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http://www.astronomy.net/forums/god/messages/10221.shtml
Hi, Jisbond. I haven't gotten around to reading your post on evolution until now, but hopefully I can provide a clarifying answer here.
I have to say that whoever wrote that article professes a profound misunderstanding of evolution. First off, rather than make scientific or researched observations on why evolution cannot be fact, he tends to stay totally ideological: "Evolution can't be true because the Nazis believed in it. Evolution can't be true because it would mean that the races have genetic differences." These are terrible arguments, and it boils down to "Evolution cannot be true because I don't like how some people interpret it." I could just as easily say that religious beliefs are incorrect, because some religious people have used their religions to defend Crusades, repressions, tortures, Inquisitions, and Jihads. But I would never limit my arguments to statements like these, and it implies a subjective reasoning. Just because power-hungry people use evolution to justify atrocities says NOTHING about its objective worth.
"how can killing from a distance by a device borrowed, or bought from others, be natural selection? Shell fragments, from a shell that is fired when a small sick man pulls the cannon trigger, may kill a strong man. What about nuclear war that will kill everybody? How can evolution account for it?"
I don't understand, for the life of me, how anyone could make such an argument. Evolution cannot be true because sometimes the weak win? No. Evolution does not say "The strong will always win." All it says is that people who pass their genes on will pass on their characteristics. That is more or less it. And since those who would prosper in a hostile environment are typically those who you would deem "strong," they tend to pass their genes on more.
The article, in general, professes an opinion so biased and unthinkingly dogmatic that I am at a loss of words to describe it. If I were to go through it point by point I KNOW I would go into a rant that would last several paragraphs, so to spare us all that torment I'll provide some evidence FOR evolution and let's see if you can refute them:
1) The fossil record. As we dig further and further back into the rock, we find life getting less and less complex as we go from strata to strata. So this means that the further back in time we go, the simpler life gets. So life gets more complex with time. Not only this, but species themselves are isolated in certain areas. We don't find, for example, human fossils among dinosaur fossils. This means that we didn't exist at the same time: different life forms existed at different times.
2) DNA evidence. We share 98.6 or some VERY high amount of our DNA with chimpanzees. How can you be 99% chimpanzee and not be related to the chimpanzee? We even have the same hemoglobin in our blood (A VERY species specific thing) similar social behaviour, almost identical anatomy, etc. We even 1/4 to 1/3 of the DNA of plants and houseflies, for goodness sake.
3) Transitory species. Dinosaurs and birds have very similar characteristics, for instance. Look at the Archaeopteryx. It has both bird and reptile characteristics.
4) Why don't we see past creatures today? If creatures stay the same, we should expect to see, for example, Icthyosaurs in the sea or trilobytes or even less sophisticated "human" beings: Neanderthals, Homo Habilus, Homo Erectus, etc? Where did they go?
5) Logical deduction: If an ape is born with longer arms then its competitors, and lives in a region with fruit high up on trees, that ape has a better chance of getting food, hence a better chance of passing his genes on, hence his "long arm" genes get passed on to his children, and eventually this gene becomes dominant in the ape species. Now, add these changes up for eons, and eventually a species will have changed so much from its parent life-form that it can be considered a new species.
I do find it suprising that anyone can deny evolution despite mountains (and I mean MOUNTAINS - I didn't go into much detail here) of evidence in favor of it. |
