Haha, I've had the best Saturday in years. I've got that great thing they call 'a cold', and I'm crabby, and I'm still ready for bed at 3:36 in the afternoon. But, that of course, is not what is making my Saturday great.
Here's why. Check this out. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/02/florida_land_of_the_delusional.php
I happened on this blog, and added my two little bits. Suddenly I found myself the target of every single commenter. It was great fun! Who cares if they're all Evolutionist and I'm a Creationist. I have my beliefs, they have theirs. Nobody changed, and nobody was converted, but I've never enjoyed a debate more in all my years. And I lost. I was severely outnumbered. But it was still amusing, how quickly all of these 'learned, higher-order, unquestioned' evolutionists began hating a little 17 year old for speaking her mind.
If you don't want to check out the link, here are a few things they said.
Is there any hope for Andria?
Andria: Go back to school before your mind turns into complete jelly.
Andria: You are part of the PROBLEM. America is going down the toilet because of people like you.
Gah! I'm really not in the mood for such flagrant, mind-destroying ignorance today. Won't someone PLEASE break out the duct tape and put an end to Andria's toxic, gaseous yapping?
Wow! This is the rudest I've been to anyone in, like, a year! Andria wins! She wins... a really nice prize. Of some kind. Or a weekend at the brain spa. It's free with the tour of the timeshares.
Seriously. I am sorry. And I'd say Andria is the real winner here. She's the one with the greatest opportunity to ACTUALLY LEARN SOMETHING HERE TODAY.
The world waits, with bated breath: Will Andria seize the day?
GO FOR IT, GIRL! Go for it.
For the love of all that's real or imagined... Go for it.
Another wrote:
Believe me, i fully understand what we are up against and this drive-by crea-troll Andria just isn't worth the effort.
One posed a good thought:
Take this statement by Andria:
My question for Evolutionists is - where did the speck come from? Who made the speck?
And then ask, "Who made God? Where did God come from?"
Another cynic:
I know God doesn't exist because if there were an omnipotent being capable of creating and guiding the development of living things, there'd be no excuse for the existence of people as utterly, deeply stupid -- and in this case, I don't mean ignorant, I mean STUPID -- as Donna Callaway and her wannabe butt-buddy, Andria.
Yet another:
Andria: I'll save myself and you a lot of venomous bileby having you prove that your imaginary god exists andhave it come down and smite all of us that have the nerveto question your insane beliefs. Come on, let's see this freaking god of yours. You cannot do it because all thissuperstitous crap is lodged in your deranged brain andwill forever misguide your pathetic and insane life.
A bit harsher:
I got bingo on Andria's #32 post alone! Right after I finished laughing at the first sentence, that is. Everyone else has already done the hard work, so I'll just chime in and say that Andria, you have said absolutely nothing that hasn't been said and shown to be wrong hundreds of times before, dozens of those times on this site alone. Google is your friend. Look up your "arguments" before you go spouting them off at the big kids' table.
And as for this, Whoever is doing this slamming, has clearly never tried to understand Christians., a lot of the slammers used to be quite dedicated Christians, so you can't use the "but they don't understand us" canard around here.
Here's one of those intillectuals with the uncanny how-to at poking fun:
All right, let's try logic, since apparently you all are not used to opposition.
LMAO!
Ten points to Andria for making me grin on this dull, grey day! Thanks! I take back every nasty thing I said! I take them back twice! Then I will eat crow! Three times!
"...not used to opposition."
Tee-hee.
[*shuffles off, muttering happily*]
I countered:
You guys are great! I like this one.
Mike O'Risal:As is typical for Creationists, she has no clue what the theory of evolution says and doesn't care because she's here not to discuss anything factual but to vomit forth her twisted, stupid, Medievalist, laughably asinine vision of a religion with its impotent, invisible, blood-drinking vampire of a manurepile of a deity.
Wow, ouch Mike. Did it hurt that much? How many adjectives can there be for such a sick, sadistic creature like me - coming into your wonderful world of scientific blog and stirring the bees-nest, eh?
Mike lashed out:
Andria,
It doesn't hurt me that you make up evil sky-giants in your head and worship them, no. It just makes you look like an idiot.
Unlike you and your fundamentalist brethren, scientists spend their lives trying to do something useful for humanity instead of creating sick fantasies of vengeful deities and basing mythologies on them.
There will never be enough adjectives for sick individuals who worship sick, bloodthirsty ghosts they invent. You can have your barbaric worshiping of death, but don't expect it to be supported by people who haven't sold their reason to your hoodoo spirits.
Nobody made you come in here and prove how stupid you are. Now you're bleating about the results of having revealed yourself. I think zombie Jesus must have eaten your brain.
Comments by Andria in bold quotes.
I have been brought up my entire life believing the Creationistic theory... I am a skeptic by nature,
Then why do you simply believe in the stuff you were brought up with? Isn't the burden of proof on those teachers as well?
I have tried to listen to his emphatic counter-pounding, and insistence that all fundamentals are wrong because of PROOF. I call shenanigans on this one. You're just setting up a straw man argument. Do you know what this is?
Suppose you asked someone to explain the operation of a nuclear reactor. Does it invalidate the existence of said reactor if that particular person doesn't know the math, physics and engineering and simply points to existence of verifiable theory and artifacts?
But when I asked him to please show me proof, So do you realize you are completely unfamiliar with how science works?
Have you demanded a proof of your god? Do you have such a proof to show us?
Therefore, sir, I am led to believe that evolutionists do not so much have a solid defense for what they believe, but instead have this unquestioning faith in their god-like peers.
Can you tell me how, based upon the performance of a few lay persons, you can generalize to pass judgment on the work of decades by thousands of people?
I'm not asking you to believe in their work, I asking if you can walk us all through how you can make such a leap of logic. Do you truly believe that your inference constitutes a proof of the validity of all evolutionary theory?
Or are you an intellectual coward?
Can you answer this last question. This is a challenge similar to the one you put to your customers. We are all waiting to hear. Now is your chance to convert us all.
Anyways, so I'll stop torturing you with the obvious wit of the evolutionists, and post here the few things I said that got them so riled. True, I'm not as 'old, mature, and arrived' as they are, but you have to admitt I bring up some good points.
Written by Yours Truly: Comment #15
Very interesting blog you have here. I have been brought up my entire life believing the Creationistic theory, and only recently have been challenged by one of my customers in heated debates, to be open to the theory of Evolution. I have tried to listen to his emphatic counter-pounding, and insistence that all fundamentals are wrong because of PROOF. But when I asked him to please show me proof, so I could be as knowledgable as he, he merely told me, "Well, everybody knows that creation is hogwash, and evolution is accepted by everybody!"
I am a skeptic by nature, which is the only reason why I was open to hearing this man out. And yet, the man began to footsie around (as many of my other customers have), and could not tell me why he believed straight Creation could NOT be true, except that he did not believe in God, and that evolution was just 'so accepted'.
Therefore, sir, I am led to believe that evolutionists do not so much have a solid defense for what they believe, but instead have this unquestioning faith in their god-like peers. I was fascinated reading over your blog-comments, because it seems like so many of your commenters took a lot of time to trash any body who disagreed with the way 'everybody believes', and what 'all scientists agree with'. That was all they had to say; "so and so is wrong and she's full of **** and her God is just another god, and I'm just another person following the crowd."
But, isn't it intriguing that some of these studiers of science have the courage to step out from among the throngs of popular belief, and say what they believe? I don't understand why so many people have this HATRED for anybody who doesn't bow down and believe the way they do! If the persons' opinion is so insignifant, then just let her talk! Let her say what she believes! Let her be wrong in your eyes! It takes alot of courage to go against 'what everybody believes and thinks'. At least she has more courage as an individual, than you have as an accepted evolutionist surrounded by the undying support of your unquestioning fans.
Posted by: Andria February 23, 2008 2:14 PM
Written by Yours Truly: Comment # 32
All right, let's try logic, since apparently you all are not used to opposition. Your only answers, as of yet, are 'she is wrong, because we say she is, and 'J' says she is, and my teacher in the third grade says she is'. But who decides 'the eyes of reality'? Are YOU reality? Who gave you that authority?
