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If, as the creationists wold have us believe, all life on Earth came into existence through a process of special creation, then the God presumably in charge of the process has had ample opportunity to create evidence that would refute what the religious extremist minority naively labels the "heresy" of evolution. However, when we examine the physical and biological Earth, we encounter not only a complete lack of disproof of evolution, but also vast quantities of evidence supporting evolution, all of which indicates one of three possibilities: (1) life evolved on its own; (2) God used evolution as a means of "creating" life; or (3) God created all life through special creation, but wants to deceive man into believing that evolution is true. All three of these options run counter to the creationist's claims.
A crucial prediction made by the theory of evolution is that one should find a general progression of increasingly diverse and complex life forms when one examines the fossils in progressively higher strata if sedimentary rock. While creationists should expect the oldest strata of sedimentary rock to yield fossils of very complex life forms (like mammals), since their God presumably created all life within a short period of time, evolutionists specifically expect the fossil record not to. Thus, had God wished to supply evidence refuting evolution and proving His status as Creator, He could easily have done so by depositing, preerving, and later exposing to paleontologists numerous mammalian fossils in the oldest rock strata. In fact, a God powerful enough to create an entire universe would surely find it a trifle to invert the whole sequence of fossils, placing the simplest life forms in the most modern strata and the most complex life forms in the earliest strata, thereby disproving evolution. Yet, when we look at the fossil record, we find the one sequence of life forms that evolution predicts -- not one of the many sequences that would have demolished evolutionary science. One must wonder why the creationist's God has failed to seize such a beautiful opportunity to refute evolution.
For the full article, CLICK HERE.
Here are some links of continuing general interest to these threads:DARWIN, FULL TEXT OF HIS WRITINGS.
Massive mega-site with thousands of links on evolution, creationism, young earth, etc..
Site that debunks virtually all of creationism's fallacies.
Another amazing site full of links debunking creationism.
The site of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, with tons of resources on evolution, education, the current controversy in Kansas, the text of court opinions on teaching evolution, and a very good article titled: "Evolution and the Science and Religion Dialogue," American Association for the Advancement of Science.
An article by John F. Haught, Ph.D., Georgetown University: Does Evolution Rule Out God's Existence?.
Great 1997 article from the Washington Post on how evolution answers its critics: How Science Responds When Creationists Criticize Evolution.
Information about The 2nd law of thermodynamics, so beloved (and so poorly understood) by creationists.
For those who keep advancing the "do the math" argument, allegedly showing the improbability of the natural evolution of life itself, here's an article in Scientific American about self-organization, a recently discovered, innate property of some complex systems. CLICK HERE FOR "SELF-ORGANIZATION".
For the old "NASA Computer Proves Joshua's Long Day" story, a classic urban legend, CLICK HERE.
For information about Ayn Rand and Objectivism, CLICK HERE FOR AYN RAND'S PAGE.
The truth about the anti-evolution $250K offer from Dr. Kent Hovind of Pensacola, Florida (the prize is yours, provided you prove to Hovind's satisfaction that there are no miracles): HERE'S HOVIND'S OFFER. For information from two people who "debated" against the learned Dr. Hovind (who is allegedly a government school teacher), DEBATE ONE, and for the other Hovind encounter DEBATE TWO. Hovind was often touted by creationists in these threads until the absurd nature of his offer became known.
Regarding the inerrancy of scripture, here are the documents about the charges against Galileo and Galileo's confession (involving his heresy that the earth orbits the sun, contrary to scripture): Heresy charges against Galileo and Galileo's confession.
The Pope's official 1996 position on evolution (about 330 years after Galileo died under house arrest).
For a wonderful concept introduced to these threads by jennyp, click on eudaimonia.
For "Conway's Game of Life," a computer simulation, an addictive program which shows how complex self-sustaining arrangements can emerge from relatively simple rules acting on random starting configurations. It's another link from jennyp: Conway's Game of Life.
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New thread. Y'all come.
Hot new thread.
The fossil record does a rather shabby job of supporting evolutionary assumptions.Ie:if evolution is how it really happened,then wouldn't fossils be dominated by "half this/half that"?There are only arguable examples of transitional forms with archeopterix about the best shot.
Darwin sent folks out to search for them over a century ago.Where are they?
I'm just makin' sure that my latest posts didn't get abandoned back on the OLD thread.
#61................Thanks for not getting on my case about the Colts output yesterday. I'm not much of a fan of 'professional' sports anyway. "Don't go nuts, kids! It's just a business."
I don't know what the Irsays wanted from Baltimore 16 years ago, but NOW the is talk of 'needing' a NEW stadium! (Yeah, 16 years old and 'obsolete' already)
And what REALLY Pi$$e$ me off:
These IDIOTS we have for elected officials NEVER retired the SURTAX on prepared food here in Indy after the 10 years ran out. I STILL have to pay an added 1% 'To help pay off the Dome'.
(Hey Jim, "You ain't gonna get it. We just busted our budget for a new basketballcathedral, mosque, churchstadium for the Pacers. (After all, the old Market Square Arena was 25 years old!)
#63.............
Creationism is not only a cult belief it is a DANGEROUS cult belief..
I may have missed it in all of the posts, but could YOU show me just HOW it is 'dangerous'? Even FLAT EARTHERs couldn't limit discovery: they'd just warn you about falling off the edge!
continue NOT! I am just now posting MY stuff! (And you KNOW you want everyone to see it!)
;^)
But the jungle is lousy for fossilization.
You have GOT to be kidding here!!! Yank out ALL of your books and you'll SEE that them there ol' dinos is STANDING up to their belly buttons in Steamy, Swampy, Leafy, Mossy, Soggy JUNGLE!!!!!!!
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Oh, that OLD thread is here.
Oh, that OLD thread is here.
Thanks, but if you scroll up, you'll see that I had already linked to it in my initial setup posting. All part of the service, my dear.
The fossil record does a rather shabby job of supporting evolutionary assumptions. This is the most common fallacy promoted by creationists: "The fossil record MUST show every intermediate form (half-and-half) with smoooth transitions if evolution is valid. To the contrary, of the literally hundreds of billions of individual organisms that have lived in the 4.5 billion year existence of the earth, only one in every hundred milllion or so actually gets fossilized. It's like looking at a tile here and a tile there on a huge mosiaic tile floor and expecting to see the "smooth transistions" of the overall design. Evolution is a fact. It happens the same way that natural selection is imitated by humans who select dogs for certain characteristics. Where is the half chihuahua, half St. Bernard? It is arrogant of humans to limit God to one specific way of doing anything. God did what God did and the truth is ALWAYS God's work. Evolution just happens to be the truth. Creationism is the same as any other ancient myth that simply must "EVOLVE".
David M. Raup, Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology:
"Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and...ironically, we have even fewer examples of Evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the Evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as the result of more detailed information".
This is true of all of the disciplines of science touched by Evolution.
David B. Kitts(School of Geology and Geophysics, University of Oklahoma), "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution, Vol. 28, September 1974, p. 467:
"Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of 'seeing' Evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for Evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them."
His,
Bob Zuvich
rzuvich@access1.com
I suppose it won't have any effect, and it's probably outrageous of me to attempt this, but I would like to make some suggestions for those who post here:
1. Please link to lengthy articles, rather than posting them here in their entirety. A brief description of the article is helpful, but dumping it here in full is overkill. It gets out of hand if a post is longer than a screen or two. (In my humble opinion.)2. In the words of Rodney King: "Can't everybody get along?"
Darwin sent folks out to search for them over a century ago.Where are they?
Every fossil is a transitional form.
>One must wonder why the creationist's God has failed to seize such a beautiful opportunity to refute evolution.
Or to create a world that isn't better explained by assuming he does not exist.
#11..........
Every one, huh?
Bats
GAP: One of the least understood groups of modern mammals -- there are no known bat fossils from the entire Paleocene.
The first known fossil bat, Icaronycteris, is from the (later) Eocene, and it was already a fully flying animal very similar to modern bats. It did still have a few "primitive" features, though (unfused & unkeeled sternum, several teeth that modern bats have lost, etc.) Fruit bats and horseshoe bats first appear in the Oligocene. Modern little vespertiliontids (like the little brown bat) first appear in the Miocene.
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I'm going to go out on a limb and make a general comment to nobody in particular.
The most compelling evidence for evolution has nothing to do with the fossil record or with genetic trees or anything like that, but from simple observation of how people and animals inherit characteristics from their parents. People look like their parents. If they have black skin, their parents have black skin. If they have epicanthic eyes, their parents have epicanthic eyes. Any illiterate fool can see this. Even if I believed in Adam and Eve, it is instantly clear that two randomly selected orientals share more common ancestors more recently than I do with either of them.
That being said, it is equally obvious that all finches share common ancestors. Given that, it is inevitable that all birds share common ancestors, at some point before the ancestors shared by all finches. From there it gets a little more complicated, but not too much: ultimately, all vertebrates must have shared a common ancestor. Are these really such great leaps of intuition?
If Darwin had never lived and no theory of evolution had never been published, I can't imagine that I really would have failed to conclude that all life (at least each kingdom) descended from common ancestors. Throw away all fossils and all knowledge of genetics; it's still obvious by mere inspection.
This is the classic "God in the Gaps" argument. When there is a big gap, the anti-evolutionist says, find a transitional form. Then a scientist, rancher, miner or other person finds a form that is in the gap. The anti-evolutionist says, "aha, but where is the transitional form between this fossil and the one on one side or other of the gap. There will always be gaps, and all fossils are to some extent transitional forms. It is up to the person disputing the evolutionary evidence to show that fossils don't fit the evolutionary record. Mammals in early sedimentary rock would be good.
Evidence of extinction and death doesn't support the evolution hypothesis.
It did still have a few "primitive" features, though (unfused & unkeeled sternum, several teeth that modern bats have lost, etc.)
Like I said: every one.
OK, I'll grant you this: the very last trilobite was not a transitional form. Find its fossil and I'll stand refuted. Meanwhile, do you (or will you) have children? Guess who's a transitional form!
Swamp perfect, jungle bad. Tarzan know!
"Evolution is an observed fact."
Depends on how one defines "evolution." I give you another "best-hits" compilation of evolution's "morphing definitions." See if you can follow the "changing" chameleon!
Here we see one definition of evolution.
It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapses of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were.
Although natural selection can act only through and for the good of each being, yet characters and structures, which we are apt to consider as of very trifling importance, may thus be acted on.
Charles Darwin, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life," Chapter 4
"Evolution in the extended sense can be defined as a directional and essentially irreversible process occurring in time, which in its course gives rise to an increase of variety and an increasingly high level of organization in its products. Our present knowledge indeed forces us to tile view that the whole of reality is evolution—a single process of self-transformation."2
2. Julian Huxley: "Evolution and Genetics" in What is Man? (Ed. by J. R. Newman, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1955), p.278.
And here we see another:
"Evolution does NOT proceed towards greater complexity. If anything, it meanders towards fitness within the species' environment. (And of course there's a big question of just how well it does that!)"
130 Posted on 10/30/1999 15:14:23 PDT by jennyp
"Maybe Darwin thought it was neat & linear. But it turns out it's actually quite a chaotic (unpredictable in advance) process. Wild & bushy, more like. Kinda like the dynamic free-market economy vs. the intelligently designed Soviet economy."
98 Posted on 10/03/1999 22:23:54 PDT by jennyp
"evolution is usually defined as any shift of allele frequencies in a population. Scientists don't usually make value judgments on whether or not a particular shift in frequency is "upward" or "downward". In fact in a book by Gould that I read, he gives an example of a plankton species that got smaller over time. While it's a common misstatement among even many of those who accept evolution as fact that evolution is "progress" it's not really a part of evolutionary theory."
49 Posted on 10/21/1999 07:40:16 PDT by garbanzo (garbanzo@worldnet.att.net)
Although 90 percent of Americans believe in God, "no divine intervention" is what their kids have been learning in public schools. As late as 1995, before yielding to anti-Darwinian pressure, the National Association of Biology Teachers made this clear when it described evolution as "impersonal, unsupervised, unpredictable."
Published: 08.22.99 Author: JACK CASHILL
If, as you imply, evolution is ongoing, where, exactly is it headed?
"We'll never know until we get there. Evolution doesn't have a predetermined goal, in the sense that we could predict beforehand. I guess you could say that it's headed in the direction of optimal fitness of each species to its local ecology. Of course, ecologies change all the time."
71 Posted on 10/03/1999 00:12:01 PDT by jennyp
The sheer dishonesty with which evolutionists approach the whole subject is quite clear.
When they want to prove evolution, they simply call it "change." When they want to attack creationists for distorting evolution, they trot out "improvement." And yet, "improvement" must have been part of the "change," or we wouldn't be discussing this right now.
And note the following:
"Evolution does NOT proceed towards greater complexity. If anything, it meanders towards fitness within the species' environment. (And of course there's a big question of just how well it does that!)"
