Are you a Christian?
- Thread starter Kett
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I'll help Hedge out with a bit of Daniel Dennet
The theory of evolution diminishes the best reason anyone has ever suggested for believing in a divine creator.
Hedge has to deny evolution because he's chosen to believe in the literal truth of the bible.
He doesn't worry about the theory of gravity or thermodynamics and radioactivity or germ theory or the laws of entropy. He's happy to fly through the air at 350 mph in a metal box designed by science and technology and type words into a machine that can send them all over the world in the blink of a bats eye - but this one thing science has got completely wrong.
After 150 of intensive study and total acceptance by the scientific community - this one thing must be wrong; obviously.
Weird ain't it?
The theory of evolution diminishes the best reason anyone has ever suggested for believing in a divine creator.
Hedge has to deny evolution because he's chosen to believe in the literal truth of the bible.
He doesn't worry about the theory of gravity or thermodynamics and radioactivity or germ theory or the laws of entropy. He's happy to fly through the air at 350 mph in a metal box designed by science and technology and type words into a machine that can send them all over the world in the blink of a bats eye - but this one thing science has got completely wrong.
After 150 of intensive study and total acceptance by the scientific community - this one thing must be wrong; obviously.
Weird ain't it?
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DCE
So who really deserves the credit for these designs?
IN RECENT years scientists and engineers have, in a very literal way, allowed plants and animals to instruct them. They are studying and mimicking the design features of various creaturesa field known as biomimeticsin an effort to create new products and improve the performance of existing machines.
What have aircraft designers learn from the humpback whale?
A great deal it seems.
An adult humpback weighs about 30*tonsas much as a loaded truckand it has a relatively stiff body with large winglike flippers. This 40-foot-long [12*m] animal is remarkably agile under water. For example, when feeding, a humpback may swim in upward spiraling circles beneath a prospective meal of crustaceans or fish, all the while blowing a stream of bubbles. This bubble net, as small as five feet [1.5*m] in diameter, corrals the creatures at the surface. The whale then snaps up its tidy meal.
What particularly intrigued researchers was how this stiff-bodied creature turns in what seem to be impossibly tight circles. They discovered that the shape of the whales flippers holds the secret. The leading edge of its flippers is not smooth, like an aircrafts wing, but serrated, with a row of protruding bumps called tubercles.
As the whale slices through the water, these tubercles increase lift and reduce drag. How? The journal Natural History explains that the tubercles make the water accelerate over the flipper in an organized rotating flow, even when the whale is rising at very steep angles. If the flipper had a smooth leading edge, the whale would be unable to make such tight rising turns because the water would churn and eddy behind the flipper and cease to create lift.
What practical applications does this discovery promise? Aircraft wings based on the design would evidently need fewer wing flaps or other mechanical devices to alter airflow. Such wings would be safer and easier to maintain. Biomechanics expert John Long believes that someday soon we may well see every single jetliner with the bumps of humpback whale flippers.
Mimicking Seagulls Wings
Of course, we already know, aircraft wings already mimic the shape of birds wings. However, engineers have recently taken this mimicry to new heights. Researchers at the University of Florida, reports New Scientist, have built a prototype remote-controlled drone with a seagulls ability to hover, dive and climb rapidly.
Seagulls perform their remarkable aerobatic maneuvers by flexing their wings at the elbow and shoulder joints. Copying this flexible wing design, the 24-inch prototype drone uses a small motor to control a series of metal rods that move the wings, says the magazine. These cleverly engineered wings enable the small aircraft to hover and dive between tall buildings. The U.S. Air Force is keen to develop such a highly maneuverable craft for use in searching for chemical or biological weapons in big cities.
Does it seem logical then, for highly trained researchers who crudely mimic systems in nature to solve difficult engineering problems to attribute the genius of devising the original idea to unintelligent evolution?
If the copy requires an intelligent designer, what about the original?
Really, who deserves more credit, the master artist our Creator or the student who imitates his technique?
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Didn't you post this one a while back DCE? I'm pretty sure that after weeks of analysis last time it was deduced beyond all reasonable doubt that... you are a nutter. 
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Hedgie, for every design feature that you can cut and paste from the creationist web sites that comfort you with their nonsense I can name 5 from memory From jet engines (squid) to reinforced concrete (celery).
