This may be the most ludicrous post I've seen at this site to date. Don't forget that it was scientists who exposed the Piltdown hoax. Science is inherently self-correcting.
I assume that your problem with current science is really about Darwin and global warming -- if you don't like the science, then it must be wrong, eh?
I would argue that science has made a few advances since 1850 -- including the very technology this site uses to propagandize the faithful.

Salve,

The most ludicrous? Really? I think I'll consider it a feather in the cap, then.

As for your observation: in our modern times, science is not at all self-correcting. It usually takes someone from outside science to show that some particular crackpot theory is twaddle...and even then, the proponents of science these days are like as not to just ignore the evidence...and that is the problem: the people who hold up science as the be-all and end-all of existence are not adhering to the basic need of science: the fearless and absolute adherence to truth at all times.

So, the Age of Science is dead...it died between about 1850 and 1950. Never again will such a man-centered construct, I think, be held up as a paradigm...and good riddance, if you ask me.

"What killed science was when its strongest advocates stopped telling the truth."
-a provocative statement to be sure.However dishonest.Science has always had its fringe elements and more than its share of "crackpots".These individuals could hardly be called science's "strongest advocates" however passionate or misguided they may be.What HAS changed is
a willingness on behalf of political and/or religious groups to openly attack "mainstream" science."Intelligent Design" BTW is nothing more than "Creationism"in a new package.

Mark-

You never cease to amaze... you proclaim the "Age of Science" is over, yet... if anything is going to protect us from terrorist attack... it's going to be science. (more on that later)

First of all, you are holding science (as an entity) to an unreasonable standard. You are saying that a few bad theories (compared to the good ones) completely destroyed an entire branch of human inquiry.

Let me tell you about some more crackpot theories:

The Earth is flat; the Earth is the center of the Universe; Prometheus is chained to a rock and has his liver eaten out by a bird everyday; bad feelings come from thetons (sad alien ghosts) in our bodies; the world, mountains, trees, and midgets were created by a giant spaghetti monster's noodly apendage; Muhammed ascended to heaven bodily on a winged horse; et cetera.

What do all of these "crackpot" theories have in common? These are all religious theories... does that mean that Religion is dead?

To tell the truth... there is no and wasn't ever any "age of science" (at least in this commentor's opinion). There was, however, an Age of Reason. We are still in that age, actually. When intelligent men started to look for answers to life in the world around them, instead of just looking at a book that was written a few hundred years ago.

This age wasn't only brought on by scientists, it was brought on by artists, philosophers (including "Christian Apologists"), mathematicians, historians, and pretty much everyone who wanted to explain their world using logic, reason, and empirical evidence.

In fact, I challenge anyone here to convince me of the truth of Christianity without using the Bible. (hint: use empirical evidence)

The Age of Reason will not go away until the philosophers, scientists, and historians stop their secular inquiry due to fears of divine retribution, and I will fight the onset of that time with all of my might.

About the war on terror...

God won't protect us from terrorist attacks merely because most of us are Christian (where was that guy on 9/11, anyways?)...

God won't step in if there is an anthrax attack in the Rose Garden... but a paramedic with a vaccine could help...

God won't jump in front of bullets when a soldier gets shot at in Iraq, but better body armor will absorb a lot of the damage...

To say that science is "dead" is to neglect all of the great things that scientists, many of whom are athiests, agnostics, or deists, have given and continue to give us.

I won't even get started on some cracked-out conservative-based pseudoscience...

Don't forsake what science has given you... unless you want to stop using those things... then again... it would be hard to write on this site if you did that...

Why did science stray from the path of truth? I think it is because we ceased educating the men of science with a knowledge of religion - a knowledge, that is, of genuine truth, genuine reason, and the relationship of man to creation, and his Creator.

Wow. Just...wow. There are so many things wrong/contradictory/silly with these two sentences, it boggles the mind. And that's not even getting into the rest of this post. I don't know that this is the most ludicrous post on this site to date, Salvelinus, but it certainly ranks near the top.

Gee...this was a silly post. As a creationist (who use to believe in evolution) I can say that "science is dead" is just as reasonable as saying "the earth orbits the moon."

Science is far from dead...its rather societies trust in evolutionistic science that has eroded.

Although I think evolution should be reclassified as a fable for grown ups, science will still be the basis on how we evaluate how the earth goes round.

The god of science is indeed dead.

Science itself is alive and kicking. Praise the Lord!

If you just started reading the posts here, and shake your head in amazement, don't feel alone.

Marks post is just another example of the "thinking" that goes on here.

"Science is dead". What more can be said?

How narrow minded. We are on the verge of breakthrough technology. Nanotechnology, stem cell research, advances in cold fusion, zero point energy, and on and on.

But, as Mark says: "science is dead".

So lets tie it all together, instead of fighting a no win war, (i.e. there will ALWAYS be terrorism, no?") and tieing up billions after billons in a deadend situation, we could invest all that money in the research to keep the U.S. at the top of the technology pyramid. But no...

We have WAR. Endless, endless WAR. Put progress on hold, there are terrorists out there who want to harm us. So advances in medicine, computer science, alternative fuel sources, all on hold. Besides, Jesus wouldn't like the advances we're writing about. He would condone the war though...
right?

Mark: "The prime rule of science was truth - everyone involved in science had to tell the truth to the best of their ability, and always be willing to correct one's views when new evidence called in to question previously held beliefs. What killed science was when its strongest advocates stopped telling the truth."

Actually, that's not true at all. Science does not require scientists to always tell the truth -- never has, never will. Although that would be nice, it's just not realistic. Scientists are just as human as everyone else. They have biases, they are driven by ego, they will even lie sometimes -- sometimes to the point of fabricating evidence (e.g, the Piltdown Man, and Haekle's embryos). What science DOES require is for scientists to provide hypotheses which are testable, and to provide evidence for them which are reproducible by other scientists.

