Evolutionist: explain your ideals w/out using scientific timetables or other created lifeforms as proof...?

Question

for instance, disvover of dinosaurs or one-celled organisms don't prove that we evolved from them, and the discover of diffrent forms or types of humans also don't prove that we evolved. it simply proved that the 'intelligent designer' that created us, also created lots of other forms of life. also, scientific timetables could be incorrect in determining the exhistance of life millions of years ago...do any of us really know with any certainty, how to date this earth when none of us have been here that long to begin with? i believe that the complexity of life and the marvelous design of the human body all point toward 'intelligent design'.

for instance, in a doll shop there are dolls at various stages of artistic developement but that doesn't prove that the dolls are evolving into what you see as the finished product on the sales floor. they are at diffrent stages of being designed and created.

i find it hard to believe that life came about by accident or by evolution from a one celled organism millions of years ago and since then evolved into more complex forms of life. my ancestors were not apes or anything of the sort. a body with the following design could not have happend by accident: constantly healing itself and rejuvinating cells, the ability to conceive, carry and deliver babies and the simple functions of the brain and nervous systems are proof in themselves of intelligent design.

i understand that there are many questions on this forum concerning this matter, but can you explain the sheer luck of evolution with regard to the extraordinary human body without quoting scientists' speculations with regard to their imperfect timetables of human history and development and without using other created life forms as possible proof of your evolution theory?

Answer 1

You're right - the theory of evolution is not perfect. We can't prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. The reason I personally believe in evolution is the simple fact that we are still evolving. Every generation gets a little taller and a little smarter. And why do we have an appendix or tonsils? If God is perfect, why would he have to make a first draft, then revise it? Your example about the dolls is a good one - however, try to look at it objectively. What is easier to believe, that creatures adapt to fit their environment, or that some magical being snapped his fingers and POOF! It was there? Either way sounds a bit insane, if you ask me.

Answer 2

Intelligent design (ID) is not science. Can ID define the outside source of energy for that Intelligence ? Can it show the mechanism that converts the energy into a design? Is ID testable? Falsifiable? Questions like these are what separates science from speculative beliefs or opinions. Evolution is supported by consistent evidence coming from many scientific areas (e.g. molecular biology, paleontology, comparative anatomy, etc). The point is, when you make a statement that "the complexity of life and the marvelous design of the human body all point toward 'intelligent design," you should understand how this will be taken. Some people above have given you excellent responses, and I hope that you actually give them some serious thought. The website below is recommended for more about evolution.

Answer 3

I've always wounder how someone who believes in ID could explain the appendix. If this intelligent designer was so clever why did he add the appendix when it has no function or reason to be there its major importance would appear to be financial support of the surgical profession. I prefer to see it as historical proof that we evolved from some previous ancestor that needed the appendix.

On the other hand you have some alien life coming down and creating us as an experiment or hobby, this is also covered by the ID paintbrush. I think I'll stick with the fact that we could have evolved into highly intelligent animals rather than an experiment that went wrong.

Answer 4

First of all, you are asking for proof of evolution while saying that we cannot use timetables. That is ridiculous. The great age of the earth and the gradual changes seen in fossils as the rocks becoming more recent is one of the major proofs that evolution occurred. The theory of evolution explains WHY they occurred, as well as thousands of other observations in biology and geology.

Your analogy concerning the doll shop is misleading and goes against your own restriction of not using time lines.

You fall into the classic doubly faulty reasoning of ID supporters. "1. Life is complicated. 2. I cannot imagine how it occurred by evolution. 3. Therefore it must be designed by a higher power" Point 1 is correct. Point 2 is a failure of imagination. Point 3 is a wild conjecture with no proof.

Humans are a wildly improbable product of evolution but they are the product of millions of tiny probable changes over hundreds of millions of years. That is how evolution works. An organism changes a little in a highly likely and explicable way and the change confers a benefit. This happens millions and millions of times and you end up with life as we know it.

Answer 5

If different life forms were created at different times durring the history of life, then we would not expect to see the landscape of fossilized genes in our genomes. This would only be true if we had evolved from ancestral forms. Only 2% of our genome is actively involved in protein construction. Most of the rest, so-called junk DNA is actually deactivated (fossilized) genes of ancestral species. Many other aspects of biology, besides molecular genetics, also infers an evolutionary process. Morphological homologies in related species, fossils which were clearly transitional forms, biogeographical distribution and species relatedness, etc.. And given what we know about heredity and reproduction, the application of mathematical algorithms would imply that the evolution of derivative species must happen over time. reply to "baker" analogy That would be like a baker using the ingredients to make roast beef, then deactivating the ingredients with stop codons, while baking a cake. At best, such an explanation would assume that if creative forces are indeed supernatural, they use bizarrely inefficient ways of creating things.

Answer 6

You ask a lot of very good questions. But you ask so many of them that it's difficult to answer them all here in this type of forum.

So I'll pick a few:

> "disvover of dinosaurs or one-celled organisms don't prove that we evolved from them, and the discover of diffrent forms or types of humans also don't prove that we evolved."

By themselves, no, these two discoveries don't "prove" that we evolved. But together, everything we have learned about dinosaurs, and everything we have learned about one-celled organisms all provide *evidence* that evolution has occurred (in the case of dinosaurs) and is occurring (in the case of one-celled organisms like bacteria ... which evolve so much in a single year that we need new flu vaccines every year).

