Evolution & Darwin Vs. Creation

[Oceanus]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...11&q=God&hl=en

I just watched this video and it cleared my questions on the probability of God creating the extremely complex universe and the probability of this extremely complex universe happening through mere chance and time. Science itself rules out the chance of it happening through chance and time because the probability it too low. Please, don't comment without watching at least ten minutes of the video, because this thread isn't about Christianity, it's about the ideas and theories that this video provides.

~Oceanus

[Reach]

Wrong section.

I already got a good chuckle from the title, so this should be interesting.


Anyway, the classic watch example is easily refutable. It's a erroneous analogy first off. The cultural evolution of watch making supports the argument it's trying to disprove. Also, a watch isn't a living system and always work the same way, where as everything around you does not.

I also like how all of the speakers in this film are christian ministers or something XD I love the balanced outlook on the question. Very accurate.

There is no proof for God. None; you by nature cannot provide any evidence for the existance of something supernatural. The video is good at throwing out all kinds of little catches that are attractive to God believers but are pretty shallow once you analyze them. It also misrepresents scientific theories like the second law of thermodynamics. Pretty much everything they say about scientific theory in this video is incorrect so far XD


Finally, the universe and life did not evolve through 'chance'. Actually, evolution has nothing to do with chance. Not only that, noone has any means of actually calculating the probability of life arising. All of this nonsense about probability was completely pulled out of a hat.


If anything I suggest people NOT watch this video because it is full of lies and deceits. This is why noone bothers with this crap any more. It's unscientific...actually, it's destructive to science and is a waste of time.


If you want some truth, the big bang is a fact of the universe. The universe (the visible one ) began somewhere between 13 and 14 billion years ago in a rapid inflation, and this was observed by WMAP when it took pictures from the beginning of the universe. It can do this by looking at CMBR and old light.

Evolution is also a fact. You get sick every year (or maybe you don't, but some people do) because the cold virus undergoes a mutation and changes. This is evolution in action - direct, observable evidence. This is onyl the tip of the iceburg too, really. There is absolutely nothing to support what this video is saying. All of the evidence directly contradicts these beliefs, and it would be nice if people wouldn't go around propagating scientific falsehoods.

[GuidoHunter]

Science itself rules out the chance of it happening through chance and time because the probability it too low.

Bull****.

I'll watch your video later, but this wrong on too many levels.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

[RandomPscho]

So let's say something even more complex than the universe randomly appears and makes the rest of the universe. Hmm, that makes sense.

I have always wondered how you find the probability of life forming.

Life and mechanical devices that humans make are not very good comparisons.

Second Law is way off as Reach said.

We didn't start off as complex as we are today, why do they always act like we were? A single cell is pretty simple, and over billions of years it'll change.

Common sense holds no justification. Most things that are "common sense" aren't truly when looked at closely.

PATTERNS ARE NOT PROOF. Everything is made up of the same things. The thing (depending on how small you go) all have common characteristics.

Just because it is "mind boggling" lets say it is impossible to happen. Well I don't understand any of this, so I will pretend I do and point out the things I do not understand and say god created it and use the things I don't understand and which the general public has no idea about to try to convince them that science is wrong!

Co dependence in cells is easily not a problem. One thing happened and then others evolved from it, therefore needing it to function.

Just because they say they are not biased, does not mean the aren't.

Wow, beauty itself is not intrinsic. So what, you are trained on what to thing is beautiful, that is not evidence of god...

So the bible is popular, big whoop. Harry Potter is a best seller, it must be true!

I am going to stop watching this now. It is extremely biased and offers no evidence of god.

[jewpinthethird]

Due to the tentative nature science, no scientific theory is ever considered "fact."

Stop saying evolution is a fact. Stop saying the Big Bang is a fact. They are just the best explanations we have at the moment.

[Reach]

Jewpin, that is semantic nonsense and shows a misunderstanding of the concept. I am talking about THE big bang, as an event, and evolution, as an occurance. The 'proof' of a THEORY itself can never be put forth, for a couple reasons, but all of which are quite irrelevant to, for example, the occurance of the big bang. This is like saying you cannot prove that the holocaust happened.

If you, for some reason think that you can't prove that the holocaust happened...well, then **** off XD You see, I wasn't even talking about the Big bang theory. No, I was talking about concrete evidence WMAP has provided to show that, inexorably, the big bang did happen. I would never claim that the theory itself was proven, as it is 1. An incomplete theory, and 2. Is always changing, and 3. 'Proofs' can be left for the mathematicians and their axiomsssssssss and their little universe they create.

