Science Debate On Evolution Not Being Up For Debate... Debate.

[LordsFire]

Acted like crazy idiots that think evolution and global warming is a conspiracy, tried to ban abortion and condemned Harry Potter/DnD as satanic, and the Iraq War. Amongst all the tax cuts, of course, because we all know how much Americans love people who are richer than them.

Add to that the association with the Confederates they love to flaunt, and the US Conservative movement is basically its own worst enemy.

1. Global warming as preached is nonsense. The Extinction Clock There's some question as to natural climate cycles ongoing, but the idea that humankind is driving it with carbon or methane emissions has no factual basis, largely because the greenies keep lying and destroying data when the 'science' doesn't actually turn up their way, unless it's a digital model they control all the parameters for.

2. Evolution is nonsense. The more science develops, the more counter-factual the concept of abiogenesis, emergence of new cell structures, much less organs, and overcoming irreducible complexity are. There's a thread over in the Philosophy subforum about this if you want to discuss it further. Suffice to say, having it taught in school is a violation of both scientific prudence, and the idea that you shouldn't be teaching religion in the classroom.

3. Abortion is murder. In extreme medical conditions, it is justified because otherwise you're losing the baby and the mother. Otherwise there's no justification for it.

4. Harry Potter/DnD etc were only issues with small fringes. I come from a Christian Missionary family, I got the first two Harry Potter books as presents on my 13th birthday, and bought the third one myself when it came out shortly thereafter. My parents had no problems with it, though I knew exactly one Christian family that didn't allow it. My dad actually knew someone who, in the late 70's/early 80's did go through D&D into the occult; when I told him I was getting into it, he just told me about his experience as a cautionary tale, and had no issue with it when I told him 'yeah, most just treat it like any other fantasy fiction setting,' and has never had any issue since.

5. I'll give you the Iraq war, partially. Don't forget that a large portion of the Dems backed it too.


Basically, your problem here is 'the Conservatives are the media's whipping boy,' and you've bought into a lot of the media's lies as well.

Telling the truth is never popular with some people, and when those people get control of the media, you can expect them to punish you for it as best they're able.

 

[Bacle]

2. Evolution is nonsense. The more science develops, the more counter-factual the concept of abiogenesis, emergence of new cell structures, much less organs, and overcoming irreducible complexity are. There's a thread over in the Philosophy subforum about this if you want to discuss it further. Suffice to say, having it taught in school is a violation of both scientific prudence, and the idea that you shouldn't be teaching religion in the classroom.

Congrats on torpedoing the rest of your points with this garbage, and demonstrating why the GOP has such shit PR.

Hint: trying to 'debate' whether evolution is real or not was solved long ago, and people like you who try to keep it alive because you see it as 'too complicated' (irreducible complexity complaint) and treat evolution as a 'religion' in competition with Christianity (or your version of it) only make it harder for the normies and average joe sixpack to take the GOP seriously about important shit.

Evolution isn't up for debate, and the GOP does itself no favors humoring people who think it is.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Evolution isn't up for debate, and the GOP does itself no favors humoring people who think it is.

If you believe in scientific study, this is the dumbest take ever.

 

[Bacle]

If you believe in scientific study, this is the dumbest take ever.

No, it really isn't, when the debate isn't about whether evolution exists, but rather the how of it, in scientific fields. even how life began is a debate about specific details, not the pseudo-religious debate LordsFire implies.

We've seen tholians created by exposing organic compounds to direct solar and extra-solar radiation on other planets in our solar system that contain the building blocks for organic chemistry, we've seen the not-quite-organic precursor compounds like various naturally occurring alcohols in space, we've seen the precurors to living organic compounds in comet trails and sample return missions from places around the solar system.

There is no reason to humor the 'evolution is a religion and shouldn't be taught in schools' crowd and their bullshit.

If they don't like an opposing 'religion' being taught in public schools and treated as hard science that is repeatedly proven, tough shit, that's not changing and they are on the wrong side of that fight.

 

[King Arts]

I feel dirty saying this but Bacle has a point partly.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

I feel dirty saying this but Bacle has a point partly.

