Give your one best shot - against evolution

[QUOTE][b]Wow! Now its millions of fossils required! You guys don't just move the goalposts, you dematerialise them, convert them into anti-matter and reassemble them in a parallel universe.[/QUOTE][/b]He did exactly the same thing in another thread, "Piltdown Man, Java Man...." He started with thousands and stayed there until I mentioned BMNH's catalog and then he went to "hundreds of thousands". I was going to prod him by asking if he would jump to "millions" but didn't, now I regret it.Point: does he actually have a credible way to calculate how many fossils we "should" be finding or is he tossing out numbers that he hopes we can't match?

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Let me rephraise what I said earlier. Its harder to beleive in abiogenesis than it is to beleive in a god that created us.

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Harder, for you. Not for agnostics and atheists who find it hard to picture a divine creation when they do not see any evidence of God. This argument (both sides) is from personal incredulity and useless for you to attempt to use because of personal subjectivity and prior assumptions. [QUOTE][b]Then what is it?[/QUOTE][/b]Weighted probability. There is some chance in it but you've forgotten or are not aware that these dice are loaded. [QUOTE][b]Yes, yes it is.[/QUOTE][/b]Again, an argument from personal incredulity. [QUOTE][b]but all Ive seen are pictures of birds beaks to show how they have "adapted" or "evolved". [/QUOTE][/b]It is your own fault if you are not adequately informed. Look around this forum and you'll see that there is a lot more to it than beak adaptations in finches. [QUOTE][b]If they could do that then yes I would accept it.[/QUOTE][/b]Multiple (evolutionary) theories can attempt to explain those features but we cannot narrow it down to THE ONE WAY it happened. Much like we know gravity exists but there are multiple competing theories to supply the mechanism. Your request is unreasonable, the best we can expect to do is to show that it *could* happen one way or another. [QUOTE][b]There is just too much complexity to have happened by chance.[/QUOTE][/b]How did you reach that conclusion? Do you have a mathematical proof or empirical observation to back it up? If not, this is not a competant argument either. [QUOTE][b]Thats exactally what evolution is CHANCE.[/QUOTE][/b]Actually evolution is a theory to account for the genetic diversity of life on Earth. Part of that is "chance" but not entirely. [QUOTE][b]Chance variations starting at nothing and ending with absolute perfection.[/QUOTE][/b]Whether our bodies exhibit "absolute perfection" is a point in itself
to debate. If our bodies were 'absolutely perfect' we wouldn't have Presidential colonoscopies (sp?) and the podiatrists wouldn't be quite so busy. Besides, Philip needs room for a "cursed creation"--I don't think this classical humanistic notion of people being "absolutely perfect" can fit too well with most Christian theology either. [QUOTE][b]Im sorry but I just cant buy that.[/QUOTE][/b]See, this is another flawed argument due to it being based upon personal incredulity.My opinion is that evolution is the best way to account for the diversity of life on Earth, but it does me little good to just repeat it, I have to respond to the issues you raise and present evidence.As for this Sickle-Cell Anemia issue:The mutation does not reduce "information" at all because the length of the DNA molecule does not change. Also it causes a change in cell property that did not exist before, therefore, information has changed. Therefore, information was added.(It does not matter if I turn a 0 into a 1 or a 1 into a 0 in binary code, either way, "new" "information" is added to the system to bring about a change)It is a substitution of valine for glutamic acid at position six in the beta hemoglobin chain. This alters the water solubility of the molecule, causing them to assemble into crystals, altering the shape of the cell. Individuals heterozygous for the sickle-cell allele have a selective advantage when exposed to falciparum malaria. (Biology, Fifth Edition, Solomon, Berg, Martin, Saunders College Publishing. 1999.)

