Are there transitional fossils?

[USincognito]

Well, that's possibly part of the problem. You are a bit wordy too; if you use simpler words and are as concise as possible, it makes for fewer opportunities to be misunderstood. Emphasis on fewer.

Succinctness limits opportunities for obfuscation.

 

[mark kennedy]

And if you read the scientific literature, the theory of evolution does not cover the bolded segment.

Oh but it does, there are tons of research papers on RNA world speculation.

 

[Speedwell]

Metaphysics comes down to transcendence and God's power to create life transcends all of Scripture and all of history. I see no trap, I'm not limited to exclusively naturalistic cause.

But you seem to be unhappy with the notion that a naturalistic explanation of the origin of life may be possible. I am just pointing put to you that if a naturalistic origin of life is demonstrated, divine authorship of life is not thereby denied.

 

[PsychoSarah]

That's kind of the thing, I'm actually very interested in adaptive evolution. It really puzzles me to see creationists arguing against evolution when the real problem is Darwinism. No one sane would deny that things change over time, I've never seen a creationist who argues against Mendelian genetics.

I remember one instance of arguing against a creationist that denied some basic principles of Mendelian genetics... and even parts of the bible. He basically was arguing that human races couldn't all have been derived from common ancestry, because "two white people won't have a black child" and so on. And I just type "How do you think Adam and Eve gave rise to all the different races of people then, and what about the mention in the bible itself that different races were descended from different sons of Noah?" Completely ignored that point, and ignores how the genetics of skin color and such work (as it is uncommon for a person to be homozygous for the darker or lighter skin genes and thus entirely possible for two equally light skinned people to have a child notably darker than themselves) and that there are very minor phenotypic differences between the arbitrary "races" applied to humans. Come on sir, the majority of dog breeds came about within the past 200 years, and you are going to tell me that skin color is too dramatic of a difference to have developed through natural processes?

Some people on here really don't know biology.

This comes down to a philosophy of natural history and there is one dramatic difference that separates the Creationist and Darwinian by an irreconcilable gulf, the time line.

Well, there are old earth creationists, though. Most that I know support evolution and view a deity as a guiding hand that either created life and then left it to its own devices, or has guided evolution to promote the eventual development of a sentient species (such as ourselves).

However, I do wish to bring up the fact that the idea that the earth was far older than what was inferred from the bible can be dated back at least as far as 1749, in which a French naturalist suggested that the earth was 75,000 years old. By the time Darwin was beginning to write his theory of evolution, it was commonly accepted that earth was at least multiple millions of years old. Thus, it makes perfect sense that the theory was developed with an old earth in mind.

Creationists, when you think about it, are actually radical evolutionists. The inhabitants of that boat emerge as the first parents of all birds, reptiles and mammals including humans, 4000 years ago. This is an accelerated evolution that would have sacred Charles Darwin to death.

Oh, that's one of my favorites. Most people that go along that path argue that "changes within kinds" can happen, but "one kind cannot change into another kind". Not one person has ever provided valid evidence for a limit on how far the changes can extend.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I'm not doing this with you, I avoid religious discussions in these forums like the plague. This is a pretty typical slight of the historical aspects of Creationism:


Living systems are complete at creation and everyone who seriously thinks about Creationism realizes this:

Creation and evolution, between them, exhaust the possible explanations for the origin of living things. Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed or they did not. If they did not, they must have developed from preexisting species by some process of modification. If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must indeed have been created by some omnipotent intelligence.(D.J. Futuyma, Science on Trial)​

And how is that an insult to your religion? It was an observation of what you said. Time and again, people who believe in special creation have been unable to show creation as it pertains to their perspective religious texts. You have done the same time and again, but when you have been called out on it, your run and hide behind a veneer of intellectualism. And before you say: no, that's not an ad hominem.

And if you claim that I'm wrong, this is what you said to me in post #255:

Didn't see it obviously, which is easy to do with a half a dozen short snipes instead of one complete post that covers the topic in context. You bent over backwards to insult me for my religion but didn't notice we had the same definition. That is, in a word, confused.

Now look at the bolded text and try and respond to me question: where did I 'bend over backwards' to insult your religion?

 

[xianghua]

Several creation events? What does that even mean? Science shows that the earth was around for hundreds of millions of years before the first one celled creature, then for billions of years before multicellular life became common, than for hundreds of millions of years before the first placental mammal, and then for millions of years before humans. Do you believe all those were separate creation events over millions of years?

its one possibilty. yes.

Missing link? There are a whole series of fossils that have been found that are midway between fish and amphibians. See Fish to Amphibian Transition . So why do you say they are missing when they aren't?

not realy. all of them are actually in the wrong place:

Discovery pushes back date of first four-legged animal : Nature News

the first tetrapod appeared before all of them (date about 400my). so we have an out of order fossil.

