Jesus wept, Darwin hysterically cried?

Just as wolves still survive though all dogs came from wolves, so the ancient ancestor of horses could still survive though all horses came from it. That is not an objection at all! Not that I actually accept the identification between the modern animal and the ancestral animal that you propose. And in the series as a whole, due to the haphazard nature of fossilization, it will sometimes come about that an ancestral species in a chain will be represented by a later descendant of that ancestral species from the time the species split into two or more branches. That does not make the representation false; it is merely dealing with the fossils as we are able to find them. Modern wolves, after all, are very much like the wolves from which dogs came.

You will be glad to learn, I'm sure, that as a theistic evolutionist I DO accept the whale and the horse as being a magnificent creation of God Almighty which He caused to be created by the process of evolution. No doubt this will ease your mind on that score at least.

And the science of Darwin does not live or die with his health, mental or physical. It lives or dies with the evidence. There is no point in exaggerating his health problems, which no doubt could have been treated to very good effect today with modern medications.

 

Yeah science has been able to aid and even cure all kinds of sicknesses and even to collide a space probe with a comet millions of miles away but it's completely clueless with respect to what the evidence from creation tells us.

 

"Evolutionist propaganda about marine mammals resembles the 'horse series' that was once put forward in the same way, but which evolutionists then admitted was invalid."

False assertion. Please show where evolutionary biologists have admitted that horse evolution is invalid.

"A number of extinct mammals that lived at different times were lined up behind one another, and the evolutionists of the time tried to impose this as 'firm evidence.' Yet the truth emerged over time, and it was realized that these animals could not be each others' ancestors, that they had emerged in different periods, and that they were actually independent extinct species."

Again, please justify this assertion that it is not possible for any members of the horse series to be ancestors or descendants of one another.

"Horse evolution is supposed to be the end all and be all to prove that horses evolved yet they are teaching the kids in school some crazy things. Like these horses are evolving but the truth is they don't tell them that it starts out with eohippus, with 18 pairs of ribs and then you keep going on to the next generation and then you can't make up how many ribs they are supposed to have."

I am not sure what point you are trying to make here. The number of ribs changed with time. But you do not even make it that far. You claim that we don't know how many ribs they had. Please explain how this is supposed to falsify the series. It does not make sense to me.

"It is made up by [H.C. Marsh] 1874 from fossils scattered across the world and not from the same location, which was Lucy's problem, scattered over almost two miles at different depths."

First off, you have a glaring error there. YOur source is claiming that the remains of "Lucy" were scattered over a great distance. This is not true and is known to not be true. I do not know why your source would feel the need to misrepresent the data if he thought he was right.

Second, please tell us which horse fossils you think were too far scattered from one another to be valid. I believe that most of the major fossils are all found in North America and that only a few side branches are found elsewhere. If you think you have a point, prove me wrong.

Here is a chart from a young earth's web site that shows where the various fossils were found, if that helps. But you will see that only a few deadends were outside of North America.

http://www.biblicalcreation.org.uk/images/MacFadden.gif

Besides, just how long do you think that it took for the animals to radiate to all parts of the world after the flood? Now explain why this is not a problem yet horse ancestors moving around on timescales thousands even hundreds of thousands of times longer is a problem.

"Modern Horses are found in layers with or lower than ancient horses, if you believe in the geologic column that presents a problem for your theory."

First off, just because a new branch evolves does not mean that the old branch dies out.

Second, just what genera do you think overlap enough to be a problem? Be specific. Ususally when you press this issue you find that while the claim is made as if genera from the beginning and end are found together, it turns out to just be overlap between two very closely related genera. Another misreprsentation that I cannot understand.

"The ancient horse is not a horse but is like the [Hirex] still alive today, I have seen one in a zoo. "

Let me show you something. This is Hyracotherium.



This is a hyrax.



If you still think they are the same species, we'll discuss further.

"He gathered animals from all over the world and arranged them in the order he thought they would have evolved, though the animals are not found in the right order."

Yawn. You have been challenged above to support this misrepresentation if you can.

"Dr. Niles Eldredge, curator of Invertebrate Paleontology..."

Yes but your source misrepresents the quote by not telling you what he found "lamentable." At the time of the display, few horse fossil were known and they were arranged in a simple, gradual order. By the time of the quote, many more fossils were known and the pattern was known to be very bushy and jerky. His problem was that the display had not been updated to reflect the state of the art.