> "it simply proved that the 'intelligent designer' that created us, also created lots of other forms of life."

Whoa! You just slipped that term 'intelligent designer' in there with no proof at all. You need to be fair. If you are denying that these things, in isolation, are "proof" of evolution (and I agree, they are not proof, they are *evidence*), then it is not fair to say that they are "proof" of an intelligent designer.

>"do any of us really know with any certainty, how to date this earth when none of us have been here that long to begin with?"

Do we know with *total* certainty? No. Do we know with *any* certainty (your words)? YES! Do we know with a LOT of certainty? YES! As another example, how can we know "with any certainty" that the sun is made of burning hydrogen when none of us "have been there" (or will ever be there)? We tell based on our understanding of chemical and nuclear processes. That's science. *MOST* science is indirect, inferrential. Nothing is every known with *total* certainty ... but it is known with a very high degree of certainty. We are as certain of the process of evolution on earth as we are of the process of fusion in the sun.

> "i believe that the complexity of life and the marvelous design of the human body all point toward 'intelligent design'."

That's great. But what you believe is not "evidence", much less "proof." I don't mean this as a put-down, (what I believe isn't "evidence" either). That's just a statement of the scientific method. It is not enough to simply say "I cannot believe this marvelous design came about though evolution, therefore it must have come about through intelligent design." That is called argument from incredulity, and it's just not science ... because what you can or cannot believe is different from what I can or cannot believe.

> "for instance, in a doll shop ..."

There is an important difference between a doll shop, and life on earth. Dolls don't *REPRODUCE WITH INHERITANCE*. That is the quality that all analogies require in order to be compared to life. Nothing can evolve without reproduction-with-inheritance. So saying that dolls obviously were created/designed not evolved doesn't prove anything. It's a false analogy.

I have heard so many different versions of this argument (the jumbo jet in a junkyard, the explosion in the print shop, a calculator found on the moon, etc. etc.) and ALL of them fail in this basic test. Junkyard pieces and print shops and calculators DON'T REPRODUCE WITH INHERITANCE. That is why they *CANNOT* evolve. So any analogy with life is a false one.

> "my ancestors were not apes or anything of the sort. a body with the following design could not have happend by accident: constantly healing itself and rejuvinating cells, the ability to conceive, carry and deliver babies and the simple functions of the brain and nervous systems"

But apes have all of these characteristics.

And all of these characteristics exist in simpler forms in other organisms stretching all the way back to the first multi-cellular organisms. None of these characteristics had to emerge suddenly.

>"but can you explain the sheer luck of evolution ..."

Evolution is NOT "sheer luck". That's the entire point of the theory of natural selection. Nature selects positive traits, eliminates bad ones ... relentlessly! Generation after generation. Millenium after millenium. Millions of years upon millions of years. Relentless selection of advantageous traits, and filtering out of bad ones. That's NOT luck. That's life. That's survival.

That's evolution.

Answer 7

Fossil evidence, comparative morphology, population genetics, ecology, biogeography, comparative biology and immunology all offer only circumstantial evidence of evolution. A ton of circumstantial evidence to be sure, but circumstantial nevertheless. Mathematical algorithms of heredity and reproductive processes suggest that evolution by natural selection must, over time, result in the origin of new species. But if you desire the ultimate forensic PROOF of evolutionary processes you must analyze the genomes of various species. We now know that 98% of the nucleobase sequences contained in the human genome have nothing to do with protein production. First termed junk DNA, later called pseudogenes because such inactive nucleobase sequences did appear to be organized into gene-like patterns, the term fossil gene has now come into use as we analyze the molecular similarities across species. We carry around in our genome a landscape of deactivated fossil genes that were once used by ancestral species. It is undisputable forensic proof of evolution.

Answer 8

Your question and subsequent diatribe has once again demonstrated the fatal flaw of all ID believers. You have only the most rudimentary understanding of the precepts and mechanisms of evolution and have latched on to other people's incorrect and misleading assumptions and conclusions.

I seriously doubt if you have the desire to actually learn abut evolution and to take the steps necessary to actually prove or disprove what it's really all about.

The hypotheses are there.

The data is there to support those hypotheses. Science is not about faith. It is about thinking and reasoning and encouraging challenges to that reasoning.

Dinosaur fossils are not bones. They are rock. The process that turns bone into rock takes millions of years. That is a proven fact.

Radioactive atoms (like Carbon 14) decay at a discrete, unchanging rate that allows us to accurately date fossils. I have performed the experiments in the lab myself and have confirmed the results that thousands of scientists and engineers have confirmed before me.

I challenge you to better understand what you disbelieve. Study evolution. Got to the classes that physically prove the theories. Disprove the current beliefs in science using the scientific method or please save yourself the embarrassment of making yourself look foolish like you have here.

Answer 9

Your claims are ridiculous. There is more evidence to support evolution than any other theory. You are making wild assumptions that the world was designed. You cannot just say, "everything looks designed, therefore there must be a designer". That is a very weak argument. Once you truly understand evolution, you can see how everything has come to be.

Answer 10

Creationist: explain your idea without using the Book of Genesis.

Thanks for asking.