Creation vs. Evolution

[Grand Prix]

Edit: Birds probably came from dinos or lizards or other scaly things that laid eggs.

Birds have reptile-like "scales" under their feathers. It is very possible that feathers developed as an alternative heating and camoflage material to hairs. An example of a feathered animal that doesn't use its feathers for flying, is of course the penguin. Ostriches and emus also don't use their feathers for flying, so why is it so bizarre to think that velociraptors had feathers? Are we still in the 1700s?

Of course bats and flying squirrels will never turn into birds Pako, they are completly separate species. An animal doesn't need to be a bird to fly.

 

[PS]

Even some fish fly, and they have scales.

 

[Swift]

I never specified straight hair, in fact I had subconciously assumed long, curly (hippy) hair. Not that it matters to my joke. I can say anything I want to back up a joke, especially when the source material gives no hard evidence one way or the other. Besides, have you met Jesus and asked him what kinda resume he has?

Do I need to draw a clown with a great big red nose with polka dot pants every time I want to make a joke?

I think if God hypothetically existed he would have had a killer sense of humour, going by Noah's ark etc etc... Lighten up! God wouldn't want you to worship him so seriously you mustn't ever make light-hearted religious themed jokes... I'm sure the crusades/church ruling peasants with fear etc etc wasn't what God had in mind, if he were hypothetically real. Bad stuff happens when people start worshipping their God/s in the wrong way (ie real hardcore, no humour, no acceptance of other views). Hence terrorism/crusades etc... People worshipping in a too hardcore and non-jokey fashion always leads to bloodshed...

I say, hey if you can't laugh what can you do?

In a serious thread, you just throw it in the middle of it. Man, is it so hard to put a smiley or two in there?

 

[James2097]

I don't like quoting myself but just saying I did say the post was a joke, right from the start:

.... Face it, Mary just had a child to another man and made up the divine conception thing so Joseph wouldn't get mad and do an 'honour' killing with a big scythe. (umm, joke people...)

Jesus was a hippy. He had long hair and didn't have a job, and was being really progressive for his time, and was a pacifist. What more do you want?

The jokeyness here is so thick and direct you could cut it with a knife. Sorry for the stereotype, but Americans as a whole, just can't do aussie/english style humour. I am already making it way more obvious for you guys than I would actually do in everyday life...

PS got the joke perfectly (as would any non-believer). Besides, one little joke ain't gonna offend God (he'd be far too busy to care!), maybe he'll zap me with some lightning, we'll see.

Just thinking, how can a thread be a serious debate when all it consists of is certain scientific minded posters (Famine etc) routinely destroying every argument for creationism, using facts, rationality and hard evidence, and then the creationists just changing tack (in denial/ignoring that they've already lost) to another equally nutty idea that is always going to be easily proven wrong... The evolutionists won pretty conclusively right near the start of the thread, I'm just laughing at the entertaining tall stories now, like trying to prove Noah's ark! Very funny and incredibly naive .

Right from the outset its obvious to a truth seeking, rational person that evolution is the only option out of the two presented theories (evolution can be proven beyond just being a theory however)- certainly when subjected to any serious informed debate. Hence my non-serious style of posts lately .

 

[Swift]

I don't like quoting myself but just saying I did say the post was a joke, right from the start:


The jokeyness here is so thick and direct you could cut it with a knife. Sorry for the stereotype, but Americans as a whole, just can't do aussie/english style humour. I am already making it way more obvious for you guys than I would actually do in everyday life...

Wow, that's amazing, Americans don't understand the humor of another culture. What an extreme concept. Granted, I find some british comedies very funny, but to assume that everyone understands and/or enjoys your sense of humor(notice how we even spell it different) is not the smartest thing huh?

But anyway, I really like the argument of the amount of people on the planet with relation to the 1 million+ years people are supposed to have been on earth. Danoff, Famine, how would you respond to this?

 

[Danoff]

You guys have been awfully quite about the fossil records I posted that show transitions from one species to another, or two species branching from one. What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Danoff]

But anyway, I really like the argument of the amount of people on the planet with relation to the 1 million+ years people are supposed to have been on earth. Danoff, Famine, how would you respond to this?

Population growth hasn't always followed our current trend.

Back in the very early days of man, our population was severely limited. The native Americans, for example, didn't have a population growth that is consistent with what we see today.

