Do you have Blind Faith?

"Do I have Blind Faith"?

No.

To me, it ain't over till the fat lady sings.

I've got the LP but the cover would probably cause offence these days.

I never really got into them. Cream was more my thing.

What's your point? Stupid video. Stupid questions. Stupid answers.

Complex issues (of all varieties) are very rarely done justice by vox pop soundbites or by comment sections on forums!

If you think that you would not understand my point.

Indeed it is a complex issue and certainly not the false dichotomy the Ultra Darwinists and ID fundamentalists have created. 

Is this what the fuss is all about? It has been posted several times here before and a bloody good album it is.

As for Dawkins, the jury is still out!

http://unbelieversmovie.com/

Watching this now....

We're in fierce agreement on that, at least.

Hilarious -  'The dynamic duo of science'. 

Here is a book written by someone who both believes in evolution and who is a Christian - regardless of his religious views  (which i don't share) and without using any religious arguments his demolishes Dawkins Ultra Darwinism. The DUD view is just that and anyone without an agenda and who has a keen mind ought to be able to see through Dawkins subterfuge.  Or you can just have faith Dawkins is right without being able to explain why he is right. 

http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-...onists/dp/0802848389

The evolutionists have not been able to conceive, and prove, a plausible mechanism for the origin of life. The "Origin of Life Prize", which is $1,000,000 , has not been awarded to anyone in the 14 years since it was first offered. The program has now been suspended...

"Origin of Life Prize - Life Origins - Abiogenesis"

So, I would say that the evolutionists are the one's guilty of having blind faith.

BBM

Indeed. 

No one can "prove" how life originated even if he/she could create life in a laboratory. There are theories more plausible than "God did it" (which is not provable either), however.

You are trying to draw the obvious distinction between scientific rigor and belief. This is a thankless task because people tend not to want such clarity for fear that it will quash banal gobbing.

The studies of evolution and the origins of life are two separate disciplines, and they are two completely different questions. The evidence for Darwinian evolution through the mechanism of natural selection is extremely strong, and by and large accepted by the scientific community.

There is no consensus as to the origins of life, and no firm proof for any of the current theories. Many scientists accept that we may never know the mechanism(s) by which life appeared. But that doesn't "prove" that evolution's "wrong", does it?

So I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make. Perhaps you could enlighten us?

This video hinges on asking a bunch of students to provide 'observable evidence' of a process that, by its own definition, takes millions of years (or more) to occur.

On a human timeframe, the idea of 'observable evidence' for this is as ridiculous as claiming that the Taj Mahal does not exist simply because you have not seen it.

There is almost nothing about most atomic chemistry, astronomy beyond the solar system, or particle physics that has such 'observable evidence', because human beings, as well as living for only a tiny fraction of time in universal terms, can also only see rather large things when it comes to examining the very small, and rather small things when it comes to examining the very large.

Evolution is fact, it is not 'faith', it is just plain how it happened, even if Darwin made a few errors (of omission mainly) and it's possible to dislike Richard Dawkins because of his evangelical atheism. Most people trying to argue for either creationism or not-evolution attempt to do so with ad hominem attacks on one man, and not in connection to his scientific credentials either. Hardly credible.

The word 'theory' in scientific terms does not mean 'unproven'.

Your laryngeal nerve connects your brain to your larynx. A distance of about 10cm. Why then does this nerve travel from your brain to your larynx purposelessly via the arteries in your heart, about 80cm?

Because it's a throwback to when your ancestors were fish, that's why. The equivalent nerve does not have to travel in a fish because its brain was linked to its gills, which were adjacent, fish not being known for their necks.

The laryngeal nerve in a giraffe travels from its brain to its larynx - a distance of about 8cm, via a detour through its heart, a distance of some 900cm.

Evolution is the only conceivable explanation for that. And if the idea of 'observing' a giraffe dissection does not put you off, entirely observable with a quick google search.

Unless, or course, the 'intelligent designer' was either not so intelligent after all, or is truly trying to trick everyone. But then you'd need to have blind faith of course.

The field of genetics has shown that information , not randomness, is the key to life. Randomness is the antithesis of information. In 1986, Richard Dawkins pointed out that there is enough information storage capacity in a single human cell to store the Encyclopaedia Britannica, all 30 volumes of it, three or four times over. Then in 2009, Dawkins said that the difference between life and non-life is a matter not of substance, but information. Most of this cellular information is stored in DNA.

Karl Popper pointed out that the genetic code is without any biological function unless it is translated; that is, unless it leads to the synthesis of the proteins whose structure is laid down by the code. The machinery by which the cell translates the code consists of at least 50 macromolecular components which are themselves encoded in the DNA. Thus the code cannot be translated except by using certain products of it's translation.

The origin of the genetic code is a vicious circle, in that protein machines are needed to read the DNA, but the instructions to build these protein machines are themselves encoded on the DNA. Furthermore, these machines use energy, which requires ATP, made by the ATP synthase motor. Yet this is encoded on the DNA as well, decoded by machines requiring ATP.

