Celtic Heroes

Ok, I realise simply stating that the DNA is similiar is not real proof but there is DNA "frozen in time" in specific places, such as ice sheets, of extinct species with similiar DNA and existed at a time before the current species, proved by carbon dating.

There is still other evidence as well such as fossil record of change in earlier species, the chemical and anatomical similarities of related life forms , the geographic distribution of related species, and the recorded genetic changes in living organisms over many generations. (http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_3.htm)

The miller-Urey experiment was designed to create natural conditions of early earth. Of course it would have to be controlled in order to isolate the early Earth variables from modern day variables. It may not prove a definite link but it certainly opens up the possibility. I know this is a wiki link but it would provide a better explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment

i question the reliability of this source. i have never heard of this before, and i think that they are not telling you everything or just what helps there theory, as it has happened before. as far as the bacteria experiment, that proves nothing other than the fact that things that are immune to something do not die by it and "thrive". There's also this thing called species dieing and going extinct. also, i have something else. this theory attributes everything to an accident. if you were to take a Chinese puzzle and set it down somewhere, will it put itself together? and trust me, the universe is a lot more complicated than a chinese puzzle. are you an accident? is this keyboard that im typing on with a bunch of complicated electrical components an accident? is that sports car outside of Bill Gates' house an accident? No.

Ok, I realise simply stating that the DNA is similiar is not real proof but there is DNA "frozen in time" in specific places, such as ice sheets, of extinct species with similiar DNA and existed at a time before the current species, proved by carbon dating.

There is still other evidence as well such as fossil record of change in earlier species, the chemical and anatomical similarities of related life forms , the geographic distribution of related species, and the recorded genetic changes in living organisms over many generations. (http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_3.htm)

The miller-Urey experiment was designed to create natural conditions of early earth. Of course it would have to be controlled in order to isolate the early Earth variables from modern day variables. It may not prove a definite link but it certainly opens up the possibility. I know this is a wiki link but it would provide a better explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment

I can answer these issues for you as well, these are all subjects I have researched and I can assure you the way scientists are using carbon dating is actually an incorrect use and is proven to be extremely inaccurate. The fossil record is based on a logical fallacy. Similarity in life forms does not prove they evolved from a common ancestor as I have already stated. The chemical and anatomical similarities in related life forms is not proof or even evidence for macro evolution. Geographic distribution of related species cannot be used as evidence. Genetic changes over generations is an example of micro evolution which does not support macro evolution as no new characteristics or new genes are introduced, only an increase in the commonness of a trait that was already present.
Of course I do not expect you to except all the previous statements without an explanation so I will begin following this up with explanations. Some of these issues do require a fair amount of knowledge on the subject to be understood.
I have already covered genetic changes over generations and similarity of certain life forms, so I will not bother writing out more explanations unless you still have questions in which case: please ask.

I have a question. What makes one religion superior or more true than another? A person with one religion believes someone with another religion's belief is false. That person believes the first person is incorrect. Is one person less sincere than the other? Everyone is 100% sure their faith is true. I personally think one's belief is based on where one was raised and one's parents.

So all the hard to explain stuff gets explained as micro-evolution... Micro-evolution is basically just adaptations that do not in any way change the way a species reproduces.

Would you care to explain how what happened at the Galápagos Islands is a hoax?

Nevermind. I am finished, lol. No amount of facts, logic, and open mindedness can convince either side that of the "truth," whatever it may be.

For now, I suppose the best solution is to flow with the majority.

It is time to bring evilution down.
( oh! did I misspel that?

First, I will admit that cells can mutate. But that doesn't prove evolution. We do not see natural selection working in our world today. As for the peppered moths, they were a hoax as you may have seen before. And as far as the Galápagos Islands, the birds' beaks did increase in size in a drought but they never grew more than 5% and they went back to normal after the drought. That's what they didn't tell you. As far as the "evidence" in that link that Vraelan posted, (http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_3.htm) such as the fossils that is not evidence. It would have to show gradual change which it doesn't if it were true, unless somehow dinosaurs hatched apes. And guess what? The oldest fossil bats already have sonar built in.(oh, carbon dating has been proven to be inaccurate) As far that the bacteria, that proves utterly nothing other than the immune bacteria surviving and "thriving." And for the test which created "building blocks" in a flask, it only created animo acids, which is a minor part to create life, if its the right kind. And that was in a controlled environment, not the harsh conditions of Earth. After 100 years of fruit fly experiments, it has not proven anything. And how they were doing it was supposed to speed it up 150x faster than natural conditions. Ok, enough with the talk on on to the EVIDENCE.

