Apes and humans have different designs

[Loudmouth]

Creationists tend not to believe in vestigial organs which assumes an evolutionary explanation. Nor are there any useless functions in a creatures design. For example in the example you gave of a whale there is a reproductive purpose to the organ believed to be a leftover leg

Vestigial Structures - Answers in Genesis

Vestigial does not mean useless. That would be the first mistake. Vestigial means having a rudimentary or secondary function compared to the same organ in another species. To use a non-biological example, if my computer keyboard stops working I can still use it to pound in nails. If my old CRT TV stops working I can shoot some holes in it and use it as a boat anchor. That is essentially what vestigial organs are, pounding in nails with a broken computer keyboard.

 

[Loudmouth]

When you say things like suboptimal with reference to the Creators design that makes me think you are missing something real important, There is a reason for everything even if people do not yet know what it is.

What is the reason for the nested hierarchy?

 

[Loudmouth]

Great that you affirm my sincerity but disappointing that you do not actually interact with my viewpoint merely on the grounds that it includes an assumption e.g. of God that you have arbitarily decided is unscientific.

How can you interact with beliefs that are immune to evidence?

 

[Loudmouth]

If God designed an environment with certain conditions and features. Why does it surprise you that there is a continuity between his more primitive and advanced designs.

Why does this continuity require a nested hierarchy? You still have not answered this question.

We were created to live with each other and with the creatures of land, sea and air that God created according to their type. We breathe the same air and even have similar digestive needs. Indeed given the mandate to rule over the other creatures a degree of empathy with their natural processes of reproduction, feeding, waste disposal and sleeping seems very helpful in fact.

Then why do bats of the air have more in common with the whales of the sea than they do with the birds of the air? The facts directly contradict your claims.

DNA replication with mutations is the essential process you describe that gives the similarities and descent patterns that you associate with "nested hierarchies". A Supreme Being with a total mastery of the life processes that He Himself designed would not be handicapped by the timescale considerations and false starts of a merely naturalistic and unguided process. Thus I can observe exactly the same evidence and yet accept 6 day creation in the last 10000 years without any contempt for the accuracy of your descriptions of what is actually empirically quantifiable.

Why would a Supreme Being be limited to a nested hierarchy? Still waiting for an explanation.

 

[mindlight]

Yes, you're operating under certain, a priori assumptions, which is not science in any sense of the word, so yes, it's difficult to have a discussion with a presuppositionalist.

So your presupposition is that miracles are impossible and naturalism. That makes 2 presuppositions. I only have one - God did it - now lets work out what it is possible to know about how.

 

[FrenchyBearpaw]

So your presupposition is that miracles are impossible and naturalism. That makes 2 presuppositions. I only have one - God did it - now lets work out what it is possible to know about how.

I make three basic assumptions, and then try to predicate my beliefs upon evidence.

1. Reality exists.
2. We can learn something about reality.
3. Models with predictive capabilities are better than non-predictive models.

 

[mindlight]

I make three basic assumptions, and then try to predicate my beliefs upon evidence.

1. Reality exists.

Including the reality of a God who is able to raise the dead, create out of nothing and in human form walk on water and encourage others to do so also.

I suspect your understanding of reality is purely material hence the comment about naturalism.

2. We can learn something about reality.

Yes but our reasons for believing this are most likely different. Reality is intelligible because it was made by an intelligence. If it were merely an adhoc and unguided product of natural forces this would be extremely unlikely.

3. Models with predictive capabilities are better than non-predictive models.

And useless in the case of unique and unanalogous events like creation , the flood and Jesus's various miracles. Also when refering to DNA this terminology is completely inappropriate. While bananas can be turned blue and their shelf life prolonged by a few adjustments with humans we are just beginning. Mainly you cannot say that if I do x to this gene and y to that gene then this will happen. That If I assemble all the genetic material in accordance with model A this will happen. Noone has that level of control and understanding as yet except for some relatively minor micro level adjustments. Of course minor adjustments may well lead to medical cures which is great or better quality of life. However there is no type to type evolution being guided in labs. Many of the theories operating in this area are actually doing so without this predictive element and supporting experimentation.

 

[mindlight]

No! How many times do we have to tell you? You are claiming here that your infinite creator is severely limited in the creation process. That he does not have the design resources to create optimal designs for each type of creature. Because he is resource constrained, he re-used designs as he went along. This is sub-optimal, but necessary when resources are limited.

No I am saying that I do not consider his designs to be suboptimal but rather merely misunderstood.

This results in a nested hierarchy and sub-optimal design in virtually every case. Not only that, but the bible's sequence of events does not follow this hierarchy.

