Tiny 'saber-toothed squirrel' found
As suggested in the "Ice Age" movies, some crazy-looking creatures roamed the planet millions of years ago. But there is a large gap in the fossil record from about 60 million to 120 million years ago when it comes to mammals in South America. Where were they, and what did they look like?
Scientists have now discovered a quirky little creature from this time period, as reported in the journal Nature. It's called Cronopio dentiacutus, and it resembles a mouse-sized squirrel with proportionally long teeth, although technically speaking it is neither a squirrel nor saber-toothed.
"The reality of exploration and research can sometimes be as strange as fiction that we see in the movies," said Guillermo Rougier, lead author of the study and professor at the University of Louisville.
The extinct mammal, which lived 94 million years ago, belongs to the lineage that has given rise to the marsupials and placental mammals that we know today. It's related to all living mammals, including humans in a remote way. It has been extinct for about 60 million years. Rougier and colleagues examined its unique skull.
"It was a lot more primitive than we are with regard to the way in which the skull was put together; the teeth were very primitive," Rougier said. "The skull is about an inch long."
Scientists believe was Cronopio dentiacutus was an insectivore, which is common for small animals today. Their teeth seem to be specialized for cutting and crushing; the large canines of Cronopio dentiacutus could puncture through small insects. To give you some perspective on the size of these canines, imagine if one of your front teeth came down below your chin, Rougier said.
Coronpio dentiacutus lived at the same time as small carnivorous dinosaurs, terrestrial crocodiles and snakes with legs. It inhabited the flood plains of Argentina that is now a desert area in Patagonia, where people live on subsistence farming.
Most mammals were very small, like Coronpio dentiacutus, at that time, said Rougier. It wasn't until big dinosaurs went extinct that mammals grew to be as large as cats and small dogs.
"These were the tiny little guys that would squirrel in between the toes of the dinosaurs trying not to get stepped on."
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Personally, I find no fault with either evolution or creationism. Feeling otherwise, to me, seems to be "limiting" God. It puts our puny human minds and reasoning up against that which we cannot comprehend, no matter how intelligent we believe we are. Categorically saying one is true while the other is false is wishful thinking. Trusting our own human ability to classify, categorize and catalog all that is in our view, including the galaxy and universe is an exercise in futility. As far as I'm concerned, the "Creation" clock is still ticking and the "Evolution" timer is set to forever. There will ALWAYS be change. Change comes from without and within. To survive, one must adapt. Those unable to adapt quite simply cease to exist. I see no dichotomy here. It is the utter rejection of one view or the other I find troubling. Anyone who believes they can "define" the powers of a Creator is sadly mistaken, arrogant and in denial of solid evidence.
Be talkin' to you....................Webrydr
It's amazing how far some people will go to justify their own particular faith, however, your last sentence says it all. If you cannot define the powers of a creator then you can't define anything else about it, such as it's wants. So then any calim of knowledge of a creator is flase and has no value. What is science supposed to do, just throw a creator into the mix without knowing the peramiters of said being? You can believe creationism if you want to but it will never be anything more than blind faith. There can never be any proof. And so to hold one up against the other as equal argumnents is rediculous. It's your kind of thinking, "puny human minds" that makes me sick. The next time you are really ill, don't go to a doctor, just pray and see where that gets you.
Friend, I think you missed the point. I advocate for neither, but believe both are possible. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. The short answer is, "God invented evolution." Why not? Being "all knowing" would be an advantage. You'd KNOW that things are gonna change, so you'd build in the ability to adapt. As hard as we may try, we cannot tie the combination of evolution and creation up with a nice, tidy red bow. Ain't gonna happen as long as rabid believers in either camp deny outright the plausibility or possibility that they are one and the same.
There are those in the scientific world who even get to a point where all the science comes to a halt, there is something missing. Science has not explained everything, including God. When science proves there is no God, which will never happen, then maybe I'll worry about trying to prove there is. Why doesn't everyone quit acting like they know it all when even any scientist and any religious leader will tell you there are still plenty of mysteries man has yet to solve.
I do get your point. You are trying to hold up creationism and say that it is an equally valid argument as science, and you are completely wrong. You use the word belief to describe each which shows where you are comming from. The use of science takes us places regardless of our beliefs. If you want to say that god created the universe and walked away, you could do so, but there is no evidence of that. There isn't one single formula on earth where the addition of a creator brings us closer to knowing or achieving something. And then here comes framed, he just wants to throw up his hands and make up his own truth. Science does not come to a halt. And just because we don't know something doesn't automatically mean that god explains it. That is lazy. Why do you guys use and bennefit from the tools and medicine that science has provided you and then mock that very process? Science and creationism cannot be comared as equal arguments, period.
So you're saying that the creation of time as science books describes it can be proven? I'd like to see how. It seems to me that no person would have been present for such an event, and all we have are theories. That's just as blind faith as anything else. There isn't a way possible to "prove" that. We take what science classed teach us and just accept it as true, science is just a man-made technique use to explain things that we wouldn't otherwise be able to.
It would probably help if you knew what the word "theory" actually means. Indeed, you obviously don't know how science works at all. I (and others here) can help you learn how it works, but until you have that knowledge, you are only expounding upon your ignorance.
Juniys Gallio, Do tell. Please educate me, I would love to hear this.
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation of empirical phenomena. A theory is a proposed description of empirical phenomena that has been repeatedly tested and is widely accepted. A theory is not (contrary to some usage) a half-baked idea somebody came up with one day on a lark. Hypotheses and theories are expressed in such a way that another scientist can test the proposed explanation–either verifying it, or falsifying it. The requirement to have a testable statements is central to science: if your statement cannot be tested empirically, it ain't science.
Science is ONLY competent to deal with the natural world. In science, there can be no discussion of "God did this", because science does not have the tools to test such a statement. That means science cannot "prove" or even "verify" the existence of God–but it also means that any scientist who claims to "disprove" or "falsify" the existence of God is full of bologna. (Richard Dawkins' assertions to the contrary, there is no such thing as a "God hypothesis" in science.)
That's what science is all about–scientists try, repeatedly, to falsify the hypotheses that have been proposed. Simply verifying a hypothesis teaches us a little .. falsifying a hypothesis teaches us a LOT, in that it allows us to discard erroneous information.
Evolution had been tested repeatedly–and at _every single test_, while the specific mechanical details of evolution may be changed, the general principles have been repeatedly verified. Despite the erroneous claims of many who oppose evolution (and, as much as I hate to say it, the outright lies of some leaders of the anti-evolutionary "movement"), there IS no evidence against it.
Scientists have tried for decades to falsify evolution–and if any scientist were to succeed in doing so, they would be assured of a degree of fame and fortune that would be the envy of the rest of the scientific community.
Your statement that there can never be any proof is unfounded. 200 years ago there was no proof that an automobile would be invented or that man would be able to fly. If in fact the bible is the inspired word of God the proof will certainly be comming and the fact that you could not prove it to yourself will only be to your detriment
ok, I've been looking at what you're saying and I would like to challenge you with one single thing: Since you have the belief that evolution is such a better explanation than creation (which is justified in your words by "blind faith"), please enlighten all of us with just one FACT of evolution. I do not mean something that you cannot prove or "think is true."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact
"Dogs are mammals," is a fact about evolution. Put it together with millions upon millions of other facts and you've got something. But I suspect you want more. The thing about "facts" is that if you adopt a position of epistemological skepticism you can deny any fact arrived at by scientific method. Such is its nature. But I find it a little bit comical and a little bit sad that people take this position of extreme skepticism with regards to evolution, but then turn around and stand by a position which is founded wholly in faith.
Fact: evolution occurs.
(Supplemental fact: many people on BOTH sides of the argument have little or no idea what the ramifications of the above fact are.)
Bonus fact: transitional fossils exist (there's a list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils), but that also means something quite a bit different than most people think.
Goddog...from Haverford?
Wes... Yes, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the theory of inflation is correct. By your argument nothing in history has ever happend since no one is alive that was there. It's called evidence. You throw the word "just" into your last sentence as if you haven't fully bennefited from science. Science has no agenda brother. If there was evidence of a creator it would be pursued. But you prefer the "religious" method which is faith based and has spawed thousands of different truths. The scientific method was designed by men in order to find a truths that could be tested and repeated and achieve unity. Don't brush it off so handily my friend. How many religious scientists do you think there are? My guess is that there are many. How many of them believe in creationism? How does creationism help us understand or advance anything? Can we make better medicine from it? Can we make better tools from it? Can we ever know more about anything if we just stop and say that it was god? You live by the rules and laws of science. You have probably been saved numerous times by it. You are like a fish on the end of a hook who yells to his friends "look, I caught a human!". Believe what you want.
"limiting God", now are you refering to teh God of the bible of just a god?
Hard to say, ain't it? Is there one God? Are there many? The God of the Bible is a human construct, as are all the gods of legend and lore, all the way back to the days of the Greeks. So, WHO I'm referring to is the entity, force, being, power that plucked everything from nothing some 17 billion years ago.
"The God of the Bible is a human construct". And you can prove that right, just as well as I can prove to you that you're wrong, right. I like how mater of fact you state you BELIEFS...
Back to the reason I asked though, your statement about "limiting God", you used a capital G when you said God so I'm going to assume you meant the God of the bible. How are we limiting God by taking what He said to be true. He said that all was created in 6 days, so to "do Him a favor" by saying that He used evolution over millions of years is not limiting Him, it's calling Him a liar. Now He being God of the universe, I don't want to be the one to call Him a liar.
How did this live 94 million years ago if the earth was created 6000 years ago?
Really?! Where have been all these years! Hope you are not a 5 year old posting comment! Take care.
just stop... no more comments from you please...
Grant, you need to watch some Science Channel. I'd suggest "How The Earth Was Made" as your primer. Then, move on to the "Mutant Planet" series. And, for a measly $29.99, you can get the whole series of "Planet Earth." I don't think you're ready for any solar system or universe programs yet. Seems you need to grow up a little before you tackle THOSE programs.
the world was created about 14 billion years ago we just didn't have written records from before that
The problem is not in what you read but in your understand of what was said. No where does G-d say 24hrs- he says night and day- which is a repeated cycle. For proof how could you have the first day be 24hrs if you hadn't created the sun n moon to measure that time yet? Also as proven by science time is relative depending on speed what is 1 day to someone moving at or faster than the speed of light can be millions of years to some else traveling much slower. 14 billion yrs is really a meaningless time for the universe bc it doesn't not give an absolute reference to compare it by- IE if humans started moving 2 times as fast it would appear that the universe was much younger, and vise versa if we slowed down it would appear as if the universe was much older. Now if you do a careful review of Genesis it says what G-d did in 7 "days" (as given from HIS reference point) then as soon as G-d rested it picks up back on the 6th day (from mans reference point) if you did some more studying you would find that we are still on/in G-d's 6th day of creation. Using "time" to try and discredit the bible is futile and just means you don't really understand the principles of time at all.
i am arresting everyone above me for lacking a sense of sarcasm
I know eh? Whatta bunch of noobs
At first there was nothing
Then god created light
There was still nothing
But now you could see it.
"It's related to all living mammals, including humans in a remote way."
Hmmm. Wouldn't this mean it was related to all mammals in pretty much the SAME remote way?
Look at the branches of a tree. You have the trunk, then a few main branches, then branches off of those and so on. You can see then how some can be more closely related than others.
I should have said it was related to all LIVING mammals in the SAME remote way.
10-4.
Not really.
I'm remotely related to Vlad Tepes (yeah, the model for Dracula, and an all-around nasty guy), which means I'm remotely related to the current Royal Family (very, very remotely). On the other hand, I am _directly_ related to an ancestor named Conrat, who lived about the time Tepes lived.
The real problem is "remotely related" is not a precise term.
If we share the same grandmother, then we are the same "distance" from her. If an elephant and I share the same great-great-great.....grandma sabretooth squirrel thing, then how am I more "distantly" related to her? The only real difference would have to do with the rate at which each generation was created (faster for humans than elephants(?), slower for humans than raccoons, etc.) But I'll bet for most of the last 94 million years the difference would be negligible.
And that's part of the reason why "remotely related" is not precise.
When biologists look at how closely related two species are, the time between the existence of those two species is relatively unimportant: what is important is the _degree of similarity_. With living (or recently dead) critters, we can find this out by examining the DNA and seeing the similarities ... with extinct species, we have to do the best we can looking for similarities in the fossilized skeletal structure.
Case in point: humans are some 98% genetically identical to chimps (I don't remember the exact figure), but chronologically the split between our common ancestor and theirs was probably Ardipithecus kadabba, some 7 million years ago.
at gallio you should check your facts from time to time as new information is always coming out- in the 80's-90's it was said humans and chimps were 98% alike in dna, but as new methods for mapping and testing have come about that percent has gone down to bt 88-92%. Still close but a lot further away than originally thought. I imagine as we understand, map, and test things that percent will go down even more.
As with so many things, the methodology is important. See:
http://efference.blogspot.com/2008/11/human-chimp-dna-similarities-truth-and.html
Anyone make a comment about Sqrat from Ice Age yet?
YES!! i think the creaters of ice age have ESP!! how cool is that though?? a sabor-toothed squirrel... wow! I wish i could go back in time for one day and just see all the differences. I know i know, never going to happen (at least in my life time) but it would be so neat to find where my house is in the time of the dinos...
We don't have to go so far back if we want to find saber-toothed squirrels. All we have to do is look up a wealth of folks like Ann Coulter, Fred Phelps and Louis Farrakhan, neither would we have to dig for long-winded cuckoo birds, we're already lousy with those in D.C.
Good one – had to laugh out loud.
Obviously life and survival was a good bit more difficult back in those days.
And we think we have it tough today!
This headline is BS reporting – to say that this squirrel was "found" as if he discovered yesterday in a filed or something??? The correct headline should have been that ancient squirrel evidence was found. And it's so boring how christians (?) can turn a news story into evangelizing – where is your brain that god gave you??????
where's your brain its field not filed
try "it's" instead of "its"
eric, you've never made a typo? I guess you must be the only person in the world with a brain then.
Bob, pointing out irony is fair. Eric just half failed at it.
Like Cronopio Dentiacutus, there are some Homo Sapiens among us who possess one inch brains too. Their brains have not yet begun to evolve, although they possess large biceps.
"But there is a large gap in the fossil record from about 60 million to 120 million years ago..."
Correct, and not just in South America. The fossil record is very much incomplete. What reasonable person presupposes to say they 'know' an answer after seeing that half the information is missing?
I would agree, no reasonable person should assume they know all the answers and all information is incomplete. That is why science works so well as a way of learning. It is based upon asking questions about what is not known and comparing those questions to evidence. One of the problems with the answers I suspect you are implicitly promoting is that they were ruled out long ago by people honestly comparing questions to evidence.
Because half is better than none.
Who came up with "half" has been descovered? Who thinks they know enough to determine "half"? Darwin's Theory is just that! The one thing I realize is the more I learn and think I know the more I realize I only know very little compared to what really exists in this universe. The world used to be flat – remember! And we hold ourselves so far above people 100 or 200 years ago! Imagine people 300 or 500 years from now will look upon us as idiots!
Those working in this field tend to avoid absolutes when data is missing. They use "suspect" instead of "know", "evidence points to" instead of "proves". But the more we learn, the more the preponderance of evidence supports some form of evolution. God possibly optional.
Why can't we all just agree that God made evolution?
