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Why Evolution is WRONG!

Philosophy Opinion Keywords: CREATION, EVOLUTION, TRUTH
Source: self, and other freepers posts
Published: 09/03/99 Author: James E. Bancroft
Posted on 09/03/1999 10:51:00 PDT by RaceBannon

Here is the essay that started it all here. Enjoy!

Nothing is more important to a persons understanding of life and living than his own answers to the three great questions: where am I from?; who am I?; where am I going? This is an important issue for the last 100 years, for a system of belief, known as evolution has permeated our society and way of thinking. I believe in creation, not evolution. I believe either system must be accepted by faith, for neither fits the scientific model. For either to be a theory, they must be repeatable events, observable events. Creation as taught in the Bible was only observed by God and His angels. Evolution by definition, happened when no one was around, and then continued so slowly that no one would be able to discern that evolution occurred, therefore it is also a non-observable event. I believe that whichever belief you hold, when completely understood, will guide your thinking and behavior and ultimately determine your destiny.

When speaking of creation, I define creation as the definite and deliberate act of God causing the beginning of life and material existence of all things in the universe having taken place in a literal six-day period. Evolution I define as the random gathering of individual molecules and elements that by random, chance accumulation formed the material world, and through random, chance events governed by natural laws eventually caused a collection of molecules to become a living organism which in turn progressed through another series of random, chance events expressed over hundreds of millions of years governed by survival of the fittest to eventually appear as life as we know it.

" Where did I come from" starts the argument. If created by God, then we are here for a purpose, a part of a divine plan that God has for all souls in the universe. Our original ancestors disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden and became separated from God because of their sins. God instituted the idea of sacrificing an innocent animal to take the place of death for the persons who sinned. The death of an innocent savior, Jesus Christ, fulfilled this need for reconciliation toward God.

If we evolved, then we are here by chance and for no other reason. This means that there is no divine plan for mankind along with no moral absolutes. If the evolutionist believes in God, it can't be a very powerful God if he had no hand in our very beginning and probably has no idea what our future holds.

" Who am I? ", deals with today. With faith in a creator God, I recognize that I owe my very existence to him along with my eternal destiny. In times past, God spoke to us through his prophets until the time of the Bible actually being written and then compiled as we have it today. Many times it is written that God's word is eternal, not conditional, and therefore is applicable to life today.

If evolution is true, then there is no objective standard to follow at any time. Morals become relative and, humanity becomes hypocritical when it comes to obeying laws. A new moral standard will arise someday and put out the old out-moded one. Mankind will be on one big ego trip psychologically, thinking itself to be better and smarter and more in touch with reality than any previous generations. Life itself would lose all important meaning with only instant gratification the driving force. Any logic-based system of morality would have no feet to stand on, for it would be based only on argument, not divine revelation.

" Where am I going? ", is the final argument. God told us that the only way to be with him at death is to base our salvation on the fact that Jesus Christ died in our place on the cross, taking the penalty for our sins, a penalty that we honestly deserve, dying for us so that we may live with him. Not in our good works, but whether we put our trust in the sacrifice that God provided for us by sending his son to die in our place. Sin was brought in the world by Adam, Christ died for those sins. If creation is true, then so is the fall in the Garden of Eden. If that is true, then we must need a savior.

If evolution is true, then where are we going? Existence of God is brought to a level of superstition, and along with that the need of a savior becomes ridiculous. With no Adam and Eve, and therefore no sin in the Garden of Eden who needs atonement? Often is heard how primitive life survived in a primordial soup, a kind of slime. From slime to man means, in time, man will evolve into a God-like state, having a superior mind and intellect. This divine man is as far ahead of us on the evolutionary scale as we are from the worm. Do worms go to heaven? Will this divine man wink at our beliefs in an afterlife?

As a child, we are told to obey authority figures like our parents and policemen. When we started school, those authority figures became our teachers and our principals. When we questioned the teachers and our textbooks, the final authority became the textbook author and the scientist; the all-knowing, objective human beings who would never steer us wrong because they had studied all the facts before coming up with their conclusions. After studying science myself for a few years, along with writings from scientists that refute another's work, I have arrived at my own conclusion: that as a society, we have become too willing to accept as fact what someone says about a certain subject because of that persons credentials and too willing to ignore our own doubts about these statements that are made because of our own lack of education in these areas.

One of these areas most affected by our easy acceptance of 'scientific fact' is evolution, and specifically, human evolution. Many scientists and farmers are aware that when two animals of the same species mate, their offspring will carry characteristics of both parents, yet be unique in it's own way. Scientists in the 19th century took this line of thinking further and reasoned that these inherited characteristics would make the animal more able or less able to survive, with the weaker characteristics eventually causing the demise of the offspring that carried the weaker traits, and the survival of the offspring that carried the stronger characteristics of the parents. Herbert Spencer, the founder of 'Social Darwinism', took these observed events and applied this logic to humans. Since the European race, (white), was obviously more superior to the African race, (black), in areas of speech, culture, and intelligence, Spencer thought evolution had to be the cause and used his brand of evolutionary thinking to influence many Europeans.

These evolutionary descriptions of cultural growth influenced Europe up to the time of Adolph Hitler, who used evolution to explain the differences and abnormalities of the 'inferior' races such as Jews, Gypsies, and Negroes. This type of thinking was also present in the United States where it was concentrated in the area of perpetuating our own apartheid system in the south. It is also the driving force behind Margaret Sangers push for abortion and forced sterilization of American Blacks in the early 1900’s.

These events happened because people listened to the authority figures instead of their own conscience. What was worse, these ‘facts’ of evolution were introduced into the public school system and taught as fact instead of as theory. Up until this time, creation was taught according to the Bible account in the United States, yet when 'science' stepped forward and said different, the die was cast. The Genesis account was put in doubt, and since no house can stand without a foundation, the historical accuracy of the Bible became questionable, along with it's importance in one's life.

Almost all evidence for human evolution is extremely questionable. Scientists theorize that we evolved from quadrepedal ape like creatures, (hominoids), into bi-pedal erect walking ape like creatures, (hominids), to eventually become ourselves. Many fossils have been found that are claimed to represent the various stages of evolution from quadruped to biped, yet there are 'missing links' between these forms.

Evolution demands that these missing links are authentic, for they would represent the transition from one group into a higher group. What does Charles Darwin say about missing links? " The main cause of innumerant intermediate links not now occurring everywhere throughout nature, depends on the very process of natural selection, through which new varieties continually take the place of and supplant their parent forms. But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so much the number of intermediate varieties , which formally existed, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geologic formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geologic record." (The Origin Of The Species, chap. 10).

Here, Darwin states that if evolution is true, then there must be numberless intermediate links between species. Yet, Darwin himself admits that there are NO finely graduated links between these species that have been discovered. He then goes on to say that the geologic record is hiding these transitional forms from us. How could a belief system, based on unobserved events with no proof to back it up, become so prevalent in society? In the 100 years that have passed since Darwin, we have more than quadrupled the number of fossil species that we have found and these links still have yet to be announced. Why was Darwin’s theory accepted at all when by education he was not a scientist, but a theologian?

If these links were found, how would science know where to classify these fossils? Darwinian evolutionary change happens so slow that the changes would be so minute that it would be impossible to distinguish one species from another, let alone when one species became another.

Modem science has proven through the archaeological record that the geologic column does not contain these missing links or any evidence for gradual change via evolution. Do the evolutionists give up? Nope, they just change their theories.

Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould has introduced his theory to explain the gaps between species. 'Punctuated Equilibrium ' is the new theory that species remain the same for long periods of time, and then through sudden, short bursts of evolutionary lightning lasting maybe 500,000 years or so, then reappear as new, different species. This theory explains the gaps in fossil record because there wouldn't be enough time for significant fossils to be formed in order for us to find them 5 million years later!

Darwin said his fossils were there but we didn't find them yet. Stephen Jay Gould says the fossils aren't there, that's why there are gaps in the fossil record. If I told you I did my homework, but the dog ate it, would you believe me? Once again, the proof, is that there is no proof. Evolution is such a fun theory, you can think up any zany idea from microbes on meteors to aliens with a mission to populate the universe and 'science' will back you up; but what happens if you say, " In the beginning, God......

Neither creation or evolution has ever been witnessed by man. Both beliefs must be accepted by faith. Yet, in order to know which belief is to be held, all evidence must be weighed from one belief against the other.

A literal 6 day creation cannot be proved exactly, but a sudden appearance of life forms on earth, as evidenced by the fossil record, would provide fuel in any debate against an evolutionist as to whether life evolved slowly over millions of years, or appeared suddenly.

Evolution, whether sudden, (punctuational), or gradual,(Darwinian), would require an appearance of life from non-life forms. Yet, is this possible? Spontaneous generation has never been observed. This was proved by Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister in the 1800's when we discovered germs. Life only appears when life already existed. This is called the Law of Biogenesis.

