Why are fruitflys the same after a quadrillion generations?
- Thread starter Josephus
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Hi Npet!
The evidence of our eyes is for Design? Now that's funny. Ever look at your own body? Have you noticed that you have the limbs and backbone of a four-legged animal? That there is not a single organ on you that is not found on a chimp? That your eye is a masterpiece of bad design? We swallow and breathe through the same tube (choking hazard)....then there are the parasites of humans, malaria, tapeworms, botflies, that make life hell for us, and the many diseases that the Designer must have designed specifically to kill children because they don't affect adults very seriously, and of course, epidemic diseases like AIDS and bubonic plague, designed to kill wholesale.....and finally, the earth itself, made for humakind, but 75% of its surface useless to people. Great Designer, whoever it was.
By all means, let's look at the brilliant designs in nature. Let's look at dolphins and whales, sea creatures that must breathe air. Why not give them gills? (duh?) Why do dolphin flippers have the same five fingered-design as other mammals? Wouldn't it have been more efficient to forego all the vestigial features? Or course, vestigial features are found in thousands of animals.....brilliantly designed. Why do flightless birds have hollow bones and vestigial wings? Why do blind cave animals even have eyes? Imagine if your computer came equipped with vaccum tubes and transistors, because that's what computer ancestors had.....
It's easy to see why blind cave animals might have eyes if they evolved from creatures that had eyes. But why would anyone design eyes that would never be used? Why would anyone design eels that had to swim into the middle of the Atlantic to breed, salmon that need to swim up and down rivers to spawn, birds that need to migrate because they can't survive winter in their home ground, desert animals that must have water to live, fish with lungs...then there are the really big questions. Why are there carnivores? And if the Designer wanted carnivores, why not just Design it so one animal in the herd lies down and volunteers itself to be the meal, to cut out all the useless and inefficient bloodshed? Why are there mating competitions? Why is there even sexual reproduction? Why are there mutations? Why are life forms unstable and changing over time? If Designs were intentional, why are 99% of the species ever known now extinct? I could multiply thousands of these examples, inefficient designs, every one. Bad. Easy to explain under evolution, incredible that anyone would design them.
BTW, if you are going to quote evolutionists, you should probably include the context. Simply grabbing a few sentences out of the middle of a discussion won't cut it. There's nothing more contemptible than quote mining. Dawkins is quite clear on what the gaps in the fossil record mean, and why they are not a threat to evolution. If you go on past the quote you gave, you'll soon get into a discussion on soft-bodied animals and fossilization, that explains why fossils are sparse from that era.
Vorkosigan
The evidence of our eyes is for Design? Now that's funny. Ever look at your own body? Have you noticed that you have the limbs and backbone of a four-legged animal? That there is not a single organ on you that is not found on a chimp? That your eye is a masterpiece of bad design? We swallow and breathe through the same tube (choking hazard)....then there are the parasites of humans, malaria, tapeworms, botflies, that make life hell for us, and the many diseases that the Designer must have designed specifically to kill children because they don't affect adults very seriously, and of course, epidemic diseases like AIDS and bubonic plague, designed to kill wholesale.....and finally, the earth itself, made for humakind, but 75% of its surface useless to people. Great Designer, whoever it was.
By all means, let's look at the brilliant designs in nature. Let's look at dolphins and whales, sea creatures that must breathe air. Why not give them gills? (duh?) Why do dolphin flippers have the same five fingered-design as other mammals? Wouldn't it have been more efficient to forego all the vestigial features? Or course, vestigial features are found in thousands of animals.....brilliantly designed. Why do flightless birds have hollow bones and vestigial wings? Why do blind cave animals even have eyes? Imagine if your computer came equipped with vaccum tubes and transistors, because that's what computer ancestors had.....
It's easy to see why blind cave animals might have eyes if they evolved from creatures that had eyes. But why would anyone design eyes that would never be used? Why would anyone design eels that had to swim into the middle of the Atlantic to breed, salmon that need to swim up and down rivers to spawn, birds that need to migrate because they can't survive winter in their home ground, desert animals that must have water to live, fish with lungs...then there are the really big questions. Why are there carnivores? And if the Designer wanted carnivores, why not just Design it so one animal in the herd lies down and volunteers itself to be the meal, to cut out all the useless and inefficient bloodshed? Why are there mating competitions? Why is there even sexual reproduction? Why are there mutations? Why are life forms unstable and changing over time? If Designs were intentional, why are 99% of the species ever known now extinct? I could multiply thousands of these examples, inefficient designs, every one. Bad. Easy to explain under evolution, incredible that anyone would design them.
BTW, if you are going to quote evolutionists, you should probably include the context. Simply grabbing a few sentences out of the middle of a discussion won't cut it. There's nothing more contemptible than quote mining. Dawkins is quite clear on what the gaps in the fossil record mean, and why they are not a threat to evolution. If you go on past the quote you gave, you'll soon get into a discussion on soft-bodied animals and fossilization, that explains why fossils are sparse from that era.
Vorkosigan
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Only one of us knows what you are talking about, though. What is it? Mosquito/bunyip is a "humorous" example. Give us a real example.
You are flat wrong in saying that nobody knows what it encompasses. It encompasses common descent of all living things by way of descent with modification and selective pressure from the environment. And of course, it is not based on imaginary data. It is based on data that doesn't satisfy Nick Petreley - someone who has not even studied the data.
We only disagree on the first. The reason I accept the "part" of evolution that says men and chimps have common ancestr is that it is confirmed by the evidence, and because common ancestry is well supported for many other organisms by even greater evidence. In other words, even if we didn't have the specific evidence available that applied to the relationship between humans and chimps, we could still conclude that they had a common ancestor because all of the evidence from biology strongly supports the idea that all life has a common ancestor.
Some evidence is universal, and applies to the human chimp relationship as well as to all other relationships. Let us call it the basics:
1) Descent with modification occurs
2) Selective pressures from the environment reduce or eliminate features that are detrimental to the reproduction of an organism in its native environment.
3) Speciation events preserve small directional changes in popluations of organisms that originally were of the same species and therefore shared common ancestors.
Then, we look at the evidence specific to the human/chimp relationship:
1) around 15 million years ago, there were no humans or chimps, but there was Proconsul Africanus:
It had features of both monkeys and apes. For about 10 million years there is a gap: no significant fossil primates are found in this area. We do not necessarily conclude that the new ape line died out at this point only to be independently re-established 10 million years later.
2) 4.4 million years ago, there were no humans, but there was Australopithecus ramidus, a primate with some human-like teeth, and some chimp-like teeth.
3) 3.9 million years ago, there were still no modern humans, but there were primitive chimps, and there was Australopithecus afarensis:
This one walked upright and had human-like teeth.
4) 2.5 million years ago, there were still no modern humans, but there were still primitive chimps, and there was Homo habilis, halfway between A. afarensis and the next one:
5) Homo erectus
(All Skulls are from Tony's Anthropology Page)
6.) Now, we have modern humans and modern chimps. All of these transitions are just a fraction of the total fossil evidence on the human/chimp relationship.
7.) Humans have a bony structure at the base of our spine that is structurally identical to the bony structure at the the base of a chimpanzee spine, leading to its tail. This is a very poor adaptation for humans. The muscles that connect to the coccyx could just as easily connect to it if it did not form the beginning of a tail, extruding from the base of the spine in a way that makes it a necessary target for frequent surgical removal of its tip-end.
