I watched "Darwin’s Deadly Legacy" on DVD last night.
I agree that the insult –and-run debate is unpleasant.
But I was reminded of how interesting the actual Creation/ Evolution debate truly is.
And I was struck by how obvious the connection is.
In the book “Mein Kampf” the translator used the English word “development” for the German word “evolution”, which is unfortunate.
“Noble Evolution” as Adolf H. considered it should have been used – “natural selection” is still prominent though.
“The support which I receive from Germany is my chief ground for hoping that our views will ultimately prevail” – Life and Letters of Charles Darwin Vol 2 p 270
Although the video hit on several on my top 10 “that is interesting”
… it missed these…
TOP 10 INTERESTING THINGS ABOUT THE DARWIN DEBATE
Ota Benga - http://www.doctorhakeem.com/Congo_Project/otabenga.html
Poly Strate tree fossils
Job 40-41 dinosaurs vs man cagefight
Billions of dead things, buried in rock layers, laid down by water, all over the earth
“dem Bible dinosaurs at deh Creation Museum”
Josef Stalin tried to create an invincible army of ape-men
Eugenics - New York World's Fair, 1939-1940 (Why no Eugenics after WW2?)
DNA only loses information in mutation – no information added
And the number one point of interest:
40% believe evolution - of that 40%, the majority (60% plus) do not believe the part about fish to apes
So my question of the day – what evidence would help you make the “leap of faith” that fish became apes?
25 comments:
It's amazing how dishonest that video in particular is, and sort of depressing that things like that are what constitute the "debate" at least in the general public. Nazism combined and mangled all sorts of ideologies, including Christianity, to justify their murderous beliefs. It's particularly silly to quote Darwin talking about support in Germany considering that he died in 1882, 30 years prior to WW1, let alone Nazism.
It's worth noting though, in passing, that talking about modern animals evolving into other modern animals is a confusion and not what evolution suggests: there is no taxonomic group in evolution known as "fish." "Fish" is a colloquial term for modern fish. Apes (and all other land animals) are subgroups of the ancient lobed fishes, sub-variations off of those more basic ancient forms.
Also, among other things:
"DNA only loses information in mutation – no information added"
Complete falsehood, by the way. If you think about it, it's not even logically possible, because mutations are random, so if they can lose information then they by definition can also gain it. And in practice they do, in fact, gain it all the time, no matter how you define information (and that's not a particularly easy task in and of itself).
Thanks for the comment Drew.
Are you a lobed-fish-to-ape evolutionist then?
I really would like to know how to leap over the inherent difficult-to-believeness of the goo-to-lobes-to-apes thing.
How to convince the majority - what do you think would work?
Do you believe the numbers? that the lobed-fish to apes is only believed by a minority of a minority of people?
The reality is that the vast vast majority of people have never actually looked at the evidence, let alone taken the time to understand the science involved (which, frankly, is fine: not everyone has to bother or care). Heck, huge numbers of people cannot even rank the planets or point to America on a globe. So I'm not sure what that's worth.
I'm also not sure why you think your incredulity about something is a good guide to anything. Frankly, I'm incredulous that skyscrapers can work and support their weight even with huge jutting holes on the bottom. And yet, engineers insist that they can do and it and what do you know: they're right. Shows how much my uninformed opinion is worth.
In my case in the case of tetrapod evolution, I have looked into the evidence, and it looks pretty much rock solid in my judgment. All land animals are observably sub-variations of the basic form the lobed fishes represent: with only a few exceptions, every feature that made those lobed fishes distinct from all other life on the planet at the time continues to be defining and unique features in their descendants. And those exceptions are telling: they are things like snakes and whales/dolphins, both of which show characteristic evidence of having once had four limbs (vestigial structures, atavisms, embryological homology, remnants in their genes, and so on). Even if you don't find the mechanism of natural selection as being plausible, it seems incontrovertible that all land vertebrates are descended in their form from the early tetrapods/lobed fishes: they are all sub-groups within that original group.
The fact that these are the exact relationships we find when we compare the genetics of modern species provides a further check on the idea, and I've never heard another plausible explanation for how all of these things could be so and for there NOT to be a relation. Obviously there's a lot more to it, but I guess I'm not sure why people DO consider so implausible, once they've looked over the pattern made by the fossil record, the genetic record, and well, pretty much every scrap of physical evidence, and noticed that they all fit together in one very specific way, and pretty much one way only.
Thanks Drew,
I am going to look into lobed-fish. I never heard of them before today. Is there a web site that makes the case with more detail? What makes them adaptable over time to become all following species?
Very interesting.
Is natural selection the mechanism that satisfies the "how"?
BTW it is my understanding that the shocking figures of incredulity apply to scientists as well. Which is not as surprising as it seems at first - science requires skepticism until overwhelmed by evidence.
This hangs on the question - who proved fish to ape evolution? and what was their moment of "aha"?
Nazism clearly has it roots in the German defeat of World War 1. That it appropriated eugenics says nothing about evolution.
David, you put your finger right on why it's hard to explain evolution to a skeptic. That over hundreds of millions of years, mutation, chance and selective pressure can result in a population of lucky, well-adapted lobe fins making the move from muddy pond-fringe to the wide open, exploitable dry land.
Some lobe fins become more lobe and less fin. They fancy only critters with more lobe and less fin. Their offspring are the same. And theirs. More lobe-y hardly any finny, and they find fish ugly and probably can't breed any more. It may take thousands of generations, but there we are. Selective pressure and breeding and we're on land. Dozens of species probably tried it unsuccessfully, but somewhere one (maybe more) made it.
That's a potted and very simple water to lake margins explanation. At which a creationist will throw a variety of arguments, ending it in well I just don't believe that could happen randomly and otherwaide the bible says otherwise.
Our case is hard to put across, requires education, assumptions challenging and patient explanation. God did it is much easier. But we shouln't stepback from making the case because it's a tough sell.
