Disproving Evolution?

Neither you nor I can pretend to start to know God’s thinking - there are many things we won’t know until we get to Heaven and transformed into His image - many things are way beyond our finite, small brains/capabilities of understanding.

Nobody said that earth was the first - just that it could be. And the segment of the universe we can see and observe with projects such as SETI is an incredibly narrow slice through space and time - less than 50 years of observation in a universe billions of years old and billions of light-years across.

“All I know is there are millions of coincidental occurrences that had to come together at the right time for us to be here with no divine intervention making it happen.”

And again, you can’t count the unlikeliness of those events when the very fact that you’re here observing them presupposes them to have happened. It’s akin to getting a hand of cards and declaring how incredibly unlikely it is after you’ve already been dealt it, or looking at the exact set of ancestors and observing that it’s incredibly likely you’d have exactly these ancestors - so it must have been divine intervention!

Maybe the “big bang” or with Higgs boson?

Changes occurs in the gene pool - indisputable fact. HOW evolution occurs is still a theory. There are many theories out there as to how these changes occur.

“We sit on this small planet in exactly in the right position for life to exist as we know it in the temperature we can withstand, protected to a tolerable radiation in this small galaxy we call the Milky Way.”

“For life to exist as we know it.” And though try as we may, we’ve not found any life out there thus far, that is my point niocil. Our earth is in a constantly changing position within our solar system and it is just right at this point for life “as we know it” to exist. All the elements to form this life, and keep it existent are now present on our planet. Was that coincidental? Might have been, but it is not what I believe.

Evolution is a theroy based on what we know and can find. If evidence is found that changes the theroy thats ok. According too the bible, I guess thats where you got that God created man, said that God created man in one day. Most christians I’ve talked to agree that it was 1 24hour period. Not a lot put much stock in the gap theroy. there for if you believe in the bible, evolution could not have accured.

Evolution says that the earth is millions of years old. the Bible says the earth is 6000 years old. Both cant be right.

Taking an objective views on both evolution and creationism. I find there is simply more evidence for evolution than creationism.

some has said its better to believe in the bible because its constant, but I think the more we discover the more our understanding grows and something that dosent grow with us just hinders our growth

I see YOU play the ‘last post’ game, too… how hypocritical…

So… are you going to attempt to disprove evolution or not?

arachnid. it is simple. I won the lotto. are my chances of having won the lotto because I did win the the lotto changed because I won the lotto. NO. I am a human life form on earth. Are the the odds changed about what forms all the possibilities to form this life changed because I exist. NOOO.

Re-think your position. You’ve lost this one.

The fundamental difference between the two is that you can make the observation of if you won the lottery or not regardless of if it happened. You can only make an observation about the universe around you if it is organised in such a way that allows you to exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_universe

So let me get this straight, since I can’t seem to “understand”. The fellow who won the lotto didn’t have the same odds I did of winning? I can’t say his chances of winning were, let’s say 21 million to 1, as mine were because I’m looking at an event that has already occurred?

Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s “a contradiction”.

It’s basic stats. You can’t make predictions about how unlikely something that’s already happened is

Yea, being dealt a hand of cards from a deck of 52. The millions of “accidental” coincidental occurrences must have occurred from many billions of possibilities. The odds are a bit more than your card example.

We are seeking it, but we haven’t been able to find it elsewhere as yet. Are we the only life that exists?

I don’t think that our technological limitations, and current inability to explore other galaxies; should lead us to believe that massive expanse in the universe, is just some elaborate light show for Earthlings to view at night…

seao2florida: What you’re making is called the ‘anthropic argument’. If conditions weren’t right for life ‘as we know it’, you wouldn’t be here making that argument. Possibly a tentacled monster would be making the argument (and it would think everything is perfectly normal), possibly nothing.

And we’ve not proved or disproved evolution.

Uhhh… no. Evolution has already been proven to occur in nature. IF you’re referring to ‘The Big Bang’ …then yes… that cannot really be proven or disproven since nobody was there to witness it. But evolution DOES occur…

there are many things we won’t know until we get to Heaven and transformed into His image

…MEHHH??? Weren’t we already CREATED in his image?

You don’t think I’m getting exasperated? You refuse to see the difference between making an observation regardless of the outcome (lotto) and making an observation that depends on the outcome (your existence). You’re also trying to declare victory by fiat, without ever presenting a convincing argument.

And you refuse to answer a really simple question: How is what you observe different from what you’d see in a ‘natural’ universe? And if you can’t show any differences, then how does your observation have any bearing on whether or not this universe is natural?

Jesus, you are more than exasperating. If I said the sun was to rise in the east tomorrow, you would attempt to argue about it. Learn to accept that there are arguments that do not agree with you. And when you have failed in an argument, rethink your position. Make your last posting, because that is what this has always seemed to be the purpose between you and lexi con

Arachnid, have a great life.

