DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Question for the Religious....

There are several evidence markets for intermediate species or transitional fossils. The horns of titanotheres appear to get larger in size over the course of the fossil record, as well as head and neck features. These were developed for head-ramming behavior (mating/etc). Even humans have transitional fossils. We had a bony ridge on our forearms that indicate knuckle walking. There are also almost a dozen known transitional species of dinosaur to bird located within the fossil record.



Creatures adapt because of environmental issues yes. I think there are a few simplistic approaches to the life after man show. For example it presumes the cats are isolated, but how will they mate if they are a solo cat? How does it get food unless mice travel all the way up to the top? etc.



This presupposes that Darwin just published his paper and all of science rallied behind him. As I wrote earlier, this is not true. It took evolution almost a century to become accepted by the scientific community. transitional fossils and genetic research spearheaded this effort. Is it true that science can be hurt by assumptions just like any field, but to place evolution as all assumption throws out the long period of time it took scientists to embrace evolution.



There is a difference between DNA being damaged and being mutated, even though both result in changed DNA strands. Mutations will be passed onto subsequent generations whereas damaged DNA often has an inability to be copied unless it's repaired. As for DNA not being damaged/mutated often, this is incorrect. No DNA replication is perfect and it's a matter of the host system to repair it successfully not.



Whether Darwin was angry at God or not does not discount the evidence of evolution. The scientific community tried for decades to discount his findings anyway. There were even religions at the time that felt that Darwin's findings showed the beautiful design of God's handiwork: that evolution is an elegant way to synthesize complex life.

The evidence of Darwin's life from his work as it progressed is that he began believing in the God of Abraham, then moved to deism/agnosticm. Still, I don't believe ones religious views on their own should be taken to discredit an idea. If a Christian scientist comes up with a new way to synthesize anti-cancer genes in a lab, why would I refute it on the basis of their belief system?



The simple fact is that abiogenesis is real. Whether you think life began from proteins or aliens or God, there was once no life on earth and now there is. Thus evolution could work with an abiogenesis theory that includes an intelligent creator. Your claim that evolution has holes is based on your presumption that we do not have evidence for it. I have supplied plenty of evidence in this post. I hope it helps.

Haha, indeed. Although chromosomal complexity does not correspond to the complexity of life. Carp has 104 chromosomes yet no one would confuse its intelligence with that of a human

FTFY

Yes, I agree that Greek Mythology is fictional. Mount Olympus is a physical place on earth and there are no gods there. Jesus is a historical figure, I'm not saying he's sitting on a throne behind some pearly gates, but he clearly existed. I'm leaning towards a Jesus as a guru (in the Buddhist/Yogi sense) sort of explanation at the moment, but I'm not dead set on it.

Life had to have started somehow and as gage has admitted it hasn't been adequately explained through science. I'm curious about that. If you're going back millions of years to explain evolution, you have to go all the way back to the very beginning. Otherwise you're just building a house of cards, built on nothing. I don't know the answers, but I'm not just going to except any answer because it could have happened based upon our limited understanding. Gravity, Electricity, Medicine, these sort of Scientific concepts are self evident. Evolution not so much.

Oh, and LeBron James is an alien *cues X-Files theme song*

As far as radioactive decay how do you know how much of each isotope you started with? Maybe there were just less of each when it started. Your decay rates could be "right", but your assumptions might not be.

p.s. It's getting to the point where there are too many posts to keep up with.

Hillary and Jeb could cause such confusion.

Especially with some of the people I've met. That carp might be smarter.

Basically, I like my facts to be able to be proven through repeatable experimentation. Millions of years just aren't repeatable. There are too many variables involved to account for over too long a period of time. I'm fine with theories. I just hate how the line between fact and theory is so often blurred. I don't like how "opposing" theories are so threatened by each other that they commonly demonize each other. In the end, the solution will probably involve some grain of truth from both. Or if not, pondering the possibilities has never harmed anyone (directly, obviously people have killed each other over their beliefs.) It just seems a sad waste to me.

