Evolution answers

[UnrepentantSinner]

Dinosaur Soft Tissue is Original Biological Material

Creationist nutter Bob Enyart should not be your source for anything, much less science.

No "soft tissue" was found. I put that phrase in quotes because many Creationist outlets act as if fresh meat fell out of the cracked bone. What actually happened is after dissolving the fossilzed bone in acid several times, Mary Schweitzer was able to recover some preserved renmants of soft tissues like blood cells.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

Creationist nutter Bob Enyart should not be your source for anything, much less science.

No "soft tissue" was found. I put that phrase in quotes because many Creationist outlets act as if fresh meat fell out of the cracked bone. What actually happened is after dissolving the fossilzed bone in acid several times, Mary Schweitzer was able to recover some preserved renmants of soft tissues like blood cells.

I chose the link not for the conclusion by Bob Enyrt, but instead for the list of cases in which soft tissue had been found. Which BTW that part of the source was well referenced with real science, better than any other less controversial source I found. And includes far more examples than the original example found by Mary Schweitzer.

So don't worry too much about the conclusions, follow the evidence and make your own conclusion. At least that source has well referenced the evidence for soft tissue in many dinosaurs and other ancient fossils, something not too long ago thought to be impossible.

Evolution can be. Speciation generally takes 10,000 generations (plus or minus some; this IS biology, after all) in animals. People on both sides of the debate are confusing the two.

exactly!

And my earlier statement (us and Neanderthal sharing a common ancestor) is supported by your own link so I'm not sure what you are questioning?


[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_5245852db529209903.jpg[/qimg]

You are looking only at the black lines from your chart and missing the red arrows. Neanderthals were kissing cousins that shared a common ancestor with us and occasionally shared a bed during those long lonely ice age nights!

Not something any of the current "great apes" can claim.

You don't think that is an important distinction? That Neanderthals were human but a chimpanzee, gorilla, or orangutan isn't human? I think it is a very important new scientific finding.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Do you folks who don't believe evolutionary theory is accurate get flu shots?

 

[jimbob]

You are looking only at the black lines from your chart and missing the red arrows. Neanderthals were kissing cousins that shared a common ancestor with us and occasionally shared a bed during those long lonely ice age nights!

Not something any of the current "great apes" can claim.

Although if stories about certain rural areas are to be believed, many domestic animals share that distinction.

 

[Aridas]

Perhaps a citation or two on this would be nice.

Well... For the first, it apparently was a quite surprising find. Either way, link time. It never actually was validly considered evidence for the bone being of recent age, though, given the whole picture.

The petroglyghs that he refers to could have been a marketing scheme which apparently tricked a number of people, a while ago. Alternately, there's also this that delves into some other petroglyph claims.

As for the radiocarbon dating... Well, the short story there is that creationists asked for bones that had a protective coating on them to be dated, were warned in advance of the expected results, got the expected results, and have since tried to claim that Carbon-14 detected was somehow indicative of a young earth.

In short, these, like what seem to be all the rest of Creationist claims, are either lacking or are evidence of open dishonesty on the part of the creationists producing the claim.

 

[turingtest]

Guess what? Your friend is right about both evolution and "global warming(TM)". Not that the far right is correct about everything, but they are certainly right on those two topics.

The following is a minimal list of entire categories of evidence disproving evolution:

• The decades-long experiments with fruit flies beginning in the early 1900s (decades of attempts to produce macroevolution in the lab produced only fruit flies).
• The discovery of the DNA/RNA info codes (information codes do not just sort of happen...). That in fact is the reason for the failure of the fruit fly experiments. Our whole living world is driven by information and the only information there ever was in that picture was the information for a fruit fly.
• The discovery of bioelectrical machinery within 1-celled animals.
• The question of irreducible complexity.
• The Haldane Dilemma.
• The increasingly massive evidence of a recent age for dinosaurs, including soft tissue being found in dinosaur remains, petroglyphs showing known dinosaur types, and actual radiocarbon dates for dinosaur remains yielding dates of 20K - 40K prior to the present.
• The DNA analysis eliminating Neanderthals and thus all other hominids as plausible human ancestors.
• The total lack of intermediate fossils where the theory demands that the bulk of all fossils be clear intermediate types.
• The question of genetic entropy.
• The obvious evidence of design in nature.
• The arguments arising from pure probability considerations which Fred Hoyle noted.
• The question of computing elements at a cellular level ( http://programmingoflife.com/watch-the-video ).

