Dog disproves God?

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by atheroy, Aug 15, 2003.

  1. atheroy Registered Senior Member

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    ok, god is assumed to have created everything on this earth and in this universe (even though the universe still appears to forming). however, when someone was trying to refute evolution in another thread (i think evolution is hard to deny), i thought that god can't have created everything on this earth as it is, simply because we have an animal that is completely dependant upon us to survive. the bulldog. i said as much but no one seems to reply to my ideas. the bulldog depends on veternarians to birth as natural birth is immpossoble for them to perform due to their large jaw- a trait bred through by dog breeders. if the bulldog had indeed been created by god then the bulldog would not exist, it's futile attempts to concieive would have produced no results and killed the female bulldog. the transformation from wolf to dog is kind of like evolution sped up several thousand millenia under some strange selection pressures. humans have created the modern dog, and fundamentalists cannot deny this fact as it is happening with cats as well now- minature cat anyone?
     
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  3. Jenyar Solar flair Valued Senior Member

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    Two thoughts:
    1)Bulldogs were evidently not part of the original creation (present on the ark, so to speak), being an artificially bred variety of dog
    2)Humans were, so the bulldog is an indirect creation - creation by proxy.
    But we did not create dogs as a species.

    Nothing says that God did not create evolvable species - we weren't set in stone.
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2003
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  5. firingseeds Registered Senior Member

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    have u seen a mad dog- it looks like a human trapped in there.
     
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  7. atheroy Registered Senior Member

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    sorry, don't believe in the ark because of it's biological ramifications and the sheer size of what was trying to be accomplished is not even doable in todays vastly technically superior world.

    yeah we did. wolves aren't dogs. dogs are dogs because we tamed wolves then bred out "desirable" traits.

    i thought evolution was regarded in any form as false by religious doctrine. if it can apply to dogs why can't it apply to humans?
     
  8. Raithere plagued by infinities Valued Senior Member

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    The belief in 'micro-evolution' creates a difficult problem for creationists: A mechanism would have to exist to prevent speciation.

    Actually, dogs are genetically identical to wolves.

    "....Breeds of dogs can not be distinguished from each other by any known anatomical attribute or even biochemical genetic test, including DNA fingerprinting. Since a given breed of dog can not be defined by any scientific means currently known, our contention is that it is not possible to write any ordinance or law that would single them out for special treatment since they cannot be so defined in a legal sense. "Recently I attended a canine genetics workshop at Texas A & M University in which it was further emphasized that there is no biochemical genetic test that can even distinguish wolves from domestic dogs. "....I would taxonomically identify all wolves, wolf hybrids and domestic dogs as the species Canis lupus. Technically, the domestic dog and wolf hybrids should be designated as the sub-species "domesticus". I. Lehr Brisbin, Jr., Research Professor, Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, The University of Georgia. Letter, 30, Jan. 1990

    ~Raithere
     
  9. ConsequentAtheist Registered Senior Member

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    It's called Young Earth Creationism. You don't get much time for speciation in 6,000 years. In fact, it's barely enough to get the lethargic Koala from Mount Ararat to Brisbane.

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  10. atheroy Registered Senior Member

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    yeah, but if you try and breed a wolf with a chiwawa(sp?) i think the results would be rather disasterous

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    . dogs and wolves may be genetically identical but when i say we created dogs, i mean their character, their size or shape, their existance. besides, the time between when we started breeding wolves and todays dogs is hardly enough time for genetic speciation to occur. i was just saying if we didn't intervene wolves would probably still be wolves and dogs wouldn't be dogs.
     
  11. Raithere plagued by infinities Valued Senior Member

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    That's okay. There are so many massive problems with the 'Young Earth' theory that this particular problem is insignificant in that case. Just imagine the three toed sloth swimming to Brazil.

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    Only if the Chihuahua is the female, otherwise the results (and the act) would merely be funny.

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    And I do agree with your underlying point. The fact of the matter is that evolution does occur. Even speciation has been observed. The amazing and amusing thing is to watch the hoops creationists will hop through to explain why the facts don't matter.

