A Question about evolution

[Crayfish]

Several inaccuracies and deliberately misleading points, but the gist of it, that as a biologist with an understanding of evolution I believe that all of biological complexity arose by a certain amount of copying errors and natural selection, is correct.

 

One inaccuracy is that the estimates of probability in that post are deeply flawed (I can explain this but don't want to write an essay right now). An omission is that the natural world has had at least 3.5 billion years to evolve to its current state. Want to take a wild guess at how many microbial generations you can get into that time period?

 

Aspects of the molecular complexity of life are truly wonderful and astonishing, but less so when you consider that even if your chance of getting something right is 1 in trillions, rolling the dice many trillions of times is likely to get you there.

[pathman]

lots of "you believe" this, and "you believe" that, but no actual evidence against evolution in that cut'n paste is there.

 

http://www.creationdesign.org/english/if%20you%20believe.html <<<< the clue's in the name

 

how about some thinking for yourself?

[Guest sibon]

Evolution teaches that random beneficial mutations are beneficial and therefore improve an organism's chances of survival. These random mutations are supposed to perpetuate the mutated organism and eventually create a new species.

EDIT

 

.

 

 

Nice cut and paste. You need to relax a bit. Accept the fact that you are a complete accident of a union between your father and another family member. None of that is evidence, just opinion. I asked you to post evidence for Creationism, you did not.

 

That is no surprise, because there isn't any. It isn't a credible world view. I offer you Darwin's Origin of Species... backed up by the fossil record, the C of E and virtually any respectable academic who has ever dipped their toe into this area. You respond with a cut and paste from an unspecified source the like of which is rampant on the internet. Go on, prove to me that the Earth and its inhabitants were created by God 6000 years ago... you can't, because all the protagonists of this postulation (not theory, you understand) are bigotted fools who fail to understand the nature of proof and simply trot out nonsense, backed up by claims of blind faith.

 

Normally, I don't get offended by nutters, but when you are part of a movement trying to gain a toehold in our schools to poison the minds of our youngsters... I make an exception.

[[Matt]]

I note he's still not replying to my last post. I don't have time to offer a full reply explaining his post is full of inaccuracies and incorrect assumptions right now as i have a nice warm bed waiting for me right now but i guarantee you i and others on this board will do in due time. However i will point of the most obvious misconception you have about evolution and that is your incorrect assumption that evolution is all about random chance. Evolution by natural selection is the complete antithesis of random chance. Just think about the phrase natural SELECTION itself. To use a method to select something is doing the exact opposite of choosing randomly. Nature isn't picking random genes to pass onto the next generation. Its selecting those life forms with the characteristics that helped them survive to an age to which they can breed and pass on those genes to the next generation who will share those characteristics from their parents. When you understand the basic mechanics behind evolution by natural selection you will also understand that evolution IS design. However the designer is physics, chemistry and nature itself.

[ALZYMER]

Dear Matt and sibon, Thanks for the compliments about my copy and paste prowess. It's a skill that is still evolving. Therefore it will always stay at the same level, because we already know that evolution is a fairy tale. Always has been, always will be.End of story.

[Cyclone]

This is a bit circular, you can't argue with faith, it's blind and stupid by definition. And most people with it like it that way.

[Fivetide]

So Alzymer, two fundamental questions for the fundamentalist... are you up to the challenge?

 

Where's the questions?!

[jfish1936]

There are two basic world views:

1/. There is an authority that tells us everything we need to know, e.g. the Bible or other holy book;

2/. We still don't know everything, and need to find out by observation, hypothesis and experiment; one way is to assume, e.g. that a tree trunk has a growth ring for every year, and that we can find the age of a tree by counting its rings, although no person now alive saw it start to grow; lots of other ways to see into the past depend on things then happening as they do now.

 

Number 1 seems to me to have falllacies; for one thing, holy books can be internally inconsistent (and I do laugh watchingfundamentalists trying to explain these); and the book story doesn't always match facts from elsewhere (OK, if it's the only truth, you'd expect that).

Number 2 works for me, but leads me to Very-Old-Earth (billions of years) and evolution.

 

Now there;s no way you can prove one of these to be TRUE and the other false. I accept one, Alzymer accepts the other.

[pininsho]

There are two basic world views:

1/. There is an authority that tells us everything we need to know, e.g. the Bible or other holy book;

2/. We still don't know everything, and need to find out by observation, hypothesis and experiment; one way is to assume, e.g. that a tree trunk has a growth ring for every year, and that we can find the age of a tree by counting its rings, although no person now alive saw it start to grow; lots of other ways to see into the past depend on things then happening as they do now.

 

Number 1 seems to me to have falllacies; for one thing, holy books can be internally inconsistent (and I do laugh watchingfundamentalists trying to explain these); and the book story doesn't always match facts from elsewhere (OK, if it's the only truth, you'd expect that).

Number 2 works for me, but leads me to Very-Old-Earth (billions of years) and evolution.

 

Now there;s no way you can prove one of these to be TRUE and the other false. I accept one, Alzymer accepts the other.

 

Pretty accurate post except for your last statement because it all depends on what you mean by proof. Do you mean absolute 100% proof in which case I would agree with you or do you mean proof beyond reasonable doubt which is similar to what we have in a court of law, in which case the outcome would be that there is no God?

[jfish1936]

I should have said "There's no way you can prove either view 100%"

After all, there's no proof that TG* didn't create the world 24 hrs ago, including our false memories; I agree, that's so unlikely that I couldn't accept it!

 

 

*Trickster God, Loki, Coyote or whatever you call him/her/it