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The Basic Stupidity of the Idea of Evolution

I was prompted to write this topic by all the stupid, silly evolution posts written in the "Scientific proof that God exists? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=737322.0)" thread.

Don't take me wrong here. I am not picking on any person's thinking ability. All of us have blind spots in our thinking. All of us miss things. None of us retains memory of everything we have seen and known, with absolute, recall perfection. So, without further rhetoric, let me get right into it.

Pick a person, any person, anywhere in the world. For our purposes, let's focus on a guy named Pete, who lives in Chicago.

It is Pete's birthday today. Pete is 30-years-old today. Pete was born on February 22, 1985. His parents and many other relatives are still alive, and will attest to his birth and birthday if necessary. His birth certificate bears the signature of a doctor, and has a valid date-stamp on it. PETE REALLY IS 30-YEARS-OLD TODAY.

Did Pete exist on February 22, 1984? Did any portion of Pete exist then? Did the pattern for Pete exist then? No! None of the stuff of Pete existed on February 22, 1984. If any of the things that are part of Pete now, existed back then, they had absolutely nothing to do with Pete then. Pete did not exist then, at all.

Evolution did not take hundreds of thousands or millions of years. In the case of Pete, from February 22, 1985, to February 22, 2015, it has taken only 30 years, plus an additional approximately 9 months of his gestation period.

So what is it that might take the hundreds of thousands or millions of years? It might take scientists that long to figure out how the human body works, especially if they keep on focusing on stupid things like evolution.

What do you think?

:)

I think you don't understand evolution, what you described is not evolution - rather it is the change of a single organism throughout its life, based on the information present in its DNA (and environmental factors). While its DNA may have mutated slightly over its life, it has not evolved in the accepted sense of the word.

However, small mutations in the DNA could drastically change the species/type of organism over multiple generations. Environmental changes could accelerate this process. This is what people mean when they talk about evolution.

Absolutely no reason to call it evolution. There is this gigantic, miraculous change in some material. The material was rather inert before. Suddenly there is a change that produces a human being. The human being is far greater than the combined sum of its parts. This is miracle. There is so little to it that might be considered evolution, that you might as well say that there is no evolution at all.

:)

Just because you consider both a single organism maturing, and a whole species changing as "miraculous", doesn't mean they are the same thing. That's why evolutionary scientists have made a different word for the latter. It's just semantics, whether you believe in it or not.

Does your main argument against evolution consist of claiming that a single organism maturing is exactly the same as a group of organisms changing over generations (due to mutations and environmental changes)? If so then you need to first understand the concept of evolution before saying it's wrong.

The Earth is so old that there could have been different worlds before the one we know. Our history reaches only a couple thousand years back and dates like 6000 BC (ancient Egypt) seem to be difficult to comprehend. An analysis of some of the oldest minerals dated them at almost 4 billion years, so there could be hundreds of evolutions in Earth's life. Civilisations were created, fell and turned to dust and from the dust came new animals that took thousands of years to evolve. Who knows, maybe our ancestors left Earth a million years ago and are now living in another galaxy. That "god" you are talking about could be an alien being that created us long ago and that "miracle" just a scientific experiment.

I do find it more realistic than a creator who demanded everyone to worship him, killed a ton of them, then sent his self to kill him self to save us from himself.

Mutations happen at every birth. Enough of these mutations, environmental factors and distribution, things tend to change drastically.

Let me say it another way. Evolution suggests that hundreds of thousands, or millions of years ago, there was no life. Then some chemicals came together sort of accidentally, and accidentally formed life. Rather than dying, this life expanded into what we see nowadays: thousands of species of lots of different kinds of life all over the place.

All I am saying is, in my example man, Pete (and every living thing that exists), there was a time that the chemicals that are constituents of his body were not life. The time that they became life was 30 years ago, plus 9 months. Those chemicals went from something else to Pete. No multitudes of eras involved.