If you're still hell bent on the holocaust not being a fact, then...we have clear evidence as to why philosophy held down the progress of mankind for a long time





Also...


I swear microbiology pretty much did the opposite for me. It disproved the existance of God. There is no way, given that God is all knowing and all powerful, that he would design something so poorly unless he purposely wanted to make my exam hard.

Therefore I conclude he does not exist, exists and had nothing to do with our arisal, or did and is dumber than I am. He ****ed up and made something smarter than he is.

Wait, that's it! I'm going to go make my own religion where Humans are smarter than God is 8) Humans will inevitably create AI that is smarter than we are, and then we will be Gods, and then the cycle will continue.

That is cold hard evidence right there. PROOF. Axioms axioms axioms


Now then, back to microbio ;(

[Oceanus]

How can something so complex where everything, or at least many things work together be a result of randomization and time. Perhaps posting it was a bad idea, but it still brought up the concept of how everything is designed to work, much like the comparison to the watch.

What about the point they brought up about how you can't think of any new colors and humans can't think of something that does not exist? I'm onl looking for views on his video and in no way am I challenging anyone else's beliefs.

[Bahamut-X]

Originally Posted by Reach

Evolution is also a fact. You get sick every year (or maybe you don't, but some people do) because the cold virus undergoes a mutation and changes. This is evolution in action - direct, observable evidence. This is onyl the tip of the iceburg too, really.

Haha, really? Everytime I watch these videos that advocate for the existence of a "god" they always bring up the point that evolution isn't observable. I remember from that Kent Hovand vid someone posted way back when he tried using arguments like "a dog has never produced a non dog". I don't know enough about the whole theory about evolution to know a way to refute this but I guess your whole cold virus thing debunks that creationist argument (assuming you have your facts right, but I've learned it's fair to trust pretty much all of what you say here).

[RandomPscho]

What about the point they brought up about how you can't think of any new colors and humans can't think of something that does not exist? I'm onl looking for views on his video and in no way am I challenging anyone else's beliefs.
Oceanus is offline Report Post Reply With Quote

Colors are a spectrum that go from non-visible to visible to non visible. we can only see a very small portion of radiation. I edited this post because I might have misunderstood something when I read it a few years ago.

::

Color Perception Is Not in the Eye of the Beholder: It's in the Brain Images of living human retinas showing the wide diversity of number of cones sensitive to different colors. (Photo credit: University of Rochester)High-resolution photo for download
(please include photo credit)First-ever images of living human retinas have yielded a surprise about how we perceive our world. Researchers at the University of Rochester have found that the number of color-sensitive cones in the human retina differs dramatically among people—by up to 40 times—yet people appear to perceive colors the same way. The findings, on the cover of this week's journal Neuroscience, strongly suggest that our perception of color is controlled much more by our brains than by our eyes.

"We were able to precisely image and count the color-receptive cones in a living human eye for the first time, and we were astonished at the results," says David Williams, Allyn Professor of Medical Optics and director of the Center for Visual Science. "We've shown that color perception goes far beyond the hardware of the eye, and that leads to a lot of interesting questions about how and why we perceive color."

Williams and his research team, led by postdoctoral student Heidi Hofer, now an assistant professor at the University of Houston, used a laser-based system developed by Williams that maps out the topography of the inner eye in exquisite detail. The technology, known as adaptive optics, was originally used by astronomers in telescopes to compensate for the blurring of starlight caused by the atmosphere.

Williams turned the technique from the heavens back toward the eye to compensate for common aberrations. The technique allows researchers to study the living retina in ways that were never before possible. The pigment that allows each cone in the human eye to react to different colors is very fragile and normal microscope light bleaches it away. This means that looking at the retina from a cadaver yields almost no information on the arrangement of their cones, and there is certainly no ability to test for color perception. Likewise, the amino acids that make up two of the three different-colored cones are so similar that there are no stains that can bind to some and not others, a process often used by researchers to differentiate cell types under a microscope.

Imaging the living retina allowed Williams to shine light directly into the eye to see what wavelengths each cone reflects and absorbs, and thus to which color each is responsive. In addition, the technique allows scientists to image more than a thousand cones at once, giving an unprecedented look at the composition and distribution of color cones in the eyes of living humans with varied retinal structure.

Each subject was asked to tune the color of a disk of light to produce a pure yellow light that was neither reddish yellow nor greenish yellow. Everyone selected nearly the same wavelength of yellow, showing an obvious consensus over what color they perceived yellow to be. Once Williams looked into their eyes, however, he was surprised to see that the number of long- and middle-wavelength cones—the cones that detect red, green, and yellow—were sometimes profusely scattered throughout the retina, and sometimes barely evident. The discrepancy was more than a 40:1 ratio, yet all the volunteers were apparently seeing the same color yellow.

