The Thinking Mans Thread - Evolution Schmevolution. No Offence to the Ladies.

[BoneDog]

What came first - the chicken or the chips?

Apologies for the massive thread opener but I can't help myself after seeing the other less intellectual thread.

I notice the old chestnut came out in the other thread that the people who don't rejoice in neo-Darwinist evolution, 'just don't get it'. Well, over the past year or two I've seen numerous debates involving well-known scientists who clearly do get it, and yet still have objections. So you can stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

In this thread some clever dicks will prove that this subject is by no means settled. The clever dicks will cover the origins of life, some of the problems of the evolution theory - of which there are many, and also some of the ways in which the theory is peddled onto the masses as if it were The Truth.

To be clear, when I say 'evolution' or 'evolutionists', I'm meaning the sort that claim that animals can change into other brand new animals - and not just variations of an existing or pre-existing variant.

As a starting point, here's a quick clip of the world famous atheistic evolutionist Richard Dawkins putting forward one theory of how it all began:

Dawkins, along with every other biologist out there, has admitted numerous times the 'appearance' of design that is observed in living things, including the cell, but he calls it 'apparent design'. He says that if one day it does turn out, as looks likely, that everything is designed, then some advanced alien life-form that had also evolved would likely turn out to be the designer. That theory would allow the evolutionists to cling on to their belief. Cover the back.

Here's another world famous Darwinist with another 'possible' explanation of how, according to Darwinists, life could have started:

He can barely hide his smile when he says "piggy-backed on crystals"! I'm not so sure that he actually believes what he said is possible at all.

Both clips are examples of how Darwinists use wild imagination to bring a hypothesis into the arena that doesn't involve an outside agent, but still supports their theory. Any hypothesis will do. They all admit that design is there, but they say it's just 'apparent design' because they want to keep the idea of a possible designer out of the debate.

Have neo-Darwinists got an agenda? Here are a couple of quotes from famous evolutionists which could suggest that they have. (There are many more quotes from big names in the games that can be added to support this):

Speaking of the trust that students naturally place in their highly educated college professors, Mark Singham, in "Teaching and Propaganda", in Physics Today writes:

"And I use that trust to effectively brainwash them . . . our teaching methods are primarily those of propaganda. We appeal - without demonstration - to evidence that supports our position. We only introduce arguments and evidence that supports the currently accepted theories and omit or gloss over any evidence to the contrary."

And Richard Lewontin of Harvard says, "We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, . . . in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated commitment to materialism . . . we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

"...effectively brainwash them...propaganda...gloss over evidence to the contrary...in spite of the patent absurdity of some of it's constructs..."

If the theory/dogma had any real basis in truth there would surely be no need for these kind of tactics.

The "Divine Foot in the door" quote is quite typical, but I was going to get to that later with more examples to back up the idea that these people have an agenda.

Unfortunately, as it happens I've got to stop for now. I thought it would be easier than this but I've not even got started yet and have already taken about an hour just for this small job.

Remember: In living systems, digital information is being used to direct the construction of mechanical parts. Random schlandom! "The more sophisticated the mechanisms are, the more it becomes likely we have a designer". I can't remember who said that last sentence, but more on that later - barring a catastrophe.

I'm sure that when this thread is finished, with the help of the clever dicks that are still to come, a large percentage of Western society will be convinced that something fishy is going on.

[Finnegan]

[Zingari]

You tell 'em Empty

Surely no-one can look around the world with all its wonder and variety of nature and believe it " just happened by blind chance".

[Haydos]

It's 'apparent design' because there is currently no speck of evidence or suggestion for it. You seem to be suggesting that we should accept something without having any reason for it.

These people are scientists, their work is dedicated to proving and disproving theories not just accepting something which is basically 'magic' with no shred of proof.

[The Doctor]

What a load of toss. I shall pick this apart in the next half hour or so, but that first video was made by an incredibly underhand fool who has deliberately misinterpreted what Dawkins was saying.

If you don't accept evolution you are one of three things - ignorant of evolution, stupid or insane. There's no more too it - if you reject evolution you do not get it, there can be no dispute there.

[BoneDog]

Picture

I saw you'd replied first and was expecting the old Tommy Lee Jones newspaper picture! Not a bad guess

You tell 'em Empty

Surely no-one can look around the world with all its wonder and variety of nature and believe it " just happened by blind chance".

I know, I find it astonishing that anybody could think so. Astonishing I say!

[BoneDog]

It's 'apparent design' because there is currently no speck of evidence or suggestion for it. You seem to be suggesting that we should accept something without having any reason for it.

These people are scientists, their work is dedicated to proving and disproving theories not just accepting something which is basically 'magic' with no shred of proof.

They are, and there are plenty more very good scientists, including Oxford professors, I'm posting about later who counter the arguement. There is plenty of evidence for design, and it is gaining momentum - even with all the pressures and backhanded tactics from so called science professionals.

What a load of toss. I shall pick this apart in the next half hour or so, but that first video was made by an incredibly underhand fool who has deliberately misinterpreted what Dawkins was saying.