Another way to approach this argument is to refer to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Lord Kelvin stated it this way: " There is no natural process, the only result of which is to cool a heat reservoir and do external work." In more understandable terms, this means that energy will turn to a state of entropy, one of less complexity and greater disorder along with a lack of usefulness unless acted on by an outside force that is directing this energy by means of an ordered arrangement that controls this energy in a useful way. Therefore, the amount of useable energy in the universe is becoming less and less. Ultimately, the amount of energy available would be zero. Due to this fact, it must be understood that the natural state of any natural system is one of disorder unless acted upon by an outside force in an intelligent, constructive manner. Any system left to itself will begin to degenerate. If you clean your room, it will get dirty again. Any life form alive today will eventually die. Chemical compounds left to themselves will break down into their parent atoms. Energy that is directed into these systems in an intelligent manner can cause greater complexity in the organism, yet when the intelligent influx of energy is removed, the system will begin to deteriorate immediately.

Evolution would require that through random, chance processes, inorganic materials would gather in such a way to create organic materials capable of replicating themselves. This process would require immense amounts of time in order to occur, and not only time, but protection against destructive forces acting on the material that was to become life.

This process is the reverse of what we know as fact as far as the 2nd law of thermodynamics is concerned. Naturalistic evolution requires that through known, proven physical laws atoms organize themselves into increasingly complex and beneficial ordered arrangements all by chance, and all without intelligent ordering of energy or information causing the change. Over the long periods of time necessary for evolution to occur, these early chance chemical combinations would be bombarded by cosmic rays, radioactive enough to destroy whatever is exposed. This raw energy is absolutely useless to these early chemicals because they have no means to process this energy in any meaningful way. Photosynthesis may be how plants process sunlight, but we're talking about a time before even the first cell; after all, plants have genetic information that programs certain cells in them in how to process this incoming light. Our first primordial cell would have no such mechanism built in yet to process ultraviolet radiation. Therefore, evolution cannot have occurred.

If by chance this pre-organic material formed on the surface of the earth, it would still find it impossible to become a life form for two reasons. Before the introduction of oxygen into the atmosphere, cosmic rays would destroy all life forms on the planet, for it is oxygen that is Ozone, O3. If there was an oxygen atmosphere, which might produce ozone, then oxidation would occur and destroy whatever is floating around. These forces would be the most important factors on whether life would evolve here.

If a life form did evolve, it would have to evolve with many existing functions the first time. A life form needs a mouth, a digestive system, a method of locomotion, and reproductive organs. Just examining the extreme complexity of these mechanisms should stop the argument here, but lets keep going.

With who would this life form mate? This first living form would need to be asexual or have a mate, which was it? What is the proof of either? Asexuality itself demands a complex system of operation, a complex series of commands to initiate. Since we are talking about the first life form, it had to be asexual unless you also want to believe that not only did a life form evolve from inorganic material, but it’s mate simultaneously evolved right alongside, right at the same time, in the same conditions, with completely compatible organic operation.

What did it eat? Think, not only did this life form need a mechanism of ingesting material to be processed as energy, but that material had to be nearby. How could all these internal organs evolve by chance? Think, not only the internal organs evolved, but so did the nerve system that controls these organs along with the organism's brain along with the intelligence to operate these organs in a manner that allowed the organism to survive. If you don’t believe that was necessary, then you must also believe that some chemical process happened by chance that processed whatever came down the life form’s ‘mouth’ in a manner that was compatible with the organism. What happens to this energy while being digested? We call this excess material waste, and it is poisonous. How was this waste removed from the organism? How did this organism not only evolve with a mouth, but also with a method of releasing waste?

How did it survive in it's primitive surroundings? How did any intelligent information get to these important functional systems in a manner that was beneficial to the organism? What type of brain and nervous system evolves by chance? How did something as complex as the eye happen by chance? If the organism didn't have eyes, how did it know when to open it's mouth when it was time to eat? How did hunger pains evolve?

All of these things speak of intelligence. Without designed and coded information, a life form is useless. The pure chemistry of a cell is not enough to explain the working of a cell, although the workings are chemical. The chemical workings of a cell are controlled by intelligent information and commands that do not reside in the atoms and molecules of these chemicals. A dead body is dead; WHY? It has all the chemicals necessary to support life already existing in a complete form with nothing missing, right?

Let's suppose this life did survive. Mendels’ law of genetics prove that variation can occur within a species, but cannot create a new species across phylum boundaries. Acquired characteristics cannot be inherited, such as the large muscles of a weightlifter to his son. Natural selection cannot create new genes, it can only select from existing gene information nation. Dogs remain dogs, and cats remain cats.

Mutations are now the only possible explanation for evolution, yet rarely has any mutation been Proven to be beneficial to any organism in its natural environment. Almost all observed mutations are harmful and many are fatal.. There is no known mutation that has ever produced a form of life having both greater complexity and greater viability than any of its ancestors.

Over 80 years of fruit fly experiments involving 3000 consecutive generations, give absolutely no basis for believing that any natural or artificial process can cause an increase in complexity and viability.

What causes variation and change in life? DNA. DNA stores enough information to fill 1000 books, each with 500 pages of fine print. Even the DNA of a small bacterium is composed of 3 million units all aligned in a very precise meaningful sequence. It is a mathematical impossibility for a random chance arrangement of molecules to arrange itself in the form of a DNA helix.

According to Dr. John Grebe, "The 15000 or more atoms of the individual sub-assemblies of a single DNA molecule, if left to chance as required by the evolutionary theory, would go together in any of the 10^87, (10 followed by 87 zeroes), different ways. It is like throwing 15000 pairs of dice at one time to determine what specific molecule to make; and to test each one for the survival of the fittest until the one out of 10^87 different possibilities is proven by survival of the fittest is proven to be the right one."

Evolutionists claim the universe is 10 to 20 Billion years old. There is less than 10^17 seconds in 20 billion years. Even by a trial and error combination occurring every second from the beginning of time till now, there is still no hope.

Mathematician I. L. Cohen says, "At that moment, when the DNA/RNA system became understood, the debate between evolutionists and creationists should have come to a screeching halt. Mathematically speaking, based on probability concepts, there is no possibility that evolution was the mechanism that created the approximately 6,000,000 species of plants and animals we recognize today."

Evolutionist Michael Denton: "The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle."

Evolutionist Sir Fred Hoyle agrees with creationists on this point. He said the odds that a cell is formed by chance is equal to the odds that a tornado going through a junkyard would create a working 747 with all instruments working. Science has discovered no proof that animals or plants can evolve. The best established facts of genetics, biology, and botany studies indicate evolution is physically impossible.

Let's turn to the origin of man, and specifically, the fossil record of ‘Man’. Many people believe we have ‘proof’ of evolution through the fossil record, yet is this true? What is the facts surrounding fossils that are presumed to portray man?

Ramapithicus, often pictured as walking erect, has been degrade to the status of extinct ape. It's teeth and dental characteristics are similar to the gelada gibbon.(Richard Leaky/Roger Lewin Origins P.68). It has also been declared to be part of orangutan lineage.(Science News Vol 121 #5 Jan 30, 1982 P.84)

Australopithecine: not a missing link, but an extinct ape. Dr. Charles Oxnard, U. of Chicago says, " These fossils clearly differ more from both humans and African apes, than these two living groups from each other. ”The Australopithecines are unique." (Fossils, Teeth, and Sex: New Perspectives on human evolution; Seattle U. of Wash Press)

Lucy has been compared to modem pygmy chimpanzees. Paleontologist Adrienne Zihlman, Univ. of Cal at Santa Cruz:( Lucy's fossil remains match up remarkably well with the bones of a pygmy chimp,(although there are some differences)). Adrienne Zihlman, “Pygmy chimps and pundits", New Scientist Vol 104 #1430 Nov 15, 1984 P.39-40

Homo habilis was once called a missing link between Australopithecus and homo erectus, and a missing link between ape and man. Current conclusions are a chimpanzee, orangutan, or an Australopithecine. (Albert W. Mehlert, “Homo Habilis Dethroned", Contrast: The creation evolution controversy Vol 6 #6)

Sianthropus, or Peking Man, was found in China in the 20's and 30's. Evidence included skulls and a few limb bones, but were lost during W.W.II. Clear evidence at the same site showed true man along with a 30 ft. deep ash pile and a limestone mine. All of the skulls of Sianthropus were broken in the same manner as those of monkeys who are eaten for their brains.(Ian Taylor, "In the Minds of Men: Darwin and the World Order", Toronto Canada, TFE pub. 1984 p. 234-241

Pithecanthropus, or Java Man, is based solely on the evidence of a skull cap and a femur that was dug up a year later and 50 feet away. The finder, Eugene Dubois, admitted the skull cap was from a gibbon like ape.(Eugene Dubois, “On the gibbon like appearance of Pithecanthropus Erectus", Koniklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen Vol 38 Amsterdam Koninklijke Akademie 1935 P.578)

