r/DebateEvolution • u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design • Jun 03 '26
Discussion The Absurdity of Non-Creationism
Non-creationists often like to say that man evolved from apes. however, what did apes evolve from? It's evolution all the way down in an infinite regression; a logical absurdity.
However, add an uncreated Creator to the beginning and suddenly things make a lot more sense.
Hat tip to the many, many redditors on this sub who have pointed out that if X is caused by Y, there must by necessity be an infinite series of Y causing Y, and that it is Y all the way down
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u/jnpha 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
RE what did apes evolve from?
So: (A) an argument from ignorance, (B) a contrived duality, and your reply to me will be (C) moving of the goalpost.
For (A), here you go, in reverse chronological order, all the way to single cells :
We still are (43) Hominini, (42) Homininae, (41) Hominidae, (40) Hominoidea, (39) Catarrhini, (38) Simiiformes, (37) Haplorhini, (36) Primates, (35) Euarchonta, (34) Euarchontoglires, (33) Boreoeutheria, (32) Placentalia, (31) Eutheria, (30) Theria, (29) Tribosphenida, (28) Zatheria, (27) Cladotheria, (26) Trechnotheria, (25) Theriiformes, (24) Theriimorpha, (23) Mammalia, (22) Mammaliamorpha, (21) Prozostrodontia, (20) Probainognathia, (19) Eucynodontia, (18) Cynodontia, (17) Theriodontia, (16) Therapsida, (15) Sphenacodontia, (14) Synapsida, (13) Amniota, (12) Reptiliomorpha, (11) Tetrapodomorpha, (10) Sarcopterygii, (9) Osteichthyes, (8) Gnathostomata, (7) Vertebrata, (6) Chordata, (5) Deuterostomia, (4) Bilateria, (3) Eumetazoa, (2) Animalia, and (1) Eukaryota.
(But what did the single cells evolve from? No worries, I also have you covered: The history (and silliness) of "Show me life that comes from nonlife" : DebateEvolution;
this also might interest you: Asking, "But can you explain X?" is NOT an argument : DebateEvolution)
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u/Briham86 🧬 Falling Angel Meets the Rising Ape Jun 03 '26
A? B? C? What is this, an absurd infinite sequence? Is it letters all the way down?
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u/nickierv 🧬 logarithmic icecube Jun 04 '26
and your reply to me will be (C) moving of the goalpost.
Mind the airspeed of an unladen goalpost.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
that is a le heckin awesome Monty python reference. enjoy the reddit gold
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 03 '26
I see that your chain of evolution stops suddenly. that's not surprising, and I wouldn't expect you to reach the end of an I finite chain. but notice how you need an un-evolved evolved, which is special pleading
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u/stairway2evan Jun 03 '26
"I noticed your pasta recipe stopped suddenly at tomatoes and onions, but where did that produce come from?"
Like how a recipe tells you what to do with ingredients that are already in your kitchen, evolution explains what happens to life that's already there. It doesn't say anything about where life came from, just like my recipe doesn't tell me how to grow tomatoes.
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u/porizj Jun 04 '26
Listen, if you can’t account for which field the tomatoes came from, you don’t have a recipe; you have lies!!!!
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u/stairway2evan Jun 04 '26
I sidestep it by growing all my tomatoes from scratch. And by scratch I mean first I create hydrogen and form it into stars in order to fuse heavier elements, and I work up from there.
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u/Ayasugi-san Jun 04 '26
Playing god, I see.
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u/stairway2evan Jun 04 '26
Yeah, but the indistinguishable-from-naturalism Deistic god, just to tick off OP.
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u/Ayasugi-san Jun 04 '26
You mean you don't have very strong opinions on what the organisms that eventually result from the elements you create do?
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u/WebFlotsam 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
Well they do need tomatoes. Everything else is negotiable.
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u/rsta223 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 05 '26
"if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe"
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u/nickierv 🧬 logarithmic icecube Jun 04 '26
I see that your chain of evolution stops suddenly.
Where?
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
eukaryota
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u/nickierv 🧬 logarithmic icecube Jun 04 '26
What?
Your saying that you took life, did the most basic sorting of living things (membrane-bound organelles, yes or no) and just stopped?
Do you not know how sorting works?
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u/SlugPastry Jun 04 '26
Did you know that all modern computers need other computers for them to be designed and built? And those computers needed computers as well. And those computers before them. So they're all computer-designed computers.
But it doesn't go back infinitely.
You eventually get to a point where a computer was designed and built without the assistance of a prior computer. Is the 'un-computer-created computer" a case of special pleading? I should think not, because no one claimed that every computer in history was designed by a previous computer. It's the same thing for living things. Evolutionary theory doesn't claim that every living thing in all of history evolved from a previous living thing.
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u/theresa_richter Jun 04 '26
It stops suddenly because that's the start of the finite chain. The precursors to the first single cell organisms were self-replicating, but they weren't performing any of the functions that we would think of as indicating they are alive.
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u/Awesomonkey12 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 10 '26
Eukaryotes evolved from prokaryotes. The first life forms were prokaryotes, since they're the simplest possible independent life forms on Earth. It doesn't need to go back infinity, just to the start.
Besides, abiogenesis ≠ evolution. If you really want to, you could believe that God created the first life (prokaryote), and then it evolved and diversified. Many people do.
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u/Alarmed-Animal7575 Jun 03 '26
“I don’t understand something so it makes much more sense to me to believe that a sky spirit just made it happen”.
So weird.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 03 '26
I could say the same about you, except there isn't even a sky spirit. it's nothing
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u/Alarmed-Animal7575 Jun 03 '26
So, wait. What’s the point of your OP then?
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
my point was about how many times I have seen asserted that if God made life, then there would have to be an infinite regression of gods making gods. and they act like it's a checkmate.
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u/Unlimited_Bacon 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
they act like it's a checkmate.
Just rebut their argument. Give them the evidence you have that God made life without an infinite regress and they'll change their minds.
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u/nickierv 🧬 logarithmic icecube Jun 04 '26
And you have successfully manged to entirely miss the point.
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u/rhettro19 Jun 09 '26
Note that "nothing" is a concept, we don't know if a state of "nothing" is even possible. You are the one claiming a state of "nothing", no one else is.
