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Author Topic:   Dogs will be Dogs will be ???
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 8 of 331 (440460)
12-13-2007 10:01 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by RAZD
12-08-2007 12:46 PM


Re: bump for beretta ... or other creationists
The purpose is to get a creationist definition of what "large scale change" is -- it is their criteria.
Dinosaur to bird perhaps. Assumption that it happened is not the same as evidence. A bird such as archeopteryx has fully-formed wings -how did anything convert from no wings to wings with each step surviving better than the preceding step? Where are all the transitions that show us that this did in fact happen? Why are we missing all those intermediates that help prove the case for wings being coded for in something that had no previous information for wings? Natural selection selects - and there is only a certain range of variability beyond which an animal cannot go. Fruit fly experiments over decades never produced nothing but fruit flies and more dysfunctional fruit flies showing adverse effects produced by mutation.So much zapping -so much mutation, nothing new.
this does represent macroevolution as used in evolutionary biology by evolutionary biologists
You assume forams came from non-forams but how? Don't you have something heading for a foram? Showing how it changed is not the same as showing how it came to be in the first place.What if the first one was created and produced varieties of its own kind according to the genetic information available? What can you show an ID proponent to indicate where these things came from? Believing that it happened is a plausible story -it needs some kind of solid proof.It needs a mechanism that produces new information.
The fact that the change shown meets the criteria of macroevolution used by evolutionary biologists is irrelevant
It is not just me that is not satisfied -no ID proponent is satisfied as far as I know. It is truelly difficult for me to understand why evolutionists are quite happy with the degree of visible change that satisfies an evolutionist. They speak of mammals turning into whales and dinosaurs turning into birds but even assuming an incomplete fossil record, there is too much missing between these things to convince me that new complex organs arrived by mutation and random directionless mutation at that.
So the question for creationists is: how much change is needed to satisfy you?
I'd like a leg changing into a wing to show that genetic wing information could conceivably arise by random mutation in a creature that had no wings.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by RAZD, posted 12-08-2007 12:46 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
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Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 11 of 331 (441075)
12-16-2007 10:55 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by RAZD
12-13-2007 5:21 PM


Example
Would you care to walk through an example of such a transition? One that shows the development of a unique feature that did not exist before?
Love to see it...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by RAZD, posted 12-13-2007 5:21 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 12 by RAZD, posted 12-16-2007 2:04 PM Beretta has replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 13 of 331 (441302)
12-17-2007 1:12 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by RAZD
12-16-2007 2:04 PM


Re: Example - Part 1: comparison of dog and eohippus skeletion
Eohippus/dog similarities?
Argument from homology -predarwinian biologists called these structural similarites 'homologies' and attributed them to a common archetype or design. Darwin attributed them to inheritance from a common ancestor.
How do we determine which is correct???

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by RAZD, posted 12-16-2007 2:04 PM RAZD has replied

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Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 15 of 331 (441547)
12-18-2007 1:13 AM
Reply to: Message 14 by RAZD
12-17-2007 10:45 PM


Re: Example - Part 1: comparison of dog and eohippus skeletion
having a common ancestor also means they have a common archetype or design - the ancestor
But where did the commonly designed ancestor come from? Was it designed or did it evolve from a random primitive unicellular organism?
Concepts are not necessarily contradictory.
The way I see it they are totally contradictory.Did the complexity of the genome come from intelligence or randomly, following chemical and physical laws only?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 14 by RAZD, posted 12-17-2007 10:45 PM RAZD has replied

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 Message 33 by RAZD, posted 01-19-2008 11:03 AM Beretta has replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 34 of 331 (450487)
01-22-2008 8:43 AM
Reply to: Message 33 by RAZD
01-19-2008 11:03 AM


