$250,000 if you can provide proof of "evolution"

[YoungAnimaniac]

Scientific beliefs change over time, so do religious beliefs. Evolution theory, as it stands today, is the best theory that's been put forth which explains the way things are and is supported by the Geologic record (if you believe that fossils are real and geologic dating techniques are reasonable.)

This isn't to say someone can't come up with a better theory which explains it all, but I haven't seen it yet.

I consider the change in human beings mental capacity and ability over the past 5000 years to be an example of an evolutionary process. I'm not saying we're better than we were 5000 years ago, but we are different.

 

[Rainsford]

I remember learning in Biology that (and this is scientific fact) we share the vast majority of our DNA with all life on Earth. Obviously some of us share a little more DNS with microbes than others.

Creationists always make it sound like a theory is something that you came up with while drinking or something. Anyone who thinks evolutionists "believe" in evolution the same way creationists believe in creation needs some serious help.

And this is a stupid contest, the judge is a person who is obviously exceedingly biased.

 

[cracgor]

Originally posted by: busmaster11
I also believe that the fossil record that evolution via Intelligent design would leave behind would look very similiar to what we observe today..

- early prokaryotes to help generate an oxygen-rich atmosphere and to get rid of poisonous gases
- sudden spurts of new and different species (known as punctuated equilibrium, its left geneticists with an awful lot to explain)
- no transitional forms
- a general vertibrate template of a spine and four limbs, specialized for the habitat -

First of all the fossil record we get is sparse at best; I therefore believe transitional forms occurred, weather their fossil is out there is doubtful. And evolution takes place over thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of years to produce a dramatically different species. And so punctuated equilibrium is contested by the theory of gradualism; both are theories and neither are absolutely known. Something more important to your theory of sudden spurts is the theory of Adaptive Radiation. After a great catastrophe causing mass extinction, remaining life forms adapt rather quickly to fill the vacant niches.

Lastly, there are like 50-some constants in the universe, from the mass and charge of an electron to the gravitational constant to the ratio of deuterium to helium or something like that, plus many others, that if a single one was off by even a tiny percentage the universe would fail to support life.

This fact alone - leads strongly to one of two conclusions - an Intelligent Creator, or the anthropic principle, which says basically that the universe is like this simply because we are here to observe it. IOW - we won the lottery...

I tend to go with God, thank you.

I used to believe like that but the flaw with religion is exactly the same....what happened before? before God? before the Universe? I just think there is no beginning of time and the Universe happened after something we will most likely never know about. That said we have no idea why things are constant...we just know some things are. And we can make all the speculation we want God, big bang, yada yada...but without some kind of proof its just speculation.

Anway Evolution takes tens of thousands of years to produce dramatic changes this contest wants proof of. I think the only real chance is with bacteria and viruses because they change more rapidly...but i'm sure not enough to win.

 

[busmaster11]

Originally posted by: Howard

Originally posted by: busmaster11
I'm glad to see that Creationism or Evolution via Intelligent design as I prefer to call it, has a stronger following here that I expected.

I look at it this way. It is true that out of the following only the last statement has been observed, and the first five are still unproven:

Cosmic evolution- the origin of time, space and matter. Big Bang
Chemical evolution- the origin of higher elements from hydrogen.
Stellar and planetary evolution- Origin of stars and planets.
Organic evolution- Origin of life from inanimate matter.
Macroevolution Origin of major kinds.
Microevolution Variations within kinds.

I also believe that the fossil record that evolution via Intelligent design would leave behind would look very similiar to what we observe today..

- early prokaryotes to help generate an oxygen-rich atmosphere and to get rid of poisonous gases
- sudden spurts of new and different species (known as punctuated equilibrium, its left geneticists with an awful lot to explain)
- no transitional forms
- a general vertibrate template of a spine and four limbs, specialized for the habitat -

Lastly, there are like 50-some constants in the universe, from the mass and charge of an electron to the gravitational constant to the ratio of deuterium to helium or something like that, plus many others, that if a single one was off by even a tiny percentage the universe would fail to support life.

