Are there any "problems" with the ToE that are generally not addressed?

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I didn't know creationism had been granted the status of a scientific position.

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If it isn't then creationism should not be used as a theory to falsify evolution. Therefore, a creationist source should not be used in a scientific argument and it is right to ignore such sources.

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What objective superior entity decided this ?

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None, unless you count such entities as Morris and family.

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What specific evidence falsifies a creationist scientific position ?

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An old earth, lack of evidence for a global flood, and universal common ancestory. C'mon, you should know this stuff by now.

Hi WillowTree,While legitimate questions can be raised about fossils classified as Homo habilis, the doubts you're raising seem without support. You claim that there are extremely few habilis fossils, and that those that have been found have been misclassified.Addressing just the first of your points, that there are extremely few habilis fossils, here is a list of significant habilis fossils from This Page at Talk.Origins. Legitimate questions can be raised about many of these, and we can get into that if you like, but this list is just to rebut your point about the paucity of habilis fossil evidence:

• OH 7: child, lower jaw, cranial fragments, some hand bones
• OH 8: foot bones
• OH 13: lower jaw, teeth, some upper jaw, cranial fragment
• OH 16: teeth, a few skull fragments
• OH 24: fairly complete but crushed cranium and 7 teeth
• KNM-ER 1470: nearly complete skull.
• KNM-ER 1481: complete left femor, ends of left tibia, lower end of left fibula
• KNM-ER 1805: much of cranium, many teeth
• KNM-ER 1813: nearly complete skull
• Stw 53: nearly complete skull, many teeth
• OH 62: portions of skull, arm, leg bones and teeth
• OH 65: complete upper jar, part of lower face

Now let's examine the Milton quote you provided: Unless Milton is actually just referring to the initial speculation about a possible new homonid species after the first habilis find, he's wrong.As can be seen by the list I just provided, Homo habilis is supported by far more evidence than Milton is telling you. As I said above, the evidence can be legitimately questioned, but that's not what Milton is doing. He's ignoring the evidence, not rebutting it.--Percy

If the scientific argument leaves its perimeter of expertise and trespasses into Genesis then it is perfectly legitimate to expose anything erroneous in the argument.Ignoring arguments only creates suspicion as to why.You can exclude whoever you want but the exclusion is explained by the N.T.Methodological naturalism and Rational enquiry claim Divine neutrality - I think.But it doesn't matter because EVERYONE has an axe to grind for or against Genesis, which renders the claims of Divine neutrality by sceintific methodologies deceptive, silly, and again, the motive is explained by the N.T. Genesis supports an old Earth. At issue is the defintion of "old".Vocal fundamentalists/YEC's have misrepresented the Bible.But more importantly, Genesis opposition has categorized every creationist to be a god-damn fundie.Global flood is a fact based upon the worldwide flood accounts. This spectacular evidence is completely ignored and eviscerated of its obvious meaning by atheists who have a lot to lose if this evidence is simply taken at face value.IOW, atheists must assert their trump card of ancients and their mythical confusion = avoidance of the evidence wholesale. IOW, everyone is a liar and you atheists are the only ones smart enough to see how every ancient is a confused believer in some type of God.IOW, there are two camps: Believers in Divine and modern intellectuals who have zero belief in the Divine. The latter is clearly explained by God-sense removal as these persons simply ignore and or change any and all evidence which contradicts their worldview.It is irrational on a incalulable scale to assert the worldwide flood accounts are ALL based upon local catastrophes = evasion of plain evidence supporting the origin of the true protected version of events in Genesis which all flood stories originate from.The only reason South America has great flood accounts is because a Great Flood happened. This evidence is only rejected because it so clearly supports Genesis = rejection thereof = proof of God-sense removal = claim of N.T. explaining why atheism exists.Only God senseless persons stripped of any ability to be rational towards Divine claims reject such sweeping and irrefutable evidence.

Loud, WT, please reveiw the topic of this thread.And stick to it! Thanks.

Admin is right.If you choose to respond Loudmouth then take your response to the God-sense topic in the "Is it Science ?" Forum.WT

We've already addressed this in message 229, remember?White provided no data in support of his claim. Scientists who do analyze the data find out that habilis had smaller brains than humans of equivalent size would have.Yes, pygmies are about the same stature as Homo habilis, but they have much larger brains.White's argument would have had equal validity [i.e. none] had he pointed out that monkeys have smaller brains than humans, but also have smaller body size which compensates for it, so they really have just as large brains as humans relatively speaking. Handwaving is worthless; you've to analyze the data. Guess what? All of this is irrelevant. Yes, the original habilis fossils were scrappy, but they're not what people think of when they talk about habilis now. They've found quite a few more habilis fossils since then including some skulls, but apparently Milton doesn't want you to know about that. Milton is so hilariously clueless that he didn't even know how one of the most famous fossils of all time is classified nowadays. Java man isn't a fraud; it's a member of Homo erectus, for reasons which are common knowledge but apparently not to Milton. This was thrashed over in great detail in our debate.Jim

This may have been said already, but I find the main problem for the theory of evolution to be that it has no basis. It logically explains how speciation occured from single celled-life billions of years ago, but does not explain how that first life was created. Even if by some chance amino acids and nucleotides and phospholipids were stuck together into the form of a cell, it would just be molecules. How would the dna know to divide, which proteins to make, or when to make a copy of itself? How do the molecules in cells move with purpose? Theory of Evolution does not explain this, and why develop a theory when the basis for it is unknown? Im not trying to be synical; if you have an answer, please give it to me.

