and there is no witnesses? Regurgitating the long winded gibberish of another old fool doesn't impress anyone. Specially those who can think for themselves. All you have proven here is that you can write forever and still not say anything. And you can read forever and still not learn anything.

Says who? We can do everything the chimps do and the chimps can do everything we do... even talk. Just in different degrees. And that's due to the difference in our DNA.

That's not miracle making. That's good science.

A stretch for on both the terms 'problem solving' and 'tool', but I'll give it to you.

That's inference. Communication and language are different things. Literature, innovation are things they don't posses

Here's my post today on the subject:

Yesterday their was a 5 page discussion about evolution. Most agree that is exists and is the explanation for the life we see around us.

Just to clarify my position. First, I'm not religious and secondly, I think science holds the key to answers. However, as it stands evolution falls short of explaining the immense diversity we see in living things.

Does natural selection occur? Yes sometimes, not always. In isolation we can observe it occur. But life is never taken in isolation. We can look at sickle cell and malaria, but what about all the thousands of other diseases out there. If we focus on sickle cell and malaria in isolation it appears to prove it exists and works. Have we shown in the lab germs mutating? Yes in some germs we have, not always and not for all germs.

Even assuming that natural selection and germ mutation is a given, their still remains an huge "fill-in-the-blank" as to how we would have evolved from single cells. To brush it off by saying, well it's a process that takes millions of years, isn't a thorough enough answer. It's not a scientific answer. Each creature on earch is composed of billions of cells, cells for the eye, the brain, the heart, the skin, and so on. To take what we know about natural selection and germ mutation and extrapolote that they account for us and all living things is not proven or a given. It also does not prove beyond doubt that we evolved from other creatures, which seems proposterous.

For one, it would require millions of ideal conditions to have existed on earth to produce one creature and/or one group of living things much less all the millions of creatures that co-exist in harmony on earth.

It has not been proven or demonstrated that a single cell was able to survive and to work in concert to create living things composed of more than just one cell.

Off the top of my head yesterday I proposed 3 criteria which I think are fair and scientific, that if met, we could assume with greater certainty the validity of evolution:


1) Dig up all the missing links and put them in a row so we can see how apes turned into man. This way we could see the sequence of man evolving.

and

2) Demonstrate in the lab evolution at work. Speed up the process so we can see a single cell becoming varied species or able to develop in concert to create a living creature, the simplest of living creatures like an insect which in itself is so complicated and their are millions of insects on the planet.

and

3) Create life in the lab. If one is able to create life in the lab, we could say they probably know something about the origin of life and life development. So far, we can't create life. We can only inject it with genes or chemicals, or kill it. The ability to create even the simplest form of life, a single cell, would give validity to the big bang theory because we could show that single cells derive from a combination of rock and minerals.


Evolution is an incomplete theory, a speculative theory, which holds a lot of promise. It is far from perfect and has not been proven to be able to explain life as we see it on earth.

http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showth...adid=383994&s=

Communication and language are different things? No they are not. And I also said in "different degrees". For someone who is accusing me of being biased you sure don't display an open mind.

Here:

http://www.janegoodall.org/chimp_cen...es/default.asp

I know what you're saying about degrees. Even though this is off topic as this has to do with the 99% similarity in our DNA, I was pointing out that we are drastically different.

And yes language and communication are different things. Language is one form of communication.

Read my post above. This is a discussion about Evolutionary Theory. The post above stands on it's own. Or you can have a look at it here http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showth...adid=383994&s=

Anybody who refutes that evolutionary theory has not explained life as we know it is not being honest with themselves. An unbiased, impartial look would point that there is so much missing and a lot of holes that we fill with assumptions.

Mike, give it up.

You will never believe in evolution no matter how much evidence is placed before you because you simply don't want to believe it.

You have a problem with the IDEA of evolution, not the evidence.

Not at all. I clearly give the reasons why I don't believe it here:
http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showth...adid=383994&s=


Watching single cells mutate or observing natural selection in isolation does not explain the variety of life on earth. That should be obvious to any impartial mind. Read my post above.

Mike, go back through this thread and find the link I gave out about half a dozen times.

Instead of ignoring this time, click it.

All the evidence you are looking for is there.

Joe I haven't ignored it. Nothing you've provided addresses all the large question I outline above. Nothing succinctly demonstrates single cells 1) coming into being from rocks and minerals then 2) being able to live under countless ideal conditions and to 3) divide or reproduce and turn into a multi-faceted multi-celled orgranism and 43) develop into varied species and then 5) species evolving into new species. These are essentially the steps that evolution must explain.

Taking things in isolation doesn't work. You want to talk about 'speciation' or cells 'mutating'. Those don't address the larger question/premise of evolutionary theory. That's why the theory is incomplete thus far.