Re: Continuing with - Part 1: comparison of dog and eohippus skeletons
Yet there is no -- absolutely no -- evidence of it not happening, of two different fossils that are identical. If evolution did not happen you would have fossils of identical organism.
You are saying that because genetic variety is possible, therefore evolution of macro variety must be possible? But we have no evidence that that can actually happen. Everything we observe shows there are limitations. If you say, aaah yes but we need millions of years to observe it so we are limited, we must then rely on our imagination instead of observation -that is not science, that is speculation and belief not proof.
If we have no evidence that it did not happen, that does not mean it necessarily did happen. That's like saying a crime must have happened because we do not have evidence that it did not happen.
Just because things have similarities, like fingers or eyes, does not mean they are necessarily related. Do you think we are related to fish simply because we both have eyes?
What we can do -- and have done -- is measure the relative similarities and differences between fossils, and create a pattern in time and space based on the relative similarities and differences between fossils and the time and location where the fossils were found.
There again you are assuming time. And what about the very abrupt appearances of fully formed body types -their general stasis in the fossil record and then their either disappearance (extinction) or the fact that so many kinds have really barely changed at all in the time it has taken one-celled organisms to become human?? If this all makes sense to you perhaps it is your belief system and is not based on the evidence at all.
the pattern that emerges from the data is that species do change over time and that speciation does occur, and that descent from common ancestors happens.
That's not what the data says, it is an interpretation of the data most likely (or definately) inspired by the belief that it happened that way. There may be other ways of interpreting it that wouldn't even occur to the interpretor due to his evolutionary mindset.
This allows us to categorize fossils into likely species, genera and family groupings.
Some things don't look as likely to some people as they do to other people. There are philisophical differences behind the differences in interpretation and neither way can be conclusively proven but one is more evidence-based than the other. The belief that humans only produce other humans is more evidence-based and thus scientific than saying that, given time, somthing else (like apes) might have produced mutated varieties that progressed to humans -that's more speculative and saying that we do not have enough time to prove it, therefore we should accept it on faith, is not scientific.
That just means we can never falsify the theory -except maybe in millions of years -in the meantime, in the absence of evidence that it did not happen, we teach it as fact.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 33 by RAZD, posted 01-19-2008 11:03 AM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
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Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 39 of 331 (450971)
01-25-2008 9:42 AM
Reply to: Message 38 by RAZD
01-22-2008 8:59 PM


Re: Continuing with - Part 1: comparison of dog and eohippus skeletons
Hi RAZD,
Sorry it's taken so long to reply.
You need to define what is enough change to convince you, and I have asked if the change necessary to get from a dog-like eohippus to a modern horse is enough. I've yet to hear your answer -- a simple yes or no would move us forward.
How about no.There are too may problems with the eohippus to horse conversion.Finding both in the fossil record and imagining that one eventually gave rise to the other is too imaginary for me.
The fossil record in general exhibits stasis of kinds -for example the jellyfish fossil found in Utah in Cambrian strata is very similar to modern jellyfish.How did they attain their characteristics so early on in the fossil record and barely change since then (assuming depth indicates time)? What happened so rapidly to jellyfish back then that has not happened in the half billion years since?
This is just another case of sudden appearance of a complex life form followed by stasis - which appears to me to be evidence against gradualist Darwinism.How did single celled organisms manage to morph into men in the same time period? Did they in fact do that at all?
Instead of showing one species gradually transforming into another, fossils overwhelmingly exhibit minor variation within a given species.Saying that eohippus may have turned into the modern horse is speculation. They may have no connection at all. How would we prove it? Observational science can't connect them.
Instead of defending neo-Darwinism we should look at the evidence more critically.
We've already seen greater change within dogs than there exists from the natural evolution that separates cats and foxes.
So that tells us that there is substantial genetic variation possible within a particular kind of animal but it does not tell us the limits of variability.Are there limits? Evolutionists don't seem to think so,I do.Who is correct? Consensus opinion can't tell us which is correct but imaginative connections could lead us far from the truth.
But you cannot say that there are limits to what can happen without having evidence that it cannot exceed those limits.
And similarly you cannot assume no limits in the absence of proof.
Everything we see now seems to show limits, only guess work leads us to believe otherwise.
it involves a progression of skeletal features with changes from species to species that are of the same magnitude as the changes in skeletal features from eohippus to modern horse.
Which is by no means proven, in fact that conversion is hotly disputed.
Other than size the skeletons are similar.
Similarity does not mean that they are necessarily related.Perhaps similar types are based on a good general design principle.
You're certainly not going to falsify it by ignoring evidence.
Nor make it true by ignoring the evidence against it.Sudden appearance, general stasis -what about that??
What are the limits of reproductive crossing in the wild? Why are there such limits? Why can't any one kind of bird reproduce with another kind if they are of a compatible size? There appear to be limits to what is possible even if we don't have all the answers as to why.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 38 by RAZD, posted 01-22-2008 8:59 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 42 by RAZD, posted 01-25-2008 10:20 PM Beretta has replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 40 of 331 (450984)
01-25-2008 11:29 AM
Reply to: Message 36 by jar
01-22-2008 10:58 AM