I disagree greatly with that statement. Scientists rely on the evidence at hand. The rest is conjecture. Please see the AGW theory, as most of that is conjecture put forth to prove a predetermined outcome. If scientists rely on evidence for evolution theory, they are missing a great deal of it, hence the term 'missing link'.

my problem is the same people not wanting to believe in science are the same ones trying to convince me that Mary gave birth to jesus without having sex.

let that sink in.

A feat that can be duplicated today very easily. All that would take to happen is someone in that day and age experimenting and getting it right once.

L. Ron Hubbard existed as well, but that fact doesn't make the teachings of Scientology any more or less credible. And I tend to land somewhere near your theory. I think Christ was most likely a spiritual leader/martyr who was the inspiration for myth and parable. Or perhaps he was a crazy David Koresh-like cult leader. Who knows? But as far as being the son of an omnipotent God born through immaculate conception, who rose from the dead? There's a higher likelihood that LeBron is an alien (I'm very excited for the X-Files return, by the way). And I'm not saying any of this indicates the validity of evolution theories, or the invalidity of creation theories. Just that, in the end, I'm not inclined to deny that these parables are obvious fiction simply because we can't prove they didn't happen. Again, by that, logic, perhaps a cannibalistic race of one eyed giants once roamed Cyprus. If it can't be proven false definitively, is it wrong to call it obvious fiction?

Perhaps Mary had a genetic mutation giving her both male and female reproductive organs, the one fully internal. The Lord works in mysterious ways and all that *shrug*

you can't be serious.

look, she got knocked up. plain and simple. If i was a chick getting knocked up back in those times i'd claim he was the son of God too.

I'm pretty sure we'd have found remains by now if there had been an entire race.

...does Scientology have a creation story? I'll admit watching Tom Cruise jump around couches on Oprah kind of made me discount it.

i find it funny y'all have an explanation for everything else in the bible, but y'all have nothing but speculation on why she got preggo. wonder why God decided to leave that bit of information out the bible, since he put everything else in there.

I'm very serious. If the story is true, then she had to get pregnant somehow. All you are talking about is lost knowledge, changed language, a lie, or an actual miracle.

she got preggo by smashing a dude.

hey, i got two miracles too. but you don't see me running around calling them the daughters of God.

Yes, they believe that the earth is four quadrillion years old, and that humans evolved from clams. Man was inherently good, but 75 million years ago, an alien lord, fearing his ouster, led billions of excess population of his species into spaceships, where they traveled to Earth, deposited them around volcanoes, and killed them all with hydrogen bombs. The spirits of those murdered, known as 'thetans', leech onto humans and cause sin or improper behavior.

that theory is just as viable as the bible. let's be clear. Maybe i should start a religion.

As we say anything is possible, right? I think it's a totally feasible question to ask if decay rates have changed. But it still doesn't support a young earth because the heat given off would have been immense. Changing this heat level could be possible but you risk violating the laws of thermodynamics. If isotope decay gives off heat, and you increase the rate of decay, then you'd give more heat in a given period of time, and possibly even more heat per individual event.

The age of the earth has changed, and will probably change again, in empirical data. We used to think the earth was 2 billion years old because we never found rocks older than that via radiometric dating, but then we found other rocks, namely meteorites.

PPS - I merged your two posts into one reply if that helps.



I don't think all Christians hate evolution, but the literal Bible interpretation ones do. To that end, I can understand why someone would be offended at the suggestion we are related to chimpanzees. But just because one is offended doesn't mean the evidence is wrong. I have serious reservations about the God of Abraham based on contradictions in the Bible, but there isn't enough evidence to me to disprove the existence either. Atheists can be pushier than Christians sometimes (see Dawkins/Hitchens/etc).

I just think the mountain of evidence points to that no matter how we came here, that we derived from an elegantly simple mechanism of evolution. It does not violate the Bible unless you take the Bible literally.