Like I say, that's a minimal list.

If you're not going to put any more effort into your argument than to copy/paste the same one from a different thread, I see no reason to do anything more than to copy/paste my answer from there too (an answer you ignored there- maybe you can do better here):

1) "The obvious evidence of design in nature."

This is the Watchmaker argument, and the question arises- what does the "obvious" rest on? I had a creationist frame it for me as finding a painting hanging from a tree in an otherwise pristine forest- in either case, watch or painting, it's an inference that they are artifacts, created things; and the finding of "obvious" results from the contrast, of either the watch or the painting, with its environment. Since creationists insist that the whole universe ("nature"), and everything in it (including man), are the created things- where's the contrast that makes the creation "obvious," since, with a sample size of only one universe, there's nothing to make a comparison to? What environment is the basis for the contrast? If you're going to say, "well, I'm not talking about all of the universe"- then that puts a burden on you to show a testable standard by which to make a distinction that isn't strictly special pleading for the case you want to show. At what level do you draw a line? Man, Earth, solar system? Show your work; don't appeal to science, and then discard it when it no longer serves you.

2) "The arguments arising from pure probability considerations which Fred Hoyle noted."

This one is really silly (Hoyle or not)- why are you applying a purely predictive concept like "probability" to the past? "Odds" are a prediction that something will happen, not a proper calculation for whether something has or hasn't happened. The first thing to understand about evolution is that it is a non-normative process, with no aims, only outcomes- man is no more an aim of evolutionary processes than a hurricane is the aim of weather processes. This being so, any one outcome is equal to any other. If you take a deck of cards and lay them all out one by one with no particular outcome aimed at (which is how evolution works), the odds against any one result are one in one- 100%- since they're all equally "desirable" from a non-normative (evolutionary) viewpoint. But, if you make that lay with an outcome in mind- that is to say, predicting one- then the odds become one in 8x10^67th against that one aim. Creationists have conflated the non-normative with the normative scenarios to get their "probability" numbers- they treat outcomes as necessarily goals.

To use another analogy- you, yourself, are the result of countless historical contingencies, going back as many generations as you wish (what if great-great-great-great-grandma's wagon broke down on the way to the dance where she met gx4-grandpa and they never met? What if gx2-grandpa died in WWI, and never met gx2-grandma? You get the idea), up to the moment your mother was impregnated with the one of a few million sperm that helped make you the result- do you really think calculating the odds against that makes you improbable (or impossible)?

Anyone who argues the probability against evolution is just showing that they don't understand (literally) the first thing about evolution.

For everybody else:
Icebear is on record in that other thread ("Evolution believers should not hold office in the United States") as asserting- apparently seriously- that humans come from Ganymede; you'll have to click over there for more on that, including his sources, because it really defies rational summation. It is funny, though.

Edit to add link to where Icebear begins his trip to (or from) Ganymede- http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=9747582#post9747582

 

[justintime]

Guess what? Your friend is right about both evolution and "global warming(TM)". Not that the far right is correct about everything, but they are certainly right on those two topics.

The following is a minimal list of entire categories of evidence disproving evolution:

• The decades-long experiments with fruit flies beginning in the early 1900s (decades of attempts to produce macroevolution in the lab produced only fruit flies).
• The discovery of the DNA/RNA info codes (information codes do not just sort of happen...). That in fact is the reason for the failure of the fruit fly experiments. Our whole living world is driven by information and the only information there ever was in that picture was the information for a fruit fly.
• The discovery of bioelectrical machinery within 1-celled animals.
• The question of irreducible complexity.
• The Haldane Dilemma.
• The increasingly massive evidence of a recent age for dinosaurs, including soft tissue being found in dinosaur remains, petroglyphs showing known dinosaur types, and actual radiocarbon dates for dinosaur remains yielding dates of 20K - 40K prior to the present.
• The DNA analysis eliminating Neanderthals and thus all other hominids as plausible human ancestors.
• The total lack of intermediate fossils where the theory demands that the bulk of all fossils be clear intermediate types.
• The question of genetic entropy.
• The obvious evidence of design in nature.
• The arguments arising from pure probability considerations which Fred Hoyle noted.
• The question of computing elements at a cellular level ( http://programmingoflife.com/watch-the-video ).

Like I say, that's a minimal list.

