Another good reason to believe in evolution....

KarlMarx

Senior Member
May 9, 2004
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Evolution, not just gluttony, led to obesity pandemic


SYDNEY (Reuters) - Evolution and the environment, not just gluttony, has led to a global obesity pandemic, with an estimated 1.5 billion people overweight -- more than the number of undernourished people -- an obesity conference was told on Monday.

remainder of article at....

http://today.reuters.com/news/artic...63667_RTRUKOC_0_US-OBESITY.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

evolution seems to be used to justify everything from genocide, marital infidelity and now this! Hail to Darwin! I'm going to order a triple, bacon, cheese, side of beef whopper burger with extra cheese, and super size the fries ... just to celebrate!!!!!

I guess personal responsibility must obviously be a construct of society with its repressive Judeo-Christian morals!
 
quite frankly, i think that article is bullshit.
I am not a christian so I do not believe in intelligent design, but what a lot of people assume about evolution is that it is 100% accurate and true. Many of the ideas of evolution have been proven but it is not necessarily the way things happened because it is called a THEORY. Even though I believe that was the way people came to be, or the most probable way, evolution needs to stop being taught like it is fact. Also, I don't think that one could justify gluttony as evolution. That makes it seem like nobody has any responsibility for what they do.
 
quite frankly, i think that article is bullshit.
I am not a christian so I do not believe in intelligent design, but what a lot of people assume about evolution is that it is 100% accurate and true. Many of the ideas of evolution have been proven but it is not necessarily the way things happened because it is called a THEORY. Even though I believe that was the way people came to be, or the most probable way, evolution needs to stop being taught like it is fact. Also, I don't think that one could justify gluttony as evolution. That makes it seem like nobody has any responsibility for what they do.

So you do believe then that you have some responsibility for being queer, right? Actually you have 100% responsibility in that area.
 
Evolution isn't something you "believe" in. It's something you accept like how snow forms or the process of photosynthesis or the existence of air. Quit trying to put science based on physically observable evidence into the same category as faith. It's not the same. Someone who accepts evolution is not the same as a person who believes in God--a belief base on nothing more than faith. It takes an absence of reason and an abandonment of logic to make the leap to faith in God. It does not take that to use your eyes to see physical evidence of the process of evolution. Belief and knowledge are not synonymous.

Evolution is not responsible for obesity. Sloth, gluttony and occasional slow metabolism are. Nothing more. The increased incidence of obesity is just an indicator of how successfully we as humans have manipulated our environment to support ourselves. We live in abundance. Naturally, some have chosen to just sit on their asses and eat all the time.
 
Evolution isn't something you "believe" in. It's something you accept like how snow forms or the process of photosynthesis or the existence of air. Quit trying to put science based on physically observable evidence into the same category as faith. It's not the same. Someone who accepts evolution is not the same as a person who believes in God--a belief base on nothing more than faith. It takes an absence of reason and an abandonment of logic to make the leap to faith in God. It does not take that to use your eyes to see physical evidence of the process of evolution. Belief and knowledge are not synonymous.

Evolution is not responsible for obesity. Sloth, gluttony and occasional slow metabolism are. Nothing more. The increased incidence of obesity is just an indicator of how successfully we as humans have manipulated our environment to support ourselves. We live in abundance. Naturally, some have chosen to just sit on their asses and eat all the time.

Have you really never researched the HUGE leaps of logic evolution tries to pass off? Seriously - there's just such a TINY chance all this happened by accident, I'm surprised Evolution holds any weight - The 'educated guess' of evolution makes as much sense as the idea of Santa Clause delivering presents to every Christmas-celebrating child on earth.
 
Have you really never researched the HUGE leaps of logic evolution tries to pass off? Seriously - there's just such a TINY chance all this happened by accident, I'm surprised Evolution holds any weight - The 'educated guess' of evolution makes as much sense as the idea of Santa Clause delivering presents to every Christmas-celebrating child on earth.

Yeah, fossil evidence and being able to OBSERVE speciation in the natural world really compares to believing in a magical man. Oh wait! That's what you believe in. Hmm. Seems the Santa Claus argument doesn't really work for you does it? Seems like the word "God" could be replaced with "Santa Claus" and nobody would miss a beat.
 
Yeah, fossil evidence and being able to OBSERVE speciation in the natural world really compares to believing in a magical man. Oh wait! That's what you believe in. Hmm. Seems the Santa Claus argument doesn't really work for you does it? Seems like the word "God" could be replaced with "Santa Claus" and nobody would miss a beat.

Fossil evidence - points to God, NOT to evolution thru random chance. Observing the natural world - from cell structure to the planets and starts - points the open-minded towards a Creator.
 
Fossil evidence - points to God, NOT to evolution thru random chance. Observing the natural world - from cell structure to the planets and starts - points the open-minded towards a Creator.

:cuckoo: Yeah, the open minded. That's a laugh. Primitive religious beliefs take such an open mind. It really takes an open mind to accept children's stories from Sunday school as fact and never question them. :rolleyes: Fossils do not point to God. What's the official estimate of the Earth's age from the creationist point of view? 4,000 years or something like that? It takes longer than that to form one fossil, muchless all of the biodiversity we see on the Earth today. I like to say that people can believe and do whatever they want. But stop lumping everyone into your "belief" system. Evolution is not a belief. It's scientific fact. I'm a scientific mind. Present me with evidence of God's existence and I'll be perfectly happy to take it into consideration. Good luck with that one.
 
Evolution is not a belief. It's scientific fact. I'm a scientific mind. Present me with evidence of God's existence and I'll be perfectly happy to take it into consideration. Good luck with that one.

Are you a 'scientist'? I could probably find thousands of scientists who don't such brazen, limited viewpoint to call evolution 'Fact'.
 
Are you a 'scientist'? I could probably find thousands of scientists who don't such brazen, limited viewpoint to call evolution 'Fact'.

"Who don't such brazen, limited viewpoint to call evolution 'Fact'." I'm also a literary mind. I can see we are not going to agree. Nevertheless, if you hire a painter to paint your house and later see a giant paint spill in your driveway, logic leads you to the fact that the painter spilled paint in your driveway. If you look at the fossil record, life began very simply and progressively became more and more complex and specialized--evolving over time to adapt more perfectly to its environment. From that physical evidence and from physically observing contemporay life forms do exactly the same thing, logic tells me lifeforms evolve and have evolved since their emergence. It certainly does not lead me to the conclusion that an invisible being who left no evidence of his existence created life. I really don't understand why you think that acceptance of facts gleaned from physical observations is a leap of faith. I can see my hands typing this. Is that a leap of faith?

No. A leap of faith is believing in something you have never seen--that no one has ever seen.
 
And nobody has ever seen a new species emerge from an old one, or anywhere close. I'm still waiting to hear where the fossils are for evolution's dead ends. I want to see the mutations that never really caught on. The whole thing seems too perfect to be random chance. Saying that a fish randomly evolved into an amphibian by random mutation is like saying that a Walkman evolved into an iPod through random mutation. There're no dead ends in the fossil record. There's also HUGE gaps where there are no transitional phases that have ever been found, such as those between the sponges and anemones of the Pre-Cambrian period and, well, nearly every other phyla of life we've ever seen, all of which just suddenly appeared at the dawn of the Cambrian period. Then there's DNA itself. The stuff is so ordered and so organized that I fail to see how it could even form without help. Pack to the painter analogy. If you come home one day and see that your house is a different color and that all the eaves and overhangs have been perfectly edged, all windows avoided, and all window and door frames a matching color, what do you think?

You have no evidence that a painter was ever at your house. You have no evidence that any intelligent being was involved at all...except the incredible ordering of the work. According to evolutionists, you must, however, discount the possibility of intelligent intervention, because you have no evidence of the intervener outside of the work done. Therefore, you MUST conclude that a random coincidence, such as an overturned truck or a split open airplane full of paint, must have dropped the paint on your house. Even lack of paint spills anywhere but where it's supposed to be must be disregarded as evidence of intervention by an intelligent being, because you have no evidence of said being and to believe that such a thing exist can only be the product of religious zealotry and a total rejection of the scientific evidence that your house was painted by random distribution.
 
