Creation Or Evolution? Vote!

[no longer active 734]

I have a question: do you believe man has evolved or just animals?

[AlphaCentaurus 173]

Evolutionists, if they actually believe in the theory of evolution, believe that evolution is true for all living things, including bacteria, animals (Humans count as an animal, by the way), and plants.

[no longer active 734]

So how did the first cell get on the planet then if not creation?

[AlphaCentaurus 173]

Big Bang. That's for another discussion, though.

[atticusmas 155]

Honestly with all due respect, I believe anyone who pisses on evolution and doesn't look at the HARD EVIDENCE THAT IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU, is a moronic fool. I do not have the strength to argue with them, Evolution is. Real and true. How can you not believe in something that has hard, real, easily possible truth and then instead believe in something that is merely magic?

[no longer active 734]

Honestly with all due respect, I believe anyone who pisses on evolution and doesn't look at the HARD EVIDENCE THAT IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU, is a moronic fool. I do not have the strength to argue with them, Evolution is. Real and true. How can you not believe in something that has hard, real, easily possible truth and then instead believe in something that is merely magic?

I believe that is the point of his debate so please contribute something useful.

[Space 2335]

I've heard people argue about how unlikely it is the world is how it is now. How the chances of genetic mutation are so low it's impossible.

Look at the night sky. Yousee stars. Now imagine that infinitely bigger. That's the universe. Too large to comprehend. But in all that, there's trillions upon trillions of planets. Imagine if 1/10000000000 of those (less perhaps) are in the 'goldilock' zone. That is millions of chances to create life like us. The chances that this is impossible, evolution and such, is extremely low.

[PtahWithin 1320]

To clarify:

Evolution says nothing about the origin of life. Evolution posits that living things undergo descent with modification, and that all living things have a common ancestor.

It does not say how this ancestor came to be.

The Theory of Abiogenesis attempts to describe the origin of this ancestor. Not Evolution.

We are not discussing Abiogenesis here. So, any claims you have that Evolution is wrong because life could not have started on its own are wrong and meaningless. They are simply non-overlapping territories of explanation.

[James Undercroft 129]

My beliefs are... different. They cover a large range of subjects from a whole different range of sources, discussions and beliefs. Sometimes they contradict each other, sometimes they are not clear and sometimes they make no sense at all. But I do believe that my beliefs that I share with you here today may prove to create some interesting debate nonetheless. I am still growing, still learning, but what I do know for certain is this.

You can never truly know. You can gather all the evidence you wish, all the points and all the sources but you can never truly be 100% right. No matter what you do there is always that tiny tiny miniscule chance that you are, in fact, wrong.

Science is not proving that science over religion. Science is a gateway to alternative explanations of how the world works. Nothing in science is "true fact", science is an endless changing discussion. Finding out new theories, new ways, dynamically changing and never stopping. Much like the theory of evolution, science is evolving itself, changing as new values and beliefs come into play as society changes.

(I would just like to point out, my entire argument here today is based on the book: "Source Field Investigations." It contains a lot of... alternative stuff, I should put it. But the sheer amount of evidence that this book cites is unbelievable. Each chapter has 100+ sources, some more. The chapter about evolution is extremely wrong, but I will try to extract the key points so I don't go on for... too long.)

I shall start with a simple note. Space is full of freeze dried bacteria. In fact around 99.9% of all space dust is freeze dried bacteria.¹ Sir Fred Hoyle and Dr. Nalin Chandra Wickramasignhe explores the composition of galactic dust in the 1960s. They discovered that these dust grains had to be 70 percent hollow on the inside. Now here comes the shocker; They found out that freeze dried bacteria was also 70 percent hollow on the inside. Once they accounted for the fact that these dust granules could perhaps be living organisms. Albeit freeze-dried and mostly dead, bacteria and life all the same. If life is so spontaneous, so rare that it hardly ever forms, why is the universe so full of it? Life is everywhere just waiting to be created, all it really needs is the right location.

Take this quote from Wired Magazine.

"bacteria have proven freakishly durable. They've been recovered from Antarctic ice and revived after 10 million years in deep-freeze. Some Black Sea strains photosynthesize in near-darkness, while others thrive on nuclear radiation or infrared light. Bacteria have been found inside volcanoes and in sediments miles beneath the ocean floor.

To me life is not an accident. Life adapts and thrives, but not in the sense of the Darwinian theory of evolution nor in the sense of creationism. I don't believe that "aliens" in the sense that many think of them are the cause of our existence, yet I would not be so quick to deny their existence.

