Is believing in evolution similar to believing in a religion?

shadow_hk · December 25, 2008

I admit the possibility that someone/something could help mankind to develop (faster) in past - by scientific or cultural means). But I mean some extraterrestrial intelligence (not some omnipotent Abrahamic Creator). In my opinion these possible factors cannot be excluded and I consider it as possible, if not likely scenario. But of course I can be wrong although I don't think I am, when I consider all the remarkable things one can find in remote past (I don't want to use the term "evidence" because a lot of this "evidences" could really be a blind and misleding path but I think that not all of them).

http://www.daniken.com/e/index.html

So the answer to the initial question is IMO yes, when we narrow down evolution only to strict darwinism, but otherwise not, because the creationistic explanation is just made up and is not based on any scientific and empirical findings at all, or more precisely: such explanation is in contradiction with them. But of course, creationists are always seeking for anything that would back up their theory.. I could continue but I won't because I intend to keep my promise not to criticize religion for a while

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Prime Junta · December 25, 2008

Von Däniken? Say good-bye to your credibility...

shadow_hk · December 25, 2008

I linked von Däniken because he is the main popularizer of these ideas. I don't say that I agree with him on everything though I do agree with him in general and I don't know why I should be in any way ashamed.

I don't judge people's credibility according to number of academic titles or (Nobel) prizes they have or how esteemed academic scientific position they have. If you do, it is your choice.

But probably the only thing I care about is what people say and motivations behind what they say. I don't care about titles etc.. at all.

Prime Junta · December 25, 2008

shadow_hk said:
I linked von Däniken because he is the main popularizer of these ideas. I don't say that I agree with him on everything though I do agree with him in general and I don't know why I should be in any way ashamed.

Any adult who believes Von Däniken automatically consigns himself to the ranks of credulous fools. Von Däniken's ancient astronauts are the worst kind of pseudoscientific nonsense the planet carries -- religion without the spirituality; superstition without the local color.

Von Däniken is also a liar: he's gone as far as to admit, on record, that many of his claims of architectural evidence are completely bogus, yet he's failed to remove them from later editions of his books, and continues to bang on about them.

I don't judge people's credibility according to number of academic titles or (Nobel) prizes they have or how esteemed academic scientific position they have. If you do, it is your choice.

I don't have any academic credentials myself, and certainly don't judge people by them. I assess ideas on their merits, and Von Däniken's ideas are utterly, completely, totally without merit.

But probably the only thing I care about is what people say and motivations behind what they say. I don't care about titles etc.. at all.

I do care about what people say, as well as their motivations to say so. You should, too -- if you don't, you set yourself up as patsy for the first con-man to show up, who's willing to tell you a comforting lie.

For the record, I believed in Von Däniken's lies too. When I was ten years old. I got over it by the time I was twelve. If you're a ten-year-old, I sincerely apologize for my harsh words to you.

Edit: on the off-chance that you're actually interested in educating yourself rather than continuing to roll around in this puddle of pseudoscientific vomit, this isn't a bad place to start:

[ http://www.amazon.com/Brocas-Brain-Reflections-Romance-Science/dp/0345336895 ]

Damian Mahadevan · December 25, 2008

Prime Junta said:
What kind of evolution are you asking for anyway? If you're talking about, say, fish evolving into amphibians, then sure, you can't observe it directly, because that takes millions of years, and we don't have that kind of time. But that's a fundamentally silly argument, since it rules out indirect evidence. If our knowledge only relied on direct observation, we wouldn't be able to know just about anything at all.

As i said before the evolution i am looking for is about say growing wings where there were no wings in the original species, that takes a special kind of mutation that must have occured if evolution is true. The thing is with indirect evidence, i assume you are refferring to the fossil record and dna record of neanderthals etc, is that there is the possibility that they could be simply different species.

Take our own evolutionary tree: Darwin hypothesized that humans and great apes have common ancestors. This hypothesis predicted that we would come across fossil evidence of these common ancestors and of species that are morphologically between these ancestors and ourselves on the one hand, and great apes on the other hand. Since Darwin, plenty of such fossil evidence has been found.

I will look into this.

Maybe you should look it up. Google "punctuated equilibrium" and "phyletic gradualism."

ok

What, the Haeckel drawings, or the fact that ontogeny often mirrors phylogeny? I don't write schoolbooks, so I don't know.

