[_ Old Earth _] Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to find?

[Asyncritus]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

asynchritus i was thinking you were a oecer.

What's that? oecer?

 

[Rhea]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

What's that? oecer?

I'm guessing Old Earth Creationist -er

Which would make me an OEEER, but that looks funny, so I'm going to label myself as an OEEist.

 

[Rhea]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

I don't agree that it is a false dichotomy to choose between evolution and creation. Just as it isn't a false dichotomy to choose between a flat earth and a sphere.

And in any case, no one's MAKING anybody choose between the two.

Mind you, I've heard the horror stories about people opposing evolution being refused tenure in the university Biology departments.

If true, that's a form of coercion, isn't it?

It's coercion to expect someone hired to teach science to use science? Sign me up!

I'd like my investment bankers to not use astrology also. And I realize this is coercion and I am ALL FOR IT. I happen to also be against anarchists teaching constitutional law and I expect you'd rather not have atheists teaching Sunday School.

 

[lordkalvan]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

To clarify my position for those who may be interested.

1 I am an Old Earth Creationist.

That's interesting. So do you think that all of life was supernaturally created at one point, or do you think that a number of discrete supernatural events have occurred throughout Earth's history? Your subsequent remarks seem to imply this.

2 I do believe in Noah's flood being a worldwide event

When do you think this event took place and what evidence supports your dating?

3 I do not believe that the fossils etc are the results of a flood, because floods mix things up, while the geological record shows distinct and well-defined stratification everywhere.

A moment of astonishment, I admit, but I actually agree with you.

4 I do not believe in the theory of evolution, because there is far too much evidence against it.

Not for long, though.....

One huge such piece of evidence is the explosive emergence of zillions of new species, genera, families, right up to phyla in the Cambrian layer with absolutely no ancestors or antecedents in the fossil record.

If you regard as 'explosive' a period lasting 70-80 MY, then the radiation of complex lifeforms was remarkable, however there is increasing evidence that this was preceded by a period of biodiversity in the Ediacaran Period and marine organisms from the Neoproterozoic show evidence of increasing defences against predators. Given the evidence of evolution and extinction from as early as at least 2.7 BYA, even though developmental change was initially very slow, citing the Cambrian biota as anti-evolutionary evidence seems a leap too far..

For those who may not know, the Cambrian is the lowest but one layer in the geological strata.

Not strictly correct; 88% of Earth's geologic history consists of the Precambrian, which is broken down into a number of discrete eras.

There are traces of life in the pre-Cambrian layer, but they do not amount to much.

Depends on what you mean by 'much' and 'traces'. Stromatolite fossils have been found in rocks dating to over 3 BYA in Australia and South Africa.

5 I do not believe that life could possibly have arisen from inanimate matter.

Abiogenesis is distinct from evolutionary theory. A divine creator could have fashioned the first single-celled lifeform from which evolutionary development gave rise to the diversity of life we see today and in the fossil record. The origin of life 'mystery' is not itself evidence for the falsity of evolutionary theory.

Pasteur finished that off.

Eh, not exactly. Pasteur demonstrated that the hypothesis of Spontaneous Generation was poorly founded. One aspect of abiogenesis research considers the consequences of the existence of interacting chemical systems as precursors to the emergence of self-replicating molecules.

We are therefore left with Divine Creation as the only viable possibility.

This does not follow, as demonstrated by research into naturalistic origins for the origin of life. Even if it does follow, this does not immediately invalidate the evidence that supports the existence of evolution.

It has its problems of course, but given the supernatural origin of so many of these things, it is unrealistic of scientists to demand 'natural' proof of the existence of the supernatural.

In which case it can safely be disregarded in studies of natural phenomena, which it is.

The very word 'super-natural' excludes such a possibility.

So are you arguing that supernatural events do not have natural consequences that leave evidence behind them?

This also has the very interesting spin-off that if scientists begin their experiments and observations by excluding the possibility of supernatural intervention, then it is hardly surprising that they finish up by excluding the supernatural.

Seems like you want to have your cake and to eat it too. If scientists are to include 'the possibility of supernatural intervention', perhaps you would like to suggest some falsifiable tests that can determine whether or not this has occurred?

And then saying 'Hey look - there's no natural proof of God's existence.'

Nope, what scientists say is here's a naturalistic explanation for X. This does not preclude the existence of a divine being, as evidenced by the strong Christian faith of evolutionary scientists such as Francis Collins and Kenneth Miller.

Footnote:

In connection with my rejection of the possibility that life evolved from inanimate matter, perhaps these citations may be of value to the unbiassed readers...

Nice poisoning of the well, there.

Chemist Dr. Grebe:

“That organic evolution could account for the complex forms of life in the past and the present has long since been abandoned by men who grasp the importance of the DNA genetic code.”

Would this be the same Dr John Grebe who was a co-founder of the Creationist Research Society? If so, why do you imagine that this rather dated quotation (Grebe's doctorate date's to 1935) has any relevance to today's understanding of DNA and evolution?

Researcher and mathematician I.L. Cohen:

“At that moment, when the the DNA/RNA system became understood, the debate between Evolutionists and Creationists should have come to a screeching halt. …the implications of the DNA/RNA were obvious and clear. Mathematically speaking, based on probability concepts, there is no possibility that Evolution was the mechanism that created the approximately 6,000,000 species of plants and animals we recognize today.”

Why should we value a mathematician's assessment of the how the 'DNA/RNA system' should be 'understood'?

Evolutionist Michael Denton:

“The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle.”

And this impacts evolutionary theory how, exactly? The origin of the 'simplest known type of cell' says nothing about how life may have developed from that cell.

Hoyle is even more unpleasant about it:
“The notion that… the operating programme of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.” [140]
—Evolutionist Sir Fred Hoyle

Hoyle was an astronomer, not a biologist, so that he supposes that cellular lifeform arose solely by chance only emphasizes the fact that he should maybe have stuck to his own area of expertise. Let's grant he's right, however: how does this impact evolutionary theory?

 

[Asyncritus]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

It's coercion to expect someone hired to teach science to use science? Sign me up!

I'd like science teachers to teach science, not volumes of evolutionary hypothesising which immediately break down on severe questioning.

At least, they should present some of the evidence for no-evolution that does exist, such as I am presenting here. In universities, students are allegedly thought to think for themselves, and should therefore be given the opportunity to hear the other side of the story, and form their own opinions on the matter.

As things stand, no reputable university would allow me to stand up and run a course on the evidence for creation in Biology.

One would think they've got something to hide.

I don't think all evolutionists are idiots. Gullible, yes. Evidence-ignoring, yes. Wishful thinking, yes. But idiots, no.

Neither, in all fairness, should evolutionists think creationists are all idiots.

I think some of the arguments presented for flood geology are quite idiotic, but that does not mean that creationists are idiots.They are not.

A bit of mutual respect wouldn't go amiss.

 

[jasoncran]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

I don't agree that it is a false dichotomy to choose between evolution and creation. Just as it isn't a false dichotomy to choose between a flat earth and a sphere.

And in any case, no one's MAKING anybody choose between the two.

Mind you, I've heard the horror stories about people opposing evolution being refused tenure in the university Biology departments.

If true, that's a form of coercion, isn't it?

i have a friend who has a degree in biology and basically said that to me. he was harassed over the fact that he is a yecer and yet didnt teach that view to his students just taught what was observed. hmm.

in new york and in the late 60's and early 70's it was a lot easier to be a creationist and a biologist. he merely got harassed but today he probably wouldnt be allowed to state what he believed or teach what he thought was the holes.

 

[lordkalvan]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

I'd like science teachers to teach science, not volumes of evolutionary hypothesising which immediately break down on severe questioning.

And yet we haven't seen you do anything other than declare that evolutionary theory has broken down 'on severe questioning'.

At least, they should present some of the evidence for no-evolution that does exist...

Which is?

...such as I am presenting here.

