"No you haven't."

I'm not going argue about the is evolution a religion side of things because I think that would be labouring the point made by others. I will argue with the total inaccuracy of the quote used. Having recently read "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins I now see even more reasons why evolution is the ONLY theory that explains the origin of life in a non faith based way (and the only one that really explains observations). Once you truly understand evolution you realise it doesn't take any leap of faith at all. The main thing is that you try to grasp both very large timescales and small changes over many many generation. At the same time you have to think of very small molecules that work very fast.

BTW It is down to Creationists to disprove evolution, because evolution, unlike creationism, is falsifiable. You can never truly prove a theory only disprove it. Frankly I think it would be tougher to explain why evolution SHOULDN'T happen.

This wasn’t an accident. Scientists say that although the chances of evolution are impossible, given enough time this impossibility becomes a possibility. They say that if I randomly picked a card from a deck of 52 cards enough times it’s possible that I could pick the ace of spades 100 times in a row, given enough time.

This sort of thinking really annoys me. First of all a scientist would not say evolution is impossible! Secondly evolution is NOT a theory of chance. Don't get me wrong chance IS a part of it, but the main basis of evolution, natural selection, is the very opposite to chance. The selection of sucessful traits is a non-random event. Evolution come about as a result of CUMULATIVE selection not one step random selection, there is a big difference.

The extent to which chance IS involved doesn't stretch credibility when you really understand the theory. The idea that evolution is based PURELY on chance is simply wrong. The reason for this is that each new generation doesn't start from a clean slate. The Ace of Spades example is wrong because the person trying to pull and ace of spades at random has to start all over again with each try. They only get one card to pick from whereas in evolution there is a selection of many "cards" (i.e. genes) and you don't start from scratch each time. A better example would be trying to get a good hand at poker where you are allowed to exchange cards to get a better hand. The difference between poker and evolution is that in poker you need the best hand in the round to win. In evolution you just need a playable hand but preferably a relatively good one.

Lets invent a modified game of poker. This game is played with hundreds of packs of cards and hundreds of people. You start off with just five people playing with one pack, they represent the first generation (FG). Instead winning and losing a round, players with playable hands are allowed to "breed". Breeding is done by:

1)adding new players (these represent offspring of the FG) to the game with a new pack (it could be many new players and many new packs, or a few new players and one new pack, it doesn't really matter).

2)The new players have to play one of the hands played by the FG (with cards from a new pack)

3) The amount of new player that play a certain hand from the FG is proportional to how good the hand is (e.g. Three of a kind can "breed" with more people than two of a kind). There would need to be further rules created to decide the proportion of new player playing a certain hand but that isn't important here.

3a) In early generations how good your hand has to be is less strict than later generations. This is because hand will steadily get better and hands like two-of-a-kind will be out competed.

4) Offspring can "mutate" by exchanging one of their cards in an attempt to get a better hand.

After a few generation of this game of "evolution" poker it wouldn't be a big suprise if several people get a full house (or possible even a royal straight flush if there is a royal dealt in the original round). The game is entirely different if you don't have to get a completely new hand each time and you are allowed to improve it. In reality organism get to keep their "good cards" i.e. good genes because DNA replication is very faithful. New "good cards" often arise from when a gene duplicates and then mutates.

Notice in this game the main area of chance is the first round played, from then on it is down to cumulative selection. My analogy actually does evolution a diservice in the sense that evolution had a longer time scale to work with to produce an initial playable hand. Also in reality there were literally trillions upon trillions of initial "players" (possible replicators) with trillions upon trillions of decks of "cards" (molecules)play for millions of years before life even began. Evolution also aquired better ways of echanging "cards" or genes for a better hand (sex for example)as time went on. I should also say that my breeding rules are simplistic but I think they get across the point. If I want to make it more realistic I might add the idea that different hands are more sucessful in different "enviroments" or new game rooms where each room rates hands differently.

