Intelligent Design vs Evolution

[CKent]

Originally posted by: dirtboy

Originally posted by: CKent
What evidence is there for the alternative?

Not fun being on the losing side of an arguement you should easily win, isn't it?

My only other comment in this thread was a jibe about it being yet another religion thread, don't lump me in with anyone else here. Just asked you a question.

 

[dirtboy]

Originally posted by: Mo0o

Originally posted by: dirtboy

Originally posted by: Mo0o

A horse has always been a horse. Fossil records prove that. Prove me wrong? Show me where horses weren't horses, how fossil records have evolved and what horses were before they were horses, and the evolutionary fossil record of this. Oddly enough all the fossils of horses we found show zero signs of evolution and match right up with horses bone structure today. What is your excuse for that?


Because if it didn't match up it would be a horse. That's a horrible argument. There's no such thing as a half horse half other animal. Yo'ure either a horse or an animal that speciated into the horse. Before the modern horse evolved there have been horse like animals, those are what it evolved from

Where are those pre-horse horses? Science has shown no proof there has been anything other than a horse.

You link a site with supposed pre-man skulls and bone fragments dating back over 2 million years. Yet, in a 2 million span of time you'd think there'd be tons of fossils. Look at how many people died in the last 50 years... that probably doesn't come close to the millions of pre-man, ape-man (funny you use this as an arguement when evolutionists have already said this isn't true) or hominids, yet you can't provide any reasonable evidence of their existance. None. Not one. Yet you believe that over a course of 2 million years, these people evolved, which should have left millions of bones.

Where are they? Show me da bones!!

so are you saying if we dug we can find every horse that's ever lived?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0317_050317_horseevolution.html
http://chem.tufts.edu/science/evolution/HorseEvolution.htm

This is desperation if I've ever seen it... from your link:

"This small dog-sized animal is the oldest found horse ancestor that lived about 55 million years ago."

Hmmmm, maybe it's a... DOG! lol

How about this one:

"Parahippus appears to be the evolutionary ?link? between the old forest-dwelling horses and the modern plains-dwelling grazers."

Appears or is? I thought this was scientfic fact and not speculation.

Those pictures don't show a smooth transition. Evolution is so slow, according to you all, taking millions of year, there should be zero speculation. We should be able to chart minute changes in fossil records, yet those all apear to either not be horses, a different variety of horse or some other animal.

Fill in the gaps people... you're giving yourselves, according this these sites, around 55 million years. I'd hope you could do better than this.

Let's see how you fare with this... Why aren't we seeing any evolution in modern horses or animals?

 

[dirtboy]

Originally posted by: Tuktuk
You misunderstood what I was trying to say. Evolution is proven, it is accepted as fact. Like I said, as true as gravity pulling things to Earth. There is plenty that shows the evolutionary cycle of humans over millions of years, and every new fossil found falls perfectly in line with evolutionary theory.

You're wrong, which proves your own lack of knowlegde in this area. Scientist, evolutionists, biologists etc, all leading people in their fields do not say evolution is a proven fact. Nowhere has it been proven as a fact. You can't prove that! You can't even show me a linear progression of fossil records over a 55 million year period.

There is nothing that proves evolution. You've failed miserablely and I've given you the easiest assignment of all... show me a progression of fossils. We haven't touched on how plants and animals came from the same cell yet, but I know you can't prove that either.

 

[Tuktuk]

Dirtboy, I have to believe someone commiting so many logical fallacies in their argument has to be a troll. If you aren't, I encourage you to take Anthropology 101 at your local community college (or if you are in school already, take it there). You obviously are not familiar with evolutionary theory and I think it would open your eyes a little, if you are willing for them to be opened.

edit: No I'm not going to lay out the fossil record for you, except to say that the linear progression is proven with fossils. I'm not here to be a teacher, only to tell you that the knowledge exists and you can learn on your own.