In @Bacle 's longer statements, certainly there's some truth there. However,

Evolution isn't up for debate

is truly a dumb take.

 

[Morphic Tide]

If you believe in scientific study, this is the dumbest take ever.

The trouble is that the counter-argument is one of pure ignorance, rejecting what we do have an enormous amount of evidence for over missing solidity on the starting point and still having gaps.

We've experimentally verified rather major biochemical changes in microbes. The changes of Whippomorpha we have fossil evidence for that actually lines up as a sequence by both carbon decay and geological estimates.

It boils down to a thought-stopping cliche of "I/you don't know, therefor God", demanding the same causal completeness of something that has to meet far more difficult evidentiary standards.

 

[Morphic Tide]

Like evolution

You dismiss the entire thing for not having clear proof of abiogenesis, despite that well post-dating evolutionary theory itself. You dismiss the entire thing for mere improbability, then handwave pointing out your own position is of infinite improbability. You dismiss the entire thing over polystrata fossils existing, then ignore the flaw of your initial example involving vulcanic strata. You dismiss the entire thing over missing intermediate forms, then ignore all the cases we actually do have them for.

Every single time you have gotten into an argument on this, you have demonstrated such a total incomprehension of the matter that you don't even understand criticisms of your position in the first place. When shown your "calculation" of the improbability of abiogenesis is wrong, you demonstrate not understanding the most utterly basic facts of how such calculations operate. When shown counter-examples to your claims, you concede nothing and move to a different point of contention.

You are the "worst people possible" on this matter, because you actively refuse any use of reason against you, no matter how exactly it mirrors your own reason for disbelief. You are a willfully ignorant cultist, no different from the intersectional progressives you rail against, because as far as you're concerned you already have "The Truth" and no counter-argument being valid is part of it.

 

[LordsFire]

You dismiss the entire thing for not having clear proof of abiogenesis, despite that well post-dating evolutionary theory itself. You dismiss the entire thing for mere improbability, then handwave pointing out your own position is of infinite improbability. You dismiss the entire thing over polystrata fossils existing, then ignore the flaw of your initial example involving vulcanic strata. You dismiss the entire thing over missing intermediate forms, then ignore all the cases we actually do have them for.

Every single time you have gotten into an argument on this, you have demonstrated such a total incomprehension of the matter that you don't even understand criticisms of your position in the first place. When shown your "calculation" of the improbability of abiogenesis is wrong, you demonstrate not understanding the most utterly basic facts of how such calculations operate. When shown counter-examples to your claims, you concede nothing and move to a different point of contention.

You are the "worst people possible" on this matter, because you actively refuse any use of reason against you, no matter how exactly it mirrors your own reason for disbelief. You are a willfully ignorant cultist, no different from the intersectional progressives you rail against, because as far as you're concerned you already have "The Truth" and no counter-argument being valid is part of it.

I could practically repeat this word-for-word back at you.

Neither of us can constructively discuss the issue with the other, because one or both of us is not willing to be reasonable on the matter. Obviously we both think the other person is the problem.

Let's not waste everyone else on the thread's time.

 

[ATP]

The trouble is that the counter-argument is one of pure ignorance, rejecting what we do have an enormous amount of evidence for over missing solidity on the starting point and still having gaps.

We've experimentally verified rather major biochemical changes in microbes. The changes of Whippomorpha we have fossil evidence for that actually lines up as a sequence by both carbon decay and geological estimates.

It boils down to a thought-stopping cliche of "I/you don't know, therefor God", demanding the same causal completeness of something that has to meet far more difficult evidentiary standards.

That is not not,we do not belive in gap God.
But,Darwin Evolution is dead and buried - species simply do not change slowly thanks to environment.
And it was obvious long ago - reptile with 20-70% wings wings would die,becouse it would not have good legs anymore,but still do not have wings.

 

[Poe]

In @Bacle 's longer statements, certainly there's some truth there. However,

is truly a dumb take.

