4 ms·

I posted this link as a new thread, but i think it is worth posting this also here, http://www.elisoriano.com/blog/new-truths-belie-evolution-even-more/ http:/

I posted this link as a new thread, but i think it is worth posting this also here, http://www.elisoriano.com/blog/new-truths-belie-evolution-even-more/ http://www.elisoriano.com/blog/new-truths-belie-evolution-ev... Would love to hear what the HN community thought on the arguments.

rbanffy 12y ago
"Ludicrous"?
- philcoders 12y ago
  Did you read it? Which one did you find ludicrous?
  - arethuza 12y ago
    "Elements and minerals found in our body is exactly what are stated in the Bible that we came from the dust (crust) of the earth." The two pie charts for the Earth's crust look pretty different to me - although the fact that the same colour is used for different elements in the two charts is obviously trying to hide this (the only consistently coloured one is oxygen).
    - grkvlt 12y ago
      Yeah, I kept looking at that chart, trying to work out the point he was trying to make. It was a very confused essay, in general.
ryanjshaw 12y ago
Speaking for myself, I don't understand understand how people can choose a book of questionable origin and authenticity as their authority on matters concerning life and death. Whatever that page is trying to say has most likely already been addressed here: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
- philcoders 12y ago
  I scanned the link you posted, found it actually is confirming one of the arguments on the blog post, about the Piltdown man Hoax. And it says in the link you posted that science corrects errors. On the blog post link i posted, one of the arguments is that in the bible it is written the shape of the earth (circle) It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth… ISAIAH 40:22 One of the argument of the writer of the blog post, in his other articles (e.g http://esoriano.wordpress.com/2007/05/25/from-dust-to-man-a-scientific-proof/ http://esoriano.wordpress.com/2007/05/25/from-dust-to-man-a-...). is that Science and the Bible doesn't contradict each other. He points out mistakes of other religions, for the wrongful claims of other religions for example that the earth is only 6000 year old or so.
  - ryanjshaw 12y ago
    The 'arguments' you refer to are meant to support the idea that the theory of evolution is "senseless" (the author's own choice of words). Given that evolution is pretty much a scientific fact, the author clearly believes that the Bible contradicts science. Now I'm going to be blunt: neither you nor the author have a sufficient understanding of the philosophy of science to be drawing any conclusions regarding science.
    - HillOBeans 12y ago
      I've been trying to sit this one out, but I've got to be blunt with YOU: how can anyone with a "sufficient understanding of the philosophy of science" draw the conclusion that evolution works?! Simply put, the scientific process is supposed to be: observe -> hypothesize -> test -> revise. If life is supposed to have arisen by purely natural processes, then the information-building, error-checking and correcting code system that is our DNA must have somehow constructed itself. I am not aware of any experiments following the scientific process that have demonstrated that such a thing is even remotely possible. Instead you have a bunch of "just so" stories about the distant past that are untestable ancient history that we are supposed to believe because we are told to do so by "people who are smarter than you". Smacks more of religion than "science" to me. And don't tell me about any experiments that demonstrate rapid speciation as evidence of evolution - that is NOT the same thing and is an equivocation I see proponents of evolution use all the time. They are instead examples of genetic isolation and information LOSS and are incapable of generating more complex, "higher" organisms. It is for this reason that some scientists have adopted the idea of intelligent design: information can only be created by an intelligent designer. I would expect a forum populated by people who write code to see that. I think that the idea of even a simple computer being able to construct AND program itself would be preposterous to most people here. And yet that is what the GTE proposes. Perhaps that points too much in the direction of a god for some people to accept, but the evidence seems to be clearly on the side of ID, IF you are truly following a "scientific" process.
