The power of accumulation in evolution is common sense!

Hi Coragyps, This is a little mixed up, as uplift raised the ridge cut by the canyon, but the "inland sea burst" is one of Hovind's hoaxes. The problem with it is that the supposed burst point is near a hill-top, on the side of a slope, and there are several lower points north and south of the canyone that show absolutely no erosion on either side, a point that Hovind (being the fraud that he is) fails to mention. He also crops the pictures he shows to remove this evidence from view. (From Google Maps)Dark areas are higher than light areas. "A" is where the Grand Canyon crosses the uplift ridgeGoogle Hovind Grand CanyonIf you are interested, I can try to dig up an old post on another forum on this, but it may take a while (herballure forum run by Russ ... if it hasn't been deleted after I was banned for exposing such lies). Found them:A couple of my posts on the Grand Canyon there:
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Post38129From what I can see, the ash erosion patterns at Mt St Helens fails to explain how the spires and ridges perpendicular to the river formed in the Grand Canyon (nor does it mimic the effects of wind and ice erosion in the older strata, or several other features) -- it only mimics some of the most rudimentary erosion patterns seen in the canyon, not all. To show this is the case, one would have to show mile by mile how the features of the Grand Canyon were replicated at Mt St Helens.The formations at Mt St Helens generally show single level broad U shaped valleys with vertical sides and one set of rubble slopes at the bottom.What we see is closer to what is seen in the Channeled Scab-lands: wikipedia article (with one picture)
article by a geologist (with several pictures and some maps)
Channeled Scablands Overview (with many good pictures of different locations along the path and some maps).There are several pictures on the last site that match the pictures of Mt St Helens better than the Grand Canyon does. Of course that could be because the mechanism that formed them was the same, while the mechanism that formed the Grand Canyon was actually quite different. In neither case are there any formations that look like:Requested Page Not Found (404)

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Note the spires and perpendicular formations, and also where the erosion has occurred in several stages with multiple soft and hard layers unlike any of the formations at Mt St Helens.Then there is Horseshow Bend, also part of the Grand Canyon: Slow flowing rivers in flat land create meanders, burst dam outflows do not.Of course creationists are not fond of complete evidence, it's too inconvenient.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : links, additional infoEdited by RAZD, : link to google maps & citation

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Hi -Sky- welcome to the fray, if I've not replied to you before.
View Larger MapThis is at 1"=2 miles. I don't see a single feature that looks like this: (From Google Maps)Mt St Helens show fairly linear erosion in the ash flows, similar to what is seen in the Channeled Scablands. Only when you zoom out, to the point where areas not affected by the ash, do you see the underlying ridges and canyons formed by erosion in a pattern similar to what is seen in the Grand Canyon, however these areas were not formed in weeks by erosion through ash deposits.Instead of the linear patterns at Mt St Helens, the Grand Canyon shows many side canyons, each with their own side canyons in a branching format. Many of these side canyons are lower at their beginning than the rim of the main canyon is where they join the main canyon. This is explained by slow continuous erosion during geological ages as the ridges are uplifted in a geological process that is still going on (and can be measured). This is not explained by rapid outflow from some burst dam.Whether it is evolutionary forms or geological forms, the slow accumulation of small effects add up over time to much larger effects, sometimes arriving at an end result that seems (at first glance) impossible to form by natural processes (water flows uphill?). Only by understanding all the evidence can one come to an understanding of how these seemingly impossible features can actually be formed by the known natural mechanisms.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : topicEdited by RAZD, : moreEdited by RAZD, : clrty

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Hi Slevesque,Moose has threatened to close the topic due to drift, so I thought I would go back to the beginning and see what it says. Can you think of anything that has not been made or modified by an accumulation of characteristics\traits\features?Maybe I'm a little brain lazy this saturday morning, but I can't think of any. But what is it a straw man of? I find many people make this claim when they don't like an argument, but they never show why it is a straw man -- what is the more complex issue that has been simplified, and what is thereby being refuted? Straw Man

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Definition:
The author attacks an argument which is different from, and usually weaker than, the opposition's best argument.

