Evolution: Science or Dogma?

[Steph]

God clearly says that men are different from ALL animals

When did God clearly say that? Was it in CNN yesterday? They interviewed him?

 

[Masquerouge]

When did God clearly say that? Was it in CNN yesterday? They interviewed him?

Well, of course not. It's according to an english version of the bible revised by the anglican church, translated from latin, and before that translated from greek from a bunch of texts authorized and selected by the Nicea Council, after an original version in Hebrew.

So, it's a clear, first-hand account, don't you think ?

 

[Esckey]

The following are all left overs from evolution


Wisdom Teeth: Early humans had to chew alot of plants to get enough calories to survive, making another row of molars helpful. Only 5% of the population has a healthy set of these third molars
Subclavius Muscle: This small muscle stretching under the shoulder from the first rib to the collarbone would be useful if humans still walked on all fours. Somepeople have one, some people have none, and a few have two
Male Nipples: Lactiferous ducts form well before testosterone causes sex differentiation in a fetus. Men have mammary tissue that can be stimulated to produce milk
Appendix: This narrow, musclar tube attached to the large intestine served as a special area to digest cellulose when the human diet consisted more of plant matter then animal protein. It also produces some white blood cells.
Plantaris Muscle: Often mistaken for a nerve by freshman medical students, the muscle was useful to other primates for grasping with their feet. It has disappeared altogether in 9% of the population
Fifth Toe: Lesser apes use all their toes for grasping or clinging to branches. Humans need only their big toe for balance while walking upright
Female Vas Deferens: What might become sperm ducts in males become the epoophoron in females, a cluster of useless dead-end tubules near the ovaries
Male Uterus: A remnant of an undeveloped female reproductive organ hangs off the male prostate gland
Pyramidalis Muscle: More then 20% of us lack this tiny, triangualr pouchlike muscle that attaches to the pubic bone. It may be a relic from pouched marsupials
Thirteenth Rib: Our closest cousins, chimpanzees and gorillas, have an extra set of ribs. Most of us have 12, but 8% have the extras
Body Hair: Brows help keep sweat from the eyes, and hair on the head keeps warmth in, but appearntly most of the hair left on the human body serves no purpose
Erector Pili: Bundles of smooth muscle fibers allow animals to puff up their fir for insulation or to intimidate others. Humans retains this ability, goos bumps are the indicator, but have obviously lost most of the fur
Palmaris Muscle: This long narrow muscle runs from the elbow to the the wrist and is missing in 11% of the population. It may of once been important for hanging and climbing but now surgeons harvest it for reconstruction surgery
Neck Rib: A set of cervical ribs, possibly left overs from reptiles, still appear in 1% of the population. They often cause nerve and artery problems
Darwin's Point: A small folded point of skin toward the top of each ear is occasionally found in modern humans. It may be a remnant of a larger shape that helped focus distant sounds
Extrinsic Ear Muscle: This trio of muscles mostly likely made it possible for prehominids to move their ears independantly of their heads, like rabbits and dogs do. We still have them, which is why most people can learn to wiggle their ears
Vomeronasal Organ: A tiny pit on each side of the septum is lined with nonfunctioning chemoreceptors. They be all that remains of a once extensive pheromone-detecting ability
Third Eyelid: A common ancestor of birds and mammals may have had a membrane for protecting the eye and sweeping out debris. Humans retain only a tiny fold in the corner of their eyes
Coccyx: These fused vertebrae are all that's left of the tail that most mammls still use for balance and communication. Our hominid ancestors lst the need for a tail before they began walking upright

 

[Masquerouge]

The following are all left overs from evolution

Thanks for that excellent and really instructive post !


But I guess the creationnists already have an answer for those useless parts in our body.

 

[King Alexander]

But I guess the creationnists already have an answer for those useless parts in our body.

They're going to imagine something to justify them, or they're going to write a new updated Bible, because, as we all know, the Bible hasn't had a critical patch for over 2000 years now! It's full of viruses/trojans/spyware.

Maybe they'll going to interpret the Bible one more time, to justify them, or say "believe and don't ask".

Anyway, let's see what they'll come up with.

 

[Masquerouge]

they're going to write a new updated Bible, because, as we all know, the Bible hasn't had a critical patch for over 2000 years now! It's full of viruses/trojans/spyware.

Excellent.

Well actually, of course, it depends of which Bible you refer to.
For example, many religions believe in the "Old Testament" - but the Jewish version has the books in a different order than the Protestant version. The Eastern Orthodox religion includes books that the others do not.
The Samaritans only recognize five books in their Bible. The Ethiopian Orthodox church has 81 books in its Bible. The Syrians have 22 books in their Bible, while the Roman Catholics and Protestants have 27 books.

So I guess it's also a problem of the version of your Bible

 

[HannibalBarka]

... Allow me to rebut by repeating with accuracy:
1. Although there is not a shred of physical evidence to prove it, because we flatly deny the existence of God we have no alternative but to believe that macroevolution occurs constantly in nature through natural selection and through the natural spontaneus mutation of the genome. While we have a general picture, we still lack fossils from any stages of evolution where species lines supposedly diverge. We infer this from genetics research that shows that species with similar body structures have similar genes. (We do not consider it significant that all living things on earth use the same four proteins to code for every one of their proteins, including the ones that determine body shape, as that would make our assumptions based on genetics research meaningless and void.)