(Not only this, but humans sometimes grow tails. You will hear creationists shout that those are not true tails, but merely unfortunate lesions. It is true that some "tails" are "pseudo-tails" of this nature. However, there are also many cases in the medical literature of infants being born with true primate tails. Evolution explains why we have the latent genes for growing tails. Creation does not. Why did God give us those genes?)
- from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html
8.) Genetic "similarities". Evolution strongly predicts genetic similarities between humans and chimps. Similar design and re-usable code only explains part of the similarities. It does not explain similarities in the pseudogenes and junk-DNA that do not code for a protein or have any regulatory function. Viral insertions of DNA that pre-date the split between chimps and humans survive identically in both. If humans had no common ancestor with chimps or other organisms, why would we expect to find patterns of similarity? Why wouldn't the non-coding and non-regulatory bits of the human genome be more similar to yeast than chimps? We only know of one way to get DNA and that is by biological descent.
Look at the DNA evidence this way: I suspect my wife of being unfaithful when she unexpectedly becomes pregnant. I divorce her and refuse to pay child support. She orders DNA tests to prove paternity. They come out positive: the child has 50 % of my DNA and 50% of his mothers. I go to court and argue that this is not explained by biological descent from me, but rather by "reusable code on the part of the designer". Will I be paying child support?
The evidence above is the TIP OF THE ICEBERG. Call it speculation if you wish, but I am going to have to pay child support on account of it.
Good, since you've read the Blind Watchmaker, you know exactly what the so-called "Cambrian explosion" is, and how it is accounted for. I wish you had quoted more of it so that others reading here could see what you were talking about.
Or maybe you didn't read it, and just found that snippet from the book on a creationist website? By the way, just for the record: are human or chimp fossils found in the "Cambrian Explosion"? Is there a single modern organism found there? What, exactly, was found there? Any fish? Any reptiles? Mammals? I think if you read up on the Cambrian explosion, you will learn a lot more about it. You may also be interested in looking at the (relatively few) fossil organisms found in pre-Cambrian strata. Also, how long did the Cambrian Explosion last?
Why should the fossil record introduce doubt? Because it isn't complete? But everyone knows that soft-bodied animals do not fossil well, and that fossilization is a rare event anyway.
Those are mighty strong words - at least out of context. Since out-of-context quotes do not constitute evidence, especially when they do not come from biologists I will not be in a hurry to check out the book and find out what Eldredge was really saying. It sounds like he is talking about a lack of transitional series preserved so completely that one can be sure that the transitional event was localized to just the specimens found. That isn't very likely to be found, and it isn't necessary to the theory of evolution.
You just quoted an evolutionary biologist and a paleontologist who talked about the incompleteness of the fossil record. You didn't show how, apart from evolution, the universally parallel, trends of the fossil record from primitive to modern organisms can be explained.
No, you quoted a paleontologist that says the fossil record doesn't support the gradualistic model as well as it does the punctuated equilibrium model. If he said that the fossil record falsified evoution, he would be either a nobel-prize winner (for showing how) or would be a "creationist" paleontologist.
You haven't read the Blind Watchmaker, have you? What, pray tell, did Richard Dawkins mean by apparent design when he proposed the idea of the blind watchmaker? I really want to know what kind of "apparent design" you think most notable biologists find in living things. When I ask what you mean by "apparent design" I am not asking you to tell me that it is the same thing as what someone else meant by it: I don't know what they meant by it either. I want to know what you are talking about: what is "apparent design" to you?
Also, you forgot to answer these two questions from my last post. Please answer:
Does apparent design equate to actual design? Does apparent design override loads of compelling evidence for evolution by descent with modification and natural selection?
What you found could just as easily be explained as what you'd predict of a Creator who has intelligence. Why WOULDN'T a Creator use the same DNA codes over and over again as deemed appropriate? Think "reusable code." Maybe programmers ought to take a lesson from the Creator.
When the Creator re-used vertebrate genetic code while making primates, why did He insert a bug into the gene that is responsible for manufacturing vitamin C? We primates cannot live without vitamin C, so now we must be sure to include it in our diets. Why do ALL of the primates have this genetic defect (and why is it at the same genetic locus in all primates), when all other mammals have a working copy of the gene, and can produce their own vitamin C? Why isn't there an amphibian or a reptile or a non-primate mammal who has this defect? Common descent of primates from a mammalian species that contained this defect explains it perfectly. Reusable code doesn't. You would think the Programmer would have found the bug in His "less important" primates and been sure to correct it in the owns he programmed "in His own image."
In short, evolutionists found what the theory predicted they would find: in spades. Not a big suprise since evolution was already pretty confirmed beyond reasonable doubt before DNA evidence was even available.
He was very specific. I believe it was in another thread (DNA from Nothing? if I am not mistaken). He meant reproductive isolation.
The darwinian theory of evolution requires speciation. It had not been observed when the theory was first put forth. It has now. Creationism does not predict speciation, but the opposite: complete stasis of reproducing kinds.
Call it speculation if you want, but speciation is 7/10 of common descent, and it has been observed. Humans and chimps are separated only by two or three speciation events.
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NP, this seems to be your real sticking point. You want to deny scientists any ability to make logical inferences from the data. After all, the IMAGINED process of evolution is based on many REAL facts. In the case of transitional species, these facts include:
- fossils of organisms with gradually changing morphology
- chronological ordering of said fossils in a way that matches the morphological changes
- the observed operation of descent with modification in nature today
- concordance between observed rates of change in the fossil record and both observed and theoretical rates of change based on modern genetic analysis
Given the above REAL FACTS, why is it invalid for scientists to IMAGINE that evolutionary processes were responsible for them?
Do you also take issue with other branches of science? After all, couldn't you also make the following claim:
What is the fundamental difference between this objection to atomic physics and your objection to evolution?
TTFN,
LFOD
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Here's a partial list of bad designs, npet.
The non-functioning eyes of cave-dwelling creatures which live in total darkness: hundreds of species, from fish (eg Astyanax mexicanus) to insects (eg the Hawaiian cave planthopper Oliarus polyphemus), spiders (eg Neoleptoneta myopica), salamanders (eg Typhlomolge rathbuni) and crayfish (eg Cambarus setosus) ...
... and of burrowing animals, such as marsupial moles (order Notoryctemorphia) (no lens or pupil, reduced optic nerve), amphisbaenians and naked mole rats (Heterocephalus glaber).
Whilst on eyes ... is it not strange that the creator, having given the nautilus an otherwise very good pinhole camera eye, chose not to give it a lens?
The human post-auricular muscle, which in other mammals moves the ears to point towards sounds. The ability of some people to wiggle their ears being one of God¡¦s lesser-appreciated gifts to us, of course.
Haemoglobin, which has more affinity for carbon monoxide than for oxygen.
The aquatic embryos of land salamanders, which live on the land from hatching ...
... and aquatic creatures such as sea turtles, which have come onto land to lay their eggs.
The lungs of snakes, such as blindsnakes and colubroids ¡V one normal, one atrophied. Why waste material with the small one? More surface area could be available if the space the atrophied one¡¦s non-gaseous-exchange tubing takes up were given over to a larger volumed single main lung ¡V and this is what is found in other snakes.
