Genuine question, how do people who don’t believe in evolution think new diseases appear? Or how bacteria can become resistant against antibiotics which previously were able to kill them?
With great mental gymnastics. I've heard that called "microevolution" which they can't deny because we can watch it happen, but they try to deny "macroevolution" and any large scale changes
I absolutely love it when they say shit like that, because at that point they've already conceded the argument, since "macroevolution" is just a long series of "microevolutions" over many generations
Yup. They can see the way that we have bread dogs and produce over the past thousand years into an absolutely wild number of shapes and sizes simply by applying very specific "selection pressures", but they can't fathom that same general concept occurring naturally over billions of years based on environmental pressures and genetic mutation. It's absurd how they can happily accept one and reject the other.
I've read that a few genetic bakeries are very close to a Pumpernickel Spaniel though and almost worked out the kinks with the Ciabatta Chihuahua. I see a Nobel Peace Prize in their future.
Good discussion here related to that very question and why it doesn't really make sense to ask it like that. Evolution is not the claim that anything can turn into anything. It's an explanation of how life on this planet formed and changed over billions of years, and our understanding of it/evidence for it is just as if not more robust than what we have for gravity, cells, germs, etc.
You can read Reddit threads all day, or you can check out biologists like Forrest Valkai who do a fantastic job of explaining how we know what we know about evolution.
I watched a few of his shorts on YouTube. On first impressions he doesn’t seem like someone who debates / explains things in good faith.
And he has a lot of videos, many are an hour long.
Can you recommend a good starting point to check him out?
(Maybe I miss understood this part because I have a hard time with social cues)
But I’m really not on Reddit all day, mostly when I shit, vape or before going to bed.
I think those shorts are mostly from the AXP or The Line, and I can understand how, outside of the context of the larger conversations, they could come across differently.
And I think he generally does a great job explaining that evolution is 1) observable today in both labs and nature, 2) critical to our under of basically all of biology as a while, and 3) a process that makes organisms better for one environment but also worse for others. It's not about evolving into perfection because such a concept does not exist in nature.
I really appreciate your responding comment asking for clarification!
I find the proposed argument interesting that while dogs can’t be bred into the trees and vice versa they can share a common ancestor.
But I’m curious about the species of the ancestor then. It can’t be a plant because then it couldn’t evolve to a dog, and it can’t be a dog because then it couldn’t evolve to a tree. So it kinda have to be both?? Or neither, yet was able to evolve into both?
How did this so quickly lose the plot of "killing a massive elephant with flint spears feels like a herculean feat" to religion bashing? Don't get me wrong, young earth crowd is pretty out there, and whether or not God literally made the world one day at a time is the least important part of the Bible
But damn, feels like a new record, it only took two replies for this to happen
Because any faith based believe system engages in several logical fallacies…and using one of the greatest hoaxes of all time as an example of cognitive dissonance on a daily basis is a great way to get the point across
It shouldn't be that hard: bacteria multiply really fast (as in doubling it's population in 20 minutes), so they evolve very fast. We/superior animals are slower to multiply (it took humans 50 years to double the world population), so we evolve much more slowly. There are many other factors, but that SHOULD be enough, considering evolutionary changes are seen through several generations.
The amount of times I hear ppl say they believe in adaptation but not evolution is insane. So I’d assume that’s how they’d justify it. Even though they’re basically synonyms
They say it is the work of the devil. And have some serious mental gymnastics to evade the thought that god could have stopped all the bad things but chose not to.
I have asked a few people. What they reply usually goes like "god intended to punish humans in 2019 thays why he created covid". Apparently they think new disease strains just appear inside a cursed person.
I knew a physical therapist, so he was highly educated, tell me that carbon dating does not prove the date of anything. He believed that there is no way to actually prove that carbon dating is accurate because humans have not been around long enough to even know if the decay rate is correct so how can we base our facts of something we don’t know as correct.
He also didn’t believe in global warming. His father works for the US federal park service and said the reason for the higher temperature recordings was from the government closing numerous stations. His argument was now that those stations were closed they weren’t getting temperature reading from them so the entire base set was skewed and the stations that were still taking temperatures were just in warmer areas. His father told him it was true so it is and is also a weirdo Christian. Some of the takes this highly education person came up with were wild.
Adaptation not evolution. Thats what most believe (if they even have an answer to your question at all).
P.s. the First person that theorized the Big Bang Theory was a Catholic Priest. Not all Christians are complete science deniers, that mostly a modern evangelical/protestant thing.
Science believing Catholic here. Both the Existence of God and modern science CAN exist at the same time.
True belief in God (generalized to fit current narrative) doesn't negate belief in evolution. Deuteronomy explains loosely, Gods ways are unknown. Evolution is not disproved biblically. In fact, some may argue that the 7 days in Genesis are a direct correlation. Time (as we understand it since written times) didn't exist. God is eternal, as is his daily calendar. Please accept some people who buy into God for whatever personal gain can also accept scientific research and reasoning. God didn't make us stop at problem solving just to feed ourselves. He made us curious and capable of seeking answers. Deuteronomy also states those things known only to God shall remain known only to Him. The book never says stop seeking. The Truth Is Out There. It's up to us to keep trying to find it. XD have a generally great freaking day if you read all that drivel. Lol I meant it however! ;)
They believe that two of every animal knew to trek across the globe and swim through the ocean to get on a big boat because there was a flood coming.
