Republican Acceptance of Evolution Plummets

I love how this argument rolls around every now and then. It never ends: "Conservatives are stupid, because they don't believe in Evolution!" Oh, ok... Or is it that Conservatives just don't believe everything they're told in college and actually view arguments more objectively? It looks to me that more Americans become more indoctrinated the more "educated" they become. That's about all this tells me.

I bet more Liberals believe that Keynesian economics actually works, too... because they're "more educated." Hell, this is the same group that won't stop believing in Man-made Global warming, because there's a "consensus" somewhere in the world.

Evolution is just another religion that liberals cling to, in order to discredit Christians. If it weren't for the unscientific theory of evolution that they have faith in and believe in, their argument against God would be pretty shallow.

Evolution: It cannot be proved, it cannot be disproved (that's fine for a Scientific Theory), and it is not falsifiable (this is not)... Thus, it's an unscientific and bad theory.

 

I'm not sure you're understanding what James Shapiro's research actually says. I posted earlier that there is too much information on it to post, but at least start here:

http://bmb.uchospitals.edu/Faculty_and_Research/01_Faculty/01_Faculty_Alphabetically.php?faculty_id=152

 

The problem at hand is while the fundamentalist right typically turns to their bible ferry tails and interpreting and reinterpreting all the bad syntax in the bible, the fundamentalist left tries to hijack evolution to prop up their own causes, pointing to facts losely speaking that the end game for evolution is far all creatures to turn gay or at least for gay behavior to outnumber straight copulaforms. That the climax for evolution is when the y chromosome finally disintegrates. Etc etc. It all has less to do with science and more with politics. The ideal solution here is for church, politics and science to finally separate.

 

The entire elements of the universe are in continued decay, it is not possible by any means that species evolve but on the contrary, that living species only degenerate throughout generations.

Even intellectual evolution is a hoax. Reading Plutarch we find out that early civilizations enjoyed of social laws no much different than ours. And going beyond the early cities, it takes lots of intelligence to discover how to make fire by different methods, to invent a language, etc. etc...

You believe that your intellect is greater than the ancestors because you have received already all their early discoveries first in order to make new ones. But the level of intelligence between them and you... I can bet that my human ancestors were even more intelligent than you... but of course, you are more intelligent than the monkey... you ancestor.

The error in the Republicans mentioned by you is for them to think that former species were the same than the current species, and yes, that is an error, because former species were more complex than the current species in several physical and functional characteristics. Our current species, including humans are more simpler, and this is the best evidence that we are all passing through continued degenerate steps.

 

I always wondered, could both be true?

During my collegiate science studies I would always think, maybe God created evolution....

Nah

 

Yeah, so here's the thing;

I believe in evolution, to a sorts, a limited type....but not where I evolved from an amoeba.

I believe in climate change, but not really one of mankind can really influence all that much.

 

From my point of view, as faithful followers are increasing, God degenerate into evolution

 

And yet, you exist. And several billion years ago, not only did you not exist, neither did the very planet we call home. What is your explanation for that?

 

Of course we aren't sure because we are speaking about the theory of evolution.

 

Here we have the work of some people dedicated to the scientific method of thinking but in spite of not being religious they are coming around to my point of view.

One-Time Beginning

Since the dawn of civilization man has gazed in awe at the stars, wondering what they are and how they got there. Although on a clear night the unaided human eye can see about 6,000 stars, Hubble and other powerful telescopes indicate there are trillions of them clustered in over 100 billion galaxies. Our sun is like one grain of sand amidst the world’s beaches.

However, prior to the 20th century, the majority of scientists believed our own Milky Way galaxy was the entire universe, and that only about 100 million stars existed.

Most scientists believed that our universe never had a beginning. They believed mass, space and energy had always existed.

But in the early 20th century, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered the universe is expanding. Rewinding the process mathematically, he calculated that everything in the universe, including matter, energy, space and even time itself, actually had a beginning.

