[_ Old Earth _] ICR - lies, ignorance and misrepresentation

[Engi]

I think people are jumping to conclusions

Firstly
ICR NEVER posted the link directly to that article. The assumption has been made; that that particular SECONDARY SOURCE was the publishing ICR were refering too. I could be wrong, but I believe the article that logical bob has referenced on the nature website to be a Secondary source article on a much bigger Primary source. Looking at the references, the nature article references another source (primary). Following this link you'll find that you need to pay to access this information, still on the nature website. I'm not interested enough to pay to find out, but it raises the issues.

SO to note:the artical which has been referenced "Whipping up a little natural selection
" Nature article is;

A) Not the original source, but instead is a secondary source
B) Therefore not necessarily complete in its information and thus isn't apropriate for comparision

This Raises the other Question: Was it the source of ICR's information
1. I believe for any professional scientist to write an article that; it would be unlikely that they would use a secondary source rather then a primary one. To assume they would, has already assumed they have done bad science and is a large potential for error. It is far more likely they would have used a primary source.
2. Because they say that it was published on nature (news article or whatever) doesn't necessarily make it the news article their source of information. This is another jump a to conclusion based on no evidence. They did not source it in their references, merely, they have made a remark.

Thus I believe it is too early to make a conclusion, and to do so would be make large assumptions with no basis and thus devoid of substance. If one is to come to a conclusion they will need to actually go and pay for the scientific source and read it, and see what it says.

 

[Evointrinsic]

thank you for bringing up a good point engi.

I actually do have the PDF file from Nature, the full, "primary" source. And all my (and Bobs) arguments still stand.

The original scientific paper (primary source) speaks nothing of a successive generation. It does however go on to explain in much detail the effects of the populations they introduced to the islands because of the influence of predators and/or added population (Competition). The paper speaks nothing about whether or not successive generations acquired new traits or variations that the ICR claims it did.

The scientists wanted to see whether or not predation (nature) was effective at causing (by selecting) different traits to become dominant or to even appear out of nowhere in the lizards.

No, the scientists wanted to see whether predator or competition was the leading factor in selecting specific traits in Anolis ecomorphs within the Greater Antilles. This experiment is an attempt to explain how traits that are already visible in the Anolis genus came to be. This isn't an attempt to recreate them.

Here is a quote from the paper (Primary source)

...competition is relatively more important than predation in driving viability selection on body size, relative limb length and stamina in brown anoles. Body size and relative limb length are of particular interest because they are key morphological features in the adaptive radiation of Anolis ecomorphs in the Greater Antilles.

 

[Barbarian]

My question to you is how long do we have to wait, how many generations from these original lizards do we have to wait for before we begin to see any changes?

That experiment has been done.

In 1971, biologists moved five adult pairs of Italian wall lizards from their home island of Pod Kopiste, in the South Adriatic Sea, to the neighboring island of Pod Mrcaru. Now, an international team of researchers has shown that introducing these small, green-backed lizards, Podarcis sicula, to a new environment caused them to undergo rapid and large-scale evolutionary changes...Striking differences in head size and shape, increased bite strength and the development of new structures in the lizard’s digestive tracts were noted after only 36 years, which is an extremely short time scale,†says Duncan Irschick, a professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “These physical changes have occurred side-by-side with dramatic changes in population density and social structure.â€...Examination of the lizard’s digestive tracts revealed something even more surprising. Eating more plants caused the development of new structures called cecal valves, designed to slow the passage of food by creating fermentation chambers in the gut, where microbes can break down the difficult to digest portion of plants.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 112433.htm

A bit of a surprise; who would have thought entirely new structures could evolve so fast? It appears that Gould was right.

 

[Evointrinsic]

Just to clarify, my answer to the same question Barbarian just answered as well, is about any changes, more specifically genetic variation as well. Just so we don't have to argue about "well one said this and one said that" Barbarian is talking about noticeable physical changes and I was talking about noticeable genetic changes (which most creationists don't seem to bother looking at if they don't see a physical change)

 

[Bronzesnake]

Hello Evo.

Because there was no evidence of a second generation in the original article. That, and such a drastic mutation wouldn't suddenly occur in a single generation, but rather many generations gradually.

I’m asking how long it takes for any changes to first be noticed.
There must be a point when a change is discovered right? So we have an animal, this animal is put into an experiment where environmental conditions are manipulated with the hopes that these animals would somehow adapt to environmental changes and the scientists would be able to observe the changes as they happened.

