The lie of evolution, part II

Just like I said before!

 

UTEOTW

"these facts might make possible quite sudden and radical changes in adult structure."

"This might seem to be abrupt if the earlier juveniles were unknown and if the neoteny resulted from a single large mutation (a point on which De Beer does not commit himself).^"

These are hardly what I would call statements of conviction.

Might??? If????

And this is usually the case you see from evolutionists. You see words like maybe, might, if, perhaps, and other like words frequently throughout their statements.

You never seem to notice these words.

Sounds more like speculations to me.

It is incredible. I have posted probably hundreds of statements showing problems with evolution. Many by evolutionists and other scientists associated with the field. But according to you (the judge and jury) they are all wrong, lies, and misleading.

But the statements of dogmatic evolutionists are all true.

Right.

Face it. You will not accept any statements against evolution. It is obvious.

It isn't because the statements aren't credible, even though you say that. You just choose to believe what you want to believe. So you make an excuse. They were taken out of context, the math is wrong, the writer isn't credible. And on and on.

You cannot accept any evidence against evolution. No proof will satisfy you.

Well, here's more anyway. You probably won't even read it. The link at the end.

The DNA Dilemma
Evolutionists thought that when the DNA code was unraveled, it would clearly show the path of evolution. By comparing differences in DNA, they thought they would be able to see the sequence of modifications in the DNA code that produced each species in turn. Unfortunately for the evolutionists, it hasn’t worked out that way. Studies of DNA are raising some questions that evolutionists are finding hard to answer.
Instructions and the Result
In order to understand the DNA dilemma, you must understand the relationship between a blueprint and the thing built--between the instructions and the result. Let’s do this using a simple analogy.
Suppose I give you instructions how to get to a shopping center. I might tell you to start from the intersection of Ridgecrest and China Lake boulevards. Go north on China Lake until you get to Drummond. Turn east on Drummond and go about 500 feet, then turn right. If you do this, you will find yourself at the Rite Aide shopping center.

Now, suppose I give you just slightly different instructions. Suppose I tell you to start from the intersection of Ridgecrest and China Lake boulevards. Go north on China Lake until you get to Drummond. Turn east on Drummond and go about 500 feet, then turn left. If you do this, you will find yourself at the K-Mart shopping center.

K-Mart is on the northeast corner of Drummond and China Lake. Rite Aide is on the southeast corner. Since the instructions are nearly identical, you wind up at nearly the same place.

This is true of DNA as well. DNA contains the instructions for building a critter. If the DNA is nearly identical, it will build nearly the same critter.

Suppose I tell you to start from the intersection of Ridgecrest and China Lake boulevards. Go west on Ridgecrest until you get to Norma. Turn north on Norma and go to Ward. Turn east on Ward and go to China Lake. Turn south on China Lake and go about 500 feet past Drummond and turn right. These instructions are nothing like the instructions in the previous paragraphs. But, if you follow these instructions you will wind up at the Midway shopping center, right across the street from Rite Aide. It is possible to arrive at nearly the same place by entirely different routes.

This is true of DNA as well. If two critters are nearly identical they might not necessarily have nearly identical DNA. It is possible that two very different sets of instructions might build two very similar critters.

Let’s concoct a truly ridiculous theory of how business evolved in Ridgecrest to see how an analysis of instructions can shed light on a theory.

Suppose we’ve been taught that from the founding of Crumville1, people used to travel north along China Lake boulevard until they got to Drummond where they turned east, went about 500 feet, and turned right, where the Rite Aide drug store (the oldest business in Ridgecrest) was.

We find this hard to believe, because Rite Aide is obviously a very new store. But they say that Rite Aide has evolved and remodeled many times since it was founded, so the modern Rite Aide drug store doesn’t look much like the original Rite Aide drug store that was there 50 years ago. Everybody else believes it, so it must be true.

Then, as the story goes, one day some people accidentally turned left instead of right. When the K-Mart corporation saw all these people milling around in the vacant building that just happened to be there, they decided to fill it with K-mart merchandise. Since there were so many people going there by mistake, the K-Mart flourished.

We wonder why there was an empty building there, but we are told that empty buildings happen. After all, we are told that mutations create genes with no immediate purpose, but generations later turn out to be useful. Everybody believes that story. It is no sillier than the idea that empty buildings sit around waiting for business.

Finally, as the story goes, the instruction to turn east on Drummond was mistakenly written as “make a U-turn at Drummond”, so people started going to the southwest corner of Drummond and China Lake, and someone built the Midway shopping center there to accommodate them.

Granted this is a silly, absurd analogy--but it has to be. It has to be analogous to the silly, absurd theory of evolution.

Even though everyone believes this story, we decide to investigate it. Did business really develop in Ridgecrest that way? How can we tell? If it is true that business really developed as the result of mistakes in directions, the way to confirm or deny it would be to find the original directions. Did a right turn become a left turn to send traffic to K-Mart? Did a right turn become a U-turn to send traffic to the Midway shopping center?

