# Stuff and Things > HISTORY, veterans & science >  The Central Flaw of Evolution

## usfan

The Theory of Evolution (ToE) is widely considered to be a fact, or 'settle science' by many people who are products of the state educational system.  Most of our institutions present it as proven fact, such as TV nature shows, national parks, classrooms, movies, & other presumptions of settled science.  But it is not. It is merely a theory, & does not really qualify as that.

Evolution has a central flaw.  It is contrary to observed reality. The Theory of Evolution is basically a logical problem. It is a *False Equivalence*. They argue that since living things change within their genetic parameters, that they also change outside of their genetic parameters. Since moths can be different colors, perhaps they can also become a different creature entirely. This concept is repeated over & over ad nauseum, until the concept seems not only plausible, but accepted as proven fact.

The argument for evolution is based on* the presumption of INCREMENTAL, cumulative changes*, that add up to big ones.  But it ignores the HUGE problem of genetic parameters.. the limits upon the changes that can be made.

For example, you can incrementally travel from New York to LA in daily, small steps.  Each step you take is cumulative.. it adds up to the goal of the destination.  If you just took a few steps a day, it might take years for you to reach your destination.  The ToE makes the false equivalence that since organisms can be observed taking 'small steps' in this way, they assume that the big changes are just added up small changes.  But the genetic parameters are ignored.  If you correlate many small steps in traveling between cities to interstellar travel, your arguments will fail, as the very restrictive limitation of gravity & distance is ignored.  You cannot take many small steps to reach the moon.. Gravity will return you to the earth every time, UNLESS there is a mechanism to overcome gravity.  DNA allows the horizontal movement, varying traits & 'selecting' those naturally, or by human design.  But it does not allow vertical movement.  DNA is like gravity.  It will return you to the same organism EVERY TIME.  That is observable, repeatable science.

The science of breeding or natural selection conflicts with the ToE.  You do not observe increasing traits being available for organisms, but DECREASING.  That is  how you 'breed' a certain trait into an animal, by narrowing the options that the offspring have.  You do not add traits constantly, as is suggested by the ToE, but you reduce them, at times to the detriment of the organism, which can go extinct if it cannot adapt with the needed variability.  A parent organism might have 50 possibilities of hair, skin, eye, or other cosmetic traits.  By 'selecting' certain ones, either by breeding or by natural selection, you REDUCE the available options.  THAT is observed reality, but the ToE claims just the opposite, that organisms are constantly making new genes to ADD variability.  This is a flawed view with a basis in 19th century science, not what we know about in modern genetics.  The high walls of genetics is the gravity that prevents vertical changes.  It will allow the variability that remains within the dna, which contains millions of bits of information & possibilities.  But there is NO EVIDENCE that any organism creates new genetic material or can turn scales in to feathers, or fins into feet.  Those leaps are in light years, genetically speaking.  It is impossible.  It could not have happened, & we do not see it happening, now.  All we observe is the simple, horizontal variability WITHIN the genetic parameters of the life form.  Simply asserting that minor back & forth movement within the horizontal limits of variability does not prove the ability to incrementally build up to major changes in the genetic structure.

 Show me HOW the chimp ancestor went from 20 pair genomes (or whatever), to 24.. or to the human 23. There is absolutely NO evidence that this CAN happen, much less that is somehow DID happen, millions of years ago or yesterday. Scientifically, it is impossible.

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ChemEngineer (09-01-2016),Daily Bread (01-31-2016),donttread (08-02-2021),Jen (02-22-2016),Jim Scott (02-22-2019),JustPassinThru (02-02-2016),Midgardian (03-04-2016),Rickity Plumber (03-31-2016),Swedgin (08-21-2017),teeceetx (04-03-2016)

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## 4/15

Breeding is done to bring out one trait at the exclusion of all others. That is not evolution but rather regression. The evidence of change is there you just can not accept it.

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## Sled Dog

More drivel.

Move this to either a religion forum or a Konspiracy Kook forum.

Evolution is what we scientist types like to call "an OBSERVED FACT".

It's been observed in real time, in the speciation of African cichlid fishes, for example, and it's observed in the paleontological record, as in the conclusive evidentiary trail between eo hippus and today's horse, ass and zebra species, each of which are distinct species that cannot interbreed with either of the others and produce fertile off-spring.  

Human beings have not only created new species....dogs for one, and many plants for another (Rodent whines against "GM foods" are just hilariously ignorant), but the species of dog that we created has bifurcated with two populations that cannot breed without artificial assistance.   

Ever try to imagine a great dane male trying to mount a Chihuahua bitch in heat?  The pheromones would be correct.  The mechanics make it impossible.

What about the reverse?   Can anyone imagine an Irish Wolfhound bitch allowing a yorkie to bounce around behind her trying to get laid?   I can imagine it...it's funny as hell...but it's mechanically impossible and the large female would eventually kill the little rat-dog in annoyance.

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Puzzling Evidence (07-26-2016)

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## Jehoshaphat

Evolution is a Religion.  It is putting faith into something you cannot see, except here their god is man.  If the true God and Creator were acknowledged then there would be moral ramifications to deal with, and the sinful man does not want to deal with that.

I have seen presentations which show how the evolutionist deal with things.  The one I liked was a school science book which was trying to explain the geological ages, and how they date their findings.  On one page they said they knew the age of the rocks, by the fossils found in them, then the next page says they date the fossils by the rocks they are in, and around.

Micro-evolution is going on around us, which is small changes, but like Darwins finches, the showed signs of micro-evolution, but the thing is, they were still Birds

It takes a lot more faith to believe in evolution than Intelligent design, or a Creator

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Daily Bread (01-31-2016),Hillofbeans (01-30-2016),JMWinPR (06-12-2016),wildflower (08-15-2017)

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## Hillofbeans

The central flaw with evolution was it's conception as a theory........

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## Hillofbeans

I'm still waiting on all these self congratulating scientists to put up a diagram with all the nice little art works showing how a mosquito came from the elephant.....same theory, just need a little graphic art to back it up, make it all believable.

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ChemEngineer (09-26-2017),Daily Bread (01-31-2016)

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## Jehoshaphat

> More drivel.
> 
> Move this to either a religion forum or a Konspiracy Kook forum.
> 
> Evolution is what we scientist types like to call "an OBSERVED FACT".
> 
> It's been observed in real time, in the speciation of African cichlid fishes, for example, and it's observed in the paleontological record, as in the conclusive evidentiary trail between eo hippus and today's horse, ass and zebra species, each of which are distinct species that cannot interbreed with either of the others and produce fertile off-spring.  
> 
> Human beings have not only created new species....dogs for one, and many plants for another (Rodent whines against "GM foods" are just hilariously ignorant), but the species of dog that we created has bifurcated with two populations that cannot breed without artificial assistance.   
> ...


The African Chchild fish, If it evolved, what did it evolve into?  What did the dog change into?  Did the plants grow wings and fly?

Scientist can call it whatever they want, but one thing it isn't is "OBSERVED FACT"

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Calypso Jones (01-30-2016),Daily Bread (01-31-2016),Hillofbeans (01-30-2016),usfan (01-30-2016)

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## Hillofbeans

> The African Chchild fish, If it evolved, what did it evolve into?  What did the dog change into?  Did the plants grow wings and fly?
> 
> Scientist can call it whatever they want, but one thing it isn't is "OBSERVED FACT"


We know what didn't evolve, liberals. Jurassic age critters didn't evolve, they became extinct, like common sense for most who claim evolution.

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## Canadianeye

How old is the earth?

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OldSchool (08-16-2016)

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## usfan

I think too many people are invested ideologically in evolution.  It *seems* to be the only alternative for all the 'Let there be Light!' creationist option for origins.  But if we approach it purely scientifically, without the added burden of trying to prop up an entire world view, & instead critique it for its scientific validity, it would be much easier.  IF evolution is proven to be impossible, which i think the evidence points to, this does not mean that the ONLY option is to become a rabid christian, singing in the choir & visiting old folks at the home on weekends.  There could be other options, that we just don't know of.  I am not, nor have i promoted creationism in my evolution threads.  I do not see any empirical scientific evidence that support it, either.  All we have is the visible, observable universe.  We can speculate about how & why, but making any definitive conclusions seems far fetched.  Opinions on origins are just that:  Opinions.

I would challenge my atheist friends to examine the evidence, & consider the arguments i have given based solely on the science, & not any fear of implications that you will have to abandon atheism if evolution is debunked.  IMO, your atheism can remain intact, as the source of the universe & the complexity of life remain mysterious unknowns.  We know a lot about life & the universe, but we also have a lot of speculation.  True science has to leave the mysterious as it is.  It cannot guess to fill in the gaps of knowledge.  There may yet be more scientific explanations.  No one has to cling to a flawed assertion, but should be open minded in their quest for truth & reality.

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ChemEngineer (04-05-2019)

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## Calypso Jones

I was an atheist for a while.   An atheist, an agnostic, now Christian.   I loved evolution.   then I noticed all the lies, the walk backs, the unusual excuses and fanatastic explanations.      I eventually worked my way here again......I was raised Christian as a child.  Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Baptist again.  Now I study the bible and I personally am convinced it is God's truth.

Someone asked about the age of the earth.   Some people, Christians, say that this is an earth age and that when the earth was described as void that meant that there was something here before and now gone which made it void...it's from the greek words for such....so then this recorded creation took place.  So.  It is possible that the earth is of great age.   billions of years....I doubt...only God knows that.   I do know in my heart and especially my head that science and scientists cannot be totally trusted.  God however, Can be trusted.   So.   this age of man or earth age is less than 10,000 years old.    There WERE dinosaurs created with adam, there became giants in the land.   Man and dinosaur existed simultaneously because of evidence in art, pottery, manuscri[ts, etc.    We are not descended from the same line as apes.   There is no such thing as evolution although there are things that we can do, that God allows us to do,  such as breeding particular characteristics in animals after their own kinds..  Same way as man developed in different areas of the world.

that is all.

don't make me come in there and shoot you.

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ChemEngineer (06-08-2016),Jehoshaphat (02-02-2016),usfan (01-30-2016)

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## Sled Dog

> Evolution is a Religion.


No.

Evolution is life.

Evolution by Natural Selection is the name of the theory that explains the observed fact of evolution.

Why are you confusing observed facts with religion?

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## Sled Dog

> The African Chchild fish, If it evolved, what did it evolve into?  What did the dog change into?  Did the plants grow wings and fly?
> 
> Scientist can call it whatever they want, but one thing it isn't is "OBSERVED FACT"


The Cichlid fishes evolved from other fish and are evolving into newer species.

Boy, that was complicated.

The dog changed into the dog from the wolf.  

Then someone fucked up royally and turned dogs into Chihuahuas.

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## usfan

> Breeding is done to bring out one trait at the exclusion of all others. That is not evolution but rather regression. The evidence of change is there you just can not accept it.


Breeding is just man made 'selection'.. that is, not 'natural'.  Natural selection does the same thing.. it reduces variability.  There is no mechanism & no process by which traits can be 'created'  That is the flaw of the premise.

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## usfan

> More drivel.
> Move this to either a religion forum or a Konspiracy Kook forum.
> Evolution is what we scientist types like to call "an OBSERVED FACT".


I know that we agree on a lot of things on the forums, but this is an obvious difference.  I try to leave the philosophical implications out, when debating just the science, but inevitably assertions & dogmatic declarations replace the quiet quest for scientific Truth.  

The only observed evolution is the horizontal variability WITHIN the genetic limitations.  The vertical changes are ALL assumed.. projected as an extrapolation of incremental, cumulative changes in the genetic structure.  But that is scientifically impossible.  You can have SOME variation, but it will not, does not, & cannot move into more complexity or added chromosomes, or added genomes, or any such imaginations.  This is an observable, repeatable FACT.




> It's been observed in real time, in the speciation of African cichlid fishes, for example, and it's observed in the paleontological record, as in the conclusive evidentiary trail between eo hippus and today's horse, ass and zebra species, each of which are distinct species that cannot interbreed with either of the others and produce fertile off-spring.


No, those are only DEFINITIONAL changes, with perhaps some reproductive isolation going on.  There are not basic genetic differences in the dna.  You do not add chromosomes or genome pairs.  You  merely shuffle the variability WITHIN the parameters of the organism.  You do not create new genes, or jump into more complexity.  Your cichlids are still cichlids.  They did not become salamanders.




> Human beings have not only created new species....dogs for one, and many plants for another (Rodent whines against "GM foods" are just hilariously ignorant), but the species of dog that we created has bifurcated with two populations that cannot breed without artificial assistance.


 Again, that is merely a definitional declaration of 'new species'.  Even when approaching reproductive isolation, the fact that there can be some reproduction implies a common ancestor.  Horses & zebras branched out separately, once they became isolated in their limitations.  they LOST variability, they did not gain anything.  Each of their current traits were in the original parent trunk, & their variability was lost as they extended to the branches.  But now, they are stuck in monotonous repetition.  The tiger no longer has the variability that it once had, from its ancestors.  The lion, as well, become stuck in a non changing, consistent creature.  Its traits were shaped by  natural processes, as they can be shaped by human engineering (breeding).  But that does not imply causation.  Just because they are stuck in a distinct form does not mean they created that form.  It proves the exact opposite.  their path down the family tree reached a dead end.  They no longer have the variability they once did, & now are trapped in the form they have.  If environmental pressures make their traits useless for survival, they go extinct.  They do not create adapting traits, but they die & their traits are forever lost.  We do not see any more sabre toothed cats.  That variable in the gene pool is gone.  The ones we see are those who have survived, to be sure, but there is no indication or scientific possibility that they somehow created these traits on their own.  They were already present in the parent species.




> Ever try to imagine a great dane male trying to mount a Chihuahua bitch in heat?  The pheromones would be correct.  The mechanics make it impossible.
> What about the reverse?   Can anyone imagine an Irish Wolfhound bitch allowing a yorkie to bounce around behind her trying to get laid?   I can imagine it...it's funny as hell...but it's mechanically impossible and the large female would eventually kill the little rat-dog in annoyance.


Fortunately, we now have scientific means to prove descendancy, & are not stuck with visual taxonomy or 'looks like' limitations.  We can see the great variety of dogs, for example, & how breeding & environmental pressures have limited them.  How many generations would it take for you to get a chihuahua from a wolf?  You might never get one.  The genetic information from the wolf is too far removed from the chihuahua, even though we know, genetically, that they came from the same parent.  But the clear, obvious, scientific reality is that these breeds are dead ends on the family tree.  they are not constantly adding new traits, & creating new breeds.. only simple variations of whatever was already in the millions of combinations of the  old ones.




> No.
> Evolution is life.
> Evolution by Natural Selection is the name of the theory that explains the observed fact of evolution.
> Why are you confusing observed facts with religion?





> The Cichlid fishes evolved from other fish and are evolving into newer species.
> Boy, that was complicated.
> The dog changed into the dog from the wolf.  
> Then someone fucked up royally and turned dogs into Chihuahuas.


These are mere assertions.  You have no evidence that this happened, it is merely your belief that  it did.  It is not an 'observable fact', it is indeed a philosophical or religious opinion.

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## Hillofbeans

The earth is ancient. We know at one time it was a smoldering lava planet. It didn't cool in a day, form the earth as we know it.

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## usfan

> The earth is ancient. We know at one time it was a smoldering lava planet. It didn't cool in a day, form the earth as we know it.


Well, i don't think we KNOW any of that.  But it is as good of a guess as many other 'theories' of how we got here.  There are a lot of holes with the 'billions & billions' of years theory.. as there are with the YEC hypothesis.  I have not seen any credible means of dating, other than that based on assumptions & extrapolations.  The magnetic half life of the earth, & the helium/argon diffusion in rocks conflict with the 'millions & millions' of years asserted by those who have no definitive method of dating, either.  Add to that the problem of 'fresh' blood in a mosquito fossil, alleged to be 46 million years old, by the typical dating methods.  Obviously, there is no way some blood could remain intact for this long.  Thousands of years is plausible, millions is not.

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## Calypso Jones

what he said.

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## Canadianeye

> Well, i don't think we KNOW any of that.  But it is as good of a guess as many other 'theories' of *how* we got here.  There are a lot of holes with the 'billions & billions' of years theory.. as there are with the YEC hypothesis.  I have not seen any credible means of dating, other than that based on assumptions & extrapolations.  The magnetic half life of the earth, & the helium/argon diffusion in rocks conflict with the 'millions & millions' of years asserted by those who have no definitive method of dating, either.  Add to that the problem of 'fresh' blood in a mosquito fossil, alleged to be 46 million years old, by the typical dating methods.  Obviously, there is no way some blood could remain intact for this long.  Thousands of years is plausible, millions is not.


What does the age of the earth have to do with _how_ we got here?

How old is the earth?

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## Corruptbuddha

Ok...let's say you're right.  (You're not...but let's just say you are)
What is your alternative to explain the diversity of life on Earth?

And here's the kicker....it has to have MORE evidence in support of it than evolution/natural selection.

Ready.....go!

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## Corruptbuddha

> Well, i don't think we KNOW any of that.  But it is as good of a guess as many other 'theories' of how we got here.  There are a lot of holes with the 'billions & billions' of years theory.. as there are with the YEC hypothesis.  I have not seen any credible means of dating, other than that based on assumptions & extrapolations.  The magnetic half life of the earth, & the helium/argon diffusion in rocks conflict with the 'millions & millions' of years asserted by those who have no definitive method of dating, either.  Add to that the problem of 'fresh' blood in a mosquito fossil, alleged to be 46 million years old, by the typical dating methods.  Obviously, there is no way some blood could remain intact for this long.  Thousands of years is plausible, millions is not.



Also...no blood has ever been found in a fossil.

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## Hillofbeans

> Well, i don't think we KNOW any of that.  But it is as good of a guess as many other 'theories' of how we got here.  There are a lot of holes with the 'billions & billions' of years theory.. as there are with the YEC hypothesis.  I have not seen any credible means of dating, other than that based on assumptions & extrapolations.  The magnetic half life of the earth, & the helium/argon diffusion in rocks conflict with the 'millions & millions' of years asserted by those who have no definitive method of dating, either.  Add to that the problem of 'fresh' blood in a mosquito fossil, alleged to be 46 million years old, by the typical dating methods.  Obviously, there is no way some blood could remain intact for this long.  Thousands of years is plausible, millions is not.


Yes, we do know that. Volcanic activity still exists, the earth is still in the process of cooling.

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## usfan

> What does the age of the earth have to do with _how_ we got here?
> How old is the earth?


I don't know.  Nobody does.  We can look at the clues, but no definitive conclusion can be made.  There are too many conflicting processes to make such a declaration.  It could be tens of thousands, or millions, or some other arbitrary number.  Statistics can be juggled to 'prove' a great many guesses.




> Ok...let's say you're right.  (You're not...but let's just say you are)
> What is your alternative to explain the diversity of life on Earth?
> And here's the kicker....it has to have MORE evidence in support of it than evolution/natural selection.
> Ready.....go!


I am right, but why do i HAVE to have an explanation?  If there was a valid, SCIENTIFIC theory with solid evidence, i would lean toward that.  But the last few hundred years have been quite unsatisfactory.  We went from 'spontaneous generation' as the naturalistic theory, to evolution.  I am looking for solid, conclusive scientific evidence, not speculation & juggled data.  Any religion can make decrees about origins, & most religions do, including evolution.

Is the earth cooling or warming from Anthropogenic Global Warming?  What is the science on that?  Evidently, we have to predetermine what your political agenda is, first, before the science can be concluded.  IMO, evolution is in the same camp.  It is a belief that is propped up by certain worldviews, & is defended with emotional, philosophical reasons, not science.



> Also...no blood has ever been found in a fossil.


You are not current on the subject.
Rare Blood-Engorged Mosquito Fossil Found 
Blood Found in Mosquito Fossil:  | National Geographic (blogs)
Questionable Dating of Bloody Mosquito Fossil | The Institute for Creation Research

You should check before making assertions like this.  I am pretty careful, & do not make wild, unsubstantiated claims.  I am a scientist, & have great respect for the scientific method.  Ok, i'm mostly a philosopher, but i still have great respect for the scientific method..   :Big Grin: 



> Yes, we do know that. Volcanic activity still exists, the earth is still in the process of cooling.


Technically, yes, the earth is cooling, but most estimated rates give us plenty of time before we have to worry about it.  But assuming 'ancient' is done by extrapolating the assumptions, which has some flaws to it.. like the magnetic half life of the earth, & a few other things.  There could be valid answers & explanations.. scientific ones..  forthcoming, but for now, there aren't.  We have educated guesses, at best.  Choose the one that best fits your philosophical outlook & go with it.

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## Sled Dog

> Well, i don't think we KNOW any of that.  But it is as good of a guess as many other 'theories' of how we got here.  There are a lot of holes with the 'billions & billions' of years theory.. as there are with the YEC hypothesis.  I have not seen any credible means of dating, other than that based on assumptions & extrapolations.  The magnetic half life of the earth, & the helium/argon diffusion in rocks conflict with the 'millions & millions' of years asserted by those who have no definitive method of dating, either.  Add to that the problem of 'fresh' blood in a mosquito fossil, alleged to be 46 million years old, by the typical dating methods.  Obviously, there is no way some blood could remain intact for this long.  Thousands of years is plausible, millions is not.


Oh, radioactive decay is a credible method of dating a planet.  

There's really no doubt about the age of the earth.   Too many different methods all come to the same answer.

And the word is BILLIONS, not "millions".

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## Sled Dog

> I know that we agree on a lot of things on the forums, but this is an obvious difference.  I try to leave the philosophical implications out, when debating just the science, but inevitably assertions & dogmatic declarations replace the quiet quest for scientific Truth.


Yes, there's a word to describe people who disagree with me.

They're called "wrong" people.

The facts are that the Earth is on the order of 4,300 million years old.

That's an observed fact determined by radioactive decay of long-lived isotopes on both Earth and Moon, by the observed age of the Sun, etc.

Shall we discuss the nonsense in the Book of Genesis?  The Deluge that never happened, resulting in the Global Flood that never happened, floating the Ark that wasn't necessary?   Shall we discuss the documented history of the human race, the order of mammals, the comparative biology of vertebrate skeletons, the DNA tracings of the various genomes?

What IS your basis for this foolish thread, besides your faith in your book of mythology?

Clearly "Creationism" isn't science and clearly "Creationism" doesn't happen.

There's really nothing to discuss here.

Have you a comparable theory to compete with the overwhelming success of the theory of evolution by natural selection?

No, you don't.  "The Magic Sky Pixie Did It" is not a scientific theory and cannot be tested.

That was for your first paragraph.  What else have you said?




> The only observed evolution is the horizontal variability WITHIN the genetic limitations.  The vertical changes are ALL assumed..


No, that's not true at all.

I've already cited the evolution of the horse.

There's the evolution of the whale.

There's the evolution of the hominids and homo sapiens.

There's the evolution the canids.

There's LOTS of "vertical" chains positively established in the paleontological record.  There's even the positive connection between tiktaalik roseae and the rest of the subsequent chain of land-based vertebrates.




> projected as an extrapolation of incremental, cumulative changes in the genetic structure.  But that is scientifically impossible.  You can have SOME variation, but it will not, does not, & cannot move into more complexity or added chromosomes, or added genomes, or any such imaginations.  This is an observable, repeatable FACT.


Spend more time studying the concepts of isolated populations, look into so-called ring-species and other documented examples of gradualism in evolution.  The reality is that sharp changes in evolution are less likely since radical changes are unlikely in the first place and rarely lead to enhanced survival traits.

Looks to me like you're chasing a strawman someone else invented who didn't know what they were talking about.




> No, those are only DEFINITIONAL changes, with perhaps some reproductive isolation going on.  There are not basic genetic differences in the dna.  You do not add chromosomes or genome pairs.  You  merely shuffle the variability WITHIN the parameters of the organism.  You do not create new genes, or jump into more complexity.  Your cichlids are still cichlids.  They did not become salamanders.


Oh.

So there only difference between a zebra and a percheron is the "definition" of the word "horse".  The stripes are ...imaginary?  The environment of the plains of North America and the hot semi-arid savanah of Africa didn't provide any input in the what must be identical DNA of the two species?  How does the wild as fit into this scheme?  All three species descended..ummm..."vertically" from a single ancestral species.

No.  I don't create chromosomes or anything.   Nature has a fairly accurate yet not perfect replication process.  Nature causes those differences.   Those cichlids species diverged to become OTHER cichlid species.  They still evolved, new species did come into being.  Your strawman about the salamanders is a sign of your desperation.




> Again, that is merely a definitional declaration of 'new species'.


No.   If the genome diverges to become sufficiently distinct to the point where fertile off-spring cannot be generated between the groups, that is the final proof that speciation has occurred.  

Horse, asses and zebras are each distinct unique species, no pair of which can produce fertile offspring.




> Even when approaching reproductive isolation, the fact that there can be some reproduction implies a common ancestor.  Horses & zebras branched out separately, once they became isolated in their limitations.  they LOST variability, they did not gain anything.


HELLOOOO?

They BECAME DIFFERENT SPECIES.  What is this BULLSHIT you're spewing about "gaining" or "losing" variability?

Zebras cannot live through a North American winter.

Horses do not survive an African summer without help.

They have EVOLVED in their ISOLATION from one species into THREE, since we haven't talked about the ass.  This is what evolution IS.

The Permian extinction event killed some 95% of all species, including the total destruction of complete phyla.  That was 230 my ago.

It took something like 30 million years for the earth to recover it's biodiversity.  I'd have to look it up and I'm not going to now.  (I'm not happy...I was cooking a nice turkey yesterday and the big windstorm took out the power something like an hour before the bird was ready...and the power didn't come back until early in the morning.   I was totally guessing in how to re-cook a bird like that and is didn't come out well.  But now I'm full anyway and kinda tired.)... but it took a long time to restore the biodiversity of the planet...but that biodiversity  was restored, even though the number of phyla never recovered.

Then the KT extinction occurred 60 my ago, toasting dinosaurs etc.  The mammals rose, creating new species all over, and the birds dominated S. America for a while.  But neither order was significant until the niches were opened by the mass extinction.  But in each order variability grew and flourished.    There were no hominids 65 my ago....many species of hominid evolved and died out since.   So the claim that evolution does not create "variability" is just absurd.




> Each of their current traits were in the original parent trunk,


Really?   The elephant's trunk was part of the original rodent-like mammals that exploded after the KT Event?    Tiktaalik had a uterus?  The fish had hair?  Legs?  Lungs?  Sweat glands and eyelids?  Nose hairs?




> & their variability was lost as they extended to the branches. But now, they are stuck in monotonous repetition.  The tiger no longer has the variability that it once had, from its ancestors.  The lion, as well, become stuck in a non changing, consistent creature.  Its traits were shaped by  natural processes, as they can be shaped by human engineering (breeding).  But that does not imply causation.  Just because they are stuck in a distinct form does not mean they created that form.  It proves the exact opposite.  their path down the family tree reached a dead end.  They no longer have the variability they once did, & now are trapped in the form they have.  If environmental pressures make their traits useless for survival, they go extinct.  They do not create adapting traits, but they die & their traits are forever lost.  We do not see any more sabre toothed cats.  That variable in the gene pool is gone.  The ones we see are those who have survived, to be sure, but there is no indication or scientific possibility that they somehow created these traits on their own.  They were already present in the parent species.


Uh-huh.   You're claiming species today are fixed and unchanging...because your personal life isn't long enough observe changes in species which aren't under any pressure to evolve because they're in the ecological niches they were already evolved to fit into...

Anyone ever take you aside and explain that circular logic is a failed logical flaw?

You're presuming that your incorrect interpretation of the theory of evolution by natural selection is THE theory of evolution by natural selection, and from that failed understanding you identify flaws that you believe are real (they're not) and fatal to the theory (but if so, only fatal to your flawed understanding, not the actual valid theory).

If you're going to show that a theory has failed, you first must comprehend the theory (you don't), then you have to show that a prediction made by that theory does not work (you haven't) or that a key aspect of that theory is demonstrably false (you haven't identified the key elements of evolution by natural selection, you've positively shown you do not understand the process of natural selection with your insistence on so-called "vertical" evolution).




> Fortunately, we now have scientific means to prove descendancy, & are not stuck with visual taxonomy or 'looks like' limitations.  We can see the great variety of dogs, for example, & how breeding & environmental pressures have limited them.  How many generations would it take for you to get a chihuahua from a wolf?  You might never get one.


Hello?

Dogs came from wolves.

Chihuahua are dogs (supposedly...my huskies don't believe that, especially not the wildest one...)

Ergo, Chihuahuas came from wolves.  I don't have to spend 15,000 years breeding dogs from wolves to get to Mexico, it's already been done.




> The genetic information from the wolf is too far removed from the chihuahua, even though we know, genetically, that they came from the same parent.  But the clear, obvious, scientific reality is that these breeds are dead ends on the family tree.  they are not constantly adding new traits, & creating new breeds.. only simple variations of whatever was already in the millions of combinations of the  old ones.


Wolves are "dead ends"?   Wolves are top predators and would still be dominant in their ranges if humans hadn't evolved into the most fearsome hunters the world has ever known and viewed the wolves as competitors to be feared and eliminated.    Killing...it's what we evolved to do, after running marathons and fist-fighting.

The clear obvious reality is that today is not the end of evolution, today is merely the snapshot we're looking at.   Take a single frame out of the movie "True Grit".   From the scene of Glen Campbell switching the annoying girl, can you predict the evolution of Glen getting his head smashed by a rock several thousand frames later?  Nope, I don't believe you would be able to do that.  And a movie isn't driven by random mutations, cyclic and occasionally random environmental swings, and a complete lack of plot.




> These are mere assertions.  You have no evidence that this happened, it is merely your belief that  it did.  It is not an 'observable fact', it is indeed a philosophical or religious opinion.


Umm...no.   Dogs exist, an observed fact.  Wolves exist, another observed fact.  Chihuahuas exist, a third observed fact.  The genomes from wolf to dog to whatever a Chihuahua is an observed fact.  Not one bit of speculation happening there.

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FirstGenCanadian (02-02-2016)

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## usfan

> Oh, radioactive decay is a credible method of dating a planet.  
> There's really no doubt about the age of the earth.   Too many different methods all come to the same answer.
> And the word is BILLIONS, not "millions".


Well, dating methods do not really address the OP, but they are part of the hypothesis.  Actually, the ancient time assumptions are a big part of the theory.. it provides a smoke screen for the flawed science to hide behind.  Radioactive decay is FILLED with assumptions.  You cannot make these, & assume uniformitarianism over millions or billions of years.  That is absurd.  It is difficult enough to get uniform dates from the SAME samples.  If you would actually research dating methods, you would see this.  I have confidence in your thinking processes, & IMO, it is only because you need the IDEOLOGICAL support from this pseudo science theory that you cling, unscientifically, to the lame assertions being made in the name of science.

There are not 'too many dating methods'.  There is isotope dating, filled with flawed assumptions, & there is strata dating, also done by assuming the date from the location within the strata.. an arbitrary assignment based on the assumption of evolution.  Strata dating is circular reasoning, not anything to do with the scientific method.

The claim is 'millions' for the blood in the mosquito fossil.  Be sure to check the context.  Nobody claims this was 'billions' of years old, but the discoverers did claim it to be 46 million years old.  A very flawed estimate, based on what?  Strata dating.  Because they declared the time of the strata, & it was found in said strata, they assigned the 46 million date.  Did the biological dating corroborate that?  Well, if you juggled the data to fit the presupposed date to '46 million', you could make it close.

Then there is the mitochondrial gene, discovered ~ 1987.  This debunked the theory that human people groups evolved separately, from different ancestors.  What it proves is that all of humanity evolved from a single human.  This gene is handed down from mother to daughter.. it dead ends with men.  But every people group & race of man has this gene, which refutes the notion of separate evolution based on geography.  Neanderthals were once thought to be separate species.. predecessors to the euro man, while the chinese came through Sinanthropus.  Other people groups had similar assumptions of evolution.  But the SCIENCE now has refuted the old way of 'looks like' taxonomy.  We have actual biological evidence within the dna of ancestry.

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## usfan

> Yes, there's a word to describe people who disagree with me.
> They're called "wrong" people.
> The facts are that the Earth is on the order of 4,300 million years old.


Not facts at all.  These are assumptions, based on extrapolations of things it is impossible to verify.  Dating methods are not consistent, & are completely unreliable.  They are also irrelevant to the OP, which is making a case for false equivalency in the increased complexity 'theory'.




> That's an observed fact determined by radioactive decay of long-lived isotopes on both Earth and Moon, by the observed age of the Sun, etc.


Full of assumptions about the original content of isotopes, a constant decay rate, & many other impossible assumptions to make.  AND they yield conflicting results, which would ordinarily debunk the claims, but we're talking about something to prop up an ideology, not just science.  Desperation is the driving force, not a quest for truth.




> Shall we discuss the nonsense in the Book of Genesis?  The Deluge that never happened, resulting in the Global Flood that never happened, floating the Ark that wasn't necessary?   Shall we discuss the documented history of the human race, the order of mammals, the comparative biology of vertebrate skeletons, the DNA tracings of the various genomes?
> What IS your basis for this foolish thread, besides your faith in your book of mythology?
> Clearly "Creationism" isn't science and clearly "Creationism" doesn't happen.
> There's really nothing to discuss here.
> Have you a comparable theory to compete with the overwhelming success of the theory of evolution by natural selection?
> No, you don't.  "The Magic Sky Pixie Did It" is not a scientific theory and cannot be tested.
> That was for your first paragraph.  What else have you said?


You can talk about whatever you wish, but you are merely dodging the issue.  I am not arguing for creationism, & have presented no arguments or evidence for or against it.  I am refuting an alleged theory of origins (evolution) that only has a philosophical basis, imo, & has flawed science at its root.  Yes, the issue is DNA evidence.  You are claiming that all living things slowly, incrementally, & cumulatively increased in complexity, from single celled organisms to the variety we see today.  I am saying this is a false conclusion, based on faulty assumptions, & obvious conflicts with observable science.  Organisms do NOT increase in complexity or variability, they DECREASE, if anything.  Every family group you mention.. horses, cats, dogs.. all of them are examples of DECREASING variability, not increasing.  You assume they 'evolve' but they merely vary within their genetic parameters.  NO new genetic variability is being created, you only get what the slot machine possibilities within the dna can yield.. which can be millions of possibilities.  As the trees branch out in their respective families, you get dead ends, not more variability.





> No, that's not true at all.
> I've already cited the evolution of the horse.
> There's the evolution of the whale.
> There's the evolution of the hominids and homo sapiens.
> There's the evolution the canids.
> There's LOTS of "vertical" chains positively established in the paleontological record.  There's even the positive connection between tiktaalik roseae and the rest of the subsequent chain of land-based vertebrates.
> Spend more time studying the concepts of isolated populations, look into so-called ring-species and other documented examples of gradualism in evolution.  The reality is that sharp changes in evolution are less likely since radical changes are unlikely in the first place and rarely lead to enhanced survival traits.
> Looks to me like you're chasing a strawman someone else invented who didn't know what they were talking about.
> Oh.
> ...


OK, you cover a lot here, & much of it is irrelevant to the specific point of the OP.  I will again address the OBSERVABLE, REPEATABLE science behind natural selection or breeding, done by man.  I'll go with dogs, but the same principles work in all the different family groups.

1. Dogs do not come from wolves.  They share a common ancestor.  That has always been the claim, & genetics supports it.  this unknown ancestor had all the traits to 'create' all the breeds we know today, & perhaps more still hidden deep in the dna but with very slim odds of happening.  Genetic breeding is a crap shoot.  You get better odds of getting the traits you want the more they are bred & 'selected'.  You do not get wild variability with every breeding session.  You can narrow the variability by limiting the traits in the offspring.  This can be done by environmental pressures (natural) or by human engineering (breeding).  I would hope this is obvious.

So what we observe is a family tree in dogs.  An unknown ancestor provided the traits that each of the canine variants went on to narrow in their own way.  Coyotes, dingos, african wild dogs, wolves, & domesticated dogs all are branches in this tree.  They branche from the trunk.  There is NO evidence that these traits were manufactured later, or were somehow 'created' within their dna.  That is impossible, according to observable, repeatable science, & DNA does not do that.  It ONLY yields what it has on hand, & nothing more.  Oh, you can get some mutations, but these are distortions of the traits, & do not provide any positive benefit to the organism.  Hemingway's 6 toed cats are no better suited for survival than the 5 toed ones, & perhaps even less suited, were they forced to survive in the wild.  this non destructive mutation became isolated & passed on, from however deep in the dna it was buried.  Cats in other places also get an occasional 6 toed variety, so perhaps it is a mere variable, & not a mutation.  I would have to study the genetics behind that issue.  But it does illustrate how a trait can be buried deeply in the dna, & not come out for generations.. perhaps thousands or millions of generations, before some obscure trait shows itself.

2. ALL of this variation is horizontal.  The dog family stays dog family.  The cats stay cats.  Horses stay horses.  Fossilized remains of extinct variants only show the LOST traits that are no longer available.  We do not have saber toothed cats anymore.  That trait has been lost.  Perhaps a deep tick in some current cat's dna might bring it out.. that is unknown.  We cannot correlate the dna to specific traits without living specimens, & even that requires some speculation.  All you get from breeding or environmental isolation is specific traits narrowed down to REDUCE variability.  The traits that made the zebra more survivable on the savannah were different than the equids in north asia or europe, for example.  The wandering animals did indeed adapt to their environment, but only with the traits they ALREADY had in their dna.  This is how it works.  There is NO mechanism in any living thing that can CREATE genetic information, add or subtract chromosomes or genomes, or any such thing.  Variability is restricted to the options on hand, in the creature.  They don't make anything.  They only adapt with what they have.  And those that lose the variability to adapt to changing environmental conditions go extinct.  They do NOT make new traits to adapt.  They die.  Only if they already have some traits in their genes can it even come up, & that depends a lot on the odds.. the number of available possibilities for this trait to come up so they can use it.

This is observable, repeatable KNOWN science.  The notion that genetic variability can somehow generate itself is a fantasy.. it is speculation with NO mechanism, & NO observable science behind it.  It is merely a philosophical opinion, masked in scientific terms to prop up an ideology.  It is not science.

It has become the defacto pop belief of the day.  It has been among the intelligentsia for a century.  But not because of science.  It was needed to prop up a naturalistic view of the universe, once spontaneous generation was debunked.  That was the problem, & why deism became so popular after the reformation, the enlightenment, & the age of reason.  Science was replacing superstition & mandated beliefs.  Truth was being discovered, not decreed.  Darwin  was able to bring plausibility to a naturalistic view of origins, & they were able to dispense with that pesky god.  I can plainly see the IDEOLOGICAL progression of evolution.  And even  now, with much more science & facts at our disposal, the myth of evolution is still promoted, but not because of the science.. it is because it is needed as an ideological basis.  The science is pathetic.  it is obviously flawed.  Yet it is clung to like there is no other explanation, which is a philosophical or religious reason, not a scientific one.

IMO, it is possible to remain an atheist without a clear, scientific explanation of origins.  You do not HAVE to conclude ID.  It is not 'either/or'.  The other obvious possibility is an unknown natural process that we are just unaware of.  That is not satisfying, i know.  People want the source for their worldviews, & are not happy with holes.  But creationists, arguably, do the same thing.  They do not KNOW, scientifically, that creation was the process of our origins.  They believe it, but there are just as many holes in the creation theory as the naturalistic one.  The universe is just too broad, & our knowledge base is too limited to make any definitive conclusions.  We can only have beliefs about our origins & the philosophical mysteries of the universe.  I  know that many people believe that science has proved the naturalistic view.  But it has not.  The science is flawed, is prejudicial, intolerant of examination, & way too testy to be called objective scientific inquiry.  Evolutionist are too vested in their philosophy to take a critical look at the basic claims.

I'll finish here with some family trees.. for the dog.  This is one showing the genome sequence comparability, which implies descendancy.



Then, there is this one, which covers the domestic dog better.



The 'wolf ancestor' here is conjecture, mostly.  We don't really have any specimens that contain all the needed genes to qualify, as the tree has branched out, & the variability has become localized & narrowed in each branch.  The term 'wolf ancestor' is just arbitrary.. you could just as easily say 'dog ancestor' & it be just as accurate.

The 'origin' of variability, which is the basis of 'the origin of species' can be viewed in 2 ways.
1. The variability observed was inherent in the parent organism.
2. The variability was created by some process.

All of observable science says that #1 is the answer.  This is what genetics proves to us.  There is no mechanism for creating genomes or added traits.  The traits are either there, or they are not.  They do not appear out of thin air.  If some 'new' appearing trait appears, we now 'know' that this was hidden deep in the millions of possibilities in the dna.

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## usfan

As an aside, most evolutionists believe modern man (homo sapiens) to be ~ 200,000 yrs old.  But the mitochondrial gene has yielded some contrary dates, & the assumptions have to be juggled to arrive at that date.  Here are a couple of quotes from evolutionist papers on the subject, which came from evolutionist sites.




> There is presently a conflict between fossil- and molecular-based evolutionary time scales. Molecular approaches for dating the branches of the tree of life frequently lead to substantially deeper times of divergence than those inferred by paleontologists. Here we show that molecular time estimates suffer from a methodological handicap, namely that they are asymmetrically bounded random variables, constrained by a nonelastic boundary at the lower end, but not at the higher end of the distribution. This introduces a *bias toward an overestimation of time* since divergence, which becomes greater as the length of the molecular sequence and the rate of evolution decrease. Despite the booming amount of sequence information, molecular timing of evolutionary events has continued to yield conspicuously deeper dates than indicated by the stratigraphic data. Increasingly, the discrepancies between molecular and paleontological estimates are ascribed to deficiencies of the fossil record, while sequence-based time tables gain credit. Yet, we have identified a fundamental flaw of molecular dating methods, which leads to *dates that are systematically biased towards substantial overestimation of evolutionary times* (Rodriguez-Trelles, et al., 2002, 98:8112,8114).





> Regardless of the cause, evolutionists are most concerned about the effect of a faster mutation rate. For example, researchers have calculated that mitochondrial Evethe woman whose mtDNA was ancestral to that in all living peoplelived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. Using the new clock, she would be a mere 6,000 years old (Gibbons, 1998: 279:29).


I merely present this to show how unreliable dating methods are, & the uncertainty we must keep in our scientific analysis.  It is ok to not know everything, & be searching.  It is stupid & prejudicial to claim to have absolute knowledge & truth about something, when it is at best a conjecture.

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## Calypso Jones

> Ok...let's say you're right.  (You're not...but let's just say you are)
> What is your alternative to explain the diversity of life on Earth?
> 
> And here's the kicker....it has to have MORE evidence in support of it than evolution/natural selection.
> 
> Ready.....go!


oh yeah..post it.  Ready?  GO!

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Hillofbeans (02-02-2016)

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## Hillofbeans

> oh yeah..post it.  Ready?  GO!


Lol, the facts are the only way DNA can be passed is through sex, and since man is capable of sticking his wiener in goats and apes most species are not. I've never seen a dog/wolf want to frig a cat, I've never seen an alligator want to frig a fish, a whale an elephant, a mosquito frig anything but. Have you? Has anyone? Evolution is madness, a lie, a looooony liberal spin by atheist.

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## Daily Bread

This isn't going to end well.    :Stirthepot:

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## Canadianeye

I am enjoying it. Not just as an atheist. I like the thought provoking that goes on, especially with Usfan and Sled.

Great back and forth.

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usfan (02-02-2016)

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## Jehoshaphat

All I have seen put up here as evidence of observed evolution, is micro evolution.  Changes within the same kind, just like different breeds of cow, cats, dogs.  A different species of dog isn't evidence of Macro Evolution, which is what the evolutionist is trying to make you think, by referring to Micro Evolution.  

Micro Evolution just proves that things can change in small ways to fit the environment.  If you breed a German Shepard, and a Beagle, you haven't seen something evolve, the offspring is still going to be a dog.  Now if those 2 dogs produced a pig with wings, then you would have an argument.

Until the evolutionist can produce real facts, that can be observed and reproduced, then all they have is a Theory, and it is a Faith based Religion, claiming man is god.

1460258_694242323940277_469952728_n.jpg

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## Sled Dog

> Well, dating methods do not really address the OP, but they are part of the hypothesis.


Yes, facts usually separate hypotheses from fantasies.

Funny how science really works, isn't it?




> Actually, the ancient time assumptions are a big part of the theory..


Not an assumption, a measured fact.




> it provides a smoke screen for the flawed science to hide behind.


No, it's just the reality of the galaxy you're living in.




> Radioactive decay is FILLED with assumptions.


Not that you could name any and stay inside the boundaries of actual science.




> You cannot make these, & assume uniformitarianism over millions or billions of years.


Introducing strawmen already.

Nobody pretends to uniformitarianism any more.   It hinders evolution.   The reality is that CLIMATES and ENVIRONMENTS CHANGE.  Sometimes with lethal rapidity, sometimes gradually.   But the only uniform characteristic is the fact of change itself.




> That is absurd.  It is difficult enough to get uniform dates from the SAME samples.  If you would actually research dating methods, you would see this.


Riiighhttt....Those damn mass spectrometers and their pesky one-atom at a time counting processes.  So many assumptions made there...so...let's see....when you have a nodule of uranium that's been sealed since formation, and you can count the relative proportion of the U238 and it's decay products....someone must have tampered with that to fudge the dates, right?

The age of the earth is known to within a hundred million years or so if it's presently held value of 4.54 billion years with an error bar of 100 million years.

Whatchya got to say different, a magic book that say it was built in six days?




> I have confidence in your thinking processes, & IMO, it is only because you need the IDEOLOGICAL support from this pseudo science theory that you cling, unscientifically, to the lame assertions being made in the name of science.


Actually, I'm an engineer and I'm qualified to look at the real science.   My birds don't fly, my bridges don't stay put, my people don't stay safe unless I use real science.

There's nothing scarier than seeing a supposed engineer thumping his bible and cutting corners on faith.   I worked on a program with one fool like that.   I did things the right way, and got in trouble because the methods were tedious and long...he got kudos for being so quick.

Then they discovered that they were going to have to re-analyze every single one of his 125 drawings because...he cut corners.

So, just eat me with your ad hominem attacks, I don't care.  You haven't cited the problems with radio uranium dating...but you're going to start telling everyone about the problems that everyone already knows about in calibrating the C14 dating process, aren't you?    You're all eager to tell the class about how variances in cosmic radiation flux alters the concentrations of N16 in the atmosphere leading to uneven production of C14 in living tissues.....oh, wait...N16 is produced in reactor cores under high neutron flux and has a half-life of only 16 seconds...but produces a deadly 16meV gamma....now I can't remember if it's routine N14 that is attacked by the cosmic radiation to produce C14 or if we're looking at possibly an alpha decay of an O18 isotope.  Can't remember was it was, now, but I'm sure you're going to tell us.

You got any experience working with radioactive materials?




> There are not 'too many dating methods'.  There is isotope dating, filled with flawed assumptions, & there is strata dating, also done by assuming the date from the location within the strata.. an arbitrary assignment based on the assumption of evolution.  Strata dating is circular reasoning, not anything to do with the scientific method.


I'm going to bet you can't accurately describe what strata dating actually is without doing a frantic search on the Internet.




> The claim is 'millions' for the blood in the mosquito fossil.  Be sure to check the context.


Don't care about the bug.     The issue was the AGE OF THE EARTH.

And it's old for a middle aged planet with a middle aged sun in a middle aged solar system near the beginning of the Era of Luminosity in the Universe.   Half the RAM has decayed from the core, the stored heat is radiating away, and continental drift is gradually slowing down.   It's really sad...kinda like some men going bald as they get older.




> Nobody claims this was 'billions' of years old, but the discoverers did claim it to be 46 million years old.  A very flawed estimate, based on what?  Strata dating.  Because they declared the time of the strata, & it was found in said strata, they assigned the 46 million date.  Did the biological dating corroborate that?  Well, if you juggled the data to fit the presupposed date to '46 million', you could make it close.


Well, strata dating is fairly reliable.

State the flaw you discovered that makes the dating suspect and write a monograph on it.  

If you're not going to write the monograph you could at least cite what they did and what they did wrong.

Perhaps if you described strata dating so we could get a glimpse of your understanding of the concept?




> Then there is the mitochondrial gene, discovered ~ 1987.  This debunked the theory that human people groups evolved separately, from different ancestors.  What it proves is that all of humanity evolved from a single human.


No.

What it shows is that a single female provided the original egg.   Why do you insist that female was human?   Looks like you're running on a "flawed assumption" there.

You are aware that males do not provide mitochondria to the off-spring, right?




> This gene is handed down from mother to daughter.. it dead ends with men.  But every people group & race of man has this gene, which refutes the notion of separate evolution based on geography.  Neanderthals were once thought to be separate species.. predecessors to the euro man, while the chinese came through Sinanthropus.  Other people groups had similar assumptions of evolution.  But the SCIENCE now has refuted the old way of 'looks like' taxonomy.  We have actual biological evidence within the dna of ancestry.


You're citing a lot of nonsense here.

Given that homo sapiens moved into Europe some 50 ky ago to find the Neanderthal species already there....it is a "wrong assumption" to claim they are the same species.   The differences in skeletal morphology clearly show they are not the same species, the isolation of the two species in their early evolution drove those differences.   But you can't understand any of that because you refuse to credit the SCIENCE of evolutionary biology with any basis in fact.

Science has not "refuted" comparative morphology in identifying species.   The skeleton of a horse is not like the skeleton of a cow and DNA markers are only useful in determining evolutionary history...when DNA is available.  And DNA doesn't last all that long in dead animals.

That thing about "science"? The first rule of science is that you have to work with what you have.

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## Sled Dog

> All I have seen put up here as evidence of observed evolution, is micro evolution.  Changes within the same kind, just like different breeds of cow, cats, dogs.  A different species of dog isn't evidence of Macro Evolution, which is what the evolutionist is trying to make you think, by referring to Micro Evolution.  
> 
> Micro Evolution just proves that things can change in small ways to fit the environment.  If you breed a German Shepard, and a Beagle, you haven't seen something evolve, the offspring is still going to be a dog.  Now if those 2 dogs produced a pig with wings, then you would have an argument.
> 
> Until the evolutionist can produce real facts, that can be observed and reproduced, then all they have is a Theory, and it is a Faith based Religion, claiming man is god.
> 
> 1460258_694242323940277_469952728_n.jpg


Gee, you must have missed the discussion on the horse, the zebra and the ass.

Ya, there's no "evidence" there, right?  Because it refutes your religion?

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## Dos Equis

I have just reread Gerald Schroeder's "Genesis and the Big Bang" and would like to share a few thoughts, purely from a scientific viewpoint.

He notes in his book that the age of the earth and the universe can be validated through 3 unrelated measurements. 

1.  Radio-active dating.
2. Doppler shifts in star light
3.  Isotropic "3" above radiation background.

The methods of these studies are unrelated, therefore, an error that might have occurred in one would not appear in all three.  All of them point to a universe that is billions of years old.

I think it is then safe to reliably say that the universe, including the earth, is billions of years old.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As for our origins, this has nothing to do with evolution.  Evolution is about the continuation of changes within species and not the creation of life.  The creation of the first cell is the scientific study of "Abiogenesis".  In a way, it is a modern day theory of spontaneious generation for which there is zero evidence.   Essenetially the theory all stems from determining what chemicals had to be present to make a cell and speculating how these amino acids came together to create a cell.  To me, the theory is blantantly absurd, especially since it cannot be duplicated or observed.

In 1968, Professor Harold Morowitz, a physicist at Yale University, published the book "Energy Flow in Biology".  Along with other physicists and mathmaticians, he had become concerned about the casualness with which some scientists studying the origins of life were assuming that unlikely events must have occurred.  These scientists were making assumptions without any attempt to rigourously investigate the probability of such events.  Morowitz presented computations of the time required for random chemical reactions to form a bacterium -- not an organism or complex reactions to form a bacterium -- not an organism as complex as a human, not even a flower, just a simple, single celled bacterium.  Basing his calculations on optimistically rapid rates of reactions, the calculated time for the bacterium to form exceeds not only the 4.5 billion year old age of the Earth, but also the entire 15 billion year age of the universe.  The likeliehood of random processes producing life from a primordial bath of chemicals is even less likely than that of your shaking an omlet and having the yolk and the white seperate back into original form of the egg.

Life formed on earth 3.5 billion years ago.  That means that life had to form in a meager 500 million years, a small amount of time in comparison to the age of the universe.  So life must have started on Earth pretty much as soon as the Earth formed.  This has led some scientists to speculate that life was seeded on Earth from elsewhere.  Nobel laureates Svante August Arrhenius and Francis Crick and astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle are among those who have looked to space for our origins.  To put this all into better perspective regarding the brevity from which life sprang upon the earth, the transition from single-celled life to multicellular life took 2.5 billion years.  The fossil record shows that the transition from nonliving to living was accomplished in 1/10 the time.

But even if we find that extraterrestrial seeding was the source of life on Earth, this would not solve the question of the ultimate origin of life.  As Morowitz pointed out, even 15 billion years are insufficient for unguided, random reactions to produce life anywhere in the universe.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In terms of evolution, the concept of a gradual evolution in the forms of life, the expanding fossil library has shown that while the theory of evolution, defined as the natural selection of those forms of life best adapted to their enviroments, is excellent as a principle for organizing into systamatic groups the various current and past morphologies, the theory of gradual evolution is unsubstantiated by the fossil record.  Gradual evolution is a fundamental tenet of Darwin's theory.  but there is no rhythmic flow from the simple to the complex.  Staccato is a more accurate description of the record.  Most serious paleontologists now accept that a form of punctuated evolution is the best that can be derived from the information that fossils present us.  A life form appears.  There may be changes within the life forms, but its basic structure reamins until it disappears and a new, different structure arises in its place suddenly.

However, this lack of paleontological evidence has not diminished the enthusiasm of paleobiologists for evolution via natural selection.  The information missing in the fossil record is now sought by inference from similarities in genetic and metabolic processes among organisms of different species.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To sum up from the scientific evidence from how I percieve it.

1.  The age of the Universe is definately billions of years old.  There is no question about it.
2.  There is zero chance that life spontaneously erupted without intelligent supervision.
3. Evolution is a mixed bag.  The gradual theory of evolution is probably incorrect, the punctuated version foreign to Darwin is probably correct.  Again, I believe it was mediated through intelligent intervention, the exact same intelligent power that must have created life to begin with.

----------


## Dos Equis

> Gee, you must have missed the discussion on the horse, the zebra and the ass.
> 
> Ya, there's no "evidence" there, right?  Because it refutes your religion?


Some scientists cite the horse as an example in which fossils show a gradual evolution.  However, a careful study of the line, from Eohippus to Equus (today's horse), reveals an erratic path, in which "some of the variants were smaller than Eohippus, not larger".

----------


## Sled Dog

> 1. Dogs do not come from wolves.  They share a common ancestor.


Dogs come from wolves, there has not been sufficient time for the wolf to diverge from it's progenitors nor has there been climactic changes destroying the home habitats of the wolf.


Today's wolves are for all intents and purposes yesterday's wolves.   Certain species of wolves have gone extinct, sure.  Look at the dire wolves from the Labrea Tar Pits.  Care to cite anyone here claiming our dogs were bred from dire wolves?




> That has always been the claim, & genetics supports it.  this unknown ancestor had all the traits to 'create' all the breeds we know today, & perhaps more still hidden deep in the dna but with very slim odds of happening.  Genetic breeding is a crap shoot.  You get better odds of getting the traits you want the more they are bred & 'selected'.  You do not get wild variability with every breeding session.  You can narrow the variability by limiting the traits in the offspring.  This can be done by environmental pressures (natural) or by human engineering (breeding).  I would hope this is obvious.


You're still confusing, probably deliberately, the distinction between evolution by natural selection and BREEDING for selected traits by the intelligent agency called "human beings".

Wolves weren't "bred", they weren't "intelligently designed", there's no watchmaker reading brail texts from Obama.   Wolves EVOLVED.

Dogs were BRED.

Your "false assumption" that evolution inevitably leads to "limited variability" is just flat wrong.   Sure, dead ends happen.   That's called "extinction".   But usually some other branch of the bush has succeeded in a different way.

What is obvious is that you have to make the false connection because of unscientific desires.




> So what we observe is a family tree in dogs.  An unknown ancestor provided the traits that each of the canine variants went on to narrow in their own way.  Coyotes, dingos, african wild dogs, wolves, & domesticated dogs all are branches in this tree.  They branche from the trunk.  There is NO evidence that these traits were manufactured later, or were somehow 'created' within their dna.


Got NO IDEA what that means.

Humans BREEDING dogs select traits they like and traits they dislike, and work to set the one and discard the other.   Some people like dogs with really curly tails, so the breeders breed dogs with curly tales and select the dogs with the curliest tails to breed again, until I see those poor dogs with tails so tightly wound over their ass it's an terrible effort for them to wag them.   BREEDING.

That tail is useless in a wild animal and dogs living in cold climes would die sooner than a typical husky who can put their noses under their tails and conserve body heat.  Because they die sooner, they have fewer litters, and there are thus fewer chances for those genes to disperse into the population.

I've one husky with a curled tail.   The other two have straighter more natural tails.   None of them are so deformed they can't stick their noses under them.  

Huskies are recognized as being very close to their parent species....(some kids freak out the dog in my avatar, when she was younger and less hobblier, she had the appearance of a wolf, if not the tall rangy skeleton...kids would back away just from her face and blue eyes).




> That is impossible, according to observable, repeatable science, & DNA does not do that.  It ONLY yields what it has on hand, & nothing more.


Yeah, the fact that some 80% (forget the number) of human DNA is deemed "useless" doesn't have anything to do with evolution, does it?  If a dog breeder can get a curly tail out of animals descended from wolves, and the observed facts are that they have, then the DNA had the potential to curl tails.   

Observed facts are so damned annoying, aren't they?




> Oh, you can get some mutations, but these are distortions of the traits, & do not provide any positive benefit to the organism.  Hemingway's 6 toed cats are no better suited for survival than the 5 toed ones, & perhaps even less suited, were they forced to survive in the wild.  this non destructive mutation became isolated & passed on, from however deep in the dna it was buried.  Cats in other places also get an occasional 6 toed variety, so perhaps it is a mere variable, & not a mutation.  I would have to study the genetics behind that issue.  But it does illustrate how a trait can be buried deeply in the dna, & not come out for generations.. perhaps thousands or millions of generations, before some obscure trait shows itself.


Is polyploidy a genetic expression or an in-utero developmental error?   "Your Inner Fish" explains how experiments with animal fetuses have shown some remarkable breakthroughs in our understanding of fetal development.




> 2. ALL of this variation is horizontal.


How about if you come here and build this fence for my wife?   She wants "horizontal", too, never mind that the sections of the fence I'll be replacing all have vertical boards....

....oh, never mind that...but evolution is not "horizontal", or we'd still be sponges...oh, wait...there are those people that vote Democrat....ahem...evolution is like a wild shrubbery, it chases all niches until they're filled, and then competition makes it difficult for newcomers to occupy the same niche.




> The dog family stays dog family.  The cats stay cats.  Horses stay horses.  Fossilized remains of extinct variants only show the LOST traits that are no longer available.


But it's REALLY FUNNY that when we exam strata containing eo hippus there is NEVER a horse bone to be found.  Nor a zebra bone nor a donkey bone.   Oh where o where has my underpony gone?

The reality is...the inescapable reality is....there are no horse bones on strata with eo hippus because...there were no horses then....because eo hippus hadn't evolved into it's descendant species and by the time today's extant horse species arrived...there were several intervening species, all descended from eo hippus (and I know I'm using an archaic name...don't care) but no actually horses per se....the so-called "intermediate" species the Creationist Kooks always insist don't exist when they're not riding horizontal rails or whatever it is that gets them off.

Love...live...give...gave...pave...save...nave...k  nave...knaves....knives.

From love to murder...done horizontally changing one chromosome at a time.




> We do not have saber toothed cats anymore.  That trait has been lost.


It's called "extinct".

They went extinct because climate change and hunting pressures from a new competitor species took out their primary food source and they were so overspecialized that they could not successfully predate on smaller fleeter mammals.  For them is was mammoth steak or death.  You can thank the efficient hunting techniques of the environmentally insensitive American Indians for killing the species.

Seriously....the next time you see an indian (feather, not dot), shake his hand and thank him for murdering the sabertooth tiger.  




> Perhaps a deep tick in some current cat's dna might bring it out.. that is unknown.


There would have to be a "vertical" evolutionary process to re-express that trait....first step...get Moochelle to wear a wig and a vacuum cleaner hose on her nose, to make the kitties curious.




> We cannot correlate the dna to specific traits without living specimens, & even that requires some speculation.  All you get from breeding or environmental isolation is specific traits narrowed down to REDUCE variability.  The traits that made the zebra more survivable on the savannah were different than the equids in north asia or europe, for example.  The wandering animals did indeed adapt to their environment, but only with the traits they ALREADY had in their dna.  This is how it works.  There is NO mechanism in any living thing that can CREATE genetic information, add or subtract chromosomes or genomes, or any such thing.  Variability is restricted to the options on hand, in the creature.  They don't make anything.  They only adapt with what they have.  And those that lose the variability to adapt to changing environmental conditions go extinct.  They do NOT make new traits to adapt.  They die.  Only if they already have some traits in their genes can it even come up, & that depends a lot on the odds.. the number of available possibilities for this trait to come up so they can use it.


It's amazing...You can actually almost try to make sense sometimes.

Except the horse evolved in North America.  

And of course there are mechanisms that create new genetic material.  It's called replicative error and there's another process called radiation induced mutations...and sometimes it's just a matter of mixing and matching through good old sex to generate individuals with more or less suitability to the environment they are born into.  Those who are least well adapted don't live long enough to get laid, those traits vanish...then there's the lucky ones who produce young...mixed and matched according to the random process of meiosis and the Great Sperm Race.   Natural selection is amazingly creative.

How else did the planet recover from the 95% collapse of all species to create the vast bio-diversity of the Cretacious....suffer through massive extinction at the beginning of the Triassic...to come back today to the again overwhelming bio-diversity of what we have today?

YOUR claim is that since evolution cannot "create" then the historic extinction events should ended life's diversity on the planet.  The very world around you proves your error.




> This is observable, repeatable KNOWN science.


Nope, not science.   It's dogma, and we're not even discussion the evolution of the husky.




> The notion that genetic variability can somehow generate itself is a fantasy.. it is speculation with NO mechanism, & NO observable science behind it.  It is merely a philosophical opinion, masked in scientific terms to prop up an ideology.  It is not science.


It's OBSERVED FACT based on the fossil record and observations of the world around us.

First there were no birds.

Then there were humming birds.

Someday there will be species of birds that can learn the words.




> It has become the defacto pop belief of the day.  It has been among the intelligentsia for a century.  But not because of science.  It was needed to prop up a naturalistic view of the universe, once spontaneous generation was debunked.  That was the problem, & why deism became so popular after the reformation, the enlightenment, & the age of reason.  Science was replacing superstition & mandated beliefs.  Truth was being discovered, not decreed.  Darwin  was able to bring plausibility to a naturalistic view of origins, & they were able to dispense with that pesky god.  I can plainly see the IDEOLOGICAL progression of evolution.  And even  now, with much more science & facts at our disposal, the myth of evolution is still promoted, but not because of the science.. it is because it is needed as an ideological basis.  The science is pathetic.  it is obviously flawed.  Yet it is clung to like there is no other explanation, which is a philosophical or religious reason, not a scientific one.


There's something wrong with a "naturalistic" view of the universe?   Is there a more correct way of viewing it?   




> IMO, it is possible to remain an atheist without a clear, scientific explanation of origins.


Yeah, but those are the stupid atheists.  The intelligent atheists pay attention to the science and try to keep vertical, because horizontal people get pregnant and don't have time to study biology in any but the most primitive way.




> You do not HAVE to conclude ID.  It is not 'either/or'.  The other obvious possibility is an unknown natural process that we are just unaware of.


Let's make up a word for this process.   Marvelous age-old growth into completion.   We'll call it MAGIC to save syllables, because as we all know, the world is having a terrible syllable shortage, made worse by the Polish language which has banned the use of vowels.




> That is not satisfying, i know.  People want the source for their worldviews, & are not happy with holes.  But creationists, arguably, do the same thing.  They do not KNOW, scientifically, that creation was the process of our origins.  They believe it, but there are just as many holes in the creation theory as the naturalistic one.  The universe is just too broad, & our knowledge base is too limited to make any definitive conclusions.  We can only have beliefs about our origins & the philosophical mysteries of the universe.  I  know that many people believe that science has proved the naturalistic view.  But it has not.  The science is flawed, is prejudicial, intolerant of examination, & way too testy to be called objective scientific inquiry.  Evolutionist are too vested in their philosophy to take a critical look at the basic claims.
> 
> I'll finish here with some family trees.. for the dog.  This is one showing the genome sequence comparability, which implies descendancy.
> 
> 
> 
> Then, there is this one, which covers the domestic dog better.
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah, just conjecture that today's modern wolf isn't the progenitor of the dog.  After all...THE CHART YOU PROVIDED says the "grey wolf" has 100% of it's progenitor species DNA, the "dog" has 93%.

What is it called when the modern species has 100% of the genetic material of the progenitor species?

Oh.  

We call them "one species".

Damn funny how that works, isn't it?

----------


## Sled Dog

> Some scientists cite the horse as an example in which fossils show a gradual evolution.  However, a careful study of the line, from Eohippus to Equus (today's horse), reveals an erratic path, in which "some of the variants were smaller than Eohippus, not larger".


Don't recall saying evolution is linear.

Linearity would imply design.

The theory of evolution by natural selection denies design and relies upon random mutation/expression of traits in an environments that will always select for traits most suitable for survival in that environment.

The fur on my huskies makes them miserable in the California summer.  But they sleep outside in what is to us miserable cold and they like it.

MY species evolved in Africa, so we have naked skin and sweat glands, a tall narrow frame to be the most effective pin-fin radiator, just to stick to thermal control issues, and the biggest evolutionary invention for our colonization of Northern Europe was....the invention of the eyed-needle which made it possible to sew furs into clothing.

My dogs descended from animals evolved on the margins of the ice sheets.  They don't sweat, they pant to shed heat.  These dogs have a double layer fur.  The one dog has such a thick layer of fur I'm convinced that no flea has ever gotten to her skin.  I've NEVER seen her scratch, not once.  She has fur between her toes, and she just does not notice 40 degree weather.  She evolved for the cold and was bred by northern humans to work in the cold, building on ancestral traits.   They bred the wolf-wildness out of her, of course.

----------


## Jehoshaphat

> Oh, radioactive decay is a credible method of dating a planet.  
> 
> There's really no doubt about the age of the earth.   Too many different methods all come to the same answer.
> 
> And the word is BILLIONS, not "millions".



I would like to see your research about these supposed perfect, and different methods of dating the earth.

I would also like to see your information that shows the transitional forms from the fossil record.  After billions of years there must be millions of them.




> That's an observed fact determined by radioactive decay of long-lived isotopes on both Earth and Moon, by the observed age of the Sun, etc


Here again I would like to see any evidence you have about this, and the irrefutable  proof that at no time in your billions of years time, there was never any type of change in the rate of radioactive decay, which would skew the results.

----------


## Sled Dog

> I have just reread Gerald Schroeder's "Genesis and the Big Bang" and would like to share a few thoughts, purely from a scientific viewpoint.
> 
> He notes in his book that the age of the earth and the universe can be validated through 3 unrelated measurements. 
> 
> 1.  Radio-active dating.
> 2. Doppler shifts in star light
> 3.  Isotropic "3" above radiation background.
> 
> The methods of these studies are unrelated, therefore, an error that might have occurred in one would not appear in all three.  All of them point to a universe that is billions of years old.
> ...


Who said there's "zero" evidence of abiogenesis?

The "settled science" states that the universe was once so compact and so hot that electrically neutral ATOMS couldn't for, let alone stable molecules.   The universe was extremely hot, extremely dense, and totally dark.    The continued expansion of the universe caused it to cool, a natural product of the Perfect Gas Laws, and it eventually cooled to the point of transparency, the so-called "recombination" event....a word from plasma physics since the electrons and atoms had never been combined before.   This era marks the formation of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation that has cooled, with the continued expansion of the universe, to something like 2.7 degrees Kelvin.

So the universe was completely lifeless at one point.

The universe has life in it today.

Ergo, the life had to come from somewhere.  There's no point in pretending a Magic Sky Pixie created life, just as there's no point in inventing a MSP to explain the universe itself.   People going the MSP route aren't actually interested in origins, they just want comfort.  They should have a good tomato soup, some crackers, a snuggy and a fire to keep warm with and let the rest of us worry about how the universe is doing.

So there's evidence for abiogenesis.   If you haven't read it, I'd recommend Hazelton's book on the subject.   Unfortunately he later wrote a book going off the deep-end about global warming, so his ideas should receive scrutiny...




> In 1968, Professor Harold Morowitz, a physicist at Yale University, published the book "Energy Flow in Biology".  Along with other physicists and mathmaticians, he had become concerned about the casualness with which some scientists studying the origins of life were assuming that unlikely events must have occurred.  These scientists were making assumptions without any attempt to rigourously investigate the probability of such events.  Morowitz presented computations of the time required for random chemical reactions to form a bacterium -- not an organism or complex reactions to form a bacterium -- not an organism as complex as a human, not even a flower, just a simple, single celled bacterium.  Basing his calculations on optimistically rapid rates of reactions, the calculated time for the bacterium to form exceeds not only the 4.5 billion year old age of the Earth, but also the entire 15 billion year age of the universe.  The likeliehood of random processes producing life from a primordial bath of chemicals is even less likely than that of your shaking an omlet and having the yolk and the white seperate back into original form of the egg.


Ah...there's nothing like a Drake Equator to play games with numbers.

What's the alternative, Sky Pixies?  Magic?   In what way is that scientific.  Did this biologist also to the aerodynamic studies to prove that bumble bees can't actually fly?

If someone produces a calculation that "proves" what did happen couldn't have happened, then he's wrong...even if he may have introduced some interesting lines of inquiry to shore up potentially weak areas of the theory he failed to disprove.

ANYONE can juggle the Drake Equation to show that intelligent life cannot happen in a galaxy as young as ours.

ANYONE can juggle the Drake Equation to show that intelligent life must happen around every G0 yellow dwarf star still on the main sequence.

The reality is that mathematical jiggering of that sort is ALWAY dependent upon arbitrary assumptions.

What are the chances that the hundred-odd or five-hundred-odd physical constants would arise to make this one universe so perfect for life?    Answer:   String theory says there are something like 10^500 possible combinations of physical properties in a universe....maybe there's 10^500 universes....that possibility is more plausible than the Magical Sky Pixie Theory.

What are the chances that the earth would be whacked at just the right time with just the right mass with just the right momentum to create the moon which is apparently so essential to the stability of earth's climate?   And it's been postulated that the tides driven by the moon...which would have been vast indeed when the moon was only 20,000 miles away, created the surging environments to drive chemicdal processes into metabolic processes, which are almost certainly a necessary precursor to life processes.




> Life formed on earth 3.5 billion years ago.  That means that life had to form in a meager 500 million years, a small amount of time in comparison to the age of the universe.  So life must have started on Earth pretty much as soon as the Earth formed.  This has led some scientists to speculate that life was seeded on Earth from elsewhere.  Nobel laureates Svante August Arrhenius and Francis Crick and astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle are among those who have looked to space for our origins.


Friggin' Hoyle.  He was latching onto ANY and EVERY flat out EXCUSE he could find to support his flawed "Steady State" cosmological model.   He's as reliable as Hillary talking about Benghazi.  He NEEDED a VERY LONG TIME process for the origin of life because he desperately needs ANY evidence that the universe was eternal.    

Needless to say, they were wrong.   The universe had an origin and life had to start and evolve within that time scale.  All calculations that insist otherwise are what we like to call "wrong" calculations.   

And what do these people insist happened to defend their calculations?

They always insist that the Second Law of Thermodynamics be violated.

Which makes their theory a theory what we like to describe as a "wrong" theory.   

The Second Law of Asimovian  robotics can be violated...by invoking the First Law of robotics.  There's no such loophole in thermodynamics.




> To put this all into better perspective regarding the brevity from which life sprang upon the earth, the transition from single-celled life to multicellular life took 2.5 billion years.  The fossil record shows that the transition from nonliving to living was accomplished in 1/10 the time.


The evidence is in.

It's simpler to get life started than it is to get two cells to work together....which isn't to say that they didn't eat each other....what are mitochondria than the fortuitous ingestion and parasitism of primordial life forms creating an advantageous symbiosis for eater and eaten?




> But even if we find that extraterrestrial seeding was the source of life on Earth, this would not solve the question of the ultimate origin of life.  As Morowitz pointed out, even 15 billion years are insufficient for unguided, random reactions to produce life anywhere in the universe.


As Sled Dog has pointed out...Morowitz is "wrong".

There. That wasn't complicated.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In terms of evolution, the concept of a gradual evolution in the forms of life, the expanding fossil library has shown that while the theory of evolution, defined as the natural selection of those forms of life best adapted to their enviroments, is excellent as a principle for organizing into systamatic groups the various current and past morphologies, the theory of gradual evolution is unsubstantiated by the fossil record.  Gradual evolution is a fundamental tenet of Darwin's theory.  but there is no rhythmic flow from the simple to the complex.  Staccato is a more accurate description of the record.  Most serious paleontologists now accept that a form of punctuated evolution is the best that can be derived from the information that fossils present us.  A life form appears.  There may be changes within the life forms, but its basic structure reamins until it disappears and a new, different structure arises in its place suddenly.

However, this lack of paleontological evidence has not diminished the enthusiasm of paleobiologists for evolution via natural selection.  The information missing in the fossil record is now sought by inference from similarities in genetic and metabolic processes among organisms of different species.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To sum up from the scientific evidence from how I percieve it.

1.  The age of the Universe is definately billions of years old.  There is no question about it.
2.  There is zero chance that life spontaneously erupted without intelligent supervision.
3. Evolution is a mixed bag.  The gradual theory of evolution is probably incorrect, the punctuated version foreign to Darwin is probably correct.  Again, I believe it was mediated through intelligent intervention, the exact same intelligent power that must have created life to begin with.[/QUOTE]

There is NO evidence of God.

Hence point 2 is wrong and based on faulty assumptions.

Evolution has both gradual phases and rapid phases.   There are punctuated equilibria...and if the punctuation is firm enough, there equilibrium falls into the permanency called "extinction".  

There are species still in existence fifty million years...the ceolocanth, I believe is that old.  Which is not to say that isolated populations of ceolocanths did not evolve into other species of fish and is not to say that in those environments the progenitor population of ceolocanths did not die out locally.   All the existence of the present ceolocanth means is that at least one local population of ceolocanth survived into modern times.  