Sorry, but claims that X is 'impossible', 'extraordinary' or whatever other extravagant term you choose to use coupled with your personal incredulity as to natural explanations for X does not amount to 'presenting' very much more than your personal incredulity.

In universities, students are allegedly thought to think for themselves, and should therefore be given the opportunity to hear the other side of the story, and form their own opinions on the matter.

There is no 'other side of the story' that should be 'heard'. If yours, why not everyone else's? The choice isn't between science-based evolutionary teaching and your theologically-derived brand of OE creationism, but between science-based evolutionary teaching and every other brand of anti-evolutionary, special creation, intelligent design and a host of other pseudoscientific theologically-derived opinions that jostle one another for pre-eminence.

As things stand, no reputable university would allow me to stand up and run a course on the evidence for creation in Biology.

Why would you expect them to?

One would think they've got something to hide.

Yes, they have - their students from theologically-based personal incredulity masquerading as a science-based explanation.

I don't think all evolutionists are idiots. Gullible, yes. Evidence-ignoring, yes. Wishful thinking, yes. But idiots, no.

I see, so we're not idiots, just stupid.

Neither, in all fairness, should evolutionists think creationists are all idiots.

It's not the creationists, it's the arguments.

I think some of the arguments presented for flood geology are quite idiotic, but that does not mean that creationists are idiots.They are not.

And I agree.

A bit of mutual respect wouldn't go amiss.

I have no problem with you as a person, it's your ideas and arguments that I baulk at.

 

[Asyncritus]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

[FONT=&quot]

That's interesting. So do you think that all of life was supernaturally created at one point, or do you think that a number of discrete supernatural events have occurred throughout Earth's history?

Yes, I do think so. I think the Days of Creation occurred with gaps between them. The Genesis record is obviously a summary of what happened, and the gaps are of indeterminate duration.

I also think that the 'kinds' referred to, correspond roughly to genera and families, not species. I think that there has been some alteration of the species, as has been shown quite clearly by the evidence, but that is largely due to the variability that was built into the genomes.

However, anything between the higher groups is simply wishful thinking. To fondly imagine that a fish, for example, could walk out on to land and turn into amphibians, reptiles etc is the height of nonsense in my opinion, and anyone holding such a view has no idea of practical biology whatsoever.

Even worse in some ways, is the idea that the seaweeds (because life allegedly began in the sea) could 'invade the land' and become ultimately sequoias and Douglas firs and such like, isn't too far from insanity.

When do you think this event took place and what evidence supports your dating?

As I said, this is indeterminate, but the dating evidence cannot really be faulted, and runs into the billions of years.

A moment of astonishment, I admit, but I actually agree with you.

If you regard as 'explosive' a period lasting 70-80 MY,

The 'Cambrian Explosion' is not my term, but the palaeontologists'.

then the radiation of complex lifeforms was remarkable,

'Remarkable' is hardly the word.

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Most major animal groups appear for the first time in the fossil record some 545 million years ago on the geological time scale in a relatively short period of time known as the Cambrian explosion. Of great worry to Darwin, the explanation of this sudden, apparent explosion persists as a sources of numerous major debates in paleobiology. While some scientists believe there was indeed an explosion of diversity[/FONT][FONT=&quot]...
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Paleobiology/CambrianExplosion.htm[/FONT][FONT=&quot]

however there is increasing evidence that this was preceded by a period of biodiversity in the Ediacaran Period and marine organisms from the Neoproterozoic show evidence of increasing defences against predators. Given the evidence of evolution and extinction from as early as at least 2.7 BYA, even though developmental change was initially very slow, citing the Cambrian biota as anti-evolutionary evidence seems a leap too far..

I wonder, LK, just how far back you are prepared to go with this. Sooner or later, you will hit the basement where life was not possible.

You will have noticed, I'm sure, that the Ediacaran stromatolites comprise pretty complex organisms, pre-eminent among them, I understand, being the cyanobacteria. Note the complexity of the iconic organism, Dickinsonia:[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
The cyanobacteria which feature then, are, according to the authorities I've read, nearly indistinguishable from the cyanobacteria of today.

Given that, you are compelled to account for their completely modern design, and for the fact that they were able, 3 billion or so years ago, to fix atmospheric nitrogen - a process which was invented by Haber and Bosch only relatively recently, using very high temperatures and pressures.

The cyanobacteria fix nitrogen at normal environmental temperatures.

From where, then, did they get their chemical know-how?

(Rhea, you're a chemist. Perhaps you'd like to tell us of the difficulties which face the fixation of nitrogen and which make it nearly impossible. You might also like to comment on the fact that the cyanobacteria had DNA/RNA, both of which require fixed nitrogen in their molecular structure: where did they get it from?)

Not strictly correct; 88% of Earth's geologic history consists of the Precambrian, which is broken down into a number of discrete eras.

Well. OK.

Depends on what you mean by 'much' and 'traces'. Stromatolite fossils have been found in rocks dating to over 3 BYA in Australia and South Africa.

Abiogenesis is distinct from evolutionary theory. A divine creator could have fashioned the first single-celled lifeform from which evolutionary development gave rise to the diversity of life we see today and in the fossil record. The origin of life 'mystery' is not itself evidence for the falsity of evolutionary theory.

So if you grant the divine Creator's hand here, why exclude it elsewhere?

Eh, not exactly. Pasteur demonstrated that the hypothesis of Spontaneous Generation was poorly founded.

It was stronger than that. He showed it was impossible. He showed that spontaneous generation was wrong, and since then, not a single example of it has ever been found.

It is quite noticeable that he strongly opposed the theory of evolution.

One aspect of abiogenesis research considers the consequences of the existence of interacting chemical systems as precursors to the emergence of self-replicating molecules.

Isn't it astonishing that the idea of 'self-replicating molecules' can even be entertained? Do you have any idea of what is involved in 'self-replication'? Perhaps you might like to give it some thought and then we'll compare notes about what is needed, and has to occur in such a process.

This does not follow, as demonstrated by research into naturalistic origins for the origin of life. Even if it does follow, this does not immediately invalidate the evidence that supports the existence of evolution.

As I said above, if the Creator created the first living organism(s), why do you exclude Him from the rest? Why do you think He might have done such a titanically amazing thing, and then just left things to themselves?

So are you arguing that supernatural events do not have natural consequences that leave evidence behind them?

Quite the contrary. I am saying that the evidence of the supernatural is everywhere visible in nature, even in inanimate nature.

Rhea, you might like to comment on the arrangement and numbers of the electrons in the elements of the periodic table. Do they show evidence of design?

Seems like you want to have your cake and to eat it too. If scientists are to include 'the possibility of supernatural intervention', perhaps you would like to suggest some falsifiable tests that can determine whether or not this has occurred?

I am merely saying that strictly speaking, science is arguing in a circle if it insists that the supernatural does not exist because of their experimental and observational results.

Nope, what scientists say is here's a naturalistic explanation for X. This does not preclude the existence of a divine being, as evidenced by the strong Christian faith of evolutionary scientists such as Francis Collins and Kenneth Miller.

I never cease to be amazed at theistic evolutionists. Dawkins laughs them to scorn, and rightly so, as far as I am concerned. The two things are mutually exclusive and contradictory.

Would this be the same Dr John Grebe who was a co-founder of the Creationist Research Society? If so, why do you imagine that this rather dated quotation (Grebe's doctorate date's to 1935) has any relevance to today's understanding of DNA and evolution?

A great deal more is now known about the structure and functioning of DNA and RNA. It has become a far more complex and intricate thing than ever Grebe, Watson and Crick could have conceived.

All that merely underlines Grebe's remarks more fircibly than he possibly knew.

Why should we value a mathematician's assessment of the how the 'DNA/RNA system' should be 'understood'?

As you certainly know, statistics is central to the understanding and interpretation of experimental results. A mathematician is in a better position than a biologist to make statements about the probability of a given event happening by chance.