Wikipedia has a decent article on Tetrapods that's pretty good as an introduction.
"What makes them adaptable over time to become all following species?"
I'm not sure what you mean: they weren't in themselves more adaptable than anything else: their descendants prospered because they filled all sorts of new niches. They didn't have to have done so.
"Is natural selection the mechanism that satisfies the "how"?"
Seems so to me, because it is a process that produces some fairly identifiable results and distinctive patterns of traits, and those are what we find in life. Of course, natural selection is not the only factor relevant to why life is the way it is, but clearly it is a major factor in the adaptation of life to its environment: i.e. its NON random changes over time.
"BTW it is my understanding that the shocking figures of incredulity apply to scientists as well."
I doubt it: certainly not in biology proper, and generally not in the sciences: last time I checked, the figure was around 95% of scientists are either straight evolutionists or theistic evolutionists (which isn't really a distinction in science, just in personal belief).
"Which is not as surprising as it seems at first - science requires skepticism until overwhelmed by evidence."
Yes, but in the case of evolution, most scientists think the evidence is overwhelming and, as I noted, inescapable in a lot of cases. There was lots and lost of skepticism, but by and large its been answered for for most of the general theory. When you really look at all the different independent lines of evidence that all converge on the exact same things in detail, there aren't a lot of bases left uncovered. You could allege that every single one of the evidences was wrong... and yet you'd STILL then have to explain why all these different things go wrong in such a way that the errors all come out to the same conclusions... which is a sort of coordination that error just can't explain (you would expect different calculations were all in error to be all over the map, not to give the same wrong answers in high detail).
"This hangs on the question - who proved fish to ape evolution? and what was their moment of "aha"?"
Again, there is no one aha: science generally works by ruling out all the other alternatives available within the confines of physical laws and nailing down every avenue of objection. However, the fact that fossil clades match genetic clades which match morphological clades is pretty darn compelling and "aha" though (not to mention that all of it fits the geographic distribution of species over time based on plate tectonics).
I mean, long before anyone considered common descent, creationist taxonomists were finding themselves placing all living things and fossils into these categories that seemed inevitable: when you look at the distinguishing traits of living things in order to group by similarities and dissimilarities, they again and again form a particular pattern: nested clades (i.e. family trees). There's no reason why living things and their traits should HAVE to group this way: why it is the all great apes and only great apes (including humans) have particular sorts of teeth AND distinctive shoulder joints: these traits could have just been scattered around the animal kingdom. Instead, they are heavily correlated, exactly as traits in a family tree. Today, the very same sort of genetic tests that we use to prove paternity on Montel Williams show a family relation between species, and the family tree we build from this turns out to be the very same one we independently build just by looking at fossil patterns or similarities/dissimilarities between modern animals.
This debate goes back and forth and will until the day every knee bows down and admits that Jesus is Lord.
Creation makes no sense to the unbeliever, and evolution makes no sense to the believer.
I think every argument for either is based on the PRESUMPTION that it is true.
You can point to the similarities in bone structure of different animals and attribute them to evolution, or you can attribute the similarities as being the handiwork of the one Creator.
One thing to keep in mind is that Darwin was looking at what he called a "simple cell" through an 1859 microscope when he developed his theory. He saw there was a nucleus surrounded by SOMETHING, inside a cell wall.
There was no way for him to see or understand the encyclopedic amount of complex information contained in DNA, or the enzymes and proteins that all need to line up in exact positions, etc. to create more cells.
To me the evidence for Creation is overwhelming, not the other.
The accidental creation of life by lightning striking some mud somewhere don't git it. Even less so that it would continue to just get better and better. That goes against the PROVEN law of thermodynamics.
I know I won't convince anyone, but that's my view. Thanks!
"I think every argument for either is based on the PRESUMPTION that it is true."
That's really not how science works though: the difference is the emphasis but on evidence. The evidence HAS to fit in order for any scientific theory to sustain and persist. It isn't up to any one person's presumptions.
"You can point to the similarities in bone structure of different animals and attribute them to evolution, or you can attribute the similarities as being the handiwork of the one Creator."
The problem the Creator as an explanation is that it is consistent with literally anything at all. No matter what the evidence says or looks like, it could always have been done by an all-powerful Creator. But that's a problem, not a feature, for that sort of explanation: it makes it impossible to identify, since there is nothing limited and distinctive. It also can potentially explain every single thing that has ever happened, including that the world began yesterday complete with our memories of a past that never actually happened. As long as we are interested in discovering answers within the context of evidence, the Creator explanation just isn't helpful: it explains too much, and hence nothing.
In the particular case of homology, its not enough to simply say that a Creator reproduced some common features: that still doesn't explain the PATTERN of traits found and how they are distinctively ancestral. Again, this puts us back to saying that a Creator specifically made it look like these relations are ancestral when they are in fact not. If you want to get into that line of thinking, we're back to "world created yesterday" territory: no criminal trial could ever proceed, because all the evidence could have been fabricated by the Creator. If we want to deal with evidence instead of inventing untestable explanations that utilize magic, then this is just not workable.
If you want to believe that a Creator fabricated specific evidence in extremely high detail of an old earth, evolution, and whole past eras that never actually happened, that's fine, but it's not science, and it isn't what a consideration of _evidence_ shows. Not everyone believes in that sort of Creator: to many people, a Creation so poorly constructed that it requires God's constant tinkering is just as unsatisfying and unglorifying to God as you might find evolution. That is a theological matter though, again, not really relevant to science.
"There was no way for him to see or understand the encyclopedic amount of complex information contained in DNA, or the enzymes and proteins that all need to line up in exact positions, etc. to create more cells."
Claims to the contrary, this doesn't really change anything: everything we've learned about cells has confirmed evolutionary common descent in some pretty powerful ways: the very fact that there IS an ancestral mechanism like DNA and that it's binary instead of blended and that it tracks homology right down to the same endogenous retrovirus sequences is an amazing confirmation of common descent. DNA itself is characteristic of something that is the product of natural selection: high levels of redundancy, overlap, feedback loops, and so forth: these are the very distinctive mechanisms we see when we reproduce the genetic algorithms of natural selection and see what evolves in a model.
