Creationists: Explain your understanding of microevolution and macroevolution

Alan Kleinman said:

And you atheists don't? You believe in macroevolution but can't explain what it is or present any experimental examples of it. It seems faith is important to you atheists as well, but faith in what?

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We can't explain the idiotic strawman you've created because it's not real.

Alan Kleinman said:

And you atheists don't? You believe in macroevolution but can't explain what it is or present any experimental examples of it. It seems faith is important to you atheists as well, but faith in what?

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And while we're on the subject... if something doesn't have experimental data in your eyes it's not real.

So explain God.

Alan Kleinman said:

And you atheists don't? You believe in macroevolution but can't explain what it is or present any experimental examples of it. It seems faith is important to you atheists as well, but faith in what?

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You must love to display you ignorance of evolution. Here is what Ken Miller, a devout Christian and biology professor has to say about naysayers like yourself:
Ken Miller has received the Laetare Medal at the University of Notre Dame. In 2017, he received the inaugural St. Albert Award from the Society of Catholic Scientists. You know as much about Christian and atheist as you do about evolution. Zilch!

Phred said:

And you hand-waved and made some snarky comment and then proceeded to say Lemski and Kishony about a million times.

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I was just thinking, wouldn't Lemski and Kishony, repeated about a million times, be very close to an example of macro evolution?

Lemski and Kishony
Lemski an Kishony
Lemski an Kishond
Lemski a Kishond
Hemski a Kishond
Humski a Kishond
Humski Kisond
Humaski Kishond
Humasi Kisond
Humasi Kisoned
Humasi Kisoved
Humasi Kisolved
Humasi Kivolved
Humasi ivolved
Humasi Evolved
Humas Evolved
Humans Evolved

Alan Kleinman said:

And you atheists don't? You believe in macroevolution but can't explain what it is or present any experimental examples of it. It seems faith is important to you atheists as well, but faith in what?

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"Atheist" got nothing to do with it. You might as well ask how the auto mechanics explain the diversity of life. Both are irrelevant to the question.

The thread is about how *creationists* understand micro/macro evolution, it's not even about non-creationists.

Faith is irrelevant. (Generally, but specifically to science.)

Ophiolite said:

I was just thinking, wouldn't Lemski and Kishony, repeated about a million times, be very close to an example of macro evolution?

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Sure! Under ideal laboratory conditions, that only 1e9*1e6 replications. No problem getting 1 quadrillion replications.

Hans Blaster said:

"Atheist" got nothing to do with it. You might as well ask how the auto mechanics explain the diversity of life. Both are irrelevant to the question.

The thread is about how *creationists* understand micro/macro evolution, it's not even about non-creationists.

Faith is irrelevant. (Generally, but specifically to science.)

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Yep! And there is no such thing as macroevolution, only what Ophiolite said, repeat the "Lemski(sic) and Kishony" experiment a million times. Compute the joint probability of those million random events (mutations) occurring! By the way, I've known some pretty smart auto mechanics.

Alan Kleinman said:

Yep! And there is no such thing as macroevolution, only what Ophiolite said, repeat the "Lemski(sic) and Kishony" experiment a million times. Compute the joint probability of those million random events (mutations) occurring! By the way, I've known some pretty smart auto mechanics.

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So you say.
Here is what Ken Miller, a devout Christian, biology professor and expert scientist has to say about naysayers like yourself:

Alan Kleinman said:

By the way, I've known some pretty smart auto mechanics.

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I've known a very smart auto mechanics also, but I wouldn't ask him to give a talk on evolution. And I wouldn't have asked Ernst Mayr to tune an E-type Jag.

Ophiolite said:

I've known a very smart auto mechanics also, but I wouldn't ask him to give a talk on evolution. And I wouldn't have asked Ernst Mayr to tune an E-type Jag.

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You know, I just can't shake the feeling this guy put someone's dog into a homemade transporter.

Phred said:

You know, I just can't shake the feeling this guy put someone's dog into a homemade transporter.

