Canadians divided over creation and evolution

[Chuck U. Farlie]

For all of the creationists lurking around here... here is a good serious on youtube that easily debunks a lot of ID's top supporters/propagators: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=AC3481305829426D

[GostHacked]

WHOA! Did I read that Antony Flew article right????

Albert Einstein.....a deist, too?

Irrelevant since Einstein studied other aspects of science. Nothing to do with the evolution.

[benny]

I'm sure, so far as the kneejerk revulsion that some have to being related to monkeys, that maybe hysteria comes into play, but for the most part, it's simply a case of Biblioatry-gone-wild, where the Bible is held up as some sort of science text, and any scientific discipline that runs counter to any particular literalistic interpretation is wrong, or worse, an attempt to undermine the interpreter's brand of Christianity.

Here is why I think it is important to understand that the expression "literalistic interpretation" is an oxymoron: In advance of all the monsters that science can create by playing with the four-letter alphabet of the genetic code, some religious people come to believe it is a good direction to give to the world of being able to stick to a specific order (combination) of an alphabetic code.

Edited May 18, 2009 by benny

[WIP]

Now just hold on here a minute. Eugenics didn't start with evolution, and some of the chief advocates were not biologists at all. This has been a long-standing attempt to undermine evolution by claiming its adherents were Social Darwinists and the like, when in fact, some of the major adherents were Christians, and it was quite popular in the American South, where it merged nicely with older ideas of racial purity.

I'm surprised that eugenics and social darwinism weren't played earlier, since they are major themes on creationist blogs.

I had always associated eugenics with the Nazis, and it was a big surprise to me when I learned about this subject while studying the topic during the last evolution debate, that America had started the eugenics movement and employed it for decades before after the Nazis had come and gone. And, like you said, fundamentalists and white supremacists, who otherwise rejected evolution, were big fans of eugenics and the idea that blacks were descendants of an inferior race.

[benny]

I'm surprised that eugenics and social darwinism weren't played earlier, since they are major themes on creationist blogs.

I had always associated eugenics with the Nazis, and it was a big surprise to me when I learned about this subject while studying the topic during the last evolution debate, that America had started the eugenics movement and employed it for decades before after the Nazis had come and gone. And, like you said, fundamentalists and white supremacists, who otherwise rejected evolution, were big fans of eugenics and the idea that blacks were descendants of an inferior race.

Whatever genetic manipulations humans do on their own genetic makeup, they will end up face-to-face with not at all something objective but with something purely subjective.

[GostHacked]

For all of the creationists lurking around here... here is a good serious on youtube that easily debunks a lot of ID's top supporters/propagators: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=AC3481305829426D

I tried that approach in another thread as well. I even posted quality vids that show the difference of ID and science. But there are people who cannot subjectively or objectively see the difference between the two.

[ToadBrother]

Whatever genetic manipulations humans do on their own genetic makeup, they will end up face-to-face with not at all something objective but with something purely subjective.

I think that's absurd. If we could, for instance, find a way to fix a gene that, say, reduced the likelihood of breast cancer, then I don't think that's subjective at all.

It's one thing if you're trying to make blond haired blue eyed Aryans like Hitler did. You're absolutely right in that case, the "superiority" is completely subjective, but finding gene therapies that could eliminate a number of rather awful genetic disorders seems to me to be no different than developing a vaccine to kill smallpox.

[benny]

I tried that approach in another thread as well. I even posted quality vids that show the difference of ID and science. But there are people who cannot subjectively or objectively see the difference between the two.

I think that if you go to the extreme of what differentiates fundamental science and applied science, you will find that ID can be called science.

[benny]

I think that's absurd. If we could, for instance, find a way to fix a gene that, say, reduced the likelihood of breast cancer, then I don't think that's subjective at all.

It's one thing if you're trying to make blond haired blue eyed Aryans like Hitler did. You're absolutely right in that case, the "superiority" is completely subjective, but finding gene therapies that could eliminate a number of rather awful genetic disorders seems to me to be no different than developing a vaccine to kill smallpox.

Curing illnesses would allow people to go right back at their dreamed lives; in other words, without meeting objective resistances from the world, what remains is pure subjectivity.

[GostHacked]

Missing link potentially discovered.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124235632936122739.html

In what could prove to be a landmark discovery, a leading paleontologist said scientists have dug up the 47 million-year-old fossil of an ancient primate whose features suggest it could be the common ancestor of all later monkeys, apes and humans.

I guess we will wait and see what the results are.

[benny]

Missing link potentially discovered.

When one knows the significance of discrete versus continuous variations, searching for a missing link becomes absurd.

[ToadBrother]

Curing illnesses would allow people to go right back at their dreamed lives; in other words, without meeting objective resistances from the world, what remains is pure subjectivity.