As evidence accumulates, disagreements about what that evidence really implies is not a weakness in science, it is a weakness in the evidence. Weakness in the evidence is very much the sort of thing that propels science. That's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. Unfortunately, it does sometimes cause people to jump on one or another bandwagon prematurely, and to conclude that what appears to them to be fact really is fact. Many of the other examples you present are examples of the latter situation: that is, the situation wherein the available evidence is so incomplete that it could be interpreted to support more than one theory. Unfortunately, when such situations cross paths with policy and/or religion, they are politicized -- the science is "hijacked" if you will. But that's more a problem with politics, and people's misunderstanding of science, than it is a problem with science itself.

Another point is this: in some fields of science it is difficult or impossible to perform adequate tests. They are observational rather than experimental. Evolutionary biology is a good example of such a field. Theoretical astrophysics is another. Meteorology is a another. One could argue that many of the social sciences are as well in many ways. Experimental science allows you to make some fairly strong cause and effect statements relatively quickly because you can control variables, apply treatments, and measure outcomes. The observational sciences require a preponderance of circumstantial evidence. And as a result, those fields are slower to develop and more susceptible to misinterpretation.

"advances in cold fusion"???- raker13

Evidence, please.

"Put progress on hold, there are terrorists out there who want to harm us. So advances in medicine, computer science, alternative fuel sources, all on hold."-raker13

That's false. We are making advances in all of those fields and more, daily. Check out the latest online article in Popular Science: "Technology vs. Terrorism"

In the race to prevent future 9/11-style attacks—or worse—Washington has marshaled the U.S. science establishment on a scale not seen since Sputnik. Federal investment in homeland-defense research has swallowed nearly $4 billion since 2003, and that’s a mere drop of total security spending. (DHS’s budget this year alone is $40 billion.) More important, McCarthy suggests, is that the accelerated spending has brought together formerly disparate disciplines: Software engineers, epidemiologists and biologists have teamed up to produce technologies that protect air and food against bioterrorism. Nuclear physicists and bioforensics specialists now cooperate with the best brains in behavioral science to devise ways to reduce the threat of nuclear smuggling and suicide bombers.

Check out the photo gallery, too!

"advances in cold fusion"???- raker13

Evidence, please.

"Put progress on hold, there are terrorists out there who want to harm us. So advances in medicine, computer science, alternative fuel sources, all on hold."-raker13

That's false. We are making advances in all of those fields and more, daily. Check out the latest online article in Popular Science: "Technology vs. Terrorism"

In the race to prevent future 9/11-style attacks—or worse—Washington has marshaled the U.S. science establishment on a scale not seen since Sputnik. Federal investment in homeland-defense research has swallowed nearly $4 billion since 2003, and that’s a mere drop of total security spending. (DHS’s budget this year alone is $40 billion.) More important, McCarthy suggests, is that the accelerated spending has brought together formerly disparate disciplines: Software engineers, epidemiologists and biologists have teamed up to produce technologies that protect air and food against bioterrorism. Nuclear physicists and bioforensics specialists now cooperate with the best brains in behavioral science to devise ways to reduce the threat of nuclear smuggling and suicide bombers.

Check out the photo gallery, too!

The book of Genesis - Content - God uses his Word to speak all of creation into being. This creation is perfect until man sins by listening to Satan instead of trusting God and obeying his plan. This sin of Adam and Eve results in spiritual death and eventually leads to filling the world with hate, violence and disobedience. Finally, sin prevails until God uses a flood to destroy mankind, except righteous Noah and his family. Even after this, sin sweeps the land, and the people build the huge tower of Babel in defiance of God. God never stops loving man, however, and the last 39 chapters of Genesis reveal how God - through the family of of Abraham - directs history to establish the eary stages in his plan to save the people and mend their fellowship with him. The book closes with God's chosen people in Egypt.
..................................................

Man still to this day cannot figure why things work the way they do, He tries and tries different methods in an effort to dis-prove the one who created it ALL!
And so the more we stray from the truth the more lost we get!

But.......Inspite of everything that we do to go against the Will of Almighty God, He still loves us each and every one!!

To me - Science is good - It helps us to learn the different facets of creation. God has given man the knowledge to explore in the different medical fields, and it has saved millions of lives!

But........As long as man continues to try and prove God wrong, and tries to undermine everything that God has done - It's all in vain!

Here is what will happen to people who think they are wise, and try to undermine the wisdom of God!

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

God's wisdom
versus humanity's foolishness.

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."

"Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influental; not many were of noble birth. BUT GOD CHOSE THE FOOLISH THINGS OF THE WORLD TO SHAME THE WISE; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, SO THAT NO ONE MAY BOAST BEFORE HIM. It is because of him that you are Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God - that is our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "LET HIM WHO BOASTS BOAST IN THE LORD""

"For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?"

Jeremiah

Jeremiah-

I can always count on you to write a lot and yet say absolutely nothing...

If I wanted a sermon, I would turn on the Jesus channel.

"I can always count on you to write a lot and yet say absolutely nothing..."

*chuckles*

You mean you could'nt even bother to address what I said?

*chuckles*

Jeremiah

Excellent post Georgia Frawg! Completely agree.This is a great topic. Thanks Mark!

"Jeremiah-

I can always count on you to write a lot and yet say absolutely nothing...

If I wanted a sermon, I would turn on the Jesus channel."

Completly agree again!

Georgia,

From what I understand, no educated person has held the world to be flat for at least 3,000 years...as that time frame includes all of Christianity, and therefor all educated Christians, we would have to say that never, not even once, has an educated Christian thought the world flat...meanwhile, the idea of the earth at the center of the universe was not at all religious, it was science...mistaken science, but science nonetheless. Ptolemy carefully made out all the mathematical calculations to prove the geo-centric view of the universe - and, uh, Ptolemy was a pagan. As for the rest of your litany, all except the story of Mohammed are fairy tales...and while I don't hold that Mohammed so ascended, devout Moslems do believe it and no matter how hard you try, you can't prove it didn't happen.

At any rate, when I speak of the death of science, I mean the death of that species of thought which figured that the whole of the universe would be fully explained by the processes of science...that sort of science, false in its initial premise, at least had the cachet of honesty...but it disintegrated after Darwin when one crackpot theory after another (including Darwin's) rolled over the scientific world and got people in to the habit of falling for any bit of nonsense as long as it was dressed up in scientific jargon. That killed the Age of Science.

