[ganjavih]

I guess you won't address your incorrect assessment of evolution as a "theory" and not a fact?

I think religion is stupid, so why shouldn't I be able to say as much?

POINTZ:

1. In science, evolution is a theory, not a fact.

2. You are entitled to make offensive statements, and I'm entitled to tell you they're offensive.

 

[wonderboy416]

POINTZ:

1. In science, evolution is a theory, not a fact.

2. You are entitled to make offensive statements, and I'm entitled to tell you they're offensive.

POINTZ,

1) You're wrong, wrong and can I say... wrong? A scientific theory is one that is based on observation, experiment and reasoning that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle to explain and predict natural phenomena. You fail to grasp the meaning of the word as it's used in a scientific context. The word theory is never used in science unless something has been tested and has stood up to scrutiny. Scientists never close the book on anything completely, so any theory may be continue to be tested well after it has been established by heaps of factual supporting evidence. You won't be able to find a single evolutionary biologist, or non-christain/religious motivated scientist who will state that evolution is not a proven fact. If you do I'll eat my own hand. There is ZERO disagreement in modern science.

2) And I'm entitled to at you

 

[wonderboy416]

Google "is evolution random", and you'll see a difference of opinion.

I've read Dawkins as well as an interesting refutation of him (forget the authour). I suspect they accomplished their true motive of getting me to empty my wallet. Woe is me.

Please provide me the name of this other author if you can, I'd love to have a go at it.
The mechanisms of evolution are still debated, but Dawkins idea that evolution is blind is the most supported and accepted idea. The very nature of natural selection itself supports it.
We know that genetic variance is random, and we know that natural selection is driven by genetic variance that gives an edge to survival of that individual. To state that it was natures intention for giraffe's to have long necks simply doesn't fit into this idea. The giraffes that could reach the highest vegetation could better provide for themselves and their families, thus their necks would grow longer and longer based on the vegetation in their area. The giraffe could not have been pre-programmed to evolve that way and there is no biological evidence supporting otherwise. The same can be applied to nearly every known instance of species adaption.

I'd be careful when googling such a topic, as many of the sources turned up are actually christain based which seek to provide all sorts of misinformation about evolution.

 

[Fresh Start]

If all things are fair and equal, we can assume that evolution, in this context, is both a fact and a theory. It is an incontrovertible fact that organisms have changed, or evolved, during the history of life on Earth. And biologists have identified and investigated mechanisms that can explain the major patterns of change. A theoretical framework that encompasses several basic mechanisms is consistent with the patterns seen in nature; and there is abundant evidence demonstrating the action of these mechanisms as well as their contributions to nature. Hence, evolution is both a theory and a set of established facts that the theory explains.

Judeo-Christian beliefs have no accounting for the biological processes of nature. Religion can only serve as a guidebook in accordance to how the chosen ones, the marginal few of the multitudes, ought to live out every aspect of their existences in order to be rewarded while others perish. It can only philosophize cultural standards by which societies operate, including technology, traditions, language and social roles. Science can tell humanity so much more, give us the broadest worldview perspective with as few biases as possible. For you see it is knowledge that provides most complete description of observances; most satisfactory explanations for observances; greatest probability of being the true picture of the real world obtained through experimentation by explicit systematic techniques, replication and control of errors.

Current explanations are always going to be challenged by new, however science leaves open the option to refute past expalnations. If a compelling case arose that it was in fact a flying spaghetti monster that jump-started life on earth, backed by irrefutable proof, then science has the flexibility to reflect that. Basically, it is not a closed canon whereby any attempts to modernize/contemporize the belief system are constantly met with both fierce opposition by conservatives and apatheitc indifference by those it aims to open its doors to.

 

[Fresh Start]

Just saying atheists might want to market themselves better.

No, thank you. I think atheists will leave the marketing up to Jihadists, Glenn Beck, Reverand Wright and those Christian missionaries whom attempted to smuggle Haitian earthquake victims, so-called 'orphans' away from their families last week. You don't have to wear atheism on your sleeve in order to be respected. Just living a fulfilled life that doesn't cause harm onto others is all the PR they need.

Totally speculative.

