suggestions?

EF I notice you tend to belittle the views of people who disagree with you. I would hope you would be more diplomatic in your lectures.
To be honest, I know nothing of your qualifications to give University lectures on these topics. Do you have a Ph.D. in some biological or scientific field? I'm not asserting that a PhD is a requirement. I am just curious as to your scientific background and/or your major published research findings in these areas. After all, most guest lecturers I know of are invited for their particular area of expertise. What sort of colleges lecture on the topics you mentioned?

 

What angle are you going to focus on (I realize the YEC angle), I mean are you going to be going over science? Over important people? Important events in the news (discoveries, etc)? Are you going to be mentioning Christianity, or strictly stick to the issues?

 

Really you need to provide more information on what audience you're actually lecturing to. However, I can give you a general idea of what I would expect to constitute a good discussion of creationism, ID and evolution (my apologies if this sounds patronising).
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• Establish why you believe in creationism as literally described in the Bible. You will need to provide evidence for Biblical inerrancy here.</font>
• Use positive evidences for ID/creationism wherever possible. Poking holes in current evolutionary theory may be fun, but it doesn't prove any alternate model. Many scientists will just say that your shortcomings (assuming they're valid points) are just areas that need more research. Stuff that I would like to see positive evidence for is:
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  • Scientific evidence (geological, genetic, etc) for a global flood in recent history</font>
  • Archaelogical evidence for a gathering of the post-flood peoples in one place until the Tower of Babel incident.</font>
  • Evidence for a young age for the universe.</font>
  • Explanations for evidence that contradicts creationism. Try to stick to science and avoid arguments like, "The Bible says so," or calls to special miracles ("Goddidit").</font>
• Do make sure to open the floor for questions. I find that a person who can answer even difficult questions convincingly will go a long way towards winning an audience.</font>

Make sure you provide handouts for people so they can look at your references. It's very hard to get across stuff like Setterfield's speed of light hypothesis (if you're going to use your husband's work) in a presentation. People will want to read further afterwards.

Things not to do (in as much as these arguments would lose my respect for the lecturer) include:
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• Using arguments from personal incredulity.</font>
• Creating strawmen of evolution.</font>
• Mixing theology and/or philosophy with evolutionary science (which discinctly excludes these fields). Evolution does not encourage immorality, genocide, etc. This argument is a non-sequitur. Also, it will leave you open to attacks on Christianity using the same tactics (assuming there are atheists or people of other religions in your audience).</font>
• Effectively bearing false witness against scientists by generalising specific incidents of malpractice. Sure some scientists fall into sin, but the same accusation could equally be applied to creationists.</font>

Good luck with your lecturing!

Andrew

 

Helen,

I would suggest avoiding any discussion of dating methods, especially the C-14 method. That way you will not repeat some of the mistaken information on your web site.

 

Well, when you're talking about the notions of evolutionists, be sure to mention how they think evolution works, including these points:

a) A population exists with stable numbers

b) mutations occur randomly from time to time

c) In the generations that follow, some of the mutations wind up hindering the individual members of the population and they are therefore reduce in number, eventually eliminated

d) Other mutations wind up helping the individual members of the population and they are therefore increased in number, eventually becoming the standard for the population.

The process repeats, and the accumulation of the beneficial mutations is evolution.

 

I'm thinking of a population that has reached the limit in terms of numbers. It can't support any more due to food limitations, space limitations, whatever . . .

Well, all the organisms get "deleted" - they die - and the next generation replaces them of course. But the next generation is going to have more numbers than the environment can support, in my "stable" scenario, so the extras die without reproducing. This process is going on, as a steady state. This is sets the stage for the next steps.

I didn't mention sexual reproduction, its an add on to the outline I presented, but it needs to be nentioned somewhere of course, and sexual reproduction of course helps mix genes up, potentially concentrating good genes together and bad genes together. This speeds up getting rid of bad mutations and helps the good ones get established.

Accumulating beneficial mutations?

How about that nylon digesting bacteria example you posted? The reference said there were a number of spot mutations required to get the bacteria to where they were. That's accumulating beneficial mutations!

Not all of them were necessarly beneficial in terms of digestion. Maybe some of them merely facilitated getting rid of the nylon chemical precusors and then one of them made the chemical fragments available to the energy developing pathway . . . .

