Exporting creationists

[Phi for All]

All is what I find out in my studies.

Do you cherry-pick those things which seem to support your beliefs?

I love how microevolution works. I still have faith in creation.

No problems here. Believing in a creator is fine. This has been said many times.

How it started I'm not sure, maybe some sort of evolution.

THIS IS THE PART WHERE YOU KEEP PLUGGING YOUR EARS. EVOLUTION ISN'T ABOUT HOW LIFE STARTED.

That's what makes me questionable about macroevolution.

Well, since you now know you were misinformed maybe you should take a closer look.

I don't just accept. Imagined if all our scienctists always accepted what was supposibly fact. A lot of things wouldn't be understood. Like heliocentrism for instance. I think everyone should question theories. It is in my book part of science.

And THAT, my friend, is why science insists on calling it a theory. They retain a tiny bit of skepticism that keeps them constantly testing and proving.

 

Will you please just take the time to study evolution? Without bias, keep your skepticism and just read. Even if you just spend a few hours at TalkOrigins.org you will have given yourself an honest chance at understanding. Remember there is nothing there that threatens your God.

[MrSandman]

define evolution in your own words. 'cause I thought it was a theory that explains how life started. I'm a little ignorant, but I learn, so don't hold it against me. Are you 16? No. Wouldn't you hate to be held to everything from once your 16 on. There was huge confusion when you came down to it. Neither side was quite getting the other side. Cpt. Refrsmt sort of made me see it his way also.

[Phi for All]

define evolution in your own words. 'cause I thought it was a theory that explains how life started.

Evolution is the change in allele frequency in a population over time. That's really it in a nutshell. At each genetic locus you have an allele from each of your parents which determine various inherited characteristics. Those will change each generation and the study of those changes is called evolution.

I'm a little ignorant, but I learn, so don't hold it against me. Are you 16? No. Wouldn't you hate to be held to everything from once your 16 on. There was huge confusion when you came down to it. Neither side was quite getting the other side. Cpt. Refrsmt sort of made me see it his way also.

Kudos to MrSandman!!! This is a far cry from the brash know-it-all who joined these boards a short time ago. Good for you for acknowledging you might have been mistaken. You just became a whole lot more mature and gained some credibility in *my* eyes.

 

Now if you can just refrain from saying things like, "Your [sic] getting into opinions not fact Severian" to one of our most eminent professional physicists when he's trying to tell you about electric charge and magnetism, you'll do all right here. Have Cap'n Refsmmat tell you about his first 100 posts when he joined up.

 

I'm going to award you some reputation points for that post, MrSandman. The mind is a bowl to be filled, not a pot with a lid on it.

[MrSandman]

I like the analogy. Just, remember that's not saying I'm not always right. JK.Oh, about Severian. I think it would help to have the rank of education by the persons name.

You should look at what I posted latter in the pole. Can you make it so my name says age sixteen on it.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

First 100? I think I got to 1500 or so before wising up a little

 

Believe me, MrSandman, I've made my share of comments in threads that have been beaten down ruthlessly by experts, and I usually gave up fighting when I realized that I was wrong. Three years on, I've learned a hell of a lot from SFN and hopefully taught a few people stuff too. A quick ego check will do you wonders and you'll end up learning so much more.

 

MrSandman: if you want everyone to know that you're sixteen, feel free to put that fact in your signature. I'd always be careful about whatever personal information you let out, though.

[MrSandman]

Well put. I'm in college, so don't want to refrain myself to kids my age.

[Phi for All]

I like the analogy.

I'd be honored (and really flattered) if you used it for your new signature. Just put it in quotes with my name after it.

Oh, about Severian. I think it would help to have the rank of education by the persons name.

And deny everyone a good laugh? No, we all have to learn how to extract our feet from our mouths. It's a human thang.

First 100? I think I got to 1500 or so before wising up a little

Yeah but having unauthorized copies of your first 100 posts is good job security for me. I'm just riding your coattails anyway 'cause I know you're going to rule the world within the next decade, Cap'n.

[MrSandman]

I will just a sec.

[PhDP]

MacroEvolution will probably never be observed. Sure there is evidence for it, but not enough.

 

But why do you say that? I gave you proofs of macroevolution, and you said you could not understand them. It's what I don't understand with creationists, how can you say you don't believe in evolution when you clearly don't understand it? If you don't understand something, if you're sceptical about something, ask a question, or read a good book about it.

 

I often imagine what new things could have already been figured out if our scientists stop dwelling on the argument between creation and evolution.

 

I think you, and many creationists, live under the illusion that there's this big debate going on in the scientific community about creation and evolution, it's simply not the case. Science is done by publishing articles in serious journals, creationists don't publish, they’re not making science. The only real problem is the amount of pseudoscience produced by creationists, and how it can confuse the public.

[ecoli]

I think that they are not all that important for understanding how to munipulate nature. Sure it could explain how it happened way back then, but that really doesn't help us now, does it?

 

I must admit... I cringed a bit when I read this.

 

 

I'm taking a class now called "Darwinian Medicine." It represents a growing field where scientist are starting to integrate evolution into how we think about diseases.

 

In health care, it just as important to know how a disease has come into existence then it is to know how it works. Then we can figure out how to treat it.

 

Thinking about host/pathogen interactions or genetic diseases in terms of evolution gives a whole new perspective on why diseases exist. Understanding how diseases arise can gives us clues to not only their mechanistic basis, but also to their effect on Darwinian fitness in populations.

 

Admittedly, it's a relatively new way of looking at medicine, but I think we should have been doing this for years.

I can discuss it at greater detail if you want.

[PhDP]

True. In fact, pretty much everything from evolutionary biology has been used to fight AIDS (even phylogenetics).

[Retrograder]

Sorry, but this is just plain wrong. If you'd said science versus religion I could agree. Creationism requires all the evidence of evolution be magically created by God, including making the geological evidence *appear* to be millions of years old. It also imposes one rigid interpretation of Hebrew translations that any orthodox scholar will tell you is open to many interpretations.

 

 

Aaaah right. In which case you do have my apologies on that. I'm a long way from having such fundamental beliefs. As I said Pantheism seems to fit how I feel about life and the universe around me. I certainly don't think "god" is a mystical joker, nor has any fear of evolutuion as it appears to evolve.

 

 

 

But the worst part about creationism is that it misquotes science to people who then don't bother to check the facts. I don't know how many times I've told creationists that evolution has absolutely NOTHING to do with human origins.

 

You know that is interesting. My only experience of a science forum before this one was where people are saying exactly the opposite, evolution is a fact and not a theory and human origins are very much a part of that. You see, until that rather distasteful experience I have had a keen interest in evolution, nature, science, genetics especially. I'm a layman on most of it, but interested nevertheless.

 

 

 

They pretend to listen and then just keep repeating that evolution precludes a creator. They tell their followers that if the fossil records are correct we'd be up to our ears in the bones of all the creatures who've died. When that's refuted they just pop over to the next bit of misinformation. When all their arguments have been thwarted they just go back to the beginning and start in with evolution precludes God again.

You're skeptical about evolution because you think you can't have your faith if it's true. You're wrong.

 

 

Well me personally doesn't experience that kind of conflict. Everything I see in nature leaves me agasp with inspiration (although there is an "ugly" cruel side to nature that doesn't always add up). I prefer nature and my own relationship with it, rather than some rotting bit of wood they call a book about God. Doesn't mean I don't see a creator evident within the processes that nature displays. The more I find out about science the more meaning my own "spiritual" connection with it becomes.

[PhDP]

You know that is interesting. My only experience of a science forum before this one was where people are saying exactly the opposite, evolution is a fact and not a theory and human origins are very much a part of that.

 

Evolution is a fact; we can see it happening.

Evolution is also a scientific theory, hoping to understand this complex phenomenon.

 

It's like gravity; it's both a fact and a scientific theory.

 

The origin of humanity can be explained by the theory of evolution, it's the origin of life (abiogenesis) that is distinct.

