We always seem to have fun with these – and the set-up asking Perry about evolution is an excellent place to start.
Perry answered the question well – no one knows how old the earth is, kid. Rather disgusting that you can hear mom trying to prompt the kid to ask gotcha questions. This is the level of the debate we’re going to have in 2012.
But, that aside, one of the more amusing aspects of the whole debate is the way the other side gets itself tied up in to knots. Demanding that unless hard, provable science, it just has no place in the debate. Missing is any understanding – any reasonable thought – about the fact that the person demanding that science be the measure of all things does not even begin to put the marvel of man in to the equation. As G K Chesterton put it in The Everlasting Man:
It is not natural to see man as a natural product. It is not common sense to call man a common object of the country or the seashore. It is not seeing straight to see him as an animal. It is not sane. It sins against the light; against that broad daylight of proportion which is the principle of all reality. It is reached by stretching a point, by making out a case, by artificially selecting a certain light and shade, by bringing into prominence the lesser or lower things which may happen to be similar. The solid thing standing in the sunlight, the thing we can walk round and see from all sides, is quite different. It is also quite extraordinary, and the more sides we see of it the more extraordinary it seems. It is emphatically not a thing that follows or flows naturally from anything else. If we imagine that an inhuman or impersonal intelligence could have felt from the first the general nature of the non-human world sufficiently to see that things would evolve in whatever way they did evolve, there would have been nothing whatever in all that natural world to prepare such a mind for such an unnatural novelty. To such a mind, man would most certainly not have seemed something like one herd out of a hundred herds finding richer pasture, or one swallow out of a hundred swallows making a summer under a strange sky. It would not be in the same scale and scarcely in the same dimension. We might as truly say that it would not be in the same universe. It would be more like seeing one cow out of a hundred cows suddenly jump over the moon or one pig out of a hundred pigs grow wings in a flash and fly. It would not be a question of the cattle finding their own grazing ground but of their building their own cattle-sheds, not a question of one swallow making a summer but of his making a summer house. For the very fact that birds do build nests is one of those similarities that sharpen the startling difference. The very fact that a bird can get as far as building a nest, and cannot get any farther, proves that he has not a mind as man has a mind; it proves it more completely than if he built nothing at all. If he built nothing at all, he might possibly be a philosopher of the Quietist or Buddhistic school, indifferent to all but the mind within. But when he builds as he does build and is satisfied and sings aloud with satisfaction, then we know there is really an invisible veil like a pane of glass between him and us, like the window on which a bird will beat in vain. But suppose our abstract onlooker saw one of the birds begin to build as men build. Suppose in an incredibly short space of time there were seven styles of architecture for one style of nest. Suppose the bird carefully selected forked twigs and pointed leaves to express the piercing piety of Gothic, but turned to broad foliage and black mud when he sought in a darker mood to call up the heavy columns of Bel and Ashtaroth; making his nest indeed one of the hanging gardens of Babylon. Suppose the bird made little clay statues of birds celebrated in letters or politics and stuck them up in front of the nest. Suppose that one bird out of a thousand birds began to do one of the thousand things that man had already done even in the morning of the world; and we can be quite certain that the onlooker would not regard such a bird as a mere evolutionary variety of the other birds; he would regard it as a very fearful wild-fowl indeed; possibly as a bird of ill-omen, certainly as an omen. That bird would tell the augurs, not of something that would happen, but of some thing that had happened. That something would be the appearance of a mind with a new dimension of depth; a mind like that of man. If there be no God, no other mind could conceivably have foreseen it.
Try as they might, the fundamentalists of evolution cannot get ’round the fact of man being what he is. We don’t naturally follow from what came before. We are similar to chimpanzees in a large number of ways except in those ways which make a man a man. Elsewhere, Chesterton notes that it isn’t a matter of a chimp doing something badly and man doing it better – man does things that no chimp ever did, or ever could do. Go back a million years and there is nothing in the simian species you can find which indicates that at some future date, quite by accident, one of them will randomly evolve a capability and a desire to decorate his body with paint or clothes…there is nothing in the animal world or the concept of evolution which prepares for the time when a creature will suddenly spend time and energy making art, that indelible signature of Mankind.
