[_ Old Earth _] Evolution is not based on empirical evidence

[Asimov]

I mean I would have to witness the process of humans evolving from the [insert whatever you beleive they evolved from]. Observe it.

That's tantamount to asking a Geologist to create mountains in minutes.

 

[Guest]

I mean I would have to witness the process of humans evolving from the [insert whatever you beleive they evolved from]. Observe it.

:D You are right,and it hasn't ever been seen by anyone,not even
once. It's more invisible than they claim God is.

 

[B]

Quote;
''I mean I would have to witness the process of humans evolving from the [insert whatever you beleive they evolved from]. Observe it.''

Evolution can be definetly observed. 4 or so hundred years ago there were several dozens of species of dogs. Each one fully domesticated, noted and catalouged. Today there is something like two hundred species of dogs. Breeds such as fox terriers didn't exist then. They have been bred into existence by controlled breeding.
This is a form of evolution - a species changing over time.

 

[bibleberean]

Well, this is my very first post to this forum. Hopefully I won't just be repeating what others have already said. Anyway, here goes.

One of the main criticisms that evolutionists throw at creationists is to claim that creation is based on religious belief while evolution is based on science. But is this actually the case? No it isn’t. I think it is quite easy to show that at its core the theory of evolution is not based on scientific evidence. To see that evolution is not science you just have to realize what foundational process has brought about all the scientific knowledge we have today. Every true scientific fact that humanity has developed over the centuries has come about through the experimental process.

In the experimental process a scientist first observes some phenomenon in the world that interests him, and he develops a hypothesis about what might cause that phenomenon. Then he designs an experiment that will test whether his hypothesis is valid or not. He runs the experiment several times and observes the results. He records the data he has observed and makes whatever calculations might be necessary and then he draws conclusions from his observations as to whether his hypothesis is an adequate explanation for the results he obtained. And finally he lets other scientists examine his data and conclusions to see whether he has made any errors or omissions in his analysis. When everyone agrees that the conclusions are valid then those conclusions become part of humanity’s store of scientific knowledge. Those conclusions are only changed if further experimental evidence comes along that modifies or contradicts the earlier results.

So all of our scientific knowledge is based on repeated experimentation and observation. But is the theory of evolution based on the experimental process? Not at all. The evolution of life from non-life supposedly happened in the far distant past and then stopped happening once life was established. No scientist was there to observe the evolution of life from non-life and no scientist was around to observe the evolution of simple life into complex life. No one was there while it was occurring and the process of evolution can never be repeated again. And in our world today we don’t see evidence that evolution is currently taking place. There simply are no animals present on earth that are partway evolved into completely different animals. And when we study the anatomy of animals we never find organs that are changing into different organs with new functions. Every animal is already complete and functional in the environment in which it lives. So it is obvious that evolution is not based on repeatable observations. No one saw evolution happening and no one can make it happen again. That means that evolution is not based on scientific empirical evidence.

What evolution is actually based on is historical evidence. That is, the historical evidence gleaned from geology and the evidence derived from fossil bones dug up from the ground. But historical evidence has one big problem – it is always incomplete and fragmentary. In other words, it is always full of holes. In order to draw conclusions from historical evidence a scientist must attempt to fill in the holes in the record. But no scientist is truly objective when it comes to filling in the missing evidence. The way that a scientist fills in the gaps will always be dependent on that person’s biases and presuppositions. An atheistic scientist who bases his worldview on materialistic naturalism will always come to conclusions that support his naturalistic bias. Just as a creation scientist who bases his worldview on the existence of the omnipotent Creator of the Bible will always come to conclusions that support what God has told us about the world in His word.

Evolution is not based on repeatable, testable observations. It is based on the interpretation of circumstantial, historical evidence. So at its core evolution is no more scientific than creationism is. Both evolution theory and creationism make use of the very same historical evidence. But creationists interpret that evidence based on a theistic worldview filtered through the teachings of the Bible while evolutionists interpret that evidence based on their naturalistic worldview that is most often coupled with an anti-god bias. Both evolution and creation are belief systems that are entirely dependent on the presuppositions of those who believe in them. I’ve seen atheists in this forum claim that evolution is a proven fact of science but I’d have to say that that is just bluster on the part of the evolutionists. Any theory that is based on unobserved, unrepeatable and untestable evidence can never be considered a fact. Evolution is based just as much on faith as creation is. A faith that believes that materialistic processes are an adequate explanation for all the complexity we see in living systems.