" If you believe the geologic column then it disputes the whale evolution theory because whales appear suddenly as a full funtioning creature with complex mechanisms so contrary to what you claim as clear cut proof of evolution "

Another assertion you will have to defend. I don't see how you can say something appeared suddenly that leaves a trail of transitionals such as akicetus, Ambulocetus, Dalanistes, Rodhocetus, Tackrecetus, Indocetus, Gaviocetus, Durodon, and Basilosaurus.

"There is no proven evidence that whales evolved from land mammals."

Yes there is.

http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi/topic/66/23.html?

" The changes would have to be rapid and it doesn't happen rapid according to evolution."

I did not know that tens of millions of years was too rapid for evolution. Perhaps you can support your assertion.

[snipped link on whales]

You want to detail any specific problems to discuss?

[snipped link on pseudogenes]

I just do not know how this is supposed to help your case.

In the case of whales, the pseudogenes are an important clue. Let's see why.

There are two basic classes of scent organs. One type detects water born odors and is used by animals in the water. The other type detects air born odors and is used by land dwelling animals. Now whales have only the dozens of genes that are used to make a land dwelling sense of smell. Futhermore, since these genes are useless to the whales, the genes have mutated to useless forms. Now if whales were formed recently and perfectly from nothing, why would they be given dozens of useless pseudogenes for a land based sense of smell and none for a marine sense of smell?

[snip whale fairly tale link]

Again, bring forward anything specific you would like to discuss. And just why are you using an Islamic website for support?

" If the YEC leaders had mental health issues as Darwin...we would certainly be called out!"

And if they did, it would still be a logical fallacy and not a reason to accept or reject an assertion.

" Evolutionists I have dealt with have referred to creationist as being wacko even though the evidence is clearly on our side and evolution evidence is lacking."

Except that this assertion cannot be supported.

 

I'm told most of the beneficial breakthroughs in medical science, immunizations, anesthesia, the MRI tool, etc., were made by those who rejected naturalism as a valid philosophy.

Advances in physical science were pioneered by theistic creationists as well, Newton, Einstein, Faraday, etc.

What has evolutionary "science" brought us other than ignorance,death and medical malpractice?

 

There is no evidence of the evolution of the horse. It would be just like me lining up the skeletons of different breeds of dogs from chiuaua to great dane and saying this proved the evolution of the dog.

It's an arbitrary assumption, not an inference drawn from facts.

 

There is no evidence of the evolution of the horse. It would be just like me lining up the skeletons of different breeds of dogs from chiuaua to great dane and saying this proved the evolution of the dog.

It's an arbitrary assumption, not an inference drawn from facts. </font>[/QUOTE]First off, just what does your statement have to do with whether his statement is true that "evolutionists then admitted [that the horse sequence] was invalid."

Second off, I remember reading about someone doing just that with the dog breeds a year or two ago. Except that they did not fit together by size. They were actually able to trace back the origins of the various brreds and groups of breeds.

Next, you act like the fossil record is the only source of information. You ignore all the other pieces of evidence. Even within just the fossil record, you have no ability to offer another explanation of why we see a pattern of fossils that connect very different animals rather nicely. You cannot explain the order of the fossils. Why are they not all found mixed together?

You cannot tell us why the fossil record that connects horses and rhinos agrees with genetic testing that shows them to be closely related.

You cannot tell us why modern horses are occasionally born with atavisms that express traits that we see in the fossil ancestors. Such as lef bones like the ancestors instead of modern horses. Such as atavistic toes instead of the splints that these have evolved into in modern horses.

It is the whole of the creation that you must deal with. You can try and raise doubt by ignoring thes things, but you make a weak case if you are forced to do so.

 

Connected?? How? Morphology?

Again, closely related? How? The presence of similar sequences?

The point is, that to draw the conclusion that these things are related one must come to them with certain presuppositions. Common traits are not evidence in and of themselves of cause or effect. They can only mean such if you come to them with the premise that life forms gradually evolve into diverse species.

Interpret the same evidence with a creationist premise, and they're evidence of a common designer.

You're jumping to conclusions here, too. What is the purpose of the "splint," and what is the evidence that one changed into another?

