Chance and evolution

[paultrr]

Is it a lie for real?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What geological evidence contradicts the Bible’s claim of a world wide flood?

Many ancient civilizations on every continent all around the world believed it to be true.

 

Who says that there is no evidence to these claims people make? Where you there..did you search?

My grandma claimed that she saw a dinosaur, she was solid on that..she would even point out which one it looked like. Imagine this, you are driving threw the jungles of Africa in the middle of nowhere, and all the sudden this most odd thing pops out and runs across the road. These things happen at the least expected times..and you stand shocked and stunned.

 

I say this…there is no evidence with the theory of one thing turning into another thing…we never run into any animal that are two or more different animals put together ..you have never found any links of anything turning into something else at any time in history…you find bones..big deal…you can make bones into anything you want them to be, you can make a skeleton of a horse into a beast..and it would even look good. So you can interbreed a loin and tiger…what does that prove? Has anyone tried to breed a rat and a blue jay? It wont work..and it will never work. You find a lot of deformed this and deformed that…but they are still fully thatever their parents are…and they will still produce only fully whatever they are…they have never changed..and they will never change. So the theory, I can say is a lie in and of itself.

 

What better evidence is out there than an eyewitness? And who is to say they are all lying?

 

People do not think they are outright lying. It could be a simple mistake. In general, science requires varifyable evidence and goes way beyond the witness type situation. There would have to be far more evidence than the word of someone before science would accept such as real.

[paultrr]

Is it a lie for real?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What geological evidence contradicts the Bible’s claim of a world wide flood?

Many ancient civilizations on every continent all around the world believed it to be true.

 

Who says that there is no evidence to these claims people make? Where you there..did you search?

My grandma claimed that she saw a dinosaur, she was solid on that..she would even point out which one it looked like. Imagine this, you are driving threw the jungles of Africa in the middle of nowhere, and all the sudden this most odd thing pops out and runs across the road. These things happen at the least expected times..and you stand shocked and stunned.

 

I say this…there is no evidence with the theory of one thing turning into another thing…we never run into any animal that are two or more different animals put together ..you have never found any links of anything turning into something else at any time in history…you find bones..big deal…you can make bones into anything you want them to be, you can make a skeleton of a horse into a beast..and it would even look good. So you can interbreed a loin and tiger…what does that prove? Has anyone tried to breed a rat and a blue jay? It wont work..and it will never work. You find a lot of deformed this and deformed that…but they are still fully thatever their parents are…and they will still produce only fully whatever they are…they have never changed..and they will never change. So the theory, I can say is a lie in and of itself.

 

What better evidence is out there than an eyewitness? And who is to say they are all lying?

 

Also, what you stated at the first gives away you're lack of having actually studied the case fully. I suspect you are someone who relies upon what others tell you, trys to find examples of such alive today, etc. Historical evidence is historical because is covers a period of time. With evolution that period of time is over millions of years. There is evidence if you actually study the whole case out across the whole of time we can study. One can also point to adaption even going on in todays world.

 

I would suggest before you dismiss something that you at least study everything to do with that something. By the same token I would suggest that before you accept something as true you do the same. One cannot accurately decide something till one has studied the subject fully enough to make an educated attempt. Its only through an entire picture on a subject that honest unbiased views can be derived. At least most of those in this group who try and attack a subject know enough about a subject from studying it to attempt to do so. That does not make them right or wrong just because they know a subject. But it does make them at least educated enough on the subject to not make common mistakes like that one on a subject.

 

In case you are wondering I will point out two such mistakes:

 

1.) Assuming that an eyewitness proves something is right. Eyewitnesses can and have lied. Sometimes our own sences can make something seem real which is not. Sometimes past mental images of something come to mind when we see something strange. We then, in our minds, assume it must be exactly that past mental image. What about UFO's. In general the scientific community dismisses them all. Now are all reports based upon lies? No, but I'm willing to bet you some are. I'd also be willing to bet you some are a case of mistaken identity. I also supect there may be some cases we do not know enough to say yes, or no on at this time. Eyewitness accounts are not considered scientific evidence. But you assume they should be considered evidence on their own. That displays a lack of understanding of what's involved when it comes to scientific evidence which in turn shows that subject has not been well studied.

 

2.) What geological evidence contradicts the Bible’s claim of a world wide flood? Plenty of evidence. Most of the mountain ranges people often point to with evidence of sea creatures on them where uplift ranges. That in itself denotes a poor understanding of the subject of geology itself and what happened when in the history of the earth. Local flood myths mean nothing as far as evidence goes. Local floods take place even today on this planet. In 200 years if you compiled all the stories of these and never knew they each where a local case one might assume it must have been a worldwide event. But in making that assumption you are leaping beyond the evidence there is. The worldwide flood is simply a myth. Its perhaps an account of a local flood. Nothing about local floods runs contrary to geological evidence.

