Evolution debunked?

M

man_of_jade

Psychic person
Registered Senior Member
I found a somewhat funamentalist Christian website contained "Chick Tracts." These are cartoons arguing for many points of Christianity. I found one relating to evolution. Im pretty sure that there are a few holes in this logic, would someone mind pointing them out to me?:confused:
 
you cant prove evolution exists. just a few skulls doesnt mean we came from them. they could have been creatures that once lived but went extinct.
 
OMG. that's the worst thing i've ever read. it certainly doesn't prove evolution false. at best it points out that evolution theory is not perfect. (and i won't add that disproof of evolution is NOT proof of christianity which the author seems to think)

the evlution guy makes horrible arguments. and so does the creationist guy.

he says "and even if they were vestigal organs isn't losing something the opposite of evolution"

no. evolution only posits change. no backwards or forwards. at least as i understand it.
 
In my opinion the only way to study it would be to look to the Dinosaur they were around long enough to, evolve.

But what is the difference from evolution and adapting or mutating?

Then again there is always nuts out there that will believe or NOT believe in anything, here check this guy out he thinks the world is still flat.......

Crazy Flat Earth
 
Originally posted by man_of_jade
I found a somewhat funamentalist Christian website contained "Chick Tracts." These are cartoons arguing for many points of Christianity. I found one relating to evolution. Im pretty sure that there are a few holes in this logic, would someone mind pointing them out to me?:confused:
Click to expand...
heres good site about evolution;
www.talkorigins.org
 
I hate people sometimes. That comic strip was misinforming the public and helping to spread ignorance.

Modern whales often retain rod-like vestiges of pelvic bones, femora, and tibiae, all embedded within the musculature of their body walls. These bones are more pronounced in earlier species and less pronounced in later species. As the example of Basilosaurus shows, whales of intermediate age have intermediate-sized vestigial pelves and rear limb bones

The vestigial features of whales tell us two things. They tell us that whales, like so many other organisms, have features that make no sense from a design perspective - they have no current function, they require energy to produce and maintain, and they may be deleterious to the organism. They also tell us that whales carry a piece of their evolutionary past with them, highlighting a history of a terrestrial ancestry.

The people that made that comic obviously did not know what they are talking about when it comes to science.

"and even if they were vestigal organs isn't losing something the opposite of evolution"
Click to expand...

Shows how much they know.

"In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions."
- Douglas J. Futuyma in Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates 1986

When someone claims that they don't believe in evolution they cannot be referring to an acceptable scientific definition of evolution because that would be denying something which is easy to demonstrate. It would be like saying that they don't believe in gravity.The real problem is that the public, and creationists, do not understand what evolution is all about.
 
Humans didn't evolve from Neanderthals. They evolved separately from them and eventually replaced them.
 
Well firstly, its a Chick Tract. Ergo, it is a complete load of ass.

And 2ndly, misc points in no particular order:

- the six basic concepts of evolution have never, to my knowledge been taught by any biology teacher. It seems to be a fundy christian construct that allows them to group all that they find repugnant about science under one big heading. "Cosmic" evolution is totally dissimilar to macroevolution, for obvious reasons.

- the criticism of the evidence for hominid evolution seems to be a collection of strawmen. This chick paints a ludicrous and inaccurate picture of fossil evidence, a picture that any evolutionary biologist or paloentologist would also find ludicrous, not to mention thoroughly dissimilar from modern evolutionary theory.

eg. Nebraska man. This was never accepted as a fossil in academic circles and they certainly never constructed a whole humanoid from it.

Lucy is definitely not a chimp http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/lucy.html

Piltdown Man is acknowledged by scientists to be a fraud it is no part of any theory of hominid evolution.

Neanderthals are not humans with arthritis, that is absolutely mental. They are different in many ways to modern humans:

- cranial capacity is larger(1500cc compared to 1350 in Homo Sapiens Sapiens). Brain is not as complex, however.