 

[Tuktuk]

From Wikipedia:

There are a number of common misunderstandings about evolution, some of which have hindered its general acceptance and form the basis of various objections to evolution.[48][49][50] Critics of evolution frequently assert that evolution is "just a theory", a misunderstanding of the meaning of theory in a scientific context: whereas in colloquial speech a theory is a conjecture or guess, in science a theory is "a model of the universe, or a restricted part of it, and a set of rules that relate quantities in the model to observations that we make".[51] Critics also state that evolution is not a fact, although from a scientific viewpoint evolution is considered both a theory and a fact.[52][53][54]

Another common misunderstanding is the idea that one species, such as humans, can be more "highly evolved" or "advanced" than another. It is often assumed that evolution must lead to greater complexity, or that devolution ("backwards" evolution) can occur. Scientists consider evolution a non-directional process that does not proceed toward any ultimate goal; advancements are only situational, and organisms' complexity can either increase, decrease, or stay the same, depending on which is advantageous, and thus selected for.[55]

Evolution is also frequently misinterpreted as stating that humans evolved from monkeys; based on this, some critics argue that monkeys should no longer exist. This misunderstands speciation, which frequently involves a subset of a population cladogenetically splitting off before speciating, rather than an entire species simply turning into a new one. Additionally, biologists have never claimed that humans evolved from monkeys?only that humans and monkeys share a common ancestor, as do all organisms.[56]

It is also frequently claimed that speciation has only been inferred, never directly observed. In reality, the evolution of numerous new species has been observed.[57] A similar claim is that only microevolution, not macroevolution, has been observed; however, macroevolution has been observed as well, and modern evolutionary synthesis draws little distinction between the two, considering macroevolution to simply be microevolution on a larger scale.[58]

Evolution is sometimes misrepresented as being guided solely by "chance" or "randomness". This leads to expressions of disbelief that "pure chance" might generate the remarkable complexity of living beings, and probability arguments are sometimes used to criticize evolution by assessing the probability that a certain highly complex feature might occur "by chance". Darwinian evolution, however, is emphatically not random in its direction. Mutation is random; but natural selection, which determines whether or not those mutations are preserved and propagated throughout the population, is extremely non-random, in that only those features which are adaptive will be preserved. At any time, the evolutionary process encounters a multitude of possible directions, each being proposed by different, random mutations; but only those directions which prove to be adaptive will actually be "taken", and thus be used as a starting point for further exploration. In time, this highly biased (and therefore non-random) preservation allows evolution to reach arbitrary levels of adaptive complexity: the gradual accumulation of small, "plausibly lucky" improvements creates a final result which would have been highly implausible by purely random assembly.

 

[Captante]

Wheres the poll option for "I believe its plausible this thread is pure flame-bait & the OP is a troll"?

 

[saymyname]

I won't even talk to someone who believes solely in creationism

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: saymyname
I won't even talk to someone who believes solely in creationism

I will, laughter is the best medicine :beer:

 

[Mo0o]

Originally posted by: dirtboy

Originally posted by: Mo0o

Originally posted by: dirtboy

Originally posted by: Mo0o

A horse has always been a horse. Fossil records prove that. Prove me wrong? Show me where horses weren't horses, how fossil records have evolved and what horses were before they were horses, and the evolutionary fossil record of this. Oddly enough all the fossils of horses we found show zero signs of evolution and match right up with horses bone structure today. What is your excuse for that?


Because if it didn't match up it would be a horse. That's a horrible argument. There's no such thing as a half horse half other animal. Yo'ure either a horse or an animal that speciated into the horse. Before the modern horse evolved there have been horse like animals, those are what it evolved from

Where are those pre-horse horses? Science has shown no proof there has been anything other than a horse.

You link a site with supposed pre-man skulls and bone fragments dating back over 2 million years. Yet, in a 2 million span of time you'd think there'd be tons of fossils. Look at how many people died in the last 50 years... that probably doesn't come close to the millions of pre-man, ape-man (funny you use this as an arguement when evolutionists have already said this isn't true) or hominids, yet you can't provide any reasonable evidence of their existance. None. Not one. Yet you believe that over a course of 2 million years, these people evolved, which should have left millions of bones.