Perhaps you are not fighting out against Christianity, or me, or Calloway. Perhaps you are fighting against the thought that you might be wrong. Why else would you so vehemently deny anybody else's theories credence? All she fought for was establishing that EVOLUTION is a THEORY. It IS a theory, just as much as Creation is! Both are 'a priori', which means 'by faith'. Are you so scared that children will grow up and know that evolution was based on man, and not God? If Christians (and by the way, Landover Baptist Church is by no means Christianity) are just little bugs of opinions that need to be squashed, then why a dedicated sight to slamming all Christians - like they are some universal hate-force? Whoever is doing this slamming, has clearly never tried to understand Christians.
In my opinion, 'Christianity' is just a word. A word that is sorely mis-used, mis-represented, and hated before understood. What is more important, is how you believe, and you interpret God's word, and how you view life. God is not just an ideal. He IS reality. And even if you may deny it, all you have in the end - is your right to deny it. But it still doesn't make you right.
Written by Yours Truly: Comment #54
Haha, you guys are all ganging up on me. It's great. All right, I am told to understand that 'evolution' is 'highly complicated, and takes years of study, and only the best scientists can truly defend it'. I beg to differ. Sometimes the most complicated things have simple answers. And it's great cause you don't even have to be 3 to understand it!
So, since we are trying to teach our kids evolution in the second grade - when is it that they will be able to understand it? Eh? In the 7th grade perhaps? Or maybe when the graduate from high school? When do all of the complicated pieces fall into a comfortable pattern of circular reasoning so the child can rise and type on a blog - 'my! I have all the answers!'
While I am not going to put on a highly-educated front of 'knowing everything' like some on this site are apt to do, I will say that there is a primary difference between the theory of Evolution and the theory of Creation.
Creation starts with - God.
Evolution starts with - what is it again - a cell? A highly powerful speck of life-potential? RIGHT. We all know the theory. That speck became highly-intelligent human beings with the ability to think and reason and then die peacably - without worry of hell of heaven or any other such nonsense. Evolution tells man that he is responsible to no one, because man came from nothing. And better yet -- Evolution (devised by woman-hater Charles Darwin) has been around a whole 150 years! Wow - this shocks me. Here we've been around billions of years -- and all of our extensive proof and reasoning goes back 150 honkin years. That's huge!
My question for Evolutionists is - where did the speck come from? Who made the speck? I'm sure you're used to this coming from skeptics and other such annoying challengers of your methods (pardons for calling it a faith), but just for the absolute fun of disagreeing for a second - where did the speck come from? How did life come about? Man accepts the ability to breathe and think as naturally as he accepts the sun will shine the next day. And yet - it is not idealistic to wonder if an exhorbent amount of time + a speck = life and intelligence. It is, in fact, realistic to doubt.
I realize I'm barking up a dead tree, and this will only be picked apart by people who determined it was wrong before they read it, but I can't help but wonder whether the simple answer of 'yes, God did it', is more logical than 'chance brought me about, and by a miracle of nothingness, and the highly-thought-out theory of the speck, my complex brain took form and here I am'.
I am not oblivious to you who are staring at your screen, getting your buttons pushed and itching to find my chokable-neck, but why not challenge yourself? Since I'm already making you 'rightly testy' (and no, I don't shy away from a debate), how do you reason that everything so detailed, and so complex in this world - came from nothing? How do you KNOW there is not a God?
If life can come from chance (for that IS what your theory is based on), why can't chance defy death?
Tell me, if you have the answer for life, what is the answer for death?
33 comments:
But it was still amusing, how quickly all of these 'learned, higher-order, unquestioned' evolutionists began hating a little 17 year old for speaking her mind.
'Hating'? No. But irritated by yet another conceited person who reveals a complete lack of knowledge of the topic yet feels they know more than thousands of people who have studied the subject for years.
Richard Simons
A clueless, self-involved, conceited 17 year old who thinks she's the first person to say a bunch of ignorant things to a group of real live scientists and then get called stupid for it.
Shocking.
Where exactly did you post your age in that thread by the way? Or are you intimating that we should have known that you were a clueless kid because Jesus was going to show up and tell us?
"Hating?" No. But you are merely one more dishonest, duplicitous little git in the long, long series of duplicitous little gits who think they're being clever by making up stories.
But now that I know you're just a little puke, I'll be sure and be REALLY gentle with you when you're next conceited enough to run around thinking that you know more about the nature of the world than do people who've been studying it for longer than you've been taking up space on the planet.
Try reading the responses and learning something, several posters responded to your questions and posted more.
Creationism isn't theory. It's a myth. Evolution isn't a belief, it's science based on evidence, it's also a fact.
Steve_C
Sorry darling, your conceit is showing. You're 17-years-old. You haven't grasped the rudiments of logic. You pulled a classic creationist gambit "the atheist friend without proof" and you don't have the guts or skill to actually try and "debate" the issue.
Any time you want to debate, you know where we are. But before you do, coming up with something original. You start here: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html And read all the various claims and answers.
Try not to repeat any of the creationist claims. Most of them are DECADES old and have been so thoroughly trashed that they're not even worth arguing about.
So, do us a favor, show all of us highly educated men and women that you, a 17-year-old person, knows more about the subject than us. It'd be great if you could provide a challenge. There hasn't been a good one in decades. (And Intelligent Design doesn't count, it's just scientific creationism repackaged.)
Just out of curiosity, when do you think life appeared on Earth?
You seem shocked that when you show up at a blog and your first comment is a sarcastic diatribe calling the people there brainwashed know-nothings, some of them do the same thing in return.
I notice you have almost nothing to say about the several commenters who nevertheless responded to you with straightforward, reasonably posed questions about your knowledge of evolutionary theory, as well as offers of resources for you to learn more. Your response there was basically to imply that it's silly for us to expect you to learn any of the details about the theory of evolution before rejecting it and attempting to critique it. And to complain about nasty evolutionists picking on a "little" kid (never mind that you're almost at the legal age of majority and quite old enough to know better).
At this point, you're a typical creationist. I'd like to think you're young enough to learn better. But that will require, at the very least, leaving the sheltered religious environment of your childhood in a year or so, going to a good, non-evangelical college and taking a few biology classes. And then... maybe.
Hmm, you might want to take a gander at www.godisimaginary.com if you want to enter into discussions about God. Maybe you're not ready to ask yourself the big questions, but when you are, know this:
IT IS OKAY NOT TO BELIEVE IN NONSENSE.
I can't emphasise that enough. Whatever your parents, teachers or preachers say, it's ok not to believe without evidence. Good luck on your journey.
Andi,
Sorry you had a rough time in there, but hey: If you'd wanted to be treated like a 17 year old, you should have said something. People would have cut you A LOT more slack. I've seen it many times. So don't go whining about how everyone beat up on "the little 17 year old" as if they knew your age at the time. That's dishonest. Anyway, get over yourself, girl. You're not much younger than I am. If you're going to go onto a scienceblog and talk shіt about something you know nothing about, be prepared to take a few lumps. If you want to be treated with kid gloves, tell'em you're 17 and you're seeking knowledge. It works. A little bit of humility goes a long way. Honest!
Andria:
The folk on that blog reacted because what you brought to the discussion appeared to be a straightforward parroting of other people's words.
If you have an honest skepticism, and truly want to know more about the universe, many folk would be willing to accommodate an honest dialogue. For example, my question below is a sincere one, and I'd be interested in an honest answer.
- Zirrad
Your words:
I have been brought up my entire life believing the Creationistic theory... I am a skeptic by nature,
Then why do you simply believe in the stuff you were brought up with? Isn't the burden of proof on those teachers as well?
You do realize that both your own comments and the responses by the other commenters illustrate perfectly how ludicrous your initial position is, right? I mean, this isn't supposed to be satire, is it? You actually believe this nonsense?
