Creationism vs Evolution

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
321

[quote]pushharder wrote:
orion wrote:
pushharder wrote:
borrek wrote:
pushharder wrote:
And even if we didn’t creationism still wouldn’t be science.

Name the reasons(s) why macroevolution is.

I have a slight problem when folks concede microevolution, but not macroevolution. What is the barrier that keeps small changes from creating a larger characteristic change? There must be some barrier, otherwise it is not a big leap to assume the small changes can be cumulative and dramatically transformational. Is the barrier just a chosen one of “God has made it so”??..

You bring up a good question but the established unerringly obvious conclusion is that there is one, a barrier. That evidence is crystal clear in nature. It is observable. It is testable.

No, it is not and the lines are blurred.

The lines are blurred at times but NEVER beyond a certain point.

Otherwise you could explain mules or ligers.

Glad you mentioned them. Even at that low of a level on the taxonomic ladder you slam squarely into sterility problems. That’s my point.

See, you can get some crossbreds at the genus level and BOOM! You start to approach that barrier we were talking about.

There are species that are still close enough together so that they can procreate, but far apart enough so that their offsring cannot.

Exactly.

Now macros come along and say EVEN though we can’t examine offspring successfully mutating (with fertility) above the genus level we JUST have to assume it happened because there is no acceptable alternative.

Obviously there are species that no longer exist. So if you indeed believe that species can die out, why are there any left?

I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at here. The fossil record is rich with extinct species. There is no evidence that a species is extinct just because it mutated into something above the genus level. That’s the speculation part I keep mentioning.

There were no large mammal predators when the dinosaurs were around but now there are.

And you KNOW this how?

All we have to suggest that is that current dating methods (some seem to think) indicate thus. I mentioned this earlier but there is a huge amount of debate we could (and has been done) regarding the accuracy of dating methods especially Carbon 14. Bottom line? Do not assume dating methods are infallible.

Why?

And, as an addendum, the whole insisting on the idea of species thing says more about the wiring of your brain than about any real clear lines in the real world, ironically because your brain has evolved that way.

You could try to find a definition of “species” that cannot be shot down immediately. That should make clear what an arbitrary concept “species” is.

Absolutely correct. I said earlier that taxonomy is an inexact and always changing science.

[/quote]

You are obviously assuming that to “prove” evolution we should be able to show you a mutation that meant a jump across that barrier.

However, it does not work that way, that would be next to impossible.

There are however small changes that add up to big changes over time until you cannot talk about the same species any longer.

Fortunately that not only happens over time nut also in space.

There are birds that can produce offspring with the similar birds in their vicinity but they can not do that with similar birds further away. As long as you go around the globe though in one direction they can always breed with their neighbors.

Same species, yes or no?

Ha, I even found a link:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB805.html

There are indeed several cases of continua in nature. In many groups, such as some grasses and leafhoppers, different species are very hard to tell apart. At least ten percent of bird species are similar enough to another species to produce fertile hybrids (Weiner 1994, 198-199). The most obvious continua are called ring species, because in the classic case (the herring gull complex) they form a ring around the North Pole. If we start in Western Europe and move west, similar populations, capable of interbreeding, succeed each other geographically. When we have traveled all the way around the world and reach Western Europe again, the final population is different enough that we call it a separate species, and it is incapable of interbreeding with herring gulls, even though they are connected by a continuous chain of interbreeding populations. This is a big problem for creationists. We expect kinds to be easily determined if they were created separately, but there are no such obvious divisions:

They are mistaken, who repeat that the greater part of our species are clearly limited, and that the doubtful species are in a feeble minority. This seemed to be true, so long as a genus was imperfectly known, and its species were founded upon a few specimens, that is to say, were provisional. Just as we come to know them better, intermediate forms flow in, and doubts as to specific limits augment. (de Condolle, quoted in Darwin, 1872, chap. 2)

So, there are indeed “intermediate” species and you can observe them right here, right now, not only in the fossil records.

Also, it is not just about dating methods.

If we discover a fossilized tar pit all the creatures in there pretty much died at the same time, give or take a few thousand years.

No mammal predators anywhere near dinosaur bones though.

Just a few rodents who hid from all the scary reptiles.

322

[quote]orion wrote:
The strong anthropic principle…

Again?

Oh see, the whole universe conspires to make human life possible so how could we not be its ultimate goal?
[/quote]

I can see how putting words in my mouth makes your life easier, but I didn’t say that the existence of man was the ultimate goal of the universe. We are a function of where the universe currently is. A universe, I believe, made my God. Man was a goal of God (not necessarily His ultimate goal)

Where is there vanity in believing in something greater than oneself?

You have that reversed. The universe, earth, genetics are ordered in certain ways that allow us to be. I believe God created us, and I think He created that order. My disagreement with standard creationism is how the current order came to be.