    ~Raithere
     
  12. GodLied Registered Senior Member

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    An organism separated from others like it which is then allowed to multiply on its own indepently of others like it might evolve. Examples are found in birds, insects and humans. Once the organism evolves enough, it is a new species. For example, there are humans who become thickly haired all over after puberty, humans that have tails, humans that have extra long incisors; as well as humans in an African tribe that have, as a tribe, two toes. Crossbreeding all those traits one can have after puberty, a two-toed, fanged, tailed, hairy ape that walks on two feet and can breed with any other human. To keep it a new species one has to only breed out 5-toes, no tails, limited hair growth, and fangs.

    GodLied.
     
  13. SoSlick Registered Member

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    To try and say evolution is not a reality would require going back to the dark ages, evolution is a widely accepted and even noted phenomena.

    HOWEVER - Human evolution is a different ball game.

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    In the not too distant past a human skull was discovered that far outdated many of our "ape like ancestors". Which meant that that a particular group we once assumed were in our line, fell into a totally different species. This however is not an arguement against human evolution offcourse, but it does raise a few questions to say the least. Human evolution has not been categorically proven.

    Today's truth is tommorws fiction!

    There was a time when scientists believed current flowed from positive to negative (conventional current). Thats is until the discovery of the electron!

    Food for thought!


    Surely anything is "doable" with God's help!!!


    1. Wolves did not evolve into dogs.
    2. To Try and say that IF wolves did evolve into dogs, that these are grounds for human evolution would be a fallacy.




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    SoSlick

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  14. atheroy Registered Senior Member

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    what mj have you been smoking? this is common knowledge.

    so we live outside of the natural biological realm of this world? what applies to everything else does not apply to us humans because we are special somehow?
    nah. common presumption that humans are different and special made by religious types.


    man that's so specific and hasn't happened before that i'm totally surpirsed. i studied this last year, and you'd be surprised at what you'd learn if you bothered to delve into the subject a little deeper.

    you don't say? i wish the same sort of thought could be applied to religion (although it is in an entirely different way than it should be).

    i'm not sure i know of anytime or anywhere where god has helped humans on any scale.

    :m:NotSoSlick:m:
     
  15. Dr Lou Natic Unnecessary Surgeon Registered Senior Member

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    I have thought about this for a long time.
    The people who developed different breeds of dogs thousands of years ago MUST have understood evolution.
    An in depth knowledge of it is required for you successfully make a breed. Why did they never put 2 and 2 together and realise they were formed through selective breeding the same way their sniffing hound was?
    I think they did, I think man has known about evolution for a long ass time but this was kept out of historical records by the religious powers of the times.

    For man to manipulate evolution to the point he did in the time he did with dogs is phenomenal. It required people who understood inheritence very well.
    But the directions in which man branched familiaris is very telling of the lack of understanding we suffer when it comes natural survival. Nature was a better dog breeder than man as far as quality is concerned. The dogs man has made are absolutely inferior to those nature made when it comes to surviving in the wild.
    Obviously the english bulldog but less obvious would be the american bulldog. It seems like a perfect machine. Its stronger than any wolf or wild dog, in fact it was designed to take on packs of wolves single handedly and does so quite well, but it still depends on man to give it its bowl of food everyday, wolves, coyotes and even jackals have it beat hands down in that regard.
    I fear humans are innadvertantly breeding themselves to be like bulldogs, more so of the english variety. Fat and useless and completely incompetent living organisms.


    PS: I'm guilty in propogating the myth that dogs descended from wolves

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    my bad, its just easier to say wolf than canis familiaris because no one knows what a wild canis familiaris is. Dogs were "stolen" from nature, their ancestors are extinct. They would have been very similar to the dingo of australia.
     
  16. atheroy Registered Senior Member

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    really? but wolves and dogs are genetically identical. though what you say is true of human evolution as well, i'm always being asked how i can believe we evolved from chimps or apes, a common misconception held by people who don't know muh about evolution. the being that we evolved from is chimp-like, not an actual chimp.

    not really, they may have simply observed that a trait becomes more developed simply by breeding dogs together that they thought looked similar. they did not require an understanding of the mechanics of what they were doing, instead, it just made sense.

    maybe, it makes intuitive sense though. micro-evolution has been performed by dog breeders, evolution as a concept is sound and applicable in any environment. i'm not sure it was known though.

    lol, yes. perhaps it should be in recognition of our own inheritance that things might change.
     