Re: Been down this road before.
Ah, no, it is an inescapable conclusion based on the data and supported by history
In what way is it supported by history???
the Theory of Evolution did NOT begin with an evolutionary mindset.
Yes it did. Trying to explain the existance of everything by assuming only materialistic means is a mindset;it is a philosophy.
They were forced to accept it based on the overwhelming weight of the evidence.
No, they observed minor variation. They found billions of dead things buried in sedimentary strata and proposed or theorized, based on materialism and uniformatarianism, that they were all connected by a common ancestor that changed in major ways over a long period of time.
Do you plan on continuing to post falsehoods that have been refuted numerous times?
Refuted by whom? By someone who was there to observe these major changes over hundreds of millions of years? People who refute what they cannot prove are people with a viewpoint, not a scientific corner on knowledge.

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 Message 36 by jar, posted 01-22-2008 10:58 AM jar has not replied

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Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 43 of 331 (451091)
01-26-2008 5:16 AM
Reply to: Message 42 by RAZD
01-25-2008 10:20 PM


Re: Continuing with - Part 1: comparison of dog and eohippus skeletons
Are the differences between dog and eohippus more or less than the variation we see in dogs?
I'd have to go with less -but we are talking about bones here nothing else.
Is eohippus similar in size, body proportions, feet, tail, etc to dog or not?
Yes their bones are pretty similar.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 42 by RAZD, posted 01-25-2008 10:20 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
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 Message 45 by RAZD, posted 02-06-2008 10:05 PM Beretta has replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 58 of 331 (465988)
05-12-2008 8:33 AM
Reply to: Message 45 by RAZD
02-06-2008 10:05 PM


Could vs Did
Hi Razd,
Thanks for calling me back to the topic.
That would logically mean that eohippus could have evolved into orohippus -- that this is possible, whether it actually occurred or not.
The operative word here is 'possible' -but possible is hypothetical and I think, quite possibly imaginary. We don't know whether it is possible -we can only imagine it to be so.
The vast variety shown amongst dogs really has little bearing on the argument because you are arguing for natural change by comparing it to the change brought about with purposeful breeding by intelligent agents. These intelligent designers select and then protect that which natural selection would have taken care of rather quickly.
So variety in dogs would understandably be greater given all the characterisitcs breeders have to play with.
The general trend in the fossil record taken as a whole appears to be resistance to change via natural selection so I really don't think it is logical to assume changes that cannot be proven to be so...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 45 by RAZD, posted 02-06-2008 10:05 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 59 by RAZD, posted 05-17-2008 9:38 AM Beretta has replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 60 of 331 (467762)
05-24-2008 3:56 AM
Reply to: Message 59 by RAZD
05-17-2008 9:38 AM


