Evolution v Creationism

[Sigurd]

The DNA evidence is a stretch.
How do you tell one descended from the other? The can't even tell if Neanderthals is the forefather of humans because the DNA evidence is ambiguous. They can't tell if The Neanderthals, our supposedly closest ancestor is related to us or is a completely different species

As to my Volvo analogy, it should be clear that cars don't reproduce. That was the whole point.
BTW, I do not offer any alternative theory. I am just stating the problem with hominid descent theory trough putting bones from different strata into hierarchy trees and conclude that this one is a descendent from that one. Similarities do not equate decent.

[CBR]

The DNA evidence is a stretch.
How do you tell one descended from the other? The can't even tell if Neanderthals is the forefather of humans because the DNA evidence is ambiguous. They can't tell if The Neanderthals, our supposedly closest ancestor is related to us or is a completely different species

The debate about Neanderthals is whether it should be Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. It is really just details as to when the split happened because either way we share a common ancestor.


CBR

[Tribesman]

the 47 million-year-old fossil

Well there you go , its obviously another hoax by the so called "scientists" .
Everyone knows the world was only created 6000 years ago on a tuesday afternoon and fossils like this are a result of the big flood 4400 years ago .

[Sigurd]

The debate about Neanderthals is whether it should be Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. It is really just details as to when the split happened because either way we share a common ancestor.


CBR

There you go - and what is the current status in this debate? And we have DNA samples of this common ancestor which proves that both Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens are descendants of this common ancestor?

Well there you go , its obviously another hoax by the so called "scientists" .
Everyone knows the world was only created 6000 years ago on a tuesday afternoon and fossils like this are a result of the big flood 4400 years ago .

The Creationists can't deny the fact that there are fossils in the stratas of this earth. IF most of the creatures including dinosaurs and evil men died in the great deluge, it would follow natually that their bones would be found in the same strata. Is this so?
And the Bible does not really support any of what the young earth creationists have to say about the matter anyway.

I could postulate that God created the earth and withdrew Deist style and then let the clockwork earth run its due. Multimillion years later he revisits and finds mr. and ms homo sapien evolved from life in clay and blows spirits into their frames. I could do this and back it up with scriptures from the KJV Bible.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Well I agree you don't have to believe the earth is just 6,000 years, I don't believe that anyway. But it is stretching it to say God created us through evolution. IMO God created quite a lot of people out of dust/whatever and Adam was the patriarch of them.

[LittleGrizzly]

But it is stretching it to say God created us through evolution.

Why ?

I assume your argument is along religious lines as you admitted yourn not to hot on the science of evolution...

What is there in the bible that paticularly rules out evolution, that is if you interpret it a certain way (because its all about interpretation right ?) could Gods creation of man not been an event spanning millions of years, with God being somewhat an entity outside our universe time means nothing to him...

Couldn't it come under the 'God works in mysterious ways' such as breaking someones x box so they'll spend time with friends and family for example ?

[Rhyfelwyr]

Yeah when I said that I was, of course, meaning from a Biblical perspective. I try not to make "private interpretations" of the scripture as it warns me against, instead when it put things bluntly I accept it.

Also, I don't think God works in mysterious ways. My take on it all is very straight-forward and kind of morbid as some people say but hey.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Fellows, it's clearly obvious we were poofed into existence from the massively hot breath of the Fire-Breathing Leprechaun, lucky be thy name. IMO we were fashioned together out of horseshoes and rabbits feet and four-leaf clovers. Then the Magic Box closed and we can no longer see the Fire-Breathing Leprechaun. However, he placed a symbol in the sky to remind us of our true origins: The Rainbow. It is said that at the end of the Rainbow, you will find the Pot 'O Gold and become rich beyond mortal dreams. It's clear that the Fire-Breathing Leprechaun created two people, and only two people, who then had a bunch of sons. Those sons then reproduced with what I assume to be unicorns, because there were no women besides their mother. And that is why men have a prominent "unicorn" below their stomach. My guess is that the women were just unlucky and theirs fell off somehow. Probably from kissing the Blarney stone.

I present this as the "Lucky Design" theory, as an alternative to Intelligent Design and Evolution.

However, beyond the physical evidence of the Rainbow, the Clover, the Horseshoe, and Rabbits, not to mention gold and blarney stones, there's no scientific basis for this theory, and I readily admit it is far, far more of a stretch to conclude that everyone was created by a divine being in a supernatural method which directly contradicts fossil and DNA evidence, and using a family tree which could only result in incestuous couplings and severe birth deformities and infertility, involving imaginary women.