Nebraska Man was a local fossil, the entire evidence consisting of a single tooth. Nebraska Man was pictured on the front page of Life magazine in a hunter-gatherer mode. During the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, Nebraska Man was labeled a genuine missing link. The tooth turned out to be a tooth of a pig. (Henry Fairfield Osborne, Hesperopithicus Haroldcookii, the first anthropoid primate found in North America, Science Vol 60 #1427 May 3, 1922 P.463)(William K. Gregory, "Hesperopithecus apparently not ape or man" Science Vol 66 #17209 Dec 16, 1927)

Piltdown Man, a deliberate hoax some blame on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had people fooled for years and even had its picture on Life Magazine.(Joseph Wiener "The Piltdown Forgery" London Oxford U. Press)

Neanderthal Man was found in Neanderthal Valley in West Germany. Long accepted as a missing link, Neanderthal man has been proven to be human, very similar to Europeans today, yet with proven diseases such as rickets, syphilis, and arthritis.(Carl Hodge "Neanderthal Traits Extant, Group Told" The Arizona Republic Vol 99 #186 P. B-5)

There is no proof that man evolved from an ape like creature. In fact, many fossils of man have been found, dated to coincide with the ages of these extinct apes:

Petralona Man, found in a stalagmite 700 thousand years old.(Current Anthropology Vol 22 #3 June 1981 P.287)

Human Jawbone found in China in Yangtze River dated 2 million years old.(Java Man is only 500 thousand)(Mesa Tribune Mesa Arizona Nov 20 1988)

Also, there are some findings that contradict all known science:

Human skeleton found 1. 6 million years old, by Richard Leaky( Wash. Post Oct 19, 1984)

Evolutionists themselves disagree on just what the fossils mean and just how old they are. Consider the following:

RUINED FAMILY TREE: "either we toss out this [skull 11470] or we toss out our theories of early man," asserts anthropologist Richard Leakey of this 2.8 million year old fossil, which he has tentatively identified as belonging to our own genus. "It simply fits no previous models of human beginnings." The author, son of famed anthropologist Louis S.B. Leakey, believes that the skull's surprisingly large braincase "leaves in ruins the notion that all early fossils can be arranged to an orderly sequence of evolutionary change." NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, June 1973, p.819

HUMAN BRAIN: "Leakey further describes the whole shape of the brain case [skull 11470] as remarkably reminiscent of modern man, lacking the heavy and protruding eyebrow ridges and thick bone characteristics of Homo Erectus." SCIENCE NEWS, April 3, 1972, p. 324

"OLD" MODERN MAN: Louis Leakey, "In 1933 I published on a small fragment of jaw we call Homo Kanamens 1s, and I said categorically that this is not a near-man or ape, this is a true member of genus Homo. There were stone tools with it too. The age was probably around 2.5 to 3 million years. It was promptly put upon a shelf by my colleagues, except for two of them. The rest said it must be placed in a "suspense account". Now, 36 years later, we have proved I was right." Quoted in Bones of Contention, p.156

THE OLDEST MAN: "[African footprints]... they belonged to the genus Homo (or true man), rather than to man-apes (like Australopithecus, who was once thought to be the forerunner of Man but is now regarded as a possible evolutionary dead end)... they were 3.35 to 3.75 million years old... they would, in Mary Leakey's words, be people 'not unlike ourselves'" TIME, Nov. 10, 1975, p.93

TOO HUMAN TOO OLD: Russell H Tuttle, Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Affiliate Scientist, Primate Research Center, Emory University, "In sum, the 3.5 million year old footprint trails at Laetoli site G resemble those of habitually unshod modern Humans... If the G footprints were not known to be so old, we would readily conclude that they were made by a member of our genus... in any case, we should shelve the loose assumption that the Laetoli footprints were made by Lucy's kind..." NATURAL HISTORY, March 1990, p. 64

Human footprints, dated 3.75 million years old at Latolil (Nature Vol28 #5702 Mar 22.1979, P.317-323)

MODERN AND TALL: Richard Leakey, "... the boy from Tukana was surprisingly large compared with modern boys his age... he would probably go unnoticed in a crowd today. This find combines with previous discoveries of Homo Erectus to contradict a long held idea that humans have grown larger over the millennia," NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, Nov. 1985, p. 629

MAN EVEN BEFORE "LUCY": Charles E. Oxnard, Dean, Grad School, Professor Biology and Anatomy, USC, "...earlier finds, for instance, at Kanapoi, existed at the same time as, and probably even earlier than, the original gracile Australopithecines... almost indistinguishable in shape from that of modern Humans at four and a half million years..." AMERICAN BIOLOGY TEACHER, Vol. 41, May 1979, p.274

HENRY M. MCHENRY, U of C, DAVIS, "The results show that the Kanapoi specimen, which is 4 to 4.5 million years old, is indistinguishable from modern Homo Sapiens..." SCIENCE, Vol. 190, p.28

1 Posted on 09/03/1999 10:51:00 PDT by RaceBannon (jimban@snet.net)
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With whom did Cain and Abel mate?

SD

2 Posted on 09/03/1999 11:05:09 PDT by SoothingDave
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shameless self-aggrandizing bump/

3 Posted on 09/03/1999 11:06:00 PDT by RaceBannon
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I won't respond to you post point by point, since that would take forever. All I will say is that anyone who thinks the Bible, as great a book as it is, is a completely accurate history is not playing wih a full deck. The same goes for anyone who uses the Bible to argue against evolution. There is enough evidence to support the theory of evolution, just as there is enough evidence to show that the Bible should not be used as a history or science book. I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone with just average intelligence does not understand and believe in evolution.

4 Posted on 09/03/1999 11:06:23 PDT by biggun
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The bible does not say that Abel mated. Cain would have mated with his sister or his niece. The Bible is silent on how old cain was when he moved away from Mom and Dad, so we don't know how old his brothers and sisters would have been. Since the sin narrative did not involve any of Cain's sisters or nieces or nephews, it just tells of Cain and Abel. So, when we read that Cain left to the land of Nod with his wife, it had to be his biological sister or the daughter of one of his sisters. The Bible did not forbid incest until the Book of Leviticus. Since these were the first humans, there would be no genetic decay, no genetic load of mutations that are harmful, so the incestuous relationship would not produce deformed children. Since we have been breeding for at least 6000 years now, the genetic load would be hazardous to us now!

5 Posted on 09/03/1999 11:11:33 PDT by RaceBannon
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There is enough evidence to support the theory of evolution, just as there is enough evidence to show that the Bible should not be used as a history or science book.

Name any point of history that has proven the Bible wrong.

Name any fact, not theory, but FACT of science that has proven the Bible wrong.

I'll wait.

6 Posted on 09/03/1999 11:13:32 PDT by RaceBannon
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Here is a nice introduction to evolution controversies: Link

Here is a point by point refutation of many creationist claims: Link

Here is a list of observed speciations to peruse at your leasure. Link

Here are some fossil records of speciation: Link

Here is a a link where the evolution of horses and other vertebrates are discussed in detail, including transitional fossils. There is also a general analysis of the evidence for evolution: Link

Here is a site explaining 5 common misconceptions of evolution: link

Here is a cool site where you can breed fruit flies on the web

Behe

Here are a bunch of articles on Behe's work: Link and Link2

I found this article written by a chemist who believes that anti-evolution creationists are actually undermining belief in G-d. There are some explanations of why Behe is wrong about irreducible complexity:

The link is here: Link

7 Posted on 09/03/1999 11:17:39 PDT by The Enlightener
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I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone with just average intelligence does not understand and believe in evolution.

I cannot understand how anyone with intelligence does not understand that we are created beings, and not involved.

The Bible calls that foolish. Psalm 14 says:1: The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.

Is this you? I hope not.

Isaiah 40: 21: Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22: It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in: 23: That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity. 24: Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble. 25: To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. 26: Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.

8 Posted on 09/03/1999 11:18:15 PDT by RaceBannon
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Evolution is a theory supported by facts.

Creationism is a belief supported by dogma.

9 Posted on 09/03/1999 11:21:47 PDT by uprise
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The bible does not say that Abel mated. Cain would have mated with his sister or his niece. The Bible is silent on how old cain was when he moved away from Mom and Dad, so we don't know how old his brothers and sisters would have been. Since the sin narrative did not involve any of Cain's sisters or nieces or nephews, it just tells of Cain and Abel. So, when we read that Cain left to the land of Nod with his wife, it had to be his biological sister or the daughter of one of his sisters. The Bible did not forbid incest until the Book of Leviticus. Since these were the first humans, there would be no genetic decay, no genetic load of mutations that are harmful, so the incestuous relationship would not produce deformed children. Since we have been breeding for at least 6000 years now, the genetic load would be hazardous to us now!

