Apples and oranges. Comparing something mechanical and man-made to something that simply exists is a bit…odd, isn’t it?

Wait. Are you suggesting we’re all watches? I wanna be a pocket watch.

Seems kind of a silly comparison, human evolution and a man made watch.

I hate that discussion with Christians. It makes them seem so duh childish! On both parts, Creationists and evolutionists!
Just like the video on my site… we dont have religion problems…we have human problems.
Communication without determination to prove a point is what we need.

i liked the simplicity of this. funny, but i almost started believing what you were saying and had to sort of shake myself a bit and be like, no, what he’s saying isn’t true and there’s a point to this.  I wonder why.  Maybe because it is early.

The watch and the armadillo had a common anscestor.

@musinuite - I mean this to provoke thought and not be a jerk, but what would you think/feel if all scientific findings pointed toward the validity of a religion’s (I’m not being specific) beliefs of the origin of the universe?  What if it told the very same story?  I think the nature of science is to be exploratory.  Anything is possible until discovered otherwise and even after that, new discoveries can make older knowledge obsolete.  I also wonder if science can ever be as cold and stark and perfect as we would like considering it is full of theories and is run by people who are flawed, emotional, or only have partial knowledge.  The whole point of knowledge is to know something.  While it may be justified in some ways to leave the creation theories or stories or belief out of public education, is it really serving us in anyway to not know about them whether we agree or not?  I guess it could be moved to sociology or some other realm of study.  But if so, should evolution go there too because I don’t think it has been proven either.  Isn’t that just a theory as well?  And if so many people hold to something that is only a theory, does that count as a religion?  Not according to our culture’s standards, but I wonder if we are right or not.  If anything I hope you take this as a complement that your comment was interesting and provoking enough for me to want to respond to. 

@AliasUndercover - Evolutionists are guilty of the worst science – “Oh, I can’t explain this change using current observable science, but if I throw a million years at it I can… I mean a billion… I mean 4.3 billion… I don’t know but it happened over a really long time.  That explains it!”

Some things take time. Plate tectonics tell us that continents drift at a slow but appreciable rate– it is only after millions of years that Pangea’s drift gave us the atlantic and pacific oceans. Dinosaur leaves don’t give us fossil fuel over-night.

It would be disigenuous if all Evolutionary Biologists had was “time.” But it’s not just that. We know and understand evolution’s gears and shafts (mutation and natural selection), what more, we have the tools to confirm the working of that gearwork (genetics and bioinformatics).

@trunthepaige - that was a nice baseless assertion

Fair enough, but you furthered no particulars on how ID is “legitimate criticism” for incremental evolution. It would be persumptous for me to go beyond general assertions and make your particular arguments for you.

but ID is based on such sound observations

Okay. What observations and how do they support ID?

Maybe you should read some of it them then comment when you know what you are talking about.

I’ve read Behe, and I believe he’s wrong. But screw what I believe, let’s discuss it. Your move.

You’re funny.

The reason evolution is the leading theory on how life evolved is from the remarkable similarity between all living organisms, from internal body organs and structure to the very makeup of cells.

The vast body of knowledge collected from fossilized remains has given us compelling evidence of the way evolution occurred. Sure carbon dating is not 100% proven infallible, but if you take the data of fossilized remains, having been dated, and compare it to the data of other fossilized remains, found thousands, if not millions of miles away, correlate ALL the data, the chemical analysis of the rock giving us so much data, of conditions, of vegetation, of so much I can barely grasp it, the the theories of quantum physics, of the data collected by the scientists, the people who built atom smashers, the people who looked with in the very makeup of the atom, the quark, the proton, the people who looked out, who deduced how fast light travels, that looked up in telescopes and saw that everything is currently expanding, and when using common logic and a few deductive guesses, that is was once all together to be moving apart…

Then we have the bible, the word of God, told by people who sat around campfires and drew pictures of harvest deities, of fertility symbols, of pagan legends and oral traditions, which only came to be this ridiculous bible thing with it’s not exclusive creation myth, the magic flood, the stories of Jeebus, which just happens to be the one that really stuck in the past 2000, years, and it certainly was not the only or the first…

Using your fallacious presentation of a select criteria above, YES, the watch is a product of evolution.

The big bang happened, the planets formed, the conditions were right, proteins came together and were able to absorb what was around them, thus becoming proteins capable of non-sentient reproduction, yet it was the first life on this planet, those proteins eventually became more complex proteins, and then the first primitive organisms which became more complex, and evolved, then there were cells, then bacteria…

I can’t go on. The theory of biodiversity is the strongest argument yet, mutations are observed to this day. Basically, what I am trying to get across is that YES, the big bang happened and using your argument, evolved to man, who created that watch. To take the leap of faith, to stop questioning and accept that it was the bible, the nomadic people in their primitive camps 10,000 years ago in the fertile crescent were actually from Eve’s rib and God created the world in seven days leading to that watch, it saddens me.

