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Originally Posted by Thoreau424
You don't have to believe in God, or any religion, to see the flaws and holes with the theory of evolution.
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Evolution doesn't claim to be perfect - or 100% complete.
One of the ways believers try to weasel out of evolution's truth is to claim that it can't be true unless it is 100% complete.
Then the believer defaults back to the Bible as being true until proven false.
It's an extremely disingenuous way of debating.
And why I used to tell everyone who debated evolution with believers to stop doing it. Because I know all the tricks. Each and every time, the "evolutionist" ends up on the back foot defending evolution almost desperately to the believer.
The believer will demand that the evolutionist describe in meticulous detail how evolution works - and since the "evolutionist" isn't a scientist, he will inevitably make a mistake - which the believer will latch on to as proof that evolution is a load of nonsense.
No, instead, we're supposed to believe that an all-powerful god created humans fully formed from a pile of dirt and a rib. Seriously? The story is so absurd that the ONLY reason why anyone believes in it today is because kids get indoctrinated with this stuff at such a young age and adults encourage it. In truth, it would be no different than encouraging a belief in Santa Claus right up through adulthood. If there's no one to shake a person from ancient, unproven, and totally impossible belief systems, that which is learned in childhood will continue raging though to their deaths. A shame, really.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thoreau424
The biggest flaw with the evolution theory is that DNA has no creative means in it; no way to advance in complexity. There's no vehicle for genetic material to learn, grow, and advance. It's strictly a copying and replicating mechanism. It doesn't matter how many thousands, millions, or billions of years you throw at it. If the mechanism isn't there, it isn't there.
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The only "creative means" religion has is magic.
And to say that it is only a copying mechanism ... that's simply untrue. And it exemplifies another common probelm with these debates. Rarely does the believer really understand evolution to begin with and therefore can't really produce a cogent argument against it.
Evolution is pretty well filled with the way in which organisms grow, learn, and advance. This just seems like a case of ignoring the inconvenient facts while cherry picking the flaws.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thoreau424
Most try to confuse and use natural selection - which is scientific and proven - to support evolution. But natural selection does not equal evolution.
Another scientific law, that does reflect the reality of nature, is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And that shows the complete opposite response of evolution, and the tendency over time for matter and objects to lose information, and to decay.
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Look out, everyone. Right here on our humble forum, Thoreau, all by himself, managed to debunk and disprove evolution. So much for all of those Ph.Ds, high IQ geniuses, and decades of experimentation, field work, and peer reviewed journal articles.
This guy here knows it all. Might as well just pack it in.
However, notice how Thoreau gives no alternative. So I guess this is just another person defaulting to religion - the same sorry argument that says, "All I have to do is debunk evolution - because that proves religion." Somehow.
So ... with the lack of any believable alternative - one that doesn't have me believing in talking snakes and women being created as an afterthought to please Adam, I'll stick with the 99.99% consensus of the scientific community.
Because, while yes, science doesn't get everything right on the first try, the scientific method is constantly rehaping the knowledge we have as new facts are discovered.
Unlike religion which never changes - except when it has to - namely when science begins disproving fundamental aspects of religion, which is all about magical thinking. Then religion sometimes must change its tune without losing its own identity. Unfortunately, with Christian apologists running around vomiting out junk science, even magic can seem like credible science to some. Again ... it's tragic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thoreau424
To believe and have faith in evolution is the exact same as having faith in the existence of God.
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Ugh, I get so sick of hearing this.
I'm even more sick of explaining why this is ridiculously untrue. I used to have a text document with the argument against this trope - and whenever someone posted this, I would just copy/paste my word document and post that.
Believers would then claim, "You're just being repetitive!" Yep. Because the presented argument is repetitive. It's not my responsibility to write the same rebuttal in a new and different way each time someone says evolution is just like religion.
Ugh ... now I'm beginning to remember why I stopped posting.
So I'm just going to say - No. No, it's not "the exact same thing as having faith in the existence of god." The comparative evidence ALONE debunks that idea.