I'd say your list in damming enough. I would hate to give evolutionist the rest of the list because that would be adding insult to injury. But that would also feed into their narrative we got so much wrong we might need the next generation of scientists to fix it......it is all about keeping their jobs.

 

[turingtest]

I'd say your list in damming enough. I would hate to give evolutionist the rest of the list because that would be adding insult to injury...

Please don't let such a weak excuse stop you...what's the "rest of the list"? If it's as bad as Icebear's "minimal" one, then the only insult likely is to our intelligence. But give it a whirl...

 

[Dinwar]

I'd say your list in damming enough.

Except that even Answers in Genesis acknowledges that most of them are nonsense.

But that would also feed into their narrative we got so much wrong we might need the next generation of scientists to fix it......it is all about keeping their jobs.

Honestly, outside a small handful of exceptions, scientists studying evolution don't care about Creationists. They demonstrably don't understand evolution and are therefore incapable of offering us any help in our research.

It is having the wrong people with low integrity willing to engage in fraudulent criminal activity that is the crux of the problem.

True. However, those people include people like you, who knowingly lie to attack science without learning it.

As for the radiocarbon dating... Well, the short story there is that creationists asked for bones that had a protective coating on them to be dated, were warned in advance of the expected results, got the expected results, and have since tried to claim that Carbon-14 detected was somehow indicative of a young earth.

If you ever hear of them arguing against the dates for Mount St. Helens, it's the same--they used inappropriate isotope families and inappropriate minerals (the minerals didn't reach their closing temperature prior to the eruption, meaning that the date they got was for much older melts).

 

[Aridas]

If you ever hear of them arguing against the dates for Mount St. Helens, it's the same--they used inappropriate isotope families and inappropriate minerals (the minerals didn't reach their closing temperature prior to the eruption, meaning that the date they got was for much older melts).

...Yup. I've encountered that one, too. The sad thing is that, in part because of my Christian background and several relatives and friends, who I think are fine people, and who are also creationists, I've given creationist arguments far, far more more chances than they've earned. They've failed miserably upon actual examination, every single time. Frequently, even very basic understandings of what the actual science relevant to their attempted points is has been enough to show that they really, really don't know what they're talking about, which is... pathetic. I have yet to find anything else even remotely close to how wrapped up in lies, distortions, ignorance, bad logic, and disinformation as young earth creationism is.

I fully admit my bias against it, though, much as my bias is fully rooted in actually having looked into many, many, many claims that just kept ending up showing the overwhelming dishonesty or arrogant ignorance of the originators of the claim and have found exactly none that were valid.

 

[jimbob]

...Yup. I've encountered that one, too. The sad thing is that, in part because of my Christian background and several relatives and friends, who I think are fine people, and who are also creationists, I've given creationist arguments far, far more more chances than they've earned. They've failed miserably upon actual examination, every single time. Frequently, even very basic understandings of what the actual science relevant to their attempted points is has been enough to show that they really, really don't know what they're talking about, which is... pathetic. I have yet to find anything else even remotely close to how wrapped up in lies, distortions, ignorance, bad logic, and disinformation as young earth creationism is.

I fully admit my bias against it, though, much as my bias is fully rooted in actually having looked into many, many, many claims that just kept ending up showing the overwhelming dishonesty or arrogant ignorance of the originators of the claim and have found exactly none that were valid.

It is worth reiterating that there are many devout Christians who are perfectly comfortable with evolution - the most prominent one being the Pope, and Catholic doctrine for a long time, as well as many protestants.

 

[Aridas]

It is worth reiterating that there are many devout Christians who are perfectly comfortable with evolution - the most prominent one being the Pope, and Catholic doctrine for a long time, as well as many protestants.

A point which I've made myself on a number of occasions, incidentally.

 

[justintime]

Originally Posted by justintime View Post
I'd say your list in damming enough. I would hate to give evolutionist the rest of the list because that would be adding insult to injury...

Please don't let such a weak excuse stop you...what's the "rest of the list"? If it's as bad as Icebear's "minimal" one, then the only insult likely is to our intelligence. But give it a whirl...

Please read post# 529 again. I am referring to Icebear's minimal list that he posted and withheld the rest so as not to overwhelm all you evolution seekers.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9776030&postcount=529

 

[Dinwar]

Please read post# 529 again. I am referring to Icebear's minimal list that he posted and withheld the rest so as not to overwhelm all you evolution seekers.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9776030&postcount=529

Given that the entire list was nothing but outdated rhetoric, misunderstandings, and outright lies, I doubt the rest of the list would overwhelm anyone, except with exasperation. Even Answers in Genesis considers that nonsense to be outdated.

