Denial of evolution II

[Saquist]

Yes, and it is a dam stupid design to be made by a so called "Inteligent Designer"!!

In my youth I had to have four of my big teeth removed so the remaining would fit in my small jaw. Even so the remaining ones are so hard against each other I cannot get dental floss between them!

If He exists, He is a dam dumb ID, IMHO.

PS: When I can I am moving to a universe he made later as even an idiot learns from his mistakes.

The design is corrupted. To be incoruptable one would have to perfect or inmortal. A programer may make a flawless system but that doesn't mean a hacker can't introduce a virus designed to corrupt that system.

 

[Billy T]

The design is corrupted. To be incoruptable one would have to perfect or inmortal. ...

OK, thanks. Now I understand the Garden of Eden story. God made man perfect and repoduction was to be only by cloning, but then Satin came along in the form of a snake* and showed Adam what he could do with his penis and Eve. Sexual reproduction "corrupted" God's perfect design. - Allowed me to have big teeth and a small mouth. (Or other mismatches controlled by separate genes.)

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*God only knows from where as a perfect God could not make or tolerate evil.

 

[Pteriax]

Well, I will reply tomorrow I hope to what everyone has posted - I'm just too tired tonight. After my post tomorrow, I will be away until Saturday night, and will get caught up at that time. Thanks everyone for the input.

 

[iceaura]

Snowflakes have less energy than the water in the air that formed them. Just because it looks nicer doesn't mean it's less entropic.

There you go - you have made the basic observation. Now, about the biosphere, with its intricate and elaborate constructions? - - same situation.

Wrong yet again. Pick up a rock. Is it composed of a bunch of simple atoms or somewhat complex molecules?
”
Simple molecules, actually. And to become more complex something has to add energy to it.

Such as, for example, the sun - about 1300 watts per square meter blasting into the biosphere of the earth, on the daylight side, for billions of years. Or a hydrothermal vent, volcanic upwelling, etc. With such huge inputs of energy, great complexity is easily obtained through "naturalistic means".

"Wrong again. Read up on basic chemistry. Energy is a conserved quantity. Heat is a form of energy. "
”
Again, be educated before arguing something. You now look like a real idiot.

Oh, son, - - - - no, he doesn't.

Because we do not know enough to be able to distinguish among supernatural causes. Why would the church know in contrast to any other source?
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They just know a lot about God... It's kind of their thing.

I've never seen the slightest evidence that anyone in a church knows any more about God than the average house cat knows.

The design is corrupted. To be incoruptable one would have to perfect or inmortal. A programer may make a flawless system but that doesn't mean a hacker can't introduce a virus designed to corrupt that system.

The "corruption" is considerably more of the design as we have it now, by weight and by structural significance and by informational content, than the immortal or perfect aspects - if indeed any such remain. We appear to be all hack and no angelus.

 

[Saquist]

OK, thanks. Now I understand the Garden of Eden story. God made man perfect and repoduction was to be only by cloning, but then Satin came along in the form of a snake* and showed Adam what he could do with his penis and Eve. Sexual reproduction "corrupted" God's perfect design. - Allowed me to have big teeth and a small mouth. (Or other mismatches controlled by separate genes.)

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*God only knows from where as a perfect God could not make or tolerate evil.

No, Billy, you do not understand.
The original Sin had nothing to do with reproduction.

And while I understand your angst of the toleration of evil, understand if he had not allowed this to play out according to the rebel's accusations, you nor any of us would be here right now because they would have been executed immediately.

Consider this a trial.
You want to live your life without God. You're being allowed to.

This world, it isn't a product of God's rulership, It's all your responsibility.
That's the nature of sedition, rebellion, treason...chaos, death, destruction a ruined planet.

It's a stay of excution.
I for one appreciate it.

 

[Saquist]

The "corruption" is considerably more of the design as we have it now, by weight and by structural significance and by informational content, than the immortal or perfect aspects - if indeed any such remain. We appear to be all hack and no angelus.

Well if you let a lap top stay infected with spyware and virus for 6,000 what would you expect? A smooth running operation system?

...you know what an IT person would say for the solution.

 

[Pteriax]

Pteriax, you are definitely beginning to sound like a conventional creationist. You say you are not, but when it squawks like an Archaeopteryx, lays eggs like an Archaeopteryx and has feathers like an Archaeopteryx, then the chances are it is an important transitional fossil.

