Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[JPhillips]

I am been trying to get a handle on how man evolved from a cell to a creature with complex organs that are interdependent on each other. Can someone help me? First there was an atom that turned into a single cell amoeba. After this what are all the life forms that existed up to man. In other words, don’t start with the monkey. Get me to the monkey from the single cell. Name all the life forms between the amoeba and man. Then maybe this whole thing will make more sense to me. Otherwise, if there is no evidence of these life forms then there is no evidence for evolution. You can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. To think otherwise is to believe in silly fairy tales.

[Alun]

I have a pretty general outline of the evidence for evolution and natural reproductive selection in this thread. I don't know if there's much reason to repeat that whole argument here.

The word you're looking for is "bacterium;" amoebas are just a large class of bacteria. Also, atoms of different elements (e.g. Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen) compose molecules (such as amino acids, nucleotides, fatty acids), which, at least according to abiogenesis theories, spontaneously began to form self-copying "macromolecules" (e.g. proteins, RNA, DNA). Those macromolecules are theorized to have eventually lead to cellular life.

As to the fossil record specifically, what you're asking for is for a huge chunk of paleontology to be presented to you, which is slightly ridiculous. There are millions of fossils along the timeline between the first of multicellular organisms and humans. Here's the general timeline, if you really don't understand what you're asking for.

[JPhillips]

Alun said:

As to the fossil record specifically, what you're asking for is for a huge chunk of paleontology to be presented to you, which is slightly ridiculous. There are millions of fossils along the timeline between the first of multicellular organisms and humans. Here's the general timeline, if you really don't understand what you're asking for.

I know exactly what I am asking for. I know it does not exist and never did. Asking you to produce proof Darwinism theory is scientific fact is no more ridiculous than you asking me to produce proof of God. So we can sit here and call each other stupid all day long and we will both have plenty of supporters.

Alun said

When you ask people to agree with you, then you open yourself up to ridicule.

I concur. And as long as we are using others to make our arguments for us, here are some who agree with me:

http://duncanlong.com/science-fiction-fantasy-shor t-stories/evolut.html

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/005947.html

[Alun]

I know it [evidence] does not exist and never did.

Of course it does; did you look at the links I provided? I'm just telling you that I'm not going to post millions of fossil citations for you. Where do you think transitional fossils are missing, exactly? It'd be helpful if you put it in terms of that timeline I linked to. E.g. do you doubt that there is a link between the ancestors of bacteria and sponges? Or between sponges and jellyfish? Etc.

Also, you should consider this when challenging interpretations of the fossil record (source):

1. Some important factors prevent the formation of fossils from being common:

* Fossilization itself is not a particularly common event. It requires conditions that preserve the fossil before it becomes scavenged or decayed. Such conditions are common only in a very few habitats, such as river deltas, peat bogs, and tar pits. Organisms that do not live in or near these habitats will be preserved only rarely.

* Many types of animals are fragile and do not preserve well.

* Many species have small ranges. Their chance of fossilization will be proportionally small.

* The evolution of new species probably is fairly rapid in geological terms, so the transitions between species will be uncommon.

Passenger pigeons, once numbered in the billions, went extinct less than 200 years ago. How many passenger pigeon fossils can you find? If they are hard to find, why should we expect to find fossils that are likely from smaller populations and have been subject to millions of years of potential erosion?

2. Other processes destroy fossils. Erosion (and/or lack of deposition in the first place) often destroys hundreds of millions of years or more of the geological record, so the geological record at any place usually has long gaps. Fossils can also be destroyed by heat or pressure when buried deep underground.

3. As rare as fossils are, fossil discovery is still rarer. For the most part, we find only fossils that have been exposed by erosion, and only if the exposure is recent enough that the fossils themselves do not erode.

As climates change, species will move, so we cannot expect a transition to occur all at one spot. Fossils often must be collected from all over a continent to find the transitions.

Only Europe and North America have been well explored for fossils because that is where most of the paleontologists lived. Furthermore, regional politics interfere with collecting fossils. Some fabulous fossils have been found in China only recently because before then the politics prevented most paleontology there.