Darwinism = "crackpot theory." Awesome. Well, we certainly don't see much evolution on this site, do we? After all, you'll "fall for any bit of nonsense as long as it was dressed up in" religious "jargon."

Good grief. What twaddle! Mark, Jeremiah, get a grip. Give your heads a shake. Come to your senses. What, you think the fable of Adam and Eve is closer to the truth than Darwin's theory? The debate is over!!! Adam and Eve and the rest Genesis are fables, like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Science is not dead, your sense of reason is dead.

Mark: "but it disintegrated after Darwin when one crackpot theory after another (including Darwin's) rolled over the scientific world and got people in to the habit of falling for any bit of nonsense as long as it was dressed up in scientific jargon. That killed the Age of Science."

Perhaps the phenomenon you refer to would best be described as the Age of Pseudo-Science.

And Darwin's theory is crack-pot? How so?

Ricorun;

They have never found a single intermediary species in the 134 years since Darwin published his theory. It is all conjecture based on similarities between the species with no evidence to support it. How many years of zero evidence does it take before a theory is recognized as BS (crackpot)?

Good grief. What twaddle! Mark, Jeremiah, get a grip. Give your heads a shake. Come to your senses. What, you think the fable of Adam and Eve is closer to the truth than Darwin's theory? The debate is over!!! Adam and Eve and the rest Genesis are fables, like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Science is not dead, your sense of reason is dead.

Posted by: Canuckguy at August 23, 2006 09:18 PM

Canuckguy,

Let Mart and Jeremiah stay in ignorance. Let them have thier "intelligent design" while we'll have the tecnology that helps humanity(in the hands of the right people).

Mark-

From Wikipedia's article on Galileo

Psalms 93:1 and Psalm 104:5, and Ecclesiastes 1:5 speak of the motion of celestial bodies and the suspended position of the earth. Galileo defended heliocentrism, and claimed it was not contrary to those Scripture passages. He took Augustine's position on Scripture: not to take every passage too literally, particularly when the scripture in question is a book of poetry and songs, not a book of instructions or history. The writers of the Scripture wrote from the perspective of the terrestrial world, and from that vantage point the sun does rise and set. In fact, it is the earth's rotation which gives the impression of the sun in motion across the sky.

There definately was Church resistance to heliocentrism. Hey, it's in the bible... Anyways, you didn't really answer any of my points...

And Jeremiah-

Here's the problem I have with your post: you have to believe in the bible to garner anything from your arguments... and... I don't believe in the bible... so your posts really are meaningless to me.

Try using empirical evidence to make your point.

Mark: I had never thought about the death of science. Interesting - yes, your reasoning that lies did it makes sense. There is an "old" saying that you might be familiar with - "Oh what a wicked web we weave when we practice to deceive." I hope Darwinism does die totally. I still see Darwin fishies on folks cars,though. I think how one views from whence we came has a tremendous affect on our worldview. You either think you came from the primordial soup or from the dust of the earth (for man) and then for women, created from the rib of a man. I take the Adam and Eve account any day over primordial soup! :)

Jeremiah - Thanks for the scripture. It adds to the dialog a lot...Keep it up! The Word gives life. :) You are an encourager to those of us who have it tough out in this world, too.

Canuckguy - I know I can't convince you that the Bible is the Word of God and Adam and Eve really did happen. Yes, it does take faith to accept the Bible. I know that there have been men such as Josh McDowell, a well known author in today's Christian circles, who set out to disprove the Bible and he could not. He ended up believing in Jesus Christ as his Savior. Check out www.beyondbelief.com if you are interested.

Ricorun,

Darwin was a failure!

He never proved anything, but just that!

Any basis for science that proves the worlds existence as just a big happening out of no where, is just plain non-sense, without question!!

Evolution being the main culprit, this type of psycho-babble will continue and will not cease because it has nothing to fall on, no foundation!
That's why scientists keep going on trying to assert other explanations for humans existence!

Natural selection - is just plain balogney, Do you believe we came from monkeys? If so? Why are there still monkeys swinging from tree vines out there? If we came from monkeys? Then there should be no more monkeys! They would have all done evolved into humans! That's Just completely a BIG FARCE!!

Take the honeybee for instance! man has tried to figure out why the honeybee make it's comb in the shape of Hexagon, with six sides! and still can't figure out how they know what there doing!

You know why? because God created them in His own special way! Because He did'nt intend for man to know everything, He just wanted us to be able to marvel at what He created!

Canuck mentions lack of reason! GEESH! It's you guys who need to give your head a shake!

Because, "The fool hath said in his heart there is no God"

God gave us our knowledge to glorify Him who is already ALL knowing! and to do otherwise would be just to chase after the wind!

HEY!!That's a thought, how about the wind? Did you ever wonder why there are wind storms? Like tornadoes, Hurricanes, and just the wind in general! You can't see it!, But you know it's there, because you see it working! and you can feel it, moving around you!

How about the expanse of sky and stars? WOW! What a MIGHTY GOD WE SERVE!

Also, Think about the ocean and it's nightly tide! Ever wonder about that?
Ever wonder about the change in the planets tilt towards the sun in summer and away from it during winter?

And the little birds, They can't reason, but they know enough to go south in the winter!

All these things - Were put in place - in order that man might truly know that there is a God!

You see what I'm saying? A bright man will set his eyes on things ABOVE; not on things below!!

Jeremiah

Jeremiah,
You write:
"To me - Science is good - It helps us to learn the different facets of creation. God has given man the knowledge to explore in the different medical fields, and it has saved millions of lives!"

That's a great point. What's more, science is starting to prove that belief in God via a collaborative spiritual style (God is my co-pilot) is much more effective at dealing with crises than a self directing style that attempts to deal with crises without God. Also, psychology is beginning to attend again to the human quantum changes, formerly known as conversion experiences, that science has no context to explain. And research on the success of nonconscious decision making also suggests the failure of reason as compared to allowing ourselves to be inspired by that which is beyond our own explanations.