Yeah, but after Cain married, he and his wife went to a city in the land of Nod!? What you are missing is that the Hebrew word for man is Adam. So when the Bible says G-d created man, it means mankind. Everyone at once. If you read Genesis this way, all the contradictions and the incest angle dissapears.

You can't be serious in thinking that sin did not exist until Leviticus was written. Why did G-d destroy the earth in a flood then(Noah's story)--to punish people who did not know they were sinning because he hadn't written down what was wrong yet? Doesn't sound like the loving G-d that I'm used to.

As for the reast of what you said, your idea of genetics is wrong. Even if you had two heterogenous individuals, their children would share 50% of the parents DNA, so their childrens children would then all have the same DNA and lethal mutations would occur in the second generation. You need a minimum number of heterogenous individuals to have a viable population. The number is . . . more than 25(at least 10 of which are female)! And even then, the females would have to have at least one child from every male to make it work right. Otherwise, by the third generation, all the kids start having major birth defects and the population dies out.

10 Posted on 09/03/1999 11:32:39 PDT by The Enlightener
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Interesting article - with many good arguments against evolution, and even some favoring creation.

I struggle with these issues almost every day in my mind - they don't go away. As an engineer, I am trained to think logically and follow the scientific method. As a Christian, I have faith that God created the universe, although I don't "believe" it happened within the last 10,000 years (due to the overwhelming scientific evidence on hand).

It's interesting that the article doesn't address the "intelligent design" theory that some creationists espouse. That appears to allow creation to occur followed by some of the evolutionary processes. If God was an imperfect engineer, he would make prototypes and test them - thereby causing the different links in the fossil record.

It's entirely possible that we are all figments of God's imagination, exercising the free will and thought bestowed upon us.

11 Posted on 09/03/1999 11:33:57 PDT by randyrep
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Here is a list of observed speciations to peruse at your leasure.

Using the given definition of speciation that your link gives, an argument could easily be made that blacks, whites, and asiatics are all different species.

12 Posted on 09/03/1999 11:35:12 PDT by Frumious Bandersnatch
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It's no wonder that conservatives get mislabelled as the "rabid right". If we could purge our ranks of the religious nuts then we might get more respect from the average American. As it is, we are stereotyped as a bunch of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell followers who won't budge on abortion, school prayer, evolution etc. Let's try to win for a change. We can start by chucking the Bibles and the evangelical rhetoric.

13 Posted on 09/03/1999 11:41:09 PDT by tm22721 (tm22721@yahoo.com)
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"In a recent interview, Richard Dawkins, a fanatical atheist and a leading spokesman for Darwinian evolution, was asked if he could produce an example of a mutation or evolutionary process which led to an increase in information. Although this has been known for some time to be a significant issue, during a recorded interview, Dawkins was unable to offer any such example of a documented increase in information resulting from a mutation.

After some months, Professor Dawkins has offered an essay responding to this question in context with the interview, and it will be examined here. It is pointed out that speculation and selective use of data is no substitute for evidence. Since some statements are based on Thomas Bayes’ notion of information, this is evaluated in Part 2 and shown to be unconvincing. Some ideas are based on Claude Shannon’s work, and Part 3 shows this to be irrelevant to the controversy. The true issue, that of what coded information, such as found in DNA, human speech and the bee dance, is and how it could have arisen by chance, is simply ignored. Part 4 discusses the Werner Gitt theory of information.

After several years, we continue to request from the Darwinist theoreticians: propose a workable model and show convincing evidence for how coded information can arise by chance!"

From an article by Royal Truman

Cordially,

14 Posted on 09/03/1999 11:42:53 PDT by Diamond
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Here is a list of observed speciations to peruse at your leasure.

Using the given definition of speciation that your link gives, an argument could easily be made that blacks, whites, and asiatics are all different species.

Here's an example for you. Pacific and Atlantic salmon look almost identical. The main difference is that when you cut open a pacific salmon, it is red inside, and an atlantic salmon is pink. Yet, these two very similar fish can not interbreed. Why? Because they both evolved from a common ancestor and have changed just enough that although they still look similar, they can not interbreed. Humans are all one species because they can all interbreed, in the same way that dogs and wolves are all one species. But these two salmon are considered different species.

So the question is what is a species? I would define it as a group of creatures that can all interbreed with each other. Any similar creature that can not interbreed with the others must be a different species.

15 Posted on 09/03/1999 11:51:37 PDT by The Enlightener
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It's no wonder that conservatives get mislabelled as the "rabid right". If we could purge our ranks of the religious nuts then we might get more respect from the average American. As it is, we are stereotyped as a bunch of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell followers who won't budge on abortion, school prayer, evolution etc. Let's try to win for a change. We can start by chucking the Bibles and the evangelical rhetoric.

I'd like to see the GOP establishment try to soft-pedal on abortion, and see how long us social conservatives keep voting for them.

So what? If you win, what will you have won? A party that must stick its finger into the wind can't lead.

"What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?" Mark 8:36

16 Posted on 09/03/1999 12:02:21 PDT by John Farson
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Here's a little Robert Ingersoll Green (1896) to spice things up:

Is there a supernatural power -- an arbitrary mind -- an enthroned God -- a supreme will that sways the tides and currents of the world -- to which all causes bow?

I do not deny. I do not know -- but I do not believe. I believe that the natural is supreme -- that from the infinite chain no link can be lost or broken -- that there is no supernatural power that can answer prayer -- no power that worship can persuade or change -- no power that cares for man.

I believe that with infinite arms Nature embraces the all -- that there is no interference -- no chance -- that behind every event are the necessary and countless causes, and that beyond every event will be and must be the necessary and countless effects.

Man must protect himself. He cannot depend upon the supernatural -- upon an imaginary father in the skies. He must protect himself by finding the facts in Nature, by developing his brain, to the end that he may overcome the obstructions and take advantage of the forces of Nature.

Is there a God?

I do not know.

Is man immortal?

I do not know.

One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor fear, belief, nor denial, can change the fact. It is as it is, and it will be as it must be.

We wait and hope.

17 Posted on 09/03/1999 12:03:04 PDT by Eddeche
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Concerning the transitional forms, I found this little gem: Archaeopterx hoax which may be of some interest.

Now don't get me wrong, I am neither for nor against evolution.  There is evidence for and against it.  It is just that the fanatical religious zealotry typically displayed by defenders of the theory bothers me.

It is dismaying, to say the least, to see ad-hominem attacks on those bringing up inconvenient questions as well as the absolute refusal of the high priests of evolution to even treat such questions with any respect at all.

18 Posted on 09/03/1999 12:15:13 PDT by Frumious Bandersnatch
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"...If we could purge our ranks of the religious nuts..."

We can start by chucking the Bibles and the evangelical rhetoric."

Well, tm22721 you may as well chuck the Constitution, too, because the Bible, more than any other writing, is responsible for our Constitution.

"We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."- James Madison, chief architect of the Constitution

"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here."- Patrick Henry

"Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue."- John Adams

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."- John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798 Address to the military

Cordially,

19 Posted on 09/03/1999 12:19:02 PDT by Diamond
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"In a recent interview, Richard Dawkins, a fanatical atheist and a leading spokesman for Darwinian evolution, was asked if he could produce an example of a mutation or evolutionary process which led to an increase in information. Although this has been known for some time to be a significant issue, during a recorded interview, Dawkins was unable to offer any such example of a documented increase in information resulting from a mutation.

After some months, Professor Dawkins has offered an essay responding to this question in context with the interview, and it will be examined here. It is pointed out that speculation and selective use of data is no substitute for evidence. Since some statements are based on Thomas Bayes’ notion of information, this is evaluated in Part 2 and shown to be unconvincing. Some ideas are based on Claude Shannon’s work, and Part 3 shows this to be irrelevant to the controversy. The true issue, that of what coded information, such as found in DNA, human speech and the bee dance, is and how it could have arisen by chance, is simply ignored. Part 4 discusses the Werner Gitt theory of information.

After several years, we continue to request from the Darwinist theoreticians: propose a workable model and show convincing evidence for how coded information can arise by chance!"

Imagine a bacterium. It reproduces by dividing and growing. It does this billions of times a day. Withing these billions of bacterium, a few will have mutations. Of these few mutations, most will be bad. But given enough days, and enough mutations, one of them is bound to turn out to be good. So imagine a bacterium sitting on a petri dish with an antibiotic spray randomly one a day, that does not cover the whole dish. Eventually, these bacteria will become immune to the antibiotic, because a mutation will make it happen--this has be proven time and time again in the lab. So we definitely agree that microevolution occurs. Now, imagine that we take one of those bacteria and put it into a second petri dish. So we have two petri dishes filled with a bacteria immune to an antibiotic. Now, we expose both dishes to random splattering from a second antibiotic and wait for them to evolve immunity. What are the odds that both populations evolve the same defense? Since random mutations are the source, the odds are quite high that they have each evolved their own mechanism to deal with the antibiotic.

