Posted on 07/23/2006 9:36:42 AM PDT by tomzz
Assuming macroevolutionary scenarios were possible (they aren't), the question arises, how much time would you actually need for them? The basic answer to that question is known as the Haldane Dilemma, after the famous mathematician and population geneticist J.B.S. Haldane who published his work in the mid 1950s. The basic answer is that you would need trillions and quadrillions of years, and not just the tens of millions commonly supposed. Walter Remine puts a simplified version of the idea thusly:
Imagine a population of 100,000 apes or “proto-humans” ten million years ago which are all genetically alike other than for two with a “beneficial mutation”. Imagine also that this population has the human or proto-human generation cycle time of roughly 20 years.Imagine that the beneficial mutation in question is so good, that all 99,998 other die out immediately (from jealousy), and that the pair with the beneficial mutation has 100,000 kids and thus replenishes the herd.
Imagine that this process goes on like that for ten million years, which is more than anybody claims is involved in “human evolution”. The max number of such “beneficial mutations” which could thus be substituted into the herd would be ten million divided by twenty, or 500,000 point mutations which, Remine notes, is about 1/100 of one percent of the human genome, and a miniscule fraction of the 2 to 3 percent that separates us from chimpanzees, or the half of that which separates us from neanderthals.
That basically says that even given a rate of evolutionary development which is fabulously beyond anything which is possible in the real world, starting from apes, in ten million years the best you could possibly hope for would be an ape with a slightly shorter tail.
But nobody ever accused evolutionists of being rational. Surely, they will argue, the problem might be resolved by having many mutations being passed through the herd simultaneously.
Most of the answer involves the fact that the vast bulk of all mutations are harmful or fatal. ANY creature which starts mutating willy nilly will perish.
So much for the amount of time evolutionists NEED (i.e. so much for the slice of wonderbread on the bottom of the basic evolutionist time sandwich. What about the slice on the top of the sandwich, i.e. how much time do they actually HAVE?
Consider the case of dinosaurs, which we are told died out 70 million years ago. Last summer, scientists trying to get a tyrannosaur leg bone out of a remote area by helicopter, broke the bone into two pieces, and this is what they found inside the bone:
This is the Reuters/MSNBC version of the story
That meat clearly is not 70 million years old; I've seen week-old roadkill which looked worse.
In fact, we appear to have one state named after a dinosaur, Mississippi being a variation of the Ojibway name "Mishipishu", which means "water panther", or stegosaur. DeLoria notes that Indian traditions describe Mishipishu as having red fur, a sawblade back, and a "great spiked tail" which he used as a weapon.
In fact you find pictures (petroglyphs) of Mishipishu around rivers and lakes and Lewis and Clark noted that their Indian guides were in mortal terror of these since they originally signified as much as "One of these LIVES here, be careful".
The pictograph at Agawa Rock at Lake Ontario shows the sawblade back fairly clearly:
and the close-eyed will note that stegosaurs did not have horns; nonetheless such glyphs survive only because Indians have always gone back and touched them up every couple of decades, and the horns were added very much later after the creature itself had perished from the Earth.
You add the questions of other dinosaur petroglyphs and Ica stones and what not into the mix and it seems fairly obvious that something is massively wrong with the common perception that dinosaurs died out tens of millions of years ago.
That is basically what I call the evolutionist time sandwich. They need trillions or quadrillions of years, and all they have is a few thousand.
You don't resemble God.
Hey Teddyboy, what's your website url?
Wait, does your God have a body?
Does he has two arms like us, or four like a Hindi God?
(Sorry, I assume when people say God they mean the real one.)
No, but whatever caused the flood could easily have changed the ratios or regular to radio carbon on the planet. Radiocarbon dating depends on those ratios having always been as they are now.
Have you ever actually done a radiocarbon date, or did you just stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night?
The ratio can be checked through time. This is done by counting individual tree-rings. They use standing dead bristlecone pines in the US, and other species elsewhere. They can then date the individual tree rings and calibrate the curve. And no, they have not always been as they are now. There are slight fluctuations.
They have the curve on bristlecone pines back past 12,600 years now. That means the atmospheric fluctuations are accounted for during that time period (other methods are used for older ages).
The results are still the same as always. No flood. Sorry.
Curious, it seems to be an attack on the scientific method by using a thinly veiled variant on Pascal's wager. You know, your words about how "his reason *may* be taking him down the incorrect path."
Then there's this: ToE "fits the facts" for philosophical reasons... the possibility of all "supernatural" explanations have to be excluded, as they fall outside of the realm of all "real" science. The study of science has fallen into a circular argument, favoring one philosophy over all others.
This is not a circular argument. Science has no means for measuring the supernatural, so it must exclude it. (Not deny it, just exclude it). Your complaint is akin to rejecting a yardstick because it won't give you the barometric pressure.
The PPT looks great...I will check it out later. Thanks
You are a funny guy!
I don't know. I've read some agnostics who think Darwinism is bogus. They don't accept creation, or some form of intelligent design; they're just convinced that Darwinism isn't the correct explanation.
I was asking the person who insists science must include the supernatural, that is you.
Do you have issues with faith? Or do you want to force atheists to see scientific proof of God?
I see no other reason to warp science in such a way.
Forget it. Apparently I didn't catch your screenname before.
You are Mormon, then I guess?
No comment.
tomzz---As you are aware Darwinoids naturally resort to personal slurs since they find Christian based science so frightening. Somehow they have devolved in that area.
Please, PM me if you must in order to be frank.
Are you aware that Darwinoids is a personal slur?
What is Christian based science, and will its results be valid in India?
You guys are hilarious. It seems every thread there'll be an anti-evo post which fusses about personal attacks from evos while simultaneously attacking them. It's like clockwork.
I'm aware of that....
I think it is an apt description. -oid from Greek suffix -oid = in the image of
darwinoid: in the image of Darwin. Pretty ugly but apt. Are you one?
Indian Christians are quite devoted.
One of the merry banned who keep returing to FR under different handles.
I reckon we won't know for sure unless we take a piece of KFC and freeze it for 70 million years. Call your local federal feed trough. They'll be more than happy to fund research on global freezing.
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