[MrSandman]

When I mentioned Macroevolution as in a salamander changing to a fish. This will prob ably never be observed in our lifetime. We can't speed up time. it doesn't mean it's is false. They're still not sure if micro leads to macro. If you have a land animal slowly changing into a bird. You will have a stage when he can't run well or fly, so that means in between species are very septible to predators. that's probably why the start of certain species started when they were on the micro stage. My hypothesis is evolution slows down the farther you go into it. A bacteria will evolve millions of times faster than a human. The evidence of a total species (like land to flying) change is zero. However, I'm not saying it isn't possible. I'm just saying that not untill millions of years of recording will we actually see it. Actually, I could almost bet humans will never become a flying species. You have to start with the simplest form of something then move up.

[Bignose]

But, Sandman, you see, we actually do have those millions of years of observations -- it is in the fossil records. That's a primary basis for the theory of evolution, that we have all of these skeletons of creatures that sort of look like something modern, but not really. Where does each piece fit in? That's a lot of the modern research. Arguing over where each unique species belong in the evolutionary history, and where to dig for other fossils, to better fill in the puzzle.

 

This is where most creationists cherry pick and say that evolution is crumbling. They like to think that just because not everyone agrees on where to put the latest fossil find, that means that the whole system is ready to fall down. Which, as previous posters in this thread have noted, couldn't be farther from the truth. If anything, each new fossil find continues to affirm the accuracy of the theory. That is, that life forms have adapted and changed over time. It has happened time and time again, and really it will happen again, but sometimes a new fossil discovery means a significant change in the knowledge of a species history. A new fossil may mean that a modern species evolved from a different path than had previously been thought. These are the debates that are carried on in the journals.

 

The fossil record really is quite amazing. You'd do yourself a great service to go to a really good museum and look at them. Off the top of my head, I don't know of any good webpages, maybe someone else here can post a few up?

[MrSandman]

Fossils, are widely messed up. Several things can mix up the bones even change the chemical makeup of bones. There was perfect human foot prints were there was dinosaur tracks. Fossils are neat in all, but scientist keep making mistakes when uncovering the fossils. Lucy's knee cap was found over 2 kilometers away and in another strata layer. The never could get DNA out of it, so they're not sure if it is her knee.

I got this on a blurp about what they hope to find the genes of.

 

 

scientists are closing in on the complete gene sequence of the Neanderthal.

 

December 2006

 

 

There has been fish that supposibly lived millions of years ago that they discovered alive not too long ago. They're making lots of mistakes. There also natural disasters that can mix up the bones. There has been fossils of several animals that live today found that were supposibly millions of years old. Like the 3 foot wingspan dragon fly. The 8 foot beaver. Whose to say that a dinosaur even evolved into a mammal. There is too many missing links. The Nebraska Man, for example, was built of a single tooth found by a farmer. They even built him a wife. They later found that it was a tooth from a pig. I'm not saying your wrong; I'm just saying it isn't sound evidence.

[Phi for All]

When I mentioned Macroevolution as in a salamander changing to a fish.

It would have been the other way around for starters. And no one but creationists use the term "macroevolution". Speciation has been proven many times:

 

Molestus speciated from Culex pipiens (Byrne and Nichols 1999; Nuttall 1998).

Primula kewensis (Newton and Pellew 1929)

Rhagoletis pomonella from Crataegus spp to Malus pumila (Filchak et al. 2000)

Anopheles gambiae (Fanello et al. 2003; Lehmann et al. 2003)

Ensatina to the subs klauberi and eschscholtzi (Brown n.d.; Wake 1997)

 

This is usually where creationists "put the lid on their pots" because it means looking up a lot of studies and pouring through data that means nothing to them because, you guessed it, they haven't studied evolution. Do you see where skepticism without study leads?

 

Please follow THIS LINK and read this page on speciation (you're smart, it won't take you long). The last fourth of the page is all citations and references to studies with peer reviewed evidence backing up these claims. Trust me, peer review in science is brutal and makes the Spanish Inquisition look like a book club questionnaire.

[MrSandman]

Didn't have time to read all the pages, but read a couple or so.

