What is the greatest evidence against the theory of evolution...?

[Abraxos]

Why do you think that the Cambrian explosion is a problem? Relying on creationists that always get confuse on how evolution works will never lead you to the right conclusion. Try siting a valid source next time.

You should educate yourself. Here's a pretty good video to introduce newbies to the cambrian explosion.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Straight out misinformation and falsehoods...

I see a perfectly nested family tree with no evolution at all. Just separate infraspecific taxa mating with other infraspecific taxa creating new infraspecific taxa.

No, the most recent generation in that family tree is most certainly different than the ones preceding it. In case you didn't notice, none of the people in that generation have dark skin, even though that trait is present in the first and second generations towards the middle. Furthermore, the frequency of the red haired trait increases dramatically by the last generation, and genetic drift is a component of evolution. Also, the red haired guy with two red haired parents that married a woman with dark skin and black hair has a kid with intermediate traits that has black hair, that also has kids with a person with blonde hair resulting in BROWN HAIRED CHILDREN.

You might not realize the significance of that, due to not having a background in genetics, but brown hair is not a trait you are likely to get from this lineage. You see, red hair is the most recessive hair color gene you can have. This guy with two redheads for parents is nearly guaranteed to be homozygous for the red hair gene. His wife has black hair, which is arguably the most dominant trait, so it is possible that she could be heterozygous and have an allele for black hair and an allele for some other hair color, but if she does, it doesn't matter, because both of her children ended up with black hair. Now, if I represent red hair alleles as r, and black hair alleles as B, this means that both of her children were Br, black hair with a recessive red hair allele. This guy has children with a blonde woman, and all three have brown hair. Now, you see, blonde hair is almost as recessive as red hair is, and if I were to represent the possible hair alleles for this blonde woman as YY for homozygous blonde and Yr for blonde with a recessive red hair allele, you should see a problem. That's right, the genes for brown hair are dominant over those for blonde hair, so her kids can't have gotten the trait from her, and since we have a firmly established lineage for the other parent as well (no brown hair alleles there), how on earth are these people having 3 brown haired children?

Now, there are a number of possibilities, and you aren't going to like any of them, because they require mutation based evolution. Among the possibilities (besides someone being unfaithful 3 times in a row), the most likely explanations to me are that one of them has a mutation in either a blonde allele or black allele that makes them codominant to each other (meaning both are expressed, resulting in an intermediate trait). It need not have happened in their generation, but it would have to happen at some point for children with that hair color to be the result this consistently (it would be excessively unlikely for the mutation that resulted in this to occur 3 separate times, one for each child, in their generation). Red hair, blonde hair, and black hair are codominant with each other very, very rarely, and it is rarer still for this codominance to result in brown hair of relatively consistent shades.

Of course, the genetics of various traits are rather complex, and it wouldn't be impossible for one brown haired child to be born from this pairing. But 3 is a statistical anomaly even with that considered.

Also, the lineage with black hair on the far right is completely out of whack. So, a red haired person has kids with this black haired guy, and the result is children representing black hair, brown hair, blonde hair, and red hair?! What?! Blonde hair should not be represented in this pairing along with red hair at the same time, that's excessively unlikely. Is this doodle even representative of a real family tree?

Anyways, traits are present in the last generation not present in the first, so evolution has occurred here. It never really stops.

 

[KWCrazy]

Wrong. You are simply having too much fun here breaking the rules, being angry and hostile and personally attacking me. It is a major no-no here to cast aspersion on the character of anyone, as you are doing here by labeling me a false teacher. That is an incredibly arrogant and ignorant remark on your part.

I am neither angry, nor hostile, and you are absolutely teaching contrary to the Scriptures which is what makes you a false teacher. The obvious proof is that I posted specific passages of Scripture and you reject all of it, couching your arguments in the philosophies of man; not in the word of God. Your talk about "irrational hyper literal interpretations" is all smoke and mirrors. The simple fact is that the Bible states God created the heavens and the Earth in six days, and that Adam was formed from the dust of the earth. It is 100% in opposition to evolution and everyone knows it, including you. Yet here you are promoting a theory you know the Creator told us did not happen. That's false teaching. You can't even distort the Bible enough to make it agree with you which is why you don't post Scripture. In fact, you continue to post untruths about Genesis 2 being another creation story and the killing of Goliath's brothers by David's family as if they were confused reports of David and Goliath. I showed you the truth, you continued with the falsehood.