It is fallacious. Creationism is incorrect. I can’t take the leap of faith and accept the second best(and far behind) theory as 100% infallible just because it asked me to (and my parents shoved it down my throat from birth).

@alynn89 - In intelligent design there is a point where there is this huge chasm, a point where all the logical sounding theories go out the window, when it come’s to god, because the last question is faith.

You have a pretty smile though. How tall are you?

@SpiritualBattlefield - You said it well. 

@valis10 - Evolution only picks up after life begins. Who knows how life begins? Could be abiogenesis, could be God, would be wookies.

@GhostBenjimon - let’s just put it this way: i’m not tall. 

@alynn89 - That’s +10 bonus points to make me stop shouting and ask for a dance instead.

@trunthepaige -  I would just do the same thing you you just did. We will be cutting and pasting until dooms day.

I don’t cut or paste. I take intellectual responsiblity of my own claims and back them up with my own words.

If you’re unwilling to support your assertions when called to them, you shouldn’t apply those assertions as actual rebuttal to the detail of other people’s arguments.

The theory you just gave a brief on, has no explanation in it for a massive cellular machine that would serve zero function, if but one out of million of its parts were missing. it is sort of the wrong subject.

The explaination I’m willing to give would be specific to the particular example you have in mind. You keep hand-waving “cellular machinary,” yet, you’re fully incapable or unwilling to cite specific examples.

It’s okay if you don’t understand the finities of your own position, just don’t pass off your jumbled mess as a solidified argument when all it does is sag and dribble.

This analogy is crap. No offense. But sure, if you want to reduce the universe to the simplicity of a wrist watch, then sure, God makes sense, creationism makes sense. Simple minds favor simple solutions.

@PreciousOnyx - ——————————————————————————————-
“Creationists and IDs do not disagree with the concept that animals or humans mutate- they simply do not believe that one distinct species becomes another. Birds do not become reptiles or vise versa.”
———————————————————————————————————————–

Progress! Thank you for progressing the discussion to particular arguments. =) I woudl give you a hug, but I don’t know if you’re a guy or gal.

Okay. I have two responses:

1.) Firstly, there is nothing to prevent the accumulation of many mutations to form an entirely new species. There are cellular controls that prevent divergent animals, say a dog and a cat, from forming viable offsprings. All it takes for speciation, the formation of a distinct species, is for an evolution to particularily effect the governing mechanism of species mutation.

Towards this, I can list a number of such mutations:

(i). A sperm can enter an egg only when its acrosome (the tip of the sperm) produces a specific enzyme that breaks down the outer membrane of the unfertilized egg. The identity of this enzyme is unique for a number of species. All it takes is for a mtuation to slightly change the identity of this enzyme and voila! Some sperms can’t fertilize some eggs, and the we have an entirely seperate breeding population.

(ii) Meiosis. In order for cells to reproduce, their chromosomes must line up in the mitosis and meiosis. Chromosomal mutations can change chromosome count and length. Humans diverged from other primates because the fusion of two chromsomes to reduce the chromosome count by one. Humans have a pair of twenty-three chromosomes. Apes have a pair of twenty-four chromosomes. Humans are a distinct breeding population from apes becuse in meiosis, teh twenty-three chomsomes can’t match up with twenty-four chromosomes (one chromosome would be missing a dance partner).

2.) Secondly, common descent can be proven by comparing the genome of closely “related” species:

Genes. We all have it, and animals too. When we compare the genes of two outwardsly similar organisms (say, mice and men), we make a number of observations:

(i) Observation: They share a similar genetic template. Across the genome are similar genes that share the same function.

Evolution: We’ve inherited them from the same source, a common ancestor. The subtle differences in the coding of the genes can be explained by the non-harmful mutations that has accumulated over the millions of years in thsoe genes.

Creationism: Who knows?

(ii.) Observation: Not only are the identity of genes similar but the genes are grouped in identical chunks: http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/proc02/pap0719/p07193.jpg

There are little practical benifit to having genes in the same ordering across such large chunks fot he chromosome.

Evolution: Genes are organized in large chunks along chromosomes. When we inherited the genes from a common ancestor, we inherited them wholesale as chromosomes (so the same gene ordering is kept).

Along the way, some of the chromsomal chunks between mice and men have been rearranged (like lego blocks). This is expected in Evolution because along with mutation of genes, there are mutations of chromosomes (translocations, splitting of chromosomes, combination of chromsosomes).

Creationism: Clueless

(iii.) Observation: Between mice and men, not only are there similar genes, but there are identical units of junk DNA. We see the same pseudogenes in mice as we do in man (pseudogenes are gene-like coding that no longer work because they’re missing important gene-components). We also see the same transposon fragments (“dead,” viral fragments).