This sounds like a very bad Simpsons episode.

Yet this is not a change in kind. If it happened, then it is a change in an animal, within its kind. We can change the types of dogs by specific breeding for specific traits. That is simple. Changing kinds though, that is difficult. Further, how do we know that some fossils assumed to be transitional might not be male/female ..... young/old ..... or even a mixture of more than one animal.

As far as examples of dinosaurs becoming birds, for example, how many instances of these fossils exist? In the case of bones, how many ways can they be assembled? Is it possible that we jigsaw puzzle bones back together to make what we want to see.

Transitional fossils have been debated and even debunked over the years. Someone finds a "miraculous transitional form", only to find that it wasn't quite what was originally thought. I remember the furor over Lucy ..... and then the silence when she was not found to be what she was reported to be.

Transitional fossils like Archaeopteryx have been questioned due to their placement within the geological time table. There is also further evidence that this creature was, in fact, a true bird, not a reptile. There is also the fact that fish and invertebrates appear, fully formed, without any evidence of evolutionary ancestry. They seem to appear out of nowhere, as if a creator spoke them into existence.



And I don't doubt that a dog, for example, can develop a thicker coat for surviving a cold climate, or a Chihuahua would be capable of surviving a much hotter climate. However, changes in kind are a completely different thing entirely. A dog becoming a cat is something we have not seen. An elephant becoming an anteater, or a zebra becoming a bird. (or visa versa in any of these cases)



Many transitional forms have been debunked over time, and I cannot think of any from the time of those early adopters of evolution that survives to today. Can you?



In the case of changes in kind, there would have to be major changes in DNA. I am not talking about a white animal becoming spotted ..... but a reptile becoming a mammal. These are major charges to DNA, not extremely minor changes to non-essential systems of an animal's body. Humans have different traits, like being tall or short, black or white, or having certain ethnic traits ..... but they are all still human. None have changed into any other kind of human .... and despite, if we accept humanity's placement in the geological table, their long history on the earth, there are only very minor, largely cosmetic differences between human beings. A human being is a human being, and if you x-rayed 2 humans of different races, but similar sizes, you would be hard pressed to tell them apart. Supposedly we began to evolve some 200,000 years ago, band spread out over the face of the earth, and while we have some cosmetic differences, a human is a human, no matter his race. (and those cosmetic differences may have even been present from the very beginning in the Garden of Eden for all we know. If we believe the Bible, people were divided up by God by the confusing of their language at Babel. Maybe God split people up, with one set of people with certain characteristics, in a certain family or clan, having a common language, and heading to one place, and another with another set or traits given a different language, and sent to a different part of the earth) To me that seems more likely than monkeys learning to become human. Further, if evolution is survival of the fittest through natural selection, than why are the primates that are our supposed ancestors still on the earth? If evolution exists, then why didn't all evolve. Wouldn't evolution make the former state undesirable, and untenable from a survival aspect?



Thank you for clearing that up for me. However, it runs contrary to what I have read, if I have understood it all. (which is certainly not 100% positively the case) I read about a study where scientists tried to manipulate DNA in certain animal cells, changing it to try and create a change to a different form ........ when they try to do so, the DNA either repairs itself, or the cells die. They have tried minor and major changes, yet the DNA refuses to be changed. Also, there is a difference between combining DNA of the parents, and completely changing the DNA of an offspring to something never seen in either parent ever before.



Actually, it is well established that Darwin started out as a man studying to be a monk. He was a very pious, very religious man. He then traveled the world, and saw human suffering throughout the world, and that changed him. He felt that he had to prove that life did not require the intervention of a God, but rather that it could be accomplished through blind evolutionary forces. His posthumously published notebooks and private letters showed that he was, indeed, an atheist by the time he gave the world his theory of evolution and natural selection. all but said that he became an atheist, and wanted to replace the creator with natural processes that would not require a creator. He wanted to find a way to explain the world without it having a creator, who he no longer believed in. He even referred to natural selection as "My deity". However, he was married to a very religious woman, and it is quite likely that he used talk of a creator in his work as a way to avoid the stigma of being labeled a non-believer, and also to maintain peace at home.