Right, That is why evolution is a theory.

People who claim evolution is a fact cannot prove it.

One camp of evolutionists claim that in the process of billions of years in life sprang into existence by chance.

Is that possibe?

The observable evidence does cannot support such a belief.

Life begets life. It takes intelligence to design and create.

"Can information arise from non-information?

Dr. Werner Gitt, Director and Professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, makes it clear that one of the things we know absolutely for sure from science, is that information cannot arise from disorder by chance. It always takes (greater) information to produce information, and ultimately information is the result of intelligence:

‘A code system is always the result of a mental process (it requires an intelligent origin or inventor) . . . It should be emphasized that matter as such is unable to generate any code. All experiences indicate that a thinking being voluntarily exercising his own free will, cognition, and creativity, is required.’15

‘There is no known natural law through which matter can give rise to information, neither is any physical process or material phenomenon known that can do this.’16"

See source:

http://christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c038.html

 

[cubedbee]

Quote;
''I mean I would have to witness the process of humans evolving from the [insert whatever you beleive they evolved from]. Observe it.''

Evolution can be definetly observed. 4 or so hundred years ago there were several dozens of species of dogs. Each one fully domesticated, noted and catalouged. Today there is something like two hundred species of dogs. Breeds such as fox terriers didn't exist then. They have been bred into existence by controlled breeding.
This is a form of evolution - a species changing over time.

Actually, there is one species of dog today just as there were hundreds of years ago. What has changed is the number of breeds. This is an example of a single species changing and becoming more varied, but it is not an example of speciation.

 

[Quath]

Right. You get speciation when a group of dogs stop inter breeding with other dogs and segregate somewhat. At some point their small changes will make them incompatible to breed with the major dog line and you can say you have a new species.

Quath

 

[bibleberean]

Right. You get speciation when a group of dogs stop inter breeding with other dogs and segregate somewhat. At some point their small changes will make them incompatible to breed with the major dog line and you can say you have a new species.

Quath

What breed of dog has become a new species?

What do we call this new species?

If it isn't a dog what is it?

 

[ThinkerMan]

Quath is right....dogs have only created new breeds, but no new species to our knowledge.

The interesting point about this idea is that creationists admit to genetic drift in the case of dogs, or any species for that matter.

Genetic drift that causes blondes, brunettes, almond-shaped eyes and big noses among us.

However, at some point, there is a "line". If you believe that genetic drift occurs, then why can't it continue to drift until two subsets of the species, long seperated by geography, no longer are genetically capable of having viable offspring.

A donkey and a horse is an example. They have drifted far enough to not produce viable offspring, however they are still close enough to have sterile offspring.

Why do creationists believe that two isolated clans of a species can drift apart to create noticable changes (i.e. skin color or Chihauhaus), but not far enough to cause "hybrids" like mules or new species altogether?

 

[bibleberean]

Quath is right....dogs have only created new breeds, but no new species to our knowledge.

The interesting point about this idea is that creationists admit to genetic drift in the case of dogs, or any species for that matter.

Genetic drift that causes blondes, brunettes, almond-shaped eyes and big noses among us.

However, at some point, there is a "line". If you believe that genetic drift occurs, then why can't it continue to drift until two subsets of the species, long seperated by geography, no longer are genetically capable of having viable offspring.

A donkey and a horse is an example. They have drifted far enough to not produce viable offspring, however they are still close enough to have sterile offspring.

Why do creationists believe that two isolated clans of a species can drift apart to create noticable changes (i.e. skin color or Chihauhaus), but not far enough to cause "hybrids" like mules or new species altogether?

The observable evidence doesn't give reason to believe a new species of life has ever evolved.

A species produces after it's kind. A hybrid cannot do that.

Dogs beget dogkind and man begets mankind.

That is how God so ordered His creation.

Genesis 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Why evolution can not take Place

The following is a short excerpt from a paper Christian apologist Dave Hunt wrote in Evolution or God's Word? Author: Dave Hunt
Publication Date: 2/1/1997

In his book, The Blind Watchmaker, Oxford University zoologist Richard Dawkins, a leading evolutionist, calls biology "the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose."13 Indeed! One cell, the smallest living unit, could have 100,000 molecules and 10,000 intricately interrelated chemical reactions going on at one time.

