A Debate of Evolutionism vs. Creationism

latios315 said:
I think you're confusing being 100% sure and making an assumption, scientists make assumptions if something is highly likely to be true however this should not equate to 100% certainty
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No, I'm not. I am 100% sure that hydrogen bonding exists. This has not been logically proven, so by the standpoint of an old philosopher one could not be 100% certain. However, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that hydrogen bonding exists. I am absolutely 100% certain that it exists, there is not a single doubt in my mind. And that's because pure logic has been rightfully thrown to the dogs.
 
hydrogen bonds can be observed to exist whereas no such observations can be made about the (non)existence of a god so I don't quite get the comparison
 
I'm sorry, how can hydrogen bonds be observed to exist? Can you look at them in a microscope?
 
More people should seriously consider the merits of solipsism as a philosophy. After all, no one can prove it isn't tr... Wait a second. Why am I talking to you philosophical zombies anyway?
 
Quite right, Surgo. And there are much more mundane things which, we being trapped in our own fallible heads, are not 100% certain, outside of scientific theories about truth and knowledge. Things as mundane as tables might actually be figments of my imagination, hallucinated conveniently and never physically there. I never know 100% that they do exist, but I have a multitude of theories, based on observation, that lead me to conclude in certainty that the tables I see and interact with do exist.

We believe evolution exists for similar reasons, it is an extensive working theory, just like the theory of tables. It provides us with oodles of predictive power. Creationism and gods provide us with no predictive power, and aren't based on any consistent real-world observations that are not better explained in naturalistic terms. I feel as confident saying I am 100% certain that this-or-that god does not exist as I feel saying that this-or-that (apparently real) table isn't imaginary.
 
i'm interested in hearing the reason for why obi and surgo are 100% (99.99999999%) sure that the christian God does not exist. :D i'm sort of a skeptic, and would like to read what you guys have to say. :)
 
tea_and_blues said:
Quite right, Surgo. And there are much more mundane things which, we being trapped in our own fallible heads, are not 100% certain, outside of scientific theories about truth and knowledge. Things as mundane as tables might actually be figments of my imagination, hallucinated conveniently and never physically there. I never know 100% that they do exist, but I have a multitude of theories, based on observation, that lead me to conclude in certainty that the tables I see and interact with do exist.
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although you cannot know with 100% certainty that tables do exist you can know with 100% that if you are sane that tables exist, because the only way tables could not exist despite your percieved observations of and interactions with them would be if your perceptions of reality were so far off of actual reality that you would be insane. thus you can say with 100% certainty that if you are sane then tables exist, and then you might as well say that you are 100% certain that tables exist because if you are insane it doesn't matter.

this cannot however be applied to the (non)existence of a god because there exists no observable evidence that god exists or does not exist
 
latios315 said:
Being 100% certain that particular god does not exist is just as foolish as being 100% certain that it does exist.

There is no definitive proof that the god of Christianity exists or does not exist so the best you can do is make a reasonable assumption based on the evidence available, 100% certainty either way is pure folly.
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I can most definitely can be certain. If a concept is properly defined, it is usually possible to determine whether it is 'real'. God in Christianity has several attributes given to it, and if I can prove that those attributes are contradictory, then God does not exist. You could then change those attributes so they cease to be contradictory, but then you're talking about a different entity entirely (and in exchanges in which that occurs, I usually end up wondering whether the concept fits under even the broadest interpretation of Christianity, or whether it ought to be called a "god").
 
stormtrooper said:
neither can be proven
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This is pretty much the only real answer. No matter how much evidence you find of evolution, it's only evidence, you can't witness the actual process in action. All you can do is extrapolate from the information you're given, and while there certainly is plenty of factual evidence that supports evolution, it can't be truly confirmed. There may be a stronger case for evolutionism than creationism, but it's not fact, and I doubt it ever will be.

Not only that, but this is a debate among forumers who are relying on whatever they've found on the internet or learned in school as evidence, not people who know exactly what they're talking about, so it's not like anything decided in this argument will be accurate either.
 
No matter how much evidence you find of evolution, it's only evidence, you can't witness the actual process in action.
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So no matter how much evidence we find for the theory of gravity (eg, things falling), it's only evidence?

