100 Reasons Why Evolution Is Stupid (Part 1 of 11)

[David Henson]

So what's the point of the bible, then, if interpretation is the only thing giving it value ?

Are you suggesting that if the Bible is inerrant it is pointless and therefore science isn't inerrant?

 

[joobz]

Here is a quote I find interesting: Not saying it isn't somehow flawed, just interesting.
Feel free to object or crticize.

It is interesting, unfortunately it is mired in horrible strawmanning of evolutionary theory.

Evolutionary pressure only selects individuals who have reproductive advantage.
Populations evolve, not individuals.


Using the hypothetical provided, Let us assume that pearl diving is the ONLY source of income and that there is a direct relationship between good pearl diving and reproductive success.

In that case I would expect over dozens upon dozens of generations (and assuming there is no external gene pool by which to cross fertilize), that the people who would lived and passed on their genes would be more disposed to being great swimmers, have increased lung capacity, possess extra layers of fat, ... Under the hypothetical given, it is simply false to think that "water breathing" would be a necessary outcome. Remember that we have evidence of sea creatures which are air breathing. So the entire premise that ocean dwelling would select for water breathing is simply false.

Really the paragraph you show describes what is known as lamarckian evolution and was discounted as a theory over 100 years ago.

 

[X]

Here is the second part of the video in case you would like to see it. It isn't necessary as I am only drawing my points from it. I will present each point clearly, simply and briefly.

1. Termites. The "little critters" in termites stomachs which digest the cellulose can't survive without the termites and the termites can't survive without the critters. Which evolved first?

2. Hovind doesn't know where God comes from and says that science doesn't know where the "dirt" or matter came from as a result of the Big Bang, and since it isn't known he assumes it isn't science. It is religion.

3. Conservation of Angular Momentum - If the universe began as a swirling dot why do some planets (2) and moons (6) spin "backward"?

4. Galaxies and voids - If the Big Bang were true why isn't matter evenly distributed?

5. Novas and supernovas - If stars evolve why do star deaths not equal star births? Supernova are observed every 30 years but there are less than 300 of them in billions of years. (keeping in mind that I don't believe in a YEC)

6. Radio polonium halos - If the Earth formed from a hot mass 4.6 billion years ago then why would the polonium halos not have melted?

<post snipped anf hyperlink removed by me>



Since you love youtube so much, allow me to introduce you to the users "ExtantDodo".

Watch these videos for clear demonstrations of why rational people regard Hovind as an imbecile:
Critical Analysis of Kent Hovind's Garden of Eden 49 minutes long
Critical Analysis of Kent Hovind's Age of the Earth 25 minutes long
Critical Analysis of kent Hovind's Dinosaurs and the Bible 34 minutes long

 

[excaza]

Another way to imagine the impossibilities of evolution is to think about what evolutionists claim.... that the habitat of an animal (or person) will cause them to develop traits or functions that better suit them to that environment, through information-gaining mutations and natural selection of those added traits.

This already presents a false assumption. Though evolution says it is possible that one day this population would develop favorable biological traits, it's not guaranteed. The population could just as easily die out. This is a fairly subtle but very important distinction.

Let’s take a man and his wife, and say they live by the ocean. They swim in the ocean all the time, and hold their breath and swim underwater every day. Then they have kids, which also swim all the time, and hold their breath to swim underwater, because they are all pearl divers. Generation after generation of this family stays by the ocean, each son and daughter marry other people who live by the ocean and swim all the time. How long will it take before one of the children has the ability to breath underwater? The correct answer is never, but evolutionists believe that in a situation like this, eventually one of the children will be born with gills, and will be able to breath underwater.

I don't really agree with this hypothetical situation, but I can understand where it's coming from. First, the population size is WAY too small. If this sample was at the very least a few thousand instead of a handful, it would be a more valid thought experiment. Second, the population isn't going to change simply because they enjoy holding their breath every day. There needs to be a more fundamental reason to stay underwater longer for a change to be pressured. If the survival of their population was dependent on the amount of time they could stay underwater, you would most certainly see a general population trend towards those who can hold their breath longer (if the population doesn't die out first), but it's not going to be because they held their breath every day. Please note: yes, holding your breath can be trained (to some extent), there are still those who are biologically better suited to do it. If the population is able to sustain itself for hundreds and thousands of generations (very important), then you will almost certainly see a trend towards higher lung capacity or some other biological mechanism that allows one to stay underwater longer. Will it be gills? Not necessarily. I also have a problem with it saying eventually one of the kids will be born with gills. This is another common misunderstanding of evolution, a mother doesn't one day just pop out a different species, the change is gradual.

