Why I Dont Believe In Evolution

[velocitychild]

Below are questions that have stopped me from believing in evolution, if you can give me straight answers I will be happy. Whenever I argue with anti-evolutionists I lose my arguments.. It reminds me of losing my arguments when I was a christian against atheists. But the following points are the reason why I have an issue with evolution.

 

1. How do we know for sure the earth is as old as it is if nobody was there to watch it age?

 

2. How are theories verified? If I read the Bible and it tells me it took 7 days to make the earth, then I read a scientific theory that says the other.. which do I choose? Men wrote the bible: therefore the bible is flawed: Men wrote the theories on the origin of the universe so the said theories are flawed. What degree are they flawed to? I can't go back in time to see for myself, I still have to trust a science book. How are these things verified?

 

3. What is an explanation for our sapience? Why would we need sapience to survive as a species and why didnt other species develop it?

 

 

I'm waiting for your answers..

[Legion]

1. How do we know for sure the earth is as old as it is if nobody was there to watch it age?

Greetings Velocitychild. As to the methods for dating the age of the Earth you might look here...

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html

 

2. How are theories verified? If I read the Bible and it tells me it took 7 days to make the earth, then I read a scientific theory that says the other.. which do I choose? Men wrote the bible: therefore the bible is flawed: Men wrote the theories on the origin of the universe so the said theories are flawed. What degree are they flawed to? I can't go back in time to see for myself, I still have to trust a science book. How are these things verified?

Theories that can be verified make predictions. The theory of evolution for instance predicts that fossils should be found in progressive strata that have progressively more developed morphology. That prediction is born out.

 

3. What is an explanation for our sapience? Why would we need sapience to survive as a species and why didnt other species develop it?

If sapience means wisdom or intelligence then some might doubt the degree to which we have these qualities. But we do seem to be comparatively intelligent. Do you doubt that intelligence confers a survival advantage? I think that other species do have their measure of intelligence. Is a racoon for instance devoid of intelligence? I think not. So we are not unique in that we have advanced nervous systems.

[Ouroboros]

Put it this way, the event of supernova SN 1987 A proves that the universe must be older than 170,000 years. So from that we know from start that the Bible is wrong. The question you have is how trustworthy is science. It is true that science sometimes miss the mark, but the benefit with science compared to a religious hypothesis is that science can be tested. The scientific theories are explanations that best fit the observed, not necessarily it always explain everything or that it is 100% correct, but it is the best estimation of describing the world (at least the physical/natural part of it). The theories are verified through peer review. Other scientists (some of the Christian, some Muslim, some Atheists etc...) do the same tests and come to the same results. The only ones that refuse to believe the theories are those who from start decided they don't want to see the evidence, but want to find contradictory evidence, and we're still waiting... There's a new "science" institute in Washington state that's working on proof for Creationism. No one has heard anything yet. They also want to find proof against Evolution, and still we haven't heard anything. My bet is that they will come up with things, which will be good, because the rest of the scientific community will take a look at it and who knows, maybe evolution will get revised, but maybe not to Creationism, but to Evolution version 2.0.

 

The strongest names in the Creationism community are scientists that actually do believe in Evolution and the age of the Universe, but they believe that God is controlling the mutations, and not natural selection. So not even the scientists in the Christians midst believe in a literal 7 day creation or 6000 year old earth. At least now when they do their science, but maybe they switch on Sunday to their alter ego and suddenly ignore all the knowledge they have. Who knows.

 

Your third question is about consciousness? You're asking if other being have consciousness and awareness? That's a fact that other mammals do have it. Apes have social structures, can feel love, can learn sign language, be aware of themselves. So we're not alone, we just happens to be the highest evolved. And the reason is that intelligence, at some point in time, gave us a better ability to survive than our cousins. We figured out how to sow, farm, have livestock, make a hut for protection (maybe it was because of the ice-age, the ice age ended around the same time homo sapient started to use language, IIRC). Intelligence is not necessarily the best trait for survival, it might even be our weakness that will lead to our demise.