You have started hurling ad hominems at DH for his alleged lack of understanding of thermodynamics. Although my own studies in this area are limited to undergraduate work and are now many decades in the past, DH appears to have a better grasp of the fundamentals than you do. Let's look at a couple of points and see where the differences arise and try to resolve them.

How bout UN-conventional creationist...

Apologies where due, you all are not the only folks to deal with idiots a lot. I over-reacted to his short, seemingly baseless answers. I retract any insults on the hope that if he replies again, he will explain his points more thoroughly.

Where is it lost to Pteriax? I do not believe you mean it is lost from the Universe. It is lost to its surroundings. The surroundings heat up. That is because the reaction is not occuring in a closed system. What is it you do not understand about this? Please don't respond with insults claiming it is I who do not understand. Explain what it is you think is wrong, in detail, with my statements.

No, I do understand that. But the surroundings quickly cool down. The energy is lost to the chemicals, not to the universe. Perhaps my own phrasing wasn't that clear. Yes, we have an equilibrium due to energy from the sun, but that sun is a part of a larger closed system. Sorry, the chemical reaction bit is more linked to abiogenesis than to evolution. I believe the two processes are linked, but many here do not. I just feel that there could be a biological "theory of everything" that links all processes somehow. We just are not far enough along to see it yet. So, sorry if my whole thing here sounded way off base.

 

[Pteriax]

As a psittaculturist I can assure you with authority that this statement is absolutely false. Large parrot species take seven to ten years to reach sexual maturity, but breeders have achieved three generations of inter-species hybridization. The first generation hybrid offspring of a blue-and-gold macaw and a scarlet macaw is named the Catalina macaw, after the island on which the first one was hatched. The second generation of a Catalina bred back to a scarlet is called a Camelot macaw (arbitrary fanciful naming since the bird is bright orange) and the hybrid parent can be of either sex. Breeding a Camelot (of either sex) back to a scarlet yields a Lavender macaw, so named because of its color.

The various species of Amazon parrots have been successfully hybridized for multiple generations and are readily available in the pet trade. The same is true of the various species of cockatoos and the various species of conures. (Conures are long-tailed South American psittacines closely related to the macaws, often called imprecisely "parakeets" by British aviculturists. Many conure species have bare skin around their eyes like macaws, whereas parakeets never do.)

Hybridization of species often produces fertile offspring, contrary to your assertion.

Come to think of it, the northeastern USA is now being invaded by a stable population of wolf-coyote hybrids. Coyotes are so successful in proximity to civilization that they have spread beyond their original territory as the wolf has declined due to persecution. The two species met in eastern Canada and due to the scarcity of mates many wolves in desperation took coyotes as mates. Their offspring look like gigantic coyotes and are now helping us control the unchecked deer population which, since we killed off our own wolves, are taking over America's cities and denuding our parks and gardens.

Hybridization is something that usually only happens in captivity, but under stress due to human pressure, it sometimes happens in the wild. The black-headed grosbeak of the Western USA and the rose-breasted grosbeak of the eastern USA also began hybridizing after we cut down the lush forest along the Mississippi River that separated their two habitats. Hybrid grosbeaks now occasionally show up at our feeder in California, having successfully spread over the Rocky Mountains.

No, you misunderstand. Those would be breeds of the same species. The mule would be a new species, not a breed of existing one. The sterility and gender bias are indicators of this. I am not saying that this alone disproves evolution by any means, it just seems like a problem to me.

 

[Pteriax]

Well, because it's just that: supernatural. How can we collect evidence in the natural world of that which exists beyond the natural world? A weighty question.

The supernatural world leaves its fingerprints on the natural world from time to time. The only real problem is that it is often very subjective.

To be honest myself here: only the one side has been dishonest about this quote. This sometimes happens with creationist arguments and it is reprehensible. Darwin's position, as you can see from the quote (and I fully recommend the link) is firmly on the side of evolutionary doctrine.

Yes, about this quote, you are correct. I was speaking in general terms.

Excellent question! Very simply: because evolution is not perfectly directional. The modification of these organisms with respect to each other varies with drift (random allele fluctuations) and selection: at different times and in different locales, selective pressure on toe reduction is relaxed - or else random changes in gene frequency result in a phenomenon similar to the kind of atavisms we sometimes see in horses today. Consider that selection is only in rare cases absolute; usually it's just a proportion of whichever genotypic class is selected against that dies without mating or passing on their genes. Complete selection is usually only more likely in cases where one homozygote is outright lethal during development.