The main point I want make with this example is: In may be improbable that you get a very good hand on the first go. However after "mutating" your hand over several generation the odds go up. It isn't hard to imagine evolution going from two-of-a-kind to three-of-a-kind to four-of-a-kind even or two-of-kind to three-of-kind to a full house (etc etc.).

But what are the chances of that ace of spades growing a head, a brain, legs and arms and starting up a conversation with me? That Mr. Sares is the possibility of the “theory” of evolution.

At this point where the analogy just gets plain silly. There is only so much you can do with an analogy especially one that was bad in the first place. We aren't talking about a single simple object becoming a sentient being. We are talking about simple objects (molecules) working together becoming more complex over millions of years. The molecules don't need to be alive first go, they just need to be able to replicate and evolve on their own and eventually become something that could be considered "alive".

Another problem with above quote is the idea that we evolve arms or legs. This may seem picky but we actually only evolve INSTRUCTIONS for making limbs, before it becomes and arm or leg it is something else. There is NOT one big jump from no arms to having arms. Before arms came onto the scene the INSTRUCTIONS for making arms were used in a different way, maybe in a way that didn't involve limbs at all.

I may write my own article on evolution soon.

"Hey Baker, good quote by Mr. Ham. Haven't I been saying that all along?"

No, you've been saying that in terms of science that creationism and evolution both have "equally valid points".

"The last thing I said today was this: So you can't say that I'm one of those creationists that is insisting that scientifically we have evidence that man and dinos lived together in past times."

Oh?

"This is what I believe: Nothing in observational science contradicts the obvious conclusion based on the Bible's history

Yet you admit that when we look at the fossil record what evolutionists predict seems to be there, and what you predict doesn't. We DON'T find dinosaur bones as young as human bones. We DON'T find human fossils with trilobytes and dinosaurs the way they'd be if they all died at the same time in the flood.

So can you really say that nothing in observational science contradicts the list there? If someone comes to you and tells you to prove that the Roman Gods aren't real, how would present contradictory evidence? Wwe have to look at what a theory's model of the world would predict. The predictions of creationists as to what we'd find aren't panning out, so the conclusions most certainly have contradictory evidence, don't they?

"Well we have nothing scientific I'll give you that.

Then you should be honest and stop portraying evolution as requiring the same level of faith or belief as creationism. You've said that we who esteem the theory of evolution higher than the creation story in the bible do so in the "absense of physical substance". Do you really believe we have nothing of physical substance?

"But I do know biblically speaking Job wrote about them. He witnesses them and put it down in writing. Since I do believe scripture is the revealed word of God, I'd have to say I accept the fact they did live together. To what capacity? I don't know and I'm sure no one else does either"

No, you don't know that. You believe that in order to make your beliefs work, but Job only talks about a large creature that no one can really identify. You interpret that to mean dinosaurs, when people interpreted it for years to mean known sea creatures or even dragons or sea monsters.

"And Baker, I don't differ with anything right in front of my face. "

No, you deny realities that I present, like 4,000 year old bones. You know full well we have bones and other organic remnants of civilization from 2,000 BC. We have animal bones that people carved and used for tools. We have caves filled with the kills of large mamals that later people lived in and left their garbage, too. You love archeaology until it works against you.

"And it's tiring that all my thoughts or beliefs or anyone I present is a liar and all your guys are not. You pride yourself on objectivity but I only see subjectivity. I've shown you also where the "other side" lies including Darwin but you refuse to believe it.

You've shown a handful, and I've shown you that MAINSTREAM creationism uses lies and misinformation constantly. You can call it being "mistaken" all you like, but they are standing there saying that God did this and God did that and God says this and that about how life began. So, yes, I hold people to a DRACONIAN standard of truth when they speak for God. That includes cutting and pasting without so much as a google search to see if it is true.

You want to talk about Darwin, but we have a conversation right here to look at, don't we?

"You have a strong faith in your side and I have as strong a faith in mine."