I have asked you over and over to give me an example of an out of order fossil. You refuse--refuse!--to do so.
And yet somehow you claim I am ignoring your evidence. Please, please show me your evidence.

see above.

Many mammal-like reptiles have been found in sequence before the first mammals. Do you agree that there were many mammal-like reptiles before the first mammal? You cannot even answer that simple question. Why not?

i said that its possible. yes. but again; its doesnt prove any evolution.

Do you agree there were no reptiles in the Cambrian times? Do you agree that life in Precambian times was simpler than life today?

Let'd get even more basic. Do you think the earth is about 4.5 billion years old?

its a good question. and yes- it's possible that the earth isnt so old. and we have evidence for that too.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Oh but it does, there are tons of research papers on RNA world speculation.

Speculation is not the same as actual research.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Lamarck and Darwin were living in a time when creationism, specifically catastrophism, was the prevailing view.

Actually, I looked up a timeline of geography. Catastrophism was on the way out when Darwin made his theory, and was by far not the predominant position by the time he published in 1859. "From around 1850 to 1980, most geologists endorsed uniformitarianism ("The present is the key to the past") and gradualism (geologic change occurs slowly over long periods of time) and rejected the idea that cataclysmic events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or floods of vastly greater power than those observed at the present time, played any significant role in the formation of the Earth's surface." Charles Lyell published his work on uniformitarianism in the 1830s. Darwin kept up to date while on his voyage through letters, and amended his work as he wrote it. Don't know why you keep feeling the need to bring up Lamarck after I told you that his ideas aren't incorporated into modern evolutionary theory. Heck, they aren't even a part of Darwin's original theory.

It was this bizarre idea that God had created life multiple times and life was ended multiple times.

Catastrophism has more to do with geological formations than living organisms. What you mention is one of the most common ways Christians tried to reconcile it with their religion.

The basic premise was that God created living things again, pretty much as they appear today. Darwin wrote in a very conversational way, passing over various anecdotal points of divergence, he appears to have been fascinated with variety that he uses interchangeably with species. I wouldn't dismiss them quite so readily, their influence is undeniable and Darwin did more then anyone I'm aware of to popularize naturalism.

I don't deny influence from predecessors, but the basic principles of Darwin's and Lamarck's work are entirely different.

​

Your really missing the progression here. Think about it, Euclid puts together his famous Elements cyclical in ancient Greece some 2500 years ago. That really didn't change and hasn't to this day. However, when Newton introduces Calculus the ability of scientists to measure the Y squared in motion takes technology to new heights. Mendel established a model for inheritance that hold true to this day, the Initial Sequence of the Human Genome spoke of his work with great respect. Mendelian Genetics has grown by leaps and bounds, he was as important to the life sciences as Newton was to physics. Just not as accomplished in his time.

I'm not missing the progression. After further reading, I will make a correction. Darwin DID actually put some aspects of Lamarckian evolution in his original theory, though not many. Mendelian genetics would later disprove Lamarck entirely, and these aspects were then removed from the theory. I always forget that Mendel was 1865-1866, with much of his work almost entirely ignored until around 1900.​

Well, I'm more of a Liberal Arts major, I get to roam around more. Darwinism was a unified theory at a time when Genetics wasn't even considered a science. I know that sounds a bit odd since geneticists were doing profoundly empirical lab work. The cause and effect could not be reconciled until the DNA double helix model, since then no one has suggested Genetics isn't true science.

I request that you not call the theory of evolution from any time period "Darwinism", for your own sake. It's a habit for some of the most ignorant creationists to call the theory of evolution "the religion of Darwinism", so when people read it, they are more likely not to treat you seriously.

I am a biomedical sciences major, with a chemistry minor, so this stuff is my bread and butter. Also, nucleic acids were recognized as the most likely genetic material prior to the structure of DNA (more specifically, in the late 1930s and early 1940s) being known thanks to experiments such as the one by Frederick Griffith in 1928 that showed that separated nucleic acids from an infectious strain of bacteria could transfer the infectious trait to living bacteria that weren't initially infectious. People were trying to figure out the structure of DNA in order to learn more about how it functioned as the source of genetic material.

Those things are being tracked, population genetics is a very big deal. I get things piecemeal, recently I read a paper on how the visual cortex in norther populations of humans is 20% different then those of a more southern hemisphere. I just find that so fascinating. Something I have always wondered though. Darwin had in his library Mendel's only surviving paper uncut. When they printed books then they would be printed accordion style so they had to be cut in order to read them. Darwin didn't speak German so he never bothered, I've often wondered what might have came from Darwin actually reading Mendel, guess we will never know.