Can vs Can't
Hi Razd,
Thanks for that -we have a slight problem with internet access around here at the moment so things are slow to get through if you get so lucky as to get anything...
We know that this is possible with dogs and we have repeated this with foxes
But the dogs are still dogs and the foxes are still foxes which means we are still using change within the kind to argue for change of a different as yet undemonstrated kind. Remarkable transformations within foxes shows large genetic variability and selection possibilities but it cannot be used to prove that frogs can change into people or anything else for that matter, even given millions of years.
As for horse evolution -
Henry Gee, a ”Nature’ science writer (though he doesn’t doubt Darwinian evolution), admits that “No fossil is buried with its birth certificate” (1999) “That, and the scarcity of fossils, means that it is effectively impossible to link fossils into chains of cause and effect in any valid way.” According to Gee, we call new fossil discoveries ”missing links’ as if the chain of ancestry and descent were a real object for our contemplation, and not what it really is: a completely human invention created after the fact shaped to accord with human prejudices.” He concluded: “To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story -amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”
As for the horse series, if one assumes Darwin’s theory to be true , fossils showing features that appear to be intermediate between hydracotherium through to modern horses can be strung together in a series but it is not a series of ancestors and descendants. We could not conclude from the fossil record alone that any one step was descended from the one before it.
One can assume that Darwin’s theory is true, and then try to fit the fossil evidence into the picture suggested by the theory. There’s nothing unreasonable about this -but lets state the reasoning up front. Theory rules even without evidence. Fossils cannot provide evidence for descent with modification even when they’re from the same species, much less when they’re from an entirely different species.
The horse fossils disagree with you.
Only if you assume Darwin’s theory is true . a philosophical assumption - and apply some imagination.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 59 by RAZD, posted 05-17-2008 9:38 AM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 61 by bluegenes, posted 05-24-2008 12:35 PM Beretta has replied
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Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 64 of 331 (468553)
05-30-2008 8:09 AM
Reply to: Message 61 by bluegenes
05-24-2008 12:35 PM


Re: Hmmm...do you need to quote-mine?
Henry Gee writes:
It is fair to assume that all life on earth shares a common evolutionary origin . .and then to go on and make clear that this is the assumption I am making throughout the book.
Well there again we have the ”assumption’ Actually nobody really cares about his assumptions -it is the actual content of what he is saying that would tend to interest anybody that believes that intelligent design better explains the evidence. I doubt that they were implying that he did not support evolution only that he stated himself that one can’t establish ancestor/descendants lines via the fossils -full stop.
Henry Gee writes:
. faith should not be subject to scientific justification . .science should not be validated by the narrow dogma of faith.
. but then again who cares about what the truth actually is so long as you hold on to your pet myth and feel fulfilled . ???
Actually my main point in this entire debate is “what is the truth?” apart from what we would like to believe is true. Perhaps faith should not be subject to scientific justification but then what point is there in faith if what you believe does not happen to be true? Does the evidence support evolution or intelligent design better?
How does evolution explain the Cambrian?
We know that evolution is true but just because we can’t find any of what should be billions of precambrian transitional forms just means that they did not fossilize -nonetheless the ”truth’ of Darwinism stands.
How do evolutionists explain the general stasis of the fossil record?
We know that gradualism is the truth -that everything descended from a common ancestor so we grab the exceptions (not the rule) and try to make things like archaeopteryx out to be just a small example of the billions of transitional forms that we should be finding.
The overall picture, the actual evidence is apparently quite irrelevant if your faith in evolution can stand up to it.
Henry Gee writes:
. use by creationists of selective unauthorized quotations, possibly with intent to mislead people .
Again it was the content of what he said that they found important, this implication of deception is just the usual old evolutionary “they can’t be serious, they must have some dubious underhand motivation for what they’re saying.” What if what they say is true? Maybe they care about the truth?
Are you going to pray for an improvement, or look for an evil materialist solution?
There we go again, equating your belief in evolution and materialism with practicality and real science. Meantime my belief that an intelligent designer is necessary to explain a lot of things including the vast information system of the genome is akin to belief in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy - cute perhaps, depending upon your age but definitely misguided to the point of lunacy if you are of the age that you should have given up on superstitions and fantasies.
Actually us people of the intelligent design ilk believe in using the mechanisms produced by experimentally repeatable science for such things as internet connections - we just don’t believe/have faith in evolution.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 61 by bluegenes, posted 05-24-2008 12:35 PM bluegenes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 66 by bluegenes, posted 05-30-2008 8:59 AM Beretta has replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 65 of 331 (468558)
05-30-2008 8:54 AM
Reply to: Message 62 by RAZD
05-25-2008 10:38 AM


