Evolution/Creation on Trial

[bhsmte]

Again there are much better theory than your mutation theory. For example the theory that cooking made us human. Most theory for the evolution has to do with food to some degree. Often the nourishment we have can go to intelligence, strength, OR speed. Take your pick. The bird wants to fly so their energy is invested in strength for wings. The horse can be strong or fast. A race horse or a working horse. Need I go on?

Food and nutrition mean nothing, if the body has not evolved to be able to use it.

 

[stevevw]

Such as?

Such as the squid.
Squid and Humans Evolved the Same Eye
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/squid-and-humans-evolved-same-eye
Such as?[/quote] In different taxa such as Pterosauria (pterosaurs), Aves (birds), and Chiroptera (bats). But also in insects.

There are features that wolves and Chihuahuas don't share.

So that shows the difficulty in linking animals together through their features. Evolutionists always have a get out clause. If its the same they say it shows a link. If its the same but unrelated it just happens to be convergent evolution and was a coincident even if it happens many times and there may even be genetics linking the two as well. Its easy for them to mistake a variation of the same creature for a different species as well. Thats why genetics is the only real evidence we can rely on.

 

[florida2]

Name me one thing that couldn't fit the "common designer" hypothesis.

If things are similar then they say 'Obviously they're similar as they have the same designer'

If things are different they say 'Obviously they're different - God can make things however he likes and they can be completely different'

It must be nice to have a belief that you can shove anything into and think it fits.

 

[florida2]

Again there are much better theory than your mutation theory. For example the theory that cooking made us human. Most theory for the evolution has to do with food to some degree. Often the nourishment we have can go to intelligence, strength, OR speed. Take your pick. The bird wants to fly so their energy is invested in strength for wings. The horse can be strong or fast. A race horse or a working horse. Need I go on?

Wat.

So if I feed my dog the finest cooked meat and ensure it only has moderate exercise will it become the Einstein of the canine world?

 

[Loudmouth]

That makes the shapes pretty broad then. You may be able to find some similarities with some bone structures. But the two are very different

No, they aren't very different. Here is a comparison of a human arm and dolphin arm.

They have all of the same bones. All of them.

All this can be the same evidence for common design. Afterall a car designer doesnt make a completely different car shape and features when he brings out different models.

And has been explained to you a thousand times, IT IS THE PATTERN OF HOMOLOGY THAT EVIDENCES EVOLUTION. That pattern is a nested hierarchy. Cars don't fall into a nested hierarchy. Animals like humans, dolphins, and sharks do fall into a nested hierarchy.

 

[Loudmouth]

Again there are much better theory than your mutation theory. For example the theory that cooking made us human.

Notice how you change the question. The question wasn't what made us human. It was what gave us our intelligence that allowed us to be scientists. There is no other accepted theory in science for why humans are more intelligent than our ape cousins other than the genetic differences between us and those apes.

As for cooking, what it did was allow for certain mutations to flourish. In order for our cranium to get bigger our jaw muscles had to get weaker. As it turns out, we can find that mutation in the human genome.

Powerful masticatory muscles are found in most primates, including chimpanzees and gorillas, and were part of a prominent adaptation of Australopithecus and Paranthropus, extinct genera of the family Hominidae1, 2. In contrast, masticatory muscles are considerably smaller in both modern and fossil members of Homo. The evolving hominid masticatory apparatus—traceable to a Late Miocene, chimpanzee-like morphology3—shifted towards a pattern of gracilization nearly simultaneously with accelerated encephalization in early Homo4. Here, we show that the gene encoding the predominant myosin heavy chain (MYH) expressed in these muscles was inactivated by a frameshifting mutation after the lineages leading to humans and chimpanzees diverged.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v428/n6981/full/nature02358.html​

Smaller jaw muscles means less dense bone and support needed to anchor those muscles. This allows the cranium to be thinner and have a larger volume. Your cooking theory doesn't work without the mutations.

Most theory for the evolution has to do with food to some degree. Often the nourishment we have can go to intelligence, strength, OR speed. Take your pick.

Feeding the same food to chimps does not give them human intelligence.

 

[crjmurray]

Again there are much better theory than your mutation theory. For example the theory that cooking made us human. Most theory for the evolution has to do with food to some degree. Often the nourishment we have can go to intelligence, strength, OR speed. Take your pick. The bird wants to fly so their energy is invested in strength for wings. The horse can be strong or fast. A race horse or a working horse. Need I go on?

