News Creationists object to Spore

I love the quote in one of Terry Pratchet's books when he writes that fossils are just left behind by the gods to confuse us, so they have some fun watching us.

Not that I don't believe in evolution, I do. Or err. I actually don't care tbh.

 

@nexxo, selective breeding is one thing, completely changing from one type of creature to another is completely different. You're talking about people theorising that reptiles became birds and that sea animals became land animals with legs.

Mutations that have been observed are either negative, or serve no advantage to the animal.

The way DNA works, is that it can't gain additional information, when a mutation occours, it's either an ommisson, or an addition of something that's alread there, and additional limb, finger, ear, toe and so on. or missing a limb, eye, fingers and so on.

The likelyhood of a creature 'mutating' and the mutation being a useful mutation enough times to turn into a leg is extremely unlikely. How does a sea creature's body know that it needs 'legs' to walk on the surface? Or it needs lungs to absorb oxygen from the air?

You don't get that type of thing out of selective breeding, you just get variations on what's already there. So your example of a wolf being selectively bred into a chihuahua just exhibits the point that they're both still dogs. they have the same features, they're just a different shape.

You're describing it as if chihuahuas have wings and can fly, whereas wolves don't.

As for the environment changing an animal's make up, how can the animal's body know what it needs to change for it to get it right, so many times that it proves useful?

Why don't you just acept that it's my opinion on the matter, while your own is different? Stop trying to dismiss what I say while complaining that I'm dismissing evolution. Learn that people don't all need to think the same.

And anyway, for those that keep commenting on me complaining about the game, read my posts, I have stated a few times already that I have no issue with the game, I like spore and think it's fun to play. regardless of the fact that I think evolution is a joke.

 

Nobody's arguing with you about the game, they're actually keeping the discussion sort of on topic by *shock horror* commenting on the article

Let's just hope you soon become a feature of the Darwin Awards because despite your poor (and fatally flawed) arguments against Nexxo's points, you are indeed subject to evolution. Bad luck

 

Ignorance is ignorance wether by a religious bigot or a ambivelant bigot. What's the point of debating one way or the other? It proves nothing and won't change somebody's mind to believe what you believe.

But I will say that his view of us being perfect, well thats just crap. Even the Bible says thats wrong. Perfection , at least according to my religion, is not something attained in this life. But it is a goal we strive for.

But trying to force someones religion on another wether it be creationistic or evolutionistic, is just stupidistic ( yes, it had to be done.)

 

If creationists are all idiots, at least they're not as dumb as people who could read that blog and think it's sincere...

 

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Maybe, but when I imagine "a million years," I see a yellow submarine, blue police box, and a bucket of fried chicken.

The list of differences between human and pig is quite short as well.

Yes

No.

Now you're just throwing big words at everyone. Does evolution involve chaos theory in a statistical sense? I suppose it is more logical a chaos effect rather than a random effect.

Anyways, I think that this thread is heading in a downward spiral. I mean, once Nexxo is dragged into things, it's pretty much over.

Now my two cents...

Kylew, you're right, evolution is a theory - a plausible one, and it should not be disregarded just because there are no formulas that fit it. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions. For the most part, much of our scientific principles are just trusted. You could say that it's a type of faith. Can we see subatomic particles? No, but we can see their effects and other proof that they exist. Can we see extrasolar planets? Nope. But we can detect them, and through scientific reasoning, we know for a fact that they're there.

A formula is just a mathematical representation of a theory. Sometimes it comes before the logic, sometimes the logic comes first. There is substantial evidence that evolutionary theory is accurate. Is there absolute proof? I don't think so. But is there enough proof that the theory can be considered a law? Yes.

For the most part, I can sympathize with creationalists. However, I do not think that this blogger is a creationalist - as I mentioned,I think he's simply trying to divert attention to his blog to earn a hefty advertising revenue check.

 

And I think that's the essence in what kylew are trying so hard to state.. ..as it's also a comment I totally agree with.

I admit I often get frustrated over other peoples view on things, when they ought to know that they are wrong and I'm right. But I try my best not to let that become an issue between me and them.. ..all though I have several times failed miserably in trying to do just that. But hey.. ..I'm only human, right? And it gives us the opportunity to apologize to each other and admit that we're not as noble as we'd like to think..