I find it weird that Darwin never learned German, given that, at the time, so many scientific papers were printed only in that language. That's why it doesn't shock me that he would have a book in German in his library; he probably owned tons of scientific texts in that language... which he could not read. There was an interesting fantasy book series with an alternative history in which Darwin not only authored his theory of evolution, but also discovered genes. Not only this, but he devised a method of manipulating genes. It makes for a fun read, though I wouldn't call it feasible. It's the Leviathan book series, by Scott Westerfeld.

 

[doubtingmerle]

Lamarck and Darwin were living in a time when creationism, specifically catastrophism, was the prevailing view. It was this bizarre idea that God had created life multiple times and life was ended multiple times. The basic premise was that God created living things again, pretty much as they appear today.

There was a reason why the early catastrophists proposed that there were multiple catastrophes that wiped out life on earth. Geologists were becoming increasingly aware that life in the lowest layers were different from modern life. They discovered that there were distinct layers down there, each with distinct life forms, and interestingly, when you went to different places on earth, you found that the same layers with the same life forms could be found in the same sequence. Adam Sedgwick was a pioneer of the day, noticing that Cambrian, Silurian, and Devonian all represented unique life forms, and always seemed to be in the same order wherever you found them. He could tell that the Devonian layer had creatures very different from modern creatures. It was like a whole new world. But when you went deeper anywhere on earth, you would tend to find the Silurian layer, which had a whole different set of creatures that were even stranger. And went you went still deeper, you would tend to find the Cambrian layer, which was strangest of all. How did people like Sedgwick explain this? They proposed that long ago, in the Cambrian times, odd creatures existed and were wiped out in a catastrophe. Then God created again with completely different life forms, creating Silurian life. Then that was wiped out in another catastrophe, so God created again, creating Devonian life. And so on and so on, until finally, after the last catastrophe, God created modern life.

And that is the catastrophism to which they referred. Now young earth creationists have adopted the term, and have tried to use this to refer to the flood of Noah, but that is far different from what these catastrophists were claiming.

Read about Adam Sedgwick. He was an interesting character. (See Adam Sedgwick - Wikipedia , Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) ) He was a creationist, doing most of his work slightly before Darwin. When Darwin came along, Sedgwick disagreed. But he did not deny the geologic column. He could see for himself that, wherever he looked, the rocks tended to be in the same sequence, and that creatures in the oldest layers were quite different from creatures today. And thus we find that creationists like Sedgwick, who loved science, are the very ones who discovered the geologic column and started naming the layers.

Later studies have found that there were changes within the layers, and that the changes between the layers were somewhat gradual, so modern uniformitarianism recognizes that all this can be explained without a series of catastrophes and creations. But the general concept of the progression of life that Sedgwick described is still recognized today.

All that to get to a couple of questions.

Do you agree with Sedgwick that the earth is millions of years old?

Do you agree with Sedgwick that the Devonian layer represents a period of time, long ago, when life was very different from what it is today?

Do you agree with Sedgwick that the Silurian and Cambrian layers below the Devonian represent other long periods of time before the Devonian, each with distinctly different life forms?

 

[mark kennedy]

Interesting discussion of Adam Sedgwick, his work seems more focused on geology then anything else

All that to get to a couple of questions.

Do you agree with Sedgwick that the earth is millions of years old?

I've always been open to old earth cosmology.

Do you agree with Sedgwick that the Devonian layer represents a period of time, long ago, when life was very different from what it is today?

I find the dating of geological layers and the identification of living systems embedded therein to be unconvincing. Life was created about 6000 years ago.

Do you agree with Sedgwick that the Silurian and Cambrian layers below the Devonian represent other long periods of time before the Devonian, each with distinctly different life forms?

No but then again geology has always left me cold. There are just too many inconsistencies and ultimately geology is irrelevant to the doctrine of creation. Before delving into Devonian fossils I think a more recent and extensive area of research would make a lot more sense.

 

[mark kennedy]

I remember one instance of arguing against a creationist that denied some basic principles of Mendelian genetics... and even parts of the bible. He basically was arguing that human races couldn't all have been derived from common ancestry, because "two white people won't have a black child" and so on. And I just type "How do you think Adam and Eve gave rise to all the different races of people then, and what about the mention in the bible itself that different races were descended from different sons of Noah?" Completely ignored that point, and ignores how the genetics of skin color and such work (as it is uncommon for a person to be homozygous for the darker or lighter skin genes and thus entirely possible for two equally light skinned people to have a child notably darker than themselves) and that there are very minor phenotypic differences between the arbitrary "races" applied to humans. Come on sir, the majority of dog breeds came about within the past 200 years, and you are going to tell me that skin color is too dramatic of a difference to have developed through natural processes?

