(not really) intelligent design

[wludavid]

Originally posted by Moses
The argument is if the process of evolution explains the origin of man. That's the question.

Originally posted by Mulhollanddose
How does the micro environment of the lab explain the macro environment and the theory that randomness begat the complex interrelationship between all of creation?

You and Moses are practically in agreement, and you still were trying to disagree and nitpick.

[Mulhollanddose]

Originally posted by wludavid
You and Moses are practically in agreement, and you still were trying to disagree and nitpick.

No, you are simply misunderstanding my response...Read it again.

[IROC]

Originally posted by Mulhollanddose
Enlighten me as to my error.

Your primary error is that you have decided to reject something that you know very little about based solely on what other people have told you to believe.

Mike

[Z-man]

Originally posted by IROC
Show me a scientific theory that in any way requires "faith" to accept.

The "foundations" of science are not "beliefs". Scientific theories are based on evidence, observations and experimentation -not beliefs.

Mike

and

Originally posted by wludavid
First, belief != faith. Belief is trusting something to be true and faith is a belief that's not held up by logical proof. Science is not based in faith. For a scientist to believe something, he needs verifiable and repeatable evidence.

Ok, faith requires believing in something you cannot see. If you have no faith in things that cannot be seen, then explain how the air we breathe (which we cannot see) enables us to live.

Yes, it is evidence, observations, and experimentation, as well as verifiable and repeatable evidence that leads to conclusions. But there is always room for change, or evolution, for lack of a better term! Often, scientific theories are accepted until someone proves them wrong with a different or new set of evidence. (Ref: Newton to Einstein) Thus, the scientific world will accept (ie believe, or have faith in) a given theory until it is proven wrong.

Originally posted by island_dude
To me the bottom line is the same if your whole life revolves around a strict and literal reading of the bible. It is very hard to do this without being forced to pick and choose. Besides, why does it seem that the literalists don't bother to read the bible in its original language? How can you be certain that you have it right if you are relying on someone else to develop the translations for you?

I believe there are passages in the Bible that cannot be taken literally. One of these passages is the Genesis account. I have studies many theories on how the different days are linked together, and what the concept of a 'yom' (day) is. BTW: I have studied classical Greek in college and have done some exegesis on various New Teastament passages. Though I have no Hebrew background, I have used credible sources in my studies of creation that describe the original language of the text. But just because certain parts of the Bible aren't taken literally, that doesn't mean it has to be discounted and described as a book of fairy tales and lies.

HardDrive
Like Nathans_Dad, I find it frustrating the people cannot be comfortable with their religous faith and science. Why do these two things need to be in opposed?

I certainly don't have a problem dealing with both. Hope you don't feel that I do. I just believe that the way the ball got started rolling involved a Master Creator, vs. random 'growth' coming out of the great big cosmic goop.

Originally posted by Moses
... Evolution is a proven, reproducable phenomenon. It should only be referred to as "theory" when it is used to explain biological phenomena.

If and how the process of evolution relates to the origin of man is theory.
snip
Respectfully, you are wrong. It's very easy to prove evolution in the lab. It's done every year in every genetics 101 lab in the country. It is, in fact, verifiable, provable and observable. The argument is if the process of evolution explains the origin of man. That's the question.

Thank you for pointing this out, Moses. I should have been more clear - by evolution, I was referring to the theory of the origin of man, the starting point of all things.

And to that point - 'micro evolution' as Mull defines evolution cannot be used to prove 'macro evolution,' ie the origins of the universe. In micro evolution, a scientist starts with SOMETHING that becomes something else. Macro evolution, or the origins of the universe, starts with NOTHING and becomes EVERYTHING. Two very different evolutions.

-Z-man.

[Mulhollanddose]

It would seem a greater error to sift through mountains of BS in order to come to the conclusion that it is wrong...It would require me to ignore what is obvious and waste immense amounts of time.

Evolutionary theory violates the 2nd law of themodynamics...no matter.

[Z-man]

Originally posted by IROC
Your primary error is that you have decided to reject something that you know very little about based solely on what other people have told you to believe.

Mike

Wow - that statement can apply to both sides equally.

-Z-man.

PS: Half-man = republican. Hehehe..... That's soooo funny.... good thing I'm not a republ...um...oh ho...wait a second...

[nostatic]

Originally posted by Mulhollanddose


Evolutionary theory violates the 2nd law of themodynamics...no matter.

do you realize how ignorant that comment is?

well, probably not because you made it...

[Nathans_Dad]

To Shaun: I say that because that is what the Bible says and what I believe. If you choose to believe something different that's ok, but I don't see how I am doing God a disservice by reading from the Bible.

To SoCal911SC: I do not base my belief in God as our creator solely on the complexity of the human body. I agree that there are millions of things about our world and universe that are just as, if not more amazing, than the things of the body, and certainly many more amazing things that we have yet to discover. It just happens that the body is my personal area of study so that's why I mentioned it, instead of the unvierse or quarks or whatever. I also don't limit my belief in God to our world only. I am sure that God could (and possibly has already) made other habitable worlds and maybe even other intelligent beings.

All I am saying is that if you follow the tenets of evolution you must invariably come to the big question which is "Where did it all start?" How did things go from molecules which are not alive to a living thing? I have heard many many theories on this, none of which have been even remotely shown to be plausible in the lab. You just can't take a "primordial soup" and get life out of it, at least not with our current technology. So getting my mind around that great big empty question takes a lot more "faith" (to me at least) than thinking that God just said "Let there be life".

[IROC]

Originally posted by Z-man
Ok, faith requires believing in something you cannot see. If you have no faith in things that cannot be seen, then explain how the air we breathe (which we cannot see) enables us to live.

