Atheist Forum

This is the problem when people start to debate evolution. Without a true understanding of how the process really works it's all to easy to get it wrong.

One of the popular misconceptions is that evolution is somehow working towards an ultimate goal and that humans are the top of the evolutionary rung.

This would infer that evolution is somehow working to a design and had an ultimate organism in mind. Evolution is of course not conscious and has no design to work towards. It simply favours those animals and plants that are more able to pass on their genes. Those who were less successful are either on the verge of extinction or are no longer here.

Another error that many people make is in saying things like "if we evolved from monkeys then why are the monkeys still here?" Again, this shows that these people are not thinking along the right lines.

The first thing is that we didn't evolve from monkeys. Monkeys and humans both evolved from a common ancestor some 2 or 3 million years ago. This species branched off into several branches, one of which led to humans, the other chimpanzees, great apes etc. We can all trace our roots back to this one common ancestor.

Also, there is no reason why just because we and our primate cousins exist today that our common ancestor has to be extinct. Evolution doesn't destroy one animal in favour of another or group of others. It may be that our common ancestor existed as a viable species long enough to see humans take their first steps. There is no evolutionary reason why this couldn't happen.

Another thing is the 'creation' of life itself. Evolution makes no comment on how life started. It simply shows how once life started it proceeded and evolved.

One last thing. The most popular and successful lifeform on the planet today isn't the human race, it's bacteria!

However, you could probably make a pretty strong case for evolution playing a very big part of the creation of life, especially if you think about either primordial soup theory, or the inorganic clay theory. Which is great!

Moving on, I absolutely agree that the biggest problem when debating creationists is that they so often are relying on outdated information and have been force-fed themselves a distorted view of evolution by the people who taught them, who either didn't understand it themselves or simply chose to not present salient facts.

I cannot see how you could make a case for creation of life using Evolution, given that Evolution relies on mutations and reproduction. Inorganic matter has neither.

The best case for creation of life at the moment is abiogenesis by either meteorite or electrical charge.

Mutations and reproduction, yes. But it doesn't technically have to be considered life- have you read much about the abiogenesis by way of organic molecules basically using a self-replicating clay (essentially crystals which reproduce exactly the molecular structure of its constituent molecules) as a “backbone” or scaffold? That is actually one of the big controversial theories right now. And why do you think a meteoric impact was necessary? In the conditions of early earth, it was actually quite easy for organic molecules to be assembled, without a so-called “seeding” from a meteor. So, why postulate something unneeded? As for electrical discharge, that’s not the only energy source, as the extreme heat around deep-ocean vents provides plenty of energy for formation of organic molecules, and perhaps something similar to DNA came along, which self-replicates automatically, given sufficient component molecules (of which, in a “primordial soup” there would have been many). But this is still not life, and yet as “food” molecules became more scarce, the molecules that were better at getting a hold of those essential components would become more numerous- natural selection at work, in a NON-living organism. Of course, evolution follows. This is better explained briefly in the Selfish Gene, and there are much more detailed works out there.

When I was in bible seminary during the days when I was an evangelist aspiring to be a minister,our instructor actually laughed when we reached the chapter on evolution in our text book.He decided then and there to skip the entire chapter and said "If you want to believe that you came from a monkey go right ahead, I am a child of my god and creator".Everyone clapped and hooted halellujahs and moved on.I was disgusted and sickened by that instructor.

Exactly!
Nicely said.

Well it *used* to be pirates.

I love it when Creationist bunch together Abiogenesis, Evolution and the Big Bang as if it's one whole theory.

Excellent way to mix up cosmology and biology without being noticed.

The best is surely when they mix up Evolution, Abiogenesis, Big Bang, Atheism, Communists, Hitler, and Morality.

Ok, I'll do you one better.

A SIGN FROM GOD!

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.p...msg_344211