Is this stuff really taught in churches?

Traydragen,

I'll use this agrument from the article I linked to show you an example of their evidence vs the scientific evidence.

Quoted from BibleLife.org

"If natural selection were true, Eskimos would have fur to keep warm, but they don't. They are just as hairless and everyone else. If natural selection were true, humans in the tropics would have silver, reflective skin to help them keep cool, but they don't. They have black skin, just the opposite of what the theory of natural selection would predict. If natural selection were true, humans at northern latitudes would have black skin, but they have white skin instead, except for the Eskimos with skin that is half way between white and black. Many evolutionist argue that melanin is a natural sunscreen that evolved in a greater amount to protect dark skinned people who live near the Equator. They simply ignore the fact that dark skinned Eskimos live north of the Arctic Circle. Melanin in the skin is not a sound argument in favor of evolution. The theory of natural selection is wrong because it cannot create something in the DNA that wasn't there in the beginning."

In the first part of this paragraph the author assumes that traits are only based on environmental factors and are created by those environmental pressures. In modern synthesis we realize that environmental pressures play a large role in the evolution of populations but they do not create specific mutations and traits. An organism must exhibit a trait before it can be selected for. If an organisms has a beneficial trait that helps camoflauge it better than the rest of the population (it is more green) then it is likely to live longer and pass on those traits. Living in a jungle did not create the trait, it mearly allowed that organism's trait to be considered beneficial in that specific context. In the same way Eskimos do not have fur because there must not have been any Eskimos with a gene that coded for fur. Simply being in a cold climate is not going to make you grow fur. To get more specific, because Eskimo (I hate using that term) people are social and have technology like warm clothing environmental materials (blubber, snow etc.) the difference between some hair and a lot of hair is not a determining factor for breeding. The Eskimo with very little hair is just as likely to breed and pass on his/her genes as is a very hairy Eskimo (purposly excluding sexual preference here). Therefore there is no environmental pressure selecting for fury Eskimos.

Onto color. Eskimos and Africans are dark-skinned (contain more melanin than most Europeans). The purpose of melanin is to protect cells from mutations caused by UV radiation. So we understand why Africans/Filipinos and other people living near the equator have darker skin than people living at higher latitudes (for very long periods of time). So why do Eskimos (Inuit) have dark skin? Well they are shown to have originated from cultures that had darker skin and lived in lower latitudes (more sunlight). When they migrated to the polar regions (fairly recently) they already had adaptive technology like clothing and due to their diet they had a rich source of vitamin D (one of the big factors for light skin in latitudes with low solar insolation).

Does this help illuminate the problem we have with creationist science?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(traydragen @ Nov 25 2007, 09:16 PM) [snapback]544134[/snapback]</div>

Cell theory. It all depends on how deep you want to go but this is a quote from a thread about god posted in 2006. These are my posts. If you would like to see the whole thread go HERE.

"The first "life" were complex (non-random) chemical reactions that evenutally formed a membrane and allowed for different concentrations of chemicals on the "inside" vs the outside world. With catalysts and feedback loops going on inside these "cells", points of non-equalibrium were reached and new levels of complex organization appear and soon (a billion years or so lol) self perpetuating, self-replicating systems evolved. That is the simple version."

Here is a link to page on cellular evolution and self-organization by Pier Liugi Luisi

Galaxee can expand on this as she is more well versed in chemistry than I am.

Here is an interesting idea on how life progressed beyond the point of the basic membrane:

"The first cells led a precarious existence. The environment around them changed continually, and every hazard presented a new threat to their survival. In the face of these hostile forces-harsh sunlight, meteorite impacts, volcanic eruptions, droughts, and floods-the bacteria had to trap energy, water, and food to maintain their integrity and stay alive. Each crisis must have whiped out large portions of the first patches of life on the planet and would certainly have extinguished them alltogether, had it not been for two vital traits-the abilities of the bacterial DNA to replicate faithfully and to do so with extraordinary speed. Because of theri enormous numbers, the bacteria were able, again and again, to respond creatively to all threats and to develop a great variety of adaptive strategies. Thus they gradually expanded, first in the waters and then in the surfaces of sediments and soils.

Perhaps the most important task was to develop a variety of new metabolic pathways for extracting food and energy from the environment. One of the first bacterial inventions was fermentation-the breaking down of sugars and conversion into ATP molecules, the "energy carriers" that fuel all cellular processes. This inovation allowed the fermenting bacteria to live off chemicals in the earth, in mud and water, protected from the harsh sunlight. Some of the fermenters also developed the ability to absorb nitrogen gas from the air and convert it into various organic compounds. The "fix" nitrogen-in other words, to capture it directly from the air-takes large amounts of energy and it is a feat that even today can be performed only by a few special bacteria. Since nitrogen is an ingredient of the proteins in all cells, all living organisms today depend on the nitrogen-fixing bacteria for their survival.