Another example would be bacteria gaining immunity. Typically a culture does not come completely immune to the antibiotic all at once, there is a period of time when it tolerates higher and higher doses. This would appear to be evidence of a series of mutations that make the colonoy fitter and fitter against the antibiotic.

Of course, we evolutionists say every currently living creature is an example of a massive amount of accumulation of beneficial mutations over deep time.

 

Hmmm. What we have here is a confusion of word meanings. If the population maxes out then one generation after another, the maximum number stays stable, doesn't it? That's the stability I was trying to suggest.

And then the kids take over and the population still has about the same number. That's the replacement of which I was speaking. It needn't be all at once, in the case of humans, there's a lot of overlap due to the adults lasting over several generations sometimes, but the the general idea holds. In our case, we are temporarily in a situation where we have not maxed out the ability of the world to hold our numbers, because of our new technology. That can't last very many more generations. Crunch time will be coming.

Oh yeah, you have a point there. I observed the phenomenon in my little evolution simulator program. You can put in a beneficial mutation and then run a few generations and its gone! You can see it start to take off and then die out!

What works is a long term series with beneficial mutations coming time and again over many many generations then they finally start to take hold.

Well, why don't you say something like, "evolutionists conjecture that given enough time, these little changes we have see will add up enough to explain the changes they see in the fossil record."

 

OK Lessee. Other things you should mention include

VESTIGES - lots and lots of vestiges in species after species

ONE TRUE TREE OF LIFE
- Originally developed by means of morphology alone
- Confirmed by chemical analysis of proteins and
- Now reconfirmed by genetic analysis

LENGTH OF TIME NEEDED FOR EVOLUTION TO TAKE PLACE
- therefore we can't expect to see macro evolution in just a century

Remnants of past development remaining in embryos
(Not as a law but as tendancy)

Predictive value for finding out what intermediate fossils might be out there to look for by estimating between presently known fossils
using "between" in the evolutionary sense

Consistent fossil history showing more complex and larger creatures coming later in time except for mass extinction events

Evidence for deep time history of life - see thread on age of the earth

Hey, I don't claim YOU agree with them, I claim EVOLUTIONISTS agree with them! Perhaps others can suggest some really outa have em topics?

 

OK Its question and answer time, and the audience wants to know why the crazy evolutionists even think of keeping on with their notions, so they ask questions about what evolutionists think. Ready to share what we think? How about these sample questions:

- What do evolutionists think when they are reminded that the second law of thermodynamics specifies entropy must always increase?

- What do evolutionists think when shown a gap in the fossil record between evolutionary steps?

- What do evolutionists say about a complex function in a cell that requires more than 3 or 4 proteins to all work together in concert, and thus would seem to be unable to be evolved a step at a time?

Naturally, you have to give a short answer, others have their hands up. You say . . . ?

 

Something that's personally important to me is that most of the early evidence concerning an old earth, evolution, etc. was discovered by theists and Christians. They begain changing our view of earth's history before Darwin ever pickled his first specimen. Modern science is where it's at today because those people were strong enough in their science and faith to follow the evidence. Even my scientist friends who are athiests appreciate the courage and honesty of those early theistic scientists.

-Neil

 

When did you say you had to be ready? August, right? OK . . .

I certainly admit populations fluctuate. The ratio between predator and prey populations is a classic example of populations fluctuating around a number instead of being steady state right on the average all the time.

But I was trying to suggest the key points of evolution theory for you . . . and that involves limits, death of some, with others left to live and breed. Whether steady state or oscillating erratically about some mean, all populations have to live with that.

When the frogs come back next year - it will be the ones most adept at escaping those gophers and king snakes that will bring on the generation after. That's the point from evolution theory. Suppose that frog jumping muscles were less efficient right now due a poorly implemented energy using protein, and a mutation could improve that protein . . . . . who do you think would live to tell the next generation about the snake that almost got him? And if that mutation only happened once in a million frogs, well, it would happen every year somewhere, wouldn't it?

Oh yes, in the wrong hands, running it and checking what happens could be a source of arguments against evolution, even. (there - if that doesn't intrigue you, what will? hee hee - ) But as to the specific point about a single hopeful mutation not taking, bear in mind that the arrival of a beneficial mutation is a random event anyway, and the one that eventually succeeds is also a random event. You could just as easily pretend all those beneficial mutations that didn't succeed didn't even happen and it would make no difference in the outcome. The only question is - out of those that (a) are random and (b) are beneficial and (c) happen to get established as well - do they come often enough and fast enough?