When you jump into a discussion about science with the antithesis of a scientific position, what do you expect- seventeen or otherwise. Hopefully, college will knock the blinders from your eyes so that, perhaps, your intellect will catch up with your arrogance about it.
Hah, if I cared about being trashed at the 'mere age' of 17, I wouldn't have posted it all on my blog. And, yes, I was in way over my head. duh. I'd be the first to tell you that I just happened on the blog and happened to add my two little cents, pitiful as they were. But where is the crime in having a bit of fun, eh? Why is everybody so angry at a little opposition? If I am ignorant, then life will teach it to me soon enough. And, you guys will be interested to notice that I posted several questions to you on the other blog, and I also defended what I believed.
Life began on earth, dear anonymous, after earth was created.
"Why is everybody so angry at a little opposition?"
The anger is there because badly misinformed people are a very serious threat to science education. This is a very, very important issue.
So, when yet another badly misinformed individual wanders in to "add her two little cents" about a serious matter that requires a great deal of study to understand, then the frustration which people feel about the impact of the ignorant on science education is going to boil over and you're going to get whacked.
Oh, and yod didn't answer the question about when life appeared. I'll give you a choice; 3.5 billion years ago or six thousand years ago.
Andria, I have truly enjoyed reading the back and forth on Pharyngula today. Like you, I am not a scientists, merely a lowly assistant librarian in a high school, and I learned a little bit, myself, in that thread. I just wanted to make sure, personally, that in the copious amounts in information being passed out, you took note of the most crucial bit--the theory of evolution is no more opinion nor speculation than the theories of gravity, acoustics, atomics, electromagnetism, et. al. While you or I might use the word "theory" in reference to the weather or who's going to prom with whom, in the scientific realm a "theory" is an explanation for natural phenomenon that has been formulated from the collection data--facts--and which is tested for validity over time. A theory may very well be a fact--gravity is a perfect example. Its tenets may also be tweaked or expanded over time as more and better testing is available. Hence, Darwin's Origin, while the grandaddy of modern evoutionary thought, is far from the final word. Evolution is so far from being a religious worldview(!)...wow. Just...wow. Maybe you really just are not in a place to understand any of this.
Creationism, intelligent design, whatever one wants to call it, on the other hand, is all religious worldview; it is not a theory, can never be a theory, because its premise is 100% untestable and unverifiable. It's the difference between thinking thunder is angels bowling and knowing that's it's the sound of lightening. If you choose to believe in Creationism, that's your deal. But it will never belong in a science curriculum. Humanities, perhaps, along with the dozen-plus other creation stories that exist in cultures all over the world. But seriously. Students should no more be given the "choice" to learn ID in a science class than they should learn how to French manicure in world history.
And speaking of history, one comment of yours made me scratch my head, perhaps you can clarify. You said, I am realizing now...that God could not possibly have brought forth this great nation of America... I'm so curious, because this rhetoric comes up more and more often these days...if God is responsible for the U.S., who, then, is responsible for Iran? China? Darfur?
Final note. "Freedom from God" as you so eloquently put it (because it really is a freedom), doesn't so much eliminate moral absolutes as it recognizes that there are so very few things that are absolute in this world. Even killing, as in a war or in defending one's kids, is sometimes justifiable. I'm just sayin'.
You wrote:
"If I am ignorant, then life will teach it to me soon enough."
Chiquita - wake up. Life just **did** teach it to you. Life in the form of a whole lotta people who know way more about evolution - and religion - than you.
This is Holydust, from Pharyngula.
Honestly, Andi, (that's my best friend's name, ha~) I stand by what I said...
so long as you try to search for the answers yourself, and are open to the probability that you might discover things that are uncomfortable -- even world-wrenching -- I think you'll find yourself better for it.
I don't mean this to translate to:
"you will find the Truth, young Padawan, and you will see we were right." What I mean is exactly what I said in the heat of the debate... I believe you will find whatever beliefs you hold much bolstered by opening your eyes and listening actively to the arguments directed at you.
I'm only 7 years older than you, but I was where you were much later than you are now. And I think it's for that reason that so many "angry athiests" directed their comments at you. I'm sure many of them saw themselves in you, and are merely directing their frustration at the past selves they wish they could turn back the clock on.
So please, no matter what you might be told by your friends, family, and others you encounter, just try your best to keep your eyes open and research the facts. You strike me as a smart person capable of critical thinking. Ask the questions you asked before, but have the courage and the guts to listen for the answers. I'm not saying every athiest will give you the perfect truth, but it doesn't hurt to give both sides a chance.
Nobody's angry. Snide, sure. Bored, mainly. We deal with these issues on a day to basis in our real lives and are simply disappointed when someone who wishes to disagree cannot follow the established rules of rational debate- to wit, answering the criticisms of one's scientific position with scientific data, or even hypothesis, supporting it.
So life began after the earth was created. Which begs the question when was the earth created?
Given your comments I wonder if you've ever stumbled over some cartoons which may open your eyes to some of your beliefs, in particular about 'teaching the controversy' or 'letting the children decide'
[IMG]http://c.myspace.com/Groups/00007/90/73/7253709_l.jpg[/IMG]
From this website http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=2192&pst=712905&archival=&posts=9
Mike Watt
Romans 12:16
1 Corinthians 4:7
Each is translated from the Greek in a variety of ways but the message is clear and the lesson is one to learn.
Now, it's 45 years since I read the Bible but when I did it was with my brain fully engaged - so that I could find that repeated injunction via Google in a couple of minutes.
Each of the scientists you claim to have beaten is fully prepared to be proved wrong in the next second. Do you have such humility?
Dear Andi
I think you attracted a lot of unnecessary aggression. The scientists on pharyngula obviously did not know about your inexperience in debating these issues. Before you go onto these blogs, you should take some time to read up and understand the arguments against creationism.
The other point is that these scientists are, quite understandably, worried about science teaching standards falling vis a vis other countries in the world. The very fact that you, an obviously articulate and intelligent 17 year old, do not know, at your age, the basic facts of biology is a source of worry.
Perhaps the aggressive adversarial approach of the scientists on pharyngula is turning off young people like yourself away from understanding science and scientific methods.
You must be aware that, increasingly, American universities and seats of higher education are educating not Americans, but students from other countries who have received a worthwhile science education. This is an unsatisfactory state of affairs for America, and for the rest of the world.
Start with http://www.talkorigins.org/
Regards
Why is everybody so angry at a little opposition?
We're angry because you post the same old long-disproven stuff that we've seen hundreds of times before. Literally. Surely you didn't think you're the first creationist who comes to Pharyngula and posts a list of talking points, plagiated from Hovind and/or Ham without attribution?
If I am ignorant, then life will teach it to me soon enough.
Yep, right now.
And, you guys will be interested to notice that I posted several questions to you on the other blog, and I also defended what I believed.
I'll get back to that in a few hours. "Your" list is long (if repetitive), and I have other things to do today, too, but it is very easy to answer, so I don't see why I shouldn't just do that.
In the meantime, I copy the following comments from Pharyngula, because I think you'll never read them there:
# 253 by Deepsix:
--------------------
I like how Andria assumes the answer to all of her questions is "God". I prefer purple space monkeys myself.
Andria, your arguments goes something like this:
"I believe god created emotions. We have emotions. Therefore, god exists."
Do you see your error? You can replace "god" with anything, and you'd be just as right (or wrong).
"I believe purple space monkeys created emotions. We have emotions. Therefore, purple space monkeys exist."
Don't be afraid to say, "I don't know the answer". And then, try finding the answer. But, if you can't don't jump to "goddidit".
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# 265 by BB:
------------------
Andria: Your list of questions is very rich, and worthwhile thinking about. Would you mind researching it (or parts) and posting here for each question two answers. Check sources available to you on the web. These answers could differ either by the evidence they cite, or the conclusionds they reach.
Perhaps postpone that until tomorrow, though ...
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# 274 by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood:
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Andria, I've come back late to all this, but let's sum up what we know so far:
(1) You don't answer questions.
