Question Your Beliefs...

[Heavy Metal]

I just got this (not sure if it is the same reason you put it but funny nevertheless)

It's Turtles all the way down!

[chadbag]

It's Turtles all the way down!

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-like-turtles

yeah, unknown to me. I am the last one to catch the hip internet memes.

My take on it was something my wife said.

kame (cah meh) = turtle
kami (cah mee) = god

Since this was a thread about beliefs and had much to say about god/God it struck me all of a sudden when the wife said that and I remembered the comment.

[SteyrAUG]

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-like-turtles

yeah, unknown to me. I am the last one to catch the hip internet memes.

My take on it was something my wife said.

kame (cah meh) = turtle
kami (cah mee) = god

Since this was a thread about beliefs and had much to say about god/God it struck me all of a sudden when the wife said that and I remembered the comment.

Your wife is Japanese?

[chadbag]

Your wife is Japanese?

Well, now an American. She was technically Japanese Korean: born and raised in Japan, as were her parents, but her Grandparents came over from Korea to Japan, I think before the war. Japan not having birthright citizenship, she had a Korean passport until she was naturalized here a few years ago. But except or a few words and liking kimchi she had no real connection to Korea and had never been there until we started changing planes at Incheon International and one time we stayed two nights and a day. So for all intents and purposes Japanese. It was funny because when she had to get her passport renewed I had to talk to the Korean consulate in San Fran because she did not speak Korean and her English accent was not a Korean one but Japanese and she could not understand them very easily nor they her.

Her name being a Chinese character, her US name for her green card and stuff was the Korean transliteration of the character but she went by her Japanese name so when some called and asked for her by her Korean name we knew it was .gov or a bank. She officially changed her name as part of the naturalization process so that problem mostly went away.

We met here in the US as she was here as a student to get a US nursing license after almost 10 years working as an RN in Japan. I don't speak Japanese except for a small vocabulary of mostly nouns my son learned so far.

[Skyyr]

Except of course on the microbial level where we constantly observe it. And of course with the extensive fossil record for various species that we do have showing dependency and of course DNA evidence showing the relation of various species to one another.

But sure if you are willing to ignore all of that, I suppose you could still qualify it as only a "theory." Arguing otherwise is just wanting reality to be something else.

Assuming you're referring to macro-evolution, do you have proof of it? Not micro-evolution, just macro. A bacteria changing to form resistance to some outside unknown is in no way the same as it changing species entirely.

[SteyrAUG]

Assuming you're referring to macro-evolution, do you have proof of it? Not micro-evolution, just macro. A bacteria changing to form resistance to some outside unknown is in no way the same as it changing species entirely.

I'm referring to evolution as a concept, you seem to wish to compartmentalize it.

When a microbe EVOLVES to produce an entirely NEW SPECIES of microbe that is what is called evolution.

The whole Micro vs. Macro evolution is nothing but a shell game some try and play in order to accept what is right in front of them but still reject the part that makes them uneasy.

Bottom line is this.

We have enough of a fossil record for various species to show evolution of one species to the next over time. We don't have a complete fossil record for every species that ever existed but we don't need one, we only need to show the evolution of one species to another to demonstrate evolution.

We have DNA evidence which shows the close relationship of various species, again we are more closely related to chimpanzees with comparative DNA than rats are to mice.

And finally there is the evolution in observable time of microbes. And we aren't talking about adaptation, we are talking about one species of microbe producing an entirely new species of microbe.

[Skyyr]

I'm referring to evolution as a concept, you seem to wish to compartmentalize it.

In that case, I can agree to disagree.

I'm a firm believer, call it a presupposition of mine, that micro-evolution is separate from macro evolution. We observe it in life forms every day, from cats to dogs to birds. Even Darwin recognized it. I'm not trying to compartmentalize it, I simply believe a (faulty) conclusion was drawn by evolutionists that think that trait changes within a species is the same as changing species entirely.

Just because a bird grows a longer beak to become more adept at pecking through bark because of a lack of food in the area doesn't necessarily support 'macro-evolution.' As you mentioned, micro-evolution does happen, but it's nothing more than traits being singled out and exaggerated through selective breeding or environment - aka natural selection.

Dogs might grow longer snouts or longer canines, birds might develop curved beaks, etc., but those traits were always in their DNA and they are still the same species after the fact. In your example of microbes, yes, micro-evolution happens even on an hourly basis, but to classify them as an entirely "new" species is premature at best.

