Posted on 07/25/2009 10:11:21 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
==We’re all going to die “on a remarkably short time scale” due to genetic variations?...Strawman.
You mean indestructible man. We all die as a result of accumulated genetic errors. And you fellow Evos say the human race is on the path of extinction due to genetic entropy. Do you disagree with this because Creation scientists just happen to agree with them???
PS You might want to read the following before inserting your foot further in your mouth than is your custom:
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j22_2/j22_2_60-66.pdf
To say that no creature “needs” to live forever is more a theological conclusion than a biological one unless you can explain biologically why any creature, including humans, lives on past the point of their offspring's independence and their own reproductive years.
In the case of MRSA it could be just as easily argued that they kill their host too quickly and doom themselves but maybe that makes them “happy”.
What proportion of human mutations could be termed “positive”?
typical horsehockey.
“Creation scientists” is about the ultimate oxymoron lately.
If you have something worthwhile to say, fine, otherwise I’ll just ignore you and I know you would really hate that.
But no worries, our consolation prize is death.
So evolution doesn’t exist but “built-in variation” does.
I don’t begrudge you you faith, but can’t you realize how ridiculous the assertion of that non-difference is?
We all see that drug-resistant bacteria develop. Perhaps you see a benevolent intelligent creator behind it. I see genetic mutation, time, and the survival of the that which survives.
As an aside, belief in freedom & limited self-government is not a religious matter. I’m not certain why the bible-thumpers need to pontificate here.
I have asked you in the past to stop pinging me so why are you still doing it?
I know this is ‘simplistic’, but, if life forms today developed (mutated) from ‘simpler’ life forms, then why have sharks always been sharks?
To make more dirt.
No dirt. No food. No life.
On the universal scale, it is the same. No star lasts forever. New stars are made from the leftovers of the deaths of old stars.
Yes. 'Man', that highly evolved, highly intelligent creature creates a drug (after tons of money and research) that helps the body resist a certain bacteria.
The lowly bacteria, even more quickly, and without money, adapts to the 'medicine' and beats it.
Who is really smarter?
There are more cells of bacteria in your body, than there are cells of 'you' (eukaryotes). Not only may they be smarter, they outnumber us.
evolution is a response to environment ... once an organism is (a) well suited for its environment, and (b) is not experiencing significant competition for resources, survival, or mating opportunities, then evolution will appear to slow to a crawl ... but it doesn’t “stop.”
Evolution IS intelligent design.
And it is perfectly compatible with Christianity.
I agree with you. I also would include the fact that the environment changes, although that might not affect a shark very much.
For what I think you're trying to ask, sharks are probably, in consideration of the level of diversity they collectively represent, a poorly chosen example.
It turns out, if we shift to mammals, to be less like asking, "why have dogs always been dogs," which I suppose to be along the lines of what you mean, and instead more like asking, "why have carnivores always been carnivores," carnivores of course including dogs, cats, bears, weasels, skunks, etc, etc.
To clarify, here are the levels of classification, from more to less inclusive, along with where sharks and dogs fall into the scheme:
| TAXON | DOGS | SHARKS |
| Kingdom | Animalia | (ditto) |
| Phylum | Chordata | (ditto) |
| Class | Mammalia | Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous, as opposed to bony, fishes) |
| Subclass | (n/a) | Elasmobranchii (sharks plus skates & rays) |
| Superorder | (n/a) | Selachimorpha (SHARKS) |
| Order | Carnivora | (There are 8 Orders of sharks) |
| Suborder | Caniformia (dogs + bears, seals, weasels, etc) | (various) |
| Family | Canidae (DOGS) | (# of Families per Order range from 1 to 8) |
So, "sharks" are two or three major steps higher in taxonomic level than "dogs," and even at that "dogs" still includes foxes and such. You have to drop down yet another level, to the Genus Canis, if you wish to confine the group only to jackals, coyotes, wolves and domestic dogs.
Furthermore, last I knew, "sharks" are not considered by most experts to be monophyletic (representing a single evolutionary branch) because some groups of sharks are thought to be more closely related to skates and rays than they are to other sharks. So sharks aren't even always "sharks," but are in some cases skates and rays (cladistically) even while "sharks" in terms of traditional classification.
But all that said, I will nevertheless answer your question, which I take to be basically, "why are X's always X's throughout geological history if evolution is supposed to be changing X's into Y's."
As I see it the answer is pretty simple:
Our classification scheme was initially created only for living creatures, and therefore considering only one particular "slice" of evolutionary time, i.e. the present.
Fossil forms then have to be shoehorned into the established, "living-creature-centric" categories, even if sometimes by hook or crook, even if the decisions about where to "stick" something sometimes have to be, almost, arbitrary.
The result of that is that we end up calling something by the same name even though it, the group called by that name, often has changed substantially over time. Creationists then take rhetorical advantage of this artifact or limitation of classification to imply that the named group hasn't changed, even if it has.
Yes, "dogs" have always been "dogs," and "sharks" have always been "sharks," even though sharks, say 200 million years ago, were quite different from, and only superficially similar to, sharks today.
In this respect sharks are a relatively, but only relatively, good example for creationists, I suppose, in that they have generally changed much slower than most creatures, than have mammals for instance. Species nearly identical to the modern Great White Shark go back nearly 65 million years (IIRC). Still, sharks similar to the modern varieties "only" go back about 100 million years, whereas "sharks" as a group have been around more than 400 million years (again, IIRC... I believe these figures are at least pretty close).
So there were several hundred million years of "non-modern-like" sharks swimming around (and for at least some of the early ones, it being more-or-less arbitrary whether to call them "sharks" or "skates" or "rays") but we call them "sharks" simply because we have to call them something, and they're closer to "sharks" than to anything else.
Do you consider for a minute, even a moment, that you might be wrong? I’m not saying that you’re not correct. I’m asking if you consider the possibility that you are incorrect.
Of course.
Thanks...I’ll now continue to listen.
IOW, I am more less constantly considering, for each statement I may make, how relatively confident am I about this particular claim, and how can I, in my statements, communicate that level of confidence to my listeners or correspondents.
So, for instance, in the preceding message I wrote some things that I am highly confident about with little or no qualification. Other things, like for instance the posited ages of fossil sharks, I indicated that I was working from recollection and so might be wrong, but believe myself to be in the ballpark.
I assume this is pretty much the way any (non pathological) human thinks and behaves. Isn't it?
(Literally speaking your question is silly, although probably only because of the telegraphic way you put it. Since you don't specify in any way what I may consider I'm incorrect about, nor allow for relative degrees of confindence my correctness, you are basically -- again in the strictly literal sense of your question -- asking me if I consider myself absolutely infallible, and of course I don't.)
Don’t read too much into the question...I just don’t choose to engage those who don’t admit to their own infallibility. With that understanding, I appreciate your sentiments.
We’re all ready to admit our infallibility! As well as always being right.
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