Because there is no such thing as God.
ummmmm 2-Thats because all this time he has ignored you and your ignorance
Ummmm, maybe because of the overwhelming scientific facts that support evolution. I am not saying anything about God here - am a believer myself - but the evidence is clear. Evolution is a fact, not a theory.
By definition, a scientific theory is an explanation supported by a large amount of data. It is, for all intents and purposes, fact. This is always a common misconception- that when something in science is "just a theory," it may not be true. A theory in science and the word theory, as used in everyday language, are two very different things.
A theory is not for all intents and purposes fact. When a theory becomes a fact, it becomes a law. First there's the theory of gravity, they prove it, then it becomes the law of gravity. A theory is just what it says it is, a theory. It's essentially a best guess based upon available evidence.
Well, not really. The Law of gravitation is F=G*m1*m2/r^2 (I don't know how to make subscript in this post, m1 should be m subscript 1 and m2 should be m subscript 2). The theory of gravity includes this plus a whole lot of other data, conclusions, proofs, suppositions, etc. all having to our understanding of all that has to do with what gravitation is. I think people mistake "theory" for "hypothesis".
I don't see any evidence at all that evolution is a fact. I see evidence that different animals and mammals existed and went extinct, plenty of animals, birds and mammals have gone extinct in the observable lifetime of mankind-does not prove that something else evolved only that something became extinct.
If you wanted to see evidence, you'd see it. You'd see lines of strata piled on top of each other, row after row. And you'd see fossils, and see that the deeper into the strata you look, the more different the fossils were. And maybe you'd think to yourself, "How come I'm not seeing fossils of modern animals? Shouldn't there be lots of them?" And maybe you'd make charts of the forms of these fossils, and start to see patterns of change in these fossils. And you'd start to wonder and start to really think about things without the cloud of blind faith and...
Nahhh!
You see what your preconceived notions limit you to seeing.
Many of us prefer instead to develop theories around what we find and observe, rather than brute-forcing our observations into the confines of a human-written book.
One reason we can’t agree upon this is because of the varying degrees of intelligence and education among believers. This has always been the case.
For example early Christians at Alexandria (an intellectual center) interpreted the Scriptures allegorically or figuratively, whereas the Christians at Antioch had a more literal understanding of the same Scriptures.
That is one of the marvelous things about the Bible, it is a rich and complex literary document, which can be appreciated by and meet the needs of individuals of all levels of ability.
Exactly, people pick and choose how they want to use the Bible everyday. It is marvelous how continuity is chucked out the window, and you can just make it fit how you want on that day.... yawn
Pete: I would also see crocodile & shark fossils that guess what look very much like todays sharks and crocodiles.
Then you would be looking for exceptions, rather than trying to understand.
Because evolution does not need direction.
Peter; And saber toothed tigers and whooly mammoths and big faced bears and on and on.
Hmmm. I don't see any sabre-tooth cat fossils in the Permian strata, or crocodiles or T. rexes for that matter. I only see see sabre-tooth cats in the Pleistocene. I wonder why. And I can extract DNA from wooly mammoth bones, but not from trilobites. Why is that?
DNA doesn't fossilise...we get it from mammoths because they're preserved by freezing, like the chicken or tofu in your kitchen refrigerator's freezer.
Fossils are living things that have had their structures replaced by stone over millions of years. The nucleotides and acids of DNA no longer exist in the fossil.
That DNA is lost in the fossilization process is mostly true, of course, but still... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/scientists-recover-t-rex-soft-tissue/#.TrgWH2BpHFQ
The real question is why fight over it? Computers, software, phones, cars, buildings, batteries, medicines, etc.. Are NOT the result of praying to God, when educating children that will be charged with making the aformentioned things they should be given the best instruction possible and that the Creator has no role there.
Not to say that a spirtual life is a waste of time, parents should pass on their culture and beliefs to their children through their lifestyles and actions. If we can agree on that, the argument becomes moot.
And as to whether or not they were created or evolved per your post should also mean nothing to them.
Pete: Gotta admit you got me on that one, but i'm anxious to hear your explanation with regards to the trilobites.
frespech: The older a fossil is, the less likely it is that there is retrievable DNA.
Adam and Eve were both squirrels......LOL
It's the squirrel from the movie Ice Age.......
Everybody,s complaining and demonstrating. Me, I,m just glad I don,t have one of these pups in my pants.
I read dumb people
To all the religious nuts out there,
In the time of Jesus the average human male was 4'7" tall. Today the average human male is 5'9" tall. If that is not evolution how do you explain it?
selective adaptation, or selective woman choosing taller men...
thats simple. god wants us to play basketball.
LOL
Actually, the relative increases in average human height and lifespan have more to do with our overall better health as a species in regards to nutrition and medicine than ongoing evolution. Not disagreeing with your sentiment, just reminding you that there are plenty of other contributing factors.
Not only that, they have found the skeletons of many tall people back then, I question your 4' 7" statistic. Race also determines height. For example the people of Scandnavia, Montenegro and some African tribes are naturally tall.
On the other hand, some people are genetically small, like Pygmies, they all are human and none have evolved into anything else other than humans.
Probably hormones from McBurgers.
Jesus was 6'0" tall and every body else u say was 4'7". So this was why Jesus was heads above the rest
How would you know Jesus was 6 feet tall? Nobody ever took a picture.
Better nutrition, better medical care, hormones and chemicals possibly in food.
It would have more to do with what is being used in the production of our food. Hybriding and growth hormones. A taller human is not evolution because it's not turning into something else. Still human.
They may have only been 4'7" tall but they were still human not some other species, adaption and change does not equal evolution.
Evolution is a Pearl Jam song.
God made scientists so we could all benefit.
Pickup line: If I was a squirrel and you were a tree, would you let me bust my nuts in your hole?
"Hey Rocky! Watch me rip the throat out of the Fractured Fairy Tales chick!"
rocky was the squirrel.
why cant religion and sciense work together. who are we to even begin to understand a concept as god. personally, im no christian, i do believe in a god of some form or another. Why cant god be responsible for the big bang, evolution, science and the whole thing. If god is so powerful as all the religious crazies claim he/she is, then prove god aint 5 trillion years old. then prove from god's perspective that 5 trillion years old is not like a human 5 year old. I believe god and i listen to science. that way im never dissapointed.
Ultimately, you can't have it both ways....not if you're going to be honest with yourself. Science and religion are not friends. By your standards, we can make anything mean anything....and that is exactly what religion does. Take out god from your statement and insert santa claus or zeus and it would mean exactly the same thing. If you believe a god (or anything else, for that matter) exists, then get busy proving it. The burden of proof is on you, friendo....not on others, like me, who say there is no reason to believe that your fairy of preference exists.
This report has false information. The universe is only 6000 years old. Science is so stupid.
@The Dude: You say the Universe is only 6,000 yrs old. What a nut job u are. Hell I know people older than that
You don't abide, DUDE! Science is real!
That is an actual picture of the prophet muham........ or some guy unrelated to any religion.
All to evolution peopl just take a look at the dead sea scrolls (lost books of the bible)and you will see.
Marsupials 10:2; Verily verily I say to thee; look and you shall see; smell and you shall smell; hunt and you shall eat. Has not my father provided all; has not my father provided marsupial saber toothed squrrel; with his tooth you shall make spear, with his pouch you shall make bag to carry tooths and verily my brothers with his body you shall have meat.
Very creative. LOL.
why would someone who does not believe in science visit a science web site. I find this ironic, or moronic. Think about this -is god male or female –it said we are made from HIS image. and if so why did we need females and who's image are they from lol hummm
do you think the squirrel ate praying mantis
Praying martinis.
1. You're an idiot.
2. Women and men have the same facial features, we are all created in God's image, duhhhh!
3. Woman was created b/c man was alone; therefore, God gave him a companion ... you would know this if you ACTUALLY read some scripture or did a little research. Only an ignorant, doubter asks questions without investigating whether answers already exist.
4. I thereby conclude ... you're just an idiot.
Have a blessed day !
Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Mk. 4.24
3
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
6
¶ Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.
If god didn't have a companion, why would man need one? Why did the companion have to be the opposite gender? What would have happened if god had stuck to the original plan and a companion was never made?
you assume image is a facial thing how restricking you think If God created man then why did he need a rib to make a woman if he was all knowing then he should have already known man would be lonley
you assume image is a facial thing how restricking you think If God created man then why did he need a rib to make a woman if he was all knowing then he should have already known man would be lonley
I love this. Man is created in god's image, huh? So god has to burn a time out every once and a while to go and take a dump? He gotta trim his nasty nose and ear hairs? I'm guessing the sheep that think a god looks like us could never wrap their heads around the idea that a god might not look like humans. Seriously? I could go on forever, but why waste my time. People who are stuck on the religious hook can't be reasoned with. This is just one of my favorite of many many many many many....arguments against religions.
I'm not sure you are actually looking for an answer but you answered the first question by "in his image" although the actual verse is let us create man in our image. As to why we need women that should really be obvious however the Bible says that Adam noticed that all the animals had mates except him. Getting the picture?
Those teeth don't seem particularly necessary for catching insects, or even helpful. I wonder if they were more oriented toward display or signaling. Maybe there was intense mating competition?
gasp! just look at that dental enhancement, I feel some serious "tooth" envy
So, this conclusion was based of a tooth and nothing else? Perhaps, fragmented skull pieces that are probably more dust than anything else? Grand conclusion, don't you think? The article does not say how they came to this conclusion. What percent of the bones were found? Secular scientists just love the confuse people. Seems there are always gaps in history. Interesting. Later on they'll find out that animal they found was not really related to anything they mentioned in this article. It does take mare faith to believe in this explanation that is filled with holes than to believe in God. I'll be called ignorant and unintelligent now because I choose to believe in God and not this. I always say, we could do so much more good if were to use the money they spend on things like this to prove God exists or even to help the human race.
I would argue that money has been poured into religion for far longer than into science. Look around you and ask if the technologies, medicines, foods, conveniences, and safeguards were brought to you by religion or science. Ask yourself if it is religion or science that has allowed you to live beyond the 26-year life expectancy of Biblical times.
The money we pour into religion will get us into heaven later. The money that we pour into science will improve our lives right now.
Actually that's completely backwards. If you read scripture there is nothing you as a human being could ever do to compensate for your sin and get into heaven. God doesn't need your money, your church does. The only way is through accepting Christ into your life and over it.
How can somebody say they don't believe in science? It's the study of all things, to include religion. God is Lord of wisdom, he placed a curiosity at the center of our being in order for us to gain knowledge. Science and God go hand in hand.
Methusala lived to be over 900 years old. How is that for longevity.
Many of us know that the Jews of biblical times very often used numbers in abstract fashion, so we don't take them all literally.
They had an entire skull. God apparently does not want you to read carefully, which explains why you believe in a magic man in the sky. The Catholic church runs a budget of about 5 billion dollars per year – and who knows how much they have in the bank, considering they're one of the largest owners of real estate (if not THE largest) and pay zero taxes – and that's just one denomination. Not enough money for your research project to "prove" that God exists? Do we need more time to prove this? Considering humans have pondered this questions since the beginning of...language and thought, perhaps funding and focus isn't the issue. C.S. Lewis would want to kick you off his team.
If we were to prove God's existence, wouldn't that ruin the whole "faith" thing? After all, isn't the whole "faith" thing what makes religion unassailable? What if we found out God was not who we thought she/he/it was?
Isn't that exactly why the "God of the gaps" keeps getting smaller?
You sir, are ignorant. Though, not because you believe in God, but because you believe money is wasted on science. The collective knowledge that exists in the scientific community can explain much more about our world and our origins than can faith. The Bible/ Koran/ Torah was not written to be taken literally- it was written to be used as teaching tool. The sooner people realize this, the sooner we can move on to more important arguments.
Seriously is evolution still being debated? Even without the miles of supporting forensic evidence which might be hard for some people to understand, evolution makes a pretty clear case with just what you can see. For instance, vestigial organs, similarities in body structure in all life forms on earth, and of course just the existance of dinosaurs in the first place. Years ago, intellegent christians realized there is just no point in arguing with these facts, because they are indeed facts. Those christians have now started to use science against science (as silly as it sounds,) even to the point where they have started to teach alternate origin theories to students in public schools. Really, it doesn't matter how we got here. What matters most is humanity working as a whole to better itself and protect itself from itself.
the thing about this article its not the actual science report someone wrote this acticle becuase he thought the mouse not squirrel looked like the character from ice age
Very well said , Ryan.
Even the squirrels were awesome back in prehistoric times. What gives?
Bad headline. Story says the rat is neither a squirrel or sabre-toothed. So much for that intro.
Most of you people are Not Very Nice. Grins.
There is no such thing as evolution. The saber toothed squirrels were created by our Creator with all the other animals.
And who created the creator?
Kerry King
The last civilization to construct self-replicating and evolving AI.
Then your creator sucked at this critters design cause all we got now is dem bones.
Evolution is a total lie ! God created this world, and it only existed 6000 years ! People that believe in science are idiots.
Silly troll is silly. At least I hope you're trolling because, if you actually believe that, it's very, very sad.
wake up Bob, or get off the drugs
I suppose God made the computer that you typed your message on. Science had nothing to do with at all. Electricity, electronics and materials technology are all the result of divine intervention as are antibiotics and medical technology. Did God make Golden retrievers and pygmy ponies or were they bred by man?
Yes to all of you questions.
The bible does not say that the earth is 6,000 years old, the human race is , but not the earth, earth is very ancient. There are references in the bible that clearly state that the earth and all other creation on it was not made in six literate days of 24 hours. Do some biblical research and this goes to all so called "christians".
Humans are 3,000,000 years old.
ah, squirrels, rats with bushy tails
And good PR.
Yes...they're real-life "Scrat"s! (film: Ice Age).
I swear my dog looks just like that saber-toothed squirrel pic.
you get the "funniest comment" star thus far on this board.
Everyone knows that the earth is only 6000 years old. The so called scientists trying to pull another one over our eyes so they can continue to fool everyone into paying their over prices salaries!
Troll.
Everybody knows the world is 6000 years old? And I guess humans rode the backs of Tyrannosaurs. Please. Did you miss some of your biology and science classes? Ever hear of carbon dating, or does that not fit neatly with your theological myths?
Mike, Everyone does not "know" that the world is merely 6,000 years old. A goodly number actually accept the theory that the entire universe is circa 14 billion years old, and the planet earth is somewhere around 4 billion years old. For those, like yourself, who do not believe this, the article is absurrd. However, for the many who do believe the greater age theory,they will find the article interesting. Honest disagreements should be accepted with grace. Many very sincere Christians differ on this issue, but they should do so wirh respect.
Mike you need to stop drinking that religious Kool-ade.......Charles Bowen Solomon Stone
Where's the picture of the actual skeletol remains. Why only an artist rendering? And how is it that a squirrel with such teeth dies off but the much less threatening version of them is thriving? Aside from what all the "experts" want to tell me about the origin of life, my own thinking ability tells me that when I see something of such design, it means some one made it. I could tell my kids until I'm blue in the face that the new TV in the living room just appeared by an accident and they would never believe it, not in a million or even trillions of years. So why should I believe some one, who frankly I don't even know, when he tries to tell me the same thing? The simple logical answer is I don't. I don't let any one else tell me what I should think without question so why should I with these guys?