This fact alone - leads strongly to one of two conclusions - an Intelligent Creator, or the anthropic principle, which says basically that the universe is like this simply because we are here to observe it. IOW - we won the lottery...

I tend to go with God, thank you.

Then again, if this universe failed to support this life, we wouldn't notice at all. Maybe the universal cycle keeps repeating, and we happen to be in just one of them?

Would you be more comfortable with that line of reasoning considering the probabilities I brought up?

I'd say if you're that much behind science it certainly does take more faith than to believe in an Intelligent Creator.

 

[busmaster11]

Originally posted by: cracgor

Originally posted by: busmaster11
I also believe that the fossil record that evolution via Intelligent design would leave behind would look very similiar to what we observe today..

- early prokaryotes to help generate an oxygen-rich atmosphere and to get rid of poisonous gases
- sudden spurts of new and different species (known as punctuated equilibrium, its left geneticists with an awful lot to explain)
- no transitional forms
- a general vertibrate template of a spine and four limbs, specialized for the habitat -

First of all the fossil record we get is sparse at best; I therefore believe transitional forms occurred, weather their fossil is out there is doubtful. And evolution takes place over thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of years to produce a dramatically different species. And so punctuated equilibrium is contested by the theory of gradualism; both are theories and neither are absolutely known. Something more important to your theory of sudden spurts is the theory of Adaptive Radiation. After a great catastrophe causing mass extinction, remaining life forms adapt rather quickly to fill the vacant niches.

So you have faith in the existance of transitional forms although none have been seen? And you have no problem with PE even though its really stretching it for geneticists to explain how species could evolve from ancestors via strictly adaptive beneficial traits in a short period of time (10-100 thousand years?)

Lastly, there are like 50-some constants in the universe, from the mass and charge of an electron to the gravitational constant to the ratio of deuterium to helium or something like that, plus many others, that if a single one was off by even a tiny percentage the universe would fail to support life.

This fact alone - leads strongly to one of two conclusions - an Intelligent Creator, or the anthropic principle, which says basically that the universe is like this simply because we are here to observe it. IOW - we won the lottery...

I tend to go with God, thank you.

I used to believe like that but the flaw with religion is exactly the same....what happened before? before God? before the Universe? I just think there is no beginning of time and the Universe happened after something we will most likely never know about. That said we have no idea why things are constant...we just know some things are. And we can make all the speculation we want God, big bang, yada yada...but without some kind of proof its just speculation.

Anway Evolution takes tens of thousands of years to produce dramatic changes this contest wants proof of. I think the only real chance is with bacteria and viruses because they change more rapidly...but i'm sure not enough to win.

You can call it a flaw with religion, I call it it an unfortunate inherent nature of the beast, and non-believers can accuse us of conveniently taking shelter in something they cannot disprove - though I try not to.

But I believe that God created this univerase via the Big Bang. And physicists would tell you there is no such thig as "before" the BB - time was a dimension that curled out of the BB, and though its not something we can comprehend, that fact is widely accepted by the scientific community. And to ask who created God, well, thats not a question we're privy to knowing, atleast not yet.

 

[datalink7]

Originally posted by: FrustratedUser
OK, Who hijacked my steak thread?

Hey, that's MY line

So, how do you like your steak?

I like mine medium rare

 

[cracgor]

Originally posted by: busmaster11

Originally posted by: cracgor

Originally posted by: busmaster11
I also believe that the fossil record that evolution via Intelligent design would leave behind would look very similiar to what we observe today..

- early prokaryotes to help generate an oxygen-rich atmosphere and to get rid of poisonous gases
- sudden spurts of new and different species (known as punctuated equilibrium, its left geneticists with an awful lot to explain)
- no transitional forms
- a general vertibrate template of a spine and four limbs, specialized for the habitat -

First of all the fossil record we get is sparse at best; I therefore believe transitional forms occurred, weather their fossil is out there is doubtful. And evolution takes place over thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of years to produce a dramatically different species. And so punctuated equilibrium is contested by the theory of gradualism; both are theories and neither are absolutely known. Something more important to your theory of sudden spurts is the theory of Adaptive Radiation. After a great catastrophe causing mass extinction, remaining life forms adapt rather quickly to fill the vacant niches.

