Evolution: Science or Philosophy

[TomOfSweden]

Actually, he was not the first, not even in the sense of publishing, but that is another issue. I am still waiting for someone to show me the proof that evolution is true in a general sense. I can see adaptation to environmnet, and even generla genetic drift on a limited scale resulting in some rather interesting differences among different types of the same species. But where is the so called proof that species develop spontaneously?

Now you're avoiding the question. Who cares what Darwin said? I didn't say he was the first. He was the first who had the balls to test and publish it. That's what I said.

You're attacking this from the wrong angle. The fact that we have diverse species is proof that they develop spontaneously. We know how mutations come about, and we know some become stable. Speciasation is just about our defintions. Given enough time every single variety of anything living will be defined as their own species, because scientists get so fucking wet about having their name on shit.

God is an absurd and outlandish concept. The only reason why anybody takes it seriously is because humanity has believed in it for so long. The reasons for this are many and easy to explain. So the burden of proof is on the religious right now. If god was involved in creating the different species, how did god do it?

I never heard of this experiment, so i will just ask, if proteins have not yet been proven to develop spontaneously, how can a complex chain of proteins and amino acids form into DNA?

They couldn't recreate it, so who knows. It was maybe just a fluke or a fault in the measuring systems. But now we're talking about faith. I think it's an intriguing idea, but I'm not going to bank on it being true. Which is what christians are doing about going to heaven, allthough it's just guesswork.

And exactly how is evolution any better? Do they also not argue from ignorance?

ha ha ha. You're going to have to do better than that. Evolution has evidence coming out of the woodwork. We've got fossils and DNA lineages everywhere to study. They're all conclusive. We've yet to have a single bit of living tissue that breaks the theory. So it's pretty safe to say that it's correct by now.

Let me point out though that i am not arguing from ignorance, I am arguing against implausiblity. I simply state that statisticle odds seem to be stacked against evolution. I then offer the opinion that Intelligent Design actually has an explanation that will deal with these discrepencies, but evolutionary theorists do not. They have postualated that there may be laws of nature that we do not know about that actually force DNA to evolve in the proper conditions. Yet they offer neither mathematical or experimental evidence to support this. yet I am arguing from ignorance because I point this out? Interesting, to say the least.

That's just bullshit. We don't know the numbers to use, so we have no idea of what is statistically unlikely. The intelligent design theory does not deal with any discrepancy because it explains nothing. Again. Just saying god has it covered, is not a theory.

Science should not be in the business of rejecting a hypothesis just becuse it does not agree with the general idea of the way the universe is. They should test to prove or disprove any hypothesis, even if it goes against personal beliefs. If someone presented evidence that could refute the existence of God I would accept it because I have a scientific outlook. Would you accept evidence that proved the existence of God? If not, which one of us is close minded?

Nobody will ever be able to prove god doesn't exist. Because god as a concept is everything we want it to be. We can go up to mount Olympos today and visit where the ancient Greeks thought the gods lived. Handy fact, that that religion is dead. Is it a coincidence that the only surviving religions with supernatural claims today are the ones who has a god that's all powerful and invisible. Saying that because you can't that it isn't true then...this...that and the other. Is arguing from ignorance.

God has been used as a wild card for so long now that I think we should demand any proof pointing to that anything in it is true. If not, let's just wait with passing judgement until we've got some more info on god.

Really? Do you know what the initial design parameters were? How can you be sure that this is not the best of the choices that was available?

Now you're thinking. Good. Exactly. How do we know? What were gods available options? See, it's not a coherant theory. Intelligent design explains jack shit. It's just fantasy. A series of what-ifs.

I agree, but my point is that this is axactly what evolution does. In fact, evolution is so inconsistent that they are no beeter than those idiots that want me to believe the earth is only 6000 years old. They both ignore any evidence contrary to what they believe, which is why I insist that evolution is not science, but philosophy. I am not pointing to Intelligent Desing as the answer because it has no more basis in science than creationism or evolution. But it does answer some questions that is raised by evolution. We are then left with another question if we acccept ID, where did the designer come from?

I'm pretty sure your beef with specisation is just Taliban created bullshit. I've e-mailed a molecular biologist about it. Let's hear what her explanation is.

The key part of this is that different speciess are not capable of interbreeding, and if I remember my biology correctly this is a key element of detirmining species. Older classifications of species have had to be changed becuse interbreeding was detirmined to be possible where it was initially thought to be impossible. Ths actually causes some of the argument about names that you probably are recalling.

As your dictionary very aptly pointed out, there are many defintions of it. My biology teacher also told me a simplified version of it. It's simplified. It's a lot more complicated.