You are keen to challenge us, but your refutations don't go on beyond "I KNOW there is a God." That's not good enough for us, I'm afraid. Evidence trumps belief every day of the week.
And pasting rote questions from creationist sites does not impress. Every one of them has been shot down at places like talk.origins. You have been given the links, why don't you go there and learn something?
Now, answer the questions as you have been asked.
(2) You want schools to 'teach the controversy' (I'm paraphrasing.)
The problem is that not only is there no controversy, because the evidence for creationism is so slight, but your method is unsound. It suggests we also teach other science 'controversies' such as geocentrism, the existence of UFOs and the enormous hole at the polar regions where the UFOs fly to.
These are crackpot beliefs, all earnestly held as true by folks at some time or other, but we don't put them into the classroom for good reason.
As I say, evidence trumps faith every day of the week.
(3) It's unwise to debate Christianity with so many ex-Christians.
We know the doctrine and catechism oh so well. And many of us have been liberated by throwing off the yoke of religion.
By becoming atheists we shed our burdens of guilt and shame. Indeed we became better people because we could no longer pray away sin. Rather we had to stop sinning against others because our holy 'get out of jail free' card had been revoked. We have become MORE moral, not less, by leaving the church. And our eyes have been opened to a world new minted and fresh and more wonderful than anything in a bible.
Why don't you come and join us?
(4) Pharyngulans are a bit rough and shouty.
Yeah, but they have taken so much crap from people from people such as yourself that they give back what they have taken. And sometimes shouting is the correct response to stupid and/or obtuse people.
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# 276 by Batch:
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I have a better analogy for life than your car, Andrea. You're probably not going to get it, though.
Think of life as a really complex computer program. Our "designers" will be really bad computer programmers. (In reality, the program would just be really bad at rewriting itself, but the programmers suck so much that the program had might as well be rewriting itself.) They have millions of years to work on this program before it ships, so they can bang on it all they want to. It starts out with just a few simple lines that don't do much, the primordial equivalent of "Hello World". But the bad programmers add a few more words every few years. Every time someone makes a mistake, it causes the program to crash or behave in unwanted ways, and someone else hacks in a line or two to fix it. Every once in a while, someone will make a "bug" that is actually a "feature", and they decide that the program is better with the "feature" because they really didn't know where they were going with this project anyway. A couple of million years later, the program is quite big. It's full of lines that are commented out, and lines that are wrong, and lines that don't do what they're supposed to, but somehow it works, because a bunch of bad programmers, given enough time, will eventually spit out something usable.
Evolution is kind of like that. Except, instead of programmers writing small snippets of bad but logical code, we have chemical reactions which are perfectly logical in and of themselves, and combined with other chemical reactions create more and more complex systems, which work, but have a lot of tiny by-products of years of bug-fixing.
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# 279 by Stephen Wells:
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@253: My favourite version of that one goes:
Christmas presents come from Santa Claus.
Christmas presents exist.
Therefore...
-----------------------
See you soon.
Meanwhile, I post this link again. You know, the one that explains what technical terms such as "fact", "speculation", "hypothesis" and "theory" mean. It has just 8 screens on my laptop, and about half of it consists of whitespace. Please read it.
No Andi, you didn't defend what you believed, you merely continued to believe it whilst refusing to read even any of the evidence opposing your belief.
Needs to be reiterated: creationsm is NOT a SCIENTIFIC theory. There is NO science that backs it up. Therefore it should not be taught in a SCIENCE classroom. No one is particularly going to mind if you teach creationist stories in religious studies, or at church. But not in the science classroom. IF you believe all that you suggest about there being "problems" with current scientific knowledge, then how about you learn some science and point out what they are, contribute to the knowledge?
Remember also that IF we teach "the controversy" then we have to teach ALL the creationist stories: Christian-Jewish-Islamic, Hindu, Shinto, Ancient Greek, Inuit, Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime stories etc. All these stories have EXACTLY the same amount of evidence for them: none, or at least nothing other than a vague "wishful thinking" that things are too complex for us to understand so there must be something/someone else. If we teach creationism in the classroom, are YOU happy for all these conflicting "theories" to be explained, and the evidence against them laid out? You seem to conveniently forget that your particular holy book is not the only supernatural explanation of the origins of earth around.
What do you think?
By the way - one of the best things you can do is go and watch from 1 to 9 the series of videos "...made easy" over at youtube.com/potholer54
these videos neatly in simple terms some up some of the science, how we came to conclusions through the scientific method, and what some of the problems in creationist thinking are. If you ignore the occasional sideswipes at creationists, which of course you may take offence to, and actually focus on the content, then perhaps we can open one little door for you to explore, or at the very least make you realise why people on a blog like pharyngula would have very little time for the sorts of things you post.
Andria, you say you 'debated'. No, you didn't.
In a debate there is an honest attempt to engage with questions. You did not do this. Instead you took offense to the language and turn of phrase employed by some people (and honestly, if you're planning on blogging much - grow much thicker skin...). Try to remember that these people see your 'arguments' every day - literally - and have answered them again and again. It gets a little frustrating to be told for the nth time by an arrogant-but-uneducated so-and-so that they're wrong.
You gave up your right to be treated decently by the commenters the first time you evaded questions and posted an incoherent rant instead. Your behaviour was not that of an honest questioner - you had a point to make, one that you knew would be incendiary, and you set about (trying - unsuccesfully) to make it regardless of what anyone else had to say.
Also, it's a little dishonest making a deal out of the '17 year old girl beaten up by nasty blog commenters' angle, when you never mentioned your age and inexperience in the first place.
Your most honest so far has been in your own blog where you state, "I lost."
Correct.
My, My how dishonest and foolish of you to cut and paste much of your good-by from such a well know liar as Mr. Hovind and other creationist.
It is very sad to see someone insist on remaining ignorant. I do hope you re-think your refusial to actually lear about this subject. Your have been led to a great pool of resources, but only you can make the choice to drink from it.
Evolution is as true as 2+2=4. The argument that other concepts should be taughts is akin to teaching that 2+2=4 or maybe 5. To encourage to instruction of creationisn in biology is to encourage ignorance.
you didn't lose because you were outnumbered. you lost because you don't understand the topic you were "debating." I would love to see you take some time (not hours and hours, maybe 30 minutes) to read some information on the pages you were linked to. what's the harm in educating yourself? most PZ readers have read the bible and studied it. We also read the websites of our "opponents." question everything and learn as much as you can - that's the best life advice i can give. you'll go far!
But where is the crime in having a bit of fun, eh? Why is everybody so angry at a little opposition? If I am ignorant, then life will teach it to me soon enough.
Better that schools teach it to you, they could do it more quickly. Unfortunately you'd prefer the schools waste their time teaching nonsense.
Why is everybody so angry at a little opposition?
You still don't get it, do you? We are not angry. You do not provide any opposition. We are just irritated by your completely unjustified belief that you have the wherewithall to confront us. Cutting and pasting decades old material from Kent Hovind is so passe.
The reaction you got was not helped by your reaction when people patiently explained some of the concepts while others asked questions designed to provoke you to think. You clearly showed you did not bother to read the explanations and you responded to the questions with smart-alec replies.
Richard Simons
Here's your monster comment 220 that is for the most part a plagiate. It's a Gish gallop: a debate tactic that consists of spouting so much nonsense in so little time that the opponent is dumbfounded, not knowing where to begin, and knowing that refuting all of it would take several hours.
So what? It'll be easy.
My dear evolutionists, This has been fun. I believe in one kind of evolutionism.
Two mistakes right there.
First, scientific theories aren't something you believe in or don't believe in. They are testable -- falsifiable (otherwise they wouldn't be scientific) --, and that means that if they are wrong, we can find that out, no matter how sincerely and fervently we or anyone else believes in them. Belief is irrational. Science is not.
Second, scientific theories aren't ideologies. They aren't "-isms". To call them such is dishonest. Or would you call yourself a gravityist?
