Dante-Alighieri
Member
- Dec 9, 2008
- 57
- 0
Hi there, I'm a new user and I would be interested in debating some of the apparent misconceptions about evolution and creationism.
However, these kinds of things are usually pointless when arguing over theology and while I'm very well versed in theology I find that aspect boring, aside from the primary reason being that I'm agnostic and I find no reason to think the Bible is anything more than a collection of ancient books.
So that being said, I'm more than willing to discuss and debate evolution and creationism from a scientific level only. Arguing from a Biblical or Theistic standpoint is both pointless and irrelevant since neither are verifiable or objectively true. And hence I wish only to debate the evidence, the lack of evidence, and the arguments from both sides of the Evolution/Creationism debate (although that's a bit of a misnomer).
Perhaps to start with I'll point out a common misconception about evolution:
"Evolution has never been observed"
Evolution is defined as a change in the gene pool of a population over time. A simple example of evolution is a population of mosquitoes developing a resistance to pesticides. This is (more or less) known as micro evolution. Macro evolution is the accumulation of genetic changes in a population to the point at which one population is no longer the same species. By this definition, a certain species of mosquitoes is seen to "macro evolve" into a separate species of mosquitoes. This is exactly what macro evolution is and is a directly observed example of macro evolution. Macro evolution is NOT a monkey giving birth to a human. That could never happen. No monkey will ever give birth to anything but another monkey. Macro evolution is not defined by changes among individuals, but large genetic changes in a population over a long period of time. That being said, there is no reason to think that certain populations may gradually change genetically over a long enough period of time to the point where a final resulting population may be so radically different from it's distant ancestors that it is hard to imagine how one may have descended from the other (i.e - early mammals to modern day humans).
A simple example might be a color wheel: macro evolution is not (generally) a huge sudden leap from one species (in terms of both physiology and genetics) to another radically different species, just as the change from red to blue on a color wheel is not sudden but a gradual change in the color wheel. However, with this in mind, there is no known mechanism that would prevent macro evolution from occurring, because it is not a sudden leap, but a gradual, subtle change in genetics (and subsequently) physiology.
That being said, evolution (including "macro" evolution) has been directly observed.
Dante
However, these kinds of things are usually pointless when arguing over theology and while I'm very well versed in theology I find that aspect boring, aside from the primary reason being that I'm agnostic and I find no reason to think the Bible is anything more than a collection of ancient books.
So that being said, I'm more than willing to discuss and debate evolution and creationism from a scientific level only. Arguing from a Biblical or Theistic standpoint is both pointless and irrelevant since neither are verifiable or objectively true. And hence I wish only to debate the evidence, the lack of evidence, and the arguments from both sides of the Evolution/Creationism debate (although that's a bit of a misnomer).
Perhaps to start with I'll point out a common misconception about evolution:
"Evolution has never been observed"
Evolution is defined as a change in the gene pool of a population over time. A simple example of evolution is a population of mosquitoes developing a resistance to pesticides. This is (more or less) known as micro evolution. Macro evolution is the accumulation of genetic changes in a population to the point at which one population is no longer the same species. By this definition, a certain species of mosquitoes is seen to "macro evolve" into a separate species of mosquitoes. This is exactly what macro evolution is and is a directly observed example of macro evolution. Macro evolution is NOT a monkey giving birth to a human. That could never happen. No monkey will ever give birth to anything but another monkey. Macro evolution is not defined by changes among individuals, but large genetic changes in a population over a long period of time. That being said, there is no reason to think that certain populations may gradually change genetically over a long enough period of time to the point where a final resulting population may be so radically different from it's distant ancestors that it is hard to imagine how one may have descended from the other (i.e - early mammals to modern day humans).
A simple example might be a color wheel: macro evolution is not (generally) a huge sudden leap from one species (in terms of both physiology and genetics) to another radically different species, just as the change from red to blue on a color wheel is not sudden but a gradual change in the color wheel. However, with this in mind, there is no known mechanism that would prevent macro evolution from occurring, because it is not a sudden leap, but a gradual, subtle change in genetics (and subsequently) physiology.
That being said, evolution (including "macro" evolution) has been directly observed.
Dante