Interview with an evolutionist

[shinbits]

Hi all!

 

I've made up an interview to help illustrate some points. I've also added the sources. Tell me what you think!

 

Ready? I call it: Interview With An Evolutionist.

 

 

Do you believe in the theory of evolution?

 

--Yes.

 

Do you think man evolved from apes?

 

--Yes.

 

Why?

 

--Well, all the evidence that says so.

 

What kind of evidence?

 

--Well....like the fact there are so many similarities between apes and humans.

 

You're right, there are similarities. Does this prove we came from apes?

 

--Well, maybe not by itself, but it provides good evidence.

 

Are robins and eagles similar?

 

--I guess you could say that.

 

Does this prove eagles evolved from robins?

 

--Well, no.

 

Have you ever seen the old fighter planes flown in WWII ?

 

--Yes.

 

Have you ever seen the fighter planes of today?

 

--Yes.

 

Are they similar?

 

--Yes, they are.

 

Does this prove F-15's came from the old WWII planes.

 

--No.

 

Then why are they so similar? They both have wings and a tail. Right?

 

--That's correct.

 

Could it be that the designer used the same law of aerodynamics to build the similar planes?

 

--Yes.

 

So the similarities could just be that they just have a similar blue print?

 

--That's true, but it's not just similarites that show man came from apes. There's evidence showing this is true.

 

What evidence is there?

 

--Well....There's Lucy that was found, and Neanderthal Man.

 

Lucy was later found to be just a three foot tall chimp. Neanderthal Man was the skull of an old man who suffered from arthritis.

 

--Oh.

 

In fact, some were delibrate hoaxes made to prove evolution, like Nebraska man, who had an entire skeleton constucted by people who found a tooth of an extinct pig. Why do you think evolutionists would do that?

 

--I don't know.

 

Let's get back to topic. Can you give any examples of transitional forms?

 

--You mean like, showing one animal in the process of becoming another?

 

Yes.

 

--Well, there are some out there.

 

Like?

 

--Well, I can't name any, I'm not an expert.

 

Really? You can't name one? But wouldn't you be able to end this debate by just providing one? After all, there'd be nothing evolution oposers could say.

And there are millions of species of animals to chose from. You can't name just one transitional form out of them?

 

---Well, some viruses evolve to adapt and become more suitable to thier envirornment---like some evolve resistance to certain medicines.

 

That would be micro-evolution.

 

---Yes.

 

Micro-evolution is a true fact. But it doesn't change into another kind of virus. It's just a different type of the same virus. Cold viruses don't evolve into HIV viruses, do they?

 

---No.

 

Because that would be macro-evolution, which is changing into a different species altogether. Like apes to humans. There are examples of micro-evolution. Can you, since you're an evolutionist, give an example of a fossil found in the process of macro-evolution?

 

--Like I said, I'm not an expert.

 

Okay. Well, how did it all begin?

 

--The Big Bang.

 

What caused the Big Bang?

 

--I don't know. Some scientists say from some really dense matter or energy that just exploded.

 

Do you think that life came out of the water?

 

--It's possible.

 

So when the first life forms came out of the sea, did they have lungs or gills?

 

--Well...mabey...gills.

 

So when this creature came out of the sea, why didn't it die the way other creatures with gills do when they're out of water?

 

--Well...it was possibly amphibious.

 

What caused it to become amphibious?

 

--Well...I'm not sure.

 

Well, when this creature first came on land, was it male or female?

 

--Probably asexual.

 

What made it become two sexes?

 

--I don't know.

 

Okay. Well let me wrap this up. Do you, as an evolutionist, believe that everything in the universe, from our ecosystem, full of millions of types of animals that have existed for thousands of years, without chaos, full of order and structure---

And this solar system with these gigantic masses called planets, that never crash into each other--- all came about by chance?

 

---Well, yeah. But the the universe is not as orderly as you make it out to be. Asteroids crash into each other, and even into planets all the time. Stars explode into supernovas.

 

That's true. Tell me, do you believe, that our planet will crash into the sun?

 

---It's possible this could happen hundreds or thousands of years from now.

 

But not in our life time.

 

--Well, no.

 

What's keeping the planet from crashing into the sun now? Or what's keeping the planets from coliding? Right now as we speak, our galaxy is traveling along at 60,000 miles an hour, surrounded by hundreds of other galaxies. What's keeping our galaxy, which is surrounded by all these other galaxies with these unfathomably huge gravitational fields from crashing into one of them? Are we just lucky?

 

--I don't know. Maybe.

 

Thank you for your time.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hope you enjoyed it!

