RTB: Serious Problems with Evolution

[Audie]

OK, Audie, then quite arguing evolution as if it makes some statement about God's existence or the truth of the Bible.

Now, I have come under criticism for complaining about people making things up. How should I better express it? Saying things based on imagination and not facts is what, exactly?

I never have, never will done what you tell me to stop doing. Just quit saying that I do, ok???

And also quit using YEC interpretations of Scripture to dismiss the Bible scientifically - you've made a gazillion

Never have, never will. So quit making up things about me. I will go with the word gazillion tho, as it is an imaginary number.

What I would advise Audie is to quit throwing out cheap dismissals of the huge and insurmountable issues above

Ive not done that, nor has any insurmountable obstacle to evolution been identified.

. It takes off the scale faith to believe these many things are possible without an eternal presence of beyond human understanding and of power untold

The "takes more faith" line is used so much, its like a mantra. I suppose those who say it may actually mean it. Almost as if "faith" is a bad word. Curious.

Christians are proud of their faith, and do of course need a lot.

Amazing faith is needed to concoct the belief that some philosophy x
an old book allow someone access to the deepest secrets of the universe, and to "know" that there is this "eternal presence". I've no such faith or conceit. I dont mind saying that I dont know, that my mind is inadequate for things that are, as you rightly put it, "beyond human understanding", as much as you may then claim to understand it.

" So you are wasting your time debating evolution with Audie or anyone else - as it proves not one thing about God, even IF it were true or provable

Again this rather ridiculous strawman about "proving one thing about God". THis is just your fantasy, of which I hope you will soon disabuse yourself.

As there is considerable data to work with showing that evolution does in fact explain the diversity of life as we know it, and nobody has ever come up with data point one that
ToE is in any way false, it takes fatih shading off into stubbornly deliberate ignorance and denial
to say it is not true. "Provable" of course, is something that does not apply to theory-no more
than theory applies to disproof of god.

[crochet1949]

There IS diversity amongst dogs, cats, people, fish -- but None of those listed will Ever develop into anything But what they Are. People ARE obviously different from everything else ever created. People have been given dominion over the animal world as per Genesis.

Okay -- so there Are people -- very intelligent people -- who Do have Faith In God And the fact that He Did Indeed create this wonderful world and every animal and person in it. Life takes place one generation at a time through animals who mate with like kinds and People who mate one generation at a time. So Where did the first two people come From? Check out Genesis. The book Of beginnings.

[abelcainsbrother]

Hi ACB! How are you with plate tectonics? The trouble with creating kiwis with lots of carnivores about is that they would have become extinct very soon. However, after New Zealand had separated from Antarctica, without any mammals, there was a much better chance that a flightless bird would survive. This happened about 85 million years ago. So were kiwis created spontaneously 85 million years ago, or is becoming a small furry flightless burrowing creature just "normal variation" for a bird? For that matter, you may like to consider any number of island creatures for whom a mainland existence would have resulted in rapid extinction. Do you think God waited until these islands appeared and then created special species just for them? Or are all endemic species just "normal variations" of other species? What about the dodo? Madagascar separated from India about 88 million years ago. Were dodos created then, or was the dodo, like the kiwi, just "normal variation"?

Hi hughfarey, it's been awhile I think since you were here last. I think it comes down to how we look at the evidence. I don't think we should look at the evidence from an evolution viewpoint first off based on the evidence used for evolution.Yet I know you do. I look at the evidence from a different viewpoint and I do not believe all things have gone on continually since the beginning of creation like you do because of evolution 2nd Peter 3:4. It really comes down to how we look at the evidence because to me any life living 85 million years ago would be extinct now and any life in this world would have been created or made 6-10,000 years ago.It comes down to how we look at the evidence and I see no reason to look at it from an evolution viewpoint based on what I have explained about evolution and how weak the evidence for it is. But I know you will since you accept evolution.I think it distorts what the evidence is telling us if we look at the evidence from an evolution view point when we still don't even know if life evolves.

[hughfarey]

Hi Audie.
"Kiwis will never to be able to mate with badgers (whose ecological niche they seem mostly to have occupied)." Yes, I did mean that, but perhaps didn't express myself clearly; not that kiwis replaced badgers - there being no mammals in New Zealand to replace - but that they currently occupy an ecological niche similar to that occupied by badgers in other countries, largish nocturnal ground-dwelling omnivores.

