Funny Evolution vs Creationism cartoons

[smitity]

Here is where I have a problem. evolutionists, will say that what they believe is true, yet they have no solid proof or evidence that will 100% show what they believe to be true. religion has proof too, but not 100% either which leads us to my conclusion. I personally believe in creation, but conclude that unless one is a believer you have to take it on faith. Without difinitive proof for evolution in the sense of how we got here, I think one has to take that on faith also.

Here's the big difference. The scientific method is actively applied to evolution in many many studies. And these studies have supported the idea of evolution. Find me some good scientific studies supporting creationism. The best I've ever been able to find is people saying "well how do you explain x,y, z?" The inability to explain something using a certain theory is not evidence against that theory or supporting to opposing theory....unless you can prove scientifically that the opposing theory works. Without proof of creationism/intelligent design, all you can say is that we don't fully understand the mechanisms of evolution.

You can't apply the scientific method to a matter of faith, just like we'll never find scientific proof that god exists.

Also there's the little fact that evolution underlies basically all modern disease research. So if creationists wanna throw all that out because of religous beleifs, be my guest......

Why do I feel like Ive said all this before several times.....oh yeah, a dead horse.

[techboy]

Why do I feel like Ive said all this before several times.....oh yeah, a dead horse.

My advice is to search your own posts, then copy and paste. Saves me loads of time.

[dfitzo53]

My advice is to search your own posts, then copy and paste. Saves me loads of time.

I find I learn more when I rewrite my position.

[smitity]

I find I learn more when I rewrite my position.

I think thats true. The more you write someting, the more you see any errors in it, etc. Plus I'm pretty sured I've learned some more things about this argument since I last posted about it. Also, I enjoy my horse meat to be extremely tender

And getting back to the topic at hand:

[techboy]

I find I learn more when I rewrite my position.

Dude I'm a Christian. I have the Truth (TM). Why do I need to continue learning?

[Zguy28]

I see the militants are out looking for a scrap again...

