This was copied and pasted directly from Mr. Shelley's Gamespot UK interview. Is anyone else surprised by this? I'm an atheist, and I certainly agree with him, but I'm still surprised he said it. Could it have been a typo? Do you suppose he meant something different when he said "mythology" that what we typically consider it to mean?
[This message has been edited by Sir William of Pork (edited 08-22-2001 @ 04:26 PM).]
I am the state.
This type of mutation would be required for insects with 4 wings instead of two, perhaps even for 2 wings instead of one. This also has been used to explain ruminants (cow is an example)
Some 80's or early 90's movie thing (educational, not fictional) said that ruminants first started when a gene was coppied twice and only one was used in life. This let the other one get mutations w/out hurting the animal. However, what was the probability that the gene would be mutated for any benifit? There are enzymes that correct mutated DNA, so mutations don't happen much. Also there are MANY nucleotides that a mutation could happen on, not just what would be wanted. (3.1 billion in humans)
Also, if there are 3.1 billion nucleotides in a human, and life started as far as 4 billion years ago (page 319 of that book), then we should be able to see large changes in animals over the past 2000 years. (my point being that near one nucleotide has been added for every year of life on earth)
(sorry my arguments wander and don't always make full sense in this post.)
I don't have a lot yet for proving creationism, but so far... The evidence of design. If you have studdied muscles in mamals, you would see just how well layed out they are and how well they work together. I find it hard to believe that they could have "randomly happened" even with billions of years.
Some people seem to have trouble with me quoting out of a text book. As far as I know, it is a intorductory college text book, not high school. I did it so that you will know that I have a source for my information.
hopefully my later posts will be better...
Don't run from it. Either there is some restriction of process, a change of process, or there is [This message has been edited by eifersucht (edited 09-03-2001 @ 00:07 AM).]
(same book as before, a little info on pg. 208)
Evolution
That is post-developmental mutation.
Which is
These huge mutations are not required at all.
That isn't a valid assumption, at all.
I'd suggest you do a bit of digging up on the subject, see what is actually suggested for the rate of change.
The 'I don't understand the mechanism so it must/might be wrong' argument isn't exactly the most convincing, I must say.....
Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorst attacks against the United States. - CATO Institute, 1998
Perseus wore a magic cap so that the monsters he hunted might not see him. We draw the magic cap down over our own eyes and ears so as to deny that there are any monsters - Karl Marx
Écrasez l'infâme
The problem with many who oppose evolution is they are simply unable to conceive of time periods greater than their life.
The following is taken from 1. The Law of Biogenesis 2. Acquited Characteristics 3. Mendel's Laws 4. Bounded Variations 5. Natural Selection The variations Darwin observed among finches on different Galapagos islands is another example of natural selection producing micro- ( not macro-) evolution. In other words, while natural selection explains survival of the fittest, it does not explain origin of the fittest. Actually, natural selection prevents major evolutionary changes. 6. Mutations 7. Fruit Flies And there's lots more where that came from. And here's some more food for thought: what has evolution added to science? What new technologies, new improvements, new discoveries, have resulted from evolution? (Apart from a rapidly changing taxonomy and an age of the earth that doubles about every twenty years?)
Organic Evolution Has Never Been Observed
Spontaneous generation (the emergence of life from nonliving matter) has never been observed. All observations have shown that life comes only from life. This has been so observed so consistantly that it is called the law of biogenesis. The theory of evolution conflicts with this law by claiming that life came from nonliving matter through natural processes.
Acquired characteristics cannot be inherited. For example, the long necks of giraffes did not result from their ancestors stretching their necks to reach high leaves. Nor can the large muscles acquired by a man in a weight lifting program be inherited by his child.
Mendel's laws of genetics and their modern-day refinements explain almost all physical variations observed in living things. Mendel discovered that genes (the units of heredity) are merely reshuffled from one generation to another. Different combinations are formed, not different genes. The different combinations produce the many variations within each kind of life, such as in the dog family. A logical consequence of Mendel's laws is that htere are limits to such variation. Breeding experiments and common observations have also confirmed these boundaries.
While Mendel's laws give a theoretical explanation for why variations are limited, there is broad experimental evidence as well. For example, if evolution happened, organisms (such as bacteria) that quickly produce the most offspring, should have the most variations and mutations. Natural selection would then select the more favorable changes, allowing them to survive, reproduce, and pass on their beneficial genes. Their offspring should tent to inherit short reproduction cycles and produce many "children." We see the opposite. In general, more complex organisms, such as humans, have fewer offspring and longer reproduction cycles. Again, it appears that variations within existing kinds of organisms are bounded.
Natural selection cannot produce new genes; it only selects among preexisting characteristics. For example, many have mistakenly believed that resistances "evolved" in response to pesticides and anitbiotics. Instead, a few resistant insects and bacteria wre already present when the pesiticdes and antibiotics were first applied. The vulnerable insects and bacteria were killed, allowing resistant varieties, which then had less competition, to proliferate. While natural selection occured, nothing evolved and, in fact, some biodiversity was lost.