In addition, all the food that he eats is not Pete until it becomes Pete. This doesn't take long periods of time. It takes only moments.

No evolution. Certainly not in the form we know it.

:)

"The earth and universe haven't come into existence, yet. They and we are all a figment of our own imagination." How do you know this isn't true?

There isn't any proof that the earth is older than 6,000 years. There is only interpretation of a geological record that can be interpreted many ways. There are also a bunch of unknown factors that could change how we interpret all the things that we interpret.

The best that we have is the record of Moses, who was in a position as an adopted grandson of a Pharaoh, where he could read all the ancient writings from the beginning, that had been stored up in the various libraries of Egypt, at the time that Egypt was the dominant kingdom on the earth. He writes both what the records say, and the things that people handed down by word of mouth as tradition. And he writes in the form that God wants him to write.

Moses' words in the first 5 books of the Bible are what happened on earth as recorded by the eye witness who where there when the things happened. Believe the records of the witnesses, not your faulty interpretations of the geological record.

:)

Did you ever take a metalworking class in school? If you did, the teacher might have required you to make a screwdriver. A screwdriver is really made for one thing - to turn screws. Sometimes we use screwdrivers for things other than turning screws... like chiseling, or prying.

God made people to worship Him. Not only this, but He made them in the best way so that they could offer the best kind of worship... free will worship.

If a screwdriver doesn't work, you have your choice: fix it or throw it away. God chose to attempt to fix broken people. But it seems that the people broken by mutations into thinking that it was evolution that made people, are some of the screwdrivers that God just may not be able to fix, but will wind up throwing away.

:)

Actually there is. For example this temple was built over 9000 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

What about dinosaurs? You want us to believe they lived less than 6000 years ago?

The temple is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about. Interpretive dating. Nobody knows for a fact how old the temple is, but it might be lots younger, and only interpreted to be older.

There is nothing wrong with the idea of dinosaurs dying out in the Great Flood of Noah's day, around 4,500 years ago. It's just that we have heard it said differently for such a long time, that we wouldn't believe it if we saw it using a time viewer that could look back then.

:)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oogenesis

some of Pete's dna was in his mum before she was born

So why dont you people just praise your lord and live in churches ? Leave the rest of the world to us reasonable idiots who wont believe in any silly genesis theory of your bible/quran/geeta.

Based on your explanation I can say that right now neither of those holy books exist because I havent seen them, they will only exist if I can see them being written by the oh holy lord of god or whatever superior being is up there according to you.

Look, evolution WAS a theory but it is a fact now, go ahead and do your own experiments and come to your own logical conclusions instead of waging a philosophical online thread war.

That would require intelligence he doesn't have, I agree that religious people should keep to the churches, when I see them trying to infiltrate our governments and our school systems that's when I get pissy about it and too many of them keep trying. The scientific minded will always have an advantage over the pious because they always seek the truth even if it challenges their own beliefs, the pious however don't which is why we'd be all stuck in the dark ages if they had their way.

I was religious as a kid growing up in a religious Indian middle class family and as a kid I was able to understand the stupidity of religion, I just dont get it that if I - not the most intelligent guy on the planet - can get how stupid & baseless religion really is as a KID why cant these so called grown ups do that as well ?

I'm sure it would be due to all sorts of reasons based on their upbringing and such, niether one of them quite being the same, but as far as I'm concerned, none of them should hold any kind of political power, even capitalists and communists of the absolute extremes tend to agree on this.

I think this is one of your pointless religious preaching threads. ::)

But it wasn't part of Pete's DNA before he existed.

:)

"aliens" need higher radioactive background than actual life on Earth... apparently the toxicer the better for "them", who/what ever they may be. to the void.


(correction is mine)

typical "masson" conditioning.

What is a year? again your conditioning.

Evolution is not a theory in the lab. In the lab it is fact. It is caused by a lot of difficult, heavy duty work by a bunch of lab workers.

Evolution doesn't produce life. If it does, it doesn't happen in the way that scientists suggest. Because life for any living thing doesn't exist until that living thing comes to life. There might be some trees that are 1 or 2 thousand years old. During that time they may have evolved. The thing evolution didn't do was produce life. They came to life suddenly, and since then they have been living.

Same for people. People weren't individually alive until they came to life. It didn't take millions of years. It didn't even take one year. It happened inside of the few seconds that it took the sperm to combine with the egg. Perhaps that was evolution, but it wasn't anything like the popular theories for evolution that fill the science books these days.

:)

The sad thing is, most religion is fantasy. The bit of it that is reality is often overlooked.

:)

Nice thought. And thank you for your input. But is what you say fact, however? And how would you determine that it is fact if it is?

:)

let's see if their creation are stable against the true creation, sorry, I don't want to test on WHERE I LIVE, ie this planet, however if they are ready to go in the clean labs for them, and stay there all their miserable lives, dedicated to their research it's fine with me... Only they will always have the sword of the TSAR over them, one mistake, and before the chain accelerate they are annihilated by atomic fire (or what ever is appropriated to "neutralize" their deeds, plasma field seems cool too).

This is like what I believe happened. With regard to rate of change in substances (time), there was a big difference even 5,000 years ago in the way time acted on different substances. The way things chemically worked back then, was probably similar in some ways to the way it works now, but there were big differences, as well. Modern science is finding out that there are measurable variations in what we have been led to believe are constants. There is no way to tell how big those variations might have been in the past.

Like the unaccepted idea of an electric cosmos would fill virtually all the gaps in astronomy physics being made by new astronomy observations, in the same way variable rates in time for all kinds of materials and half-lifes, would fill some of the gaps in archaeological thinking. In addition, such thinking would prove out certain aspects of religion.

:)

Proof of evolution

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Rsu0L1EnE9I/TgK3egvI5yI/AAAAAAAADpw/b2S00W07Q1c/s1600/Funny%2BPicture%2BMichael%2BJackson%2BEvolution.jpg

It seems to me you are saying, humans, plants, animals are code (dna)

But what is the compiler?

At some point of our life we have been manipulated in our DNA to look like humans. That's all.

Ugg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_RNA

This isn't new people.

OK, you give the impression in this thread that you're purposefully being difficult, but I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you want to learn some new shit.

First off, you're confusing evolution with the spontaneous emergence of life. The theory of evolution cannot explain this, and doesn't pretend to. Some people refer to this emergence of life as abiogenesis. What evolution explains is what happened from there, and how a single (or small number of) simple single-celled organism(s) evolved into the huge diversity of life we see today. It's like how the big bang theory explains what happened since the big bang, but doesn't say anything about why/how it happened.

The sperm and the egg you speak of were both alive before they combined, and no, that wasn't evolution, and no, science books are not claiming such a thing.

It has been shown in laboratories that certain organisms do in fact evolve according to their environment. Things like bacteria reproduce so rapidly that it is possible to see changes, over multiple generations, that give the bacteria an advantage in their environment (such as evolving more efficient flagella (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13663-evolution-myths-the-bacterial-flagellum-is-irreducibly-complex.html#.VOvNS_msX5M)). You admit that evolution can happen in a lab, yet you say it is impossible in the wild? Why? (also it's not "caused by a lot of difficult, heavy duty work by a bunch of lab workers". Lol, the recording of the data may be heavy duty work by a bunch of lab workers, but the actual evolution happens due to random DNA mutations on a molecular level, nothing to do with the lab workers.)

Also, another thing. Just because you don't believe in something, that's no excuse to not understanding the concept of it. For example, I don't believe in ghosts but I have no trouble understanding the basic concept of a ghost. Same goes for intelligent design/creation. So if you are skeptical about evolution, surely the best way of proving your point of view is to understand the concept, to the point that you can disprove it?

both ideas are right

Herein lies the problem. The word evolve evolves independently among different groups, at different times, and in different ways. Then the groups try to apply their meaning to things that other groups wouldn't.

"Evolution" meaning "adaptation" may be absolutely correct. But "evolution" meaning "random changes" is something that doesn't happen... at least not in any evidence that we have of it happening. In fact, the greater the scientists and researchers, the more they look for cause and effect.

Evidence as adaptation means cause and effect. Lab evidence for anything other than this is manipulation. Nature has no natural evidence of anything other than cause and effect without randomness, even if we have some math that suggests that randomness is possible. This indicates pre-programming, more than it indicates anything else.

At this stage in investigations, without some tremendously great, almost miraculous, development in observation of nature, or in the methods of researching, evolution looks like programming way more than it looks like random changes.

:)

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120623162528/adventuretimewithfinnandjake/images/e/ef/Nope.jpg.jpg

Just because you cant grasp it doesnt mean it doesnt happen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation

"naturally occurring DNA damages arise about 60,000 to 100,000 times per day per mammalian cell."

The question remains. What is the cause of that DNA damage? There is no evidence that it is random. There is every evidence that it is cause and effect produced. Cause and effect ultimately suggests "made" or "pre-programmed" rather than random effects. What's your point?

:)

Are you even reading the stuff people write at your threads or the links the post or you just reply ignoring them?

There are dozens of ways a mutation can happen. Its  chemistry. A gamma ray from a distant star may excite a molecule therefore destroying it. Maybe UV light from our sun. Or that lead atom in the atmosphere. Maybe it is just the probability of a reaction to happen that simply doesnt create the same products 100% of the times. Or maybe that burned food full of carcinogen you ate. α particles from Radon? Or β+- particles from the potassium in the banana you just ate.

Simple chemistry....

Are you talking to me? If not, ignore this as you want. But if you are talking to me...

The point is not a question of mutation causes. We know that all mutations, all multi-trillions plus of them, happen because something causes them to happen. Call these actions and reactions anything you want. Call them evolution or something else. The point is something different than this.

The point is that, mixed in the writings about the causes that cause mutation-type effects, there is the false idea that some of the mutations come about by random chance. If the definition of "random chance" is "cause and effect," then random chance is the thing that makes the mutations - the thing that evolution is expressing - then evolution is a correct idea and word to use.

However, the definition of "random" doesn't always include only "cause and effect." Sometimes it includes changes that have no cause whatsoever. Such changes are said to have come about accidentally, in ways that don't have a cause, randomly.

There is no non-cause and effect change in the universe that we have seen. All changes, even mutations, happen by cause and effect. Some of the causes we are aware of. Others we are not aware of. Since we haven't found any changes that we know exist because of no cause whatsoever, the changes we haven't seen any cause for, simply have causes that are unaccounted for. They are not pure randomness - no cause whatsoever - in action.

Since all change has to do with cause and effect, all evolution is essentially pre-programmed. This idea isn't even found as a suggestion in the writings about evolution... although it may be in some obscure writings. Since pre-programming isn't even suggested, this makes the idea of evolution to be basically a stupid idea.

:)

thread has nothing to do with evolution theory.

what you can learn here from badecker is a (good) use of rhetoric to persuade people about x (x seems to be mostly religious though).

some of the techniques s/he is using are described here https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/588/04/

Yes, it's my fault. I was simply trying to attack the thing from too many directions at once. So, let me restate much simpler. I hope I don't state it too simple, now. Here goes.

Change, however you call it, evolution or something else, comes about by cause and effect. We don't know of anything else that produces change.

Some of Evolution Theory attempts to assign some change to pure randomness. This is change that might occur without a cause.

Since there is no evidence that we have seen, of any change happening without a cause, and since the closest we can come to change happening without a cause, is when we don't know what the cause is, and since Evolution Theory does not state such clearly, the whole idea of evolution crashes in on itself.

Furthermore, cause and effect in everything suggests that everything is pre-programmed. Does anything in Evolution Theory even suggest this - pre-programming? Evolution, as it is stated, is close to pure bunk.

