Evolution/Relgion (Split from Death Penalty, as off topic)

[Pah-Wraith]

I'd like to point out, although I believe in a Divine Creator or Deity, the existance of God is just as far'fetched to some people as the Big Bang or Evolution Theory is to religious people. Remember the Existance of God is not scientific fact, so let's not try and act like it.

BTW Christianity is a Religion, it is classed as a Religion in Census' and I think that Government Theologians and Scholars of the World are more qualified than the majority of people on this site, when they say that Christianity is a Religion. BTW the original followers of Jesus were called Messianic Jews, it wasn't until Paul went to Antioch that they gave them the derrogatory name "Christ-ians" which Messianic Jews decided to adopt.

[Jeremy]

Sorry I haven't replied to this, and it looks like I missed a lot but been busy. I also will be away all next week.

There are a few problems with evolution though. From what I understand evolution happens when a slight change happens in DNA. This improvement then may be passed down. If this happened then why are people not all related to one person? You cannot say that two or more cells/ creatures had the same change around the same time so that there was more than one set of parents. This means we would all be related and is the same as what we would be if Adam and Eve were true. And obviously something happened to stop cell breakdown.

Christianity is a religion as such, but it is also a personal relationship with Jesus.

There could have been a little variation in species since the start of creation in my view. This could explain the slight variations in the finches. While saying that they could have easily have been created by God like that. I have a slight question about it though, why was there no variations in the beaks in the mainland?

[IntrepidIsMe]

Because they didn't need a different beak. The reason that the finches had different beaks on the islands, was to eat a local nut variety (or something like that). On land they didn't need it, as there weren't nuts there,

[Jeremy]

But they would eat different things. There are different nuts and there are different seeds. Why not there?

[IntrepidIsMe]

Because their beaks had already adapted to the area on the mainland, and were the standard idea for finches. On the island, they were different.

[Jeremy]

Why did the beaks on the mainland not specialise though? There is different types of nuts and seeds like the island yet they specialise in one place but not the other? I'm slightly puzzled. If they were the standard version for the mainland why did they not change and become the standard version for the island instead of lots of different ones?

[IntrepidIsMe]

Shush, you're confusing me,

Let's just agreeeeee, with everything I saaaaay. Alrighty then?



The beaks on the mainland were already made for eating all the different kinds of things that they needed to eat. When the mainland birds ended up on the island, they needed to adapt to eat the food there, so that's why their beaks changed.

[Gondor Girl]

Please don't mind if I cut in and add my little word here. I live on the "islands" that you speak of. Though we more prefer to call them Hawaii. (I'm assuming that they're the islands you are referring to ) But anyhoo, I have heard the exact same theory that you are posing, and I said the exact same thing then, as I shall now. And that is, was anyone there with the birds while they were evolving? Does anyone have any proof that the birds didn't start out with the beaks that they currently have? According to Hawaiian history, the flora and fauna were here long before humans were, yet they said without a tone of doubt in their voice that they evolved, when humans weren't even there to witness it. But then, these people already hated me due to me being a haoli, and these people firmly believed that we haolis are suppressing them, and yet in the one island that they do not let us go to, their average lifespan is about thirty to fourty years. But that's a whole other peeve of mine Anyway. There's my two cents, do with it what you will.

[IntrepidIsMe]

I was talking about the Galapagos Islands,

And you weren't cutting in, as you've posted 5 days after the last post,

And if you compare the birds on the Galapagos, to those on the mainland, they have almost the exact same DNA. There's no way that they can't be related. Two species don't just pop up at the same time, having nearly the exact same DNA, yet in different places. One had to have come from the other, and therefore changed to look different (evolved). Just like how us humans share 95+ percent of our DNA with chimpanzees.

[Gondor Girl]

Oh, no one's saying that they're not related. Actually, I'm not against a thing called micro-evolution. I believe that it's possible that people or animals change just an eeny-beeny bit to be better suited for their environment. Think about it, Asians have dark skin and squinty eyes to help them better withstand the sun. However, micro-evolution is the only thing that I even remotely think is possible. I do not believe in Macro-evolution which is the belief that we evolved from single-celled organisms. I don't believe in that at all. I do not believe that anything can evolve so much as to change into an entire species, not even over an extensive period of time. They just have tiny little features of them changed just a little bit and stay that way. That's all. That's how I think that Noah was capable of bringing all of the animals onto the ark. Because he didn't take every single different little species of every kind. He probably just took like two dogs, two cats, a set of each type of bird, etc. Their inbreeding caused all the little differences in the specific kinds of dogs and cats and such. But no amount of inbreeding could possibly cause the type of evolution that you speak of.

[IntrepidIsMe]

Well, I never said that inbreeding causes evolution,

And how can they be two different species and share so much of the same DNA? It amazes me how people don't think evolution is possible when you bring up that point.

[Gondor Girl]

Oh, I was referring to something that someone said earlier (I think) but anyhoo. They aren't all that different from each other, they just have different beaks. That's pretty much the only difference. That was micro-evolution a slight mutation of a species having a little feature changed, but it's not one species slowly changing to another.