"Those early experiments showed that everyone we tested has the same color experience despite this really profound difference in the front-end of their visual system," says Hofer. "That points to some kind of normalization or auto-calibration mechanism—some kind of circuit in the brain that balances the colors for you no matter what the hardware is."

In a related experiment, Williams and a postdoctoral fellow Yasuki Yamauchi, working with other collaborators from the Medical College of Wisconsin, gave several people colored contacts to wear for four hours a day. While wearing the contacts, people tended to eventually feel as if they were not wearing the contacts, just as people who wear colored sunglasses tend to see colors "correctly" after a few minutes with the sunglasses. The volunteers' normal color vision, however, began to shift after several weeks of contact use. Even when not wearing the contacts, they all began to select a pure yellow that was a different wavelength than they had before wearing the contacts.

"Over time, we were able to shift their natural perception of yellow in one direction, and then the other," says Williams. "This is direct evidence for an internal, automatic calibrator of color perception. These experiments show that color is defined by our experience in the world, and since we all share the same world, we arrive at the same definition of colors."

Williams' team is now looking to identify the genetic basis for this large variation between retinas. Early tests on the original volunteers showed no simple connection among certain genes and the number and diversity of color cones, but Williams is continuing to search for the responsible combination of genes.

[Reach]

Originally Posted by Bahamut-X

Haha, really? Everytime I watch these videos that advocate for the existence of a "god" they always bring up the point that evolution isn't observable. I remember from that Kent Hovand vid someone posted way back when he tried using arguments like "a dog has never produced a non dog". I don't know enough about the whole theory about evolution to know a way to refute this but I guess your whole cold virus thing debunks that creationist argument (assuming you have your facts right, but I've learned it's fair to trust pretty much all of what you say here).

Well that's because they have to use lies and deceits in order to persuade you, because they're fighting a losing battle.

Yes, that is a 'fact'. Evolution is absolutely true. The only area where there is a little bit of debate is on 'macroevolution', but most of it is due to misunderstanding, since microevolution ---> macroevolution. There is no 'limit' to how much change DNA can undergo...

How can something so complex where everything, or at least many things work together be a result of randomization and time. Perhaps posting it was a bad idea, but it still brought up the concept of how everything is designed to work, much like the comparison to the watch

I'm going to be straight up here. Maybe this will offend some people, but I don't care. It goes to show my point quite clearly XD

It's an outright farse to even suggest something like this was designed. Tell the parents of this child that God designed their baby...

[monkeybomb45]

Reach..maybe God designed their baby as a perfect child but (just a possibility) it was the MOTHER'S fault by not caring for her own body or taking wrong and/or not recommended medications during her pregnancy which could have and very well might have interfered with the baby's natural development.

[Reach]

Originally Posted by monkeybomb45

Reach..maybe God designed their baby as a perfect child but (just a possibility) it was the MOTHER'S fault by not caring for her own body or taking wrong and/or not recommended medications during her pregnancy which could have and very well might have interfered with the baby's natural development.

I purposely picked the harlequin so this could not be used ;p

It's a genetic disorder, caused by mutations in the ABCA12 gene...meaning it's God's fault. It's very rare, at about 1 in a million. Evolution causes these types of things to happen. If we had an omniscient 'designer' stuff like this just wouldn't happen.

This doesn't mean there couldn't be a God. It means God is not a designer as this video suggests.

[All_That_Chaz]

Oh god, not this argument again. Look, there's no point debating Creationism versus Evolution.

Creationism is a part of religion, a belief system, which by definition is something that cannot be proven or disproven, ergo, if you want to believe it, fine, we can't prove you wrong (well, at least on the existence of God, the idea of Creationism is downright poppycoc.k), but don't for an instant think that you can call God a fact.

Evolution is in the realm of science, a realm where all theories must be supported by empirical evidence and upon observing contradictory empirical evidence, the theory must be falsifiable. We don't know for certain that Evolution is exactly how it happened or that the Big Bang is exactly how it happened. These are the best explanations we have that haven't been proven wrong. I've studied a nominal amount of biology in my day (my roommate is a bio major so he's got my back on this), and I have to say that the evidence for Evolution is overwhelming.

If we had an omniscient creator, we wouldn't have an appendix or a coccyx (tailbone, you know, that thing chimps have).