I do not follow the point about the bible. Primitive organisms were created first and man last is what the bible says but in a vastly accelerated fashion compared to evolution. The bible does not need to follow the theorised order of evolution anyway as that is just speculative guess work based on degraded information, with no understanding of evidence trails, throusands of years after the event and without reference to the primary factor involved ie the Creator Himself.

And a nested hierarchy is utterly unnecessary to interact with the environment. A cat can have six legs and a dog can have four legs, but the Biochemistry of digestion is the only thing that needs to be common for successful interaction with the environment. So the body plan does not need to be re-used. But since body plans (and much more!) are "re-used", we can see that the evidence unequivocally points to evolution and away from a creator.

Life is not just an interaction with ones environment , it has its own internal logic also - I really do not see the problem of finding that there are patterns shared across species. To me this points to a common designer with a definite idea about what the life he wished to create on this world looked like. Also the example you shared is mystifying. Almost every land animal has 4 limbs - the only issue is if we use them as legs or arms. What God has done works doesn't it, you could not have done better, so it just reads like uninformed pride when you suggest that the way it was done was suboptimal. You forget also when talking to me I do not buy into half the presuppositions that you have accepted by faith about the theory of evolution.

 

[mindlight]

That is a good point to stress. Both a fish and a human have the same inverted retina even though they live in entirely different environments. A fish and a squid, who share the very same environment, have very different eyes with a squid having a forward facing retina and a fish having an inverted retina. It makes no sense from that perspective.

So there are a variety of designs and sometimes designs for particular features resonate better between specific creatures despite the one being land based and the other sea based. So what - that's true but it says nothing.

 

[mindlight]

Vestigial does not mean useless. That would be the first mistake. Vestigial means having a rudimentary or secondary function compared to the same organ in another species. To use a non-biological example, if my computer keyboard stops working I can still use it to pound in nails. If my old CRT TV stops working I can shoot some holes in it and use it as a boat anchor. That is essentially what vestigial organs are, pounding in nails with a broken computer keyboard.

From evolutionary perspective I guess you are looking at functionality being the primary issue but from a design perspective this may be a matter of ascetics rather than functionality and also of character which would be much harder to quantify and predict within the scientific paradigm. If one accepts the ontological reductionism of a naturalistic scientific methodology when applied to the analysis of creatures then you are going to find some odd things. It's the same issue why this individual was created with an enormous nose- from a biological view point females may well be put off by it. But it is a feature of a particular individual that comes to define his character and appearance. Is there a reason for it - yes, but it has nothing to do with reproduction or survival. I know there are elaborate explanation to try and explain the beauty of a peacocks feathers in evolutionary terms but the simple explanation is one of design ascetics and character combined with the mating advantages that evolutionists want to stress.

 

[Mr Strawberry]

Including the reality of a God is able to raise the dead, create out of nothing and in human form walk on water and ecourage others to do so also.

You might want to ask yourself what you are basing these extraordinary beliefs on and how reliable you think those sources are. Have you any way of testing those sources?

I suspect your understanding of reality is purely material hence the comment about naturalism.

I suspect yours includes some wishful thinking.

Yes but our reasons for believing this are most likely different. Reality is intelligible because it was made by an intelligence.

You have no evidence for that.

If it were merely an adhoc and unguided product of natural forces this would be extremely unlikely.

How do you know?

And useless in the case of unique and unanalogous events like creation , the flood and Jesus's various miracles..

...as well as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland being taken as evidence of what happened to a little girl when she fell down a rabbit hole. As they might say in the EastEnders: If you ain't got nuffin better than that, then you ain't got nuffin, sunshine.

 

[mindlight]

How can you interact with beliefs that are immune to evidence?

Someone close to me is a CSI and deals with evidence. Evolutionary scientists speculate on the basis of dead remains, where the evidence trail has gone cold and build elaborate theories based on patterns that they observe now. What you call a nested hierarchy is just a pattern of similarity that you have made sense of with a theory. The theory fits but there is more likely a better one you haven't grasped yet as is often the case with scientific models. Its not about the facts here it is about the theory laden interpretative filters and concepts that you use to explain them and organise them.

 

[mindlight]

Why does this continuity require a nested hierarchy? You still have not answered this question.



Then why do bats of the air have more in common with the whales of the sea than they do with the birds of the air? The facts directly contradict your claims.



Why would a Supreme Being be limited to a nested hierarchy? Still waiting for an explanation.