130 Posted on 10/30/1999 15:14:23 PDT by jennyp
Now I ask you all to consider the quote, above, in the light of this oft-repeated evidence on these threads:
"...RNA strands of as little as six units is enough to provide a template for the creation of new copies of itself. Six units!"
166 Posted on 01/15/2000 21:42:28 PST by jennyp
I wonder how one gets from "RNA strands
of as little as six units"
to HUMANS, CELLS, DNA,
a protein with a process that "does NOT proceed
towards greater complexity."
All life from as little as "Six units!" by a process that "does NOT proceed towards greater complexity."
Is any of this getting through?
The amazing thing to me is that so much evidence of evolution has been accumulated from fossil records inthe relatively short period of time since Darwin. Most important has been the discovery of an almost complete record of the evolution of homo sapiens (that us, for you creationist guys).
The only people in the world who can read and write and still believe in creationism are the relatively few but very noisy Christian Fundementalists that have not yet figured out that evolution is not a threat to religion.
How many evolutionists does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one, but it takes eight million years.
Or to create a world that isn't better explained by assuming he does not exist.
Literal biblical creationism would predict that the universe as a whole would exhibit anthropocentric qualities. However the universe doesn't exhibit those qualities. Why do there exist poisonous plants if the universe was created for man's benefit? Most parents take the trouble to childproof their homes even without the benefit of omnipotentence. Why do there exist galaxies and stars that are invisible to the naked eye if the universe was created solely for man's benefit - for that matter why is the universe that big? Or why is there nothing particularly special about the sun?
All life from as little as "Six units!" By a process that "does NOT proceed towards greater complexity."
(It's a miracle!)
What gets through is that you're making quite a bit of hay about (what I consider to be) a misstatement by jennyp, who is not the spokesman for evolution.
In her zeal to counter the myth that evolution implies some sort of progress towards "higher" beings, she stated that evolution does not tend towards greater complexity. In this, I think she is wrong. Evolution CAN tend towards greater complexity. The mere fact that the genomes of many of today's organisms are far larger than that of any bacterium shows that evolution can and does generate complexity.
It doesn't have to produce complexity, although complexity IS one valid path to survival. The bacteria of today are probably not too much more complex than the bacteria of a billion years ago, and yet they are the product of an evolutionary chain every bit as long and eventful as that which produced human beings.
[Previous thread] You have read Zacharia Sitchen! His books account for the primal eve and Elohiem given as the name of God in Genesis. Eloheim is plural of El.
What I seem to remember:
El was the chief Canaanite god, head of the pantheon that included the notorious Baal. "El Elyon," god of gods. Some Bible verses were written in the "elohist" tradition, as opposed to "yahwist" (from Yahweh, the God of the monotheist tradition). I've seen arguments over whether the "elohim" usage stole in when the persecution of the Canaanite religion had ended and things relaxed a bit. But I haven't read Sitchen. The one book I read on Biblical times history was from a library far away and not available to me now.
Before wasting any time responding to garbanzo, you should carefully read the following quotes, culled from many long, tedious months of discussing the subject with him. I'll start with one of his most recent. See what you think...
I was not specifically referring to human evolution but rather to more generally to the evolution of wide variety of modern species in which in many cases you do see a radial pattern of evolution in space and in time. Not necessarily humans but other lineages do show that pattern.
Presumably garbanzo's reference includes horse evolution:
To: garbanzo
garbanzo: we can tell that horses have changed over time - that part seems quite clear - but what isn't known is exactly who ancestors of horses were. The fact that we don't know exactly what the ancestry was doesn't change the fact that horses developed from somewhat horselike progenitors.
watchin:
1) We know horses have changed.
2) We don't know what they looked like before
3) It is a fact that horses developed from somewhat horselike progenitors.Okay. How can #1 and #2 be true at the same time? That's like meeting someone for the first time and telling him he looks like he's lost weight. And the basis for #3 is that you know horses evolved because evolution is true?
160 Posted on 11/03/1999 13:14:15 PST by watchin
Or how 'bout these gems:
"It's clear humans evolved from something, just what is isn't yet clear."
"The law of biogenesis probably breaks down at the molecular level. Exactly how it breaks down isn't yet known though."
94 Posted on 08/22/1999 20:59:27 PDT by garbanzo"Trees evolved from earlier green plants. The evolution of chlorophyll is not particularly difficult to imagine and in fact was one of the first major systems to evolve in living things. It's only a problem if you set up the "piece-by-piece" strawman in which chlorophyll supposedly evolved an atom at a time..."
131 Posted on 08/22/1999 22:23:02 PDT by garbanzo
Note, especially, this line:
"It's clear humans evolved from something, just what is isn't yet clear."
It's the same logical fallacy watchin' nailed him on in another post, on another thread! All this store of "scientific" knowledge coming from someone who once wrote:
"I'm not biologist or a paleontogist - I don't collect evidence of this sort for a living. I'm not the avatar of the entire biological science community."
55 Posted on 09/19/1999 00:55:47 PDT by garbanzo
He has, however, alleged the following:
"I have a degree in physics."
138 Posted on 10/16/1999 06:05:28 PDT by garbanzo"Well I'm trained as a scientist, but work as an engineer - I kind of know how these things work."
194 Posted on 01/15/2000 23:37:02 PST by garbanzo
"Kind of know?" Seems a little knowledge goes a long way with regards to evolution. (It also seems that garbanzo is schooling with the wrong fish when he tries to argue in your pond, isn't he? Hehehe...)
Of course, where his knowledge is lacking, he simply fills in with something else:
"The evolution of chlorophyll is not particularly difficult to imagine..."
131 Posted on 08/22/1999 22:23:02 PDT by garbanzo
A fitting "science" for Disney, perhaps, but hardly "scientific," wouldn't you agree?
And finally, there's this gem:
"Here's a hint if you want to be a real scientist type - you have to answer criticism, often from hostile sources."
264 Posted on 09/20/1999 20:46:00 PDT by garbanzo
But, of course, I guess it's OK to duck out on the hard questions when it comes to evolution.
Just thought you might like to know who and what you're dealing with here.
All life from as little as "Six units!" By a process that "does NOT proceed towards greater complexity."
Let's not forget that science isn't about what's TRUE. Science is about what is SCIENTIFIC. That is, science is the result what one achieves when when applies the scientific method.
There have been plenty of scientific "truths" that were later abandoned in the face of new observations, which required that new theories be developed to accommodate those observations.
But I gotta tell you, I don't see that creationism makes a whole lot of sense from a scientific point of view. And I don't understand why it is so important for people to believe the creation story as fact.
Even to a layman like me, it is clear from advances in 20th century theoretical physics that God's greatness is far, far beyond human comprehension. Ask any physicist what happens inside a black hole, or what existed before the big bang, and they will tell you that we cannot know through science, because in those environments all the known laws of physics break down.
I believe that the whole universe is the manifestation of God's divine consciousness. The Bible, for all its value, is like a giant game of telephone. Even if the original words were actually spoken by God, after centuries of being re-told, written down over and over from memory and translated into so many languages, who can say which words are God's and which are man's?
If you ask me, the whole science vs. creationism debates is silly, and the creationists ultimately succeed only in making religion unbelievable and inaccessible.
God is great beyond imagining, and evolution -- a mechanism which is observable everywhere even today -- is just more proof of his divine wisdom.
I would venture that evolution is a principle which would explain virtually any life form on any planet in the universe. Creationism can't do that, unless one assumes that a) there is no life anywhere in the Universe (a really unwarranted assumption), or b) God created every world in the Universe, one at a time, in seven day increments. Since there are only 1428 weeks in 10,000 years (which I understand is the timeframe most creationists accept since the creation of the earth), the number of planets in the universe would have to be a lot, lot less than can reasonably be expected, given the known number of stars.
Why creationism is a problem is that Christianity has played a fundamental role in the political evolution of Western thought, which finally cumliminated in the founding documents of this once great nation. (I am not a Christian, but I know where respect must be paid).
To say that belief in creationism is a necessary part of Christianity, in my opinion, denigrates the importance of that great religion.
Still, I am open to the idea that evolution, which is just a scientific theory, may one day run into a series of observations that call its validity into question, and require its replacement with a new theory.
Personally though, I can't imagine that new theory being both scientific and creationist.
But that's just me.
Do you think that people will take you more seriously for the length of your posts? To summarize, you miss the main point. Evolution doesn't of necessity proceed towards greater complexity. As can be shown mathematically, a random process can cover an entire range of values. If there is a selective process which selects for certain values, then a random process can generate highly complex systems. Simply put, we don't know the number of times the six-unit sequence produced something simpler than itself. It's only the success stories (i.e. greater than six-units) which stuck. Put into industrial terms - most projects don't form fully formed from the start - they start off simple and you never see the R&D phase in the final product.
Also I think this qualifies as both personal attack and change of subject.
It's just the old "out of context quote" trick. Here's jennyp's perfectly defensible statement:
"Evolution does NOT proceed towards greater complexity. If anything, it meanders towards fitness within the species' environment. (And of course there's a big question of just how well it does that!)"In other words, evolution is a trend to adaptation, fitness in the immediate environment. That may or may not introduce complexity. Complexity can and does happen, but so does simplification--atrophy, disappearance, or reassignment of no-longer-necessary organs and functions. It's not about complexity, it's about fitness.
New thread, new filibuster. Amazing how quickly the creationists get them too big to load. Did you catch RaceBannon's performance on the previous thread?
"It seems to follow that there is no general reason to expect evolution to be progressive-- even in the weak, value-neutral sense. There will be times when increased size of some organ is favoured and other times when decreased size is favoured. Most of the time, average-sized individuals will be favoured in the population and both extremes will be penalised. During these times the population exhibits evolutionary stasis (ie, no change) with respect to the factor being measured. If we had a complete fossil record and looked for trends in some particular dimension, such as leg length, we would expect to see periods of no change alternating with fitful continuations or reversals in direction--like a weathervane in changeable, gusty weather."
Richard Dawkins,
"The evolutionary future of man - a biological view of progress"
Is Richard Dawkins a spokesman for evolution???
Sorry. Not gonna' let you off easy on this one at all.
All life from as little as "Six units!" By a process that "does NOT proceed towards greater complexity."
(To paraphrase, "Seemingly successful evolutionary 'proofs' have many fathers, but illogic is an orphan.")
Yell louder, people can still read the posts rebutting you.
Yeah, that was a world record I think. But Stingray has to get an honorable mention for the huge bold fonts. One thing I've noted when surfing the net and reading various forms of crankery - that length is inversely proportional to intelligible content and that the rationality is inversely proportional to the number of large fonts and exclamation points.
"It's just the old "out of context quote" trick."
This isn't out of context. You simply resent the fact that the collective stupidity from your side is being quoted and challenged at all!
Like garbanzo says:
"...if you want to be a real scientist type - you have to answer criticism, often from hostile sources."
264 Posted on 09/20/1999 20:46:00 PDT by garbanzo
All life from as little as "Six units!" By a process that "does NOT proceed towards greater complexity."
(Amazing!)
If, as the creationists wold have us believe
There is no creationists. They are Christians. We don't worship a science (creationism). There is no such thing as a creationist.
Evolution the biggest fraud by atheist and antiChrist forces of all time!
If monkeys evolved into people why are there still monkeys ?
If monkeys evolved into people why are there still monkeys? Evolution: the theory that works pretty good as long as you don't need any proof at all ; and as long as the bible means nothing to you !
If monkeys evolved into people why are there still monkeys ?
I pity whoever tries to bring you up to speed here.
If there is no G-d then there is no right or wrong, and ALL mores (not just sexual ones) are private hangups. This means that all life becomes a struggle to crawl to the pinnacle of power so one can impose his personal hangups on his fellow man for no reason whatsoever. Negative feelings about murder, theft, envy, rape, etc., would no more reflect an objective moral standard than the Shakers' belief that one should always put the right foot forward when walking and make ninety degree turns.
Also, if there is no G-d, why should anyone have to acknowledge this truth? In a meaningless, random universe no obligation to accept "the Truth" exists. Which means that every time you seek to convert people to evolutionism you are contradicting your own ideology of meaninglessness.
You do form one very important function, Mr. Henry. You witness to the true "enlightened" character of so many of our Founding Fathers.
Thomas Paine is still boiling in the excrement.
I pity whoever tries to bring you up to speed here.
I'm beginning to think that some intellectual triage might be necessary here...
1. It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.
Charles Darwin,
Origin of Species2. While it's a common misstatement among even many of those who accept evolution as fact that evolution is "progress" it's not really a part of evolutionary theory."
49 Posted on 10/21/1999 07:40:16 PDT by garbanzo (garbanzo@worldnet.att.net)3. Evolution doesn't of necessity proceed towards greater complexity.