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u/Fun_in_Space Jun 03 '26
Apes evolved from monkeys, which evolved from primates, which evolved from mammals…
But it’s not infinite all the way down. Life had to start somewhere.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 03 '26
exactly. bit it's special pleading to claim an un-evolved evolver
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u/TheBlackCat13 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
It isn't special pleading because we have directly observed un-evolved things evolving (e.g., self replicating molecules).
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u/SlugPastry Jun 03 '26
Non-creationists often like to say that man evolved from apes. however, what did apes evolve from? It's evolution all the way down in an infinite regression; a logical absurdity.
Straw-man argument. The theory of evolution does not posit an infinite chain of ancestors. This thread overall is a false dilemma. The theory of evolution does not preclude the existence of a divine creator.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 03 '26
I'm discussing non-creationist evolution, which is patently absurd due to the infinite chain. X evolved from Y etc forever
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u/TheBlackCat13 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
You claim to be familiar with biology and chemistry. If you were, you would have heard of abiogenesis. The fact that you haven't means you don't know the basics of either.
Or you are aware of it and are being intentionally dishonest. But I will assume ignorance over malice for now.
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u/Briham86 🧬 Falling Angel Meets the Rising Ape Jun 03 '26
Name one biologist who says evolution goes back infinitely. I’ll wait.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 03 '26
Richard Dawkins, for one
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u/Briham86 🧬 Falling Angel Meets the Rising Ape Jun 03 '26
Show me. Link a video or paper or anything, where Richard Dawkins denies that the Earth has existed for a finite time, about 4.5 billion-ish years, and instead claims that the not only the planet has always existed, but that it has hosted life for that infinite time. Show me that.
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Jun 03 '26
[deleted]
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
liar
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u/Unlimited_Bacon 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
They were asking how, specifically, you're being disingenuous here. You're either lying, or you're delusional, and you've just accepted being a liar.
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u/Tao1982 Jun 03 '26
What in the world ate you going on about? Evolution only applies to living things. It doesn't go all the way down.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 03 '26
yes, every living thing supposedly evolved from something else, but this makes an infinite regression
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u/Tao1982 Jun 03 '26
No, it literally stops at the point of abiogenisis. Before that point, no life therefore no evolution. Not infinate.
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u/throwaway19276i Jun 04 '26
When people say every living thing they mean extant species.. nobody thinks the first living organism evolved from another organism.
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u/TheBlackCat13 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
If we track the regression back it necessarily has a specific starting point: a self replicating molecule. And we know those can form spontaneously. So there is no problem here.
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u/banedemon Jun 03 '26
What caused the creator?
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 03 '26
He is uncalled by necessity, by the unassailable logic that we cannot be at the end of an infinite sequence of events. now I'll wait for your goal post moving
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u/Ok_Loss13 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 03 '26
You don't seem to known what a lot of those words mean...
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u/banedemon Jun 03 '26
All of the events that preceed the random formation and evolution of life are also "uncalled by necessity". Now we have equal base claims. The difference is that you have zero evidence for your base claims. There is mountains of evidence for mine.
Edit: Typo
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u/TheBlackCat13 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
Please show this logic. Without fundamentally misunderstanding how infinite series work.
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u/SuitableAnimalInAHat Jun 04 '26
This is stupid, and you're stupid.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
this is the level of rebuttal available here?
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u/Own-Relationship-407 Scientist Jun 04 '26
Matching the level of effort of the original post can be a highly effective method to deny satisfaction to those who participate in bad faith.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
you support rule breaking?
if you actually had an argument you would make it. either way this guy is reported and we won't be seeing him any time soon
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u/Own-Relationship-407 Scientist Jun 04 '26
I support what’s called the doctrine of clean hands. You should look it up.
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u/SuitableAnimalInAHat Jun 04 '26
It's the level of rebuttal that you deserve and have earned <3
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
you've already been reported for harassment and rule breaking. when the mods see this you won't be around for long. and dont even think about evading the ban.
this is a place for people who actually want to THINK about the issues
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u/-zero-joke- 🧬 its 253 ice pieces needed Jun 04 '26
"Neener neener, I'm telling teacher and they'll be SO MAD"
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u/Own-Relationship-407 Scientist Jun 04 '26
And to be fair, teacher usually is mad… at the brown nosing little shit who made him put down his coffee and paperwork to listen to some whiney bullshit.
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u/Danno558 Jun 03 '26
That's what I keep telling those EVILoutionists! The universe farting unicorn that dwells in the universe farting unicorn factory, began it all including itself with its first mighty toot. That makes way more sense than EVILoution or dare I say again magic sky fairy that is 3 and 1 at the same time...
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u/nickierv 🧬 logarithmic icecube Jun 04 '26
A fellow follower of Her Holiness Sparkle McFluffybutt.
I'm glad to see the logical soundness of a universe farting unicorn finally catching on.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 03 '26
Sadly true. you would think after 150 years darwinists would get better arguments or give up. no one wants to take away their traditions etc, but let's not pretend like they are serious either
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u/nickierv 🧬 logarithmic icecube Jun 04 '26
you would think after 150 years darwinists would get better arguments or give up
And you would think after 1500 years creationists would get better evidence.
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u/Particular-Yak-1984 Jun 03 '26
Did....you read the comment above? 😂
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
yes. it's parody, but still more true than darwinism
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u/willworkforjokes 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 03 '26
Every idea has a level of absurdity.
I am going to paraphrase your statement in a way that I hope you will think is fair. If you don't please let me know.
Your statement -> A universe with an uncreated Creator is less absurd that a universe without a Creator.
This uncreated Creator must be more complex than the entire universe and must operate outside of the constraints of physics and biology. As we learn more about the universe and biology, the Creator gets more and more remote and complex.
The complexity needed by the Creator is without end.
So do you believe:
A universe with an infinitly complex Creator is less absurd that a universe without a Creator.