Well will you look at that...
That human may have becom lunch
And there are many more! Including...
How did they know what a dinosaur looked like?
Wrestle match!
Im no expert but they must have seen dinosaurs.

These are genuine ancient artifacts.

Now all you evilutionists, I have a question for you. How are we here? Is the universe an accident? If a were to take a complicated puzzle and set it on the table will it put itself together? And trust me, the universe is a lot more complicated than a puzzle. How did something non-intelligent create something intelligent? Even if there was a "big bang" there had to be something to start it. If not then we wouldn't be here to argue about it.

*for the pictures, open them in a new tab.*

So there is no such thing as a "Theory of Evolution". It does not exist. Its called "Darwin's Theory of Evolution" and there is no other theory outside of that one.

While the current generally accepted theory is often termed "Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection," it isn't the only theory... nor was it the first; evolutionary theory can be brought back to the Greeks. It tends to be called that simply because it is the most comprehensive, and most accepted by scientists. Theories of evolution have existed for many many years; several theories were disproved over time, such as the spontaneous evolution theories, as knowledge or technology improved.

Actually, Darwin and another chap named Wallace independently developed similar theories of evolution by natural selection at the same time but Darwin's name remains attached to the term, mostly because Wallace added a metaphysical element to his theory which included the soul. The scientific body wasn't terribly keen on that.

There is also something called Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, which builds on Darwin and others to attempt to give a more complete answer than Darwin.

What you are talking about above is a mutation or an adaptation not evolution.

I would argue semantics on this one, or more specifically, that different groups have different definitions for terms.

The Oxford dictionary defines it in the following way: "the process by which different kinds of living organism are believed to have developed from earlier forms during the history of the earth."

But for the sake of argument, (building off your comment and simplifying the above definition) would you agree with this?: Evolution can be described as a series of adaptations over time, SO THAT when the two extremes are compared together, they could be called two different species.

Darwin's Theory of Evolution says that one species can become a whole different species. This is where the disagreement is. A true scientist will say that this has not at all been proven.

I think you may have boiled down a few too many layers at once. The point isn't that a spider monkey will give birth to a fish, nor that an amoeba will become plankton through metamorphosis. Evolution may not be recognizable side by side, however if you think of it in terms of the definition I outlined above, it might be more palatable.

Perhaps not proven to a degree of 100% certainty, no. But all things point to it being correct, or near correct. There is a large enough body of evidence to suggest its likeliness, the same way that if I have enough pieces of a puzzle put together I can most likely describe the complete picture. There may be some parts of the picture that are only realized later, but I will most likely be able to tell you what the picture is.

The Higgs field was a theory for years before the predicted discovery of the Higgs boson all but confirmed it in March of this year. Of course, scientists two years ago would say it hadn't been proven... but that doesn't mean that they doubted it would be proven.

Hence why its still called Darwin's THEORY and not Darwin's FACT. There is no proof what-so-ever of a change in KINDS. Only adaptations within the species themselves (a cat knows to use the litter-box without being told is not evolution, its an adaptation).

The term theory in science is a little different than when we use it in our general speech. It isn't like "I have a theory that Billy is actually using her for her money." Generally accepted scientific theories can be taken to be next to law (I'm assuming you are implying law when you say fact), and anyway, all a Law can do is explain something in a certain condition. The "law" of gravitation doesn't always work, for instance.

Some theories will never be Law... Einstein himself said something to the effect of "No amount of experiments will be able to prove me right, but one experiment could prove me wrong." Though termed a theory... you would be hard pressed to find a large number of scientists to vehemently disagree with Einsteinian Relativity.

As for a proof in change... again, not 100%, but there is evidence of its existence. (I know I know... puzzle pieces, eh.) We see it very clearly in cetacean evolution, and the best example with the largest fossil record (I believe) is the whale. Now, I'm not sure if you would argue the kind of animal hasn't changed or not (I guess you could say it is still a whale with many adaptions). But as far as I am concerned, whales give us a nearly complete fossil record of evolution by going from a four legged hoofed animal living on land, and slowly evolving into the ocean dwelling mammal that we have today.