Also, evolution was not something that Darwin arrived at by himself. He just put together a bunch of ideas that had been floating around for centuries before him.



No offense, but if I remove God from your claims, the rest falls flat.

If there is no God, and if God is not the creator, then what created life? (let alone the universe) If it is an alien, than what created the alien? I have seen mathematical calculations that place the possibility of life appearing out of non life at something like 1 in the total number of stars in the universe squared ..... or some ridiculously high number. In other words, if it's not impossible, then it is impossible's brother. So, if it is impossible that life "just appeared by itself, out of nonliving materials", then how did it appear. Aliens, as i said, have to also be excluded, because the same problem exists in their creation. God is the only reasonable answer. God is a being who lives outside of time and space, and is the being who created the universe. He then also created life, and then man as a special being into which he not only conveyed life, but into whom he breathed life. God said that He created man in His own image .... nto necessarily in a physical sense, but in that He gave us a soul, and a consciousness. We are self aware. This is the other problem with evolution. How did we, out of all of the creatures on the earth, become self aware?

In the end, I have read a fair amount on evolution and natural selection, on both sides of the argument. I used to feel that it was not only possible, but likely that God could have used some form of evolutionary process to create animal life on the earth. However, I have moved away from that idea, because it assumes that certain animals and types were created out of other kinds, and there just isn't enough evidence for me to think that. There also is the problem of hominids becoming humans somehow, not only in form, but in brain, mind, soul, creativity, self awareness, and everything else that separates human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom. That is a leap too far for me to make.

Yet we can do this today. No God, but man. Right now, a virgin can have a child, conceived in her womb, without ever having sex.

Why is it so hard to believe that God is incapable of doing something we take for granted today?

It's no more or less plausible than Christianity or any other major faith. They're unique, though, along with Mormonism, in that despite modern and irrefutable evidence that their founders were lying con men, the faiths still exist and thrive today. But if I were to refer to Scientology's theology as "obvious fiction", no one would bat an eye, but if I were to prescribe such a description to Christianity or Islam, I would be expected to have the burden of disproving it, as has happened here. I think it has to do with bein indoctrinated for so long. If you hear all of these Christian parables as a young person in church, you're more inclined to believe them. I imagine the same is true for the fictional stories in Mormonism and Scientology. To an outsider, it's ludicrous to consider the possibility of these events actually having happened, but if you've been indoctrinated early and often, there's a sort of wall that prevents logic and reason from entering an honest assessment. I think deep down many people know these parables to be just that, but if you can convince yourself of their possibility, you can go along with notions of the afterlife, which are very comforting, and thus you take the good, you take the bad. But that's my terrible attempt at pop psychology. I don't say it definitively. But I think there's far more spirituals than literalists out there.

because for people who aren't religious, that sounds nothing more than a chick who got caught preggo out of wedlock back in those times when it was shamed, and tried to save face.

you keep trying to argue a religious standpoint to people who aren't religious, then complain when people are more than skeptical of these crazy claims.

and i'm going to repeat this again, it's funny how the bible has an answer for everything, yet just so happen to leave out why mary got preggo without having sex.

you want to point to biblical references for everything, but now you can only speculate about THAT important aspect of the bible, and toss it up to, "cause god".

wildly inconsistent, yet again.

It's not that it's hard to believe God is capable of knocking up a bunch of chicks. It's hard to believe that God is real in the first place.

For AGW I'd be curious to see your resources that prove the majority of the research as conjecture. If scientists worldwide are botching research the same way I think that would be an amazing phenomena. If they are being malevolent as an entire community the rate is amazing, because 97% of all climate papers stating a position on AGW agree that AGW is happening and we are the reason why. Maybe it's a vast-scientific conspiracy

If you need more evidence I'd say start by looking at China. They don't give a crap about the planet and they have what, 1/7th of the population of the earth? That's a large polluting percentage. I agree with you that the US enforcing political protocols does not mean squat, especially if the rest of the world is going to spend their time polluting every waterway and ecosystem they can find.