You should probably have your "thinking ability" checked out. Just because it's difficult for the human brain to understand how something complex could develop naturally, does not make it impossible. A hundred years ago you would have told me that your "thinking ability" tell you that something like an I-phone could never exist, simply because you refuse to accept things that are too complex for you to understand. Give the thinking a rest and let someone with a bit of diligence give it a shot.
Why did a sabretoothed squirrel die out? Probably for the same reason all the sabretoothed animals died out. They didn't need those teeth anymore. They had pointy teeth when they had to break through insect exoskeletons, but their food source changed and they had to adapt. So tell me, what do squirrels eat today, genius? Try shaving little bits off of a nut with giant pointy teeth and see how you do.
Nice to see reasoning ability used in this craziness. 😉
My condolences.
Clueless and uneducated, clearly. Religious people threatened by the idea of evolution would be better to take the stance of f(who commented here). There are people believe that evolution occurs but that god made man special and man did not evolve. That's not what the evidence shows, but its more reasonable than denying the process of evolution.
I grew up in a religious city in Canada where they misrepresented the ideas of evolution to us to make it sound ridiculous. I was lead to believe that evolutionist were saying that if you kept an ape confined long enough, it would turn into a person. many people don't understand that evolution occurs across populations over large spans of time. It does not occur to individuals. The misinformation put out there by religious extremists makes Americans look like idiots-even the most religious can believe in evolution without believing in hominid evolution. but the nonsense they come up with instead......
Here is my understanding of the evolutionary theory: 1. Key elements combined to form basic molecules. 2. The molecules then linked together in the exact sequences required to form DNA, RNA or protein with the capacity to store the information needed to carry out tasks essential to life. 3. Molecules somehow formed the specific sequences required to replicate themselves. Without replication, there can be neither evolutionary development nor life itself.
The grand question then is this, if it didn't come about by a grand designer then how did it happen naturally? An adequate explanation seems lacking.
The truth is the opposite is what is happening. Decay. This is a result of what is called the second law of thermodynamics. The natural tendency is for order to degenerate into disorder.
Here is where your own thinking ability comes into play. Look at a building or even a town that is deserted. It doesn't evolve into a more complex town. It returns into nothingness. Science can not explain how energy was used to defy the law of thermodynamics in that something was built over time. Back to a deserted town, if people showed up and began doing repairs and kept it up, the town would continue but it takes intelligent design. Am I to believe now that the laws of the universe have also changed over millions of years? If that is what you are saying then show me the proof. Don't just call me an idiot because I don't just take your word on it. Believe it because scientist say it sounds much like religion itself.
It isn't that thermodynamics is being violated– it's that you are failing to understand the bigger picture here, and falling for creationist propaganda instead of digging deeper (objectively) on your own.
Paul:
> 1. Key elements combined to form basic molecules. 2. The molecules then linked together in the exact
> sequences required to form DNA, RNA or protein with the capacity to store the information needed to
> carry out tasks essential to life. 3. Molecules somehow formed the specific sequences required to replicate
> themselves. Without replication, there can be neither evolutionary development nor life itself.
The above statements do not relate to evolution: they relate to _abiogenesis_, a separate question (for which we know a lot less).
And what is abiogenesis? By definition: the supposed spontaneous origination of living organisms directly from lifeless matter. This belief is the very core of the evolutionary theory teaching.
I don't think this is a matter of me not getting the "bigger picture". I think it's more about letting the evidence speak for itself rather than forcing it to say what we want it to say.
And we don't want to confuse science of the origin of life with science that has done much in understanding how to fix the human body. We have the human body available to look at with thousands of studies that have been done to come to an understanding. And even then, some times we get it wrong. How many times do they go back and forth as to what is healthy and what is not. But as far as the beginning of all things, no one was there to witness it. As far as the fossil record, not much truth is told on it. Truth is, it shows that over a very long period of time, the appearance of animal life happened over a very short period of time. Pretty much like taking one step over the distance of a football field of distance.
As far as creation saying it all happened over 6 24hour days a few thousand years ago...that is not what the bible says. Each creative day represents the time it takes to completion of something. It also speaks of the day of Noah but that was not 24 hours, it was the time during which he was alive. Each creative day could have been millions or billions of years. There is one thing that both sides believe and that it all had a beginning. On that, we can agree. And no one was there to see it. That we also agree on. From there, we have to look at available facts and known acceptable standards. One should really do their homework to find out how and why this theory even began being taught in this country. And about the man who first came up with it. At what was he looking that made him come up with the idea? When most of the world was saying the earth was flat, did they say belief it is round is a human construct? Over 3000 years ago, recorded in the bible it says the earth was round and hung upon nothing. My point is, don't be so sure there isn't a bigger picture you might be missing. Just because people claim to be religious doesn't mean they have the proper understanding. And just because they are scientist doesn't mean they are always trustworthy. Demand proof. My guess is, for those who are hoping there is no God, they will accept it sight unseen.
> And what is abiogenesis?
A completely separate issue. Arguing against evolution by criticising abiogenesis is ... frankly, dishonest–I fear you have fallen prey to lies.
We can try to discuss the lies you have been handed, but first I will ask this: are you actually interested in learning the facts, or are you content?
I guess that's really it isn't it? You are looking for converts who will listen and obey your every word without question. If you actually had any tangible evidence and not speculations and artist renders, you might stand a chance of convincing some one who lets the facts speak but you don't have any tangible evidence or else you would have presented your case instead of always resorting to insult. The evolutionary religion has to be the worst of it's kind I have every seen. Requires blind faith in unproven theory from it's clergy the "scientist". Like most religions, do not ask any questions, just believe it. The more you try to move yourself away from modern religion, the more you have become like them. I would say your methods of converting is more like a cult with the insults. Just like them, you try to tear the person down first and then offer answers. For the record, not just you haven't answered any of my questions but no one has. Only thing I have heard is that I'm wrong or stupid. But to be honest, I wasn't expecting there were any other answers other than believe it because every one else does and the scientist say it's so.
Paul, his statements didn't warrant your hyperbolic reply. Shameful.
> You are looking for converts who will listen and obey your every word without question.
Nice try, but I'm not interested in "converts," tractable or otherwise.
> If you actually had any tangible evidence and not speculations and artist renders, you might stand a chance of convincing some one who lets the facts speak but you don’t have any tangible evidence or else you would have presented your case instead of always resorting to insult.
Paul, I've not insulted you in the slightest. Believe me, if I ever do, you'll know it. The only people I've "insulted" are those specific leaders of the ant-evolutionary "movement"–and if it's "insulting" to call a liar when he lies about something, I'll gladly plead guilty.
>The evolutionary religion has to be the worst of it’s kind I have every seen.
Now you're edging into enough dishonesty that the "insults" are starting to be warranted. If evolution were a "religion," we could very simply institute a pogrom against those who opposed it. After all, we do have Christianity (including the "early" church, Catholicism, various Protestant sects, and Orthodoxy) to offer splendid and plentiful examples on how it's done.
Evolution, however, is not a religion: it is a scientific theory (or group of theories, if you prefer), constantly subject to review and revision if any aspect of it is discovered to be in error. Indeed, as I said before to Wes, "Scientists have tried for decades to falsify evolution–and if any scientist were to succeed in doing so, they would be assured of a degree of fame and fortune that would be the envy of the rest of the scientific community."
> For the record, not just you haven’t answered any of my questions but no one has.
No, I've not–for precisely the reason that I asked you if you were content. If you are content, it's a waste of your time for me to offer evidence.
And yes, there is evidence–tangible evidence, quite literally tons of it. You've evidently been told that the evidence does not exist, or you've ignored or rejected it–that's your choice, and if you choose to continue to do so, that's fine.
> Only thing I have heard is that I’m wrong or stupid.
If the shoe fits, wear it. There's no moral condemnation in either being wrong or stupid: the ONLY moral choice comes in if you choose to continue in either of those statuses.
Did they find it still holding his favorite acorn.
So funny I forgot to laugh.....
You wouldn't want that squirrel taking a bite out of your nuts. Sorry just had to say.
That squirrel look CRAZY!
I'm Brian Fellow!
I thought only God could create life?
"Scientist accused of playing God after creating artificial life by making designer microbe from scratch"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1279988/Artificial-life-created-Craig-Venter–wipe-humanity.html
Pretty cool would love to read actual papers about it instead of a really awful article...
i am watching you.... right now look outside
Narrow minds think Narrowly, Takes a Male and Female to Create Life. and then again, What is "Life"? 🙂
Never heard of asexual reproduction I take it.
Actually, he didn't "create" life, but piggy-backed off of existing DNA. So its more than a misnomer to say we have the ability to create life or anything like it. But yet the stories role in with titles like that to draw in the readers. Now if they created it truly from scratch without having to have instructions, that would be worthy of saying they created life.
ICE AGE 4: CONTINENTAL DRIFT – COMING DEC 2012
Just say "No" to Continental Drift! Stop Plate Techtonics! Pass it on.
In general... If I have a life threatening condition and i have to choose between a pill that was made from chemicals through science or a pill made from dogma through faith, I'll take the science one any day of the week. And I don't care what any of you Religious apologists say, you do the same thing every day you hypoctitical viruses.
Maybe you could argue that by supporting faith, you are supporting evolution. As medical treatment based on science can inhibit natural selection. lol
Ha ha. Yes, if more religious people would go with faith healing, our collective intelligence might go up. however, they only selectively use faith. Like the Duggars, who do not use birth control and say that they will leave it to god. But when the last baby got sick with complications-they were in the hospital like most people. ..I'm not begrudging them that-I just think people make up whatever justification are convenient for them at a given time.
Ha ha! He looks like that mouse from the elephant movie!
Religion was made up to get peoples money...it's a scam. Nothing can be proved in any religions bible. I think some smart person thought up the idea of "God" thousands of years ago and somehow convinced just about everyone to give some of their earnings to the place of their worship. Believing in god is no different than believing in the Easter bunny or Santa..I believe in extraterrestrials and have had a couple encounters that I'm still searching for answers but for Christs sakes give it a break on this religion crap. One last thing I would like to add is, I would like to know how the Egyptian's got to Illinois 2700 years ago and buried some of their kings including Alexander The Great. You should check this out illinoiscaves.com this really happened and is true. If this really got out it would change all the history books. No joke extremely fascinating
Dude, be careful of what you say about Santa.
😉
Politics were made up to get peoples money...its a scam. Nothing can be proved by Government doctrines. Some smart person thought up the idea of world governments a long time ago and convinced everyone that they would rule fairly and not take advantage of the people who they were elected by. Thus man made governments could claim to do the work of God whom they had rejected in general, as they make war over power and resources, then blame it on him...
Alexander the Great buried in Illinois? Extraterrestrials? Dude, I have to tell Ya. I fine it very ironic that anyone as naive and gullible as you is not religious.
Hank. I'm a confirmed agnostic. And a philosophy student. There is no way to disprove the existence of God.
However, religion serves many social functions (I'm not saying its good.) Mostly, its social control, and like you said, financial control. It keeps people in line and lets the elites get around being in line. But our temporal lobes respond to religion-it probably served a social function also helped ease stress about not knowing what's going to happen to us. SO there are other reasons for religion. They don't make god any less or more likely to exist. But, in the end organized religion is usually corrupt and cruel. Its pretty sad that Christianity, which is supposed to be a reaction against cruelty and corruption, is ripe with capitalists taking from the poor and casting the first stone in all sorts of areas of public life. Hypocrisy and corruption
Jeez, look who's talking....
Why didn't the monkeys evolve into humans some more after us? Because we didn't come from MONKEYS. We evolved from ape-like (hairy and brutish) creatures. But they weren't actually apes, they somewhat resembled both.
Thanks
I think I speak for everyone when I say thank you, for sharing your profound wisdom.
They ARE evolving into something like humans. But it takes millions of years. There were several species of ape-men on the planet at one time. Homo Sapiens beat them out, they all died out. We probably killed them because they were different.
IT'S SCRAT, FROM ICE AGE MOVIES!
That's what I was gonna say, Looks like that poor guy finally kicked the bucked, now let's clone it... could make a neat pet, clean up scraps better then the dog...
So, if you are already certain that the ongoing stream of fossil discoveries is just a hoax or a conspiracy by scientists grovelling for grant money (or pushing an atheist world view), why bother looking at these stories in the first place?
Really, what is your interest other than being cognitively flatulent little trolls?
Dr.K.
I see that you are an open minded person with a degree. Why do you feel you have to insult someone that has another perspective. I'm grateful that there are some scientist that are open minded or we would still be treating some diseases by bleeding people and thinking that the sun revolves the earth. Have to agree with John on this one, too many times stuff like this comes out and scientist and lay people are quick to jump on it as actual proof of something only to find out sometime later it isn't what they claim it is.
Chris, science is based on evidence. Yes, science makes mistakes and it evolves too. But Creationists are not basing their beliefs on evidence. they are trying to manipulate evidence or explain away evidence. That is why they are ridiculed so badly. Some form of creationism that accepted the process of evolution, but denies that hominids evolved into people-that would be a more plausible explanation than denying evolution itself. But creationists are NOT open mined, for the most part, they will do anything to deny anything that disrupts their theology, including coming up with ridiculous stories, and attempting to misinform others.It happens in science too, when someone has a theory he really believes and then contrary evidence shows up> often the scientific community does not want to believe it. they try to shoot it down. But if there is enough evidence, people start doing more tests. And sooner or later, the evidence speaks for itself. Evolution can be observed in the lab under some conditions, for some animals that have fast generations.
Its been seen. IT cannot be denied
Well, for one thing, because it is not only ridiculous but incredibly insulting to accuse people who spend their professional lives studying something as either too dense to be able to do their job well, or only motivated by the idea of raking in grant money. It's not just a different perspective, it is a wrong, ignorant, and insulting perspective.
Dr.K.
Are you suggesting that his funding/grant idea doesn't happen? So many bad things happen is all professions – its my hope that your not offended because it hit too close to home. The presumppositions that historical science certainly is not as credible as operation science, thus we tend to have these quick claims to fame on some of these fossil finds, but again, only to find out out that they are not what they claim. A good scientist should know that his happens and as a Dr. you should realize that there is corruption and mistakes in science. Don't be so sensitive, just know the facts.
Elle: Try fruit flies genetic testing after hundreds of accelerated generations of producing fruit flies, one clue as to what science discovered."FRUIT FLIES".
I think it's more 'flatulent' to put Dr. in your login name; it makes me think YOU'RE the troll....hahahaha
hahahahahah...Doctor...WHO DOES THAT???
Now I'm hurt. If you're not up to the task of attacking the idea, just attack the person.
Imagine how stupid you'll feel when it's revealed that they actually do have a doctorate.
Yes, there is corruption and grant money in science. there is also fierce competition. If one scientist knew that anther's find was BS. He'd say so. Anthropologists are always calling each other out. But then more evidence is found that supports one theory or another and people move on. When there were fraudulent finds, they were exposed.
So its more likely that people arguing against fossil evidence are doing so because they are afraid of what it means for their faith. And I'm not an atheist. I'm agnostic. I think there may be a god, and there may not be. But there is no doubt that evolution occurs, and likely occurred with hominids. You can believe in god AND evolution. Or Don't/ But the stuff that people come up with in order to try to discredit science, is ...made up non-sense. you can't discredit evidence because ti scares you. You need facts
Funny, they didn't show a picture of the actual fossil, only a crazy cartoon rendering. I imagine there are some major discrepencies between the reaility of the find and the rendition. Or, as often happens, in two years we will find out that the bones belong to a known animal, but at least the researchers aquired more funding from the government based on their suppossed find. lol
lolololol
it's funny because you're uneducated
John has a point. Postulating where bones come and asserting what the animals looked like are all claims and based on a series of assumptions. These assumptions can be proven wrong in the future. It doesn't take a high school diploma to figure this out, frankly, so it has nothing to do with education. I really wish that the gov't wouldn't fund studies like these because they do nothing to benefit humanity....
