Posted on 02/13/2004 3:14:29 AM PST by The Raven
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:51:05 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
And "is"?
The more complex the organism, the more often you find features that have little to no survivability benefit - right down to the DNA.
I bet if you took a few moments of thought, you could come up with a couple examples in your own body. Not everything in an organism is there for a specific purpose, sometimes things are just left over from earlier development.
Now, if we go to your ludicrous extreme of "literally covered with all kinds of INEFFECTUAL 'features,'" guess what happens. The sheer mass would then become limiting for survival and thus a pressure for elimination. But if there is no pressure for elimination, features tend to hang around for a long, long time.
But as I said before, that does nothing to rescue the irreducible complexity of the flagellum. Either it came from a more compact structure, or resulted in a more compact structure - but either way, that more compact structure is also functional, so long as you don't buy into this artifical constraint that only things that do X are "functional". Or, alternately, the TTSS and the flagellum are both descendents from a common ancestor structure, but that obviously belies the irreducible complexity of the flagellum by its very nature.
One could, I suppose, argue that they're both the products of special creation, appearing sui generis, independently of one another as the products of some designer. But then again, I see no evidence to support that hypothesis at the moment.
Why do we have trucks and cars?
Years ago I was watching one of the last shows of the William F. Buckley. Jr. debate series on PBS, The topic was evolution vs. creationism. He had on his team an amazingly and disappointingly annoying man who repeatedly argued every point that the evolutionist team brought up by saying 'show me every step.' If every single step of evolution in fossil record could not be shown for an animal, he would immediately say that the process could not exist because steps were 'missing.' It didn't matter if work was ongoing or that million year old fossils are hard to find or anything. If every single step could not be laid at his feet, then the thing did not exist.
A woeful injustice to logic and thought and to the quality that I had come to expect from the series. Yet, it is a tactic of the creationist argument to expect.
>>> Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man [Adam] sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned--
Evolution requires death...millions of years. But the Bible teaches that sin did not enter into the world system until after Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden.
>>> Romans 8:22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
Now all of creation suffers because of the curse brought on by the sin of Adam.
Additionally, Jesus said that Adam and Eve existed "from the beginning"...
>>> From Genesis 1 - Matthew 19:4 And He answered and said, "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE,
>>> From Genesis 2 - Matthew 19:5-6 and said, `FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH'? "So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."
There is certainly more, but these verses stand in contradistinction to evolution. Check this article for more information. Two Histories of Death
Theistic Evolution: Future Shock
Not to mention that he was willing to wait <Carl Sagan Mode> BILL-YUNS and BILL-YUNS </Carl Sagan Mode> years for humans to show up.
As I stated, the functionality under question is flagellar not virulence and that determines irreducibility. The argument is not whether something has any function( you can fill a balloon with water, air, or a present).
Adaptability. Is a pickup truck a work vehicle, family vehicle, sport, towing, cargo?
Elements can adapt to new demands or be used for more than one function. The same neurotransmitter protein in the same organism can be stimulatory or inhibitory - it depends on which system it is in.
That is Silly.
Read my post this evening, I will ping you.
Bingo - and a nifty way of putting it.
That's simply an artificial restriction on what it means for something to be "functional", though. If I take the wheels off of a skateboard, it's no longer a skateboard - it's basically just a plank of wood. But that doesn't mean that I can't use the the plank for something else, that it's functionless in and of itself - you have to evaluate it on its own merits, not based on what it is not. "Either it's a skateboard or it's useless" is a false dichotomy - there are lots of things you can do with the wood even in the absence of wheels.
But the quote from Romans 5:12 implies that it applies to man.... "death spread to all men." I have no problems with the idea that there is a point in evolution where there was a first man, who would've been Adam, whom God was prepared to give everlasting life to.
The Bible says man was created in God's likeness. Now, given that God is outside time and the universe, it doesn't seem likely that this is a physical likeness, but rather a spiritual one. God calls himself "I Am That I Am." Seems to me that the central likeness of man to God that separates us from the animals is the concept of "I am."
It is quite reasonable -- indeed, it is what I believe -- that Homo sapiens evolved to its present physical state, before Adam became the first human with the God-like realization, "I am."
Right! Is it hard to make one? No, just get some wheels and a way to securely attach them. Trouble is, those extra items don't just drop off of non-complex things.
Not by random chance - it didn't just suddenly fall together in its finished form. It is a building and developing process, hence evolution. It starts small, simple, and limited and then develops into a larger, more complex, and more dynamic component.
So, did the woodpecker evolve all 3 at the same time? What are the chances? Which came last, the tongue, the beak, or (the "logical" choice) the shock-absorbing skull? Once all 3 pieces were in place, how and when did it evolve the instinct to feed the way it does?
I've no doubt the Evolutionist Church has the solution to this apparent puzzle.
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