The point, as I’ve said over and over again, is that the very fact that you’re making the argument requires you to exist. Your argument is a tautology, because if the universe wasn’t suited to human life, you wouldn’t be here asking about the probability of it.

Let’s look at it another way: You claim the universe looks the way it is because it was designed to be suited for human life. How would the universe be different if life evolved naturally?

*In short, you can’t (ab)use statistics to predict how unlikely something that’s already happened is, when the observation depends on the outcome of that event.

Ok let me simplify it, I just won the lottery, therefore I can’t look back and see what the odds of my winning might be? Yes I can.

I am a living human being on the planet earth at just the right time and in the right place in the cosmos with a million other variables that took place to make this happen. I can’t look at the odds that all this came together at the same time? The observation doesn’t depend on the outcome. The “event” occurred, I’m looking at the odds of it happening. Just like the lotto.

You can look at the odds of both. I won the lotto, what were the odds against it.

I exist - what are the odds against it?

That was some interesting reading but it doesn’t show I can’t do the foregoing now does it? And I assume you are a critic of the fine-tuning theory?

By the way, I’m 57 years old, rather read, and I had not heard of the “anthropic principle” until you brought it to my attention last week thank you.

Only if the person who won’s observation depends on them winning. If they decided to have a child only because they won the lotto, for example, that child could observe that the chances of his existence are millions to one and therefore (by your reasoning) conclude there must have been some intelligent agency that caused his parents to win the lotto so he could come into existence.

In short, you can’t (ab)use statistics to predict how unlikely something that’s already happened is, when the observation depends on the outcome of that event.

The observation of where this planet is in relationship to all the factors to generate life as we know it, is a very valid argument. The fact life occurred here BECAUSE these factors all came into play. It’s like saying, all else equal, you can’t predict the odds for me, who didn’t win the lotto are the same as the fellow who did, because it is an observation of something that has already occured. And greater minds than ours have looked at this theory, and now it has been carried on to the string theory.

*You’re missing the point. The exact figures aren’t important. The fact that you’re making an argument about the likelihood of something that’s already occurred is. If it helps, imagine a deck of thousands of cards.

In short, you can’t (ab)use statistics to predict how unlikely something that’s already happened is, when the observation depends on the outcome of that event*

Please go back and re=read your last Post. It is such a contradiction.

You’re missing the point. The exact figures aren’t important. The fact that you’re making an argument about the likelihood of something that’s already occurred is. If it helps, imagine a deck of thousands of cards.

In short, you can’t (ab)use statistics to predict how unlikely something that’s already happened is, when the observation depends on the outcome of that event.

* . And that’s also my point. We are seeking it, but we haven’t been able to find it elsewhere as yet.

The only places we’ve looked so far other than earth, are the moon, and Mars - and even in these two places, all we’ve done is collect a few hundred pounds of rocks. It’s way way way too early to draw any conclusions about the non-existence of life beyond earth!

Could we be the only life in our solar system or galaxy, etc? It’s possible. If life develops, somewhere has to be first.

And do we have any other forms of life that we know of anywhere else, tentacled or otherwise? Life is very ingenious and hardy and has found in all kinds of inhospitable climates and conditions, from boiling water at the ocean floors to frozen glaciers. And that’s also my point. We are seeking it, but we haven’t been able to find it elsewhere as yet. Are we the only life that exists?

And based on the Anthropic Principle, Einstein questioned “did God have a choice in his design of the Universe?”

seao2florida: The rarity or otherwise of life is irrelevant to the argument. Though the universe is a very big place, in both time and space, and we’ve only looked at a very, very small segment of it. The point is that you can’t make an argument about how unlikely life is when the very fact that you’re able to make the argument implies that it came about in that manner. It’s like getting a particular hand of cards in poker, then exclaiming how incredibly unlikely that particular hand is, and therefore it must be divine intervention.

Being disprovable is one essential component of any scientific theory. Evolution could be disproven - otherwise it wouldn’t be a scientific theory. (Creationism or ID, in contrast, make no disprovable claims).

However, what we refer to today as ‘Evolution’ is what’s also called ‘the modern synthesis’. It’s more complex than Darwin’s original formulation, and is really a set of theories, rather than a single one.

Darwin’s original theory could be disproven if you could show, for example, that random variation (in our modern understanding, DNA mutation) does not occur in nature, or that it’s not inherited, or that the fittest (best suited) individuals do not have the highest chance of survival.

