Stupid Christian Article on Evolution

[randman]

Ok, for the earth a billion years is a day and so if something takes a billion years it does not happen slowly.

We can quibble the definition of slowly then, or you could try to understand point.

Mutations over generations of population are sequential.

Can we agree on that, or should we debate the meaning of "is" like Clinton?

So since they happen, then more creatures are born or whatever, more happen, and the process repeats itself, that is sequential, and no, nothing else implied, discussed with that. Not saying that all have to steadily accumulate, blah, blah, blah....

Mutations according to evolutionists produce genes and since they happen sequentially and by definition from the vantage point of someone or something, slowly over time, that means genomes don't start out genetically complex but get that way through adaptionist means of evolution.

Then how did the simplest organisms that didn't have so much to adapt to in the sense of novel traits to be selected for, how did they get so genetically complex?

And if novel genes can arise without NeoDarwinism, isn't the whole ND narrative overplayed?

Maybe environmental pressures played a very little role in what forms emerged. Sure, species had to survive. But other than that, maybe the mutations were preset, programmed to evolve into certain forms.

It sure looks that way, assuming common descent in the first place. They were front loaded with all the genes needed for all types of life. They repeat certain forms such as the Marsupials and Placentals. They seem to follow a pattern that has essentially petered out now.

That's front loading. It's evolution of a sort but not NeoDarwinism which makes no sense at all when you look at the fact. Microevolution decreases genetic variability not increases it.

Unfortunately for front loaders, we still have the fossil record. No gradualistic evolution there, nada,.....so it'd have to be very fast macro-jumps like Goldschmidt and others envisioned.

Maybe then the creationists are correct. Just didn't happen.

 

[randman]

So, this entire 8-page thread has been a day's worth of argument from incredulity by randman, based on his lack of understanding of the theory of evolution - getting increasingly shrill and repeating the same questions, even if they had been answered several pages back? Nice.

He's fun. I vote we keep him.

No lack of understanding here, bud. It's your side shown to laughably ignorant and inept. Saying stupid things like placentals evolved from marsupials while calling me ignorant, and apparently completely unaware of numerous other basic facts and theories, one of the more ignorant evolutionist crowds I've come across.

I've had to slowly break down very basic concepts in the evo debate. Yea, I got a little bothered at the level of ignorance and intellectual inability to follow the debate, but I've come to expect that from most evolutionists. Just thought this might be different here, that you'd at least have the basic facts straight, but you guys haven't even had that right.

I get people that essentially yell in print saying, hey you stupid creationist, don't you know the mammalian ear is not convergent evolution.....I mean, you guys don't even have the evo side of the debate right. So I am bringing up evolutionary theory, you are saying look, he doesn't even understand it, when in reality I've been the only one with my facts right here on this thread, for the most part, and you guys have the gall to suggest I'm the guy that doesn't understand the science here?

 

[randman]

Wow, so much info - a lot going over my head but I didn't mean to derail with the whole dinosaur thing. The dinos being thousands of years dead and not millions of years dead could be a thread all of it's own - possibly discussing the details of dating techniques - but I was really just trying to contrast then and now.

Basically, there weren't dogs and people - now there is. Do you have an alternative theory to where they came from? Note again that not having an alternative theory is not a weakness (that would a logical fallacy I encounter a lot in the religion threads) but again - I'm curious. If it's something along the lines of "supernatural big-daddy in the sky magiced us into existance", then tell me I'm off topic and stick to the evolution. Most young earthers would say that there's always been people and dogs because the earth doesn't go back past thousands of years - but that's not the vibe I'm getting from you.

Clearly dogs and people have not always been on the earth. How they got here isn't 100% clear, imo, in terms of the exact means. I do believe God created the universe and life on earth and continues to uphold all existence so that if He did not at all moments do that, the universe would not exist. Nothing exists apart from the presence of God's actions through the Logos in upholding it.

The Logos is then the underlying informational/energy structure that gives rise to all of space-time. The Logos (Word) became flesh and dwelt among us.....So I follow the Bible in what I believe, but it's not always clear, for example, how God does and did these things.

