Evolution or Creationism, Where does the evidence lead?

[evolution disbeliver]

But how can a mutation that is random be repeated? If the parents have a baby & it was covered in fur, the chances of that offspring having identical offspring are extremely high. So high I would say it wasnt plausible. Besides if the same mutation occurred in as many generations it would take in oder to change into another organism it would then very definately become non random. This a big one for me to accept. Because if it made it past the first generation & remained a random mutation there should be millions of carcasses somewhere that have very extreme differences between them from nature trying to get it right.
Correct?

 

[MG1962]

But how can a mutation that is random be repeated? If the parents have a baby & it was covered in fur, the chances of that offspring having identical offspring are extremely high. So high I would say it wasnt plausible. Besides if the same mutation occurred in as many generations it would take in oder to change into another organism it would then very definately become non random. This a big one for me to accept. Because if it made it past the first generation & remained a random mutation there should be millions of carcasses somewhere that have very extreme differences between them from nature trying to get it right.
Correct?

The thing to consider is just how chancy it is for a creature to fossilise, then be in a position for us to locate it. In the media we here of two headed cows lambs snakes etc. And they would appear very common. However we have never found anything remotely like it in the fossil record

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Hey ed, I'm late getting back to this thread so I hope you don't mind me covering previous territory for a bit.

Wanna start with carbon dating?
Is it possible that something like a huge solar flare or some cosmic storm could have engulfed the planet with something that could reset or jumble the lifes & half lifes?

No, because we'd see the effects of that in other areas like atmospheric carbon isotopic content 12 v. 14 in ice cores, changes in tree ring growth patterns that otherwise weren't explainible by environment and die-offs of plants/animals that similarly weren't explainable.

Nothing in the "fossil*" record, including things like animal bones which can be carbon dated, exist in a vacuum. They are found in a position in the geological record with evidences of their environment around them from which we can draw conclusions about how they lived. We can determine what an environment was like from other datable items from the same period like ice cores (back 175,000 much further than carbon dating) and tree rings (back to about 15,000 years about 1/3 the range of carbon dating).

Also Carbon dating is not the only radioisotopic method availible. Here's a list of some others, the half-lives of some isotopes being in the billions of years.

* Animal bones are fossils, though they aren't what we normally think of which is skeletal and structural features that have been replaced by mineralization. I'll clarify this in a post below responding to your fossil question.

 

[evolution disbeliver]

I understand about the fossilizing process. So I can accept the fact that us finding it as the proverbial needle in a haystack. Plus scavengers and such wouldnt leave much to fossilize to begin with. But if they were random should there not be evidence just from the ratio of nature getting right even just once let alone to have it pass on to the next generation. The 2 headed cows are screw ups, not a mutation for the betterment of the species. I am talking about the mutations that would have species survive. Those cannot be random. So one would conclude that it is built into the DNA. If it is, what triggers the mutation? How does it know what kind of mutation to trigger? It cannot be random if it passed from one generation to the next.

Unrepentant Sinner-thank you for that response. I like the way you worded it. Very simple.
But do we know every possible thing in the universe? If we say yes, we are arrogant as a species. The universe is so huge we cant see the end, so it would also be arrogant to say that we know the make up of it. There could be elements, chemicals, and some kind of radiation out there we havent discovered yet. So why would that not be possible?
(Not implying supernatural or god here)

 

[MG1962]

IBut do we know every possible thing in the universe? If we say yes, we are arrogant as a species. The universe is so huge we cant see the end, so it would also be arrogant to say that we know the make up of it. There could be elements, chemicals, and some kind of radiation out there we havent discovered yet. So why would that not be possible?
(Not implying supernatural or god here)

You are absolutely right. I think we have a thumbnail working model of the Universe....but there is sooooooooooo much out there - it is what makes all this so much fun, ya never know whats around the corner

 

[evolution disbeliver]

