Valentine Pontifex

Funny, though I am not sure we want the evolutionists being the Evil Empire after all look what happend to Vader and Palpatine in the next movie. How about:

Officer: The rebels -- uh evolutionists -- have good evidence and good scientists. They are dangerous.

Jonathan Sarfati: Dangerous to your tracks and magazine articles not to this battle website.

Ken Ham: Do not be too proud of this huge technological website make you made. The power to blow up logic is insignificant next to the power of creationism.

Officer: Don't try to scare us with your "devout" ways Lord Ham. Your creationism has not allowed you to destroy the evolutionists, or to shut down the NCSE, or to conjure up any evidence.

[Officer starts having trouble breathing]

Ken Ham: I find your lack of faith...disturbing.

[ August 11, 2002: Message edited by: LordValentine ]</p>

tgamble

It's just the one scene that works.

Bravo! Except that Sarfati would say "THEY DO NOT!!! DO NOT! DO NOT! DO NOT!" instead of admitting tot he danger.

[ August 11, 2002: Message edited by: tgamble ]</p>

KnightWhoSaysNi

Hi Primemover, welcome to the forum!

First, I'd highly recommend reading material from the follow FAQ:

<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/" target="_blank">29 Evidences for Macroevolution</a>

And perhaps check out the book The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins which answers a good deal of your objections.

Natural selection or environmental adaptation should be thought more as a mechanism for evolution, rather than evidence for it per se. Scientists do debate what mechanisms were most influential in bringing about evolution, but evidence that evolution happened via common ancestry is overwhelming (see the above FAQ). And contrary to what creationists say about the fossil record, evolution does indeed have strong support from a mountain of fossil evidence of <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morphological_intermediates" target="_blank">intermediate (transitional) forms</a>.

See Amen-Moses's comments regarding fossil preservation. I don't really see a problem with evolution happening more rapidly in some cases where there are greater selection pressures to induce change.

Evolution is not a magical process that produces a totally different creature in one generation. The land dwelling ancestors of whales didn't miraculously give birth to a porpoise complete with fins and blowhole, ready to dwell in deep ocean. Instead, the development of organs with new functions is an accumulation of steps over several generations. In the case of wings, the organs likely developed gradually with the intermediate steps having a different function like sexual display, gliding, or leaping further. So a "half a wing" might be an advantage after all. For example, natural selection could favour animals with small wing-like structures that allow it to jump further to escape hungry predators.

As far as mathematics and probabilities go, a probablility argument is only as good as the assumptions that go into it. Remember that natural selection is anti-chance, not random. It will select animals that are more likely to reproduce and pass on their genes.

It's kind of like when you walk along a beach, you don't see different sized pebbles randomly sorted. Wave action acts as a filter and you'll find smaller pebbles segregated from larger pebbles. The chances these pebbles would be sorted by size would be astronomical if you just dumped them all on a beach from the back of a truck. But the probability assumptions are eliminated if you use wave action as the sorting mechanism instead of just random dumping. In a similar way, natural selection is also a form of filter.

[ August 11, 2002: Message edited by: Nightshade ]</p>

Corona688

The current theory on wings and other complex structures like that, is that partially-formed structures could be useful for other purposes. For instance, the wings of an insect make very good heat diffusers, even if they can't fly with them... it is speculated that they evolved as just that, first, and later were modified into wings.

Albion

Primemover, there are any number of other threads where you can go and criticise evolution to your heart's content. It's very interesting that you should try and derail this thread with the same old creationist arguments about evolution. That's what creationsts always do when someone asks the questions MrKrinkles asked.

How about having a stab at answering them instead of trying to change the subject?

MrKrinkles

Primemover,

Try answering the original questions.

Thank you.

Brooks

[ August 11, 2002: Message edited by: MrKrinkles ]</p>

Aahz

Oh goody a design proponent. This notion holds very little weight and is basically a god of the gaps argument. "We don't know how this structure could be created (based solely on random chance--an implicit assumption), therefore God did it."

Notice the implicit assumption. Many design proponents don't tell you that (or more cynically, they don't even know it is there).

1. There is no reason for "God did it" to be the default explanation.
2. God, an omnipotent being, is not a scientific hypothesis since the probabiltiy that an all powerful being can do something is 1. Hence it always beats out all other hypotheses.
3. The implicit assumption seems bogus to me, but I am not an expert in biology.
4. Design has not been successfully applied as a research paradigm and can barely be found in the peer reviewed literature (what little is there are usually articles pointing to the problems of design).

