Evolution or Creationism, Where does the evidence lead?

[MG1962]

BTW, I am a Christian and accept that evolution occurs and that the Earth is several billion years old. God really does move in mysterious, subtle, and amazing ways; evolution is one of them, and "deep time" is an awe-inspiring and humbling concept.

Thats perhaps the core of why I also dont find conflict in my faith and science. If we accept Gods involvement in the Universe, then we have accept that we are totally clueless to his great plan. I fear that for some that is too big a dent in their ego to handle.

God made us incredible curious, then gave us an amazing playground to exercise that curiosity in

 

[cyborg]

Even their sheer size lends one to thing something was goin on with the gravity as well. They should have been crushed under their own weight.

Uh, no. Not at all.

This is the sort of simplistic thinking that says that an object of iron weighing millions of tonnes cannot float because it is too heavy.

Absolute weight, you should conclude, is not the important factor as to whether or not a ship sinks. Perhaps you should reconsider your hasty conclusions?

 

[evolution disbeliver]

Uh, no. Not at all.

This is the sort of simplistic thinking that says that an object of iron weighing millions of tonnes cannot float because it is too heavy.

Absolute weight, you should conclude, is not the important factor as to whether or not a ship sinks. Perhaps you should reconsider your hasty conclusions?

You are right, I shouldnt have tried using the weight.

But I notice that nothing was pointed out about the nostrils & their breathing.
That is another trait about science & evolutionists that helped to run me off. To point out when somebody is wrong very quickly but no mention when they might be right. Their attitude is "that if you are not a scholar you are beneath me"
and yes creationists are the same way, but at least they act like they are happy that you are on their side.

I'm not trying to start a fight, thats just the way the 2 communities come across.

So what about the nostrils & breathing. With small nostrils & the possiblities of "extra" lungs or breathing organ in the larger animals. I know that we can only speculate about the extra organs because of the soft tissue issue. But can somebody point out the atmospheric conditions about that time? Perhaps the nostrils were big enough.

 

[cyborg]

But I notice that nothing was pointed out about the nostrils & their breathing.
That is another trait about science & evolutionists that helped to run me off. To point out when somebody is wrong very quickly but no mention when they might be right. Their attitude is "that if you are not a scholar you are beneath me"

I think the point here is that you seem to have picked up a multitulde of wrong ideas about these things - approaching this is a completely unstructured and ad hoc way isn't really going to get us anywhere. So can we choose one topic at a time and stick to that rather than picking things randomly from one place to another?

 

[MG1962]

So what about the nostrils & breathing. With small nostrils & the possiblities of "extra" lungs or breathing organ in the larger animals. I know that we can only speculate about the extra organs because of the soft tissue issue. But can somebody point out the atmospheric conditions about that time? Perhaps the nostrils were big enough.

Sorry I missed this in the tooing and froeing. The size of nostrils dont play that big a part in air intake, they are more about heat. If we look at humans today, we see wide flat noses on negros in Africa. This is an adaption to try and reduce heat stress for the body. Causicans however have a longer bridged nose. This is an adaption for cold. By extending the airway, the air is warmed so that the core temperatrure of the body is less vunerable

Because Dinosaurs appear to have been cold blooded, they dont need to regulate thier body heat. The hotter the better, they just become ore active

 

[evolution disbeliver]

I think the point here is that you seem to have picked up a multitulde of wrong ideas about these things - approaching this is a completely unstructured and ad hoc way isn't really going to get us anywhere. So can we choose one topic at a time and stick to that rather than picking things randomly from one place to another?

I agree. That would be a more structured way to go about this. My problem of jumping around is that I have so much intrest in all of it. Also since all of the 'ologies seem to coroborate each other I tend to jump from one to the other to validate or debunk it. Just the way my brain comprehends things for me.
I guess you can say I try to look at too big of a picture. All at once.
EDIT:I will make a concerted effort to stay with each item at the time. Below I start with dinos because that is what interests me the most of all of it.