And as the evolutionists refuse to consider this – a plain fact – the debate grinds forward in a rather sterile manner, and ever more clearly becomes not a defense of science and truth, but a mere desire to suppress an uncomfortable thought: perhaps it isn’t all an accident? Maybe there is a design and a purpose in the universe? Maybe there is even a Designer who wants something of us?
My thinking on this subject is rapidly leading me to the conclusion that, at bottom, this rigid, hysterical demand that we turn away from what common sense proclaims is, in the end, no more than a fierce desire to defend adherence to a lie. As it turns out, the lie being adhered to is the first lie of hell – “you will be like gods”. Beings who evolved by accident from a senseless universe of no purpose owe nothing to anyone…they need not serve, and they are free to rule as far as their own power and inclination leads them. Introduce even the possibility of God and purpose in to the universe, and all of a sudden you become a debtor who owes someone every last thing you have. Some of us react with joy to this discovery and eagerly seek to thank our Benefactor…others furiously reject this and demand not only their right to believe differently, but further demand that no one else even bring up a question which casts doubt upon the evolutionist viewpoint.
To me it is a matter of perfect indifference whether the world is 6 billion or 6 thousand years old. It doesn’t alter in the least the actual facts I have to deal with every day. I don’t care if someone teaches about a 6 billion year old world and a slow, purely accidental evolutionary development. I also don’t care if someone teaches that the world sprang directly in to being as it is at the command of God in 6 literal days. Far more important, to me, than the mechanism of existence is the fact of my existence, and what I shall do with it. But regardless of what I think, the fact is that those who hold to a rigid, ideologically blinkered view of the creation of the universe are trying to advance a particular agenda – an agenda which doesn’t so much question God but seeks to ban His presence from the public square. My view is that the fight between Evolution and Design is not about the relative merits of the viewpoints, but about the right of people of different views to engage in the debate.
The gotcha questions to Perry are part of that larger design – that effort to de-legitimize a different view. The attempt was to try and trip Perry up and hold up Perry and the whole concept of a Divine order to ridicule. And, so, we have to fight this out – if for no other reason than to defend human reason and liberty. Reason because people who think can come to widely different views; liberty because if those widely different views cannot be brought in to the public square, then none of us are free.
Blogs For Victory 
Gods already set things the way they are…he made the sun…the moon…all the empty space out there…
and he made people…lots of them with reprobate minds…
you or I cannot change that…thats one thing i will concede
Evolution, just like agw, fails the test of the scientific method over and over and over again. Its effects can not be duplicated and cause and effect can not be proven. Evolution is a RELIGION, a system of beliefs, nothing more nothing less.
He should have answered that is an interesting question, What do you suppose barry thinks about the subject?
The anti Christian scrreed will reach a new fevered pitch soon.
They HATED W and Sarah not because who they are, but because of their Christianity.
Yet they loved the racist, marxist, lunatic wright and barry hussein and the Mooch two of his most devoted followers.
WHY?????
one side = darkness, one side = light
the chaff is being separated from the wheat for the harvest.
oh yeah
evolution = BS
Depends on who he has to answer. If its a loony like Thomas, of course he believes in evolution. If it one of his muzzie buddies, of course he believes in creation. Evolution is a big no no to the muzzies.
GMB
Evolution is a big no no to the muzzies.
except for the Joooooos, they are decedents of monkeys according to the muzzies arent they??
Hey, lets ask hussein, he would know or he could ask wright of fartacan.
Explains it better than I can. Evolution per Chuckie Darwin is the big no no. Allah created everything. No questions asked….at the point of a sword.
forgot the link
http://www.scienceislam.com/evolution_creation.php
Deleted. //Moderator
“The number of intermediate varieties which have formerly existed on earth must be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.” – Charles Darwin 1902 edition.
so darwin was a dope?
no wonder the lefty dupes follow the dope.
Could you not have just changed the word? Now the context is pretty much gone.