Where are they? Show me da bones!!

so are you saying if we dug we can find every horse that's ever lived?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0317_050317_horseevolution.html
http://chem.tufts.edu/science/evolution/HorseEvolution.htm

This is desperation if I've ever seen it... from your link:

"This small dog-sized animal is the oldest found horse ancestor that lived about 55 million years ago."

Hmmmm, maybe it's a... DOG! lol

How about this one:

"Parahippus appears to be the evolutionary ?link? between the old forest-dwelling horses and the modern plains-dwelling grazers."

Appears or is? I thought this was scientfic fact and not speculation.

Those pictures don't show a smooth transition. Evolution is so slow, according to you all, taking millions of year, there should be zero speculation. We should be able to chart minute changes in fossil records, yet those all apear to either not be horses, a different variety of horse or some other animal.

Fill in the gaps people... you're giving yourselves, according this these sites, around 55 million years. I'd hope you could do better than this.

Let's see how you fare with this... Why aren't we seeing any evolution in modern horses or animals?

because human have been "observing" animals for what.. 10,000 years? And we CAN observe evolution and speciation and all these things just not as often with larger, more complex animals because of developmental entrenchment. Btw, we can see evolution with modern animals, but only after natural disasters. There was a study of birds living on an island that suffered a major hurricane. Before the hurricane the birds exhibited a certain phenotype that made it adept at dry weather conditions. but after the hurricane hit and everything became flooded, a new phenotype became dominant, one that fared much better under wet conditions. This is evolution. Human's selective breeding of the wolf has given us the domestic dog, a species that is much more docile than a wild wolf.
We can also observe evolution in a test tube with RNA viruses

And yes, Appears to be, because we are filling in the dots. Even with more fossil, it will still "appear" to be becuase we are looking at the remains after the fact. Do you know the concept of "theory?" People still say the "THEORY" of natural selection because things in biology can never be proven, we can only gather overwhelming evidence to support a theory. Please read "Wonderful Life" by Gould or take a real evolution class before spouting off nonsense.

I'm also curious to ask why you, someone with no training in paleontology, archaelogy, geology, evolutionary biology believes theres something thousands of world class scientists have missed. There's no science conspiracy for natural selection. If a scientist can suffiicently disprove natural selection in front of his peers, he would be seen as a revolutionary in scientific thinking, are you saying this is not incentive enough for people to try to disprove it? That only reason it hasn't is becuase natural selection has held up under scrutiny from the scientific community. It's rather interesting that everyone ID defender on these boards, who unwaveringly deny the evidence supporting natural selection, has never studied it in a serious academic manner.

 

[Gibsons]

Originally posted by: dirtboy

Originally posted by: Gibsons
They aren't here because the current population has diverged from them. It's been quite a long time.

That contradicts the evolutionary process. Evolution doesn't stop, so things should be evolving all over the place. Where are they? Why is nothing evolving now?

Certainly if evolution is a continuous form, there will be apes evolving right now

yes, of course.

Can you point me to a zoo that has these ape-men?

and ape-like creatures evolving into man right now.

No, that's not predicted by any theory I'm aware of.

That's evolution... therefore in order to believe in evoltion, things should be in transition, including apes or whatever you say we evolved from.

Of course, nothing is doing this and ever has; science proves that. Let's see how you prove science wrong.

lol.

A horse has always been a horse. Fossil records prove that. Prove me wrong? Show me where horses weren't horses, how fossil records have evolved and what horses were before they were horses, and the evolutionary fossil record of this. Oddly enough all the fossils of horses we found show zero signs of evolution and match right up with horses bone structure today. What is your excuse for that?

It seems we have two different theories.

I'm talking about the theory of evolution, a largely Darwinian model based on variation of alleles over time and natural selection.

I really have no idea what to call your version, it seems to be somewhat Lamarckian, but with a single end goal regardless of selection. Pretty damn bizarre.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Originally posted by: oldman420
lets keep this flame free OK folks?
DISCUSS

:laugh:

As if

 

[bignateyk]

Evolution that was intelligently designed. Problem solved.