African humans migrated to Europe and evolved into caucasions.   African humans still exist in Africa...but their traits were such that they could not survive without modern (within the last 5000 years) technology to keep them alive.   Their very skin color precludes them from producing sufficient vitamin D.  So the species evolved in it's new niche, and did not evolve those survival traits in it's old niche.   Speciation in action, corrupted, of course, by human technology.   Left alone for a million years, chances are that the two races would cease inter-fertility.

Whatever.  I hope nobody takes my use of the word "evolved" in that discussion to mean "better" or whatever.   Sure, white skin is better for making vitamin D in Scandanavia...and I got on heck of a sunburn in 20 minutes sitting one a pier in Puerto Rico waiting for some shipmates to come out of the submarine...Jaker got the entire back side of his body sunburned snorkeling...the black crew member he was diving with...did not.  "Better" in evolutionary term is always relative.

Anyway....people who claim that something is not possible, therefore a violation of the Second Law must have happened to make it possible, are blowing smoke up your ass unless they explain HOW the Second Law was violated.

They never do.

There's something wrong with their math, not with the universe.

----------


## Katzndogz

My understandig from the classes that I took is that all dogs are descended from the wolf.   Not all canines but all dogs that are domesticated today come from the wolf.   The variations on breeds are the result of specific breeding programs from human beings.  There is no ancestor to the wild poodle for instance.

----------


## Sled Dog

> I would like to see your research about these supposed perfect, and different methods of dating the earth.


I would like to see you learn how to use the Internet as a tool for extracting a meaningful education and the last thing I would ever want to do is deny someone a really good opportunity for learning solid life skills by doing their work for them.

I love my fellow man, so I let them do as much work as they possibly can for themselves.




> I would also like to see your information that shows the transitional forms from the fossil record.  After billions of years there must be millions of them.


There's always one straight man in the crowd.

EVERY species in the fossil record is a transitional form between it's progenitor species and it's descendant species, unless that species has become so specialized that a relatively or even REALLY sudden significant environmental change removes all specimens from the table in the process we like to call "extinction".

WE are the "transitional" species for the species our descendants will remotely evolve into.

So, I give you "MAN" as a fine example of a species in transition.

Jeez, that was easy.




> Here again I would like to see any evidence you have about this, and the irrefutable  proof that at no time in your billions of years time, there was never any type of change in the rate of radioactive decay, which would skew the results.


So you're trying to claim that universal constants aren't constant?

Have fun with that.    Of course, cosmology will prove you wrong, like the time the astronomers matched the decaying light curve of a supernova (or was it a nova?  I forget) to the half-life of Californium...and element thought previously only to exist in the laboratories of Berserkley university in umm....California.

Then there's the decay curves of Type II Supernovae, visible to the VERY EDGE of intergalactic space....which decay EXACTLY LIKE those Type II Supernovae that happen in closer galaxies...

You said you wanted evidence...you now have evidence.

I believe those are actually Type IIa supernovae, but I don't want to dig out my book on the cosmological supernovae project to verify.  A little homework for ya.

Good night.

----------


## FirstGenCanadian

Just a point of curiosity.

If a higher power is the cause of life on Earth, then why, do we, (humans) have an appendix (useless and ignored until a rupture), or remnants of a third eyelid (located by tear ducts), or coccyx bones (tail bone)?  If Genesis is to be believed, man was created in His image.  Yet, there are definite signs that humans (present) are not a final product.  So, does that mean He was/is not a finished product?

While I find this topic very fascinating, I see a lot of the evolutionary theories answer more questions than Creationist theories, as one looks in the mirror.

----------


## Dos Equis

> Who said there's "zero" evidence of abiogenesis?
> 
> .
> 
> What's the alternative, Sky Pixies?  Magic?   In what way is that scientific..


Sky Pixies?

The issue is, can life evolve by random chance within a 500 million year span?   As we have seen in the fossil record, this took place, but how?

Does it not trouble you that life cannot be created in a laboratory?  Does it trouble you that there does not seem to be life anywhere else but earth?

I simply don't believe that life forms, as we know them, can self create themselves, especially in such a short time frame.   It is my contention that life was seeded on earth by a life form that existed before the Big Bang in a dimension foreign to us.  They, or he, had no beginning because time was created with the Big Bang.  Those who existed before its creation simply were able to visit this dimension and seed life

To drive home my point, do you think that abiogenesis has stopped?  All life forms are related as we know them which began some 3.5 billion years ago.  We all have a common ancestor.  Why?  If Abiogenesis was ongoing, it would seem to me that there would arise life forms completely foreign to our own, but there is not.  This raises an alarming question, why was abiogenesis a one time event?  All evidence points to seeding.

----------


## Sled Dog

> Sky Pixies?


Got a more entertaining name?




> The issue is, can life evolve by random chance within a 500 million year span?   As we have seen in the fossil record, this took place, but how?


If it didn't happen in 500 my then it happened in the preceding 14,000 my and infected by some form of panspermia.   

No reason to believe it happened by magic.




> Does it not trouble you that life cannot be created in a laboratory?


No.  I'm under no delusions about the omniscience of human scientists.  You needed to put the word "yet" at the end of that question.




> Does it trouble you that there does not seem to be life anywhere else but earth?


No.  It's not like we've looked anywhere else.

It's a big universe.  I see no reason to believe that Earth is the only abode of life in all that vastness.




> I simply don't believe that life forms, as we know them, can self create themselves, especially in such a short time frame.   It is my contention that life was seeded on earth by a life form that existed before the Big Bang in a dimension foreign to us.  They, or he, had no beginning because he created time and lived in a dimension devoid of time.


I don't know why anyone would say one-tenth of the age of the earth is a short time.

The presumption of panspermia is a hypothesis devoid of substantiating facts.

Ah...a genuine believer in the MSP theory.

Do tell...what evolutionary pressures forced this being into consciousness?  Without the arrow of time, how can evolution happen at all?  Timelessness is also changelessness since the passage of time is measured by change.

Why would a timeless being create a entropic clock and populate it with living forms?   It couldn't possibly be bored, boredom is the emotional state of a being conscious of the passage of time and of the lack of interesting events marking that passage of time.  But you said your MSP lived in a timeless space...hence it has no urge to do something "interesting".

Can you discuss coherently the origins of this timeless being?  Which intelligent being created him? Which intelligent being created that intelligent being that created the intelligent being that supposedly seeded this universe with life?  In what way does this infinite regression of infinite creative intelligent beings add to the human understanding of both abiogenesis and the evolution of life?   What does it do besides remove science completely from the picture?

Carl Sagan (thankfully dead) once related, a woman came up to him and said he was all wrong, that everyone know that the Earth was flat and rested on the backs of elephants standing on a turtle.  Sagan supposedly asked her what the turtle was standing on and she replied, "don't be silly, it's turtles all the way down".

Logically your theory is holding up just as well as the Turtle Theory.  Let's get together on Ankh Moorpork and I'll buy you a beer.

----------


## Dos Equis

> Just a point of curiosity.
> 
> If a higher power is the cause of life on Earth, then why, do we, (humans) have an appendix (useless and ignored until a rupture), or remnants of a third eyelid (located by tear ducts), or coccyx bones (tail bone)?  If Genesis is to be believed, man was created in His image.  Yet, there are definite signs that humans (present) are not a final product.  So, does that mean He was/is not a finished product?
> 
> While I find this topic very fascinating, I see a lot of the evolutionary theories answer more questions than Creationist theories, as one looks in the mirror.


Evolution is the study of what has already been through observation.   The Bible is not a book of science.  It would then stand to reason that evolution can tell you more about the science of what has already happened.

But is the Bible contradictory to what science tells us?  That is the question.  For example, the first man created is called Adam in the Bible.  In Hebrew, Adam is "adamah", translated, "earth" or "soil".  God made man out of the dust of the earth.  For this, both scientist and Bible believing creationist can agree.

So what of the fossil record?  Neanderthal fossils show us that similar creatures like ourselves existed before humans, such as ourselves, did.  Their cranial capacities had reached 1,400 ml, which is close to our own.  Then 3 million years ago animals began to walk upright with a smooth and erect bipedal stride for the first time.  Then very suddenly, 40,000 years ago tools diversified at a rate far in excess of anything seen during the previous history of mankind.

What appears to be the oldest part of our brains is a mass of nerves at the top of the spinal cord.  In this region, referred to as the stem, or brain stem, automatic body functions such as breathing and heartbeat are controlled.  Overlying our brain stem is the reptilian part of our brain, where the instincts for territorial control and for fight or flight are seated.  Then above this lies the limbic system.  With the appearance of this portion of our brains, mammals depart from all their ancestors.  From there originate emotions, especially those related to the love and care of offspring.  However, the most recent part of the brain to evolve is the cerebral cortex.  This overlies the limbic system.  It is from here that analytical thought and the ability for mathematics and language and forethought stem.

As we can see, the "making" of modern man was a process, the fossil record is irrefutable.   So does this contradict the Bible?

The fact that the making of man is the most intimately described event of Genesis and the last act of creation indicates that mankind was targeted for these evolutionary punctuations.

Genesis 1:26  "God created mankind in his image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created him."

The verbs make and create are both used, and so, from these two verses, it appears that both making and creating were involved in the appearance of the first of mankind.  In Genesis 2:7 it is explicitly stated that mankind is formed from a previously existing substance, in fact, the same substance used to form fowl and land animals (Gen 2:19).  However, a special ingredient, not mentioned before is summoned at this point.  God breathes a neshamah, a "soul life", into this creature and man became a living being.

All animals in the Bible were given a life giving spirit, a nefesh in Hebrew, and the animals that we are, are no exception.  However, into the physical form that contained the nefesh of Adam, God placed an additional spirit, or soul, the neshamah.  It is this that separates mankind from the animal kingdom.

Genesis 2:7 "And the Lord formed man (adam) from the dust of the ground (adamah) and blew in his nostrils a soul life (neshamah), and the man became a living being (nefesh).

Ok, so you say that I'm simply trying to make the Bible say what modern science is saying, right?  In the Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides makes a remarkable comment.  He states that in the time of Adam, there coexisted animals that appeared as humans in shape and also intelligence and what separated man from the animals was this "nehamah" that God breathed into mankind.  *How can a man who died in 1204 C. E., have come to such a conclusion by just studying the Hebrew text of Genesis?

*For those who don't agree that mankind was made in the image of God, this raises a very troubling question, what separates mankind from the animal kingdom?  After all, we lock away animals in zoos without a second thought.  We force them to be beasts of burden for us, and we kill and eat them.  Morally, how is this justified?  Are we morally able to do this simply because we are smarter?  If so, then we should have no problem treating "stupid" people much in the same way.  This, I think, is why those who are without faith often gravitate towards groups like PETA.  In their minds, humans are simply glorified animals but really no more sacred.  Then you have Fabian socialists who think that children with Downs Syndrome should simply be left to die on their own, like a horse with a broken leg.  And lastly, you have the political elite who are godless and think nothing of herding us around like sheep with the knowledge that they are intellectually or genetically superior to ourselves, so treating us like sheep is acceptable.  In fact, the said sheep would probably all die without them, so in their twisted minds captivity of the said sheep is seen as compassionate.

----------


## Dos Equis

> Got a more entertaining name?
> 
> 
> 
> If it didn't happen in 500 my then it happened in the preceding 14,000 my and infected by some form of panspermia.   
> 
> No reason to believe it happened by magic.
> 
> 
> ...



Science has two fundamental questions to answer

1.  Where did matter come from?
2.  How did life start?

To date, they are both mysteries.

It was not long ago that scientists thought that the universe was eternal, without beginning.  But lo and behold, with continuous study we find out it did have a beginning after all, something both the Bible and science agree.

So what existed before the Big Bang?  That is the question.  The problem is, that state of existence is foreign to us.  We need some point of reference to identify with any given thought, otherwise it is nonsensical. 

Scientists agree that there are dimensions that exist that are foreign to us.  We have no real way to comprehend them, yet they exist.  Again, when you ask, "Who created God?", you are asking this with the assumption that God is regulated to this current dimension we are in now in which time is apart.  Time simply measures from point A to point B.  The 4 dimension which we live are height, length, width, and the time to go from point A to point B in between.  Take away these three dimensions, however, and time does not exist.  I think we can both agree that time began once the Big Bang came to be, the only question is, what came before it, if anything?


As to why God created us, the Bible mentions that God is a God of love.  That is an interesting statement, especially since love is the single most important phenomenon in our lives.  Without love, our existence is meaningless.  So man either tried to make God in his image, or God made us in his own image.  Take your pick.

So what is love?   Love has little to do with intellectual capacity and more to do with something that is really not definable.  Love is the door between the material world and the supernatural.  Love by itself, does not really exist in the material world other than describing it as a complex set of chemical reactions, yet what is not tangible or measurable or real has become the most important and treasured thing we possess.

More to the point, love demands a choice.  If you demand or force someone to love you, then love does not exist.  For their to be a mutually loving relationship, freedom of choice must reign supreme.  So just think of a God that controlled everything and knows everything.  If he "chose" to only relinquish control over human will and nothing else, would that not interest you more than anything else in the universe no matter how insignificant in size or power?

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usfan (02-03-2016)

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## Corruptbuddha

> I don't know.  Nobody does.  We can look at the clues, but no definitive conclusion can be made.  There are too many conflicting processes to make such a declaration.  It could be tens of thousands, or millions, or some other arbitrary number.  Statistics can be juggled to 'prove' a great many guesses.
> 
> 
> I am right, but why do i HAVE to have an explanation?  If there was a valid, SCIENTIFIC theory with solid evidence, i would lean toward that.  But the last few hundred years have been quite unsatisfactory.  We went from 'spontaneous generation' as the naturalistic theory, to evolution.  I am looking for solid, conclusive scientific evidence, not speculation & juggled data.  Any religion can make decrees about origins, & most religions do, including evolution.
> 
> Is the earth cooling or warming from Anthropogenic Global Warming?  What is the science on that?  Evidently, we have to predetermine what your political agenda is, first, before the science can be concluded.  IMO, evolution is in the same camp.  It is a belief that is propped up by certain worldviews, & is defended with emotional, philosophical reasons, not science.
> 
> You are not current on the subject.
> Rare Blood-Engorged Mosquito Fossil Found 
> ...



It was FOSSILIZED blood.

----------


## usfan

> It was FOSSILIZED blood.


kinda sorta.. there was still some measurable hemoglobin in it, & the condition of the sample is not consistent with a 46 million year estimate.  the point is that much of this 'dating' is speculation & guesswork.. it's not like you have a time stamp or anything.

Here is another article:



> Publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers reported that they detected iron three times inside the fossil mosquito's abdomen, which strongly suggests the presence of still-fresh hemoglobin. They also confirmed the presence of heme groups (vitamin-like porphyrin molecules found in hemoglobin) only inside the abdomen, where living female mosquitos store the blood from their meals. The study authors wrote, "The combination of these two determinations indicates that the porphyrins are derived from the oxygen-carrying heme moiety of hemoglobin."1
> 
> No scientific evidence supports the assertion that heme groups can last, even under circumstances that would maximize their preservation, for one million, let alone tens of millions of years. In fact, all longevity studies of biomolecules like hemoglobin, DNA, and collagen show decay rates in ranges that show total sample disintegration in a matter of months to a maximum of several hundred thousand yearsassuming reasonable Earth surface temperatures.2
> 
> Fundamental physical laws describe how highly organized systems like proteins constantly decay unless an outside agencylike an engineer or a robotmaintains them. The PNAS study did not explain how hemoglobin could defy these basic laws.
> 
> The study authors wrote, "The data reported herein provide* incontrovertible documentation of the presence of heme and arguably hemoglobin-derived porphyrins* in a 46-million-year-old compression fossil and localize the porphyrins to a specific anatomical structure within that fossil."1
> 
> Though they provided incontrovertible documentation for blood remnants, without something like a time machine, science cannot directly measure these ages.


source

There was enough measurable iron & other compounds that had NOT fossilized to refute any claim of '46 million' years.  Yet because it fit within their other assumptions, they stuck doggedly to this date.  IOW, it was not arrived at scientifically, but arbitrarily, to prop up a theory.

IMO, it is no different than the 'science' of global warming.. cherry picked data.. agenda driven conclusions.  REAL conflicts with the science are met with cries of 'Blasphemy!!  Kill the infidels!!'  I find it very difficult to have a calm, rational discussion about this subject without hysteria & emotion ruling the debate.

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## Dos Equis

> kinda sorta.. there was still some measurable hemoglobin in it, & the condition of the sample is not consistent with a 46 million year estimate.  the point is that much of this 'dating' is speculation & guesswork.. it's not like you have a time stamp or anything.
> 
> Here is another article:
> source
> 
> There was enough measurable iron & other compounds that had NOT fossilized to refute any claim of '46 million' years.  Yet because it fit within their other assumptions, they stuck doggedly to this date.  IOW, it was not arrived at scientifically, but arbitrarily, to prop up a theory.
> 
> IMO, it is no different than the 'science' of global warming.. cherry picked data.. agenda driven conclusions.  REAL conflicts with the science are met with cries of 'Blasphemy!!  Kill the infidels!!'  I find it very difficult to have a calm, rational discussion about this subject without hysteria & emotion ruling the debate.


No one likes to be told they are wrong, even scientists.  That's why when an upstart proposes an idea that is new, and especially if it contradicts current belief, that upstart will encounter a great deal of skepticism, which may even end a career.

That's why Einstein introduced into his theory of relativity the "cosmological constant".  For you see, it was generally accepted that the universe was static and not accelerated outward, so Einstein simply fudged the numbers with the cosmological constant in order to make the numbers not contradict the accepted belief about a static universe.

Later, when it was proved that the universe is accelerating indefinitely, the cosmological constant was dropped off the equation and it all made sense one again.  Einstein later said it was the biggest blunder of his career, essentially admitting he had given into peer pressure.

And that is exactly what people encounter when going up against any assumed truth, such as Darwinian version of evolution or abiogenesis.  The movie "Expelled" is a good version of how this occurs in real life.

Here is my favorite clip





Interestingly, Schroeder is in this film as well.

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usfan (02-04-2016)

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## Jehoshaphat

> _
> I would like to see your research about these supposed perfect, and different methods of dating the earth._





> I would like to see you learn how to use the Internet as a tool for extracting a meaningful education and the last thing I would ever want to do is deny someone a really good opportunity for learning solid life skills by doing their work for them.


 
*You bring it up, it is up to you to back it up, so I can only assume you can't* 




> I love my fellow man, so I let them do as much work as they possibly can for themselves.


 
*Translation=I'm lazy and people should just listen to me, and not question my sources*




> _
> I would also like to see your information that shows the transitional forms from the fossil record. After billions of years there must be millions of them._





> There's always one straight man in the crowd.
> 
> EVERY species in the fossil record is a transitional form between it's progenitor species and it's descendant species, unless that species has become so specialized that a relatively or even REALLY sudden significant environmental change removes all specimens from the table in the process we like to call "extinction".
> 
> WE are the "transitional" species for the species our descendants will remotely evolve into.
> 
> So, I give you "MAN" as a fine example of a species in transition.
> 
> Jeez, that was easy.



*
That goes totally against evolutionist and Charlie Darwin.

**You might want to explore the topic of Circular Reasoning, most of your positions seem to depend very heavily on it.*




> _
> Here again I would like to see any evidence you have about this, and the irrefutable proof that at no time in your billions of years time, there was never any type of change in the rate of radioactive decay, which would skew the results.
> _





> So you're trying to claim that universal constants aren't constant?
> 
> Have fun with that. Of course, cosmology will prove you wrong, like the time the astronomers matched the decaying light curve of a supernova (or was it a nova? I forget) to the half-life of Californium...and element thought previously only to exist in the laboratories of Berserkley university in umm....California.


*When did they actually go to this nova or supernova to verify the theories they made up here on earth?*




> Then there's the decay curves of Type II Supernovae, visible to the VERY EDGE of intergalactic space....which decay EXACTLY LIKE those Type II Supernovae that happen in closer galaxies...
> 
> You said you wanted evidence...you now have evidence.


*I don't have evidence, I have a bunch of words you have written, that cannot be scientifically verified.

This is no different than a probe flying by Pluto, which is 46,000,000,000 or 0.1 light years away and everyone being surprised at what they see.  

Now we look in a telescope at a star, the closest is 4.2 light years or 24,690,226,567,371 miles, and they want us to believe they can tell us what is going on at that star, and ones 100's or more distant.  So convenient that they won't actually be able to scientifically prove their theory until the Star-Ship Enterprise makes it way out there.*




> I believe those are actually Type IIa supernovae, but I don't want to dig out my book on the cosmological supernovae project to verify. A little homework for ya.


*I will read it, when it is a proven fact, and not just another theory. *

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## FirstGenCanadian

I really appreciate your views, but I cannot say I agree with them, here's why:




> For those who don't agree that mankind was made in the image of God, this raises a very troubling question, what separates mankind from the animal kingdom?  After all, we lock away animals in zoos without a second thought.  We force them to be beasts of burden for us, and we kill and eat them.  Morally, how is this justified?


Morally, how is this justified?  We are members of this planet, and part of it's life cycle.  It's not like there aren't animals that won't eat us or hunt us.  Beyond the ability to reason, and use tools, and even that is questionable, a lot of animals use "tools".  It is only our arrogance that separates us.  When push comes to shove, we resort to our most basic "instincts". 




> Are we morally able to do this simply because we are smarter?  If so, then we should have no problem treating "stupid" people much in the same way.


We do.  Otherwise this world wouldn't be driven to silence/get rid of other ideologies.  This forum is proof of that.  Otherwise, Trinnity wouldn't need to interfere on "dog piling" name calling and personal attacks.  We have rules to dissuade us in the belief that we are supreme, and again, this stems from our arrogance, ability to reason, and not simply rely on instinct. 




> This, I think, is why those who are without faith often gravitate towards groups like PETA.  In their minds, humans are simply glorified animals but really no more sacred.


PETA, like most "religious" beliefs have radicals.  (I call this a religion based on the American Natives beliefs that animals are sacred.  Radicalized would become PETA.)  This ties into what I said above reference our arrogance removing us from the rest of the animal kingdom.



> And lastly, you have the political elite who are godless and think nothing of herding us around like sheep with the knowledge that they are intellectually or genetically superior to ourselves, so treating us like sheep is acceptable.  In fact, the said sheep would probably all die without them, so in their twisted minds captivity of the said sheep is seen as compassionate.


Political ideologies are not something new to humans, and nothing new to the Animal Kingdom, as they also have hierarchies.  Any republic, (Rome, and soon to be the USA) fall due to greed, and the loss of vision of a Nation being greater than the individual.  I honestly miss the chanting of USA, USA, USA...  It invoked emotions.  That is a powerful tool.  When emotions can be invoked, you can build or destroy a nation, on a whim.  Thus, politicians use emotions to cloud the judgement, or reasoning ability, of voters.  Confusing their rights, for special privileges given to the people, like kindly lords, who gave us existence, to serve them.

Are we really that enlightened?

----------


## Sled Dog

> Science has two fundamental questions to answer
> 
> 1.  Where did matter come from?
> 2.  How did life start?
> 
> To date, they are both mysteries.


Matter comes from energy.

The energy came from whatever it was the universe formed from.    Since that question is not answerable at this time, we not having the technology to probe alternate universes, clearly the best we can do is invoke imaginary anthropocentric spirits and pretend they did all the heavy lifting.




> It was not long ago that scientists thought that the universe was eternal, without beginning.  But lo and behold, with continuous study we find out it did have a beginning after all, something both the Bible and science agree.


Yeah, ALL primitive mythologies assume that, like people, entire universes come into being.

Gee, nothing strange there for a people who know they are born from nothing to grow into something to come up with a mythology of universal birth and growth.

So the Bible managed to guess kinda right, but not really, given the author's ignorance and reliance on the Magic Sky Pixie to pull them through the tricky parts.

The universe IS eternal.  And it's dying.  And growing ever larger at an accelerating rate.

Once we figure out where that dark energy is coming from, we'll have a fair idea where the matter comes from.  As it stands, the input of energy fueling the accelerating expansion is an indication that this universe is probably not isolated from others.

The energy has to come from somewhere.




> So what existed before the Big Bang?  That is the question.  The problem is, that state of existence is foreign to us.  We need some point of reference to identify with any given thought, otherwise it is nonsensical.


We're an MSP fart...?




> Scientists agree that there are dimensions that exist that are foreign to us.  We have no real way to comprehend them, yet they exist.  Again, when you ask, "Who created God?", you are asking this with the assumption that God is regulated to this current dimension we are in now in which time is apart.


Not at all.

I'm asking with the supreme knowledge that you can't answer it.  Because if you claim God created Herself...you have no logical basis for refuting any notion that the Universe didn't bootstrap itself, but you've added the additional complexity of trying to explain where your MSP's omniscience and omnipotence (if you presume either, as the Faithful always do) come from.

If you say your God was Itself created, all you've done is open an infinitely regressing series, with GOD Raised to N+1 creating GOD Raised to N...with NEVER any sensible reason for ANY of the incarnations.

I'm perfectly willing to pretend your God is a pan-dimensional hyper-intelligent being of the color blue, if that's what you wish to postulate.

And then I'll take Her apart because the universe is a logical place and religion is not a logical process.

As I pointed out...if your god is timeless...how did He become bored to the point of creating something as useless as us?   If God is not timeless, then She is undergoing entropy.   Is He becoming Senile, like *HER*?




> Time simply measures from point A to point B.  The 4 dimension which we live are height, length, width, and the time to go from point A to point B in between.  Take away these three dimensions, however, and time does not exist.  I think we can both agree that time began once the Big Bang came to be, the only question is, what came before it, if anything?


Time doesn't exist without space?    So if something does not move, it does not age?

Okay.

In what "space" is the MSP enclosed in since modern consensus is that the MSP encompasses more than just the universe we know exists.  How was this complete-space created, how did She come to occupy that space, and since He now occupies a variation of space, She enjoys duration and boredom....is He subject to entropy?




> As to why God created us, the Bible mentions that God is a God of love.


Anyone really believe that whopper?  But the Bible isn't a factual reference, it's a book of mythology.




> That is an interesting statement, especially since love is the single most important phenomenon in our lives.


Gee...man invents god, decides then the rationale for Her creation of man is His love of Her own creation...which just happens to be the most singularly necessary emotion a child demands it's parents feel for it...

...nah, just a mere coincidence, is all.   




> Without love, our existence is meaningless.  So man either tried to make God in his image, or God made us in his own image.  Take your pick.


Philip Wylie in An Essay on Morals made a solid case for the former, no one has ever succeeded in making a case for the latter.

Nothing to pick but my nose.




> So what is love?   Love has little to do with intellectual capacity and more to do with something that is really not definable.  Love is the door between the material world and the supernatural.


Ah, love.

Love is the expression of lust for reproductive success, fear of reproductivfe failure, the instinctual bonding process necessary to hold the parents together over more-than-decade long process of raising the off-spring to their own sexual maturity, and the instinctual bonding force that makes most, but not all, parents hang around and actually raise their young.

In a short word, love is chemistry.

And I LOVE the word "supernatural".   It's a word by people who don't understand the word "science".

The "supernatural" is the set of aspects of the natural world the scientific method has not gotten around to quantifying and explaining.  Once some aspect of this set is explained, that element of "supernatural" becomes plain "natural", which is another way to say "mundane".

The Oracle at Delphi was a supernatural mouthpiece for the Gods.

We now recognize that she really was nothing more than a poor woman high on ethylene gas from a volcanic crack in the building's foundations.

Scientific Progress Goes "Boink".




> Love by itself, does not really exist in the material world other than describing it as a complex set of chemical reactions, yet what is not tangible or measurable or real has become the most important and treasured thing we possess.


It's not a thing, it's a feeling.

Many many people got gonged on the Gong show for singing that song.




> More to the point, love demands a choice.  If you demand or force someone to love you, then love does not exist.  For their to be a mutually loving relationship, freedom of choice must reign supreme.  So just think of a God that controlled everything and knows everything.  If he "chose" to only relinquish control over human will and nothing else, would that not interest you more than anything else in the universe no matter how insignificant in size or power?


Which leads into a discussion of the Three Faces of All Magic Sky Pixies, the Omnipotent Face, the Omniscient Face, and the Perfect Face, and the ineluctable fact that no concept of MSP can be logically valid if the MSP wears all three faces AND it's presumed that humans have free will.

The logic is obvious.    Just use the definitions of the words and you'll see what I mean.

----------


## Sled Dog

> No one likes to be told they are wrong, even scientists.  That's why when an upstart proposes an idea that is new, and especially if it contradicts current belief, that upstart will encounter a great deal of skepticism, which may even end a career.
> 
> That's why Einstein introduced into his theory of relativity the "cosmological constant".  For you see, it was generally accepted that the universe was static and not accelerated outward, so Einstein simply fudged the numbers with the cosmological constant in order to make the numbers not contradict the accepted belief about a static universe.
> 
> Later, when it was proved that the universe is accelerating indefinitely, the cosmological constant was dropped off the equation and it all made sense one again.  Einstein later said it was the biggest blunder of his career, essentially admitting he had given into peer pressure.
> 
> And that is exactly what people encounter when going up against any assumed truth, such as Darwinian version of evolution or abiogenesis.  The movie "Expelled" is a good version of how this occurs in real life.
> 
> Here is my favorite clip
> ...



Ummm....that's not quite the way it was.

Yes, Einstein had a pesky Constant of Integration, Lambda, the implied the universe was not static.  Since his Theories of Relativity preceded Hubble's pioneering work with the Hooker telescope on Mount Wilson, Einstein believed, as most did, in a static universe.   So he fudged the value of Lambda to show a universe consistent with the observations of the time.    What the hell, he could only win one Nobel Prize in a lifetime anyway, right?

But then Hubble proved the expanding universe and oh! shit they dropped lambda out as zero (I believe) and assumed the universe was expanding on initial impetus from the Creative Moment (the term "Big Bang" was introduced derisively by Herman Gold or Fred Hoyle in their defense of their Steady State cosmological model) and the universe was then assumed to be behaving as a Newtonian system of particles as modified where necessary with relativistic concepts.

And then the late 1990's came along and the ultimate Yardstick was discovered.  To explain this, let's go back to Hubble for a minute, and how he stole credit from a woman...the scientific problem of his era was why those pesky lenticular nebulae (not known to be galaxies, the impression at the time was that there was just one galaxy, ours, shown by the Milky Way, and the lenticular nebulae were funny star clouds inside this galaxy, which bounded the whole universe) always tended to show a red-shift on their spectrograms, with only a few exceptions of blue shift (the Andromeda galaxy being the most notable). 

The concept of gravitational red-shifting wasn't in vogue (people weren't familiar with relativity), so they tried to invoke the Doppler effect to explain the shifting spectra, except some galaxies were shifted more than others.  What did that mean?  Nobody knew.   Then a woman pointed out (don't know her name, don't feel like looking it up) discovered Cepheid Variables in those lenticular nebulae.

A Cepheid Variable a star (in the constellation Cephus) which varies in brightness with clock-like regularity.  These stars are important because their brightness is a pure function of their period.  The longer the period, the brighter the star.   Until the discovery of Cepheid Variables in remote galaxies, it was impossible to measure the distance to those pesky lenticular nebulae with the intriguing red-shifted spectra.

Using this new yard stick and the world's largest telescope, Hubble measured the distance to various lenticular nebulae...proved that those objects were indeed separate "island universes", giving the word "galaxy" meaning as a distinct object similar to the one we live in....AND most importantly, he plotted the degree of red-shift, which from the Doppler effect gave a measure of the objects speed of recession against the distance to the object, resulting in a linear slope of red-shift vs distance.

Hubble proved the universe was not static, it was expanding.   

Now back to 1998 or so.  Cepheid Variables aren't all that bright and they're impossible to detect in high-red-shift galaxies...too far away.   Enter the realization that Type IIa Supernovae explode at a CONSTANT brightness.   Find that type of supernovae in a galaxy, no matter how far off, measure it's apparent brightness here, and voila!  an accurate measure of distance is gained...and we already know the red shift.    It's an extension of Hubble's work.

Except, oh, shit...from the original Big Bang Theory, from the modifications of Guth's inflation theories, it was still expected by this time that the Universe would be behaving as Newton said a gravitational machine should act.  Except the High-Z galaxies were accelerating AWAY, not slowing down.  ACCELERATING AWAY.   Definite and positive proof of a positive Cosmological Constant...and we're scratching our heads wondering how and why.   

If those teams making those discoveries don't get a Nobel Prize in physics for their work, they should try to see if doing nothing like Obama will get them one.

But remember, it was a woman who discovered the Cepheid Variable yardstick.

========
On Peer Pressure

Wegener's theory of Continental Drift was scoffed at but mounting evidence forced the world's leading geological society, forget it's name, to VOTE on it...and thus Continental Drift became the pre-eminent theory of geology...by a vote.  Velikovsky of "Worlds In Collision" fame derided the idea in his "Earth in Upheaval"....because Wegener's theory explained most of what Velikovsky was trying to explain with his entertaining but misguided "Venus was a comet that almost hit earth and cause the ten plagues of Egypt" theory.   

The history of science is FASCINATING.

----------


## Sled Dog

> *You bring it up, it is up to you to back it up, so I can only assume you can't*


*

Well, you know what they say about people who assume things.  They make an ass out of  you and yourself.

*


> *Translation=I'm lazy and people should just listen to me, and not question my sources*


*

You're beginning to get the picture.  I don't do my students' homework.

*


> *That goes totally against evolutionist and Charlie Darwin.*


*

Actually, since Darwin NEVER used the phrase "transitional species", he never had anything to say on the matter.  Since Darwin never had anything to say on the matter, my statements on the matter cannot be against what Darwin said, because he didn't.

In fact, the ONLY people who use the phrase "transitional species" are people who flatly don't understand what Darwin taught.

EVERY species is a species in it's own right.  No species exists merely to be the intermediary for the next  species down the line.   

And, besides, I've already produced examples of chains of speciation with more than three links.

*


> *You might want to explore the topic of Circular Reasoning, most of your positions seem to depend very heavily on it.*


*

I'm extremely familiar with ass-self-sniffing Creationists who don't understand their own religion let alone real science.





			
				When did they actually go to this nova or supernova to verify the theories they made up here on earth?
			
		

See my preceding comment.   I suspect I can identify one of those tail-chasing religionists by name.





			
				I don't have evidence, I have a bunch of words you have written, that cannot be scientifically verified.
			
		

Oh, you can verify that I wrote them.  Ask a moderator to check the IP addresses, or simply take it on faith that nobody would hack a dog's account.    Let sleeping dogs lie, they hate telling the truth when they just wake up.





			
				This is no different than a probe flying by Pluto, which is 46,000,000,000 or 0.1 light years away and everyone being surprised at what they see.
			
		

?   Okay, so you have NO IDEA what a light-year is.   





			
				Now we look in a telescope at a star, the closest is 4.2 light years or 24,690,226,567,371 miles, and they want us to believe they can tell us what is going on at that star, and ones 100's or more distant.  So convenient that they won't actually be able to scientifically prove their theory until the Star-Ship Enterprise makes it way out there.
			
		

I just posted a VERY NICE pocket history of the cosmological constant, off the top of my head, and you want to challenge me with grade-school nonsense?   

You're ignorant, go back to your adult coloring book.

*


> *I will read it, when it is a proven fact, and not just another theory. *


Yes.  Confirmed.  Proven fact.

You really have NO IDEA what science is, how it works, and I'm pretty certain that you don't know how to define a scientific theory.

----------


## FirstGenCanadian

.

----------


## usfan

> Yes, facts usually separate hypotheses from fantasies.
> Funny how science really works, isn't it?


 Hilarious.  Dating methods, or even time itself, do not corroborate the hypothesis of evolution.  They are needed to muddy the waters, by appealing to such ancient dates & implying that given enough time, anything is possible.  But you still do not have a mechanism for the alleged process, & time has no power to do it.. it only plods along, making no changes itself.  some other mechanism must make the changes.  Time has no ability or process to do it.



> Not an assumption, a measured fact.


You keep saying this, but EVERY dating method is fraught with assumptions.  How can you not see this?  It is NOT a measured fact, but an extrapolation, based on myriads of assumptions of constants, known variables (none of which are), & the ASSUMPTION of a big bang or other imagined explanation of matter, life, & the universe.  BUT, there are many holes in these various theories which require huge amounts of time.. and which are mostly appeals to chance.  'Give us enough time', they say, 'And the odds are it happened'.  But appealing to odds is not a scientific process.  You have to SHOW, by experimentation, observation, & repetition that this is possible, & evolution isn't.




> No, it's just the reality of the galaxy you're living in.
> Not that you could name any and stay inside the boundaries of actual science.
> Introducing strawmen already.
> Nobody pretends to uniformitarianism any more.   It hinders evolution.   The reality is that CLIMATES and ENVIRONMENTS CHANGE.  Sometimes with lethal rapidity, sometimes gradually.   But the only uniform characteristic is the fact of change itself.
> Riiighhttt....Those damn mass spectrometers and their pesky one-atom at a time counting processes.  So many assumptions made there...so...let's see....when you have a nodule of uranium that's been sealed since formation, and you can count the relative proportion of the U238 and it's decay products....someone must have tampered with that to fudge the dates, right?
> The age of the earth is known to within a hundred million years or so if it's presently held value of 4.54 billion years with an error bar of 100 million years.
> Whatchya got to say different, a magic book that say it was built in six days?
> Actually, I'm an engineer and I'm qualified to look at the real science.   My birds don't fly, my bridges don't stay put, my people don't stay safe unless I use real science.
> There's nothing scarier than seeing a supposed engineer thumping his bible and cutting corners on faith.   I worked on a program with one fool like that.   I did things the right way, and got in trouble because the methods were tedious and long...he got kudos for being so quick.
> ...


It is clear from this thread that many people believe in God & evolution.  so this is not a religious argument, but a scientific one.  That you keep trying to inject religious arguments, & feel threatened when i rebut the SCIENTIFIC arguments tells me your science is not secure.. & you must resort to emotional religious hysteria to deflect.  I have made NO 'ad hominem attacks'.  That is just your projection from feeling threatened in your IDEOLOGICAL position.  You think you 'need' evolution to provide the basis for your atheism, it seems, so you lash out at anyone who dares to challenge the sacred cows of your beliefs.  I am NOT making any religious arguments, but only scientific & logical ones.  The science you use in your engineering projects had nothing to do with any dating methods, or genetic changes in living things.  They do not correlate, & your attempt to use PROVEN engineering principles & correlate them with the SPECULATIVE concepts in evolution is a false equivalence.  They do NOT correlate.  The engineering principles are PROVEN, by observation, repetition, & the scientific method.  Evolution remains a hypothetical extrapolation, based on a lot of assumptions, none of which are proven.




> You got any experience working with radioactive materials?
> I'm going to bet you can't accurately describe what strata dating actually is without doing a frantic search on the Internet.
> Don't care about the bug.     The issue was the AGE OF THE EARTH.
> And it's old for a middle aged planet with a middle aged sun in a middle aged solar system near the beginning of the Era of Luminosity in the Universe.   Half the RAM has decayed from the core, the stored heat is radiating away, and continental drift is gradually slowing down.   It's really sad...kinda like some men going bald as they get older.
> Well, strata dating is fairly reliable.
> State the flaw you discovered that makes the dating suspect and write a monograph on it.  
> If you're not going to write the monograph you could at least cite what they did and what they did wrong.
> Perhaps if you described strata dating so we could get a glimpse of your understanding of the concept?
> No.


I made my points about dating methods, so it seems pointless to repeat them.  I am quite familiar with them, & have studied this issue for decades.  I won't make arguments of authority, as this is about the science of the claim, not the credentials of the claimants.  IOW, i'm looking at the science, not what 'really smart people' believe.  The point about 'the bug' was to question the assumptions of '46 million years' in the strata dating, for something that had traces of hemoglobin & other 'fresh' remnants.. it would be scientifically impossible for this fossil to be that old, so the assumptions were flawed.  The issue was 'the validity of strata dating' which i was refuting.




> What it shows is that a single female provided the original egg.   Why do you insist that female was human?   Looks like you're running on a "flawed assumption" there.
> You are aware that males do not provide mitochondria to the off-spring, right?
> You're citing a lot of nonsense here.
> Given that homo sapiens moved into Europe some 50 ky ago to find the Neanderthal species already there....it is a "wrong assumption" to claim they are the same species.   The differences in skeletal morphology clearly show they are not the same species, the isolation of the two species in their early evolution drove those differences.   But you can't understand any of that because you refuse to credit the SCIENCE of evolutionary biology with any basis in fact.


1. the mitochondrial gene shows that the ORIGINAL female was a regular human being.. not a distant, different genetic type, or genome sequence.  That all humans can interbreed validates this obvious fact.  No chimps or gorillas have this gene.  It was not from a 'common ancestor' of other hominids, but ONLY humans.  There is NO evidence that any of the past humans descended from this woman were anything other than humans as well.  There are no other hominids that anyone can claim 'descended' from this same woman, or that interbred with her offspring.  THAT is what this gene teaches us.  Those are the facts.  The speculations about human evolution were flawed, & actual scientific evidence has refuted what many believed for nearly a century.
2. Neanderthals were not a 'different species' but were as human as anyone now.  It is only imagined taxonomy & creative drawings that show any 'subhuman' characteristics.  Genetics has changed a lot of the ways neanderthal is viewed, especially by evolutionists.  Most of them, who understand the genetics, now say neanderthal was just as human as us.  They were merely another tribe of humans, & they carried the same descendancy that we all do.  You are behind on this research.  You tell others to 'do their homework'.  Pot.  Kettle.  Black.  You should at least be current before you judge other's work as 'nonsense'.  Your out of date ASSUMPTIONS about neanderthal show that your assertions are no more than beliefs, with NO basis in actual science.
3. The mitochondrial gene is a MAJOR problem for the various long aged theories of human evolution.  The little charts showing descendancy are not supported by the facts.  Humans did not evolve separately in the various regions.  Sure, some traits became more prominent, due to reproductive isolation, but there have not been any 'jumps' in the dna to more advanced (or regressive) conditions.  No new genome pairs, or new chromosomes have been added.  Humans have remained UNCHANGED.  They only vary within their genetic ability, from the options within their dna.. color of hair, skin, minor variations in bone structure, height, etc.  But none of them are 'becoming' anything, or have descended from something subhuman.  There is no common mitochondrial gene with apes or chimps, that would indicate a common ancestry.




> Science has not "refuted" comparative morphology in identifying species.   The skeleton of a horse is not like the skeleton of a cow and DNA markers are only useful in determining evolutionary history...when DNA is available.  And DNA doesn't last all that long in dead animals.
> That thing about "science"? The first rule of science is that you have to work with what you have.


Deflection.  'Looks like' taxonomy of skeletal structure is irrelevant.  Unless you can PROVE descendancy with scientific methods, the old 'looks like' visual determination is just opinion.  Genetics provides this science, & it PROVES that organisms do NOT vary outside of their parameters, but stay locked within the variation that they ALREADY HAVE.  Can you not see this?  As organisms extend out past the trunk of the parent, they do not ADD variability, they reduce it.  The canine ancestor had all the variability within, & as it branched out, this variability reduced to the specific traits we see in the wild.  Modern wolves do NOT occasionally pop out a german shepherd, or a chihuahua.  They alway produce a wolf, since it is now the narrowed selection of traits they have to pick from.. in their slot machine combination of traits that are within their dna.

Calling them 'dna markers' first ASSUMES evolution, then tries to correlate the various organisms based on 'similar' genetic taxonomy.  But similar is not enough.  The similarity between apes & humans has nothing to do with descendancy, but is only percentages of genetic similarity.  Humans are also 50%  similar to a banana, but nobody claims common descent.  Unless you can prove descendancy, by a mitochondrial gene or something else, the 'descendancy' theory' is just speculation.  It is an ASSUMPTION, based on imagined processes that do not exist.  There is NO mechanism that can affect change in the high walls of the genetic code.  It does not flit about randomly, producing variability out of thin air, or constantly adding & changing genome pairs, or other traits.  That is the ASSUMPTION of evolution, but genetics refutes it.  That cannot happen.  Perhaps someday there will be a better naturalistic explanation for origins, but for now, evolution is not the one.

Evolution is behind the times with genetic research.  The old assumptions & beliefs have been debunked by real science.  But many hang on to the old beliefs, even when the updated science does not support it.  The visual taxonomy & 'looks like' methods of assuming descendance have been replace with actual data, & a means of proving descendancy through the dna.  But these are fairly recent developments, & they have not 'taken' within the rest of the schools of thought in evolution.  Dating assumptions do not reflect the new genetic sciences, but are stuck in the flawed assumptions of the past.  Eventually, they will catch up, & there will be more sheepish admissions of error, OR just ignoring the data, OR claiming this is what they believed all along.  That exposes these charlatans as humans, & not purely logical, scientific beings.  There is an agenda, in most of what is called 'science', and especially with the theoretical sciences of origins & philosophy.

----------

Dos Equis (02-04-2016)

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## usfan

> I have just reread Gerald Schroeder's "Genesis and the Big Bang" and would like to share a few thoughts, purely from a scientific viewpoint.
> He notes in his book that the age of the earth and the universe can be validated through 3 unrelated measurements. 
> 1.  Radio-active dating.
> 2. Doppler shifts in star light
> 3.  Isotropic "3" above radiation background.
> The methods of these studies are unrelated, therefore, an error that might have occurred in one would not appear in all three.  All of them point to a universe that is billions of years old.
> I think it is then safe to reliably say that the universe, including the earth, is billions of years old.
> 
> In terms of evolution, the concept of a gradual evolution in the forms of life, the expanding fossil library has shown that while the theory of evolution, defined as the natural selection of those forms of life best adapted to their enviroments, is excellent as a principle for organizing into systamatic groups the various current and past morphologies, the theory of gradual evolution is unsubstantiated by the fossil record.  Gradual evolution is a fundamental tenet of Darwin's theory.  but there is no rhythmic flow from the simple to the complex.  Staccato is a more accurate description of the record.  Most serious paleontologists now accept that a form of punctuated evolution is the best that can be derived from the information that fossils present us.  A life form appears.  There may be changes within the life forms, but its basic structure reamins until it disappears and a new, different structure arises in its place suddenly.
> ...


I have no problem with any of this as a belief system.  My only quibble is when obvious unknowns are presented as 'empirical truth'.

RE: dating, age of the earth.
I haven't studied the doppler shifts in star light, so i would have to examine both the claim, & the science behind it.  I have not come across it, much, in the claims of ancient dating, so i wonder about its validity.  I do understand the argument of 'light years' of distant stars, & the time it would take the light to get here, but that is also based on an assumption of uniformity of conditions, & purely naturalistic processes.  Maybe this is the same argument, with different terms.  Some have theorized the expanding universe as an explanation for incorrect time assumptions. Einstein's relativity implies time, space, & speed being interwoven.  You just get into too many unknowns, to make dogmatic assertions about dating, especially going back 'billions' of years.  This also applies in radiometric dating, which also relies on many assumptions of constants.  I am very skeptical of the 'billions & millions' of years tossed about casually, as if there is some kind of objective method to measure this.  There is not, so my skepticism remains intact.  I am not sure of dates, so i make no claims about them.  I can see the many flaws in the assumptions of both long & short estimates, & all that tells me is that we can't be sure, & we _MUST not base any theories_ on these flawed assumptions of dating.  IMO, it is not 'safe to say' any date of the sort.  We do not know, & can only extrapolate based on assumptions that we cannot prove.

re: the summary
1. 'Definitely' is a belief, nothing more.  There are more than a few 'questions' about it.
2. odds are irrelevant, but are used CONSTANTLY in discussions of origins.  'given enough time, anything is possible' is the basic argument.  But this is gambling, not science.  You must prove that something is possible, before you can calculate the odds.  The genes have to be there, for the odds of any variability to come up.  With no genes, there is zero chance of a speculated combination coming up.  It is like pulling the handle of a slot machine.  If it contains only cherries, lemons, stars, & a couple of other possibilities, believing that if you pull it enough times you will eventually come up with alligators or space ships is absurd.  It can NEVER come up, since it is not an option in the system.  The same is true with evolution.  Merely asserting that 'given enough time' this scenario 'could' happen is a leap of faith.  The combinations do not exist in the dna, & there is nothing to manufacture them.  It will ONLY yield the combinations within the dna.  It cannot go outside to grab others, or conjure up some out of thin air.
3. Evolution has a huge hole, which is the topic of the OP.  There is no defined mechanism for increasing complexity, or adding genome pairs, or creating traits, as is asserted & assumed by the ToE.  This cannot be observed, repeated, or defined, yet it is claimed to be fact.

----------


## usfan

> My understandig from the classes that I took is that all dogs are descended from the wolf.   Not all canines but all dogs that are domesticated today come from the wolf.   The variations on breeds are the result of specific breeding programs from human beings.  There is no ancestor to the wild poodle for instance.


It is a little more complicated than that.. not really 'complicated' as the observation is obvious.

1. All the canines descended from a common ancestor, an unknown time in the past.  The genome pairs, & ability to interbreed indicates common ancestry.  Visual taxonomy doesn't help much here, since there seems to be a lot of difference between a wolf & a chihuahua.
2. As the different varieties extended out in their respective branches, their variability reduced, since they no longer carried the variety of the original parent.  The 'breeding' done by nature or man reduced the variability & created each 'breed' of canine.  The modern wolf is merely another variable of the canine family.  The exact taxonomy of the original canine parent is unknown.  It may have been wolf like, or it may have been something else.  But this parent produced all the variety we see today.
3. The modern wolf has lost the variability of the original, & is now at the tips of the branch, like the other canines.  We do not see much variety in the different wolf types, as they have settled into an equilibrium of similarity from reproductive isolation.
4.  We can 'inject' different traits from different breeds & 'create' new breeds, but they are mostly just mixes of what we already see.  Note the noble poodle.  Here is a list i found of mixed breeds:

Poodle x Affenpinscher mix = Affenpoo
Poodle x Airedale Terrier mix = Airedoodle
Poodle x Akita mix = Aki-Poo
Poodle x American Eskimo Dog mix = Eskapoo
Poodle x American Rat Terrier mix = Rattle
Poodle x Australian Shepherd mix = Aussiedoodle
Poodle x Australian Terrier mix = Terri-Poo
Poodle x Basset Hound mix = Bassetoodle
Poodle x Beagle mix = Poogle
Poodle x Bernese Mountain Dog mix = Bernedoodle
Poodle x Bichon Frise mix = Bich-poo
Poodle x Bichon Frise x Poodle x Shih Tzu mix = Daisy Dog
Poodle x Bolognese mix = Bolonoodle
Poodle x Border Collie mix = Bordoodle
Poodle x Boston Terrier mix = Bossi-Poo
Poodle x Bouvier des Flandres mix = Flandoodle
Poodle x Boxer mix = Boxerdoodle
Poodle x Brussels Griffon mix = Broodle Griffon
Poodle x Cairn Terrier mix = Cairnoodle
Poodle x Cavalier King Charles Spaniel mix = Cavapoo
Poodle x Chihuahua mix = Chi-Poo
Poodle x Chinese Crested mix = Chinese Crestepoo
Poodle x Cock-A-Poo mix = Lacasapoo
Poodle x Cocker Spaniel mix = Cockapoo
Poodle x Collie mix = Cadoodle
Poodle x Corgi mix = Corgipoo
Poodle x Coton de Tulear mix = Poo-Ton
Poodle x Dachshund mix = Doxiepoo
Poodle x Dalmatian mix = Dalmadoodle
Poodle Standard x Doberman Pinscher mix = Doodleman Pinscher
Poodle x English Bulldog mix = English Boodle
Poodle x English Springer Spaniel mix = Springerdoodle
Poodle x Fox Hound mix = Foxhoodle
Poodle Standard x German Shepherd mix = Shepadoodle
Poodle Standard x Giant Schnauzer mix = Giant Schnoodle
Poodle x Golden Retriever mix = Goldendoodle
Poodle x Golden Retriever / Cocker Spaniel / Poodle mix = Petite Goldendoodle
Poodle x Golden Retriever / Toy or Miniature Poodle mix = Miniature Goldendoodle
Poodle x Goldendoodle / Labradoodle mix = Double Doodle
Poodle x Great Dane mix = Great Danoodle
Poodle x Great Pyrenees mix = Pyredoodle
Poodle x Havanese mix = Poovanese
Poodle x Irish Setter mix = Irish Doodle
Poodle x Irish Terrier mix = Irish Troodle
Poodle x Italian Greyhound mix = Pootalian
Poodle x Jack Russell Terrier mix = Jack-A-Poo
Poodle x Japanese Chin mix = Poochin
Poodle x Labrador Retriever mix = Labradoodle
Poodle x Labrador Retriever / Cocker Spaniel / Poodle mix = Petite Labradoodle
Poodle x Labrador Retriever / Toy or Miniature Poodle mix = Miniature Labradoodle
Poodle x Lhasa Apso mix = Lhasapoo
Poodle x Maltese mix = Malti-Poo
Poodle x Mastiff mix = Mastidoodle
Poodle Miniature x Miniature Australian Shepherd mix = Miniature Aussiedoodle
Poodle x Miniature Pinscher mix = Pinny-Poo
Poodle x Newfoundland mix = Newfypoo
Poodle Standard x Old English Sheepdog mix = Sheepadoodle
Poodle x Papillon mix = Papi-poo
Poodle x Pekingese mix = Pekepoo
Poodle x Pomeranian mix = Pomapoo
Poodle x Pug mix = Pugapoo
Poodle Standard x Rottweiler mix = Rottle
Poodle x Saint Bernard mix = Saint Berdoodle
Poodle x Schnauzer mix = Schnoodle
Poodle x Schipperke mix = Schipper-Poo
Poodle x Scottish Terrier mix = Scoodle
Poodle x Shar-Pei mix = Shar-Poo
Poodle x Sheltie mix = Sheltidoodle
Poodle x Shih Tzu mix = Shih-Poo
Poodle x Shiba Inu mix = Poo-Shi
Poodle x Siberian Husky mix = Siberpoo
Poodle x Silky Terrier mix = Poolky
Poodle x Skye Terrier mix = Skypoo
Poodle x Soft Coated Wheaton Terrier mix = Whoodle
Poodle x Standard Schnauzer mix = Standard Schnoodle
Poodle x Tibetan Terrier mix = Ttoodle
Poodle x Toy Fox Terrier mix = Foodle
Poodle x Weimaraner mix = Weimardoodle
Poodle x Welsh Terrier mix = Woodle
Poodle x Westie mix = Westiepoo
Poodle x Wirehaired Fox Terrier mix = Wire-Poo
Poodle x Yorkie mix = Yorkipoo

Obviously, these are not new species, but merely variants, & remixes of traits that the respective breeds lost from the original.  None of these traits are spontaneously 'created' by any process known to man.  If it is not deeply imbedded in the dna, it won't come out.  Breeders 'breed out' undesirable traits.  How could they do this if random traits were constantly being introduced?

----------


## usfan

..sorry to lump all these replies together.. early morning is my usual posting time, as work & other distractions keep me from the forums.

----------


## usfan

> Some scientists cite the horse as an example in which fossils show a gradual evolution.  However, a careful study of the line, from Eohippus to Equus (today's horse), reveals an erratic path, in which "some of the variants were smaller than Eohippus, not larger".


..a very erratic path.  The cute charts & drawings that the pseudo scientists provide are juggled data.. not consecutive, sequential observations.  It  is usually shown as something like this:


They DRAW a plausible 'evolution' of the horse, but this has nothing to do with reality.  Eohippus was likely a hyrax, not an equus at all.  The sizes are all different times & locales, which suggests divergency in the horse family, with many extinctions.

This is more the SCIENTIFIC lineage, based on genetics:



They can trace through the dna which actually came from which, & can reasonably extrapolate a common ancestor.  But this merely displays LOST variability, as each tip of the branch becomes fixed in isolation.  they do not continue to produce variability, but they reduce it, trapped in dead ends of similarity.  The fact that many of these 'sub species' can interbreed also confirms descendancy.  Some species can become reproductively isolated, but this does not eliminate the possibility of descendancy.  It can still be proved via dna.

But if there is no genetic proof of descendancy, it is mere speculation to suggest it happened.  How?  What mechanism overcame the high genetic walls?  It cannot happen, it did not happen, & it will not happen, with what we know of genetic science.  Unless a force or mechanism can be defined & demonstrated, the leaps between genome pairs & genetic parameters is impossible.  It is a myth based on children's drawings trying to indoctrinate naturalistic origins.

----------


## usfan

> Who said there's "zero" evidence of abiogenesis?
> 
> The "settled science" states that the universe was once so compact and so hot that electrically neutral ATOMS couldn't for, let alone stable molecules.   The universe was extremely hot, extremely dense, and totally dark.    The continued expansion of the universe caused it to cool, a natural product of the Perfect Gas Laws, and it eventually cooled to the point of transparency, the so-called "recombination" event....a word from plasma physics since the electrons and atoms had never been combined before.   This era marks the formation of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation that has cooled, with the continued expansion of the universe, to something like 2.7 degrees Kelvin.
> 
> So the universe was completely lifeless at one point.
> 
> The universe has life in it today.
> 
> Ergo, the life had to come from somewhere.  There's no point in pretending a Magic Sky Pixie created life, just as there's no point in inventing a MSP to explain the universe itself.   People going the MSP route aren't actually interested in origins, they just want comfort.  They should have a good tomato soup, some crackers, a snuggy and a fire to keep warm with and let the rest of us worry about how the universe is doing.


Your argument is basically, 
1. Life came from somewhere.
2. It could NOT be from a magic sky pixie
3. Therefore, abiogenesis happened naturally

But this is merely a prejudicial opinion, with no scientific basis.  There is NO EVIDENCE of abiogenesis at all.  It is IMPOSSIBLE.  We cannot replicate life, or the alleged conditions it is hypothesized that it came about.  Well, we can replicate conditions, & make the assumptions, but ALL attempts to create life have failed.  It has NEVER happened.  Some amino acids brewed up in a laboratory stew does not make a living organism.

Arguments of incredulity are not valid.  If you want to PROVE a premise, it has to be done with valid science, not by ridiculing a straw man.

There are only 2 options for the origins of life & the universe:

_1. All matter & life was created by an unknown being or beings: Supernatural Design._
_2. All matter & life happened by accident, via unknown natural processes: Natural Accident.

_These are both PHILOSOPHICAL views, with no way of verifying by the scientific method.  What we are discussing here is the claim that natural processes can 'evolve' organisms from single cell to complexity.  Abiogenesis is a side issue, & does not relate exactly, unless it can be shown how life can be created.

----------


## usfan

> Just a point of curiosity.
> 
> If a higher power is the cause of life on Earth, then why, do we, (humans) have an appendix (useless and ignored until a rupture), or remnants of a third eyelid (located by tear ducts), or coccyx bones (tail bone)?  If Genesis is to be believed, man was created in His image.  Yet, there are definite signs that humans (present) are not a final product.  So, does that mean He was/is not a finished product?
> 
> While I find this topic very fascinating, I see a lot of the evolutionary theories answer more questions than Creationist theories, as one looks in the mirror.


This is also an older argument of evolution.. that of vestigial organs.  The assumption is that some organs are leftovers from an earlier condition, now no longer needed.  But this is flawed in many ways.
1. many vestigial organs have been discovered to be important, currently, in the biology.  the appendix & tonsils are examples.  Once thought to be useless appendages, they have been discovered to be still useful & functional.
2. 'Looks like' judgements are made, without any basis.
3. Assumptions of evolution are made to prove vestigiality.. IOW, circular reasoning.  'Since we are evolving, this leftover appendage proves we are evolving.'
from an evolutionist on wiki:
_In 1893, Robert Wiedersheim published The Structure of Man, a book on human anatomy and its relevance to man's evolutionary history. This book contained a list of 86 human organs that he considered vestigial, or as Wiedersheim himself explained: "Organs having become wholly or in part functionless, some appearing in the Embryo alone, others present during Life constantly or inconstantly. For the greater part Organs which may be rightly termed Vestigial."[3] His list of supposedly vestigial organs included many of the examples on this page as well as others then mistakenly believed to be purely vestigial, such as the pineal gland, the thymus gland, and the pituitary gland. Some of these organs that had lost their obvious, original functions later turned out to have retained functions that had gone unrecognized before the discovery of hormones or many of the functions and tissues of the immune system'

_this is the problem of basing the conclusion on the assumptions of the premise.  If you ASSUME evolution, then vestigial organs is a given.. expected as we are allegedly constantly evolving into something else, creating new traits & organs, & leaving past remnants behind.  But if you do NOT assume evolution, we merely have organs that we are unsure of their function, & which have come to light over the centuries.  Few (if any) organs are assumed to be vestigial anymore.  Many biologists & doctors don't think there are ANY useless organs in humans.  They all have a function, even if it is minor.

----------


## Sled Dog

> Hilarious.  Dating methods, or even time itself, do not corroborate the hypothesis of evolution.


1) It's the THEORY of evolution by natural selection.   it's not a "hypothesis".  It's also an observed fact.

You'll just have to get used to that, or not.   

2) Dating methods are accurate, independent and confirm each other.  There is NO DOUBT about the age of the Earth, Sun, Galaxy or Universe.

You'll just have to get used to that, or not, but arguments against dating are fool's arguments and not worth wasting my time on.




> You keep saying this, but EVERY dating method is fraught with assumptions.  How can you not see this?


You saw a little man upon the stair, you saw a little man who wasn't there.




> It is NOT a measured fact, but an extrapolation,


Actually, it's observed fact.

You'll just have to get used to this, or not.  It's not going to start being wrong just because you can't change your world view to fit observed facts.




> It is clear from this thread that many people believe in God & evolution.  so this is not a religious argument, but a scientific one.


Actually, if they're rejecting established science for RELIGIOUS purposes, if they're rejection OBSERVED FACTS for RELIGIOUS purposes, they've made a RELIGIOUS argument.

Like what you're doing.





> I made my points about dating methods, so it seems pointless to repeat them.


That's true.  They were refuted so I'm not sure why you're going back to them again...except I am sure why.  Your religion insists you deny reality to keep the religion, and you're more comfortable doing that than dumping the false religion to discover what's really in this universe you live in.




> 1. the mitochondrial gene shows that the ORIGINAL female was a regular human being.. not a distant, different genetic type, or genome sequence.


No.

What was established is that humans all share that gene.  Since the mitochondrial DNA is not expressed in human morphology, nobody can say, based solely on that evidence, what the precursor female was.




> 2. Neanderthals were not a 'different species' but were as human as anyone now.


I guess you've never seen a Neanderthal skeleton.   

Neanderthals were as different a species as chimpanzees are from bonobos.  I've already pointed this out.




> 3. The mitochondrial gene is a MAJOR problem for the various long aged theories of human evolution.


No it's not.

If it was it there would be discussions about the revolution in the scientific literature, not in the religious kook profiteering literature.

You clearly don't know how fundamental the theory of evolution by natural selection is to the entire science of biology.

Darwin is to biology what BOTH Einstein and Newton are to physics.




> Deflection.  'Looks like' taxonomy of skeletal structure is irrelevant.


I'll bear that in mind when I next compare a T. Rex skeleton to a Triceratops skeleton.




> Evolution is behind the times with genetic research.  The old assumptions & beliefs have been debunked by real science.  But many hang on to the old beliefs, even when the updated science does not support it.  The visual taxonomy & 'looks like' methods of assuming descendance have been replace with actual data, & a means of proving descendancy through the dna.  But these are fairly recent developments, & they have not 'taken' within the rest of the schools of thought in evolution.  Dating assumptions do not reflect the new genetic sciences, but are stuck in the flawed assumptions of the past.  Eventually, they will catch up, & there will be more sheepish admissions of error, OR just ignoring the data, OR claiming this is what they believed all along.  That exposes these charlatans as humans, & not purely logical, scientific beings.  There is an agenda, in most of what is called 'science', and especially with the theoretical sciences of origins & philosophy.


You want to know why one professor failed a medical student?  It's because the medical student refused to accept the science of biology and insisted on some BS creationist crap.  The professor didn't feel that ignorant people should have medical degrees.

He was correct.

Genetics and the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection are intimately entwined...because it's the genes that are being selected and discarded in the process.

----------


## usfan

> 1) It's the THEORY of evolution by natural selection.   it's not a "hypothesis".  It's also an observed fact.
> You'll just have to get used to that, or not.   
> 2) Dating methods are accurate, independent and confirm each other.  There is NO DOUBT about the age of the Earth, Sun, Galaxy or Universe.
> You'll just have to get used to that, or not, but arguments against dating are fool's arguments and not worth wasting my time on.
> You saw a little man upon the stair, you saw a little man who wasn't there.
> Actually, it's observed fact.
> You'll just have to get used to this, or not.  It's not going to start being wrong just because you can't change your world view to fit observed facts.
> Actually, if they're rejecting established science for RELIGIOUS purposes, if they're rejection OBSERVED FACTS for RELIGIOUS purposes, they've made a RELIGIOUS argument.
> Like what you're doing.
> ...


You are stubborn & intractable, i'll give you that!   :Smile:   But since there is no evidence or arguments given, but mere assertions, i think our discussion has fizzled.  I have tried to show, with logic & evidence, the flaws in the ToE.  But since we do not seem to have a common basis of knowledge on the subject, any attempts to debate further just become swapping of assertions.  I made my case.  You dismissed it.  'nuff said.

----------


## Northern Rivers

> Your argument is basically, 
> 1. Life came from somewhere.
> 2. It could NOT be from a magic sky pixie
> 3. Therefore, abiogenesis happened naturally
> 
> But this is merely a prejudicial opinion, with no scientific basis.  There is NO EVIDENCE of abiogenesis at all.  It is IMPOSSIBLE.  We cannot replicate life, or the alleged conditions it is hypothesized that it came about.  Well, we can replicate conditions, & make the assumptions, but ALL attempts to create life have failed.  It has NEVER happened.  Some amino acids brewed up in a laboratory stew does not make a living organism.
> 
> Arguments of incredulity are not valid.  If you want to PROVE a premise, it has to be done with valid science, not by ridiculing a straw man.
> 
> ...


_3. All matter & life have always existed....._

----------


## usfan

> _3. All matter & life have always existed....._


..could be.  But that seems unlikely.  During the buildup before the big bang (if you assume that theory) how could life have existed?  The conditions necessary for life would not be there.  Life as we know it can only exist in a very small window of conditions.  Optimum conditions that we only 'know' exist here on earth.  

If there was no 'big bang', but matter has been drifting on for eons of eternity, all the stars, suns, & orbits would have burnt out & dissipated sometime in eternity past.  With nothing to 'wind' it back up, we would have cold dead matter, drifting endlessly in infinite space.  So i have a bit of a logical problem with this possibility.  Unless you posit other processes, either natural or supernatural, the conditions in the universe imply an origin.  There was a beginning, for the universe.  The status quo could not be constant.  Stars are burning out, orbits are decaying, the universe is expanding.  You would have to produce a theory as to how this could be, given what we know about the universe.

But as to the OP, i think the major problem that people have is a misunderstanding of genetics.  I am no expert, only a hobbyist.  But the fundamental assumptions about evolution come down to a flawed perception of genetics.  I think some people view the dna strand as a big Lego block assembly.. the parts can be assembled in multiple ways, in various combinations.  The universally click into each other & are consistent across all living things.  But there are major differences among genetic strands.  Most bacteria have a circular strand.  The more we study genetics, the more complex & profound it becomes.  Traits are passed down in the dna of each living thing.  Pop science notions, promoted by the movie industry & simplified in children's books make it sound like tweaking the dna & 'creating' new species is easy, & a given.  Terms like 'clone' are used to imply a sheep was grown in a laboratory.  X-men, Jurassic Park, & countless other movies & fantasies about genetic possibilities are indoctrinated from birth.  A narrative is promoted.  Life is simple building blocks, & you can put a bunch of legos in a bag, shake it up, & out comes a functional dna strand that you can seed to grow a living thing.  Too much is assumed, in what goes on in genetically modified organisms.  they  can 'knock out' certain genes, & introduce minor tweaks to an organism, wrt disease resistance & altering certain traits.  But the idea that geneticists can 'create' new life is a myth.  They cannot modify the genome pairs, or make a new organism with a distinctly new genetic structure.  they can modify certain genes, 'knock out' others, & introduce material that changes the disease resistance or some other benefit.  But the more they 'tweak' the dna, the chromosomes, the genomes, & all the other bits & pieces of information that are within EACH cell of every living thing, the more impossible the ToE becomes.  We cannot even force the kinds of changes we posit that happen 'naturally' in the ToE.  It is an imaginary process, with NO scientific corroboration.

Geneticists have made a translucent cat & pig.  They introduced some green fluorescent proteins, observed in jellyfish, into these mammals.  But this is just tweaking WITHIN the parameters of the basic genome structure.  They do not add or subtract genome pairs, which is the basic difference between animal types.  Chimps have 24 genome pairs.  Humans have 23.  It has been suggested that humans descended from chimps, & that 2 of their genomes merely fused to make 23.  But this is flawed in too many ways.

1. Humans & chimps cannot interbreed.  So in order to get a breeding pair, you would need 2 concurrent mutations of this sort, which cannot be replicated or observed in laboratory settings, which would have to simultaneously occur in the same geographic area, so they could begin their new journey as humans.  Just one of these events seems astronomically impossible, yet they dogmatically assert this is what happened.
2. All the rest of the taxonomy is wrong, so where did this variety that we observe in humans come from?  Intelligence, upright walking, & thousands of differences between chimps & humans are observed in the gene pool.  How did these genes come about?
3. The mitochondrial gene is passed down from mother to daughter in every mammal.  IF there was descendancy, this gene would show it.  Humans & chimps would carry this gene, if they are commonly descended.  Dogs & wolves carry this, & it shows a common descendancy.  The fact that humans & chimps don't, indicates they are not related, or descended from a common ancestor.

There may be a better explanation, someday, for a naturalistic view of life, but evolution, as presented, is not it.

----------


## usfan

It's a dog eat dog world.  Dogs are common human companions.  We have domesticated & bred them for centuries.  Here are some interesting facts & studies about dogs, & their genetic base.




> The domestic dog is the most phenotypically diverse mammal on earth. The large differences in size, conformation, behavior, and physiology between dog breeds exceed the differences among species in the dog family, Canidae (Coppinger and Coppinger 2001; Wayne 2001). Recent studies show that the *origin of most dog breeds may derive from very recent selective breeding practices and are probably <200 yr old* (Parker et al. 2004). However, *selection acts upon existing variability*. It is remarkable that the potential for such large diversification* existed in the ancestral wolf population from where the domestication process was initiated.* Furthermore, the time since domestication (at least 14,000 yr; Vilà et al. 1997; Sablin and Khlopachev 2002; Savolainen et al. 2002) seems* insufficient to generate substantial additional genetic diversity*.


Relaxation of selective constraint on dog mitochondrial DNA following domestication 

This is a study by evolutionists, with the assumptions of evolution dispersed throughout.  They even quote Darwin.  I'll try to define the problem as they present it.

1. All of the variety of dogs are recent developments, less than 200 yrs old.
2. Fact:  Selection acts on EXISTING variability.  It is not created on the fly, & is assumed to take thousands & millions of years to come about.
3.  ALL of this variability EXISTED in the ancestral wolf/parent.
4. the recent time for the variety of dog breeds is incongruent with the assumption of 'millions' or even thousands of years of evolution, to generate such variety.

You can see from the following chart, where they mapped the genome sequence, & followed the trail of the mtDNA:



_Phylogenetic tree of wolf (W), dog (D), and coyote (C) mtDNA sequences. The tree was constructed using a Bayesian approach. The same topology was obtained with a neighbor-joining approach. Support is indicated at the nodes as percent bootstrap support for 1000 neighbor-joining replicates and Bayesian posterior probabilities. Four clades of dog sequences (I to IV) are indicated as in Vilà et al. (1997). Internal dog branches are marked in orange, and internal wolf branches are marked in light blue. The branch leading to wolf haplotype W1 was basal to the rest of the tree and it was also considered internal. Internal branches that could not be conclusively associated to dogs or to wolves are indicated in discontinuous green.

_As you can see, the mtDNA shows the ancestry line.  The canid ancestor preceded the wolf, the dog, & the coyote, as well as other canid not listed.  I have seen them in other genetic studies.  But all this does is PROVE descendancy, and shows the variability to be INHERENT in the genes.  It was not created on the fly, or mutated over millions of years.  So postulating evolution as an explanation of the canid species is flawed.  It did not happen as the ToE suggested, & there is still no mechanism for 'creating' variability.  And the assumption of genome additions or subtractions are absurd.  That cannot happen at all, yet it is assumed as fact.  It is a myth, based on conjecture, flawed assumptions, & faulty science.  It is a RELIGIOUS opinion, nothing more.  It is a lame attempt to tack a 'science' label on a speculative, philosophical opinion of naturalistic origins.

----------


## teeceetx

To believe evolution is responsible for modern humans, is a fallacy.  No geneticist or evolutionist will attest to the fact that there is ANY evidence to support that theory.  Many have been quoted to have said that based on evolution, modern humans cannot exist.  And yet we do.

We are now discovering that life was likely seeded throughout the universe on comets, meteors, etc.  It's unlikely that the proverbial "primordial soup" ever existed.  I doubt life on Earth "sprang" from such a soup.

Nature does not make MAJOR changes that survive.  Nature, in it's perfection, provides exactly what is needed, nothing more, nothing less.

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## Sled Dog

> You are stubborn & intractable, i'll give you that!



I'm also correct.

Don't forget that part.

It's the most important part of the discussion.

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## Sled Dog

> To believe evolution is responsible for modern humans, is a fallacy.  No geneticist or evolutionist will attest to the fact that there is ANY evidence to support that theory.  Many have been quoted to have said that based on evolution, modern humans cannot exist.  And yet we do.
> 
> We are now discovering that life was likely seeded throughout the universe on comets, meteors, etc.  It's unlikely that the proverbial "primordial soup" ever existed.  I doubt life on Earth "sprang" from such a soup.
> 
> Nature does not make MAJOR changes that survive.  Nature, in it's perfection, provides exactly what is needed, nothing more, nothing less.


To believe in Magic Sky Pixies is a bigger fallacy.

There's evidence that evolution has occurred and is occurring.   It's an OBSERVED FACT.

You'll just have to get used to that idea, because unlike invisible Magic Sky Pixies, it won't be convenient for you and go away.

Significant and MAJOR changes do happen in the evolution of life.  Your religion convictions and use of caps to be really really emphatic don't affect the facts in the least.

300 million years ago, no vertebrates.

Today, no vertebrates in Congress.

But on the rest of the planet, vertebrates all over the damn place.

That's called a "major" change.