"Who don't such brazen, limited viewpoint to call evolution 'Fact'." I'm also a literary mind. I can see we are not going to agree. Nevertheless, if you hire a painter to paint your house and later see a giant paint spill in your driveway, logic leads you to the fact that the painter spilled paint in your driveway. If you look at the fossil record, life began very simply and progressively became more and more complex and specialized--evolving over time to adapt more perfectly to its environment. From that physical evidence and from physically observing contemporay life forms do exactly the same thing, logic tells me lifeforms evolve and have evolved since their emergence. It certainly does not lead me to the conclusion that an invisible being who left no evidence of his existence created life. I really don't understand why you think that acceptance of facts gleaned from physical observations is a leap of faith. I can see my hands typing this. Is that a leap of faith?

No. A leap of faith is believing in something you have never seen--that no one has ever seen.

The problem with evolution as a "fact" is the lack of evidence of one form becoming another. Only idiots would argue that "genesis" is more than an nice explanation to a primitive people about the origins of man. However, equally true is the idiot that states that evolutionary theory is"fact". It isn't and the fossil record does not prove it. What you have is more primitive forms "apparently due to the stratum in which they are found" preceding more complex forms. There is literally scant evidence to "prove" evolution as a scientific "fact". What is clear is that fish were followed "apparently by the stratum in which they were found" by amphibians, followed by reptiles followed by mammals. All by the stratum in which they were found and carbon dating. The carbon dating is often erroneus and affected by geologic factors. Science was in such a hurry to displace the Bible that "evidence" was unnecessary and "deduction" alone was sufficient. Tell me in what chemical experiment would the observer allow "deduction" to determine rather than "proof" the outcome?
 
Tell me in what chemical experiment would the observer allow "deduction" to determine rather than "proof" the outcome?

Tell me which chemist would observe a chemical reaction and deduce that God himself had his finger in the beaker causing the exchange of energy?
 
Even lack of paint spills anywhere but where it's supposed to be must be disregarded as evidence of intervention by an intelligent being, because you have no evidence of said being and to believe that such a thing exist can only be the product of religious zealotry and a total rejection of the scientific evidence that your house was painted by random distribution.

Evolutionists are considered close minded for failing to believe in intervention because there is a lack of evidence? Yet you were quick to point out the weak fossil evidence supporting evolution. Why then are the evolutionists considered close minded. Both sides face the same dilemma: more theoretical evidence than physical proof. Thus, both evolutionists and supporters of intelligent design could be considered close minded.

In the end, I believe in God, but I believe in evolution. In my opinion, it just makes too much sense to pass over.
 
Evolutionists are considered close minded for failing to believe in intervention because there is a lack of evidence? Yet you were quick to point out the weak fossil evidence supporting evolution. Why then are the evolutionists considered close minded. Both sides face the same dilemma: more theoretical evidence than physical proof. Thus, both evolutionists and supporters of intelligent design could be considered close minded.

In the end, I believe in God, but I believe in evolution. In my opinion, it just makes too much sense to pass over.

Oh, I'm open to the idea of evolution. I just happen to think the evidence supports an intelligent designer. What I criticize is evolutionists strongarming government into promoting their creation myth for them.
 
Oh, I'm open to the idea of evolution. I just happen to think the evidence supports an intelligent designer. What I criticize is evolutionists strongarming government into promoting their creation myth for them.

Are you saying that you do not believe evolution should be taught in schools?
 
Are you saying that you do not believe evolution should be taught in schools?

actually evolution should be taught in private schools (or not, depending on the school)... let's get government out of the education business, then issues of prayer in school, plummeting SAT scores, whether to teach evolution or sex ed in them becomes a non sequitur. Each parent can then decide which school to send their kids because private schools will compete for children and their parents' dollars..... that's what Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and all of Capitol Hill do, that should tell you something.....
 
