Thread: Evolution is a Religion!

Not gonna lie to you, I'm not satisfied with the 'proof' you gave me. Oh well.
Read this article:
http://www.trueorigin.org/to_deception.asp

Well Darwin still admitted that anyway. And he even said that "the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection" was "insuperable by our imagination."

Yes, Darwin said that. But you're picking and choosing: The next sentence says that he can unterstand how such a mechanism could be created in steps.

Next, the 'TrueOrigins' site you linked to seems to bank a lot on how we don't know how non-living matter formed living matter. TrueOrigins proceeds to set up a fine array of strawmen:

* 1. Nobel laureate Dr. Francis Crick promotes ‘directed panspermia’ (i.e., ‘DNA originated somewhere ‘out in space’ and somehow made its way to Earth’), apparently having recognized the odds against a natural earthly cause for DNA.[1]
* 2. Richard Dawkins (The Blind Watchmaker, W. W. Norton, New York, 1986) assumes the number (1020 by his accounting) of theoretically possible planets that may exist in the universe in order to provide sufficient opportunities for the highly improbable event of life to occur naturally (i.e., without intelligent direction).
* 3. Barrow and Tipler (The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford University Press, 1986) go far beyond Dawkins in that they invoke entire universes (theoretical, of course) as the potential arenas for (natural) life to emerge.
* 4. Kauffman (The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution, Oxford, 1993) takes a different route than Dawkins, Barrow and Tipler. *Kauffman brings into the panorama a hypothetical set of laws by which life may emerge here on Earth solely through (only) natural process.
[/b]

All this is merely an attempt to select the most easily refutable theories and portray all of evolution relying on it. There are multiple other theories out there. Labs have even demonstrated how a type of clay common on the ocean floor can act as a catalyst for the formation of RNA from materials that were all present at the time of the origination of life on this planet.
It's quite similar to me saying that all creationists believe the world is flat. It's laughable to believe such a thing, but some creationists DO believe that. But that doesn't mean all creationists do, and proclaiming that is wrong.

Next, it preys on a distinction between "microevolution" and "macroevolution". In fact, there is no such thing. Evolution is evolution, period. Macroevolution is different only in timescale. The people at TrueOrigins created the distinction themselves, it isn't something evolution is trying to cover up. And there IS evidence for large-scale evolution. The fossil record! It's been around for years, and is growing more and more complete every day. In Darwin's time, fossils suggested a link between species, but with the continually filling gaps between species, we can not only link two species together, we can show all the intermediate mutations and when they occurred.
Another major bit of evidence for large-scale evolution is Endogenous Retroviruses. It gets a bit complicated, but there's a wiki page on it HERE. More or less, viruses infect a species. They transcribe a bit of their own genetic code into the host's DNA as they infect the host. The alterations in the DNA can be spotted for incredibly long periods after infection--10 million years or more afterwards, the genetic code still remains. Meanwhile, the host species continues to diverge into multiple new species, but each one contains the unique Endogenous Retrovirus. We can use these as markers to determine which species are related via a common ancestor. I
Here's the punch line: Humans and chimps share some Endogenous Retroviruses. There's no way the viruses could have separately infected humans and chimps: The virus in question's code is far too specialized to make the jump between two species. Additionally, the alterations to DNA would be different if the hosts had speciated before being infected. This leads to the conclusion that humans and chimpanzees have common ancestors.

Originally posted by Lonewolf
Not gonna lie to you, I'm not satisfied with the 'proof' you gave me. Oh well.
Read this article:
http://www.trueorigin.org/to_deception.asp

If you want to read, talkorigins did respond to the article. Seeing as there's been over 4 years for Jorge Fernandez to amend his article to remove the blatant misrepresentations I doubt that he's actually attempting an honest cricicism.

But, in the hopes of avoiding people just linking to sites without posting any sort of informationl:

I didn't give you proof, I did provide you with a link where you could educate yourself to what evolution actually is, as opposed to the creationist version of evolution. By the link you send me, I take it you're going with the creationist version . If you're going to argue against something, you should try to argue against what it actually is, rather than a misrepresentation of it. For example:

The article you linked to agrees with talkorigin's basic definition of evolution as “Biological evolution is a change in the genetic characteristics of a population over time". Why doesn't it end there? Because the author has some sort of agenda and has decided that naturalistic means are not enough to drive this change in genetic characteristics. What he doesn't understand is that while talkorigins does promote a naturalistic method of change, it is not because of a "materialistic bias", it is because that is where all of the evidence points. It is because of his agenda that he fails to accept naturalistic explenations, even when such a failure is contrary to all evidence. As the author of that site puts it:

For the record, every informed creationist that I know of accepts changes, mutations, adaptations and even speciation—there is no dispute here. *The real dispute is in the naturalists’ extrapolation from (observable) genetic ‘change’ to (unobservable) Neo-Darwinian macro-evolution to (unobservable) ‘cause for being’. *Such an extension is no longer science, it is a metaphysical transfiguration. [/b]

The extrapolation from genetic change to naturalistic evolution is the same as the extrapolation from "the window is broken" to "something natural broke it". Sure god could be running around smashing windows, or god could be running around influencing every genetic change that has ever occured. But any application of occam's razor should tell you which of these can be eliminated.

By the linked definition "when multiple competing theories have equal predictive powers, the principle recommends selecting those that introduce the fewest assumptions and postulate the fewest hypothetical entities". Given that there is actually ample evidence of naturalistic changes to genetic characteristics (read talkorigins for an idea of just how much evidence there is), which explenation do you think should be eliminated?

On a side note, I don't think religious people really carry this sort logic through - or else they wouldnt be using it. If god is the cause of all genetic change, then god would be responsible for things like this.

But anyway, faulty basis aside, was there anything in particular about that link which you found compelling evidence against evolution?

srry. I mainly just put that link just for your opinion. I wasnt sure about it. I have touble figuring out what evolution really is because I heard of so many different theories

One reason I dont like evolution is, besides the fact that I dont believe it, it is not concerned with the origin of life, only the origin of species. I'm more concerned with the origin of life.

Evolution wasn't designed with the intent of explaining the origin of life. If you want that, you'll have to look into theories with that purpose in mind. Theories such as the one I just mentioned, where RNA spontaneously forms when a clay catalyst is present.

And if you're judging a theory because it doesn't explain what it wasn't designed to explain, you're being exceedingly foolish.

NO im not judging evolution because of that. I already do not believe in evolution but if I did, I would wonder more of the origin of life and why we are here. I would not be satisfied with the other things.

To me I cant even imagine our whole planet coming along by chance. I just cant.

Originally posted by Lonewolf
To me I cant even imagine our whole planet coming along by chance. I just cant.

If you're really interested in finding out about 'why' we're here. I suggest that you be willing to accept explanations even when you don't like how they sound.

Originally posted by Lonewolf
NO im not judging evolution because of that. I already do not believe in evolution but if I did, I would wonder more of the origin of life and why we are here. I would not be satisfied with the other things.

To me I cant even imagine our whole planet coming along by chance. I just cant.

God is supposedly an even greater thing than this universe, right? So could he have come along by chance? Whatever your explanation for the origin or lack of origin of God, why could the same philosophy not logically apply to the universe?

Originally posted by Lonewolf
NO im not judging evolution because of that. I already do not believe in evolution but if I did, I would wonder more of the origin of life and why we are here. I would not be satisfied with the other things.

To me I cant even imagine our whole planet coming along by chance. I just cant.

In that case, why not believe in evolution? For what it set out to explain, it's unrivaled. No rival theory has or is comparable in terms of predicting power.