Cells couldn't arise by chance! Dawkins admits that every cell contains in its nucleus "a digitally coded database larger...than all 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together."14 You can't even imagine the odds against chance creating a 30-volume encyclopedia! That's for one celland there are trillions in the human body, thousands of different kinds, working in unbelievably complex and delicately balanced relationships!

The astronomical odds make evolution mathematically impossible.

Hoyle calculated that the odds of producing just the basic enzymes of life by chance are 1 over 1 with 40,000 zeros after it. By comparison, the odds of plucking a particular atom out of the universe is 1 over 1 with 80 zeros.

Even if each atom became another universe, the odds of plucking a particular atom out of all those universes by chance are 1 over 1 with 160 zeros. One chance in 1 with 40,000 zeros after it just to produce the basic enzymes! But enzymes perform incredible feats, which fact further compounds the already impossible odds.

Why does blood clot only at the point of bleeding and not within the veins and arteriesand stop clotting when the bleeding stops? Imagine the billions of animals that would have bled to death or been killed by improper blood clotting before this incredible process was perfected by chance!

The immune system is even more astonishing, says Behe: "The complexity of the system dooms all Darwinian explanations...." And so it is with hundreds of other life systems. Remember, these complex systems must be operational to be of value; they couldn't evolve in stages.

In his excellent 1996 book, Darwin's Black Box, Behe documents the incomprehensible complexity of life at its most basic chemical/cellular levela complexity unimagined by Darwin. Behe, who says evolution "should be banished," demolishes Darwin's theory by offering multiple examples at the biochemical level of intricately designed "irreducibly complex" elements which could not have evolved:


[Evolution] cannot explain the origin of the complex biochemical structures that undergird life. It doesn't even try....The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs.

http://www.thebereancall.org/Newsletter ... /5218.aspx

 

[SyntaxVorlon]

No one is saying that cells, DNA, or complex proteins arised via chance. This is what the Abiogenesis theory talks about and does not have anything to DO with evolution.

The astronomical odds make evolution mathematically impossible.

Evolution does not have to do with random chance, either.

Why does blood clot only at the point of bleeding and not within the veins and arteriesand stop clotting when the bleeding stops? Imagine the billions of animals that would have bled to death or been killed by improper blood clotting before this incredible process was perfected by chance!

This would have been a problem hundreds of millions of years ago when bleeding in animals would have lead to death, or infection. This means that somewhere along the line there must have been populations of certain animals from which we and most life that exists today which wasn't hemophiliac, would have been much more likely to survive to reproduce than animals that did not. Simple statistical logic.

*Sigh* Behe.
This irreducible complexity that he speaks of has been oft refuted. Among them the complexity of the eye, cell structure, wings, etc. by people on this board alone.

 

[Quath]

A species produces after it's kind. A hybrid cannot do that.

Dogs beget dogkind and man begets mankind.

That is not always true. For the horse and mule it is hard because Donkeys have 62 chromosomes and horses have 64. So Mules have 63. It makes it hard to have children, but some mules have had babies. (See http://members.aol.com/jshartwell/hybrid-mammals.html for more on this.)

There are also other crosses that create new species like the wolf/jackel, coyote/wolf, & Bobcat/Manx.

Quath

 

[bibleberean]

A species produces after it's kind. A hybrid cannot do that.

Dogs beget dogkind and man begets mankind.

That is not always true. For the horse and mule it is hard because Donkeys have 62 chromosomes and horses have 64. So Mules have 63. It makes it hard to have children, but some mules have had babies. (See http://members.aol.com/jshartwell/hybrid-mammals.html for more on this.)

There are also other crosses that create new species like the wolf/jackel, coyote/wolf, & Bobcat/Manx.

Quath

I did misuse through an ignorance of meaning some of the words we use. So, I need to clarify some things. You are right and I am wrong in some areas. I need to stick to "kind".

Hybrids and species and sub species are for me best not discussed because I need to learn more about this subject.

I need more data. I will admit.

So after eating humble pie let me present this piece of information.

I am not an expert on understanding exactly how gene pooling works.

Here is an excerpt from an article which talks about Kinds especially dog kind.