4. The shortage is not just in fossils but in paleontologists and taxonomists. Preparing and analyzing the material for just one lineage can take a decade of work. There are likely hundreds of transitional fossils sitting in museum drawers, unknown because nobody knowledgeable has examined them.

5. Description of fossils is often limited to professional literature and does not get popularized. This is especially true of marine microfossils, which have the best record.

6. If fossilization were so prevalent and young-earth creationism were true, we should find indications in the fossil record of animals migrating from the Ark to other continents.

[JPhillips]

Alun

I am just becoming more and more frustrated because for every argument I find for evolution I come across an argument is that just as valid in refuting it.

Don't misunderstand me. I've already admitted that I believe in God and to do so requires faith. That is because His existence cannot be scientifically proven or disproven. I believe that everything in the physical universe including man was by intelligent design, but that God first created the building blocks and then used them to complete His final creation, one small step at a time. Man may not even be His most evolved creation in the Universe. I believe that the universe is a work in process. The universe and life are still evolving. I don't believe anything was random.

So in this regards I know there has to be an evolution of some sort. I am just not sure the scientists are sure of how it came about yet.

I've looked at the time-line. Way too many holes, assumptions and gaps in it for me. Unbelievable, in other words. It does not begin to explain how organs evolved, and how did one organ know to evolve to work with all the other organs? How in the world did we get to a point where it takes two humans to produce another human via the whole reproductive process? These are all concrete process, so there must be concrete explanations.

[Juice]

It is timely that this topic has been reinvigorated at this particular point in time considering the recent uncovering of scientific manipulations in the global warming controversy.

What is interesting is how a mathematician reviewing the DATA submitted by climatologists noted some discrepancies. Resulting in his "requesting" data particulars in order to either confirm the data or confirm his mistakes, if any. He was repeatedly turned away, and for ten years attempted to get the information through the Freedom of Information Act with no success until the recent uncovering of damning E-Mails suggesting a broad based conspiracy of lies, manipulations and cover-ups by the scientific community, and exposing the fallacy of peer review comparative to an alcoholic put in charge of guarding the still on New Years Eve.

Mathematicians have been questioning the validity of evolution since almost as soon as Darwin presented his theory. Some likening the advent of all known diversity of life coming from a single random, chance event to greater than all the known matter in the universe (a really ginormous number) to one.

Alun and I have tried to hash this out to little avail. It seems that there is a believability factor hard to breech. Like climate change, I suppose it's a matter of passion, trust and whether or not we really want something more for ourselves than commonality with chimpanzees and bonaboo's, and the belief that God would have created something as beautiful, bountiful and giving as this planet along with minds capable of using its gifts as the means to destroy it with the wonderful things He provided.

But keep up the skepticism and here are some things to consider worthwhile that you do.

-No evidence of abiogenesis.
-No evidence of multicellularization.
-No transitional organisms before the Cambrian explosion.
-No transitional organism proving the transition of plants to coldblooded to warmblooded animals or mammals. (think about this one, its important)
-Evolution of Sexual Reproduction (sexual dimorphism)
-Rh Factor Blood Types
-Chirality
-Speciation
-Human Eye Complexity
-No missing link
-Elephant evolution
-Horse Evolution
-Sharks
-Horseshoe Crabs
-Whales, Dolphins
-Flightless birds (de-evolution)
-Cellular Complexity (information processing) AGCT 0/1
-And numerous others if you want more.

If you are interested in evolution hoaxes;

-Ernest Haeckel-(atheist) Fake embryo drawings, still used in college textbooks.
-Prof. Reiner Protsch von Zieten made fraudulent fossils. Fabricated a fake skull passed off to be a link between Neanderthal and man.
-Piltdown man
-Archaeoraptor
-Nebraska man (this is important due to the problems linking man to common Ape ancestors because of teeth, not widely discussed)
-Flipperpithecus
-Speckled Moths (glued to trees)

Seems to be a product of any contested science to value the necessity for a high degree of misinterpretation and even down right fraud.