[Hitchhiker]

[Gondor Girl]

Well, firstly, if we really did evolve from single celled organisms, why haven't archaeologists found any missing links. I mean, if we really were in the missing link form for millions of years or whatever, you'd think that there'd be civilizations worth of fossilized missing links. As opposed to "lucy" which, if you've ever actually seen it or a picture of it, you'd know right off the bat is no proof at all, as you can hardly even tell what it's supposed to be. And some of the other "proofs." A monkey skeleton found next to tools? Fossils of human beings with rickets? A human skull cap with an ape jaw and a pig's tooth were found in the same location, and you guys thought for a while that that was parts of a skull that belonged to a person of a whole other missing link. I'm sorry but none of these things prove anything. Hard evidence. That's what you need to find.
I also have a slight problem with that interstellar drift thing. First off, since we're part of the universe, how are we one hundred percent certain that we really are drifting all that much, and if we are, how do you know how far apart the stars were when they first started moving at their current speed? You mentioned to me once before not to say anything about the Steady State theory or something like that, but here you are assuming that these stars and planets have been moving at these speeds forever. Perhaps they were going a heck of a lot faster than they currently are going for the first couple thousand years. But this is all provided that you can prove that there really is universal expansion at all.

[Hitchhiker]

Well, many scientists believe that the universe increased in size exponentially during its first few seconds of existence. So yes, things were travelling faster than before.

We figure out how far apart stars are mostly be triangulation. For example, we know how far about Mars is. So using Mars and Earth as the first two points, we can calculate the distance to the third using some high school math.

The phenomenon known as red shift is very good proof for the expansion of the universe. As galaxies move away from us, their light is shifted into longer and longer wavelengths, making it appear redder. This is known as red shift.

[Gondor Girl]

So, you've proven interstellar drift. I didn't doubt that the stars moved around. Nothing seems to hold still in this universe, but can you prove that the universe is actually expanding rather than just moving around? And also, don't you have any comments on all my statements of evolution? I'm genuinely curious to see what you have to say.

[IntrepidIsMe]

Sharing 95+ % of our DNA with chimps seems like pretty hard evidence to me,

[Founder]

Thats the evidence!? What if we shared that much with an Otter. Would that mean we evolved from them too?

[Gondor Girl]

Plus, I've read that the animal whose eyes are most like ours are squids. Now, you'd think that as we go up the evolutionary scale, the animal's eyes would get more and more like ours as opposed to being similar to ours then changing to something very different then POOF! Here we are with the eyes that we have.

[IntrepidIsMe]

Don't be so silly. Thing is we nearly look like a chimpanzees, too. We don't look like otters, no matter how cute they are,

[Gondor Girl]

So they're facial structure is somewhat similar to ours. But their arms are longer than their legs, they're covered with fur. They have muzzles, however short, they are still muzzles. They don't have nearly the same amount of intelligence capacity as we do. Despite how much you train them and how much the movies say they can, we can never communicate with monkeys through sign language. Troodons had a closer mental activity to ours than chimps.

However, I must agree. Otters sure are cute.

[IntrepidIsMe]

But, chimps are amazingly smart for animals, and walk on two legs, can create tools, etc. 95% of shared DNA seems amazingly high to me, for us not be related.

[Gondor Girl]

Troodons walked on two legs. A large portion of dinosaurs walked on two legs when they had more than two available. Also, though chimps do occasionally walk on only their two feet, they use their arms a large portion of the time. They're not hugely smart though. I've seen a video clip of a chimp sniffing another chimps butt and passing out. An ape pooping in it's own hand, and so on. And I have never seen or heard of a chimp that has made a tool for itself. They may have used a stick to poke into a hole, but they've never actually created their own tools. Plus, the odds of our planet being right where it is seems awefully high for it to have been a coincidence yet amazingly, you think it was.

[IntrepidIsMe]

Yes, but your explanation for "god" creating it has absolutley NO proof whatsoever to back it up, Evolution has proof.

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/ThinkTank/ToolUse/ChimpToolUse/default.cfm
That's a pretty trustworthy source, I think.

Troodons and Dinosaurces are extinct, however. Chimpanzees aren't, not to mention walking isn't the only factor, it was only an example. Your video viewing seems awfully selective.

[Gondor Girl]

They aren't extinct by any fault of their own. It was because the Great Flood changed the climate so that the oxygen wasn't pure enough for their tiny nostrils to inhale enough oxygen to sustain them.

Evolution doesn't have proof. No one has found missing links, until they do evolution will continue to not have any proof. Evolution cannot be proven true until they find missing links, and not just one or two, but all of them. A whole composite of them. If they don't, then one could simply think that it was the fossil of a man born due to incest or something. According to the theory of evolution, man was in the stages between ape and man for millions of years. This would mean that there should be a large amount of men in that state. Another thought. Why are there still apes around if we evolved from them? And if you're going to say that it's because they're the next generation of humans or something like that, why don't we still have the half-human half-apes walking around? They could just as easily be the "next generation" of humans.