What do creationists make of the Cern experiment today?

[beansprout]

It's getting a huge amount of coverage here in the UK. Is it getting much coverage in the US? What do people with a different viewpoint make of it?

stitch you are right.

When I wrote evolution what I was really thinking was natural selection

I need more sleep and less coffee I think.

lol, yes beansmum, i had forgotten all about the horizon. i live in a concrete jungle, so rarely have the oppurtunity to see it.
i used the flat earth as an analogy. it was something we believed in, but with the understanding of science becoimg popular, it has gained laughability status.

Shiny, that book looks good but is it Christian or religious? It didn't seem clear from the blurb.

Evolution is just a way that someone tried to make sense of the world. It is not fact. The world is far more complicated than that.

I know hundreds (literally) of people who don't believe in evolution as fact. I am also of the belief that God created the universe and everything in it.

surely natural selection is the process by which evolution occurs...?

Except it doesn't go against observable phenomena.
How exactly do you define evolution?

more reading matter for those interested: www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn13620-evolution-24-myths-and-misconceptions.html

natural selection occurs in anobservable manner. for example, if a cultures idea of beauty is big eyes, then it is more likely that people with big eyes are going to be able to breed, so creating more people with big eyes, until most people in the place have big eyes. or, in a place where some physical ability, say speed of running is going to give the greater survival ability, then the fast runners will be able to live long enough to breed, so you will then get people who are more disposed to being able to run faster. and eventually eveyrone will be a fast runner.
sort of the reverse of inbreeding.
the example i am thinking of right now is that tribe in africa with the big toes.

Hardly anyone ever believed in a flat earth actually, precisely because it doesn't even look flat.

'Evolution is just a way that someone tried to make sense of the world. It is not fact. The world is far more complicated than that.'

yes the world is complicated
evolution is a complicated process that has been happening over billions of years
it is not just 'someone' trying to make sense of the world
it is a theory with a mass of evidence of support it
there is no evidence for creationsim
that literally is someone trying to make sense of the world by saying 'oh yeah god made it'

I think they are making the distinction between natural selection within a species - ie the process by which generations of say giraffes will be selected for having longer necks, since longer necked ones do better and produce more offspring and shorter-necked ones tend to die off in a drought.

And that natural selection causing large enough changes to separate groups of animals into separate species.

Changes within a species can be shown to happen, within a reasonable timescale to be "proved" to have happened.

But it is harder to show that the changes cause by natural selection have actually caused speciation - one species becomming two separate species.

Personally I believe both happen, and the lack of evidence is due to the limited fossil record. But proof of natural selection is not automatically proof of speciation due to evolution.

natural selection is only about phenotype, ie, what you can see on the outside. evolution is when one species not only changes to become another, it can no longer interbreed with the original species. that is genetics. and the genome of living things contains enough safe guards built into it, that ensures random breedingdoesnthappen.
so for example, whislt a horse and a donkey can interbreed, the resulting mule cannot reproduce.
or different types of horses can interbreed, but the result is still a horse. and can breed with other horses.
i shall return to this after i have done some housework. the moring spen ton this thread has been fun. but not veyr productive in terms of daily life.

well said mumins cotland.

Quite. And indeed, it's not a theory at all in the sense most people understand it. It is accepted scientific fact that species change and adapt. The discovery of the genome has obviously added to our understanding of micro-evolution and made us realise that some of what appear to be adaptations are actually more genetic accidents, but this doesn't mean natural selection isn't happening. Evolution is a fact, the 'theory' bit was Darwin's explanation of how evolution happened (natural selection) and that part is still being refined and better understood.

i think people do not understand the time-scales involved in evolution

So if evolution isn't a natural and currently-occurring process, then WTF did God decide, after we'd invented antibiotics, to go and create MRSA.

Either MRSA evolved (natural selection of bacterial mutations favourable to surviving antibiotics) or else God is one sick bastard.

Stitch - does sailing right around the world, and in more modern times, flying round the world and even observing it from space not count as 'observable'?

And please give details of the genetic numbers which do not 'add up' in the case of evolution.

The theory of evolution is not that one species evolves ionto another, but that species evolve differently from one common source.

Natural selection is the vital mechanism of evoltion...a current theory is that we have now put a stop to the evolution of humans because we use technology and other mechanisms to adapt our environment to us, and have therefore interrupted natural selection.

I ca completely see that if you believe in god, the search fo the source currently ends in the same place - so what before that?

A belief in god doesn't answer that in any factual sense. But you may have philosophical beliefs which sidestep a scintific explanation.

One species turned into another:
www.newscientist.com/channel/life/evolution/mg17723851.500

OMDB that's because the book is not Christian and is not about religion. Get one

You can get them for a couple of quid at the moment.

catsleepy, if you take out the emotional baggage that comes when people start talking about God, and atheism. then creationism is just as valid a theory as evolution. it fits the observable facts just as well. evolution requires an almost infinte number of lucky accidents, with each accident having the probablity of a monkey sitting at a key board and typing out the entire works ofshakespeare without any mistakes, by pure chance. i dont not believe in evolution because i think it is a viable theory. i just dont believe the numbers add up. i dont believe that the 2.5 billion years is long enough for such chance tohave occured. life is beautiful and complex. i find it impossible to believe it occured out of such minuscule chance. it is imo, mathematically impossible.
but its a good theory. and if someone can come along and prove it scientifically, i wil be happy to accept their arguments.

yes, but blu, have you , personally, sailed around the world?

Regarding fossils - the fossil record is incredibly incomplete. We have NO fossils to confirm loads of really key parts of evolution theory. This can be interpreted in different ways. But at the end of the day no serious researcher from any decent university would suggest that fossils are anything other than the bones of animals from millions of years ago

I really recommend everyone reads Bill Bryson's book A Short History of Nearly Everything. Should be on the national curriculum imo. It explains science in a genuinely interesting way and I even understood particle physics for a few minutes - tho obv have now forgotten most of it

Anyway the bits about evolution and Darwin's theory are v v v interesting. He also clearly explains how natural selection and evolution are different

In that case Shiny, I think I will get one. Thanks!

stitch-why don't the numbers add up?

belief in god or not, has nothing ot do with beliving in creationism as opposed to evolution, or the big bang or not. all are mutually compatible.
natural selection is provenfact.
evolution is not a proven fact.

as a monkey who spends a great deal of time at her keyboard, i will endeaver to recall the actual numbers we were bandying baout in my university genetics classes way bakc when in the mists of time.

the mrsa/antibiotic/god discussion is surely more about theology and philosopy than to do with this thread?

But stitch, can you really tell me that you find the idea of an omnipotent being forming the earth, blowing to create the wind and forming little figures and breathing life into them, in any way likely?

And yes eveolution is a 'good theory', surely 100x better than creationism?