I have seen the air in LA. It's not pretty. :>) You can't "see" atoms, either, but do you doubt they exist? I think you're argument is very simplistic. We can "detect" things using other senses besides human sight.

Mike

[Mulhollanddose]

Originally posted by nostatic


do you realize how ignorant that comment is?

well, probably not because you made it...

By "no matter" (I wasn't clear in context) I meant "it doesn't matter" facetiously.

[nostatic]

do you believe that evolution is a violation of the 2nd law?

[creaturecat]

Originally posted by Mulhollanddose
It would seem a greater error to sift through mountains of BS in order to come to the conclusion that it is wrong...It would require me to ignore what is obvious and waste immense amounts of time.

Evolutionary theory violates the 2nd law of themodynamics...no matter.

proof of reverse evolution - making a monkey out of man!

[IROC]

Originally posted by nostatic
do you believe that evolution is a violation of the 2nd law?

I think even the AiG website is telling creationists not to use this argument any longer...

Mike

[Mulhollanddose]

Originally posted by nostatic
do you believe that evolution is a violation of the 2nd law?

Order does not come from chaos...Unless you are an evolutionist of course.

"Of all the statements that have been made with respect to theories on the origin of life, the statement that the Second Law of Thermodynamics poses no problem for an evolutionary origin of life is the most absurd... The operation of natural processes on which the Second Law of Thermodynamics is based is alone sufficient, therefore, to preclude the spontaneous evolutionary origin of the immense biological order required for the origin of life." -- Duane Gish (Berkely PHD)

"It is probably no exaggeration to claim that the laws of thermodynamics represent some of the best science we have today. While the utterances in some fields (such as astronomy) seem to change almost daily, the science of thermodynamics has been noteworthy for its stability. In many decades of careful observations, not a single departure from any of these laws has ever been noted." -- Emmett L. Williams, Jr.

[wludavid]

Originally posted by Z-man
Ok, faith requires believing in something you cannot see. If you have no faith in things that cannot be seen, then explain how the air we breathe (which we cannot see) enables us to live.

I intentionally did not use the word "see" for a reason.

Originally posted by Z-man
Yes, it is evidence, observations, and experimentation, as well as verifiable and repeatable evidence that leads to conclusions. But there is always room for change, or evolution, for lack of a better term! Often, scientific theories are accepted until someone proves them wrong with a different or new set of evidence. (Ref: Newton to Einstein) Thus, the scientific world will accept (ie believe, or have faith in) a given theory until it is proven wrong.

Not so. I have "faith" in the system to produce verifiable and repeatable evidence because it has done so many times in the past. I don't have faith in any particular theory. Idealy, I'll accept the ones that work well, and be skeptical of ideas that don't check out. While it's true that individual scientists have blindly had faith in particular ideas (the history if science is riddled with them), the scientific community agrees that such faith is a Bad Thing whereas blind faith is the MO of most organized religions. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Originally posted by Z-man
And to that point - 'micro evolution' as Mull defines evolution cannot be used to prove 'macro evolution,' ie the origins of the universe. In micro evolution, a scientist starts with SOMETHING that becomes something else. Macro evolution, or the origins of the universe, starts with NOTHING and becomes EVERYTHING. Two very different evolutions.

This is true -taken alone, the fossil record of man's alleged ancestors has enough holes and inconsistencies to cast doubt on evolution as the explanation of our current form. However, we have fossil records from many other species and they all show similar types of changing, adaptation, and diversification that the homonid record has. There is no reason to believe that Man is special in how we got this way. The burden of proof is on the opponents of evolution.

Further, evolution as it stands today does not try to explain how self-replicating molecules emerged from muck. So evolutionary biologists do start with something.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally posted by Mulhollanddose
Order does not come from chaos...Unless you are an evolutionist of course.

or a structural molecular biochemist.

[nostatic]

Originally posted by Mulhollanddose
Order does not come from chaos...Unless you are an evolutionist of course.

"Of all the statements that have been made with respect to theories on the origin of life, the statement that the Second Law of Thermodynamics poses no problem for an evolutionary origin of life is the most absurd... The operation of natural processes on which the Second Law of Thermodynamics is based is alone sufficient, therefore, to preclude the spontaneous evolutionary origin of the immense biological order required for the origin of life." -- Duane Gish (Berkely PHD)

phd in what? religion?

This is a classic misunderstanding that high school and college freshmen suffer from. The 2nd law refers to the overall entropy. A local system can decrease in entropy. It happens all the time in your body. It can happen on broader scales.

[Nathans_Dad]

Originally posted by wludavid
Further, evolution as it stands today does not try to explain how self-replicating molecules emerged from muck. So evolutionary biologists do start with something.

So what do they start with? Do they just choose to ignore that massive question because it doesn't fit?

[wludavid]

Originally posted by Nathans_Dad
So what do they start with? Do they just choose to ignore that massive question because it doesn't fit?

Yes. Just like you have to ignore the massive question of gravity (haha, pun honestly not intended) when you're studying quantum physics. There are lots of big questions ignored by lots of very successful theories. The process is about bringing more and more theories together so that they explain more phenomenon. Just because a particular theory does not address the question you want answered, it doesn't invalidate that theory.

[Z-man]

Originally posted by wludavid

Yes. Just like you have to ignore the massive question of gravity (haha, pun honestly not intended) when you're studying quantum physics. There are lots of big questions ignored by lots of very successful theories. The process is about bringing more and more theories together so that they explain more phenomenon. Just because a particular theory does not address the question you want answered, it doesn't invalidate that theory.

And therein lies the difference: The answer to the question! (42!) Some answer the question with God and creation, while others answer it with scientific theory and evolution.

-Z-man.