Besides, one-toed and three-toed horses co-existed (National Geographic of January 1981, p.74)

No, it's just that folks generally know when a thing is proven and when it's not. Consider the failure of Evolutionists over the last century to persuade the public of its truth.

 

Uh - Aaron - will you be willing to accept the cosmology views of Einstein as to the age of the universe and the truth of evolution? Is that why you included him in the list?

 

Connected?? How? Morphology?
</font>[/QUOTE]Yes. Evolution explains why it is possible to put the fossils together in an evolutionary tree order. If things were merely created separately, it would not be possible to put the fossils together in an evolutionary tree order, because no consistent evolutionary tree history would exist.

Again, closely related? How? The presence of similar sequences?
</font>[/QUOTE]Exactly the same way we prove fatherhood and motherhood, we prove species related to species. Similarity of genetic structure, both in the shared positive constructive genes and in the shared junk dna including shared retro-viral inserts.

So far, the premise that life has one grand shared common history fits the facts very well. The alternative premise, that a designer individually crafted different species and used common design features faced with common problems in design, does not mesh with the facts.

For example, take hollow bones for aiding flight. Why is every flying bird, no matter what size, provided with hollow bones, while every flying bat, no matter what size, is denied them? The common problem is there. Where is the common solution? The evolution theory says that the particular mutations that led to hollow bones just never happened to come along to the bats at any point, leaving them to struggle along without that advantage. Its another example of the evidence for one true tree of common descent of all life.

Another example, the atavistic legs of whales, always present in the embryo, on rare occasion seen in the adult animal. Leg making genes persist, therefore, in a totally sea-going animal.

It would be like seeing sockets for buggy whips still present in our cars. It is evidence that the design process did not use omniscience to design the whales.

I am unwilling to take away the attribute of omniscience from my concept of God. Your willingness to do so in defense of your theology is strange to me.

You're jumping to conclusions here, too. What is the purpose of the "splint," and what is the evidence that one changed into another?</font>[/QUOTE]The evidence comes with the occasional atavistic showing of the extra toes - they are obviously the splints showing larger. And they don't do anything for the horse, as the horse ages, they are simply hardened into the bone of the leg and become solid with it anyway.

I want everyone to take notice of this remark, because it shows the total lack of reasoning on the part of this creationist about the evolutionary process. He cites this as if it were somehow evidence against the evolution of horses. But I challenge anybody to come up with a scenario true to evolutionary premises in which one toed and three toed horses did NOT coexist at some time together! It can't be done! They had be together at one time, and then the better toes won.

Oh, we can save a lot of money by not building any more super colliders or space probes or trials of new medications. We'll just take public opinion polls to find out what the truth is - that's the way to do science, right?

 

I included Einstein in the list because he was a theist, or, more accurately, a Deist. He did not believe in a personal god, but he did believe in a divine order of things.

 

I believe in God also, just like you and Einstein. Does that mean you'll accept Einstein's and my views on evolution and the age of the universe?

 

Of course not. My point, which you haven't rebutted, is that most of the really helpful advances in science came from those who believe in a Creator.

Einstein was a physicist. He worked with math and laws which he did not believe evolved, but were created. He did not believe the laws of nature were cluttered with a host of vestigial principles.

Had he been a biologist, he probably would have died in obscurity as many scientists do now.

For instance, if our tonsils and appendices were really atavisms, as was commonly thought, there is no motivation to find out what they do or how to treat them when they're unhealthy, we just take them out. In fact, in looking at humans, we don't see well-ordered systems functioning as created, yet under a curse, we see systems stifled and polluted with useless, resource-consuming evolutionary holdovers.

This kind of thinking is not very conducive to any real advances--or of mercy, either.

What should be done with the mentally ill, retarded or deformed humans? We try to nip these things in the bud by early detection and abortion. Why look for ways to treat them?

 

You will never find a reason for mercy in pure science. You will find better ways of practicing mercy by means of science, but science itself is not able to establish values.

This does not mean we are doomed to live without values. It means we must look beyond science to find values.

It is not the fault of science that it discovered that the universe is billions of years old and all life on earth has a common origin. That was a discovery waiting for us to find. It is not the fault of science that people treat other people inhumanely based on their race, illnesses, religion, or whatever. It shows the need for us to adopt better values, and we had better be clear what they are and where we can find them - and we won't find them in science!