You sure have some capacity for popping out word salad. At any rate, the same criticism (such as it is, you're not even trying to make sense now) could be applied to antibiotics, crutches and pouring cold water on a burn.

[ToadBrother]

When one knows the significance of discrete versus continuous variations, searching for a missing link becomes absurd.

You see a fossil about the right age, which shows features that clearly puts at the base of a certain tree, and that certainly seems to qualify to me as finding a missing link. Now we can debate whether or not Common Descent is true, but accepting, for the moment, that it is true, then the faunal succession we observe in nature would indicate that the fossil found is related to the common ancestor of many modern primates.

[benny]

You see a fossil about the right age, which shows features that clearly puts at the base of a certain tree, and that certainly seems to qualify to me as finding a missing link. Now we can debate whether or not Common Descent is true, but accepting, for the moment, that it is true, then the faunal succession we observe in nature would indicate that the fossil found is related to the common ancestor of many modern primates.

The routing on the tree is determined by genetic markers.

[ToadBrother]

The routing on the tree is determined by genetic markers.

Actually, the "construction" of the tree of life began long before genetics. Linnaeus certainly was building taxonomic trees, and he was hardly the first guy to notice the resemblances between various organisms and to grasp the key idea that these similarities suggested relationships.

One of the key evidences for common descent, in my mind, is that genetic analysis, in very large part, agrees with the trees of life developed before we had the capacity to do large scale molecular analysis of various genomes. Some things get bumped around, to be sure (such as the idea of Neandertals being ancestors of modern humans, which seems very unlikely now), but the big picture; the twin-nested hierarchy demonstrates a key strength of evolutionary theory and common descent; that two separate lines of evidence arrive at the same result, and are complimentary.

[DogOnPorch]

You see a fossil about the right age, which shows features that clearly puts at the base of a certain tree, and that certainly seems to qualify to me as finding a missing link. Now we can debate whether or not Common Descent is true, but accepting, for the moment, that it is true, then the faunal succession we observe in nature would indicate that the fossil found is related to the common ancestor of many modern primates.

Classic case in point: birds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx

[benny]

Actually, the "construction" of the tree of life began long before genetics. Linnaeus certainly was building taxonomic trees, and he was hardly the first guy to notice the resemblances between various organisms and to grasp the key idea that these similarities suggested relationships.

One of the key evidences for common descent, in my mind, is that genetic analysis, in very large part, agrees with the trees of life developed before we had the capacity to do large scale molecular analysis of various genomes. Some things get bumped around, to be sure (such as the idea of Neandertals being ancestors of modern humans, which seems very unlikely now), but the big picture; the twin-nested hierarchy demonstrates a key strength of evolutionary theory and common descent; that two separate lines of evidence arrive at the same result, and are complimentary.

Actually, the "construction" of the tree of life began long before science. Mythologies around the world are full of stories of our human ancestors taking the form of different animals. The question still remains to know if it is a spirit who shapes the matter or the opposite.

[Oleg Bach]

Actually, the "construction" of the tree of life began long before science. Mythologies around the world are full of stories of our human ancestors taking the form of different animals. The question still remains to know if it is a spirit who shapes the matter or the opposite.

If nothing became something - and spirit is nothing - then spirit shapes matter - super nature controls and creates nature. It all falls from above - in effect de-evolution is evolution..good work Benny - you are a very bright young man. Or woman - that would be even nicer.. Remember that the tree of life is bears one fruit and the tree of knowledge is the tree of human imagination - it is dangerous if you imagine the wrong thing - a thing that destroys life - creative or destructive - it's touchy.

[benny]

If nothing became something - and spirit is nothing - then spirit shapes matter - super nature controls and creates nature. It all falls from above - in effect de-evolution is evolution..good work Benny - you are a very bright young man. Or woman - that would be even nicer.. Remember that the tree of life is bears one fruit and the tree of knowledge is the tree of human imagination - it is dangerous if you imagine the wrong thing - a thing that destroys life - creative or destructive - it's touchy.

Yes. The case can be made that the Tree of life is not the product of an evolution of matter but of a self-humiliation or a dialectics of a Spirit. Hegel has made this case in philosophy by writing his most important philosophical work: The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). Physics gives today some scientific credence to this idealist view with the Higgs' fields in which something positive comes out of nothing.

Edited May 20, 2009 by benny

[GostHacked]

If nothing became something - and spirit is nothing - then spirit shapes matter - super nature controls and creates nature. It all falls from above - in effect de-evolution is evolution..good work Benny - you are a very bright young man. Or woman - that would be even nicer.. Remember that the tree of life is bears one fruit and the tree of knowledge is the tree of human imagination - it is dangerous if you imagine the wrong thing - a thing that destroys life - creative or destructive - it's touchy.