A logical person would realize this is impossible; a human would never develop gills, because the capability to breath underwater is not in the human genome.

In the vague and flawed situation presented, it does sound pretty impossible. But this is for the reasons I stated above, not because it "isn't in the human genome." Unfortunately, though this hypothetical presents a case that certainly makes sense, it makes some fundamental errors that the intended audience might not understand.

Evolutionists pretend that fish grew legs and lungs because for some reason “it was beneficial for them to leave water.

They don't 'pretend anything'. Also, what the hell is an 'Evolutionist?' Biologists, paleontologists, and other scientists can provide plenty of reasons why 'fish' (over a long period of time) developed, not grew, legs and lungs. Most importantly, in a time when the majority of sentient (for lack of a better word) life was almost all in the oceans, there would be a lot of competition for food. But then you have these vast land masses, full of nutrients, with very little competition. So the organisms that had the capability of breathing on land got food a lot easier. Same goes for legs, you can't exactly move around on land with a flagellum (I think that's singular), so you'd be a prime target for predators plus you couldn't get to food as easily as something with legs. Again, these changes happened over hundreds of thousands to millions of years. It wasn't overnight.


Hope this made sense.

 

[dasmiller]

1. Termites. The "little critters" in termites stomachs which digest the cellulose can't survive without the termites and the termites can't survive without the critters. Which evolved first?

False dichotomy. They've been evolving together for a while now.

2. Hovind doesn't know where God comes from and says that science doesn't know where the "dirt" or matter came from as a result of the Big Bang, and since it isn't known he assumes it isn't science. It is religion.

Science doesn't know what precursors the big bang might have had, though there are certainly many hypotheses. I don't see the religious equivalance there. If he means that we don't know how to get from the big bang to modern dirt - I think we understand that just fine, and have huge amounts of evidence to support our understanding.

3. Conservation of Angular Momentum - If the universe began as a swirling dot why do some planets (2) and moons (6) spin "backward"?

As phrased, that question doesn't make sense. Why wouldn't they some of them spin backwards? Conservation of angular momentum refers to the entire system (universe); the individual pieces of it may vary as long as the total doesn't. Angular momentum gets passed from me to the earth whenever I turn my head.

4. Galaxies and voids - If the Big Bang were true why isn't matter evenly distributed?

This is actually a topic of much research and computer modeling. One of the more hard-core techies should address it.

5. Novas and supernovas - If stars evolve why do star deaths not equal star births? Supernova are observed every 30 years but there are less than 300 of them in billions of years. (keeping in mind that I don't believe in a YEC)

Again, this doesn't make much sense as phrased. Is he asserting that there have been only 300 supernovae in history? Also, a lot of stars simply have very long lifetimes (red dwarfs may live 100B years or more) so they've simply been accumulating. And a large fraction of stars are too small to go supernova.

But this question needs some elaboration before it can really be addressed.

6. Radio polonium halos - If the Earth formed from a hot mass 4.6 billion years ago then why would the polonium halos not have melted?

I'm not familiar with this. Someone else will have to address.

 

[John Jones]

Here is a quote I find interesting: Not saying it isn't somehow flawed, just interesting.
Feel free to object or crticize.

That's not the theory of evolution by natural selection. As has been pointed out, that's Lamarckism.

Is there a single creationist anywhere in the world that understand what the theory of evolution is?

It is something to behold when the pathologically clueless speak at length about subjects they don't understand.

 

[Aitch]

6. Radio polonium halos - If the Earth formed from a hot mass 4.6 billion years ago then why would the polonium halos not have melted?

I'm not familiar with this. Someone else will have to address.

Does this help?

ETA: I'm not familiar with it either; just did a quick Google and that was the first result.