Suppose we find the actual instructions of how to get to Rite Aide and Midway shopping centers as presented at the beginning of this essay. The directions are entirely different. Clearly traffic to Midway didn’t result from mistakes in the directions to Rite Aide.

The Dilemma
This is the problem that the evolutionists have. Some critters that they think evolved from the same ancestor have very different DNA sequences. Their DNA is more like other critters that traditionally have been thought to have evolved from a much different ancestor. Given these large differences in DNA, it is difficult to support the idea that some similar critters were really built from slightly different corruptions of a single original set of instructions.
Recent Headlines
Let’s look at some of the headlines (and subheadings) in mainstream scientific journals in the last 12 months. This will give you an overall indication of the turmoil in the scientific community. Then we will look at what some of these articles say in detail. Here are the headlines, in chronological order:
7 August 1998 (Science page 774) “New Views of the Origins of Mammals--Paleontologists and molecular biologists take different approaches to questions of evolution and often come to different conclusions”

27 November 1998 (Science page 1653) “The Abominable Mystery”. The caption under two alleged evolutionary trees says, “In this analysis, Gnetales are more closely related to other gymnosperms than to the angiosperms.”

5 December 1998 (Science News page 358) “Turtle Genes Upset Reptilian Family Tree”. The caption under the photo of a turtle says, “Turtles: An evolutionary enigma”.

6 February 1999 (Science News page 88) “DNA’s Evolutionary Dilemma--Genetic studies collide with the mystery of human evolution”.

26 February 1999 (Science page 1310) “Evolutionary and Preservational Constraints on Origins of Biologic Groups: Divergence Times of Eutherian Mammals--Some molecular clock estimates of divergence times of taxonomic groups undergoing evolutionary radiation are much older than the groups’ first observed fossil record”.

5 March 1999 (Science page 1435) “Can Mitochondrial Clocks Keep Time?”.

6 March 1999 (Science News page 159) “Turtles and Crocs: Strange Relations”.

21 May 1999 (Science page 1305) “Is It Time to Uproot the Tree of Life?--More genomes have only further blurred the branching pattern of life. Some blame shanghaied genes; others say the tree is wrong”.



Two “Related” Problems
Evolutionists believe that a common ancestor had descendants that evolved into two different species. In each of those two groups of descendants, certain ancestors had descendants that evolved into two other different species. This happened countless times, producing all the species we see today. Evolutionists have been telling school children for decades which species came from a common ancestor, and when the bloodlines diverged. They expected the DNA analysis to confirm which species are “brother and sister” and how long ago the species diverged from each other.
The headlines above deal with two related problems. The first is that the DNA evidence is contradicting the presumed relationships. The second is that the DNA evidence is contradicting the presumed time when those relationships split apart. Evolutionists are trying hard to reconcile their interpretation of the DNA evidence with their interpretation of the ages of the fossils and their supposed family tree. They aren’t being very successful.

The Genealogical Problem
A year ago, biologists looking over newly sequenced genomes [DNA] from more than a dozen microorganisms thought these data might support the accepted plot lines of life’s early history. But what they saw confounded them. Comparisons of the genomes then available not only didn’t clarify the picture of how life’s major groupings evolved, they confused it (Science, 1 May 1998, p. 672). And now, with an additional eight microbial sequences in hand, the situation has gotten even more confusing--so confusing that some biologists are ready to replace what has become the standard history with something new. 2


In other words, the more DNA analysis they do, the less it agrees with what one would expect if life evolved the way evolutionists think it did.

Advances in molecular systematics have provided new data that, in theory, have the potential to unravel relationships that are opaque because of apparently intractable morphological variation, or convergence. And breakthroughs in software make it possible to analyze large data sets quickly and accurately. The torrent of analyses, instead of providing clarity, has often yielded conflicting hypotheses of phylogeny. 3


There are some relationships that evolutionists have a difficult time explaining because they are “opaque” (hard to see through). The problem is that the “morphology” (the way they appear) is difficult to explain. Take the duck-billed platypus, for example. Did it evolve from a beaver, or a kangaroo, or a duck? It is hard for evolutionists to tell because it is so like many different species, but very different from them, too. The usual explanation is “convergence” (the evolution of the same feature, such as the duck’s bill, in un-related species).

Phylogeny is a big word that means “evolutionary relationship”. Evolutionists thought that DNA analysis would have to show the evolutionary path in these difficult cases. But it didn’t. It just produced even more contradictions.

For example, there is a problem with turtles.