Evolution, as in the traits of species changing over time through selection pressures and random mutations, is pretty self evident it would be like debating if kids looked like their parents. What the OP seems to mean by evolution is abiogenesis being a random thing, but regardless evolution is a separate mechanism and it doesn't even imply a lack of direction as it's literally just about how traits pass from one generation to another. As for abiogenesis, again I don't see how can you debate that life began existing at some point. You can believe that God created life and that doesn't change that abiogenesis would be how he did so.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Ah, Christians and completely misguided attempts to defend their faith. Name a more iconic duo.

And I say that as a Christian!

Look, I’ve been to London’s Natural History Museum, and I’ve seen fossils in their thousands. Evolution is something of an unavoidable fact right now, and these misguided at best, bad faith at worst, attempts are critiquing it are utterly unproductive.

How do you think we got from T-Rex to the Pigeon?

 

[ParadiseLost]

It boils down to a thought-stopping cliche of "I/you don't know, therefor God", demanding the same causal completeness of something that has to meet far more difficult evidentiary standards.

The fact that you don't presume that we don't currently know period is actually the underlying issue. No one wants to accept, "we don't know," because humans are extremely disinterested in results of "unknown/not confirmed/false," to the extent that its basically a big part of why we have a replication crisis (because there's a bias towards positive results getting published, there's a bias towards getting positive results...).

Evolutionists are almost always the ones trying to argue that its some kind of evolution vs creation dichotomy, because no one wants to consider the very real possibility of, "we don't know how life started and developed."

 

[Morphic Tide]

The fact that you don't presume that we don't currently know period is actually the underlying issue.

...It was LordsFire demanding it, with the post you noted, the next post that was moved to make this thread, and my posts in the old thread the paragraph of "you dismiss the entire thing ..., despite ..." is referring to all being about that being bullshit because it's throwing out well-grounded things in evolutionary theory over not-actually-required things with poor grounding at the edges of it.

Projection, much? Because I did not once state that we definitively know how abiogenesis happened. In fact, I'd specifically noted in the old evolution thread that LordsFire's criticism of it as "improbable" is bullshit because we don't know enough to be sure where to start looking. The absolute most is "it's a pretty clear conclusion for tracing evolution back to The Start", as the Last Universal Common Ancestor had to come from somewhere, and we're ruling out creation as the source of biological variety already, so we're left with life from non-life.

 

[colorles]

very simply speaking from a mammal perspective, evolution is just natural selection and certain males of a species being more suited for any given environment and, thus out competing all other males and breeding with all the females. thus the advantageous traits are passed on to the next generation and are amplified over time. given enough time, this changes animals into different animals. not complicated and it can happen on a small scale over the course of just two or three generations (why do you think zoomer and gen A boys are, on average, bigger and taller than previous generations over the last few centuries?); but on a macro scale it takes hundreds and thousands of generations, millions even.

with that said, you can believe in evolution and still be religious. you can also believe that humans evolved naturally, but were also "augmented" at some point. you can believe whatever you want. it doesn't have to be all apples or all oranges. a man can enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables, while also enjoying steak and organ meats. it doesn't have to be one or the other...

 

[King Krávoka]

Why do American religions believe that evolution (of a sort) is a positive process, or rather that the Gods made successively better versions of Humanity, while their counterparts of Indo-European origin focused on an unstoppable process of degeneration?

 

[LordsFire]

Why do American religions believe that evolution (of a sort) is a positive process, or rather that the Gods made successively better versions of Humanity, while their counterparts of Indo-European origin focused on an unstoppable process of degeneration?

It has little to do with religion, and a great deal to do with science.

Macro-evolution has not just a lack of evidence, but evidence indicating it isn't feasible. There's variation within species, but unless you're playing games with the definition of genus, species, and subspecies, you do not see one species changing into another.

The sheer level of complexity of biological life is hard for humans to wrap their minds around, much like it's hard for us to understand the scale of distance in space, money in the Federal budget, etc.

You have better odds of taking a 2 million piece lego set, putting it into an industrial tumbler, and getting out the completed construction, rather than eroded and/or broken pieces, than you do getting life from lifelessness. The odds of something as distinct as a cat and a dog 'evolving' into each other is similarly absurd, and that's before we get into even more preposterous things, like the apparatus for sexual reproduction evolving from creatures that reproduce through simple cellular division.