Chris Matthews Grills GOP Chair: Wouldn‘t it Be ’Scary‘ to Have ’Anti-Intellectual’ Creationist as President?
well lil chrissy my boy, not as *SCARY* as having a marxist, muslim, POS, never was as pResident.
Is Matthews really trying to imply that Obama is an intellectual?
Really?
fang said, “Evolution, just like agw, fails the test of the scientific method over and over and over again.”
Actually, fang, it’s just the opposite. The Theory of Evolution has stood the test of time for over 150 years. Maybe you don’t understand how scientific theories work. A scientific theory–like the theory of gravity–is a statement that explains observable phenomena of the real world. It stands until proven wrong by scientific experimentation. The theory of evolution has been subjected to thousands of experiments and has yet to be proven wrong. Whether or not you believe in the theory of evolution doesn’t change the fact that has stood the test of time. Believing in the tooth fairy doesn’t change the fact that there isn’t one.
Mark says, “We are similar to chimpanzees in a large number of ways except in those ways which make a man a man.” Duh. Chimpanzees are similar to baboons except in those ways which make a chimpanzee a chimpanzee.
Watson,
But the differences between a chimp and a baboon are tiny – trivial. The differences between a man and a chip, even given all the marked similarities, are massive. We are of a different kind … there is nothing in a chimp which will give you an indication that one day, millions of years from now, his biological descendents shall paint a Sistine Chapel. The addition of Mind to Matter is a leap – there is no bridging the chasm. The one does not flow from the others…something happened.
You say the theory of evolution has been subjected to thousands of experiments and has yet to be proven wrong. What experiments?
What theory?
Please tell us of the experiments of exposing inert matter to whatever—-radiation, heat, pressure—and creating viable life. Please tell us of the experiments where this created life then mutated into wildly different life forms which now have no relationship to each other in any way shape or form including DNA.
Do tell us of these thousands of experiments. They sound fascinating.
Or do you merely talk about the easily proved and undisputed evolution of existing life, where a species changes but somehow does not become another species but just an altered form of the species it always has been? e coli. Wow. And this is the same as the progression of algae to fish to monkey to human? The e coli change but are still e coli. The algae change but are still algae. The monkeys change but are still monkeys. Man changes, adapts, but is still man.
The blind white fish in caves are still fish. They just adapted to breed without things they do not need in caves, like skin pigment and eyes. They did not turn into bats, who also live in caves. They did not revert to minerals, and become stalactites and stalagmites. They merely became different forms of fish.
You don’t tell us what you mean by science because you don’t know. You don’t tell us what you mean by evolution because you don’t know. You just use words you think might make you look smarter than you really are and try to pretend that other people are not as smart as you. But you fool no one.
And as always, Mark tries to counter actual science with religious dogma and avoids like providing any actual scientific evidence for his (non-scientific) belief as though doing so would give him the plague.
This is a perfect example of the Belief Trumps Fact philosophy that runs conservatism.
Bodie,
Where in my article is a piece of religious dogma? Or, do you even know what “dogma” means? Or is it just a word you heard and think that it is insulting to use it against someone you disagree with?
The problem with a purely materialist view of the universe is that it doesn’t cover all the known facts – two of the most stunning things left out is the fact of existence, at all, and of Mind existing in a purely accidental, meaningless universe. How did anything come to be? How did mind arise out of matter? There is no theory worth the name in strictly materialist thinking to cover these things…what we get are multiplying hypotheses trying to explain it away…even some figuring there are an infinite number of universes and thus with an infinite number of universes you are bound to get one by random chance developing mind out of matter. This is as asinine as the “an infinite number of monkeys at keyboards will eventually produce Hamlet“.
This has nothing to do with whether or not you believe in the Judeo-Christian understanding of God. Heck, it doesn’t even actually require you to believe in God, at all…but don’t try and pretend that the just-so stories of a purely evolutionary development cover things better than the Judeo-Christian understanding.
Really, Mark? You’re going to pretend that you weren’t mouthing dogma? Geez, at least stand by your actions, wrong as they may be, instead of pretending that you didn’t do them.