Paleontologists have long viewed turtles as evolutionary slowpokes, the sole survivors of an ancient group that later gave rise to other reptiles, birds, and mammals. A new genetic analysis, however, dramatically redraws the evolutionary tree of vertebrates and challenges the conventional wisdom on turtle origins.
…
According to the standard evolutionary story, turtles retain some characteristics of the ancient anapsids. As such, biologists have regarded them as an example of the stock from which reptiles, birds, and mammals later evolved.

Zardoya and Meyer explored this hypothesis by comparing the sequences of two mitochondrial genes from turtles to those of iguanas, tuataras, alligators, chickens, and mammals. Turtles fell squarely within the modern diapsids rather than in their expected position on a branch outside the group. 4



Turtles aren’t the only misfits in the evolutionary view of reptiles.

Paleontologists will find other aspects of the genetic results perhaps even more disturbing than the news regarding turtles. Hedges and Poling provide some of the first DNA analysis of tuataras, a group of four-legged reptiles that look superficially like lizards and are regarded as their closest living relatives. The analysis by Hedges and Poling, however, places tuataras nearer to crocodiles than to lizards. “From a paleontological point of view, I cannot even begin to imagine how a tuatara could not be [closely] related to lizards and snakes,” says Rieppel. 5


The problem isn’t confined to reptiles. There is trouble in the plant world, too. A technical (and not very quotable) article3 in Science describes the problem of classifying flowering plants. Outward appearance and common sense would indicate that angiosperms and gnetales are more closely related to each other then they are to cycads, ginkgo, and conifers. But DNA analysis places angiosperms and gnetales at opposite ends of the flower family tree, with cycads, ginkgo, and conifers between them.

The Time Problem
DNA analysis is not only supposed to tell what different kinds of critters are related to each other, it is also supposed to tell when they split apart. Those analyses aren’t helping evolutionists, either.
Fossils and molecules are also at odds over when most modern orders of birds and mammals appeared. Paleontologists haven't generally found them before about 65 million years ago, after the great Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction wiped out the dinosaurs. But molecular studies using both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA conclude that many living species diverged much earlier, up to 130 million years ago. …
The long-standing view from the fossil record is that mammals first appeared 225 million years ago as small, shrewlike creatures and that only after a mass extinction 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period killed off the dinosaurs were mammals able to evolve into everything from primates to rodents to carnivores. But in this week’s issue of Nature, a pair of researchers compared genes from hundreds of vertebrate species and used the differences as a molecular clock to date when animal lineages originated. The molecules show, they say, that the modern orders of mammals go back well into the Cretaceous period, in some cases to more than 100 million years ago. 6



Evolutionists believe that there are so many mutation opportunities that one can use statistics to predict how many mutations will occur over a given time interval. Therefore, they can use the number of mutations as way to determine how much time has elapsed. They think that certain similar critters must have shared a common ancestor, and therefore had common DNA. They think that the number of differences in their DNA is the result of mutations at a particular rate, which can be used to tell how long ago the two species diverged.

When they compare the DNA from species (various mammals, for example) that they are sure diverged at a particular time, they don’t get the expected results. Since there are more differences than they expect, they either have to believe that the split occurred longer ago, or that mutations happened faster in the past than they do now.

Since they believe “the present is the key to the past”, many evolutionists are reluctant to assume that the past rates were appreciably faster than present rates. There is no evidence to support the faster rate, other than the large differences in the DNA of “closely related species.” This forces them to believe that the species diverged sooner than they used to believe. That’s why some evolutionists now believe that mammals evolved before dinosaurs became extinct.

Another Possibility
Of course, there is another possibility. The DNA of “closely related species” might be very different because the species are not really related at all. They were all created separately and distinctly. They just happen to bear a superficial resemblance which mislead people into thinking that they evolved from a common ancestor. The DNA analysis might not show the expected evolutionary development because evolution didn’t happen.

http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~do_while/sage/v3i10f.htm

 

When it comes to choosing to believe what you want to believe in spite of the evidence, you wrote the book. I can't help but notice that once again you have ignored my request for an honest answer.

I would definitely have more of an incentive to rebut these posts of yours if I thought you would actually have a clue what I was talking about and not dismiss it all willy-nilly as rationalizations. . . However, I will tackle it tomorrow. I don't have access to Science online here, so it will have to wait until then. I can already answer some of it, but from your source's writing I suspect that some of the answers lie in the articles themselves and they were just conveniently overlooked. It seems rabid young earthers tend to conveniently overlook things like that, such as with the ample examples you've given us in quote mines.

In the meantime, I would be gratified if you would answer yes or no: Do you think that all mutations are detrimental and all result in loss of specificity?

 

"These are hardly what I would call statements of conviction.

Might??? If????

And this is usually the case you see from evolutionists. You see words like maybe, might, if, perhaps, and other like words frequently throughout their statements."

Just going to skip over the part about another badly out of context quote aren't you? Don't worry, I noticed that you failed to acknowledge the mistake.