Mutations are the only known means by which new genetic material becomes available for evolution. Rarely, if ever, is a mutation beneficial to an organism in its natural environment. Almost all observable mutations are harmful; some are meaningless; many are lethal. No known mutation has ever produced a form of life having greater complexitiy and viability than is ancestors.
More than ninety years of fruit fly experiments, invovling 3,000 consecutive generations, give absolutely no basis for believing that any natural or artificial process can cause an increases in complexity and viability. No clear genetic improvement has ever been observed in any form of life, despite the many unnatural efforts to increase mutation rates.
By the way, you still haven't come up with a modern example, which you said several could be indentified. Increasing longevity is incorrect, that is a result of better health and nutrition. People still lived into their eighties in ancient times, it was just rarer with a lot more infant mortality.
No, the theory of abiogenesis states that. Evolution starts with a simple unicellular organism and goes on from there. It doesn't matter how the cell got there, be it by God or abiogenesis. You realise that no one at all believes in Lamarkian evolution? You're right, but that in no way weakens the arguement for evolution. I'm pretty sure that's correct, but evolution doesn't depend on this being untrue. So humans can't be evolved from bacterium because we reproduce more slowly and would have died out? I really don't follow what his point is... bacteria are immediately mature and can reproduce in a manner of hours because they are simple. As we became more complex and bigger the maturation process slows and reproduction is slower because it's a more complex organism, but because we're more complex we survived. I don't understand why that doens't make sense. (If I've totally misjudged the author's point I again mention that I really am not qualified to debate this). As far as I can tell, he demonstrated why evolution and natural selection work. The bacterium with a resistance to a virus that survive were more evolved, and so reproduced and thrived. How does this disprove evolution? The mutations that increased His point? We aren't talking about some small number of years like 90, assuming evolution has only gone on for 1,000,000,000 years then evolution has had 11,111,111 times more time than the fruit flies have had. And fruit flies are rather complex, look at how fast bacteria reproduce and change, tens of generation a day. I can't comprehend the massive number of generations of bacteria there have been that have had a chance to mutate beneficially. But, like I said, I'm not really that knowledgable about this, so don't ask for sources and such, this is all off of my woefully incomplete biology education, and I'm sure I've said stuff in an attempt to prove my point that's totally wrong, so to reiterate a final time, I don't claim to be totally right so don't expect me to be.
Natural selection cannot produce new genes; it only selects among preexisting characteristics. For example, many have mistakenly believed that resistances "evolved" in response to pesticides and anitbiotics. Instead, a few resistant insects and bacteria wre already present when the pesiticdes and antibiotics were first applied. The vulnerable insects and bacteria were killed, allowing resistant varieties, which then had less competition, to proliferate. While natural selection occured, nothing evolved and, in fact, some biodiversity was lost... In other words, while natural selection explains survival of the fittest, it does not explain origin of the fittest. Actually, natural selection prevents major evolutionary changes.
More than ninety years of fruit fly experiments, invovling 3,000 consecutive generations, give absolutely no basis for believing that any natural or artificial process can cause an increases in complexity and viability. No clear genetic improvement has ever been observed in any form of life, despite the many unnatural efforts to increase mutation rates.
Spontaneous generation (the emergence of life from nonliving matter) has never been observed. All observations have shown that life comes only from life. This has been so observed so consistantly that it is called the law of biogenesis. The theory of evolution conflicts with this law by claiming that life came from nonliving matter through natural processes. |
Acquired characteristics cannot be inherited. For example, the long necks of giraffes did not result from their ancestors stretching their necks to reach high leaves. Nor can the large muscles acquired by a man in a weight lifting program be inherited by his child. |
Mendel's laws of genetics and their modern-day refinements explain almost all physical variations observed in living things. Mendel discovered that genes (the units of heredity) are merely reshuffled from one generation to another. Different combinations are formed, not different genes. The different combinations produce the many variations within each kind of life, such as in the dog family. A logical consequence of Mendel's laws is that htere are limits to such variation. Breeding experiments and common observations have also confirmed these boundaries. |
While Mendel's laws give a theoretical explanation for why variations are limited, there is broad experimental evidence as well. For example, if evolution happened, organisms (such as bacteria) that quickly produce the most offspring, should have the most variations and mutations. Natural selection would then select the more favorable changes, allowing them to survive, reproduce, and pass on their beneficial genes. Their offspring should tent to inherit short reproduction cycles and produce many "children." We see the opposite. In general, more complex organisms, such as humans, have fewer offspring and longer reproduction cycles. Again, it appears that variations within existing kinds of organisms are bounded. |
Natural selection cannot produce new genes; it only selects among preexisting characteristics. For example, many have mistakenly believed that resistances "evolved" in response to pesticides and anitbiotics. Instead, a few resistant insects and bacteria wre already present when the pesiticdes and antibiotics were first applied. The vulnerable insects and bacteria were killed, allowing resistant varieties, which then had less competition, to proliferate. While natural selection occured, nothing evolved and, in fact, some biodiversity was lost. |
Mutations are the only known means by which new genetic material becomes available for evolution. Rarely, if ever, is a mutation beneficial to an organism in its natural environment. Almost all observable mutations are harmful; some are meaningless; many are lethal. No known mutation has ever produced a form of life having greater complexitiy and viability than is ancestors. |
More than ninety years of fruit fly experiments, invovling 3,000 consecutive generations, give absolutely no basis for believing that any natural or artificial process can cause an increases in complexity and viability. No clear genetic improvement has ever been observed in any form of life, despite the many unnatural efforts to increase mutation rates. |
It wouldn't matter if the Theory of Evolution had brought about armageddon, that wouldn't make it any more or less accurate. I would be surprised you brought it up at all, but you're a fundy who thinks that punctuated equilibrium is a mechanism.....
Go for it.
1. I've seen the entire list (and responded to it quite easily) before.l
2. It didn't have any evidence for creation. It tried to argue against evolution. They are 2 seperate things (if evolution was dumped today, creation still would not be science).
A modern example of speciation? I never said I could. Speciation takes 10's of thousands of years. Add to that the fact that speciation events are classified as such
I didn't provide that as an example of speciation, but of mutation.
Increased understanding of genetics (they feed off each other), a more sophisticated environmentalism, and a method to smoke out those who are completely and utterly ignorant.
Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorst attacks against the United States. - CATO Institute, 1998
Perseus wore a magic cap so that the monsters he hunted might not see him. We draw the magic cap down over our own eyes and ears so as to deny that there are any monsters - Karl Marx
Écrasez l'infâme
IV1066 you are right you didn't do as good a job as eifer. The fissil record cannot prove mutations. You cannot compare fossils, assume they are related and evolved from one another, and then say you have observed mutation.
You also said that it wouldn't make a difference in evolution if the first cell was created by God, but evolution trys to explain the origin of life without God, so if God did create the first cell then evolutionists could not just assume that he didn't do anything after that and ignore him.
Anyway, eifer I have to say that your responses to clarissimus weren't that good either.
How does the word "merely" change anything in his post? Saying something like this is just plain stupid and I guess you did it because you cothink off anything to combat his obviously true statement. He was just showing that sexual reproduction alone could cause variations and be acted on by natural selection, such as with insects being resistant to bacteria, and our artificial selection as with dogs, mutations were not the cause of these variations. Then you ta;k about changes in an individual as opposed to a population, but some individuals have to be different (due to sexual reproduction) for the population to change. The same would be true for mutations to be acted on by natural selection, so I really don't see your point. In short, genetic reshuffling by sexual reproduction is enough to create small variations within a species.
Of course mutations don't cause new species on their own, but you claim they do cause favorable variations which are acted on by natural selection and eventually accumulate until the resulting population is so different from the original that it can e considered a new species. However, he is saying that mutations can't be beneficial so that colapses evolution right there. The fruit flies don't have to become a new species, they just had to show one, just one mutation that was favorable, which should have happened in over nienty years, but it didn't.
He asked you to come up with a modern example of a favorable mutation, not speciation, and the increase in average life span ceartainly was NOT a result of mutation, it was as he said, due to better living conditions. If it were mutations being acted on by natural selection, which you said it was, then consider this. The increase in life span is mostly past reproductive age, so how was it beneficail? just because we like to live longer doesn't mean it is halpful as a species, it is not, in fact it is detrimental because the older individuals now have to be cared for.
Whoa there tiger...
I wasn't commenting on the general intellect of Christians.
But it stands to reason that 'women' wasn't crafted from a man's rib.
Right there is a deviation from known logic.
Creationism requires faith to believe- not logic (obviously).
Also, about me contributing to this thread, why don't you take another gander at the first coupla pages and see exactly where this thread was before I first replied.
I am the state.
The point being that general shifts in the fossil record do show
And even if the first cell was created by god, evolution could explain it without him. Even if we had scientific proof that god created the first cell, we couldn't include god in any scientific theory. Supernatural can't be included because it would invalidate any predictive elements of science (which is the basis of all science).
If you're going to try and say I'm stupid, don't argue on the back of your inability to comprehend.
Here is the explaination.
He said: "Mendel discovered that genes (the units of heredity) are merely reshuffled from one generation to another."
The use of "merely" implies that Mendel had proved that 'reshuffling' was the
No, he was saying that genetic reshuffling caused as a natural product of sexual reproduction between non-genetically identical partners causes shuffling which results in .....
You are being very sloppy with language, and that isn't justifiable in a debate where such sloppiness leads to massive misunderstanding, and is used to justify ridiculous assumptions.
Yes.
That doesn't change the validitiy of my statement (Which was a positive statement of what certain things described).
Seriously, arguing
He is saying it. He isn't supporting it with any evidence at all. If he could prove it, then yes, it would be viable. I'm waiting the evidence. I asked for it a long time ago...
1. Proving a negative proposition is almost impossible, and really not an intelligent way to go about things.
2. Nobody has said that no beneficial mutations have ever occurred. Such a claim would be vitally important, yet I've heard nothing about it. So, evidence that such a claim had been made is both necessary for the point, and easy to find, as long as it isn't a lie.
Ok:
-
Increased diversity = new alleles, ie, mutation.
Increase in average life span
No, I said it was mutation that couldn't be acted upon by natural selection. Read what I say before responding....
Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorst attacks against the United States. - CATO Institute, 1998
Perseus wore a magic cap so that the monsters he hunted might not see him. We draw the magic cap down over our own eyes and ears so as to deny that there are any monsters - Karl Marx
Écrasez l'infâme
And are any definitively proven to have been written before the fact without a ton of allusion?
This is where you lose me... What part of "I wasn't commenting on the general intellect of Christians," didn't you catch? I am not stating that the Creationists are (hmm, necessarily) stupid in any way, shape or form- merely that it rebuffs attempts to refine it using the logical process- it is illogical.
In vino veritas
I apologize for the many mistakes in grammar, spelling and wording in my last post, I will be sure to proof read all of my posts better from now on, sorry about that.
Also, I am sorry if thought that I was calling you stupid, I was not, I was just saying that I thought what you said was stupid which you have said many times already.
You call creation ilogical and irrational, well you are entitled to your opinion, but this is what I think is irrational:
"Even if we had scientific proof that God created the first cell, we couldn't include God in any scientififc theory."
This is ridiculous. You have scientific PROOF that God created the first cell, yet you would chose not to accept this and then exclude God from all scientific theories? Come on! That is not science, a scientist should not reject something it knows to be true just because he doesn't like it, or it might ruin a few of his precious theories. But I guess that is the all time low that science has come to today, a poit at which they would completely reject the fact that God had anything to do with the universe even if they had proof of his existance, and that is just sad.
About the fossil record, I was not trying to twist words, or imply that the assumption was completely arbitrary, but again, I apologize for that post being of rather poor quality. However, even though it is not completely arbitrary, it is still assumption, because you don't know for sure if the animals are related or not, or if evolution is real. My point is that you cannot observe anything from a fossil, except the bone and to some extent musscle structure of the organism, and so his statement about beneficial mutations in the fossil record was incorrect. Just because organisms have similar bone structure and are found in the same palce does not mean they are related, or that one evololved from the other.
At this point I will once again admit that my last post was terrible and I will attempt to clear up some of the things that I said.
Ok, maybe I misunderstood clarissimus' statement about mendel's laws. I didn't think that he was saying mendel, proved that mutations didn't happen, but that some of the examples of mutations that have actually been the result of genetic shuffling. This is what I think causes some people to live longer than others, not mutations.
I meant that if it was proved mutations could not cause favorable variations, or if it was extreamly rare, than evolution would colapse.
In the future I will read your posts better and not make you say things you didn't say, sorry.
First off, let me answer the previous reply:
The whole point of the "Mendel's Laws" section was to explain the difference between micro- and marco-evolution. A beta may be bred to have large fins and bright colors, but it's still a beta. Dogs have been bred to all sorts of variaties, but never has a new animal been formed. That's micro-evolution.
You can say evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis, that it picks up after the first one-celled life, but if you don't believe in God you have to have some theory as to how that one-celled life got there in the first place.
And when you talk about scientists drawing conclusions from DNA, that doesn't count as observation of mutation. Nor does it count when you talk about evolutionists making assumptions from fossils. That is not scientific observation.
Now, for today's reasons not to believe in evolution.
Did language evolve in humans? Darwin claimed it did. If so, the earliest languages should be the simplest. On the contrary, language studies reveal that the more ancient the language (Latin, 200 B.C.; Greek, 800 B.C.; and Vedic Sanskrit, 1500 B.C.) the more complex is it with respect to syntax, case, gender, mood, voice, tense, and verb form. The best evidence indicates that languages devolve. Most linguists reject the idea that simple languages evolve into more complex ones.
There is no reason to believe mutations could produce any new organs. If you've ever studied organs as complex as the eye, the ear, the heart, or the brain, you'd know why.
All species appear completely developed, not partially developed. (Not just fossils, all species today as well.) Has evolution stopped?
There are no examples of half-developed feathers, eyes, skin, blood vessels, intestines or any other of thousands of vital organs.
Partially developed organs are a liability, not an asset. (see above). If a reptile's leg starts to evolve into a bird's wing, it would be a bad leg long before it became useful as a wing.
If evolution happened, we would expect to see blended types. For example, variations of dogs might blend with variations of cats. Actually, some animals have organs completely unrelated to their supposed evolutionary ancestors.
The platypus is warm-blooded, has a single ventral opening, has claws and a shoulder girdle (like a reptile's) detects electrical currents (like some fish), has a bill (like a duck), webbed feet (like an otter), a flat tail (like a beaver), and can inject poisnous venom (like a pit viper.)
Such pathwork plants and animals have no place on the evolutionary tree.
Many animals (as well as humans) will endanger or even sacrifice their lives to save another, sometimes a member of a completely different species. Shouldn't natural selection have eliminated altriustic behavior? Cheating and aggressiveness should have "weeded out" cooperation.
No verified form of extra terrestrial life has ever been observed. If evolution occured on earth, one would expect to find at least microbes by the elaborate experiments sent to the moon and Mars.