People up through the ages has thought many crazy things, but just because we think that something are absolute facts, doesn't necessarily mean that it is so. A a saying goes: "Never say never! - Never!"

 

Not just because I wanted to quote the lonest post and therefore make mine longer but rather that I wanted to add that the most obvious visible sign of evolution at work is the length of the beds and height of the doors in old stately homes and castles from victorian and edwardian times. People WERE smaller. Surely the fact that we as a race are now taller is evolution at work.

I personally don't believe that evolution is the reason for diversity as we now see it on the planet, I believe that there were many starting points but that evolution has played a part in the shaping of life to the point where it now is. Creationism and Evolution are not mutually exclusive theories. Or at least they don't have to be.

 

I regret calling all people who could fall for this dumb, but seriously now. An article describing "creationist bloggers starting a massive anti-spore campaign" over a single joke blog? Maybe I should have said that the only people who would "fall" for this would be those who want their beliefs confirmed.

 

How do you come to think this?

Nope - a mutation is a random corruption of one (or more) chromosomes in a particular animal (or more properly, organism - $DRUG-resistant bacteria (like MRSA, anyone?).
Whether a particular mutation survives or not is all down to environmental (indeed, evolutionary) pressure: Does [the mutation] confer an advantage to the organism in question, when set in the same environment as it's fellows? In the case of eg: MRSA, the answer is yes, as it survives in the presence of Methicillin, which kills the non-resistant strain (hence the pressure to evolve).

 

I think much of the issue with evolution is that people don't understand / grasp just how long its been going on for. Its not like one day a fish is borne with 4 legs. Over the course of human history we've got taller and taller - and that's just a few thousand years. Millions of years is a massive step up...

Either way, creationism entertains me greatly. 'God created everything all at once'. Almost 2 thousand years later fossils are catalogued, dinosaurs are found, etc. 'Ummm ignore those'. So you get two (maybe three) major schools of thought:

'It was gods will - testing us, whatever'
'It's meant to be taken as a metaphor... but the rest is golden'
'God set everything up - then let the rest take its course' - this one I can't really count, since it basically admits the bible is rubbish and therefore I doubt you can call it 'christian' as opposed to 'based on christianity'

It curiously misses out the more likely explanation - there was no knowledge of dinosaurs / fossils at the time, so the authors of the texts couldn't take it them into account. The bible was written by people - not god.

Either way, people can believe whatever they want - its called freedom. I don't agree with religious views being given any weight above and beyond what they are - beliefs. Science should take the centre stage every time since it relies on actual evidence - it can also be improved and refined upon.

Oh yeah and to the guy banging on about formulae. Do you even know what a formula is? You're hanging on to something which you heard from someone else and clinging on to it as if it was an arrow into the heart of evolution. To put it another way, if I couldn't explain how gravity worked - does that mean gravity can't possibly exist?

There's a general rule - the more outlandish your claim, the stronger your evidence must be. So for example, if you're going to say something like 'an omnipotent being created everything in 7 days', then you better have some damn good evidence - like all creatures having been around since the very beginning (blatently not true, due to fossil records, extinctions, etc.). Of course the converse is true - if you're going to say evolution is the way the world works, you too must have some startling evidence. Fortunately, there is! Darwin spent decades working on his theory, and many people since then have gone on to find more and more evidence. In the meantime, Christianity has done little more than point to a book written many years ago by various authors. Well, that's not much different than me going into a library, picking a book, and saying it answers all things... is it?

Religion will be around forever, there's no getting around that. But having it gaining influence rather than losing it - that scares me. Before long we'll be back to the middle ages where everyone is scared of god, and the local vicar/priest has ultimate power.

 

Good call. They would certainly be in the target group: "Hey, this guy is probably on to something good. I'll support him, the words do sound right. Check the facts? No, takes too much time" Kinda reminds me of Cipher in The Matrix:"Ignorance is bliss!"

 

I think the problem in the theory with regard sea creatures becoming land dwelling is that they surely would need an array of simultaneous advantageous mutations all at the same time. No use for legs to walk on land if you can't breathe air, no use for lungs to breathe air if you can't eat the food available on the land etc etc....
And that's without looking into how many mutations are required in a fish to produce just a 'knee'. Not an entire working leg with nerve function etc.