If I did write a biology textbook, I would explain the phenomenon, mention that Haeckel first described it, and finish off with a picture of one of his drawings compared to photographs of embryos at the same stages to show how our understanding of the topic has evolved since him. Then I'd draw the reader's attention to the fact that some of Haeckel's drawings are a bit too good to be true, and put in a homework assignment asking the students to consider why this is the case, and what this, and our subsequent improved knowledge of the phenomenon, says about the scientific method.

Edit: Turns out Wikipedia has a pretty good discussion of Haeckel's theory in light of what we know now. You might want to check it out: [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory ]

No Haeckels drawings were represented as fact. I will look at the link and come back to you.

Prime Junta · December 25, 2008

Damian Mahadevan said:
As i said before the evolution i am looking for is about say growing wings where there were no wings in the original species, that takes a special kind of mutation that must have occured if evolution is true.

Sure, you won't be able to observe that -- because that sort of thing takes millions or tens of millions of years. But you will be able to see the evidence that was left behind -- in genes, in the fossil record, in a variety of living, related species, and even in ontogeny. That's not unlike the study of history: you won't be able to pay a visit to the Roman Empire of Augustus, but you can learn a great deal about it by studying the vestiges it left behind.

Edit: Here's a pretty good explanation of how flight evolved in birds. It's intended for kids, but somehow I don't think that'll do any harm.

[ http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/explorations/reslab/flight/main.htm ]

The thing is with indirect evidence, i assume you are refferring to the fossil record and dna record of neanderthals, is that there is the possibility that they could be simply different species.

That would depend on your definition of "species."

No Haeckels drawings were represented as fact. I will look at the link and come back to you.

Oh, I'll take your word for it. There are lots of crappy textbooks. That doesn't say anything about the subjects themselves -- just that the writers of those textbooks didn't do their jobs properly, for whatever reason.

Damian Mahadevan · December 25, 2008

Maybe you should look it up. Google "punctuated equilibrium" and "phyletic gradualism."

I had a look at it in the wiki, i prefer the phyletic gradualism of the two. Because i dont think that there is any reason to stop evolution if it ever occurs. Like why would you suddenly grow wings when you are threatened?

As for neanderthal dna evidence and the fossil record, it is possible that though genetic drift that human beings could have the same number of dna as the neanderthals, but there is no absolute way of knowing if humans had an ancestor of the ape or a product of a designer that like to build a certain way.

shadow_hk · December 25, 2008

Prime Junta said:
For the record, I believed in Von Däniken's lies too. When I was ten years old. I got over it by the time I was twelve. If you're a ten-year-old, I sincerely apologize for my harsh words to you.

Leave your sincere apologies to yourself because I'm not interested in them at all.

You probably think that you ate all the wisdom of the world, but you didn't. And certainly not the good manners.

I will not argue with you about "religion without spirituality" etc, because 1. it doesn't have a meaning / sense, 2. it is not easy for me to discuss and argue in English and thus pretty time consuming and then I have more pleasent things to do.

edit: and most importantly: you are not worth it to me.

JemyM · December 25, 2008

Damian Mahadevan said:
I had a friend with six fingers, the sixth was an exact copy of his pinkie, and non functional i believe.

Do you call your friend a separate species? Humans regulary have five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot. Every exception to that rule is a mutation. It's the same in the animal kingdom.

Damian Mahadevan said:
And i think you missed my point. The hands when there were no hands was an example. The point is that new information in evolution hasnt been observed.
And that is the problem with evolution. There has been no observations on evolution. If this is false show me an example of high level evolution that has been observed. And i will accept evolution.

Evolution is the change in lifeforms over time due to minor mutations. Direct observations of this process have been made. It have been observed how new simple species with new traits develop during less than 100 years. Complex lifeforms doesn't evolve in a single human lifespan, we see through the fossils that they did. There are a couple of great videos on youtube that show these discoveries the easy way, such as this one.

Thanks to our insight in how it works we have been able to make predictions that keep turning up true.

Prime Junta · December 25, 2008

Damian Mahadevan said:
I had a look at it in the wiki, i prefer the phyletic gradualism of the two. Because i dont think that there is any reason to stop evolution if it ever occurs. Like why would you suddenly grow wings when you are threatened?

