The evolution thread

Quote from: "dysfunction"

Quote from: "googleSearch"

Quote from: "dysfunction"

Uh-huh, and God gave us a tailbone that looks an awful lot like the ones our ape relatives have just for the purpose of shitting.

Yeah, and you skin looks and feels an awful lot like pig's, so which one of your relatives is a pig?

My great-great-great (however many greats you need to go back a few million years) grandpa. Our skin performs the same function as a pig's skin, so it makes sense that a deity would have given both similar skin. What doesn't make sense is that a deity would have given humans and apes a similar, but slightly different, bone that serves an entirely different purpose in each.

What's to say that the actions of God should make sense to you or any of us?

If evolution is so great in predicting things of the past and fossils provide a record of events, how come there are no gradual changes in bones found?

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Because the occurance of naturally occuring fossils compared to the number of larger organisms that have lived is so statistically small that is unlikely to find any direct chain.


And if The world was created 10,000 years ago with Adam and Eve, why were there native americans in eastern PA 10,000 years ago?  That's one heck of a walk (and swim, the Artic land bridge was from 13,000 to 40,000 years ago).

Quote from: "troubadour"

-In Leviticus among many laws there is one that instructs to wash your hands after you take a dump or handle something dead. In the same 18-century, after the discovery of microorganisms, all hospitals implemented mandatory rule about washing hands before any procedures. Again how would people who "faked" the bible know about microorganisms?

Was not Moses raised in Egypt?  Read up on the ancient Egyptians and their almost obsesive cleanliness.  They went so far as to shave their bodies and heads to prevent lice.

To say that washing equates to a knowlege of germs, rather than an understanding of the benefits of washing, is just silly.  The Dark and Middle Ages had many examples of lost knowlege.  A person who could swim was considered evil and being rejected by the water, hundreds of years after Archimedies.  Washing was looked on as bad, and was thought to cause disease.  That one follows through to the modern age, how many times have you been told not to go out with a wet head, or you will get sick?

I could as easily claim the the ancients knew of DNA, look at the caduceus.  Two snakes coiled around each other in a double helix, used a symbol of healing, the Staff of Asclepius is also related to medicine and is a single helix (RNA?).  A study of ancient cultures does indicate that they knew much about health that had been lost (the lost knowlege is why the Dark ages are called that).  

The Renaissance was a "Rebirth", a rediscovery of what had been lost.

Quote from: "dysfunction"

The supernatural can, of course explain anything- but homologous and vestigial structures are better explained by common descent.

You think so? I already told you the function of coccyx in your body, and I think it is very important one. BTW animals, like apes, have a vertebra that has the same function as coccyx in human body. The only difference is that apes have more vertebrae after coccyx which form a tail that has different function than coccyx. And the fact that the functions are the same can be explained by a common design.

Are there any other structures in your body that you think you don't need?

They believe the Earth is 6000 years old, not 10,000

Yes, something like that. He also made us dependent on natural resources, food, water, air, and many other things that we came to enjoy.

And don't forget that we were made in the image of God, so it is also possible that during creation God was recreating His own body in all the details.
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He also made them Male and Female,

So why do they become both:

[quote'"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060906/ap_on_sc/intersex_fish"]The worrisome fish were first found in a West Virginia stream in 2003. Now, scientists are finding male smallmouth and largemouth bass with immature eggs in their sex organs at testing sites dotting the region.

Last month's testing at three tributaries emptying into the Potomac revealed that more than 80 percent of all male smallmouth bass found were growing eggs, according to Vicki S. Blazer, a fish pathologist with the        U.S. Geological Survey.

At a testing site in Washington, seven of 13 male largemouth bass showed some kind of unusual feminine characteristic, Blazer told The Washington Post. Six of the seven tested positive for a protein used to produce eggs and three actually carried eggs.

Dude! That is not at all what I believe.

I meant macroevolution as speciation, not common descent. THERE. ARE. NO. KINDS. They do not exist. They are fiction. No one has ever demonstrated what a "kind" is or what blocks evolution from occuring at that level. Lots of small changes =  big change, and no one has ever shown what prevents lots of small change from accumulating into big enough change to break the "kinds" barrier, nor for that matter has anyone shown where the "kinds" barrier is.

Now, please address the points in my last post. If evolution cannot create information, how is that any given species expresses far more genetic variation than could possibly have been contained in only two representatives?

If the geographic strata are caused by "hydraulic sorting" how is it that many light animals, including a number of flying creatures, are closer to the bottom, and many heavy animals are on top?

If evolution can work within "kinds" but not beyond them, and humans and apes are totally separate "kinds", how is it that the genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees is smaller than the genetic difference between a number of animals that are supposedly in the same "kind"?