Cohen, along wih others such as Murray Eden ( I think he was from MIT) have mathematically examined the probability of the DNA molecules arising by chance, as has Hoyle, below.

Their results show how hopeless it really is - as I'm sure you intuitively know yourself.

And this impacts evolutionary theory how, exactly? The origin of the 'simplest known type of cell' says nothing about how life may have developed from that cell.

I'm sure you can answer that question by yourself. If the origin of the simplest known type of cell was 'miraculous', then the development of the 6000000 or so species from that cell cannot be described as anything less than that.

There's also the point that if that first cell contained within itself the blueprints of the abovementioned 6000000 species, then that was the most wonderful cell ever! How then did it arise?

Hoyle was an astronomer, not a biologist, so that he supposes that cellular lifeform arose solely by chance only emphasizes the fact that he should maybe have stuck to his own area of expertise. Let's grant he's right, however: how does this impact evolutionary theory?

Very violently, I think.

If the first cellular lifeform could not have arisen by chance, then the 6000000 species couldn't either. I would have thought that was pretty obvious. Unless you are attributing miraculous powers to that first cell? Are you?[/FONT]

 

[Rhea]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

I'd like science teachers to teach science, not volumes of evolutionary hypothesising which immediately break down on severe questioning.

At least, they should present some of the evidence for no-evolution that does exist, such as I am presenting here.

But you have only presented assertions. Your conclusions do not follow from the facts presented. They do not follow the scientific method. If a scientist is to say something is "impossible" as you have, they would need much more rigorous proof than you have shown.

In universities, students are allegedly thought to think for themselves, and should therefore be given the opportunity to hear the other side of the story, and form their own opinions on the matter.

Creationism isn't "the other side of the story" It is a different story altogether. It does not use the same methods, it does not use the same manner of proof.

As things stand, no reputable university would allow me to stand up and run a course on the evidence for creation in Biology.

Not true. Of course they would - just not in the biology department because what you're teaching is not biology - AS YOU'VE STATED - it is proof-less. Hence in a religion course it would be quite welcome.

to wit:

It has its problems of course, but given the supernatural origin of so many of these things, it is unrealistic of scientists to demand 'natural' proof of the existence of the supernatural.

You say it's not science and then complain that the scientists won't give you speaking space. (?)

Neither, in all fairness, should evolutionists think creationists are all idiots.

We don't think they are idiots. But we do think they are not scientists, since they do not care to use the scientific method for their subject matter.

 

[lordkalvan]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

Yes, I do think so. I think the Days of Creation occurred with gaps between them. The Genesis record is obviously a summary of what happened, and the gaps are of indeterminate duration.

Okay, I understand, although the 'obviously' seems to be more retrofitting than anything else.

I also think that the 'kinds' referred to, correspond roughly to genera and families, not species.

Why? Biblical examples of 'kinds' seem to be arbitrary and without any obvious precision. Genesis 7:14 implies that there is more than one 'kind' of cattle; Deuteronomy 14 mentions varieties of owls, hawks and ravens as 'kinds'. Clearly these 'classifications' are neither (cattle are a Subspecies and owls are an Order, for example).

I think that there has been some alteration of the species, as has been shown quite clearly by the evidence, but that is largely due to the variability that was built into the genomes.

How do you know that any such 'variability' was 'built into the genomes'? What evidence supports this idea, rather than variability arising as a result of the evolutionary alogorithm? Clearly, from your attribution of 'kinds' to genera and families, variability is sufficient to result in speciation events, the generally accepted level at which macroevolution is considered to occur.

However, anything between the higher groups is simply wishful thinking.

Why?

To fondly imagine that a fish, for example, could walk out on to land and turn into amphibians, reptiles etc is the height of nonsense in my opinion, and anyone holding such a view has no idea of practical biology whatsoever.

No fond imagining required at all: we see terrestrial mammals that display transitional features and behaviour that adapts them for a semi-aquatic existence and marine fish that display transitional features and behaviour that adapts them for a semi-terrestrial existence. To categorize a view based on these actual examples - never mind the evidence from the fossil record - as 'the height of nonsense' and being held by someone who 'has no idea of practical biology whatsoever' seems only to indicate your lack of familiarity with this field of science.

Even worse in some ways, is the idea that the seaweeds (because life allegedly began in the sea) could 'invade the land' and become ultimately sequoias and Douglas firs and such like, isn't too far from insanity.

Are you sure people who don't propose such evolutionary development aren't idiots? There is ample evidence that green marine algae were the first plants to colonize the land.

As I said, this is indeterminate, but the dating evidence cannot really be faulted, and runs into the billions of years.

Well, presumably after the appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens in the fossil record. Scientists can date many catastrophic events in Earth's history to before this date. Why is it difficult to point to evidence that can similarly date one of the supposedly most catastrophic events ever to affect Earth?

The 'Cambrian Explosion' is not my term, but the palaeontologists'.

Well, the Big Bang wasn't really a 'bang', so I'm not sure how relevant such shorthand terms are to understanding how life appeared over the period in question.

'Remarkable' is hardly the word.

But not necessarily miraculous or requiring divine intervention. Also from the site you quoted:

The discovery of new pre-Cambrian and Cambrian fossils help, as these transitional forms support the hypothesis that diversification was well underway before the Cambrian began. More recently, the sequencing of the genomes of thousands of life forms is revealing just how many and what genes and the proteins they encode have been conserved from the Precambrian.

Source: ww w.fossilmuseum.net/Paleobiology/CambrianExplosion.htm

Selective quoting to support a particular argument does not attest to the rigour of your methodology.

I wonder, LK, just how far back you are prepared to go with this. Sooner or later, you will hit the basement where life was not possible.

Well, life was clearly not possible on Earth before conditions arose on Earth that were conducive to its development, so I'm not sure what your point is.

You will have noticed, I'm sure, that the Ediacaran stromatolites comprise pretty complex organisms, pre-eminent among them, I understand, being the cyanobacteria. Note the complexity of the iconic organism, Dickinsonia..

What is your definition of 'complexity' and why do you regard 'complexity' as a barrier to evolutionary processes? Is there a lesser level of 'complexity' where this barrier does not exist? As your comments on variability support the actuality of speciation, much more recent (and complex?) organisms than Dickinsonia have speciated.

The cyanobacteria which feature then, are, according to the authorities I've read, nearly indistinguishable from the cyanobacteria of today.

And why is this particularly noteworthy? If an ecological niche exists and an organism successfully occupies that niche, what would you imagine would be the evolutionary explanation for why descendants of ancestral species do not appear to have changed significantly?

Given that, you are compelled to account for their completely modern design…

Why is the ‘design’ ‘modern’ and why am I ‘compelled’ to account for anything about it? Are ‘modern designs’ inherently less likely to have resulted from evolutionary processes than ancient ones, or is your use of the word ‘design’ intended to suggest that naturalistic process cannot have been involved in their origin at all? You simply stated that ancient cyanobacteria are ‘nearly indistinguishable from’ current cyanobacteria. You may just as well suggest that I am ‘compelled to account for their completely [ancient] design’.

…and for the fact that they were able, 3 billion or so years ago, to fix atmospheric nitrogen - a process which was invented by Haber and Bosch only relatively recently, using very high temperatures and pressures.

What do completely different artificial methods of ‘fixing’ nitrogen have to do with natural processes, ancient or modern?

The cyanobacteria fix nitrogen at normal environmental temperatures.

Yes?

From where, then, did they get their chemical know-how?

It’s not ‘know-how’, it’s a biochemical reaction. Where did you get your ‘chemical know-how’ to absorb and metabolize oxygen?

(Rhea, you're a chemist. Perhaps you'd like to tell us of the difficulties which face the fixation of nitrogen and which make it nearly impossible.

You seem to have already identified these ‘difficulties’ and know why it’s ‘nearly impossible’, so why don’t you tell us? Don’t forget to provide a full and detailed account of the role played by the enzyme nitrogenase.