- bigger brow ridges

- significant DNA differences. This is one of the reasons people dispute whether we evolved from them.

We still have casts and photographs of P. man. The tract presents no evidence to suggest these fossils were faked.

Heidelberg's jaw wasn't human. Saying "conceded by many to be quite human" is a weasally way of saying some think it is an archaic h. sapien.

Rock strata can also be dated absolutely using radio dating methods and magnetic reversals. Using index fossils to date the strata is not circular because the age that they index is obtained independently. The circularity of this dating can also be avoided by the law of Superposition(that older strata are below the younger ones. Excepting overthrusting, folding).

The tract also constructs a strawman regarding vestigial structures. It suggests biologists think vestigal structures are organs that once had a function but are now completely useless. In reality vestigal structures are considered to be structures that have reduced functionality when compared to that same structure in other animals. eg. our appendix, compared to that of a cow has massively reduced functionality, though is not useless. In the case of whales the pelvis still has a use, but has greatly reduced structural obligations compared to that of land mammals. Like our tailbone, it is a anchor point for muscles, and like our tailbone it is a rather unwieldy and inefficient solution sourced from our evolutionary past.

http://www.talkorigins.org/features/whales/

is an interesting article on whale evolution

Gluons, WTF? What this has to do with evolutionary theory, I don't know. This is a "made up dream" is just an attempt to hide the self-evident truth that Jesus holds the protons together.

All in all this is badly drawn, tragically absurd propaganda.
 
I love the second to last panel -"they've been feeding us lies!" "We do have a soul!" GASP!



If anyone is willing to flip their belief system w/o any reaons to do so, simply based on the removal of supporting evidence of another belief system , they are not being very logical (ie "I just found out my God doesn't exsist, therefore, your god must be the one true god!" huh? logic? no).

If you can take anything out of the new testament, it's that Jesus was a logical guy (ie, "a house divided cannot stand" logical proof used to show that Jesus is most likely not Satan).
 
Why do creationists and Christians use comics and cartoons so often to get their message across?

They use it to hook children and the mentally weak. I mean, Cartoons? Is it not totally obvious that their tactics center on trying to appeal to the ignorant?

This use of propaganda disgusts me, and I do not think that we should treat it as anything but lies.

We should not give our children the bible with pictures in it either. Religion is a very mature topic, and I think that is better to hold off on the brainwashing until the kid at least has a mind of his own.

ZERO MASS
 
Originally posted by Voodoo Child
the six basic concepts of evolution have never, to my knowledge been taught by any biology teacher. It seems to be a fundy christian construct that allows them to group all that they find repugnant about science under one big heading.
Click to expand...
Actually that tract is kind of funny, because there are basic principles of evolution.

1. In every generation not all offspring survive
2. In every generation there are random differences in individuals
3. Some individuals will be more suited to survive than others
4. The better-suited individuals will be more likely to survive and reproduce
5. The characteristics that make some individuals more likely to survive than others can be passed to the next generation of offspring.

These are the actual principles of evolution that you will probably learn if you take a class on it. Good luck trying to refute any of them.
 
We should not give our children the bible with pictures in it either. Religion is a very mature topic, and I think that is better to hold off on the brainwashing until the kid at least has a mind of his own.
Click to expand...

Yes I agree with your setiments Zero Mass.

A human child is shaped by evolution to soak up the culture of her people. Most obviously, she learns the essentials of their language in a matter of months. A large dictionary of words to speak, an encyclopedia of information to speak about, complicated syntactic and semantic rules to order the speaking, are all transferred from older brains into hers well before she reaches half her adult size. When you are pre-programmed to absorb useful information at a high rate, it is hard to shut out pernicious or damaging information at the same time. With so many mindbytes to be downloaded, so many mental codons to be replicated, it is no wonder that child brains are gullible, open to almost any suggestion, vulnerable to subversion.Like immune-deficient patients, children are wide open to mental infections that adults might brush off without effort.
 
