What's the Matter With Creationism?

I suppose this is going to come down to another word definition issue as it usually does.
"A mutation is caused when a DNA gene is damaged." - cancer is a mutation - they're normally things that weaken the DNA structure and don't last a significant amount of time within a species, because they are negative things that shouldn't have happened to begin with. I will agree that there can be mutations that are beneficial, but they still don't normally last a very long time, anyway.

"Noun 1. scientific theory - a theory that explains scientific observations; 'scientific theories must be falsifiable'"
It's still a theory, by this definition, and not a law. A law is something proven, evolution has not been proven, otherwise.. Scientific Law would be the word for it.

"ev·o·lu·tion
a. Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species."

I've learned about evolution, studied it a bit, I don't think I have an issue with understanding what it is or means - all I want is an example of it on a bit of a larger scale. If everything is made under this theory, there should be something someone can give me to look at.

I need to get Tripp in here lol
He's been reading about this stuff for the last week.
Perhaps I should step down and let him take over. He's more articulate than I am anyway

Hypatia wrote: What is the matter with creationism...hmmm, let me think :evil:

1. Proclaims something as truth which has no evidence to support it as truth
2. Slanders the only theory we have about our origins that does have evidence to support it (and a great deal of it, in fact)

I'm fairly sure that the same thing is happening both ways here haha
Christians can produce what they believe is scientific evidence just as well as anyone can with evolution. (please see link)
Stating one is more believable than the other doesn't make very much sense to me, to be honest, and I'm really trying to understand it.

In my own eyes - my own brain - neither of these ideas make any sense in the least and both are as "absurd" as the other. I realize, like I said, that both sides can give their evidence, but to claim knowledge based on bits and pieces of information is something I can not do, or will not do.


http://www.icr.org/article/summary-scientific-evidence-for-creation/

"This scientific evidence both for creation and for evolution can and must be taught without any religious doctrine, whether the Bible or the Humanist Manifesto."

Reliah wrote: I suppose this is going to come down to another word definition issue as it usually does.
"A mutation is caused when a DNA gene is damaged." - cancer is a mutation - they're normally things that weaken the DNA structure and don't last a significant amount of time within a species, because they are negative things that shouldn't have happened to begin with. I will agree that there can be mutations that are beneficial, but they still don't normally last a very long time, anyway.

Did you look at the Wikipedia page for mutation ?

It has some interesting bits such as;

Nonlethal mutations accumulate within the gene pool and increase the amount of genetic variation.[20] The abundance of some genetic changes within the gene pool can be reduced by natural selection, while other "more favorable" mutations may accumulate and result in adaptive changes.

I don't often use Wikipedia for these types of discussions, no, but thank you for that.
I did use the word "normally", yes? I know there isn't a definite on everything..
but I really would love some examples - still.

On a side note, this isn't personal and I hope none of you take it that way. If I say something that comes across as rude, I probably didn't mean to. Sometimes I don't word myself very well and will apologize in advance.
I care for you all very much - like family - and simply enjoy discussing ideas with you

The book Why Evolution is True is excellent. http://jerrycoyne.uchicago.edu/about.html

For Reliah I particularly recommend Thank God for Evolution. http://thankgodforevolution.com/

Here's a free online guide. http://ideonexus.com/2012/02/12/101-reasons-why-evolution-is-true/

Reliah wrote: I don't often use Wikipedia for these types of discussions, no, but thank you for that.
I did use the word "normally", yes? I know there isn't a definite on everything..
but I really would love some examples - still.

15 evolutionary gems wrote: The origin of feathers
One of the objections to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was the lack of ‘transitional forms’ in the fossil record — forms that illustrated evolution in action, from one major group of animals to another. However, hardly a year after the publication of On the Origin of Species, an isolated feather was discovered in Late Jurassic (about 150 million years old) lithographic limestones of Solnhofen in Bavaria, followed in 1861 by the first fossil of Archaeopteryx, a creature with many primitive, reptilian features such as teeth and a long, bony tail — but with wings and flight feathers, just like a bird.

Although Archaeopteryx is commonly seen as the earliest known bird, many suspected that it was better seen as a dinosaur, albeit one with feathers. Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin’s colleague and friend, discussed the possible evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds, and palaeontologists speculated, if wildly, that dinosaurs with feathers might one day be found.

In the 1980s, deposits from the early Cretaceous period (about 125 million years ago) in the Liaoning Province in northern China vindicated these speculations in the most dramatic fashion, with discoveries of primitive birds in abundance — alongside dinosaurs with feathers, and feather-like plumage. Starting with the discovery of the small theropod Sinosauropteryx by Pei-ji Chen from China’s Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and his colleagues, a variety of feather-clad forms have been found. Many of these feathered dinosaurs could not possibly have flown, showing that feathers first evolved for reasons other than flight, possibly for sexual display or thermal insulation, for instance. In 2008, Fucheng Zhang and his colleagues from
the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing announced the bizarre creature Epidexipteryx, a small dinosaur clad in downy plumage, and sporting four long plumes from its tail. Palaeontologists are now beginning to think that their speculations weren’t nearly wild enough, and that feathers were indeed quite common in dinosaurs.

The discovery of feathered dinosaurs not only vindicated the idea of transitional forms, but also showed that evolution has a way of coming up with a dazzling variety of solutions when we had no idea that there were even problems. Flight could have been no more than an additional opportunity that presented itself to creatures already clothed in feathers.

