Evolution & Atheism... Is it really more plausible?

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Gritimo The Odd

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Aug 25, 2009
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When people get asked about evolution there should be a qualifier about what kind of evolution you are talking about. There is Micro evolution, which boils down to specific traits and features that can transfer and shift from parents to offspring that gradually creates different species, which is what Darwin actually documented on his trip. The other is Macro evolution, which is the whole goo to the zoo to you theory which is what most people think of today. Micro evolution is well documented, and reasonably observable, and in some cases recrateable and forced, as in the case of various breeds of dogs, horses, cows and other animals. Macro Evolution on the other hand has a few problems for me. One there is a distinct lack of transition speicies, both now and in the fossil record that are clearly both one major type and another. Im not talking mixture of breeds of dogs but half fish half reptile or half reptile half mammal kinda critter. The generational timeframe that would require should have left relatively larger amounts of fossils for those types of critters than for the confirmed fossil ancestry of other animals we do have, such as the horse and ryhno which we can see clear ancestral relations through the various fossil records we do have. If anybody says that the lack of known fossils does not mean they are not there then the same argument could be used regarding several religions as well.


My other major doubt with Macro evolution is one described best by a book called Darwins Black Box by Michael J. Behe who (at the time of writing it back in 1996 anyway) was an associate professor of Biochemestry at Lehigh University. The book ascribes to the point that there are somethings that are irriducibly complex in order to work. a basic example is a mousetrap that is composed of the spring, catch, hammerbar, holding bar and base. You need all these parts for the mouse trap to work becuase with out any one of them the mousetrap won't work. He then goes on to describe how Biochemically there are parts of anything that need everything to be there in order for them to work as they do and diagrams examples like eyes of animals from jelly fish up to us, and bacteria parts in single cell organisms. Each of these objects had to have all the parts that make them work there at the same time as the difference in the stages would have been to prohibitive and detrimental to the function of the part in question to have occured one stage/part at a time.
Hopefully this will give people some things to think on.
 

Skeleon

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Island said:
the part about Occam's razor is an interesting way to look at things, but in my personal opinion a slightly flawed one seeing as how it is not always the simplest answer that is correct.
That's what my example about Zeus and lightning was for. Glad you liked it.
I agree that one should apply such a stance in general, not just philosophical or religious issues. No matter what situation you're in, coming to the simplest and often wrong conclusions may lead to very bad results.

i was simply saying that all in all its pretty amazing.
Again, I fully agree with you on this.
Some people say "evolution detracts from the uniqueness of our lives" or something along those lines.
But if you consider all the struggles through hundreds of millions of years life had to endure to reach this point, I'd say we're pretty amazing without some supernatural reason.
And aren't we humans still unique?
 

Skeleon

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grimsprice said:
A fine answer to be sure. But, you forgot one thing. Time.
Ah, yes. Given enough time, there could be a new species rivaling our own sophistication.

Yes, we need:
Mutation for animals to be able to change...
Reproduction so that animals can pass down these changes...
External conditions for selection and...
A lot of time for evolution to unfold...
Anything I forgot?

EDIT: Sorry for double-post.
 

Lukyo

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Flying-Emu said:
Lukyo said:
Good night then. But with all due respect you have a very odd notion of happiness.
And with all due respect, stop trolling.

This isn't worth arguing. Micro-Evolution is a bloody fact, and is about as deniable as gravity and Newton's First Law. Macro-Evolution admittedly has holes, but its still the best guess we've got as to how things came about.

Either way. Everyone can have their own beliefs about it, it's not like bickering over the internet is going to change anyone's opinion.

This coming from a Christian Deist.
I never disagreed with micro-evolution. Even a hard nosed fundamentalist can acknowledge that it happens. Of course if by evolution you mean coping errors due to heat and radiation, then I don't agree by any means.

A Christian Deist? There's contradiction in terms.
 

Spyre2000

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Apr 18, 2009
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There are a lot of unanswered questions. Personally I like to look at more recent history because I think they pose much more interesting then going back millions and billions of years. Like for starters it was mentioned humans have been around for 100K years. I think that number is off a bit. I recall watching a documentary some time ago which talked about the history of human evolution and tracing our linage back. Well new estimates as I recall put it back to more like 250K years.

So a more interesting question is even if you assume the 100K year number the question is what took us so long to develop technology? If the human remains they found do match modern day humans and show they would be similar to us then why did it take 100K years to develop into the modern technological world? Now I understand the dark ages and that knowledge was lost but that is only for a few centuries and were talking 100K+ years here were humans were as intelligent as they are today even if uneducated.

Interestingly the first civilization seems to spring up overnight. And it's not a simple one either. Do some research on the Sumerians. We get the 24 hour day divided into 60 minutes from them, 360 degrees in a circle, the first written language, and so on. In fact a lot can be traced back to them. Much of Egyptian knowledge came from them as Egypt roses out of the ashes along with many other early civilizations that we are more familiar with. Yet not much is ever talked about Sumerians.