Also, the funding statement is especially savvy; scientists definitely have to 'sing for their supper'.
It's going to take time to separate the fossil from the rocks. You just don't pull them out of the ground hose them off and display them. It could take months or years depending on the size of the fossil.
Perhaps they found them buried under Adam and Eve's tree!
Sound silly? Its as valid a rationalization as your belief that an "open mind" is somehow a valid argument against fossil evidence.
It's just me: By studying animal and plant fossils, there will be a better understanding of the history of life on Earth. Comprehension of past climate trends and their effects on animal life can be used for predicting what might happen in the future. That is why it is beneficial to fund such research. Same as NASA, there are so many inventions an comfort of living coming out of it. Don't you agree?
Damn! I wished it would be the Lincoln Squirrel.
Many have the logic for belief in a creator wrong. First off people can believe in things for different reasons. Secondly, by the criteria of science, no explanation for the origins of life, atheistic, or otherwise qualify as anything beyond hypothesis (suggestion). Many scientists believe that a creator is a more feasible explanation for the origins of life based on three scientific principals: 1) The second law of thermodynamics (governing the behavior of matter and energy), 2) Statistical probability (characterizing the behavior of random event events), and 3) observation of the non-living natural world. From these three sciences we know that random events are overwhelmingly destructive such that the more complex something is, the more unrealistic it is to attribute its creation to random events. Life is infinitely complex, therefore it is infinitely unrealistic to attribute its creation to random events. A conclusion many scientists have drawn is that life could not have originated from random events. The science of our physical realm would not let random events produce life. By deduction, something outside our physical realm had to be the cause. All attempts to speculate on explanations from that constraint lead to semantic variants of god.
Atheism, in contrast, attempts to explain the origins of life with the constraint that there is no supernatural element. The basis of that constraint is philosophical – a choice to not believe in something unless proof exists. With that constraint life had to have originated from random events despite the science that contradicts it. Interesting difference between atheists and sciences of faith is the difference in constraints. The atheist constrain is philosophical while the scientist of faith's constraint is based on science! The scientific facts behind evolution can be summarized as natural selective breeding (changes from within a species limited to its normal variation). The scientific challenges to atheism continue through all explanations for the myriad forms of life. None of the explanations for the emergence of species have a consensus behind them.
Bottom line is it is not as simple as religious morons clinging to antiquated beliefs versus sound science. It is much more complicated than that.
well put
um, atheists can believe in the supernatural just fine. They just don't believe in a god. It's a pretty simple definition. Buddhists, for example, are atheists. They still have faith and mysticism, just no god.
I agree that it's not as simple as religious idiots versus sound science. I don't agree with dynamic you propose though. Any scientist should be looking at what can be proven, what can be repeated, and not simply what they believe.
The scientific method, for example, tries to DISPROVE the theory, instead of trying to prove it. That's why science has a larger amount of credibility than say, a subjective religion. There might be some truth to magic miracles and an invisible god, but until there is ANY proof, it's kind of a non-starter.
Remember the Bible or ANY believers wouldn't exist if god hadn't taken a concrete action in our world. From the burning bush, to political involvement in Egypt, to mass murder, to walking on water, to rising from the dead. Most reasonable people question if that was the case, that god interacts in a tangible way in real life, then why aren't there youtube videos of miracles? or angels? or demons?
...not to pigeonhole the religious as idiots.
From that perspective atheism is a "nonstarter" as is the theory of evolution to explain the origins of life or the emergence of species. The explanations are all speculative.
not sure why you're connecting atheism and evolution. Atheism will be disproven once god appears again, or for the first time, whatever you want to think of it as. Not sure how the scientific method is a non-starter, since that's mainly what I was posting on.
Anyone can believe in anything they want, that's why you can't use subjective feelings or faith as an indicator of anything.
I'm not saying evolution is right, but it does have WAY more going for it than say, god created it all. The Bible lists so many specifics, yet it doesn't get into specifics of what species god created or how many? I mean there's a bunch of holes in the Bible, is there any other 'faith' related context that you can use to point to a god?
speculative, sure.
subjective, nope.
That's the main difference. Not sure how else to put it so it's understood : (
Evolution doesn't even attempt to explain the origin of life. It only explains how life adapts to changing environments and new niches in order to survive.
1nd3p3nd3nt,
There is what is called Operational (observational) Science – which is what is like you say, observable, testable, repeatable,etc. Then there is Historical (Origins) Science – interpreting evidence from past events based on a presupposed philosphical point of view. Because evelotionary ideas are interpretations of past events, they ar not as well-founded at testable scientific theories. Evolution relies on assumptions of naturalisms, which is why it doesn't hold the water that most feel it does – people believe what they see on TV. However, if most would look into this very important subject they would see the evolution has not yet been proved, still just a theory. In fact Dawin himself said if no proof (transitional fossils) have been found in a hundred years, chalk up evolotion as failed theory (paraphrasing).
I'm comfortable with what you said Chris. Seems perfectly reasonable to me : )`
I'm a research scientist and a Southern Baptist, and I have never felt conflicted by the faith vs. science argument. If there's one thing I'm tired of, it's people telling me what I am or what I believe.
However, how many people who read this really believe that you can really be both a Christian and a scientist? Not many, because there are too many loud mouth bigots.....
So, you do not care about believing that a man lived few days in the big fish's belly. But you are skeptical about a scientific finding, whether it is this squirrel's teeth. You do know that people denied that the earth is round. Right?
In your case, I prefer o believe in Santa at least it brings gifts and they are real.
Get real people, we already past the age of logic. Let's move on ...
i'm just guessing here, but if you're a scientist AND a christian, I'm guessing that you do NOT take the Bible literally?
1nd3p3nd3nt,
I would think you would need as much faith in the science of evolotion than the faith of the Bible being the Word of God. Could you be wrong about the Bible not being literal Truth of God?
I don't think of the Bible in literal terms, although I have faith in the veracity of Christ's teachings. God authored a book through the writings of prophets, and I don't split hairs as to whether or not a man was swallowed by a big fish, or if Satan really was a snake, etc. It's the Message that counts, and I believe in Him because I feel His love.
Its Just Me,
How can you be a Christian and not believe in the Bible's literal meaning? You believe in some parts and not others? How do you determine what you believe and not believe?
Grrr, complex life did not come from a series of random events. Why do people keep saying that? A mutation may be random but the environmental suitability of that mutation is not random. If mutation results in better suitability, mutation successfully spreads through population. If not, the mutation goes extinct. Simple statistical simulations can demonstrate this. Based on this simple statistical formula, species will adapt to their environement and optimize for maximum reproduction. Ofcourse with all the other species doing the same thing, the environement becomes dynamic. So what may be beneficial at first may not be later as the competitive landscape changes. Indeed, completely random systems cannot generate complex life. Natural selection is not random.
Brian,
While natural selection is not random, mutation from one organism into another, as evolution suggest is not possible. Every time there is a mutation, even in natural selection mutations, there is a loss in code in DNA. For something to be changed into something entirely different, there would have to be something added to the DNA, which has never been proved. However, what has been proved is the loss of DNA coding when natural selection occurs.
OK, so you are agreeing that natural selection is not random and that random mutations can lead to a superiorly evolved species. However you state that even though it may be more superior, it can't be more complex because natural selection mutations remove genetic information, not add. That's just not true. One single code can be flipped from an A to a T. That is still not adding but it's also not deleting. And if DNA itself is built up there is nothing to say it couldn't result in extra code. I'm not an expert at all, but I could imagine that entire junks of code could be duplicated. Duplication could be a very simple mutation. Then once duplicated, one version is free to mutate and evolve independantly from the other. The end result being increased complexity and larger DNA. An example of this would be your eyebrow hair vs. your head hair. Obviously hair of some form evolved. Then it got duplicated and applied elsewhere. Then it was free to evolve seperately. So you have many versions of hair all over your body. Some of the differences are based on chemical stimulation. Lifespan of hair based on hormones for example. But there must be many copies of the hair gene with subtle differences.
Brian, never has it been proven that there has been adding to DNA. Molocules to man evolution requires the production of large amounts of new generic information. You would expevct to see an increase in the amount of of DNA as you move up the evolutionary tre of life. However, this is not the case. Human are much more complex than other organisims and animals.
First of all, to say that evolution must result in more DNA is wrong. A mutation can add, change, or delete information. Natural selection does not care if the DNA is larger or smaller, only that the result is more suitable to the environment. Secondly DNA can be added as I mentioned. I did a quick lookup of evolution FAQ and pulled this off a page: Increasing DNA is accomplished through a process called Gene Duplication, which is believed to play a major role in Evolution. Because of a mistake during meiosis, an organism may end up with two copies of the same gene. After this happens, the usual mechanisms of point mutation and natural selection can evolve one of the copies into coding for something completely new, while retaining the original gene. To test how quickly gene duplication can occur, an experiment was performed on yeast in 1998. After only 450 generations, it was discovered that the "hexose transport" genes had duplicated several times.....So this supports what I said previous and in the 1998 experiment with yeast they demonstrated gene duplication. So they have proven that mutations can add DNA and complexity. Now I know you don't believe everything you read on the internet, but it shouldn't take long to dig up that 1998 experiment and review it.
Brian,
I know that study that they did with yeast – there are follow up to that studies that prove how that does not apply to real complex organisms. I can't recall all the detail, but keep digging and you will find it. Mutations are not able to add new information to the genome. Not a single mutation has been observed to cause an increase in the amount of information in a genome. The failure of evolutionary models to explain how single cell could have evolved more complex information by additive mutations challenges the entire concept.
You contradicted yourself. You said mutations can't add complexity, then admitted it did in the case of yeast but now you say it can't in complex life? A mutation doesn't understand complexity. If a mutation can lead to duplication of a gene, then it can period. Also, mice and humans both have approximately 3 billion base pairs. Humans are way more complex, so complexity can be added without growing the number of genes. Now I do agree in one aspect. If a mutation duplicates a gene, it would have a better chance of being a positive change in a simple lifeform. For example, add two more arms suddenly to a human and it won't work. You need proper shoulders, muscles and such to make the arms viable. This is why all mammals have two eyes. We all have the same basic gut system that shares our throat with our breathing system. Stupid design by the way but inherited all the way back from the worm. So once you have complexity and features are dependant on other features then simple mutations won't be successful. Evolution requires small steps. So therefore most of the genome capacity and duplication had to be done early when lifeforms were simple. Then complexity was able to add later within the same or similar size DNA. You can expand the capacity and capability of the PS3 but it takes time for the SW developers to take advantage of that added capacity. Games continue to get better even though the platform is unchanged.
"From these three sciences we know that random events are overwhelmingly destructive such that the more complex something is, the more unrealistic it is to attribute its creation to random events. Life is infinitely complex, therefore it is infinitely unrealistic to attribute its creation to random events. A conclusion many scientists have drawn is that life could not have originated from random events. "
actually, i'm pretty sure most scientists don't actually say that. while that's written well, it's not based on anything substantive.
The substance you question from what you quoted is based on the three scientific principles I cited.
The first principle is the second law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics states that differences in energy in a closed system will move toward equilibrium. The second law of thermodynamics extends that matter and energy in a closed system exist at a certain level of organization, and as time advances matter and energy move toward a state of ever increasing disorder. Expressed a little differently, there is a certain degree (or level) of complexity (order, or organization) among the components of matter and energy at any point in time. As time progresses, or moves forward, energy interacts with matter to continually make that matter less complex (break it down, become less organized, or move to a state of decreasing order). Whatever degree of complexity matter has, it will degrade as a result of energy interaction and time. In other words everything that is and has been is forever becoming less complex and more disorganized.
The second principle is statistical probability. Statistics is a science that, among other things, accurately defines the behavior of random events. Statistics tells us about the probability of singular events occurring. It also tells us about the probability of events occurring in succession. From this science we know that random events do not behave in ways they would have had to of in order for atheism to be viable. The improbability of a random event producing increased complexity is overwhelmingly high. That improbability increases exponentially for a second random event to produce more complexity. In fact the odds are overwhelming that complexity will be decreased each time. So it becomes ever more improbable for additional random events to continue to increase complexity. The more successive events needed to produce something, the more improbable it is for random events to accomplish it. Any suggestion of multiple constructive random events would quickly move from extraordinarily improbable, to absurdly improbable, to impossible. Statistics supports the same conclusion as entropy for the suggestion that life emerged from some primordial soup building blocks. That conclusion is that the events leading to the transition from various chemicals and energy to a life form was influenced rather than random.
To referee these arguments consider the basics of science which is the third principle mentioned. Science is a means of building knowledge in a predictable way through observation of the natural world. Is there an example in the physical world where random events are observed as the cause of successive increases in the complexity of matter? Consider multiple random events causing a long sequence of increases in complexity rather than single, isolated events. Remember, life doesn’t count. We know life, humankind included, can increase the complexity of matter through the execution of deliberate actions and responses. Deliberate actions and responses are not random. Can anything else? Are there any examples in the non-living physical world where purely random events are attributable to continual increases in the complexity of matter?
As far as being “pretty sure most scientists don't actually say that” – I am a scientist and I say that. But I am by no means alone. Cambridge University astrophysicist Fred Hoyle offered an analogy regarding the suggestion that random events could have produced life. His analogy suggests atheism is as absurd as believing in “the likelihood of a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747”Another quote from Fred Hoyle puts a realistic perspective on the statistical implications confronting atheism: “The likelihood (probability) of the spontaneous formation of life from inanimate matter is one to [a] number with 40,000 [zeros] after it ... It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution.” Physicist Ilya Prigogine, a recipient of two Nobel prizes in chemistry wrote: “The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.”
x2
"In the real world, facts are stubborn beasts. They are supremely unmoved by whether we like them or not. We may sternly disapprove of the idea that stepping off the window ledge of an apartment on the 14th floor will result in our death; we may go further, and resolutely contradict all claims to that effect, clinging religiously to our belief that such activity is nothing more than an enjoyable and exhilarating way to spend an afternoon; but neither our disapproval nor our disbelief will make the slightest difference to the real-world splat.
And it is the same with evolution. Evolution is a simple fact. We can choose to remain ignorant of it, we can stick our fingers in our ears and refuse to think about it, we can even rail against it and shout and scream that it is not allowed to be true. But facts are facts, and will not go away just because we don't like them. We don't get to vote for our preferred method of having come into existence as a species, any more than we can choose to have been delivered by stork rather than conceived and born in the usual way.
The primary role of the school is pretty straightforward: it is to educate. It is to give young people the opportunity to learn as much as possible about the world, on the basis of the very best knowledge we have. Education is about overcoming ignorance – so the idea of allowing ignorance to set the school curriculum and to perpetuate itself by continuing to teach generation after generation information that for the last 150 years we have known to be false, is a shameful betrayal: a betrayal of young people, who put their trust in us and who deserve better; and a betrayal of the very concept of education itself.