Why I never pursued it as a career I will never know. But it (science as a whole)
has had my interest since I was in high school. So I became a truck driver, talk about variables! lol
Back to the subject, I have never really considered the Gap theory much. But this is probably something somebody already noted somewhere. In Genesis day 1 "the earth was without form & void" yada, yada, yada. That is when he created the forces of nature. ie heat convection(wind), gravity, the basic stuff. Day 2 he created light, yada, yada, yada. Day 3 he created plants, yada, yada, yada. Day 4 the marine animals, the sun & moon, yad, yada, yada. Wait. He didnt create the sun & moon till day 4. So our concept of time is ruined. We cant have "days" without the rotation of the earth . Does this destroy the creation theory? Those damn parables? Not for me. But maybe for many. I would have to step into philosophy to explain myself and that wouldnt be very scientific. So I will have to go with the parable idea and say that a day to god could be a very loooong time for us. Until he created the sun & moon. But as I think more of it, he formed the earth & forces of nature including gravity. Gravity is what hold planets, stars & moons together. This is not done without rotation. So he did create time & space on day one. So it could have been a very slow rotation giving that our day is based on taking 24 hours to rotate 360 using a fixed point in the sky(sun) that wasnt there till 3 "days" later.

See, not all creationists are bad. lol I pick on my side as well. Some will say I will burn in hell.
While I do very much believe in god and will never deny him or say there is more than one, for me there is no question. Because for us (in our known "reality") to say he doesnt exist is not true. We cannot refuse the existence of something that isnt bound by "our" reality. At least until we can cross out of or it crosses into ours. Just looking at the evidence of how things change (evolution or variation) over time does not mean it doesnt exist. As far as creationists go the debate between evolution is an argument that shouldnt be. The argument should be with the big bang crowd. My reason for not believing evolution is because I havent seen enough evidence that proves to me personally that it happened that way. For instance, we evolved from monkeys, why are they still here? They should have went extinct long ago. Why are sharks still the same as millions of years ago? Why are there any species still alive today that are the same as they used to be? And if evolution is a constant where do you think we will be going to?
I am now rambling and getting off subject(too much coffee buzz, buzz)
Sorry lol

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Glad you appreciated it ed. I've been working the last 8 hours and haven't been able to respond further, but will after I get some groceries and go home. For now, in response to your fossil question and what I was alluding to above:

I did read the article already, found it very interesting. It makes sense that anyone would want to test it from as many as there is. I am not familiar with them so I cant really comment on them individually. I was just wondering if it was possible that it could occur. Something known or unknown as of this current time. I will read the article again.

As far as the idea of liquefaction. Do you think that the earth can shake violently enough to mess up the fossil record? Wouldnt that explain the creationist claim?

If it happened before major decay set in the carcasses would be more dense and sink. I'm not saying it happened to all of them at once unless we could consider a mass extinction. What if it happened several times for each strata (I believe that is the term I am looking for, layers in rock)? If it happened many times like that I think it would come close to what we see today.

Trace fossils

 

[evolution disbeliver]

US with that link you lead me to my next question. Creationists say dino's lived with man. How does a human compression footprint happen in rock with a dino's footprint? Such as the world famous prints from Texas. Please dont give the same old answer as there must have been a dino with a human foot. That doesnt work because of simple anatomy. It couldnt stand up. Unless it looked like us. Although it would make a great movie villain.
I did notice that those were conveniently left out of the article.

 

[MG1962]

US with that link you lead me to my next question. Creationists say dino's lived with man. How does a human compression footprint happen in rock with a dino's footprint? Such as the world famous prints from Texas. Please dont give the same old answer as there must have been a dino with a human foot. That doesnt work because of simple anatomy. It couldnt stand up. Unless it looked like us. Although it would make a great movie villain.
I did notice that those were conveniently left out of the article.

Do you mean these tracks?

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/onheel.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/retrack.html

 

[evolution disbeliver]

Yes I do believe those were the ones. I notice that when in some creationist presentations that they say that more have been found in oters parts of the world. Never have heard where.
I am on a different puter now and some of the keys arent working right so if my posts look strange you all know why. (The joys of having a 3 year old)
Back to the DNA, how would it know what to change for te survival of the species? And I understand that we are related to the apes on the DNA level, but since we are all from earth and comprised of the same elements shouldnt we(animals) all have similar DNA?

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Again, terribly sorry for being about 12 hours out of the loop, but such is the nature of work and the World Wide Web.

... liquefaction.

...would come close to what we see today.

I've never seen liquefaction mentioned by any of the creationists I've debated over the years because most of those I have encountered argued Henry Morris' "hydrological sorting" hypothesis.