I'm all for evolution as a theory for small changes but not from sea to land - that really doesn't pass with me!

 

check the fossil record, you can clearly see this happening over (admittedly huge) periods of time.
there is much hard evidence to support this.

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.html
"Scientists have shown that beneficial mutations do occur to produce brand new alleles (variants of genes) that improve an organism's chances of survival in a particular environment."

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html
"It is hard to understand how anyone could make this claim, since anything mutations can do, mutations can undo. Some mutations add information to a genome; some subtract it. Creationists get by with this claim only by leaving the term "information" undefined, impossibly vague, or constantly shifting. By any reasonable definition, increases in information have been observed to evolve."

fins to hard fins that can drag creature across land
hard fins to small bony protrusions that can drag creature across land better
over time you end up with legs

no scientist is claiming legs went *poof* and spontaneously appeared overnight.

and as for the evolving lungs part. there are examples of fish that live in low oxygen water that gulp air to supplemnt the gills.
It's not a huge advance to rudimentary lungs over a long period of time
http://www.lookd.com/fish/airbreathing.html

and over time the differences get so large they can no longer breed together, add lots more time and they can end up very different.

i get the feeling you don't like evolution because you're under the impression people are saying that it's a relatively quick process... it's not.

now you just seem to have gone off into silly mode

what? since when has anyone said the body needs to 'know' when to change?
*gah* this idea is so wrong i don't even know where to start

i accept it's your opinion, but facts clearly completely disagree with almost every notion you seem to have about evolution
that is why people are dismissing your opinions

 

Or look at it in another way:
look at the link in my previous post about the fish that have limited air breathing skills.
once a creature has that, getting out of the water for short periods to escape predators/feed or whatever suddenly gives you a huge advantage, even if it's only as limited as simply 'beaching' yourself on land for a few mins. over a long time you will get variations that will spend longer and longer amounts of time on land

If think a lot of people think the same. they're thinking in too large jumps of changes, it's actually a very gradual thing

 

What about bacterial resistance to antibiotics? That's pretty favourable to the bacteria, don't you think?

It doesn't "know" anything. The mutations are entirely random, but the net result is a gradually improving adaptation to the environment: organisms with "favourable" mutations are more successful and hence more likely to pass on their genes. This puts the other organisms at a relative disadvantage, decreasing their chances of survival.

Take my earlier example: say that your doctor prescribes antibiotics to treat a bacterial infection. There are billions of these bacteria in your body and, until your immune system kicks in, they're breeding at an incredible rate. Once every few thousand divisions or so, an error in replication, or a stray cosmic ray, or whatever, will cause a mutation. In all likelihood, that mutation will be either useless or damaging, and so the bacterium dies.

However, after hundreds of millions of divisions, is it not possible that one bacterium somewhere in your body will have a mutation that confers resistance to the antibiotics? That bacterium is obviously going to survive while the others are wiped out. Natural selection at work. How else can you explain it?

Well, we're not trying to turn dogs into birds. We're artifically emphasizing characteristics that we find favourable over a very short timespan. Give it a few million years and you'll get something much more interesting.

As mentioned countless times, the animal's body doesn't "know" anything. The process is entirely random - evolution has no goal, it just is.

Although you're welcome to your opinion, why would you believe something that flies in the face of all the available evidence?

 

i am a die-hard creationist, but i don't give a hoot about this game. it features evolution, yes, but thats in culture everywhere. these bloggers do not represent the majority of creationism.

 

Don't waste your breathe

The existance of "God", or a god, Zeus, unicorns, visits by aliens, santa clause or any other supernatural entity can't be logically proved/disproved so don't waste your typing.

 

It's my understanding that laws describe the effects of something, and theories explain why it happens.

 

A particularly good bit of ammunition for creationists, though very rarely fired, is actually somewhat pre-evolution. The amount of time required for basic amino acids to spontaneously assemble in that primordeal soup we hear so much about is, going by sheer statistics, entirely too long. Theories abound on this, one particularly current one being that it's a process comparable to crystallisation - and we knew that crystals formed long before we knew why.

What's important is that we accept that we do not know these things and seek answers. We do not throw up our hands in defeat and claim our imaginary friend did it.