:)

OK I'll bite... This is a fair comment (even though there are subatomic processes which seem to be totally spontaneous, but that's off-topic)

Right, I think this is where you're getting confused. No-one is claiming that evolution behaves like a pre-programmed machine or anything. Stop thinking of evolution as some sort of entity/intelligent force, and think of it as an abstract process.

Most, if not all cellular mutations are totally random. But, I hear you say, how do the cells know how to become specialized? They must have been programmed to be able to arrange themselves into complex things like human eyes etc!!

Wrong. For all the specialization we see around us, there was an exponentially higher number of "fuck-ups", cells and organisms that mutated in a way which was detrimental to them (considering their environment). These "fuck-ups" were not successful in their respective environments and have disappeared/died out, giving the impression of design (as the ones that survived suit their environment very well).

Consider this: If there was a serious nuclear apocalypse tomorrow and you studied the Earth a few weeks later, very few animals would look as though they had been designed for the environment. You return a few years later, and everything has died except single-celled organisms and cockroaches. Now, it looks as though the animals have been designed to suit the environment (because you can't see all the species that have died out).


OK, what on earth do you mean by this? Evolutionary theory doesn't claim that changes happen with no cause. Greekbitcoin's post has a nice list of some of the things that cause mutations. Over time, the useful mutations stick around, and the pointless and detrimental ones disappear. The mutations themselves are totally random.


Cause and effect doesn't suggest this, you're joining dots that don't exist (much like your claims about "the machine-like nature of the universe" and how "machines must have makers, and nature has better machines than man, so they must have been made by a more advanced maker than man...") - stop jumping to conclusions. Just because nature has better machines, doesn't mean that they must have appeared by magic.

You're basically saying Evolution theory is bunk because it doesn't include programming or a God. Come on, you can do better than this.

Which part is fantasy and which part is reality and how can you tell the difference between them? People believe what they want to believe at the end of the day. Personally I don't get how religious people can shoot down the idea of evolution because beings are far too complex to have been created this way but believe a far greater being with super powers can just spontaneously exist without questioning how the hell he came into being.

Religious people have always equaled mental retardation to me. This group believes in things like angels and it confuses you that they don't believe in evolution?

Things Christians believe:

A mistranslated book written by cave people is a reliable guide to the modern world.

There’s an invisible man in the sky who likes to watch you while you’re showering.

Two thousand years ago, an alter ego of this invisible man knocked up a Jewess whose husband wasn’t satisfying her.

The progeny of this drunken coupling was both god and the son of god.

This son of god was killed (but not really, since he’s also god, and god can’t die) and then came back to life to seek revenge, just like J.D. Walker.

His killing was a necessary sacrifice in order that we might be forgiven for the sins of Eve, the first woman in the world, who lived 6000 years ago in a magical garden, where a talking snake convinced her to eat a forbidden apple.

To show our thanks for this sacrifice, we should put special crackers and wine in our mouths, where they will be magically transformed into his flesh and blood, which we should then swallow despite taboos regarding cannibalism.

A guy built a boat out of wood large enough to hold two of every creature on the earth with primitive tools.

In the beginning there was only Adam and Eve. God punished them by making them biologically reproduce. They founded the entire world which means incest is ok. Eve had two sons Cain and Able. They went off and found wives. From where exactly?

The most retarded of all: People of the world speak different languages because a tower was constructed to reach the cloud God lives in. To punish them he made them all speak different languages.

If you don’t believe all the preceding items, then after you die you will be plunged into a lake of fire and tortured for all eternity.

If you do believe all the preceding items, then after you die you’ll get to go to heaven, which is a cloud in outer space.

Retarded.

That is exactly the point... well, close to it.

Scientists got sick of finding no clear results that could show God. So some of them simply suggested that He did not exist, and started looking for the spontaneity that must have started this whole thing, and that "evolves" it this way and that right up to the present.