 

Going back in time can be done through the Hubble telescope, analysing fossils, even do DNA tests or compare the difference of oldest mitochondrial DNA and the modern mDNA and based on the mutation rate establish how old the sample is. (I read about it last year so I don't have the link readily available.)

 

And much more. I'm sure someone else will fill in the gaps here, and even correct me where I got my facts wrong.

[Asimov]

1. How do we know for sure the earth is as old as it is if nobody was there to watch it age?

 

In short, we don't, although this really has nothing to do with evolution itself in terms of its mechanisms and common descent. Even though we ourselves haven't been there to watch it age doesn't mean that there aren't indications that are provided by the Earth to give us this idea. It's not as if some guys were sitting around saying "I feel like contending that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old!"

 

There are a number of different radiometric dating methods which date the Earth that we can corroborate our finds with. Not to mention that for each properly dated sample by different companies who do such things yield the same ranges. Not to mention that radiometric dating of the moon provides us with verification of our ideas, as well as dating the sun (non-isotopic). Given these methods, which are testable, repeatable, and verifiable including margins of error and anomalous samplings we can state with confidence that the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old.

 

2. How are theories verified? If I read the Bible and it tells me it took 7 days to make the earth, then I read a scientific theory that says the other.. which do I choose? Men wrote the bible: therefore the bible is flawed: Men wrote the theories on the origin of the universe so the said theories are flawed. What degree are they flawed to? I can't go back in time to see for myself, I still have to trust a science book. How are these things verified?

Well, your logic there is completely fallacious. Just because humans wrote things doesn't mean they are flawed. I can write 1+1=2, does that mean 1+1=2 is flawed simply because I'm human?

 

How do you know they are flawed? You're human, so you must be flawed too in your criticisms of what other people write. No? OK

 

Simply put, theories are verified by being falsifiable, having valid logical conclusions based on the inductive principles of the scientific method, and having evidence to support those logical conclusions.

 

You don't have to go back in time.

 

3. What is an explanation for our sapience? Why would we need sapience to survive as a species and why didnt other species develop it?

 

Intelligence gave us an evolutionary advantage, as it gives other species advantages. Other species didn't develop the degree of intelligence because they didn't need it.

[chefranden]

3. What is an explanation for our sapience? Why would we need sapience to survive as a species and why didnt other species develop it?

 

Evolution is an explanation of our sapience.

 

Why would a lion need claws to survive? After all many species do not have claws.

 

No species has all the features available collectively in all the species. You might just as well ask why we can't lick our asses clean, or why our tongue doesn't shoot out 6 feet to catch bugs.

 

And I wouldn't jump to any conclusions about sapience. There maybe is a sapient species out there in the universe that would make us look like rats in a maze. Then again since we are the only surviving hominid species, and since we are using our sapience to destroy the place we live, sapience could well be an evolutionary dead end akin to saber like teeth.

 

The reason you loose arguments on this topic is because you are not knowledgeable enough to engage on this topic. Reading is the only thing that will cure this. A couple of sentences or paragraphs from us isn't going to do it.

[Jubilant]

Do you mean that you don't believe in how life as we know it evolved? Surely you do believe in evolution to some degree, right? I mean, there is no denying the evolution of viruses and bacteria. Maybe it would help you to think of earlier evolution like that, except it took billions of years to get to where we're at today. KWIM?

[Dave]

1. How do we know for sure the earth is as old as it is if nobody was there to watch it age?

How do you know what is written in the bible is true since there was no one there to watch it? Every story in the bible was written about from decades to centuries AFTER it was claimed to have happened.