No, I'm pretty sure that's for video games...

 

[joshua 1 9]

Notice how you change the question. The question wasn't what made us human. It was what gave us our intelligence that allowed us to be scientists. There is no other accepted theory in science for why humans are more intelligent than our ape cousins other than the genetic differences between us and those apes.

As for cooking, what it did was allow for certain mutations to flourish. In order for our cranium to get bigger our jaw muscles had to get weaker. As it turns out, we can find that mutation in the human genome.

Powerful masticatory muscles are found in most primates, including chimpanzees and gorillas, and were part of a prominent adaptation of Australopithecus and Paranthropus, extinct genera of the family Hominidae1, 2. In contrast, masticatory muscles are considerably smaller in both modern and fossil members of Homo. The evolving hominid masticatory apparatus—traceable to a Late Miocene, chimpanzee-like morphology3—shifted towards a pattern of gracilization nearly simultaneously with accelerated encephalization in early Homo4. Here, we show that the gene encoding the predominant myosin heavy chain (MYH) expressed in these muscles was inactivated by a frameshifting mutation after the lineages leading to humans and chimpanzees diverged.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v428/n6981/full/nature02358.html​

Smaller jaw muscles means less dense bone and support needed to anchor those muscles. This allows the cranium to be thinner and have a larger volume. Your cooking theory doesn't work without the mutations.



Feeding the same food to chimps does not give them human intelligence.

Even if the driving force is natural selection. Neutrition is still important and the mutation theory is just a desperate attempt to explain where variation comes from rather than to accept that God puts variation into the DNA when He said let there be man.

Remember that in botney the plants themselves have to evolve to be more nutritious so the other species in that food chain can progress and develop. They become better at converting the light from the sun into life.

 

[Loudmouth]

Even if the driving force is natural selection. Neutrition is still important and the mutation theory is just a desperate attempt to explain where variation comes from rather than to accept that God puts variation into the DNA when He said let there be man.

We directly observe mutations producing variation. When has anyone ever observed God putting variation into DNA?

Remember that in botney the plants themselves have to evolve to be more nutritious so the other species in that food chain can progress and develop. They become better at converting the light from the sun into life.

That evolution is produced by random mutations that are filtered through natural selection.

 

[Loudmouth]

No, I'm pretty sure that's for video games...

Or Lamarkism, take your pick.

 

[joshua 1 9]

We directly observe mutations producing variation. When has anyone ever observed God putting variation into DNA?



That evolution is produced by random mutations that are filtered through natural selection.

That is your current best guess. No one has a better explaination.

 

[Loudmouth]

That is your current best guess. No one has a better explaination.

We can directly observe mutations increasing genetic variation.

"Here we present, to our knowledge, the first direct comparative analysis of male and female germline mutation rates from the complete genome sequences of two parent-offspring trios. Through extensive validation, we identified 49 and 35 germline de novo mutations (DNMs) in two trio offspring, as well as 1,586 non-germline DNMs arising either somatically or in the cell lines from which the DNA was derived."
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v43/n7/full/ng.862.html

We are able to find mutations in children. Every single one of us is born with mutations. This isn't a guess. This is an observation.

It is also not a guess that our DNA is responsible for our intelligence. Feeding a chimp rice pilaf with a Coke is not going to make him into a college graduate. The difference between human and chimp intelligence is due to your genomes. For example, one of the genes scientists are studying is FOXP2:

"FOXP2 is the first gene relevant to the human ability to develop language2. A point mutation in FOXP2 co-segregates with a disorder in a family in which half of the members have severe articulation difficulties accompanied by linguistic and grammatical impairment3. This gene is disrupted by translocation in an unrelated individual who has a similar disorder. Thus, two functional copies of FOXP2 seem to be required for acquisition of normal spoken language. We sequenced the complementary DNAs that encode the FOXP2 protein in the chimpanzee, gorilla, orang-utan, rhesus macaque and mouse, and compared them with the human cDNA. We also investigated intraspecific variation of the human FOXP2 gene. Here we show that human FOXP2 contains changes in amino-acid coding and a pattern of nucleotide polymorphism, which strongly suggest that this gene has been the target of selection during recent human evolution."
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v418/n6900/abs/nature01025.html

You can try to claim that we are just guessing, but anyone with knowledge of the science is going to laugh at that claim.