Micro-evolutionism. But Macro-Evolutionism
There is no difference between "microevolution" and "macroevolution". Biologists invented these terms in the early 20th century when evolution wasn't well understood yet. It has since turned out that the terms are useless. Let mutation, selection and drift (if you don't know what exactly these terms mean, ask me or ask Google) go on for long enough, and you'll see "macroevolution" no matter how you define it. That's because there's simply nothing to prevent it from happening.
continues to have nothing but circular reasoning behind it.
So? Explain, if you can.
I realize, though, that this is a dead-end where debate is concerned, because none of you will change, and I will not change.
Wrong. We are talking about science, not about religion. We, and you, will go wherever the evidence leads us, and we -- like you -- will immediately change our minds when our opinions are disproven. This is of crucial importance for science. If we are wrong, we can find out that we are wrong. That's the big advantage of science over any other so-called "way of knowing".
"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."
-- Thomas Henry Huxley. Called "Darwin's Bulldog" because he defended On the Origin of Species with more fervor than the ever-cautious, ever-polite Darwin did.
Here I thought I was just randomly posting a query to someone else's opinion on a random blog!
Hundreds like you have come before you. Pharyngula has been among the most widely read blogs in its field for years. Hundreds of creationist drive-by trolls have posted the ever-same talking points, believing they had made an original point.
It's not your fault you didn't know this situtation, but I think you could have easily imagined it.
And it seems I have become the only defender of faith, God, and a divine Creation.
"Defender of God"? Isn't that, like, blasphemy or something? Are you saying God can't defend himself?
Also, you have never answered the question of why you confuse Christianity and creationism. The two are not the same.
I will however give a couple of parting thoughts, because while no one can win at this, what is there to lose in at least saying what you believe anyway?
Your beliefs might be either disproven or shown to be untestable and therefore outside science. That's what.
(Which is apparently what you are doing, and I will continue to do throughout my life).
We don't believe. We test hypotheses.
The only proof of Creation is in the objects of Creation.
All of which can also be explained in other ways -- so they aren't proof. No surprise there. Outside of math and formal logic, nothing can ever be proven.
That's the point of the "flying space monkey" and "Santa Claus" comments I forwarded.
I love examples, so I'm going to use a nice simple example for you guys. Our example lies in the beautiful example of a car (you've probably heard this before). Take your pick which kind of car you'd like to imagine. Okay, even such a normal thing as a car, could not exist, without a creator.
See, that's where the analogy already breaks down. Cars don't reproduce. They don't even grow. Try again.
Evolution is something that happens to populations, not to individuals. It requires reproduction with imperfect inheritance. That means that living beings (including viruses) evolve, languages evolve, and evolution can be simulated in computers, but that basically is it. Oh, universes might evolve, too, but that's very difficult to test and probably not the simplest explanation for the observations it's supposed to explain. (Therefore it's not a very popular hypothesis at the moment.)
Normal plausibility tells us, that things prone to disorder do not HAPPEN upon order. Shake things up in a blender, and you're not going to come up with anything but a shake.
You overlook that order is sometimes the energetically preferred state of affairs. Water vapor is disorder -- liquid water is partial order -- ice is order. That's because of electrostatics: water molecules have a positive and a negative pole, so that they stick to each other in a certain pattern. Destroying that pattern requires energy. Or take the paranut effect. Take random solid objects, put them in some container, and shake that container. If you shake long enough and then open the container, you'll find that the biggest objects are on top and the smallest at the bottom. That's because the shaking creates spaces between the objects -- the small ones can fall through, the big ones can't. Or take well-shaken sandy and muddy water and let it settle. Regular layers will settle on the bottom: the biggest grains will fall out first, so the bottom layer will be coarse sand, and the finest grains will fall out last, so the top layer will be fine clay. Geologists call this a fining-upwards sequence. I've seen several on top of each other in a 10-million-year-old nearshore seafloor in northwestern Austria: every time a storm came, it stirred the water at the shore where it stirred up sand and silt, the water spread offshore to the point where I was, and then the coarsest grains fell to the bottom, then the next coarsest grains, and so on. Coarse sand grading into middle sand grading into fine sand, coarse silt, middle silt, fine silt, coarse clay, middle clay, fine clay. Then the fine clay continues upwards till the next storm layer, which again begins suddenly with coarse sand.
In answer to those of you who demand proof of God - I offer you the very breath you use to speak out against God. Who gave it to you?
This has already been answered on the Pharyngula thread.
Let's put it this way: Those babies who didn't have the reflex to start breathing when they were born have already died, so that nobody has inherited the lack of this reflex, so the trait has disappeared from the population. That's called natural selection.
Don't you even know that most Christians today believe that God's existence cannot be proven? That God is above the understanding of puny humans?
In Austria, all schoolchildren who at least nominally belong to one of the largest local religions get religious instruction in school. My Catholic RI teacher told me that a God who could be proven would be poor! The idea is that 1) God is simply greater than that, greater than a puny human brain; 2) if God were proven, there would be no free will anymore, but God wants us to have free will, so he refuses being provable.
I should also mention what might be the most important point here: Atheists aren't dystheists. Dystheists like Dr. Behe believe that God exists and is evil. They can "speak out against God". Atheists believe that God does not exist. Logically, they cannot speak out for or against God. They speak out against the -- in their eyes delusional -- belief in any deities. Can you speak out against Ea, the Sumerian water god who sent the worldwide flood that only Utnapishtim and his family survived in their ark? No, because you believe he's a fairytale in the first place.
You think I'm going to offer you a proverbial offering of fire like that of Elijah?
Huh?
You think I'm going to say that Leviticus is what all good Christians base their lives around (which, btw to be 'technical', the Old Testament way of sacrificing animals was [...]
Blah, blah, blah. No, the vast, vast majority of atheists are ex-Christians. Everyone knows Leviticus isn't the whole Bible. Everyone knows, for example, the New Testament and what it says.
The only proof in God is when you know him personally.
Do you?
And yes, (thank you for pointing this out) by know, I do mean believe.
Then you should say "believe" rather than "know". By doing so, you would also no longer conceal the fact that a belief cannot be a proof.
Often, as you well know in your own studies, for even the most objective scientist, their bias sneaks into their hypothesis and they will present their beliefs as 'fact'.
See? You didn't follow my link, so you still don't know what "fact" even means. Go read it, and then come back. It's just about 12 lines of text.
"Even the most objective scientist" will occasionally overlook evidence and therefore present a hypothesis that is already disproven, or (more commonly) will overlook an alternative hypothesis and will therefore present their own as the only one that can so far explain the facts when that is not the case. No scientist will ever present a hypothesis as a fact, because hypotheses explain facts. They cannot become facts.
What did Creation and God ever do to you?
Why did Napoleon cross the Mississippi?
Lastly, many of you complained that you wanted me to answer your dozens of specific questions concerning Evolution.
"Specific"! Hah! We were asking you the very basics!
I'm not going to pansy around and pretend I have all the answers. I don't. And you do?
We understand the very basics, yes. We understand what on Earth we are talking about.
But since I have been demanded answers for my beliefs, I have a few questions of my own.
How logical.
And no, they are not original with me (so if you pick them apart, you're picking apart someone else).
So what? Whether something is wrong doesn't depend on who came up with it.
1. Where did the space for the universe come from?
Why did Napoleon cross the Mississippi?
This is yet another wrong question. There is no such thing as "space for the universe". The universe is space, with energy and matter in it.
2. Where did matter come from?
Matter is a form of energy. When you inject energy into a vacuum, you create elementary particles. This is inevitable according to quantum physics, and indeed it is observed. Heating a lightbulb creates photons (particles of light), for example.
Energy... in sum, the universe apparently contains zero energy, because the sum of all energy (including matter) is equal to the sum of all gravity.
3. Where did the laws of the universe come from (gravity, inertia, etc.)?
We don't know. But we're working on it. Spend a few hours in Wikipedia, and you will get a glimpse into this active field of research.
4. How did matter get so perfectly organized?
What do you mean?