Hey now, no living human was ever around to see a dinosaur or trilobite or pterodactyl or wholly mammoth, but there is no rational case against accepting that these creatures once existed on this planet. Why can't the same methods of fossil analysis and carbon dating applied to earthly palentology not be applicable to the Martian meteorite?

Science might have something close to a monopoly explaining the physical aspect of life but there is tons of competition trying to account for the spiritual/emotional aspect.

Ha, ha. You do realize that one's spiritual/emotional self is just a chemically-induced extension of the biological processes occuring in one's brain, right? Complex alterations in chemical signaling which results in changes in mental states. When we die, the mind/thoughts/spirit dies too, in spite of what you might've been told.

Oh please! Many of the greatest mass killings in history occurred in the 20th century under a system that was explicitly atheist. No one has clean hands.

It is a complete myth that atheism is more dangerous than religion because atheists like Adolf Hitler killed millions in the name of their atheistic ideologies like Nazism or that that's far more than have been killed in the name of religion. The Nazi Party had the implicit support of millions of German Christians, of the Lutheran and Protestant church movements because they believed that Adolf Hitler was a gift to the German people from God. After the Nazis took control, Catholics turned their criticism into support and praise. Catholic churches even helped identify Jews for extermination. It is also a myth that Hitler was an atheist. There are countless writings of his that refute this claim and Christianity was promoted in the party platform. So you're very right when you say that no one has clean hands, particularly the millions of German Christians whom either did nothing or willingly participated in crimes against humanity.

I'll credit you Mao and Stalin were atheists, but atheism does not kill anyone. People kill people. And predisposition to indoctrination is a vessel personality-cultists can easily take advantage of. And if the people fighting in the Crusades had the same weapons capabilities as these three men, you can be certain that the loss-of-life would be on the same scale, albeit worse cause there was fewer people back then to sustain populations/gene pools.

Kids as easy marks sounds like a good conspiracy, but these days more people today tend to "get religion" later in life than get indoctrinated into it at a young age.

Which is more or less what I said. Parents send their kids to Sunday school, by their teens they get rebellious and say no to that. After years of rebellion, they feel lost and are enticed by the promise of family, love, meaning, purpose that a dogma can offer them and they become indoctrinated. Doesn't have to be religion, it can also be in the form of political movements using religion as a recruiting tool.

Brings me joy.

If that's what brings you joy, the belittling of others whose opinions you do not agree with, then that would make you the poster child for why the religious lifestyle is degenerate.

To say that anyone is happy living their lives through anything is open to question. All depends who's doing the questioning.

Okay. If man in the absence of laws and culture were all self-determining beings focused on just pursuing their own ends (happiness, survival, comfort) without interferring with the natural space of other self-determining beings minding their own business, is that society any worse for wear? Do humans really need guidelines from an antiquated book to tell them have they ought to live or do we each not have within all of us our own sense of natual law and morality that mitigates the likelihood of war and civil unrest? To answer your question, many people are not happy living their lives because so much of our time is preoccupied with pleasing others, or worse a dogma, that we forget how to be comfortable in our own skin.

If we didn't spend so much time contemplating our existence and impending death, it's entirely possible that religion never would have existed. But we do, and religion has been a feature throughout recorded history. I don't think it's going away.

Sure, I don't disagree with you, but there's certainly a case to be made for equal status of non-religious peoples. I don't see why Christianity should be threatened by it, no more than a straight man be threatened by homosexuality. Same as it lessens the competition for potential mates, atheism weans out the elements of the Church that never should've been there in the first place. Those whose thrist for knowledge and answers has never been satisfied by religion. You'll find many atheists started out this way. So why make them continue giving lip-service to a god with doubts, when non-belief can at least offer them solace and inner peace?

 

[wonderboy416]

If all things are fair and equal, we can assume that evolution, in this context, is both a fact and a theory.

While I completely agree your entire post, in this instance the theory, or framework of evolution has been tested and does in fact work and, which is why evolution itself is considered to be factual.
While one could debate that any theory is not necessarily 100% factual, there is a superior set of standards that must be met for it to be accepted. If it was 100% understood they wouldn't still be working on it, that doesn't mean there's any doubt that it actually happened, because there's none. Ganjavih was trying to assert that there was, which irked me because there's no scientists of a non-religious background who has gone on record stating otherwise, the scientific community accepts that evolution is a real, working explanation for the adaption of life.