So you have faith in the existance of transitional forms although none have been seen? And you have no problem with PE even though its really stretching it for geneticists to explain how species could evolve from ancestors via strictly adaptive beneficial traits in a short period of time (10-100 thousand years?)

Lastly, there are like 50-some constants in the universe, from the mass and charge of an electron to the gravitational constant to the ratio of deuterium to helium or something like that, plus many others, that if a single one was off by even a tiny percentage the universe would fail to support life.

This fact alone - leads strongly to one of two conclusions - an Intelligent Creator, or the anthropic principle, which says basically that the universe is like this simply because we are here to observe it. IOW - we won the lottery...

I tend to go with God, thank you.

I used to believe like that but the flaw with religion is exactly the same....what happened before? before God? before the Universe? I just think there is no beginning of time and the Universe happened after something we will most likely never know about. That said we have no idea why things are constant...we just know some things are. And we can make all the speculation we want God, big bang, yada yada...but without some kind of proof its just speculation.

Anway Evolution takes tens of thousands of years to produce dramatic changes this contest wants proof of. I think the only real chance is with bacteria and viruses because they change more rapidly...but i'm sure not enough to win.

You can call it a flaw with religion, I call it it an unfortunate inherent nature of the beast, and non-believers can accuse us of conveniently taking shelter in something they cannot disprove - though I try not to.

But I believe that God created this univerase via the Big Bang. And physicists would tell you there is no such thig as "before" the BB - time was a dimension that curled out of the BB, and though its not something we can comprehend, that fact is widely accepted by the scientific community. And to ask who created God, well, thats not a question we're privy to knowing, atleast not yet.

I don't remember saying I bought into punctuated equilibrium where things magically develop into new forms quickly. I buy into adaptive radiation more where there is less competition and a need to fill ecological roles.
Also, God is not for me. There is no way to prove or disprove his existence (luckily the Bible makes the "faith" clause so that it no longer matters). I didn't say who created God. I don't even care who created God because Biblically he was just always there. But what makes the Bible a more legitimate resource than say The Vidas, The Upanishads, The Udana, the Sutta, the Dhammapadaeven, or even The Urantia? I believe God was created first and foremost to protect those who created him; someone to be watching even when no one was watching and punish wrongdoers who went uncaught. And it has been mildly successful at creating order and protecting interests. But that is probably just using my common sense. I should let go and join the flock i guess.

 

[Bignate603]

Originally posted by: Fausto1
*sigh*

Commence flamewar.

About the same old thing.

That can't be resolved by either side.

For the 100,000,000th time.

WTF is it with creationists that they feel constantly compelled to disprove evolution? You're 99% chimpanzee. Deal with it.

So God reused his work, wouldn't you?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: Ameesh
that guy is a $hit head, there is no way anyone in the world can have empircal evidence of the big bang. he knows he'll never pay out and he gives opportunity to the small minded myopic religious fundies who post links to his site can get all huffy about it.

For the first time in the history of AT I agree with Ameesh.

Hah, that's the exact thing I was thinking when I read his post.

BBWF
What if I said the NSA had a crapload of backdoors in the Linux kernel source?
Of course you could go through it line by line, but I could always counter that by saying the programmers of <insert fav editor/IDE here> are in on the conspiracy, and that their software hides those backdoors when you open the files.

And so and so on.

Using that kind of logic one can "prove" anything and nothing.

Yeah, I totally agree. You can only agree with things to varying extents, that's about as "proven" as things get IMO. That's all that facts are anyways - things that a majority of people in a group agree on.

 

[cracgor]

They discussed this on the Ali G Show...
Compelling evidence dialogue:

Ali G: "but 'ave you eva' eatun a banana?"
Creationist: "Well yes."
Ali G: "There you go. So I won the money?"
Creationist: "What are you talking about?"
Ali G: "C'mon I got you. You saw it. He turned red."