No, I have NO FAITH WHATSOEVER in either side. Neither deserves it. The difference is the liars on the creationism side ask me to believe their lies without proof, whereas the liars on the evolution side are *required* to show proof to me so that I can make my own mind.

"I don't care if an evolutionist or a Scientist or you Baker calls me a liar, but if God does, that would crush me."

Creationists have become comfortable passing along other people's falsehoods without checking into them. That, I am sorry to say, IS lying when you can find out differently and just opt not to. You promoted Hovind to people saying that he backed up what he said with evidence. Then, when you are faced with the fact that he doesn't you distance yourself, claiming now he's not your go-to guy.

You've done a lot of that here, and you simply will not own up to the responsibility of making sure what you say is true before you say it. Because of that, I'm not sure that there's much reason to continue, unfortunately. I'm disappointed, because I thought that this really might go somewhere with a person who entered the discussion honestly. Instead, you offer misinformation, and when challenged on it you just point to science's rare sins and try and change the subject.

I don't think we are excused for misleading people by pointing out that the other side does it too, do you?

This was just a redundant post after rereading it. I will again mention Proverbs 6:17-19 since folks here esteem scripture higher than anything else, and ask why bearing false witness in discussions on evolution is okay, but a few scientists lying throws the whole theory into suspicion. Frankly, if I had that attitude, there's enough misinformation and twisting of the truth here to make me doubt creationism with no scientific help at all.

P.S. I'm still waiting for Mr. Anonymous to back up the assertion that there are plenty of human fossils. ( #184 by no way bakerstreet (Anonymous user)). That person said:

"there are tons of human fossils, bakerstreet... you lied... in fact most of what your "proof" and what you use for evidence for evolution is based on lies. the facts that you do bring to the table have been distorted. either you are ignorant of this, or you are purposefully making an attempt to decieve."

I don't know if they are a religious person or not, seeing as they were far too cowardly to really commit to the conversation. I'd challenge them to either prove their statement or admit that they are making false accusations, though. That's the kind of tactics one has to get used to arguing against creationist opponents of evolution, though, so it is no surprise.

If Genesis cannot be taken literally, there is no foundation for Christian doctrine.

i can't decide which is more amazing: the statement i've quoted or its impact on me.

only three possibilities present themselves.

either i'm misreading you, you're misrepresenting your true position or you seem almost certain to become-and i'm thinking sooner rather than later--the first bonafide apostate i've encountered. (to provide some perspective, after dismissing the facts of my being alive yet not on life support nor incarcerated, perhaps the single most remarkable aspect of my personal history is having had the great good fortune to meet and know an incredible variety of people including madelyn murray ohare).

But another thing to remember is that crocs are considered dinosaurs remember and we do live among them still. When I went to Washington State some years ago there were fish in the Columbia River that were considered dinos as well

neither fish nor crocodiles are now nor have they ever been dinosaurs.

This game is played with hundreds of packs of cards and hundreds of people.

i dunno bout splainin evolution but it's surely more than enuff cause to revise the first principle of algren's aphorism as follows: never play poker with a guy named toblerone

I've observed the transformation of humans to dinosaurs quite a few times.

i dunno bout splainin evolution but it's surely more than enuff cause to revise the first principle of algren's aphorism as follows: never play poker with a guy named toblerone

Oh I don't, I'm such a novice at it you'd probably win a lot of money off me!

BTW I'm taking KFC's silence as a sign I've converted him to Darwinism

One has to wonder why, in the absense of physical substance or actual evidence (the missing link) ,is evolution not somewhat faith-based? Perhaps it is because having faith in the theory of a missing link is more acceptable than having faith in an intelligent designer?

No evidence of evolution. That is just plain bull there is plenty of supporting evidence:

1. In older strata you find less complex lifeforms. You never find a layer with a more complex lifeforms than the young layers above it.

2. We've observe microevolution in many situations. There many naturalistic situation (Trinidadian guppies, moth coulour changes during the industrial revolution) not mention many computer simulations the reveal that given the premises put forward by Darwin evolution must occur. Those premises are:
a) You have a breeding population
There is variation in the population
c) Variation can be inherited
d) That variation causes a differential in survival rates
then you will get evolution.