Parasites also evolve with the bacteria. They are bacteria that have no replicating mechanisms of their own, but steal the replicators of other bacteria to reproduce. In this case, such a parasite is merely a strand of RNA that hijacks a bacteria and makes it pump our more RNA strands to infect other bacteria. This has also been shown in the lab that for any simple life form(up to single cell size), the first thing that evolves is a parasitic version of the life form that steals reproduction from its brothers.

Now, imagine that the bacteria will evolve a mechanism to fight off the parasites, and the parasites will evolve a way to beat the mechanism. We are adding complexity to the system, adding information. You can see these results in computer simulations of artificial life today(see Link). So your problem is solved.

The parasites and the full bacteria will fight back and forth, adding complexity to the organism until the organism or the parasite is wiped out(hopefully the parasite, or the population dies!), and new parasites evolve all the time. This is just one mechanism for complexity to evolve, but there are many other theories. I suggest you check out the link I posted above.

20 Posted on 09/03/1999 12:20:05 PDT by The Enlightener
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Evolution is a theory supported by facts.

Creationism is a belief supported by dogma.

That being the case, is should not be too much trouble for you to answer the challenge, also presented here to Enlightener, from an article by Royal Truman: "After several years, we continue to request from the Darwinist theoreticians: propose a workable model and show convincing evidence for how coded information can arise by chance!"

Cordially,

21 Posted on 09/03/1999 12:29:00 PDT by Diamond
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Here is a link pointing to news that in China they have found several relatives of Archeoptorx: Link

There is no evidence to show that Archeopterx is a hoax. In fact, they keep finding other examples of it, and now they even found a fossil of Confuciusornis, a close, somewhat younger relative of Archaeopteryx. There simply is no reputable evidence that Archeopterx is a hoax, but it sure does bother the creationists for some reason. They always have to try to ignore it or make it into a hoax.

From the article:

In the new work, the researchers report discovery of so many specimens of Confuciusornis that they conclude that the bird lived in large colonies, which is the first evidence of social behavior in birds. They also found that that it was the first fully feathered bird yet identified and that its flight feathers were asymmetric, meaning that it too could fly.

22 Posted on 09/03/1999 12:38:44 PDT by The Enlightener
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I believe either system must be accepted by faith, for neither fits the scientific model.

I believe the author misrepresents the scientific model, and does not seem to grasp the full implications of evolutionary theory, as evidenced by his next statement:

For either to be a theory, they must be repeatable events, observable events.

Biblical creation as described is unique and unrepeatable, so the author is half right: creationism is not a theory. Evolution, on the other hand, is thought to be universal, i.e. if and when we find life on other planets, we should also find evidence of evolution of that life. High-energy physics has many useful theories about events that are not directly observable, for example.

Cosmology, for example, is still a valid scientific theory, even though creating a new universe in a lab for observation is highly unlikely (not to mention extremely dangerous) and thus, for all practical purposes, unrepeatable. But cosmological theories can still be tested, based on the predictive power of the theory.

The author goes on to make some other questionable (to put it mildly) statements:

I believe that whichever belief you hold, when completely understood, will guide your thinking and behavior and ultimately determine your destiny.

An acceptance of the evidence for evolutionary process has had no impact on my behavior, or morals, or ethics, or thought processes. Unlike the author, I do not presume to make this claim for everyone. The catch-all "when completely understood" is a subtle and insulting pretext; the author in essence is claiming omniscience in this matter, which I reject utterly. He is not God, and as such I doubt that he or any human completely understands anything of substance.

If the evolutionist believes in God, it can't be a very powerful God if he had no hand in our very beginning and probably has no idea what our future holds

By this statement, I take it that the idea that evolution may be God's plan in action is too awesome for the author to comprehend.

If evolution is true, then there is no objective standard to follow at any time.

More nonsensical omniscient assertions, as if rational objective standards did not exist, could not exist, and do not exist. The golden Rule is not 'golden' because 'God said so', it is 'golden' because it works as an ethical scale and as a survival rule [c.f. Prisoner's Dilemma Computer Tournaments]. As an aside, note that almost every 'civilized' culture has come up with some form of this rule.

Any logic-based system of morality would have no feet to stand on, for it would be based only on argument, not divine revelation.

Try that line in the Objectivists' newsgroup sometime. Then tell us how to distinguish "divine revelation" from "delusional hallucinations".

Existence of God is brought to a level of superstition, and along with that the need of a savior becomes ridiculous. With no Adam and Eve, and therefore no sin in the Garden of Eden who needs atonement?

Maybe, maybe not. Ask yourself this: if the above is true, then who stands to benefit from humanity's collective inherited guilt? Adam did not ask my opinion, therefore I am not responsible in any way for his actions.

The eugenics arguments have nothing to do with evolution, which does not make value judgements over superficial and temporary (on its scale) differences between individuals. Such abhorrent and unfounded conclusions are wholly unscientific. There is no unit of 'betterness' in the scientific standards of measurement! The eugenics argument is as superficial and erroneous as arguing that Christianity is inherently evil because some of its adherents waged unjust wars centuries ago.

Darwin states that if evolution is true, then there must be numberless intermediate links between species.

Darwin imagined the evolutionary process to be a slow, steady, and incremental process of change. Apparently, it is often neither slow nor steady; this does not invalidate the theory, it just alters it slightly, resulting in a better theory.

Darwin himself admits that there are NO finely graduated links between these species that have been discovered.

Darwin is dead, and all the fossils on this planet have not been found yet. The ones we have found tend to support a 'punctuated equilibrium' model, rather than a smooth, continuous one. Given the tendency towards thresholds and phase-transitions in other areas of natural science, this should not be a surprise.

This is getting long, so I'll wrap it up with a few short observations:

Lord Kelvin had no experience with self-organizing, chaotic systems. Furthermore, references to entropy implicitly assume that life is inanimate, incapable of sustaining its organization. This is clearly not true.

A life form needs a mouth, a digestive system, a method of locomotion, and reproductive organs

Meet Mr. Amoeba, Mr. Paramecium, and Mr. Virus. Arguing that life forms must have appeared with all current internal organs fully formed is tantamount to saying that the wheel could not have been invented and found useful without a carriage, bucket seats, and four-on-the-floor.

The all-mutations-are-harmful argument has been refuted thoroughly here and elsewhere; the author's off-hand dismissal of fruit-fly research indicates a lack of familiarity with its results, which are numerous; many were even predicted in advance, thanks to evolutionary theory.

It is a mathematical impossibility for a random chance arrangement of molecules to arrange itself in the form of a DNA helix.

Apparently the author slept through the basic chemistry class the day they discussed chemical bonds.

The dice-throwing example is silly on its face as it assumes no external natural forces play a part. It is also wrong in its conclusions because it assumes that there is only one 'right' answer to a question of survival.

The author brings up some notable mistakes and hoaxes, none of which constitutes a death blow to a working theory. After that begin the Appeals to Authority, including Werner von Braun (the rocket scientist) and other notables, few of which are notable for their work in evolutionary processes. Finally, the list of "believer" scientists is tantamount to '50 million Frenchman can't be wrong'. I see that Pascal is listed - I wonder if the author is familiar with Pascal's Bet? [Pascal's bet is the notion that believing in God is safer than not, because if you're wrong there are no consequences, just some wasted time.]

Overall, a well-written, but unenlightening article.

23 Posted on 09/03/1999 12:45:09 PDT by CzarChasm (The most INDICTABLE administration in history!)
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I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone with just average intelligence does not understand and believe in evolution.

24 Posted on 09/03/1999 12:51:36 PDT by Billt
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We are speaking here of the origin of information (not mere complexity or order) in the first place, and that takes quite a bit of "imagining".

"Pierre-Paul Grasse', the great French evolutionist. When commenting on the mutations of bacteria he said:

What is the use of their unceasing mutations if they do not change? In sum, the mutations of bacteria and viruses are merely hereditary fluctuations around a median position; a swing to the right, a swing to the left, but no final evolutionary effect.

A mechanism for the creation of new genetic material is also sadly inadequate. Sometimes, an extra copy of a gene arises due to a DNA duplication error. Evolutionists suggest that this extra gene can accumulate mutations and eventually code for a new gene with a different function. In reality, however, this fails to explain how an old gene takes on a new function and new regulation pathways by the introduction of genetic mistakes into the gene and the regulatory apparatus.

Natural selection is a conservative process, not a creative one. The famous example of peppered moths teaches us how a species survives in a changing environment by possessing two varieties adapted to different conditions. Antibiotic resistance in bacteria only instructed us in the ingenious mechanisms of different bacteria to share the already existing genes for antibiotic resistance among themselves."

From Raymond G. Bohlin, Ph.D.