 

[evolution disbeliver]

Sorry I missed this in the tooing and froeing. The size of nostrils dont play that big a part in air intake, they are more about heat. If we look at humans today, we see wide flat noses on negros in Africa. This is an adaption to try and reduce heat stress for the body. Causicans however have a longer bridged nose. This is an adaption for cold. By extending the airway, the air is warmed so that the core temperatrure of the body is less vunerable

Because Dinosaurs appear to have been cold blooded, they dont need to regulate thier body heat. The hotter the better, they just become ore active

That makes sense. But what of the findings that Dinos may have been warm blooded? And what about their enviroment? So from the constuction of their nostrils the climate was warmer? And inherrently wetter? & finally could a warmer wetter climate lead to an increased abundance of plant life leading to a higher content in the O2 of the atmosphere leading to an increase in the barometric pressure?
Wow that question is worded like a question at a Presidential press conference!
Sorry guys & girls.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Again, I'm terribly sorry for seeming that I'm in a time warp, but while I checked in on this thread repeatedly last night at work I was too busy to committ the time I prefer to when responding to questions (see Shermer's adage about debating Creationists).

I think it was Hovind that I heard refering to it as liquefaction.

Ah. To that I can only reply - avoid listening to Hovind for anything other than enterainment. I hate the over use of "lie" in describing someone who is merely asserting B.S., but in his case it's totally warrented because he's well aware that virtually everything out of his mouth is.. well, a lie.

Very good point about the plants being all over the place. That makes sense & I hadnt thought about it that way.
But their argument is that it happened all at once during the flood. If you take carbon dating out of the way it I can see where it could make sense. There is no doubt that the flood happened in my view but I do agree that wouldnt screw with the strata. Besides the flood could have erased alot of the fossil record.
I did notice a long time ago about the modern day animals are convienently left out of the strata in the creationist argument.

I think I made a pretty convincing case yesterday as to why neither liquifaction nor hydrological sorting explains the fossil record as satisfactorally as the standard geological/paleontological/evolutionary models do. And as I'll note below, just removing carbon dating from the process doesn't eliminate the number of other dating methods which confirm C-14 dating and the other radiometric dating methods I linked to above.

As far as the flood goes, are you familiar with the world-wide Iridium layer that was lain down between Cretaceous and Tertiary strata? There are myriad problems with the flood narrative (where did the Native Americans, Sub-saharan Africans, East Asians and Australian Aborigines come from - they're not mentioned in Genesis, and why is there no genetic bottleneck in humans nor any other species from about 4,000 years ago?), but the fact that we have this world-wide layer of a rare element at precisely the K/T boundry is damming for the flood explaining the geological column.

Regarding Creationists and fauna in the fossil record, if you listen to some of them, there's three periods - the Pre-Cambrain, Post-Cambrian and strata where we either find "fully ape" hominids, "fully human" hominds and anomolous finds like Paluxy or a supposed trilobite that had been stepped on by booted human.

 

[evolution disbeliver]

US Yes I knew about the Iridium layer. But my question is could there not have been a world wide flood before that. I do think that a flood would be able to cause mass extinction as much as an object impacting the earth. I just think it's odd that it is so quickly thrown out as false when it seems entirely plausible. I'm not saying that it occurred during the time of humans. Why could it not have happened before or even very close to early humans?
I have heard of studies that try to explain the dragon fear as some kind of "memory" that is passed on through the generations. Those studies say that the early humans had a fear of volcanic activity and that is what shows up in our instinct as dragons. With dragons stories so prominate in our history, why couldnt the same be applied to the flood. There are countless stories of floods destroying the earth (noah, atlantis, babylon, etc) Why couldnt be an instinctive fear of drowning passed on in the genes?

But I would like to stick to one at a time, as previously requested by cyborg above.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Why would there not be things in the universe that exist that we havent discovered yet that could have an impact on our planet? If we dont know it exists, how do we know whether it does or doesnt effect us? That might be more philosophic than scientific but it is still a factor that cant be ignored.

Actually, what you're delving into isn't philosophy so much as ad hoc reasoning. Is I noted previously, carbon dating isn't the only method used in dating, though it's very effective for items under 50,000 years. Since that was your focus, if you're going to suggest there might be "something" that reset the clocks on the C-12/C-14 content, you're going to need to address why all the other dating methods like dendrochronology (tree rings), varves and ice cores all match up with other dating methods, especially the radiometric methods I linked to earlier.