Also, a common misconception is that cells are primitive compared to multicelluar structures. But in fact, cells are the oldest known forms of life on the planet: the basic machinery of cell function is the MOST evolved structure that there is.
"The accidental creation of life by lightning striking some mud somewhere don't git it."
The actual start of life is not itself part of evolutionary theory by the way, because evolution requires reproduction with heredity to work at all. How life began is quite a different subject.
"Even less so that it would continue to just get better and better. That goes against the PROVEN law of thermodynamics."
No, it doesn't. Note that if your understanding of thermodynamics were true, ice couldn't freeze, life could not exist at all, and all sorts of chemical reactions could never occur at all. But they do.
The 2nd law is essentially a statement that you cannot get as much energy out of something as you put into it: nothing is perfectly efficient. It is not a law against order arising if there are natural processes at work. It simply requires that wasteful work be done in order to get there. As long as there is energy input, these processes can continue apace.
Very good sounding arguments.
There are nearly limitless other considerations though; the perfect placement of the moon and planets in our solar system that deflect asteroids and space debris from constantly hitting our Earth...the perfect distance from the sun that provides our climate...the perfect blend of gases that provides our atmosphere...the list goes on and on.
And the truth is, scientists are continually discovering evidence of things that they considered indisputable yesterday. For example, when they recently discovered multiple gas-giant planets that completely orbited their suns in extremely short time frames like only 4 earth days, they said that was impossible and did not believe the data at first.
"No matter what the evidence says or looks like, it could always have been done by an all-powerful Creator."
THIS is my point exactly, except to say that it WAS done by an all-powerful Creator.
I believe that human science is fallible and the word of God is not.
God doesn't need to tinker with or fabricate His creation. My belief is that someday what is considered fact proven by evidence will be disproven.
God is not magic, but IS supernatural, and does supernatural things. Science does not recognize the supernatural.
Jesus continually asserted the truth of the Old Testament and it's stories...things as unbelievable as Jonah living in the belly of a fish for 3 days. Then He allowed Himself to be brutally killed so He could rise from being totally dead and show himself to at least 500 eye-witnesses to prove the things He said were true.
If God used the evolution of life forms to put life on this planet, the Bible would say so. He didn't need to do that.
I know that this is all foolishness to the natural man. The Bible says that, too.
Our little pea-brained science can't explain what God does. He is so much bigger than that and His thoughts and ways are so much higher than ours.
That's what I think in a nutshell. Thanks for the equal time!
Steve, anyone can endlessly make claims and arguments: the point is whether those arguments are good or not. Lot and lots, even an endless amount of bad arguments that misunderstand and misrepresent science don't add up to anything at all.
The fact that scientists are surprised by things and wrong is part of science: that's precisely what makes it such a good methodology for examining the world around us: it is ruled by what evidence shows. When new evidence appears, or old evidence is re-evaluated, so must our conclusions. But again, merely noting that this is possible in general is not itself a good argument that science is mistaken about your particular pet issue. Again: it's about the evidence. Either you have it or you don't. And of course, people often misrepresent how surprised or how sure scientists are by certain things in order to try and create more openings for their own complaints, whether they have merit or not.
"THIS is my point exactly, except to say that it WAS done by an all-powerful Creator."
But don't you realize how self-defeating that point is? It IS equivalent to magic. If you used that line of thinking, you'd never have any reason to learn about anything: you could just sit in your house all day long and answer any question at all with "god did it!" There's no explanation there. And from the theology angle, honestly, I just can't envision God wanting us to be that lazy.
You can of course believe that your view is true no matter what the evidence says, but so can anyone about anything. That still doesn't MAKE there be evidence for your position, and it most certainly does not justify false arguments that misrepresent evidence, just because they look like they help reach the "right" conclusion.
"I know that this is all foolishness to the natural man. The Bible says that, too."
That's a very self-sealing worldview and interpretation then: thinking like that, you can't even really consider the possibility that you are wrong, because all criticism is de facto labeled foolishness right off the bat.
"Our little pea-brained science can't explain what God does. He is so much bigger than that and His thoughts and ways are so much higher than ours."
Then why are you so sure that you know for certain what and how God would do things, including how he'd record his wishes or describe the universe?
Hi Drew, et al, sorry, I've been sick.
You assert that Creation "IS equivalent to magic".
You see, that is how I see the theory of evolution; equivalent to magic, and I don't see the origin of life as a separate issue.
The theory of evolution starts with the idea that nonliving matter somehow became living by mere chance, without the benefit of intelligence or planning. At it's most basic premise, the theory says that given enough time, HYDROGEN turns into PEOPLE.
After "something happens here" to make nonliving matter alive, what is the 'engine' that drives cells to become complex machines on their own? I'm curious which mechanism or mechanisms you adhere to:
'Lamarckism'; the theory of acquired characteristics?
Or 'Darwinism'; the theory of natural selection,
Or the 'Mutation Theory',
Or 'Neo-Darwinism'; the combined effects of mutation and natural selection?
"You assert that Creation "IS equivalent to magic"."
Yes, but understand the sense in which I mean that: it is in the sense that it is not any sort of explanation: there is nothing to test or consider. It is asserted that an all powerful being did it. That could explain anything at all.
Why bother to wonder how rain works? An all powerful being did it, because it can do anything. You're welcome to believe that, of course. Or you can go out and look and find out that there is a much more specific explanation involved that doesn't require the extravagance of an all powerful being explaining everything (and hence, explaining nothing).
Now, if you didn't know about the basics of evaporation and pressure differentials and atmosphere, someone saying that rain is caused by the water cycle might SOUND like magic. But that's not the same thing: the actual explanation is there, in fact, and involves all sorts of direct explanations based on the interaction of known elements.