 

[Luthien]

All religions are superstitions developed to explain the unexplainable, create a superiority complex for believers (so they can be empowered to by the grace of god to subvert the will of others) and act as societal form of control creating "normative" controls. As time passes and the unexplainable is explained, reason wills out and secular law takes hold religion loses it's power and becomes a belief system instead of a tyrannical know it all theocracy. Religion has it's place and works synergistically within society like anything else and will imo never dissapear.

I think the biggest problem people have with religions or any power is their inability to stop foisting their idealogy on others when others tell them they don't want to "believe." At the same time that is the strength of religions; the ability to preselatize and grow so the unbeliever and the believer are in constant conflict... Religion requires reason but the last step or steps are leaps of faith and generally a surrender to a higher power taking many stressful things out of the believers hands, hence it's allure. Simple believe in my religion and your sin's are forgiven, we will embrace you as part of our large familiy and care for you, god will sort it out you don't have to worry so much; oh and don't forget the grab bag of goodies offered after death while the rest of us suffer for eternity.

When you think about it all the 100 billion people that came before and after Christ that never even heard of Christianity are now in hell... That is one reason in a plethora of reasons why religions are very silly some times, but that being said I doubt their is any organization that has lasted without being considered extremely silly by others.

 

[oldman420]

Originally posted by: dirtboy
Evolutionists and science has been trying to prove evolution since the dawn of time. Not only is there no evidence supporting evolution, but science actually disproves evolution. If you believe in evolution over ID, then you are believing in blind faith of a factless theory.

no evidence?
i am sorry but I just don't buy that.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: StevenYoo
intelligent design = evolution

Heh, this comment would make most ID people flip . One of my philo professors was actually a big proponent in ID and one thing he made sure to stress was that ID != Evolution and boy did we get to hear lots of reasons why :Q.

 

[oldman420]

Originally posted by: dirtboy

Originally posted by: Mo0o

Originally posted by: dirtboy

Originally posted by: Mo0o
modern research does not debunk Darwin, atleast not the important parts of "origin of species." and yes my college professors told me this, who also happens to researchers in molecular evolution.

and man evolved from some form of hominid that no longer exists.

Show me a peer reviewed journal from pubmed that says natural selection is completely debunked

Please provide fossil evidence of this transition and tell me what this "hominid" evoloved from.

The transitions can be seen from the comparisons of the different hominid species that show a gradual phenotypic variation to humans. And that hominid will have evolved from some other kind of hominid that looks even less human. Btw, I'm still waiting for your peer reviewed research paper from pubmed that says natural selection is completely wrong

Ahhh so you have no fossils to support your claim that man came from a hominid, that you can't say where that came from. Also interestingly enough, you didn't challenge your buddy's claim that man came from ape. I thought you both said science and research is clear on this?

So, where are all these bones of hominids? What did hominids evolve from? This is easy, show me museums full of these hominids showing a gradual evolution. Then tell me where hominids came from.

This is what you blindly believe in and have scienctific proof of. Why is this so hard for you?

how about showing us ANY evidence that all of this came from a cosmic creator?
aside from geneses what evidence is there to support creationism? none there is a body of evidence that backs evolution as a real thing that is occurring.
http://books.nap.edu/html/creationism/evidence.html

 

[imported_inspire]

Originally posted by: oldman420
I will agree that the creation of the universe and all that has followed is a profound mystery that as of yet has no definitive explanation, but I personally have a very hard time believing that there was some master being or intelligence that created it all. I think that thing are way too random to have such a concise explanation, to buy the intelligent design theory is to stop questing for further knowledge.

I believe that evolution is the more proper theory and is a provable one vs intelligent design which is unprovable as god isn't talking yet.

lets keep this flame free OK folks?


DISCUSS

Evolution happens, but it doesn't explain the beginning, just the aftermath. The 'Uncertainty Principle' that is the current in-theory among your top scientist just takes it back to a random event. Well, that random event took place because of the laws of physics that were in place prior to its happening. How did those laws comes to be? Well, that's a question Evolution doesn't answer.