And I note that your record of never once providing scientific evidence for what you claim are beliefs worthy of being taught as science continues. And so it shall be for the rest of your life, no doubt. You’re absolutely dedicated to arguing that non-science is science because…well, because. Luckee, take note: This is precisely what I mean by “belief trumps fact for conservatives.”
Bodie,
Looked up “dogma”, found out that you were talking nonsense and now just trying to cover, huh?
The only one trying to cover here is you, Mark. You’re trying to cover the fact that you spewed pointless dogma, and, at the root of it all, you’re so very desperately trying to cover the fact that you have zero scientific proof for the views you want to be accepted as “science.”
Put up or shut up, Mark. Can you do it? I guarantee that you can’t.
Provide one direct link that can be reproduced using the scientific method. Can you? How come it is still called a “theory” Why is not a fact?? You know why. Evolution is nothing more than a humanistic religion. It simply can not be proven that man evolved from a lower life form.
Opinion? Sceintific consensus?? I want facts. Provide them. And if you would do some reseach for a change you find that humans share more characteristics with a different type of genus that they do with apes. Find some facts.
Chuckie Darwin knew what he was saying when he said that the best argument against his theory was the theory itself.
Liberal world…..As long as we think it, it is true. Same thing with global warming. The two biggest frauds ever purpetrated on mankind.
Again provide proff that meets the standards of the scientic method. Please
Green, you don’t know what a scientific theory is. That’s why you ask the question of why it’s still called a theory. It just shows your ignorance. Gravity is also a theory. I suppose you reject it, too.
Science is not conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat. No matter how much you want it to be. You are simply reveling in your ignorance of science.
Watson, correct me if I’m wrong here, but the big bang can’t be either duplicated by experiment or proven – only inferred. I’m curious as to what you or any evolutionist would say the cause of the big bang might have been. Both evolution and creation are belief systems requiring faith and suspension of disbelief at critical junctures. The late Edwin Conklin, professor of biology at Princeton University, once said, “The concept of organic evolution is very highly prized by biologists, for many of whom it is an object of genuinely religious devotion, because they regard it as a supreme integrative principle.”
I don’t believe there will ever be proof for something God intends to remain a matter of faith (ref. Hebrews 11:6). The creation-evolution debate won’t be resolved by human arguments or scientific proofs. Too much lies outside our ability to measure or test. There will remain an increasing pile of evidence that can be interpreted any number of ways, depending on one’s presuppositions. But whatever one believes about origins will always require an element of faith in some unprovable axiom.
I’ve also felt the biggest (and nearly always unspoken) reasons for atheism and agnosticism are the moral implications of belief. When you come up against the staggering mathematical odds against the spontaneous organization (heirarchies of organization, actually) of proteins into DNA it becomes less difficult to believe in a master Designer. But faith leads directly to accountability, and therein lies the problem. Sadly, it’s a much worse problem than it ought to be because of the way self-appointed moralists have framed so many issues and arguments. Often people recoil from religion not because of how bad they are, but because of how badly God is represented to them. God is holy and not to be trifled with – but God is also much more reasonable and loving than most of the blowhards down here who claim to speak for him. (Study the life of Christ to see how little has changed in that regard over 2,000 years.)
It really is too bad that it falls to someone like Gov. Perry to be an agent of persuasion on a such a controversial topic as creation. Aside from his “ugly” remark being a near-repudiation of Christianity (at least of Christ’s admonition to love one’s enemies), Perry repeatedly has proven himself antagonistic to empirical evidence and so has very little credibility regarding anything of a scientific nature. He may do just fine preaching to the choir, but as far as making a nuanced argument using evidence to persuade any non-believer toward faith – well, lots of luck with that.
Dennis,
God will use all the tools in the box…even someone as fallible as Perry.
Well said, Dennis. I don’t believe that the Theory of Evolution and the existence of God are mutually exclusive. Science is science. God is God. In fact, one way of looking at it is the more we learn about science, the more incredible God’s creation is. On the other hand, you can see by GMB’s response that he simply refuses to accept science. It’s idiotic. But he is what he is.
You call my post antogonistic? Yet you do not answer one question. You are down to attacking the messenger.
