If Darwin was correct

[Imran Siddiqui]

as God has never sanctioned vilence as a means for spreading his gospel and crushing opposition.

The people of Sodom and Gamorrah may have had a different interpretation of God's use of violence, I would think .

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by Xin Yu


But with answer a) present, answer b) just looks silly. Why do we go through all these trouble when there is a simple answer? Let me see... perhaps to feed some scientists so that they can live on it?

b) doesn't look silly, regardless of what other answer is available. There's a good reason for this: b) is built on demonstrable facts and makes no assumptions, while a) makes one big assumption and presents that assumption as the answer. That's pretty silly right there.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by trev

I must disagree with this statement, when human beings ignore the existence of God completely as a society, they begin to commit great evil, examples being communism under Stalin and Mao, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Hitler in Nazi Germany. There is a need for people in every society who believe in God and obey his will, or the society will degenerate and commit great evil

Crusades and the Inquisition. PWNED.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Dont' forget about the Thirty Years War, Kuci. And there is a reason Queen Mary of England was refered to as "Bloody Mary" and has a delicious red drink named after her.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by DanS
And I disagree. It's no accident that religion has been a prominent part of every human civilization and tribe.

Depending on how you define religion, it's either a substitute for knowing the answers, or an the institution of an arbitrary authority to defer to. Now we have democratically elected leaders and a solid scientific method, religion shouldn't be necessary. The fact that belief seeps out and latches onto any old thing is (in a perfect world) a sign of poor teaching. Of course that is probably a very narrow viewpoint, and in the long run having lots of people believing in lots of utter crap may be beneficial.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DanS
And I disagree. It's no accident that religion has been a prominent part of every human civilization and tribe.

Not true, unless you include philosophies and atheism as religions.

[Xin Yu]

I love forum discussion! Topics are always changed after several pages. Now where are we?

Evolution in microscopic manner has no problem with me. That's the way we survive. For example, germs develop resistence pretty quickly and new variations emerge after being attacked by antibiotics.

However evoluting from one species to another is in question.

First there is lack of evidence for such an evolution. There are thousands of species being observed constantly, why haven't we seen an example of one species morphing into another? You may argue that evolution takes several generations to be accomplished, but for some species, one generation is just several hours to several days, so that is not an excuse.

Second, the evolution theory does not consider the side effect of a gene change -- deficits (i.e., mental retardness, lack of ability to bear children, etc.). Do you expect a clear cut change from one type of gene to another? That may not happen in real world. Deficits will appear. And what happens when a child is born with deficits? It will be abandoned or killed and never get a chance to retain its new gene.

[St Leo]

There are thousands of species being observed constantly, why haven't we seen an example of one species morphing into another?

Don't fruitflies count?

Generations and timescales.

There is a bird species in North America that is well represented coast-to-coast. East Coast individuals are cross-fertile with Central individuals, and West Coast individualsare cross-fertial with Central individuals. However, East Coast and West Coast individuals are not cross-fertile with each other. Ergo, the species is splitting into two.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Xin Yu
First there is lack of evidence for such an evolution. There are thousands of species being observed constantly, why haven't we seen an example of one species morphing into another? You may argue that evolution takes several generations to be accomplished, but for some species, one generation is just several hours to several days, so that is not an excuse.

Firstly: species don't "morph" into another, they usually diverge into two or more species by whatever means, and the change is very slow. Secondly: "several" can mean hundreds, thousands. Even thousands of fly generations is a considerable amount of time, and when under observation, there is seldom a strong selective pressure acting - people generally want their objects of study to stay alive as they are.
It is likely that organisms with shorter generations have more conserved genes, since selective pressure from predators operates on a much less immediate level. Example: If it takes 5 years for a generation of aarvark to come up with a more efficient way of eating ants, there isn't any reason for ants to be selected for avoiding the new technique. There won't be any change in the ant gene pool until the new aarvark gene becomes widespread.