Any theory of the origin of things has to go on some kind of faith. Unless you truly believe in an infinite regress - to which a quantum physicist will laugh at, since the new wave in physics is that everything is discrete.

The majority of people have a backstop. For you, it's the Big Bang with the Uncertainty Principle followed by Evolution. For me, it could be God and any combination thereof. As a guy with a degree in Math and Statistics, I simply take as an axiom that the structure of the universe was not created by a random event (which would require structure), but ordered.

What I'm getting at is that all theories of origin are meaningless unless we accept there is a Prime Mover. What we call it and how we study it may differ, but no matter what side of the fence you're on, you continue studying those beliefs (hopefully, at least).

Now, you add in Pascal's Wager....and you get an extended thread.

 

[oldman420]

Originally posted by: Captante
Wheres the poll option for "I believe its plausible this thread is pure flame-bait & the OP is a troll"?

you are a funny one

 

[Mo0o]

Originally posted by: inspire

Originally posted by: oldman420
I will agree that the creation of the universe and all that has followed is a profound mystery that as of yet has no definitive explanation, but I personally have a very hard time believing that there was some master being or intelligence that created it all. I think that thing are way too random to have such a concise explanation, to buy the intelligent design theory is to stop questing for further knowledge.

I believe that evolution is the more proper theory and is a provable one vs intelligent design which is unprovable as god isn't talking yet.

lets keep this flame free OK folks?


DISCUSS

Evolution happens, but it doesn't explain the beginning, just the aftermath. The 'Uncertainty Principle' that is the current in-theory among your top scientist just takes it back to a random event. Well, that random event took place because of the laws of physics that were in place prior to its happening. How did those laws comes to be? Well, that's a question Evolution doesn't answer.

Any theory of the origin of things has to go on some kind of faith. Unless you truly believe in an infinite regress - to which a quantum physicist will laugh at, since the new wave in physics is that everything is discrete.

The majority of people have a backstop. For you, it's the Big Bang with the Uncertainty Principle followed by Evolution. For me, it could be God and any combination thereof. As a guy with a degree in Math and Statistics, I simply take as an axiom that the structure of the universe was not created by a random event (which would require structure), but ordered.

What I'm getting at is that all theories of origin are meaningless unless we accept there is a Prime Mover. What we call it and how we study it may differ, but no matter what side of the fence you're on, you continue studying those beliefs (hopefully, at least).

Now, you add in Pascal's Wager....and you get an extended thread.

In my opinion Pascal's Wager is a mind exercise more than anything. Religious bet hedging probably isn't looked favourably among but anyone up high. This also presents an interesting problem. Which religion should you follow? Why is one religious more valid than another when religion as a whole is set up on the principle of nonfalsifiability.

And, yes the Big Bang is only a theory and a "prime mover" is possible. But ID goes beyond that, it's implying during the course of evlution there has been a guiding hand towards a certain direction. If you are describing a God that created the universe then simply let physics take its course, well then it's not a very interesting God to begin with.

I'm not denying the possibility that God created it all, but I am denying the creation story of a 10,000 year old earth and that all animals appeared suddenly as they are now out of nothing. The problem with assigning God to the unknowns in the world is that people are too content on simply leaving it that. That explanation has no predictive value and it doesn't further our understanding of the world.

 

[Mr Pickles]

I have never understood why evolution is the pivot of non-creationist theories. Arguing science vs. intelligent design is equivalent to arguing what the color blue smells like; both subjects are not on the same playing field.

Man creates a scientific method for proving or disproving theories and when it does not work because of our realm of intelligence you would think that we would have some sort of an epiphany: ?The scientific method isn?t going to fully explain the beginning.? So what do we do? We turn to theories and? dare I say it? the faith that we are on the right path to guessing just how things happened.

Omnipotence brings us the creation of the universe in the blink of an eye (or six days?) and is explained to us. The human nature in us forces us to dig deeper into the mysteries of our creation. After struggling endlessly, doing what we can to explain this happening through Him we circle back around to the front and say ?We already have the answer: He told us that He created the heavens and the earth.? This redundant discovery is nothing more than falling back on? dare we use it again? the faith that we have within ourselves, knowing that it was He that made all that we know and don?t know.