 

3.) There is no evidence with the theory of one thing turning into another thing... There again you show a lack of actually having read all the evidence and case history out there. You assume because we do not see such now that such must hold always. Problem is we do see adaption going on all over the planet. Full scale evolution takes large periods of time. I might also suggest really reading the case about Birds being related to certain Jurassic era lifeforms for just such a case of a species showing traits of another. You get down to brass facts and the Bible myths have no supporting evidence of any kind in their favor at all. They are simply a compiled group of stories that relate how one group of people saw everything.

 

In short, while a lot of the statements you make show you've been taught or self taught yourself the Bible, it also shows you really have not studied properly geology, biology, are even the subject of what is considered scientific evidence. It also shows you take statements like those of others and the Bible as true without having checked everything out for yourself. Try studying things a bit more before you make assumptions.

[Biochemist]

So your "biochemical" view of a cell has a vast army of lysosomes partolling the grounds, continuously roaming through every sector, nook, and cranny, checking every single protein's passport and if it's not valid, the protein is consumed and degraded?

 

Gee, that's not at all the picture one gets from reading molecular cell biology texts. But hey, you never were big on science, were you.

TM- Attacking valid criticism by saying you didn't happen to read about it is not science, it is defense. Yes, this is pretty much what lysosomes do. And there are other degradatory pathways besides lysosomes. Those non-lysosome pathways are more dominant in lower life forms (by definition, because they do have scavenger pathways, and they have no lysosomes).

But did you know that natural selection tends to eliminate the detrimental mutations while preserving the beneficials ones. This allows 'progress' to be made even though most mutations are deleterious.

TM- I do understand the standard liturgy of natural selection. Repeating the chant does not improve the mathematics.

But did you know that many of the proteins in the supposedly irreducibly complex bacterial flagellum exist in a different cellular machine - the type III secretory system - which performs a different function?

I suspect the actual fact is more like "several" than "many". Most enzymes (as you are well aware) are extraordinarily specific. They have exactly one substrate, exactly one cofactor (if they have one) and exactly one output. They typically have several rate modulators that are specific to production of the single specific output. The fact that some proteins are reused (rarely) does nothing to offset the incredible probabilistic hurdle that a new cell structure (like a rod or a cone, for example) would require hundreds to thousands of beneficial mutations, and that several sets of dozens to hundreds of beneficial mutations would have to avoid lysosomes and "wait" until the final positive mutation occurred to get a functional benefit. Even then, the lysosomes might still attack the new fully functional beneficial mutation. Thus, biochemically, the vast majority of individual mutations, even if positive, would have been selected against. The fact that 0.5-1% (being gracious) might have been reused is mathematically irrelevant. And the vast majority of mutations that would eventually become beneficial would have been degraded by a normal lysosome scavenger process.

 

And this is still only the tip of the iceberg of the mathematical selection problem. Any functional enzyme system that survives in the cell must have a feedback loop the the nucleus to rebuild/reestablish the enzyme system if the output of the enzyme system is inadequate. The feedback then results in DNA morphological alteration, followed by RNA transcription, followed by protein transportaion to the site of the enzyme system, etc. ALL of this has to be in place for the new mutatiosn to be viable. This ain't like falling off of a log.

Nature employs cooption a lot.

This is part of the natural selection chant. It is not science, and does nothing to address the overall assertion (as referenced in the simplistic 747 metaphor) that the core of the theory is very problematic.

[C1ay]

In my news travels I stumbled on this piece that some of you might enjoy...

 

Creation Museum Sparks Evolution Debate

 

Ken Ham wants to save your soul.

 

He's so bent on that mission that he has spent 11 years in Northern Kentucky creating a museum to answer one of the most debated questions of our time:

 

When and how did life begin?

 

Soon, visitors to Ham's still-unfinished Creation Museum will experience his view: that God created the world in six, 24-hour days on a planet just 6,000 years old. This literal interpretation of the Bible runs counter to accepted scientific theory, which says Earth and its life forms evolved over billions of years.

 

More.....

 

This guy will probably do pretty good in the southern bible belt.

[TeleMad]

First, eMTee, I already pointed out to you that this ithe CHANCE AND EVOLUTION thread. If you want to discuss irrelevant young-earth creationist stuff - like the flood - you need to post in a different thread. In fact, there's already one on creationism.

 

eMTee: What geological evidence contradicts the Bible’s claim of a world wide flood?

 

See the other thread about creationism, where I just posted some yesterday.

 

eMTee: Many ancient civilizations on every continent all around the world believed it to be true.

 

And some even predate the Biblical account.

 

By the way, what ancient cilization was on the continent of North America, and left written works, when the flood supposedly happened?

 

eMTee: Who says that there is no evidence to these claims people make?

 

Who says there IS evidence to these people's claims? They have the burden of proof - they have to provide scientifically sound evidence that supports their claims.

 

Take Big Foot. A number of people claim to have seen him. Does science accept his existence as fact? Nope (so called cryptozoologists excluded). Why not? Because many eyewitness testimonies from some people in nonpopulated areas does not count as scientific evidence. The burden of proof lies with the pro-Big Foot crowed, not with scientists.

 

 

eMTee: My grandma claimed that she saw a dinosaur, she was solid on that..she would even point out which one it looked like.

 

My mother told me see saw a ghost: really. So does that mean that science should accept the existence of ghosts?

 

Get real eMTee.

 

eMTee: Imagine this, you are driving threw the jungles of Africa in the middle of nowhere, and all the sudden this most odd thing pops out and runs across the road. These things happen at the least expected times..and you stand shocked and stunned.

 

Have you ever watched nature shows? There are a lot of researchers and film crews over in Africa. Why haven't they ever photographed a living dinosaour running around? Why haven't they ever found empirical evidence of living dinosaurs over there?

 

You are gullible.

[TeleMad]

C1ay: This guy will probably do pretty good in the southern bible belt.

 

I live in the southern bible belt!

 

And just yesterday, I received something in the mail. It was from a church saying that they were on their knees praying for my address because they felt that someone there needed God's love and assistance. Just picture this.

 

Church: "Oh dear Lord, we are on our knees and humbly pray for you to watch over [state the address here] for we feel someone at that address is having problems."

 

LOL!

 

And they went on to say that while they were praying for my address, that the Holy Spirit spoke to them, telling them to send my address a prayer handerchief.

 

So I guess the discussion went something like this.

 

Church: "Oh dear Lord, we are on our knees and humbly pray for you to watch over [state the address here] for we feel someone at that address is having problems."

 

Holy Spirit: "Dear faithful, what you should do is send a faith handerchief to [state the address here].

 

I can see that happening, can't you! :-)

 

Enclosed in the letter I received was a very special item: a prayer handkerchief: something the worshippers had "soaked" with their prayers in order to cure my problems, whether they be financial, health, relationsip, etc. Oh but wait. It wasn't really a handerchief: it was a regular old piece of paper, printed out from a regular old printer, with a pattern printed on it.

 

So I guess the dialog actually went like this.

 

Church: "Oh dear Lord, we are on our knees and humbly pray for you to watch over [state the address here] for we feel someone at that address is having problems."

 

Holy Spirit: "Dear faithful, what you should do is setup a "faith handkerchief" pattern template in Microsoft Word: make sure the save it to your harddrive so that you can reuse it for other addresses. Then, using your laser printer, print one for [resident at stated address] and send it to out to [state the address here]. By doing this, [resident at stated address] will be blessed."

 

Oh, did I mention there was one little "catch"? They wanted you to send back the handkerchief, ALONG WITH A LOVE OFFERING OF $[fill in the amount here]!

 

 

Church: "Oh dear Lord, we are on our knees and humbly pray for you to watch over [state the address here] for we feel someone at that address is having problems."

 

Holy Spirit: "Dear faithful, what you should do is setup a "faith handkerchief" pattern template in Microsoft Word: make sure the save it to your harddrive so that you can reuse it for other addresses. Then, using your laser printer, print one for [resident at stated address] and send it to out to [state the address here]. By doing this, [resident at stated address] will be blessed.

 

Oh, and by the way, don't forget to ask for a love donation! If people want to be blessed by God, they've got to pay!"

 

 

What a frieking scam!

 

But you just KNOW that this will pay off big time, down here in the southern bible belt.

[C1ay]

I live in the southern bible belt!

Me too. You probably knew that already from my location....

But you just KNOW that this will pay off big time, down here in the southern bible belt.

I suspect it will do as well as their main activity of passing the plate around. I know people that pledge 10% of their earnings to the church. I'll never understand why....

[TeleMad]

TM- Attacking valid criticism by saying you didn't happen to read about it is not science, it is defense. Yes, this is pretty much what lysosomes do.