The pelvis remnants of pythons...
... and the pelvis and hind limb bone remnants of whales. Even if (as is sometimes claimed) they do have a function, why are the bones in question bits of pelvis and limb?
Apes and humans requiring vitamin C in their diets. Not only can most animals synthesise their own; the great apes do all have the gene for this ¡V but it is broken. And it is rendered non-functional by the same mutation in all the great apes. How kind of God to give people without adequate diets scurvy.
The famous thumb of the giant panda. Why is its 'thumb' made of an altered wristbone (the radial sesamoid) rather than the normal digit? If six 'fingers' are better than five for grasping, why do only pandas have this feature?
The phenomenal waste of life in nature, everywhere you look. Oak trees produce thousands of acorns, and fish thousands of eggs, in the hope that a few will survive; tons of pollen are cast into the air (cf Genesis 38:9-10 ¡V wasting your gametes was a serious enough sin (though almost everything was in Yahweh¡¦s eyes in those days) for Onan to be killed in punishment, yet the Good Lord is supposed to have created things which by their nature spill so much seed on the ground?); approximately a third of human pregnancies miscarry in the first trimester; male elephant seals battle so furiously for females that great numbers of them die of bloody wounds; when a male lion takes over a pride, it will usually kill the cubs of the previous top male; the boom and (catastrophic for the individuals) bust of lemming populations...
Marsupial infants being born from the usual opening and having to wriggle arduously through their mother¡¦s fur to reach the pouch and nourishment. Why not be born either more fully developed (like placental mammals) or even straight into the pouch? And why is such a set-up present in such diverse creatures as kangaroos, koalas and thylacines ¡V and why are (were) they found only in Australasia?
The foetal teeth of cows, anteaters and baleen whales, which are made, only to be reabsorbed.
The tails and gill bars of human embryos.
The tails of peacocks, which are so long that the birds (which are a favourite food of tigers) can barely fly ¡V just so they can attract females and ensure the survival of the kind?
The tails of guinea pigs, which are present but which are so short (reduced?) they do not extend outside the body.
The diet of ruminants is composed largely of cellulose, so why do they have to rely on gut bacteria and protozoa in order to digest it? Enzymes are readily apparent in animals to break down other foodstuffs. A good designer would surely have enabled them to break cellulose down for themselves ¡V after all, ¡¥mere¡¦ bacteria can do it!
In a similar vein, the Chinese grass carp, Ctenopharyngodon idella, grazes on aquatic plants and, during floods, on land vegetation. It has specialised pharyngeal teeth that enable it to break up leaves, and so access the cell contents. So the creator clearly intended it to be able to eat these plants. Yet like most vertebrates, the cellulose itself and unopened cells pass undigested through the gut. If only it had the appropriate gut bacteria ... (Did God just forget the grass carp when he was giving out the bacteria? Well I suppose there are a lot of species, so he can¡¦t be expected to remember everything.)
The mammalian tidal respiratory system, which is less efficient than the avian through-flow one.
The non-functional and reduced poison spur on the hind legs of echidnas (functional in the platypus).
Flatworms of the species Convoluta roscoffensis are green because their translucent tissues are packed with Platymonas algae. The algae live, grow and die inside the bodies of the worms. Their photosynthetic products are used as food by the worms, and the algae recycle the worms¡¦ uric acid waste as food for themselves. The worms¡¦ mouths are superfluous and do not function after the larvae hatch: worm plus algae plus sunlight is a self-contained unit. For what divine-design purpose do the flatworms have mouths, as other flatworms have? And just how useful would it be in times of hardship if all animals could make their own food? Some chlorophyll (or strategically placed algae!) would do it. But only plants have it.
Cell organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts have their own DNA, which is inherited separately from the rest of organisms¡¦ genetic material. Why should the code for small elements within each eukaryotic cell be inherited separately and differently from that which forms the rest of the organism in all its intricacy ¡V the leaves, bone, teeth, eyes, antennae or brains? An odd design ¡V and the numerous structural and biochemical resemblances between these organelles and bacteria are mere coincidences of course. See: http://www.nature.com/genomics/papers/r_prowazekii.html)
The non-functional pistils (female parts) in male flowers. Since most flowers have both sexes of reproductive organs (stamens and pistils), the pistil of a flower with only stamens that are functional is vestigial ¡V or a waste of materials.
Flowers on plants such as dandelions, which are self-pollinating, and so do not need to attract pollinating insects.
The twisted skulls of bony flat fish, order Pleuronectiformes ¡V around 600 species including halibut, plaice, sole and turbot. If you are a fish and want to hug the contours of the sea bed, there are two ways your body can be flattened. The most obvious is front to back, laying on your tummy, as rays and some sharks are. Sharks are generally already slightly flattened dorso-ventrally. Most bony fish, however, tend to be flattened in a vertical direction (higher than they are wide). No surprise to an evolutionist, then, that those bony flatfish that do swim at the bottom are flattened sideways, and lay on their side. The problem with this is that one eye would always be pointing at the sea bed. They solve this by the skull contorting during development so that both eyes point up. You will notice though that their mouths are still sideways on. They are cartoon stereotypes of what a mutant should look like. How is this ¡¥intelligent design¡¦, rather than design constrained by history, by the materials it started with?
The human appendix. I¡¦ll leave aside the idea that it¡¦s vestigial, and simply wonder why, if it¡¦s part of an intelligent design, it has no known function ¡V other than to be a pocket for bacteria to get trapped in? It is common (7% of the US population, for instance) for it to become distended and blocked, so that the bacteria can invade the wall, leading, untreated (as it would have been for nearly all of our past), to potentially lethal perforation.
The nerve ¡¥wiring¡¦ of the mammalian eye, where the photoreceptor cells are in backwards, so the ¡¥cables¡¦ are in the way of the incoming light, and have to exit the retina at the correctly-named blind spot (an excellent design feature in an eye). Yet God got it the ¡¥right¡¦ way round in that pinnacle of His purpose, the squid?! ...
... of the African locust¡¦s (Locusta migratoria) wings, where the nerve cells that connect to the wings originate in the abdomen, even though the wings are on the thorax. Nerve signals from the brain have to travel down the ventral nerve cord past their target, then backtrack through the insect to where they are needed ...
... and of the mammalian larynx. The recurrent laryngeal nerve, rather than taking a direct route from the spine, instead passes down the neck, round the posterior side of the aorta, then back up again to the larynx. Which in the case of the giraffe, implies a creator so set on the mammalian Blauplan that an extra 10 to 15 feet of nerve is needed.
Talking of larynxes, there¡¦s the opening of the human larynx (leading to the trachea) being from the pharynx, so that swallowing impedes breathing (and vice versa). Not only that, but with the wind-pipe coming from off the food-pipe, there is a constant risk of choking. Before the Heimlich manoeuvre was invented, choking was one of the leading causes of accidental death; even so, thousands still die worldwide each year from inhaling their food. Children are more vulnerable because their airways are narrower. Great design.
The plumbing of the urethra ¡V a soft tube through the prostate, an organ prone to infection and subsequent swelling?!