Remember that 'ignorance' is not an insult, but merely a term for 'lack of knowledge'. Many of the people who protest so vociferously against the teaching of evolution do not understand how overwhelmingly strong the evidence for it is; and many of those who proclaim “But it's only a theory” do not understand that the scientific and everyday usages of the word 'theory' are very different. In everyday English, 'theory' can mean something vague, a hunch, a guess. In scientific English, it is almost as far from that meaning as it's possible to get: in science, a theory is the best explanation for a set of facts. It carries real weight: in science, nothing can be called a 'theory' until it is very well established indeed. Science has its own term for what, in a non-scientific context, the rest of us might call a 'theory': the scientific term for a suggestion, a best guess, something that seems plausible but has not yet been shown to be reliably true, is 'hypothesis'. You will never, ever hear a scientist talk about 'the hypothesis of evolution', for the simple reason that evolution is long past that stage. Evolution is a theory in the scientific sense of the word – tested, researched, explored and supported by masses and masses of evidence. There may still be specific details that are not entirely agreed upon; but the fact of evolution itself is not disputed by any reputable scientist. (If you are in any doubt about the evidence for evolution, I highly recommend The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins or Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne , because both authors have explained comprehensively, beautifully and very accessibly just why we can be so sure that evolution really is a fact.)
To deprive children of this knowledge, or to water it down so as to pretend that it's just a wild guess, is to deliberately deprive them of one of the most powerful and illuminating pieces of knowledge that humans have ever acquired. It is to deliberately keep them from what we know to be the truth. It is to conceal from them their true identity, and all meaningful knowledge of their roots. To suggest that creationism is in any way a rival 'theory' is to confuse reality with myth. Creationism is to evolution what Santa Claus is to frazzled parents frantically buying and wrapping presents for their children at Christmas. There comes a point in our childhood when we must let go of the fantasy of Santa Claus; and there comes a point in our civilization when we must let go of the fantasy of creationism too.
Evolution is science, and should be taught in science classes. Creationism – let us be very clear about this –is a purely religious doctrine, with no scientific underpinning whatsoever. Indeed, all the evidence points very strongly to its being false. It therefore has no place in a science lesson. Science proceeds on the basis of evidence, religion on the basis of faith, and any teacher who tries to teach faith-based dogma in a science class is clearly demonstrating her unsuitability for the role.
But of course evolution poses a problem for Christianity. That's not to say it poses a problem for all Christians, since many Christians happily accept evolution: they see Genesis 1 as merely a metaphor, and declare that if God chose to create us using evolution, that's fine by them. I used to be this kind of Christian myself; but I must confess that my blitheness was only possible because I had only the vaguest possible idea of how evolution works and certainly didn't know enough about it to realize that unguided-ness is central to it. While I welcome anyone who recognizes that the evidence for evolution is such that it cannot sensibly be denied, to attempt to co-opt evolution as part of a divine plan simply does not work, and suggests a highly superficial understanding of the subject. Not only does evolution not need to be guided in any way, but any conscious, sentient guide would have to be a monster of the most sadistic type: for evolution is not pretty, is not gentle, is not kind, is not compassionate, is not loving. Evolution is blind, and brutal, and callous. It is not an aspiration or a blueprint to live up to (we have to create those for ourselves): it is simply what happens, the blind, inexorable forces of nature at work. An omnipotent deity who chose evolution by natural selection as the means by which to bring about the array of living creatures that populate the Earth today would be many things – but loving would not be one of them. Nor perfect. Nor compassionate. Nor merciful. Evolution produces some wondrously beautiful results; but it happens at the cost of unimaginable suffering on the part of countless billions of individuals and, indeed, whole species, 99 percent of which have so far become extinct. It is irreconcilable with a god of love.
Evolution poses a further threat to Christianity, though, a threat that goes to the very heart of Christian teaching. Evolution means that the creation accounts in the first two chapters of Genesis are wrong. That's not how humans came into being, nor the cattle, nor the creeping things, nor the beasts of the earth, nor the fowl of the air. Evolution could not have produced a single mother and father of all future humans, so there was no Adam and no Eve. No Adam and Eve: no fall. No fall: no need for redemption. No need for redemption: no need for a redeemer. No need for a redeemer: no need for the crucifixion or the resurrection, and no need to believe in that redeemer in order to gain eternal life. And not the slightest reason to believe in eternal life in the first place."
Christianity is like a big, chunky sweater. It may feel cozy, it may keep you warm, but just let one stitch be dropped and the whole thing unravels before your very eyes. Evolution is that stitch. Evolution destroys the loving creator on which the whole of Christianity depends. I can quite understand why the evangelicals throw up their hands in horror at the very idea of it and will do everything in their power to suppress it. But they can throw up their hands all they like: it won't make any difference to the reality. All that will be achieved by their determined efforts to keep young people misinformed about it is that another generation of Americans will be condemned to ignorance, unable to understand the world around them properly, and at a real disadvantage when having to deal and compete with their peers from more enlightened countries. Willful ignorance is a choice; evolution is not.
this was written by Paula Kirby and honestly, she just owned religious dogma.
very well written. Thank you for posting this by Paula.
Evolution is a broad term. As someone stated here it explains how life adapts to changing environments and new niches in order to survive. It is a fact, theory, and hypothesis depending on what it is applied to. As a well established and thoroughly observed and explainable fact, evolution accounts for how traits in a species change in response to changes in an environment. For example mice with varying color move onto an island and natural selection matches brown mice to a brown reef and white mice to white sand. Real time evolution observed! All the mechanisms explained thanks to DNA. Evolution to explain the variation and emergence of unique species does not exist as anything closely representing facts. The explanations for how a sonar system manifested itself in dolphins, how neurotoxic venom glands in combination with hypodermic like teeth manifested itself in a cobra, exist as speculation. Not only are they speculative but there is science in the way of it. The common explanation for the emergence of species is combinations of chance mutation, gene drift, and natural selection. The science in the way of it is the fruit fly mutation experiments and the fossil trail. We can induce mutation in fruit flies and have been doing so for decades. This was expected, at one point to lead to proof of evolution because we could accelerate an otherwise lengthy process. Instead what we’ve learned is that no amount of mutation produced anything resembling a new species. They are always fruit flies. The second is that when fruit flies with common mutations are bred they turn back into normal fruit flies. Mutations produced disadvantageous results in all cases. This implies that genes are stabilizing rather than accepting of change. This is similarly supported by the fossil trail. The evidence shows static species for the duration of a creature’s existence with no transitional fossils linking them to other species.
Evolution to explain where species came from is a theory at best. We have never observed the emergence of new species. Any suggestions to the contrary exist as opinion. Evolution to explain the origins of life is pure speculation. We don’t know the path lifeless chemicals took to form life; we don’t even have a consensus on how to define life. We have nothing to observe, test or anything of the like regarding the origins of life. There is no science supporting evolution to explain the origins of life.
I agree we should only teach facts. Regarding evolution the facts do not come close to accounting for all of life’s varied forms. The facts are that nature can selectively breed traits the way humans have done so with dogs. All nature or we can breed into an animal is within its normal variation. We can breed darker dogs. Nature can breed darker mice. We can breed short leg dogs to get under fences. Nature can change the shape of a Galapagos finch beak to exploit changes in food supply. We can’t breed a dog with a sonar system to locate prey. We are completely conflicted as to how nature could have done the same with a bat. That is a fact.
Should we teach what we don’t know? Or should we continue to just assume that since a component of evolution is a fact that evolution is an umbrella that covers all of its speculative elements as fact too?
Your first example is simple adaptation, not evolution. Evolution is an extreme form of adaptation. The mechanisms may not be fully understood, but we understand enough. If members of a population are split by extreme circumstances (flood, earthquake, etc), and one segment adapts to thrive in a drastically changed environment as a result, over time the two groups can evolve to be different enough that they are unable to interbreed. This results in transformation of at least one of the groups (the one under most pressure) into a distinct species. It has actually been observed in modern times, so I'm not sure where you get your ideas.
Can you imagine the kind of bugs it ate? Even though small, the size and shape of its teeth conjures up big, nasty, hard and crispy insects. Yuk!
Daddy, I want one of "those" squirrels.
Only if the EPA was around 60 million years ago. They could have stopped this little guy from going extinct!
Looks like a skrat to me.
It is!
God is impossible in the way the religious would like for him to exist. He is perfect, however he created man, which is imperfect. So how does something that is infallible in every way able to make something imperfect and keep its status of perfection? not possible, everything can be proven with math.
God did not make man imperfect.
So you are saying that all humans are perfect? No disease can harm us. Cancer, AIDS, deformations do not exist? What rationale do you use to come up with that statement? Perfection is unattainable to the senses.
BOB: Read Genesis.
If I was made so perfect, why have I been sick with a cold for the past week?
God created evolution.
And evolution created God. Win – win.
Hold on....what?
Free will. In order to have free will the choice to choose an alternative that includes imperfection must exist. You might venture to include imperfect understanding or imperfect interpretation of data. No human is omniscient on either side of an argument. Even science fact is only hypothesis that is yet to be disproven (i.e. Newtonian physics vs Einsteinian physics).
And all knowledge is just a matter of opinion. All information is obtained through the senses and our senses are not perfect, therefore all information can be flawed. So nothing can be believed to be true.
"Even science fact is only hypothesis that is yet to be disproven (i.e. Newtonian physics vs Einsteinian physics)."
Your statement comes from ignorance and you might want to change your comparison criteria and focus on who did what:
Credit newton for his work in calculus, and his contributions to classical mechanics. He practically laid a solid foundation for classical mechanics.
Credit einstein for his work in relativity and QM, his contributions to such fields practically laid a solid foundation for quantum mechanics.
aren't you a little old to believe in fairy tales
Those were some good insights, BOB. Have you considered this: What if we take God as perfect in the absolute sense... that nothing is perfect except for God. Then couldn't we say that anything God created (anything not God, in this case) would therefore be imperfect out of necessity?
Or couldn't we also say that God can intend to perfectly create imperfect creation? Maybe the act of creating could still be perfect, but the creation distinct from the Creator is proportional to the imperfect from the Perfect?
i have come to the conclusion that an excess of spiritualism and religious ferver is just another personality trait, similar to homosexuality.
As a gay man I find that comparison offensive. Homosexuali ty is a gift of genetics ie "born that way". Being a "religious" fanatic is a product of your environment and a choice just like bigotry and homophobi a.
Stop trying to fool everyone, its ludicrous to think homos are born homosexuals.
Look up "god gene" which will show you that spiritualism is not all environmental
Hold your mouth please,
Where do you get your information? Didn't see that it was proven that people are born homosexual.
Actually, a recent study of twins that were separated at birth indicates that how religious (or not) a person is, is to a large extent genetic. Not WHAT religion they are, just HOW strongly they believe in whatever religion they were raised in.
Have they found a saber toothed Kangaroo yet?
I just saw a sabre-toothed Dodo bird run across my yard. !!!
hahahahahahahahahaha
ha
Know what the bible and the Harry Potter series have in common ...both were written by someone trying to make Money and both are NON-Fiction now please move "my god this my gos that, you're going to suffer for not following my god" crap somewhere else
Not saying I disagree, but just so you know, "non-fiction" means that it is reality.
@JimmyJonesCoolaid: Dude, nobody would write the Bible trying to make money! The stories are just too unlikely. I mean, look at Genesis: a talking snake tricks the first humans into eating a piece of magical fruit, from which they gain wisdom, and, as punishment for what that talking snake did, now all snakes go on their bellies. What sane person would come up with such a story? It's got to be the truth! 😉 So remember, if you enjoy having human wisdom, you owe it all to a talking snake! 😉
hey just saying the bible is true, and snakes couldve flown beacuse most people belive dinos are real, how many dinos have you seen lately, you could say this ; jesus please send me a sign that you are real
Anyone who doesn't believe in evolution is an idiot. Plain and simple.You can say the bible said that and that, but don't be a moron. The bible says a lot of things that aren't meant to be taken literally. Just because you believe in evolution doesn't mean you don't believe in God. And anyone with an IQ over 80 knows that. PS. Mine is 141
Love that you messed up the non-fiction/fiction
The Bible does have a lot of ancient history in it that is actually quite accurate. Archaeologists use that literature somewhat successfully finding locations (cities and events) described within.
Don't forget... the places/events might have some factual basis, but the Bible can't even agree on when Jesus was born... The first three books have a time-span (and they each contradict each other!) of nearly 100 years for the date of Jesus' birth.
Actually a lot of events/places in the Bible are continuously found to be non-existant and have no evidence outside the Bible.
Hey JimmyJones,
Who was making money on writing the Word of God 4,000 years ago? Perhaps it needs more thought.......
Imagine camping out in the open air, then this thing comes around to take a bite out of your nuts!
I can honestly say I would not like them taking a bite out of my sack o' nuts.
wow, alot of people are so against the bible because they only know the childrens version of stories and have never read the bible perticularly the new testament. When it is read on a level with even a minimum amount of understanding Jesus Christ was an amazing "man" and if we all followed what he said and truly just believed the world would be heaven on earth. I believe in evolution i want to be able to believe in god but i can never attack those who do have faith of what they beleive in because he said some pretty amazing things and his greatest wish was that we try to help people open up there eyes and hearts to his teaching which i hope this post will do for as many of you as possible
Mike,
This story is about the evidence supporting evolution. It is not about fairy tales and myths. Perhaps you posted on the wrong article by mistake?
Mike, what a lovely post. Thank you.
But how do you feel about the squirrels?
In Soviet Russia Squirrel hunts YOU !
nice
Haha...I detect a troll!
Good one. 🙂
what a sad, sad troll you are
Evolution.
Please comment. 🙂
thanku
Ralph, this makes more sense than denying evolution altogether, but there are hominid fossils that show creatures-not monkeys- developing into hominids and then developing into Homo. So that's why its "hard to believe" that God just created us. There is also no evidence that it is how you say it is. It is more likely that you believe that in order to not deal with the discrepancy between your faith and what science says.
Yes, there is corruption and grant money in science. there is also fierce competition. If one scientist knew that anther's find was BS. He'd say so. Anthropologists are always calling each other out. But then more evidence is found that supports one theory or another and people move on. When there were fraudulent finds, they were exposed.
So its more likely that people arguing against fossil evidence are doing so because they are afraid of what it means for their faith.
One of our ancestors was a "saber-toothed squirrel," is totally cool! Guess God has a wicked sense of humor! 😉 Bravo to the paleontologists who make these wonderful discoveries!
Wow... talk about art imitating life!
He looks just like the squirrel with the big nut in the Ice Age movies!!
dont let that thing take a bite out of my nuts. OUCH!
Saber-tooth squirrel? Hell, that's a possum! http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_VWrdY5IxZFs/TUBi8OCGWZI/AAAAAAAAAPE/_c31e5GXRZI/s1600/Opossum.jpg
More like a shrew....
"It's related to all living mammals, including humans in a remote way." ~ Well that explains why so many people are nuts.
Squirrels, Little blood thirsty evil doers I say, EVILDOERS I say!
The reason why the IQ of people are so low is because the bible thumping idiots in charge. This is the 21st Century. Science and religion cannot go together. If I was in charge I would ban all religion from all schools and require everyone to learn science. I am so sick and tired of religious idiots barking at the moon every time science makes strides. Religion was created to control the idiot masses. Guess what, religion isn't needed any more. Science is my religion, and logic is my god. BITE ME everyone who is too stupid to think otherwise.
... but the masses still need controlling.
