MIT students who don't accept evolution

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p>Chesterton,</p>

<p>The point is that if all living animals dispersed from mt. Ararat just a few thousand years ago and dispersed across the world from there, then that should explain a lot about the places we find animals living in nature today. We would find animals only in places they could have travelled to in that time, and almost every type of animal living in the area of the mountain. This is not the case at all. We do not find chimpanzees distributed from Mt. Ararat to West and Central Africa.</p>

<p>We find animals distributed exactly as we would anticipate they would be if evolution occurred. What did Darwin find on the Galapagos? Tortoises adapted to the terrain of specific islands, lots of different birds he had never seen before, but all of them related to Finches, no mammals except bats, seals that could swim or fly and a few rats that could ride detritus for the long trip from the mainland or hitched a ride on a ship.</p>

<p>Once again, I know that everyone who rejects the evidence does it on a religious basis. That is fine to have any supernatural belief. But once you begin to make claims about the natural world, then there are facts and evidence to contend with, and the are no non religious scientists who disagree with evolution, and most of the religious ones agree too. If you would only take the time to learn the facts and evidence that you so strongly disagree with, you would realize there is no rational basis to continue arguing. Read one of the books mentioned earlier and learn something.</p>

<p>One person who was defending creationism to me said, “You have your reality, and I have mine.” </p>

<p>The problem with that line of thinking is that we don’t get to pick our realities. Either something happened in the physical world or it didn’t. You can’t make Harry Potter real In your head, and you can’t make creationism real that way either.</p>

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<p>Please do.</p>

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<p>Ahahah… oh my god… you guys have to stop or I will die of laughter…</p>

<p>I can’t believe there are a whole 3 people in this thread <em>actually</em> trying to claim that evolution is even probabilistically, much less definitively, false. And with all the arguments you’d expect of people that can’t process basic logic…! This is just… so great… If you manage to speed up the pace of this conversation a bit, I’ll never need video games again…</p>

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<p>@HikaruYami Yes, you should lay off of the video games and actually do some research about the topic. Approach any topics of controversy with “why is it wrong,” you’ll see the world from an entire different view.</p>

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<p>Undefined123, </p>

<p>The problem is that the same people that are arguing against evolution have no skepticism at all on other topics. They have just created a very special standard for this topic because it doesn’t fit the model they have built in their heads. Unfortunately, reality refuses to conform to some peoples’ imagination.</p>

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<p>@Much2learn Until I see animals “afraid of their own nakedness,” with no superior being interference, I am not convinced. Reality, then, agrees to conform to my so-called “imagination.”</p>

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<p>“Afraid of their own nakedness” is an arbitrary and ill-defined trait. What counts as nakedness? We covered ourselves with animal fur, but animal fur doesn’t count for… animals? What parts of our body do we have to be afraid of our nakedness for? In some Muslim cultures, nothing but a woman’s eyes and hands can be seen. On the other end, we have African tribes where women don’t cover their breasts. Heck, we have nudist colonies. This is clearly something socialized.</p>

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<p>Undefined123,</p>

<p>You seem to have a strange hangup with nakedness. Please do not assume that everyone else does. People wear clothes to stay warm because they don’t have much body hair, and to protect sensitive skin from injury. Recently, they wear them out of modesty, but that is not because people are naturally afraid or naturally ashamed of their bodies, that is a learned behavior.</p>

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<p>Undefined,</p>

<p>I am also trying to understand the logic here.</p>

<p>You seem to be saying that your best evidence for your creator is that people are afraid to be naked and other animals are not, and somehow that is definitive proof that your deity exists. I am not the smartest apple in the bin, but I am also having trouble with the logic.</p>

<p>In addition to my disagreement with the statements accuracy, I would also add:</p>

<p>How does that prove anything? To me, that seems like a huge misstep in logic and reason</p>

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<p>There’s a deeper meaning to “not realizing their nakedness” that you guys don’t get because you are not very philosophical. You obviously have no understanding of philosophy and so arguing with you is futile.
Stick to your genetics.</p>

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<p>I would be happy to learn more about “not realizing their nakedness.” If you are willing to share.</p>

<p>I do know that this phrase comes from The Garden of Eden story in Genesis.</p>

<p>Gen 2:25 “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” NIV</p>

<p>However, when they sinned, something changed.</p>

<p>Gen 3:7 “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” NIV</p>

<p>So Adam and Eve were happily naked in the garden until they sinned, and then they “…realized they were naked” and were ashamed of their bodies.</p>

<p>So I think you are suggesting that they were initially inferior like the animals, and did not “realize their nakedness”, meaning that they were not ashamed of being naked. But once they sinned and realized they were naked, they changed in some way that made them superior to the other animals. </p>

<p>I am still not sure how being ashamed of being naked demonstrates that people are superior. I would have thought that they were more superior when they were supposed to be perfect, before they sinned. At that point, they were completely unashamed to be naked. </p>

<p>Please explain.</p>

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<p>The nakedness argument is an interesting one. Would this mean that tribes in the amazon rainforest may have evolved from other primates - but that those from colder climates could not have?</p>

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<p>My feeling is that this is a clumsy way of saying that humans are capable of introspection.</p>

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<p>Well Chimpanzees, Bonobos, and Dolphins (and perhaps a few other animals like orangutans and some elephants) certainly are self-aware to the extent that they can recognize their own image in a mirror. You can google the research on this.</p>

<p>I do not believe that they feel ashamed of being naked, but then I do not believe a human who had never worn clothes or taught that he should feel ashamed when naked would either.</p>

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<p>I’ll bet I have a more thorough philosophy background than you do, undefined123. You can’t make a single point in defense of your statement, and that’s not something you’re able to hide by acting too good to actually discuss the merit of your arguments.</p>

