The lie of evolution, part II

Yes there is a point there.

A.F.

 

Contains not an ounce of reasoning and lots of sloganeering.

Fails to address specifics of evidence offered and therefore again is mere sloganeering.

On waht basis do you call it arbitrary? Because you can't understand it? How far do you think that argument goes? It leads to everything we don't understand as being arbitrary. I totally reject the premise.</font>[/QUOTE]Fails to take note of the non-arbitrary pattern of evolution, and how the explanation of evolutionary descent acts to remove the arbitrariness being discussed.

So speaks the defense attourny, regardless of the evidence presented against his client. But you have simply ignored the quality of the evidence.

Tell me, just what is it about starlight coming from millions of light years away and therefore traveled for millions of years that is so easy to dismiss?

 

ZIRCON EVIDENCE

What is a Zircon? A zircon is a crystal of Zirconium Oxide. You find them here and there amoung the rocks of earth.

One of the interesting things about a zircon crystal is, when it forms, it excludes lead. The lead atom, you see, is to big to fit inside the crystal lattice. On the other hand, the occasional uranium atom makes it in, because the atom of uranium is smaller. (All those extra protons pull the electron orbits closer, you see.)

On the other hand, when uranium decays, it leaves behind a certain amount of lead. And the lead, trapped in the zirconium crystal, has no place to go.

Its a perfect way to deal with the question of what about pre-existing lead! There is none!

The story of the analysis of some zirconium crystals is found in Scientific American for October 2005, page 59 and following. The amount of lead that accumulated from the uranium decaying in those crystals is consistent with an age for the crystals formation of 4.4 Billion Years. This makes them the oldest ever minerals found on earth. They were found in the Jack Hills of Western Australia. The article is titled "A Cool Early Earth?" and was written by John W. Valley. The article is not about documenting the age of the earth, that is almost incidental to the article. The article is about other interesting things that scientists are very curious about. The confirmation of the age of the earth like this is a very routine thing in geology, but those of you who are interested don't even have to spend a dime - just go read it in the library or browse it on the newstand.

It is, of course, another piece of evidence.

 

Now that we have rambled on for a bit, let's return back to the first page of the thread.

Helen in the OP quoted an attendee of a recent conference. In the quotation, it was mentioned how some recently discovered T-rex fossils had similarities to ostrich blood vessels. So I ran with that.

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/3/3194.html#000004

I took that item and presented a further list of homologies between birds, dinosaurs and other archosaurs. These included such things as feathers up to and including fully formed flight feathers. Four chambered hearts in contrast to the three chambered hearts of other reptiles. The dinosaur reproduction system which is intermediate between that of birds and crocodiles. The pneumatic bones of birds and theropod dinosaurs. There is a tissue, known as the medullary bone, that is only found in extant female birds which has also been found in fossil tyrannosaurs. And developmental homologies such as how the digits develop.

I then said that these observations then allowed me to predict that birds and crocodiles have a more recent common ancestor than crocodiles and other reptiles. Therefore according to evolutionary theory, crocodiles should test as genetically more closely related to birds than to other reptiles.

I then produced four references that show this to be true.

The challenge to YEers is to tell us why you would think that crocodiles should be closer to birds than to other reptiles. We need a logical reason why. We need proposals for how this hypothesis could be tested or falsified. And we need a proposal for how you would differentiate between your hypothesis and common descent based on additional evidence.

 

The same challenge has been issued for whale evolution.

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/66/23.html

In this case we have a variety of evidence to suggest that whales had land dwelling ancestors.

Some of it deals with various pieces of evidence that shows that whales have the genes for making legs.

During development, whales go through a stage with rear legs and feet which are absorbed before birth. Many whales carry around vestigal traces or rear legs and a pelvis. Occasionally, whels are even born with atavistic rear legs with all the right bones and everything. The front flippers of whales have the same morphology as the arms and/or front legs of land dwelling mammals.

Whales also have a curious set of dozens od pseuodogenes which are the same as the genes that land dwelling animals use for their sense of smell. They have none of the genes that marine animals use for detecting odors in water.

There is also a nice fossil record for whales extending back to a land dwelling ancestor from the group of even toed ungulates.

Now, all of this allows me to predict that genetic testing will show whales as being more closely related to living even toed ungulates such as camels and hippos than to anything else.

And wouldn't you know it, they are.

Now we have the same challenge. Please explain all of these observations in a YE paradigm. Tell us how you would test it and how you would differentiate your hypothesis from common descent.

There have been numerous claims that we all have the same data and that it is just a matter of different interpretation. Here are opportunities to demonstrate your assertions to be true.