You might also like to comment on the fact that the cyanobacteria had DNA/RNA, both of which require fixed nitrogen in their molecular structure: where did they get it from?)

Adaptation to environmental change?

So if you grant the divine Creator's hand here, why exclude it elsewhere?

This is a ‘grant’ for the purposes of argument only. What I have excluded elsewhere are claims of divine intervention where neither evidence for that intervention exists nor are naturalistic explanations inadequate or unevidenced.

It was stronger than that. He showed it was impossible. He showed that spontaneous generation was wrong, and since then, not a single example of it has ever been found.

Your point is correct, however I do not see what the consequences are supposed to be of the fact that, having been disproven, no occurrence of it has been observed.

It is quite noticeable that he strongly opposed the theory of evolution.

Which, no doubt, is why he made this comment in 1881:

Virulence appears in a new light which cannot but be alarming to humanity; unless nature, in her evolution down the ages (an evolution which, as we now know, has been going on for millions, nay, hundreds of millions of years), has finally exhausted all the possibilities of producing virulent or contagious diseases - which does not seem very likely.

Isn't it astonishing that the idea of 'self-replicating molecules' can even be entertained?

No.

Do you have any idea of what is involved in 'self-replication'?

Yes. Do you?

Perhaps you might like to give it some thought and then we'll compare notes about what is needed, and has to occur in such a process.

Will you be considering the role of energy-driven networks of small molecules as the possible progenitors of life?

As I said above, if the Creator created the first living organism(s), why do you exclude Him from the rest?

Two points: first catch your rabbit, then show that your rabbit is the only possible explanation for phenomena that we appear to have quite satisfactory naturalistic explanations for.

Why do you think He might have done such a titanically amazing thing, and then just left things to themselves?

Because if this hypothetical creator is as smart as it is supposed to be, its plan encompassed the genius of evolution and natural selection to accomplish its objectives.

Quite the contrary. I am saying that the evidence of the supernatural is everywhere visible in nature, even in inanimate nature.

But you seem unable to provide falsifiable hypotheses that allow us to test whether or not this evidence has a supernatural explanation for its occurrence.

Rhea, you might like to comment on the arrangement and numbers of the electrons in the elements of the periodic table. Do they show evidence of design?

Allow me to comment as well: yes, design according to the entirely naturalistic laws of physics and chemistry. Do you imagine that all aspects of chemical behaviour are the product of supernatural design and, if so, what evidence supports this idea?

I am merely saying that strictly speaking, science is arguing in a circle if it insists that the supernatural does not exist because of their experimental and observational results.

Where does ‘science’ as a body ‘insist’ any such thing? Clearly Francis Collins and Kenneth Miller, amongst many others, don’t.

I never cease to be amazed at theistic evolutionists. Dawkins laughs them to scorn, and rightly so, as far as I am concerned. The two things are mutually exclusive and contradictory.

Which doesn’t tell us why you should be regarded as ‘right’ and they should be regarded as ‘wrong’. Richard Dawkins would be equally scathing of your views. What should I make of that?

A great deal more is now known about the structure and functioning of DNA and RNA. It has become a far more complex and intricate thing than ever Grebe, Watson and Crick could have conceived.

All that merely underlines Grebe's remarks more fircibly than he possibly knew.

How? Grebe’s remark seems ill-informed, outdated and, if he is indeed the co-founder of CRS, scarcely from a disinterested commentator.

As you certainly know, statistics is central to the understanding and interpretation of experimental results. A mathematician is in a better position than a biologist to make statements about the probability of a given event happening by chance.

Not if he is ignorant of the systems on which he is pronouncing, which clearly seems to be the case.

Cohen, along wih others such as Murray Eden ( I think he was from MIT) have mathematically examined the probability of the DNA molecules arising by chance, as has Hoyle, below.

On what basis?

Their results show how hopeless it really is - as I'm sure you intuitively know yourself.

I know that the probability of a ball at rest moving along any given vector is remarkably low, but if the ball is not supported in the vertical plane the probability that it will fall in the direction dictated by gravitational forces is virtually unity. I hope you can see from this simple example that it is not the simple probability of an object-event occurring in isolation that is important, but rather the probability of an object-event occurring within a system of forces that act upon the object that is significant. In other words, the bald probability of, say, RNA assembling as a one-off event by chance is vanishingly small, but the probability is actually influenced by the conditions in which the event occurs, i.e. a complex chemical system in which millions of reactions are occurring simultaneously and continually.

I'm sure you can answer that question by yourself. If the origin of the simplest known type of cell was 'miraculous', then the development of the 6000000 or so species from that cell cannot be described as anything less than that.

See above. There is no immediate reason to suppose that the event was ‘miraculous’ other than one biochemist’s opinion; others take a different view. There is nothing miraculous about the evolutionary algorithm.

There's also the point that if that first cell contained within itself the blueprints of the abovementioned 6000000 species, then that was the most wonderful cell ever! How then did it arise?

There are no blueprints in the cell, so your analogy is specious. The figure of 6,000,000 species you adduce are the result of the evolutionary algorithm. You have already admitted that speciation is a fact, so if it can happen once, why not six million times?

Very violently, I think.

If the first cellular lifeform could not have arisen by chance, then the 6000000 species couldn't either. I would have thought that was pretty obvious. Unless you are attributing miraculous powers to that first cell? Are you?

Except that none of your references establish that the ‘first cellular lifeform’ could not have arisen by naturalistic means, they simply claim this on the basis of unspecified probability calculations. Here’s a contrasting comment by historian Richard Carrier:

To actually calculate the odds of 'life' developing from inanimate matter, one must be acquainted not only with a vast arrangement of data and know how to estimate all the statistical relationships involved, but one must even know things that no one on Earth presently knows, or ever may know.

Source: w ww.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/foster9.html

So exactly how specious do you imagine these probability calculations that you refer to are?

 

[Asyncritus]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

Okay, I understand, although the 'obviously' seems to be more retrofitting than anything else.

Hardly. A single page and a half in Gen 1 can't be anything else but a summary of the creation of the world, can it?

Why? Biblical examples of 'kinds' seem to be arbitrary and without any obvious precision. Genesis 7:14 implies that there is more than one 'kind' of cattle; Deuteronomy 14 mentions varieties of owls, hawks and ravens as 'kinds'. Clearly these 'classifications' are neither (cattle are a Subspecies and owls are an Order, for example).

The Bible does not set itself up as a textbook of taxonomy. So I'm painting with a broad brush here.

How do you know that any such 'variability' was 'built into the genomes'? What evidence supports this idea, rather than variability arising as a result of the evolutionary alogorithm? Clearly, from your attribution of 'kinds' to genera and families, variability is sufficient to result in speciation events, the generally accepted level at which macroevolution is considered to occur.

Variability is built into every genome. Just look at humans, for example. Over long periods of time, I can see variation hardening into some speciation - but that's all that it is or can be.

There are such things as species barriers, beyond which it is not possible to transgress. But a great deal hinges on the definition and description of a species. As you know, what is a species to one taxonomist can be a variety or similar to another.

No fond imagining required at all: we see terrestrial mammals that display transitional features and behaviour that adapts them for a semi-aquatic existence and marine fish that display transitional features and behaviour that adapts them for a semi-terrestrial existence. To categorize a view based on these actual examples - never mind the evidence from the fossil record - as 'the height of nonsense' and being held by someone who 'has no idea of practical biology whatsoever' seems only to indicate your lack of familiarity with this field of science.

I may be unfamiliar with some of this, but I am very familiar with the biology of fishes and amphibians.

I think it is the height of idiocy to suppose that any given species of fish can become an amphibian.

There are far too many insuperables in the way. For a gill-breather to develop lungs, passing through an external gill stage, then into an internal lung stage, which cannot breathe in the water any longer is impossible.

Now before you start moaning about personal incredulity, find some evidence of any assertion you've made. Tiktaalik died a death, as you may or may not know. So did Latimeria. I don't see any other promising candidates on the horizon, but I may be wrong here.

