braces_for_impact

Those were many of the examples I was thinking of, as a matter of fact.

Thanks for saving me the trouble folks!

NumberTenOx

Actually, I think there is a different way to approach this argument. Who, when contemplating the marvelous complexity of life, hasn't been overwhelmed? How indeed did this come to pass?

But let's take that Mt. Everest thing again. Looking at that mountain you can marvel at how high, how forbidding, how beautifully treacherous it is. How could a human have ever made it to the top?

The "evolution" explanation is that it was a journey of many, many steps. The total journey is difficult to comprehend, but each little step is something we can get our minds around. Some steps seem more difficult (how did they get across that crevasse? Up that ice wall?) But once we understand how a single step works, we can make a theory about the entire journey.

The "creationism" explanation is that a helicopter dropped some guys on the top. Sure, they walked down a bit, but basically they must have started at the top because they couldn't have made it up there on their own.

For me, the feeling of awe comes from imagining the long long journey from primordial chemicals to my children's laughs. Some of those steps seem impossible (eyes? consciousness?), but the more you think about it and look at the diversity of life, the more you can imagine how those steps were taken.

MrDarwin

Although I don't have the energy to discuss it all over again, let's not forget the infamous "Suboptimal design: the fetal circulatory system" discussion.

Peez

I have certainly felt overwhelmed. Here is a good quote:From No Answers in Genesis!


Peez

Oolon Colluphid

These things tend to manifest themselves in behaviours. So evidence for them -- objective evidence -- is available.

If my wife says she loves me, yet is always off with other men, treats me with disregard and avoids contact where possible, I would have reason to doubt the truth of her claim. If someone says they love you, how would you know if it is true?

This is of course not evidence for the subjective feelings involved. So I ‘believe’ in them in the sense that I subjectively feel them myself, and others display evidence for their feeling of them too.

But that, I guess, would be better taken to another forum -- Science and Skepticism, perhaps. It has little to do with validating or invalidating evolution.
Well I have photographs showing a family resemblance, and of him with a child that is clearly me, and of him holding a baby in the right place at the right time, and with my mother while pregnant, and so on. But that misses the point. ‘Concrete evidence’ -- DNA testing, plus a birth certificate stating him as father, and so on, is potentially available. So it is not a belief in the way you imply it -- as in ‘something accepted without evidence’. It is something accepted because of masses of evidence.
Your definition is too wooly for a yes/no answer. But to take it at face value, then no. I accept things on the basis of evidence.
I’d say that it’s okay to believe something on little evidence if the benefits are significant, when there is nothing to be lost, and where to do so conflicts with no other evidence. So I might well just take your word for it that you have a cousin called Dorothy who lives in Kansas. But I would expect rather more from you before I’d ‘believe’ that she had been on an adventure with a talking scarecrow involving flying monkeys.
Then you’ll have no trouble telling me what the definition of the Genesis ‘kind’ is, and how to apply it to the natural world.And you’ll easily be able to say which of these are apes...



... and which are human, then, won’t you?
It seems that way. If you have evidence otherwise, of course, then please present it.
There are a variety of answers to that, mostly speculative. But that’s not the real point. Even if there were no explanation, all you’d have is a ‘god of the gaps’. Not knowing something only shows that we do not know; it offers no evidence in support of divine involvement. For what happens to your god if a reasonable, well-evinced explanation does come along?
Again, there’s a number of ways. But you should note that “survival of the species” is not how evolution works. It’s about survival, or more precisely, survival and reproduction, of individuals. Can you not envision ways that being intelligent, talented, or having a good sense of humour might affect an individual’s chances of reproducing? Never seen a ‘lonely hearts’ column?
Nope. You are confusing lack of purpose or intention with non-randomness. A sieve has no intention of sieving, yet stuff that goes in it gets sieved.
I see no evidence of this, hence I do not believe you. Such as?
What, self-replicating molecules? Yes I do. If you cannot see that a hundred billion slight changes from yourself might lead to something radically different, then I doubt your ability to cope with large numbers.
Thank you. You are most welcome .
And so different designs to accomplish the same thing are from different designers. Fair enough. If the design of a bird’s wing is good enough for a wren and an eagle, a penguin and an ostrich, perhaps you could explain why those of bats, pterosaurs and insects have different designs.