28 Posted on 01/17/2000 06:41:16 PST by garbanzo
A third definition now? Get back to us when you've all decided on what it is you're trying to prove.
Also I think this qualifies as both personal attack and change of subject
Hmmm...Simply posting someone's expressed views on a given subject now constitutes a "personal attack?" Hey, dude...If you can't stand the heat, get out of the lab! Hehehe...
"Amazing how quickly the creationists get them too big to load."
Get something faster than 2400 baud, and you'll be able to run with the big dogs, too.
"I'm beginning to think that some intellectual triage might be necessary here..."
"Physician, heal thyself."
Would you -- please -- stop your spam postings. It's quite juvenile and it looks very bad for your side of the argument. If that's all you have to say, you've said it plenty of times. It's quite enough.
Actually they're all the same. Evolution can (as Physicist pointed out) proceed towards greater complexity - but it's not a necessity - and as jennyp has pointed out tends to fluctuate around a mean. Progess doesn't equal complexity -increases in complexity are allowed by evolution but not required. From a statistical point of view increases are just as likely as decreases.
Let's see more personal attacks and I forgot the misquotes from the last time.
Sitchin is a fascinating read but probably falls into the "Panspermia" school so far as humanity is concerned.
Another very very interesting book is Everything You Know Is Wrong, Book One: Human Origins by Lloyd Pye.
These to authors ought to offend everyone here.
"The fossil record does a rather shabby job of supporting evolutionary assumptions."
This is the most common fallacy promoted by creationists: "The fossil record MUST show every intermediate form (half-and-half) with smoooth transitions if evolution is valid."
That's the second most common fallacy.
To the contrary, of the literally hundreds of billions of individual organisms that have lived in the 4.5 billion year existence of the earth, only one in every hundred milllion or so actually gets fossilized. It's like looking at a tile here and a tile there on a huge mosiaic tile floor and expecting to see the "smooth transistions" of the overall design. Evolution is a fact. It happens the same way that natural selection is imitated by humans who select dogs for certain characteristics. Where is the half chihuahua, half St. Bernard? It is arrogant of humans to limit God to one specific way of doing anything. God did what God did and the truth is ALWAYS God's work. Evolution just happens to be the truth. Creationism is the same as any other ancient myth that simply must "EVOLVE".
"Would you -- please -- stop your spam postings. It's quite juvenile..."
Spam? Juvenile??? How 'bout I put up a few of your posts and we'll see who has engaged in "juvenile spamming?" (Besides, I thought you would have appreciated all the "bumps" for such an important lead article!)
"...and it looks very bad for your side of the argument."
Since when have you ever cared about what made our side of the argument look bad?
"Methinks thou dost protest too much." (Which is simply to say, it makes your side look far worse than ours.)
she stated that evolution does not tend towards greater complexity. In this, I think she is wrong...
When talking about complexity, the inorganic world forms a wall against which it is impossible to move toward less complexity. Therefore the only direction possible for variation is toward greater complexity. "Average" or typical life forms are not more complex than they were billions of years ago. Most life is still single cell or viral.
If there is no G-d then there is no right or wrong, and ALL mores (not just sexual ones) are private hangups.
I think you may be wrong on all counts. Evolution does not mean there's no god, any more than Galileo's solar system (which is blatantly contrary to scripture) meant there's no god. That's point one.
Point two: Even if there were no god, there is still right and wrong. Hell, it's even scriptural that we can figure out right and wrong for ourselves. Remember when God came to Abraham and said he was going to wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah? And Abraham said: "Hold on, that's wrong!" (or words to that effect). "Will not the judge of the world do justice?" Think about that. Think hard.
Most life is still single cell or viral.
Quite right. It is only the descendants of mutants which can exhibit any increasing complexity. Most ancestral forms just stay the way they've always been, unless some catastrophe wipes them out.
It's not about complexity, it's about fitness.
So the endless search for transitional forms is meaningless because there are no "higher forms" but we still don't have solid evidence what came from what. The gaps remain.
And God knows, I don't, what "fitness" really means. It all seems very circular to me, and I would wager that Darwin and most of his followers would say that evolution does move toward complexity and the "higher forms".
Stingray is pointing out that if the evidence misses the target, then the target gets moved by some. This redefinition process toward "change over time", however, is moving or has moved Evolutionist theory toward or to irrelevancy.
The gaps remain.
Some gaps remain, but we do keep finding new fossil species all the time. There's no point at all in closing up shop.
"Evolution can (as Physicist pointed out) proceed towards greater complexity - but it's not a necessity - and as jennyp has pointed out tends to fluctuate around a mean. Progess doesn't equal complexity -increases in complexity are allowed by evolution but not required. From a statistical point of view increases are just as likely as decreases."
So then tell me, what is the "mean" between "6 units of RNA" and a human being, statistically speaking?
You've just gotta' love what passes for "science" from your side. Hehehe...
Think of it this way - green is a "transitional color" between yellow and blue. Yellow is not a "higher" color than blue - but green lies between them. As as pointed out numerous times there are plenty of sequences in which transitional forms are found. But you never seem to actually respond to the evidence presented.
As for fitness - it simply means the ability to survive in a particular enviroment. Organisms which have traits which give them a survival advantage live longer and have more offspring passing their traits on to the next generation. Those that don't survive don't pass on their traits. It's as simple as that and I can't figure out why this is so controversial.
Some gaps remain, but we do keep finding new fossil species all the time.
Each new fossil fills an old gap, but that never silences any critic. The new specimen then has a gap on each side of it, creating two gaps where once there was only one. All progress leads the gappers to greater and greater fits of denial. They will never stop complaining about gaps.
Question to all gappers:
Show me the gap which, if a fossil were found to fill it, would persuade you that you are wrong. Or show me a series of gaps that, if filled, would persuade you. Put your beliefs to the test.
Is Richard Dawkins a spokesman for evolution???
If I had to pick one, he'd be a good choice.
Sorry. Not gonna' let you off easy on this one at all.
Then don't. What's wrong with the quote by Dawkins? Did he say something with which I ought to disagree?
>If there is no G-d then there is no right or wrong, and ALL mores (not just sexual ones) are private hangups.
I just can't let this pass without a comment. If there is no God and feelings of right and wrong evolved (like Instinct) from evolution, then there is nothing "private" about it.
What we call wrong are those things which are more likely to get you killed --those things which are more likely to come in conflict with more primitive drives (like territoriality.)
Doesn't it make sense that you are more likely to be killed if you murder another person, lie, steal, or commit adultery with their wife. Isn't being killed enough of an incentive to not do these things?
Survival of the fittest:
"Those that survive are fit because those that are fit survive."
And again, what is the "mean" (half-way point) between "6 units of RNA" and a human being?
mean n. 1. Something having a position, quality, or condition midway between extremes; a medium.
A bacterium, the most numerous form of life on earth. Bacteria bascally make up most of the biomass on earth. Which brings me back to the topic of anthropocentrism or rather the lack of it.
Yes, if you have n transitionals, you have n*2 gaps. But the lawyering I love most is the "If it's not a modern [whale, bird, horse, human] it's just some extinct thing" trick.
You don't get it, Pat. Fill any gap with a transitional form, and they'll say, "Now there are two gaps! You really have a problem!"
They could look at a film of an object falling and maintain that it doesn't give evidence for gravity. After all, it's just a collection of photographs of a ball at various heights. At 24 frames per second, there are just too many missing "transitional frames".
Or in statistics, the arithmetic mean is the sum of a distribution divided by the number of elements in the distribution. It's not necessarily at the middle if the distribution is skewed and is heavily influenced by elements at the extremes of the distribution. I'm surprised whatever dictionary you pulled that from gave that as a definition.
Or in statistics, the arithmetic mean is the sum of a distribution divided by the number of elements in the distribution. It's not necessarily at the middle if the distribution is skewed and is heavily influenced by elements at the extremes of the distribution. I'm surprised whatever dictionary you pulled that from gave that as a definition.
"Think of it this way - green is a "transitional color" between yellow and blue. Yellow is not a "higher" color than blue - but green lies between them."
Actually, for a self-professed physicist to make a statement like this, only further points up the dishonesty inherent in their need to defend evolution at any cost.
Green is not just a "transitional color" between yellow and blue, but is it's own distinct color with it's own unique frequency along the visible light spectrum.
The "colors" that exist in the fossil record, if we use frequencies in the visible light spectrum as an example, wouldn't even comprise a fraction of the many possible shades of just the color "green."
"What's wrong with the quote by Dawkins? Did he say something with which I ought to disagree?"
You: "Evolution CAN tend towards greater complexity."
Dawkins: "...there is no general reason to expect evolution to be progressive-- even in the weak, value-neutral sense."
Again, it all depends on how honestly someone from your side is going to define your terms.
(But I'm not going to hold my breath.)
"Evolution CAN tend towards greater complexity."
And the Titannic could tend to rise from the floor of the Atlantic, too. Of course, such is more a statement of faith than of science, and it would depend upon what one meant by "rising." (If the water in the Atlantic disappeared, would this not meet one criterion for defining it that way, given the definitions we see your side using all the time here?)
Sophistries and semantics are the best evidence evolution has going for it. Stick to the lab, doc, and let the guys at the NY Times play the word games.
All life from as little as "Six units!" By a process that "does NOT proceed towards greater complexity."
Uh no - green is a range of frequencies that lay between yellow and blue - they blend into each other. Otherwise, things like yellowish-green or blue-green wouldn't exist. Optically, green is a ranges of frequencies which stimulate certain cones to a certain extent. There is no such thing as the green frequency.
A hundre coin tosses CAN produce all heads, but there is no reason to expect it.
If a hundred people bet on heads for a hundred coin tosses, about half will be winners. If the losers are not allowed to reproduce, evientually you will have a population of people who have never lost at gambling -- defying the odds. But no laws of chance or physics have been violated.
Harmful mutations result in death or diminished reproductive success (by definition). The successful do not have to pay the debts of the losers. There is the appearance of progress, even though there is no actual tendency.
The two quotes are 100% compatible. Evolution is not progressive; I said that myself in this thread. That means that evolution does not move towards any goal (other than survival).
Complexity is another matter entirely. IF something (say, a species's brain) needs to be more complex to survive, then either it will become more complex OR the species will become extinct. Complexity can be generated that way. (But still note: it is no more progressive than a leg growing longer or shorter.)
Is this stuff really that hard to grasp?
One more thing:
Yellow is not a "higher" color than blue - but green lies between them."
Yellow is a higher frequency wavelength than green, which is, in turn, a higher frequency wavelength than blue. So there is a qualitative difference between colors on the visible light spectrum.
For a self-professed "scientist" to make such asinine statements shows you where the quality of science in this country is going nowadays.
Off to work...
And the Titannic could tend to rise from the floor of the Atlantic, too.
No, it can't. Gravity holds it in place. Surely you aren't suggesting that gravity prevents evolution from generating complexity?
The bacteria of today are probably not too much more complex than the bacteria of a billion years ago, and yet they are the product of an evolutionary chain every bit as long and eventful as that which produced human beings.
It may be as long, but it doesn't seem to be as eventful!
Yellow is a higher frequency wavelength than green, which is, in turn, a higher frequency wavelength than blue. So there is a qualitative difference between colors on the visible light spectrum.
Blue has the highest frequency of the three.
Green has a lower frequency.
Yellow has the lowest frequency.
Wavelength goes inversely as frequency. You might want to think again about whether the phrase "higher frequency wavelength." makes any sense.
For a self-professed "scientist" to make such asinine statements shows you where the quality of science in this country is going nowadays.
I'll let this stand as is.
Off to work...
Hit the books, while you're at it.
It may be as long, but it doesn't seem to be as eventful!
More eventful, in fact. One generation for a bacterium is more like 20 minutes than it is like our 20 years.
"The two quotes are 100% compatible."
And as I've repeatedly illustrated, this depends entirely upon how one wishes to define the terms. See post 19, above.
Is this stuff really that hard to grasp?
Far too many of the Recent Creationists on this forum simply refuse to understand the process of evolution. It is nothing but willfull ignorance upon their parts; if they refuse to understand it, they can argue against it using the same old tired, previously-refuted arguments.
No, it can't.
Faithless! You only need to give it sufficient time. Give natural selection enough time and even the atoms of the Titanic could evolve into a whale and swim to the surface.
Far too many of the Recent Creationists on this forum simply refuse to understand the process of evolution.
I sure wish you'd use your mind-reading technique and tell us who you think the Genesis creationists are on these threads so we could determine whether you're directing your comments to us or not.
Give natural selection enough time and even the atoms of the Titanic could evolve into a whale and swim to the surface.
I know you're being flippant, but you do understand that this would constitute a disproof of evolution, right?
I sure wish you'd use your mind-reading technique and tell us who you think the Genesis creationists are on these threads so we could determine whether you're directing your comments to us or not.