Nicely said, couldn't agree more.
Three things that science replacing religion would do: 1. People would be more educated, because there are really a lot of idiots walking around out there now, 2. There would be far less fighting and bickering, because most of this is related to religious bigotry, and 3. People would achieve more in life, because now there is a lot of "hoping" and "praying" and "wishing" instead of actually "doing".
Three things that your post tells me...1. You have never read the Bible. 2. You have never had any hope. 3. You need Jesus Christ. Some "bible thumpers" can indeed go too far by not being realistic on certain subjects but how on earth does that small few hurt you? You being tunnel visioned by science is no different than those tunnel visioned by religion. The two do, in fact, coexist. Its too bad that you are too one sided to see that. God is real. I will testify that to you but I won't waste anymore of my time reading your atheist writings, nor will I expect you to read anymore of mine. So good day.
@BoneClover – I've read the bible from cover to cover, both the old and new testaments. I found it interesting but I saw it for what it really is; ancient mythology, written thousands of years ago by members of a primitive, bronze age culture. It has nothing whatever to do with reality, it's just ancient myths. Evolution on the other hand is modern science. Sorry, I'll take modern science any day over ancient mythology.
in 9 years of parochial school i learned that there is no "truth" in religion.
Joe in Caolorado,
I would imagine you know as much about science as you do the Bible. Faith in the Bible being the Word of God does live with true science. You would know that if you knew the Bible and understood science. In fact there are many writings in the bible that proved science wrong thousands of years ago. It the truth, you would just have to spend some time studying both sides. Not all people of faith are uneducated – on the other hand there are people with out faith that are uneducated. There are some very interesting things that the Bible says about scoffers and people who feel they are intellects (those that see themselves as wise and good) – those are the people that will feel that thos with faith are fools. Perhaps its the Bible (or the Truth) that make them afraid – people who have been changed by the Bible typically see it as a mirrorr – it reflect the real person you and can be scarey. Let's take you for instance, you most likely feel you are a good person – right?
Yeah! bite me too!
You are perpetuating a similar ignorance as the stereotypical "bible thumpers" with your attacking comment. Science is based on ration, little of which is evident in your comment. It's embarrassing.
Go ahead join the minority church of scientology...let the masses live in peace.
You're right that we don't need religion to control people anymore; look how easily all the brainless libs fell under Barry O'Bummer's spell.
Why can't peole have respect for others with differing beliefs??? I say this to people of faith as much as anyone else. If people follow a religion so be it. If you don't so be it. If you believe in science or in God what does it matter what someone else believes. As someone who has attended church for much of my life I have a really hard time with the judgement that many church goers have against those who don't attend. I think a lot of Christians have turned Christianity into pretty much everything Christ taught against. Personally I think that nobody really knows the answer until they die and they don't come back to tell us what's what. Believe what you believe and leave peole alone.
Thumbs up. Excited for the day when people just relax a bit. Have a good day.
You do NOT "believe" in science.
Why should people have respect for ignorance and stupidity. Religion is nothing more than ancient mythology. Period. Modern science is based on logic and reason, not archaic mythology. How can I respect a culture that wants to force their archaic ideas on everyone else through legislation? If they just sat back and wallowed in their fantasy world and left the rest of us alone, that would be fine, but no, they have to "save" everybody. The want to revoke a woman's right to choose, they want to force school children to pray to their invisible, supernatural man in the sky and learn the bible BS alongside modern science. They'd like to make homosexuality a crime like it was in the past. These people are dangerous. I have no respect for that.
@LuisWu
Agreed 100%
Luis Wu, did you read my entire post?? I never said that region has any right to dictate what others do. My point was that whatever your beliefs are is fine, don't try for force them on others. One of the wonderful things about the United States is the freedom to believe whatever we want. We should be able to do so without ridicule from others regardless of what we believe.
It matters a great deal. When people base their beliefs on worldviews with no evidence, they end up making very bad, unjustified decisions. There are people refusing medical treatment to their kids who later die... There are people stoning women cause she got raped. There are people claiming a certain group is an abomination, should be gotten rid of. There are missionares going to Africa teaching lies about contraception, resulting in misconceptions that kill thousands from AIDS where it's already a huge epidemic. There are people who claim I deserve eternal torment just because I do not belive in their god out of many out there.
I WILL NOT respect religion beliefs. It deserves none.
You are kidding yourselves. People would still be intellectually lazy and therefore dumb. Also, you guys are equally as dumbfounded when ask to prove that God doesn't exist. Treating yourselves as intellectually superior to anyone based on a personal belief in God shows the level of your own ignorance. And arrogance for that matter.
Sigh. Prove a negative?
Please cite proof of this gods existence please.
And if you say, look at a rainbow, I will stab you.
"prove that God doesn't exist" – you're kidding, right? Prove to me that the flying spaghetti monster doesn't exist. Make sense now? If I believe it, you HAVE to prove me wrong. Now how ridiculous does that sound?
And let me just say this – I do not consider myself intellectually superior. I am just tired of being looked down on, for going to he**, for my LACK of beliefs. And I'm also tired of the advancement of humankind slowing down when religion gets in the way (which it does sometimes). On the flip side – religion can have positive aspects, a feeling of community, etc. It's not all bad. I love all who have equal respect for one another.
Doug,
No one is claiming Super flying spegetti monstors created anything. Without reading the entire thread, I would imagaine what was meant that look at everything you see – how can you say there wasn't a creator. Using your logic in a smarter way, would you believe that the car you drove was evolved over millions of years and became what it is now. Of course not, but why would you feel that way about a human which is the most complex organism (mechangical being) that exists. Our eye has around a million nerve endings in it, how can there not be a God. It takes more faith to believe that we exist because of evolotion by random chance. So someone is trying to make you think by asking you to prove to them that God doesn't exist.
Chris – the only reason people claim that God created anything is because they had nothing else to explain it – for example – the Bible talks about God, saying that 'nobody can explain his thunder' – well, of course now we can explain thunder. It's actually quite simple. The advent of 'modern' science has given us explanations for many of the things we see in the natural world around us. If we had that knowledge 6000 years ago – do you think people today would really believe that thunder was God speaking? Faith is only a way to bridge a gap where you do not have a reasonable explanation. There is no 'faith' in believing in evolution. It is simply observing the facts. Evolution does not attempt to explain how it all started, it is just observing what has happened, and what is STILL happening. I have read the Bible several times over and for the majority of my life was in fact quite a devout Christian. Have you read the Origin of the Species? I have been on both sides of the fence. As far as your car analogy – if both of us have time to sit around for a few million or BILLION years, then perhaps we can have a conversation about this. Our puny lifespans do not afford us that luxury. Thanks for the civil and intelligent conversation 🙂
Well said!!!
When you are burning in Hell you will be screaming "I was an idiot for what I said, please forgive me God." All the people in the world today that do not believe in God will wish they had when they are burning for eternity in Hell.
Yeah, your god sends people to be tortured forever, burning and screaming throughout all eternity, simply because they were raised in another faith or don't accept ancient mythology as reality. Nice guy your god.
that doesnt sound so bad to me....without nerves, i will be unable to feel the hot flames. got anything else??
hell is a story to scare the kiddies. nothing more.
Please note that the person posting this is not the same Sam as the one who made the comment about Barry O'Bummer up above.
You will really feel sick when you are burning in Hell praying for help and forgiveness. Too late then......
how do you feel sick without a brain, body, nerves to give you the feeling of nausciousness???....how do you feel heat without nerves....dont post another idiotic rant until you are able to give me the definition of the empirical criterion of meaning.
Everyone worships something. It's just a matter of whom or what.
Intelligent people don't worship anything. Only idiots do that.
worship something? not a chance.
@Chris, you used "whom" wrong.
bewbs?
"Intelligent Design: Helping stupid people feel smart since 1987"
...so is that why some of the biggest names in Intell Design come out of UC Berkeley??? Do your research.
Should have named it Scrat. Maybe Coronpio Scratus or something.
If it was a FLYING squirrel I dub thee Rockius Fangus MoosePal-ius.
"watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat"
No doubt about it. I need a new hat.
They're not extinct. i've got one of those running around in my backyard!
Me, too!
Is it just me or are they kinda hawt?!
God put fossils on this planet for the sole purpose of confusing Sarah Palin.
Sarah Palin believes that the Flintstones is a factual documentary of early man.
No- rubberbands were invented to do that.
A "colleague" of mine who actually teaches biology in a public school believes that humans were able to coexist with T-Rex and velociraptors because (get this) "they weren't really carnivorous... they ate fruit". This is what passes for thinking in the fundie community.
Yikes! That's a teacher of biology?
Do parents + students know?
In the demographic I teach in, he's considered a wonderful teacher.
Well.. they are changing their minds all the time..
They had brains the size of walnuts.. So how smart were they?
They are finding they probably had feathers which made thiem large birds like creatures.. And some of the ones we thought existed were actually the same animal, at different stages of life..
So why not co exist with them? And why think they would be more dangerous that an elephant or a whale?
Just cause they were big? And the movies always made them appear ferocious ?
Seriously Mary? Or are you just effing with us?
Mary – They are thought to carnivores based, among other things, the fact that they had teeth that were clearly adapted to shearing and cutting flesh. There are a number of other reasons (Google is your friend). As for why they were not contemporaneous with humans: The last dino fossils were from about 65 million years ago. Anatomically modern humans have only existed for 100 to 200K years (not quite settled yet). I am surprised you do not know these types of basic facts – unless you were unlucky enough to have this teacher when you were in school.
There's no evidence to suggest that we ever lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. The earliest human fossils date back only about 100,00 years or so (give or take a few thousand) whereas the dinos died off millions of years ago. Furthermore they're no evidence that they were omnivores either.
Hmmm...sharp, knife sized teeth may be the first clue...but you know I bet they just used them to cut tape they put on Christmas presents. P.S. elephants ARE dangerous
I have a response for anyone who doesn't believe in evolution: "So this evolution thing isn't working for you, is it?"
That is scary. Where did this person go to school? What qualifies her to teach biology? It certainly doesn't sound like she even went to college.
He went to San Diego State but you don't have to believe everything you say on college term papers and tests. You just have to be willing to regurgitate the correct answers on tests and you get the degree.
"we didn't come from monkies"????
Gee, the spell-checker picked that up right away...
Besides, we came from Monkees...we worship Peter Tork...
I'm seriously depressed after reading this post. It's no wonder we're in the state we're in.
Does your idiot friend not know that humans and dinosaurs NEVER existed on earth at the same time? If you are not making this up the it shows how completely worthless a college education has become in this country. I say that because to be a teacher he would have to have a college degree.
Man has been man since we were created, we didn't come from monkies. Animals evolved over time. Why is that so hard to believe, it's the truth.
I like these.
Bring fourth... the Holy Hand Grenade!
the number shall be 3.
he's got great big fangs! AAAAHHHH!
The fossil record, contrary to the science-surface-skimmers here, does not exhibit a "tree" denoting a single common ancestor with major branches, rather it more resembles several bushes, with great complexity at every level. The fossil record reveals primarily 3 things: 1. There were more species in the distant past than now (contrary to evolutionary dogma) 2. Stasis (most lifeforms were suited to their environment for (relatively) long periods with minor variation 3. Extinction. Using logical induction, looking at the actual empirical evidence (rather than emotional arguments), we see: abrupt complex appearance, stasis, extinction. When one includes recent DNA research, the evidence favors intelligent design to a degree almost rendering the competition inconsequential to the discussion. Overcoming entropy through mechanisms such as accumulations of mutations, genetic drift, frame-shifts, and genetic incorporation are wholly inconsistent with what we actually know about probabilities, chemistry, genetics, and other observable occurrences in biology. Darwinian Evolution is a tautology: The survival of the fittest. (think about it) Who survives? The fittest. Who are the fittest? Those who survive. (circular reasoning, self-fulfilling prophecy)
so we're back to god did it? let me guess, it was your particular god, too. not the thousands that have come before and after.
face it, because of its challenge to prevailing religious dogma, the theory of evolution is the most challenged and studied theory on the planet.
Typical textbook example: 1. Mock the messenger 2. Refuse to discuss the actual evidence presented 3. Claim victory.
Please respond to the issues, evidence, reasoning, or research...not a characterization of it.
you are not a messenger. you are joeshmoe challenging a science article on an internet forum because it disagrees with your theology. a messenger would be publishing papers in a scientific journal supported by actual evidence instead of pasting paragraphs from "answers in genesis".
II'm sorry, JQP, it was your god. The eternal, infinite, and all-powerful god of chaos and purposelessness. But unfortunately, do to the law of cause and effect, and my study of science, especially natural law, I cannot believe in your almighty god, for that would defy logic and observation. I have to be true to "wherever the argument leads" as the former atheist Anthony Flew used to posit. But, upon real investigation of the evidence, Flew, and scores of other skeptics have to cast aside their emotional arguments and philosophy, and to acknowledge what logic and reasoning reveal.
Thousands of gods? Before and after? Most major religions have multiple gods, but less than twenty, so they total probably less than two hundred over the thousands of years, but Judeo/Christianity has had only one God dating back to the beginning. Evolution has gone through more convolutions than most religions have and is statistically impossible.
1. pot calls kettle black 2. pot calls kettle black 3. pot calls kettle black
ike: the hindus list 309 gods. the ancient hitttites claimed over 1000. that is just 2 out of thousands of societies around the globe over millenia. so yes. thousands.
Everyone knows that man was created by God in His image, out of clay.
Then woman was created from one of Adam's ribs
These things you foolish "scientists" call fossils are just things that Satan planted in the ground to try to deceive and confuse us.
Seems to be working on the faithless heathens.
It's your eternity.
Spend it in the lake of fire.
I will pray for you all......
Norm, Norm, Norm...it's judgemental statements like you's that would make Jesus himself cringe.
Why would any "intelligent designer" design so many evolutionary dead ends? Is it possible he/she/it could not foresee environmental changes that would render species extinct and had to go back to the drawing board time and again?
Nah man...it was the Intergalactic Freakshow! Their spaceship was traveling through the solar system when it was hit by a comet and crashed on primordial earth billions of years ago. All lifeforms, of course, perished, but the bacteria they were carrying thrived and started to branch off and evolve in a million different directions...hey...it could happen.
Though this has the appearance of a challenge, upon investigation it is an emotional argument. The statement: "Why would someone do such and such, because I can't see/understand why..." has no bearing on the actual issue at hand (the existence of an intelligent designer). A child does not understand why a parent spends hours doing complex tax paperwork each spring, but that lack of understanding does not invalidate the necessity of such an activity. As created beings, to say that we could fathom all the purposes of an intelligence that could design DNA (which took us over 20 years to crack with supercomputers) is...well, you get the point. Questions about purposes do not belong to the realm of empiricism. That is more of a philosophical inquiry, but greatly hindered by pure speculation. It is a common question, though, but not worthwhile in this type of discussion. Since we may not even understand the ultimate GOAL, to make judgments that certain things are "unnecessary" or "dead-ends" is spurious. Watch a painter at work, there are some actions early on, that only make sense in the greater understanding of the entire picture.
"upon investigation"
LOL. Rote mannerisms of a hard core creationist.
Maybe it was because they weren't evolutionary dead ends, but because they were just too darn tasty!
Only if "hard core"=evidence based. I am only discussing intelligent design, not age of the Earth, YEC, etc. Why label? The evidence favors intelligent design, and IMHO, DNA closes the case for an impartial jury.