We live in a society in which depression and other mental health complaints continue to go through the roof, and we continue to teach in schools that God doesn't exist, even when it flies in the face of research on decision making, quantum change, and spiritual coping. What's unraveling science is that science is proving that reason and logic and the scientific method are failures when compared to relying on that which we can't explain. Only the laziness or cowardice of people to actually look at the evidence, and the corruption of those who benefit from keeping their sacred rationalist cows on dialysis, are keeping science alive as a description of the way the world is, absolutely, end of story. Science is one way to know the world, but the multicultural left isn't so multicultural when it comes to embracing that so many other cultures have different ways of knowing what is real.

Georgia;

Wikipedia's article is incorrect, Galileo very specifically stated that the sun being the center of the solar system proved that the bible and the church were wrong. The church had no problems with a heliocentric solar system, what they had issues with is using the fact that the bible contains conventional modes of expression i.e. sunrise & sunset, which are still in use to this day as evidence that the whole thing is false.

Mel,

There have been countless intermediary fossils found. Where do you get the idea that there haven't? How can you possibly call the Theory of Evolution crackpot when you’re not even aware of the basic facts and evidence related to it?

Jeremiah,

Humans evolved from an ape-like creature, not from monkeys. If you would take the time to actually learn about evolution, you would understand why monkeys still exist.

Mel Evenson: "They have never found a single intermediary species in the 134 years since Darwin published his theory. It is all conjecture based on similarities between the species with no evidence to support it. How many years of zero evidence does it take before a theory is recognized as BS (crackpot)?"

First of all, you have to understand that 134 years isn't a very long time in the grand speciation scheme of things -- even for very simple organisms. A lot is involved in a speciation event. Nonetheless, there are, in fact, several well-documented cases of true speciation: in numerous types of plants, both angiosperms and ferns, as well as many types of animals (houseflies, gall former flies, apple maggot flies, flour beetles, Nereis acuminata (a worm), mosquitoes, and various other insects; some types of green algae and bacteria; and apparently in mice.

In one sense, Mark is quite right.
Science, in essence, is the belief that there is absolute truth, an iron clad set of facts which remains the same no matter how much you argue against them. This blog has many times presented cases of anti-Science, where people refuse to believe in solid proof, and continue to espouse their party line.

And then there's Jeremiah. Hello, Jeremiah.

"Natural selection - is just plain balogney, Do you believe we came from monkeys? If so? Why are there still monkeys swinging from tree vines out there? If we came from monkeys? Then there should be no more monkeys! They would have all done evolved into humans! That's Just completely a BIG FARCE!!"

First of all, that is NOT what Natural Selection is about, as you would know if you actually read the theory.
Natural Selection states that living systems change and adapt. It doesn't say that individuals evolve. It doesn't say that species become more intelligent. It says that if you change the environment, species will change in order to better thrive within that environment.
So, no, monkeys do not turn into humans. (By the way, the monkeys into humans is one of the big lies told about Evolutionary theory. If anything, monkeys evolved from proto-humans.)
Yes, there are transition species. Just not large ones. Ever hear of resistant strains of bacteria? They are species of bacteria which have changed to thrive in a world of antibiotics. And yes, the pre-resistant "transition" strains still exist, have been analyzed, and been proven to be the forebearers of the resistant germs.

Not that this matters, Jeremiah. You don't listen to arguments. Your entire post was along the lines of "Why is the sky blue? Because God made it that way." Even Sunday School classes are more sophisticated nowadays.

God did more than give us five fingered hands and gravity. He gave us a mind and the senses we need to make use of it. The "foolishness" you speak of is yours - the superstitious nature of a peasant, accepting without interest or curiosity whatever they've been told. If you had not been raised to believe in the true God, I'm sure you'd have made a great Thor worshipper.
Or jihadist.

The only place that science is dead is in the minds of radical religious right wingnuts that dream of a return to the 1600's when witches were burnt at the stake beside heretics.

What is ultimately going to happen is that the US is going to be left behind on the rest of the world as you allow your radical right people to control your science and learning, so one day the rest of the world will move forward, the US backward to believing in spirits, ghosts and goblins.

Now is the time to step up and keep the crackpots in line before its too late.

Mark-

FromWikipedia (again)

The notion of a flat Earth refers to the idea that the inhabited surface of Earth is flat, rather than curved (see Spherical Earth). It is believed to have been prevalent up to and including early Classical Antiquity, and is evidenced in early Greek maps like those of Anaximander and Hecataeus. The first person known to have advocated a spherical shape of the Earth is Pythagoras (6th century BC).

From Mark:

From what I understand, no educated person has held the world to be flat for at least 3,000 years...as that time frame includes all of Christianity, and therefor all educated Christians, we would have to say that never, not even once, has an educated Christian thought the world flat

Now Mark... let's do some basic math here. 2006-3000=-994. In date terms, negative would be B.C.E, so given that the first person to say that the world was spherical said it in 6 B.C.E, you were about 986 years off.

On to the second part of your ridiculous assumption:

from wikipedia:

A few authors directly opposed the round Earth: * Lactantius (245–325) called it "folly" because people on a sphere would fall down. * Saint Cyril of Jerusalem (315–386) saw Earth as a firmament floating on water (though the relevant quotation is found in the course of a sermon to the newly baptized, and it is unclear whether he was speaking poetically or in a physical sense); * Saint John Chrysostom (344–408) saw a spherical Earth as contradictory to scripture; * Diodorus of Tarsus (d. 394) also argued for a flat Earth based on scriptures; however, Diodorus' opinion on the matter is known to us only by a criticism of it by Photius.[10]; * Severian, Bishop of Gabala (d. 408), wrote: "The earth is flat and the sun does not pass under it in the night, but travels through the northern parts as if hidden by a wall".[11] * The Egyptian monk Cosmas Indicopleustes (547) in his Topographia Christiana, where the Covenant Ark was meant to represent the whole universe, argued on theological grounds that the Earth was flat, a parallelogram enclosed by four oceans.

At least one early Christian writer, Basil of Caesarea (329–379), believed the matter to be theologically irrelevant.[12]

That was "late antiquity".

So... your statement is rendered completely false... hmmm...

"monkeys evolved from proto-humans"

FALSE!

monkeys DID NOT evolve from humans!