It also must be pointed out that you are stretching the limits to try and pick apart a fifty year old quote on mutations from round about that time that DNA was discovered in the first place.

"It is incredible. I have posted probably hundreds of statements showing problems with evolution. Many by evolutionists and other scientists associated with the field. But according to you (the judge and jury) they are all wrong, lies, and misleading."

Every one that has been examined HAS been found to have been misrepresented.

[Snip analogy unrelated to anything having to do with evolution]

Then there is a list of supposed headlines from Science. I couldn't find a full text of the first but I could of the second.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/282/5394/1653?ijkey=36771c426ea65fe941dea575b35291228f40dc4c&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha

This is a discussion about how the exact evolutionary path of the seed bearing / flowering plants has long been disputed. That is the "Abominable Mystery" in the title. The author explains how a combination of new fossils and new genetic methods are combining to shed light on the subject. In the short run, it is clouding the issue until the full picture is known. BUt the author concludes by saying "Given the potential informative value of this taxon and the recent pace of innovation in studies of angiosperm systematics and paleobotany today, I predict that the great 'abominable mystery,' with us for over 100 years, will not last another 10."

After seeing that again, the article has been misrepresented, I failed to see the need to dig through the rest of the list. One lie is enough.

After that, your source is known to be dishonest, so I'll just skim through the rest and hit any highlights I see.

"There are some relationships that evolutionists have a difficult time explaining because they are “opaque” (hard to see through). The problem is that the “morphology” (the way they appear) is difficult to explain. Take the duck-billed platypus, for example. Did it evolve from a beaver, or a kangaroo, or a duck? It is hard for evolutionists to tell because it is so like many different species, but very different from them, too. The usual explanation is “convergence” (the evolution of the same feature, such as the duck’s bill, in un-related species)."

More misrepresentation.

A platypus did not "evolve from a beaver, or a kangaroo, or a duck" and the question becomes a fallacious false dilemma. Take the "duck bill" for example. You're right it is convergent evolution. It may look like a duck bill but that is merely superficial. It is made of different material and serves a radically different purpose.

"Fossils and molecules are also at odds over when most modern orders of birds and mammals appeared. Paleontologists haven't generally found them before about 65 million years ago, after the great Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction wiped out the dinosaurs. But molecular studies using both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA conclude that many living species diverged much earlier, up to 130 million years ago. …
The long-standing view from the fossil record is that mammals first appeared 225 million years ago as small, shrewlike creatures and that only after a mass extinction 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period killed off the dinosaurs were mammals able to evolve into everything from primates to rodents to carnivores. But in this week’s issue of Nature, a pair of researchers compared genes from hundreds of vertebrate species and used the differences as a molecular clock to date when animal lineages originated. The molecules show, they say, that the modern orders of mammals go back well into the Cretaceous period, in some cases to more than 100 million years ago."

Where is the supposed problem here?

You say that the oldest mammals are about 225 years old and that the living mammals seem to have started diverging up to 130 million years ago. There is no contradiction here at all. I fail to see what the problem is.

"Of course, there is another possibility. The DNA of “closely related species” might be very different because the species are not really related at all. They were all created separately and distinctly. They just happen to bear a superficial resemblance which mislead people into thinking that they evolved from a common ancestor. The DNA analysis might not show the expected evolutionary development because evolution didn’t happen."

You have seen by now enough examples of the type of similarity in genes that leads one to conclude common descent that you should know that this assertion does not address the actual evidence.

For that matter, no one appears to ever address that actual evidence on your side.

 

Yep, he was correct.

Wang, Z.-Q. "A New Permian Gnetalean Cone as Fossil Evidence for Supporting Current Molecular Phylogeny." Annals of Botany, 2004, 94, 281-288.

 

The Cambrian Explosion sure fits creationism.

You know, looking around for more "quotes" I ran across a great site where a very knowledgeable fellow with a degree in zoology was taking on a bunch of evolutionists. And of course they attacked his intelligence until he told them of his degree.

He asked some very simple questions that impressed me. One was;

"If an elephant produces only a small number of babies over its long lifetime, then how did it ever evolve when bacteria, that reproduce constantly, still remain bacteria?"

He also said,

"You live in a world where bacteria and other life forms exist. But, bacteria lived at a time when it was probably the ONLY life form around. So it was infinitely successful compared to anything else. If you’re argument is that it hasn’t changed because of its success, well, why did it evolve in the first place? If it doesn’t evolve, then no other life forms would be here."

Great points.

No other life form mutates at the rate that bacteria does. Yet bacteria is here today just as it was in the beginning.

And as the author also observed, despite mutating faster than any other life forms (they can actually be observed in the lab), never has a bacteria evolved into another form of life. They are still bacteria as they always were.

So how did all life evolve from simple one-celled organisms as evolution teaches?

You can't argue that there has not been enough observational time. Bacteria are observed today just as they were in the distant past.

Still the same.

Must be frustrating to an evolutionist.

 

"The Cambrian Explosion sure fits creationism."

Covered. You have never responded. You ought to address the concerns before you repeat the same claim. Here is my response from the last time you brought it up which was only really pointing you to where it had been addressed before.

"You know, looking around for more 'quotes'..."

Please quit looking for quotes until you are prepared to defend some of your terrible misquoting in the past and to take responsibility for you quotes by giving us links for each where we can read each quote in context.

"...I ran across a great site where a very knowledgeable fellow with a degree in zoology was taking on a bunch of evolutionists.[/i]"

The Panda's Thumb actually is a great site. You could learn a lot there. Potentially that is.

I have referred you here before. Back when you were making Cambrian Explosion claims. I guess you never followed up on the information that was given you. Well, actually, since you keep posting the same claims without even responding to the criticism of those claims, I doubt that you even bother to read the posts that respond to you.

Your awsome question.

"If an elephant produces only a small number of babies over its long lifetime, then how did it ever evolve when bacteria, that reproduce constantly, still remain bacteria?"

Well if he has a degree in zoology he sure does not show that he learned anything by this question.

Bacteria are still around because they are the most successful form of life ever. They can adapt to seemingly any environment. Why would you expect them to ever become, every single one of the species, something else? It makes no sense and does not fit at all into what we observe about evolution.

When a few fish crawled out of the water and gave us all tetrapods, did the rest of the fish just disappear? Not hardly. And when some bacteria started behaving symbiotically and formed the eucaryotes, the rest of the bacteria continued on their meery way.

You did notice the subject of the page, did you not? It is that bacteria may have "endless diversity." It should also be noted that there is much more genetic distance between the two most diverse bacteria and, say, you and a mushroom.

So to answer the question, bacteria HAVE continued to evolve and diversify. The only ones who seem to think that this means that they should no longer be any single celled bacteria are those who either do not understand or who misrepresent evolution.

"You live in a world where bacteria and other life forms exist. But, bacteria lived at a time when it was probably the ONLY life form around. So it was infinitely successful compared to anything else. If you’re argument is that it hasn’t changed because of its success, well, why did it evolve in the first place? If it doesn’t evolve, then no other life forms would be here."

No one is arguing that bacteria stopped evolving. But evolution does not necessarily mean that all bacteria must become a completely different form of life.

"No other life form mutates at the rate that bacteria does. Yet bacteria is here today just as it was in the beginning."

NOPE.

Bacteria are still around but you can be sure that they are not the same ones.

"And as the author also observed, despite mutating faster than any other life forms (they can actually be observed in the lab), never has a bacteria evolved into another form of life. They are still bacteria as they always were. "

Please tell me just what you think you should be able to turn a mutating bacteria in the lab into that is in accordance with actual theory.

"So how did all life evolve from simple one-celled organisms as evolution teaches?"

We talked about this. Today. Did you miss it?

"Must be frustrating to an evolutionist."

Only when dealing with those who misrepresent what it has to say for their own benefit.

 

Yep, he was correct.

Wang, Z.-Q. "A New Permian Gnetalean Cone as Fossil Evidence for Supporting Current Molecular Phylogeny." Annals of Botany, 2004, 94, 281-288.

</font>[/QUOTE]Thanks, Petrel. It is interesting that the data seems to be coming in and making the picture more clear just as was predicted a few years ago.

Must be frustrating to be a YEer. Every time you get some new material mined, even if you happen to find something recent, that darn research just seems to come along and plug whatever holes you thought you'd dug up.

 

Culled from a JWI post:

And with obvious sarcasm he states:

Is it consistent to complain about scientists saying "maybe" and "might" and then accuse them of being dogmatic?

 

Ten words that settle this amicable discussion:

IN THE BEGINNING, GOD CREATED THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH.

Now what?

Is anyone considering the possibility that SIN might be a mutation?

How long will we consider our navels?

Selah,

Bro. James

 

You guys argue away problems with evolution so easily. This is why I suggested you write a book to convince the scientific world. Afterall, that is where I am getting all these quotes.

But you keep on discrediting me or anyone else who shows an objection. So now I don't understand what I am reading?

Like I said before, you guys like to have all the marbles.

So I add YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND to, lies, misrepresentations, quoted out of context, the math is wrong, the writer is unreliable......

Hey, did you know they can calculate the amount of meteorite dust that falls on the earth? And the moon as well.

When we were preparing to land on the moon, many scientists were worried that the lander would sink in very deep dust. But it didn't. In fact the dust averaged only 1/8 inch thick. This does not fit with an old age for the universe. You cannot explain it away with erosion either.

Here is a letter from an Assistant Physics Professor at the University of Texas calculating the depth of dust that should have been on the moon if it were billions of years old.

http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev/slusher.html

Again, real evidence does not agree with an old age for the universe.

