Freedom Of Religion?

[McDuffies]

Braggards.

[Soldier Volkov]

I didn 't have time to read everything since my last post, but I'll touch on a few things.

The supposed discovery of evolutionary proof in the horse fossils model, is really not very compelling. One or two examples is not enough to proove evolutionary theory. There's hundreds of millions of species on earth, right? Each evolved through hundreds of intermediate forms? Heck, we should be walking all over missing links. We should be finding hundreds of examples for evolution a year. Our roads should be paved with their fossils. Yet we only manage to find a few supposed missing links, or "intermedate forms".

On the fossil record: In many places where evolutionists say they've found evidence that it took hundreds of millions of year for sedimentary layers in rock to form, there is actually even more compelling evidence that the layers actually formed over a very short time. A worldwide flood perhaps?
Also the fossils of many modern animals have been found alongside fossils of extinct animals in the same rock layers, dated to be around the same age.

Laemkral. "All of your three main points come back to one single point. "It's really complicated, so complicated that it must come from a divine source." It's almost as if not a single proponent has ever heard the word "coincidence". Just because something is extraordinarily complex, doesn't mean it has a meaning." The position is more: It's really complicated, so complicated that it couldn't have occured by random chance. Also in this post, you described teeth as a model. ID has no problem with microevolution, just macro.

I can't really explain all the details but "Darwin's Black Box" by Michael J. Behe is a very compelling case against evolution written by a former evolutionist. It might be worth a read. It can probably be found in a local library.

Jim North: "First: "If the whole system is not complete and functioning flawlessly, it cannot perform at all." Incorrect. If you get a cold, do you stop functioning completely? No, you do not. You are not functioning flawlessly, yet you are still performing." That's completely different. ID focuses on the irreducable complexity of proteins and the makeup of cells. A cold is not even close.

"Second: 'life is only possible when thousands of variants [. . .] are meticulously set and balanced.' Highly unlikely." But quite proven in various cases. A notable example is in the makeup of cells.

"with enough time, random chance can literally accomplish anything." That seems very far-fetched. It's impossible to prove.

[Ahaugen]

"with enough time, random chance can literally accomplish anything." That seems very far-fetched. It's impossible to prove.

we have penicillin-resitant bacterial diseases, we started using penicillin in the 1940s. It took bacteria about 60 years to evolve to a resistant form, and bacteria reproduce rapidly. generations go by in hours if not minutes. Macroevolution is not impossible to observe ... it's just impossible to oberve in the span of a human life.

[Soldier Volkov]

"with enough time, random chance can literally accomplish anything." That seems very far-fetched. It's impossible to prove.

we have penicillin-resitant bacterial diseases, we started using penicillin in the 1940s. It took bacteria about 60 years to evolve to a resistant form, and bacteria reproduce rapidly. generations go by in hours if not minutes. Macroevolution is not impossible to observe ... it's just impossible to oberve in the span of a human life.

Certain bacteria has always possesed the capacity to mutate into resistant forms. This isn't an example of macroevolution any more that antibodies adapting to fight a specific disease. It's simply adaptation using processes that already existed; no evolving nessesary.

[Joel Fagin]

The supposed discovery of evolutionary proof in the horse fossils model, is really not very compelling. One or two examples is not enough to proove evolutionary theory. There's hundreds of millions of species on earth, right? Each evolved through hundreds of intermediate forms? Heck, we should be walking all over missing links. We should be finding hundreds of examples for evolution a year. Our roads should be paved with their fossils. Yet we only manage to find a few supposed missing links, or "intermedate forms".

What you just said makes sense on a very peripheral level but even a minute's thought suggests reasons why it might be wrong. Conditions are probably not always perfect to create fossils. Many are probably underwater now. Lots were probably destroyed. You'd need the right landscape to make them and so you'd only get the animals who were in that area and at that time.