Genetics has determined that humans do no diverge by more then a fraction of a percent of their DNA. Mendelian genetics has all but vanquished race and the Darwinian concept of multiple species and subspecies of humans.

Some people on here really don't know biology.

That's very true and all too often actual biology is irrelevant to what's being discussed. When you can't get basic biological facts like the molecular basis for adaptive evolution agreed to any discussion of Biology and Genetics is destined to drift into the stacks.

Well, there are old earth creationists, though. Most that I know support evolution and view a deity as a guiding hand that either created life and then left it to its own devices, or has guided evolution to promote the eventual development of a sentient species (such as ourselves).

The age of the earth is irrelevant to the doctrine of creation and I can demonstrate that from an exposition of Genesis 1. The origin of life on this planet is another story entirely.

However, I do wish to bring up the fact that the idea that the earth was far older than what was inferred from the bible can be dated back at least as far as 1749, in which a French naturalist suggested that the earth was 75,000 years old. By the time Darwin was beginning to write his theory of evolution, it was commonly accepted that earth was at least multiple millions of years old. Thus, it makes perfect sense that the theory was developed with an old earth in mind.

Greater lengths of time do not give you an established molecular mechanism for the overhaul of highly conserved genes. Brain related genes in particular.

Oh, that's one of my favorites. Most people that go along that path argue that "changes within kinds" can happen, but "one kind cannot change into another kind". Not one person has ever provided valid evidence for a limit on how far the changes can extend.

I don't think anyone could deny that there are clear limits. Functional constraint, the deleterious effects of mutations and just the fidelity of the DNA replication process argue strongly for obvious limits.

Actually, I looked up a timeline of geography. Catastrophism was on the way out when Darwin made his theory, and was by far not the predominant position by the time he published in 1859. "From around 1850 to 1980, most geologists endorsed uniformitarianism ("The present is the key to the past") and gradualism (geologic change occurs slowly over long periods of time) and rejected the idea that cataclysmic events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or floods of vastly greater power than those observed at the present time, played any significant role in the formation of the Earth's surface." Charles Lyell published his work on uniformitarianism in the 1830s. Darwin kept up to date while on his voyage through letters, and amended his work as he wrote it. Don't know why you keep feeling the need to bring up Lamarck after I told you that his ideas aren't incorporated into modern evolutionary theory. Heck, they aren't even a part of Darwin's original theory.

Darwin was reading Lyell while on board the Beagle, he often discusses at length. Gradualism is quite simply the gradual accumulation of traits changing over time. The influence of Lyell on his think cannot be overestimated.

Catastrophism has more to do with geological formations than living organisms. What you mention is one of the most common ways Christians tried to reconcile it with their religion.

Most Christians wouldn't have even been aware of Catastrophism. A straight forward exposition of the time line in the Old Testament then, just as now, was sufficient.

I don't deny influence from predecessors, but the basic principles of Darwin's and Lamarck's work are entirely different.

​

I'm not missing the progression. After further reading, I will make a correction. Darwin DID actually put some aspects of Lamarckian evolution in his original theory, though not many. Mendelian genetics would later disprove Lamarck entirely, and these aspects were then removed from the theory. I always forget that Mendel was 1865-1866, with much of his work almost entirely ignored until around 1900.

Darwinian naturalism became very popular and it was developed philosophically with the help of philosophers like Asa Grey and Hebert Spencer. Mendel had discovered that traits emerged in cyclical patterns something Darwin would have known simply as varieties. Mendel noted a prevailing stability, aka stasis, and that, 'species are fixed within limits beyond which they cannot change.' (Mendel, Experiments in plant-hybridisation 1865). Evolution is defined in Biology by genetics. Darwinism was a part of a much larger philosophy that could be understood better as Naturalism and was developed by guys like Asa Grey, Darwin's philosophical pen pal and Herbert Spencer. Spencer related the concept of natural selection to political and legal theory, thus, the advent of Social Darwinism.

Darwinism is much more then the theory of natural selection, it's also a legal and social theory. In the post WW2 world Soviet Russia and China rejected Mendelian Genetics as being an unhealthy western influence while Darwinism was embraced whole heartily:

Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes's words in their own defense...In Mein Kampf, published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. "There is today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States." HNN article​

I request that you not call the theory of evolution from any time period "Darwinism", for your own sake. It's a habit for some of the most ignorant creationists to call the theory of evolution "the religion of Darwinism", so when people read it, they are more likely not to treat you seriously.

The Theory of Evolution has become synonymous with Darwinian thinking through the Modern Synthesis. I didn't coin the term and it's not something exclusive to Creationist thinking. I will not forego the use of it when discerning between the phenomenon of adaptive evolution and the apriori assumption of universal common descent by exclusively naturalistic means.