So back to the original question of if people have been around in their present form and intelligence for at least 100K years then what were they doing for those first 90K+ years because it stands to reason at least one group should of developed technologically. It only stands to reason that someone somewhere would of developed the technology much sooner given our intelligence. It's like the story of when the laser was invented. Three different people in 3 different parts of the world all get the idea for the laser at about the same time be it a few weeks or months apart. But there still work on their own without any knowledge of each other or that the others are working on it.

So why not with farming, city development, mathematics, writing, and a ton of other things? Why only in that one place and why only after tens of thousands of years of humans being around? There were people all over the world at that point which has been shown through fossil records. And given human intelligence it's quite obvious that technology can develop rapidly in a very short period of time but it can also be lost just as quickly given war, natural disaster, or etc. This I understand and accept.

It does not explain however why humans waited so long to develop even the most primitive technologies when our bodies and minds had developed to the point they are today where we pretty much need technology to survive. And humans have been around for long enough to develop different physical characteristics that suit the local environment. Something that was estimated to take at least 20K years for each split. And is also estimate that if all global travel were to stop that in 20K years each region would return to the same ethnicity group that is associated with that area because of natural adaptation. Since things like skin color actually have a function such as effecting how much sunlight our body absorbs so that we can make Vitamin D while also preventing the break down of other Vitamins in our body. One of which actually effects woman and pregnancy. Though I forget the medical specifics.
 

Lieju

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I have never seen a species of animals being poofed into existence by magic.

So I'll just go with science in this one.
 

MR.Spartacus

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Okay I've got a better idea. How about instead of trying to me why to tell me how evolution is wrong why don't you explain why intelligent design, or creationism, or whatever you want to call it is better?
 

Zacharine

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VanityGirl said:
We evolved from single cell organisms (supposedly). My question, where did the single cell organisms come from? That had to be there at some point.
I'm trying to help out the other side here, also I don't like the idea of being evolved from apes, because it doesn't make sense for apes to still exist today. (Why didn't they evolve? o_O)
This has been dealt by many people in great detail, both in the Internet and in books before that. Here's a few simple explanations of possible methods for a-bio-genesis or 'life from non-life'. How exactly things went on Earth in the past, we do not know. But here is couple of ways it might have happened. No supernatural forces, no outside interference. Just simple inorganic and organic chemistry. Note that Organic Chemistry is simply the chemistry of organic materials, or molecules with a coal-chain as a basis. These form all the time in inorganic surroundings.



 

Flying-Emu

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Lukyo said:
Flying-Emu said:
Lukyo said:
Good night then. But with all due respect you have a very odd notion of happiness.
And with all due respect, stop trolling.

This isn't worth arguing. Micro-Evolution is a bloody fact, and is about as deniable as gravity and Newton's First Law. Macro-Evolution admittedly has holes, but its still the best guess we've got as to how things came about.

Either way. Everyone can have their own beliefs about it, it's not like bickering over the internet is going to change anyone's opinion.

This coming from a Christian Deist.
I never disagreed with micro-evolution. Even a hard nosed fundamentalist can acknowledge that it happens. Of course if by evolution you mean coping errors due to heat and radiation, then I don't agree by any means.

A Christian Deist? There's contradiction in terms.
Deism: Belief that the world was set in motion by a higher power who created the world and laws of physics and allowed the world to spin of its own accord. I believe that higher power was the Christian God, the Jewish Yahweh, etc. and that the Bible is essentially a bunch of men trying to interpret what little interference God gave the world.
 

Lukyo

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Aug 14, 2009
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Flying-Emu said:
Lukyo said:
Flying-Emu said:
Lukyo said:
Good night then. But with all due respect you have a very odd notion of happiness.
And with all due respect, stop trolling.

This isn't worth arguing. Micro-Evolution is a bloody fact, and is about as deniable as gravity and Newton's First Law. Macro-Evolution admittedly has holes, but its still the best guess we've got as to how things came about.

Either way. Everyone can have their own beliefs about it, it's not like bickering over the internet is going to change anyone's opinion.

This coming from a Christian Deist.
I never disagreed with micro-evolution. Even a hard nosed fundamentalist can acknowledge that it happens. Of course if by evolution you mean coping errors due to heat and radiation, then I don't agree by any means.

A Christian Deist? There's contradiction in terms.
Deism: Belief that the world was set in motion by a higher power who created the world and laws of physics and allowed the world to spin of its own accord. I believe that higher power was the Christian God, the Jewish Yahweh, etc. and that the Bible is essentially a bunch of men trying to interpret what little interference God gave the world.

A little interference? God is always maintaining the universe. Nothing in the universe happens without his ordainment. A Deist God NEVER interacts with his creation, even Wikipedia understands that. That means you have to deny Jesus who is God walking on Earth in Human form to save His people from there Judgment, which also puts you outside of Christian theology.
 

Downfall89

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Aug 26, 2009
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If Evolution is wrong, why do they teach it in High Schools? And why do no kids from religious upbringings stand up and yell, "No! That's not right! God made humans! We didn't come from animals!" I have never seen this in my entire life, and I've had friends that are extreme religious fundamentalists who didn't care about the idea of Evolution when our science teacher decided that was the next topic to do.