3. We have found numerous genetic mechanisms that can lead to physical changes that will lead to new species.

4. All life we know of on earth has the same arbitary genetic code and use amino-acids of the same "handedness". The is no good reason for this unless you assume every living thing is related. Their is no good reason why a creator should make it this way.

5. There are many aspects fo physiology that you be hard to explain if they were design by a supposedly hyper-intelligent creator. Why are the photoreceptor of the eye wired up so the nerve pass IN FRONT of the receptors? Why can't spinal nerves in higher organisms repair themselves? When you look at it there a many things about the body an intelligent engineer wouldn't do.

BTW the idea of a "missing link" is a classic sign you really don't understand evolution, paleontology or genetics well enough to be critisising it. Firstly fossilisation is an extremely rare event and the their in little to no chance of finding every trasitional form. Besides that the "missing link" is based on the outmoded idea that a transitional form would be an exact intermediate between different species. Genetic simply doesn't work like that. That being said as far as human ancestor go we have found many species that look like they could be direct ancestors. The current theory is that speciation occurs over geologically very short periods of time. There are gaps in the record, but that is only to be expected since fossilisation is so rare. The chances of catching a species in the act of changing into another is impossibly small. Speciation isn't a discrete event but something that is smeared out over a long period of time. For example Lions and Tigers can produce offspring, however they tend to be sterile (depending on the sex).

That is just a small part of the evidence for evolution. More to the point is no evidence against evolution, merely incredulity of people that don't bother to understand it. The is plenty of evidence AGAINST creationism however, to believe in creationism you would have to stop believing in many we supported scientific theories. You would have to believe light is slower then it is because if the universe is only 6000 years old the light from other galaxies wouldn't have time to reach us. You would have to overturn ideas about radioactive decay for the same reason.

BTW I'm taking KFC's silence as a sign I've converted him to Darwinism

nice try....first I'm a she and second I've been gone all weekend.

neither fish nor crocodiles are now nor have they ever been dinosaurs.

oh ya? Really?

Link

and what do you say about this:

Link

*BTW it's from the evolutionist's side I got these. This has nothing to do with us creationists.

The is plenty of evidence AGAINST creationism however, to believe in creationism you would have to stop believing in many we supported scientific theories. You would have to believe light is slower then it is because if the universe is only 6000 years old the light from other galaxies wouldn't have time to reach us. You would have to overturn ideas about radioactive decay for the same reason.

You were doing great until you hit this point and made the mistake of confusing creationism with young Earthers. While I am still not convinced that macroevolution has ever happened (no, I don't accpet extrapolations of microevolution as evidence), I am not a young Earther. You mixed two different schools here and lost a bit of ground. The true fact is, there really is no evidence against creation.

Hehe, so in one fell swoop KFC offers evidence stating that the world is at least 135 million years old, and that crocodiles have evolved. Keep em comin!

Ok, I've found proof that science is wrong!
Link

Creationists have become comfortable passing along other people's falsehoods without checking into them. That, I am sorry to say, IS lying when you can find out differently and just opt not to. You promoted Hovind to people saying that he backed up what he said with evidence. Then, when you are faced with the fact that he doesn't you distance yourself, claiming now he's not your go-to guy. You've done

First off, I have not distanced myself from Hovind. He is not my main source of info. I had a student here that graduated #1 in her class, a foreign student from Bulgaria. She sat in stoney silence watching one of his tapes. I know evolutionists hate him because he makes them look stupid. We were all laughing, but she was not. I thought she may have been offended. He's sarcastic which I think it's a bit much but I'm telling you he made sense to her. She read Steven Hawking and Darwin in her spare time with Science as her major. She was an atheistic evolutionist. She dropped it after she watched him, because he said some things that made absolute sense to her. I don't know exactly what it was but she is now majoring in something entirely different as a result.