 

[stevevw]

 

[stevevw]

Actually, we find this exact bone structure in all tetrapods. The bones themselves may be shorter or longer, but this basic structure doesn't go away.

We also never find it in non-tetrapods. You will never find a fish with this bone structure. Homologous structures like this make perfect sense in the light of evolution, and they make testable predictions. By contrast...

Yes design is amazing. All it does is show common design just as humans use when designing things.

Of course it could be! Name me one thing that couldn't fit the "common designer" hypothesis.

...See, this is the problem with intelligent design. It's fundamentally unfalsifiable. As I keep saying over and over again: no matter what the scenario, you can come up with some excuse for why the designer made things the way it did! Same goal, same structure? "Same design, same designer". Same goal, totally different structure (such as with the whale and the shark)? "The designer got bored". Bananas are perfect for human consumption? "The designer wanted us to have this lovely fruit." Pineapples eat our flesh? "The designer wants humans to work for it sometimes."

Or, to come back to the issue above, the intelligent design hypothesis could easily accommodate both never finding a fish with Ulna, Humerus, Radius, Carpals, Metacarpals, and Phalanges in that particular structure, and finding such a fish. Evolution makes a testable prediction here, one that has, thus far, borne out completely. Intelligent design does not.

The fundamental question is living things, nature, the earth and the universe and everything that allows them to function speak of design. It looks designed, it works like its designed. It has all the criteria for design that we use for absolutely everything that is made by humans. In fact it has far greater design especially when we look at the inner workings of things such as down at the genetic or particle level. So why do we all of a sudden begin to attribute some other description to life. How does something that is in every way designed as much or more than anything we've designed not be designed or be self creating to act and look designed. It is illogical and just doesn't make sense and the chances of it happening that way are impossible.

A hypothesis which fits every potential line of evidence by definition makes no falsifiable predictions and is as a result completely useless and completely untestable. You cannot distinguish between a world in which the hypothesis is true and one in which it is false. That's an unworkable, useless idea.

Evolution is good at making general predictions and theories. But when it is looked at more closely it begins to break down. It predicts the way life should form in a tree back to a common ancestor. But when we look closely at the evidence such as the genetic evidence it starts to bring up contradictions. Many unrelated animals are linked and many related animals have in-congruences. This is overcome by coming up with new ideas like convergent evolution. This happens a lot when a contradiction comes up and so evolutions ends up with many new ideas added as time goes by to side step the problems it encounters. So evolution has ways of never being wrong and changing the goal posts all the time.

It also uses circular reasoning in that the fossil evidence that life has evolved from simple to complex forms over the geological ages depends on the geological ages of the specific rocks in which these fossils are found. The rocks are then given geologic ages based on the fossil assemblages which they contain. The fossils, in turn, are arranged on the basis of their assumed evolutionary relationships. Thus the main evidence for evolution is based on the assumption of evolution.

EDIT: I have been informed that while convergent evolution such as in the case of a fish with therapod bone structure should be rare, they are by no means impossible. My bad.

The problem is with convergent evolution is that we are finding more and more of it. In some cases there is genetic evidence that is also linking these unrelated animals together. So rather than being linked as two animals that may share a evolutionary relationship which would contradict evolution it is put down to a coincident. The two animals happen to evolve the same and even obtain the same genes but are unrelated. So we are to believe that not only did this near impossible feat of evolving complex parts happen once but twice and even on several occasions in a very similar way independently.

So nature is repeating this amazing process of what looks like design by repeating steps that come to a similar end result which also speaks of design because its almost a predictable outcome which is one of the hallmarks of design and having intelligence involved. But we are told its still a naturalistic process that has absolutely no intelligence and can create itself to look like its designed.

 

[The Cadet]

The fundamental question is living things, nature, the earth and the universe and everything that allows them to function speak of design. It looks designed, it works like its designed. It has all the criteria for design that we use for absolutely everything that is made by humans. In fact it has far greater design especially when we look at the inner workings of things such as down at the genetic or particle level. So why do we all of a sudden begin to attribute some other description to life.

Because you've ignored two of the most important factors for determining design: a lack of a plausible naturalistic mechanism, and the existence of a plausible designer. We have a plausible naturalistic mechanism. We do not have a plausible designer.

