The only problem there is that I've seen good pictures of the archeopteryx fossil along with several other feathered dinosaur fossils discovered since and they certainly don't resemble modern birds. Their feather shapes is not as conducive as flight. Their heads have those teeth and lizard like jaws and they have claws at the ends of their arm wings. As for whether they were warm blooded that's hard to know either way from a fossil. Anyway there is plenty of speculation that some if not all dinosaurs were warm blooded because they couldn't have survived as widely dispersed if they weren't. Evolution can be proven without even looking at the fossil record. Just look at a wolf and a yorky terrier. Both are nominally biologically and genetically the same yet are morphologically different. It is known that within the history of humanity that dogs like yorkys evolved from wolves because of selective breeding. A type of survival of the fittest abbetted by humans who selected traits in wolves to create yorkys, chihauhuas, St. Bernards, golden retrievers and all the other types of dogs we have today from a common wolf ancestor. Even thoug humans have only domesticated plants and animals for probably less than 200K years and been able to create wildly diverse forms of those plants and animals think about how much change can occur over the billion years of life on Earth. The problem that you have is that evolution fits the evidence and our own selective breeding of domesticated animals shows that the mechanism for evolution works. Your argument seems to be that since its not 100% absolutely proven it shouldn't be taught. Well nothing is 100% proven. As others have noted we can't 100% prove why things fall down instead of up. Heck since you have probably never seen without a visual aid what the back of your head looks like can you 100% say what the color of your hair is there? The point is that you're arguing that we should keep people in ingnorance, or worse give them some theory that fits the facts less, just because that theory isn't absolutely 100% proven. At that point we might as well teach people nothing. Evolution is what best fits the known evidence regarding the origin and development of life. The practical application of the theory also involves all of the biological fields from medicine to agriculture. To simply reject it out of hand because its not 100% perfect and especially because it threatens one's religious views. To do so would thrust us back into a dark age where we fear progress at the risk of offending purist who believe they hold a monopoly on truth. I will end this rant with a quote from the Bible itself If you don't believe evolution happened and that the world really was created in 7 days and that Adam and Eve were the first people. Fine go ahead. At the same time then don't try to justify it by warping the scientific factual record. You can believe what you want and leave evolution alone because one is a matter of faith and the other is a matter of science. The two aren't mutually exclusive but their goals and methods are so different that it is unproductive to attempt to argue a point in one by relying on evidence from the other.
Actually I think its pretty well known why airplanes fly these days but I totally agree with your point.
Very articulate post. When Creationists start publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals, I'll start listening.
thats what annoys me about religion.... it ignores logic and reason for pure faith. why couldnt God have created evolution? i tend not to take what the bible says literally, unlike many people.
Sam: I hear ya. I am by no means an expert on the creation of the universe..or even what man's current theories are regarding that. I can't explain evolution past a surface level understanding...and I can't explain what we've learned from astronomy past a surface level understanding. I am struck by scientist after scientist saying, "man...the odds against against the universe even being created in a form that could support life are so huge that we can't even explain it." I'm fascinated by studies that show that if you tinker with the nuclear strong force (which I don't even understand) even to such a small degree that it involves a decimal point and 43 zeros, that you would have a universe composed entirely of hydrogen, and thus, no oxygen. I'm intrigued by Hawking saying that if the expansion rate of the universe upon the big bang were 1/100 millioneth slower it would have collapsed...and that if it were 1/1 millioneth faster, it couldn't have supported itself. Gravity is 10 to the 39th power times weaker than electromagnetism...and that if gravity had been 10 33rd power times weaker than stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster.. The nuclear weak force is 10 to the 20th power times the strength of gravity...had the weak force been even slightly weaker, all hydrogen in the universe would be helium. A stronger nuclear force by as little as 2% would have prevented the formation of protons, thus yielding a universe without atoms. Decreasing it by as little as 5% would give us a universe completely without stars. If the difference in mass between a proton and a neutron were not exactly as it is then all neutorns would have become protons or vice versa..and you could say goodbye to chemistry as we know it. Sir Fred Hoyle: "All that we see in the universe of observation and fact, as opposed to the mental state of scenario and supposition, remains unexplained, and even in its supposed first second, the universe itself is a-causal. That is to say, the universe has to know in advance what it is going to be before it knows how to start itself. For in accordance with the Big Bang Theory, for instance, at a time of 10 to the minus 43 seconds the universe has to know how many types of neutrinos there are going to be at the time of one second so that it starts up at the right rate to fit the eventual number of neutrino types." Have you read "Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in Cosmoloy" by Brandon Carter??
