Science Disproves Evolution

Facts speak louder than opinions. I posted two links and you keep offering me your opinion.

Nice to have an opinion. I on the other hand posted two links that describe Buddhism as a religion. ...and you call me superficial, *sigh*.

Keep in mind we are not debating about these religions, we are debating that atheism is a religion. If you want to play with a red herring, at least post something else besides your opinions as I have done. Or you could come up with something new besides nit picking my posts to death and going on a rabbit trail about all sorts of subtle variations in the non-germane.

Atheism is a religion as much as abstinence is a sex position.

Try reading a book published by an actual Buddhist, Daoist, or adherent of Confucianism. If you could remember I addressed your "links" and how both didn't touch on the core supernatural tenant of reincarnation in Buddhism and the possibility of becoming a god, then you would know that Buddhism is far from atheistic. Read more on reincarnation before you claim that atheism has no superstition or supernatural beliefs its always good to have an understanding of something you're trying to talk about rather than a few googled articles. If your tired of me pointing out the errors and gaps in your arguments I offer you a tissue. Atheism is not a religion, it does not incorporate worship or belief in a god, or the supernatural. You're free to keep asserting it, but you would be wrong.

I'm a buddhist. There is very much is supernatural stuff in my religion, but different sects put different focuses on it. Danschance actually did a pretty good job of explaining it in a previous post. As to the existence of God, however, it really depends on the local context. Many south asian sects, at least back in the day made their local gods Bodhisattvas or some other class of etherial beings. That was actually one of the early draws of Buddhism, you could still keep your old beliefs and do this new thing, so long as you realized that the old beliefs aren't the end all-be all to the issue of suffering.

But yeah, whether a god or gods exist isn't really a question that is super important to Buddhism, as it at best can just help you a little to end your suffering in life. You have to put most of the work in though. My own position toward a god is that of ambivalence; it really doesnt' matter to me. But there can be all sorts of theological positions in the buddhist community, its just not a position thats of real importance to us. I hope this helps.

So, I am supposed to trust what you say about your own opinions? Are you really going to stick with that line of reasoning? Keep in mind I have already stated that some Buddhists incorporate other beliefs into their buddhism. So you have not proved your point nor have you proved mine wrong.

..and again you post your reasoning, experience and your opinions. I will no longer respond to them in anyone's posts on this subject. As a matter of fact, I am leaving this thread as it is a waste of my time.

By all means I hope we've both learned something.

I just took a class in World Religions and we went over Buddhism, since there seems to be some confusion.

There are many schools of Buddhism, and each adheres to its own interpretation of what Siddhartha Gautama aka the original Buddha taught. Theravada is the more traditional school that passes down Buddha's teachings unchanged, and they don't worship gods of any kind. Mahayana Buddhism believes that Buddha is god. That varies too, though. Some think he was literally god, others just see him as a divine quality. However, none focus too much on god or the worship of gods because that's not really the point of Buddhism.

I don't know why it got brought up but a couple of you seemed confused.

I had thought Buddhism was primarily about 'the way' (principles of how to live), a belief structure. Quoted that Buddha said that even if he or their God's did not exist, 'the way' will remain. Depending on how you define religion, 'structures of belief' are a more religious element.

If atheism is religious, it's got nothing to do with the definition or what it means to be one, but rather the appearance of consistent belief structures of self-declared atheists. Note that is in the eye of the observer rather than the beholder.

How about the following information from peer reviewed science journals:

“[Natural selection] may have a stabilizing effect, but it does not promote speciation. It is not a creative force as many people have suggested.” Daniel Brooks, as quoted by Roger Lewin, “A Downward Slope to Greater Diversity,” Science, Vol. 217, 24 September 1982, p. 1240.

“The genetic variants required for resistance to the most diverse kinds of pesticides were apparently present in every one of the populations exposed to these man-made compounds.” Francisco J. Ayala, “The Mechanisms of Evolution,”Scientific American, Vol. 239, September 1978, p. 65.

Definition of religion as seem by the United States Supreme Court: "A set of beliefs and practices which express a person's "ultimate concern" around which that person orients his or her life"

Ultimate concern is something a person considers of extreme importance. This can be a god but it doesn't have to be.