Wrong, in a 10 dimensional universe, such as ours, there are infinite other universes, with infinite beginnings and infinite ends. Many of these universes do not even follow our laws of physics, making the existence of human beings is not possible.

324

[quote]borrek wrote:
orion wrote:
The strong anthropic principle…

Again?

Oh see, the whole universe conspires to make human life possible so how could we not be its ultimate goal?

I can see how putting words in my mouth makes your life easier, but I didn’t say that the existence of man was the ultimate goal of the universe. We are a function of where the universe currently is. A universe, I believe, made my God. Man was a goal of God (not necessarily His ultimate goal)

Praise the Lord!

The sheer vanity and narcissism…

Where is there vanity in believing in something greater than oneself?

No, we are, and therefore the universe must be a certain way or otherwise we would not be.

You have that reversed. The universe, earth, genetics are ordered in certain ways that allow us to be. I believe God created us, and I think He created that order. My disagreement with standard creationism is how the current order came to be.

We do not know how many possible universes there are, but we do know that a universe with us in it must follow certain rules and must have had a certain history.

Wrong, in a 10 dimensional universe, such as ours, there are infinite other universes, with infinite beginnings and infinite ends. Many of these universes do not even follow our laws of physics, making the existence of human beings is not possible.
[/quote]

The debate we are having right now is the weak vs the strong anthropic principle and it seems that you are trying to have it both ways-

Either we wonder how it came to be that so many things fell into place that it allows for our existence and conclude that there is a creator or we realize that our existence makes a certain universe necessary.

325

[quote]pushharder wrote:
orion wrote:

You are obviously assuming that to “prove” evolution we should be able to show you a mutation that meant a jump across that barrier.

However, it does not work that way, that would be next to impossible.

Thanks.

There are however small changes that add up to big changes over time until you cannot talk about the same species any longer.

According to the hypothesis.

There are birds that can produce offspring with the similar birds in their vicinity but they can not do that with similar birds further away. As long as you go around the globe though in one direction they can always breed with their neighbors.

Same species, yes or no?

Ha, I even found a link:

There are indeed several cases of continua in nature. In many groups, such as some grasses and leafhoppers, different species are very hard to tell apart. At least ten percent of bird species are similar enough to another species to produce fertile hybrids (Weiner 1994, 198-199). The most obvious continua are called ring species, because in the classic case (the herring gull complex) they form a ring around the North Pole. If we start in Western Europe and move west, similar populations, capable of interbreeding, succeed each other geographically. When we have traveled all the way around the world and reach Western Europe again, the final population is different enough that we call it a separate species, and it is incapable of interbreeding with herring gulls, even though they are connected by a continuous chain of interbreeding populations. This is a big problem for creationists. We expect kinds to be easily determined if they were created separately, but there are no such obvious divisions:

They are mistaken, who repeat that the greater part of our species are clearly limited, and that the doubtful species are in a feeble minority. This seemed to be true, so long as a genus was imperfectly known, and its species were founded upon a few specimens, that is to say, were provisional. Just as we come to know them better, intermediate forms flow in, and doubts as to specific limits augment. (de Condolle, quoted in Darwin, 1872, chap. 2)

So, there are indeed “intermediate” species and you can observe them right here, right now, not only in the fossil records.

Thanks for citing an example of micro-evolution. I know this is frustrating for you because you want it to say so much more but that is the fact.

Also, it is not just about dating methods.

If we discover a fossilized tar pit all the creatures in there pretty much died at the same time, give or take a few thousand years.

No mammal predators anywhere near dinosaur bones though.

Just a few rodents who hid from all the scary reptiles.

There’s more to it than that. In that case you have a picture in time for that particular locality. You can’t establish anything beyond that.

[/quote]

I was citing a case of evolution, there is obviously no distinction between micro and macro evolution.

So, are all of these birds of one species, even if they cannot interbreed, or not?

Something has to give, either your rather arbitrary concept of species or your distinction between micro and macro evolution.

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and in the end - it doesn’t matter - it comes down to which you choose to accept and which you think is wrong.

We will not see any effect of evolution in our lifetimes if it is right and if it is wrong - it won’t matter anyway.

Everyone here who is pro-evolution doesn’t give 2 pennies for the actual rationale and beliefs of those you are creationists and vice versa.

You have your sides well-chosen and your defenses dug in - congrats. Doesn’t mean a thing. Argue all you want - in the end, you still won’t have a changed anyone’s mind

327

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
and in the end - it doesn’t matter - it comes down to which you choose to accept and which you think is wrong.

We will not see any effect of evolution in our lifetimes if it is right and if it is wrong - it won’t matter anyway.
[/quote]

If you die of Aids, or SARS or just the next flu that comes around every year or two it will matter very much to you.