You may be a Fundy Atheist if...
# You believe that planes, computers, calculators, compasses, etc, were "all obviously designed," yet the human body, being intricately more complex was "obviously a product of biological evolution." It seems the more complex the apparatus, the more obvious the "fact" that it was not designed.
# You claim that evolution and the big bang are two entirely separate theories that explain different aspects of the universe, yet, in what school of learning can you find any real separation or distinction between the two?
# As a member of the Skeptic's Society you pride yourself on being skeptical of extraordinary claims. You also pride yourself on silencing everyone who is skeptical of the extraordinary claims of evolution.
# Isaac Newton does not count as an example of a great scientist who believed in the Bible since he died before the Origin of Species was published.
# When you watch a punt returner run a 93 yard touchdown, you marvel at what evolution has done for the human race. But when someone gets cancer, you blame God for it.
# When you're discussing the origin of the world, the phrase "uncaused cause(God)" is a stupid, meaningless thing to say. You will, however, settle for "uncaused effect(the world without God)".
# You descended from apes.(Think about it.)
# You think that humans are products of chance but when it comes to human reason we can believe in logic! (Think about it !)
# You think you arrived at your position because you are a free-thinker who rationally weighed the evidence, and then freely chose atheism over theism. YET, you also believe that your thinking and actions are nothing more than the FIXED reactions of the atoms in your brain that are governed by the Laws of Chemistry and Physics.
# You love to castigate Christians for being "anti-science" if they deny evolution from goo to you via the zoo, and to preach that they should adapt their thinking to the "science" of our day. But you also castigate the Church of 400 years ago for being anti-science, when it DID adapt its thinking to the science of ITS day, i.e. Ptolemaic cosmology, then joined with the Aristotelian scientists of the universities in rejecting Galileo!
# You think that some guy named "Dr Dino" with no scientific credentials represents mainstream Evangelical thinking and scholarship about evolution and creation, and thus by spending inordinate amounts of time attacking him you are somehow dismantling the arguments of scholarly dissenters from evolution, creationists with earned Ph. D.s in science, and of advocates of intelligent design.
# You claim poker-faced that "social Darwinism" and its spawn of eugenics have absolutely no connection to the biological theories propounded by Charles Darwin in "On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life"
# You have recently stuck a Darwin fish on your car in the hopes the people with the Jesus fish on theirs will be offended.
# You also claim that not only is there no connection between Darwin's theories and the doctrines of social Darwinism and eugenics (despite the fact that the term eugenics was coined and advocated by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, who acknowledged his debt to Origin), but that none of these philosophical positions have any connection to the modern fields of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology.
# You can claim with as straight face on sites like Talk Origins that "Evolution does not have moral consequences" despite the fact that prominent evolutionary advocates like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett vehemently assert that evolution does transcend biology in a way that has a profound effects upon ethics.
# When the Pope says that God may have used evolution, he is an enlightened religious leader whom Christians should listen to. When the Pope preaches on the sanctity of human life from conception, and thus denounces abortion, he's just a senile religious bigot who should keep his opinions to himself.
# Concerning the origins of life, you feel that though the chances of life forming without an intelligent creator are small it DID indeed happen that way. And yet you don't believe me when a rock, coming from my direction, hits you in the back of the head and I tell you, "I didn't throw it. There was a sudden shift in the earth's gravitational pull and the rock levitated into your head...Sure the chances are small but it DID happen that way."
# When you're shown that your view of origins is silly, you can only respond, "Well...at least it's better than believing in some invisible SKY DADDY!"
# When a Christian points out the impossibility of a biological system (or feature) forming by pure chance you accuse them of invoking a "God of the gaps". YET, when you are asked how a particular feature could come about solely by chance you invoke "Evolution of the gaps" (i.e., we don't know HOW but we do know that Evolution MUST have done it!)
# You claim antibiotic-resistant bacteria is proof protozoa evolved into a person.
# You insist that science is completely partial to all ideas, is not dogmatic and researches all possibilities -- except creationism and/or intelligent design.
# You claim Creationists don't research on evolution websites before debating against it. Luckily you caught this useful weapon against Christians at the evolution site you learned all about creation doctrine from.
# You think that every scientist who believes in Creationism and doesn't mindlessly accept evolution as a fact is a "kook," but you believe that Francis Crick (Nobel Prize winning co-discoverer of DNA), who reached into his nether regions and pulled out the "theory" of Directed Panspermia (which states with absolutely no support that aliens seeded the earth with life - see the movie "Mission to Mars"), is a great evolutionist scientist.
# When a creationist points out problems with the evolutionist model you claim that the whole point of science is to answer problems like these. But if you can point out even one problem in the creationist model it should instantly be abandoned as absurd.
# You are a person who absolutely believes that life came from nonlife, yet absolutely deny the possibility of anyone rising from the dead.
# You won't bet $10 on the football game because a 50/50 chance isn't good enough, but you have no problem gambling with your life on the nearly impossible odds of a cell randomly generating from nothing.
# Engaging the "slippery slope" fallacy, you think you can invalidate the whole bible by discrediting Genesis, since 'the whole bible either stands together or falls apart'. However, when a Creationist tries to invalidate the whole doctrine of naturalistic evolution by exposing the sheer improbability and lack of evidence of abiogenesis, you note this point as 'irrelevant'.
# You think the movie "Inherit the Wind" best describes the eternal struggle of how an evolutionist is being treated by creationists in this religious society. And you can personally relate your life to the Scopes Monkey Trial.
# You ignore "Time Magazine's" poll, which states that only 28% of Americans believe in evolution. But of course, "Time Magazine" must been run by creationists.
# You teach a belief only held by 28% of a nation, as truth beyond any shadow of a doubt because only educated people believe in evolution. Yet of course, you ignore that fully educated scientists in most other nations have proven against Darwinian theory. Like the Chinese paleontologist who reportedly says: "In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize the government but not Darwin."
# You think man evolved from monkeys but get mad when somebody calls you one.
# You think that if schools teach the Intelligent Design theory of creation,they should also teach the "stork theory" of where babies come from.
# You demand that Christians study advanced evolutionary biology before making claims about natural selection. You then claim that their theological ideas, which you have never examined before, are pure nonsense.
# On the other hand, you demand that Christians who have NOT studied evolutionary biology ought to go ahead and publicly commit to arguments about it, because you want to trap or embarrass them with your own knowledge of the subject, which is limited to quoting Gould and Futuyama.
# You claim that the 'God' mentioned by Albert Einstein and Steven Hawkings is nature and that they were atheists, then claim that you have no religion, which is defined by the dictionary as "Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe."