daemonk 12y ago
I am a bioinformatician with a background in genetics. The argument against evolution in the article, mainly the piltdown man hoax and new sequencing data on neanderthal is extremely weak. I don't think a single example of scientific fraud is enough to discredit the entire community. I actually think the fact that the fraud was found out as a hoax shows that evidence is constantly being scrutinized and re-examined; which is exactly what science should be all about. The point about sequence similarity/dis-similarity being not the ultimate evidence for common ancestry is actually an insightful point; however, I doubt the author of the article realized the insight. He was probably just parroting a statement he read in another article. I don't think you can make a strong statement about homology between genomes using only 65,000 bases of sequence from potentially heavily degraded sample. I think it is just an interesting starting point for further analysis with more data. The rest of the article dealt with interpreting biblical statements to fit with current undeniable understanding of the universe. IE. Man is made from dust is consistent with humans being consisted of elements found in dust (crust) of the earth. I am sure it sounds nice to people who believe in the bible. But it makes me wonder what these interpretations will look like in a hundred years. Are these interpretations going to change with new understandings of the universe? Is the bible just full of vague statements that can constantly adapt to new understanding of the world? What good is that really? I've always wondered what a creationist view of biology would look like. There are plenty of attacks against evolution, but never any clear explanation of how their belief system is in accordance with current data. Do new species suddenly pop into existence from nothing by god? Do god specifically implant new species into the womb of a surrogate specie? Why does god invent bunch of new species in the first place? Why not modify the environment to suit the species rather than modify species to suit the environment? I think creationism hides behind a wall of hand-wavy and foggy ideas that breaks down when explicitly examined.
- philcoders 12y ago
  "The rest of the article dealt with interpreting biblical statements to fit the current undeniable understanding of the universe.", (How do i correctly put a quote here in the replies?) In Isaiah 40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth… This is written before any scientist can confirm it. Thats not interpretation, its a clearly stated fact, "circle". And he points out if other religion gets it wrong.
t__r 12y ago
I just don't understand it. What is it exactly that creationists argue against? What part of the theory of evolution do you disagree with? Is it the fact that there is a thing called DNA? That DNA determines traits of organisms? That DNA gets mixed up as organisms multiply? That some traits are better than others? That this process leads to evolution and natural selection? I'm sure there are, within the field of evolutionary biology, numerous claims that will turn out to be false, as well as many phenomena not yet understood and explained. But draw from this the conclusion that the theory of evolution is flawed and must be replaced with creationism, is absurd. The basic claims of the theory are well understood and have been confirmed in the real world over and over again. Just stop the nonsense.
- Naks 12y ago
  I see what the author did there, he used DNA to disprove evolution.
quasque 12y ago
It's a poorly argued essay. The author starts from an assumption that the Bible is true and cherry-picks evidence in an attempt to support that, choosing the interpretation (or misinterpretation) that best fits into his pre-existing biases. Not convincing unless one has already been indoctrinated into the belief that everything is 'God-given', rather than being more open-minded and inquisitive about the nature of the world.