 

[Olowkow]

Here is a quote I find interesting: Not saying it isn't somehow flawed, just interesting.
Feel free to object or crticize.

http://www.themythofevolution.com/Site/Evolutionists.html
Consider the beliefs of evolution/atheism, also known as “Darwinism:”

There is no right, wrong, good or evil. If you kill 153 people and nobody finds out, what makes it wrong?

The articles are either evidence of madness or mendacity of the worst kind. I am very interested in how you found such a vile site? Is it something that a religion promotes? If this is your understanding of atheism, you need to look into the subject a little more.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

100 Reasons Why Evolution Is Stupid - Part 2


1. Termites. The "little critters" in termites stomachs which digest the cellulose can't survive without the termites and the termites can't survive without the critters. Which evolved first?


*snipped explanation and all those questions about stellar physics which I cannot awnser as its not my speciality

So once again biological evolution and stellar evolution are mixed, although those two theories are about as similar as christianity and hinduism.

But question 1 can be easily awnsered. The bacteria in the termites stomachs evolved first. In fact, only bacteria have so far managed to evolve the ability to digest cellulose even though it would enable the unlocking of an untold amount of food should humans be able to (one of the things a caring and intelligent designer would be silly to overlook, but I digress).
Since all living things ingest bacteria when we eat, and cellulose digestable bacteria are quite likely to be found on (rotting) plants it is inevitable that the ancestors of termites occasionally ate them too. Once some survived the stomach and ended up in the gut these proto-termites gained some ability to digest wood ending up in their digestive tract. These then gained an evolutionary advantage. Due to the nature of social insects, these bacteria would rapidly spread through the colony with each generation (the same way parents infect their children with their gut bacteria over time).
This is called symbiosis. Two lifeforms, both capable of living independently gaining an advantage of cooperating.
The proto-termites gain the ability to live off of food that is widely available and uncontested by most other higher lifeforms. The bacteria gain a protected environment (the gut) which continously provides them with food.
In this protected environment the bacteria have no need for a lot of the genes needed to survive outside of it, and given how bacteria evolve these would be rapidly lost (something seen and reproduced in laboratoria all over the world on numerous occasions), eventually producing a species of bacteria unable to live anywhere except in termite guts. On the other hand, the termites no longer have any evolutionary pressure to maintain a competition for easier food sources like leaves or detritus and thus over time the species loses the capacity and can only survive on wood while gaining the mutations needed to chew the wood better. At which point they become termites as we know them today.

Experiments, observation, sequencing explain how this could happen. In fact, the arrangement is not that dissimilar to how our own bacterial flora came to be.

Now I can imagine what Hovind suggest, namely that termites were made that way by God. I'll admit its easier for brevity. Did he also explain why his God would deny us the ability to digest cellulose? After all being able to digest cellulose would solve world hunger permanently and for ever, preventing all famines ever to have occurred in the history of mankind.

 

[dasmiller]

Does this help?

ETA: I'm not familiar with it either; just did a quick Google and that was the first result.

I didn't think it would be appropriate for me to expound on a topic for which I had no prior knowledge. I'm not sure why I'm willing to post with "little prior knowledge" but not "no prior knowledge" . . . <shrug> yet another character flaw. I have a collection.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

Here is a quote I find interesting: Not saying it isn't somehow flawed, just interesting.
Feel free to object or crticize.

Actually, evolution suggests it is highly unlikely that under such conditions gills would be re-evolved.
In actuality these beings will learn to hold their breath longer and longer, as mutations that cause hemoglobin to hold oxygen for longer become an advantage.
Once an individual with webbed feet is born that will cause a marked advantage in swimming, causing that to become the norm in rapid succession (ie hundreds of thousends of years). Shorter legs, arms and longer body to allow for better streamlining and swimming will again cause advantage. etc etc.
In fact there are examples of what happens when mammals start re-adapting for life in the water in various stages. Hippo's, sea lions, dolphins, whales among others. None of these have re-evolved gills, which indeed is exceedingly unlikely, yet do you deny these are mammals that live (mostly) in water?

I'm afraid the gills argument is about as strawman as they come. It is only part of the evilutionary theory creationists rail against, it has no credibilty in the actualy current theory, nor has it ever been any serious part.