I concur. I think Marathon is the only one on FR who actually believes that the Bible is literally true when it says that the Earth is around 6000 years old. People like that are best refuted with a telescope, rather than with a gene sequencer or a geologist's hammer.
I know you're being flippant, but you do understand that this would constitute a disproof of evolution, right?
Would it? Then let's concentrate on "proof." From what magic hat does evolution draw its complex specified information necessary to successfully develop whole new organs, organic processes, and morphologies in one fell swoop to punctutate the Gouldian equilibrium? Where was all this information shortly after the Big Bang? An honest answer would be, "I really know for sure; that's a tough one. I guess what we have here is a theory with enormous gaps yet to be bridged." However, a dogmatic answer (not necessarily from you) is what I expect.
Folks like RaceBannon, Stingray, et al, who, no matter how often the evidence is presented, take us back to square one on the very next Evolution/Creation thread.
One generation for a bacterium is more like 20 minutes than it is like our 20 years.
And that's for a moderate bacteria (as generation times go). Once adapted to environmental variables, the generation times for many pathogenic organisms are half that.
And given that doubling times (generation times) are measured in minutes, the numbers for bacteria get pretty high in a matter of hours. And interestingly enough, they provide a nice benchtop laboratory for demonstrating the principles of natural selection.
Organisms with anti-microbial resistance can form spontaneously, as a result of a chance genetic mutation, from a single organism (colony forming unit) which has no such resistance properties.
When exposed to low-levels of antibiotics, organisms with favorable mutations may survive, and organisms without those favorable mutations will die in a matter of hours. As such, if a growth medium is seeded with just one single organism, and that organism is allowed to thrive and multiply, you get millions of orgnaisms in no time.
Some of those organisms will contain chance genetic mutations, say for example, for the production of certain enzymes. Now if those enzymes allow for the reduction of a certain molucule which is unfavorable to the growth of the host organism, they allow it to survive in the presence of an antibiotic whose mechanism of action is dependent on the lack of that enzyme in the host cell.
Subsequent exposure of that large population of a bacteria, (which were all derived from a common host cell), to antibiotics which function by the aforementioned mechanism, will yeild only the surviving bacteria (those which produce the enzyme). The result is, a natural selection model in microcosm. Only those organism which can deal with the environmental conditions survive. All others perish.
So from the single parent cell, is rendered a unique and genetically distinct population with environmentally favorable characteristics.
Caution, natural selection at work. :-)
Correction: "I really don't know for sure;"
Sloppy typing. (It's my curse)
I've got to go to work as well. Happy hunting on the physics trail! ;-)
I think Marathon is the only one on FR who actually believes that the Bible is literally true when it says that the Earth is around 6000 years old.
Try Uriel175 for sure. RaceBannon for sure. Probably Buggman. Don't give up too quickly on Dataman and Stingray. Phaedrus says no, but I can't see the difference in his discourse. Kevin Curry denies defending Genesis Creationism, whatever that's worth, but uses the attack arguments from creationist pamphlets stating that Ramapithecus was a baboon fossil, Australopithecus a juvenile ape, etc.
but uses the attack arguments from creationist pamphlets stating that Ramapithecus was a baboon fossil, Australopithecus a juvenile ape, etc.
So I guess Neanderthal populations are dismissed as "no different" than modern human populations..?
From what magic hat does evolution draw its complex specified information necessary to successfully develop whole new organs, organic processes, and morphologies in one fell swoop to punctutate the Gouldian equilibrium?
Increasing complexity comes something like this:
Gene duplication creates a redundant gene. No harm.
One copy of the gene is mutated by a copy error, a cosmic ray, a chemical mutagen, a Bill Clinton speech, whatever.
Natural selection evaluates whether the change lives or dies.
If the change is good, it may someday become essential in an "irreversibly complex" system, giving Behe ammunition to say it could not have evolved.
From what magic hat does evolution draw its complex specified information necessary to successfully develop whole new organs, organic processes, and morphologies in one fell swoop to punctutate the Gouldian equilibrium?
The magic hat is the genome. Organisms have genomes; the Titanic does not.
As for "one fell swoop", you do understand that even in Gould's model, changes don't occur in one generation? Gould proposes that many large changes occur in a geologically brief time, which is gigantically large compared to one generation. There are still many, many steps. Is that so radical?
The changes, according to Gould, would tend to occur when conditions change, i.e., when the evolutionary stresses are maximal. I tend to think of it the other way around, though: when a creature's environment has stabilized for a long period, gross morphological changes cease occurring, owing to the creature's being well-adapted to those conditions.
So I guess Neanderthal populations are dismissed as "no different" than modern human populations..?
A variety, from the classification Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis. Everything must be pigeonholed to exclude crossing species lines. In the case of Neanderthal, they have legal standing.
A variety, from the classification Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis. Everything must be pigeonholed to exclude crossing species lines.
Which would of course raise the question... "Were they created differently?", or did those differences (along with all differences between geographically distinct populations) develop naturally....?
Which would of course raise the question... "Were they created differently?", or did those differences (along with all differences between geographically distinct populations) develop naturally....?
Ah, most of them will glibly tell you they believe in microevolution (as in new flu strains). But evolution stops for them at the species boundary. I try to point out that there is no barrier, from wherever you are you can drift in any direction, but it's talking to a wall.
Which would of course raise the question... "Were they created differently?", or did those differences (along with all differences between geographically distinct populations) develop naturally....?
Good point, OWK, particularly if the Earth is 6000 years old. Either they were omitted from the Bible, Adam was a Neanderthal (or a homo erectus, to be more dramatic), or Neanderthals (and homo erectus) evolved from us and died out. And if you can have that amount of evolution in a mere 6000 years, whatever could you do in a billion?
You might want to think again about whether the phrase "higher frequency wavelength." makes any sense.
Maybe he means yellow is faster than green...
Good point, OWK, particularly if the Earth is 6000 years old.
Ah, yes! I missed that implication. They're either a separate creation (within species?) or some real fast hominid evolution happened.
When confronted with this argument, I have had literal creation advocates go so far as to suggest (with a straight face) that God created fossilized fauna.
And yet, when you ask those same people whether maybe, perhaps, the creation account in Genesis is meant as an allegory, they come back with, "Genesis must be the literal truth: it is the word of God, and God isn't a liar."
I remember seeing a cartoon of a fictitious book. On the cover was a trilobite wearing a clown mask. It was entitled, "Fossils: God's Little Jokes". The author was Duane T. Gish. Too funny.
Think of it this way . . .
Because I use plain language in my posts does not mean I don't understand, and because I believe that my understanding exceeds your own, I really don't need anything explained.
You weren't suffering from the illusion that Phaedrus actually reads what you post, were you?
. . . I really don't need anything explained.
If you were on our side instead of Stingray's and had--regardless of context--uttered these words, they would still be coming back in thread after thread, months from now. Be glad in your opposition.
If, as the creationists would have us believe, all life on Earth came into existence through a process of special creation...
To start with, this is a straw-man.... Nothing new there, of course, but it got me to wondering: why is it that this strawman is a staple of pro-evolution arguments? Something else is going on here.
That there are some real difficulties with the present state of evolutionary theory cannot be denied: the host of competing explanations for serious unsolved problems is proof of that. For example, without going into its faults or merits, Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" addresses the sudden appearance of fully-formed species within the fossil record -- a fact that is not adequately handled by today's theory.
A number of respectable scientists have called into question major tenets of the theory of evolution. For example, Michael Denton's Evolution: A Theory In Crisis points out several difficulties with Darwinian theory.
Here at FR, these threads almost always boil down to a debate over Darwinian evolution and strict creation. (And I've noted that, at least here, "creationist" theories seem most often to be introduced by those defending evolution. Hmmm...)
More importantly, the debate is always based on the premise that the true answer can only come from one of those two possibilities: evolution or creation. But what if this premise is wrong?
Serious and scientific challenges to "standard" evolution are coming on several fronts, so it's not unreasonable to predict that we're heading toward a Michelson-Morley moment for evolution: a point at which the experimental evidence simply cannot support the continuation of the old theory of evolution. The fact that the replacement theory is TBD means nothing -- it's a state of affairs not unlike the period between Michelson-Morley and Einstein, where there was no satisfactory theory to explain the results.
A corollary prediction would be multilateral turmoil within the ranks of scientists -- between adherents to the status quo; those who've broken away from the old theories but have not yet decided; those who have settled on one of the new, competing theories; and adherents to the various new theories.
It's instructive to note that the calumny heaped on Einstein (both personally and on his theories) by the "old school" scientists (some very famous) is similar in tone and content to that leveled on evolutionary skeptics such as Behe. That's not proof of Behe's theories, of course, but it demolishes the myth (often invoked here) that scientists are concerned only with mercilessly sifting truth from falsehood. In reality, like most humans, scientists tend to react violently to having their ox gored. Attacks on a favorite theory (often a life's work) naturally provoke personal and defensive reactions.
It may be that the "moment" has already arrived, since we do have evidence that's claimed to call evolution into question. We would first expect the argument to center on whether the evidence is really counter to evolution, or if it shows anything at all. At any rate we know something is happening, because the theory is being forced to account for new evidence. Moreover, arguments over evidence are generally accompanied by impassioned attacks on the scientists themselves (e.g., Dawkins calling Gould a thoroughly discredited fool), which tells me that the various "interest groups" are beginning to form.
A final observation: A lot of the folks arguing in favor of evolution on these threads are very smart, and obviously have scientific backgrounds. But something about their approach to this topic has bothered me. There's usually an undertone of something more hostile.
I finally realized that I've seen it before, in the arguments put forth by folks -- they call themselves "Free Thinkers" in my town -- whose main concern is not science, so much as it is a denial and disproof of God. Come to think of it, those folks almost always use evolution when they're arguing against God.
When you look at it that way (as being rooted in arguments against God), the continual use in these threads of "creationist" straw-men begins to make sense, as does the stolid refusal to consider seriously any challenges to evolutionary theory. I don't mean to say that a lot of these folks aren't sincere, but perhaps it would be worthwhile if they would seriously consider whether their positions are driven by something more than scientific curiosity.
If monkeys evolved into people why are there still monkeys ?
If you had a grandfather, then why are there still cousins?
No one would mind if a competing scientific theory came along and explained the evidence better. That has yet to occur, however. If an Einstein of biology were to appear, I for one would welcome him; and I suspect that all here who defend evolution against mindless supernaturalism would also. [I like that phrase, "mindless supernaturalism."]
Evolution is not in crisis. It is alive, well, and vigorous. The current activity is very much like what is going on in cosmology. All kinds of work being done there to explain all the evidence being accumulated. But no one says that physics is in danger of collapsing. Likewise, no one knowlegable says that of biology.
We interrupt this regularly scheduled debate to bring you this special announcement:
Human Development...
All babies start out with the same number of raw cells which, over nine months, develop into a complete female baby.
The problem occurs when cells are instructed by the little chromosomes to make a male baby instead. Because there are only so many cells to go around, the cell necessary to develop a male's reproductive organs have to come from cells already assigned elsewhere in the female.
Recent tests have shown that these cells are removed from the communications center of the brain, migrate lower in the body and develop into male sexual organs. If you visualize a normal brain to be similar to a full deck of cards, this means that males are born a few cards short, so to speak. And some of their cards are in their shorts.
This difference between the male and female brain manifests itself in various ways.
Little girls will tend to play things like house or learn to read. Little boys, however, will tend to do things like placing a bucket over their heads and running into walls. Little girls will think about doing things before taking any action. Little boys will just punch or kick something and will look surprised if someone asks them why they just punched their little brother who was half asleep and looking the other way.
This basic cognitive difference continues to grow until puberty, when the hormones kick into action and the trouble really begins.
After puberty, not only the size of the male and female brains differ, but the center of thought also differs. Women think with their heads. Male thoughts often originate lower in their bodies where their ex-brain cells reside.
Of course, the size of this problem varies from man to man. In some men only a small number of brain cells migrate and they are left with nearly full mental capacity but they tend to be rather dull, sexually speaking. Such men are known in medical terms as "Engineers." Other men suffer larger brain cell relocation. These men are medically referred to as "Pilots."
A small number of men suffer massive brain cell migration to their groins. These men are usually referred to as....."Mr. President."
If you had a grandfather, then why are there still cousins?
Well put, but he won't get it.
For example, without going into its faults or merits, Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" addresses the sudden appearance of fully-formed species within the fossil record -- a fact that is not adequately handled by today's theory.
Yes, punk eek addresses that problem superbly, which is why not too many evolutionists are racking their brains over why the fossil record isn't smooth and continuous. That part of Gould's work at least is today's theory. If Dawkins and Gould still argue, well . . . all is never said and done. The last I heard, they both still believe in evolution.
The fact that the replacement theory is TBD means nothing -- it's a state of affairs not unlike the period between Michelson-Morley and Einstein, where there was no satisfactory theory to explain the results.
But evolution is better grounded now than at any point since Darwin published in 1859. There has been no Michelson-Morley experiment showing that evolution is impossible. The reverse has happened. It has been repeatedly observed happening. Now consider that "the replacement is TBD." (Is it ever!) You'd better get used to evolution.
There has been no Michelson-Morley experiment showing that evolution is impossible.
To revise and extend your remarks, I would suggest that revelations and advancements in DNA analysis (and mitochondrial DNA in particular) have come as close to being the Michelson-Morely Interferometer experiments in question.... but the results suggest an evolutionary continuum.
There's a progression in time-to-maturity in intelligent species. Time-to-maturity and the ultimate intelligence level are inverse. Chimpanzees can walk and grasp objects at an age when human babies are utterly helpless. Young female homo sapiens initially grow faster than young male homo sapiens in every way, tending to outperform them in school and on the playground. I had to look up to many of the girls in my class in elementary school, it was the only way. In summary: perfection takes a little longer.
That said, good Clinton joke!
No one would mind if a competing scientific theory came along and explained the evidence better. That has yet to occur, however.
The truth or falsity of evolution does not depend on the existence of a theory to replace it. The question is: does the evidence jeopardize the theory of evolution? There are reputable scientists who say it does.
If an Einstein of biology were to appear, I for one would welcome him;
Einstein was only about 9 years old (and considered by many to be retarded) when Michelson-Morley was performed. The evidence against deterministic Newtonian physics came long before Einstein made his scientific appearance. Einstein's genius was in proposing a new theory to explain the evidence that had already disproved the old.
...and I suspect that all here who defend evolution against mindless supernaturalism would also. [I like that phrase, "mindless supernaturalism."]
It's pointless to inject "Mindless supernaturalism" into a scientific debate unless you're creating straw-men. But as I noted above, it makes perfect sense if you have a different agenda.
Evolution is not in crisis. It is alive, well, and vigorous.
So you say. However, there are reputable scientists who disagree with you, and who claim to have scientific results to back it up. Take it up with them.
The current activity is very much like what is going on in cosmology. All kinds of work being done there to explain all the evidence being accumulated. But no one says that physics is in danger of collapsing. Likewise, no one knowlegable says that of biology.
You're right about biology not being in danger of collapsing. Nor was physics in danger when Einstein, Bohr, and other giants overturned the status quo of the late 1800s. However, you apparently assume that "evolution" and "biology" are synonymous. They're not -- at least, they're not, according to people a lot more "knowlegable" than either of us.
Thanks, PH. I really couldn't have asked for a better example of the mindset I described above.
However, there are reputable scientists who disagree with you, and who claim to have scientific results to back it up. Take it up with them.
Appeal thou not unto authority when the overwhelming preponderance of authority think that thou lackest sense.
More eventful, in fact. One generation for a bacterium is more like 20 minutes than it is like our 20 years.
Uh oh. Looks like we need to define our terms! To me an "event" is more than a new bacterium coming into being that looks just like its father!
To me an "event" is more than a new bacterium coming into being that looks just like its father!
See post 86 of this thread. (I have conducted such experiments myself)
... addresses the sudden appearance of fully-formed species within the fossil record ...
If I said that a million years from now the Republicans would control the presidency and both houses of congerss, would this be sudden? Let's be careful about what sudden means in geology.
I think I get it; but why are the cousins still humans?
It's pointless to inject "Mindless supernaturalism" into a scientific debate unless you're creating straw-men. But as I noted above, it makes perfect sense if you have a different agenda.
"Mindless supernaturalism" is redundancy, not the beginnings of a strawman.
Thanks, PH. I really couldn't have asked for a better example of the mindset I described above.
Any time. Thanks for the compliment.
The sheer dishonesty with which evolutionists approach the whole subject is quite clear...
"Evolution does NOT proceed towards greater complexity. If anything, it meanders towards fitness within the species' environment. (And of course there's a big question of just how well it does that!)"
130 Posted on 10/30/1999 15:14:23 PDT by jennyp
Now I ask you all to consider the quote, above, in the light of this oft-repeated evidence on these threads:
"...RNA strands of as little as six units is enough to provide a template for the creation of new copies of itself. Six units!"
166 Posted on 01/15/2000 21:42:28 PST by jennyp
I wonder how one gets from "RNA strands of as little as six units" to
HUMANS,CELLS,DNA, a protein with a process that "does NOT proceed towards greater complexity.""Six units!" All life from as little as "Six units!" by a process that "does NOT proceed towards greater complexity."
Is any of this getting through?
What happened, Stingray? We were having what I thought was a calm, rational discussion over on "THREAD THREE", which had petered out in a friendly "agree to disagree" mode. In fact, I was rather surprised (& impressed, even) to see you engage in a deep discussion of our basic differences in a calm, rational manner.
But I guess that was too much for you. You had to get your fix. You can't stay away from juvenile and dishonest taunts to try to change the subject over to something you think you can "win".
Return with me now to those thrilling days of, oh, 2 1/2 months ago...
To: StingrayThere's more, but you can read the whole post for yourself if you think I've left out any context.
How many times has the creationist mis-application of the Second Law of Thermodynamics been debunked on FR threads?None. You have cited ill-informed opinions in keeping with your need to believe in evolution, but the math has been worked out here. Read it and weep.
<>yawn> Same old same old. Just a couple points. First, in the very first paragraph he sez:
The second law of thermodynamics suggests a progression from order to disorder, from complexity to simplicity, in the physical universe. Yet biological evolution involves a hierarchical progression to increasingly complex forms of living systems, seemingly in contradiction to the second law of thermodynamics.A progression from order to disorder does NOT mean from complexity to simplicity. It's a progression from simplicity to randomness. A random sequence is complex. Maybe it's high in "specified complexity" - which means it can be useful in some context like producing a meaningful sentence in one language, or be translated into a physical object that does something "useful" in a specific context - or maybe it's just high in "unspecified" complexity. But either way, it takes more information to describe the sequence than the original state.
Next he makes a fundamental error: "biological evolution involves a hierarchical progression to increasingly complex forms of living systems". He sounds like a 19th century scientist, thinking that evolution is a process that creates "higher" beings - forgetting that monkeys, sloths, fruit flies, & humans are ALL the end product (so far) of evolution.
I mean, what is he claiming here? That a T.Rex's body was simpler than an iguana's? That dinosaurs' chromosomes had fewer genes than a modern salamaner? Evolution does NOT proceed towards greater complexity. If anything, it meanders towards fitness within the species' environment. (And of course there's a big question of just how well it does that!) You COULD say that a larger animal is more complex than a smaller one, using different metrics (# of differentiated organs, # of cells, total # of molecules, etc.). And some organisms have more genes than others. But the general progression from single-celled to large multicelled organisms stopped hundreds of millions of years ago. By any meaningful chemical metric (which is the only kind that's relevant to the 2LOT), evolution hasn't been working to create more complex species over time.[emphasis mine]
Now, as any contextually honest reading will show, I was referring to the 2nd Law of Thermo objection to evolution.
If you can't see that, then I'll repost it but in a much bigger font. (or maybe not.)
Meanwhile, here's one more quote for your quote file:
"But the general progression from single-celled to large multicelled organisms stopped hundreds of millions of years ago. By any meaningful chemical metric (which is the only kind that's relevant to the 2LOT), evolution hasn't been working to create more complex species over time."
130 Posted on 10/30/1999 15:14:23 PDT by jennyp
My boss can read that post, and he's two offices away …
Appeal thou not unto authority when the overwhelming preponderance of authority think that thou lackest sense
A major criticism (considered damning by many) of one of Einstein's famous papers -- I think it was the photoelectric effect -- was that it contained no references to earlier scientific papers. Back then the "preponderance of authority" was overwhelmingly with Lord Kelvin, who, despite all that, was wrong.
Thus, the fact that a Behe, Denton, or somebody else disagrees with the "preponderance of authority" with regard to evolution proves very little beyond the fact of the disagreement.
Yes, punk eek addresses that problem superbly, which is why not too many evolutionists are racking their brains over why the fossil record isn't smooth and continuous.
This is contrary to something I read in the New Yorker by a prominent evolution scientist (the name escapes me) who claims exactly the opposite. The guy's major points were (going from memory here):
a) Gould is a good "popularizer" whose scientific theories make "reputable" evolution scientists cringe and
b) punk eek is flawed and discredited.
By way of disclosure, the author acknowledged a rivalry with Gould, who had given him a poor book review -- but at any rate, he claimed that there is widespread displeasure with Gould's theory even within the evolution community. (New Yorker articles tend not to be on-line, so I can't link, but I believe it was in one of the November, '99 issues.) The point is, there are still evolutionists who are wracking their brains over the fossil discontinuity. In other words, that particular issue has not been put to bed.
Jenny, you've been so bright and cheerful and professional, and now he's gotten to you too. Darn, even you. I understand. I understand. My guess is that here, on FR, hiding behind the cloak of anonymity, it's a thrill for [you know who] to tease and taunt and engage in revoltingly childish games. If we were all meeting together, as people used to do, my suspicion is that [you know who] would sulk, shrink, pout and generally fade into the woodwork. It's only here that he can get your attention. It's all the power he has in this world, so he delights in it. My advice: ignore him. Never respond to him. In due course he will wither away, and find some other place to annoy people.
To start with, this is a straw-man...
How precious! You falsely accuse someone of a fallacy and then go on to commit multiple fallacies.
1) Appeal to authority fallacy: Michael Denton.
2) Strawman fallacy: Representing your view of evolutionism and creationism as similar to Einstein's (then) new and triumphant view of physics, and then comparing your detractors to those of Einstein.
3) Ad Hominem fallacy: Arguing against evolutionists: "Dawkins calling Gould a thoroughly discredited fool" and characterizing FR evolutionists as hostile.
4) Strawman fallacy: Representing evolutionism as nothing more than an argument against your God.
One copy of the gene is mutated by a copy error, a cosmic ray, a chemical mutagen, a Bill Clinton speech, whatever.
Natural selection evaluates whether the change lives or dies.
If the change is good, it may someday become essential in an "irreversibly complex" system, giving Behe ammunition to say it could not have evolved.
LOL! These are the kind of posts I like! Funny, but with a point. (I don't mind the funny ones without a point. It's those pointless humorless ones that I don't like. Kind of like this one, for instance. . .)
Good post (#86). Thanks for bumping it.
characterizing FR evolutionists as hostile.
Stop being so hostile!
Looks like you've hit on a new fallacy: The "everything I don't like is fallacy" fallacy!
The point is, there are still evolutionists who are wracking their brains over the fossil discontinuity.
A pioneering experiment in Psych studied induced neurotic behaviors in rats. The victi- er, subjects had to jump from a platform to one of two doors, one of which had a tray of food behind it. The other door was locked shut, causing the rat to bounce off and have an unpleasant fall to the bottom of the cage. Which door was good and which bad was completely randomized from trial to trial, so there was nothing the rats could do but at best live with a fifty percent success rate.
All of the rats developed extreme emotional symptoms: urination, self-biting, bristling fur, etc. Some fixated on one door, jumping to it every time. The fixators would ignore the other chamber even after the door was removed, revealing the food dish in the compartment behind. In other words, fixation to the point of extreme perseveration in error. I truly find it hard to believe there are at all many serious paleontologists, biologists, whatever still scratching their heads over the lack of smooth change in the fossil record. When you model it correctly, you don't expect that. The right door is already open.
I don't envy the anti-e crowd much at all, but it would be nice to have a principled opposition, wouldn't it?
The fixators would ignore the other chamber . . .
Haven't you pretty much decided that there will never be any food behind one of the doors?
Evolution CAN tend towards greater complexity. The mere fact that the genomes of many of today's organisms are far larger than that of any bacterium shows that evolution can and does generate complexity.
Careful, Physicist, your preconceptions are showing! In making your argument to support evolution you're assuming evolution to have occurred. You're assuming that because bacteria have simpler genomes that a progression has occurred. The "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc" fallacy.
I've been gone this morning and here are a BUNCH of replies, stacked up (I'll include the post to which I am responding so you folks won't have to back up to read them.)
If you had a grandfather, then why are there still cousins? Well put, but he won't get it. 107 Posted on 01/17/2000 10:39:05 PST by PatrickHenry [ Reply | Private Reply | To 104 | Top | Last ] To: VadeRetroYeah, that was a world record I think. But Stingray has to get an honorable mention for the huge bold fonts. One thing I've noted when surfing the net and reading various forms of crankery - that length is inversely proportional to intelligible content and that the rationality is inversely proportional to the number of large fonts and exclamation points.
33 Posted on 01/17/2000 06:52:56 PST by garbanzo
[ Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | Top | Last ]
To: Zionist ConspiratorIf there is no G-d then there is no right or wrong, and ALL mores (not just sexual ones) are private hangups.