Plus, sometimes it is not so much about convincing other people, but to see how good an effort they put up.

Like sparring.

Now admittedly Pushharder has been dealt quite a though hand with the introduction of the concept of a ring species that is exactly what he says should not be and now let us see how he plays it.

328

nope - AID’s or SAR’s - you’ll still die believing what you want to . . .

330

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Schlenkatank wrote:
For the record i will take on all creationists with regards to this topic. I believe no one can logically prove me wrong.

Please, someone try to find a major/valid scientific proposal validating creationism, or one that debunks evolution published this side of the century.

Seriously, you won’t prove me wrong:P

Whew, you are quite the intimidator! Even I’d better not mess with the likes of you.

By the way, regardless of one’s views on the authenticity of the moths study, the fact remains that it is an example of microevolution - something that is observable and therefore testable and therefore very believable. Have you heard me dispute this anywhere?

See, you can breed moths and breed moths and breed moths and you’ll always end up with…moths. No matter how many flying ants try to give it to that female moth…you simply will never ever end up with an ant/moth hybrid.

So we DO agree that evolution occurs; we just disagree at what level. You ASSUME/hypothesize that it can happen given enough time but you cannot and have not ever observed it happening. Speculate? Yes. Observe and test? No.

Adios, El Intimidator![/quote]

hahaha. All right fair enough. To be honest with you I was just trying to get a rise out of someone so I could enter the conversation and shed my knowledge of biology/chemistry/genetics.

For the record It’s good that you didn’t believe that very poor scientific article.

With regards to my aforementioned ASSUMPTIONS/hypotheses, evolution is considered a theory in scientific terms because, in fact, it has been observed and recorded many times in labratory studies. Any other belief is pure ignorance. Microorganisms are effected by natural selection much MUCH quicker than other ones due to there short lifespan and often evolve into organism with radically different genetic material.

Also, just so you know, “radically diiferent genetic material” can mean as little as a third of the genetic sequence is different. Mosquitos and humans share two thirds of the same genetic sequence.

332

[quote]pushharder wrote:

Like I have now said approximately 347.89 times…you can breed mosquitos forever and ever and ever and ever and…you’ll never end up with a bird. You can try and breed mosquitos with oh, lets say, dragonflies and you can do this forever and ever and ever and ever and you will still never end up with a bird. Or whatever. You’ll just keep ending up with some type of mosquito. Not a beetle. Not a butterfly. Not a tick. Not a lightning bug. Just some form of a mosquito.

.[/quote]

No you CAN NOT breed mosquitos, or anything else for that matter, forever and ever. No one can. Even considering mosquitos that have a 2 day lifespan, even if you bred them for 40 years, you still only have 7,300 generations (40 years x 365 days / 2 days per generation). That’s a pathethic little nothing in terms of evolution. It didn’t take the first amoebas 7 thousand generations to evolve into a little more complex amoeba, and than into a fungus, and eventually into a sea sponge… you get the picture… it took it BILLIONS of generations. BILLIONS. You can’t get even remotedly close to that in a lab, even if you dedicated your entire life to breeding mosquitoes. Just because you can’t do something in the equivalent to a human lifespan (let’s say 80 years), it doesn’t mean it won’t happen spontaneously in 4 billion years. The job you can’t do in a lab, nature has been doing for 50 million times longer…

Edit: I’ll add this one more thing. Not only does macro evolution happen in terms of hundreds of thousands to million years, it also happens in the shape of a tree, one could say. All current species have evolved from a common ancestor, branching out in different directions. So saying that you should be able to turn cats into dogs or vice versa by breeding is also a big misunderstanding. Dogs have never become cats, never will. But if you could find their common ancestor, if it wasn’t extinct, and if you could breed said ancestor for countless times, you’d end up with both puppies and kittens. Say you could go even further back in time, and find yourself an earlier specimen, you could wind up with dogs, cats, horses, pigs, cows and more! Most of these diferentiations happened over 100 million years ago. The point in time where a bird and a moth didn’t exist, but their common ancestor did, was over 700 million years ago. Good luck getting those moths into birds in a lab! Anyways, my point is, one could think that there can’t be such great biodiversity if all living beings have a common ancestor, but if you consider that each big “jump” in evolution opened up a whole new branch, that explains a lot. Think of a tree again. You can start with a seed that is half an inch wide, and end up with leaves that are more than 30 feet apart from each other.

333

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
nope - AID’s or SAR’s - you’ll still die believing what you want to . . . [/quote]

True, but a lightning bolt will kill you, whether you believe in electricity or not.

334

[quote]pushharder wrote:
orion wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
and in the end - it doesn’t matter - it comes down to which you choose to accept and which you think is wrong.