 

[iknownothing]

Are you suggesting that if the Bible is inerrant it is pointless and therefore science isn't inerrant?

How does the part of your sentence after "therefore" relate to the first part of the sentence? I don't just think you're wrong...I can't even follow what you're trying to say.

 

[Pup]

If you take your science so seriously that you don't have the time to rewrite "Evolution for Dummies" for me then this thread isn't for you. Move on and save us both a great deal of time.

If you care so little about science that you ignore the answers when people do rewrite Evolution for Dummies for you on this thread, as they have many times, why do you keep asking them to do it again?

The subject here is, to me, more religious than it is science.

What's the point of the thread, then? With faith, facts are irrelevant. Just believe whatever you want. It's a free country.

 

[Aitch]

I didn't think it would be appropriate for me to expound on a topic for which I had no prior knowledge. I'm not sure why I'm willing to post with "little prior knowledge" but not "no prior knowledge" . . . <shrug> yet another character flaw. I have a collection.

Fair enough - I have a fair few of my own! Mind you, I was described in a letter from the local hospital to my GP as 'this pleasant 57 year old retired gentlman". Go, as they say, figure.

It does strike me as interesting, though, that the first hit for the subject in Google is a fairly thorough (from what I can make out) debunking of it.

 

[SOdhner]

Termites. The "little critters" in termites stomachs which digest the cellulose can't survive without the termites and the termites can't survive without the critters. Which evolved first?

Okay, I'm a little torn here. It's a reasonable question and I want to answer it, but I'd like to use another thing as an example. Please, please, please... try to understand that this is an example only, a metaphor almost, and so you should focus on the lesson I'm trying to pass along rather than the details of this specific example. I hope we can do that.

Have you seen those birds that clean hippo's teeth? So, they're totally separate creatures but they work together. Let's take a totally fictional version of those, that live in the fictional colorful hippos from Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Maybe some of them start to live inside the hippo's mouth. The ones that are good at this find it to be advantageous because they don't use energy flying around and they get to nibble on all those marbles that hippos like to eat. The hippo benefits from good dental hygene and maybe also from the bird poop (let's say the hippos can't process some aspect of the marbles. They can live off of them, but not get the full benefit. However some of the nutrients are processed first by the birds, and the hippo CAN digest the poop.) Sweet deal!

So, birds that live inside hippos do better, and reproduce more.

Hippos with birds in them do better, and reproduce more.

Birds that are better adapted to live in a hippo mouth do better, and so just by natural selection those traits (feet that fit nicely around hippo teeth, eggs that sit nicely behind the molars) are passed on. Hooray evolution!

Same for the hippos. The ones with wider mouths, and more room back behind the molars, tend to have more birds and thus get more nutrients from the marbles and so are healthier and so reproduce more.

Keep this up.

So eventually the birds are really well suited to the hippos and the hippos are really well suited to the birds. Traits that would benefit a bird that doesn't live in a hippo aren't particularly useful and while some will still get passed along just by chance others are more of a nuisance (those big wings just get in the way) and will slowly be selected against. Likewise, the hippos are used to getting those nutirents. It's just expected. The ones that make good use of the nutirents do well, but are also slowly becoming dependant on them - which is fine, because the birds are always there.

Keep this up.

So now, many many generations down the road, you come and take the birds away from a hippo. The birds hop around on the marshy ground and are defenseless and lost and up to their necks in water and can't find marbles and die. Bummer. The hippo finds marbles, but his body has evolved to make use of nutrients he's not getting, and so he suffers from malnutrition and eventually organ failure. So sad!

Neither one evolved first, they evolved together. At some point in the process they were still okay on their own, but eventually they came to rely on each other. Does this make sense to you? If not, which step in the process?

ETA: And I see while I was typing someone provided an example that is more specific to the termites - note that that's why I gave a fictional example... I knew mine might not be accurate to this exact case but felt it was still educational as an example of how these things can work.

 

[SumDood]

3. Conservation of Angular Momentum - If the universe began as a swirling dot why do some planets (2) and moons (6) spin "backward"?

source:http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE260_1.html :

"Conservation of angular momentum doesn't require that everything spin the same way. It requires that a change in spin in one object be compensated for by an opposite change in spin in one or more other objects. Retrograde planets are not a violation of angular momentum because other bodies in the early solar system could account for the compensating spin."