Evolution: Since mice and men took from the same genetic template, they took both the working genes and the junk that just happens to be on the inherited chromosome.

Siblings may both have Tay-Sachs or Sickle Cell Anemia. Guess why? They’ve inerhited it from the same parents.

Creationism: Clueless again

———————————————————————————————————————–
“Humans never came from apes- and the supposed “missing links” have not panned out. Neanderthals are purely human- they exhibit exclusively human traits. Whereas “Lucy” is not at all human- she is exclusively ape-kind.”
———————————————————————————————————————–

There are a bunch of reasons for this. And I’m not trying to be a smart-ass here in typing up numbered responses, I actually think they’re each pretty important:

1.) Punctuated Equilibrium. Major evolutionary events happen in huge squirts. There isn’t enough time during the squirts for fossils to form.

2.) Fossils are rare, happy accidents. In order for a fossil to be unearthed, some poor animal must suffer:

(a) a swift death and
(b) be quickly entombed.
(c) Particular geological processes have to happen over thousands of years,
(d) The fossil must  survive for million of years
(e) and a paleontoligst has to be as lucky as to find it.

All of these factors have to luck into play for fossils to be form. Because of this, fossils are very rare occurances. Relative to the speed of evolution, fossilization isn’t fast enough to capture a represenative sample of all species and organisms.

It’s like trying to capture Usain Bolt if your shutter-speed is 1 second. All you’d get is a blur– you won’t get a continuous lineage from start to finish.

———————————————————————————————————————–
“Furthermore the vast majority of mutations any species or kind experiences are negative or neutral.”
———————————————————————————————————————–

True, but there is nothing to prevent a mutation from being benifical. And with a a set rate, positive mutations do pop up and establish themselves in the population.

Most people lose the lottery. Some people get kinda lucky and win only five bucks. Once in every long while, we have a lucky idiot who wins millions.

I think both ignore a more fundamental question than how we got here: why? Sometimes we assume that if we discover how something works, we’ll know why it works. That’s not always the case and I especially feel that will be the case in evolution v ID. If evolution is true, why are we here? Is it just to evolve into a new species that will wipe out the old or does it just mean we are a cosmic accident? If ID is true, which God or which version of God do we give credit and why did He/She/It/They do it?

Personally I subscribe to the Christian theory of ID, but not everybody does or will even if ID is proven true.

Oh fucking hell.  Why do we have to argue about this?  No one will be proven right on earth, and if heaven exists, then the evolutionists are fucked.  I think it’s a combo of the two, but that’s no one’s fucking business but my own.  Evolution should be taught in school, because anyone who’s going to believe creation was raised in the church and should be taught the other side to the story.  Everyone who believes evolution has had creationism shoved down their throats already – it’s payback time, suckers.

@huginn - what is an occan? i find okham’s razor to be better. make the fewest assumptions possible. 

evolution, assumes 1) there is no God 2)that order can and does come from chaos 3) that something can and does come from nothing  and the list goes on

ID assumes 1) the order in the universe is the result of an intelligent mind 1.5) ascribing it to a particular deity.

creationism assumes 1)that the individuals deity created everything(this holds true for christians, muslims, etc.) and not much else.

i seperate ID and creationism because they are different, creationism starts with the premise that the individuals deity is the sourse of creation, where as ID starts with the premise that there is “A” creator and it is to the individual to discover who that is, kind of a theistic agnostasism. “i know there is a God, which one is it?” whereas atheism begins with the premise that there is no God.

the fact of the matter is that creationism and atheistic evolutionism are religions(look the word up in the dictionary) id is more of an aproach to studying the religion. yes, beginning as all things do with a premise, that someone designed it. ID does not in it’self rule out evolution(as there is the study of guided evolution) it merely rules out atheistic evolution.

C’mon, Dan, tell us how you really feel! :p

I think neither should be taught in school.
It should be up to the parents/family to teach kids how they think everything was created.

@ionekoa - evolution, assumes 1) there is no God

Evolution doesn’t speak of the existance or nonexistance of God. Like ANY OTHER scientific theory (Newtonian Mechanics, the Atomic Theory), Evolution does not evoke the active role of God in creationism.

2) that order can and does come from chaos

And we see “this” in nature. Every winter, randomly scattered water droplets form intricate and beautiful snowflakes: Order from chaos.

3) that something can and does come from nothing  and the list goes on

This thread and the comment of mine that responded to dealt with Evolution as a natural theory. In this argument, I will concede ignorance of the universe’s formation and the origins of life. Evolution is a compartmetnalized process– it picks up where the origins of life leaves off (however it happened) and works with that.

ID assumes 1) the order in the universe is the result of an intelligent mind

This is an unfounded assumption. ID has neither found nor characterized this “intelligent mind.” At this point, ID is furthering more than it can prove.

1.5) ascribing it to a particular deity.

ID itself does not. I don’t mind you arguing a fusion of ID and creationism, but I want your advocacy to be clear.

the fact of the matter is that creationism and atheistic evolutionism are religions(look the word up in the dictionary)

Evolution is instrisicly agnostic. I challenge you to explain how evolution is a “religion.” Anyone can blow hot air, it’s a bit different to actually justify an argument

..ID does not in it’self rule out evolution(as there is the study of guided evolution) it merely rules out atheistic evolution.

ID in its purset form speaks nothing of God. “God” is just an acceptalbe form of intelligence as aliens from another galaxy.

@trunthepaige - Oh good lord i understand and you damn well know why I not giving a full explanation. it would take about 500 words to detail what i meant by “a cellular machine” and you supposedly read a book on the subject.

I have books on the subject, as I have book son Chritsian apologetics. I put them on my “bullshit” shelf.

I am only asking for an example. And if you’re really too lazy to even to begin to cite one, then your arguments immediately lose their merits.

You point to a theory, giving no explanation yourself, that doesn’t even apply, and I gave you a change to explain why you think it does.

You have to be more specific as to the “theory.” I posted many comments in this thread. One comment rang up to over 900 words.

Again, I repeat: I can’t give a proper treatment of your arguments unless you actually explain yourself. Since you’ve furthered the initial argument on intelligent design, it is your burden of proof.

Before i made the claim that you don’t seem to understand what you are talking about. I think you do understand, but are being lazy. I don’t blame you for that as it would likely take you about 500 words to explain yourself. But I see you hold yourself to different and lower standard.

I am fully willing to build rebuttling arguments from the ground up. Note that in a different comment, my arguments spanned 900+ words. But I can’t rebuttal a point if you yourself are unwilling to provide the point.

@lightnindan - If I absolutely don’t want to admit a Creator because of the implications it has on my life and the restrictions it would place on me, then I must find a way to explain Him away.

I would like God to exist. I’ve searched for him most of my adult life. Effort came in the form of fellowship groups in college, bible study session, and many books on Christian apologetics.

Despite my wishfulness for there to be a God, I can’t simply convince myself that God exists. There simply isn’t sufficient evidence for God’s existance. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. By my standards of investigation, “God” flunked his test.

The merits of Evolution stand indepednetly of the existance or percieved existance of God. The mechanism and support for Evolution comes from the natural world. Just as the atomic theory– the idea of electrons, protons, and neutrons making up the atom– doesn’t actively evoke God; neither does Evolution. But this itself does not make evolution atheistic.

The fool hath said in his heart, “There is no God.”
The heavens declare the glory of God.

I love this pathetically veiled personal attack on non-Christians. It’s as if you cover name-calling with a bit of scripture, you think you can get away with it.

My boy, I have found the missing link in this watch’s evolutionary chain!

http://www.antiquereproductions.org.uk/ebay/ar/grandfather_clock_mg9814/grandfather_clock_mg9814_full_size.JPG

Blimey, my dear boy, how stupid you must feel!

Fire with fire,
∞

@CircusMask - ”…it will have an explanation for why humans (which are supposed to be made in God’s image, right?) are susceptible to regular and predictable back pain….” 

When the Bible says that humans were made in God’s image, it didn’t mean physiologically. By this, it means that we have a conscious and a subconscious. We have the ability to choose, to reason, and to feel. This is imperitive to know in order to understand God’s plan with Jesus. With the way that God created humans, he gave us the choice to either accept or deny him. Why would God give us a choice? Because if it were forced, it would not be real and true. We wouldn’t realize that there were other things out there to love, and we wouldn’t have the ability to turn from those things and choose to love God. It really is a beautiful thing to think that God loves us enough to give us the choice of who/what we’ll love in return.

@SiuMonGuet87 -  Christian doctrine attempts to provide an explanation — we decide for ourselves whether to accept or reject it as true based on any available evidence.

Fair enough. Popular evangelicalizing, though, doesn’t take a logical appraoch in arguing for God. I’ve been approached by people who ask for me to look into my heart for God or to consider the explantory powers of someone like God.

There is definately a way to present and argue God logically and empirically. It irks me that most evangelicalizing Christians (at least on college campuses), don’t take that route.

I read The Case for Faith and The Case for Christ. While my Christian friends raved about it, I was really unhappy with it. What little biology is in Faith is horribly distorted and his claims were weak, though occasionally I found some interesting points. In a way, somewhat reminiscent of C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, though his thoughts were a bit more reasonable.

Ha, I was so disgusted with Case for a Creator that I sold it on ebay. =P I have Case for Faith and Case for Christ sitting around, gathering dust (and waiting for me).

Lewis is a creationist also, no?

That is an excellent question. According to Wikipedia, he lived from 1898 through 1963. He lived through the modern synthesis. I would guess that he’s a creationist, but I duno if there were an easy way to verify it.