Courtesy of http://www.tektonics.org

[PeterMP]

The basic difference between evolution and creationism is that evolution can be used to predict things that can then be tested. Evolution predicted that there must be someway for traits to be passed on. Decades later this prediction was proven true w/ the discovery of DNA, and that organisms that are closely related have similar DNA sequences (e.g. mice are more similar to rats than humans and humans are more similar to chimps than mice or rats at the DNA level, and you are more closely related at the DNA level to your parents than some unrelated stranger). Creationism can only be used to predict that there is a God, and there is no way for me to test that in a lab.

If nothing else, evolution has greatly increased our knowledge of how nature works and has held up very well in making predictions and having those predictions be accurate.

I should also note, that this an issue that most people don't understand. In chemistry and biology (unlike math), it is impossible to prove that something is true. The only thing you can do is eliminate alternatives. If you have proven that all of the other reasonable alternatives are false, then what you are left w/ must be true. The fact of the matter is that Creationist won't describe a single experiment that feasibly can be done that would disprove creation. When evidence comes up that suggest that Creationism is wrong, they just say, 'God made it that way to test people so he can identify the unbelievers'. Many people believe fossils aren't "real", but were placed by God to mislead people. I'm Christian, but I don't believe God would need to place fossils on Earth to help him determine if you truly believed.

[Cdowwe]

Anyone see the opening of the Simpsons last night, where Homer started off as a cell and became Homer...then he passes Moe who is 'devolving into a rat'

[techboy]

I see the militants are out looking for a scrap again...

Give it up. Their cartoons are better than ours. Why not just embrace the inevitable?

[Zguy28]

I should also note, that this an issue that most people don't understand. In chemistry and biology (unlike math), it is impossible to prove that something is true. The only thing you can do is eliminate alternatives. If you have proven that all of the other reasonable alternatives are false, then what you are left w/ must be true. The fact of the matter is that Creationist won't describe a single experiment that feasibly can be done that would disprove creation.

Do evolutionists do that? Seriously, I would like to see evidence and the results of them trying to disprove their theories of evolution.

When evidence comes up that suggest that Creationism is wrong, they just say, 'God made it that way to test people so he can identify the unbelievers'. Many people believe fossils aren't "real", but were placed by God to mislead people. I'm Christian, but I don't believe God would need to place fossils on Earth to help him determine if you truly believed.

And you would be right. Those folks are spiritual infants or they read too many comic books. God doesn't need to "identify" the non-believers, He has always known.

[alexey]

Anyone see the opening of the Simpsons last night, where Homer started off as a cell and became Homer...then he passes Moe who is 'devolving into a rat'

oh-oh, here comes the Theory of Devolution

[alexey]

Do evolutionists do that? Seriously, I would like to see evidence and the results of them trying to disprove their theories of evolution.

Yep, they certainly do.

At this point, however, the discussion is focused on mechanisms of evolution, since there are no other viable alternative scientific theories.... Unfortunately a theory of a divine being creating everything (including the evidence for evolution) cannot be considered scientific or cannot for that matter be disproven.

Creationism and Evolution really do not belong in the same category... Creationism can work just fine if you assume that God created everything to look like it was actually a result of evolution... including giving organisms the actual ability to evolve... A better way to reconsile this, in my view, is to consider evolution to be a "tool of choice" for God, guided by God's loving hand, etc. In either case these two do not belong anywhere near each other

[PeterMP]

Do evolutionists do that? Seriously, I would like to see evidence and the results of them trying to disprove their theories of evolution. And you would be right. Those folks are spiritual infants or they read too many comic books. God doesn't need to "identify" the non-believers, He has always known.

The fact of the matter is yes. Currently, much of it is now done on computers w/ simulations because it is hard to do experiments that take millions of years in the lab, but that is based on our knowledge of DNA sequences, which come from real experiments and our understanding of how traits (actaul phenotypes like eye color) are passed through generations, which I again from real experiments and observations.