 

And if anyone wants to make thier own "Interview with a creationist" type thread, or post it here, I invite you to do so. Only if you do, don't point out any specific religion, since creation/inteligent design as taught in schools doesn't advocate any specific religion

[zyncod]

Oh, I'm sorry. You're really going to get killed over the utter inanities that you've posted here. I'm not going to argue these things - there are plenty of people here that will probably post step-by-step responses that you will completely ignore. But the post is hilarious - I would love to meet this hypothetical evolutionist. Unlike all sentient beings we have encountered up til now, he/she seems not to be a vertebrate.

[Skye]

Socrates was better.

[bascule]

Oh man, this reminds me so much of Jack Chick I just have to post this:

 

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0055/0055_01.asp

 

 

 

 

Yes folks, this is what you call a "strawman argument"

[Hailstorm]

INTERVIEW WITH A PHYSICIST:

 

 

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

 

August 17, 2005 | Issue 41•33

 

KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

 

Enlarge ImageEvangelical

 

Rev. Gabriel Burdett (left) explains Intelligent Falling.

 

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

 

Burdett added: "Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, 'I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.' Of course, he is alluding to a higher power."

 

Founded in 1987, the ECFR is the world's leading institution of evangelical physics, a branch of physics based on literal interpretation of the Bible.

 

According to the ECFR paper published simultaneously this week in the International Journal Of Science and the adolescent magazine God's Word For Teens!, there are many phenomena that cannot be explained by secular gravity alone, including such mysteries as how angels fly, how Jesus ascended into Heaven, and how Satan fell when cast out of Paradise.

 

The ECFR, in conjunction with the Christian Coalition and other Christian conservative action groups, is calling for public-school curriculums to give equal time to the Intelligent Falling theory. They insist they are not asking that the theory of gravity be banned from schools, but only that students be offered both sides of the issue "so they can make an informed decision."

 

"We just want the best possible education for Kansas' kids," Burdett said.

 

Proponents of Intelligent Falling assert that the different theories used by secular physicists to explain gravity are not internally consistent. Even critics of Intelligent Falling admit that Einstein's ideas about gravity are mathematically irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. This fact, Intelligent Falling proponents say, proves that gravity is a theory in crisis.

 

"Let's take a look at the evidence," said ECFR senior fellow Gregory Lunsden."In Matthew 15:14, Jesus says, 'And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.' He says nothing about some gravity making them fall—just that they will fall. Then, in Job 5:7, we read, 'But mankind is born to trouble, as surely as sparks fly upwards.' If gravity is pulling everything down, why do the sparks fly upwards with great surety? This clearly indicates that a conscious intelligence governs all falling."

 

Critics of Intelligent Falling point out that gravity is a provable law based on empirical observations of natural phenomena. Evangelical physicists, however, insist that there is no conflict between Newton's mathematics and Holy Scripture.

 

"Closed-minded gravitists cannot find a way to make Einstein's general relativity match up with the subatomic quantum world," said Dr. Ellen Carson, a leading Intelligent Falling expert known for her work with the Kansan Youth Ministry. "They've been trying to do it for the better part of a century now, and despite all their empirical observation and carefully compiled data, they still don't know how."

 

"Traditional scientists admit that they cannot explain how gravitation is supposed to work," Carson said. "What the gravity-agenda scientists need to realize is that 'gravity waves' and 'gravitons' are just secular words for 'God can do whatever He wants.'"

 

Some evangelical physicists propose that Intelligent Falling provides an elegant solution to the central problem of modern physics.

 

"Anti-falling physicists have been theorizing for decades about the 'electromagnetic force,' the 'weak nuclear force,' the 'strong nuclear force,' and so-called 'force of gravity,'" Burdett said. "And they tilt their findings toward trying to unite them into one force. But readers of the Bible have already known for millennia what this one, unified force is: His name is Jesus."

 

 

 

Adapted from: The Onion

[shinbits]

Well, well. No "welcome newcomer, glad to have ya!"?

 

I was hoping for an inteligent discussion, but....when you have no tools to argue with, I guess this is what you resort to. Eh, mi amigos?

 

Any inteligent, or-perchance to dream- any rational, maybe even CONSTRUCTIVE feedback?

 

 

Oh. and like I said. Don't harp on religion to mask the lack of facts from evolution.

Like I said.... inteligent design does not point to any specific religion. Be mature and respectful. Leave Budha, Jesus, Allah or whoever out of this.

 

Let's see someone debate just the facts. If you're brave enough.

[Skye]

Any inteligent, or-perchance to dream- any rational, maybe even CONSTRUCTIVE feedback?

Spell 'intelligent' correctly. It makes you look like a monkey if you are dismissing evolution while advocating inteligent design.