rbanffy 12y ago

"Ludicrous"?

philcoders 12y ago
Did you read it? Which one did you find ludicrous?
- arethuza 12y ago
  "Elements and minerals found in our body is exactly what are stated in the Bible that we came from the dust (crust) of the earth." The two pie charts for the Earth's crust look pretty different to me - although the fact that the same colour is used for different elements in the two charts is obviously trying to hide this (the only consistently coloured one is oxygen).
  - grkvlt 12y ago
    Yeah, I kept looking at that chart, trying to work out the point he was trying to make. It was a very confused essay, in general.

ryanjshaw 12y ago

Speaking for myself, I don't understand understand how people can choose a book of questionable origin and authenticity as their authority on matters concerning life and death. Whatever that page is trying to say has most likely already been addressed here: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

philcoders 12y ago
I scanned the link you posted, found it actually is confirming one of the arguments on the blog post, about the Piltdown man Hoax. And it says in the link you posted that science corrects errors. On the blog post link i posted, one of the arguments is that in the bible it is written the shape of the earth (circle) It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth… ISAIAH 40:22 One of the argument of the writer of the blog post, in his other articles (e.g http://esoriano.wordpress.com/2007/05/25/from-dust-to-man-a-scientific-proof/ http://esoriano.wordpress.com/2007/05/25/from-dust-to-man-a-...). is that Science and the Bible doesn't contradict each other. He points out mistakes of other religions, for the wrongful claims of other religions for example that the earth is only 6000 year old or so.
- ryanjshaw 12y ago
  The 'arguments' you refer to are meant to support the idea that the theory of evolution is "senseless" (the author's own choice of words). Given that evolution is pretty much a scientific fact, the author clearly believes that the Bible contradicts science. Now I'm going to be blunt: neither you nor the author have a sufficient understanding of the philosophy of science to be drawing any conclusions regarding science.
  - HillOBeans 12y ago
    I've been trying to sit this one out, but I've got to be blunt with YOU: how can anyone with a "sufficient understanding of the philosophy of science" draw the conclusion that evolution works?! Simply put, the scientific process is supposed to be: observe -> hypothesize -> test -> revise. If life is supposed to have arisen by purely natural processes, then the information-building, error-checking and correcting code system that is our DNA must have somehow constructed itself. I am not aware of any experiments following the scientific process that have demonstrated that such a thing is even remotely possible. Instead you have a bunch of "just so" stories about the distant past that are untestable ancient history that we are supposed to believe because we are told to do so by "people who are smarter than you". Smacks more of religion than "science" to me. And don't tell me about any experiments that demonstrate rapid speciation as evidence of evolution - that is NOT the same thing and is an equivocation I see proponents of evolution use all the time. They are instead examples of genetic isolation and information LOSS and are incapable of generating more complex, "higher" organisms. It is for this reason that some scientists have adopted the idea of intelligent design: information can only be created by an intelligent designer. I would expect a forum populated by people who write code to see that. I think that the idea of even a simple computer being able to construct AND program itself would be preposterous to most people here. And yet that is what the GTE proposes. Perhaps that points too much in the direction of a god for some people to accept, but the evidence seems to be clearly on the side of ID, IF you are truly following a "scientific" process.

daemonk 12y ago

I am a bioinformatician with a background in genetics. The argument against evolution in the article, mainly the piltdown man hoax and new sequencing data on neanderthal is extremely weak. I don't think a single example of scientific fraud is enough to discredit the entire community. I actually think the fact that the fraud was found out as a hoax shows that evidence is constantly being scrutinized and re-examined; which is exactly what science should be all about. The point about sequence similarity/dis-similarity being not the ultimate evidence for common ancestry is actually an insightful point; however, I doubt the author of the article realized the insight. He was probably just parroting a statement he read in another article. I don't think you can make a strong statement about homology between genomes using only 65,000 bases of sequence from potentially heavily degraded sample. I think it is just an interesting starting point for further analysis with more data. The rest of the article dealt with interpreting biblical statements to fit with current undeniable understanding of the universe. IE. Man is made from dust is consistent with humans being consisted of elements found in dust (crust) of the earth. I am sure it sounds nice to people who believe in the bible. But it makes me wonder what these interpretations will look like in a hundred years. Are these interpretations going to change with new understandings of the universe? Is the bible just full of vague statements that can constantly adapt to new understanding of the world? What good is that really? I've always wondered what a creationist view of biology would look like. There are plenty of attacks against evolution, but never any clear explanation of how their belief system is in accordance with current data. Do new species suddenly pop into existence from nothing by god? Do god specifically implant new species into the womb of a surrogate specie? Why does god invent bunch of new species in the first place? Why not modify the environment to suit the species rather than modify species to suit the environment? I think creationism hides behind a wall of hand-wavy and foggy ideas that breaks down when explicitly examined.

philcoders 12y ago
"The rest of the article dealt with interpreting biblical statements to fit the current undeniable understanding of the universe.", (How do i correctly put a quote here in the replies?) In Isaiah 40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth… This is written before any scientist can confirm it. Thats not interpretation, its a clearly stated fact, "circle". And he points out if other religion gets it wrong.

t__r 12y ago

I just don't understand it. What is it exactly that creationists argue against? What part of the theory of evolution do you disagree with? Is it the fact that there is a thing called DNA? That DNA determines traits of organisms? That DNA gets mixed up as organisms multiply? That some traits are better than others? That this process leads to evolution and natural selection? I'm sure there are, within the field of evolutionary biology, numerous claims that will turn out to be false, as well as many phenomena not yet understood and explained. But draw from this the conclusion that the theory of evolution is flawed and must be replaced with creationism, is absurd. The basic claims of the theory are well understood and have been confirmed in the real world over and over again. Just stop the nonsense.

Naks 12y ago
I see what the author did there, he used DNA to disprove evolution.

quasque 12y ago

It's a poorly argued essay. The author starts from an assumption that the Bible is true and cherry-picks evidence in an attempt to support that, choosing the interpretation (or misinterpretation) that best fits into his pre-existing biases. Not convincing unless one has already been indoctrinated into the belief that everything is 'God-given', rather than being more open-minded and inquisitive about the nature of the world.