Both are terribly problematic when it comes to the fossil record. As EJArmstrong noted above, geology as a practicable science would be utterly impossible - and hydrocarbon exploration (oil, coal and natural gas) would be folly - if we could not make reliable determinations of fossil (again using the term in it's broadest sense) that we could find in certain locations in strata thought to be of a certain geological age. This applies to sandstone, dolomite, oil, coal, basalt, diamonds, chalk, salt and even special cases like the search for Tiktaalik, in which case paleontologists knew to seach Ellesmere Island because it had Devonian strata and it was predicted that strata would contain fish to terrestrial tetrapod tranistionals.

That's a deathblow for liquifaction and becomes even more problematic when we move beyond microfossils into body and trace fossils when it comes to hydrological sorting. It's also an irony that most Creationists just ignore or try and excuse away that if we found fossils in strata consistent with hydrological sorting it would be the demise of evolutionary theory.

The fact is though, that we never find trouts and trilobites in the same strata. Hydrological sorting says we should. We never find crows and Confuciusornis in the same strata. Hydrological sorting says we should. We never find rabbits and Dimetrodons in the same strata. We never find lobsters and Ammonites in the same strata. We never find rhinos and triceratops in the same strata. The list of potentially falsifying discoveries we could make for evolutionary theory and evidentiary for Creationism is nearly endless.

And yet, we never make those discoveries...

So here's were microfossils ties back in with hydrological sorting again - remember how I noted that fossils aren't found in vacuums? We never find pollen or fossils of pollen bearing plants in strata that predate the Devonian. If the hydrological sorting hypothesis suggests or beings like plants that couldn't run should be all over the geological column, why isn't pollen or fossils of pollen bearing plants in all strata?

 

[evolution disbeliver]

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

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

What about the claim of non random & random mutations. If I am to believe an organism evolves into another organism over several generations, how can random mutations do that and it be a better organism? If it is survival of the fittest would there not be an abundance of evidence {snip}

Sorry to snip that down, but I wanted to concentrate on two issues you raised.

First off, organisms don't evolve into other organisms in the sense that a salmon has great-great-grandchilden that are frogs... or worse yet that an insect has great-great-great-grandchildren that are elephants. Phylogenies are simultaneously one of the most difficult and easiest concepts in biology to understand. No living being is quatitatively different from it's parents or ancestry, it is merely qualitatively differently. A human is still a primate and all primates are still mammals and all mammals are still anmiotes and all amniotes are still vertebrates, etc. If you want a magnificent website showing this check out the Tree of Life. In fact, don't start by clicking on the homepage links, enter a being into the search... elm, walrus, sea cucumber or shiitake and if you get a page, start using the nested hierarchical link function. Oh, and those transitions don't take several generations, they take millions to hundreds of millions of years.

Second, you seem to be conflating "more adapted to it's environment" with "better". Cockroaches aren't "better" evolved otherwise they'd know enough to run from me when I turned the lights on or got out the can of Raid instead of skittering in circles giving me enough time to smoosh or spray them? And yet they've survived 350,000,000 years and made a successful environmental transition from tropical environments to temperate.

And then there's blind cave fish. If evolutionary theory predicted they became "better" wouldn't they have evolved an organ on their forhead which painted their environment with infrared and eyes which could see in that wavelength? But evolutionary theory predicts the opposite - that fucntioning eyes come at a cost during development and of calories to maintain them during maturation and their reproductive cycle... so having eyes in a totally dark environment is not an advantage, but a disadvantage and since our genes can only work with what we have (see biological homoloy - especially the limb part, instead of "creating" innovative things like infrared painting organs and infrared viewing eyes... it selects for shutting off unneeded or "useless" organs.

But that gets us into atavisms which, again, is ironically an evidence for evolution and against Creationism.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

{snip}

Unrepentant Sinner-thank you for that response. I like the way you worded it. Very simple.
But do we know every possible thing in the universe? If we say yes, we are arrogant as a species. The universe is so huge we cant see the end, so it would also be arrogant to say that we know the make up of it. There could be elements, chemicals, and some kind of radiation out there we havent discovered yet. So why would that not be possible?
(Not implying supernatural or god here)

I think I covered both the fossil issue and how mutations give rise to new species above, but if you want clarification, just ask and I'll gladly delve into more detail.

The answer to your non-snipped quote above is of course we don't. I don't understand what knowing every possible thing in the Universe has to do with us understandig the history of the Earth and how live on it came to demonstrate the diversity we find extant and in the fossil record. There could be things about the Universe that humans never understand. There could be things about how the Earth was formed we never understand. There could be things about how life first started that we never understand.