We will not see any effect of evolution in our lifetimes if it is right and if it is wrong - it won’t matter anyway.

If you die of Aids, or SARS or just the next flu that comes around every year or two it will matter very much to you.

Plus, sometimes it is not so much about convincing other people, but to see how good an effort they put up.

Like sparring.

Now admittedly Pushharder has been dealt quite a though hand with the introduction of the concept of a ring species that is exactly what he says should not be and now let us see how he plays it.

Why are you getting hung up on this? You cited an example of intra-species adaptation. You can breed those birds until the cows come home and go back and come home again (do you understand that metaphor, Wolfgang?) and the results will never stray very far from where you started, biologically and/or taxonomically speaking. In other words, it is not exactly what I said it should not be. (You damn fucker, making me use a double negative)

You or I can start with a standard size male and female dog and we can breed dogs and breed dogs and breed dogs and we might eventually end up with Great Dane sized dogs as well as Chihuahua but all we’re ever going to get is …DOGS. We will never work it out to where we end up with a cat. Or a platypus. Or an aardvark.

That “barrier” we spoke of earlier is in place and you can struggle mightily against it and hypothesize your head off but you’re just going to get a broken nose from your repeated attempts to walk through it.
[/quote]

Yes, those birds are still birds.

But, unlike dogs, somewhere along the continum these birds can no longer interbreed.

They cannot even produce infertile offspring.

That means they no longer belong to the same species, if you use a common definition.

However, we know every single intermediate step from species A to species B, because they still exist.

So. new species can develop when small changes on top of each other lead to such a big change that a new species develops.

Those birds are not just variations of the same species like dogs, or even wolves and dogs or members of the equine family.

They are farther apart than that.

So again, you say new species cannot come into existence and no intermediate links exist, yet here they are.

So I am asking you, what is a species?

Because, if no such thing can develop through evolution, what is your definition of it?

335

The answer to all of this is in the Bhagavad-gita. Life must come from life.

“As Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita (2.13), dehino 'smin yatha dehe kaumaram yauvanam jara/ tatha dehantara-praptih: “As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death.” And a little later (2.18): antavanta ime deha nityasyoktah sharirinah. This means that only the material body of the indestructible and eternal living entity is subject to destruction. The material body is perishable, but the life within the body is nitya, eternal.”

http://www.hansadutta.com/CHALLENGE/life5.html

Life evolving from non-life is also not possible logically. Nothing can be both living and dead at the same time and in the same respect (esp a cat in a box). :wink:

336

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
The answer to all of this is in the Bhagavad-gita. Life must come from life.

“As Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita (2.13), dehino 'smin yatha dehe kaumaram yauvanam jara/ tatha dehantara-praptih: “As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death.” And a little later (2.18): antavanta ime deha nityasyoktah sharirinah. This means that only the material body of the indestructible and eternal living entity is subject to destruction. The material body is perishable, but the life within the body is nitya, eternal.”

http://www.hansadutta.com/CHALLENGE/life5.html

Life evolving from non-life is also not possible logically. Nothing can be both living and dead at the same time and in the same respect (esp a cat in a box). :wink:
[/quote]

Give me a definition of “alive”.

Is a virus alive?

337

[quote]pushharder wrote:
You or I can start with a standard size male and female dog and we can breed dogs and breed dogs and breed dogs and we might eventually end up with Great Dane sized dogs as well as Chihuahua but all we’re ever going to get is …DOGS. We will never work it out to where we end up with a cat. Or a platypus. Or an aardvark.
[/quote]
You do know that the reason we have dogs is because we domesticated the wolf, right? And after only a few thousand years you consider them to be separate species.

There’s actually been a modern day experiment where they did the same things with foxes; Domesticated silver fox - Wikipedia

I think it’s the concept of “species” that is messing you up here. Species is a pretty vague, if useful, label at best. We are only able to identify distinct species because of extinctions and time. If you go back far enough we all have the same ancestor.

Say for example that a new Lucy was bred; if she could breed with chimpanzees, and breed with us too, where then lies your definition of species? No one in science uses it the way you do.

340

scientist - despite their best efforts still have never created life from inorganic elements . . .just wanted to point that out . . .

I love the evolutionary tree . . . . except we have never found on of those “branch point” dual-directional species . . . you know, where one species splits into two different species(that wonderful common ancestor) . . . anywhere along the line . . .

Pick any point on that evolutionary tree and what you get is a lot of species specific branches, but no connecting branch point - no matter how hard they try to graft that tree together . . .

For example . . . where is the fish/reptile splitter species- we’ll call it FiRSS . . . where is the reptile/mammal? better yet - where are some of the species branches themselves? like the Lemur-Gorilla-Chimp species the LeGorCH! Who likes to move it move it with a banana and a diaper?