Evolution has had millions of years to adapt and refine all manner of structures and if we're clever enough to understand them we copy them - so far we've only managed the simpler ones.
On the other hand your 'designer' got all sorts of things wrong and most thing we know of in the natural word are complete bodge jobs that are just good enough. (There are a million examples, our backbone is adapted from a creature that uses 4 legs so it rubbish on only two, The human testes have to hang externally because sperm can't survive the heat of their own bodies, the female pelvis is too narrow to allow birth without having to collapse the babies head etc etc etc.)
Design faults can't be explained by those that believe in a Perfect designer, but they are perfectly explained by evolution.
On the other hand the perfect designer failed to design some indispensably useful things that the imperfect human managed fairly early on like a wheel, not to mention the Transistor, lasers and the internal combustion engine. Pretty soon we'll manufacture a brand new organism from chemicals.
None of this proves that god doesn't exist but it does show that YOUR god of the creationist bible doesn't.
Evolution has had millions of years to adapt and refine all manner of structures and if we're clever enough to understand them we copy them - so far we've only managed the simpler ones.
On the other hand your 'designer' got all sorts of things wrong and most thing we know of in the natural word are complete bodge jobs that are just good enough. (There are a million examples, our backbone is adapted from a creature that uses 4 legs so it rubbish on only two, The human testes have to hang externally because sperm can't survive the heat of their own bodies, the female pelvis is too narrow to allow birth without having to collapse the babies head etc etc etc.)
Design faults can't be explained by those that believe in a Perfect designer, but they are perfectly explained by evolution.
On the other hand the perfect designer failed to design some indispensably useful things that the imperfect human managed fairly early on like a wheel, not to mention the Transistor, lasers and the internal combustion engine. Pretty soon we'll manufacture a brand new organism from chemicals.
None of this proves that god doesn't exist but it does show that YOUR god of the creationist bible doesn't.
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DCE
Your evolutionary theory attempts to eliminate the need for the impossible to be accomplished in one blow by espousing a step-by-step process by which natural selection could do its work gradually.
However, without the genetic code to begin reproduction, there can be no material for natural selection to select.
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It doesn't 'attempt to eliminate', it simply explains how it happens. The fact that it exposes a primitive mythology for what it is - ie wrong - is only a problem for those few that believe in it without evidence.
It was inconvenient for religious belief when science proved that the earth was not the centre of the universe, but they eventually got over it by tweaking their beliefs. The Catholic church accepted evolution eventually simply because they recognised that there's no point railing against what is provably true - only a few idiots do that and they didn't wish to be aligned with the idiots. (Although I read that the current pope was considering changing its view on this - I really wish they would.)
Well now you're being pushed further and further back and are having to argue from the very edge.
We don't know why there is something rather than nothing - although there are some mathematicians that claim they do. If you wish to argue that god made the stuff that became the universe and all that eventually lives but had no further interest in it, not many could say for sure that you're wrong.
But your not saying that at all are you? You believe in the literal truth of your weird JW version of the Christian bible with all it's additional nonsense - that's a whole different can of cosmology.
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bdw
No? Really? Says who?
Look, I do not pretend to have all the answers but I think I have evolved as a logical, thinking individual and my logic tells me that the creation is errant nonsense. I may be wrong but I don't think so and I will continue to defend my corner "religiously".
I posted the thing about the Israeli discovery because if and when it is proven to be what they think it is it will blow all religious teaching about creation out of the water. But then you guys will just come up something else, won't you?
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Parthelan
Scientist goes up to God and sez Oi Mate, youre not all that you know. With my scientific ability and knowledge I can create man just as you did.
Really sez God, go on then.
The scientist bends down and picks up a handful of earth ...
... ah ah ah sez God .... make your own earth first
Really sez God, go on then.
The scientist bends down and picks up a handful of earth ...
... ah ah ah sez God .... make your own earth first
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Here's one for you DCE.
I went to a planetarium today and saw photographs of the Orion nebulae. Nebulae means 'cloud' - it's an area in our own galaxy consisting of condensing dust; the dust forms new stars - it's a star factory. You can see brand new stars there being formed now, some of them are less than a million years old; your god is making them while I type this.