[insane_alien]

when fish came out the sea they had both a lung and gills a living example exists today

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungfish <-a lungfish

 

what caused it to be amphibious? probably the tides if it can hunt for fish/crustaceans while they are buried in the sand and practically defenseless then this is a very good advantage.

[shinbits]

Spell 'intelligent' correctly. .

Thank you.

 

*ahem*

 

"Any intelligent, or-perchance to dream- any rational, maybe even CONSTRUCTIVE feedback?"

 

Come on. Attacking me, instead of the point? That's a low tactic when you know you are unable to make any good points.

 

And about the lung fish--thank you for your post.

 

see folks? that's what I mean by intelligent conversation.

 

But about the lungfish--is that to say it's remained unchanged for millions of years while everything else has been evolving?

 

And your reason as to what caused it to change sounds resonable. But you don't know for sure.

In the interview, I was making the point that pretty much every aspect of evoltution is speculative.

[insane_alien]

But about the lungfish--is that to say it's remained unchanged for millions of years while everything else has been evolving?

 

the above quote suggests that you believe(or think) that there is a uniform evolution rate for all species and in all enviroments. this is not the case. in the areas where lungfish are found they are quite well suited to the enviroment therefore have little need to evolve so do so very slowly. they are also probably not the origionals but a modernday example of what the first amphibians could have been.

 

Also i think people are being a bit hostile because we have seen people make posts like this and turn out to be total morons this happens around 99.999999999999999999% of the time so excuse them. (i find it fun arguing with morons, there is something about the futility of it that appeals to me)

[shinbits]

Also i think people are being a bit hostile because we have seen people make posts like this and turn out to be total morons this happens around 99.999999999999999999% of the time so excuse them.

Oh. Well okay then!

 

what caused it to be amphibious? probably the tides if it can hunt for fish/crustaceans while they are buried in the sand and practically defenseless then this is a very good advantage.

But what about it's natural surroundings would cause it to start to develop lungs? If it's under water all the time, there'd be no cause for it to have lungs. Natural selection has no way to take place in this situation.

 

I say this respectfully. I hope people can start to see that that evolution doesn't make sense, and makes no valid points. There are no facts whatsoever in existence to back up it's claims--only "maybe this", or "maybe that", or "perhaps this". But no facts.

[Dak]

But what about it's natural surroundings would cause it to start to develop lungs? If it's under water all the time, there'd be no cause for it to have lungs. Natural selection has no way to take place in this situation.

 

gills --> gills that can breath in the air, albeit innefficiently. this makes a fish that can escape predators by going on to dry land for short periods of time, and thus is a huge natural advantage.

 

gills that can breath in the air, albeit innefficiently --> lungs.

 

the above can be seen in lung fish; also, the smooth transition from fish --> amphibians --> reptiles, and the fact that all chordates* (fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds**) have what are called pharangeal gills, which is where they develope gills in the early stages of embryonic development; a vestige of our picine evolutionary past.

 

evolution tends to happen slowly, and there are, to my knowledge, no huge jumps of the form 'fish gives birth to air-breathing animal'. If your thinking thats the case, then that is probably why evolution seems unbelilevable to you.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------

* except euchordates -- colourful little filter-feeding sacs -- from which fish evolved.

 

** actually, im not sure if birds have pharangeal gills, but i think that they do.

[Phi for All]

You obviously haven't read a thing here in the Evolution section. You haven't read our sticky Welcome Creationists to SFN, which would have cleared up most of your silly arguments about what evolution is NOT. You haven't read our sticky about Common Human Ancestry, which would give you a fraction of the genetic evidence linking man and ape. You spend seven of your interview questions on the "fighter plane" strawman, trying to draw analogies about man-made designs to prop up your ID weaknesses. And you call this farce an interview with an evolutionist, and then blatantly make him "not an expert".

 

Here there be experts.

 

Read if you aren't an utter troll, read further and find your transitional fossils, read other threads and find out why the Big Bang and cosmological events like the earth crashing into the sun have nothing to do with evolution. At the moment your interview is just laughable, and it shows you haven't done your research. Every single point has been proven wrong here over and over and over.

 

Read.

[Skylark]

But what about it's natural surroundings would cause it to start to develop lungs? If it's under water all the time, there'd be no cause for it to have lungs. Natural selection has no way to take place in this situation.