HINT - I advise using God's Word for a good source of appropriate values.

 

Again, you're just assuming things. Your assumption is that if God created each species seperately, He would not have given them certain traits in common.

But you have nothing in nature or in Scripture to base that assumption on. It's completely arbitrary. In fact, nature would strongly suggest otherwise. Consider the wing or the eye. If your intention is to give your creatures in a certain universe, ours for example, 3D, binocular, color vision, how different can the basic elements be?

Or if you want to give your creatures flight, could you give them flight without wings? You could give them wings without flight, but could you give them flight without wings?

And in these eyes and wings, how many different variations could really exist before the design would cease to work in the world you created them for?

But more than that, try to imagine the evolution of the eye or the wing. Any intermediary stage of such would only serve as a disadvantage to the species. Can you imagine an intermediary stage?

You can't. No one can. The eye had to suddenly appear in its sophisticated and complex state before it could have been any use, and that is physically impossible.

Again, closely related? How? The presence of similar sequences?
</font>[/QUOTE]Exactly the same way we prove fatherhood and motherhood, we prove species related to species. Similarity of genetic structure, both in the shared positive constructive genes and in the shared junk dna including shared retro-viral inserts.</font>[/QUOTE]But, you see, that again is only evidence of relation if interpreted with certain premises. We know that humans come from humans. We see it everyday and have seen it for thousands of years. We also know that half our DNA comes from Dad, and the other half comes from Mom. Therefore a close similarity indicates the probability that a certain fellow is my Dad.

But no one ever saw a horse come from a rhino, or a rhino from a horse, or anything remotely resembling such.

Ever.

It's still only a presupposition that similar sequences indicate that one or the other is related.

And "junk" DNA is really only DNA that we don't know anything about. I don't think it's safe to assume it is junk, especially since evolutionists don't have a glittering track record in identifying vestigial organs.

What problem? Bats can fly very well without hollow bones or avian lungs, but...

Can they fly as high or as far as a bird? Do they need to? Did God want them to? What are the main differences in avian or mammalian flight, their purposes and patterns?

You see, you're the one who is not looking at all the information, and you're still coming at the "problem" with a certain presupposition. A bat's method and means of flight is perfectly suited to it's manner of existence.

Solution to what. What "struggle"? You think that because bats don't fly like birds they're disadvantaged? This, again, is arbitrary assumption.

And concerning mutations, can you name one occurance of a mutation that was observed to to resulte in an advantage for an organism?

Every mutation ever observed was the result of corrupted DNA info, and has always resulted in weakness or death.

Every one.

Always.

Never has anyone ever seen a genetic mutation occur that gave someone an advantage.

Ever.

And doctors and scientists and highschool freshman have observed and documented millions of occurances of mutated genes.

Now, we're just supposed to believe that the only beneficial mutations were the ones we haven't been watching?

I want everyone to take notice of this remark, because it shows the total lack of reasoning on the part of this creationist about the evolutionary process. He cites this as if it were somehow evidence against the evolution of horses. But I challenge anybody to come up with a scenario true to evolutionary premises in which one toed and three toed horses did NOT coexist at some time together! It can't be done! They had be together at one time, and then the better toes won.</font>[/QUOTE]Lack of reasoning? Just how common was this beneficial mutation?

 

(sigh) you've missed the whole point of the hollow bones in birds and solid bones in bats. Birds with their hollow bones are able to combine strength with lightness and this represents an advantage in achieving flight.

Your assumption is that faced with common problems, the creator would use a common solution, which explains the commonalities we see that evolution tries to explain.

Your assumption fails to explain why the creator failed to use the solution for combining strength with lightness that was used in birds, namely hollow bones. It is found to be non-predictive; it fails this simple observational test.

Evolution theory explains why we never see hollow bones in bats. Special creation theory founders on this example. Same thing for feathers. There's no real reason to never have placentas and feathers in the same flying creature except for the seperate evolutionary history.

Special creation theory cannot explain why we never see a feathered placental flying animal.

Well, some animals have the nerves that collect the data from the retina on the forward side of the retina, others have the nerves that collect the data from the retina on the back side of the retina. A human designer would automatically think of putting the receptors in front of the nerves. That design in fact works fine with the average octopus, but we don't get to have that design. This design feature, however, can be traced in the same tree of life postulated by evolution.

That is evidence for evolution.