Natural selection and speciation
by Ken Ham, Carl Wieland and Don Batten

First published in One Blood
Chapter 2

In Genesis 1, we read that God created the animals and plants ‘after their kind.’ The phrase ‘after its kind’ or ‘after their kind’ occurs a total of ten times in Genesis 1. Thus, God’s Word is explaining to us that God created distinct kinds of animals and plantsâ€â€each to reproduce after its own kind.

Now, evolutionists teach that one kind of animal changed into another over millions of years. They claim that the observable changes in living animals and plants are evidence that evolution is occurring today.

The truth is, however, that these observable changes fit exactly with what the Bible teaches concerning ‘kinds’ and are the opposite of the changes required by evolution.

Straw man

People often get confused about this issue because evolutionists set up a straw man scenario. For instance, at the entrance to the Darwinian exhibit at the Natural History Museum in London, one is confronted with the following statements: ‘Before Charles Darwin, most people believed that God created all living things in exactly the form that we see them today. This is the basis of the doctrine of Creation … . Darwin’s work supported the view that all living things have developed into the forms we see today by a process of gradual change over long periods of time. This is what is meant by evolution.’1

Now, creationists do not believe that God made the animals and plants just as we see them today. For instance, when God made dogs, He didn’t make a poodle! After all, dogs like poodles are in fact degenerate mutants, suffering the effects of 6,000 years of the Curse.

Creationists agree that animals and plants change. For instance, dogs change, but they change into different varieties or breeds of dogs. We observe many different dogs such as dingoes, wolves, coyotes and the numerous domestic varieties like poodles, St Bernards and so on. How then did these varieties of wild and domestic dogs come about? And how does a creationist explain these changes that have occurred in dogs?

Genetics

To understand this, let’s consider the dog/wolf ‘kind’ in more detail. To begin with, we need to consider some very basic principles from the science of genetics.2 Even though in reality it’s much more complicated than this, the principles are still the same and thus provide us with a basic understanding.

The master program that determines that a dog is a dog, as well as a poodle variety of dog, is carried in its genes. A dog/wolf has tens of thousands of genes.3 We need to understand that creatures inherit two copies of each geneâ€â€one from each parent. The two copies can be differentâ€â€then they are called different ‘alleles.’ An offspring can get only one of each gene pair from each parent. Let us consider gene-pairs represented as ‘A’ ‘a’ ‘B’ ‘b’ ‘C’ and ‘c.’ Now, let’s imagine God makes the original dog/wolf kind, a male and a female, each having three pairs of genes in the following combination:

Aa Bb Cc

From these two dogs we can get many different combinations in the offspring. For example, the mating of

Aa Bb Cc (male dog) x Aa Bb Cc (female dog)

can produce 27 different combinations of these genes in the offspring.

For the rest of this article:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/ar ... apter2.asp

bibleberean adds:

A poodle, wolf or coyote is still dog kind.

Another interesting article "Did God Create the Poodle?"

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creatio ... oodles.asp

 

[SyntaxVorlon]

You need to actually read something by a biologist.
I suggest Gould.

 

[bibleberean]

You need to actually read something by a biologist.
I suggest Gould.

I have read a some from Gould and a lot from Dawkins.

Very intelligent men. They are simply wrong.

Not in everything. But where it counts.

Eternal life. I hope they don't miss it. I really mean that.

Carl Sagan was one of the most brilliant men I have ever heard speak.

He missed the point of Creation completely. I heard him on the once on the Regis Philbin Show say he is in awe of creation and if he was going to worship anything it would be the cosmos. He said that after Kathi lee Gifford asked him if it was true he didn't believe in God.

I assure you. He is a believer now.

 

[SyntaxVorlon]

Simply saying they are wrong is not enough. Your arguments so far have been lacking in completeness and mostly copies of arguments given on various webpages or taken from books by creationists who don't understand the subject.
Saying evolution is impossible because it is like a tornado in a junkyard making a 747 is completely meaningless as an analogy, because it is a strawman of evolution as some random force being posited by evolution proponents.

If you work under the scientific definition given to evolution and natural selection then you are given a simple theory of statistical distribution for the potential survival of a species based on the variety of traits they posses and the way that species differentiate because of differences in the statistics based on those traits and their environment. Given this as the theory of natural selection, you can arrive at complex species, ranging from animals to fungi, over the ~500 million years since the Cambrian Explosion, probably several million years before that but the fossil record does not make clear what went on at this time. Speciation does happen, evolutionary change DOES occur, and because we can see that it does occur we can extrapolate logically from that the heirarchy that nature and the fossil record give us.

