Creationist questions from a creationist

Hello and thanx for reading and if possible answering.I can't believe in evolution for there are so many problems that arise when I dig a little deeper. But I have also many questions regarding creation, here is one :God created a perfect world, where every creature lived in peace, they only ate fruits and vegetables it seems. There never were preys or predators. Then why do most of the present animals have dangerous/poisonous features/organs and attitude. Even after the fall how did they gain those. I suppose that snakes didn't have poison in them, but where does it come from.Was it plan by God?thanx for answering, I hope you get what I meant.

Evolution sounds like the answer you may be looking for What problems did you find with evolution that arise when you "dig deeper"?Why is evolution not a suitable answer to your questions as to why animals have the fetures they do?Evolution dosn't deny the existance of God, it mearly offers a natural, verafiable, observable, process by which creatures change (over time) to meet the needs of an everchanging environment.Evolution, and natural selection are perfect explanations as to why animals have such wide and varied deffenses. It simply makes no sense for a garden of Eden-like world, were no predetor prey relationships existed.Why do you suppose carnivorous animals digestive systems are specifficaly tailored for digesting complex proteins? Likewise, rumminants have a digestive system specificaly tailord for the consumption of plant matter. This is why they chew their cud.These cretures have specific diets, cows can't subsist on steak, and likewise lions cant eat grass. What were they eating in the garden?[This message has been edited by Yaro, 07-29-2003]

What problems would those be, exactly? It may be that your problems are the result of a misunderstanding of the theory itself, but we can't tell unless you describe them for us. I'm not a Creationist, so I can't really speak to how this question in answered in the Creationist framework. Personally, I think the whole notion of a "perfect world" vs. a "fallen world" is the result of distorted idealism and projection, and that a "perfect world" as Christians commonly describe it is either pointless, impossible, or both.The answers that I have seen offered in reponse to questions like yours generally end up appealing to God's inscrutable motives, or his "Divine Plan," as it were, which basically translates to "I don't like to think about those questions, so I'll ignore them by substituing the unknown with a resignation to my belief that it is instead unknowable."Blessings,::[This message has been edited by ::, 07-29-2003]

There is certainly no support for that idea in the fossil record, which is the only record we have of life before a few thousand years ago. Fruits didn't even exist for a few hundred millions of years after animals had been eating each other. If you wish to make up some story to add on to the story of the Fall, go right ahead and decide how snakes became poisonous - whatever you decide on will have as much factual basis as the creation and fall story in Genesis.

DGE, Where have you dug deeper? I suspect creationist webstites & journals? The evidence in favour of evolution is vast, drawn from multiple disciplines, & as is the nature of corroborating evidence, reduces the tentativity of the Theory of Evolution to near zero.On the other hand.... ...This is a bald assertion supported by no evidence whatsoever, actually, I take that back, it's worse. This is not only unsupported, contradicted by evidence.Why someone would eschew the conclusions of shelf miles of evidence in favour of a position actually contradicted by evidence, I guess I'll never understand. Are you one of these people, DGE?Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.[This message has been edited by mark24, 07-29-2003]

I'm not a creationist, but I'll try to answer within
that framework rather than imposing my view onto your
comments.The organisms that we see on the planet at the moment have
a great adaptaive capability. When situations change
and different members of the population find it easier
to survive they and their offspring become the norm. The
populational content has changed.From a creationist perspective all of this adaptability was built
into organisms by God. Why else would it be there, if not to
allow creatures to change over time, to adapt to different ways
of life.From the creationist point of view, the creatures were created
with an adapaptability that they have utilised over time
to produce what we see now as diversity.Another possibility, one of my own interpretation of the
bible, is that the Garden of Eden was not all there was. It
was a special enclosure for God's chosen group. Gen 1:1 describes
the whole creation including the making of mankind ... then
Gen 1:2 talks about the creation of Eden and Adam ... and God
bringing all of the animals to Adam to be named. The only
way to rationalise the discreprancy is to consider that the two chapters are talking about different things. This view helps
to understand where Cain's wife came from later on, and why there
are predators (from outside Eden).