Re: Can vs Can't
We are still using hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation . ..to explain the diversity of life .
Except that you are assuming that that is the only possibility that could explain the common genome and its variations. You also apparently assume that an intelligent creator is ”outside of science’ as a possibility meaning that only a naturalistic explanation is allowable in the meantime.
What we are saying is that the evidence is better explained by the intelligence outside of matter theory.
You assume that mutation and natural selection is capable of producing the variety seen in the genome from bacteria to human but have no explanation for how the genome came into being in the first place -that is really the big question -could it have come into being by natural processes? It’s like imagining that a programme like ”word’ could produce itself without intelligent input and ”word’ is just so much simpler than the genomic information.
It’s the information being separate from matter argument. You can transfer information from computer to computer via a CD or a DVD but the material medium of transfer is not the information component. The information is a separate issue -how did that genomic information get there and is there a viable naturalistic explanation for it or do we just have to assume there is, in the absence of real evidence for it? You see you haven’t seen God, neither have I, but then you have no proof, no evidence even to show that natural causes could have done the work that we attribute to an intelligent source. We both have our answers to how life originated but which choice is more in keeping with the evidence we have? How does intelligent information arrive without intelligence? Did matter come before mind or is matter a product of mind? Are our minds just random nervous connections or are they the product of an original intelligence. How can you be rational without a rational reason for your rationality? Nerve cells connecting according to random natural processes does not explain the mystery of our consciousness and believing that intelligence is necessary for our rationality is not an unintelligent suggestion that should necessarily be classed as ”religion’-or outside the realms of probability. You can’t see gravity but you know it exists through its effects. We can’t see God but we can see that what exists appears to have order and design. Of course Richard Dawkins states that the design is only apparent -but then again that’s his opinion.
and that is the point of using dogs and foxes: to demonstrate the degree of possible variation within a species, and to use this as a measuring stick for comparing other variations.
In other words using variation within a species and extrapolating that to everything within the fossil record. The problem is we have no experimental evidence to show that that extrapolation is possible - are there limits to variation? You cannot say that there aren’t, all you can do is have faith that there are no limits to variation and that bacteria can eventually become something else that is not a bacteria.
The horse fossils disagree with you. They can and most likely WILL, in fact change into something else, given time and opportunity.
But that is not science to imagine that they can and most likely will . .even given time and opportunity. Do you imagine that random errors (mutations) in the copying of a simple computer programme like “Notepad” will eventually with a lot of minor copying errors over a very long period of time and continuous copying eventually change into something like “Photoshop CS3”? No - and why not ? -because additional complex information would be necessary in order for the one to change into the other. Scientifically speaking the only source we know of that gives rise to information is intelligence so you have to have a lot of faith to believe that some simple organism can, given vast time and opportunity, turn into something far more complex without intelligent input.
It’s the difference between science and faith.
All we have to do is take all the fossils and arrange them by time and space and then draw boundaries around them . .
Breeding experiments are organized with intelligence and cannot be compared to what would happen in the wild. Tame foxes if they were to arise naturally would most likely not survive. In the absence of intelligent input and protection of the tame ones, this variability is unlikely to occur. Same for the dogs. So your boundaries are not natural ones and should not be extrapolated to include potential variability in the wild. Every step in the transformation of one kind into another would have to have survival advantages or natural selection would eliminate the changes. That is what the fossil record actually shows, natural selection appears to keep things within limits. Some things exhibit stasis and others become extinct. We have no scientific reason to believe that any one species became another species just because they may have certain features in common. There are two choices, either it happened or it didn’t and in the absence of scientific proof for a mechanism that allows it to happen, we are left with faith in naturalistic mechanisms as a possibility but, though naturalists don’t like to think so, not the only possibility.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 62 by RAZD, posted 05-25-2008 10:38 AM RAZD has replied

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Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 68 of 331 (468563)
05-30-2008 10:05 AM
Reply to: Message 66 by bluegenes
05-30-2008 8:59 AM


Re: Hmmm...do you need to quote-mine?
Actually bluegenes, perhaps I have not expressed myself clearly enough for you but there is no need to throw yourself so wholeheartedly into a parental role -it is arrogant and uncalled for.
I am saying that if you cannot scientifically justify your faith then perhaps it is not a faith worth having.I am saying that evidence against your faith should cause you to pause and question that which you have put your faith into.Not everyone feels inclined to question their faith, that includes people that believe in a superior intelligence as well as those who believe that no intelligence is necessary to explain what we can see.
Ultimately I am saying that I care about the truth and if the scientific evidence clearly was antagonistic to my faith then I would be more than a little inclined to question it and follow the evidence where it leads.