Cordially,

25 Posted on 09/03/1999 12:54:29 PDT by Diamond
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With whom did Cain and Abel mate?

Is that so important an issue that it will keep you from God, Jesus and salvation?

26 Posted on 09/03/1999 12:54:35 PDT by Bob Celeste
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Race,
This is superb! Thank you.

27 Posted on 09/03/1999 12:56:30 PDT by Bob Celeste (bob.celeste@usa.net)
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As a Christian, I have faith that God created the universe, although I don't "believe" it happened within the last 10,000 years (due to the overwhelming scientific evidence on hand).

You have left me bewildered. On the one hand you claim to be a Christian while in the same sentence you accuse God of being a liar.

Are you a Christian who doesn't believe in God?

Did not God say that He created the earth in twenty four hours and all that is in it on it and in space in six of those 24 hour days. And does He not give the list of mankinds family tree from Jesus back to Adam in Luke the third chapter. And does He not give us the ages and dates to figure from Adam through Abraham in Genisis.

My friend you are either a Christian who does not read his bible or a liar. For to believe you would make God out to be a liar and that can not be, so it must be you who are doing the misleading.

28 Posted on 09/03/1999 13:06:31 PDT by Bob Celeste
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Here's a hint. If you want people to take you seriously - actually learn some science and be able to make intelligent criticisms. These questions have been asked and answered so many times - I'm considering writing a FR-Evolution FAQ just save us some time and bandwidth.

This would be a lot more interesting if someone actually came up with novel statements or some question that wasn't asked and answered by mainstream scientists one hundred years ago. People patiently refute these arguments and attempt to educate, but it doesn't seem as if creationists actually learn anything since they ask the same questions ad nauseam as if the answers are going to change from one iteration of these endless debates to the next.

29 Posted on 09/03/1999 13:11:42 PDT by garbanzo
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This is an interesting thread because there is no right and wrong since no one really knows for sure. I think the debate was poorly framed because it did not list a 3rd option - creation + evolution. Many are arguing minutae about specific christian theology and writings. Many can't see the forest for the trees so-to-speak.

The larger question to me - is the universe the result of intelligent design or randomness? Based on our level of scientific knowledge to date, we can observe with our own eyes the tremendous staggering evidence to support intelligent design. There is very little evidence to support random processes actually creating complex life. There is no evidence whatsoever to support random processes creating matter and the universe. I'll go with Pascal's bet.

30 Posted on 09/03/1999 13:18:38 PDT by plain talk
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I define creation as the definite and deliberate act of God causing the beginning of life and material existence of all things in the universe having taken place in a literal six-day period.

This assumes and defines all existence in a planet earth reference (6 earth days) which is immature, egocentric nonsense.

The Bible, as sacred and spriitually truthful as it may be, was written and later translated by and for human beings 2000 + years ago; most human beings then had an intellect not nearly as developed as ours is today.

Reason allows that abstract principles were communicated by allegorical stories - creation being the first of those allegories. Towards the end of the Bible it is stated: "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." This reinforces the allegorical nature of Biblical time - but it does not require that creation must have taken 6000 years. Physical evidence indicates that life as we understand it has been developing on this planet for way more than 6000 years.

Having faith in a Spiritual Creator does not require the suspension of reason or the ignoring of facts.

31 Posted on 09/03/1999 13:22:18 PDT by Batman
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Is that so important an issue that it will keep you from God, Jesus and salvation?

Rev. Bob, how do you reconcile the two Flood accounts in Genesis? Are there not different numbers given for the animals brought aboard?

Thanks for the concern about my salvation.

SD

32 Posted on 09/03/1999 13:26:07 PDT by SoothingDave
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MONKEY BUSINESS
Evolutionists get into scrapes
And elicit all manner of japes:
We'll allow that these loons
Harken back to baboons,
But our own family trees have no apes!

More "Politickles" by F.R. Duplantier at

http://www.americasfuture.net

33 Posted on 09/03/1999 13:36:14 PDT by Bayou Bob
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Having faith in a Spiritual Creator does not require the suspension of reason or the ignoring of facts.

Dare I say it? .............AMEN!

34 Posted on 09/03/1999 13:37:04 PDT by seamus (jlakely@yahoo.com)
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I think Enlightener just showed you the mechanism in his last post. If you were being intellectually honest you'd recognize that. As for the oft repeated refrain that it's statistically impossible for cells to evolve into more complex forms - that is just wrong.

Evolutionary SCIENCE, extrapolating from known a repeatedly observable physical phenonmena, proposes that the earliest single cells were along the lines of mitochondria or black smoker bacteria. Both of these energy-using, self-propagating systems are relatively simple. Even 15 years ago researchers were producing cell-like, non-living structures using organic chemicals, simple carbohydrates, fatty acids and simple proteins. At that level, the molecules prove to be "self-arranging" to a certain degree.

It is not too hard to imagine that if one were to repeat the conditions of such experiments, an energy using, self-propagating biological machine could result which reproduces itself at an exponential rate, doubling in number every 20 minutes. Now imagine that such interactions are occuring all over the planet trillions upon trillions of time per millisecond for 4 billion years. Just like with Enlightener's bateria in a petri dish/antibiotic medium example, tiny changes occur which either render a new "offspring" capable of surviving its present environment or not. The survivors continue to reproduce at an exponential rate. Just as tiny, or even very large changes occur in the organism, so there occurs changes in its environment. And imagine that occurs on unimaginable scale for billions of years.

You don't need intelligent design to improve the "information" of the organism because it's a self regulating system. Only random helpful information (eg. information which allows the organism to better survive its environment) survives to be passed on to the next generation.

Recently, researchers in the field of artificial intelligence designed a program which selected for optimum simple through increasingly complex locomotion systems designed by radomization (essentially computerized tinkertoy with motorized joints, slapped together every way the computer could think of, overlaid by certain constant parameters - ie gravity, etc). The program would keep the best (most efficient) designs, dump the rest and then start over using the best designs as archetypes, and so on, thousands of times per day. If you're still following at this point, the UN-surprising result was that the computer quickly (within a few months) designed all of the basic types of locomotion you see in nature (two legs, four legs, six/eight, snake movement, flagellar movement), and a few we don't see (three legs, etc.). Is the computer a God, intelligently designing 747's out of junkyard whirlwinds?

People reject evolution because it is an extremely complex and wide ranging study which they do not understand and cannot imagine. Yet those same people have no trouble believing that I can create a city-busting explosion out of a fist-sized heavy lump of grey metal. Were I to suggest that thermonuclear explosions are generated by prayer rather than application of the laws of physics, You would laugh at me. When you tell me the world and man were created "POOF", I laugh.

The only real question we should be concerned with is how did the physical laws that govern us come into being? Speculating that an amazingly imperfect, kindly, man-shaped, alpha male made it all and will lead our little monkey tribe into happiness-land as long as we don't piss him off is Simian at best. Trying to discover the answer through scientific means is the only useful approach.

35 Posted on 09/03/1999 13:47:01 PDT by Melinator
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You have left me bewildered. On the one hand you claim to be a Christian while in the same sentence you accuse God of being a liar.

Are you a Christian who doesn't believe in God?

Did not God say that He created the earth in twenty four hours and all that is in it on it and in space in six of those 24 hour days. And does He not give the list of mankinds family tree from Jesus back to Adam in Luke the third chapter. And does He not give us the ages and dates to figure from Adam through Abraham in Genisis.

No, he does not. If there's one thing worse than no reading G-d, it should be misquoting him, which is why we should still read the bible in Aramaic or Hebrew. To quote:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the eretz. 1:2Now the eretz was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep. God's Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.

1:3God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 1:4God saw the light, and saw that it was good. God divided the light from the darkness. 1:5God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. There was evening and there was morning, one day.

1:6God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." 1:7God made the expanse, and divided the waters which were under the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse, and it was so. 1:8God called the expanse sky. There was evening and there was morning, a second day.

1:9God said, "Let the waters under the sky be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear," and it was so. 1:10God called the dry land Eretz, and the gathering together of the waters he called Seas. God saw that it was good. 1:11God said, "Let the eretz put forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with its seed in it, on the eretz," and it was so. 1:12The eretz brought forth grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with its seed in it, after their kind: and God saw that it was good. 1:13There was evening and there was morning, a third day.

1:14God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of sky to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years; 1:15and let them be for lights in the expanse of sky to give light on the eretz," and it was so. 1:16God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He also made the stars. 1:17God set them in the expanse of sky to give light to the eretz, 1:18and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good. 1:19There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

1:20God said, "Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the eretz in the open expanse of sky." 1:21God created the large sea creatures, and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. God saw that it was good. 1:22God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the eretz." 1:23There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

1:24God said, "Let the eretz bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle, creeping things, and animals of the eretz after their kind," and it was so. 1:25God made the animals of the eretz after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. God saw that it was good.