  17. Jenyar Solar flair Valued Senior Member

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    The problem is not so much that there is no fossil record of a pre-chimp human/pre-human chimp, but that the theory necessarily converges at a point where pre-chimps and pre-wolves share a common ancestor. At one stage, apparently, they were all part of the same niche in the food chain, with no natural predators. I wonder why we are not all rabbits, rather.
     
  18. Dr Lou Natic Unnecessary Surgeon Registered Senior Member

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    Please elaborate jenyar.
    I'm every interested as to where you see a shortcoming in the theory of evolution.
    What you just did was simplify it to the point of greatly insulting its complexity.

    Dogs and humans seperated a very long time ago, we aren't much further removed from any other mammal than we are from dogs. Dog ancestors evolved feeding on our ancestors for quite some time.
    I don't know where to begin in explaining why we aren't all rabbits

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    Jenyar, you are one person I think purposelly ignores studying evolution seriously. You are too intelligent to hold such primitive misconceptions, I think deep down you know you're wrong.
    Maybe not, but I maintain my suspicion.
    :bugeye:
     
  19. Jenyar Solar flair Valued Senior Member

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    The shortcoming is the lack of evidence and the ready speculation. I have no problem with the mechanisms of evolution - they are well attested - but I have doubts about their power to create. I do simplify it somewhat, because that makes it harder to hide among its "complexities".

    Consider what you just said: dogs and humans "separated a very long time ago", and the commonality is that both are mammals. Early dogs/wolves might have hunted early humans (or was it the other way around?) but you suppose that we were both the same (carnivorous/omnivorous/herbivorous?) animal at some stage, with no "natural" food - not life feeding on life, but life feeding on itself. Was cannibalism the only option for such a being? I know you can't answer that - because nobody knows. I just want to figure out where knowledge about evolution ends and where the speculation begins.

    There is no evidence of such a "template animal" for any species - all fossils we have ever found are either different, or related species. I think you are stretching their "relatedness" further than science warrants.

    (My point about the rabbits was that they are far more effective breeders and efficient eaters than most - at their first stage of evolution, they what natural predators would they have had?)
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2003
  20. MRC_Hans Skeptic Registered Senior Member

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    Mmm, I have to share Dr Lou's notion that you are deliberately being obtuse. Obviously there was no stage in time, except for the very first instances of life, perhaps, where the fauna of Earth consisted of a single species. Concurrent with early mammals were late dinosaurs, other lizards, birds, insects. There was always a food chain.

    And we can easily document that; the fossil record shows that even right after the so-called mass-extinctions, there were an abundancy of species on Earth.

    About template animals and transitory types, an argument also often brought on by creationists: Evolution is not a deliberate process; it is not planning to produce a certain species or variation. At any time, selection works according to present conditions and on the present material. Any creature that has ever existed has been viable in itself, thus, depending on definition, there are no templates or transitional types ... or all types are.

    Hans
     
  21. Dr Lou Natic Unnecessary Surgeon Registered Senior Member

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  22. Raithere plagued by infinities Valued Senior Member

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    First, although it's already been said, you're over-simplifying. You're thinking of the tree diagram where the lineage of modern species is traced out where one species joins with another on down the tree until there is only the trunk of the tree (one species). But this is a vast oversimplification.

    Think of it more like graphing a function, where the individual fossil discoveries are the points on the graph.

    http://www.dean.tec.ma.us/MCAS/MCASgraph.htm

    The lines of the tree graph are interpolations of the data, not exact representations. If we were to examine the tree in more detail we would find it to be truly bizarre. Rather than solid branches, they would be woven from many different strands. It would be very hairy, with all sorts of tendrils twisting and turning in and out of each other to make up the branches, some threads would dead-end and others would merge sometimes only to split later on.

    In regards to your cannibalism question; at no point would one species ever have existed alone except very close to the point of inception of life on Earth. And at this point we would be talking about something similar to bacteria which would have lived off the nutrients in the oceans.

    ~Raithere
     
  23. Jenyar Solar flair Valued Senior Member

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    I try to use my brain whenever the opportunity presents itself

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    But as you know, "filling gaps" are only fine as long as they do not make any claim to evidence that are not theirs. If I find a tire in the grass and tracks in the dirt - I might conclude that the tire belonged to a car, but won't have evidence to support it. Conjecture is useful but not factual. As long as you realize this. Otherwise you are just saying "evolution did it" where others might say "God did it", with the same amount of faith.
     

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