Humans DID NOT evolve from monkeys!

Jeremiah

Small Town hick,

Jeremiah has done nothing but present the truth, in a hard-core way. If you choose not to accept it, then fine and dandy. But there is no need to go making assumptions about him, and accusing him of things that you know nothing about.

Let me say something about the theory of evolution and natural selection, and all that jazz ...

Natural Selection is real, and it still happens today. If you took a set of miniature poodles out in the wild, and just left them there, then over time those poodles would grow to get bigger muscles in order to survive. These genes would pass on to the younger ones, and so on and so forth. You would eventually have a colony of just plain out, beefed up poodles. So yes, they would change to meet the needs of their survival according to the environment. And the arguement for natural selection ends there.

Now, where the real problem starts is that people want to add to the natural selection process by saying that things evolve (change species). Well, evolving and adapting are two different things, so I guess that the two have no correlation. But alas, some fool-hardy people wish to think that they do. I'll elaborate on that ...

In natural selection, things change physically in order to meet needs. In evolution, they are saying that species change species. We are not apes, apes are not humans, therefore, we can not come from apes, and apes can't come from humans. Dogs are not cats, cats are not dogs. AND FURTHERMORE you can't cross breed the two. I'll guarantee 1,000 to 1 if you took a male ape's semen and injected it into a female human, nothing would happen, and the woman would not concieve. It was setup this way, and that's just the way it is. I can't, to the life of me, see the reason why people wish to believe that we came from apes.

Now ... explain to me, why you think we evolved from apes. Apes have adapted relatively well enough to survive. They have no need to think or add or subtract, or multiply or divide. They have no need of highly sophisticated jobs ... now tell me, how in the world can we come from apes? It makes absolutely no sense. Furthermore, how could apes have came from us? That's even more bizarre.

Natural Selection and Evolution are so totally seperate and opposite that it's amazing, yet people still wish to continue in the thought process that they are similar or even exactly the same.

One last thought ... Apes have a relatively sophisticated language that they go by. It pales in comparison to our language, but still they can understand each other. They have very strong muscles, and are extremely nimble. They show some very strong characteristics .... Why would they need to change? I cannot, and will not, see the reasoning why people choose to believe evolution, it is an ignorant theory.

Lucas

Small Town hick,

Jeremiah has done nothing but present the truth, in a hard-core way. If you choose not to accept it, then fine and dandy. But there is no need to go making assumptions about him, and accusing him of things that you know nothing about.

Let me say something about the theory of evolution and natural selection, and all that jazz ...

Natural Selection is real, and it still happens today. If you took a set of miniature poodles out in the wild, and just left them there, then over time those poodles would grow to get bigger muscles in order to survive. These genes would pass on to the younger ones, and so on and so forth. You would eventually have a colony of just plain out, beefed up poodles. So yes, they would change to meet the needs of their survival according to the environment. And the arguement for natural selection ends there.

Now, where the real problem starts is that people want to add to the natural selection process by saying that things evolve (change species). Well, evolving and adapting are two different things, so I guess that the two have no correlation. But alas, some fool-hardy people wish to think that they do. I'll elaborate on that ...

In natural selection, things change physically in order to meet needs. In evolution, they are saying that species change species. We are not apes, apes are not humans, therefore, we can not come from apes, and apes can't come from humans. Dogs are not cats, cats are not dogs. AND FURTHERMORE you can't cross breed the two. I'll guarantee 1,000 to 1 if you took a male ape's semen and injected it into a female human, nothing would happen, and the woman would not concieve. It was setup this way, and that's just the way it is. I can't, to the life of me, see the reason why people wish to believe that we came from apes.

Now ... explain to me, why you think we evolved from apes. Apes have adapted relatively well enough to survive. They have no need to think or add or subtract, or multiply or divide. They have no need of highly sophisticated jobs ... now tell me, how in the world can we come from apes? It makes absolutely no sense. Furthermore, how could apes have came from us? That's even more bizarre.

Natural Selection and Evolution are so totally seperate and opposite that it's amazing, yet people still wish to continue in the thought process that they are similar or even exactly the same.

One last thought ... Apes have a relatively sophisticated language that they go by. It pales in comparison to our language, but still they can understand each other. They have very strong muscles, and are extremely nimble. They show some very strong characteristics .... Why would they need to change? I cannot, and will not, see the reasoning why people choose to believe evolution, it is an ignorant theory.

Lucas

Hmmm ... maybe we were on the same lines with the natural selection and evolution thing, Small Town hick. A hastiness on my part caused me to explain what you had already partly explained. My fault ... but, I did go on to explain that many people want to further natural selection with evolution. A stupid thing to do.

Jeremiah apologizes about earlier, again he was hasty himself in saying Natural Selection when he meant Evolution. Only a slight mix up, but one that he will avoid in the future.

Also ... sorry about the double post. Mark or Matt, if you would, please delete one of those. I hate having a double post up, lol.

One more thing ... please explain what you mean in saying "proto humans", small town. You're going in a direction that I have never been familiarized with ... yet. Also, that missing link thing is all a hoax in my honest opinion. They say there are thousands upon thousands out there, but they have yet to find one ... kinda funny, eh, thousands of them out there in the world and the millions of geologists that have roamed the Earth can't seem to find one, ha ha ha. Just goes to prove the folly of living a belief system based on science as "Iron Clad Truth".

Lucas.

"One last thought ... Apes have a relatively sophisticated language that they go by. It pales in comparison to our language, but still they can understand each other. They have very strong muscles, and are extremely nimble. They show some very strong characteristics .... Why would they need to change? I cannot, and will not, see the reasoning why people choose to believe evolution, it is an ignorant theory."

They needed to change so you could exist.

Really guys, the transition between monkey to man is very well detailed in text books, and a fossil record, how's that for truth. All your questions would be answered if you just cracked a book. Don't get all offended and have an identity crisis because your scared your a monkey because you have no concept of the time it took.

Keep traveling down that same road and next you'll be telling me dinosaurs didn't exist.

Well before I head home for tonight I thought I'd make a quick comment here. (Or not so quick who knows.)