And I'm just guessing. In spite of that, I'm probably right, too. It all makes sense. It's all reasonable. Diamonds aren't always made from coal either. We don't have graveyards full of fossils.

The problem here is that you're getting us to do all the work, even down to the basic application of common sense as above. In a debate against science - a field defined by it's careful, meticulous, logical, thoughtful approach - it's not helping your side at all and makes it almost pointless debating with you.

Edit: I forgot. It's not proof but it's proff the theory is valid. Scientist have "evolved" an electrical circuit. I forget the task they decided it should evolve to do but once it was finished, they could not figure out how it worked. There was a component which wasn't even connected that, if they removed, would stop it from functioning.*

So, svolution creating complex results is possible in theory. Whether or not if happens biologically is another matter, of course.

- Joel Fagin

* It can happen. There are such things as stray capacitance and such like in electronic circuits.

[Ahaugen]

bacteria are single-celled organisms, we are multi-celled organisms. when change happens in bacteria, the effect is immediate because there is only one cell to change. when change happens in us, it takes several hundred generations to change because there are several billion cells that need to change.

microevolution is macroevolution on a small scale, like a model

[Soldier Volkov]

The supposed discovery of evolutionary proof in the horse fossils model, is really not very compelling. One or two examples is not enough to proove evolutionary theory. There's hundreds of millions of species on earth, right? Each evolved through hundreds of intermediate forms? Heck, we should be walking all over missing links. We should be finding hundreds of examples for evolution a year. Our roads should be paved with their fossils. Yet we only manage to find a few supposed missing links, or "intermedate forms".

What you just said makes sense on a very peripheral level but even a minute's thought suggests reasons why it might be wrong. Conditions are probably not always perfect to create fossils. Many are probably underwater now. Lots were probably destroyed. You'd need the right landscape to make them and so you'd only get the animals who were in that area and at that time.

And I'm just guessing. In spite of that, I'm probably right, too. It all makes sense. It's all reasonable. Diamonds aren't always made from coal either. We don't have graveyards full of fossils.

The problem here is that you're getting us to do all the work, even down to the basic application of common sense as above. In a debate against science - a field defined by it's careful, meticulous, logical, thoughtful approach - it's not helping your side at all and makes it almost pointless debating with you.

- Joel Fagin

What do you mean? My three points on ID used the same methods. The studied evidence for ID is also defined by a logical, thoughtful approach.

[Orion]

I didn 't have time to read everything since my last post, but I'll touch on a few things.

The supposed discovery of evolutionary proof in the horse fossils model, is really not very compelling. One or two examples is not enough to proove evolutionary theory. There's hundreds of millions of species on earth, right? Each evolved through hundreds of intermediate forms? Heck, we should be walking all over missing links. We should be finding hundreds of examples for evolution a year. Our roads should be paved with their fossils. Yet we only manage to find a few supposed missing links, or "intermedate forms".

pretty much what joel said. If you've watched an excavation in progress you'd see just how delicate fossils are once they're formed and that's once the process of 'petrification' is complete. Way back when they were organic it was probably even easier to destroy them. Given the presumed amounts of time involved and the various forces of erosion, new creatures, so on it should not be suprising at all that fossils are rare. it's a miracle they survived at all.

Hell likely our roads are paved with fossils (in fact they literally are since oil is a primary component) they just are no longer in any form that can be recognized as being once organic.

On the fossil record: In many places where evolutionists say they've found evidence that it took hundreds of millions of year for sedimentary layers in rock to form, there is actually even more compelling evidence that the layers actually formed over a very short time. A worldwide flood perhaps?
Also the fossils of many modern animals have been found alongside fossils of extinct animals in the same rock layers, dated to be around the same age.

I think this is what joel means when he say's you're making us do all the work. You say there's compelling evidence? what evidence? You definitely can't make a claim like this without at least something to back it up.