 

2.2 The Biological Species Concept

Over the last few decades the theoretically preeminent species definition has been the biological species concept (BSC). This concept defines a species as a reproductive community.

 

They actual couldn't reproduce with the other similiar species???

 

If that is true that is Macroevolution on a small scale that's is interesting.

 

There is a difference between Macro and Micro and both should be used when talking about evolution. Micro is much more like adaptation then anything. Like the iguanas on the galapogos. They could still reproduce with other iguanas.

 

His fossil accounts wasn't very good evidence in my opinion that's why I think a lot of scienctists try observe the current species.

[Blade]

evolution crashcoarse

 

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL5oAEX4B5E

 

i like that serie.

 

The Human Eye is NOT Irreductibly Complex

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stb9pQc9Kq0

 

hope it helps understanding evolution

[swansont]

Fossils, are widely messed up. Several things can mix up the bones even change the chemical makeup of bones. There was perfect human foot prints were there was dinosaur tracks. Fossils are neat in all, but scientist keep making mistakes when uncovering the fossils. Lucy's knee cap was found over 2 kilometers away and in another strata layer. The never could get DNA out of it, so they're not sure if it is her knee.

 

Fossils have no bone left in them, by definition. They have been mineralized.

 

As for jumbling up the order, I'm afraid that's way too simplistic of a dodge. You typically have more than one specimen, often spatially separated, and for all of them to get jumbled up the same way is quite unlikely.

 

The Paluxy river tracks were fabricated.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy.html

 

The part about Lucy's kneecap is not true, though it is often repeated.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html

 

General rule of thumb: don't expect to learn evolution from a creationist site. They have an excellent record of lying.

[PhDP]

There is a difference between Macro and Micro and both should be used when talking about evolution. Micro is much more like adaptation then anything. Like the iguanas on the galapogos. They could still reproduce with other iguanas.

 

Evolution, micro or macro, is about selection, drift and mutation (+ many other small mechanisms).

 

His fossil accounts wasn't very good evidence in my opinion that's why I think a lot of scienctists try observe the current species.

 

We work a lot with the genome, simply because we can see what happened millions of years ago. The Molecular Clock, which can be very accurate, would never work if macroevolution was a myth, but it does. Sarich predicted divergence time of humans and apes was 4-5 mya. At the time, anthropologists thought he was crazy, they thought the divergence happened between 10 and 30 mya. But new fossils were discovered and the prediction made by Sarich was confirmed.

[CDarwin]

Fossils, are widely messed up. Several things can mix up the bones even change the chemical makeup of bones. There was perfect human foot prints were there was dinosaur tracks. Fossils are neat in all, but scientist keep making mistakes when uncovering the fossils. Lucy's knee cap was found over 2 kilometers away and in another strata layer. The never could get DNA out of it, so they're not sure if it is her knee. [/Quote]

 

This has been addressed already, but yes, the Lucy thing is just a lie. That kneecap was never included as part of Al-288-1 (the individual's real designation) and it's not necessary to tell if an organism is bipedal or not. With Lucy we have both the pelvis and the foot bones that tell us that most eloquently. Not that Al-288-1 is the only human fossil ancestor to be found, either, by far.

 

There has been fish that supposibly lived millions of years ago that they discovered alive not too long ago.

 

I believe you're speaking of the coelacanth, and that's a strawman. No one ever said that every species that left fossils behind must also have gone extinct for evolution to have occurred.

There also natural disasters that can mix up the bones.

 

And geologists can spot those. You'd be surprised how much you can tell from an exposed rock layer with only an elementary education in what to look for.

There has been fossils of several animals that live today found that were supposibly millions of years old. Like the 3 foot wingspan dragon fly. The 8 foot beaver.

 

I'm not sure what you're talking about.

 

Whose to say that a dinosaur even evolved into a mammal. There is too many missing links.