And all such possible 'intermediates' sink on the reef of the question of instinct. This is the fundamental ruin of the whole of evolution theory as I insist.

Let me grant you any physical transformation you like. Assume for instance, that a fish has somehow managed to produce a pair of functional legs and is able to breathe in air. Minor points, of course.

Now what is it going to do with those legs? It's all very well having the legs and lungs, but before they can be used, a instinct has to be implanted which will power the use of the relevant organ.

Without that instinct, the organ is useless.

Without the organ, the instinct is useless.

They both have to arise together.

Let me grant you that mutations etc have produced the physical structures. What has produced the powering instinct?

Since the instinct is non-physical, it is not subject to your normal evolutionary processes. It is way beyond that - but it does exist, and there is no evolutionary accounting for its existence. It has arisen, and is implanted into the genome somewhere.

I think it is a very fair question to ask: how did it arise, and how did it enter the genome?

You have been singularly unable to answer these 2 questions. Unsurprisingly so.

Are you sure people who don't propose such evolutionary development aren't idiots? There is ample evidence that green marine algae were the first plants to colonize the land.

I don't know what 'ample evidence' you have in mind. But the most basic biology must surely tell you that a water plant/ land plant precursor cannot survive for any length of time in the air on land?

Try it. Experiment with any water plant you like. You've seen seaweeds on the shore. Guess what happens? They die.

It's the same with fish. The most basic biology tells me that unless they have specialised air breathing structures,(as in the case of the mudskippers and lungfish - which have not changed for the last 286 million years, and so show no evolutionary progression whatsoever -) they will perish.

Millions of such experiments are carried out every day - by the fishermen. No fish caught ever survives on land and in the air.

So quite apart from the ruinous instinct question, there is the sheer physical one of survival in the air.

You've heard of oxygen poisoning. The concentration of oxygen dissolved in water is extremely low in comparison with air. The high concentration in the air, will poison any fish or plant exposed for too long in the air. How do you suppose the fish/whatever survived?

It's this kind of practical, detailed questioning that evolution theory cannot withstand, without retreating hastily. And as a teacher in the university course I would run, I would beat this drum exceeding loud.

I know they don't dare have people like me, but that's their loss, no, it's their students' loss.

Scientists can date many catastrophic events in Earth's history to before this date. Why is it difficult to point to evidence that can similarly date one of the supposedly most catastrophic events ever to affect Earth?

Are you talking about the flood, or creation? I was talking about the date of creation.

Well, the Big Bang wasn't really a 'bang', so I'm not sure how relevant such shorthand terms are to understanding how life appeared over the period in question.

These palaeontologists are generally sober people, I imagine, and for them to use such a description is not in an effort to mislead.

You can, and will, I suppose, do your best to play it down - but the sheer volume of new species and all the higher taxons that appear in that geological blink of an eye defies any evolutionary explanation. I've never seen a count, but if you have, I'd like to hear it. Darwin knew this perfectly well, and shoddily persisted in presenting this foolish theory.

[FONT=&quot]The theory of the Cambrian Explosion holds that, beginning some 545 million years ago, an explosion of diversity led to the appearance over a relatively short period of 5 million to 10 million years of a huge number of complex, multi-celled organisms. Moreover, this burst of animal forms led to most of the major animal groups we know today, that is, every extant Phylum. It is also postulated that many forms that would rightfully deserve the rank of Phylum both appeared in the Cambrian only to rapidly disappear.

Cambrian Explosion
[/FONT]
Eldredge and Gould, among others knew it too, and Gould presented his 'tree of life' which completely flattened every other tree to date.

 

[Rhea]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

There are far too many insuperables in the way. For a gill-breather to develop lungs, passing through an external gill stage, then into an internal lung stage, which cannot breathe in the water any longer is impossible.

Oh, gosh, this is so totally true! And I can't tell you how uncomfortable pregnancy is when your fetus has to develop in that bubble of oxygen-bearing gas to work with its non-aquatic lung structure. You wouldn't believe the embarrassing sounds a woman's body makes as it passes gas in and out of the womb for 40 weeks!

Oh, wait.

 

[Rhea]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

Let me grant you that mutations etc have produced the physical structures. What has produced the powering instinct?

Since the instinct is non-physical, it is not subject to your normal evolutionary processes. It is way beyond that - but it does exist, and there is no evolutionary accounting for its existence. It has arisen, and is implanted into the genome somewhere.

I think it is a very fair question to ask: how did it arise, and how did it enter the genome?

You have been singularly unable to answer these 2 questions. Unsurprisingly so.

I don't think it's a fair question at all. I think it's a weird, contrived and specious question.

You don't need some second-level mutation to instruct you to feel your legs and notice that when you move them it propels you in a direction that you'd like to go.

That's just bogus.

All the organism needs is a nerve/muscle in the limb and the decision to use it will arise from accidental activation and the observation that this activation was useful.

Have you ever seen an infant discover its fist? Discover the astonishing and surprising fact that not only can you feel your fist on your face, but also you can feel your face on your fist? This is no instinct, it's observation. They are surprised by it. But before long they come to accept, "I don't know how that works, but it works". This can take a while and its so endearing watching them punch themselves in the face and get surprised by it over and over. Sometimes they get mad at their fists. It's quite cute, though you feel sorry for the little buggers, it must be so frustrating to not have an instinct of what to do with your limbs or how they work.

And have you ever seen their consternation as they learn to crawl and their lack of instinct of how to work their limbs results in their moving backwards when they intended to go forwards? Oh, the howls of frustration! They keep trying and going backwards and trying, until the accidentally move in the correct direction, then they pause, recalibrate, discover what their limbs can already do, and then, with some backsliding from time to time, start to master the forward motion.

There's no instinct going on there. There is a desire to "get" to some object in front of them, some spasmodic motion that provides sense feedback that motion is occurring, repetition of that action, trial and error and finally - oh! finally - the deliberate motor planning and executive function to put intent together with activation resulting in the desired motion.


Now you know how it works, please don't pretend we haven't answered you (again).

 

[Asyncritus]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

As I'm looking at the Cambrian explosion, I managed to find a collection of quotations dealing with this very subject. The earliest is 1980, and the latest 1999.

They all sing the same song: 'it simply cannot be explained'.

Source: The Cambrian Explosion

"The fossil record had caused Darwin more grief than joy. Nothing distressed him more than the Cambrian explosion, the coincident appearance of almost all complex organic designs..." (Gould, Stephen Jay., The Panda’s Thumb, 1980, pp. 238-239.)

The Cambrian period (thought to have started 540 million years ago) is a huge evolutionary enigma. Scientists at one time postulated that evolution of phyla took more than 75 million years. Even that period of time was vastly insufficient for this major evolutionary step. Now Darwinists believe that this happened in a few million years. Supposedly nothing but blue-green algae and bacteria lived for billions of years and then in a geologic instant all of the major types of animals sprung into existence! This has been called the Big Bang of Biology. No real progress has been made by evolutionists since Darwin’s day and "The Cambrian evolutionary explosion is still shrouded in mystery." (Eldredge, N., The Monkey Business, 1982, p. 46.)

"Before the Cambrian period, almost all life was microscopic, except for some enigmatic soft-bodied organisms. At the start of the Cambrian, about 544 million years ago, animals burst forth in a rash of evolutionary activity never since equaled. Ocean creatures acquired the ability to grow hard shells, and a broad range of new body plans emerged within the geologically short span of 10 million years. Paleontologists have proposed many theories to explain this revolution but have agreed on none." (Monastersky, R., "When Earth Tipped, Life Went Wild," Science News, vol. 152, 1997, p. 52.)

[They missed the simplest one of all, didn't they?...]

"Eldredge and Gould certainly would agree that some very important gaps really are due to imperfections in the fossil record. Very big gaps, too. For example the Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years, are the oldest ones in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists." (Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker," 1986, p.229).