So, the animal appears not to have changed at all!
If the theory is correct, and genetic changes occur due to changing environmental conditions, then why was there no change? Why would there be stasis? If environmental changes really do effect genetic changes which your theory assumes then leads to macro evolution, then why was there no change?

Or are you now telling us that the environmental changes are not the cause for genetic change?
Why would the animal wait for multiple generations in the same enviornmental conditions to show any genetic change?
This is not good news for the theory because many environmental changes actually cause species to die off before any genetic change can take place which would have the animal adapt to the change which killed them off in the first place!

So genetic adaptation must happen extremely fast for this theory to be reliable.
What you’re telling us is that the animals don’t actually react on a genetic level when they are placed in a new environmental condition until several generations after the change.
I’m asserting that the idea that genetic change is a direct reaction to environment changes is not shown to be accurate.

Either environmental changes cause genetic change or they don’t. You seem to want it both ways.
If I stick my hand in an open fire, it burns right away. I don’t have to have wait for my son to be born, and have him stick his hand in the fire, then in turn he doesn’t have to wait for his son to be born and stick his hand in the fire and so on, until the skin begins to react to the heat and melt.
This is what you’re trying to have us believe.

You place animals in a different environmental condition, and in at least one case, the animals were being eaten, and yet none of the animals appear to have any genetic change whatsoever, and so you tell us it takes several generations before they realise they are in a different state, then they change!
This is nonsense.

Also, I have serious problems with the hypothesis in that Darwinian evolution is based on circumstances where there is no intelligent direction and yet out of this random, fluke chance chaos; we have what appear to be very complex deliberate systems and events which are predictable. This is not the true description of random, fluke, chance non intelligent events. This is more suitable to an explanation of intelligent creation or manipulation in the very least.

Here again, the evolutionists wants it both ways. He wants to believe in a random, fluke, chance event, and he also wants to be able to put the entire process into a predictable, scientific system.
How on earth could a process which is based exclusively on chaos ever have such predictable parameters attached to it?

If life was actually “created†by chance, then it takes an amazingly huge leap of faith to take the odds against all the progressive steps which happened immediately after this first so called simple single cell magically appeared.

Once this first life form came into existence, if we ascribe to non intelligent, fluke, random dumb luck chance, then by all odds that first life form should have simply died instantaneously.
But low and behold, and against all odds, life not only came into existence, it amazingly found itself in favourable conditions which in itself was also a fluke, random, dumb luck chance occurrence.

Yes, it found itself on a planet which just happened to have all this life form needed to survive! Wowee!!! Anyone wanna buy a lottery ticket!?
After this stroke of extreme luck, this lucky little cellular life form also just happened to have a built in “system†of sustenance! Yes, it was able to survive without any other living food source, how extremely fortunate again!

Then, by yet another amazing random, dumb luck chance occurrence, or coincidence, this life form was able to mutate and reproduce!! Wow and built in friend! What are the odds!!??
Then, as if this wasn’t enough, this simple random, dumb luck fluke life form actually had an extremely complex set of instructions - information far more complex than even those of us who evolved into geniuses could ever hope to create with all their brain power. Wow, how amazing!

These instructions actually had an encoded set of blue prints, and as if that weren’t against all odds in the entire history of the universe, there wasn’t just blue prints, no, that would be only "super duper elephant blooper amazing", there was also a “system†which could not only understand these blue prints, but could follow the information encoded in blue prints and build more and more complex life forms using what evolutionists would have any gullible people believe, was yet another amazing random, dumb luck system where fluke, random, dumb luck “mutations†actually went onto “create†all life forms that we have come to know and love today. Now that is just "super duper elephant blooper Clint Eastwood portrayed a Marshal named Cooper if you walk your dog please use a scooper amazing"!

Mind you, this “knowledge†and this “love†I speak of is also part of a dumb, random lucky process, because we are not allowed to infer any meaningful, purposeful, intelligently guided life.

I haven’t gone into the amazing set of random, dumb luck events which happened right after “nothing†exploded (well, evolutionists don’t like this description, so use whatever word you like, after all, words aren’t really meaningful, because they are just another dumb, luck unintelligent accident of evolution)
So when nothing fill in the blank here for exploded, turned into everything including systems which don’t fit evolutionary parameters, we have another set of unexplainable random dumb luck occurrences in between each successive new element coming into existence.