So atheism really isn't a religion, I'd say. It doesn't have a set of practices or beliefs. Most atheists don't orient their life around science and some don't accept evolution, even those who do don't typically orient their life around it unless they happen to be a scientist. But even then, you wouldn't say a plumber orients their life around plumbing, that's just their profession.

Atheism is a lack of a belief in a god. I've heard it put this way before, and it makes a lot of sense: everybody is an atheist to most gods. I can say there's a very high likelihood that nobody here believes in Zeus or any of the Greek gods, for example. You're an atheist to those gods. You're an atheist to every god but yours. You wouldn't say not believing in those gods is a religion on its own, it's just a lack of belief. The difference between Christians and atheists is atheists just take it one god further.

wow there are so many red herrings I'm wondering if folks are planning a fish bake..

I guess your just joining in for the halibut.

They do not tell the truth either. Fossils just sit there and are subject to interpretation of those looking at them. Much of that interpretation is subject to their pre-conceptions.

What about Tiktaalik? Consider this:

Tiktaalik roseae—a fishy ‘missing link’

by Jonathan Sarfati

15 April 2006

© Ted Daeschler
Fig. 1: Tiktaalik fossil.

The secularized mainstream media (MSM) are gleefully promoting a recent find,Tiktaalik roseae, as the end of any creationist or intelligent design idea. Some paleontologists are claiming that this is ‘a link between fishes and land vertebrates that might in time become as much of an evolutionary icon as the proto-birdArchaeopteryx.’[SUP]1[/SUP]

So is Tiktaalik real evidence that fish evolved into tetrapods (four-limbed vertebrates, i.e. amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds)? As will be shown, thereare parallels with Archaeopteryx, the famous alleged reptile-bird intermediate, but not in the way the above quote claims!

The alleged fish-to-tetrapod evolutionary transition is full of difficulties, explained in great detail in The fossil record of ‘early’ tetrapods: evidence of a major evolutionary transition? In this, it parallels the record of reptile-to-bird, Mammal-like reptiles,land-mammal–to–whale and ape-to-human evolution; superficially plausible, but when analyzed in depth, it collapses, for many parallel reasons. For simpler summaries on the fossil record than the preceding linked articles, see The links are missing and Argument: The fossil record supports evolution.

What was found?

The above quote comes from two leading European experts in the alleged evolutionary transition from fish–tetrapod, Per Ahlberg and Jennifer Clack. It was about the find of well-known American leaders on the same alleged transition, Neil Shubin and Edward Daeschler, and which was the cover story for Nature.[SUP]2,3[/SUP] Clack, Shubin and Daeschler even previously featured on the PBS-Nova seven-part series, Evolution, Episode 2: Great Transformations about the origin of tetrapods.

Shubin et al. found a 20-cm-long skull sticking out of a cliff. They found that this skull, superficially like a crocodile’s, was part of a fish that had a fin that was supposedly on the way to becoming a tetrapod limb. They ‘dated’ it to 383 Ma (million years ago). Since it was in Ellesmere Island, Nunavut Territory (Canada), it was given a genus name from the indigenous Inuktitut word for burbot, or large, shallow freshwater fish.

Is it transitional?

Clack and others are naturally enthusiastic about Tiktaalik’s transitional status. But this is not surprising—to her, we are all fishes anyway! She states:
This is reminiscent of University of Kansas paleontologist Larry Martin criticising overly enthusiastic ‘feathered dinosaur’ claims:
Clack also admitted:
Indeed, the evolution of land limbs and life on land in general requires many changes, and the fossil record has no evidence of such changes. Geologist Paul Garner writes:
Indeed, Tiktaalik’s fin was not connected to the main skeleton, so could not have supported its weight on land. The discoverers claim that this could have helped to prop up the body as the fish moved along a water bottom,[SUP]3[/SUP] but evolutionists had similar high hopes for the coelacanth fin. However, when a living coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) was discovered in 1938, the fins turned out not to be used for walking but for deft manœuvering when swimming.