There is no evidence for creationism. Period. Framing the creationist bullocks in the framework of ID is simply disingenuous.
There is no evidence of Creationism. You cannot put forth, "There is a God" and then work your way back to prove it, you do not know the answer and then find the questions.
Ho, ho, ho! What a bunch of babbling bul|s|hit. You think you can confuse people with an argument about stasis? or extinction? None of that disproves anything at all about evolution. Epic fail.
However, credit is due for your blindingly nonsensical attempt to babble long enough to get people to walk away from you shrugging. Trying to give people a headache is not a valuable debate technique. Better try again with a more lucid argument.
Once again, please "enlighten" the ignorant masses about the arguments presented. Mocking an argument doth not a refutation make.
Bravo! That was exactly what I was thinking. Thank you!
OK.
1. "There were more species in the distant past than now"
What does "more" mean (as used here)?
What do you mean by "distant past"?
2. Stasis.
Comes + goes today, as ever. How does that refute evolution?
3. "abrupt complex appearance"
Define abrupt. Millions of years? A single generation?
"Overcoming entropy through mechanisms such as accumulations of mutations, genetic drift, frame-shifts, and genetic incorporation are wholly inconsistent with what we actually know about probabilities, chemistry, genetics, and other observable occurrences in biology."
Red Herring. Where's the inconsistency?
Hmm. Intelligent points, but 'survival of the fittest' isn't a tautology. Your argument is based on semantics, which is only displays a weakness in the language, not the intent of the theory. Those that are 'fit', are fit through an accident of birth or mutation. They survive because they were lucky enough to have the traits necessary for their particular environment. If they survive, then they pass on their genetic material to spawn other creatures that can survive, while those that can't, don't. It's a pretty simple and elegant theory actually, and it's only circular if you're trying to be sophist about it.
+1 Agony
"Survival of the fittest" is not circular logic. You're just playing semantics games.
Let me give you an example of what you just did. Take the sentence "The fastest person wins the race."
Analysis by your logic: Who is the fastest? The winner. Who is the winner? The fastest. Therefore it must be circular logic.
Of course, everybody knows that the above sentence is definitely not circular logic.
Also, just because modern scientific thought hasn't proposed an answer with 100% certainty does not mean "God did it." Adding an "intelligent designer" to the creation process is just ADDING more complexity to the whole thing. Why is this "intelligent designer" not subject to all the limitations of creation that you subscribe to?
"Of one thing, however, I am certain, and that is that `natural selection' affords no explanation of mimicry or of any other form of evolution. It means nothing more than `the survivors survive.' Why do certain individuals survive? Because they are the fittest. How do we know they are the fittest? Because they survive." Professor E.W. MacBride (biologist), Nature magazine
For Ktisis:
Being a supporter of Lamarckian inheritance doesn't really address the fact that you and Prof. McBride are just making a semantic argument. Science builds on itself and becomes a synthesis of previous versions of theories or we wouldn't ever get anywhere. At this point, I'm not really sure what you're arguing about other than to just argue.
Way to drag out a quote from 1929.
BTW, Darwin never used the term 'survival of the fittest'. It really helps to actually read the book. Just try it. It's one of the best ones ever written.
yes, the MacBride quote was from 1929. Again, before genetics was understood (btw, is genetics true according to the bible?). Poor E.W. misread Darwin's theory and didn't understand heritability (well, in his defense, we didn't understand it until decades later). But in short, the quote doesn't carry any weight, really. He basically said that the way he interpreted (i.e. misinterpreted) the theory doesn't make sense - I agree, the way his (mis)interpreted it doesn't make sense. That doesn't make the base theory invalid of course.
HA HA HA HA. I can't believe that in this day and age, with the mountains upon mountains of scientific evidence for evolution that there are still people that cling to their ancient mythology and deny science.
Sorry, I'll take modern science over ancient mythology any day.
Just what was God doing before he created everything? God did not create man....Man created God.
So let's put your challenge in a modern setting:
You do not know what I was doing before I typed this message, THEREFORE (according to your logic) I do not exist.
Sweet.
Lets put YOUR challenge in a modern light.
"I cannot fully understand, nor is it totally proven that evolution/science is infallible"
Therefore, there is a god and he created everything. Sheesh dude, quit mucking things up with your errr... "proofs" and come out with it.
Ktisis- straw man argument.
So... if your invisible, supernatural man in the sky (God) created everything, then who created God? Did he just spring forth from nothing? Religious nuts claim the big bang is false because something can't come from nothing. But your invisible, supernatural man in the sky must have, so what's the difference? How utterly ridiculous.
No Ktisis- What were you doing before you were conceived? You seem to exist now.... at least as a contributor to this forum.
I am a paleontologist and most of what you said shows an understanding of the subject garnered from headlines without an in depth exploration of the material. It would be as if extra-terrestrials created a model of earth's culture based on tabloid headlines.
ya, I am a paleontologist too. I've dug in the dirt for a few hours in the tar pits in South Dakota. Now go do something you can make a living doing.
Lori – don't give him that much credit. Given the popularity of tabloids and "reality" TV (at least in the US), the extraterrestrials wouldn't be as far off as the ID folk are.
There is no evidence whatsoever that "favors intelligent design." Intelligent design is merely a pseodoscience emotional crutch for biblical creationists who can't spin observed evidence to fit their creation theories. They are unable to understant the real science and real data in full context, so they resourt to an argument, in essence, that is nothing more than "it couldn't happen this way without a 'Creator' to design it."
Intelligent design is really just Creation 2.0 – a dogmatic fraud posing as science. ID starts with the proposition that there "must" be a "design" and all data is interpreted to fit that premise.
Your claims as to what the fossil record reveals are a classic strawman – it is wll known and universally accepted that there will always be gaps in the fossil record, because of the physical requirements of the process of fossilization. This is especially true with earliest life forms that did not have skeletal or other structures that would lend themselves to fossilization.
The fossil record does not, has not, and never can document that "there were more species in the distant past" because we don't have a complete and accurate count of species that exist now (more are found all the time in remote ecosystems and documented on a regular basis), and we know that there are huge gaps in the fossil record in areas where the geology is not conducive to fossilzation, or for organisms whose body structures don't lend themselves to fossilization, or fossils which exist but have yet to be discovered. Leaving those issues aside, the total number of identified fossil species in all period from pre-Camrian on are only a small fraction of identified species which are extant today. Your entire "argument" is driven by the related concept that "Darwinian" evolution "must be" wrong, and there "must be" intelligent design, simply because, well, there "must be." At the end of the day, there's no more accuracy or intellectual rigor to ID hypotheses than there is to young earth creation hypotheses.
You have the logic for belief in a creator wrong. First off people can believe in things for different reasons. Secondly, by the criteria of science, no explanation for the origins of life, atheistic, or otherwise qualify as anything beyond hypothesis (suggestion). Many scientists believe that a creator is a more feasible explanation for the origins of life based on three scientific principals: 1) The second law of thermodynamics (governing the behavior of matter and energy), 2) Statistical probability (characterizing the behavior of random event events), and 3) observation of the non-living natural world. From these three sciences we know that random events are overwhelmingly destructive such that the more complex something is, the more unrealistic it is to attribute its creation to random events. Life is infinitely complex, therefore it is infinitely unrealistic to attribute its creation to random events. A conclusion many scientists have drawn is that life could not have originated from random events. The science of our physical realm would not let random events produce life. By deduction, something outside our physical realm had to be the cause. All attempts to speculate on explanations from that constraint lead to semantic variants of god.
Atheism, in contrast, attempts to explain the origins of life with the constraint that there is no supernatural element. The basis of that constraint is philosophical – a choice to not believe in something unless proof exists. With that constraint life had to have originated from random events despite the science that contradicts it. Interesting difference between atheists and sciences of faith is the difference in constraints. The atheist constrain is philosophical while the scientist of faith's constraint is based on science! The scientific facts behind evolution can be summarized as natural selective breeding (changes from within a species limited to its normal variation). The scientific challenges to atheism continue through all explanations for the myriad forms of life. None of the explanations for the emergence of species have a consensus behind them.
Bottom line is it is not as simple as religious morons clinging to antiquated beliefs versus sound science. It is much more complicated than that.
Recommended reading: 'Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics', edited by Robert T. Pinnock. In this book, the intelligent design 'theorists' are allowed to have their say-they give it their best shot-and then are rather viciously refuted by folks who know what they are talking about. Those who read this book will understand why real biologists and other scientists refer to it as 'Stupid Design Theory'. The judge in Pennsylvania who ruled that teaching intelligent design 'theory' in public school science classes is an unconstitutional breach of the First Amendment got it exactly right. In short, it is hogwash.
But isn't that correct. Those creatures who adapt to their current surrounding, using whatever means necessary, become fit to survive. By throwing around all those big sentences you hope to create a smoke screen of what really is the issue. Oh its circular logic saying the fittest will survive. Well guess what, it is true. Life lives on. Jurassic Park for you. THere are some species of frogs that will adapt their color of skin to their surroundings, will learn to tolerate huge toxicities to survive, hell the human body has evolved to take a large amount of punishment from disease and wounds. There is actual scientific data backing up the evolution of the human body by getting rid of useless parts. the appendix, the pinky toe, these are things that are slowly being phased out. You also see evolution most in bacteria and viruses. What we call mutation is evolution in progress.
You can try to say its not happening. That intelligent design is more pronounce now thanks in part by new DNA data. Well let's throw the fact that you have named not one scientific study about it, no actual credited researcher that studies the genetic modification to prove intelligent design.
if human were created by an intelligent being, then why is it that the human body is still an ongoing process in which it changes in order to meet the necessary requirements to survive at the time.
I had one of these when I was a kid. It was called a gerbil. It was highly aggressive and tore the flesh off of my thumb. After a very brief trial, it was sent to gerbil heaven. To this day rodents with fangs freak me out.
Yet another item that will throw creationists into a fit: hard to explain a creature from 94 million years ago when the earth is just 10,000 years old, eh? Better pull the kids from having a real education and start up on that home schooling!
nah, they will just claim its all 'guess work'
or they will say that it's "a test of faith" from god... lol
Not to create waves here, but most on this blog are probably not aware that it is impossible to "date" permineralized remains (non-carbonized fossils) with current technology. It is not possible to date sedimentary rock (99% of all fossils are in sedimentary layers) using radio metric methodologies (potassium-argon, helium, strontium-rubidium, etc). Radiometric (decay-based dating methods) only work in primary, fundamental geological formations (igneous, etc) but not sedimentary, which are secondary type deposits. If there is carbon left in the sample (not the case with dinosaurs, or even the creature in this article) then carbon-dating can be used, but only reliably up to perhaps 30,000 years-and that only with several caveats that are based upon assumption (though not wholly without merit). Fossils like this are dated by the layer they are found in, and that layer is "dated" using evolutionary uniformitarian geology, an arbitrary date is set for how "old" it "has to be". Typical discussion in a museum: How old is this fossil? Answer: It is dated by the rock it is found in. Question: How old is the rock? Answer: Well, it's dated by the fossils that are found in it. (circular)
Maybe you're going to the wrong museum or asking the wrong docent. Assuming that sort of non-answer is the true state of scientific knowledge is ludicrous. Other associated fossils are not the only means of dating sedimentary layers, they are one piece of an overall context.
It is also impossible to talk to snakes too.
I am certain that you have a misunderstanding about the discovery/dating/learning process of the scientific method. People, expecially scientists, don't just "arbitrarily" assign an age to rocks so that they can make them "as old as they need to be". They actually find out how old they are by comparing many mediums, such as climate events, bubbles of atmosphere in rocks, glacial activity, tree rings, life forms, volcanism, sea floor spreading, ice cores, dna mapping, multiple independent radioactive elements, geology, paleantology, and human history among thousands of other methods to corraborate their data. Nothing in science is "arbitrary" or "just assumed". These people are the sceptics of sceptics.
hey Ktisis, this is solely for you and all your fundie friends.
"In the real world, facts are stubborn beasts. They are supremely unmoved by whether we like them or not. We may sternly disapprove of the idea that stepping off the window ledge of an apartment on the 14th floor will result in our death; we may go further, and resolutely contradict all claims to that effect, clinging religiously to our belief that such activity is nothing more than an enjoyable and exhilarating way to spend an afternoon; but neither our disapproval nor our disbelief will make the slightest difference to the real-world splat.
And it is the same with evolution. Evolution is a simple fact. We can choose to remain ignorant of it, we can stick our fingers in our ears and refuse to think about it, we can even rail against it and shout and scream that it is not allowed to be true. But facts are facts, and will not go away just because we don't like them. We don't get to vote for our preferred method of having come into existence as a species, any more than we can choose to have been delivered by stork rather than conceived and born in the usual way.
The primary role of the school is pretty straightforward: it is to educate. It is to give young people the opportunity to learn as much as possible about the world, on the basis of the very best knowledge we have. Education is about overcoming ignorance – so the idea of allowing ignorance to set the school curriculum and to perpetuate itself by continuing to teach generation after generation information that for the last 150 years we have known to be false, is a shameful betrayal: a betrayal of young people, who put their trust in us and who deserve better; and a betrayal of the very concept of education itself.
Remember that 'ignorance' is not an insult, but merely a term for 'lack of knowledge'. Many of the people who protest so vociferously against the teaching of evolution do not understand how overwhelmingly strong the evidence for it is; and many of those who proclaim “But it's only a theory” do not understand that the scientific and everyday usages of the word 'theory' are very different. In everyday English, 'theory' can mean something vague, a hunch, a guess. In scientific English, it is almost as far from that meaning as it's possible to get: in science, a theory is the best explanation for a set of facts. It carries real weight: in science, nothing can be called a 'theory' until it is very well established indeed. Science has its own term for what, in a non-scientific context, the rest of us might call a 'theory': the scientific term for a suggestion, a best guess, something that seems plausible but has not yet been shown to be reliably true, is 'hypothesis'. You will never, ever hear a scientist talk about 'the hypothesis of evolution', for the simple reason that evolution is long past that stage. Evolution is a theory in the scientific sense of the word – tested, researched, explored and supported by masses and masses of evidence. There may still be specific details that are not entirely agreed upon; but the fact of evolution itself is not disputed by any reputable scientist. (If you are in any doubt about the evidence for evolution, I highly recommend The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins or Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne , because both authors have explained comprehensively, beautifully and very accessibly just why we can be so sure that evolution really is a fact.)
To deprive children of this knowledge, or to water it down so as to pretend that it's just a wild guess, is to deliberately deprive them of one of the most powerful and illuminating pieces of knowledge that humans have ever acquired. It is to deliberately keep them from what we know to be the truth. It is to conceal from them their true identity, and all meaningful knowledge of their roots. To suggest that creationism is in any way a rival 'theory' is to confuse reality with myth. Creationism is to evolution what Santa Claus is to frazzled parents frantically buying and wrapping presents for their children at Christmas. There comes a point in our childhood when we must let go of the fantasy of Santa Claus; and there comes a point in our civilization when we must let go of the fantasy of creationism too.
Evolution is science, and should be taught in science classes. Creationism - let us be very clear about this –is a purely religious doctrine, with no scientific underpinning whatsoever. Indeed, all the evidence points very strongly to its being false. It therefore has no place in a science lesson. Science proceeds on the basis of evidence, religion on the basis of faith, and any teacher who tries to teach faith-based dogma in a science class is clearly demonstrating her unsuitability for the role.