You've shown a handful, and I've shown you that MAINSTREAM creationism uses lies and misinformation constantly.

I could give you a ton, but what is that going to prove? Tit for tat? I'm not into that. Have you ever heard of Danny Phillips?
He was a 15 year old HS junior from Denver who dared grab the "microphone" of the evoutionists. His class was assigned to watch a NOVA program produced with government funds which stated the usual evolutionary story as fact and the story went something like this...."The first organized form of primitive life was a tiny protozoan.......From these one celled organisims evolved all life on earth.

Science education encourages students to memorize this doctrine and repeat it as fact. Danny fought this. He knew that this claim of molecule to man evolution went far beyond the scientific evidence (a lie). So he wrote a lengthy paper criticizing the NOVA program as propaganda. School admins at first agreed that he had a point and they decided to withdraw the NOVA program from its curriculum. That set off a media firestorm.

He was making a reasonable point. The doctrine that some known process of evolution turned a protozoan into a human is a philosophical assumption not something that can be confirmed by experiement or by historical studies of the fossil record. But the Darwinists were furiated that the admins seriously considered any dissent from the evolutionary education here. They flooded the city's newspapers with letters. Some of the letters were so venomous that the editorial page editor of the Denver Post admitted that her liberal faith had been shaken. She wrote that "these defenders of intellectual freedom behaved in fact, just like a bunch of conservative Christians. Their's was a different kind of fundamentalism, but no less dogmatic and no less intolerant."

His story appeared on CBS and an experienced Darwinist debater named Eugenie Scott was careful to cast Danny as the opponent of learning. She argued, "If Danny Phillips doesn't want to learn evolution....that's his own business. But his views should not prevail for 80,000 students who need to learn evolution to be educated." So when does questioning evolution make you an enemy of education? Don't mess with it is the theme here.

When Danny got a chance to speak he was reported only in a local paper. He said, "Students' minds are to be kept open and not limited by a set of beliefs." He had, for a second, a chance or partial success in getting past the microphone that only belongs to the evolutionists. There is no equal play here. It's an uphill battle for the "other side."

He challanged evolutionary naturalism on two grounds. It is religious dogma and it isn't supported by the weight of scientific evidence. The admins were impressed by his arguments but his case ended like so many others. He lost because the power is on the other side. Civil liberties lawyers threatened to bring an expensive lawsuit and the school board capitulated to them. But he was successful because his challenge to evolutionary orthodoxy got a lot of press. Some was favorable.

The uproar so upset science educators that they brought out a really big gun to silence the HS student. Bruce Alberts who was the president of the National Academy of Sciences personally responded to Danny in an editorial published in the Denver Post. The NAS is the mosst prestigious organization of scientists in the US so this guy effectively would be the official voice of the scientific establishment.

You can check area Denver newspaper stories on this as well as local radio and TV. It was all over the place. See especially Janet Bingham, "Boy Crusades Alone; Evolution Research Won Panel's Rspect," The Denver Post, Aug 3, 1996 p.B1

Sue O'Brien, "Zealots Rage from Left, Too," The Denver Post, Aug 18, p.F1

Scott made her quted comment on CBS program Sundy Morning on Sept 22, 1996.

I even have a full text of the NOVA introduction to this video called "The Miracle of Life."

and Baker....it's full of LIES.

Really?

really.

as noted in the first article to which you linked:

The group had traveled to the site—one of the richest fossil beds in Africa—to search for dinosaurs. But it was immediately clear that the giant jawbones had not come from a dinosaur, Sereno said.


""We had never seen anything like it," he said. "The snout and teeth were designed for grabbing prey—fish, turtles, and dinosaurs that strayed too close."

Other massive crocodiles have been reported, but Sarcosuchus imperator is the most complete specimen found so far and among the largest crocodilians that ever lived."

for further confirmation, please research the unique differences between archosaurs (the lineage of crocodiles and birds) and dinosaurs.