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Author | Topic: Creationist Friendly Q&A | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
coffee_addict Member (Idle past 499 days) Posts: 3645 From: Indianapolis, IN Joined: |
Gary writes:
I agree completely. This is why we need to answer from individual to individual. Questions reveal the questioners' preconceived notions. We just need to treat those who ask questions as intelligent people who want to learn something. For example, I would give a much more detail answer to someone who asks something like "if evolution is true then why do we have so little fossil record of human evolution?" than someone who asks something like "if we descended from monkeys then how come current monkeys aren't evolving?" I don't think it is fair to treat everyone the same way. Some will undoubtedly already know some of the basics required. Others will know zippo about science.
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Loudmouth Inactive Member |
quote: It is hard for me to pull back and look at the ToE with fresh eyes. That makes it hard to explain the ToE to lay people. On that we can agree. The quip you gave puts the creationist on the defensive right away. Instead of getting an answer they are suddenly made to look foolish and may feel they need to defend themselves. I was hoping for more of a textbook answer than a Socratic discussion.
quote: That's the kind of input this thread needs. How would you phrase it, within the confines of a "textbook" answer?
quote: Honestly, yes I do. At least I hope so. I can't think of a better way of explaining it without being too vague. When I hear the "if men no apes" question asked it is often due to a poor understanding of evolution, that the progression of species looks like a ladder instead of a branching tree. Instead of saying "we came from dirt, why is there still dirt" you could have said that we came from repitles, there are still reptiles. We came from fish, and there are still fish. We came from bacteria, and there are still bacteria. I think this type of approach might have worked better, but again, this is my opinion and I could be totally off-base.
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coffee_addict Member (Idle past 499 days) Posts: 3645 From: Indianapolis, IN Joined: |
Loudmouth writes:
And so they should. Think of it as a nudge on the back for them to realize that there is a much bigger world out there. The quip you gave puts the creationist on the defensive right away. Instead of getting an answer they are suddenly made to look foolish and may feel they need to defend themselves. Again, I would not give such an answer to a question that seem more thought out than that.
How would you phrase it, within the confines of a "textbook" answer?
Thank goodness I'm not an educator. People, please look at the Style Guide for EvC thread by Sylas. Pay particular attention to step 3. SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Refusal to use the search engine may cause brain cancer.
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Monk Member (Idle past 3946 days) Posts: 782 From: Kansas, USA Joined: |
Ok Loudmouth I'll give it a go:
Approximately 550 million years ago, an abundance of life appeared to develop relatively quickly and at the same time. This era is referred to as the pre-Cambrian and the pre-Cambrian explosion of life forms. Prior to this period, there seems to be a significant lack of fossils with which to show that evolution occurred. One explanation suggest that prior to this period there were no hard shell creatures to leave a fossil record. I’d like comments on the following:
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NosyNed Member Posts: 9003 From: Canada Joined: |
The shortest period of time I have ever heard allocated to the time of the "explosion" is 5 million years.
This site: The Cambrian Explosion gives 40 million years. I'm pretty sure that the longer times are now the consensus. What we get is a "non-explosion". We see many other periods with significant change in even the shortest time period. That is about the time we have been evolving separate our nearer surviving cousins. And that is under conditions with no wide open niches like there were for the first multicellular organisms. On the other side 40 million years is 2/3 of the time that the refilling of niches has been going on since the end of the cretaceous. This doesn't strike me as being all that anomolous at all. Especially when you examine what the end point (depending on where you define it) was. At the extreme it is a trilobite. Somewhere well through the time it is things like Pikaria. These maybe, with hindsight, represent different phyla but it takes an expert to say they are more than a bunch of funny worms. It reconciles with evolution because we understand that allowing organisms to have wide open niches allows for evolution to move dammed quickly. It is also not a problem as the time frames don't seem to be too terribly short in any case. I don't see what is particularly wrong with the "hard shell" theory in any case. There are traces of multi cellular life back to around 600 million years and one would not expect much to remain of worms after 600 million years would one? Hard parts had to come in at some point. Obviously (I hope it is), that would produce a quantum leap in preservation even if there was no real change in the diversity or number of living things around at the time. ABEAs with most of the really common questions it is important to, first, get the facts as straight as possible. Not to use old outdated information or only a few snippets from the real research. This message has been edited by NosyNed, 03-04-2005 19:41 AM
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Coragyps Member (Idle past 756 days) Posts: 5553 From: Snyder, Texas, USA Joined: |
There may well have been a change in ocean/atmospheric chemistry at about the time of the early Cambrian that actually allowed critters to make calcium carbonate shells for the first time, too. Before that time, the seas were apparently a little more acidic, and solid calcium carbonate wouldn't have been stable.
Now exactly where I read the details of how this is known is a mystery to me at the moment......
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PecosGeorge Member (Idle past 6894 days) Posts: 863 From: Texas Joined: |
quote: And here you see the problem spelled out, and it has been so many times by those who would call themselves 'enlightened', who by virtue of a little education think themselves qualified to judge who occupies the dark hole and who is fed silly things.And this is how you seek converts to the half-truth, half-crap you present as the only way. How's the weather up there on your high horse? Your intentions for this thread are self-serving. You do not have anything other than ridicule in mind........look at me, I am intelligent and you can be, too, all you have to do is put away everything that I believe should have no meaning to you, and accept as meaningful what has meaning to me. I encourage anyone and everyone who has any degree of charity toward fellow-creatures, to see that you are not servants of your cause in this approach, but despotic, arrogant manhandlers in dire need of understanding that humanity is spiritual as well. George
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crashfrog Member (Idle past 1489 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
I encourage anyone and everyone who has any degree of charity toward fellow-creatures, to see that you are not servants of your cause in this approach, but despotic, arrogant manhandlers in dire need of understanding that humanity is spiritual as well. What does any of that have to do with science?