Nonhumans communicate, but not with language. True language requires both vocabulary and grammer. With great effort, human trainers have taught some chimpanzees to recognize a few hundred spoken words, to point to up to 200 symbols, and to make limited hand signs. These impressive feats are sometimes exaggerated by capturing and editing the animals' successes on flim.
Chimps have not demonstrated these skills in the wild and do not pass on their skills to other chimps. When a trained chimp dies, so does the trainer's investment. Also, trained chimps have essentially no grammatical ability. Only with grammar can a few words express many ideas.
Speech is uniquely human. Futhermore, studies of 36 feral children shows that speech appears to be learned only from other humans. Apparenly, humans do not automatically speak. If this is so, the first humans much have been endowed with speaking ability.
In our experience, codes are produced only by intelligence, not by natural processes or chance. A code is defined as a set of rules for converting information from one useful form to another (e.g. Morse Code or Braille.) The genetic material that controls the physical processes of life is coded information. It also is accompanied by eloborate transmission, translation, and duplication systems, without with the genetic material would be useless, and life would cease.
Likewise, no natural process has even been observed to produce a program. A program is defined as a planned sequence of steps to accomplish some goal (e.g. Computer programs like Age of Mythology). The information stored in the genetic material of all life is a complex program.
Throughout this debate I have been arguing against evolution, and I got very excited when you said you would post 130 reasons why evolution is false. I read you first post. It was good, it had some very good points, which I defended but also some not so good ones. Now your second post started out ok, but then it got a litle weird, so I figure I will try to post this before eifer does.
What you said about distinct types is probably the most confusing and false. Why should dogs blend with cats? Just because one species has a different organ from the species it is supposed to be related to doesn't prove anything. The platypus is not a patchwork animal, it is just well suited to it's environment. The beak is not hard like a ducks, but soft and very sensitive because it is used to feel for tiny invertebrates in the mud. Webbed feet and a flat tail are adaptations for an aquatic environment, and it's venom is in a spur on it's hind leg, and is only present in males (I think), so it is in no way similar to a snakes venom. Anyway, creatures like this cannot disprove evolution, in fact, evolutionists use the platypus to support evolution, because it lays eggs, isn't completely warm blooded, and has what seem to be primitive mammary glands, so they say it is a primitive mammal. evolutionists.
About altruism, animals cooperate because it benefits them as a species, and helps the species survive, communal insects will sacrifice themselves for the survival of the queen or hive because that is more important than the individual, so will some mammals who live in packs to protect other members and further the survival of their species, it is really quite logical and does not disprove evolution.
Evolutionists would say that extraterestrial life exists out there somewhere, but we haven't explored enough planets yet (the later part is true).
As for language, they would simply say that we are the only animal to evolve this special ability.
ANd speech has to be taught from parent to child, that is why feral children cannot speak.
I am not arguing for evolution, just saying that these are bad examples because they can be easily countered by evolutionists. Look over your material before posting it, and try to anticipate how they would counter it, and if they can don't bother posting it, or back it up. Please continue you posts though because we need all the help we can get! I am not trying to insult you or anything, please don't think that, next time though, do a little more research.
This is ridiculous. You have scientific PROOF that God created the first cell, yet you would chose not to accept this and then exclude God from all scientific theories? |
Also, I should point out that not including it in scientific theory is a Thus the creationist's favourite question "What is the use of half an eye?" Actually, this is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 per cent better than 49 per cent of an eye, which is already better than 48 per cent, and the difference is significant. A more ponderous show of weight seems to lie behind the inevitable supplementary: "Speaking as a physicist, I cannot believe that there has been enough time for an organ as complicated as the eye to have evolved from nothing. Do you really think there has been enough time?" Both questions stem from the Argument from Personal Incredulity. Audiences nevertheless appreciate an answer, and I have usually fallen back on the sheer magnitude of geological time. It now appears that the shattering enormity of geological time is a steam hammer to crack a peanut. A recent study by a pair of Swedish scientists, Dan Nilson and Susanne Pelger, suggests that a ludicrously small fraction of that time would have been plenty. When one says "the" eye, by the way, one implicitly means the vertebrate eye, but serviceable image-forming eyes have evolved between 40 and 60 times, independently from scratch, in many different invertebrate groups. Among these 40-plus independent evolutions, at least nine distinct design principles have been discovered, including pinhole eyes, two kinds of camera-lens eyes, curved-reflector ("satellite dish") eyes, and several kinds of compound eyes. Nilsson and Pelger have concentrated on camera eyes with lenses, such as are well developed in vertebrates and octopuses. How do you set about estimating the time required for a given amount of evolutionary change? We have to find a unit to measure the size of each evolutionary step, and it is sensible to express it as a percentage change in what is already there. Nilsson and Pelger used the number of successive changes of x per cent as their unit for measuring changes of anatomical quantities. Their task was to set up computer models of evolving eyes to answer two questions. The first was: is there a smooth gradient of change, from flat skin to full camera eye, such that every intermediate is an improvement? (Unlike human designers, natural selection can't go downhill not even if there is a tempting higher hill on the other side of the valley.) Second, how long would the necessary quantity of evolutionary change take? In their computer models, Nilsson and Pelger made no attempt to simulate the internal workings of cells. They started their story after the invention of a single light-sensitive cell--it does no harm to call it a photocell. It would be