People that are behind you and agree totally admit to the public world that the only reason they still believe in evolution is because they will NOT believe that God created everything. FOr those who you who keep bringing up that gravity and natural gases and whatever is part of evolution, that I'm not denying. I'm saying Hubble and Einstein PROVED that the Universe started at some point. It didn't just "evolve", it was "created" by a higher intelligence (God). And as I learn more I find the "new" evolution theory evolutionist have come up with: Punctuated Evolution-- This new theory claims that there is no evolutionary change in a species for millions of years, then suddenly these animals change spontaneously to a new species in one leap within a single generation without any gradual or transitional process. I find that sad.
Fred Hoyle... another scientist/SF writer like Asimov and Clarke (and several others). I have some of his novels from 30-something years ago. What I like about scientists who write science fiction, other than their obvious qualifications due to their background, is that they are literally all over the map with their take on things, just like us "regular folks". And I like that. Thanks for reminding me of Hoyle... I haven't pulled one of his books off the shelf in a long time. A lot of "laymen" think of scientists as dry, rather boring people who would rather be puttering about with their work than running amok with astounding imaginations. In fact, the astounding, entertaining, and often on-target imaginations abound. You surprise me, Max. I like that, too.
People that are behind you and agree totally admit to the public world that the only reason they still believe in evolution is because they will NOT believe that God created everything. This argument has already been addressed and debunked. (A) I believe that the only other logical reason I can currently think of for the existence of gravity as on of the critical laws of the Universe is that God created gravity - it certainly doesn't mean I don't believe in gravity or that gravity can exist on its own right. For those who you who keep bringing up that gravity and natural gases and whatever is part of evolution, that I'm not denying. I'm saying Hubble and Einstein PROVED that the Universe started at some point. It didn't just "evolve", it was "created" by a higher intelligence (God). Please tell us - how did Hubble/Einstein prove that the universe started at some point in any more definitive a fashion than evolution has been "proved"? Punctuated Evolution-- This new theory claims that there is no evolutionary change in a species for millions of years, then suddenly these animals change spontaneously to a new species in one leap within a single generation without any gradual or transitional process. I find that sad. This theory is only relatively new but has been around. There are multiple hypothesized types of evolution, most with significant factual evidence to support the theories. In either case why is it sad? In the end, there is just way too much evidence out there to support evolution than to beleive someone writing a book intent on dissproving it. You can see evolution happen in person, you can see it historically in the fossil record (even/especially in human evolution), you can see it in multiple examples of sexual evoltion, you can see it in similar aspects of humans and other animals - in very very young babies in the womb that are nearly indistinguishable from a young chicken or a young monkey at similar stages...the list goes on an on.
IS BELIEVING IN EVOLUTION THE SAME KIND OF THING AS BELIEVING IN GRAVITY? "An article appeared in the Jan./Feb. 2004 issue of The Professional Geologist by paleontology Professor, James S. Mellett, with the intriguing title, "Question: Do You Believe in Evolution? Answer: Do You Believe in Gravity?" While the article brought nothing new to the debate, and indeed belied a substantial misunderstanding of creation thinking, its title indicates a profound misunderstanding of evolution as well and merits a response. Let me remind you that "science" has always relied on human observation. Obviously, observations occur in the present, even if they relate to things in the past. For instance, paleontologists, who exist in the present, make observations in the present of fossils, which exist in the present even though the fossils are the remains of organisms, which lived in the past. Science is done in the present. The study of gravity involves science, for the effects of gravity can be observed today. In fact, each and every time someone observes anything, gravity operates. Gravity is more than a theory, it is a law, and has never been known to fail. It seems nonsensical to ask, "Do you believe in gravity?" because we know for a certainty that gravity works. Contrast this with evolution. By "evolution" I mean "macro-evolution," or big changes such as the transformation of a fish into an amphibian or a dinosaur into a bird or an ape into a man. On a grander scale, evolution implies the common ancestry of all life, including amoeba-to-man. Evolution means that dogs evolved from a non-dog ancestor. Today we observe dogs with many adaptations, even having speciated into domestic dogs, wolves, coyotes, etc., all inter-fertile, but this observed variety in the present does not address the ultimate origin of dogs in the unobserved past. Evolutionists claim that large-scale evolution occurs too slowly to be observed today. The question remains, did it happen in the unobserved past, when no human was there to observe it? While gratuitously called a "historical" science, evolution thinking obviously differs from observational, empirical sciences such as the study of gravitational effects. In reality it is a historical reconstruction, attempting to decipher what happened in the unobserved past to make things get to be the way we observe them today. While the evolutionary reconstruction of history may have some appeal, providing a way to arrange today's array of life, it is far from proven. Creationists contend there is another, more scientifically robust way to understand history, i.e., that each basic type of life appeared abruptly, without having descended from some other type, and remained substantially the same, varying within limits, until either becoming extinct or surviving into the present. This view much better fits the observed facts. The claim that evolution is as well proved as gravity surfaces repeatedly in evolution discussions. But the statement does not stand the test of scrutiny, nor does evolution fare well in comparison to the alternative. "