Cotchet, there is indeed diversity among animals, brought about by evolution. All of it is in a continuous state of change - that's what evolution is - such that in another ten million years or so, few of the dominant species on the earth then, if it still exists, will resemble what is on the earth today, although it is not impossible that marine organisms, whose habitat has remained remarkably constant over the last ten million years, may not have the same evolutionary pressure to evolve as terrestrial organisms.

People are indeed different from everything else ever created, but then, so are kiwis, and badgers, and blue whales, and elephants, and puffins, and so on, and so on...

ACB, I hope I do not look at any evidence from this or that viewpoint; I expect the evidence to direct me, not the other way round. If I had any evidence that all living things were created 6-10000 years ago, it might direct me to your point of view, but I don't.

[abelcainsbrother]

Hi Audie.
"Kiwis will never to be able to mate with badgers (whose ecological niche they seem mostly to have occupied)." Yes, I did mean that, but perhaps didn't express myself clearly; not that kiwis replaced badgers - there being no mammals in New Zealand to replace - but that they currently occupy an ecological niche similar to that occupied by badgers in other countries, largish nocturnal ground-dwelling omnivores.

Cotchet, there is indeed diversity among animals, brought about by evolution. All of it is in a continuous state of change - that's what evolution is - such that in another ten million years or so, few of the dominant species on the earth then, if it still exists, will resemble what is on the earth today, although it is not impossible that marine organisms, whose habitat has remained remarkably constant over the last ten million years, may not have the same evolutionary pressure to evolve as terrestrial organisms.

People are indeed different from everything else ever created, but then, so are kiwis, and badgers, and blue whales, and elephants, and puffins, and so on, and so on...

ACB, I hope I do not look at any evidence from this or that viewpoint; I expect the evidence to direct me, not the other way round. If I had any evidence that all living things were created 6-10000 years ago, it might direct me to your point of view, but I don't.

I understand but keep in mind you have no evidence that demonstrates life evolves either,yet believe it and look at the evidence from that perspective. So yeah,like I said it comes down to how we look at the evidence.As long as you accept evolution then you'll continue to look at the evidence that way. I don't.We are looking at pretty much the same evidence in and on this earth but looking at it from different perspectives and coming to different conclusions about what the evidence is telling us.

[hughfarey]

I think I spot a more fundamental difference between us than belief or not in evolution, which is what we do with evidence. You seem to be suggesting that looking at evidence from this or that perspective will enable a correct interpretation, when in fact all it is likely to do is to strengthen the perspective from which you started. I think it best to look at evidence with no perspective at all, and hope that a careful study of it will lead towards a correct interpretation. So I hope I do not look at evidence from an evolutionist perspective, it is the evidence that leads me towards an evolutionary conclusion. You, on the other hand, do not appear to require any any evidence at all, as your perspective derives from a completely different philosophical paradigm, wouldn't you say?

[Audie]

I think I spot a more fundamental difference between us than belief or not in evolution, which is what we do with evidence. You seem to be suggesting that looking at evidence from this or that perspective will enable a correct interpretation, when in fact all it is likely to do is to strengthen the perspective from which you started. I think it best to look at evidence with no perspective at all, and hope that a careful study of it will lead towards a correct interpretation. So I hope I do not look at evidence from an evolutionist perspective, it is the evidence that leads me towards an evolutionary conclusion. You, on the other hand, do not appear to require any any evidence at all, as your perspective derives from a completely different philosophical paradigm, wouldn't you say?

We often see this "same evidence, different interpretation" thing, which is used sort of like a "get out of jail free" card in Monopoly.

Among the first things to notice is you very seldom-I never have- run across a creationist who actually know much of anything about ToE. So really, they do not remotely have "the same evidence". Usually they are loaded up with
misrepresentations, half truths etc from creationist sites.

The core tho of why "SEDI" is dumb, is that an interpretation that is not consistent with all known evidence is, well, wrong.

ToE has been very successful at meeting every challenge. Six day poof and gap are simply not consistent with the data.

[Audie]

There IS diversity amongst dogs, cats, people, fish -- but None of those listed will Ever develop into anything But what they Are.

Quite an assertion-what is the basis?

[Audie]

Hi Audie.
"Kiwis will never to be able to mate with badgers (whose ecological niche they seem mostly to have occupied)." 't.

