The best evidence for Creationism

[Gracchus]

Whatever isn't eliminated is "selected."

(Actually, I suspect "natural elimination" just didn't have the same ring to it.)

Yup! Sounds like someone didn't need a laxative.

 

[WisdomTree]

Selecting out, or culling, produces the same effect as choosing what is to survive and breed.

To say that nature selects implies that she roots for the best (making her an elitist) and that she actually cares.

Nature's a cold-heated [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] who doesn't care for anything, not even the best. The only reason the best survive is because Mother Nature didn't find a way to kill them yet. :o

 

[Gracchus]

To say that nature selects implies that she roots for the best (making her an elitist) and that she actually cares.

Nature's a cold-heated [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] who doesn't care for anything, not even the best. The only reason the best survive is because Mother Nature didn't find a way to kill them yet.

Selection, "natural" or not, drives evolution. It is merely human hubris that requires a distinction.

And if we are going to quibble, Mother Nature has no heart because there is no Mother Nature, and because there is no Mother Nature, she can't kill anything. She can't even try.

 

[WisdomTree]

Selection, "natural" or not, drives evolution. It is merely human hubris that requires a distinction.

And if we are going to quibble, Mother Nature has no heart because there is no Mother Nature, and because there is no Mother Nature, she can't kill anything. She can't even try.

Exactly.

 

[sfs]

To say that nature selects implies that she roots for the best (making her an elitist) and that she actually cares.

No, it doesn't imply that at all. "Natural selection" is just a name, a label that was applied to a process that most certainly occurs. When coined, the label was intended to be metaphorical; it suggests that what happens in natural selection is in some way analogous to what happens in "real" selection, i.e. when humans selectively breed animals. And the analogy is valid: in both cases, genetic variants causing certain traits become widespread in a population. The usefulness of the name doesn't depend on the original motivation, however, and mostly biologists don't think about selective breeding when they're talking about natural selection; they just think about the naturally occurring phenomenon.

Is there some reason you're quibbling about the name?

 

[NailsII]

Because God does not reside in "time" as we are, your statement is the most likely.
Why He would take 6 days, only God knows.

So why did he make it appear, in his most valuable lesson to us poor, feeble humans, that not only did he create in a given timespan, he was also restricted by it (created during the day, even when it was dark) and did nothing at night, and then rested on day 7?
These would appear, to an ignorant non-theologian like myself, to be very human traits.

You are taking small changes observed in a species grossly amplifying it, expanding on it to mean something or imply something greater than what it actually is. I have not been given any example of one kind of animal turning into another. Yet this is what is claimed.

Over time, small changes accumulate and effetively become big ones.
This isn't grossly amplifying anything, it is a description of what we see in the natural world.

Yet still, in the 21st century, people still expect to see evolution changing an animal into another.
This would actually falsify evolution.

One way I found easy to imagine it is to imagine you are holding hands with your mother.
One the same side is your grandmother, holding hands with your mother.
coninue this hypothetical line back over several million years, and something strange happens - those further away from you look less like you, and less like humans. Yet every one is the same species as its its neighbour, and the same animal as its neighbour.
What you have just witnessed is effectively a ring species, because either end (ie you and the relative you have pictured furthest back in time) are not able to interbreed with each other, and hence are seperate species.

This really is how evolution works, and the genetic evidence is compelling.

 

[Loudmouth]

To say that nature selects implies that she roots for the best (making her an elitist) and that she actually cares.

All it demonstrates is that humans tend to anthropomorphize nature when it simply isn't called for.

 

[diychristian]

I don't understand the question. NS doesn't know anything. Organisms do vary. Some of those variations are genetic, and some of those make the organism more or less likely to successfully reproduce. NS just means that the genetic traits that are more likely to reproduce are likely to increase in frequency in the population.

But why do you believe it to be insufficient?

I agree NS doesn't know anything and that's the problem.

Example the bearded dragon. There are two mechanisms that determine its sex: genotypically and temperature sex determination. Males have ZZ chromosomes while naturally born females have ZW. During a warm period genotypic males will become phenotypic females. If this period last for an extended period of time ZZ females will dominate the population, but for some reason there is a preservation of the W chromosome insuring the survival of the species to when temperatures return to normal.

Same thing with the peppered moth. White and black before and after. Even after several decades of favoring one color moth over the other there is a preservation of both.

Same thing with E. Coli. In sugar digestion they can mutate from digesting lactose to lactose/lactulose or from lactose to lactose/lactobionate, but not from lactulose to lactobionate or vice a versa. Again somehow within the population it preserves the non mutant when it seems advantageous to digest two sugars this enables the colony to adapt when there is a deprivation in the supply of the second sugar and an introduction of a sugar they haven't been acquainted with previously.