Laemkral. "All of your three main points come back to one single point. "It's really complicated, so complicated that it must come from a divine source." It's almost as if not a single proponent has ever heard the word "coincidence". Just because something is extraordinarily complex, doesn't mean it has a meaning." The position is more: It's really complicated, so complicated that it couldn't have occured by random chance. Also in this post, you described teeth as a model. ID has no problem with microevolution, just macro.

I can't really explain all the details but "Darwin's Black Box" by Michael J. Behe is a very compelling case against evolution written by a former evolutionist. It might be worth a read. It can probably be found in a local library.

You've basically restated Laemkral's argument against your point, but this time claiming it supports it. First and foremost 'it's too complex' is and never will be a scientific observation unless you can somehow show that it is literally true. If mankind were created from elements that cannot be formed through any process in the known universe you might have an argument but that's not the case. In all honesty it's just a statement that doesn't work. if you throw 1,000,000,000 dice enough times they'll all turn up 1's eventually.

it's also worth pointing out that even if you could completely disprove evolution. showing it to be utter bupkis it doesn't count as evidence for ID. destroying your oppenent's arguement does not strengthen your own position. And avoid presenting arguements that require us to have read a given book. if you can't provide the arguement on your own you might as well just post a bibliography and step out of the debate.

Jim North: "First: "If the whole system is not complete and functioning flawlessly, it cannot perform at all." Incorrect. If you get a cold, do you stop functioning completely? No, you do not. You are not functioning flawlessly, yet you are still performing." That's completely different. ID focuses on the irreducable complexity of proteins and the makeup of cells. A cold is not even close.

I believe Jim's arguement was that if there was indeed a creative force, and he did have the capacity (both in terms of cognitive ability, manipulation of forces and so on) to craft mankind why didn't it get it right? Why are portions of our design so inneficient?

"with enough time, random chance can literally accomplish anything." That seems very far-fetched. It's impossible to prove.

No. it's not. in fact it's terribly easy to prove. Take a random number generator. give it a set of numbers (anywhere from 1 to 10 to .01 to 5 trillion) name a number in the set and set it to generate a random number every .1 seconds. if let completely alone it will eventually produce that number, no matter how large you make the set. I have just proven the impossible.

Now saying it can accomplish anything is of course not strictly true, for instance random chance will not create matter or energy out of nothing so you're stuck with the set of matter/energy you have at the beginning of the process unless you have some way of introducing more.

So given any enviroment cabable of change (the universe obviously is) and a given mixture of matter/energy and plenty of time any combination of that matter or energy may be produced. tada!

[Laemkral]

The position is more: It's really complicated, so complicated that it couldn't have occured by random chance. Also in this post, you described teeth as a model. ID has no problem with

Ask a statistician if an event with a probability of .00000000000000000000000000000000000000001 can occur, yes or no. The answer will be "Yes, it can." Astronomically unlikely =/= impossible, and that's basic statistics. I should know, I'm taking a statistics course and this was explained on day one. Just because something is highly unlikely to occur does not mean it can not occur. We've already explained this with the "infinite monkeys, infinite typewriters, infinite time" statement. For more of an example, scientists recreated on a much smaller scale in a controlled environment the chemical soup that was Earth shortly before life. Just a bunch of basic elemental chemicals on a super heated planet. It has been theorised that a lightning strike jump started a reaction that resulted in the original amino acid responsible for life. The odds against this reaction occuring were outrageously high, so outrageous that many ID supporters have used it as a basis as to why ID is correct. The experiment produced the amino acid. Assuming the scientists are wrong about the origins of life, it still occured one more time than ID proponents said was possible.

Recently some scientists have concluded that lightning may have played a part in the evolution of living organisms. Nobel prize winning chemist Harold Urey proposed that the earth's early atmosphere consisted of ammonia, hydrogen, methane, and water vapor. One of his students, Stanley Miller, used an electric spark to duplicate lightning and introduced it into the chemical brew. He was careful to excluded any living organisms from the experiment. At the end of a week, he examined the mixture and found it contained newly-formed amino acids, the very building blocks of protein

ID has no problem with microevolution because it's clearly evident. Macroevolution is the end result of lots of microevolution stretched out over time. We've said this, over and over and over.