----------


## usfan

> I'm also correct.
> Don't forget that part.
> It's the most important part of the discussion.


did you get a chance to look over the post on dogs?  Being a canid fan, i thought you might find it enlightening.

No, i admire your strong beliefs, even if you present them somewhat dogmatically, if you pardon the pun.   :Smile: 

I actually am a strong believer in seeking the Truth, wherever it leads.  I am pretty confident in my reasoning skills, & my perceptions on the universe, & the knowledge base i have accumulated over the years, but ALWAYS, Truth is foremost.  It probably sounds a little hokey, naive & idealistic, but it is something i value & i believe it colors my outlook on life.

----------


## Sled Dog

> did you get a chance to look over the post on dogs?  Being a canid fan, i thought you might find it enlightening.
> 
> No, i admire your strong beliefs, even if you present them somewhat dogmatically, if you pardon the pun.  
> 
> I actually am a strong believer in seeking the Truth, wherever it leads.  I am pretty confident in my reasoning skills, & my perceptions on the universe, & the knowledge base i have accumulated over the years, but ALWAYS, Truth is foremost.  It probably sounds a little hokey, naive & idealistic, but it is something i value & i believe it colors my outlook on life.


Did you get a chance to figure out that eo hippus wasn't in genus equus because equus hadn't evolved then?

----------


## usfan

> Did you get a chance to figure out that eo hippus wasn't in genus equus because equus hadn't evolved then?


I'm not the one claiming descendancy. ..but I'll have to address equids later. I've got the geological column before me, now, and I have to solve it, first.   :Smile: 

Are you suggesting that the scientific status quo might be wrong?!?   :Shocked20: 
You think that all the speculations about eohippus might be flawed?

I'm still hoping for some comments about the dogs.. Both in the alleged evolution of the family, & in the source of all the variety.  But don't be dogmatic about it.. You'll need reason and evidence to back any wild claims.   :Wink:

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## sandhurstdelta

This is precisely what happens when people mix science and religion.

You cannot mix science and religion.

They need to be kept separate.

Science is an Empirical process of research which makes observations and measurements with precision instruments and then correlates the data into inferences of inductive speculation to arrive at hypotheses, theories, and so called laws.  Science will always be speculative.

Religion is an ancient system of devotion to super beings who are presumed to be the first causes, prime movers, purposeful designers, and creators of the Universe.  Religion will also always be speculative.

The two do not overlap.

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## sandhurstdelta

> did you get a chance to look over the post on dogs?  Being a canid fan, i thought you might find it enlightening.
> 
> No, i admire your strong beliefs, even if you present them somewhat dogmatically, if you pardon the pun.  
> 
> I actually am a strong believer in seeking the Truth, wherever it leads.  I am pretty confident in my reasoning skills, & my perceptions on the universe, & the knowledge base i have accumulated over the years, but ALWAYS, Truth is foremost.  It probably sounds a little hokey, naive & idealistic, but it is something i value & i believe it colors my outlook on life.


Ha ha !!

DOG-matically !!

What about CAT-egorically too !!

----------


## sandhurstdelta

> To believe in Magic Sky Pixies is a bigger fallacy.
> 
> There's evidence that evolution has occurred and is occurring.   It's an OBSERVED FACT.
> 
> You'll just have to get used to that idea, because unlike invisible Magic Sky Pixies, it won't be convenient for you and go away.
> 
> Significant and MAJOR changes do happen in the evolution of life.  Your religion convictions and use of caps to be really really emphatic don't affect the facts in the least.
> 
> 300 million years ago, no vertebrates.
> ...


A lot of people over-use the word "fact" unfortunately.

----------


## sandhurstdelta

> More drivel.
> 
> Move this to either a religion forum or a Konspiracy Kook forum.
> 
> Evolution is what we scientist types like to call "an OBSERVED FACT".
> 
> It's been observed in real time, in the speciation of African cichlid fishes, for example, and it's observed in the paleontological record, as in the conclusive evidentiary trail between eo hippus and today's horse, ass and zebra species, each of which are distinct species that cannot interbreed with either of the others and produce fertile off-spring.  
> 
> Human beings have not only created new species....dogs for one, and many plants for another (Rodent whines against "GM foods" are just hilariously ignorant), but the species of dog that we created has bifurcated with two populations that cannot breed without artificial assistance.   
> ...


The theory of Darwinian Evolution is just another speculative theory in biology.

It is speculative although there is no reason to doubt it.

No sane person is going to doubt it.

No sane person is going to suggest that we know it either -- as a "fact" -- which it is not.

A "fact" is something that we know.

A theory is not a fact.

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## usfan

> Ha ha !!
> DOG-matically !!
> What about CAT-egorically too !!


..wait until we start horsing around with equids..   :Smile: 



> The theory of Darwinian Evolution is just another speculative theory in biology.
> 
> *It is speculative although there is no reason to doubt it.*
> 
> No sane person is going to doubt it.
> 
> No sane person is going to suggest that we know it either -- as a "fact" -- which it is not.
> 
> A "fact" is something that we know.
> ...


I find the above bold a very bizarre statement.  True science is about skepticism, & NOT just 'beliefs'.  If you can't prove your theory scientifically, I am under no compunction to accept your beliefs.

Of course I can doubt any speculative claim, & that is not an indicator of insanity. Insanity is demanding acceptance of someone's opinion, without any proof.  Merely asserting something as fact, or 'settled science' does not make it true.  It has to be proved, by the scientific method, & submitted to peer scrutiny.

----------


## sandhurstdelta

> ..wait until we start horsing around with equids..  
> 
> I find the above bold a very bizarre statement.  True science is about skepticism, & NOT just 'beliefs'.  If you can't prove your theory scientifically, I am under no compunction to accept your beliefs.
> 
> Of course I can doubt any speculative claim, & that is not an indicator of insanity. Insanity is demanding acceptance of someone's opinion, without any proof.  Merely asserting something as fact, or 'settled science' does not make it true.  It has to be proved, by the scientific method, & submitted to peer scrutiny.


The part I mentioned which you bolded simply means that the theory of Darwinian Evolution is just like the theory of gravity.

While it is only a theory, and while we do not know it, yet it is more likely than not that either the Big Bang or God used it to create our bodies and all living things.

All living things seem to bear strong similarities to each other within their classes: protists, plants, insects, vertebrates, invertebrates, etc.

Plants all have a cell wall -- other living things do not.

Vertebrates all have internal skeletons and a backbone -- other living things do not.

These theories about them are simply inductive inferences about the many Empirical scientific observations made about them with very sophisticated expensive precision instruments.

Everyone needs to be more careful what they call a "fact."  Anyone who thinks Evolution is a fact is not very well trained in science.

And whether Gods used Evolution or not, and whether there be no Gods or many, the Evolution Debate is not relevant.

The Evolution Debate results from mixing science with religion, which is something Bertrand Russell warned us all against.

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JMWinPR (04-05-2016)

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## usfan

> The part I mentioned which you bolded simply means that the theory of Darwinian Evolution is just like the theory of gravity.
> 
> While it is only a theory, and while we do not know it, yet it is more likely than not that either the Big Bang or God used it to create our bodies and all living things.
> 
> All living things seem to bear strong similarities to each other within their classes: protists, plants, insects, vertebrates, invertebrates, etc.
> 
> Plants all have a cell wall -- other living things do not.
> 
> Vertebrates all have internal skeletons and a backbone -- other living things do not.
> ...


1. The ToE is nothing like gravity. I can test, observe, repeat, & measure gravity, & conclude a scientifically valid theory as a law. The ToE is all conjecture, assumptions, & circular reasoning.
2. The consequential implications to beliefs is irrelevant to those seeking empirical truth. Science is not concerned with corroborating beliefs, only in discovery.
3. ' Likely, probably, maybe' are fine in expressing opinions or beliefs, but have little value in empirical discovery.
4. 'Looks like' subjectivism in taxonomy has been trumped by empirical evidence in genetics. We now have real science and not just visual subjectivity.

Perhaps I need to repost the dog study, which has a lot of factual information and scientific evidence to debunk many of the assumptions that people have about the ToE. When I get to a real computer, I'll do that.  :Smile:

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## Sled Dog

> A lot of people over-use the word "fact" unfortunately.


They do.

That's a fact.

I'm not one of them.

That's a fact.

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sandhurstdelta (02-27-2016)

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## Sled Dog

> The theory of Darwinian Evolution is just another speculative theory in biology.


No.  

It's not.

It's the architecture of biology.

It's also an observed fact.

Since it's an observed fact we can conclude that people use the word "speculative" in a casual fashion.




> No sane person is going to suggest that we know it either -- as a "fact" -- which it is not.


As I have pointed out, evolution is an OBSERVED fact.

Find a dictionary, look up the word "observed".




> A "fact" is something that we know.


I know I like pea soup.

I don't call that a "fact" and you can't cite it as one.

Seems like some people who complain about people using the word "fact" to cavalierly aren't too certain what the word means.




> A theory is not a fact.


You sure about that?

I'm betting you can't define "theory" in a meaningful way.

----------


## Sled Dog

> The part I mentioned which you bolded simply means that the theory of Darwinian Evolution is just like the theory of gravity.


Which theory of gravity, Newtonian or general relativity?




> While it is only a theory, and while we do not know it, yet it is more likely than not that either the Big Bang or God used it to create our bodies and all living things.


Gotta love people who say "only a theory".

It means they don't know what the word means.




> All living things seem to bear strong similarities to each other within their classes: protists, plants, insects, vertebrates, invertebrates, etc.
> 
> Plants all have a cell wall -- other living things do not.
> 
> Vertebrates all have internal skeletons and a backbone -- other living things do not.


Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's called "the definition of vertebrate".  That's all it means.




> These theories about them are simply inductive inferences about the many Empirical scientific observations made about them with very sophisticated expensive precision instruments.


Oh.

Science can't happen without "expensive" and "precision" instruments?   I wasn't doing "science" when I used a weight, a string, a ruler and a stop watch to calculate the acceleration of gravity?

Sure felt like a physics lab.




> Everyone needs to be more careful what they call a "fact."  Anyone who thinks Evolution is a fact is not very well trained in science.


Of course not.  I'm an aerospace engineer and have absolutely zero science training at all.  I use rubber bands and balsa and glue.  Before that I operated a nuclear reactor.  Nope, I have no technical training at all.




> And whether Gods used Evolution or not, and whether there be no Gods or many, the Evolution Debate is not relevant.


There is no debate about the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, to use it's correct name.  The so-called "debate" is merely the devout ignorami attempting to make their status sacred through the imposition of law.




> The Evolution Debate results from mixing science with religion, which is something Bertrand Russell warned us all against.


There's no "mixing".   There's conflict. Science reveals what happened, and what happened is not what the Magic Book says, so the believers in the Magic Book get upset, because the words written by an ignorant sheep chaser 3500 years ago are much better informed than the last four centuries of the scientific method.

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## sandhurstdelta

I won't get between two people, one of whom loves the TOE and the other hating it.

All I will say again is that theories are theories.

Gravity is just a theory.  Until we can form gravity for ourselves by accreting mass into a moon sized body it will always remain just a theory.

As my chem professor in college used to always say -- all we know is that the Earth sucks.

TOE is just a theory.  As a biological science theory the similarity among the various classes of living things -- plants and animals -- suggest a common evolution.  As to whether it happened on its own or some God-force used it makes little difference.

As my Catholic nun summer school teacher was fond of pointing out, you can reconcile evolution with faith simply by presuming at some point God gave the humanoid a soul.

----------


## Sled Dog

> I won't get between two people, one of whom loves the TOE and the other hating it.
> 
> All I will say again is that theories are theories.


Repetition is not refutation.





> Gravity is just a theory.  Until we can form gravity for ourselves by accreting mass into a moon sized body it will always remain just a theory.


No.

Gravity is what keeps the inside of the earth from paying all of us a visit and it's what forces the sun to shine.

It's an observed fact.

THEORIES of gravity seek to explain the event in terms humans can understand, and it makes falsifiable predictions about the motions of bodies, predictions with which it was possible to falsify Newton's theory of gravity and verify Einstein's relativistic theory of gravity.

But the fact of gravity existed before there were even people to wonder about it.

Similarly, evolution is also an observed fact and the THEORY of Evolution by Natural Selection is a specific ideation that accurately and correctly describes how species came to be as they are and makes predictions about how things are likely to evolve in the future.  

And gravity is a property of all matter.  The variations of gravity on Earth are measurable and they recently discovered Einsteinian gravity waves.   What you just said is as ignorant as saying "radio is just a theory an will remain so until we can pick up Howard Sperm in our heads".   No radio is an observed property of the E-M spectrum and we have tools to make use of it.




> As my chem professor in college used to always say -- all we know is that the Earth sucks.


Lewinsky sucks.

The Earth is attractive.




> TOE is just a theory.  As a biological science theory the similarity among the various classes of living things -- plants and animals -- suggest a common evolution.  As to whether it happened on its own or some God-force used it makes little difference.


People who say "just a theory" are ignorant of science.

That's all there is to say about that.




> As my Catholic nun summer school teacher was fond of pointing out, you can reconcile evolution with faith simply by presuming at some point God gave the humanoid a soul.


Nuns.

Nuns can't prove the soul exists.    Do souls have food?   They like chitlins, perhaps?

The soul is a postulate without evidentiary basis.

And the Bible says, 




> Genesis 
> 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
> 
> 
> 
> 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
> 
> 
> 6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
> ...


The Book of Genesis God created plants and animals as they were.   No evolution.  Thus your silly nun was WRONG, there's no reconciliation between the theory of evolution by natural selection and the Bible.

The Bible is wrong.

Also, the moon was formed by an impact on the young earth by a Mars-sized body long, LONG before any multicellular life existed on the planet.  The impact sterilize the Earth.  This theory is the ONLY theory that fits all the observed facts.

Also, the stars in the sky predate the Sun....stars are where the chemical elements with atomic numbers greater than 2 are synthesized. So the bible is wrong there, too. 



Not to mention the fact that Genesis says "day" and "night" existed BEFORE the Magic Sky Pixie built the Sun.  That "fact" make any sense to anyone?

So in the first 26 lines of the Holy Bible, the absurdity of Creationism and blind religious faith is exposed for what it's worth.  It's worth nothing for modern people with a knowledge of science, no matter what it was worth to ignorant sheep chasers willing to believe ANYTHING.

----------


## QuaseMarco

> Evolution is a Religion.  It is putting faith into something you cannot see, except here their god is man.  If the true God and Creator were acknowledged then there would be moral ramifications to deal with, and the sinful man does not want to deal with that.
> 
> I have seen presentations which show how the evolutionist deal with things.  The one I liked was a school science book which was trying to explain the geological ages, and how they date their findings.  On one page they said they knew the age of the rocks, by the fossils found in them, then the next page says they date the fossils by the rocks they are in, and around.
> 
> Micro-evolution is going on around us, which is small changes, but like Darwins finches, the showed signs of micro-evolution, but the thing is, they were still Birds
> 
> It takes a lot more faith to believe in evolution than Intelligent design, or a Creator


I believe evolution is factual but there is an intelligent force driving it. You may call that force God if you like.

----------


## Sled Dog

> I believe evolution is factual but there is an intelligent force driving it. You may call that force God if you like.


There is no scientific basis for this belief.

NONE.

The force driving evolution by natural selection is the random mixing of genes and random mutation.

----------


## Roadmaster

> I believe evolution is factual but there is an intelligent force driving it. You may call that force God if you like.


God knew this and that is why He said over and over after their kind. Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every _sort_ shall come unto thee, to keep _them_ alive

----------

sandhurstdelta (02-29-2016)

----------


## sandhurstdelta

> There is no scientific basis for this belief.
> 
> NONE.
> 
> The force driving evolution by natural selection is the random mixing of genes and random mutation.


 @Sled Dog , there is nothing backing up your own speculation either.

We simply do not "know" either way.

That leaves the door open for anybody to guess.

----------


## sandhurstdelta

> Repetition is not refutation.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No.
> 
> Gravity is what keeps the inside of the earth from paying all of us a visit and it's what forces the sun to shine.
> 
> ...


 @Sled Dog , as most agnostics and atheists or anti-theists always do, I think you are setting up your own straw man and then knocking it down.

Although there is too much literal-ness taken for the English (or even Hebrew) versions of the Tanakh (Old Testament), you must always remember just as the Protestants must always remember that these old writings were written down millennia ago.  They don't have the same meaning now as they were intended to then.

You cannot logically pretend that Genesis (Bereshet) is a lab notebook and then with your straw man set up proceed to knock it down.

----------


## usfan

> No.  
> It's not.
> It's the architecture of biology.
> It's also an observed fact.





> There is no scientific basis for this belief.
> NONE.
> The force driving evolution by natural selection is the random mixing of genes and random mutation.


It is NOT an observed fact.  That is the point of this OP.  It is a sketchy BELIEF, at best.  You can randomly mix genes with mutation all you want, & you still have NO MECHANISM for increasing complexity, or adding chromosomes or genome pairs.  This is merely your dogmatic BELIEF, & shouting it louder, or being insulting, or stomping your feet does NOT make it a fact.  It is merely your opinion.. your BELIEF.  You have NO empirical evidence that this CAN happen, much less that it DID happen.. millions of years ago or yesterday.

Ridiculing other 'theories' of origins does not provide evidence for your pet theory, either.

----------


## usfan

This thread seems to be going to the dogs, so an examination of canidae seems to be warranted.  I have a study about mtDNA in canids to examine.  Here is the title & abstract:
*Relaxation of selective constraint on dog mitochondrial DNA following domestication*
Susanne Björnerfeldt, Matthew T. Webster, and Carles Vilà

_Abstract_

_The domestication of dogs caused a dramatic change in their way of life compared with that of their ancestor, the gray wolf. We hypothesize that this new life style changed the selective forces that acted upon the species, which in turn had an effect on the dogs genome. We sequenced the complete mitochondrial DNA genome in 14 dogs, six wolves, and three coyotes. Here we show that dogs have accumulated nonsynonymous changes in mitochondrial genes at a faster rate than wolves, leading to elevated levels of variation in their proteins. This suggests that a major consequence of domestication in dogs was a general relaxation of selective constraint on their mitochondrial genome. If this change also affected other parts of the dog genome, it could have facilitated the generation of novel functional genetic diversity. This diversity could thus have contributed raw material upon which artificial selection has shaped modern breeds and may therefore be an important source of the extreme phenotypic variation present in modern-day dogs.
_
I will quote some of the findings of this study, as well as their conclusions & my own observations.  This study is by evolutionists, with the assumption of evolution throughout.

_In The Origin of Species, Darwin (1859) suggested that several wild species of Canidae have been tamed and that their blood, in some cases mingled together, flows in the veins of our domestic [dog] breeds. We now know that dogs (Canis familiaris) are entirely derived from the domestication of wolves (Canis lupus) (Vilà et al. 1997); however, the origin of the huge morphological diversity that led Darwin to his speculation remains largely unknown (Sutter and Ostrander 2004). The domestic dog is the most phenotypically diverse mammal on earth. The large differences in size, conformation, behavior, and physiology between dog breeds exceed the differences among species in the dog family, Canidae (Coppinger and Coppinger 2001; Wayne 2001). Recent studies show that the origin of most dog breeds may derive from very recent selective breeding practices and are probably <200 yr old (Parker et al. 2004). However, selection acts upon existing variability. It is remarkable that the potential for such large diversification existed in the ancestral wolf population from where the domestication process was initiated. Furthermore, the time since domestication (at least 14,000 yr; Vilà et al. 1997; Sablin and Khlopachev 2002; Savolainen et al. 2002) seems insufficient to generate substantial additional genetic diversity. What is the origin of this diversity? We hypothesize that changes in the living conditions of dogs as a result of domestication resulted in the release of selective constraint allowing a faster accumulation of functional (non-silent) genetic diversity in a large array of genes._

This paragraph is packed with important information, facts, & observations about the domestic dog.  I will provide a summary:

1. The dog is the most diverse mammal on earth.
2. The origin of most dog breeds are recent, less than 200 yrs
3. The diversity found in the variant dog breeds were ALREADY PRESENT in the ancestral wolf
4. The time since domestication is insufficient to generate the genetic diversity, according to evolutionary claims

They go on to hypothesize a theory about how these traits could have come about, calling it 'selective constraint', a mechanism with no evidence or observable reality, but they must have something to make up for the flaws in the lack of time to 'evolve' the diversity that we obviously observe.

_Weakly deleterious mutationsthose with selective effects close to the reciprocal of the effective population sizerepresent an important class of genetic variability (Ohta and Kimura 1971). Such mutations are expected to accumulate faster in populations with small effective sizes or in populations in which selection has been relaxed, resulting in a decline in fitness. Advantageous mutations, conversely, contribute little to patterns of genetic variation and are enriched in fixed differences between species. To examine whether the accumulation of deleterious mutations is increased in dogs compared with their wild ancestors, we have focused on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). The mitochondrial genome represents only a small part of the canine genome and has a unique mode of inheritance. However, while dog and wolf lineages are difficult to separate for nuclear genes (Parker et al. 2004; Vilà et al. 2005), mitochondrial lineages are clearly distinguishable for the two species (Vilà et al. 1997; Savolainen et al. 2002). This offers a good opportunity to evaluate the consequences of life with humans on a portion of the dog genome._

1. Deleterious mutations 'are expected' to accumulate faster.  This is not anything observable, or repeatable, but is an assumption, to promote the 'theory' of increasing complexity.
2. 'Advantageous mutations' (undefined) don't contribute much to genetic diversity, but show as fixed traits in the different breeds.  That is, the 'theory' of 'advantageous mutations' don't create variability.  The traits are FIXED within the breeds, which is observable, obvious reality.  That is how we are able to isolate traits in the science of breeding.
3. mtDNA provide clearly distinguishable lineages in the canid family.  

Mutation is still the assumed mechanism, though there is NO VISIBLE, OBSERVABLE MECHANISM provided that can explain how any traits can be 'created'.  Time cannot do it.  'Accumulated deleterious' mutations cannot do it.  'Advantageous mutations' don't even occur.  Fortunately, the discovery of DNA, & especially mtDNA can provide SCIENTIFIC proof of descendancy, instead of 'looks like' taxonomy & speculation.

_Previous studies have shown that domestic dog mtDNA sequences cluster in four main clades when compared with wolves, indicating different origination events (Vilà et al. 1997; Savolainen et al. 2002). In order to select samples of dogs representing several mtDNA lineages for the analysis, we sequenced the mitochondrial control region I for 88 dogs from 53 breeds. Among those individuals we selected 14 dogs, which included six from clade I (the clade that encompasses about 71% of todays dogs; Savolainen et al. 2002) and two or three from each one of the clades II, III, and IV (Vilà et al. 1997). Because we wished to characterize mutations that occurred on dog lineages since the emergence of each clade, the dogs in this study were selected to be representative of the full genetic diversity observed in each clade (Supplemental Fig. S1). Complete mtDNA sequences, excluding the tandem repeat located inside the control region (Hoelzel et al. 1994), were obtained through polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and sequencing. The complete mitochondrial sequence was also obtained for six wolves from throughout the world trying to represent as much of the previously described wolf diversity (Vilà et al. 1999) as possible: Spain, Russia, Saudi Arabia (two individuals), North America, and Sweden. Three coyotes (Canis latrans) from Nebraska and Colorado (two individuals), USA, were also sequenced and used as outgroups._

_To construct a gene tree from the 23 complete mtDNA sequences, we first excluded the control region because of the high incidence of homoplasy (Ingman et al. 2000), resulting in a sequence length of 15,54715,549 base pairs (bp). The average uncorrected pairwise sequence divergence between wolves and dogs was 0.47% (SE = 0.02), whereas average sequence divergence between coyotes and dogs plus wolves was 4.28% (SE = 0.11). A gene tree constructed with these sequences shows that all four clades of dogs are very well supported with bootstrap support values of 100% and Bayesian posterior probabilities of 1.00 (Fig. 1)._

This is a description of the study, & the parameters of the mapping.  Here is the graphic they devised to display the findings




_Fig. 1.  Phylogenetic tree of wolf (W), dog (D), and coyote (C) mtDNA sequences. The tree was constructed using a Bayesian approach. The same topology was obtained with a neighbor-joining approach. Support is indicated at the nodes as percent bootstrap support for 1000 neighbor-joining replicates and Bayesian posterior probabilities. Four clades of dog sequences (I to IV) are indicated as in Vilà et al. (1997). Internal dog branches are marked in orange, and internal wolf branches are marked in light blue. The branch leading to wolf haplotype W1 was basal to the rest of the tree and it was also considered internal. Internal branches that could not be conclusively associated to dogs or to wolves are indicated in discontinuous green.
_

As you can see, the mtDNA shows the ancestry line.  The canid ancestor preceded the wolf, the dog, & the coyote, as well as other canid not listed.  I have seen them in other genetic studies.  Here are the facts about this study:

1. The modern wolf breeds, coyotes, & domestic dogs are all descended from a common ancestor, as is proved by the mtDNA.
2. Some branches of the trees can be followed, showing further narrowing of variability, & lessening of the trait options in the DNA
3. All of the original traits of ALL the subsequent breeds were ALREADY PRESENT in the canid ancestor.
4. The current set of breeds in canidae are mostly dead ends.. the limits of the branches in the family tree, & no longer have the original variability within the ancestral canid.

The study continues, & i can highly recommend it for a better understanding of genetics in mammals.  I don't think all the conclusions or speculations are supported, but the facts of the study are very enlightening.

source
Relaxation of selective constraint on dog mitochondrial DNA following domestication 
Quotes from study are in italics

----------

Midgardian (03-31-2016)

----------


## pinqy

> you still have NO MECHANISM for increasing complexity, or adding chromosomes or genome pairs.


ummm polyploidy is a well known and observed phenomenon.  Example: The frequency of polyploid speciation in vascular plants
There are many other. Wikipedia does a decent job of explaining it: Polypoloid

----------


## Sled Dog

> @Sled Dog , as most agnostics and atheists or anti-theists always do, I think you are setting up your own straw man and then knocking it down.


No.

I was quoting the Bible.

So sorry.  

Guess again.




> Although there is too much literal-ness taken for the English (or even Hebrew) versions of the Tanakh (Old Testament), you must always remember just as the Protestants must always remember that these old writings were written down millennia ago.  They don't have the same meaning now as they were intended to then.


Right.

You're of the gang that claims the Bible should be taken metaphorically, not literally.

Which blows the silly notion that Jesus is the Son of God right off the planet.

You've just confessed that Jesus is a man, not a god.

Thank you.

I already knew that.




> You cannot logically pretend that Genesis (Bereshet) is a lab notebook and then with your straw man set up proceed to knock it down.


That's not what I did.

I said the story of Genesis is foolish because it was written by an ignorant person trying to sell a con to other ignorant people.

YOU just wasted a post trying set up your own straw man.

And failed.

----------


## Sled Dog

> @Sled Dog , there is nothing backing up your own speculation either.
> 
> We simply do not "know" either way.
> 
> That leaves the door open for anybody to guess.


Here's how real science works.

There's a theory that Random Changes provide the necessary diversity to drive evolution via natural selection.

Random Changes are observed in nature and their impact on selection processes are documented in both lab experiment and in the field.

There's another theory that the changes are not random.   So this theory has to be complicated with the mumbo jumbo that "gee, gosh, they certainly look random by my idiot religion says they can't be, so therefore they're not random.  I wonder how the seemingly random planned changes are effected?  I don't have a clue."

That's not science.  

It's gibberish.

It's religion.

Run along and look up Occam's Razor.

----------


## Sled Dog

> It is NOT an observed fact.


Yes it is.




> Ridiculing other 'theories' of origins does not provide evidence for your pet theory, either.


Sure it does.  Look past the scorn and see the facts.

You need to be objective if you're going to grow up to become a scientist some day.

Engineers who are religious are the most dangerous people on the planet.  I know, I've had to correct their mistakes...fortunately before they killed someone.

----------


## Calypso Jones

> Here's how real science works.
> 
> There's a theory that Random Changes provide the necessary diversity to drive evolution via natural selection.
> 
> Random Changes are observed in nature and their impact on selection processes are documented in both lab experiment and in the field.
> 
> There's another theory that the changes are not random.   So this theory has to be complicated with the mumbo jumbo that "gee, gosh, they certainly look random by my idiot religion says they can't be, so therefore they're not random.  I wonder how the seemingly random planned changes are effected?  I don't have a clue."
> 
> That's not science.  
> ...


this is all theory.  Not observable fact.   Your scientists were not even present at the things that they're running their mouths about.   They think they pronounce truth and all they do is look like fools.

----------


## pinqy

> this is all theory.  Not observable fact.   Your scientists were not even present at the things that they're running their mouths about.   They think they pronounce truth and all they do is look like fools.


Do you have a theory that better explains things? The current theories on Evolution are the best explanation of the diversification of the species. If/when a better theory or theories are developed, then they will be accepted. This has already happened as Lamarckism has been falsified and some of Darwin's ideas have been supplanted by subsequent study.

----------


## Sled Dog

> It is NOT an observed fact.


But it IS an observed fact.

It's observed in both plant and animal species directly.

It's bred deliberately in experiments.

It's part of the paleontological record.

Evolution is an OBSERVED FACT.

Denying this places the opponent in the position called "wrong".




> NO MECHANISM


What?

The chromosomal replication process is far from perfect and introduces error frequently and in the process changes the response of the descendants to environmental stimuli.

It's called "genetics".

You should learn about it sometime.

----------


## usfan

> ummm polyploidy is a well known and observed phenomenon.  Example: The frequency of polyploid speciation in vascular plants
> There are many other. Wikipedia does a decent job of explaining it: Polypoloid


There is a big leap in correlating what you can do with ferns & some plants & projecting it across the entire living spectrum.  They do not correlate.  They are different, with different genetic structures, & different ways of varying & reproducing.  You still get ferns from ferns.  There is no increase in complexity, just simple horizontal variability.

This is not a mechanism.  it is an observation of CERTAIN types of animals & plants.  It is merely a variant of living things.. something with more than the basic 2 pair of chromosomes.. genomes.. that makeup the life.  It is a big stretch to say that because goldfish have this capacity, that dogs, horses, or humans can just dig deep into their genetic pool & arbitrarily pick their genome pairing, or add or subtract at will.  There is no mechanism to do this.  It is imagined, & polyploidy is merely an observed CONDITION of SOME living things.  it does not extend to ALL living things, & it is NOT a mechanism for increasing complexity, adding chromosomes, or genome pairs.  That is an imaginary construct, with no mechanism to do it.

If you are going to post a rebuttal, do so, but in your own words, with a quote from a link if you want.  Merely posting a link is a deceptive practice, as it implies an authoritative answer, even if it does not relate or correlate.  It is up to you to apply the argument to the discussion, not for me to try to decipher your link & apply it to the discussion.

----------


## pinqy

> There is a big leap in correlating what you can do with ferns & some plants & projecting it across the entire living spectrum.  They do not correlate.  They are different, with different genetic structures, & different ways of varying & reproducing.  You still get ferns from ferns.  There is no increase in complexity, just simple horizontal variability.
> 
> This is not a mechanism.  it is an observation of CERTAIN types of animals & plants.  It is merely a variant of living things.. something with more than the basic 2 pair of chromosomes.. genomes.. that makeup the life.  It is a big stretch to say that because goldfish have this capacity, that dogs, horses, or humans can just dig deep into their genetic pool & arbitrarily pick their genome pairing, or add or subtract at will.  There is no mechanism to do this.  It is imagined, & polyploidy is merely an observed CONDITION of SOME living things.  it does not extend to ALL living things, & it is NOT a mechanism for increasing complexity, adding chromosomes, or genome pairs.  That is an imaginary construct, with no mechanism to do it.
> 
> If you are going to post a rebuttal, do so, but in your own words, with a quote from a link if you want.  Merely posting a link is a deceptive practice, as it implies an authoritative answer, even if it does not relate or correlate.  It is up to you to apply the argument to the discussion, not for me to try to decipher your link & apply it to the discussion.


You stated there was NO mechanism to increase the number of chromosomes or genome pairs. Polyploidy is the observed mechanism of chromosomes and genome pairs being added. That it is only common in plants and fish is entirely irrelevant. It is a heritable condition and observed mechanism of speciation. 

You said there were no mechanisms for increasing the number of chromosomes or genome pairs. I showed one. That's all I needed to do to rebut your point. No further explanation should have been necessary. I forgot that there would be the inevitable shifting of goal posts.

----------


## usfan

It is NOT a mechanism.  It is an observed condition of CERTAIN organisms.  It does not correlate to all living things, nor is it present in all living things.  Just because goldfish or ferns have this capacity (where they only produce more goldfish & ferns) does not prove increasing complexity, or leaps to added genome pairs or other such fantasies of the ToE.  You are trying to extrapolate polyploidy to everything, & imply it as a mechanism, when it is not.  it is merely a property of SOME types of organisms, & it does not universally apply to all living things.

Therefore, it does not apply.  It is not a mechanism.  it is not the savior of evolution.  It cannot add genome pairs or chromosomes, but is only a condition of certain organisms that are not binary chromosome ordered.  it is a false equivalency to try to apply polyploidy as the engine of evolution.  It does not even 'evolve' goldfish or ferns.  They merely vary within their genetic parameters, which includes more than the usual pairs of chromosomes.  You cannot prove polyploidy as a mechanism of increasing complexity.  That is just a belief, & has no scientific corroboration.

----------


## pinqy

> It is NOT a mechanism.


If you want to be more specific, then copying errors during mitosis or meiosis can and do result in an increase in the number of chromosomes.




> It is an observed condition of CERTAIN organisms.


So you do admit that, at least in some organisms, the number of chromosomes can change?




> It does not correlate to all living things, nor is it present in all living things.


 So what? Your claim was that it didn't exist at all.




> Just because goldfish or ferns have this capacity (where they only produce more goldfish & ferns) does not prove increasing complexity, or leaps to added genome pairs or other such fantasies of the ToE.


How is it not increased complexity? 




> You are trying to extrapolate polyploidy to everything, & imply it as a mechanism, when it is not.  it is merely a property of SOME types of organisms, & it does not universally apply to all living things.


 I was not trying to extrapolate it to everything nor did I ever state it applied universally to all living things. I simply stated that it is a demonstrated observation of CHANGE in the number of chromosomes, which you claimed could not happen. 




> It cannot add genome pairs or chromosomes,


 By definition it does add chromosomes.

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Sled Dog (03-02-2016)

----------


## usfan

> If you want to be more specific, then copying errors during mitosis or meiosis can and do result in an increase in the number of chromosomes.
> So you do admit that, at least in some organisms, the number of chromosomes can change?
> So what? Your claim was that it didn't exist at all.
> How is it not increased complexity? 
> I was not trying to extrapolate it to everything nor did I ever state it applied universally to all living things. I simply stated that it is a demonstrated observation of CHANGE in the number of chromosomes, which you claimed could not happen. 
> By definition it does add chromosomes.


You have jumped on a condition & are trying to universally apply it as a 'mechanism'.  it is not what you think.  Multiple sets of mostly matching chromosomes in certain plants do not prove increasing complexity, & they certainly do not add genome pairs, or create new traits or complexity.  If you study the phenomena, which is very limited in scope, & absent from most animals, you will see how ineffectual it is as a 'mechanism' of change for evolution.  That is wishful thinking, nothing more.  Study the issue before you embarrass yourself making absurd, unscientific claims that are completely unwarranted.

If you like, you can produce some actual studies that show how organisms with polyploidy genes 'evolve' or increase in complexity, or add genome pairs, or become something different than the parent organism.  You will, of course, find this to be unsubstantiated, as are most of the claims of the ToE.  If you get into specifics, i'll rebut the specifics, & try to explain how genetics works, & some  of the more obscure conditions like polyploidy.  But you are merely tossing out a term, that does not do what you think, & believing it to be the Answer.  Pro evo sites like talk.origins are famous for propaganda, but are pretty weak with science.  Better to have a broader education in the actual sciences, than trust the claims of an agenda driven site.

And btw, polyploidy does not 'add' chromosomes.  It merely has copies of the original, with some variations of the parent stock.  These are not 'new' chromosomes, but mere copies that lurk in the background.  This phenomena is deadly to animals, who are much more complex, with beating hearts, eyes, brains, & other bodily functions.  They have observed polyploidy genes in mice, under strict laboratory conditions, & under forced diabetic glucose culture mediums.  But this is not a mechanism, & it has no power to do as you seem to think it does.  It is merely copies of the usual chromosome pairs, only found in certain organisms.

----------


## Midgardian

> But it IS an observed fact.


You have "observed" evolution? Wow, you must be ancient! LOL!

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sandhurstdelta (04-05-2016)

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## teeceetx

There are serious serious flaws in both evolution and creation (religion).  So serious in fact, as to make them both questionable.

We have never seen one species evolve into another.  A crocodile is 55 million years old, supposedly split off from some common ancestor.  Yet in 55 million years, there has been no appreciable changes in them.  So clearly evolution takes a very very long time, and results in very subtle changes, attributable to environment.

Modern Humans (homo sapiens) are roughly 200,000 years old, supposedly evolved from primates in Africa.  Except that missing link has never been found.  We have creatures before and after the rise of Homo Sapiens, but strangely, that link remains missing.  And then there is that pesky little matter of the 223 genes in the human genome, that have no history of having evolved with us.  Just suddenly appeared without the required genetic precursors.

Now as far as religion, we all know the bible (old and new testaments) relate stories which bear a striking semblance to those of ancient Sumeria.  We are told Adam and Eve were the first humans, who were _created_, who had many children who had to marry each other, and yet there are narratives that describe many many other people in existence at that time.  

So where did they come from?  Adam and Eve were said to have been created 6,000-8,000 yrs ago. That would put it right in the Sumerian timeframe.  And many say the Sumerians just appeared as if out of nowhere with civilization, farming, language, art, etc etc.  The Sumerians were a Caucasoid people, and it is they who are given credit for civilization.  We know homo sapien to be 200,000 years old.  Out of Africa.  So after 192,000 years, modern man decides to become civilized _overnight_!  What happened to evolution?

There of course are answers that would rectify the seemingly incongruous concepts of evolution and creation.  But I don't think most are ready for that.

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usfan (04-05-2016)

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## Sled Dog

> There are serious serious flaws in both evolution and creation (religion).  So serious in fact, as to make them both questionable.


No significant flaws in the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Religion is about feeling good and has nothing to do with external realities.  Religion is nothing but a construct of the human mind....it's um...a product of evolution.




> We have never seen one species evolve into another.


Not true.




> Observed speciation - EvoWiki
> 
> *A new species of mosquito, "Culex molestus", has evolved in the subway system of the London underground. This new species has completely different mating behaviors from its parents, feeds exclusively on mammals rather than aves, and displays evidence of genetic drift.<*ref>Byrne K, Nichols R A, (1999) âCulex pipiens in London Underground tunnels: differentiation between surface and subterranean populationsâ Heredity 82:7-15</ref> 
> 
> ##The Hawthorn, or apple maggot, fly is a evolving a new species due to the introduction of a new host plant, apple trees, into North America. The parent species infests hawthorn trees, while the emerging population infests foreign apple trees. Both parent and daughter species have different maturation rates, breed at separate times to match their hosts fruiting, and rarely hybridize.<ref>Feder J L, Chilcote C A, & Bush B L, (1988) âGenetic differentiation between sympatric host races of the apple maggot fly Rhagoletis pomonella" Nature 336:61-64</ref> 
> 
> ##A population of mice were introduced to the island of Maderia five hundred years ago. Over the course of about 1,500 to 2,000 generations have developed into distinct populations distinguishable by their karyotype. *The ancestral population has forty chromosomes while the six new species have twenty-two to thirty chromosomes*.<ref>Britton-Davidian J, et al (2000) âRapid chromosomal evolution in island miceâ Nature 403:158</ref>[8]







> A crocodile is 55 million years old, supposedly split off from some common ancestor.  Yet in 55 million years, there has been no appreciable changes in them.  So clearly evolution takes a very very long time, and results in very subtle changes, attributable to environment.


If you understood the theory of evolution by natural selection you would make such silly mistakes.

The coelacanth is an even more ancient species.   Yet it exists today.  

Instead falsely citing these examples as a "failure" of evolution, instead recognize what they are.  A confirmation of the process of natural selection.  When a species is adapted to it's environment, it doesn't need to change further so long as that environment remains stable.

Duh.




> Modern Humans (homo sapiens) are roughly 200,000 years old, supposedly evolved from primates in Africa.  Except that missing link has never been found.  We have creatures before and after the rise of Homo Sapiens, but strangely, that link remains missing.  And then there is that pesky little matter of the 223 genes in the human genome, that have no history of having evolved with us.  Just suddenly appeared without the required genetic precursors.


Yawn.  "Missing link" crap again?   Don't you people ever get tired of being wrong?  What do you people, want, a geneology table?   The line between earliest hominids and modern day humans is clear, including genome commonality between adjacent branches of the evolutionary bush.




> Now as far as religion, we all know the bible (old and new testaments) relate stories which bear a striking semblance to those of ancient Sumeria.  We are told Adam and Eve were the first humans, who were _created_, who had many children who had to marry each other, and yet there are narratives that describe many many other people in existence at that time.


Everyone knows the Bible is mythology, not accurate history.

----------

Corruptbuddha (04-05-2016)

----------


## sandhurstdelta

The ancient Greeks theorized that humans evolved from fish.

The similarity in endoskeletons is fascinating.

Amphibians are slightly more changed, and reptiles even more so.

It has been a popular theory for over 2500 years.

----------


## Sled Dog

Your Inner Fish

----------


## Northern Rivers

> ummm polyploidy is a well known and observed phenomenon.  Example: The frequency of polyploid speciation in vascular plants
> There are many other. Wikipedia does a decent job of explaining it: Polypoloid


Billy Budd Premium Seeds & Clones

----------


## usfan

> Billy Budd Premium Seeds & Clones


methinks too many have been pursuing polyploidy through this method..    :Laughing7:

----------


## Midgardian

_Originally posted by_ *SLED DOG*


> Observed speciation - EvoWiki
> 
> *A new species of mosquito, "Culex molestus", has evolved in the subway system of the London underground. This new species has completely different mating behaviors from its parents, feeds exclusively on mammals rather than aves, and displays evidence of genetic drift.<*ref>Byrne K, Nichols R A, (1999) â€œCulex pipiens in London Underground tunnels: differentiation between surface and subterranean populationsâ€ Heredity 82:7-15</ref> 
> 
>  ##The Hawthorn, or apple maggot, fly is a evolving a new species due to the introduction of a new host plant, apple trees, into North America. The parent species infests hawthorn trees, while the emerging population infests foreign apple trees. Both parent and daughter species have different maturation rates, breed at separate times to match their hosts fruiting, and rarely hybridize.<ref>Feder J L, Chilcote C A, & Bush B L, (1988) â€œGenetic differentiation between sympatric host races of the apple maggot fly Rhagoletis pomonella" Nature 336:61-64</ref> 
> 
>  ##A population of mice were introduced to the island of Maderia five hundred years ago. Over the course of about 1,500 to 2,000 generations have developed into distinct populations distinguishable by their karyotype. *The ancestral population has forty chromosomes while the six new species have twenty-two to thirty chromosomes*.<ref>Britton-Davidian J, et al (2000) â€œRapid chromosomal evolution in island miceâ€ Nature 403:158</ref>[8]


At the end of the day, they were still mosquitos, maggots, and mice.

The same is true of that study touted by evolutionists involving bacteria. At the end of the day all the bacteria "studied" were still E Coli.

You have done an admirable job of proving microevolution (adaptation within a species) , which no one seriously disputes. 

You have not, however proved macroevolution, which can not be observed, and does not in fact take place because it violates every topically relevant physical law of nature.

----------

sandhurstdelta (04-06-2016),usfan (04-06-2016)

----------


## sandhurstdelta

Evolution is a convenient assumption for science, which must at all times remain Empirical and non-religious until that day when one of our space telescopes finds and zooms in on the home of God walking in His garden and sends the photos back.

In the meantime too many religious zealots get all upset over evolution, while on the other end of the spectrum too many scientists tend to treat evolution as gospel.

The philosopher who occupies a space either between the other two, or else above them, must always remember that science is Empirical and inductive while religion is revelatory and dogmatic, whereas philosophy is a priori and purely analytical.

----------

Midgardian (04-06-2016),OptimaFemina (04-08-2016)

----------


## teeceetx

> ....Religion is about feeling good and has nothing to do with external realities.  Religion is nothing but a construct of the human mind....it's um...a product of evolution.
> 
> The coelacanth is an even more ancient species.   Yet it exists today....
> 
> Instead falsely citing these examples as a "failure" of evolution, instead recognize what they are.  A confirmation of the process of natural selection.  When a species is adapted to it's environment, it doesn't need to change further so long as that environment remains stable....
> 
> Yawn.  "Missing link" crap again?   Don't you people ever get tired of being wrong?  What do you people, want, a geneology table?   The line between earliest hominids and modern day humans is clear, including genome commonality between adjacent branches of the evolutionary bush...
> 
> Everyone knows the Bible is mythology, not accurate history.


Religion IS a human construct designed to control behaviors.  And everyone DO NOT KNOW the Bible is mythology.  The stories of the Bible are thousands of years old, and NO ONE today was around to verify them.  As years progress, we see more and more things emerge as REAL, that were in the Bible, and presumed to be allegory. 

I stated that nature EVOLVES creatures to better suit environment.  Yet you argue THAT with me.  The examples you give do not demonstrate a creature evolving into something entirely different.  My point was and IS, that according to many respected geneticists, modern humans SHOULD NOT EXIST.  Like it or not.

You have let your contempt for religion cloud your judgement.  And you will be proven wrong at some future point.


Oh, you might want to use some up to date info on the "Evolution" examples.  You seemed to have cherry picked data to skew the result.  All is not as you described.

----------


## Sled Dog

> Religion IS a human construct designed to control behaviors.


Umm...no.

That's the natural outcome of people making dumb-asses of themselves, but the urge to believe in life-after-death comes from the evolved organization of the human brain and our instincts.




> And everyone DO NOT KNOW the Bible is mythology.


Everyone doesn't know King Obama is a traitor, doesn't change the reality.




> I stated that nature EVOLVES creatures to better suit environment.


I'm so proud for you.




> Yet you argue THAT with me.


That's the price YOU pay when YOU talk out of both sides of your ass.




> The examples you give do not demonstrate a creature evolving into something entirely different.


Actually, they did.

Ignorant claims that "a mosquito is still a mosquito" (@midgardian) merely reveals their weakness of concept.   They could have said "a bus is a bug" and been just as wrong.    Someone doesn't know there's many different species of mosquito.   And they don't know that a "maggot" is merely the larval stage of development for many species of flies.

So, yeah, actually what was described was observed instances of present day speciation, just as the evolution of the horse, the zebra and the ass are all paleontologically demonstrated examples of speciation of one species into ultimately three in the present day.

A horse is not a zebra is not a donkey.




> My point was and IS, that according to many respected geneticists, modern humans SHOULD NOT EXIST.  Like it or not.


There's a difference between being respected and being right.

So-called respected physicists declared that bumble-bees could not fly, respected engineers proclaimed that supersonic flight was not possible, that rockets couldn't work in space because they had nothing to push against.

Humans EXIST.

Whether some professor of the WRONG persuasion says we should not exist is irrelevant. Those "respected" geneticists would earn more "respect" if they a) quantified what they believe is the impossible turning point and b) explained how it was crossed.  Could be Nobel Prize stuff in there.

What you presented is what knowledgeable people call "not an argument".




> You have let your contempt for religion cloud your judgement.  And you will be proven wrong at some future point.


Oh.  You're waiting for someone else to do the heavy lifting.




> Oh, you might want to use some up to date info on the "Evolution" examples.  You seemed to have cherry picked data to skew the result.  All is not as you described.


Umm...when the statement is "evolution does not happen", the only requirement to refute that claim is to provide ONE example.

I provided several.

Also, since the argument presented was evidence of modern day speciation, then evidence of that was presented, and how is it "cherry picking" to provide the necessary data and only the necessary data.

If I'd been requested to provide evidence of  Obama's treasons, I'm not obligated to provide evidence of Obama's beneficence to the US (which is good, because no examples of that alternative exists).

You're kind of new to public internet forums and the basic rules of logical arguments, aren't you?

======

Buuuttttt...if you want an up-to-date example of speciation-in-progress, here's one I've personally observed.

Huskies are dogs.  (Just in case you didn't know.  Always got to make sure the foundational definitions are in place.)  If improperly socialized, huskies will turn out rather wild and predatory.  I've got one bitch, that one right there, who was left in her owners' backyard from when she was a pup with practically no adult (human) supervision.   etc etc, I rescued her.

She views ALL small animals weighing less than twenty pounds as prey animals.  NO exceptions.  And huskies are some of the fastest dogs around, too.

Then there are those Chihuahua things.  They look like dogs.  They have dog-like DNA, but, let's face it, nobody really thinks those things are real dogs.  But, let's pretend they are.

The key to evolution by natural selection is first isolation of a population, and then the natural divergence of that population from the control, non-isolated population, until the divergence gets to the point that the isolated population is reproductively isolated from the control population even if they are once again mingled.

Back to huskies and chihuahuahs.

Remember I said my bitch treats all smaller animals as prey animals?

Think there's any chance whatsoever of her letting one of those THINGS mount her, even if it physically could?  No.  The Chihuahua would have it's neck or back broken before it could even make it's intentions known.

Get a pack of wild huskies and a pack of wild rat-dogs on an island and the rat-dog line would vanish.   The husky line would NEVER be mixed with the rat-dogs.

Reproductive isolation.

The only problem with the above scenario is that huskies are a purebred dog breed and it would be a LONG time before true genetic divergence could happen.  But the rat-dog strain would never get introduced, under natural conditions, into the husky blood line.

They'd be murdered, first the males (and females) by the husky bitches on the one hand, and by the husky males killing the females on the other, out of pure frustration at being too tall to mount the rat-bitches no matter how much they might want to.

Speciation in action.

----------


## sandhurstdelta

Everybody seems to be an expert at religion.

But not too many people seem to know the difference between religion, science, and philosophy.

----------

OptimaFemina (04-08-2016)

----------


## Midgardian

> Ignorant claims that "a mosquito is still a mosquito" (@midgardian) merely reveals their weakness of concept.   They could have said "a bus is a bug" and been just as wrong.\.


I would never say that a bus is a bug, because that is nonsense, as is the theory of evolution.

You, however, might well claim that a bug could evolve into a bus. That is just about the process of amoebas "evolving" into human beings, which never happened.

----------


## sandhurstdelta

There are dilemmas and paradoxes in philosophy and religion relating to the existence and the need for a God or Gods to explain why we are all here.

It is as if we all woke up together one morning and here we all are.  But we don't know how we got here or why we were put here.

Some people will naturally assume we sprung from mushrooms -- which is as good as any evolutionary theory.

Some people will assume we were transported here on spacecraft and left here.

And some people like Aquinas will come up with the 5 classic proofs of God --

1 - the First Cause
2 - the Prime Mover
3 - the Artistic Artificer
4 - the Intelligent Designer
5 - the Conceivable Most Good by which being conceived of proves that He must exist.

Once you get past that there was either a God or Gods, or else a Big Bang, or else Space Aliens from distant worlds, then you can come up with your own theories and whether slow evolution over 4 billion years (the theorized age of the Earth) or a fast creation in a few days as told by Moses back in 1450 BCE is more valid.

It does not really matter though.  Nothing that happened in the past is going to influence what will be in the future.

The past is in the past and the future is going to be whatever it becomes.  And there is nothing that tiny Humankind can do to change any of it, short of a nuclear holocaust in both hemispheres at the same time -- the northern AND the southern.

----------


## usfan

> Umm...no.
> That's the natural outcome of people making dumb-asses of themselves, but the urge to believe in life-after-death comes from the evolved organization of the human brain and our instincts.
> Everyone doesn't know King Obama is a traitor, doesn't change the reality.
> I'm so proud for you.
> That's the price YOU pay when YOU talk out of both sides of your ass.
> Actually, they did.
> Ignorant claims that "a mosquito is still a mosquito" (@midgardian) merely reveals their weakness of concept.   They could have said "a bus is a bug" and been just as wrong.    Someone doesn't know there's many different species of mosquito.   And they don't know that a "maggot" is merely the larval stage of development for many species of flies.
> So, yeah, actually what was described was observed instances of present day speciation, just as the evolution of the horse, the zebra and the ass are all paleontologically demonstrated examples of speciation of one species into ultimately three in the present day.
> 
> ...


You describe a process of extinction, not evolution.  Variability is LOST, among the canids, in your hypothetical, as disadvantageous traits are not furthered in the line.  Put those same 2 variants in a desert region, where burrowing to escape the hot sun, or to find food is a positive for survival, & your huskies would likely not fare as well.  But this is not speciation, but extinction, that you are describing.  Huskies are not 'becoming' anything.  They remain huskies.  You only kill off the variability found in the chihuahua, with artificial 'selection'.  And since neither huskies or chihuahuas occur naturally in the wild, the example only displays HUMAN driven selection, or breeding.

Dog breeds, while being useful in analyzing whether evolution has any mechanism to affect change in living things, are not examples of evolutionary change.  They are merely examples of horizontal, or 'in species' variability.  You never addressed the points of my analysis of canids, & the facts about them that is a problem for the evolutionary theory.  I'll restate them here, from way back in post #69, & 'updated' in post #94:




> 1. All of the variety of dogs are recent developments, less than 200 yrs old.
> 2. Fact: Selection acts on EXISTING variability. It is not created on the fly, & is assumed to take thousands & millions of years to come about.
> 3. ALL of this variability EXISTED in the ancestral wolf/parent.
> 4. the recent time for the variety of dog breeds is incongruent with the assumption of 'millions' or even thousands of years of evolution, to generate such variety.


So not only do dogs NOT show any evolution, but the whole example of the canids seems to indicate that evolution does not happen.  You are making the basic error in the ToE, that of a false equivalency.  Since living things vary WITHIN their genetic parameters, you reason, they can vary OUTSIDE their genetic parameters.  But that is false, unscientific, & has NO evidence that it can, did, or will happen.

Huskies killing chihuahuas is not speciation.  Their genetic makeup is still that of dogs, even if the physical ability to mate is difficult.  Most dog breeds are the result of forced breeding by man, & are not 'naturally selected'.  Actually, the chihuahua is one of the few naturally occurring breeds among canids, with bones going back 1000 yrs.. not too many modern breeds can claim that heritage.

Is there ANY evidence that the canids 'descended' from another family/genus/species?  None.  That is speculation, with cute drawings & imagination driving the 'theory'.

Is there ANY evidence that canids are 'evolving' into something else?  Are there any 'new' animal forms with distinctly different genetics, genome pairs, etc, that can trace their line to any canid source?  NONE.  Nobody even speculates that.  Canids are the end of the evolution tree, & are not in the middle somewhere.  They are stuck.. not evolving, but at best devolving, as the wide range of traits that were available to them seem to be winding down.  That is the result of breeding.. man made 'selection'.  It lessens the variability available to the descendants, to narrow the gene pool.  IF evolution did as theorized, we would not be able to produce breeds with only certain traits, as there would constantly be new traits introduced by this mysterious mechanism that we cannot observe, repeat, or define.  It is an imaginary sky mechanism.. a magic fairy that waves her wand & produces species, because there is NO naturalistic mechanism that can do it.  It is a religious belief, not science.

----------


## Sled Dog

> You describe a process of extinction, not evolution.  Variability is LOST, among the canids, in your hypothetical, as disadvantageous traits are not furthered in the line.


I describe "extinction" because "disadvantageous traits" are lost from the line?

Who gets to decide which traits are advantageous?  You?  The dogs?  No.  The interaction of the dogs with the environment makes that determination, and the only thing presented in the given scenario was that the breed of Siberian husky and the breed of Chihuahua are already reproductively isolated and the two breeds each have their paws on separate evolutionary paths and can easily be considered as distinct species today using that criteria.

I said nothing about the future viability of either species.  The rat-dogs will chase rats and eat bugs for survival, the huskies will pursue larger game since they've been bred by their designers to work well as a team.    

IF the two species were permitted to live independently of man.




> Put those same 2 variants in a desert region, where burrowing to escape the hot sun, or to find food is a positive for survival, & your huskies would likely not fare as well.


Got any more non sequiturs to confuse yourself with since this WAS NOT the scenario I posted and this IS NOT relevant to the discussion?

I'm betting if I put the Chihuahua in the oven it wouldn't survive, either, even if that's all I did and didn't turn on the gas.  Just let starvation and dehydration do the work, right?

Is there some particular reason you're flooding your post with strawmen, besides the fact that you can't refute what I said in any meaningful way?




> Dog breeds, while being useful in analyzing whether evolution has any mechanism to affect change in living things, are not examples of evolutionary change.


Sure they are.

When I present the case.

Of course they're not, when you try to turn a husky into a strawdog.




> They are merely examples of horizontal, or 'in species' variability.  You never addressed the points of my analysis of canids, & the facts about them that is a problem for the evolutionary theory.  I'll restate them here, from way back in post #69, & 'updated' in post #94:


No, I stopped wasting my time on that many posts before and if you want to see what was said, go back and read them again.  I'm not into that kind of thing.

All you're doing now is posting ANOTHER strawdog argument.

Too bad for you, but ALL speciation events START with "reproductive isolation", be it a physical isolation or less obvious but real isolation caused by the refusal or inability of one of the bifurcating species to mate with the other. 

Siberian huskies WILL KILL Chihuahuas.   

That makes natural cross breeding, to use a technical term, IMPOSSIBLE.




> So not only do dogs NOT show any evolution, but the whole example of the canids seems to indicate that evolution does not happen.  You are making the basic error in the ToE, that of a false equivalency.  Since living things vary WITHIN their genetic parameters, you reason, they can vary OUTSIDE their genetic parameters.  But that is false, unscientific, & has NO evidence that it can, did, or will happen.


Oh.

Dogs don't show any evolution.

Dogs are 100% identical with wolves, whether the dog is an Irish Wolfhound, a St. Bernard, or a rat-dog.

Sure.

Whatever you say.

I personally never believed that mindless repetition of false assertions in clear contravention of facts was a good way to argue a position, but I can't deny that others find it orgasmic, or something.  The word "effective" certainly doesn't apply.




> Huskies killing chihuahuas is not speciation.


It's part of the process.

Bauxite isn't an airplane, but you can't build a 737 without bauxite in the process somewhere.




> Their genetic makeup is still that of dogs, even if the physical ability to mate is difficult.  Most dog breeds are the result of forced breeding by man, & are not 'naturally selected'.  Actually, the chihuahua is one of the few naturally occurring breeds among canids, with bones going back 1000 yrs.. not too many modern breeds can claim that heritage.


"Most" dog breeds are the result of human meddling?

Try "all".




> Is there ANY evidence that the canids 'descended' from another family/genus/species?  None.  That is speculation, with cute drawings & imagination driving the 'theory'.


Shooting yourself in your own foot, I see.




> Is there ANY evidence that canids are 'evolving' into something else?


Yes.

I presented evidence that real dogs, like Sibes, are reproductively isolated from rat-dogs.   Which means, absent the hand of man to force commingling of the two gene pools, those breeds would eventually diverge into genuinely distinct species with distinct ranges, distinct prey animals and distinct breeding practices.

You were presented that evidence.

You responded to a post containing that evidence.

Yet you ask if the evidence existed.

What kind of game are you playing?




> Are there any 'new' animal forms with distinctly different genetics, genome pairs, etc, that can trace their line to any canid source?  NONE.  Nobody even speculates that.  Canids are the end of the evolution tree, & are not in the middle somewhere.  They are stuck..


All evolution stops at the present species.

Until that species evolves into other species.   

So much for that dead end, eh?

not evolving, but at best devolving, as the wide range of traits that were available to them seem to be winding down.[/quote]

Devolving is not a meaningful term.

If the animal evolves to a different species, it's evolved.

Its your value judgement, something totally irrelevant to the science of biology, that a species has "improved" or "declined".   It means nothing.

Far as I'm concerned, a Chihuahua is a devolved dog.   So what for my opinion on that?   They exist solely because some humans found them valuable, either as a vermin-chasing small breed or some cute toy.  I don't know.  The damn things make people money now.

Huskies exist because they're bred to be strong as hell, and they're valued today by millions who've never owned a sled...because they're friendly, gentle, damn smart, and the prettiest dogs ever.  So they too have value in the human world.

But none of that matters in biology.   I'll repeat:  Left alone, either breed would find it's geographical and ecological niches and thrive therein, and left alone, neither would breed with the other.  The Chihuahua would be too terrified to try, the Husky would eat the chihuahua.

Again, what part of "eating the Chihuahua" would signal reproductive compatibility to you?




> That is the result of breeding.. man made 'selection'.


Really?

You figured that out?

No.  Who told you?  It was supposed to be a secret, dammit!




> It lessens the variability available to the descendants, to narrow the gene pool.


Sure.

But it does not preclude future mutation events.

Duh.

So all the species has to do is survive and time will provide the needed variability eventually.

Or the species dies.




> IF evolution did as theorized, we would not be able to produce breeds with only certain traits, as there would constantly be new traits introduced by this mysterious mechanism that we cannot observe, repeat, or define.


It is observed, it is repeated, and it's certainly defined.

Never heard of the science of genetics, the studies on mutations in the laboratory and the natural world?

YOU receive, on average, as a worker not routinely exposed to work-place ionizing radiation, a dose of approximately 6 millirem per month from naturally occurring radioactive substances and cosmic radiation.  You cannot escape it and that dose can certainly affect the haploid gametes in your reproductive tissues.

Chemicals in the environment can have similar effects, as can starvation, malnutrition, etc etc etc.

Why do you say the process is not observed and not understood?




> It is an imaginary sky mechanism.. a magic fairy that waves her wand & produces species, because there is NO naturalistic mechanism that can do it.  It is a religious belief, not science.


Oh.

Genetics and biochemistry and evolution are no longer sciences.

Right.

----------


## Midgardian

Entropy, described under the Second Law of Thermodynamics, rules out evolution as a possible occurrence.

----------


## argo weaver

> More drivel.
> 
> Move this to either a religion forum or a Konspiracy Kook forum.
> 
> Evolution is what we scientist types like to call "an OBSERVED FACT".
> 
> I agree , this is pure INSTITUTE FOR CREATION DRIVEL. or KHam's creation museum stuff .get it outta here!
> 
> It's been observed in real time, in the speciation of African cichlid fishes, for example, and it's observed in the paleontological record, as in the conclusive evidentiary trail between eo hippus and today's horse, ass and zebra species, each of which are distinct species that cannot interbreed with either of the others and produce fertile off-spring.  
> ...

----------


## argo weaver

Sounds like more of Ken Ham's creation museum handouts.

----------


## Sled Dog

> Entropy, described under the Second Law of Thermodynamics, rules out evolution as a possible occurrence.


I'll take MY training in thermodynamics over yours any day.

The rise of any system's ordered complexity causes it to export entropy.

Local entropy declines, universal entropy increases as a result.

It's how things evolve, from the post-Inflation uniformity to today's extremely complex ordered universe.

But don't you worry, the heat death is coming.

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## usfan



----------


## teeceetx

> Umm...no.
> 
> That's the natural outcome of people making dumb-asses of themselves, but the urge to believe in life-after-death comes from the evolved organization of the human brain and our instincts.............


Like it or not, Darwin and his assistant BOTH admitted that humans were not part of his TOE.  Your closed-mindedness is apparent.  Remember, it's the THEORY of evolution, not the FACT of evolution.  You rail against thinking that disagrees with your own philosophy, thus demonstrating why you can never be called scientific in your views.

If you were to live long enough, you'd likely be proven wrong.  But such is reality to you.  You can believe in anything you want, right or wrong.  It's your attitude toward others who think differently than you, that makes you less believable.

As I've said before, our history is probably vastly different than any of us can imagine, except you, that is.

----------


## ChemEngineer

> No.
> Evolution is life.
> Evolution by Natural Selection is the name of the theory that explains the observed fact of evolution.
> Why are you confusing observed facts with religion?


Darwinists, such as you, invariably bring up "religion" as you did above. You do so because Leftists have long pretended that Christianity is anti-science.  That is a despicable lie, but an extremely persistent one.

Darwin's ToE is the biggest scientific scam in history, by far.  Let's just look at one polypeptide, human hemoglobin.
The space, or number of possible sequences, for a polypeptide 528 amino acid residues in length is about 10 to the 747th power.  (From memory. There are 20 amino acids, L form, in human proteins.)

Explain how random mutations produced the precise sequence, out of 10 to the 747 possible configurations, when Richard Dawkins defines "impossible" as one chance in 10 to the 40th power?  When the number of fundamental particles in the universe is "only" about 10^80th.
When there are hundreds of thousands of polypeptides, many of which are far longer and more complex than human hemoglobin?
When the number of possible sequences doesn't even take into consideration the folding of these proteins and enzymes?  When humans in a modern lab can't make them? When it doesn't consider chirality (right handed vs. left handed amino acids).  When...   When... When...

Moreover, the absurd and anti-intellectual pretense of the likes of Richard Dawkins, that statistics improve with time, is fraudulent on its face.

If you toss a coin every second, the odds of heads remains 1 chance in 2.
Slowing your toss rate to one toss every five years does not change this probability in the slightest.  But in evolution-talk, the claim is always made that slow and steady does the trick.  Not on your life it doesn't.

10 to the 50th grains of sand would fill 15 spheres the size of our solar system out to pluto.   Imagine you picking out ONE unique grain of sand, in 15 solar system sized spheres, on your FIRST and ONLY try.  An infinite number of attempts is NOT "1 chance in 10 to the 50th power."  One and ONLY try is 1 in 10^50.  Now compare that impossibility to 1 in 10^747.  That's just for one compound.

These are scientific facts, unrelated to "religion" with which Darwinists are as obsessed as atheists.

----------

usfan (06-08-2016)

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## ChemEngineer

*The following is a partial list of quotes from knowledgeable scientists.
I have more if anyone would like them.  Many more.

The Evolution Fraud*
Truth never lost ground by enquiry.- WILLIAM PENN, _Some Fruits of Solitude_
“The pathetic thing about it is that many scientists are trying to prove the doctrine of evolution, which no science can do.”  (Dr. Robert A. Milikan, physicist and Nobel Prize winner, speech before the American Chemical Society.)

“There are only two possibilities as to how life arose; one is spontaneous generation arising to evolution, the other is a supernatural creative act of God, there is no third possibility. Spontaneous generation that life arose from non-living matter was scientifically disproved 120 years ago by Louis Pasteur and others. That leaves us with only one possible conclusion, that life arose as a creative act of God. I will not accept that philosophically because I do not want to believe in God, therefore I choose to believe in that which I know is scientifically impossible, spontaneous generation arising to evolution.” (Dr. George Wald, evolutionist, Professor Emeritus of Biology at the Harvard University, Nobel Prize winner in Medicine.)
“Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing.” (Dr. George Wald, evolutionist.)
“Evolution [is] a theory universally accepted not because it can be proven by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.” (Professor D.M.S. Watson, leading biologist and science writer of his day.)
“My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed…..It is not even possible to make a caricature of an evolution out of paleobiological facts…The idea of an evolution rests on pure belief.”(Dr. Nils Heribert-Nilsson, noted Swedish botanist and geneticist, of Lund University)
“Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever! In explaining evolution we do not have one iota of fact.” – (Dr. Newton Tahmisian, Atomic Energy Commission.)
“When you realize that the laws of nature must be incredibly finely tuned to produce the universe we see, that conspires to plant the idea that the universe did not just happen, but that there must be a purpose behind it.”  (John Polkinghorne, Cambridge University physicist, “Science Finds God,” Newsweek, 20 July, 1998)
“Many have a feeling that somehow intelligence must have been involved in the laws of the universe.”  (Charles Townes, 1964 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, “Science Finds God,” Newsweek, 20 July, 1998)
“250,000 species of plants and animals recorded and deposited in museums throughout the world did not support the gradual unfolding hoped for by Darwin.”  (Dr. David Raup, curator of geology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, “Conflicts Between Darwinism and Paleontology”)
“The miracles required to make evolution feasible are far greater in number and far harder to believe than the miracle of creation.”  (Dr. Richard Bliss, former professor of biology and science education as Christian Heritage College, “It Takes A Miracle For Evolution.”)
“Scientists at the forefront of inquiry have put the knife to classical Darwinism. They have not gone public with this news, but have kept it in their technical papers and inner counsels.”  (Dr. William Fix, in his book, “The Bone Peddlers.”)
“In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection—quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection tautology.”  (Dr. Arthur Koestler)
“The only competing explanation for the order we all see in the biological world is the notion of special creation.”  (Dr. Colin Patterson, evolutionist and senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, which houses 60 million fossils)
“A growing number of respectable scientists are defecting from the evolutionist camp…..moreover, for the most part these “experts” have abandoned Darwinism, not on the basis of religious faith or biblical persuasions, but on strictly scientific grounds, and in some instances, regretfully.”  (Dr. Wolfgang Smith, physicist and mathematician)
“It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student….have now been debunked.”  (Dr. Derek V. Ager, Department of Geology, Imperial College, London)
“One must conclude that, contrary to the established and current wisdom, a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not been written.”  (Dr. Hubert P. Yockey)
“Darwin’s evolutionary explanation of the origins of man has been transformed into a modern myth, to the detriment of scientific and social progress…..The secular myths of evolution have had a damaging effect on scientific research, leading to distortion, to needless controversy, and to gross misuse of science….I mean the stories, the narratives about change over time. How the dinosaurs became extinct, how the mammals evolved, where man came from. These seem to me to be little more than story-telling.”  (Dr. Colin Patterson, evolutionist and senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, which houses 60 million fossils)
“The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop.”  (Dr. Edwin Conklin, evolutionist and professor of biology at Princeton University.)
“One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are-as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.”  (Dr. George Wald Evolutionist, Professor Emeritus of Biology at the University at Harvard, Nobel Prize winner in Biology.)
“The explanation value of the evolutionary hypothesis of common origin is nil! Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, it seems to convey anti-knowledge. How could I work on evolution ten years and learn nothing from it? Most of you in this room will have to admit that in the last ten years we have seen the basis of evolution go from fact to faith! It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not be taught in high school, and that’s all we know about it.”  (Dr. Colin Patterson, evolutionist and senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, which houses 60 million fossils)
“Hypothesis [evolution] based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts….These classical evolutionary theories are a gross over-simplification of an immensely complex and intricate mass of facts, and it amazes me that they are swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without a murmur of protest.”  (Sir Ernst Chan, Nobel Prize winner for developing penicillin)
“There is the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form. This theory can be called the “general theory of evolution,” and the evidence which supports this is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis.”  (Dr. G. A. Kerkut evolutionist)
“All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that life’s complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did.”  (Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Prize winner)
“The deceit is sometimes unconscious, but not always, since some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and the falsity of their beliefs.”  (Dr. Pierre-Paul Grasse of the University of Paris and past-president of the French Academy of Science)
“Meanwhile, their [evolutionists] unproven theories will continue to be accepted by the learned and the illiterate alike as absolute truth, and will be defended with a frantic intolerance that has a parallel only in the bigotry of the darkest Middle Ages. If one does not accept evolution as an infallible dogma, implicitly and without question, one is regarded as an unenlightened ignoramus or is merely ignored as an obscurantist or a naive, uncritical fundamentalist.”  (Dr. Alfred Rehwinkel)
“It is my conviction that if any professional biologist will take adequate time to examine carefully the assumptions upon which the macro-evolution doctrine rests, and the observational and laboratory evidence that bears on the problem of origins, he/she will conclude that there are substantial reasons for doubting the truth of this doctrine. Moreover, I believe that a scientifically sound creationist view of origins is not only possible, but it is to be preferred over the evolutionary one.”  (Dean H. Kenyon, professor of biology at San Francisco State University)
“For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”  (Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means)
“I suppose the reason we leaped at the origin of species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores.”  (Sir Julian Huxley, President of the United Nation’s Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization (UNESCO).)
“Evolution is unproved and improvable, we believe it because the only alternative is special creation, which is unthinkable.”  (Sir Arthur Keith, a militant anti-Christian physical anthropologist)
“Perhaps generations of students of human evolution, including myself, have been flailing about in the dark; that our data base is too sparse, too slippery, for it to be able to mold our theories. Rather the theories are more statements about us and ideology than about the past. Paleontology reveals more about how humans view themselves than it does about how humans came about, but that is heresy.”  (Dr. David Pilbeam, Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, American Scientist, vol 66, p.379, June 1978)
“If I knew of any Evolutionary transitional’s, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them in my book, ‘Evolution’ ”  (Dr. Colin Patterson, evolutionist and senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, which houses 60 million fossils)
“For over 20 years I thought I was working on evolution….But there was not one thing I knew about it… So for the last few weeks I’ve tried putting a simple question to various people, the question is, “Can you tell me any one thing that is true?” I tried that question on the Geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, A very prestigious body of Evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, “Yes, I do know one thing, it ought not to be taught in High School”….over the past few years….you have experienced a shift from Evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith…Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge.”  (Dr. Collin Patterson evolutionist, address at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Nov. 1981)
“The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualist accounts of evolution.”  (Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University.)
“I shall discuss the broad patterns of hominoid evolution, an exercise made enjoyable by the need to integrate diverse kinds of information, and use that as a vehicle to speculate about hominoid origins, an event for which there is no recognized fossil record. Hence, an opportunity to exercise some imagination.”  (Dr. David Pilbeam)
“To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree possible.”  (Charles Darwin, “The origin of species by means of natural selection”)
“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as a trade secret of Paleontology. Evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.”  (Dr. Stephan J Gould, Harvard Paleontologist, “Evolution, Erratic Pace”)
“Within the period of human history we do not know of a single instance of the transformation of one species into another one. It may be claimed that the theory of descent is lacking, therefore, in the most essential feature that it needs to place the theory on a scientific basis, this must be admitted.”  (Dr. T.H Morgan)
“The facts of paleontology seem to support creation and the flood rather than evolution. For instance, all the major groups of invertebrates appear “suddenly” in the first fossil ferrous strata (Cambrian) of the earth with their distinct specializations indicating that they were all created almost at the same time.”  (Professor Enoch, University of Madras)
“It remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of families, appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual completely continuous transitional sequences.” (Dr. George Gaylord Simpson of Harvard)
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”  (Charles Darwin, “The Origin of Species”)
“I can envision observations and experiments that would disprove any evolutionary theory I know.”  (Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, “Evolution as Fact and Theory,” Discover 2(5):34-37 (1981)
“Darwinism is a creed not only with scientists committed to document the all-purpose role of natural selection. It is a creed with masses of people who have at best a vague notion of the mechanism of evolution as proposed by Darwin, let alone as further complicated by his successors. Clearly, the appeal cannot be that of a scientific truth but of a philosophical belief which is not difficult to identify. Darwinism is a belief in the meaninglessness of existence.”  (Dr. R. Kirk, “The Rediscovery of Creation,” in National Review, (May 27, 1983), p. 641.)
“It is not the duty of science to defend the theory of evolution, and stick by it to the bitter end no matter which illogical and unsupported conclusions it offers. On the contrary, it is expected that scientists recognize the patently obvious impossibility of Darwin’s pronouncements and predictions . . Let’s cut the umbilical cord that tied us down to Darwin for such a long time. It is choking us and holding us back.”  (Dr. I.L. Cohen, “Darwin Was Wrong:” A Study in Probabilities (1985)
“The theories of evolution, with which our studious youth have been deceived, constitute actually a dogma that all the world continues to teach; but each, in his specialty, the zoologist or the botanist, ascertains that none of the explanations furnished is adequate . . It results from this summary, that the theory of evolution is impossible.”  (Dr. P. Lemoine, “Introduction: De L’ Evolution?” Encyclopedie Francaise, Vol. 5 (1937)
“Paleontologists [fossil experts] have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin’s argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we almost never see the very process we profess to study.”  (Dr. Steven Jay Gould, The Panda’s Thumb (1982), pp. 181-182 [Harvard professor and the leading evolutionary spokesman of the latter half of the twentieth century].)
“Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy.”  (Charles Darwin, Life and Letters, 1887, Vol. 2, p. 229)
“I have often thought how little I should like to have to prove organic evolution in a court of law.”  (Dr. Errol White, Proceedings of the Linnean Society, London (1966) [an ichthyologist (expert on fish) in a 1988 address before a meeting of the Linnean Society in London])













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usfan (06-08-2016)

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## Talon

What if science and religion both have it wrong?  I can believe that organisms can change and adapt to their environments once they are alive, but how in the hell did it become alive in the first place?  That's my question.  The religious zealot will scream "God!" and the science geek with yell "Evolution."  