The human spine. Bipedal vertebrates usually carry much of the spine roughly horizontal, and balance it with a tail. Equally, a string of cotton reels with spongy cushions between is a good cantilever bridge type design for flexible quadrupedal running, but a lousy thing to stand on its end and withstand the compression strains of vertical bipedalism. (And why thread so important a feature as the spinal cord through the middle of this, where disc damage can cause anything from pain to paralysis?) Compression strains are best absorbed by pillars. If you want the pillars to be flexible, you put joints in them. In biology, we have examples called ¡¥legs¡¦. The spine¡¦s divine design thus results in back pain which causes over 80 million annual days off work in the UK alone, 80% of people being affected by back pain at some point in their lives, backache during pregnancy (extra weight pulling in an out-and-down direction it can¡¦t happily support), and why you find, if you¡¦ve ever slipped a disc, that about the only comfortable position is on all fours.
The human knee. Ask any long-distance runner.
The human coccyx. When the bones of the coccyx are larger and there's more of them, we call that sort of coccyx a tail. If a single bone is required, why does the coccyx start as separate ones that just happen to look like little vertebrae? Why is there an extensor coccygis muscle?
Wings on flightless beetles. Numerous beetle species are flightless, such as darkling beetles (Eleodes species), the Kauai flightless stag beetle (Apterocyclus honoluluensis), and many weevils. Darkling beetles, for instance, are ground-dwelling and feed on decaying vegetation such as dead leaves and rotting wood. Females lay their eggs in soil, the larvae hatch, mature and pupate in soil, finally to emerge as adult beetles. Like most beetles, they have wings ... but these are sealed beneath fused wing covers (elytra), and so the beetles are flightless. For darklings, the fused elytra help conserve water; for others they are a better protection for the abdomen. Wings are obviously not needed for flight for ground-dwelling beetles. The question is, why is the shell on their backs made of wing covers, and why are there (often greatly reduced) wings beneath them?
Wings on flightless birds. Maybe some species use them for something else, but kiwis (Apteryx, three separate species) barely have wings. Barely being the point.
The homosexual stabbing rape reproduction in the bedbug Xylocaris maculipennis. Some bedbug species make use of a ¡¥mating plug¡¦, where once a male has mated with a female, the male seals her shut, preventing other males from mating with her. Some species have adapted around this by stabbing rape, where the male impales the female and bypasses the mating plug. In X maculipennis, this has been taken one step further, where the male impales and inseminates other males, and the rapist's genes enter the bloodstream to be carried to females by the victim. In this way, the rapist conceives by proxy. A convoluted ¡V and pointless ¡V piece of design. (See: Miranda MacQuitty with Laurence Mound, 1994: Megabugs: The Natural History Museum Book of Insects.)
Part I.....and
The non-functioning eyes of cave-dwelling creatures which live in total darkness: hundreds of species, from fish (eg Astyanax mexicanus) to insects (eg the Hawaiian cave planthopper Oliarus polyphemus), spiders (eg Neoleptoneta myopica), salamanders (eg Typhlomolge rathbuni) and crayfish (eg Cambarus setosus) ...
... and of burrowing animals, such as marsupial moles (order Notoryctemorphia) (no lens or pupil, reduced optic nerve), amphisbaenians and naked mole rats (Heterocephalus glaber).
Whilst on eyes ... is it not strange that the creator, having given the nautilus an otherwise very good pinhole camera eye, chose not to give it a lens?
The human post-auricular muscle, which in other mammals moves the ears to point towards sounds. The ability of some people to wiggle their ears being one of God¡¦s lesser-appreciated gifts to us, of course.
Haemoglobin, which has more affinity for carbon monoxide than for oxygen.
The aquatic embryos of land salamanders, which live on the land from hatching ...
... and aquatic creatures such as sea turtles, which have come onto land to lay their eggs.
The lungs of snakes, such as blindsnakes and colubroids ¡V one normal, one atrophied. Why waste material with the small one? More surface area could be available if the space the atrophied one¡¦s non-gaseous-exchange tubing takes up were given over to a larger volumed single main lung ¡V and this is what is found in other snakes.
The pelvis remnants of pythons...
... and the pelvis and hind limb bone remnants of whales. Even if (as is sometimes claimed) they do have a function, why are the bones in question bits of pelvis and limb?
Apes and humans requiring vitamin C in their diets. Not only can most animals synthesise their own; the great apes do all have the gene for this ¡V but it is broken. And it is rendered non-functional by the same mutation in all the great apes. How kind of God to give people without adequate diets scurvy.
The famous thumb of the giant panda. Why is its 'thumb' made of an altered wristbone (the radial sesamoid) rather than the normal digit? If six 'fingers' are better than five for grasping, why do only pandas have this feature?
The phenomenal waste of life in nature, everywhere you look. Oak trees produce thousands of acorns, and fish thousands of eggs, in the hope that a few will survive; tons of pollen are cast into the air (cf Genesis 38:9-10 ¡V wasting your gametes was a serious enough sin (though almost everything was in Yahweh¡¦s eyes in those days) for Onan to be killed in punishment, yet the Good Lord is supposed to have created things which by their nature spill so much seed on the ground?); approximately a third of human pregnancies miscarry in the first trimester; male elephant seals battle so furiously for females that great numbers of them die of bloody wounds; when a male lion takes over a pride, it will usually kill the cubs of the previous top male; the boom and (catastrophic for the individuals) bust of lemming populations...
Marsupial infants being born from the usual opening and having to wriggle arduously through their mother¡¦s fur to reach the pouch and nourishment. Why not be born either more fully developed (like placental mammals) or even straight into the pouch? And why is such a set-up present in such diverse creatures as kangaroos, koalas and thylacines ¡V and why are (were) they found only in Australasia?
The foetal teeth of cows, anteaters and baleen whales, which are made, only to be reabsorbed.
The tails and gill bars of human embryos.
The tails of peacocks, which are so long that the birds (which are a favourite food of tigers) can barely fly ¡V just so they can attract females and ensure the survival of the kind?
The tails of guinea pigs, which are present but which are so short (reduced?) they do not extend outside the body.
The diet of ruminants is composed largely of cellulose, so why do they have to rely on gut bacteria and protozoa in order to digest it? Enzymes are readily apparent in animals to break down other foodstuffs. A good designer would surely have enabled them to break cellulose down for themselves ¡V after all, ¡¥mere¡¦ bacteria can do it!
In a similar vein, the Chinese grass carp, Ctenopharyngodon idella, grazes on aquatic plants and, during floods, on land vegetation. It has specialised pharyngeal teeth that enable it to break up leaves, and so access the cell contents. So the creator clearly intended it to be able to eat these plants. Yet like most vertebrates, the cellulose itself and unopened cells pass undigested through the gut. If only it had the appropriate gut bacteria ... (Did God just forget the grass carp when he was giving out the bacteria? Well I suppose there are a lot of species, so he can¡¦t be expected to remember everything.)
The mammalian tidal respiratory system, which is less efficient than the avian through-flow one.
The non-functional and reduced poison spur on the hind legs of echidnas (functional in the platypus).
Flatworms of the species Convoluta roscoffensis are green because their translucent tissues are packed with Platymonas algae. The algae live, grow and die inside the bodies of the worms. Their photosynthetic products are used as food by the worms, and the algae recycle the worms¡¦ uric acid waste as food for themselves. The worms¡¦ mouths are superfluous and do not function after the larvae hatch: worm plus algae plus sunlight is a self-contained unit. For what divine-design purpose do the flatworms have mouths, as other flatworms have? And just how useful would it be in times of hardship if all animals could make their own food? Some chlorophyll (or strategically placed algae!) would do it. But only plants have it.