Taken from here . A nice additional lecture to what Br. John provided (:

Who can you trust? The godless atheists or the Christian scientists? (And I recognize this is a false dichotomy, but please allow me to illustrate my point. I know the camps on both sides aren't that black and white.)

I like to ask myself in matters like this: "what's in it for them?"

If I believe the godless atheists what do they gain?

If I believe the Christian scientists, what do they gain?

Sometimes you can figure out who's telling the truth just by learning about what their motive is...

Feel free to skip down to the part where I include the near perfect record of the whale's evolution over time if you are interested in the claims (by creationists) that the fossil record is completely useless and doesn't provide any evidence

Adder wrote: That's the sort of position which d'amours popular atheism to me.

Just so you were aware, I was referring my comment:

Akkarin wrote: I'm afraid, completely and utterly wrong in every respect

to be in truest factual and historically accurate sense

There is a difference between the founders of America being Christians and America being founded as a Christian country. The founding fathers were Christians (Thomas Jefferson believed in God) but even so when they wrote the constitution they specifically included, as the first thing they wrote:

American Constitution wrote: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

As for the business on evolution. The way scientific theories are constructed is to look at the world around us and then come up with the most reasonable way of explaining it. They start from nothing and build up. The way religious scripture works is completely the opposite way round. They blindly state something as being true and then say it created the world around us

Scientists look at the world around them and try to make the best explanation of the currently available evidence into a theory. Those who take biblical teachings as fact are instead stating first that a God exists and then trying to find evidence to support that statement based on what their holy books say

A hypothesis is an idea or statement you start with and then look for evidence, but if you find contradictions with the evidence (as provided from just looking at the world and how it behaves) and your theory then your hypothesis is wrong

Why do you think there are so many inconsistencies with religious scripture (more specifically the bible) and real world fact? Could it be because scientists are covertly trying to destroy religion? Or could it be because when you do independent studies from a purely knowledge searching basis you find out that religious theory is incorrect?

There are quite a few scientific misconceptions regarding creationism and they are explained here:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html#thermo

For a more complete analysis of creationist arguments and the reasons given for them being wrong can be found here: http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-creationists.html

You have to understand. If evolution is wrong then as the original article said:

Katha Pollitt"" wrote: Think what the world would have to be like for evolution to be false. Almost every scientist on earth would have to be engaged in a fraud so complex and extensive it involved every field from archaeology, paleontology, geology and genetics to biology, chemistry and physics.

Evolution of the whale

The significance of creationism being wrong isn't that we have found the species evolve over time (see this link here for the near perfect explanation of the evolution of whales over the course of 55 million years: http://etb-whales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/evolution-of-whales-adapted-from.html)

Here are also some links to pictures of the various stages of a whale's evolution over time:

Pakicetus inachus: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Pakicetus_BW.jpg
Ambulocetus natans: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Ambulocetus_BW.jpg
Indocetus ramani: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~gingeric/PDGwhales/PDGrodsciencecov.jpg
Dorudon: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Dorudon_BW.jpg
Basilosaurus: http://factspy.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Basilosaurus.jpg
Baleen whale: http://www.factzoo.com/sites/all/img/mammals/baleen-whale-underwater.jpg

That last one is a photo, because that is the current stage in evolution that is present at our time

The whale's closest living relative is the hippopotamus and I should also add that even if we had no fossils on the entire planet at all the theory of evolution would still be accepted as being true based on the DNA evidence alone. The very fact that we have fossils only strengthens the theory's basis in fact


(continued from: The significance of creationism being wrong isn't that we have found the species evolve over time......) it's that nearly every scientific investigation into the creation of the world and the explanation of how we have arrived at where we are also refutes it.

If it was just one thing, that disagreed with creationism then it could be understood why some may wish to grant creationism a credible theory. But when you have such a massively multi-sourced all round disagreement with what the creation theory states then you shouldn't accept it as being blindly true

Also as to the point regarding scientific theories. Scientists are the very first people to admit that they do not know the answers for everything. If they did then why would we have science? Newtonian mechanics was a theory and that was overturned by Einsteins theories and in case you were wondering Einstein is in fact wrong. His theories fall apart completely when you start factoring quantum mechanics into how the world behaves

Einstein made a hypothesis and they looked for the evidence to see if he was right. He turned out to be right i.e. the way the universe worked fitted his hypothesis, and so they accepted his theory based on the evidence at hand. There are however many instances where his theory doesn't work (see above) but the scientists don't just say 'well he's right regardless of that' they admit that he is wrong and try to find a new and better way to describe how the world works

There is no such thing as infallibility in science, but what science does it to provide the best possible picture of how things behave. That is all it does.

So you have a choice. Who should you believe? You aren't qualified to make judgements on whether evolution is or isn't correct. You are not a biologist (as far as I'm aware) and neither am I. I am not an authority of the subject but I have a choice:

Do I believe that the authorities on the subject of evolution (the scientific community) are not simply just 'wrong' and actually know what they are talking about? Or do I believe that a book originally written by biblical scholars over 1000 years ago is the correct source of information we should be using?

Reliah wrote: There is no evidence anywhere of evolution. No creatures DNA structure has ever changed before. They have never and will never prove that.
There is metamorphosis; such as a tadpole to a frog, a caterpillar to a butterfly, etc. but the genetic makeup never changes.

Evolution, adaptation, and metamorphosis are not the same things.

I once heard of a boy that was born with 3 stands of DNA. Is it evolution or a mutation? Who knows but its very interesting.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1375697/Alfie-Clamp-2-1st-person-born-extra-strand-DNA.html#ixzz1JJbDz6xk