So we have a situation where your god is creating new suns to last billions of years whilst your brand new religion of a mere 100 years or so, thinks it's all going to end tomorrow.
Would you like to remove the contradiction for me? - without quoting from your little book of course.
I went to a planetarium today and saw photographs of the Orion nebulae. Nebulae means 'cloud' - it's an area in our own galaxy consisting of condensing dust; the dust forms new stars - it's a star factory. You can see brand new stars there being formed now, some of them are less than a million years old; your god is making them while I type this.
So we have a situation where your god is creating new suns to last billions of years whilst your brand new religion of a mere 100 years or so, thinks it's all going to end tomorrow.
Would you like to remove the contradiction for me? - without quoting from your little book of course.
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Looking like a graceful watercolour painting, the Orion Nebula is one of the most photogenic objects in space and one of the Hubble Space Telescopes favourite targets. As newborn stars emerge from the nebulas mixture of gas and dust, protoplanetary discs, also known as proplyds, form around them: the centre of the spinning disc heats up and becomes a new star, but remnants around the outskirts of the disc attract other bits of dust and clump together. Proplyds are thought to be young planetary systems in the making. In an ambitious survey of the familiar nebula using Hubbles Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), researchers have discovered 42 protoplanetary discs.
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dagr
Way too abstract and far off, CJD.
How about explaining why some humble single-cell amoebas, something which you can't actually see without a microscope, has got around 100 times more genetic code than humans? Even wheat has more genetic code than humans. Doh!
(or should that be "Dough!")?
How about explaining why some humble single-cell amoebas, something which you can't actually see without a microscope, has got around 100 times more genetic code than humans? Even wheat has more genetic code than humans. Doh!
(or should that be "Dough!")?
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I suppose that means you can't explain it. I'm not surprised.
As for 'abstract', it's real - get a telescope and see for yourself; as for 'far off' - it's IN OUR OWN GALAXY. Stars don't get nearer than that.
Explaining why your god made a universe with billions of galaxies like our Milky Way, containing trillions of stars just so that one of them can be used to fashion you, needs explaining.
Look up the word 'hubris'.
Douglas Adams describes it as 'Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea...
I will but I have to drive up north where it's gloomy. Meanwhile google is your friend. As is Junk DNA (altho' we may be forming a different view of that these days.)
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dagr
Don't worry CJD, my question was rhetorical (and a bit of a tease). I was just hoping DCE would try a punt at why god would have spent so much effort on the blueprint of something (amoeba) that was invisible to humans until a few centuries ago. And hopefully beyond the "god works in mysterious ways" thing.
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J
Jeff Knows
Point 1 - That mega-image has totally broken this page and it's getting annoying. (Weyhey, new page!)
Point 2 - If we are quoting the great Douglas Adams;
"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.'"
Point 2 - If we are quoting the great Douglas Adams;
"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.'"
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DCE
An amoeba may consist of about 100 quadrillion atoms.
Could this number of atoms, in the correct ratio, accidentally meet together and assemble themselves into a living amoeba?
Could it?
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No it couldn't DCE. So luckily, it wasn't necessary to. That's not how evolution works.
I really don't understand why you need to tell lies like this DCE. You know very well that the way evolution works is not like that because I've explained it over and over again to you. It's one thing claim evolution is incorrect it's quite another to claim that it works in a way that no scientist says it does.
Why lie DCE? Is it lying for Jesus?
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DCE
This Scientist says it does, i think your telling porkies.
FOR evolution to have happened, lifeless chemicals had to come together to form a living cell. Scientist Isaac Asimov, in The Wellsprings of Life, says it took place in this way:
Once upon a time, very long ago, perhaps two and a half billion years ago, under a deadly sun, in an ammoniated ocean topped by a poisonous atmosphere, in the midst of a soup of organic molecules, a nucleic acid molecule came accidentally into being that could somehow bring about the existence of another like itself, and from that all else would follow.
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DCE
The complex molecules in the simplest living thing cannot reproduce alone.
Outside the cell, they break down. Inside the cell, they cannot reproduce without the help of other complex molecules.
For example, enzymes are needed to produce a special energy molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP), but energy from ATP is needed to produce enzymes. Similarly, DNA is required to make enzymes, but enzymes are required to make DNA. Also, other proteins can be made only by a cell, but a cell can be made only with proteins.