It's like saying: "Suspect A was caught at the crime scene standing over the body with the murder weapon in his hand and his DNA all over the body. But believing in Suspect A's guilt is exactly like believing in the guilt of Suspect B who lives 5,000 miles away from the crime scene in another country who was at work at the time of the murder with 205 people vouching that, yes, he was at work all day, and who doesn't even know the murder victim or even has a passport which would allow him to enter our country."
Yep, they're both the same. Might as well throw Suspect B in prison because he's just as guilty as Suspect A.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thoreau424
We have no concrete proof on either side.
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There is loads of concrete proof for evolution. No, it isn't 100% complete. There will be more tweaks and improvements as more facts come to light.
But evolution is so soundly proven that it is actually more heavily vetted than the theory of gravity. The odds that science will ever discover something that will completely unravel evolution is so small it's not even worth talking about.
And even if that were to happen - why should we then fall back to magic? Because there is absolutely nothing anywhere in the universe that suggests magic was the cause for anything. So why should we give the origin of life a pass and then fall back on the usual God of the Gaps fallacy: "Well, gee, we haven't figured it out yet so it must be god's magic spell that did it - and not just any god, but Yahweh, Lord God of the Hebrews because ... yeah ... Yahweh left his fingerprints on the universe's doorknob."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thoreau424
So it will take belief in either instance. At least with spirituality though, one has the chance or potential of sensing or tapping into what might be there, whereas evolution can only be believing what other people say.
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What makes you believe that evolution and spirituality are mutually exclusive?
Why does one have to cancel out the other? Just because I don't believe in any ridiculous stories about Yahweh and Adam and Eve, original sin, or the Bible does NOT mean I cannot be a spiritual person. For instance, no I don't believe in Heaven as it is described from a Christian point of view, but that doesn't mean I don't hope for or even believe in an afterlife ... right?
Why must an afterlife always be presided over by an angry, jealous, and wicked god who only allows those who kiss his boots thorugh the proverbial Pearly Gates? Only one religion teaches that. One. Out of the hundreds of deities and thousands of denominations. Why should I believe that one must chuck his or her brain into the trash in order to be spiritual? Why should I have to believe without evidence in magic, simultaneously disbelieving factual information in order to gain some sort of epiphany?
Why should I believe that a god like Yahweh - or indeed ANY god - would create a universe wherein evolution is undenyably and evidentially true when, in fact, it's not? Why would a god do that? Why would ANY god create a universe that provides evidence for that which isn't true? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever - and I believe that any god presiding over this universe is, at the very least, logical given the logical, organized, and systemic way the universe operates. It isn't filled with chaos.
The universe doesn't have ice cream cones the size of galaxies, cosmic space squirrels living in condos on Mercury. There aren't upside down sea horses floating through space eating photon particles for breakfast or alien magicians doing card tricks with wafers made out of neutron star dust and on and on. There's not some random, "anything goes" structure to anything that we have observed.
And yet we must forgo any sort of logic and ignore everything science is telling us in order to be spiritual? I don't believe that for a nanosecond. In fact, it makes far more sense that one must be in touch with the universe scientifically before a person can even understand his spirtual connection.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thoreau424
There's no way to tap into or sense evolution. Even if you believed in it, it would at best be incredibly slow and imperceptible. Spirituality/cosmos would be dynamic and active.
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That's like turning the channel away from a documentary because it's slow and pedantic to a mindless reality televison show because it's fast, the scene changes every 5 seconds, and there's always some bizarre camera angle to keep everything interesting.
I guess if you want to learn something, one stays with the documentary. If you want mindless entertainment, turn it to the reality show.
Because apparently we're stuck in our binary thinking again. Something can't be slow and even imperceptible and still yield truckloads of interesting and useful information. In fact, I don't even see the relevance here as to whether or not something is slow or dynamic, imperceptible or obvious.
After all, it took millions of years to create the Himalayan mountains. Should we then dismiss them as boring and uninteresting because we can't set up a lawn chair and watch the mountains change by the minute? Must we say that one cannot have a spiritual connection to the mountains because they aren't dynamic and exciting with new things happening every moment?
Just some thoughts to gnaw on.
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