J. R. Norman, a zoologist from the British Museum of Natural History, said in 1975 that "the geological record has so far provided no evidence in the origin of the fishes." It then goes on to talk about how there is absolutely no evidence in the fossil record that any remarkable change from reptile to bird occurred. A professor Derek Ager, from the imperial college of London's Department of Geology wrote in 1976 that "it must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student ... have now been 'debunked.'" The fossil record itself doesn't hold up the Darwinian theory too well; it clearly and consistently shows us one type of creature and then suddenly a jump to the next. ²

Many scientists have begun to support theories against the Darwinian theory of evolution. For example Professor Louis Bonoure, Director of Research at the French National Centre of Scientific Resesarch, said, "Evolutionism is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless.²

¹http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=455

²http://web.archive.org/web/20011126101316/http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/4871/images/quotes.html

My argument here is completely unfinished, but I wish- no I challenge people to prove me wrong. Tell me your arguments and opinions which conflict with these initial beliefs of mine.

I will add to this when it is not so late at night and I find myself with bounds of free time. I did enjoy having to research all of this information up again ^_^ Have a good day/night peoples, and have fun!

[PtahWithin 1320]

On knowledge:

Of course you cannot be a hundred percent certain about anything. But that does not matter. What matters is what we observe in reality, whether or not it is actually there.

On source 1,

If the bacteria are dead, how is it life?

As for the second point in this paragraph. Maybe life isn't so rare as was thought? I do not know how valid this bacteria in space idea is. However, if it is true, it would change our perception of how rare life is in the universe. So you don't need to jump through the fourth wall and say that something must have put the bacteria there (AKA God).

On source 2,

This is a very good example of quotemining. I suggest you read the quote again, in-context, here. Your other mentions of some 'controversy' between scientists about evolution is a logical fallacy, Argument from Authority. Talking of a handful of scientists denying evolution is not a good way to disprove it.

On your fossils point. They are not discrete jumps. Each happened millions if not hundreds of millions of years between each other. I hardly call that a 'sudden jump'.

[James Undercroft 129]

Just before I begin I would like to point out I mean no offence

On knowledge:

Of course you cannot be a hundred percent certain about anything. But that does not matter. What matters is what we observe in reality, whether or not it is actually there.

Things may be perceived to be "actually there" and in fact not be. There are numerous theories about everything in life which have not been explored in depth because they are written off as "pseudo-science" and other things; simply because people do not wish to explore those pathways.

Take for example matter. With our current technology we see things in one way, but as we advance and develop we may see things in completely new lights. We'd look back, just as we look back on things such as "The World is Flat" now and think: "How ignorant we were."

People assume that with what we have now, we can make a theory and state that it is pretty much fact without ever taking into consideration what the future may hold. People seem to think that because of the so called "Evidence" which supports evolution right now seems to be so concrete that evolution is the theory that is going to be developed and proven until it becomes fact. This is getting a little off topic here, so I shall retract to the main point.

On source 1,

If the bacteria are dead, how is it life?

As for the second point in this paragraph. Maybe life isn't so rare as was thought? I do not know how valid this bacteria in space idea is. However, if it is true, it would change our perception of how rare life is in the universe. So you don't need to jump through the fourth wall and say that something must have put the bacteria there (AKA God).

I never said anything about any entity placing any bacteria anywhere. I have put forth a half-developed argument, one which I did intend to come back to later.

Perhaps you would read that entire article yourself and find out? These are two very accomplished and respected scientists, they know their stuff.

On source 2,

This is a very good example of quote mining. I suggest you read the quote again, in-context, here. Your other mentions of some 'controversy' between scientists about evolution is a logical fallacy, Argument from Authority. Talking of a handful of scientists denying evolution is not a good way to disprove it.

The reason for these quotes as not to disprove evolution at all, but to display that things are not as concrete as they seem. The point of this was to show you that respected scientists, HEADS OF DEPARTMENTS in some cases believe that evolution itself is a fallacy that should be discontinued. It was a reminder that evolution is indeed merely a theory that is still debated.

On your fossils point. They are not discrete jumps. Each happened millions if not hundreds of millions of years between each other. I hardly call that a 'sudden jump'.

I would argue with you on this point. Have you any evidence to back your claim that these happened slowly over millions of years and not in a "sudden jump".

I'll show you what I mean.

Extinction as was discovered by DAVID M. RAUP AND J. JOHN SEPKOSKI, JR. follows a 26 million year pattern. At each of the peaks around the 26 million year mark a mass extinction occurs. At equal points in time we see masses amount of species just disappear off the planet, and more take their place. There was no switch over from these other species, it just happened on a planetary scale.¹

Later on Dr. Richard A. Muller, a physics professor at the University of California, Berkely, and his graduate student Robert Rohde discovered another cycle of evolution. They expanded the search to some 542 million years ago, and found that every 62 million years more or less all life on earth went through a relatively spontaneous upgrading. Suddenly all life on earth at these points drastically changed into more evolved forms, the fossil record shows this.²

It has also been proven that the galaxy follows a 62-64 million year cycle, see-sawing as it moves through space. When the galaxy faces the Virgo cluster, our section of the galaxy received much more charged particles and cosmic rays, this is the time when these mass extinctions occurs.³

¹http://www.pnas.org/content/81/3/801.full.pdf

²http://muller.lbl.gov/papers/Rohde-Muller-Nature.pdf

³http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070420-extinctions.html

[OSD 10]

Welp, since I'm stuck on RP/VA/Event proposal, I might as well wade into this mess again.