 

Basic geology tells us how old the Earth is. Go look at the Grand Canyon, look at the layers of rock. These layers were laid down by water over millions of years, not by one single flood It only makes sense that the oldest layers would be on the bottom. This is known as superimposition. Each depositional event leaves a record that can be easily read. Samples from the lowest layers that we can find are dated in the billions of years. Not far from me are some serpentine rocks that are billions of years old. The base of the Canadian Shield is over 4 billion years old. These rocks are dated by proven methods.

2. How are theories verified?

By the facts, not by humans, not by gods, but by the facts.

3. What is an explanation for our sapience? Why would we need sapience to survive as a species and why didnt other species develop it?

We did not need sapience to survive since many species get along just fine without it. The main definition of "sapience" is "wisdom." With all the wars and religions that humans have come up with, I don't think that wisdom is one of our best traits.

[Ouroboros]

Jubilant brings up a interesting part.

 

Lets assume that Creationism is correct. 7 days, 6000 years ago etc.etc.

 

Lets also assume the stories following the Creation are true too.

 

Now, Noah's ark limited the number of animals quite drastically only to the basic "kinds" of animals. Today we have millions of species. Not all of them could have been on the ark, so we know, even if the Genesis stories are true, that evolution has to be true to quite a large degree. Or the other explanation is that God went through a second Creation after the flood, but the Bible never mentions that. And the problem that happens here though is that the evolution that has to happen from the ark 'till now have to be in high-speed. Much faster than the observed mutation rate.

 

Mutation are observed all the time, and most of the time the arguments with Creationists come down to if the mutations are good or bad. And they of course say they're only bad. But that is not true, since the explosion of species since the ark can't be explained any other way than positive mutations.

 

-edit-

 

Based on this, knowing that positive mutations happens and evolution must have happened to some degree, even in the framework of Creationism, then science give evolution more credence by giving it enough time to actually be possible.

[velocitychild]

Here's some more questions:

 

1. Why would humans need to be this smart to survive?

 

2. Regarding flaws: you're right that 1+1=2 but why is 1+1=2 correct? It is because we say it is? Or it is because it has to be? Couldnt we call 1's 2's and 2's 3's etc? I suppose two is always two no matter how you spin it. How much scrutinty, and how much tests have been put to evolution? How can you tell the tests are not biased like perhaps the creationist theory?

 

3. Yes that's true I should read up on this, but I'm not sure what to read and what will keep my attention span at the same time. I'm ADD.. :S

[Dave]

1. Why would humans need to be this smart to survive?

We don't. Maybe if we were smarter we would not have caused a disaster that has the potential to wipe us out - climate change.

2. Regarding flaws: you're right that 1+1=2 but why is 1+1=2 correct?

A simple math course can explain that.

How much scrutinty, and how much tests have been put to evolution? How can you tell the tests are not biased like perhaps the creationist theory?

Evolution has undergone more tests than just about any other part of science. It has passed every test imaginable. The creationists have come up with no way of testing their claims. There is no creationist theory, they have only preposterous claims that they back up with rhetoric instead of facts. There is no comparison.

3. Yes that's true I should read up on this, but I'm not sure what to read and what will keep my attention span at the same time. I'm ADD.. :S

Many people that have ADD study, they just don't use it as an excuses not to.

[velocitychild]

Thanks for your replies. I admit some of you are coming across condescending because of your obvious distaste for those who don't study. I can only do so much research in my lifetime, I'll never get it all figured out. But I can say that I'm trying to figure out how to understand evolution and thanks for your help.

 

I remain an agnostic and I am skeptic. I am skeptic of both religion and science actually, oh and just about anything else in life. I don't like to blindly believe a text book or anything. What books are reliable and how do you know?

 

Please don't think I'm attacking your beliefs, I am asking honest questions and some of you are helpful, some of you are kinda knee-jerkin it.

[chefranden]

Here's some more questions:

 

1. Why would humans need to be this smart to survive?

 

2. Regarding flaws: you're right that 1+1=2 but why is 1+1=2 correct? It is because we say it is? Or it is because it has to be? Couldnt we call 1's 2's and 2's 3's etc? I suppose two is always two no matter how you spin it. How much scrutinty, and how much tests have been put to evolution? How can you tell the tests are not biased like perhaps the creationist theory?