I'm a man, and I have nipples, and an appendix, and hair on my body, and ear lobes, and had to have my wisdom teeth removed because my jaw was not big enough to accommodate them.  

Just a few quick examples of gross anatomical relics.

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I'm a man, and I have nipples, and an appendix, and hair on my body, and ear lobes, and had to have my wisdom teeth removed because my jaw was not big enough to accommodate them.  

Just a few quick examples of gross anatomical relics.

Your nipples, shockingly, can produce milk after a month of stimulation, don't believe me - review some medical literature.

Hair on your body is important for thermoregulation of your body.

Appendix is a home for a special kind of bacteria that help you in digestion, well, in actuality, bacteria digests the food and than you digest and reabsorb the bacteria.

According to Bible pre-flood people were bigger that we are now and had a lifespan of 300-400 years. Bigger people means bigger jaws, longer lifespan means wisdom teeth will grow later in life, say at 20-40 years old.

And what's wrong with ear lobes? It is the bottom part of your ear arch, you think you don't need it?

Quote from: "dysfunction"

Dude! That is not at all what I believe.

So, what do you believe?

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I meant macroevolution as speciation, not common descent. THERE. ARE. NO. KINDS. They do not exist. They are fiction. No one has ever demonstrated what a "kind" is or what blocks evolution from occuring at that level. Lots of small changes =  big change, and no one has ever shown what prevents lots of small change from accumulating into big enough change to break the "kinds" barrier, nor for that matter has anyone shown where the "kinds" barrier is.

Of course they kinds exist. You have to stop thinking in terms of evolution. Two animals are the same kind if they can produce offspring.

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Now, please address the points in my last post. If evolution cannot create information, how is that any given species expresses far more genetic variation than could possibly have been contained in only two representatives?

Dogs have 78 chromosomes with average 100K genes on each strand. That’s 7.8 million genes. So, how many unique combinations of genes can 2 dogs produce? Total of 15.6 mil genes we are selecting 7.8 mil

15,600,000!/(7,800,000!(15,600,000-7,800,000)!) = X dogs with unique DNA from just 2 dogs, where X is around 51 billions if not more. (I approximated the answer because numbers were too large to be calculated in Excel)

So I think you have enough DNA material to populate Earth from 2 representatives.

Hydraulic sorting is not a precise process, some deviation from average result will occur, besides don't forget that it was a storm that shook everything pretty heavily, and produced currents that could have deposited lighter animals deeper and visa versa.

If evolution can work within "kinds" but not beyond them, and humans and apes are totally separate "kinds", how is it that the genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees is smaller than the genetic difference between a number of animals that are supposedly in the same "kind"?

Hydraulic sorting is not a precise process, some deviation from average result will occur, besides don't forget that it was a storm that shook everything pretty heavily, and produced currents that could have deposited lighter animals deeper and visa versa.

If evolution is so great in predicting things of the past and fossils provide a record of events, how come there are no gradual changes in bones found?

That the first life was assembled as a result of organic chemistry. Sure, we don't know exactly how it happened, but that's no reason to say God must have done it. The gaps in our knowledge of origins grow steadily smaller; your God's role shrinks with them.

If that's your definition of "kind", then evolution certainly can produce new ones!

The geographic strata absolutely could not have been laid down by a flood. If an imprecise process created the layers we see today, we would expect to see at least a few trilobites in the Cenozoic and hominids in the Paleozoic! Yet species appear in the strata, last, then disappear- they occupy a certain number of layers and are found nowhere else.

Biologists don't simply look at the average genetic similarities, they look for which genes are shared between species. For instance, it was long predicted from genetics that whales had evolved from land-dwelling mammals, but no transitionals had yet been found. A testable prediction of this hypothesis was that transitionals should demonstrate how the cetacean ear evolved from an ear suited to the land to an ear suited to the water. And guess what? They found transitionals that showed exactly that. Early whale ancestors, the pakicetids, had the same type of ear as land mammals. Then, the protocetids, which came about five million years later,  still had the land-suited sound transmission system, but had a primitive version of the system found in modern whales as well! And over the next few transitional whales, the land-suited system disappears and the sea-suited system further develops. Prediction resoundingly confirmed. There are literally hundreds of evolutionary predictions just like this.

Quote from: "googleSearch"

Hydraulic sorting is not a precise process, some deviation from average result will occur, besides don't forget that it was a storm that shook everything pretty heavily, and produced currents that could have deposited lighter animals deeper and visa versa.

So why is it that we see no human fossils mixed in there?

Quote from: "EnragedPenguin"

Quote from: "googleSearch"

Hydraulic sorting is not a precise process, some deviation from average result will occur, besides don't forget that it was a storm that shook everything pretty heavily, and produced currents that could have deposited lighter animals deeper and visa versa.