There is no biblical support for that position, the only biblical quotation that comes close to what you describe refers to the situation in heaven, not in the pre-fall garden of eden.Does that solve your problem?

thank you for responding!As a kid I always believed evolution was "stupid" (don't want to offend anyone) though I was fond of science, I never questioned the fact we had been created. Here is one of the argument I told myself considering evolution (and from what I had been taught) :-I still see fishes, apes so why don't they still evolve?
-Why are we the only very inteligent "animals" on earth? we can make computers, and think on very metaphysical/philosophical subject...afeter my conversion it was more obvious that I was God child, but after one year I started to doubt...in 1999 and from that time on I have had more and more doubts (with no foundations actually) and I started my long journey through science, philosophy, history....I've learnt many things BTW.Here is what I think is problematic in evolution (based on my -certainly- basic knowledge of the Evolution theory:--I can't conceive that a cell with all the complexity it involves, has been assembled by pure random.--the living fossils just make me amaze, because we were told that they were millions of years old, but still here they are.--I can not conceive a fish trying to go on land, he would die.--i have read the irreducible complexity theory, and I think it's not stupid. Even Darwin said that if it was proven that an organ could have not been produced by slight modifications then he's theory would break down.i like to discuss things and try to understand but i don't like when evolutionists take evolution for granted, whereas it's just an interpretation--to me.I understand very much Darwin's process, and truly believe that all animals were not created the way they are right now, they have adapted, this is proven. But we have never seen a dog turning into a dolphin.Even if I have difficulties with the evolution theory, I have many questions about creationism, and that gives me a headache, I can't make up my mind!Thanx for reading and answering, tell me what yo think.I know I'm young (21) and I need more knowledge maybe, but right now I'm strugling with this issue. Because on one hand there are former hard core evolutionist who are now creationist and vice versa maybe.have a nice day!

Greetings, DoesGodExist.You seem to be labouring under some common misconceptions about evolutionary theory. Let me try and explain: Good, because the idea of anything that complicated being assembled by pure random is dumb. Really, really dumb. Fortunately, it's not how evolution explains it.People often describe evolution as 'by chance'. This has some truth, evolution does contain strong random elements, but it is certainly not the whole truth. Any population of living things will contain differences (not just mutations, also new combinations of existing traits) those who's differences make them more likely to survive will have more children. That's just common sense, right? So, over time those differences will begin to become normal among that population. Small, small steps can produce complex things surprisingly rapidly (as can easily be shown by computer modelling), or big changes in an organism (as can be shown by selective breeding). So the cell didn't assemble by pure random, it slowly evolved from simpler cells, and before that from pre-cell replicators, and before that from the simplest possible replicator.Now they (the simplest possible replicator) did come about by chance, and not very likely chance at that. We're not sure how complex they were, but they were probably in the region of forty amino acids in a chain. We know amino acids are formed under the conditions believed to be present on the early earths surface. Now, it forming by chance was very unlikely, very unlikely indeed, but given half a billion years and the entire surface of the earth even unlikely things can happen. That's a good question. The answer? Well, we're not sure yet. However we do have some good leads. Brains are horribly expensive organs. They require huge amounts of food, and relatively rare minerals to keep running. They put out a lot of heat, and they need to have their tempreture carefully maintained at all times. No simple herbivour could have one as expensive as ours, they couldn't pay the energy costs. And the fact is, most animals do very well with their level of intelligence. They do. They have, and do, evolve to meet the requirements of their environments and fill the niches they are exploiting. They do this very well. Evolution is not directed. It isn't making humans. There is no progression of life. Mud skippers? Nearly all fish can survive out of water for a while. It is far than inconceivable that a species of fish living near mudflats, or in rockpools might find it an advantage to travel short distances across land, and then longer distances, and so forth. If I make a stone bridge, it will collapse without the key-stone. So there is no way to remove it and have a standing collection of stones, so how then did the bridge get built. I have seen no irreducible complexity theory that gets above this level. Do you have some examples that you have found convincing.Hope this helps. I'll leave it there for now, feel free to ask any questions you have.

DGE, Why? An open mind considers all possibilities. They are. The problem is it took a few million years for humans to evolve from their ape like ancestor, the time scale you are observing on is too short to expect to see large scale evolution. On the other hand there are numerous examples of speciation that are observable on our timescale.How do explain the fossil record, & the intermediate forms, & transitional series that are found within it? Because we outcompeted the others, is the short answer, but this is an inappropriate question. So what if we are the only "very" intelligent animal, why is this a problem for evolution? Some animal has to be the cleverest, the fastest, the largest, the smallest.This isn't evidence of anything. Why are you ignoring vast quantities of corroborative evidence that points to evolution having occurred on the strength of a question that ultimately poses no problem to evolution anyway? Me neither, & nor does the Theory of Evolution (ToE). Among other mechanisms, random mutation culled by natural selection is what gives the appearance of design. In a lab experiment (Hall 1982) effectively destroyed the ability of a clonal population of bacteria to metabolise lactose. After xx generations the bacteria had not only re-evolved an enzyme to cleave lactose, but an expression control system (so that the enzyme was only made in the presence of lactose), & a protease to facilitate the entry & transport of lactose into the cell. This didn't happen via purely random processes, the original mutations may have been random, but the best ones were kept & improved upon by natural selection.The argument you just made is what we call a strawman. This is where you (deliberately or not) misrepresent an argument (the ToE in this case), & because of that misrepresentation you reach the wrong conclusion. Can you show me a fossil species of starfish from the Mesozoic that is alive today? What about a frog, or shark even? What about the creationist staple, the coelacanth? In truth there are coelacanth fossils, but not the living ones today. In fact Latimeria chalumnae has an extra pair of ventral fins plus a double tail. An analogy would be creationists of 70 million years in the future saying that our four legged cow is identical to their six legged bovines!This question needs tackling on two levels, firstly, I assume you are generally familiar with the classification system? As you probably know, it is a heirarchical system that has big groups full of smaller & smaller subsets. Take frogs, for example. They belong to Order Anura (along with toads). An Order is a fairly high level taxa, the equivalent to Therapsida, containing monsters such as T.Rex, Velociraptor, Allosaurus, etc. Or the Primates, containing mammals as diverse as humans, bush babies, lemurs, & marmosets, for example. Now, the higher the level of taxa, the longer you can expect members of that taxa to have hung around, since a high level taxa has MANY smaller taxonomic levels within it, & therefore has a greater taxonomic survivability than smaller taxa. Order Anura contains families, genus', & species. What could we reasonably expect of the pattern of survivability of different taxonomic levels, then? Families are the larger of the taxonomic scales (that contain genus' & species), so we could reasonably expect fossil members of Anuran families to go back further than the genus or species level. That is what we see. There isn't a single genus or species living today that is represented in the Mesozoic (251-65 mya), yet families are. So to say frogs are found unchanged in the fossil record is disingenuous. The further you go back the more basal Order Anura becomes, which is by itself strong evidence of evolution. In fact this is a trend in the fossil record. Creationists always claim that taxa appear with no precursors (with justification), yet fail to take into account that when they do appear, they are very primitive versions of what they eventually become. Take Order Carnivora, for example, containing the canines & felines. Today it's fairly easy to tell any one canine skeleton from any one feline. The further you go back, however, the features that makes felines felines, & canines canines become more & more less pronounced. But I digress....To put it another way, Order Anura may survive, but many smaller sub-groups do not, & are even replaced by newly evolving organisms that are different enough to