 

3. Yes that's true I should read up on this, but I'm not sure what to read and what will keep my attention span at the same time. I'm ADD.. :S

 

(That cool chart from Reboot sure messes with the formatting.)

 

1. The question doesn't ask anything unusual, just like the questions:

Why would Lions have to be this strong to survive?; Why would Sloths have to be this slow to survive?

Why would slugs have to be this slimy to survive? Why would a chimpanzee have to be this smart to survive?

 

Evolution does not operate with a why. It only operates with a how: if something (a biological feature) works it survives.

If the feature stops working say due to environmental changes, it dies out.

There is no why. There is no predetermined by something that thinks purpose for this or that.

 

2. Sure you could call 2's 1's but then 2's would act like 1's act now. Symbols are arbitrary, number bases are arbitrary

(decimal, hexadecimal, binary), even notation (+,-, $, /, *,...) is arbitrary. However, what they describe is real.

Symbols only stand for reality they are not reality. You cannot build a house out of the letter arrangement

"w-o-o-d", but you can build a house from the substance "w-o-o-d, or l-e-g-n-o, or д-р-е-в-е-с-и-н-а" stands for. The map is not the land.

 

As a Christian you were taught that your life signifies something, but your life doesn't do that. "Tree" signifies the woody plant in the yard.

The actual woody plant signifies nothing. Your life is something real and is not a symbol of something else. Included in that life is your intelligence and in the

same way it does not signify god, non-evolution, or anything else. It just is. Be real. Don't reduce yourself to a symbol.

 

3. I say start by reading Darwin. It isn't difficult reading. To defeat your ADD, walk while you read. I know it sounds stupid, but it works.

To make this even easier, listen to recorded books while you walk

[Jubilant]

I personally do not grasp all of evolution as a whole, I only asked you to try and see it from a bacteria/virus standpoint because that does happen, we know that it happens. How are such miniscule little life forms able to adapt and survive mans attempts at wiping them out? They evolve. How do they know how to evolve? How do they develop the means to evolve to the point of being able to fight vaccines/antibiotics that once killed them with no problem? Evolution does happen, just because some people like myself can't grasp an in-depth *how* this happened, or can't wrap my brain around how it would have looked, or can't go back in time to actually see it...does not mean that we can ignore that it does happen now.

[Jubilant]

3. Yes that's true I should read up on this, but I'm not sure what to read and what will keep my attention span at the same time. I'm ADD.. :S

 

Maybe you're in need of a more interactive approach then to at least grasp some basics.

 

Evolution Lab

 

There is also a video game about evolution called SPORE

 

Much can be learned from game play, so please don't knock it.

[qadeshet]

Why I Dont Believe In Evolution, Feel free to change my mind

 

Why should we care what you believe? There are many good books and web sites that go into great detail on Evolution. After de-converting from Xianity I spent about a year researching Evolution. So you are unwilling to put any time into discovering the facts? Evolution has been heavily tested for the last 150 years-and has never failed a single test.

[Dave]

Thanks for your replies. I admit some of you are coming across condescending because of your obvious distaste for those who don't study. I can only do so much research in my lifetime, I'll never get it all figured out. But I can say that I'm trying to figure out how to understand evolution and thanks for your help.

I made time in my life for study. No one handed it to me. I worked hard at it. No one is just going to hand an education to you. It takes effort. No one will ever get it all figured out, but you can understand quite a bit of it with some studying.

I remain an agnostic and I am skeptic. I am skeptic of both religion and science actually, oh and just about anything else in life. I don't like to blindly believe a text book or anything. What books are reliable and how do you know?