Certainly early man would have barely populated any more than a dominate animal would - until natural resources in the area would no longer support more.

So he's extrapolating population data from present day back to when that profile doesn't really make sense.... not very scientific.


Edit: It makes perfect sense that early man might have reached a fairly constant population for hundreds or thousands of years.

 

[Swift]

You guys have been awfully quite about the fossil records I posted that show transitions from one species to another, or two species branching from one. What are your thoughts on this?

Well, my thoughts on it were that the fact that we have so few fossils, I'm surprised that people are so sure about this theory.

 

[Swift]

Population growth hasn't always followed our current trend.

Back in the very early days of man, our population was severely limited. The native Americans, for example, didn't have a population growth that is consistent with what we see today.

Certainly early man would have barely populated any more than a dominate animal would - until natural resources in the area would no longer support more.

So he's extrapolating population data from present day back to when that profile doesn't really make sense.... not very scientific.

I totally understand that. Ok, let's look at it from a different viewpoint. Was the planet at maximum population before the industrial revolution or other major point in history where technology changed that amount of people that a certain area could support?

 

[Danoff]

Well, my thoughts on it were that the fact that we have so few fossils, I'm surprised that people are so sure about this theory.

We have a bunch of fossils, but the records are patchy in many cases. We have some very clear examples though of how evolution works (some of which I posted). So how else do you explain it? What other theory fits the facts?

Are the facts rubbish? Do you just ignore them completely?
Do you think God was constantly releasing new versions of these creatures?
What do you think explains it?

 

[Danoff]

I totally understand that. Ok, let's look at it from a different viewpoint. Was the planet at maximum population before the industrial revolution or other major point in history where technology changed that amount of people that a certain area could support?

Probably not, but it makes sense to me that our population growth would change even as we approached the limit. I'll draw you an example.

Edit: Ok, I updated the example. So now you can see how the population growth is different after the invention of toothpast but before the invention of dishwashers, but then after dishwashers are out there the population booms again before it starts to get close to the new limit and the tapers off again.

So you can't just fit an exponential curve through the data and figure out how far back humanity started - there are too many factors influencing the population growth. So we really have to rely on fossils.

 

[code_kev]

I'm surprised that people are so sure about this theory.

Gee wiz, good thing theres loads to back up Creationism. Oh wait...

 

[Swift]

Probably not, but it makes sense to me that our population growth would change even as we approached the limit. I'll draw you an example.

Edit: Ok, I updated the example. So now you can see how the population growth is different after the invention of toothpast but before the invention of dishwashers, but then after dishwashers are out there the population booms again before it starts to get close to the new limit and the tapers off again.

So you can't just fit an exponential curve through the data and figure out how far back humanity started - there are too many factors influencing the population growth. So we really have to rely on fossils.

Ok, let me get this straight. We can't even come close to reasonable approximation for population growth but we CAN reasonably approximate where I entire species came from. Uh...sorry, but that really doesn't make much sense.

We're totally reliant on fossils that are in incredibly short supply. But we can tell how the human population has grown over the last million years(that people supposedly have been walking the earth).

I'm sure there is a logical explaination, but it's just not appearing to me right now.

Gee wiz, good thing theres loads to back up Creationism. Oh wait...

Good thing that you understand all the parts of evolution.

 

[Danoff]

Ok, let me get this straight. We can't even come close to reasonable approximation for population growth but we CAN reasonably approximate where I entire species came from. Uh...sorry, but that really doesn't make much sense.

It makes sense to me. Population limits and growth would be unbelievably difficult to estimate given a specific scenario. We can look at historical data and know roughly what the population growth has been like since we've been keeping careful records, but prior to that it would have been very difficult.

Human beings don't leave a whole lot of fossils behind. We can estimate what we think the population was for a certain civilization based on what we find, but it's going to be a rough estimate.

For example, we dig up a T-Rex skeleton. Ok, we know T-Rex was out there and we know roughly how old it is and what peices of its skeletal structure it shares with other animals - but we don't know how many of them there were because how do we know how often they became fossilized.


I don't know swift, I'm having trouble figuring out why this one is throwing you off.