 

[justintime]

Originally Posted by justintime View Post
Please read post# 529 again. I am referring to Icebear's minimal list that he posted and withheld the rest so as not to overwhelm all you evolution seekers.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php...&postcount=529

Given that the entire list was nothing but outdated rhetoric, misunderstandings, and outright lies, I doubt the rest of the list would overwhelm anyone, except with exasperation. Even Answers in Genesis considers that nonsense to be outdated.

The Bible devotes very little or nothing at all to what man descended from and almost everything to what man can ascend to. Whereas science/evolution is all about theories of man's descent and very little about what he can ascend to. Much is made in evolution about man evolving from arboreal primates (tree dwellers) to bipedalism. The Bible/Genesis starts with man walking upright. Monkeys and apes fill most of the chapters in evolutionary theories. Primates were an obsession with Darwin and evolutionist. There is hardly a mention of them in the Bible and for very good reasons. They did not play any role in man's descent or are they contributing factors in man's ascent. So why should such a convoluted theory capture the imagination of scientists. The only explaining I can offer is they started with very little understanding of humans and reached to far back into some imaginary past and have never caught up with the present.

It is a world created from some primordial soup full of creatures and lagoons and sinister stalkers all competing to destroy the other. Life is determined by selfish genes climbing over each other to succeed. We are just extensions of those selfish genes. So to what end do we owe our accidental meaningless existence? Is it to a theory that cannot explain why human altruism built the institutions, churches, cathedrals, schools and charities? Why every effort by scientists to denigrate human aspirations by shackling us to some evolutionary tree is resisted because the world did not evolve to its current form......humans were inspired to build it so we could enjoy it. It is time to end evolutionary dead end theories and certify its proponents misguided, inept and terribly wrong.

 

[Mojo]

There is hardly a mention of them in the Bible and for very good reasons.

Principally that there weren't many chimps or gorillas wandering around the Bronze Age Middle East.

 

[jimbob]

The obvious evidence of design in nature.

I like to think that I am an intelligent designer, and have looked at using genetic algorithms in my work so have some idea about the different approaches.

From reading other posts of yours - I *think* you are arguing for alien intervention rather than a supernatural intervention.

How was this achieved? Did they do it all at once and fake all the fossil evidence? Did they selectively breed over hundreds of millions of years - which would explain why organisms have the signatures of evolution because selective breeding is an a form of evolution with a very strong (artificial) selection pressure.

Anyway were all organisms designed or just some?

If humans were designed, then why put in the appendix? Why put in wisdom teeth?

If humans were designed, and these were minor errors that had been overlooked in the design phase, why were they not corrected as soon as the first hominid died from a burst appendix, or suffered from impacted wisdom teeth?

I make mistakes when designing something, but I then try to correct them when the testing finds them.

If all organisms were designed, then why the lack of originality? Why have horses and zebras using the same basic body plan? Why have housecats and tigers sharing such similarities, and why then have wolves and foxes that are more like each other than like felines, yet both obviously being mammals.

Why design organisms that seem to fit into a "Tree of life"?

Why, given the lack of originality at that level, have so many different designs for the eye? Why put more than one design of eye on some animals
(e.g Notostraca).

If I design something, I tend to reuse components because it is simpler than redesigning it every time.

Why are there so many different plants that produce fruit? Why are there so many different parts of the flower that turn into fruit (either true-fruit, or false fruit)? This is easy to explain if they evolved separately, but hard if you posit a designer attempting different solutions, to the same problem.

Why design the eye in cephalopods so it lacks a blind spot, yet design it with a blind spot for mammals? If a competent designer is faced with a
problem (say blind spot in mammalian retina) and they already know the solution (no blind spot in the cephalopod retina) they tend to use it.


Why are vestigial organs vestigial, and neither fully working nor non-existent, which would look more elegant. For example either Basilosaurus, or modern whales have the more aesthetic rear leg "solution". Why did Basilosaurus have vestigial legs?

 

[justintime]

I like to think that I am an intelligent designer, and have looked at using genetic algorithms in my work so have some idea about the different approaches.

From reading other posts of yours - I *think* you are arguing for alien intervention rather than a supernatural intervention.