Microbes are defined by their bacterial roles, resistances, and similar; plus, they're relatively simple (compared to larger, more complex lifeforms). In light of that, just because a man says that they're a new 'species,' are they really? Are they not still just the same bacteria? So what if they grow an extra flagellum (I'm just making up a hypothetical example) - why can't the original species have an extra one? Why does having an extra one make it an entirely new species? Simple: because someone in a lab said it was that way.

All of the examples showcasing supposed macro-evolution to date use bacteria's ability (or inability) to adapt to environment, such as the study case with E. Coli adapting to low levels of glucose and high levels citrate... and then back to the opposite again. There was no species change, the bacteria simply showed the ability to adapt on how it could live. At the end of the day, it was still E. Coli... just like every other case of natural selection.

That's the same thing as modifying a gasoline car engine to run on ethanol. Just because it's modified doesn't mean it's a new car, it's the same car with a modified engine, unless you try to define the car based on its engine. Absurd, right? Yet people in the mountains grow larger lungs than those at sea level, but within a generation or two of moving down to sea level, they lose those large lungs. That's not a species change for humans, so why should it be the same with bacteria? In my opinion (which is shared by many), it's semantics.

Show me an example of something changing from one simple life form to another more complex species entirely and I then will fully believe in evolution. The problem is we all know that's not the way evolution supposedly works and the only changes that we can observe are small, almost entirely unnoticeable changes that occur over millions of years, which is why bacteria being able to survive in hostile environments are paraded as "proof." That being the case, that's about as much proof as you could ever hope for and I don't blame them one bit. However, it still falls severely short of explaining anything of substance.

I don't believe in Creation because I'm a Christian, I believe in it because I found it makes sense when you look at it from a 100% objective point of view. No examples have ever been produced of something evolving from simple to more complex. As you said, there are many unknown, unexplainable situations in Evolution (as there are as well with Creation).

As VB said above, it's fundamentally flawed to define God as the Inventor and Creator and then judge His decisions on how things were implemented. If He did create everything, then how could we ever hope to understand why it was done the way it was? Or even more, how can we claim "it doesn't make sense" when we have no idea what the reasoning was for doing it in the first place? That's not a cop-out excuse, that's a simple truth of all design. If future humans, 5,000 years from now, were to try to study one of our current-day computers and draw conclusions on our technology and existence from them, what theories would they come to? Most of our computer technology is based on the number 8, which in itself is based on technology limits dating back to the 1920's. In and of itself, it makes absolutely zero sense whatsoever, but to a human living in the 21st century who knows that the number 8 is derived from a limit to two states (on and off - 1/0) and that 8 is 2 to the third power, it makes complete sense.

The same goes for existence in this universe. You cannot understand existence unless you understand why it exists in the first place. Whether Christian or Evolutionist, there is always a "why" (even if that "why" is that a universe somewhere else imploded and created our "Big Bang"). The problem, for me personally, is that Evolution completely dismisses the "why" and then looks for an answer after the fact. Without the "why," you're stuck trying to explain things from the perspective of a limited human mind. It's fundamentally flawed.

Sure, you may disagree, but that's just my opinion. In the end, you have to believe what you believe and leave it at that.

[SteyrAUG]

In that case, I can agree to disagree.

Of course you can. I made that clear in the first paragraph of my original post.

"Ok, if you are one of those people who is happy and content with your belief system and personal views of the world (and more importantly aren't imposing your beliefs on everyone else or using them as justification to blow shit up) and don't mind if they have little or no supporting evidence you can stop reading now and I wish you a good day and a happy life."

[Skyyr]

Of course you can. I made that clear in the first paragraph of my original post.

"Ok, if you are one of those people who is happy and content with your belief system and personal views of the world (and more importantly aren't imposing your beliefs on everyone else or using them as justification to blow shit up) and don't mind if they have little or no supporting evidence you can stop reading now and I wish you a good day and a happy life."

Sorry - I didn't mean it as an insult, I was meaning it more along the lines of "I respect you and your opinion, so no hard feelings." I actually enjoy in-depth discussions where people share beliefs without emotional outbursts and was trying to reflect those sentiments.

[SteyrAUG]

Sorry - I didn't mean it as an insult, I was meaning it more along the lines of "I respect you and your opinion, so no hard feelings." I actually enjoy in-depth discussions where people share beliefs without emotional outbursts and was trying to reflect those sentiments.

I certainly didn't take it as an insult, I was agreeing that you could choose to believe anything you wished.