5. Where did the energy come from to do all the organizing?
See above.
6. When, where, why, and how did life come from non-living matter?
When? Between 4.4 and 3.85 billion years ago. Where? Somewhere in liquid water, probably on Earth. Why? Because it could happen. Everything that can happen happens sooner or later.
The numbers I got from a paper (which I think I can send you) that showed the Earth already had a crust and an ocean 4.4 billion years ago, and from another (which I don't have, but which is cited in textbooks) that found chemical evidence for life in 3.85-billion-year-old layers. If you don't know how radiometric dating works, just look it up on Wikipedia, it has a good article on that.
7. When, where, why, and how did life learn to reproduce itself?
"Learn"? That's again a wrong question. If you leave nucleic acids alone under certain conditions, they will get copied, because of nothing else than temperature and electrostatics.
8. With what did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce?
It didn't reproduce sexually. It reproduced asexually. And then its offspring started mating occasionally.
Man, that was easy. Did you really believe that the ability to reproduce sexually automatically makes asexual reproduction impossible? Sorry -- did you even read what you copied from Hovind?!?
9. Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival?
"Want" simply doesn't enter into the question.
(Does the individual have a drive to survive, or the species? How do you explain this?)
It's simple: those who haven't had enough surviving offspring have already died out, and their lack of fertility and/or protection and/or nourishment for the young with them. Natural selection. We are the descendants of those that had enough surviving offspring. It really is that simple.
10. How can mutations (recombining of the genetic code)
This doesn't mean anything. Whoever wrote it doesn't know what a mutation or the genetic code are.
create any new, improved varieties? (Recombining English letters will never produce Chinese books.)
Is that supposed to be a comparison?
Any mutation creates something new. If it manages to change the amino acid in the resulting protein (about 1 in 3 mutations does that), and if this doesn't change an amino acid into a chemically very similar one, then something new will happen to the organism.
What "improved" means depends on the circumstances. The most famous example is sickle cell anemia. If you have two copies of the mutated gene, you die from sickle cell anemia. If you have one copy, you suffer from things like shortness of breath. Bad, no? Not in the region in West Africa where sickle cell anemia is widespread. It just so happens that the malaria parasite cannot enter the deformed red blood cells that result from the mutated gene. So, over there, those who have two copies of the mutated gene die from sickle cell anemia -- and those who have two normal copies die from malaria. Those who have one copy of the mutated and one of the normal version survive.
Or take vitamin C. Normally, vertebrates can make vitamin C. Apes (such as us) and guinea pigs have lost this ability: one of the genes for an enzyme in the chemical pathway has acquired a mutation that disables it. Bad, no? No, because we get enough vitamin C from our food. Not needing to produce all those enzymes, which would require energy, is an advantage: we can invest this energy in growth or reproduction.
(Incidentally, humans and chimps at least have exactly the same mutation in that gene. Why could that be? Guinea pigs have another.)
11. Is it possible that similarities in design between different animals prove a common Creator instead of a common ancestor?
By "prove", you don't mean "prove", you mean "are evidence for". Similarities alone are compatible with both ideas, so we'll have to look for something else.
So let me present the fact that the similarities have a pattern. A tree-shaped pattern. Why are there intermediates between "reptiles" and mammals, but none between mammals and insects? If there were intermediates between everything and everything, the theory of evolution would be in trouble. (I told you it's falsifiable.) The speculation of creation, on the other hand, is compatible with all imaginable scenarios. It can "explain" everything and nothing. If it were wrong, we could never find that out by disproving it. Therefore it is not science.
Simple, isn't it?
12. Natural selection only works with the genetic information available
Yes, but don't forget that the available information changes all the time -- mutation.
and tends only to keep a species stable.
This depends on the enviroment. When the environment is stable and the species (or, rather, population) is well adapted to it, we see stabilizing selection. When the environment changes, a few individuals have traits that fit the new environment better than the majority of the population, and then we see directional selection. By "see" I mean it has been observed in the field; check out e. g. the studies by the Grants on the Darwin finches.
How would you explain the increasing complexity in the genetic code that must have occurred if evolution were true?
Increasing complexity? No, increasing diversity of complexity. Sometimes, being complex is an advantage, so it's selected for. Sometimes, it's a disadvantage, so it's selected against. There is no overarching trend in evolution. It really is just mutation, selection, and drift -- or at least these three factors are enough to explain everything we observe.
13. When, where, why, and how did:
Single-celled plants become multi-celled?
Several times independently: red algae once, green algae twice. (Yellow and brown algae once more each, but they aren't actually plants -- they have red algae inside their cells.) The fossil record of marine plants isn't good, but the oldest known remains of multicellular red algae were 2.1 billion years old last time I read something on the topic.
Where: Somewhere in the sea.
Why: Because cooperation sometimes has net advantages.
(Where are the two and three-celled intermediates?)
Learn about colonial green algae, will you? Google Micraster and Volvox, for instance. Also, what about cell chains that are so common among fungi and green algae?
Really, isn't that taught in biology lessons in the USA?
Single-celled animals evolve?
At least 1.3 billion years ago, probably.
Where: Somewhere in the sea, probably on the floor.
Why: Because filter-feeding sometimes is the easiest way to get food. Compare choanoflagellates and sponges.
Fish change to amphibians?
Not directly. Limbs evolved from fins sometime between 380 and 390 million years ago, probably in a vegetation-rich body of water, perhaps an estuarine swamp. Amphibians ( = everything more closely related to the frogs, salamanders and caecilians than to us) evolved from other limbed vertebrates sometime around 350 million years ago, most likely in a possibly coastal swamp; this has no "why", it's simply a split.
Amphibians change to reptiles?
Never. The closest relatives of the amniotes (mammals, "reptiles", and birds) are not the amphibians, but the diadectomorphs; amphibians and amniotes have a common ancestor that lived sometime around 350 million years ago (see above). By definition, the origin of Amniota is the divergence between the mammal branch (Theropsida) and the bird branch (Sauropsida -- turtles, lizards and crocodiles are on the bird branch); this probably happened sometime between 315 and 335 million years ago, on land. Sorry for not being more precise -- I can't be, because the fossil record consists mostly of holes, and because the formation of Pangea had progressed pretty far at that time.
Reptiles change to birds? (The lungs, bones, eyes, reproductive organs, heart, method of locomotion, body covering, etc., are all very different!)
Congratulations! I am a paleontologist, my specialty are... drum roll... dinosaurs! The "where" of all this questions is easy: on Pangea. The "when" and the "why" are different for each.
Bird lungs are shared by at least one of the two dinosaur branches, as well as by the pterosaurs. So let's say 240 million years ago, for greater endurance. Many of today's "reptiles" have lungs that approach a crude version of bird lungs to various degrees; imagining how the bird-style lungs evolved is very easy. Unfortunately the only good description I've seen is in a very technical book, and it relies heavily on illustrations, so I can't reproduce that here. (I don't even have the book here with me in the first place.)
How do we know? Because bird-style lungs usually leave traces on and in bones: first the vertebrae in the shoulder region, then all neck and trunk vertebrae and ribs, then the sacral vertebrae, then the tail vertebrae (sometimes), then the wishbone, breastbone, and hip bones, then the upper arms and thighs, and so on. This we find in the fossil record in this order.
The eyes? The eyes aren't different. Birds have ordinary vertebrate eyes -- more normal ones than most mammals, in fact. What is your source talking about?
By the reproductive organs I suppose you mean the fact that in most birds only the right ovary is functional and that they lay one egg per functional ovary at once? Oviraptorosaurs, dromaeosaurids and troodontids (close relatives of birds) laid their eggs pairwise: one egg per functional ovary, like in birds. We've found their nests, complete with brooding parent on top and baby skeletons inside. Other dinosaurs, like crocodiles, laid eggs en masse.
