Originally posted by: Meuge
Originally posted by: themusgrat
Actually, we Republicans support the separation of church and state, but not the removal of church from state. That is called discrimination. I'm not sure that I would support teaching ID as the official school science, but I sure don't suport evolution. Some religious people don't take the Bible literally at all, and so they can believe that a day doesn't mean a day. I personally think that God means what He says, and that a day has always been 24 hrs. on planet earth. But who knows, I could be wrong. I think that evolution can be possible, given enormous, infinite amounts of time, but I don't think that a chicken can evolve into a monkey, or a dog, or a fish, or whatever. We evolve naturally, but we don't become something else naturally.
EDIT: Most Republicans, I should have said.
You keep using the word "think", but given your post, that is exactly what you DON'T DO.
You define these arbitrary divisions between the organisms... divisions which don't exist... and then you claim, with nothing to support your conjecture, other than your own suppositions, that these divisions cannot be transcended. And you keep saying it, until you believe it. Not once do you actually subject your own beliefs to the same kind of scrutiny. And not once do you consider that the reason you cannot fathom these events, is because you're under-educated, or simply uncapable of intellectually relating to the world on a factual level.
I call that "arrogant willfull ignorance", and it's the most dangerous phenomenon in the world today (and always was, actually). Willfull ignorance is why Danish tourists are being beheaded... it is the reason Copernicus burned at the stake, and it's the reason why the radical right is driving this country into the ground.
OK.
1. The first problem that I have with evolution is DNA. It is not explained well by the THEORY of evolution. Information has never come from nothing, or do you have some special knowledge? For a theory to be scientifically valid, it must be 1. observable. 2. capable of repeatable experimental verification. 3. must withstand a falsifiability test, or an experiment must be conceived the failure of which would disprove the postulate.
2. Laws of thermodynamics
A. Law of Conservation
Matter and Energy are neither created nor destroyed.
B. Law of Entropy
All energy tends towards lower and less useable forms.
Entropy precludes self organization either biological or chemical. Self organization requires information, and a reversal of entropy for at least a short time. If the organization is to happen over millions of years then the reversal of entropy must be somehow also exist for millions of years. This is absurd.
C. The Laws of thermodynamics are true from the quantum to the cosmic and cannot be turned off.
D. Open vs. Closed systems
Some people state that the earth and sun formed a closed system in which the input of energy from the sun kept entropy at bay. There are two basic problems with this assumption. The first is that entropy still exists in this system and much is due to the raw energy of the sun. Look at the paint on your house, over time and bombardment from the UV and heat from the sun it crack and peels. Your skin will do the same thing. Second, the energy from the sun is not highly energetic and is disorganized. It is not capable of creating information. There has to be a mechanism to capture this unorganized energy and use it for information of life. There is a mechanism, photosynthesis and chlorophyll, without which life would not be possible.
Mutation and selection has a hard time with entropy as they do not demonstrate the ability to organize energy and create information of lfe.
3. Evolution depends on mutations and natural selection.
A. Somatic and genetis mutations cannot be inherited.
B. What some scientists call mutation is very possibly just the natural surfacing or showing of different genes. But until someone maps the DNA of almost all animals, no one can say for sure. So this cannot be used as proof.
C. Natural selection selects against mutations.
4. The fossil record. I know that you won't listen to this, so skip ahead if this is uncomfortable for you.
A. Darwin: "Why if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?"
Darwin later said about the lack of transitional links.. this fact is "the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory." Maybe this is grounds to discuss it?
B. After 160 years of us looking for them, we have found none. I can give you examples of failed transitions, if you wish. There are too many to list in 1 post, though. It would waste my time, unless you really have never heard of them.
5. The complexity of life. This should stand for itself.
6. It is illogical.
A. Evolutionists argue that similarity of design proves evolution. But similarity of design more logically points to a designer. If all life came from a single set of genetic instructions of a cell 4.5 billion years ago then we would not see the variety we see today.
B. If everything is a process of random change over time, then our thoughts are nothing more than random events and our discussion about evolution meaningless.
6. Believe it or not, evolution is racial by today's standards.
A. It is interesting how the artists make early man look Negroid in its attempt to make them look "primitive". The theory says we are all constantly evolving and lead to the belief that the white man had made it along the evolutionary path a little farther. This has lead to the theory of Aryan superiority of Nazism, the elitist philosophy of Marxism and promoted the denigration of Jews and peoples of color.
8. Problems with radiometric dating.
A. Recent measurements of radiogenic argon and helium contents of 200 year old lava flows yielded dates of 22,000,000 years.