Like most logical people, I'm on the side of evolution. But I won't get into the science just yet, hell, I'll even save that for last!

Problem 1) creationist maintains the bible is infallible and inerrant, that the christian god is the creator of all. Well, the very existence of the chinese people and their culture shows that the bible is merely a book of historic fiction with creation mythos thrown in.

The great flood involving Noah and his ark. The bible says god was displeased with his creations, and that he flooded the world to start anew. Creationists peg this flood to ~second millennium b.c.e, (although some have pointed to the seventh, it doesn't matter in either case). First, let's get some agreed upon facts out.

1) The completed bible was written around 1 b.c.e

2) The oral bible (old testament) can be pegged at between 1400-1000 b.c.e

3) The bible had several revisions before becoming the first "completed edition"

No objections with this, correct?

Here comes the fun part, specifically using the chinese since their records are the most intact outside the influence of the middle east.

1) Sima Qian, a notable historian of Han, collected the folklores and oral traditions of the then unified land and compiled it into a book called the Shiji around 1 b.c.e

2) Chinese mythos and oral traditions can be traced to 12000-10000 b.c.e (this alone would already invalidate the young earth creationist bullcrap, but lets assume otherwise)

3) The exploits of Yu the Great (where monuments dedicated to him still stands), conqueror of floods, were well known even before the Shiji, which took place in the second millennium b.c.e.

4) This one will take a little story telling, so bear with me. In the chinese mythos, the age of the world since the being of the beginning came to be was over 300 million years. The jade emperor eventually took over as the successor around 12,000 b.c.e. as the ruler of the three planes. During his reign, a great demon, intending to destroy all of creation, trained for millenniums before attacking the heavenly kingom. As the two side fought, famine and floods were destroying the plane of men. Without the direct help of heaven, the men worked together to control and survive the floodings until the jade emperor finally managed to defeat the demon.

"What does this have to do with the bible?!"

Well, you see, we just need to follow the geological record and the age of the writings! In both the bible and chinese records, the time line for the floods matches each other as well as the geological record identified from sediment samples.

If the christian god flooded the world to start anew with Noah in the second millennium b.c.e Yu the Great must have been an immortal, a god or the greatest con artist in history. He was credited with successfully controlled the floods during his reign, his kingdom was even thriving for that matter. The flooding of the world would've surely killed off the chinese as well as all other cultures (the proto-mongols must have snuck onto Noah's ark with the yaks!), the fact that they survived and thrived means that the bible was retelling a great event with a lot of embellishment to make it a best seller. Unless of course, the chinese were really imaginary lying devils, how dare they try to fool us by pretending to be mortals!

If the biblical flood happened in the seventh millennium, how did the "river people" survive to leave an oral tradition of great floods prior to Yu as well as the mythos? Maybe the christian god was really the great devil that tried to destroy all of creation and the jade emperor had to put down to save the chinese. *dun dun dun*

TL;DR - The chinese survived the supposed flood that destroyed the world, contradictory to the christian theology that the world was start anew with Noah and his ark.

Problem 2) creationism is merely another attempt in a longstanding tradition to extol the christian theology

With so many creation mythos around the planet, the creationists are somehow convinced that they (and their bible) are right and everyone else is wrong. With the same reasoning, every non-christian could claim that the christians are liars and that their version is false. I would sooner believe the hindu creation myth than to believe in something that defies reason and logic which was brutally forced onto others. But let's skip that since it would be a logical fallacy at the level of some of the most prominent creationists out there at this time. Instead, let's look at the history of christian theology and how it worked tirelessly to undermine the work of men to preserve their influence. I'd dare say this would qualifies as ad hominem on a massive scale!

Let us recall the christian flat earth proponents. For those not familiar with their history, they, with the support of the church, harassed, prosecuted and muffled the voice of reason and empirical science. This can be seen in the writing of Lactantius (one of the many non-scientific early christians), which demeans his comtemporary scholars and past great philosophers as such as Pythagoras, Parmenides, Eratosthenes, etc... for proposing and maintaining that the earth was round. After centuries of trying to destroy the spherical world model, the christian establishment eventually lost after the translation of the works of Ptolemy.