And nobody has ever seen a new species emerge from an old one, or anywhere close. I'm still waiting to hear where the fossils are for evolution's dead ends. I want to see the mutations that never really caught on. The whole thing seems too perfect to be random chance.
There are many "dead ends" in evolution and we know about them because of the fossil record. In human evolution alone, paleontologists have found evidence of a variety of extinct humanoids that branched-off from the line we evolved from. And the universe is by no means perfect.

Saying that a fish randomly evolved into an amphibian by random mutation is like saying that a Walkman evolved into an iPod through random mutation. There're no dead ends in the fossil record. There's also HUGE gaps where there are no transitional phases that have ever been found, such as those between the sponges and anemones of the Pre-Cambrian period and, well, nearly every other phyla of life we've ever seen, all of which just suddenly appeared at the dawn of the Cambrian period. Then there's DNA itself. The stuff is so ordered and so organized that I fail to see how it could even form without help.
I don't think you understand how evolution works. A fish doesn't spontaneously grow a lung and appendage-like flippers and waddle onto land. It's a long process that builds on itself. We see missing link species like amphibians that can both breathe on land and in water. These species branched-off from the original "fish" creature that walked onto land and they remain with gills and a lung-like organ. Others branched-off further still and eventually became dinosaurs, mammals, etc. The thing you have to understand is that not all species are evolving at the same pace all the time. Evolutionary changes occur sporadically depending on many factors. Most species on Earth right now cannot point to their living, missing link species. Ours, for instance, are long extinct. Apes and monkeys branched-off from a common ancestor with us. We didn't come from monkeys, we and monkeys share a common ancestor. You and others keep expecting for one of us "evolutionists" as you put it to pull an example of spontaneous speciation out of our asses, but it just doesn't work that way. Evolution works through small, varied adaptations. When these add-up consistently over time a new species emerges. There are many "species" of frogs, fish, rats, etc. But they are all still frogs, fish and rats. They're just slightly different. If a group of rats became isolated from all other rats for a long period of time, they would speciate because the genetic information within that group would recycle itself over and over until certain characteristics became dominate enough to completely rid the entire group of other, less dominate characteristics. Environmental stimuli can do the same thing to an isolated group. Sickle Cell anemia is an excellent example of adaptation spurred by environmental stimuli--in humans no less. You can't just look at something complex, shut down your brain and write it off to "miraculous intervention." We hear thunder and see lightning, but do we say "Oh, it's the angels moving furniture around?" No, we study it and find the real explanation. http://science.howstuffworks.com/lightning.htm

Pack to the painter analogy. If you come home one day and see that your house is a different color and that all the eaves and overhangs have been perfectly edged, all windows avoided, and all window and door frames a matching color, what do you think?
I think a painter painted it.

You have no evidence that a painter was ever at your house. You have no evidence that any intelligent being was involved at all...except the incredible ordering of the work. According to evolutionists, you must, however, discount the possibility of intelligent intervention, because you have no evidence of the intervener outside of the work done. Therefore, you MUST conclude that a random coincidence, such as an overturned truck or a split open airplane full of paint, must have dropped the paint on your house. Even lack of paint spills anywhere but where it's supposed to be must be disregarded as evidence of intervention by an intelligent being, because you have no evidence of said being and to believe that such a thing exist can only be the product of religious zealotry and a total rejection of the scientific evidence that your house was painted by random distribution.
Really bad play on my analogy. We know painters exist. We have proof that painters exist. So if I see that my house has been painted inexplicably, I know a painter painted it. We have evidence that organisms have progressively evolved from one, simple common ancestor as well as the knowledge of geology, chemistry, meteorology, biology, physics, etc.--so you immediately jump to the conclusion that a magical, invisible being that no one has ever seen created everything? You're making an illogical leap based on nothing more than what you've been told--a story passed down from the beginning by primitives--I love the word "savages"--who had absolutely no scientific understanding of the world. You can be religious, but why would you turn your nose up at science? The word science can be traced to the Latin term, "scientia," which means "to know." Why would you turn your nose up at knowledge in exchange for superstition?
 

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