This all came together by chance without the need of a designer, I think not.
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paultnl
Before complex molecules you have simple molecules etc. complexity is a result of evolution.
Have a good read here http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html
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DCE
The theory of evolution rests on the notion that a long series of fortunate accidents produced life to start with.
It then proposes that another series of undirected accidents produced the astonishing diversity and complexity of all living things.
However, if the foundation of the theory is missing, what happens to the other theories that are built on this assumption?
Just as a skyscraper built without a foundation would collapse, a theory of evolution that cannot explain the origin of life will crumble. which it does.
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DCE
Professor of biochemistry Michael Behe, who has spent most of his life studying the complex internal functions of living cells, explained that those who teach the evolution of cell structure have no basis for their claims.
Could evolution occur at this tiny, molecular level?
Molecular evolution is not based on scientific authority, he wrote. There is no publication in the scientific literature in prestigious journals, specialty journals, or books that describes how molecular evolution of any real, complex, biochemical system either did occur or even might have occurred, the assertion of Darwinian molecular evolution is merely bluster.
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paultnl
The claim is false please see this link for more detail http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/publish.html
Caught you telling lies again.
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DCE
Molecular evolution and Michael Behe
Michael Behe, in his October 2005 testimony in support of Intelligent Design as science, confidently stated under oath that there is no research on molecular evolution published in scientific journals. Here are his own words as recorded on Page 20 of the court transcript (PDF) (italics mine):
Molecular evolution is not based on scientific authority. There is no publication in the scientific literature, in prestigious journals, speciality journals, or books that describes how molecular evolution of any real, complex, biochemical system either did occur or even might have occurred. There are assertions that such evolution occurred, but absolutely none are supported by pertinent experiments or calculations. Since no one knows molecular evolution by direct experience, and since there is no authority on which to base claims of knowledge, it can truly be said that the assertion of Darwinian molecular evolution is merely bluster.
It was given under oath must have sworn on the bible that what he was saying was true.
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DCE, PLEASE read around what your propaganda machine tells you.
The court case you refer to was the Dover trial and his evidence was proven wrong - by a Christian Judge. he lost DCE.
Behe writes for the creationist institute and does not publish his work through scientific, peer review. His intelligent Design stuff has been debunked both by science and by law.
Just read it, if you can get permission from your thought police.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District
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DCE
The evidence is quite clear that that Many evolutionists assume that ancient living things were simple but then were supposedly driven by natural selection to become more and more complex through the ages.
Recent studies have failed to find such a drive toward greater complexity. Dr.*Dan McShea, a paleobiologist, examined the fossilized backbones of various mammals; another study focused on mollusk fossils.
Neither study found any evidence of an evolutionary drive toward greater complexity. Nor did they find that greater complexity brought any survival advantage.
According to The New York Times, experts say that these findings will come as a surprise to many biologists used to thinking in terms of such trends.
Notes the Times: According to Dr.*McShea, the perception of drives toward complexity may be more a reflection of scientists desires to see some sort of progress in evolution rather than a reflection of any biological reality.
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paultnl
mammals and mollusks are already increadably complex so are not a good example to start with.
I found this from the opening of a biochemestry textbook that puts it in simple language.
I found this from the opening of a biochemestry textbook that puts it in simple language.
"By a process not entirely understood and in a time span that is difficult to comprehend, elements such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus combined, dispersed, and recombined to form a variety of molecules until a combination was achieved that was capable of replicating itself. With continued evolution and the formation of ever more complex molecules, the environment around some of these self-replicating molecules was enclosed by a membrane. This development gave these primordial molecules a significant advantage in that they could control to some extent their own environment. A form of life had evolved and a unit of space, the cell, had been established. With the passing of time a diversity of life evolved, and their chemistry and structures became more complex. Eventually, they were capable of extracting nutrients from the environment, chemically converting these nutrients to either sources of energy or to complex molecules, of controlling chemical processes they catalyzed, and of replicating themselves into other cells. The challenge of biochemical research is to unravel the chemical mechanisms behind the organized and controlled manner in which cells carry out their function."
Thomas Devlin of Jefferson University in Philadelphia first published by John Wiley & Sons in 1982
Thomas Devlin of Jefferson University in Philadelphia first published by John Wiley & Sons in 1982
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