The Problem With Evolution

ChronWatch ^ | 09/25/05 | Edward L. Daley

[Ichneumon]

Evolution should be kept a closely guarded secret, among the enlightened practioners of your sect or cult what have you.

So many errors, so little time...

Evolution means and individual can look forward to eternity in the tar pits of time, all your happy memories will be in the rearview mirror, and nothingness awaits your eventual arrival.

You are yet again mistaken. Evolutionary biology makes no statement about the possible nature of an afterlife.

Don't quite your day job.

[Pipeline]

Teaching evolution as a scientific theory is fine as long as they also make the kids understand the scientific fact that science can't explain the origin of things like atoms.

[bobdsmith]

LOL! What a silly remark. Obviously the most interesting, complex, and diversified mammals reproduce sexually, and the theory of evolution and speciation is supposed to account for the existence of sexually-reproducing organisms.

There is nothing silly about it at all. Sexual reproduction evolved long before mammals evolved. The ancestors of mammals already reproduced sexually. There are no mammals that reproduce assexually.

>>I don't see the problem with different organs evolving in parallel. What would stop eyes evolving at the same time as the heart?)))

The organism would choke and die while trying on contact lenses. Continually silly...

First of all the basic heart could evolve before eyes even exist (and many organisms have no heart). Second, once the basic heart is in place there is nothing stopping the eyes evolving while the heart is also evolving. At no point would the organism choke and die.

Evos claim that speciation occurs in the wild. If speciation occurs by accident, it ought to be able to be duplicated on purpose.

What do you mean by on purpose? All you can do is sit and wait. You can't speed up the process.

As for time, domesticated animals have been bred to specfication for thousands of years on separate continents. That is, a laboratory of significant history. You'd think, under ideal conditions, that at least one accident would have happened.

No because first there is no reason to think domestication is ideal conditions for speciation, and second why is thousands of years sufficient time? What calculation have you based that on? Why not hundreds of years, or tens of thousands of years? The dog and wolf split over ten thousand years ago for example.

Not enough time, eh? Well, that's the stock answer. Billions and billions of years and it'll happen.

If the rate of speciation were as high as 1 new species per dozen species per 3000 years then that would imply over 100 new species worldwide per year. The fossil record does not bear this out, and neither does recorded history. So such a rate is obviously far too high.

[Edit35]

However, the fossil record shows that all of the major animal groups (phyla) appeared fully formed about 540 million years ago, and virtually no transitional life forms have been discovered which suggest that they evolved from earlier forms.

Wait a second!

These creationists are admitting that the major animal groups appeared "540 million years ago."

I thought they insisted the world is only 6,000 years old.

[PatrickHenry]

[Thunderous applause!] I'm going to find a place for that in The List-O-Links, but I'm pondering what to call it. Probably "How speciation occurs" will suffice.

[Mamzelle]

While I'm no adherent of ID, I delight in the dependable way that they provoke the evos, and make them behave like inquisitionals with a recalcitrant heretic...patronize away.

[Mamzelle]

re: What do you mean by on purpose? All you can do is sit and wait. You can't speed up the process.)))

There are scientists attempting this in many places. A couple of years back a scientist at the U of Chicago named Wu claimed to have created a new species of fruit fly. "Speciation Occurs!" claimed the headline. It was discussed here on FR. And, reading the headline, I believed it for a moment. Why not? The scientist in question used microsurgical techniques to try and alter the DNA enough to bring about a fly that satisfied the criteria of a unique new species.

Put aside he notion that it's really kind of "cheating" to duplicate speciation by tampering with the basic programming through a kind of "intelligent design" by lab scientists.

It turned out, there was no fly at all. There were only "expectations" of a new species. Since then, I google up Wu and fruit flies to see if his expectations have ever borne fruit. (flies). None yet.

If long centuries of breeding livestock in geographic isolation for particular types--which is about the only long-term laboratory that we can look to--can't bring about a duplication of this process, it would seem that the humble fruit fly might have provided the experience. It's been used to study genetics (in labs all over the world) for more than two centuries, and is far less complex than a bird or mammal.

That evolution provides a good working theory for categorizing and analyizing is indisputable, and that's as far as the theory goes. There are a lot of paradigms that are useful and ultimately limited. In linguistics, understanding a sentence structure does not mean that you can *generate* a sentence, but that is an arcanity that may not signify...

