I'm having a little trouble getting a straight answer from Biblical Creationists so if any of you want to help me out by answering these question...
[b][u]Kind[/u][/b]
1) Define a biblical "kind" for me. 2) Tell me how one reliably and consistently concludes whether or not two animals belong to the same "kind" .
[b][i]Evolution[/i][/b]
a) In your own words (ideally without googling it) how is evolution meant to work? How, for example, does a bird evolve from a dinosaur? b) What would be a hypothetical example of evidence which would suggest this process had occurred?
Evolution is just a theory and I don't believe in it, I would also enjoy somebody trying to realistically explain it but they would just be repeating whatever they read somewheres
[quote] My point is anything presented as a dinosaur bone in a museum is not a real bone, and that's a fact[/quote]
That's simply incorrect. I have myself found the tooth of a tyrannosaur when i was prospecting in horse thief canyon. The only way in which many dinosaur specimens in museums are not real bone is in the sense that they are mineralized bones, i.e. fossils.
[quote]And why are almost all dinosaur bones found in the same locations?[/quote]
You mean Canada, America, China, Argentina, Brazil, Germany, India, the UK, Africa, Spain etc...? Why are most dinosaur bones found all across the globe? I think you're taking other people's word for things you have not investigated for yourself....
Now i notice you're avoiding the evolution side of our discussion but i must bring you back to that since that is the actual topic of this thread.
I will repeat:[i] Under your understanding of evolution, why would you expect all ape-like creatures to have evolved into humans?
@Pikachu I'm taking other people's word for things in the sense that it refines my belief system by making me choose not to believe what is presented to the mainstream as a fact when everything is just a theory. The same way that you're taking somebody's word for it that the tooth you found belonged to a dinosaur. Did you carbon date it yourself? Did you somehow prove it to yourself that it is millions of years old? I seriously doubt it. And even if you did, you're still using a formula or a tool created by somebody else to reach that conclusion, so no matter what, your belief system is also revolved around taking other people's word for things.
And I'm not avoiding anything, I keep chipping away at your questions and you keep asking new questions. It seems like you want to believe that the version of human beings that we currently belong to actually evolved from a simpler creature. What makes you think some type of evolutionary trait that can turn an ape into a complex human? What could possibly account for that? That means at some point, whatever this hypothetical primate creature was had to branch off into different sections of it's own species. One section that remained the same, one section that possibly died off, and another section that completely evolved into something far more advanced. Why do you think that makes sense? How many more ways can I state why I don't believe what we're told about evolution? Just tell me why you think it's a fact and not just a theory instead of asking me further questions. You're acting like you know a fact that I am not aware of. You don't personally know anything more than I do.
And about the dinosaur bones, I said MOST are found in the same locations, not all. Such as most are found in the Americas, specifically North America. And anything that looks like a dinosaur bone in a museum is 100% a fake bone, we're not talking about fossils. But again, you don't know for sure the fossils are real. So why argue that they are?
[quote]I'm taking other people's word for things in the sense that it refines my belief system[/quote]
Isn't that just another way of saying you're happy to take other people's word for something if it aligns with what you want to believe is true? I never made the claim that i'm unwilling to accept as true things i haven't myself tested. That was your thing.
[quote] But again, you don't know for sure the fossils are real. So why argue that they are?[/quote]
Well for example my brother who works for a museum found a triceratops skull in the rock and then excavated it from the rock and it's now being mounted for display in the museum...a real dinosaur bone. Now maybe someone secretly planted the 8 foot long skull in the solid rock of a hillside in the badlands and maybe it's secretly a giant human as described in the bible but Occam's razor suggests that it is what it appears to be.
[quote] That means at some point, whatever this hypothetical primate creature was had to branch off into different sections of it's own species ... Why do you think that makes sense? [/quote]
Bingo, baby! First: taxonomically humans are apes. Every anatomical feature which distinguishes apes from other primates is possessed by humans. Humans are apes in the same way that humans are mammals and vertebrates. Humans and chimps share a common ancestor which diverged along different evolutionary paths. This occurs through reproductive isolation wherein a daughter lineage is separated from a parent lineage. For example a physical barrier like mountain range or an island. Both parent and daughter populations continue to change over time in response to their respective environmental pressures until they become behaviorally and physiologically distinct.
Why do i think that makes sense? Because this is a process we observe in the world today both in the lab and in nature.
And remember: Both humans and chimps have been evolving for the same amount of time and we're both still around. That tells you that hyper intelligent basket into which we've put all our eggs is not the only way for an ape to have evolutionary success. That's an important thing to understand about evolution: [i][b]There's no goal, no direction, no better or best. There is only what works under a given set of circumstances for reproductive success. [/b][/i]
[quote] Just tell me why you think it's a fact and not just a theory [/quote]
It's both fact and theory. It's a fact that organisms change over successive generations in response to environmental pressure. The Theory of evolution describes the various ways by which this occurs and so far that Theory consistently and comprehensively explains the data while also allowing testable and verified predictions to be made about future discoveries. That ability to make predictions is crucial.
For example: if humans and chimps share common ancestry then evolution theory says that there must be genetic evidence of this. And there is. Actually there are a number of examples but here i'm going to briefly go over Endogenous Retroviruses (ERV)
To put it simply; when a virus infects an animal it might infect a reproductive cell. When it does this, it inserts its genetic code into that of the host and this genetic code with the addition of viral genes is passed on to the descendants. These viral gene insertions occur at random but specific points along the human genome and represent acute infection events in one of our ancestors. But the cool part is that when we look at our genome and compare it to that of a Chimpanzee....we find those same viral genetics occurring in the same places along the genome where they are found in humans. For that to happen, both humans and chimps had to have shared an ancestor that was infected by a specific virus which inserted its genome into that specific point in our ancestor and that ERV was then passed along as humans and chimps diverged along different evolutionary paths.
Evolution isn't really a theory. It's called that so people don't get all torqued up. There's clear evidence of it in the way that viruses and other things adapt. The idea is that there are mutations that make a life form more adaptive to its environment. I think where some objection to the idea is that people take the idea of evolution (a fact) and expand it to be things it isn't. It does not assert that there is not God; on the contrary, it's very compatible with all modern religions. It's entirely possible that God intervened numerous times to create something as complex as a human eye from a single celled creature. I'm not a religious person, but I can see the opportunity for a god in the process..