 

Fishes that live in areas where anoxic conditions can occur often cannot obtain enough oxygen via gills and have accessory respiratory structures that enable them to breath air. The electric eel, in addition to gills, has an extensive series of highly vascularized papillae in the pharyngeal region. The eels rise to the surface to gulp air, which diffuses across the papillae into the blood. Other fishes swallow air and extract oxygen through vascularized regions of the gut. (Note that developmentally, lungs begin as evaginations of the gut.) Anabantid fishes (ex. bettas you see in pet stores) have vascularized chambers in the rear of the head, called labyrinths, which act in a similar manner. Many fishes are facultative air breathers; that is, oxygen uptake switches from gills to accessory organs when oxygen in the surrounding water becomes low. Others, like the electric eel and the anabantids, are obligatory air breathers. The gills alone cannot meet the respiratory needs of the fish even if the surrounding water is saturated with oxygen. These fishes drown if they cannot reach the surface to breath air.

[swansont]

"Any intelligent' date=' or-perchance to dream- any rational, maybe even CONSTRUCTIVE feedback?"

[/quote']

 

 

Intelligent feedback assume the OP was intelligent.

 

You can't both ask and answer the questions if you don't understand evolution. Otherwise it's a strawman. Surely someone as intelligent as yourself understands why a strawman is an intellectually dishonest tactic. Is that constructive enough?

[insane_alien]

the lungfish could have evolved in shallow coastal areas where the tides can leave some animals stranded, whether in rock pools or just dumped on dry land. the ability to survive this is pretty good for the fish. the lung fish can even crawl back to the sea if it needed too.

[Xyph]

--Like I said, I'm not an expert.

While I'd like to think there's no-one rational who would yield to Creationist nonsense quite as easily as the hypothetical person in the interview does, the fact remains that most people who are successfully deceived by Creationists are not experts, which should tell you something about what it takes to accept it over science.

 

Can you give any examples of transitional forms?

What would satisfy you as a transitional form?! There isn't a perfect record of every minor variation of creature that ever existed, you know. Gaps in fossil records don't mean nothing existed in between. Are not amphibians a perfect example of a transitional form between aquatic creatures and surface dwellers? What do you want, an animal that's one half elephant and one half fish?

 

creation/inteligent design as taught in schools doesn't advocate any specific religion

That doesn't stop it from being religiously inspired. Have you ever met a Creationist who isn't religious? Are there any organisations dedicated to Creationism that aren't religious? If it wasn't for religion, would Creationism even exist?

 

 

Saying "God did it" (or "an Intelligent Designer did it", if you insist) is clearly not science no matter how it's used, since you're no closer to understanding the process than you were in the first place and are postulating something above all established laws of nature to explain a natural process, and something that cannot be examined scientifically.

 

If Creationism was a science (and don't fool yourself, it isn't) the next step would be to extrapolate the methods used by the creator and the properties of the creator itself. The fact that pretty much all Creationist organisations adhere to religious doctrine that has not been scientifically obtained, and spend more time poking imaginary holes in established scientific theories than doing this should be proof enough of how unscientific (yet deceptive!) Creationism is.

[Skye]

Thank you.

 

*ahem*

 

"Any intelligent' date=' or-perchance to dream- any rational, maybe even CONSTRUCTIVE feedback?"

 

Come on. Attacking me, instead of the point? That's a low tactic when you know you are unable to make any good points.[/quote']

Ok, here are the factual problems with the interview that are most obvious to me:

 

We are apes, so you have to be careful in using the phrase 'humans evolved from apes'. We did, but by the same logic we evolved from vertebrates.

 

Eagles can't have evolved from robins because they belong to different phylogenetic groups. I.e. they belong to two seperate branches within Aves. Beyond that is that they are both living species, so it would only be correct to say they share a common ancestor at some point.

 

Aeroplanes don't evolve from one another, we know this to be untrue. On the other hand, we can't say that we know that biological evolution is untrue.

 

You don't explain what you mean by 'transitional forms' clearly enough.

 

The way you defined macroevolution is that it is where one species changes into another. But as far as I can tell it makes no sense for something to be in between two species, but not of a species itself, so you can't have fossil evidence of it.

 

The stuff about life crawling onto land is confused, as people have said. Plenty of gilled animals survive out of the water for substantial periods of time, eels and crabs for example. The first vertebrate (which is what I presume you are talking about) on land probably wouldn't have been asexual.

[The Peon]

Have you ever seen the old fighter planes flown in WWII ?

 

--Yes.

 

Have you ever seen the fighter planes of today?

 

--Yes.

 

Are they similar?

 

--Yes, they are.

 

Does this prove F-15's came from the old WWII planes.

 

--No.

 

________________________________________________________

 

And now the factual response.

 

Have you ever seen the old fighter planes flown in WWII ?

 

--Yes.

 

Have you ever seen the fighter planes of today?

 

--Yes.

 

Are they similar?

