[quote]pushharder wrote:
1. Evolution Is Not Happening Now
Adaptation/microevolution IS. What is observable is unbridgeable gaps between “kinds” of plants and animals. The common refutation to this is "It (macro) is happening soooo slowly and minutely that it can’t be observed. As Sento said, “It’s logical” to assume that what we can see can be extrapolated to explain what we can’t see. Well, to me, that is twisted logic.
Science by its very definition is observable. So whereas to Sento it may seem logical, it simply cannot carry the “scientific” designation. And it is ludicrous to compare it to the theory of gravity. Gravity IS observable. Macroevolution simply is NOT. This is inarguable.[/quote]
The Macro/Micro divide is something creationists continually exploit. You also use the terms with extremely elastic definitions. The acceptable definition is “any change at the species level or above” (phyla, group, etc.) and micro-evolution is "any change below the level of species.
Macro-evolution IS observable.
In 1988, scientists at Michigan State University created twelve population lines of E. coli so that they could watch them evolve. Since then, the bacteria have been growing under carefully controlled conditions in a culture containing low concentrations of glucose and high concentrations of citrate. Under oxic conditions (that is, when oxygen is present), E. coli cannot grow on citrate and that inability has long been viewed as a defining characteristic of this important, diverse, and widespread species. Many traits were observed changing over time. Creationists dismissed these changes as micro-evolution. For over 30,000 generations, the E. coli in the experiment did not evolve the ability to grow on citrate. Finally, one of the populations evolved, and gained this ability.
Each population experienced billions of mutations in the first 30,000 generations. Since every possible point mutation was tried many times, scientists were either looking at a rare mutation (such as a large piece of DNA inverting) or a mutation made possible by the cumulative mutation history of prior generations. If this was just a rare mutation, then a sample of bacteria taken just before the trait first appeared would be no more likely to evolve the trait again than a sample taken from the other populations at the same point in time. However, if the ability to use citrate was from an accumulation of micro-evolutionary changes, then a sample from earlier generations of the E. coli would be able to evolve the ability to use citrate again.
Fortunately, the scientists had frozen samples of each population every 500 generations. Sure enough, when they revived earlier samples, they watched the citrate-growing ability evolve in the micro-evolutionary line, but not from samples taken from other lines.
We know that in one population, a series of changes that happened between the 15,000th and 20,000th generations laid the groundwork for a major evolutionary advance. Here we have a clear example of macro-evolution under carefully controlled laboratory conditions.
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7899.abstract
[quote]2. Evolution Has Never Happened
Billions of fossils (or at least all that have been studied) do not include a single indisputable transitional form with transitional body parts in the process of evolving hence the need for the Cambrian Explosion hypothesis.
Since there is no real scientific evidence that macroevolution is presently occurring or ever has occurred, why is it unreasonable to state that evolution can’t carry its weight as a “fact of science”? And that rather it must carry the “faith” label?[/quote]
Sigh. Not the transitional fossil crap again.
That right there is a very dumbed down explanation for people who don’t have any education in evolutionary theory. That’s down at the basics for you.
Also another dumbed down video for you. It shows the evolution of Yellow Stone Algae (stephanodiscus yellowstonensis).
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The Cambrian explosion was the seemingly sudden appearance of a variety of complex animals about 540 million years ago (Mya), but it was not the origin of complex life. Evidence of multicellular life from about 590 and 560 Mya appears in the Doushantuo Formation in China (Chen et al. 2000, 2004), and diverse fossil forms occurred before 555 Mya (Martin et al. 2000). (The Cambrian began 543 Mya., and the Cambrian explosion is considered by many to start with the first trilobites, about 530 Mya.) Testate amoebae are known from about 750 Mya (Porter and Knoll 2000). There are tracelike fossils more than 1,200 Mya in the Stirling Range Formation of Australia (Rasmussen et al. 2002). Eukaryotes (which have relatively complex cells) may have arisen 2,700 Mya, according to fossil chemical evidence (Brocks et al. 1999). Stromatolites show evidence of microbial life 3,430 Mya (Allwood et al. 2006). Fossil microorganisms may have been found from 3,465 Mya (Schopf 1993). There is isotopic evidence of sulfur-reducing bacteria from 3,470 Mya (Shen et al. 2001) and possible evidence of microbial etching of volcanic glass from 3,480 Mya (Furnes et al. 2004).
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There are transitional fossils within the Cambrian explosion fossils. For example, there are lobopods (basically worms with legs) which are intermediate between arthropods and worms (Conway Morris 1998).
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Only some phyla appear in the Cambrian explosion. In particular, all plants postdate the Cambrian, and flowering plants, by far the dominant form of land life today, only appeared about 140 Mya (Brown 1999).
Even among animals, not all types appear in the Cambrian. Cnidarians, sponges, and probably other phyla appeared before the Cambrian. Molecular evidence shows that at least six animal phyla are Precambrian (Wang et al. 1999). Bryozoans appear first in the Ordovician. Many other soft-bodied phyla do not appear in the fossil record until much later. Although many new animal forms appeared during the Cambrian, not all did. According to one reference (Collins 1994), eleven of thirty-two metazoan phyla appear during the Cambrian, one appears Precambrian, eight after the Cambrian, and twelve have no fossil record.
And that just considers phyla. Almost none of the animal groups that people think of as groups, such as mammals, reptiles, birds, insects, and spiders, appeared in the Cambrian. The fish that appeared in the Cambrian was unlike any fish alive today.
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The length of the Cambrian explosion is ambiguous and uncertain, but five to ten million years is a reasonable estimate; some say the explosion spans forty million years or more, starting about 553 million years ago. Even the shortest estimate of five million years is hardly sudden.