This message is a reply to:
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Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 81 of 331 (473459)
06-29-2008 1:42 PM
Reply to: Message 69 by RAZD
05-30-2008 9:38 PM


Faith vs Fact
Hi Razd -back after a forced absence - Africa has it all, no power, no telephones and no internet -or all of the above intermittently and with no apparent plan. South Africa has returned somewhat to the dark ages and we miss what we used to take for granted.
To continue -
Razd writes:
Beretta writes:
you are assuming that the only possibility for the common genome . is evolution.
When the fossil lineage shows trees of lineage in time and space . [and].the genetic evidence shows trees of descent from common ancestors
The fossil evidence shows sudden appearance of fully formed kinds and sudden extinction of same -no tree. Perhaps a lawn would better describe what is actually seen when the evolutionists wonderful distorting glasses are removed.
It is only the desire to believe in evolution that can turn the hard facts of the so-called fossil record into positive evidence for gradualism.
In Gould’s own words;
“The history of most fossil species includes 2 features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1) Stasis -most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on the earth. They appear in the fossil record looking pretty much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless.
2) Sudden appearance -in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and fully formed.”
And thus the outstanding characteristic of the fossil record is the absence of evidence for evolution.
Phillip Johnson had this to say:
If Darwinism enjoys the status of an a priori truth, then the problem presented by the fossil record is how Darwinist evolution always happened in such a manner as to escape detection. If, on the other hand, Darwinism is a scientific hypothesis which can be confirmed or falsified by fossil evidence, then the really important thing about the [punctuated equilibrium] controversy is not the solution Gould, Eldredge and Stanley proposed but the problem to which they drew attention.
No doubt a certain amount of evolution could have occurred in such a way as to escape detection, but at some point we need more than ingenious excuses to fill the gaps.
As for the molecular evidence:
The growing gap between molecular analyses and the fossil record, concluded one researcher, ”is astounding.’ Instead of a single evolutionary tree emerging from the data there are a wealth of competing evolutionary trees.
Incongruities are found everywhere in the evolutionary tree.
Darwinist David Penny computed 5 different evolutionary trees for the same set of species by using 5 different molecular data sets. Different data sets indicated very different evolutionary trees.
So the molecular ”evidence’ for evolution contradicts the morphological ”evidence’ and the fossil ”evidence’ contradicts the entire gradualism story but that is what faith is all about - people prefer to believe that either there is no God or that whatever God there may be is outside the material system having nothing to do with it so that the only useful thing this God has ever done is exist quietly far away from a place of influence or accountability in our lives.
How does ”intelligence outside of matter’ explain the horse geneology and why it looks exactly like evolution?
The horse geneology looks exactly like evolution because it has been arranged to look exactly like evolution. The horse series has been pulled from museums and textbooks (the ones that are at all interested in accuracy). The only ones that still ”believe’ in the horse series are the ones that have not been updated as to the facts.
The various ”horses’ in the series were not found in any one place in the world -the series starts in North America, travels to Europe and goes back to North America -that’s some evolving. They are arranged according to what the faithful want to believe.
According to GG Simpson:
“The uniform continuous transformation of hydracotherium to equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature.” He said that the exhibit the American museum of natural history is ”flatly fictitious’.
Dr David Raup said that the horse series ”has to be discarded or modified.’
He also said that “we have to abandon belief in the evolution of the horse.”
Saiff and Macbeth said that the seven stages do not represent ancestors and descendants. They are fossils taken from different times and places and were strung together, perhaps innocently, to show how evolution might have handled the matter.
Good Darwinists have apparently tried to expunge it from the record but it persists, despite their efforts, to appear in one textbook or another.
“The early classic evolutionary tree of the horse . .was all wrong.” (Science Newsletter Aug 25, 1951 p118)
“Other examples, such as the much repeated ”gradual’ evolution of the modern horse, have not held up under close examination.” (Starr and Taggart 1992, p304)
We have a very good idea of what mutation and natural selection is capable of producing
The only thing is that the logic is backward - we believe it happened therefore mutation and natural selection must be capable of it, one way or the other.
The evidence includes a dearth of humans in ages when only bacteria lived
The evidence also shows, according to evolutionary geologic age assumptions, that the coelocanth lived in the age when dinosaurs lived and then disappeared from the record and became supposedly extinct. They never lived with whales or humans according to the fossil record and yet evidentially (according to real repeatable observable facts), they exist alongside both whales and humans in the present.
And bacteria remain bacteria hundreds of millions of hypothetical years later while their more favored cousins apparently turned into philosophers in the same time period. According to the fossil record, bacteria shouldn’t even be here now if you go according to what appears where.
There is a difference between going to the empirical evidence to test a doubtful theory against some plausible alternative and going to the evidence to look for confirmation for the only theory that one is willing to tolerate.
The difference between science and faith is that science is sceptical of all ideas equally.
Except when it comes to Darwinian evolution where faith in the supposed ”fact’ that evolution has occurred overrides all other possibilities and thus ”facts’ are forced into the framework of the overriding belief system.
There are at least 3 (1) it happened (2) it didn’t happen (3) We can’t tell whether or not it happened. Then there is (4) It is possible that it happened and (5) it is not possible that it happened.
Which brings me back to what I said before -either it happened or it didn’t happen and to draw conclusions we need conclusive proof. Science is supposed to be based on hard evidence showing that something did happen and can be proven based on repeated experimental evidence. All the rest is philosophy.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 69 by RAZD, posted 05-30-2008 9:38 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 82 by RickJB, posted 06-29-2008 2:45 PM Beretta has replied
 Message 95 by RAZD, posted 06-30-2008 9:21 PM Beretta has replied