Thus all the claims about Tiktaalik are mere smokescreens, exaggerating mere tinkering around the edges while huge gaps remain unbridged by evolution. Similarly, all the hype about Archaeopteryx and alleged feathered dinosaurs is beside the point while feathers, theavian lung and flight are still an evolutionary enigma. See also Does a ‘Transitional Form’ Replace One Gap with Two Gaps?

Transitional limb?

Fig. 2: Cladogram of the pectoral fins on the tetrapod stem, from Ref. 3. Click to see larger image

Quite aside from the huge problems explaining the origin of locomotion, there are other problems. The series of corresponding limbs (Fig. 2, right) does not appear to show the clear progression. Even from looking at it, it is not obvious that the Panderichthys limb belongs in between the adjacent ones in the series. It has fewer small bones. The authors themselves appear to recognize this:‘Homoplastic’ essentially means ‘convergent’ or ‘analogous’, i.e. independently evolved because of a common function (such as the wings of pterosaurs, bats, birds and insects, according to evolutionists), rather than evolved from a common ancestor (homologous, as evolutionists claim for features such as the different forelimbs here). But homology is alleged to be the evidence for evolution (despite many problems—seeCommon structures = common ancestry?) But appeal to homoplasy is really explaining away evidence that doesn’t fit the paradigm, and indeed such explaining away is ubiquitous. Two evolutionists admit:In fact, when more characteristics than just one are analysed, homoplasies become even more necessary to explain away anomalies, as will be explained in the section Mosaic rather than transitional.

Another major problem is that evolutionists appeal to the common pentadactyl 5-digit pattern as evidence for their common ancestry from a 5-digited creature. Yet the nearest creatures they have to a common ancestor did not have five digits! Acanthostega had eight, whileIchthyostega had seven.

Fossil order

Fig. 3: Alleged lineage including Tiktaalik, from ref. 1. Click to see larger image.

Fig. 3 (right) does much to popularize evolution, but there are a number of problems:

• The caption admits, ‘These drawings are not to scale, but all animals are between 75 cm and 1.5 m in length.’ If size were taken into account, would there be such a clear progression? Compare a far more extreme example, the supposed land-mammal–to–whale sequence. This was also illustrated as equally sized, but Basilosaurus was 10 times longer than Ambulocetus.
• Another admission is, ‘The vertebral column of Panderichthys is poorly known and not shown.’ We should remember the Pakicetus fiasco: when a few bones were known, evolutionists drew it like a half-way land-water form. But when more bones were found, it was realized that it was a fast-running land mammal.
• All the fossils of this entire series are assigned to middle-upper Devonian, or 385–365 Ma. Naturally, there are many problems with dating , but even under the evolutionists’ own scenario, there are problems. E.g. the entire fish-to-tetrapod transition is supposed to have occurred in 20 Ma, but other salamanders, according to Shubin himself, have remained unchanged for far longer :
• ‘Despite its Bathonian age, the new cryptobranchid [salamander] shows extraordinary morphological similarity to its living relatives. This similarity underscores the stasis [no change] within salamander anatomical evolution. Indeed, extant cryptobranchid salamanders can be regarded as living fossils whose structures have remained little changed for over 160 million years.’[SUP]8[/SUP]
  
  ​
• From Wikipedia.org
  
  
  Fig 4: Lobe-finned fish and amphibians, according to evolutionary order. Click to see larger image.
  
  Even more importantly, the order is not right! Compare Fig. 4 (right): Panderichthys is dated earlier than its supposed predecessor, Eusthenopteron. And all are earlier than the undoubted fish, the coelacanth. This is yet another parallel with alleged bird evolution—undoubted beaked birds like Confuciusornis are 10 Ma older than their alleged feathered dinosaur ‘ancestors’. Evolutionists would argue that it is not a problem, for the same reason that sometimes a grandfather can outlive his grandson. This is correct, but one of the major ‘evidences’ of evolution is how the evolutionary order supposedly matches the fossil sequence. So the mismatch of claimed order of appearance with claimed phylogeny undermines the evolutionary explanation.
• Also, Acanthostega is allegedly a predecessor to Ichthyostega, but they were actually contemporaries.