My points is it seems nature leaves a means to get out of the corner and this is against the abilities of NS (as I understand it).

 

[Loudmouth]

I agree NS doesn't know anything and that's the problem.

Example the bearded dragon. There are two mechanisms that determine its sex: genotypically and temperature sex determination. Males have ZZ chromosomes while naturally born females have ZW. During a warm period genotypic males will become phenotypic females. If this period last for an extended period of time ZZ females will dominate the population, but for some reason there is a preservation of the W chromosome insuring the survival of the species to when temperatures return to normal.

What are you trying to say here?

Same thing with the peppered moth. White and black before and after. Even after several decades of favoring one color moth over the other there is a preservation of both.

However, the ratio of black to white differs between environments. That is natural selection.

Same thing with E. Coli. In sugar digestion they can mutate from digesting lactose to lactose/lactulose or from lactose to lactose/lactobionate, but not from lactulose to lactobionate or vice a versa. Again somehow within the population it preserves the non mutant when it seems advantageous to digest two sugars this enables the colony to adapt when there is a deprivation in the supply of the second sugar and an introduction of a sugar they haven't been acquainted with previously.

If a colony is formed from a single bacterium how is the non-mutant preserved?

My points is it seems nature leaves a means to get out of the corner and this is against the abilities of NS (as I understand it).

Nowhere does it say that a trait has to be completely removed from a population by natural selection. All it says is that the one allele will tend to be passed on at a higher rate due to selective pressures.

 

[WisdomTree]

For the time being, I see minimal evidence against the theories of evolution. The theories themselves aren't perfect, but they are darn convincing with the amount of evidence they have, considering it takes a ****-ton to make ones hypothesis into a theory. I reckon the theories themselves will be replaced by a more centralized theory which brings all the different schools of thoughts together and harmonizing it, but for now I have to say that evolution is a fact. To say otherwise is to ignore very convincing evidence.

 

[CabVet]

For the time being, I see minimal evidence against the theories of evolution. The theories themselves aren't perfect, but they are darn convincing with the amount of evidence they have, considering it takes a ****-ton to make ones hypothesis into a theory. I reckon the theories themselves will be replaced by a more centralized theory which brings all the different schools of thoughts together and harmonizing it, but for now I have to say that evolution is a fact. To say otherwise is to ignore very convincing evidence.

+1

 

[Greg1234]

I reckon the theories themselves will be replaced by a more centralized theory which brings all the different schools of thoughts together and harmonizing it,

One funeral at a time.

but for now I have to say that evolution is a fact. To say otherwise is to ignore very convincing evidence.

People will decide on their own if it is valid visible evidence or not. For example, there was something posted as a "synthetic jellyfish" in the link below. One can decide, without the mainstream's opinion, whether or not a jellyfish was created.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/genetics/from-the-genetics-isnt-what-we-used-to-think-files/

 

[Loudmouth]

People will decide on their own if it is valid visible evidence or not.

Have you heard of Morton's Demon ?

 

[Greg1234]

Have you heard of Morton's Demon ?

http://darlenemichaud.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/morton-salt.jpg

 

[Loudmouth]

http://darlenemichaud.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/morton-salt.jpg

I think you just proved my point, and Glenn Morton's as well.

 

[sandwiches]

People will decide on their own if it is valid visible evidence or not.

This is obvious. People are always welcome to be wrong, of course.

 

[WisdomTree]

Anyways, the point I was getting at was that evolution is perfectly legit and in no way does it contradict the Christian faith.

Well, apart from the literalists of course.

 

[cricket0206]

ToE does has its holes, but so does every theory. Evolution is much more plausible than Creationism. What's more probable? That human beings have evolved over time from basic, simple organisms, through natural selection, or that we were randomly created one day by a "God" for no reason?

 

[Illuminaughty]

Good idea for a thread. From my experience creationists spend a lot of time trying to debunk various theories of evolution but never really present evidence in favor of their own theory.

Debunking evolution and proving creationism are two different things entirely. They forget to include the possibility that both could be wrong.

 

[mathetes123]

ToE does has its holes, but so does every theory. Evolution is much more plausible than Creationism. What's more probable? That human beings have evolved over time from basic, simple organisms, through natural selection, or that we were randomly created one day by a "God" for no reason?

What is more plausible, the idea that everything came from nothing, that it was it's own cause, that life appeared spontaneously from non-life, developed the ability to reproduce itself in the first generation, and developed into increasingly more complex organisms despite the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics, or that information (dna) came from an intelligent source, design came from a designer, or laws (natural laws and moral laws) came from a law giver.