Dawkin's Points

So Richard Dawkins makes a good point that when religion makes a scientific statement, it's only fair game for scientists to examine such claims and evaluate them.  Religion, in his view, is only a matter outside of science so long as religion makes no claims about science.

His example is as follows.

What would happen if archeologists found some sort of great scientific evidence, DNA or such, that pretty much conclusively showed Jesus not only lived, but really was born of a virgin.  And it gets published and peer reviewed and all that.  How many theologeans (at least christian ones) would hesitate and say, "Well, that's science, religion is a matter of faith."

They only use that excuse when science doesn't agree with them.  Again, we see religion has a big double standard.

Yeah. And?

god i hate that douche. why dosnt he see that no matter how much science is behind him and many anti-religiouse arguments, is void. any religiouse person truly dosnt respect science at all, they dont belive man can comprehend the universe in all its glory. we need someone to adress the problem at a more ground level, attacking the need humans have to explain everything about the universe even though it may have little to no effect on their direct daily lives. i guess he should be commended for showing how religion is nullified in the eyes of science? gratz richard dawkins thats quite a feat, how original

Errr...By religion, im going to assume you mean Christianity ...since that's probably what you mean.

Anywho, I would definitly disagree with you.  Christianity , on the Theory of Evolution and Big Bang Theory stand point (yes, its they theories believe it or not) says that the earth was created in 7 days along with man.  But when you say that there is a "double standard" when it comes to accepting science and not accepting science you are truly wrong.  Religion, namely Christianity, does not reject science, but rather embraces it.  However, it does reject "Psudoscience", and theory that is not backed up by fact.

A couple (out of many) faults of Evolution -

1) There are no transitional links and intermediate forms in either the fossil record or the modern world. Therefore, there is no actual evidence that evolution has occurred either in the past or the present. (No, Lucy does not count, she was fully human.  A very short human, but a human none the less *46 chromosomes*)

2) "Natural Selection", the mechanism of evolution is incapable of changing one organism into another.  A dog will produce a dog, and an amoeba will make more amoebas (if you want to call it that).  By itself, natural selection cannot advance a species, and it cant do it with the aid of mutation either.  Beneficial mutation, while being a 10^4,478,296.17 chance does not affect the offspring of the organism because mutations do not create new genetic potential, they just alter the existing genetics.

A couple (out of many) supporting facts of creationism -

Fossil Record - I think this says enough...
"Since only a small percentage of the earth's surface obeys even a…portion of the geologic column…the claim of their having taken place to form a continuum of rock/life/time…over the earth is therefore a fantastic and imaginative contrivance."

   -Woodmorappe, John, "The Essential Non-Existence of the Evolutionary Uniformitarian Geologic Column: A Quantitative Assessment," Creation Research Society Quarterly, vol. 18, no.1 (Terre Haute, Indiana, June 1981),pp. 46-71

and another

Dr. Thomas Barnes, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at El Paso, has published the definitive work in this field.4 Scientific observations since 1829 have shown that the earth's magnetic field has been measurably decaying at an exponential rate, demonstrating its half-life to be approximately 1,400 years. In practical application its strength 20,000 years ago would approximate that of a magnetic star. Under those conditions many of the atoms necessary for life processes could not form. These data demonstrate that earth's entire history is young, within a few thousand of years.

   --Nilsson, N. Heribert, as quoted in Arthur C. Custance, The Earth Before Man, Part II, Doorway Papers, no. 20 (Ontario, Canada: Doorway Publications), p. 51

Whew...well my hands are tired of typing so im going to stop now.  This is just an alternate perception that is different from the mainstream one today (and more truthful, and scientifically sound)

>>4 reinforces the stereotype that tripfags are retards

>>4
"1) There are no transitional links and intermediate forms in either the fossil record or the modern world. Therefore, there is no actual evidence that evolution has occurred either in the past or the present. (No, Lucy does not count, she was fully human.  A very short human, but a human none the less *46 chromosomes*)"

So, let's see. First off, you (along with every other creationist on the planet) do not understand the difference between "absence of evidence" and "evidence of absence." Secondly, "46 chromosomes" does not imply that she's human. There are other species - some not even closely related to humans - with 46 chromosomes.