For someone who claims to only have a surface level understanding you seem to know quite a bit. The concept of the anthropic universe is interesting and extend to almost everything. One of the main arguments regarding the anthropic universe is that its that way because we are here to observe it. If things had been different then we wouldn't be here to observe it. The coincidences are certainly amazing but those are more than just coincidences because existence as we know it wouldn't have happened. Think about it this way. If you know your genealogy how many coincidences happened that you happen to exist now at this moment. Say if your grandfather instead of catching a train missed it and then ended up meeting this beautiful women while waiting for the next train who he ended up marrying leading to your mother who had a fender bender with a man who ended up becoming your father. The odds of these events happening are beyond calculation yet without them you wouldn't be here to speculate on why the universe is as it is. Which leads me to my next point. Looney Toon; Just because there might have been a singular creation of the universe doesn't mean that there is a higher intelligence or disprove that there isn't. Events happen all the time that arise from an incalculable series of coincidence and as MadMax notes its a remarkable series of coincidences that the universe is as it is. Are all of these the work of a higher power or is it all just a chain of coincidences that we are only aware because if anything was different we wouldn't be able to perceive it? I don't know and frankly that's not a question that is scientific. Science does a good job of explaing the "how" things happen but the not necessarily the ultimate "why" things happen. If you believe God created the Big Bang or even that God had influenced your decision to have waffles instead of oatmeal for breakfast fine. These are questions that belong to the realm of faith and not science. As I said before these are not mutually exclusives but it's unproductive to try to argue a point in one by relying on the means and evidence of the other. For instance I can't scientifically prove the existence of non-material life after death but at the same time you can't use the Bible to develop a faster semiconductor. Here again you are trying to draw an adverserial dichotomy where none need to exist. You can certainly believe that God created everything and there are scientists, included evolutionist, who do. It just happens they believe that God acts through the observable and mathematically proven scientific theories. And whose to say that isn't the case. Again there is no way to calculate or prove that the chain of coincidences that led to you and me debating this issue on ClutchFans.net instead of talking about whether Steve Francis will outscore Kobe on Wed.. Its just as reasonable to presume that there is a higher power that has created and manipulated the universe to get to this very point as it is to argue random chance.
The problem with this argument is it denies the ability to glean factual evidence from the past and instead says that what we observe today should be the way that things always should be. It is basically the equivalent of saying the earth should be flat because I can't see the curvature. If this attitude were generally accepted then not only science but also history would collapse because since I wasn't around 2K years ago how do I know that the Romans existed or for that matter how do I know that anything existed beyond my life span. Technology as I know it today must have appeared abrubtly and not built upon previous technology because I wasn't around to observe how wheels became pulleys and then gears and finally leading to my car. Basically that attitude becomes self-defeating and denies that any progress can be made beyond ones own singular POV. Its much more logical to presume that since we can directly observe the processes of things like evolution, even in a relatively short time of a single human lifetime its logical to extrapolate those to the functioning of the evolution of all life. Further that is reinforced through the archeological reconstruction. Does this mean that this is absolutely 100% the case? No but as I've said repeatedly there is no 100% guarentee. The problem that creationist have is that you are attempting to overturn evolution because it is 100% absolutely guarenteed. True but there is nothing that is 100% absolutly guarenteed but we understand the mechanism of evolutions, change brought through selective breeding and survival and that fits the evidence we have from fossils while we have no logical understanding of another method of species creation or even scientific provided evidence that would support an alternative theory. Y'all have done a good job of poking holes in evolutionary theory but have done nothing at all to prove that creationism, Biblical or not, has any scientific validity.
