Why don't you spend some time studying the science behind this stuff before posting here? For example for scientific dating I highly recommend the clocks chapter in Dawkins "Greatest Show On Earth". Once you've read that chapter and understand it you can then poke holes in it.
As someone who describes themselves as scientifically illiterate how can you expect to engage in these types of conversations at all?
I've got 50 Biblically illiterate weekend scientists telling me that the flood couldn't have happened and, look! I gave you the floor. What do I get? A couple of good posts with good questions a handful of wikipedia links, some graphs you snagged of the web and baseless denials with no reason or rhyme. You think I haven't been down that road before? I've noticed that when I do challenge you people, with your offhanded smart ass remarks about radio carbon dating and I put
you to the test all I get is the sound of the ocean.
You want science? Have at it. Here is my science. Its old but refute it anyway without wikipedia and with reason.
I chose to start at Mutations because from my understanding mutations are the alleged basis of evolution, but at the same time, it seems to me, the least likely to have substance. Steven Stanley called mutations "the raw materials" for evolution. Geneticist Peo Koller said they "are necessary for evolutionary progress." Robert Jastrow stressed the importance of "a slow accumulation of favorable mutations." Carl Sagan said: "Mutations - sudden changes in heredity - breed true. They provide the raw material of evolution. The environment selects those few mutations that enhance survival, resulting in a series of slow transformations of one lifeform into another, the origin of new species."
The Punctuated Equilibrium
In Science Digest John Gliedman stated: "Evolutionary revisionists believe mutations in key regulatory genes may be just the genetic jackhammers their quantum-leap theory requires." But British zoologist Colin Patterson observed: "Speculation is free. We know nothing about these regulatory master genes."
Mutations are thought to occur in the normal process of cell reproduction, if I am not mistaken, but experiments have shown that they also can be caused by external agents such as radiation and chemicals. And how often do they happen? The reproduction of genetic material in the cell is remarkably consistent. Relatively speaking, considering the number of cells that divide in a living thing, mutations do not occur very often. As the Encyclopedia Americana commented, the reproducing "of the DNA chains composing a gene is remarkably accurate. Misprints or miscopying are infrequent accidents."
From my perspective it is generally ... well actually overwhelmingly thought that, as Sagan said: "Most of them are harmful or lethal and Koller: "The greatest proportion of mutations are deleterious to the individual who carries the mutated gene. It was found in experiments that, for every successful or useful mutation, there are many thousands which are harmful."
With the Bible, for me and my studies, it has always been etched in stone, if you like. A problem in my understanding could be investigated, usually a simple excercise.
Most mutations are damaging to the organism which seems hard to reconcile with the view that mutation is the source of raw materials for evolution. Indeed, mutants illustrated in biology textbooks are a collection of freaks and monstrosities and mutation seems to be a destructive rather than a constructive process.
G. Ledyard Stebbins observed: "After a greater or lesser number of generations the mutants are eliminated."
This could indicate to me that mutations are useless - harmful. Or that they are as was what I learned in 'school,' the basis for evolution. In that they are eliminated.
The problem I have with that is that if they are eliminated why would they have evolved through mutations in the first place? I could think along the lines that they need to be eliminated.
In his book The Wellsprings of Life, science writer Isaac Asimov wrote: "Most mutations are for the worse . . . . In the long run, to be sure, mutations make the course of evolution move onward and upward."
Geneticist Dobzhansky once said: "An accident, a random change, in any delicate mechanism can hardly be expected to improve it. Poking a stick into the machinery of one's watch or one's radio set will seldom make it work better."
The trouble, in the end that I have with mutations is this. If evolution is change and mutations are the basis of it then why is it that mutations can not produce anything new?
The World Book Encyclopedia: "A plant in a dry area might have a mutant gene that causes it to grow larger and stronger roots. The plant would have a better chance of survival than others of its species because its roots could absorb more water."
But ... it couldn't produce anything new ... it changed but that was it's demise.
Here I see the flaw of the basis of evolution. It provides a brief window of speculation and study but beyond that it is a stagnant pool. Evolution could only wind itself out in a series of mishaps. Mishapen accidents leading nowhere.