"2) "Natural Selection", the mechanism of evolution is incapable of changing one organism into another.  A dog will produce a dog, and an amoeba will make more amoebas (if you want to call it that).  By itself, natural selection cannot advance a species, and it cant do it with the aid of mutation either."

See Dobzhansky's fruit fly experiments.

"This is just an alternate perception that is different from the mainstream one today (and more truthful, and scientifically sound)"

Yes, how can one dispute the scientific integrity of research from the "Creation Research Society Quarterly." It's not like those guys could possibly have an agenda other than science.

>>4

Hah...
Kinda sucks when "intelligent people" stoop down to smearing someones sources, even when the science is sound.

they dont belive man can comprehend the universe in all its glory
some merit to this argument, but quite irrelevant as far as science is concerned
i guess he should be commended for showing how religion is nullified in the eyes of science?
Nietzche killed God, and then God killed Nietzche. God will kill Dawkins someday too lol
we see religion has a big double standard
well it's not like science never said "we are science, we know ze troooth" and did a whole lotta shit and then were wrong

>>4
Not that I like feeding the troll, but to those reading...

There is plenty of evidence for transitional links and intermediate forms. They have been directly observed. Anyone who believes otherwise simply has choosen not to investigate the truth, and rather heard what they liked and stopped there.

We have seen transitional link in:
Ants
Peppered Moths
Cave Bats (many species)
Crop destroying insects (many species)
Crabs
Bovines (wild type)
Spiders
Finches (duh)
Primates (a few monkey species)
AIDS
Fish in isolated ponds
many, many more

and while I understand your point that it can only affect an existing species, and not actually create a new one, that too has been observed. Although I admit much more rare (as it would be expected to be), several species have been seen to be losing their ability to mate within some populations of their own kind, signifying the birth of a new species. This is seen (besides bacteria and insects where it can quite easily be observed) in larger animals like some fish and a birds species (at least 1).

Also, the half life of the magnetic field is a terrible example. The magnetic field changes it's intensity in waves, shown by the residue of magnetic allignment in rocks on sea floor faults. Carbon dating is much more reliable, as we have found very few things that can alter it, and the data from carbon dating is in allignment with every other form of long term dating we've used.

Finally, and this is too anti-evolutionists in general...
What I don't understand is how they can possibly say evolution doesn't exist from even a theist point of view. That is like saying "God created evolution halfway, but then stopped and went on to something else".

Evolution is proven to exist. What we can't prove is how some steps in the evolutionary process came about, and we can't prove that evolution is how life started billions of years ago. But God wouldn't create a world that doesn't make sense. If he created our world, it would be the perfect world (which obviously has plenty of scientific grounding, along with an extreme complexity). In a perfect world (outside of human caused evil, free will), then there simply won't be any half-assed laws about how life grows that don't make sense.

Simply put, God doesn't create junk, and he doesn't give his existance away (relies of faith, free will).

If he created a crappy evolution system that didn't work well, that would be junk. I don't understand why a Christian isn't FORCED to say that evolution has to exist, as perfect and complete as God intended it to. Seems that saying it kinda exists would be insulting God's power and perfection. (And evolution does, at least, kinda exist. We've observed it)

>>9

Its actually not.
It may come as a shock to some, but fewer than 50 percent of the radiocarbon dates from geological and archaeological samples in northeastern North America have been adopted as `acceptable' by investigators."—*J. Ogden III, "The Use and Abuse of Radiocarbon," in Annals of the New York Academy of Science, Vol. 288, 1977, pp. 167-173.

In the Proceedings of the Symposium on Radiocarbon Variations and Absolute Chronology held at Uppsala in 1969, T. Säve-Söderbergh and I. U. Olsson introduce their report with these words:

 "C-14 dating was being discussed at a symposium on the prehistory of the Nile Valley. A famous American colleague, Professor Brew, briefly summarized a common attitude among archaeologists towards it, as follows: If a C-14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it does not entirely contradict  them, we put it in a footnote. And if it is completely out of date we just drop it. Few archaeologists who have concerned themselves with absolute chronology are innocent of having sometimes applied this method. . ."