There seems to be a guiding "force" if you will that kinda helps move things along.  

My main concern with evolution is that if you need something in particular to survive, you need it right now, and not a hundred thousand years later when you finally evolve it.  In order to evolve, your species already has to be living and thriving, and that seems to fly in the face of the whole concept.  

My main concern with religion is that the "designer" that designed us, would have to have been designed himself, ad infinitum.

RNA and DNA are so darn complex that I have a hard time believing that they were swirled up in the oceans of earth.  And the fact that we know what chemicals and elements make up life, but we are still unable to create it from scratch bothers me some. 

Like I said, I think both sides are missing something in the equation, but what it is, I'm not sure.

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## usfan

> Darwinists, such as you, invariably bring up "religion" as you did above. You do so because Leftists have long pretended that Christianity is anti-science.  That is a despicable lie, but an extremely persistent one.
> Darwin's ToE is the biggest scientific scam in history, by far.  Let's just look at one polypeptide, human hemoglobin.
> The space, or number of possible sequences, for a polypeptide 528 amino acid residues in length is about 10 to the 747th power.  (From memory. There are 20 amino acids, L form, in human proteins.)
> Explain how random mutations produced the precise sequence, out of 10 to the 747 possible configurations, when Richard Dawkins defines "impossible" as one chance in 10 to the 40th power?  When the number of fundamental particles in the universe is "only" about 10^80th.
> When there are hundreds of thousands of polypeptides, many of which are far longer and more complex than human hemoglobin?
> When the number of possible sequences doesn't even take into consideration the folding of these proteins and enzymes?  When humans in a modern lab can't make them? When it doesn't consider chirality (right handed vs. left handed amino acids).  When...   When... When...
> Moreover, the absurd and anti-intellectual pretense of the likes of Richard Dawkins, that statistics improve with time, is fraudulent on its face.
> If you toss a coin every second, the odds of heads remains 1 chance in 2.
> Slowing your toss rate to one toss every five years does not change this probability in the slightest.  But in evolution-talk, the claim is always made that slow and steady does the trick.  Not on your life it doesn't.
> ...


My central argument in this thread has been genetic.  It is the 'central flaw', that of a false equivalency.  The ToE posits that man descended from an apelike creature, with 24 chromosome pairs, that fused into 23, creating man.  But this ignores HUGE hurdles in the genetic code.



IF you could show that all the genes in the chromosomes correlated.. that is, they were the same ones in both organisms, THEN there might be some credibility for such a 'theory'. But the chromosomes & genes of the chimp & man are completely different.. as different as chimp & man. It takes more than fusing (or dividing) a chromosome to change the gene structure, or to add or subtract genes in the organism. Merely theorizing the possibility of 'chromosome fusion' & declaring that as the solution ignores some pretty big hurdles, genetically. Each chromosome contains genes.. hundreds & thousands of them, that provide the basis for the organism.. their heritage, their traits, & their ancestral history. They are unique to each organism, & are not 'lego blocks' that can easily be transferred from one organism to another. So assuming that chromosome fusion proves chimp ancestry of humans, or even common descent ignores a huge hurdle in the genetic code. How did all those genes change? How did you get the traits & variability to change from chimp to human? There is no genetic trail, that is merely asserted & assumed. IOW, it is not based in anything scientific, but is a belief.. a conjecture about genetic makeup that has no evidence of being possible.

It is more like this: Organisms within genetic families, that have proven descendancy, are like specific machines, with parts unique to that machine. A boeing 747 has specific, unique parts, that do not interchange with a chevy pickup. Just because they all use 'parts', does not make their parts identical. That is what the science of genetics has shown us, that the complexity at the genetic level is huge, & they do not randomly leap about, changing & adding variability. Genes are boringly stable, & they produce what their parents produced, who produced what their parents produced. You can repeat this for as many generations as you want, & you ALWAYS get the same genetic structures.. some variability is lost, by selective processes, such as natural selection or man made breeding, but you still do not get added traits, or changes in the basic structure. The genetic makeup remains the same.

The GENES within each organism are very different, & do not flit about & change easily. Gene splicing is a VERY difficult task, & does not happen at all, outside of the laboratory, as far as we know. Claiming that genes can move freely between species is a baseless assertion. 

The genome is like a book.. & chromosomes being the chapter of a book. The words inside the chapters are genes. They are not lego blocks, that easily interchange with any other gene.  Without the ability to reproduce, there is NO WAY to transfer genes from one species to another. You could have sex with monkeys or sheep, or attempt to reproduce with any number of different species, & you will not produce offspring, & you will not mix their genes. Those are the 'high walls' of genetics. We are not lego blocks of genes, tumbled around, randomly producing various traits, while some mysterious mechanism is producing NEW traits to add to the pool.

Any morphological similarity between fused chromosomes cannot make the correlation that this is what happened with apes to humans. The genes are completely different, & there is no way to make new ones. It is like taking chapter 3 of 'Origin of Species', & changing it with Chapter 3 of 'Genesis'. They are not the same 'genome', or book, so they will not produce a working organism. The claim is that chapter 4 & 5 of 'Origin of Species' fused together to form chapter 5 of 'Genesis'. But the words don't match. The content is different, even if the chapters 'look' similar on the outside.

Note again the close up of a chromosome pair. All cells have exact copies of the chromosome pairs unique to each organism. The human genome has 23 pairs, with 46 chromosomes. Each chromosome has hundreds & thousands of genes, with the base pairs providing almost 'binary' information for each living organism. The source of this information is a combination of the parents. There is NO OTHER source.

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## ChemEngineer

> ///
> 
> There seems to be a guiding "force" if you will that kinda helps move things along.  
> 
> My main concern with religion is that the "designer" that designed us, would have to have been designed himself, ad infinitum.
> 
> Like I said, I think both sides are missing something in the equation, but what it is, I'm not sure.


"Both sides are missing something" but you have no idea what it is.  Hmmmmm.  Not a compelling argument at all.

There is indeed a guiding "force," and it is not nothing.  It is not a quantum vacuum.  It is not wishful thinking of atheists who don't believe in God but hate God, and are obsessed with talking about the God they claim does not exist simply because they wish it to be so.

In the naturalistic world, our universe as we know it, all design has a designer.  This is our reasoned logic derived from thousands of years of the combined efforts of billions of thinkers.  Therefore it is rational - to use their favorite word - to conclude with great confidence that SOME intelligent designer made this marvelous universe which so fascinates us all.
It could not possibly have made itself any more than your computer made itself.

Outside our known universe is somewhere and something else altogether.  Our observations can never extend outside.
Ultimately you must choose whether:
A.  There is an ultimate cause, or
B.  Nothing made everything.

It is not designers all the way down.

"If somebody made God, then He wouldn't be God, would He." - Professor John Lennox, of Oxford, on his YouTube video,
A Matter of Gravity

You will enjoy watching it.

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## Jaxter

> The Cichlid fishes evolved from other fish and are evolving into newer species.
> 
> Boy, that was complicated.
> 
> The dog changed into the dog from the wolf.  
> 
> _Then someone fucked up royally and turned dogs into Chihuahuas._


Taco Bell?

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## Sled Dog

> What if science and religion both have it wrong?  I can believe that organisms can change and adapt to their environments once they are alive, but how in the hell did it become alive in the first place?  That's my question.  The religious zealot will scream "God!" and the science geek with yell "Evolution."


Um...no.  The non-ignorant will state that abiogenesis is a separate topic from biological evolution and point out thereby that you're ignorant of the matter and not worth teaching.




> There seems to be a guiding "force" if you will that kinda helps move things along.


Well, there's not.  

Get over it.




> My main concern with evolution is that if you need something in particular to survive, you need it right now, and not a hundred thousand years later when you finally evolve it.  In order to evolve, your species already has to be living and thriving, and that seems to fly in the face of the whole concept.


Again, that's not how evolution works.    If there's an event that kills every member of a species, that branch dies, it's evolutionary days are kaput (sorry, watched Stalag 17 last night...).




> My main concern with religion is that the "designer" that designed us, would have to have been designed himself, ad infinitum.


There is no designer or design.  If there was, hesheit's an incredibly inefficient and incompetent engineer.




> RNA and DNA are so darn complex that I have a hard time believing that they were swirled up in the oceans of earth.  And the fact that we know what chemicals and elements make up life, but we are still unable to create it from scratch bothers me some.


It's not like DNA and RNA as they exist today are the same as the initial product.




> Like I said, I think both sides are missing something in the equation, but what it is, I'm not sure.


You're conflating abiogenesis with biological evolution, you're failing to comprehend the process of natural selection, and you're hanging up on religious foibles that aren't part of the scientific process.

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## Sled Dog

> Darwinists, such as you, invariably bring up "religion" as you did above. You do so because Leftists have long pretended that Christianity is anti-science.  That is a despicable lie, but an extremely persistent one.


I do love it when people bring up their motives as an explanation of my motivations.

The matter of the delusions of religions are inherent in the discussion of the origin of species because ignorant religious asses believe a book written by goat herds (not goat herders) is the full and complete fount of knowledge on the matter.

That aspect of Christianity IS anti-science.   ANYTHING that threatens to illustrate a factual or logical flaw in the Bible is a threat to the deluded asses that MUST have an inerrant bible because the Bible story of Jesus starts out with the assumption that Mary wasn't fucked prior to the "Immaculate Conception".    

The theory of Evolution by Natural Selection pokes gigantic shredding holes in the silly story line of Genesis, and if Genesis has error, then there's no reason to believe that Jesus wasn't the son of some swinging dick, Joe's or John, or even Judas' grand father.   Who knows?

What is known is that "immaculate" conceptions are not possible in primates.   Period.




> Darwin's ToE is the biggest scientific scam in history, by far.  Let's just look at one polypeptide, human hemoglobin.


Not gonna bother responding.  The Theory of Irreducible Complexity has been disproven by experts.  You can spend your time profitably by looking up the refutations on the internet, I can only waste my time doing it again.

Behe addicts are boring.

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## Midgardian

> Taco Bell?

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Jaxter (06-12-2016)

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## usfan

> I do love it when people bring up their motives as an explanation of my motivations.
> The matter of the delusions of religions are inherent in the discussion of the origin of species because ignorant religious asses believe a book written by goat herds (not goat herders) is the full and complete fount of knowledge on the matter.
> That aspect of Christianity IS anti-science.   ANYTHING that threatens to illustrate a factual or logical flaw in the Bible is a threat to the deluded asses that MUST have an inerrant bible because the Bible story of Jesus starts out with the assumption that Mary wasn't fucked prior to the "Immaculate Conception".    
> The theory of Evolution by Natural Selection pokes gigantic shredding holes in the silly story line of Genesis, and if Genesis has error, then there's no reason to believe that Jesus wasn't the son of some swinging dick, Joe's or John, or even Judas' grand father.   Who knows?
> 
> What is known is that "immaculate" conceptions are not possible in primates.   Period.
> 
> Not gonna bother responding.  The Theory of Irreducible Complexity has been disproven by experts.  You can spend your time profitably by looking up the refutations on the internet, I can only waste my time doing it again.
> Behe addicts are boring.


Absurd. You have a clearly IMAGINED belief, nothing more. You cannot observe, repeat or define any mechanism that shows HOW these living things 'evolved' other than a false equivalency.. attributing observable variation WITHIN the genetic structure to outside of it. You see micro, & assume macro, but they do not equate. You cannot show any correlation, or any 'slow, accumulative changes' other than with cutesy charts & imaginative drawings.  The ToE has not poked any holes in any theory of origins.. it has plenty of its own.

Deflections about religious texts, or caricatures of other 'theories' of origins does not improve the science of the ToE.

You can jump up & down for a million years, & what would be the 'odds' that you could eventually reach the moon? For the evolutionist, any odds is PROOF that 'it could happen', so they assume it did. But that is not science. That is religious chicanery. You have no evidence for your claims, & resort to ad hominem & ridicule because of that. If it is such an easy to see concept, why not show me ONE PROOF of this kind of vertical evolution, where distinctly new organisms are formed from increasing complexity within the gene structure. You cannot. All you have is horizontal variability. There is no macro evolution.. that is an imagined scenario, that was popular in the 19th century, but has been debunked by genetics & clear, rational science. Unfortunately, nobody sent out a memo, so too many people still function under the delusion that macro evolution is 'settled science'.. But it is not. It is not even science. It is a religious/philosophical belief, nothing more.

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## JMWinPR

> I'm still waiting on all these self congratulating scientists to put up a diagram with all the nice little art works showing how a mosquito came from the elephant.....same theory, just need a little graphic art to back it up, make it all believable.


If evolution is a fact, why haven't progressives moved up the scale to  mosquitoes.

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Midgardian (06-12-2016)

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## ChemEngineer

> If evolution is a fact, why haven't progressives moved up the scale to  mosquitoes.


Liberals are, like blind fish and salamanders have done, losing some of their features.
Many male liberals have no balls, or else they don't know how to use them as they were designed.
Likewise, females either forswear copulation with men altogether, or else have their offspring murdered
long before full term.  Other liberal females are so ugly that either they never get married, or else their
unfortunate husbands can't, or don't want to get an erection.

Unfortunately as Darwinian as all these countervailing forces weigh against liberals, they continue to grow
in number due to ignorance and evil.  Brainwashing the gullible masses by the press, universities, television,
and ignorant internet media increases their numbers, to the great detriment of humanity.

Totus mundus stultizat.  (The whole world is getting stupider.)

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## Sled Dog

> Absurd. You have a clearly IMAGINED belief, nothing more. You cannot observe, repeat or define any mechanism that shows HOW these living things 'evolved' other than a false equivalency..


I don't have to.

Charles Darwin already did that.


Yawn.  Rant at someone else with your walls of boring text.  

Sheesh.

I have a hot bitch to take out for a walk.
yuki_run_3.jpg

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## Midgardian

> I don't have to.
> 
> Charles Darwin already did that.
> 
> 
> Yawn.  Rant at someone else with your walls of boring text.  
> 
> Sheesh.
> 
> ...


You admit that Charles Darwin presented a false equivalency?

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## ChemEngineer

> My main concern with religion is that the "designer" that designed us, would have to have been designed himself, ad infinitum.


Talon, you have restricted yourself to the domain we know and understand.  The earthly domain.  We seek origins based on our understanding, which is of course based on contemporary knowledge, and ONLY contemporary knowledge.

Were we hypothetically to go back in time and speak to Beethoven and Mozart, and tell them that in 230 years, people would be in machines, 7 miles above the earth, traveling at 600 miles per hour, in safety and comfort, eating a hot lunch, and listening to their symphonies which were played by orchestras in Vienna and Berlin several decades ago, they would have thought you absolutely MAD!  And so would have everyone else in any university.
*
If anyone made God, then He wouldn't be God, would He.*

Because you can't possibly understand something TODAY does not make it untrue.  It only suggests that you may still have something to learn.
This lesson is ignored by atheists whose pride is greater than their love for truth and knowledge.

The title of this thread is The Central Flaw of Evolution.  In truth, the central flaw of evolution is that it is a complete fraud, perpetuated by those who cannot countenance their errors.  As a result, they conspire to withhold data, information, and experimental evidence which tend to contradict Darwinism, with of course many exceptions.  Unfortunately hateful people relentlessly attack anyone who does not march in lockstep with the ignorant and mediocre college dropout, Charles Darwin.

----------


## ChemEngineer

> Um...no.  The non-ignorant will state that abiogenesis is a separate topic from biological evolution and point out thereby that you're ignorant of the matter and not worth teaching.


Says the profoundly intellectual and *scientific* Sled Dog.  My, aren't you compassionate and kind.
///




> You're conflating abiogenesis with biological evolution, you're failing to comprehend the process of natural selection, and you're hanging up on religious foibles that aren't part of the scientific process.


Serial errors in one sentence above.

1.  Darwin's controversial book was titled "On The Origin of Species."  The very first living organism was a specie.  That you so forcefully refuse even to consider the impossibility of materialistic abiogenesis speaks volumes.

2.  "Ignorance" is such an overused and trite word, yet you Leftists never tire of spreading it all around to describe anyone beneath your 1859 dogma.
Leftists have long censored science, beginning with Darwinism and now extending through *climate change*.    Subjugating citizens by censorship and lies is not serving them, but rather undermining them.  America is currently on a downward spiral, from which there is little hope of recovery.  

3. You PRETEND that dissenters don't "understand" an archaic tautology consisting of two trivial steps:
A.  Random mutations, followed by that *all important*
B.  *Selection*

Woo woo.  It was "selected" and therefore it "survives."  It "survives" and therefore it was "selected."  This pretense explains everything, and therefore it explains nothing at all.

3.  Nobody brought up religion except you.  Your pretense that Darwinism's failure is the fault of "religion" is absurd on its face.  Leave the Bible out of scientific discussions, _for a change._

----------


## ChemEngineer

> Um...no.  The non-ignorant will state that abiogenesis is a separate topic from biological evolution and point out thereby that you're ignorant of the matter and not worth teaching.
> ///


Since you are so... "non-ignorant," why don't you tackle this question, left unanswered in another thread:
_____________________

SINCE YOU DARWINISTS "understand abiogenesis," why don't YOU explain the impossibility of hemoglobin synthesis.
Human hemoglobin consists of 574 amino acids arranged in a very precise sequence, which sequence is folded in such a complex manner that humans cannot make a single hemoglobin molecule in a laboratory. There are 20 different amino acids.
So the number of possible sequences is 20 to the 574th power or 10 to the 747th power.


Explain, with your profound scientific intellect, exactly how the impossible task of assembling the one correct sequence of human hemoglobin, out of 10^747 possible others, was accomplished, KNOWING FULL WELL that every step in the assembly demands, according to your "selection" tautology, that each intermediary have a useful function which selectively preserves that step to the exclusion of most if not all others.


Your "proof," as you are always demanding of others, will require, oh, about 10 to the 700 steps, and intermediaries, and 'selection" processes.
That is just for ONE polypeptide, understand, and we have perhaps 2,000 of them inside each of us.


It's abundantly obvious you cannot ever begin to take the first step in demonstrating YOUR fatuous pretense of "understanding abiogenesis."
But try anyway.
*
(Nobody ever has, and nobody ever will.)*

----------


## usfan

Sometimes the question comes up, 'Why'? Why do we debate this issue with such passion & intensity, if it is just a discussion about some scientific theory?

IMO, it is because it is NOT a scientific theory, but a basis for a philosophical outlook. It is the foundation for a World View, & as such carries tremendous importance. It is the core belief of a naturalistic view of the Universe, not to be too dramatic. There are only 2 ways to look at the Universe, relating to origins:
1. Naturalistic.. all life (and complexity) is here from observable natural processes (that we have yet to observe or define).
2. Supernaturalistic.. all life is here from some unseen supernatural process, that we cannot observe, repeat, or define.

That has been the debate for millennia. I would like to point out some facts about this debate:
1. There is NO empirical evidence that compels a conclusion about either 'theory'. We can neither observe or repeat either mechanism of origins... either the natural or supernatural.. they are beyond the realm of science, & are firmly in the area of belief & opinion.
2. A naturalistic view is no more scientific than a supernaturalistic view. Since there is no science that compels EITHER conclusion, and since both are matters of belief, to claim one is 'scientific' while the other is, 'religious', is only a definitional dodge.. there are no facts that make concluding naturalistic processes any more 'settled' by science. It is an attempt to smear the opposing view to define one as 'science' & the other as 'religious'. Both are philosophical beliefs, with no compelling scientific conclusion.
3. ID, creation, alien seeding, or any 'supernatural' explanation cannot be observed, repeated, or even defined, as to the process. The ToE also has some mysterious process that cannot be observed, repeated, or defined, as it claims increasing complexity through gradual, cumulative changes in the genetic structure. A false equivalence is made, conflating 'micro' variability changes in an organism, with the ability to make 'macro' changes in genetic structure. This has NEVER been observed, & the science of genetics is making this concept seem less plausible all the time.
4. The 'data' of the fossil record does not compel either conclusion. The fossils are a partial record of past living things, not an exhaustive one, & the conditions of their fossilization are primarily unknown. Dating methods are highly speculative, rely on circular reasoning & prior assumptions, & are slanted in favor of a naturalistic view, when no such conclusion can be drawn by the mere existence of the data.

Some will dispute these 'facts' as they conflict with their BELIEFS about the ToE. But if this issue is studied without an agenda, i believe a thinking person will see the truth, & realize that the ToE is merely a belief system.. it is not 'settled science'. In fact, there are huge holes in this theory, that no one has been able to fill.

This is not really a new debate. Socrates hypothesized a 'naturalistic' theory of origins over 2k yrs ago, & there were no doubt people before that with that view. For over 2 thousand years, the popular naturalistic view was 'spontaneous generation'. That is the theory that life spontaneously is generated from non life. It was 'settled science' for millennia, until thinkers & methodology from the Age of Reason began to systematically dismantle it with real science. The final death blow to this 'theory' was in Louis Pasteur's experiment/demonstration at the French Academy of Science in 1859. There was now no valid 'theory' of naturalistic origins. The only option, they thought, was some supernatural one, which many found (and find) unacceptable. Ironically, & perhaps coincidentally, in the EXACT same year that spontaneous generation was debunked by scientific methodology, a 'new' theory of naturalist origins was taking root. Charles Darwin published his book, 'The Origin of Species', in Nov. 1859. Within 100 years it had become the de facto, 'settle science,' naturalistic view that spontaneous generation once held. It was a slow morphing, but eventually, the science caught up with the beliefs, & the ToE is the status quo belief for a naturalistic view of the universe. IMO, it was not because the ToE was so compelling, but because they had no alternative, since spontaneous generation had been debunked.

IMO, the distinction between spontaneous generation, & evolution, or 'abiogenesis & biogenesis' as Huxley presented it, is a redefinition. Evolution is merely a repackaged 'theory' of spontaneous generation, with a twist. You can see the 'evolution' of the ideology, which is a fascinating study of the human mind, more than anything.

But i submit to you that the reason for the wide belief & indoctrination for the ToE is NOT from compelling science, but necessity. It is the ONLY valid theory of naturalistic origins out there, & it is defended with religious zeal. The actual science is non existent, for proving gradual, cumulative changes in the genetic structure.. genetic science has not been able to confirm or demonstrate any mechanism or ability in living things to make those kinds of vertical changes in the genetic structure. You cannot add complexity, or chromosomes, or traits, by any visible process. It is a belief, that it happens, but it is not based on science.

And that is the reason, IMO, why the ToE is defended & promoted with such intensity.. it is not merely a scientific theory of origins, but is The Foundational Element in the naturalistic view of the Universe. As such, it cannot be pondered with detached intellectual reflection, but is the Central Tenet of Faith in the naturalistic religious view of the universe.

I believe this perception to be flawed, as there can be other naturalistic views, as history has shown. We may not know them, yet, but that is no reason to dogmatically cling to a fading theory just because our scientific knowledge is incomplete. The truly scientific minded person should be open to possibility, not dogmatically declaring 'truth' when the facts do not compel it. But the emotional investment with evolution blinds the True Believers, & they cannot even question their core beliefs, as they 'feel' it would betray their World View. That is the nature of Man, who is not always rational & scientific, but is driven by ideology, emotion, & a life assembled world view.

I do not expect this philosophical analysis to change anyone's perceptions.. those run too deep, & are a combined product of school indoctrination, reinforcement from human institutions, peer pressures, compatibility with ideology, & prejudice toward alternate views. But i offer this as a plausible explanation for the passion & intensity in this debate.

Sorry it got so long.. some things cannot be presented in a soundbite, but need a foundation to provide the overview.

----------


## Sled Dog

> You admit that Charles Darwin presented a false equivalency?


No.

Darwin presented the First Cornerstone Theory of Biology - the accurate description of the origin of species.

Mendel presented the Second Cornerstone of Biology - the theory of genetics.

Darwin didn't know about Mendel, but his theory was so accurate it is the only Cornerstone theory of any of the modern sciences that has not undergone a major revision.

Newton was corrected by Einstein, whose relativity is the last significant classical theory of physics.

Physics was made nearly complete with the advent of quantum mechanics.

Chemistry went from alchemy to chemistry by Lavoisseur, later guillotined by socialists in the Frog Revolution.

Chemistry was later reformed as the science of physics advanced, with quantum mechanics aiding greatly in the understanding of how atoms and molecules interact.

Psychology isn't a real science and it used to get revised every other year until the fags took it over.

Medicine wasn't a science until Pasteur.

Astronomy went from myth and magic to science, as did it's Siamese twin, cosmology.

But the theory of evolution by natural selection was so transparently elegant that a pigeon breeder managed to write it down without leaving any significant flaw or major lacunae.

And because that theory tells the religious cultists where their mothers came from, it pisses them off.

----------


## Sled Dog

> Says the profoundly intellectual and *scientific* Sled Dog.  My, aren't you compassionate and kind.
> ///


Absolutely not.





Serial errors in one sentence above.

1.  Darwin's controversial book was titled "On The Origin of Species."  The very first living organism was a specie.[/quote]

ATTENTION ON DECK, THERE'S A LAWYER IN THE ROOM.


Don't even had to read the rest.

I bet this guy believes the transition from metabolism to "life" was sliced clean by a molecular filament, it's so sharp.

Go read something on the subject, okay?

----------


## Sled Dog

> Since you are so... "non-ignorant," why don't you tackle this question, left unanswered in another thread:
> _____________________
> 
> SINCE YOU DARWINISTS "understand abiogenesis," why don't YOU explain the impossibility of hemoglobin synthesis.


As I pointed out earlier, the mythology of Irreducible Complexity is addressed on the internet for anyone seeking to learn it for the first time.

You'll note that I'm not quoting the rest of your post.

I'm glad you made so much effort to write it.   Idle hands are the how the Devil plays with his joystick and all, you know.

But I certainly didn't waste any time reading a canned argument from one of those ignorant IR sites that were so easily disproved so long ago.

You want an answer?

Go find.

I've already told you where to look and what to look for.

----------


## Midgardian

> And because that theory tells the religious cultists where their mothers came from, it pisses them off.


History is a science, and it is the mother of all sciences.

----------


## Midgardian

> No.


So, if you don't believe that Darwin propositioned a false equivalency, what do you claim, based on your previous statements?

----------


## Midgardian

My mother came from Noah's wife and one of his sons.

----------


## Sled Dog

> Sometimes the question comes up, 'Why'? Why do we debate this issue with such passion & intensity, if it is just a discussion about some scientific theory?
> 
> IMO, it is because it is NOT a scientific theory, but a basis for a philosophical outlook..


IMO it is because you are incapable of defining the term "scientific theory".

It has an exact meaning.

People who don't know what the definition reveal themselves by saying "just some theory".

There are two kinds of people in the world.

There are the kind of people who understand what a scientific theory is and how they're used, and there are people who spend their lives in superstition and wagging their asses in the air to allah when shrieked at by some asshole in a tower who wants to see some ass-waggin'.

In other words, there are rational people and religious cultists.

I'm the rational one.

You're not.  You said "just some theory".

We rational people have to waste our time correcting you people because you people get the stupid idea you should use your foolish religion to dictate what is taught in SCIENCE classes to CHILREN.

Child molesters no better than moose limbs.

The worst ones are the people who managed to con their professors into giving them engineering degrees while still holding those foolish ideas.   

And yeah, that matters in the field of structural engineering, too, considering the messes I've had to clean up by mythological fools who can't think.   "Gee", he said, "that element doesn't exist in the real flight article, so I'll just IGNORE THE LOAD IT CARRIES.  It's only the third of three elements that transfer the load from the shear panel into the cone mating to the Launch Adapter Ring.   So it doesn't matter if I just toss away 2400 lbf of load."

People who are mythological and NOT rigorously scientific are fucking DANGEROUS.

This shit is important.

----------


## Trinnity

@Midgardian*, how come it's always you and me up in the wee hours?

/edit

Oh hi, @Sled Dog 


*

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Midgardian (06-26-2016)

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## Sled Dog

> History is a science, and it is the mother of all sciences.


Uh...no.

Astronomy is the mother of science.   Something about the primitives being worried that Venus would come and attack again.

History as anything serious started with ...damn, I'd have to dig the book out...um....Herodotus.  Before that it was the mythologists, like those who concocted the Bible and Homer, who wrote down an oral "history" of a war and a fantasy.

And, naturally, the friggin' mooselimbs didn't invent shit.  The ancient Babylonians had a base-sixty numbering system that included a symbol for the zero....and the Hindus invented the hole to show the zero.

Every post should have a dig at islame and if possible, other religious nonsense, too.

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## Trinnity

History is not a science.

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## protectionist

> @Midgardian*, how come it's always you and me up in the wee hours?
> 
> /edit
> 
> Oh hi, @Sled Dog 
> 
> 
> *


Hi Trinnity.   :Hello: 

Hi Midguardian.  Hi Sled Dog.

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Trinnity (06-26-2016)

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## Sled Dog

> @Midgardian*, how come it's always you and me up in the wee hours?
> 
> /edit
> 
> Oh hi, @Sled Dog 
> 
> 
> *


Hi.

I'm up because I spent from noon until ten-thirty at work...fixing other people's designs for a project I REALLY can't tell you about...but they have a design review on Monday.

This is a new project, for me, on top of what I've been building for the last eight years.

And their designed is CARTOONISH!

(Not as bad as the clods that welded that ladder disaster up....I so WISH that one had crossed my desk before it escaped into the wild.   I would have KILLED it. - Remember....NEVER still a very large poorly designed welded structure into an oven and then dunk it in cold water...I'm not getting the blame for that thing, but they keep threatening to deport me to Ohio to inspect the things if I can't show it good on paper...It's been a rough couple of weeks. - Oh, and that is all on top of the tasks I'm supposed to be doing to keep everyone else on schedule... it's a fun job, it really is, when my tummy behaves.)

----------

OldSchool (06-26-2016)

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## Sled Dog

> History is not a science.


Oh, I don't really agree.

Science is merely a methodical method of sorting the lies from our understanding under the assumption that if we can remove enough falsity we will begin to perceive the truth.  Some sciences are more precise than others.

Modern historians, if they follow the rules and are dedicated to exploring the truth, do come up with theories and do find means to falsify them (a phrase that does not mean what it sounds like, i.e. creating the next global warming hoax), in a process of proper peer review to do the sorting.

The nature of the subject is of course challenging, but modern historians will use mathematics and statistics, economic analysis, and all sorts of well-defined techniques to test theories.

It's a soft science, one of those vanilla-chocolate swirl soft-serve kind of sciences, but it's not supposed to be fiction writing and mythology.

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## Trinnity

I'm in awe of you Sled Dog. Keep up the good work.

Hi Protectionist <smooch>

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Sled Dog (06-26-2016)

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## Sled Dog

> History is a science, and it is the mother of all sciences.


And mindless repetition in the face of irrefutable FACT is the mother of insanity.

----------


## protectionist

> I'm in awe of you Sled Dog. Keep up the good work.
> 
> Hi Protectionist <smooch>


WOW.  A kiss on the cheek, at 4:30 in the morning.  I'm not gonna wash my face for a whole week.   :Occasion14:   :Icon Biggrin:

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## Sled Dog

Well, I have to get up and do it again, today.

Good night, everyone.

(Who the hell hangs around the SCIENCE Forum anyway...weirdos... :Thumbsup20:

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## Midgardian

> @Midgardian*, how come it's always you and me up in the wee hours?
> 
> /edit
> 
> Oh hi, @Sled Dog 
> 
> 
> *


Its only 1:30 here on the Pacific coast.

1:37 if you want to get exact.

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## Trinnity

Hey!   :Tongue20: 

norsehead nebula.jpg

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## Midgardian

> (Who the hell hangs around the SCIENCE Forum anyway...weirdos...


Scientifically minded people who may or not think that Lincoln started the Civil War.

----------


## OldSchool

> Oh, I don't really agree.
> 
> Science is merely a methodical method of sorting the lies from our understanding under the assumption that if we can remove enough falsity we will begin to perceive the truth.  Some sciences are more precise than others.
> 
> Modern historians, if they follow the rules and are dedicated to exploring the truth, do come up with theories and do find means to falsify them (a phrase that does not mean what it sounds like, i.e. creating the next global warming hoax), in a process of proper peer review to do the sorting.
> 
> The nature of the subject is of course challenging, but modern historians will use mathematics and statistics, economic analysis, and all sorts of well-defined techniques to test theories.
> 
> It's a soft science, one of those vanilla-chocolate swirl soft-serve kind of sciences, but it's not supposed to be fiction writing and mythology.



History and science are interests of mine. Why? It's about learning from our mistakes and discovering the truth. That and I like a good challenge.

 :Cool20:

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## Trinnity

> Its only 1:30 here on the Pacific coast.
> 
> 1:37 if you want to get exact.


Oh yeah. Forgot you were out there.

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Midgardian (06-26-2016)

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## Midgardian

> Oh yeah. Forgot you were out there.


I once wanted to move to the Carolinas, or anywhere in the South really.

----------


## usfan

> IMO it is because you are incapable of defining the term "scientific theory".
> 
> It has an exact meaning.
> 
> People who don't know what the definition reveal themselves by saying "just some theory".
> 
> There are two kinds of people in the world.
> 
> There are the kind of people who understand what a scientific theory is and how they're used, and there are people who spend their lives in superstition and wagging their asses in the air to allah when shrieked at by some asshole in a tower who wants to see some ass-waggin'.
> ...


I'm starting to think that there are 2 kinds of people, too.
1. Those who can follow rational arguments.
2. Those who cannot, but are blinded by their religious beliefs.

You obviously missed the point of that post, & instead looked for a 'gotcha!' statement to parse, mixing in some ad hominem for flavor.

I realize that for you, the insulting part is what's fun, & you don't mind suspending reason as long as you get to engage in ridicule & arrogant self assurance.

But this is a 'scientific' discussion, in a 'science' subforum.  The debate is SUPPOSED to be scientific, with evidence, logical arguments, & the scientific method as the means of discovery.

But you have not addressed ANY of my arguments, other that to deflect with irrelevant correlations about somebody's lack of engineering prowess, which you somehow correlate to their belief in creation... completely irrelevant to this debate.  I could point out that Hitler believed in evolution, & correlate that to the debate, & it would be the same rationale.

Child molesters?  Muslims?  More absurd correlations, that have NOTHING to do with science.  Your total investment in the ToE has blinded you to any scientific critique of this 'theory'.  It has become a religion, & you cannot stomach any blasphemers daring to challenge the tenets of your faith.  You blindly dismiss the VERY REAL problems of the false equivalency, that observed MINOR variations (micro) prove large, vertical changes in the genetic structure (macro).  But you have NO mechanism, NO evidence, & NO science that the process you imagine can work, does work, or did work.. it is just a belief, with no scientific basis.

Have you known no incompetent evolutionists?  Or atheists?  How you  can correlate some lunkhead who believes in ID with their engineering competence is another absurdity.  I would venture to say that most of the knowledge we have concerning engineering, & the processes for calculations were from old time creationists, who believed in a universe of order, & who sought to define the laws that governed it.  Your disdain for this coworker has become a stumbling block for any rational thought, & you wrongly correlate his incompetence to any criticism of evolutionary theory.. they do not relate. 

 I have provided reason, science, & sound arguments in this thread, with NO appeal to religious texts, or a creator, or aliens, or any alternate theories.  The issue here is the validity of the ToE as a scientific explanation of origins.  I challenge you to set aside your disdain for this co worker, & consider the facts of science.  You do not have to embrace ID, if there are flaws in this particular 'theory' of naturalistic origins.  Just as people believed in spontaneous generation for millennia until an alternate theory of origins came along, so there can be another theory of naturalistic origins that has scientific validity, & is not full of observable flaws & logical fallacies.

You don't have to go to church with your hated coworker, or sing in the choir, or thump a bible.  You can dispassionately follow the science, like a rational person, & differentiate between empirical reality & philosophical beliefs.

----------


## Jim Rockford

If man came from monkeys , why are there still monkeys? Why did they not evolve? Where are all the inbetweens from man to monkey? Surely some creatures must have paused at a point in evolution just as the monkey stopped completely.

----------


## Sled Dog

> I'm starting to think that there are 2 kinds of people, too.
> 1. Those who can follow rational arguments.


Such as yourself.



> 2. Those who cannot, but are blinded by their religious beliefs.


Which may also be yourself.

----------


## Sled Dog

> If man came from monkeys , why are there still monkeys? Why did they not evolve? Where are all the inbetweens from man to monkey? Surely some creatures must have paused at a point in evolution just as the monkey stopped completely.


Because evolution isn't linear.

Monkeys in one place had an environment that did not change drastically and thus did not impose selection pressures on the population therein, while other apes were selected by their changing environment to change, with the ones with the original but no longer quite beneficial traits being out-bred by those with more appropriate advantages, to the point where the original population IN THAT REGION was replaced with a breed of animals who could no longer mate with the animals following the original morphology.

Monkeys stayed in the trees.  Our hominid ancestors evolved because the trees left the monkeys and they had to adapt to an environment of widely spaced trees and develop the ability to lift their eyes above the grass to see the lions and hyenas.

Untrained basically wild huskies WILL NOT (and cannot...size matters) breed with Chihuahuas.  The funniest thing is watching my grey husky treat Chihuahuas as prey.  Not even as dogs, but as merely things to be chased, caught and shaken to death.   Chew toys.

----------


## ChemEngineer

> If man came from monkeys , why are there still monkeys? Why did they not evolve? Where are all the in betweens from man to monkey? Surely some creatures must have paused at a point in evolution just as the monkey stopped completely.


Jim, I have just completed reading, and studying Darwin's Enigma, a book detailing just a few of the many different ways Darwinism has failed to live up to its expectations for 150+ years.  A very prominent biologist states that selection means more offspring survive, and they survive because they survive.  Darwinism, he says, "is as simple as that."  In other words, it is utterly meaningless.  

Darwinism is not validated in the fossil records, in the biochemistry of genomes, in the attempt to artificially create new species by irradiating fruit flies, or anywhere else.  It is the greatest scientific fraud in human history, and is merely being maintained because biologists insist on the absurd notion of having SOMETHING to hang their hats on.  Many have doubts and for good reason, but they are afraid to express them publicly for fear of being ostracized and blackballed by their colleagues.  When the "best" examples of macroevolution are the spotted moth (light and dark), and Darwin's finches (different beak lengths and thicknesses), it is only adaptation that is demonstrated, not remotely related to change in kind.  30,000 generations of fruit flies have been grown, and... they're still fruit flies.  This is equal to 1,000,000 human years.

Out of desperation, they are invoking "hopeful monsters" via "punctuated equilibrium."  Prior to that, it was always slow, but slow clearly fails, so they are trying fast. (Fast fails even worse.)

----------

Jim Rockford (06-27-2016),usfan (06-27-2016)

----------


## teeceetx

Theory of Evolution, brought to you from the same people that brought you the "Primordial Soup", that apparently spontaneously created life on Earth.  Of course we now see that more likely, life was brought here on comets and asteroids.  Fear not, some day these "scientists" will catch up with reality.

Take note, it's called the "THEORY" of evolution because it's not scientific "FACT".

----------


## ChemEngineer

> As I pointed out earlier, the mythology of Irreducible Complexity is addressed on the internet for anyone seeking to learn it for the first time.


Arguing with Darwin's defenders is futile, absolutely futile.  Your blanket pretense of scientific sophistication is not just dishonest, but really begs the point.  Like leftists defending global warming, or *climate change*, you accept anything said by anyone who can fog a mirror, but all dissenters are wrong because they are stupid, or paid for by those nasty oil companies, or for some other reason you leftists fabricate.
You present a one-sided fallacy of the argument from authority. It is anti-intellectual and anti-scientific.




> I'm glad you made so much effort to write it.   Idle hands are the how the Devil plays with his joystick and all, you know.


Yes indeed, you're far too sophisticated and enlightened for me. ::::snork, snork::::  
So as to not waste any more of my time, I'll just put your name on my Ignore List.

~ciao

----------


## Sled Dog

> Arguing with Darwin's defenders is futile, absolutely futile.


That's what happens when YOU take the wrong side of the argument.

You keep losing and the people who know it all get tired of repeating themselves to the losers.

Life's like that, there are the better people, and there are the people who can't recognize the reality of the origin of species by the process of natural selection and random mutation.

You pretend to be an engineer, why are you anti-science?




> Your blanket pretense of scientific sophistication is not just dishonest, but really begs the point.


I never beg anything.

Your failure to falsify the theory of evolution is chapping your ass.

You do know what it means to falsify a theory, don't you?




> Like leftists defending global warming, or *climate change*, you accept anything said by anyone who can fog a mirror


No, actually, I pay more attention to Stephen Jay Gould.

Who is dead and cannot fog anything.




> but all dissenters are wrong because they are stupid, or paid for by those nasty oil companies, or for some other reason you leftists fabricate.


Yeah, I'm on the right side of that argument, too, because I've been studying real science since the second grade.





> You present a one-sided fallacy of the argument from authority. It is anti-intellectual and anti-scientific.


In no place do I argue from "authority".  I present the logic and the available facts, or I get bored and tell the poster to do is own damn homework because he's wrong and I don't give a shit.

That IS NOT "argument from authority".

It's called being tired of the bullshit.   As I said, the myth of irreducible complexity has been disproven every time.  There's no point in me presenting the arguments when someone else has written better explanations.     I don't want to make anyone already full of happy horseshit explode by feeding him more, so I send the poor ignoramus to the original sources, which he can find by searching for them and learning more by the effort he puts in.

I'm HELPING them.

Because I'm such a nice person.




> Yes indeed, you're far too sophisticated and enlightened for me.


I know that.

I build airplanes and stuff, the pinnacle of engineering.




> ::::snork, snork::::


You've no idea.




> So as to not waste any more of my time, I'll just put your name on my Ignore List.
> 
> ~ciao


You'll be back.

I'm far to illuminating to be ignored.

Besides, oh, how will you ever know what I say about you if you don't peek?

----------


## usfan

One of the  more interesting life forms on this planet (and there are a lot of them!), is the octopus.  As more & more genomes are being mapped, there have been many surprises to the assumptions of evolution.. our eight armed friend is one of them.  Richard Dawkins would be pleased.. as some are saying that the octopus has the genetics of an alien.




> Researchers have found a new map of the octopus genetic code that is so strange that it could be actually be an alien.
> 
> The first whole cephalopod genome sequence shows a striking level of complexity with 33,000 protein-coding genes identified  more than in a human.
> 
> Not only that, the octopus DNA is highly rearranged  like cards shuffled and reshuffled in a pack  containing numerous so-called jumping genes that can leap around the genome.
> 
> The octopus appears to be utterly different from all other animals, even other molluscs, with its eight prehensile arms, its large brain and its clever problem-solving abilities, said US researcher Dr Clifton Ragsdale, from the University of Chicago.
> 
> The late British zoologist Martin Wells said the octopus is an alien. In this sense, then, our paper describes the first sequenced genome from an alien.
> ...


Now, i always find it ironic that someone who claims to be 'scientifically minded', or who lives an 'evidentiary based existence' can consider the option of 'alien seeding', but they will hysterically reject any  notion of supernatural creation.  Why is that?  Both of those 'theories' are basically 'supernatural' in every way.  We cannot repeat the phenomenon of 'creation'.  We cannot observe it.  There is no mechanism to define the process.. it is a completely philosophical explanation, with  no scientific basis.  Yet talk about aliens with many evolutionists & they will nod like bobble heads over any conjecture about aliens seeding life.  But change those 'aliens' to some kind of supernatural Creator, & their ears lay back, their eyes flash, & their veins begin to pop.  The outrage & indignation they express over what they insist to be a 'religious' view overrides any reason or perception of facts.

In actual truth, there is no difference, scientifically, between any of the 'theories' of origins, except for those that have been debunked by science.  IMO, we are on the verge of doing that with the ToE, because of genetics.  The more we learn about it, & the complexity & inflexibility of the genome, the less plausible the ToE is.  The very serious problem of the 'false equivalence' that this thread describes is a fatal flaw in the ToE.. just as there is no repeatable mechanism defined for alien seeding or intelligent design, so there is none for the ToE.  Gene don't do that $h*t.  Organisms don't flit about, genetically, adding genes, changing chromosomes, picking up traits where there were none..  they are boringly consistent.  The child organism ONLY carries the genetic information from the parent.  Oh, you can have mutations.. aberrations in the gene structure, but that does not create complexity, or add chromosomes, or create an eye, or make cold blood warm, or create a beating heart, or any of the wild claims of the  ToE.

THAT is the central problem of the ToE.. there is NO WAY it can happen.  Genetic science is making the concept of macroevolution seem more absurd every day.  And even though all the evidence says this cannot happen, and there is NO observable instance of this actually happening, and it cannot be tested, repeated, or defined by scientific methodology, still it is hailed as 'settled science' by those who promote it like a religion.

The ToE IS a religion.  It is defended & promoted with religious zeal, that would impress the most dedicated jihadists.  Any outliers are met with 'Kill him!!  Kill the infidel!!  Mockers of Darwin should not be allowed to live!!'  It has become a tenet of faith, for naturalistic origins, replacing the older one of spontaneous generation, that was debunked by Pasteur in 1870.  But the claims are just as wild.  Living creatures changing their genetic structure.. morphing into other life forms, adding traits on the fly, moving easily between chromosomes & gene structure.. it is sci fi, not sci.  It was a fine belief for 19th century superstition, & a plausible explanation of naturalistic origins, but it does not hold up under scrutiny.  It is a flawed belief system, with flawed science behind it.  It has become a leftist tenet of faith.. like global warming & redistribution.  The science behind the 'theory' is pathetic & non existent, but the propaganda behind it is always going full tilt.  It is CONSTANTLY being indoctrinated & pushed in EVERY institution, which just happen to be controlled by the progressive left.  It is an anti-science ideology, based on conformity & mandates, about as far as you can get from the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment, & the birth of the Scientific Method.

----------


## ChemEngineer

> ///
> 
>  I have provided reason, science, & sound arguments in this thread, with NO appeal to religious texts, or a creator, or aliens, or any alternate theories.  The issue here is the validity of the ToE as a scientific explanation of origins.


The problems with your seemingly rational and passionate appeal are these:

1.  Darwinists, as you clearly are, claim to "provide reason, science and sound arguments" and dismiss any and all criticisms of your ToE.
2.  The "validity" of Darwinism always is premised on the demand that something better MUST take its place, or else it stands.  That contention is absurd and anti-science in the extreme.  If it fails, it fails and must be discarded.




> You don't have to go to church with your hated coworker, or sing in the choir, or thump a bible.  You can dispassionately follow the science, like a rational person, & differentiate between empirical reality & philosophical beliefs.


Darwinists do NOT "dispassionately follow the science."  They/you follow Darwin, demand Darwin, swear by Darwin, make excuses and promises for it, as an insisted "fact".   It is anything but, as evidenced by a broad range of modern science, which you and your Darwinist friends ALWAYS dismiss out of hand, in an authoritarian style that is antithetical to scientific discovery, repeatedly overturning what was once "known" with great certainty.

----------


## Sled Dog

> The problems with your seemingly rational and passionate appeal are these:
> 
> 1.  Darwinists, as you clearly are, claim to "provide reason, science and sound arguments" and dismiss any and all criticisms of your ToE.


Got any valid criticisms of the theory of evolution by natural selection?

Not one has been posted yet.




> 2.  The "validity" of Darwinism always is premised on the demand that something better MUST take its place, or else it stands.  That contention is absurd and anti-science in the extreme.  If it fails, it fails and must be discarded.


EVERY other "theory" and myth has been rejected because of "massive fail".

Meanwhile, there are no instances of falsification of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

----------


## ChemEngineer

Common descent did not originate with Charles Darwin in 1859.  It was kicked around long before that.  So it is an archaic idea, repeated by this college dropout who admitted that he was a sub-standard student.  He claimed that fame and fortune awaited anyone who collected beetles.
He was a vile racist, who hoped and predicted that blacks would soon be eliminated from the earth.  His claim of common descent drove him to renounce God and embrace atheism, as it has to so many millions since.

The fossil record does not support common descent and gradual change.  
The fundamental source of information, viz. random mutations, cannot ever generate the amount of information inherent in all living organisms.
Mathematicians at the Wistar Symposium authoritatively asserted that random mutations are hopelessly inadequate.
Evolutionary biologists at the Wistar Symposium agreed that random mutations were the source of information and could not begin to explain the countless inadequacies of Darwinism, but they continue to cling to it because old ideas die very, very hard, and this is a very old idea.
Biochemists have shown that genomes are in no way consistent with the hypothetical "tree of life."
Biologists have utterly failed to create any new kinds of life despite bombarding fruit flies for forty years and 30,000 generations.

Darwinism cannot POSSIBLY be valid when evidence continues to pile up AGAINST rather than FOR it.

Smugness, arrogance, pretension, and snark are hallmarks of Darwinians.  Shameful and anti-intelligent, they are.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.” ― Michael Crichton

----------


## Sled Dog

> Common descent did not originate with Charles Darwin in 1859.  It was kicked around long before that.  So it is an archaic idea,


Yeah, what Darwin added was...the MECHANISM...called...er...umm...perhaps you've heard of it....Natural Selection.

That was Darwin's genius.




> repeated by this college dropout who admitted that he was a sub-standard student.  He claimed that fame and fortune awaited anyone who collected beetles.


Yeah, and they pretty much rated a guy working in the Swiss Patent Office as a retard.

I just LOVE over educated dwarf snobs who piss down their pants after getting a degree by standing shoulders of giants.





> He was a vile racist, who hoped and predicted that blacks would soon be eliminated from the earth.  His claim of common descent drove him to renounce God and embrace atheism, as it has to so many millions since.


Actually, he was just a typical Englishman.  Fee Fi Fo Fum and all that.




> The fossil record does not support common descent and gradual change.


Yes it does.

Read "Your Inner Fish" and the story of Tiktaalik.

Explain why dogs have humerus bones and radiuses and ulnas, too.   Gee, they gots them some hair, and two eyes, and two ears and a excretory system that diverts the liquid waste to a separate path from the solid waste, the females produce milk, they reproduce by life birth, they're an awful lot like wolves and coyotes and dingos and stuff.

And then there's the horse and the zebra and the donkey.  Yeah, they don't have anything in common, like eo hippus.  No, of course.

Some engineers are honest.  They build airplanes and stuff.

Other engineers have been sniffing the reagents too long.

I gotta take my daughter driving.   BBL to cover the rest of your nonsense.

Don't peek.

----------


## Sled Dog

> The fundamental source of information, viz. random mutations, cannot ever generate the amount of information inherent in all living organisms.


"Cannot ever"....what a peculiar thing for someone allegedly trained in the sciences to say.

At the same time, Stephen Hawking, world famous iconic British cripple, asserts positively and mathematically that it's entirely possible for a black hole to eject via the quantum tunneling effect complex intact macroscopic objects like cakes (preferably Black Forest, don't forget the cherries) and people.




> Mathematicians at the Wistar Symposium authoritatively asserted that random mutations are hopelessly inadequate.


Using some variant of the Drake Equation, naturally.

Next you'll be citing little Freddie Hoyle.




> Evolutionary biologists at the Wistar Symposium agreed that random mutations were the source of information and could not begin to explain the countless inadequacies of Darwinism, but they continue to cling to it because old ideas die very, very hard, and this is a very old idea.


There's this thing called "sexual reproduction"?   You ever hear of it?   Or are you of an age where this song is more true than not?




Any, sex introduces genetic mixing and brings out traits that weren't necessarily expressed before.

An amazing thing, a good  lay...

HINT:  "Mathematical studies" ain't real science.  You'll just have to get used to reality someday.

Nice argument from authority.   As usual, though, that worked like this:








> Biochemists have shown that genomes are in no way consistent with the hypothetical "tree of life."


No.

Biochemists have failed to understand how the genome comes to express itself morphologically.

Biologists use gene sequencing and mapping as the definitive species identification when possible (not with dinos) and use alterations in gene sequencing to pinpoint when and where branching occurs between species.




> Biologists have utterly failed to create any new kinds of life despite bombarding fruit flies for forty years and 30,000 generations.


That's funny.

Uneducated dog breeders have bifurcated the canis familiaris line to the point where some breeds of dog WILL NOT and CAN NOT breed with others.

Huskies eat Chihuahuas, they don't fuck them, for example, and if there was no outsider intervention the two distinct species (since they will not and can not breed without human assistance, why play pretend?), would continue to diverge from their common lupine origins to the point were even laboratory in vitro fertilization would not produce viable offspring.

Try it, put a real husky that was raised to be a wild animal, or partially so like the one I adopted, and put her in a field with some Chihuahuas.   It's friggin' hilarious, if you're not the Chihuahua or it's owners....No breeding is ever going to happen there.

That experiment was part of the scientific process.  Do you need to be informed that dead Chihuahua's can't fuck live huskies that are eating them?   




> Darwinism cannot POSSIBLY be valid when evidence continues to pile up AGAINST rather than FOR it.


Except, of course, for that pesky annoying fact that the evolution of new species by the process of natural selection has been observed in modern times and throughout the fossil record, you're doing fine.

When something is an established fact, something that happens precisely as theory says it will, it's pretty funny watching others hold their religion out as some kind of shield against umm...established fact.




> Smugness, arrogance, pretension, and snark are hallmarks of Darwinians.  Shameful and anti-intelligent, they are.


No, I'm just a real engineer.

Arrogant smugness is the source of snark, no pretenses at all, and I never mark my halls because I always have them with me.

Did you peek yet? 

I know you will.

That's the glory of being me.   You havta look!




> There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.





> ― Michael Crichton


Nice little quote.

The consensus is that fire is a simply combustion process in which fuel is gasified by heat and the vaporized products bind with the free oxygen in the atmosphere, to produce more heat to keep the process going until the supply of fuel or oxygen is exhausted.

That's the consensus about fire.

Are you saying that because you subscribe to the consensus understanding of how fire works, your understanding of fire isn't scientifically valid?

Is there some valid theory of fire in an oxygen-rich atmosphere that does not fit the consensus view?

Why do you post quotes that are so easily refuted?   Especially when you're applying a quote used against Glowballs Warming Idjits and their insistence on a "consensus" that does not exist in the field of study they've turned into a cult.

----------


## ChemEngineer

*This message is hidden because Sled Dog is on your ignore list.*------------------------------

Darwinian evolution, in proceeding from the first single-cell organism, had to synthesize many thousands of polypeptides, ranging in size from more than 150 amino acid residues to 2,000+ amino acid residues.  If we calculate the space, or number of possible sequences, in a chain 150 links long that number is 20 x 20 x 20 x 20.... 150 times.  20^150th = 10^195.  The chances are therefore 1 in 10^195.

Just doubling the number of sequences, from the simplest known organism of 482 proteins to 964 proteins means that 1 chance in 10^195 is taken to the 482nd power, which is 1 chance in 10^93,990.    Twenty or thirty thousand orders of magnitude does not change the impossibility of this impossibility.
By comparison, there are ~10^80 electrons, protons, and neutrons in the universe.  The chance of picking one special particle in the universe, on your first and only try is 1/10^80.  This is 93,910 orders of magnitude easier than Darwinian synthesis, i.e. random mutation followed by *selection*.

The origin of the very first organism is far, far more unlikely, and therefore more difficult to explain away with a wave of A>B>C>D alphabetization, because:
1.  The primordial soup had to consist of a mixture of D and L amino acids, right-handed and left-handed forms, respectively.  Living organisms consist exclusively of L forms.  The chance of selecting an L amino acid is clearly 1/2, and in a short sequence of 150 amino acid residues, 1/2 to the 50th power is 1 chance in 10^45.
2.  Polypeptides are so named because they form linkages with all peptide bonds, as opposed to non-peptide bonds.  Both bonds form with roughly equal likelihood, so the chance of a series of exclusively peptide bonds is 1/2 to the 150th power, or 1 in 10^45.

1/10^45 x 1/10^45 = 1/10^90. This is compounded by 1/10^195 or 1/10^285 for just the first simple protein, in the first living cell on earth to create itself from purely naturalistic means.

The magic word of *selection* does not wave away these impossibilities, irrespective of any word games played by Darwin's Faithful.

----------


## Sled Dog

> *This message is hidden because Sled Dog is on your ignore list.*
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Darwinian evolution, in proceeding from the first single-cell organism, had to synthesize many thousands of polypeptides, ranging in size from more than 150 amino acid residues to 2,000+ amino acid residues.  If we calculate the space, or number of possible sequences, in a chain 150 links long that number is 20 x 20 x 20 x 20.... 150 times.  20^150th = 10^195.  The chances are therefore 1 in 10^195.
> 
> Just doubling the number of sequences, from the simplest known organism of 482 proteins to 964 proteins means that 1 chance in 10^195 is taken to the 482nd power, which is 1 chance in 10^93,990.    Twenty or thirty thousand orders of magnitude does not change the impossibility of this impossibility.
> By comparison, there are ~10^80 electrons, protons, and neutrons in the universe.  The chance of picking one special particle in the universe, on your first and only try is 1/10^80.  This is 93,910 orders of magnitude easier than Darwinian synthesis, i.e. random mutation followed by *selection*.
> 
> ...


Right.

Like I said.  Drake Equation.  Fudge the numbers to get the answer you desire.

It's called "lying" not "science".

You see, what you are DELIBERATELY ignoring is that....evolution isn't a random process.   That's limited by natural selection.

I can't help it your religion prevents you from understanding the science.  I guess mere chemical engineers don't do real science.  The things I built MUST work, or people die.  So, you know, I have to be serious about MY science.

I told you you'd peek.

----------


## ChemEngineer

On the *clever* phrase of "god of the gaps," which makes Darwinists giggle so very much, they overlook their own gaps:

*1. Gaps in the Fossils*
They have been promising to fill in all those gaps in the fossils since Darwin turned to atheism because his cockamamie idea *explained* (he thought) the elegant design of the biosphere.
_
I invite the many thoughtful and mature individuals posting here to ponder the many other gaps of the evolutionary paradigm, and add your own observations here. They will absolutely infuriate Darwin's Faithful, who should instead modify their conduct and condescension, but cannot and will not.
_
*2. Gaps in science*
Likewise, Darwin's Faithful have been claiming that macroevolution ("fact, fact, fact") is sustained by a wide range of scientific research, with of course much more to come. They don't have all the answers YET, but by golly, they'll discover them, you betcha. Just need a few more hundred million dollars in government grants for that all important *research*.
*
3. Gaps in integrity*
_Icons of Evolution, Science or Myth; Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong__ b_y Jonathan Wells is just one book which documents the 150 years of fraud in the name of evolutionary science. Hegel's drawings of embryos is one of the most pervasive frauds in the history of science. It was exposed immediately, and Hegel was convicted of fraud in a trial, but still university and high school biology books parroted his fraud until as recently as the year 2000.

*4. Gaps in decency*
One of Darwin's most vocal and well known advocates is Richard Dawkins, who said "Anyone who doesn't believe in evolution is either ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked." His vile indecency exemplifies the tenor and character of virtually any discussion of Darwinism, anywhere. The indecent remarks of Darwin's Faithful are anti-intelligent and anti-scientific, but his Faithful are powerless to stop being hateful and condescending.

----------


## QuaseMarco

So what we are saying here is that what appears to be evolution is really guided by .... not chance....... but some type of intelligent force.

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## Sled Dog

[QUOTE=ChemEngineer;1063456]On the *clever* phrase of "god of the gaps," which makes Darwinists giggle so very much, they overlook their own gaps:

*1. Gaps in the Fossils[/qutoe]*
There has not only always been gaps in the fossil record, there will always be gaps in the fossil record.   People ignorant of geology are doomed to repeat it.




> *2. Gaps in science*
> Likewise, Darwin's Faithful have been claiming that macroevolution ("fact, fact, fact") is sustained by a wide range of scientific research, with of course much more to come. They don't have all the answers YET, but by golly, they'll discover them, you betcha. Just need a few more hundred million dollars in government grants for that all important *research*.




People who understand the evolution of species by natural selection don't use the word "macro evolution".  That has something to do with making the image on raw film stock larger than the actual object.

Since the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection describes OBSERVED FACTS, it's not really subject to dismissal.

And EVERY OTHER hypothesis requires the use of MAGIC.   Which means it's not science, it's Hairy Potter.
*




			
				3. Gaps in integrity
			
		

*


> _Icons of Evolution, Science or Myth; Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong__ b_y Jonathan Wells is just one book which documents the 150 years of fraud in the name of evolutionary science. Hegel's drawings of embryos is one of the most pervasive frauds in the history of science. It was exposed immediately, and Hegel was convicted of fraud in a trial, but still university and high school biology books parroted his fraud until as recently as the year 2000.


Yes, people propounding something other than the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection...are lying.  Thus they have no integrity.

Your citations from "authority" are just one example of that.

*



			
				4. Gaps in decency
			
		

*


> One of Darwin's most vocal and well known advocates is Richard Dawkins, who said "Anyone who doesn't believe in evolution is either ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked." His vile indecency exemplifies the tenor and character of virtually any discussion of Darwinism, anywhere. The indecent remarks of Darwin's Faithful are anti-intelligent and anti-scientific, but his Faithful are powerless to stop being hateful and condescending.


Ah.

So you're saying the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection has been falsified because some of it's proponents don't express the respect you feel the idiots that reject the theory in favor of magic should be receiving.

It's a cruel world out there.  More accurately, the world doesn't give a shit.  It's one of the many efficient scythes of natural selection, the fact that there's no Magic Sky Pixie performing miracles.

Remember, you can't respond to my posts unless you're peeking or if someone quotes me.

----------


## Sled Dog

> So what we are saying here is that what appears to be evolution is really guided by .... not chance....... but some type of intelligent force.


Yeah.

Magic Sky Pixies.

----------


## QuaseMarco

> Yeah.
> 
> Magic Sky Pixies.


I knew it.  :Thumbsup20:

----------


## usfan

*Hypothesis:* All living things have a common ancestor, & are descended from simpler forms, i.e., the 'macro' theory of evolution.

*Observation & experimentation:* NO changes in the genetic structure have been observed, nor is there any mechanism by which an organism can be forced to depart from the parameters of their basic genetic structure. NO experiment has been able to demonstrate the alleged phenomenon of increasing complexity, added chromosomes, added genes, & major alterations to the genetic structure. Millions of experiments have been attempted to prove this theory, but none have been able to overcome the strict confines of the genetic code. NOT ONCE has there been ANY experiment that could demonstrate the basic claims of the macro ToE.

*Analysis & conclusion:* As there is no evidence to support this theory, and every attempt to demonstrate this process has failed, we are forced to accept that the theory is flawed. Perhaps someday, there will be a mechanism defined, or some other process by which the alleged changes in the basic genetic structure can be observed, but until then, the theory is flawed. It does not work. We cannot definitively DISPROVE this theory, as the lack of current evidence cannot preclude the impossibility of future evidence. But that is speculative, & is not subject to scientific methodology.

This has been my central argument in this thread. Show me ONE example of macroevolution. ONE real, observable, repeatable test of this alleged phenomenon, that allows a departure from the confines of the genetic code. Show me HOW this can happen, Merely asserting it DID happen is science by decree. It does not have any scientific evidence to back it.

----------


## usfan

I would also like to point out a commonly accepted, observable concept in all living things, & an oft repeated principle in evolutionary circles:

*Selection acts on existing variability.*

What this means, is that selective pressures, that cause adaptation within a species, can only draw from the pool of variability already present in the gene pool.  Whether they are environmental or man made, this 'breeding' process does NOT create traits, but only draws from those already present.

This brings up some pertinent questions:
1. Where did all this variability come from? It did not 'evolve' slowly, but was already present in the parent stock.
2. Why would all this variability be present, in the parent stock? What selective pressures compiled this abundance of variability, to be released slowly over centuries of breeding?
3. How do these kinds of traits become available? What 'creates' them? How would 'mutation' form millions of possibilities within the parent stock, yet not employ them until future generations? These were not 'environmental' pressures, or any kind of selective pressures, but thousands of traits ALREADY PRESENT in the parent stock, with NO pressures of any kind to 'create' them.
4. Family trees are not 'evolving', in the darwinian, macro sense, but DEVOLVING. Less variability is present in the child species, not more. There are no 'new' traits being created, but fewer ones made available as breeding or natural selection limits the undesired traits. IOW, traits are lost, not gained.

I provided a study of canid genetics earlier in the thread.  If you examine it, or many other similar ones involving genetics, you can see the rationale of these arguments. Science is disproving the ToE, not proving it. Genetics is problematic for macroevolution.. we can follow the mtDNA, & see when real ancestry is happening. But there is NO evidence of anything changing from within its basic genetic structure. That is an imagined construct, with no empirical basis.

----------

Puzzling Evidence (07-16-2016)

----------


## Sled Dog

> *Hypothesis:* All living things have a common ancestor, & are descended from simpler forms, i.e., the 'macro' theory of evolution.
> 
> *Observation & experimentation:* NO changes in the genetic structure have been observed, nor is there any mechanism by which an organism can be forced to depart from the parameters of their basic genetic structure.


Well, that's a lie, so your argument is false.

----------


## ChemEngineer

> ... Science is disproving the ToE, not proving it. Genetics is problematic for macroevolution.. we can follow the mtDNA, & see when real ancestry is happening. But there is NO evidence of anything changing from within its basic genetic structure. That is an imagined construct, with no empirical basis.


Darwin's original book, *On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection*, contained only one illustration, viz. the vaunted "tree of life."
Not one tip of one branch of his "tree of life" named any species.  Not one.   Today, you can look up hundreds of "trees" and although many have the tips labeled, further down these "trees" nothing is labeled.  Nothing.  Nobody has a clue as to what the first life form was in DarwinSpeak because it could not and did not arise from some primordial ooze.  It is statistically impossible.

Darwin's tree of life.jpg

----------


## nonsqtr

> I would also like to point out ...
> 
>  That is an imagined construct, with no empirical basis.


I would like to point out, that ignorance does not equate with a flawed theory.

Study up on "chaotic attractors". You speak of statistics? Surely you understand the role of an attractor in a dynamic system, yes?

----------


## Midgardian

> I would like to point out, that ignorance does not equate with a flawed theory.
> 
> Study up on "chaotic attractors". You speak of statistics? Surely you understand the role of an attractor in a dynamic system, yes?


I am attracted to hot conservative females who exercise their 2nd Amendment rights.

----------


## usfan

> Well, that's a lie, so your argument is false.


To prove the hypothesis of increasing complexity, & vertical (macro) changes in the genetic structure, you would need an example of this phenomenon.  Insisting on evidence does not equate with a 'lie' in any shape or form.

My statement & obvious observation stands, unrefuted.  There are NO observable changes that are posited by the ToE.  They are all  imagined, with no empirical basis.  Living things stay strictly within the confines of their genetic structure, & do not flit about whimsically, adding chromosomes, adding genes, creating new traits on the fly, or any of the claims that the ToE makes.  There is also NO definable, testable mechanism that can force such changes in the genetic structure.  Your belief in this imaginary mechanism is based on wishful thinking, assertion, & ridicule of any alternative.  There is no science or empirical evidence to support the claims.

Asserting something is a lie, with no refuting evidence, is a propaganda method.. loudly repeating something over & over does not make it true.  You need evidence & reason, if you wish to comply with the scientific method.  Using political debating tactics do not work in this sphere.




> I would like to point out, that ignorance does not equate with a flawed theory.
> Study up on "chaotic attractors". You speak of statistics? Surely you understand the role of an attractor in a dynamic system, yes?


Apply your mechanism to the theory, then.  YOUR ignorance of how genetics works, & the impossibility of the kinds of macro changes in the genetic structure cannot be attributed to 'chaotic attractors' or any such speculation.  HOW would that add chromosomes?  Genes?  Variability?  WHERE does this 'variability' come from?  HOW is it created?  Selection only acts upon existing variability, according to evolutionists themselves.  So WHERE did this variability come from?

You can't just drive by & throw out a word grenade, hoping it will fool everyone into thinking the terms apply to the arguments being made.  You have to apply them, yourself, & SHOW how it provides evidence for your argument.

Quantum mechanics.  Irreducible complexity.  Environmental pressures. 

It's easy to toss in a term, but if you don't apply it, define it, & use it in the argument, it has no meaning, & it appears more as a bluff to deflect.

Are you arguing against the statement, 'Selection acts on existing variability?'  This is an evolutionary concept, that i quoted in the earlier study on canids & their genome mapping.

Explain to me how this graphic proves anything about biological evolution:



Then, you would need to demonstrate, by experimentation, HOW your mathematical theories apply & force the kinds of changes you assert in the ToE.  Lacking that, you have an interesting speculation, that might make a good sci fi movie, but it is not science.

----------

Puzzling Evidence (07-16-2016)

----------


## nonsqtr

> Explain to me how this graphic proves anything about biological evolution:


Okay. Pay me for a college education.




> Then, you would need to demonstrate, by experimentation, HOW your mathematical theories apply & force the kinds of changes you assert in the ToE.  Lacking that, you have an interesting speculation, that might make a good sci fi movie, but it is not science.


"I" don't need to demonstrate anything. YOU need to learn about a concept called "saltatory mutation", and why it only applies to complex genetic sequences, and how it applies to those sequences.

And then for your graduate thesis, to make sure you understand the material, you can formulate a computer model that shows how salutatory mutation can create species-changing genetic events. To actually program this model, you'll need a detailed understanding of stochastic dynamics (hint: the picture you're showing us is not it). You'll probably want to begin with "catastrophe theory", which codifies and systematizes everything to make it a little easier to grasp the big picture.

Remember: mutations are point events. The effect of a mutation depends (almost entirely) on where it occurs. 95+% of genetic mutations are entirely deadly  However a certain type of well placed mutation can result in the abnormal replication of an entire chromosome. And all of that, is built on a stochastic dynamic foundation, these are all point events that occur asynchronously and there is no "magic bullet" that will cause the formation of a new species. Rather, certain events are of "sufficient" magnitude to alter both the developmental cycle and the physiology of the organism. 

The first observation in fractal dynamics is, "nature replicates itself". You see the same structures in one place, as you do in another. Ever watch an amoeba move? Evolution is the same way. It extends pseudopods, then retracts them, then extends them again...

But all this is neither here nor there. There isn't a better model. There simply isn't. Just because you don't grasp how species-changing events can occur in a complex biochemical environment, doesn't mean the model is broken. I understand it, and others do too, and your lack of knowledge doesn't really mean a whole lot. They were complaining the same way when someone first said that all the electrons and protons in the universe were made of the same stuff. They even burned people at the stake for saying otherwise.

By the way, the pic you're showing us is a generator for a space-filling curve. Look up "tessellation". It means "tiling", which is a discrete version of the continuous example. Placing dots on a page - same as point mutations along a strand of DNA.

----------

Sled Dog (07-16-2016)

----------


## Sled Dog

> To prove the hypothesis of increasing complexity, & vertical (macro) changes in the genetic structure, you would need an example of this phenomenon.  Insisting on evidence does not equate with a 'lie' in any shape or form.


You mean like how the universe evolved complexity from homogenieity by the export of entropy from local regions to the greater universe?

Galaxies clumped around the super-massive black holes (not a moochelle joke), exporting entropy away from the protogalaxies as a result.

Stars exported entropy from the primordial clouds of H2 and He gas.

That's two examples.

You've been refuted.

----------


## Senter

> NO changes in the genetic structure have been observed . . .


When?  Where?  In what?  The genetics of the pterodactyl were significantly different from modern birds.





> . . . nor is there any mechanism by which an organism can be forced to depart from the parameters of their basic genetic structure.


No?  You've probably heard of "cosmic rays" and natural radiation and their effects on genes.

----------


## Senter

> Okay. Pay me for a college education.
> 
> 
> 
> "I" don't need to demonstrate anything. YOU need to learn about a concept called "saltatory mutation", and why it only applies to complex genetic sequences, and how it applies to those sequences.
> 
> And then for your graduate thesis, to make sure you understand the material, you can formulate a computer model that shows how salutatory mutation can create species-changing genetic events. To actually program this model, you'll need a detailed understanding of stochastic  . . . . (snip)


Good luck with these bimbos grasping even 10% of what you posted.

----------


## Midgardian

> Okay. Pay me for a college education.
> 
> 
> 
> "I" don't need to demonstrate anything. YOU need to learn about a concept called "saltatory mutation", and why it only applies to complex genetic sequences, and how it applies to those sequences.
> 
> And then for your graduate thesis, to make sure you understand the material, you can formulate a computer model that shows how salutatory mutation can create species-changing genetic events. To actually program this model, you'll need a detailed understanding of stochastic dynamics (hint: the picture you're showing us is not it). You'll probably want to begin with "catastrophe theory", which codifies and systematizes everything to make it a little easier to grasp the big picture.
> 
> Remember: mutations are point events. The effect of a mutation depends (almost entirely) on where it occurs. 95+% of genetic mutations are entirely deadly  However a certain type of well placed mutation can result in the abnormal replication of an entire chromosome. And all of that, is built on a stochastic dynamic foundation, these are all point events that occur asynchronously and there is no "magic bullet" that will cause the formation of a new species. Rather, certain events are of "sufficient" magnitude to alter both the developmental cycle and the physiology of the organism. 
> ...