"You see, that is how I see the theory of evolution; equivalent to magic, and I don't see the origin of life as a separate issue."
You may not see it as such, but it is, of course, a separate issue. The two are neither logically nor explanatorily linked.
"The theory of evolution starts with the idea that nonliving matter somehow became living by mere chance, without the benefit of intelligence or planning."
No. Again, if you are going to criticize something, that's one thing, but what is the point of a criticism that misstates the basics? It's like reviewing a book you've never read. The theory of evolution starts with life already present. What you seem interested in is abiogenesis, which is a different issue.
"At it's most basic premise, the theory says that given enough time, HYDROGEN turns into PEOPLE."
No, again, not even close, even for abiogenesis. Abiogenetic theories of develop suggest that the early environment of the earth, which had a LOT more going on than simply hydrogen, had the capability of producing organic molecules complex enough to establish some form of reproduction with heredity.
If you think of it as hydrogen turning into a human being as one big poof, of course it seems like magic... but that's only because what you are imagining is simply a false caricature and not relevant: that's not what abiogenesis is suggested to involve.
"After "something happens here" to make nonliving matter alive,"
Again, just because you think in terms of magic does not mean that the things themselves are magic. Living matter is a subset of matter in general, but nothing about it requires magic above and beyond the same normal chemistry operating on everything else: it simply involves particular non-living elements structured in particular ways such that they perform the basic defining things of life. There is no bright line here between living and non-living: are viruses alive? Are prions?
"what is the 'engine' that drives cells to become complex machines on their own"
Not all cell lines do become complex, by the way.
In any case, the answer to your question of mechanism is very complicated, because there is no one single simple answer: there are lots of different things going on in biological life, many different things that affect outcomes, many different chemical laws and interactions that have to be understood in specific before one can discuss whether this or that is plausible.
But yes, in an overview scale, natural selection most certainly seems to be the key component in specifically why life adapts to its environment and diversifies to new environments over time, which is really the key element of things most people care about and seem to have trouble with. I'm not sure what you think you are describing with the other things you mention. The neo-darwinian synthesis is the general name for how adaption works in evolution. The strong form of Lamarckism is not (though this is one of those many complications: not all acquired characteristic mechanisms are impossible, and certain things like symbiosis blur the lines as well).
Hi all,
Here is a quote from George Wald, 1967 Nobel Prize Winner in Science:
"When it comes to the origin of life on this earth, there are only two possibilities: creation or spontaneous generation. There is no third way. Spontaneous generation was disproved 100 years ago, but that leads us only to one other conclusion: That of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds; therefore, we choose to believe the IMPOSSIBLE: that life arose spontaneously by chance."
That doesn't sound like proven scientific fact based on evidence to me.
Drew, I neglected to re-answer one of your earlier questions:
"Then why are you so sure that you know for certain what and how God would do things, including how he'd record his wishes or describe the universe?"
As I said before:
Jesus continually asserted the truth of the Old Testament and it's stories...things as unbelievable as Jonah living in the belly of a fish for 3 days. Then He allowed Himself to be brutally killed so He could rise from being totally dead and show himself to at least 500 eye-witnesses to prove the things He said were true.
Not to mention the more than 300 prophetic scriptures which came to pass many hundreds of years later in most cases.
The Bible is God's inspired Word and Owner's Manual and He stuck in all kinds of proof of authenticity.
But back to my question to you about which theoretical "mechanism of evolution" you adhered to. You seem to be saying they all play a part.
As far as the theory of acquired characteristics (Lamarckism); it was believed that characteristics acquired through adaptation could be passed down to offspring. It's now known that change can only be passed on to offspring through alterations of the genes and DNA. Because of this error, I believe Lamarckism was rejected in the scientific community by the 1930s.
Darwin's 'Survival of the fittest' or Natural Selection doesn't work as the SOLE mechanism either, a point you seem to agree with. It only acts to conserve existing organisms. It does not produce new ones. (An aside; Did you know that the phrase "we may suppose..." or similar words occur over 800 times in Darwin's 'The Origin of the Species' and 'The Descent of Man'? This doesn't sound like proven evidence to me.)
According to the Mutation theory, new species result from favorable chance DNA alterations. But isn't it true that mutations are almost always harmful to an organism, and extremely rare in duplications of a DNA molecule?
I'm also curious; what about the 'Geologic Column' that the theory depends on, and the fact that it exists nowhere in the world?
With all respect to Wald, winning a Nobel Prize does not make you an expert in anything, and having an unpublished opinion on something outside your own field of study does not make it sound science. In this case, Wald was confusing Pasteur's disproval of the emergence of complex life from things like spoiled meat (a disproof which, by the way, is strong evidence for the evolutionary over the previous model of various Platonic forms appearing/created with no ancestry or sequence of causes) with the possibility of simple life emerging in the conditions of the early earth. One is not the other.
Yes, as I noted, Lamarckism, at least in its conventional form, isn't credible. But, as I noted, it's not quite that simple, because biology isn't all that simple. Things can happen like viruses inserting their genetic material into germ line of a species, and having that event be passed down (in fact, these events are often telling signs when looking at genetic ancestry, because when two species diverge from a common ancestor, they will bear the same distinctive virus insertions in the same places in their genes: witness to past events) Biology is full of complex elements like this that really need to be understood at least in overview to have some sense of what things are like.
"It only acts to conserve existing organisms. It does not produce new ones."
Again, this is pointing to a misunderstanding of the full implications of evolution. Evolution does not, in fact, suggest that "new" organisms are produced (that, in fact, would be non-evolutionary): it suggests that all organisms are variations of past species and share a common ancestry. Gorillas, Chimps, Humans are all sub-types of the basic great ape form, which is itself a variation of Old World primate forms, and so on. This is why when creationists often complain that something is "still" a fly, or a dog... they don't know how correct they are, and yet falsely believing that to be contrary to evolution instead of it exactly.