Mosaic rather than transitional

Many of the alleged transitional forms do not have structures in transition from one form to another. Rather, the alleged transitional nature is a combination of fully-formed structures that in themselves are not transitional.[SUP]9[/SUP]

For example, Archaeopteryx has fully formed flight feathers, an avian lung and an avian braincase (which is why the ‘hoax’ claim is indefensible), but had allegedly reptile features like a tail and teeth. Alleged whale evolution also has a number of ‘modules’, as documented in Walking whales, nested hierarchies, and chimeras: do they exist? These creatures with a mixture of characteristics are called mosaics orchimeras.

Also, who was the predecessor of whom in the case of Acanthostega and Ichthyostega? It depends on which characteristic one looks at: e.g.Ichthyostega's skull seems more fish-like than Acanthostega’s, but its shoulder and hips are more robust and land-animal–like.[SUP]10
[/SUP]
The inconsistencies in progression are much like that of the Mammal-like reptiles: major trait reversals and discontinuities. Andrew Lamb, commenting on another alleged tetrapod claim by Per Ahlberg, Livioniana, points out:Lamb’s paper demonstrates this, using Ahlberg’s own table, showing that:The same is true of the limb pattern as shown above. This is also consistent with a designer who used ‘modules’ of different characteristics.

A better explanation

When analyzed in detail, the evidence is consistent not with evolution, but with a particular form of intelligent design. But not just intelligent design in the broad sense, which allows for any sort of designer(s), even aliens (such as the Raëlian cult), and even can allow for evolution (Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box, accepts evolution, for example).

Rather, it supports a particular subset of ID: the biotic message theory, as proposed by Walter ReMine in The Biotic Message. That is, the evidence from nature points to a single designer, but with a pattern which thwarts evolutionary explanations. In this case, the common modules point to one common designer, but evolution is powerless to explain this modular pattern, since natural selection can work only onorganisms as a whole. That is, it cannot select for particular head design as such, but only for creatures that have a head that confers superior fitness. But a designer who worked with different modules could create different creatures with different modules, that fit no consistent evolutionary pattern.

But as we say, Design is not enough! Nature does not reveal the identity of the Intelligent Designer. Fortunately, the Designer already has.

• Salamanders are ‘living fossils’!
• Panderichthys—a fish with fingers?
• Tiktaalik—sticking its head out of water?
• Tiktaalik finished [by ‘older’ footprints]

Tiktaalik roseae--a fishy 'missing link'

1) The first quote is out of context. While the full paper of Science isn't accessible without a subscription, an extract of the first page can be found here (A Downward Slope to Greater Diversity). The paper is about the role of non-equilibrium and equilibrium thermodynamics in evolutionary theory. It makes it very clear right in the first paragraph that it accepts the typical scientific view of how evolution works. What I'm seeing they're doing is discussing the effect of entropy on speciation, which is a really interesting topic that I thank you for introducing me to! Entropy has its fingers everywhere it seems.

2) I can't find the paper anywhere online. It doesn't appear Scientific American keeps its records that far back. But that was back when it actually was a peer reviewed journal. Even then, I can't really understand why its supposed to be critical of evolution. Its saying that in every strain of a particular plant exposed to a type of pesticide, it developed an immunity to that pesticide. While plants don't have the same kind of robust immune system that we do, they're not defenseless by any means, so its within reason that they would have some means of combating strange chemicals. I can't say with any certainty because I don't have access to the paper and have only limited biology training.

3) Another case of I can't find the full article. Here's an excerpt from science like the 1st: (Evolutionary theory under fire). It's harder to extrapolate from this one without the full text, but based on the tone of the article, some statements made in it and what i know about modern evolutionary theory, this is where they came up with a continuum model of evolution, by which i mean the model that doesn't view micro and macroevolution as two different things. An important thing to keep in mind also is the time scales they're talking about . This is geologic time, where an instant can be as long as 50,000 years. I can't really say more on this one without the full article.

And yeah, please dont post quotes and stuff without the full article, or at least an excerpt. It's really obnoxious to have to look all this stuff up. It means nothing at all without the source.

1. Something exists.

That seems pretty simple, right? Can we all agree that this is true? Even the atheist will agree that this is true. This seems to be undeniably true. Anybody who would say that “nothing exists” would have to exist in order to say that in which case he would be defeating his own statement.