If it can go back and forth, then why would it always seem to move forwards to a 'destination'? How can random set a goal? I mean, I has seen explanations like this on several specific creature trees, and they seem to make sense, but I seem to always find a greater amount that does not make sense. Yes, it makes the most sense to most people who study it, but that doesn't make it correct.

Well, let's consider these changes: what is the intermediary between four toes (Orohippus) and one (Equus)? You can see three-toed variants from the figure. Two toes might be a harder developmental change, since all the later examples look to have some kind of left-right symmetry. A single gene might knock both toes out. As for the teeth: no enamel to enamel is a single change, really. The morphology of the teeth is also affected by relatively few genes; each of these systems may evolve independently, although their co-evolution would probably be preferred by selection: the Miohippus, spending more time on the newfound grass plains of its era, would benefit by having more complex tooth surfaces to eat the tougher cellulose fibers of these grasses. Its earlier ancestors would have more recourse to tubers, leaf buds, shoots and berries, and would not require such intricate and cemented tooth surfaces, since these foodstuffs are not as tough. There would be little ecological gain from running all over the plains only to be forced to return in the evening to nip at berries (because your teeth simply won't do an effective job on grass), the tigers of the woods patiently awaiting your return.

Let me use this one as an example: it's easy to say a horse developed enamel and extra toes at the same time, right? But why do we never see a creature (now or in the fossil record) with extraneous parts? Where is the creature with half of an echolocation system in place? I know the easy way out is to say there are creatures with flipper-feet; but that itself serves a specific purpose - a creature simply spends a lot of time in water and a lot out, like a seal. That is not a half evolved creature, its parts serve a very specific purpose, and not to gradually become aquatic or to 'crawl from the sea'. Maybe the few critters that we can imagine up a real good reason and sequence for evolution just look that way - you know, like a coincidence. There seems to be no good reason for most animals to evolve. Plus there is a huge balance in nature. One creature cannot evolve simultaneously with several others, each to benefit each other. How could a creature mutate and keep the mutation when it only helps something else? That seems counter-intuitive to the evolutionary process.

Fair enough; personal beliefs are personal beliefs, whatever Dawkins and his atrocious wife may think. But how are we, as physical beings (corporeal selves, if you prefer), different from the natural world? Are we not components or elements thereof? We are born, live, die, and decay as other things. Can we not, as corporeal elements of this world, exert an effect on its species? Do we not act as agents of selection? The dodo and the passenger pigeon would have something to say about that. Surely you must agree with this?

Well, yes and no. We are like tadpoles in a puddle. There is a bigger and better world out there that we can reach one day. So, we can have effect on the world, without it really being our true 'home'.

 

[Pteriax]

I only meant that most humans adhere to some religion that teaches very different "truths" about God, the origins of life, even how many Gods there are, etc. than the Christian teach. AFAIK, none acknowledges that a religious POV, which contradicts their own POV, is equally likely to be true. Objectively, there is no way to decide, which if any is true.

I believe that there is a way to decide which is true. Not an easy way, and not a way that you can use to prove it to all mankind, but to 'find the truth for yourself' is possible. You can use other's words as a guide, but investigate the claims before you take it to heart.

To again mention these five: A population of only 40 maximum (and less when they were larger) that never lost a favorable mutation by it being eaten, always under the extreme stress with most in each generation dying of starvation, and completely isolated so no foreign genes entered the gene pool, and a very high rate of inbreeding, evolution can be very rapid. (These same factors usually make such a tiny population go extinct. If only one cat were released on their tiny island, the preá would be extinct in about one month.) Normally evolution takes at least 100 times more time to achieve such significant changes. I.e. many facts support, and none contradict, the idea that the preá evolved from a few big Island guinea pigs that got stranded on the tiny, almost barren rocky peak which became an island detached from the big island land mass as the ice age melting raised the sea level.

How can you know, beyond an educated guess, that these factors accelerate evolution (or even contribute to it)? Couldn't the prea just be an inbred version of the guinea?

This brings me to a question about your concepts of God’s 6-day construction time line. You indicated day 6 began about 6000 of our years ago (Day 6 was less than 6000 years long as it is now day 7 and God is resting.). Was day 5 and day 4 etc. also about 6000 years long also? Or did God keep changing his wrist watch so that the relationship between one day and ~6000 years changed greatly? If not, then instead of like the fundamentalist, you are claiming the universe is only at most ~42,000 years old.