Very typical of you watson.
Maybe I’m just generally not as inquisitive as the average bear, but I’ve always looked at things I don’t understand and/or don’t know the answer to, and ask myself; would my life change for the better if I understood or knew the answer. If I can’t answer yes, then I don’t waste a lot of time dwelling on it. Evolution is one such topic. One of the things that most drives me nuts about Liberals is that so many of them are mindless busybodies who constantly attempt to insert themselves into other people’s lives to try to dictate how they should live.
Exactly. Look at how enraged they get when we simply have another point of view. Look at how downright nasty they get when someone does not agree with them.
How is Bodie’s life affected by Rick Perry’s belief of the origin of life?
For that matter, what impact would it or could it have on the nation if Rick Perry was president?
liberalism is rooted in evil = darkness
Christianity is rooted in God = light
darkness hates the light, the two are completely incompatible the leftists follow the father of darkness, we the light.
1 John 1:5
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
Bert
“
Luckee, it seems to me that the outrage comes from those that refuse to accept science. Look at GMB’s antagonistic post above and his outright refusal to even educate himself about what science is.
watsondouche
Luckee, it seems to me that the outrage comes from those that refuse to accept science.
Science REQUIRES PROOF, replication, standards…….theory is just like an AH everyone has one.
See, Lucky? I give you Exhibit A: NeoClown. Well, GMB was Exhibit A. Clown is Exhibit B of conservative enragement against science. As for myself, I’m more amused by Clown and GMB”s complete lack of understanding of science. Fortunately, they don’t have any control over the advancement of science. The president of the United States, on the other hand, does have some control. And therefore one would hope that the president would have at least a rudimentary understanding of science, which GMB and Clown fail to possess.
And Watson you still toss out the word science but never define it.
Sigh.
You seem to think that whatever definition is in your head is the only correct definition and that anyone who does not agree with it just does not believe in science, period.
But you never tell us what this science is.
I keep asking and you keep ignoring.
When you speak of evolution do you speak of a big bang type of random collision of atoms which resulted in an evolution of whatever that created into the many varied species we see today?
Or do you mean created species which then evolve to meet current criteria for survival or even just simplicity, like the fish who are hatched without eyes because they do not need them in the dark?
What qualifications do you have to pronounce on the accuracy or correctness of any other person’s understanding of or acceptance of science?
If your own understanding of science is so incomplete and disorganized that you can’t even explain it to us, why should we pay any attention to you when you sigh that we just don’t believe in what you believe?
Nobody says science doesn’t exist. To claim they do is the most stupid thing even you can say. No wonder you have no credibility here. Even your lies are beyond stupid, well into crazy.
You sigh some more when you explain that there is a scientific basis to the theory of evolution but you can’t event tell us what the theory of evolution is. Is it that man and fish and cacti all come from the same collision of atoms? Is it that man and fish and cacti were all created by God in some form or other but each unique to its form and then changed to meet needs of survival or even convenience or simplicity? Is it that all life once had the same DNA but then it all changed so every species and then every individual in that species has different DNA? How can you blather on so much about this so-called theory of evolution when you don’t even know what it is?
Bert
“Mutations do not gain information so technically that’s not a good example of evolution. Micro and macro evolution is two completely different things. When the common cold develops eyes, ears, arms and legs, we’ll talk.
Harvard’s Stephen Jay Gould put it this way”Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.” In other words, Throughout the geologic layers, which supposedly formed over eons – the various kinds of fossils remain essentially unchanged in appearance.They show no evolution over long ages. Paleontologists call this “stasis.”
Wouldn’t a fossil record, showing all animals complete when first seen, is what we’d expect if God created them whole, just as the Bible says?
Austin H. Clark, the eminent zoologist of the Smithsonian Institution, was no creationist but he declared:
“No matter how far back we go in the fossil record of previous animal life upon the earth we find no trace of any animal forms which are intermediates between the major groups of phyla.