The trouble is, science hasn't been able to find anything that they can show is true spontaneity. They have been able to find all kinds of simplicity, complexity, diversity, and a bunch of other "...ities," but no pure spontaneity.

The thing that we have found in great abundance is cause and effect, action and reaction. Cause and effect is the thing that "runs" even our most complex machinery. We, ourselves, seem to operate throughout by cause and effect. Even our decisions and thinking are determined by which neurons fire and which other neurons and chemicals determine that they fire, and which stimuli act even on these, all the way back to "the beginning(?)".

Since we are cause-and-effect people, and since this is all we have been able to find in nature (except, of course, in the things that we haven't found the causes for yet), fantastic and improbable as it may seem, this whole nature and universe must have been programmed. And whatever programmed this universe, we don't have much of a clue about. Religion might think it has, but science knows it doesn't.

When scientists are unwilling to talk about the fact that they haven't been able to find any spontaneity (no pure random "effect"), in the face of all the cause and effect findings that they readily admit to, their theories of something like evolution are extremely unbalanced, flawed, even simply wrong.

:)

I love this, two entirely conflicting logical fallacies.

1. We found everything, and cant explain anything else, hence god.
2. We haven't found everything, hence god.

Not only ignorant, but stupid as well.

I wasn't aware we had discovered everything there is to know about everything. Please alert the world. What an idiot.

You seem quite the expert on science and being a scientist? Where did you obtain your PhD, please direct me to your list of publications.
What is your scientific education and experience?

You have about as much understanding as I have of oncology, which is little to none. Why should anyone listen to anything you have to say about anything?

Bravo! You are waking up to some of the questions of logic and the universe. It is always thrilling to see when people start to question things, and examine the things that they have formerly taken for granite.



No PhD.



Click on my handle in this forum, above, at the top of this post. Go to the bottom of the page that opens up. Click the link entitled, "Show the last posts of this person."



Nosey!



I'll look it up in the encyclopedia sometime.



Because I have a very loud voice when I choose to use it. They shouldn't listen, really, but they can't help themselves.

 :D

I feel sorry for you, badecker. I sincerely hope you won't live the rest of your life in ignorance.

 :(

I feel the same way. Do you think we could get a donation fund set up for Badecker and all others in a similar position? He needs all the help he can get.

In all seriousness, only time can help. Religion is a dying problem, it becomes less and less relevant every day as it has been for a long time. We are too connected and intelligent for it to be a viable means of control in this day and age for most people. Hopefully we're only a few generations away from religion being in the same camp as smallpox.

On a very related note, have you guys watched the documentary "Jesus Camp"? It's an interesting look at hard-core religious beliefs, available on Netflix.

Thanks, kids, for feeling sorry for me. I should feel sorry for you more, but I don't, 'cause you are young enough that you just might survive.

The two weakest religions that will crash first are the religion of atheism, and the religion of faulty science like evolution. It is happening among a lot of folks right now. And you can see me crashing them right here in this forum.

I don't have anything against you kids. I should feel sorry for you, because you will be receiving the backlash of your crashed religions in the near future. But I don't have time to feel sorry. I'm too busy preparing for the crash, because it will not only be a crash of your religions. It will go into finance, and all kinds of other things.

Should I say, "good luck to you?" I don't have time. But, thanks again for feeling sorry for me.

:)

His kind are dying out. Atheists in the first world are growing fast, religion is not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_religion

He should be afraid.

No he isn't. S/He uses tired arguments, logical fallacies and ignorance. An intelligent high school student can see though it. Arguments like this would fail in any liberal arts course, forget science. The only people convinced are equally as ignorant and uneducated. To think stupidity would be worn as a badge of honour.  ::)

I think that's what he's saying. This is a good example of dummies like badecker trying to spread their "knowledge" to other simple minded dummies.

Since Atheism is a religion, it is only a shift in the religions, and which religious group has the larger population.

Atheists should fear more. They will have to face God in the judgment, and have a very good reason why they did not believe in Him. There probably won't be a reason that will be good enough, and they will be condemned.