You're right. The roads should be paved with fossils considering how many animals have lived and died over the millenia. In fact, they are. Not everything that dies turns into a fossil, most organic matter decomposes post-mortem. After all, where do you think oil (a key component in the paving of roads) comes from? Dinosaurs that are preserved do so because of the situations that occured after their death. Pressure, ground materials, etc. contribute to the act of fossilization. Often the conditions are not ideal, and fossilization does not occur. Good thing for us the end result is such a great fuel.

[Joel Fagin]

What do you mean? My three points on ID used the same methods. The studied evidence for ID is also defined by a logical, thoughtful approach.

You miss easy and obvious explanation for your own arguments, like with the fossils. There are lots of possible reasons why fossils aren't all over the place and most of them can be guessed at simply by extrapolation of things you already know. If, after all, you don't get fossils in graveyards, they surely can't happen all the time, and if diamonds, another geological process, don't always happen, surely fossils might have similar restirctions apply?

Or the flood. The Bible says the whole world was flooded but back then, "the whole world" was little more than a country. They didn't know about China, Australia, America, England or probably even Europe or India. Noah certainly never saved the Kangaroo or the Dodo.

(I don't know if you believe it was actually the whole world or not but it still works as an example. It's a legend with common sense applied to it.)

And if you don't apply common sense to your posts, you seem unreasonable. I mean, take the diamond example. Same thing as fossils. Geological process, needs the correct conditions and doesn't always work out. How seriously would I be taken if I argued that we should be knee deep in diamonds because there's millions of pieces of coal?

Anyway, I just wanted to make that point in the interests of the debate as a whole. I'll go back to lurking in the thread now.

- Joel Fagin

[Mercury Hat]

I didn 't have time to read everything since my last post, but I'll touch on a few things.

The supposed discovery of evolutionary proof in the horse fossils model, is really not very compelling. One or two examples is not enough to proove evolutionary theory. There's hundreds of millions of species on earth, right? Each evolved through hundreds of intermediate forms? Heck, we should be walking all over missing links. We should be finding hundreds of examples for evolution a year. Our roads should be paved with their fossils. Yet we only manage to find a few supposed missing links, or "intermedate forms".

As Joel said, complete fossils are actually quite rare. Fossils are rather fragile things and while the occasional bone or imprint is found, finding an actual 100% complete skeleton is practically a miracle.

Just because the horse model is one of the most complete does not make it the only one. Whales, birds, humans, many other species have records which are complete enough to draw educated conclusions about their lineages.

We have observed evolution within our own history. We've observed and recorded speciation, what would be called macroevolution, in fruit flies and many species of plants.

On the fossil record: In many places where evolutionists say they've found evidence that it took hundreds of millions of year for sedimentary layers in rock to form, there is actually even more compelling evidence that the layers actually formed over a very short time. A worldwide flood perhaps?
Also the fossils of many modern animals have been found alongside fossils of extinct animals in the same rock layers, dated to be around the same age.

There's plenty of solid geologicalevidenceagainst the practicality of a worldwide flood and the notion that the fossil layers were put down by such an event, no matter how it is said to have been sorted.

The problem with many claims of refutation like this is it was one single instance which is then leapt upon and waved around as proof of the entire thing being false.

[Wp]

Jim North: "First: "If the whole system is not complete and functioning flawlessly, it cannot perform at all." Incorrect. If you get a cold, do you stop functioning completely? No, you do not. You are not functioning flawlessly, yet you are still performing." That's completely different. ID focuses on the irreducable complexity of proteins and the makeup of cells. A cold is not even close.

How can you say life functions flawlessly? What about cancer? There is something very wrong with the makeup of cells and yet they live (if only for a limited time). What about genetic diseases? What about Trisomy 13 and 18, which are incompatible with life longer than a year? What about stillbirths due to nondisjunctions and such?