If you don't accept evolution you are one of three things - ignorant of evolution, stupid or insane. There's no more too it - if you reject evolution you do not get it, there can be no dispute there.

That ignorant, insane or stupid quote is played out. Go ahead and pick it apart. He didn't misinterpret anything. Dawkins said he didn't believe in a Creator, but did offer an explanation for if there happened to be one. I watched the whole film a long time ago and was just posting a couple of examples of 'imagination' in science to set the tone. There are plenty more serious examples than those two I gave that I'll get to.

'Underhand fool' I'll try and post a few examples later of 'underhand fools' from your side.

Why don't you bugger off to your own thread. This is the thinking mans thread!

Edit : Oh, and don't bother with that 6000 year old earth thing you sometimes use because no-one's claiming none of that malarkey round here. Keep it on subject.

[Zingari]

What a load of toss. I shall pick this apart in the next half hour or so, but that first video was made by an incredibly underhand fool who has deliberately misinterpreted what Dawkins was saying.

If you don't accept evolution you are one of three things - ignorant of evolution, stupid or insane. There's no more too it - if you reject evolution you do not get it, there can be no dispute there.

i accept evolution , in the same way i accept it in cars , that much is obvious. But if someone tried to tell you it just happened blindly without design , you would find that difficult to believe. And that's how i feel about lifeforms that have all the hallmarks of design for purpose.

I know it all happened over billions of years , but it still seems too incredible just to be chance ,

[The Doctor]

Right - the first video. **** off with intelligent design - it's a lie peddled by the Discovery Institute, designed to disrupt science so as to force into schools the child abuse that is creationism. However, let's not misquote him like the doofus who made the video has done - what he is talking about there is akin to us working on synthetic DNA and synthetic cells (which has been suggested as the future of the food industry in terms of meat). It's far from admitting intelligent design in it's current guise (a pathetic trojan horse), rather admitting that life could have been kick-started by life already present on another planet (let's not forget the universe is 10bn years older than our planet) - the only issue there is that we then have to follow that back and ask where that life came from. It's very much possible, but it just changes the question from what started life on this planet to "what started that life". It's far more sensible to cut out the travelling back and instead just work out how life would start were sentient beings not involved. That is why we still work on the notion of abiogenesis - because even if it were started by sentient aliens, life on that planet had to come from somewhere.

the second video - On the the backs of crystals, I'm not sure of the hypothesis here, and in general the notion of a primordial soup + lightning has far more support (the Miller-Urey experiment for one), however the guy who made the video is trying to over-simplify it for the sake of ridicule. It's akin to me saying that the creationist standpoint is "god went poof and everything existed".

What you have gone on about is not evolution - it's abiogenesis, you've not challenged the theory of evolution anymore than a 5 year old asking "how" when told about the theory.

Now then - as for the quotes:

Nope - we don't gloss over evidence to the contrary, the way science works is to scrutinise this new evidence, how it affects the theory and then come up with a new hypothesis that accounts for this data. However, no evidence has been found in contrary to evolution. Everything we find just supports it.

As for a divine foot in the door. Science can't allow it no, because science concerns itself with the natural, not the supernatural - so god (until proven) would never be factored into an equation by any scientist with a hint of credibility.

The theory of evolution has a lot of basis in truth - 150 years worth of evidence and research that has backed it up. As we've learnt more about the way spermatogenesis and oogenesis work and the replication errors inherent in it, about the way that DNA mutates - we've gained more and more evidence that supports evolution. As we've investigated in labs and on farms with applying artifical selection we can force speciation to some degree.

Only germ theory has more basis to it than evolution (we've more evidence for evolution than we do for gravity) , if you still deny it you clearly don't get it.

Zingari - saying it happened by blind chance is strawmanning the theory of evolution. Mutations are random (or are they? Jim Al-Khalili has done some work I'll not pretend to understand which might add a quantum mechanics aspect to it: http://www3.surrey.ac.uk/qe/pdfs/mcfadden_and_al-khalili.pdf) but the way they cause changes in our phenotypes and are then selected for (or not as the case may be) is entirely non-random.

[The Doctor]

Why don't you bugger off to your own thread. This is the thinking mans thread!

Bit of a misnomer since creationism and thinking work together about as well as Free Radicals and the human body (I may need to elaborate - they're incredibly destructive, rip molecules to bits).

[whoareyaaa]

Interesting topic... Evolution is not based on the origins of life though is it? more how life as we see it has been evolving over time on this planet.

I think we could well have been designed by a higher species millions of years ago and seeded onto this planet, its defiantly not out the question but I doubt we will ever find this out.

The question which gets me thinking is where did the universe come from? like forget all the planets, stars etc... how the hell did the universe become something surely something cannot come from nothing? absolute MIND ****! Deeper than deep.

[BoneDog]

Right - the first video. **** off with intelligent design - it's a lie peddled by the Discovery Institute, designed to disrupt science so as to force into schools the child abuse that is creationism.