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<p>much2learn said: “So I think you are suggesting that they were initially inferior like the animals, and did not “realize their nakedness”, meaning that they were not ashamed of being naked. But once they sinned and realized they were naked, they changed in some way that made them superior to the other animals.”</p>

<p>Actually go back a bit in Genesis, and you will find this in Genesis 1:27-28:</p>

<p>27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” </p>

<p>So I don’t think the point was that man was inferior like the animals since God made man in His image and commands man and woman to have dominion over all living things on the earth.</p>

<p>Also, someone upthread mentioned the earth (or man?) being only a few thousand years old. There are many scientific types that believe in special creation but don’t believe in a young earth or such a brief history of humanity. Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe and Greg Koukl (mentioned above but dismissed because he’s a Christian) are two such apologists.</p>

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<p>I’m probably not adding anything to the discussion, and stop me if this has been addressed before, but you can have evolution with a creator.</p>

<p>Natural selection simply makes so much sense in every way, and is completely intuitive to the layman (unlike much of science in general). There’s overwhelming proof for it, whether through bacterial resistance to antibiotics, to Darwin’s finches. I don’t think it’s reasonable to believe that Adam and Eve were exactly the same physiologically to modern day humans. Look at the fossil record.</p>

<p>Also, the Bible was written by humans, was it not? Sure, they took the word directly from God, but you try perfectly transcribing everything someone says without messing up and having to fill it up with your own recollections, which are undoubtedly shaped by your own biases. Fact is, people back then had no concept of natural selection, and they said wrote what made sense to them. God created the world in seven days, right? Does it mention in anywhere that his creations never ever once changed over time? It doesn’t say he put into place gravity or made everything out of atoms, in any case. Natural selection seems like a process that a perfect being would create, so.</p>

<p>In my opinion, creationism vs evolution is a misguided argument. It should be atheistic evolution vs theistic evolution-- on whether you think life formed from random processes, or life was created by God.</p>

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<p>Might be an issue with the wording of hte question to be honest! Who really knows what goes on in the minds of others???</p>

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<p>“They have just created a very special standard for this topic because it doesn’t fit the model they have built in their heads. Unfortunately, reality refuses to conform to some peoples’ imagination.”</p>

<p>This is not reasonable. The model I presented in post #124 was built AFTER a close look of the evidences, not before. You need to try to digest others’ words.</p>

<p>Let me give a summary of why the model I presented in post 124 is a reasonable model… (a summary of posts 87,94,96,99,120,124,151,155,156,159)</p>

<p>I have already given you explanations that scientists are basically holding four views:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Natural evolution of all living things happened without any outside intelligence (believed the first cell was formed naturally)</p></li>
<li><p>An intelligent being set rules and then natural evolution occurred (believed the first cell was formed naturally)</p></li>
<li><p>An intelligent being started the first cell and then evolution started from there (believed the chance of first cell formed from non-organic elements naturally is mathematically zero.)</p></li>
<li><p>An intelligent being created the first cell and evolution process, and then intervene at many points of time to alter and speed up process of some new kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species
Evident with extremely clear MISSING of fossil records in a university-built evolutionary tree of life involving 3000 contributors in 20 years.
<a href=“http://tolweb.org/Terrestrial_Vertebrates[/url]”>Terrestrial Vertebrates;
[Eutheria[/url</a>]</p></li>
</ol>

<p>and the huge gap (due to extinction )between [url=&lt;a href=“http://tolweb.org/Synapsida/14845]Synapsida[/url”&gt;Synapsida]Synapsida[/url</a>] and [url=&lt;a href=“http://tolweb.org/Therapsida/14973]Therapsida[/url”&gt;Therapsida]Therapsida[/url</a>] in going to the link for mammalia
one should follow the whole line from the beginning to mammal and primates to get an idea. </p>

<p>Among these four views, scientits with view number 1 who ruled out a creator is a MINORITY. But they were more vocal in the past decades which lead many young to think falsely that ‘MOST scientists ruled out a creator’. The actual percentages of scientists who do not believe in a creator are: (and they are minorities)</p>

<p>A poll specifically on scientists: (but not Ph.D.'s only)
Scientists Disbelief in God by Academics
Discipline %

Physics 40.8

Chemistry 26.6

Biology 41.0
Overall 37.6


Sociology 34.0

Economics 31.7

Political Science 27.0

Psychology 33.0
Overall 31.2</p>

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YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND that it is a huge problem for supporting an entirely natural evolution due to the impossibility of the first cell formed under earth’s early conditions. (Chemists had a number of papers on earth’s condition. This explains why less scientists in Chemistry has a disbelief in God.)</p>

<p>The latest attempt on finding a possible environment for the origin of life on earth, a professor (a chemist) thought of Mars. The 2013 news on his paper:
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/sc...n-of-life.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/sc...n-of-life.html](<a href=“http://tolweb.org/Eutheria/15997]Eutheria[/url”>Eutheria)</a></p>

<p>"Today, borate is found in deserts that formed after large seas evaporated. But deserts may not have existed four billion years ago. A number of studies suggest that the early Earth was COVERED IN WATER and had few if any continents. </p>

<p>As for molybdate, it only forms in the presence of oxygen. The atmosphere of the early Earth appears to have been NEARLY OXYGEN-FREE. </p>

<p>At the moment, Mars looks more promising to Dr. Benner. The evidence gathered by satellites and rovers suggests that both oceans and continents existed early in the planet’s lifetime. Under those conditions, borate MIGHT have formed. "</p>

<p>There is NO evidence to support life on earth are by a totally natural evolution on earth.</p>

<p>People need to agree to disagree, scientists do. That’s why we are all still exploring.
(some people didn’t read the whole thread so I think this would help)</p>

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<p>Does it have the plurality, though?</p>