Why might birds have a through-flow lung ventilation system while bats have a tidal one? The bird one is measurably more efficient, by the way. So the designer either deliberately gave a less efficient system to bats, or there was more than one designer and they didn’t talk to each other. (Or, there was no designer, no forethought used.) Bats have the mammalian system, the same one found in whales and mice, humans and aardvarks, while a kiwi has the same system as the swift. Two designers?
Flat-out wrong. Not only are the same functions performed by a range of different structures, but the designer, if there was one, was incompetent, wasteful and sadistic. I will be happy to elaborate.
So you admit that it is an argument from personal incredulity, and that you realise it is a fallacy? Jolly good!
Sorry, but I didn’t need to search a list of fallacies to recognise that one. It is what all creationist arguments amount to.
Go on then. I can see only a possible false trichotomy, and that only for simplicity.
Thanks! Any time!
Then you should realise that if you lack an understanding of something, you may not be best placed to criticise it.

TTFN, Oolon

Oolon Colluphid

Heehee....

lpetrich

Disciple:
QUOTE---Believe away, old chap. But would you find it rude if I asked you for evidence to support your contention?

REPLY---Do you believe in love? Show me the evidence? ...

I directly experience it.

Also, I wonder if Disciple trusts the sacred books of religions other than his. Does he believe that if he is a good Muslim, that he will get to live like a sultan in the next world, complete with having a harem of lovelies to make love to? Does he believe that the rulers of the Universe once took sides in a war over a little town in northwestern Turkey about 3000 years ago?

REPLY---Are we the result of an evolutionary process which is devoid at the start, in the middle and toward the end, of a divine creator? Oh and as for the over-evolved brain bit....why has evolution landed us with the ability to enjoy classical music, art and literature? In what way does our enjoyment of these things lend itself to survival of the species?

Side effects of complicated systems. That happens all the time with computers.

QUOTE---(similarities in anatomy...)

REPLY---This one is easy. We are all from the same designer. An expert can tell an artists work just by the way they finished a pianting or the particular way they saw and drew shapes. we can see god's handiwork all around and his designs are similar...

Except that there is LOTS of evidence for multiple designers.

Vertebrate eyes vs. squid/octopus eyes. They are both camera eyes, but each group has its own characteristic eye architecture. Vertebrate photoreceptors are wired in the "wrong" direction, with the nerves in front of them, while squid ones are wired in the "right" way, with the nerves behind them. Among numerous other differences.

The wings of birds, bats, pterosaurs, and insects. The bird, bat, and pterosaur ones are all front limbs, but they have very different characteristic architectures.

Grasping organs. Human thumb / finger ("precision grip"), primate hands in general ("power grip"), elephant trunks, feet of perching birds, front limbs of mantids, claws of scorpions and lobsters/crabs, tentacles of squid/octopuses and of sea anemones and jellyfish (cnidarians), arms of starfish.

Fins. Each group that has them has its own characteristic fin architecture. Fish, cetaceans, sirenians, some marine crocodiles, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, penguins, squid. You can start by comparing a dolphin's fins to a shark's fins.

Hooves. Even-toed and odd-toed ungulates (artiodactyls and perissodactyls) have their characteristic numbers of hooves per foot (even: 2 or 4, odd: 1 or 3). The largest hooves are also characteristic: 3 and 4 for even-toed ones and 3 for odd-toed ones. Compare a cow's hooves and a horse's hooves.

Which of the two two systemic aortic arches kept. Mammals keep the left one, birds the right one.

Internal fertilization. Most land animals practice it, though their closest primarily-aquatic relatives usually do not. Thus, reptiles and their descendants (amniotes) practice it, while frogs and most bony fish practice external fertilization. Also, seed plants practice it, even though most other plants do external fertilization.

Live birth. This has evolved from egg-laying several times. Plants also do something like it -- the seeds of flowering plants (angiosperms) contain dormant embryos, not egg cells.

My patience has run out here...

ps418

Accept things on belief? Believe things on the basis of belief? wtf does that mean? Did you mean to ask whether you accept as true propositions for which there is belief but no evidence? I'd say the answer to that is no, though it is a lifelong process uncovering and weeding out one's own false beliefs.

