Defence of Intelligent Design

Only a few doctorate scientists are willing to debate Walt because:1. Debates don't matter except to the great unwashed. Debates do not decide truth.2. Debating crackpots like Walt is a waste of time that could better be spent doing useful things.3. There's no sicentific basis on which to debate Walt, all he's got is theology ... he refuses to debate on what he's got.This is, of course, terrifically off topic. Walt Brown has nothing to do with intelligent design, or intelligence, or design.

Only if you ignore 99.99% of the evidence. Yes, he did, in The origin of Species: Chapter 9. It was Darwin's style to ask a rhetorical question and then answer it, and he did the same in this case. It's worthwhile to read his answer; much of it is aplicable today (although the section on the denudation of the Weald suffered from erroneous estimates and oversimplification, and was removed from later editions). A vague and unsupported claim. Fred's almost as confused as you, but is a more prolific writer.You or he should review, for example, the whale fossils (start at http://darla.neoucom.edu/DEPTS/ANAT/Thewissen.html) or the human lineage (start at Prominent Hominid Fossils, which doesn't include all of them by any means, and go on to Prominent Hominid Fossils). What "necessary links" are not listed, and why are they necessary? A bare-faced and outright lie. Darwin said that intermediate and transitional links must be inconceivably great. He went on to explain why the evidence of such links available today is not inconceivably great.Nonetheless, a sufficient number of transitional fossils have been found for us to make valid conclusions, especially about the evolution of Man.The barest beginning of the details is contained at the links I posted above. Read tehm and report back.You claimed that "we do not find a single one of Darwin’s necessary links, not even one that evolutionists can agree on. None. Nada. Zippo". What necessary links are missing, and why are those links necessary? Results: Life on Earth is circa 3.5 billion years old. Although we don't have a good handle on how life originally arose, the panoply of life that we see today was generated from a few primitive organisms by the processes detailed in the mainstream theory of evolution. They don't.[This message has been edited by JonF, 01-23-2004]

The Zen of dealing with such creationists is the sound of one hand clapping ...

Prominent Hominid Fossils. What "necessary links" have not been found, and why are they necessary?

Prominent Hominid Fossils. What "necessary links" have not been found, and why are they necessary? Right. That's why it's such a misleading term. The so-called "explosion" took many millions of years. It is, at about the same rate.[This message has been edited by JonF, 01-23-2004]

That site does not mention "double genes". Gene duplication is not chromosome duplication.That site does not mention mutations.Nodoby is discussing chromosome duplication as a method of increasing information or implementing beneficial changes. I suppose it could happen, but if it does it's rare compared to gene duplication, mutations, gene transfer, and other mechanisms. (I know there'a a lot of chromosomal modifications going on in plants, but I'm not very knowledgable on that subject).In other words, that site is irrelevant.Are you ever going to learn that citing randomly selected irrelevant sites and posting randomly generated irrelevant gibbberish is both unconvincing and unproductive? I suspect not. Yes. So what? (hint: the answer is "it's irrelevant. It has nothing to do with increase of information or mutations, be they harmful or neutral or beneficial.")

However, natural selection does not prevent the passing on of extra information, and mathematical formulas do matter. The study of information is a "quantitative science", which means that measurements and numbers and mathematical formulas are relevant, and made-up vague claims such as yours are not relevant.

Absolutely and fundamentally wrong.Any gene that either parent has can be passed along to that parent's offspring.If both parents have the same gene, there is a near-100% chance that all offspring will have the gene (and a very small chace that the offspring will get a freshly-mutated version of the gene).If the parents have different versions of the gene, there is a near-50% chance that any particular offspring will have the mother's version and a near-50% chance that the same offspring will have the father's version. Or, looking at it another way, on the average half the offspring will have the mother's version and the other half will have the father's version.And then the filtering power of natural slection comes into play.

Different numbers of chromosomes do not necessarily prevent interbreeding, For example consider Przewalski's horse which has 66 chromosomes (33 pairs) whereas domestic horses have 64 chromosomes (32 pairs). Przewalski's horses and domestic horses interbreed freely, and the offspring (which have 65 chromosomes) are fertile with either Przewalski's horse or domestic horses. See http://www.mhref.com/breeds/takhi/.Of course, having the same number of chromosomes essentially always does not make interbreeding possible.I bet you don't even know what a chromosome is, or what a gene is, or what a mutation is.As usual, your gibberish about chromosomes is a blind alley. It has no relationship to microevolution, macroevolution, speciation, or intelligent design.

Wrong. There are literally many millions, maybe billions, of different species with different genetics, and there are only about 100 diferent chromosome counts. Simple arithmetic will tell you that there are at least hundreds of thousands of different species with the same chromosome count. Therefore chromosome count is pretty useless for distinguishing between species. Different chromosome count usually (but not always) means different species, but same chromosome count means essentially nothing in terms of species classification. You may be right. That's because chromosome count is almost meaningless in species classification and all the speciation events involving chromosome count that I know of are in plants .. do you count those as creatures? However, there are many examples of genetic changes giving rise to new species; E.g. Observed Instances of Speciation and http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html. Ring species (http://www.cs.colorado.edu/...say/creation/ring_species.html) are also interesting, and of course they all have th same number of chromosomes around the ring. And what significance does it have that we call them by the same name?[This message has been edited by JonF, 01-26-2004]