And yes I would like a little more clarification of how we get from a dino to a walrus to a tree to man. I can follow it backwards to a point, but then I when it becomes an entirely different organism I get lost. I can understand the human ape concept and the fish to shark, even dino to bird, but a reptile to mammal, warm blooded to cold blooded? insect to human? How does it go from a to b to c to all of a sudden x? I am checking out that tree of life site right now, maybe the answer I am looking for is there.

Dig around more on the TOLweb site, but don't forget... you're not going backwards per se, as much at watching a film in reverse. The key to phylogenies (see the previous link) is not that we can trace back x became y became z, but that all z's are y's and all y's are x's. All turtles must be reptiles (otherwise evolution is false) and all reptiles must be vertebrates (otherwise evolution is false). In Creationism, there is no requirement that that be so.

A quick primer into how phylogenetics work or are falsified. If beings exhibit certain characteristics, they belong to a group. The more characteristics they share, the more closely they are grouped together. These characteristics are then effected by homology. For example, a bat and a bird both have wings and fly, but the bat is covered in fur, has mammary glands and is viviparous, while at bird is covered in feathers, lacks mammary glands and is oviparous. Thus, while bats and birds share wings and flight, it is their differences that place them in the mammal and bird phyogenies, not the similarity.

I understand about the Aristolian line you gave, we are all connected because we are from the same elements. What I dont understand is how the elements arranged themselves to make the organisms. I would tend to think it that lies at the DNA level. We do still consider DNA as the blueprint of life, or has there been a discovery that I missed? Not being sarcastic, just want to know?

You're delving into abiogenesis with this paragraph. Life didn't suddenly go from random elements to fish. In the abiogenetic model, first there elements that self-organized into molecules (think Water, Carbon Dioxide or Methane). Those molecules self-organized into self-replicating precursors of "life". Eventually those self-replicating chemicals (there are examples in polymer chains evolved into what we know as "life". Once "life" developed as a method of biochemicals to reproduce themselves... imperfectly... evolution was inevitable.

As far as the blueprint of life goes, are you familiar with HOX genes? They explain why a fish develops a fin, a frog develops a forelimb, a bird develops a wing and a human develops an arm.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Why couldnt be an instinctive fear of drowning passed on in the genes?

Who said it couldn't? There very likely is an instinctive fear of drowning and there are very definitely reflexive protections against drowning. But what does that have to do with a worldwide flood? It doesn't take 10 mile deep water to put you in danger of drowning.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

I didnt mean to imply that a living dino would falsify evolution. For my own inner child would love to have a living breathing dino.

Me too. But as I noted, a living dinosaur today would be much less prolematic for evolutionary theory than a Devonian rabbit or Permain chicken.

As far as archaeological evidence of man and dino, what about cave drawings found with animals that can only be described as dinos. Did they dig up the fossils and put them together as we have? So they would know what they look like. Or are they all part of the mass hysteria of creationism?

Well, here's the problem with that assertion by Creationists. None of the supposed dinosaur glyphs have the context that I mentioned previously. There are no evidences of spearpoint nicks on any dinosaur bone ever found (and to toss archeology into to mix, since humans supposedly had, according to Genesis, agriculture and animal husbandry from day 1, why were there any hunter-gatherer societies on the Earth at all... we simply don't tend to lose technologies we develop... especially simply things like harvesting and rasing livestock) or any horns, bones or hides taken from human settlements or trash middens. Why is that?

Also, we have a number of cross cultural fantastical creatures that show up in mythology like Shedu and Centaurs (half man, half horse), Garuda and Harpys (half human, half bird), Nagas and Questalcoatl (half man, half snake). And I'm not even mentioning the numerous examples of petroglyphs that look like aliens in spacesuits. Are all those glyphs, cultural references and protrayals of actual beings, or the imagination of the artist?

Continuing with the living dinos how is it that nearly every culture from all over the world have dragons or similar creatures in it's history? More mass hysteria?

I have a TE friend of mine who is of Chinese extraction and he is continually bemused by Creationists who assert that European dragon tales are evidence of dinosaurs because in Chinese mythology dragons are serpentine, but tetrapodal and fly not with wings, but with spiritual power and are good omens, not harbingers of doom. I hate to be so harsh, but that blows your "similar" assertion out of the water huh?