"Nevertheless, the difficulty of assigning any good reason for the absence of vast piles of strata rich in fossils beneath the Cambrian system is very great. ...The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained." (Darwin, C., The Origin of Species, 1872, pp. 316-317.)

Gould writes, "The Cambrian Explosion occurred in a geological moment, and we have reason to think that all major anatomical designs may have made their evolutionary appearance at that time. ...not only the phylum Chordata itself, but also all its major divisions, arose within the Cambrian Explosion. So much for chordate uniqueness... Contrary to Darwin's expectation that new data would reveal gradualistic continuity with slow and steady expansion, all major discoveries of the past century have only heightened the massiveness and geological abruptness of this formative event..." (Gould, Stephen J., Nature, vol. 377, October 1995, p.682.)

and four years later, he wrote...

"The Cambrian explosion was the most remarkable and puzzling event in the history of life." (Gould, Stephen J., "The Evolution of Life," in Schopf, Evolution: Facts and Fallacies, 1999, p. 9.)

All this, is of course, entirely in harmony with a burst of creative activity - and the observations exactly match what we would expect.

Assuming that these guys are speaking the truth as they knew it, LK, what 'evolutionary' explanation can be offered for this 'explosion' of new biological forms? At known rates of speciation, there simply isn't enough time for all this to have happened.

How can one look these facts in the eye, and still talk about 'evolution', 'gradualism', 'uniformitarianism' and the like?

My mind boggles at the thought, but perhaps yours doesn't.

I can't understand why it doesn't.

I'll get to the rest of your last post as soon as I can.

 

[Asyncritus]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

It's difficult to know how to address this post, Rhea, because you have left your common sense and reason far behind in the dust.

I disagree with you: it is a most reasonable question, and there is nothing weird about it at all.

Evolution is supposed to be a theory of origins, isn't it? I'm asking the question: what is the origin of these behaviours, and how can it have entered the genome?

Here in this post, you are talking about an infant LEARNING motor skills of one kind or another.

Can you not see, that THE ABILITY TO LEARN THOSE SKILLS IS ALREADY PRESENT in the child?

If it wasn't there, then all the fist waving and leg moving in the world would be useless.

How did it get there? The child certainly doesn't know, the parents don't either, and neither do you!

The child is able to move its hands and legs. HOW DID IT KNOW HOW TO DO SO? It certainly didn't LEARN how to do so - that was INBUILT, an instinct if you like.

It knows how to suckle. Some animals can get up and walk immediately they're born.

How? Instinct is the only answer we can give.

But that leaves you with the quite ruinous questions: how did that instinct arise? And how did it enter the genome?

Now you know how it works, please don't pretend we haven't answered you (again).

You haven't answered anything - but you've done a fair bit of question begging.

Try again.

 

[lordkalvan]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

Hardly. A single page and a half in Gen 1 can't be anything else but a summary of the creation of the world, can it?

I think we are probably at cross-purposes. I was commenting on the use of the word 'obviously', which I took to imply that what you were referring to corresponded in some way with reality. As you clarify here, Genesis is obviously a typical summary of a mythological supernatural creation event familiar from other such tales.

The Bible does not set itself up as a textbook of taxonomy. So I'm painting with a broad brush here.

Well, yes, but insofar as it is the Bible that provides the inspiration for classifying animals (but not plants, strangely enough; how should they be classified?) into kinds, the lack of precision that you acknowledge only reinforces the idea that such a definition is largely useless for any scientific purpose.

Variability is built into every genome. Just look at humans, for example.

Okay, I'm looking. How can I isolate and identify this 'built-in' variability?

Over long periods of time, I can see variation hardening into some speciation - but that's all that it is or can be.

As you have described 'kinds' as equivalent to families and genera, then speciation has to be more common than just the 'some' which you seem to use in the sense of 'not very much at all'. You have also still to clarify why 'kind' should be pitched at the family/genus level when the Bible classifies different types of cattle as 'kinds'.

There are such things as species barriers, beyond which it is not possible to transgress.

Fine, so no doubt you can identify what these 'barriers' are, how they operate and how they can be identified?

But a great deal hinges on the definition and description of a species. As you know, what is a species to one taxonomist can be a variety or similar to another.

I agree that species have fuzzy boundaries, but in terms of taxonomic science the consensus as to what constitutes a species is almost universal. Uncertainties may arise, but these tend to come up over questions of identification (a previously described species may comprise several separately evolving groups), speciation and how to decide which species a particular individual belongs to.

I may be unfamiliar with some of this, but I am very familiar with the biology of fishes and amphibians.

I think it is the height of idiocy to suppose that any given species of fish can become an amphibian.

Well, as evolutionary theory proposes no such thing, so would I. In fact, such an event would falsify evolutionary theory as currently understood. However, insofar as some 11 genera of fish are classified as amphibious by zoologists, I am surprised that you regard the possibility of amphibious fish as achieving such heights of idiocy.

There are far too many insuperables in the way. For a gill-breather to develop lungs, passing through an external gill stage, then into an internal lung stage, which cannot breathe in the water any longer is impossible.

Well, I guess frogs, toads, newts and salamanders must be figments of the collective evolutionary imagination, then?

Now before you start moaning about personal incredulity, find some evidence of any assertion you've made.

Pick one of these alleged assertions and I'll do my best.

Tiktaalik died a death, as you may or may not know.

No, I don't know. Why don't you elaborate?

So did Latimeria.

Again, this is news to me. Perhaps you can explain what you are talking about?

I don't see any other promising candidates on the horizon, but I may be wrong here.

Candidates for what?

Pressed for time, I'm afraid. More later.

 

[Asyncritus]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

[FONT=&quot]

I think we are probably at cross-purposes. I was commenting on the use of the word 'obviously', which I took to imply that what you were referring to corresponded in some way with reality. As you clarify here, Genesis is obviously a typical summary of a mythological supernatural creation event familiar from other such tales.

Genesis is certainly not a 'typical summary'. You really aren't acquainted with the creation myths of other religions, are you? Here's a nice compendium for you to examine and compare with Genesis: Creation Myths - A Large and Diverse Collection of Links to Creation Myths from Around the World - creation myth,creation myths,creation mythology,creation myths from around the world,creation myths from different cultures,creation story,creation sto

Creation certainly wasn't a mythological event. I mean, if I were to write my own story, and say, "in the beginning there was the god No-thing, and suddenly he exploded, and that explosion produced uncountable zillions of stars and moons, and also lots of life forms like elephants and tapeworms" - would you believe me?

I very much doubt it - but that account bears more than a passing resemblance to what science is trying to say today.

Now compare that with: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

That's sober, rational sense, isn't it?

Well, yes, but insofar as it is the Bible that provides the inspiration for classifying animals (but not plants, strangely enough; how should they be classified?) into kinds, the lack of precision that you acknowledge only reinforces the idea that such a definition is largely useless for any scientific purpose.

I agree, it's difficult to be precise enough for us moderns 2-3000 years ago. But their systems of classification were certainly based on different criteria to ours, and those are their distinctions: clean and unclean, for whatever reasons.

Okay, I'm looking. How can I isolate and identify this 'built-in' variability?

I don't know how you could 'isolate' it - maybe a ststistically minded geneticist could help you here - but it is phenotypically perfectly obvious, isn't it?

As you have described 'kinds' as equivalent to families and genera, then speciation has to be more common than just the 'some' which you seem to use in the sense of 'not very much at all'. You have also still to clarify why 'kind' should be pitched at the family/genus level when the Bible classifies different types of cattle as 'kinds'.

The reason I have for saying so, is the non-interbreeding phenomenon. It is possible to cross say zebras and donkeys, or horses and donkeys in the genetic labs and domestically. Those are 'related' groups. In the wild, that never occurs.