Have a pint anyway. Surely there is room enough for our personal religious views AND science in this world, but we have to admit, they are based upon different ideas: One is the idea that we know something we cannot possibly know except "with our hearts", and the other is the idea that we don't really know anything, but we have strong evidence which leads to some fairly reliable conclusions. The two ideas do not mix and cannot be compared to one another, otherwise some fairly ridiculous notions can be associated falsely with science, such as the idea that some ethnicities are not human beings because they look slightly different from us, and we know this because we looked at them and saw a slight difference and so therefore they aren't human beings.

As sad as that theory is, it's very similar to the idea that human beings are completely disassociated with the animal kingdom, because we are more intelligent. Nevermind our biological processes are nearly identical, we share almost identical DNA with a very small margin of difference, in our embryonic state we develop almost exactly the same way as other vertebrates, our fossils appeared in the record millions of years ago along with many others, the fact that we are born and then we die... in other words, virtually identical in every way to the nearest primate, but some believe we were given different, exclusive to human-beings, otherworldly supernatural origins poofed out of dust, rather than evolving like all other species have done, in spite of a lack of supportive evidence and physics that doesn't involve what amounts to magic.

[Meneldil]

But it is stretching it to say God created us through evolution. IMO God created quite a lot of people out of dust/whatever and Adam was the patriarch of them.

Oh the irony.

[Adrian II]

Oh the irony.

I had to laugh at that one, too. Sure, the work of generations of evolutionary researchers and theorists is a real stretch, whereas the idea that god created Adam and Eve out of dust is far more plausible. Truly, a no-brainer.

[CBR]

There you go - and what is the current status in this debate? And we have DNA samples of this common ancestor which proves that both Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens are descendants of this common ancestor?

I think some of the latest would be from March this year:

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/gene...enome_released

Analysis of the genome reveals that humans and Neandertals share genetic roots stretching back at least 830,000 years.

And since the article use the term Homo neanderthalensis I guess they are considered a separate species.


CBR

[Adrian II]

The DNA evidence is a stretch.

The Bible is a bigger stretch.

Radiocarbon technique allows dating back to 45.000 years ago, which should put a definite lid on the 6000 years old earth crap.

As for DNA: it proves kinship between species, not descendance. DNA specimens prove that the dodo was a close cousin of the pigeon, not that the dodo was the pigeon's predecessor or that the dodo and the pigeon have a common ancestor. DNA also proves that humans are related more closely to chimps than to mice, even though we share about 95% of our genome with both species - the difference being in the kinds of genes we share with either.

Hence phylogenetic trees do not flawlessly represent species evolution. However, other forms of tracing and sequencing (proteins, molecules, morphology, physiology) plus dating methods like radiocarbon have enabled scientists to come up with more a than tentative picture of historic speciation. New research (such as the recent massive sequencing of bird dna across a large range of bird species) constantly produces new insights on phylogenetics. Even so, every phylogenetic tree remains a hypothesis. That's how science works.

Do you have a better hypothesis? Bring it on.

For reference, I point the honourable gentleman from Norway (whose independent thinking I have always respected and welcomed) to a brilliant essay by Stephen Jay Gould. One quote deserves to be highlighted:

Evolution lies exposed in the imperfections that record a history of descent. Why should a rat run, a bat fly, a porpoise swim, and I type this essay with structures built of the same bones unless we all inherited them from a common ancestor? An engineer, starting from scratch, could design better limbs in each case. Why should all the large native mammals of Australia be marsupials, unless they descended from a common ancestor isolated on this island continent? Marsupials are not "better," or ideally suited for Australia; many have been wiped out by placental mammals imported by man from other continents. This principle of imperfection extends to all historical sciences. When we recognize the etymology of September, October, November, and December (seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth), we know that the year once started in March, or that two additional months must have been added to an original calendar of ten months.

The third argument is more direct: transitions are often found in the fossil record. Preserved transitions are not common—and should not be, according to our understanding of evolution (see next section) but they are not entirely wanting, as creationists often claim. The lower jaw of reptiles contains several bones, that of mammals only one. The non-mammalian jawbones are reduced, step by step, in mammalian ancestors until they become tiny nubbins located at the back of the jaw. The "hammer" and "anvil" bones of the mammalian ear are descendants of these nubbins. How could such a transition be accomplished? the creationists ask. Surely a bone is either entirely in the jaw or in the ear. Yet paleontologists have discovered two transitional lineages of therapsids (the so-called mammal-like reptiles) with a double jaw joint—one composed of the old quadrate and articular bones (soon to become the hammer and anvil), the other of the squamosal and dentary bones (as in modern mammals). For that matter, what better transitional form could we expect to find than the oldest human, Australopithecus afarensis, with its apelike palate, its human upright stance, and a cranial capacity larger than any ape’s of the same body size but a full 1,000 cubic centimeters below ours? If God made each of the half-dozen human species discovered in ancient rocks, why did he create in an unbroken temporal sequence of progressively more modern features—increasing cranial capacity, reduced face and teeth, larger body size? Did he create to mimic evolution and test our faith thereby?