 

LOL!

 

Tell me biochemist, if you what you assert is true, then how did scientists place a spider-silk gene into goats and have them produce spider silk!!!

 

By your reasoning, that foreign spider silk proteins would have been degraded by the lysosomes. But they weren't.

 

Of course, we could point out many such experiments where a foreign protein was produced in a higher life form, and was NOT degraded by lysosomes, or any of the other "garbage disposals" you allude to.

 

Observable fact overrules your unfounded and flawed conjecture. You lose.

[TeleMad]

C1ay: I suspect it will do as well as their main activity of passing the plate around. I know people that pledge 10% of their earnings to the church. I'll never understand why....

 

I can tell you why I used to do that.

 

First, I was told to do so by my religious leader. This is a man who communicates with God - the creater of the Universe for goodness sakes. We should blindly do whatever this man tells us to!

 

Second, it says to do so in the Bible: in the old testament. This is the WORD of the ALLMIGHT GOD. We shoudl blindly do whatever this book tell us to!

 

Third, I was told that the Bible says that those who tithe will receive it back a thousand times (or some crap like that). So it's not like you are really losing any money: hey, in fact, you are going to GAIN money by giving 10% of your earnings to the church! WHAT A GREAT DEAL!

 

Fourth, I was told, by the pastor and "the good book", of the evils of money. The love of money is the root of all evil. It is harder for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle (or some crap like that). A man cannot worship two masters at once - God and money - for he will come to despise one of them. And so on and so on.

 

 

 

But I was very poor at that time: the only working adult in a family of five, and I was making just over minimum wage. We were on welfare, food stamps, and WIC. I really couldn't tithe, but I just had to. THIS HURT MY FAMILY.

 

I started thinking, if God is so loving, would he rather me pay money to the church, or feed my family? Surely God would prefer the latter.

 

I asked my pastor about it. He told me that Christians were willing to die for Jesus, and all God was asking from me was a few dollars each week. Hell, how could I argue against that! I was just giving money, not my life.

 

So I continued to tithe, just knowing that God wouldn't make my family completely suffer: surely he'd reward me for my faithfulness and bless me financially - not making me rich, but allowing me to support my family and still tithe.

 

Didn't happen. Got to the point where I couldn't afford food. That was one of the first turning points for me. I said to hell with tithing: the church will get whatever money I can spare, which was none.

 

Why did I tithe? The short answer is because (1) I was brainwashed into doing so, and blindly followed the pastor and Bible, and then was (2) coerced into doing so, by trying to make me feel unworthy if I didn't continue tithing.

[eMTee]

Clay...would you like to debate with Ken Ham, and I would encurage you to go to the Museum after it is finished, and see...and go to creation science seminars.

 

How could a dead animal or plant last for even 100 years in the environment without wrotting away before having enough millions of years to turn into a fossil? how could it last even buried in the ground under the sea for a million years without it wrotting away? How could Mt. St. Helen, and the eruption and all the trees that became petrifyed in a matter of months have acured? how could have coal been developed in a matter of months when somone tested it? and why is it developing in the ocean today in a matter of the same timing when tested? Why have they found ancient stories about the global flood all over the globe, and why are they so similar in ways...such as one man and his family...a boat with animals...everyone and everything else dies...a god comes to warn him of the event...and he thanks the god afterward...? dont tell me that this is not uniqu and strange. I'm not talking about local floods.

 

I know people that pledge 10% of their earnings to the church. I'll never understand why....

Because in the Bible it asks to do it.

 

Explain this true story to me...and how it could have happened totaly naturaly. Note: it is shortened and not word for word.

 

A man and two friends where driving up a mountian in a remote area, in the middle of the wilderness, suddenly their breaks go out, no more breaks, they come to a stop and get out of the truck..luckly one of them is a mechanic who looks under the vehical and notices that the breaks are most definately out..they are stranded with nothing and nowhere close. These people then pray to God for help, after praying, they decide to walk down the road.

 

After a while they run into a truck hidden in brush (obvousle abandoned) at the side of the road. This abandoned truck they discover is exactly the same truck as they where traveling in...same make model and year..they where so excited because this was most definately the Lord's work, so they get under the truck to take out the breaks, and much to their dismay, discover that this truck has absolutly no breake, so they go looking around inside the truck, to see what they might find, and in the bed of the truck they find a whole brand new set of breaks not even out of the box, and where able to replace them onto the truch they where traveling in, and go on.

 

And say that there in no higher power than science.

[zadojla]

Got to the point where I couldn't afford food.