The shift to a single egg per functional ovary must have happened between 230 and 170 million years ago (fossil nests are rare), on Pangea, as a shift from r-strategy (lots of cheap offspring, of which a few will survive simply because they're so many) towards K-strategy (heavy investment in a few offspring that get a good start into life and will therefore more likely survive). The shift to a single egg per ovary must have happened between 170 and 70 million years ago, probably at the later end of this span, anywhere on land (birds can after all fly), probably for the same reason. (K-strategy and r-strategy are extremes of a very broad spectrum.) It may also have been an advantage for flying (two ovaries are probably heavier than one).
The hearts of birds and crocodiles are almost identical. This type of heart (4-chambered) differs from that found in lizards (3-chambered with varying degrees of separation of the left & right halves of the main chamber) only in degree. The 4-chambered heart must have evolved about 260 million years ago, on Pangea, and has the advantage of giving greater endurance.
"Method of locomotion" means "flight", I suppose? How flight evolved is an active field of research, but a few things are clear. For example, feathers and probably wings were already present; it is also logical that wings had evolved for something else (like sexual selection or brooding) before they were first used for flight. Around 180 to 160 million years ago, on Pangea. The advantages of flight are self-evident.
Feathers are scales that are lengthened, split down the middle of the underside, and in most cases opened. The first bristle-like feathers must have appeared between 170 and maybe 200 million years ago (they don't fossilize normally) and had advantages like insulation, but may have first appeared as something that sexual selection acted on.
14. How did the intermediate forms live?
Between what? In most cases it's self-evident how intermediate forms lived. Be more precise.
15. When, where, why, how, and from what did:
Whales evolve?
About 55 million years ago, from chevrotain-like even-toed ungulates. (So did the hippos, the whales' closest living relatives.) Probably on the shores of the Tethys ocean, maybe in Pakistan. How? Here you are asking for a treatise because we are have discovered a whole tree of intermediate forms in the last 20 years!!! Spend a few hours in Google. Why? Because they had no competition in the sea -- the mosasaurs had died out 10 million years earlier.
Sea horses evolve?
No idea. I'm not an ichthyologist.
Bats evolve?
Also about 55 million years ago. Their closest identified relatives are the odd-toed ungulates plus the carnivorans plus the pangolins (together called Zooamata). The last common ancestor of all these animals must have looked like a shrew. The bat branch took to the trees and perhaps started gliding and using its arms to grasp insects... the fossil record is poor here. Only two weeks ago it was found out that flight appeared before echolocation in bats. The advantages of flight to a tree-living insectivore are obvious.
Eyes evolve?
Whose eyes? Eyes evolved several times independently from light-sensitive cells. (Those cells, however, are very old.)
Ears evolve?
Whose ears? A cricket's?
Hair, skin, feathers, scales, nails, claws, etc., evolve?
Skin is, basically, simply the outer -- or upper -- cell layer of a two-layered animal.
Feathers -- see above. Hair, feathers, scales, and claws including nails are all just outgrowths of the skin. You'll be surprised to learn that the same gene, called Sonic hedgehog (no joke), is involved in all outgrowths from animal body walls, all the above as well as teeth, taste buds, and limbs.
Which evolved first (how, and how long; did it work without the others)?
The digestive system, the food to be digested
The food came first. Not all organisms even eat other organisms, you understand.
the appetite
Very late.
the ability to find and eat the food
When you swim in a watery solution of your food, and when the food diffuses through your cell membrane, you don't have this problem.
the digestive juices
See above.
or the body's resistance to its own digestive juice (stomach, intestines, etc.)?
Must have evolved in tandem with the digestive enzymes and the acid production. Step by step.
The drive to reproduce or the ability to reproduce?
Cell division comes automatically.
The lungs, the mucus lining to protect them, the throat
The throat. Lungs are just an outgrowth of the esophagus. The mucus came last, because when you live in water, you don't dry out.
or the perfect mixture of gases to be breathed into the lungs?
"Perfect mixture" is ridiculous. We have adapted to the mixture that is there.
Of course, oxygen was dumped into the air long before lungs evolved.
DNA or RNA to carry the DNA message to cell parts?
RNA. Pretty obviously. Go read Wikipedia.
The termite or the flagella[te!] in its intestines that actually digest the cellulose?
First the "flagellates" which were originally free-living. I bet lots of such free-living organisms still exist.
The termites originally ate rotting wood where the cellulose was already mostly decomposed. One of the two branches of the termite family tree still does just that.
The plants or the insects that live on and pollinate the plants?
The plants. Ever heard of wind pollination? I mean, please!
The bones, ligaments, tendons, blood supply, or muscles to move the bones?
Never noticed that animals without bones have muscles, too? If you're small enough, you can have one without the other.
The nervous system, repair system, or hormone system?
Hormones first, nerves later. There is no such thing as a "repair system". You know, Hovind likes making stuff up.
The immune system or the need for it?
The need for it -- but gradually, like the immune system. It's an arms race.
16. There are many thousands of examples of symbiosis that defy an evolutionary explanation.
Provide one if you can. Hint: you can't.
17. How would evolution explain mimicry? Did the plants and animals develop mimicry by chance, by their intelligent choice, or by design?
By mutation and selection. Mutation is random, selection is not -- those who look most similar to what they're imitating are eaten the least often. Simple. Really simple.
18. When, where, why, and how did man evolve feelings?
Man didn't. They're all much older.
Love, mercy, guilt, etc. would never evolve in the theory of evolution.
Wrong. Look up "kin selection" and "reciprocal altruism". It's all quite obvious, really.
19. *How did photosynthesis evolve?
AsteriscMost of the intermediates are still alive. The form most widespread today, which uses water as the hydrogen source, is the chemically most difficult one and came last. The precursor uses hydrogen sulfide instead, which is much safer; bacteria that use it are widespread in oxygen-poor or -free and sulfur-rich layers of seashores today. A yet older method is to directly use hydrogen. That's easiest. This, too, still exists today.
20. *How did thought evolve?
We're working on it.
21. *How did flowering plants evolve, and from that?
That's a very active field of research. The "how" is pretty obvious: more and more protection layers accumulated around the seed. What their closest relatives are is unclear: either bennettites or cycads or pentoxylopsids or glossopterids or gigantopterids or gnetaleans or all of the above plus conifers. Come back in 10 years, and I'll probably be able to tell you.
22. *What kind of evolutionist are you? Why are you not one of the other eight or ten kinds?
Tell me about those "kinds". I don't know what you're talking about.
23. What would you have said fifty years ago if I told you I had a living coelacanth in my aquarium?
"Really? That I wanna see."
Except what you mean isn't 50 but 70 years ago. This happens when creationists copy from each other over 20 years. The first Latimeria chalumnae was discovered in 1938.
24. *Is there one clear prediction of macroevolution that has proved true?
See above on the lack of a difference between "micro-" and "macroevolution". Also see above for the treelike pattern of similarities among organisms. Also see above for how science works: you should ask "is there one clear prediction of the theory of evolution that has proven wrong, and is there one clear prediction of the speculation of creationism that has proven wrong?"
25. *What is so scientific about the idea of hydrogen as becoming human?
Huh?
26. *Do you honestly believe that everything came from nothing?
"Believe" doesn't enter into the question. It currently looks like everything came either from nothing or from nothing-with-quantum-physics-in-it (which is a more realistic state of affairs than "nothing" can be); I don't know of any evidence against this, so I have to accept this hypothesis for the time being.
After you have answered the preceding questions, please look carefully at your answers and thoughtfully consider the following questions.
1. Are you sure your answers are reasonable, right, and scientifically provable, or do you just believe that it may have happened the way you have answered? (Do these answers reflect your religion or your science?)
I am sure they are reasonable. I am not absolutely sure they are all absolutely right -- science isn't finished yet! I am, however, certain that all reflect the best of my knowledge of the evidence.
There is no such thing as "scientifically provable". Is not understanding science a prerequisite for being a creationist, or what? (On second thought, it probably is.)
My religion? I'm an apathetic agnostic, I have no such thing as a religion.