Since all people die, my fear is mostly a fear of the passing operation itself... a natural fear, like everyone else has of death.

:)

Cause and effect is good, sound, scientific logic. Since we have absolutely no evidence of anything other than cause and effect operations in nature and the universe, this means that everything is pre-programmed. This is probably the most fundamental idea that IS and should be held by all scientists in all scientific examination, because it exists everywhere. Nothing exists or operates without cause and effect.

What exists without a cause? Nothing!

When modern science ignores cause and effect within their theories, the theories are flawed. If it isn't a flaw when it is ignored, then it is downright attempted deception.

:)

I teach evolutionary biology and I am sure this is a misunderstanding.  There is no mystery here it is very well understood. I assume everyone believes in DNA. Well if you understand what DNA is then you understand evolution.
Any person in the world may launch a scientific experiment to test the concept of evolution. They can publish their results for peer review and further testing. Science works by testing ideas with logic. It does not look at claims, rather results of tests. There have been thousands of such experiments but there has never been a finding that contradicts evolution and it is the basis of all modern biology.

I suspect the real reason why people don't "believe" in evolution is because of the greater implications in their lives. Few of us who are atheists recognize what is being asked of a person when they look logically at the issue of evolution. It is as clear as day that it is and has happened. Anyone can see that. Except for those who would have to alter their whole world view just to recognize an obvious fact. It is why for centuries astronomers knew that the sun was the center of the solar system but refused to acknowledge it. Opening their eyes meant questioning everything they thought they knew.  

100 years ago the issue was dinosaurs. Many people simply could not admit they once lived here. It would call into question the Koran or the Bible or the Bahgavadgita. There can't have been dinosaurs!
Eventually religion found ways to accommodate the millions of bones now found in museums. I think that will happen for evolution also. Evolution is modern biology and we use it everyday in medicine etc. In 10 years denying evolution will be like denying the existence of dinosaurs. There will always be some, but very few.

The basic implications of the term "evolution" seem to be that life and everything else came about spontaneously. The spontaneity seems to be understood as pure randomness. There isn't any evidence of pure randomness existing. There might be some math that suggests that it can exist. But there is no evidence of its existence. Everything exists completely orderly, according to cause and effect.

If "evolution" simply means "change" then, obviously, there is evolution all over the place. But when you consider Darwin's "tree," you can see that evolution does NOT simply mean change.

Human life is more than simply patterns of life that have been handed down over the millennia. Human life is something that does NOT evolve. It comes into existence for the first time when the sperm and egg get together. It is not a random coming together (cause and effect), and it is not a life that existed for untold eons of time. It is new life, that comes about in a moment, even though it is patterned after combinations of older life.

Standard evolution teaching does not say much of anything to these things. Perhaps it says nothing to them. If standard evolution writings included the cause and effect that penetrates the universe, as part of the important things in its "doctrine," stating cause and effect right out in the open (because it is probably the most important part of evolution), then evolution might have some true meaning.

As it is, the idea of evolution is being used to deceive people. At the very least, it is entirely remiss in explaining one of the most important of its basic tenets - cause and effect.

:)

Again from which accredited institution did you receive your education?


Really? You think the entire universe is deterministic and we just need a big enough model? Quantum effects are well established in cellular function. The existence of virtual particles is established. Physics says the universe is random, your understanding of science is stuck in the 18th century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle

http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=quantum+effects+in+biology&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=7BXuVOGfLszaoATtw4CgCg&ved=0CBoQgQMwAA

You bring up some important ideas BADecker. Where did evolution/life start? The answer from science so far is "I don't know". It is a true mystery and to just say randomness... That is not an answer. We don't really even know what life is. We can't do it in a lab, we don't know if life started here or somewhere else. We don't know if life is common in the universe or if this is the only occurrence.