At no time in my college career did anyone ask me to blindly believe in any text book. The books used facts to support what they were talking about and often what they explained required knowing about other things and how it all fit together. It all fit together kind of like a brick building, each layer building on the next. In science, especially in biology (my field) one starts to see a web of interconnected theories and facts. The more facts you learn, the clearer the web becomes.

[Legion]

Velocitychild I'd like to add that only you can change your mind. We can try and offer evidence, but only you can decide if that evidence is persuasive.

 

Oh, and only you can prevent forest fires.

[Antlerman]

Below are questions that have stopped me from believing in evolution, if you can give me straight answers I will be happy. Whenever I argue with anti-evolutionists I lose my arguments.. It reminds me of losing my arguments when I was a christian against atheists. But the following points are the reason why I have an issue with evolution.

Hi velocitychid,

 

First of all I would get rid of the phrase, "Believing in evolution". It really isn't a belief thing. It's more a matter of accepting or rejecting the credibility of the science behind the theories. For me I state, "I accept the theory of evolution as a valid scientific theory."

 

Two things: Evolution is a fact. It is a process in nature that is observable. We can witness evolution happen. The Theory of Evolution on the other hand is a scientific "model" which proposes how the fact of evolution, this process of evolution, contributed to the origin of animal species. A scientific theory is not a guess, or an opinion as is the common use of the term "theory". It's a model that can be used to make predictions, which then can find evidence that corroborates the validity of that model. As new information comes along, that model may change to better represent the information.

 

The Theory of Evolution is probably the most highly supported scientific theory in existence today. It is not just seen in paleontology, but in practically every discipline of science there is. Those that dispute it are on the same level as the Holocaust Deniers.

 

 

 

1. How do we know for sure the earth is as old as it is if nobody was there to watch it age?

Probably the single most used phrase by me to poke fun at evolution deniers is the “were you there” argument. Adam and Eve, were you there? Noah’s Ark, were you there? The age of the Bible, were you there? Abe Lincoln, were you there? You’re grandparents, were you there?

 

In short, yes we were there, through geological and fossil records. With DNA it is said to be the closest thing to actually having been there as you walk your way back down the thread in time. Cut a tree in half and you have annual rings. Were you there 250 years ago? When you touch that first inner ring, yes you were.

 

2. How are theories verified? If I read the Bible and it tells me it took 7 days to make the earth, then I read a scientific theory that says the other.. which do I choose? Men wrote the bible: therefore the bible is flawed: Men wrote the theories on the origin of the universe so the said theories are flawed. What degree are they flawed to? I can't go back in time to see for myself, I still have to trust a science book. How are these things verified?

There’s a whopping big difference from historical, geological, archeological, etc evidence, and someone reading a religious book.

 

For one thing, scientists start with the evidence, then create a hypothesis about their observations to explain it, then they do testing to check the validity of their hypothesis. Others cross check their work for proper controls, and proper method. They take this and make predictions based on this which can be repeated independently, etc, etc. In essence the method is for the explicit purpose of eliminating personal biases and errors in coming to conclusion about something.

 

No such checksums exist in theological speculation.

 

The religious believer does the opposite. They start with a conclusion, then look for evidence to support it. Their emotional desire to believe it to be true pollutes and distorts how they evaluate evidence, and when someone challenges their conclusions, they will not accept other opinions and instead embark on a campaign to gain popular support through politics and defamation of those of disagree. This is markedly different that the scientific method.

 

Read my two signatures below as a perfect illustration of this contrast.

 

 

3. What is an explanation for our sapience? Why would we need sapience to survive as a species and why didnt other species develop it?

Be careful in how you are saying this. Our intelligence is what happened. It wasn’t put there from some outside agent with an end result in mind ahead of time.

 

Purpose in nature is “adaptive purpose”, not intentional purpose. Nothing in nature supports the latter idea.

 

There are a lot of theories about how our intelligence arose. I am fond of the view that as we became more socialized beings, those genes that favored those who could be socialized allowed our evolution to take a different course that led to bigger brains, higher intelligence, etc. Human society aided in our survival, so interestingly culture and biological evolution are connected. It’s here that I am fascinated by the idea that God is Language. We created God, and God created us, so to speak. (there is no real god).