Oh, Im just being a bit technical I guess. Badgers are powerful burrowing carnivores, that can and do kill sizeable prey.

A kiwi is restricted to small organisms that it can swallow whole.

[abelcainsbrother]

I think I spot a more fundamental difference between us than belief or not in evolution, which is what we do with evidence. You seem to be suggesting that looking at evidence from this or that perspective will enable a correct interpretation, when in fact all it is likely to do is to strengthen the perspective from which you started. I think it best to look at evidence with no perspective at all, and hope that a careful study of it will lead towards a correct interpretation. So I hope I do not look at evidence from an evolutionist perspective, it is the evidence that leads me towards an evolutionary conclusion. You, on the other hand, do not appear to require any any evidence at all, as your perspective derives from a completely different philosophical paradigm, wouldn't you say?

It would be good if we could do that - look at it from no perspective and hope that careful study will lead to a correct interpretation. The thing that usually prevents this is that our minds have been so saturated with evolution and especially if we accept it and have a lot of knowledge about it. We tend to look at the evidence from that perspective and it distorts it to me.I think that in order to look at the evidence more clearly we need to remove from our mind as much about evolution we know about and not look at the evidence from this perspective.

I do require evidence but I have not presented any because this is about evolution and I have rejected evolution based on the evidence that I have researched and learned about and have accepted another theory instead. I'm not sure evolutionists and you yourself can do this.And so I think we need to find out in this thread what causes people to accept evolution based on the evidence behind it and then choose to look at the evidence in and on the earth from this perspective. No offense to anybody who accepts evolution but I don't think we should look at the evidence from an evolution perspective.From my perspective it seems weird to look at the evidence from an evolution perspective when we don't even know if life evolves.Or am I wrong about that and we do need to and do have evidence? I don't think we could accept both.

[hughfarey]

"our minds have been so saturated with evolution". Well, you speak for yourself. My mind was certainly not saturated with evolution before I started investigating the diversity of organisms. Quite the reverse; I was brought up in the rather conservative Catholic primary school tradition of the 1950s.
"we need to remove from our mind as much about evolution we know about and not look at the evidence from this perspective". Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. But I find, having done that, that evolution explains the evidence better than spontaneous creation of all living things between 6-10000 years ago.
"No offence to anybody who accepts evolution". Well, that's good news. And in return, no offence to creationists either!

[abelcainsbrother]

Then there is no reason for me to try to get you to look at the evidence from a different perspective because you think looking at the evidence from an evolution perspective makes the most sense compared to creationists.But it seems you are saying evolution makes the most sense rather than spontaneous creation of all living things 6-10,000 years ago which may be true but that is not how I'm looking at the evidence.

The way I'm looking at the evidence makes more sense than both of them views both evolution and a spontaneous creation of all living things 6-10,000 years ago.But as long as you choose to accept evolution when you don't even know if life evolves and choose to look at the evidence that way,it might make more sense than a spontaneous creation 6-10,000 years ago but not the way I'm looking at the evidence.I choose not to look at the evidence from an evolution perspective because we don't even know if life evolves,so I can't look at it from that perspective.

I look at the evidence from the perspective that life does not evolve and there was a former world that had life in it just like this world we now live in does but when the former world perished ALL the life that was alive at the time died and there was no life at all until God made this world and created and made the life for this world.Regardless of what evolutionists say who push this evolution myth with no evidence to show life evolves there is no way the life in the former world is related to the life in this world. And again all things have not gone on continually since the beginning of the creation 2nd Peter 3:4 like evolutionists think because of evolution and the hominids are not our fathers.

[hughfarey]

Then there is no reason for me to try to get you to look at the evidence from a different perspective because you think looking at the evidence from an evolution perspective makes the most sense compared to creationists.

No, no, you miss the point. I do not look at evidence from any perspective; I just look at it and see where it leads me. If you have any confidence in your belief you would be able to state the evidence which leads you to a spontaneous creation event a few thousand years ago. I have not seen such evidence myself, which may be why I have not been led in that direction.

The way I'm looking at the evidence makes more sense than both of them views both evolution and a spontaneous creation of all living things 6-10,000 years ago.

Then may I humbly suggest that you don't look at any evidence in any particular "way", just look at it it.