But I'm sure you can explain this away as well. Maybe the writer is not qualified, or poor at math.

 

And though you dismiss the Cambrian Explosion it is a real problem for evolution.

http://www.creationism.org/books/sunderland/DarwinsEnigma/DarwinsEnigma_03NonLife.htm

Here is someone who says it's a problem.

They explained that the sudden appearance of all animal phyla with no ancestors was called the "Cambrian Explosion." Dr. Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History said, "There is still a tremendous problem with the sudden diversification of multicellular life. There is no question about that. That's a real phenomenon." He said that it could not be explained away with the assertion that the ancestors of Cambrian life all had soft parts and thus left no fossils, and he was not going to give a scenario of why he thought that explosion took place.

"There is STILL a TREMENDOUS PROBLEM"

And you accuse me of being dishonest??

 

Yeah, I know, you can explain the Cambrian Explosion.

Pure theory and totally unproven.

Look at this quote.

It was pointed out to Dr. Raup that Simpson had said that two-thirds of evolution was over by the time we found the first fossils. Creationists were saying that, to an open-minded person, this would indicate agreement between the creation model and what was found in Cambrian rocks. You have to make up stories to fill in the gaps. He replied, "Sure. It's a process of rationalization. No question about it."

A process of rationalization. You evolutionists are experts at that.

 

"You guys argue away problems with evolution so easily."

Yes. They are not serious objections so they are very easy to dismiss.

"This is why I suggested you write a book to convince the scientific world."

No need. The scientific world is already convinced. I could do nothing to further the opinions of the well informed in that area.

"Afterall, that is where I am getting all these quotes."

Yes, but your quotes do not accurately reflect the opinions of the ones being quoted. Therefore your quotes do not show a widespread set of doubts within the scientific community as much as they show that you have the ability to find people who have a good ability to take quotes out of context to make a superficially convincing case. But it falls apart when the quotes are examined.

"But you keep on discrediting me or anyone else who shows an objection."

And quite easily I might add. But it is easy to dismiss pseudoscientific ideas when you have the truth on your side.

"So I add YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND to, lies, misrepresentations, quoted out of context, the math is wrong, the writer is unreliable......"

That's a good list. It covers most of the problems.

"Hey, did you know they can calculate the amount of meteorite dust that falls on the earth? And the moon as well."

Hey did you know that this number is based on a very old and flawed measurement?

The letter claims 1,000,000,000 tons per year of dust influx. Yet by the time the letter was written, there had been better measurements on the books for 1 - 2 DECADES. There was a survey of different measurements published here.

Dalrymple, G. Brent. 1984. "How Old is the Earth? A Reply to Scientific Creationism" Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Volume 1, Part 3, edited by Frank Awbrey and William Thwaites, April 30, 1984, pages 66-131.

He found several studies that put the rate in the range of 11,000 to 18,000 tons per year and one that was 22,000 tons per year.

But the guy who wrote the article ignored the more recent and better analysis and instead went with the one outlier study with known flaws that found a rate 50,000 times as high as all of the other studies.

So, yes, he is dishonest in his reporting. He cherry picked a single flawed value and ignored all other data.

"When we were preparing to land on the moon, many scientists were worried that the lander would sink in very deep dust."

You really need to check up on your facts.

At a conference in 1963, on the Lunar Surface Layer, McCracken and Dublin state

So no deep layer of sediment was expected.

So, from your list, we'll chalk this one up to "misrepresentation" and "the math is wrong."

 

*stifles self* You are aware of all of the definitions of "rationalize," right?

Yes, I would say that evolutionists are experts at logical thought.

Things you have said that have been repeatedly debunked, yet you continue to repeatedly spout:

1. Misquoting Gould about punctuated equilibrium and transitional forms.
2. Spamming "quotations" which have been shown to be spoken by anti-evolutionists, be debating the mechanism of evolution and not whether it actually happened, be older than dirt (sometimes older than the discovery of the structure of DNA), say something else in context, or be either completely made up or reworded for the desired effect.
2. Continually stating that evolution means bacteria should no longer exist (your supposed zoologist who said this above must have gotten his degree mail order--either that or he meant "zoo keeper" and his job is scooping elephant dung).
3. Saying that the Cambrian explosion is terribly problematic and is evidence for creation--see UTEOTW's statements above as well as any scholarly book or article written on this in the last couple years. Additionally the Cambrian Explosion can't provide evidence of creation unless you think that everything alive evolved from a group of very primative lifeforms--let me remind you that you think all speciation is impossible.
4. Supposed mathematical "calculations" proving evolution couldn't happen which employ bad reasoning and aren't calculating what they say they are calculating.

And yet another bad argument--moon dust. This is on Answers in Genesis' Do Not Use list.

I'm so glad I'm not a young earther because by this point I would be sending you PMs asking you to please stop defending my side!