Try this. Find any human that has defective eyesight. Some humans can barely tell light from dark, some humans can only see things in very blurred fashion. These humans exist.

There, I've met the second part of your challenge, which is, can you imagine an intermediary stage.

Now, talk to your new friend. Ask him if he would be willing to give up the limited vision he has for absolutely no vision at all. You already know what he will say, he will say "no way!"

There, I've met the first part of your challenge, which is to figure out how a partially functioning eye could be of any use.

It is beyond me to try to fathom the reasoning you are suggesting here. These simple common sense facts are clearly against you.

As for partial wings, think about so called flying squirrels . . .

You are aware, of course, of the pace of evolution according to evolution theory. In other words, it won't happen in a single lifetime, and we haven't been watching for such changes. The evolutionary history is inferred from current observations, including the observation of extinct species dating back millions of years ago.

And it is your presupposition that they do not, made with no evidence to back it up.

Lots of the dna is known to have instructions preceding them to skip them. Some of the dna represent broken bits . . . like, for example, our genes for making vitamin c. That gene was damaged, not in Adam or anybody after him, but in a genetic predecessor of Adam, that also passed on that defective gene to other primates.

Either that or the designer copied the same mistake over and over in all the others. That once again means you choose to believe in a less than omniscient designer. I really have to wonder at your theology.

Alternatively, you can believe that the same accident happened over and over again in exactly the same way in the vitamin c making gene. That simply would not have happened. Damage like that happens arbitrarily in arbitrary places, not exactly the same way in every place.

In other words, you have no explanation to give us why no bat ever has hollow bones like all birds do, from the smallest hummingbird through the insect eaters like the swallows, the aquatic birds like the ducks, the huge albotross and vultures . . . .

You've never heard about bugs evolving means of resisting pesticides, bacteria evolving means to resist antibiotics? I'm sorry you've led such a sheltered life.

Amoung humans, there is a community in Italy near Milan that doesn't get atherosclorisis. The individual that first had this trait has been identified.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mutations.html#Q2

From now on, if you are an honest debater, you will never say a beneficial mutation has never been observed. You may say it is rare, you might try to say it happens infrequently, but now that you know better you can never say it never happens again.

 

No. My assumption is that bats do not have hollow bones nor avian lungs because they do not need them for the kind of flight God intended.

That is my assumption, and it is just as valid as assuming that natural selection gave bats wings at all.

But my question is again: what problem is trying to be solved? Who said bats have a problem flying? Because they can't fly as well as birds? Who said they had to?

Creation itself was a special, supernatural intervention of God. It is non-predictive by virtue of that fact.

But my point was, that a lack of feathers and hollow bones are not major differences. In basic design and function, a bat's wings are more like a birds wings than they are different. If they were too different, a bat would not possess controlled, powered flight.

Cut some big holes in the flaps of skin on a bat's wings, and see how well it flies.

Except that you have to have evidence. I can make up any story I want about how things happen or why, but to be taken seriously, I have to have evidence of intermediary stages in gradual development of these complex systems. Describe the gradual development of the wing--with evidence, please.

Well, some animals have the nerves that collect the data from the retina on the forward side of the retina, others have the nerves that collect the data from the retina on the back side of the retina. A human designer would automatically think of putting the receptors in front of the nerves. That design in fact works fine with the average octopus, but we don't get to have that design. This design feature, however, can be traced in the same tree of life postulated by evolution. </font>[/QUOTE]No it can't be traced. It can only be assumed based on morphology, and morphology is not evidence of common origin. The systems for sight suddenly appear in their final forms, but as with the wing, eyes are more alike than they are different.

</font>[/QUOTE]What do you mean you answered my challenge? How are defective eyes in an individual an example of an intermediary stage? We know his ancestors had fully functional eyes. His problem with sight is a defect, a corruption of DNA information. This is your answer to my challenge?

Try again. Describe the intermediary stages in the evolution of eyesight in a species without it to a species with it.

Puh-leeze! The fact he can sense light at all is evidence of a complex system. Describe the process that gradually gave him corneas, retinas, irises, lenses, maculae, and a host of other elements, working together in a system more complex than any camera imagined by men. What came first? A rogue cell in the brain or an accidental optic nerve? What advantage was gained by this accidental mutation?

The fact is that you can't describe any functional intermediary stage.