I am a biomedical sciences major, with a chemistry minor, so this stuff is my bread and butter. Also, nucleic acids were recognized as the most likely genetic material prior to the structure of DNA (more specifically, in the late 1930s and early 1940s) being known thanks to experiments such as the one by Frederick Griffith in 1928 that showed that separated nucleic acids from an infectious strain of bacteria could transfer the infectious trait to living bacteria that weren't initially infectious. People were trying to figure out the structure of DNA in order to learn more about how it functioned as the source of genetic material.

There is a rich history there, completely unaffected by Darwinism.

I find it weird that Darwin never learned German, given that, at the time, so many scientific papers were printed only in that language. That's why it doesn't shock me that he would have a book in German in his library; he probably owned tons of scientific texts in that language... which he could not read. There was an interesting fantasy book series with an alternative history in which Darwin not only authored his theory of evolution, but also discovered genes. Not only this, but he devised a method of manipulating genes. It makes for a fun read, though I wouldn't call it feasible. It's the Leviathan book series, by Scott Westerfeld.

Darwin could not have even conceived of chromosomes let alone DNA and certainly wouldn't have had any concept of genes. Mendel simply refereed to them as 'elementals' since the substance of the molecular basis was completely unknown. Mendelian Genetics went through a process culminating in the DNA double helix model to be recognized as science, there are two foundation laws of science and a growing body of research involved. Darwinism enjoyed over night success without contributing much in practical terms to real world science. Mendelian Genetics has never been accused of being responsible for inciting racist thinking and to date I have yet to see it so much as criticized for it's social, legal or political implications. You just can't say that about Darwinism.

I think if you dismiss Darwinism, the controversy over evolution goes away, Mendelian Genetics never needed it. When it comes to teaching evolution the only question that merits serious attention is how the central term 'evolution' is defined scientifically. Do we insist on Lamarck's prescription or simply defer to what can be directly observed or demonstrated. Opinions vary but Darwinian thinking transcends the boundaries of natural science into political, social and legal agendas.

 

[mark kennedy]

Now, getting back to the key transitional that occupies a million years where we should be seeing our ancestors:

The curvature of the finger and toe bones (phalanges) approaches that of modern-day apes
The presence of a wrist-locking mechanism, though, might suggest they engaged in knuckle-walking.
The shoulder joint is also oriented much more cranially (i.e. towards the skull) than that in modern humans, but similar to that in the present-day apes.

P. boisei is usually thought to descend from earlier P. aethiopicus (who inhabited the same geographic area just a few hundred thousand years before) and lived alongside several other species of early humans during its 1.1 million year existence. P. boisei belongs to just one of the many side branches of human evolution, which most scientists agree includes all Paranthropus species and did not lead to H. sapiens. (Paranthropus boisei, Smithsonian)
​

Two species of gorillas live in eastern and western Africa, as well as two species of chimpanzees. Four species of orangutans live in, ’Indonesia and Malaysia, are currently found in only the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra’, (Orangutan, Wikipedia). Since there is no question among evolutionists that they all have a common ancestor. If that original ancestor got of the Ark in modern Eastern Turkey the migration pattern suggests you would find their descendants from that area radiating into Africa and Asia which is exactly what we see.

Their ancestor had a cranial capacity much closer to modern apes, thus, thus southern apes:

A. afarensis also has a relatively small brain size, about 380–430 cm3 (Australopithecus afarensis, Wikipedia)
​

It makes no sense that apes would progress from a chimpanzee/gorilla over a million years and then 2 million years ago the human ancestors have their cranial capacity nearly triple in size.

There is a million years between the A. Afarensis, A. Africanus and the emergence of the Oldovia fossils. In the middle are the Paranthropus (from Greek παρα, para "beside"; άνθρωπος, ánthropos "human"), that isn't consider one of our ancestors and they have a distinctive gorilla-like sagittal cranial crests.

Skull of Paranthropus boisei

A. Afarensis with a cranial capacity of ~430cc lived about 3.5 mya.
A. Africanus with a cranial capacity of ~480cc lived 3.3-2.5 mya.
P. aethiopicus with a cranial capacity of 410cc lived about 2.5 mya.
P. boisei with a cranial capacity of 490-530cc lived between 2.3-1.2 mya.
OH 5 'Zinj" with a cranial capacity of 530cc lived 1.8 mya.
KNM ER 406 with a cranial capacity of 510cc lived 1.7 million years ago.

There's your gap and fossils that don't belong there. The Paranthropus are transitional enough, but they are a transitional between chimpanzee and gorilla not ape and human.

I would have settled on a definition of evolution but apparently that isn't going to happen. I would have liked a discussion of the genetic basis for the three fold expansion of the human brain from that of apes but that's well out of reach at this point. So back to the fossils.