As far as the science, I am not 100% sure what the right model is and think it could well be a mixture of things. For example, we all know some variation occurs via darwinian evolution (natural selection, etc,...). But that really is a dead end as far as macroevolution. It is a process of decreasing genetic variability. We also don't see one instance of it in the fossil record producing macroevolution. I could go down the list, but the one model that clearly does not work, is a total modern myth, is that the small changes of NeoDarwinian evolution add up to the large changes of macroevolution.

Most evos have never bothered to listen to their critics and so they don't have that much of an understanding of their own theory much less alternatives. They just keep stonewalling away. It's like talking with a computer programmed to spit out the same responses. Happens even with well-educated, even the highest levels of evolutionist science. They'll repeat ad nauseum the same thing, even if factually wrong, for decades. They did that with Haeckel, and though we had brief respite around 2000, as I predicted, they are already back again.

So I choose to look at the data and see what it does and does not say. The front loading hypothesis is interesting but that still leaves out the means of how evolution happened. Some front loaders and very prominent scientists of the past 80 years believe evolution has essentially petered out and ended. We're just seeing the last bit, and that whatever process produced macroevolution, it has ended today.

Of course, some ignorant evo will say, well, just look at this study on bacteria. See how it adapts and evolves. They never even think of the fact with how rapidly bacteria adapt, it's a basic, stable system or type that hasn't changed in billions of years. Natural selection is a conservative process, not an evolutionary one in a macro-sense.

 

[randman]

Indeed the creationists abuse of Grasse is so common it's got an entry on the Talk Origins FAQ.
Creationists have to resort to such deceit as they have no real arguments of their own.....

Haven't misquoted Grasse at all, and if you are linking to TalkOrigins, I feel sorry for you.

Grasse called NeoDarwinism a myth. He calls "evolution" a "myth", a lie perpetuated in part by fraud. That's what he was talking about when he called evolution a myth. That's one reason I started out using the term, Darwinism and then NeoDarwinism, and talked about how evos use "evolution" in different ways.

But here is the truth. Pier Grasse called what you believe and what TalkOrigins believes and writes about, a "myth" and went so far as to say although some do it in ignorance, many evos deliberately perpetuated this myth knowingly, that some evos (talking prominent scientists) are deliberately lying at least on some levels. He said you guys are either ignorant or lying.

If creationists say the same things and quote him, they are not taking him out of context at all. Moreover, you mischaracterize what he believed, probably parroting TalkOrigins. He was not Lamarckian in the way you define it; nor was his whole argument on living fossils.

Pier Grasse would likely be in the ID camp today. Accepting common descent does not make one an evolutionist in the way you guys define evolutionist. Michael Behe believes in common descent, for example.

Is he an evolutionist?

Same with a lot of ID theorists. I have for the most part not even talked about special creation here but ideas from front loading evolutionists and ID theorists, discussing the facts in the context of common descent, even though I don't necessarily accept it.

So who is misusing Pier Grasse? I think TalkOrigins is when they say he's an evolutionist like they are. Grasse said that scientists saying the same things as the folks at TalkOrigins are either ignorant or lying.

So how's he taken out of context again?

 

[randman]

The core of Randman argument is so desperatly vague simplistic, though, that it is pretty much useless.
What is genetic complexity? It is simply the number of genes? Some species are tetraploids, meaning they have four copies of chromosomes rather than two and hence, twice as many genes.
Are they suddenly twice as complex than their closest relative? Even if polyploidy is generally reserved for "lower" animals and life form and lethal to more complex ones?

So you don't know how the term "genetic complexity" is used in science.

The term "genetic complexity" is not mine. It's used in peer-reviewed literature and does not just refer to the number of genes. You can read one of the paper's I linked to and see how they use the term.

Are these scientists doing cutting edge research "so desperately vague simplistic"?

 

[randman]

Evasion noted. So which Creationist camp is the best one and why? They can't all be right. How shall one judge the validity of their conflicting claims?