All descendent species of a current species will "still" be that original group in the same sense that pigs, dogs, cats, humans, and goats are "still" mammals, or that you are "still" your father's child, even though you are not your father. Heck, humans are "still" eukaryotes.
"Did you know that the phrase "we may suppose..." or similar words occur over 800 times in Darwin's 'The Origin of the Species' and 'The Descent of Man'? This doesn't sound like proven evidence to me."
Are you really arguing that Darwin's writing was the be all and end all of evolutionary biology? Otherwise, why is this relevant? Darwin proposed his theory based on what he saw in the evidence, and he was a careful, highly critical thinker. That's to be praised, not ridiculed. His basic theories were confirmed and validated later, many in ways he never could have imagined (like DNA). He was also wrong about all sorts of things, most notably his model of heredity (which he himself realized, but did not live to hear of the solution, which ironically he had unread in his library: Gregory Mendel's studies of pea plant breeding). Again, so?
Also, isn't it a little disingenuous of people to count the word "suppose" entirely without looking at how it was being used? A lot of those "we may suppose" 's involved him laying out theoretical framework descriptively to a reader, after which he then proceeded to show the evidence for his claim. It seems more than a little misleading to present that as pure speculation in the way whomever developed that anecdote did.
"According to the Mutation theory, new species result from favorable chance DNA alterations. But isn't it true that mutations are almost always harmful to an organism, and extremely rare in duplications of a DNA molecule?"
No: mutations are relatively common, but are mostly neutral in their effect. It's also important to realize that whether a particular mutation is useful or not is largely situational, not universal. It's also worth noting that most really harmful mutations (those that break important life functions) are in fact screened out en masse in the germ line: they simply fail to form proper germ line cells, auto-abort, and so on. What's left in most gene pools is a stock of mostly minor mutational variation, most of it without obviously good or bad effects. It's only when these variations are exposed to an environmental pressure that we can say whether or not they are useful, and only in context.
I've never heard of anyone outside of creationists talking about "mutation theory," but speciation is not necessarily linked with mutation, and certainly not with the idea of one big mutation happening that suddenly splits two populations in twain.
Species are defined by whether they can/do interbreed in the wild. It's a very fuzzy definition, and it is that way because of a very fuzzy reality: there are many different levels of genetic compatibility/incompatibility (some species could interbreed genetically but culturally/habitually do not, others can so some extent, but have a low success rate, or produce a certain likihood of sterile offspring, and so on).
The basic model of speciation is that a population that can interbreed becomes split in two: usually by geographical distance or blockage. Then, over time, the gene pools of these two species diverge to the point where, if and when they come back together, they cannot interbreed (and again, this can be for all sorts of different reasons, from simple differences in habit to physical incompatibility to genetic incompatibilities that arise).
It's worth noting that speciation is not directly correlated with other large scale differences: two different species can be almost identical (for instance, abalone speciate simply by a very slight genetic change in their reproductive "lock/key" system) or vary a great deal physically while remaining genetically compatible (like domestic dogs). That's why it's somewhat of a mistake to link the idea of major mutational changes directly to the process of speciation.
"I'm also curious; what about the 'Geologic Column' that the theory depends on, and the fact that it exists nowhere in the world?"
This is somewhat upsetting, because it gives me a real sense of how someone has twisted the truth into a lie and then tried to pass it on to you.
In fact, while the geologic column is indeed not "complete" in most areas of the world (that is to say, not every layer is preserved or accessible in every spot on the globe), it in fact is in some, and it actually wouldn't much matter even if it wasn't. The earth's surface is volatile: from the formation of mountains to the movement of plates and things like subduction, areas can be flipped, split, crushed, and eroded. However, just like a multi-dimensional puzzle, it is possible to fit all of these things back together based on comparisons of their similarities and differences. Again, this is a very complex and technical subject: it involves understanding things like magnetic reversal patterns, the effects of volcanism, asteroid impacts and elemental formation, and so on. It's not impossible to learn, but you have to really learn it in order to judge its validity, not just have some non-geologist tell you that it's all a big conspiracy.
It's very easy to make up arguments out of half-truths and misrepresentations that sound plausible enough to people who both want to believe a certain thing, and do not know enough about the subject to really check the claims for accuracy. But the reality is that this information can be checked, the evidence can be looked at, and the claims of creationists on these issues simply do not hold up.
As to the issue of your particular theology, I don't really have much to say. You are in a minority amongst Christians, and while I understand that you think they are all wrong, they all think the same about you, which gets no one anywhere. No one is going to be convinced by the apologetics of another sect, particularly when there is in fact little other than faith and conviction, and much of the evidence for one reading over another is circular reasoning.
Hi again,
Speaking of "circular reasoning"...this is basically what I meant before about the theory being based on the PRESUMPTION that it is true...
The fact that historical geology is based on the assumption of evolutionary biology (the picture you use to put the "geologic puzzle pieces" together is a case of circular reasoning. The only basis for putting rock formations in order is their fossil content. The only justification for assigning fossils to specific time periods in that chronology is the assumed evolutionary progression of life. The only basis for biological evolution is the fossil record, so constructed.
The assumption of evolution is used to arrange the sequence of fossils, then the resultant sequence is used as "proof" of evolution.
Oh, except no matter how you piece together all the stratum, there are no transitionary forms of life, and the Cambrian strata contains billions of fully developed life forms which SUDDENLY appeared.
Aside from all that, real geological, paleontological, and archeological evidence actually proves biblical history like the great flood, and a young earth.
Now you will think I am REALLY crazy. But the way I see it, the evolutionary theory has been so ingrained in schools and taught as fact for so long, due only to the atheistic scientist's denial of God by any means whatsoever. It's a weak theory that is continually bolstered by more THEORY, and passed off as fact, ignoring the bulk of the real evidence uncovered.