This can only mean one thing. There can only be one interpretation of this entire lack of any intermediates between the major groups of animals – as for instance between backboned animals or vertebrates , the echinoderms, the mollusks and the arthropods
If we are willing to accept the facts we must believe that there never were such intermediates, or in other words that these major groups have from the very first, borne the same relation to each other that they have today.”
.British science writer Frances Hitchens wrote” On the face of it, then, the prime function of the genetic system would seem to be to resist change ; to to perpetuate the species in a minimally adapted form in response to altered conditions, and if at all possible to get things back to normal. The role of natural selection is usually a negative one : to destroy the few mutant individuals that threaten the stability of the species.
Why aren’t fish today, growing little arms and legs, trying to adapt to land? Why aren’t reptiles today developing feathers?Shouldn’t evolution be ongoing?
Evolution Is not visible in the past, via the fossil record. It is not visible in the present, whether we consider an organism as a whole, or on the microscopic planes of biochemistry and molecular biology,where, as we have seen, the theory faces numerous difficulties. In short, evolution is just not visible. Science is supposed to be based on observation.
L. Harrison Matthews,long director of the London Zoological society noted in 1971:”Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation – both are concepts which believers know to be true, but neither up to the present, has been capable of proof.
Norman Mac Beth wrote in American Biology Teacher:
“Darwinism has failed in practice. The whole aim and purpose in Darwinism is to show how modern forms descended from ancient forms, that is to construct reliable phylogeny(genealogies or family trees). In this it has utterly failed…Darwinism is not science.”
Swedish biologist Soren Lovtrup declared in his book Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth:
I suppose nobody will deny that it is a great misfortune if an entire branch of science becomes addicted to a false theory. But this is what has happened in biology;for a long time now people discuss evolutionary problems in a peculiar” Darwinism” vocabulary — “adaptation”,”selection pressure”,”natural selection”, etc.–thereby believing that they contribute to the explanation of natural events.They do not, and the sooner this is discovered, the sooner we will be able to make real progress in the understanding of evolution.
As natural selection’s significance crumbles, the possibility of God, creation and design is again making a wedge in scientific circles. In a 1998 cover story entitled”Science Finds God” Newsweek noted:
“The achievements of modern science seem to contradict religion and undermine faith. But for a growing # of scientists, the same discoveries offer support for spirituality and hints of the very nature of God…According to a study released last year, 40% of American scientists believe in a personal God—not only an ineffable power and presence in the world, but a diety to whom they can pray.”
Author David Raphael Klein may have said it best:
“Anyone who can contemplate the eye of a housefly, the mechanics of human finger movement, the camouflage of a moth, or the building of every kind of matter from variations in arrangement of proton and electron, and then maintain that all this design happened without a designer, happened by sheer, blind accident– such a person believes in a miracle far more astonishing than any in the Bible.”
markus:
i love this discussion
you’ve shifted markneo from chief insulter to chief cut and past intellectual
only in america
i love this planet!!!
::))
nanu nanu dork from ork
go play in your card board box “spaceship” in mamas yard and leave the discussion to the adults.
PS FOOL
when some one else has written the right and appropriate response why re write it as my own.
Im man enough to use a re post than to pretend it was my words, the line of thinking is the same though.
Show me one observable effect of evolution. Anywhere any time. Can you watson?
The man himself knew his own theory was full of it.
“…I am quite conscious that my speculations run beyond the bounds of true science….It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many flaw[s] & holes as sound parts.” Charles Darwin to Asa Gray
Green, maybe you’re heard that bacteria evolves at a relatively fast rate to develop immunities to antibiotics. Or that insects develop immunities to pesticides. The faster the generations occur–and in bacteria it is very fast–the faster they can evolve.
Look, this all boils down to the same fears as in Darwin’s day 150 years ago. It goes against some folk’s notion of man’s supremacy and God’s role in the creation of the world. It conflicts with people’s deeply held beliefs of how life came to be. I get it. But it doesn’t mean that science doesn’t exist. Sorry.
Devoping an immunity is now evolution? If that is the best you can do you are reaching. Those bacteria are still geneticly the same after devoping those immunities or not?
Using this theory, anyone human that ever devolops or has devoloped an immunity to a disease is now a differnt creature? Has the genitics of this been traced? Is this verifyable?