Shockwaves rang loudly throughout the scientific community. Many scientists, including Einstein, reacted negatively. In what Einstein later called “the biggest blunder of my life,” he fudged the equations to avoid the implication of a beginning. [3]

Perhaps the most vocal adversary of a beginning to the universe was British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, who sarcastically nicknamed the creation event a “big bang.” He stubbornly held to his steady state theory that the universe has always existed. So did Einstein and other scientists until the evidence for a beginning became overwhelming. The “elephant in the room” implication of a beginning is that something or Someone beyond scientific investigation must have started it all.

Finally, in 1992, COBE satellite experiments proved that the universe really did have a one-time beginning in an incredible flash of light and energy. [4] Although some scientists called it the moment of creation, most preferred referring to it as the “big bang.”

Astronomer Robert Jastrow tries to help us imagine how it all began. “The picture suggests the explosion of a cosmic hydrogen bomb. The instant in which the cosmic bomb exploded marked the birth of the Universe.” [5]

Everything from Nothing

Science is unable to tell us what or who caused the universe to begin. But some believe it clearly points to a Creator. “British theorist, Edward Milne, wrote a mathematical treatise on relativity which concluded by saying, ‘As to the first cause of the Universe, in the context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him.’” [6]

Another British scientist, Edmund Whittaker attributed the beginning of our universe to“Divine will constituting Nature from nothingness.” [7]

Many scientists were struck by the parallel of a one-time creation event from nothing with the biblical creation account in Genesis 1:1. [8] Prior to this discovery, many scientists regarded the biblical account of creation from nothing as unscientific.

Although he called himself an agnostic, Jastrow was compelled by the evidence to admit,“Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world.” [9]

Another agnostic, George Smoot, the Nobel Prize winning scientist in charge of the COBE experiment, also admits to the parallel. “There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.”[10]

Scientists who used to scoff at the Bible as a book of fairy tales, are now admitting that the biblical concept of creation from nothing has been right all along.

Cosmologists, who specialize in the study of the universe and its origins, soon realized that a chance cosmic explosion could never bring about life any more than a nuclear bomb would—unless it was precisely engineered to do so. And that meant a designer must have planned it. They began using words like, “Super-intellect,” “Creator,” and even “Supreme Being” to describe this designer. Let’s look at why.

Finely-Tuned for Life

Physicists calculated that for life to exist, gravity and the other forces of nature needed to be just right or our universe couldn’t exist. Had the expansion rate been slightly weaker, gravity would have pulled all matter back into a “big crunch.”

We’re not talking about merely a one or two percent reduction in the universe’s expansion rate. Stephen Hawking writes, “If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have re-collapsed before it ever reached its present size.” [11]

On the flip side, if the expansion rate had been a mere fraction greater than it was, galaxies, stars and planets could never have formed, and we wouldn’t be here.

And for life to exist, the conditions in our solar system and planet also need to be just right. For example, we all realize that without an atmosphere of oxygen, none of us would be able to breathe. And without oxygen, water couldn’t exist. Without water there would be no rainfall for our crops. Other elements such as hydrogen, nitrogen, sodium, carbon, calcium, and phosphorus are also essential for life.

But that alone is not all that is needed for life to exist. The size, temperature, relative proximity, and chemical makeup of our planet, sun, and moon also need to be just right. And there are dozens of other conditions that needed to be exquisitely fine-tuned or we wouldn’t be here to think about it. [12]

Scientists who believe in God may have expected such fine-tuning, but atheists and agnostics were unable to explain the remarkable “coincidences.” Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, an agnostic, writes, “The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”[13]

 

DNA is not EVIDENCE of evolution. You choose to infer that it is. I choose to conclude it means life is designed by a Creator.

 

You can say species are in constant transition till the cows come home. What you can't do is prove it. Species adapt; they don't become other species. Finding similarities in structure is not proof of evolution. It's proof that living creatures bear resemblances that enable them to survive on a shared planet.