And sorry for being to general, if species are constantly changing over millions of years, why would 2 species still be around when one has evolved much further than the other. ie Neanderthals were around when we hit the scene yet we are the ones here. Did we commit genocide or did they simply die out? As far as human and ape do you suppose that they are still around because we are in a transitional period where the apes could be extinct in the future?

The last question first. We're in a period where our fellow great apes are going extinct, but not because of any (technically) naturally selective pressure. The pressure for their extinction is us. We're destroying the Orang environment in Indonesia. We're doing the same with gorillas and chimps in Africa, but the added pressure of "bush meat" and trophy hunting makes their situations all the more precarious. Ultimately, the survival of our fellow great apes might not come down to environment (technically), but our intervention.

Back to your question of why 2 species would continue to be around... why wouldn't they? Unless, as you noted, one actively tried to eradicate the other, they would just continue to exist. And therein lies the environmental aspect of natural selection. It's entirely possible that Neanderthals existed in ever smaller populations after their Pleistocene hayday had passed, but that competition with Sapiens, combined with their specialization (very small clan social structure) sealed their doom. Back to the possible, there might have been a time when Earth was populated with Erectus/Ergaster, Neanderthal and Sapiens simultaneously... and back to your living dino issue - I would love for us to find (at least in the "enlightened" time of 2008) a living Erectus or Neanderthal, if anything for the DNA they could provide us.

For the reciprocal question, my grand parents didnt die because a) We are the same species or what ever it is called. and b)According to evolutionary theory several generations are not enough to make the change, it would take millions of years.
Wow that tree of life site is interesting 3 pages from alligators to ants. Interesting. This may take me a while on this link
But I dont think it's going to answer my question of how the transitions are made. Is it something that is inherent in DNA? or do we not know?

Again, refer back to what I mentioned about how somthing that is X will only give birth to an X that might also be a Y, but never a B. And how that Y might give birth to something that might also be a Z, but will never be a C. Ugh, which reminds me of a note about falsifications of evolution I forgot to mention earlier.

If a trout was found with fur, evolution is done.
If an iguana was found with boobies, evolution is done.
If a sea cucumber was found with a vertbrate brain, evolution is done.
If a bird was found with arms as well as wings, evolution is done.
If a human was found with a chitenous exoskeleton, evolution is done.

All of those things would be undersandible within Creationism, but would utterly falsify evolutionary theory... and yet we never find anything that doesn't fit.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

But I would like to stick to one at a time, as previously requested by cyborg above.

No problem. It's my bedtime and I'm still 18-24 hours behind reality on this thread. I'll try and address some more one to one's tonight since I'm off. Thank you for putting up with my lateness.

 

[kev]

I just think it's odd that it is so quickly thrown out as false when it seems entirely plausible.

Who said it was "quickly thrown out as false?" Unless I am missing something, it was believed as true for thousands of years. It has only been over the past 100-200 years that it has been PROVEN false. Is it "plausible" that a great, world wide flood could cause a mass extinction? Certainly. But, it is also plausible that a great, worldwide "anything" could cause mass extinction. The flood idea was not "quickly" thrown out. It took a long time to throw it out. But, now that it has been thrown out, it should not need to be "rethrown out" every week.

There are countless stories of floods destroying the earth (noah, atlantis, babylon, etc)?

You are right, but there are also countless stories as to what causes lightning, how the stars were placed in the sky, why the sun rises and sets, where the seasons come from, where you go when you die, how babies are made . . . . .The key here is that they are STORIES. Humans have always sought to explain that which they do not understand with stories. Over the years, those stories have helped to create comfort about ideas that we did not have the technology to explain. Different cultures make up different stories and explain the unexplainable by introducing the supernatural. And, each culture affixes itself in the center of its particular supernatural story, because they are the ones writing it (or telling it).

The funny thing though, about these stories, is that everyone else's version is always a "story" - but your own version, is somehow the inerrant word of the almighty creator (of choice).

Which is more likely?