The understanding of genetics we have gives us and understanding of the mechanism that evolution works with, and that not many changes are required for a species to become two mutually independent species over time.

 

[bibleberean]

SyntaxVorlon writes:

"If you work under the scientific definition given to evolution and natural selection then you are given a simple theory of statistical distribution for the potential survival of a species based on the variety of traits they posses and the way that species differentiate because of differences in the statistics based on those traits and their environment. Given this as the theory of natural selection, you can arrive at complex species, ranging from animals to fungi, over the ~500 million years since the Cambrian Explosion, probably several million years before that but the fossil record does not make clear what went on at this time. Speciation does happen, evolutionary change DOES occur, and because we can see that it does occur we can extrapolate logically from that the heirarchy that nature and the fossil record give us."

bibleberean comments:

You know what? You said nothing. I mean zilch in that string of words.

Explain to me how a dinosaur can develop feathers and wings and evolve into a bird over any period of time?

If you can do that you will have my undivided attention. I promise.

Explain to me how life came into existence from non life.

Comment on this quotation from an earlier post.

"Why does blood clot only at the point of bleeding and not within the veins and arteries and stop clotting when the bleeding stops?

Imagine the billions of animals that would have bled to death or been killed by improper blood clotting before this incredible process was perfected by chance!"

 

[Asimov]

Explain to me how a dinosaur can develop feathers and wings and evolve into a bird over any period of time?

The dinosaur develops a mutation (proto feathers) which provide better insulation for the dinosaur in a colder climate. These provide an advantage over other populations of that specific dinosaur species. These feathers, over thousands, if not millions of years, gradually provide better advantages, some of these advantages may be for better speed, ability to run up steeper hills to avoid predators. In time, that ability refines into an ability to fly. That's a possible explanation.

Explain to me how life came into existence from non life.

http://www.siu.edu/~protocell/issue1.htm
http://www.siu.edu/~protocell/
http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html

I don't want to get into a huge explanation over abiogenesis, because I'm not very well versed in that area, but here are some studies and experiments done where scientists have produced life from non-life.

Imagine the billions of animals that would have bled to death or been killed by improper blood clotting before this incredible process was perfected by chance!"

99% of all species that ever lived on this earth are now extinct...what's your point?? I'm assuming that blood clotting would have provided a distinct advantage in animal species. Because of this, there would have been more and more animals born with the ability to blood clot. As a result, mutations that arise in these animals would also include an ability to clot blood better, due to natural selection, those who clotted better would have an advantage over those animals who could not clot as well. Yes, it arrives by chance, but natural selection filters it, so the end result isn't chance, but selection.

 

[Guest]

:D Just as two people can create a child that looks totally
different from themselves,so may the animals.
In the beginning there were just two people,and DNA was brand
new. DNA is by no means new today,and we can come up with a
variety of combinations due to our long ancestory.
Dogs are still dogs,and people are still people.
This cannot and does not prove evolution at all.

 

[Guest]

99% of all species that ever lived on this earth are now extinct...what's your point?? I'm assuming that blood clotting would have provided a distinct advantage in animal species. Because of this, there would have been more and more animals born with the ability to blood clot. As a result, mutations that arise in these animals would also include an ability to clot blood better, due to natural selection, those who clotted better would have an advantage over those animals who could not clot as well. Yes, it arrives by chance, but natural selection filters it, so the end result isn't chance, but selection.

:P This is a total lie!
http://www.origins.org/articles/johnson_unraveling.html
http://www.gennet.org/facts/lutheran.html
http://www.soulcare.org/Creation/Evolution.html

 

[Guest]

You need to actually read something by a biologist.
I suggest Gould.

I have read a some from Gould and a lot from Dawkins.

Very intelligent men. They are simply wrong.

Not in everything. But where it counts.

Eternal life. I hope they don't miss it. I really mean that.

Carl Sagan was one of the most brilliant men I have ever heard speak.

He missed the point of Creation completely. I heard him on the once on the Regis Philbin Show say he is in awe of creation and if he was going to worship anything it would be the cosmos. He said that after Kathi lee Gifford asked him if it was true he didn't believe in God.

I assure you. He is a believer now.

:D Amen.