I am new to this discussion, but this post was so ridiculous that I had to stop and comment on it. I am an actual biologist, and will be receiving my Ph. D this year. I thought I should comment on as many of these points as I could:
1. to state the obvious, the Bible does not use or refer to the evolutionary process. all references are point to God as creator and a six day creation.
True.
2. there are no ancient records, myths, stories or scientific studies which refer or mention the process we now know as evolution. all records talk of creation, nothing else. thus evolution has no historical foundation.
Probably true, but then again there is probably also no ancient account of quantum physics, germ theory of disease, or the earth not being the center of the universe.
3. the fossil record can only reveal that a species lived at a certain point in time. it cannot reveal or prove the process of evolution nor can it show which is or isn't the mother/daughter species. conjecture is needed to fill in the blanks to make the process seem real.
True, but simple logic helps us deduce that if an older species looks like a later species then the later probably came from the earlier. Can it be "proven" to the extent that Christians want (i.e. beyond any reasonable possible doubt)? Maybe not, but lving to this standard would make us all look like idiots. If I went outside my front door one day and saw a small wasp's nest in one corner of my door, and the did the same a week later and saw a large wasp nest, would I seem reasonable to suggest that the first wasps most likely went away and then the new, larger colony moved in?
there is no way of knowing if the one fossil was a mutation, injured in a fight, or accident , fossilized in a position which does not reveal everything about it and so on. what the fossil record does prove is that there was an event which destroyed the majority of the animals.
Well, there is if you found more than one; but in a sense you are disproving your own thesis. Evolution states that ALL fossils are mutants, as are we. But again just going back to reality leads us to conclude that while we have all seen single mutants with two heads, an extra limb, etc., that are usually deletarious (sp?), we have never seen a chance single mutation that leads to a huge new functional unit, like four limbs, a through-gut, etc. So much of this Creationist nonsense can be disproven not by deep philosophical argument but by restraining your logic to your everyday life.
there is no way to prove the 5-6 mass extinctions scientists claim took place. these are nothing more than an excuse to avoid dealing with the reality of the flood.
This is just conjecture. I am not a geologist or palentologist so I am not familiar with the science behind it. But just saying "there is no way to prove it" doesn't satisfy, because as I have stated your requirements for "proof" go so far beyond what is feasible then you can never be disproven. However since the Bible states that ALL animals were taken on the ark, yet there are clearly animals that no longer exist, you seem to be in a pickle.
3. the dating systems are not reliable. in my work and studies i have found that these systems are very subjective, prone to corruption {way to easily}, manipulable{sp} and unverifiable. the half-life for almost all of them are too long to prove true or even accurate. at best, c-14 if limited to 11,000 +/- has a chance but its assumptions leave it too vulnerable.
Again, I'm not a palentologist so I don't know. Please provide citations for the publication and peer review of your work.
4. the time frame for evolution to work is a very exaggerated figure and unprovable. it is too convenient and allows ecolutionists an ecuse for violating the very scientific principles they love to force creationists to adhere.
Again with the "unprovable". Physicists have proven pretty well the age of the universe. They will acknowledge that they are probably off by some margin, but there is a huge difference between 7 billion years and 6000 years. The scientific principle that we "force you to adhere to" is: PROVIDE SOME EVIDENCE!!! A man in a dinosaur's stomach. A good method of dating. Anything. That is PEER REVIEWED, and not by guys who want you to be right. Just sitting back and trying (badly) to poke holes is not evidence.
we cannot say that a modern day mutation is evolution at work because no one knows how the process really works or if it would even proceed as stated by darwin and subsequent supporters. at best they are guessing.
Well, you've got us there. Scientists do not know every miniscule detail of everything that that has ever happened. I guess we should give up. But just because you are not sure how something got from A to B does not mean that it didn't get there. Humans have changed a lot just since the beginning of history; we have observed this. Just because we don't know EXACTLY how, does this mean it didn't happen?
we have no scientific research from anytime in the past, who would have opportunity to observe the process in action thus there is nothing to indicate what is truly the process at work. we know there were scientists alive long before the greeks as the babylonians had the pythagorum theory long before the greek 'discovered' it.
We don't need the past to prove evolution. Do you ever wonder why you need to get a flu shot every year? Why penicillin is rarely prescribed anymore? Why there is no AIDS vaccine? It is because the influenza virus mutates constantly, many of the bacteria that penicillin treated have become immune to it, and HIV has no proof-reading mechanism, thus throwing its evolution into overdrive. Evolution is apparent always in organisms with a short enough generation time. This is beyond all of the fossil evidence and genome analysis evidence that we have nowadays.
they would most certainly observe life and make note of anything that was different than what creation stated and investigate.