My version is much more accessible and doesn't require spending years of studying the foolishness invented by humans who want to deny their Creator.

"In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth and everything in it".

- Genesis 1:1

----------


## Senter

> My version is much more accessible and doesn't require spending years of studying the foolishness invented by humans who want to deny their Creator.
> 
> "In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth and everything in it".
> 
> - Genesis 1:1


LOL!!  You really want to argue for an ancient myth's version of "reality" and ignore the long actual and repeatable observations, testing, and experience of science verified by many scientists around the world!!!!!   Yours is the way of the zealot!  You lost the spiritual content of the bible back in the 16th and 17th centuries, turned it into an intellectual exercise of reading and study and now actually take it as *literal historical fact*, and you still want to cling to the disproven myth and force it on others???

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is your refusal to expose yourself to tested, proven science that will enslave you to remaining as you are.

Hence, you have already lost the debate before starting.

----------


## Midgardian

> LOL!!  You really want to argue for an ancient myth's version of "reality" and ignore the long actual and repeatable observations.


Macroevolution has never been observed and the theory is not falsifiable.

----------


## Midgardian

> and force it on others???


No, I don't wish to do anything of the sort.

Could you explain where you got that lunatic idea?

----------


## Midgardian

> Hence, you have already lost the debate before starting.


You have lost the debate because you believe in the fairy tale of evolution.

I rely on facts.

Furthermore, you don't seem to be interested in a debate, but rather want to hurl insults at your opponents.

----------


## Senter

> Macroevolution has never been observed and the theory is not falsifiable.


Oh?  You're right that evolution is not falsifiable.  But you have no idea what Nonsqtr said, eh?   And it is your fantasy about Genesis being factual history is a huge joke on you and you don't even know it.

----------


## Senter

> You have lost the debate because you believe in the fairy tale of evolution.
> 
> I rely on facts.
> 
> Furthermore, you don't seem to be interested in a debate, but rather want to hurl insults at your opponents.


But your position is LUDICROUS and you feel classifying you as a zealot is an insult?  Besides that, what else did I say that you find to be insulting?  In your world, evolution is a "fairy tale" and the bible is "fact".  Right?  You really think the bible is fact?  Do you?  The bible provides the "facts" that you rely on?  You take the bible literally.  Is that insulting?  You consider Genesis to be a reporting of historical fact.  Do you find that to be insulting?  Genesis is a fantasy.  Is that insulting?  You're the one who raised the ridiculous ideas.  I just called them what they are.  And as for debate, if you think debating the bible against science is possible, you need to think again.  Science has pretty well refuted much of the bible as cultural bias and myth.  Is that insulting?

----------


## Senter

> No, I don't wish to do anything of the sort ("force it on others").
> 
> Could you explain where you got that lunatic idea?


You insist that science be rejected and that the bible be relied on for guidance in understanding life on earth.  You will accept no compromise and compromise isn't possible.  That is a wish to force it on others.

But let's make some big changes to the Constitution and put God in the lead.  Let's require that the bible be the guide ("God's word").  Let's require that all laws be consistent with the bible.  We can even require a bible reading in every school at the start and at the end of each class.  We can structure the whole society on the bible and put an end to all else.

Then we can have great debates on who does it better, us or the Taliban.

----------


## LFD

All knowledge is based on priori or empiricism.

So many people will  attempt to justify one position with non-empirical evidence, and deny another based on a lack of non-empirical evidence. 

It needs to be acknowledged that both positions need to relate to either priori or empirical evidence. If not, then the only rational position is to not take either stance.

If you look really closely at what @Midgardian and @Senter are doing, you might realize they are committing the same exact fallacy.

----------


## LFD

Another thing.

Saying that an argument is non-falsifiable is conceding that the position is logically sound with the current availability of knowledge.

----------


## Sled Dog

> Another thing.
> 
> Saying that an argument is non-falsifiable is conceding that the position is logically sound with the current availability of knowledge.


And the ignorance of proper vocabulary continues.

"Falsifiable" as a term used to describe a theory is not the same as Obama's multiple birth certificates.

It means "the theory is not consistent" with observed fact, ergo the theory is false.

The following statement is not falsifiable:




> Some comets are interstellar spaceships picking up passengers as they fly past earth.


This can't be proven false.  One of them might be, can't tell unless you inspect ALL of them, which isn't possible.

The following statement IS falsifiable:




> NO comet is an interstellar spaceship.


To falsify this statement, one needs to produce one, and just one, interstellar comet spaceship for inspection.

----------


## Sled Dog

> Macroevolution has never been observed and the theory is not falsifiable.


Evolution by natural selection HAS been observed and your theory is falsified by the established evolution of the horse, the zebra and the donkey from a single progenitor species, eohippus.

----------


## Sled Dog

> Oh?  You're right that evolution is not falsifiable.  But you have no idea what Nonsqtr said, eh?   And it is your fantasy about Genesis being factual history is a huge joke on you and you don't even know it.


But is falsifiable.

All those denying the validity of the theory of evolution by natural selection has to do to prove their point is to corral a genuine Magic Sky Pixie.

----------


## Senter

> All knowledge is based on priori or empiricism.
> 
> So many people will  attempt to justify one position with non-empirical evidence, and deny another based on a lack of non-empirical evidence. 
> 
> It needs to be acknowledged that both positions need to relate to either priori or empirical evidence. If not, then the only rational position is to not take either stance.
> 
> If you look really closely at what @Midgardian and @Senter are doing, you might realize they are committing the same exact fallacy.


And you seem to want everyone to be awed by your intellect.  Nobody in 2016 in any developed country should have to point out that the bible is not a valid source of factual data.  Today, that awareness consists of both a priori and a posteriori knowledge.  Even simply raising bible expressions/verses as "evidence" of how life developed is absurd.  Do you disagree?

----------


## Senter

> Another thing.
> 
> Saying that an argument is non-falsifiable is conceding that the position is logically sound with the current availability of knowledge.


I agree with that.  That was one of my points.  I don't think our friend knows what "falsifiable" means.




> But is falsifiable.
> 
> All those denying the validity of the theory of evolution by natural selection has to do to prove their point is to corral a genuine Magic Sky Pixie.



Then evolution is not falsifiable since the Magic Sky Pixie remains invisible.

----------


## Sled Dog

> I agree with that.  That was one of my points.  I don't think our friend knows what "falsifiable" means.
> 
> 
> Then evolution is not falsifiable since the Magic Sky Pixie remains invisible.[/COLOR]


No.  The "theories" of creationism are false because they aren't constructed as valid theories....it's religious claptrap, pseudo-science.

There's nothing wrong with the theory of evolution by natural selection.    It's formatted properly, can be shown to be false (but hasn't been, of course, especially not by MSP cultists), it can be used to make predictions (which are borne out.   The theory of evolution does wonders for explaining animal traits and behaviors), and it explains the fossil record better than anything.

Can the creatinoids provide a mechanism in the real world to explain their Magic Design hypothesis?

No.

----------


## ChemEngineer

> Okay. Pay me for a college education.


If you haven't gotten one by now, you never will.
If you haven't earned enough money to pay for your own education, stop asking for handouts from others who have earned their way through life with savings to spare.




> But all this is neither here nor there. There isn't a better model. There simply isn't. Just because you don't grasp how species-changing events can occur in a complex biochemical environment, doesn't mean the model is broken. I understand it, and others do too, and your lack of knowledge doesn't really mean a whole lot. 
> .


First you ask someone for money for your education, and then you toss out fancy words and phrases and pretend that anyone deigning to disagree with you does so due to a "lack of knowledge."   Your condescension is terribly anti-intellectual and unscientific.  

One does NOT support any model which fails as miserably as does Darwinism in all its forms and offshoots.  Extremely knowledgeable scholars convened the Wistar symposium and examined all aspects of "common descent."  It is not supported by fossil evidence; it is not supported by the best computer models;  it is not supported by biochemistry;  it is not supported by statistics.  It is a failure and whether anything "better" is proposed or not, your "model" is worthless.  Embrace your pillow if you need to hug something.  Macroevolution is a fraud - a gigantic extrapolation of simple adaptation.

----------

usfan (07-21-2016)

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## Senter

"Liberalism is a mental illness"???  You can say that with a straight face when we are now confronted with the most insane extremism of right wing ideology, collapsing "conservative" economy taken over by multinational corporations and doing little for the middle class, politics in which "Citizens United" hands power to corporations and produces legislation through A.L.E.C. for their sole benefit, and with guns flooding society and producing the predictable result for the profit of the gun industry???  --And you think that is "sane"???

I think we know who suffers mental illness just by looking at the current state of affairs.

----------


## Midgardian

> Evolution by natural selection HAS been observed and your theory is falsified by the established evolution of the horse, the zebra and the donkey from a single progenitor species, eohippus.


Notice that I am not arguing against natural selection.

Yes, it occurs.

It is called microevolution.

Show me evidence that macroevolution has occurred and I will be impressed.

Hell, you could be a millionaire if you could do that.

Is that incentive enough?

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usfan (07-21-2016)

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## Midgardian

> But is falsifiable.
> 
> All those denying the validity of the theory of evolution by natural selection has to do to prove their point is to corral a genuine Magic Sky Pixie.


Not true.

You evolutionists are making a positive claim.

The theory of evolution should stand or collapse on its on feet.

The burden of proof is on you, and I say that you have no evidence to support the fairy tale of evolution.

----------


## Senter

> Notice that I am not arguing against natural selection.
> 
> Yes, it occurs.
> 
> It is called microevolution.
> 
> Show me evidence that macroevolution has occurred and I will be impressed.


*Prediction 2.1: Anatomical vestiges*"The wing of the ostrich resembles those of the gyrfalcon and the hawk. Who does not know how the speed of the gyrfalcon and hawk in flight exceeds that of other birds? The ostrich certainly has wings like theirs but not their speed of flight. Truly, it has not the capacity to be lifted from the ground and gives only the impression of spreading its wings as if to fly; however, it never supports itself above the earth in flight.
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: Part 2


We find vestigial limbs in whales and dolphins, and you have a vestigial tail.  And that is just the smallest of beginnings.  There is much more.

----------


## Senter

> Not true.
> 
> You evolutionists are making a positive claim.
> 
> The theory of evolution should stand or collapse on its on feet.
> 
> The burden of proof is on you, and I say that you have no evidence to support the fairy tale of evolution.


Have you looked into it?

29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: Part 1

29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: Part 2

THE EVOLUTION LIST: Macroevolution: Examples and Evidence

http://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=evidence+of+macroevolution&search_pl  us_one=form

----------


## ChemEngineer

> "Liberalism is a mental illness"???  You can say that with a straight face when we are now confronted with the most insane extremism of right wing ideology, collapsing "conservative" economy taken over by multinational corporations and doing little for the middle class, politics in which "Citizens United" hands power to corporations and produces legislation through A.L.E.C. for their sole benefit, and with guns flooding society and producing the predictable result for the profit of the gun industry???  --And you think that is "sane"???


It won't do any good for me to try to teach you a few things, but I will offer up some salient facts and perspective just to refute your left-wing comments.
Leftists think if nobody replies to them, they've "won."

1.  Obama came to office promising all things for all people.  He was "going to bring us together."  He was "going to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq."
He was going to "cut the national debt in half."    Instead, the ranks of the poor have increased enormously, now with 43,000,000 on food stamps.
The middle class has shrunk thanks to his idiocy, and the idiocy of the Democrat Congress during his first term.  Terrorism worldwide is blooming thanks to his and Hillary's incompetence and support of Islamic terrorists, and their snubbing of Israel.

2.  As to "guns flooding society," there were many millions of guns long before Obama was elected.  His threats to the 2nd Amendment and his contempt for the rule of law and the savageness of murderers and cop killers have encouraged more gun ownership.  You leftists blame guns for killing but not spoons for obesity.  How about banning knives?  They "kill" many more thousands than those scary (to you) "assault rifles."

3.  Leftists badmouth "big corporations" only when it suits them/you.  Hillary has taken millions of their dollars for "speaking fees" which were really payola for special favors.  You should be ashamed of her corruption, perjury, obstruction of justice, and incompetence, but you excuse Democrats of anything and everything.  Disgraceful.




> I think we know who suffers mental illness just by looking at the current state of affairs.


  The "current state of affairs" were supposed to be so dramatically improved by your god, Obama.  Instead, he plays golf, shoots hoops, appears on late night talk shows, and the world goes to hell.
It is a far more dangerous and ugly place than it was when you elected your god to the Oval Office.  Chant now, with reverence:  "OOOOOOOO---BAHHHHHHH---MAAAAAAA".

That should make shivers go up and down your left leg - both of your left legs.

Now just a side note, on account of your "Oregon" location.

I came back from Alaska recently.  Was in the back of the plane talking to two stewardesses.  I had an epiphany, and asked them, "Of all the people you see from all regions, who are the rudest, who are the nastiest?  Is it New York?"

They glanced at each other, suspicious of my question.  I assured them it was anonymous, just between us three. No names.

Then one replied, "No, New Yorkers can take as good as they get. It's the northwest, Washington and Oregon.  They mouth off more rudely than anyone, and think their **** doesn't stink."  Words to that effect.  Those haughty northwesterners, better than everyone else, and they/you KNOW IT!

Time for you to go hug a tree.  Then watch the video "Gun Free Zone."  It's on YouTube, and it has your name all over it.

----------


## ChemEngineer

> Have you looked into it?
> 
> 
> http://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=evidence+of+macroevolutio
> 
> Thoday and Gibson (1962) established a population of _Drosophila melanogaster from four gravid females. They applied selection on this population for flies with the highest and lowest numbers of sternoplural chaetae (hairs). In each generation, eight flies with high numbers of chaetae were allowed to interbreed and eight flies with low numbers of chaetae were allowed to interbreed. Periodically they performed mate choice experiments on the two lines. They found that they had produced a high degree of positive assortative mating between the two groups. 
> 
> 
> 
> ...


"A high degree of positive assortative mating."   My, how impressive.  "High degree of assortative mating." 
This is one of your "proofs."


_ (geotaxis). The last was between the scent of acetaldehyde and the scent of ethanol (chemotaxis). This divided the flies among eight habitats. The flies were further divided by the time of day of emergence. In total the flies were divided among 24 spatio-temporal habitats.

The other emerged late, flew downward and was attracted to light and ethanol. Pupae from these two strains were placed together in the maze. They were allowed to mate at the food site and were collected. //////// After 25 generations of this mating tests showed reproductive isolation between the two strains. Habitat specialization was also produced.

_"Habitat specialization."  This translates to change in kind...... HOW, exactly?_

They next repeated the experiment without the penalty against habitat switching. The result was the same -- reproductive isolation was produced. They argued that a switching penalty is not necessary to produce reproductive isolation. Their results, they stated, show the possibility of sympatric speciation._

"Possibility of sympatric speciation."  There you have it.  From "possibility" to "proof."  Voila.



Now please these dissenting viewpoints, from very knowledgeable scientists:

“Evolution can be thought of as sort of a magical religion. Magic is simply an effect without a cause, or at least a competent cause. ‘Chance,’ ‘time,’ and ‘nature,’ are the small gods enshrined at evolutionary temples. Yet these gods cannot explain the origin of life. These gods are impotent. Thus, evolution is left without competent cause and is, therefore, only a magical explanation for the existence of life…”  (Dr. Randy L. Wysong, instructor of human anatomy and physiology, The Creation-Evolution Controversy, pg. 418.)
“After chiding the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort, could not be proved to take place today had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past.”  (Dr. Loren Eiseley, anthropologist, The Immense Journey, pg. 144.)
“Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups.”  (Dr. Duane Gish, Biochemist.)
“Evolution is a fairy tale for adults.”  (Dr. Paul LeMoine, one of the most prestigious scientists in the world)
“Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless.”  (Prof. Louis Bounoure, Director of Research, National Center of Scientific Research.)
“The evolution theory is purely the product of the imagination.”  (Dr. Ambrose Flemming, Pres. Philosophical Society of Great Britain)
“The Darwinian theory of descent has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of scientific research but purely the product of the imagination.”  (Albert Fleishman, professor of zoology & comparative anatomy at Erlangen University)
“We have had enough of the Darwinian fallacy. It is time we cry, “The emperor has no clothes.”  (Dr. Hsu, geologist at the Geological Institute in Zurich.)
“The great cosmologic myth of the twentieth century.”  (Dr. Michael Denton, molecular biochemist, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.)
“9/10 of the talk of evolution is sheer nonsense not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by fact. This Museum is full of proof of the utter falsity of their view.”  (Dr. Ethredge, British Museum of Science.)
“We have now the remarkable spectacle that just when many scientific men are agreed that there is no part of the Darwinian system that is of any great influence, and that, as a whole, the theory is not only unproved, but impossible, the ignorant, half-educated masses have acquired the idea that it is to be accepted as a fundamental fact.”  (Dr. Thomas Dwight, famed professor at Harvard University)
“I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science. When this happens, many people will pose the question, “How did this ever happen?”  (Dr. Sorren Luthrip, Swedish Embryologist)
“The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based upon faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion….The only alternative is the doctrine of special creation, which may be true, but irrational.”  (Dr. Louis T. More, professor of paleontology at Princeton University)
“Evolution is faith, a religion.”  (Dr. Louist T. More, professor of paleontology at Princeton University)
“Darwin’s theory of evolution is the last of the great nineteenth-century mystery religions. And as we speak it is now following Freudians and Marxism into the Nether regions, and I’m quite sure that Freud, Marx and Darwin are commiserating one with the other in the dark dungeon where discarded gods gather.”  (Dr. David Berlinski)
“In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to “bend” their observations to fit in with it.”  (H.S. Lipson, Physicist Looks at Evolution, Physics Bulletin 31 (1980), p. 138)
“A time honored scientific tenet of faith.”  (Professor David Allbrook)
“Darwinism has become our culture’s official creation myth, protected by a priesthood as dogmatic as any religious curia.”  (Nancy Pearcey, “Creation Mythology,”pg. 23)
“When students of other sciences ask us what is now currently believed about the origin of species, we have no clear answer to give. Faith has given way to agnosticism. Meanwhile, though our faith in evolution stands unshaken we have no acceptable account of the origin of species.”  (Dr. William Bateson, great geneticist of Cambridge)
“Chance renders evolution impossible.”  (Dr. James Coppedge)
“It (evolution) is sustained largely by a propaganda campaign that relies on all the usual tricks of rhetorical persuasion: hidden assumptions, question-begging statements of what is at issue, terms that are vaguely defined and change their meaning in midargument, attacks of straw men, selective citation of evidence, and so on. The theory is also protected by its cultural importance. It is the officially sanctioned creation story to modern society, and publicly funded educational authorities spare no effort to persuade people to believe it.”  (Professor Phillip Johnson, “Objections Sustained: Subversive Essays on Evolution, Law and Culture,” pg. 9)
“Therefore, a grotesque account of a period some thousands of years ago is taken seriously though it be built by piling special assumptions on special assumptions, ad hoc hypothesis [invented for a purpose] on ad hoc hypothesis, and tearing apart the fabric of science whenever it appears convenient. The result is a fantasia which is neither history nor science.”  (Dr. James Conant [chemist and former president of Harvard University], quoted in Origins Research, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1982, p. 2.)
“George Bernard Shaw wisecracked once that Darwin had the luck to please everybody who had an axe to grind. Well, I also have an axe to grind, but I am not pleased. We have suffered through two world wars and are threatened by an Armageddon. We have had enough of the Darwinian fallacy.  (Dr. Kenneth Hsu, “Reply,” Geology, 15 (1987), p. 177)
“Unfortunately for Darwin’s future reputation, his life was spent on the problem of evolution which is deductive by nature…It is absurd to expect that many facts will not always be irreconcilable with any theory of evolution and, today, every one of his theories is contradicted by facts.”  (Dr. P.T. Mora, The Dogma of Evolution, p. 194)
“Ultimately the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century…The origin of life and of new beings on earth is still largely as enigmatic as when Darwin set sail on the [ship] Beagle.”  (Dr. Michael Denton, molecular biochemist, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 358.)
“The theory [of evolution] is a scientific mistake.”  (Dr. Louis Agassiz, quoted in H. Enoch, Evolution or Creation, (1966), p. 139. [Agassiz was a Harvard University professor and the pioneer in glaciation.]
“There is no evidence, scientific or otherwise, to support the theory of evolution.”  (Sir Cecil Wakely)
“It’s impossible by micro-mutation to form any new species.”  (Dr. Richard Goldschmt, evolutionist. Founder of the “Hopeful Monster” theory.)
“The theory of life that undermined ninteenth-century religion has virtually become a religion itself and in its turn is being threatened by fresh ideas…In the past ten years has emerged a new breed of biologists who are scientifically respectable, but who have their doubts about Darwinism.”  (Dr. B. Leith, scientist)
“Everyone who is seriously interested in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe a spirit vastly superior to man, and one in the face of which our modest powers must feel humble.”  (Albert Einstein)
“Unfortunately, in the field of evolution most explanations are not good. As a matter of fact, they hardly qualify as explanations at all; they are suggestions, hunches, pipe dreams, hardly worthy of being called hypotheses.”  (Dr. Norman Macbeth, Darwin Retried (1971), p. 147)
“Evolution is baseless and quite incredible.”  (Dr. John Ambrose Fleming, President, British Association for Advancement of Science, in “The Unleashing of Evolutionary Thought”)
“The fact is that the evidence was so patchy one hundred years ago that even Darwin himself had increasing doubts as to the validity of his views, and the only aspect of his theory which has received any support over the past century is where it applies to microevolutionary phenomena. His general theory, that all life on earth had originated and evolved by a gradual successive accumulation of fortuitous mutations, is still, as it was in Darwin’s time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support and very far from that self-evident axiom some of its more aggressive advocates would have us believe.”  (Dr. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 77)
“I have always been slightly suspicious of the theory of evolution because of its ability to account for any property of living beings (the long neck of the giraffe, for example). I have therefore tried to see whether biological discoveries over the last thirty years or so fit in with Darwin’s theory. I do not think that they do. To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all.”  (H. Lipson, “A Physicist Looks at Evolution,” Physic Bulletin, 31 (1980), p. 138.)
“In conclusion, evolution is not observable, repeatable, or refutable, and thus does not qualify as either a scientific fact or theory.”  (Dr. David N. Menton, PhD in Biology from Brown University)
“The success of Darwinism was accomplished by a decline in scientific integrity.”  (Dr. W.R. Thompson, world renowned Entomologist)
“Contrary to what most scientists write, the fossil record does not support the Darwinian theory of evolution because it is this theory which we use to interpret the fossil record. By doing so we are guilty of circular reasoning if we then say the fossil record supports this theory.”  (Dr. Ronald R. West)
“The evolutionary establishment fears creation science, because evolution itself crumbles when challenged by evidence. In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of public debates were arranged between evolutionary scientists and creation scientists. The latter scored resounding victories, with the result that, today, few evolutionists will debate. Isaac Asimov, Stephen Jay Gould, and the late Carl Sagan, while highly critical of creationism, all declined to debate.”  (Dr. James Perloff, Tornado in a Junkyard (1999), p. 241)
“It is hard to resist the impression that the present structure of the universe, apparently so sensitive to minor alterations in numbers, has been rather carefully thought out…The seemingly miraculous concurrence of these numerical values must remain the most compelling evidence for cosmic design.”  (Physicist Paul Davies, “God and the New Physics,” page 189)
“Would it not be strange if a universe without purpose accidentally created humans who are so obsessed with purpose?”  (Sir John Templeton, “The Humble Approach: Scientists Discover God,” page 19)
“Set aside the many competing explanations of the Big Bang; something made an entire cosmos out of nothing. It is this realization–that something transcendent started it all–which has hard-science types…using terms like ‘miracle.'”  (Gregg Easterbrook, “The New Convergence”)
“Perhaps the best argument…that the Big Bang supports theism is the obvious unease with which it is greeted by some atheist physicists. At times this has led to scientific ideas…being advanced with a tenacity which so exceeds their intrinsic worth that one can only suspect the operation of psychological forces lying very much deeper than the usual academic desire of a theorist to support his or her theory.”  (C. J. Isham, “Creation of the Universe as a Quatum Process” page 378)
“Science and religion…are friends, not foes, in the common quest for knowledge. Some people may find this surprising, for there’s a feeling throughout our society that religious belief is outmoded, or downright impossible, in a scientific age. I don’t agree. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if people in this so-called ‘scientific age’ knew a bit more about science than many of them actually do, they’d find it easier to share my views.”  (Physicist John Polkinghorne, “Quarks, Chaos, and Christianity”)
“Science…has become identified with a philosophy known as materialism or scientific naturalism. This philosophy insists that nature is all there is, or at least the only thing about which we can have any knowledge. It follows that nature had to do its own creating, and that the means of creation must have included any role for God.”  (Professor Phillip E. Johnson, “The Church Of Darwin,” Wall Street Journal, August 16, 1999)
*Chance Renders Evolution Impossible*
“The probability of a single protein molecule being arranged by chance is, 1 in 10-161 power, using all the atoms on earth and allowing all the time since the world began…for a minimum set of required 239 protein molecules for the smallest theoretical life, the probability is, 1 in 10-119,879 power. It would take, 10-119,879 power, years on average to get a set of such proteins. That is 10-119,831 times the assumed age of the earth and is a figure with 119,831 zeros.”  (Dr. James Coppege from, “The Farce of Evolution” page 71)
“The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 nought’s after it…It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of Evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.”  (Sir Fred Hoyle, highly respected British astronomer and mathematician)
“I could prove God statistically; take the human body alone; the chance that all the functions of the individual would just happen, is a statistical monstrosity.”  (George Gallup, the famous statistician)
“The chance that higher life forms might have emerged through evolutionary processes is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein.”  (Sir Fred Hoyle, Highly respected British astronomer and mathematician)
“The probability for the chance of formation of the smallest, simplest form of living organism known is 1 to 10-340,000,000. This number is 1 to 10 to the 340 millionth power! The size of this figure is truly staggering, since there is only supposed to be approximately 10-80 (10 to the 80th power) electrons in the whole universe!”  (Professor Harold Morowitz)
“The occurrence of any event where the chances are beyond one in ten followed by 50 zeros is an event which we can state with certainty will never happen, no matter how much time is allotted and no matter how many conceivable opportunities could exist for the event to take place.”  (Dr. Emile Borel, who discovered the laws of probability)
“The more statistically improbable a thing is, the less we can believe that it just happened by blind chance. Superficially, the obvious alternative to chance is an intelligent Designer.”(Professor Richard Dawkins, an atheist)
“The only competing explanation for the order we all see in the biological world is the notion of special creation.”  (Dr. Colin Patterson, evolutionist and senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, which houses 60 million fossils)
“To insist, even with Olympian assurance, that life appeared quite by chance and evolved in this fashion, is an unfounded supposition which I believe to be wrong and not in accordance with the facts.”  (Dr. Pierre-Paul Grasse, University of Paris & past-president of French Academy of Science.)
“It is emphatically the case that life could not arise spontaneously in a primeval soup from its kind.”  (Dr. A.E Wilder Smith, chemist and former evolutionist)
“The idea of spontaneous generation of life in its present form is therefore highly improbable even to the scale of the billions of years during which prebotic evolution occurred.”  (Dr. Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize winner)
“The complexity of the simplest known type cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle.”  (Dr. Michael Denton, molecular biochemist)
“The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop.”  (Dr. Edwin Conklin, evolutionist and professor of biology at Princeton University.)
“Hypothesis [evolution] based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts….These classical evolutionary theories are a gross over-simplification of an immensely complex and intricate mass of facts, and it amazes me that they are swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without a murmur of protest.”  (Sir Ernst Chan, Nobel Prize winner for developing penicillin)
“All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that life’s complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did.”  (Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Prize winner)
“The world is too complicated in all parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. Each part of a living thing depends on all its other parts to function. How does each part know? How is each part specified at conception? The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some type of organizing principle—an architect.”  (Scientist Allan Sandage)
“One may well find oneself beginning to doubt whether all this could conceivably be the product of an enormous lottery presided over by natural selection, blindly picking the rare winners from among numbers drawn at utter random…..nevertheless although the miracle of life stands “explained” it does not strike us as any less miraculous. As Francois Mauriac wrote, “What this professor says is far more incredible than what we poor Christians believe.”  (French Biochemist and Nobel Prize winner, Jacques Monod, “Chance and Necessity.”)
“A further aspect I should like to discuss is what I call the practice of infinite escape clauses. I believe we developed this practice to avoid facing the conclusion that the probability of self-reproducing state is zero. This is what we must conclude from classical quantum mechanical principles as Wigner demonstrated”  (Sidney W. Fox, “The Origins of Pre-Biological Systems)
“In terms of their basic biochemical design….no living system can be thought of as being primitive or ancestral with respect to any other system, nor is there the slightest empirical hint of an evolutionary sequence among all the incredibly diverse cells on earth.”  (Dr. Michael Denton, molecular biochemist)
“We have always underestimated the cell…The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines…Why do we call [them] machines? Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world, these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts.”  (Bruce Alberts, President, National; Academy of Sciences “The Cell as a Collectrion of Protein Machines,” Cell 92, February 8, 1998)
“We should reject, as a matter of principle the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity; but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”  (Biochemist, Franklin M. Harold “The Way of the Cell,” page 205)
“Evolutionary biologists have been able to pretend to know how complex biological systems originated only because they treated them as black boxes. Now that biochemists have opened the black boxes and seen what is inside, they know the Darwinian theory is just a story, not a scientific explanation.”  (Professor Phillip E. Johnson)
“The simplicity that was once expected to be the foundation of life has proven to be a phantom; instead, systems of horrendous, irreducible complexity inhabit the cell. The resulting realization that life was designed by an intelligence is a shock to us in the twentieth century who have gotten used to thinking of life as the result of simple natural laws. But other centuries have had their shocks, and there is no reason to suppose that we should escape them. Humanity has endured as the center of the heavens moved from the earth to beyond the sun, as the history of life expanded to encompass long-dead reptiles, as the eternal universe proved mortal. We will endure the opening of Darwin’s Black box”  (Michael j. Behe, Biochemist “Darwin’s Black Box, pg. 252”)
“An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”   (Dr. Francis Crick, biochemist, Nobel Prize winner, Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature, pg. 88)
"Complex molecules that are essential to particular organisms often have such a vast information content as…to make the theory of evolution impossible.”  (Bird, Origin of Species Revisited, Vol. 1, pg. 71)
“A close inspection discovers an empirical impossibility to be inherent in the idea of evolution.”  (Dr. Nils Heribert-Nilsson, Swedish botanist and geneticist, English Summary of Synthetische Artbildung, pg. 1142-43, 1186.)

----------


## teeceetx

I think the problem is that evolution is real, but it's NOT responsible for modern humans.  There, did I fix it for some of you?  Clearly not all living organisms have undergone the same level of evolution, some none at all apparently.

----------


## Sled Dog

> Not true.
> 
> You evolutionists are making a positive claim.
> 
> The theory of evolution should stand or collapse on its on feet.
> 
> The burden of proof is on you, and I say that you have no evidence to support the fairy tale of evolution.


I've presented proof.

Just look at the history of the horse.

Look at the breeding potential of chihuskies.  (There is none.)

The burden of proof rests on you people.   What magical power drives evolution since you people deny the proven path of natural selection?

----------


## Puzzling Evidence

> I've presented proof.
> 
> Just look at the history of the horse.
> 
> Look at the breeding potential of chihuskies.  (There is none.)
> 
> The burden of proof rests on you people.   What magical power drives evolution since you people deny the proven path of natural selection?


Agreed, evolution is good science because of the ability to test various parameters of it. In "Creationism," you have no questions, you already have the answer....God, therefore no reason to ever test the observations or question the data in any way. I guess God really hates you to second guess his handiwork apparently, which makes me wonder what God is hiding. 

I'm wondering what happened to all the dinos, trilobites, megaladons and all those other critters that "suddenly" went poof? I guess that's just Satan fucking with us stupid people. 

Which reminds me, any one actually ever see a dino and a human footprint TOGETHER? How about a fossilized human bone that looks like a human and not a four foot tall hominid? Anybody....anybody??? No, because humans in their current form have not been around long enough to actually fossilize in that manner.

How in the hell in 2016 could ANYONE be so naive as to not understand how evolution works? It's a waste of time to explain it to some of you yahoos who refuse to even entertain that you are wrong or even could be.

----------


## Puzzling Evidence

> ..................................................  ........




Dude, did you expect anyone on this site to read your giant wall of text C&P? No one did or will. Use your words.  :Thumbsup20:

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## Sled Dog

> Dude, did you expect anyone on this site to read your giant wall of text C&P? No one did or will. Use your words.


CE believes that quoting someone saying "Evolution is a religion" is proof.

What can ya do?  Not all engineers are scientifically rigorous, and that's why they have other engineers baby-sitting them.

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Puzzling Evidence (07-26-2016)

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## ChemEngineer

> We find vestigial limbs in whales and dolphins, and you have a vestigial tail.  And that is just the smallest of beginnings.  There is much more.


Speculation is weak.  It is hopeful.  It is tentative.  

Darwinists abuse extrapolation terribly.  How many times must people provide you evidence against your macroevolution before you so much as grant that there MIGHT be something to the evidence against your "fact, fact, fact"?

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## ChemEngineer

> Agreed, evolution is good science....


Duplicate deleted.

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## ChemEngineer

> Agreed, evolution is good science....
> 
> 
> How in the hell in 2016 could ANYONE be so naive as to not understand how evolution works? It's a waste of time to explain it to some of you yahoos who refuse to even entertain that you are wrong or even could be.


1.  There is absolutely NO CHANCE that YOU could be wrong, is there? Only those who disagree with you should entertain such thoughts.

2.   Oh the complexity of "how evolution works."   Random mutations, followed by the ever complex "selection."  Woo!

Are these people quoted below all "yahoos"?

“Evolution can be thought of as sort of a magical religion. Magic is simply an effect without a cause, or at least a competent cause. ‘Chance,’ ‘time,’ and ‘nature,’ are the small gods enshrined at evolutionary temples. Yet these gods cannot explain the origin of life. These gods are impotent. Thus, evolution is left without competent cause and is, therefore, only a magical explanation for the existence of life…”  (Dr. Randy L. Wysong, instructor of human anatomy and physiology, The Creation-Evolution Controversy, pg. 418.)

“After chiding the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create mythology of its own: namely, the assumption that what, after long effort, could not be proved to take place today had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past.”  (Dr. Loren Eiseley, anthropologist, The Immense Journey, pg. 144.)
*“Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups.”*  (Dr. Duane Gish, Biochemist.)

*“Evolution is a fairy tale for adults.”*  (Dr. Paul LeMoine, one of the most prestigious scientists in the world)

“Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless.”  (Prof. Louis Bounoure, Director of Research, National Center of Scientific Research.)

*“The evolution theory is purely the product of the imagination.”*  (Dr. Ambrose Flemming, Pres. Philosophical Society of Great Britain)

“The Darwinian theory of descent has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature.* It is not the result of scientific research but purely the product of the imagination.”*  (Albert Fleishman, professor of zoology & comparative anatomy at Erlangen University)

*“We have had enough of the Darwinian fallacy. It is time we cry, “The emperor has no clothes.”*  (Dr. Hsu, geologist at the Geological Institute in Zurich.)

*“The great cosmologic myth of the twentieth century.”*  (Dr. Michael Denton, molecular biochemist, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.)

“9/10 of the talk of evolution is sheer nonsense not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by fact. This Museum is full of proof of the utter falsity of their view.”  (Dr. Ethredge, British Museum of Science.)

*“We have now the remarkable spectacle that just when many scientific men are agreed that there is no part of the Darwinian system that is of any great influence, and that, as a whole, the theory is not only unproved, but impossible, the ignorant, half-educated masses have acquired the idea that it is to be accepted as a fundamental fact.”*  (Dr. Thomas Dwight, famed professor at Harvard University)

*“I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science.* When this happens, many people will pose the question, “How did this ever happen?”  (Dr. Sorren Luthrip, Swedish Embryologist)

“The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based upon faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion….The only alternative is the doctrine of special creation, which may be true, but irrational.”  (Dr. Louis T. More, professor of paleontology at Princeton University)

“Evolution is faith, a religion.”  (Dr. Louist T. More, professor of paleontology at Princeton University)

“Darwin’s theory of evolution is the last of the great nineteenth-century mystery religions. And as we speak it is now following Freudians and Marxism into the Nether regions, and I’m quite sure that Freud, Marx and Darwin are commiserating one with the other in the dark dungeon where discarded gods gather.”  (Dr. David Berlinski)

“In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to “bend” their observations to fit in with it.”  (H.S. Lipson, Physicist Looks at Evolution, Physics Bulletin 31 (1980), p. 138)

“A time honored scientific tenet of faith.”  (Professor David Allbrook)

“Darwinism has become our culture’s official creation myth, protected by a priesthood as dogmatic as any religious curia.”  (Nancy Pearcey, “Creation Mythology,”pg. 23)



“Chance renders evolution impossible.”  (Dr. James Coppedge)

“It (evolution) is sustained largely by a propaganda campaign that relies on all the usual tricks of rhetorical persuasion: hidden assumptions, question-begging statements of what is at issue, terms that are vaguely defined and change their meaning in midargument, attacks of straw men, selective citation of evidence, and so on. The theory is also protected by its cultural importance. It is the officially sanctioned creation story to modern society, and publicly funded educational authorities spare no effort to persuade people to believe it.”  (Professor Phillip Johnson, “Objections Sustained: Subversive Essays on Evolution, Law and Culture,” pg. 9)

“Therefore, a grotesque account of a period some thousands of years ago is taken seriously though it be built by piling special assumptions on special assumptions, ad hoc hypothesis [invented for a purpose] on ad hoc hypothesis, and tearing apart the fabric of science whenever it appears convenient. The result is a fantasia which is neither history nor science.”  (Dr. James Conant [chemist and former president of Harvard University], quoted in Origins Research, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1982, p. 2.)

“George Bernard Shaw wisecracked once that Darwin had the luck to please everybody who had an axe to grind. Well, I also have an axe to grind, but I am not pleased. We have suffered through two world wars and are threatened by an Armageddon. We have had enough of the Darwinian fallacy.  (Dr. Kenneth Hsu, “Reply,” Geology, 15 (1987), p. 177)

“Unfortunately for Darwin’s future reputation, his life was spent on the problem of evolution which is deductive by nature…It is absurd to expect that many facts will not always be irreconcilable with any theory of evolution and, today, every one of his theories is contradicted by facts.”  (Dr. P.T. Mora, The Dogma of Evolution, p. 194)

*“Ultimately the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century*…The origin of life and of new beings on earth is still largely as enigmatic as when Darwin set sail on the [ship] Beagle.”  (Dr. Michael Denton, molecular biochemist, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 358.)

----------


## Sled Dog

> Speculation is weak.  It is hopeful.  It is tentative.  
> 
> Darwinists abuse extrapolation terribly.  How many times must people provide you evidence against your macroevolution before you so much as grant that there MIGHT be something to the evidence against your "fact, fact, fact"?



Only one.

Nobody's provided any refutation of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection on this thread yet.

They've presented, you've presented, only religion.

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## Midgardian

> The burden of proof rests on you people.


The burden of proof rests on the one making a positive claim, which you are by claiming that the fairy tale of evolution is "true".

I'd love to see some evidence.

Got any?

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## Sled Dog

> The burden of proof rests on the one making a positive claim, which you are by claiming that the fairy tale of evolution is "true".
> 
> I'd love to see some evidence.
> 
> Got any?



Yeah, but I've already provided the proof.

Which means the burden of rebuttal rests on those people I just proved wrong.

Get to work.

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## Midgardian

> Yeah, but I've already provided the proof.


Impossible.

The theory of evolution cannot be proved.

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OldSchool (08-16-2016)

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## Midgardian

Besides, it is only a theory.

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OldSchool (08-16-2016)

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## Sled Dog

> Impossible.
> 
> The theory of evolution cannot be proved.


The Theory of Evolution has been proven.  

People who are ignorant of science like to say "it's only a theory".  But that is because, as I said, they're ignorant.

Relativity is a proven theory, there's no doubt that the time dilation and foreshortening effects, the Doppler effects on light escaping from deep gravity wells and the rest, are all real events.

There may be a later theory that modifies some aspect of Relativity, but it is not going to be replaced with something totally new, as Relativity did to Newton's theory of gravity.

Same is true for the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection.   Not only does too much data fit the architecture, it's actual process has been observed in nature.  

And you have to say "Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection" because there have been other, failed, theories of the origin of species, starting with that amusing God Book.

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## ChemEngineer

> Nobody's provided any refutation of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection on this thread yet.
> They've presented, you've presented, only religion.


Not exactly.  Nobody has provided any refutation that YOU deem acceptable.  This is because nothing can dissuade you from this 150-year-old fantasy.
Lack of fossil evidence won't.   Statistical impossibilities of biochemistry won't.  Nothing will, so why should anyone bother citing more evidence.
It runs off your back like water off Charlie Darwin's bald and mediocre head.

The space of human hemoglobin is 10 to the 747th power.  Explain how that one structure, in far more than 10 to the 747th different possibilities, was synthesized, giving just a hundred or two hundred useful intermediaries along that path, and their respective purposes.  Let's see you posit some real "science," not just bring up "religion" and falsely try to put that word in everyone else's mouth.

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## ChemEngineer

And Sled Dog ran away, for he had nowhere even to begin on explaining the naturalistic synthesis of hemoglobin, much less the other thousands of polypeptides throughout the human body.

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## Sled Dog

> And Sled Dog ran away, for he had nowhere even to begin on explaining the naturalistic synthesis of hemoglobin, much less the other thousands of polypeptides throughout the human body.


No, I just got bored.

You want answers?

Use the Internet.

I don't have to teach you chemistry, go learn it for yourself.

You're insisting that it couldn't have evolved, but you're the one relying on Drake's Equation for "proof".

Since I've already shredded DE, there's no need for me to confront your every corollary and contingency.

You're just wrong.

And boring.

Now that you've peeked, put me back on ignore.   It's funny how you "Ignore" me but can't get enough of me.

I'm just not that into you, though.   You should move to San Francisco.

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## Midgardian

> I don't have to teach you chemistry, go learn it for yourself.


He is a chemical engineer.

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## OldSchool

> He is a chemical engineer.


With a growing 'ignore list'  :Stirthepot:

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## Midgardian

> With a growing 'ignore list'


I'm not on that list.

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## OldSchool

> I'm not on that list.


Were you 'knocking on wood' as you typed that or do you not really care?

Anyway, I's just messin' ya all. I should probably not do that.


ETA: The subject at hand (as the thread was started) actually interests me. I should quit messin around and read it.

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## Midgardian

> Were you 'knocking on wood' as you typed that or do you not really care?


Anyone who wants to ignore me is free to do so.

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OldSchool (08-16-2016)

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## OldSchool

> Anyone who wants to ignore me is free to do so.


Same goes for me too. But, I just don't get using the ignore option. I mean we are not all going to agree and like each other. For me it (ignoring someone) would be like ignoring Hillary because she's a piece of shit, but I can't (ignore) because what she says and does has an effect on the world we live in.

----------


## OldSchool

Anyway, about the theory of evolution:

I firmly believe that there's more to this world than what meets the eye. Science can try to explain our existence all they what, and can present 'so-called' evidence, but that doesn't mean I'm buying it.

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Midgardian (08-18-2016)

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## NRJeys



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## Sled Dog

> He is a chemical engineer.


You don't know that.

You know that he calls himself a Chemical Engineer.

Ever wonder how many legs  I have?

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## ChemEngineer

> Just a point of curiosity.
> 
> If a higher power is the cause of life on Earth, then why, do we, (humans) have an appendix (useless and ignored until a rupture), or remnants of a third eyelid (located by tear ducts), or coccyx bones (tail bone)?  If Genesis is to be believed, man was created in His image.  Yet, there are definite signs that humans (present) are not a final product.  So, does that mean He was/is not a finished product?


We also have two kidneys, but only require one.  I have a friend who functions quite normally on one lung.  The structures of human anatomy are marvelous, indeed miraculous by almost any standard.  That some aspects are not to your particular liking is completely irrelevant.  You are presuming to challenge the Maker of the entire universe.  What next, you don't lie the gravitational constant, the velocity of light, and sound?  You could have done a better job of constructing the human body?  One reads that a lot from atheists, who have yet to build a single university and put their/your name in its title.

The tired cliche that things aren't quite as perfect as atheists would have designed them is a pretty feeble reason to dismiss the millions of other genuine marvels surrounding us, from the submicroscopic to the supermacroscopic.  What have YOU personally designed and built, using only a few building blocks, that is 99.99999% empty space, and yet is as solid as a block of iron?




> While I find this topic very fascinating, I see a lot of the evolutionary theories answer more questions than Creationist theories, as one looks in the mirror.


Tautologies, as Darwinism clearly is, answer absolutely nothing. They are circular.  The fit survive, and those which survive are fit.  Please elaborate on what "questions" this answers?  Oh wait it answers "everything."  Which is to say, it answers nothing.

More importantly, nobody knows the mind of God.  Only atheists pretend to be smart enough to judge and overrule Him, and suggest how terrible a job God did in forming us.  No alternative "theory" is necessary to discard Darwinism as the greatest scam in the history of science.  If it doesn't work, it has to be tossed out, whether or not something else has been or ever will be proposed in place of it.  Darwinism is an ATTEMPT at science.  Explaining the divine mind of God is not.  Do not try to make it so.

----------


## FirstGenCanadian

> We also have two kidneys, but only require one.  I have a friend who functions quite normally on one lung.  The structures of human anatomy are marvelous, indeed miraculous by almost any standard.  That some aspects are not to your particular liking is completely irrelevant.  You are presuming to challenge the Maker of the entire universe.  What next, you don't lie the gravitational constant, the velocity of light, and sound?  You could have done a better job of constructing the human body?  One reads that a lot from atheists, who have yet to build a single university and put their/your name in its title.
> 
> The tired cliche that things aren't quite as perfect as atheists would have designed them is a pretty feeble reason to dismiss the millions of other genuine marvels surrounding us, from the submicroscopic to the supermacroscopic.  What have YOU personally designed and built, using only a few building blocks, that is 99.99999% empty space, and yet is as solid as a block of iron?
> 
> 
> 
> Tautologies, as Darwinism clearly is, answer absolutely nothing. They are circular.  The fit survive, and those which survive are fit.  Please elaborate on what "questions" this answers?  Oh wait it answers "everything."  Which is to say, it answers nothing.
> 
> More importantly, nobody knows the mind of God.  Only atheists pretend to be smart enough to judge and overrule Him, and suggest how terrible a job God did in forming us.  No alternative "theory" is necessary to discard Darwinism as the greatest scam in the history of science.  If it doesn't work, it has to be tossed out, whether or not something else has been or ever will be proposed in place of it.  Darwinism is an ATTEMPT at science.  Explaining the divine mind of God is not.  Do not try to make it so.


Wow, did you jump off the deep end...
You made assumptions, without inquiring into the thought process of the poster.

At no point did I say I could have created the human being, better.  You assumed.  
What you failed to understand from my thought process, is it is evident to me that human beings are constantly changing.  Evolving.  In other words not a final product.  Ergo, adaptable.

Theology states we are the final product.  Created in the image of the Lord.  Ergo not adaptable.  

One could simply argue that people "adapt" by the will of mercy by the Lord.  It doesn't require proof, or evidence.  Simply belief.  And if those "blessings" are not granted to an individual, or population, it was simply the will of the creator.  Again, no proof, or evidence required.  Scary magic...and a book to philosophize the intentions of a being that created it all.

Also, before you go off on another tirade, note my post was pointing to my curiosities.  You smacked down on those.  So, I will not be responding to further posts of yours in this thread.  You're not looking for conversing, or debating ideas.  So you may as well add me to your ever growing list.  It doesn't matter to me, you started this conversation looking for a fight.  So, just click on my profile and add away, to your blocked list.  Atta boy.

----------


## Midgardian

Evolutionists tend to look just at Earth itself when discussing the presence of abundant life on this rock, but don't consider the other rocks that dance around our star.

The outer planets (especially the gas giants of Jupiter and Saturn, and perhaps to a lesser extend the ice giants of Your Anus and Neptune) provide protection for the inner planets that feature atmospheres and at least the potential for life, intelligent or otherwise).

Evolution can't adequately explain the relationship of Earth to our neighboring rocks, our galaxy, or the Universe itself.

The action of an intelligent designer can, however.




> when God created the universe, he created the conditions which ultimately produced Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and so forth. In fact, it has been shown by good evidence that the large planets such as Jupiter and Saturn provide gravitational protection for the smaller and more vulnerable inner planets against impacts of large objects such as 
> asteroids. If it were not for Jupiter and Saturn, there probably would be no advanced life forms on the earth, at least according to scientific 
> discovery


http://evidenceforchristianity.org/w...ther-planetsr/

----------

ChemEngineer (09-05-2016)

----------


## Midgardian

That makes Jupiter one really big pawn.

----------


## Midgardian

Or, if we are going to play galactic billiards, Jupiter would block a call for #9 striped asteroid into Earth, corner black hole.

----------


## ChemEngineer

> Evolution can't adequately explain the relationship of Earth to our neighboring rocks, our galaxy, or the Universe itself.
> 
> The action of an intelligent designer can, however.
> 
> 
> 
> http://evidenceforchristianity.org/w...ther-planetsr/


Although you are still on my Ignore List, out of curiosity seeing your three consecutive posts in this subject of great interest to me, I peeked.  What a brilliant point you made.  I may have to remove you from my Life is Too Short List if you don't watch out.

----------


## ChemEngineer

Let's just take ONE compound, human hemoglobin, to prove that Darwinism is statistically impossible.  It consists of 528 amino acid residues, all in a very precise sequence. Oneresidue error results in, for example, sickle cell anemia, which is oftenfatal.

Given the array of 20 different amino acids which might be used, the space,which is to say, number of different combinations possible, is 1/20 x 1/20 x1/20... 528 times. 

This is 1 in 10 to the 747th power. Richard Dawkins defines"impossible" as 1 chance in 10 to the 40th power. There are only 10to the 80th fundamental particles in the universe. 
Even if one were to claim that 10,000,000 slightly different structures of human hemoglobin would all be survivable, reducing the probability from 1 in 10 to the 747 by 7 orders of magnitude is effectively no change at all!  Change it by 100 orders of magnitude if you wish.  It's still impossible.

So it is absolutely impossible that any naturalistic process synthesized humanhemoglobin, particularly when:

1. We did not even consider the additional complicating factor of precisefolding, and
2. We did not even consider the complicating factor of chirality, or handednessof the amino acids, which had to be L or levorotary, and
3. We did not even consider the necessity of peptide bonds between the residues,which are of equal probability with non-peptide bonds.

Darwinism demands that at each step in this "evolutionary chain"which hypothetically formulated human hemoglobin, there was a usefulintermediary. For what was each of the trillions and trillions ofintermediaries used, pray tell? And what were they? These, no biologist canever_ hope_ to answer. 

Then there is the complicating fact that many polypeptides are much longer thana chain of 528 residues, so they are far more impossible.

All of the simple one-liners in the world from Darwinists will not alter these scientific facts in the slightest.
Let's just take ONE compound to prove the point, human hemoglobin.
It consists of 528 amino acid residues, all in a very precise sequence. One residue error results in, for example, sickle cell anemia, which is often fatal.

Given the array of 20 different amino acids which might be used, the space, which is to say, number of different combinations possible, is 1/20 x 1/20 x 1/20... 528 times. 

This is 1 in 10 to the 747th power. Richard Dawkins defines "impossible" as 1 chance in 10 to the 40th power. There are only 10 to the 80th fundamental particles in the universe. 

So it is absolutely impossible that any naturalistic process synthesized human hemoglobin, particularly when:

1. We did not even consider the additional complicating factor of precise folding, and
2. We did not even consider the complicating factor of chirality, or handedness of the amino acids, which had to be L or levorotary, and
3. We did not even consider the necessity of peptide bonds between the residues, which are of equal probability with non-peptide bonds.

Darwinism demands that at each step in this "evolutionary chain" which hypothetically formulated human hemoglobin, there was a useful intermediary. For what was each of the trillions and trillions of intermediaries used, pray tell? And what were they? These, no biologist can ever hope to answer. 

Then there is the complicating fact that many polypeptides are much longer than a chain of 528 residues, so they are far more impossible.

You Leftists may now begin your simple one-liners, which add nothing to the analysis, as usual.

----------


## usfan

Ok, it seems that the ToE is once again foremost in many people's minds.  I repeat my challenge here, which no evolutionist has answered.  I'll quote from the OP, to remind everyone of the subject:

"Evolution has a central flaw. It is contrary to observed reality. The Theory of Evolution is basically a logical problem. It is a False Equivalence. They argue that since living things change within their genetic parameters, that they also change outside of their genetic parameters. Since moths can be different colors, perhaps they can also become a different creature entirely. This concept is repeated over & over ad nauseum, until the concept seems not only plausible, but accepted as proven fact.The argument for evolution is based on the presumption of INCREMENTAL, cumulative changes, that add up to big ones. But it ignores the HUGE problem of genetic parameters.. the limits upon the changes that can be made."

Here is the challenge. 

1. Demonstrate ONE instance of observable, repeatable science where the claims of macro evolution can be observed.  Not minor changes of color or traits within an organism, but major changes in the genetic structure.. added chromosomes, new traits, on the fly adaptation.

More from the OP:
"The science of breeding or natural selection conflicts with the ToE. You do not observe increasing traits being available for organisms, but DECREASING. That is how you 'breed' a certain trait into an animal, by narrowing the options that the offspring have. You do not add traits constantly, as is suggested by the ToE, but you reduce them, at times to the detriment of the organism, which can go extinct if it cannot adapt with the needed variability. A parent organism might have 50 possibilities of hair, skin, eye, or other cosmetic traits. By 'selecting' certain ones, either by breeding or by natural selection, you REDUCE the available options. THAT is observed reality, but the ToE claims just the opposite, that organisms are constantly making new genes to ADD variability. This is a flawed view with a basis in 19th century science, not what we know about in modern genetics."

We have discussed this issue a lot.. here is another thread that could still go on, & addresses the same issues.

Evolution is a hoax

I am perplexed.  Why do seemingly rational, intelligent people bristle at examining the claims of a theory?  It is not a fact, cannot be repeated or observed, yet they defend it with jihadist zeal.

All you need is ONE example of this kind of evolution, where the basic genetic structure changes, adds traits, or creates adaptive genes.  That has NEVER been done, & all observed adaptation is ONLY about the traits that are ALREADY present in the organism.

----------


## Calypso Jones

> How old is the earth?


this is what the evolutionist falls back on when they can't give a good justifiable defense of evolution.  It's either...1.  how old is the earth, 2. If you don't agree with me you are a God Believer.   and 3.  you probably believe in a global flood.

----------


## jet57

> The Theory of Evolution (ToE) is widely considered to be a fact, or 'settle science' by many people who are products of the state educational system.  Most of our institutions present it as proven fact, such as TV nature shows, national parks, classrooms, movies, & other presumptions of settled science.  But it is not. It is merely a theory, & does not really qualify as that.
> 
> Evolution has a central flaw.  It is contrary to observed reality. The Theory of Evolution is basically a logical problem. It is a *False Equivalence*. They argue that since living things change within their genetic parameters, that they also change outside of their genetic parameters. Since moths can be different colors, perhaps they can also become a different creature entirely. This concept is repeated over & over ad nauseum, until the concept seems not only plausible, but accepted as proven fact.
> 
> The argument for evolution is based on* the presumption of INCREMENTAL, cumulative changes*, that add up to big ones.  But it ignores the HUGE problem of genetic parameters.. the limits upon the changes that can be made.
> 
> For example, you can incrementally travel from New York to LA in daily, small steps.  Each step you take is cumulative.. it adds up to the goal of the destination.  If you just took a few steps a day, it might take years for you to reach your destination.  The ToE makes the false equivalence that since organisms can be observed taking 'small steps' in this way, they assume that the big changes are just added up small changes.  But the genetic parameters are ignored.  If you correlate many small steps in traveling between cities to interstellar travel, your arguments will fail, as the very restrictive limitation of gravity & distance is ignored.  You cannot take many small steps to reach the moon.. Gravity will return you to the earth every time, UNLESS there is a mechanism to overcome gravity.  DNA allows the horizontal movement, varying traits & 'selecting' those naturally, or by human design.  But it does not allow vertical movement.  DNA is like gravity.  It will return you to the same organism EVERY TIME.  That is observable, repeatable science.
> 
> The science of breeding or natural selection conflicts with the ToE.  You do not observe increasing traits being available for organisms, but DECREASING.  That is  how you 'breed' a certain trait into an animal, by narrowing the options that the offspring have.  You do not add traits constantly, as is suggested by the ToE, but you reduce them, at times to the detriment of the organism, which can go extinct if it cannot adapt with the needed variability.  A parent organism might have 50 possibilities of hair, skin, eye, or other cosmetic traits.  By 'selecting' certain ones, either by breeding or by natural selection, you REDUCE the available options.  THAT is observed reality, but the ToE claims just the opposite, that organisms are constantly making new genes to ADD variability.  This is a flawed view with a basis in 19th century science, not what we know about in modern genetics.  The high walls of genetics is the gravity that prevents vertical changes.  It will allow the variability that remains within the dna, which contains millions of bits of information & possibilities.  But there is NO EVIDENCE that any organism creates new genetic material or can turn scales in to feathers, or fins into feet.  Those leaps are in light years, genetically speaking.  It is impossible.  It could not have happened, & we do not see it happening, now.  All we observe is the simple, horizontal variability WITHIN the genetic parameters of the life form.  Simply asserting that minor back & forth movement within the horizontal limits of variability does not prove the ability to incrementally build up to major changes in the genetic structure.
> ...


YOUR central problem with evolution is the scientific fact and empirical evidence that backs it up and _makes it true_.

There is nothing to back up the creationist theory.

----------


## Big Dummy

> YOUR central problem with evolution is the scientific fact and empirical evidence that backs it up and _makes it true_.
> 
> There is nothing to back up the creationist theory.


Where are the half monkey half men? Why aren't monkeys and apes evolving?

----------


## Northern Rivers

> Where are the half monkey half men? Why aren't monkeys and apes evolving?


Who says that they are not??? Here we are...at a waystation called Homo Sapiens. We haven't come to a destination...we are still chugging along. 

IMO, all those "space aliens" out there...are one of the hominid scions that split off tens of thousands of years ago and have colonised the best prospects in our solar system.

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Quark (08-12-2017)

----------


## nonsqtr

> All you need is ONE example of this kind of evolution, where the basic genetic structure changes, adds traits, or creates adaptive genes.  That has NEVER been done, & all observed adaptation is ONLY about the traits that are ALREADY present in the organism.


I explained this twice already. There are two parts to the theory of biological evolution: selection, and mutation.

What you're saying (above) is not true, at all in the least. You need to understand certain things, because it sounds like you're not a biologist.

Your argument is based on selection, but entirely ignores mutation. And mutation is the driving force behind biological evolution. And it does not (just) mean an A changing into a C in the DNA. Mutation is very complex. There are many different forms of mutation, there are point mutations and sequence mutations, mutations induced by radiation and physical mutations induced by trauma, or biological (including environmental) conditions.... it's a long list.

Your assertion about breeding is entirely incorrect. Plant breeders regularly administer colchicine, which is a mutagen. That's how they get their new species. It works, ask anyone. It's worked for hundreds of years, long before anyone knew they were looking at evolution in action.

You have physical mutations - you can stick a pin in a frog embryo at exactly the right time during development, and it'll grow an arm where its eye is supposed to be, or vice versa. And, the effect depends on the kind of pin. If you use a clean pin, you get a clean mutation. If you use a dirty pin, the little bits of dirt travel all over the place, and sometimes they have secondary effects, so you can end up with some pretty monstrous tadpoles. 

The biblical literalists are making a very serious mistake - they think they "understand" what's being discussed. Their mistake is called "anthropomorphic interpretation" - which means - when it says God "created" something, it doesn't say "how" he created it, and the human brain jumps automatically to its own image of "what it means to create something".

We need science to tell us how God works. Direct spiritual experience might reveal that on a spiritual plane, but it takes science to reveal the physical laws underlying biological organisms. For centuries the arrogant dogmatic Catholics thought they could "fiat" the earth as the center of the universe, and when they were proven wrong they got very nasty about the retaliation. The thing is, none of that dogma is actually based on the Bible. If you think you understand what "created" means, you're probably wrong. (But you're a typically arrogant human being so you'll never admit it).

This whole business of "macro-evolution" is jumping the gun, it's non-sensical to ask questions like that at this time.

We are at the level of "basic understanding" right now. We need, for example, to understand why all biomolecules are left handed. There's no obvious reason why that should be, but it appears to be essential for life. Why is that? No one knows. Some people have guessed, but no one really knows.

Why is that important? Well, it's because left handed mutations are different from right handed mutations. They behave differently. At some level a lot of biochemistry is about the "shape" of molecules, and a right handed shape is completely different from a left handed shape. But in theory they could coexist... they just... don't.

Everything is evolving, constantly. Apes are evolving even as we speak. The average height of human beings has increased several inches over the last couple hundred years. Even the weed is getting better. We don't know how it works yet, and it's not the kind of thing where you can snap your fingers and get an answer. The better thing to do is, become a scientist and design an experiment. Then you'll have evidence, instead of just conjecture.

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Quark (08-12-2017)

----------


## ChemEngineer

> I explained this twice already. There are two parts to the theory of biological evolution: selection, and mutation.


So profoundly complicated that ONLY Darwinists can *understand* it.



> What you're saying (above) is not true, at all in the least. You need to understand certain things, because it sounds like you're not a biologist.


No, what YOU'RE saying is not true, at all in the least.  Many biologists, and biochemists reject Darwinism.
"Ultimately the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century...The origin of life and of new beings on earth is still largely as enigmatic as when Darwin set sail on the [ship] Beagle."  (Dr. Michael Denton, molecular biochemist, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 358.)

"It is inherent in any definition of science that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really saying anything or at least they are not science."  (George G. Simpson, "The Nonprevalence of Humanoids," in Science, 143 (1964) p. 770.)

"The theory [of evolution] is a scientific mistake."  (Dr. Louis Agassiz, quoted in H. Enoch, Evolution or Creation, (1966), p. 139. [Agassiz was a Harvard University professor and the pioneer in glaciation.]

"There is no evidence, scientific or otherwise, to support the theory of evolution."  (Sir Cecil Wakely)
"It's impossible by micro-mutation to form any new species."  (Dr. Richard Goldschmt, evolutionist. Founder of the "Hopeful Monster" theory.)

"Scientists who utterly reject Evolution may be one of our fastest growing controversial minorities...Many of the scientists supporting this position hold impressive credentials in science."  (Larry Hatfield, "Educators Against Darwin," Science Digest Special, Winter, pp. 94-96.)

"The theory of life that undermined ninteenth-century religion has virtually become a religion itself and in its turn is being threatened by fresh ideas...In the past ten years has emerged a new breed of biologists who are scientifically respectable, but who have their doubts about Darwinism."  (Dr. B. Leith, scientist)

"The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 nought's after it...It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of Evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence."  (Sir Fred Hoyle, highly respected British physicist and astronomer)

"Everyone who is seriously interested in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe a spirit vastly superior to man, and one in the face of which our modest powers must feel humble."  (Albert Einstein)

"Unfortunately, in the field of evolution most explanations are not good. As a matter of fact, they hardly qualify as explanations at all; they are suggestions, hunches, pipe dreams, hardly worthy of being called hypotheses."  (Dr. Norman Macbeth, Darwin Retried (1971), p. 147)

"Evolution is baseless and quite incredible."  (Dr. John Ambrose Fleming, President, British Association for Advancement of Science, in "The Unleashing of Evolutionary Thought")

"The fact is that the evidence was so patchy one hundred years ago that even Darwin himself had increasing doubts as to the validity of his views, and the only aspect of his theory which has received any support over the past century is where it applies to microevolutionary phenomena. His general theory, that all life on earth had originated and evolved by a gradual successive accumulation of fortuitous mutations, is still, as it was in Darwin's time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support and very far from that self-evident axiom some of its more aggressive advocates would have us believe."  (Dr. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 77)

"I have always been slightly suspicious of the theory of evolution because of its ability to account for any property of living beings (the long neck of the giraffe, for example). I have therefore tried to see whether biological discoveries over the last thirty years or so fit in with Darwin's theory. I do not think that they do. To my mind, the theory does not stand up at all."  (H. Lipson, "A Physicist Looks at Evolution," Physic Bulletin, 31 (1980), p. 138.)

"In conclusion, evolution is not observable, repeatable, or refutable, and thus does not qualify as either a scientific fact or theory."  (Dr. David N. Menton, PhD in Biology from Brown University)

"The success of Darwinism was accomplished by a decline in scientific integrity."  (Dr. W.R. Thompson, world renowned Entomologist)





> Everything is evolving, constantly. .


No, adaptation is taking place.  It is trivial tinkering, that is all.

Thousands of man years have been devoted to exposing bacteria and fruit flies to mutations in an effort to create some new species.  All have failed to date.  Every one.  Likewise the touted Miller-Urey Experiment was a colossal failure for a number of reasons, not the least of which was its assumptions were incorrect, and its products yielded trivial amounts of just a few simple amino acids, all under controlled laboratory conditions, not in a mud puddle outside.

----------


## Sled Dog

MORE cherry picked quotes?

Doesn't he realize that the normals all recognize that tactic as a sign of incompetence in the poster?

----------


## Sled Dog

> Where are the half monkey half men? Why aren't monkeys and apes evolving?



Moochelle_dabd41bb041a59f7b5b7cd48d41826f9.jpg

The bottom half is male....

----------


## Sled Dog

> Where are the half monkey half men? Why aren't monkeys and apes evolving?


Who says they ain't?

Who says we ain't?

Evolution is a species response to environmental change.    Humans change their own environment, hence drive their own evolution.   A heck of a lot more sub-normal intelligent human shapes are breeding successfully these days than there were back during...two centuries ago.   That will over time reduce the average intelligence of the species and eventually the species will be so stupid the Culling of the Morons will resume.     But nobody can predict what today's on-going corruption of the gene-pool will lead to.

----------


## ChemEngineer

Lion doesn't turn.jpg

----------


## nonsqtr

> So profoundly complicated that ONLY Darwinists can *understand* it.
> 
> 
> No, what YOU'RE saying is not true, at all in the least.  Many biologists, and biochemists reject Darwinism.
> "Ultimately the Darwinian theory of evolution is no more nor less than the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century...The origin of life and of new beings on earth is still largely as enigmatic as when Darwin set sail on the [ship] Beagle."  (Dr. Michael Denton, molecular biochemist, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 358.)
> 
> "It is inherent in any definition of science that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really saying anything or at least they are not science."  (George G. Simpson, "The Nonprevalence of Humanoids," in Science, 143 (1964) p. 770.)
> 
> "The theory [of evolution] is a scientific mistake."  (Dr. Louis Agassiz, quoted in H. Enoch, Evolution or Creation, (1966), p. 139. [Agassiz was a Harvard University professor and the pioneer in glaciation.]
> ...


Too many words.

I'm not interested in other people's logic, I'm only interested in yours.

You clearly do not understand basic biology.

You should go to school, then come back and talk to me.

----------


## nonsqtr

> No, adaptation is taking place.  It is trivial tinkering, that is all.


See?

This statement illustrates perfectly the depths of your misunderstanding.

Evolution *IS* adaptation. That is the whole point. Duh?

Look here - I had to come all the way over to a different machine to reply to your post, 'cause there's so many useless words I couldn't edit them all out on a mobile device.

You still don't get it.

==> *You are asking the wrong question.* <==

You're looking for something nonsensical, and you can keep looking as long as you want but it isn't going to magically appear in front of you.

The Miller-Urey experiment was not a failure. Go study some basic biology and get back to me.

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## Sled Dog

> Attachment 23653


We've noticed that nobody ever looks back at you.

Now we know why.

----------

FirstGenCanadian (08-19-2017)

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## nonsqtr

The arrogance of the religious zealots never ceases to amaze me.

Most of these clowns have no fucking idea what they're arguing about. As I pointed out earlier, the mere concept of biological "shape" is hugely complex, and these guys are sitting there going "where's my new species" - when they can't even define what a species is!

They're telling me "I've never seen a new species happen in front of my eyes", and because of that, the entire theory of evolution is hogwash.

They're telling me "there are no new species" and they can't even define what a species is!

It's like.... Jesus H Christ.... *go to school!* Learn why you can stick a pin in a tadpole and suddenly it'll have three arms or three eyes or something. And, is that a different species? No.... it's just a tadpole with three eyes. But what would it take to make you say that's a "different" species? If I put a yellow diamond on its back and made sure all its arms were always at a 90 degree angle, would that be a new "species" of frog?

Well.... it "might" be, if you were a naturalist categorizing it in the wild. But no one has any idea how that relates to the DNA, *which is where evolution occurs*. Evolution *does not occur at a macroscopic level*. Anything you can "see" with your eyes is only a side effect, it's not evolution. If you're looking at a "species" that happens to have different macroscopic characteristics, that is not evolution. To look at evolution, you have to look at the DNA. "Traits" are not the stuff of evolution, base pairs are the stuff of evolution.

For instance - an example of linkage between evolution and macroscopically observable phenomena, is the "*complex log mapping*". This is basically what gives a seashell its shape. And it turns out, that if you look in the human brain, there is a complex log mapping in the primary visual cortex which is what "connects" the neurons into a feature extraction system and allows them to perform local spatial Fourier transforms. There is a gene somewhere, that directs this mapping to proceed in a complex log manner, instead of a direct point-to-point topographic manner (an example of which is the wiring from the retina to the lateral geniculate nucleus). Once again, the actual mapping is accomplished by chemical gradients that are set up genetically. Destroying the gene has the same effect as permanently blindfolding the eyes, however there are "other mutations" that create some very specific behavioral symptoms, like highly nuanced dyslexia which is very different from reading dyslexia and facial recognition dyslexia.

Keep in mind that phylogeny began long before anyone knew about DNA. In humans (and most other animals) there is also the issue of mitochondrial DNA, which lives in a whole separate world of its own with different mutation rates and selection responses, but even that is involved at a macroscopically observable high level, for instance there seems to be causal linkage between one form of major depression and a specific mitochondrial DNA mutation.

It's complicated stuff. Saying "where's my new species" and using that to invalidate the entire theory is.... well.... arrogant.

----------


## usfan

> Ok, it seems that the ToE is once again foremost in many people's minds.  I repeat my challenge here, which no evolutionist has answered.  I'll quote from the OP, to remind everyone of the subject:
> 
> *"Evolution has a central flaw. It is contrary to observed reality. The Theory of Evolution is basically a logical problem. It is a False Equivalence. They argue that since living things change within their genetic parameters, that they also change outside of their genetic parameters. Since moths can be different colors, perhaps they can also become a different creature entirely. This concept is repeated over & over ad nauseum, until the concept seems not only plausible, but accepted as proven fact.The argument for evolution is based on the presumption of INCREMENTAL, cumulative changes, that add up to big ones. But it ignores the HUGE problem of genetic parameters.. the limits upon the changes that can be made."*
> 
> Here is the challenge. 
> 
> *1. Demonstrate ONE instance of observable, repeatable science where the claims of macro evolution can be observed.  Not minor changes of color or traits within an organism, but major changes in the genetic structure.. added chromosomes, new traits, on the fly adaptation.
> *
> More from the OP:
> ...





> YOUR central problem with evolution is the scientific fact and empirical evidence that backs it up and _makes it true_.
> There is nothing to back up the creationist theory.


I am examining the science behind the ToE, not engaging in comparative religion.  Why don't you present this alleged 'empirical evidence' & 'scientific fact' that so clearly demonstrates what you claim?  All i hear are assertions.. dogmatic, eye rolling, & ridicule.  NOBODY is presenting any science, just making the usual logical fallacies that the Toe completely relies on.



> I explained this twice already. There are two parts to the theory of biological evolution: selection, and mutation.
> What you're saying (above) is not true, at all in the least. You need to understand certain things, because it sounds like you're not a biologist.
> Your argument is based on selection, but entirely ignores mutation. And mutation is the driving force behind biological evolution. And it does not (just) mean an A changing into a C in the DNA. Mutation is very complex. There are many different forms of mutation, there are point mutations and sequence mutations, mutations induced by radiation and physical mutations induced by trauma, or biological (including environmental) conditions.... it's a long list.
> Your assertion about breeding is entirely incorrect. Plant breeders regularly administer colchicine, which is a mutagen. That's how they get their new species. It works, ask anyone. It's worked for hundreds of years, long before anyone knew they were looking at evolution in action.
> You have physical mutations - you can stick a pin in a frog embryo at exactly the right time during development, and it'll grow an arm where its eye is supposed to be, or vice versa. And, the effect depends on the kind of pin. If you use a clean pin, you get a clean mutation. If you use a dirty pin, the little bits of dirt travel all over the place, and sometimes they have secondary effects, so you can end up with some pretty monstrous tadpoles. 
> The biblical literalists are making a very serious mistake - they think they "understand" what's being discussed. Their mistake is called "anthropomorphic interpretation" - which means - when it says God "created" something, it doesn't say "how" he created it, and the human brain jumps automatically to its own image of "what it means to create something".
> We need science to tell us how God works. Direct spiritual experience might reveal that on a spiritual plane, but it takes science to reveal the physical laws underlying biological organisms. For centuries the arrogant dogmatic Catholics thought they could "fiat" the earth as the center of the universe, and when they were proven wrong they got very nasty about the retaliation. The thing is, none of that dogma is actually based on the Bible. If you think you understand what "created" means, you're probably wrong. (But you're a typically arrogant human being so you'll never admit it).
> This whole business of "macro-evolution" is jumping the gun, it's non-sensical to ask questions like that at this time.
> We are at the level of "basic understanding" right now. We need, for example, to understand why all biomolecules are left handed. There's no obvious reason why that should be, but it appears to be essential for life. Why is that? No one knows. Some people have guessed, but no one really knows.
> ...


So you assert.  You make a lot of claims, but have no repeatable, observable science to even suggest what you claim is possible, yet alone actually happened.  We DO NOT observe macro evolution happening, only simple adaptation.  You cannot extrapolate the Origin of Species based on simple observed adaptation, yet that is what is being done with the ToE.

And, i  notice you still deflect with religious arguments, eye rolling, & ridicule.  This is about science.  Present it, or your arguments are merely religious opinions.