I think you may be wrong on all counts. Evolution does not mean there's no god, any more than Galileo's solar system (which is blatantly contrary to scripture) meant there's no god. That's point one.
Point two: Even if there were no god, there is still right and wrong. Hell, it's even scriptural that we can figure out right and wrong for ourselves. Remember when God came to Abraham and said he was going to wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah? And Abraham said: "Hold on, that's wrong!" (or words to that effect). "Will not the judge of the world do justice?" Think about that. Think hard.
51 Posted on 01/17/2000 07:35:45 PST by PatrickHenry
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To: Stingray
And the Titannic could tend to rise from the floor of the Atlantic, too.
No, it can't. Gravity holds it in place. Surely you aren't suggesting that gravity prevents evolution from generating complexity?
74 Posted on 01/17/2000 08:45:28 PST by Physicist (sterner@sterner.hep.upenn.edu)
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To: PhysicistI think Marathon is the only one on FR who actually believes that the Bible is literally true when it says that the Earth is around 6000 years old.
Try Uriel175 for sure. RaceBannon for sure. Probably Buggman. Don't give up too quickly on Dataman and Stingray. Phaedrus says no, but I can't see the difference in his discourse. Kevin Curry denies defending Genesis Creationism, whatever that's worth, but uses the attack arguments from creationist pamphlets stating that Ramapithecus was a baboon fossil, Australopithecus a juvenile ape, etc.
88 Posted on 01/17/2000 09:15:17 PST by VadeRetro
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To: jennypIf you had a grandfather, then why are there still cousins?
Well put, but he won't get it.
107 Posted on 01/17/2000 10:39:05 PST by PatrickHenry
[ Reply | Private Reply | To 104 | Top | Last ]
That's why MY answers are so short and sweet! :^)
Come on, do you mean God cannot test us by saying something far out; just to see our response? We've even done this with OUR own children....
And just WHY can't iron evolve into a material less dense than water? Surely this is easier to do than for LIFE to appear from non-living material!
(No, this is where Liberals come from!)
As anyone who has looked into the night sky, trying to find certain constellations, wondering just HOW the ancients connected the dots that they did, to define shapes in the sky, when there appear to be a myriad ways to connect them, evolutionary data, to me, is a whole bunch of dots.
Even those involved in the Evolutionary 'main' branch argue over what those dots mean. They are constantly rearranging them, trying to make a better fit to the most prevailing 'theory' of the day.
1. 'Things evolve slowly, over great periods of time'
---(Problem: great changes appear too close together in the rocks)
2. 'Things evolve quite rapidly, leaving no evidence of gradualism'
---(Problem: not large enough gene-pool to insure propagation of 'new' species)
However, I do believe that God created it all.
(How many times did 'Life' have to evolve before it decided (?) that it had better learn how to reproduce?)
Why is only ¼ the Earth's surface land? The geologists tell us that ages ago, all the continents were pushed together into one big super continent, Pangea. The coasts of Africa and South America fit together, this the geologic column the same on both sides of the Atlantic.
It seems to me, that the core of the earth is expanding. That's why the continents ride along, bumping into one another, pushing up mountains. When they can't push any more, the new crust is pushed under the continents.
I believe there was a war in heaven and this creation was subjected to a lot of turmoil (C-K boundary anyone?) (Moon appears to be blasted out of the Pacific?)
The 'Literalists' of Genesis go along with six day creation. However, in another spot in Scripture, it mentions....
2Peter 3:8 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.
So it would appear to me, that there may be a bit of leeway here.
Haven't you pretty much decided that there will never be any food behind one of the doors?
Yes, but I'm richly nourished by the food I get jumping through the door that works for me. I forgot to mention that when the experimenters saw the rats had fixated, they stopped the randomness and started always putting the food behind the un-fixated door. So the rats were every time jumping to the wrong door, bouncing off, falling to the cage floor, and getting no food. But they persisted.
Then the experimenters took the door off the unfixated cage, making the task only one of looking where the food is and jumping to it. But the fixated rats kept jumping to the locked door, falling to the cage floor, and getting no food. If that makes a distinction for you.
#122...............
Good point! I've thought many times, "Wouldn't it be nice to get us all together in one room to do just as you've proposed."
Assuredly we'd treat one another better! (I'm even begining to LIKE some of the opposing viewpointers here, after yakking back and forth now for about 2 months!) [Variation of the 'Some of my best friends are Liberals' idea]
#133............
Hey! I resemble that remark!............(say most of the C/E debate posters)
And just WHY can't iron evolve into a material less dense than water? Surely this is easier to do than for LIFE to appear from non-living material!
Iron evolve? Just in general, you're talking about nuclear decay and not evolution when elements change from one to another. And it happens that the iron nucleus is the most stable around, having the lowest packing fraction. That is, its nucleotides have less mass than those of other elements. You have to put all that lost mass/energy (remember e=mc2) back before you can break up that nucleus. That's why stellar fusion tends to stop when lighter elements have fused to iron, etc. In other words, abiogenisis is a snap by comparison.
Hey! I resemble that remark!............(say most of the C/E debate posters)
Some really shameless baiting goes on at the top of this thread. It lends validity to garbanzo's "E: blows up. C: declares victory and moves on to a new thread."
Come on, do you mean God cannot test us by saying something far out; just to see our response? We've even done this with OUR own children..
Bad analogy. The situation with God is different. He IS the definition of right and wrong. Who are we to question Him? So if he says he's gonna wipe those Sodomites out, that's "good," by definition. But if Abraham can question Him ... then Abraham has within him the capacity to reason these things out for himself. We all do. Thus my original response, the even if there were no God (I can't answer that one) we would still be able to reason as well as Abraham.
nucleotides
VR make silly malaprop. "Nucleons," i.e, protons and neutrons, was meant.
Jenny, you've been so bright and cheerful and professional, and now he's gotten to you too. Darn, even you. I understand. I understand. My guess is that here, on FR, hiding behind the cloak of anonymity, it's a thrill for [you know who] to tease and taunt and engage in revoltingly childish games. If we were all meeting together, as people used to do, my suspicion is that [you know who] would sulk, shrink, pout and generally fade into the woodwork. It's only here that he can get your attention. It's all the power he has in this world, so he delights in it. My advice: ignore him. Never respond to him. In due course he will wither away, and find some other place to annoy people.
Thanks, Patrick. But in practice, a half-truth that's shouted repeatedly does require a response to set the record straight - else others might start to take it seriously.
Far too many of the Recent Creationists on this forum simply refuse to understand the process of evolution. It is nothing but willfull ignorance upon their parts; if they refuse to understand it, they can argue against it using the same old tired, previously-refuted arguments.
I too, believe in a recent creation (although I don't insist on 6000 years).
Speaking only for myself; I've read about evolution, I've thought about it, I understand the concept and I used to believe it. Later on I did some more reading and some more thinking and reached the conclusion that the concept cannot stand on it's own and that evolution could not be responsible for the life I see around me in all it's wonderful diversity and complexity. So at what point did I, the average man on the street, become illogical or willfully ignorant? Please grant me the same assumption for intelligence and reasonableness that you give yourself.
And don't paint yourself into a corner - you may change your thinking about evolution yourself one day based on new evidence or revelations.
You have completely mischaracterized my post. Happily (for me), your comments are easily dispensed with.
First off: Equating "opposition to evolution" and "creationism" is indeed a straw-man. The article in question frames the debate in such a manner that posits creationism as the only possible argument against evolution. That's not true, of course.
1) Appeal to authority fallacy: Michael Denton.
I made no appeal to authority beyond the statement that reputable scientists have begun questioning the theory of evolution. Michael Denton is a reputable scientist who has published a book outlining problems with the theory of evolution. I made no claims as to whether Denton is wrong or right. I see no problem here.
2) Strawman fallacy: Representing your view of evolutionism and creationism as similar to Einstein's (then) new and triumphant view of physics, and then comparing your detractors to those of Einstein.
The strawman is yours. I made no comparison between Einstein and evolution at all. I did use Michelson-Morley as an example of a situation where experimental evidence no longer supports current theory. Einstein is connected to Michelson-Morley, of course, but my post mentions him in order to make an entirely different point: that the insults heaped on Einstein (or Behe) prove nothing with regard to the theories in question, but they do show that scientists are not above personal attacks in defense of their theories.
3) Ad Hominem fallacy: Arguing against evolutionists: "Dawkins calling Gould a thoroughly discredited fool" and characterizing FR evolutionists as hostile.
You're misrepresenting what I said. I was merely talking about my "corollary prediction" that scientific controversy will be accompanied by personal attacks. That Dawkins has in fact called Gould a fool (or the equivalent) says nothing about the theories they espouse, but it does nicely illustrate my point about personal attacks.
As to the (pro-evolution) posts on FR, it is my observation (OK, my opinion) that there is a hostile undertone to many of them. Nothing ad hominem about that: read through this thread and you can easily spot many posts that are, or can be interpreted as, hostile to a religious point of view (even if the arguments in question have not mentioned God).
4) Strawman fallacy: Representing evolutionism as nothing more than an argument against your God.
Again, you misrepresent my post -- and it's another strawman on your part. I absolutely did not represent evolutionism as "nothing more" than an argument against my God. What I did say is that the the nature of many pro-evolution posts reminds me of the method of argument used by the Free Thinkers in my town when they argue against God. Those folks make no bones about their denial of and desire to disprove God, and they usually do use evolution to make their points.
You can take offense at my opinion if you like -- but it is valid to ask people to examine their premises in order to determine whether there is more than scientific curiosity behind their pro-evolution stance. I ask myself to do the same thing (and you don't even know my stance).
Now, the fact that you have accused me -- four times, no less -- of committing fallacies, and being egregiously wrong each time.... Well, let's just say that I won't be putting too much weight on your opinions for a while.
But in practice, a half-truth that's shouted repeatedly does require a response to set the record straight - else others might start to take it seriously.
Now jennyp, you took the words right out of my mouth.
I think if you read Physicist's posts on this and any of the other 999 thousand evolution threads you will find that acceptance of evolution derives from a host of independenly verifiable sets of facts and arguments -- including evidence from geology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, biology.
Evolution could easily be discredited by a single DNA strand that did not fit the model of common descent, but no such strand has been found.
Evolution could have been discredited by radioactive dating of rocks and crbonf, but it wasn't.
Both of these lines of research were unavailable to Darwin, yet both are consistent with an ancient earth and common descent of life.
And just WHY can't iron evolve into a material less dense than water? Surely this is easier to do than for LIFE to appear from non-living material!
OK, iron is subject to rust and other chemical attacks. It's still iron, but in compound form after this happens. I can at least conceive that some atoms of Titanic iron are already swimming around as fish hemoglobin. (Not that that has anything to do with any previous discussion at all.)
#136............
I must be as dense as the rocks fossils are found in! Could you go over, just one more time, how THIS works?
In other words, abiogenisis is a snap by comparison.
I believe you here....... Thus my original response, the even if there were no God (I can't answer that one) we would still be able to reason as well as Abraham.
I think you are an honest man.
In other words, abiogenisis is a snap by comparison.
Basically, to rip iron atoms apart on any big scale takes a supernova. Someone's probably done a few atoms in a collider, but that's about it for what you can do easily on earth. Iron is the bottom of the strong force "well," so you can't refuse its mass into any heavier elements and get more energy back than you put in.
The earth and sun are made of second-generation, supernova-remnant material or there wouldn't be any heavy elements in our solar system at all. Abiogenisis, life from non-life, isn't nearly so strenuous by comparison.
That there are some real difficulties with the present state of evolutionary theory cannot be denied: the host of competing explanations for serious unsolved problems is proof of that. For example, without going into its faults or merits, Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" addresses the sudden appearance of fully-formed species within the fossil record -- a fact that is not adequately handled by today's theory.
All this recent talk about evolution being a theory verging on civil war got me to reading a bit of Dawkins. It's quite interesting & instructive. Let's see what he says about Punctuated Equilibrium:
Here, then, is our orthodox new-Darwinian picture of how a typical species is 'born', by divergence from an ancestral species. We start with the ancestral species, a large population of rather uniform, mutually interbreeding animals, spread over a large land mass. They could be any sort of animal, but let's carry on the thinking of shrews. The landmass is cut in two by a mountain range. [A small population of shrews somehow make it to the other side, and create a new isolated population that gradually diverges from the ancestral population. Eventually the two races of shrew become two species. If the second population were to migrate back to the ancestral homeland, they wouldn't be able to interbreed with the first.][T]he likelihood is that the two species would not coexist for very long. ... It is a widely accepted principle of ecology that two species with the same way of life will not coexist for long in one place, because they will compete and one or other will be driven extinct. ... If it happened to be the original, ancestral species that was driven extinct, we should say that it had been replaced by the new, immigrant species.
