Creationists: Why is Evolution Bad Science?

While we are waiting for a specific off shot thread on the beetle let's discuss the more generic science issues in this post. "There is no known physical or chemical mechanism to generate heritable variations that will improve adaptivity or increase the complexity of living organisms."This is, of course, not true. We have observed in great detail the changes in genomes now that we can sequence them. These changes are random mutations, they are heritable and they run the range from not helpful to both increasing the adaptivity and complexity (whatever that is ) of liveing organisms."The neo-Darwinians have rejected nonrandomness as the major feature of variation."I don't get the point of this particular line. Could you explain? In other threads it has been shown that IC things can, in fact, evolve. Simply saying that something is irreducibly complex does not mean it can not be evolved by the understood processes.

I can try to answer crash and to be more critical, the problem is that I don't really know what I"m talking about, which, if the things I've posted are so obviously wrong, should be evident. My goal was to see what people who believe in evolution woudl say about it. I am in no intellectual position to debate, just inquire. I hope that's okay.

You could also paraphrase and explain the source you did give Crash.

I think what the author is clumsily getting at is that, if an organism requires a specific mutation in order to survive in an environment, there's no physical mechanism that ensures that that mutation will occur.That is, of course, true. The fossil record, after all, is comprised mostly of organisms that failed to gain the mutations they needed to survive. And I think that's what our pal Winston doesn't realize - he's looking at the one or two organisms that beat the odds, and presuming that they represent some kind of universal pattern, when really the pattern is one of extinction and failure.

When I did a proposition oral on chemiluminescence 31 years ago, it was pretty durn well understood - though I'd have to go back to the library to give you the precise details on how this light is produced. Many luciferins involve breaking of a dioxetane ring and subsequent singlet -> triplet conversion of the radicals formed.
And that "1000 proteins" bit is complete nonsense! There are lots of different luciferases, and the biggest I know of is a single protein. Many are small molecules.

Follow that link to TalkOrigins.org that I posted; it should address the majority of the bombardier questions you have as well as give you one potential evolutionary pathway for the development of the bombardier mechanism. It's fairly well-footnoted so you should have no trouble looking up the sources yourself. Any university librarian can show you how to get journal articles.While you're at it, poke around Talkorigins.org. Page through their list of creationist claims and you should find some familiar ones, and maybe some you haven't heard of.I'm plugging the TalkOrigins.org page because they're very smart individuals who make the issues very clear, and they've been good enough in the past to help me with discussions here, quite on their own initiative, out of the blue. Very kind of them.If you just have questions, I can't think of any better resource than TalkOrigins.org.

Excellent!Asking questions is a good thing. It would be well if you would try to force Crash and others to be as clear as possible. That's good for them and allows you to gather enough information to be able to have a chance of making up your own mind rather than just haveing to believe what you are told.However, Winston, let me give you an idea of how these things unfold. It is a biased view, of course, but you can dig at it as much as you want to see if the result is because of bias or because it is actually right.There are a lot of web sites that support creationism. Most of them are very unsophisticated and when they are subjected to the smallest amount of careful scrutiny do not hold up at all. They are not intended to stand up to anyone who knows the subject matter. They are intended to convince those who know little about the subjects and who want to believe what they are told.Some of these sites lie. There isn't any other way to put it. Others are rather careless with their use of facts but it is hard to tell if they lie or are simply not knowledgable enough to know what they are talking about.Whatever particular issue you bring up it has probably already been discussed and debunked somewhere. Most of it will have already been discussed here. The bombadier beetle is one that I think has already been discussed but it's been awhile so it can be gone over again. i don't remember that tha angler fish has been discussed though.see Message 45 up and down from there for one of the beetle's discussions.Do note that the concept of irreducible complexity has been discussed a lot here -- in the intelligent design threads I think. It turns out to be flawed.This message has been edited by AdminNosy, 11-08-2004 10:36 PM

Welcome Winston! This is not true, though it is the basis for many arguments against evolution. Many call this "irreducible complexity". There are easy ways to envision evolution of attributes that the passage states are impossible. For example: OR, the Angler fish didn't always live in lightless conditions. Perhaps the lure evolved first while the species lived in a more lighted environment. Subsequent mutations that made the lure more striking were selected for due to increased hunting success. Eventually a mutation occurred producing a glowing lure - once this occurred, the angler fish was free to colonize an environment previous inaccessible, and perhaps devoid of predators - the absolute darkness of the deep sea.This is speculation, but is not unlikely let alone impossible. The passage you cite makes the assumption that the fish lived in darkness before adapting, rather than the more likely case that the fish developed an adaptation that allowed it to move into dark hunting grounds, potentially with fewer predators or competition - a great selective advantage. Evolution is usually not an all-or-nothing situation, though the author you cite would have you believe so. It is quite possible that the size of the swim bladder decreased slowly over hundreds or thousands of generations. At the same time, adaptation to the pressure could have developed gradually.FYI, there is also very blatant errors in the passage, causing me to doubt the author's knowledge or intent: Luciferase consists of only two protein subunits, not 1,000 (there is no such thing as an enzyme consisting of 1,000 proteins). Also, the production of light by luciferase has been very well characterized by scientists, and is no mystery. A reference, though technical.Finally as a stylistic note, it is good form to lay out your ideas in your own words and support them with quotes or references, rather than just quote someone else's words.Please let me know if you have any questions...

Thanks, pink. I was pretty sure that by coming to a site like this, the arguments that I've read would be crushed, but since most people here want to debate I think I should just remain as a "lurker" until I am done with classes and have time to research.

People do like the game of debating but I think you will find that almost all are very willing to help out by asking any questions you may have.Might I suggest that, rather than go to various sites for the supposed "problems" (which as I noted usually turn out to be not problems at all), you just ask questions about some of the fundamentals of evolutionary theory.Perhaps explanations of terms that you read in some of these places. If you're just lurking and have questions I encourage you to dive and and ask also.

Winston,No problem. Definitely feel free to participate and ask questions along the way - I'd enjoy answering them for you when I can. The participants here generally won't be harsh unless you start making unreasonable statements without evidence or foundation.So far you've shown yourself to be quite reasonable.Welcome and I'll keep an eye on your new thread.

Firstly, a good scientist should try to fit theories to science, not the other way round. Evolution theory is a THEORY and nothing more. People are always offering up slightly different versions, tweaking here and there (most recent famous example is Richard Dawkin's "Selfish Gene"). Creationism starts with a theory and attempts to fit every piece of scientific evidence to it. In my opinion this is bad science.Secondly, in my experience creationists ask questions of belief that don't apply to science. I'm always hearing thinks like "Do you really want to believe that you were descended from apes?". I don't want to believe that some people could go into a school and kill children. I don't want to believe that people get bombed to pieces in the name of freedom. I don't want to believe that millions of people have been killed because of their religion. But it all happens.Finally, I find that creationists go out of their way to find an element of evolutionary theory that doesn't quite make sense, and use this to renounce the whole process. The rules of chemistry say that substances should get denser as they get colder. However, water is most dense at 4 degrees C, and exands below that. This doesn't mean that all chemistry is wrong!WhirlwindPS I do know why water expands below 4 degrees!

What you said is very true, you pin-pointed exactly why creationism fails so badly. You can't start with the "right" answer and never allow that answer to change. If that were so the universe would still be made of four elements (fire, air, water and earth) like the ancient greeks thought.One point about what you said though (and I get the feeling that you already know this, so this is more for others who read your post). One tactic by people attacking evolution is to say that it is "only a theory" as if this is some kind of flaw or reason to think it is all wrong. I know this isn't what you were trying to do, but when I first started reading your post I thought you were.For those who think that being a theory is a flaw, EVERYTHING science produces a theory. Einsteins theory of General Relativity is a theory, electromagnetics is a thoery, quantum mechanics is a theory, and evolution is no different to any of them.In science, theories don't become facts when they are verified. Facts and theories are not the same thing in any way whatsoever. Facts are simply things that are observable using the scientific method (ie repeatedly by anyone doing the measurements). Theories are models that explain those facts. More than that, they also have to predict future facts to be observed. If they don't do this then they're not falsifiable, as nothing you observe will ever be able to show them to be wrong.So in short, being called a "theory" is not in any way an insult in science. If a scientist manages to produce a theory then he'll be very happy indeed This message has been edited by happy_atheist, 11-30-2004 08:32 AM

Einsteins theory of General Relativity is a theory, electromagnetics is a thoery, quantum mechanics is a theory, and evolution is no different to any of them"WE have mixed apples and oranges here. Mathematically, all the above can be derived except evolution. Evolution is based purely on speculations, presuppositions, statistical improbabilities and assumptions. Therefore, this is not even science. But a philosophy based on naturalism.

To the contrary, evolution is easily derived from some very obvious observations about living things.It is apples and oranges, though. None of the other theories are really science - they describe abstractions of the universe, not the universe itself. Biology - evolution - is really the only "true" science.