The Case for "Guided" Evolution (Shmuley Boteach)

[Jobbeybob]

Even if he HAS found a hole in evolution (which he hasn't), ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LEGITIMATE states that god should be brought in to fill it.

Give scientists a chance to figure it out.

[ApertureScience27]

Either this guy does not understand science or he's intentionally misleading people. The argument that scientists keep changing the age of the earth to give evolution more time is wrong on so many levels. First of all, the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. I don't know where he got 8 or 20 billion, maybe he's thinking of the age of the universe, but the age of the universe is irrelevant because life as we know it can only exist on a planet. Second, 4.6 billion has been constant for a long time...

[ApertureScience27]

... and is backed up by radioactive dating along with astronomy and all that. Third, new evidence continues to show that the first living organisms existed earlier than we previously thought, therefore abiogenesis (the beginning of life) must not have been very improbable, meaning that a creator is not necessary.

[KrunchyGoodness]

For those of you that think you understand probabilities but don't, listen up. The probability of evolution having occurred is not simply about AND-ing all the individual events together. It is about the probability that over time (in this case, lots of it) organisms tend to gain information rather than lose it or keep constant. Time will simply magnify the probability.

[lethalvb01]

Even if the nonsense that Boteach is spouting off in this clip was true...saying that because evolution is so improbable then it must be God, is just as improbable.

[wild0hawk]

11 pissed off athiests

[ConanTheAntFarmer]

I cant listen to anymore of this horse shit. LOL!  Time itself performs miricles.... like when it will kill this loser.

[Desmognathus]

* Doesn't understand the patchiness of the fossil record: e.g. 10-15 years ago, there were only 3000 good dinosaur fossils for 160 million years - compare that to ~5500 extant mammal species, with species lasting a few million years. There are more extant mammal genera than there are known dinosaur genera.

[Desmognathus]

For those who like quote-mining, "Can't answer it all" means "don't have time and/or space here" - he said nothing which hasn't been well refuted.

* His probability arguments are specious - see Sean Carroll "The Making of the Fittest" for detailed numerical examples

* There are plenty of transitional fossils, with more being found all the time - see e.g. Talk.origins on the reptile/mammal transition

[Desmognathus]

Amusing that this guy wearing glasses extols the eye's design.

He does talk rubbish, in a Gish gallop. Can't answer it all, some points:

* out-of-context quotes e.g. Darwin on the eye

* he confuses age of earth and universe

* asserts human eye couldn't be improved by random mutation: probably already has been - primate color vision is a recent recovery through duplication & mutation of opsin genes. And we could avoid red/green color blindness if we could move those genes off the X chromosome.

[Mccoins]

I always ask Christians this: You can tell a lot about an artist by the art they create. Ask yourself which is more beautiful: A creation which can become, create, and grow unto itself through Natural Selection and Evolution? Or a creation that simply appeared, is quite boring, uni-dimensional, limited in character, and utterly childish?

[AegeanKing]

@Mccoins Does Genesis 1:24 not have God commanding the EARTH to bring forth life? Sounds like an abiogensis event to me....

[PopROCKSLive]

What it all breaks down to is a religious person saying.... "It's so improbable..... that it MUST be magic."

Again, the concept of billions of years of evolution is somehow not possible... but an all powerful being that has always existed that creates and or guides things by magic.... that's totally possible.

[malarbusto]

@PopROCKSLive Well put.

[macthornberg]

No case

[Theonlydump]

I do have to give Rabbi Boteach some praise. He does not condescend to the non-believer; he engages with honest questions and observations. As the rest of this debate shows, he is not afraid to capitulate to superior reasoning, or to stick to his guns as warranted. He is one of the few notable religious people working toward the unification of humanity. We need more of his kind.

[LISTofAbillion]

good points, why is everyone hatin

[warren52nz]

This guy doesn't have his facts straight. The Earth is 4.7 billion years old. It's been known for a long time. I've never heard anyone claim it's older than 5 billion years. It's ironic that he tries to discount science for being flexible when it's religion's inflexibility that leads it to wrong conclusions.

[warren52nz]

Such a tired argument. This guy is talking about the chances of ALL mutations required to make a horse happening at once and of course they didn't. They happened 1 at a time and then were tested by Natural Selection which kept it or discarded it, then moved on.

It's the difference between rolling a Yahtzee (look it up) in 5 FULL throws vs keeping the dice that are all the same and rolling the others. One method is unlikely, the other is easy.

[TheScienceFoundation]

I'll ask the same question ZOMGitscriss asked, if these religious texts contained evidence of modern scientific theories, why weren't the religious adherents of these texts the first to come up with them?

[nemirn]

This guys is a piece of shit.

Flat out liar.

He needs to fucking die soon.

[upandopen]

1. What does he say that he knows to be false?

2. Is anyone allow to disagree you without deserving to die?

[nemirn]

LOL

Come on, dude.

You can't misunderstand evolution so badly that you make such patently wrong claims about it.

This guy is not stupid. It's not a matter of lack of opportunity to understand biology.