> The arrogance of the religious zealots never ceases to amaze me.
> Most of these clowns have no fucking idea what they're arguing about. As I pointed out earlier, the mere concept of biological "shape" is hugely complex, and these guys are sitting there going "where's my new species" - when they can't even define what a species is!
> 
> They're telling me "I've never seen a new species happen in front of my eyes", and because of that, the entire theory of evolution is hogwash.
> 
> They're telling me "there are no new species" and they can't even define what a species is!
> 
> It's like.... Jesus H Christ.... *go to school!* Learn why you can stick a pin in a tadpole and suddenly it'll have three arms or three eyes or something. And, is that a different species? No.... it's just a tadpole with three eyes. But what would it take to make you say that's a "different" species? If I put a yellow diamond on its back and made sure all its arms were always at a 90 degree angle, would that be a new "species" of frog?
> Well.... it "might" be, if you were a naturalist categorizing it in the wild. But no one has any idea how that relates to the DNA, *which is where evolution occurs*. Evolution *does not occur at a macroscopic level*. Anything you can "see" with your eyes is only a side effect, it's not evolution. If you're looking at a "species" that happens to have different macroscopic characteristics, that is not evolution. To look at evolution, you have to look at the DNA. "Traits" are not the stuff of evolution, base pairs are the stuff of evolution.
> ...


Sheesh.. .seriously?    :Shakeshead: 
ridicule, arguments of authority, dropping a few technical terms.. these are not really, 'arguments', & do not hold up under scientific scrutiny.

Show me the science, not hysterical outrage, & pretended indignation over projected ignorance.

But you are right.. the irrational hysteria from the religious zealots never ceases to amaze me...  and that would be the evolutionists, with their jihadist zeal over a lame theory with no scientific basis.

Put up or shut up.  Provide some SCIENCE, not ad hominem, eye rolling, name calling, & bandwagon assumptions.  this thread has NEVER been offered any scientific evidence, & neither has the one before.  I have examined EVERY claim of 'science!' for the ToE, & exposed the flaws, in the very few times they have been presented.  

And you are wrong.  Mutation is wishful thinking.  It cannot produce the series of complex increases that you see in living things.  How could all the components of an eye, all 'mutate!' at once, at the same time, to form a working eye?  And do it with another organism of the opposite sex, so they can reproduce?  Mutations are neutral, or negative.  they are not the creative power that evolutionists put their trust in.

the constant call of 'Time & Mutation!!' as if it has some kind of magical creative power is absurd.  You cannot observe it.  You cannot repeat it.  It is NON science.  It is science FICTION.  Merely ridiculing those who expose the flaws does not help your case, but reveals you as a True Believer, who cannot critically examine the actual evidence.  It is too bad.   We have quite enough of those types already.

----------


## nonsqtr

> Put up or shut up.  Provide some SCIENCE.


I'm not the one trying to invalidate a theory, you are.

Sorry but you're not going to get me to review the hundreds of thousands of peer reviewed published experiments related to biological evolution. Like I said, "go to school".

You have no case. You're claiming a theory is invalid because its consequences have never been observed. There is a distinct lack of logic in that argument.

----------

jet57 (08-19-2017)

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## patrickt

Why do those driven to proselytize keep posting in a science forum when they have a forum dedicated to magic?

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## patrickt

> Evolution is a Religion.  It is putting faith into something you cannot see, except here their god is man.  If the true God and Creator were acknowledged then there would be moral ramifications to deal with, and the sinful man does not want to deal with that.
> 
> I have seen presentations which show how the evolutionist deal with things.  The one I liked was a school science book which was trying to explain the geological ages, and how they date their findings.  On one page they said they knew the age of the rocks, by the fossils found in them, then the next page says they date the fossils by the rocks they are in, and around.
> 
> Micro-evolution is going on around us, which is small changes, but like Darwins finches, the showed signs of micro-evolution, but the thing is, they were still Birds
> 
> It takes a lot more faith to believe in evolution than Intelligent design, or a Creator


Ah, the faith in floudering. Nothing takes more faith than believing in a magical god who can do anything...but won't.

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## usfan

> I'm not the one trying to invalidate a theory, you are.
> Sorry but you're not going to get me to review the hundreds of thousands of peer reviewed published experiments related to biological evolution. Like I said, "go to school".
> You have no case. You're claiming a theory is invalid because its consequences have never been observed. There is a distinct lack of logic in that argument.


Show me ONE.  it is easy to assume that 'there is all this evidence!' but there is not any.  You just believe there is.  Show me ONE peer reviewed article or experiment that demonstrates the 'theory' of macro evolution.  You cannot.  You can demonstrate simple adaptation, or varying WITHIN the genetic parameters, but there is absolutely NO evidence that organisms can make slow, cumulative changes in their genetic structure.. adding traits, chromosome pairs, or any such asserted changes.

The burden of proof is in those making the claim that a phenomenon is taking place.  I can only observe that this is NOT happening, i cannot prove that it is impossible.  But if you are claiming that it DID happen, & is still happening, then you are tasked with providing the evidence for this phenomenon, & explaining the mechanisms behind it.

Of course there is a case.  It is sound, & the science is clear.  The ToE relies on conjecture, imagined mechanisms, & impossible genetic changes.  If this 'theory' has 'never been observed', then HOW is it a scientific theory?  You MUST be able to repeat AND observe phenomena to construct a theory.  Otherwise, all you have are religious opinions about the universe, that cannot be scrutinized by the scientific method.

I'm the science geek, here.  Show me the science.  Words are cheap, & assertions without evidence are meaningless noise.  I get it.  I know you believe in this imagined process.  But it is NOT science.  It is a religious opinion, not a valid scientific theory.

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## usfan

> Ah, the faith in floudering. Nothing takes more faith than believing in a magical god who can do anything...but won't.


You can ridicule other beliefs or 'theories', if you wish, but it does not provide any science or support for your belief in naturalistic evolution.  IF your BELIEF in this theory is so clearly grounded in 'scientific fact!', why not produce ONE fact that demonstrates the ability of living organisms to change in their basic genetic structure.. either suddenly, or cumulatively, over time.

I'll wait.  I have waited for decades for such evidence, & have looked very closely for any scientific basis for the ToE.  So if you are hiding the clear evidence that will prove, once for all, that evolution is the explanation for the origin of species, & the complexity of life, the world is waiting with bated breath for this revelation.

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## usfan

As a reminder, here is the premise of the thread:

_"Evolution has a central flaw. It is contrary to observed reality. The Theory of Evolution is basically a logical problem. It is a False Equivalence. They argue that since living things change within their genetic parameters, that they also change outside of their genetic parameters. Since moths can be different colors, perhaps they can also become a different creature entirely. This concept is repeated over & over ad nauseum, until the concept seems not only plausible, but accepted as proven fact.The argument for evolution is based on the presumption of INCREMENTAL, cumulative changes, that add up to big ones. But it ignores the HUGE problem of genetic parameters.. the limits upon the changes that can be made."_

My challenge remains unrefuted, & basically ignored.  Show me the mechanism that allows the kinds of cumulative changes in the genetic structure.  DNA forbids this kind of change. Organisms reproduce into the same basic genetic structure, with the same chromosome pairs, traits, & genome structure.  They are NOT lego-like building blocks, that can vary randomly & be disassembled & reassembled into some new structure.  The genome is quite complicated, & it acts as a blueprint for the structure & traits of each organism.  You can have variety, that is within the pool of traits that each organism can choose from, but they do not 'create' new traits on the fly, nor do they make structural changes in the genome.

The more we learn about genetics, the less plausible the ToE becomes.  It just is not possible for organisms to make the kinds of vertical changes in the genetic structure that is asserted (without evidence) by the ToE.

I am NOT attacking anyone's belief system.  This has NOTHING to do with atheism, or theism, or any religious belief system.  This is about a theory.. an alleged phenomenon that is claimed to be the 'origin of species'.  It was controversial when it first came out, then enjoyed a heyday of almost universal acceptance, but it is now being viewed with a jaundiced eye, by many who can reason & follow simple science.  You can keep your religious beliefs, or opinions, about the nature of God & the universe.  You can believe in a big bang, or whatever 'theory' of the universe you wish to.  This thread is about the Theory of Evolution.  It is supported ONLY by logical fallacies, not science.  It does not deserve to be called a scientific theory, since it cannot be observed, repeated, or its mechanisms explained.

Why anyone would be driven to rage over a simple critique of a 'theory' is beyond me.  This is science.  It is calm, dispassionate, & based on facts & empiricism.  Emotion has no place in a scientific examination.  So PLEASE.. present the science.  Show me the evidence, not a barrage of witty insults & ridicule.

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## usfan

> I explained this twice already. There are two parts to the theory of biological evolution: selection, and mutation.
> What you're saying (above) is not true, at all in the least. You need to understand certain things, because it sounds like you're not a biologist.
> Your argument is based on selection, but entirely ignores mutation. And mutation is the driving force behind biological evolution. And it does not (just) mean an A changing into a C in the DNA. Mutation is very complex. There are many different forms of mutation, there are point mutations and sequence mutations, mutations induced by radiation and physical mutations induced by trauma, or biological (including environmental) conditions.... it's a long list.


I'll address this post, since it was an attempt to use science & logic to explain the ToE.  I have addressed 'time & mutations' as the mechanism for evolution, but the indoctrination is strong in this belief, even though there is no evidence that this is or could possibly be the engine behind the ToE.

I put together a lengthy post about canids, some pages back.  I have used the same arguments in other threads about evolution.

The Central Flaw of Evolution - Page 10

Here are some central points:
Selection acts on existing variability.All the traits, from the various breeds were ALREADY present in the parent stock.HOW did 'mutation!' cause these traits?  Why would an organism 'manufacture' a massive array of traits, then let them out gradually over time?HOW did time have any bearing in the construction of these traits, via mutation?




> Your assertion about breeding is entirely incorrect. Plant breeders regularly administer colchicine, which is a mutagen. That's how they get their new species. It works, ask anyone. It's worked for hundreds of years, long before anyone knew they were looking at evolution in action.


Absurd.  Breeding is EXACTLY a narrowing of traits, by the breeder.  it can happen naturally, as 'natural selection', or it can be forced by man.  Tweaking genes in the laboratory only proves that this process is impossible.  You get hybrids, or mutated GMO's, but they are not really, 'new species!'.  They are mere variants.  Claiming 'speciation!' when you still have the same genetic structure is a definitional dodge, not anything that can be called 'scientific proof!'




> You have physical mutations - you can stick a pin in a frog embryo at exactly the right time during development, and it'll grow an arm where its eye is supposed to be, or vice versa. And, the effect depends on the kind of pin. If you use a clean pin, you get a clean mutation. If you use a dirty pin, the little bits of dirt travel all over the place, and sometimes they have secondary effects, so you can end up with some pretty monstrous tadpoles.


Yes, some organisms have a lot of leeway in their genetic structure.  some  have round genomes, some linear, some are polyploidy.  But they always return what information is already there, within the organism's dna.  There is no mechanism for 'creating!' traits or genes.  That is imagined.

And, you still have tadpoles.  This is not evidence for the ToE, but is evidence that the claims are impossible.



> The biblical literalists are making a very serious mistake - they think they "understand" what's being discussed. Their mistake is called "anthropomorphic interpretation" - which means - when it says God "created" something, it doesn't say "how" he created it, and the human brain jumps automatically to its own image of "what it means to create something".


irrelevant religious deflection



> We need science to tell us how God works. Direct spiritual experience might reveal that on a spiritual plane, but it takes science to reveal the physical laws underlying biological organisms. For centuries the arrogant dogmatic Catholics thought they could "fiat" the earth as the center of the universe, and when they were proven wrong they got very nasty about the retaliation. The thing is, none of that dogma is actually based on the Bible. If you think you understand what "created" means, you're probably wrong. (But you're a typically arrogant human being so you'll never admit it).


more religious deflections, with some ad hominem.



> This whole business of "macro-evolution" is jumping the gun, it's non-sensical to ask questions like that at this time.


Macro evolution is the exact thing we are examining.  We can observe 'micro' evolution, or simple adaptation.  The problem is extrapolating that into 'macro!', when there is no evidence that this is possible.  Correlating them as equivalent is the central flaw, as described in this thread.



> We are at the level of "basic understanding" right now. We need, for example, to understand why all biomolecules are left handed. There's no obvious reason why that should be, but it appears to be essential for life. Why is that? No one knows. Some people have guessed, but no one really knows.
> Why is that important? Well, it's because left handed mutations are different from right handed mutations. They behave differently. At some level a lot of biochemistry is about the "shape" of molecules, and a right handed shape is completely different from a left handed shape. But in theory they could coexist... they just... don't.


My point, exactly.  Why claim 'understanding!' for something that is obviously not happening, & has no science behind it?



> Everything is evolving, constantly. Apes are evolving even as we speak. The average height of human beings has increased several inches over the last couple hundred years. Even the weed is getting better. We don't know how it works yet, and it's not the kind of thing where you can snap your fingers and get an answer. The better thing to do is, become a scientist and design an experiment. Then you'll have evidence, instead of just conjecture.


only at the micro level.  And you get dead ends, in the family trees, where the loss of variability can spell extinction.  When organisms no longer have the variability to adapt to changing conditions, they die & go extinct, they do not conjure up new traits to keep going.  THAT is what we observe.  The conjecture is yours.  I'm the skeptic, here, & am not buying the smoke & mirrors of this alleged 'theory'.  You'll have to provide some real evidence, not just imagined scenarios.

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## nonsqtr

More misunderstanding. ^^^

I'm not going to argue, your mind is already made up.

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## Sled Dog

> I'll address this post, since it was an attempt to use science & logic to explain the ToE.  I have addressed 'time & mutations' as the mechanism for evolution, but the indoctrination is strong in this belief, even though there is no evidence that this is or could possibly be the engine behind the ToE.
> 
> I put together a lengthy post about canids, some pages back.  I have used the same arguments in other threads about evolution.
> 
> The Central Flaw of Evolution - Page 10
> 
> Here are some central points:
> Selection acts on existing variability.All the traits, from the various breeds were ALREADY present in the parent stock.HOW did 'mutation!' cause these traits?  Why would an organism 'manufacture' a massive array of traits, then let them out gradually over time?HOW did time have any bearing in the construction of these traits, via mutation?
> 
> ...


All that wasted gibberish.

But no matter what lies he posts, there's one incontrovertible fact:

The Horse, the Zebra and the Ass all came from a single progenitor species.

Glad I didn't bother to read what he wrote.

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## Sled Dog

> I'm the science geek, here.  Show me the science.


What diploma mill gave @usfan his degree in what science?

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## Sled Dog

> As a reminder, here is the premise of the thread:
> 
> _"Evolution has a central flaw. It is contrary to observed reality. The Theory of Evolution is basically a logical problem. It is a False Equivalence. They argue that since living things change within their genetic parameters, that they also change outside of their genetic parameters. Since moths can be different colors, perhaps they can also become a different creature entirely. This concept is repeated over & over ad nauseum, until the concept seems not only plausible, but accepted as proven fact.The argument for evolution is based on the presumption of INCREMENTAL, cumulative changes, that add up to big ones. But it ignores the HUGE problem of genetic parameters.. the limits upon the changes that can be made."_.


The Horse.

The Zebra.

The Donkey.

OP thesis shattered.

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## jet57

> I am examining the science behind the ToE, not engaging in comparative religion.  Why don't you present this alleged 'empirical evidence' & 'scientific fact' that so clearly demonstrates what you claim?  All i hear are assertions.. dogmatic, eye rolling, & ridicule.  NOBODY is presenting any science, just making the usual logical fallacies that the Toe completely relies on.
> 
> So you assert.  You make a lot of claims, but have no repeatable, observable science to even suggest what you claim is possible, yet alone actually happened.  We DO NOT observe macro evolution happening, only simple adaptation.  You cannot extrapolate the Origin of Species based on simple observed adaptation, yet that is what is being done with the ToE.
> 
> And, i  notice you still deflect with religious arguments, eye rolling, & ridicule.  This is about science.  Present it, or your arguments are merely religious opinions.
> 
> Sheesh.. .seriously?   
> ridicule, arguments of authority, dropping a few technical terms.. these are not really, 'arguments', & do not hold up under scientific scrutiny.
> 
> ...


I wouldn't trust your examination of a cheese sandwich.  Science has shown volumes of proof and skeletal evidence AND DNA evidence of evolution.  Religion is opinion based on stories with nothing to validate any of it except the remains of villages that show that people lived there at the time.

You have don't have a credible argument for your proselytizing.

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## usfan

good.  'nuff said.

If nobody wants to discuss the science behind the ToE, i don't blame you.  My arguments stand, unrefuted & unaddressed.  I have nothing more to add.

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## usfan

> The Horse.
> 
> The Zebra.
> 
> The Donkey.
> 
> OP thesis shattered.


these are equids.. provable descendants of a parent equid, that contained all the necessary traits to make each one, which is at the end of the tree branch.. a dead end, & some have even become reproductively isolated.. to a degree.  It does NOT prove universal descendancy, as they have the EXACT SAME basic genetic structure, which they inherited from the parent equid.

But you can dance around & pump your fist, if it makes you feel better.

IOW, this is a clear example of variability WITHIN an organism.. MICRO evolution.  It does not demonstrate macro, & has no explanation as to HOW you can create traits, or add chromosome pairs, or make major changes in the genetic structure.

I showed the same thing with canids.  I could do it with any number of families.  But noting the clear distinctions within each genetic family type only proves how impossible the ToE is.  You don't drift between equids & canids.  they can vary within their genetic structure, but they do NOT become another genetic type, with different genes, chromosome pairs, & structure.

But i waste my time, here, bickering with unscientific minded fools.

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## Sled Dog

> good.  'nuff said.
> 
> If nobody wants to discuss the science behind the ToE, i don't blame you.  My arguments stand, unrefuted & unaddressed.  I have nothing more to add.


You haven't added ANYTHING, so you can't honestly say you have nothing "more" to add.

The Horse.
The Zebra.
The Ass.

Scientific EVIDENCE of the reality of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

DON'T be a descendant of eo hippus, even if you can't change your stripes, you're no zebra and you're definitely not swift enough to be a horse.

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## Sled Dog

> these are equids.. provable descendants of a parent equid,.


PROVEN descendants of eo hippus.

But, even if we were stupid enough to pretend they all descended from a more horse-like creature...they are THREE descendant species of ONE progenitor species, thus your fucking bullshit deflection is...

...fucking bullshit still.


Jesus but your deliberate lies are tiresome.

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## usfan

> PROVEN descendants of eo hippus.
> 
> But, even if we were stupid enough to pretend they all descended from a more horse-like creature...they are THREE descendant species of ONE progenitor species, thus your fucking bullshit deflection is...
> 
> ...fucking bullshit still.
> 
> 
> Jesus but your deliberate lies are tiresome.


Thanks for reminding me to continue to ignore your hateful ignorance.

eo hippus is NOT a 'proven' equid.. just speculated as such.  Many think it was a hyrax.  So your 'proven!' claim is off base.. pure assertion with no evidence.  And your insistence on ad hominem only exposes your ignorance & bigotry.

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## usfan

btw.. if this is all you have, i'm not interested.  You can take your hostile, hateful bile & let it eat you up.  I'm not dealing with your hostile ignorance & bigotry.  You do not present any science, or use reason or provide facts or evidence.. just ridicule, insults, & religious bigotry.

It is too bad you have denigrated this forum into such a condition.  But i will no participate in such anti-science, anti-reason, & anti-Christian tirades.  And it does not seem to matter how many times i point this out, you only continue in your religious bigotry, denigrating anyone you disagree with.

..probably better for me to just ignore you.. too much hysteria & drama.  Your cronies in the peanut gallery love this reality show stuff, but i find it terribly juvenile & demeaning.

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## usfan

> More misunderstanding. ^^^
> 
> I'm not going to argue, your mind is already made up.


asserted without evidence.  You must prove, with facts or reason, HOW my statements indicate 'misunderstanding'.  Merely asserting it is a fallacy.. a run away from real reason & logic.

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## nonsqtr

> good.  'nuff said.
> 
> If nobody wants to discuss the science behind the ToE, i don't blame you.  My arguments stand, unrefuted & unaddressed.  I have nothing more to add.


Whew. Glad it's over.  :Wink:

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## usfan

IF....  everyone is really tired of debating evolution (which i don't really believe), THEN, i will be glad to end it, too.  But IMO, the problem is you guys don't have any science.  You have assertions, wild claims, & imagined scenarios, that you dress up in logical fallacies, then call it, 'Science!'.

WHY have there been NO EVIDENCES presented, if there is all this alleged proof of the ToE, & it is clearly settled science?  WHY is it that all i get is insults, ridicule, & eye rolling, when i ask for some evidence?  C'mon, people!  This is a SCIENCE thread, not the mosh pit.

Why not admit that this is nothing but a philosophical construct, without any scientific basis?  You claim 'Religious!' people do that, but you are not willing to admit this for your own philosophical beliefs?  Why not?  Why the fear over what is obviously a religious belief system?

I know many of you prefer to believe you are somehow special & superior.. intellectual giants, with no need of philosophical/religious beliefs.  And i hate to burst your bubble, but you are just another human being.. groping in the dark.. overwhelmed by the mysteries of the universe, that you don't 'know', anymore than your hated religionists.

But i doubt you will admit it.  Because, the indoctrination is strong, in our culture, & it has hammered this religious indoctrination into you since infancy.

But, if you want to talk about the science, i'll be glad to do it.  I enjoy a spirited examination of scientific things, & can follow pretty technical lines of reasoning.  I can follow most peer reviewed journals, especially those related to the ToE.  Try me.  But don't try to bluff me with techno babble, or dazzle me with ridicule or ad hominem.

I keep hearing how much evidence there is.. how everyone knows this is 'settled science!', and how it is 'common sense!' and common knowledge.  But these are not scientific arguments, presenting evidence.  these are logical fallacies.  They do not prove anything, other than demonstrate that the debater has no arguments.

If you let me, i can handle the science.  I'll show you how the assumptions are flawed, & how the whole enchilada is a false equivalence, & then completely relies on fallacies to support it.  But i cannot 'debate' ridicule, insults, & ad hominem.  All i can do is expose the impotence of those arguments, & try to point us back to science.  I offer calm, scientific discussion, about a major 'theory' that is the basis for many people's belief systems about the nature of the universe.

But if you truly want to end this debate, i'll do so, too.  But you should realize that you have NOT debated the science, but have skirted the issue, going for the fallacies, & ignoring rational arguments & scientific evidence.

So what do you say?  Any scientific minded people out there, who have the guts to scrutinize their most Holy Doctrines of Belief?

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## nonsqtr

You're sounding more like jet57 every time.

"No science".

lol  :Wink:

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## usfan

> You're sounding more like jet57 every time.
> "No science".
> 
> lol


..easy to solve.  Show me.  Present some science, & see what happens.  Why not try a logical, rational debate over this issue, instead of the typical ridicule, eye rolling, & hysteria?

and btw, @jet57 is on your side of the debate.

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## usfan

> I wouldn't trust your examination of a cheese sandwich.  *Science has shown volumes of proof and skeletal evidence AND DNA evidence of evolution*.  Religion is opinion based on stories with nothing to validate any of it except the remains of villages that show that people lived there at the time.
> 
> You have don't have a credible argument for your proselytizing.


Show me ONE.. i don't need 'volumes!'... just one bit of compelling evidence for this claim would be quite refreshing.

You do illustrate some fallacies, that i listed in this thread:
Fallacies of Evolution

Argument of Authority. 'All really smart people believe in the ToE.' This is not a scientific proof, but an argument of authority, as if truth were a democratic process. Real science must be proved, via the scientific method, not merely declared by elites.'Everybody believes this!' This is an attempt to prove something by asserting it is common knowledge. It is obviously not true, anyway, as many people do not believe in the ToE, in spite of decades of indoctrination from the educational system, public television, & other institutions intent on promoting this ideology.Ad Hominem. This is a favorite on the forums. If you cannot answer someone's arguments, you can still demean them & call them names. It is an attempt to discredit the person, rather than deal with the science or the arguments.Argument by Assertion. Instead of presenting evidence, assertions are repeated over & over, as if that will make up for the impotence of the arguments.Argument from Ignorance. This is claiming that evolution is true, because it has not been proven false. But the burden of proof is on the claimant, not the skeptic, to prove their claims. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" ~Marcello Truzzi

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## jet57

> Show me ONE.. i don't need 'volumes!'... just one bit of compelling evidence for this claim would be quite refreshing.
> 
> You do illustrate some fallacies, that i listed in this thread:
> Fallacies of Evolution
> 
> Argument of Authority. 'All really smart people believe in the ToE.' This is not a scientific proof, but an argument of authority, as if truth were a democratic process. Real science must be proved, via the scientific method, not merely declared by elites.'Everybody believes this!' This is an attempt to prove something by asserting it is common knowledge. It is obviously not true, anyway, as many people do not believe in the ToE, in spite of decades of indoctrination from the educational system, public television, & other institutions intent on promoting this ideology.Ad Hominem. This is a favorite on the forums. If you cannot answer someone's arguments, you can still demean them & call them names. It is an attempt to discredit the person, rather than deal with the science or the arguments.Argument by Assertion. Instead of presenting evidence, assertions are repeated over & over, as if that will make up for the impotence of the arguments.Argument from Ignorance. This is claiming that evolution is true, because it has not been proven false. But the burden of proof is on the claimant, not the skeptic, to prove their claims. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" ~Marcello Truzzi


Human Evolution Evidence | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program

----------


## usfan

> Human Evolution Evidence | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program


Oh, now that is rich.  Really?  A link?  That is your 'best shot?'

If you don't know the basis for your own beliefs, & can't verbalize them in a simple, intelligent manner, then all you have is indoctrination & bluff.  You have  been duped.

ONE bit of actual scientific evidence.. not links.. not 'millions & millions of volumes!'  Do you think you can do this?  I don't.
 :Dontknow:

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## nonsqtr

> ..easy to solve.  Show me.  Present some science, & see what happens.  Why not try a logical, rational debate over this issue, instead of the typical ridicule, eye rolling, & hysteria?
> 
> and btw, @jet57 is on your side of the debate.


Why do I gotta show you?

Crack a book! They're all over the place.

----------


## nonsqtr

> and btw, @jet57 is on your side of the debate.


No he isn't.

There's no debate.

You and he both keep insisting there's a debate but there isn't.

----------


## usfan

> Why do I gotta show you?
> 
> Crack a book! They're all over the place.


So.. you don't know?  You don't know of a single bit of hard evidence that the claims of the ToE are possible?  Cumulative changes in the dna add up to increased complexity, added chromosome pairs, & added traits?


And really... you don't believe there is a 'debate' over the ToE?    :Rolleyes20: 

Resolved:  The Theory of evolution is filled with assumptions & lacks the evidence to be accepted as a valid scientific theory.


Or, 

Resolved:  The Theory of evolution explains the origin of species.
..but you've never heard of this debate...

There is plenty of debate, even among evolutionists, & if you toss in those who have serious scientific issues, there is a major conflict of consensus.

It is not settled science.  It is not even a good 'theory' of origins.  it is science fiction, & is all based on speculation, imaginary mechanisms, & unobservable phenomena.

But you can ignore that, if you wish, & pretend your beliefs are based on hard science..

----------


## usfan

> Human Evolution Evidence | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program





> Why do I gotta show you?
> Crack a book! They're all over the place.


..and, btw, these are both 'Appeals to Authority'.. logical fallacies.  They are not presenting any evidence, nor addressing the subject, but are an attempt to bluff or deflect with  a link or book that is assumed to be authoritative.

Evidence... not fallacies.  If it is so plainly there, why not present it, in your own words, as you believe it to be so.  If you understand the basis for your own beliefs, this should not be that hard.

----------


## jet57

> Oh, now that is rich.  Really?  A link?  That is your 'best shot?'
> 
> If you don't know the basis for your own beliefs, & can't verbalize them in a simple, intelligent manner, then all you have is indoctrination & bluff.  You have  been duped.
> 
> ONE bit of actual scientific evidence.. not links.. not 'millions & millions of volumes!'  Do you think you can do this?  I don't.


I showed you a proof.

----------


## jet57

> ..and, btw, these are both 'Appeals to Authority'.. logical fallacies.  They are not presenting any evidence, nor addressing the subject, but are an attempt to bluff or deflect with  a link or book that is assumed to be authoritative.
> 
> Evidence... not fallacies.  If it is so plainly there, why not present it, in your own words, as you believe it to be so.  If you understand the basis for your own beliefs, this should not be that hard.


BTW, those are appeals to reality.

----------


## usfan

> I showed you a proof.


You did not, by any stretch of definitions.  You pasted a link, & presumed it would speak for you, since you could not verbalize your own beliefs.



> BTW, those are appeals to reality.


No, they are fallacies.  What bizarre progresso world do you live in, where logical  fallacies are reality?  Is that some kind of drug induced reality?

----------


## jet57

> You did not, by any stretch of definitions.  You pasted a link, & presumed it would speak for you, since you could not verbalize your own beliefs.
> 
> No, they are fallacies.  What bizarre progresso world do you live in, where logical  fallacies are reality?  Is that some kind of drug induced reality?


I've shown you a proof dude.  Not accepting it is denial of reality.

----------


## Sled Dog

> eo hippus is NOT a 'proven' equid.


NOBODY ever said eo hippus was an "equid".

Eo hippus was the progenitor species of the extant and distinct species of horse, zebra and donkey.

You can't make that evidence go away, so you are going to violate the 9th Commandment to continue your bullshit.

That's all you have.  Just bullshit.

Jesus hates you because you lie in His name.

And you aren't fooling ANYONE.   Not even the other liars on your side.

Evolution of the horse - Wikipedia

----------


## Sled Dog

> asserted without evidence.  You must prove, with facts or reason, HOW my statements indicate 'misunderstanding'.  Merely asserting it is a fallacy.. a run away from real reason & logic.



Q.E.D.

See preceding post.

----------


## Sled Dog

> Oh, now that is rich.  Really?  A link?  That is your 'best shot?'
> 
> If you don't know the basis for your own beliefs, & can't verbalize them in a simple, intelligent manner, then all you have is indoctrination & bluff.  You have  been duped.
> 
> ONE bit of actual scientific evidence.. not links.. not 'millions & millions of volumes!'  Do you think you can do this?  I don't.



This internet thingy....doesn't let us post actual bones through the computers.

We normals recognize links as valid argument devices.

----------


## Swedgin

Well put!

And this is the reason I believe in "Intelligent Design," (basically accepting the Scientific Theory of Evolution....), but still....this pisses anti-Christian leftists off, to no end......

Seriously.  It seems to have gotten to the point that a fervent Christian is accepting if you stress your Faith in Evolution.

Not so much, with an Atheist, if you believe in "Intelligent Design," and certainly not, if you are a "Creationist...."

----------

usfan (08-21-2017)

----------


## usfan

> NOBODY ever said eo hippus was an "equid".
> 
> Eo hippus was the progenitor species of the extant and distinct species of horse, zebra and donkey.
> 
> You can't make that evidence go away, so you are going to violate the 9th Commandment to continue your bullshit.
> 
> That's all you have.  Just bullshit.
> 
> Jesus hates you because you lie in His name.
> ...


Pure speculation.. with quite a bit of ad hominem & false accusations.  But, i am accustomed to such behavior from you, & while i might usually ignore you, i will address your remarks about eohippus, since you present them with such passion & dogmatism.

Here are a couple of quotes about eohippus from evolutionists themselves.

"The evolution of the horse provides one of the keystones in the teaching of evolutionary doctrine, though the actual story depends on who is telling it and when the story is being told. In fact, one could easily discuss the evolution of the story of the evolution of the horse. ... In the first place, it is not clear that Hyracotherium (original name for eo hippus) was the ancestral horse". G. A. Kerkut, Implications of Evolution, 1960, pg 149

"The family tree of the horse is beautiful and continuous ONLY IN THE TEXTBOOKS [Emphasis mine]. In the reality provided by the results of research it is put together in three parts, of which only the last can be described as including the horses. The forms of the first part are just as much little horses as the present day damans are horses. The construction of the whole Cenozoic family tree of the horse is therefore a very artificial one, since it is put together from non-equivalent parts, and cannot therefore be a continuous transformation series."  ~ H. Nilsson

Now, if many evolutionists disagree with eohippus being the ancestor of the horse, how can anyone dogmatically state with such assurance that it absolutely is?  There is NO EVIDENCE.. it is all based on morphology (looks like!).  You have NO GENETIC evidence, that can indicate descendancy. All you have is speculation, which you deliver as if it is proven fact.

Here is a simple rebuttal about eohippus that i turned up with a google search.

_In the 1860's, a man named Othniel Charles Marsh of Yale University became a supporter of Charles Darwin and a defender of Darwin's Theory of Evolution. From reading Darwin's book Origins of the Species ... he knew that Charles Darwin was very concerned about the great lack of transitional fossils in the fossil record. Marsh paid people to dig up and bring him fossils from the American west. He was hoping to collect enough fossils to demonstrate a major evolutionary transformation of a species into a new quite different species. An abundance of horse fossils were brought to him. They varied enough that he was able to arrange a selection of them into an evolutionary order starting with Mesohippus, then Merychippus, and finally Equus. These all looked like horses with minor changes, mostly in size. Marsh had in his collection a fossil of a creature that he named Orohippus which means Mountain horse. Eohippus had been discovered by David Cope, Marsh's chief rival. Orohippus looks just like the Eohippus in our textbook illustration except that a premolar in Eohippus had become a molar in Orohippus. Marsh chose to place Orohippus at the base of the horse series as the ancestor of all the horses. Thomas Huxley, the chief defender of Darwin's theory, came to America to see Marsh's horse series. It was at this time that it was decided that Eohippus (dawn horse) would be used in the horse evolution illustration instead of Orohippus. This horse series has remained this way in textbooks ever since.   

 Today, one could just as easily arrange modern horses in a similar evolutionary manner from the 17" tall Fallabella to the 7 foot tall English Shire Horse.    

 If Hyracotherium, Eohippus, and Orohippus were eliminated from the horse series, all we would have is a series of horses evolving into slightly different horses.  source

_I have known about this for years.. the controversy about eohippus.. whether it is a horse ancestor, or maybe a hyrax.  I find it very bizarre how some people who have no background or education in the sciences make wild claims about things they know nothing about.  I hear similar things about neanderthal, archaeopteryx, & many other of the evolutionary distortions that are presented as 'Absolute Fact!', when they are nothing but conjecture & speculation.  When you spout dogmatic nonsense like this, you only expose your own indoctrination, & your complete lack of objectivity.  You have become a propagandist, & lack the circumspection needed for scientific objectivity.

----------


## usfan

> I've shown you a proof dude.  Not accepting it is denial of reality.


You pasted a link.  That is not a 'proof!'  It is not even an argument.  If you don't understand what you believe about the ToE, just admit it & run along.  Don't feel bad.  Nobody else understands how it works, either.

You demonstrate that your beliefs in the ToE are all about faith, not science, since you cannot present a single factual evidence for this 'theory'.  But this is a science thread, in a science subforum.  I am not examining the faith of the believers, but the science behind the theory.

----------


## usfan

> This internet thingy....doesn't let us post actual bones through the computers.
> 
> We normals recognize links as valid argument devices.


You & your comrades seem to think that links or 'read a book!' is a rational rebuttal, or an argument itself.  It is not.  It is a logical fallacy, with nothing there.  IF you have an argument, or a point, AND, you wish to support it with a quote or a link, fine.  That is good debating practice.  But saying NOTHING, & merely posting a link is not.  It is a pretense of knowledge, hoping to bluff their way in an argument, when they are out of their league, & don't know the material they pretend to debate.

Bluff, assertion, ad hominem, Authority.. these are all fallacies, & come as no surprise, since that is all i have gotten in almost every evolutionary thread i have 'debated' in.  Nobody wants to deal with the science.  Why is that?

And, if you just double down on insults & ad hominem, i will begin to ignore you, again.  This is a rational, scientific discussion, not a flame war in the mosh pit.  Go there if you feel  like berating & demeaning people.

----------


## usfan

Note the above graphic.  HOW & WHY are these thing presented as such?  Is it based on hard genetic science?  No.  it is based on the 'Phylogenetic Tree'.  What is that?  Is it from some stone tablets, found on a mountain?  One might think so, based on the devotion & worship of the followers of these imaginary sequences.

_A phylogenetic tree is a diagram that represents evolutionary relationships among organisms. Phylogenetic trees are hypotheses, not definitive facts.  source

_These are imagined sequences, by someone, who put them in a nice drawing, then in a textbook, then it carries an air of authority, as no chart in a textbook can ever be wrong.  They have no genetic evidence for these sequences, as most of them come from fossils, which contain no dna.  They are completely a 'looks like!' imaginary sequence.. a descendancy of conjecture, because someone thought, 'Hey! That looks like it could have been a horse!!'  It is not really science.. it is science fiction.

And that is the PRIMARY source of 'data' for the ToE.  Imaginary drawings, & the plausibility of the sequences.  There is no hard data to support it.  And when they get actual genetic evidence, it usually spells the end of the claim, but not always the drawing.  Neanderthal has shown us that.  Once ballyhooed as an ancestor of man, an ancestor of homo sapiens..  Now, through genetic evidence, we know that neanderthal was just another human.. mtDNA has proved that modern man has a lot of neanderthal dna in him.. some more than others.  They were NOT another 'species', but were as human as anyone on the planet now.

But that does not deter the propagandists!!  NO!  They continue to pitch the 'neanderthal was subhuman!' line, showing it constantly as a primitive, apelike ancestor.


It is no different with the horse, or whales, or any of the imagined trees of phylogenetic speculation.  The hard science is woefully lacking, so they fill it with imagination & speculation.

THAT is what your beliefs are based in.. NOT science, but the imaginings of someone else.. often not even credited.

----------


## nonsqtr

> You & your comrades seem to think that links or 'read a book!' is a rational rebuttal, or an argument itself.  It is not.  It is a logical fallacy, with nothing there.  IF you have an argument, or a point, AND, you wish to support it with a quote or a link, fine.  That is good debating practice.  But saying NOTHING, & merely posting a link is not.  It is a pretense of knowledge, hoping to bluff their way in an argument, when they are out of their league, & don't know the material they pretend to debate.
> 
> Bluff, assertion, ad hominem, Authority.. these are all fallacies, & come as no surprise, since that is all i have gotten in almost every evolutionary thread i have 'debated' in.  Nobody wants to deal with the science.  Why is that?
> 
> And, if you just double down on insults & ad hominem, i will begin to ignore you, again.  This is a rational, scientific discussion, not a flame war in the mosh pit.  Go there if you feel  like berating & demeaning people.


The point is, YOU are trying to argue something you don't understand.

You're still saying where's my new species.

And I keep telling you you're asking the wrong question but it doesn't seem to register.

That question can only be asked from the perspective of naivete and ignorance. You're asking that question that means you do not understand the theory of biological evolution, and you need to crack a book and try to understand the damn thing before you try to argue about it.

I appreciate your level of dedication, but the truth is you're not going to convince anyone of anything with this argument.

The technical term for what you're asking about is "saltatory", and no it's never been observed in the test tube, but that little fact has absolutely no relevance to the theory of biological evolution.

----------


## usfan

> The point is, YOU are trying to argue something you don't understand.
> 
> You're still saying where's my new species.
> 
> And I keep telling you you're asking the wrong question but it doesn't seem to register.
> 
> That question can only be asked from the perspective of naivete and ignorance. You're asking that question that means you do not understand the theory of biological evolution, and you need to crack a book and try to understand the damn thing before you try to argue about it.
> 
> I appreciate your level of dedication, but the truth is you're not going to convince anyone of anything with this argument.
> ...


I don't get this.  I understand plenty about the ToE... probably more than most.  But what is there to understand?  Nobody here has made any arguments, or presented any science, so WHAT am i not understanding?  I see deflections.. insults.. logical fallacies.. bob & weave & do anything BUT present science.  So HOW can i not understand, when you have presented NOTHING to understand?

You are deflecting with sematics about species.  I am not caught in that web of definitional mumbo jumbo, but am asking for clear, genetic evidence of increased complexity, added chromosome pairs, added traits, creating an eye, legs, wings, or any number of highly specialized organs that living things are equipped with.  HOW did these things come about, under the theory of evolution?  What mechanism, that can be observed, repeated, & tested, can do this thing?  Time & mutation cannot.  What mechanism can CREATE the variety of traits that are seen in many of the parent organisms, such as the canidae ancestor?

There is very little dedication needed from me.  I'm the skeptic, here.. remember?  It is up to YOU, the makers of the wild claims, to support them with valid science.  That has not happened.

I like this.  Saltatory.  What a great word.. and so appropriate.

Here is merriam webster's def:

Definition of saltatory
1. archaic :  of or relating to dancing
2. proceeding by leaps rather than by gradual transitions

So, your argument seems to be (pardon me if i make the inference of a real argument, when none have been actually given), that the transitions between 'species' or phylogenetic types are by 'leaps', rather than gradual transitions.

But i prefer to think  you are using it in the archaic manner..  You are dancing around the topic, saying nothing, & attempting to bluff with techno babble & undefined words.    :Smiley ROFLMAO: 

I don't mind.  I can dance, too.   :Big Grin: 

 :Hammertime: 

I am not trying to convince anyone of some alleged 'truth'.  That is your job, as the defender of the ToE.  I am skeptical, & don't see the evidence for this hare brained 'theory' that has NO SCIENTIFIC validity.

All you have to do to convince me is show some valid science, or make some rational arguments, or provide some kind of evidence that what you claim is even possible, much less that it happened millions and thousands of years ago.

And please.. enough with the 'you don't understand!!' or 'you need to read a book!'  Those are fallacies, not arguments, & they do not present any arguments, evidence, or refute anything i have said.

----------


## nonsqtr

No. You're backing off your original position. The title of this thread was the central "flaw" in evolution. You're trying to argue that there's a flaw in the theory.

----------


## usfan

> No. You're backing off your original position. The title of this thread was the central "flaw" in evolution. You're trying to argue that there's a flaw in the theory.


There is.  A major flaw.  It is an assumption that small horizontal changes in an organism can add up to major changes in the genetic structure.  I am asking for evidence for this assumption, not just assertions that it is possible.  Show me.  Demonstrate the mechanism that overcomes the high walls of the genetic code, that forces all living things to produce offspring like their parents.

My position has not changed.  It is the central flaw.. an equivocation.. that because you can see variations within an organism, you can assume major changes in the genetic structure, given enough time.  But there is no observable, repeatable, or explainable mechanism to do this thing.  It is all speculation, imagination, & conjecture.

The 'saltatory' actions are yours & your comrades, dancing around this central issue, & trying to deflect with irrelevant points, ad hominem, or other fallacies, rather than provide the simple evidence that has been requested.

If you do not have any evidence, or cannot explain it, or don't know why you believe in this 'theory', i understand.  But don't try to bluff me with diversions or distractions from the topic.  I am requesting SCIENCE, not BS, for the evidence for this theory.  Otherwise, all you have are religious opinions.

----------


## nonsqtr

> There is.  A major flaw.  It is an assumption that small horizontal changes in an organism can add up to major changes in the genetic structure.  I am asking for evidence for this assumption, not just assertions that it is possible.  Show me.  Demonstrate the mechanism that overcomes the high walls of the genetic code, that forces all living things to produce offspring like their parents.
> 
> My position has not changed.  It is the central flaw.. an equivocation.. that because you can see variations within an organism, you can assume major changes in the genetic structure, given enough time.  But there is no observable, repeatable, or explainable mechanism to do this thing.  It is all speculation, imagination, & conjecture.
> 
> The 'saltatory' actions are yours & your comrades, dancing around this central issue, & trying to deflect with irrelevant points, ad hominem, or other fallacies, rather than provide the simple evidence that has been requested.
> 
> If you do not have any evidence, or cannot explain it, or don't know why you believe in this 'theory', i understand.  But don't try to bluff me with diversions or distractions from the topic.  I am requesting SCIENCE, not BS, for the evidence for this theory.  Otherwise, all you have are religious opinions.


I can show you.

But first you're going to have to crack some books.

If you really want to know how mutation works I need you to understand something called stochastic dynamics. I need you to understand the difference between a Brownian process and a process with memory.

Mutation is a high level description of collections and sequences of random events, and therefore if you want to understand mutation you need to know about random processes in detail.

And that means you have to know what a distribution is (an example of which is a statistical distribution, although that's not the only kind).

I don't know how much you know, but if you want to know how mutation generates complexity you need to understand stochastic dynamics.

If you don't want to do that, you can simulate the whole thing mathematically on a computer with just a few Simple Rules. Haven't you ever played The Game of Life? This math has been so well study that there's actually algorithms named after the evolutionary processes. Evolutionary algorithms are a big deal in computers these days.

So, take your pick. It's either the math or the computers, and if you want an understanding at a deep level probably do both.

----------


## usfan

Show me a study where mutation, or stochastic dynamics, if you will, has created new traits in an organism.. an eye.. wings.. legs.. or whatever.  Show me how you can increase in complexity from a simple organism to a more complex one.. adding chromosome pairs, changing the genes, adding or removing strands of dna.. or making it circular, or polyploidy.

This is not complicated.  You either have evidence of this, or you don't.  I have cracked many books, & have never seen any such evidence of this widely believed phenomena.  You obviously believe in it.  Why?  What evidence do you have that this is a valid scientific process?

Pretending authority or superior knowledge is a fallacy.. it is not science, & provides no evidence, facts, or even reasoning.  it is a bluff.. an attempt to hide the fact that you have no evidence or understanding of the subject.

----------


## Calypso Jones

> I can show you.
> 
> But first you're going to have to crack some books.
> 
> If you really want to know how mutation works I need you to understand something called stochastic dynamics. I need you to understand the difference between a Brownian process and a process with memory.
> 
> Mutation is a high level description of collections and sequences of random events, and therefore if you want to understand mutation you need to know about random processes in detail.
> 
> And that means you have to know what a distribution is (an example of which is a statistical distribution, although that's not the only kind).
> ...


simulation on a computer is not real life.   I think we've all seen how that works.    

and just as an aside...you're making this way more difficult than it is.   The Science community has to come up with all these 'fancy' terms and models and theories to prove one very flawed theory.   You know what they say...once you practice to deceive.

----------


## nonsqtr

> Show me a study where mutation, or stochastic dynamics, if you will, has created new traits in an organism.. an eye.. wings.. legs.. or whatever.  Show me how you can increase in complexity from a simple organism to a more complex one.. adding chromosome pairs, changing the genes, adding or removing strands of dna.. or making it circular, or polyploidy.


See? You're still asking the stupid question. You refuse to grasp the point. Why?




> This is not complicated.  You either have evidence of this, or you don't.  I have cracked many books, & have never seen any such evidence of this widely believed phenomena.  You obviously believe in it.  Why?  What evidence do you have that this is a valid scientific process?


You're just being obtuse. The fact is you don't even know what you're asking. You have no idea at all how biological evolution actually works.

==> *You need to crack some books*. <== 



> Pretending authority or superior knowledge is a fallacy.. it is not science, & provides no evidence, facts, or even reasoning.  it is a bluff.. an attempt to hide the fact that you have no evidence or understanding of the subject.


Now you're just being stupid. Either go learn the material and come back, or don't and I stop trying to help you.

----------


## nonsqtr

> simulation on a computer is not real life.   I think we've all seen how that works.


Not the point. @usfan is trying to argue something he's completely ignorant about. He needs to learn the math.




> and just as an aside...you're making this way more difficult than it is.   The Science community has to come up with all these 'fancy' terms and models and theories to prove one very flawed theory.   You know what they say...once you practice to deceive.


Jeez.  :Geez: 

Science does not "prove" anything.

Science is a method.

Science is something you do, not something you think.

Come on now, y'all have to do better. Here, I'll give you a hint: go look up a guy named Ilya Prigogine. He's a Nobel Prize winner.

----------


## nonsqtr

Look, I'm trying to be helpful. You want me to explain how mutations lead to complexity, yes?

I can do that. But first I need you to understand what a mutation is. I guarantee it's not what you think it is (right now). 

First you have to understand a little something about random processes, then you have to understand a little about the structure of DNA and how it's replicated and expressed. That's it, it's not hard. 

For instance - I need you to understand vocabulary like "slipped strand mispairing", "oxidative DNA damage", and "DNA repair". (That's right, "repair" - in addition to mutation there is also repair, and sometimes there are mutations inside the repair mechanism - and not only that but there are induced mutations, and there is also reversion). The DNA in a cell is "protected", it's wrapped with proteins that unwind themselves during replication and transcription. When it's exposed, it's "constantly" subject to mutation, it's constantly being bombarded by loose charges and UV radiation and microwaves and all kinds of other bad stuff. 

Anyway, throughout our discussion (if we have one), I will continue to insist that you're asking the wrong question. As long as you're asking "where's my new species", you're asking the wrong question. Your expectation would be unreasonable, if you are expecting any living scientist to be able to snap their fingers and create a new species in a test tube. It's only been 11 years since we obtained an entire human DNA sequence, and no one yet knows what any of that stuff does.

How about we start by reducing the complexity of the question? Since no one (and I mean no one) can define what a "species" really is, how about we start with something smaller, like, we could say, "where's my new internal organ", or "where's my new brain pathway", or something like that. (I'm actually pretty good with brain pathways, I can probably explain that one to you in a way that makes sense).

But I mean, you've got this concept in your mind that's entirely invalid, which seems to be that a point mutation is somehow going to create a new species. Well, nuh-uh, it doesn't work that way. But to explain it to you, I need you to first understand a little bit about how the DNA actually works and a what a mutation actually "is" and "means" in that context, and to understand that you're going to have to know a little about random processes. I mean, look, I'm not going to kid you, at some level this stuff becomes "not simple". When you're looking at induced mutations and reversion you're looking at processes with memory and non-zero Volterra kernels, it's not simple stuff. But you can understand it conceptually if not mathematically, at least that much you need, because you can't really speak to "mutations" unless you understand it.

Brain pathways are actually a great example, because a lot is understood about them. As a matter of fact, there's a research team being led by a professor I know, that right this very minute is in sub-Saharan Africa studying DNA samples from paleos, in an effort to get at the history of a particular brain pathway. This pathway is brand new in the great apes, it never existed before that. And, it is identical in innervation to certain other brain areas near it, which "suggests" that it may have been simply replicated in the genome. This particular pathway is "highly volatile" in terms of its variability in human beings, it is among the "most" mutable of all the brain pathways (that we know of). And, it has to do with one of the "highest" functions of the human animal, which is the social behavior between human beings. Relative to brain wiring, this particular pathway is "simple", it's "easy" to study, it's "accessible", and there is probably direct fossil evidence in sub-Saharan Africa somewhere, and my professor friend is going after it.

Everyone and their brother would like to be the "first" to show a genetic mutation directly causing a new brain pathway. Whoever does that will certainly win a Nobel Prize, or at least a Lasker award or something. It's in progress "right now", and it makes sense we need to answer "that question first", before we can make sense of any questions about species.

----------


## usfan

I completely understand what a mutation is.  Do you?  You seem to be trying to mask the concept in some kind of new age voodoo mystery.. it is so deep & complex you must grasp vortex terminology & be able to calculate derivatives, or some other bizarre, non related inclusion.

Show me.  That is all i ask.  Show me a STUDY, where the mechanisms & processes of evolution are displayed & peer reviewed.  Show me a repeatable, observable experiment where the kinds of major changes to the genome can be observed.  THAT is what you are claiming, that the ToE is 'science!', so it must have repeatable, observable tests that support the theory, right?

You seem to be obfuscating.  You don't have any evidence, & are trying to hide that fact by dancing around the issue, & not getting to the point.  WHERE is the evidence, that supports your claim?  If it is so plainly, 'settled science' as many of your comrades claim, where is the evidence?  Why do i have to repeat this simple request over & over?

Show me the study of a mutation that produces the kinds of changes you claim.  Don't worry about whether i 'understand!' it or not, just give me the evidence, & take your chances.

I don't think you have anything.  I think you are deflecting with obtuse terms, vague hand waving, & distractions (look!  A squirrel!).  If you had any evidence, you would have presented it by now, and while all your cronies are silent, you are left floundering about in a sea of bluff & bravado, trying to make something out of nothing.

Use you 'brain pathways' to provide some logic & evidence.  You have provided NOTHING.

Computer models?  Seriously?  A video game?  This is a scientific debate, not a hysterical claim of AGW or some other progressive mandated belief.  Evidence is what i am asking for, & all you have done, for many pages now, is dance around the issue, & avoid producing any evidence.  You pretend indignation over your claim of MY ignorance, but you have not shown anything but yours, claiming some kind of mysterious 'knowledge', when you have made NO arguments, and provided NO evidence.

If you cannot verbalize WHY you believe in the ToE, & you cannot produce ONE SINGLE bit of empirical evidence to support your belief, HOW is it a rational, scientific based opinion?  Is it not just a religious belief?  An opinion without any empirical evidence?

many of your cronies, & i suspect you as well, are busy searching the internet, desperate for anything that would even resemble 'hard evidence' for your belief system.  Not much out there, is there?  So tell me.  HOW has this 'theory' become the defacto belief, presented as 'settled science!', when you cannot even find ONE test or study that supports the theory?

In other forums, & other threads, i have examined studies of bacteria, dogs, horses, mutations, & myriads of studies that have attempted to give scientific credence to this theory.  For over a century, people have been trying to show how this is the Answer for our origins.  And, it is obviously the Majority Opinion, as fewer people doubt the ToE as the origin of species.

But, it relies COMPLETELY on indoctrination, bluff, speculation, & logical fallacies.  NOBODY has been able to produce a single experiment that demonstrates or defines the alleged mechanism that can do what the theory claims.  It is an unscientific belief, without any evidence, yet it is widely believed.  I find that amazing, in a time of technological & scientific advancement.

I'm not debating terms.. i don't care how you define, 'species'.  Just show me the mechanism for increasing complexity in the genome.  Show me HOW you can add chromosome pairs, simple genes, or make structural changes in the genome.

You should also know that terms like, 'suggest', 'possibly', 'perhaps', 'might explain', & other such speculation are all conjecture.  That is not a definitive, scientific evidence.

Stop pretending you have some kind of 'higher knowledge' about this issue.  You don't.  You are out of your league with me, & your pretension just makes you look foolish.  If you have some evidence, or arguments,  or facts that support your case, please present it.  But distracting with fallacies only exposes your lack of evidence, & makes it look like you have no clue what you are talking about.. trying to bluff with vague, undefined terms, or mysterious studies, or some professor who is at the cusp of discovery.  None of that is evidence, but is speculation.

It is not complicated.  It is very simple.  Show me a valid scientific study that defines & demonstrates the kinds of changes you claim can happen in an organism, at the genetic level.  Show me HOW you can construct an eye, or a wing, or a leg, genetically.  Show me the mechanisms that can do this amazing feat.

Talk is cheap.  Show me.

----------


## usfan

> See? You're still asking the stupid question. You refuse to grasp the point. Why?
> You're just being obtuse. The fact is you don't even know what you're asking. You have no idea at all how biological evolution actually works.
> ==> *You need to crack some books*. <== 
> Now you're just being stupid. Either go learn the material and come back, or don't and I stop trying to help you.


This is just a 'dodge & deflect'.. a fallacy.  You did not answer my question, or rebut my points.  You deflect with claims of superior intelligence or knowledge, but you don't present any evidence for it.  WHERE IS THIS knowledge that you allege to have?  WHY have you not presented it, if it can shed light on the discussion?

It is because it is a bluff.. an argument of authority, without even appealing to some other expert.  You claim to have some deep, mysterious insight into the inner mechanisms of the ToE, but they are so beyond human comprehension, a common man, like myself, cannot possibly understand it.

Can't you see how absurd this 'argument' is?  It is not an argument at all!  It is a fallacy.. a smug pretense of knowledge, when none has been presented.

Enough with the fake 'superior knowledge!' claim.  Show me the evidence, or run along.  You are not going to bluff me with fancy dancing.  You drop a few terms every so often, hoping to bluff people into thinking you have some deep knowledge about this topic, but it is just a saltatory gesture.. a distraction of words.  You  make some nice moves, but you are avoiding the subject.

 :Hammertime:

----------


## usfan

> I can show you.
> But first you're going to have to crack some books.
> If you really want to know how mutation works I need you to understand something called stochastic dynamics. I need you to understand the difference between a Brownian process and a process with memory.
> Mutation is a high level description of collections and sequences of random events, and therefore if you want to understand mutation you need to know about random processes in detail.
> And that means you have to know what a distribution is (an example of which is a statistical distribution, although that's not the only kind).
> I don't know how much you know, but if you want to know how mutation generates complexity you need to understand stochastic dynamics.
> If you don't want to do that, you can simulate the whole thing mathematically on a computer with just a few Simple Rules. Haven't you ever played The Game of Life? This math has been so well study that there's actually algorithms named after the evolutionary processes. Evolutionary algorithms are a big deal in computers these days.
> So, take your pick. It's either the math or the computers, and if you want an understanding at a deep level probably do both.


Please.  This is so pathetic.  Crack some books?  If i was your logic professor, i would crack your head!   :Laughing7: 

Brownian process?  Stochastic dynamics?  This is just obfuscation with terms.. dropping undefined, irrelevant terms to hide the fact of your lack of evidence, & avoidance of the topic.

"A stochastic dynamical system is a dynamical system subjected to the effects of noise."  source

Very appropriate.  You probably didn't realize the irony of this term dropping.

From wiki:
"Brownian motion or pedesis (from Ancient Greek: πήδησις /pέːdεːsis/ "leaping") is the random motion of particles suspended in a fluid (a liquid or a gas) resulting from their collision with the fast-moving atoms or molecules in the gas or liquid. This transport phenomenon is named after the botanist Robert Brown."

If i use more technical terms, i try to define them, so everyone can understand what is being said.  You, OTOH, seem to be dropping techno babble for the purpose of obfuscation, not enlightenment, as most of them do not even relate to this discussion.  If you wish to apply some vague terminology to the topic, YOU must make it apply, by sound reason, not merely dropping a term to try to impress people.

Include whatever obscure terms or techno babble you wish, but provide some evidence, if you want to be taken seriously.  Otherwise, you are just another propagandist, trying to deceive people with bluff & indoctrination.

----------


## nonsqtr

> I completely understand what a mutation is.


No, you obviously don't, otherwise you wouldn't be participating in this idiotic thread.

I'm done here. You need education, and you refuse to be educated.

If you're unwilling to help yourself, I'm not going to help you either.

The rest of it is just too many words.

I'm not going to show you anything when I know up front you're not going to understand it, and not only that, you'll do your best not to understand it.

So, in the interest of not wasting my time, I'm outta here. 

(Watch, now you'll say you won the debate 'cause I didn't show you anything. Well, I have a suggestion - why don't you stop wasting your time. You're not learning anything, you're not helping anyone, and you're not convincing anyone).

----------


## usfan

> No, you obviously don't, otherwise you wouldn't be participating in this idiotic thread.
> 
> I'm done here. You need education, and you refuse to be educated.
> 
> If you're unwilling to help yourself, I'm not going to help you either.
> 
> The rest of it is just too many words.
> 
> I'm not going to show you anything when I know up front you're not going to understand it, and not only that, you'll do your best not to understand it.
> ...


I take no pleasure in anyone deliberately closing their eyes to reason or science.  But you are right.. you didn't show anything, or present evidence, facts, or logic.  You are done, because you can't keep up the facade of pretended secret knowledge of some enlightening revelation.  If you had something, you would present it.  I'm sure you really would like to 'win' this debate, with dazzling displays of evidence & compelling logic.  But what does this tell you?  Your beliefs are based on INDOCTRINATION, not science.  Not reason.  Not facts.  Not evidence.  You may convince yourself otherwise, but if you look critically at the evidence, you can make no other conclusion.

I'm not asking for help.  I'm not asking for education.  I'm asking for evidence, as a card carrying skeptic.  I'm not trying to convince anyone.  I am demonstrating the obvious:  THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR THE MACRO THEORY OF EVOLUTION!

That you cannot refute this simple premise only supports it.  IF you had evidence, you would present it.  But you do not, so you don't.  But don't feel bad.  Nobody else has any evidence, either.  They are just as indoctrinated as you, & as i was, & as billions of other people who have been victims of this grand ideological hoax.

I will point out, that in a science thread, asking for scientific evidence for the ToE, NOBODY has been able to present ONE SINGLE bit of empirical evidence that defines the mechanism of the ToE, & how genes are 'created', or increasing complexity.

This should make people pause.. and wonder.. 'Maybe it is all just a big bluff.'  Maybe i've been told to 'trust the experts!' & have not trusted my own mind to lead me to the proper conclusions about the universe.  And,  maybe you have.

----------


## pinqy

> Note the above graphic.  HOW & WHY are these thing presented as such?  Is it based on hard genetic science?  No.  it is based on the 'Phylogenetic Tree'.  What is that?  Is it from some stone tablets, found on a mountain?  One might think so, based on the devotion & worship of the followers of these imaginary sequences.  _A phylogenetic tree is a diagram that represents evolutionary relationships among organisms. Phylogenetic trees are hypotheses, not definitive facts.  source_ These are imagined sequences, by someone, who put them in a nice drawing, then in a textbook, then it carries an air of authority, as no chart in a textbook can ever be wrong.


They're not imagined. They are based on morphological evidence and details. Horses, zebras, donkeys, all have features (skull, bone structure, teeth) that are similar to them as a group but not to other groups. We can broaden that out and get groupings based on similar features. No one claims the groupings are perfect and they're certainly not "worshipped." They are all tentative and subject to change based on new evidence. 

But really, do you not see that there are more similarities between animals with a spine and those without? And that for those with a spine, we can group them into mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians, where each group has unique features/combinations of features not found in others?  And then we can keep going, grouping into Orders and Families and genus and species etc. But not being 100% certain is not the same thing as just being imagined. 




> They have no genetic evidence for these sequences, as most of them come from fossils, which contain no dna.


 You can get dna from fossils, and dna comparisons have confirmed much of the phylogenetic tree, although also have shown some branches and groupings to be wrong. 





> Neanderthal has shown us that.  Once ballyhooed as an ancestor of man, an ancestor of homo sapiens..


I don't recall Neanderthal ever being considered an ancestor..I remember being taught that they were absolutely not an ancestor of modern human.  




> Now, through genetic evidence, we know that neanderthal was just another human.. mtDNA has proved that modern man has a lot of neanderthal dna in him.. some more than others.  They were NOT another 'species', but were as human as anyone on the planet now.


 Some do consider Neanderthal to be a sub-species, but most biologists and anthropologists consider them a separate species in the same genus. Their body structure, and especially their skulls, are clearly different from modern humans. Interbreeding was clearly possible and did occur, although when and where has been subject to debate.
But that does not deter the propagandists!!  NO!  They continue to pitch the 'neanderthal was subhuman!' line, showing it constantly as a primitive, apelike ancestor.

----------


## nonsqtr

All I hear is a two year old throwing a temper tantrum.

Pouting and stamping of feet - "no! no! it's not true!"

And then the reference to a mysterious "macro theory" of evolution - which doesn't exist. There is no "macro" theory of evolution. There's only ONE theory of evolution, and it works at the level of DNA, and nowhere else.

This thread is way too stupid for further participation. This is like a bunch of software geeks who don't understand hardware, trying to argue about physics. I mean, at least learn a little about wires before you try to tackle the deep stuff.  :Geez:

----------


## usfan

> All I hear is a two year old throwing a temper tantrum.
> 
> Pouting and stamping of feet - "no! no! it's not true!"
> 
> And then the reference to a mysterious "macro theory" of evolution - which doesn't exist. There is no "macro" theory of evolution. There's only ONE theory of evolution, and it works at the level of DNA, and nowhere else.
> 
> This thread is way too stupid for further participation. This is like a bunch of software geeks who don't understand hardware, trying to argue about physics. I mean, at least learn a little about wires before you try to tackle the deep stuff.


 :Shakeshead: 

fine.  Have it your way.  I offered a calm, reasonable debate over this issue, & you want to call names & act petty.

'You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make eohippus into an equid'..   :Smile: 

see you around.  This is hardly settled.  No real debate has taken place.  Nobody has given any evidence or made any debateable statements or provided a premise.  I made my challenge, & everyone runs away.  It is not surprising, but i find it very peculiar that those claiming the mantle of 'science!' would behave like liberals.

It's the 'fake science' indoctrination, imo.  It holds people in its  power, & blinds them to open inquiry.  Loyal devotion to the Tenets of the Faith are required, & nobody dares go off the liberal science reservation.

----------


## usfan

> They're not imagined. They are based on morphological evidence and details. Horses, zebras, donkeys, all have features (skull, bone structure, teeth) that are similar to them as a group but not to other groups. We can broaden that out and get groupings based on similar features. No one claims the groupings are perfect and they're certainly not "worshipped." They are all tentative and subject to change based on new evidence. 
> 
> But really, do you not see that there are more similarities between animals with a spine and those without? And that for those with a spine, we can group them into mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians, where each group has unique features/combinations of features not found in others?  And then we can keep going, grouping into Orders and Families and genus and species etc. But not being 100% certain is not the same thing as just being imagined. 
> 
>   You can get dna from fossils, and dna comparisons have confirmed much of the phylogenetic tree, although also have shown some branches and groupings to be wrong. 
> 
> I don't recall Neanderthal ever being considered an ancestor..I remember being taught that they were absolutely not an ancestor of modern human.  
>   Some do consider Neanderthal to be a sub-species, but most biologists and anthropologists consider them a separate species in the same genus. Their body structure, and especially their skulls, are clearly different from modern humans. Interbreeding was clearly possible and did occur, although when and where has been subject to debate.


You are way off, on almost everything.
'morphology' is just another way of saying, 'looks like!'  So 'morphological evidence' is just someone's OPINION that 'that looks like a horse molar!' It is NOT definitive, & unless you have something hard, like dna, it is speculation.Neanderthal was (and still is, since many have not gotten the memo) considered a 'transition species'.  They did not believe that homo sapien & neanderthals could mate, & it was not until dna that they discovered otherwise, & had to quietly & sheepishly revise their wording.  But they still haven't revised the charts, like the one i posted from brittanica.Only if the material is NOT fully fossilized, can you extract dna.  That would make it a NON fossil.  A fully formed fossil does not have readable dna.Spines?  Everything that has a spine must be related & descendended?  WHY?  HOW?  This is just an assertion, without evidence, reason, or any compelling points to conclude such a thing.
While you're at it, have you come up with any empirical evidence that shows living things able to create genes?  Add chromosome pairs?  Make structural changes in the genome?  That is the topic, here.  Please provide some valid, peer reviewed scientific evidence that supports the ToE, in making vertical, structural changes in the dna.

----------


## Oskar

Evolution is a sham.

----------


## Sled Dog

> Pure speculation.. with quite a bit of ad hominem & false accusations.


So much writing.  Didn't even bother to read it.

YOU asked for evidence.

YOU got evidence.

Now you're lying about the evidence.

Because you're wrong.

----------


## Oskar

> So much writing.  *Didn't even bother to read it.
> *
> YOU asked for evidence.
> 
> YOU got evidence.
> 
> Now you're lying about the evidence.
> 
> Because you're wrong.


Didn't read it, but you are criticizing the content?

Wow!

I am right. Atheists really do have religion and dogma.

You are brainwashed and closed minded, Mr. Junior Darwin.

----------


## Sled Dog

> It is no different with the horse, or whales, or any of the imagined trees of phylogenetic speculation.  The hard science is woefully lacking, so they fill it with imagination & speculation.



Explain why you are deliberately violating the Ninth Commandment.

----------


## Sled Dog

> I don't get this.


You wouldn't lie so desperately if you didn't understand and acknowledge the truth about the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection.

----------


## Sled Dog

> If you do not have any evidence,



The Horse.

The Donkey.

The Zebra.

Why do you lie about the evidence shoved in your face?

----------


## usfan

> The Horse.
> 
> The Donkey.
> 
> The Zebra.
> 
> Why do you lie about the evidence shoved in your face?


In spite of your rude, hateful, & insulting posts, which are completely empty of arguments, reason, or evidence, i will address the equids you mention, again.

I've covered equidae in other posts.

This from a few years back.
Evolution is a hoax - Page 13

I also addressed it briefly, to you, earlier in this thread:




> these are equids.. provable descendants of a parent equid, that contained all the necessary traits to make each one, which is at the end of the tree branch.. a dead end, & some have even become reproductively isolated.. to a degree.  It does NOT prove universal descendancy, as they have the EXACT SAME basic genetic structure, which they inherited from the parent equid.
> 
> IOW, this is a clear example of variability WITHIN an organism.. MICRO evolution.  It does not demonstrate macro, & has no explanation as to HOW you can create traits, or add chromosome pairs, or make major changes in the genetic structure.
> 
> I showed the same thing with canids.  I could do it with any number of families.  But noting the clear distinctions within each genetic family type only proves how impossible the ToE is.  You don't drift between equids & canids.  they can vary within their genetic structure, but they do NOT become another genetic type, with different genes, chromosome pairs, & structure.


You did not even address my arguments here, but just double down on 'Liar!!' and other ad hominem laced rants. Deflecting with false accusations is not evidence.  

We have scientific evidence of the descendancy between the zebra, horse, & donkey.  The mtDNA shows they descended from the same parent equid.  That is why they are ALL equids, from the genus equidae.  The same is true with canidae, & other families with clear scientific evidence of descendancy.  The problem is when you EXTRAPOLATE this variability within a phylogenetic 'type' to universal descendancy.  Just because you can prove that zebras & horses descended from the same parent stock, or chihuahuas & huskies, does not mean you can ASSUME that all living things descended from each other.  That is a huge leap of faith, without any scientific evidence.  It is the 'False Equivalence' that the OP addresses.

So, merely asserting 'Zebras, horses, & donkeys!' is not evidence, contains no reasoning, & is used irrationally.  Of course they are descended from each other.  We have hard evidence of this.  But this is merely horizontal variability WITHIN a genetic family.. that have reached the ends of the tree branches.  They do NOT indicate universal descendancy, or show how you can increase complexity, add genes, or make structural changes in the genome.  The variety in equidae is no different than the variety within canidae, so HOW do these animals 'prove evolution!' to you?

But, i suspect this will fall upon deaf ears, & you will only double down with the ad hominem, as that seems to be your favorite 'style' of debating.  But i am sticking with science & reason, here.  You will not bait me into a flame war, even though you are certainly the 'master baiter' of the forum.    :Laughing7:

----------


## nonsqtr

> I offered a calm, reasonable debate over this issue


WHAT ISSUE??? 

There is NO issue.

Your argument is logically flawed, it's a logical fallacy from the git-go, with or without evolution.

Your claim is that a theory is flawed because YOU have never observed one of its predicted consequences.

And YOU deliberately choose a consequence which the theory can not yet address, because it's not that far along yet. You pull this fantastic and completely unreasonable expectation out of thin air, and use it to claim that the entire theory is invalid.

And I'm sorry, but that's a logical fallacy right out of the starting gate. Your "issue" is a non-issue, it's not worth addressing. If you were genuinely interested in the answer you'd learn the stuff you need to learn. I'll state flat-out, you will NOT understand DNA mutations without understanding stochastic dynamics. That stuff is very complex, people have spent their whole lives studying it.

Yes, progress is being made. In the last dozen years there have been tremendous advances in both technology and evidence. But you're making like the theory is "complete", and it's not. Darwin said absolutely nothing about the mechanisms underlying his observations, and your "issue" is highly mechanistic, and therefore you need to understand the math if you want to talk about it. It's that simple, I mean, shit or get off the pot. Otherwise you're just making a spurious claim and it's not worth chewing up bandwidth to respond to it.

There's a whole class of mutations that don't get replicated. But, in the last three years, we've discovered that some of those are in systems that control replication. This is some serious stuff, it's nothing as simple as A-C-G-T. Mutation is a controlled process in the organism, it's "allowed" more under certain circumstances and less under others. There are "protective" mechanisms and there are "repair" mechanisms.

Until you understand all that stuff, you're not qualified to be asking the question you're asking.

----------


## usfan

> WHAT ISSUE??? 
> 
> There is NO issue.
> 
> Your argument is logically flawed, it's a logical fallacy from the git-go, with or without evolution.
> 
> Your claim is that a theory is flawed because YOU have never observed one of its predicted consequences.
> 
> And YOU deliberately choose a consequence which the theory can not yet address, because it's not that far along yet. You pull this fantastic and completely unreasonable expectation out of thin air, and use it to claim that the entire theory is invalid.
> ...


Show me a mutation that increases complexity, or does what you suggest in the ToE.  Until you do, all you have is loud deflections.  You have NO evidence that this can happen, much less that it did happen, yet you believe it & defend it with jihadist zeal.  Why would you do that?  Why be so fully invested in a 'theory' that is so obviously bereft of hard science?  It is a house of cards.

I have studied this issue for decades, & many others smarter than both of us have too.  Not everyone believes the theory is sound & credible.  There are a WHOLE lot of problems with the ToE, that merely shouting over & accusing 'ignorance!', or 'Liar!' will not solve.  Show me the facts, that support this theory.  Show me the hard evidence that demonstrates that the wild claims you posit are even possible, much less that they actually happened.

*In science, the burden of proof falls upon the claimant; and the more extraordinary a claim, the heavier is the burden of proof demanded. The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved. He asserts that the claimant has not borne the burden of proof and that science must continue to build its cognitive map of reality without incorporating the extraordinary claim as a new "fact". Since the true skeptic does not assert a claim, he has no burden to prove anything. He just goes on using the established theories of "conventional science" as usual. But if a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that he has a negative hypothesissaying, for instance, that a seeming psi result was actually due to an artifacthe is making a claim and therefore also has to bear a burden of proof.*  ~Marcello Truzzi

----------


## nonsqtr

> *In science, the burden of proof falls upon the claimant;*


Hey genius, you're the claimant. 

You're the only one "claiming" anything in this thread.

All you're doing is flaunting your ignorance. You keep saying "no evidence", and all that means is you don't know where to look. There's plenty of evidence, all you have to do is find it. Like I said, you need to crack some books.

I do not believe you have "studied" this issue for years. I believe you've skimmed the fossil trail about as much as "most" creationists have. I believe you know next to nothing about DNA, which is everything in evolution (fossils have nothing to do with it, they're only artifacts).

You're the claimant, it's up to you to prove your claim. You're up against the best kind of evidence there is in science, which is "converging" evidence, which means where different lines of inquiry agree. 

You're saying "show me a new species", which means you're asking a mechanistic question. The converging lines of evidence show us "that" it works, but not necessarily "how" it works. The "how" part is down in the DNA, and that requires very sophisticated tools, much more sophisticated than the readily available off-the-shelf stuff like Carbon-14 dating.

I have a suggestion: instead of wasting your time arguing about things you don't understand, why don't you learn enough to design an experiment to try to disprove whatever it is you think you can disprove?