nice, in the future, to do another computer model, this time at the level of the inside of the cell. to show how the first living photocell came into being by step-by-step modification of an earlier, more general-purpose cell. But you have to start somewhere, and Nilsson and Pelger started after the invention of the photocell. They worked at the level of tissues: the level of stuff made of cells rather than the level of individual cells. Skin is a tissue, so is the lining of the intestine, so is muscle and liver. Tissues can change in various ways under the influence of random mutation. Sheets of tissue can become larger or smaller in area. They can become thicker or thinner. In the special case of transparent tissues like lens tissue, they can change the refractive index (the light-bending power) of local parts of the tissue. The beauty of simulating an eye, as distinct from, say, the leg of a running cheetah, is that its efficiency can be easily mea-optics. The eye is represented as a two-dimensional cross-section, and the computer can easily calculate its visual acuity, or spatial resolution, as a single real number. It would be much harder to come up with an equivalent numerical expression for the efficacy of a cheetah's leg or backbone. Nilsson and Pelger began with a flat retina atop a flat pigment layer and surmounted by a flat, protective transparent layer. The transparent layer was allowed to undergo localised random mutations of its refractive index. They then let the model deform itself at random, constrained only by the requirement that any change must be small and must be an improvement on what went before. The results were swift and decisive. A trajectory of steadily mounting acuity led unhesitatingly from the flat beginning through a shallow indentation to a steadily deepening cup, as the shape of the model eye deformed itself on the computer screen. The transparent layer thickened to fill the cup and smoothly bulged its outer surface in a curve. And then, almost like a conjuring trick, a portion of this transparent filling condensed into a local, spherical subregion of higher refractive index. Not uniformly higher, but a gradient of refractive index such that the spherical region functioned as an excellent graded- index lens. Graded-index lenses are unfamiliar to human lens-makers, but they are common in living eyes. Humans make lenses by grinding glass to a particular shape. We make a compound lens. like the expensive violet- tinted lenses of modern cameras. by mounting several lenses together, but each one of those individual lenses is made of uniform glass through its whole thickness. A graded-index lens, by contrast, has a continuously varying refractive index with in its own substance. Typically, it has a high refractive index near the centre of the lens. Fish eyes have graded-index lenses. Now it has long been known that, for a graded-index lens, the most aberration-free results are obtained when you achieve a particular theoretical optimum value for the ratio between the focal length of the lens and the radius. This ratio is called Mattiessen's ratio. Nilsson and Pelger's computer model homed in unerringly on Mattiessen's ratio. And so to the question of how long all this evolutionary change might have taken. In order to answer this, Nilsson and Pelger had to make some assumptions about genetics in natural populations. They needed to feed their model plausible values of quantities such as "heritability" . Heritability is a measure of how far variation is governed by heredity. The favoured way of measuring it is to see how much monozygotic (that is, "identical") twins resemble each other compared with ordinary twins. One study found the heritability of leg length in male humans to be 77 per cent. A heritability of too per cent would mean that you could measure one identical twin's leg to obtain perfect knowledge of the other twin's leg length, even if the twins were reared apart. A heritability of 0 per cent would mean that the legs of monozygotic twins are no more similar to each other than to the legs of random members of a specified population in a given environment. Some other heritabilities measured for humans are 95 per cent for head breadth, 85 per cent for sitting height. 80 percent for arm length and 79 per cent for stature. Heritabilities are frequently more than 50 percent, and Nilsson and Pelger therefore felt safe in plugging a heritability of 50 per cent into their eye model. This was a conservative, or "pessimistic", assumption. Compared with a more realistic assumption of, say, 70 per cent, a pessimistic assumption tends to increase their final estimate of the time taken for the eye to evolve. They wanted to err on the side of overestimation because we are intuitively skeptical of short estimates of the time taken to evolve something as complicated as an eye. For the same reason, they chose pessimistic values for the coefficient of variation (that is, for how much variation there typically is in the population) and the intensity of selection (the amount of survival advantage improved eyesight confers). They even went so far as to assume that any new generation differed in only one part of the eye at a time: simultaneous changes in different parts of the eye, which would have greatly speeded up evolution, were outlawed. But even with these conservative assumptions, the time taken to evolve a fish eye from fiat skin was minuscule: fewer than 400,000 generations. For the kinds of small animals we are talking about, we can assume one generation per year, so it seems that it would take less than half a million years to evolve a good camera eye. In the light of Nilsson and Pelger's results, it is no wonder "the" eye has evolved at least 40 times independently around the animal kingdom. There has been enough time for it to evolve from scratch 1,500 times in succession within any one lineage. Assuming typical generation lengths for small animals, the time needed for the evolution of the eye, far from stretching credulity with its vastness, turns out to be too short for geologists to measure! It is a geological blink. I'm sorry I can't provide you with Dan Nillson's great research on the subject, but the papers I have are only on pay sites (I think), and I'm not going to put it here, for copyright reasons. Go to your library, and you should be able to find it quite easily, however. Basically: The evolution of the eye is certainly not impossible. Both of these are from the first article I posted. If one community of a certain animal cooperated, and another acted indepedantly, evolution would favour the community that survived and reproduced most effectively. There is no natural tendancy either way, it's based on survival and reproduction. The claim, clearly, is based on a complete misunderstanding of evolution (And, I would suggest, putting more emphasis on Nietzschean philosophy of survival and independance than actual evolution, an absurdly common phenomenom).