Wait.. I think this man had everything to do with it.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/picture.ph...p;pictureid=310

[ToadBrother]

Yes. The case can be made that the Tree of life is not the product of an evolution of matter but of a self-humiliation or a dialectics of a Spirit. Hegel has made this case in philosophy by writing his most important philosophical work: The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). Physics gives today some scientific credence to this idealist view with the Higgs' fields in which something positive comes out of nothing.

The "tree of life" is a description of the branching cladogram constructed from the earliest common ancestor of all life. It's simply a way of graphically displaying the reality, that all organisms fit within a nested hierarchy. Whether you're organizing the various descendants of a parent language (like Proto-Indo-European or Afro-Asiatic), or a group of related organisms, it looks like a tree.

You seem to know a number of words and names, but you have no idea what they mean. I suppose you're just trying to baffle folks with your bulls**t, but I'm not baffled, I simply know significantly more than you do. But then again, my daughter, who took grade 11 biology, knows more than you do.

[DogOnPorch]

Wait.. I think this man had everything to do with it.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/picture.ph...p;pictureid=310

All hail the Q Consortium!

Yes...the Q could 'get things done'.

[benny]

The "tree of life" is a description of the branching cladogram constructed from the earliest common ancestor of all life. It's simply a way of graphically displaying the reality, that all organisms fit within a nested hierarchy. Whether you're organizing the various descendants of a parent language (like Proto-Indo-European or Afro-Asiatic), or a group of related organisms, it looks like a tree.

You seem to know a number of words and names, but you have no idea what they mean. I suppose you're just trying to baffle folks with your bulls**t, but I'm not baffled, I simply know significantly more than you do. But then again, my daughter, who took grade 11 biology, knows more than you do.

You are in the wrong forum: it is not the Health and Science Forum but the Religion and Politics one.

Edited May 23, 2009 by benny

[ToadBrother]

You are in the wrong forum: it is not the Health and Science Forum but the Religion and Politics one.

Have you looked at the title of the thread, or is this just some pathetic attempt at pseudo-legalize. I think I liked betsy's cowardly-yet-arrogant departure much more than the whining tone you're beginning to take.

[betsy]

After all is said....the fact is:

ID theory vs the theory of Evolution, both present their own arguments and rebuttals. Each one trying to refute the other. It's a matter similar to.... HE SAID - SHE SAID.

Some of you said "oh betsy you're a creationist, so therefore you'll refuse to acknowledge and see what we're saying."

Well, I can say the same thing to you: You are Atheists, or more Atheists-than Agnostics....your belief lie solely on the premise that there is no God. So of course you'll refuse to acknowledge and see what ID theory is saying. More so, acknowledgement of ID means KABOOM to your faith!

Face it, you've got more....or should I say everything to lose.....by acknowledging the existence of Design. You're fighting for the survival of your faith!

So let's not kid around. Be mature enough to at least acknowledge that using my belief as an argument smacks of....desperation....lack of any sensible rebuttals....and so childish.

Anyway, just so to accomodate your silly argument that since I'm a believer of God therefore I cannot be objective about it.....I gave you the view of one who could be really objective about the whole thing regarding this: A PPHILOSOPHER (of course he'll use reason, logic and rational thinking)....and he's an ATHEIST to boot!

An Atheist who after embarking on a lengthy debate (imagine the amount of research this fellow did preparing for those debates), ended up abandoning Atheism and embracing Deism. Not only that, he criticized Evolution and supports ID!

No wonder you want to exclude his testimony!

You know....we all know...what the testimony of Antony Flew means! And we know why he's much more credible than Dawkins. Dawkins can't....and won't be objective ...or open to anything that might suggest...or hint that there is a God. And that bias manifested itself in his book God Delusion, which Flew criticized.

Remember, Flew was on the side of Atheism when he embarked on these lengthy debates over decades. A Philosopher with quite a reputation to uphold! He wouldn't just go on these discussion without being armed to the teeth! Needless to say, he studied and researched the arguments and rebuttals of the other side as well as Evolution's side.

He wouldn't put his reputation at stake by being irresponsible and negligent! Or worse, by being ignorant! Besides, and most important of all....his own faith in Atheism depended on it!

I bet his main purpose was to debunk the "myth" of God when he got into these debates. He was an Atheist after all.

Not one of you guys debating here truly knows a lot about what you're talking about! Yours are just embellished mish-mash....lifted from here and there...arrogant claims of having had college or university training by one or two (which actually is irrelevant, and really looks like just mere delusions on the part of these one or two - since just digesting the way their arguments are presented give one terrible heartburn). We could tell who really among the posters here went to College or University. And it ain't the one who keeps saying he did!

Anyway, that's the sum of it.

Bottom line: Theory of ID is far more convincing.

Edited May 23, 2009 by betsy