In the end, the very idea that the entire universe including earth and all life is the result of “nothing†becoming “everything†is ludicrous!

If any of you evolutionists went into a courtroom and were asked to explain where the gold bars you were arrested possessing came from, and you stated that they just all of a sudden randomly appeared in the trunk of your car, you would be laughed out of court. And a gold bar is far less complex than the things which you expect us to believe just "happened".

First, there was "nothing", then “something†happened. How can you have “something†out of “nothing�
What cause this imagined “spark†which cause this imagined “big bang†in the first place?
And where did all the material which encompasses all the elements come from?

Some of you laugh at Christians because we believe in this “invisible man in the sky†but do you even consider that you believe in an invisible “nothing†in the sky?
We see how complex the universe is with all its galaxies, suns, planets, all its laws and systems, earth and life and we believe in a creator. You see the same things and you believe it is all the result of chaos. Heck, even chaos cannot exists out of "nothing"!

When we look at the workings of a computer. All its programs and its systems, we know for certain it was created beginning with an idea and then a set of drawings and instructions, and a list a materials and a code for the programs. We know for certain that something this complex cannot happen without intelligence, and yet with the universe, which is far more complex, so complex that we know without a doubt that humans could never recreate it, and yet this we are willing to believe happened without God.
Its human arrogance I suppose. What else could explain such a dichotomy?

Obviously there is humour in this post. Please do not take it personally. It was not aimed at any one in particular.

Bronzesnake

 

[Evointrinsic]

Because there was no evidence of a second generation in the original article. That, and such a drastic mutation wouldn't suddenly occur in a single generation, but rather many generations gradually.

I’m asking how long it takes for any changes to first be noticed.
There must be a point when a change is discovered right? So we have an animal, this animal is put into an experiment where environmental conditions are manipulated with the hopes that these animals would somehow adapt to environmental changes and the scientists would be able to observe the changes as they happened.

So, the animal appears not to have changed at all!
If the theory is correct, and genetic changes occur due to changing environmental conditions, then why was there no change? Why would there be stasis? If environmental changes really do effect genetic changes which your theory assumes then leads to macro evolution, then why was there no change?

First, you'll have to identify what "Change" means by your standards. If you mean Genetic Change, then of course no change is going to happen if there was no second generation, that is not what the scientists are trying to observe. I repeat, This study has nothing to do with affirming genetic changes.

What the scientists are studying is what factor (predation, lack of predator or Competition) would lead to certain traits. here is an image from the paper.

As you can see, the population did, in a sense, acquire separate traits, but this isn't acquired through successive generations, only from their environment.

The Anolis population that had no predator and not no added competition grew quite large, but because there wasn't much competition, their stamina is rather poor. Where as the population with birds as the predators were quite small in size, but their stamina was a lot higher. Then we take a look at the extreme end of competition where the specimens are large and have very high stamina.

Now, if we take this information and look at the entire Anolis Genus that inhabit the islands in discussion, we can infer that the cause of some traits in specific Anolis species of the islands are caused by this or that.

The way this relates to natural selection is that if we have an area that is full of an Anolis species there is going to be high competition for food. If an Anole is weak at all or less capable of acquiring the food source than it's chances of breeding are rather slim. If however an anole is very fast and large the chances of it breeding are much higher. So eventually we will see that the most dominant anoles will breed, and the weaker anoles wont. So the traits of the stronger anoles will carry on, where as the weaker traits will wither away. This is what natural selection is. And the study was to find out how these specific traits likely originated. No new traits appeared in the sense of genetic drift through generations because that's not what they were attempting to study. we already know for a fact that new traits come up through generations, it's already been proven, why prove it again? (look at dogs, cats, or domesticated animals in general for new traits through generations)

Or are you now telling us that the environmental changes are not the cause for genetic change?

No, i never said that did I. in fact, I stated many times that the natural selection isn't the dominating factor in all genetic changes, just most.

Why would the animal wait for multiple generations in the same enviornmental conditions to show any genetic change?

The organism doesn't choose to mutate, it happens naturally.

This is not good news for the theory because many environmental changes actually cause species to die off before any genetic change can take place which would have the animal adapt to the change which killed them off in the first place!