1:26God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the eretz, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the eretz." 1:27God created man in his own image. In God's image he created him; male and female he created them. 1:28God blessed them. God said to them, "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the eretz, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the eretz." 1:29God said, "Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is on the surface of all the eretz, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed. It will be your food. 1:30To every animal of the eretz, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that creeps on the eretz, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food." And it was so.

1:31God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

2:1The heavens and the eretz were finished, and all the host of them. 2:2On the seventh day God finished his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 2:3God blessed the seventh day, and made it holy, because he rested in it from all his work which he had created and made.

Reading the above, do you see anything saying 24 hours? Do you notice that G-d did not create a day until the 4th day? How can he create a day when three days have already passed? Maybe the definition of day before the 4th day is different. Maybe it even lasted billions of years. Maybe now, even today, we are still living in the seventh day.

My friend you are either a Christian who does not read his bible or a liar. For to believe you would make God out to be a liar and that can not be, so it must be you who are doing the misleading.

Anyone who quotes G-d as creating the world in six 24 hour days is misleading us. G-d didn't even create the day until day 4 of creation. How he did this is unclear, but the implication is that before the fourth day, days were something different than they were after. It seems to be you who does understand chapter 1 of the Bible.

And no, he does not give us names and ages to figure out how long passed either. What is given is a list of men who begat each other. But ages are only given for a few. So you cannot figure out how long the old Testament took place over.

36 Posted on 09/03/1999 14:01:36 PDT by The Enlightener
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Here's a hint. If you want people to take you seriously - actually learn some science and be able to make intelligent criticisms. These questions have been asked and answered so many times - I'm considering writing a FR-Evolution FAQ just save us some time and bandwidth.

Once again, you have failed to address anything I have said with a coherent arguement defending your point of view, and have instead made a personal offensive attack. You should really tryto refrain from that approach.

37 Posted on 09/03/1999 14:13:45 PDT by RaceBannon
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""After several years, we continue to request from the Darwinist theoreticians: propose a workable model and show convincing evidence for how coded information can arise by chance!"

I don't think that it has been demonstrated yet how life evolves from lifeless matter. But I think that it has been demonstrated that humans share 95% of their DNA with chimpanzees. In other words, we are evolved from apes. Now let me ask you a question so I can try and get your belief clear: do you think that God invented the world in seven days and that Adam and Eve were the first humans?

38 Posted on 09/03/1999 14:15:06 PDT by uprise
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Anyone who quotes G-d as creating the world in six 24 hour days is misleading us. G-d didn't even create the day until day 4 of creation. How he did this is unclear, but the implication is that before the fourth day, days were something different than they were after. It seems to be you who does understand chapter 1 of the Bible.

You yourself posted Genesis 1: 3: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4: And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5: And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Now, try to explain what you said again about there not being a day/night reference?? It is clearly in the very first part of Genesis 1:3.

39 Posted on 09/03/1999 14:17:34 PDT by RaceBannon
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Yeah, but after Cain married, he and his wife went to a city in the land of Nod!? What you are missing is that the Hebrew word for man is Adam. So when the Bible says G-d created man, it means mankind. Everyone at once. If you read Genesis this way, all the contradictions and the incest angle dissapears.

The problem is, is that when youread Genesis that way, you are no longer reading with normal reading comprehension that we were both taught in elementary school. It does not say that Cain AND his wife went to Nod, it says that CAIN went to Nod, and THERE he knew his wife. I do believe that he probably took his wife with him, but it is silent of where Cain got his wife from.
Genesis 4:16: And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. 17: And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.
Nor does it say that God is having conversations with groups of people, He is having the conversations with 2 people, Adam and Eve. The name of Adam does mean mankind, but, which came first? The MAN Adam? Or the naming of Mankind after Adam? Think about it, the MAN Adam came first, for their would be no reason to name mankind after no one.

You can't be serious in thinking that sin did not exist until Leviticus was written. Why did G-d destroy the earth in a flood then(Noah's story)--to punish people who did not know they were sinning because he hadn't written down what was wrong yet? Doesn't sound like the loving G-d that I'm used to.

Once again, you don't read with comprehension. I said nothing about there not being sin, I said that incest was not declared to be a sin until Leviticus, not that sin was not sin, you must read slower, you are really missing important stuff here. Also, do you really tink that men didn't know what sin was then? Just because we have only one record of God's word from the pre-flood era, that does not mean that men didn't know God's will. Men talked to God openly back then by direct revelation, and ALL would know of the original creation story from Adam himself for the first 930 years!! Think it through!!

As for the reast of what you said, your idea of genetics is wrong. Even if you had two heterogenous individuals, their children would share 50% of the parents DNA, so their childrens children would then all have the same DNA and lethal mutations would occur in the second generation. You need a minimum number of heterogenous individuals to have a viable population. The number is . . . more than 25(at least 10 of which are female)! And even then, the females would have to have at least one child from every male to make it work right. Otherwise, by the third generation, all the kids start having major birth defects and the population dies out.

Once again, you must pay attention to facts. We know that the closer to the original blood line two people mate at, the closer the reality of genetic mutations becoming dominant in the zygote that is conceived. If we have two perfect created humans, Adam and Eve, having children, we have no reason to believe that these children have any genetic mutation loading to pass on to offspring. Since they are actually generation #2, where is the accumulation of genetic mutation? The time span to have that happen is zero!!!! Mutations are a rarity thanks to DNA, and remember, we are talking about the offspring of two perfect people, physically. So, your arguement is flawed, seriously.

The other aspect here, is that there is no guarentee that the defect would raise it's head. There are almost countless combinations of gene mixing between male and female, that is why me and you don't have all the diseases that our parents genetic mutations gave us!! Think it through!! Do you have genetic mutations showing?? Me and you have at least 6000 years of genetic load of defective genes, and yet, me and you probably look normal, eh? Why assume that the offspring of two perfect humans would produce downs syndrome children for example, when me and you don't, (most likely?) THINK IT THROUGH!!!! By your logic, we all are genetic freaks, and there is no one 'normal' looking.

40 Posted on 09/03/1999 14:38:12 PDT by RaceBannon
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It's interesting that the article doesn't address the "intelligent design" theory that some creationists espouse. That appears to allow creation to occur followed by some of the evolutionary processes. If God was an imperfect engineer, he would make prototypes and test them - thereby causing the different links in the fossil record.

I think you need to re-read it. I didn't use the words 'intelligent design', for sure, but I hinted at the idea of complexity and how evolution doesn't explain it, how evolution cannot account for that complexity, and I guess, you need to read a little into it, but, the only other way to explain what evolution cannot explain, is the intelligent design side of the arguement, and hence: Creation is the only answer.

41 Posted on 09/03/1999 14:40:56 PDT by RaceBannon
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It's no wonder that conservatives get mislabelled as the "rabid right". If we could purge our ranks of the religious nuts then we might get more respect from the average American. As it is, we are stereotyped as a bunch of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell followers who won't budge on abortion, school prayer, evolution etc. Let's try to win for a change. We can start by chucking the Bibles and the evangelical rhetoric.

I for one, do not follow Robertson or Falwell. However, I believe if more followed what the Bible clearly said, they would wake up to the truth. This country was founded by 'Religious zealots', who fled the church-state of England to found their own little religious community, sort of like Waco in a way, only much better grounded on Scripture. It is the Bible that our laws are based on, our statutes, and our moral cause itself, now known as Conservatism. It is a shame you don't know that, this party (Republican) would not exist now if not for that.

42 Posted on 09/03/1999 14:46:45 PDT by RaceBannon
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I strongly reject the notion of the creationists the claim that those who believes in evolution as a theory are not Christians!

Such a thought is a form of bigotry and judging.

The believers in Chirst are Christians. Period.

All you judges will have to answer to GOD !

43 Posted on 09/03/1999 14:47:04 PDT by Gomer512
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http://www.americasfuture.net/1998/dec98/98-1227c.html

44 Posted on 09/03/1999 14:49:35 PDT by Bayou Bob
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Evolution, interspecies evolution, is obviously untrue. That doesn't mean creationalism must be true.

45 Posted on 09/03/1999 14:51:42 PDT by William Terrell
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So imagine a bacterium sitting on a petri dish with an antibiotic spray randomly one a day, that does not cover the whole dish. Eventually, these bacteria will become immune to the antibiotic, because a mutation will make it happen--this has be proven time and time again in the lab. So we definitely agree that microevolution occurs. Now, imagine that we take one of those bacteria and put it into a second petri dish. So we have two petri dishes filled with a bacteria immune to an antibiotic. Now, we expose both dishes to random splattering from a second antibiotic and wait for them to evolve immunity. What are the odds that both populations evolve the same defense? Since random mutations are the source, the odds are quite high that they have each evolved their own mechanism to deal with the antibiotic.

