Posted on 11/30/2004 3:53:55 PM PST by shubi
There are two parts to creationism. Evolution, specifically common descent, tells us how life came to where it is, but it does not say why. If the question is whether evolution disproves the basic underlying theme of Genesis, that God created the world and the life in it, the answer is no. Evolution cannot say exactly why common descent chose the paths that it did.
If the question is whether evolution contradicts a literal interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis as an exact historical account, then it does. This is the main, and for the most part only, point of conflict between those who believe in evolution and creationists.
(Excerpt) Read more at talkorigins.org ...
Archaeopteryx! OK, now click your heels together 3 times and say, "I wish I was in Kansas." That is an even better fantasy.
Look back in one of my previous posts for MY evolutionary professor who disagrees...kay, you guys boor me.
B: I did and already refuted it. First off, Feduccia does not, that I've read, claim Archeaopteryx is not a transitional form. Certainly the little snippet you provided doesn't indicate that. Feduccia argues that birds didn't evolve from theropods, but from a more primitive group of dinos known as, if memory serves me, Pelycosaurs. Second it is laughable to suggest that in order for science to come to a consensus all scientists must agree. In the case of the birds are dinos hypothesis, the overwelming majority of paleontologists as typified by the likes of Kevin Padian regard the issue as settled. The number of dissenters, like Feduccia, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. And given recent work on the development of bird embryos, Feduccia no longer has a supportable argument. He's an important scientist, so I figure eventually unless he comes up with a good argument to support his hypothesis, he'll eventually give up on it. Thats a hard thing to do when you've staked much of your professional career on it. There's no harm in being wrong, however.
B: Sorry, you still lose. But feel free to continue and play pretend you didn't read what I wrote.
"But macroevolution is more than just *speciation*. "
Not really. Since speciation is the only step from one "form" to another, it is only speciation that macroevolution describes. When you get into Genus and above it is simply multiple steps of divergence through speciation.
OK?
Dr. Jonathan Wells who wrote "Icons of Evolution" is on the Michael Medved show right now.
I think I understand macroevolution better than you do.
Besides being a minister, I am also a biologist.
Micro and macro are the same process. It is allele frequency changes in populations over time. Macro is simply the result of accumulations of micro changes.
IT IS THE SAME PROCESS!!! SAME!!!!!!!
B: I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Again parts of macroevolution do result from microevolution, speciation for example. But macroevolution sum toto, is not microevolution. Again, I strongly suggest you read the references I gave you. And the distinction between the two is not often stressed on the undergraduate level. I'm not a biologist. I'm a geophysicist who got his Ph.D. in the same Dept. where Steve Stanley teaches. So much of what I know about it came straight from one of the founders of macroevolutionary theory. If you want to argue that macroevolution is nothing more than an accumulation of microevolutionary changes, you'll continue to be in error. THis is true for speciation, but other processes like, mass extinctions, do not result from microevolutionary processes like drift or selection.
B: I realize that creationsits have greatly abused these terms, however, they are well defined by evolutionary biologists, and there's not point in ceeding our terminology because creationists have made a mess of it.
Indeed so, as a biblical literalist you are in opposition with so much observed reality (physics, astronomy, cosmology, geology, biology) that your rejection of evolution barely warrants a mention on the "head in the sand" scale.
I see that jehu's ad hominem nastiness is proportional to the perceived intelligence and knowledge of the person who he abuses^h^h^h^h^h^h "refutes". Jehu just can't handle BDK's command of the material so he resorts to abuse. Fortunately I am not clever and knowledgeable enough ever to have attracted that level of venom. "insufferable moron"! LOL.
That is your error.
Physics is not reality. A proton is.
Astronomy is not reality. Stars are.
Evolution is not reality. Mutation, birth, death, etc. are.
How do you know that protons exist and that stars are balls of hot gas like our sun? Theories of physics and astronomy tell us these things and many other things besides. You pick and choose the evidence that you want to accept according to whether it matches folk tales of bronze-age middle-eastern animal herders who were probably highly intelligent but had no conception of any of these things. They had myths that made sense to them but that make no sense in the light of modern physical knowledge.
Never claimed special creation is scientific, just that observable data fits it better than evolution. Now tell me something...Since man is related to the apes, and men descended from apes, and yet, when born, apes come out face up.
B: I'm not sure what Jehu is talking about here.
But humans come out face down. The mechanics and chemical signals and specifics for such a little thing as this is stupefying.
B: You haven't given any reasons why such a thing requires a large change in signals and specifics (whatever Jehu means by that). Perhaps it is simply that compared to chimp infants human babies have proportionally larger heads.
B: THere is no telling what creationists will say next. Every moment is like gift waiting to be unwrapped with these folks.
So did the axial rotation of how humans are born face down, versus face up happen all at once? Or by degrees?
B: Beats me. But it should be pointed out that enhanced encephlazation acquired during the course of hominid evolution did not occur all at once. Jehu again has nothing to offer other than his principle of "Personal Astonishment". All we get from Jehu is that " I can't figure out how this happened, ergo science must be wrong." Will somebody please inform Jehu, that the world doesn't revolve around him.
What is the advantage of babies only rotating one degree, or two or twenty? Knowing that with our large heads we could be crushed at birth if not situated in the birth canal...just so.