How does something that is in every way designed as much or more than anything we've designed not be designed or be self creating to act and look designed. It is illogical and just doesn't make sense and the chances of it happening that way are impossible.

Personally, I'd like you to explain how you came to the conclusion that it was designed. What criteria did you use? How can "design" objectively be measured?

See, this runs into another important problem: our "design"? Part of nature. We, humans, are part of nature. This distinction we make between our design and natural processes is entirely artificial, and while it is a useful one to make in some scenarios (anthropology, for example), it's an utterly confusing one in the context of evolution.

Here's the essence of what I'm getting to. This complex machine?

Made by nature. The fact that we made it does nothing to distract from the fact that we are a part of nature. And while we can distinguish this as made by humans... Well, with things like early cells, how would we distinguish that? "Made by designer"... Yes, but which designer? How can demonstrate the existence of the designer? Is the designer part of nature? How do we find its fingerprints? How do we distinguish between something made by the designer and something made by nature?

I mean, this is a non-trivial problem when it comes to humans. Some landscapes designed by professional architects will be designed explicitly to parallel naturally occurring landscapes. Certain naturally occurring structures look like they were carved by human tools, despite simply being the product of natural erosion. And we generally know what humans are capable of throughout history, what the hallmarks of human design are, and in many cases, we can go back and say, "Ah, that's who designed that, there's their signature".

But now we're presented with an object you claim was designed. By a different designer. One whose signature we do not know; one whose capabilities we are unaware of; one whose hallmarks are unclear, and one whose very existence is based on the claim that something must have been designed by this designer. I'm sorry, that's not good enough. That's not how we recognize human design, that's not how we recognize any sort of specified design.

We can objectively recognize specified design by looking at what we know organism X has designed, and then comparing the object we have with what we know occurs outside the purview of organism X and what we know organism X can and does do. Notice how this is necessarily dependent on the organism! If we were to look for evidence of beaver design, we would not use the same set of objects for our comparisons as if we were to look for evidence of bumblebee design, nor human design. In the case of human design, we have a wide and deep range of things to look at, and to compare to. We have language as a fairly clear distinguisher - something that non-human processes could produce only as a bizarre coincidence and which humans produce all the time. We have metalworking as a distinguisher. We have clayworking and pottery. And so on, and so forth.

So what do we know your designer has designed? What do we know your designer can do? What have we established that this designer has designed? We haven't even established this designer's existence yet? Well, shoot.

Look, if you want to provide some alternative objective way of determining whether something is designed or not, or whether something is designed by a particular entity or not, then by all means, let's hear it! Thus far, I have heard of no robust mechanism to distinguish design from non-design, particularly without any established work of the designer in question. But you need to provide this mechanism, and it needs to be robust and testable. We should be able to take your mechanism and prove that things we know are designed are designed, and things we know are not designed (within a certain reference frame) are not designed (within that reference frame, see the "human = part of nature" thing above). Make any sense?

Evolution is good at making general predictions and theories. But when it is looked at more closely it begins to break down. It predicts the way life should form in a tree back to a common ancestor. But when we look closely at the evidence such as the genetic evidence it starts to bring up contradictions. Many unrelated animals are linked and many related animals have in-congruences. This is overcome by coming up with new ideas like convergent evolution. This happens a lot when a contradiction comes up and so evolutions ends up with many new ideas added as time goes by to side step the problems it encounters. So evolution has ways of never being wrong and changing the goal posts all the time.

Convergent evolution was predicted as far back as 1940 to explain the odd issue of homoplasy vs. homology, and fits perfectly into the core concept. Do you think that evolution is somehow the same theory that Darwin proposed? No. It's undergone numerous significant shifts - punctuated equilibrium, the genetic revolution, horizontal gene transfer... But the root of descent with modification and common ancestry has not shifted one bit. It is still fundamentally accurate.

If you would like to provide unrelated animals that are linked or related animals that have significant incongruences, I recommend you seek out one of the several tools used to construct cladistic tables, find all the relevant morphological similarities and differences between those animals and a bunch of randomly thrown-in organisms, and see if you can find an example where the results you discover do not match the tree of life we have now. Then, publish those results in a peer-reviewed journal, because what you have is a major discovery that is useful to the endeavor of science and directly contradicts the results of previous research. Also, might wanna mention it here after you submit the manuscript. Look, this is a well-established scientific field, and the fact that you point to bats, birds, and pterosaurs as though they were somehow morphologically "similar" simply because they all can fly shows that you really don't know what you're talking about. This is a complex field, and you need to approach it with the attitude "I'm going to learn something", not "I'm going to debunk it all with no prior understanding thereof"!