Cell organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts have their own DNA, which is inherited separately from the rest of organisms¡¦ genetic material. Why should the code for small elements within each eukaryotic cell be inherited separately and differently from that which forms the rest of the organism in all its intricacy ¡V the leaves, bone, teeth, eyes, antennae or brains? An odd design ¡V and the numerous structural and biochemical resemblances between these organelles and bacteria are mere coincidences of course. See: http://www.nature.com/genomics/papers/r_prowazekii.html)
The non-functional pistils (female parts) in male flowers. Since most flowers have both sexes of reproductive organs (stamens and pistils), the pistil of a flower with only stamens that are functional is vestigial ¡V or a waste of materials.
Flowers on plants such as dandelions, which are self-pollinating, and so do not need to attract pollinating insects.
The twisted skulls of bony flat fish, order Pleuronectiformes ¡V around 600 species including halibut, plaice, sole and turbot. If you are a fish and want to hug the contours of the sea bed, there are two ways your body can be flattened. The most obvious is front to back, laying on your tummy, as rays and some sharks are. Sharks are generally already slightly flattened dorso-ventrally. Most bony fish, however, tend to be flattened in a vertical direction (higher than they are wide). No surprise to an evolutionist, then, that those bony flatfish that do swim at the bottom are flattened sideways, and lay on their side. The problem with this is that one eye would always be pointing at the sea bed. They solve this by the skull contorting during development so that both eyes point up. You will notice though that their mouths are still sideways on. They are cartoon stereotypes of what a mutant should look like. How is this ¡¥intelligent design¡¦, rather than design constrained by history, by the materials it started with?
The human appendix. I¡¦ll leave aside the idea that it¡¦s vestigial, and simply wonder why, if it¡¦s part of an intelligent design, it has no known function ¡V other than to be a pocket for bacteria to get trapped in? It is common (7% of the US population, for instance) for it to become distended and blocked, so that the bacteria can invade the wall, leading, untreated (as it would have been for nearly all of our past), to potentially lethal perforation.
The nerve ¡¥wiring¡¦ of the mammalian eye, where the photoreceptor cells are in backwards, so the ¡¥cables¡¦ are in the way of the incoming light, and have to exit the retina at the correctly-named blind spot (an excellent design feature in an eye). Yet God got it the ¡¥right¡¦ way round in that pinnacle of His purpose, the squid?! ...
... of the African locust¡¦s (Locusta migratoria) wings, where the nerve cells that connect to the wings originate in the abdomen, even though the wings are on the thorax. Nerve signals from the brain have to travel down the ventral nerve cord past their target, then backtrack through the insect to where they are needed ...
... and of the mammalian larynx. The recurrent laryngeal nerve, rather than taking a direct route from the spine, instead passes down the neck, round the posterior side of the aorta, then back up again to the larynx. Which in the case of the giraffe, implies a creator so set on the mammalian Blauplan that an extra 10 to 15 feet of nerve is needed.
Talking of larynxes, there¡¦s the opening of the human larynx (leading to the trachea) being from the pharynx, so that swallowing impedes breathing (and vice versa). Not only that, but with the wind-pipe coming from off the food-pipe, there is a constant risk of choking. Before the Heimlich manoeuvre was invented, choking was one of the leading causes of accidental death; even so, thousands still die worldwide each year from inhaling their food. Children are more vulnerable because their airways are narrower. Great design.
The plumbing of the urethra ¡V a soft tube through the prostate, an organ prone to infection and subsequent swelling?!
The human spine. Bipedal vertebrates usually carry much of the spine roughly horizontal, and balance it with a tail. Equally, a string of cotton reels with spongy cushions between is a good cantilever bridge type design for flexible quadrupedal running, but a lousy thing to stand on its end and withstand the compression strains of vertical bipedalism. (And why thread so important a feature as the spinal cord through the middle of this, where disc damage can cause anything from pain to paralysis?) Compression strains are best absorbed by pillars. If you want the pillars to be flexible, you put joints in them. In biology, we have examples called ¡¥legs¡¦. The spine¡¦s divine design thus results in back pain which causes over 80 million annual days off work in the UK alone, 80% of people being affected by back pain at some point in their lives, backache during pregnancy (extra weight pulling in an out-and-down direction it can¡¦t happily support), and why you find, if you¡¦ve ever slipped a disc, that about the only comfortable position is on all fours.
The human knee. Ask any long-distance runner.
The human coccyx. When the bones of the coccyx are larger and there's more of them, we call that sort of coccyx a tail. If a single bone is required, why does the coccyx start as separate ones that just happen to look like little vertebrae? Why is there an extensor coccygis muscle?
Wings on flightless beetles. Numerous beetle species are flightless, such as darkling beetles (Eleodes species), the Kauai flightless stag beetle (Apterocyclus honoluluensis), and many weevils. Darkling beetles, for instance, are ground-dwelling and feed on decaying vegetation such as dead leaves and rotting wood. Females lay their eggs in soil, the larvae hatch, mature and pupate in soil, finally to emerge as adult beetles. Like most beetles, they have wings ... but these are sealed beneath fused wing covers (elytra), and so the beetles are flightless. For darklings, the fused elytra help conserve water; for others they are a better protection for the abdomen. Wings are obviously not needed for flight for ground-dwelling beetles. The question is, why is the shell on their backs made of wing covers, and why are there (often greatly reduced) wings beneath them?
Wings on flightless birds. Maybe some species use them for something else, but kiwis (Apteryx, three separate species) barely have wings. Barely being the point.
The homosexual stabbing rape reproduction in the bedbug Xylocaris maculipennis. Some bedbug species make use of a ¡¥mating plug¡¦, where once a male has mated with a female, the male seals her shut, preventing other males from mating with her. Some species have adapted around this by stabbing rape, where the male impales the female and bypasses the mating plug. In X maculipennis, this has been taken one step further, where the male impales and inseminates other males, and the rapist's genes enter the bloodstream to be carried to females by the victim. In this way, the rapist conceives by proxy. A convoluted ¡V and pointless ¡V piece of design. (See: Miranda MacQuitty with Laurence Mound, 1994: Megabugs: The Natural History Museum Book of Insects.)
Part I.....and
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All gastropod larvae do a 90 to 180 degree twist, so that the mantle, kidney opening and anus are sticking out over their heads. Which is an odd design. The really stupid design is the fact that slugs (subclass Pulmonata) and sea slugs (subclass Opisthobranchia) then do an untwist and straighten their bodies out again.
Mammalian testes form inside the body, and then have to pass out through the abdominal wall to the scrotum so they can be at a more conducive temperature for sperm formation. Not only is that odd (why cant sperm be made at body temperature?), but the process leaves a weak spot in the muscle wall. This inguinal ring?is liable to herniate, which both obstructs or strangulates the bowel and stifles blood flow to the testicles.