The theory of speciation resulting from initial geographical separation has long been a cornerstone of mainstream, orthodox new-Darwinism, and it is still accepted on all sides as the main process by which new species come into existence (some people think there are others as well). Its incorporation into modern Darwinism was largely due to the influence of the distinguished zoologist Ernst Mayr. [The punctuationists asked themselves:] Given that, like most neo-Darwinians, we accept the orthodox theory that speciation starts with geographical isolation, what should we expect to see in the fossil record?
... The 'gaps', far from being annoying imperfections or awkward embarrassments, turn out to be exactly what we should positively expect, if we take seriously our orthodox neo-Darwinian theory of speciation. ... [W]hen we look at a series of fossils from any one place, we are probably not looking at an evolutionary event at all: we are looking at a migrational event....
The point that Eldredge and Gould were making, then, could have been modestly presented as a helpful rescuing of Darwin and his successors from what had seemed to them an awkward difficulty. Indeed that is, at least in part, how it was presented - initially. ...
Eldredge and Gould could have said:
Darwin, when you said that the fossil record was imperfect, you were understating it. Not only is it imperfect, there are good reasons for expecting it to be particularly imperfect just when it gets interesting, just when evolutionary change is taking place; this is partly because evolution usually occurred in a different place from where we find most of our fossils; and it is partly because, even if we are fortunate enough to dig in one of the small outlying areas where most evolutionary change went on, that evolutionary change (though still gradual) occupies such a short time that we should need an extra rich fossil record in order to track it!But no, instead they chose, especially in their later writings in which they were eagerly followed by journalists, to sell their ideas as being radically opposed to Darwin's and opposed to the neo-Darwinian view of evolution ....
... The proper way to characterize the beliefs of punctuationists is: 'gradualistic, but with long periods of "stasis" (evolutionary stagnation) punctuating brief episodes of rapid gradual change'. The emphasis is then thrown onto the long periods of stasis as being the previously overlooked phenomenon that really needs explaining. It is the emphasis on stasis that is the punctuationists' real contribution, not their claimed opposition to gradualism, for they are truly as gradualist as anybody else.
Even the emphasis on stasis can be found, in less-exaggerated form, in Mayr's theory of speciation. [Mayer believed that large populations have more inertia, in a sense, against change than small populations.]
The proponents of punctuated equilibrium took this suggestion of Mayr, and exaggerated it into a strong belief that 'stasis', or lack of evolutionary change, is the norm for a species. They believe that there are genetic forces in large populations that actively resist evolutionary change ... [This question - whether or not there really are active forces for stasis - is where the controversies do lie within neo-Darwinism; but creationists try to paint these minor controversies as evidence of a crumbling ideology.]
-- Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1996 edition, pp238-252
I'm going to give a few quotes from some confirmed evolutionists.
"There is.....no fossil evidence bearing on the question of insect origin."--Frank M. Carpenter
"The geological record has so far provided no evidence as to the origin of fishes..."--R.J. Norman
"...the student of prehistoric man...cannot reject [the Castenedolo skull] as false without doing injury to his sense of truth, and he cannot accept it as fact without shattering his accepted beliefs."--Sir Arthur Keith
"Just how fins developed into limbs is still a mystery-but they did." E.A. Hooton
This is a funny one:
"The best place to start the evolution of the vertebrates is the imagination." Homer W. Smith
Basically, evolution is for people who are really desperate to take credit from the Creator. Yours truly
Son of zeebob
Hebrews 10 (English-RSV)
28A man who has violated the law of Moses dies without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses.
29How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God, and profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace?
30For we know him who said, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay." And again, "The Lord will judge his people."
Far be it for me to question and split hairs about evolution. Life is truly short and each one of us is going to know the answer to this question. The only thing is, the answer has eternal time consequences.
31It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
And why do you think evolution denies God? To say that something happens by a natural process doesn't mean that God didn't do it.
Thanks for the post. But I never argue for or against the merits of punctuated equilibrium. I only use the existence of the theory to show that there are in fact certain problems with current evolutionary theory.
my interpretation of Dawkins' statement is that he is admitting some possibly serious problems with the theory of evolution (he wouldn't come right out and say this, of course). He makes an interesting statement of what Eldredge and Gould should have said, but of course he doesn't take his point any further. Instead, he goes on to insult them, which does nothing to prove his own point, or disprove theirs.
... [This question - whether or not there really are active forces for stasis - is where the controversies do lie within neo-Darwinism; but creationists try to paint these minor controversies as evidence of a crumbling ideology.]
I'm guessing that this is your editorial comment. Is it your opinion, or is it a summary of Dawkins' own later arguments? At any rate, whether or not the ideology is crumbling, the controversy here is more than "minor".
The words in "[ ]" are myself paraphrasing Dawkins.
And I don't think it's a matter of Dawkins "not coming out and admitting" something - he's saying that punk eek says that evolution happens gradually - and then stops for a long time.
IOW, Gould is a gradualist, who characterized his theory as being more radical than it really is - and for his sin was condemned to be quoted out of context forever by creationists, in their attempt to paint evolution as being "in crisis".
"And why do you think evolution denies God? To say that something happens by a natural process doesn't mean that God didn't do it."
I couldn't agree with you more. I don't believe that evolution denies God.
The point is that God is free to do as he pleases and just because he may please to do something that looks like evolution, doesn't validate evolution, but just simply says I'm God; accept me for Who I am, just as I lovingly accept you.
Basically, evolution is for people who are really desperate to take credit from the Creator.
Come now. Surely God can take care of himself. Do you think he's really worried about any of this? Do you imagine that God is angry about how Darwin snuck up on him when God wasn't looking and wrote a bunch of lies? Do you think if God were seriously opposed to the concept of evolution that Darwin would even exist? Well, maybe you're one who thinks that God is giving us enough rope to hang ourselves, he's salting the Earth with fraudulent fossils to mislead us, he's given us brains so we'll be curious about all this phoney evidence, knowing we'll fall for it so he can toast our tushies forever. Is that your idea of God? It's not mine.
I believe (as a matter of faith) that God created the world. I believe that the world, since its creation, has obeyed the physical laws laid down by its Creator. I do not believe that anything we learn from studying the operation of those physical laws does, or could, contradict the existence of God.
I believe in evolution, not as a matter of faith, but as the best available explanation of the data we learn by observing nature. I am therefore puzzled by all the vehemence which some believers bring to their efforts to falsify evolution. If evolution could be proven definitively, it would not disprove God; and if evolution could be definitively disproven, it would not prove the existence of God (or would, at most, prove the Deist conception of God, rather than the Jewish, Christian or Moslem beliefs).
Sanity! In this thread! Amazing!
Do you really feel it necessary to bring logic and clarity to this discussion?
Phaedrus says no, but I can't see the difference in his discourse.
When the Evolutionists bring me evidence and science, I will believe it. So far I have been brought ego and sophistry. And I have no trouble believing the physicists even as to their most bizarre conclusions.
But I could not care less how old the earth is, as I have said before. It is a sloppy mental habit to assume that your opposition does not have the facts and proceeds from pre-conceived notion or prescribed belief.
I believe (as a matter of faith) that God created the world. . .
I believe in evolution . . .
Ah, one of those rare Creation-Evolutionists! That should make it hard for you to figure out where to line up in this Creationist vs. Evolutionist debate. Yet you have chosen to line up with the evolutionists:
I am therefore puzzled by all the vehemence which some believers bring to their efforts to falsify evolution.
If you spend any time on these threads, you'll see that there is an equal vehemence on the evolutionist side of the aisle displayed whenever anything but neo-Darwinist explanations are suggested for evolution. And that this outlook is usually expressed as if it were fact rather than theory. So when somebody comes along like Behe, who is an evolutionist, and believes in common descent, and even Darwinian means for micro-evolution, but sees evidence for Design . . . they act as if he should be crucified! Because it's a known fact that life arose by chance, by random processes . . .
Keep reading. I started off these threads on the E side of E vs. C. I've moved over to the C side. Even though I'm an Agnostic, and believe that evolution is a real phenomenon.
This is way off point, but I gotta share this:
Monday January 17 2:24 AM ETAustralia Fish Fossil May Be Distant Human Relative
CANBERRA, Australia (Reuters) - A 400-million-year-old fossilized fish recently discovered near an Australian dam may be one of the human race's earliest relatives, according to researchers at the Australian Museum.
Museum research fellow Alex Ritchie said the fossil's braincase showed the fish had an eyestalk connecting its eye with its brain. It was the first fish of its type to be preserved well enough to show this.
Ritchie said in a statement it was probably a primitive type of ray-finned fish. Previously, it was thought only archaic armored fish and some primitive sharks had eyestalks.
He said the fish could be part of the lineage that not only led to ray-finned fish, but also to land vertebrates and humans.
``It's not only one of the oldest specimens, but it's also the first specimen that could be affiliated with us as well,'' a spokeswoman from the museum told Reuters.
Museum staff discovered the fish fossil about six months ago on the shore of a dam in the tiny southern town of Wee Jasper in the state of New South Wales.
The area is believed to have been the site of a reef 400 million years ago.
I found it on Yahoo. RIGHT HERE.
I've moved over to the C side. Even though I'm an Agnostic, and believe that evolution is a real phenomenon.
Color you confused.
In making your argument to support evolution you're assuming evolution to have occurred.
Reading it out of context, it would seem that way. In point of fact, however, I was not making an argument to support evolution. I was correcting (or rather clarifying) a statement about our understanding of how evolution proceeds. Of course if there is no evolution, arguments about how it proceeds are moot.
You're assuming that because bacteria have simpler genomes that a progression has occurred.
I don't assume that at all. A combination of fossil evidence and genetic evidence shows that we have ancestors in common with bacteria. Since those common ancestors, either the genomes of our ancestors have gotten much longer, or the genomes of the ancestors of modern bacteria have gotten much shorter. Given that we and bacteria share common ancestors, one of these statements makes more sense than the other. Which would you pick?
Everyone has been very well behaved lately, which has made this place a whole lot more enjoyable. If the thread keeps growing at its current rate, it will soon become too big again. I will probably start a continuation thread in the morning (unless I wake up to discover that it's been already done). But unless things get impossible, just relax. I'll take care of it.
(From the prior thread) Perhaps you will agree that there's an "average" advancement.
Yes, that's true, or so I think is likely assuming you mean something like quantity of coding genetic material per organism.
Here's an interesting fact. I remember reading that there is a type of plant (a cereal of some kind I think) that has far more coding genome than humans. Would you say the plant is more advanced?
...they act as if he should be crucified!
A little hyperbole jazz? Thinking that Behe's not really shown anything, as you know I do, isn't crucifying him. He has exhibited wondrously complex systems but not shown they could not have evolved by the usual means.
Good post (#150). Quoting their own guys is always enlightening especially when some of them on the thread try to make evolution look like a flawless explanation of our origin.
When the Evolutionists bring me evidence and science, I will believe it. So far I have been brought ego and sophistry.
Right you are, Phaedrus. And as anyone trained in logic knows, one should not change one's mind unless there is good reason. That "good reason" is not available to the evolutionists which forces them to resort to name-calling and stereotyping if we remain unconvinced by their tangled, knotted yarn.
Yeah, right. More HARD Science from Mr. Henry:
may be one of the human race's
it was probably a primitive type
fish could be part of
he area is believed to have been
Well, here's your transitional form, the only one you evolutionists will ever be able to come up with:
A little hyperbole jazz?
LOL! Ok, ok. You got me. A little exageration there. But you should have read a private reply or two that I got when I first posted that Behe's opinions were interesting! Why the vehemence against him? Is it just that Darwinists feel that to even consider Behe may lend support to the Creationist camp? I don't even "believe" Behe. And I don't believe Cosmic Origins Theory, nor Gaia Theory, nor Complexity . . . but I consider them and I think they're interesting. I don't believe ANYBODY knows enough to tell me with anything approximating certainty what happened 4 Billion years ago! But people do. And it's a natural reaction for me to rebel against that.
And I guess I realize that I'm not truly in one camp nor the other. Thanks Ed for keeping me honest.
there is a type of plant (a cereal of some kind I think) that has far more coding genome than humans. Would you say the plant is more advanced?
Not yet maybe. But I would keep a very wary eye on that plant if I were you . . .
Color you confused.
Don't you get it? People SHOULD be confused about this stuff. I believe that the people on both sides of the debate that speak with the most certainty are the ones who are fooling themselves.
"But the general progression from single-celled to large multicelled organisms stopped hundreds of millions of years ago."
Explains why we don't observe it today. And since no one was around to observe it then, this also explains why evolution is unproveable. It is neither testable, nor observable, and so it is not science.
It is, however, conjecture, speculation, and myth. Thank you for illustrating this point nicely. (You really were farther ahead before this last response.)
"By any meaningful chemical metric (which is the only kind that's relevant to the 2LOT), evolution hasn't been working to create more complex species over time."