It's a deliberate attempt to distort it.

Yeah, I hope he dies or at least has his head ripped off.

[oplu45]

@upandopen The problem is when he's wrong...

Mutation is important for evolution, but the mutation isn't evolution (usually), it's variation that happens to be advantageous and the individual with that adaptation gets to have more offspring and passes on that advantageous variation.

Also the most recent estimate for the age of the earth is 4 (ish i think (correct me if I'm wrong))billion years.

Finally, the fossil record is imperfect, fossils are HARD to make, not everything makes a fossil.

[SeeProfileForDetails]

@nemirn  lol fuckin religious nuts, idiots

[AegeanKing]

@SeeProfileForDetails who is the bigger idiot, Shmuley for standing up for his beliefs or you for trolling??

[SeeProfileForDetails]

@AegeanKing are you not trolling too? What sort of response do you expect?

[Sachaztan]

Another reason is that we have only excavated a MICROSCOPIC portion of the earth (something Shmuley Boteach for some reason doesn't know even though he is holding a speech about it in front of an audience and on camera). A third reason is that it requires an extraordinary combination of premises and events for a fossil to be formed and preserved and a vast quantity of the species that have existed probably have never been fossilised and survived to this day.

[Sachaztan]

A very good example of where we have a crystal clear fossil record of one species turning into another is the diatom Stephanodiscus Niagarae turning into Stephanodiscus Yellowstonensis.

Many more examples of a complete record exists.

And it is fairly common sense to understand why we haven't found 100% of all the fossils that exists. Scientists believe we haven't even found 10% of all the LIVING species on earth.

(part 2)

[Sachaztan]

Now I'm not as knowledgeable in palaeontology as I am in mathematics but I certainly know more about it than he do, and I'm not preaching publicly at seminars about it. This is NOT good.

Our current fossil record is full of "transition fossils". Actually every fossil that we have is one! Every set of species that are believed to have evolved from eachother is in reality just a gradient of the same species.

(part 1)

[Sachaztan]

Wow for being someone that uses probability as a case he has no idea what he is talking about.

"I'm not a scientist"

That certainly is true

For everyone that hasn't studied enough probability to know why he is talking out from is out:

Randomly play out a deck off cards. The probability that this sequence of cards would be the one you played out is EXTREMELY small, and yet every time you do it you procure an equally improbable outcome

[NoQuarterZp]

I'll give this guy credit for believing in evolution, but a lot of his arguments make no sense. First of all, does he think that people are just pulling the age of the universe out their ass?? I mean, 4 billion years is when the earth was formed as demonstrated by radioactive dating, no one says it's how old the universe is...

Also, I wouldn't say we've definitively ruled out life in Andromeda because "We looked. It wasn't there!"

I think this guy just doesn't really understand probability.

[DIVASIVLIVS]

If Boteach has succeeded in confusing you about Stephen Jay Gould's position on creationism, read pages 309-315 of his book, "Punctuated Equlibrium," (or the correspdoning section of "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory," from which it was excerpted).

[BrooklynNotQueens]

ברוך אתה יהוה אלוהינו מלך העולם שלא עשני ליובאוויטשער

[TiberiusDominus]

Hitchens doesn't beat Boteach...Though I see by your screen name how your thought process would give you that biased. Omega I understand you think Boteach's logic is bad. However there are certain proffessors at Harvard, Yale, and Berkley where he debates that would disagree with you. Do you travel around youtube looking for his speeches to leave criticizing comments? I assure you Rabbi Schmuley doesn't read them, Neither does Hitchens. Both men are brilliant. Great Debate

[Omega5001x]

This guy is so full of erroneous information, bad "logic", and quote mines, he's just another tick mark on the tally sheet for evolution.

[darwinkilledgod]

You should watch the entire debate with Hitchens (it should be floating around youtube). Hitchens beat him like a small child.

[upandopen]

How do you think I found this quote? I am a Hitchens fan too, but compared to many of the other people Hitchens has debated, Boteach did well. Hitchens completed avoided responding to many of the points Boteach made, including this one.

[kevinscales]

Yeah Hitchens clearly hasn't studied the science of evolution all that much or at least not enough to answer all these points.

I particularly hate the Darwin quote about the eye because he would only have to read the next line to see that he only metioned the complexity of the eye to illustrate how powerful evolution is, to allow us to see beyond everyday common sense, which this guy clearly can't.

[Essincy]

@upandopen absolutely. i love hitchens but there is no denying that he couldn't respond to these really important points made by boteach.

[hazydavey]

@Essincy

What important points are made here by Boteach? The fact that Boteach does not understand a thing about evolution (much less mathematical probability) was already addressed by Hitchens in this debate. And not content with getting the biology & geology wrong, Boteach goes so far as to suggest that the dating of the earth is part of a scientific conspiracy by those who will not accept God. Amazing. Watching this, I actually cringed in embarrasment for this pathetic man.

[johnedwards1968]

I call quote mining! lol

That Darwin eye quote is always taken out of context. Somebody with honest evidence would NOT resort to these tactics.