Disciple

I would like to debate/discuss the theory of evolution, its flaws, inconsistincies, HUGE gaps and other mistakes. Would anyone care to join me?

My position is as follows...I do believe in a creator and creation. I also believe that evolution is taking place within a divinely inspired time frame
and following divine rules. I do not like the way that people expound evolution as the answer, when it is simply a process and is quite plainly not the answer. I wish to discuss these issues and also would like to illustrate the massive holes in the theory and why it does not offer sufficient evidence to be fully believed, or to deny the existnec of a creator...

pz

That's the purpose of this forum. Go ahead.

I'm sure many of us are looking forward to your presentation of the purported flaws, inconsistincies[sic], gaps, and mistakes.

Non-praying Mantis

Disciple,

Perhaps you would like to take one aspect of evolution that troubles you and debate on that. It would certainly narrow our discussion.

NPM

Peez

Hi Disciple,

Welcome. I would be happy to discuss evolution with you, but we should get a few things straight first. For example, just what is "evolution" in this context? A biological definition of evolution is:This is the process of evolution, but the terms is also often used to include the fact of evolution and the theory of evolution. The fact of evolution is that living things have evolved by descent with modification from common ancestors. This is so well established by masses of evidence that it is no longer in question in the scientific community (and has not been for a long time). The theory of evolution is the proposed mechanisms by which this evolution has occurred. Note that "theory" here does not mean "unproven assumption," rather it means "the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another" or "a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena" (Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary).

Now, you have opened with the implication that the theory of evolution has "flaws, inconsistincies [sic], HUGE gaps and other mistakes." I am quite familiar with the theory of evolution, and know of none of these. Perhaps you should point out and explain at least one example.This sound much like "theistic evolution," would it be accurate to characterize it thus? Note that many devoutly religious people do accept the fact and theory of evolution.I cannot speak for the "people" you refer to, but the "answer" to what? The theory of evolution is not, and was never meant to be, the "answer" to anything other than scientific questions about the way living things have evolved.Of course it is a process, but what "answer" are you referring to?It was never meant to "deny the existance of a creator" at all. As I said, their are many religious people who accept evolution, even Darwin did (as far as I can tell). Evolution (and science in general) does not address the existence of one or more gods. As for evidence, please explain why you think that there is insufficient evidence supporting evolution.

Peez

Disciple

Okay...here goes a few pointers...

1) There are no intermediate fossils of any significance in the fossil record. About a ¼ of a million fossil species exist in the museums of the world, and you can pretty much count on the fingers of one hand the number of fossils evolutionists are today seriously putting forward as intermediate forms – and even then the evidence is disputed. [Copied from What Are the Main Problems With The Theory of Evolution?]

2) There is NO adequate explanation for the origin of life from dead chemicals. Even the simplest life form is tremendously complex. [Copied from Biblical Creation Science Subjects .]

3) Not a single fossil has ever been discovered that clearly demonstrates a link between basic organism “kinds.” [Copied from Why People Believe in Evolution.]

4) For a postulate to qualify as a scientific theory is must fulfill three basic criteria.

1. The postulate must be observable.

2. The postulate must be capable of repeatable experimental verification.

3. The postulate must withstand a falsifiability test, or an experiment must be conceived the failure of which would disprove the postulate.

Neither evolution nor creation can meet the above three criteria and thus are not theories but postulates. In fact neither are fully capable of becoming theories because of the limits of observing events that happened many years in the past. [Copied from 10 REASONS EVOLUTION IS WRONG.]

5) The total number of nanoseconds (1 billionth of a second) in 20 billion years is 1026

Probability of the random combination of a 40-chain amino acid is 1 in 10141

If recombination occurred every nanosecond only 1026 would be done in 20 billion years leaving undone 10115 recombinations. The average protein is a chain of 500 amino acids. [Copied from 10 REASONS EVOLUTION IS WRONG.]

6) If everything is a process of random change over time, then our thoughts are nothing more than random events and our discussion about evolution meaningless. [Copied from 10 REASONS EVOLUTION IS WRONG.]

MrDarwin

For a debate to get anywhere you will need to be a little more specific as to what those "flaws, inconsistencies, HUGE gaps, and other mistakes" are.

If you accept evolution as a process, what then is there to debate? Again, you need to be a little more specific.