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Sorry, that one has gone over my head, or past my shoulder. I'm sensing a cultural reference, or a colloquiallism that's not in my repertoire. Can you explain?

Ophiolite said:

Sorry, that one has gone over my head, or past my shoulder. I'm sensing a cultural reference, or a colloquiallism that's not in my repertoire. Can you explain?

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Star Trek. Scotty puts the Admiral's prized beagle into a transporter to attempt to prove that it's possible to transport farther than just from ship to planet. The beagle was never heard from again and Scotty ends up assigned to a remote, frozen outpost.

I hear this guy who claims to have been an engineering whizkid. He's got advanced degrees out the yingyang. He's working on the shuttle. He solved some equation that's still being used today. (the guy blows his own horn louder than Maynard Ferguson.) Suddenly he's studying medicine at a fourth-rate medical school in the Caribbean. Does that lead to more fame and fortune? No, our intrepid adventurer is currently practicing at an urgent care.

Ophiolite said:

I've known a very smart auto mechanics also, but I wouldn't ask him to give a talk on evolution. And I wouldn't have asked Ernst Mayr to tune an E-type Jag.

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Auto mechanics can't study and figure out biology and biologists can't study and figure out physics and it shows.

Phred said:

Star Trek. Scotty puts the Admiral's prized beagle into a transporter to attempt to prove that it's possible to transport farther than just from ship to planet. The beagle was never heard from again and Scotty ends up assigned to a remote, frozen outpost.

I hear this guy who claims to have been an engineering whizkid. He's got advanced degrees out the yingyang. He's working on the shuttle. He solved some equation that's still being used today. (the guy blows his own horn louder than Maynard Ferguson.) Suddenly he's studying medicine at a fourth-rate medical school in the Caribbean. Does that lead to more fame and fortune? No, our intrepid adventurer is currently practicing at an urgent care.

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Life can take strange paths. And you didn't get this all correct. The equation I solved showed that trying to use thermography to diagnose cancer could never work. The accuracy of skin temperature measurement would have to be at least 5-6 orders of magnitude more accurate than currently possible and that's for a distribution of temperatures at points all across the skin. And there are lots of physicians trained in Caribbean medical schools and there is still a big shortage of physicians. I had no problem passing 3 written medical licensing examinations and an oral exam on my first attempts. Perhaps the problem is that you can't be a clown and pass a medical licensing exam.

But explain to us why you think a biologist whose mathematical studies consist of a few dumbbell math courses and their physics studies consist of a survey course in physics for the non-scientist should be able to understand and analyze a complex thermodynamics problem such as biological evolution. Biologists don't have the scientific training to do this, and it shows. You would do this if you could but instead, you attack my education.

And one last thing, you whine so much about my continual mentioning of the Kishony and Lenski microevolutionary experiments. If you had a single real, measurable, and repeatable experiment that demonstrates macroevolution, you would mention it over and over. But you don't have it, if you do, mention it in a reply to this post. Since you don't, I don't mind you mentioning my education and training at all. It shows that you don't have any scientific argument for your claims about macroevolution, otherwise you would be making those arguments.

Isaiah 41:10 said:

I was raised without religion as well, though now I am an avid church goer and happy to be so.

But I think that there is a difference here in the topic of evolution and the topic of something along the lines of the anthropic principal.

The question of if there are long neck giraffes is a bit different from the question of why any giraffe even exists to begin with rather than the universe being some mottled or incoherent, non-sentient jumble of matter.

I have to say, I'd go with the atheists here in the topic on the theory of evolution, but as far as I can tell, there doesn't appear to be an answer from atheists for why the universe has the apparent order that it does that hosts life. And to be fair, theists have beliefs, but it's not like we were alive in the beginning to "know" these deep questions either beyond faith based ideas. For atheists though, as noted, the rabbit appears in the hat without any particular reason or rhyme nor even a purpose.

Atheism doesn't really have a clear philosophy on life. Something to collectively motivates people in life through ups and downs, together as a "church". It doesn't have a philosophy that makes efforts for cohesion of people.