[Mylo]

None of those idiots (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot)had any idea of evolution. Stalin thought genes and DNA didn't exist as per his pet "peasant scientist" Lysenko. Hardly a Scientific outlook.

Hitler was self described as a Catholic, and he sold the Holocaust to the German people (Catholic and Lutheran) as revenge for the killing of Christ.

[Mylo]

The problem with blaming the murders of Communism and National Socialism on Darwin, Evolution and Science is that they didn't kill their millions because they disagreed upon Scientific interpretation. The Communists didn't even believe in Darwinian evolution, preferring the unsupported hypothesis of Lamarkian evolution as a mechanism for "Homo Sapiens" the thinking man, to become "Homo Communista" the unthinking man. The Nationalist Socialists were Christian and they sold the holocaust to the German people (a Christian people) as revenge for the killing of Christ.

There is a mechanism for settling disputes in Science, as it pertains to observable phenomenon that can be measured. The only way to get a FINAL settlement of a dispute in religion is to kill the heretics; as there is no way to objectively settle their competing claims.

[Mylo]

There has been speciation events of fruit flies observed in the lab. And it wasn't through "microsurgical techniques" but through a chromosomal mutation. How could any surgery effect the offspring of the altered fly? You must think that modern Biologists believe in Lamarkian evolution.

Please don't lie. Especially such a stupid lie.

[Right Wing Professor]

What he suggests is to dishonor God and make himself a god and in turn influence others to become like him arrogant and decietful.

The mind boggles.

I'd settle for influencing them to remember 'i' before 'e' except after 'c'.

Once they learn that, they're on the path to correct orthography and perdition. BWHAHAHA!

[bobdsmith]

Where do you think the 1000 species of fruit fly on earth came from?

[Right Wing Professor]

Actually most Jewish and Christian scholars believe that the passage as a whole is authentic, although there may be some interpolations.

This seems to be a balanced appraisal.

What I find significant is that, knowing that most scholars consider parts of the text you quoted to be a later interpolation, you posted it 'as is' to bolster your argument. I'm constantly being lectured by Christians about how, without their belief system, morality would be impossible, and then they do things that in my field would immediately get them a reputation for shady dealing, if not actual fraud.

[Right Wing Professor]

Put aside he notion that it's really kind of "cheating" to duplicate speciation by tampering with the basic programming through a kind of "intelligent design" by lab scientists.

Ah, the old creationist catch-22.

Creationist: evolution isn't a scientific theory because you can't duplicate it in a lab

Scientist: Yes I can. Here, let me show you!

Creationist. That isn't evolution, it's ID, because it didn't happen naturally.

[Dark Knight]

Ah, the old creationist catch-22.

Creationist: evolution isn't a scientific theory because you can't duplicate it in a lab

Scientist: Yes I can. Here, let me show you!

Creationist. That isn't evolution, it's ID, because it didn't happen naturally.<<

No fair Perfessor, you were using logic and reason. Scientists haven't used them in decades...you said so!

Ready to apologize?

DK

[js1138]

Here is an interesting and imposing bit of research on Josephus.

http://members.aol.com/FLJOSEPHUS/testimonium.htm

Its conclusion is that Josephus and the writer of Luke used the same source, now lost.

[Junior_G]

I don't understand why more Christians can't just view science as the means by which god works his wonders, rather than as something to shield their children from.

[blowfish]

There were over 500 witnesses to Jesus after his crucifixion. His own brother didnt beleive yet later became a believer and was willing to die for that belief.

This may count for evidence in religious circles. But 2000-year old hearsay accounts from mostly biased, untrained observers doesn't cut it in scientific research.
Why not leave science to science's role, and the bible to the bible's role. Trying to use the bible as a science book just doesn't work.

[Right Wing Professor]

Hmmmm. I have to say it's interesting and plausible, but I'm not entirely convinced. I tend to be skeptical of claims of statistical significance if the person doing the analysis is not a statistician. But in any case, it deduces that two of the three sentences that Meier concludes were interpolations really were interpolations, and only the third, longer passage, might have come from the proto-Luke source.

I'd be interested in how this all relates to the Q source, which with Mark is supposed to be the source for Matthew and Luke.

[js1138]

It has the virtue of simplicity.