When a friend tells you he "does not agree" with the concept of evolution

[Ouroboros0977]

Ah I find it hilarious that I have a friend that not only doesn't agree with the concept of evolution but also the concept of imaginary numbers (square root of a minus number) not for any valid reason but because they were 'imaginary so he could just imagine the answer and be right' and no he was not kidding, he was doing this straight faced.

 

[Raynooo]

DNA mutations in between generations of a same species is AN OBSERVABLE FACT.
The Theory of Evolution is a theory in that it can not yet explain every single little fact and also since it is science we're talking about, saying "this is the absolute truth of what happened" would be stupid. Religions have to have straight answers but science should not.

We did not evolve from Chimpanzees or other present time animals, we share a relatively close (as in a few millions years old) ancestor specie.

Every single specie that exists today is just as evolved as us in that we all had the same amount of time since the first living cell to adapt and evolve to environment.

Evolution for big animals is slow because you can only have so much random mutations in a single individual that don't kill them and big animals such as us reproduce slowly. Evolution and selection can easily be observed for bacteries for example.

Most importantly : mutations are random !

The whole micro vs macro is what people who can't fathom what millions of years is. If "micro evolution" happens in let's say 100 years (no wisdom teeth in more and more people every year for example) then in a million years you'll have 10 000 more. If you have two isolated populations that spent these million years apart and since these mutations are random, it might be enough to create different species. So "micro evolution" doesn't exist.

 

[TheFinalFantasyWolf]

*GASP* He doesn't believe in the exact same thing you do -_-. Get over it, people have different beliefs, why do you care?

Oh and there sure are alot of comments about religious people being "less intellectual" because of their beliefs. Wow I always heard from my atheist friends that they were sick of religious people trying to enforce their beliefs onto them and belittle them, but jeez, you guys are no better. How do expect people to respect what you believe in if you don't do the same?

 

[Jonluw]

Smack him across the head and tell him to learn how to science.

Meh, I dunno. Personally I'd just ignore his crazy ideas. Perhaps I'd ask him why it is he believes what he does or if he can offer an alternative explanation, because as it stands, everything points towards us having evolved from the same ancestors as all other apes, and unless he has some observations to back up his alternative theory it doesn't matter how smart he is otherwise: He's talking out his ass.

 

[Contradiction]

I don't believe in religious creation or intelligent design. I DO however believe that DARWIN'S concept of evolution is pretty much flawed.
It runs of the idea that animals will change due to environments. Yeah we all know this is true, HOWEVER, at what stage does nature change you natural genetic coding. Short answer at no stage I am aware of.
You can make a mutation. You can breed smaller different coloured ect. You can make something LOOK or ACT like a completely different animal geneticly they are the same animal based on different mutations.
And if a kind escapist does know what in nature forces a deep and basic genetic mutation I would very much like to know and reneg on my doubt of Darwin's theory.

 

[Alexlion]

I am a Christian and I'm not saying evolution is false, but there's a problem with it. If we really did evolve from monkeys wouldn't the old form die out or change?

Erm we didnt evolve from monkeys if you go back far enough we have a common primate ancestor (which did "die out" in the sense they evolved into us, we are different branches of a tree metphorically speaking.

We arnt monkeys we are apes, there is a difference

Dont dismiss evolution when you have clearly little understanding of it there isnt a limit on the type of species to one family just because we exist dosent mean all other apes have to die out. Evolution is survival of the best adapted as long as a species can compete with other animals in its enviroment it will do fine.

 

[Thumper17]

Why is it that people hate on religion so much when by and large Religious people are content to sit quietly and behave?

Leave them alone. Please. Listen to the Beatles on this one and just Let it Be.

 

[bliebblob]

Me and one of my collage friends were having a discussion that came to be about evolution at some point. what you need to understand before replying is that this guy is probably one of the smartest people out there, the guy is a certified genius.
He practices Judaism up to a certain degree (separates meat a dairy and other stuff) but calling him religious will be a vast exaggeration.

So when this guy, who is probably the smartest guy I ever met told me he didn't believe that humans are apart of evolution it blew me away. To make things worse he said "there are some things that humans are meant to understand. and we are both Comp-Sci majors so rational thought is a given.

So..... WTF?!?!

This is a textbook example of a classic creationism vs evolution mistake.

There is nothing wrong with someone who BELIEVES we were created by god. No matter your education or prestige you have no right to belittle them for their religious believes. After all they are not really harming anyone.

It's only when creationists claim that evolution is BS and that creationism is a worthy alternative that there is a problem.

So in the case of your friend, it may have been shocking but there's nothing wrong with it. You could debate his arguments but unless you really know what you are talking about you are not likely to convince him.

