Evolution
 

A very heated argument.
There's the opinion in favor of evolution, the opinion in favor of creationism, and the opinion of intelligent design.
If there's another point of view in this, let me know, but don't come up to me with other means of creation other than creationism which is strictly speaking of the judeochristian creation. It would be ridiculous to mention all religious ideas of the beginning and this would stop being a semi-scientifical debate and would become a complaint for religious tolerance.

Anyway, first I want to make a request. Anyone that posts here has to post something relevant (almost needless to say) and something that can be backed up. No arbitrary statements or "they say" claims. I don't think it would have been something common, but it wasn't harmful to mention it.
Also, don't answer with rhetorical questions. Those are really unnecessary and annoying.

Anyway, let's begin with the vaguest question I can think of.
When talking about evolution, where does evidence point to? (plus examples of this)
Don't respond to another person's post unless you yourself have already established your opinion of this simple question.

Are you asking does scientific evidence point to evolution or creationism, or are you asking what evidence supports evolution?

Actually both:
When talking about evolution, where does evidence point to? (Evolution? Creationism?)
(plus examples of this) (what do you have that proves what you're saying?)

I notice chaos theory is missing from the options you gave. Irrelevant to your discussion?

First, Creationism and Intelligent Design are the exact same thing. As one article on the subject put it, calling it "Intelligent Design" is an end-run around the Supreme Court and its power to enforce the separation of church and state. The only people pushing for Intelligent Design to be taught in the science classroom are religious fundamentalists, and the ploy is their crowbar to pry open the lid on secular education.

Second, how can any physical evidence point to the validity of Creationism? Creationism assumes that an all-powerful deity made the universe. How the hell is anyone supposed to prove that? The evidence points to evolution. What do we have that supports this theory? Darwin's "Origin of Species" and every natural history museum in the country. They may not be perfect, but they're a hell of a lot more plausible than "The world was created, as is, in six days."

No, I just mentioned the ones that were in the discussion before this thread. That's why I said that you should tell me the ones I missed.

Giving evidence of a young earth would be a nice start for anyone in favor of creationism.
And Intelligent Design doesn't really equate to Creationism.
Any form of guided evolution rather than simply natural selection is already intelligent design.

Fossils--They show how animals slowly developed.

Organs we have, but don't need. The appendix, in humans. Whales have tiny limbs deep within their blubber.

True, but one must look at Intelligent Design within the context of the society that promotes it. I don't recall seeing any Atheist groups pressing for it. Not even Agnostics. The impetus for introducing Intelligent Design into the classroom comes solely from the religiously motivated. As I said, it's just a ploy to introduce religion into the secular public domain under the guise of providing alternate creation theories.

Not really. For the purpose of this thread, we have to see intelligent design as whether it's a plausible explanation based on evidence. Society has nothing to do with it. It's all about science.

Righto. I like the idea that every other theory of creation isn't relevant. That humanity is just one massive fluke in the universe. There's something incredibly moving about all that we know being the result of one big cosmic fuck up. Ineffably sad...

This thread is going to be very boring if we're all on the same side. Where are the ones that were fighting in the beliefs thread?

Probably tucked in bed, or at midnight mass?

I'd play devil's advocate, but everyone will forget I'm playing devil's advocate, and then look at me differently.

Is that the game you play with a knife and a pair of dice? I forget...

This topic is already failed. There is the fact of evolution, the myth of creationism, and the psuedoscience of intelligent design. Let's get that much straight. Then we could proceed. Intelligent design is not proven at all, and has been disproven the entire way. Scientists WISH there was such a thing, but there isn't.

Creationism claims the earth is 6-10 thousand years old, and radio-dating techniques prove this irrevocably wrong.

Evolution is a fact, and can be observed in our fossil records, microbiology, and even some recent changes of animals. Evolution is the only safe answer currently, until a competing SCIENTIFIC theory can take it out--which I doubt.


This will not be a scientific debate at all. This is going to be a mud-slinging match. Evolution = fact. Every other explanation is not even a runner up. It's just nonsense.

Right.

Fossil records, microbiology, Darwin's famous finches, etc. etc.

Hm. How do you know the sky is blue? What is blue? Really?

This is a discussion and it's confines are set. Suggesting it's a moot point is barely short of belligerency.

Roll with it.

Yes, yes, I get it. The point of this thread is not to amuse me or to convince me.
Hell, I'm with you in that it's not going to be a debate so much as a massacre of beliefs.
But still, this discussion hijacked another thread, so I created a thread for it rather than letting the other be sidetracked anymore.
It doesn't matter what you think of this thread. It doesn't matter what you think of the other theories. What does matter is that if a discussion of evolution ever raises up again, you now have a nice little niche where you can argue at will.

I can really only think of one guy who was trying to back creationism.

Other than that, the only way I see creationism as plausible is if it's pretty much evolution by accident of a higher beings own volition and it's trying desperately to maintain a balance.

I sometimes wonder why some people have never entertained the idea that it's possible that a creator is neither loving or nurturing. Maybe it does things because it can.

Then again, what does that say about the betterment of humanity? Fuck the idea of an actual god as we know it. The capacity to reason and love your fellow man would be a better and separate idea from creation and how it was formed.

This is why I can be a theist and yet understand that evolution is entirely probable.

Evolution and God do not make sense together. Perhaps there isn't enough cognitive dissonance in this topic, but they just DON'T MAKE SENSE TOGETHER.

In that case, there is no evidence to support the theory of Intelligent Design.

It's strange how the only supporters of ID are religious, and all backing for it is done by religious institutions. If they could get a secular group to help, then it might be credible--but it's not.

You're pretty much right, onetwentythree.

Hence the reason that if a god exists as we would understand it, that deity would have to be in some way NOT perfect in our opinions and made evolution as we know it because it just could.

Young creationism is a silly idea. But, a god or deity who created all things could be in some way at fault or contain short comings to design evolution as it is. Simply get the ball rolling on it, just because it wanted to see what would happen.

Which, in a way, could give some people hope for something better than what is presented.

As others have pointed out before me, "intelligent design" is just a submarine form of creationism. Actually, it's not so much a submarine as an attack cruiser with "this is not an attack cruiser" painted on the side and a small piece of folliage stuck to one side of the conning tower with scotch tape.

It points to common descent through natural selection.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_evolution

How does chaos theory provide a potential substitute for the theory of evolution?

I don't think Intelligent Design is really compatible with guided evolution. The entire point of the "irreducible complexity" argument is that complex organisms are an all-or-nothing game. Therefore, speciation through artificial selection is just as impossible as speciation through natural selection, according to Intelligent Design.

Conceivably, the designer could be slowly forming organisms through a non-selective process of direct manipulation, but nobody is arguing that.

This is really key. Creationists, including exponents of Intelligent Design, do not simply reject the modern evolutionary synthesis. They reject common descent in its entirety. To borrow Gould's famous example, for these people, it must be very mysterious that there are no rabbit fossils in the pre-cambrian.

You could have gods and evolution at the same time. It's just that making humans is at least half of what we want God to do, so the theory of evolution seriously threatens his job security. Point being, though, you can still have expansive, pantheist type gods, deist hands-off gods, or animist nature gods or whatever.

Drake

Looking at humans and primates comparatively, it's pretty obvious what similarities we have. I have no problem believing humans evolved from primates. I think why most creationists don't want to believe in evolution is, because they want to feel superior to all other forms of life.