As for the missing link, I spoke of transitional fossils earlier in the thread, but I can expand a bit on this. The fossil record, while imperfect, shows a great deal of change over time. So much so that even if creation as written in the Bible was to occur, they would have been millions of creation events over a span of time. We also have intermediate forms between many of the so called missing links.

It does not go unanswered ..... the Bible clearly said that God was the father of the child, and that He impregnated her without sexual contact, (as she remained a virgin) and sent his Holy Spirit her.

Matthew 1: 18-25

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. “She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” 22Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL,” which translated means, “GOD WITH US.” And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus.

Then she got really, REALLY lucky that her son was willing to spend his life as he did up to and including beating beaten and crucified just to protect his mom's integrity.... and that she had a fiance who was willing to marry her anyway...


Why? Because God wanted it that way.

lmao.

i'm sorry......lmao.

That means there isn't a God.

he's just a dude. made his own book. a book written by man.

or it's a classic case of a brainwashed family.

Trying to explain one of God's miracles to a person who doesn't believe that miracles exist is a pointless exercise. If I could rationally explain how a miracle happened, then it wouldn't be a miracle in the first place.

ahh, if I could only draw. I'd draw Swish in God's face, pointing his finger, caption reading, "You didn't build that"!

Of course you didn't build that. God built that.

Maybe God did build it.

sorry if i don't believe these religious stories. at all.

I mean two of every species for how many days on a boat? and those lions or any other carnivore didn't eat one of them?

rigggghhhttt....

I would direct you to start with Al Gore's 2006 prediction that Manhatten would be underwater by 2015. After that, you should look up the current charges of fraud laid against Michael Mann and others of the IPCC and other such organizations. Even NOAA has been caught trying to manipulate data to 'prove' their predetermined conclusion. To top it off, that 97% number is also fradulent, and there has never been 97% of scientists in agreement on AGW. You should look it up yourself, as this has been argued many times on this board, and it's the wrong thread for it.

IF you're talking with someone who earnestly believes that a man took two of every species on a giant ark, at what point do you think pointing out the absurdity of such a notion will dawn on them? I'm up for some spirited theological debate from time to time, but at a certain point it just becomes circular logic bordering on antagonism (both believers and nonbelievers alike). If someone believes that Noah built an ark, at a certain point you just smile and nod. I've enjoyed popping into these theology debates since I found the board, but tire of them quickly. They're an endless parade of "God." "Nuh uh, No God." Do we not all have more valuable uses of our time? Even within the confines of theology, surely there's more sophisticated avenues of discussion?

So human fossils having evidence that we were knuckle draggers is no evidence of change in kind? I think we have a fundamental disagreement on the definition of change then. Are you looking for a fossil that has a dogs head and cats tail? punctuated equilibrium supports the concept that evolutionary changes can happen rapidly, but not all the time. If you are expecting smooth changes it happens but not very often. We have observed rapid speciation in australian starfish by the very methods theorized that new species occur: small group of an original species moving into a new environment and rapidly adapting to fit the new area.



Scientists usually don't put bones back together in that fashion because they are too brittle to do so. It's rare enough to find a bone and even rarer to find an encased vertebrate, but we have.



Just because a transitional fossil had issues doesn't mean all do. To suggest otherwise is anecdotal fallacy. And so what if scientists got excited and then stopped when they realized Lucy was not as closely related to us? If scientists wanted so hard to prove that Lucy was an ancestor then they would have stopped researching and just claimed "welp, this is transitional human." What exactly are you upset about?

Archaeopteryx is indeed a bird but it has more dinosaur traits than bird traits. It has long nostrils and no teeth serrations on the bird trait side. Additionally other bird traits are also found on several non-bird dinosaurs. Dinosaur traits include no bill, neck attached to skull from the rear, long bony tail, an unfused pelvis, etc. If this creature shares both bird and dinosaur traits, what precisely makes it non transitional?