 

[Bribase]

The conversation becomes increasingly difficult when we speak to the religious about the natural world. I've often come across people that "don't accept" or "don't believe in" evolution. There is something distinctly magical about thinking what manifests in reality depends on whether or not you believe in it.

If there is one thing we have learned in the entire history of biology, it's that we share a common ancestry with all of the other living things on the earth. That is a fact about the world whether a person is comfortable about it or not. What evolution is, is the proposed mechanism by which different species can specialise and eventually diverge. This is still a theory that is controversial, here I'm not talking about ID creationism vs. evolution, I mean punctuated evolution vs gradualism and other theories. If you want to "Disagree" with evolution it is up to you to provide a new mechanism to explain our common ancestry. And NO! Goddidit is not a proper explanation. It has as much use as saying Thor creates thunder and lightning.

 

[Mathak]

Why is it that people hate on religion so much when by and large Religious people are content to sit quietly and behave?

Leave them alone. Please. Listen to the Beatles on this one and just Let it Be.

Hehehehe. Guess: you're not american?

 

[orangeapples]

This is how I see it, as a kinda smart person and a practicing Christian.

creation functions like this.

God's day 1: created light and separated darkness
God's day 2: created the sky to separate water from water
God's day 3: gathered the lower water and separated it and the land formed. Plants grew.
God's day 4: God created the sun and moon to govern daytime and nighttime
God's day 5: God created creatures of the ocean
God's day 6: God created creatures of the land and ended with Adam and Eve
God's day 7: God rested

Human's comprehensions of 'day' is a full rotation of the Earth and we experience 1 daytime and 1 nighttime. However God's 'day' is different; God had 3 full days before the sun and the moon. So 1 Earth day cannot equal 1 God day. i do not know how people can screw this one up.

Aside from a few hiccups (The sun and moon I don't thing could have been created at the same time), this looks like how the big bang theory and life jelly blob theory (the actual term eludes me at the moment) worked.

All of this creation stuff didn't happen in Eden. There are no oceans in the area we consider to be Eden; there are ocean near it, but not in it.

Now here is where my personal belief (not the whole creationist community belief) begins.

in Genesis 4, after Adam and co. are banished from Eden, Cain takes a wife, but it doesn't say where this woman came from. She could have been a daughter of Adam and Eve, but it does not say if she was. It is possible that she was Cain's sister, but what is also possible is that the creatures outside of Eden also evolved to become humanish. I have another point to support my belief that people evolved outside of Eden.

This is after Cain killed Abel and Cain is asking for punishment:
Genesis 4:13-15
Cain said to the LORD, ?My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.?
But the LORD said to him, ?Not so; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.? Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him.

So I ask people, if Adam and Eve and their family are the only people on Earth, who would find Cain? There must be other people besides the Edenites (people from the land of Eden) because clearly Cain was afraid of them.

jump forward about 2000 years and we have Noah and the flood. In the flood, Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives are the only humans saved. And they go on to repopulate the Earth.

So I were to visualize humanoids that existed, it would look like this:

God
Angels
Edenites (Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Seth)
People who evolved over the course of a God day outside of Eden (people like Cain's wife)

Noah was a descendant of the Edenites and the people of evolution and we are descendants of Noah.

So I am one of a few Creationists who do not believe that Evolution conflicts with Creationism. Again, I wasn't there so I don't know what actually happened, but this is my personal belief. I'm certain there are a few gaps that I haven't figured out yet, but it is getting there. Like the origin of Cain's wife; the bible does not say so I cannot say for certain.

 

[Contradiction]

I don't believe in religious creation or intelligent design. I DO however believe that DARWIN'S concept of evolution is pretty much flawed.
It runs of the idea that animals will change due to environments. Yeah we all know this is true, HOWEVER, at what stage does nature change you natural genetic coding. Short answer at no stage I am aware of.
You can make a mutation. You can breed smaller different coloured ect. You can make something LOOK or ACT like a completely different animal geneticly they are the same animal based on different mutations.
And if a kind escapist does know what in nature forces a deep and basic genetic mutation I would very much like to know and reneg on my doubt of Darwin's theory.

We've kinda gotten past Darwin, you know. But what you're objecting to is simply false. Nature changes your genetic coding by selecting for certain traits in breeding and survival. That is, those animals with the genes to survive in certain climates are more likely to survive. Within a species of, say, Elk, for example, this could mean that in the onset of an ice age, the elk with the thicker, warmer fur have better chances of surviving the cold winters, while the elk with less fur die off and therefore cannot pass their genes on. Natural Selection has been understood since well before Darwin, for that matter-not only did ancient human selectively breed for certain traits in livestock, but Gregor Mendel theorized the cause... in 1590.