The series of small changes over time (hind leg recession, frontal leg morph into flippers, tail transition, lung capacity and pressure endurance, nasal drift etc.) paint a picture of a change in "kind."

The changes may not be significant at each stage to say it is a new kind or species... but comparing Pakicetus to a modern whale would certainly warrant such a distinction.

As for a cat using a litter box... I'm not sure I would classify that as adaptation, so much as instinct or reflex reaction, much like goosebumps on humans.

Personally I don't quite know where I stand yet. Evolution is not contrary to Christianity. God could had very well used evolution for his purposes. There is a lot of heated debate here because a lot of religious people think evolution disproves God. That is not at all correct.

I am however skeptical of evolution because of all the manipulation that surrounds it. Like where those two guys glued 2 butterflies to a tree and took a picture as some kind of proof that was later found out to be a lie and yet its still in public school books. For me evolution is currently Liberal Propaganda and thus I sway away from it. Of course that doesn't mean its false.

Yup. I'm sure you are aware of it, but in case some others aren't, there is an entire branch of evolutionists called Theistic evolution.

Evolution is compatible with most religions. The only branches of religions that seem to have a problem with it are the Young Earth Christian Creationists, and, ironically, Right Wing Islamists. Two groups that you wouldn't expect to see side-by-side, but there they are.

The Church of England had this to say a few years back: "Charles Darwin, 200 years from your birth [in 1809], the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still."

I'm going to take a stab in the dark from your comments and guess you are from the States. If so, I can understand your comment. The problem is linked to what we were chatting about earlier: those who take the Bible literally, and therefore push this young earth theory.

The States is an odd country as far as I am concerned... It produces some of the best minds on the planet, and yet 46% of the population believe that God created humans in our current form within the last 10,000 years or so. Overall that is pretty pitiful, and here in Japan, the American education system is a bit of a joke. That creationism/evolution is actually debated in the American school system floors the Japanese... and me too.

If you look at world views on the topic, however, that polarization doesn't exist much. Maybe try to read non-American/non-political sources?

No matter what, you are obviously an intelligent person, and I am sure that in the end, where ever you find yourself standing on the issue, it will have been made with concerted and honest thought.

The peppered moth debate is a bit out of the scope of this thread... in fact it is a classic example of the "straw man fallacy."

For those unaware of straw man arguments, here is a definition:

To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and to refute it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.

Or described another way:

Imagine a fight in which one of the combatants sets up a man of straw, attacks it, then proclaims victory. All the while, the real opponent stands by untouched.

But because some people seem to have been misled by hoax claims, and so that others aren't similarly led astray, I would like to point out the following:

1. The changes (read: evolution/adaptations) in the peppered moth have been documented over the past 200 years. (If this is a 200 year hoax, that is a really really long scam.)

2. Much of the early research didn't have access to photography. Even when photography became more widely available, the technology didn't allow for setting up the necessary tripods and flashes once a moth was found. Regardless, all studies documenting the moths used sketches, not photography. Photographs were used later as a means of depicting the reality.

3. The Kettlewell experiments (the one's that link this genetic trait with pollution and the environment) were from the 1950s. They included no photos, but merely described the situation, and counted the numbers of moths still alive (ie. those able to avoid being eaten by birds due to colouration).

4. The "these moths don't normally rest on trees" issue was a mistake. It comes from one biologist misreading some information. In fact, they have been observed on trees often. In one study the location of 47 moths was well detailed: "twelve were on tree trunks (six exposed, six unexposed), twenty were at the trunk/branch joint, and fifteen resting on branches"

It blew out of proportion after a Creationist professor of law (not science) named Phillip E. Johnson took it upon himself to start the "fraud" claim. Not only does this guy hate Darwin... he' also an AIDS denialist, and says evolution is atheistic.

5. The biologist who made the mistake in point 4 (though he never said sorry for misinterpreting the data) said this:

I think my criticisms carried some weight, because Cambridge biologist Michael Majerus decided to repeat Kettlewell’s experiments, but doing them correctly this time.