Enormous numbers of observed organ systems and even cellular structures would, by necessity, defy the precepts of natural selection as an origin of species, in order to come about through gradual change.

Why? Because until they are fully complete structures, they are at best a drain on the life form 'evolving them,' and that's if they aren't actively decreasing their odds of survival. If natural selection is functioning, then the aberrant member of species X will not gradually evolve into species Y, the deficiencies of being in an incomplete transitory state will make it markedly less fit to survive, and as a result, it will be out-competed by the non-aberrant members of species X.

To make matters even worse, a lot of the cellular structures and organ systems that are worse than useless while incomplete? The species cannot survive without them.


The theory of evolution is fraught with massive, gaping holes, but for hardline atheists their personal 'god of the gaps,' luck, and 'we just don't know how yet,' cover all inadequacies and anti-scientific issues.

It's nothing less than dogma.

 

[Morphic Tide]

Macro-evolution has not just a lack of evidence, but evidence indicating it isn't feasible. There's variation within species, but unless you're playing games with the definition of genus, species, and subspecies, you do not see one species changing into another.

Larus Fuscus being unable to interbreed with the neighboring Larus Argentatus despite a spectrum of interbreeding between them demonstrates the fundamental principal of interfertility not being a commutative property. Also see Grizzly/Polar Bear hybrids, coyote-wolf hybrids, and the great many infertile hybrids. "Species" is in fact mostly arbitrary paperwork.

The sheer level of complexity of biological life is hard for humans to wrap their minds around, much like it's hard for us to understand the scale of distance in space, money in the Federal budget, etc.

So "we don't know, therefor God" again?

You have better odds of taking a 2 million piece lego set, putting it into an industrial tumbler, and getting out the completed construction, rather than eroded and/or broken pieces, than you do getting life from lifelessness.

Inaccurate comparison, huge swaths of biochemistry are self-catalyzing and as such terribly dysfunctional partial products create largely similar but slightly different products. The dice do in fact have memory, "failed rolls" still increase the odds of a successful one. Also ignoring the "Watchmaker God" interpretation where the ridiculously long timescales of geology are real but God still set it in motion, creating just the handfuls of initial life that then differentiated by modified heritable traits.

The odds of something as distinct as a cat and a dog 'evolving' into each other is similarly absurd, and that's before we get into even more preposterous things, like the apparatus for sexual reproduction evolving from creatures that reproduce through simple cellular division.

One, quite a lot of intermediate forms tracing to connect the Caniform and Feliform taxons in the fossil record, all quite unlike any current organism. Two, quite a lot of intermediate forms for sexual reproduction itself surrounding parthenogenesis, with obligate, optional, non-viable, and wholly absent cases all existing. Three, historic dog breeds were not consciously selected by anyone to reach their exceedingly unwolf-like body-types, just by what did the breed's job well.

To make matters even worse, a lot of the cellular structures and organ systems that are worse than useless while incomplete? The species cannot survive without them.

Is it really so hard to comprehend increasing differentiation leading to formation of distinct systems? Have you forgotten we have experimental verification of entirely new chemical pathways evolving from scratch? Or do you really need a fucking time machine to be shown a time-lapse of everything from the first microbe to the clear differentiation of Aves from others in the reptile taxon?

The theory of evolution is fraught with massive, gaping holes, but for hardline atheists their personal 'god of the gaps,' luck, and 'we just don't know how yet,' cover all inadequacies and anti-scientific issues.

Your complaint is not actually that it's "unreasonable" for being unlikely, it's for it being incomplete. The gaps are just that, gaps that the existing theory does not give a clear answer for creating improbabilities, not contradictions showing it's impossible. But because you're obsessed with totalizing bullshit, you cannot accept the fundamental premise of science that is starting from ignorance.

"We don't know" is perfectly fine in science, so long as what you say you do know explains enough of the observations that can be made that it's a better fit than what came before. Evolution fits with fossil and genetic evidence, actually predicting quite a number of conclusions of the latter, and we have no way to make any direct observation of the intermediates for the things you question rendering them just a gap, an absence of evidence.