Well, no, God did not "keep changing his wristwatch" at least not as such. As I said before, the universe expanded at a relativistic rate, dilating time. Each 'day' for God has been shorter and shorter for the universe, as the expansion has slowed, easing the time dilation. So the first 'day' of creation would have been over a billion years long to a person or object expanding with the universe. So God never actually changed his perception of time or the length of a day, but our day in relation to his day has started to balance out a bit, so to speak. I have the exact timeline written down somewhere, I'll try to find it for you...

Please give a table of your ideas about how long each of God's days is in our years.When you answer, I will get back to you with question off thread about physics, not evolution. i.e. not any assumptions about how many years the dinosaurs existed, but simple physics. (Nothing to due with the big bang theory's model of time either, but something much more simple and well accepted.)

I will need to post the details later on, possibly this weekend. I will get back to you on this, the notes are just jumbled up with a bunch of other stuff and I haven't got the time to dig them out right this minute.

 

[Pteriax]

I think I answered the rest of your post in my replies to the others. If not, post something specific and I will reply to it then.

I've never seen the slightest evidence that anyone in a church knows any more about God than the average house cat knows.

Honestly, I would say to this comment that you didn't look very hard. But then I have no idea what you are basing this conclusion on. Seems like a blanket statement based in frustration, anger, or both - at people in a church or the church in general; likely stemming from a severe lack of understanding - possibly on both sides.

 

[Dr Mabuse]

Honestly, I would say to this comment that you didn't look very hard. But then I have no idea what you are basing this conclusion on. Seems like a blanket statement based in frustration, anger, or both - at people in a church or the church in general; likely stemming from a severe lack of understanding - possibly on both sides.

You didn't understand the point that was being made.

 

[Roman]

(note that to repeat the cycle the sun must provide energy for the water to vaporize into the atmosphere again - the sun itself being an entropic source of energy that will eventually cease.) Meanwhile, the electricity that reaches your house powers electric lights, giving off the rest of the energy as heat and light.

How is that any different from the biosphere?

Saying it has been proven innumerable times is a logical fallacy and I will not accept that as an answer. It would not be a valid point in any official debate. You have mentioned several ideas that relate to evolution but not shown me how the provide evidence for it. I will wait until you do to address those issues. You then question me about Bible stories, as if that has any bearing on evolution. I believe in God. I do not pretend to know what his purpose in all things is, and could only guess - if the questions were not loaded to begin with. That last question... no, it does not. It only speaks of our ability to consume and destroy everything with little hope for balance and renewal. I don't think it proves anything about evolution, though it demonstrates a thing or two about sin, IMHO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

That's probably the best experiment in support of evolution. I'm curious; do you think bacteria developing a mechanism to absorb citrate evolution?

If you mean different in the sense that ponies and horses are different, yes, humans are different. If you mean different in the sense that humans are something completely different than all other animals, you are once again wrong. The difference between humans and chimps is incredibly small.

Genetically, humans and chimps may be quite similar, but the qualitative differences are huge.

Sexual reproduction "corrupted" God's perfect design. - Allowed me to have big teeth and a small mouth. (Or other mismatches controlled by separate genes.)

I guess you can thank God for sloppy polymerases, huh?

Well if you let a lap top stay infected with spyware and virus for 6,000 what would you expect? A smooth running operation system?

...you know what an IT person would say for the solution.

But this begs the question; as the perfect creator of everything, why design a system that includes spyware and viruses?

 

[tuberculatious]

That is absolutely true. Moreover, the difference between chimps and bonobos is even smaller.

 

[spidergoat]

I believe...yada...yada...yada.

You talk about relativity as if you respected science, but yet deny the evidence about evolution that the same scientific method has revealed. Strange.

 

[Roman]

If it can go back and forth, then why would it always seem to move forwards to a 'destination'? How can random set a goal?

Because of selection. The environment (the sun, the air pressure, other animals) selects for certain combinations of features. Imagine if you had a jar full of jellybeans, but you didn't like the brown ones, and didn't eat them. After some time, all the beans in the jar would be brown.

Let me use this one as an example: it's easy to say a horse developed enamel and extra toes at the same time, right? But why do we never see a creature (now or in the fossil record) with extraneous parts? Where is the creature with half of an echolocation system in place? I know the easy way out is to say there are creatures with flipper-feet; but that itself serves a specific purpose - a creature simply spends a lot of time in water and a lot out, like a seal. That is not a half evolved creature, its parts serve a very specific purpose, and not to gradually become aquatic or to 'crawl from the sea'.