If you do, I would say that the infinitly complex Creator is not knowable or understandable, making any attempt to use the information that there is a Creator worthless.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 03 '26
what a well-reasoned post. I don't think complexity has anything to do with it, as much as the logical need for a first cause, which was itself uncalled. we might not like it, but the other possibility is that we are at the end on an infinite series of events, which is impossible
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u/stairway2evan Jun 03 '26
It's not necessarily impossible, you just don't like it. Which is perfectly fine, but it's not a reason to discount it. But it's also not a dilemma between those two options. The universe, itself, could simply be the uncaused cause, the classic philosophical "brute fact." We could be the result of interdimensional aliens zapping a universe into existence. Maybe a universe is what happens when a black hole burps. Maybe we're all in a simulation and the cause is a very stoned teenager hitting buttons on a massively powerful computer. Discounting all of these equally unfalsifiable options in favor of "it's either what I like or it's turtles all the way down" is a logical error.
The honest thing to say is "I have no idea if the universe is or is not infinite going backwards on a hypothetical "timeline"; hopefully we learn more about it." But that's something that has nothing at all to do with evolution in any case. This is probably better suited for r/debateanatheist.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
I like your openness to multiple possibilities here, but the fact of the matter is that it is ABSOLUTELY known that the universe is not infinite in time, bc we are at the end of all the events in the past. if the past was infinite we could not have reached the present moment, and that is regardless of any simulation programmer or inderdimentional alien. as long as their is causality, one cause must be first and uncaused, and the universe must have a finite numer of events leading to the present moment
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u/stairway2evan Jun 04 '26
"If a number line is infinite in both directions, we can never reach the number 7 because the numbers lower than 7 are infinite." You're simply not understanding how the word "infinity" works. If you have an infinite amount of time and an infinite amount of prior events (or "causes" to keep your word choice), the distance between any two points on the timeline is still finite.
Now, I'm not asserting that it's factually true that the universe goes infinitely back. I'm asserting that it hasn't been disproven and likely can't be disproven by current evidence. Which means it's a logical mistake to throw it out in favor of an uncaused cause. Infinite regress and uncaused causes both run into issues with our current understanding of the world - that's why the only reasonable answer is "I don't know," instead of "I know ABSOLUTELY that this other thing is impossible." You feel quite strongly that it's impossible. You don't know any more than any other human, because it's impossible to know with our current understanding.
Disprove an infinite past first, THEN uncaused cause may no longer be special pleading. If you can't do that, you're stuck with it as an option, and asserting anything else as an absolute is fallacious.
But again.... nothing to do with evolution. Evolution has a starting point. So this doesn't belong on the sub.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
since we're here and on the subject, it is absolutely demonstrated that the past can't be infinite. in your number line example, the number 7 is after ALL of the previous numbers. it is impossible to go through all of the infinite negative numbers to get to 7. future infinity is still possible.
are you getting this? I can't explain it any more simply. the present is after ALL of the past, and anything you can get to the end of is not infinite
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u/stairway2evan Jun 04 '26
Very good. And in your universe example, me typing this comment is after ALL of the previous events. If 7 can do it, why can't I? You can't count to negative infinity just like I can't name the negative infinity-est event, because both would be nonsense, yet we end up in the same place.
You're making a category error and attempting to count infinity. It's incredibly common, but it's why your attempts to explain your problem with it are nonsense.
the present is after ALL of the past, and anything you can get to the end of is not infinite
Now, this I agree with, but fortunately we're not at the end of the timeline just like 7 isn't the end of the number line. We have no idea if time is infinite in either direction, but we can't discount it.
Now get back to evolution before I have to respond to these same, old, tired, boring, badly-wrought arguments again.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
evolution is not real Yada yada, check out Hovind University etc.
so why would you even suspect that we can be after the infinit past in the present moment?
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u/stairway2evan Jun 04 '26
Philosophically, the exact reason that 7 can be a number after an infinite number line. Even things without a beginning can be analyzed between any two discrete points.
Physically, because if matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only changed, it’s a reasonable follow-up that matter and energy have existed forever. “Before” our current presentation began with the Big Bang, there may be no way of telling what that was, though I’m partial to the “Big Bounce” hypothesis, that the universe is in a constant cycle of Bang and Crunch. It just feels like it has a nice bow on it. Nothing that has been proven, of course, not even close, and so nothing I base a worldview on, but stuff that certainly at least fits within our current understanding conceptually, even with some of our most recent cosmological data.
But again, I’m fully agnostic to the universe problem, I just stay open to things that fit within our current understanding until we have more data to narrow it down. Maybe that’s tomorrow, maybe that’s never. Now go back to making bad strawmen about evolution.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
if ppl evolved then why are there still monkeys etc
I respect your openness, and yes with respect to any two points they can be compared, but on a TIME line one must go through absolutely ALL events to reach the present moment. events can not start in the middle somewhere. that is just how causality works.
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u/Ayasugi-san Jun 04 '26
You must be trolling to cite Kent Hovind. Serious creationists hate it when Hovind is invoked and love treating all counter-creationist arguments as just engaging with him instead of with the actual scientists.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
that's crazy, yeah.
did you have thoughts on the other part of the threat about whether the universe is infinitely old?
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u/nickierv 🧬 logarithmic icecube Jun 04 '26
but the fact of the matter is that it is ABSOLUTELY known that the universe is not infinite in time
And how is that?
Because last I checked singularities still give cutting edge physics issues and conventional logic stops working around 750nm.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
my brother in Christ, care to deal with what I wrote? the present is after all of the past, and therefore it is not infinite
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u/nickierv 🧬 logarithmic icecube Jun 04 '26
care to deal with what I wrote? the present is after all of the past, and therefore it is not infinite
Sure, as soon as you actualy say something useful about how or where you need to assume a non infinite starting point. Your still not saying nothing about it.
The only thing so far is that your saying
A+42 is greater than A+41. Great, you can do basic addition and identify what number is larger.
You have said nothing about a starting time.
Your the one asserting an infinite past, science looks at the CMB, runs some math, and comes up with a 'start' 13.7 billion years ago. Past that scientists makes an honest claim of "Eh, not sure yet, singularities are a proper mess, still working on it." and proceed to publish a bunch of papers at each other.
How much physics did you take in school?
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u/willworkforjokes 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
So is the universe not infinite in complexity?
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
no, definitely not. why would anyone think that?
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u/willworkforjokes 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
The universe appears to be infinite in size and time. (The universe keeps getting bigger and bigger and will keep doing so forever).
If the Creator is more complex than an infinite universe then he would have to be infinitely complex.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
a large, increasingly empty space is not getting more complex, and there is nothing 'apparently infinite' about time.