[QUOTE][b]For example. Lets say you have a single celled organism (one of the very first) but its immune system hasnt evolved yet. All it would take to wipe out each and every living cell would be a paper cut and then youre back to square one.[/QUOTE][/b]Actually cell membranes are composed of a double-layer of phospholipids (with a hydrophobic head and a hydrophilic tail) that spontaneously form their shape when exposed to water. No energy or input from the cell is needed to fix leaks, it happens automatically because that is the lowest-energy configuration of those phospholipid molecules. In fact they will assume that formation without the rest of the cell present when immersed in water.By the way, I'm confused at what the immune system would have to do with it. Single-celled organisms don't have an "immune system" as we know it, that requires cellular differentiation. [QUOTE][b]There would be millions of similar "weaknesses" for the early life forms.[/QUOTE][/b]"Apparent weaknesses" would be a better way to describe it, depending on the conformation of early life. There are probably quick solutions, like for the one above. [QUOTE][b]What percentage of the mutations are beneficial?[/QUOTE][/b]That depends upon the environment. One set of conditions could make a mutation detrimental, another environment could make it beneficial (see sickle-cell example). The vast majority are neutral. [QUOTE][b]How many mutations would it take to produce the reproductive system?[/QUOTE][/b]Quite a few, I admit. But how many living things have existed on the Earth by now? [QUOTE][b]Wouldnt the addition of the reproductive system cause potential harm to the mother?[/QUOTE][/b]The human reproductive system is a significant potential harm to a mother. Yet you have already claimed that we are 'perfect'.... [QUOTE][b]Then by natural selection all of those carrying the reproduction traits would die off.[/QUOTE][/b]Unless the "new" reproductive system (which would evolve step by step so that it wouldn't ever really be "new") decreased infant mortality, in which case it would be selected for and would proliferate. [QUOTE][b]There are too many processes that have to be just right.[/QUOTE][/b]Actually that isn't so. If everything had to be "just right" most of us would no longer be alive. Most organisms can run around just fine with proteins slightly different that what their parents had. This is why antibiotic resistance is such a problem today, some of those mutations actually make the microbe more virulent. [QUOTE][b]5 billion years is not enough time.[/QUOTE][/b]More like 3.5 if we're talking about the age of life. Why can't an amoeba evolve into a human if a cat can evolve into a lion? Is there a barrier? [QUOTE][b]Im just saying that IN MY OPINION the whole theory of abiogenesis, and to a lesser degree evolution, is at best very very difficult to naturally occur and have posotive results. Its like a plant that you dont water or fertalize or give enough sunlight to. It usually dies. Why would the very first life forms be any different? [/QUOTE][/b]Because the first life forms would be composed of chemicals that were already floating around in the environment. To exist in the environment they must be stable there. Hence, unlike the plant that dies because its new environment is too different from its last one, the protocell would be right at home from the beginning. [QUOTE][b]Like chance when throwing dice.[/QUOTE][/b]But, like I said, the dice are loaded. [QUOTE][b]Have you ever been to Las Vegas? Did you go home with more money or less?[/QUOTE][/b]I wouldn't waste my money. But somebody there probably hit the jackpot. In this biological jackpot, it would be because the organism had a trait that was beneficial. Then the next generation of gamblers consists of hundreds of individuals with the same trait--a few of which will hit that jackpot again. As individuals the chances are very low, but as a whole the chances are almost fixed.I like the analogy.

[QUOTE][b]for the probability that all of them are left-handed[/QUOTE][/b]Interesting that you bring that up because meteoric AA's *are* almost exclusively left-handed.

[QUOTE][b]Most genes can be knocked out without killing the organism, and a lot of genes have been demonstrated not to affect the fitness of the organism at all.[/QUOTE][/b]Sounds like evolution, or at least a jury-rigged design in nature.As for information theory, I see no need to rebute an argument that was already being fought over before you posted.

[QUOTE][b]I don't know who Terra or the "Terra crowd" are, or who the evolutionists you're thinking of are, but this all seems like the most obvious quackery.[/QUOTE][/b]Terra is an artificial life simulation for PCs running (I think) Unix-derived OS's.

That's not the one. Terra was a frustrating and technical shareware program from, oh, circa 1995 I'd say.I can't find any trace of it on the search engines. I do recall attempting to download and install it a few times.