If so a real scientist should be able and use this method to backtrack the human genome and prove that we evolve from monkeys? Not so?
Again, Green, you simply refuse that there might be a scientific basis to the Theory of Evolution and rely on your poor layman’s version of science to reject it. Look up the e coli long-term evolution experiment, which has been tracking genetic changes in e coli bacteria for the last 20 years. It has revealed genetic changes as well as evolutionary adaptions.
But it’s not likely that you will spend any time looking it up because you already have the answers to everything–Just no actual knowledge. That makes you ignorant, and if you were in control of science, dangerous.
There’s probably nothing more to say because your mind is a closed vessel.
Watson,
None but the most convinced “young earth” creationist would deny the underlying evolutionary theory – what is in question is whether or not you really can get a totally new species from any particular species, and if this does happen is it really based upon blind chance, or is there something inherent – designed, that is – about life which causes new species to arise? The point I make is not whether or not evolution is valid, but that those who are insisting upon nothing but blind evolution are engaged in an ideological rather than scientific effort.
I don’t know that I disagree with you, Mark. But look at GMB and Neo. They simply reject science using their own made up reasons, which reveal them to be completely ignorant of science. Their ideology clearly does blind them, and find that to be true of a lot of religious fundamentalists. It must be because they feel threatened.
Science is science. God is God.
“what is in question is whether or not you really can get a totally new species from any particular species”
That’s only “in question” by people who don’t understand what they’re talking about. In the realm of science, no, it’s not “in question.” This troubles you greatly for whatever reason, so you have to lie about it.
Watson,
Science is a tool for understanding…so is thinking. What is to be understood is everything under the sun. To the believer, the very fact that we wonder about things is an indication of God. God’s light illuminates things, and as we are “like” God, we are impelled to try and understand, working from the Judeo-Christian assumption that everything is, at least in theory, intelligible (and it is this very Judeo-Christian concept, absent in all other civilizations, which created the “scientific method” and led to the gigantic material advances of the western world).
Bodie,
Now you’ll have to look up “evolution” so you can actually comprehend what I said.
Your dishonest attempts to pretend that there is actual controversy in the scientific community as to whether or not evolution occurs cannot be wiped away by asking me to define words I understand and you clearly do not. Either stand by your lies or recant them, Mark.
I want to introduce that the current US President, President Obama, is the worst President of the US since inception with the possibility of Woodrow Wilson. I will introduce this as the “Worst President Ever Theory” and can prove a vast majority of it but could not or would not want to duplicate it in a scientific environment. So there it is–a Theory…and quite possibly a fact but that is for others to decide.
At least there’s one Republican presidential candidate that isn’t ideologically motivated to reject science. Jon Huntsman:
“When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Science – Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position….I can’t remember a time in our history where we actually were willing to shun science and become a – a party that – that was antithetical to science. I’m not sure that’s good for our future and it’s not a winning formula.”
Of course, he has no chance of winning because today’s conservatives do shun science. Sigh.
Huntsman has no chance of winning because he is a mindless lemming who repeats what he heard but doesn’t bother to check out his facts. It is a lie that 98 out of 100 climate scientists believe that man has altered the climate. It is a favorite leftist lie but it is a lie and if Huntsman repeats it he is an idiot who can’t be bothered to look into what he is told.
And Huntsman does not define what he means by evolution. Alteration of a species over time to adapt to changes or spontaneous eruption of super-basic life due to a random collision of atoms which then somehow changes into millions of completely different life forms?
Pick any animal which lives in different parts of the world. Take cows for example. Cows which have adapted to hot climates have thinner skin and bigger ears because they need to be able to dissipate heat quickly. They have longer legs and thinner bodies because fat traps and generates heat and the more body surface that is exposed the more heat is dissipated. But cows from colder climates have shorter legs and heavier bodies, more fat and smaller ears. But they are all cows. They were never algae.