 

For one last example this morning, I have also introduced similar evidence with regard to human evolution. Here is a whole thread on the subject if you are really interested.

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/66/19.html

But for this thread, I pulled a single example of human and ape genetics to the table looking for explanation in a YE paradigm. Same requests here as above.

"Genomic divergences between humans and other hominoids and the effective population size of the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees," Chen FC, Li WH, American Journal Human Genetics, 2001 Feb;68(2):444-56.

For this paper, they used "53 autosomal intergenic nonrepetitive DNA segments from the human genome and sequenced them in a human, a chimpanzee, a gorilla, and an orangutan." These segments included "Y-linked noncoding regions, pseudogenes, autosomal intergenic regions, X-linked noncoding regions, synonymous sites, introns, and nonsynonymous sites."

When all the various sequences are considered as togther, they "supports the Homo-Pan clade with a 100% bootstrap value." This is pretty clear evidence of the shared common ancestor for humans and chimpanzees. What is the alternate explanation for why all of these various bits of junk DNA should fit the expected pattern so well? And remember, this is only one study out of an almost limitless supply of other studies showing the consistency of the phylogenies of the apes from all sorts genetic and molecular means.

 

I don't know what references you are referring to because I didn't supply any in my post. Somatic hypermutation in B cells is a proven fact. It is because of somatic hypermutation that the targeting and binding abilities of antibodies with the same class and specificity improves with time. This does create a problem for those young earth creationists who say that mutations are always detrimental and always result in loss of specificity because we have certain evidence against this in the natural experiment in mutation and natural selection constantly going on in every person's immune system.

I am sure you know that just because you do not understand something does not mean that others do not. I'm also sure you know that just because you don't understand something that does not make it "pseudoscience." If you want to make a real contribution to the discussion, I suggest you read about and make sure you understand unfamiliar concepts before trying to leap into the fray. If you're unwilling to do this and would rather just shout "Snow job!" and "Pseudoscience!" every time you don't understand something, please stay out of the discussion and leave the scientific details to the young earth creationists who are able to understand them.

Oh, and JWI, if you knew anything about radiometric dating you would be ashamed to try to use that analogy. *sigh* For instance, from your counterlink, there is this paragraph:

Unfortunately this is unadulterated horse manure!

 

Is there a scientific way to differentiate horse manure from cow manure? Maybe we have been smoking too much bison chips--or is it peyote?

Selah,

Bro. James

 

What he's saying, brother James, is that scientists are aware of the fact that lead pre-exists a lot of times in the samples, and it is necessary to compensate for that pre-existing lead; furthermore, there is a straight forward way to compensate for the pre-existing lead, and that is to use the known isotope composition for regular lead vs radioactive decay lead and use that to tell the difference; and furthermore, in some cases (such as within zircon crystals) there isn't any lead to start with at all and therefore this pre-existing lead problem is not the problem you say it is.

Hope that helps you in this case.

 

If you prefer, this paragraph can be designated as cow manure, mouse droppings, bat guano, or excreta from whatever other species you desire.

It is completely untrue that every dating method requires knowing the original ratio of the elements. The following methods don't need that information, and some can even determine that ratio.

For U-Pb dating the dating is typically done on zirconium crystals which exclude lead at formation so that all lead inside the crystal comes from U-238 and U-235. Additionally, contaminating lead can be corrected for as Paul describes. (Page defending U-Pb dating against a failed critique.)

For Ar-Ar dating the original ratio of the elements does not matter. The method of extracting and measuring the argon is able to detect disturbance of the crystal and sometimes can even tell the time of crystal formation, the time the crystal was disturbed, and the percentage of Ar-39 that escaped at that time.

For Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, Lu-Hf, and Re-Os the original ratio of elements can be determined by the method. If the rock was disturbed and cannot be dated accurately the data will not plot a straight line and we can tell the rock must be dated by a different method.

 

BINGO! You nailed your argument along with the others. Someone (on the side of evolution) claimed that the stories are true, they are just not literal; here you admit that we believe the stories to be true, but we are making a false claim.

Therefore, in your book, part of God's word is NOT the truth.

Therefore, why would God bother to tell us about an Adam or an EVE or a Noah and a boat? All lies to placate the stupid people of Earth who cannot grasp the concept of a God who is limited by physical laws that He himself created? I don't think so.

There is some fault on both sides of this argument. The Bible is full of miracles. What is a miracle? It is when God chooses to do something outside of the created physical laws of nature.

Isn't it in God's capability to keep fish alive in sulfuric acid, if He so chooses? Isn't it just possible that every scientist who is interpreting the evidence is wrong because they are boxing themselves in to a "naturalistic" requirement without allowing for the supernatural characteristics of an Almighty, Omnipresent/Omnipotent God who created this universe with the laws of nature?

Helen is right. The more things are viewed by open minded scientists, the more evidence appears for things to have been very different only 4000 years ago.

Since all of this evolution took place over millions and millions of years, it is interesting that actual historical data and historical recordings began around the same time period that the Bible said it did. Doesn't it seem a little odd that out of millions and millions of years of evolution that man would only become capable of written history in the last 5000 years or so?

Scientists have changed theories for the past two-thousand years; and they will continue to change theories. We have not even scratched the surface of science and you are trying to convince us that we know all about the origin of life on this planet. No, you simply have a theory, with lots of gaps, which you use to uphold a science based strictly on naturalistic beginnings.

Go ahead and say we misinterpret Genesis. Why don't you do a verse by verse commentary of the first few chapters of Genesis and explain to US what God means each time you claim He says something that is false (your own statement above.)?

Let's hear YOUR interpretation of Genesis.....

It seems funny that every single time supernatural creation is discussed the evolutionists run to their "scientists KNOW this" answer, when scientists only have a bunch of theories.

The bottom line was mentioned earlier. Just HOW BIG is YOUR God? Is He capable of keeping fish alive during the flood? Is He capable of stopping the rotation of the Earth without tearing the planet apart? Just what IS God capable of, anyway? Is He ONLY capable of natural selection?

What does the Bible mean when it says, He made the animals after their kind. If that is not literal, then what is He trying to say? Tell us and BE SPECIFIC. We are waiting. ...verse by verse now---let's hear the interpretation of those of you who do not believe in an accurate creation account. Stick to God's Word on this, not a scientific observation that may or may not be perceived in proper context due to our little limited corner of the universe. I can't wait to hear this verse by verse commentary; but I'm not holding my breath. My guess is that you would just as soon throw it out of the canon.

I can guarantee you more people have lost faith over evolution than ever thought about loosing faith after listening to a creationist.

 

Is this a good junction to ask for a comparative definition?

How does one define a scientist and a pseudo-scientist?

Selah,

Bro. James

 

Scientists: The men who formulated the theory behind radiometric dating and went out and tested it in the field (for example, dating the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii surprisingly accurately and correlating carbon dating with dendrochronology).

Pseudoscientists: The men who don't really understand the methods used, but who nonetheless feel free to raise ridiculous objections to radiometric dating. Also including the men who purposefully lie about the validity of radiometric dating by dating unmelted crystals in new igneous rock and then saying the old age of these crystals invalidates the method.

I hope these examples clarify things.

JWI, I'm still waiting to hear if you have decided that mutations are not always detrimental and do not always result in loss of specificity due to the evidence from somatic hypermutation in B cells.

 

Well, Helen, I have received all sorts of PMs regarding my post and how I am dishonest in it.

Let me make it clear that there is no dishonesty intended and my point still stands that if any of the story in the Genesis is not "true", then it must be "false". So, since evolutionists keep claiming that "we extreme fundamentalists" are simply interpreting Genesis in a wrong manner---then let's hear their interpretation.

If they can convince me that there is another interpretation of Genesis---that also allows for it to be TRUE; then, this is their chance to tell us verse-by-verse just exactly WHAT that interpretation is. All I have done is thrown the ball back into their court.

I would like to hear this argued from the side of God's Word for once. I am not ignoring what science observes, but putting the burdeon on a believing evolutionist to show me why the Bible would waste so much space with non-literal "stories".

 

"Well, Helen, I have received all sorts of PMs regarding my post and how I am dishonest in it. "

I don't know if was dishonest but the quote you used for the basis was out of context so I don't know how relevent what follows could be. You falsely equivocated claiming that someone's story was false with saying that they were claiming that the Bible was untrue. Not the same. So what followed had no basis in what you quoted. It was a strawman.

 

"I have seen many times the demand for 'proof' of creation, or at least strong evidence of it. And yet every time some kind of strong evidence surfaces, the evolutionists reach into their little black bag of tricks and find an explanation, no matter how implausible, for the evidence that they are uncomfortable (to say the least) with."

It is a most reasonable demand that if YE is true that the observations in the creation should reflect that.

I have yet to see "strong evidence" in support of YE that needs to be dismissed. Generally it is based upon a misrepresentation of the data. I hope the list of items that followed was not supposed to be your strong list.

"punctuated equilibrium"

You yourself have posted on how rapid some change can happen. Fossilization is rare, so why is it surprising that the most rapid change in the smallest populations is unlikely to leave fossils very often?

The most interesting part about this is that the small changes that are generally missing and explained by PE are the only ones that those who claim "kinds" should predict that would be found. The transitions that we do find are exactly the kind that adherents to "kinds" would say that we should not find. The data is exactly opposite that expected from YE and yet they soldier on.

A quote from perhaps the most important scientist in the world of PE is apt here.

- Gould in Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes.

"dark matter"

I have repeatedly explained to you how were directly observe dark matter and you refuse to respond. My favorite method is the Einstein Ring. It provides a direct measurment of the mass of a lensing galaxy. The mass is generally found to be about 5 times the mass of the visible matter. Hence there is unseen matter. We call it "dark matter."

"snowball earth"

Snowball earth provide a plausible hypothesis to explain a wide number of observations in the NP. I know you have an alternative but it fails to explain some of the observations that snowball earth handles with ease and it ignores some of the most important data that leads to the conclusion of the snowball.

For interested readers.

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/66/18.html
http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/66/95.html#000013

"iron trick to keep tissues pliable for MILLIONS of years"

Since the hypothesis has yet to be published as AFAIK I do not know how you can offer an informed opinion as to its plausibility.

"simultaneous evolution of the same feature, such as the eye, many times over (it's too early in the morning for me to remember the name for this trick), etc. "

Convergent evolution, perhaps?

But let's look at the eye. It is supposed that the eye evolved many times. Or at least the final product. But while they are suppperficially similar, many go about their business in different ways.

I think that the answer that you would get if you asked the right kind of scientists would be that the common ancestor of all of the animals with eyes had some sort of primitive eye that diversified as the animals diversified. So the eye itself did not really evolve that many times buut really diversified into that many forms from a common feature. There is developmental and genetic support for this. I would guess that you have heard of the so-called eyeless gene? This developmental cue can be substituted between species and still cause the right kind of eye to grow. I read recently where this gene from a mouse was activated in a developing fly embryo. Wherever in the embryo the researched activated the mouse gene, the fly grew a fly eye.

And while we are on the subject of "strong evidence," I posted what I feel are strong evidence from genetics that needs a YE explanation. You complain that we dismiss your strong evidence. Well from our perspective, we cannot ever even get YEers to address the evidence at all. It is dismissed through silence and hand waving.

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/3/3194/6.html#000083
http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/3/3194/6.html#000084
http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/3/3194/6.html#000085

We need YE a YE hypothesis for each and how this hypothesis can be tested and how it can be differentiated from the common descent explanation.

 

Madame Curie may have had a different definition--regarding the gender of a scientist anyway. She learned about ionizing radiation the fatal way--probably a "wholebody" overdose over time.

Some folks still use ionizing radiation to "selectively" kill cells. There are those who would disagree with the efficacy of such a procedure. Radiation therapy has slowed the process in some, prolonged the agony in others, and just plain killed the rest.

The practice of "blood letting" has waxed and waned over the centuries. Blood suckers have been popular and not so popular over the years.

Could it be that "pseudo" is applied to anyone who disagrees with the establishment? It certainly seems so.

The real key to the definition might be: how one filters evidence through the existing paradigms. i.e. The paradigm of God's wisdom or the paradigm of man's wisdom--they are not even in the same universe. Maybe that is why science books are constantly revised--the Word of God never changes.

Selah,

Bro. James

[ October 27, 2005, 09:45 AM: Message edited by: Bro. James ]

 

When all the experts in a field assert a thing is so it is unreasonable to assert the opposite is certainly true anyway.

That is, however, a piece of man's reasoning on display, and therefore just as questionable on its face as it claims any other of man's reasoning should be.

And you are putting the wrong things up for comparison. The word of God never changes, but the interpretation of word's God certainly does. Science changes, but God's Nature never changes. Please try to keep the proper comparisons straight. Compare Science with Theology, Scripture with Nature, otherwise you're misrepresenting the situation.

History shows how the Word used to be interpreted literally about the sun moving across the sky, and how the first scientists who declared the earth really rotates were - guess what - disputed on literal scripture interpretation grounds.

Today the word of God is no longer interpreted literally on that subject.

And for one reason only. Not because its mere "phenomenological expression" . . . Not because the readers don't love to interpret literally - but because they know these things:

a) The word of God, properly interpreted, is always true (axiom)

b) The earth really rotates (based on scientific discoveries)

c) Therefore the word of God, properly interpreted, is consistent with the rotation of the earth in SPITE OF WHAT IT LITERALLY SAYS.

Nobody can dispute this is the way BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION HAS HISTORICALLY CHANGED.