Early on in the age of bacteria. photosynthesis-"undoubtedly the most importnt single metabolic innovation in the history of life on the planet" 27 -became the primary source of life energy. The first processes of photosynthesis inventd by bacteria were different from those used by plants today. They used hydrogen sulfide, a gas spewed out by volcanoes, instead of water as their source of hydrogen, combined it with sunlight and CO2 from the air to form organic compounds, and never produced oxygen.

These adaptive strategies not only enabled the bacteria to survive and evolve, but also began to change their environment. In fact, almost from the beginning of their existence, the bacteria established the first feedback loops that would eventually result in the tightly coupled system of life and environment. Although the chemistry and climate of the early Earth were conducive to life, this favorable state would not have continued indefinately without bacterial regulation.

As iron and other elements reacted with water, hydrogen gas was released and rose up through the atmosphere, where it broke down into hydrogen atoms. Since these atoms are too light to be held by earths gravity, all the hydrogen would have escaped if this process had continued unchecked, and a billion years later the oceans of the world would have disappeared. Fortunately life intervened. In the later stages of photosynthesis free oxygen was released into the air, as it is today, and some of it combined with the rising hydrogen gas to form water, thus keeping the planet moist and preventing it's oceans from evaporating. However, the continuing removal of CO2 from the air in the process of photosynthesis caused another problem. At the beginning of the age of bacteria, the sun was 25% less luminous than it is now, and the CO2 in the atmosphere was very much needed as a greenhouse gas to keep the planetary temperatures in a comfortable range. Had the removal of CO2 gone without any compensation, the Earth would have frozen and early lbacterial life would have been extinguished.

Such a disasterous course was prevented by the fermenting bacteria, which may have evolved already before the onset of photosynthesis. In this process of producing ATP molecules from sugars, the fermenters also produced methane and CO2 as waste products. These were emitted into the atmosphere, where they restored the planetary greenhouse. In a way fermantation and photosynthesis became mutually balancing processes of the early Gaia system.


The oxygen crisis

As the bacterial web expanded and filled every available space in the waters, rocks, and mudflats of the early planet, its energy needs led to a severe depletion of hydrogen. The carbohydrates that are essential to all life are elaborate structures of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. To build these structures the photosynthesising bacteria took the carbon and oxygen from the air in the form of CO2, as all plants do today. They also found hydrogen in the air, in the form of hydrogen gas, and in the hydrogen sulfide bubbling up from valcanoes. But the light hydrogen gas kept escaping into space, and eventually the hydrogen sulfide became insufficient.

Hydrogen of course, exists in great abundance in water (H2O), but the bonds between hydrogen and oxygen in water molecules are much stronger than those between two hydrogen atoms in hydrogen gas (H2) or hydrogen sulfide (H2S). The photosynthesizing bacteria were not able to break these strong bonds until a special kind of blue-green bacteria invented a new type of photosynthesis that solved the hydrogen problem forever.

The newly evolved bacteria, the ancestors of the modern-day blue-green algae, used sunlight of higher energy (shorter wavelengths) to split water molecules into their hydrogen and oxygen components. They took the hydrogen for building sugars and other carbohydrates and emited oxygen into the air. This extraction of hydrogen from water, which is one of the planet's most abundant resources, was an extraordinary evolutionary feat with far-reaching implications for subsequent unfolding of life. Indeed, Lynn Margulis is convinced that "the advent of oxygenic photosynthesis was the singular event that led eventually to our modern environment.

However, this evolutionary sucess came at a heavy price. Like all rapidly expanding living systems, the blue-green bacteria produced massive amounts of waste, and in their case this waste was also highly toxic. It was the oxygen gas emitted as a by-product of the new type of photosynthesis. Free oxygen is toxic because it reacts easily with organic matter, producing so-called free radicals that are extremely destructive to carbohydrates and other essential biochemical compounds. Oxygen also reacts easily with atmospheric gases and metals, triggering combustion and corrosion, the two most familiar forms of "oxidizing" (combining with oxygen).

At first the Earth easily absorbed the oxygen waste. There were enough metals and sulfur compounds from volcanic and tectonic sources that quickly captured the free oxygen and prevented it from building up in the air. but after absorbing oxygen for millions of years, the oxidizing metals and minerals became saturated and the toxic gas began to accumulate in the atmospere. About 2 billions years ago the oxygen pollution resulted in a catestrophe of unprecedented global proportions. Numerous species were whiped out completely, and the entire bacterial web had to fundamentally reorganize itself to survive. Many protective devices and adaptive strategies evolved, and finally the oxygen crisis led to one of the greatest and most sucessful innovations in the entire history of life.