I'm surprised you seem to think no-one has witnessed evolution 'in action'. Researchers have seen all sorts of evolutionary processes in experiments, evolution is an incredibly studiously documented and observed process compared to many other processes that we take for granted.

although you cannot know with 100% certainty that tables do exist you can know with 100% that if you are sane that tables exist, because the only way tables could not exist despite your percieved observations of and interactions with them would be if your perceptions of reality were so far off of actual reality that you would be insane. thus you can say with 100% certainty that if you are sane then tables exist, and then you might as well say that you are 100% certain that tables exist because if you are insane it doesn't matter.
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But lots of people claim they have access to a god, that they 'observe' god's deeds. Gods are observed habitually, almost as habitually as tables.
 
Fishin said:
There may be a stronger case for evolutionism than creationism, but it's not fact, and I doubt it ever will be.
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Sure, in the practically useless sense that inductive logic cannot lead you to a 100% certain fact because there's always the chance that your senses deceive you (or in the almost as useless "It could be that, or it could be this other thing with a 1/10^500 chance of being true").

Not only that, but this is a debate among forumers who are relying on whatever they've found on the internet or learned in school as evidence, not people who know exactly what they're talking about, so it's not like anything decided in this argument will be accurate either.
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This always seems to come up whenever people try and talk about anything serious relating to science, and it's always a horrible way of thinking.

There is no mystical class of scientist somehow separated from the rest of us mere mortals. Just because someone is posting on a forum doesn't mean they don't know what they're talking about.

When chaos makes a post about his plans for some new program, no one says to him "Yeah right, like some forum poster could have actually come up with an improvement in online chat!". I've never heard someone come into one of X-Act's threads talking about the rating system and say "This is pretty interesting stuff, but how about you leave the statistics to the statistics people?"

Science is the same way. By its very nature it is open. I really don't understand why people have this sort of vague, shadowy notion of "scientists" being some group separate from "us". You don't know anyone's background that's posting here, so I really don't see how you could possibly justify saying that none of us know what we're talking about. Even if you were certain that I was a copyright lawyer instead of an evolutionary biologist, that still would not justify your comment, because it assumes you must have made a discovery to understand it. I've never seen a kangaroo in my life, but I can understand (and put up a convincing argument) that it is a marsupial.

Ideas should be judged on their merit alone, not based on who says them or where they are said.
 
I believe in microevolution, the process of adapting to different living conditions over a fairly short period of time. That has been observed and proven countless times.

Macroevolution's biggest stumbling block is abiogenesis. I simply cannot believe that life originated from inanimate material. Reality is not Frankenstein, you don't jolt ooze with lightning and create single-celled micro-organisms.

Abiogenesis is no better a theory than Creationism. Evolution works as a theory for the inbetween, but there's no such thing as "pseudo-life" outside of viruses.

Addendum: Evolution suffers the same problem as the Big Bang theory.

Both suffer from the "uncaused cause syndrome." It's great to theorize single-celled -> multi-celled -> fishlike -> amphibianish -> land dweller. The problem lies with what turned "lifeless" into "single-celled." Same with the Big Bang. Why, when initially created, was the universe a single spec of impossibly dense matter that exploded outward infinitely into some incomprehensible, undefinable, matterless void?

That's the problem with any origin theory. You have to account for the "Uncaused Cause."
 
What the hell does abiogenesis have to do with evolution?

Regardless, given all the interesting fossils people keep digging up, it's pretty damned clear that different species have lived at different times, and the ones we've got now didn't always exist. Conclusion: Species change over time, evolution is a fact.

So then the natural question to ask is why species change over time. That's the theory of evolution - an explanation for why something happens that ties together a number of disparate phenomena and makes predictions. Much the same way there's the fact of gravity - stuff falls - and the theory of gravity - stuff falls because space is bent by large masses.

Turns out the theory of evolution matches the data pretty well. It's also been observed (Although Deck, I'm sure, will insist that's merely 'microevolution', which is magically different to 'macroevolution'. Clearly there's some sort of invisible wall beyond which organisms cannot change). Basically, it's a really good theory. When you dig up fossils of whales with legs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolut...urids_and_dorudontids:_fully_marine_cetaceans , well, what can you say?

Turns out it's not a complete picture - there's some other interactions, like general drift of genomes over time, kin selection, etc., but those are essentially refinements to the theory - same sort of way Einstein refined Newton, but didn't really change the underlying rules a great deal.

