Paul2

has anyone yet offered up a "$10,000 to the first person that can prove that god did infact have a hand in creation" ?? could be fun.

mark24

Really, aberdeen?

Perhaps you could explain this phenomena without recourse to natural selection, then?

"The guppy, Poecilia reticulata. In waters populated by the predator Crenicichla, males have smaller less conspicuous spots that match the gravel bottom (different bottoms elicit different patterns). In effect the guppy has evolved camouflage. The alleles that express phenotypes are under SELECTIVE pressure.

Guppies that exist in waters that lack Crenicichla display a much wider range of colouration. That is to say the alleles that affect skin colour are no longer under selective pressure.

Guppy populations that are in waters that have Crenicichla populations, & are placed in waters without the predator soon display a wider variety of colouration. Again, the skin colouration alleles aren't selectively constrained, & are able to increase via genetic drift, since they are now "neutral" alleles.

If guppies from non-predatorial waters are placed in water with Crenicichla, the colourations soon begin to match the gravel bottom. That is, alleles responsible for skin colouration are under selective pressure.

(Endler 1980)

A fairytale indeed!

Mark

AmbiguousUbiquity

LOL!! Don't feel too bad, DMB! I majored in Biology, and sometimes have no idea what people are talking about. I have to say, though, that although reading these posts brings me back to the fun fun fun classes of cell and developmental biology, that we have to add more steaming horse excrement to aberdeen's pile.

Lauren

Suburban

Statistically speaking, we've been evolving ever since we were created.

DNA is information. Information is orderly and cannot arise from chaos absent some sort of intelligence behind it.

To propose that every species on Earth arose from one common ancestor is preposterous (to be kind). The Burgess Shale should be enough proof for anyone that the number of species has been in decline for some time (whether that be hundreds of thousands or billions of years is absolutely irrelevant). For evolution to be supported, the number of species would have to be ever increasing.Were that not the case, we would still only have that very first species.

caravelair

ooh, i can't wait to see THIS one get ripped apart! *points to above post*.

Free Thinkr

Nuh-uh. I was created 23 and some odd years ago, and I haven't evolved a damn bit since.

Oh.. you meant species. No, humans evolved.

Information can't be created, or order can't? Either way, you'll need to prove that. Aren't sand dunes orderly? We have those here in NW Indiana. Perhaps you contend that wind is intelligent.


Why exactly would the number of species have to be ever increasing?

caravelair

let me start if off by pointing out that the following statement is incorrect:

what you are saying would only be true if the number of species was a strictly linear function. this is, of course, a completely baseless assumption, and is nothing short of preposterous (to be kind). can you not imagine the number of species rising for a period of time, and then dropping later? sigh.

Suburban

In a word, no.

RufusAtticus

That's funny because chemistry disagrees with you. There are plently of unintelligent processes that make DNA. In fact, your body uses one all the time.

People knowledgable in things like genetics, paleontology, neontology, and biochemistry disagree with you. What makes your opinion on the matter any more relevant than my opinion on music theory?

And this proof would be what exactly?

For evolution to be supported, the total number of species ever to exist on this earth needs to increase. Show me in the burgess shale, any species currently on the earth today? Otherwise the Burgess Shale offers good evidence for evolution and descent with modification.

Suburban

The appearance of the first living cell requires the following:

- The accidental creation of a functional strand of DNA. This represents one chance in 10^600 (10 to the 600th power, a 1 followed by 600 zeroes).

- The accidental creation of the 2,000 proteins needed as enzymes by cells. This represents odds of 1 in 10^40,000.

- The simultaneous accidental creation of all the necessary components of the most primitive form of life, assembled in the correct configuration. The odds against this are not even reasonably calculable.

Statistically, any odds greater than 1 in 10^50 are considered impossible. What does that say for DNA with odds 10^550 times greater, or the odds against the synthesis of the 2,000 proteins, which are 10^39,950 times greater?

Consider the creation of a viable cell by random processes, and ponder the statistical nighmare that involves:

- The odds against a perfect mixture of chemicals in the right place

- The odds against an external influence that is perfectly suited to creating life from the chemicals

- The odds against creating a functional cell membrane

- The odds against creating cytoplasm

- The odds against creating functional organelles within the cyoplasm

- The odds against creating a nucleus within the cytoplasm

- The odds against creating a properly-coded DNA strand

- The odds against creating all the necessary amino acids and proteins to support the DNA

- The odds against containing the DNA along with its support chemicals within the nucleus

- The odds against all of that being contained within the cell membrane

- The odds against the environment of the cell being hospitable to life

- The odds against there being nutrients available for the cell

- The odds against the DNA being matched to the cell

- The odds against the DNA being coded to initiate mitosis

Each of these defies statistical odds that any rational statistician would consider absolutely impossible. Yet we are to believe that EVERY ONE of these impossible things occured simultaneously.

Let's imagine that the entire populace of the Earth sat down in groups of four to play bridge, and each of them was dealt a perfect hand once each minute for 50 years. Would you say that's impossible?

Compare that to the odds cited above, and the premise of the perfect bridge hands is a certainty in comparison.

The notion of a functioning cell arising other than by special creation is so ludicrous that it cannot be seriously entertained by anyone with even the most tenuous grasp on reality.

I know the argument: "Well, despite the odds, it evidently DID happen." Why did it "evidently" happen? Because evolutionism mandates it. Period.

Life appeared on Earth fron non-life...and evolutionism cannot accept that it was the product of intelligent design. They would rather believe that a ludicrous combination of accidents involving a probability of one chance in 10 to the power of some five- or six-figure number is more credible than an act of creation.

And you dare to call Creationists unscientific.