[pjkeeley]

The genius of Darwinism, like many scientific theories, is in the elegant mechanism by which the theory functions. In Darwinism this is the process of natural selection. Natural selection is as logical and obvious as gravity, and like gravity its recognition occurs spontaneously once explained to someone who has never considered it before, or had previously only considered it unscientifically. And it is indeed obvious: an advantage that aids survival and the propagation of advantageous genes will flourish. This is more than theory. You can watch it take place with your own eyes, in the labratory or in the field.

I have heard that some critics of evolutionary theory accept that natural selection occurs, but attempt to seperate it from Darwinism, claiming it is not responsible for evolution. The simple fact is that those who have a stake in some religious formulation of the truth will always distrust a purely scientific formulation, even though religious orthodoxy has for many years welcomed evolutionary theory. Even the previous Pope said that Darwinism is compatible with the Christian faith.

If I may make a personal aside, I was given religious instruction for five years, and not once were complex questions such as how life came about and the meaning of existence made any clearer during that time. We were not encouraged to ask too many questions. However, I was taught about evolutionary theory in the final years of my schooling, and in a period of weeks I found that science provides satisfying explanations, showing common sense at work in nature. Questions can be asked and answered. Indeed, difficult questions are what drive science. This appealed to me.

Like Newtonian physics, I don't believe evolution is a complete picture or that everything about evolutionary theory has been satisfactorily explained. As has been pointed out, scientific knowledge is provisionary knowledge. Nevertheless, Darwinism is the only theory that promises to explain life on earth in a logical and common sense fashion. Intelligent design simply fills in the gaps in evolutionary theory with God, claiming that where Darwinism has so far failed to provide an explanation, that is where God is at work. Once these gaps have been filled by scientific discovery, how will intelligent design be able to sneak God into the process? Let's be clear: if people want to believe that God is involved in the process of evolution, that is fine. What I am concerned about is believers who claim that evolution can only be explained if we assume that God intervenes. This is nonsense, but it is nonsense that will take a long time to die, since science is a long way from explaining every aspect of evolution.

However, even if the kinks aren't all ironed out yet, eventually, like most leaps in science, things which seem inexplicable now will fall into place. That's what I believe, and it isn't hard to believe it, because if you look at every scientific leap in history it's the same.

And Juice, I'm not sure what the climate change story has to do with Darwinism. Are you saying that because some scientists have been caught falsifying their findings, science as an institution cannot be trusted? Do you mind if I apply the same logic to assert that since some Christian priests have been found to be paedophiles, Christians should not be trusted around children?

[Juice]

PJ-I think my post speaks for itself. Just as Darwinism is a great fiction story based on hoaxes, manipulating information and misinformation so is the global warming hoax. Please PJ, the reference to pedophile priests was plebeian, you can do better than that.

First let's clear up what the Pope stated as it is something which once again proves secular distortions;

Pope John Paul made the statement in French;

“Aujourd'hui, pres d'un demisiecle apres la parution de l'encyclique, de nouvelles connaisances condesuisent a reconnaitre dans la theorie de l'evolution plus qu'*une* hypothese.”

Translation;

“Today, almost half a century after the publication of the Encyclical [Humani generis, 1950], new knowledge has led to the recognition of more than *one* hypothesis in the theory of evolution.”

Without trying to disparage the Roman Catholic Church, the church has long accepted evolution theory and has for years taught evolution in schools, but has always maintained that creation is impossible without God. Pope John Paul II had a storied life and was very much the philosopher. It would be unfair to attack so brave and hearty soul for things he said in his old age.

As a philosopher the Pope insisted on being up to date in the sciences. The Pope was referring to Intelligent Design. While I am sure that some will continue to use this misstatement for some purpose it was taken out of context.

What is curious is that the current Pope Benedict XVI has officially stated that evolution can not be proven and that evolution unnecessarily narrows the view of creation, and no news agency bothered to quote him. Bias maybe? Or, just more secular and Darwinian manipulation and misinformation?