The vast quantity of junk DNA: pseudogenes, introns, transposons, retroposons, etc. Junk DNA is just that ?it does nothing for its owner except get itself copied. Pseudogenes, for instance, are chunks of DNA which have a resemblance to known genes that is too improbable to be coincidence, but which are not prefaced with a start?codon. Thus the DNA-to-RNA transcription system doesnt know that here is a gene to be expressed? This is not just an idle observation: about 95% of human DNA is junk DNA, not coding for any protein. For example, there is a family of junk DNA called Alu sequences that are repeated some million or so times, and this one family alone accounts for about 5% of our DNA. In Drosophila fruitflies, 40% of the genome is taken up by three sets of so-called satellite DNA: pieces just seven 'letters' long, with no 'meaning', repeated eleven million, 3.6 millio0n and 3.6 million times. Again, using more materials than are needed is not good design.
One of my favourites: normally non-functioning genes for making hens teeth, complete bird fibulas and separate tarsals, horse toes, human tails and congenital hypertrichosis. What are genes for making these things doing in creatures that dont need them, dont normally have them ... and under creation never have had them? Just how ridiculous does a design have to be in order to refute creation?
The genetic code itself. DNA has a remarkable copying fidelity ... yet mutations ?errors ?are far from rare. If the Good Lord wanted his creations to be separate immutable kinds, all he had to do was make the copying mechanism flawless (the second law of thermodynamics ought not be a problem to its inventor!). Meiotic recombination and outcrossing (sex) would still make different individuals. Hey presto ?no evolution. But the system is flawed ... so God must ... want evolution?
Sharks hunt, up close at least, by sight. Greenland sharks (Somniosus microcephalus), however, are nearly all blind, due to the presence of parasitic copepods (a subclass of crustaceans) that feed on the skin of their eyes. The sharks benefit because the copepods are bioluminous, and by their wriggling attract other fish which the sharks then snap up. But where is the intelligent design in such a complex set-up, and why does the shark need eyes if they are going to be parasitised to blindness as part of the design? There are other more straightforward ways to lure fish with a bait, as anglerfish (order Lophiiformes ?about 210 different species of them) show, rather than first having eyes, then having them go blind.
Fake sex in parthenogenic species: whiptail lizards of the genus Cnemidophorus have only females. An individuals fertility increases when another lizard engages in pseudomale behaviour and attempts to copulate with it. These lizards?nearest relatives ?oh, okay, the ones most similar to them in geography, genetics, anatomy and biochemistry ?are sexual species. The hormones for reproduction in these others are stimulated by sexual behaviour. Now, although Cnemidophorus are parthenogenetic, simulated sexual behaviour increases fertility. (See: Crews and Young 1991: Pseudocopulation in nature in a unisexual whiptail lizard? Animal Behaviour 42: 512-514; Crews and Fitzgerald 1980: ?quot;Sexual" behavior in parthenogenetic lizards (Cnemidophorus)? Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 77: 499-502.)
The human jaw, which is too small for the number of teeth it holds, hence impacted wisdom teeth.
The hollowness of the bones of flightless birds, from dodo to ostrich and penguin. It is not critical for ground birds to reduce weight with hollow bones of the sort that flying birds have. If the hollowness has some other useful purpose, why is this not shared by other animals?
Goose bumps (cutis anserina). Since humans (especially women) generally have little body hair, it is pointless having the same system of muscles (the arrectores pilorum) and sympathetic nerves which in most mammals raises the hairs in response cold or fear. Come to that, if our skin is meant to be mostly bare, why do we have the tiny hairs (and separate muscles and nerves for them) that we do?
... and so on, and on and on ...
All of these are easily explained if designs are constrained by history, but are anything but indications of intelligent design. It is often asked: what use is half a wing? But heres a use for half a brain ?any human designer with one, starting with a clean slate, could do better than these arrangements.
It is worth bearing in mind what intelligent?really means in a design context. Manufacturing researcher and consultant Terry Hill, in his 1986/2000 book Manufacturing Strategy, notes that any third-rate engineer can design complexity? and goes on to say that the hallmark of truly intelligent design is not complexity, but rather simplicity, or more specifically, it is the ability to take a complex process or product spec and create the least complicated design that will meet all project parameters. Xylocaris maculipennis implies that, at the very least, God the designer has an odd sense of humour.
And it also depends on what one calls perfection? Under creation, living things would be expected to be each perfectly adapted to its circumstances. Yet the opening of the Suez Canal has led to a massive influx of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean (at a rate of ten new forms per year ?and hardly any the other way). Many Mediterranean species are now in decline, and the native prawn is almost gone. Similarly, grey squirrels have driven the native red squirrels to near extinction in these isles in the 150 years since their introduction from America, and in their fifty years here American mink (Mustela vison) have caused a 30-50% fall in ground-nesting birds in Scotland and a catastrophic?decline in water voles throughout Britain. (Preliminary Water Vole Report, Vincent Wildlife Trust; The mink and the water vole ?analyses for Conservation, Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Oxford.) Unlike in the mink's own native America, our native birds and mammals have no natural defence mechanisms to deal with this predator.?(Government Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs 2000: Mundy: Submission on Mink Hunting.) There are countless other examples of organisms introduced by man to a region where they did not exist before out-competing the local fauna and flora, such as rabbits in Australia, and the devastation on local Galápagos fauna wreaked by mans introduction of pigs, goats, rats, dogs, fire ants, etc. Thus, creatures designed by God to fit their circumstances are pushed out, even unto extinction, by more-perfectly adapted ones from elsewhere. How can that be?
Also, to quote Nesse and Williams, Evolution and Healing (1995):
Why, in a body of such exquisite design, are there a thousand flaws and frailties that make us vulnerable to disease? If [God] can shape sophisticated mechanisms such as the eye, heart and brain, why hasnt [he] shaped ways to prevent nearsightedness, heart attacks, and Alzheimers disease? If our [God-made] immune system can recognise and attack a million foreign proteins, why do we still get pneumonia? If a coil of DNA [his preferred method for all life on earth to make offspring, apparently] can reliably encode plans for an adult organism with ten trillion specialised cells, each in its proper place, why cant we grow a replacement for a damaged finger [after all, lowly salamanders can grow whole new legs]? If we can live a hundred years, why not two hundred? [though many in the Bible apparently did, and more!].?
This list was borrowed from a friend....
By all means, npet, let's look, really look, at Design in nature.
Vorkosigan
Mammalian testes form inside the body, and then have to pass out through the abdominal wall to the scrotum so they can be at a more conducive temperature for sperm formation. Not only is that odd (why cant sperm be made at body temperature?), but the process leaves a weak spot in the muscle wall. This inguinal ring?is liable to herniate, which both obstructs or strangulates the bowel and stifles blood flow to the testicles.
The vast quantity of junk DNA: pseudogenes, introns, transposons, retroposons, etc. Junk DNA is just that ?it does nothing for its owner except get itself copied. Pseudogenes, for instance, are chunks of DNA which have a resemblance to known genes that is too improbable to be coincidence, but which are not prefaced with a start?codon. Thus the DNA-to-RNA transcription system doesnt know that here is a gene to be expressed? This is not just an idle observation: about 95% of human DNA is junk DNA, not coding for any protein. For example, there is a family of junk DNA called Alu sequences that are repeated some million or so times, and this one family alone accounts for about 5% of our DNA. In Drosophila fruitflies, 40% of the genome is taken up by three sets of so-called satellite DNA: pieces just seven 'letters' long, with no 'meaning', repeated eleven million, 3.6 millio0n and 3.6 million times. Again, using more materials than are needed is not good design.