It also uses circular reasoning in that the fossil evidence that life has evolved from simple to complex forms over the geological ages depends on the geological ages of the specific rocks in which these fossils are found. The rocks are then given geologic ages based on the fossil assemblages which they contain.

No, the rocks are dated radiometrically and stratigraphically. There is no assumption of evolution buried in the age of these fossils, and we do not use fossils to date the rocks. Again, your ignorance of the field you are ostensibly trying to debunk is showing.

The problem is with convergent evolution is that we are finding more and more of it. In some cases there is genetic evidence that is also linking these unrelated animals together. So rather than being linked as two animals that may share a evolutionary relationship which would contradict evolution it is put down to a coincident. The two animals happen to evolve the same and even obtain the same genes but are unrelated.

I'm just going to say that this is not my strong suit and pass the ball off to someone who might know a little better.
@sfs ? @[serious] ?

 

[Smidlee]

Made by nature. The fact that we made it does nothing to distract from the fact that we are a part of nature. And while we can distinguish this as made by humans... Well, with things like early cells, how would we distinguish that? "Made by designer"... Yes, but which designer? How can demonstrate the existence of the designer? Is the designer part of nature? How do we find its fingerprints? How do we distinguish between something made by the designer and something made by nature?

We have computer engineers who can program a computer to do just that. Of course since it deals with national defense that information is classified.

 

[[serious]]

Yes design is amazing. All it does is show common design just as humans use when designing things.

Just like? Try putting all existing vehicles into a nested hierarchy. I'll point out vehicles that don't fit your nested hierarchy.

 

[The Cadet]

We have computer engineers who can program a computer to do just that. Of course since it deals with national defense that information is classified.

Well that's a useful piece of non-evidence.

 

[Smidlee]

Well that's a useful piece of non-evidence.

Oh there is evidence as look at our guided missiles. The same way our brain is "wired" to recognize design.

************
There is no reason for evolution to produce a nested hierarchy. According to the evolution myth a small land creature slowly transformed into a huge whale making a lot of changes yet with all those changes along the way so why did it keep it's boobs and hair? It's there a natural law that says once a creature evolves boobs it must never lose them. We have a fish turning in a land creature back to a sea creature but once boobs always boobs.

 

[The Cadet]

Oh there is evidence as look at our guided missiles. The same way our brain is "wired" to recognize design.

Yeah, sure. That makes sense.

(I'm kidding, cite please.)

There is no reason for evolution to produce a nested hierarchy.

Actually, descent with modification is to wit the only known mechanism that will create a consistent nested hierarchy. Descent without modification is a straight line; design will not necessarily show any hierarchy (whether your car has power steering has no relation to whether or not it has air conditioning, is a v6 or a v8, or has FWD, for example). Meanwhile, run any basic evolutionary algorithm with splitting populations, and the result will always fit into a consistent nested hierarchy. So yes, evolution absolutely should produce a consistent nested hierarchy, and something like a pegasus, a satyr, or a crocoduck would post a serious problem. Check out this video, where cdk007 uses such an algorithm, clearly showing the difference between a designed piece of DNA and a descended piece of DNA:

After 7 sequences of genes are created and then allowed to mutate, the ones that did not share any such ancestry formed a straight cladogram. That is, they were all equidistant and at the same level. However, the ones where the sequences were simulated to have "split off" (that is, the sequences were duplicated from an existing sequence post-mutation, starting with one sequence and ending with 7), they formed exactly the nested hierarchy that you would predict from their ancestry. There are robust models to deal with this. We're not taking stabs in the dark here. You can do this with anything which simulates descent with modification and splitting populations, then apply the same parsimony algorithm to work it out and get a consistent tree like that. You will not get a consistent tree with designed objects.

According to the evolution myth a small land creature slowly transformed into a huge whale making a lot of changes yet with all those changes along the way so why did it keep it's boobs and hair? It's there a natural law that says once a creature evolves boobs it must never lose them. We have a fish turning in a land creature back to a sea creature but once boobs always boobs.

This is basically an incoherent mess. Care to try again?