This statement alone is fact that you know nothing of natural selection. If a species dies off because the traits it had in an environment were less suited than another species' traits that would confirm natural selection, not disprove it.

So genetic adaptation must happen extremely fast for this theory to be reliable.
What you’re telling us is that the animals don’t actually react on a genetic level when they are placed in a new environmental condition until several generations after the change.
I’m asserting that the idea that genetic change is a direct reaction to environment changes is not shown to be accurate.

Also incorrect. Take a look at sea turtles, crocodiles, sharks and all that. they have stayed relatively the same for millions of years.

Once again, animals don't choose to have genetic mutations, it happens naturally. The photo above (remember these are all the same species of the Anolis Genus) shows that if this environmental factor is in place on these islands to this species, this trait is what will be selected for in the long run. This isn't a genetic change however, genetic changes will show up after successive generations.

Either environmental changes cause genetic change or they don’t. You seem to want it both ways.
If I stick my hand in an open fire, it burns right away. I don’t have to have wait for my son to be born, and have him stick his hand in the fire, then in turn he doesn’t have to wait for his son to be born and stick his hand in the fire and so on, until the skin begins to react to the heat and melt.
This is what you’re trying to have us believe.

No, actually, it can in fact be both. Environmental factors can and do cause changes, we know this, however there are plenty of other things that cause genetic changes as well, some viruses are able to change another organisms genes, for example.

The fire example isn't a genetic change. Not only that, but the large changes (such as being resistant to fire) aren't usually going to appear because of a single individual organism, most of the time it's the population that changes and the weaker ones tend to die off.

You place animals in a different environmental condition, and in at least one case, the animals were being eaten, and yet none of the animals appear to have any genetic change whatsoever, and so you tell us it takes several generations before they realise they are in a different state, then they change!
This is nonsense.

Correct! there is no genetic changes. However, there are traits that come up (such as shorter limbs and stamina). once again, an organism doesn't make the choice to mutate. It happens naturally. and Natural selection has a tendency of slowly removing organisms that aren't fit to their environment. If we have small and quick Anoles, they are going to be harder to eat from a predators standpoint than the slower, sluggish ones. The slow ones will eventually die off because they keep getting eaten, where has the fast ones breed more easily because they can escape prey. The faster and faster the anoles get the less likely they will be eaten and the more likely they will be able to breed and continue their traits through the next generation to the point that genetic changes may occur (such as shorter limbs, slim-er bodies and that).

Also, I have serious problems with the hypothesis in that Darwinian evolution is based on circumstances where there is no intelligent direction and yet out of this random, fluke chance chaos; we have what appear to be very complex deliberate systems and events which are predictable. This is not the true description of random, fluke, chance non intelligent events. This is more suitable to an explanation of intelligent creation or manipulation in the very least.

I know you have a serious problem with that, and that's because evolution completely diminishes young earth creationism. Biblical literalism and evolution cannot possible exist with what we know. In Barbarians sense, he can still hold his faith, while not holding the stance that the earth is 6000 years old. In this sense he is still able to realize that evolution is not a biblical threat. You've come into this topic thinking that nothing they say can be correct or everything I believe will be wrong. Which is both true and not true at the same time. In one sense, your depiction of the bible may be proven wrong, but the bible in itself can still stand strong without that depiction. But, that's for another topic (theistic evolution). We can continue talking about it there if you'd like.

Other than that, your main issues with The Theory of Evolution is because your misunderstanding it. Evolution is not all random, hence the reason we can make predictions using the theory of evolution just like any other scientific theory or study. I suggest you read Darwin's "On The Origin of Species" before you make assertions such as those in the quote.

Here again, the evolutionists wants it both ways. He wants to believe in a random, fluke, chance event, and he also wants to be able to put the entire process into a predictable, scientific system.
How on earth could a process which is based exclusively on chaos ever have such predictable parameters attached to it?

This is for another topic, if you'd like me to answer it please go to my topic here: http://www.christianforums.net/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=48081

If life was actually “created†by chance, then it takes an amazingly huge leap of faith to take the odds against all the progressive steps which happened immediately after this first so called simple single cell magically appeared.

Evolution has nothing to do with the creation of life. We can further discuss this on this topic if you'd like. http://www.christianforums.net/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=48081

actually, the entire second half of your post has nothing to do with this topic. please make any claims or questions you want here: http://www.christianforums.net/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=48081