 

Scientist hope they will find signs of life on other planets, let alone life itself. Out of the billions of planets that exist, why did earth happen to create a living single cell? That alone is a miracle. The same type of miracle Mary experienced when she gave birth to Jesus. And having hope of a life after is better than not having any hope at all. It's called faith which the Bible teaches. What does Darwin's book teach about hope? Nada.

 

Well, no, we really weren't. You brought up the history of evolution and abiogenesis. Neither of those things are a part of the theory of evolution.

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How do you know it is a miracle? You just said that we hope to find signs of life on other plants, and since we haven't actually gone to any other planets, I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that the creation of life is a miracle.

Hope about what? I don't really give a damn about an afterlife, so why should I have hope about it? Again, hope says nothing about the veracity of a belief.

 

Maybe you would give a damn about an afterlife if you knew for sure there were only two options. And the second option was out of the question. I believe it is better to be safe than sorry. Seeing all the negative in this world it is understandable to believe even the end will hold nothing but negativeness as well. Why is it some have more faith than others of an afterlife? I don't have the answer.

 

Do you actually mean species? I can give you examples of observed speciation, but I'd rather you move the goalposts now before I repost those links just to have them discarded.

 

DNA itself isn't evidence, but particular sequences most certainly are. I still have yet to see an evolution denier actually address endogenous retroviruses. We share at least 14 with chimpanzees, and the odds of that being the case without us being related is 1 in 2.919 x 10^126.

Edit: I should actually say that DNA isn't strong evidence. It's still part of the overall evolutionary picture. If each organism had its own kind of genetic material, that would almost completely prove evolution to be false.

 

Sure, if you want to ignore how inheritance works, that would make sense.

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Oh, yeah, how does that work?

 

Then you didn't see my response to your statement. I said to you that the fact that chimps share 14 ERV's with humans is no more an indicator of a common ancestor than it is of a common designer. No one - including YouLie - is arguing that chimps and man aren't related. We're arguing that they are; that they were both Created by the same Designer with common parts.

I find the study of evolution fascinating. Evolution can be responsible for the present state of all organic matter in our existence, but it doesn't change the underlying fight.

Extrapolating the belief that Evolution is responsible for the present state of all organic matter ... to Evolution is responsible for all organic matter, however, is....problematic.

But that very critical line is crossed - willfully - by secularists, who wish to find a way to replace religious belief in our society. In truth, they're not replacing religious belief at all. They're merely attempting to supplant Deistic religious belief with their own religious belief - Humanism.

That is why I argue with some over Evolution.

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Tsk. I answered this too.

 

You didn't respond with anything other than a flawed analogy. Cars don't reproduce, and if you understood what ERVs are, you'd see how your analogy is further flawed.

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By moving the goalposts to a change in genus. That's all I'm asking YouLie about, whether he'd like to move the goalposts now or after I post the links.

 

That would make sense... if organisms were inanimate beings. We aren't. We understand how DNA works and more importantly we understand how it is inherited. Inheritance throws a big wrench into the common creator argument for DNA being similar.

 

PLEASE!!!!

Even among his peers Shapiro has been labeled as a QUACK who without any scientific evidence or proof declares specific scientific crap as facts...when they are neither scientific or facts.

Talking about Evolution using Shapiro as a source is like me talking about a FLAT EARTH using a Pope from the very early Roman Christian Church.....IT'S A JOKE!!!!!

AboveAlpha

 

Stop lying. Children do not apply for nor receive welfare benefits. Never have and never will.
Nice attempt at duck and cover.
Now answer the question.
Why does an atheist not want to apply evolution's primary driver to humanity if for nothing but religious comfort.

 

Ahem....not. Einsteinian relativity theory has nothing to do with gravitational mechanics in astronautics. Rocketry was quite well along it's path before that theory was born. Just look up Oppenheimer.