Evolution Logic

I would say that right now there is no sign that there is a reason in evolution. The walker is not heading for Bagdad, that's just where he happens to end up.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I hope that this might help you.So far we only have one sample of living things to study, and that is the pool of living things, and the remains of things that have lived, here on earth. So anything we say has to be taken with the unstated provision that what we are talking about is just the stuff we have seen so far. Someday we may find other life and all the rules may need to be rewritten to account for that new evidence.But for now, here is what we see.So far every lifeform we look at has some very basic similarities, the chemicals are the same, the building methods are the same, there really doesn't seem to be very much difference at the most basic level between humans and slime mold.Things like micro and macro, species or genus or order are simply arbitrary classifications that we assign for convenience and our human characteristic of putting stuff in boxes.Let me try a couple analogies. Consider the light spectrum. We see light and color in certain ranges. We all have a pretty good idea of the macro differences, we know blue from green. But that only works when the differences are large, as we move from blue to green we pass through a whole series of micro colors, until we get to one where we're not sure if it is blue, or green.They are all though just part of the visible light spectrum. There is no macro change between blue and green. Macro only comes in when the intervening micro color changes are removed. If they are present we see one continuous spread of all colors.We can step back a little further and look at the electromagnetic spectrum. Again, we can find macro differences, gamma rays, xrays, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, microwave and radio, but these are arbitrary name assignments we use to label those boxes we are so fond of. There is no intrinsic difference between any of them, they are all electromagnetic waves. As we look closely at the boundaries of any two adjacent classes it gets harder and harder to tell which box we should put it in. Is it red, or infra red? Is it violet or ultra violet?It's the same with living things. We can only apply the term macro when we ignore all of the micro steps inbetween. The differences are far more our perceptions and love of boxes than the properties of the things themselves.Edited by jar, : to fix subtitle

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

That statement shows a major misunderstanding of evolution. It is not directional, towards adding something. Rather evolution is a history, it is looking backwards at what did happen. It could be gaining legs or losing them, or as happened several times, gaining wings, losing them and gaining them yet again.It is change. And it is the history of what critters survived long enough to reproduce. It is not some issue of more or better, simply what worked.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Yup, pretty clear you don't have a clue what you are talking about.That's not a problem, we have all been in exactly that position.When life started here, oh 3 or 4 billion years ago, it was single celled. At that stage there was no way to go except towards more complex. But over the years, things happened, and at times it was the less complex critters that were the winners in the survival game.Remember, that humans are not a goal. We are just one of many of the critters, and it's way to early to tell if we are a successful one or not. It's absolutely certain that we are not going to be among the most successful designs, turtles and cockroaches got us beat hands down there.Evolution is what works. If a creature that lost it's legs as it moved into a water environment had an advantage over the one with legs, and the legless wonder reproduced better than the legged one, eventually the population would be legless.Evolution is just a history of what worked, what didn't.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

well, AnswersInGenesis is not much of a source, and we have all been there and seen what they have to say. In addition, the AIG article does not really offer any evfidence in support of their assertions, but only a series of arguments from incredulity. They really offer nothing to support their position except that they don't believe it.Bu that still has nothing to do with the point I was making in my post. This post too simply shows that yet again you don't understand what is happening.You say: What is so funny is that AIG actually ends up proving macroevolution even while claiming it does not. You message itself is proof of macroevolution.You say "... the first couple of creatures in the supposed "whale evolution" were not really whales,...". Of course not, they are the ancestors of the whales. That is why this is such a great example. Here is something that is clearly not a whale, and that overtime evolved into modern whales. The whales are almost as good an example of macroevolution as we are ourselves.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

the link works both ways down here. And I'm even further down the line than you.

Can you tell me whether ACT, CGA, TAC or CAG has more information?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Nope, can't until you can define what information is. That's close. IIRC the human genome is about 2.9 billion pairs while maize is only 2.5 billion base pair. Chimps have about 2.8 billion base pairs. The lungfish genome is about 35 times the size of the human genome and Amoeba dubia has more than 600 billion, Amoeba proteus more than 290 billion base pairs and the common toad, Bufo bufo, have more than 6.9 billion base pairs.The point is, the length of a genome really doesn't mean a whole lot.As to seeing evolution in the code such as you suggest, they happen all the time. It's likely that you carry 6-8 such mutations yourself right this minute and that you yourself will have about 30 such mutations during your lifetime. Edited by jar, : change subtitle

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Others have dealt with most of the errors or misunderstanding your post, but I'd like to deal with one other aspect.Dembeski likes to pull the old complexity = information rabbit out of his hat and set it off hopping around the stage. He uses this as some magic trick to convince folk of ID. What is funny is that many folk here him speak, and he is a good speaker, and buy into the idea that something more complex is a sure sign of intellegence, even though they know that it is not true from personal experience.I have been a software programmer, a system designer, and designed circuitry that extended over a 1000 miles. I can tell you that complexity does not equal information. Nor is complexity the product of intelligent design, that in fact the goal of intelligent design is simplicity.If we look at any living thing, what we find is "just barely good enough".

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Well, I think I responded to that back in Message 161.The human is about average for the lower end of critterdom, having about the same amount as corn or chimps, but certainly not as much as a lungfish, or common toad or amoeba.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

We don't have a clue. But we are evolving. Remember, Evolution can best be seen looking backwards. It's a history of what did happen.Evolution is not worse ----> better, it's what is just good enough to get by. And when we do look back over our shoulder, that is just what we see. What we see is a bunch of features that really aren't all that great, but rather good enough to get by for awhile.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

There is no such thing as devolving. It's all evolving no matter what direction.And the 2^nd. Law of Thermodynamics has nothing to do with evolution. We have lots of threads here on that.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Okay, just a few points.We don't know what the bottom of the geological column is, and it's even possible may never know since the surface gets recycled. But we do know of stuff that goes back long before sponges, trilobites, jellyfish and worms.Second, you say "fully developed". Well, yes. That is exactly what we would expect to see. No one except the Biblical Creationists sites ever expects to see some critter that is not fully formed.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

What? LOL

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion