So, here we have a person with 12 functioning fingers and toes. Now, yes, it is not a direct advantage to survival in this case, but at least it helps you see that it is not impossible for 4 entire functioning digits to spring up in humans.
How did I not do that in message #71? If you think others gave suitable responses then let the record show I strongly disagree!!!
Yes, but why? Because you think it's not sufficient?
You and your buddies are the ones making claims that rm/ns is producing miraculous designing feats and as Bolder-dash rightly stated, the burden of proof is on you to prove the impossible really happened, not on us to prove that it didn't.
There's nothing miraculous about it.
I haven't been dumbly asking the same questions over and over as you have made it sound. I have presented thought provoking questions worthy of sound answers. Its not my fault that I think the answers thus far fall flat.
No, but it is your fault for not explaining why they fall flat.
Remember, "I don't think it can explain it", is not a valid reason. You have to highlight where the explanations are impossible, and why.
State of the art indeed. Saying they gradually progressed from simple beginnings into a state of the art mammalian skeleton does nothing to explain how they ended up in such perfect formation from the skull to the toe. With your obviously very intelligent mind, you would be hard pressed to sit down and engineer a more well thought out design for a foundational structure than our current skeletal system.
First, who says it is perfect? I think I'm beginning to see the problem here. You see man as an end product, don't you? As the pinacle of the natural (created) world. Is that correct?
You see, we don't see it like that. To us, life is continually changing, and the only measure of how "good" something is, is in its ability to survive. Viewed like that Homo Sapiens is indeed a very succesful "design", if you will. But then again, there are designs that survived much longer than we have up until now. So there really is nothing special about us. And being "perfect" is all relative.
You present a lot of "could have's" and "possible's" but I would love to see some tangible evidence that rm/ns is capable of pulling off such miraculous feats of design.
Check out the design programs we use to design planes, cars, highly complex antenae, and so on. They all use evolutionary algorithms. And they all come up with "miraculous designs".
So if an organism starts out fully formed with the systems it needs to survive already fully developed, that is an act of creation not evolution.
No no no no! I'll try to explain. When an organsim, for whatever reason, is born incomplete, what happens to that organism? It dies, and well before it can reproduce. This means that wahtever caused the malfunction will die with it.
Remember the laryngeal nerve thread? We explained to you there that if there ever was an instance of a mutation breaking the nerve, that the organism would die before it can reproduce, and therefore the mutation would die with it. You seemed to accept that. The same thing applies here. If there ever was produced an incomplete organism, it would die before it was able to reproduce, and thus, its "faulty" genes will not be passed on, eliminating it from the population.
That is what Percy meant with "evolution doesn't produce half-formed organisms". Every organism is as complete as it needs to be (this is very important) to survive. Or if it isn't, the faults will be eliminated with it, because it cannot reporduce.
Please pay special attention to the "as it needs to be". If you don't quite understand how we mean that, feel free to ask more questions.
I was just wanting to understand how you guys think. I don't agree with your conclusions because I believe everything was created suddenly. It wasn't a hill to fight to the death over for me on that issue.
Well, look at this thread the same way. We are trying to explain to you how we see things. To get you to understand how we see it. I know we probably will never convince you of the "truth" of evolution. But we can explain to you how we see things in the hope you will understand our position.
Yes. What I think he was trying to say there is that we think the first life came about through chemistry, not evolution (Which only happens after there is life). Also, even if we grant you that god only created the very first life (a position I don;t think you hold), evolution would still be responsible for everything we see after that.
While that is true I would have to start with the fact that I believe the biblical account of God speaking all things into existence in a six day period.
Yes, that's (partly) what I meant when I said that. You think god wouldn't be true to "his word" when the bible is not taken literally in this instance, and so, his glory is diminished.
The ToE violates several laws such as the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the law of non-contradiction. ie; something from nothing and a design without a designer.
Well, that's not exactly true. But this is perhaps not the thread to discuss that. We should focus on the skeletal system. I will say however, that it only looks like design to you, to me, it doesn't look designed at all. And yes, we may call it a "design", but really, any configuration can be called that, that still doesn't mean it is.
This is wild speculation with no evidence to support such a claim.
If you mean we have found the organism then, no, we haven't, would be kinda hard. However, since all life seems to be based around chemistry, and in the oldest rock layers, we see only very simple critters or single celled organisms, we infer that the earliest life was a very basic chemical "soup" in a membrane.
If it started with chemicals it should be repeatable with chemicals....or let me guess, those chemicals conveniently no longer exist right?
Oh, no, they are still around, and experiments are underway to see if we can indeed replicate it. So far, no complete organism has been produced yet, but we're getting ever closer. Remember, just because we can't do it today doesn't mean we will never be able to do it
And how did that "organism" become fully formed? ...just dumb luck at its best I guess.
No. there are very precise laws concerning chemistry. Which is why you always get iron rusting (for example).
If you guys want to believe such a fairy-tale as all of this that's fine but lets quit calling it science. It qualifies as a fable and no more.
Well, we don't believe what you're saying we believe, though.
I don't mean this in a disrespectful way Percy. I have great respect for you and I like you but all I am taking away from this is a bunch of double talk and no clear explanations for my previous questions. I feel like I am sitting in on a David Copperfield show or something.
Would it help if we took it step by step? I.e. you ask a question, and we give the answer, than you ask a question again and we give the answer, and so forth. Don't make it anything to big (from both sides), and we should be alright, yes?
...we don't need to use people as an example. Lets go back when fish hit the land and the skeletal system was in the process of evolving.
They already had a complete skeleton at that point. Yes, it was different from ours, but for it was as complete as any skeleton is complete today for any critter.
I am very unclear how changes show up in each off spring.
Gradually. Step by step.
How does a new bone show up as it is in the process of development?
It doesn't "show up" as a whole new bone, or part of a new bone (say, half a femur) in this instance. By the time we are at this stage in evolution, everything that follows is a modification of the already present skeleton.
Maybe it would be easier if you pointed me to a web-site that has lots of pictures. Seems like all I ever see and hear are broad generalizations.
Hmm. Let's see. This one is about horse evolution, and illustrates the modifications to the horses leg bone and teeth over about 50 million years:
(Start from bottom)
This is from the wiki article about horse evolution. Now, not all these critters are direct ancestors of each other, but I hope you get an idea of the process we have in mind.
I am also very unclear about selection pressure. Can you direct me to a source that explains what this "pressure" is, what reads it, and how it directs design please?
I'll try to explain myself first. Simply put, the selection pressure is the environment the critter lives in. For example, if the critter lives in a mainly purple coloured environment, but is grey, there is of course a big risk of being spotted by predators. Now, say, that by a mutation, a critter is born that has a purple pelt. It will of course be much easier for this critter to elude its predators. This will result in it being able to reproduce better and as a result it's purple offspring (they inherited this trait from their parent), will also be able to reproduce better, until ultimately every critter in the population is purple. This is the "pressure" for "being purple" (in this case) that we mean with natural selection, or selection pressure.
P.S. I never learned how to embed videos, and don't have the time to try to learn it now, so if an admin wants to edit this for me to make it easier on everybody, go right ahead.
It's very simple really, under the video there is a button that says "embed", click this, and a code will appear, copy this code into your reply box and voila, embedded video.
Can't do it for you now, since youtube is blocked at work.
Yes I do. I would have a stroke if I ever heard one of you evolutionists admit to being wrong about anything or admitting there is something you don't know.
I will stand behind any chance factor number that adds up to showing the ToE is utterly impossible in every way shape and form.
But the one "chance factor" you mentioned in this thread isn't about the ToE.
You think you are all high and mighty because you have biology knowledge and yet your conclusions are so far off you are nothing more than a bunch of well educated fools!
Ok, you'll have to run me though this one. You say we have "knowledge" of biology. Which would mean that we know, if not a great deal, than at least an appropriate amount about t. However, you then say that this knowledge, which I assume you do not posses, is making our conclusions wrong. This sounds very weird to me. Are you saying that the less knowledge one has, the more accurate his conclusions will be? Should we stop informing juries in courts? Afterall, the less knowledge they posses, the more accurate their conclusion will be?
Frankly, any person who can stand there and look at the skeletal system configuration and HONESTLY think it could have formed by way of lucky accidental mutations is in my opinion as dumb as random mutation and natural selection itself.
And yest hundreds of thousand, if not millions, of people, who are very educated, and went to college (certainly nothing a dumb person could do?), agree with all the findings of biology. What makes you think they're dumb? Your ow incredulity?
I emphasize the word honestly because I know most of you are "willingly ignorant" because of your rebellion against your maker.
Plenty of the people I menioned above are religious in one way or another. Does Francis Collins strike you as a man in "rebellion to his maker", for example?
I admit I have a simple childlike approach to things but guess what? The truth is so simple a child can understand it.
Well no, I disagree. There are some truths a child might understand, but really, most things are far more complex than a child-like approach can comprehend. Or are you going to tell me that children understand complex mathematics?
I may not be the most articulate cat in town but I think I bring some thought provoking points of view to the table. Heck, at least I bring a little personality into the fray with some humor and friendly gestures now and then which is more than I can say for many of the members around here.
And sometimes a bit of bile, perhaps? What I mean is that some of your remarks are condescending and belittling, like all your "opponents" are children to be told off.
Yes I could. Your little fairytale was quite entertaining. I had to stop half way through and run to make some popcorn.
Ok, go ahead, explain it then. We're waiting.
I think that was an excellent way to put it because that's exactly what this whole notion of natural selection being able to "edit" is, a fraud.
See, this is what I was talking about. Was it really necessary to label it as a fraud here? You're basically calling everyione dishonest people. That's not necessary, now is it?
In a nutshell editing is an act of intelligence with intentionality.
Yes. And editing in the example was the fraud.
This is in direct violation of the very premise of ToE.
Yes. Which was the point of the example.
And where the heck are all these bones, muscles and joints coming from to begin with. This totally screams intentionality!
No, it really doesn't. They evolved from previously present bones / bone-like structures.
A joint is needed between bones to have proper mobility and I am to believe it just happened along?
No, you could take the evidence into acount. Though, you ask to "just beilieve" your version.
Sorry, I just can't sign up for that wishful thinking fairytale!
Ok, but if you don;t want to take into account the evidence, it's not fair to vcall it a fairytale.
Let me give you a very simple and short quiz Crash;
What is one provable truth all of these systems have in common?
The Neurological System Vision Hearing Balance Smell Taste Touch Skin The Endocrine System The Respiratory The Gastrointestinal System The Circulatory System The Excretory System The Musculoskeletal System The Reproduction System
Doot du doot du, doot du doot, doot du doot du doot du doot ......and his answer is?
You are right my friend. Some of my remarks do end up as you say. In fact it is one of my New Year resolutions to work on that. Having said that, the heavy condescending and belittling comes from your camp mostly. Almost every single reply from your guys are filled with hate centered comments about how stupid we creationists are.
Well, it's more that we can't seem to understand why you guys (used loosely here), seem so hell bent on putting your own beliefs in front of the evidence. Anyway, yes, perhaps a bit less condescension should be done on both parts.
Being a rebel all my life and an Ex-Marine, my tendency is to push back.
Does being a rebel and taking orders work togehter?
Any who mate I am off to bed. You will have to wait till tomorrow for more feedback and the answer to the quiz. Your answer was wrong. I said provable.
Yes, I figured as much, I should've included a winky. Let me guess, it's something to do with function, intelligence, and complexity? Anyways, good night mate.
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