One of my favourites: normally non-functioning genes for making hens teeth, complete bird fibulas and separate tarsals, horse toes, human tails and congenital hypertrichosis. What are genes for making these things doing in creatures that dont need them, dont normally have them ... and under creation never have had them? Just how ridiculous does a design have to be in order to refute creation?
The genetic code itself. DNA has a remarkable copying fidelity ... yet mutations ?errors ?are far from rare. If the Good Lord wanted his creations to be separate immutable kinds, all he had to do was make the copying mechanism flawless (the second law of thermodynamics ought not be a problem to its inventor!). Meiotic recombination and outcrossing (sex) would still make different individuals. Hey presto ?no evolution. But the system is flawed ... so God must ... want evolution?
Sharks hunt, up close at least, by sight. Greenland sharks (Somniosus microcephalus), however, are nearly all blind, due to the presence of parasitic copepods (a subclass of crustaceans) that feed on the skin of their eyes. The sharks benefit because the copepods are bioluminous, and by their wriggling attract other fish which the sharks then snap up. But where is the intelligent design in such a complex set-up, and why does the shark need eyes if they are going to be parasitised to blindness as part of the design? There are other more straightforward ways to lure fish with a bait, as anglerfish (order Lophiiformes ?about 210 different species of them) show, rather than first having eyes, then having them go blind.
Fake sex in parthenogenic species: whiptail lizards of the genus Cnemidophorus have only females. An individuals fertility increases when another lizard engages in pseudomale behaviour and attempts to copulate with it. These lizards?nearest relatives ?oh, okay, the ones most similar to them in geography, genetics, anatomy and biochemistry ?are sexual species. The hormones for reproduction in these others are stimulated by sexual behaviour. Now, although Cnemidophorus are parthenogenetic, simulated sexual behaviour increases fertility. (See: Crews and Young 1991: Pseudocopulation in nature in a unisexual whiptail lizard? Animal Behaviour 42: 512-514; Crews and Fitzgerald 1980: ?quot;Sexual" behavior in parthenogenetic lizards (Cnemidophorus)? Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 77: 499-502.)
The human jaw, which is too small for the number of teeth it holds, hence impacted wisdom teeth.
The hollowness of the bones of flightless birds, from dodo to ostrich and penguin. It is not critical for ground birds to reduce weight with hollow bones of the sort that flying birds have. If the hollowness has some other useful purpose, why is this not shared by other animals?
Goose bumps (cutis anserina). Since humans (especially women) generally have little body hair, it is pointless having the same system of muscles (the arrectores pilorum) and sympathetic nerves which in most mammals raises the hairs in response cold or fear. Come to that, if our skin is meant to be mostly bare, why do we have the tiny hairs (and separate muscles and nerves for them) that we do?
... and so on, and on and on ...
All of these are easily explained if designs are constrained by history, but are anything but indications of intelligent design. It is often asked: what use is half a wing? But heres a use for half a brain ?any human designer with one, starting with a clean slate, could do better than these arrangements.
It is worth bearing in mind what intelligent?really means in a design context. Manufacturing researcher and consultant Terry Hill, in his 1986/2000 book Manufacturing Strategy, notes that any third-rate engineer can design complexity? and goes on to say that the hallmark of truly intelligent design is not complexity, but rather simplicity, or more specifically, it is the ability to take a complex process or product spec and create the least complicated design that will meet all project parameters. Xylocaris maculipennis implies that, at the very least, God the designer has an odd sense of humour.
And it also depends on what one calls perfection? Under creation, living things would be expected to be each perfectly adapted to its circumstances. Yet the opening of the Suez Canal has led to a massive influx of Red Sea species into the Mediterranean (at a rate of ten new forms per year ?and hardly any the other way). Many Mediterranean species are now in decline, and the native prawn is almost gone. Similarly, grey squirrels have driven the native red squirrels to near extinction in these isles in the 150 years since their introduction from America, and in their fifty years here American mink (Mustela vison) have caused a 30-50% fall in ground-nesting birds in Scotland and a catastrophic?decline in water voles throughout Britain. (Preliminary Water Vole Report, Vincent Wildlife Trust; The mink and the water vole ?analyses for Conservation, Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, Oxford.) Unlike in the mink's own native America, our native birds and mammals have no natural defence mechanisms to deal with this predator.?(Government Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs 2000: Mundy: Submission on Mink Hunting.) There are countless other examples of organisms introduced by man to a region where they did not exist before out-competing the local fauna and flora, such as rabbits in Australia, and the devastation on local Galápagos fauna wreaked by mans introduction of pigs, goats, rats, dogs, fire ants, etc. Thus, creatures designed by God to fit their circumstances are pushed out, even unto extinction, by more-perfectly adapted ones from elsewhere. How can that be?
Also, to quote Nesse and Williams, Evolution and Healing (1995):
Why, in a body of such exquisite design, are there a thousand flaws and frailties that make us vulnerable to disease? If [God] can shape sophisticated mechanisms such as the eye, heart and brain, why hasnt [he] shaped ways to prevent nearsightedness, heart attacks, and Alzheimers disease? If our [God-made] immune system can recognise and attack a million foreign proteins, why do we still get pneumonia? If a coil of DNA [his preferred method for all life on earth to make offspring, apparently] can reliably encode plans for an adult organism with ten trillion specialised cells, each in its proper place, why cant we grow a replacement for a damaged finger [after all, lowly salamanders can grow whole new legs]? If we can live a hundred years, why not two hundred? [though many in the Bible apparently did, and more!].?
This list was borrowed from a friend....
By all means, npet, let's look, really look, at Design in nature.
Vorkosigan
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The difference is one of time and presence.
When it comes to atomic physics, you can test the products of your imagination here and now.
You can't test what you imagine about evolution in the same way. You can't toss some primitive life forms in a lab environment and then twiddle your thumbs for a billion years to see if "mosquito-to-bunyip" evolution really happens.
So what do you (evolutionists) do? You make predictions and then look at the data. When the data doesn't really fit, you adjust your predictions. When the data contradicts evolution, you ignore it and explain it away as "none of the fossils were preserved for some reason."
Then you take these meaningless events (such as a mosquito evolving into a mosquito) and extrapolate from them that evolution must happen the way you IMAGINE it would happen.
But you have nothing whatseover in the way of hard evidence when it comes to the difficult and important aspects of evolution -- mosquitoes that evolve into bunyips.
The most entertaining thing of all is what happens when the evidence clearly points to creation. Dawkins, Eldredge and many others take a look at the nature of life and the fossil evidence and say "gosh, life sure does look like it was designed, and the fossil evidence sure does look like it matches the predictions of creationists." So what do they do next? Admit the obvious and abandon the theory of evolution? No! They concoct elaborate explanations as to how evolution can occur and leave evidence that looks like creation! (Punk Eek, for example.)
Are they simply idiots? No, of course not. IMO this is a spiritual issue. When it comes to spirtual blindness, no amount of contradictory evidence will ever convince an evolutionist that creation is true. Which makes me wonder why I even participate in these discussions.
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Jerry Smith,
I don't feel compelled to answer 99% of your post, since it's 50% hand waving (as if adding expressions like "in spades" makes speculation any more true) and 49% ad-hominems. I will point out one thing, though:
Is this a question you really want to ask? IMO evolution is not apparent at all, but you not only seem to think it is apparent, you also seem to think that apparent evolution equates to actual evolution.