Apples and oranges.  I think the watch is a product of “evolution”, but the people who designed it are a product of intelligent design.

This question makes no sense to me.

The watch was made by a man.  We know this because…we made it.

@kissthewake - ”Suppose there were no intelligence behind the universe. In that case,
nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. Thought is merely
the by-product of some atoms within my skull. But if so, how can I
trust my own thinking to be true? But if I can’t trust my own thinking,
of course, I can’t trust the arguments leading to atheism, and
therefore have no reason to be an atheist, or anything else. Unless I
believe in God, I can’t believe in thought; so I can never use thought
to disbelieve in God.” ~C.S. Lewis

Mr. Lewis would not be able to trust his thinking even if there were a God. Not all Gods are nice and truth-telling.

@jsyc - Do you honestly believe that you just evolved????

Much is funky in our world. If I told you that diamond and soot were composed of the same elemental constituents, you might not believe me. Not all of the natural world is obvious and easy.

So you’re telling me that through evolution, this world just naturally selected its way into all the living things that exist today? 

Much of it is guess-work. Some of phylogenetic trees are constructed with circumstantial evidence. With living species (say mice and men), we can peer into the genome, and through comparisons of similiarties and differences, understand how long ago the two species diverged.

Evolution is a process. It only takes a single confirmation to demontsrate that the process happens sometimes. Does it happen always, and is it responsible for all the biodiversity on the earth? Maybe, but no one can say for certain. We are certain, though, that it is responsible for at least some.

Sorry buddy, I have to disagree with your opinion.  There is a higher being who was in charge of everything.

And he answers to a three-letter word: DNA.

Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Why not teach the Flying Spaghetti Monster in high school science class?  It is a valid explanation for how the universe got here.  It must be because I believe it.  So why isn’t anyone teaching it?  Christianity is Satan’s lie to distract simple minds from the truth of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Look at it this way: A caveman couldn’t have made that. So, evolution.

And intelligent design.

@Tavia_n_Jones - creation CAN be taght in school as truth. Science backs up creation all the way.

Creationism can’t be science because there is no scientific support for its mechanism. Evolution works with mutation and natural selection– each of the two are very well understood, observed, and characterized. Creationism has no mechanism because no one has found and measured “God.”

@SamweSarahEerandgel - How can you say that the watch isn’t a living organism? Did you ask it? How can you make such a statement without sure knowledge of your subject? Can you  be sure that watches aren’t sentient beings as well?

I hope you’re on medication.

I spent a lot of nights last semester arguing this very subject with a roommate who was a strict adherent to evolution. So I only have two notes:

1) The watch analogy is VERY common in this debate. It is purely used to give us a visual image of the complexity of life. For those who are saying “apples and oranges” exchange the image of the watch for the double helix and then exchange the word “watch” for DNA and you’ve got specifics. The only thing is that you lose half the element of sarcasm and all of the absurdity and the average person places themselves solely on evolutionist grounds–where science rules. Everyone can understand a watch. But if we were discussing DNA, and someone decided to begin listing off every–single–protein in the double helix…well, most of us would look pretty ignorant now wouldn’t we. Few creationists are familiar enough with science to engage in a raw scientific debate on the origins of life. But even scientists use images to understand things they can’t see (the double helix for example). So why can’t metaphor suffice for those of us who don’t follow the double helix.

2) SO…strict adherence to evolution, in opposition to all concepts of creation, is collective solipsism, pure egocentrism, and cultish. Yeah, I’m ruffling feathers, but here’s why I say that:

Strict adherence to evolution requires a parallel leap of faith as creation. (I’m not gonna outline what I believe, but responding to evolution doesn’t take much.) To believe in evolution, you have to first believe in a primordial universe filled with gas and dust–compressed to an “infinite” density–governed by a series of unwritten laws (like gravity). All of these things existed before “time”, and there is no theory in evolution which explains the origin of this primordial matter–just that IT was and after the Big Bang, the unwritten laws said “it was good” and we were, after an eternity, blessed with life.

To say that, “in the beginning, there was matter” is its own leap of faith; just like, “in the beginning, there was God”. That matter could easily have been “created” by another source which could easily be called “God”. The Big Bang is just a set of theories based upon mathematical equations and crude observations made from a tiny rock from an obscure star in a white galaxy in the middle of nowhere. It is a theory of estimable proximity–they are highly-educated guesses and little else. (Their also the best guesses at any given time, but because of their nature, they are subject to change every 50-100 years or so when Newton, Leibniz, or Einstein or someone comes along and clusterf*cks the whole lot of pre-existing beliefs.)

The theory of evolution was not intended to, and still doesn’t, disprove the existence of God. It merely proves the inaccuracy of the book of Genesis–a book which could easily be interpreted as most people have, a story told around a campfire among “primitive” nomadic peoples as a metaphor explaining the origin of their world. It invalidates the creation myths of most religions even, but what it doesn’t do is invalidate the existence of a god; it doesn’t discount the possibility of intelligence somewhere around the time of the Big Bang.