A.) There are 1000 fictional stories about the creation, told and changed throughout history, to explain what science could not explain at the time. And, there is one story that is actually the recorded word of an almighty creator - looking out for you, and those like you. And this one account, just so happens to be the one you believe in.

Or,

B.) There are 1001 fictional stories about creation.

The major problem you are having with trying to wade through your curiosity about evolution is your lack of understanding about evolution. Your references to mutations resulting in one animal "turning into" another animal, and your references to "How does it KNOW what genes to pick" are misconceptions that make it impossible to comprehend how evolution works. So many of your questions are based on a fundamentally flawed understanding of evolution.

 

[evolution disbeliver]

US I understand your schedule totally, my days start at 10pm.

I have a TE friend of mine who is of Chinese extraction and he is continually bemused by Creationists who assert that European dragon tales are evidence of dinosaurs because in Chinese mythology dragons are serpentine, but tetrapodal and fly not with wings, but with spiritual power and are good omens, not harbingers of doom. I hate to be so harsh, but that blows your "similar" assertion out of the water huh?

Not necessarily, what one culture derives about something another could get something entirely different. I was meaning them as a whole.

Again, refer back to what I mentioned about how somthing that is X will only give birth to an X that might also be a Y, but never a B. And how that Y might give birth to something that might also be a Z, but will never be a C.

In other words T might give birth to an U while it is not another T it is still closer to a T than a D, but it is still related to the D & T
Right? I am still looking at that site, alot of work has gone into that.

If an iguana was found with boobies, evolution is done.

Boobies are the greatest feature in nature. lol

Actually, what you're delving into isn't philosophy so much as ad hoc reasoning. Is I noted previously, carbon dating isn't the only method used in dating, though it's very effective for items under 50,000 years. Since that was your focus, if you're going to suggest there might be "something" that reset the clocks on the C-12/C-14 content, you're going to need to address why all the other dating methods like dendrochronology (tree rings), varves and ice cores all match up with other dating methods, especially the radiometric methods I linked to earlier.

Exactly why I was said philosphy, I was implying all dating methods. Giving that we really only know the tip of the ice burgh about the universe.

Touch on the rest of yours later tonite.
Now to RY...

Who said it couldn't? There very likely is an instinctive fear of drowning and there are very definitely reflexive protections against drowning. But what does that have to do with a worldwide flood? It doesn't take 10 mile deep water to put you in danger of drowning.

NO it doesnt and it wouldnt take 10 mile deep water to flood the earth. If evolution is corroborated by other sciences then wouldnt Pangaea be rather flat considering it is the only continent on the planet at the time? The highest point being volcanoes? The lower elevations created by erosion? There could technically be no mountain ranges because there is no tectonic plates.
or am I wrong?

 

[kev]

If evolution is corroborated by other sciences then wouldnt Pangaea be rather flat considering it is the only continent on the planet at the time? The highest point being volcanoes? The lower elevations created by erosion? There could technically be no mountain ranges because there is no tectonic plates.
or am I wrong?

I think you are wrong. Where did you come up with the fact that there were no tectonic plates? Just because they were in a different place, does not mean there were no plates. There are also plates that do not correspond to any continents at all - oceanic plates. The continental plates being in close proximity to each other does not make them, and the oceanic plates, disappear.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Ok so I probably wont understand DNA. But the way I understood it was that it mutates.

In an utterly reductionist context you do understand. DNA is composed of 4 amino acids which are, basically, the letters that compose the language of life. If you want more details read here. Bascially what happens is there is a change in either individual amino acids, or in whole groups of them due to imperfect replication. Those changes can have a negative effect (as some do), a neutral effect (as most do) or, depending on the environment a positive effect.

If a mutation is random (like a 2 headed cow) and it is somehow beneficial to the organism or gives it an edge over the others in the same generation, how is that then passed onto the next generation?

Forget radical changes in morphology because those rarely convey a survival/reproductive advantage. Think in more subtle terms. The answer to your question is simple... if a mutation confers a survival advantage to an individual, that individual is obviously more likely to survive to maturity, to mate and to have not only offspring, but more offspring than others without the survival advantage. The genes of that parent are then passed on to the offspring who, sharing that survival advantage in their DNA, will continue to thrive and reproduce in that environment.