This did not stop them from trying to stomp out additional works that would further undermine the christian theology as they (the christian authorities, being the church and others) worked tireless to eradicate the emerging model of heliocentrism. Galileo, Copernicus and many others astronomers were imprisoned, exiled, excommunicated, sometime even executed for their works. The geocentralists (who has the support of some scriptures) were afraid of losing further influence by having the christian theology proven wrong again, this time by the heliocentralists (who has the support of massive amount of meticulous observations and calculations). It took two centuries before heliocentrism took hold as the accepted model before modern science caused it to become obsolete.

To note, many of the heliocentralists and later spherical world proponents were christians. However, they would rather follow the path of reason and logic instead of the increasingly questionable words of some thin book and those who holds it as the absolute truth. In addition, the main christian body would later adopt the newer models and claims it as their own.

Defeated, but never deterred, for they have the scriptures to support them so they must be right, the theologians went on to suppress the next item that would diminish their theology, the natural sciences. I'd assume everyone would know about the details, so I won't go into how creationists

tried to exert their influence which caused the reformation, baconism and darwism.

TL;DR - Christian theologians have a history of being proven wrong for centuries as they rely on scriptures instead of actual evidence-based work. Additionally, they have proven to act with malicious intents to anyone who attempted to undermine their theology and then turn around and claim the work as theirs when change is inevitable.

Problem 3) Modern creationists are not interested in science, only theology

Most modern christian creationist does not use empirical data to support their views yet claim they are "scientific" with highly selective "proof" (science use evidence, gotta love their proof though!) and logical fallacies to support their cases. They are more interested in garnering media spotlight as opposed to actual discussion and research. The few that did follow the scientific method and presented their research (from the fossil record) in a peer-review-able

which hypothesized the old-earth creationist theory (with alternative hypothesis) were criticized by the majority of creationists of being traitors and blasphemers (that's right folks, if you do science properly, you can't be a christian according to these folks). The scientific community was lukewarm to the research, but it was acceptable as a proposed theory since it uses readily agreed upon data, just different interpretation of it.

TL;DR - Most modern creationists don't care for science, they believe they are correct, therefore they must be correct. The few actual creationist scientists that effectively used the fossil record as evidence to support the idea of creationism have been effective shot down by the other creationists.

Problem 4) Definition of Macro-Micro evolution.

The two terms were coined by some russian scientists back in the early 20th century. They were not common terms often used within the scientific community as they were simply a difference of time scale, not a difference of mechanism. It was not until "modern" creationists revive the terms in order to move the burden of proof (well, for science, it's more like evidence, it isn't math :3) required beyond the currently available data. As such, creationists would demand proof of macro-evolution knowing that it was outside the realm of contemporary research and evidence. Fortunately, new data and research on speciation on dogs, foxes and wolves have pointed to the possibility of macro evolution in the works as a result of domestication. Over the millenniums, new "breed" of dogs appeared everything around the world. Although it would be argued that domestication caused sympatric speciation as a result of artificial selection, it does not change the facts that the developmental evolution (digestive system, skeletal structure, cognitive behaviour, hair pigmentation and density as a result of lack adrenal stimulant, etc..) of dogs have change significantly even between closely related relatives. Additionally, many crossbreeds of dogs have sterile offspring which effectively prevent the breeds from ever exchanging their genetic pool again, thus meeting the requirement of a new species.

TL;DR The only difference between macro and micro evolution is just a scale of time. Creationists revived an invented their own meaning in order to push the the available evidence just beyond the requirement of acceptance. But research is slowly catching up into providing the evidence they asked for from research. Different breeds of dogs today have significant different physical appearance, mental capacity and behaviour that can't have viable offspring between certain breeds.

Edit: The fossil record can be used both way as evidence of evolution and creationism (even with evolution as part of creationism by certain hebrew, christian and islam sects and many other culture's mythos). So it is kind of pointless to use it at this point since we still need more data concerning it. Additionally, certain christian theologians claim the fossil record is really god's prank or they were made some blasphemers. I'll keep it away from the discussion somewhat :3

[no longer active 734]

In the Bible it says that Noah and his descendants then repopulated the earth. As his sons could have eventually gotten to China then renamed Noah as the Chinese dude who stopped the flood. You say the Bible is a COMPLTELY false document? Why then has NOTHING been proven wrong that was in the Bible?

[0000 175]

Evolution has been proved, but does not mean that God didn't create the Earth. It could very well mean the God created the Earth, humans, and animals, and they evolved to higher states. Probably even humans. Evolution makes scientific sense. The best mutations (the ones that make it easier to live) will allow those animals to reproduce more and have a larger population of evolved animals.

So religion and science can both work in this case, in my opinion.

TLDR: God ---> Humans + Animals ----> Evolution ----> Genetically related yet modified Humans and Animals = Science + Religion both plausible at the same time

But ultimately...

[no longer active 734]

I agree wih Alkenaar. Both answers could be true.