Pope Benedict XVI (2007)

"The question is not to either make a decision for a creationism that fundamentally excludes science, or for an evolutionary theory that covers over its own gaps and does not want to see the questions that reach beyond the methodological possibilities of natural science,"

I too was a staunch evolutionist since before I was ten. Even in my short stint in college before I entered military service I geared all my energies to Anthropology and Paleo-anthropology for my electives. It was one simple question that pervaded my thinking more than anything else for years and that is sexual reproduction.

The origin of life is naturally a human paradigm. Significantly the examination of life origins is the single most important priority of science and philosophy. It actually means more than all other sciences combined. To trivialize it in any way is a disservice to rational constructive and meaningful thinking and discourse. To accept any theory of such import without examining it and accepting its faults and inexactitude is irresponsible. The truth is that Darwinism makes no sense and those who heartily accept it are susceptible to the same con as is so obviously perpetuated by the global warming hoax.

The question with the global warming hoax is that one would think that any evidence proving it false would make everyone so happy that they would work to confirm just how well our planet is doing just to offer some relief to all the nuts who have given their lives to perpetuating death and destruction. Instead they are adamant that there is some small validity to the lies to continue holding the global community hostage. Welcome to secular psychosis.

Darwinism works the same in that it maintains its validity on the premise that the less one knows the less one wants to know. Anyone with anything better to do than worry about where life started as long as we're so busy living it which includes most of us.

Back to sexual reproduction. In order to take anything anyone says seriously someone must at least give a satisfactory answer, or at least one which can be digested as either true or false. You see that's the thing about evolution. It's like arguing God with an atheist. One can't prove God exists, and the other can't prove that He doesn't so we each are left with faith. The question of the evolution of sexual reproduction is the classic, "what came first the chicken or the egg", Waterloo of Darwinian speculation. The question no evolutionist will touch. Ask an evolutionist and he'll give you anything but the answer. My favorite being, "Why not doesn't it feel good".

Go ahead and try to figure it out from the mechanisms of evolution. The physics, the mechanics, the engineering. If you loose your wallet and when asked if a found wallet is yours and you answer, "I don't know", guess what you're not getting?

Think about sharing genes in order to increase the viability of mutations. Knowing the science you'd be amazed by the dangers involved with sex, not to mention the energy costs. The questions will come then why did God make such a dangerous and inefficient system? "Because it feels good".

But it doesn't end there. Question Rh- factors, butterflies, DEATH. There are actually animals which die after sex. Imagine being a male, finally getting some, dying and then after a certain amount of time the female figures out you were shooting blanks. How is that an evolutionary advantage? "Because it feels good".

I like Whales. Apparently they left the water, figured out for some reason that living on land wasn't good enough for them then went back into the water. Or while other animals were leaving the water to evolve on land, other animals were leaving the land to evolve in the water. What good is an intelligence when all it got me is a mortgage. Whales don't have mortgages and there smart too!

Think about intelligence and how it "evolved". WHY couldn't we just go back into the water? And, leave all the murderers, rapist and thieves behind. AH-HA.

The problem with us non-scientist accepting evolution from scientist is a matter of trust. Why, you wouldn't trust anyone with other things, like your wallet, or your spouse with Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. The problem with evolution on its face is that we don't think it through to its beginning, or its end. It's not about religion (maybe a little, alot?), it's about using your God given "common sense".

Ask me about butterflies.

Or consider caterpillars. A caterpillar has no obvious resemblance to a butterfly. The disparity in engineering is huge. The caterpillar has no legs, properly speaking, certainly no wings, no proboscis. How did a species that did not undergo metamorphosis evolve into one that did? Pupating looks like something you do well or not at all: If you don’t turn into something practical at the end, you don’t get another chance.

Think about this. The ancestor of a modern caterpillar necessarily was something that could reproduce already. To get to be a butterfly-producing sort of organism, it would have to evolve silk-extruding organs, since they are what you make a cocoon with. OK, maybe it did this to tie leaves together, or maybe the beast resembled a tent-caterpillar. (Again, plausibility over evidence.) Then some mutation caused it to wrap itself experimentally in silk. (What mutation? Are we serious?) It then died, wrapped, because it had no machinery to cause it to undergo the fantastically complex transformation into a butterfly. Death is usually a discouragement to reproduction.

