What do you belive in, Creationism or Evolution?

I am majoring in Anthropology with an Archaeology concentration. I have not ever, in all my schooling, found any flaws in the theories of evolution. The only time evolution has not seemed perfectly reasonable to me was during my early years in a Christian school, where they used every misleading fact, generalization, false discovery, or downright misinformation they could find to shove creationism down the students' collective throats.

Sure, there are some marginally unreliable techniques, like C14 dates not being reliable in periods of heavy sunspot activity, but we have dozens of other methods to counter those flaws.

The only truly unreliable element is the human element, where people might see what they want to see, not what is actually there, as is the case with 3 6 million year old fossils in Africa, any one of which could have led to the Human race. Anthropologists have split into 3 factions over a few skull-cases and teeth. I'm not forming any opinion until more fossils are found. The human element is the only thing wrong with evolution. If we could have machines do our work for us, we would probably get more accurate results (not by much,in most cases, but it might resolve my former example).

 

sighs..... Whether Creationism exists or not it is impossible to say. for all of you who are absolutely positive that it exists, well you guys are at fault here. for you guys saying that it does not exist, you are at fault too. Since presenting proof for either or is impossible for Creationism, you can not say it does or does not exist. so you guys might as well stop arguing over that.

Evolution, on the other hand does exist. There is proof, and I don't mean bones and dna. I mean living animals. There were a group of jellyfish that evolved in a lake that was created when a volcano erupted not too many years back. the lake was form when lava flowed into the ocean and blocked off a body of water from the rest of the ocean.

Now Jellyfish eat regular fish. but since the lake was blocked from the ocean, fish eventually became scarce there. So the jellyfish began to starve, until a new generation of jellyfish was born. what was interesting about this generation was that some of them fused, or something like that, to allergy (I don't think I spelled that right) and use the allergy to do photosynthesis in order to get food. evolution can happen in many ways. One of those ways is dependent on diet, and this way can make evolution happen in one generation.

evolution has also happened in laboratories with mice and I think snakes.
but even though evolution exists, creationism could still exist. these two subject are not dependent on each other.

so either you are neutral, or you are for evolution only since Creation alone has been proven wrong.

 

Wait, so where do you stand here?

 

Me, personally, I don't believe in god and therefore I don't believe in Creationism. but, since I am a man of logic, I can't be sure about any of this so I give Creationism a fighting chance. but there have been just so many things about god and about the stories that have been proven wrong, I have a strong belief solely on science and science alone.

There is a scientist, though, that believes in god and says that god could have placed a trigger switch in animals called evolution to give animals a fighting chance when their environment changes. After reading the article about this scientist, i was like, "Damn." cause, you see, you can't say that what that scientist said is not true since what he said is entirely plausible.

It all comes down to logic. you can believe in something and disagree with someone else about those beliefs all you want, but as long as there is the slightest possibility that the person you are arguing with is right, you can't just go and say it's impossible. If a person has a valid argument, then you can't say he is wrong until proven otherwise.

 

Crap...I got confused and voted for Creationism even though I actually think I believe in both.


Damn.


But yeah, I believe in some kind of God, I think. But then at the same time I think that some things just evolved. I don't believe that Humans evolved though. I think we were created. I just...Refuse to believe that Humans are just..."Animals" basically. With hearts, emotions, thoughts, feelings...That vanish into nothingness once we die. :/ I think we're more than that. And that kind of more, I believe, would have to come from someone more than this. If that makes any sense.


But then, I'm still unsure.​

 

That is an argument of semantics. We as humans called all other organisms animals to make ourselves seem special. Yes, we are a very special kind of organism. We are the only one (that we know of) to gain sentience and sapience. However, we are all still products of evolution. I think that the Anthropic Principle applies here. The reason we see our evolution as so special is because it seems so rare. But the only reason we are here to think about it is because it did happen. If it hadn't happened we wouldn't be here to think about it xD

But yeah, the evidence we have completely and utterly contradicts creationism. The earth cannot possible be 6000 years old and all animals did not appear at the same time.

 

I'd say a bit of both. God gave life to bacteria, which evolved into what we know today. ​

 

Chimpanzees are VERY close. I think they are what we were about 6.5 million years ago (we have definitive human ancestors using tools from about 6 million years ago). They fashion crude wooden tools and have been known to store them for a later date (evidence of a time sense that most animals don't have), and use them to, in part, go after honey, which has no real value or them besides enjoyment.

If we were created, what are the thousands of fossils of australopithecenes? Or various species of the Genus Homo (which includes Homo sapiens sapiens - us)? How do you explain the direct evidence leading straight from Australopithecus afarensis to modern humans?

 

you know, dolphins are more intelligent than humans. they just don't have thumbs which makes it difficult for them to make things like we do. but they have made use of underwater things such as sponges and they use them as a sort of tool.

Elephants may even be smarter that us! if they had another nose, then who knows where they may have gone. Elephants are even able to paint! They typically paint other elephants though. there are videos on youtube that show this. So are you saying that even though those creatures are intelligent, maybe more so than us, they are still animals?

the definition of an animal is a living thinking organism. we fall under that definition. if you were to open one of us and a chimp up, you would find that the insides look nearly identically. other animals have feelings and critical thinking skills too! these are complex organisms we are talking about (and i'm including humans here). they are not created from scratch. it takes a long period of time to get to where we are now, and where we are now is not an ultimate form of evolution.

evolution only makes it so that creatures will have the means to survive in their environment. if intelligence is unnecessary for a creature's survival then it will go out the window. Same thing could happen to us, and that would not be called de-evolution (which does not exist), it would be evolution. Intelligence is an important trait for humans. without it, we could kiss our butts goodbye, because we wouldn't be able to defend ourselves. also, if we don't exercise our brain enough, then chances are that evolution would consider the extra brain power unnecessary and could in turn make the following generation dumber, however there would probably be other changes as well.

humans did evolve from something in the primate family. our ancestors used to live in trees until the environment changed. however it changed we cannot be sure, but what we can be certain of is that we were forced to live in an area with less trees. trees gave us protection from predators, so without them only the clever could survive. that is only a basic idea of what happened.

