hezekiah jones

<deleted>

rofl

[ July 05, 2002: Message edited by: hezekiah jones ]</p>

Creation's Terrier

Oh okay then. So tell me then evolutionists: since you think you can explain everything by little incremental changes, just what sort of thing would demonstrate creation to you? Since it seems to explain everything, surely it explains nothing -- isn’t that what you say about creation?

As to supposed flaws in design: why should everything be ‘perfect’ (whatever that is)? As any biologist would tell you, living systems are about balances, trade-offs in design/function. Nothing is going to be optimum, most things are going to be ‘good enough’, because, eg, faster running has to be balanced against the skeletal practicalities, energy consumption, etc. Any good designer knows this; and it’s what we see in nature: not perfect, but good design.

And pandas’ thumbs and ‘inverted’ retinas etc are very efficient in their own way. Do you have any evidence that the mammalian retina is in actuality any less efficient than a squid’s, each in its own environment? As to ‘why?’, surely the huge diversity of life shows that God prizes novelty and variety very highly? You’ll now say I’m just saying “it’s the way God wants it, so there!” Well, why not? I don’t claim to know His mind! We can but guess His intentions, and do our best to live according to the rules He’s given us.

And as for "a problem with evolution does not automatically = evidence for creation", I beg to differ. Douglas Futuyma, author of the apparently highly regarded Evolution textbook and the evolutionist propaganda book Science on Trial, says in the latter:

Now, if this is a false dichotomy, then fair enough. But what other options are there? If Futuyma is right, then any evidence against evolution is evidence for creation.

I note that none of you have actually answered my questions (yet?) Come on guys, it can’t be that difficult, can it? Not if evolution is so damn secure...

I wouldn’t want to accuse you all of avoiding the questions, so just to recap:

1. How do you know that all the ‘transitional’ fossils are actually related?

2. Where’s the bat (and bee, if you like) intermediates?

3. Please show me some ‘macroevolution’. If all you’ve got is fossils, see Q1. (Speciation doesn’t count, of course, cos it’s just creating more variety, which as I’ve already argued, God is all in favour of.)

4. Bat echolocation.

5. Please show that all those tiny steps really did happen to produce the complexity we see. No talk of ‘plausible intermediates’: plausible doesn’t mean ‘did happen’. And keep your just-so stories: evidence please.

Enough to go on with?

CT

[ July 05, 2002: Message edited by: Creation's Terrier ]</p>

Quetzal

Besides begging my question inre actual evidence in support of your particular view, you are ignoring quite a bit of the basis for the inferences concerning evolutionary development of echolocation. After all, you yourself, thanks to the two ears you've got, are able to at least slightly use the same principle to differentiate direction if nothing else. In addition, in an interesting case of convergent evolution, many modern insect eating birds, such as the European barn swallow (Hirundo rustica) use a form of echolocation. These swallows - of which there are lots just outside my appartment - use echolocation not for hunting (a night hunter's trick), but for determining their proximity to buildings. They emit an audible, high-pitched squeek when their eyes show them approaching an obstacle. The reflected sound tells them when to swerve. In level flight with no obstacles, they don't make a sound.

IOW, lots of critters use sound in one way or another. It's a fairly common adaptation. There are examples in nature of ALL the ways to use sound - so we have homologies from other species that show different "levels" of echolocation - all of which lend credence on the inferences concerning how bat echolocation evolved. Finally, recent studies have shown that echolocation has evolved twice in the microchiroptera, and at least once in a totally different form in several species of megachiroptera (specifically, Rousettus spp.) which use audible tongue clicks rather than vocalized high-frequency chirps. Worse still, from a creationist point of view, is that there is significant variation even among the microchiroptera in frequency, emitting through the mouth vs nose, rapidity, etc. IOW, EXACTLY what would be predicted by the ad hoc processes of evolution's build-on-what-works.

Meanwhile - take a stab at my questions concerning positive evidence for creationism.

[ July 05, 2002: Message edited by: Morpho ]</p>

nogods4me

CT posted:
I would be interested in seeing the context for this quote. It is incorrect for a very basic reason, evolution says absolutely nothing about the origin of life, nothing at all, nil, zip, zero.

Creation's Terrier

Hi Morpho!

Thanks for the fascinating info. However, that’s not my point. I know how echolocation works, and that bats have it . I’m talking specifically about the mechanism which disables bats’ hearing at just the moment it squeaks, and ‘re-engages’ it just afterward to let it hear the echoes. (That’s if I’m remembering Dawkins’s TBW correctly!)