Well, on this thread I have primarily presented non-creationist arguments which you guys mistook for creationism. So I'd have to be convinced you know what the different camps are if we are going to discuss them.

There's no evasion.

 

[randman]

Is there any reason why this coral could not have once been a more complex organism but its niche lifestyle meant it had no need for some of its complexity and so abandoned them but retained the genes?

Sorry to respond twice. Very good question. Glad to see someone get the conundrum here the data presents.

They'd have to not be as old as they are considered to be as a group of creatures in order to have been vertebrates at one time and evolved into simpler organisms. It seems unlikely.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

I've had to slowly break down very basic concepts in the evo debate.

And you're still getting them wrong. Go you!

 

[randman]

So is this par for the course here? You guys just come on and say very little science and data-wise but lambast how the critic doesn't understand evolution?

Sceptic, back up your point. Name one area I haven't "understood"?

You guys reminded me about debating some folks 15 or more years ago that insisted since simple organisms have simple genomes, that it was evidence for evolution and a prediction of evolution. Maybe some of you recall that being the evo spin? Now, we know that's wrong, and I think there was evidence even then but evos still went around saying it. So what's the spin now? That NeoDarwinism predicted this all along?

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

So is this par for the course here? You guys just come on and say very little science and data-wise but lambast how the critic doesn't understand evolution?

Only if the critic doesn't understand evolution and sticks his or her fingers in his or her ears shouting "la la la la la!" when it's pointed out to him or her that s/he is wrong.

Sceptic, back up your point. Name one area I haven't "understood"?

Instead of novel genes emerging with the adaption of through mutations of beneficial traits, which is the basic NeoDarwinian narrative[...]

It's been explained to you many times so far how this statement is wrong. It's wrong in more than one way, in fact. But you keep on plugging away at it as if repeating it will somehow make you correct. It won't. And you won't convince anyone that it is correct just by repeating it, either.

 

[randman]

So you cannot name one thing?

Ok.

next

 

[Avicenna]

Ok, for the earth a billion years is a day and so if something takes a billion years it does not happen slowly.

A billion years is a fairly long time even earthwise. It's around a sixth of the life of the actual earth.

Mutations according to evolutionists produce genes and since they happen sequentially and by definition from the vantage point of someone or something, slowly over time, that means genomes don't start out genetically complex but get that way through adaptionist means of evolution.

No. A gene is a section of DNA that codes for a protein. Mutations are changes to the

Then how did the simplest organisms that didn't have so much to adapt to in the sense of novel traits to be selected for, how did they get so genetically complex?

There is a lot to be adapted for in micro-organisms. Simple is an understatement in their complexity. A simple mutation in the fimbrae of a bacteria results in a flagellar motor changing virulence to motility.

And if novel genes can arise without NeoDarwinism, isn't the whole ND narrative overplayed?

Genes can arrive due to replication errors, transposons and exogenesis (AKA foreign DNA being supplanted in. Before you say impossible, I will point out that is how most latent viruses hide in your body. Things like cold sores)

Maybe environmental pressures played a very little role in what forms emerged. Sure, species had to survive. But other than that, maybe the mutations were preset, programmed to evolve into certain forms.

It sure looks that way, assuming common descent in the first place. They were front loaded with all the genes needed for all types of life. They repeat certain forms such as the Marsupials and Placentals. They seem to follow a pattern that has essentially petered out now.

No they don't. That's called convergent evolution. If something is good for a specific purpose then things evolve those things. It's like coming to the same solution to a problem individually. Hence moles in Australia are marsupial while ours are mammals and both have the same shape because if you want to dig through soil you need short powerful legs with spade like hands and don't need eyes.

That's front loading. It's evolution of a sort but not NeoDarwinism which makes no sense at all when you look at the fact. Microevolution decreases genetic variability not increases it.

Unless you witness gene replication events such as copy errors and transpositions which we know occur.

Unfortunately for front loaders, we still have the fossil record. No gradualistic evolution there, nada,.....so it'd have to be very fast macro-jumps like Goldschmidt and others envisioned.