That is
The theories may well be completely destroyed, and scientists would be fine with that. I said that
Again, not what I said at all.
Of course not. The fossil record by itself would definately not be strong enough evidence for evolution. However, as
Most people in the field are of the opinion that evolution would be supported strongly enough to still be Theory even if there were no fossils at all.
Bone and muscle structure being very important in evolution, this isn't that big a worry.
I realise that fossils aren't too helpful for internal organs, and soft parts in general. However, it's the best we have. Keeping in mind what I said above, it's not that big a problem, though.
That is simply wrong. If we can view a gradually changing bone structure over time, then that is very strong evidence for the evolutionary pattern of that organism.
When they have near-on identical bone structure, it's a very, very strong possibility. Evolution, as I've said many times, isn't about massive changes, but a massive amount of absolutely miniscule changes.
But during this time mutations
I think there is a misunderstanding of evolution here. It's not a case of natural selection within a certain genetic structure, then mutation and change. It is continual mutation altering the gene structure. Mendels work certainly does not provide a difference in process between micro and macro evolution.
Well, I object to 'you have to have some theory....', because I don't believe humans are omnipotent. However, your point is that an atheist requires life to occur naturally from non-life is correct.
I would add a few points here:
1. Even though this is the case, it doesn't have anything to do with the validity of evolution.
2. The creationist/evolutionist divide is
You didn't read the articles at all, did you?
There is no reason to believe mutations could produce any new organs. If you've ever studied organs as complex as the eye, the ear, the heart, or the brain, you'd know why.
Well, if you don't mind, I'll deal with just one of these, in the interest of brevity.
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All species appear completely developed, not partially developed. (Not just fossils, all species today as well.) Has evolution stopped?
Nonsense.
Here are some sketches of partial-wings:
Here is an example of wonky eyes:
(in the top fish, the 2 eyes are as you would expect. However, in the bottom, there is one where you would expect for an upright fish, then another near the edge. Both these fish swim flat, so both eyes look down in each case. The first evolved flat, the 2nd has clearly switched at some point).
Also note that in my dealing with the eye, 'half eyes'
See above, as to why that claim is false.
If evolution happened, we would expect to see blended types. For example, variations of dogs might blend with variations of cats. Actually, some animals have organs completely unrelated to their supposed evolutionary ancestors.
We do. All the time. Not dogs and cats (because that wouldn't be expected), but similar organisms. Most glaring example is the lungfish.
Such pathwork plants and animals have no place on the evolutionary tree.
That is ridiculous. Saying that it has a bill "like a duck" doesn't mean it is related closely to a duck. It means that is has had similar evolutionary pressures. A platypus has developed independantly of most animals (Due to the isolation of Australia), and thus appears quite abnormal, yet it's different parts do resemble animals worldwide, because
Many animals (as well as humans) will endanger or even sacrifice their lives to save another, sometimes a member of a completely different species. Shouldn't natural selection have eliminated altriustic behavior? Cheating and aggressiveness should have "weeded out" cooperation.
It is
Furthermore, for communal cooperation, it depends on whether it's a benefit or not.
No verified form of extra terrestrial life has ever been observed. If evolution occured on earth, one would expect to find at least microbes by the elaborate experiments sent to the moon and Mars.
We wouldn't 'expect' them on Mars at all. We are fully aware that abiogensis requires certain conditions. We would, however, expect extraterrestrial life, somewhere. We currently have barely checked our own solar system, so our knowledge on whether or not it exists is basically non-existant.
1. This looks at fully developed language.
2. This looks at language from
3. Since those languages are from sucessful cultures, you'd expect them to be from the communities best able to communicate, that is, with the best language. A more reasonable approach would look at all languages.
Speech is uniquely human. Futhermore, studies of 36 feral children shows that speech appears to be learned only from other humans. Apparenly, humans do not automatically speak. If this is so, the first humans much have been endowed with speaking ability
Complete and utter nonsense.
First of all, there is communication via sound in many other animals, notably dolphins and whales (Which aren't that closely related, btw
That human aural communication is different to that of other animals is expected.
Evolution from very simple grunts and such to modern speech over hundreds of thousands of years is entirely possible. Just have
In our experience, codes are produced only by intelligence, not by natural processes or chance. A code is defined as a set of rules for converting information from one useful form to another (e.g. Morse Code or Braille.) The genetic material that controls the physical processes of life is coded information. It also is accompanied by eloborate transmission, translation, and duplication systems, without with the genetic material would be useless, and life would cease.
Likewise, no natural process has even been observed to produce a program. A program is defined as a planned sequence of steps to accomplish some goal (e.g. Computer programs like Age of Mythology). The information stored in the genetic material of all life is a complex program.
More attempts to confuse people.