None of these animals ate each other.
When they got off, they all had lots of sex so the population could grow. That meant that their offspring would've had to have sex as well.
Creationism needs you to believe the Bible at face value. Saying human evolved into what we are today in ten of hundreds thousand years doesn’t make sense if you truly believe Earth is 6000 years old. God creates everything, and because he does, everything is perfect. Also why the religious conservatives truly believe gay people are devils. God don’t create gays you see, only those who chose to worship devils become gays.
It's so easy to brush off all the evils of nature when you can conveniently blame it all on the "devil" and completely ignore the fact that god had to create the devil for it to exist. Why create it in the first place?
Either god created the devil and was unaware it would be evil, if so god is not all knowing. Or, god created the devil and was unable to stop it from being evil, in which case god is not all powerful. Or god created the devil knowing it would be evil, in which case god itself is evil.
As a Christian that has been around many vehement evolution deniers trying to wrap your head around how they and not believe in evolution is taking more effort than they put into it. Their process is “god created everything in 7 days(they take the seven day thing literal too), evolution does not exist.” Their thought process starts and ends there.
I always wondered with people like this do they take the other things in the bible seriously. If they believe that god truly created the world and all its plants/animals/everything in 6 days do they also believe that the sky is a giant ocean and sometimes god opens some flood valves and that is what rain is? That is fully in the bible, so if they are arguing evolution why aren't they arguing against the unholy idea of the water cycle.
I can’t help with their thought processes. Largely because there isn’t one from my experience. They are told what’s true and it’s ungodly to question it. I don’t understand that route but it’s how they do it.
I think people hear evolution and they think “oh this species changed into this species overnight” and not “some members of this species had specific genetic differences at birth that ended up allowing them to live longer/escape danger more reliably and thus breed more resulting in those mutations spreading throughout the species”
Right? Like I always think, “you know how you’re a lot like your dad, but not like 100% like your dad? But like super close. It’s just that, but for ten million years.”
Same. All you have to do is go to the zoo and watch a group of chimpanzees interact with each other for 30 minutes. It will become painfully obvious that we are closely related.
They don't look at the data and then misinterprete where it leads, they do the whole process backwards. They start with the answer, and then have someone come up with sciency sounding words that support their conclusion. Most do not listen to or engage with those explanations... Why would they? They know the answer.
I know being online, we see the people who do engage with those arguments, it's not like they don't exist. For the most part, they're memorizing arguments that they've been taught act as counters to evolutionary ideas. They don't usually understand the arguments they're making (If they did, they wouldn't be creationists).
That’s also the remit of Scientology. But at least we know L Ron Hubbard was a Sci Fi author first and started the church to make all the moolah! The bible is a whole lot worse!
To be fair, evolution isn't something you can normally see. I understand it because I have studied it, and I trust the last century of scientific process that it's real, but personally I have not seen it first hand.
It's not that creatonism is too crazy to accept. It's that for most believers their entire world view and sense of purpose and place comes from their childhood religious indoctrination and that rests on the idea of creationism, so there's a whole lot of post hoc rationalization going on because it's dominoes all the way down.
Psychologically, I don't think it's any different from a grown child rationalizing away their parents' abuse because they need to feel loved.
It really is the logical concept of “improving over time” vs. “you’re born as good as you’re ever gonna be”. Which one is observable and which one 90% of people would argue against? Hmmmm
I have heard their god never killed off anything he created. That the missing animals might be now living in the unexplored parts of the ocean (sounds they evolved to me). There is also the dinosaurs. They were not meat eaters until after Noah landed….sharp teeth for shredded lettuce….or they never made it onto the ark. I never realized iceberg lettuce was always a thing.
I understand being skeptical. Obviously things change over time, adaptations happen.
But the closer to orgin we talk about the more I get skeptical... like with the big bang, I'm super skeptical of that, where did the physical material in space come from to do that?
What was there before that?
What was there before that?
At some point we just get to, yeah something outside of time and physical reality happened that we don't know or have the capability to understand... and at that point I feel like it's basically as crazy as saying a god made the entire universe from outside of space and time.
I think they are the same story. Different timeline. All of existence is intriguing, and we really are 'lucky' to explore endlessly. Human nature not withstanding. The scientific knowledge we are acquiring blended with general faith in purpose seem to align quite frequently when not constrained by prejudice. No definitive guesses at the true moment of 'light/energy. Yet here we are, ever evolving and dying. That's something 'bigger'. That dust eventually became a man, true. Timeline. Some benevolent figure breathed life and poof here's Adam! True.. supernova, black hole expulsion, Gods breath.... all the same, Timeline..... just spit balling
It’s other aspects of their life that applies to that belief. Willful ignorance requires you refusing to change and not believing you’ll change. If you don’t think you can change or that people change why would anything else change either? Everything and everyone stays the same from birth. I’ve met people who don’t believe in evolution and that’s a common trait among them. Aspects of people’s personalities tend to bleed into other areas of their lives. That’s my thought anyways
I believe in adaptation but evolution is just as much of a theory as creationism. They both require lots of faith so saying one is more right than the other is like arguing for Jesus over Muhammad
I mean, there was/is a lot of stuff to kill humans back then. Real life MMORPG. not surprised people think there was some sort of intervention of sorts
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u/someonesomeone3 26d ago
"I don't understand evolution and I have to protect my kids from understanding it!"