4. Galaxies and voids - If the Big Bang were true why isn't matter evenly distributed?

source:http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE260_1.html :

"Rotations within the universe are not expected to be related to any rotation of the cosmos. Galaxies probably arose from slightly denser regions of the early universe, which coalesced and combined due to gravitational and viscous interactions. Since these early density fluctuations were apparently random, we expect galaxies to have random orientations. Solar systems within galaxies have still different origins and additional random influences on their orientations."

I did the best i could by copying from Talk Origins. It is a very, very informative site and i suggest exploring it some when you get a chance:

http://www.talkorigins.org/

 

[Belz...]

I go to a church were they don't think the bible is literally true, and question the motives and identities of the writers, and all that good stuff. We still read passages out of it though, because there's a lot of good lessons you can either take from it or base off of it. There's also a lot of stuff we don't use, of course.

Well, there's no arguing against the fact that the bible makes for a very interesting read/analysis. It's the contention that it's morally perfect or preferable that I find hard to swallow.

 

[Maia]

Wait, so is this thread arguing that not only is the theory of evolution as it applies to biology stupid, but that anything that is described as evolution is stupid? Good grief, this is getting dumber all the time. My strategies for playing Fallout 3 have evolved, is that stupid?

I"m not sure if the answer to your question is yes or no, but I think that the answer to this question is worth clarifying (although my hopes aren't high that it'll make any difference, seeing as how this thread turned into an ungodsly mess long, long, long ago. At the first post, actually.) Biological evolution is about successful adaptation to local environments, and that's it. There is no "higher goal" or grand outcome that it's working towards. No life form is the crowning achievement. Here's a good example of what I mean:

As a final footnote to life’s little joke, I remind readers that one prominent (or at least parochially beloved) mammalian lineage has a long and extensive history of conventional depiction as a ladder of progress—yet it lives today as the single surviving species of a formerly more copious bush. Look in the mirror, and don’t be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority of prospects for extended survival.

-- Stephen Jay Gould, Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin

If any life form is a success story in biological evolution, it's bacteria. But there's also cultural evolution, which follows a different set of rules, and you could say that there is such a thing as personal evolution (that would be your changing strategies for playing Fallout 3.) I think one thing that frightens people who "don't believe in evolution" is the idea that the rules of biological evolution-- which really is a very "meaningless" thing from the POV of human ethics--must apply to everything else that could possibly be referred to as evolution. So if we accept that we evolved from the same common ancestor that monkeys did, then everything that we ever do has to follow the same rules as this type of evolution from bacteria to the ancestor to us, or so the thinking goes.

Now, that's a whole different thread in a way, and just thinking about one of those endingless endless threads getting started again gives me a headache. But the actual evidence that all types of evolution are the same-- and that this argument is really supported by much of anything more than the emotional appeal of quick "solutions" to complex problems, and the satisfaction of thinking that questions about human behavior have such easy, pat answers (remember how well that worked with Freudian psychiatry?)-- is simply not there. The rules of biological evolution can be factually proven to support biological evolution. That's it. They can't be randomly slapped onto any and every other human society, culture, endeavor, or behavioral pattern. If we're going to do that, we might as well go back to intelligent design all over again.

Still, I just don't think this is going to please any non-evolution believers. It doesn't work without accepting the scientific method, for one thing, and that's going to sink it right there. But yes, I do have to wonder-- is this actually a big sticking point for anyone on this thread who doesn't accept evolution?

 

[Belz...]

I think these are threats!

 

[Belz...]

Are you suggesting that if the Bible is inerrant it is pointless and therefore science isn't inerrant?

Well, if there were a prize for misunderstandings you'd at least get a silver medal.

What I said is this: If the bible is NOT inerrant, what's the point of taking it as some sort of moral code or spiritual guideline ? How do you tell which parts are true/good and which parts aren't ? The fact that it's inerrant is a bad thing.

Science is imperfect, but self-correcting. It's the best method we have for determining the truth value of a statement about reality. The fact that it's NOT inerrant is actually a good thing.