Science is not dead, far from it. Nor does Mark or anyone else I've seen here seem to want to stop scientific progression. What I see Mark saying is that the idea that Science is the end all and be all of explaining things is dead. There was a time when we thought science would cure everything and explain everything "just around the next bend." We could fly, travel across the country in days and not months, and even contemplate space flight. Could nothing stop science?

Now it seems science has slowed. We're not getting "world changing" technologies as often anymore. Most new technologies are just refinements of exsisting technologies. How to talk over long distances quicker, how to move a car better, how to fly faster and farther. When was the last "big" scientific breakthrough you think?

Vaccines? X-rays? Trains? Cars? Airplanes? Telegraph? Telephone? Computers? Each of these things changed the world dramatically when they first came out, but what new technology has made us all go "wow, how did we ever survive before this?"

Will science continue on? Sure. Will certain areas of science be frowned upon because of relgion? Absolutely. Will that stop scientific progress? Heck no! Pandora's box has been opened, and we're never getting it back in the box again.

Ricorun,

Darwin's theory - at least as presented today - is twaddle because it presumes the impossible (ultimately, life from lifelessness) as well as insisting, in the face of all contrary evidence, that entirely new species have evolved out of other species. Darwinism just doesn't work - it can't work; the mechanism described cannot so much as explain plankton, let alone what I'm doing here typing on a computer.

How did life get here? Well, in my view, it was created - and the Creator has a purpose; a design, if you will. This makes vastly more sense - is vastly more reasonable - than the idea that some organic goo 5 billion years ago suddenly coalesced into self-replicating life.

The real destructiveness of the Darwinists comes in where they demand that nothing but Darwinism be taught, and that no questioning of Darwinism be allowed - this is a negation of science.

Ricorun,

Think of it in terms of Occam's razor - what is more likely:

That a Creator willed Nature in to existence and guides its development

or...

That Nature just "is" and by a vastly long and incredibly complex set of happy accidents, eventually produced a rational being?

Georgia,

Not at all - I was unware that a few intellectuals of late antiquity disputed the notion of a spherical earth. The last bit of your quote actually tells the tale - theologically, the shape of the earth in insiginificant. I've learned something new, but not something of much significance...the more important point on this particular debate is to point out that the concept that religion once held to a flat earth is just an anti-religious slander invented by the boosters of science as opposed to religion (rather than, as proper, the handmaid of religion). People in the mid-19th century wanted to denigrate all things religious, and they simply made up a series of lies about what religious people believed.

It is good to keep in mind, Georgia, that we're no smarter than the ancients - indeed, we may be less smart than they were. We know more because we've had a longer time to gather and transmit information, but we're no more clever than they are. Do you really think that they, looking up at the spherical Moon, couldn't conceive of a spherical earth?

SUSA,

I have cracked the books - my mother carefully looked at the theory and even wrote a book about it all - never published - about what she found. I grew up in a household where such matters were dinner table conversation subjects. That, along with physics, particle beam lasers, relativity...Mom was a physicist, Dad a mathematician...science was well represented.

Net result? Darwin's theory is fundamentally flawed - and you are quite mistaken if you believe that any of the books you have cracked actually detail the evolution of one species in to another. Such a thing has never been demonstrated anywhere.

What you have done is just accepted without question what has been told to you. Give it some thought - some real thought. There's no danger in questions...not at all.

TL,

You have a long journey in front of you.

Actually, there is a proof for evolution, the peppered moth.

(this proof is not 100% true, but one link below explains the shortcomings of this theory)
It is a british moth, which was originally white, and hid on some trees. When came the coal-industrial era, because of the pollution, trees became black. The white moth where exterminated by birds, because they couldn't hide.

Because of a random mutation, one(or more) moth was born black. Before industrialisation, it wouldn't have survived, but now it could survive much better than the white moths, so now you can only find black peppered moth.

here are some links:
(this one is best, it explains some mistakes in the original theory)
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/Moths/moths.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution

you only need to search for peppered moth on google to find these websites, it took me time to find the moth name (I studied it in Biology class, some 6 years ago)

I want to clarify natural selection. It is not adaptiveness, creatures growing bigger muscles or a third arm to deal with nature. It is nature selecting the most fit beings to survive in a particular environment. DNA recombination suggests that changes can happen at a genetic level that would make a being more likely to survive in a particular environment. But it would take a being with a brain bigger than a humans to know exactly what the environment is going to be in a couple of centuries, and it would take more power over themselves than humans currently have to make the genetic changes to survive in that environment. Using the term adapting suggests that beings are consciously, intentionally adapting, and that is not what natural selection says (it only says nature selects).

Also, any science presuming to describe the world as it actually is, end of story ignores as Bohm points out (another religious, science hating fanatic who came up with advances in high energy physics like Bohm diffusion) that science right now tells us we will never be able to know what happens at the subquantum level, and his work suggests that there are things happening at that level (read Wholeness and the Implicate order).

Brian & Ricorun;

This is not correct, there have been no intermediary species found as far as my research tells me. If you have different information please share it with me. Show me a single intermediate species and I'll revise my opinion. 134 years is a long time to look for evidence especially when you have a clear theory to guide you in your search.

Mark, as I've mentioned in the past, the fundamental precept that I believe most strongly is this: God created heaven and earth and everything in it. And in that creation he set down the natural order of things and the laws that govern them. Thus, by revealing the laws that govern the natural order of things one reveals God at the same time (whether one appreciates it or not).

So on the question of whether the Creator has a purpose, I would say yes. However, when you say that somehow negates the possibility that organic goo 5 billion years ago suddenly coalesced into self-replicating life, I disagree. I would say that it's quite possible it was all part of the plan. Even if scientists were able to demonstrate beyond the shadow of a doubt how that ooze developed into self-replicating life, doing so wouldn't negate God. It just changes the assumptions a bit -- at least for some people. It wouldn't change anything for me, because I've already made that leap. To me it's not a question of choosing between religion and science. To me the two are complimentary, not conflicting. It is all part of God's work.