But of course evolution poses a problem for Christianity. That's not to say it poses a problem for all Christians, since many Christians happily accept evolution: they see Genesis 1 as merely a metaphor, and declare that if God chose to create us using evolution, that's fine by them. I used to be this kind of Christian myself; but I must confess that my blitheness was only possible because I had only the vaguest possible idea of how evolution works and certainly didn't know enough about it to realize that unguided-ness is central to it. While I welcome anyone who recognizes that the evidence for evolution is such that it cannot sensibly be denied, to attempt to co-opt evolution as part of a divine plan simply does not work, and suggests a highly superficial understanding of the subject. Not only does evolution not need to be guided in any way, but any conscious, sentient guide would have to be a monster of the most sadistic type: for evolution is not pretty, is not gentle, is not kind, is not compassionate, is not loving. Evolution is blind, and brutal, and callous. It is not an aspiration or a blueprint to live up to (we have to create those for ourselves): it is simply what happens, the blind, inexorable forces of nature at work. An omnipotent deity who chose evolution by natural selection as the means by which to bring about the array of living creatures that populate the Earth today would be many things – but loving would not be one of them. Nor perfect. Nor compassionate. Nor merciful. Evolution produces some wondrously beautiful results; but it happens at the cost of unimaginable suffering on the part of countless billions of individuals and, indeed, whole species, 99 percent of which have so far become extinct. It is irreconcilable with a god of love.
Evolution poses a further threat to Christianity, though, a threat that goes to the very heart of Christian teaching. Evolution means that the creation accounts in the first two chapters of Genesis are wrong. That's not how humans came into being, nor the cattle, nor the creeping things, nor the beasts of the earth, nor the fowl of the air. Evolution could not have produced a single mother and father of all future humans, so there was no Adam and no Eve. No Adam and Eve: no fall. No fall: no need for redemption. No need for redemption: no need for a redeemer. No need for a redeemer: no need for the crucifixion or the resurrection, and no need to believe in that redeemer in order to gain eternal life. And not the slightest reason to believe in eternal life in the first place."
Christianity is like a big, chunky sweater. It may feel cozy, it may keep you warm, but just let one stitch be dropped and the whole thing unravels before your very eyes. Evolution is that stitch. Evolution destroys the loving creator on which the whole of Christianity depends. I can quite understand why the evangelicals throw up their hands in horror at the very idea of it and will do everything in their power to suppress it. But they can throw up their hands all they like: it won't make any difference to the reality. All that will be achieved by their determined efforts to keep young people misinformed about it is that another generation of Americans will be condemned to ignorance, unable to understand the world around them properly, and at a real disadvantage when having to deal and compete with their peers from more enlightened countries. Willful ignorance is a choice; evolution is not.
Because the half-life of carbon-14 is 5,700 years, it is only reliable for dating objects up to about 60,000 years old. However, the principle of carbon-14 dating applies to other isotopes as well. Potassium-40 is another radioactive element naturally found in your body and has a half-life of 1.3 billion years. Other useful radioisotopes for radioactive dating include Uranium -235 (half-life = 704 million years), Uranium -238 (half-life = 4.5 billion years), Thorium-232 (half-life = 14 billion years) and Rubidium-87 (half-life = 49 billion years).
It might not be that accurate, but it reliably dates things back more that 10k years.
As I'm sure you're aware, the theory of evolution is not based on rhetorical gamesmanship... unlike the wholly unscientific notion of intelligent design (creationism). Your suggestion, for instance, that the phrase "survival of the fittest" is a tautologous argument ignores the rather important point that the words themselves are not evidence – evidence for the theory of evolution is so incredibly abundant (from the enormous fossil record to essentially all biological and medical research) that no one in the legitimate scientific community questions it. Alternatively, HOW evolution happens, is a different question – the simple Darwinian notion that those best adapted to their environment are best able to reproduce/shape future generations/pass on their genes (a testable scientific proposition – and no, this is not circular – imagine, hypothetically, if an animal was so well suited to its environment it lost all interest in mating), has become much more robust as our understanding of genetics has advanced.
ROFL. Creationists are funny.
kso: Thank you for the excellent summary. It is truly frightening that people still question the science of evolution.
That reasoning would be circular if your facts were true. Sadly, they are not.
Modern geology predates evolutionary theory. Basically, we figured out how old the earth was, before Darwin formulated his theory (feel free to check this fact – look for C. Lyel).
But here is the test: Solid theory predicts yet undiscovered facts. Solid nonsense adapts each time new facts come to light. Darwin's theory hinges on genetics, even though at the time, that science didn't even exist – basically, his theory hinges on genetics existing (quite the prediction, I would say). Religious doctrine on the other hand has been playing catch-up all the time – btw, do you believe the earth is flat and in the center of the universe?
Scripture doesn't say the Earth is 10,000 years old and nor does it say it is 6,000 years old. The Bible says the heavens and earth were created. Period. No specific time line is given. It could have been millions, billions, or trillions of years before 'life' as we know it was created on Earth. There are also scriptures that infer or even refer to life on Earth before Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When these facts are taken into account, it can be clearly seen that scientific fact (not necessarily theory), rather than refuting Scripture, actually confirms it. *shrugs*
The book of ancient mythology that you call "scripture" gives the leneage and ages of everyone from Adam to Jesus. Add them up and it comes to about 6,000 years.
I never said that the lineages didn't add up... I've added them up myself. I'm saying that Scripture doesn't say there was no life before the Garden. There are several scriptures that allude to life and even civilizations before ours. So to say dinosaurs and other creatures lived millions of years ago is very likely.
The bible also isn't a science book, the vatican's even said that... but since most fundamentalists are heretics they wouldn't listen to this anyways....
According to James Ussher, the world was created in 4004 BC, based on his study of the bible. This was done in the 17th century. Since then, we have found proof the earth is of course much older. So much proof that even the religious folk had to adjust their stance. Why, I would ask?
The bible hasn't changed since the 17th century. Why would your estimates based on that book now suddenly be different? Riddle me this, batman.
Really? Scripture doesn't specifically say that in six days God created the heavens and the earth and man was made on day six? And it doesn't give geneologocal record of Adam and his descendants and their lifespan? What bible are you reading?
The Earth of Genesis 1:1 is not the earth of Genesis 1:2. Look at it from a logical point of view: God is the author of order, not confusion. The inference in Genesis 1:2 is that at that time the earth was in a state of chaos. The inference is that there was something that happened between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 that isn't specifically stated. Probably the biggest reason it is rarely spoken of is that it really has nothing to do with Salvation. As such, it really isn't worth debating. It is, however, an interesting thing to think about.
To simply say that people had it wrong in that past and that means people throughout all time must hold to the same belief and if they don't, they're hypocrites, isn't a very valid argument.
John: I absolutely believe what the Bible says about life as we know it now being created in 6 days as the Bible clearly states. However, I also believe that there are references to life prior to... however, since it has no bearing on my salvation, I don't see it as a point of contention. I believe the BIble is absolute. There is no contradiction in the Scripture. 🙂
Like that kids movie Ice Age!
I'm beginning to believe the story about the killer rabbits on the Monty Python Holy Grail movie. I mean saber tooth Squirrels? OMG!
Since it is half fox half squirrel, it should be called Foirrel; French Ronaroille, feminin Ronaraillette.
I prefer squox.
nice!
Well, apparently they lost the evolution battle somewhere. I guess saber teeth weren't exactly conducive to survival of the species.
No, but a few million years later larger models were introduced,
and they were better and lasted longer.
CNN title: SABER-TOOTHED SQUIRREL FOUND
Actual article contents: It's been dead for a long time, and it's neither a squirrel nor saber-toothed. What the heII, CNN, are you a legitimate news source or the new Weekly World News?
Zey have found ze body of skvirrel, but let us hope zey don't find body of moose!
Ve do not need to be reportink zees to Fearless Leader, Natasha!
The headline got me here expecting to see a new / re-emerging species... what a let down. At least all the jesus stuff was funny
My dogs had better watch out for the saber-tooth whatever it is!
Only if your dogs do a lot of time-travelling.
You never bought your dog a time machine? I got my pooches one for Christmas last year. The love going back in time and chasing the saber-toothed squirrels that are neither saber toothed nor squirrels.
Where – O – Where is Mr. Peabody and Sherman when you need them?
What would Sarah Palin think
I asked myself the same thing. I really do wish she would weigh in on this. We need her guidance and superior judgement.
Sarah Palin thinks?
You actually expect SP to do something she's never done before? Her head would explode! What's wrong with you guys?
Xenu put them there trillions of years ago when Jeebus wasn't looking.
I don't care whatchacallit, if it – or it's descendants – show up in our bird feeder my husband will freak out.
Squirrels are REALLY cute... but imagining them with GREAT BLOODY FANGS is a bit disturbing to say the least.
Kind of like the bunnies in Monty Python's Guest for the Holy Grail.
"They're killers man!!"
**bunny flies at neck**
EEEEE
**blood flies everywhere**
See what I'm sayin'?
I'm a christian and even I can't imagine the earth only being 6000 years old.
that's good, now tell your candidates!
that is because it isn't science versus religion.......... and everything found in western religions – including Christianity – can be found in the oldest earth based religions nothing changes – just the packaging
Please, do not disrespect the Bible in any means neccisary. The Bible still complies with the earth today. Thank you
That's because when bible was written people weren't as educated (neither were the people writing it).
Exactly. Doesn't mean its not necessarily true. Just that it was described in a way that they understood at the time.
jay
It was untrue. Unless you actually believe the sun revolves around the earth.
Personally I think the Earth and all life forms was created by God via evolution. If you follow the events in Genesis that led to the creation of the different species over time (millions of years), you can theorize that evolution could be the driving factor behind it. Also since God is outside the realm of time, the diversity of species that was describe in the bible could be the product of millions of years of genetic changes in species. Atleast this is how I look at it. I may be wrong.
What came first, the chicken or the egg? The Bible says both (Genesis 1 & 2). Makes these sorts of things immaterial. Of course, you would believe a guy named "the antichrist" wouldn't you?
I believe that from prokaryotic organisms came eukayotic cells that evolved into multicellular organisms which eventually after a couple million years of evolution came the ancestor of the chicken that laid the egg. This process can be found in about any biology book.
And yet you fill this mysterious question with, "Yes, I am 100% certain that a GOD, not GODS, created EVERYTHING."
Yeppers, that makes sense.
"The Bible still complies with the earth today."
Umm no it doesn't.
I'd have never dreamed that Skrat was real.
Exactly what I was thinking. I love Skrat.
totally cool. love this stuff!!
I want more discoveries + articles like this.
It's called Nat Geo! A much better news source as it's not filled with garbage like the "who give's a crapdashian family"!
Fossils were planted by the devil to make us question the bible. The earth is 6000 years old and the sun revolves around it.
I always thoght that fossils were planted by the baby jesus just to mess with everybody's head.
Yep, it was baby jesus.
He was the first human, wasn't he?
And the scary part is, while I'm certain this post was facetious, there are people who actually believe this. And they're in positions of power.
No the Bible makes us question the Bible. God is great, men are evil. Eat babies.
WOW... please please tell me you are just being funny and I am missing the obvious sarcasm. You are, right?!?!?!
Does this remind anyone of a Monty Python skit??
What, you mean behind the rabbit?
Ooo! ME! ME! ME!!
Teabaggers believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old and that early man walked with the dinosaurs. Teabaggers believe that early man rode dinosaurs to church every Sunday. Teabaggers are also still mourning the loss of Peggy Rea, the actress that played Boss Hogg's wife.
It's true though, the skull of Earl Sinclair was on eBay just the other day!
teabaggers do not really believe that early man rode dinosaurs to church and I really don't think they believe that they ever did but......they do believe that they rode in stone cars and stopped them with their feet........
Are you serious? No they didn't. Teabaggers stayed as far away from Dinosaurs as they could because most of them were agnostic or atheistic. This is why they died when the giant fireball came from heaven…duh!
Species name must be italicized.
"It's a vicious rodent with big teeth! Run away!"
Behold, the cave of Caerbannog! That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on! Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer! He's got huge, sharp... er... He can leap about. Look at the bones!
I heart Monty Python!
Sharp pointy FANGS!!!
Notice in the article it says that the animal was neither a squirrel nor a saber-tooth. lol. So the headline is just a lie to get you to read an uninteresting article. They got me!
Typical poorly written science article. "To give you some perspective on the size of these canines, imagine if one of your front teeth came down below your chin..." And that's *NOT* sabre tooth?
I'm just waiting for a Jesus freak to refute this.
Nevermind, I didn't see Sybaris.
Maybe it would have helped if I used some HTML in my post: [mocking] [/mocking]
@Sybaris, Nice.
Wrong!
These animals only lived within the last 6,000 years and the debil put the bones there in old looking rock.
Too funny!
So, you're saying that the Devil created fossils, and other evolutionary evidence, to deceive us? Hmmm...
Geological evidence - all of it, not just fossils - supports evolution. So, the Devil must've created the Earth.
Anatomical, genetic and biochemical evidence from life - all of it - supports evolution. So, the Devil must've created all living things.
Psychological and behavioral evidence from humans - all of it that's been studied from an evolutionary, not religious, perspective - supports the notion that humans' behavior is consistent with an evolved drive to survive, reproduce, and perpetuate our genes. So, the Devil must've created human nature ... or, if you prefer metaphors, "the soul".
Now... what, exactly, did GOD supposedly create, again? Looks like the Devil is all that's left for Him to take credit for.
Some animals may have lived and become extinct. Some may have evovled. However, I am not a monkey and did not come from the beasts. I was made by God in His image. Thank you very much.
Sharlee, apparently sarcasm doesn't translate well over the internet
Good one Sybaris!
Sybaris > Sharleen!
HAHAHAHAAAA!!!! That just made my day (which has been stressful and just bad), so thank you for that!!!!
F was made in god's image so he must be... invisible...?
dude... im christian. But even i dont believe that the earth is 6000 years old, that wouldnt make any sense with modern science....... why cant people believe that god exists and that science is factual, but also his doing?? i mean- you CANT prove Gods existence, but theres nothing in the bible that says that evolution is false.
People need to keep an open mind.... much of science' "FACT" changes eventually when we discover something new, we thought we were in another ice age not too long ago, and we also thought that perpetual motion machines were impossible..... am i saying evolution or the big bang theory is false? NO, im saying we need to keep an open mind if we want to learn anything, and not just continue through our short lives doing and believing whatever "higher-ups" say.
Just because you say you are a "Christian" doesn't make it so. I can claim to be from mars, but that doesn't actually mean I am from mars. Jesus beleived in a literal six day creation and the record of the first man (Adam) and his descendants are recorded in Genesis. Simple math will show how old the earth is accroding to scripture. A "Chirstian" is one who follows the teachings of Christ and believes what He beleives. If you beleive the earth is billions of years old, then you are either not a Chirstian, or you are extremely ignorant of scripture.
actually no such thing as a perpetual motion machine...there will always be energy loss. Theoretically it may be possible..but to this day and age no such devise exists. of course maybe Christians have figured out a way to circumvent the Scientific law of thermodynamics but i haven't been to Church lately.
Homeless peoples have existed for 100s of years. What makes you think animals have been around much longer?
Man has been man since we were created, we didn't come from monkies. Animals evolved over time. Why is that so hard to believe, it's the truth.
Man! God lets the debil get away with EVERYTHING!