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<p>So much for a cheery articulation with absolutely no argumentative substance.</p>
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<p>:heart:Until Tuesday, dear.
:*</p>
<p>Besides, I am just fighting fire with fire. I am never particularly inclined to be respectful, no matter the topic; you know this firsthand. And your reactions (or lack thereof) prompt me to even greater extremes.</p>
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<p>Okay, well I have been studying some interesting material for the greater part of this evening, so I am going to log off for the night to better immerse myself. Talk to you later.</p>
<p>@mifune:</p>
<p>"I never intimated that evolution disproves anyone’s particular cloud-fairy. However, many religious factions, from a variety of convictions, take evolution as an patently stark violation of their holy book and resist its factual stature. Evolution itself commonly contravenes a theologically endorsed certitude of what their god has accomplished, but isn’t a system that debunks the supernatural altogether. It derails the ancient notion that life has existed in immutable form since the beginning of biotic existence and that it is necessary to account for biological diversity and complexity in living quality by deferring to the account of supernatural creation. "</p>
<p>First, the cloud-fairy jab adds nothing whatsoever to your argument. Second, true many fundamentalist groups resist the obvious facts of evolution, claiming the “bible” - which many of these fundamentalist groups, I may add, edited - to be literal. This is an incorrect interpretation of the Bible. The Bible primarily is a story, at times taken literally (i.e. do not kill) and at times symbolically (did the Devil turn into a snake and tempt Adam and Eve? Not necessarily). You should go look up Tolkien’s view of the Bible. </p>
<p>I myself am a fairly good Catholic (not perfect, but faithful to the teachings of the Church) who believes that evolution, including speciation, occurs. Now, do I believe that life evolved from inanimate objects over long periods of time without any guidance whatsoever, no I do not for a few reasons. First, there is no real scientific evidence to support it. Second, I believe in a creator. This is not to say, however, that there was not some long process that evolved life as you understand it; the only difference is that this must have been at least started by some Creator. I quote Aquinas here since he is much more apt to the task than I:
*
The First Way: Argument from Motion</p>
<p>1.Our senses prove that some things are in motion.
2.Things move when potential motion becomes actual motion.
3. Only an actual motion can convert a potential motion into an actual motion.
4. Nothing can be at once in both actuality and potentiality in the same respect (i.e., if both actual and potential, it is actual in one respect and potential in another).
5.Therefore nothing can move itself.
6.Therefore each thing in motion is moved by something else.
7.The sequence of motion cannot extend ad infinitum.
8.Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God. </p>
<p>The Second Way: Argument from Efficient Causes</p>
<p>1.We perceive a series of efficient causes of things in the world.
2.Nothing exists prior to itself.
3.Therefore nothing is the efficient cause of itself.
4.If a previous efficient cause does not exist, neither does the thing that results.
5.Therefore if the first thing in a series does not exist, nothing in the series exists.
6.The series of efficient causes cannot extend ad infinitum into the past, for then there would be no things existing now.
7.Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God. </p>
<p>The Third Way: Argument from Possibility and Necessity (Reductio argument)</p>
<p>1.We find in nature things that are possible to be and not to be, that come into being and go out of being i.e., contingent beings.
2. Assume that every being is a contingent being.
3.For each contingent being, there is a time it does not exist.
4.Therefore it is impossible for these always to exist.
5.Therefore there could have been a time when no things existed.
6. Therefore at that time there would have been nothing to bring the currently existing contingent beings into existence.
7.Therefore, nothing would be in existence now.
8.We have reached an absurd result from assuming that every being is a contingent being.
9.Therefore not every being is a contingent being.
10.Therefore some being exists of its own necessity, and does not receive its existence from another being, but rather causes them. This all men speak of as God. </p>
<p>The Fourth Way: Argument from Gradation of Being</p>
<p>1.There is a gradation to be found in things: some are better or worse than others.
2.Predications of degree require reference to the uttermost case (e.g., a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest).
3.The maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus.
4.Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God. </p>
<p>The Fifth Way: Argument from Design</p>
<p>1.We see that natural bodies work toward some goal, and do not do so by chance.
2. Most natural things lack knowledge.<br>
3. But as an arrow reaches its target because it is directed by an archer, what lacks intelligence achieves goals by being directed by something intelligence.
4. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.*</p>
<p>You cannot replaced God in this quote with some physical force, because then you must by necessity admit that there was something before this universe existed. Ergo, there must have been some other universe repeating itself to infinity that created the something. But then what created the previous universe? Thus you arrive at the same point with nothing to show for it. If, on the other hand, we accept the existence of a master intelligence outside of space and time (i.e. there is no physical body of God) then we have arrived at a theory that is indeed plausible, and in the absence of all other plausible theories, the only one possible. </p>
<p>I do agree with you that evolution disproved the idea that species do not change, but that, as you agree, does not disprove the supernatural. It disproved certain fundamentalist erroneous ideas. These fundamentalists got angry and vehemently denied evolution. Atheistic scientists got angry in return, somewhat more understandably, and denied religion. Thus we have the modern evolution/religion misconception. </p>
<p>Sorry for such a long post and kudos to whoever reads this entire thing.</p>
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<p>That’s simply not true. Both of those processes allow existing genes to increase or decrease in frequency in the population. Neither of them ever raise the frequency of a certain gene from 0 to >0.</p>
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<p>Mutation, or a copy error, is the only way DNA can be changed. If there are no errors, then the DNA is the same as before. An individual creature may have different alleles, but these will only be alleles that existed in one of its parents.</p>
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<p>So far, so good.</p>
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<p>This is where I believe you are wrong. The reason antibiotics work is because they consist of molecules that can bind to ribosomes, disrupting their function. When the ribosome mutates, it does the same thing as before, but the antibiotic non longer “fits”.</p>
<p>There’s no new function in the ribosome. Just an arbitrary change. But an antibiotic designed to match unmutated ribosomes cannot bind to the new ones.</p>
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<p>Genes are not just arbitrary sequences. They are words and instructions that serve a particular purpose.</p>
<p>How do you address my statement that THBTKRNPTTKBH is no closer to the *purpose<a href=“in%20this%20case,%20of%20stating%20a%20moral%20dilemma”>/I</a> than BGHORENPQYJS, even though the first has many more “correct” letters?</p>
<p>As another example, suppose I wanted to explain to you how to turn on a computer. For my laptop, this task would be served by the sequence PRESSTHEBUTTONWHICHHASTHECIRCLE/LINESYMBOLONIT.</p>
<p>Is the random sequence PINSSTFEDTTTANWHILHHRSTNETIFGLE/KINESOMLOLOKIT, which has 30 correct characters, going to get you closer to an activated PC than HOLOGRAPHICALMCGUFFINDODADOFNOTHINGTOREPORTWHO, which has 1 correct character?</p>
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<p>So by far the most common result of a mutation is that the creature in question is filtered out. One would think that this would mean that it is an evolutionary advantageous trait to mutate infrequently of never, but that’s another subject…</p>
<p>See my above post for why I think even the “beneficial” mutations would never be able to accumulate into a significant change.</p>
<p>And you must multiply the improbability of any given mutation by the average number of offspring produced per parent, as I explained before.</p>
<p>Again I would like to say that Evolution is complete B.S. …so i don’t see the point in arguing about it. It’s so simple…obviously God created everything and yes, Religion >Science.</p>
<p>I found this book lying around my house which had some interesting things to say that bashed the concept of Evolution & Darwinism:</p>
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<p>From the article you linked to:</p>
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<p>The first creature to develop a lens of that type had essentially a cataract, unless you think that the ability to create nontransparent tissue, shape it into a light-refracting device, and then kill all the cell in it and remove the nontransparent material all developed in a single generation.</p>
<p>^eastafrobeauty, </p>
<p>That does not help the argument at all. Evolution as a physical process does not on it’s own disprove God. You are merely stoking the fires by presenting arguments without any reason whatsoever. The biggest misconception propagated by atheists is that religion, not just Catholicism or various Christian splinter faiths, but all religion is somehow incompatible with both science and reason. This is a false idea, but one unfortunately reinforced when some argue without reason, as you are doing. I believe in intelligent design, but I can reason within my own belief. This is not to say I lack faith; faith, rather, is a large part of my own belief, but that this faith is harmonious to my own reason. To say what is not physically there is not real is not scientific, nor reasonable, nor correct. Not that the last few statements apply to you.</p>
<p>@eastafro: I don’t really agree with your approach. For many people, it isn’t immediately obvious that evolution is false. I don’t think religion is better than science, I think that (depending on how you define them) religion and science are either two aspects of the same thing or two entirely different things that cannot be in conflict because they deal with different questions.</p>
<p>EDIT: Ninjad by Circular</p>
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<p>Specifically, it’s an example of a survival advantage that isn’t enough of a survival advantage to be preserved by natural selection, yet somehow must have been preserved if evolution is true.</p>
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<p>Yet all of whom were intelligent beings, not natural processes.</p>
<p>@Circular & MosbyMarion: lol…sorry my bad 
I guess i was kind of confused…? thanks for clearing that up for me :)</p>
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<p>So we have proven that it is possible for us to read the DNA of a creature, and then cause another creature (yeast) to synthesize a slightly modified version of this DNA. The genome was synthesized biologically by yeasts from small segments according to the plan created on a computer, if I understand the article correctly.</p>
<p>This is a significant development, but it is not what you seem to think it is.</p>
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<p>Was the recipient cell inanimate matter? The scientists merely harnessed the natural ability of yeasts to convert inanimate matter into a genome, and then insterted it into a natural cell.</p>
<p>And even if they did succeed in synthesizing a cell completely artificially, they would only have proven that extremely intelligent design is capable of creating something self-replicating from inanimate matter.</p>
<p>But we already knew that.</p>
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<p>The opposite of science is nihilism. The opposite of religion is nihilism. The opposite of nihilism is either science or religion, depending on what you are talking about.</p>
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<p>Support this statement please. When in this argument have I asked you to accept anything on the basis of “theology, biblical authority, and revelation”?</p>
<p>I don’t understand why people tout the evolution debate as the be-all and end-all to the science-religion debate. There are actually quite a few religions that evolution doesn’t conflict at all with. </p>
<p>A good friend of mine is a evolutionary biologist who is deeply Jewish. He laughs at the people who use the evolution vs creation debate as a religion vs. science debate. As a scientist, he has to go by what the evidence tells him. As of right now, he says that evolution has the best evidence for how we got here. His explanation for that-rather than the Torah creation story- is that God knew how much of a pain in the arse humans were going to be, so he took his time getting to us. The dinosaur fossils weren’t planted by the Devil to make humans disbelieve God (my crazy Catholic uncle is convinced this is true)- rather, the dinosaurs were just kind of a test species before the humans came to Earth. </p>
<p>Either way, he deeply believes in evolution and he deeply believes in God. He believes that God gave us the ability to be scientific thinkers for a reason, and that he wanted us to discover just how much energy He put into creating us. By thinking that God did all this in 6 days is selling him short, according to my friend. </p>
<p>IMO- I don’t particularly care HOW we got here. We are here and we should make the best of it.</p>