Can you prove evolution? Win $10,000.

http://www.intelligentdesignversusevolution.com/

The $10,000 Offer
A transitional form (or missing link) is an example of one species “evolving” into another species. Excited scientists thought they had found one when they discovered “Archaeopteryx.” The fossil led to the theory that the dinosaurs did not become extinct, but rather all turned into birds. The Field Museum in Chicago displayed what was believed to be an archaeopteryx fossil on October 4-19, 1997. It was hailed as “Archaeopteryx: The Bird That Rocked the World.” However, Dr. Alan Feduccia (evolutionary biologist at the University of North Carolina), said, “Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleo-babble’ is going to change that.” [Science, February 5, 1993]. So here’s my challenge: I will give $10,000 to the first person who can prove to me that they have found a genuine living transitional form (a lizard that produced a bird, or a dog that produced kittens, or a sheep that produced a chicken, or even as Archaeopteryx—a dinosaur that produced a bird).

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The blog: Tofuball's Worklog

Read The Bible - it's the Word of God.

How about a horse that produced a zebra?

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Let's see how long this lasts.

since once life starts changing the ecosystem only life produces life, every bit of life currently living can trace its liniage back to the beginning.

so every fossil is of a critter that either went extinct, stopped producing offspring, or is a part of the chain of a currently living critter.

if you go back far enough there are no examples of any currently living critters, only critters that went extinct... or changed into the currently living critters.

since life only comes from life the new critters HAD to come from whatever critters came before them.

no matter how different the two critters may look.

so a person digging up a fossil has to try to figure out what critter the fossil might be related to if it didn't go extinct.

even though the fossil is obviously not related to any living critter there MUST be examples of critters that did change into todays critters to account for the existance of todays critters which MUST be descended from SOMETHING that was living at the same time as the fossil was.

or must we assume a magic wand was waved to spontaniously create the new critters when ALL the old ones went extinct without having ANY children ?

Now before I begin, I'm not attacking anyone's faith.

Here's the problem, if you allow for the presence of an omnipotent/omniscient being(which, for convenience's sake I'll refer to as lowercase-g god), then that being could have conceivably created the universe at any time at any stage of "development". This means that any proof of an existing process can instantly be negated by the "god created it that way" argument. For instance: allowing the above, we've negated fossils as proof of the existence of dinosaurs, as they can be instantly negated by the idea that god created the earth with said mineral formations in place. The very universe could have been created 5 seconds before you read this post, but as you (the reader) were created with your memories, you feel that you have observed and been party to a great many events that did not in fact happen (by this case, all events prior to about 30 seconds ago, give or take for how fast you read).

One of the basic assumptions of most science, and I apoligize for my horrible paraphrasing, is that things are the same as they've always been. What we observe now would have been repeatable 50, 100, or 1,000,000 years ago, and thus the present is the logical progression of the past.

We can set up the moment of creation at any point prior to right now. (Obviously we have to have some form of existance to have any form of experience, cogito ergo sum and all that). Now, we can move that moment back, and based upon what we are observing, extrapolate probable reasons for why things are the way they are and the processes that caused them to come to their current state. If the Universe was created 10 days ago, and I come upon an accident scene, I can assume from my observations that the two vehicles were 1) traveling at some rate of speed, 2) came into contact at a combined rate of speed high enough to deform metal 3) not in their current shapes 24 hours prior. (amongst many other observation and extrapolations). Now we start pushing the moment of creation back, let's say 100 years. Now we can look at some greater causes and effects, like population explosion and pollution. Now push it back 5000 years, 100K years, 10 billion years, etc. Science as a whole continues to try and push back it's understanding, based on the way things are now, and its understanding of the way things change, to understand the way things were. As techniques get more advanced, and more people have more time to observe and experiment, effects can be traced back to further and further potential causes.

But, as said before, this can all be negated by the "god created it that way", or slightly modified "god created it to appear that way" arguments. Proof is only as good as your initial premises. Using Occam's razor, we choose one of two paths (well, for this argument): either it's more succint that all living creatures stemmed from a long and improbable series of random mutations, or that all living creatures were created in their present from by an exterior power.

In short, I don't believe that any theory of evolution, especially one that includes humankind, can ever be proven to one of faith, much as the presence of an all-powerful exterior being coud be proven to one of science. One side bases everything on faith, while the other takes nothing on faith (ideally).

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I counter with a dollar to someone who can prove God.

I'd go for 10K too, but I don't have it. We have to be realistic about these offers.

lol@random evolution. where are the people with arms on their heads? Why dont basketball players' children not have arms on their head? Why is my immune system so efficient? How to sperms know how to get to the ovum? How do birthing women's contractions happen with precision timing so as not to crush the baby? How!!?! Chance? LOLLLL get the fuck outta here!!!

platypusssssss

Why not chance?

Thats the whole point of evolution, that things are the way they are because they work.

Things that don't work die off, things that do work work better and better.

For 10,O0O bucks? Naw, I want more.

ohhhh yeah, and what process decides what works and what doesnt?

What are the chances an idiot writes a multiple choice exam on something he doesnt know about and gets 100%. OKay, now what are the chances that 100 uneducated people do a multiple choice exam and get everything 100% correct?? Dude, just cuz yall dont know exactly how it or what happens, doesnt mean it's chance. There is clearly some intellect at work. Some fundamental framework to which everything must abide by, in order to make "work" out of chance

excellent post

you covered a whole bunch of territory in few, well chosen, words.

naturally you got fuzzy in a couple spots, this is NOT an attack on that fuzziness.

the use of "improbable" here is a key feature of creationist attacks on biology.

it turns out that, to the contrary, the chemical interactions that produce DNA and all of its manifestations are so probable that "inevitable" would be a more suitable word to use there.

as in, "given the initial conditions of the planet it was inevitable that DNA would form and life would happen."

since that removes any 'need' whatsoever for a god to meddle in the nature of the planet after it was formed, creationists, who require a god TO meddle with nature, substitute "improbable" for "inevitable" to create a 'need' for a god to meddle with nature to bring about the "improbable" process we observe happening all around us.

the movie "Dark City" features a race of gods who create reality anew each day.

M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village" is a different take on created reality.

stir in "The Matrix" and godding around in creating reality seems to be fairly easy.

I see the framework, what I don't see is the intellegent hand needed to force it to work.

the only intellegence I do see is ours, and ours IS required for the 'random' configuration to have produced us, otherwise there would be nobody to NOTICE that this configuration had ever happened.

{anthropic, eh ? }

but we didnt come up with the order of the universe or physical laws or anything even close to such incredible phenomena, we can only use it

Death.

You are obviously illiterate, since I clearly stated that anything that doesn't work dies in my previous post.

There is no need for intelligence, only circumstance.