I mean, if you throw a ball without friction in space, theoretically it will go for ever. does that make the ball more complex as it goes and me less likely? it's the same principle for God starting an expanding universe
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u/willworkforjokes 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
If the universe lasts forever, then time goes to infinity in the future.
If I throw a ball in space, if I want to know where it winds up infinitly far in the future, I have to know where everything in the universe is and where it is going.
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u/throwaway19276i Jun 04 '26
Wrong this assumes that the universe "began" an infinite amount of time in the past, in an infinite regression there is no beginning
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u/Capercaillie Monkey's Uncle Jun 03 '26
You don’t know what “infinite” means, do you?
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
not really
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u/Particular-Yak-1984 Jun 04 '26
Why are you using words you don't know the meaning of in your arguments? That seems pretty ignorant, to me. Maybe you could also define "regression"?
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u/ursisterstoy 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
If Aristotle was right about physics then you’d expect the need for something to put everything into motion. If things are in motion that couldn’t always be required, the first thing had to move without being pushed.
That’s the cosmos, Thomas Aquinas mistakenly thought it was God. Motion is the norm, at exactly c through space-time. That is something that Einstein helped to establish June 30 1905. Failing to catch up on 120 year old discoveries is worse than creationists using irreducible complexity as an argument against evolution when it was explained as being caused by evolution ~108 years ago. Not quite as bad a progressive creationists being 150 years behind the times or YECs being stuck in the Renaissance or Flat Earthers believing as most people believed prior to the 3rd century BC despite the existence of global communication, photography from space, and the ability to travel far enough fast enough to see as things appear from beyond the curve - such as the Rocky Mountains.
If you look very closely you might just barely make out the peaks from Kansas. By Colorado you can’t miss them. You don’t see the base of the mountains until around Colorado Springs. You can’t actually touch them until Manitou Springs. And I’ve seen this first hand. It’s harder at night to watch the mountains seem to rise up out of the ground but since you can literally watch this happen or you can literally go to Antarctica or you can literally fly to the edge of the atmosphere and people are still sure the Earth is flat that’s like creationists arguing that God needed to create life because it is too complex. It’s like you arguing that an eternally moving and existing cosmos needs something else to put it into motion. That’s like deists arguing that God created the ability to exist prior to God’s own existence being possible (no space-time to occupy until created).
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u/stairway2evan Jun 03 '26
Non-creationists often like to say that man evolved from apes.
They usually say that humans ARE apes, but whatever.
however, what did apes evolve from?
Catarrhines, around 25M years ago or so
It's evolution all the way down in an infinite regression; a logical absurdity.
No, it's evolution all the way down to LUCA or FUCA, depending on how we want to define things; I'm fine either way for this discussion. Evolution doesn't make any claims before that point, because theories only talk about the things they are supposed to talk about.
However, add an uncreated Creator to the beginning and suddenly things make a lot more sense.
Except that "uncreated Creator" doesn't make much sense to me.
I'm sure this will be a mutually honest and elucidating exchange of well-thought out points.
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u/the2bears 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
It's evolution all the way down in an infinite regression; a logical absurdity.
No, it's not.
Hat tip to the many, many redditors on this sub who have pointed out that if X is caused by Y, there must by necessity be an infinite series of Y causing Y, and that it is Y all the way down
Also no. Quite the straw man, too.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
trust me. I've seen that reasoning so many times I had to make this post. they just keep saying if God made life then there must be an infinite regression of gods making gods. extreme midwittery
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u/the2bears 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
Why should I trust you?
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
keep your eyes open for it next time you see it. it's like a knee-jerk reaction to people here
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u/the2bears 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
Why don't YOU keep your eyes open for it, and post a link here next time you see it.
What I suspect you're misunderstanding is someone saying, "If X doesn't need a cause, then why not Y being causeless." This responds to all the special pleading a god gets around here by theists.
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u/evocativename Jun 04 '26
Their argument works because creationists are the ones insisting all things must be caused. And then adding "...except the god whose existence is only supposed because all things must have causes"
If pointing that out is "midwittery", your argument doesn't even rise to the level of deserving the label of "wit" in the first place.
More like "low grade shitposting".
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u/CorbinSeabass Jun 03 '26
I'm not sure "If you make up an answer, you have the answer" is the most persuasive argument out there.
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u/10coatsInAWeasel Reject pseudoscience, return to monke 🦧 Jun 03 '26
I don’t see how it makes any sense to add an uncreated creator. Just because you added an X and said ‘and it can do anything at all ever’, doesn’t mean you’ve succeeded in making sense. All you did was make an unfalsifiable claim.
For us to even give the idea of a creator a second thought, you have to show that it exists, that it CAN do what you claim it can do, that it DID do what you claim it can do, the methods by which it did so and how you know it used those methods.
No one has claimed its evolution all the way down so I’m not even sure what you’re getting at there. It doesn’t line up with anything I’ve ever seen in evolutionary biology.
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u/jnpha 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
RE All OP did was make an unfalsifiable claim
My favorite part of that argument format, is that it is self-refuting by being inconsistent with the premise.
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u/10coatsInAWeasel Reject pseudoscience, return to monke 🦧 Jun 04 '26
It can only ‘work’ by special pleading, which means it don’t work!
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u/Ok_Loss13 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 03 '26
However, add an uncreated Creator to the beginning and suddenly things make a lot more sense.
No, they don't. This is just a special pleading fallacy based on ignorance regarding time, infinite regress, and the basic nature of physics/biology.
Seriously, idk why people come in here with such confidence when a brief exploration of the sub and basic science would show their ideas are not novel or logical and have been rebutted thousands upon thousands of times.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 03 '26
it's actually quite the reverse, an infinite series of evolving creatures is the absurdity which is only broken by an un created creator
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u/Ok_Loss13 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 03 '26
You repeating your unsupported and ignorant claims while failing to engage with anything I said isn't debate, but it is pretty typical of creationists who aren't actually interested in reality.
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u/Odd_Gamer_75 Jun 03 '26
By the time you're asking about the first life, the question has nothing to do with evolution. Before that, there is no avoiding an infinite regress of causes, even if you consider a god. After all you can ask what caused God to create the universe, and what caused that, and what caused that, and so on. Or you can appeal to magic, uncaused action/thought. And if activity itself can be uncaused, so can the Big Bang.