A bunch of links:
Scientific discussion of abiogenesis. Creationism is just as good an explanation? Ha! http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html

An absolute shitton of referenced articles providing evidence for evolution, in the species-change sense: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

An index of creationist claims, with rebuttals: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

And before Lexite shows up and posts a list of random quotes she's copied from somewhere, the quotemine project: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/contents.html

And Project Steve: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/steve/
 
What the hell does abiogenesis have to do with evolution?
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Abiogenesis has everything to do with evolution.

If you assume that there is no outside force acting upon anything in the universe such as a God capable of creation, you must then find a plausible theory for how a molten planet deluged in water with no life whatsoever first generated life.

Therefore, the most central question to evolution is what initially caused the first life.

Why is this important? Because according to evolution species adapt over time into other species. Thus, this trait of adaptation also had to be present in the very first species. Such a species would have to be able to self-replicate and live off it's environs, as well as be able to generate mutations. Otherwise you would only ever be populated by a single carbon copy life form. Predation is impossible if some of the life forms don't consume other life forms. Thus predation would have to be a later mutation, as a species which consumes itself does not last very long.

Scientists have never been able to observe macroevolution. They might as well line the skulls up of 40 different sized breeds of dog, and claim dogs grew larger over time. The Labrador Retreiver is the "missing link" between the Beagle and the Mastiff.
 
Deck Knight said:
Abiogenesis has everything to do with evolution.

If you assume that there is no outside force acting upon anything in the universe such as a God capable of creation, you must then find a plausible theory for how a molten planet deluged in water with no life whatsoever first generated life.

Therefore, the most central question to evolution is what initially caused the first life.

Why is this important? Because according to evolution species adapt over time into other species. Thus, this trait of adaptation also had to be present in the very first species. Such a species would have to be able to self-replicate and live off it's environs, as well as be able to generate mutations. Otherwise you would only ever be populated by a single carbon copy life form. Predation is impossible if some of the life forms don't consume other life forms. Thus predation would have to be a later mutation, as a species which consumes itself does not last very long.
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No, Abiogenenis is irrelevant to whether or not the theory of evolution is true. They have something to do with each other in the way that the germ theory has something to do with the theory of evolution, but they are not dependant on each other. If you can prove that life can't come into existence without help of a larger intelligence, that doesn't disprove the theory of evolution.

Edit: And apart from whether the theory of evolution is true, creationism has the credibility of your general fairy tale. (Talking animals? Bible did it. Magic fruit? Bible did it.)
 
The problem lies with what turned "lifeless" into "single-celled."
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Actually, that's probably the biggest myth thrown around in amateur debates at the present time. Researchers are well on their way to understanding synthetic proto-life. If you're interested, Robert Hazen's "Gen•e•sis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins" is a good place to start. Otherwise, you're welcome to remain wilfully ignorant.

It's also worth noting that evolution is not dependent on abiogenesis at all. However life did come about, scientists observe it evolving. Evolving not only from form to form, but from species to species. 'Species' is a difficult term. Ring-species really drum home how difficult it can be to talk about speciation. Ring-species are two different species of animal that have evolved so that they are physically and genetically different, and cannot interbreed, yet most the transistional form linking the two species (or sub-species) still exist. Thanks to Richard Dawkins, a well-known example are the salamanders of California's Central Valley. Salamander population stretch around the valley, and each neighbouring population of salamanders can breed with each other. However, somewhere around the ring, the animals have speciated. At some point on the ring, salamanders have evolved to the point where they cannot breed with the original population. Needless to say, the salamanders at one end of the valley are a different species of salamander to those at the other end of the valley. I hope I'm being clear enough here. Researchers have found many, many examples of ring-species, gulls are another example, if I recall correctly migration patterns have resulted in several ring-species of gulls.

This is a scenario that evolutionary theory quite clearly predicts, and so many other predictions about the theory hold true that it really is the only sufficiently complex, compelling explanation for the radiation of life on this earth.

I believe in microevolution
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Can you name any mechanism at all, known to science, or hinted at by biology, that suggests evolution has a way of preserving animals within their current species? Because if you cannot, it seems safe to assume that evolutionary change can continue until two animal populations are barely recognisable as from a common ancestor. Indeed, we know that different species CAN arise from common ancestors, as with ring-species.
 