If you do that, then you're engaging in actual science. Till then, you're just being an armchair philosopher, and I'm simply telling you, you don't know enough to argue the point. It's not about the Carbon-14 or the fossil trail or even the species, it's about the DNA. "Complexity" is not something you can measure by observing organisms in their natural habitats. It's not even something you can measure with the number or sequence of DNA base pairs. The very first thing in science, is you have to be able to measure stuff, because the core requirement of science is reproducible results, which means the other guy has to be using the same yardstick you are.

----------


## Oskar

> The Horse.
> 
> The Donkey.
> 
> The Zebra.
> 
> Why do you lie about the evidence shoved in your face?


All different animals, created that way.

Are you a monkey?

----------


## Oskar

> You wouldn't lie so desperately if you didn't understand and acknowledge the truth about the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection.


Natural selection takes place - it is called microevolution. 

Macroevolution does not occur.

----------


## nonsqtr

> Natural selection takes place - it is called microevolution. 
> 
> Macroevolution does not occur.


See?

This is a perfect example of arguing from a position of ignorance.

This statement demonstrates a COMPLETE lack of understanding of process Dynamics which is what I said in the first place you need to understand that stuff if you're going to argue this point.

The math says if there is evolution at a microscopic level there will ALWAYS be Evolution at a macroscopic level.

Period. End of story.

If you want to argue against that, then you have to invalidate an entire branch of mathematics, and I mean no offense, but you're simply not good enough to do that.

All I'm hearing is more conjectures by people who don't understand the topic

----------


## nonsqtr

This ^^^ is why I pointed you clowns to Ilya Prigogine.

"Population dynamics leading to stable spatial equilibria" earned this guy the Nobel Prize.

"Stable spatial equilibria", that's SHAPE, stuff you can observe with your eyes. Like for example the shape of a seashell we were talking about or the shape of the long neck of a giraffe or whatever other features of the species you want to talk about right?  :Mad: 

Now please stop being stupid and go crack a book. 

Y'all are being very damn arrogant if you think you know how God works. You don't know a damn thing, and neither does anyone else. The only difference between you and them is they're trying, and you're not.

----------


## usfan

> Hey genius, you're the claimant. 
> 
> You're the only one "claiming" anything in this thread.
> 
> All you're doing is flaunting your ignorance. You keep saying "no evidence", and all that means is you don't know where to look. There's plenty of evidence, all you have to do is find it. Like I said, you need to crack some books.
> 
> I do not believe you have "studied" this issue for years. I believe you've skimmed the fossil trail about as much as "most" creationists have. I believe you know next to nothing about DNA, which is everything in evolution (fossils have nothing to do with it, they're only artifacts).
> 
> You're the claimant, it's up to you to prove your claim. You're up against the best kind of evidence there is in science, which is "converging" evidence, which means where different lines of inquiry agree. 
> ...


This is like reasoning with a leftist.

YOU ARE MAKING THE CLAIM!!  I am skeptical.  I don't see the evidence you think is there.  You claim that there is this magic occurance in living things, that makes them suddenly change into different organisms, with different dna, genetic structure, & completely different genes & traits.

What is so hard to grasp about this.  Are you that much indoctrinated into this that you can no longer follow simple reasoning?

It could be, that the goal is to provoke, insult, & frustrate me & anyone who tries to have a reasoned debate about this issue.. i have seen this before, & it is the MO of some posters.  I have not seen that with you, & have given you the benefit of the doubt.

I haven't even brought up c-14.  where did that come from?  Cramming from some Evo sites?

Yes.  It is about the DNA.  So show me.  Show me HOW you can get these major structural changes, added genes, new traits, & chromosome pairs, & cumulative changes in the genetic structure.  This is YOUR claim, not mine.  I say BS on this claim, so YOU have to prove it.

 :Geez:

----------


## Oskar

> All I'm hearing is more conjectures by people who don't understand the topic


That is always the evolutionist argument - "you don't understand this complex theory".

Wrong. We do understand and know that it is completely unscientific.

ToE is unfalsifiable. That is a fancy term that means there is no test to demonstrate that ToE is wrong.

It is a self-perpetuating theory, that is it is true because its brainwashed acolytes assert it to be so.

Evolution cannot be observed. If you can invent a way to observe it happening, you will be the king of this rock.

----------


## pinqy

> You claim that there is this magic occurance in living things, that makes them suddenly change into different organisms, with different dna, genetic structure, & completely different genes & traits.


Nobody claims that.  
Fact: genetic distribution in a population changes over time.
Fact: Looking at the past, there comes a point where modern animals/plants are not found
Fact: Many, many, many, creatures existed in the past that no longer exist.
Fact: All current and past creatures/plants can be sorted into groups of similar features...there are no chimeras, such as a feathered cat, or a ruminant bird.
Fact: Genetic testing, when possible, has confirmed the phylogenetic tree, although there have been a few surprises, but nothing major.

If even one of the above was not true, then Evolution would be false.

----------


## Oskar

Evolution is not pseudoscience - it isn't science at all.

----------


## pinqy

> ToE is unfalsifiable. That is a fancy term that means there is no test to demonstrate that ToE is wrong.


Rabbits in the pre-Cambrian, as an example.  Any truly out-of-place fossils.
A true chimera, that mixes features across phyla, or families. And no, the platypus doesn't count, because its bill only superficially resembles a duck's and it's tail only superficially resembles a beaver's.  Pigs with wings, a Quetzalcoatl, etc.
Random dna patterns, so that there is no match between morphology and genetics.
A dog giving birth to a cat.
A lizard-cow hybrid. 

Any of these would prove Evolution wrong.

----------


## usfan

> Nobody claims that.


of course they do.  That is the basic premise of the ToE.  Here is a chart from a university site, that shows this is what is believed:


It is claimed that some 'relative' branched out, & some became lizards, other birds, mammals, frogs, etc.  These drastic changes are claimed, but there is NO EVIDENCE that this can happen, or did happen.  it is pure speculation.

Show me.  Show me ONE example of a structural change in the genome.  Show me ONE observable, repeatable test that defines & demonstrates this wild claim.  You have NONE.  You talk big, but you do not produce any evidence.



> Fact: genetic distribution in a population changes over time.


..within the parameters of the DNA.  'Selection acts on existing variability'.  You are just saying that there is variety within the families/genera of living things.  This does not prove or disprove the ToE.



> Fact: Looking at the past, there comes a point where modern animals/plants are not found


False.  Too many assumptions about dating are made, & too many times a fossil shows up in a strata that it is not supposed to, with no explanation.

You are only saying that if you dig deeply enough, eventually you don't find fossils.  You cannot ASSUME uniform time OR universal descendancy from this observation.  That is conjecture.



> Fact: Many, many, many, creatures existed in the past that no longer exist.


True.  This is a problem for the ToE.  Why did they not conjure up some traits to survive?  If an organism does not have the variability within its dna to adapt, it goes extinct.  This is also no proof of evolution.  It is observable evidence that can fit in many models of origins.



> Fact: All current and past creatures/plants can be sorted into groups of similar features...there are no chimeras, such as a feathered cat, or a ruminant bird.


Irrelevant.  If you posit a Creator, why would this Higher Power NOT create things similarly?  This is not a 'proof!' of evolution, just a simple observation of the similarity of living things.  That does NOT compel a conclusion of descendancy.



> Fact: Genetic testing, when possible, has confirmed the phylogenetic tree, although there have been a few surprises, but nothing major.


There have been some confirmations with genetics, & some that debunk the morphological classifications.  this is not a positive or negative, as science always changes with new information.  Someone posits a theory, then another refutes it, or debunks it, or finds more info to support it.  that is science.  To claim that the scientific method somehow secretly roots for the ToE is absurd.  It is a dispassionate observer, nothing more.  The scientific method is not about percentages of guessing right, or how many times you are wrong.  it is about testing, repeating, & observing certain phenomena, & drawing conclusions based on those tests.  Not all of the conclusions are right, or wrong.  So how does the guess about the 'looks like!' morphology in the phlygenetic tree have any bearing on the actual descendancy (or not) of some visual guess?  That is an irrelevant data set, & has no bearing on the truth or falsehood of the theory being presented.



> If even one of the above was not true, then Evolution would be false.


That is your belief.  I don't see the compelling reasoning for this conclusion, but if you think you just disproved evolution with some baseless assertions, that is fine with me.  Your statements here are not logical or scientific compelling reasons to conclude much of anything about the ToE.. whether it is validated or invalidated.  So i don't see how you got to your final conclusion.  It seems a bit of a  non sequitur..

----------


## nonsqtr

> This is like reasoning with a leftist.


Yeah. You're the leftist.  :Wink: 




> YOU ARE MAKING THE CLAIM!!


You started the thread. The thread says there is a "flaw" in evolution, that is your claim.  :Dontknow: 




> I am skeptical.  I don't see the evidence you think is there.  You claim that there is this magic occurance in living things, that makes them suddenly change into different organisms, with different dna, genetic structure, & completely different genes & traits.


No, I never said that. In fact I said exactly the opposite. The difference in DNA between humans and apes is only a few percent.




> What is so hard to grasp about this.  Are you that much indoctrinated into this that you can no longer follow simple reasoning?
> 
> It could be, that the goal is to provoke, insult, & frustrate me & anyone who tries to have a reasoned debate about this issue.. i have seen this before, & it is the MO of some posters.  I have not seen that with you, & have given you the benefit of the doubt.
> 
> I haven't even brought up c-14.  where did that come from?  Cramming from some Evo sites?
> 
> Yes.  It is about the DNA.  So show me.  Show me HOW you can get these major structural changes, added genes, new traits, & chromosome pairs, & cumulative changes in the genetic structure.  This is YOUR claim, not mine.  I say BS on this claim, so YOU have to prove it.


I can prove it, that part is easy. But first you have to understand what you're looking at. If I just "show you something", it's going to look like magic to you, and you're going to accuse me of waving my hands like a magician. 

I'm telling you clearly: you have to crack a few books. You're not going to understand anything with your current level of misunderstanding. You're making a whole series of nonsensical statements, like the one above about different DNA and completely different genes and traits.

You should stop trying to argue this point, and crack a few books instead, until you're good enough to design a few experiments. Then come back and talk to me, and we can have a nice detailed debate.

It's not my job to school you in the basics of the human genome. It's your job to understand it, if you want to make a blatant claim like you're trying to make in this thread. 

I'm telling you (clearly I hope): you need to understand what a mutation is, before you can argue its significance. Are you aware that the same gene that codes for blue eyes at birth, codes for Parkinson's later in life? Why is it, that if you get a "mutation" in one, you don't automatically get a "mutation" in the other?

To answer that question, you have to understand how the genome works, how it exposes itself under certain conditions, and how and why it tries to repair itself under other conditions. A "mutation" is not equivalent to a photon hitting a nucleotide in the right place.

Yes, there have plenty of experiments done on how you can double the number of chromosomes. You don't seem to know about any of them. Google might be your friend. Start somewhere. Google books, real books, wherever. Lehninger's "Biochemistry" is the standard text for understanding the portion of the DNA which can not be mutated (any mutations in the Krebs cycle are invariably fatal).

----------


## nonsqtr

> Evolution is not pseudoscience - it isn't science at all.


You really REALLY don't get it. 

Evolution is a beautiful mechanism. It is God's way of "creating" species. If you truly understood how this incredibly awesome set of natural laws actually works, you wouldn't say idiotic stuff like that ^^^.

You're just pissing all over one of God's most beautiful creations. Do you realize, that our DNA can specifically control not only which parts of it are susceptible to mutation, but "how much" mutation they're susceptible to?

Our genome is "specifically directed" to mutate along certain lines, and not along others.

In addition to the environmental "niches" involved in natural selection, there are niches within the DNA itself.

Yeah man. It's entirely fucking mind-boggling how many arrogant human beings want tell God that His reality isn't real. People like that are entirely guilty of "contempt prior to investigation". Their faith is misplaced in human arrogance, because they think they understand what the word "create" means. They think their puny little brains are capable of understanding one of God's most marvelous creations, just by looking at it. They're that smart, they can understand the Creator just by looking at His creations.

----------

Taylor (08-24-2017)

----------


## usfan

> You really REALLY don't get it. 
> 
> Evolution is a beautiful mechanism. It is God's way of "creating" species. If you truly understood how this incredibly awesome set of natural laws actually works, you wouldn't say idiotic stuff like that ^^^.
> 
> You're just pissing all over one of God's most beautiful creations. Do you realize, that our DNA can specifically control not only which parts of it are susceptible to mutation, but "how much" mutation they're susceptible to?
> 
> Our genome is "specifically directed" to mutate along certain lines, and not along others.
> 
> In addition to the environmental "niches" involved in natural selection, there are niches within the DNA itself.
> ...


Amazing.

How about you provide ONE bit of evidence for this 'beautiful mechanism'?  talk is cheap.  You claim to be scientific, where is the science?  all you have done is insult, demean, & assert.  You have not presented ONE SINGLE bit of empirical evidence that your fantastic claim is even possible.

So until you do, you are just a blowhard.. ranting on & insulting people with pretended knowledge, that you won't provide.

All of this is unbased assertions.. you make up stuff, declare it with some expletives, & hope that the outrage will substitute for empirical evidence.  It does not.  You still have NO evidence.  NO science.  all you have is assertions.. very passionate, True Believer kinds of assertions, but assertions, none the less.

----------

Oskar (08-24-2017)

----------


## Oskar

> Yeah man. It's entirely fucking mind-boggling how many arrogant human beings want tell God that His reality isn't real. People like that are entirely guilty of "contempt prior to investigation". Their faith is misplaced in human arrogance, because they think they understand what the word "create" means. They think their puny little brains are capable of understanding one of God's most marvelous creations, just by looking at it. They're that smart, they can understand the Creator just by looking at His creations.


Investigation has been conducted and evolution found to be lacking for a single shred of evidence. 

Human arrogance is at play, among the evolutionists - they think that they can supplant God with their "theory".

----------


## Sled Dog

> That is always the evolutionist argument - "you don't understand this complex theory".
> 
> Wrong. We do understand and know that it is completely unscientific.
> 
> ToE is unfalsifiable. That is a fancy term that means there is no test to demonstrate that ToE is wrong.
> 
> It is a self-perpetuating theory, that is it is true because its brainwashed acolytes assert it to be so.
> 
> Evolution cannot be observed. If you can invent a way to observe it happening, you will be the king of this rock.



But it's not a complex theory at all.

It's fairly simple, and simply wonderful in the way it demonstrates how complexity can come from simplicity.

You people just like the lies in your magic book.

Because they make you feel good, even though they have nothing to do with the real world.

----------


## Sled Dog

> investigation has been conducted and evolution found to be lacking for a single shred of evidence. 
> 
> Human arrogance is at play, among the evolutionists - they think that they can supplant god with their "theory".


  haz.

----------


## Sled Dog

> Amazing.
> 
> How about you provide ONE bit of evidence for this 'beautiful mechanism'?


I'm tired of treating the LIARS who claim there is no evidence.

I've posted, repeatedly, evidence to this mindless thing, and the damn robot won't stop with the lies.

the word that will now mean that some fool is worthless because he's too dishonest to admit the evidence  is "HAZ".  

To my mulatto friends, that stands for:

Horse's
Ass,
Zebra.

----------


## Sled Dog

> See?
> 
> This is a perfect example of arguing from a position of ignorance.


It's an argument of lies in defense of ignorance.

Considering that this particular poster has probably been banned from here several times, I'm not going to waste time answering the thing or being nice to it.

----------


## Calypso Jones

> I'm tired of treating the LIARS who claim there is no evidence.
> 
> I've posted, repeatedly, evidence to this mindless thing, and the damn robot won't stop with the lies.
> 
> the word that will now mean that some fool is worthless because he's too dishonest to admit the evidence  is "HAZ".  
> 
> To my mulatto friends, that stands for:
> 
> Horse's
> ...


there is not a shred of evidence. It is all conjecture, wish and fantasy.  Even this soup mixture they came up with is not even elements that were on earth. THEY ADMITTED so.  No simulation of the proverbial soup of life has ever been recreated in a test tube or lab.

----------

Oskar (08-25-2017)

----------


## FirstGenCanadian

> there is not a shred of evidence. It is all conjecture, wish and fantasy.  Even this soup mixture they came up with is not even elements that were on earth. THEY ADMITTED so.  No simulation of the proverbial soup of life has ever been recreated in a test tube or lab.


 :Geez:

----------


## Calypso Jones

> 


am I off topic?

----------


## usfan

Let me point out some observations, since we are dealing with observational science:

Variation WITHIN a family/genera/species is merely micro evolution, or simple variability.  That is observed & acknowledged by every scientist.  Zebras, horses, & donkeys fall under that classification.  So do fruit flies, bacteria, dogs, & just about all other life forms that vary within their genetic families.The unsubstantiated claim of vertical changes in the genetic structure are all imagined.  There is NO EVIDENCE that this can, or did, happen.  There is NO mechanism to make these kinds of structural changes in the genome.  No mechanism to 'create' genes, add traits (that were not already there), or morph into some entirely different genetic base.All of the deflections about the easily verified phenomenon of variability has no bearing on the claim of structural changes in the genome.  'Micro' does not prove 'Macro'.It is a 'false equivalence', or an argument of equivocation, like saying since you can walk from toledo to kalamazoo, you can walk to the moon.  DNA is like gravity.  It will allow some horizontal variability, but not the vertical differences between the phylogenetic types.Ad hominem, ridicule, eye rolling, 'everybody knows the ToE is fact!', and many other tactics here are NOT evidence, but fallacies.  They merely expose the obvious lack of evidence for this 'theory'.That nobody even tries to present arguments or evidence proves the impotence of the theory, that it relies completely on indoctrination, assertion, & mandate, NOT empirical science.Merely repeating the same 'non-argument's, that have no reason or science behind them does not substantiate your claim.  You must demonstrate, with valid science, the claims you make.  Assertions can be dismissed, without evidence.The people making the claim of universal descendancy are tasked with proving this 'theory'.  it is not up to skeptics to disprove it.  YOU are claiming these structural changes in the DNA, so YOU must demonstrate HOW this can happen, when all of observational science says otherwise.
It is quite simple.  Put up, or shut up.  Prove it.  SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE!  If you don't have any, or can't express WHY you believe in this hare brained 'theory', admit it, & i will leave you with your religious beliefs.  This is America, & i believe in tolerance toward other's religious beliefs.  But to try to bluff with SCIENCE, & claim your beliefs are somehow Absolute Truth, is decidedly UNscientific, bigoted, arrogant, & absurd.

All i see in threads like this are examples of indoctrination.  There is no science, no reason, & certainly no civility.  It is religious zeal, pretending to be rational science.  I point this out, every so often, but the jihadists continue with their, 'Kill the infidels!!'  'Blasphemers of Darwin should not live!'

If you have evidence for your beliefs, then you live an evidentiary based existence.  If you do not have evidence for your beliefs, you live by faith.. in other people, what you have been taught, state indoctrination, or other such influences of religious belief.  But this is a science thread.  I am asking for scientific evidence for any & all claims, not which religious fanatics can shout the loudest.  Prove it.  Give me simple evidence for your claims, or you are just another religious fanatic, demanding that i believe in your gods.

Nothing has really changed, in the world of man, has it?

----------


## usfan

> I've posted, repeatedly, evidence to this mindless thing, and the damn robot won't stop with the lies.


show me ONE.  You have not presented any evidence, but mere examples of variability.. 'micro' evolution, not the structural changes you claim happen.

Deflecting with ad hominem, false accusations, & pretended outrage will not help your arguments, or give you scientific credibility.  They only show you as a propagandist, indoctrinated into your religious beliefs, & unable to think scientifically, or critically examine anything.

----------


## nonsqtr

> there is not a shred of evidence. It is all conjecture, wish and fantasy.


If you're talking about creating a new species in a test tube, yeah you're right. It's never been done. There's "no evidence".




> Even this soup mixture they came up with is not even elements that were on earth. THEY ADMITTED so.  No simulation of the proverbial soup of life has ever been recreated in a test tube or lab.


See - now I'm going to take you back to my earlier question. Why are all the biomolecules left-handed? That is ultimately a much more interesting question than the creation of species. I'm very confident that species-creation will ultimately roll out along almost exactly the same lines that the human immune system has been shown to work. But this idea of left-handed molecules is.... quite amazing.

----------


## usfan

> there is not a shred of evidence. It is all conjecture, wish and fantasy.  Even this soup mixture they came up with is not even elements that were on earth. THEY ADMITTED so.  No simulation of the proverbial soup of life has ever been recreated in a test tube or lab.


And this is just the claim of abiogenesis.  The BELIEF that life spontaneously arose from non-life, by natural processes.

But the FACT is, that ALL the technology & money & combined intelligence of man has NOT been able to create even the tiniest spark of life.  They claim 'building blocks!', but that is not life.

Now, if abiogenesis were a valid scientific phenomenon, would we not be able to observe it, test it, repeat it, under the most rigorous of conditions?  If this event allegedly happened, in a lifeless primordial ooze, why can it not be observed or repeated under strict laboratory conditions, that could not have possibly existed in a random open system?

I submit that the BELIEF in abiogenesis, which almost always accompanies the BELIEF in the ToE, is the same naturalistic religious belief.. an OPINION about the nature of the universe, without any empirical evidence to support it.  These are religious opinions, nothing more.  There is no science to back up the claims.

Think i'm wrong?  Easy.  Prove it.  Show me ONE instance of abiogenesis, or ONE instance of vertical changes in the genetic structure.. adding traits.. changing the genome structure.  I repeat this over & over, yet nobody even attempts to provide evidence.  Why is that, if this 'theory' is so obviously 'settled science!'?

----------


## nonsqtr

> And this is just the claim of abiogenesis.  The BELIEF that life spontaneously arose from non-life, by natural processes.
> 
> But the FACT is, that ALL the technology & money & combined intelligence of man has NOT been able to create even the tiniest spark of life.  They claim 'building blocks!', but that is not life.
> 
> Now, if abiogenesis were a valid scientific phenomenon, would we not be able to observe it, test it, repeat it, under the most rigorous of conditions?  If this event allegedly happened, in a lifeless primordial ooze, why can it not be observed or repeated under strict laboratory conditions, that could not have possibly existed in a random open system?
> 
> I submit that the BELIEF in abiogenesis, which almost always accompanies the BELIEF in the ToE, is the same naturalistic religious belief.. an OPINION about the nature of the universe, without any empirical evidence to support it.  These are religious opinions, nothing more.  There is no science to back up the claims.
> 
> Think i'm wrong?  Easy.  Prove it.  Show me ONE instance of abiogenesis, or ONE instance of vertical changes in the genetic structure.. adding traits.. changing the genome structure.  I repeat this over & over, yet nobody even attempts to provide evidence.  Why is that, if this 'theory' is so obviously 'settled science!'?


More misunderstanding.

Life is a natural property of the universe.

All things in this universe are living.

An electron in a rock is just as alive as the one in your body.

You are working from an antiquated and highly flawed set of assumptions.

----------

Puzzling Evidence (08-29-2017)

----------


## usfan

> More misunderstanding.
> 
> Life is a natural property of the universe.
> 
> All things in this universe are living.
> 
> An electron in a rock is just as alive as the one in your body.
> 
> You are working from an antiquated and highly flawed set of assumptions.


Are you serious?  You don't believe in the phenomenon called 'Life'?  You think a butterfly & a rock are the same?

Life is a very unique & mysterious thing, that we do not understand.  We know about molecules & atomic science, but we cannot really explain life.  It is not just neutrons & electrons.. it is quite different & unique.

No, there is something called 'dead matter'.  It is quite different from 'living matter'.  And they are not 'alive' in the same way a living cell is.  DNA is a big difference, & so is a mysterious property we cannot define or reproduce.  Something animates matter, to make it alive.  For millennia, humans have tried to understand it, hypothesizing Frankenstein-like theories, & spontaneous generation.

Perhaps you were joking, or trying to get a rise out of me.  If so, you succeeded!   :Big Grin:

----------

nonsqtr (08-25-2017)

----------


## Jehoshaphat

> Ah, the faith in floudering. Nothing takes more faith than believing in a magical god who can do anything...but won't.


Would that be your magical god of evolution that turns a rock into a human.  What does the rock and the human have in common...They were both Created by the same God.

If you don't believe in God, then why are you saying He won't do anything.  Why should he do anything for someone who doesn't believe in Him?

----------


## Sled Dog

> there is not a shred of evidence. It is all conjecture, wish and fantasy.  Even this soup mixture they came up with is not even elements that were on earth. THEY ADMITTED so.  No simulation of the proverbial soup of life has ever been recreated in a test tube or lab.


haz

----------


## Sled Dog

> It is quite simple.  Put up, or shut up.  Prove it.  SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE!


haz

----------


## Sled Dog

> show me ONE.



haz

----------


## Sled Dog

> If you're talking about creating a new species in a test tube, yeah you're right. It's never been done. There's "no evidence".
> 
> 
> See - now I'm going to take you back to my earlier question. Why are all the biomolecules left-handed? That is ultimately a much more interesting question than the creation of species. I'm very confident that species-creation will ultimately roll out along almost exactly the same lines that the human immune system has been shown to work. But this idea of left-handed molecules is.... quite amazing.


I believe the answer to that question is essentially the same as the answer to why the universe terrene matter and not contra-terrene matter.   

It's simply one of numbers.   The universe is matter and not anti-matter because there was a slight imbalance, the matter out numbered the anti-matter, and thus the universe is what we call "matter", today.

For the predominance of levo-rotary molecules on earth, it's almost certainly due to the predominance of processes needing those molecules, and replicating them, over processes using dextro-rotary molecules.

A numbers thing.

If we had access to examples of life on other planets, it would be interesting to see if left-handed chirality is universal or merely random.   As it stands, we cannot make universal generalizations from a single datum.

----------

nonsqtr (08-26-2017),Puzzling Evidence (08-29-2017)

----------


## Sled Dog

> I submit that the BELIEF in abiogenesis, which almost always accompanies the BELIEF in the ToE, is the same naturalistic religious belief.


As usual, you're wrong.

There are two possibilities for the origin of life.

A religious belief in some magical arrangement of dirt by the supernatural in some way.

The only alternative to the religious option is the natural option.

Because it's the ALTERNATIVE to the religious options, it's the non-religious option.  The RATIONAL option.

Your claim that it's a "religion" is just your usual lies and projections.

haz.

----------


## usfan

> As usual, you're wrong.
> 
> There are two possibilities for the origin of life.
> A religious belief in some magical arrangement of dirt by the supernatural in some way.
> The only alternative to the religious option is the natural option.
> Because it's the ALTERNATIVE to the religious options, it's the non-religious option.  The RATIONAL option.
> Your claim that it's a "religion" is just your usual lies and projections.
> haz.


You merely attempt to marginalize or belittle a valid option for origins with demeaning words.  It does not remove it as a possibility.  Abiogenesis is a belief, just as intelligent design.  Labeling one, 'science!', and the other, 'religion!' is  just semantics.  It does not change the facts that both are beliefs about the origin of life.

Your own Richard Dawkins believes in intelligent design, regarding the origins of life.  He has stated, repeatedly, that he believes aliens seeded life on earth.  Any evidence?  None.  But he sees the unlikely event of random, natural causes 'sparking' life, under primitive, primordial conditions, & is driven to that conclusion.

If man cannot create life under the most rigorous, perfect conditions, HOW did it allegedly happen spontaneously, in an atmosphere of dead matter?  There is absolutely NO EVIDENCE that life can begin spontaneously, under natural conditions.  So this is merely a RELIGIOUS BELIEF, with no evidence.  To belittle another's religious belief, & pretend that your own is superior, is just religious bigotry.  it is not science.

..and, chanting your mantras over & over does not resolve the irrationality of the claim, or the obvious fact that those equids are genetically related, but many are not.  Equivocation is not valid evidence.  Those equids do not prove or demonstrate your belief in major structural changes to the organism.

----------


## Sled Dog

> You merely attempt to marginalize or belittle a valid option for origins.


haz.

----------


## nonsqtr

> Perhaps you were joking, or trying to get a rise out of me.  If so, you succeeded!


 :Tongue20: 

 :Smiley ROFLMAO: 

 :Smile: 




> Are you serious?


Yes.




> You don't believe in the phenomenon called 'Life'?


Of course I do.




> You think a butterfly & a rock are the same?
> 
> 
> Life is a very unique & mysterious thing, that we do not understand.  We know about molecules & atomic science, but we cannot really explain life.  It is not just neutrons & electrons.. it is quite different & unique.
> 
> *
> No, there is something called 'dead matter'.  It is quite different from 'living matter'.*  And they are not 'alive' in the same way a living cell is.  DNA is a big difference, & so is a mysterious property we cannot define or reproduce.  Something animates matter, to make it alive.  For millennia, humans have tried to understand it, hypothesizing Frankenstein-like theories, & spontaneous generation.


Look very carefully at the bolded part. Think very carefully about what you're saying here.

All matter is the same, mister. The electron in a rock is exactly the same as the electron in a butterfly. Think about it.




> Perhaps you were joking, or trying to get a rise out of me.  If so, you succeeded!


I am showing you quite clearly that your fundamental assumptions are highly questionable. 

Look here - "in the beginning was the Word". You have names for stuff, you "name" this thing called life, you say it is "different" because it SEEMS to have different properties, properties you can "see" at a macroscopic level even though you can't "see" the stuff that it's really made of - 

But in this thread I've tried to show you about "shape", I've tried to show you about the things you SEE. I told you, you can create a frog with five legs by simply sticking a pin in the embryo at exactly the right time. I told you, the shape of a seashell is due to a complex log mapping that programs a chemical gradient, and I showed you using the example of the frog that this gradient transcends individual cells, in other words the "entire organism" knows which end is the head and which end is the tail, from the moment the first cell division occurs. I told you about stable spatial equilibria, and I gave you the name of the Nobel prize winner who first showed that stable spatial equilibria at a macroscopic level could be created by chaos at a microscopic level.

The point is, YOU don't understand what you're looking at. You have no idea what you're looking at, when you're looking at the long neck of a giraffe, or the bill on a platypus, or even a human being who happens to be a genetic psychopath. This thing you call "life"... I mean, your model for that is kind of like saying "the apple always falls down" when everyone else is telling you we live in a curved universe.

Life is a natural property of the universe, it's an inherent property of matter, it will always occur under the right conditions, because there is structure in the universe at a level so fundamental that it transcends elementary particles or energy waves or anything else we can barely see or measure. One of the key words for your consideration is "symmetry", you want a little background in groups and rings and geometric topology. 

Yes, I'm serious. "Life" is present even in a rock. That is my opinion, and no one can prove me wrong. Many wise men have tried...  :Dontknow:

----------

Puzzling Evidence (08-29-2017),Quark (08-29-2017)

----------


## usfan

You seem to be trying to correlate the atomic structure of atoms to living things.  That is absurd.  there is a HUGE difference between dead matter, & life.

Why have scientists been trying to 'create' life, & prove abiogenesis, if life is the same as all other matter?

I figured this was a major deflection, or something.. but if you ARE serious, then we are not on the same scientific page, at all.

I find it very bizarre & hypocritical for you to rant on about MY 'understanding & knowledge', while you make absurd claims like this.

A mouse and a rock, are the same to you.  Water & a baby.. no difference.  Your definition of 'living things' transcends reality, & belongs in the voodoo, 'all is dream', matrix-like explanation of consciousness.

I would like to hear from your comrades, & if they make any distinction between living things & inanimate matter...

----------


## Sled Dog

> I would like to hear from your comrades, & if they make any distinction between living things & inanimate matter...


If you look at the universe along the axis of the fourth-dimensional hyper-plane defined by the three spatial coordinate axes and the time axis, nothing moves.   Everything that was, is, and will be, all at the same time.  All that can be seen are the paths taken by the essentially immortal elementary particles.   

Life is an illusion held only by the living.

----------


## Puzzling Evidence

> Look here - "in the beginning was the Word". You have names for stuff, you "name" this thing called life, you say it is "different" because it SEEMS to have different properties, properties you can "see" at a macroscopic level even though you can't "see" the stuff that it's really made of - 
> 
> But in this thread I've tried to show you about "shape", I've tried to show you about the things you SEE. I told you, you can create a frog with five legs by simply sticking a pin in the embryo at exactly the right time. I told you, the shape of a seashell is due to a complex log mapping that programs a chemical gradient, and I showed you using the example of the frog that this gradient transcends individual cells, in other words the "entire organism" knows which end is the head and which end is the tail, from the moment the first cell division occurs. I told you about stable spatial equilibria, and I gave you the name of the Nobel prize winner who first showed that stable spatial equilibria at a macroscopic level could be created by chaos at a microscopic level.
> 
> The point is, YOU don't understand what you're looking at. You have no idea what you're looking at, when you're looking at the long neck of a giraffe, or the bill on a platypus, or even a human being who happens to be a genetic psychopath. This thing you call "life"... I mean, your model for that is kind of like saying "the apple always falls down" when everyone else is telling you we live in a curved universe.
> 
> Life is a natural property of the universe, it's an inherent property of matter, it will always occur under the right conditions, because there is structure in the universe at a level so fundamental that it transcends elementary particles or energy waves or anything else we can barely see or measure. One of the key words for your consideration is "symmetry", you want a little background in groups and rings and geometric topology. 
> 
> Yes, I'm serious. "Life" is present even in a rock. That is my opinion, and no one can prove me wrong. Many wise men have tried...


An unusual take on it, but compelling, nonetheless.

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nonsqtr (08-29-2017)

----------


## Puzzling Evidence

> there is not a shred of evidence. It is all conjecture, wish and fantasy.  Even this soup mixture they came up with is not even elements that were on earth. THEY ADMITTED so.  No simulation of the proverbial soup of life has ever been recreated in a test tube or lab.


If you take the primordial elements of this earth and shoot electricity through the test tube; you wind up creating amino acids -- the building blocks of life.

----------


## usfan

> If you look at the universe along the axis of the fourth-dimensional hyper-plane defined by the three spatial coordinate axes and the time axis, nothing moves.   Everything that was, is, and will be, all at the same time.  All that can be seen are the paths taken by the essentially immortal elementary particles.   
> 
> Life is an illusion held only by the living.


Ok.  I live in Sedona, & this kind of other worldly, new age consciousness is quite common.  But i find it very bizarre how in the next breath you will ridicule theists as being 'unscientific!' for believing in a 'magic sky pixie.'

If all is but dream, & life is an illusion, how can you make dogmatic statements that are rooted in a material view of the universe?  How can you have 'rational' discussions, if reason is a variable, where facts & reality can change with the wind?

But it does explain things, somewhat.  Attempting to reason with interdimensionalists is an exercise in futility.
*
Where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing.* ~John Locke

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Puzzling Evidence (08-29-2017)

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## Sled Dog

> Ok.  I live in Sedona, & this kind of other worldly, new age consciousness is quite common.  But i find it very bizarre how in the next breath you will ridicule theists as being 'unscientific!' for believing in a 'magic sky pixie.'



All you have to do is have a little imagination.   You don't even have a little one.

An electron is unchanging.

ALL electrons are IDENTICAL.

ALL protons are IDENTICAL.

Etc.

They're too simple to have variations.

And I'm not the one claiming the Magic Sky Pixie can see the entire universe all at once, for all time, because she's "outside of time".  I'm merely explaining what that view would look like.    It would look like a photograph, never changing.

But, as I said, people need an imagination to change their perspective.

So you can't do that.

----------


## usfan

> If you take the primordial elements of this earth and shoot electricity through the test tube; you wind up creating amino acids -- the building blocks of life.


You have done this?  You know what the primordial elements were, millions of years ago?  You can create life, from these building blocks?

Methinks you have played with lego blocks for too long, & feel a godlike, creative power over the universe.  But it is good for young children to exercise their creativity, so they develop a healthy self esteem..

----------


## Puzzling Evidence

> You have done this?  You know what the primordial elements were, millions of years ago?  You can create life, from these building blocks?
> 
> Methinks you have played with lego blocks for too long, & feel a godlike, creative power over the universe.  But it is good for young children to exercise their creativity, so they develop a healthy self esteem..


Wow. Do I talk to you like that just because I disagree? Please note that I am not Sled Dog. I respect your religion, please respect me.

That would be BILLIONS of years ago. 

Ammonia, methane, and water were all major constituents of the earths atmosphere. While the quantities were unknown, how these molecules would have interacted with the constant barrage of radiation and endless electric charges is not -- it has been studied ad nauseam.

Are you seriously implying that I, personally, need to conduct all my own scientific experiments in order to validate them? No problem. I'll start with quantum theory....

----------


## nonsqtr

> You seem to be trying to correlate the atomic structure of atoms to living things.  That is absurd.  there is a HUGE difference between dead matter, & life.


No. You only "think" there is, because you "see" stuff you can't explain.

You have formed a "hypothesis" to explain what you're seeing, and in this case the hypothesis doesn't pan out.




> Why have scientists been trying to 'create' life, & prove abiogenesis, if life is the same as all other matter?


No scientist I know, is arrogant enough to believe he or she is "creating life". What happens is, there are various groups around the world trying to "build cells", and even that is a complex endeavor. For instance - there's little things called "mitochondria" that live inside the cell, they're like little organism unto themselves, they have their own DNA, and they're vitally important because they provide usable energy to the cell in the form of phosphates and phosphorylated nucleotides. It turns out, you can't just "inject a mitochondrion into a cell" and expect it to work, it has to be the "right" mitochondrion, it has to be compatible with the rest of the cell.  



> I figured this was a major deflection, or something.. but if you ARE serious, then we are not on the same scientific page, at all.


That much was obvious from the git-go.  :Wink: 





> I find it very bizarre & hypocritical for you to rant on about MY 'understanding & knowledge', while you make absurd claims like this.


"Absurd"? For 15 centuries the Catholic Church said the earth was the center of the universe. 'Cause they claimed that's what it said in the Bible. You want to talk about absurd?





> A mouse and a rock, are the same to you.  Water & a baby.. no difference.  Your definition of 'living things' transcends reality, & belongs in the voodoo, 'all is dream', matrix-like explanation of consciousness.


Now that you mention it, yes, I believe that the brain is a substrate for a low-level physical process. At some level, "thought" is the same as "matter". I'm not sure what that level is (no one is, probably), but once again - this is a "belief" that no one can disprove. The science simply doesn't exist, there's no way to test this hypothesis. Nevertheless it is a viable hypothesis, it explains what is observable. 




> I would like to hear from your comrades, & if they make any distinction between living things & inanimate matter...


Living beings have more fun.  :Smile:

----------


## nonsqtr

> If you look at the universe along the axis of the fourth-dimensional hyper-plane defined by the three spatial coordinate axes and the time axis, nothing moves.   Everything that was, is, and will be, all at the same time.  All that can be seen are the paths taken by the essentially immortal elementary particles.   
> 
> Life is an illusion held only by the living.


That's definitely a big clue - the "curved universe". 

For @usfan - look, I realize this must sound unorthodox, especially to someone such as yourself who seems to have a traditional view of "life".

There's nothing fancy about this concept. However - you have to think "a little" abstractly, "a little" out of the box - same as if you were having a Newtonian view of gravity, and suddenly someone clued you in that what you're "really" looking at is a curved universe. 

Now, that word "curved" is not really accurate - what it is, is a non-Euclidean geometry. In three dimensions there are 9 geometries, and only one of them is Euclidean. The branch of math that tells you there are 9 geometries, that's called (algebraic or geometric) topology, and the key concept to derive and focus on in that math is the "embedding". That's an easy concept to visualize, if you imagine a piece of paper as being two-dimensional (of "infinite thin-ness"), then you can twist it all kinds of ways (it can "assume all kinds of shapes") and still be embedded into our normal 3-dimensional space. So, topology also describes the types of embeddings that can be realized -

And, it turns out, that engineers use this little trick called "complex math" to describe periodic functions, and in the known universe, "all" energy is periodic, energy has a "frequency" and a "wavelength" - so if you allow complex numbers in your rings, suddenly you get more degrees of freedom and you have more choices in terms of embeddings. With complex math you can easily see that "nonsensical embeddings" are not only possible, they're useful! 

One example is in the brain, the human brain takes a timeline spanning approximately one second (give or take), and "embeds it" into the current moment. It's one of those non-sensical embeddings that only starts to make sense when you realize the universe is curved and you're dealing with a non-Euclidean geometry. If "life" is mysterious to you, then "awareness" must be even more mysterious. But when you look at it from this perspective not only does it make perfect sense but the architecture that supports it makes sense too.

An interesting exercise is to list the essential properties of "life". For instance, the ability to self-replicate, is essential. And, it turns out, DNA is not the only way to accomplish this. There are plenty of molecules that could encode information, so why is it that DNA is the molecular codec of choice? Well, Sled Dog you may be on the right track - because more recent (and advanced) versions of the Miller-Urey experiments have shown that nucleotides and amino acids are created in variety and in quantity. All it takes is for a micelle to surround the right piece of DNA and suddenly you have a proto-cell. DNA will self-replicate without all the fancy machinery, it'll just take a while (like... thousands of years, which is a drop in the bucket on the evolutionary scale).

At the end of the day, all this wonderful self-organization is based on the symmetries defining elementary particles and their behaviors. (That would be something to google on probably - "self organizing systems"). There are very simple rules defining self-organizing systems (they're so simple they're called "meta"-programs). One of the most common and ubiquitous rules in the real world is "coincidence in time", so if two events happen close enough together then they cause a third event. 

"Life" is a self-organizing system operating within a small set of very minimal constraints. The only thing that uniquely distinguishes "life" at a macroscopic level is its complexity, in other words, life is a violation of the second law of thermodynamics, because life (over time) gets more complex and more highly structured. It is the information that causes this violation - the idea of collecting and storing specific information is the opposite of the dissipative "equalization" implied by the Second Law.

The "evolution" of individual brain function parallels the "evolution" of species. (Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny). The same types of symmetries that are present at the level of elementary particles, are also present in the human brain. It is extremely instructive to understand how the brain "individuates" complex sensory input. That process has everything to do with topology, the brain actually "tests" different topologies to determine the best fit for information.

Where the pedal hits the metal is when you realize the brain isn't deterministic, it's "statistical" and it's also "stochastic". So you have to translate all these concepts into the land of random processes, which is very fuckin' difficult unless you have a 180 IQ. You learn lots of interesting stuff by studying that though - like for instance you learn the brain wouldn't work AT ALL without the randomness and the stochastic variability.

An interesting clue from the real world is that energy is quantized. It's "discrete", it comes in "packets". What benefit does this confer? Well, all you have to do is understand stochastic math, it kinda leaps out at you. In calculus, you can approximate just about any function using a "Taylor series expansion", and the same is true in stochastic calculus.

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Sled Dog (08-29-2017)

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## usfan

Hey, i don't mind.. you guys can believe whatever you want.. if traditional scientific methodology is too quaint & archaic, you can go for the more mystical, or '4th dimensional' approach.

I just find it very bizarre how you can be so hostile to a theistic belief system, & claim you have some kind of empirical based existence, when you are definitely 'other worldly' in your philosophical opinions..

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## Sled Dog

> Hey, i don't mind.. you guys can believe whatever you want.. if traditional scientific methodology is too quaint & archaic, you can go for the more mystical, or '4th dimensional' approach.
> 
> I just find it very bizarre how you can be so hostile to a theistic belief system, & claim you have some kind of empirical based existence, when you are definitely 'other worldly' in your philosophical opinions..


We find it totally ridiculous that you base your belief system on a book has been proven to be wrong.

There was no flood.  Period.

haz.

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## usfan

> We find it totally ridiculous that you base your belief system on a book has been proven to be wrong.
> There was no flood.  Period.
> haz.


..and, that you rely on caricatures, to define other's beliefs..

very silly.  Hypocritical.  Ironic.  

but, it is par for the course, with the progressive based indoctrination, destroying the roots of real science, & replacing it with hysteria, mandates, & pontifications from elites.

hmm.. book proven wrong.. would that be 'Origin of Species', 1859?

No flood?  There is evidence of 'flood' in every geographical locale.

still chanting your religious mantra?

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## Sled Dog

> No flood?  There is evidence of 'flood' in every geographical locale.



As we all can see, you left out the word "the" in "The Flood".

You just can't be honest.

We all know what I was referring to.

I was referring to that lie in Genesis that says the entire planet was drowned.

You just can't be honest.

That's why Jesus hates you.

----------


## Oskar

Evolution is a religion.

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## Oskar

> There was no flood.  Period.


There is one in Houston right now.

Forget to use "The"?

You just can't be honest.

Jesus loves you and died for your sin.

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## nonsqtr

> I just find it very bizarre how you can be so hostile to a theistic belief system


Excuse me, but what would lead you to that conclusion?

That is an unwarranted conclusion, not safely drawn from facts in evidence.

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## usfan

> Excuse me, but what would lead you to that conclusion?
> 
> That is an unwarranted conclusion, not safely drawn from facts in evidence.


Actually, you are right.  Replies from hysterical, irrational people are very likely to be 'hostile'.  Reason, self-doubt, circumspection have no place in the thinking of religious dogmatists, and facts are irrelevant.

So it is quite natural, for those indoctrinated into progressive ideology to reply with hostility, & is even esteemed as a virtue.  Reason & evidence are not needed, but emotion & hysteria are very useful.

----------


## usfan

So, religious deflections aside, does anyone want to take a shot at refuting the OP?  Anyone want to provide any scientific justification for their beliefs about origins?  Talk is cheap.  Assertions are  a dime a dozen.  But evidence?

This is not about atheism.. you atheists can keep your beliefs in 'no god'.  This is about a theory of origins.  Is it valid?  Is there any evidence for this theory?  I cannot see it.  I see only assertions & unscientific claims.  None have been presented on this thread.  So, if there is evidence for your beliefs about the origin of species, let's see it.  If it is so plainly obvious, & 'settled science', why not just present this evidence & make it obvious for everyone?

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## patrickt

> Evolution is a religion.


That is a stupid statement.

Science and religion took different paths centuries ago but those who believe in myth and magic are desperate to control science again. I wonder if they still insist the sun revolves around the earth?

Religions love to get people to believe the unbelievable. It's the test of their power.

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Quark (09-27-2017)

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## usfan

> That is a stupid statement.
> 
> Science and religion took different paths centuries ago but those who believe in myth and magic are desperate to control science again. I wonder if they still insist the sun revolves around the earth?
> 
> Religions love to get people to believe the unbelievable. It's the test of their power.


This is a false dichotomy.  BOTH religion AND science have been part of the human experience for MILLENNIA.  We may be more advanced, but there are still many mysteries in the universe that are unknown, by science or religion.

What is 'religion?'  Is it just a belief in something?  If so, the ToE fits that description.  Is it an organized set of tenets?  Then most theists don't really fit that narrow description.

No, there are 2 basic 'beliefs' about the origins of man & the universe.. theistic, & atheistic, & they are both religious in nature.  Science is an unbiased observer, that only relays facts.  And the facts do not compel either belief, conclusively.  Both are matters of opinion & belief.

Science is a tool.. a process of discovery, & it is not some new thing that Darwin discovered.  To equate the ToE as 'science!' and every other 'theory' of origins as 'religion' is just religious bigotry.

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## ChemEngineer

*Atheist:*  1.   "Gravity is true and so therefore evolution is true.  There.  Both theories. Both so very good.  Science.  It's SOOO simple!"

2.  "You don't understand evolution.  It's SOOO COMPLEX!    Random mutation, followed by *selection*.  There.  Complicated."

3.  "The fittest survive because they're.... the fittest.  And they're the fittest because.... they survive.  Don't you know nothing?"

4.  "Atheists are really, really smart because we say so.  The rest of you are really, really stupid because .... we say so.  And we're right, because we say we're really smart, and smart people are never wrong.  Even if they are."

*"Heavier-than-air flight is impossible." - Lord Kelvin, president of the Royal Society, 1895

Orville and Wilbur Wright, uneducated bicycle mechanics flew - 1903*

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usfan (09-03-2017)

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## Sled Dog

The loser goes from quote-mining to strawman construction without taking a breath.

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Quark (09-27-2017)

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## Sled Dog

> This is a false dichotomy.  BOTH religion AND science have been part of the human experience for MILLENNIA. 
> .


That's just a false statement.

Science has been part of the human experience since the 1600's, when Gallileo formalized the scientific method.

Lies and religion (same thing) have been part of human history forever because it's what the animal evolved to become.

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Quark (09-27-2017)

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## Sled Dog

> So, religious deflections aside, does anyone want to take a shot at refuting the OP?  Anyone want to provide any scientific justification for their beliefs about origins?  Talk is cheap.  Assertions are  a dime a dozen.  But evidence?
> 
> This is not about atheism.. you atheists can keep your beliefs in 'no god'.  This is about a theory of origins.  Is it valid?  Is there any evidence for this theory?  I cannot see it.  I see only assertions & unscientific claims.  None have been presented on this thread.  So, if there is evidence for your beliefs about the origin of species, let's see it.  If it is so plainly obvious, & 'settled science', why not just present this evidence & make it obvious for everyone?



The OP was refuted.

Many times.

Lying that is hasn't been is what we expect of you, but that doesn't not alter the fact that it's been refuted.

haz.

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Quark (09-27-2017)

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## ChemEngineer

> How old is the earth?


Time is relative, isn't it.

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## Quark

> This is a false dichotomy.  BOTH religion AND science have been part of the human experience for MILLENNIA.  We may be more advanced, but there are still many mysteries in the universe that are unknown, by science or religion.
> 
> What is 'religion?'  Is it just a belief in something?  If so, the ToE fits that description.  Is it an organized set of tenets?  Then most theists don't really fit that narrow description.
> 
> No, there are 2 basic 'beliefs' about the origins of man & the universe.. theistic, & atheistic, & they are both religious in nature.  Science is an unbiased observer, that only relays facts.  And the facts do not compel either belief, conclusively.  Both are matters of opinion & belief.
> 
> Science is a tool.. a process of discovery, & it is not some new thing that Darwin discovered.  To equate the ToE as 'science!' and every other 'theory' of origins as 'religion' is just religious bigotry.


you still don't understand what a atheist is nor what science is.

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patrickt (09-27-2017)

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## patrickt

> you still don't understand what a atheist is nor what science is.


Bingo. That's why USFan can say:
"What is 'religion?' Is it just a belief in something? If so, the ToE fits that description. Is it an organized set of tenets? Then most theists don't really fit that narrow description."

Science is a process for testing the validity of a hypothesis. Religion is a process for avoiding testing the validity of a hypothesis and simply accepting it as magic and having faith.

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Quark (09-27-2017)

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## usfan

> That's just a false statement.
> Science has been part of the human experience since the 1600's, when Gallileo formalized the scientific method.
> Lies and religion (same thing) have been part of human history forever because it's what the animal evolved to become.





> The OP was refuted.
> 
> Many times.
> Lying that is hasn't been is what we expect of you, but that doesn't not alter the fact that it's been refuted.
> haz.


What a lying asshole.  You haven't refuted anything, & i doubt you even know what the word means.  You have not addressed ONE part of the fallacies, but only jumped in with constant demonstrations of fallacies, yourself.  I have never encountered anyone as stupid & fucked up as you are.  You OOZE bigotry, & are steeped in so much falsehoods, you couldn't recognize truth if it bit you in the ass.



> you still don't understand what a atheist is nor what science is.


Oh, i understand all right.  I also know stupid fuckers when i see them.  Dumb as a box of rocks, you are.  You are like little kids demanding i play act with you in some convoluted game.. actually worse.  You are like progressive leftists, with your 'anti-reason' & constant barrage of insults & deflections.

Tell me how many of your remarks here have been topical?  I don't remember ANY!! All you have is ad hom, which you dish out like candy.  The pretense  of 'reason' is enough to give 'reason' a bad  name, if you guys are supposed to be examples of reason.  No wonder so many christians have a bad attitude about 'science', with you fuckers pretending to 'Know!' All Science, & claiming the exclusive right to label what you believe is 'science!' and what you don't like is 'religion!'  Madness & idiocy!  Your phony labels have no basis in reason, logic, definitions, or anything resembling common sense.

I have never seen such blatant displays of indoctrination, from the most deluded bunch of fools i have ever had the pleasure to 'debate' with.  In the decades i have 'debated'  origins, science, politics, & other such topics of knowledge, i have never seen a stupider bunch of dumb fucks, all together in one place.  I guess 'birds of a feather' have certainly flocked to this poor site.

All you have is insults & intimidation.  Is there anything more pathetic than that?  Could you ever display more religious bigotry, than you do in these threads?

How about it, dumb fucks?  Want to try some science & logic? Or would you rather deflect from your pathetic belief system with insults & hysteria?  I think all you have is insults & hysteria.  You dumb assholes couldn't reason to save your lives.  ..just a bunch of pathetic old fuckers, with only their hate & insanity to keep them company.  No wonder you can't get christians to 'debate' with you.  Have you ever wondered why they put you on ignore?  Stupid asses, it is because you only insult & ridicule.  ..but apparently, you love that stuff.  You certainly don't know science or reason.

----------


## usfan

> Bingo. That's why USFan can say:
> "What is 'religion?' Is it just a belief in something? If so, the ToE fits that description. Is it an organized set of tenets? Then most theists don't really fit that narrow description."
> 
> Science is a process for testing the validity of a hypothesis. Religion is a process for avoiding testing the validity of a hypothesis and simply accepting it as magic and having faith.


I don't care.  Join in with your atheist dumb fucks, see if i care.  You can pretend to be 'science!!' all you want, but you do not produce any evidence, or rational arguments, or follow the simplest lines of reasoning, just deflect with your phony caricatures.  Is there any doubt HOW these stupid atheists came to be?  Leftist indoctrination!  They ooze it at every word.  Twisted, convoluted logic is all they have, along with fallacies, & especially ad hom.

Well did the Bible foretell of you dimwits:

'Professing to be wise, they became fools'.

Keep your phony narratives of 'atheists have science! Christians are superstitious & religious!'  I have never seen such convoluted 'reasoning' in my whole life.  Your pathetic, empty minded beliefs are no more 'science!' than some voodoo child in the jungle.  Yet for these beliefs, you can only express religious bigotry toward christians.  ..all because you had some bad experience with 'religious!' people in the past. For that you will reject God, your whole life?  Talk about stupid.  You are going to let some person in your past dictate your entire destiny?  That is the height of stupidity.  That is why your mind is blinded to reason & Truth.  You condemn yourself by your own words:

_Religion is a process for avoiding testing the validity of a hypothesis and simply accepting it as magic and having faith.

_Your 'faith' in your imaginary processes, only confirms your anti-science bias.  You are so fully indoctrinated into leftist naturalism you can only see caricatures.. the evil 'christians!' and their hatred of science, & your beloved 'atheists!' who are so rational, loving, & scientific.  I have never heard such idiocy, yet that is the meme you stupid fuckers put up, all the time.

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## SharetheHedge

When Christians start shooting the "F" word, you know they're all out of ammo  :Angel11:

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Morning Star (09-29-2017),Quark (09-28-2017)

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## usfan

> When Christians start shooting the "F" word, you know they're all out of ammo


great.. another dumb fuck atheist....    :Rolleyes20: 



I'm just using words & tactics that you assholes can understand.  You don't do reason, history, philosophy, & normal english language, but have redefined, revised, & retarded everything for your beloved world view, that you can't even define or explain.

So, what do you believe, about the nature of the universe?

Oh, never mind.  I'll just stick with the 'arguments' you guys understand..  GFYS...

----------


## Sled Dog

> *Atheist:*  1.   "Gravity is true and so therefore evolution is true.  There.  Both theories. Both so very good.  Science.  It's SOOO simple!"
> 
> 2.  "You don't understand evolution.  It's SOOO COMPLEX!    Random mutation, followed by *selection*.  There.  Complicated."
> 
> 3.  "The fittest survive because they're.... the fittest.  And they're the fittest because.... they survive.  Don't you know nothing?"
> 
> 4.  "Atheists are really, really smart because we say so.  The rest of you are really, really stupid because .... we say so.  And we're right, because we say we're really smart, and smart people are never wrong.  Even if they are."
> 
> *"Heavier-than-air flight is impossible." - Lord Kelvin, president of the Royal Society, 1895
> ...



MORE irrelevant quotes from the Underminer.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth...

...there was no Global Flood.

Damn, y'all can't get around that fact, can ya?

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Quark (09-28-2017)

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## Sled Dog

> When Christians start shooting the "F" word, you know they're all out of ammo


I haven't seen any Christians using the F word.

Just some lying slime buckets who never read the 10th Commandment.

Or the Ninth, I don't keep track of those things.

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## freethinker

Genes and chromosomes can duplicate. Even an entire genome can duplicate.Duplication of a gene usually occurs as a result of unequal crossing over during meiosis. The duplicate genes are located next to each other and one of the two genes can mutate over time and perform a new function. All of our olfactory receptor genes evolved from a single olfactory receptor gene in a distant ancestor that has duplicated many times and the duplicates are passed on to new species as new species evolve. 3300 human genes, 15% of the genome, reside in clusters of highly similar genes that likely arose through tandem duplication. Humans also have ten thousand duplicate pseudogenes (no longer functional but were once functional).

Also your example of human artificial selection, not natural selection, is consistent with evolutionary theory. Artificial selection reduces variability and is often maladaptive as you say. Not all evolutionary processes are caused by natural selection.

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## usfan

> Genes and chromosomes can duplicate. Even an entire genome can duplicate.Duplication of a gene usually occurs as a result of unequal crossing over during meiosis. The duplicate genes are located next to each other and one of the two genes can mutate over time and perform a new function. All of our olfactory receptor genes evolved from a single olfactory receptor gene in a distant ancestor that has duplicated many times and the duplicates are passed on to new species as new species evolve. 3300 human genes, 15% of the genome, reside in clusters of highly similar genes that likely arose through tandem duplication. Humans also have ten thousand duplicate pseudogenes (no longer functional but were once functional).
> 
> Also your example of human artificial selection, not natural selection, is consistent with evolutionary theory. Artificial selection reduces variability and is often maladaptive as you say. Not all evolutionary processes are caused by natural selection.


Seriously?  You want to actually debate the topic?    :Smiley ROFLMAO: 

I'll be glad to address this, in a bit.  But i have some assholes to deal with, who only want to thread shit on the topic, or mock & ridicule, since they can't use reason or facts.

----------


## Morning Star

> Seriously?  You want to actually debate the topic?


It is funny because you dont debate anything you just post some anti-science nonsense then call everyone that doesn't buy it, bigots. 
Your OP is nothing but your own ignorant opinion on a subject you obviously know nothing about.
In fact the only thing you have posted to "debate" the claims you made is stuff like this: 




> I don't care. Join in with your atheist dumb fucks, see if i care. You can pretend to be 'science!!' all you want, but you do not produce any evidence, or rational arguments, or follow the simplest lines of reasoning, just deflect with your phony caricatures. Is there any doubt HOW these stupid atheists came to be? Leftist indoctrination! They ooze it at every word. Twisted, convoluted logic is all they have, along with fallacies, & especially ad hom.

----------


## usfan

> It is funny because you dont debate anything you just post some anti-science nonsense then call everyone that doesn't buy it, bigots. 
> Your OP is nothing but your own ignorant opinion on a subject you obviously know nothing about.
> In fact the only thing you have posted to "debate" the claims you made is stuff like this:


I've gone over 40 pages trying to reason with you dumb fucks.  You won't follow reason, science, or simple logical progressions.  Why should i expect you to change now, & suddenly be rational & scientific minded?  No, the only response you deserve is 'fuck you!'

----------


## Oskar

Evolution is central dogma to the atheist religion. They can't listen to reason because it threatens their faith system. Rational criticism of evolution is seen as a personal attack.

----------

usfan (09-29-2017)

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## usfan



----------


## freethinker

"But there is no evidence that any organism creates new genetic material"   

Answer: A mutation to an existing gene during the process of meiosis can become new genetic material. If a gamete with that mutation unites with a gamete of the opposite sex and the offspring survives to maturity, there is the potential for a new gene to become part of the gene pool, assuming sexual reproduction. If the reproduction is asexual there is also new genetic material.

Hairs, feathers, and scales are not light-years apart. They all share a common ancestry.

----------

Quark (09-29-2017),Sled Dog (09-29-2017)

----------


## usfan

> Genes and chromosomes can duplicate. Even an entire genome can duplicate.Duplication of a gene usually occurs as a result of unequal crossing over during meiosis. The duplicate genes are located next to each other and one of the two genes can mutate over time and perform a new function. All of our olfactory receptor genes evolved from a single olfactory receptor gene in a distant ancestor that has duplicated many times and the duplicates are passed on to new species as new species evolve. 3300 human genes, 15% of the genome, reside in clusters of highly similar genes that likely arose through tandem duplication. Humans also have ten thousand duplicate pseudogenes (no longer functional but were once functional).
> 
> Also your example of human artificial selection, not natural selection, is consistent with evolutionary theory. Artificial selection reduces variability and is often maladaptive as you say. Not all evolutionary processes are caused by natural selection.





> "But there is no evidence that any organism creates new genetic material"   
> 
> Answer: A mutation to an existing gene during the process of meiosis can become new genetic material. If a gamete with that mutation unites with a gamete of the opposite sex and the offspring survives to maturity, there is the potential for a new gene to become part of the gene pool, assuming sexual reproduction. If the reproduction is asexual there is also new genetic material.
> 
> Hairs, feathers, and scales are not light-years apart. They all share a common ancestry.


Alright.  But it is not going to be easy, with all the hecklers & thread shitters in the peanut gallery.

1.  Your first point assumes universal descendancy.. the ToE, and is not evidence.  You speculate that some genes 'likely' came this way, & that others are 'going away' or such.  Genetics is a bit more complicated than that.  Genes are not lego blocks, that you can rearrange into different organisms, just switching genes around or rearranging chromosome pairs.  Your 'point' here is speculative, & is not evidence.  You have no proof of what you 'guess'  might have happened.

2. Mutations do not 'create' any genetic material.  They can alter it, and are mostly destructive.  Some are rearranged, if they are not fatal.  But to suggest mutations can add chromosome pairs, or scales to feathers, or any such 'transitioning' process has no evidence.  It is all speculative, with nothing to suggest it CAN happen, much less that it DID happen.

Perhaps it would help if i reposted some info about genetics.




> My central argument in this thread has been genetic.  It is the 'central flaw', that of a false equivalency.  The ToE posits that man descended from an apelike creature, with 24 chromosome pairs, that fused into 23, creating man.  But this ignores HUGE hurdles in the genetic code.
> 
> 
> 
> IF you could show that all the genes in the chromosomes correlated.. that is, they were the same ones in both organisms, THEN there might be some credibility for such a 'theory'. But the chromosomes & genes of the chimp & man are completely different.. as different as chimp & man. It takes more than fusing (or dividing) a chromosome to change the gene structure, or to add or subtract genes in the organism. Merely theorizing the possibility of 'chromosome fusion' & declaring that as the solution ignores some pretty big hurdles, genetically. Each chromosome contains genes.. hundreds & thousands of them, that provide the basis for the organism.. their heritage, their traits, & their ancestral history. They are unique to each organism, & are not 'lego blocks' that can easily be transferred from one organism to another. So assuming that chromosome fusion proves chimp ancestry of humans, or even common descent ignores a huge hurdle in the genetic code. How did all those genes change? How did you get the traits & variability to change from chimp to human? There is no genetic trail, that is merely asserted & assumed. IOW, it is not based in anything scientific, but is a belief.. a conjecture about genetic makeup that has no evidence of being possible.
> 
> It is more like this: Organisms within genetic families, that have proven descendancy, are like specific machines, with parts unique to that machine. A boeing 747 has specific, unique parts, that do not interchange with a chevy pickup. Just because they all use 'parts', does not make their parts identical. That is what the science of genetics has shown us, that the complexity at the genetic level is huge, & they do not randomly leap about, changing & adding variability. Genes are boringly stable, & they produce what their parents produced, who produced what their parents produced. You can repeat this for as many generations as you want, & you ALWAYS get the same genetic structures.. some variability is lost, by selective processes, such as natural selection or man made breeding, but you still do not get added traits, or changes in the basic structure. The genetic makeup remains the same.
> 
> The GENES within each organism are very different, & do not flit about & change easily. Gene splicing is a VERY difficult task, & does not happen at all, outside of the laboratory, as far as we know. Claiming that genes can move freely between species is a baseless assertion. 
> ...

----------


## usfan

Here is a reminder of the subject, & a call for evidence, in a science thread.




> As a reminder, here is the premise of the thread:
> 
> _"Evolution has a central flaw. It is contrary to observed reality. The Theory of Evolution is basically a logical problem. It is a False Equivalence. They argue that since living things change within their genetic parameters, that they also change outside of their genetic parameters. Since moths can be different colors, perhaps they can also become a different creature entirely. This concept is repeated over & over ad nauseum, until the concept seems not only plausible, but accepted as proven fact.The argument for evolution is based on the presumption of INCREMENTAL, cumulative changes, that add up to big ones. But it ignores the HUGE problem of genetic parameters.. the limits upon the changes that can be made."_
> 
> My challenge remains unrefuted, & basically ignored.  Show me the mechanism that allows the kinds of cumulative changes in the genetic structure.  DNA forbids this kind of change. Organisms reproduce into the same basic genetic structure, with the same chromosome pairs, traits, & genome structure.  They are NOT lego-like building blocks, that can vary randomly & be disassembled & reassembled into some new structure.  The genome is quite complicated, & it acts as a blueprint for the structure & traits of each organism.  You can have variety, that is within the pool of traits that each organism can choose from, but they do not 'create' new traits on the fly, nor do they make structural changes in the genome.
> 
> The more we learn about genetics, the less plausible the ToE becomes.  It just is not possible for organisms to make the kinds of vertical changes in the genetic structure that is asserted (without evidence) by the ToE.
> 
> I am NOT attacking anyone's belief system.  This has NOTHING to do with atheism, or theism, or any religious belief system.  This is about a theory.. an alleged phenomenon that is claimed to be the 'origin of species'.  It was controversial when it first came out, then enjoyed a heyday of almost universal acceptance, but it is now being viewed with a jaundiced eye, by many who can reason & follow simple science.  You can keep your religious beliefs, or opinions, about the nature of God & the universe.  You can believe in a big bang, or whatever 'theory' of the universe you wish to.  This thread is about the Theory of Evolution.  It is supported ONLY by logical fallacies, not science.  It does not deserve to be called a scientific theory, since it cannot be observed, repeated, or its mechanisms explained.
> ...





> IF....  everyone is really tired of debating evolution (which i don't really believe), THEN, i will be glad to end it, too.  But IMO, the problem is you guys don't have any science.  You have assertions, wild claims, & imagined scenarios, that you dress up in logical fallacies, then call it, 'Science!'.
> 
> WHY have there been NO EVIDENCES presented, if there is all this alleged proof of the ToE, & it is clearly settled science?  WHY is it that all i get is insults, ridicule, & eye rolling, when i ask for some evidence?  C'mon, people!  This is a SCIENCE thread, not the mosh pit.
> 
> Why not admit that this is nothing but a philosophical construct, without any scientific basis?  You claim 'Religious!' people do that, but you are not willing to admit this for your own philosophical beliefs?  Why not?  Why the fear over what is obviously a religious belief system?
> 
> I know many of you prefer to believe you are somehow special & superior.. intellectual giants, with no need of philosophical/religious beliefs.  And i hate to burst your bubble, but you are just another human being.. groping in the dark.. overwhelmed by the mysteries of the universe, that you don't 'know', anymore than your hated religionists.
> 
> But i doubt you will admit it.  Because, the indoctrination is strong, in our culture, & it has hammered this religious indoctrination into you since infancy.
> ...

----------


## Sled Dog

> Seriously?  You want to actually debate the topic?   
> 
> I'll be glad to address this, in a bit.  But i have some assholes to deal with, who only want to thread shit on the topic, or mock & ridicule, since they can't use reason or facts.


He does not want to debate it with you.

He wants to discuss the topic with someone knowledgeable of the subject.

I'd say nonsqtr would be the man.

Don't give up on your tantrum.

You've got an audience at the Comedy Club.

----------

Quark (09-29-2017)

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## Sled Dog

> I've gone over 40 pages trying to reason with you


....geniuses.

For some reason you are completely incapable of discussing HAZ.

Poor you.

Your flight from facts doesn't entice us to pursue you into fantasy.

But it does make us laugh.

Don't stop your tantrum for my sake.

HAZ amiga.

----------

Quark (09-29-2017)

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## Sled Dog

> Evolution is central dogma to the atheist religion. They can't listen to reason because it threatens their faith system. Rational criticism of evolution is seen as a personal attack.


There is no "atheist religion".

The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is merely the central theory of biology.

That's all.

No other theory is as essential to biology as that one.

It's also an observed fact, not merely a theory.

You have no reason, so our failure to engage in rational discussion with you upon topics you've closed your mind to is not a defect in our abilities or our intentions.

It's just that you are not capable of accepting the truth.

You have a personal flaw.   

A SERIOUS defect.

An apparently irreparable wound in your psyche.

What would you expect us to do about your failures and defects?

Surgery?

No, I don't think so.

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Quark (09-29-2017)

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## usfan

> He does not want to debate it with you.
> 
> He wants to discuss the topic with someone knowledgeable of the subject.
> 
> I'd say nonsqtr would be the man.
> 
> Don't give up on your tantrum.
> 
> You've got an audience at the Comedy Club.


Don't expect any reason from me to you.  You're a religious bigot, with no reason or perspective.  So go fuck yourself, & let rational people discuss things in peace.  Is that too much to ask, even for someone as lame & stupid as you?

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Oskar (09-30-2017)

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## freethinker

My argument regarding gene duplication and divergence of the new gene does not require the theory of evolution to be true. This is a fact that it happens. I found one article after a short Google search, "Gene Genesis: Scientists Observe New Genes Evolving From Mutated Copies", a Scientific American article. 

Mutations of an existing gene can  create a new gene with a different function such as creating a new protein. About 45% of all mutations are harmful, another 45% are neutral, and about 10% are beneficial. It doesn't matter that the creation of a new gene is an unlikely occurrence. A new gene that confers some adaptive advantage to an organism will multiply fast once it has a few generations to reach some minimal level in the gene pool.

Your post of a diagram from a creationist website is not germane to this discussion. That is about chromosomes and I am talking about genes. The chromosomes in man and chimpanzees are not completely different - but that is for another discussion.

I think that you are relying on creationist literature as a primary source.

----------


## Sled Dog

> Don't expect any reason from me to you.  You're a religious bigot, with no reason or perspective.  So go **** yourself, & let rational people discuss things in peace.  Is that too much to ask, even for someone as lame & stupid as you?



I am being rational.

Lets discuss HAZ.

Oh.

WE can't.

Because YOU won't.

Because you know, and we know you know, that the evolution of the horse, the donkey and the zebra from a single progenitor species, shatters your nonsensical religious drivel.

So you've had a 100 page tantrum on all the science and religion threads because the honest people (that means me) won't let that handle go.

HAZ, pal, HAZ.

And you can be sure I laugh at you and your rants.

And ESPECIALLY at your begging.

----------


## usfan

> My argument regarding gene duplication and divergence of the new gene does not require the theory of evolution to be true. This is a fact that it happens. I found one article after a short Google search, "Gene Genesis: Scientists Observe New Genes Evolving From Mutated Copies", a Scientific American article.


If you have any evidence for your claims, by all  means, post it.  If an article supports your argument, you can quote the pertinent parts & source it.  But the 'new genes' claim is specious, at best.  it is like wrecking a car, & calling it a 'new car!'  Or washing it... IOW, there has been no changes in the genetic structure of the organism, just some aberrations within a particular gene, which is almost always destructive.




> Mutations of an existing gene can  create a new gene with a different function such as creating a new protein. About 45% of all mutations are harmful, another 45% are neutral, and about 10% are beneficial. It doesn't matter that the creation of a new gene is an unlikely occurrence. A new gene that confers some adaptive advantage to an organism will multiply fast once it has a few generations to reach some minimal level in the gene pool.
> Your post of a diagram from a creationist website is not germane to this discussion. That is about chromosomes and I am talking about genes. The chromosomes in man and chimpanzees are not completely different - but that is for another discussion.
> I think that you are relying on creationist literature as a primary source.


You can think whatever you want, but evidence has to be sourced & verified.  Poisoning the well is a fallacy, not an argument or evidence.  How is the graphic about the genome & chromosome flawed?  I did not think it was from a creo site, as i avoid those, for the sake of the dainty thought processes of the dogmatists, here.  AFAIK, this is basic science concerning the chromosome, & illustrates the parts for discussion.

If you have some evidence that makes a point, other than vague innuendo about 'new' functions of a gene, that is not really quantified or demonstrated, you should do it.  Otherwise, all you have are assertions.

How is this graphic wrong or flawed in its descriptions?



I thought it was a good illustration of the very complex science of genetics & the DNA.  I use my own words, from decades of studying & researching this subject.  I will quote other sources, from time to time, but i do not just do cut & pastes, or post links, & hope they do the 'debating' for me.  I make my own points, & back them up with science, facts, reason, & evidence.  I only ask for the same in return.

----------


## usfan

> I am being rational.
> Lets discuss HAZ.
> Oh.
> WE can't.
> Because YOU won't.
> Because you know, and we know you know, that the evolution of the horse, the donkey and the zebra from a single progenitor species, shatters your nonsensical religious drivel.
> 
> So you've had a 100 page tantrum on all the science and religion threads because the honest people (that means me) won't let that handle go.
> HAZ, pal, HAZ.
> ...


I do have a request.  I ignore your posts, whenever possible.  But trying to have a serious, thoughful discussion, when there are hecklers & disrupters is very difficult, if  not impossible.  I don't go to your threads, & disrupt, heckle, insult, or demean everyone taking an alternate position.  You are like antifa.. disrupting any free speech from those you disagree with.. and hate.  I don't begrudge you your opinion, and i'm not trying to change it.  I only ask that you avoid my threads, since it seems to bring out the worst in you.  You can rage & insult all you want, in your mosh pit threads, but most of my threads are in the science of philosophy subforums, & aren't really mosh pit topics.  You try to make them that, as antifa tries to disrupt any free speech from conservatives.

So, rather than continue in rude, ill mannered behavior, why not just avoid me, & especially threads that i start?  Is that not just common human courtesy?  I don't follow you around, demeaning you, ridiculing your threads, posts, or person, so why do you feel compelled to do this with  me?

I have tried reasoning with you, & it does not work.  I have tried returning your insults, but instead of showing some dignity & self respect, you double down on the disruption.  You do not post anything topical or thoughtful, just demeaning, insulting remarks that you seem to think are witty.

So how about it?  I don't want to see your posts, at all.  I don't want to look at your avatar, but it is impossible to ignore you, since you post multiple times, to be sure you are seen, with the only purpose of disrupting & thread shitting.  Why does this appeal to you?  If you despise me so much, why not just avoid any discussion, instead of exposing yourself as an unreasoning, hysterical bigot?

I am not going to engage you in any rational discussion, as history has shown this to be impossible.  So why don't you just fuck off, & leave me alone?