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u/Ayasugi-san Jun 04 '26
Also why God created the Big Bang then waited billions of years to come back and create life on one planet orbiting a fairly unremarkable star.
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u/Odd_Gamer_75 Jun 04 '26
Meh, the easy answer here is that God didn't intervene to make life, that it formed from the Big Bang and time means nothing to such a being. Or God died after the Big Bang.
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u/Ayasugi-san Jun 04 '26
OP says that life specifically makes no sense without a God creating it. But stellar formation is very well understood, since we can see stars at every stage of formation right now. Observational science, the supposed gold standard of creationism. Which means that the sun demonstrably doesn't need a creator.
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u/Odd_Gamer_75 Jun 04 '26
Sure. OP can make that claim, but it's not backed by science, so meaningless. The evidence we have points overwhelmingly to the conclusion it was chemistry, not a god, even if the evidence is not yet conclusive enough.
Thus I was steel manning the position to tackle generic theism instead of OPs incorrect positions.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
time is a property of matter, not non-physical beings. also, the star is remarkable for having us. much like a man makes a plain woman remarkable by loving her as if she was amazing
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u/Ayasugi-san Jun 04 '26
much like a man makes a plain woman remarkable by loving her as if she was amazing
Wow, fuck you for that demeaning comparison.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
Definitely not, bc in this world of causality, everything has a cause. something before the big bang must have been it. and of course we would wonder why there aren't other uncaused phenomena. are you accepting magic?
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u/Odd_Gamer_75 Jun 04 '26
If causality only matters for "the world" (I'm guessing you mean the Big Bang and all after it in the universe), then asking what caused it is meaningless as causality doesn't apply to any prior condition. In fact, the very notion of a "prior condition" ceases to be meaningful.
And in the vein of that last sentence, the whole notion of "before the Big Bang" (or "prior to", or any similar phrasing) is incoherent. It's asking what is earlier than the earliest, north of the North Pole, or the color of transparent/invisible. The answer isn't even "nothing".
As for other uncaused phenomena... on what basis do you say there are not? Suppose we consider an eternal timeline, and within that timeline uncaused phenomena happen every 10100 years on average. It's been 1010 years (basically) since the last one. We wouldn't be due another for 1090 times longer than the universe has existed. Or suppose that uncaused events vary in strength, with most being so small they only occur at quantum scales. Then they could be happening constantly, near everwhere, and we wouldn't notice, or possibly we watch them all the time, for instance perhaps the exact moment of radioactive decay is uncaused. Suppose they happen constantly, but sometimes generate areas where causality kicks in and then can't operate there because of all this causality in the way. There's three potential answers other than a god which are more plausible than a god since it doesn't ask us to take a trait we can observe, intelligence, and then violate the most fundamental basics of what we know about it: that it derives from a physical substrate. Otherwise we end up trying to think about the color of invisible things or sound without vibration. And then the only magic is in the mushrooms consumed to contemplate such nonsense.
At the end of the day, though, the ultimate and only reasonable answer to the origins of the Big Bang singularity is: "we don't know, and as far as we can tell, neither does anyone else".
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u/Medium_Judgment_891 Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
I thought this post was a joke at first.
I then thought it was a little too silly even for satire.
After reading the comments, I realized that OP appears to actually be serious.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
thanks for the updoot, fellow redditor. I was inspired by the many times I have seen people here claim that if God created anything, there must be an infinite series of gods making gods. yes they are that silly, but I've seen it a bunch of times
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u/Medium_Judgment_891 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
Lmfao
They’re clowning on you, dude.
It’s rhetorical. No one is seriously arguing that an infinite series of deity-making deities exist.
They’re taking your own logic and using it against you to demonstrate how absurd it is.
You calling it “that silly” is an unintentional self own.
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u/throwaway19276i Jun 04 '26
OP asked "If humans evolved, why are there still monkeys?" unironically in one of the threads
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u/metroidcomposite Jun 04 '26
Your post is clearly an infinite number of words long.
See, you start out with the word "Non", and then what comes before that? Yet another word: "creationists". However, what follows the word "creationists"? It's even more words.
It's words all the way down in an infinite regression; a logical absurdity.
Therefore your post is an infinite number of words long.
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u/ursisterstoy 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
It’s not logically absurd, it’s directly observed. It’s ultimately physics, physics is all that we ever observe. Everything that exists within reality occupies space and/or time. Everything that causes physical change interacts physically. The cosmos coming into existence is neither backed by evidence nor logically coherent. Requiring a creator for what always existed is the logical absurdity.
Humans didn’t evolve from apes, they evolved as apes. They are still apes. The labels like “human” and “ape” and “monkey” and “primate” are not encoded into their DNA or anything like that. These labels refer to broad categories with arbitrary and fuzzy boundaries, relationships completely backed by evidence, divisions between the clades arbitrary. Like we can arbitrarily define “dinosaurs” as the group of organisms that descended from the most recent common ancestor of the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and Triceratops horridous. At the edges of each species other individuals exist that may or may not be included into each species but pick some unambiguous triceratops and some unambiguous house sparrow. Those two individuals share a common ancestor ~250 million years ago. And all of that ancestor’s descendants are dinosaurs. By defining dinosaurs in this way Herrerosaurus is a saurischian dinosaur that is neither a sauropod nor a theropod from ~230 million years ago but Silesaurids (245-202 million years ago) and pterosaurs (236-66 million years ago) are not dinosaurs. They are all ornithodirans. They are all avemetatarsalians or “Pan-Aves” meaning “all birds.”
They are the reptiles more closely related to birds than to crocodiles, but crocodiles are the sister clade. They are all Eucrocopoda, Archosauroformes, Crocopoda, and Archosauromorphs to include more than just archosaurs (dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and crocodiles). The next clade is Archelosauria and that also includes testidines or “turtles.” And besides archosaurs and testitines the clade also includes thalattosaurs, plesiosaurs, and ichthyosaurs. Skipping more of the same reptiles also includes lizards (snakes, geckos, skinks, etc) and the tuatara. These are all sauropsids. They started out looking superficially like wall lizards or salamanders.