I recommend that you and everybody else read http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showth...adid=383994&s=

Think about it for 2 minutes and think about what our experiments and current knowledge show. You don't get one from the other without filling in large gaps with limitless assumptions. Let's hold the theory to the litmus tests that we do for other sciences and not believe it solely because we really really want it to be true.

mutation happens ALL the time, it's not an occassional process.

Natural selection is observed ALL the time as well.

DNA explains very well the variety in a population and in between species.

I

thats a real sad statistic :(

Agreed. But those assumptions are based on evidence, not random beliefs. You seem to take the assumptions you call "holes" in the theory to insist on disproving it. I read your post. You want strict, concrete lab results that mathematically and physically prove the theory of evolution. But as you said yourself, the real world doesn't behave as it does in a lab. Forget about science and arguments for a second and look at nature itself. Forget about trying to understand it for a second and just "feel" it. You'll see how it works. It does what it does regardless of our conclusions and assumptions. The truth about the world is not bound by our theories, measurements and definitions. You don't always have to fill ALL the holes with lab results to get closer to the truth. You don't have to drive over every curve in the road to see where it's headed. If you can't put all the little pieces together to get the answers, step back and see the big picture.

OK. I've been up way too late and am starting to sound like a coked up oracle. Time for bed. Later.

The lunatics are taking over the Asylum :(

Again re-read what I posted. You're blinded by your partiality to your biology studies. I already said that mutation and natural selection occur. We observe them in isolation all the time.

DNA does not "explain" how the variety of species on earth came to be. It merely shows us that there are differences. It's a marker that we can use to define the differences we observe.

Victor, thank you so much for the post!!!!

I agree that the assumptions are based on some evidence that we've been able to observe such as cell mutations and natural selection (at least salient natural selection). I'm not using the holes to disprove it. I'm merely saying that in order for the theory to be put to the test as the "truth" as it's touted to be, it would be in our scientific interest to be able to provide strong evidence in favor of it. The evidence thus far, while showing small occurances of mutations is a far cry from saying we were once single cells the evolved into what we are today. I outlined some steps above and each step has enormous holes. I sincerely hope we fill those holes. I have faith that science may unlock them. Right now, it's a theory, a tenative speculative theory. It's an interesting and fascinating one too.

As for "feeling" it, people 'feel' things all the time and are mistaken. That's not a good litmus test. The world is very much guided by principles and theories we've come to know and control.

Good night buddy! :)

Amazing thread even for this subject. There's little worth adding that Joe and others haven't said far better than I ever could. What's amazing is how people are not only so very ignorant but they happily shout it from the rooftops. Why on earth would anyone argue on a subject they have almost no knowledge of? But then to argue against evolution does take a huge amount of ignorance in the first place.

Amusing and sometimes informative reading if nothing else. If you're going to argue a subject though learn it first. The links to information are there and have been repeated a multitude of times. It makes for a far better debate and stops people laughing at you

:glugglug

Again, somebody blinded by assuming evolution is correct. In another time and place, this person would put people at the stake for not believing the other prevailing notion, religion.

Read http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showth...adid=383994&s=
and draw your own conclusions. I know quite a bit about science. I've studied for years.

Interesting thought you have there.

very interesting

Well the same could be said about most science. Everything in science is tentative. You seem to have a particular problem with evolution.. or do you really just have a general problem with scientific method.

No I read what you said, you implied mutations happen occassionally.. and you said later "small occurences of mutations"
mutations happen all the time, it's not an isolated occurence, like you seem to think.
Cancer for example is the accumulation of mutations.

Ok, emm.. Mike33... there are two fundamental problems here which lead to you never beleiving in this ;)

1) You do not seem to understand what science is, or at least not how "facts" in science are proven.
2) You do not seem to understand what evolution is.


I might base this on too little of the thread read, but oh well...

About 1)
A scientific "fact" basically is anything that can not be explained differently. For example: A few hundred years ago, the earth was FLAT for most people. Why? Because it honestly LOOKS flat if you just look outside. Until it was proven that it just looks flat because it is so immensly big, it was a scientific fact that it is flat.
That might be a bad example, but thats how it is. You can use any other "fact" with this and it is the same.

Thus, because there is no other feasable explanation of why we are here, or how it all evolved from single-cell organisms, evolution is a PROVEN FACT.

About 2)
Evolution is the process of organisms changing over long periods of time due to mutations and natural selection.
You do agree that mutations happen, you do agree that natural selections happen, but you do not accept Evolution. Just because your mind can not grasp what mutations and natural selections on a LARGE SCALE over a LONG PERIOD OF TIME (we are not talking _millions_ of years here btw, we are talking _billions_) can produce.

Our organisms, be it a single cell organism, a human being, or a blue wale, all have DNA. Mutate it, and the organism changes. It takes a LOOOOOONG time, and we might not know why exactly it DID happen or how, but obviously it did, or we would not be here now.
Or do you think we just popped up here out of nowhere one day?