Evolution, a section of science, seems to have partitioned itself off from the group which strictly adheres to the scientific method. It has grown beyond the boundaries of observation-theory/hypothesis-prediction-experimentation and presumes itself to be the end-all-be-all of beliefs. It has become a dogmatic response to religious dogmatism. It is the rebellious child of Galileo which should have taken a lesson from Socrates: the truly wise man knows that he knows nothing. Its adherents believe it to answer questions it never purported to ask and they get their feathers all bound when you say so.

Scientists will never have all the answers. They know that. Because once they reduce something to its absolute, it is no longer an absolute–and they have to keep searching. Scientists are forever reaching for the infinite, and I respect and admire them for that. Evolution, as a theory, is a work-in-progress and treating it as anything else is false. It will undergo revision and correction. Researchers working off the assumption of evolution might, one day, accidentally stumble upon something genuinely irreducible that responds intelligently. You never know, so don’t act like you do. And don’t try to bury me in your parallel dogma. If you want to rail against religion, so be it, but don’t be dogmatic in your rejection of a theory that you are incapable of DISproving (god), just admit it: you don’t know, and nothing makes you feel certain about it. The rest of us had better accept that, because I think that’s as good as we’ll ever get.

(And I have a whole separate rant for dogmatic religionists! but not today.)

@UberGoobah - “Apples and oranges. Comparing something mechanical and man-made to something that simply exists is a bit…odd, isn’t it?”

That’s the thing… We KNOW how the watch happened, that’s why we could use it as an example. (What if some tribe in some part of the world that had no contact with Western culture had found that watch – would they think it was man-made? Probably, since it is obviously designed…) But we don’t know how we happened. You are just assuming we “simply exist”, when in reality we could be God-made.

@huginn - ”There is no “oil maker.”

That’s precisely the point that is being debated. Just because  we don’t know  who produced the products that eventually produced oil doesn’t mean there isn’t someone who did it.  The burden of proof is on those who reason that someone did create us, true, but that doesn’t make them wrong simply because  it can’t be proven  materially…

@huginn - ”Common descent disproves Creationism.”
No it doesn’t, because Creationism may include common descent. The two can co-exist. At any rate, common descent is part of a theory, the whole of which has not been proven.

“Evolution has been proven in the lab.”
Micro-evolution, not macro-evolution, has been proven. The fact that you don’t acknowledge this distinction devalues your credibility.

“Evolution explains the world’s biodiversity. Creationism does not.”
As mentioned above, Creationism allows for such biodiversity.

@CormackMcKinney - No it doesn’t, because Creationism may include common descent. The two can co-exist. At any rate, common descent is part of a theory, the whole of which has not been proven.

Agreed. In typical Evolution/Creationism discussions, Evolution is understood sans special creation and Creationism is understood to not include Evolution. I was being lazy with my terms.

Micro-evolution, not macro-evolution, has been proven. The fact that you don’t acknowledge this distinction devalues your credibility.

The distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution is superficial. Mutations can happen to one of any one of an organisms trait. Cross-species incompatibility is one such trait.

@CormackMcKinney - We could be either. Isn’t that what the whole debate is about? There is no proof one way or the other. So now we’re back to …square one after looking at the pretty watch? 

@JJ_Ames - Tell me that only after creation science muster a single peer-review quality journal article.

I also have this to say: Sundial.

lol thats awesome!!!!!!! Evolution is really that stuipid, Romans says that creation is proof enough of creation and it really is, seriously look into the sky and tell me it kist naturally, by itself one day apeared……Amazing, it is Amazing how blind people can be. Its sad that they have even gone into space, they have looking into the stars this whole time and still don’t believe in Christ ……….wow It is acctually harder to believe the universe just magically appeared and fish turned into monkeys then it is to just believe the truth! amazing.

@JJ_Ames - The problem with that criteria is that no evolutionary journal would ever publish a creationist article regardless of the strength of its argument.

The problem with creation science isn’t this, the problem with creation science is its low standards of academic research. While the editors Nature of PNAS may sneer at flat-earth research, what’s actually preenting them from green-lighting publication would be the lack of science.

Paradigm shifts are cool. Scientists don’t mind being proven wrong. Newtonian Physics was overturned by General and Special Relativity. There were initial resistance to Einstein’s ideas, but gradually, the scientific community accepted.

Evolution, in its present form, has been around for sixty years. Name me a single landmark research in creation science from the last decade that would overturn Evolution.

Evolutionary theory is so entrenched in academia that it’s impossible for creationists to be taken seriously – anything but Evolution is written off.