That doesn't have any effect or bearing on the fact that we've found genetic evidence in lampreys connecting them with humans evolutionarily through the study of homoglobin, that we've discovered transitional fossils like Tiktaalik or that humans and chimpanzees are undeniably linked genetically and through the fossil record.

We could still live in an Aristotelian Universe of ether and crystaline spheres, but because of evolutionary theory, we could know who we are and where we came from (obviously within a certain metaphysical context).

 

[evolution disbeliver]

Yes by betterment I meant more suited for the enviroment. Sorry, you know I'm not a scientist, just interested.

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.

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.
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?

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

{snip}See, not all creationists are bad.

I've been engaging Creationists for 10 years and except for some who are probably insane or have let all rationality go to the point of intransigence, I have met few how are "bad" and the rest of those get that categorization mainly because they are/were jerks. Conversely, I have met few, if any Theistic Evolutionists I would not want to share a meal or enjoy some coffee or a drink with. Speaking of which, I've got 12 Nattys in me so this will have to be my last post for today... more later tonight when I'm back at work.

For instance, we evolved from monkeys, why are they still here? They should have went extinct long ago. Why are sharks still the same as millions of years ago? Why are there any species still alive today that are the same as they used to be? And if evolution is a constant where do you think we will be going to?
I am now rambling and getting off subject(too much coffee buzz, buzz)
Sorry lol

The simplist answer to your first query is to posit a reciprocal question - if you were born, why didn't all your grandparents die first? Humans are not evolved from some failed species or genus of monkeys... we're evolved from a successful one, otherwise we could not have evolved from their descendents nor our cousin progeny our fellow apes.

As to your second question, sharks are not the same as they were millions of years ago. "Sharks" the colloquial definition haven't changed much in 10s of millions of years, but individual species and genuses have changed. You won't find Hammerheads and Makos in the fossil records in Jurassic (IIRC). A perfect example of how beings find their niche, and change over time, but still remain within that nich is the Coelacath which you can investigate further (meaning scientific realities vs. Creationist claims) at The Dinofish.com website.

And I'm too bombed to post more, bed calls, but MG's links about the Paluxy prints effectively debunks them. The Ica stones are known frauds. Mkele Momebe remains a legend. The Loch Ness Monster and Champ remain anecdotal and questionable from the supposed photographs and here's the important thing if any dinosaur should actually still exist that Creationist sources won't tell you... a living dinosaur today would not falsify evolutionary theory (see my Coelacanth link above), while a Cambrian chicken or a Jurassic rabbit would bring evolutionary theory down like a house of cards.

Human and dino prints contemporaneously would do the same thing, but we have yet to find any that withstand study and worse yet, we have no evidence from trash middens of any human civilization hunting dinosaurs and disposing of their skins, bones, horns, etc. or using those hunting tropies as they have with every other known animal since we evolved. In this case, the archeological evidence is even more damming than the paleontological.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Yes by betterment I meant more suited for the enviroment. Sorry, you know I'm not a scientist, just interested.

I'm not either. I'm a guy with a BA in History and Political Science who works as a security guard and has just taken on a cause celebre. I've also been arguing with Creationists for a long time in case that wasn't totally obvious. And while my typing is coherent, there's enough beer in my blood to make me sleepy after my night shift that I'll need to address the rest of your questions this evening after 11pm CDT or tomorrow morning if I'm busy. Thanks for having an open mind and reding my posts and taking my links.

 

[evolution disbeliver]

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. 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? 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? 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?
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?

Your talk of the drinkin is makin me thirsty. Think I'll go grab a few myself. Miller Lite (gotta watch the carbs)

 

[Inquisitive Raven]

Well, yes it does take generations, but we're talking tens of thousands of generations, not three or four. Or do you really think that if we isolated a population of oh, Norwegian rats with a generation of a year and a same size population of humans with a 20 year long generation from the rest of their species, their descendants would be recognizable as a new species at the same time? I think the rats would get there first.

 

[Inquisitive Raven]

Just as an observation, we don't go from insect to man. Arthropods had split off from the chordates by the Cambrian Era and genetic lines, once split beyond the species level don't reconnect. There's a point at which they don't reconnect at the species level as well. Ring species are on the way to finding that point.