Not to pick on midgets, but you dont see very many of them having midgets themselves.

Dwarfism is a recessive gene and is detrimental to human populations (though not in some populations where it might be selected for due to limited resources) because of skeletal issues and potential reproductive problems for dwarf females who mate with "normal" males (all of this supposes a pre-surgical C-section world). An interesting case of dwarfism is the Roloff family who can be seen in the delightful series Little People, Big World. Amy and Matt are both dwarves but three of their four children are "normal". They are an example of how recessive the dwarfism gene is.

Or Siamese twins producing the same.

Conjoined twins are not a genetic condition or mutation. They are the result of identical twins who fail to complete their developmental separation in utero. Chang and Eng Bunker had 22 children between them, and none of them were Conjoined twins because it was a fluke of development in the womb, not a genetic condition.

I do understand the genes are passed on, but the chances of them being the dominate genes are still pretty low right? or are you saying that all mutations are "pre-programmed"? So the exact same mutations that give us a walrus also give us an alligator? They just happened at different times to bring about different species.

See my link earlier about homology. There isn't much difference between a walrus and an alligator since both of them evolved from a reptilian concestor. Alligators developed scales, a three piece jawbone, wide stance and are cold blooded while Walruses developed fur, their reptilian jawbones became their (and our) ear bones, a tripod stance and are warm blooded. And no, they weren't "pre-programmed", they were selected for in populations which, over millions of years led to the diversity of life we see today and in the fossil record.

As far as not enough water, not even if you take into consideration the ice caps, the air and subterranean? We are worried about global warming melting the glaciers and ice caps and flooding the coasts. Could there not be enough subterranean water to tip it even further inland?

Taking the flood narrative literally, there simply is not enough water to cover the mountaintops we know of today (and historically), nor even the mountaintops that were known historically without crazy geological upheaval that we just don't see evidence for in the geological record. To put it simply, the "water" issue is the least of the problems Creationists have regarding taking the Flood narrative literally.

 

[evolution disbeliver]

I am begining to think the argument is flawed and not the two theories.
It should be about the way it begins not the way it changed. While one theory is based on evidence and follows a logical train of thought, the other is based on what is observed but not tested. The argument has over the years turned into destructive attacks from both sides trying to defend themselves. When it should be used to ensure the betterment of our society and ensure our survival. Creationists seem to be upset more because they think it destroys God, when it should increase their faith in him. Because of the shear odds that evolution would continue let alone get started by itself are astronomical. So I guess that maybe I'm not an evoluton disbeliever totally, I wouldnt say I am a creationist either. I must be a ID'er, but I still subscribe to events in the bible. Some as they are stated, some not. Some are a little far fetched. Some absolutely make sense to me. Some will probably say that I am trying to ride the fence on this, some may say I am afraid too choose a side. But I honestly dont care. I know there is a god, the evidence for that is overwhelming, none of it testable....yet. I do know that there is only one thing left for me to ask..........

are we able to change our board name without joining again?

 

[evolution disbeliver]

US,

Taking the flood narrative literally, there simply is not enough water to cover the mountaintops we know of today (and historically), nor even the mountaintops that were known historically without crazy geological upheaval that we just don't see evidence for in the geological record. To put it simply, the "water" issue is the least of the problems Creationists have regarding taking the Flood narrative literally.

Not taking it literally as it is written, would there be enough to flood the land high enough it could cause something like a mini-mass extinction? Perhaps hundred or so feet in elevation above sea level? I just cant see a large land animal scrambling up the side of a mountain or herds of animals (or humans) trying to out run fast aproaching flood waters to higher ground.

 

[evolution disbeliver]

I think you are wrong. Where did you come up with the fact that there were no tectonic plates? Just because they were in a different place, does not mean there were no plates. There are also plates that do not correspond to any continents at all - oceanic plates. The continental plates being in close proximity to each other does not make them, and the oceanic plates, disappear.

That was my understanding of the theory. If all the continents were connected why would there be any plates? I never really studied it in depth. I was a very bad slacker in school unless something interested me. And that was one of them. I would sit and stare at the dino fossils and pics & try to imagine the size and strength that they must have had. I could've cared less about there enviroment at that time. Ahhh, I miss the teen years.