Huh? They would note the differences in since creation? How on Earth would they do that? Do you go out and say "yep, that dog looks exactly like the dogs at creation" (side note: dogs actually make a great example of evolution. All dogs came from wolves: they can still interbreed, but they are not wolves. They arose most likely as a symbiotic relationship with humans. But who today would say that a Chiuahua and a timber wolf are the same? This change, since it occurred DIRECTLY DUE to humans, is really good evidence of selective pressure AND has occured during human history.)
5. as stated in the last point, evolution and the theory violate the the two main principles of science. there has been no real observation of species changing or for it is impossible due to the manner in which this theory is structured.
Revist: Dogs. Revist: HIV and influenza. Revist: bacteria. Revist: humans. Revist: Well, any other species you can think of.
[qoute] also the theory cannot be testable. again, one limitation is the time factor declared needed to see evolution at work. one scientist claimed in a lecture that dna is testable and proves evolution. sorry but it doesn't. all dna can prove is the similarity in number of dna molecules. at no time can testing dna prove the process at work or demonstrate how different species ended up with different counts.[/quote]
Again, your standard of "proof" is ridiculously high. We know how DNA replicates. We know the enzymes involved. We know how genes are inherited. We know that, for instance, the animal most genetically similar to man is the chimpanzee. Now, the theory that chimps are humans' closests relatives has been around for much longer than our ability to determine genetic sequence. What were the odds that, once that technology became available, that that particular species WOULD be our closest genetic relative, and not, say, a fruit fly? And that then next closest would be another ape? And so on, and so on. And yet that is exactly what happened. The phylogeny has been proved again and again. What you are saying is really the equivalent of saying that a paternity test doesn't prove that someone is you father, because there is that one in 100 billion chance that this random man has the same DNA as your real father. Come on. Be a least a LITTLE realistic. Furthermore, getting away from man for a moment, we can trace genetic changes, again, in organisms with fast enough generation times. Actual changes have been DOCUMENTED in organisms like influenza and HIV and, yes, humans (not everyone has sickle-cell anemia, do they?)
the process and how it did its work is still a mystery. similar dna counts do not prove evolution at work.
A: no, it's not B: Yes, they do (see above)
another limitation is that all species follow the creation edict, which we can observe and test. the hybrid experiments have shown that animals cannot mate outside of their kind, if they want offspring. even if the females are fertile, it does not do any good if the males are sterile.
This is just plain wrong. Recently a hammerhead shark was shown to reproduce assexually in an aqarium in Omaha, even though this species normally reproduces sexually. There is a lizard species (don't remember the name, look it up) that reproduces ENTIRELY assexually. All are females. HOWEVER, in order for reproduction to occur, a female must simulate mating on another female. No exchange of genetic info takes place. Why on earth would they do this? For fun? Maybe.
6. elements of life today, why would evolution need death, since there is nothing waiting for anyone when they die, death is a useless function. why would evolution conceive of such an act? also, with its ability to evolve speices, why would evolution need a reproduction system which sets its species free from its control? there is no need for any species to be able to reproduce for the process should continue replicating them at will. there is no reason nor logic as to why evolution would change its process mid-stream?
What? Why would anybody choose to die? It is not something that evolution can defeat; it can't stop time or gravity, either. For your second point, you are (as is often the case amongst creationists) assuming evolution knows what it's doing. It doesn't. It's random. Many species (lets take octopuses for an example) produce thousands or millions of offspring, 99.9% of which are eaten within seconds of being born. That tiny fraction of those that survive make up the next generation. This is a huge waste of energy, not to mention cruel. But the species survive by doing it, so it is evolutionarily favorable. So to answer your question, you're right: there is no logic.
7. evolution is described as a non-thinking, non-feeling, non-knowing, non-everything process thus how could it conceive of what is the right combination of organs, blood and so on that would be needed for the species to survive? how would it know to evolve variety? or know that species would need feelings? morality? none of these are evident in the process thus it is impossible for the process to evolve what it has no conception.
