[quote name='alonzomourning23']The fact that life changes over time is not accepted by many creationists (outside of some man made ones such as dogs), and was not accepted before evolution to many on religious grounds. Every species that exists has always existed is what some, and most before evolution became prominent, believed. Fossils called it into question, but all the did was change it from "all that ever existed exists" to "all that exists today has always existed". And if you believe that things change over time, then that is evolution. The idea of evolution is not darwins, and had existed long before, but he made it acceptable.[/quote]
I think we are getting into the problem that the word "evolution" means too many different things. Yes of course evolution in the simplest sense means change, but the theory of the origin of species put initially put forth by darwin is what is commonly referred to with the term "evolution".
I think you would be surprised to find that life changing over time is accepted by many of them. However, life can change over time without new species originating. Many of them believe that life changed, but new species did not originate. Now of course, things get slippery because how do you define a species.
In any case, there is very little in the way of controlled experiments that proves anything about how the current species of earth originated.
What has been shown is small changes that satisfy a few technical definitions for species. However, there is very little evidence (in terms of controlled experiments) to show that the same mechanisms could account for the variety of life on earth.
There is a huge difference between showing that two fruitflies are incapable of breeding and showing that amebas could produce men. One has scientific support, the other is pure speculation.
[quote name='alonzomourning23']
Again, what evidence do we have of heliocentrism?
[/quote]
Well it depends what you mean by heliocentrism. Certainly we understand the way our solar system works. We sent a probe to mars and brought back rocks. We sent another probe into space. We can observe the difference. It is a controlled experiment.
Now if you mean how do we know that the sun is the center of the solarsystem and not the earth then I would say it is all in the definition of center. We have demonstrated with controlled experiments that considering the sun at the center is a noninertial frame of reference. So if by center you mean noninertial frame of reference, then yes we have have controlled experiments to prove it (see space travel above).
[quote name='alonzomourning23']Atheism is not a worldview outside of a lack of god, and I said nonreligious, meaning not devout, likely not atheist. Someone who believes in a literal interpretation of the bible is clearly at a conflict of interest, someone who doesn't care about the bible one way or another has much less of a conflict.[/quote]
Agreed, but everybody cares about something. I would believe someone who admits bias and promises to try to be impartial over someone who claims to be completely disinterested in everything.
[quote name='alonzomourning23']Evidence always trumps scripture, no matter how small. Scientifically, scriptural evidence is worth zilch. A true scientist, when faced with no scientific evidence but a pile of scriptural evidence, will say there is no basis to the hypothesis. Scripture may provide historians where to look, to see if there is a basis (ie. noah's flood texts originated from a summarian text, but in a less religious, and more realistic, way). Now, what you call scriptural may differ. Biblical texts are rarely taken in their current state, due to the amounts of translations that have occured. Now ancient scriptural texts from the time of the event have much value. Basically, scripture is valuable when referring to history, worthless when referring to biological science.[/quote]
Well in the context of science of course all nonscientific evidence is meaningless. But in the search for truth science is not the whole picture.
In other words, it may be worthless in the context of biological science, but biological science cannot explain everything. So at times you must abandon biological science for something else. In these situations, something that was worthless in the context of biological science may now be useful.
I am basically saying that biological science is doing a very poor job of explaining how species originated. So it is reasonable to turn to something else.
[quote name='alonzomourning23']
That's not true, science does not require agreement from the uneducated.
[/quote]
I'm not saying that science requires agreement from anyone. What I am saying is that science is useful because it boils down to empirical experience which is irrefutable. If it were not for this property then science would not be as respected as it is (and in my opinion rightfully so).
So although science doesn't require agreement from the uneducated, its primary importance is because it commands agreement from the uneducated (among others).
[quote name='alonzomourning23']
Shhhhhh....... don't tell that to copernicus, kepler, galileo, Giordano Bruno etc.[/quote]
That is my point entirely. Regardless of wordwide opposition and persecution (sometimes ending in execution) from the most powerful institution on earth the theories still became accepted.
If the church, at the apex of its power, along with popular opposition couldn't stop those scientific theories then it certainly can't stop a good scientific theory today. The only thing that evolutionary proponents have to fear is that evolutionary theory isn't up to snuff. Ironically it is survival of the fittest for scientific theories.
[quote name='alonzomourning23']I don't like most atheists, they often tend to be rebellious young idiots whose beliefs have little duration. Most older atheists are not like that. I have just as little respect for religious fanatics. They shut their eye to anything that could possibly disagree with them, and lash out just as violently at any supposedly "dangerous" knowledge. That being said, I was friends with, and very much respected, a very devout evangelical. But, he also believed in a sharp distinction between science/religion, and church/state. His ideas of how the secular should be run were as liberal as mine (pro gay marriage, evolution, no church interference in government, no bible texts in courts etc.), but his views on religion was very conservative. That being said, atheists make up a very small portion of evolution supporters, and this has no basis in this argument.[/quote]
I agree entirely and I think I probably believe similarly to your friend. However, regarding atheists, I feel that they may be partially responsible for the unwarranted promotion of evolutionary theory. I could be wrong, but I think it is at least worth discussing which is why I brought it up.