You don't. That's not how it works.

Seriously, before saying anything at all about evolution, you owe it to yourself to read up on it enough to be able to understand what evolutionary biology actually claims. Thus far, you haven't said a single thing about it that's even true. You can't rebut it if you don't know what it claims, can you now?

As for neanderthal dna evidence and the fossil record, it is possible that though genetic drift that human beings could have the same number of dna as the neanderthals, but there is no absolute way of knowing if humans had an ancestor of the ape or a product of a designer that like to build a certain way.

Science doesn't deal in absolutes, only probabilities and reasonable explanations.

Prime Junta · December 25, 2008

shadow_hk said:
Leave your sincere apologies to yourself because I'm not interested in them at all.

Fair enough, I won't do that again.

You probably think that you ate all the wisdom of the world, but you didn't. And certainly not the good manners.

What's that to do with the validity of what I'm saying?

I will not argue with you about "religion without spirituality" etc, because 1. it doesn't have a meaning / sense,

It most certainly does. You may not be able to understand the meaning/sense of the statement, but then again that doesn't surprise me a whole lot.

2. it is not easy for me to discuss and argue in English and thus pretty time consuming and then I have more pleasent things to do.

So, you have a perfect rebuttal to what I said, but you can only say it in Czech, and would only say it if I asked politely enough. Riiight...

edit: and most importantly: you are not worth it to me.

Oh dear, now you've gone and hurt my feelings.

JemyM · December 25, 2008

Damian uses creationist rethoric. The first time you hear these arguments you can simply check up reality, unless you already have basic education which allows you to see through the majority of them. After that point it get's frustrating to hear the same arguments over and over again from different people. You might ask yourself "doesn't these people verify this stuff?". The answer to this is no, they do not. Evolution isn't the problem, which is why facts and reason simply fails.

The interest for greater understanding through enquiry and exploration can be shut down if a child is treated harshly. A child can then be trained to blindly follow authority, who ever that is. After you have disabled this function, they will do as told without any rational reasoning at all. Interacting with someone who is trained this way is like trying to reason with a computer program that is programmed to behave in certain patterns and give pre-programmed replies.

Most extremist groups establish scapegoats without any understanding of the things they attack. There's nothing rational about that either, more than the establishment of an enemy is a way to keep the tribe closer together. Such ties do not deal with questions like truth or false, right or wrong. There is the tribe and who ever is not with it is against it.

So you can sit there and try to uninstall the program over and over again to get the individuals taste for knowledge working again. It's not impossible, I am personally an example of that. But doing so in the long run is simply frustrating and doesn't really get you anywhere. The root of the issue is the foundation for breeding and training people like this. The cure is a school system who are told to adress all extremism. Right now we only adress political extremism but not religious extremism, which leaves many children behind outside the modern civilization.

shadow_hk · December 25, 2008

Prime Junta said:
Oh dear, now you've gone and hurt my feelings.

Your manners really sucks, you know. As long as your behavior does not improve, we have nothing to say each other. A "sophisticated" discussion looks completely different.

And because you apparently lack any self-reflection and you won't likely change and because I can't rule out the possibility that we won't "collide with each other" in any other thread /and we would probably because I'm not interested solely in RPG/ and especially because you are unable to express your opinions in decent, polite way and without offending others, particularly those you particularly dislike and who at the same times aren't moderators and the like (so you don't need them etc..),

I prefer to leave these forums (for the benefit of my health)

(also because I really have obvious language "disadvantage" when it comes to arguing because it is sometimes hard for me and particularly very time consuming to find apropriate English words and "weave" the whole sentence even if using Google Translate and similar, but this is a my problem, I know..).

So, you can congratule yourself, your mission of getting me out of this forum (which started when I had allowed myself to be critical about Islam to which you made the relationship) is finally succesful.

I guess, all the bigger forums out there has at least one of your sort I inevitably collide with. But this is not my "home" forum, so it is better for me to say good bye than to argue to infinity and spoil one's health.

If you decide to start to be polite, let me know. I could reconsider my decision then.

Damian Mahadevan · December 25, 2008

JemyM said:
Damian uses creationist rethoric. The first time you hear these arguments you can simply check up reality, unless you already have basic education which allows you to see through the majority of them. After that point it get's frustrating to hear the same arguments over and over again from different people. You might ask yourself "doesn't these people verify this stuff?". The answer to this is no, they do not. Evolution isn't the problem, which is why facts and reason simply fails.