>>10
how is macro evolution proven? I thought it was only "supported by evidence", which by the way is not the same as being proven.

>>12
Changes from generation to generation can be (and moreover, have been) observed in organisms with short life-spans. Fruit flies are one example.

>>13
hmm yes, but its a huge fucking leap from small changes in generations to a new fully, functional organ etc. etc. I'm just saying is all. It's just hard to fathom, although by no means impossible... i suppose.

>>12
It is unproven

>>14
There have been significant enough changes in some species that two (or more) divergent branches could no longer inter-breed.

>>11
My only point is that carbon dating, while admittidly not perfect (I was aware of that, just not the numbers), aligns itself with other forms of dating quite well. If it was just one, maybe two forms of dating that suggested the Earth is 5b years old or what have you, that would be one thing. But when time and time again a clear coorilation is seen between forms of long term dating, I say that's much more reasonable to believe than that they are all wrong in such an amazing way that they all seem to be right and support each other.

>>14

large changes (organs, cell types, basic but fundamental stuff) happens on the level of small organisms, then as those organisms evolve and grow larger they take the changes with them. Large animals (monkeys, bears, dogs, cats, lizards) are much more complex, and thus MUCH more "resistant" to evolving new organs and the like.

What I'm saying is just because it's hard to fathom that a human will evolve a new type of organ doesn't mean it's hard to fathom a small simple fish slowly evolving a new type of organ (lungfish). And that is exactly what happens. But you are correct, anything like that is quite unlikely to happen to us. That's no evidence against macro evolution.

>>12
I wouldn't say it is fully proven, but there is enough evidence around to prove that some sort of macro evolution is going on, even if it can't explain everything. Again, we have actually observed species start to break apart from one another, which is exactly what marco evolution is. Just because we can't "observe" entire species evolving and growing drastically new body types doesn't mean that we can't infer from evidence such things have happened beyond any reasonable doubt.

And again, my only point is that if God created this obviously scientifically grounded world, then he certainly could easily create it in such a way that everything could be explained through science. Why would God create a world based on science only to have science seem to, but not fully, explain stuff? That's like a master painter painting a beautiful masterpiece, but leaving one corner of it as just a sketch. It wouldn't make any sense, exp. if the painter is a perfect, omnipotant being.

Even if God did create everything on Earth a few thousand years ago, he certainly would make it seem as though he hadn't (as science has apparently proven the Earth is much, much older than that). And, even if God did create all life, he creatinly would make it seem as though he hadn't. It wouldn't make any sense if evolution didn't do this.

"Just because we can't "observe" entire species evolving... doesn't mean that we can't infer... such things have happened beyond any reasonable doubt."
but you really can't infer beyond reasonable doubt; there is nothing to remove your doubt

>>18


I said reasonable doubt, not doubt, so yes you certainly can. If I had meant all doubt was removed, I would have said so.
And reasonable doubt is enough. Here are a list of things we can only know how they work/if they exist through inferance:

gravity
atoms
electromagnetic forces
protons/neutrons/electrons
dinosaurs existed
consistancy of stars
mathematic axioms
most criminal cases
God exists (huge inferance here)

And with us personally, news stories, most cases with classes, the stories of friends, families, non-fiction books ALL require inferance on your part. If you deny believing in things which are 'merely' proven beyond a reasonable doubt (not certainly) you have denied yourself almost all branches of knowledge.

And heck, I wouldn't even say that was a bad thing as long as you don't pick and choose which things you believe and don't believe based on whatever fits into your predefined belief system. Evolution may not be the strongest field yet (wouldn't expect it to be, it's new), but it sure as hell deserves the credit for what is has done, which is explain a HUGE amount of things about how life works and changes over time.

who cares

>>1
My thoughts as I was reading your post:

So Richard Dawkins
(Who the fuck is that?)

makes a good point that when religion makes a scientific statement
(Oh shit. This guy is stupid.)

Then you lost me.

So much stupid...