Evolution can act pretty fast. The evolution of MRSA is like human beings suddenly being able to eat cyanide. It's occurred in just 60 years. The domestication of foxes started (or restarted?) in the 40s in Russia. Thirteen generations later the foxes look different from their wild peers and behave wildly differently. Evolution is pretty solid pressure all things considering and selective breeding is pretty much how evolution works only on a more cruel scale.

And the fossil record cannot be gradualistic because animals that form fossils die in very specific conditions. What you are doing is hiding between the gaps. You would only be happy with the explanation if we had a set of fossils dating back over individual generations of change (AKA offspring fossilised

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

What is genetic complexity? It is simply the number of genes? Some species are tetraploids, meaning they have four copies of chromosomes rather than two and hence, twice as many genes.
Are they suddenly twice as complex than their closest relative? Even if polyploidy is generally reserved for "lower" animals and life form and lethal to more complex ones?

Many creationists, when they want to make genes look oh so complex, will claim that the measure of complexity is 4 to the number of base pairs in a genetic sequence. By that simplistic arithmetic every tetraploidal mutation event creates enough information or complexity to account for an astronomical number of species.

 

[bokonon]

You guys reminded me about debating some folks 15 or more years ago that insisted since simple organisms have simple genomes, that it was evidence for evolution and a prediction of evolution. Maybe some of you recall that being the evo spin? Now, we know that's wrong, and I think there was evidence even then but evos still went around saying it. So what's the spin now? That NeoDarwinism predicted this all along?

Simple organisms do have simple genomes. I mentioned E. coli before -- a simple organism, with 4,377 genes, as compared with over 20,000 for humans. The fact that you are saying "now, we know that's wrong" suggests that this is one thing you have misunderstood.

There are also organisms, like the water flea I mentioned earlier, which appear to be simple but have genomes which are surprisingly complex. Rice has over 28,000 genes. It is a mistake to conclude that genome size is proportional to the complexity of the organism, another thing you appear to have misunderstood.

 

[Simon39759]

So you don't know how the term "genetic complexity" is used in science.

Yep; it means that something is complex as far as genetic is concerned.
So you could refer to a particular protein as genetically complex, for example, if it is composed of various sub-units on different genes.
You could refer to a particular regulatory pattern as such, if various steps are dispatched in various regions...
You could probably even use it as you do, for an organism which has many genes...

So, it is a vague, ill-defined, muddled term useless in itself.
And your use of the term as base of your argument IS simplistic.

The term "genetic complexity" is not mine. It's used in peer-reviewed literature and does not just refer to the number of genes. You can read one of the paper's I linked to and see how they use the term.

Are these scientists doing cutting edge research "so desperately vague simplistic"?

Probably not. But the way that you misunderstand their research and misrepresent them to dumb it down and twist it into supporting your pre-reached conclusion turn it into a simplistic shadow of the complex reality these cutting edge scientists are dealing with.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

So you cannot name one thing?

Ok.

next

Ignoring something doesn't make it not true, either.

At this point I'm curious as to what you're trying to achieve by posting in this thread. Because if you're attempting to demonstrate to anybody that your conclusions are right or that theirs are wrong, then dishonest debating such as you are doing, is not going to help your cause one little bit.

 

[Avicenna]

Clearly dogs and people have not always been on the earth. How they got here isn't 100% clear, imo, in terms of the exact means. I do believe God created the universe and life on earth and continues to uphold all existence so that if He did not at all moments do that, the universe would not exist. Nothing exists apart from the presence of God's actions through the Logos in upholding it.

Dogs and wolves were incorrectly classified. Dogs and wolves can crossbreed producing viable young such as the Czech Wolfdog. Human beings evolved from an ape like ancestor a nearly 2 million years ago and the evidence for this is astoundingly large. Evidence of tool making exists that dates back in the million year mark.

And do you have proof of the actions of god to make the universe work? Empirical not wishful. The bible does not count since it cannot be empirically tested.