I don't feel compelled to answer 99% of your post, since it's 50% hand waving (as if adding expressions like "in spades" makes speculation any more true) and 49% ad-hominems. I will point out one thing, though:
Is this a question you really want to ask? IMO evolution is not apparent at all, but you not only seem to think it is apparent, you also seem to think that apparent evolution equates to actual evolution.
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actual evolution has been observed, both on a "micro" level (antibiotic/pesticide resistance) and on the "macro" level (the numerous speciation events you all seem to ignore or dismiss)
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I guess points 1-8 which relate the evidence for a common ancestor between humans and chimps is in this category.
I only ask for 1 example of an ad hominem argument anywhere in any of my posts here. If your claim for 49% is even a reasonable exaggeration you should be able to reproduce one, because there should at least be two or three examples in my post. I will not take accusations like that lightly.
It is a question I want to ask. No, I don't see that evolution is readily apparent - why do you think that it wasn't understood until century and a half ago? Even if evolution was apparent, I would not consider that necessarily as strong evidence for it: looks can be deceiving. I would like to know what you consider apparent, and whether or not the "apparent" design is evidence enough to throw out all cladistics studies, all biogeography, all paleobiogeography, etc... that all support the factuality of darwinian evoloution. If "apparent" design is enough to prove design, is "apparent" jury rigged design and "apparent" poor design enough to prove that the designer was inept, and was restricted to already-existing genetic material for each of his countless chronologically successive creations?
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Yes, these are wonderful examples of how imaginative evolutionists are.
You wanted just 1 example of ad-hominems.
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Ok: here we have another instance of the data not satisfying Nick Petreley, who seems to have extremely (ridiculously) high standards of evidence where it concerns evolution, but "apparent design" is enough for him where it concerns Creationism.
In response to this statement from a Linux guru, who seems to think that the fossil skulls in museums around the world, and the DNA sequencing data in laboratories around the world is imaginary:
It is perfectly fair to me to point out that, as a computer guru who has not studied biology or evolution in depth, your claim that the data is imaginary is a laughable one. The fossils are in the museums the genetic sequences are in the labs and in the journals. The marsupials are in Australia and the sourthern Americas. The pandas are in China, and the Russian Zebra Mussels were, until recently, in the Baltic. Our imagination covers a lot of the Earth's surface. If you had, in fact, studied the data, you would already know all of this.
Ad hominem is something like this:
"brain-dead evolutionists"- Nick Petreley (from his own board)
"You are exploiting their ignorance of the terminology to pretend that science has already observed the kind of leap their talking about -- a mosquito turning into a bunyip. But science has not observed anything of the kind."- Nick Petreley (from this thread)
"Anyway, I think I have a solution for this problem. I suggest evolutionists stop whipping out the mosquito URL and get a vasectomy, instead."- Nick Petreley (from this thread).
If you don't want to be criticized for arguing about what you haven't bothered to become informed about - become informed first.
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A correction: not all primates have the inactivated gene for vitamin C. Only the "great apes" (humans, chimps, gorillas, and orangatans). The principle of the problem remains. Why didn't the designer detect this flaw in Australopithecus and correct it b4 he made homo sapiens "in his own image". Why is the unique sharing of this genetic defect (at the unique locus) present only in homo sapiens and other great apes? Why not in the occasional rat or iguana - if not by common descent?
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How is evolution different?
I can look for fossils in the here and now.
I can compute the age of the Earth in the here and now.
I can study genetics in the here and now.
I can observe small instances of evolution in the here and now.
No, but I can examine some primitive life forms in the lab for a few months and then extrapolate out to a billion years. Is there a problem with extrapolation?
Um, isn't that the scientific method? We used to think matter behaved one way until it didn't fit the data, so then we invented quantum mechanics.
Please present the data the contradicts evolution.
Uh, that would be incorrect. See:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
Maybe if you actually read Dawkins, Eldredge, and Gould instead of creationist misrepresentations of them, you'd understand that this is not what they either say or do.
Yeah, right. The Pope suffers from "spiritual blindness". Very convincing.
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What creation would you be referring too? Young earth, old earth, day-age, c-decay, white-hole cosmology, geocentric, heliocentric, or that form of creation that looks an awfully like it but doesnt use the e-word?
So instead of educating people about science and scientific terminology, you would rather science pick new terminology. Do you advocate the same accommodation for computer users who think that cd-rom trays are cup holders?
Well its their own fault for not learning about a subject before criticizing it. Im sure you would not be so willing to accommodate my ignorance, if I argued that Linux was a buggy system, and by Linux I meant the game console produced by Microsoft.
You are exactly right. A bunyip is an undefined, imaginary concept. Until you give us something for it to refer too, any comments regarding its evolution or lack there of are imaginary too.
Actually no, the few exceptions are not enough to bring the species back together. In fact, hybrid inferiority is enough to maintain and increase the division between populations.
Sorry, wrong inference. There is no evidence in biology that related individuals must be able to reproduce together. There is evidence that you must be related to reproduce together.
Until you give us some description of what bunyip refers too, your question is worthless. There is not one answer that can satisfy all imaginable definitions of bunyip. For some definitions, it might work and for other it might not. By not explaining what bunyip refers too, you will be able to shift your goalposts no matter what explaination we give. As such, its really not that compelling of an argument against evolution. You also understand that no one here is claiming that speciation is the only mechanism with influences evolution.
But of course, you have to imagine the Creator. If He/She/It/They is/are responsible for the diversity of life, He/She/It/They sure did go to a lot of trouble to make it look like universal common descent and evolution happened. Of course He/She/It/They could also be invoked if the evidence didnt look like evolution and universal common descent happened. As such, its not that informative of an answer.
All youve done is exaggerate peoples claims and then announce victory when they admit theyre not making those claims.
Again, please provide a reference to someone claiming that speciation leads to a mosquito evolving into a bunyip. (Whatever that means.) Otherwise, youre criticizing evolutionists for a position they dont even hold. Thats really not a good way to disprove science.
Pardon, me. But I thought I posted this reference in response to Louis and Josephus. You came much later to the thread, so I couldnt have been presenting it to you.
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Let's see what Pierre Grassé has to say from his book, The Evolution of Life. Emphasis mine, although I included more than just the text about extrapolation because it is most entertaining.
The only thing about which I disagree is this: "a pseudoscience has been created" should read "a pseudoscience has evolved, which we know from the evidence of all the science books that have changed dramatically over the years."
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well I guess if you've been cornered in an arument you can always just quote some creation scientist and pray that will distract your opponent
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I wrote:
Which npetreley attempted to answer with the following quote:
If this is to be more than a worthless argument from authority, then you'll need to tell us exactly what you think those "bold, often ill-founded extrapolations" are and why they are invalid.
And please keep your objections relevant to my original quote -- no Big Bang, abiogenesis, etc. non-sequiturs please.
Which npetreley attempted to answer with the following quote:
If this is to be more than a worthless argument from authority, then you'll need to tell us exactly what you think those "bold, often ill-founded extrapolations" are and why they are invalid.
And please keep your objections relevant to my original quote -- no Big Bang, abiogenesis, etc. non-sequiturs please.
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