You can see the cycles in this thread. We argue, and argue, and argue, and then science falls back on statements and projections that only someone with just a last resort would use. We argue, and argue, and argue more and then finally those that stand by intelligent design fall back on statements explaining that It is written. The tactics lead both sides back to their faith; their faith in what they believe to be reasoning.

The question is not what happened, but where you place your faith to determine how it happened.

MrLee

 

[dirtboy]

Originally posted by: Tuktuk
Dirtboy, I have to believe someone commiting so many logical fallacies in their argument has to be a troll. If you aren't, I encourage you to take Anthropology 101 at your local community college (or if you are in school already, take it there). You obviously are not familiar with evolutionary theory and I think it would open your eyes a little, if you are willing for them to be opened.

edit: No I'm not going to lay out the fossil record for you, except to say that the linear progression is proven with fossils. I'm not here to be a teacher, only to tell you that the knowledge exists and you can learn on your own.

I knew you'd give up. We've only begun and you can't prove yourself.

Let's look at the facts ape-man.

I ask you for a linear progression of fossils of anything, man, horse, something. You response... *silence* followed by, but Evolution is a fact!! *cries*

So I ask to prove yourself and you can't.

So your link stuff that says horses have evolved over a 55 million year period, but no substantial fossil records. I have studied the same classes as you, been to top museums unlike you, and never seen proof. But you say it's there. I have and will continue to prove you are completely 100% wrong. You're just too closed minded to realize it and you will fall back on your undieing faith in evolution.

So let's say horses started 55 million years ago, but your testimony is that they were around long before that.

Let's say there was only one horse then that reproduced asexually, also an inaccurate fact.

Let's say the horse population doubled every 10 years, even though they can reproduce much quicker.

So, 55 million years divided by 10 is 5.5 million years.

So we can use simple math to determine how many horses have lived and estimate the current population.

That is:

2^5,500,000 - 1

Wow. That's so many horses, every bit of land would be covered by them 3 high or more.

Since so many horses lived, acording to your "facts" and testimony, providing a linear progression of fossils showing their evolution would be simple. There should be so many horse bones around, I should trip over them. So where are all the fossils, where are all the horses and why can't you show this?

Too hard?

How about humans or ape-men, which you claim as fact but also was rebuked by science.

You sight 4,000,000 year old bone fragments.

Okay, first human started 4 million years ago.

Reproduced every 100 years.

That means, there should be 2^400,000 - 1 humans running around, with loads of fossil records over the 4,000,000 year span. But there's not fossil records or any proof of this either.

What did you professors spoon feed you as an excuse for this?!?

Call me a troll all you want. You all criticize other people for believing different than you, citing that you have abosulute unconditional scientific proof that evolution is FACT. You jump on those people claiming they are stupid blind believers. I ask you simply to prove it and you can't. Now you go running... typical losers of a debate. When you can't win, go cry to your professors who brain washed you. It is you who believe in blind faith of evolution.

 

[dirtboy]

Originally posted by: Tuktuk
From Wikipedia:

There are a number of common misunderstandings about evolution, some of which have hindered its general acceptance and form the basis of various objections to evolution.[48][49][50] Critics of evolution frequently assert that evolution is "just a theory", a misunderstanding of the meaning of theory in a scientific context: whereas in colloquial speech a theory is a conjecture or guess, in science a theory is "a model of the universe, or a restricted part of it, and a set of rules that relate quantities in the model to observations that we make".[51] Critics also state that evolution is not a fact, although from a scientific viewpoint evolution is considered both a theory and a fact.[52][53][54]

Another common misunderstanding is the idea that one species, such as humans, can be more "highly evolved" or "advanced" than another. It is often assumed that evolution must lead to greater complexity, or that devolution ("backwards" evolution) can occur. Scientists consider evolution a non-directional process that does not proceed toward any ultimate goal; advancements are only situational, and organisms' complexity can either increase, decrease, or stay the same, depending on which is advantageous, and thus selected for.[55]