Homosapians didn’t come from just one homoeructus, there were many different kinds. The ones most able to adapt , the fittest of the fit, were the ones who lived & passed dwon their jeans to the nest. The ones who weren’t died & fell out of the gene pool. Evadeince of evalotion can be sought out everywhere. There’s an island in particular in which evaluation quite rapidly & can be seen within a decade. I don’t believe evolution can be disporved.

You might want to specify WHO you’re talking to…

Any theories on how God would’ve created the universe?

Sorry to say this sea but your argument is bogus, do you not realize how truly fragile this argument is?

You do like to gloss over things don’t you?

You think the universe is an elaborate light show, for us earthlings? you do know that only stars in the milky way galaxy are visible to the naked eye? It wasn’t even till the 20th century that it was revealed the universe expanded beyond the milky way galaxy.

I wouldn’t be suprised if there was no other intelligent life in the galaxy. This is not a debate only on evolution but of abiogenesis and also the properties of a planet. I can see how life at any level is a rarity, but you’re speaking of intelligent life. Out of the millions of species that existed on earth only two to our knowledge evolved to this level of intelligence. With that said, no reason to credit divine intervention, but evolution, which you must not be too familiar with.

As of now a couple of planets discovered thought to be earth-like, existing in the habitual zone, are the 2 out of atleast 3 planets that orbit the red dwarf star Gliese. But I do doubt life exists there to, but it probably does in some other distant galaxy or maybe in one of the several small irregular galaxies that travles with our own.

I find it ironic that you believe that a creator can just exist, but don’t understand natural order or emergent complexity, well how do you think the creator exists if these things don’t?

We don’t know exactly how the universe is here, and I’m fine with that. I’m not content with made up stories that answers that question with a fairytale. I don’t see “divine intervention” there.

Created in one day? Just how long is a day if you are God? If man were told it happened in one day, he writes it down to his understanding, one revolution of the earth. I don’t know what “one day” is to a God in a near infinite universe. Could evolution AND Divine Creationism both exist? I think it can. I do know science is still seeking the answer of how life began, there are many theories still being researched. And scientists are still seeking the theoretical Higgs boson or the God Particle to explain the beginning of the universe.

We sit on this small planet in exactly the right position for life to exist as we know it in the temperature we can withstand, protected to a tolerable radiation in this small galaxy we call the Milky Way. And we conjecture on how it all began. Just as scientists used to conjecture that the earth was the center of the universe and was a flat world - until we found otherwise. We are still seeking the answers and the jury is still out for me. But I don’t think it all happened coincidentally.

And we’ve not proved or disproved evolution. We find “windows” of what is believed to be “evolution” in the form of fossils that scientist conjecture were the forefathers of later species, but the fossils are just that windows in time.

I think I should play the lottery. Of all the billions of galaxies, “somewhere has to be first”? Earth won.

And Mars and the Moon are not the only places we’ve searched. SETI has been listening for life elsewhere since 1960. Since Professor Drake conducted that first experiment 48 years ago SETI listening devices are more than 100 trillion times more sensitive and capable of listening to millions of channels at once, over Drake’s one at a time. Over 60 projects have developed since Drake’s first attempt.

Are we alone and the heavens are “some elaborate light show for Earthlings to view at night…”, or is there other life out there? And whether we are alone or other life exists or Divine Creation made us, that is exactly what the heavens are is a beautiful elaborate light show for Earthlings to view.

All I know is there are millions of coincidental occurrences that had to come together at the right time for us to be here with no divine intervention making it happen.

No I haven’t. You need to learn more about probability (specifically, bayesian probability). As I pointed out earlier, your observation of whether or not you’ve won the lotto does not depend on your winning. Your observation of the universe, however, depends on your existence as you are - which is only possible if the universe exists in the state it does! There’s only one posible outcome of your observation of the universe (that it appears to be suited to our existence), so pointing out that it meets those criteria doesn’t add anything useful.

So once again, how would you expect an ‘evolved’ universe to differ from a ‘created’ one? If you can’t provide any concrete differences, how does your line of reasoning support creation over natural causes?

How does one single cell organism just “transform” into something that creates an immune system? How does it know , “I should build some eyes so I could see where I’m going”. If that brainless blob can do that then, why can’t you with our own will power rebuild a cut off arm that you were born with? It just has to many holes in the theory, Yes I said THEORY. Doesn’t it make more sense that a caring God would create us to see, smell, enjoy each others company. Also how did that cell know that there should be a male and a female to reproduce? everywhere you look it doesn’t make sense

Both are “outcomes” can you not comprehend that? The “outcome” of the lotto is the same as that, that I exist? Both can then have the odds calculated. It is a theory that many do support. Accept the fact that others do, you do not. And look at the exponential possibilities of your existence.

that is exactly what the heavens are is a beautiful elaborate light show for Earthlings to view.

Uhhh… no… that is just a bonus, not the purpose.