But to try that with the higher taxons, would be stupid. There are such limits which cannot be crossed. I recall Luther Burbank, the most famous American plant breeder saying something of the sort.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]"I know from my experience that I can develop a plum half an inch long or one two and a half inches long, with every possible length in between, but I am willing to admit that it is hopeless to try to get a plum the size of a small pea or one as big as a grapefruit . . In short, there are limits to the developments possible, and these limits follow a law . . [/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]"In the law [of reversion toward the mean, or average], experiments carried on extensively have given us scientific proof of what we already guessed by observation: namely, that plants and animals all tend to revert, in successive generations, toward a given mean, or average . . In short, there is undoubtedly a pull toward the mean which keeps all living things within more or less fixed limitations."[/FONT][FONT=&quot]—*Luther Burbank, Partner of Nature (1939), pp. 89-99.[/FONT][FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]
"Some remarkable things have been done by crossbreeding and selection inside the species barrier or within a larger circle of closely related species, such as the wheats. But wheat is still wheat, and not, for instance, grapefruit; and we can no more grow wings on pigs than hens can make cylindrical eggs."—*E. Deevey, "The Reply: Letter from Birman Wood," in Yale Review, (1967), Vol. 61, pp. 631, 636.[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]"It would appear that careful domestic breeding, whatever it may do to improve the quality of race horses or cabbages, is not actually in itself the road to the endless biological deviation, which is evolution."—*Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey, (1958), p. 223.[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]

Fine, so no doubt you can identify what these 'barriers' are, how they operate and how they can be identified?

You need a geneticist to answer that one - and the above people, like Eiseley, and Deevey were very famous geneticists in their time.

I agree that species have fuzzy boundaries, but in terms of taxonomic science the consensus as to what constitutes a species is almost universal. Uncertainties may arise, but these tend to come up over questions of identification (a previously described species may comprise several separately evolving groups), speciation and how to decide which species a particular individual belongs to.

It's all very well to talk about 'evolving groups', LK. But whether they exist at all, they simply never existed is sufficiently significant numbers to produce anything like the 6000000 species today.

And as shown above, the Cambrian explosion falsifies any such idea. It simply does not happen.

Well, as evolutionary theory proposes no such thing, so would I. In fact, such an event would falsify evolutionary theory as currently understood. However, insofar as some 11 genera of fish are classified as amphibious by zoologists, I am surprised that you regard the possibility of amphibious fish as achieving such heights of idiocy.

I looked at the wikipedia article you mentioned, and I find that although 11 genera sound a pretty fair number, they are really not amphibious in the way a frog, say, is amphibious. All of those mentioned above HAVE TO RETURN TO THE WATER TO SURVIVE.

These MAY SURVIVE OUTSIDE the water for extended periods, but HAVE to return.

Remember, evolution says that they come out of the water forever, and walk, run and eventually fly. None of these creatures even remotely meets those requirements.

I repeat, that for a fish of whatever description to emerge from the water AND NEVER RETURN is a complete non-starter, no matter how hard the evolutionists may try to bolster the idea up.

And have you ever considered the differences between a gill and a lung? A gill, in order to function must be kept wet and surrounded by the water from which it extracts the oxygen and into which it passes the carbon dioxide.

A lung is a hollow sac, which, if it fills up with water, results in drowning and death. Those are two insurmountable objections. A lung cannot function underwater, and neither can a gill function in the air.

So where does our hypothetical intermediate live? It has successfully produced functioning lungs, legs, and kidneys all of which are designed to function OUT OF THE WATER. (By heaven, these mutations are miraculous things, aren't they? Ho boy!)

But it is still a fish, presumably.

So what does it do? It dashes in and out of the water, practising, until it dies. How does it pass these new characteristics to its offspring? AND WHERE DO THE INSTINCTS REQUIRED TO USE THESE NEW ORGANS COME FROM?

Well, I guess frogs, toads, newts and salamanders must be figments of the collective evolutionary imagination, then?

They are not intermediates, LK. They collectively form a massive group called the Amphibia. There are 6,317 amphibian species, of which 5,576 are anurans (frogs and toads), 566 are caudates (newts and salamanders), and 175 are gymnophiones (caecilians). Poison Dart Frogs | Red Eye Treefrog

They show no sign of 'evolving' into reptiles.

There's another major difficulty - reproduction. Most fish, if not all, lay their eggs in the water, and they are fertilised by milt also released into the water. Many bear live offspring.

Some amphibians lay their eggs on land. Some climb trees. Some don't have a tadpole stage, many do - and as you know, there are several tadpole stages. Fish simply don't do this. So how did that evolve, and from what?

No, I don't know. Why don't you elaborate?

Again, this is news to me. Perhaps you can explain what you are talking about?

Here's a quote from some chap called Asyncritus on his blog 'How does instinct evolve?'

Tiktaalik was considered to be one of the ancestors of tetrapods, with much blowing of trumpets and evolutionist chortling.

Alas, alas! Woe is them, they are undone!

This very month (Jan 2010) an article was published in Nature which caused one of the editors (Henry Gee) to write this:

The best discoveries are those that overturn current thinking, revealing that what we thought, only yesterday, to have been a coherent and complete picture, is in fact a void that no discoveries can yet fill.

Such is the report in tomorrow’s Nature (Niedźwiedzki et al., 463, 43-48, 7 January 2010) of footprints left by tetrapods (four legged land vertebrates) eighteen million years older than the earliest known tetrapod fossils,A fairly complete picture of tetrapod evolution, built up over the past twenty years, has been replaced by a blank canvas overnight.

:biglol:toofunny

Candidates for what?

For intermediacy between fish and amphibians and reptiles.

[/FONT]

 

[Rhea]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

It's difficult to know how to address this post, Rhea, because you have left your common sense and reason far behind in the dust.

gratuitous insult enjoyed. Carry on. About the ideas, then.

Evolution is supposed to be a theory of origins, isn't it? I'm asking the question: what is the origin of these behaviours, and how can it have entered the genome?

And I answered it. Is it IN the genome? Or is the knowledge of HOW to use our limbs something that we discover. I watched my children discover it. They were quite surprised. Read child development books, you'll see this is quite the norm.

Can you not see, that THE ABILITY TO LEARN THOSE SKILLS IS ALREADY PRESENT in the child?

Nope. That was what I said to you. They were quite surprised by the astonishing discovery that the limb flailing in front of their face was theirs.

Do you have children? Have you never seen this? If you have not, you can read any child development book helping parents understand the development of their kids. It's all spelled out.

If it wasn't there, then all the fist waving and leg moving in the world would be useless.

LOL. It was useless. Until many months passed and the child eventually went through enough trial and error to make the observational discovery.

Human babies are born quite premature. Man other animals go through this in the womb, or, in the case of marsupials, in the pouch. Some other animals have infants as premature as ours which require as much parental oversight until they discover and develop these capabilities.

How did it get there? The child certainly doesn't know, the parents don't either, and neither do you!

On the contrary. I told you in my lat post that I watched them discover something that was clearly NOT in their instinct at birth. They had limbs that they did not know how to use

Moreover, I have told you in previous posts, that the ones that are instincts are the ones that showed up and produced an advantage and therefor surviced and outproduced the non-present ones.

You keep replying that this is impossible, but you have presented no good reason why. It does not seem impossible to me as it is merely an extension of other obviously possible things that we see all the time.

The child is able to move its hands and legs. HOW DID IT KNOW HOW TO DO SO? It certainly didn't LEARN how to do so - that was INBUILT, an instinct if you like.

It doesn't know how. I told you that already. It does it impulsively and unthinkingly and unpurposefully. It is flailing. it is jerking and spasming.

How? Instinct is the only answer we can give.

It's not the only answer, as I have pointed out. Some "instincts" however are still not "impossible" as they are natural extensions of beneficial mutations and survival advantage. Something happens that the organism likes/gets good feerdback. It repeats it to get the good feedback (think drug addiction). Those that like that, survive better.

But that leaves you with the quite ruinous questions: how did that instinct arise? And how did it enter the genome?