 

[The Cadet]

I am neither angry, nor hostile,

@Hoghead1 I gotta give this one to KWCrazy here. In this thread he's been extremely measured and for the most part reasonable*. You want to see him angry and hostile, get him talking about Benghazi.

*Note: reasonable is not the same thing as right.

 

[KWCrazy]

Are you kidding me? Have you read Exod. 32? There is absolute nothing that that says Moses brought down a tablet with the creation narrative of Genesis written on it. Where on earth did you get that idea?

Seriously?
Exodus 32 tells of Moses coming down the mountain with the stone tablets, on which were written the Ten Commandments; including the fourth one which states that in six days the Lord made the Heavens and the earth. Red about it in Exodus 20:11. Nobody but you ever suggested it contained the Genesis narrative. That's just another falsehood.

 

[KWCrazy]

When and where did this happen?

In a small church in central Michigan, circa 1978.

Shame God could rustle up a few extra dollars for a church but couldn't be bothered to heal a very good friend of mine who died earlier this year from a brain tumour. She was a pillar of her local church for many years and had a very strong faith but I guess God didn't want to listen to prayers to heal her?

God listened, and the answer was no. He was ready for her. When your Father calls you, you WILL go home. Death is the penalty for sin, but eternal life is the gift from God. Her pain and suffering are over. If she was a person of strong faith her place in Heaven would make anything on this earth intolerable after a mere glimpse.

Miracle stories do not support an all loving God.

If they happened every day they wouldn't be miracles, would they?
God didn't promise we would escape death in this life. He promised us eternal life with Him after we leave this place.
We're born, we live, we die, and we are judged. If we please the Lord, we will be with Him. If we displease the Lord, we will be apart from Him. I really can't help a person who's mind is closed to the possibility of miracles happening; especially on a website surrounded by people with first hand experience with them. It's a ponderous and sad thing, indeed, to be so blind. You really need our prayers.

 

[Hoghead1]

I am neither angry, nor hostile, and you are absolutely teaching contrary to the Scriptures which is what makes you a false teacher. The obvious proof is that I posted specific passages of Scripture and you reject all of it, couching your arguments in the philosophies of man; not in the word of God. Your talk about "irrational hyper literal interpretations" is all smoke and mirrors. The simple fact is that the Bible states God created the heavens and the Earth in six days, and that Adam was formed from the dust of the earth. It is 100% in opposition to evolution and everyone knows it, including you. Yet here you are promoting a theory you know the Creator told us did not happen. That's false teaching. You can't even distort the Bible enough to make it agree with you which is why you don't post Scripture. In fact, you continue to post untruths about Genesis 2 being another creation story and the killing of Goliath's brothers by David's family as if they were confused reports of David and Goliath. I showed you the truth, you continued with the falsehood.

Yes, you are being quite hostile and inappropriate in your disrespectful name-calling here. You are letting your fundamentalist ideology speak for you, not Scripture and certainly not anything near what is appropriate in a theological discussion group. I am seeking to cut out all middlemen, and that includes fallible , human-made religious ideologies, such as Bible Belt. What you say appears rude and goes in one ear here and out the other, as I am trying to keep my mind clear of any possible distortions and contaminations of Scripture that are often produced by a too exclusive reliance on man-made religions ideologies. I realize that fundamentalism is the way for some Christians to go, and it is probably your way. However, you fail to respect the fact that fundamentalism simply does not work for all your Christian brethren. Being very old-fashioned and anti-intellectual does work for some. The Amish are one example, and the Bible Belt is another. But it definitely does not work for the majority of modern-thinking Christians. I respect the fact that according to the major tenets of backwoods Christian ideology, you should rise up, shout down, and demonize any intellectual or scholar who does not agree with you. But you are not in those circles here. In modern theological dialogues, such as approach is simply viewed as backward, intolerant, , and ill-informed. You need to tone down you language here. Also, you need to [ay far better attention to what I am saying. I pointed out to you more than enough times that the original Hebrew texts say Elhanan killed Goliath, period. The "brother of" that you see in some translations is a serious tampering with the original text by the translators and therefore is being omitted by many modern Bibles. So your attack on me here is wholly off-base and reflects you know little of biblical scholarship.

