Reddit reviews The Structure of Evolutionary Theory

> Do you believe in Evolution?

So rantus, your response to making a presentation of the burden of proof of some of the claims of Catholicism/Christianity is to totally dismiss and abstain from actually addressing what you believe and how you can defend your belief (to something better than the very low level of significance of wishful thinking/Theistic Religious Faith) to asking me if I believed in evolution?

That's not very good debate style. :(

So let me answer your question with a question. Are you referring to evolution of Christian theology (and it's relationship to the fallacious argument from appeal to tradition [which is very prevalent within Catholicism and Christianity])? other Religious Sect evolution? economic evolutionary theory? biological evolutionary theory? cosmological or stellar evolution? moral evolution in a changing human condition environment? Theistic biological evolution?

If you mean biological evolution on Earth, I accept (not "believe"), and I have faith/trust (based upon inductive, abductive, and deductive, reasoning - not to be disingenuously conflated or evocated with the wishful thinking of Theistic Religious Faith), to a moderate to very high level of significance, most of the aspects, and results, of Evolutionary Theory. Using the following book as a basis for discussion:

• The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, by Stephen Jay Gould, 2002
  
  which part(s) of Evolutionary Theory would you like to debate as it applies to the existence of Yahweh, of monotheistic Yahwehism, or the other foundational and essential claims of Christianity/Catholicism?
  
  Evolutionary Theory is a lot like hierarchical claims of Christianity. Many of the components of Evolutionary Theory are contingent upon the foundation laid by other parts of the theory. The hierarchy of claims of Christianity are similar, in that many claims are contingent upon other claims being presumed to be true.
  
  rantus, if you find the list of claims essential to Catholicism/Christianity, presented above, to be too daunting or hard for you to address (or given the number of responses you have had to your request to debate, you just don't have time to adequately address all those that will take you up on your offer to debate) - after all there are a lot of claims that form the tenets of belief within the Catholic/Christian Religion that have an associated burden of proof for these claims - let's reduce the list to just three'ism of the more foundational claims upon which others dependent/contingent upon
  
  
• יהוה/YHWH/Yahweh exists (not any God, but YHWH having the Christian assigned attributes)
  
• The construct of monotheistic Yahwehism is true (without addressing the Trinitarian construct within this monotheism; that is another discussion - one which even the Holy See identifies as a mystery)
  
• An afterlife exists and that some or all of the "I" will have actualized existence in this afterlife
  
  So rantus, can you/will you support your positive claim position(s), present an argument(s) and meet the burden of proof to support your claim(s), and then defend your argument(s) against refutation/criticism?
  
  I look forward to an actual (and hopefully good) debate that consists of more than one or two simplistic sentences.

I recommend checking the Structure of Evolutionary Theory for a book that gives a different view on evolution (which I personally prefer over Dawkins' view of evolution, which is too natural selection and adaptation-centered).
Dawkins vs. Gould: Survival of the Fittest summarizes both positions.

> And if your still certain that Evolution is indeed a fact then give solid answers to the following 4 questions:
> 1) Every single living organism at their base level requires 3 things to live, DNA, RNA and Proteins, all of which are co-dependant on one another for existence (DNA needs RNA & Proteins to feed it, RNA needs DNA & Proteins to form it and Proteins needs DNA to form RNA to create it) and if even for a split-second they would cease to exist. How did they come to be?

Lots of work is being done on this. Go to scholar.google.com and start reading. There are many compelling ways life could have initiated.

Also note, you do not understand evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory only applies to life forms. At the moment there are many hypotheses about the origin of life. Evolution and the origin of life are different fields. Evolution does not depend on knowing how life started, just that life exists.

If you had read a very basic text on evolutionary theory

https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Evolutionary-Theory-Stephen-Gould/dp/0674006135

It would be obvious that you don't know what you are talking about.

Again, Cambpell's biology is a good place to start for a high school student.

> 2) Sequential Hermaphrodites have the ability to change their gender and thus rearrange their entire biology. How did they evolve that ability? BONUS: Since that ability is generally used to compensate for a missing gender, how did they survive long enough to gain it?

See above. There is a lot known about this from a variety of species. This is also irrelevant to speciation by the way.

Don't forget that most organisms are not sexual. Only a few clever species, mainly Eukaryotes have evolved sex, though some bacteria have mechanisms to exchange genetic information.

> 3) Humans have forced mutations to occur in dogs for over 100 years, however instead of new species being born, the most we got was Inbred Monstrosities suffering from complete Genetic Failure and they were all still dogs. Why didn't the mutations result in a new species?

Populations are mixing, therefore no speciation. Again, you do not understand basic evolutionary theory, nor population biology.

https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Evolutionary-Theory-Stephen-Gould/dp/0674006135

Explains it all.

> 4) Crocodiles have been around for 200 million years, longer than the dinosaurs, survived multiple Mass Extinction Events, and the only change they've gone through is becoming smaller, and the Coelacanth an ancient species of fish that first appeared 400 million years ago and was though to be extinct yet was discovered to be alive and unchanged from 400 million yrs ago. Why is this the case for them, but not for other species such as Dinosaurs, even though Dino's and Croc's have very similar biology's?

See above. Dinosaurs are having breakfast at your bird feeder. You couldn't have picked worse examples.

Here is another one: https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dinosaurs-ancient-fossils-new-discoveries/extinction/dinosaurs-survive/

CONCLUSION:

You are ignorant.

https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Evolutionary-Theory-Stephen-Gould/dp/0674006135

The Structure of Evolutionary Theory by Stephen Jay Gould

http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Evolutionary-Theory-Stephen-Gould/dp/0674006135