Answer to what? What is the question? For me, evolution answers questions about the patterns we observe among living organisms, and in the fossil record. Do you think it answers different questions?

Again, just what are these "massive holes" and why do you believe in evolution as a "process" if you think it has fundamental problems?

Do you believe in evolution or not? Make up your mind. You cannot expect to enter into a debate if your own position is not clear.

I believe this is the source of your confusion: evolution does not deny the existence of a creator.

(Edited to add that it looks like Peez addressed pretty much all the same things I did. Sadly, based on Disciple's reply to Peez it looks pretty much like the same old same old.)

Godless Dave

"Basic organism kinds" is not a biological term. If we're going to debate this assertion you're going to have to define what a "basic organism kind" is, and explain the criteria for determining what kind a particular organism belongs to.

MrDarwin

This will come as news to paleobotanists, who for several decades now have considered the progymnosperms to be perfectly intermediate links between two of the major groups of land plants: gymnosperms (non-flowering seed plants) and the spore-bearing vascular plants that immediately preceded them in the fossil record. In fact, the division between spore-bearing and seed-bearing plants is one of the most fundamental divisions in botanical classification, reflecting one of the major evolutionary transitions in plant evolution, and is pretty well documented in the fossil record.

Peez

Pointers?This is entirely incorrect but before we can even discuss it you should define "intermediate fossils" here. Do you mean ‘fossils or organisms that are intermediate in form between an earlier and a later fossil'? Do you mean ‘fossils that are intermediate in form between two modern taxa'? By "intermediate" do you mean ‘having one or more traits of each but not all,' or ‘having at least some traits that are midway between the two,' or both?This is an interesting assertion, and one without any support, but it has nothing to do with evolution.This seems to be the same as point #1, but with the added bit about "kinds." Before we can address this, we need to know what a "kid" is, please define it carefully.Do you have a source for this?I don't know what you mean exactly, but what is really needed is empirical data (data collected by observation of the natural universe).You are on the right track here, but science does not ever prove anything. What is required is experiments that could, if the hypothesis is incorrect, falsify the hypothesis. That is, it must be possible to test the hypothesis with empirical data. In principle, such tests should be repeatable. Note that one does not have to observe or repeat their own birth to study it scientifically.Essentially correct.Incorrect. Evolution can easily be empirically tested, and has been millions (not an exaggeration) of times.Exactly what do you mean by "theory"? Also, what do you mean by "evolution"? Clearly the theory of evolution is a scientific theory, but the fact of evolution and the process of evolution are not theories.Approximately correct, assuming that you mean 10^26.You have made a couple of silly assumptions here. For one thing (assuming that you mean 1 in 10^141), you are assuming about 3350 different possible amino acids. Certainly there are more possible amino acids than the 20 known to be used in proteins, but why 3350? Another silly assumption is that amino acids combine randomly.An uninteresting and irrelevant calculation. It makes a couple more silly assumptions (that only one protein at a time can form, and that only one sequence of amino acids will be functional), but more to the point nobody thinks that proteins have formed from random assortments of amino acids. You are betraying a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution.It isn't, and nobody is saying that it is. Again, you do not understand evolution.That is a non-sequitur, but irrelevant as evolution of adaptations is not a random process.

Peez

Disciple

[The following material was copied from GodandScieence.org.]

Scientific Facts Solution
Homochirality somehow arose in the sugars and amino acids of prebiotic soups, although there is no mechanism by which this can occur (1) and is, in fact, prohibited by the second law of thermodynamics (law of entropy).

solution ~ reject the second law of thermodynamics

Chemical reactions in prebiotic soups produce other sugars that prevent RNA and DNA replication

solution ~ discard chemistry data "science of the gaps"

also a few quotes by evolutionists for your reflection...

'There is now overwhelmingly strong evidence, both statistical and paleontological, that life could not have been started on Earth by a series of random chemical reactions.... There simply was not enough time... to get life going." Niles Eldridge (paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History). (17)

G. F. Joyce and L. E. Orgel lead us into the RNA world with a description of the difficulties in achieving the direct synthesis of nucleosides and nucleotides from prebiotic precursors and conclude that the de novo appearance of oligonucleotides on primitive Earth amounts to a "near miracle" W. Keller, 1999 (20).