Any theory confirmed time and time again would be entrenched– and for the right reason. Evolution is like the atomic theory or the central dogma of molecular biology– new research actually confirms and refines the theories.

@PreciousOnyx -  —————————————————————————–
Lots of scientists have demonstrated the failures of the inner workings of the evolution theory- their writings are just ignored because the media and science journals intentionally exclude their findings because they refuse to bow at the shrine of Darwin. Behe, Wells, Pasteur, Faraday, and many many other scientists both now and in the past have shown that evolution simply does not pan out- not in the fossil record, not in the lab, not anywhere.
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Faraday experimented on electro-magnetics. I’m not aware of him doing any research in biology.

Pasteur demonsrated that the larvae of rotting meat came from live flies and insects. His conclusions shows that under specific conditions, abiogenesis is impossible. This research has nothing to do with the modern theory of evolution which actually only congealed a full four decades after Pasteur’s death.

Who’s Wells?

Behe’s irreducible complexity says that Evolution is fundamentally incapable of explaining the complexity of modern life. Behe looked to biochemical cycles, and he pointed out that in order for the cycle to work, each of its components must be present in its fully functional state. He says taht step-wise evolution of the cycle is impossible since that each component of the cycle must simutaneously evolve. This is so unlikely that it is practically impossible.

Behe’s observation is interesting, but it is easily answered:

1.) The components of the biochemical cycle may have evolved serving different roles. For instance, proteins that participate in the Calvin Cycle have different roles. Some are involved in the production of proteins, others help the body convert ATP to storing fat.

2.) Cycles can actually be built stepwise: Two-member cycle –> three-member cycle –> four-member cycle. Each evolving step would add refinement and complexity.

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I fail to see at all how this would support evolution. Sure a mutation could occur but that doesn’t mean it would birth a new species. In fact, that mutation may just be fatal resulting in nothing produced at all.
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The sperm/acrosome example provides a mechanism for speciation. The other mechanism I’ve mentioned was chromosmal mutations.

The formation of species barriers is the first step to the evolution of a “new species.” Once two populations of a previously common species can’t itnerbreed, they would each undergo a seperate evolutioanrily lineage.

If a polluting is dumped into one side of the pond, it would diffuse over the span of hte entire pond. If water is lost in one side of the pond, the water level will even out over the entire length of the pond. The gene pool of a species is like this.

Things, however, changes once someone erects a dam. With a dam, pollution of one side would not reach the other. With a dam, the two sides of the pond can have different water levels. Mutations that erect barriers to interbreeding is the first step to a complete change in the two sides of an organism’s population. Give it enough time, and the naturally occuring micro-evolution would make it so that the two previously common species would look very very different.

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Common traits do not necessitate common ancestors. According to the creationist view archetypes are better understood as coming from the same designer the way the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper may have similar brush techniques or the way The Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield may have a similar linguistic style.
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A while ago, there was a copyright infringement lawsuit between the authors of two Chemistry textbooks. Chemistry textbooks all take from the same source– the repository of scientific knowledge in chemistry– and process it to be education friendly.

If all chemistry textbooks serve the same function, if they’re all of the same “archetype,” how can we know if there’s really a case of out-right plagarism of one book from the other?

Mistakes. In a 500-page textbook, it is inevitable that typographical errors or minor mis-statements creep ino the writing of a textbook. If a plagarising textbook really used a different textbook as a template for its own writing, then along with the correct information, it would copy the mistakes and the errors.

Between two similar species, we see not only a similarity of good, working genes; but a similarity of junk DNA and genetic cast-offs. I’ve addressed the particulars of this in a comment I’ve replied to you.

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You and I could go on all day with point and counter point but we’re not going to make any progress until we address the very underpinnings of the issue. What we are not arguing against here is not the facts- we are arguing their interpretations.
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I disgaree. When we zoom in to sufficient detail, the evidence will support only one side: That of Evolution. This, at least, is what I think. This, at least, is the conclusion that the scientific community has arrived to.

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You and I both see fossils, we both observe the laws of nature, we both are capable of doing the same calculations and so forth. Our interpretations of those facts are where we diverge.
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In questions of Evolution and Creationism, there are many many fields of interest. Sure, when we only look at one piece of evidence, there may be a variety of possible explainations.

But each of  Paleotology, Genetics, Developmental Biology, Zoology, and Bioinformatics support the Theory of Evolution. All together, these fields do not as nicely and cleanly support Creationism.

Creation Theory is not the problem, it’s the people who PUSH it on everyone else.  Being the Christian, I do believe in it, however, in the last couple of years, I’ve had a question bouncing around in my brain.  Could it be possible that God “created” all the pieces that then “evolved” into what “is” today?

Sort of a “Creation of Evolution Theory”.   I don’t want to use the words “Intelligent Design” because I’ve already come too many other “Christians” who are trying to push that as a compromised Psuedo-Creation Theory just to get it in the schools.