This is where we need to consider populations and how many there are. Where I run a few hundred individuals God routinely whips up millions and millions of them. Also, there is the matter of the "trials" I run, especially at first. Should they be easier, just more of them to reduce the population? I'm beginning to suspect (based on observation of the difference between going from all 8's to 9's and 5's to 6's) that with lots more of slightly easier trials makes the results come out more favorable to beginning those hopeful, good mutations.

I also can't help but think of the single, positive mutation that fails as a metaphor for the good scientific idea that gets out there and fails to gain acceptance, initially - then someone else propounds it and succeeds, gets all the glory - this has happened time and again in history.

Answer: Because the potential is there. When whales left land and went to the sea one of the things that happened was their shapes became more and more fish like. There are probably many alternative mutations that could have achieved that, and only a few of the near-infinite possibilities were actualized in real whales. Look at dolphins, with that little beak, and compare that with whales and no beak. Different solutions to the streamlining problem.

If you ever play poker, when you win, its not with the same cards, but there are common themes that come out of the winning patterns. That's what happens in evolution. PS I only play for dimes and nickles with relatives, in case anybody is interested, and that about once every 3 or 5 years.

Well, we see all of it we have the right to expect to see, in the short time we've been seriously looking! And I'm unaware of the process alledged to STOP the little changes from adding up on each other! (this is the debate over "kind" barrier, what is it, etc.)

Sure we still speak of vestiges. Take your little toe, for instance. And the one next to it, for that matter. Mention that I can wiggle my ears. Mention the little muscle attached to the immoveable tailbone. Mention those whale hip vestiges. Mention the "dew claw" on cats - and I think on dogs to, isn't it?

I don't think you'll find any serious student of life that will argue that the DNA based life didn't all share a common origin. I guess that leaves the question open for a few viruses out there, and I don't know what else. I'm not a scientist, you know.

Strictily speaking, morphology has not been exactly 100% confirmed by genetics, its more like 98 or 99 per cent, and really, this is about what one would expect, isn't it? Considering how some of the cases were marginal and hard to tell - - - kind of like trying to decide if a particular verse in the Bible is best represented by the Hebrew or the Septuagint . . . probably nobody gets that answer perfectly right every time, see what I mean?

Recapitulation was once proclaimed as if it were a law. It's not a law, but there are recapitulative "vestiges". Like the little fuzzy hair on the human infant that is shed before birth. Like the extra tusks grown by elephant babies that are then absorbed back . . .

Trilobites have shells, that's why we have fossils of them. Something happened in the cambrian era that made shells very popular, that's why fossils really take off then. Perhaps an effective predator against larger life forms evolved? Anyway, the eyes evolved before the shells, thats all.

OK - do you understand my argument from expected slowing of astronomical orbits? "yes" or "no" is all I need for the purposes of this particular thread . . .

OK. Not bad! This particular evolutionists always wants to mention that entropy can in fact be allowed to decrease in one area, as long as entropy is allowed to increase even more somewhere else, and that somewhere else can be shoved away out of the area. Like hauling out the garbage and dumping the mop water after cleaning up the house.

 

Helen
When you are giving your ID lectures, don't talk about evolution at all, leave that for your other lecture.
Simply teach your audience the theory of Intelligent Design, just like you would teach a class the theory of relativity, or how to make cheese.

 

Mioque wrote:

Well, that's what one should do if one wanted to teach the theory of ID as that theory should be rather than as it is actually understood by its adherents. As practiced today ID theory IS mainly anti-evolution. (Dembski's Explanatory Filter may be an exception if it could actually work as advertised.) Behe's irreducible complexity argument, for example, isn't ABOUT ID at all. When he writes about it he's writing about evolution and its supposed problems with IC. Little or nothing is directly said about ID. So I don't see how one could lecture on contemporary ID theory without discussing its antievolutionism.

 

Helen,

You have been involved in discussions of Evolution and creationism for a long time. For many of us, there are a vast multitude of creationist arguments that don't stand up to scrutiny. Have you ever changed your position on any of these issues, when new information has become available to you? By this I mean, have you ever recognized that some creationist arguments are not valid? If so, which creationist claims have you realized are not valid?