  
Beretta
Member (Idle past 5597 days)
Posts: 422
From: South Africa
Joined: 10-29-2007


Message 85 of 331 (473492)
06-30-2008 4:53 AM
Reply to: Message 82 by RickJB
06-29-2008 2:45 PM


Intelligence
What other possibilities?
Intelligence. We are on EVC forum . Evolution and creation are the two options - I can't personally think of anything else. Since when in life do random mistakes and selection of the best mistakes manage to design anything good, brilliantly clever, integrated and so very very complex? Small is not simple. Even unicellular bacteria are too complex for us to create. They make man's creations look like toys in comparison.
The assumption that random errors called mutations and selection of the best, most beneficial errors makes absolutely no sense. Can you turn a story or a computer programme into a better story or programme by random spelling mistakes and selection of the best ones. Mistakes make nonsense not specified complexity of the kind seen in the living world.
'In the beginning, God' or 'In the beginning, nothing (hydrogen? dirt?)created everything by random processes and no plan.I don't think so. You only have to look at the complexity to know that there has to be a designer - just like looking at a painting and knowing that there has to be a painter even if you don't know who the painter is.
The problem with mankind is that they don't want God, they want no rules and no guilt and no accountability. You only have to look at the creation to know that God exists and that this can't all have come about by mistake. You have to clear your head, I know, I used to be blind to design, now its too obvious why I didn't want to see it. The Bible calls is "willful blindness" meaning blind on purpose and says we are without excuse if we can't work out the obvious fact of a creator from the creation. It is completely against the laws of nature that complex organs like the eye or the liver could have been put together piece by random pieces into an integrated whole, not only integrated within itself but within the whole organism to which it belongs, by no plan only typing errors randomly occurring.
If any human being ever manages to make life in a lab. it will only show how much time and intelligence is required even to copy a small simple part of what our intelligent designer has made.
Time is not a magician.
What other testable hypotheses have been presented
Macroevolution is not testable, it is an historical concept and it is assumed; so to ask what 'other testable hypothesis' is out there is to imagine that macroevolution has somehow been proven by repeatable experimentation.You can prove neither and only one can be correct.The truth is out there...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 82 by RickJB, posted 06-29-2008 2:45 PM RickJB has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 86 by Wounded King, posted 06-30-2008 6:01 AM Beretta has not replied
 Message 87 by RickJB, posted 06-30-2008 7:22 AM Beretta has replied
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