What can be observed is that over time life on Earth has become more complicated and that older forms change via DNA into different forms. That we do in the lab every day. It happens to all living things from germs evolving resistance or into new species like HIV, or whale flukes evolving from feet.

There is also a vast amount of fossil and DNA evidence about our own species. For most of our history there was more than one species of human on Earth. Just 40,000 years ago you could have met at least five species of humans.  Today there is only one species, but the reconstructions below show just some of the others in our larger family tree. We (all life on Earth) are just variations of the DNA molecule and in the future it will get even more confusing. Soon we will swap out sections of our DNA the way we modify computer code. It's easy we are all just DNA monsters.

http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/870.png

It's not only that it changes their entire world view, its worse than that. They have to admit to themselves that they were wrong and fooled. This is a common defence mechanism, people will fight to the death rather than admit they were wrong. Only evolution could produce such a defective species.

exactly :)

imho badecker is far from being a idiot, he seems more like someone you would describe as a fanatic or fundamentalist?
he definitively knows how to use rhetoric to persuade people (more so people that lack knowledge about certain scientific topics - check his post history)

his arguments are less scientific and much more of a rhetoric nature.

Well I agree with both of you, but I will maintain I don't think he is skilled at rhetoric, or presenting an argument. He's just shouts the loudest, many people consider this good enough. Look at a cable news debate.

From the book of WTF;
Pray for BADecker, as he has embarked on a long journey of ignorance.  He knows not, what science he chooses to ignore.  For what he believes, is the pure randomness that he chooses to spew forth.

Let us snicker pray!

it tends to take approx. 30 years cause Saturn takes 30 years to come again to your sign.

just remember.  staurn is good.  not EVIL.  like some Capricorns want u to belive..

Actually, that which we observe over time is not necessarily a more complicated Earth. Archaeology over the last two or three decades has shown that there was in the past a great trading organization that covered the Earth. You can see that it was united by all the similarities in the structures (often pyramids) and carvings that are gradually being found around the world.

While technology in the prehistoric past of man was not the same as ours today, it also was not necessarily inferior. Consider that we would find it very difficult if not impossible to build The Great Pyramid with our current technology. And at least one of the pyramids in Bosnia is a lot larger than The Great Pyramid. In addition, pyramids seem to focus a healing energy that seems rejuvenate people in ways that our medical has no understanding about.

Consider the fact that within the fossil record we find about three times the number of species around today. These died off, not because things are advancing, but rather because they seem to be declining.

Consider Neanderthal man. There is no evidence that would suggest that he was less intelligent than we. In fact, the larger size of his cranium would suggest just the opposite. The smart Neanderthal would never want to live in the crowded cities of today. He is smart enough to know that there is a whole lot more freedom in the peace of nature.

As for the 40,000 years you mentioned, without bringing my personal beliefs into it, you can check into the fact that there is much disagreement about the ages of prehistoric things and times. The general understanding was set in place, arbitrarily, by the universities, simply so that there could be an orderly setting down of timelines. Dates and ages are certainly not agreed on by all the experts in the field. Even C-14 dating is wildly off at times. If you, as a teacher, check in what others say about timelines into ancient prehistory, do it discretely. Universities don't like it when people find out that that their timelines are arbitrary.

Since we are just getting a first more or less solid understanding of DNA and how the DNA systems work, we don't know that there isn't an underlying, imbedded method for adaptation to protect the species that we haven't seen yet. In other words, germs that become resistant, could have a process built right into their whole system, a process that we simply haven't discovered, one that acts like a more complex computer program, one that will need decompiling once we find out that it is there. Don't rule it out just yet.

Even quantum mechanics, which is simply probability extended, might be able to be extended to the place where Einstein's principles of cause and effect fit right in with quantum entanglement. It would lie in understanding further dimensions, mathematically at least. The reason for quantum mechanics is that people have gone about as far as they can in direct cause and effect observation. Complex probability fills in the gaps in direct cause and effect observations.

:)

Found a video of badecker circa 1993

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MUVNuD3MiU