 

[cainsdive]

READ THIS

 

[brigden]

God put dinosaurs on earth to test our faith

 

[TaylorD]

ok, well, on the other side of this, I will give eleventy billion dollars to anyone who can empirically prove that god exists, and he created the world, and man.

 

[JACKHAMMER]

punctuated equilibrium

Ohh..my. Never actually read S. Gould did we? If you would actually read what punctuated equilibrium meant you would see that it does NOT support creationism.

Secondly

"Evolution is presented in our public school textbooks as a process that:
1. Brought time, space, and matter into existence from nothing.
2. Organized that matter into the galaxies, stars, and at least nine planets around the sun. (This process is often referred to as cosmic evolution.)
3. Created the life that exists on at least one of those planets from nonliving matter (chemical evolution).
4. Caused the living creatures to be capable of and interested in reproducing themselves.
5. Caused that first life form to spontaneously diversify into different forms of living things, such as the plants and animals on the earth today (biological evolution)."

No one I have ever read, and I AM a biologist has ever stated 1-2. And #3, evolution doesn't "create" anything. And with the new discovery of prions, it is obvious that even nonliving organic material can evolve. #5, there was no spontaneous diversification. Who ever this person is it would do them well to read a book every once and a while.

 

[BigToquex]

I can follow evolution all the way back to the very moment that time existed (assuming "big bang" theory). The small spec of energy that would explode and spew out everything the universe today needed to form.

This is the thing that bugs me...

Where did this energy come from? It didn't just create itself. The laws of the universe say it can't just create itself. Something had to put it there.

Where did space come from? Who put "space" in place? Was it God? Where did God come from? He didn't just create himself...

Thinking about this makes my head hurt.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: TaylorD
ok, well, on the other side of this, I will give <STRONG>eleventy billion dollars</STRONG> to anyone who can empirically prove that god exists, and he created the world, and man.

well, specifically THEIR version of god

 

[Eli]

This thread is still going?

By the time it's done, that 250k will be up to around 500k due to inflation and interest.

 

[RobCur]

There are billions of people on this planet and all think differently, they will never come to the same conclusion. So why bother? I can convince one individual that man evolved but million others will not agree because of ethic background or because creation cannot be disapproved?
If someone wants to believe in creation, let them be. Then we can all get along much better? IMHO. Those who say they know everything about life must be very intelligent, i respect that.

:Q

 

[Babbles]

Anybody who would name a portion of their organization as 'creation science' is doomed to live with the intelligence of a fermented piece of goat cheese.

 

[Babbles]

Double post incoming.

Dunno if it has been mentioned in this thread as I just skimmed most of it, but without even breaking open my college science textbooks I can refute nearly every arguement that nutball has under his FAQs.

Either he is totally clueless about most sciences or his only reference is the Bible. That is saying, for instance, biblical man lived to be 900 years old because the Bible said so. Yeah, I buy that one bud.

 

[thomsbrain]

i love jezo's argument: you are just as stupid as i am.

wow! cleared that one up!

 

[Ameesh]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey

Originally posted by: Sunner

Originally posted by: Ameesh
that guy is a $hit head, there is no way anyone in the world can have empircal evidence of the big bang. he knows he'll never pay out and he gives opportunity to the small minded myopic religious fundies who post links to his site can get all huffy about it.

For the first time in the history of AT I agree with Ameesh.

Hah, that's the exact thing I was thinking when I read his post.

BBWF
What if I said the NSA had a crapload of backdoors in the Linux kernel source?
Of course you could go through it line by line, but I could always counter that by saying the programmers of <insert fav editor/IDE here> are in on the conspiracy, and that their software hides those backdoors when you open the files.

And so and so on.

Using that kind of logic one can "prove" anything and nothing.

Yeah, I totally agree. You can only agree with things to varying extents, that's about as "proven" as things get IMO. That's all that facts are anyways - things that a majority of people in a group agree on.