Tell me how the beast can gradually acquire, by accident, the capacity gradually to undergo all the formidably elaborate changes from worm to butterfly, so that each intermediate form is a practical organism that survives. If evolutionists cannot answer such questions, the theory fails.

Evolutionist will say that the bodies of worms, caterpillars and butterflies are to fragile to leave fossils.

Evolution is a long way away from explaining every aspect of itself. (Just fill in the "gaps" until then)
"I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today"

[Alun]

I am just becoming more and more frustrated because for every argument I find for evolution I come across an argument is that just as valid in refuting it.

No, you're just asking questions in the wrong way (and of the wrong people). It took many hundreds of scientists years to compile and determine these theories, so it's fairly silly to think you've absorbed all the arguments from an Ann Coulter blog. Or from ID advocates. If you really want to understand the theory, then I again invite you to point out your problems in my argument in the thread I started on the topic--I don't have the patience to rehash the same evidence again.

considering the recent uncovering of scientific manipulations in the global warming controversy.

Yes, the politicization of theoretical meteorology has a ton to do with the underpinnings of biology.

Mathematicians have been questioning the validity of evolution since almost as soon as Darwin presented his theory.

The only mathematicians who I've seen question evolution are ones who pull probabilities of beneficial change out of the air and then do basic statistics with them.

Alun and I have tried to hash this out to little avail. It seems that there is a believability factor hard to breech. Like climate change, I suppose it's a matter of passion, trust and whether or not we really want something more for ourselves than commonality with chimpanzees and bonaboo's

That'd be a charitable stance of equality except for the fact that I have all of the evidence behind what I believe.

And stop saying there is no evidence for these things; I've personally shown you evidence for almost half of those points.

[Juice]

Alun-You have provided documents that "you" think is evidence, which only proves the hypermania of the Darwinist movement to exploit any farthing or tidbit of thought to make grandiose claims and conclusions.

I am no longer going to waste time on manipulated and fabricated science but appeal to the abilities of every human being to use their own powers of reason and common sense. I find those with the strongest ability to do so can see past the dust of Descent into a more modern train of thought encouraged by the power of self actualization rather than any form of indoctrination from either religion or science.

I am not telling anyone to believe in creationism and I am certainly not going to endorse any science which has proven itself to be so self engrossed it has become manic and authoritarian in its pleas for support.

Life origins, particularly in regards to humanity, is too serious a subject to leave to any agenda driven ideology. Those who value themselves, purpose, spirituality and the grand wondrous universe we are so blessed to occupy would be well to consider it all for themselves rather than leave such determinations to any other conscious, self aware, reasoning, upright, opposing thumb, biped just as capable of tripping and falling down as everyone else.

The "Truth", and I will stake my life on it, that there is no proof whatsoever on how life started, there is no proof of speciation, and there is no proof of how a complex organ such as the eye evolved. In fact there is some evidence which suggests that the human eye may in fact have "devolved".

The fact is that Darwinism is a "future" science its gaps filled with expectations, "HOPE", rather than provable, repeatable experimentation.

I will not direct anyone to "evidence", but rather encourage everyone to search for the answers themselves, and to use their own basic common sense and ask hard questions. Think of what's at stake and put every effort into being sure for yourself. The person who is trying to convince you may not have your best interest at heart.

What is the difference in me saying that "current science" is unable to provide proof of the existence of God but may someday be able to do so, and me saying that current science is unable to prove why a billygoat has two eyes, but may some day be able to do so?

Science isn't infallible, unless you count seedless grapes, warm brandy, cozy socks, a warm fire on a rainy night snuggled next to someone you love as infallible science.

[JPhillips]

Juice

I copied this for you for your amusement.

New Lack of Evidence Boosts Certainty of Darwinism
by Scott Ott for ScrappleFace · Comments (75) · ShareThis· Print This Story

(2007-09-18) — Recent discoveries indicating no direct line of descent from ape-like creatures to modern man have further bolstered anthropologists’ belief that Darwin’s theory of descent-with-modification by natural selection must certainly account for the rise of Homo sapiens.

New research on a pair of recently-unearthed African skulls shows that Homo habilis and Homo erectus most likely did not descend one from another, as scientists have believed for years, but that the two diminutive hominids lived as neighbors during the same epoch. Other recent research indicates that Homo sapiens lived at the same time as Neanderthals.

Far from casting doubt on Darwin’s theory, experts say that the lack of evidence and contradictory discoveries have helped to build “a consensus of certainty in the field.”

“Finding little physical evidence to substantiate the theory only means there must still be a great deal of supportive evidence out there to be found,” said an unnamed editor of the journal Nature, which plans to publish a paper on the African skulls this week. “The more we realize how little we know, the more certain we are that we’re right. As I once read in a scholarly paper somewhere, ‘faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’.”

Another good site http://www.buzzardhut.net/Crunch/Speak.htm:

Evolutionary scientists say the theory is unscientific and worthless

[athena]

I am been trying to get a handle on how man evolved from a cell to a creature with complex organs that are interdependent on each other. Can someone help me? First there was an atom that turned into a single cell amoeba. After this what are all the life forms that existed up to man. In other words, don’t start with the monkey. Get me to the monkey from the single cell. Name all the life forms between the amoeba and man. Then maybe this whole thing will make more sense to me. Otherwise, if there is no evidence of these life forms then there is no evidence for evolution. You can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. To think otherwise is to believe in silly fairy tales.

I recommend the book "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas for a better understanding of the cooperative nature of evolution. This book will do what you asked for. It is a long and complex explanation that can not realistically put into one post.

Our existence is interlocked with nature, and it is paramount that we realize this and act on it.

Also what we are learning a lot about genes and regressive genes and what triggers a gene to turn or off. Our ability to study genes, means we can predict how a gene is manifest in plants, animals and humans. Here is an example of this:

http://redheadedwisdom.blogspot.com/2008/03/last-n eanderthal.html

Bread wheat is also an example of evolution resulting from changing climate conditions, and a nature induced cross breeding of grasses resulting in the high bred plant having more chromosomes then the parent plants, and finally the effect of human intervention in the reproduction of the plant, selecting a large kernel plant that is dependent on human sowing of crops, because the seeds no longer blow easily in the wind.

Our understanding of evolution involves a whole lot more than Darwin's theory of it. We can read the earth like a book, determining when land life evolved, when there were plants, then when plants developed flowers, and when bugs appeared, then when animals that eat bugs appeared, and so on. life is interlocked with life. And human life as we know it, is interlocked with the development of wheat, rice and corn.

Nomadic people living in harsh climates could not use their brains as we use our brains today, because their brains were consumed by meeting their immediate survival needs. We can observe this by observing the nomadic tribal people today, who live as their ancestors lived. In away the expression of our intelligence is as environmentally determined as the expression of a gene. Genetically life comes with diverse potential, but the environment will influence the expression of that potential.

[Alun]

Alun-You have provided documents that "you" think is evidence, which only proves the hypermania of the Darwinist movement to exploit any farthing or tidbit of thought to make grandiose claims and conclusions.

I am no longer going to waste time on manipulated and fabricated science but appeal to the abilities of every human being to use their own powers of reason and common sense.

Yes, my presentation of facts to support my position just proves I'm deluded. Have fun guys.

[tmv]

Really Juice you can't just look at evidence someone presents and automatically call it "fake". If everyone took that stance people could still insist the earth was flat.

[Juice]

tmv-I direct you to post #6 in which I provide several hoaxes perpetuated in the name of evolution. These examples are easily researched.

Believe it or not the "Flat Earth Theory" is based on the best scientific technology available of that day and that was direct observation. This is not an attempt to support it but only to show the limits of observation in that it can be faulty as it has often been proven even to these days.

I only encourage examination of the various evolution theories and examinations of all sides of the observations and conclusions/theories for oneself.

Alun-I am not to comfortable with the reasoning behind self flagellation.