Who are you going to trust?

Wizend · #1 28th September 2003, 07:13 PM

I have been reading about the Creation/Evolution topic for almost a year. I am far from being a "scientist", but know a little bit about the subject. I admit most of my reading is from All About God.com, and Answers in Genesis.org (I had to type those sites like that because it will not let me post links yet, sorry). I have also read from some evolutionist sites. I have tried to read Origin of Species (Charles Darwin) and basically could not stay awake, very boring. I have also started reading a book called Evolution and the Myth of Creationism. (Tim M. Berra). I am also reading Darwin's Black Box (Michael J. Behe) and think it is a wonderful book.

Now, I have seen calculations of the probability of life spontaneously arising from non-living matter. It is very low probabilities like 10 to 40,000th power. How can evolutionists still say science has proven the theory of evolution when evolutionists themselves come up with these calculations of near impossibility?

Then there is the real stinker "Can nothing explode?"

If you believe in Uniformitarianism then you believe things have always been the same since the beginning of time. Since there is time now, there had to be time always, how is this possible? Time had to start at some point in time.

How can Natural Selection create, with a step by step process, a wing with feathers on it?

Now remember every intermediate has to be fully functional.

Ex. Evolutionists say that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Now a dino with extra skin behind its front legs could cause that individual to be a slower runner making it unable to get away from predators, it also could get caught on rocks, etc...

I conclude that is would have to be one HUGE mutation, from dino, to bird in one step. If this happened how would that dino/bird learn to fly? Today mother birds teach their kids to fly, a mother dino could not teach the baby dino/bird to fly. Now a bird that does not fly is very vulnerable, it would get eaten right away. I can catch a bird that can not fly, how easy would it be for a cheetah, or a wolf.

Now for the feathers, some scientists claim that they started evolving to keep the animal warm. The problem here is that feathers are extremely complicated and why would natural selection pick one of the most complicated items to keep something warm; fur or more layers of fat would work much better than feathers. (Reference to Feathers and Fur by Dr. David Menton)

I do not believe in evolution because it seems impossible to me. It also disappoints me when people call themselves Christians and do not believe in the entire bible (including Gen 1-11). If you do not believe in that part of the bible then why do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus who quoted genesis multiple times?

Arikay · #2 28th September 2003, 07:33 PM

oh my.

Ill leave most of it to others, but speaking of AIG and trust,
http://www.geocities.com/arikayx/datinginconflict.html
read, and then tell me, should we really Trust AIG? This is one of many examples.

revolutio · #3 28th September 2003, 07:38 PM

There are some animals (i.e. Ostriches) with vestigial wings. As we all know they can't do diddly when it comes to flying. However, their wing structure still provides a little bit of lift, thus enabling them to run as if they were quite a few pouds lighter. As you may have noticed, when ostriches run they spread their wings.

Most modern day structures such as wings, did not start out as anything of the sort. Every step along the way had some advantage. It is almost inconceivable, but then again so is the size of the universe. The point is that it takes a massive amount of time for natural selection to produce the results you are talking about. One thousand monkeys at typewriters would have produced quite a few of Shakespeare's works in the time it took functional wings to arise.

Frumious Bandersnatch · #4 28th September 2003, 07:42 PM

So many misconceptions, so little time. First you need to understand that Young Earth Creationism was falsified before Darwin published origin of species and alleged evidence against evolution is not evidence for YEC. Now let's take feathers.

I conclude that is would have to be one HUGE mutation, from dino, to bird in one step. If this happened how would that dino/bird learn to fly? Today mother birds teach their kids to fly, a mother dino could not teach the baby dino/bird to fly. Now a bird that does not fly is very vulnerable, it would get eaten right away. I can catch a bird that can not fly, how easy would it be for a cheetah, or a wolf.

I have recently been to Berlin and seen the famous Berlin Specimen of Archeopteryx. They also have a fossil of the small bipedal dinosaur called Compsognathus. The skeletons are so similar that a specimen of Archeopteryx that had poorly preserved feathers was once mistaken for compsognathus. You should go and see them yourself sometime.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsid...aeopteryx.html

You think you can catch a bird that can't fly. All right. Let's see you run down an ostrich. You might actually be able to run down a cassowary but I wouldn't recommend it as it would probably beat the stuffing out of you.
http://home.mira.net/~areadman/casso.htm

Now for the feathers, some scientists claim that they started evolving to keep the animal warm. The problem here is that feathers are extremely complicated and why would natural selection pick one of the most complicated items to keep something warm; fur or more layers of fat would work much better than feathers. (Reference to Feathers and Fur by Dr. David Menton)

So mammals evolved fur and birds evolved feathers. The March 2003 issue of Scientific American has a nice article on feather evolution. BTW I have read the AiG review of the article and I can only say read both. AiG misrepresents quite a bit of the work and as usual quotes it out of context.
The Frumious Bandersnatch

Wizend · #5 28th September 2003, 07:53 PM

Originally Posted by revolutio

One thousand monkeys at typewriters would have produced quite a few of Shakespeare's works in the time it took functional wings to arise.