Do I think it should be taught in the schools?  Absolutely!  But since I understand WHY the State wants to be separated from the church, I don’t mind that it’s not.  Besides, the children’s parents can always take them to their local, church, temple, synagogue, etc… to learn all about.

Best of both worlds I’d say.

But then again, I wear an Timex Ironman Digital LCD watch for running.  Haven’t figured out what I’m running from or too yet.

@CormackMcKinney - But from what I have learned, mutations are generally limiting, not creative.

Agreed, and this is because the odds of 1.) A positive, “creative,” mutation occuring are slight, and 2.) the odds of it establishing itself in the gene pool is slim. But have enough idiots play the lottery, and wait long enough, you’d get a happy winner or two.

I have not learned of any research that has shown that structural domains can create genes with entirely new properties.
Perhaps you can provide some references…

Firstly, I push a counter-challenge: Explain to me how rearranged structural or functional domains can’t change or give new functions to an old protein.

There was a good example I picked up from my undergraduate days– it was how a structural molecule lost its binding domain to become a free-floating protein in the circulatory system and evolving new functions. But I can’t recall enough to google articles, so I can’t fairly cite this as an example.

What about this: Nylon eating bacteria. I don’t have full access to pubmed from my home. The wiki article should has the references for  you to track down the relevant published articles.

@QuantumStorm - Yes, I agree that increases of information can occur.

@CormackMcKinney - The burden of proof is on you, not me; we have never known one to do what I said, so it’s not unreasonable to assume that it doesn’t happen.

I hold the burden of proof in the assertions I make. The burden of proof is on you to support the positive claims you make. If you’re really saying that mutations can’t necessarily generate new functions, then I’m calling on you to show how not.

That’s a cool article, though that sort of thing happens all the time with bacteria, viruses, and the like, and it doesn’t prove the Macro-evolution theory.

Are you stupid? Come on.

If you trace back this sub-discussion, you’d see that the Nylon-munching bacteria is an answer of a direct challenge of showing a gain-of-function mutation; it wasn’t to directly demonstrate macro-evolutionary mechanisms.

You brought up the “show me a gain-of-function mutation” as an answer to my examples of mutations that would allow for speciation. Your point was that mutations, in general, cannot produce a new function.

I’ve answered your challenge. You can either agree that, yes, it is a gain-of-function mtuation or say no, it doesn’t and briefly explain how it doesn’t. This lazy non-sequitur jump to the assertion of “it doesn’t prove anything about Macro-evolution theory” is lame and pathetic.

We were making good progress in our discussion, and in the right way. I really don’t understand you you can so quickly get so lazy or so dumb.

@huginn - ”Your point was that mutations, in general, cannot produce a new function.”
It is a built-in function of bacteria to adapt to take in whatever “food” necessary to live. That is nothing new… The source of its sustenance is new, yes, but that is not a new function – or at least not an example of a new function that could lead to a new species.

“I really don’t understand you you can so quickly get so lazy or so dumb.”
Sorry, I thought it was a dumb example, and quite obviously not productive in proving your point…

“If you’re really saying that mutations can’t necessarily generate new functions, then I’m calling on you to show how not.”
I cannot explain. To me that’s like asking how earth’s gravity can not keep the earth’s materials from floating off into space…  How can that be explained? It just always has kept us from floating off. (Sure, I could go into the details about the mass and size of the planet, magnetism, its spin, etc… but how much is enough? Do you want me to read you a text book?) The burden of proof is on the one who speculates that an object can, in fact, defy gravity. In the same way, the question you’re asking me is like wanting me to explain biology to you from… where, from scratch? Nearly everything  about it demonstrates the fact that mutations will not lead to a new species. Everything but theory. I don’t have to prove anything, because in all of what we know it never has.

@huginn - I guess I would have to clarify what I am saying… Yes, bacteria have a built-in adaptive function that will produce the type of enzymes necessary to break down a substance for “food”. Similarly, we have immune systems with a function to eventually adapt to and/or fight whatever new virus may be attacking us. And, true, we know that this adaptive function applies to other aspects of biology as well. But we do not have sufficient evidence to prove that this adaptive function sometimes leads to cross-species evolution. Just because we have seen how bacteria produces new enzymes, doesn’t mean that all biological components have such an ability.

At any rate, I am open to evolution and think it’s a pretty reasonable theory, even beautiful. But my specialty is Psychology, not Biology, and I am not very passionate about this topic because whether it is true or not I have learned and experienced enough to convince me beyond reasonable doubt that nature and all we have learned about it was ultimately designed. So, because I have other things that require more urgent attention, and because I no longer have the desire to debate this topic at this time, I’m gonna stop.

Good discussion, though. I have been in far too many discussions where people resort to insults and dirty tactics in order to seem superior to those they are having the discussion with, but you have been reasonable, patient, and polite.