In one of the greatest coups of all time, the blue-green bacteria invented a metabolic system that REQUIRED the very substance that had been a deadly poison...... The breathing of oxygen is an ingeniously efficient way of channeling and exploiting the reactivity of oxygen. it is essentially controlled combustion that breaks down organix molecules and yeilds carbon dioxide, water, and a great deal of energy in the bargin... The microcosm did more than adapt: it evolved an oxygen-using dynamo that changed life and its terrestrial dwelling place forever.

With this spectacular invention the blue-green bacteria had two complimentary mechanisms at their disposal-the generation of free oxygen through photosynthesis and its absorption through respiration-and thus they could begin to set up feedback loops that would henceforth regulate the atmosphere's oxygen content, maintaining it at the delicate balance that enabled new oxygen-breathing forms of life to evolve. The proportion of free oxygen in the tmosphere eventually stabalized at 21 percent, a value determined by its range of flammability. If it dropped to below 15 percent, nothing would burn. Organisms could not breathe and would asphyxiate. If the oxygen in the air rose above 25 percent, everything would burn. Combustion would occur spontaneously and fires would rage around the planet. Accordingly, Gaia has kept the atmosphereic oxygen at a level most comfortable for all plants and animals for millions of years. in addition, a layer of ozone (three-atom oxygen molecules) gradually built up at the top of the atmosphere and from then on protected life on Earth from the sun's harsh ultraviolet rays. Now the stage was set for the evolution of the larger formsof life-fungi, plants, and animals-which occured in realtively short periods of time. ~ Fritjof Capra "The Web of Life" 1996

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(traydragen @ Nov 25 2007, 09:51 PM) [snapback]544147[/snapback]</div>

I'm not sure I would call it faith. Most sources list faith as a conviction or a belief in something without logical or material evidence. Science has given us the material evidence and I do not like convictions because they pigeonhole us into a set structure and can hinder progress. I'm always ready to say "I do not know" or oops, I was wrong. Convictions do not allow for that even when faced with explicite facts.

So you believe in the evolutionary process and it's ongoing nature correct? You believe that god has set this entire thing into motion? Do you believe God still plays a hand in it all or do you feel he set it up and then went back to simply watching and not interfering or interacting? My point is to try and figure out how your faith is structured. IE are you a theist a deist or somewhere between due to modern thinking and scientific evidence? This is not an attack or an attempt to catch you up in something. I am simply trying to learn about you and your faith. I think your attitude is great and I don't want to offend you or come across condescending.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(HolyPotato @ Nov 25 2007, 10:32 PM) [snapback]544160[/snapback]</div>

That about how I see the bible.

In particular I tend to focus on the disasters that are written about in the bible. The bible gives reasons for catastophes just like another other culture would. For example; the great flood in the bible vs the great flood as depicted in Indigenous peoples accounts of tsunamis. Although these are in different time contexts, it is worth noting that they both created a story to describe the event and what it's causes were because they lacked the education in geology, oceanography and hydrodynamics. Wiki explains the deluge myth better than I can here.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(traydragen @ Nov 26 2007, 07:46 AM) [snapback]544232[/snapback]</div>

We can show how membranes form through simple chemistry. They were not formed out of nothing as you say, they were formed out of chemicals present in the atmosphere and water and powered by the suns radiation. It is replicated in the lab and in computer modeling. The lack of ability to actually create a living cell does not mean that the whole idea is wrong. Again, chemistry, biology, and physics all say that this is possible and each can explain how it is possible without breaking any fundamental scientific laws. So in essense science has built up so much evidence backing evolution that it would take a momumental amount of evidence to the contrary to break it back down. Evidence that would totally wreck modern medicine as well.

There is no faith here. Faith is based on a lack of evidence as I stated earlier. The bible does not prove anything nor does it give information on how to prove anything. The only thing that validates the bible is the bible. That is it. I can write a book about historical accounts and say that I am a god and that I created everything. The only reason no one would believe my book is that I wrote it during a time when more people were educated and it has not been passed down through the centuries as a truth. There is no proof whatsoever of god. None at all. So how is it that we are being proved wrong? Like the saying goes, "extrordinary claims require extrordinary proof". Science has provided it's proof, show me the proof of god and the bible. Since 90% of this is over your head I do not expect you to provide that proof but I do wonder why you can be so set in your opinion of god and the bible if you do not understand the science that refutes it. That is the main problem I have with faith, it throws out all available evidence and stubornly holds fast to its opinions.

So we've given you examples of how life could have started and even stated that we do not know the exact mode that "sparked" it. All of these ideas follow logical and testable science. Science that is the foundation of everything you have today, your health, your clothes, your car etc. The creationists have their opinion on how life got started but unfortunately they have zero evidence for such a claim and the science that allows them to live today, refutes their claims. Can you see the problem here?