I have seen the probabilities of that claim and I disagree.

"And the time taken on the average to correctly type the whole of the 23rd Psalm, made up of 603 letters, verse numbers, punctuation, and spaces, would be 50^603 divided by 31,536,000 which is 9.552 x 10^1016 years. If the letter ‘b’ stands for billion (10^9), this could be written as about one bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb years."

That is from AiG, but it is simple math and pretty hard to screw up too much. Divide that number by 1000 if you want to decide how long it would take 1000 monkeys to do it.

I edited this because when I copied it from the site it left out the powers and made them whole numbers (i.e. 109 instead of 10^9)

SORRY FOR THE CONFUSION

Arikay · #6 28th September 2003, 08:03 PM

A problem with the monkeys on a typewritter is that it sets a very specific goal. Evolution has no goal except to adapt to the environment.

Here is a question, in the AIG math, did they include a form of natural selection? say the 100th letter was E. When the monkey put an E in the 100th letter spot, was it saved because it was correct, or not? That will change the probability outcome by a huge amount.

Did you read what I wrote at the link?

revolutio · #7 28th September 2003, 08:09 PM

Originally Posted by Wizend

I have seen the probabilities of that claim and I disagree.

"And the time taken on the average to correctly type the whole of the 23rd Psalm, made up of 603 letters, verse numbers, punctuation, and spaces, would be 50603 divided by 31,536,000 which is 9.552 x 101016 years. If the letter ‘b’ stands for billion (109), this could be written as about one bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb years."

That is from AiG, but it is simple math and pretty hard to screw up too much. Divide that number by 1000 if you want to decide how long it would take 1000 monkeys to do it.

Lol, I was just using that saying figuratively. I had never actually seen it worked out before, thank you. That is going in my cool but worthless information file.

Wait a sec though, 50,603 divided by 31,536,000 is a fraction. Most certainly not 9.552 x101016. Where the heck did you quote that from?

Wizend · #8 28th September 2003, 08:19 PM

I did read your link and I think this:

The writer of that article was human, and humans make mistakes sometimes. There might even be a chance that he change the wording of things to make them fit with the creation model. There is so much picking on AiG here, I am sure there are just as many "difficulties" on the Evolutionist sites, just no one talks about them because they will get their throat slit on this forum if they point out the frailties of an Evolutionist.

I just want to say, I still have not seen any real evidence against what I said in my OP.

What I meant by me being able to catch a flightless bird is basically a sparrow or robin on the ground. I have to say that was a good point about the Ostrich having wings to lighten it while flying. Never thought of that, but that is a fully developed wing. What about when the wing was half that size with half the feathers, what purpose did it serve then?

Arikay · #9 28th September 2003, 08:30 PM

Interesting response. So, the writter was human, the fact that they present false data and that they have not changed it or stopped using it, even though has been shown to be false, doesn't bother you?

How, um, interesting.

Evolutionists do make mistakes, but they fix them once they realize its a mistake. Take something like the Piltdown man. It was a fake (I believe) once evolutionists realized that, they stopped using it as evidence. Why doesn't AIG follow this example?

Originally Posted by Wizend

I did read your link and I think this:

The writer of that article was human, and humans make mistakes sometimes. There might even be a chance that he change the wording of things to make them fit with the creation model. There is so much picking on AiG here, I am sure there are just as many "difficulties" on the Evolutionist sites, just no one talks about them because they will get their throat slit on this forum if they point out the frailties of an Evolutionist.

I just want to say, I still have not seen any real evidence against what I said in my OP.

What I meant by me being able to catch a flightless bird is basically a sparrow or robin on the ground. I have to say that was a good point about the Ostrich having wings to lighten it while flying. Never thought of that, but that is a fully developed wing. What about when the wing was half that size with half the feathers, what purpose did it serve then?

hotarugari · #10 28th September 2003, 08:36 PM

Behe wrote a book "Darwin's Black Box" which has good amount of evidence against what is considered to be traditional evolution.

In most of his writing, he'll show a complex biochemical system. That system in so many ways, is like a mousetrap. Everything works, at that stage, but an evolutionary step would blow things off kilter and something wouldn't work.

In the example of the mousetrap, either the spring is too weak or too strong, the platform can be missized or the hammer on it that latches down on the mouse can be too big or too small.

This doesn't disprove evolution, but it does disprove the slow step by step evolution.

Macroevolution is possible if there are massive jumps. I think even our scientists given enough time, could create some artificial evolution, using retroviruses or something similar. Still, that only proves the possibility of evolution and not the historical existance of it.