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Here Taz is proposing that accumulation is almost universally apparent around us, that the effects of accumulation can be seen in virtually everything we observe, do, use, interact with.You are a product of accumulation, most recently having just accumulated the reading of this post.What is your stronger argument? I agree that portraying creationists as 'those people' is not very ennobling.Let's just say 'people who don't understand evolution'. Curiously, I have heard this argument several times from people who don't understand evolution - it is one of the common arguments they make regarding macroevolution, the "hopeful monster" argument. To paraphrase Taz: The eye example is a well known PRATT (Claim CB921.1: What use is half an eye?), so citing this as an example is based on evidence of many typical arguments put forth by people who don't understand evolution.Would you agree that the features of the mammalian eye can be explained by an accumulation of characteristics\traits\features?We can also look at explaining the development of the octopus eye by an accumulation of characteristics\traits\features to the point that it seems to be similar to the mammalian eye, except for a couple of distinct differences:

• the nerves are on the back side of the octopus eye and on the front side of the mammalian eye.
• the eye is focused by changing the length of the octopus eye to move the retina to the focal point of the fixed lens, and by changing the focal length of the lens to focus on the fixed retina in the mammalian eye.

Accumulation of characteristics over time explains these differences.I would say that the accumulation of characteristics over time is so universal that we can regard it as a natural law.Enjoy.

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Hi slevesque, thanks. Ah, so the quibble was about the portrayal of creationists, not about the principle of accumulation of characteristics\traits\features. Thanks for clearing that up. (not like creationists don't do it too ...) And yet, from the perspective of the grenade or the asteroid this is just a (final?) accumulation of events in their existence, as they did not appear de novo instantaneously. From the perspective of the earth, this is just another in a long line of accumulated explosions\impacts that temporarily modify part/s of the landscape. I disagree, the explosion is the result of the accumulated design and manufacture of the grenade, the conveyance of it to the point in question and the initiation of the explosive mechanism, and all of these happened and accumulated in real time. The process of the the explosion from the moment of initiation of the event to it's final end, with the last piece of dirt landing back on the earth and the echoes of the sound dying away as the sound energy is absorbed by various objects, this all occurs in real time and can be modeled as discrete moments that combined result in an accumulated effect. I'd have to let one of the physics mavens reply to this, but I don't think this is entirely accurate. We can think of the energy as a particle, and thus the exchange of energy from one object to another is just the accumulated exchange of energy packets from one to the other. Accumulation doesn't have to be a continuous process, just that the result over time is an accumulation of small incidents that add up.Mutation is also not a continuous process but one that occurs relatively constantly (in real time) to all organisms through quantified changes in their DNA. This is true for reproductive cells and all the other cells in your body. When such mutations occur in other parts of your body the accumulation over time can result in tan (the response to damage to the skin following sun energy causing a change in skin cells) or cancer. Agreed, it is not evidence that this is precisely what happened long ago in the evolution of eyes, however what it does do is show that the argument that the eye could not have evolved because it either (pick your pratt) had to evolve all at once or is too complicated, because these are just arguments from incredulity. Seeing as you can imagine the eye accumulating characteristics\traits\features from a light sensitive skin patch to the mammalian or octopus eye, means that you can see these arguments are logical fallacies.We can also see that the retina being one side up in one eye and the other side up in the other eye is just a logical result of which side was up in the initial process before more characteristics\traits\features accumulated to turn the eye into the visual instrument we now use, and not a product of specific design or intent.Further, we can see that the different mechanisms to focus the eye are also the result of something that worked being accumulated into the development process, where once it was operational in an organism would be passed by hereditary to all their descendants. Thus, the octopus focuses the eye by squeezing the entire eye to change it's shape and move the retina towards or away from the fixed focal length lens, while the mammalian eye is focused by the lens being squeezed to change it's focal length to match the fixed distance to the retina.We could also discuss how insect eyes work, or this litle guy: This is a little critter (a copepod, shown here as a larvae) that has a single eye and a single photoreceptor ... and yet it has a lens, and the single photoreceptor is moved around to accumulate an image of what the lens shows.Thus we see that they eyes in question are an accumulation of characteristics\traits\features that are not necessarily the same every time. Instead we see that each hereditary lineage was just opportunistic in taking any characteristic\trait\feature that proved advantageous to the reproduction or survival of the organism at any one stage and passing that on to following generations.Curiously, I do believe that anyone who understands evolution would have to agree, if evolution is true, that this process adequately explains how eyes would develop, in whatever lineage is involved.Enjoy.

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