2. Do your answers show more or less faith than the person who says, "God must have designed it"?
They show a complete lack of faith. It's all "show me the evidence, show me, show me, show me". Compare the story of St Thomas. :-)
3. Is it possible that an unseen Creator designed this universe?
It's certainly possible, but it's neither testable nor a necessary hypothesis to explain anything. Thus, it is a completely useless assumption, at least for now.
4. Is it wise and fair to present the theory of evolution to students as fact?
No. It is wise and fair to present evolution as an observed fact, because that's what it is, and to present the theory of evolution by mutation, selection and drift as the only testable explanation that people have so far come up with.
5. What is the end result of a belief in evolution (lifestyle, society, attitude about others, eternal destiny, etc.)?
There is no such thing as "belief in evolution" in the first place. The evidence is clear -- it doesn't go away if we stop believing in it.
But even if, what end result should there be? I can't think of one.
6. Do people accept evolution because of the following factors?
- It is all they have been taught.
That's certainly the case for some people, but not for scientists. Scientists follow the evidence where it leads.
- They like the freedom from God (no moral absolutes, etc.).
Does not follow. What are you talking about? Has it ever entered your mind that not all Christians are creationists (for the fifth time now)?
- They are bound to support the theory for fear of losing their job or status or grade point average.
Ridiculous! If you can overturn a widely accepted theory, you get the Nobel Prize. In this case the one for Physiology Or Medicine. The more revolutionary your results*, the greater your fame.
* I didn't say "beliefs". I didn't even say "opinions". I said "results". Research results.
- They are too proud to admit they are wrong.
People for whom this is true shouldn't go into science. And indeed, very few of them do. Among creationists, on the other hand... ouch.
- Evolution is the only philosophy
BZZZT! Wrong. The theory of evolution is science, not philosophy. The difference should be clear by now.
that can be used to justify their political agenda.
Various distortions of the theory of evolution have been used to "justify" any political ideology, except theocracy. Various forms of any religion have been used to "justify" any political ideology, no exceptions this time.
7. Should we continue to use outdated, disproved, questionable, or inconclusive evidences to support the theory of evolution because we don't have a suitable substitute (Piltdown man, recapitulation, archaeopteryx, Lucy, Java man, Neanderthal man, horse evolution, vestigial organs, etc.)?
Why exactly did Napoleon cross the Mississippi?
Please. Nobody has used the Piltdown forgery as evidence for anything in biology ever since it was discovered to be a hoax (by paleoanthropologists who noticed it didn't really fit into the human family tree). Every biologist, as far as I can tell, knows that Haeckel's "law" of recapitulation is a drastic oversimplification (ontogeny evolves, too -- the Pharyngula stages of mammals, birds and frogs are very, very similar, but their blastula stages are very different, for example, because of the different amounts of yolk they carry). Nothing is wrong about Archaeopteryx -- Sir Fred Hoyle's claim of forgery were easily and quickly disproven, and several new specimens of Archie have been discovered in the decades since, not to mention lots of other ancient birds and near-birds. Nothing is wrong about Lucy, Java Man, or the Neandertalers -- if you think otherwise, please explain. Horse evolution is very well documented: it's not a pole, as it was illustrated in the 19th century and unfortunately in general textbooks till much later, but a tree. Google for it. And what's up with vestigial organs?
8. Should parents be allowed to require that evolution not be taught as fact in their school system unless equal time is given to other theories of origins (like divine creation)?
Note the misuse of "theories".
Firstly, "equal time" is a bit silly. Some ideas require more time for explanation than others. Creationism is just "goddidit" -- evolution is more complicated than that. Secondly, did you follow this link? Its point is that Christianity is not the only religion with a creation myth. You'd have to teach literally hundreds of such stories. That would easily fill up an entire school year, and I don't just mean the biology classes. Thirdly, we are talking about the USA. According to the big-C Constitution, you are allowed to teach either all religious ideas of creation or none. Given the aforementioned time constraints, it's much easier to teach none of them and to teach science instead.
9. What are you risking if you are wrong?
Nothing, why?
As one of my debate opponents said, "Either there is a God or there is not. Both possibilities are frightening."
And therefore neither of them can be true, or what?
But did you notice? Hovind or whoever changed the topic here: from evolution to religion.
10. Why are many evolutionists afraid of the idea of creationism being presented in public schools?
We aren't. We are afraid of evolution not being sufficiently presented in public schools -- plus all the problems mentioned above, such as the Constitution.
If we are not supposed to teach religion in schools, then why not get evolution out of the textbooks? It is just a religious worldview.
Wrong, see above.
11. Aren't you tired of faith in a system that cannot be true?
Faith doesn't even enter the question here, and "cannot be true" is something you will have to demonstrate. Good luck.
Wouldn't it be great to know the God who made you, and to accept His love and forgiveness?
Once again a change of topic from evolution to religion...
Sure, it would be great, if he exists in the first place. That remains to be demonstrated. Many Christians, never mind believers of other religions, agree that it can't be.
Most of them aren't angry at the opposition, they're angry that you didn't read the links they sent you. Seriously. Check out TalkOrigins.org and bring your quibbles back to pharyngula. I know absolutely nothing abotu biology and the site is lucid enough that I can understand it, if you still have questions AFTER reading it, the science geeks will be happy to help.
Andi- anonymous is asking whether you think life started about 6,000 years ago, or 3 billion or suchlike. If you are a YEC, that makes some lines of argument clear. If you are an OEC, that opens different lines. There are certain patterns to Creationist/ science interactions that become clear after a while.
Good on you, Andi, for letting all those comments through. An open but critical mind will take you far. You're bright, you can write, and your education has only just begun. Just remember: the fact that evolutionary theory does not require God does not mean that it necessarily denies or excludes the possibility of God. As a matter of fact, it makes no attempt whatsoever to address the question of God, or even of the origin of life. Belief to the contrary is one of the many, many lies that creationists promote against Darwin and the theory that has grown out of his seminal work.
On that subject, I'm going to paste part of a comment left over on Pharyngula by a guy named Dave, which itself was a response to one of your comments. You might find it interesting:
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Andria: "My question for Evolutionists is - where did the speck come from? Who made the speck?... It is, in fact, realistic to doubt."
Of course the good Darwinist answer is "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one." From the second edition of On the Origin of Species onwards. And Charles did indeed doubt, thinking the question of the existence of God was beyond his abilities, but never withdrew that statement. Evolution theory may eventually shine light on how that speck arose, but in the meantime evolution stands as the scientific explanation of diversity of life regardless of how life originated.
Now, where were we? The origin of the universe, matter, space, or life: not part of evolution.
"I believe in microevolution but not macroevolution": See Carl Zimmer's book, "Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs," And consider whether it makes sense to say that erosion can cause gullies in fields but not river valleys.
Most of the other questions: We're on it, see standard literature on evolution.
As for the irritation of science bloggers, consider how you'd feel after 10 or 20 years of people saying, "Christians--you're the ones who worship donkeys on sticks! Whyever would you believe in that nonsense?"
Hi! I failed to answer the question on the origin of seahorses. On the Pharyngula thread, windy provided this in comment 336:
A seahorse is just an upright pipefish with a fancier brood pouch but a more boring sex life.
I have nothing to add. :-)
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A theory may very well be a fact--gravity is a perfect example.
Well. Gravity (that all matter attracts all other matter) is a fact, and the theory of gravity (...or rather the theory of relativity...) is the theory that tries to explain this fact. Same with evolution: that allele frequencies in populations change over time is a fact, and the theory of evolution by mutation, selection and drift tries to explain this. (Very successfully.)
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And, yes, please do answer the question on what you think the age of the Earth is. The point of this question is that knowing the answer will help us not to waste everyone's time convincing you of things of which you are already convinced or fussing around about details without noticing we aren't even arguing from the same premises.
Incidentally, a comment by a physicist on a recent Pharyngula thread gave the following explanation of what the Big Bang theory means:
All that physicists really agree on is that at the big bang, the universe became similar enough to the way we understand it for the concept of time to make sense.
That's the best one I've come across so far.
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