The interest for greater understanding through enquiry and exploration can be shut down if a child is treated harshly. A child can then be trained to blindly follow authority, who ever that is. After you have disabled this function, they will do as told without any rational reasoning at all. Interacting with someone who is trained this way is like trying to reason with a computer program that is programmed to behave in certain patterns and give pre-programmed replies.

Most extremist groups establish scapegoats without any understanding of the things they attack. There's nothing rational about that either, more than the establishment of an enemy is a way to keep the tribe closer together. Such ties do not deal with questions like truth or false, right or wrong. There is the tribe and who ever is not with it is against it.

So you can sit there and try to uninstall the program over and over again to get the individuals taste for knowledge working again. It's not impossible, I am personally an example of that. But doing so in the long run is simply frustrating and doesn't really get you anywhere. The root of the issue is the foundation for breeding and training people like this. The cure is a school system who are told to adress all extremism. Right now we only adress political extremism but not religious extremism, which leaves many children behind outside the modern civilization.

Whatever. I have been taught evolution in school and only recently became a creationist. I have made my own theories on the matter. You say you have evidence when you have none and tell me im brainwashed or something to that effect when i question it. You compare evolution to gravity and electricity when one can be observed and the other has yet to be seen.

Damian Mahadevan · December 25, 2008

Prime Junta said:
You don't. That's not how it works.

Seriously, before saying anything at all about evolution, you owe it to yourself to read up on it enough to be able to understand what evolutionary biology actually claims. Thus far, you haven't said a single thing about it that's even true. You can't rebut it if you don't know what it claims, can you now?

Dude it was written in the negative, i know this. But the idea that evolution waits for a specific time to do its deed is absurd, unless you are talking about mutations caused by genetic drift which results from famine ore something which reduces the dna length or something to that effect.

ffbj · December 25, 2008

I like Lewis Black's take:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_BRZoXjOmI

Prime Junta · December 25, 2008

Damian Mahadevan said:
Dude it was written in the negative, i know this. But the idea that evolution waits for a specific time to do its deed is absurd, unless you are talking about mutations caused by genetic drift which results from famine ore something which reduces the dna length or something to that effect.

But it doesn't. Evolution isn't a conscious agent that "decides" or "waits" or does something like that. It doesn't have a "direction" or "goal" or "purpose." (Also, that bit about famine or reduction of DNA length or genetic drift doesn't make any sense at all, on any level.)

Structures like wings or eyes don't magically appear all at once; they develop over millions of years, with each surviving mutation producing an improvement in the capacity to produce surviving offspring. We know from a variety of lines of evidence with remarkable accuracy how birds evolved from dinosaurs, or how the eye evolved (in parallel in a number of different lines, too), and any number of similar things. If you don't know what evolutionary biology says about these processes, you can't possibly hope to rebut it. Thus far you've failed to show any evidence that you have any degree of understanding about the claims of evolutionary biology.

JemyM · December 25, 2008

ffbj said:
I like Lewis Black's take:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_BRZoXjOmI

Yeah, that's a favorite of mine. I also find this creationist satire to be pretty funny.

GothicGothicness · December 25, 2008

IT is so simple to verify yourself that evolution works.
1. Is it possible to create new races by combining what we have?
For example take a lion and breed it with a tiger, what would you get a liger? which has the abilities of both the lion and the tiger? point one proved.

Or try yourself buy two dogs, of two different races and breed them togheter you'll make a new race of dogs.

2. Is it possible for two people of the same race to create something new if they breed togheter?

People are born with three breasts, an extra finger, or other mutations everyday, breed two people with the same mutations togheter and the chance would increase for the child to have the same genre, at least with most kinds of genes and mutations ( not all ).

Take yao ming the chinese basket ball player, he was breed by chinese gouverment to play basket, they took the two tallest chinese basket ball players and had them breed togheter. What did they create a taller and greater basketball player, breed him with the tallest female one, and odds are quite good they'll get a tall son that is good at basketball... there you have it basektball evolution.

enough?

Corwin · December 25, 2008

But when you breed two dogs, you don't get a cat!!

Is believing in evolution similar to believing in a religion?

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