Flying squirrels do not have wings. They're not even partial wings. They do not possess powered or controlled flight.

But, why stop there, get me from the flap of skin between the fore and rear legs on a rodent to a bat's wing.

You can't do it, can you?

But that's okay, neither can Michael Denton. He is an avowed evolutionist, but effectively derailed Darwinism as a viable evolutionary theory in his book "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis". He is a more prominent and knowledgable scientist than yourself, and he says that the systems such as the eye or the wing are irreducibly complex and had to have "suddenly appeared."

You are aware, of course, of the pace of evolution according to evolution theory. In other words, it won't happen in a single lifetime, and we haven't been watching for such changes. The evolutionary history is inferred from current observations, including the observation of extinct species dating back millions of years ago. </font>[/QUOTE]That's the point. You have no evidence other than arbitrary assumptions about what may have happened.

Who was Adam's predecessor? You see? Assumptions. No evidence.

You don't have to wonder too long, because my theology includes the Fall, and Judgment. Everything we see today is in a state of decay because of God's judgment on sin, and if left to itself, will finally die out. This explanation fits the evidence so much better than Darwinism.

In other words, you have no explanation to give us why no bat ever has hollow bones like all birds do, from the smallest hummingbird through the insect eaters like the swallows, the aquatic birds like the ducks, the huge albotross and vultures . . . . </font>[/QUOTE]You say it evolved, I say it was created that way. How is your explanation superior?

No, the bugs, don't change, the populations change. The bugs that already had a resistance to pesticides or antibiotics survived, reproduced and now you have a resistent population. The resistance was already there, it just multiplied. There were no mutations.

The information is incomplete. What do they get instead? Just like the sickle cell anemia example on the same page. Those folks don't get malaria easily, but their blood cells are still deformed and less efficient, and their deformed because of a corruption of genetic information.

Anyway, I'm done in this thread. Face it. Darwinism is dead. Read Denton's book.

 

You may be through with this thread, but your misinformation needs to be corrected before it infects anyone else. I must divide your posts up so it will take multiple replies.

"But that's okay, neither can Michael Denton. He is an avowed evolutionist, but effectively derailed Darwinism as a viable evolutionary theory in his book 'Evolution: A Theory in Crisis'. He is a more prominent and knowledgable scientist than yourself, and he says that the systems such as the eye or the wing are irreducibly complex and had to have 'suddenly appeared.'"

Your source has lied to you by not being complete. When he wrote the book, he was a young earther. He has since wrtitten another book called Nature's Destiny in which he shows where all he had to say in the first book was wrong. Why don't you read that book if you find Denton to be a credible source.

"And concerning mutations, can you name one occurance of a mutation that was observed to to resulte in an advantage for an organism?

Every mutation ever observed was the result of corrupted DNA info, and has always resulted in weakness or death.

Every one.

Always.

Never has anyone ever seen a genetic mutation occur that gave someone an advantage.

Ever."

Again, your sources must keep you in the dark about the truth in order for you to be able to make such a claim. They are not honest.

But there are ways to make new genes without being harmful. One way is duplication and mutation. The mutation can take many different forms. Here is one example.

"Adaptive evolution after gene duplication," Hughes AL, Trends Genetics, 2002 Sep.18(9):433-4.

A gene was duplicated and one of the copies mutated to give rise to a new function.

In a variation on this theme, two genes that have been duplicated can be combined into a new gene. Here is an example of that.

"Selective sweep of a newly evolved sperm-specific gene in Drosophila," Nurminsky DI, Nurminskaya MV, De Aguiar D, Hartl DL, Nature. 1998 Dec 10;396(6711):572-5.

Another way to produce new proteins exists without even having to mutate the genes. It is called alternative splicing. Genes consists of exon and intron sections. During the process of converting the DNA to protein, the introns are removed and the exons spliced together. Yet organisms can change this splicing such that while the original protein is still made, a new protein is also made by various changes to the process. Maybe an intron is not removed. Maybe an extra exon is removed. There are even more complicated examples. In each case, a new protein is formed from the same raw genetic material without changing the protein that works. When you add point mutations and the copying around of transposable elements, this becomes an even better way to make new proteins.