[quote name='alonzomourning23']Homosapiens and gorillas are two separate beings, that branched apart about 5-7 million years ago. The species that they branched off into have long gone extinct, they are descendents of them.[/quote]
Your missing the point. Look you are illustrating my point. You can't conduct a controlled experiment to determine whether or not you said is even true.
Convincing scientific evidence would be this:
1.a. Start with the common ancestor between men and gorillas.
2.a. Evolve gorillas.
1.b. Start with the common ancestor between men and gorillas.
2.b. Evolve men.
This is a controlled experiment that proves that men and gorillas can evolve from the same species. This is how they do it in physics, this is how they do it in chemistry, and this is how they do it in other branches of biology. This is how science is done. Anything else is not science.
If you can't do a controlled experiment like this then you can't state scientifically that gorillas and men evolved from the same species. You can conjecture that it might be true, but scientifically you don't have any evidence. And I'm not even considering the fact that just because something can happen that doesn't mean that it does happen.
[quote name='alonzomourning23']There aren't many theories with more evidence than evolution, which is why in biology the agreement is nearly universal. There may be arguments as in how or why, but there is little in whether evolution occurs. My opinion? Most of creationist supporters are reading a book, they're going to keep quoting that book no matter what evidence is presented. As long as they stay locked up in their own world I don't care. Elprincipes link to the creationist website earlier is a perfect example, the questions asked in it are due to ignorance, science had provided answer to the vast majority. He didn't even attack the evidence, the guy had no idea it existed, or simply didn't understand what it was (ie. he thought genes were blended, he didn't understand dominant and recessive). You want to provide scientific evidence fine, I'll listen to you. These people don't. Not to make assumptions about you, but you don't see to even fully understand how evolution is supposed to work, but I can't be certain. Just going on a few odd comments.
Here's an idea. I've said why there is plenty of evidence to back it up, you keep insisting it is lacking. State how it is lacking, poke as many hole into it as you can. As it is, all you are saying is unless we can actually witness it (and we can in fast reproducing species) there isn't evidence to support it. You keep saying theories and evidence aren't enough, theories I'd agree with but evidence not being enough I find to be grasping at straws. With your logic anything we can't physically witness (plate tectonics we can't witness) does not have valid scientific support. But again, evolution in quickly reproducing species is witnessed.[/QUOTE]
Maybe there aren't many biological theories with more evidence than evolution, but it certainly isn't the case with science at large.
I'm not saying that I have any evidence, but I don't feel that you have presented any scientific evidence at all regarding the origin of species.
Simple organisms can evolve into new species. So what? How do we know that this can occur in large organisms?
We know that large organisms have mechanisms for stopping cancer. How do we know that they don't have similar mechanisms for stopping the mutations which supposedly lead to evolution?
Just a few weeks ago I was reading about a plant that is able to revert back to the genes of its grandparents, even though the genes of the parents (both DNA and RNA) had completely mutated. How do we know that large organisms don't have similar mechanisms?
It should be obvious that anything we can't physically witness doesn't have scientific support. That is what science is. Here is the scientific method:
1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.
Evolutionary theory definitely does #1 and #2. To a very limited extent it does #3. However, the predictions of other phenomena in the case of evolution are primarily qualitative and not quantitative. Forget about #4, to the best of my knowledge this has only been performed in a handful of cases in very limited circumstances.
Prediction is the primary test for a scientific theory and evolution doesn't make any predictions when it comes to large organisms. Everything is chalked up to environmental pressures so that no matter what the results are it is always assumed that the environmental pressures are whatever would have lead to those results.
The evidence that you present isn't really evidence. It is terribly easy to fit a wrong hypothesis to data that you already have. Especially when you can pick and choose which fossils are "meaningful", effectively throwing out all the data points that don't agree with your theory.
I concede that evolutionary scientists have a tougher job than scientists in other fields because if evolution does occur as they claim then it occurs very slowly. However, that doesn't give them a free pass.
What if gravity pulled at 9.8*10^-6 meters/second. Would Newton be off the hook when it came to experiments? Should we just take his word for it? Well we could just take his word, but then it wouldn't be science. Also, more than likely he probably wouldn't have paid attention long enough to develop a good theory and probably would have came up with something much more simplistic and erroneous.
Such is the case when it comes to evolution. They don't do experiments because experiments are too difficult, but that doesn't get them off the hook. On the contrary the fact that the experiments are hard to do makes the theory much more suspicious.
Don't get me wrong. I accept the evidence that there is. However, the evidence is meager and the claims are grandiose.
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