 

[Speedwell]

Genetics has determined that humans do no diverge by more then a fraction of a percent of their DNA. Mendelian genetics has all but vanquished race and the Darwinian concept of multiple species and subspecies of humans.



That's very true and all too often actual biology is irrelevant to what's being discussed. When you can't get basic biological facts like the molecular basis for adaptive evolution agreed to any discussion of Biology and Genetics is destined to drift into the stacks.



The age of the earth is irrelevant to the doctrine of creation and I can demonstrate that from an exposition of Genesis 1. The origin of life on this planet is another story entirely.



Greater lengths of time do not give you an established molecular mechanism for the overhaul of highly conserved genes. Brain related genes in particular.




I don't think anyone could deny that there are clear limits. Functional constraint, the deleterious effects of mutations and just the fidelity of the DNA replication process argue strongly for obvious limits.



Darwin was reading Lyell while on board the Beagle, he often discusses at length. Gradualism is quite simply the gradual accumulation of traits changing over time. The influence of Lyell on his think cannot be overestimated.




Most Christians wouldn't have even been aware of Catastrophism. A straight forward exposition of the time line in the Old Testament then, just as now, was sufficient.



Darwinian naturalism became very popular and it was developed philosophically with the help of philosophers like Asa Grey and Hebert Spencer. Mendel had discovered that traits emerged in cyclical patterns something Darwin would have known simply as varieties. Mendel noted a prevailing stability, aka stasis, and that, 'species are fixed within limits beyond which they cannot change.' (Mendel, Experiments in plant-hybridisation 1865). Evolution is defined in Biology by genetics. Darwinism was a part of a much larger philosophy that could be understood better as Naturalism and was developed by guys like Asa Grey, Darwin's philosophical pen pal and Herbert Spencer. Spencer related the concept of natural selection to political and legal theory, thus, the advent of Social Darwinism.

Darwinism is much more then the theory of natural selection, it's also a legal and social theory. In the post WW2 world Soviet Russia and China rejected Mendelian Genetics as being an unhealthy western influence while Darwinism was embraced whole heartily:

Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes's words in their own defense...In Mein Kampf, published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. "There is today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States." HNN article​

The Theory of Evolution has become synonymous with Darwinian thinking through the Modern Synthesis. I didn't coin the term and it's not something exclusive to Creationist thinking. I will not forego the use of it when discerning between the phenomenon of adaptive evolution and the apriori assumption of universal common descent by exclusively naturalistic means.



There is a rich history there, completely unaffected by Darwinism.



Darwin could not have even conceived of chromosomes let alone DNA and certainly wouldn't have had any concept of genes. Mendel simply refereed to them as 'elementals' since the substance of the molecular basis was completely unknown. Mendelian Genetics went through a process culminating in the DNA double helix model to be recognized as science, there are two foundation laws of science and a growing body of research involved. Darwinism enjoyed over night success without contributing much in practical terms to real world science. Mendelian Genetics has never been accused of being responsible for inciting racist thinking and to date I have yet to see it so much as criticized for it's social, legal or political implications. You just can't say that about Darwinism.

I think if you dismiss Darwinism, the controversy over evolution goes away, Mendelian Genetics never needed it. When it comes to teaching evolution the only question that merits serious attention is how the central term 'evolution' is defined scientifically. Do we insist on Lamarck's prescription or simply defer to what can be directly observed or demonstrated. Opinions vary but Darwinian thinking transcends the boundaries of natural science into political, social and legal agendas.

Am I now right in thinking that you are arguing if favor of adaptive evolution from something like the "biblical kinds?" Is that why you reject universal common descent?

Previously I had the impression that you rejected universal common descent because it implied the emergence of life by "entirely naturalistic means" which you erroneously thought would deny God's creation of life. Was that a mistaken impression on my part?

 

[pitabread]

Creationists, when you think about it, are actually radical evolutionists. The inhabitants of that boat emerge as the first parents of all birds, reptiles and mammals including humans, 4000 years ago. This is an accelerated evolution that would have sacred Charles Darwin to death.

It's nice to see a creationist actually admit this. The amount of evolutionary change that would have to happen over only ~4000 years to get to the diversity we see today is mind-blowing and far, far exceeds any known natural rates of evolution. In fact, the rates of mutation required would be so high that arguably life would probably go extinct in short order.

Of course creationists can always solve this via *insert miracle here*, but that kinda defeats the whole point.

 

[pitabread]

Which would presuppose there is no such thing as miraculous events like creation.

It's not that it presupposes that there is no such thing as miraculous events. It's that science is not equipped to answer those scenarios in the first place. After all, miracles are inherently unbounded by the laws of the universe. How can science which rests on the premise of working with the laws of universe deal with things inherently outside of it?