Actually, you have proved nothing about evolution, but have only re-enforced the fact of genetic variation. Those that have a god-given ability to not be destroyed by the anti-biotic thrive as they can in the environment. There is no proof they evolved, only that they survived. By interbreeding those that survive, you have survival of the fittest, and that is NOT evolution, that is the fit survive, but what it is is the forced selection of breeding of a species with the result of the common genes being the genes of those who can survive the anti-biotic.

. They are still bacterium you know.....

46 Posted on 09/03/1999 14:53:35 PDT by RaceBannon
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Evolution would require that through random, chance processes, inorganic materials would gather in such a way to create organic materials capable of replicating themselves.

Why does evolution require these processes to be random? Is it because we have no other explanation? Could not God be the author of evolution and the "six-day" period of creation be an allegory?

47 Posted on 09/03/1999 15:11:04 PDT by ContraryMary
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An acceptance of the evidence for evolutionary process has had no impact on my behavior, or morals, or ethics, or thought processes. Unlike the author, I do not presume to make this claim for everyone. The catch-all "when completely understood" is a subtle and insulting pretext; the author in essence is claiming omniscience in this matter, which I reject utterly. He is not God, and as such I doubt that he or any human completely understands anything of substance.

That may be that I am not omnicient, but I do observe and think. I also know, that what we really believe, we do. If you really believe something, your life is patterned by it. If you REALLY believe that McDonalds is bad for you, you don't eat there. If you really believe that we came from slime to ape like creatures, you eventually accept theories and thought processes that reflect the fruits of that. However, if you believe that We are accountable to God, you will most likly respond in the way He commanded, to believ on His Son.

If the evolutionist believes in God, it can't be a very powerful God if he had no hand in our very beginning and probably has no idea what our future holds
By this statement, I take it that the idea that evolution may be God's plan in action is too awesome for the author to comprehend.

No, I just choose to believ what God said, and I wonder why you choose to believe that He lied. The Bible clearly says creation, yet you say that God sai, Evolve! Why? You are calling God a liar, who's side do you want to be on judgement day?

If evolution is true, then there is no objective standard to follow at any time.
More nonsensical omniscient assertions, as if rational objective standards did not exist, could not exist, and do not exist. The golden Rule is not 'golden' because 'God said so', it is 'golden' because it works as an ethical scale and as a survival rule [c.f. Prisoner's Dilemma Computer Tournaments]. As an aside, note that almost every 'civilized' culture has come up with some form of this rule.

Why should this scare you? If we evolved, then survival of the fittest tells me that killing you is okay. There is no moral 'standard'. What is a standard? It is an absolute model, one that is sure, not fluctuating. Evolution is fluctuation ad infinitum, and therefore, no moral code is applicable for we always change. The rate of change is absurd, for how do youknow what time we are in concerning this? Maybe my killing you is the change we need?

Any logic-based system of morality would have no feet to stand on, for it would be based only on argument, not divine revelation.Try that line in the Objectivists' newsgroup sometime. Then tell us how to distinguish "divine revelation" from "delusional hallucinations".

Again, where is the standard, and why do we have one? Existence of God is brought to a level of superstition, and along with that the need of a savior becomes ridiculous. With no Adam and Eve, and therefore no sin in the Garden of Eden who needs atonement?Maybe, maybe not. Ask yourself this: if the above is true, then who stands to benefit from humanity's collective inherited guilt? Adam did not ask my opinion, therefore I am not responsible in any way for his actions.
You do not stand guilty before God because of Adam's sin, but your own. Sin came through Adam, true, but why do you sin? You cannot blame Adam, only yourself.

The eugenics arguments have nothing to do with evolution, which does not make value judgements over superficial and temporary (on its scale) differences between individuals. Such abhorrent and unfounded conclusions are wholly unscientific. There is no unit of 'betterness' in the scientific standards of measurement! The eugenics argument is as superficial and erroneous as arguing that Christianity is inherently evil because some of its adherents waged unjust wars centuries ago.

Are you unfamiliar with Margret Sanger's arguements for abortion? Blacks were an inferior species. Henry Fairfield Osborne of the American Natural History Museum thought so too. And, where di Hitler get his ideas? You need to read up on Social Darwinism also, it is all evolution based.

Darwin states that if evolution is true, then there must be numberless intermediate links between species.Darwin imagined the evolutionary process to be a slow, steady, and incremental process of change. Apparently, it is often neither slow nor steady; this does not invalidate the theory, it just alters it slightly, resulting in a better theory.

Sorry, But I was quoting Darwin, so, you have to go back and re-read Darwin, that is what he said.

Darwin himself admits that there are NO finely graduated links between these species that have been discovered. Darwin is dead, and all the fossils on this planet have not been found yet. The ones we have found tend to support a 'punctuated equilibrium' model, rather than a smooth, continuous one. Given the tendency towards thresholds and phase-transitions in other areas of natural science, this should not be a surprise.

So, the dog ate my homework? The evidence of evolution is the lack of evolution?? Stop! I can't stop laughing at that one!!

This is getting long, so I'll wrap it up with a few short observations: Lord Kelvin had no experience with self-organizing, chaotic systems. Furthermore, references to entropy implicitly assume that life is inanimate, incapable of sustaining its organization. This is clearly not true. A life form needs a mouth, a digestive system, a method of locomotion, and reproductive organs Meet Mr. Amoeba, Mr. Paramecium, and Mr. Virus. Arguing that life forms must have appeared with all current internal organs fully formed is tantamount to saying that the wheel could not have been invented and found useful without a carriage, bucket seats, and four-on-the-floor.

You make my arguement and then attack it?? How can life sustain itself with designed, coded information? How did that information happen by chance? I want to see you type the code written in 'C' to make the simple program "HEllo World", all by chance. You know that is nothing compared to a life form and the complexities needed to make a paramecium!!

The all-mutations-are-harmful argument has been refuted thoroughly here and elsewhere; the author's off-hand dismissal of fruit-fly research indicates a lack of familiarity with its results, which are numerous; many were even predicted in advance, thanks to evolutionary theory.

Show me one of drosphilia melangasters mutations that produced a stronger, longer living, faster flying fruit fly. Then, show me that mutation happening by chance alone, not complex, ordered,controlled man made and highly scientific observed processes occuring in stages with man made knwolege, and then I might think about fruit flies having good mutations.

It is a mathematical impossibility for a random chance arrangement of molecules to arrange itself in the form of a DNA helix.Apparently the author slept through the basic chemistry class the day they discussed chemical bonds.

Apparently, you think that just because an ionic bond takes place, it is a correct bond, is is not random, and it is DNA that is created, Where were you?? Random chance accumulations of molecules do not fall into DNA, you really lost all your case with that statement.

48 Posted on 09/03/1999 15:15:43 PDT by RaceBannon
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An Evolution FAQ? Each point has crunched through all the available evidence pro and con for that point. Each debate finally bottoms out at "No, it is"/"Yes, it isn't". And each FAQ would be debated to the same point.

Here's something that hasn't had as much press: neither evolution, as the evolutionists present it, nor creationalism, as creationalists present it, are correct.

49 Posted on 09/03/1999 15:19:56 PDT by William Terrell
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I think the debate was poorly framed because it did not list a 3rd option - creation + evolution. Many are arguing minutae about specific christian theology and writings. Many can't see the forest for the trees so-to-speak.

That's because I believe it somes down to this important point: What did God say? A simple reading of Scripture tells us that we were created, and it happened in 6 days, that there is one creation account,told two ways, one flood account, told two ways. Either it is God's word or it isn't. That is why there can be NO joining of evolution with Creation. Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve died spiritually that day, and were in need of salvation. Me and you are decended from them, and we need a saviour since we inherited a sinful nature from Adam, and God sent His son to die on the cross for those sins. No Adam, No sin in the Garden of Eden. No Sin, no need for Jesus. No need for Jesus, Satan wins the arguement in men's minds. That is why Creation is important to teach, men need to be saved, and evolution teaches men they have no need of a Saviour. 'Christians' who try to hold to both, either don't understand Christianity, or they don't understand evolution.

50 Posted on 09/03/1999 15:21:43 PDT by RaceBannon
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Reason allows that abstract principles were communicated by allegorical stories - creation being the first of those allegories. Towards the end of the Bible it is stated: "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." This reinforces the allegorical nature of Biblical time - but it does not require that creation must have taken 6000 years. Physical evidence indicates that life as we understand it has been developing on this planet for way more than 6000 years.

First off, where is the verse that says a day with the Lord is a 1000 years and a 1000 years is a day? What is the context? Is the context the time of creation, or is it the description of God's willingness to be patient with us to give us time to repent and be saved? You need to be careful to read what it says, and not what you are told it says, remember that!!

2 Peter 3: 3: Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, 4: And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. 5: For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: 6: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: 7: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. 8: But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 9: The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance..

51 Posted on 09/03/1999 15:26:25 PDT by RaceBannon
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