And even if Archaeopteryx has issues, then what of the over 3 dozen other species that show transition between theropods and modern birds?



And a dog turning into a cat would disprove evolution. Evolution stipulates that all species move outwards like a branching tree, not transitioning in the fashion you describe.



I'm afraid I got to call you on a weasel word for claiming "many transitional forms have been debunked" without supporting your claim. But yea, I can name some species for you:

Sinosauropteryx prima - dinosaur with feathers but otherwise structurally similar to unfeatured dinosaurs
Ornithomimosaurs - a dinosaur with feathers, unserrated teeth, and elongated wings
Sapeornis - One of the first birds to have a fused tail vertebrae.
Modern Birds - Modern Birds still have several similarities to their ancestral dinosaurs.



The transition from reptile to mammal is actually well documented. We have almost a dozen species showing bone configuration transformation from reptilian to mammalian.



From an evolutionary standpoint the human species has been around an astonishingly short amount of time. A thought I have as to why we haven't adapted that much due to geography is we are very well rounded to handle almost any type of climate and terrain. Even so, genetic makeup of various human races shows certain geographical advantages.



It's an interesting story but does not have basis for what we know about linguistic development. You and I are typing in English but what we know as English is vastly different from even 1000 years ago. To put it in even shorter time frames, the English dialects of the United States are quite different from that of Cockney English, to the point where it can be hard to understand Cockney accent due to pacing changes from American English, local slang, etc.



This one of the most frequently asked questions about evolution, and with good reason. We look at the evolutionary descent and assume that older species die off to make room for newer, more advanced species. But there are a few issues with this:

- Our related species are all extinct within the Homo genus.
- Living homonid species aren't direct relatives but rather cousins.
- Ancestors do not have to disappear in order for evolution to occur
- Evolution does not occur spontaneously but through environmental changes.

It's better to think of species as distant cousins sharing a super old grand parent. Asking "If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys" is like asking "If I am related to cousin Bob, then why is cousin Bob still alive?"



This runs counter to what I've read, where modern scientists can add bases, insert bases, rearrange genes, etc. in test tubes, then add to living cells.



I don't find reason to disagree with any of this, and this also supports my readings on the man. But there is nothing wrong with proposing theories to fit data. The reliance is then on you and others to back up or disprove the theory, but every hypothesis and theory ever thought up ever was the result of someone saying "I believe X is X because Y." The fact that Darwin used other peoples research to support his publication adds further evidence that evolution did not occur in the mind of one man.



I've left abiogenesis out of our conversation mostly as a kindness, but you betray your own logic. If you believe it falls flat because what created aliens, then what created God?

Calculation odds assume that biochemistry occurs by chance. However biochemistry is not chance, meaning whatever odds you come up with are meaningless numbers. The calculation odds also assume life in its present form, yet given evolution's elegance early life would have been much simpler. Claiming that because we don't know how life began means God must exist is an argument from ignorance.

While we may not know exactly how life began there are many assumptions made by Creationists/ID's that aren't good science. They assume the earth was similar today as it was when life began, when the Earth likely had very little oxygen. The matter/molecules that may have been required for abiogenesis to occur may not even exist in the required state on Earth anymore. Perhaps early life ate this matter and used it up, then had to adapt from there. We don't know. Is it speculation? Yes. But all science starts from this.



Yea, I came from the other direction so I know what you mean. I was in the literal creationism story camp for a long time. Agreed with the humans and monkeys argument. I just think evolution has far more evidence on its side than creationism. Most creationism rebuttals use either junk science or feelings to back up their claims, and that is simply not good science.

I repeat, if you are trying to apply logic to explain miracles, then you will never accept miracles... it's really that simple.

No real need to list the miracles of the Bible and why you don't believe them.. you've stated you don't believe in miracles, good enough for me.