2. Nothing does not produce something.

This statement is of course true as well. Think about it. It would be absurd to say that nothing could create or produce something.

Nothing is no-thing. Nothing does not have the power to do anything at all, does it! Even David Hume one of the most zealous skeptics of Christianity ever agreed to the truth of this second premise. He said, “I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause.” (Feb. 1754).

To propose that nothing could do anything at all sounds utterly foolish. A basic law of physics (and if you ever had a physics class you’ll recall this) is called the Law of Conservation. It states: “From nothing, comes nothing.”

This supports our second premise as well. So if the first two premises are true, that 1. Something exists and 2. Nothing does not produce something, then a rather astounding conclusion logically follows...

3. Something must have always existed.

Why’s that? Okay, well, let’s walk back through this. Something now exists. Nothing does not produce something, then something must have always existed.

Why must something have always existed? To have brought the “something” that now exists (in No.1) into existence. Why? Because premise number two is true (Nothing does not produce something). But the critic asks, “Why does that something have to be eternal? Aren’t you just assuming the eternality of that something that brought into existence the something that now exists (no.1)?"

Not at all. Stay with me on this. There is a reason why that something (no. 3) must be eternal. To say that that something (in premise no. 3) did not always exist would be to say that it was finite. Right?

If that something (in premise no. 3) was finite, that means it had a beginning. If that something had a beginning we are back at our start. How did that something (premise no. 3) begin? Did nothing create something? No, that’s impossible. Nothing can’t do anything.

Anything that begins to exist must have a cause. If we deny this we are saying that nothing produced something from nothing and by nothing. But this is absurd. So we are left with the only other option and that is that something in no. 3 must have always existed.

Do you understand why premise 3 must be true?
Now, there are only two options as to what that “something (No.3) [that] always existed” might be:

A. The universe, or
B. Something outside the universe

The fourth premise in my argument is this:

4. The universe has not always existed.

In 1948, a theory known as The Steady State Theory, was set forth, that proposed that the universe was eternal (William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, p. 102). It stated that the universe has always been. “If this theory is correct” the critics of Christianity said, “there is no need for a Creator.” Well, the theory sounded good on paper for the atheist, for a while but the scientific evidence against it has since demolished the theory.

Numerous evidences from the field of astronomy now overwhelmingly point to the fact that the universe actually began to exist a finite time ago in an event when all the physical space, time, matter, and energy in the universe came into being.

And that is exactly what the Bible affirms, that the universe had a beginning. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).

Let me share with you just 2 facts of science that deal a fatal deathblow to the theory of an eternal universe. The first blow to this theory that universe is eternal is…

A. THE MOTION OF THE GALAXIES

Prior to the 1920’s, scientists had always assumed that the universe as a whole was stationary. [Of course they acknowledged that there was movement of planets in solar systems, etc.]

But in 1929 an alarming thing happened. An astronomer named Edwin Hubble discovered that the light from distant galaxies appeared to be redder than it should. The startling conclusion to which Hubble was led was that the light is redder because the universe is growing apart; it is expanding! When the source of incoming light is moving away from an object the light that you see is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. The light of the galaxies was redder because they are moving away from us. But here is the interesting part: Hubble not only showed that the universe is expanding, but that it is expanding the same in all directions. Scientists have concluded that the galaxies in the universe are not stationary but are expanding further and further away from each other from what appears to be some stationary point.

Imagine that I were to draw a bunch of dots on a balloon that represented galaxies and then blow up the balloon. If you were to suck the air back out, or let’s say rewind the film, go back in time—what would happen? The dots would converge, i.e. get closer to one another. The same is true with our universe. If you go back in time scientists say that the stars would converge into a singular space, where they exploded into being:

This explosion or beginning of the universe is often referred to as, you know the name:

“THE BIG BANG." We call it Genesis 1:1!! It’s incredible that the scientific evidence that helps establish Big Bang theory also helps verify what the Christian theist has always believed: That the universe actually had a beginning!!

Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning, God created the heavens..."

A second blow to the theory that the universe is eternal comes from the facts behind...

B. THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS

[The first law says that the actual amount of energy in the universe remains constant—it doesn’t change.]
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is one of the best, most established laws in all of science. In fact, there is no recorded experiment in the history of science that contradicts it. It states that: the amount of useable energy in any closed system (which the universe is) is decreasing. In other words, the useable energy in the universe is dying out like the batteries in a flashlight.

Scientists acknowledge that the sun can not burn forever, and that even our galaxy itself will one day, if left to itself, burn up and die out. So we reason that if the Second Law of Thermodynamics is true for all closed systems, and it is, then it is true for the universe as a whole. The universe according to the atheist is a gigantic closed system, since to them it is all there is and there is nothing outside it. This means that the universe is currently running out of useable energy.

If it is running out of useable energy, then it cannot be eternal, for a finite amount of energy (no matter how large the quantity.) could never have brought the universe through an eternity of time.

Flashlight Illustration: Let's say you stumbled upon this flashlight and you’re curious how long it has been burning. So you do a little investigation. Through your investigation you discover that the batteries are going down hill. They are running out of energy. You turn to a scientist standing nearby and ask him: “How long do you think the flashlight’s been burning?” Now, what if he was to tell you: “It’s always been on. It’s been lit like this and burning like this forever.”

Hunh? Would you believe that? Of course not. There’s a problem with that isn’t there?

Batteries with a finite amount of energy (seen in the fact that they are steadily running out of energy) could never have kept the light burning for an eternal amount of time. It would have run out of batteries trillions of years ago!! So it is with the universe. The amount of useable energy is steadily decreasing, thus proving it impossible that it has been burning for all eternity. So, it is scientific discoveries like…

1. The Motion of the Galaxies
2. The Second Law of Thermodynamics (and other discoveries like the background radiation echo discovered by Penzias and Wilson) ...that have blown the Steady State Theory into smithereens.

Now, if my premises are all true:
1. Something exists.
2. Nothing does not produce something.
3. Something must have always existed.
4. The universe has not always existed
...then a conclusion can be validly drawn from these premises.

5. There must be an eternal power beyond the universe that caused the universe to come into existence.

Do you think this is a sound argument thus far? I believe it is! The whole argument could come crashing down, if even just one of the premises could be proven to be false. Causing the argument to crash wouldn’t prove that God doesn’t exist, it would just prove that the argument is not valid. Let’s take it a bit further.

6. Intelligent life exists in the universe.

I take that to be self-evident. This also seems to be undeniable. Anybody who would say that there is not intelligent life in the universe would be uttering an intelligent statement from an intelligent being.

To understand any of this study this far (even if you disagreed with what I was saying) would prove that this sixth premise is true...for it has taken a great degree of intelligence to understand the thousands of combinations of syllables that I have been uttering.

So this premise is undeniably true as well.
Let’s take it further.

7. It takes an intelligent living being to create an intelligent living being.

How could a material, inanimate, unintelligent, unconscious force produce on intelligent living, breathing being? It takes a living, intelligent being to create a living, intelligent being. Non-life does not produce life. You could leave the barren side of a mountain exposed to...

--wind
--rain
--the forces of nature
--chance
--and millions of years of time and you would never get a Mount Rushmore, let alone a living, breathing human being. Why? It takes intelligence. You need intelligent intervention.

It would take great intelligence to create a robot that operates like a human, and even more so, it takes intelligence to create a real human being.

8. Therefore there must be an intelligent, living, eternal power, beyond the universe, that created the universe.

That intelligent, living, eternal power, beyond the universe that created the universe is God.

If the universe has not always existed, and something must have always existed, then something or someone outside of the universe must have always existed, I propose to you that that person is an intelligent, living, powerful being, i.e. God.

CONCLUSION

For me it is more reasonable to believe, based on the laws of logic as well as the observable scientific evidence that God exists, rather than to believe what the atheist believes that nothing, times nobody, equals everything we see in the universe.

Throw in the fact that we also have the testimony of our conscience and the revelation of God in the scriptures and I believe we are standing on solid ground when we affirm:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)

[Charlie H. Campbell adopted major premises from a debate heard on the existence of God by Norman Geisler]

A Logical Argument For God's Existence