It's the wrong tool for the job.

The truth is that there is very little science in these discussions, it's largely matters of fact and opinion related to natural history. History does not have the same limitation that natural science does, an event in history is just an event in history.

If you're suggesting we cannot use scientific methods towards investigating natural history, then that's where I flat out disagree. The only presumption we need to make is that the universe is not inherently deceptive and that processes we observe today functioned the same in the past.

Granted, creationists kind of throw all that out by presuming miraculous events such as the creation of fully-formed species. So I'd agree that creationists appear to have little use for science in investigating the past.

First you assume exclusively naturalistic causes because that all science can consider then pass off your conclusion as if it were not a presupposed fact.

It is a conclusion based on examination of the sum of the evidence.

Look at from the other way around. If a creator wanted to miracle in a bunch of fully-formed species, they could do so without being constrained by limitations of heredity. So when we examine genomes of species, we could potentially expect to find loads of genetic chimeras. Heck, this doesn't even have to be something miraculous since humans can do the same thing via genetic engineering.

Yet, we don't find anything like that in nature. What we find is that genomes of organisms only reinforce the nested hierarchy of common descent. When you combine this with findings in paleontology, observation of evolutionary processes, biogeography, developmental biology and morphological comparisons, the only logical conclusion is that life appears to have evolved and shares common ancestry.

The only way to presume otherwise at this point is to throw out the last 100+ years of finding in biological science.

I insist on something I know to be an irrefutable fact, well sourced and completely comprehensive.

Which is what exactly?

 

[pitabread]

Am I now right in thinking that you are arguing if favor of adaptive evolution from something like the "biblical kinds?" Is that why you reject universal common descent?

Previously I had the impression that you rejected universal common descent because it implied the emergence of life by "entirely naturalistic means" which you erroneously thought would deny God's creation of life. Was that a mistaken impression on my part?

I get the impression mark is making the classic microevolution/macroevolution divide many creationists do, just without actually calling it that.

 

[mark kennedy]

It's not that it presupposes that there is no such thing as miraculous events. It's that science is not equipped to answer those scenarios in the first place. After all, miracles are inherently unbounded by the laws of the universe. How can science which rests on the premise of working with the laws of universe deal with things inherently outside of it?

It's the wrong tool for the job.

Now that's the whole thing, science only observes natural phenomenon so it can't investigate creation so life must have originated by naturalistic law because that's all science looks at. That's not science that's circular logic. Evolution starts at creation and not only creation but much of history, certainly redemptive history is beyond the purview of the empirical sciences. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, it's just one of the limitations of natural science.

If you're suggesting we cannot use scientific methods towards investigating natural history, then that's where I flat out disagree. The only presumption we need to make is that the universe is not inherently deceptive and that processes we observe today functioned the same in the past.

You don't get to equivocate natural science and natural history with naturalistic assumptions.

Granted, creationists kind of throw all that out by presuming miraculous events such as the creation of fully-formed species. So I'd agree that creationists appear to have little use for science in investigating the past.

Creationists rarely explore scientific methodologies, most Christians accept the doctrine of creation the same way they accept the reliability of the New Testament historical texts. They need neither secular permission or approval and you might want to drop be pretense of being overtly scientific because there has been none of that in this thread.

It is a conclusion based on examination of the sum of the evidence.

No, actually it's not, its an a priori assumption of universal common ancestry that never considers the inverse logic. It's not a conclusion, it's the only option Darwinians will conclude, therefore a foregone conclusion.

Look at from the other way around. If a creator wanted to miracle in a bunch of fully-formed species, they could do so without being constrained by limitations of heredity. So when we examine genomes of species, we could potentially expect to find loads of genetic chimeras. Heck, this doesn't even have to be something miraculous since humans can do the same thing via genetic engineering.

What God could do isn't in question, what we know God did do based on special revelation is what's at issue with the doctrine of creation. The laws of inheritance and the law of biogenesis are scientific principles, universal in their scope. Darwinism is something else entirely, divorced from the restrictive confines of empirical testing.

Yet, we don't find anything like that in nature. What we find is that genomes of organisms only reinforce the nested hierarchy of common descent. When you combine this with findings in paleontology, observation of evolutionary processes, biogeography, developmental biology and morphological comparisons, the only logical conclusion is that life appears to have evolved and shares common ancestry.

What we are finding in the comparison of chimpanzee genomes and human genomes is that over a hundred million bases pairs of divergence. In addition one codon substitution per protein coding gene on average in each of the respective genomes. Massive overhauls of highly conserved brain related genes including the de novo emergence of no less the 60 brain related genes with no explanation.

My guess is you have read little or nothing on the subject, just assume it's confirming your naturalistic assumptions, typical.

The only way to presume otherwise at this point is to throw out the last 100+ years of finding in biological science.