I'll say it again. Some of these things are not in the genome, or don't have to be in the genome. The "use of limbs" is one.

Other things that appear to be in the genome (like navigation) will arrive there by mutation and stay there due to advantage.

I realize that you must reject this pathway because it destroys your worldview. But it is clear to me from ample evidence that these mechanisms exist in many ways and in many places. To presume they exist in this place, too, is not a stretch.

Are you aware that the mechanisms of evolution and development have so many parallels that a new discipline of "evolutionary developmental science" has arisen? There are MANY parallels that can be seen between how organisms evolve and how organisms develop (e.g. fetal to adult). I recommend the book "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" by Sean Carroll.

You never did answer my question what kind of scientist are you?

 

[lordkalvan]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

And all such possible 'intermediates' sink on the reef of the question of instinct. This is the fundamental ruin of the whole of evolution theory as I insist.

No matter how often you repeat this canard, it remains the case that your 'question' poses no threat to evolutionary theory at all. The only thing it demonstrates is your poor grasp of that theory. Do you still believe that evolutionary theory proposes that humans evolved from chimpanzees, for example? This is one of the many questions arising from your many assertions, assumptions, misrepresentations and misunderstandings that you have still shown no inclination to answer.

Let me grant you any physical transformation you like. Assume for instance, that a fish has somehow managed to produce a pair of functional legs and is able to breathe in air. Minor points, of course.

Now what is it going to do with those legs? It's all very well having the legs and lungs, but before they can be used, a instinct has to be implanted which will power the use of the relevant organ.

Evolutionary theory proposes descent with modification from common ancestors for all known life on Earth. Do you understand this?

Without that instinct, the organ is useless.

Without the organ, the instinct is useless.

They both have to arise together.

Let me grant you that mutations etc have produced the physical structures. What has produced the powering instinct?

What do you understand by the term 'instinct'? You seem to imagine it as a word endowed with wonder and mystery. It is a short-hand way, in biology, of referring to a range of reflex actions that can be characterized as biochemical responses reinforced by positive feedback and it evolves like any other trait - by descent with modification through natural selection. Do you think that oxygen bonds with hydrogen because of some intent on the part of a supernatural designer? Do you think that observed changes in migratory behaviour require supernatural explanations or are you satisfied with naturalistic ones? This is another question that you have been assiduously avoiding.

Since the instinct is non-physical, it is not subject to your normal evolutionary processes.

What do you mean, instincts are 'non-physical' and why are they 'not subject to normal...evolutionary processes'? We see changes in migratory behaviour all the time. What is there about these changes that are 'not subject to normal...evolutionary processes'?

It is way beyond that - but it does exist, and there is no evolutionary accounting for its existence.

Assertion without evidence and, more culpably, in ignorance and denial of evidence.

It has arisen, and is implanted into the genome somewhere.

And research into knockout mice allows scientists to see exactly where in some cases.

I think it is a very fair question to ask: how did it arise, and how did it enter the genome?

Through the evolutionary algorithm. How do you imagine amoeba - completely without brains and with only the most rudimentary of nervous systems - will 'instinctively' move towards food. How do they 'know' how to do this? Because they are responding to biochemical signals and those ancestral amoeba that lacked the mutation that led to this action were eminently less successful at reproducing than those that did. And there you have an 'evolutionary explanation' for how the instinct to move towards food developed in amoeba and how it 'entered the genome'. No magic required.

You have been singularly unable to answer these 2 questions. Unsurprisingly so.

And you have resisted all attempts to develop discussion around these two 'questions' designed to elucidate the processes by which instinct arises and to correct the misunderstandings and misrepresentations that litter your posts. Given your stated pre-existing belief that evolution is impossible, this isn't surprising either: all you want to do is pose your simplistic strawman questions and proclaim the defeat of evolutionary theory when no one can answer them to your satisfaction.

I don't know what 'ample evidence' you have in mind. But the most basic biology must surely tell you that a water plant/ land plant precursor cannot survive for any length of time in the air on land?

Why not? All the best evidence suggests that the first algae to colonize the land did so by evolving resistance to drying out. Four separate types of algae seem to have made efforts to colonize a terrestrial environment, but it was one particular lineage that gave rise to terrestrial plants. All four varities of these colonizing algae continue to be found on land, which is a strong indication that the evolution of resistance to drying out was successful.

The evidence indicates that plants did not evolve a wholly terrestrial existence directly from algae roots, but were still dependent on the water, particularly for reproduction. I don't think anyone suggests that this transition and the adaptations that were necessary to allow an entirely land-based existence (cuticles to keep water in, stoma to let gases pass through the cuticle, vascularization, root-systems, etc) took place immediately the first algae colonized the land, but there is no obvious evolutionary barrier to preclude any of these systems developing.

Try it. Experiment with any water plant you like. You've seen seaweeds on the shore. Guess what happens? They die.

What evolutionary hypothesis are you aware of that proposes that seaweeds gave rise to terrestrial plants?

It's the same with fish. The most basic biology tells me that unless they have specialised air breathing structures,(as in the case of the mudskippers and lungfish - which have not changed for the last 286 million years, and so show no evolutionary progression whatsoever -) they will perish.

Millions of such experiments are carried out every day - by the fishermen. No fish caught ever survives on land and in the air.

Again, you seem to imagine that individuals evolve rather than populations.

So quite apart from the ruinous instinct question...

You need to give up this unsupported assertion.

...there is the sheer physical one of survival in the air.

You've heard of oxygen poisoning. The concentration of oxygen dissolved in water is extremely low in comparison with air. The high concentration in the air, will poison any fish or plant exposed for too long in the air. How do you suppose the fish/whatever survived?

And yet some fish survive in air for months. How about that?

It's this kind of practical, detailed questioning that evolution theory cannot withstand, without retreating hastily. And as a teacher in the university course I would run, I would beat this drum exceeding loud.

And it is this kind of ignorance-based arrogance that means that no university would permit you to run such a course. Well, not in any science department, anyway.

I know they don't dare have people like me, but that's their loss, no, it's their students' loss.

Well, they do have standards imposed in order to maintain accreditation of their courses.

Are you talking about the flood, or creation? I was talking about the date of creation.

My bad; I think we lost the thread of conversation there: I was referring to the flood originally, but you must have thought I was referring to creation, so I thought your reply was talking about the flood....


Again short of time. To be continued.....

 

[lordkalvan]

Re: Assuming Creationism is true (and the flood) what evidence would we expect to fin

These palaeontologists are generally sober people, I imagine, and for them to use such a description is not in an effort to mislead.

And yet not sober enough to realize that evolutionary theory is a chimaera. Go figure.

You can, and will, I suppose, do your best to play it down - but the sheer volume of new species and all the higher taxons that appear in that geological blink of an eye defies any evolutionary explanation.

Eh, no it doesn't.

I've never seen a count, but if you have, I'd like to hear it.

I have no precise knowledge.

Darwin knew this perfectly well, and shoddily persisted in presenting this foolish theory.

Careful, your pre-existing bias is showing. Darwin 'persisted in presenting this foolish theory' because it best accounted for (and still best accounts for in its modern incarnation) for all the observed evidence.

[FONT=&quot]The theory of the Cambrian Explosion holds that, beginning some 545 million years ago, an explosion of diversity led to the appearance over a relatively short period of 5 million to 10 million years of a huge number of complex, multi-celled organisms. Moreover, this burst of animal forms led to most of the major animal groups we know today, that is, every extant Phylum. It is also postulated that many forms that would rightfully deserve the rank of Phylum both appeared in the Cambrian only to rapidly disappear.

Cambrian Explosion
[/FONT]

Yes? And?

Eldredge and Gould, among others knew it too...

Knew what?

...and Gould presented his 'tree of life' which completely flattened every other tree to date.

Do you mean Gould's more 'shrubby' analogy? Don't make the mistake of assuming that an analogy is anything more than a means to help you visualize a complex idea in simple terms.