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There are some plausible explanations for why diversification may have been relatively sudden:
[i]* The evolution of active predators in the late Precambrian likely spurred the coevolution of hard parts on other animals. These hard parts fossilize much more easily than the previous soft-bodied animals, leading to many more fossils but not necessarily more animals.
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Early complex animals may have been nearly microscopic. Apparent fossil animals smaller than 0.2 mm have been found in the Doushantuo Formation, China, forty to fifty-five million years before the Cambrian (Chen et al. 2004). Much of the early evolution could have simply been too small to see.
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The earth was just coming out of a global ice age at the beginning of the Cambrian (Hoffman 1998; Kerr 2000). A “snowball earth” before the Cambrian explosion may have hindered development of complexity or kept populations down so that fossils would be too rare to expect to find today. The more favorable environment after the snowball earth would have opened new niches for life to evolve into.
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Hox genes, which control much of an animal’s basic body plan, were likely first evolving around that time. Development of these genes might have just then allowed the raw materials for body plans to diversify (Carroll 1997).
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Atmospheric oxygen may have increased at the start of the Cambrian (Canfield and Teske 1996; Logan et al. 1995; Thomas 1997).
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Planktonic grazers began producing fecal pellets that fell to the bottom of the ocean rapidly, profoundly changing the ocean state, especially its oxygenation (Logan et al. 1995).
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Unusual amounts of phosphate were deposited in shallow seas at the start of the Cambrian (Cook and Shergold 1986; Lipps and Signor 1992).[/i]
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Cambrian life was still unlike almost everything alive today. Although several phyla appear to have diverged in the Early Cambrian or before, most of the phylum-level body plans appear in the fossil record much later (Budd and Jensen 2000). Using number of cell types as a measure of complexity, we see that complexity has been increasing more or less constantly since the beginning of the Cambrian (Valentine et al. 1994).
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Major radiations of life forms have occurred at other times, too. One of the most extensive diversifications of life occurred in the Ordovician, for example (Miller 1997).
So yes, it is unreasonable to call it faith when there are MOUNTAINS of evidence in support (because as you will no doubt fail to realize, there are much more examples available to see)
[quote]3. Evidence From Genetics
Because of the above, evolutionists are inclined to mention genetics and similarities in DNA for “proof” that evolution is a scientific fact since it is common to all life and hence the “common ancestry” argument.
BUT it is ridiculous to conclude that the Creator could not or would not use the same type of genetic code for all that He created. In fact, this points to intelligent design, does it not?
If we look at an automobile and see that they all are built with four wheels does that mean they all came from the same factory or just that having four wheels on a car is simply a darn good way to intelligently design a land based vehicle intended to carry 2 - 6 people?
[i]“The overall effect is that molecular phylogenetics is by no means as straightforward as its pioneers believed. . . . The Byzantine dynamics of genome change has many other consequences for molecular phylogenetics, including the fact that different genes tell different stories.”
[/i]For instance:[i]
“The elephant shrew, consigned by traditional analysis to the order insectivores . . . is in fact more closely related to . . . the true elephant. Cows are more closely related to dolphins than they are to horses. The duckbilled platypus . . . is on equal evolutionary footing with . . . kangaroos and koalas.”
Roger Lewin, “Family Feud,” New Scientist (vol. 157, January 24, 1998), p. 39.[/i][/quote]
It is ridiculous to say the creator might done anything when the fact is that it would work WITHOUT divine intervention. You are also playing hard and fast with your definitions of God, which is as amusing as ever. What you have really implied is that God decided to go the way of evolution, which is ruthlessly apathetic to suffering. So God is either impotent or idiotic.
Or both.
[quote]4. It Violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics
Rather than explain why it does I’ll ask you to explain why it doesn’t.
Your problem will be to explain why entropy just happens to not occur in this situation. If so, it is the ONLY situation in the universe where it doesn’t.
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- The second law of thermodynamics says no such thing. It says that heat will not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer one or, equivalently, that total entropy (a measure of useful energy) in a closed system will not decrease. This does not prevent increasing order because
[i]* the earth is not a closed system; sunlight (with low entropy) shines on it and heat (with higher entropy) radiates off. This flow of energy, and the change in entropy that accompanies it, can and will power local decreases in entropy on earth.
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entropy is not the same as disorder. Sometimes the two correspond, but sometimes order increases as entropy increases. (Aranda-Espinoza et al. 1999; Kestenbaum 1998) Entropy can even be used to produce order, such as in the sorting of molecules by size (Han and Craighead 2000).
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even in a closed system, pockets of lower entropy can form if they are offset by increased entropy elsewhere in the system.[/i]
In short, order from disorder happens on earth all the time.
- The only processes necessary for evolution to occur are reproduction, heritable variation, and selection. All of these are seen to happen all the time, so, obviously, no physical laws are preventing them. In fact, connections between evolution and entropy have been studied in depth, and never to the detriment of evolution (Demetrius 2000).
Several scientists have proposed that evolution and the origin of life is driven by entropy (McShea 1998). Some see the information content of organisms subject to diversification according to the second law (Brooks and Wiley 1988), so organisms diversify to fill empty niches much as a gas expands to fill an empty container. Others propose that highly ordered complex systems emerge and evolve to dissipate energy (and increase overall entropy) more efficiently (Schneider and Kay 1994).
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Creationists themselves admit that increasing order is possible. They introduce fictional exceptions to the law to account for it.
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Creationists themselves make claims that directly contradict their claims about the second law of thermodynamics, such as hydrological sorting of fossils during the Flood.