@tas8831 what do you think of this?

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Thanks for the response - I'm a little busy this time of year (short summer where I live!) but I try to respond to thoughtful posts.

I'd say I find it difficult to separate the two; an explanation for the creation of the universe itself- and the culmination of that creation- humanity- a means by which this universe can literally contemplate it's own existence.. from physics to chemistry to biology - there is a progression

i.e. it seems improbable to me that the origins would be by design while the outcome was not...

The example of the Giraffe just illustrates that even in the most elementary theoretical examples of Darwinian evolution- supporting evidence is a lot more scant than many of us ex-atheists once assumed!

Isaiah 41:10 said:

Oh, here's another.

Samotherium - Wikipedia

Oh wow, this is a genus of 5 different short necked species of prehistoric giraffe.

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from your link:

This newly discovered ancient animal is an evolutionary offshoot of the "Sivathere" clade of animals, which includes Sivatherium and Samotherium, a similar-looking giraffid. As a "basal offshoot," that means that the animal was closely related to the common ancestor of sivatherium and samotherium, but it evolved in another direction.

^ and this is what we generally see in 'short necked Giraffes' examples - they are similar but key evidence shows they were most likely NOT direct ancestors-

One of the best candidates for actually being a direct ancestor:

Giraffa jumae was most likely the direct ancestor of the modern giraffe. G. jumae had a wider range than modern giraffes, extending from the modern giraffe's homeland in sub-Saharan Africa through the modern Middle East as far as Asia Minor. They closely resembled modern giraffes, but grew about 1 meter taller. G. jumae lived from 13 million years ago, during the Miocene, until about one million years ago, during the Cenozoic.

^ and this is the pattern we see in the fossil record... early appearances of direct ancestors are often fully formed and in this case- larger, not smaller than the modern species. Contrary to those artistic impressions of gradual Darwinian development we are all familiar with.

pitabread said:

While it can be said that we don't have complete information about how things like DNA arose naturally, the preponderance of evidence we do have supports natural origins.

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How it could have happened naturally is an ever more perplexing mystery for origin of life scientists- the preponderance of evidence we have is that some relatively crude steps can be achieved only in very carefully prepared and directed experiments (i.e. with a generous helping of ID)

What has also been established is that the usual fix-all 'billions of years' works against nature in this case, not for it- because certain intermediate chemical stages are prone to decay within a matter of hours

If ID proponents want to claim otherwise, they need to start by explaining the mechanisms by which DNA was designed and created by an intelligent designer.

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Well no, again- that's not how forensic science or archeology works either- i.e. that's not how we scientifically determine intelligent design in any observed subject.

People still debate how the pyramids or Stonehenge were built- some argue ancient aliens using levitation devices! and who knows they may be right... but obviously none of this alters the unambiguous evidence for intelligence being a necessary mechanism in the object's design.

How exactly the manufacturing process was conducted by the deduced intelligence, is a very good question, but a higher order one.

FrumiousBandersnatch said:

Reading this, I get a picture of an old guy on a porch swing, saying, "Yes sir, I was raised atheist, in a non-God fearing home, indeed I was. I remember my momma used to wag her finger at me and say, "Thomas, you be a good atheist now, and don't go believin' in any o'them there gods, y'hear?" "Yes, mamma.". Heh, heh, and mealtimes, we'd not bow our heads and not say grace over the food; not thanking the Lord for his bounty... And then, once a week on a Sunday morning, we'd get up early and not dress smart, and then we wouldn't go to church to not listen to the sermon and not sing hymns... it wasn't fundamentalist atheism, but it was pretty strict, I can tell ya!"

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Well that sounds lovely but I'm afraid it was not quite as charming- a porch swing probably would have been stolen in my neighborhood!

And it was a little more strict- in fact I never did give my parents any inkling of my skepticism of their beliefs, because I know how passionately they held them- and how they talked about people with different beliefs

Yesir, Id'a probly got me a parful whuppin for some of this here talk, and no foolin!