Seriously, read a science textbook. >.>

Perhaps rather than I read a text book you read my post.
I had made mention to "warmer fur" and other such changes that you described about the elk. My issue is with the fact that this does NOT and never will change the fact that it is an elk. Species are instead based on deeper genetic code (as mentioned in my post) unlike the mutations that you mentioned. You have in no way disproved my issue with the theory in fact you have addressed my point on your own.

 

[Moromillas]

Because he chooses to hold onto his own beliefs rather than a scientific truth.

Yeah, it is kinda creepy that they produce (and talk to) a simulacrum of the mind, of a perfect being no less. But for them, it can give them value, inter peace, comfort, and the like, so taking that belief away isn't a good thing necessarily. If that's what keeps them going, then well, have at it.

 

[YamadaJisho]

Well, it helps is you understand taht evolution is not a fact. It's a theory (and not a particularly good one, since all the evidence used to 'prove' it has either been disproven, or is ALSO evidence for intelligent design). A person isn't dumb or uninformed because he doesn't believe in evolution, he has come to a different conclusion. You say WTF?!?, which only shows that you don't give credence to the ideas or conclusions of others, which is why there's so much violence and hardship in the world. Instead of asking "What's wrong with him that he doesn't beleive in evolution", try asking "What brought him to the conclusion that evolution is wrong". It's only this way will you ever actually understand the entire areguement. One of my college professors said it best. "You don't truely understand an issue until you can effectively and intelligently argue both sides of it."

 

[gussy1z]

I had a problem with a guy form college, where this guy wanted to know how dogs became domesticated as pets but refused to believe it was true since it started more than 6000 years ago.

He kind of gave this idea up when we had about 7 or 8 people telling him otherwise. Weirdly peer-pressure works pretty well for convincing people.

He ignored any scientific papers we showed to him, but if all his fiends believed it that changed his mind. The same thing might work for your friend with the evolution thing. Or show him youtube videos by AranRa.

 

[Thumper17]

Why is it that people hate on religion so much when by and large Religious people are content to sit quietly and behave?

Leave them alone. Please. Listen to the Beatles on this one and just Let it Be.

Hehehehe. Guess: you're not american?

Nay, Canadian.

 

[ThisIsSnake]

I don't believe in religious creation or intelligent design. I DO however believe that DARWIN'S concept of evolution is pretty much flawed.
It runs of the idea that animals will change due to environments. Yeah we all know this is true, HOWEVER, at what stage does nature change you natural genetic coding. Short answer at no stage I am aware of.
You can make a mutation. You can breed smaller different coloured ect. You can make something LOOK or ACT like a completely different animal geneticly they are the same animal based on different mutations.
And if a kind escapist does know what in nature forces a deep and basic genetic mutation I would very much like to know and reneg on my doubt of Darwin's theory.

External factors don't usually force mutations. They do occur naturally in every organism that reproduces (most of them don't do anything though). I remember reading somewhere that mutations occur more under large amounts of stress (not sure where so I'll assume it's not true until I find it).

The genetic coding changes independantly of the enviroment, the enviroment is responsible refining the gene pool down to the ones most suitable for it. Surviving the enviroment makes you more likely to mate, more likely to pass on your genes and produce children that are also capable of surviving the enviroment and passing on their genes.

 

[Bribase]

I don't believe in religious creation or intelligent design. I DO however believe that DARWIN'S concept of evolution is pretty much flawed.
It runs of the idea that animals will change due to environments. Yeah we all know this is true, HOWEVER, at what stage does nature change you natural genetic coding. Short answer at no stage I am aware of.
You can make a mutation. You can breed smaller different coloured ect. You can make something LOOK or ACT like a completely different animal geneticly they are the same animal based on different mutations.
And if a kind escapist does know what in nature forces a deep and basic genetic mutation I would very much like to know and reneg on my doubt of Darwin's theory.

Contradiction, if I understand what you're saying here, you mean that gradual changes do occur in nature but there is no point at which an entirely new species is created. Am I right?

The notion of species is a very controversial topic at the moment, indeed a definitive description of what constitutes a new species is yet to be provided. But that is exactly the point! The natural world was not made for our convenience, a scientist cannot simply make an arbitrary division between two species and say "Those are now two different species". Evolution is far too gradual to be able to do that. None the less we understand that we share a common ancestry via palentology,genetics,biogeography and anatomy and we understand the genetic and environmental machanism by which species are produced. Lots of this Darwin had no idea about (ffs his theory is 150 years old!), biology has moved on since his time don't you think?