 

[gristle]

POINTZ,

1) You're wrong, wrong and can I say... wrong? A scientific theory is one that is based on observation, experiment and reasoning that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle to explain and predict natural phenomena. You fail to grasp the meaning of the word as it's used in a scientific context. The word theory is never used in science unless something has been tested and has stood up to scrutiny. Scientists never close the book on anything completely, so any theory may be continue to be tested well after it has been established by heaps of factual supporting evidence. You won't be able to find a single evolutionary biologist, or non-christain/religious motivated scientist who will state that evolution is not a proven fact. If you do I'll eat my own hand. There is ZERO disagreement in modern science.

Scientific theories are "open." Because they are complex structures built on observation, hypothesis and prediction, they are never "complete." Just as Natural Selection added to the overall idea of evolution in nature, there is always a possibility that further insight will add to, modify or possibly overthrow Natural Selection as a primary mechanism for evolution. There is always that possibility. After all, evolution is a process of change, and there is no definitive knowledge as to why there is change in the universe (and there is even a lively debate as to whether there is any actual "change." Just go deeper in Einstein's work to read about that).

In this context, Ganjavih's usage of the word theory is quite correct.

 

[wonderboy416]

In a scientific context it's incorrect. The word is only used to describe a working framework. There can be no two accepted theories describing the same principle. Evolution has no competing framework and has been tested and verified. We can be as certain of evolution as we can be as certain of anything else in this world, which is why Dawkins goes to great lengths to argue that it is a fact. If it's not a fact, then indeed then all facts are merely hypothetical and we can be uncertain of anything. I have read your prior responses to this and I wholly disagree with you so there's no point in trying to "enlighten" me again on the matter that we can never be truly certain as humans. There is no debate in science, evolution is a working framework based on a mountain of factual evidence.

For those who still don't know the meaning of the word theory (gristle, ganja...):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIm2H0ksawg

 

[ganjavih]

POINTZ,

1) You're wrong, wrong and can I say... wrong? A scientific theory is one that is based on observation, experiment and reasoning that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle to explain and predict natural phenomena. You fail to grasp the meaning of the word as it's used in a scientific context. The word theory is never used in science unless something has been tested and has stood up to scrutiny. Scientists never close the book on anything completely, so any theory may be continue to be tested well after it has been established by heaps of factual supporting evidence. You won't be able to find a single evolutionary biologist, or non-christain/religious motivated scientist who will state that evolution is not a proven fact. If you do I'll eat my own hand. There is ZERO disagreement in modern science.

2) And I'm entitled to at you

Evolution can have many meanings. If it's used to mean how organisms can adapt to their environments, genetically and otherwise, it can be argued that evolution in that sense is a fact. Evolution, as an alternative to Creationism, that is as an explanation of how life began and how one species developed into another, is universally considered a theory. It is a phenomenon that cannot be observed or tested experimentally. It can never be a scientific fact. Scientific facts are based on hard data that is collected. Scientific theory is a concept created based on those hard data.

Any time someone says there is ZERO disagreement in science, it makes me nervous. Uncertainty, retesting, and revising scientific theories are fundamental in the quest to find this thing called "truth". Arrogance only impedes scientific progress. We've been burnt before.

 

[wonderboy416]

Evolution can have many meanings. If it's used to mean how organisms can adapt to their environments, genetically and otherwise, it can be argued that evolution in that sense is a fact. Evolution, as an alternative to Creationism, that is as an explanation of how life began and how one species developed into another, is universally considered a theory. It is a phenomenon that cannot be observed or tested experimentally. It can never be a scientific fact. Scientific facts are based on hard data that is collected. Scientific theory is a concept created based on those hard data.

Any time someone says there is ZERO disagreement in science, it makes me nervous. Uncertainty, retesting, and revising scientific theories are fundamental in the quest to find this thing called "truth". Arrogance only impedes scientific progress. We've been burnt before.

Evolution does NOT explain how life began and it does not attempt to explain how life began. There for it is not merely an alternative to creationism as you suggest, it's an explanation of how life evolved into its current state AFTER the event that first triggered life on this planet had occurred.