A Supreme being is not limited to anything but may choose to work in whatever way he chooses. A nested hierarchy is a pattern you have interpreted with a theory and a title. I accept similarities in patterns not your theory laden version of the facts here. There is a continuity in creation between earlier and later designs and there is a discontinuity. I do not think it is possible to be as precise as you insist and indeed it is foolish to do so.

God created bats AND whales is the best explanation to that point as the similarities reveal.

 

[mindlight]

You might want to ask yourself what you are basing these extraordinary beliefs on and how reliable you think those sources are. Have you any way of testing those sources?

I suspect yours includes some wishful thinking.

I have discussed the authority of scripture most of my life with atheists like yourself to PhD level and beyond and the bible has won through that. The historical criticism movement of the nineteenth century was a severe test and accompanied with the claims made about evolution gave a lot of Christian pause for thought. But the bible survived that test intact and there are more Christians than ever today despite more being martyred for its truthes in the last 100 years than in the 1900 before that.

We live in a world where the high priests of knowledge cannot prove the claims that they make so aggressively about our origins and yet continue to receive billions in funding for their socalled theories. Wishful thinking is indeed a feature of the modern world

You have no evidence for that.
How do you know?

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

 

[StormanNorman]

A Supreme being is not limited to anything but may choose to work in whatever way he chooses. A nested hierarchy is a pattern you have interpreted with a theory and a title. I accept similarities in patterns not your theory laden version of the facts here. There is a continuity in creation between earlier and later designs and there is a discontinuity. I do not think it is possible to be as precise as you insist and indeed it is foolish to do so.

God created bats AND whales is the best explanation to that point as the similarities reveal.

That's fine. But, you are talking to scientists who do science and science doesn't work that way. In other words, they can't resort to the supernatural in order to explain the observations. By its very definition, the supernatural is outside the bounds of science. They only have the physical and natural laws to work with.

 

[Tomk80]

A Supreme being is not limited to anything but may choose to work in whatever way he chooses. A nested hierarchy is a pattern you have interpreted with a theory and a title. I accept similarities in patterns not your theory laden version of the facts here. There is a continuity in creation between earlier and later designs and there is a discontinuity. I do not think it is possible to be as precise as you insist and indeed it is foolish to do so.

God created bats AND whales is the best explanation to that point as the similarities reveal.

In other words, there is no model, there are no predictions and there are no observations that could ever confirm or falsify your idea of a creating God. Whatever you call it, that's not science.

 

[Mr Strawberry]

I have discussed the authority of scripture most of my life with atheists like yourself to PhD level and beyond and the bible has won through that. The historical criticism movement of the nineteenth century was a severe test and accompanied with the claims made about evolution gave a lot of Christian pause for thought. But the bible survived that test intact and there are more Christians than ever today despite more being martyred for its truthes in the last 100 years than in the 1900 before that.

The 'authority' of the scriptures? You might need to explain what you mean and how you test that 'authority'.

We live in a world where the high priests of knowledge cannot prove the claims that they make so aggressively about our origins and yet continue to receive billions in funding for their socalled theories. Wishful thinking is indeed a feature of the modern world

This is empty rhetoric. It might sound good in a pulpit but you have to be more detailed and less windy if you want to make a point that can be addressed.

 

[FrenchyBearpaw]

Including the reality of a God who is able to raise the dead, create out of nothing and in human form walk on water and encourage others to do so also.

Before this conversation goes any farther, please demonstrate you understand the definition of assertion and empirical facts.

After you've sufficiently demonstrated an understanding in basic terms, then you can move onto "the reality of a God."

(Please keep in mind these fundamental assumptions: reality exists; we can learn something about reality; predictive models can be made.

 

[Loudmouth]

So there are a variety of designs and sometimes designs for particular features resonate better between specific creatures despite the one being land based and the other sea based. So what - that's true but it says nothing.

Your post doesn't say anything either.

The point is that the inverted retina is always found in species with vertebrae regardless of their environment. You claim that adaptations are related to environment. They aren't. They are dependent on the evolutionary lineage.

 

[Loudmouth]

A Supreme being is not limited to anything but may choose to work in whatever way he chooses. A nested hierarchy is a pattern you have interpreted with a theory and a title.

False. The nested hierarchies were first discovered by Linnaeus who was a creationist that lived well before Darwin was born. The nested hierarchy is a fact. Creationism can not explain the faccts. Evolution can.

I accept similarities in patterns not your theory laden version of the facts here. There is a continuity in creation between earlier and later designs and there is a discontinuity. I do not think it is possible to be as precise as you insist and indeed it is foolish to do so.

Why does a continuity require a nested hierarchy? Still waiting for an answer.

God created bats AND whales is the best explanation to that point as the similarities reveal.

How does creationism explain the nested hierarchy?