Upheavals in the Third Millenium BCE

[Minimalist]

No one observed "creation" either.

Most crimes are solved by forensics or circumstantial evidence. Eye-witnesses are notoriously unreliable.

[Charlie Hatchett]

No one observed "creation" either.

True, though we can use the scientific principle of Inference to Best Explanation. We see highly complex mechanisms in this world all the time, and we automatically know that intelligence was involved in their creation.
We don't see a F-22 Raptor hauling ass across the sky and think, wow, what a cool, natural occurrence. When it comes to life, though, many abandon this line of reasoning. Why?

[Minimalist]

Because of the Theory of Evolution.


If you could come up with a theory for creating an F-22 I would be glad to look into it!

[Charlie Hatchett]

Because of the Theory of Evolution.

Right, because of the Theory of Evolution. We forego normal reasoning when it comes to life because of ToE.
Do you honestly think that matter randomly interacting with other matter could result in a F-22?




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Raptor

[Minimalist]

No but single cell organisms growing into multi-cell organisms over 3.8 billion years is not such a stretch.

When last I looked the F-22 was a machine. Oddly, so was the Sopwith Camel and there is an developmental trail from one to the other.

Someday someone will invent an F-23 providing we don't get one of those "if god had wanted man to fly he would have given him wings" types running things.

[Forum Monk]

Because of the Theory of Evolution.

Right, because of the Theory of Evolution. We forego normal reasoning when it comes to life because of ToE.
Do you honestly think that matter randomly interacting with other matter could result in a F-22?

If the piper cub"needed" to be supersonic and stealthy eventually it will be. That is the principle of selection pressure as applied to living things. Evolution theory as good as it, fails to explain two basic concepts: biogenesis (life from non-life) and the ascent of species (i.e. lower life forms becoming high life forms).

[Charlie Hatchett]

No but single cell organisms growing into multi-cell organisms over 3.8 billion years is not such a stretch.

I have a hard time buying that. And how do we get to that single cell organism to begin with?

It's all too organized and all too information bearing to be randomly thrown together, imo.

[Minimalist]

And here we disagree....because the notion of an invisible-man-in-the-sky doing it is a lot more than I can stomach.

[Charlie Hatchett]

If the piper cub"needed" to be supersonic and stealthy eventually it will be.

Right. Good analogy.

[Charlie Hatchett]

And here we disagree....because the notion of an invisible-man-in-the-sky doing it is a lot more than I can stomach.

All right then, just call it aliens, or some super intellect. I have a lot easier time buying that than matter randomly organizing itself into highly complex systems...It's just not what we see in our everyday observations.

[Minimalist]

Because of the Theory of Evolution.

Right, because of the Theory of Evolution. We forego normal reasoning when it comes to life because of ToE.
Do you honestly think that matter randomly interacting with other matter could result in a F-22?

If the piper cub"needed" to be supersonic and stealthy eventually it will be. That is the principle of selection pressure as applied to living things. Evolution theory as good as it, fails to explain two basic concepts: biogenesis (life from non-life) and the ascent of species (i.e. lower life forms becoming high life forms).

They disagree:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articl ... =3&catID=2

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.

The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.

Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.

Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species.

Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved.

The willingness of creationists to lie about the science of evolution is one of the major things that makes me doubt their motives.

[Minimalist]

And here we disagree....because the notion of an invisible-man-in-the-sky doing it is a lot more than I can stomach.

All right then, just call it aliens, or some super intellect. I have a lot easier time buying that than matter randomly organizing itself into highly complex systems...It's just not what we see in our everyday observations.

Same citation as above:

8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.

Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.

[Charlie Hatchett]

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.

The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.

Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

Let's take a chunk at a time:

The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young

Who are these biochemists? References?

Man can't even create a self-replicating molecule, but somehow random chance did?

Hint...hint??

...Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets...

Could have??

...could have formed and organized ...

May solve??

...may solve the problem...

Again, where are the observations? References are much appreciated.

[Charlie Hatchett]

8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.

Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.

You have to have something to act on. See response to #7.

...natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times...

..


Observable example?

[Minimalist]

You might read the whole article and click on the link at the end.