To demand completeness is to disregard all of science, because none of it is complete like you're criticizing evolution for. Every field has extremely important unanswered questions, but the answers that do exist are a vast body of useful predictive models. We use evolutionary theory in pathology all the time to help with the yearly flu vaccine update, saving quite a few lives. You don't need an omnipotent singular creator-deity for scripture, and outside that to bolt ethics to so there's less difference in them to cause problems I can't think of a single other practical value to what you call "The Truth".

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Your complaint is not actually that it's "unreasonable" for being unlikely, it's for it being incomplete. The gaps are just that, gaps that the existing theory does not give a clear answer for creating improbabilities, not contradictions showing it's impossible. But because you're obsessed with totalizing bullshit, you cannot accept the fundamental premise of science that is starting from ignorance.

His “complaints” are basically (as much as it pains me to say as LordisFire is usually quite a reasonable chap) the bad faith debating tactics of a religious zealot who (for one reason or another) perceives the idea of evolution as an existential threat to his faith, whether he realises it or not.

Confirmation bias is a Hell of a thing. It’s why many once thought the Sun rotated around the Earth, even when Galileo had done has work and all the evidence was there to say otherwise.

It wouldn’t matter if such a person was buried by a mountain of evidence: their mind is already made up.

 

[LordsFire]

His “complaints” are basically (as much as it pains me to say as LordisFire is usually quite a reasonable chap) the bad faith debating tactics of a religious zealot who (for one reason or another) perceives the idea of evolution as an existential threat to his faith, whether he realises it or not.

No, it isn't. There are Christians who believe in things like day-age theory and whatnot, and Christians who just don't care enough to get involved in the issue.

The problem is not my religious belief, rational or not, the problem is that evolution is a religious dogma of modern atheists.

Are you familiar with how many different elements are required for the human reproductive system to work? Do you know what happens if any single element of the system fails to function?

Humans cannot reproduce.

If the human reproductive system is present in an incomplete form, there is no possibility of subsequent generations for it to 'evolve' the rest of the way into existence.

Even worse, it requires too separate, simultaneous paths of evolution, for the two separate genders, in an extremely compatible way.

You would need thousands of generations of gradual accumulations of change to develop something like that, except you can't have generations without the reproductive system existing.

And if some proto-human already had a reproductive system, then it's not going to 'evolve' another, secondary one. In order for that to happen, you would need thousands of generations of an organism gradually 'evolving' this new, extremely complex and resource-intensive system, which provides no benefit to the organism, while other strains which are not 'evolving' this system do not have that massive strain on their resources, and thus, by the law of natural selection which evolutionists treat as absolutely essential to their ideology, these less-fit organisms should go extinct.

This is not, as Morphic Tide claims, just a matter of 'we don't know yet,' this is a matter of 'we assume our theory is correct, and interpret all evidence in that light.'

Reproduction isn't the only system that presents such a massive problem. The origin of life itself is such a problem, the existence of multi-cellular life is another such problem, the existence of blood clotting is such a system.

But evolutionists have faith that in spite of basically every discovery about how life works since Darwin's time showing his theory was fraudulent, in spite of many 'proofs' of evidence being shown out as frauds, despite other interpretations of the data available existing, their theory must be true.

Why?

Ideological commitment.

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."
-Richard Lewontin.

To quote an agnostic on the matter:

"Has anyone provided proof of God's inexistence? Not even close. Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close. Have our sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close. Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough. Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough. Has secularism in the terrible 20th century been a force for good? Not even close, to being close. Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy in the sciences? Close enough. Does anything in the sciences or their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ball park. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on."
-David Berlinski.


You can call me the religious zealot all you like, you can claim that I'm willfully ignorant all you like, but according to leading minds within the atheist movement, it is in fact the opposite that is true.

The sheer amount of time and money that has been wasted on atheists vainglorious pursuit of 'proof' of their failed ideology, that could have instead been spent on actually productive research or cultural and social causes, is mind-boggling.