Again, it DOESN"T know what it is doing. There is a major fallicy in your argument but I can't remember what it is called; basically what you are doing is taking the final product and assuming that it was a desired end-point, when in reality it was just how things happened. This is a very popular argument by creationists, but it's one of the worst. They often say: "How did it know to create a liver? Did it forsee that the organism would need to process toxins? No. But if it hadn't, the organism wouldn't have persisted, and therefore we wouldn't be discussing this. I built a swing recently. I made an A-frame. I could have tried an H-frame, but that probably wouldn't have worked, and been scrapped. I could have gone through the whole alphabet, and most wouldn't work, but some would. If I kept refining my designs by RANDOMLY going through the ones that worked, I would probably end up at an A-frame, because it works the best. I don't need any knowledge of physics or any thought at all to figure this out; just enough time and wood. However even this is an oversimplification. In reality, many forms might persist if there is NO REASON for them NOT to (i.e. the frame collapses and kills me). This is actually evident in human "design". Men have nipples. The tube that you eat and breathe through is the same for about the first 8 inches; not very safe. You can't see behind you, despite the fact that that is the most likely direction for attack. Human embryos have a tail. Cancer cells come directly from the body's own cells. There is a vital nerve that runs through the human neck, for no apparent reason. You (probably) have an appendix. These things are either not harmful (nipples) or not harmful enough to prevent breeding (choking,cancer, appendix, nerve), and so they persist in the species. But if God truly created us in His image, he has a really poorly designed image. Furthemore, since we DO see so many variations in how organism do things, like process food, it proves that there really IS no "right" way to do many things, just ways that are right enough to survive in a particular environment. For example, rats. If an alien life form were to come to earth, they would probably conclude that rats are the most dominant mammal on earth, and they would be right. To state the obvious, rats are different than people. We do, however, share most of the same organs. But rats have taken a different approach to life as humans. They breed very quickly, bear very little regard for their offspring, and they die young, thus avoiding age-induced mutations that would be deletarious to the species. They also live in filth. However, they are the most successful mammalial species, in terms of sheer number and adaptability; humanity would be wiped out by nuclear winter; rats would be just fine. By your standards, given that rats are more successful than humans, the "correct" way to live life is the way rats do. The reality is that rats have simply adopted a different survival strategy (breed fast and die young) than ours (invest lots of energy into few young), and there's is better.
case in point: man would not dream of flying and seek to do it if there were no birds or insects to give him the idea.
What? I don't get many ideas from insects.
evolution is void of all that we contain thus how could it evolve what it does not know? adherents ascribe God-like characteristics to what they say it does not possess, sorry but you can't have it both ways. either it is a process lacking in all we possess or it is a living being which created in its own image. one of the two.
I think I've hit all these before. Top summarize: evolution doesn't think. It is FORCED to do "what it does not know" (which is everything) by the conditions surrounding it. If I threw a ball, it will inevitibly end up in the position of lowest possible energy. It does not know to go there. It is driven by physics. Evolution is ongoing and has made many "mistakes", such as rewarding cruel breeding schemes. Evolution has not come up with anything perfect, including humans, or even gotten close. It has simply allowed things to survive that COULD survive.
**i could go on but my time is running out here. i am sure i am going ot here the words; 'you do not understand evoultion'. sorry but i understand it quite well or i wouldn't be able to point out its fatal errors. this theory is what people want it to be, nothing else and it changes as adherents get stumped by creationists. our knowledge is growing concerning evolution it is just that the ie needs to be perpetuated so people will keep believing in it.
i haven't even dealt with the miniscule amount of evidence scientists use to build their theories and that alone shows that evolution is untrue becuase too much conjecture is needed to fill in the blanks.
the last item in the case against evolution: we wouldn't be having this debate if the Bible wasn't true. no one pits evolution vs. the mormon scriptures, the popol val, the hindu scriptures, all debates focus on the Bible and there are many attempts to discredit it. if the Bible was false, it would have the same amount of attention given to those ancient works and people woul dbe researching something else.
You can SAY that evolutionists get stumped by creationists all the time; this doesn't make it true. Even just going by my personal knowledge of biology and plain common sense I have managed to refute all of your claims. Same goes for the "miniscule" amount of evidence, which is actually literally millions of peer-reviewed papers and books for ~150 years, which frankly trumps the, well, one book you have, written by shephards 2000 years ago, that says the world is flat. Your standard of proof is such that there will never be a "proof" of evolution to your liking. There have been dozens of pre-human primates discoved. Not enough. There have been giant ancient lizards discovered that are not mentioned in the bible (you think Noah had a T-Rex on that canoe?). Not enough. The age of the universe has been confirmed and re-confirmed. Not enough. There has been genetic linkages hypothesized and proven between man and apes. Not enough. You can go to THE ZOO and compare yourself to the gorillas vs. the tigers. Not enough. There are LIVING transitional species, like the lungfish and mudskippers. Not enough. We can WATCH evolution taking place in bacteria and virus, in real time!!! Not enough. I submit that you will NEVER be convinced of evolution unless you can be taken back in time to witness it for yourself, and even then you will simply believe that it is the devil deceiving you, just like the church said the other planets in the universe that Gallileo could see through his telescope were the work of the devil.
Please not that I have tried to provide REAL instances of evolution in the natural world. Creationists rarely is ever provide any such evidence, because there is very little, and the examples they use (like the eye) are easily refuted (hint: look at a flatworm). They rely on trying to manipulate and mis-state the actual work of others, AND things that are blatently obvious, like my Gorilla example, to cover up the fact that they HAVE no evidence EXCEPT their BELIEF that we must be wrong. They never publish peer-reviewed papers. They never go to conferences. They are in the enviable position of sitting back and jabbing at people that do try to figure stuff out without providing their own, testable theories.
I don't know if God exists or not, but I am pretty sure that evolution does.