Not much of a church. My wife's church helps families in trouble. That's the point of titheing; so the church has the resources for charitable work, as well as support itself.

 

In properly operating denominations, titheing redistributes wealth in a charitable way. In improperly operating denominations, titheing results in gold leaf on the church columns, and a pastor driving a BMW.

[C1ay]

creation science

What an oxymoron...

[eMTee]

creation science, What an oxymoron...

I can say the same thing...evolution science, oxymoron...

 

What is the Greek definition of science?

[TeleMad]

eMTee: ... and I would encurage you to go to the Museum after it is finished, and see...and go to creation science seminars.

 

And I would encourage you to read actual science books: not creationist junk, but actual science. If you want to go further, you could even take a few science classes at your local community college.

 

 

 

PS: What would be nice - but is completely impractical - is to test everyone who wants to discuss evolution, whether it be here or in a school board hearing on evolution, and only those who pass the test are allowed to participate. This would weed out the biologically ignorant and raise the quality of the exchanges a great deal. Well, it would probably eliminate all Creationists and the like, meaning there would no longer be a debate!

 

The problem with this notion is that such tests would have to be given face to face. Consider a test given on the Net. If a question were "Prokaryotes have mitochondria: true or false", someone could Google mitochondria, for example, and find that prokaryotes don't have them. Basically, everyone - no matter how ignorant of biology they might actually be - could pass a test that wasn't given face to face.

[Smokinjoe9]

And I would encourage you to read actual science books: not creationist junk, but actual science. If you want to go further, you could even take a few science classes at your local community college.

 

 

 

PS: What would be nice - but is completely impractical - is to test everyone who wants to discuss evolution, whether it be here or in a school board hearing on evolution, and only those who pass the test are allowed to participate. This would weed out the biologically ignorant and raise the quality of the exchanges a great deal. Well, it would probably eliminate all Creationists and the like, meaning there would no longer be a debate!

 

Since Evolution still has holes in the theory, eliminating other possibilities than evolution would be a horrible mistake..You can say it is correct all you want that doesn't make it so!!

[TeleMad]

This is such an important point that I don't think it should be lost in the bulk of other exchanges.

 

Biochemist: TM- Attacking valid criticism by saying you didn't happen to read about it is not science, it is defense. Yes, this is pretty much what lysosomes do.

 

TeleMad: LOL!

 

Tell me biochemist, if you what you assert is true, then how did scientists place a spider-silk gene into goats and have them produce spider silk!!!

 

By your reasoning, that foreign spider silk proteins would have been degraded by the lysosomes. But they weren't.

 

Of course, we could point out many such experiments where a foreign protein was produced in a higher life form, and was NOT degraded by lysosomes, or any of the other "garbage disposals" you allude to.

 

Observable fact overrules your unfounded and flawed conjecture. You lose.

 

I spent like 2 minutes Googling, on "mice" "human protein", and found one site that lists several examples. Sheep, goats, chickens, and mice expressing foreign proteins: for mice, more than one example is given.

 

”Transgenic sheep and goats have been produced that express foreign proteins in their milk.

 

Transgenic chickens are now able to synthesize human proteins in the "white" of the eggs.

 

…

 

Normal mice cannot be infected with polio virus. They lack the cell-surface molecule that, in humans, serves as the receptor for the virus. So normal mice cannot serve as an inexpensive, easily-manipulated model for studying the disease. However, transgenic mice expressing the human gene for the polio virus receptor

can be infected by polio virus and even develop paralysis and other pathological changes characteristic of the disease in humans.

 

…

 

This image (courtesy of R. L. Brinster and R. E. Hammer) shows a transgenic mouse (right) with a normal littermate (left). The giant mouse developed from a fertilized egg transformed with a recombinant DNA molecule containing:

the structural gene for human growth hormone

a strong mouse gene promoter

The levels of growth hormone in the serum of some of the transgenic mice were several hundred times higher than in control mice.

(http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/T/TransgenicAnimals.html)

 

None of this would be possible if what Biochemist claimed were true, were actually true. Obviously, he was wrong.

[eMTee]

And I would encourage you to read actual science books: not creationist junk, but actual science. If you want to go further, you could even take a few science classes at your local community college.

 

Is science only science when it is explained in evolutionary form, and when it is not..does it make it not science? If I want to read some real science...I should go for National Geographic...because Creation Magazine and other books like that are a bunch of hogwash? And sence when does creation controdict science? I should go to a local community college to learn science, because in there, they teach evolution/"real science" Aka creation/"bunch of bunk"