 

Mammals didn't evolve from dinosaurs. Mammals evolved from the synapsid reptiles, of which the sail-backs are prominent members and likely direct ancestors of mammals. And the suggestion that there are too many "missing links" in mammalian evolution is particularly inaccurate, because the big problem in mammalian evolution is too many transitional forms. It's practically impossible to define the definitive "first mammal" on anything but pedantic grounds because of the fidelity of the continuum between the therapsid reptiles and the first mammals.

 

The Nebraska Man, for example, was built of a single tooth found by a farmer. They even built him a wife. They later found that it was a tooth from a pig. I'm not saying your wrong; I'm just saying it isn't sound evidence.

 

A peccary actually, not a pig, there were no pigs in the New World during the Pliocene. Nebraska man was a bad example of nationalistic excess on the part of some American paleontologists who should have know better and the mistake was uncovered before the decade was out. Another strawman by Creationists, although perhaps their getting their due since Nebraska Man was actually used against them Henry Fairfield Osborn during the Scopes Trial.

 

Fossils have no bone left in them, by definition. They have been mineralized.

 

I do feel like I need to point out that this isn't necessarily the case. The fossils of the Miocene Age Gray Fossil Site, for example, still contain large amounts of their original bone. There are also insects preserved in amber and the remains of animals from tar pits and frozen in ice that it is proper to call fossils.

[Bignose]

I don't have much to add, the previous posters pretty much cleared up a lot of Sandman's objections to fossils. My only comment is that, sure, fossils aren't perfect. But the experts who study fossils can learn quite a lot from them, determine which ones are good and which ones are bad or fakes or unusable. And the fossil record is the best we have.

 

If we throw away all data from anything that is imperfect, we'd have almost no data on anything. We don't throw out the data from the Mars rovers just because we lost a few packets of information as it got transmitted. We don't throw out the temperature reading you take when you think you have fever just because it is only accurate to 1 degree, and not to tenths, or hundredths, or thousandths. We didn't ignore intercepted communiques between Japan and Germany during WWII just because we didn't get the entire message or could only decode part of it. The simple truth is that pretty much all real-world data has some errors and incompleteness in it -- there is an entire branch of mathematics devoted to studying these errors and getting the most out of incomplete and erroneous data.

 

The same thing has to be said about the fossil record. Sure, it's incomplete, and rarely fossils get mixed up or mislabeled or misidentified. But, overall the quality is really quite amazing -- again, do try to plan to go to a good museum. Chicago's Field House museum has quite a collection. I am sure that London's Natural History Museum's collection is going to be excellent. Almost any city of any size has some kind of natural history museum and probably some significant collection of fossils on display.

[Retrograder]

Well here we go again. This now feels like being in a church. I haven't been to church since I told my parents to stick it, about thirty five years ago. And yet, the only time I feel I am back in church is when I hear evolutionists telling me of the facts! Sorry, I'm really not trying to be rude, but you guys are not very tolerant of others that need a little faith in order to occupy their own ground and stances in ife. And like them, you don't tend to mind your own leaps of faith.

 

You would not tolerate some muslim or christian or hindu talking about their evidence and "facts" this way. Just because it isn't scientific evidence makes no difference. Science doesn't have facts on a lot of pretty important issues. It is trying to understand the world and life through its own theories. Some are great and very rewarding to come to learn about. Others are just plain evangalism.

 

Even though I personally believe ( and yes it is a belief) that evolution does account for a specie emerging from another (and so breaking the hearts of the poor christians that think a book should be infallible, and god has to be restricted by old ignorant views), I know a fact from a theory. One cannot deny micro-evoution, and I don't think it is only non-scientists that use that term, that is a fact. But at the moment it ends there. The rest is theory.

 

If I was having a similar conversation with a die hard christian, and I have a few of those too, they would say "if you do the reading and the learning you'll

have a better picture etc etc". They don't have to be scientific, scientists have to be. And that leads us round a circle, toward your respective "churches" and beliefs.

 

I'm happy not knowing for certian. The only certainty available at the moment is uncertainty. The world will know about it when a drop of certainty about who we are and where we came from is obtained.