He went on to say this:

These new data answer criticisms of earlier work and validate the methodology employed in many previous predation experiments that used tree trunks as resting sites. The new data, coupled with the weight of previously existing data convincingly show that ‘industrial melanism in the peppered moth is still one of the clearest and most easily understood examples of Darwinian evolution in action.'

^^^ Remember, this is the guy who tried to debunk the peppered moth experiments in the first place!!! ^^^^

6. From a book addressing the "hoax": "Professional photography to illustrate textbooks uses dead insects because of the considerable difficulty in getting good images of small, relatively fast moving animals. The scientific studies actually consisted of observational data rather than using such photographs. The photographs in Michael Majerus's 1998 book Melanism: Evolution in Action are unstaged pictures of live moths in the wild, and the photographs of moths on tree-trunks, apart from some slight blurring, look no different than the "staged" photographs."

7. Pretty much the only place you will find this described as a hoax, is on Creationist sites. In the world of science, there is no debate. The only debate that existed was whether the early experiments were done satisfactorily or not. This issue has since been resolved.


Again, that photos were staged to illustrate reality is a straw man in this debate. It is irrelevant, and has nothing to do with the existence of peppered moths, nor the reason they flourished during a time of industrial pollution. I wouldn't classify the peppered moth as evolution by any means, but it is an example of natural selection.

Part 1:
http://youtu.be/5hsilv172io

Part 2:
http://youtu.be/Oxb1RghvW6Q

That is all.

Well, wolf and dersu pretty much responded for me...

Rochoh2000, the human imagination is quite extensive.

Well, wolf and dersu pretty much responded for me...

Rochoh2000, the human imagination is quite extensive.

ok? did you think that i didnt know that? when i show evolutionists what i just showed you, they just ignore it and blow it off. just like u guys are doing. there is no evidence that 100% supports evolution, and those fossils i think are sufficient evidence for intelligent design. something unintelligent cannot create something intelligent. how did everything start in the first place? the peppered moths is a hoax, they dont even rest on tree trunks. they hide under leaves. they created an artificial situation. and for the Galápagos Islands, the birds' beaks did increase in size in a drought but they never grew more than 5% and they went back to normal after the drought. That's what they didn't tell you. that isnt natural selection and chance. here, read this if you didnt and if you respond to this then tell me how those fossils came into existence.

It is time to bring evilution down.
( oh! did I misspel that?)

First, I will admit that cells can mutate. But that doesn't prove evolution. We do not see natural selection working in our world today. As for the peppered moths, they were a hoax as you may have seen before. And as far as the Galápagos Islands, the birds' beaks did increase in size in a drought but they never grew more than 5% and they went back to normal after the drought. That's what they didn't tell you. As far as the "evidence" in that link that Vraelan posted, (http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_3.htm) such as the fossils that is not evidence. It would have to show gradual change which it doesn't if it were true, unless somehow dinosaurs hatched apes. And guess what? The oldest fossil bats already have sonar built in.(oh, carbon dating has been proven to be inaccurate) As far that the bacteria, that proves utterly nothing other than the immune bacteria surviving and "thriving." And for the test which created "building blocks" in a flask, it only created animo acids, which is a minor part to create life, if its the right kind. And that was in a controlled environment, not the harsh conditions of Earth. After 100 years of fruit fly experiments, it has not proven anything. And how they were doing it was supposed to speed it up 150x faster than natural conditions. Ok, enough with the talk on on to the EVIDENCE.


Image

Well will you look at that...

Image

That human may have becom lunch

Image

And there are many more! Including...

Image

How did they know what a dinosaur looked like?

Image

Wrestle match!

Image

Im no expert but they must have seen dinosaurs.

These are genuine ancient artifacts.

Now all you evilutionists, I have a question for you. How are we here? Is the universe an accident? If a were to take a complicated puzzle and set it on the table will it put itself together? And trust me, the universe is a lot more complicated than a puzzle. How did something non-intelligent create something intelligent? Even if there was a "big bang" there had to be something to start it. If not then we wouldn't be here to argue about it.

*for the pictures, open them in a new tab.*

oh, and the oldest fossil bats still have sonar for the images in the quote, scroll up to see my original reply cuz i couldnt get them in the quote.