 

One argument against so-called Intelligent Design is the sheer amount of intermediates in metabolic pathways imo.

One example out of thousands:
The release of alpha-amylase in the endosperm of a plant embryo is induced by gibberellin. While hormone signals to activate enzymes are nothing special, I've always stopped to wonder why tey have to pass through so many intermediate signals. For the example of gibberellin:
1) Gibberellin (GA) binds on a receptor in the cell membrane.
2) It interacts with a G-protein complex. This initiates two transduction pathways: Ca-ion dependent and a Ca-ion independent one. The latter will be important now, the former later on (I won't go as far with my explanation).
3) An activated GA-molecule acts as a signaling intermediate (!) and binds on a transcription-blocking DELLA repressor.
4) The repressor degenerates, an MYB gene is expressed (among others).
5) But this is not yet the gene for amylase! Nooooooo! First an MYB protein is synthesized for reasons that escape me.
6) This MYB protein finally finds it in its heart to bind on a promotor that actually does initiate genes that initiate amylase-processing.

Why is there a step nr. 5 between 4 and 6? What could be the use of an MYB protein if an intelligent designer could just as well draw the line from 4 to 6 straight out without any twists and turns or stops along the way?

If this doesn't sound inefficient or unintelligent to you, then I don't know what does. For those of you who would like to have it spelled out, here's why:
Reason #1: Speed. A more direct synthesis of amylase would speed things up a little, there's no arguing about that. However I will admit that this is a rather futile argument since the current lack of speed doesn't seem to hinder the organism.
Reason #2: Error hazard. And this is significantly more important than reason #1. During every step of the amylase synthesizing protocol, something can go wrong. Fewer steps would mean fewer chances that the entire operation derails.

As you well know this case doesn't stand on itself. Rather, many life forms have an overload of intermediates in their metabolism and thus lack maximum biological efficiency.

 

Exactly, a perfect being would imply a perfect process. But life processes are most definitely far from perfect.

Although, I would like to hear evidence from the Creationist side. It doesn't appear very often and any that does is ruthlessly torn apart because it is almost always complete and utter tripe xD

But yeah, Creationism doesn't have a leg to stand on =/

 

But we have to remember that science exist for the sake of the human race to LEARN. Humans do not, nor will they ever, know everything, and there will subsequently be some sort of gap of information somewhere. If these imperfect processes seem inefficient or there seems to be holes in the logic of their systems, then either yes, they are flawed, or there is something about this process that we have not yet learned about. We must also take into account the idea of survival of the fittest, if all systems of all organisms were perfect and had no flaws whatsoever, then there would be fewer opportunities of contesting, food would become harder and harder to obtain, and the population of all species on earth would most likely react adversely, both as a whole and in proportion to one another.

 

Bolded the part I disagree with most. It's not survival of the fittest, that is an old 19th century idea. It's more like "survival of the most adaptable", because they can adapt to changing climate and habitat (which is happening quite rapidly right now).

Also, there are indeed structures in the human body (and in other creatures) that are either inconvenient or just downright useless. The appendix, for instance. We have known about it for 200+ years, yet we have yet to find one single use for it (except to give us extremely painful appendicitis). It does nothing. We can live without it. Or, who thought it would be such a good idea to put a recreation area next to the plumbing on a human body (to put it in a non-offensive manner)?

 

Okay, yes. I can understand this, but my theory on the effect of species population remains, because were all systems perfectly orchestrated, so would all adaptations, if they would even be necessary.

They may be inconvenient for one reason, yet purposeful for another that, as I said before, we do not know because we don't know anything. I'm not even sure they have any studies going on into the purpose of the appendix right now, I think that they just deemed it useless according to the current human understanding through science at that time. Doubtless, as time goes on, more and more information and data may be discovered, and it could be found that it serves some obscure yet not completely critical use. As for the living without it, yes, you can, but you can also live without part of your liver, or one of your kidneys with only minor moderations to your lifestyle. Given my argument that the function of the appendix is UNKNOWN and could very well work in conjunction with a function of some other part of the body, then it would equate it with these, though I don't claim that it's anywhere as critical.

 

We can live without an appendix. We can live with absolutely no ill effects without an appendix. All it ever does is create a painful, debilitating, and expensive illness. I personally think it is left over from our Ape lineage (maybe it once allowed us to eat many plants that we can't anymore?) and has atrophied since we started eating meat, about 3-4 million years ago. It'll probably disappear within another million years (if we survive that long, lol)

 

It creates no VISIBLE effects on the human body. There are diseases and such where you feel fine even though you have it, and only minor changes are made to how people carry out their daily lives. The same basic concept could apply here, though I don't claim to know what would be changing here.

 

And it might not be gravity which holds us to the earth, but rather an undetectable force with the same properties.

It very well might create some undetectable, meaningless change in the human body. But how is that any different from doing nothing?

 

On request of thread creator


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