I can't offhand think of many animal species we have seen diverge before our eyes - there are certainly bacteria that have changed (although the species definition doesn't really work for bacteria), there are probably insects or fish. Plant species frequently arise from polyploidy events, though again the exact defintion of 'species' is looser. It would be a fun experiment to try to produce two different species of some insect. Anything bigger than an insect and time becomes a very very good excuse as to why we haven't seen a precise speciation event.

Second, the evolution theory does not consider the side effect of a gene change -- deficits (i.e., mental retardness, lack of ability to bear children, etc.). Do you expect a clear cut change from one type of gene to another? That may not happen in real world. Deficits will appear. And what happens when a child is born with deficits? It will be abandoned or killed and never get a chance to retain its new gene.

That's the entire point of natural selection Individuals with disadvantageous mutations die out before reproducing, individuals with advantageous mutations survive to reproduce better.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Xin Yu
Evolution in microscopic manner has no problem with me. That's the way we survive. For example, germs develop resistence pretty quickly and new variations emerge after being attacked by antibiotics.

If you accept such "microevolution," then you have no logical grounds on which to reject "macroevolution." The difference is of scale, nothing more:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.html

"There is no difference between micro- and macroevolution except that genes between species usually diverge, while genes within species usually combine. The same processes that cause within-species evolution are responsible for above-species evolution, except that the processes that cause speciation include things that cannot happen to lesser groups, such as the evolution of different sexual apparatus (because, by definition, once organisms cannot interbreed, they are different species).

The idea that the origin of higher taxa, such as genera (canines versus felines, for example), requires something special is based on the misunderstanding of the way in which new phyla (lineages) arise. The two species that are the origin of canines and felines probably differed very little from their common ancestral species and each other. But once they were reproductively isolated from each other, they evolved more and more differences that they shared but the other lineages didn't. This is true of all lineages back to the first eukaryotic (nuclear) cell. Even the changes in the Cambrian explosion are of this kind, although some (eg, Gould 1989) think that the genomes (gene structures) of these early animals were not as tightly regulated as modern animals, and therefore had more freedom to change."

First there is lack of evidence for such an evolution. There are thousands of species being observed constantly, why haven't we seen an example of one species morphing into another? You may argue that evolution takes several generations to be accomplished, but for some species, one generation is just several hours to several days, so that is not an excuse.

It is amazing to me that Creationists routinely assert things which are blatantly not true. We have indeed observed speciation:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html

Second, the evolution theory does not consider the side effect of a gene change -- deficits (i.e., mental retardness, lack of ability to bear children, etc.). Do you expect a clear cut change from one type of gene to another? That may not happen in real world. Deficits will appear. And what happens when a child is born with deficits? It will be abandoned or killed and never get a chance to retain its new gene.

Evolution certainly does consider such things. You again make sweeping claims when, in fact, you don't know what you're talking about.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mutations.html

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by trev
God has never sanctioned vilence as a means for spreading his gospel and crushing opposition. If you wish to oppose my statement, use genuine examples only please.

Um, have you ever read the Old Testament?

God commands the Israelites to commit genocide on rival tribes. The Israelites slaughter men, women and children at God's behest.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Xin Yu
Perhaps you did not get my question. I mean, if we only evolute in responding to environment, then we should not have such a huge brain with 90% of it almost never used.

that 10% bit is an urban myth. Human use all of their brains. It just wouldn't be efficient otherwise as the brain requires the most energy of the human body.

[Boris Godunov]

Thanks, Diss, for repeating stuff said on page 1.

[Dis]

just had to make sure it was said.

[germanos]

Re: If Darwin was correct

Originally posted by Xin Yu
If Darwin's evolution theory was correct, then we should have already used the full potential of our brains and bodies.

However there are theories saying that we only used 10% of our brains. Examples of people releasing brain and body power under emergency were not rare.

One of the two theories must be wrong.

I think darwin was wrong and we were created, what do you think?

I think the theory on the 10% use of our brain is wrong. It's more likely the scientists have not been able to detect/determine what the other 90% does.

Likewise: why would God create an 90% disfunctionate brain?