Most Turner syndrome babies (XO) are spontaneously aborted before mothers-to-be even realize there was an embryo. What would be the purpose of creating a being in which a significant proportion of offspring are dead without anyone knowing? Life is far from flawless.

And how are proteins and cells all that great? It's been proven if you throw methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water, etc... into an environment that simulates primordial Earth and wait for a couple of hours, simple proteins, sugars, nucleic acids, and micelles are formed randomly. It's not really a huge stretch of logic to see how these components can lead to a simple cell.

EDIT: whoops, apparently Laemkral got to that last part before I did. But they didn't just find proteins.

[Kilre]

One or two examples is not enough to proove evolutionary theory. There's hundreds of millions of species on earth, right? Each evolved through hundreds of intermediate forms? Heck, we should be walking all over missing links. We should be finding hundreds of examples for evolution a year. Our roads should be paved with their fossils. Yet we only manage to find a few supposed missing links, or "intermedate forms".

if you'll notice, most of our dead decompose rather nicely. why aren't we knee-deep in their bones, hmm?

for the same reason we don't find many fossils.

[Gengar003]

Certain bacteria has always possesed the capacity to mutate into resistant forms. This isn't an example of macroevolution any more that antibodies adapting to fight a specific disease. It's simply adaptation using processes that already existed; no evolving nessesary.

Mutating into forms resistant to a new threat (penicillin), and adapting to new things is evolution.

(Note: Dictionary.com is far from the end-all authority, but it does have a point. I'm also oversimplifying what evolution encompasses, I know.)

And eventually some scribe writes down the story that someone told him about a mad woman who died five hundred years ago claiming to talk to God. And then an inquisitor tortures the scribe for writing it down wrong.

OMG awesome.

[Rkolter]

Volkov -

For ID to be a scientific theory (and thus worth teaching as a scientific theory) it needs to explain what has happened, predict what will happen, be experimentally verifiable (including the ability to be disproved) and be the simplest theory that meets the above conditions.

I've said this before, you did not listen. I'll say it again.

1 - existing tests and observations:
ID theory fails to properly explain evidence we do have, such as the evolution of dogs from their wild wolf cousins, or the fossil record that we do have. It fails to explain major mistakes or throwbacks in the anatomy of humans. It doesn't explain why viral DNA is a part of human DNA or why certain snippits of DNA exist essentially unchanged in most life forms. It doesn't explain mitochondrial DNA at all, nor the progression and evolution of the Y chromosome. These are just to start. If you want ID theory to be a scientific theory, you must modify it so that it explains all existing evidence. Evolution DOES THAT.

2 - predict what will happen:

ID theory does not offer a set of rules for future macro evolution aside from the possibility that the higher power will again interfere. Evolution does tell us what to expect.

3 - be testable and be capable of being proven wrong

You cannot test ID theory short of meeting this higher power and asking them to please show us.

You cannot disprove ID theory because you can always say, 'ok you figured out how that works, but the NEXT step, that step is impossible without the hand of a higher power'. In short, since you cannot prove god exists scientifically, you cannot disprove ID theory scientifically. You never have to change the theory because it's basic tenant is that God Himself can do anything, and that God did it.

Evolution can be tested - you can do a 50 year experiment breeding mice for a lack of a tail, and end up with something that is entirely different, and has no tail. Evolution can be disproven - and it has had to change over the years as our knowledge of evolution grew.

4 - must be the simplest theory that fists 1-3 above

Let's say ID gets accepted. The question then becomes, which is simpler - that evolution exists, or that evolution exists but God has to push it the way he wants it to go?

Without regard for what kind of theory ID theory is, it is most definately not a scientific theory because it does not follow the requirements of a scientific theory, and it should therefore not be taught as science.