Another way to get new proteins is to get them from other species. An example. A retrovirus can insert its genetic material into its host. Sometimes this happens in a germ line cell and the virus DNA gets passed on. It happens often enough that a sizable percentage of our DNA are retroviral inserts. These genes can also be subject to mutation and might be made into something useful. Here is an example of that happening.

"Syncytin is a captive retroviral envelope protein involved in human placental morphogenesis," Mi S, Lee X, Li X, Veldman GM, Finnerty H, Racie L, LaVallie E, Tang XY, Edouard P, Howes S, Keith JC Jr, McCoy JM, Nature 2000 Feb 17;403(6771):785-9.

---

Let's look specifically at the evolution of resistance to the antibiotic vancomycin.

Vancomycin works by attacking the D-alanyl-D-alanine in the cell wall of the bacterium. There are two genes, VanR and VanS, whose job is to make proteins to detect the presence of vancomycin. When detected, a cascade of other enzymes are created to protect the cell. VanH starts by converting precursor materials into D-lactate. VanA then joins the D-lactate with D-alanyl to make D-alanyl-D-lactate, instead of D-alanyl-D-alanine which is usually used in the cell wall. VanX hydrolyzes the D-alanyl-D-alanine that is still being made before it can be used in the cell wall.

This is the usual process, but there are variations. Some bacteria have VanB instead of VanA to make D-alanyl-D-lactate. Some bacteria replace the D-alanyl instead and make D-serine-D-alanine component instead of D-alanyl-D-lactate.

Once the resistance evolved, it was spread through plasmids.

---

Here is a short list of documented cases of beneficial mutations I posted on another thread. A little time with pubmed and you could make a list pages long if you knew how to search effectively.

"Selective sweep of a newly evolved sperm-specific gene in Drosophila," Nurminsky DI, Nurminskaya MV, De Aguiar D, Hartl DL, Nature. 1998 Dec 10;396(6711):572-5.

"Adaptive evolution after gene duplication," Hughes AL, Trends Genetics, 2002 Sep.18(9):433-4.

"Accelerated protein evolution and origins of human-specific features: Foxp2 as an example," Zhang J, Webb DM, Podlaha O, Genetics. 2002 Dec;162(4):1825-35.

"Syncytin is a captive retroviral envelope protein involved in human placental morphogenesis," Mi S, Lee X, Li X, Veldman GM, Finnerty H, Racie L, LaVallie E, Tang XY, Edouard P, Howes S, Keith JC Jr, McCoy JM, Nature 2000 Feb 17;403(6771):785-9.

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"Einstein was a physicist. He worked with math and laws which he did not believe evolved, but were created. He did not believe the laws of nature were cluttered with a host of vestigial principles.

Had he been a biologist, he probably would have died in obscurity as many scientists do now."

Where do you get the idea that Eistein would have been an obscure biologists if he had gone into that field and why does it matter to the discussion.

Next question... JUst what is a "vestigial principles" in physics?

Finally, we should look at Einstein in the area in which he was qualified. Einstein, one of the greatest physicists ever, accepted the Big Bang origin of the universe. Why should we not trust him? How is his opinion much different than those you argue against here who accept, as you have asserted about Einstein, that God made the laws of the universe and the universe obeys His rules?

"For instance, if our tonsils and appendices were really atavisms, as was commonly thought, there is no motivation to find out what they do or how to treat them when they're unhealthy, we just take them out."

Tonsils and appendices are not atavistic. They might be vestigal, but they are not atavsitic.

Not those tails that some babies are born with, they are atavistic.

"But more than that, try to imagine the evolution of the eye or the wing. Any intermediary stage of such would only serve as a disadvantage to the species. Can you imagine an intermediary stage?"

Yes, many in fact.

You and Paul were going at this from the wrong direction. You should go it it from the beginning and not the end.

Do you not think that being able to sense light is better than not being able to sense light? Then you see the advantage of an eyespot.

Do you think you can see an advantage if this spot were to be made a bit concave? Perhaps protection from damage? Perhaps a bit more surface area allowing it to detect finer changes in light intensity? Once the pit is about as deep as it is wide, you have the simple eye like flatworms have.

If the top of the pit begins to close in, visual acuity increases because the eye now begins to resemble that of a pinhole camera. A nautilus is a good example of an animal with this eye.

From here, do you see the advantage of a clear covering for protection? A clear covering is easy to make. For instance, a common way to simply destroy most of the components of a cell that make it opaque, like in our own eyes.