Drosophila melanogaster
Dobzhansky: "The clear-cut mutants of Drosophila, with which so much of the classical research in genetics was done, are almost without exception inferior to wild-type flies in viability, fertility, longevity."
DNA has a remarkable ability to repair genetic damage to itself. The organism it is coded for thus is preserved. Scientific American relates how "the life of every organism and its continuity from generation to generation" are preserved "by enzymes that continually repair . . . . In particular, significant damage to DNA molecules can induce an emergency response in which increased quantities of the repair enzymes are synthesized."
Again ... mutations are increasingly science fiction ... of speculations which lead to nowhere.
In the Book Darwin Retried the author relates the following about the respected geneticist, the late Richard Goldschmidt: "After observing mutations in fruit flies for many years, Goldschmidt fell into despair. The changes, he lamented, were so hopelessly micro [small] that if a thousand mutations were combined in one specimen, there would still be no new species."
The Peppered Moth
The International Wildlife Encyclopedia: "This is the most striking evolutionary change ever to have been witnessed by man. After observing that Darwin was plagued by his inability to demonstrate the evolution of even one species, Jastrow, in his book Red Giants and White Dwarfs, added: "Had he known it, an example was at hand which would have provided him with the proof he needed. The case was an exceedingly rare one." The peppered moth.
There were two forms of the peppered moth. A light and a dark. The lighter type blended into the lighter colored trunks of the trees which it hung to. It thrived while the darker didn't. Then, when industrial pollution caused the trunks of those trees to darken the role of survival switched, naturally to the darker.
Consequently the darker variety of peppered moth, which is said to be a mutant, survived better because it was difficult for birds to see them against the soot-darkened trees. The darker variety rapidly became the dominant type. The question was, of course, was the peppered moth evolving into something new? No. The English medical journal On Call referred to using this example to try to prove evolution as "notorious . . . . This is an excellent demonstration of the function of camouflage, but, since it begins and ends with moths and no new species is formed, it is quite irrelevant as evidence for evolution."
The same could be said of some germs which have proved resistant to antibiotics. The hardier germs are still the same, not evolving at all into anything else. Even this is not likely evolution through mutations, but simply a case where some germs were immune to begin with. Some germs having been killed off by drugs and the immune ones multiplied and became dominant. Evolution From Space said: "We doubt, however, that anything more is involved in these cases than the selection of already existing genes."
Insects being immune to poisons - is a case of some poisons being effective and others not, that is being effective on some insects and other insects it is ineffective. The ones having been killed could not develop a resistance since they were dead. Those living were immune from the start, a genetic factor which is selective but not demonstrating change or evolution of the insect itself or in effect any evolution other than some insects were dead and others were not. It doesn't change anything on a minimal scale as evolution would suppose.
Molecules to Living Cells said: "The cells from a carrot or from the liver of a mouse consistently retain their respective tissue and organism identities after countless cycles of reproduction." Symbiosis in Cell Evolution said: "All life . . . reproduces with incredible fidelity." Scientific American said: "Living things are enormously diverse in form, but form is remarkably constant within any given line of descent: pigs remain pigs and oak trees remain oak trees generation after generation."
Rose bushes always blossom into roses, never into camellias. And goats give birth to kids, never to lambs, mutations cannot account for overall evolution - why there are fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
Interpretation
Darwin's observations of the finch on the Galapagos Islands operated upon the premise that they were the same type as those which had apparently migrated from South America, but there were curious differences in those which Darwin observed - the shape of their beaks, for example. This, he interpreted as evolution.
The reason that I side with the Bible over evolution, then, as far as mutations go, is a matter of a flawed observation based upon speculation. The finch that Darwin observed is a finch. It will never be anything else. A black person, a red person, a yellow person, a white person, a brown person, a person with a big nose and a person with a small nose or any variation of person or finch never evolves beyond what a finch or a person is.
A moth becomes a butterfly, a child becomes an adult. This is, in effect an evolution ... a change ... but not a change which evolves beyond what the Bible speaks of in the Genesis account.
See? That's how it is done. That is how you refute something. Lets see you do that with the Bible, wise guy.