[MeaCulpa]

Did anyone just see the segment on CNN about Religion vs. Science?
Man, it was awful. The only good part was a mini-debate, where the scientist crushed the creationist. Of course, the Fundie just tried to divert the questions and such, but she phailed.
Oh, and of course, they featured Ken Ham (your favourite person, Reach =P).

[Reach]

Originally Posted by MeaCulpa

Did anyone just see the segment on CNN about Religion vs. Science?
Man, it was awful. The only good part was a mini-debate, where the scientist crushed the creationist. Of course, the Fundie just tried to divert the questions and such, but she phailed.
Oh, and of course, they featured Ken Ham (your favourite person, Reach =P).

Oh god, not Ham XD

Scientists should be able to easily crush creationists though. There should be no creationists, because it's ridiculous. This is completely seperate from religion and spirituality, mind you.

Chaz is right in that, if we're going to have the debate, people should bring up different points than what have been brought up before. More specifically, this should deal directly with the design argument rather than straying and talking about evolution vs the bible again...

[tsugomaru]

I watched the first 10 minutes of your video and my only thoughts are, "who do they think they are?" They are asking me to not be biased when they themselves are biased.

Also, just because the probability is so low doesn't mean it'll never happen.

I believe there is a certain Quantum law that explains this, but I don't understand it myself, so if I were to explain it, the explanation will be no better than their watch one.

~Tsugomaru

[GuidoHunter]

Originally Posted by Oceanus

How can something so complex where everything, or at least many things work together be a result of randomization and time.

That's because the entire process is directed by the Second Law.

Monkeys banging on typewriters won't produce Shakespeare, but that's not how the world works. The Second Law acts as a guide. If a monkey produces the correct word, it saves that word and moves on. With that direction, you bet live can come to exist!

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

[jewpinthethird]

Originally Posted by Reach

Jewpin, that is semantic nonsense and shows a misunderstanding of the concept. I am talking about THE big bang, as an event, and evolution, as an occurance. The 'proof' of a THEORY itself can never be put forth, for a couple reasons, but all of which are quite irrelevant to, for example, the occurance of the big bang. This is like saying you cannot prove that the holocaust happened.

If you, for some reason think that you can't prove that the holocaust happened...well, then **** off XD You see, I wasn't even talking about the Big bang theory. No, I was talking about concrete evidence WMAP has provided to show that, inexorably, the big bang did happen. I would never claim that the theory itself was proven, as it is 1. An incomplete theory, and 2. Is always changing, and 3. 'Proofs' can be left for the mathematicians and their axiomsssssssss and their little universe they create.

If you're still hell bent on the holocaust not being a fact, then...we have clear evidence as to why philosophy held down the progress of mankind for a long time

You should try taking a History and Philosophy of Science course. You know, so you don't have to talk out of your ass so much. Ask any self respecting scientist if they believe Evolution is a fact and they will respond no. Why? BECAUSE THE NATURE OF SCIENCE IS TENTATIVE. Science is what it is because it never assumes anything to be true...even if there is irrefutable evidence to support it.

People who claim that Evolution is a fact only want to push their belief on others.

Now Reach, understand that I am an atheist, I believe in the Big Bang Theory and Evolution.

Oh, and axioms (and deductive reasoning) are the enemy of science. Nothing should ever be assumed true. Ever. Axioms are what philosopher's use to back their claims, not scientists.

[GuidoHunter]

Originally Posted by jewpinthethird

Ask any self respecting scientist if they believe Evolution is a fact and they will respond no.

Actually, my professors of the Scientific Method (you know, the guys who teach you about how to approach these subjects for a living, when they're not researching astronomy or particle physics) say that it's a fact.

Saying that it's a fact doesn't mean that it's 100% infallibly true (at least, not in this context). It just means that you'd have to be a freaking idiot to not believe it. Like the example that's so often brought up in evolution debates: gravity. I think it's safe to say that it's a fact because all the evidence points to its being so.

No self-respecting scientist would say that you can't disprove it, but they find it safe to say that it's a fact.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

[Squeek]

My last professor of science told the class that evolution is a fact, Jewpin.

He's also the founder of a major study of science now adapted by dozens of universities around the country and has many mentions of his work in the Smithsonian, various scientific magazines, etc.

Whenever I talk about how evolution is a fact, I reference him. His Smithsonian exhibit (coming soon) is a MASSIVE collection of trilobites. He loves the things and keeps finding more fossils all the time.

Wait, fossils? You mean, like, they don't exist anymore? You mean, like, life has changed over time? Isn't that the definition of the word "evolution"?