I choose not to look at the evidence from an evolution perspective because we don't even know if life evolves,so I can't look at it from that perspective.

As I say, don't look at it from any perspective, just take it as it is.

I look at the evidence from the perspective that life does not evolve and there was a former world that had life in it just like this world we now live in does but when the former world perished ALL the life that was alive at the time died and there was no life at all until God made this world and created and made the life for this world.

I don't look at evidence from any perspective, but such evidence as I have studied does not lead me to the same conclusions as you. You seem to imply that you had already formed your belief before you looked at any evidence, so were naturally inclined to try to fit it to a preconceived idea.

There is no way the life in the former world is related to the life in this world.

So you believe, and you have every right to. However I have not seen any evidence that indicates such a scenario, quite the reverse, so I hope you'll excuse me for being led down a different path.

[abelcainsbrother]

Then there is no reason for me to try to get you to look at the evidence from a different perspective because you think looking at the evidence from an evolution perspective makes the most sense compared to creationists.

No, no, you miss the point. I do not look at evidence from any perspective; I just look at it and see where it leads me. If you have any confidence in your belief you would be able to state the evidence which leads you to a spontaneous creation event a few thousand years ago. I have not seen such evidence myself, which may be why I have not been led in that direction.

The way I'm looking at the evidence makes more sense than both of them views both evolution and a spontaneous creation of all living things 6-10,000 years ago.

Then may I humbly suggest that you don't look at any evidence in any particular "way", just look at it it.

I choose not to look at the evidence from an evolution perspective because we don't even know if life evolves,so I can't look at it from that perspective.

As I say, don't look at it from any perspective, just take it as it is.

I look at the evidence from the perspective that life does not evolve and there was a former world that had life in it just like this world we now live in does but when the former world perished ALL the life that was alive at the time died and there was no life at all until God made this world and created and made the life for this world.

I don't look at evidence from any perspective, but such evidence as I have studied does not lead me to the same conclusions as you. You seem to imply that you had already formed your belief before you looked at any evidence, so were naturally inclined to try to fit it to a preconceived idea.

There is no way the life in the former world is related to the life in this world.

So you believe, and you have every right to. However I have not seen any evidence that indicates such a scenario, quite the reverse, so I hope you'll excuse me for being led down a different path.

If you accept evolution then you do look at the evidence from this perspective and like I said before,if you do? It distorts what the evidence shows us.As long as you accept evolution you will not look at the evidence like I do from a former world that perished perspective,or a lost world because you think life evolves and so you will think the extinct life in the earth evolved into the life we see now on the earth and that life has always survived extinction events so that it can evolve over billions of years.

Thinking like this distorts the view and you cannot see that we have evidence that a former world full of life perished. I mean we see the kinds of life that lived in this former world when we examine the fossils but you look at the fossils as if life evolves with no evidence after 150 years of evolution science and so you cannot see that we have a lost world that has been overlooked because of this belief life evolves.

If you accept evolution then you should know all about the evidence in and on this earth,I mean it has been used as evidence in evolution science. So no need to act like or imply you don't know about it. Just look at it from a former world a lost world that perished perspective instead but I don't think you can because you believe life evolves and so look at the evidence from that perspective. It is a better theory based on the evidence to believe a former world different than this world perished instead of looking at the evidence as though it confirms evolution especially when scientists have produced no evidence that demonstrates life evolves.

I know those who accept evolution believe it does and they look at the evidence as if it does but there is no evidence that demonstrates life evolves.And so to look at the evidence from this perspective distorts what the evidence is telling us. I'm not just refuting evolution but offering a more believable theory than the theory of evolution based on pretty much the same evidence but I cannot make you change your mind.

[hughfarey]

You're still going on, and on, about perspective, which suggests that you think that opinions or beliefs come before evidence rather than the other way round. Perhaps your own opinions reflect that philosophy; but you ought to understand that that is not the philosophy of others. I can look at a pile of fossils, or rock strata, or printouts of DNA bases, or whatever, and simply ask myself, how do all these things relate? What do they tell me? Your own posts suggest that you do not do that - you begin with a 'perspective', and then fit the evidence to it. That's not scientific.

If I'm wrong, and we both look at the same evidence in the same way, but come to different conclusions, then that's fine; we must agree to differ, and could discuss the reasons why, but that's not the way I read your posts.