B: THis is precisely the same kind of muddled thinking that creationists always engage in. Again encephalazation was at best a step by step, if not a gradual process. Hence changes need to have occured all at once, one after the other, but concurrently. And to note, death during childbirth was a pox on humanity for a long time (it still is in many places). Indeed, did you think the designer couldn't have better made the female pelvis so that this wouldn't be necessary?
If all at once, what happened to barely discernible "natural selection?" If all at once, what accounts for such drastic change? Must have happened to some ape woman about 200,000 years ago.
B: Nobody says it happened all at once. Once again Jehu confuses his mishmash muddled thinking with scientific thinking.
And modern man "supposedly" being about 200,000 years old, has undergone spectacular, almost unbelievable changes:
True bipedalism
B: Again Jehu displays his abundant ignorance. Folks, I hope your paying careful attention here. Its not often one witnesses such ignornace coupled with hubris. It is a thing to behold.
B: True Bipedalism originated long before modern humans evolved. This is again one of those basic facts that Jehu continually gets wrong.
Tripling of brain size
B: Actually more than that. But following hominid evolution from Australopithicus to Homo Habilis to Homo Erectus to Archaic Homo Sapiens this increased brain size didn't occur all at once. Unfortunatley this increase in brain size did not benefit everybody.
Loss of fur or covering
B: That appears to relatively recent.
All the mechanics for human speech
B: What mechanics? Be specific. And post any information that claims what ever mechanics you're talking about had to happen all at once.
True opposable thumb
B: All primates have an opposable thumb. Opposable thumbs predate humans only by 65 million years.
An incredible firestorm of evolutionary change...practically natural selection working at the speed of light.
B: If one thinks 65 million years of primate evolution is "the speed of light".
Meanwhile at the same time:
Apes never change one iota.
B: Proof?
Cockroaches are still EXACTLY the same.
B: Proof?
Dolphins, sharks, whales...the same!
B: Proof? And aquatic mammals actually have a pretty good fossil record of their development. As evidence of your intellectual impotence you are writing blanks now.
Crocodiles...the same!
B: Proof?
( Rest of similar nonsense snipped)
I hope your kids are smarter, otherwise we are doomed, won't be able to change a light bulb in another 50 years under evolutionary teaching.
B: I hope yours are no smarter than you. Mine will need people to work for them.
You still haven't said why the falsifications suggested in Theobalds article wouldn't falsify ToE. (eg finding modern creatures in old strata, or finding some creature with completely different DNA, or DNA species comparisons coming out unexpectedly, or finding duplicated mutations that didn't fit the phylogenetic tree, or finding ancient creatures in the wrong strata) To continue to assert that ToE is not falsifiable without doing so labels you a liar.
You are wrong.
Yes, macroevolution does involve some other concepts but it all comes down to the same process. Mass extinctions also change the allele frequency.
Give me the steps from scales to feathers.
B: Recent experiments suggest not too many steps needed. Second, I'm under no obligation to list a number of steps. You however, have an obligation to prove it can't happen. Second recent experiments suggest this happened fairly quickly. Bird feathers and scales are formed from the same proteins. It also appears that they are governed by a similar genetic regulatory cascade. Have you not ever observed a chicken's leg? It has both scales and feathers. But none the less, keep telling us that there is no link between birds and dinos. You sound very convincing. Not.
B: A little later I'll post an experiment in which scales were inadvertantly converted to feathers. Scales and feathers are the same stuff, but in different forms.
YOU propose how that came about. Archeopteryx is a bird. Or if you prefer call it a reptile.
B: I prefer to call it a transtional bird. Thats what it is. Reptile is not a useful taxonomic rank.
You don't even know if it was cold blooded or warm.
B: Most likely warm blooded.
Or a thousand other things that would identify it as one or the other, or as something in between...it was lost with the DNA!
B: Well, you're right there. We don't have any archie DNA. But our genomes contain much flotsam and jetsam acquired during our evolutionary history, as do birds.
So my bird expert is just as good as any of your LABEL game experts,
B: Your bird expert is outside the mainstream of evolutionary thought when it comes to bird evolution. Furthemore, you still haven't documented that Feduccia has claimed that archie is not a transitional form. Your attempt at argument from authority has failed. Either give us some reasons why we should not accept archie as a transtional form, or move on to another argument.
no matter how much they stamp their evolved little hoofs and say, "it is settled!"
B: It is. Only Feduccia can decide for himself when it is time for him to abandon his failed hypothesis. The vast array or data, from comparative genetics, homologies with therapod dinos, cladistic analyses, embryology and the fossil record are so heavily in favor of the bird theropod-dino link, its not funny.
All you have are fossils, no DNA, you can only SAY it is a transitory species. It cannot be proven.
B: Proof not required in science. THis is science 101. Theories in general can't be proven, only falsified. The simple fact is, is that Archeaopteryx has features common to either therapod dinos or birds. By any meaningful defintion, it is a transitional form between major taxons. Birds don't have boney tails. Theropods too. Theropods don't have flight feathers. Birds do. Either present data which refutes that or move on. Arguing the "data is wrong" not a good scientific argument.
Once again the ability of ToE to have the only evidence in science that cannot be falsified is a marvelous mechanism to keep this circular logic machine alive.
B: To be clear, the problem Jehu is having, is not the evolution is unfalsifiable, but that evolution is so far unfalsified.
As I am only a poor engineer too I don't understand your objection to the words "per se", and I don't see why you couldn't use it when referring to energy destruction/conversion and could use it when referring to evolution. I thought it just meant "as such" but I must have missed some pejorative sense carried by "per se".
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