By your own point about changes in the earth's crust, volcanism, etc., radioactive dating depends on there being no parent or daughter atoms being added to, or being taken from the rock. Percolation of water through rocks cause atoms to be transported and deposited elsewhere. Heating and deforming of rocks causes migration of daughter and parent atoms. Exposure to neutrino, neutron, or cosmic radiation alters the rates of decay. It is a fact that living snails have been dated 2300 years old by the carbon-14 method. The same method has dated wood taken from living trees to be 10,000 years old. Hawaiian lava flows, known to be fewer than 200 years old have been dated by the potassium-argon method to be 3 billion years old. These dating techniques are NOT reliable, in fact they're all over the place.
Thomas G. Barnes has shown that the earth's magnetic field was twice as strong as it is now, 1400 years ago.
If we use the Uniformitarian assumption which evolution depends on (i.e., given enough time anything is possible), and extrapolate back 10,000 years, the earth would have had a field as strong as a magnetic star. (I know, here is where all the magnetic reversal hypothesis comes in...but the self-reversal process known to exist in rocks is independant of the earth's field. Plus, it is believed that the magnetic field is due to circulating electric currents in it's core. Use the Uniformitarian theory and we find that the estimated heat produced by those currents would have melted the planet.
More...the rotation of the earth is gradually slowing by the gravitational drag of the sun, moon and other factors. If it's been slowing uniformly, it's present rotation should be zero. Otherwise, several billion years ago the continents would have gravitated to the equitorial regions by centrifugal force.
The moon is receding from the earth. Calculations based on the known recession speed and the evolutionary age of 4 - 5 billion years would put the moon much much farther away from earth than it is.
Evolutionists maintain that the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium that produce helium has been occurring for billions of years, but the earth's atmosphere only contains 1 part in 200,000 of helium. Recent data indicate that helium does not escape into space the way hydrogen does. The observed helium content of the atmosphere is calculated at about 10,000 years worth.
More...there is no evidence of meteoric craters or materials below the surface.
Extrapolate the earth's population by the Uniformitarian theory. Even if the population increased at only 1/2 percent per year for only a million years, the earth's population (allowing for war and disease) would still exceed 10 to the 2100 power.
Each time a comet comes around the sun, part of it is boiled off. The comets we see should be totally gone by now if they've been making passes at the sun for BILLIONS of years.
I'll stop here for now.
As for your statement "You are in a minority amongst Christians...", I'm not too surprised at that, (although I wonder what poll that came from) I used to think evolution made sense too.
Also, Drew, your statement "It's very easy to make up arguments out of half-truths and misrepresentations that sound plausible enough..." is very much how your arguments sound to me.
Sorry, I need to correct myself; I said "Uniformitarian assumption which evolution depends on (i.e., given enough time anything is possible)..."
'Given enough time anything is possible' is not the Uniformitarian theory, I know. I got ahead of myself there. 'Given enough time...' is the crutch that evolution rests on.
The Uniformitarian theory is that the earth's rotation, decay, and all other factors remain constant through time. I understand that and you will not have to point it out.
Thanks!
"The fact that historical geology is based on the assumption of evolutionary biology"
This is a common creationist claim, but it, like so many others, is simply a falsehood. At some point, you are going to need to ask yourself what it means that so many of your ideas about science are based on outright lies and misrepresentations.
In any case, modern geology began before Darwin ever published, and it was creationist scientists, in fact, who realized that the earth was old: that the evidence didn't fit with their beliefs. They put this understanding together not with any comprehensive understanding of fossils but with a very wide range of consistent measurements based on things like magnetic polarity reversals, radio isotope dating methods, the emerging picture of the actual elements and refined models of physics and chemistry. All of these things are based themselves on considerable scientific evidence that you cannot simply dismiss with a wave of your hand as you do, and none of these things are based on circular reasoning of the sort you describe: they are based on the principle of convergence of all physical evidence. Carbon dating, for instance, is based on some pretty amazingly solid evidence about how physics works, but even so, it's tested against all manner of different and independent checks on its accuracy, from ice core samples to petrified forest tree rings to silt layers, and so forth. So many different measured things have to be just right for it to be useful and accurate... and they are. You can't simply handwave away that convergence: you need to explain how it is that the basic dates match up so well with virtually every piece of physical evidence we have in fine detail, in all sorts of complicated and unexpected ways.
The reason fossils are today used as a decent shorthand for identifying layers is not because it is the sole evidence on which those layers rests, but because these findings have proven so universally consistent in practice that they are THEN considered to be reliable. It's like if you were digging through a garbage pile: if you find discarded pokemon, you can be pretty sure that you aren't in a layer from 16th century England, not because you simply assume so, but because virtually every element of history supports the idea that no pokemon existed in 16th century England, from the materials to the concept, to the character sets, to the contact with the Japanese at the time, and so on.
Furthermore, none of your other points are valid either. Common descent is not based on fossils alone: fossils are a rich source of additional detail, but hardly the key piece of evidence. In fact, in the case of Darwin, fossils were a rather minor part of his discussion: he noted them mostly to show that various creatures go extinct, that creatures once lived that are different from life today. In his time, he never expected to see the sort of rich sampling of fossils we've come to have. We are extremely lucky to have them, but the correctness of his ideas did and does not rely on whether or not we have them.
"Oh, except no matter how you piece together all the stratum, there are no transitionary forms of life, and the Cambrian strata contains billions of fully developed life forms which SUDDENLY appeared."
All of these are very very commonplace creationist tropes that have been asked and answered literally millions of times. There are countless transitional forms: you simply don't understand what the are. Furthermore, the fossil record very plainly shows nested clades, not simply randomly, but distributed geographically in ways that accord with actual physical events of the past, including, for instance, plate tectonics. If you don't understand the significance of nested clades, I suggest you read up on it, because the fact that the fossil record turns out to fit this pattern, and not some other, means that the fossil record is 100% consistent with evolution as best as we could possibly expect it to be, not in contrast to it as you claim.
Furthermore, the Cambrian explosion was not "sudden" except in a geological sense, and it is not the case that life appeared then with no precursors. Of course, I'm not sure why you are even talking about the Cambrian explosion if you don't believe in modern geology, because it makes no sense to speak of it unless you accept it in the first place.
"By your own point about changes in the earth's crust, volcanism, etc., radioactive dating depends on there being no parent or daughter atoms being added to, or being taken from the rock. "
This is what I mean. Only a person who really had no clue at all how things like radioactive dating is actually done would say things like this. There are specific ways to tell if all the things you claim are just "assumed" not to happen have happened or not. In fact, this is what people that do radioactive dating spend their time working out, not simply by grandly assuming virtually everything, but by carefully testing, studying, publishing, debating, responding to criticism with more tests, and so on, endlessly.
Let's be honest: you DON'T know the first thing about how dating is really done, do you? You may have heard it vaguely described somewhere, but have you actually ever read a journal article concerning the method, or a technical level description of the best practices method? Do you know, for instance, what an isochron is off the top of your head, without googling it? If you don't, how can you possibly run around claiming to know that geologists are all fakers when you don't really even understand what they are doing or how they do it?
I'm going to stop there for now. You are just throwing out a bunch of long debunked creationist claims that you are repeating after having heard from somewhere: doing this is something that takes no effort at all on your part, and yet demands lots of effort on my part to respond to each one (most of which would ideally involve having to explain half a college course worth of science to really do justice). I see no evidence whatsoever that you are actually concerned with whether these arguments are true or accurate or not.
And that's the problem. You think you already have the right answer, so you basically do not care about the details. But if you are going to engage in making scientific arguments, whether the details of these arguments are correct is really important. You cannot have it both ways.
Anyone can make bogus calculations based on misunderstandings of the principles involved and repeat them to people who will believe anything as long as it seems to support the "right" conclusion. You can claim till you are blue in the face that I "sound" like I am the one doing so, but such claims mean nothing unless you are actually willing to look at the real data and real science and be willing to admit that you may be wrong. The real fact of the matter is that all of these creationist arguments really are incredibly dishonest and misleading. I know because I have looked into them.
I've already explained at great length why this or that is so, and what is your reaction? There is almost no reaction: you pretty much jump to another subjects with a thin transition, and start making new arguments, tossing out completely new subjects in areas of study all over the map, never acknowledging or continuing to debate the points I (or even yourself!) had raised previously. Why should I spend time explaining the arguments in detail when you are just going to come back with the equivalent of "that's interesting, but did you know that these pills can help you lose weight!"
Hi Drew,
"With a wave of your hand" you dismiss so many of the very logical points which contradict uniformitarianism.
And "with a wave of your hand" you dismiss a quote from a Nobel prize-winning scientist, because evolution wasn't his field (even though he believed it).
I agree with you that there is not much point in continuing this blog; I continue to believe that you and most people have been mislead by a great lie, and it WILL come out in the end.
Best wishes to you, and really Drew, be careful about thinking you are smarter than the Creator.
It's been interesting!
Steve
Drew im sorry to say but once a evo. turned christian told me that one day he did the mathematics of what the chances of evo. happening and sadly for you they were 0.0001 to the 7,000th power ... now i don't know about you but thats a small number for me :-)
""With a wave of your hand" you dismiss so many of the very logical points which contradict uniformitarianism."
This is just stunningly dishonest. I've sat here and spent considerable time explaining in detail why the evidence does not support your claims. In response, you simply keep glibly changing subjects, bringing up entirely new claims, all in brief, without any real attempt to engage or respond to what I've said. You might as well have simply copy pasted your follow-up claims off a website (and perhaps you did) for all the thought put into them. And yet, you think you can accuse ME of handwaving?
"And "with a wave of your hand" you dismiss a quote from a Nobel prize-winning scientist, because evolution wasn't his field (even though he believed it)."
As I explained, science isn't done by authority. Winning a Nobel prize does not make you an expert on everything, or prevent you from being misinformed. When we uncover some important scientific question, we do not survey the opinions of Nobel prize winners to find the answer. What matters in science is the evidence, plain and simple. That creationists like yourself seem to do and think of science principally in terms of just repeating brief quotes by this or that person, instead of actually trying to understand the subjects in question, is part of why I think you just do not get what critical thinking and empirical science is all about.
"Drew im sorry to say but once a evo. turned christian told me that one day he did the mathematics of what the chances of evo. happening and sadly for you they were 0.0001 to the 7,000th power ... now i don't know about you but thats a small number for me :-)"
Given that it was a number pretty much made up out of thin air, I'm surprised that he didn't make it an even smaller number. Of course, anyone that would express a number as an arbitrarily uncompressed exponent is not exactly a math whiz to begin with, so perhaps he couldn't think of a smaller one.
It would certainly be amusing to see what his terms were though: most such claimed calculations do more to expose the calculator's ignorance of probability and mathematics than tell us anything about reality.
Here are just a few mathematical probabilities:
To preface; it is generally considered by mathematicians that any event with a probability of less than 1 chance in 10 to the 50th power, has ZERO probability.
But first, a very simple exercise in probability:
Consider the likelihood of just spelling the word "evolution" by randomly selecting 9 letters from the alphabet. Even with the advantage of HAVING an alphabet to start with, as opposed to only primordial mud, the probability of success is 1 in 26 to the 9th power. Or 1 in 5,429,503,678,976. Pretty improbable, even for such a simple example. (9 integrated parts out of a ready 26)
We know that the most basic type of protein molecule that could be classified living is composed of at least 400 linked amino acids. Each of those in turn is made up of a specific arrangement of 4 or 5 chemical elements and each element is itself a unique combination of protons, neutrons and electrons.
It's been demonstrated that the chance formation of the simplest replicating protein molecule is 1 in 10 to the 450th power.
That's a big number. There are only 10 to the 80th power electrons in the known universe.
