Evolutionism vs creationism

[Evil Knievel]

Hi, propbably nothing useful I can contribute, but from this kind of thread i just can#t keep away.

So, god is the laws of nature? and god created everything? does it not mean that creation isn#t finished but still going on? evolution is nice description for that.

A god that is nowadays increasingly well understood in his doings, but not at all apart from that.

There was this other guy (P Mainlaender) who talked about order and chaos and made a philosophy about it. He kind of foresaw thermodynamics, and said that the initial state was the state of perfect order (super symmetry i guess it is called today) and there was no time and space, only transcedence - god was a proper god. And what we are witnessing now is the decay of all this perfection into entropy. Finally, all this is going to stop when the chaos is so perfect that it doesn#t change any more. And then god has finished dying.

So the ultimate goal of life and evolution, although it seems to create order, is to catalyze the global disorder to come about even faster (we help god dying), since every bit of order highly structured being like us create destroys a lot more order in the process - to an amount that we start to endanger ourselves already...

and even if it is not the ultimate goal of life, as he states, it is an accurate description of life#s actions and their consequences...

[grobblewobble]

In the case of my lotto, it is done in one sitting in one week. However, with evolution, this selection is done over extremely long periods of time. However, this select of six numbered balls can be compared to the selection of new traits. Every single living member of a species buys a lotto ticket a birth. The current living generation at the time of a significant change each check their numbers. Do their numbers match up for them to win a prize? Yes? They survive. No? They are gruesomely removed from the gene pool.

Your analogy misses the aspect of gradual changes. Let's stick with the example of fish to amphibian. It is not as if the jump from fish to amphibian has been made in a single generation. This has been a very, very slow progress of intermediate forms that became less and less fish-like and more and more amphibianish.

So to win this lottery, all that is needed is that you are just slightly more amphibian and slightly less fishy than your parents. This has much greater probability than something like drawing 6 correct balls out of 50. It is enough if you just improve on one aspect, too. Having either better lungs or better feet would both be an incremental step forward, you don't need to improve all aspects in each generation.

You emphasize that most mutations are not beneficial. Now this is true, but it does not make evolution impossible. Selection both favours individuals with the least detrimental mutations and individuals with the most beneficial mutations (if any). So in the evolution, simultaneously the damage is repaired and new improvements are implemented. Of course, a too high mutation rate (from high radiation levels) would disrupt the process because the damage could not be repaired quickly enough.

[Overheat]

If mutations happen over time, then where are the millions of half fish half amphibian fossils? Also, what animals today are evolving currenly?

There are two kinds of evolution. Microevoluion is a fact that there are differences between members of the same species. Macroevolution is a hypothisis that a species can evolve over time into another.

The evidence for macroevolution is weak, but it is accepted because is the a hypothisis that does not involve God. Creationism accepts that there is a god, so it can produce a theory that best fits th evidence.

Both ideas require belief. One can belive that all the matter in the universe suddenly exploded and formed stars. Then gas slowly gathered together and made planets. Then a planet was the perfect distance from a
star. Then, the chemicals available spontaneously formed life, something that humans cannot do even today with the best knowledge and tools. Then these bacteria grew over millions of years and slowly built up all of life as we know it today.

Or, one can believe that God made the universe, ex nihilo, and formed life on earth to live and prosper.

When it comes down to it, this issue is whether God exists. If you are willing to believe whereever the facts lead, then one must believe in creationism. If one refuses to believe in God from the start, then they are forced in thinking that evolution was possible.

[gut]

> Then, the chemicals available spontaneously formed life,

That's my hangup, and ultimately why I lost interest in this
thread. Some would nitpick the word 'spontaneously', but
that's just nitpicking. How things transitioned from raw
materials into life is the more fundamental question to me,
rather than how life proceded thereafter. Well, that, and
how did the raw materials come to be

[garyd]

Evolution is about looking at the available facts applying various assumptions and from those assumptions providing a theory to date the theory is unproven and in fact cannot be proven. Crationism is looking at the exact same facts applying an entirely different set of assumptions regarding those facts and coming up with a different answer. The facts, in either case have nothing to do with the resultant answers but the assumptions based on those facts determine the answer you give. Which by the way means that tecnically neither side is discussing facts merely there opinion of what those facts mean.

[Soirana]

If mutations happen over time, then where are the millions of half fish half amphibian fossils? Also, what animals today are evolving currenly?

A) in museums. If you did not bothered going there it is your problem.
Some of these millions still live actually.
B) all of them. Well, humans not so much do to being social, but i could drop some facts in human evolving, particulary in certain human groups gaining resistance to certain diseases due to mutations but i would end rather racistic i guess.

Well, for me it is two questions. Evolution per se is rather clear. Origin of life is another question.

You can believe in spontaneus start of it despite it not being even close to replicable. Or you can believe some sort of it was created and than went on it is own.

Both theories have equal probability straight now in my opinion.

[garyd]

Sorry no such fossils exist. However there appaer to be a rther large number of creatures that exist to day and existed millions of years ago but do not exist in the fossil record any where in between.

[fazisi]

Hey, as long as I can deny God, I don't care what the truth is.

[garyd]

Eactly...You've got two different sets of people hunting the truth or at least a truth that suits them...

[fazisi]

Also, as for the racist stuff... Being resistant or immune to disease (or certain anti-bodies as some bacteria have developed) is not due to mutation. It is due to the natural growth of certain cells. Because Europeans were exposed to smallpox long before Native Americans, they already developed a resistance to it while it completely ravaged the natives.

I was going to bring it up earlier when someone mentioned the "different colored lizards on different hilltops". Different colored humans on different continents was the first thing that came to mind but no one really wants to start asking if other nationalities are different species without sounding like complete racists.