Look at dogs. Most dog breeds today have been manipulated by man, but they still represent changes due to use and need. Boxers and bulldogs have underslung jaws so they can bite onto a bull’s nose and still breathe. Earth dogs have different musculature than running dogs. Compare a greyhound to a foxhound to a bloodhound to see the different ways breeds develop some characteristics and drop others they don’t need. But they are all still dogs and never have been clams or giraffes.
The facial and pigmentation characteristics of Africans are very different from those of Swedes. It is obvious that humans develop characteristics to help them survive. But they are all still human. Not just humanoid. Human.
So what is this science of evolution that Watson is so smug about understanding and accepting? Is it what I have described or is it an ooops of the universe that finally resulted in Shakespeare and fire ants all from the same gene pool that happened by accident?
A dog is still a dog, a bacteria is still a bacteria, and a human is still a human. Please show proof of an ape becoming a human watson? Can you? Or can you continue to attack the messenger instead of the message?
lots of people live up north where its cold…they dont all have short legs and lots of fat…matter of fact…lots of folks live in the south too…and they are not all skinny either…
so the coefficient analysis with the cow is just a bit o’ gossip i guess huh?
look at the buffalo….they were never short and fat…they roamed the plains for hundreds, if not thousands of years….winter after winter…and they didnt become short fat critters…matter of fact…they were highly prized for thier thin, soft hide…so much as a matter of fact…they allmost were all killed off for short fat white women living…in the north…east…
Are you seriously saying that what I said about cows is not true? Are you seriously saying that cows are just like people or people are just like cows? Maybe if cows could make and wear clothes they would not have to adapt physically to their environment. Cows with furry ear muffs and fireplaces might not have to evolve into a breed of cow with small ears to prevent frostbite. It does take a little intelligence to consider that human beings have the ability to manipulate their environment where animals do not and have to adapt. Maybe you could spend a little time learning things before saying such stupid things. There are pictures of cows on the internet, maybe you could spend less time typing and more time learning. Compare the cattle of Africa with the cows of England and Scotland for starters. Watusi vs Scottish Highland?
Too bad you have never seen a buffalo. Just like people have thin soft hide under their down coats and wool sweaters buffaloes cover their thin soft hide with thick heavy hair. Buffalo robes were very prized to keep human beings warm so they could be tall and skinny and still not freeze. I was not aware of leather made from those thin soft skins being nearly as valuable as the heavy robes of thick warm hair. But then I was not aware of the use of many periods as a substitute for real punctuation either so you seem to know alot more than most people. Buffaloes shed their heavy hair coats in the summer and they migrated every year going from north to south and back again following warmer and cooler weather.
I went through this with three children studying adaptive mechanisms in school and I can tell you I know I lot more about this than you do. If you intend to deny that animals adapt to their environments you might just say so instead of talking about fat people in the south. If you are going to claim that no animal has ever changed over centuries or eons due to external causes or for survival then you go right ahead but using people who have air conditioning and central heating and wear clothing and build fires as examples is pretty dumb.
My point is that there is evolution or adaptation of any given species due to various causes but that no species ever becomes another species and no one can prove that all species came from some cosmic accident that spontaneously created life that then became so many kinds of life. What is your point?
Who are you arguing against?
Me? First trying to get Watson to say if his definition of evolution is random life coming from random collision of random particles or just the adaptations of created life.
Then……..buffalo are not fat……soft skin……white….women…..from the….north…..fat people……in…..the south…….gossip.
My position is firmly on the side of intelligent design but realizing that after this divine creation animals also used the gift of the ability to alter according to their situations. The ability to change is part of the intelligent design.
JS? who…..knows……
waspdouche
. But look at GMB and Neo. They simply reject science using their own made up reasons, which reveal them to be completely ignorant of science.
I would say pure ignorance, but that would be a lie…so I will say pure stupidity and total BS
I live my life around science My whole business and career is built around the LAWS of science and not theory.
The scientific LAWS of thermodynamics
The scientific LAWS of entropy and enthalpy
Boyle s LAW
Ohms LAW
NOW
explain how a SINGLE cell creature “born” out of a lightning striking the mud became LIFE, replicated and became a T Rex?
I’ll be waiting for your SCIENTIFIC” response.
If you cant then STFU