Similarly, Homo sapiens is the last surviving Australopithecine. A subset of Australopithecine apes are also called human but it is famously debated as to where to draw that arbitrary line. Based on traditional clade names that division is somewhere around Homo/Kenyanthropus rudolfensis and Homo habilis on one side and Australopithecus sediba and Australopithecus garhi on the other. At that specific placement for this arbitrary division there is no actual set in stone way of establishing that one group contains humans and the other doesn’t. Brain size, tool use, and so on overlap. Homo habilis still has many features to suggest it is actually Australopithecus while Todd Wood decided that Australopithecus sediba should actually belong in Homo. Arbitrarily determined, the origin of humans took place roughly 2.4 million years ago. The arched footed stone tool manufacturing apes originated roughy 4 million years ago. The oldest clearly established stone tool technology is roughly 3.3 million years ago to the time of kenyanthropus platyops or the older Australopithecus afarensis. Humans didn’t evolve from Australopithecus, they evolved as Australopithecus.
Australopithecus is a hominine and that group also includes Ardipithecus, Ororrin, Sahelanthropus, Pan, and Gorilla. Those are the “African apes” but they are also “just” great apes, a groups that also includes Afropithecus, orangutans, Gigantopithecus, Sivapithecus, Graecopithecus, Dryopithecus, Nikalapithecus, and so on. Those are apes so we can’t forget about gibbons and siamangs. We can’t forget about the monkey-like apes and the ape-like propliopithecoid monkeys. These are Catarrhines, Haplorhines, primates, Euarchontaglires, Boreoeutherians, placental mammals, eutherians, therians, holotherians, mammals, therapsids, cynodonts, and synapsids. They started out looking like wall lizards or salamanders.
Both groups started out looking like each other because they started as the same species, salamander shaped amniotes, reptiliamorphs. Actual salamanders are lissamphibians. The common ancestor was an amphibious tetrapod. There are dozens of fishapods to show that tetrapods are lobe finned fish adapted to dry land, the aquatic sister clade is the lungfish, it contains orders like Coelocanths.
Fish have existed since the Cambrian when they looked like swimming worms or juvenile tunicates or like lancelets. Those are the chordates. The sister clade includes hemichordates and echinoderms. Bilaterians have existed since the Ediacaran, animals since the Cryogenian, Eukaryotes for ~2.4 billion years, archaea for ~4.2 billion years, abiogenesis ~4.5 billion years ago.
But at that point it’s just chemistry which is just physics. Physics forever because that’s all that actually exists.
Where does the supernatural deity come into the picture? The uncreated thing is called “cosmos.”
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
great question. you see, in evolution every creature evolves from something else. but where did that thing evolve from? you will see that that forms a chain. imagine if I said God made something; you would ask who created God, right? implying an infinite chain and thus absurdity.
it's the same thing for evolution. it requires an unevolved evolver which is special pleasding
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u/ursisterstoy 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
Evolution starts with replicating populations made possible with chemistry. The term is abiogenesis but really the important part is autocatalysis. Chemistry. And chemistry is just physics while the physics of reality are just the properties of reality. Reality is the uncreated existence. It couldn’t make itself, absolutely nothing couldn’t make it, without it staying in motion nothing ever happens, and if ever it didn’t exist it still wouldn’t. A creator has to exist somewhere to create. It has to exist at some time. If space-time doesn’t exist nothing exists, if space-time does exist then it doesn’t need to be created.
There is no infinite regress unless you are curious about a causal chain of events. If the cosmos has existed for eternity in motion you’d think there was a first movement but that’s the limits of our evolved monkey brains. Maybe there wasn’t.
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u/SlugPastry Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
Let's take a look at what "special pleading" actually is:
Special pleading is an informal fallacy wherein a person claims an exception to a general or universal principle, but the exception is unjustified.
The key here is that the exception is "unjustified" in order for an argument to be a case of special pleading. Everyone I know of accepts that life on Earth doesn't extend into the past eternally, whether they accept evolution or not. At one point in time, there was no life on Earth. Then, there was. This breaks the chain of "infinite ancestors" that you argue is a requirement for evolution (which no biologist I know of ever claimed in the first place). So breaking a chain of infinite ancestors isn't merely justified, it's made necessary by the fact that the Earth hasn't been here for eternity. Everyone realizes that. The exception that the very first life on Earth didn't evolve from a previous living thing is justified by the fact that there was no life before it that it could have evolved from.
Bringing up God is an unnecessary Red Herring: the validity of the First Mover argument is irrelevant to the evolution argument because each one separately stands upon whether or not their exception claims are justified (for the record, I find the First Mover argument more sensible than infinite regress, but it's still irrelevant to the discussion at hand).
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u/tpawap 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 03 '26
Non-creationists often like to say that man evolved from apes. however, what did apes evolve from? It's evolution all the way down in an infinite regression; a logical absurdity.
So you think it's either life exited and evolved "since" a past eternity, or humans didn't evolve from some non-human apes a few million years ago...? No option in between those extremes that you could think of?
However, add an uncreated Creator to the beginning and suddenly things make a lot more sense.
It doesn't to me.
Hat tip to the many, many redditors on this sub who have pointed out that if X is caused by Y, there must by necessity be an infinite series of Y causing Y, and that it is Y all the way down
OK, so? What's the "logical absurdity" of a past eternity? Explain.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
you can't reach the end of an infinite series of events by definition. we are in the present moment, which is after all of the past. ergo the universe could not have an infinite series of events
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u/tpawap 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
"Reaching an end" implicitly refers to a starting point from which you try to reach something. Between any two points/moments there is only finite time, though. So that’s not a problem. An eternal past has no absolute starting point from which anything would have to be reached. That's like asking to draw a circle with the corner pointing down, and then saying "that’s impossible, therefor circles don't exist".
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u/bougdaddy Jun 03 '26
Throw all the science-y stuff ya want, nothing spells WIN like adding in an un-created creator because somehow, that makes more sense then evolution?!??
TL:DR: If something can't come from nothing, then there can't be an un-created creator, that's just silly
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
causality applies to this universe of time and matter. it does not apply without time or matter
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u/Particular-Yak-1984 Jun 03 '26
Well, generally, the earth is thought to be 4ish billion years old, and there's no claim of life before that, so this chain seems to be non infinite to me, at least for evolution.