"
In the experience of modern humans. In the experience spanning no more than 6000 years or so. Out of a geological period of 4.5billion years.
In our experience no natural event has put the earth out of it's orbit, that doesn't mean it can't, or even hasn't, happened. In our experience no natural event can destroy the dominant lifeform of the planet, yet it could happen.
The period of recorded human history is
Furthermore, this is to deal with
Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorst attacks against the United States. - CATO Institute, 1998
Perseus wore a magic cap so that the monsters he hunted might not see him. We draw the magic cap down over our own eyes and ears so as to deny that there are any monsters - Karl Marx
Écrasez l'infâme
1. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. We have never been able to create energy so how is the big bang possible?
2. Every 5,000 years(i think, the amount of years might be off give or take a few thousand) the earth's magnetic field is half as strong as it was 5,000 years before. The same is true with the earth's rotation. This make the earth unable to support life 30,000 years ago, much less billions of years ago.
I look forward to your response.
I am the state.
Thank you for your kind words, I am glad I have earned your respect, and i respect your views as well, you put up a very convincing arguement I know you didn't say anything about scientists rejecting God had anything to do with the universe at all costs, I was commenting that there are alot of scientists that do think like that. I still have a hard time seeing, though, how if it was proven that God created the first cell, you could exclude him from any theory about the origin of life. I guess it wouldn't be very scientific, but it just doen't seem right to me. Again, about he fossil record, even though the fossils may be very similar in structure, and it is a possibility that they are related or evolved from one another, you still can't really say that this is observing a mutation, because you didn't actually see it happen. It is getting late and I start school tommorrow, so that's all I will say for now. Oh and the site clarissimus is getting his information from is
Anyway, to answer, there are some ways around this, although I've little idea about them I'm sorry that I haven't got more on this atm, but the simple fact is that universities + serious researchesr, and the like don't deal with all creationist claims because some are simply absurd. As for the recession of the moon from the Earth, your article says "two inches per year". It also says that if you work it backwards, the Earth and Moon would be touching 2 billion years ago. Well, it's not too hard to test that assertion. First, we know that the current rate of recession is 3.82±0.07 cm/year . At 2.54 cm/inch (exactly), 3.82 cm is 1.50 inches, so your creationist article rounds up by about a half inch. But let's use the right number, shall we? The current average Earth-moon distance is 384,400 km (38,440,000,000 cm). If we cover 3.82 cm for 2,000,000,000 years, we get 7,640,000,000 cm. That would put the Earth-moon separation, 2 billion years ago, at 38,400,000,000 - 7,640,000,000 = 30,760,000,000 cm. But the radius of the moon is about 1,738.2 km (173,820,000 cm), and the radius of the Earth is about 6371.0 km (637,100,000 cm). These radii only add up to 810,920,000 cm, a far cry from the 30,760,000,000 cm between the Earth and moon. So, I think it's fair to say that the Earth and moon would not be touching 2 billion years ago. In fact, at 3.82 cm per year, you would have to crank the creationist clock backwards over 10,000,000,000 years to make the Earth and moon touch, and that's a lot older than I have ever heard any evolutionist claim, for the age of the Earth-moon system. Now, I will add that neither the rate of recession of the moon from the Earth, nor the rate of slow down in the spin of the Earth are constant. Theory says that the rate of recession of the moon from the Earth should have been rather slower than the current 3.82 cm, for at least a few billion years, and paleontological evidence supports that conclusion . Creationists wrongly assume it must always have been faster in the past, because they ignore most of the real physics of the tidal interaction. Detailed theoretical & observational studies reveal that there are no inconsistencies between the tidal physics of the Earth-moon system and an evolutionary age for the Earth-moon system. Creationists create bogus inconsistencies by ignoring most of the basic physics, and arriving at naive conclusions as a result. This is not a matter of some "creationist" view versus some "evolutionist" view, or even some "atheist" view. It is simply a matter of doing it right versus doing it wrong, and make no mistake about it, creationists definitely do it wrong.
An important thing to remember, however, is that BBT created not only mass/energy but also space/time. Outside the construct of space/time our laws of physics are basically meaningless
Magnetic field:
As for the earths rotation, it is partially correct, but overstated.
Sorry, I was unclear. It couldn't be included in any theory of
It's important that this is to do with the scientific method (ie, this must occur for science to be of any use, even though it may appear at times absurd).
Are you arguing that you can't really say it is in the same evolutionary line, or that it is, but you can't say it is caused by mutation?
Thanks. I've already looked at it (and trueorigins, and answersingenesis, etc etc etc)
Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorst attacks against the United States. - CATO Institute, 1998
Perseus wore a magic cap so that the monsters he hunted might not see him. We draw the magic cap down over our own eyes and ears so as to deny that there are any monsters - Karl Marx
Écrasez l'infâme
I don't know much about the bombadier beetle, but if there is anything I have learned about the theory of evolution it is that it is a very slow and gradual process of many small mutations being acted on by natural selection. So the mechanism and chemicals the beetle uses probably devolped gradually from something different or simpler. Then again I could be wrong because as I said I know little about this beetle, so I guess you could disregard this until eifer posts on it.
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