Never has, never will. Thanks for making the point far more clearly than I ever could.
Given the quote I've repeatedly cited from you, and in the context which I've used it, tell me how I've taken you out of context again??? Hmmm???
If you don't want to stand by what you write, perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to post.
"Computer models suggest that certain complex systems tend toward self-organization."
139 Posted on 01/15/2000 18:03:57 PST by PatrickHenryA common creationist strawman tactic involves calculating the statistics for a complex modern entity (organism or protein or set of proteins) coming together by chance in order to butress a claim that NO replicating entity could possibly ever have come together by natural means, while ignoring the fact that the first replicating entity surely was vastly simpler than anything seen in today's modern highly evolved organisms.
(SNIP)
But anyway, all this is still too pessimistic, since the first replicators were probably short RNA strands. A nucleotide sequence of just six units is enough to provide a template for the creation of new copies of itself! Six units! And in 1996, Ferris et.al. created both proteins and RNA strands of up to 55 units in about a week, using certain types of clay as catalysts. Clearly, given the creationists' own framework for deriving probabilities of abiogenesis, the probability that life did not arise by chance are astronomical indeed.
64 Posted on 11/08/1999 20:48:46 PST by jennyp
I just want you all to see how dishonest evolutionists have to be to push their "science." Note the two "proofs" posited for evolution above, and ask yourself these questions:
First of all, was the first life on earth something like these "short RNA strands...of just six units," something that was "vastly simpler than anything seen in today's modern highly evolved organisms.?" Or was it "complex systems" that "tend toward self-organization?" What's the baseline assumption evolutionists are asking to to believe? In other words, what are we to assume about that first "life?" Simple, or complex?
Secondly, how does one get from the "first replicating entity" which "surely was vastly simpler than anything seen in today's modern highly evolved organisms," to a "complex, self-organizing system," (never mind a fully-formed human being) by a process that:
"...doesn't of necessity proceed towards greater complexity."
28 Posted on 01/17/2000 06:41:16 PST by garbanzo"...doesn't have to produce complexity, although complexity IS one valid path to survival."
24 Posted on 01/17/2000 06:32:05 PST by Physicist"...tends to fluctuate around a mean. Progess doesn't equal complexity - increases in complexity are allowed by evolution but not required. From a statistical point of view increases are just as likely as decreases."
46 Posted on 01/17/2000 07:20:24 PST by garbanzo
So now we're back to flipping coins and rolling dice, from a purely "statistical point of view." But even here, it all depends on how one defines "evolution." Is it merely "change," [horizontal, "micro-evolution"], as defined above (and below):
"Evolution does NOT proceed towards greater complexity. If anything, it meanders towards fitness within the species' environment. (And of course there's a big question of just how well it does that!)"
130 Posted on 10/30/1999 15:14:23 PDT by jennyp"Maybe Darwin thought it was neat & linear. But it turns out it's actually quite a chaotic (unpredictable in advance) process. Wild & bushy, more like. Kinda like the dynamic free-market economy vs. the intelligently designed Soviet economy."
98 Posted on 10/03/1999 22:23:54 PDT by jennyp"evolution is usually defined as any shift of allele frequencies in a population. Scientists don't usually make value judgments on whether or not a particular shift in frequency is "upward" or "downward". In fact in a book by Gould that I read, he gives an example of a plankton species that got smaller over time. While it's a common misstatement among even many of those who accept evolution as fact that evolution is "progress" it's not really a part of evolutionary theory."
49 Posted on 10/21/1999 07:40:16 PDT by garbanzo (garbanzo@worldnet.att.net)If, as you imply, evolution is ongoing, where, exactly is it headed?
"We'll never know until we get there. Evolution doesn't have a predetermined goal, in the sense that we could predict beforehand. I guess you could say that it's headed in the direction of optimal fitness of each species to its local ecology. Of course, ecologies change all the time."
71 Posted on 10/03/1999 00:12:01 PDT by jennyp
or is it "improvement? [vertical, "macro-evolution"], as defined this way:
It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapses of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were.
Although natural selection can act only through and for the good of each being, yet characters and structures, which we are apt to consider as of very trifling importance, may thus be acted on.
Charles Darwin, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life," Chapter 4"Evolution in the extended sense can be defined as a directional and essentially irreversible process occurring in time, which in its course gives rise to an increase of variety and an increasingly high level of organization in its products. Our present knowledge indeed forces us to tile view that the whole of reality is evolution—a single process of self-transformation."
Julian Huxley: "Evolution and Genetics" in What is Man? (Ed. by J. R. Newman, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1955), p.278.
All those purporting to tell us that evolution is merely "change" need to explain how that change went from something that was "vastly simpler" than life as we know it today, (if this is to be our underlying assumption) to everything that we see today, in the limited time frame with which evolution has had to work. Or they must explain how "certain complex systems" that "tend toward self-organization" could have - in essence - arisen from nothing.
The point of this exercise is simply to show that evolution is a house of cards built on various assumptions that no one can prove. The dishonesty from the evolutionist camp lies in the fact that they won't tell you this, and instead hide behind "proofs" that read like this:
"...the first replicators were probably..."
"I mean, what is he claiming here? That a T.Rex's body was simpler than an iguana's? That dinosaurs' chromosomes had fewer genes than a modern salamaner? Evolution does NOT proceed towards greater complexity. If anything, it meanders towards fitness within the species' environment. (And of course there's a big question of just how well it does that!) You COULD say that a larger animal is more complex than a smaller one, using different metrics (# of differentiated organs, # of cells, total # of molecules, etc.). And some organisms have more genes than others. But the general progression from single-celled to large multicelled organisms stopped hundreds of millions of years ago. By any meaningful chemical metric (which is the only kind that's relevant to the 2LOT), evolution hasn't been working to create more complex species over time."
Revisiting this, how do you get from "a nucleotide sequence of just six units" (sourced above) which was "was vastly simpler than anything seen in today's modern highly evolved organisms" to "a T.Rex's body" (or an iguana, et al supra) with a process that "by any meaningful chemical metric (which is the only kind that's relevant to the 2LOT), hasn't been working to create more complex species over time?"
These are direct quotes taken from sources you've posted, jenny. I have framed the question above using quotes from your sources. It's your side who keeps playing these silly semantic games with words like "vastly simpler" and "complex systems."
And don't give me this "evolution CAN tend towards greater complexity" [Physicist] nonsense. Evolution is what your side is trying to prove, therefore it cannot be used to prove itself. Or have you all forgotten Logic 101? "The conclusion of a proof cannot be proof of the conclusion."
Maybe evolution - as you all understand it - makes perfect sense to you. But for thinking people who actually read what you're writing here, then try to understand it in the light of your side's many changing definitions, circular arguments, contradictory statements, "probably proofs," a priori assumptions, baseless assertions, wild speculations, and outright frauds, you simply don't have a "theory" that makes any sense at all.
Personally, I don't care what you and your side believes. But none of you should presume to look down your noses at a creationist, or an ID'er given the illogical, nonsensical, garbage that passes for evolutionary evidence here. You simply should not be throwing stones from within the confines of your own ideaological glass house.
#145 & 148..............
Iron is the bottom of the strong force "well," so you can't refuse its mass into any heavier elements and get more energy back than you put in. So.... how does this stuff get into fish blood then?
Well, would you rather have him 'confused' or 'dogmatic'?
There is enough data in these threads to keep ANYONE confused! (If they'd just admit it!)
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We have a continuation thread. CLICK HERE.
FYI Chromosome counts:
Fern 480
.
White Ash 138
.
Carp
100
.
.
Horse
64
.
Human
46
Frog
26
Lettuce
18
.
.
Honeybee
16
.
Fruit Fly
8
.
.
Penicillium
2
.
Eventually we will evolve to become ferns.
I was correcting (or rather clarifying) a statement about our understanding of how evolution proceeds.
Ok.
A combination of fossil evidence and genetic evidence shows that we have ancestors in common with bacteria. Since those common ancestors, either the genomes of our ancestors have gotten much longer, or the genomes of the ancestors of modern bacteria have gotten much shorter. Given that we and bacteria share common ancestors, one of these statements makes more sense than the other. Which would you pick?
In an evolutionary context your statement makes sense. I just don't accept the "given".
Regards,
Do you really feel it necessary to bring logic and clarity to this discussion?
Sorry, Phaedrus, I'll try to do better.
"Eventually we will evolve to become ferns."
I think some of the evolutionists here have already made it. :)
My response to you is on the new thread.
<sigh> It's like I'm arguing with James Carville.
"<sigh> It's like I'm arguing with James Carville."
Glad to oblige, Hillary.
"Far too many of the Recent Creationists on this forum simply refuse to understand the process of evolution."
This, of course, is one more of the many unsubstantiated assertions evolutionists make when discussing the subject. As I, and others, have repeatedly stated on these threads, I was a staunch, dyed-in-the-wool Darwinist, probably before you were born (if your "handle" is any indicator.)
I understand this stuff. We would simply like others to understand it, because in that full process of understanding then - and only then - will you arrive at truth.
But having said that, you are certainly free to believe anything you wish, no matter how illogical, untenable, and fraudulent it may be.
P.S. You never did get back to me on those questions I posed to you on the other thread. Are you still thinking about them, researching them, or have you decided that your faith isn't something you need to defend?
Later...
The most compelling evidence for evolution has nothing to do with the fossil record or with genetic trees or anything like that, but from simple observation of how people and animals inherit characteristics from their parents. People look like their parents. If they have black skin, their parents have black skin. If they have epicanthic eyes, their parents have epicanthic eyes. Any illiterate fool can see this. Even if I believed in Adam and Eve, it is instantly clear that two randomly selected orientals share more common ancestors more recently than I do with either of them.
That being said, it is equally obvious that all finches share common ancestors. Given that, it is inevitable that all birds share common ancestors, at some point before the ancestors shared by all finches.
Ok, you're using comparative analysis. Here's how it works:
1) If you have blue eyes, at least one of your anscestors have blue eyes (not nessasarily your parents, as they have may have blue eyes resessive.) You're related to your relatives (by definition).
2) If you have blue eyes, and John and Jane Doe next door has blue eyes, it does not nessasarily mean that you are related to them.
In other words, comparative analysis only gives valid results if you assume relation to begin with! Otherwise, it'll give invalid results ('you're related to John Doe' and 'you're not related to John Doe' are both invalid results in this case using this logic. 'Invalid results' does not mean 'true results' or 'false results'. It means your logical argument doesn't work.)
You can get valid results by saying 'animal A is related to animal B, so their characteristics might be simular'. And you can use comparative analysis to try to help determine a 'family tree' (though a family tree created only with comparative analysis may be false also). However, if relation isn't previously known, comparative analysis will give invalid results. In other words, you can't say 'animal A is related to animal B because their characteristics are simular'.
From there it gets a little more complicated, but not too much: ultimately, all vertebrates must have shared a common ancestor. Are these really such great leaps of intuition?
Yes, as that is an invalid logical argument. It simply won't work.
-The Hajman-
They could look at a film of an object falling and maintain that it doesn't give evidence for gravity. After all, it's just a collection of photographs of a ball at various heights. At 24 frames per second, there are just too many missing "transitional frames".
Actually, you're more right then you realize, Physicist. Could also say that you could look at a film of a flying saucer (pick one..how about Independence Day?) and maintain the flying saucer doesn't really exist and truely fly. And how about that...you'd be true! How do you verify gravity then? You observe it!
Your upper point is invalid for the reason given. And sorting doesn't nessasarily mean relation (see sedimentary sorting in turbulant water. The sorting gives no more information then the weight/density/boyancy of the sediment being sorted. In other words, you can't get any more information from the sediment out of the way it's sorted then what you can directly observe). Can the past be directly observe? Nope. If evolution isn't assumed to be fact to begin with, do transitional animals exist for the entire 'geologic column'? Nope! Why not? Because without evolution, you obviously don't have transitions between all the different kinds of animals! (note: evolution refered to here is macro evolution. Changes within the same kinds of animals have been observed. Doesn't mean macro evolution is happening or will happen.) Conclusion: 'transitional animals' are mearly animals that are assumed to be related to two other animals based on the assumption that evolution happend! An assumption based on an assumption to come up with a conclusion will give an invalid conclusion in this case since evolution is not proven to be fact!
And since you need evolution to be true to prove something is a transitional species without directly observing such, you can't use a 'transitional species' (or 'transitional animal') in the fossile record to prove evolution. Why?
Premise 1: Evolution is true.
Premise 2: Transitional species exist because of evolution (they are dependent upon evolution, but evolution is not dependent upon transitional species).
Conclusion: Evolution is validated because of transitional species.
This is commonly known as circular reasoning. It's invalid.
Would love to post more, but I need to be heading to bed. Will try to continue this later. Goodnight everyone!
-The Hajman-
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