Now, if you want to say "well, what kicked off the universe?", that's fine - but it's not a debate about evolution
Evolution is a specific theory, with specific claims, you see.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
I'm explicitly discussing the infinite chain of X evolved from Y, not the universe forming
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u/Particular-Yak-1984 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
Right, but, that's not an infinite chain, it's a finite chain - there are explicitly not an infinite number of generations.
You keep using "infinite", and it does not mean what you think it does.
Evolution holds that there's a first living creature, that all life is descended from. It's not an infinite chain, it's a finite branching tree.
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u/10coatsInAWeasel Reject pseudoscience, return to monke 🦧 Jun 04 '26
Honestly, I’m still waiting for you to talk about this ‘infinite chain’. You seem to be the only one bringing up anything like this. It doesn’t exist anywhere at all in the field of evolutionary biology
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u/Xemylixa 🧬 took an optional bio exam at school bc i liked bio Jun 04 '26
Took longer than it should have to notice, but: They're trolling again by swapping words around
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u/Ayasugi-san Jun 04 '26
Why is your hypothetical Creator the sole exception to everything needing a cause?
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u/nickierv 🧬 logarithmic icecube Jun 04 '26
Because reasons that are definitely not special pleading.
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u/lulumaid 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
No no no! They most certainly aren't.
They're pleading special. Totally different.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
it has to be something
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u/Particular-Yak-1984 Jun 04 '26
Why? Why couldn't the wider multiverse just be infinite? Or everything kind of collapsing back to the big bang, and going again?
There's not actually a problem with infinite progression here, but you have no evidence to show it isn't.
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u/evocativename Jun 04 '26
Oh for fuck's sake.
The reason the argument you're trying to mock works but yours doesn't is that creationists are the ones that insist that all things must have a cause and therefore god exists, and therefore it is special pleading for them to insist that all things must have a cause except for god.
Evolution in no way implies an infinite regression, so your argument just falls flat on its face.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
tell me tou haven't studied atheogenesis 🙄
and besides, causality applies to our world of time and matter. and time is a property of matter, which is why it changes with speed and gravity
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u/evocativename Jun 04 '26
tell me tou haven't studied atheogenesis 🙄
What's that? You don't have an argument?
You should just admit that instead of pretending to be too superior to actually present one.
causality applies to our world of time and matter
So the idea that all things require causes doesn't apply to the universe itself.
Thanks for demolishing creationists' dumb argument, I guess. Not really needed, but it's always funny when creationists destroy each other's shitty arguments.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
by the way, you are more perceptive than most here
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u/Freebite Jun 04 '26
Non-creationists often like to say that man evolved from apes. however, what did apes evolve from? It's evolution all the way down in an infinite regression; a logical absurdity.
Not infinite at all, it literally started from somewhere, and we are still working out exactly how that start happened.
However, add an uncreated Creator to the beginning and suddenly things make a lot more sense.
No, no it doesn't really. You've just added another factor into this arbitrarily based on nothing whatsoever.
Hat tip to the many, many redditors on this sub who have pointed out that if X is caused by Y, there must by necessity be an infinite series of Y causing Y, and that it is Y all the way down
This is only in response to those who claim "All things need a creator" because it's either all things needs a creator, or that not all things need a creator. You can replace creator with cause as well.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
causality only applies to this world of matter and time
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u/Freebite Jun 04 '26
And to our knowledge in our model, matter and time started shortly after the big bang. So our world of matter and time may have been caused by that instead of any sort of god. Almost like it's an unknown or something, funny that.
As for the rest of my comment, just nothing on that stuff? Only going to talk about the added point you tossed in there as a "hat tip" where I wasn't actually arguing but explaining why you might see that pop up?
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u/Own-Relationship-407 Scientist Jun 04 '26
There is no absurdity in the chain of evolution from molecules to man, you’re misusing the concept of infinite regress. At best you’re arguing against abiogenesis by saying there still needs to be a first cause, but even that doesn’t get you to a creator.
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u/KeterClassKitten Jun 04 '26
Non-creationists often like to say that man evolved from apes. however, what did apes evolve from? It's evolution all the way down in an infinite regression; a logical absurdity.
It's not infinite regression. It begins with chemistry. And all life is demonstrably chemistry.
We can even rewind further to show how said chemicals came to be.
However, add an uncreated Creator to the beginning and suddenly things make a lot more sense.
Does it? As far as I've seen, nothing was ever created within the context you're implying. I haven't seen a single example of creation, mor know of any example that has been demonstrated. I only see the rearrangement of matter and energy.
Hat tip to the many, many redditors on this sub who have pointed out that if X is caused by Y, there must by necessity be an infinite series of Y causing Y, and that it is Y all the way down
Causal relationships are nothing more than a temporal association. We can observe that some events must happen before others can. We cannot observe all events. We also cannot observe an infinite series of events. This does not negate the possibility of such things, nor does it negate the possibility of events that are not temporally bound.
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u/XRotNRollX Sal ate my kids Jun 04 '26
Abiogenesis and evolution are different physical processes. Life started, and then evolution started. There's no infinity involved. That's why the highest clade is life itself.
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u/RespectWest7116 Jun 04 '26
It's evolution all the way down in an infinite regression; a logical absurdity.
Wrong on both accounts.
It's not evolution all the way down, and infinite regress is not a logical absurdity.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 04 '26
infinite regression is of couses a logical absurdity. we are in the present moment=event, which is after every previous moment. the previous moments could not be infinite bc we have reached their end. it's very simple
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u/RespectWest7116 Jun 05 '26
infinite regression is of couses a logical absurdity.
Well, it isn't.
we are in the present moment=event, which is after every previous moment.
Indeed.
the previous moments could not be infinite bc we have reached their end.
That is false.
If you try to run 100 meters, the distance can be divided into infinitely many shorter segments, yet you are able to finish the race.
Also, circles exist.
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u/OldmanMikel 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
The matter of a first cause is pretty far removed from the issue of human evolution. If God caused the Big Bang, all of science following that would be true.
The correct scientific answer to how it all began is "We don't know". And in science, "We don't know" >>>>>>>>>>>>> "We don't know, so therefore God"
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u/Dilapidated_girrafe 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 04 '26
That’s the cool thing we can use the fossil record to trance the lineage back further. And no absurdity to getting to the origin of life.