 

[Swift]

It makes sense to me. Population limits and growth would be unbelievably difficult to estimate given a specific scenario. We can look at historical data and know roughly what the population growth has been like since we've been keeping careful records, but prior to that it would have been very difficult.

I don't know swift, I'm having trouble figuring out why this one is throwing you off.

It's throwing me off because as the guys said in Pako's post, if we'd been here a few million years, wouldn't there be more people?

Also, it's just really really annoying to be yelled at and ridiculed by others(not you usually) that are so sure about this theory. But a question much more simple then where did man come from being "Population trends in history" comes up and we say, "No clue" That's what's throwing me off.

 

[Danoff]

It's throwing me off because as the guys said in Pako's post, if we'd been here a few million years, wouldn't there be more people?

Like I said, not necessarily. Because early man might have reached the maximum population for hundreds or thousands of years.

Also, it's just really really annoying to be yelled at and ridiculed by others(not you usually) that are so sure about this theory.

It is annoying. I'm annoyed with you. Saying "isn't it obvious" is only going to get in the way of a good discussion.

Edit: I'm not annoyed at Swift, I'm annoyed along with him for the same thing. *sigh* that was quite the blunder.

But a question much more simple then where did man come from being "Population trends in history" comes up and we say, "No clue" That's what's throwing me off.

Well how do you get the data? We can see skeletal structure in fossils or more in the cases of preserved wolly mammoths - but how do we get data about population? We'd have to know how frequently skeletons were fossilized? How could we know that?

 

[Swift]

Like I said, not necessarily. Because early man might have reached the maximum population for hundreds or thousands of years.



It is annoying. I'm annoyed with you. Saying "isn't it obvious" is only going to get in the way of a good discussion.




Well how do you get the data? We can see skeletal structure in fossils or more in the cases of preserved wolly mammoths - but how do we get data about population? We'd have to know how frequently skeletons were fossilized? How could we know that?

Sorry I annoy you. I don't remember saying isn't it obvious. But it does sound like something I would say.

So, you mean we can take census numbers from roman and possibly egyptian records and at the very least make an educated guess as to how many people were there before the rise of that particular empire?

EDIT: I just thought of something else. We can tell that this fossil is of this time period and all that. But we can't tell how close together two fossils were fossilized?

 

[PS]

Well, my thoughts on it were that the fact that we have so few fossils, I'm surprised that people are so sure about this theory.

So few? Paleantologists and archeologists have hundreds of thousands of fossils! Plus, how many are we supposed to have if they're 1000ft below solid rock?

 

[Swift]

So few? Paleantologists and archeologists have hundreds of thousands of fossils! Plus, how many are we supposed to have if they 1000ft below solid rock?

Are those fossils relevent to this theory and discussion?

 

[PS]

Are those fossils relevent to this theory and discussion?

Yes. They show the evolution of species of animals. Obviously.

 

[Swift]

Yes. They show the evolution of species of animals. Obviously.

No it's NOT obvious. That was the most shortsited post I've ever seen from you. From what you just said, you prove evolution from the mere existance of fossils. I'm guessing that is not your actual stance. But that's what you sound like.

Fossils = Evolution must be true.

I really hope I'm wrong here.

 

[Duke]

Evolutionary Myth: There has been some kind of life on earth for billions of years. And man has lived for one million years.
The Truth: If animals and people have lived for millions of years there would be trillions of people and animals on the earth today, even if we allowed for worst-case plagues, natural disasters, etc. The number of people on earth today is about six billion. Even allowing for lower birth rates and higher death rates than what we have traditionally seen, this number indicates that man has been around for only a few thousand years.

But anyway, I really like the argument of the amount of people on the planet with relation to the 1 million+ years people are supposed to have been on earth. Danoff, Famine, how would you respond to this?

Here, look at these:

Over the course of human existence, including prehistory:

Starting with recent prehistory:

Just recorded history:

So you see, this is not a function of "there aren't trillions of people and animals, so humans must only be a few thousand years old". The difference between 20,000 years ago and 2,000 years ago is minimal compared to the last 200 years. Even assuming that we started 6,000 years ago in a puff of Holy Magic, that makes no account for the sudden boomerang in population growth starting in the 18th century and turning almost vertically upwards.