Originally posted by Nasor
Actually that tract is kind of funny, because there are basic principles of evolution.

1. In every generation not all offspring survive
2. In every generation there are random differences in individuals
3. Some individuals will be more suited to survive than others
4. The better-suited individuals will be more likely to survive and reproduce
5. The characteristics that make some individuals more likely to survive than others can be passed to the next generation of offspring.

These are the actual principles of evolution that you will probably learn if you take a class on it. Good luck trying to refute any of them.
Click to expand...

I don't get it, where in the tract do they talk about those five principles?
Are you mocking the tract or supporting it?
Who would refute those principles?

MooseKnuckle, your genius is only second to your awesomeness.

ZERO MASS
 
I was listing the real basic principles of evolution. They aren't mentioned in the tract at all, I just thought people might be interested to see what the real basic principles of evolution are, as opposed to the crap in that tract.
 
I have a few questions about the evolution theory. Although I know it is true, I still have a few questions that I hope some smarter evolutionists here can answer (fanatical theists used these questions against me.)

1. If evolution is occurring, why hasn't humankind turned into a super-human race? (Why haven't we become stronger, faster, and more superior?)

2. I don't understand why none of our ancestors are alive today. Because don't only one of two of the species evolve, they reproduce, and a new species is born? What happens to the other species? Do they die out, or just disappear? Why don't we see our ancestors walking about today?

3. Why have we evolved to become smarter and create inventions, while other animals have not?
 
Originally posted by mountainhare
1. If evolution is occurring, why hasn't humankind turned into a super-human race? (Why haven't we become stronger, faster, and more superior?)
The only way it works is if weaker members of the species don't get the chance to breed. Anyone in the human race can breed because nothing preys on us and we don't kill other members simply for not being breeding worthy like lions do.
Also we are one of the youngest species in the world, even if we were going to evolve very little would have happened, yet. For the reasons I mentioned above and more we will not naturally evolve any more anyway.

2. I don't understand why none of our ancestors are alive today. Because don't only one of two of the species evolve, they reproduce, and a new species is born? What happens to the other species? Do they die out, or just disappear? Why don't we see our ancestors walking about today?
If they are our ancestors that means we descended from them, why aren't your great great great grandparents alive?
We have "relatives", these are animals who's ancestors branched off in a different direction than ours did(chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans etc)

3. Why have we evolved to become smarter and create inventions, while other animals have not?
Because we did, we happened to. Thats like saying "why have dolphins evolved to have echo location systems in their foreheads while others did not?"
 
1. If evolution is occurring, why hasn't humankind turned into a super-human race? (Why haven't we become stronger, faster, and more superior?)
Click to expand...

Its a work in progress, there is still much room for improvement. Look at how much we've already accomplished, what the future holds for the human race will be quite amazing.

I don't understand why none of our ancestors are alive today. Because don't only one of two of the species evolve, they reproduce, and a new species is born? What happens to the other species? Do they die out, or just disappear? Why don't we see our ancestors walking about today?
Click to expand...

We have relatives like Dr. Lou mentioned. The Chimpanzee is 99.9% gentically similiar to us. Many species of primate died off when a catastrophic event happened thousands of years ago. (not sure on the details of the event)The terrain was changed from mostly forrest to mostly grassland. So by developing bipedalism and being able to take advantage of the new terrain caused our relatives to evolve the way they did.

Why have we evolved to become smarter and create inventions, while other animals have not?
Click to expand...

The greatest factor that contributed to our superiority as a species was bipedalism. This allowed for us (relatives) to carry items and munipulate objects in new and revolutionary ways.
 
Man of jade-
You don't actually see any truth in ANYTHING that piece of crap Chick publishes, right?
I mean the guy is a total crazy christian bigot fundamentalist nutter.

Edgar- The stuff in the tract proves nothing about evolution, but evolution is true. You can't base your opinion on propaganda like this-go out and read a book kid

ZERO MASS
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top