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Monk Member (Idle past 3946 days) Posts: 782 From: Kansas, USA Joined: |
Thanks for your reply.
I wouldn’t classify 40 million years as an explosion either, but I’m not an evolutionary biologist, so what do I know. Anyway, even a novice like me can speculate what mammals might have looked like 40 million years ago based on the fossil record and compared to extant mammal specimens we have today. From this I acknowledge that it is a sufficiently long time for species to undergo profound changes.
NosyNed writes: I don't see what is particularly wrong with the "hard shell" theory in any case. There are traces of multi cellular life back to around 600 million years and one would not expect much to remain of worms after 600 million years would one? Hard parts had to come in at some point. Obviously (I hope it is), that would produce a quantum leap in preservation even if there was no real change in the diversity or number of living things around at the time. Regarding the hard shell theory, there does seem to be much speculation among experts in the field, which is why I posed the question initially. Consider the following:
"Beyond the latest Precambrian there occurred what has appropriately been called an explosion of life forms, many of which seem to be extraordinary experiments in animal design. For a long time it was supposed that the idea of a sudden rise of complex forms of life in the Cambrian Period (on the Proterozoic-Phanerozoic border) was in fact a fallacy created by the nature of the fossil record, and that it simply represented the time when the first shelled creatures began to appear. Since shells are hard objects, they are much more capable of being preserved than soft-bodied creatures. However, from recent research it really does look as though the Earth presented these early organisms with a "clean sheet" upon which to develop all manner of designs." (Dr. David Norman, Prehistoric Life: The Rise of the Vertebrates, pub. Boxtree limited, 1994, p. 32) Dr. Norman is Director of the Sedgwick Museum and lectures on paleontology and evolution at the University of Cambridge. BTW, If there is another thread where the pre-Cambrian "hard shell" theory has been discused, please provide the link
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Admin Director Posts: 13018 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 1.9 |
Thread moved here from the Suggestions and Questions forum.
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Gary Inactive Member |
This is why I said we should treat others with the same respect with which we would want others to treat us. I don't think it is my right to judge others solely by their beliefs, even if I do not agree with those beliefs. I'd like to have a place where people can learn about the opposite side of the argument that won't make the people who ask questions feel stupid.
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PecosGeorge Member (Idle past 6894 days) Posts: 863 From: Texas Joined: |
Re: Be a good example
This is why I said we should treat others with the same respect with which we would want others to treat us. I don't think it is my right to judge others solely by their beliefs, even if I do not agree with those beliefs. I'd like to have a place where people can learn about the opposite side of the argument that won't make the people who ask questions feel stupid. ============================= I do not feel stupid when I ask about something I do not know.If I were to tell you about a man who made a foolish promise and then, even more foolishly, kept that promise. Would you feel stupid asking me to tell you more, or who it was, etc? Of course not. Not knowing something does not make a person stupid, it makes a person uninformed. I thank you for your words. You are way ahead of your crowd. The maxim to treat your neighbor as you want to be treated is logic in its purest form and cannot be argued. "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Hey, Albert, I agree!
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PecosGeorge Member (Idle past 6894 days) Posts: 863 From: Texas Joined: |
It has everything to do with science.
It is the people you belittle and classify as dumb who hold many a purse string you care to tap for the sake of science. Do you see now how unscientific it is to treat them poorly? Even tho I love science and the wonders it has discovered, I'll not give another pluck nickel for research regardless of how it may benefit man. It is here I learned to think that way. From folks like you. "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Hey, Albert, I agree!
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SoulSlay Member (Idle past 5632 days) Posts: 44 From: billy's puddle, BC Joined: |
I have a question about a certain aspect of evolution. How does modern evolutionary theory account for the emergence of complex organs? For example, how would an organ such as the eye have come to be around? If evolution happens slowly, then it would be ridiculous to assume that a blind animal with no dna coding for sight suddenly gave birth to an organism with an eye. The emergence of an eye would need to be gradual, possibly one part at a time(retina, lens, cornea...). An organism with only one part of an eye would not be able to see with just that one part, so it would not be beneficial to its survival. I imagine it would be unhelpful for an animal to have a loose retina attached to a loose optic nerve dragging on the ground.
So how did organs come to be?
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Gary Inactive Member |
You are right, evolution of organs is gradual. For example, our appendix was once much longer than it is now. It has gradually changed over countless generations to its present state.
The evolution of eyes has been used many times as an argument for intelligent design or irreducible complexity. Early "eyes" were simply groups of cells containing pigments which were sensitive to light. An animal could move into dark or light places, whichever benefited its survival, but it couldn't see with any sharpness as we can. Forming a pit lined with such cells can increase sharpness, and partially closing over such a pit produces a simple pinhole-camera type of eye. The lens is thought to have formed from a clear covering of cells over the pit. A double layer of cells filled with fluids, giving it a convex shape which greatly improved image sharpness. So its not really necessary for the lens to form without the other parts, though the retina is the most important part. This explanation comes from observation of the animals alive today. There are all sorts of animals with different types of eyes - for example, planarian worms have very simple eyes, they just have eyespots. Snails have a slightly more advanced eye. Humans and octopus both have very complex eyes, though they evolved in different ways, leading to different structures. It is thought that many of these different types of eyes are at stages of evolution which are nescessary to reach a more complex stage, like the eyes of a human or octopus. About organs in general, they started with different types of tissue in simple multicellular organisms. For example, a ball of protozoa living in a colony might have some cells dedicated to reproduction and others dedicated to photosynthesis or other processes. By making some groups of cells do one thing and another group do something else, a more efficient organism is produced which may have a reproductive advantage over others. Other people might go into greater detail on this.
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