Only read the first sentence so far and had to correct you. Intelligent Design is not Creationism. Two different things. Creationism tries to prove the Christian Bible to be correct. ID isn't doing that.

That is a fact, and yet all your top people lie about it - even though they know. More on that later.

You're a right drama queen.

Bit of a misnomer since creationism and thinking work together about as well as Free Radicals and the human body (I may need to elaborate - they're incredibly destructive, rip molecules to bits).

Think you need to do a bit of research on the difference between ID and Creationism. I'll help you later though if you don't fancy it.

[Zingari]

Doc , I don't see how if you take "blind chance" out of the evolutionary equation , then whatever replaces it must be "design" of some sort

It really doesn't matter what name scientists come up such as "elan vital"etc etc it just hides the problem .

you could just as easily substitute elan vital for god

[The Doctor]

Only read the first sentence so far and had to correct you. Intelligent Design is not Creationism. Two different things. Creationism tries to prove the Christian Bible to be correct. ID isn't doing that.

That is a fact, and yet all your top people lie about it - even though they know. More on that later.

You're a right drama queen.

Didn't say ID was creationism though did I? ID is a lie peddled by the Discovery Institute designed to destabilise evolution and get itself in schools alongside it so that creationism can then be put into schools. I shall quote from Anarchy Evolution by Dr Greg Graffin:

The objective of the centre, as described in an internal document leaked to the public in 1999 is "to defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacy. The idea is to use ID as a wedge to separate science from its alligience to "atheistic naturalism".

Reference chapter: http://www.creationismstrojanhorse.com/Koertge_Chap_12.pdf

As for conflating ID and creationism - I'm well aware of the differences, I just prefer to argue against the opposition, not their trojan horse.

[The Doctor]

Doc , I don't see how if you take "blind chance" out of the evolutionary equation , then whatever replaces it must be "design" of some sort

It really doesn't matter what name scientists come up such as "elan vital"etc etc it just hides the problem .

you could just as easily substitute elan vital for god

Not at all - blind chance was never in it, mutations are the only (possibly) random aspect - after that it's lead by the basic laws of natural selection, not design, but more an individuals ability to survive and how much the females want to screw that individual. You can't just easily substitute god in for it, because we fall back into the issue of needing to prove god before it can be dragged into proper science.

[Harry - LCFC]

I accept evolution as there exists substantial evidence to prove it. I feel it's a little silly to argue against that theory although I don't think anyone on this thread doesn't believe in Darwinism.

However, I do struggle with the inception of life. How something can come from nothing is difficult to imagine.

On the other hand, the idea that there is some superior being out there pulling all the strings is, to me, totally ridiculous and I reject that thought. So I'm left with something that I find difficult to believe but I have faith in it as it is the only possibility.

[Zingari]

Typical!! You wait ages for a thread about evolution and then two come along together .

[Kitchandro]

I don't claim to be an expert on any of this but surely creationism is a vague concept and isn't necessarily an argument against evolution or an argument supporting the specifics of the bible?

[whoareyaaa]

I accept evolution as there exists substantial evidence to prove it. I feel it's a little silly to argue against that theory although I don't think anyone on this thread doesn't believe in Darwinism.

However, I do struggle with the inception of life. How something can come from nothing is difficult to imagine.

On the other hand, the idea that there is some superior being out there pulling all the strings is, to me, totally ridiculous and I reject that thought. So I'm left with something that I find difficult to believe but I have faith in it as it is the only possibility.

Maybe we have been 'designed' that way so we will never understand how it started...or we are just not capable of understanding, that is the most intriguing question though!

[The Doctor]

I don't claim to be an expert on any of this but surely creationism is a vague concept and isn't necessarily an argument against evolution or an argument supporting the specifics of the bible?

Creationism is simply put the belief that genesis is a factual account - which requires evolution to be untrue. Which it isn't, and which is why creatards should be considered in the infancy of our species.

[Kitchandro]

Maybe we have been 'designed' that way so we will never understand how it started...or we are just not capable of understanding, that is the most intriguing question though!

Yes it's mind boggling, something humans shouldn't ever think about really.

Our minds are too puny.

[The Doctor]

Yes it's mind boggling, something humans shouldn't ever think about really.

Our minds are too puny.

If we had that sort of attitude we'd still be living in caves - that we don't understand it can mean only one thing - that we should give a nice fat middle finger to health and safety and go and investigate it ourselves.

[Zingari]

Yes it's mind boggling, something humans shouldn't ever think about really.

Our minds are too puny.

Yes

Perhaps when we can mend broken biscuits , cure common colds , and finally decide on the causation of global warming , we'll be able to understand these greater mysteries .

[Zingari]

If we had that sort of attitude we'd still be living in caves - that we don't understand it can mean only one thing - that we should give a nice fat middle finger to health and safety and go and investigate it ourselves.

We'd moved out of caves a long while before evolutionary theory came about

[Kitchandro]

If we had that sort of attitude we'd still be living in caves - that we don't understand it can mean only one thing - that we should give a nice fat middle finger to health and safety and go and investigate it ourselves.

Are you going to investigate it yourself then?