You are stating your claims Volkov, ignoring the people who disagree with you, and then restating your claims. There's a quote feature - use it liberally or not be taken serioiusly.

[Jim North]

That's completely different. ID focuses on the irreducable complexity of proteins and the makeup of cells. A cold is not even close.

There are plenty of diseases and syndromes and the like (some of which have already been mentioned) that effect both the cellular structure and the cellular processes of living organisms, sometimes ending in death of the cells and sometimes not. Many people with damaged cells continue to live their lives quite fine. People can keep on with some types of cancer for years before it becomes a major problem. Some children born with genetic mutations can go on to live full, happy lives. Just because your cells aren't working right doesn't mean they won't be working at all.

And Orion's right, another point I was trying to make is that if our cells were really perfect, then we wouldn't even get colds. A virus wouldn't be able to attack and destroy a perfectly crafted white blood cell. Bacteria couldn't latch on to it like a sailor grabbing a cheap hooker. Trying to sell ID on the fact that the way everything currently works is perfect ain't gonna fly, 'cause it's just not true.

But quite proven in various cases. A notable example is in the makeup of cells.

Did you even read the rest of what I wrote about that part? What you're talking about isn't proven at all.

"with enough time, random chance can literally accomplish anything." That seems very far-fetched. It's impossible to prove.

Dude, I linked you to a website that is actively proving just that!

And I hear this "random chance is so far-fetch, so it must be (insert deity here)!" stuff from ID people a lot, and it doesn't make any sense. Seriously, which is more far fetched . . . that in a cosmos of infinite probability, in which everything that can happen will happen, we eventually came to be as a matter of course . . . or some magic man in the sky popped out of nowhere and poof, here we are?

I didn 't have time to read everything since my last post,

Alice: "I don't think-"
Hatter: "Then you shouldn't talk."

[Yeahduff]

On the fossil record: In many places where evolutionists say they've found evidence that it took hundreds of millions of year for sedimentary layers in rock to form, there is actually even more compelling evidence that the layers actually formed over a very short time. A worldwide flood perhaps?

"with enough time, random chance can literally accomplish anything." That seems very far-fetched. It's impossible to prove.

Right here you perfectly articulate a central issue with intelligent design. You've deemed the idea that given infinite time unlikely things can happen to be "far-fetched" and "impossible to prove" but you have absolutely no issue believing some all powerful being made it rain all over the world for forty days and forty nights, causing the world to completely flood, destroying everything except one single boat with one pair each of all the animals that existed on the earth. Which, really, is fine, except these are the standards intelligent design judges what it finds. You may think DNA is too complicated to have formed from chance, but why is "some invisible and intelligent force created it" a more acceptable and plausible answer? How is that distinction scientific?

And if intelligent design isn't religion, why'd you bring up a "worldwide flood?"

[Ahaugen]

On the fossil record: In many places where evolutionists say they've found evidence that it took hundreds of millions of year for sedimentary layers in rock to form, there is actually even more compelling evidence that the layers actually formed over a very short time. A worldwide flood perhaps?

"with enough time, random chance can literally accomplish anything." That seems very far-fetched. It's impossible to prove.

Right here you perfectly articulate a central issue with intelligent design. You've deemed the idea that given infinite time unlikely things can happen to be "far-fetched" and "impossible to prove" but you have absolutely no issue believing some all powerful being made it rain all over the world for forty days and forty nights, causing the world to completely flood, destroying everything except one single boat with one pair each of all the animals that existed on the earth. Which, really, is fine, except these are the standards intelligent design judges what it finds. You may think DNA is too complicated to have formed from chance, but why is "some invisible and intelligent force created it" a more acceptable and plausible answer? How is that distinction scientific?

And if intelligent design isn't religion, why'd you bring up a "worldwide flood?"

and wouldn't all of the animals be inbread and stupid

[Sortelli]

Animals should be inbread. In delicious sandwich breads.

Mmmm.

[Ahaugen]

yes, yes they should