Evolution is also frequently misinterpreted as stating that humans evolved from monkeys; based on this, some critics argue that monkeys should no longer exist. This misunderstands speciation, which frequently involves a subset of a population cladogenetically splitting off before speciating, rather than an entire species simply turning into a new one. Additionally, biologists have never claimed that humans evolved from monkeys?only that humans and monkeys share a common ancestor, as do all organisms.[56]

It is also frequently claimed that speciation has only been inferred, never directly observed. In reality, the evolution of numerous new species has been observed.[57] A similar claim is that only microevolution, not macroevolution, has been observed; however, macroevolution has been observed as well, and modern evolutionary synthesis draws little distinction between the two, considering macroevolution to simply be microevolution on a larger scale.[58]

Evolution is sometimes misrepresented as being guided solely by "chance" or "randomness". This leads to expressions of disbelief that "pure chance" might generate the remarkable complexity of living beings, and probability arguments are sometimes used to criticize evolution by assessing the probability that a certain highly complex feature might occur "by chance". Darwinian evolution, however, is emphatically not random in its direction. Mutation is random; but natural selection, which determines whether or not those mutations are preserved and propagated throughout the population, is extremely non-random, in that only those features which are adaptive will be preserved. At any time, the evolutionary process encounters a multitude of possible directions, each being proposed by different, random mutations; but only those directions which prove to be adaptive will actually be "taken", and thus be used as a starting point for further exploration. In time, this highly biased (and therefore non-random) preservation allows evolution to reach arbitrary levels of adaptive complexity: the gradual accumulation of small, "plausibly lucky" improvements creates a final result which would have been highly implausible by purely random assembly.

Wiki is not a factual source. LOL

 

[Mo0o]

Originally posted by: dirtboy

Originally posted by: Tuktuk
Dirtboy, I have to believe someone commiting so many logical fallacies in their argument has to be a troll. If you aren't, I encourage you to take Anthropology 101 at your local community college (or if you are in school already, take it there). You obviously are not familiar with evolutionary theory and I think it would open your eyes a little, if you are willing for them to be opened.

edit: No I'm not going to lay out the fossil record for you, except to say that the linear progression is proven with fossils. I'm not here to be a teacher, only to tell you that the knowledge exists and you can learn on your own.

I knew you'd give up. We've only begun and you can't prove yourself.

Let's look at the facts ape-man.

I ask you for a linear progression of fossils of anything, man, horse, something. You response... *silence* followed by, but Evolution is a fact!! *cries*

So I ask to prove yourself and you can't.

So your link stuff that says horses have evolved over a 55 million year period, but no substantial fossil records. I have studied the same classes as you, been to top museums unlike you, and never seen proof. But you say it's there. I have and will continue to prove you are completely 100% wrong. You're just too closed minded to realize it and you will fall back on your undieing faith in evolution.

So let's say horses started 55 million years ago, but your testimony is that they were around long before that.

Let's say there was only one horse then that reproduced asexually, also an inaccurate fact.

Let's say the horse population doubled every 10 years, even though they can reproduce much quicker.

So, 55 million years divided by 10 is 5.5 million years.

So we can use simple math to determine how many horses have lived and estimate the current population.

That is:

2^5,500,000 - 1

Wow. That's so many horses, every bit of land would be covered by them 3 high or more.

Since so many horses lived, acording to your "facts" and testimony, providing a linear progression of fossils showing their evolution would be simple. There should be so many horse bones around, I should trip over them. So where are all the fossils, where are all the horses and why can't you show this?

Too hard?

How about humans or ape-men, which you claim as fact but also was rebuked by science.

You sight 4,000,000 year old bone fragments.

Okay, first human started 4 million years ago.

Reproduced every 100 years.

That means, there should be 2^400,000 - 1 humans running around, with loads of fossil records over the 4,000,000 year span. But there's not fossil records or any proof of this either.

What did you professors spoon feed you as an excuse for this?!?