I believe in love, anger, and dreaming because I've experienced these things myself, and numerous people I know have described similar experiences. Of course, plenty of people claim to experience 'God' as well, and I agree, to the extent that 'God' refers to a type of conscious experience that a person can have, for instance of overflowing compassion and love, but not with the interpretation of such an experience as being an experience of an objective thing existing apart from the person, like a tree.


Patrick

Oolon Colluphid

And now mine...
Ah, eyes. Not only that. The part of the brain that does the image processing is at the back of the head, so the wiring has to travel further than it need, were it actually designed.

Then there’s eyes that do not work, since they lack crucial bits, in creatures that do not need eyes at all, sinice they live in total darkness.

And of course there’s the vertebrate retina, which has the photosensitive cells pointing away from the incoming light, so their nerve ‘cabling’ in in the way. Yet the designer (or a different one) got it the ‘right’ way round in that pinnacle of His purpose, the squid.

Thinking of nerves, there’s the old recurrent laryngeal, that goes from one side of the neck to the other by passing under the aorta by the heart and back up again. Even in giraffes.

And there’s the ‘wiring’ of the locust’s wings, which travels from the brain (such as it is) down into the abdomen, then back again to the thorax where the wings are.
Not only that, but in passing out of the body, the testes leave a weakness in the abdominal muscle wall (the ‘inguinal ring’), through which the bowel is rather prone to herniate, strangulating the gut and stifling the blood flow to one’s balls. Why can’t sperm be made at body temperature?
Hmm, what else without cheating...

There’s all those animals that are ‘designed’ to eat grass. Yet grass is a terrible food. Why does it contain so much silica, if not to protect itself against... the animals that were designed to eat it...? And it is deficient in minerals, so much so that animals have to migrate for hundreds of miles to get to ‘salt licks’, and elephants have excavated whole caves in their efforts to get minerals from the rock.

What’s more, ungulates can only get the little nutrition they do from grass because of the millions of bacteria in their guts that break down the cellulose of the plant cell walls. Surely the designer could have given plant-eaters an enzyme or two for this -- after all, the bacteria can do it!

And again, there’s the Chinese grass carp, which feeds in times of flod on land grass. It has specialised pharyngeal teeth to grind the grass. Specialised, yeah, so designed. Yet it lacks the gut bacteria that ungulate mammals have, so something like 80% of the plant cells pass out of its gut again unopened, undigested. By what standard is a very inefficient digestive system supposed to be a good design?

I’ve mentioned a couple earlier, but will recap here: genes for things that an organism doesn’t have, and the mammalian tidal respiratory set-up. Ref the former, perhaps Disciple could tell us why we humans have the necessary genes for making our own vitamin C, much as most other mammals have. And yet the gene is broken, thus condemning those without adequate diets to scurvy. And what’s more, the gene is broken in precisely the same way in the other apes. Same mutation, same place, in what are proposed to be closely related creatures. Hmmm....

Ah, that should do for now. Oh, has anyone mentioned human third molars (wisdom teeth)? Our jaws are too small to accommodate them, Try looking up ‘impacted’.

Disciple, that’s all I can think of off the top of my head that’ve not already been mentioned, but there are rather more, when you’re ready.

************************

Now a prediction or two.

We’ll get a lot of waffle about how these are not poor designs, which we will refute.

Then there’ll be something about how we mere humans cannot discern god’s purpose. Which will totally undercut the claim for good designs too. So we’ll point that out.

Then, or possibly sooner, Disciple will vanish in a puff of logic, possibly complaining about how mean-spirited we all are, possibly threatening us with hell, or simply go silent, maybe to complain about us elsewhere.

Or... and this is what I would really like to happen... Disciple will start to investigate for him/herself, ask questions, wonder about all the lies he/she has been fed, and at some point Scigirl will point out that evolution has no bearing whatsoever on religion, only on literal interpretations of an old book.

Well, there’s the predictions. Now to test them.

TTFN, Oolon

Deadbeat

Oolon, if there WERE a god, you'd be damn close to it.

Love that post. :notworthy