So why is it that we see no human fossils mixed in there?

There are. Evolutionists work with a preconception that humans did not exists before dinos, so whenever human fossils are found they get dismissed as burial grounds of some tribe. There was one site (I think it is a national park somewhere in mid USA) where human tracks were found with dino's tracks, but since it does not sit well with the theory, it got dismissed. The explanation was that there existed a dinosaur with human-like feet.

There are. Evolutionists work with a preconception that humans did not exists before dinos, so whenever human fossils are found they get dismissed as burial grounds of some tribe.

There was one site (I think it is a national park somewhere in mid USA) where human tracks were found with dino's tracks.

Cats will always produce cats, same with dogs and all others.

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The geographic strata absolutely could not have been laid down by a flood. If an imprecise process created the layers we see today, we would expect to see at least a few trilobites in the Cenozoic and hominids in the Paleozoic! Yet species appear in the strata, last, then disappear- they occupy a certain number of layers and are found nowhere else.

A couple of reasons:
-those animals may have been extinct before the flood.
-If you haven't found them yet, it doesn't mean they don't exist, or do you think you looked everywhere?

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Biologists don't simply look at the average genetic similarities, they look for which genes are shared between species. For instance, it was long predicted from genetics that whales had evolved from land-dwelling mammals, but no transitionals had yet been found. A testable prediction of this hypothesis was that transitionals should demonstrate how the cetacean ear evolved from an ear suited to the land to an ear suited to the water. And guess what? They found transitionals that showed exactly that. Early whale ancestors, the pakicetids, had the same type of ear as land mammals. Then, the protocetids, which came about five million years later,  still had the land-suited sound transmission system, but had a primitive version of the system found in modern whales as well! And over the next few transitional whales, the land-suited system disappears and the sea-suited system further develops. Prediction resoundingly confirmed. There are literally hundreds of evolutionary predictions just like this.

I'm not familiar with that research, how many fossils with disappearing land ear were found?
Erlier, I outlined 3 conditions for fossils to become evidence (gradual change traced over millions of fossils, strict cronological order of fossils, and direct descend, meaning yonger bones are direct offspring of older bones), if this research complies with those conditions, I'll look at it, if not, why bother? You can't make conclusions about land animal turning into whale based on a ears of half dosen bones.

No! Where did I mention rocks?? It has been demonstrated how many of the basic parts of living organisms could have assembled themselves on the early Earth, requiring nothing more than the conditions that we already know existed (a reducing, low-oxygen atmosphere, lots of organic molecules, heat, etc.). Stanley Miller and Harold Urey showed that amino acids could assemble themselves, given these conditions; Sidney Fox showed that amino acids could assemble themselves into polypeptides, which are essentially simple proteins, and that these could assemble themselves into reproducing "microspheres". Other research has shown that even very short strands of RNA can copy themselves. There are gaps, but absolutely no need for divine intervention.

All the amino acids necessary for life have been produced in subsequent experiments- as well as all the DNA and RNA bases- and many of them in fact exist in space, so we can be absolutely confident all the amino acids and all the bases would have been present no matter what the atmosphere was like. Further experiments simulated wildly varying atmospheric conditions and stil produced complex organic molecules.

A reducing atmosphere would indeed destroy most modern forms of life, but many simple modern organisms DO survive in reducing environments. That the early Earth's atmosphere was a reducing one relatively similar to that simulated in the Urey-Miller experiment, within a broad range, is supported by geological evidence.

What are your sources for such statements?

Oh yes, and if it is true about amino acids produced in the lab, it doesn't mean it can spontaniously happen in the wild.

I already explained to you why Urey-Miller Experiment is irrelavant.

God I hate Bible-thumping morons. GoggleSearch, it's FICTION, get over it. :roll:

Are there any other structures in your body that you think you don't need?

Once again explain WHY men have nipples, why humans have appendices, hair (nope, not needed for thermoregulation, or else there wouldn't be perfectly healthy 98.7 degree people walking around totally hairless), uvulas, wisdom teeth and tonsils. Head hair I'll let you have, I'm referring to body hair.

You should read up on Darwin's Finches. If evolution wasn't possible, then we wouldn't see the wide variety of dogs we see, and if animals have some "program" (for lack of a better word, not to be taken and misconstrued for some retarded "God putting a computer together" analogy) that can allow that much change, then what's to prevent it from changing even more, possibly into something considered to be a new species, given millions of years (into the future from now, not the age of Earth, which is a wholly different point you're mistaken about)?

God I hate Bible-thumping morons. GoggleSearch, it's FICTION, get over it. :roll: