Evolution

No. I know you revel in the idea of all viewpoints being equal and valid (because you have no interest in understanding any but your own and it makes you seem reasonable), but the problem with that is that, for example, you have just accused "evolutionists" of sticking to their guns and refusing to take new evidence into account within about five posts of saying that the theory of evolution keeps changing and people keep coming up with new variations on it. You've for some reason gotten the idea that every question or statement about one belief can be turned back on itself, and that only works if all "sides" are equal. In this case they aren't. Something is true of one and not true of another. Deal with it, and ideally, deal with it in a more intelligent and less infantile way.

 

I think what he means is that it's a logical extension of what you're describing. There are a lot of things that you may not intend to imply but which you still do by virtue of what you actually say.

I can see how what you said could be read to imply that all species that are alive now existed once and then some of them died. If you don't believe that the process you described can create new species, and if you don't believe that another process does so, then I don't see any other way you could account for it. If you don't believe that all species that have ever existed once co-existed, then how do you account for the new ones?

 

Thanks I was to lazy to explain it.
:cheers2:

 

I don't think it matters, really. I don't want to be accused of ad hominems and so on, but really, I personally have discussed this with OWB enough for him to know that evolution requires a lot of death in order to occur at all, and I know that I'm not the only person he discusses this with. I can only conclude from this that he specifically refuses to accept that that is what the theory is, and prefers to believe that it's something else just because it makes it easier to argue against.


EDIT: The real problem I have with it is the implication that evolution doesn't happen. I think if you gave him a list of all the factors that are supposed to lead to evolution, even, OWB would struggle to deny that they exist and are common and plausible, and that they would have a substantial effect on an ecosystem and the life in it. He's not denying that mutations happen, that populations can be reduced, etc. I don't understand why it's such a stretch to imagine that evolution (which is basically just these factors combining over and over again, fairly inevitable over the course of hundreds of millions of generations) would happen. You hardly even need evidence because just about everything required to cause evolution can be observed.

What I'm trying to say is, it's obvious that it could happen, even if there's no solid proof that it definitely did in this instance. The suggestion that it's a crackpot theory just isn't born out. Even if God put all the animals on the planet 6000-ish years ago, evolution would still be a reality, unless we are able to just not believe in death, in mutation and so on.

 

lol

 

Thanks for looking out for me. I wouldn't want to look silly, not that that has ever stopped me before.

But to explain myself, to me there is a difference between the genetic diversity that has always been there and the evolutionary changes that are new that never existed before.

To use my illustration, if you were to kill off every human that does not have brown eyes and so now every human living would have brown eyes would that mean that mankind has evolved into something different and is no longer human? In killing off every human that does not have brown eyes mean that a human with blue eyes will never be born again?

No to both. A person with brown eyes is still a human and even if no human were to exist with blue eyes, that recessive gene can still exist and can re-emerge at a later date.

Call it what you will but to me that just seems like normal everyday genetic diversity and has nothing to do with proving evolution true.

 

Good enough for me!

 

I think two brown eyed people can still have blue eyed(or probably any other color) children.

 

Did you take an extra hit? lol

j/k

 

The above doesn't prove or disprove a thing.

I think the problem here is, you seem to be dismissing these mundane roots of evolution for no real reason other than they seem too boring. Considering that this process is believed to occur at glacial speed (albeit for the sake of argument - there's no real reason why it shouldn't happen incredibly fast by pure fluke, although the odds would be stacked against it), it's never going to be that exciting.

The problem is that, every time you use the words "to me it seems", it's like saying "well, that may be exactly how evolution is theorised to work, but I DON'T LIKE IT". It's meaningless really, because it just implies that, even if you had proof, you'd still feel able to ignore it or to move the goalposts and demand other proof. Just about everything that would be required to happen for evolution to occur does happen, constantly, everywhere. If the end result (the process) can't be observed in a lab, everything that causes it can be seen causing it, and what would be required for it to not cause it simply doesn't make sense.

 

Yes. My mother has blue eyes, my father has brown eyes; my sister and I both have green eyes. I guess the genes involved in determining eye colour are a lot more changeable than others.

 

Both a mother and a father can have Achondroplasia dwarfism and give birth to children without.

 

We're talking about evolution not the Lord of the rings...

I kid, I kid...

 

Busted! You finally caught me, I knew with your tireless logic and dogged search of my posts that you would finally catch me in a contradiction.

Even though my comment: “I just wish those evolutionists would quit putting their blindfolds back on” was a more or less a toss off punch line meant to be more of a joke than to be taken seriously, let’s take a look at where I went wrong.

The line; “I just wish those evolutionists would quit putting their blindfolds back on” to me was saying that evolutionists will grasp at any straw to try and save the concept of evolution no matter how flimsy it might be, even to the point of ignoring obvious facts to the contrary.

And then the statement I made earlier that; “the theory of evolution keeps changing and people keep coming up with new variations on it” in order to grasp at any straw to try and save the concept of evolution no matter how flimsy it might be, even to the point of ignoring obvious facts to the contrary.

Oh, wait a second, those statements aren’t contradictory after all! Never Mind!

Well Hoatzin, I guess you’ll just have to keep on trying.

 

Can you go into more detail about "ignoring obvious facts to the contrary"?

 

Oh, thanks, you've been so helpful.

I’ve always stated that the animals were created over a period of time and exactly how long that “day” was no one knows. Although God could have snapped his fingers, so to speak and all the animals come into existence instantaneously, I’ve always thought of him creating them one at a time and perhaps even some lived a long time before others were made. So “new ones” were just ones created later than others. Now I know some will say that this may sound a little like evolution but I believe that God created each one in the order he chose and did not use an evolutionary process but each “kind” was an individual creation. I believe that this very order of creation is what gives evolution some of it’s appearance of credibility.

 

I read somewhere that close to 99% of all life that has ever existed on this planet is now extinct, if there is no evolution involved and indeed life was created by an omnipotent intelligence why would it waste billions of years fumbling with creatures who's pre written destiny was to die off completely?

Seems like a waste of time to me, an ENORMOUS waste of time.

 

The problem with evolutionists is not their saying it could happen but that they say it did happen.

I have never said it was a “crackpot theory” just that it seems to me to have some holes in it’s logic.

Once again, the Bible does not say how long ago it happened.

And last, thanks for implying that I don’t believe in death or mutations etc but the thing is I just don’t see those things evolving new creatures, with all the death and mutations etc, I don’t see anything new, moths are still moths, bacteria are still bacteria, dogs are still dogs and humans are still humans

 

You are correct.