----------


## freethinker

Alfred Sturtevant was the first person to discover gene duplication while studying fruit flies (1925). The new genes were observed under a microscope. Other examples of gene duplication have been observed in many species including humans.

whyevolutionistrue.worpress.com/2017/01/24/alfred-sturtevant-a-hero-of-genetics/  -  The new gene is the same as the old gene. It takes time for the new gene to mutate into a gene that is functionally different or for the gene to be modified by changes to the control regions  surrounding the gene.

Ernst Mayr's book, "What Evolution Is", on page 108,  section THE ORIGIN OF NEW GENES , states: _A bacterium has about 1000 genes. A human has perhaps 30,000 functional genes. Where did all of these new genes come from?_ _They originate by duplication, with the duplicated gene inserted in tandem in the genome next to the sister gene.Such a new gene is called a paralogous gene., At first, it will have the same function as the sister gene.
_However, it will usually evolve by having its own mutations and in due time it may acquire functions that differ from those of its sister gene.

Gene duplication isn't speculative. It isn't unreasonable to conclude that some duplicated genes will mutate into a new gene that is beneficial. The rareness of this process is not an argument against it. Also, changes in the genome resulting from gene duplications are a very good way to trace descent.

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Quark (09-30-2017)

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## usfan

> Alfred Sturtevant was the first person to discover gene duplication while studying fruit flies (1925). The new genes were observed under a microscope. Other examples of gene duplication have been observed in many species including humans.
> 
> whyevolutionistrue.worpress.com/2017/01/24/alfred-sturtevant-a-hero-of-genetics/  -  The new gene is the same as the old gene. It takes time for the new gene to mutate into a gene that is functionally different or for the gene to be modified by changes to the control regions  surrounding the gene.
> 
> Ernst Mayr's book, "What Evolution Is", on page 108,  section THE ORIGIN OF NEW GENES , states: _A bacterium has about 1000 genes. A human has perhaps 30,000 functional genes. Where did all of these new genes come from?_ _They originate by duplication, with the duplicated gene inserted in tandem in the genome next to the sister gene.Such a new gene is called a paralogous gene., At first, it will have the same function as the sister gene.
> _However, it will usually evolve by having its own mutations and in due time it may acquire functions that differ from those of its sister gene.
> 
> Gene duplication isn't speculative. It isn't unreasonable to conclude that some duplicated genes will mutate into a new gene that is beneficial. The rareness of this process is not an argument against it. Also, changes in the genome resulting from gene duplications are a very good way to trace descent.


This is the very point of the OP.  You are making an equivocation.. a fallacious conclusion.. that since you can see 'some' variation within an organism, & that they can change in horizontal, 'micro' ways, you assume that they can change in major or 'macro' ways, too.  But those are 2 different things.

You still have fruit flies, even after millions of generations, attempting to 'see' evolution in action.  I dispute the 'new genes!' claim from 1925.  They maybe saw different genes, that were already in the parent stock, but there is no mechanism for 'creating' new genes.  Fruit flies, or any organism, do not 'create' new genetic material.. adding traits, developing wings, feet, eyes, or anything.  They can ONLY return what they began with, from the parent stock.  If those genes weren't already there, there is no mechanism to create new ones.

That is the basic claim of the ToE, & its basic fallacy.  There is no mechanism to create new genetic material.. added chromosomes.. different genome structure.. you can only slightly modify what was there from the beginning, or draw upon existing variability.

You compare bacteria with humans, & merely project or speculate that all the genes were 'created' by some mythical process.  What is it, if it can do this amazing thing?  Why cannot we observe it, if this is the source of all living things?  Bacteria always produce bacteria.  Humans always produce humans.  How can you project they were descended?  That is a fantastic claim, with no evidence.

The quotes you provided are just the opinion of someone's speculation.  This is not science.  This is conjecture.

What 'changes the genome?'  You merely assume that, based on the assumption of universal descent.  You cannot compare 2 diverse, completely different genetic structures & conclude descendancy, based on projection.  There must be evidence.  Show me the gene copies that suggest common descent.  Show me a marker, like the mtDNA flag that actually indicates descendancy.  But to merely assert it happened, & show a phylogenetic tree as proof, is circular reasoning.  you are using the premise to prove the conclusion.

----------


## Morning Star

> They can ONLY return what they began with, from the parent stock. If those genes weren't already there, there is no mechanism to create new ones.


Already proven wrong.

----------


## freethinker

See the Wikipedia discussion (very brief) on Molecular Evolution, section *Origins of New Genes*. There are 4 ways that this can happen: 1) Gene Duplication, - already discussed 2) Retrotransposition - creates new genes by copying mRNA to DNA and inserting it into the genome, 3) Chimeric Genes - form when duplication, deletion, or incomplete  retrotransposition combine portions of 2 different coding sequences to produce a novel adaptive function, 4) De novo origin - Novel genes can also arise from previously non-coding DNA. De novo genes are discussed in an article in quantamagazine.org "How New Genes Arise from Scratch".

In recent decades or years it has become apparent that changes in gene regulation which can enhance or repress gene transcription or affect the timing during embryonic development at which gene transcription (protein synthesis) occurs. Gene regulation also involves chemical transmitters that affect which locations of the organism are affected. Gene regulation is likely the major evolutionary difference between humans and chimpanzees since the structural gene difference is only 1%. So we have to consider not just new structural genes but changes to gene regulation.

I quoted the greatest evolutionary biologist of the 20th century, Ernst Mayr, because I thought his statement was profound, of interest to the audience, and he explained the process of gene duplication and divergence better than me.

I have another quote from the book, Evolution (Douglas Futuyma), page 461, section, *THE ORIGIN OF NEW GENES.
*"It is obvious that the approximately 30,000 different functional genes in mammalian genomes must have
evolved from a much lower number in the earliest ancestor of living organisms. Presumably, all genes in the human genome ultimately descend from a single gene or set of genes that provided the first programs for life on earth. Moreover, the number of functional genes differs among major groups of organisms. How do such genes arise, and what processes lead to the origin of novel genes? 
   Evolutionary biologists have described several mechanisms by which the genes in a species' genome originated, either from pre-existing genes in the same genome or in the genome of different species. These mechanisms include lateral transfer, exon shuffling, gene chimerism, retrotransposition, motif multiplication, and gene duplication."

None of these mechanisms depend on the theory of common descent or evolution to be true. These mechanisms depend on cell biology or molecular biology primarily. 

Correction: There are closer to 20,000 genes in the human and mammalian genome, not 30,000. The source were somewhat old (2005). 




"Bacteria always produce bacteria. Humans always produce humans."  -  Are you claiming that speciation never takes place?

----------


## Midgardian/Shane Ryan

> No.
> 
> Evolution is life.
> 
> Evolution by Natural Selection is the name of the theory that explains the observed fact of evolution.
> 
> Why are you confusing observed facts with religion?


What observed facts? Evolution cannot be observed.

----------


## nonsqtr

> What observed facts? Evolution cannot be observed.


Keep saying that.

You sound more like Jussie every minute.

----------


## nonsqtr

Sigh. Arguing about gene duplication - without knowing what it MEANS. What happens if a gene gets duplicated, what are the downstream effects? What does gene duplication actually do to the cell?

This is why I keep pointing you clowns to reaction diffusion systems. Because you need to understand those, to understand how gene duplication can give rise to a brand new organism with a different SHAPE.

Elementary reaction-diffusion is just two chemicals interacting in water. So, we assume that each chemical has an initial source (location, concentration, etc - and it may or may not be replenished), and each chemical may or may not be degraded or destroyed independently of the reaction, so fir instance if there is enzymatic destruction or if the molecule participates in some other reaction that tends to remove it from solution, all that would go into the removal process.

If you google "reaction diffusion" you will find some nice intuitive videos, showing reaction diffusion systems in action in 3-space.

The more interesting cases, are reaction diffusion systems "on a geometry", for instance of you go to the wiki page on reaction-diffusion they show you an example on a torus, and the result kinda leaps out at you if you're a biologist.

A good simple example of r-d is the Gray-Scott model which has three terms in each equation: a diffusion term that's just simple fluid dynamics, a replenishment term that describes how fast each chemical is created, and a removal term that describes how fast each chemical is degraded or destroyed.

The first thing that happens when you get two working copies of a gene, is that the internal concentrations of the end products doubles.

Well, as you can see from the videos, this can have a DRAMATIC effect on "shape".

----------


## BabyBoomer+

Tiny T-Rex relative is dubbed the 'harbinger of doom' | Daily Mail Online

The discovery of the Moros intrepidus  fills a 70 million year void between the existence of the earliest  tyrannosaurs, approximately 150 million years ago, and when the T-Rex  was first known to have existed. 


It is  believed to be an evolutionary mid-point which may explain how  allosaurs were replaced by tyrannosaurs atop the food chain.  


According to the research, published in the journal Communications Biology, the Moros intrepidus lived near the end of the allosaurs and at the evolutionary beginnings of the T-rex's reign.  


This gave rise to the name, which means 'harbinger of doom.' 


Researchers  claim tyrannosauroids stayed small in stature for about 15 million  years, before becoming behemoths like the T-Rex over another 16 million  years. 


Tyrannosaurus rex was one of  the largest carnivores to ever live and measured around 40 feet (12  metres) in length and between 15-20 feet (4.5 metres - 6 metres) high.


Previous studies have claimed it may have weighed up to 9 tons. 


But they were not always the dominant group of predators.  


Dr  Lindsay Zanno at North Carolina State University said: 'With a lethal  combination of bone-crunching bite forces, stereoscopic vision, rapid  growth rates, and colossal size, tyrant dinosaurs reigned uncontested  for 15 million years leading up to the end-Cretaceous extinction - but  it wasn't always that way


'Early in  their evolution, tyrannosaurs hunted in the shadows of archaic lineages  such as allosaurs that were already established at the top of the food  chain.'  


10093946-0-JORGE_GONZALEZ-a-2_1550749562318.jpg



Shhh. Dont mention the 'E' word

----------


## nonsqtr

> Tiny T-Rex relative is dubbed the 'harbinger of doom' | Daily Mail Online
> 
> The discovery of the Moros intrepidus  fills a 70 million year void between the existence of the earliest  tyrannosaurs, approximately 150 million years ago, and when the T-Rex  was first known to have existed. 
> 
> 
> It is  believed to be an evolutionary mid-point which may explain how  allosaurs were replaced by tyrannosaurs atop the food chain.  
> 
> 
> According to the research, published in the journal Communications Biology, the Moros intrepidus lived near the end of the allosaurs and at the evolutionary beginnings of the T-rex's reign.  
> ...


Could you imagine putting two of those on a boat?

Maybe that's why they didn't make it?

lol  :Wink:

----------


## Midgardian/Shane Ryan

> Sigh. Arguing about gene duplication - without knowing what it MEANS. What happens if a gene gets duplicated, what are the downstream effects? What does gene duplication actually do to the cell?
> 
> This is why I keep pointing you clowns to reaction diffusion systems. Because you need to understand those, to understand how gene duplication can give rise to a brand new organism with a different SHAPE.
> 
> Elementary reaction-diffusion is just two chemicals interacting in water. So, we assume that each chemical has an initial source (location, concentration, etc - and it may or may not be replenished), and each chemical may or may not be degraded or destroyed independently of the reaction, so fir instance if there is enzymatic destruction or if the molecule participates in some other reaction that tends to remove it from solution, all that would go into the removal process.
> 
> If you google "reaction diffusion" you will find some nice intuitive videos, showing reaction diffusion systems in action in 3-space.
> 
> The more interesting cases, are reaction diffusion systems "on a geometry", for instance of you go to the wiki page on reaction-diffusion they show you an example on a torus, and the result kinda leaps out at you if you're a biologist.
> ...


If your theory is so hard for the layman to understand, then why do evolutionists insist that we buy their dogma? Apparently you need a PhD to understand evolution. Why bother teaching it in schools, especially since evolution has no impact on anyone's life save for the people who "study" it?

----------


## nonsqtr

> If your theory is so hard for the layman to understand, then why do evolutionists insist that we buy their dogma? Apparently you need a PhD to understand evolution. Why bother teaching it in schools, especially since evolution has no impact on anyone's life save for the people who "study" it?


Antibiotic-resistant bacteria will have a direct impact on your life if you encounter one, trust me.

The physics behind biological evolution is not "hard", it's just a little unusual. It's not what most people are used to. It's not simple euclidean geometry. It has to do with lots of randomness, and "space filling processes". But it's not hard, it's actually very intuitive, much like euclidean geometry. You get used to it after a while. The important thing is, it's a different way of looking at the world. It is an additional tool in your tool kit.

I agree for the most part, armchair philosophy is pretty useless. We study this stuff because we need to do things with it, we need to cure diseases and therefore create Pharmaceuticals. If we want drugs that work, we have to understand how cells work.

And cells, are very complex pieces of machinery. What makes it difficult from an evolutionary standpoint, is that niches disappear. So for example, you may have a temporary set of conditions caused by a volcano, that only happens once every 50,000 years. But during the 60 to 90 days after the volcano erupts, you're going to have a brand-new niche that's going to support evolution, and then it's going to go away a few months later. So the life forms that will survive, are those that can adapt "out of" their original niche.

This happens in the universe that large too, for example elements only get created in certain ways at certain times, a supernova explodes and then it goes away. There is really no way to definitively trace the history around this, except by examining the byproducts. It's not easy, but it's not particularly hard either, mostly it just takes a lot of time. And effort. And money, that too.

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## Midgardian/Shane Ryan

> Antibiotic-resistant bacteria will have a direct impact on your life if you encounter one, trust me.
> 
> The physics behind biological evolution is not "hard", it's just a little unusual. It's not what most people are used to. It's not simple euclidean geometry. It has to do with lots of randomness, and "space filling processes". But it's not hard, it's actually very intuitive, much like euclidean geometry. You get used to it after a while. The important thing is, it's a different way of looking at the world. It is an additional tool in your tool kit.
> 
> I agree for the most part, armchair philosophy is pretty useless. We study this stuff because we need to do things with it, we need to cure diseases and therefore create Pharmaceuticals. If we want drugs that work, we have to understand how cells work.
> 
> And cells, are very complex pieces of machinery. What makes it difficult from an evolutionary standpoint, is that niches disappear. So for example, you may have a temporary set of conditions caused by a volcano, that only happens once every 50,000 years. But during the 60 to 90 days after the volcano erupts, you're going to have a brand-new niche that's going to support evolution, and then it's going to go away a few months later. So the life forms that will survive, are those that can adapt "out of" their original niche.
> 
> This happens in the universe that large too, for example elements only get created in certain ways at certain times, a supernova explodes and then it goes away. There is really no way to definitively trace the history around this, except by examining the byproducts. It's not easy, but it's not particularly hard either, mostly it just takes a lot of time. And effort. And money, that too.


Are you talking about speciation or macro-evolution?

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## nonsqtr

> Are you talking about speciation or macro-evolution?


Well, let's define "macro" evolution.

What does that mean to you?

To me, it just means something I can see. There's some stuff I cannot see, like what happens in the DNA, but there is some stuff I can see, like the shape of the organism or maybe whether it has any diseases or anything.

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## Midgardian/Shane Ryan

> Well, let's define "macro" evolution.
> 
> What does that mean to you?
> 
> To me, it just means something I can see. There's some stuff I cannot see, like what happens in the DNA, but there is some stuff I can see, like the shape of the organism or maybe whether it has any diseases or anything.


Alright.

Macroevolution is a process in which one species becomes another species through the process of "many" microevolutions over a period of time, likely millions or even billions of years, since the evolutionists keep on tacking more years to the age of the earth and even the universe, so that they can account for their flawed theory.

Speciation is a process in which natural selection produces hardier traits within a species and weeds out non-survivable traits. A classic example of this is Leski's E coli experiment, where at the end of the day the E coli viruses were still E coli.

Evolutionists can't understand this because they are beholden to religious dogma.

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usfan (02-22-2019)

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## nonsqtr

Oh - regarding speciation - google "evolution of new species".

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## nonsqtr

> Alright.
> 
> Macroevolution is a process in which one species becomes another species through the process of "many" microevolutions over a period of time, likely millions or even billions of years, since the evolutionists keep on tacking more years to the age of the earth and even the universe, so that they can account for their flawed theory.
> 
> Speciation is a process in which natural selection produces hardier traits within a species and weeds out non-survivable traits. A classic example of this is Leski's E coli experiment, where at the end of the day the E coli viruses were still E coli.
> 
> Evolutionists can't understand this because they are beholden to religious dogma.


Oh. Okay. Well, my claim is that the first part more likely happens "all at once", rather than gradually over time. In real life, survivability depends on the ability to mate. So for instance, if you have a mutant coyote (let's say a chupacabras) and it has the ability to mate with a normal coyote, then it is survivable.

I try to keep an open mind about this particular mechanism, and most likely there is more than one mechanism in play. The best I have after 40 Years of study is a hunch, and my hunch says that speciation has more to do with instantaneous large-scale mutations, so not little stuff like changes in base pairs, this would be big stuff like segment duplication, or trisomy, stuff like that. Like I said many times, a speck of dust. The meiotic spindles are very sensitive, they need to be properly aligned in order to replicate, and they need to be free from mechanical impediments because the DNA is actually unwinding, the proteins that normally protect the DNA are forced to temporarily disengage, which is what allows the replication to occur.

I'm pretty sure this is a very active area of research "right now". The embryologists have been pushing hard on the idea of mechanical malformations, and they've been able to demonstrate it in the laboratory, and they certainly have a point, but as you say it's entirely unclear how any of this relates to speciation in the field.

The biggest success in many of the most important advances in understanding have come from studying very simple life forms. It is much easier to change one bacteria into another, than it is to change a mouse into a dog. The people who study mutations have come across some very interesting ones, for sure. There is a whole library of these things, the people who do the DNA sequencing maintain libraries of where the cleavage points are, and so on.

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## Midgardian/Shane Ryan

> Oh - regarding speciation - google "evolution of new species".


Why would I do that? If you think that new species can come from life that is not the same species, then explain how? That is evolution, but it never happens. Instead we see E coli becoming improved through natural selection, but still being E coli. How can you pretend that you have "observed" evolution?

----------


## Midgardian/Shane Ryan

> Oh. Okay. Well, my claim is that the first part more likely happens "all at once", rather than gradually over time. In real life, survivability depends on the ability to mate. So for instance, if you have a mutant coyote (let's say a chupacabras) and it has the ability to mate with a normal coyote, then it is survivable.
> 
> I try to keep an open mind about this particular mechanism, and most likely there is more than one mechanism in play. The best I have after 40 Years of study is a hunch, and my hunch says that speciation has more to do with instantaneous large-scale mutations, so not little stuff like changes in base pairs, this would be big stuff like segment duplication, or trisomy, stuff like that. Like I said many times, a speck of dust. The meiotic spindles are very sensitive, they need to be properly aligned in order to replicate, and they need to be free from mechanical impediments because the DNA is actually unwinding, the proteins that normally protect the DNA are forced to temporarily disengage, which is what allows the replication to occur.
> 
> I'm pretty sure this is a very active area of research "right now". The embryologists have been pushing hard on the idea of mechanical malformations, and they've been able to demonstrate it in the laboratory, and they certainly have a point, but as you say it's entirely unclear how any of this relates to speciation in the field.
> 
> The biggest success in many of the most important advances in understanding have come from studying very simple life forms. It is much easier to change one bacteria into another, than it is to change a mouse into a dog. The people who study mutations have come across some very interesting ones, for sure. There is a whole library of these things, the people who do the DNA sequencing maintain libraries of where the cleavage points are, and so on.


If this is still ongoing research without not much supporting data, why is it being taught as fact in classrooms from early grade school to the senior bachelor level in college?

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## Midgardian/Shane Ryan

I did not say beyond the bachelor level, because anyone who has to be knowledgeable about "evolutionary theory" _will_ recite the correct words or be out of a job.

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usfan (02-22-2019)

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## nonsqtr

> Why would I do that? If you think that new species can come from life that is not the same species, then explain how? That is evolution, but it never happens. Instead we see E coli becoming improved through natural selection, but still being E coli. How can you pretend that you have "observed" evolution?


No. Do the due diligence. Google what I told you, because it answers your question. Right there, on the first page, in the first 10 links.

You will see examples of the evolution of new species, both in the wild and in the laboratory.

And you can get a very precise definition of speciation from Wikipedia, including the four generally recognized types.

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## Midgardian/Shane Ryan

> No. Do the due diligence. Google what I told you, because it answers your question. Right there, on the first page, in the first 10 links.
> 
> You will see examples of the evolution of new species, both in the wild and in the laboratory.
> 
> And you can get a very precise definition of speciation from Wikipedia, including the four generally recognized types.


I took a biology class at a public high school that taught evolution. I graduated. Pray tell me, why should I trust Wilipedia more than my alma mater?

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## usfan

The issue is DNA evidence. The claim is, that all living things slowly, incrementally, & cumulatively increased in complexity, from single celled organisms to the variety we see today. I am saying this is a false conclusion, based on faulty assumptions, & obvious conflicts with observable science. Organisms do NOT increase in complexity or variability, they DECREASE, if anything. Every family group mentioned in this thread.. horses, cats, dogs.. all of them are examples of DECREASING variability, not increasing. You can assume they 'evolve' but they merely vary within their genetic parameters. NO new genetic variability is being created, you only get what the slot machine possibilities within the dna can yield.. which can be millions of possibilities. As the trees branch out in their respective families, you get dead ends, not more variability.

With humans, mtDNA has become a major problem for the theory of universal common descent. Here are some facts, concerning the mitochondrial DNA:

1. There is a 'marker' within the mtDNA that provides a glimpse into ancestry.  Mothers pass this on to daughters.
2. All human beings have been proven to be descended from the same ancestral 'mother'.  This has been ironically called the 'eve' gene.
3. Measured genetic mutations of the mtDNA have been determined, and by extrapolating backward, the age of this first mother of humanity has been calculated..  ~ 6k yrs.. well under the 100-200,000 that was believed.  Wiki even removed this original study/conclusion, in favor of the mandated narrative. 
4. An attempt was made to reconcile the recent dates of this human ancestor, by extrapolating with chimp dna.  A more acceptable number was acheived, but it was based on the assumption of human/chimp ancestry.
5. 3 major clades have been followed, through the studies of human mtDNA.   All of humanity came through one of these.  They are, also ironically (and appropriately) referred to as 'daughters of Eve'.

There has been a lot of amazing and enlightening discoveries, about DNA,  and especially the mitochondrial DNA,  in the last 30 yrs.  Most of them have been problematic for the theory of universal common descent.  Reconciling the facts about genetics, with the beliefs about common descent has not been easy, and has given rise to hysterical dogmatism, among the True Believers in evolutionary theory. 

I would be thrilled to discuss and analize the facts about these genetic discoveries,  and their implications on the different models of origins.

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## usfan

> No. Do the due diligence. Google what I told you, because it answers your question. Right there, on the first page, in the first 10 links.
> 
> You will see examples of the evolution of new species, both in the wild and in the laboratory.
> 
> And you can get a very precise definition of speciation from Wikipedia, including the four generally recognized types.


Google?  Read a book?  These are 'logical rebuttals!' to you?

 :Facepalm:

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Midgardian/Shane Ryan (02-22-2019)

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## BabyBoomer+

> With humans, mtDNA has become a major problem for the theory of universal common descent. Here are some facts, concerning the mitochondrial DNA:
> 
> 1. There is a 'marker' within the mtDNA that provides a glimpse into ancestry.  Mothers pass this on to daughters.
> 2. All human beings have been proven to be descended from the same ancestral 'mother'.  This has been ironically called the 'eve' gene.


Nope this is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. and I already posted a detailed rebuttal referencing the sources, in another of these endless evolution threads. Stop posting disingenuous false 'facts'.  

Its shameful the way you misrepresent  and distort proven science, especially when you have already been corrected  once , with evidence of the original science and correct analysis.  You  really are a scurrilous dishonorable liar, usfan, which is why i decline to debate with you. You bring decent honest 'christians' into disrepute. You are the christian equivalent of ISIS.

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## nonsqtr

> I took a biology class at a public high school that taught evolution. I graduated. Pray tell me, why should I trust Wilipedia more than my alma mater?


I dunno... I'm guessing it's been awhile?  :Dontknow: 

We are getting very close to understanding what a species really is. It's an equilibrium state. It's a sequence of equilibria that lead to a stable conformation, or what you call a "shape".

So like, simple things - the presence or absence of hair. You cannot just take out the DNA sequence that codes for keratin, and expect all the hair to disappear. It doesn't work that way. What you find is, all kinds of other stuff starts happening. Suddenly the brain doesn't develop right, the muscles don't develop right, all kinds of weird stuff happens. None of these organs use keratin, that we know of - none of them are "hairy" lol 

Um... oh yeah, those Chinese twins that were genetically engineered to prevent HIV, that CCR5 protein turns out to be vital to brain development. It affects cognition in adults. So the people from MIT or saying that it's quite likely these kids will be smart.  :Smile:

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## usfan

> Nope this is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. and I already posted a detailed rebuttal referencing the sources, in another of these endless evolution threads. Stop posting disingenuous false 'facts'.  
> 
> Its shameful the way you misrepresent  and distort proven science, especially when you have already been corrected  once , with evidence of the original science and correct analysis.  You  really are a scurrilous dishonorable liar, usfan, which is why i decline to debate with you. You bring decent honest 'christians' into disrepute. You are the christian equivalent of ISIS.


Ad hom deflection is not a scientific rebuttal.  You have presented NOTHING that refutes the discovery and facts about mtDNA. 
My points stand, unrefuted.

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## usfan

From Gibbons:
_
Regardless of the cause, evolutionists are most concerned about the effect of a faster mutation rate.
For example, researchers have calculated that "mitochondrial Eve"--the woman whose mtDNA was
ancestral to that in all living people--lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. Using the new
clock, she would be a mere 6000 years old._

Source

I'll give you a summary,  in layman's terms. 

1. Mitochondrial DNA was discovered in the early 80s.
2. A 'flag', or correlation was discovered, showing descendancy from mother to daughter.
3. An estimate of dating, based on phylogeny (evolutionary tree assumptions) was made of 1 mutation every 10k yrs, or so.
4. MEASURED dating of mtDNA mutation, from multiple actual samples,  produced a constant 800 yr rate.
5. Facts and scientific results have been poo pooed, in favor of preconceived beliefs, based only on assumptions of evolution..  aka, circular reasoning.

I am surprised, that the facts about mtDNA,  in humans and other phylogenetic haplogroups,  have not already introduced more doubt as to the 'settled science!' beliefs, regarding universal common descent. But dogmatic beliefs do not fade easily, and the dogma indoctrinated into modern 'science!' students are based on decades old teachings, and mandated Indoctrination. 

1. Neanderthal is still taught as a missing link, or subhuman ancestor of humans.
2. Dating assumptions are glossed over, and beliefs in 'millions & millions of years!' are mandated.
3. Obvious implications of actual scientific data are swept away with excuses, while the official dogma is repeated.
4. All humans have been shown to have descended from a SINGLE female, about 6k yrs ago, by proven, measured rates.  Another 'branch' in the human clades has been shown to be the ancestors of all humans, splitting 3 ways, about 4200 yrs ago, by the same measured rate.
5. The ASSUMPTIONS of '200k yrs!' as the age of humanity has taken precedence over the measured, scientific based conclusions of <10k yrs.

Much more can be said, and concluded, about this fairly new discovery.  As usual, the scientific establishment is slow to change their beliefs.  Flat earth, the 4 humours, spontaneous generation, geocentricism, and many other 'beliefs!' from the scientific status quo have shown this to be common to man.  Cries of 'blasphemy!' replace scientific scrutiny and methodology.

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## nonsqtr

Oy vey.  :Geez:

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## usfan

More from Gibbons:

_The most widely used mutation rate for noncoding human mtDNA relies on estimates of the date when humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor, taken to be 5 million years ago. That date is based on counting the mtDNA and protein differences between all the great apes and timing their divergence using dates from fossils of one great ape's ancestor. In humans, this yields a rate of about one mutation every 300 to 600 generations, or one every 6000 to 12,000 years.._

..aka, circular reasoning.. you ASSUME  the descendancy of apes and humans, THEN calculate a 'rate!'.  It is convenient if the data fits within the preconceived assumptions.

_The researchers sequenced 610 base pairs of the mtDNA control region in 357 individuals from 134 different families, representing 327 generational events, or times that mothers passed on mtDNA to their offspring. Evolutionary studies led them to expect about one mutation in 600 generations (one every 12,000 years). So they were stunned to find 10 base-pair changes, which gave them a rate of one mutation every 40 generations, or one every 800 years. The data were published last year in Nature Genetics, and the rate has held up as the number of families has doubled_..

So the ACTUAL, MEASURED rates, from real life data and evidence, is suspected, while the ASSUMPTIONS are clung to with dogmatic certainty.  The measured, scientifically based rate is dismissed, in favor of the assumed and believed rate that fits the status quo dogma.

Don't you think that questioning some of the Indoctrination you have been pounded with, from all angles, would be a good idea?  Especially if these dogmatic, mandated beliefs have such serious philosophical implications?

----------


## nonsqtr

I have a quick Parable to relate. Once Upon a Time, some naive and ignorant person looked at a psychopath, and discovered a small amount of macrocephaly. This observation, turned into the science of phrenology. Some people, never had much use for phrenology, but other people got out there with their measuring instruments and started drawing conclusions. Here endeth the parable.

----------


## Morning Star

> Ad hom deflection is not a scientific rebuttal.  You have presented NOTHING that refutes the discovery and facts about mtDNA. 
> My points stand, unrefuted.


There is no ad hominem he has simply posted the truth you are posting disingenuous false facts. 

_All human beings have been proven to be descended from the same ancestral 'mother'. 

_
This is a distortion of the facts, the article, the science, traces us back to a single common mother but this is NOT the "Eve" you are trying to claim it to be. There were in fact tens of thousands of other mothers as well, it only says that the genes of this particular mother can be traced unbroken all the way to modern man. Big difference. To be honest I don't think you are really trying to be dishonest, I think you are truly just ignorant and incapable of understanding the science you hate so much.

I await your complete dismissal of the truth along with the usual ad-hominem bull shit to deflect from your obvious inability to comprehend the subject.

----------


## usfan

> There is no ad hominem he has simply posted the truth you are posting disingenuous false facts. 
> _All human beings have been proven to be descended from the same ancestral 'mother'.
> _
> This is a distortion of the facts, the article, the science, traces us back to a single common mother but this is NOT the "Eve" you are trying to claim it to be. There were in fact tens of thousands of other mothers as well, it only says that the genes of this particular mother can be traced unbroken all the way to modern man. Big difference. To be honest I don't think you are really trying to be dishonest, I think you are truly just ignorant and incapable of understanding the science you hate so much.
> I await your complete dismissal of the truth along with the usual ad-hominem bull shit to deflect from your obvious inability to comprehend the subject.


Other than the gratuitous ad hominem, you are mistaken about the facts of human dna.  Like most common descent indoctrinees, you are behind on the studies of dna.  The facts as i related them are easily confirmed, and the labels i used were from the evolutionists in their own studies.

Cut the insulting crap, and I'll be glad to debate it with you.  But if you look into mtDNA,  you will find i have presented the facts, and your accusations are false.

Any more off topic, incivil threadshitting will be redirected.

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## usfan

No response to any of my points regarding the Gibbons study?  Nor any other points about trait creation, and structural changes in the genome? 

Name calling and indignation is the best you evolutionists can do?  And you claim scientific objectivity?
 :Dontknow:

----------


## Morning Star

> Other than the gratuitous ad hominem, you are mistaken about the facts of human dna.  Like most common descent indoctrinees, you are behind on the studies of dna.  The facts as i related them are easily confirmed, and the labels i used were from the evolutionists in their own studies..


Link?

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## usfan

> From Gibbons:
> _
> Regardless of the cause, evolutionists are most concerned about the effect of a faster mutation rate.
> For example, researchers have calculated that "mitochondrial Eve"--the woman whose mtDNA was
> ancestral to that in all living people--lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. Using the new
> clock, she would be a mere 6000 years old._
> 
> Source





> Link?


It was provided in the post.

----------


## BabyBoomer+

> It was provided in the post.


Miochondrial Eve WAS NOT A SINGLE INDIVIDUAL!!!  Ive already shot this bollox down in flames in another thread, with proof. 

And yet this fuckwit continues to distort the facts to his own ends and then claim its the truth!! He unbelievable!

Hers what the SMITHSONIAN says:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...ies-180959593/

"
*No, a Mitochondrial Eve Is Not the First Female in a Species"*

----------


## usfan

1. Mitochondrial 'Eve' is the first woman we know of, in the family/species of humanity.  Any others are speculative, and have no evidence. Read the Gibbons link, or any of the hundreds of papers on mitochondrial 'Eve'.
2.the mtDNA has shown this singular ancestor, in every human being, in every race and region.
3. Ad hom is a poor substitute for reason.
4. Loud, repeated, indignant assertions are not 'proof!'

----------


## usfan

I am getting really tired of the constant insult streams from the pro evolutionists here.  Please keep your posts topical and civil, or i will be forced to report.

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## BabyBoomer+

> 1. Mitochondrial 'Eve' is the first woman we know of, in the family/species of humanity.  Any others are speculative, and have no evidence. Read the Gibbons link, or any of the hundreds of papers on mitochondrial 'Eve'.
> 2.the mtDNA has shown this singular ancestor, in every human being, in every race and region.
> 3. Ad hom is a poor substitute for reason.
> 4. Loud, repeated, indignant assertions are not 'proof!'


ill repeat it again. Mitochondrial eve was not a single woman. at the minium it was two sisters, and may well represent a small group of related woman. And that may well include previous ancestral line sthat have died out but related. And I provided MULTIPLE SOURCES THAT STATE THIS.



https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...ies-180959593/

"
*No, a Mitochondrial “Eve” Is Not the First Female in a Species"*  claiming its a single woman is a GROSS MISREPRESENTATION OF THE SCIENCE, AS THE ABOVE LINK CLEARLY EXPLAINS. 

STOP DISTORTING AND WARPING THE FACTS, USFAN, YOU LYING TROLL!! Your behaviour is disgraceful,  and discredits all christians.

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## Midgardian/Shane Ryan

> Google?  Read a book?  These are 'logical rebuttals!' to you?


Exactly, Anyone who makes an argument ought to be able to defend it independently, of course with the help of other sources. But, they should make an argument, not tell people to read something or hide behind the "authority" of _science_.

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## usfan

> ill repeat it again. Mitochondrial eve was not a single woman. at the minium it was two sisters, and may well represent a small group of related woman. And that may well include previous ancestral line sthat have died out but related. And I provided MULTIPLE SOURCES THAT STATE THIS.
> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...ies-180959593/
> "
> *No, a Mitochondrial Eve Is Not the First Female in a Species"*  claiming its a single woman is a GROSS MISREPRESENTATION OF THE SCIENCE, AS THE ABOVE LINK CLEARLY EXPLAINS. 
> 
> STOP DISTORTING AND WARPING THE FACTS, USFAN, YOU LYING TROLL!! Your behaviour is disgraceful,  and discredits all christians.


I don't debate links.  If you have studies or facts that you want to source, fine.  But a link to speak for you is not a forum debate.

And you are wrong.  Sisters?  Where do you get these cockamamie notions...   :Rolleyes20: 

And enough with the insulting ad hom.  If you have facts or arguments, present them.  But demeaning me is a lame, fallacious tactic for losers.  I will cease engaging you with reason, and report your off topic threadshitting.

Even wiki, with their pro evolution bias, knows the facts about mtDNA. 

*In human genetics, the Mitochondrial Eve (also mt-Eve, mt-MRCA) is the matrilineal most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all currently living humans, i.e., the most recent woman from whom all living humans descend in an unbroken line purely through their mothers, and through the mothers of those mothers, back until all lines converge on one woman..*

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Midgardian/Shane Ryan (02-22-2019)

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## BabyBoomer+

> I don't debate links.  If you have studies or facts that you want to source, fine.  But a link to speak for you is not a forum debate.
> 
> And you are wrong.  Sisters?  Where do you get these cockamamie notions...  
> 
> And enough with the insulting ad hom.  If you have facts or arguments, present them.  But demeaning me is a lame, fallacious tactic for losers.  I will cease engaging you with reason, and report your off topic threadshitting.
> 
> Even wiki, with their pro evolution bias, knows the facts about mtDNA. 
> 
> *In human genetics, the Mitochondrial Eve (also mt-Eve, mt-MRCA) is the matrilineal most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all currently living humans, i.e., the most recent woman from whom all living humans descend in an unbroken line purely through their mothers, and through the mothers of those mothers, back until all lines converge on one woman..*


you really are a pointless dimwit, usfan. youve had the facts from impeccable sources,. you simply ignore them, and carry on posting the same bullshite and made up bollox

----------


## usfan

> you really are a pointless dimwit, usfan. youve had the facts from impeccable sources,. you simply ignore them, and carry on posting the same bullshite and made up bollox


Fine.  What part of the last quote from wiki did you miss?  

_the most recent woman from whom all living humans descend in an unbroken line purely through their mothers, and through the mothers of those mothers, back until all lines converge on one woman.._

I'm the dimwit?  You make dimwits look smart!  

 :Smiley ROFLMAO: 

..what a maroon..  you think you can insult and intimidate me with your bluff and bravado, pretending 'knowledge!', when anyone can see you haven't a clue about dna, or mitochondrial clocks, or really, anything relating to common descent, biology, and science.

..just another pretender, who posts rude, insulting posts in a science thread, and can't find the mosh pit with both hands, to spew his pathetic little insults.

Look, Einstein, you wanna bash me, take it to the mosh pit, and enough with the threadshitting disruption, ok?

..but you won't.. like your antifa cronies, you'll keep up the bluff and bluster, and demean people who have more brains than you'll ever hope for.  

 :Horsepoop: 

But like a typical, shit-for-brains progressive indoctrinee, you have these knee jerk, triggered impulses, driven into your empty little head through decades of propaganda, and have the gall to snark at other people's intelligence.    :Rolleyes20: 

You'll fit right in, with the brain dead MADAs here..   :Smiley ROFLMAO: 

..too dumb to post in the appropriate thread, and the only goal is disruption and threadshitting.   What a jewel you are for this forum...   :Shakeshead:

----------


## usfan

Ok..  to humor the new guy, even though he's coming off like a real dimwit, i glanced through his 'Smithsonian!' link that he believed refuted the points i had on mitochondrial DNA, and specifically, the 'Eve'.

Early into the rambling, unsourced, journalistic denialism piece, it said this:

_Instead, this so-called Eve "was one of many females, but she happened to be the only one who passed down the mitochondrial DNA in an unbroken female to female way._

Now, i don't know how this new guy, with his self image of a scientific genius,  missed this, but it is exactly what i said in my first correction to his indignant, insult laden 'rebuttal' to my post.

Of course, the 'one of many females' part is believed, or assumed, because all we really know is that the mtDNA can only track backwards to the FIRST mother, of whatever species we are researching.. there is no evidence of 'others!', in mtDNA. 

In the Smithsonian piece, it was sperm Whales.  No doubt this new genius went there by mistake, excited by the word, 'sperm!', and gets off with the other MADAs here with their homoerotic obsession with me, personally!   :Bananabutt: 

But now really...  wouldn't this be more appropriate in the mosh pit, where you can revile me all you want, pretend out your male sadism fantasies, and let others discuss scientific subjects without your juvenile demands for attention?  I get it, that you're rude, ignorant, bigoted, and homophobic about your own feelings, when you read my posts.  But why trash a perfectly good thread? Why not take it to the mosh pit?   :Dontknow:

----------


## Trinnity

Folks better be civil... :Sofa:

----------


## OldSchool

> Folks better be civil...


Like we know the meaning of the word. lol

----------


## usfan

I think it is time for me to take another break from origins threads.  There is just too much over the top hostility, and it wears me out.  The UCD Believers won't debate the science,  with any pretext of civility, but only rage and fume.  I'm getting too old, crabby, and impatient, to stay rational and scientific in the face of such hostility.  So I'll fade out of this thread...  again.. and others, too.  There are more positive things for me to engage in, other than irrational hatred from anti-christian activists.

----------


## BabyBoomer+

> F 
> ..but you won't.. like your antifa cronies, you'll keep up the bluff and bluster, and demean people who have more brains than you'll ever hope for.


The only left wing fascist on this forum is you, you even use the same debating tactics as these looney lefties.  To think my entire family fought fascism in WW2 just so idiots like you could post offensive drivel.

----------

usfan (02-23-2019)

----------


## Trinnity

> I think it is time for me to take another break from origins threads..


Good idea. For everybody's sake. 




> The only left wing fascist on this forum is you, you even use the same debating tactics as these looney lefties.  To think my entire family fought fascism in WW2 just so idiots like you could post offensive drivel.


I suggest you stay out of USFan's threads.

----------

usfan (02-23-2019)

----------


## usfan

> Good idea. For everybody's sake.


Ok.  If that's what you want.  I will censor myself, so as not to trigger progressive indoctrinees. 

It doesn't feel right, though.   :Dontknow: 

But I'm ready for a break, and will back off.  
 :Hello:

----------


## BabyBoomer+

> Good idea. For everybody's sake. 
> 
> I suggest you stay out of USFan's threads.


I asked him to stay out of mine  a few days ago. He declined.

----------


## Trinnity

*People picking fights should stop. People should be civil to each other. I'll leave it up to your individual consciences, for now,  to figure it out. 

We'll call it a grace period.*

----------



----------


## ChemEngineer

> Thanks61Thanked: 718


Your lack of gratitude is noteworthy but unfortunate, for you and for everyone around you.

We scientists have found that doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested. – Martin Seligman, psychologist, in his book, *Flourish*

----------

Brat (03-28-2019),Rita Marley (03-27-2019)

----------


## BabyBoomer+

> Your lack of gratitude is noteworthy but unfortunate, for you and for everyone around you.
> 
> We scientists have found that doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested. – Martin Seligman, psychologist, in his book, *Flourish*


1. I fail to see the point or function of the system, so im not bothered if people thank me or not. 
2. I personally contribute about half the posts and threads to the science and technology forums, which were dead as a door nail before  i got here
3. i contribute a UK perspective, which no one did before  i got here, which Trinnity likes
4. personal attacks are against the rules. reported.
5. why are you dragging up a long dead thread, notorious for personal attacks? 
6. fuck off, dickhead.

----------

usfan (03-28-2019)

----------


## BabyBoomer+

Science, tech and Uk forums:

21 of 36 recent threads created by me.  Whers you contribution chemengineer ?  GTFO.


forum 1.jpgforum 002.jpgforum 003.jpg


Tine to lock this thread, Trinnity,

----------

usfan (03-28-2019)

----------


## ChemEngineer

disappointment_thumbnail.jpg

Grammar is the least of this hater's problems.  I had no idea how much of an understatement I made.
Vulgar, bitter, ignorant.   A terrible combination.  He certainly does not belong anywhere around this forum.

----------

usfan (03-28-2019)

----------


## patrickt

Let's see. I've read reliable reports of fish which live in caves, in total darkness, and have evolved to have no eyes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexica...ution_research

Would that count as an observed reality?

----------


## patrickt

> Evolution is a Religion.  It is putting faith into something you cannot see, except here their god is man.  If the true God and Creator were acknowledged then there would be moral ramifications to deal with, and the sinful man does not want to deal with that.
> 
> I have seen presentations which show how the evolutionist deal with things.  The one I liked was a school science book which was trying to explain the geological ages, and how they date their findings.  On one page they said they knew the age of the rocks, by the fossils found in them, then the next page says they date the fossils by the rocks they are in, and around.
> 
> Micro-evolution is going on around us, which is small changes, but like Darwins finches, the showed signs of micro-evolution, but the thing is, they were still Birds
> 
> It takes a lot more faith to believe in evolution than Intelligent design, or a Creator


Leave it to the religious fanatics to invade the science forum with their nonsense.

----------

usfan (03-28-2019)

----------


## Brat

> *Your lack of gratitude is noteworthy but unfortunate, for you and for everyone around you.
> * 
> We scientists have found that doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested. – Martin Seligman, psychologist, in his book, *Flourish*



How, in ANY WAY is this a personal attack?  It is polite as can be.  Pointing out the ratio between your thanks and the thanks you receive is hardly an attack.

----------

ChemEngineer (03-29-2019)

----------


## ChemEngineer

Correct a fool and he will hate you.  Correct a wise man and he will thank you.
It's from the Scriptures. Look it up. Not a direct translation or quote from the KJV, but close enough.

----------

Brat (04-04-2019)

----------


## nonsqtr

> Correct a fool and he will hate you.  Correct a wise man and he will thank you.
> It's from the Scriptures. Look it up. Not a direct translation or quote from the KJV, but close enough.


Appeal to Authority

Who revived this thread anyway?

Mistake!

I agree, time to lock it up.

Most of these clowns want to talk about anything but science. Personalities, religion, it's all in the mix. But this is the science forum. Personalities have no place here. Generally speaking, in the domain of science, if you can't work with someone that makes you the bad guy. "Tolerance" acquires a very real meaning when you're on the ground performing experiments with someone you can't stand.

Science is about repeatable and independently observable results. It's not about opinion, it's not about politics, and it's not about belief. It's about you and me agreeing on what we're looking at, because the evidence speaks for itself and cannot be contradicted, invalidated, or disproven.

It has been said that the first requirement of science is a common vocabulary, and the second requirement is a common metric.

As a scientist, we get a pretty good feel for when someone's trying to blow smoke up our butts. The first question you can ask is where's the metric, and if there isn't one, that should be an immediate red flag.

No one has yet shown that personalities play into evolution. Although it makes sense that those who are exceedingly abrasive won't get laid. lol  :Wink:

----------


## CWF

If evolution be the case study why is it that rank stupidity has a field day, uninhibited, fertilized, promoted and considered fashionable in the classrooms of America?

One would think that just the opposite would be occurring.

----------


## Morning Star

> If evolution be the case study why is it that rank stupidity has a field day, uninhibited, fertilized, promoted and considered fashionable in the classrooms of America?
> 
> One would think that just the opposite would be occurring.


Science is taught in schools, you want stupid there are churches for that.

----------


## ChemEngineer

Copied from elsewhere:

Did you know that Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the EXACT same date?  February 12, 1809.
Perhaps the two most influential people in American History were born on the same day. 

Abraham Lincoln's life resulted in slaves becoming free.

Charles Darwin's life resulted in free people becoming enslaved, by causing some to think that they are superior to others. 

-----------------  END OF COPIED PORTION--------------

Stalin and Hitler were mesmerized by Darwin's eugenics implication.  They LOVED being in the superior race and Hitler set out to produce more Aryans and murder inferior Jews, as he saw them.  
The Japanese did the same thing, bayoneting perhaps a million inferior Chinese civilians, and Philippino civilians.

Hitler was no Christian.  In his SS schools, children were taught to pray to the Fuhrer.  Numerous quotes establish Hitler's hatred of Judiasm and Christianity, even though godless Leftists will deny the reality.  So what's new.

----------

Jehoshaphat (10-03-2019),usfan (04-05-2019)

----------


## nonsqtr

Oh brother - now we've been Godwin'd. ;

lol  :Smiley ROFLMAO:

----------


## ChemEngineer

Recent Humans with Archaic Features Upend Evolution
*BY JEFFREY P. TOMKINS, PH.D. *  | FRIDAY, MARCH 29, 2019*



Ideas shaping the concept of human evolution have largely played out through images. Characters with large brow ridges and sloping foreheads—including _Homo neanderthalensis_ and _Homo erectus_—have consistently been depicted as the earliest forms of evolving humans. Now, new fossil evidence is turning the whole paradigm upside down.
A skull fossil found in Mongolia in 2006 was linked to evolutionary icons like _H. neanderthalensis_ and_ H. erectus_ because of its alleged “archaic” features. A recent study now dates it at about 34,000 years, which puts it in the same age range (evolutionarily speaking) as very recent humans.1 This study also extracted mitochondrial DNA from the skull and placed it within the range of modern Eurasian humans. Considering that secular scientists have dated other human skulls with “anatomically modern” features at over 300,000 years,2these new findings of “recent” humans with archaic features highlight the abject futility of the human evolution story.
_Figure 1. Salkhit skullcap found in Mongolia._
Image credit: Copyright © Institute of History and Archaeology, Mongolian Academy of Sciences. Used in accordance with federal copyright (fair use doctrine) law. Usage by ICR does not imply endorsement of copyright holder.

This discrepancy is reminiscent of human skulls found in Kow Swamp, Australia, reported in the journal _Nature_ in 1972. In that study, researchers stated, “Analysis of the cranial morphology of more than thirty individuals reveals the survival of _Homo erectus_features in Australia until as recently as 10,000 years ago.”3
But evolution’s problem of human fossils with archaic features persisting into the very recent evolutionary past pales in light of the fact that these traits are still found in living humans. One of the best examples is former Russian boxing champion Nikolai Valuev. A profile picture of Valuev clearly shows he possesses a very prominent brow ridge along with a distinctly sloping forehead.

_Image credit: Russian boxer Nikolai Valuev. Copyright © 2015 Allrus.me. Used in accordance with federal copyright (fair use doctrine) law. Usage by ICR does not imply endorsement of copyright holder._

As things stand, the so-called fossil record for human evolution is still nothing but a collection of apes and humans with no transitional forms linking the two groups. This inconvenient fact was the subject of a 2016 Royal Society research paper bearing the provocative title “From _Australopithecus_ to _Homo_: the transition that wasn’t.”4
Numerous studies have shown that Australopithecines are extinct apes with many chimp-like anatomical traits. _Homo_ is the human genus that includes all of us modern folks along with our assumed archaic ancestors. In the Royal Society paper, the researchers bluntly state:
Although the transition from _Australopithecus_ to _Homo_ is usually thought of as a momentous transformation, the fossil record bearing on the origin and earliest evolution of _Homo_ is virtually undocumented.4
*So-called archaic humans have always coexisted with modern humans, just as creationists expect.* 
Not only is there no fossil evidence for the evolution of humans from apes, but the so-called archaic features of alleged early evolving humans have in reality coexisted with those of anatomically modern humans throughout the _Homo_ fossil record and are even found in humans today. Human skull trait diversity merely demonstrates the created variability that was placed there by the ingenuity of the Creator.
_References_

Devièse, T. et al. 2019. Compound-specific radiocarbon dating and mitochondrial DNA analysis of the Pleistocene hominin from Salkhit Mongolia. _Nature Communications_. 10: 274.Hublin, J.-J. et al. 2017. New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of _Homo sapiens_. _Nature_. 546: 289-292.Thorne, A. G. and P. G. Macumber. 1972. Discoveries of Late Pleistocene Man at Kow Swamp, Australia. _Nature_. 238: 316-319.Kimbel, W. H. and B. Villmoare. 2016. From _Australopithecus_ to _Homo_: the transition that wasn’t. _Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B_. 371 (1698): 20150248.
_* Dr. Jeffrey Tomkins is Director of Life Sciences at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his Ph.D. in genetics from Clemson University._

Cite this article: Jeffrey P. Tomkins, Ph.D. 2019. Recent Humans with Archaic Features Upend Evolution. _Acts & Facts_. 48 (4).

----------

Northern Rivers (04-06-2019),usfan (04-06-2019)

----------


## ChemEngineer

Professor David Berlinski explains how Darwinian evolution is NOT science in five minutes:




If this causes you to perspire heavily, gnash your teeth, and use swear words and  personal attacks, perhaps you should really try to understand and appreciate what this brilliant man is trying to tell you.  He's no fool and makes very valid points.

----------

CWF (04-07-2019),usfan (04-06-2019)

----------


## nonsqtr

> Professor David Berlinski explains how Darwinian evolution is NOT science in five minutes:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If this causes you to perspire heavily, gnash your teeth, and use swear words and  personal attacks, perhaps you should really try to understand and appreciate what this brilliant man is trying to tell you.  He's no fool and makes very valid points.


We've been over all this before.

And you can come back to the table as often as you want, you're not going to change anyone's mind.

Least of all mine.

----------

CWF (04-07-2019)

----------


## CWF

> We've been over all this before.
> 
> And you can come back to the table as often as you want, you're not going to change anyone's mind.
> 
> Least of all mine.


And I thank you kind sir for proving, beyond any reasonable doubt whatsoever, the point that ChemEngineer was making concerning the phony "science" of evolution. Those who embrace it do it willfully. NOT factually.

----------

ChemEngineer (10-04-2019),usfan (04-07-2019)

----------


## Morning Star

> And I thank you kind sir for proving, beyond any reasonable doubt whatsoever, the point that ChemEngineer was making concerning the phony "science" of evolution. Those who embrace it do it willfully. NOT factually.


Those that believe in the sky man shouldn't waste our time calling for facts.

----------

patrickt (08-02-2021)

----------


## ChemEngineer

> And I thank you (MorningStar) kind sir for proving, beyond any reasonable doubt whatsoever, the point that ChemEngineer was making concerning the phony "science" of evolution. Those who embrace it do it willfully. NOT factually.


To the extent that we ignore lies and nonsense, we give them a kind of credibility that they do not begin to merit.  Younger and more impressionable adults may well be wavering in their beliefs and we must present to them facts and science refuting Darwin's archaic tautology.  It is as meaningless as the biology professor's response to me when I challenged him with "Why do all chordates and mammals have two eyes, and none of them has but one?"  

His simplistic non-answer:  "It's better that way."

There is a phrase that was coined by the Romans at least two thousand years ago that addresses why we must continue to refute absurdities:

Qui tacet consentire videtur.  In other words, "Who remains quiet seems to give consent."  

And the crowd chose Barabbas, the thief, to be released.

----------

CWF (04-07-2019)

----------


## CWF

> To the extent that we ignore lies and nonsense, we give them a kind of credibility that they do not begin to merit.  Younger and more impressionable adults may well be wavering in their beliefs and we must present to them facts and science refuting Darwin's archaic tautology.  It is as meaningless as the biology professor's response to me when I challenged him with "Why do all chordates and mammals have two eyes, and none of them has but one?"  
> 
> His simplistic non-answer:  "It's better that way."
> 
> There is a phrase that was coined by the Romans at least two thousand years ago that addresses why we must continue to refute absurdities:
> 
> Qui tacet consentire videtur.  In other words, "Who remains quiet seems to give consent."  
> 
> And the crowd chose Barabbas, the thief, to be released.


Keep posting, sir. And, thank you for doing so.

----------

ChemEngineer (04-08-2019)

----------


## nonsqtr

> To the extent that we ignore lies and nonsense, we give them a kind of credibility that they do not begin to merit.  Younger and more impressionable adults may well be wavering in their beliefs and we must present to them facts and science refuting Darwin's archaic tautology.  It is as meaningless as the biology professor's response to me when I challenged him with "Why do all chordates and mammals have two eyes, and none of them has but one?"  
> 
> His simplistic non-answer:  "It's better that way."
> 
> There is a phrase that was coined by the Romans at least two thousand years ago that addresses why we must continue to refute absurdities:
> 
> Qui tacet consentire videtur.  In other words, "Who remains quiet seems to give consent."  
> 
> And the crowd chose Barabbas, the thief, to be released.


Spare me the idiotic moralism. This is science. Come to the table with evidence, or go away.

Barrabas has no place in a scientific discussion. Please, go away with that stupid shit. Find some other thread. Get out of the science forum with that stuff. PLEASE!!!

----------


## Morning Star

> Spare me the idiotic moralism. This is science. Come to the table with evidence, or go away.
> 
> Barrabas has no place in a scientific discussion. Please, go away with that stupid shit. Find some other thread. Get out of the science forum with that stuff. PLEASE!!!


Chemical Engineer has never posted anything but stupid shit.

----------


## usfan

The challenge here, as it should be in any scientific inquiry,  is EVIDENCE and REASONING, not deflections, name calling, or other fallacies. 

It is a tragic commentary on our culture, that something obviously non partisan..  science..  is hijacked for political and ideological memes.

Evidence for this claim, is the query, here, not catty comebacks at ideological enemies.

----------

ChemEngineer (10-04-2019)

----------


## ChemEngineer

> Keep posting, sir. And, thank you for doing so.


“I can think of no other example in all of history  when an important scientific theory – a dominant position in intellectual life – was held in such contempt and skepticism by people who are paying for its research.  People just found that theory (Darwinism) impossible to swallow.” – David Berlinski, 2008 lecture

Professor Berlinski is the author of a terrific book, *The Devil's Delusion - Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions

*I have notes should you wish to review them.  Happy to oblige your request.

----------


## ChemEngineer

> The challenge here, as it should be in any scientific inquiry,  is EVIDENCE and REASONING, not deflections, name calling, or other fallacies. 
> It is a tragic commentary on our culture, that something obviously non partisan..  science..  is hijacked for political and ideological memes.
> Evidence for this claim, is the query, here, not catty comebacks at ideological enemies.


Wisdom exceedeth folly as far as light excelleth darkness. - The Holy Bible

Take heed that no man deceive you. - The Holy Bible

Go from the presence of a foolish man. - The Holy Bible

Prove all things, hold fast that which is true. - The Holy Bible

Facts, and wisdom,  be they Biblical or scientific are denied, deflected and mocked by the godless left, who think themselves intellectually superior and therefore morally superior.   "That isn't right.  It isn't even wrong." - Max Planck

----------


## nonsqtr

> Wisdom exceedeth folly as far as light excelleth darkness. - The Holy Bible
> 
> Take heed that no man deceive you. - The Holy Bible
> 
> Go from the presence of a foolish man. - The Holy Bible
> 
> Prove all things, hold fast that which is true. - The Holy Bible
> 
> Facts, and wisdom,  be they Biblical or scientific are denied, deflected and mocked by the godless left, who think themselves intellectually superior and therefore morally superior.   "That isn't right.  It isn't even wrong." - Max Planck


It is extremely retarded to suggest that God doesn't like science.

The only result of that Viewpoint throughout history, has been the burning of innocent people at the stake.

I'm not sure which is worse, fools or moralists. Sometimes you get both in the same package.  :Dontknow:

----------


## nonsqtr

> The challenge here, as it should be in any scientific inquiry,  is EVIDENCE and REASONING, not deflections, name calling, or other fallacies. 
> 
> It is a tragic commentary on our culture, that something obviously non partisan..  science..  is hijacked for political and ideological memes.
> 
> Evidence for this claim, is the query, here, not catty comebacks at ideological enemies.


There are no enemies here, only ignorance.

For example, the fallacy of the 10^77 argument can be exposed by a simple Google search on the word "histone".

The very Elementary observation can be easily made, that heterochromatin mutates at a different rate from euchromatin.

Histones are among the most highly conserved of all proteins, they are practically identical in all organisms.

----------


## Rickity Plumber

> There are no enemies here, only ignorance.
> 
> For example, the fallacy of the 10^77 argument can be exposed by a simple Google search on the word "histone".
> 
> The very Elementary observation can be easily made, that heterochromatin mutates at a different rate from euchromatin.
> 
> Histones are among the most highly conserved of all proteins, they are practically identical in all organisms.


 . . . AND you're a musician also.

----------


## Trinnity

> It is extremely retarded to suggest that God doesn't like science.
> 
> The only result of that Viewpoint throughout history, has been the burning of innocent people at the stake.


Science is part of God's toolbox. God didn't burn anyone at the stake, power-corrupted people did that. God isn't the problem, bad people are.  




Another time wasting thread...

----------


## nonsqtr

> Science is part of God's toolbox. God didn't burn anyone at the stake, power-corrupted people did that. God isn't the problem, bad people are.  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Another time wasting thread...


We agree.  :Smile:

----------


## Trinnity

Well, I liked USFan, but he got mad over this and how he was treated so he left. I think that's  tragic.  People arguing over religion is no good for anybody. Let the faithful be faithful and the Godless be Godless. Arguing  doesn't change anything.

----------


## Quasar44

Evolution is 100 precent fact
has no flaws

the DNA, Bone, genetic evidence all 
shows this

----------


## Trinnity

Well, that's settled then.

----------


## Morning Star

> Well, that's settled then.


Evolution is settled by anyone that recognizes that facts of science, but it is entirely possible that "God" created life to evolve.

If Biblical creation were true all species first existing remains would be found to be dated from the same time. They are not. They are found to have come into existence EXACTLY as they would have over time by way of evolution. This is without exception by millions of remains. Not one, not a single one has EVER been found out of evolutionary sequence. All you would have to do to disprove evolution is find one, a single one, out of sequence.

----------


## Trinnity

What a fool you are. The Bible was not literal about time. "A day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day". When you know the mind of God, get back to me. Til then, I don't care how you feel about it; to me it's a non-issue and the whole debate is moot.

#PeatFire

----------


## Morning Star

> What a fool you are. The Bible was not literal about time. "A day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day". When you know the mind of God, get back to me. Til then, I don't care how you feel about it; to me it's a non-issue and the whole debate is moot.
> 
> #PeatFire


The bible doesn't literally mean anything, it means what ever non-sense you need it to mean to support the moronic delusion.

What is the point of having a "Word of God" when the words don't actually mean anything they say?

The truth is the bible has been debunked and now you have to play stupid games to ward off reality.

You sound just like the Democrats after the Muller report came back with nothing.

----------


## Trinnity

> *The bible doesn't literally mean anything*, it means what ever non-sense you need it to mean to support the moronic delusion.
> 
> What is the point of having a "Word of God" when the words don't actually mean anything they say?
> 
> *The truth is the bible has been debunked and now you have to play stupid games to ward off reality.*
> 
> You sound just like the Democrats after the Muller report came back with nothing.


 You're flinging insults at me now. Fair warning you better stop.

----------


## Morning Star

Ok. I apologize.

However, if you are going to say words don't really mean anything what is the point of the "Word".

How can you say the word is true when the word has no real meaning?

To be fair, you must admit, claiming the word doesn't really mean what it says because you know the word as it is written has been debunked, is not a winning argument for the word.

----------


## Trinnity

> Ok. I apologize.
> 
> However, if you are going to say words don't really mean anything what is the point of the "Word".
> 
> How can you say the word is true when the word has no real meaning?
> 
> To be fair, you must admit, claiming the word doesn't really mean what it says because you know the word as it is written has been debunked, is not a winning argument for the word.



Some of the Bible is metaphor and some is literal. It was written in a manner contemporary man could understand. Nothing has been debunked.

 I don't have to admit anything to you, a nobody stranger atheist for whom I have no  respect. Keep your fake apology. Keep hounding me and see what happens. You got told to stop and here you go, nagging and making demands. I don't like you now. Congratulations. Tread lightly, sir. You have seriously pissed me off. I think you are unintelligent.

----------

tiny1 (08-02-2021)

----------


## Quasar44

Evolution is 100 percent factual 
accept it ...its really not a big deal that you evolved
from ape like species millions of yrs ago
 .

----------


## Quasar44

I suggest you read a few books you would love 
it explains the genetics , Skeleton data and 
how flawed the human body is along 
with evolutionary remnants

----------


## usfan

> Evolution is 100 percent factual 
> accept it ...its really not a big deal that you evolved
> from ape like species millions of yrs ago
>  .


The theory of common ancestry is unevidenced,  based on unbased assumptions, plausibility, and imagination.  Don't believe that?  Show me the evidence.  Assertions of belief is not scientific evidence. 




> I suggest you read a few books you would love 
> it explains the genetics , Skeleton data and 
> how flawed the human body is along 
> with evolutionary remnants


Books are everywhere, that promote man's opinions.  Facts and scientific methodology are needed, not persuasive religionists and fast talking con men.

Vestigiality has been debunked, as 'proof of common ancestry!', decades ago.  Ignorance of function, or a 'looks like!' belief (that looks like a fish!) does not compel a conclusion of ancestry.  That is an absurd non sequitur.

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## Northern Rivers

> Evolution is 100 percent factual 
> accept it ...it’s really not a big deal that you evolved
> from ape like species millions of yrs ago
>  .


Strictly speaking...apes and ourselves evolved from the same common ancestor. But...yeah. We probably looked like Congressman Al Green, I would imagine.  :Smiley20:

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## usfan

> Well, I liked USFan, but he got mad over this and how he was treated so he left. I think that's  tragic.  People arguing over religion is no good for anybody. Let the faithful be faithful and the Godless be Godless. Arguing  doesn't change anything.


I am not mad..  i was not mad.  I got tired of the constant personal attacks, in a scientific thread, and a computer glitch evidently shut me out for a while.

This thread is not about religion..  at least, not about the bible or Christian beliefs.   This thread is about the belief in common ancestry..  which IS a religious belief about origins.  My challenge is to examine the scientific evidence,  to see if it holds water.

Perhaps we have been duped, by State mandated religious Indoctrination, into believing in universal common ancestry..

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## Freewill



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patrickt (08-02-2021)

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## patrickt

> To the extent that we ignore lies and nonsense, we give them a kind of credibility that they do not begin to merit.  Younger and more impressionable adults may well be wavering in their beliefs and we must present to them facts and science refuting Darwin's archaic tautology.  It is as meaningless as the biology professor's response to me when I challenged him with "Why do all chordates and mammals have two eyes, and none of them has but one?"  
> 
> His simplistic non-answer:  "It's better that way."
> 
> There is a phrase that was coined by the Romans at least two thousand years ago that addresses why we must continue to refute absurdities:
> 
> Qui tacet consentire videtur.  In other words, "Who remains quiet seems to give consent."  
> 
> *And the crowd chose Barabbas, the thief, to be released*.


And the crowd chose Hitler to lead Germany. Did you have a point with that quote?


The people who believe in the unbelievable are desperate to believe everyone does.

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## donttread

> The Theory of Evolution (ToE) is widely considered to be a fact, or 'settle science' by many people who are products of the state educational system.  Most of our institutions present it as proven fact, such as TV nature shows, national parks, classrooms, movies, & other presumptions of settled science.  But it is not. It is merely a theory, & does not really qualify as that.
> 
> Evolution has a central flaw.  It is contrary to observed reality. The Theory of Evolution is basically a logical problem. It is a *False Equivalence*. They argue that since living things change within their genetic parameters, that they also change outside of their genetic parameters. Since moths can be different colors, perhaps they can also become a different creature entirely. This concept is repeated over & over ad nauseum, until the concept seems not only plausible, but accepted as proven fact.
> 
> The argument for evolution is based on* the presumption of INCREMENTAL, cumulative changes*, that add up to big ones.  But it ignores the HUGE problem of genetic parameters.. the limits upon the changes that can be made.
> 
> For example, you can incrementally travel from New York to LA in daily, small steps.  Each step you take is cumulative.. it adds up to the goal of the destination.  If you just took a few steps a day, it might take years for you to reach your destination.  The ToE makes the false equivalence that since organisms can be observed taking 'small steps' in this way, they assume that the big changes are just added up small changes.  But the genetic parameters are ignored.  If you correlate many small steps in traveling between cities to interstellar travel, your arguments will fail, as the very restrictive limitation of gravity & distance is ignored.  You cannot take many small steps to reach the moon.. Gravity will return you to the earth every time, UNLESS there is a mechanism to overcome gravity.  DNA allows the horizontal movement, varying traits & 'selecting' those naturally, or by human design.  But it does not allow vertical movement.  DNA is like gravity.  It will return you to the same organism EVERY TIME.  That is observable, repeatable science.
> 
> The science of breeding or natural selection conflicts with the ToE.  You do not observe increasing traits being available for organisms, but DECREASING.  That is  how you 'breed' a certain trait into an animal, by narrowing the options that the offspring have.  You do not add traits constantly, as is suggested by the ToE, but you reduce them, at times to the detriment of the organism, which can go extinct if it cannot adapt with the needed variability.  A parent organism might have 50 possibilities of hair, skin, eye, or other cosmetic traits.  By 'selecting' certain ones, either by breeding or by natural selection, you REDUCE the available options.  THAT is observed reality, but the ToE claims just the opposite, that organisms are constantly making new genes to ADD variability.  This is a flawed view with a basis in 19th century science, not what we know about in modern genetics.  The high walls of genetics is the gravity that prevents vertical changes.  It will allow the variability that remains within the dna, which contains millions of bits of information & possibilities.  But there is NO EVIDENCE that any organism creates new genetic material or can turn scales in to feathers, or fins into feet.  Those leaps are in light years, genetically speaking.  It is impossible.  It could not have happened, & we do not see it happening, now.  All we observe is the simple, horizontal variability WITHIN the genetic parameters of the life form.  Simply asserting that minor back & forth movement within the horizontal limits of variability does not prove the ability to incrementally build up to major changes in the genetic structure.
> ...



There are holes in the theory of evolution. The details are fuzzy .For example how do neutral traits develop and spread? I would like to see studies based upon short lived creatures like bacteria to actually observe evolution in real time.  Yet we know the results we can accomplish through selective breeding of animals and plants are real. But the overall script seems to explain things fairly well IMO. 
In the end you have to believe it all started in one of three ways or number 4

1) A big ball of matter/energy which existed out of space and time just exploded into space and time for no know reason and thousands of millions of years later we are here via something like evolution. In other words magic.
2) An all powerful being whom has always existed created everything maybe even in a week just 6,000 years ago, even though there were already empires on the planet at that time.  Again magic.

3) Some magical combination of 1 and 2
4) We don't have the foggiest how it all came to be and maybe we aren't meant to yet

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gregonejeep (08-02-2021)

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## gregonejeep

Very good points that you have made Don. Even with me being a believer, the boundaries of my intellect restrict me from being able to comprehend, how ALL that we know that exists in the universe... came to be. 

Even the people with the highest intellect probably ever witnessed by man, (think Einstein/Hawkins) could never PROVE a definitive answer to these type questions.

It gets so frustrating at times when people ask me why and how, that I could believe that God exists. As they say the people that believes that God exists, cannot PROVE that God exists. 

Therefore, how can a person that believes in this God that cannot be proven to exist (while claiming themselves to be mentally competent), state that God created ALL that exists in the universe ? To this I truly believe, is why people make a choice at some point in their life to either be a believer in God or a believer in evolution. 

Because it seems to me at least, that man has built themselves an invisible wall of division.  A theoretical scene follows of the point that I am trying to make here, and it would go as follows.... 

A leader of the believers, while wanting to make one last good faith effort to get the evolutionist's to believe that God truly exists, passes through the invisible wall to meet with the leader of the evolutionists. ..

The lead believer says to the lead evolutionist,.. " I am here to present you with our last and final attempt to get you and your followers, to believe that God exists. If we choose to drop our belief in that God created ALL in 7 days and instead, we choose to believe that Creation was done another way. Would you then be open to changing your mind and your followers minds, in to believing that God exists ??"

The leader of the evolutionist replies, " Maybe, it depends. What do you have for us" ? 

The believer says, " We will choose to believe that God over a time span that lasted millions of years, implanted His vast amount of "creation" seeds into the soils of all the MANY celestial bodies that HE created. And then over the span of millions of years, His "seeds" came in to their "due" time to become a living species. And over these millions of years through many stages of development and physical changes, they grew in to the living species that we know of them as in this year 2021." 

The evolutionist's face emits a look that shows of one being interested, but not totally willing to concede and replies, "We will consider your proposal here believer, but before we can agree to it, you and your follower's must complete to my satisfaction one more task. And that task MUST be completed in a way that I nor my follower's, will EVER fill the necessity to ask of you, any more questions about your belief in God."

The believer then asks the evolutionist, "And what is this task that you demand of us"? 


The lead evolutionist's replies to the believer, " You must prove to us who or what, created God".

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## patrickt

There's a big difference between "holes in a theory" and a narrative that is nonsense. That's why one is called a theory and the other is called faith.

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## Authentic

> There's a big difference between "holes in a theory" and a narrative that is nonsense. That's why one is called a theory and the other is called faith.


Theory of creation and evolution faith.

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## usfan

This thread should be moved from the pseudoscience forum, that ONLY allows confirmation bias of atheistic naturalism.   No evidence of the Creator is allowed here.

I would be happy to discuss real science,  but can only do so in the mosh pit, as anything that conflicts with atheistic naturalism is forbidden,  here.

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## gregonejeep

> This thread should be moved from the pseudoscience forum, that ONLY allows confirmation bias of atheistic naturalism.   No evidence of the Creator is allowed here.
> 
> I would be happy to discuss real science,  but can only do so in the mosh pit, as anything that conflicts with atheistic naturalism is forbidden,  here.


Not sure what it is usafan, that you want the poster's to this 5 year old thread to post?  Because no matter WHAT someone post's regarding the OP, the same two simple words can be posted by someone later in defiance. And those two words are "PROVE IT".

As no one can prove that ALL that exists in the universe and even the universe itself, was the result of evolution OR creationism. And I feel sure that my silly post above did not suit the "posting requirements" that I now read that you demand. 

As it was just me making the point in a simple format that IMO, people do not HAVE to be staunch believers in just evolution or just creationism. I believe that E and C can be seen as "partners" working together in unison, on the largest project that has ever been endeavored. But this also is JMO.

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## usfan

> Not sure what it is usafan, that you want the poster's to this 5 year old thread to post?  Because no matter WHAT someone post's regarding the OP, the same two simple words can be posted by someone later in defiance. And those two words are "PROVE IT".
> 
> As no one can prove that ALL that exists in the universe and even the universe itself, was the result of evolution OR creationism. And I feel sure that my silly post above did not suit the "posting requirements" that I now read that you demand. 
> 
> As it was just me making the point in a simple format that IMO, people do not HAVE to be staunch believers in just evolution or just creationism. I believe that E and C can be seen as "partners" working together in unison, on the largest project that has ever been endeavored. But this also is JMO.


You misjudge me.  My post was not about you.

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## gregonejeep

> You misjudge me.  My post was not about you.



My apologies to you usafan. Upon reviewing my post again it does appear I was judging you, but that was not my intention. I was just admitting that my theoretical reply about E and C was about as far from meeting the posting criteria for a science forum, as Jupiter is from earth.

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usfan (08-05-2021)

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## UKSmartypants

Ive never seen so much bollox posted about one subject by such a small group of people (two, in fact)

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Oceander (08-05-2021)

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## Northern Rivers

I forgot what this thread was about... :Thinking:

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## usfan

I can only request that this thread be moved, since it does not fit within the current parameters for the atheistic naturalism subforum, improperly labeled,  'science!'  I have censored myself, and agreed to no longer post anything critical of atheistic naturalism,  or supporting creationism in this subforum.  I can't help the older threads when i thought it was a scientific subforum.  This should be moved to the mosh pit, like the others.

The hostility and militancy of those indoctrinated into atheistic naturalism has become too intense, and makes rational discussion impossible, anyway.

Stop global warming!
Wear a mask!
Your origins are from random chaos!

Progressive Pseudoscience Pretension.

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## UKSmartypants

> I forgot what this thread was about...


yes, after a while the thread blurs into a load of pseudoscietific mush and non-intellectual grey goo

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## Authentic

> You misjudge me.  My post was not about you.


Of course not. It's about me!

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