Why would evolution ever select for an extraneous body part, though?

Think of it like this- if the whales went extinct tomorrow, who would be at a better advantage to take their place as huge, marine mammals, seals and otters, with in between organs, or animals without any flippers?

Gross anatomical features are huge investments of resources, so shouldn't be expected to pop up willy-nilly overnight. They will most likely appear in stages, getting bigger or small, much like with the horse examples, or from dinosaur to bird. Those horse fossils are an awesome example of change over time.

Maybe the few critters that we can imagine up a real good reason and sequence for evolution just look that way - you know, like a coincidence. There seems to be no good reason for most animals to evolve.

Evolution is defined as a change in allele frequency over time. So as long as selection continues to weed out mutants, evolution does not occur. However, given small enough population sizes or big enough environmental chnages (meteor impacts, volcanic eruption), you get changes in allele frequency independent of selection. Accidents are a huge driving force behind evolution.

Given our very narrow time frame, most animals shouldn't have a whole lot of reason, or time, to evolve. But given the mass extinction event happening, we can expect animals to move into niches that they previously couldn't compete for, and change to fill it.

Plus there is a huge balance in nature. One creature cannot evolve simultaneously with several others, each to benefit each other.

Why not? Mutualisms exist all over the place. The bacteria in your stomach right now, for instance. Or the mitochondria in your cells.

How could a creature mutate and keep the mutation when it only helps something else? That seems counter-intuitive to the evolutionary process.

Many mutualisms are hypothesized to have started as either a commensalism or parastism. Some are simply luck. The hyperaggressive Pseudomyrmex, a genus of ant that lives in bullhorn acacias, defends the plant, and the plant gives it a place to live. One could imagine that the ant merely lived on the plant and ate bugs there. The plant gained a slight benefit from the ant picking off bugs, and the ants had a place to live. A mutation in the plant maybe led it produce some food for the ants, or a better place to live, so the ants did better and killed more bugs. Over time, they developed to be almost completely dependent on each other.

Honestly, I would say to this comment that you didn't look very hard. But then I have no idea what you are basing this conclusion on. Seems like a blanket statement based in frustration, anger, or both - at people in a church or the church in general; likely stemming from a severe lack of understanding - possibly on both sides.

I think you missed the point.

 

[tuberculatious]

I think relativity has been proven to be wrong. Or not correct in all cases. Which equals wrong.

 

[spidergoat]

I think relativity has been proven to be wrong. Or not correct in all cases. Which equals wrong.

Not correct at a quantum level, but proven correct by experiment at larger scales. Don't forget, even Newton's Laws of motion are still used to calculate the orbits of satellites.

 

[Oli]

Or not correct in all cases. Which equals wrong.

No, it means it's incomplete, not wrong.

 

[Billy T]

Saquist Please correct your post 446. You are quoting iceaure's last text of his post 444, not me.
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Pteriax In post 447 you say:
"we have an equilibrium due to energy from the sun..."

I know what you mean but it is far from "equilibrium." It is quasi- steady state. I am not trying to nitpick, but help you as these two are very different concepts but are often confused. Quite possibly you already know that, so perhaps I am only requesting a little more care in your choice of words.

One of the main requirements for equilibrium in a system is that all parts of the system are at the same temperature; for example of what may be equilibrium, consider 0 degree C ice floating in 0 degree water with 0 degree air above both and their container. (I said "may be" because if the ice is bobbing up and down in the water, there is no equilibrium. There could be other reasons, for example internal stresses within the ice. Real equilibrium is quite rare.)
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To Pteriax & Fraggle here is something for you to puzzle over and discuss related to post 448 reply:

There is an arctic bird (I bet Fraggle can name it.) that is found in every arctic land, except Greenland and Iceland, I think. The ones that live in the Eastern most part of Canada cannot mate with the ones that live in the Western most parts of Norway*, yet the ones in Norway can mate with those in Sweden, and they with the ones in western Russia and they with the ones in Eastern Russian, and they with the ones in western Canada. I.e. this species of birds is like a cut ring in their distribution - Each region can mate with those on either side but the ones on one side of the gap cannot mate with those on the other side of the North Atlantic gap. That would make you think there are two different species, but there is no division line between them.
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*It has been long time since I read about them, but as I recall it is an actual physical problem. I.e. his will not fit in hers or something like that.