As far as the science, I am not 100% sure what the right model is and think it could well be a mixture of things. For example, we all know some variation occurs via darwinian evolution (natural selection, etc,...). But that really is a dead end as far as macroevolution. It is a process of decreasing genetic variability. We also don't see one instance of it in the fossil record producing macroevolution. I could go down the list, but the one model that clearly does not work, is a total modern myth, is that the small changes of NeoDarwinian evolution add up to the large changes of macroevolution.

Er... there is. you just have not bothered looking at all the old fossils of salamanders which became lizards and so on. It's not a modern myth since salamanders still exist as do lizards and not only can you see the physical similarity but also the similarity of lifestyle.

Most evos have never bothered to listen to their critics and so they don't have that much of an understanding of their own theory much less alternatives. They just keep stonewalling away. It's like talking with a computer programmed to spit out the same responses. Happens even with well-educated, even the highest levels of evolutionist science. They'll repeat ad nauseum the same thing, even if factually wrong, for decades. They did that with Haeckel, and though we had brief respite around 2000, as I predicted, they are already back again.

Haeckel's publications were not far off from the truth. And indeed Darwin came before Haeckel so his theory still stands.

So I choose to look at the data and see what it does and does not say. The front loading hypothesis is interesting but that still leaves out the means of how evolution happened. Some front loaders and very prominent scientists of the past 80 years believe evolution has essentially petered out and ended. We're just seeing the last bit, and that whatever process produced macroevolution, it has ended today.

The front loading hypothesis is incredibly dumb because that would require the most incredible amounts of genetics to keep it working. Your proto organism would be insanely complicated and prone to falling apart since a lot of the mechanisms for it's existence would be contradictory.

And genetics does not work that way at all. You can add to genomes, it happens a lot. Infact a lot of our genome is junk and can be added to and a lot of our genes are infact repeated.

 

[randman]

Dogs and wolves were incorrectly classified. Dogs and wolves can crossbreed producing viable young such as the Czech Wolfdog. Human beings evolved from an ape like ancestor a nearly 2 million years ago and the evidence for this is astoundingly large. Evidence of tool making exists that dates back in the million year mark.

Did I ever mention wolves? Of course, dogs and wolves were misclassified by evos. They are clearly the same kind...

And do you have proof of the actions of god to make the universe work? Empirical not wishful. The bible does not count since it cannot be empirically tested.

He asked about what I believe. If I or you waited around for empirical proof of something, we'd not get too far in life. Certainly wouldn't get married and have kids, for example.

Er... there is. you just have not bothered looking at all the old fossils of salamanders which became lizards and so on.

The fact you present such a weak example is all the more evidence in my favor.

Haeckel's publications were not far off from the truth.

Like i said, evos are still trying to use Haeckel. I rest my case on that one (and his ideas were and are still way off from "the truth" and his data fraudulent).

The front loading hypothesis is incredibly dumb because that would require the most incredible amounts of genetics to keep it working. Your proto organism would be insanely complicated

Well, even evos now say the proto-organisms are indeed insanely complex genetically, having "more types of genes than are available today."

But you are correct there is no known mechanism still in operation to explain it. That doesn't justify insisting mechanisms which clearly work against macro-evolution such as natural selection are the mechanism.

So mainstream evos keep insisting something shown to be wrong to be effective which is why Grasse said "evolution was a myth " and accused mainstream evos of fraud, and front loaders haven't figured out the mechanism. I'd say the front loaders are more consistent with the data but they definitely have a hole there without knowing the mechanism.

 

[randman]

And genetics does not work that way at all. You can add to genomes, it happens a lot. Infact a lot of our genome is junk and can be added to and a lot of our genes are infact repeated.

So NeoDarwinian evolution isn't actually needed at all or just plays a small part in variation within a kind or say the family level of species.

 

[randman]

So, it is a vague, ill-defined, muddled term useless in itself.

Then complain about it with a paper. Otherwise, your protests are weak, and for the record I am using exactly as it is used in peer-reviewed published papers. If you don't like the way science uses the term, don't blame me.