Whoa there! A tad circular, that, assuming that’s what it is?!

I’ve no doubt that God might have given it to some birds too. So?
Or ‘piece of useful design’.

“lend credence” ... “inferences” ... got any evidence that that’s really what happened?

Sounds more hopeful. What did they actually show, though?

So? God loves variety! Why might he not use different things, if he so chose, just to make it interesting, perhaps?!

Or by a God who likes things to vary a bit. It’s the difference between looking at a repeating pattern of letters on a page and reading a book.

Covered above. Evidence against evolution is evidence for creation.

CT

Creation's Terrier

Note that it’s the ‘origin of living things’, not ‘life’. Meaning how stuff came to be as it is. I know evolution doesn’t address OOL (nah, you’ve got the even more pie-in-the-sky‘ abiogenesis’ for that ), and I’m sure Futuyma wouldn’t have meant it.

I’ll get the context shortly, but IIRC it means what it says.

CT

Duvenoy

4. Bat echolocation.

Echolocation systems are truly wonderful, and I seem to remember going through all this a few weeks ago with Ed.

Anyhow, it can be argued that bat echolocation is sparking evolution in some species of moth (no CT, not the peppered moth. Sorry). The moth 'hears' the bat closing in and it emits a high-frequency squeak of it's own, and takes evasive action, often causing the bat to miss. Thereby causing the more efficent squeakers to breed more often.

Yeah, yeah. I know. Micro evolution. But I must ask: In a single species, how many micros would make a macro? Will the bat become a better ehcolocator, causing the moth to become more evasive yet? Could the moth ultimatly become an echolocator in it's own right, finding the bat before it finds the moth? The Theroy of Evolution sez, "Sure. Why not?" And then, I think, the moth will have met all reasonable requirments for macroevolution, what ever that might be.

I cast doubt on macroevolution simply because the requirments for it seem to change with the Creationist demanding the proof.

Frankly, I think that the micro/macro debate is a crock. Evolution is evolution, and trying to break it up into something more palatible, something that will fit into the world view of various religions, is tatamount to lying.

Will the moth ever become an echolocator? I dunno. Perhaps. Or could it be that it already is, we just haven't found it yet. Whaddya think?

doov

Stephen T-B

An analogy:
The Number 28 bus was seen to leave Shadwell Main Street at 8.15am.
It was next observed at A) Moortown Corner, B) Chapel Allerton, C) Chapletown, D) Sheepscar and eventually, at 8.43, we find it outside E) the Corn Exchange.
Evolutionists accounting for this bus would say: "we know it started from Shadwell Main Street and we deduce that it travelled from there to A, B, C, D and E."
CT, accounting for this same bus, would state: "God put it at E. The Evolutionists say they have evidence of it having been at A, B, C and D, but what about in between those places, eh? WHERE'S your evidence it ever made this journey? Haven't got it? Thought not. So that proves God put it at E.
Thank you and good night."

nogods4me

and there is the BIG difference between CT (and other creationists) and us evolutionists.

we look at the evidence and reach a conclusion, we constantly revise and modify this conclusion as more evidence comes in and some old evidence is either disguarded or re-evaluated. The creationists have had the conclusion pre-printed in indelible ink for 2 thousand years and after all who gives a rat's ass about evidence, and those damned evilutionists keep changing the theory to fit the evidence, how dare they!

edited because I haven't evolved a spell checker....yet!

[ July 05, 2002: Message edited by: nogods4me ]</p>

Duvenoy

"Oh okay then. So tell me then evolutionists: since you think you can explain everything by little incremental changes, just what sort of thing would demonstrate creation to you? Since it seems to explain everything, surely it explains nothing -- isn’t that what you say about creation?"
------------------------

Oh... An angel showing up at my front door offering to flutter down to the liquor store and get us a jug of cheap whiskey, his treat, would do it, nicely.

Are you a chess player, CT? I am, although a pretty poor one. Chess is a game of small, incremental changes, back and forth, predator and prey, until at last the change has become large enough to decide the match. How many species has ours driven into extinction? And how did we do it?

We were more efficent hunters and more wasteful of resources than any species before us. We have had a greater impact than any other cause short of the Dinosaur Killer that hit the earth way back when and made it possible for mammals to evolve into the great reptile's vacant niches.

Not the best of example perhaps, but the best I can do until that feller with the wings gets back from town with the refreshments.

doov