Life is no accident. Even given 30 billion years, which is a very small number, comparitively.
"But first, a very simple exercise in probability:"
To do that, you'd have to actually understand how to do a probability calculation more complicated than multiplying two numbers together. I don't see any evidence here of that:
"Consider the likelihood of just spelling the word "evolution" by randomly selecting 9 letters from the alphabet."
Doing that randomly in one try would of course be very improbable. But that's not a calculation of "likelihood" nor is it a good model even of basic chemistry, let alone evolution. As an example, it's not even a sensible model of, say, English, because it does not take into account all the possible restrictions and laws of language (since your calculation would allow "impossible" arrangements such as nine consonants). Doing actually useful probability calculations requires taking such things into account.
"Even with the advantage of HAVING an alphabet to start with, as opposed to only primordial mud,"
Here, again, you are showing your ignorance of what you are talking about. Mud and all the other elements of the early earth are not simple discrete objects. There is no "mud" on the element table, and no "mud" molecule. What we have instead is a heck of a lot of complex chemistry, and molecules, right off the bat, and knowing what they are specifically in what environments, at what temperatures, and so on, matters very very much to any calculation of what we can expect from them.
"the probability of success is 1 in 26 to the 9th power. Or 1 in 5,429,503,678,976. Pretty improbable, even for such a simple example. (9 integrated parts out of a ready 26)"
Again, that is a somewhat high number, but you simply designed the example that way, making it irrelevant (and if we had a billion years and the surface of the earth, even so, it would be a quite common occurrence, especially since it only has to happen once).
If, however, you wanted an reasonable model of, say, evolution, then your calculation would have to allow multiple parallel and successive trials wherein changes that are closer to the sequence "evolution" are more likely to be preserved into the next round of sequences rather than rolled completely randomly again. If such a filter existed in your example, we would expect to hit upon the "target" word in well under a 100 generations, depending on the gradient strength used. Of course, this would still be unlike evolution in a fairly important way: evolution has no one set target, but "whatever works better than non-existence for the current environment."
And if you wanted to model chemistry, in terms of abiogenesis, then you would have a far far bigger problem on your hands. Simply put, most of the key variables in your calculation would be unknown, and the number of rules, laws, and specific effects you'd have to include to have a valid model would be quite large. No simple product calculation could come even close: the sort of product based calculations you are doing are essentially assuming that every single variable is independent of every other, which is very much NOT the case in chemical interactions. Nor could you do a calculation that assumes that everything must happen all at once. Again, that's just not how chemistry works.
"We know that the most basic type of protein molecule that could be classified living is composed of at least 400 linked amino acids."
Proteins are not themselves "living." If you are confusedly trying to talk about DNA/RNA, then you are wrong: the smallest known reproducing evolving thing so far is around 45 bases.
You're also way off the bat in any case, because most protein sequences are interchangeable: only key areas of a chain actually control things like its final shape and bond strengths: the things that actually matter. Many protein sequences are functionally identical.
The fact that your calculations do not take even these very basic elements in to account only highlights a lack of understanding of both proteins and probability.
"Each of those in turn is made up of a specific arrangement of 4 or 5 chemical elements and each element is itself a unique combination of protons, neutrons and electrons."
Yes, but again, you can't treat all these factors as independent variables. They all interact. Chemistry is not pure randomness or anything even close to it. So why would you think you could possibly represent it that way mathematically?
"It's been demonstrated that the chance formation of the simplest replicating protein molecule is 1 in 10 to the 450th power.That's a big number."
It is, but it's nonsense, since it doesn't represent anything even remotely related to how proteins actually form. It simply compounds all the mistakes I pointed out before into one big number that doesn't mean anything related to the real world.
Drew, you say:
"...the smallest known reproducing evolving thing so far is around 45 bases."
"...because most protein sequences are interchangeable: only key areas of a chain actually control things like its final shape and bond strengths: the things that actually matter. Many protein sequences are functionally identical."
"...Chemistry is not pure randomness or anything even close to it. So why would you think you could possibly represent it that way mathematically?"
You need to rethink that...if chemistry is not random, but ordered (that makes sense), why then can't mathematics represent the liklihood and probability of something ORDERED, Drew?
Seems to me you are saying that the spontaneous origin of life and evolving life forms is not only likely and probable but INEVITABLE (given enough time).
OK, time is still moving on. When did life STOP originating and evolving?
If uniformitarianism is true and the "elements of the early earth" are the same as ever, why are new life forms not continually crawling out of the swamps?
Why are there not myriads of changing and transitional life forms all around us?
Why have I not lost my toes yet? It's been millions of years!
(oh, and you're really showing your immaturity when you call people ignorant and clueless, Drew.)
Creationists are have a lot of scientific company;
Per Wernher Von Braun: "...For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design....I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happened by chance." That's not all he had to say, but I know, evolution is not Von Braun's field.
Pierre P. Grasse, French zoologist, concluded that "The explanatory doctrines of biological evolution do not stand up to an in-depth criticism."
P. Lemoine, president of the Geological Society of France and director of the Natural History Museum in Paris said "The theories of evolution, with which our studious youth have been deceived, constitute actually a dogma that all the world continues to teach: but each, in his specialty, the zoologist or the botanist, ascertains that none of the explanations furnished is adequate...It results from this summary, that the theory of evolution is impossible."
This list goes on. There is no "empirical" evidence for evolution. It is all based on theory, not observation, since we cannot observe it happening.
So many of the "facts" that are still on the books and being taught still, have long ago been disproven, or exposed as hoaxes. Fabrications of the "missing link" based on what turned out to be a horse's tooth, or a knee joint found 2 miles away from a thigh bone, etc.
Dr. John Grebe, director of basic and nuclear research for Dow Chemical Company and inventor of styrofoam, synthetic rubber and Saran Wrap, once offered a reward of $1000 to anyone who could produce just one clear proof of evolution. No one has collected that I know of.
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