Concerning your comment: "The real destructiveness of the Darwinists comes in where they demand that nothing but Darwinism be taught, and that no questioning of Darwinism be allowed - this is a negation of science." It is not a question of "demanding Darwinism". It's a question of the adequacy of competing theories. Good theories are those that explain a given set of phenomenon most adequately and simply. A lot of people seem to think that "Intelligent Design" is a competing theory. But in order for it to compete it must be as good an explanation as the theory it competes with. And to me, ID doesn't add anything. In fact, it rather requires one to believe that God (or some space alien) occasionally intervenes to tweak the expression of natural laws that He already established. Personally, I don't see that as necessary. In fact, the theory all but requires a lack of curiosity rather than fosters it. The theory basically states that some natural structures are too complex to have been formed by gradual processes. But there is offered no prediction ahead of time as to what those structures might be or when they are likely to arise. They just happen. And they use holes in the fossil record as evidence. And if later it is demonstrated that there is a plausible, gradualistic explanation for the structure, that instance is simply eliminated from the body of evidence. It is, in effect, just a restatement of the null hypothesis: rather than "I don't know", it's "God did it". Of course God did it. The question is how.

However, if ID ever gets to the point where it can effectively predict when, where, and in what way "God's finger" occurs, then I'm all ears. And if your mom's book ever gets published, please let me know.

To me, faith is a process, not an end-point. And it will be continuously challenged along the way. But if, along the way, one willfully ignores one's intellect and common sense, one loses the challenge, IMO. As Galileo said, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

Mel, in the citation I offered in my earlier post cited several primary sources on the subject of speciation. This is an even better one. Perhaps I didn't understand what you meant by "intermediate species"? To me an "intermediate species" is one which can breed with neighboring populations but not more distant ones -- even though it may be able to breed with a population that does breed with the more distant one. Perhaps you have another definition in mind.

Will someone tell me where cavemen fall in this whole debate? You know, Neanderthal, Homo Erectus, the fossilized remains of 'Lucy' in Africa? Was Adam a caveman? Did humans not evolve into different races? How about two different races mating and giving birth to a cross-breed? (That sounds kind of racist)Don't get me wrong I think mixed race people are some of the most beautiful and attractive people in the world. Halle Berry? Rowr!

I have no problem with the idea that God created all. I also have no problem that God may have started life and it evolved into what we see today. Who is to say God did not create evolution?

I have a problem believing that God created Adam out of nothing but had to borrow a rib to make Eve.

I think humans are evolving. You see it in the technological advancements, and there was a large boom in the advancements at the turn of the 20th century. Simple sticks and chipped stone to fire to copper to bronze to iron and gold. The wheel to carts to horse drawn carts to trains, planes and automobiles.

I'd like to have some proof that a Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt, a burning bush could talk, or Noah could build an Ark large enough to house a pair of all of the animals of the world. Oh, and keep them separated so the one species won't eat the others.

To me, the Bible is a story to try to explain what happened back then, kind of like the Romans explaining lighting, cyclops, griffins, centaurs, and many other myths. Let's see where this takes us.

Mark,
You are dead wrong. While you were discussing Darwin around the dinner table; you should have passed "Origin" around.
Darwin makes no attempt whatsoever to explain the origin of life "life from lifelessness."
"The origin of species" is a book on that particular subject only. A remarkable work, especially when one considers that Darwin presented his theory without understanding the mechanism (mutation) involved.
I hate to set up examples -- but could you explain to me the diversity in salmonid species without mentioning that they demonstratively evolved over the last 10-40,000 years from a holarctic ancestor?
Oh wait, I know -- "hocus pocus; let there be three genera!"

Ricorun;

I wasn't talking about crossbreeding between sub-species but rather to missing links showing a clear chain of evolutionary change from one species to the next. By definition, if they can breed, they are of the same species. These missing links are what I mean by intermediate species, none of which, to my knowledge, have been found.

Better check again, Mel,
There are many examples of interspecific breeding -- that produce viable offspring (not subspecies; which by definition can always breed). These organisms are often infertile -- but not always.
On the other hand, Darwinian evolution is about speciation through mutation -- not cross breeding.
Also, there is an ever-expanding list of so-called "intermediate species" out there as well. If you'd stay off the creationist/ID websites and do some actual research you'd know that.

Darwin's theory - at least as presented today - is twaddle because it presumes the impossible (ultimately, life from lifelessness) as well as insisting, in the face of all contrary evidence, that entirely new species have evolved out of other species.

I guess you won't have a problem showing just one example of such contrary evidence?

Mel: "I wasn't talking about crossbreeding between sub-species but rather to missing links showing a clear chain of evolutionary change from one species to the next."

Okay, how about this one? If this doesn't do it for you, I don't know what you want. But I'm getting a sense that you're setting up a straw man argument where you will constantly come back with the argument that my argument isn't good enough.

But if you are actually inclined to read the paper, note the level of detail with which he treats the subject. He draws upon geological evidence to map changes in habitat that produce the selection pressures, morphological evidence that demonstrate the changes in populations, and genomic evidence to explain how they occurred. All of these things have to dove-tail. To the extent that they don't, the conclusions suffer. That doesn't mean they're necessarily wrong, it just means they're relatively weak. That's how science progresses.

But it seems to me that the alternative explanation you're implicitly offering is this: God did it and that's all there is to it. And frankly, I don't have a problem with the "God did it" part. I DO have a problem with the "that's all there is to it" part. It just doesn't add anything to the dialog. Ignorance may be bliss for some people, but not me.

ECCLESIASTES 1:12-18

Written by the teacher - son of David - King in Jerusalem. 940 - 935 B.C.

Wisdom is meaningless - "I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a heavy burden God has laid on men! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. What is twisted cannot be straightened; What is lacked cannot be counted."

I thought to myself, "Look, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of Wisdom and knowledge." Then I applied myself to the understanding of Wisdom." Then I applied myself to the understanding wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.(NIV)

What this means is - EVERTHING is meaningless -under the sun - without God!

Jeremiah

These missing links are what I mean by intermediate species, none of which, to my knowledge, have been found.

Sorry Mel, but we have an faq for that, too. See the evidence there. It is quite voluminous.