These are but a few examples of the "chicken and egg" scenarios that exist at the cellular level.

Darwin's theory operates by means of natural selection and random mutation, but natural selection can only operate on something that already exists. So, the origin of life is definitely relevant to Darwin's theory.

Francis Collins, the lead scientist of the Human Genome Project, is now a Christian. Go figure...

Here's a link:

The Question of God . Other Voices . Francis Collins | PBS

BBM 

Firstly the video does not just include students - did you not watch it? It included PhD scientists and professors of various scientific disciplines. 

As for giraffes - 

'Longer neck vertebrae require many concurrent modifications. As the vertebrae become longer, the
head must become smaller, because it becomes more difficult to support the head atop a long neck.
The circulatory system has to produce higher blood pressure, valves must originate to prevent
overpressure when the giraffe stoops to get a drink. The lung size has to increase so the animal can
breathe through a much longer pipe. Additionally, many muscles, tendons, and bones have to
change harmoniously; in fact, the entire skeletal frame has to be restructured to accommodate
lengthened forelegs. It goes on and on. Clearly, much more than neck-lengthening gene mutation
have to be involved – and with what amazing coordination! All this through cumulative step-bystep
chance and necessity'?

 Professor Amit Goswami

Additionally for Darwinian evolution to be 'fact' there must be proof that a change of kind has taken place and there is simply no evidence for this at all. None. 

Surely you are just trolling here?

There won't be your "proof" because the process takes many millions of years. There are plenty of 'kinds' that are almost certainly on their way to being other kinds.

But the evidence is quite literally all around you. Adaptation IS evolution in microcosm, and it is everywhere. You yourself are almost certainly less hairy, taller and much more slender of finger than your great grandfathers. Why on earth are whales mammals and not fish? The first whales were land animals. The closest living relative of a whale is a hippopotamus, and there are many fossil remains of all the links in the chain between the two. There are only a tiny number of biologists who do not believe birds are descended from dinosaurs (we now know of at least 20 different dinosaurs that were feathered animals), and all of them simply believe it's a different common reptile ancestor - still a change of type. 

If you really believe in a creator god, why on earth did the creator produce so many species, (indeed up to whole phyla) that are now extinct? What was the point of that?

Amit Goswami is, to put it politely, a bit of a quack, who believes in ESP amongst other things, and whose writing is far more philosophical than scientific (and that's being charitable). His thesis that Quantum Mechanics proves the existence of god by virtue of QM not being able to exist unless there is something to observe it, has been widely debunked. But even if he was an unquestionable authority on everything, your giraffe quote above does not address, still less explain, the laryngeal nerve that all mammals have that passes from brain to larynx via a preposterously over-long journey that does not, and cannot, serve any purpose whatsoever. Besides being very convincing evidence for evolution, of course. Of which you believe there is "none".

This mildly amusing divertissement of a stupid video (heavily edited) to make a bunch of people stumble over not being able to prove in a sound-bite something unprovable, has now descended into an argument about religion, and as I believe that all religion is nonsense - dangerous and pervasive nonsense - then I'll withdraw from this debate and thread now I think.

And the decline  into severe Autzheimers shows that even the personality can change beyond recognition. 

I think we need to accept that life is a brute fact as Bertrand Russell said of the Universe.

We don't have the evidence to hand to prove this or that, and therefore anyone who proposes a solution is open to the accusation of blind faith.

For myself, born more than fifty years ago, I cannot explain it, and the route to madness is to worry about that which you can do nothing about ...

Are we approaching the end time, when the so called climate change caused by humans will be irreversible?

I don't know. Some scientists say that we have thirty years to change our ways. I don't know and could not on the evidence that I can find and know to be accurate. Even if I believed that we were on the cusp of disaster [for the human] it would not concern me, for I can do nothing about it. In thirty years I shall have quit this mortal coil.

However, I do fear for those much younger than me, who may face a different future to mine, in my gradual disintegration into senile hopelessness!

Dawinsim, Christianisty, Islam, Judaism, other Faiths ... What I might or might not believe makes not one jot of difference.

In reality, I find the only thing I can really believe in - the kindness of a very small number of people, whom I have learned to trust.

ATB from George

Does the man become a new species due to these changes? So much for the great philosopher...

Romans 1:22  "Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools"

BBM

Cell theory has become the foundation of biology and is the most widely accepted explanation of the function of cells.

The three tenets to cell theory are:

1. All living organisms are comprised of one or more cells.

2. The cell is the most basic unit of life.

3. All cells arise from pre-existing living cells.

BBM

But a virus is not a cell ...

Just a lump of protein DNA that cannot reproduce without the compliance of a cell ...

Simpler than a cell and damaging to higher life forms ...

Of course, the existence of viruses is more or less an act of faith, but flu is real enough ...

Perhaps the explanation is scientific propaganda ...

ATB from George

We are all fools, who pretend to be wise,

ATB from George