 

--Yes, they are.

 

Does this prove F-15's came from the old WWII planes.

 

--*YES!* The same concepts which allowed a WWII plane to fly was carried over and evolved into a more advanced fighter type. Why this is even relevent in this conversation is pointless *imagines 2 korean war planes humping to produce the F15 *, given a fighter plane is a machine and only the concept evolves.

[Mokele]

Ok, we need to move this thread to Psuedoscience, where all such blather belongs.

[Hellbender]

Does this prove F-15's came from the old WWII planes.

In a way yes, (as technological innovation can mimic the process of natural selection, if you want to think about it that way). But comparing something non-living to something that is alive and has the capacity to reproduce, and therefore, evolve makes for a blatantly dishonest analogy.

In fact, some were delibrate hoaxes made to prove evolution, like Nebraska man, who had an entire skeleton constucted by people who found a tooth of an extinct pig. Why do you think evolutionists would do that?

You make it sound like biologists need to deliberately hoax fossil evidence of human common ancestry just to prove their theory. Nebraska man (I believe) was a case of an incompetant scientist rushing to conclusions. Mistakes happen, but we don't focus on them. Other hoaxes such as the piltdown man are the result of conmen trying to make money. Why don't creationists focus on genuine fossil discoveries, I wonder?

Don't harp on religion to mask the lack of facts from evolution.

Like I said.... inteligent design does not point to any specific religion.

ID makes a point not to be (although we all know its roots lie in religious conservatives), making it the sneakiest form of creationism out there.

Come on. Attacking me, instead of the point? That's a low tactic when you know you are unable to make any good points.

Pot calling the kettle black.

see folks? that's what I mean by intelligent conversation.

and I'm sure we will see more of the same from you

But about the lungfish--is that to say it's remained unchanged for millions of years while everything else has been evolving?

To quote Phi: "read". First of all, just becuase an organism shares a resemblance with ancestral forms, it does not mean it has gone unchanged. Second, if their environmental niche has remained somewhat stable, there is no reason why a particular organism couldn't go unchanged.

In the interview, I was making the point that pretty much every aspect of evoltution is speculative.

Not true. Most aspects of evolution have been verified experimentally, such as natual selection, speciation, etc. All have been, and continue to be the subject of rigorous experimentation. Right now I am reading a book called "The Beak of the Finch", and pretty much every chapter goes into some sort of evolutionary experiment done by a biologist.

[bascule]

Any inteligent[/i'], or-perchance to dream- any rational, maybe even CONSTRUCTIVE feedback?

 

Yes, a strawman is a logical fallacy. If you really wish for people to take you seriously, you should refrain from using them.

[Hailstorm]

And your reason as to what caused it to change sounds resonable. But you don't know for sure.

In the interview' date=' I was making the point that pretty much every aspect of evoltution is speculative.[/quote']

 

Tell us something that you "know for sure."

 

Follow it with ANY aspect of creationism that isn't speculative from a dream, or somebody else's story book.

[zyncod]

Oh man, this reminds me so much of Jack Chick I just have to post this

 

I read the rest of that cartoon. Do people really think that Jesus is holding atoms together?

[shinbits]

wOW! Sooo much to answer to!

 

Let me try to answer as much as I kan--kuz I luv you all so much!

 

1) The lung fish. That's just one life form. If life originated out of the sea, this brings up a few questions. Like when the animal started to develop lungs, you're saying it came out of the water, couldn't breathe, then kept going back until lungs developed? See, it's just not logical. And I noticed some of you have put what you believe is the way it happened. Is there any proof at all that there was such a change? Or do we just take your word?

 

2)The fighter plane and the eagles from robbins thing. Some evolutionists like to point out the "2 percent difference" thing. So I was just showing that this isn't evidence that we came from apes. Eagles and robbins are quite similar creatures. Hawks and eagles are even more similar. But it would be quite incorrect to state that eagles came from hawks because of the similarities. The same with apes and humans.

 

3)What qualifies as a transitional form? What a question. Any animal halfway or partway to becoming another.

 

 

4) Inteligent design has religious undertones--So? Charles Darwin in his book "The Evolution of Species", wanted readers to believe that Black people were less evolved than whites. Darwin also wrote that men have come to "A higher esscence than women". That men are better with reasoning, AND (--are u ready?) "simple use of the hands feet."

 

Yet, no one throws out Darwinism because of his racist and sexist views. People just try to look at the science of it.

So if ID has a religious agenda, as long as it continues to show logic, that doesn't matter.

 

So in the same way we don't bring up racism and sexism at the heart of the "Father of Evolution", don't point out any specific religion with respect to ID.

 

Okay?