MadMax: The anthropic principle really is one of the places where science intersects with phiolsophy and religion. I have a devil of a time understanding it. In any event, my point with SH was not that God doesn't exist, it's just that an atheist who says "What place, then, for a Creator?" probably shouldn't be held out as a shining example of a cosmologist endorsing the idea of god. FWIW, I believe that I read once that one of his colleagues (was it Roger Penrose? or maybe some guy from California (B-Bob?)) was a devout christian and while they'd argue about stuff all the time, they were both cool with each others beliefs on a scientific level. Senor Gootan: The argument presented against evolution boils down to this: Tabling the fact that no humans were around to observe Genesis either, this is just an awful argument. No human was around to observe the Civil War either; did it happen? No human has observed any number of scientific or historical phenomenon on certain levels; have you ever seen electrons orbiting a nucleus with your own two eyes? That doesn't mean they're not true.
Gravity is more than a theory, it is a law, and has never been known to fail. Gravity is a law? God's law? As for as science is concerned, scientist have theories to explain gravity, but they do not have a law for it yet. Carry on.
ok now i'm confused. when something is a theorie it is a lie?why. Creation is also a theorie? or am i wrong. or are there have been evidence that the world was created by god? I'm not a religious man. and i'm a biological student. i think that the theorie evolution could very wel be possible. there has been evidence that it happens. But i think that if you believe in a god and that a god created the world that you stil can believe in evolution. because evolution is happening as we speak. if the world is created by god is it not also possible that evolution changed the creatures created by god?
Of course it does, what are we suppose to rely on? Blind faith? So basically, since we weren't 'there' we couldn't possibly know what happened and we're just wildly guessing. It sounds like the author is downplaying scientists attempts to piece together our genetic histories by saying its NOT observational or empirical even though he says earlier that science is based on observation...so is he saying that evolutionary science is NOT science based? I'm confused, and apparently so is the author. I guess the use of radioactive dating techiques among other geological indicators that pin fossils to eariler times aren't classified as 'science'. Whatever. Evolution is far from proven? Its funny how this guy doesn't use one shread of evidence to show how it isn't proven, he just says it and we're suppose to believe that he knows what he is talking about. Someone said it eariler. Give me some penicillin, some E.Coli in a petri dish with enriched agar and I'll show you evolution happen in less than a week in a lab. Its a fact, its happens, if you don't think it does than you are gravely mistaken. So, according to creationist theory, God just made everything spontaneously and allows them to vary slightly, and thats it. Many times I wish I could be a creationist...things would be so simple then, if I had a question to anything I'd know the answer instantly..."Cause God made it that way."...End of discussion. Oh, and don't forget to leave a donation before you leave.
I'm sorry, but I don't think Looney read my post. Again, he won't be persuaded by any of us. And he won't persuade any of us. So what's the point? Please feel free, LT, to believe the exact Genesis version. That's fine. Don't pretend that science can't do its own thing though. It's not a conspiracy. Like rimbaud said, your logic would have us taking medicine back to medieval times simply because modern medicine is built on theories. I could go on and on. We don't fully understand electrons when there's more than one involved. That's a fact! So, we should turn all our lights off? Anyway, please enjoy your beliefs, but there's no "discussion" here. What is very interesting is the "anthropic" principle, and the wide range of discussion-oriented posts in this thread! There is a weak anthropic principle (which has a lot to do with hard science, in my view), and the strong anthropic principle, which as SamFish said, has more to do with religion and philosophy. Still fascinating! Weak: This responds to "why is the universe approximately 15 billion years old? Why does all the astronomical data show us this particular age? Why isn't it older or younger?" Here, the anthropic principle says that, for this question to exist, you must have us (or something like us) asking it. Simply put, the universe is this old, because this is exactly how long it took to move from pure quarks and leptons to forming a few nuclei to forming atoms, to forming molecules, to congealing planets and stars, and so on, until you had humans asking the dumb question. Most physicists, at least, say "yeah, it's simple. But that makes sense." We are simply at that stage in the universe's continuous drive toward greater and greater complexity. Strong: This gets more to MadMax's interesting questions (not that he originated them). This responds to "why are all the fundamental constants exactly what they are so that we can have exactly this universe that can support life like humans?" Max's numbers are basically close enough. If you change any of the fundamental constants very much, you suddenly don't have a universe anything like this. Nothing that could last very long or form stable matter as we know it. Couldn't the constants (such as the speed of light, the gravitational coupling, the strong nuclear force constant, etc) have been just about anything? Isn't it eerie? The strong principle, if I follow it correctly, says the constant are what they are because we are observing it. Now, this either means that there are an infinite set of universes and we just happen to be in the one that can support things like humans, OR it means that there is some monumental purpose for the universe, and people may be part of that purpose. That's pure religion and philosophy, if you ask me, but it's seriously FUN stuff. Again, I just don't see why "god created the world" or what-not has to be at odds with evolution. The Bible is long enough, right? Can you imagine how long Genesis would be if they'd had the time to set out all of modern microbiology and the fossil record!