Once again I notice that you are blithely pretending I don't exist. Unfortunately, the evidence against a young creation is not going to go away if you just close your eyes. So answer me: Do you think that all mutations are detrimental and all result in loss of specificity?

 

At the very least, whoever gave you this quote is being dishonest and we will get to why in a moment.

But first off, can you tell me where I can go read the context in which Eldredge wrote this? It seems to be a strange statement considering he wrote a chapter on this subject in his book Life Pulse where he did not seem to see any problems that could not be overcome.

Which leads to my next topic before I go on to why I consider it to be dishonest. I can almost assure you that what he is calling a "tremendous problem" is a lack of hard evidence at that time for what happened during the Cambrian period. He is not suggesting that something seems to have happened which cannot be explained. I suspect he is lamenting a lack of data.

Which brings me to the main part of my objection and where I think dishonesty plays a role. I said above that it "[m]ust be frustrating to be a YEer. Every time you get some new material mined, even if you happen to find something recent, that darn research just seems to come along and plug whatever holes you thought you'd dug up."

Which is just what has happened here. YOu are relying on a quote that is at least 20 years old and ignoring what has come along since then. Now I have alread given you much of this before but apparenetly it did not sink in so here we go again.

First off, there are a few places in which we can actually find fossils from before the Cambrian which sheds some light on what some of the transitions may have looked like and which extend the fossil record into the pre-cambrian period. The Burgess Shale in the mountains of British Columbia provides some very well preserved fossils from the Cambrian. The Ediacara Hills of Australia provide fossils from the pre-Cambrian period. Mistaken Point in Newfoundland provides pre-Cambrian fossils. The Winter Coast area of the White Sea in Russia was found in the 1990's (Notice this is past the date of your quote) to have perhaps the best preserved examples of pre-Cambrian fossils. The Dengying Formation in China is also producing nice pre-Cambrian fossils.

So the first point is that we are finding more fossils from the Cambrian and the pre-Cambrian to fill the holes which Elderidge lamented so long ago.

The next issue here are the transitions. As has been pointed out to you previously, the Cambrian saw the emergence of essentially all phyla of the modern world. The problem that you overlook is that at the time, the differences between the phyla are things as simple as whether the notochord runs down the top or bottom of the animal. I can provide examples of where this has changed in animals alive today if you doubt that this is an easy transition.

Since you have found the Pand's Thumb and found it to be "a great site" then maybe you will read an article from there that I have linked you to in the past. It better describes whatI have said above about the small differences in phyla at the time.

http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000969.html

Here is a repeat of something I have previously given you talking about fossils from the Cambrian which are intermediate between phyla.

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Evolution/PSCF12-97Miller.html

 

So let's see if we are getting this here.

It would fit in with your creation model if fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, insects, spiders, moluscs, ferns, conifers, flowering plants and just about all other life with which you are familar on a daily basis evolved from a few common ancestors in the Cambrian.

Because that is just what you have advocated in this post. Can I quote you on this or would you like to modify your statement?

 

I believe GOD has given us evidence for several items which will, I believe, become axioms in years to come, if Jesus doesn't soon return.

I believe God has allowed us to discover this evidence in His due time, and His purpose is to INFORM us, not to trick us.

First, the universe and the earth itself are very old. God has allowed man to discover the speed of light and to discover how to roughly measure the distances to other stars for us to see they're quite old.

Next, such processes as the erosion that made the Grand Canyon, Devil's Tower, and other features cannot occur rapidly w/o washing EVERYTHING away. And we've all driven on roads cut into solid rock, where we see the bending and undulations in the layers of the rock. Such bending simply cannot occur rapidly without breaking the rock.

Geological evidence shows the Appalachian Mountains were once as tall as the Rockies, but erosion has cut them down to mostly hills now, covered with soil over most of their span. Again, this process HAD to have been very slow, as any force able to chop down a mountain woulda left many signs of a great disturbance.

Coal didn't form overnight, either. and let's not forget the gigantic coral reefs of the Pacific.

And to the Christian, this should be the most striking evidence of all...the fossils of thousands & thousands of animal species now extinct. Remember, God said that at least a male and female pair of EVERY KIND(species) of land animal and bird went into the ark. There were many hundreds of species of large and very large dinos & mammals so large that the ark couldn't have held even a pair of each, even baby ones.(A baby baluchitherium a gigantic sloth-like animal, was much larger than a baby elephant.

The reason they weren't on the ark was because THEY WERE ALREADY LONG-EXTINCT.

Now, does this clash with Creationism? Not at all. In 1997, scientists announced the discovery of a new species of bird in Brazil, which lives in a marsh near the city of Curitiba. It is about 4 inches long & weighs about 1/2 oz. they named it the lowland tapaculo.