Call me a troll all you want. You all criticize other people for believing different than you, citing that you have abosulute unconditional scientific proof that evolution is FACT. You jump on those people claiming they are stupid blind believers. I ask you simply to prove it and you can't. Now you go running... typical losers of a debate. When you can't win, go cry to your professors who brain washed you. It is you who believe in blind faith of evolution.

so what do you make of fossils? are all dead animals fossilized? What is the probability of fossilization?

Your math of the estimation of how many humans have lived is wrong also. Even if you consider that the earth has been around for 10,000 years, going by your math 2^10000 that is an incredibly high number still.

 

[dirtboy]

Originally posted by: Mo0o
because human have been "observing" animals for what.. 10,000 years? And we CAN observe evolution and speciation and all these things just not as often with larger, more complex animals because of developmental entrenchment. Btw, we can see evolution with modern animals, but only after natural disasters. There was a study of birds living on an island that suffered a major hurricane. Before the hurricane the birds exhibited a certain phenotype that made it adept at dry weather conditions. but after the hurricane hit and everything became flooded, a new phenotype became dominant, one that fared much better under wet conditions. This is evolution. Human's selective breeding of the wolf has given us the domestic dog, a species that is much more docile than a wild wolf.
We can also observe evolution in a test tube with RNA viruses

And yes, Appears to be, because we are filling in the dots. Even with more fossil, it will still "appear" to be becuase we are looking at the remains after the fact. Do you know the concept of "theory?" People still say the "THEORY" of natural selection because things in biology can never be proven, we can only gather overwhelming evidence to support a theory. Please read "Wonderful Life" by Gould or take a real evolution class before spouting off nonsense.

I'm also curious to ask why you, someone with no training in paleontology, archaelogy, geology, evolutionary biology believes theres something thousands of world class scientists have missed. There's no science conspiracy for natural selection. If a scientist can suffiicently disprove natural selection in front of his peers, he would be seen as a revolutionary in scientific thinking, are you saying this is not incentive enough for people to try to disprove it? That only reason it hasn't is becuase natural selection has held up under scrutiny from the scientific community. It's rather interesting that everyone ID defender on these boards, who unwaveringly deny the evidence supporting natural selection, has never studied it in a serious academic manner.

And in 10,000 years no new species or any signs of evolution have been recorded and agreed upon by scientists and evolutionists as fact.

Cleary you have failed in your own reserach. You cite skull fragements as proof, when prominent scientists have said they are either fakes or not proof of evolution.

Why are you right and the people you say prove your point are wrong?

So all these birds magically changed? Evolution is the changing of a species through breeding. What you're saying is evolution is when Mc Donald's is out of Big Macs so I order a chicken sandwich. Sorry, that's not evolution.

But since you like birds, what did the woodpecker evolve from? No other bird is like it in the world and thing about it contradict how birds should work. Yet it exists... your excuse for this? If it evolved from something, we should be able to find what it evolved from.

Evolution is continuous. You just said it has stopped in the last 10,000 years, but yet for evolution to work it must be visiable as a continous process. We should see animials evolving into humans, single cells evolving into new species, yet we don't. When's the last time a single cell animal popped off a new species? NEVER. lol We got lots of lab data to prove that... we should see evolution at the cellular level much more clearly than anything else.

But you can't prove that, because it doesn't happen. Just like you can't explain the lack of fossil records. Just like you can't explain why the population of the planet is so misaligned with your 55 million+ years of evolution.

 

[Tuktuk]

Appeal to ignorance. Look it up, because your argument is soaked in it.

Call it throwing it the towel, I don't really care. Like I said I'm not here to be a teacher, because if someone believes there isn't any evidence of evolution that is exactly what they need.

You say Wiki isn't a good source. That would be a fair statement if you were citing scholarly sources. You seem to love to talk about horses and falsely characterize evolution, instead of addressing the fossil record proving evolution in humans or the molecular evidence proving evolution in other animals.

Besides the fact that I don't feel the need to teach an anthropology lesson, I have the feeling that if I show conclusive evidence you will simply attack the source instead of address anything the evidence suggests. Such is the case with the Wiki article, where you chose to ignore everything in it. If it was so unreliable you should've been able to pick it apart and prove it so.