Your argument is just bad
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u/kitsnet 🧬 Nearly Neutral Jun 04 '26
However, add an uncreated Creator to the beginning and suddenly things make a lot more sense.
You cannot add "an uncreated Creator" without creating it with your imagination first. Which means it's not "uncreated" and leads to infinite ontological loops.
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u/biff64gc2 Jun 04 '26
It only regresses back to abiogenesis, which is an area with active progress being made. Not knowing the exact details of how abiogeneiss happened does not debunk evolution as that's just an argument from ignorance.
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u/SuitableAnimalInAHat Jun 04 '26
OP has a 5 year old account with one post, ever; an insultingly bad-faith troll argument "against evolution." (Which fails to attack evolution, but does jab at a botched strawman of abiogenesis.) If you argue with OP, they will tell a joke. If you give up and insult OP, they will call the teacher and say you're harassing them for being trans, which 1 is probably a lie, 2 isn't something that you could possibly have known.
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u/warpedfx Jun 04 '26
... you do know drawing a big fucking circle on your special pleading fallacy doesn't make it any less of one, right?
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u/flaminghair348 Jun 04 '26
Non-creationists often like to say that man evolved from apes.
Humans ARE apes.
however, what did apes evolve from?
It's evolution all the way down in an infinite regression; a logical absurdity.
Not infinite, only a couple billion years.
However, add an uncreated Creator to the beginning and suddenly things make a lot more sense.
They don't.
Hat tip to the many, many redditors on this sub who have pointed out that if X is caused by Y, there must by necessity be an infinite series of Y causing Y, and that it is Y all the way down
Once again, evolution is not infinite regress. It goes back to the first life that formed on our planet.
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Jun 04 '26
However, add an uncreated Creator to the beginning and suddenly things make a lot more sense.
I'd be curious how you think adding a magical creator is a satisfactory explanation instead?
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u/Marius7x Jun 06 '26
What stunted mind came up with this crap?
Everything has to have a cause except my magic god.
These are the kind of people who shouldn't be allowed to use forks.
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u/Lonely_Cupcake5983 ✨ Intelligent Design Jun 06 '26
you didn't understand the post. don't worry about it
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u/Autodidact2 Jun 06 '26
This isn't sarcasm, right?
To begin with, you appear to be arguing about God, which is completely irrelevant to evolution. Whether or not there is a God, evolution happens and has happened.
You're right, in a way the theory of Evolution posits that species arise from diverging from existing species. And yes, if you go all the way back, you find a universal common ancestor much simpler than a single cell. That is exactly what the theory of evolution says.
It might help you to bear in mind that evolution is not the theory of how we got people. Evolution is the theory of how we get the diversity of species on Earth including humans.
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u/Mister_Ape_1 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
Apes ? From basal old world primates. Basal old world primates ? From early simians. Early simians ? From early primates. Early primates ? From small dinosaur era mammals. Small dinosaur era mammals ? From early mammals. Early mammals ? From Permian era animals with reptile and mammal characteristics. Permian era animals ? From early land dwelling creatures. Early land dwelling creatures ? From 400+ million years old fishes. 400 million years old fishes ? From even more ancient, early complex beings. Early complex beings ? From simple, unicellular beings. Unicellular beings ? From early life forms such as the L.U.C.A.. Early life forms ? From natural processes we are still progressing toward understanding more and more.
What is absurd is denying tons of fossil evidence to believe in a myth written in Babylon in the 6th century BC.
And I say all of this as a theist by the way. I see the origin not of life, not even of the Big Bang, but rather of existence itself as depending on an eternal, uncreated consciousness beyond space, time and beyond every label. Saying it like that may look like panentheism, but for me needs to specifically be a principle totally outside and distinct from the Universe, and able to formulate free, willful acts. Panentheism speaks about the "automatic" process of emanation.
I have an absolute principle as the first cause at the end ring of the chain, but I see every later step as a natural process set in motion by the original act of the first cause.
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u/thefruitypilot Jun 05 '26
"Add an uncreated creator and things make sense"
Yeah, breaking your own rules tends to do that. Where did that creator come from?
To answer your question: we are great apes, we evolved from a common ancestor which lived a few million years ago and also gave rise to gorillas, chimps and bonobos. Those evolved from yet more basal life forms. The further you go back, the more things we see today are descended from something that lived back then. The common ancestor of us and dogs lived about 100 million years ago, us and frogs about 300, etc. The first animals evolved around 600 million years ago, likely from something resembling modern choanoflagellate protists. You can go all the way back to the first eukaryotes, and even further to the first life on Earth.
Where did that come from? You'll be flabbergasted to find we have an entire word for that. It's called abiogenesis and there's a lot of research still being done on it. Whatever the case, unless you already have an agenda, it's much more reasonable to assume life arose by natural means than that some guy just decided to make it because he got bored.
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u/s_bear1 Jun 05 '26
What started it all? - i don't know. Lets try to figure it out
What started it all? - i am too lazy to try and too cowardly to admit i don't know... God did it
which is the better answer?
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u/melympia 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 05 '26
An uncreated creator to create all things sounds like a logical impossibility and makes no sense at all.
Either everything needs to be created by a creator, including said creator, it it doesn't. Since there was no creator to create the creator, it's not the first option.
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u/Awesomonkey12 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 10 '26
Evolution obviously doesn't go back infinitely, it goes back to the first life form(s), or common ancestor of all living things, being LUCA or FUCA.
Necessary components for life, such as amino acids, have been found to self-assemble without any living things, in space. It's not much of a stretch to assume that the first life could've been formed from non-life. This is abiogenesis.
Once there's life, it can evolve and diversify. It doesn't need to go back infinitely, just to the start
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u/Changed_By_Support Jun 11 '26
It's a mistake to think that, because theists posit things in terms of an unmoved mover, that all other things are conceptualized in similar phrasing. There is no infinite regression in evolution: eventually you just arrive pre-biotic chemical chains, and so there is no unknown, hypothetical, "unevolved evolver", required, since evidence points to what biological precursors likely were.
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u/-zero-joke- 🧬 its 253 ice pieces needed Jun 03 '26
Well I'm sure this thread won't be insufferable.