 

I'm waiting for your answers..

I hope this helps.

[Asimov]

1. Why would humans need to be this smart to survive?

 

Essentially, evolution doesn't necessarily drive on need. It works with the mutations it gets in order to select the most beneficial traits. There is no real why or need. Our variation provided us with smarter children and the environment selected those.

 

2. Regarding flaws: you're right that 1+1=2 but why is 1+1=2 correct? It is because we say it is? Or it is because it has to be? Couldnt we call 1's 2's and 2's 3's etc?

That would be a semantical fallacy. Calling 1's 2's and 2's 3's would still require that 1+1=2 is still true. Changing the language of it doesn't change what it describes. Calling a cat a dog doesn't make a cat a dog.

 

It's this way because we say it is, but it's representative of reality, an abstract, so to speak.

 

I suppose two is always two no matter how you spin it. How much scrutinty, and how much tests have been put to evolution? How can you tell the tests are not biased like perhaps the creationist theory?

 

150 years of tests and scrutiny have been put into evolution. The tests may be biased, but those who strive to falsify other peoples theories would have found it out anyways. The creationists theories aren't biased scientific theories because they aren't science. You can't compare the two.

 

3. Yes that's true I should read up on this, but I'm not sure what to read and what will keep my attention span at the same time. I'm ADD.. :S

 

The best help for me was talkorigins.org "Introduction to Evolutionary Theory" It's easy to find on the site, after you have a foundation on what Evolution says, you can move into the evidences and some of the challenges there too.

[Poonis]

Below are questions that have stopped me from believing in evolution, if you can give me straight answers I will be happy.

Here is the key. If an ideology requires belief for it to be true, then without belief it is false. Religion mandates belief; evolution does not.

[Antlerman]

Below are questions that have stopped me from believing in evolution, if you can give me straight answers I will be happy.

Here is the key. If an ideology requires belief for it to be true, then without belief it is false. Religion mandates belief; evolution does not.

Which is a very telling thing. You notice how evolution deniers call it Darwinism? What the hell is that? It's science. It's not a belief system. The ToE stands with or without Darwin. It doesn't start with his "authoritative" teachings. Yet this is how they view it. That's why they will never be open to it. They view it as a belief accepted on faith. Evidence doesn't need faith.

[Legion]

Poonis and Antlerman make some good points. I don't believe in evolution, rather I accept it because the evidence compels me to.

[Taphophilia]

volocitychild,

 

Good for you! You are open minded and want to accept new ideas but skeptical enough not to believe everything you hear just because everyone does. There is nothing wrong with that! No scientist worth their salt would accept anything if it were not demonstated, proven, and there was a whole lot of evidence to back it up.

I went to Christian schools all my life and I didn't know squat about evolution. How can you accept something as truth if you don't know about it or understand it? Evolution is difficult to grasp, at first, because if you don't understand the terms being used, it's almost like reading a foriegn language where you have no idea what most of the words mean. I would suggest you start with Jubilants links and ask questions and if you don't understand say so. I had to start with information that was geared to children and work my way up.

There are a lot of people on the forums, here, who are in the know. However, evolution is so involved that it's not possible to cover anything but the barest basics in a few posts.

 

Jubilant,

 

Thanks for posting that game. My son tried to find something like that on the web, but was unable to. I bookmarked it for him.

 

Taph

[Ouroboros]

Oh, come on guys, you know Evolution is a religion. Every night we all bow our heads and thank Darwin for another day we were chosen to be fittest to survive, and mutations didn't happen too quickly so we'd become monsters.

 

...

 

What!?

 

 

Don't you all do that?

 

...

 

 

Damn! Why didn't anyone tell me?!?!

[Legion]

I ask Darwin every night that beneficial mutations will be given to my progeny.