When DNA was first discovered a lot of work was done to understand its role in evolution. You have to remember that Darwin put forth evolution w/o knowing what happened at the molecular level, which was not clear until DNA was discovered decades later (after Darwins death) so the discovery of DNA and the fact that the way it works makes sense in the context of evolution is a huge plus for evolution. If with the discovery of DNA, we found that organisms that are unrelated still have very similar DNA sequences (e.g. that rats were more similar to humans than mice) or that DNA couldn't be changed or something else like that then evolution would have taken a huge hit, and we would have had to start over, and evolution would have been discarded or at least under gone major modifications. People have done a lot of work looking at how mutations in the DNA change things and can cause evolution.

The other issue is that there is no real competeing theory against which it can be tested. Normally, the way it works is the you have idea A and idea B. Idea A predicts if you do X, Y will happens. Idea B maybe completely silent on what will happen if you do X or it might predict Z will happen. Then I have a very simple experiment. I do X, if Y doest not happen, I can discard idea A. Even if idea B predicts Z happens and Z does happen, it doesn't mean idea B is correct because there are likely many ideas that could produce Z (even an infinite amount). As I described before, I can't test creationism. Historically, the other theory was Lamarck's. For the most part people had discarded Lamarckism before the discover of DNA, but our understanding of how DNA put the nail in its coffin.

I also should point out, individual scientist would love to disprove evolution. That is how you become "famous". If I could go into my lab right now and do an experiment that dispoved evolution, I would because I would be famous and set for life (e.g. I would never have to worry about losing my job because I could always fall back on being the person that disproved evolution much less the money I'd make from the book and speaking tour). There is no personal motivation or benefit to me to push evolution. The right frequently makes it sound like 'they', scientist are all in cahoots. What is the benefit to us? As far as I know, I don't make more money if more people believe in evolution.

I'll also make a more general statement about the right and liberal universities, I don't really know how it is in the humanities, but the person that I did research w/ as an undergrad was part of a bible study w/ other science faculty (I believe they were all protestant, but don't know) and the chair of the Chem. Dept. was Catholic, I'm Catholic, my Ph.D advisor was Catholic (and I didn't chose to work /w him because he was Catholic that's just the way it worked out; I didn't even know he was Catholic until after I started working there), my wife is in science, and she is Catholic (she actually converted after we married, but her parents attend a S. Baptist Church), her Ph.D. advisor was a practicing Jew. When I was getting my Ph.D., there were four other people in the lab, one other was Catholic (again just chance), one was protestent, but very devout, one was a practicing Hindu, and the last described himself as agnostic. Where I did post-doctoral work, my boss was again Catholic (again I didn't know that when I went to work for her) and at least two other people in tha lab were practicing Jews. My wife's post-doctoral advisor was Catholic and at least two other people in that lab were Catholics (there were a collection of Italian-Americans, but to my knowledge nobody including my wife went to work there because of religion). Now, I am a professor. I actually don't know about most of the people I work w/, but I am in a small dept. (there are six of us), and I am Catholic and the women whom has the office next to me is Christian (not Catholic, but I'm not sure what she is), and actively practicing. I would not consider my experience in sciences in universities as a drove of atheism and liberalism.

[Popeman38]

First, the definition of evolution

1.any process of formation or growth; development: the evolution of a language; the evolution of the airplane. 2.a product of such development; something evolved: The exploration of space is the evolution of decades of research. 3.Biology. change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift. 4.a process of gradual, peaceful, progressive change or development, as in social or economic structure or institutions. 5.a motion incomplete in itself, but combining with coordinated motions to produce a single action, as in a machine. 6.a pattern formed by or as if by a series of movements: the evolutions of a figure skater. 7.an evolving or giving off of gas, heat, etc. 8.Mathematics. the extraction of a root from a quantity. Compare involution (def. 8). 9.a movement or one of a series of movements of troops, ships, etc., as for disposition in order of battle or in line on parade. 10.any similar movement, esp. in close order drill.

Myself, Baculus and another poster (name slips my mind, sorry) had a very calm, informed debate ion this topic many months ago. Most informed creationists do believe in evolution. Intra-species evolution is quite obvious, inter-species evolution is a differnt beast altogether . Sorry, my sense of humor has yet to evolve...

[rincewind]

Those folks are spiritual infants or they read too many comic books. God doesn't need to "identify" the non-believers, He has always known.

Then why did he do what he did to Job?