Griffin said:
No, Abiogenenis is irrelevant to whether or not the theory of evolution is true. They have something to do with each other in the way that the germ theory has something to do with the theory of evolution, but they are not dependant on each other. If you can prove that life can't come into existence without help of a larger intelligence, that doesn't disprove the theory of evolution.

Edit: And apart from whether the theory of evolution is true, creationism has the credibility of your general fairy tale. (Talking animals? Bible did it. Magic fruit? Bible did it.)
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Then evolution ceases to be an origin theory, which is what this topic is supposedly about.

Using this logic, Creationism and Evolution cannot logically debate. Creationism is an origin theory and evolution is a biological process theory, and never the twain shall meet, much less debate.

Abiogenesis on the other hand is an origin theory. Thus it would be the only thing which could debate creationism or intelligent design.

EDIT: When synthetic [read: man-made] "proto-life" can be made in nature without human interference, I'll start caring. As of now, pseudo-living material in a highly controlled lab setting is not remotely like anything that would occur naturally, and it sounds to me as if this "proto-life" cannot self-replicate. It's about as "alive" as a Roomba.
 
When synthetic [read: man-made] "proto-life" can be made in nature without human interference, I'll start caring. As of now, pseudo-living material in a highly controlled lab setting is not remotely like anything that would occur naturally, and it sounds to me as if this "proto-life" cannot self-replicate. It's about as "alive" as a Roomba.
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Actually, if you bother to read the book I recommended, or indeed any science about current research into abiotics at all, you'll quickly learn that scientists do believe abiotic proto-life forms reasonably often all around us, but that due to various circumstances the leap from proto-life to life may only happen under extremely rare circumstances, and may be a very fragile process at that.

As I said, you're welcome to be wilfully ignorant about abiogenesis. It is not my field, I will not discuss it nearly as clearly and gracefully as Hazen does. Read the book, if you care to understand. Do not read it, if you care only to be immobile.

and it sounds to me as if this "proto-life" cannot self-replicate.
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Judging from your quickness in jumping to conclusions based on no information, I worry that you much prefer the latter option.
 
Kietharr said:
Evolution has more evidence than creation, therefore evolution is the superior theory. This ignores other theories, and keep in mind evolution still has some pretty major holes, as it is still just a theory, not a law.
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This misconception always irks me! Theories do not become laws! Theories and laws are two different kinds of knowledge. Laws are "patterns" in nature, while theories are the explanations of said laws in science. Calling evolution "just a theory" wiil not discredit it.

Edit: I'm going to have to read that book after I'm done reading Death From The Skies, tea_and_blues!
 
Evolution has never been an origin theory in the sense of "Where did life come from?". It's always been about what happens to life once it's around. It's only embroiled in debate with creationists because it's mutually exclusive with young-earth creationism. Also old-earth creationism if you think life was created as several different 'kinds' that then radiated outwards, because the fossil record doesn't agree.

Creationism is an origin hypothesis (Not a theory, it doesn't make predictions. Honestly, even 'hypothesis' is a bit rich, it can't be tested. But no matter), but it has implications for things like evolution, so there is some overlap.

Also, Deck, there are plenty of self-replicating chemical reactions. Honestly, it's not so much a problem of figuring out how 'non-life' could have become 'life' as how it did - there's on the order of tens of competing explanations, because it was far too long ago for there to be any real conclusive physical evidence. But there's certainly no reason to think it impossible - early Earth was warm, it was full of water, and it was full of a whole variety of interesting compounds. It's well-known that complicated carbon chains can quite easily self-assemble in such circumstances, and it's no great leap to think that self-catalysing reactions could turn up.

Life isn't special or magical in any way - vitalism was dealt with quite some time ago. It's just self-sustaining chemical reactions. It can certainly be quite complicated self-sustaining reactions, but it's not really any different to stuff that we don't define as 'alive'. The line is entirely arbitrary.
 
@Theorymon - That annoys me too! The problem is that there is a large gap between what 'theory' means as a scientific term, and what 'theory' means in today's casual English. Too many people interpret 'theory' to mean 'wild-ass unsubstantiated guess', when in science it is anything but that!
 
Here's something I found on talkorigins that should help explain abiogenesis better:

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Here's a link to the article if you're interested (you're not):

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