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House Science Comm. member calls science "Lies straight from the pits of hell"

Junebug said:
Not of speciation. Microevolution is a given. Macro is a different ball game.
Did your anthro professor not tell you about that? Shocking.
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There are tons of evidence of speciation. You just choose to ignore it because it doesn't conform with your religious beliefs.

It doesn't take faith, the evidence of speciation laid out pretty clearly in fossil records.

You are welcome to your belief, but it isn't science.
 
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ChrisL68 said:
There are tons of evidence of speciation. You just choose to ignore it because it doesn't conform with your religious beliefs.

It doesn't take faith, the evidence of speciation laid out pretty clearly in fossil records.

You are welcome to your belief, but it isn't science.
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Evolution is not at all incompatible with my religious beliefs. I do believe in God, but I have no problem accepting the possibility of a big bang, speciation, and even human speciation. That's not an affront to me at all. As another poster has said, religion answers the question of "who?" and science answers the question of "how?"

I'm an evolution skeptic because the evidence doesn't convince me. Microevolution makes perfect sense. But macroevolution and speciation is a whole different ball of wax. Chromosomal mutations are almost never beneficial (see, Down's syndrome).

That most assuredly is a scientific conclusion. You may disagree with it, but, in my view, your thetic adherence to an imperfect theory bears a close resemblence to faith. And what is so ironic about it is that in another 150 years, pretty much any scientific theory we hold true today--including the theory of evoluation--will either be modified, reconceptualized, or completely discredited. That's not a reason to disengage with science, but it is a good reason to be a little less dogmatic about scientific "truth."
 
Faith? Well, for one thing, there were Homo Sapien fossils going back a certain amount of time, and then the older fossils show other species such as Homo Erectus and Neanderthal that were very humanoid in nature. Mutations occur all of the time that promote the beneficial through environmental factored natural selection.

It seems pretty logical to conclude that this is where our species came from.

You can always disregard the logical by looking at the gaps, but that doesn't make the alternative logical.

Are you denying that there have been multiple extinction events on this planet and that different species existed during the periods between each extinction event? How did they get here. Was this just God's playground?
 
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Junebug said:
Not of speciation. Microevolution is a given. Macro is a different ball game.
Did your anthro professor not tell you about that? Shocking.
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My anthro press or told us that if you didn't believe in macro, you could drop.

Biology at Wake? And you're so dismissive of theories? I hope Dr. Eure doesn't read the boards.
 
bym051d said:
My anthro press or told us that if you didn't believe in macro, you could drop.

Biology at Wake? And you're so dismissive of theories? I hope Dr. Eure doesn't read the boards.
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Not "I will convince you" but "you can drop." What a joke.

Yes, Bio at Wake.

I wouldn't say I'm dismissive of theories. I just think its important to recognize its just a theory. We laugh at scientific theories from hundred years ago (like the "ether" idea of explaining the movement of light) but we act as if our present thinking is indisputably correct. It's very myopic.
 
Junebug said:
Not "I will convince you" but "you can drop." What a joke.

Yes, Bio at Wake.

I wouldn't say I'm dismissive of theories. I just think its important to recognize its just a theory. We laugh at scientific theories from hundred years ago (like the "ether" idea of explaining the movement of light) but we act as if our present thinking is indisputably correct. It's very myopic.
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Its incredible to think about how your mind must work. I applaud your open-mindedness and critical thinking in your approach to science, yet find it so crazy that going on in the very same mind of someone who questions evolution is someone who doesn't question the fact he believes approximately two thousand years ago a virgin gave birth to a man who would go on to rise from the dead and if you eat his flesh in a ritual each Sunday and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master then one day you will live forever. All this is necessary because at one point in time a talking snake convinced a woman to eat from a magical tree.

But you're right. Evolution has so many holes!!!
 
P4nthers11 said:
Its incredible to think about how your mind must work. I applaud your open-mindedness and critical thinking in your approach to science, yet find it so crazy that going on in the very same mind of someone who questions evolution is someone who doesn't question the fact he believes approximately two thousand years ago a virgin gave birth to a man who would go on to rise from the dead and if you eat his flesh in a ritual each Sunday and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master then one day you will live forever. All this is necessary because at one point in time a talking snake convinced a woman to eat from a magical tree.

But you're right. Evolution has so many holes!!!
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I believe none of those things. You have an extremely unsophisticated understanding of modern theology.
 
Junebug said:
I wouldn't say I'm dismissive of theories. I just think its important to recognize its just a theory. We laugh at scientific theories from hundred years ago (like the "ether" idea of explaining the movement of light) but we act as if our present thinking is indisputably correct. It's very myopic.
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Evolution is not merely a hypothesis we accept for the sake of argument as you seem to think it is. Again, you're misusing the word 'theory' in this context. A scientific theory is a framework for analyzing a set of facts. The process of evolution is a fact. It happens. The body of evidence in support of it, at the micro- and macro- levels, is too great to ignore. It may be counterintuitive to you, but the evidence is there.

