Science is knowledge gained by observation, with experimentation, and documentation. Therefore evolution has to be taken by faith, which makes it a religion. There is evidence for micro evolution- the adaptation to climate. but as for macro evolution, cosmic evolution, stellar evolution, chemical evolution, etc., these have no evidence and are therefore a religion
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Invented terms do not a scientist make.
That out of the way, if you can accept that small changes happen, what happens if a bunch of small changes occur? It's like "there's evidence that a person can take a single step, but, none that a person can walk accross the room" ...
these have no evidence and are therefore a religion
I just love it when they let gems of truth like this slip out.
Yes, they do have evidence, but thanks for admitting that religious explanations don't.
So there's this thing called the homeo box. It's a set of genes that regulates body layout -- it was first studied extensively in Drosophila melanogaster (the fruit fly of first resort in genetics), which is ironic because Drosophila's hox genes are all over the map (literally -- they're scattered throughout the genome instead of in one nice tidy spot).
So here's where this comes in. Some geneticists not too long ago decided to do a little hacking on some mouse genes, replacing a mouse embryo's rather baroque mammalian hox genes with that from (IIRC) a nematode or some other very basal life form. And you know what? The modified mouse was completely normal, no abnormalities at all.
Common descent demonstrated, motherfucker. Whatchu gonna do about that, yo?
Science is knowledge gained by observation, with experimentation, and documentation
Yes! Finally a fundie who gets it.
Therefore evolution has to be taken by faith, which makes it a religion
Damn, and here i thought that we finally had found someone sensible.
I saw a wonderful comment explaining the micro/macro evolution dichotomy on Slashdot, of all places.
"Well true, but then again, no one has ever proven that fingernails can grow significant amounts either. I mean, we can look at them under a microscope and see tiny amount of growth happening while we watch. But that is just micro-growth. Macro-growth -- as in growing an actual amount that requires them being clipped -- has never been observed. No one has actually observed a fingernail changing from not needing to be clipped, to needing to be clipped."
"Macroevolution will occur over time as a consequence of microevolution for a long enough period of time...therefore, you lose."
You are wrong cause you forget a important thing. For they the world have only 6000 years.
Cosmic evolution? Stellar evolution? True, we have no evidence for those.
Or, just to go by fundie reasoning: "Prove they DON'T exist, motherfucker!"
You want to observe evolution? Easy - get thee to a laboratory some time and have a look at a little thing called HIV. It's evolving at a truly fucking terrifying rate, which is why there's no treatments that don't stop working yet.
To quote wikipedia:
"HIV differs from many other viruses as it has very high genetic variability. This diversity is a result of its fast replication cycle, with the generation of 109 to 1010 virions every day, coupled with a high mutation rate of approximately 3 x 10-5 per nucleotide base per cycle of replication and recombinogenic properties of reverse transcriptase.[54] This complex scenario leads to the generation of many variants of HIV in a single infected patient in the course of one day."
Did you get that? Not millions of years, but one fucking day, and with the right equipment and training you sure as hell can observe it .
"Science is knowledge gained by observation, with experimentation, and documentation."
No, the requirement for 'experimentation' is wrong. Science does not require experiments, Special Relativity was not arrived at through experiments, nor (initially) confirmed through them.
Long version:
Science is composed of facts, laws and theories arrived at throught the application of the scientific method. Facts are observations or inferences that are so well confirmed as to be almost certainly true, laws are generalised statements of the relationship between two or more properties of a well-defined system, and theories are 'explanations' those predictions have been repeatedly tested and confirmed. Evolution is a science because it meets those criteria. Its hypotheses lead to predictions, and these predictions have been confirmed.
Short version:
Observation. Hypothesis. Prediction. Confirmation. Repeat.
Very short version:
WRONG!
I love how they keep screaming about differences between "micro" and "macro" evolution when it's the same damn thing and the only thing separating the two (if anything) is time.
To borrow a quote; "It's like saying seconds and minutes exist but not hours and days."
I've heard the terms micro-evolution and macro-evolution, but have never heard anything about how to differentiate between them. This means that there's either an unexplained gap between them, that they overlap, or are, in fact, the very same thing . As for cosmic, stellar, chemical, etc. forms of "evolution," I doubt they're happening to organisms in any way, shape, or form, and so would be entirely different and unrelated fields of science.
Being that science draws on what is observable, and is shown to be true, then nothing has to be taken on faith. If you have to take something on faith with science, then either you are in the process of learning it and haven't gotten to the explanation yet, or you missed something and are too prideful to admit it.
Time to put our hands up guys, we've had the fundies wrong all this time!
Far from being the intellectual f-tards of our mean and spiteful caricatures, they are observational philosophers of the first order!
Case in point.
Fundies have long since abandoned our narrow and outdated definition of 'evolution' and now consider the matter in only its broadest sense of 'change over time'! This is why they assiduously conflate biological evolution with stellar evolution, etc. They are simply looking at the bigger picture!
Being keen observationalists and descartian philosophers, they have long since deduced that if change over time is a reality then nowhere should it be more clearly visible than in the platonic realm of perfect forms, which is (naturally) only accessible through pure thought.
Hence, as their thinking hasn't changed since the second century AD, it is immediately obvious to them that change over time, i.e. evolution, is a myth.
Quod Erat Demonstradum
Holy shit, evolution applies only to living things. Again, macro-evolution is micro-evolution over millions of years. The Universe, stars, and chemicals do not evolve.
"Science is knowledge gained by observation, with experimentation, and documentation. Therefore evolution has to be taken by faith, which makes it a religion ."
Huh? How does one derive that conclusion? Possibly out of... stupidity?
The moment you mentioned "cosmic evolution, stellar evolution, chemical evolution" I knew you were getting your info from Kent Hovind.
And of course, what you said is mostly bullshit.
> macro evolution
You are right. A monkey doesn't give birth to a human. There are millions, if not billions, of micro-evolution steps that occur in between. These changes tend to add up after a while.
New species are still being formed every so often. For example, the London underground mosquito evolved in the 1850s, and they can no longer breed with the mosquitoes they evolved from--they are a new, distinct species.
> cosmic evolution, stellar evolution
Both of these can be observed with a good enough telescope.
> chemical evolution
What the fuck are you on about?
If you're talking about stellar nucleosynthesis, there is plenty of evidence of that.
If you're talking about gas evolution reactions or oxygen evolution, there's plenty of evidence of those, too.
If you're talking about abiogenesis, that is possible too (amino acids can be synthesized in conditions similar to the Earth when it was only a couple billion years old).
So if micro evolution allows small changes over small periods of time, and those changes add up over time, what do you think happens over large periods of time? Do you seriously think micro evolution only changes things so far and then stops? What evidence do you have that suggests this happens?
What you're suggesting is that you can walk across your kitchen(micro evolution), but something stops you when you try to walk across the country(macro evolution)? Seriously?
It's all just evolution; the only difference is time.
And no, it's not a fucking religion. Unlike for your sky-pixie, we actually have EVIDENCE that evolution occurs.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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