Through it out? Virtually my entire argument is based on matters of fact or opinion from the scientific literature. It's rare to find an evolutionist who even reads it.

Which is what exactly?

That depends on the context of what's being discussed. Detailed expositions of the scientific literature has always sufficed.

 

[mark kennedy]

I get the impression mark is making the classic microevolution/macroevolution divide many creationists do, just without actually calling it that.

I've long maintained that Creationism is a radical evolutionary theory. Fundamentally different then the naturalistic assumptions of Darwinism but requiring adaptive radiation spanning the globe from Ararat. The biggest difference between Darwinism is clearly the timeline, gradualism literally has all the time in the world, the difference is, that Creationism can rely solely on naturalistic processes, normative Mendelian Genetics and a firm affirmation of the law of biogenesis.

It's nice to see a creationist actually admit this. The amount of evolutionary change that would have to happen over only ~4000 years to get to the diversity we see today is mind-blowing and far, far exceeds any known natural rates of evolution. In fact, the rates of mutation required would be so high that arguably life would probably go extinct in short order.

Of course creationists can always solve this via *insert miracle here*, but that kinda defeats the whole point.

First of all adaptive evolution doesn't rely on mutations:

In the living cell, DNA undergoes frequent chemical change, especially when it is being replicated (in S phase of the eukaryotic cell cycle). Most of these changes are quickly repaired. Those that are not result in a mutation. Thus, mutation is a failure of DNA repair. (Mutations)
​

Mutations are the worst explanation possible for evolution. What you would start with is nearly pristine genomes that haven't accumulated mutations yielding a far larger gene pool, thus, greater diversity and rapid adaptive radiation. Once adaptive traits become fixed bottlenecks and the inevitable mutations make such adaptive radiation much more limited.

 

[pitabread]

Now that's the whole thing, science only observes natural phenomenon so it can't investigate creation so life must have originated by naturalistic law because that's all science looks at. That's not science that's circular logic.

This doesn't mean that science will automatically conclude evolution, though. For example, if life on Earth was genetically engineered instead of evolved then scientific conclusions could be made to that effect. It just wouldn't be able to say anything about its origin with respect to miraculous creation.

You don't get to equivocate natural science and natural history with naturalistic assumptions.

Not seeing the equivocation here. All I'm saying is that science can be used to investigated natural history. If you choose to believe that natural history is not if fact natural then you're free to believe whatever you want. But science can't make any statements about that one way or the other.

Creationists rarely explore scientific methodologies, most Christians accept the doctrine of creation the same way they accept the reliability of the New Testament historical texts. They need neither secular permission or approval and you might want to drop be pretense of being overtly scientific because there has been none of that in this thread.

Creationists can believe whatever they want. Just don't expect to be taken seriously and definitely don't expect to challenge mainstream scientific thinking.

No, actually it's not, its an a priori assumption of universal common ancestry that never considers the inverse logic. It's not a conclusion, it's the only option Darwinians will conclude, therefore a foregone conclusion.

No, it's definitely a conclusion. Again, genetically engineered species wouldn't necessarily have to fall into a nested hierarchy bound by heredity. Yet that's what we see in nature. The only logical conclusion life evolved via common descent. Or life was created to look like it evolved via common descent.

Either way, life still looks like it evolved via common descent.

What God could do isn't in question, what we know God did do based on special revelation is what's at issue with the doctrine of creation. The laws of inheritance and the law of biogenesis are scientific principles, universal in their scope. Darwinism is something else entirely, divorced from the restrictive confines of empirical testing.

I think you're setting up "Darwinism" as a giant strawman.

What we are finding in the comparison of chimpanzee genomes and human genomes is that over a hundred million bases pairs of divergence. In addition one codon substitution per protein coding gene on average in each of the respective genomes. Massive overhauls of highly conserved brain related genes including the de novo emergence of no less the 60 brain related genes with no explanation.

Not having an answer from a scientific POV is not the same thing as there being no answer. You appear to have adopted a "God of the gaps" approach where arguments from incredulity give you an opportunity to insert miracles as needed.

Good luck with that.

My guess is you have read little or nothing on the subject, just assume it's confirming your naturalistic assumptions, typical.

Your guess is completely and utterly incorrect. I've studied human genetic evolution at the University level. Have you?

Through it out? Virtually my entire argument is based on matters of fact or opinion from the scientific literature. It's rare to find an evolutionist who even reads it.

Curious. How do you explain the overwhelming conclusion of common ancestry in the biological sciences then? How is it that you (a non-scientist) have somehow stumbled onto something that the rest of the scientific world is so blind to?

 

[pitabread]

What you would start with is nearly pristine genomes

What are these "nearly pristine genomes" of which you speak?