2. Because there is not a shred of physical evidence to prove it, we believe that Macroevolution does not occur. Jehovah created the world, then created life and let it run along its course, occasionally using His knowledge to in utero mutate members of one kind into other kinds or simply engineered new kinds from 'whole cloth' and placed them on earth. He showed Moses a vision of these things that happened before man was created, which Moses duly recorded as the Bible Book of Genesis; but due to his education as a 'Palestinian goatherder', he did not write in terms of 'clades' and 'billions of years', but rather in terms of 'kinds' and 'days'. 4,500 years of scientific research have only proven the 'Palestinian goatherder' to be pinpoint accurate, which lends strong credence to the notion that Jehovah really did tell him these things, as no Palestinian goatherder would have known them.

Now, why don't YOU pick an option?

I'll add to those two options of yours:
3. The Big Snake "Hanash the Creator" had sex with with almighty "Mother Bagra" and their small family prospered and gave birth to the Earth, the Sun, the Animals and all other creatures.
4. Little "Kalba the Great" was bored in the skies where the other Gods were playing soccer, cause she doesn't like soccer, so she decided to get herself doing something and started creating all kind of cool stuff: stars, galaxies, animals...

So between the 4 options, I see three good stories based on... well nothing but imagination, and one that may not be "true", but some how look different from the others

 

[CrazyScientist]

Well, here is man's scientific classification:

TAXA: MAN
Kingdom: Animal
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Genus: Homo
Species: sapiens

In evolutionary thinking, the primates split into the apes, and mankind. This, I reject. God clearly says that men are different from ALL animals. Man is neither a primate cousin of apes, or an animal at all. So thus, the scientific classification is invalid.

Very interesting. So what would you say is the flaw in our genetic sequencing technology? Whole genome analysis has confirmed that at the DNA sequence level, chimps and human beings are 98% similar. That's more similar that chimps are to, say, orangutans. The primates as a whole, including humans, show more genetic similarity to one another then any one of them does to any outgroup. So what is your basis for saying that humans are not primates. Do you reject the data itself? Do you reject the conclusions reached by analysis of the data? In either case I'd be interested to hear your reasoning?

 

[Steph]

So what is your basis for saying that humans are not primates. Do you reject the data itself? Do you reject the conclusions reached by analysis of the data? In either case I'd be interested to hear your reasoning?

He already explained his reasonning. God clearly told him.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

All you have to do realise we're primates is look in a mirror. I dont understand how anyone could deny the evidence provided by their own eyes.

 

[Masquerouge]

God clearly says that men are different from ALL animals. Man is neither a primate cousin of apes, or an animal at all. So thus, the scientific classification is invalid.

I don't think it's a matter of what God says.

Go also clearly says, in the Deuteronom for instance :

1 When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girga****es, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; 2 And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them: 3 Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.

Are you upholding these words ?

 

[Birdjaguar]

The creationists have left the building!

 

[Perfection]

The creationists have left the building!

Don't worry, in a few weeks they'll be back (with a new thread so they can evade my questions), in fact I'm still waiting for a response from the last thread (the one in my sig) too.

 

[Esckey]

Well I guess I had better save my post for a later date then. They'll probably ignore it, but it'll be funny to watch

 

[FearlessLeader2]

The following are all left overs from evolution
*SNIPped long list of stuff*

So, how many times do I have to answer the same question the same way before you get tired of thinking up new ways to ask it?

If two organisms have a large convergence of structures, it makes more sense to use the same template and suppress or express different traits from that template than use traits from vastly different templates.

 

[yoshi]

@Dumb pothead: "All you have to do realise we're primates is look in a mirror. I dont understand how anyone could deny the evidence provided by their own eyes."

Well, people have been dong just that for as long as I can remember. Funny that they understand something as complex as genetics but can't see what an non-religious person without a superiority complex can see without any scientific knowledge whatsoever. Denial is a sad thing.

@FearlessLeader2: "If two organisms have a large convergence of structures, it makes more sense to use the same template and suppress or express different traits from that template than use traits from vastly different templates."

What? It sounds like you're talking about designing units for a videogame. Please, drop the technical wording and get to your point.

 

[Blasphemous]

@yoshi: Actually I think it's not denial. As humans, we live among many humans and socialize with them. For this we MUST learn to recognize a human very well and to distinguish all the human features to a great degree (allowing us to recognize family and friends even when faced with people who look generally similar to them). But, since we do not actually live with other primates they look very alien to us, because we do not distinguish their features nearly as well as we do those of humans. If you were to look at chimps for a long while you would grow to know them better and you would see them in a way more similar to the way you see humans.

 

[yoshi]

I personally don't know any chimps (although I've certainly met enough chumps) but I look at one and say, he that looks very much like the bozos I run into on a daily basis only hairier (usually). Chimps haven't been fabricated to look that way, they look that way for evolutionary reasons which are as logical as the nose on your face. But simply put: the fact that we look similar to them is not a coincidence.

 

[Blasphemous]

I personally don't know any chimps (although I've certainly met enough chumps) but I look at one and say, he that looks very much like the bozos I run into on a daily basis only hairier (usually). Chimps haven't been fabricated to look that way, they look that way for evolutionary reasons which are as logical as the nose on your face. But simply put: the fact that we look similar to them is not a coincidence.

Yes, I know, the similarity is obvious to me as well, but there are logical reasons for people to feel that chimps are dissimilar to us. Also remember, humanity is very arrogant, we think that just because we don't understand what chimps say to eachother they're inferior to us. I would say the inferior ones are we, who cannot understand our cousins' language (and chimps HAVE been tought to understand human languages, or sign language at least).

 

[Singularity]

I personally can't believe that this discussion is still going on in the U.S. In Europe, we had this discussion in the 19th century (as the americans also did), and at last the church gave in and accepted it. Evolution has been proven several times.

That may be true to a certain ascent. But that doesn't exclude powerful individuals like this whoman from politisizing dogmatic nonsence.