A theory will inevitably have different interpretations and as-yet unanswered questions/future research directions, as evolution does, but still remain scientific. These differences are what drive hypotheses, their experimental testing, and subsequent acceptance or rejection. Some of the reviews here, though technical in places, do a good job of summarizing some of these different points of view (in particular those on p. 22 and p. 26): http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/19458906/1750262941/name/Science+Special+Edition+-+Darwin+200.pdf (this is the most complete though concise, free resource I know of online. I can also fully endorse Richard Dawkins' and Jerry Coyne's recent books, which don't even overlap all that much due to the sheer volume of evidence each presents)

Unlike evolution, there was never any evidence for the luminiferous ether. That was indeed a hypothesis. It was rejected when experiments failed to provide any evidence of it. You'd be more correct to refer to something like, say, String Theory as "just a theory." As of now its mathematical predictions cannot be experimentally tested (doesn't mean they won't be in the future), so it remains as more of a set of hypotheses. It's just way off base to label evolution the same way. We're past that.
 
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KickballDeac said:
Evolution is not merely a hypothesis we accept for the sake of argument as you seem to think it is. Again, you're misusing the word 'theory' in this context. A scientific theory is a framework for analyzing a set of facts. The process of evolution is a fact. It happens. The body of evidence in support of it, at the micro- and macro- levels, is too great to ignore. It may be counterintuitive to you, but the evidence is there.

A theory will inevitably have different interpretations and as-yet unanswered questions/future research directions, as evolution does, but still remain scientific. These differences are what drive hypotheses, their experimental testing, and subsequent acceptance or rejection. Some of the reviews here, though technical in places, do a good job of summarizing some of these different points of view (in particular those on p. 22 and p. 26): http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/19458906/1750262941/name/Science+Special+Edition+-+Darwin+200.pdf (this is the most complete though concise, free resource I know of online. I can also fully endorse Richard Dawkins' and Jerry Coyne's recent books, which don't even overlap all that much due to the sheer volume of evidence each presents)

Unlike evolution, there was never any evidence for the luminiferous ether. That was indeed a hypothesis. It was rejected when experiments failed to provide any evidence of it. You'd be more correct to refer to something like, say, String Theory as "just a theory." As of now its mathematical predictions cannot be experimentally tested (doesn't mean they won't be in the future), so it remains as more of a set of hypotheses. It's just way off base to label evolution the same way. We're past that.
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It is a theory that humans evolved from non-human ancestors. There may be more empirical observations that are consistent with this theory than the theory of the ether, but, before the latter was discredited, we are talking about differences in degree, not kind.
 
P4nthers11 said:
as opposed to what?
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I don't understand what you are asking me here. I'm saying that much modern Christian theology holds that a literal belief in the things you mentioned in your post isn't necessary, or, for that matter, even correct. To assume, as you did, that christianity is stuck in the dark ages and requires literal belief in those things reveals extremely unsophisticated religious thought.
 
Junebug said:
I don't understand what you are asking me here. I'm saying that much modern Christian theology holds that a literal belief in the things you mentioned in your post isn't necessary, or, for that matter, even correct. To assume, as you did, that christianity is stuck in the dark ages and requires literal belief in those things reveals extremely unsophisticated religious thought.
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What will Christian theology say tomorrow? or the next day? Glad to see it can all be changed as time goes on to make you seem like less of an idiot when you're beliefs are criticized. Who decides what "modern" Christian theology is? I suspect it is man. But those deciding issues of theology are divinely inspired. But were the people interpreting the Bible also divinely inspired when they came up with Christian theology that wasn't "modern"? This does not lead to you critically examining Christian theology though. Only evolution. One you accept despite its constant re-packaging over thousands of years without a shred of objective evidence but it is evolution which has shoddy foundations! You are like a walking definition of cognitive dissonance.
 
Junebug said:
I don't understand what you are asking me here. I'm saying that much modern Christian theology holds that a literal belief in the things you mentioned in your post isn't necessary, or, for that matter, even correct. To assume, as you did, that christianity is stuck in the dark ages and requires literal belief in those things reveals extremely unsophisticated religious thought.
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Jesus rising from the dead is central to Christianity.
 
Everybody should have given up when he said micro-evolution exists but macro-evolution not so much because "chromosomal mutations are rarely beneficial". That's how ALL evolution, micro and macro if you want to be part of the group of people that wrongfully separates the two, occur. Evolution is based in genetic mutation, so you cannot accept any form of evolution without accepting that chromosomal mutations happen and that a small percentage of them do not result in death and confer some advantage. And you certainly cannot believe in a species evolving as a species while disregarding the capacity for one species to evolve into another. They utilize the exact same mechanism, just on a different scale. Deny it all you want but it happened and will continue to happen so long as life exists on this tiny little planet we call home.

Also note Down's Syndrome isn't the result of a chromosomal mutation, it's a failure of chromosome 21 to segregate in one parent's sperm/egg resulting in a state of trisomy in the offspring. A Biology major at Wake should know that

Eta: I have no issue with faith or somebody questioning evolution (no matter how wrong such a stance is). I simply want to point out is is completely incongruous to accept that a single species evolves within itself while denying new species evolve from other species.
 
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