The Brazilian natives of the area, who knew every plant & animal on the area, said they'd never heard this bird's song until a few years earlier, even though now this bird seems fairly common in that area. Upon capturing some of them, ornithologists found them to be unique from any previously known species in song, shape of feathers, or bone structure. In all, it has 11 unique structural features, they said, along with a unique song and habitat. Brazilian professors have confirmed the discovery, saying the tapaculo is so unique that it cannot be a "sub-species" of another kind of bird.

The fact that this bird, which lives so close to a large old city, was unknown to the people(This bird is neither scarce nor reclusive) is quite-convincing proof that God is still creating new forms of life. there are similar stories from explorers in Africa, Philippines, and elsewhere in South America, but this one is well-documented and representative of other accounts.

If we learn to read God's evidence AS PRESENTED, free of our guesswork and imaginations about it, perhaps we can dispel the "mystery" about it.

 

As promised, I have looked up the original articles and read them.

7 August 1998 (Science page 774) “New Views of the Origins of Mammals--Paleontologists and molecular biologists take different approaches to questions of evolution and often come to different conclusions”

The evolutionists aren't shrieking and crying because their theory has been demolished. The theory remains intact, they're just debating how the fossil record and molecular clocks should be interpreted.

27 November 1998 (Science page 1653) “The Abominable Mystery”. The caption under two alleged evolutionary trees says, “In this analysis, Gnetales are more closely related to other gymnosperms than to the angiosperms.”

New evidence which I posted above clarifies this relationship--mystery solved. Gentales are clearly gymnosperms.

5 December 1998 (Science News page 358) “Turtle Genes Upset Reptilian Family Tree”. The caption under the photo of a turtle says, “Turtles: An evolutionary enigma”.

What is the supposed problem here? The evidence shows that turtles come from diapsids but have lost the characteristic holes in the diapsid skull.

6 February 1999 (Science News page 88) “DNA’s Evolutionary Dilemma--Genetic studies collide with the mystery of human evolution”.

Once again, no one is saying that humans did not evolve, they just disagree on where the evolving populations were geographically.

26 February 1999 (Science page 1310) “Evolutionary and Preservational Constraints on Origins of Biologic Groups: Divergence Times of Eutherian Mammals--Some molecular clock estimates of divergence times of taxonomic groups undergoing evolutionary radiation are much older than the groups’ first observed fossil record”.

Once again, not saying that evolution did not happen, just determining how to interpret the fossil record and molecular clocks.

5 March 1999 (Science page 1435) “Can Mitochondrial Clocks Keep Time?”.

Not saying that evolution does not occur, but fine-tuning the calculations for the molecular clock.

6 March 1999 (Science News page 159) “Turtles and Crocs: Strange Relations”.

As above, just a discovery that turtles descended from diapsids.

21 May 1999 (Science page 1305) “Is It Time to Uproot the Tree of Life?--More genomes have only further blurred the branching pattern of life. Some blame shanghaied genes; others say the tree is wrong”.

Not saying that evolution did not occur, but pointing out that microbial evolution can involve promiscuous gene swapping between bacteria, bacteria and protists, and even bacteria and metazoans. Fascinating, and certainly more evidence for evolution than against!

We return you to JWI's post:

Regarding turtles:

Not evidence against evolution, but clarification of a previously uncertain relationship.

This is a bit deceptive because even five years ago scientists suspected the rates of gene evolution might not be constant. At this point it is certainly known that some genes evolve faster than others, and that some genes may suddenly evolve more rapidly under selection pressure and then return to the basal rate. It is possible to determine which genes between two species evolve at uneven rates by comparing multiple genes. If a dozen genes give a date of 50 Mya for the species split and another gene gives a date 200 Mya, you can be pretty certain that the final gene evolves at a faster rate. As one quote I posted above says, these clocks are most accurate for closely related animals which slowly diverged, and not so accurate for trying to date distantly related animals that split off in a time of extreme radiation millions of years ago. The accuracy of these dating methods will no doubt improve with time.

Oh, I wanted to thank JWI for trying to use something less than 30 years old in this discussion--although maybe he just plain ran out of the old stuff!

I would also like to ask JWI once again if he will answer my question: Do you believe that all mutation is detrimental and always results in loss of specificity?

 

One interesting point is that an evolutionist will say that Genesis 1 through 11 are not historical.

Two questions:

Why, exactly would God tell such a wild story?

Second question, why would He keep saying -- over and over -- that each animal was created and then multiplied "each according to its kind"? If God was telling a parable, why would He go so far from the truth?

The bottom line remains that it is very interesting that the typical "Christian" evolutionist with not accept anything supernatural to occur during the creation, but supernatural occurances happened when Jesus came to Earth. This seems to be a conflict of belief.

Robycop have you ever thought that God just might have created everything already working, including coal in the ground? Since God invented time for the universe we live in, couldn't God create a past that didn't exist before? Are we limiting God to His capabilities?