be placed in a new genus, yet are still frogs or toads by definition!!Secondly, why would an organism change in morphology over time? Very simply, because their environment does. Imagine an organism that isn't well adapted to it's environment. It will suffer as many (roughly) mutations as an organism that is well adapted to it's environment. The difference being that all mutations that affect the well adapted organism will be deleterious (because they upset the optimal morphology/chemistry), but the substandard organism is going to get some of it's mutations be beneficial (because there is room for improvement). There come a point where our maladapted organism becomes well adapted, & any further mutations are selected against. This is called stabilising selection. Hence, if an environment doesn't change appreciably as far as our organism is concerned, it will remain in "stasis". Fish do survive on land. Mudskipper & its tracks. Periophthalmodon schlosseriAlthough it is the lungfish that are thought to be the nearest relative of the tetrapods, the existence of mudskippers (&lungfish for that matter) makes your point moot. Fish can & do live out of water.The fossil record shows the transition of fish to tetrapods. Some info here."A 350-million-year-old fossil was labeled a fish, until close examination revealed a pelvis and femurs. Most of the pelvis is on the underside of the fossil, but part of it is visible (arrow, far right), a wide arc of bone above the darker-colored rock and below the vertebrae."
Photo by S. M. Finney, University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge. You may also find this interesting. Jennifer Clack, a tetrapod evolution big gun discussing Acanthostega, a fish with arms, hands & fingersThe best & most accessible (IMO) treatment of fish to tetrapod evolution can be found in Gaining Ground: The Origin & Evolution of Tetrapods by Jennifer A. Clack An IC structure is a structure that fails if one component has been removed. It has never been shown that IC cannot evolve, NEVER! It is asserted without evidence by creationists all the time, however. Potential routes of IC evolutionAnds to really be a stick in the mud, it's only fair to show evidence of an IC system that has strong evidence that it evolved, the mammalian middle ear. This consists of three bones, the malleus, incus, & stapes, whose function is to transfer vibration from the outer to inner ears. Remove one of the bones & the whole shebang ceases to function, it is by definition IC. Evidence suggests that two of the three bones belonged to reptilian lower jaws which during the reptile-mammal transition over 250 million years ago, ended up in the middle ear & were involved in hearing.Embryology shows that two of the bones in mammals begins with the lower jaw, then migrates to the middle ear during developement.The fossil records shows a transition from retile to mammals, clearly showing the reduction of bones in the lower jaw. "Figure 1.4.3. A comparison of the jawbones and ear-bones of several transitional forms in the evolution of mammals. Approximate stratigraphic ranges of the various taxa are indicated at the far left (more recent on top). The left column of jawbones shows the view of the left jawbone from the inside of the mouth. The right column is the view of the right jawbone from the right side (outside of the skull). As in Figure 1.4.1, the quadrate (mammalian anvil or incus) is in turquoise, the articular (mammalian hammer or malleus) is in yellow, and the angular (mammalian tympanic annulus) is in pink. For clarity, the teeth are not shown, and the squamosal upper jawbone is omitted (it replaces the quadrate in the mammalian jaw joint, and forms part of the jaw joint in advanced cynodonts and Morganucodon). Q = quadrate, Ar = articular, An = angular, I = incus (anvil), Ma = malleus (hammer), Ty = tympanic annulus, D = dentary. (Reproduced from Kardong 2002, pp. 274, with permission from the publisher, Copyright 2002 McGraw-Hill)"Lastly, molecular evidence also shows mammals had evolved from reptiles, the corollory of which is that mammalian IC middle ear bones evolved from reptile middle ears.Three lines of evidence resulting in clear cut evidence that IC can, & has evolved. It's a vast body of evidence that points to one thing to me. Don't worry what other people think. Examine the evidence & make your own mind up!Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