Looney, I like others believe that God created the world, and he did it using evolution. There are a couple of things which need to be cleared up first. The story of the creation of the earth in the bible is a poem. It's in the form of a type of poem that was common at the time. Poems don't have to be literal. This one certainly wasn't. But this one also agrees with evolution talking about the ocean coming first etc. Secondly. Evolution has been proven. Theories in common usage are far different than theories in Scientific usage. People have mentioned the theory of gravity. There's also the theory that germs cause infection and disease. Like Evolution these are also True. SCIENTIFIC THEORY WordNet Dictionary Definition: [n] a theory that explains scientific observations; "scientific theories must be falsifiable" FALSIFIABLE WordNet Dictionary Definition: [adj] capable of being tested (verified or falsified) by experiment or observation Synonyms:confirmable, empirical, verifiable Thus we can see that for a scientific theory to exist, it has been tested and verified. In my view God created the world and Science is merely trying discover the way in which God works. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory Further explanation of a scientific theory In common usage a theory is often viewed as little more than a guess or a hypothesis. But in science and generally in academic usage, a theory is much more than that. A theory is an established paradigm that explains all or many of the data we have and offers valid predictions that can be tested. In science, a theory can never be proven true, because we can never assume we know all there is to know. Instead, theories remain standing until they are disproven, at which point they are thrown out altogether or modified slightly. Theories start out with empirical observations such as “sometimes water turns into ice.” At some point, there is a need or curiosity to find out why this is, which leads to a theoretical/scientific phase. In scientific theories, this then leads to research, in combination with auxiliary and other hypotheses (see scientific method), which may then eventually lead to a theory. Some scientific theories (such as the theory of gravity) are so widely accepted that they are often seen as laws. This, however, rests on a mistaken assumption of what theories and laws are. Theories and laws are not rungs in a ladder of truth, but different sets of data. A law is a general statement based on observations.
If it wasn't, then why do people follow it like its absolute FACT, why was this described as truth to so many people when they were little impressionable children. And if it is a poem and not literal, then doesn't the bible give any details about the actual creation? I'm just curious, from what you're telling me, you seem certain it was put in there more as an "it kind of happened this way." explaination, which is really frustrating considering so many people follow it like its hard core, proven accounts spoken from the mouth of God himself. If it isn't, then how can so many people base their lives around something so deceptive? Granted, religion does teach people great morales and rules to live by, but the reasoning behind it is all wrong IMO.
It definitely is a poem, with actual meter, and it's own poetic standards. But the why do people follow or believe a lot of things? I can't say. Few people look in depth at the bible and place in the context of when it was written. You have people who believe all kinds of things becuase it's in the bible. The bible has been used both to defend and argue against slavery. I think the more education a person has the less likely it is that they will believe that the creation poem in the bible is a step by step detailed telling of how God created the earth. I don't think that so many people are believing in a deceptive bible. What I think is deceptive(or ignorant, or misguided) is those that teach that the bible conflicts with science over the issue of creation. The bible itself is not deceptive. As for why it was put in there, I don't think it was put in there to talk about how things came to be and disobedience. I don't think bible talks at all about how the earth actually created at all. Why should it? It's not a science book, or a history book. The bible is there as a spiritual guide to give people some ideas on how to guide themselves through life.