 

[The Cadet]

I really can't help a person who's mind is closed to the possibility of miracles happening; especially on a website surrounded by people with first hand experience with them. It's a ponderous and sad thing, indeed, to be so blind. You really need our prayers.

If we were on a paranormal site, I get the feeling I would get the same response from people for not believing the personal testimony of ghost sightings or alien abductions.

 

[Hoghead1]

Seriously?
Exodus 32 tells of Moses coming down the mountain with the stone tablets, on which were written the Ten Commandments; including the fourth one which states that in six days the Lord made the Heavens and the earth. Red about it in Exodus 20:11. Nobody but you ever suggested it contained the Genesis narrative. That's just another falsehood.

Yes, according to Exod. 20. No, according to Deut. 5. Please read the Bible more carefully. Anyhow, your original claim was that teh tables were quoting the text of Genesis, not just summarizing a point here.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You should educate yourself. Here's a pretty good video to introduce newbies to the cambrian explosion.

Sorry, but that man is either very ignorant, very dishonest, or both. Why would you think that such idiocy would be of value?

Why don't you bring up the claims one at a time on your own. Let me give you a hand. You do realize that the Cambrian "explosion" was millions of years long. We do have predecessors for many if not all life forms. There have been many new fossils found since Darwin's time. You might want to Google search the Ediacaran to start with.

 

[Hoghead1]

@Hoghead1 I gotta give this one to KWCrazy here. In this thread he's been extremely measured and for the most part reasonable*. You want to see him angry and hostile, get him talking about Benghazi.

*Note: reasonable is not the same thing as right.

In a way, you are probably right. She would like to see me close my cool. Well, she is just going to have to work much harder. I am well used to this sort of hate mail. The problem I have with such posts is that they bore me. HBO, hum, same old, same old, from the fundamentalists. I am looking and hoping for more exciting and challenging posts. When I was doing graduate work in a Presbyterian seminary, I used to get threatening phone calls and letters from fundamentalists denouncing me because I was in seminary, telling me that Jew atheists were running the place, you name it. Jews running a Presbyterian seminary? I don't think so. But I wasn't particularly surprised. Being very dangerously anti-Semitic is a major feature of the Bible Belt.

 

[Hoghead1]

"When Charles Darwin wrote "The Origin of Species " in 1859, the sudden appearance of animal fossils at the beginning of the Cambrian was of particular concern to him. It was at odds with his view that the diversification of life on earth through natural selection had required a long period of time. Darwin's theory predicted that the major groups of animals should gradually diverge during evolution. He knew that the sudden appearance of fossils would be used by his opponents as a powerful argument against his theories of descent with modification and natural selection. Consequently, he argued that a long period of time, unrepresented in the fossil record, must have preceded the Cambrian to allow the various major groups of animals to diverge. At that time the strata that we now regard as Cambrian were subsumed within the concept of the Silurian, so Darwin wrote,

'I cannot doubt that all the Silurian trilobites have descended from some one crustacean, which must have lived long before the Silurian age....Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Silurian strata was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably longer than, the whole interval from the Silurian to the present day.....The case must at present remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained'

The Origin of Species, 1859, pp. 313 - 314​

• Derek E.G. Briggs, Douglas H. Erwin, & Frederick J. Collier
  "The Fossils of the Burgess Shale," 1994, Smithsonian Institution, p.39.

Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Silurian stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Silurian age to the present day; and that during these vast, yet quite unknown periods of time, the world swarmed with living creatures. To the question why we do not find records of these vast primordial periods, I can give no satisfactory answer.

• Darwin, Charles
  On the Origin of Species, 1st edition
  Harvard Univ. Press, facsimile reprint, 1964, p. 307

Note: In Darwin's time, the "Silurian" was the name given the oldest known fossil-bearing strata. "Cambrian" does not occur as an index entry in this edition of the Origin.

http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/library/origins/quotes/cambrian.html​

Thanks for the info. You are to be complimented for doing your homework. I wish I could say that for other here.

 

[Hoghead1]

You should educate yourself. Here's a pretty good video to introduce newbies to the cambrian explosion.

Well, I am always willing to learn something. However, I think I am about "educationed" out at the moment. I have a doctorate in theology and my dissertation addressed God in relationship to an ever-evolving, changing world. I work with a very different view or take on evolution, so the Cambrian problem really isn't an issue to me.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Actually you evolutionists are wrong again. As usual.

http://www.africaresource.com/rasta...ack-couple-makes-a-white-baby-oguejiofo-annu/

That's not a caucasian baby.
Pigmentation is not the only difference between african blacks and caucasian whites.