Let me ask you - how would you go about proving that an organ could not evolve through slight modifications over time?That a given organ fails if certain components are removed is not significant in this regard. If I have a jenga tower, and I pull a block out of the bottom, it falls over. But yet, I can build the tower one block at a time. Since the removal of some components causes catastrophic failure, does that mean the tower is "irreducably complex"? No, not really. In fact what it means is that we'll have an easier time determining an evolutionary pathway for a certain organ, because other potential pathways are eliminated because they don't "construct" the organ in the right order.I.e. if I see a jenga tower, and I know that the blocks on top fail without blocks on the bottom, I know that it was assembled starting with the blocks on the bottom.

I read the blood clotting thing, from "Darwin's Black Box". This is such a complex system.I'm not a scientist so I can't enter in deep explanation, I'm sure you know more than I do.The bridge is made by people not by itself. When we study nature we don't expect it to "create" intricate things even in long periods.
It's really hard for me to even think that it took millions of years for a cell to appear, believe me this I find is against the natural against the natural laws that we currently know. Even a kid would not believe it.
But in the mean time I say to myself "what if it was possible", because no one will really know (if it took so much time). And even with our great technology we have never been able to create a living organism.Do you really believe that?I believe that all organisms "evolve", we adapt to our environment. This is scientificaly proven and it's a fact. Asian people, African...don't look the same but they are still human. But with the coelacanth fish, it was said to be 30 m. years old, but when they found it near Madagascar, it was mostly the same. But maybe it was only one or so member of this fish that got the "chance" to evolve?I would like scientists to explain how species vary. This is the most interesting thing ever.There is no proper order in what I write, just things that come to mind, before I forget.Actually when I first posted , it was to ask questions to creationists, but that's ok, because I have many questions for evolutionists too.I understand that you don't belive that the cell fully formed right here right now. But let's suppose we have now the first living organism, why would it evolve, unless it's written in its DNA then there's no way he can gain new functions. Just tell me if I'm wrong, I only write to get to know the theory better.Why can't we inter-cross each others (animals and humans), if we really evolved from one single ancestor?Do you believe that Nature is intelligent, because it looks like it is. A very common argument is the eye. Why would Nature gives us "tools" to apprehend the world?It's hard to understand why and how Nature would just work the way it works.I don't really want to argue because I don't think I can, but just getting answers would help, I think.Thanx to everyone who replied.

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I read the blood clotting thing, from "Darwin's Black Box". This is such a complex system.I'm not a scientist so I can't enter in deep explanation, I'm sure you know more than I do.

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Last time this came up, someone mentioned that there are organisms with part of the blood clotting system we have. It's not IC.

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The bridge is made by people not by itself. When we study nature we don't expect it to "create" intricate things even in long periods.

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However, nature can create structures similar to the bridge via deposition, lithification, and erosion. Haven't you ever seen a natural bridge?Short on time, I may answer some more of these later today.

Yeah, the thing is, Behe more or less ignores/was ignorant of the fact that we find simpler versions of the clotting cascade in ancient organisms like horseshoe crabs. So it's not really "irreducibly complex" after all. That's the pattern with the IC argument, after all - time after time, a system creationists thought was IC turns out to have a "reduced" form after all. It's not the same fish. It's a different species. "Coelacanth" refers to an order of fish, and, as such, is no more significant in it's continued existence than it's significant to say that there are "still" mammals.So-called "living fossils" just aren't the stumbling block you seem to think they are. The Theory of Evolution doesn't say that all organisms must evolve. It simply says that, over time, organisms either adapt to their environment or they die out. What happens when an organism gets adapted to an environment that doesn't change? The organism doesn't substantially change, either. It's pretty simple, really. Random mutation. What exactly do you need to have explained? Remember, evolution happens because of two things: random, heritable mutation; and natural selection. Anything that reproduces imperfectly - with the occasional, inheritable error - and doesn't always survive long enough to reproduce, evolves. Evolving is as simple as reproducing with some mistakes. What, like transgenic genetic engineering? We do that all the time.The reason you can't viably mate with a chimpanzee is because there's mechanisms that separate species. Differing chromosome counts, for instance. But no mechanism prevents the insertion of genes from one animal to another (or even animal to plant!). This basic compatability of DNA is a very compelling argument for common ancestry. Because organisms that have eyes do way better than those that don't? Remember the expression "In the land of the blind, the man with one eye is king"?Nature doesn't "give" us things. We have the things we do because the organisms that had those things left way more offspring than those that didn't.

DGE, Doolitlle is one step ahead of Behe. He showed that the evolution of the blood clotting system is plausible. If it's plausible, it's not impossible, is it?At the bottom of this, & every other post is a "reply" button (rather than the big button at the bottom of the page). If you click this then it shows to whom you are replying to. I responded to EXACTLY this issue in my last post. Given I spent a lot of time writing & researching message 10 for you, & you still raise points as if I never answered them, why should anyone respond to you if you aren't going to read responses to the issues you raise?I would like a point by point response to message 10, please.I have shown you that IC is evolvable, that living fossils aren't what creationists claim they are, that fish can live out of the water, & that your own idea that evolution is purely random is false. Are you not going to factor this into your thinking?Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.[This message has been edited by mark24, 07-30-2003][This message has been edited by mark24, 07-30-2003]