You stated:

1. In science, evolution is a theory, not a fact.

Now you seem to be backtracking on this. Perhaps you should watch the youtube link I posted.
In science, evolution is a FACT, it's also a theory supported by over 250,000 peer reviewed published, factual studies.
When I say there is no disagreement in science about evolution being a fact, I mean there is no known practicing scientist in the field of biology or otherwise actively pursuing and producing peer reviewed work that states that evolution is not a valid explanation. To quote Richard Dawkins again, there is no disagreement, none at all in modern day science whether or not evolution is a fact. The only disagreement lies within the mechanisms of evolution itself... which is why the theory of evolution is constantly being updated itself.

Your initial statement still stands incorrect...

 

[ganjavih]

Evolution does NOT explain how life began and it does not attempt to explain how life began. There for it is not merely an alternative to creationism as you suggest, it's an explanation of how life evolved into its current state AFTER the event that first triggered life on this planet had occurred.

This thread is about Creationism vs. Evolution, and the theory of evolution as an alternative to creationism. It's not about whether a certain gene in a frog becomes methylated at the promoter region in cold temperatures and whether this epigenetic alteration can be passed onto its progeny.

Evolution in the sense that all life began from prokaryotes and genetic alterations through natural selection resulted in more complex organisms and the appearance of different species is an evolutionary theory. Not fact.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

i think that when ganj says theory, he's not demeaning it like some people do with the "it's just a theory, it's not a law" mentality. theories incorporate facts, laws & hypothesis. the theory is the collection. a fact can't do anything. the theory is what puts everything together and gives the explanation.

i think ganj is saying theory in the scientific sense and wonderboy is saying fact in the english dictionary sense. a scientific theory can never be a scientific fact. it's like saying gravity theory is my weight amount or magnetic theory is my compass. it doesn't make sense.

 

[Fresh Start]

This thread is about Creationism vs. Evolution, and the theory of evolution as an alternative to creationism. It's not about whether a certain gene in a frog becomes methylated at the promoter region in cold temperatures and whether this epigenetic alteration can be passed onto its progeny.

Evolution in the sense that all life began from prokaryotes and genetic alterations through natural selection resulted in more complex organisms and the appearance of different species is an evolutionary theory. Not fact.

Evolution is incontrovertible. Impossible to dispute; unquestionable; necessarily or demonstrably true; incapable of being contested. In other words... it's a fact based in rational reality. That is how life on Earth began, from protein synthesis of chemicals in the oceans such as Nitrogen, Oxygen and Hydrogen to produce bacteria and in turn protists from which sprang algae and plankton and up the eras and epochs we go. Evolution doesn't occur within a lifetime, so we cannot monitor the genetic processes making it happen in a natural setting, but that's doesn't mean that the process of gene alteration isn't real or doesn't necessarily exist. A creation myth/legend/fable/story never has the same burden of proof as something researchers can go out into nature and test whether it is true or not. Subjective thoughts vs. objective tangible evidence and the logical conclusions one can draw from that evidence. That's what's being debated here.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

What the "Theory" in Theory of Evolution means

[video=youtube;aVAYDWJrJ7c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVAYDWJrJ7c[/video]

 

[cacruden]

I see many viewpoints here, but a lot of them come from very rigid doctrines. There is God, which many interpret to be God as defined by Christian theology/doctrin. I have said before I am not a Christian, but I do not deny the existence of God. I also do not deny the observations in respect to Evolution - in that all life on Earth is related in some way. Evolution and Creation are not mutually exclusive (although I am sure some Christians and some Atheists will of course argue with).

Evolution may describe how organisms evolve, and adapt .... but scientifically it is still a theory. It is supported by observations of different species that seem from fossil evidence is closely related. It is also supported by the discovery of DNA evidence that supports the theory, but it is still a theory (even if well supported by observation). What the theory fails to do is how this process began, and why we evolve the way we have.

For those that believe in only science, in only evolution, where does morality fall? Is morality just an evolutionary thing? Was it something that was an evolutionary necessity for society as a whole to survive, if so... we are in deep trouble because even if it is necessary for society - it could be a hindrance for individuals -- and with current technology if it is just an evolution some scientist could genetically engineer out for the benefit of a few.