In short, it isn't science and calling it a "theory" is completely and totally inappropriate. Calling it dogma tarted up in scientific garb is far more accurate.

Oh yeah and Creationists never ever answer questions. Further, they always promise to provide more responses/answers/research/etc. later, but almost always fail to do so. Some excellent examples are

William Dembski
Micheal Behe.

Getting a straight answer out of them is impossible.

Oh and Primemover,

If you want to discuss the mathematics involved I'm game. I sure hope you are not relying on Dembski. Debunking his fecal matter is getting old and tiring.

[ August 11, 2002: Message edited by: Aahz ]</p>

Caverdude

Yeah, the "Odds" argument is an old strawman...a futile exercise in mental gymnastics. I like this counter argument to "what are the odds":
Take a coin. Flip ten thousand times and record the sequence of heads or tails. Now, what are the odds that you would come with that EXACT sequence? Billions to one or more, right? But you DID end up with that sequence. Do you see? The tired old argument of "what are the odds of that happening" is simply not valid or useful.

lpetrich

Actually, one can often test the hypothesis that this or that feature helps its owners survive more efficiently. And the professional literature has discussions of numerous such tests.

This intermediate problem has been seriously considered, and the usual solution is that intermediates can have limited functionality. Thus, a front limb can function as a crude wing before it gets modified to serve as a very efficient wing.

Note my vocabulary here; I wish to indicate that a front limb does not magically stop being a front limb when it becomes a wing.

primemover

My earlier post seemed to get people good mood. I was accused of not replying to the initial questions. I will attempt to answer some them as best I can.
It is not only politically incorrect for them to do so (loose of money and credibility), but they have been brought up to believe evolution is true. Many have worked their entire career attempting to show how evolution works. Attempting to disprove it, although important for scientist to do, likely seems like shooting their own child.

I have no idea if any biologist suffer from delusions. I would have to assume, that they are fairly intelligent if they have a Ph.D. or another advanced degree. And, I doubt there is a worldwide conspiracy. I think that evolution seems to be intuitively sound. Evolution makes a lot of sense and has a lot of merit on face value. More importantly, it is the creation story for all philosophical naturalists. If someone wants to forward the idea that God does not exist then they need a creation story. Enter evolution.

I, again do not know what percentage of Christians accept evolution. As for the Pope, he does not care what mechanism is used to create life as long as God is seen as the initial cause. fundamentalist are likely the only one's to argue against evolution since it spits in the face of their beliefs.


I don't think that there is room in the scientific community for other theories to counter evolution. There would likely be little fame or fortune to be gained for someone to counter it. There have been people who attempted to counter traditional evolution, but they were met with a less than a warm hearing.


I am not a fundamentalist creationist nor a scientist, so I am not going to offer much in regard to info on either side. However, I think that there are problems in the theory of evolution that should be looked into, instead of being brushed off.

I doubt you will ever here anything in regard to a scientific theory from a fundamentalist Christian on evolution, b/c few if any are going to pursue a career in the scientific community. I mean why would you go into a field that is completely counter to your personal beliefs. Of course, doing so might be better for them in the long run.

Once again, evolution is a scientific theory (or claims to be) and most, if not all, fundamentalist creationists do not form their beliefs on scientific facts. I know that most people in this community do form beliefs on scientific facts. This seems to annoy most of the people in this forum, but why do you even care. I don't think the ideas from fundamentalist creationists are going to take over the scientific community anytime soon. I don't disagree with evolution per se, but I just find some flaws in the theory and think that it should be investigated more.

I would go on and answer a few more, but I have to go now (I am at work). Like I said, I don't really have anything against evolution. I think that it is a nice theory, but there are flaws in it, and instead of getting defensive about it why not look into it and investigate. That is what science is supposed to do. Science is supposed to attempt to disprove it's theories, as best it can. However, scientist most often study evolution with the assumption that it is a self-evident fact, instead of a framework in which to view the natural progression of life on Earth.

I think that both followers of evolution and creationism have some common ground. Both want to preserve their creation story, no matter what the cost.

Primemover

P.S. Its been fun reading stuff on this site.