?Please explain Evolution to me in simple terms

by Guest with Questions 125 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  press any key

  Evolution in simple terms

  one word response - change

  two word response - slow change

  four word response - eons of slow change

  Evolution is an emotionally charged word - when you say to some people that lifeforms evolve they go into denial but say that lifeforms change over eons of time and they are more accepting.

  Cause everything changes, mountains change, weather changes, cars change, fashions change, continents change, why should lifeforms be unchanging.

  The devil however is in the details.

  cheers

  pak

  Warlock - I will pm you.
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  hooberus

  Here is one of the best sources that I have found for understanding evolution [not always simple though]:

  http://saintpaulscience.com/contents.htm

  Though not everything in the book is agreeable to biblical creationists (such as myself) there are numerous important items that are discussed. It can also be purchased from the Creation Research Society http://www.creationresearch.org
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  nvrgnbk

  Another challenge for those who choose not to believe in the reality of evolution is that no human being has lived long enough to perceive it taking place in contemporary life forms.

  It's a matter of perspective.
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  funkyderek

  Warlock:

  Unlike you, I really don't care what people choose to believe, or choose not to believe.

  Unlike you, I don't choose what to believe. I believe what the most rational interpretation of the available evidence compels me to believe. Indeed, I can do nothing else and have never been able to understand or replicate the intellectual dishonesty required to do otherwise.

  I have recently been accused of still having the JW mindset or some such nonsense, but I'm not the one who is telling people you MUST believe in God, but I'm being told that I MUST believe in evolution, or I'm just a dumbshit.

  You don't have to believe in evolution; however it remains an observable fact. Choosing not to believe something that is supported by an overwhelming abundance of evidence has inevitable consequences for other people's opinions of you.

  I don't care whether people believe in evolution or not. I'm just saying I don't believe it. To me. it's a myth, but you seem to care that people believe in the supernatural. Who appointed you the caretaker of us who believe in the paranormal? Why do you, and people like you, feel you have to "save" us from our supposed "delusional" ideas? Where do you get this urge to control what people believe? Who said you MUST believe like we do?

  Warlock, to be honest I think you're probably beyond saving. You seem incapable of rational argument, and are at the very least unwilling to do the work necessary to understand the subjects you discuss. I expect nothing else from you. But there are some intellectually honest but ignorant people who might find your claims compelling if someone wasn't there to point out why they're almost certainly not true. That's why I do it, to prevent people who really want to know how the universe works from being taken in by shysters and gulls.

  And of course it's conceivable that some day someone will have good evidence for a paranormal claim. I want to be around in the unlikely event that it ever happens.

  If you get on the paranormal threads and say you don't believe, or whatever else, fine. But don't tell us what we saw or heard is not what we saw or heard. You were not there and you don't know the circumstances. Don't tell us that our friend, our mom, our brother, or our sister made up a story about what they experienced. You don't know them. We do.

  Sure you do. You know and love them and can't imagine how they could be dishonest or even mistaken. And it's not just your bias towards your friends and family that influence your beliefs. It's also that while you know them as individuals, you don't know humans as a species. You don't understand why humans have highly sophisticated pattern recognition and threat-management abilities that are subject to false positives, or why people are more likely to believe certain propositions than others regardless of which is true. How could you? You think that humans just popped into existence a few thousand years ago by divine fiat. The idea that human nature has evolved based on what happened to our ancestors is anathema to you, and as a result you will never have more than the most superficial understanding of human nature, and are condemned to live in a world where you can't tell the difference between the real and the imaginary.
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  wednesday

  Warlock is OK, his viewpoint is shared by some educated professionals. Some feel they can agree with
  Darwin but still feel a creator was involved.

  I hate being gouged and name called for a belief I hold. I am now able to open my mind more and imagine things I couldn't before. This is a wonderful journey.

  I do believe mankind is evolving now. I see the amount of persons who can use their 6th sense. Perhaps 1-200 yrs from now all will be able to do this and we will look back on this part of history much as we do the witch burnings. We treat people like kooks b/c they had a more highly developed 6th sense.

  weds
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  funkyderek

  wednesday:

  Warlock is OK, his viewpoint is shared by some educated professionals. Some feel they can agree with
  Darwin but still feel a creator was involved.

  But that's not Warlock's view. He rejects the fact of evolution completely, and even for a creationist knows embarrassingly little about the theory.

  I hate being gouged and name called for a belief I hold.

  Don't we all! However, if you say you think all black people should be put in camps, it's likely you will be called a racist. If you say that humans have only been on earth for 6,000 years it's likely you will be called ignorant, uneducated etc. If you refuse to learn even the most basic aspects of a widely-believed theory you disparage you will likely be dismissed as a fool and an ignoramus. Such is life. Actions have consequences.

  I am now able to open my mind more and imagine things I couldn't before. This is a wonderful journey.

  Indeed it is. The universe as revealed by science is far more amazing and wonderful than anything any religion has come up with. Just be careful to remember that not everything you can imagine is real and that there may be some things that are beyond your abilities to imagine that turn out to be real.

  I do believe mankind is evolving now.

  That's certainly true in the broad sense that the frequency of particular alleles continues to vary as sexual reproduction mixes up our genes. Whether there's a trend in a particular direction is another question altogether and very difficult to answer (probably best left to another thread).

  I see the amount of persons who can use their 6th sense.

  We certainly have more than five senses but I assume you mean something like telepathy or ESP. I've never seen convincing evidence of such phenomena but I would be fascinated to see some.

  Perhaps 1-200 yrs from now all will be able to do this and we will look back on this part of history much as we do the witch burnings.

  I doubt it. Even if such an ability exists (and is genetic), 200 years isn't long enough for it to spread throughout the population. Also, people without it seem to survive and reproduce just fine so unless psychics/telepaths have more offspring than the rest of the population there's no reason to believe their numbers would increase. And if your hypothesis on witch burnings is correct, it seems more likely that they will produce fewer offspring than the general population.

  We treat people like kooks b/c they had a more highly developed 6th sense.

  No, we treat them like kooks because they claim to have these abilities but are unable to produce convincing evidence when tested. In the past, "witches" were burned because almost everybody believed in sixth senses, second sight, evil eyes and demon possession. Now that we know more about the world, we are generally less superstitious and more rational (Warlock et al. excepted, of course). If telepathic abilities exist, then suitable tests will prove they exist and we will eventually find a genetic or other explanation for them. More likely however is that belief in such abilities is based on an irrational superstitious part of our nature, something that is itself plausibly explained within evolutionary theory.