 

[DogmaHunter]

We can only wonder what your point is, since nothing has ever been observed to become anything else but what it started as.

And evolution doesn't say we should.

But even knowing a black person never becomes anything but a black person, you want them to magically become Asian.

No. That's your strawman again.

That's why fish evolved into humans, because they don't jump branches, right? So fish are homo-sapiens????? Or are we sub-species of fish????

Fish are modern species. Not everything that lives in the sea is a fish.

Yet fish became mammals.

Which is a sub group of vertebrates and chordata.

Hmmm, seems consistency is not really your strong point in evolution theory. So which is it?

Please refresh your high school biology classes.
Mammals are vertrebrates.

Because at some point the Latin infraspecific taxa mated with another infraspecific taxa and made a Spanish infraspecific Taxa.

lol, what???

Are you being serious???

 

[DogmaHunter]

No. Intelligence has little to do with the physical body.
Is there any study on the correlation between IQ and a particular body part?

I hear the brain kind plays a role...................

 

[Gene2memE]

"When Charles Darwin wrote "The Origin of Species " in 1859, the sudden appearance of animal fossils at the beginning of the Cambrian was of particular concern to him. It was at odds with his view that the diversification of life on earth through natural selection had required a long period of time. Darwin's theory predicted that the major groups of animals should gradually diverge during evolution. He knew that the sudden appearance of fossils would be used by his opponents as a powerful argument against his theories of descent with modification and natural selection. Consequently, he argued that a long period of time, unrepresented in the fossil record, must have preceded the Cambrian to allow the various major groups of animals to diverge. At that time the strata that we now regard as Cambrian were subsumed within the concept of the Silurian, so Darwin wrote,

'I cannot doubt that all the Silurian trilobites have descended from some one crustacean, which must have lived long before the Silurian age....Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Silurian strata was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably longer than, the whole interval from the Silurian to the present day.....The case must at present remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained'

The Origin of Species, 1859, pp. 313 - 314​

• Derek E.G. Briggs, Douglas H. Erwin, & Frederick J. Collier
  "The Fossils of the Burgess Shale," 1994, Smithsonian Institution, p.39.

Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Silurian stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Silurian age to the present day; and that during these vast, yet quite unknown periods of time, the world swarmed with living creatures. To the question why we do not find records of these vast primordial periods, I can give no satisfactory answer.

• Darwin, Charles
  On the Origin of Species, 1st edition
  Harvard Univ. Press, facsimile reprint, 1964, p. 307

Note: In Darwin's time, the "Silurian" was the name given the oldest known fossil-bearing strata. "Cambrian" does not occur as an index entry in this edition of the Origin.

http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/library/origins/quotes/cambrian.html​

Even a cursory glance at the evolutionary history of trilobites and/or arthropods would inform you that the fossil record of proto-arthropods stretches well back into the Ediacaran. There are even some hard body organisism that we know of that evolved 50 million years prior the Cambrian.

Seriously, why do creationists think that the Cambrian presents anything more than a very interesting rapid diversification event?

 

[PsychoSarah]

In a way, you are probably right. She would like to see me close my cool. Well, she is just going to have to work much harder. I am well used to this sort of hate mail. The problem I have with such posts is that they bore me. HBO, hum, same old, same old, from the fundamentalists. I am looking and hoping for more exciting and challenging posts. When I was doing graduate work in a Presbyterian seminary, I used to get threatening phone calls and letters from fundamentalists denouncing me because I was in seminary, telling me that Jew atheists were running the place, you name it. Jews running a Presbyterian seminary? I don't think so. But I wasn't particularly surprised. Being very dangerously anti-Semitic is a major feature of the Bible Belt.

I haven't seen anything from KWCrazy that would qualify as "hate mail" towards you. Especially not in regards to the degree of aggression some people can have on this site. You definitely strongly and persistently disagree, but otherwise, your discussion is quite tame.

 

[juvenissun]

Yes, people without a functioning brain tend to score very low on IQ tests.

I think they would all agree on what you said.

 

[Shemjaza]

No. Intelligence has little to do with the physical body.
Is there any study on the correlation between IQ and a particular body part?

There is considerable evidence from medical studies about brain injuries and deformities and how they effect intelligence and cognition.