How was this achieved? Did they do it all at once and fake all the fossil evidence? Did they selectively breed over hundreds of millions of years - which would explain why organisms have the signatures of evolution because selective breeding is an a form of evolution with a very strong (artificial) selection pressure.

Anyway were all organisms designed or just some?

If humans were designed, then why put in the appendix? Why put in wisdom teeth?

If humans were designed, and these were minor errors that had been overlooked in the design phase, why were they not corrected as soon as the first hominid died from a burst appendix, or suffered from impacted wisdom teeth?

I make mistakes when designing something, but I then try to correct them when the testing finds them.

If all organisms were designed, then why the lack of originality? Why have horses and zebras using the same basic body plan? Why have housecats and tigers sharing such similarities, and why then have wolves and foxes that are more like each other than like felines, yet both obviously being mammals.

Why design organisms that seem to fit into a "Tree of life"?

Why, given the lack of originality at that level, have so many different designs for the eye? Why put more than one design of eye on some animals
(e.g Notostraca).

If I design something, I tend to reuse components because it is simpler than redesigning it every time.

Why are there so many different plants that produce fruit? Why are there so many different parts of the flower that turn into fruit (either true-fruit, or false fruit)? This is easy to explain if they evolved separately, but hard if you posit a designer attempting different solutions, to the same problem.

Why design the eye in cephalopods so it lacks a blind spot, yet design it with a blind spot for mammals? If a competent designer is faced with a
problem (say blind spot in mammalian retina) and they already know the solution (no blind spot in the cephalopod retina) they tend to use it.


Why are vestigial organs vestigial, and neither fully working nor non-existent, which would look more elegant. For example either Basilosaurus, or modern whales have the more aesthetic rear leg "solution". Why did Basilosaurus have vestigial legs?

For all the knowledge scientists claim to have accumulated, acquired and even profess to have about the universe and origins of life. They have yet to produce a single living organism from scratch in the lab. Theories of amino acids as building blocks of life and a pile of proteins suddenly taking form in the absence of any genetic blueprint belongs in science fiction.

It is easy to assume flaws in systems which are not fully understood especially when we are just scratching the surface. But to jump from total ignorance to speculations of spontaneous events that made all this possible is beyond even science fiction. It is fraudulently disingenuous.

 

[Dinwar]

The Bible

We can stop reading here. The Bible is a religious text, not a scientific one, and even Christians agree (largely) that attempting to use it as a scientific text is to misapply it.

That's giving you the best possible interpretation. It only goes downhill from there.

I'm also curious as to who you stole that rant from. It's not your style of writing.

It is easy to assume flaws in systems which are not fully understood

It's even easier when one refuses to educate one's self.

 

[abaddon]

The Bible devotes very little or nothing at all to what man descended from and almost everything to what man can ascend to.

<snigger>Sure, because rape murder and incest are what we should all aspire to, right?

Whereas science/evolution is all about theories of man's descent and very little about what he can ascend to.

Wrong. Evolution cares not a whit about your particular flavour of religion.

Much is made in evolution about man evolving from arboreal primates (tree dwellers) to bipedalism. The Bible/Genesis starts with man walking upright.

Correct. Evolution has evidence, the babble just makes stuff up out of whole cloth.

Monkeys and apes fill most of the chapters in evolutionary theories.

You are an ape. I am an ape. We are apes.

Primates were an obsession with Darwin and evolutionist.

Nope.

There is hardly a mention of them in the Bible and for very good reasons. They did not play any role in man's descent or are they contributing factors in man's ascent. So why should such a convoluted theory capture the imagination of scientists.

There is no mention in the babble of the computers we are using to communicate right now. So what?

The only explaining I can offer is they started with very little understanding of humans and reached to far back into some imaginary past and have never caught up with the present.

Utter rubbish.

It is a world created from some primordial soup full of creatures and lagoons and sinister stalkers all competing to destroy the other. Life is determined by selfish genes climbing over each other to succeed. We are just extensions of those selfish genes. So to what end do we owe our accidental meaningless existence? Is it to a theory that cannot explain why human altruism built the institutions, churches, cathedrals, schools and charities? Why every effort by scientists to denigrate human aspirations by shackling us to some evolutionary tree is resisted because the world did not evolve to its current form......humans were inspired to build it so we could enjoy it. It is time to end evolutionary dead end theories and certify its proponents misguided, inept and terribly wrong.

I will just leave that as is. So much ignorance stands as a testament to itself.