OMG!!! OH NO! AIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! NOOOOOO!O!OO!O!!!!

 

[xirtam]

Originally posted by: JACKHAMMER

punctuated equilibrium

Ohh..my. Never actually read S. Gould did we? If you would actually read what punctuated equilibrium meant you would see that it does NOT support creationism.

Secondly

"Evolution is presented in our public school textbooks as a process that:
1. Brought time, space, and matter into existence from nothing.
2. Organized that matter into the galaxies, stars, and at least nine planets around the sun. (This process is often referred to as cosmic evolution.)
3. Created the life that exists on at least one of those planets from nonliving matter (chemical evolution).
4. Caused the living creatures to be capable of and interested in reproducing themselves.
5. Caused that first life form to spontaneously diversify into different forms of living things, such as the plants and animals on the earth today (biological evolution)."

No one I have ever read, and I AM a biologist has ever stated 1-2. And #3, evolution doesn't "create" anything. And with the new discovery of prions, it is obvious that even nonliving organic material can evolve. #5, there was no spontaneous diversification. Who ever this person is it would do them well to read a book every once and a while.

Having been victimized by the public school system, I can say that I have been directly taught #1. Of course, it didn't take long for xirtam to be sent to the hall. #2... nope, not really... inferred, but not taught. #3 and #4 are the same imo: Before high school, I was taught this. After high school, I was merely taught that current theories regarding abiogenesis and spontaneous generation were being revamped, post Pascal's and Reding's earlier proofs to show them impossible. 5: Judging how it's a completely unplanned and random process, I would state that any evolutionary model dependent solely on divergent evolution would have to conform to this rule. Dependent somewhat on how one defines spontaneous.

Our society has been taught to think that belief in a Creator or God is an unintelligent and irrational way to view the situation. We're currently being brainwashed to think that all such belief is a mere logical jump to explain that which we do not know -- to provide some sort of fall-back on an unscientific explanation to account for everything of which we are currently ignorant. Science is inherently limited in nature, and a lot of those limitations are actually account for science's strength. But it is both unscientific and irrational to state that solutions outside the realm of science are inherently flawed and false.

People have argued back and forth over the issue of "well, it doesn't take as much faith to believe <insert opposing position here>." Why pride yourself on demeaning the value of faith? If you believe in God, yet argue that it takes less faith to believe in God than evolution... congratulations, you've just undermined your faith. On the other hand, if you believe in a Godless system whereby everything came into existence... or was already there... etc... then by hampering on faith without explaining why faith is invalid, you're merely undermining the logical processes by which you've arrived at a solution. You haven't proven its superiority.

There appears to be diversity of human intuition. Different people wake up from the dream-of-uncognizant-mush at different points in their lives and accept a worldview, saying, "Wow. That makes sense." These worldviews are in conflict... the evolution-creation argument is nothing more than a screen to isolate a secondary problem. Once the underlying worldview is resolved, there can be agreement. Until that happens, all you're going to see here is stubborn bullheadedness about isolated "evidences" designed to establish greater support for one side or the other.

Quote

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by: TaylorD
ok, well, on the other side of this, I will give <STRONG>eleventy billion dollars</STRONG> to anyone who can empirically prove that god exists, and he created the world, and man.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



well, specifically THEIR version of god

Ok, so wait here... whose money is it? Are there two chances for me to get eleventy billion dollars now?

 

[exp]

ok, well, on the other side of this, I will give <STRONG>eleventy billion dollars</STRONG> to anyone who can empirically prove that god exists, and he created the world, and man.

I can prove it. I'll PM you my address...drop by tomorrow and bring the money with you.

 

[xirtam]

Originally posted by: exp

ok, well, on the other side of this, I will give <STRONG>eleventy billion dollars</STRONG> to anyone who can empirically prove that god exists, and he created the world, and man.

I can prove it. I'll PM you my address...drop by tomorrow and bring the money with you.

In unmarked, non-consecutive bills. Or suitcases of cocaine. Your choice.