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This may have been said already, but I find the main problem for the theory of evolution to be that it has no basis. It logically explains how speciation occured from single celled-life billions of years ago, but does not explain how that first life was created.

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Geology can explain how beaches and tidal plains can be formed and found in the fossil record. Do you feel that this is weakened because geology can't explain where silica, iron, and other elements came from? The germ theory of disease is based on bacteria and yet the theory works fine even though it doesn't hypothesize where bacteria came from. The laws of thermodynamics work fine even though we don't know where the laws came from. All scientific theories have their limitations and requirements. For evolution, the theory starts with the first replicator and does not venture any farther into the past. I don't need to know where the laws of fluid dynamics came from or even where air came from to build an airplane, do I?

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How do the molecules in cells move with purpose?

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They don't, not anymore than oxygen and hydrogen move with a purpose to form water. Life is chemistry, and the chemistry within the cell does not differ from the chemistry found outside of the cell.

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Theory of Evolution does not explain this, and why develop a theory when the basis for it is unknown?

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The basis of the theory of evolution is that life exists, that life varies, and that variation will cause some organisms to be better fit in their environment. There is ample evidence that all of this exists now and existed in the past. Tell me again how evolution is baseless?

Hello, first post. I heard this argument somewhere in my debates and was wondering. Breeders and scientists have bred many animals to a very high degree, as in, beyond what natural selection would produce. For instance, rock pigeons with such large breast muscles and feathers that they are physically incapable of flying and are only kept alive because they are cared for by human aid. The point of the illustration is this. Why do animal breeders hit an "invisible barrier" when breeding animals where they do not change any more regardless of the specimens used. For another instance, feathers were mutated to such a high degree that the rachis was gigantic and the barbs no longer interlocked, but that they could not get the mutation to go much farther than that point. The barbs fused in a few instances but not regularly, and the feather still remained a feather. Should we not be able to scientifically breed animals backwards to prove evolution?

Welcome aboard. Give it a few hours and you'll have several answers to your question.Enjoy the stay, Please ask any questions in the Questions and Suggestions thread.

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There are two possible reasons for hitting a "barrier". Some barriers may be fundamental - there's no requirement in evolution that we ought to be able to produce any change we can imagine.But in the case of selective breeding another reason is probably more important. There are limits to the amount of variation actually within the gene pool of a species. While the amount of variation available is greater than we might think, if we did not have the examples from domestication it is still a limit. And while mutations add to that variation the appearance of useful variations is relatively infrequent, and so it is quite easy to hit a temporary barrier until a variation that allows further progress appears (and that may take hundreds or thousands of years).

I do not need a horse changing to a cow, just a horse changing back to his anscestors. Surely the genetic material from earlier evolution should still be in the horse now. Sometimes I've heard that recessive genes come out and a horse is born with three toes. Should not other genes exist, and allow us to breed it backwards?

Horse Evolution. Although it doesn't strictly answer your question, I thought I'd add this link so we can read about the evolution of the horse.This message has been edited by Zawinul, 12-26-2004 10:55 AM

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Originally posted by glorfindel:
Surely the genetic material from earlier evolution should still be in the horse now. Sometimes I've heard that recessive genes come out and a horse is born with three toes. Should not other genes exist, and allow us to breed it backwards?

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Typically not. The changes involved in evolution are seldom masking something that could later be restored, they are almost always random changes to the "specifications" that happen to be beneficial but also destroy the old "specifications".Sometimes we can approximate an ancient organism by cross-breeding between modern organisms that have lost different parts of the ancient "specifications". And who knows what we will be able to do in the future with ancient DNA.Now, those few that argue that all possible variations were built into each "kind" at creation should be able to explain how to restore an ancient horse from a modern one ...

As others have said some changes will be irreversible in practical terms.Evolution generally occurs by genetic changes becoming "fixed" in a population - that is the "new" version of the gene (or versions with further mutations) is in every individual. Which means that all the older versions are lost unless another mutation undoes the first. Statistically that is unlikely in most cases. "Throwbacks" would either be the result of those rare cases when the mutation is (relatively) likely to reverse or possibly a product of a recessive gene which has not entirely been lost.