 

[Swift]

Here, look at these:

Over the course of human existence, including prehistory:


Starting with recent prehistory:


Just recorded history:

So you see, this is not a function of "there aren't trillions of people and animals, so humans must only be a few thousand years old". The difference between 20,000 years ago and 2,000 years ago is minimal compared to the last 200 years. Even assuming that we started 6,000 years ago in a puff of Holy Magic, that makes no account for the sudden boomerang in population growth starting in the 18th century and turning almost vertically upwards.

Thanks for a logical response with some evidence behind it that evolutionary theorists seem to cling to.

OK, So basically the vast majority in population growth from about when Columbus found America for the Europeans and on. Cool. So for hundreds of thousands of years there was literally just a few million or possibly a few hundred thousand people on the entire planet. Hmm...

 

[Danoff]

Thanks for a logical response with some evidence behind it that evolutionary theorists seem to cling to.

OK, So basically the vast majority in population growth from about when Columbus found America for the Europeans and on. Cool. So for hundreds of thousands of years there was literally just a few million or possibly a few hundred thousand people on the entire planet. Hmm...

That's what I was trying to describe, that early man reached what was basically an equilibrium with nature.

I have know idea how they could figure out population millions of years ago. Notice that those charts don't go back that far.

 

[PS]

No it's NOT obvious. That was the most shortsited post I've ever seen from you. From what you just said, you prove evolution from the mere existance of fossils. I'm guessing that is not your actual stance. But that's what you sound like.

Fossils = Evolution must be true.

I really hope I'm wrong here.

Yah, it was a bit satirical.


But fossils do actually write a story depicting the course of dinosaur and mammal life as it came to their demise. Even some wooly mamoths have been found, 99.9% intact frozen in the ice.

 

[PS]

That's what I was trying to describe, that early man reached what was basically an equilibrium with nature.

I have know idea how they could figure out population millions of years ago. Notice that those charts don't go back that far.

I like how the evolutionist questioned the data but the creationist just accpeted it.

 

[Danoff]

Sorry I annoy you. I don't remember saying isn't it obvious. But it does sound like something I would say.

WOW!!! I can't believe I actually wrote "I'm annoyed with you" and didn't read it the way it comes across.


Swift, I TOTALLY APOLIGIZE FOR THE MISUNDERSTANDING I should have bolded or italicized the "with" in that sentence so that it sounds like we're annoyed at the same people rather than me being irritated at you.

Wow.. some things just get screwed up over the internet when you don't pay close attention to how you're writing something.

Totally completely my fault.

 

[Swift]

WOW!!! I can't believe I actually wrote "I'm annoyed with you" and didn't read it the way it comes across.


Swift, I TOTALLY APOLIGIZE FOR THE MISUNDERSTANDING I should have bolded or italicized the "with" in that sentence so that it sounds like we're annoyed at the same people rather than me being irritated at you.

Wow.. some things just get screwed up over the internet when you don't pay close attention to how you're writing something.

Totally completely my fault.

Not a problem. No apology needed since that wasn't your original intent.

I like how the evolutionist questioned the data but the creationist just accpeted it.

You didn't see the question I put at the end of that post?

 

[Pako]

Thanks for a logical response with some evidence behind it that evolutionary theorists seem to cling to.

OK, So basically the vast majority in population growth from about when Columbus found America for the Europeans and on. Cool. So for hundreds of thousands of years there was literally just a few million or possibly a few hundred thousand people on the entire planet. Hmm...

Maybe there was a world disaster that greatly reduced the human population. Maybe the line isn't as straight (pre-exponential curve) as one might guess it to be. I'm with you danoff, I don't know how they would guess at that? Sure it's a mathematical formula, but it can't possibly account for things such as world disasters etc....

 

[Danoff]

Maybe there was a world disaster that greatly reduced the human population. Maybe the line isn't as straight (pre-exponential curve) as one might guess it to be. I'm with you danoff, I don't know how they would guess at that? Sure it's a mathematical formula, but it can't possibly account for things such as world disasters etc....

Yup,

We can pretty much know for certain that there was not some kind of major human civilization back a few hundred thousand years because we would see a whole lot more fossils, tools, artwork, etc. etc.

But a fossil here and there doesn't give you a feel for the total - not the total number of Tyrannosauruses OR people. Only that it's a whole lot smaller than we have now.

That's why those charts don't go back much farther than the ancient Egyptians - some of the first records we have of human population.