Mark: Your invocation of Occam's razor to me seems rather ill-advised. In the first place, Occam's Razor only applies to the choice between two theories of equal predictive or explanatory power. But the explanatory power of the naturalistic theory of evolution by natural selection is far greater than any divine creation theory I'm aware of, for the simple reason that the theory of natural selection is supported by a wealth of evidence, whereas any theory of intelligent design (or its cognates) is not. Evolutionary theory specifically explains the appearance of that evidence, whereas non-naturalistic theories do not. So, Occam's Razor isn't yet in the picture. But even assuming that I'm wrong and that divine creation theories are equally supported by the evidence, Occam's Razor would still favor the naturalistic theory. Expressed as the principle of parsimony, Occam's Razor dictates that we should postulate as only such entities as prove explanatorily necessary. Thus, if by hypothesis the naturalistic theory of evolution and the non-naturalistic theory of divine creation are equally well supported by the evidence, we should still prefer the former theory, because it achieves the same results without postulating any entities beyond those that we find in nature. Including God in a scientific theory of natural selection would simply be explanatorily superfluous.
Does that mean that belief in natural selection is incompatible with belief in God? No, of course not. What it means is that, according to our best science at present, we do not need to invoke God to explain the phenomena we observe, and accordingly, we don't. There is still room to believe that God is, as it were, behind stage, making sure the whole show goes according to plan, or writing the script (viz, the laws). But as far as our best science is concerned, God is not an actor on stage.
Of course, there's also room to say that the principle of parsimony and Occam's Razor are poor methodological principles, but the proof is in the pudding. The scientific method is still the greatest and most efficient epistemological instrument ever devised. The principle of parsimony is part of that methodological canon, and as long as it works, we're holding on to it.

As for the "death of science" in general, I would certainly advise holding onto those obituaries. The 'species of thought which figures that the whole of the universe will be fully explained by the processes of science' still, to my mind, has every reason to persist. The existence of pseudo-science or out-moded paradigms does nothing to refute the notion that virtually anything that exists in the universe can be studied scientifically (I mean, good grief, we just found evidence of the existence of dark matter: the stuff doesn't even interact with electromagnetic radiation and we can still measure it). It may be that some things are genuinely beyond our physical capacities to observe at present, but in each case, the limit is a practical, not a methodological one. Take this with a due grain of salt as the prognostication of a non-scientist, but I'm inclined to believe that whenever someone says, "science just can't explain x," where x is some observable phenomenon, they've just stepped on the wrong side of history. I suspect that science, like my own field of philosophy, will always bury its undertakers.

Salvenous;

From the Oxford dictionary;

species
/speesheez, -seez/

• noun (pl. same) 1 Biology a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding. 2 before another noun denoting a plant belonging to a distinct species rather than to one of the many varieties produced by hybridization. 3 a kind or sort.

— ORIGIN Latin, ‘appearance, form, beauty’, from specere ‘to look’.

I don't visit creationist web sites, nice gratuitous insult though. I have examined these "so called" intermediate species and remained unimpressed/unconvinced. I love people who respond to calls for evidence with sweeping statements about "many examples" and 'ever-expanding" without actually providing any evidence.

Mel,
I assure you that I don't need a dictionary definition of "species" or "subspecies" for that matter.
As for examples; there are so many that I can't believe you would really need any -- how about the interspecific breeding and hybridization of virtually all of the N. American sunfishes (Lepomis spp.)? And yes, I'm aware that most, if not all, of these hybrids are infertile.
So wait, better yet, what about the the natural hybridization that DOES produce some fertile young; like the cross between brook (genus Salvelinus) charr and brown (genus Salmo) trout?
I refer you to an excellent little work by W.B. Willars -- "Trout Biology" which provides a table with probabilities of cross-breeding success and fertility of hybrids produced for nearly all common salmonid species (Willars was writing for the general public and requires little effort to follow). These are examples of Interspecific (and often intergenus)crosses.
As for the "intermediate species" that have so unimpressed you, I have one name I'm sure you'll recognize -- Archaeopteryx.
But there's no need to stop there; how about Eustenopheron and Icthyostegn? Certainly these two species would seem to be transitional between fishes and amphibians.
If you just Google some, you'll find plenty more.
Sorry about the lack of italics, I'm not sure how to post them.
If you really don't vist creationist/ID websites, my apologies.

Mel: "I love people who respond to calls for evidence with sweeping statements about "many examples" and 'ever-expanding" without actually providing any evidence."

If you look at the citations mentioned throughout this thread they cover evidence for microevolution (where traits are influenced by environmental variables, as in the case of the peppered moth), basic macroevolution (where the transition from one species to another is documented in considerable detail), macroevolutionary radiation (in the case of the ciclid fish, again in considerable detail), and transitional species during taxa radiation.

And yet you say no one has provided any evidence. So I guess you have something very specific in mind that you either can't or won't enunciate. I failed clairvoyance class, so you're going to have to tell us... (a) what exactly do you want, and (b) failing an adequate answer (again), what do you have to offer in its place? Because as far as I can tell, you haven't offered anything. You can't expect anyone to love that either.

Correction:
The work I cited had the author's name misspelled -- it should be:
Willers, W.B.: Trout Biology, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1981.
I see from on the Internet that it is still available -- but a little expensive.

Salvelinus,
How many years have you had that sobriquet while waiting for someone to bring up trout? And what's the fishy connection? Raise them, angel for them, sauté them?

"Darwin's theory - at least as presented today - is twaddle because it presumes the impossible (ultimately, life from lifelessness) as well as insisting, in the face of all contrary evidence, that entirely new species have evolved out of other species."

Isn't Life from Lifelessnes the basis of Genesis? Is Genesis twaddle?!

Willem,

In all of our collective experience, we've never seen something come from nothing...all of our experience indicates and uncreated Creator because that is the only way to explain why you're sitting there reading what I wrote.

Ricorun,

In 150 years, Darwinism has never shown how one species became another, and yet for ID to even be considered, it has to demonstrate conclusively how God created life?

Bit of an unfair advantage you give Darwin, if you ask me.

Maxime,

The Peppered Moth example was demonstrated to be just as fraudulent as Piltdown Man...it simply didn't happen.