 

Something has to speak for itself when we say something is a fact. People look at the same supposed evidence and do not draw similar conclusions. Some will be baised, but others that are not even religious will not accept a theory as a fact, regarding the whole idea of evolution, for example. They just won't because they just don't want to BS themselves.

 

Macroevolution is psuedoscience, or protoscience, whatever. It just hasn't been elevated to factual. Perhaps intellectually one can extend their minds to seeing it as inescapable fact. But realistically one has to just admit that the day has not come when enough certainty is there, if one is brutally honest.

 

Some questions just cannot be answered 100%. It may still be possible that

aliens created man from the highest specie that lived here on earth at the time. I'm not saying that is true, only that it is still a possibility. And if the future were to present a visitation, and little gray aliens educate us as to how they did it, and told us of other evolutionary tricks up their sleeves, and about the origins of life in their cultures, then we would have to rethink our own supposed facts.

 

So it isn't any good looking into the future and simply saying we know the facts even though we can't see them in plain daylight here due to the time needed to prove certain facts. A portion of what we see has to be based on belief. So why is it a surprise when others have other beliefs to your own?

 

I like science when it is honest. I like a christians when they live their lives trying to love others as themselves. I like a buddhist monk when he laughs in the face of the selfish gene theory, or a rescuer that is prepared to loose their life in order to save anothers.

 

I'd never heard of creationism until I learnt about it on a science forum. I've also seen plenty of evidence of scientism, a slight exaggeration of the use of the word "fact".

[MrSandman]

Retrograder, you post is well put.

 

Now, if we all take what Retrograder said into thought and not be bias about it. You'll discover he is quite right. Fossils, we can learn from, but always remember they could be mistaken.

 

I could keep going on talking to all the people who think evolution in all its aspects is a cold hard fact. I'm saying it isn't. Send me a private message, and I'll show you were the gaps lie. That's is why as a student of science I don't accept either, but constantly debate both. Creationist, obvisously, none of you know much about how it can be supported, so I don't debate it.

 

I like to believe in creationism, because I truly believe there is a God. Whether or not evolution was part of his plan, I don't know. The big bang theory however to me is still absurd, because the big bang came from a lot of dust, but where did that come from? It truly goes back to nothing. i would rather believe in a God that supplies hope and meaning to peoples life than believing in nothing. I'm not saying big bang is evolution, but something had to give the push for even evolution to start. Now, you can post small comments in reply on here, but large ones send directly to me.

 

About the vids. I'll look at them tomorrow when I'm on school bandwith and not my own.

 

The Paluxy river tracks were fabricated.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy.html

 

You neeeeeeeeeed to look at your own links. It didn't say it was fabricated. Did it list the creationist that abandoned it? No. I see that post as a cheap dodge. The Bible actually supports the feet. It says in genesis. "There was giants in those days." Noah was over 12' when you look at the other history around the bible. As for the enlarged metatarsal. Giants today, don't have porportionate metatarsals. I would also suggest you stop posting talkorigins for a fact sight. It is a forum. I started, posting there when I was 10. They couldn't answer my questions. Talkorigins has some good facts, but some aren't fact such as the link you sent me. Notice the man even was accepting corrections. I don't post the creation sites I know, but not saying they're are wrong I like to get my resources second to the person who did the study.

 

 

The part about Lucy's kneecap is not true, though it is often repeated.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/knee-joint.html

 

General rule of thumb: don't expect to learn evolution from a creationist site. They have an excellent record of lying.

 

I got my answer verified earlier from this site.

 

Q. How far away from Lucy did you find the knee?

A. Sixty to seventy meters lower in the strata and two to three kilometers away.

 

It's still a long distance.

 

Creationists lie just as much as the evolutionists????? No, creationists usually believe in the TEN COMMANDMENTS, if you know what they are.

 

This site is affiliated with a really good creationist. Try emailing him.

 

http://www.drdino.com

 

I've watch this guys seminars and he really rises interesting points about the two. remember I'm not saying he's right. Read Job chapter 21. The chapter about leviathan. They think he was one of the last Dinosaurs. Remember though the word "Dinosuar" wasn't made untill websters time. Before they believe the word might have been DRAGON.