Once you have the clear covering, can you see the advantage in making it a bit thicker and changing its shape a bit to focus light better?

Once you have lens, the eye must flatten out a bit to give optimum focus. And what do you know, you have evolved a fish eye. Each step can be shown to have conveyed an advantage over the previous step. No step required any particular great leap, it was just a slight modification of the previous step. We even have examples of animals that use those incomplete intermediate steps to success.

"And "junk" DNA is really only DNA that we don't know anything about."

Wrong. We know what a lot of the "junk" is. A few percent are made up of stretches of virus DNA that has been inserted into the genome through the years by retrovirii**. Some are genes that have been disabled due to mutation, such as the vitamin C pseudogene you carry around which happens to be the same Vitamin C pseudogene that all primates carry around. Some are transposable elements that seem to be very easily duplicated and copied around the geneome. Some are paralogs, genes that have been duplicated.

**Here is an interesting consequence for you to explain to us if you return.

Humans and the other apes and primates share insertions that demonstrate their common ancestry. (The quote is "Therefore, an ERV locus shared by two or more species is descended from a single integration event and is proof that the species share a common ancestor into whose germ line the original integration took place." - "Constructing primate phylogenies from ancient retrovirus sequences," Welkin E. Johnson and John M. Coffin, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 96, Issue 18, 10254-10260, August 31, 1999.) In a young earth hypothesis, this is a major problem. You would have to assume that the humans and all the "kinds" (whatever that may be) of primates and apes were infected by the same combination of virii, that they all inserted the exact same sequence in the same place, and that all these insertions were fixed into the various species.

Furthermore, since these insertions are common between essentially all humans, in a young earth they all must have taken place in the (about) ten generations between the creation and the last common ancestor (Noah) and none have taken place since. Unlikely.

 

Thank God for you UTEOTW. I used to think you were fighting in futility but I've learned so much from these threads that even if you never do change a single mind here it's still worth knowing you've given your opponents enough information to make them accountable.

I'd have found it far too difficult to break down the arguments as simply as you present them.

 

"But more than that, try to imagine the evolution of the eye or the wing. Any intermediary stage of such would only serve as a disadvantage to the species. Can you imagine an intermediary stage?"

We looked at the eye, let's look at the wing.

One problem that perplexed scientists for a while was how did birds evolve the powered upstroke used in powered flight. It is a crucial element of flight but it was not known how it originated. Explaining the evolution of flight seemed to face a problem.

But then additional theropod dinosaur fossils began to pour in. Theropod dinosaurs are those like t-rex and velociraptor in the Jurassic Park movies. If you mentally picture t-rex you can visualize the short, stubby front arms they possessed. It is reasonable to ask how those could have become wings.

As it turns out, as additional fossils were found, they discovered that the smaller theropods evolved progressively longer front limbs which they likely used for grasping prey. As this trait developed, the front arms had a number of adaptations to improve this feature. Some of these included things like the fused bones that we call a wishbone. Examination of these limbs showed that they moved in the same motion as the powered upstroke of powered flight. So the equipment evolved for one purpose and was then co-opted for flight later. Flight was not the goal.

You see the same thing with feathers. Many different theropods, including tyrannasoids, have been found with feathers in different stages of development. One dinosaur, Caudipteryx, had a full suit of symmetric tail feathers. Since this was not a flying animal, the feathers evolved for some other purpose. Two possibilities, which are not mutually exclusive it should be pointed out, are they they were used for display and that they were used for warmth, both of which are uses of feathers today. You even have dinosaurs such as Microraptor which had all four legs covered in asymmetric flight feathers but was only capable of gliding as it lacked the necessary skeletomuscular development needed for powered flight.

But these two different aspects of flight can be shown to have evolved in concert with each other but for very different reasons. Only later were the traits combined into a new, useful feature, flight. But you should also be able to see that there was benefit all along, contrary to your assertion.

But the problem here is that some misrepresent what can be shown to have happened by asking such questions as "What good is half an eye" or "What good is half a wing." By misrepresenting the way things happened, they ask questions which to you, on the surface, sound like reasonable questions/problems. But they sound as such only because they have no bearing on what happened here in reality. They are at fault for knowingly asking dishonest questions though you must share some of the blame for not checking to see if the questions were valid before repeating them.