Evolution: Total Rubbish Because….

noitallmr – The reason you gave is reason enough!

Evolution, by its very definition, explicitly denies the existence of G-d.

There is no clear cut proof of anything in this world. That is why there will forever be a clash between those who only believe in God, and those who only believe in evolution. Belief. That’s where it all lies. Because there are many missing links in evolution, and because God doesn’t physically “show” Himself to the world, things will never be certain to people, perhaps until one dies. God gave us this big world to forever explore and learn from. Why should one limit their minds only to what they see in front of them. I’ve always believed that God, and evolution, can coexist. I’ve been bashed at times, but stuck to my “beliefs” none the less. Then I went to Israel, and there I discovered many Chashuv Rabbaim who agreed and shared with my philosophies of the world.

I don’t think that evolutionary theory denies the existence of G-d. We are not sure of the exact time frame of the creation of the world. Evolution actually makes a lot of sense. Life started in the sea, and the sea animals crawled out on land, and so on. Who is to say that what we read in Parshas Breishis is not exactly describing that? We believe the world was created in six days? By what time passage? The sun was not even set in the sky until day four. Who knows how mcuh time passed before that day? Even if we believe each day was a 24 hour period of time, do we really think that Hashem who created everything, could not create it in a speeded-up evolutionary way? I don’t really see the contradiction.

Evolution, by its very definition, explicitly denies the existence of G-d.

No it doesn’t. Why can’t one maintain that evolution was guided by God? (NB: This has nothing to do with Torah sources. Joseph maintained that if Evolution is true, then God must not exist. That is not necessarily so, from a strictly logical POV.)

one of the obvious flaws of evolution is that it offers no explanation for how life began

That’s the field of abiogenesis, not evolution. Evolution deals with speciation, not the origin of life. The fact that evolution does not address the origin of life no more causes it’s invalidation than the fact that the Theory of Gravity doesn’t explain the origin of life.

The Wolf

mw13: dont take anything personaly i cant help myself. i just enjoy raizting on the oilum

i suggest that those of you (joseph, etc.) who seem to insist that evolution is somehow “assur” (which, as wolfish points out above generally indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the theory of evolution) should take a look at the Ramban at the beginning of parshas bereishis. there, the ramban says that the word ‘bara’ (as in “bereshis bara…” refers to a creation of ‘yesh me’ayin’ (‘something from nothing’), and he says that this term is used only by the creation of ‘shamayim’ and ‘aretz’. the ramban goes on to say that hashem essentially created these two formless elements of ‘shamayim’ and ‘aretz’, and in subsequent days these two elements were formed and molded into other creations (but these later creations were not ‘yesh me’ayin’ as shamayim and aretz were).

while i acknowledge in advance there may be questions on this ramban, i suggest that joseph and others here take the time to study this ramban before ranting that evolution is ‘assur’ and ‘krum’.

mw13 “one of the obvious flaws of evolution is that it offers no explanation for how life began,”

That is partially true, but there are several theories as to how it all began. There are four of which most scientists agree on, one of which all of us have heard of, “The big bang.”

Seeing is not believing. Having a visual makes something a fact. That is why we “believe” in God’s Existence. And that is also why some, “believe,” in the theory of evolution. We never see God, but some have experienced His Supernatural Phenomenon’s. We have no clear cut proof of how the world began, but science has shown us fossils.

Both the existence of God, and evolution have at least one thing in common. That from nothing, came something.

The theory behind evolution can happen – the idea that things adapt to their surroundings. Who says that animals today are exactly as they were 5,000 years ago? They might have changed.

However, to say that people came from monkeys or apes is wrong. The Torah says that Hashem created man, and that man was able to speak, reason, etc.

The theory that living things evolved over billions of years is also wrong, as we know the world isn’t even close to that old.

Yes, there are fossils. Do you know why? The Medrash says that whenever Hashem does something miraculous, He does something to make it possible to not believe in it. For example, it says that before Kriyas Yam Suf, the wind blew hard all night. That’s so people who didn’t want to believe in the miracle could claim the wind caused it.

In this case, the fossils are there so that a person could believe Hashem didn’t create the world.

GMAB: congrats. You were fooled by Hashem Himself!

For anyone who is interested in this kind of stuff, the “center of science” of Europe is currently trying to replicate the Big Bang. They built a Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for this purpose, and it was just started up this October. It was a big deal in the science community. Go ahead and search for LHC if you care about this. I’m satisfied with “Beraishis Borah….”

Oy, where to start. Bogen, your post is full of fallacies:

Let’s start at the top:

Evolution is just a theory, not a fact. (And a false theory, at that.)

This assertion shows that you don’t understand how the term “theory” is applied to science. Gravity, for example, is also a “theory.” Please understand what a theory is (in terms of science) before throwing this out.

Past evidence for evolution has been overturned. In the past, major scientific revolutions have overturned theories that were at the time considered factual.

This statement is absolutely correct. But so what? In many other areas of science, theories that were later proven wrong were thrown out, but that doesn’t invalidate the latest findings. For example, originally before germ theory was developed, there were other theories to explain the spread of some diseases. The fact that earlier theories were overturned does not invalidate germ theory. Likewise, the fact that earlier evolutionary theories were overturned does not mean that the latest ones are invalid.

In the past there have been scientific hoaxes regarding evolution, such as the Piltdown Man forgery.

Again, this statement is absolutely correct. And again, so what? There has been fraud in just about every scientific field at one time or another. That does not necessarily mean that all scientific theories are false.

Pieces of “evidence” for evolution such as Ernst Haeckel’s 19th-century embryo drawings, were not merely “scientific errors” but frauds; Biology textbooks have continued to reproduce such “evidence” long after it had been debunked.

That’s correct, but no respectable biology book does so today. Again, the same point I made earlier applies.

Evolution is a pseudo-religion (evolution is based on faith, supporters of evolution revere Charles Darwin as a prophet, and supporters of evolution dogmatically reject alternative suggestions out-of-hand.)

This is a baseless claim. No one revers Darwin as a “prophet.” In addition, the very idea of scientific theory is that no idea can be rejected “out of hand.”

Evolution is “unfalsifiable” (there is no tests that could be made that would demonstrate that the statement is false). Any “fact” can be “fitted” into the evolutionary framework. Past events of speciation are not observable and repeatable, and therefore evolution is not falsifiable. In 1976, Popper himself said that “Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory but a metaphysical research programme”.

This is just plain false. You can do a simple Google search and find examples where evolution is claimed to have been observed and experimented with. I’m not familiar with the Popper quote you brought, but I’m confident that the vast majority of the scientific community does not agree with it.

Mind you, I haven’t brought one scintilla of evidence that evolution is true. That’s not my goal here. My goal is simply to cut down false arguments.

The Wolf

The Big Bang has nothing to do with abiogenesis. The Big Bang is a theory that explains the origin of the universe and the expansion of space/movement of galaxies. It has nothing to do with the origin of life on Earth.

The Wolf

feivel, you sound like you just read the wikipedia article. correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t really know much about this, right? Please don’t try to give me a lesson on this.

Wolf: How do you accomplish the italics here?

Wolf, do you believe human beings evolved from monkeys?

The Torah says that Hashem created man on the same day he created monkeys. It also says he formed him from Earth.

Evolution contradicts that.