St. Bernard study casts doubt on creationism

I am not sure it does but I am not a theologian. I do know religious people and I don't know of any who believe you can't breed in changes in dogs without invalidating their deity.

I know those on the atheist fringes of science and anti-science fringes of religion fight like dogs and ... well, dogs ... on this topic but is there really that large a schism in the mainstream?

There is absolutely no conflict between true science and true religion because they are both searching for an appreciation of the wonderfully diverse universe we are a part of.

How can anyone believe in a deity so puny as to be incapable of presiding over millions of years of evolution when that time span can be compared to is a mere flicker of an eyelid for an all-powerful God?

Marilynne wrote:

There is absolutely no conflict between true science and true religion because they are both searching for an appreciation of the wonderfully diverse universe we are a part of.
How can anyone believe in a deity so puny as to be incapable of presiding over millions of years of evolution when that time span can be compared to is a mere flicker of an eyelid for an all-powerful God?

Read your post...speculation, hope, faith? Science relies on reproducability, not wild-eyed wishful thinking. Science and religion are miles apart.

Like we needed another example of evolution to disprove creationism?

There is absolute conflict between science and religion. A universe brought into being and guided and molded by a creator figure is a very different thing to one that came into being and developed through natural processes that can be researched, examined and, maybe, understood and explained.

Religion may provide people with a train of thought to follow, but as a way of explaining the universe it has as much validity as investigating exactly how the tooth fairy leaves a coin under children's pillows.

That said, this St Bernard example is not a good example of natural selection, because the changes in the dogs have come about through artificial selection by the breeders. If anything, they could be said to be a model where the breeders are taking the role of God in this foolish intelligent design concept.

Let me get this straight: they're drawing definitive conclusions about hundreds of millions of years' worth of evolution, on the strength of the results of 120 years' worth of selective dog breeding?

Must be some really good hallucinogenics in those test tubes they've got hanging around the lab! Can I have some?

For the record, I fully believe that God created this world...via hundreds of millions of years' worth of evolution. Just because the dice were tossed through selective breeding, doesn't necessarily mean that no one threw the dice to begin the game in the first place!

And by the way...if those scientists want to find evidence of truly intelligent design, they ought to switch to studying cats!!!:)

Mary, you, and religion are the ones who are reaching here no?

Reproduceable conclusions versus silly creationalism??? No contest.

Lets hope that thru natural selection, people like MAry get "weeded out" of the world.

Religion is nothing more than a way to steal money from the poorest people in the world, then make them start wars cuz "Their book don't say what YOUR stupid book says"

For the record, most people who believe in "intelligent design," do not believe that the earth was created in six days, but that each day refers to a period of time. Indeed, many of the oldest translations of the Bible support this interpretation. The writer of this article needs to do his/her homework better. Obviously though, this writer had a bone to pick with religion.

Mary wrote:

And by the way...if those scientists want to find evidence of truly intelligent design, they ought to switch to studying cats!!!:)

you had me until the rodent eating,dumpster cruising cats.

Do you even know how many eons it took
before "books" even existed!!

Most "organized” Religion wouldn’t recognize that bone even if it were millions of years old as being anything more than another thing made in Six 24 hour days… kind of on the same level as the world is flat....and the sun revolves around the earth....

Mary wrote:

For the record, I fully believe that God created this world...via hundreds of millions of years' worth of evolution. Just because the dice were tossed through selective breeding, doesn't necessarily mean that no one threw the dice to begin the game in the first place!

If you believe that, then you have to admit the bible is wrong about us being created in your god's image.

Mary wrote:

And by the way...if those scientists want to find evidence of truly intelligent design, they ought to switch to studying cats!!!:)

http://www.messybeast.com/freak-cats.htm

That look like intelligent design to you? A retarded 3rd grader could do better than that.

Writing in Paradise wrote:

Like we needed another example of evolution to disprove creationism?

Most of us already believe in evolution. However, there are still some out there that only understand creationism mianly because they can't wrap their brains around words that big!

told you so

Ahh. Science, the misunderstood field. Be careful not to turn science into it's own religion. I'm a scientist myself, and don't believe in creation (at least not in the sense of the man on the cloud version) and would still dispute the conclusion that this study demonstrates evolution. Yes, it demonstrates that natural selection (and actually, only human-guided selection) can result in changes in a species over time (not exactly novel- who funded this?) Natural selection is a prerequisite of evolution. Still changing the head of a St. Bernard is a long ways from showing that humans evolved from an ape progenitor and all terrestrial vertebrates started out as a lungfish. It also doesn't even touch on how you get from a toxic, inorganic, boiling planet, to complex life forms without some type of divine intervention. Evolution is a grand theory that encompasses numerous smaller theories. We have evidence to piece most of these theories together, so it seems rational to believe in it. However, to truly prove it you have to re-create the experiment in a controlled environment (no Gods allowed). You would also somehow have to prove that a God doesn't exist, or that if it did it either couldn't, wouldn't, or didn't create life or guide its development. I would say we're never going to answer this one.
I'm with the guy who says religion and science aren't necessarily incompatibile. Both different ways of approaching the same problem. The main reason I'm not religious is while science encourages this kind of debate, most organized religions frown on it. Plus, I've never really needed someone else to tell me how to think, and I've always been enough off the wall that I don't find enough people who share my thinking who want to get together every Sunday and talk about it when they could be out fishing.

Face it, Scientoids: Darwinism is FAITH-BASED! Its logic is a tautology, and there is no natural biological phenomenon that it cannot explain, because there exist no acceptable scientific protocols to test the theses inherent in the belief system. GOD created time, so HE is not time-bound, as is HIS Creation. Keep that fact in mind while contemplating our Universe.

It,s not who right or wrong, the Sun never comes up late, the Moon always goes down on time, according to God,s Will, Not our will, We have free choice to believe, God or man. Man has never hit the MARK! without fault or error and will always miss it, when we dont seek the TRUTH (Bible) NOT religon. RELATIONSHIP / Jesus. God created man with knowledge to subdue the earth.(GROWTH) Not destroy it. LOOK AT THE FACTS, Crime, Quality of Life, Air, Hate, The list goes on and on. I love Science and I LOVE GOD!!! No Conflick!!! See you coming, LOVE